High White Sun

by J. Todd Scott

  Deputy Buck Emmett shot Little B, but it was Earl that fucking killed him.

  * * *

  • • •

  SHERIFF CHERRY PULLS OVER and cuts the lights. The truck is getting bogged down in the loam and clay. The long tail of the storm has all but passed here, but it’s left its mark, and it’s still north of us somewhere, dropping a lot of water. The creek roils and turns, in some places you might even promote it to a river, and in other places it’s already broken free from its banks to search out the low places in the washes and draws. It’s almost biblical, a desert flash flood coming to life in front of us.

  The sheriff pulls out his SureFire and then a set of handcuffs.

  He turns to me and tells me to get up front.

  He cuffs me to the steering wheel. Both he and Deputy Reynosa have portables, and he’ll be able to raise me on the truck’s dash set if something happens. He tells me that no matter what, if they’re not back in an hour, I’m to turn the truck around and get back to Murfee and meet with his other deputies and the FBI agent Nichols and his men. Otherwise, I’m to keep the channel clear and stay quiet.

  “You don’t have to do this,” I tell him, raising my handcuffed arm.

  “I’m sorry, Danny, but I do. If you go down there and shoot Earl or anyone else, it’s nothing but revenge, and everyone will know it. A district attorney might just call it murder, and I won’t let you walk into that.”

  “And because you happen to be wearing a badge right now, it’s not?”

  He checks the cuffs to make sure they’re secure, but not too tight.

  “No, I guess not. No matter what happens, I can still call it my job.”

  * * *

  • • •

  DEPUTY REYNOSA SHOULDERS HER AR-15. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to argue with her sheriff. She’s been quiet most of the drive out here. She does that, lapses into silence, just watching. For a few minutes out near the Lights, when we were walking in the desert, I thought I got a real glimpse of her, or at least understood her a little. But you could spend an entire lifetime with her and never unravel everything behind her eyes. She’s younger than me, not by much, I guess, but getting out of the truck, getting ready to walk into the dark and face a man who will absolutely kill her if she gets in his way, she shows no sign of nervousness or fear.

  If anything, she’s impatient, ready to go, welcoming whatever comes next.

  Earl has no fucking idea who’s coming for him.

  * * *

  • • •

  I WATCH THEM WALK OFF and disappear.

  I want to chew my arm free from the cuffs, tear the steering wheel clean off and follow them. I think about the guns I spent days hiding out in the desert behind the house and whether they’re still there, or if Earl found them or if they were washed away by the storm. There are occasional stray raindrops on the roof, like fingers tapping, marking time, and that’s all I’m doing, handcuffed in this goddamn truck.

  Then I look over to where Deputy Reynosa was sitting just a few moments before and catch sight of it, tucked down in the edge of the seat, near the seat belt. If Sheriff Cherry had glanced over at any point, he might have seen it. But he didn’t.

  It’s a stretch, but I get my fingers on it. Deputy Reynosa was counting on that the whole time.

  It’s a handcuff key.

  61

  Sunny thought at first she was dead.

  Released.

  But . . . her ears were ringing, so that probably meant she was still alive, more or less. She fell over Jesse’s body, protecting him, as bullets and buckshot continued boring holes through the cheap plaster. A lamp next to the bed rocketed toward the ceiling and the back window gave way, showering her with glass, letting in cooler air and some of that thunderstorm that had been rolling through. She opened her mouth, screaming, and tasted rain, felt glass on her skin and damp on her face. She wouldn’t have even gotten this far . . . she wouldn’t be alive . . . if it hadn’t been for T-Bob, who’d pushed her down the hall from the hell in the living room back toward the bedroom, helping her retreat.

  His face was the last thing she saw before she closed her eyes and ran.

  T-Bob. Not JW.

