Perdido

by Rick Collignon

  Ray raised the gun until it was level with Will’s face. He crossed himself with his free hand and said softly, “Vaya con Dios.” Then he jerked his arm up as if it were tied to a string, put the muzzle under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

  Ten

  WILL WATCHED RAY FALL. He went down without making a sound. The wind blew the noise of the shot at Will, and that’s all he heard. Like thunder, it seemed to him, dull and rolling. The sound was almost a place in itself, and some part of Will knew that he didn’t want to be around when it ended.

  He didn’t know how long he stood there staring. Until he could hear the wind again in the sage. Until he heard a long, slow whisper of a sigh come out of Ray’s body. Will heard himself say something he didn’t understand. He could see Ray’s face. He could see the mess the top of his head had become, the blood in the dirt pooling down to his shoulders. The only thing Will was conscious of at that moment was the desire not to get one step closer to Ray. He looked past where Ray had fallen and saw the hat still snagged in the sagebrush. It moved when the wind hit it, but still it was stuck.

  Will turned around and walked away. His legs felt weak and his hands were shaking badly. He walked maybe a hundred yards and then circled around, stumbling his way through the brush to Ray’s truck. He leaned against the hood and tried to catch his breath, the air wheezing in and out of his lungs. He tried to think about what he should do. An anxiousness grabbed hold of him, and he began to tremble again. He had the truck door open and was climbing inside the cab when he cursed loudly and got back out and walked over to where Ray lay. He knelt beside the body, one knee soaking up blood, and put his hand where he thought he might find a pulse. He pressed his palm into the flesh on the side of Ray’s throat for a long while and then slid his hand inside Ray’s shirt and held it there against his chest. He gave it some time to be sure. And then he went back to the truck and got the hell out of there.

  Will drove too fast, hitting the potholes and small ar-royos that knocked him around the cab and bounced the truck chassis hard on the springs. Finally, he swung the truck off the road and just drove over the sagebrush, swerving once to avoid the whiskey bottle Ray had thrown out not so long ago. After a few miles, he felt himself leveling off, not quite so shaky, his breath easing in and out more calmly. Will realized that he was going back to Guadalupe in Ray’s truck, and he had a feeling this wasn’t going to look so good.

  He hit the highway and felt the shakes coming back. He lit a cigarette, hoping it would have a soothing effect. But the muscles were dancing in his thighs and his heart was speeding up, tripping in his chest as though it had lost all sense of timing. A couple of vehicles passed by him, the drivers waving and then glancing back sharply as if they hadn’t seen right. Will pulled the sun visor down and drove to the village office.

  The place was closed up and empty. There wasn’t a vehicle parked in the lot. No sign of Donald Lucero’s squad car. Will didn’t even bother to get out of the truck. He circled the parking lot, got back on the highway, and drove to Felipe’s. He didn’t have any better luck there, which, he thought, was probably just as well; Felipe and his family didn’t need any of this in their lives. But Will cursed him just the same. For fishing, for being with his kids, for having dinner with his relatives instead of being home to help him out. It crossed Will’s mind that he could just drive the truck back to Ray’s house. He could tell Ray’s wife that Ray was at the river and needed a ride back, tell her she might want to bring someone with her. Instead, he went home. He drove through Guadalupe feeling like a neon sign, waving back at everyone who flicked up a hand at him.

  Lisa’s car was parked outside his house. A small fire was burning in the firepit. Lisa’s making dinner, he thought. She came out of the house when he drove up and stood in the doorway. She wiped her hands down on her jeans. She was smiling.

  “I thought you were going to cook,” she said. Will shut off the engine and climbed out of the cab. He leaned against the pickup and tried to smile. Lisa glanced at Ray’s truck and then brought her eyes back to him. She must have seen something in his face because her expression went slack and she said, “What happened?”

