China Lake

by Meg Gardiner

‘‘Anything, Ev. I’m on my way.’’

  He broke the connection and I stared at the phone, hands shaking. Anything.

  I called the police. A woman’s voice answered, ‘‘Nine-one-one emergency,’’ and I said, ‘‘I want to report a child abduction in progress.’’

  ‘‘A child is being abducted, ma’am?’’

  ‘‘He’s going to be, in a few minutes.’’

  ‘‘Where is the child now?’’

  ‘‘In my car, on Highway Fourteen south of the Walker Pass turnoff.’’

  The deputy stood up from his crouch and looked toward the cruiser. I hid the phone on my lap. His attention stuck, then loosened again; he looked away.

  The dispatcher was saying urgently, ‘‘Ma’am, are you being pursued?’’

  Briefly my legal training turned me stupid, as I thought, Am I? Pursue: to chase; follow . . . before a smarter part of my brain screamed, Lie!

  ‘‘Yes! I don’t know if I can keep ahead of her much longer. Please send the police; she has men with her; I won’t be able to fight them off—’’

  The back door of the cruiser popped open, the deputy’s mass filling the space. He grabbed the phone. I slumped against the seat, feeling time tick away.

  A China Lake police car arrived ten minutes later, pulling off the road in a cloud of blowing sand. Behind it came the green Dodge pickup I had seen outside Luke’s school. Brian, I thought, please hurry.

  The China Lake officer, a rangy woman with big legs, walked around to open the police car’s passenger door. Tabitha got out tentatively and stood facing my Explorer, her auburn curls and soft white dress swirling in the breeze. From the green pickup emerged Chenille Wyoming in a lavender Stetson, and Isaiah Paxton, looking as hard as a length of pipe. They hung back, watching Tabitha.

  She ran to the Explorer. At the open door she stopped. Her fingertips went to her lips, a movement of delicate anguish. She threw out her arms and burst into tears.

  I shook the mesh screen, yelling, ‘‘No!’’

  Her loud voice carried clearly. ‘‘Luke, it’s Mommy. Come on, sweet pea.’’ She tilted her head in sweet cajolery and gestured, Come here, with her hands.

  And, for the first time since the deputy had pulled me over, Luke moved. He scurried away from her to huddle on the driver’s seat. Tabitha flicked a nervous glance at Chenille, who said, ‘‘What are you waiting for? Get him.’’

  No, I thought, I can’t let her. I can’t.

  I lay down on the seat and kicked both feet against the window. Nothing happened. I kicked again, screaming this time, and heard a dull crack. Once more, hard as a mule, and the window collapsed into beads of safety glass.

  The door behind my head flew open. The deputy loomed above me, shouting, ‘‘Stop!’’ I kept kicking and yelling, smelling his leather gun belt and British Sterling cologne. He yanked me out by the collar. I dropped back, hit the sand, felt the breath clap out of me. The China Lake cop appeared and helped him flip me facedown. I felt a knee in my back and grit on my cheek, heard the cop say, ‘‘She’s high. It’s PCP.’’

  The deputy flattened his nightstick against my neck. ‘‘Don’t move. I mean do not even breathe.’’

  I had to squeeze out the words. ‘‘That man has a gun.’’

  ‘‘Jesus H. Christ.’’ The deputy exhaled harshly. ‘‘That’s what gun racks are for. You think he should hang potted flowers from it?’’

  ‘‘You’re not going to let her put Luke in a truck that has a rifle within reach. You’re not.’’ They pulled me to my feet and marched me toward the China Lake police car. I said, ‘‘And how are they going to belt Luke in? That truck has three seat belts and I count four people. That’s illegal.’’

  ‘‘So’s resisting arrest. Now shut up before I jam this stick down your throat.’’

  They shoved me in. But, slamming the door, the China Lake cop said, ‘‘She actually has a point.’’

  ‘‘Make Tabitha go back to China Lake and rent a car!’’ I said. ‘‘And I’m not high—I’m trying to stop you from making a terrible mistake!’’

  Outside the window Paxton appeared, his face in shadow. He said, ‘‘What a way for the boy to remember you.’’

  Chenille barked, ‘‘Tabitha! Enough of this. Get your son.’’