  Jesse was trying to sit up beneath her, awakened by the noise, but she held him down. It sounded like someone had driven two cars through the front door and they’d crashed into each other right in the living room. More bullets left bite marks in the wall, trailing corkscrews of plaster that spun around like mouthfuls of blown smoke.

  “What, what the hell . . .” Jesse said, and she held him tighter, waiting for the car crash to end.

  * * *

  • • •

  SILENCE CAME, EVENTUALLY, and at first she thought it was because her hearing finally had gone south. Then there was a lone gunshot, still so loud it made her jump. More silence, followed by another. She could pick out the click of boots walking across the old wood, then one last blast, not as loud as the first, and she knew what was going on in there and didn’t have to see it at all. Not like that night in 1979 when she’d watched her daddy get shot in the head, kneeling outside their apartment.

  He’d taken her to see the elephants Bertha and Tina and used to sing to her you are my sunshine, my only sunshine . . .

  JW appeared at the door. He had two pistols stuck in his belt, his daddy’s revolver in his hand, and there was blood speckling his shirt and his face. He leaned against the frame, resting, like he was thinking.

  “JW, what . . . ?” Now she could barely hear her own voice.

  “It’s bad, Sunny, real bad. You don’t want to go back in there.”

  “T-Bob and Cole . . . ?”

  He shook his head and looked down at the gun in his hand.

  Jesse struggled, pushing on her to get a look at his daddy. His eyes were glassy, not focused—they rolled sideways in his head, back and forth, like coins disappearing down a jukebox—and his lips were thin and almost invisible. “It’s okay, Daddy, we good now, right? We gettin’ going?”

  JW continued to stare at the revolver in his hand, turning it over once or twice, weighing it, and Sunny went cold. She held on to Jesse, who had no idea his brother was dead and that the living room was full of more bodies. He didn’t understand at all what was about to happen.

  “John . . . please . . . no . . .”

  Earl stepped in and raised the gun; it seemed to hang in front of Sunny’s face forever before he turned it around and handed it to her. “Look, that fucker Flowers got out, used Jenna as a shield, pulled her right in front of him. He’s runnin’ around outside somewhere. I don’t know if he’s armed or not. Clutts had two pieces on him, one in a goddamn ankle holster, and got T-Bob and they’re both dead. Cole took most of his fuckin’ head off with the scattergun. There ain’t nobody else.” He straightened up, getting ready to walk out. “Like I said, it’s bad.”

  “What are you doing? Where are you going?”

  “Jesse can’t walk, Sunny. That car T-Bob went and got me is our ticket outta here, our only ticket. I’m gonna go down the way and get it and drive back here and then we’re goin’, just like Jesse said. You stay here. Keep that gun on you in case Flowers comes back round. Pack up whatever you and Jesse need, we ain’t never comin’ back.”

  “The RV, we can just—”

  “No, not the RV. That’s registered to T-Bob. We can’t run in that thing. Flowers was right about that. Everybody will be lookin’ for it. Leave it be.”

  “How long you gonna be gone?” Sunny asked, sitting up now with the gun in her lap.

  He winked at her. “Hell, you waited for me for years when I was inside. This ain’t gonna be no time at all.” He took one last look at Jesse, and disappeared.

  She sat there for a while, thinking about Nevada; about her daddy bleeding to death below her bedroom window.

  And th
e Bee Gees singing how sometimes you loved with your heart hanging out . . . how sometimes there was just no other way . . .

  She popped the cylinder on the old revolver, and when she saw it wasn’t loaded, that’s when she knew for sure JW was never coming back . . .

  * * *

  Earl moved through the house, searching for T-Bob’s big old JCPenney duffel bags—the ones he dragged all of his clothes around in—and when he found them, he emptied them out on the floor, kicking the clothes and books and photos and a couple of empty bottles and whatever other trash his brother had held on to out of his way.

  He folded two of them inside the third and then slung that one over his shoulder.

