High White Sun

by J. Todd Scott

  Fuck me.

  Sweat collected in his eyes. None of his options were good, all of them just different kinds of bad. His shirt stuck to him like a second skin—that high white sun hammering hard. It had been infernally hot for days, with no end in sight. The scrub all around was burned brown, skeletal, brittle and quick to turn to dust. Except for the yucca standing tall, crowned with its ivory flowers and marching into the distance toward the mountains, the world out here looked and felt lifeless. Like a hot breath would be all it’d take to set it aflame.

  The air above the car rolled back and forth in waves, reflecting the engine heat back skyward, where it got lost.

  Impatient, Amé started inching forward, moving beyond the safety of his truck’s tailgate; too far away from him to pull her back. Just like he feared, she’d been listening to Harp too damn much.

  “Driver . . .” He started again, angrier, but before he could call out anything else, the driver’s-side window slid down.

  Chris braced, found a point in the darkened interior and kept his A5 on it, realizing the engine had also stopped.

  The car was now silent, still.

  Long moments passed, everyone holding their breath.

  Then keys tumbled out of the open window, jingling loudly, and landed on the asphalt.

  Followed finally by a slim arm, grabbing the door handle as he’d instructed and opening the door.

  * * *

  • • •

  A MAN GOT OUT.

  No, that wasn’t quite right; he was younger than that, early twenties, maybe, a Hispanic male in black jeans and a white T-shirt. His hair was slicked back and he still had sunglasses on—metallic, small frame, designer.

  There was no sign of blood.

  Chris put the A5 on him. “Driver, turn around once, and then lock your hands together behind your head and walk backwards . . . slow . . . until I order you to stop.”

  The kid—and that’s how Chris saw him, even though Chris wasn’t a whole lot older than him—did as he was told. The watch on his wrist was big and looked expensive. It caught all of that impossible, fiery sunlight, and winked it back at Chris and his deputies as he put his hands behind his head. They might have been shaking, too, just a slight tremble matching the kid’s heartbeat. He started walking backward, trying to catch a glance over his shoulder.

  “Look straight ahead and keep walking. Slow.” Now that the door was open Chris could see all the way through the cabin. There was no one else in the front passenger seat, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone curled up in the back. He still needed to clear the car while Harp and Amé dealt with the kid.

  He heard it then, tinny music echoing over the desert. Some popular rap song he might have dialed past once or twice on the radio. It was the same few bars, over and over again—a ring tone—a cell phone somewhere inside the car. Is that what the kid had been doing while fleeing, making a call? Waiting for a goddamn call back, while Tommy Milford bled out on the asphalt behind him?

  By the time the driver backed within the arrow formed by the two trucks, the cell had stopped.

  “Driver, take five more steps. Count them with me and then get on your knees. Keep those hands behind your head.”

  One.

  Two.

  If the kid was counting along, Chris couldn’t hear him.

  Three.

  Four

  Five.

  The kid’s knees had barely flexed when Amé was already in motion, clear of the truck, handcuffs carried like a church cross in her right hand, moving toward him.

  Goddammit.

  Impatient.

  Chris shifted aim and tried to zero in on the black mouth of the car, the open door, scanning for movement. But he couldn’t help keeping one eye on Amé as she went to put her free hand on the back of the kid’s head, her hand over both of his, ready to push him facedown. And just like that, inches away, the kid turned to stare at her, quick as a snake. His chin was up, like he was looking her up and down and giving her a once-over. Even hidden behind his expensive glasses, Chris had the idea there was something important passing through the kid’s eyes . . . recognition . . . and then he said something to her, lips clearly moving, but whatever it was, it was low and fast so that only she could hear.

