Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  Debra was a strong-boned woman almost six feet tall. She was efficiently chopping up celery for turkey stuffing, hampered slightly by straight straw-colored bangs that hung in her eyes.

  At the sight of her a rush of tenderness sailed through Loren. At some point in his mid-twenties it had occurred to him, with something of the force of revelation, that Debra was the woman for him, that the tall, hunch-shouldered girl two grades behind him in high school who had gone away to college and returned a straight-backed schoolteacher was the person with whom he wanted to spend his life. After two years of more or less relentless pursuit, she’d finally agreed.

  He’d had a reputation for wildness to live down before she capitulated, and live it down he somehow did, for Debra’s sake. Not without backsliding— the memory of the times he’d cheated on her went through him in a weak-kneed, giddy wave, warmed by the blazing image of Eileen— but since the birth of their elder daughter, Loren’s commitment had stayed firm, absolutely firm, without a single fling with the wife of a colleague, without a visit to Connie Duvauchelle’s that wasn’t in the line of Loren’s business.

  Perhaps it was Katrina’s birth that had saved the marriage. She had come late— Debra was thirty-six— after a long series of miscarriages and a newly developed operation that had made it possible for Debra to carry to term.

  But now the marriage was solid. Perfect. And so were his daughters.

  A steel wall of protectiveness fell about his mind. There was so much that could go wrong here— in his job he saw that more than anyone. He would guard his marriage, his daughters, his community. He would help make Atocha a nice place.

  He promised himself that every day.

  “Didn’t expect to see you.” Debra hadn’t turned to Loren, just stared severely at the celery through rimless schoolmarm spectacles.

  “I’m resting up for tonight. They laid off everyone at the Atocha pit.”

  Debra paused on her chopping. She put her knife aside and wiped her hands on her apron. “I should call Linda.”

  Linda was married to Debra’s brother, who was a miner. Debra reached for the telephone.

  “If I see him tonight,” Loren said, “I’ll send him home.”

  Debra looked at him, one hand on the phone. “Will I see you?”

  “Probably not.”

  She turned toward the fridge. “Let me make you a sandwich.”

  “I can get something at the Sunshine.”

  “Just in case.”

  The refrigerator door had a poster on it with a view of the round blue Earth from space. Large white letters commanded him to GUARD THE PLANET! One of his daughters had put it up.

  Debra got out an elk steak left over from dinner last night. Loren had shot the elk the previous autumn with his Russian military-surplus rifle.

  “Mrs. Trujillo called. She was hoping Kelly could baby-sit tomorrow night.”

  “No.”

  She looked baffled. “Why not, Loren?”

  “Because she can’t.”

  “She baby-sits for everyone else.”

  Loren spoke through clenched teeth. “Not for the mayor. Never.”

  “It would help you at City Hall.”

  “I don’t need that kind of help.”

  Debra turned back to the elk steak. With precise, economical moves, she began slicing it.

  “This isn’t just political, is it? I wish you’d explain. I never know what to tell Kelly.”

  He sighed. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”

  She made two sandwiches in silence and wrapped them in a Baggie, then put the Baggie and an orange in a paper sack along with a can of grape soda. Loren put on his shoes and gun, then carried the sack to the Fury and backed out of the driveway. He opened the can of soda and drove one-handed as he drank. A towheaded kid on a bicycle, one of the Adams sisters, was flinging copies of the Copper Country Weekly onto front lawns. Loren waved at the girl as he passed, and in answer she stared at him as if he were a stranger.

  Somehow that nettled him. He pressed the accelerator and the Fury’s engine grumbled as it took him down the street at thirty past the limit.

  He wondered about the headline on the Weekly. Probably some kind of puff piece on economic development from the mayor’s office. The mayor had undoubtedly kept the one important piece of news from the paper as well as from everyone else.

  By the time the paper came out next week, the headline would be optimistic again. ATOCHA RIDES THE STORM, something like that. Edward Trujillo would come up with some way to turn the mine closure into a blessing in disguise. He was good at that.

  West Plaza was one-way, so to get back to his parking place Loren stayed on Estes as he crossed Central, then put on the turn signal to go right, past the Methodist church, onto Railroad.

