High White Sun

by J. Todd Scott

  After he hung up he made one last call, this time to Mel, and told her he was on his way home. She was already at Earlys for the night shift. They talked for a few minutes about her day, about the new dog, and he asked her if it had looked like rain out on the Far Six. She said there were a lot of clouds and even some thunder during the day, but no rain. Not yet. It was coming, though, she felt it.

  The Rio Grande was off to his right, marked by a green band of trees and grass that lined its course. There were farms tucked down in there, surviving only because of the river’s water. He didn’t get up to El Paso often, but thought that green looked a little paler this time around, worn-out; drained like everything else by the hot summer drought. Lights were coming on in the small river valley, ready to push back whatever darkness they could.

  He rolled down the window, let some air into the car, and watched the sky slowly change colors with that coming night.

  42

  I drive into the desert, away from that little blond boy.

  He’s not actually there, but still I see him. I have to get this insanity away from the roadside pavilion and the main road, so stray rounds don’t clip a passing car, or worse, another family just like his pulling off to search for Murfee’s ghost lights.

  I drive and T-Bob’s old Marquis follows us, one headlight blown out but the other bleeding ugly light like a monstrous eye, still searching.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE MARQUIS DIDN’T HIT US straight on. Deputy Reynosa drove it off target by emptying another magazine into it, punching out glass and puckering metal, but as it passed us it caught the back end of their truck, tearing away the rear bumper and knocking Deputy Harper off his feet and me nearly out of the cab. I heard the grinding of the metal as the Marquis tried to pull itself free, and still we were taking rounds, from either the Marquis’s driver or Jesse and his driver, both of whom were hidden from us by the tangle of vehicles. I’d followed Deputy Reynosa’s first volley into the Marquis and knew that was a kill, the blood still fan-tailed all over the window, but still it came on, refusing to give up, as if it was the car itself that was furious. I thought I caught a glimpse of Joker’s bulk behind the wheel, and if it was him, he’d never let us go.

  Deputy Reynosa pulled Harper up into the cab and pushed bloody keys into my hand and yelled at me to drive. She shoved the older man down in the backseat and pulled free the AR-15 he had back there, checking the load, and then shot out the back window, still trying to put down the Marquis’s driver. The seat next to me exploded as a stray return round found its way into the truck and tunneled through leather and foam, before finishing its trajectory right into the dash radio. I got the truck started and crushed a small chain barricade, knocked over a picnic table, and then we were out and free across the open desert, bouncing up and down.

  Deputy Harper was sprawled in the backseat, a bloody mess.

  Deputy Reynosa had blood of her own all over her face, either from broken glass or a grazing bullet.

  And then I realized that some of the blood all over the truck was mine.

  * * *

  • • •

  I DRIVE INTO THE DESERT but the truck is giving out on us. I can feel it through the steering wheel shaking in my hands.

  The radiator is spraying out fluid from beneath the hood and one or more of the tires are shot. The Marquis behind us isn’t much better, but it’s still coming, and this slow-motion chase might be funny if it wasn’t so goddamn horrible. I don’t know if Jesse is dead, since we left him and the other car back at the pavilion, but Joker in the Marquis is most definitely not. Not yet, despite Deputy Reynosa’s best efforts. She can’t get a clean shot off as we rumble and zigzag over the broken ground, but she keeps at it, her bloody face determined.

  Both cars are leaving thick wakes of dust and smoke. We can barely see anything and we’ve lost our way in the world.

  There is spent brass throughout the truck, still warm and bouncing in my lap and tap-dancing along the dashboard. I wipe my eyes with bloody hands and look for a service road or a mule track or anything to follow rather than this endless, empty stretch of twilight—something straight to give shape or direction or meaning to what we’re doing and where we’re going.

  A rising moon appears for a second before slipping behind a cloud, leaving soft, pale light in its wake.

  I aim toward that.

  * * *

  • • •

  I CAN NO LONGER DRIVE. The truck is done, and Deputy Harper is as well.

