by Logan Miller
Marlo exhaled and stood erect. The droplets of sweat slithered down his graceful limbs and crested the blue and green ridges of his veins and blotted the wood along the circuitous path of saline coins that traced his movements across the studio. He exhaled again and stared at a thousand mirrored phantoms of himself alone in a thousand phantom worlds.
She was holding her final position atop the scaffolding with her back arched and breasts pointing heavenward, spread eagle to the opposing wall as if offering herself up to some primitive god of eroticism, her hands clenching each of the metal poles and waiting for the deity’s phallic deliverance.
Marlo concluded Fosse’s piece and spoke out loud the final lines of taking you everywhere and yet getting you nowhere. And he thought at that moment: Yes. Yes, indeed.
He helped her down from the scaffolding and kissed her on the cheek.
“You were magnificent.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I had a great time today. I really appreciate the work.” She looked down his legs and said, “You have such beautiful feet. I wish I had your arches.”
He flexed his calves and lifted his right foot and pointed the toes. “A blessing of my birth, I suppose.”
“I’m so jealous. They’re perfect.”
He blushed and then motioned to the doorway across the studio. “There’s a bathroom at the end of that hall with fresh towels if you want to shower before heading back to Santa Fe.”
She said that she would like to rinse off and he told her that the driver would wait for her as long as she liked and that there was a bottle of champagne on ice for her in the car. He told her that he was stepping outside and that if she needed anything to press the intercom and he would be right there.
He opened the side door and walked into the night air with his body steaming. He caught his breath and stared into the wild darkness. The moon was rising behind the mesas and the slopes and caprocks were aglow with electric silver as though a vast city sprawled across the uninhabited plains beneath them. He thought about what he had and what was at stake in this hour of his life. He thought about those that had stuck with the business and died bloody, stuffed in the trunks of their cars, a head full of bullets. He thought about those languishing in prison cells on five continents. He thought about luck, fate, and chance. He thought about other things but mostly his mind turned from the past and into the current drifting now. Gates had become a disappointing name. A disappointing face. A disappointing idea. He had become a problem.
30.
The night passed without sleep for Jake and he found himself on the couch smoking a cigarette when the prairie sky flushed red against the dawn and the mesas rose out of the blackness and took form.
He had come out to the living room around midnight to see if the television would help carry his mind away so that he could rest. But the people and the shows seemed excruciatingly remote and only made him feel more depressed. They were so far away, on a planet and life he would never touch—the successful, the rich, the famous, the people who had made the right decisions in their lives and the world envied them. He turned off the television and sat against the tattered cushions and muffled his crying with a pillow so that no one would hear. But there was only his brother sleeping in the back of the trailer with Lelah in his arms.
It was 7:00 a.m. when they stepped into the living room freshly showered.
“I won’t be back until this evening,” Caleb said.
Lelah could see Jake’s bloodshot eyes and disheveled appearance and so she said goodbye to him and walked outside to the truck and waited. She could tell that the brothers needed to talk and besides she hoped that the morning air would lessen her anxiety.
“I’ll just be working around the yard today,” Jake said. “Cutting up some wood and old timber. It should be nice and dry by now.”
“What about the backhoe?”
“I’m gonna call Equipment Depot when they open and see if they have a return policy. I’m pretty sure they do. I hope.” Jake took a drag on the cigarette and blew the smoke out the window notched open above his head. “I’ll get rid of that guy’s gun as well.”
“The gun?” Caleb winced. “You’re kidding right? Please tell me you’re kidding. You were supposed to get rid of it that night.”
Jake looked down at the carpet and shook his head.
“I know,” he said.
“Where is it?”
“I hid it.”
“Where?”
“In the woodshed. In the bottom drawer of the tool chest. I didn’t know what else to do with it.”
“In the bottom drawer of the tool chest?”
“I didn’t know what to do.”
The impulse to lash into his brother had never been stronger but Caleb hesitated and then halted entirely. Sitting on the tattered couch in day-old underwear and grimed with yellow-brown sweat he saw a broken child. A broken down child of a man with a cigarette. He saw their father. His brother had become that withered man and he pitied him. He pitied both men. He had lost the anger toward their father when he was overseas staring into the blue desert twilights of a foreign land and he now lost the anger that moments ago had raged toward his brother. Speaking his mind would only wound his brother further. And what good would that do right now?
“Smash the gun apart with the log splitter and then scatter the pieces in the Chama far away from each other.” Caleb spoke firmly and without reproach. “Far away and in the deep pools, not the shallow parts that dry up in the summer. One piece here. Drive several miles and drop another piece there. And so on. Can you do that? I don’t have time right now.”
“Yeah… I can do that.” Jake took another drag and he could not raise his head to look at his brother. “I’ve never been good at the little things. I’ve always had big ideas. Always had things that I thought that I could do and now I know for sure that I can’t. I won’t ever.”
Caleb stepped over to his brother and set his hand on his shoulder. His brother looked up with a penitent frown and eyes veined red and graceless with fatigue.
“I’m sorry, Caleb.”
“I know…I know you are.”
“Drive safe.”