  Lisa made the call. Will sat at the kitchen table. Every so often he could feel a splash of heat shoot through his body like a fever. Lisa called the Guadalupe dispatcher number, and a machine gave her another number to call. When she finally got someone on the line, she said that she wanted to report a death and that Donald Lucero should come to Will Sawyer’s house by the baseball field. She started to give directions but then cut it short and said it was the land Marcello Rael owned with the old house on it. She said yes a few more times, ended with, “Bueno,” and put the phone down. Her back was to Will. She lowered her head and brought her hands up to her face.

  “Lisa,” Will said.

  Lisa took her hands from her face, shook her head slightly, and let out a long breath of air. “What are you going to do now?” she asked without turning around.

  “I’ll wait for Lucero,” Will said, “and tell him what happened.” She spun around and faced him. “No, you stupid, I mean after that.”

  “What do you mean, where am I going to go? I’m not going anywhere. The man shot himself, Lisa.”

  “He shot himself?” She was yelling now, leaning across the table. “You killed him, Will. You think everyone won’t know that? What are you, anyway? Crazy? This stupid? If I want to kill you for this, how do you think his family will feel?” She let out a long, low moan that rose higher in pitch. She picked up the ashtray on the table and flung it at Will. It hit him full in the mouth and fell back on the table, spinning until it lay still. Will felt a trickle of blood down his chin. Lisa let out another howl and pounded the tabletop with the flat of her hands. She picked the table a few inches off the floor and slammed it back down, and then, without a word or even a look, she turned and went out the door. Will heard her car door slam and then the wheels spinning in the dirt. Sixty seconds later, Donald Lucero drove up.

  Will walked outside and watched Lucero climb out of the squad car. The first thing he asked was what had happened to Will’s mouth. Will told him that he’d had an argument with his girlfriend and she’d hit him with an ashtray. When Will spoke, he could feel his lower lip stretch tight as if it were too big for his mouth. It was throbbing some, but there wasn’t any pain.

  “That’s Ray Pacheco’s truck,” Donald said without looking at it. He was standing by his car. Will thought that both the squad car and Donald Lucero in his neat blue uniform looked weirdly out of place in front of his house.

  “I know that’s Ray’s truck,” he said.

  “Where’s Ray?” Lucero asked. When he spoke, his mouth moved but the rest of his face stayed still and heavy, as if it had been cast that way. Lucero walked over to Ray’s truck, opened the door, and looked inside the cab. He shut it back up, stared at Will, and asked again, “Where’s Ray?”

  “He’s at the gorge,” Will said. “It happened out there. I left him and drove back here in his truck.”

  “What happened out there?”

  “He shot himself.”

  Lucero didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then he asked, “He shot himself how?”

  “With a gun. A revolver. Under his chin.”

  “Who else was with you?”

  “Just the two of us.”

  “Who was the woman who called the dispatcher?”

  “A friend. Lisa Segura.”

  Lucero looked at him for a while longer and then walked over to the squad car. He took some keys out of his pocket and unlocked the back door. He held it open. “Get in,” he said.

  They drove to the dirt road that led off the highway to the gorge, and Lucero pulled the car onto the shoulder. They sat there without talking, the car engine idling softly. Will wondered what they were waiting for, and he thought that it was good he’d checked Ray for a pulse. If there had been any life left in him, it would have been long gone by now. Will rested his
head back against the seat and closed his eyes. The windows were closed, and the air in the car was heavy and hot. Will wondered how his life had come apart so completely in just a few days.

  Twenty minutes later, a state trooper showed up along with an ambulance. Lucero must have seen them coming. He sat up straighter in the front seat and pushed the transmission into drive. The car jerked forward and Lucero ended up taking the turn a little too fast, the car scraping dirt, bottoming out hard. Will told him the ruts were bad, and he grunted. He glanced at Will in the mirror and then moved his eyes away. Out the rear window, Will watched the state cop and the ambulance take the turn slowly, the ambulance lurching slightly on the slope down from the highway. Both vehicles had the decency to have their sirens off, but their lights were on and swirling, flashing blue and red in the dust that Lucero’s vehicle had kicked up.

