They round a bend and pass an abandoned school, blue buildings left to flake apart beneath the desert sun, a baseball diamond which once had green grass growing in it now dead brown, bleachers sitting empty in the distance. Another turn and they enter a neighborhood of residences, the street lined with telephone poles made gray by the weather. Two out of three houses seem to have vanished. There is evidence that they were once there; the foundations laid out on the ground in the shapes of houses let you see where various rooms should be, but the buildings are gone. In the back yards rusty clothesline poles poke from the ground, usually with the lines long rotted away. Occasionally a T-shirt hangs from a rope like a flag of surrender.
‘Are you sure this is the right place?’ Beatrice asks.
‘This is the right place,’ Henry says.
‘Where’d all them houses go?’
‘Sold. Cut in half and put on trucks and hauled off to be planted in better ground.’
‘Your brother lives here?’
‘You been here, Bee, about twenty years ago.’
‘That was here?’
‘Changed, hasn’t it?’
Maggie wasn’t even born twenty years ago, but she doesn’t think it’s changed. She thinks it’s died. When she was locked down in that basement, in the Nightmare World, she sometimes found the shells of beetles whose insides had been eaten hollow by ants. This town reminds her of that.
Henry pulls the truck to a stop in front of a small single-storey house which was probably once painted white. It now looks about ready to collapse in on itself.
Henry looks at her and at Beatrice and says, ‘Wait here.’
Then he pushes open the door and steps from the truck. He walks to the front door of the house. A moment later he knocks.
Henry knocks on the peeling green-painted door and waits. When, after some time, there is no answer he knocks again. Ron hasn’t had a phone for several years so Henry could not call him to let him know he was coming. Probably he is at work. Last time the two men exchanged letters-four maybe five years ago-Ron had gotten a job as a guard at a privately run prison about twenty miles away, Joshua Tree Medium-Security Correctional Facility, mostly populated by non-violent drug offenders.
Henry walks around the perimeter of the house, looking for open windows and checking the closed ones to see if he can push them open, but in the end he finds himself back out front with no way inside. He could break a window, but Ron’s the kind of man who upon seeing signs of a break-in will shoot first and asks questions later. While there might be some irony in driving fifteen hundred miles only to get shot by the man you came to for help, irony just ain’t a thing Henry is willing to die for.
He walks to the truck and looks in the window.
‘He ain’t here. We’ll have to wait. You guys might as well get out and stretch some.’
‘I have to pee,’ Bee says.
‘Just take some of them McDonald’s napkins around back of the house and squat.’
He looks out at the faded gray street. He needs Ron to come home. Ian Hunt could arrive at any moment, and Henry has no weapons. He lost both his Lupara and his.22 in Sierra Blanca and has been utterly defenseless since. Ian could drive right up the street and put a bullet in his head and he couldn’t do a goddamn thing about it. That ain’t no position to be in.
That ain’t no fucking position to be in at all.
‘Come on, Ron,’ he says.
He looks at his watch. It’s only noon. If Ron works eight to four, as he used to, he won’t be getting home till four thirty at least, and that’s if he don’t stop off someplace to get lit. That leaves over four hours during which Henry can get his brains blowed out. And while this corpse of a town is a good place to finish this, nobody around to call the police about any noise and plenty of places to dump a body where it won’t ever be found, the qualities that could work in his favor could also work in Hunt’s.
If Hunt shows up in the next four hours or so.
If it weren’t for getting pulled over this would have ended yesterday, it would have ended last night. But after Henry lost his weapons, he knew the only thing to do was to get to Ron’s as quick as possible and hope when he got here he had time enough to prepare for Hunt. He still doesn’t know if he has that time. If it weren’t for that fucking cop this would be over. He felt kind of bad about having to shoot him at the time, the man was just doing his job, after all, opposed to Henry though he was, but thinking about the situation it’s put him in Henry’s glad he killed the son of a bitch.
He looks at his watch again, and he waits.