  In the wink of an eye the sleek silver maglev train moved across his path and then was gone, leaving only the lingering impression of the gray and red ATL logo burned onto Loren’s retinas. The station was only a quarter mile away, but the maglev was already going at least eighty, moving in total silence with its rubber wheels a precise four centimeters above the rails.

  Probably no one was aboard. The computer-operated train kept its schedule whether there were passengers or not.

  The future has arrived, Loren thought. A train with no passengers shuttling over a twenty-five-mile length of track at two hundred miles per hour.

  Loren made his turn, passing the old Spanish-style Santa Fe passenger depot. A chocolate-colored Blazer with its ATL issue of two young Anglo men in Ray-Bans drove past heading the other way, then made an illegal U-turn and fell into place behind Loren.

  Practicing their tailing skills. What idiots.

  Loren watched them in his rear view mirror and considered, then dismissed, pulling them over and handing them a ticket.

  Serve them right if he did, though.

  He passed the Southern Baptist Assembly and turned right onto West Plaza. The deco Chamber of Commerce, topped by a kind of fan-shaped stylized winged radiator, was followed by the deco City-County Building, with its restored clock tower and the old-fashioned big receiver dish for the LAWSAT. Loren pulled into his parking space. The ATL jeep cruised past, its passengers carefully not looking at him. Loren got out of the car and walked through the police entrance.

  Edward Trujillo, the mayor, stood on the yellowing white tile of the foyer talking to Cipriano Dominguez. Al Sanchez was off somewhere; the front desk was unoccupied. Trujillo was a short man, his back longer than his legs. He had carefully styled hair and a practiced sunny manner. He wore a beige jacket and a turquoise and silver string tie.

  It didn’t pay to look too formal in a place like Atocha.

  Trujillo gave Loren a smile white as a movie star’s. He shook hands. “I came down to see you, Loren. I was wondering where you were.”

  “I was at home taking a nap.”

  The shadow of a frown crossed Trujillo’s face. “I expect to find city officials in their offices during daylight hours.”

  “Normally I would be, but I’ll have to be up late tonight, dragging drunken, unemployed miners to jail. You know. The ones you’ve known about for days but didn’t tell me about.”

  Trujillo reddened. Loren could see an amused but well-behaved gleam in Cipriano’s eyes.

  “I was going to tell you this afternoon.”

  “Right. After half my men had got my permission to go off hunting this weekend, or got extra leave for the Days of Atonement. There could be a riot on the City Line and I couldn’t do anything about it.”

  Trujillo mentally processed the consequences of a riot on the Line, then dismissed them. Out of his jurisdiction.

  “I was told in confidence,” he said, “so that I could make preparations.”

  “What preparations are those? A press release maybe? If I didn’t have a few sources in Riga Brothers myself”—protecting Eileen—“I wouldn’t be able to keep the peace tonight.”

  “I have to consider all manner of cons
equences—”

  “God damn it, Ed, so do I!”

  Loren glared at Trujillo for a moment, anger burning in his throat. Trujillo cleared his throat and took a half-step back.

  “I can see that you’re upset. Maybe if I were police chief I’d feel the same. But I was told in confidence, and I had a lot of preparations to make. Our whole city is going to be changed by this. We’ve got to be ready with alternatives.”

  Loren looked at Trujillo in amazement. “Alternatives? What alternatives? There aren’t any goddamned alternatives!”

  “There are always alternatives, Loren. You just have to know how to find them.”

  Trujillo bounced away in apparent good cheer. Loren looked at Cipriano.

  “He’s awful happy, considering his town’s tax base just went to hell again.”

  Cipriano shrugged. “Shit, Chief. Atocha’s always been a company town. The way I figure it, all that’s happened is that the company’s changed.”

  Loren snorted. “ATL? It has not exactly come to my attention that Advanced Technology Laboratories fucking wants this town.”

  Cipriano chewed on that one for a moment. Loren started walking for his office, then hesitated. He turned back to Cipriano.

  “Pachuco, have you ever wondered why William Patience lets you make idiots out of his new men?”