  She didn’t respond, just pushed him down hard and straddled him as she cranked his hands behind his back to get him cuffed. They look so young . . . his deputy and her prisoner. It was easy to imagine them as kids roughhousing in the yard, a brother and sister with their matching dark hair. Without too much effort she pulled the kid to standing and started to drag him back behind their trucks, while Harp moved toward the abandoned car, his AR-15 sweeping left to right; smooth, steady, like the hands of a clock. Now that Amé was clear with their prisoner, Harp could work up the passenger side and Chris could move in on the open driver’s door, so they could finish clearing the car and then figure out what the hell was going on.

  But then the kid said something else to Amé. Louder this time, in Spanish, just before he flicked his tongue out—quick, again, like that goddamn snake.

  The kid was still talking, fast.

  Chris held up, now forgetting Harp and the car. As hot as it already was, the temperature seemed to boil up another few degrees, releasing sparks and turning the air around them all to embers.

  “Amé . . . no . . .”

  It was hard to read her face: anger, surprise, something else. Or nothing at all. She nodded, like she was considering whatever it was the kid had said or maybe Chris’s warning, and then she hit the handcuffed son of a bitch anyway in the face as hard as she could.

  2

  It was hours later, the sun lost and the Chisos and the Santiago mountains gathering long shadows beneath them, when Chris stood on the porch of his unfinished house and polished off the first of what promised to be several beers. Stars were taking their time coming up, holding their breath, waiting—letting summer lightning play havoc on the low hills, chasing its own bright tail.

  All that lightning and still there’d be no rain. There hadn’t been any in weeks and none was expected.

  Some folks thought it bad taste that Chris had sold his dad’s place in town and bought this piece of land so far out, a sliver of the old Far Six ranch. Chris had grown up in Murfee and everyone knew he’d never shown much interest in returning home, much less owning his own piece of land . . . this land . . . but all that had changed over two years ago, when he’d nearly died out here. When he’d been shot three times and then killed three men himself. While those same folks who wondered about it wouldn’t say it to his face, they did raise it to Melissa at Earlys—wanting to know as they mulled over their beers or whiskeys why he would want to live out here when it had almost killed him before, and why the hell she’d let him. But she always just shrugged, smiled, and asked if they wanted another drink. Chris didn’t know if he could explain it—not easily—so there was no way she could do it for him. Maybe it was all about moments like this, watching the world put on a show just for him. Maybe it was because the land was dirt cheap and it got him away from the town itself, which had always felt too small even before the shootings and twice as small after, with people driving by his old house and pointing it out like they still did for Sheriff Ross’s place.

  Out here, in this vast empty land, he could see a car coming for miles. He could see everything.

  Or maybe it was just because he’d bled on it, and figured he owned the land now or it goddamn owned him. Either way, he’d never had to explain it to Mel. She’d never tried to talk him out of it or questioned it; even now, when it meant long drives for her back and forth to town and to the hours she still kept at Earlys. He’d told her more than once to quit, but the truth was they needed the money and she never complained. He knew she smoked those long miles away, careful with her ashes so she wouldn’t start a fire in the scrub and cali
che, listening to the radio with her window down as she drove.

  And it was beautiful out here on the outer edge of empty, a perfect wildness.

  The house itself was another story, a continuing source of frustration. Most things worked, although not all at the same time. The septic tank had its issues and the electrical was balky and the wraparound porch wasn’t quite even. Chris had tried to do a lot of the work himself, but eventually relented after Mel had made some jokes about it at Earlys, and Judah Canter and his crew had offered to come out and shore up the whole mess. Judah had squinted and clucked his tongue just looking at some of Chris’s handiwork, afraid even to take a sip of the beer Chris had offered as if that, too, might be off-kilter, but he’d promised to help. Judah was as good as his word, and cheap—he’d been doing building and electrical in the area for decades—and he and his men had at least made the place habitable. Just recently they’d put in two large Vogelzang potbelly stoves, one for the kitchen and one for the study, but with the summer heat it would be months before he and Mel would have a chance to try them. At least with Judah having finished the work, it was likely they wouldn’t fill the house with smoke when they did.

  There was something good to be said about the lack of rain . . . it meant Chris didn’t have to worry about what parts of his roof might leak.