  He finally stopped to check the Nichols phone and there were about twenty phone calls and a dozen missed messages in the last hour or so alone. The cat was finally out of the bag, which was a good joke, what with T-Bob’s duffel bag over his shoulder, and then he put the phone on the ground and stepped on it hard with his boot.

  He wasn’t taking any phones with him. He knew they could track them.

  There was a moment when he thought about going back into the bedroom and finishing that business. But he didn’t want to look either of them in the eye again. It already reminded him too much of Phyllis in Corpus, how her eyes had flickered in and out before she’d flatlined, and the way she’d gone limp in his arms but he’d still felt her there for a long time afterward. She’d stayed with him for far too many years, fuckin’ with his dreams, and he didn’t need that ever again.

  Like all the phones and his own bag of clothes and his daddy’s gun he’d dropped in Sunny’s lap and everything else he’d brought with him to Killing—a lifetime’s worth of shit, in so many ways—he was leavin’ it all behind.

  In fact, other than the empty duffel bags and the guns he’d pulled off of Clutts, he wasn’t takin’ a goddamn thing with him at all.

  62

  They moved through the desert, not needing their SureFires. The world had been washed clean by rain and the sky scrubbed free of clouds, although a silver moon had slowly started filling it in again, turning everything around them neither light nor dark, but a gunmetal gray. It was a weird light, but more than enough to see by, and they cut along the rocky ground, getting lower by the moment, moving past mesquite and ocotillo and cat’s-claw and rainbow cactus, listening to the water breathe in and out in the creek bed around them. The new clay sucked at America’s boots, tried to pull her down, but she got ahead of Sheriff Cherry, almost running in places, and even though he whispered after her to slow down, she couldn’t. She didn’t want to. She wanted to find John Wesley or Jesse Earl first and end it with them once and for all. Ben had asked her to look after the sheriff because he was a good man, but also because Ben had seen through her and had accepted exactly who she was and what she was capable of and what she was willing to do.

  And she did, too.

  Ella era un lobo, ahora.

  Everything she’d worried about—all of her guilt—had burned up with the last of the money hidden at her house. It was a weight she hadn’t even known she was carrying, the last tie to her old life and the person she’d been before—to Rodolfo and Caleb Ross and Duane Dupree and Máximo. The money was gone, nothing but smoke and ash now, and they were all gone, too, but she was still here, running.

  Libre.

  She was far ahead and had left the sheriff behind, when the low ground crumbled away and she was left standing on the rough edges of a deeper arroyo, a finger of the Alamito now filled with water from the storm that was keeping the creek swollen and angry and alive. In that gray, unsteady light, she realized just how much of the flatlands around Killing had flooded, and how many of the mesquites were waist deep in water. The road Danny had talked about was somewhere beneath it all. No one was driving out of here anytime soon.

  Then, before the sheriff made it down to her, she picked it out of the wet haze. She had seen it only hours ago in the impound lot in Murfee, but now it looked strange and unfamiliar, out of place.

  It glowed with its own light.

  Azahel Avalos’s car.

  There was something else inside it, something she had to look at twice as she made her way to it, just to be sure.

  She was almost there, wondering what to do next, when she heard laughter.

  63

  Jesse was dyin’.

  He’d heard somewhere, maybe on one of Jenna’s reality shows, that you got to see your whole life in flashes, all the good stuff anyway, but he wasn’t seeing jack shit. Just black holes he kept falling into, over and over again. He was waking up in bits and pieces, once to thunder, or maybe gunshots.

  The whole of his world was torn paper he couldn’t hold on to.

  Next it was Sunny breathing over him, talking about RVs and keys, and his daddy standing in the doorway, winking.

  Then the sound of the back door slamming.

  In fact, the only thing one hundred percent clear for him was the face of that lying cocksucker Danny—his ass driving out in the desert with that crazy fucker Joker giving chase, while Jesse’s own fuckin’ guts were looped up in his arms. He’d ridden all the way back to Killing holding them, pushing ’em back in, and it had hurt like almighty hell. You could live a damn long time gut shot, but it was a painful way to go, and he was most certainly going. He could smell his own blood, his own real shit, and knew he was dyin’ right there stained and wet in his own mess and still not gettin’ a glimpse of anything good.