  The assistant chief grinned. “ ’Cause he’s a good sport, jefe?”

  “Patience never struck me as much of a sport.”

  “Me, either. You’re right, there. Maybe he does it for the same reason Sanchez’s sergeant sent him off for a left-handed monkey wrench. Some kind of initiation thing.”

  Loren nodded. “Maybe. But I think they can do their own initiations without our help.”

  “Okay, jefe. I give up. What’s your theory?”

  “ ’Cause they don’t give a shit what we do,” Loren said. “We’re a bunch of small-town rubes, and nothing we do matters. So they let us make fools out of them because it keeps us amused, and back in their burb they can sneer at us for being hicks.”

  Cipriano seemed offended for a moment, then dubious. “I dunno, Chief.”

  “That’s my working hypothesis, anyway.”

  “I dunno.”

  “For what it’s worth.”

  Loren went into his office and sat in his leather chair and stared at the pale green walls. Distorted images of the ceiling fan rotated slowly in the gold surface of his old boxing trophies. His framed Certificate of Achievement from the American Association of Police Chiefs needed dusting.

  He remembered that he’d left his sandwiches in the hot car.

  Sanchez knocked, then entered. “Got a message from the DEA on the LAWSAT receiver,” he said. “There’s supposed to be a shipment of drugs coming up from Mexico today or tomorrow.”

  “Great. Just what we need.”

  “White late-model Chevrolet camper pickup, U-Haul trailer, two Mexican nationals. Supposed to be keeping to the back roads.”

  “That’s us,” Loren sighed. “Back roads our specialty.”

  “Armed and dangerous.”

  “Natch. Three UZIs per Mexican. What’s supposed to be in the trailer?”

  Sanchez looked at the printout. “All designer stuff. Riptide, black lightning, love beads.”

  “Whatever happened to potoguaya?” Loren wondered, then sighed. “Put it out on the radio.”

  Sanchez grinned. “I’ll get the word out.”

  Loren’s stomach growled. He thought about his sandwiches. Maybe he’d just eat the orange.

  He looked down at his desk calendar. Yom Kippur, it said over today’s date. (Begins at sunset.) Loren had put a little red tick mark against each of the seven days following. Jews had one Day of Atonement, but as a result of a church meeting in 1831 Loren was compelled to acknowledge seven.

  That meeting took place in Palmyra, New York, where a thirty-one-year-old Pennsylvanian, Samuel Catton, had gone to hear the preaching of Joseph Smith. (Mormon historians claimed that Catton had briefly been appointed apostle in the Church of Christ, as the LDS was then known, but Catton’s followers denied it.) At that meeting, Catton found himself sitting next to a quiet, eagle-eyed, smooth-faced gentleman in gray broadcloth, a man who led him away from the teachings of the false prophet Smith and took him on a tour of the universe. He was known to Catton’s followers as the Master in Gray, though Joseph Smith later identified him simply as Satan. Among the Authorized Revelations written by Samuel Catton were the commandments to return to the Jewish sabbath and other holy days, though with a few improvements.

  Catton was preferred over Smith by those who thought their prophets should be grave and serious. Smith laughed and joked, and stripped off his coat and wrestled any challenger; he married around fifty women, including some already married to his closest friends, and got together with those same friends for nights of drinking beer and wine— Catton did none of these things, nor was ever accused of them. As a consequence of his rectitude the Jewish Day of Atonement was multiplied by a factor of seven: the Holy Church of the Apostles of Elohim and the Nazarene contemplated their sins for a whole week.

  Anything worth doing, the Apostles figured, was worth doing right.

  Loren, looking at the week of red tick marks spreading out before him, decided to go to the car and get his sandwiches. Might as well enjoy a sensual indulgence while it was still possible.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE 41 CHURCHES OF ATOCHA WELCOME YOU. The sign stood between Atocha proper and the long strip of bars and clubs just over the city-county line. The forty-one churches in question had kept the city of Atocha dry since 1919, but the county allowed liquor sales by the drink— package sales were still illegal— and the miles of dusty, hilly road between Atocha and the copper pit were lined with places where miners could drink away their paychecks before they ever got them home. The city and county, by long-standing agreement, had always shared responsibility for policing the Line— the sheriff’s deputies were spread too thin to be effective here.