  Anxiety had stretched Tabitha’s thin face like a balloon. Cops were watching, and her Remnant overlords, and her sweet talk had driven Luke onto the floor of my car. She reached for him. He leaped up and scrambled over the gearshift into the backseat. She grabbed after him but he opened the back door, jumped down, and broke for open desert. I yelled ‘‘Run!’’ and he did, beautifully, with a high kick in the back, such a little kid to have an Olympian’s stride, as I shouted, ‘‘Go faster’’—faster, away from all this, forever.

  Paxton caught him. He grabbed him by the shirt and brought him back thrashing and screeching. Please, Jesus, I begged. Let this be a witness to the cops. Let this testify. I cried, ‘‘Look at him!’’

  But Chenille was showing the deputy some paperwork. Paxton, his face like cracked ice, handed Luke to Tabitha. Luke arched his back and pushed against her with his arms, head back, howling at the sky.

  She didn’t flinch. She cinched her arms around him, securing her grip, speaking quietly to him. Paxton and Chenille grabbed his kicking legs, pressed him against Tabitha’s chest, and led her toward the pickup truck.

  Luke shot a hand out, sobbing. ‘‘Aunt Evvie!’’

  My heart broke.

  Tabitha turned him away. Chenille shook her index finger at his nose. Her face was a hot rock. I read her lips: Naughty boy.

  Luke folded. His limbs went limp, his face blank. When Tabitha set him in the truck he looked like a broken doll, arms floppy, eyes empty.

  The China Lake cop said, ‘‘Be sure he’s belted in, now.’’

  That was when we heard the horn, urgent and angry. A red Mustang was barreling down the highway toward us. Tears sprang from my eyes. It was Brian.

  He skidded to a stop and leaped out, lace-up boots hitting the ground, green Nomex flight suit snapping in the wind. He sharked toward the pickup truck. His black hair was sweaty, his mouth a slash, his voice a razor.

  ‘‘Take Luke out of the truck, Tabitha. He’s coming with me.’’

  The cops started toward him. Tabitha shriveled back, covering Luke with her body. Paxton stepped forward and said, ‘‘The child is with his mother now.’’

  ‘‘Move aside.’’

  ‘‘I don’t snap to when you give orders, Commander. ’’

  ‘‘Let me make this simple. My son is coming with me right now. I’m not going to say ‘pretty please,’ or kiss the ass of that Bubba Gump preacher you worship. I don’t have to.’’ He held up a sheaf of papers. ‘‘I have a court order.’’

  The female cop took them. Brian peered into the truck. ‘‘Luke,’’ he said, ‘‘everything’s going to be okay.’’ The answering silence was like a wound. The cop flipped through the custody documents. Brian looked into the police car, locking eyes with me. He was at full throttle, running white-hot.

  He said, ‘‘What the hell are you doing cuffing my sister in there? She’s the one Luke’s supposed to be with, not these clowns.’’

  The deputy said, ‘‘Take it off the burner, pal.’’

  Paxton spit on the ground. ‘‘Delaney, don’t you get sore dragging such big brass gonads in the dirt all day long?’’

  The cop shifted her broad hips. ‘‘We have a problem here. These papers seem to be in order, but so were the documents your mother-in-law showed me.’’

  ‘‘Who?’’

  She pointed to Chenille.

  ‘‘Calamity Jane?’’ Brian looked Chenille up and down disdainfully. Her face curdled into a sour pudding. He said, ‘‘She’s not Tabitha’s mother. Tabitha’s mother killed herself two years ago.’’

  The wind dropped; the air seemed to hang. The deputy said, ‘‘That’s it. I’m taking every last one of you in to the
station.’’

  6

  At the China Lake police station I waited alone in an interview room, sitting under fluorescent lights so bright that they buzzed, staring at cigarette burns in the Formica table. I could hear voices raised down the hall. Brian was turning the station into a verbal free-fire zone. The door opened and a detective walked in, a redheaded man in his fifties who was built like a side of beef. His plastic glasses were scratched and his breath whistled through his nose. He held a file folder in fingers as thick as cigars. He sat down across the table from me.

  ‘‘I’m Detective McCracken.’’ His voice, clashing with his physique, was melodious. Mirandizing me, he sounded like a poet. He said, ‘‘I’d like to get a statement from you.’’

  ‘‘Fine.’’

  He slid a pen and a blank sheet of paper at me. ‘‘I’d like you to write down what occurred this afternoon, if you don’t mind.’’

  I didn’t know police procedure, but this didn’t sound standard. Still, I started writing. I got through half a page and he stopped me.