  Ray was where Will had left him, but he wasn’t alone, and Will thought that he’d been stupid not to have covered the body with something. A dozen or so large black ravens stood around Ray. They flew off squawking when Lucero approached and then lit down in the sage fifty yards away. Lucero jumped out of the car quickly and yelled, waving his arms. He picked up a rock and threw it. The birds flew up in the air a few feet, there was the heavy sound of their wings beating air, and then they settled back down where they had been. Lucero picked up another rock and threw it, but this time they ignored him altogether. He came back to the car, unlocked the door, and motioned Will out.

  “You shouldn’t have left him here like that,” he said and walked away.

  Will stayed by the car and watched the four of them, Lucero, the state trooper, and the two guys from the ambulance, a couple of tall, rangy Anglos in blue jeans and white shirts, walk up to Ray. Lucero said, “Jodido birds,” and the state cop said something that made the two EMTs laugh. Lucero shook his head and didn’t say anything else.

  The wind was still blowing, but it wasn’t gusting as it had been earlier. The sun, as hot as ever, was perched just above the horizon. Will could taste the bitter residue of whiskey in the back of his mouth. When he swallowed, the saliva went down his throat like mud. His lip hurt only when he moved it, but then it felt as though it were going to split open. He rubbed his chin and his hand came away with some dry flakes of blood.

  One of the EMTs knelt down next to Ray and did what Will had done earlier, put his fingers against Ray’s neck and kept them there, checking for a pulse. After a moment, he stood up and looked back down at Ray with the other three. “Surprise, surprise,” he said. “Do you want us to take him now?”

  The state cop nodded slowly, his jaw moving as if there were something in his mouth. “Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.”

  The EMTs walked back to the ambulance. Lucero and the state trooper stared at Ray for a while longer, and then Lucero branched away slowly, his head bent, his eyes scanning the ground as though looking for clues. Will took out a cigarette, lit it, and stuck it in his mouth where it didn’t hurt. He watched the state cop come back from his car and put Ray’s gun in a clear plastic bag. He sealed the bag, took it to his squad car, and tossed it on the front seat.

  The EMTs dragged a stretcher from the back of the ambulance and carried it over. They laid it on the ground next to the body, and, with one guy taking Ray’s feet and the other his arms, they loaded the body onto the stretcher. When they lifted him, Ray’s body sagged in the middle, his butt scraping the ground, and Will could hear the guy who had Ray’s arms grunt trying to lift him higher. Ray’s head tilted forward and two red lines of fresh blood ran from his hairline down each side of his nose and dripped in a steady stream off his chin onto his shirt. His eyes were open and he looked dazed, as though he weren’t exactly sure what had happened. His face was pale and drawn, the flesh sagging, and he looked older and used up, which, Will thought, he was. When they dropped Ray heavily onto the stretcher, his head fell back so that Will couldn’t see his face. They carried the stretcher over to the ambulance, slid it into the back, and then climbed in the front seat.

  The state trooper waved his hand absently, and the ambulance drove off. Will could picture Ray tossing around in back when the vehicle hit the ruts, his head moving from side to side, his eyes open and confused. There was a dark wet spot on the ground where he had lain, probably soaked through enough to be mud. Beyond that, in the sage, Ray’s hat moved gently in the breeze.

  Lucero and the trooper walked over to Will, Lucero trailing behind a little. The trooper walked with a bit of a swagger, his arms away from his body. The name plate on his chest read “L. Quintana.” He stopped in front of Will and took a few seconds to look at him.

  “Your lip could use a stitch,” he said. “Did Mr. Pacheco do that to you?”

  “No,” Will said. “It happened later. It didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “You tripped and fell?”

  “I told Donald already. I had a fight with my girlfriend.”

  “Over what?” he asked, and suddenly Will could see the conversation going in a direction that made him feel uneasy.

  Will shrugged. “Over nothing,” he said. “I don’t know. We fight.”

  L. Quintana looked over at Lucero. “His mouth was bleeding when I picked him up,” Lucero said. “It looked like it had just happened.”

  “Do you know this girl?” Quintana asked him. Lucero nodded and said that he knew the family. Quintana brushed at something on the side of his face. “Well, Bill,” he said, and Will didn’t bother to correct him, “Why don’t you tell us what happened out here?”