Ian and Diego cross the state line into Arizona around two o’clock in the afternoon, passing a sign welcoming them to THE GRAND CANYON STATE, though the surrounding desert looks the same as it did ten minutes earlier when they were in New Mexico. Ian has always liked the desert. The harshness of it and the emptiness. If God exists He lives in the desert, of that Ian is certain. None of the masks of civilization here. No grinning handshakes and knives in the back. The desert is honest: it will take you whole and leave a husk and you will know what it is doing while it’s happening. It is what it is and makes no apologies.
There is something to be said for that.
Ian coughs into his hand, and the cough becomes a fit.
Between the coughs he manages to say, ‘Take the wheel,’ in a tight, strangled voice, and Diego does so. His coughing fit is wet and painful and comes from a very deep place in him and when it is over tears stream down his face and the strong taste of metal fills his mouth.
He wipes his hands off on his Levis, rubs at his eyes, and takes the wheel once more.
‘Thank you,’ he says.
Diego stares at him silently for a long time.
‘Do you need to stop?’
‘No.’
‘Are you okay?’
‘ No.’
He glances at Diego, expecting him to say something, expecting him to tell Ian he needs to go to the hospital and take care of himself, expecting him to once more suggest that they tell the police what is happening, but he does none of those things. With only a nod he makes it clear that Ian’s answer is okay. As long as Ian knows what he is doing to himself, Diego will accept it and help him. He does not turn his back on his friends.
Diego rolls a cigarette and looks out the window. ‘When do you think we’ll get there?’
‘Around sunset.’
Diego grunts in acknowledgment, lights his cigarette, and cracks the window.
The wind blowing through the car is very loud and very hot, but it feels good against Ian’s face even as hot as it is.
He looks to the gray road ahead.
In another four and a half or five hours they should be there. In another four and a half or five hours he gets his daughter back.
Maggie hears the car before she sees it, and Henry must hear it about the same time she does, because he gets to his feet from the curb where he was sitting with her and Beatrice and sort of leans forward as if that will help him see it sooner. Maggie feels a burning hope that it is her daddy. It is her daddy and he has come to save her and he will wrap her in his arms and take her away from here forever.
A white Toyota turns the corner and the face behind the windshield is not her daddy’s. It is nothing like her daddy’s. It is an ancient face into which time has carved great hollows. The eyebrows are thick and bushy and gray. The nostrils flare. The tongue, a colorless piece of meat, pokes out and licks the dry lips and disappears back into the pit of the mouth like some blind burrowing animal that’s sensed a predator.
The car slows and, though it is merely a machine, seems to approach them with great caution.
Henry waves.
The man behind the wheel of the Toyota lifts his hand in an automatic return wave, but for a moment his face remains blank and stupid. Then his mouth opens in an ah and he smiles and says, audibly, ‘I’ll be a goddamned son of a whore.’
He pulls the Toyota into the driveway, pushes open
the car door, steps out into the daylight, and holds out his arms. He is wearing a beige uniform and a belt with a black stick and a pair of handcuffs and a can of pepper spray hanging from it and black shoes. His thin gray hair is cut close to his head.
‘Henry,’ he says.
‘Ron.’
They hug.
‘How you doin’, Bee?’
‘Okay.’
‘Good to hear it. And you must be Sarah,’ looking toward Maggie. ‘I can’t believe I never met you before. I’m your Uncle Ron.’
Henry grabs Ron’s arm.
‘Listen, we need to talk-now.’
‘Okay,’ Ron says, ‘let’s head inside.’
Maggie sits silent on the floor while Henry and Ron sit on the couch. Henry talks, and though his talk is at least half lies Maggie does not interrupt him. She merely watches and listens. While Henry tells his story Ron’s face changes, and his posture. His eyebrows lower on his head and his brown eyes seem to go black as shadows fill the deep pits of his sockets. The corners of his mouth curl down. His large nostrils flare. His loose bones weld together, locking him into a tight robotic posture. His round shoulders square, his c-shaped back snaps straight. His hands open and close in a motion Maggie recognizes from Henry. His tongue licks his dry lips. And when Henry is done Ron nods and says, ‘So how long we got, you reckon?’