  I have no idea how bad I’m injured, it’s hard to tell, there’s so much blood everywhere. I’m cussing at the truck, banging at the useless steering wheel, and he’s trying to sit upright, struggling, as he tells me to stop through clenched, bloody teeth. Just stop. Fifty yards behind us, half the length of a football field, the Marquis has gone still as well, with its one crazy headlight canted skyward, shining light back at the new stars. Deputy Reynosa is ready to slip out of the truck and approach it, finish what she started, but Harper holds her back, grabs the hot muzzle of her rifle with a bloody, shaking hand, and pulls her to him.

  She resists, fights, tries to get out of the truck, but he won’t let her. I know what he wants me to do, so I hold her back as well, as another bullet whines over the truck’s roof. It’s a gentle purr and then it’s gone, like a big cat passing us in the dark.

  She’s whispering something in Spanish and I have no idea what it is, and I don’t know that Deputy Harper does, either, but he understands it well enough. He grabs her face with both hands, holds it close to his, makes her look at him so she can see just how hurt he is, how bad it really is.

  She won’t do it, trying to look at anything and everything but him, but none of that stops the tears I finally see . . .

  43

  This is a dream . . .

  He didn’t know how much time he had left, but it wasn’t much. He hoped it was enough.

  “Listen, you two are not going to die out here, you hear me? You are not. You have to get back to town and tell the sheriff what happened. Tell him about the car, about Avalos, John Wesley . . .”

  Amé grabbed his hand. “You already talked to the sheriff, you told him all this. You promised me earlier. Te creí.”

  Harp shook his head, but stopped because it hurt too much. Everything below his neck was on fire and he refused to look down. He knew he’d been hit once in the gut and might have even caught another. “No, I didn’t. I talked to him . . . but . . . fuck, I just wanted to make things right. I didn’t want him calling Nichols yet . . . I . . .”

  “You lied to me, Ben Harper.” But she stopped crying, and Harp thanked God for that. He wanted her angry now, like he’d wanted Danny angry in Murfee. It was better for what was going to happen next.

  “I did, I’m sorry. I’m a bad, bad man, and this is what I fucking get for it. I won’t do it again, I promise.” He spat blood, tried to wink, but the eye just stayed closed and refused to open again. He knew it never would.

  “Fuck, I am getting too old for this . . .”

  They are out on the lake and she’s sitting in the front of the boat, her hair pulled up, laughing at something he just said. The water behind her is blue, capped white, catching the sunlight and sending it back skyward. Everything is bright and she has on her sunglasses so that he can’t see her eyes and her head is thrown back and there is light playing on her throat and her skin shines like a new star . . .

  He drifted for a second, slid back in the seat on his own blood, but then there were two sets of hands on him, pulling him back up.

  There is wind between them . . .

  “I’m not walking out of here, it’s not happening. But you two can, and you goddamn will. I’m not running the risk of either of you getting hurt. Give me the rifle and get out of here. I’m going to take care of that son of a bitch back there. Then I’m gonna lie down for
a bit. I’m goddamn tired.”

  “No, not happening. You’re too weak already. We’re not leaving you,” Danny said.

  “Trust me, I’m fucking strong enough for this. But you help get her out of here. You owe me that, ’cause I got all shot to hell trying to help you. And Deputy Reynosa, I’m giving you a direct order to leave with this man. I’m still the chief fucking deputy.”

  “Vete a la mierda,” she said.

  “That’s my girl.” He laughed, coughed, spitting up blood more black than red. “I got a present for you . . .”

  And he wishes he could see her eyes . . . goddamn wishes he knew what he just said to make her laugh like that, so he can say it again, forever and always. He can’t take his eyes off her shining skin and wants to take her up and hold her and feel that shine with his own hands . . . hold her tight . . . so they can both glow together.