  Will took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he began. Lucero never said a word. Quintana interrupted every once in a while with a question. He asked Will what time it was when he and Ray left his house. How long they’d driven around town. Where they stopped. What time it was when Will returned to Guadalupe alone. Had he touched Ray’s revolver, and had either one of them been drinking?

  When Will had finished, Quintana waited as if there were more to say. He took off his hat and brushed at his hair with his fingers. He put his hat back on, puffed out his cheeks, and blew out some air. “Are you related to Mr. Pacheco?” he asked.

  “No,” Will said. “We’re not related.”

  The sun dipped below the horizon and all of a sudden the air stilled, not a breath of breeze, as though the sun had taken the wind with it when it set. A fly buzzed Quintana’s face and he waved at it.

  “Were you friends?” he asked.

  Will, and probably even Donald Lucero, who stood mute a few yards away, knew what Quintana was asking. And for a moment Will almost spilled it out, almost told L. Quintana that the reason Ray picked him up wasn’t due to friendship but because Ray couldn’t stand the sight of him, that if there were an afterlife, Ray would be pleased to see Will standing here in the sagebrush with a couple of cops, faced with the dismal prospect of returning to Guadalupe. Will didn’t know what stopped him. He didn’t know why it seemed smarter not to get involved in explaining the mess everything had become since Felipe told him about the girl on the bridge. But he didn’t take the time to think about it. He shied away as if he were leaning back from a railing at a great height. He wasn’t sure why he pulled away. He just did.

  He looked at Quintana. The fly came back, if it was the same one, and buzzed the air between them. Will swatted it aside, in Lucero’s direction.

  “I talked to Ray a couple of days ago,” Will said. “About an old truck he had junked. When he came over this afternoon and asked me to take a drive, I thought that was what it was about. We started driving around, talking, drinking some, and somehow we ended up out here. Ray was pretty drunk. He told me he had cancer and that he didn’t want to live that way. We got out and walked over to where you could see the river. The next thing I know, Ray has a gun in his hand, and then it’s under his chin. I didn’t even have time to move. He pulled the trigger and fell.” Will moved his eyes away from Quintana. The spot where Ray had fallen was drying up, and beyond that h
e could see the flock of ravens still standing around, waiting for them to leave. Ray’s hat had fallen from the sage and was lying in the dirt.

  When Will brought his eyes back, Quintana was looking at Lucero. “Damn,” he said, “it’s dry out here.”

  “Always,” Lucero said.

  Quintana flipped over his wrist and looked at his watch. He looked back at Lucero. “I don’t see any reason to take Bill in, do you?”

  Lucero stared at Will for a moment. Finally, he shrugged. “I don’t have any say out of the village limits.”

  Quintana grunted and turned back to Will. “How long have you lived here?” he asked.

  “Eighteen, nineteen years.”

  “Do you own property?”

  “Yes. A house and some land in Guadalupe.”

  Quintana looked at Lucero and raised his eyebrows. “Is this true?” he asked.

  “As far as I know,” Donald said, “what he says is true.”

  Quintana made a ticking sound with his tongue. After a few seconds, he said, “Okay, Bill, Officer Lucero can give you a ride back home. Thanks for your help. I’ll tell the medical examiner you’re available at the number you gave me. Is there any problem with that?”

  “No,” Will told him.

  “Do you have transportation to get to his office if he needs to see you?”

  “Yes.”

  Quintana nodded slowly and then gave a slight shrug. “That’s it, fellas. You guys can head out.”

  They drove off, leaving Quintana sitting alone in his squad car, his hat off, one hand moving idly through his hair, the other filling out forms.

  Lucero didn’t say a word on the ride back. Will sat in the back seat watching the mountains fill up the front windshield, growing larger as they drove east. There wasn’t much daylight left when they came to the highway, and Donald switched on the headlights. They drove south into town. Felix’s was closed down for the night, hardly any traffic at all on the road. Sunday night. Everyone smart was home resting up for Monday morning.