  ‘‘That’ll do. If you’ll sign it we can chat.’’

  I added my signature and pushed it back at him. ‘‘You could have just asked me for a handwriting sample.’’

  He took a letter from the file folder and compared it with what I’d written. He said, ‘‘I’m no expert, but I’d say they match.’’

  He handed the letter to me. Signed with my name, it began, Dear Tabitha, You bitch. It tossed around threats in the copious, haphazard way that a child shakes sprinkles onto sugar cookies, ending with, Show your face again, and I will get you. You aren’t seeing Luke; you can forget it!! I’ll never tell you where he is at. Evan.

  My face was burning. ‘‘So they have fourth graders writing their forgeries.’’

  ‘‘The signature’s actually quite good. However . . .’’ He picked up the statement I’d written. ‘‘ ‘Continually escalating harassment . . . inadvertently misplaced the custody papers . . .’ Well. Sounds a bit different.’’

  His nose whistled. He took more papers from the file folder—legal-looking documents, and an orange flyer. It was the ‘‘HELL-o-ween’’ comic. On the back, mocked up to look like the stolen-children pleas you see on TV, was the headline ‘‘MISSING.’’ And there, photocopied, was last year’s Christmas-card snapshot of Luke, heartrending in his little elf’s cap. Next to it was a drawing, with the caption ‘‘Age progression— artist’s conception.’’ She really was a damned fine illustrator. She had him, down to the lost bottom tooth.

  McCracken then held up my set of custody papers. ‘‘We found them in your car.’’

  I waited.

  He said, ‘‘You aren’t going to be charged with child abduction. But you’ll have to deal with the sheriff’s department regarding the damage to their cruiser.’’

  ‘‘I’ll pay for the broken window.’’

  ‘‘Under the circumstances, I’ll recommend that they release you on your own recognizance, or at low bail.’’

  ‘‘Under the circumstances,’’ I said. ‘‘Wow. How magnanimous of you.’’

  McCracken pondered me through his scratched eyeglasses. ‘‘If you don’t mind a suggestion, I think it would be a good idea for you and your brother to take an anger-management course.’’

  Hitting him on the head with the chair, I decided, would be a bad idea. I counted to ten. I said, ‘‘I want to file a complaint against Tabitha and her friends for false arrest, malicious prosecution, and stalking.’’

  ‘‘Sounds like you’ve been talking to a lawyer.’’

  ‘‘I am a lawyer.’’

  His eyes refocused behind his scuffed lenses, maybe seeing a new explanation for my apparent belligerence. He said, ‘‘The sheriff is waiting to process you. Come on.’’

  I was booked, photographed, fingerprinted, and stuck in a holding cell. But McCracken, true to his word, convinced the sheriffs to release me on OR, and an hour later I walked out, free. The lobby of the police station was empty except for a uniformed cop behind the front desk. I didn’t see Brian. I pushed through the front doors into the fresh air, and the sun hit me. I took a breath, tilting my face to the sky. It was a bottomless blue, with an immensity I’d forgotten, dwarfing the sawtooth mountains that rimmed the horizon. Dry air, wind, rock, it was coming back, physical memories, the elemental feel of this place.

  Behind me came a hawking sound. I looked around. Isaiah Paxton was leaning against the building, cleaning under his fingernails with a pocketknife.

  ‘‘So you think my rifle is a danger to your nephew. How many guns you think his daddy carries aboard his warplane?’’

  Walk away, I thought. Let it go. But I couldn’t. ‘‘Not one single gun that could end up aimed at Luke.’’

  ‘‘Bringing the boy here, you’re dropping him into a death zone. Out there’’—his eyes jinked toward the naval base—‘‘they cook up every warhead you can load on a missile, from plutonium to anthrax. Up against that, my rifle is man’s best friend.’’

  ‘‘What a lonely life it must be. Just you and your illusions.’’

  ‘‘I forgot, you’re a navy brat. Got a tailhook lodged in your brain.’’ He wiped his knife clean on his jeans. ‘‘You think your brother flies around testing this stuff blowing up sheep, or breeze-block buildings? Wake up. They test it on Bible-believing Christians.’’

  The knife hung in his hand. I inched back, anxious to get away from his bizarre convictions and cool, burnished rage. But when I turned toward the door he blocked my way.