  Loren pulled off the road at an open gate and followed a half-mile dirt driveway. Behind an eight-foot-high Cyclone fence was a house trailer with a sliding glass window in it. Loren waited in line behind an old blue GMC pickup that had a bumper sticker that read REDUCE WELFARE COSTS. WORK FOR A LIVING. The driver, a woman in a checked shirt and kerchief, bought two six-packs of Coors, and then Loren pulled up to the window.

  “Hi, Loren.”

  “Hi, Maddy.”

  “What can I get for you?”

  Maddy Dominguez was a round-faced, white-haired woman married to one of Cipriano’s cousins. She ran the City Line’s largest bootlegging operation.

  “They’ve closed the Atocha pit,” Loren said.

  Maddy’s grin turned sour. “God damn,” Maddy said. “Sallie’s going to have to move in with me again.” Sallie was her younger son.

  “I want you to close up for the weekend,” Loren said. “I’m gonna have enough trouble policing the bars.”

  Maddy looked dubious. “I don’t know if I want to do that, Loren. The weekend’s when I do most of my business.”

  “I need you to close, Maddy. Rubén’s closing. So is Kevin.”

  “What about Connie Duvauchelle?”

  “People don’t go to Connie’s to get drunk.”

  “Rubén and Kevin don’t do my volume. I’d like to oblige, Loren, but if Sallie’s going to be needing help, I’ve got to keep open.”

  Loren let his gaze settle on her. “I’m not asking, Maddy.”

  Her reply was immediate and angry. “Dammit, Loren. What am I paying you for?”

  Loren was out of the Fury in an instant, big hands closing on the window frame, his head and shoulders thrusting through. Maddy jumped back, eyes wide in fright. Through his anger Loren saw she was dressed in a red housecoat and blue carpet slippers.

  “I just saw you make an illegal beverage sale,” Loren said. The flimsy aluminum window frame bent under his weight as he leaned inw
ard. “I can arrest you for that. And after what I’ve seen with my own two eyes, I’ve got grounds to kick down your door, search your place, and confiscate your stock.”

  Maddy’s fear turned to outrage. “My stock’s worth fifteen grand!”

  “Then if you want to keep it, you’d better close down till Monday, hadn’t you?” Loren said. “That’s my working hypothesis, anyway.”

  “Okay.” Quickly. “I’ll close.”

  Loren stared at her for a long moment, then turned away. “See you in church,“ he said. He returned to his car and drove down the dirt drive. He waited by the gate till he saw Maddy, in her housecoat and an oversize pair of cowboy boots, clumping down the dusty drive to close the gate.

  A convoy of trucks went past, full of fire fighters wearing hard hats and carrying saws and spades. Many of them were Apache. Another fire in the national forest, Loren thought. There had been dozens of them in this year of drought.

  Some timber companies, he’d heard, were blaming eco-terrorists. Several of the fires had started in areas where lumbering was authorized, and the companies claimed the monkeywrenchers were burning as much of the wood as possible before it could be harvested.

  Loren didn’t think he quite believed it. He had been living in a company town too long to entirely believe what a company was going to say about its opposition.

  He pulled onto the highway and headed toward the pit. Bleached white tailings piles occupied the whole of the eastern horizon. The day shift would be ending in about ten minutes. Loren figured the miners wouldn’t get juiced enough to start any trouble for at least an hour after that. Then he’d be busy till the bars closed at two.

  He’d eaten a sandwich and the orange, but he was still hungry.

  He decided he didn’t want to see the pit. It would be too depressing. He pulled into the driveway for the UFO landing field that had been built out on the Figueracion Ranch in ’99, backed onto the highway heading west, and went back into town. Maybe he’d get something to eat at the Sunshine.

  Just past the sign from the forty-one churches was a big Riga Brothers billboard that showed a cheerful guy in a flannel shirt and a hard hat tossing the motorists a cheery salute. THIS IS COPPER COUNTRY! the sign said.