  * * *

  • • •

  MEL CAME THROUGH THE SCREEN DOOR, handing him another Rahr & Sons, the bottle still nice and cold even where her fingers had been. She curled herself up in the porch swing they’d brought with them from the other house; one of just a handful of things they’d kept. It had been his mother’s and for reasons all her own, Mel had been just as reluctant to part with it as he’d been.

  “So Amé hit him in the face?” she asked, picking up their conversation from a few minutes before.

  “Yeah, a nice right hook. She rocked him right down to his knees. He spit blood.”

  Mel shook her head. “Jesus, what did he say to her?”

  “Something about Tommy supposedly, something about running him down, at least that’s what she said. To be honest, I don’t really know.”

  Mel watched the slow and darkening sky. “What does Ben think?”

  Chris shrugged, took a long pull on his beer. What does Ben think? had become a familiar question over the past year. Ben Harper had retired from the Midland Police Department planning to spend the rest of his life drinking and bass fishing with his wife Jacqueline out at Falcon Lake in Starr County, but Jackie had gotten sick—a sudden stroke—and passed just as suddenly. After Chris had formally been elected Big Bend County sheriff, Harp’s name had been passed to him as someone who had a lot of police experience and might be willing to help shore up a department still in disarray after former Sheriff Ross’s murder at the hands of his own chief deputy, Duane Dupree. When Chris had called Harp out of the blue, the man hadn’t asked many questions, easily reading between the headlines and understanding there was a hell of a lot more to that story. But he’d still agreed to help Chris, who’d admitted that he’d been elected after Ross’s death only because he was something of a local hero—a known quantity—and not because he had any goddamn clue how to run a sheriff’s department. Ben Harper had forgotten more about law enforcement than Chris could ever have hoped to have learned in his one year on the job before getting elected, and he’d proved to be a steadying hand and a reassuring presence. He never questioned Chris openly, never used his long experience to press a losing point, but had no problem waiting until they were alone to share whatever was on his mind; giving plenty of suggestions and advice. His lessons. Chris had made him the chief deputy from day one and he’d become a mentor to the other deputies, particularly Amé, and had become a friend to Mel, as well. He kept a small apartment above Modelle Greer’s garage in town and spent a lot of nights at Earlys, keeping Mel company at the bar.

  Chris liked him and trusted him, they both did.

  “Harp was closer and could hear the kid was talking in Spanish but not much of what he said.” Chris turned the beer bottle in his hand. “No reason to doubt her. Harp asked her about it later and she gave him the same story. Doesn’t matter, really. You can’t go hitting a guy in handcuffs, no matter what he said or did.”

  Mel’s look suggested she might feel otherwise. “You call the hospital again? How’s Tommy?”

  “Better than we could have hoped, and a helluva lot better than he looked laying out there on the asphalt. He was awake, even cracked a couple of jokes. Buck and Dale are there and will take turns sitting with him. He wanted a burger from the Hamilton and they brought it over. He’s not even old enough for a beer, but I let them sneak him in one anyway. The injuries read like a goddamn grocery list. Punctured lung, bruised spleen, broken ribs. Bunch of other stuff busted up. The left leg is bad . . . real bad. He’s not walking for a while. Not running again ever, maybe.” Chris refused to glance down at his own leg. He knew a thing or two about bad injuries, ones where you had to relearn to walk a straight line and where a lot of things still weren’t quite straight again no matter how many steps you took. He finished off the beer. “Harp warned me not to put those two out there together. He likes Dale but doesn’t think he’s got much sense, says he’s watched too many movies. And he caught Tommy dry-firing his gun in the bathroom, speed-drawing in the mirror. It was just going to be for a couple days, babe, just to get Tommy up to speed. That was it. Harp can’t be everywhere. He can’t ride with everyone.”

  “And neither can you. It happened. It’s going to happen again.” Mel stretched out a leg, tapped him with a bare toe to get his attention. “You couldn’t have known.”