“See you this evening.”
“Love you.”
“I love you too, Jake.”
31.
Three hours later Caleb and Lelah sat in the adobe décor waiting room when a nurse opened a door from behind them.
“Miss Gates?” the nurse asked.
Caleb and Lelah stood from their chairs and held hands.
“Right this way,” the nurse said, holding open the door for them. She escorted them down a beige linoleum hallway and into a room with a blue medical gown sitting on the examination table.
“Please disrobe from the waist down and Doctor Sherry will be with you shortly.”
ᴥ
Back at the wood yard Jake had finally talked himself into feeling better. He ate two pieces of white toast with grape jelly and washed it down with a glass of milk. He brewed a pot of coffee and drank a cup on the front steps with two cigarettes before retiring again to the couch where he napped until ten.
Finally some sleep.
The sleep was heavy and without dreams and there was an oppressive energy about it as though he hadn’t slept at all and only silenced his mind against the onrushing world. When he awakened he turned on the television and surfed the channels and decided that there was nothing worth watching but he kept the television on anyway and fell asleep again. By noon he picked himself off the cushions and headed outside to get some work done.
Shit.
He needed to get rid of the gun. He’d nearly forgotten. Again. He’d call about returning the backhoe afterward. Equipment Depot was open late.
He packed a lipper of Skoal and walked across the yard and turned on the log splitter and then walked to the other end of the yard through the corridors of stacked firewood and into the shed. The scent of marijuana still clung to the place. He pulled on the stri
ng hanging from the ceiling and the bulb flickered and then cast light onto the standing Craftsman tool chest against the wall. He spit tobacco juice onto the dirt floor and then opened the bottom drawer.
He pushed aside a greasy collection of second-and third-generation screwdrivers and ratchets and vice grips and wriggled his hand to the back of the drawer. He felt the rag and the hard object wrapped inside.
He pulled the rag from the drawer and unfolded it and stared down at the .40 caliber Beretta. His stomach wrenched with a flash of heat and he slouched under the weight of sorrow and regret. He felt terrible about himself again. His eyes became bleary and his lower jaw began to quiver as the inescapable reality thrust itself back to the forefront. He had killed a man. A boy, really. But then he reminded himself, as he had countless times already, that the boy had pressed this very gun into the back of his head with the intention of blowing out his brains. The boy was no angel. He would have grown into a very bad man.
He told himself that he would eventually come to terms with this crazy episode in his life. Time heals. He was on a new path now, a path of redemption. But first he needed to get rid of the evidence. That was the first step. His brother was counting on him.
He turned and was about to step into the sunlight with the .40 cal and shatter it to pieces in the log splitter when the sheriff’s cruiser nosed down the driveway.
He froze. His stomach turned again, sharper and more intense. His entire body flushed with adrenaline and another wave of heat and it was hard to collect his thoughts.
Be cool. You haven’t done anything wrong.
He rewrapped the gun in the rag and stuffed it back in the bottom drawer and closed the tool chest. He took several deep breaths and then walked out of the shed and over to the log splitter and turned off the noisy machine.
He removed his gloves and set them on a stump.
“How’s the firewood business going?” Gates said, walking over.
“Burning along,” Jake said, taking a stab at humor.
“Must be,” Gates said. “I see you got yourself a new backhoe. She’s a beauty.”
“I got a really good deal on it.”
“I bet.”
Jake shook hands with Gates and Sparks.
“Is it gonna be a cold winter?” Gates asked.
“That’s what they’re saying.”
Sparks stepped over to the log splitter and admired it. “How does this thing work? Can I try it?”
But Sparks did not wait for permission. He hit the power switch and the log splitter roared back to life. The industrial machine reminded him of a medieval interrogation device. He set a pine log on the holding plate.
“You put the wood here?” Sparks asked. “Is that right?”
Jake nodded slowly.
The maul drove down and halved the log with a thundering whack of machine-powered steel.
“Efficient,” Sparks said. He took another log from the pile and repeated the process, amusing himself with his new violent toy.
The prelude had produced the desired effect: Jake was becoming visibly nervous. His eyes were darting from Gates to Sparks and his hands were clasped at belt level and his fingers were fidgeting with each other. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and swallowed with noticeable discomfort. He reached for his cigarettes and shakily removed one from the pack and realized that he still had the dip in his mouth. He tried to press the cigarette back inside the pack and the cigarette buckled and the rolling paper tore and tobacco shavings curled out.
“Caleb and Lelah ain’t here,” he said, tossing aside the broken cigarette.
“We didn’t come here for them,” Gates said. “We came here for you.”
The maul drove down and halved another piece of wood. Sparks chuckled at the destructive power. What a clever tool.
Gates smiled. But the smile was cold and it frightened Jake. He wondered what they knew.
“Our system is so fucked up, Jake,” Gates said, speaking loudly over the clamoring log splitter. “I’m not sure how well-read you are—you don’t strike me as someone with a library card. Frankly, I’ve never met a lumberjack who liked reading more than he liked drinking beer and scratching his ass watching Duck Dynasty. But in Saudi Arabia, that backwater of fundamentalist shit, those sand gorillas got thieves figured out.”