  ‘‘You don’t believe me? Military has a million acres here, and you step foot on it, they shoot to kill. That ain’t to protect little desert wildflowers; it’s so we can’t spot the prison camp.’’

  I said, ‘‘Please move.’’

  ‘‘We call it the great deception,’’ he said, ‘‘ignoring what’s right in front a’ your nose, but I think you’re just plain finger-licking stupid. The army used to set off A-bombs and march soldiers across ground zero, right under the mushroom cloud. Guinea pigs—that’s all they was to the brass. I watched my daddy die of lung cancer because of that, just being a young private didn’t know any better but to follow orders.’’ He snapped the knife shut. ‘‘Course, nowadays they’re saving their forces for the invasion, so they test their stuff on civilians. But they can’t loose it on protected minority groups, queers and kikes, niggers and gooks, or—’’

  ‘‘Stop.’’ I turned away.

  He grabbed my arm. ‘‘Woman, you don’t never walk away when a man is talking.’’

  ‘‘Let. Go.’’

  His eyes were sheer blue, pale like blisters. His Western shirt smelled of sweat and dust. ‘‘And you don’t never tell the law to take away my rifle.’’

  From the corner of my eye I saw the lobby door swing open and a swatch of lavender emerge. ‘‘Isaiah.’’

  ‘‘This is my business, Chenille.’’

  More sharply she said, ‘‘Ice.’’ It took me a moment to figure out that she was still addressing him, Ice a nickname. He gave me a crushing look and said, ‘‘Never.’’ Shoving me aside, he headed for the parking lot.

  Catching my breath, I turned to go back inside, but Chenille stood in front of the door, arms crossed, having taken the handoff in the Harangue Relay.

  She said, ‘‘You done turned that little boy into an animal. It’s unbelievable.’’

  Beneath eyebrows plucked razor-thin, her eyes were a harsh and ageless gray. Dry flesh puffed around them. She could have been anywhere from her mid-thirties to her mid-forties, and I saw how she had passed herself off as Tabitha’s mother.

  I said, ‘‘I have never been as proud of Luke as I was this afternoon.’’

  ‘‘Proud? The boy don’t need pride; he needs discipline.’’

  ‘‘Don’t ever scold him again. Don’t you dare open your lips or raise that nagging index finger to him.’’ I pulled the door open. ‘‘I’m pressing charges against you.’’

/>   Her face turned pinker than her sweater. ‘‘Luke needs correction. What’s he had from you? Single woman who drinks and fornicates with a cripple.’’

  Her eyes enlivened, savoring the hit. Pleased with herself, she walked away.

  A few minutes later I was pacing the lobby, rocked by Chenille’s insult more than anything else. Hurt, angry, I nursed my shock, formulating too-late comebacks, wondering, Is that what people really think when they see me with Jesse? Bald prejudice hadn’t hit me before. It was a fresh cut. The cop behind the counter glanced at me disinterestedly.

  From the back of the station Tabitha walked into the lobby, her white dress hanging tiredly on her. She was alone, and she looked reduced, as if something had evaporated. My pulse jumped.

  Her eyes arced. ‘‘Don’t celebrate. This is nothing to rejoice about.’’ She started past me. ‘‘And it’s not over, either.’’

  ‘‘Oh, yes, it is. You crossed the border today from outrageousness into total stupidity. You’ll never get Luke back now.’’

  She stopped. Angry tears rose in her eyes. ‘‘It’ll never be over. And you know why? Because down deep, beneath that clean-cut front he puts on, Brian has a heart of death.’’

  Even in the circumstances, this statement truly shocked me. I said, ‘‘Do you honestly feel the need to hate him so much?’’

  She stared, confounded. ‘‘This isn’t about hatred; it’s about salvation. How do I get that through to you? Getting saved—when it happens, you know what you have to do, because it’s like this flash and roar; the bottom drops out and your whole life—’’

  ‘‘Honey, get yourself a new song and dance. This is a police station. They’ve heard that jailhouse conversion sung in every key on the scale.’’

  Her chest rose and fell. ‘‘You know what? This is like that Mad Max movie you love so much, The Road Warrior. Mel Gibson has to keep driving full speed no matter what. If he stops or swerves he dies. Well, if I swerve from God’s path I’ll die an eternal death in hell. Me and my son. So don’t tell me to stop, ever.’’

  Pressing her lips white, she ran outside. The sunlight caught her, white dress flaring like a star shell.