‘I don’t know. He could be here any time.’
‘And he’ll be heading to the house?’
‘Best as I can figure.’
‘Okay,’ Ron says, ‘I know just what to do.’
Henry and Beatrice and Maggie pile into Ron’s Toyota as Ron said they should before he disappeared into a hallway, and now he emerges from the green-painted front door of his house with two rifles under one arm, boxes of shells in the other hand, and a pistol tucked into his waistband.
He hands the rifles to Henry, who slides them between his legs, butts on the floorboard, barrels aimed at the roof of the car.
Then Ron gets into the car himself and closes the door behind him.
Maggie does not understand what is happening, not exactly, but she knows it is bad. They’re going to try to use those guns on Daddy. She wants to do something, but she doesn’t know what. She can’t even run. This town is empty, and miles from anywhere else. She only wanted to go home. She only wanted to go home to her daddy and mommy and-
Stop it, Maggie. Stop it.
One two three four five six seven eight.
She exhales in a slow breath. She has to be a big girl. She has to stay calm. She has to stay calm and see what happens and if there’s anything she can do to help herself or help Daddy she will. But she can’t panic. That won’t get her anywhere. She closes her eyes and is enveloped by darkness. She opens her eyes, feeling a bit better, though still scared.
‘Where we going?’ Henry asks.
‘High school.’
‘High school?’
Ron nods.
‘Trust me,’ he says and starts the car.
They park in an otherwise empty parking lot. It is strange to be the only car in this vast field of asphalt. They get out of the car. There are several textbooks lying open on the asphalt, the hot breeze like a ghost occasionally turning their pages. Henry hands Ron one of the rifles and keeps the other for himself.
‘This way,’ Ron says.
They walk toward the front door of a two-storey building. It is a light blue color, the paint chipped and peeling. Not just the paint is peeling-time and weather have taken out chunks of the outer wall itself, leaving behind empty pits guarded only by what looks like chicken wire. They walk up five concrete steps and into a large empty corridor lined with lockers, some open, some closed, several still padlocked. The open ones have pens and pencils and books in them, pictures taped inside some of the doors. Books litter the vinyl floor. There are also occasional animal skeletons.
A rattlesnake lies on the vinyl floor in front of them. It looks to be in pretty bad shape. Ron pokes at it with the barrel of his rifle to make sure it’s dead. It is. They step over it and continue walking.
‘Beatrice and Sarah can wait for us in one of the classrooms,’ Ron says.
‘I’m hungry,’ Beatrice says. ‘Are you hungry, Sarah?’
Maggie nods.
‘You couldn’t’ve said nothing before this minute?’
‘I didn’t want to interrupt.’
‘We was at Ron’s house. There was food there. What the fuck do you think we’re gonna find here?’
‘I just wanted to use the vending machine.’
‘What fucking vending machine?’
Beatrice points. At the end of the hallway sits an ancient vending machine with ancient food in it. Bags of chips, candy bars.
‘All right,’ Henry says. ‘Let’s get you some.’
They walk to the end of the hall where the vending machine sits. As they near it Maggie can see that several of the bags have been chewed through by animals-small rough-edged holes in the packaging, and pieces of food visible, usually small crumbs of it littered with even smaller pieces of insect shit.
‘All right,’ Henry says, ‘stand back.’
He slams the butt of his rifle into the glass front of the vending machine and it cracks loudly, sounding to Maggie like God clapping His hands. Then he slams the butt of the gun against it once more, and it shatters and pieces of glass fall to the floor where they shatter further. He knocks more glass away, then hands the rifle to Ron and starts pulling out packages and going through them.
‘Most of this shit’s been got to, Bee.’
He throws the stuff that’s been gotten to to the floor.