The log splitter fell like a guillotine and whacked a log in two.
“And in America, well, we’ve gotten soft on criminals. We might put a first-time thief on probation. A habitual fuckup might serve a few years in the joint. But only the most notorious face long-term imprisonment. Hence the reason why this country has so many fucking thieves. And don’t get me started on Wall Street. Those white collar faggots steal billions everyday without ever being core-bored in prison by some Cho-mo serving consecutive life sentences for sodomizing an orphanage. So you know what I say? The fucking sand gorillas got it right. I mean, when you have to pause every time before you take a shit to ponder the fact that the hand you used to wipe your ass with is gone—well, that’s a powerful deterrent.”
“I’m not a thief,” Jake said.
“Sure you are. But a murderer to boot? I never would’ve suspected that. I always knew you were a first-rate fuckup. But the commission of a crime is a peculiar thing, Jacob. It has a way of creating its own weather system. Things tend to escalate and evolve into something way beyond one’s control and initial intention.”
“I want a lawyer.”
“A lawyer? What the fuck for?”
“Are you going to arrest me?”
“I’m confused, Jake.”
“So am I.”
The maul drove down and shattered another log.
ᴥ
Doctor Sherry lubricated the ultrasound wand. Caleb held Lelah’s hand, her back on the examination table, knees bent.
“When was your last period?” Doctor Sherry asked.
“About six weeks ago.”
Doctor Sherry nodded and then sat down on a stool. She wheeled over to the examination table. “This will feel a little cold at first,” she said. Doctor Sherry moved between Lelah’s open legs and inserted the wand. “The image will come up in just a moment. How are you feeling today, Lelah?”
“Fine.”
“I remember delivering you. Time flies. Boy does it. How’s your mom like Lubbock?”
“She says it’s flat.”
“I need to give her a call.”
“I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.”
“How’s your father doing?”
“He’s doing really good.”
ᴥ
The maul hammered through another log. Splinters exploded from its dry core.
“Did you know a turd named Edgar Rivera?” Gates asked.
Jake stood several feet away from them. He wanted to run. But where would he go? He had a strong urge to piss.
“I’m not talking,” Jake said. “I want a lawyer.”
“Goddamnit, Jake. Stop saying that. You’re not under arrest. No fucking lawyers. Only the truth. Lawyers get involved and the train of lies starts rolling on down the track. And before you know it the train has derailed and everything is spilled all over the place and pell-mell. I only want the truth right now. We only want the truth right now, you and me. We’re cowboys in the same rodeo. Can you nod in agreement to that?”
But Jake made no response, not even a slight nod.
Gates sighed. He bent down and picked up a piece of split wood and flicked off a scab of bark with his thumb. There was a worm trail on the flesh of the wood that ran like a white river on a map. He tossed the piece onto the pile beside the log splitter and continued.
“You see, last night Edgar caught himself on fire. Yep. Burned himself to chorizo grease in the front seat of his lowrider just off Interstate 84. A freak accident. Some sort of electrical malfunction in the fuel line. Wasn’t that what it was, Lester?”
“Sure was,” Sparks replied. “Yes indeed. That’s what the firemen sa
id this morning.”
“Well, shortly before Edgar became a Mexican marshmallow, we had a very interesting conversation with him, one in which he informed us that he was up here looking at what he figured to be several hundred pounds of marijuana in your woodshed.”
“He was lying.”
“Do you want to take us over there and show us? Or are we going to have to kick down the door.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I believe you do.”
ᴥ
The television monitor displayed Lelah’s uterus as the transducer bounced sound waves through her and read the echoes.
“You see the egg and the sperm there?” Doctor Sherry said, pointing to the tiny spheroid sack on the monitor. “The beginning of life. You’re pregnant. Congratulations.”
Lelah squeezed Caleb’s hand and they smiled at one another.
It was their first real smile in days. Tentative, but a smile nonetheless.
ᴥ
Across the yard Sparks walked out of the woodshed and shook his head at Gates, who had sent him over there to have a look.
“It’s empty,” Sparks yelled.
“Told you,” Jake said to Gates. They were still standing beside the log splitter.
“But it sure does smell like something was in there,” Sparks said, making his way back over to them. “A lot of something.”
“Where is it, Jake?” Gates asked.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“We could be friends, Jake. All you have to do is try.”
“I am your friend.”
“You’re not acting like one.”
Gates strolled over to the cruiser and removed his bindle of cocaine from the shirt pocket behind his badge. He dabbed a hit onto the star-spangled hood and chalked the line with his business card.
“You like cocaine, Jake?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“You know. A fat rail every now and then. To improve things. To get you out of a funk. To pick you up. To make you macho.”
Jake did not answer.
“C’mon, Jake. I can’t arrest you for your thoughts—I ain’t Jesus.” Gates ran the edge of his business card up and down the line several more times and made sure it was orderly. “You mean to tell me you’ve never partied with Johnny Yayo? Snorted a little snowball off a girl’s nipple out at a mesa party? C’mon, just a little snowball atop a brown señorita nipple?”