  He pushed the small medallion and necklace into her hand. “It’s Michael the Archangel, the cops’ saint. Jackie used to have this and she’d pray all the time for me, for all the good that did, and neither of us need it anymore. Not now. Keep it. You’ve been a goddamn fine partner, America Reynosa.” He closed her fingers around it. “One of the best cops I’ve ever met.” He looked over her shoulder, to where the Marquis sat waiting. “Now help me out of the truck. It’s time.”

  He didn’t have to tell them time for what.

  He is darkness and always has been and always will be and is ashamed that he exists only when reflected by her, by stealing her light.

  But it does not matter to her, it never did. She never thought he was stealing what she was willing to give . . .

  They got him out and he refused to kneel or take cover, knowing if he got down on his knees he’d never get up again.

  As Amé handed him the rifle, she kissed his forehead; quick, fleeting, so that he barely felt her lips but knew they were there. And if she or Danny had any thought of stopping him, that ended when they all saw that Danny had been hit, too. One of Jesse’s rounds had gouged him, a deep cut along his left side, even though Harp had pushed him out of the way. It may have been the same bullet that had gone all the way through Harp’s stomach. It was that damn outlaw luck, the sort of luck that promised a fleeing felon would hit a cop with a blind shot over his shoulder—the wild round finding its way through a gap in the cop’s vest and killing him midstride. The same sort of luck that guaranteed that cop would hit that runner four of five times and none of them would be enough to bring him down. That’s why Harp wouldn’t risk Danny and Amé forcing a confrontation with whoever was in the Marquis. Because of that fucking outlaw luck, and all of it bad for the one with the badge. In the receding light he couldn’t tell how bad Danny was really hurt, and the boy wasn’t complaining, but there was a lot of blood, and he’d need it tended sooner or later.

  There was a lot of blood everywhere.

  “There’s a med kit in the truck that will help with that.” Harp motioned at Danny’s wound. “It’s not much, but it will get the bleeding stopped.” He lurched forward, kept his balance, just barely. “The radio’s shot up, so you two make for the main road and keep working your cells until you get reception. Don’t head back straight toward the Lights, in case Jesse is still there, waiting. Get someone to pick you up. And then you go down there and drag that fucking John Wesley Earl out of Killing and put a bullet in him. Tell him it’s from me.”

  Amé came to him one more time, put her hands on him, but he didn’t feel anything, He was too cold and had stopped feeling anything at all.

  “Puedo hacerlo. I’m in better shape than either of you. I’m a better shot now, too.”

  “I know, and that’s why I won’t let you.” He breathed deep, but didn’t taste air. “I gotta do this. I fucked up . . . with the car, with not being truthful to Chris, with a lot of things. Everything. I need to fix it.”

  “I didn’t think you believed in any of that. You don’t believe in second chances or making things right.”

  “Oh, I believe you owe it a try, at least for the ones you love.” He hoisted the AR-15, aimed it downrange toward the Marquis. “I just don’t have much faith in how it works out. But I’m ready for this. It’s time, she’s waiting for me. Be safe, Deputy Reynosa. Take care of our sheriff. He’s a good man, and he’s going to need you.” He tried to push her away, but she hesitated, wouldn’t move.

  “Get going, now. It’s time I finish what I started.”

  She says something to him but he can’t hear it, the wind snatching it away at that moment. Maybe it’s “I love you,” or just his name . . . they are both the same to him. He calls back to her, but something has caught her eye out on the shore, and she’s turned away from him, looking out over the water.

  He moved out wide of the truck, keeping his head down but the AR-15 up, locked in a shooting position, as he circled back in on the Marquis, standing still every few steps and listening—but not too long, afraid standing still would lead to him falling over. The goddamn radio was playing, music drifting out above the ocotillos, and maybe he could make out the words, the song itself. He smiled. It was the Eagles, Jackie’s favorite. They once had tickets to a concert in Dallas, but something had come up at work and he couldn’t make the trip. He’d begged her to go on her own, or take a girlfriend, since the tickets were damn expensive, but she wouldn’t do it. She wouldn’t go without him, and she’d just put the unused tickets in her keepsake jar on the desk.