  Which meant his whole life hadn’t amounted to shit, either, and he was gonna leave this world never knowing his mama and with the last thing he really remembered being Danny . . .

  Somehow that just didn’t seem goddamn fair.

  Someone was banging around deeper in the house, maybe Sunny looking for the keys she may or may not have talked about, but other than that, he was alone. His daddy had been there a few minutes ago, he was pretty sure of that, but he was gone, too . . . the sound of that door slamming. When Jesse struggled to sit up, his guts moving sideways and sending pain like lightning all through his body right up to his eyes, he realized there was a gun in his lap—his daddy’s and his granddaddy’s before that, the trusty ole Blackhawk. He’d shot Danny and that old deputy with it, and he’d always wanted this gun. He’d had it before he collapsed into bed and he picked it up now; glad to feel its weight again. It anchored him, kept him out of the holes and firmly in this world, and when the pain like lightning came again, and it did, he just willed it all the way down his arm and into the gun.

  He thought the gun itself glowed. It flashed, far brighter than those glimpses of his shitty life.

  Bright enough for Jesse to see by, as he got up out of bed, to figure out where his daddy had gone . . .

  64

  Earl was laughin’, ’cause there wasn’t much else to do.

  Hell or high water. That’s what T-Bob had said, and now it made perfect sense—why he was all muddy and why his brother had that weird look on his face as he threw the money at him.

  It had been his statement after all; a goddamn inside joke that only T-Bob knew the punch line to.

  Hell or high water.

  Goddamn right.

  * * *

  • • •

  T-BOB HAD PARKED THE CAR that Manny Suarez’s son had brought him close up beneath a stand of mesquites, just where Earl had told him. But water had since rolled up around the Nissan, as high as the wheel wells and still rising, and T-Bob had left the hot-wired car running, lights on, and even left the goddamn front door open; on purpose or not, Earl couldn’t say. So creek water, dark as a snake, was now moving around in there, twistin’ in and out, and carrying some more of his money with it. The stray bills were floating on south down the creek, the direction he’d wanted to go all along. And propped up in the backseat was Little B, his head against the window, like he was staring up at Earl, waitin’ for h
im to get in and drive.

  A little father-and-son road trip, like the boy had always wanted.

  The little beaner deputy was there down below him, looking at the car, too, and when she heard him she turned fast, but he already had one of Clutts’s guns leveled at her.

  “Goddamn, girl, you’ve been some trouble for days. Now what I need you to do is put down that rifle.” He slipped the duffel bag off his shoulder and tossed it at her feet. “And then you’re gonna crawl up in the car and save us as many of those pesos as you can. Good thing I brought these here bags, although they’re gonna be a bit lighter now. My money was supposed to have been packed in there all nice and tight, like good pussy, which is why I needed to get the whole damn car outta your town in the first place, but my brother went and fucked all that up. Hell, I was gonna use it to get me outta this dump, too . . .” He shook his head, watching his money disappear into the dark water. “But I gotta get something for all my troubles, right? I can’t have it all wash away.” He motioned at the car with the gun. “There’s also a passport and some other stuff in that hole under the dash, so whatever you get, you slip nice and easy into that bag. And don’t mind Little B sittin’ there in the back, he’s harmless. Looks like you’re gonna be my way out now.”

  She lowered her rifle but didn’t drop it all the way, and she ignored the duffel bag, where it had gotten lost on the darkness on the ground.

  He drew out the second gun from his jeans and pointed that one, too, at her heart. “You hear me, you beaner bitch? I said—”

  There was now a bright light switched on his face, a flashlight, and someone calling out to him.

  “It’s over, Earl. It’s done.”