  “Sure, but maybe I’m supposed to know better.” He grabbed her foot, held it. “Dale is barely twenty, Amé not much older than that. Till Greer is what, twenty-three? Same for Buck Emmett. Jesus, Tommy turned nineteen two days ago. They’re all kids, babe. Kids I’m putting out there to get hurt.”

  Mel laughed. “Says the old man of twenty-six. We just agreed that you and Ben can’t be everywhere all the time. You two have to train them the best you can and then hope for the best. Hope they do the right thing, the smart thing. And you know what? Even then, sometimes it’s not going to be enough. That’s the job and you know that as well as anyone.”

  He let her foot go. “Harp always reminds me that hope isn’t a strategy. But you’re right. Hell, I know you’re right. It’s the goddamn job. Still, it doesn’t make it any better. Maybe I don’t know enough to show them what to do.”

  She got up and went to put her arms around him, following his gaze out to the summer lightning and the places where stars would soon appear, if they appeared at all. “You know plenty. After all, you’ve been spending a fortune on all those books, right?” She laughed again and this time he joined her. He’d been ordering book after book on law enforcement techniques, police psychology, professional leadership and management. Anything he could get his hands on to teach himself how to do his job. He kept them in his truck and by the nightstand, even hiding a few in his desk drawers at the department. Harp had seen them and never made a big deal about it, but a couple of months back gave Chris one of his own, a well-thumbed copy of Edward Conlon’s Blue Blood. Chris hadn’t pegged Harp as a reader, but the man had surprised him more than once. He hand-painted his own fishing lures and liked to play chess against himself, easily beating Chris the few times he’d challenged him, and Chris at one time hadn’t been a bad player, either, having learned the game from his dad. He also knew an unfathomable amount of Old West history, could endlessly recite cowboy poetry, and listened only to jazz. He didn’t even own a TV, instead keeping a huge collection of Art Tatum, Charles Mingus, and Thelonious Monk CDs on constant rotation in his apartment and his truck.

  “Why did Tommy and Dale try to stop this guy? Who is he, why did he run?” She paused, stepping carefully before adding, “Drugs?”

  That was a thorny
subject, far too sharp, given Murfee’s history and that of its former sheriff and chief deputy, as well as Deputy Amé Reynosa’s own brother, Rodolfo.

  “Just speeding, but they saw the Arizona plates and got curious.” Chris didn’t offer the other reason, the real one, he suspected. His two white deputies had caught a young Hispanic male driving a late-model car probably worth more than a year’s pay instead of the usual rusted-out trucks with Ojinaga plates they were all too familiar with, and that had gotten their attention. A wetback in a nice car is what really had made them curious.

  “He pulled over when they first lit him up, but when Tommy approached the car, he gunned it, went backwards, hit him. Maybe he was just as nervous as they were. Maybe it was an accident. Who in the hell knows? Right now, he’s not talking. I’ll be meeting with Royal in the morning and see where we are then.” Royal Moody was the district attorney for Big Bend, Terrell, Jeff Davis, and a couple of other counties—a good chunk of the Trans-Pecos plus some—almost sixteen thousand square miles. Over half of which was patrolled by Chris and his deputies in Big Bend alone. Royal kept one office in Murfee and another over in Nathan.

  “His license says his name is Azahel Avalos. He’s twenty-three years old.”

  Mel put her face against Chris’s neck, breathing soft against him. “Not much older than Tommy and Amé and the others.”

  Chris kissed the top of her head, held her tight, counting lightning strikes and listening for thunder that never reached them.

  “No, not much at all.”

  * * *

  Chris had fallen asleep, the sheets kicked off; his long, thin body pale and exposed. He’d never really gained back all his weight after the shooting, after the recovery. And if you just looked at him nowadays, standing against his truck or out on the porch like he was earlier, with his scars hidden beneath his clothes, you’d never guess all that had happened to him. You would have had to have known him before, to really see how much it had cost him.