  Her hair’s come loose and it streams behind her, the trail of a now falling star.

  He made out the outline of the Marquis, someone struggling to get out of the driver’s seat, and he knew who it was: that big bastard Joker. Death on dark wings. And that one headlight also revealed swirling dust; so much falling upward where stars were coming on high above him like lights in distant rooms. He heard the radio again, her song . . .

  And now, he thought, the night was nothing but stars.

  They lit up everything.

  But there wasn’t a song. That was all in his head.

  He goes to catch her, to hold her, before she reaches the ground.

  He moved in as fast as his legs could carry him, as Joker tried to stand. He was hurt, too, and bad; Amé had done a number on him. Left alone he eventually would have bled out like Harp, but he was getting out of the big old car, propping himself up with a long gun of his own, with that music still playing behind him that really wasn’t playing at all. Harp was singing along with it through ragged breaths. He wasn’t done with the fight, either.

  Joker heard Harp almost a second too late, but still swung his own rifle at Harp’s face, ready to shoot blindly into the rising dark.

  Goddamn outlaw luck.

  This is a dream.

  This is all it will ever be.

  He pulled the trigger and all the stars went white.

  * * *

  • • •

  HARP HAD THE DROP ON HIM, action versus reaction.

  Everything he’d ever told Chris, except the truth.

  Sometimes it didn’t matter.

  44

  It was dark by the time Jesse and Clutts came back, and Jesse was bleeding, bad.

  His guts were a mess, blood everywhere, and he came in the house hollerin’ and everything was in an uproar. Clutts was also yellin’, about Danny meeting a cop or bein’ a cop. It was clear that things had gone bad out on the road, very bad, and that Joker and Lee Malady weren’t coming back. Earl told Sunny to help Jesse into one of the back bedrooms and get him some fuckin’ bandages, and told Jenna to get him a beer.

  No one noticed yet that T-Bob and Little B and Kasper weren’t standing around.

  But Earl saw Clutts talking low and fast to Flowers, and didn’t like the look of that. He’d deal with that in a second, once he figured out just what the hell had happened, and once he knew whether Jesse was gonna die before daybreak.

/>   * * *

  • • •

  “HE WAS MEETING those deputies from Murfee, the old one and that spic girl. He was talking with them,” Jesse said. He was pale, shaking, his hair slicked back by sweat and blood, and some of that blood was fresh on the bedsheets, more of it dried and spotting his face. Sunny kept trying to wipe it away but Earl pushed her back.

  “He said he was a cop. He’s been spying on us.”

  “You killed him, right?”

  Jesse nodded. “It all went to shit. I think I hit him, and that older deputy, too. The girl was shooting at Joker and Lee. Joker drove off after ’em into the desert.”

  Sunny was hovering at Earl’s shoulder, Jenna appearing and disappearing as well. And Cole Malady was there, too, wanting to know what the fuck had happened to his cousin, and to make sure Flowers or Clutts didn’t try to barge in.

  Earl took his daddy’s empty Ruger from Jesse’s hand, where he was still holding it. “So you didn’t kill them? They’re still out there, somewhere, right now?”

  “I don’t know. Everyone was shooting . . . fuck . . . Daddy.” Jesse bit his pale lips. “Except for that shit stain Clutts. He was hidin’ down in the car. I don’t think he took a single shot. Not a one.”

  Earl sat back, tried to think, absentmindedly reloading the Ruger from the shell box by the bed. There were a couple of wounded real deputies being chased out in the desert, along with Danny. It was possible they’d all die out there, or it was possible they wouldn’t, and in a matter of hours or even less this place would be lit up like fucking Christmas, which was kinda funny in its own way. Jesse should have followed Joker, he should have made goddamn sure, even bleeding like he was. Earl hadn’t gotten any more calls from Nichols, so whatever had happened outside Murfee hadn’t made it to his ears, not yet, but still . . .