But they still manage to find six bags of chips and three candy bars and two bags of pork rinds that seem safe, or at least undisturbed by animals. With Beatrice’s arms piled up with food, they head toward the nearest classroom.
‘I need to talk to my girls a sec,’ Henry says.
‘Have to it,’ Ron says, ‘but make it quick. I wanna get to the roof ASAP.’
Henry nods, and then guides Beatrice and Maggie into a classroom.
The room is bright with daylight. It is empty save about twenty desks stacked in the corner. A tattered poster of the multiplication table hangs on the wall. There are math problems written on the chalkboard, faded white ghosts of what used to be. The floor itself is littered with textbooks and math papers. A row of windows, some of which are now shattered, reveal the baseball diamond. Empty bleachers. A rusty dugout. Plugs where bases used to be. A pitcher’s mound. Dead grass.
Henry grabs Maggie by the arm and walks her to the stack of desks. He grabs one of the desks from the top of the stack and pulls it down and puts it on the floor. He shoves her into it.
‘Sit here.’
Then he stops, apparently thinking. Turns silently and walks out. When he returns he has a pair of handcuffs, Ron’s handcuffs, in one hand and a pistol, also Ron’s, in the other. He tucks the pistol into his waistband, and then walks to Maggie with the handcuffs. He puts one of the cuffs on her wrist, tight, and the other he wraps around the desk, around part of the metal frame that curves up from the seat and bends to become the desk-top frame, onto which the slab of wood is screwed.
‘What if I have to pee?’
‘Squat by the desk.’
He turns away from her and walks to Beatrice. He pulls the pistol from his waistband and puts it into her hand.
‘What’s this for?’
‘Just in case.’
‘Just in case what?’
‘It’s a semiautomatic and the safety’s off, so be careful. All you have to do is aim and pull the trigger, Bee. You got that?’
‘Aim and pull the trigger at what?’
‘Anybody walks through that door other than me or Ron.’
‘I don’t wanna shoot nobody, Henry.’
‘What do we do, Bee?’
‘What do we do?’
‘We do what we have to to keep the family together.’
&nbs
p; She is silent a long time, and then she nods.
‘Good girl. Now keep an eye on Maggie, give her some chips or something, and if anybody walks through the door other than me or Ron. .’
Bee just stares at him.
‘Bee?’
‘What?’
‘If anybody comes through the door other than me or Ron what are you gonna do?’
‘Aim and pull the trigger?’
‘That’s right.’
As soon as Henry is gone Maggie begins trying to squeeze her hand out through the cuff. It hurts, but if she squeezes her hand tight, and folds her thumb into her palm, she thinks she might be able to get free. If she has enough time.
Henry walks out of the classroom and into the corridor.
‘All taken care of?’ Ron says, pulling himself up from his leaning position against a wall of lockers.
‘Yeah.’
‘Good.’
He hands Henry back one of the two rifles, what was once their dad’s.30–06, an old army job that takes an eight-round en bloc clip. When their dad got drunk he would shoot bottles off fence posts with it and tell them, ‘Patton used to say this was the finest piece of military machinery ever made, and you know what? That crazy motherfucker was right.’ Henry checks to make sure it’s loaded, and then nods to himself.
‘To the roof?’ he says.
‘To the roof.’
They climb an access ladder in the janitor’s closet, push open a hatch, and make their way out onto the asphalt roof. It is early evening now and the sun is low and red in the sky. For some reason it makes Henry think of cracking a fertilized egg into a frying pan. That yellow yolk, that seed of red upon it cooking and dead. The evening sun. He turns in a circle and looks at the deserted town around them. He stops and looks down the long gray strip of asphalt leading to town. He can see for miles. If he had better eyes he could see all the way to the interstate.
‘Good place,’ Henry says.
‘I know it,’ Ron says. ‘Only the Jackrabbit Inn’s taller, three storeys instead of two, but you can’t see the road leading to town as good.’ Ron nods to his right and says, ‘Let’s take a load off while we wait.’
The Dispatcher Page 24