High White Sun

by J. Todd Scott

  She and the sheriff had come back together. Melissa had been there, but Dale Holt brought her back to Murfee, giving her and Sheriff Cherry over two hours alone to talk. He drove and drank a Coke while she stared out the window and told him about taking one of Billy Bravo’s old guns for Vianey Ruiz, about leaving the handcuff key for Danny, and then all about Santino Paez and Azahel Avalos and what he’d said to her that day out on the highway. She told him the things he had claimed about her family—about her uncle, Fox Uno—and how two years ago she’d used her brother’s phone to call a ranch across the river, summoning a boy named Máximo to kill Duane Dupree. She told him it was Máximo who’d cut off Dupree’s head and burned down his house with his body inside it, and that he’d come to her later with ashes in his hair and blood still beneath his fingernails. Finally, she told him that Caleb Ross had left her a large suitcase full of his father’s drug money—everything that Sheriff Ross had stolen from the cartel Nemesio—and how she and Máximo had fled Murfee with that for a while, until she left him in Houston with a thick stack of bills and her brother’s gun. The gun had been an ugly silver thing etched with images of the narco saint Jesús Malverde and grinning calaveras that she guessed had been a gift from her uncle.

  She said all the remaining money had been hidden in her house and now it was all gone.

  The sheriff had listened and didn’t ask any questions, and when she was done, he’d filled in the rest—his side of it—the real story and not what was printed in the papers. How Caleb had come to the hospital in El Paso and told him about the money, but never said where it was or what he’d done with it, and how he’d returned to Murfee with every intention of killing his father. How the sheriff, with help from Mel and the English teacher, Anne Hart, had rescued Caleb from himself and then confronted Sheriff Ross in his old office with a gun in his hand—a confrontation that Ross had walked away from, right into an ambush by Dupree.

  And how it must have been sometime after that when Máximo caught up with Dupree and finished it for all of them, for good.

  By the time they’d both told their sides of it, they were just pulling up in front of what remained of her house, and they’d gotten out together, to stand there silent, staring.

  She thought if she looked close enough, she could see a blackened piece of a dollar bill, still trapped in the charred wood.

  * * *

  • • •

  “YOU REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME we stood together in front of another burned-out house?” the sheriff asked.

  “Sí, Dupree’s house. That’s when I came back to Murfee and you asked me if I wanted to be a deputy.”

  “And you had all that money then?”

  “In my truck, I used some of it to buy this place . . .”

  “And a lot of guns, right?”

  He was talking about all the ammunition that had cooked off in her house; that had slowed efforts to save it. “Sí, muchas armas. I was always afraid someone would come looking for that money, or for me. After what happened to Rodolfo and Máximo, I never wanted to need anyone’s help ever again.”

  “I know that, I understand that.”

  “Lo siento.”

  The sheriff looked at her, his eyes hidden behind sunglasses, before turning back to the ruined house. “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.”

  She pushed ahead. “I’m sorry about not telling you everything sooner, and not being honest about Avalos . . . Suarez. But I’m not sorry about Duane Dupree. These past two years I’ve struggled with guilt over these horrible things I thought I’d done, but it really wasn’t guilt, not the way you think. I hated myself for not feeling bad enough about any of it, not at all.” She shrugged. “I’m glad Duane Dupree is dead. I’m glad Máximo did what I couldn’t. Like Danny with John Wesley Earl, I had chances to kill Dupree myself and I was too scared and waited too long, and I probably shouldn’t have. And I’m not sorry about the Earls. Eran hombres malos. Buck and Ben are dead because of them.”

  “It’s not about revenge, Amé, it’s supposed to be about justice.” He shrugged, too, defeated. “You know who you sound like, right?”

  “Sí, and maybe Ben Harper was right and you’re too good to see that.”

  “And you’re not?”

  She put a hand on his arm. “I don’t know. But I didn’t need Ben Harper to show me there are hombres malos in this world. I learned that from Duane Dupree. He showed me what a really bad man will do.”

  The sheriff didn’t have anything to say, and she let her hand drop. She went to grab her badge, to give it back to him.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “I said I’m not sorry, and I’m not. I helped Danny get free and I lied to you, and if Azahel Avalos was right, most people in Murfee and all along the river think I’m a drug smuggler working for my uncle anyway, just like my brother. That’s more trouble for you than it’s worth.”

  The sheriff held her hand, stopped her. “Let me be the judge of that. I’ve lost two deputies and I have a third on the mend. I can’t afford to be down another. And if you hadn’t slipped that cuff key to Danny, maybe we’re all dead. I don’t know which one of us was right or wrong, and maybe I never will. Maybe it doesn’t matter. You still want to quit again in a few months? Fine, we’ll talk then, just not now. I won’t let you. Besides, with Ben gone, you’re the best damn shot I have.” He released her, pointed instead at her badge. “You’ve earned the right to carry that as much as anyone, but no more secrets, though, for either of us.” He looked down at his own hands. “And since we’re being so honest, maybe Ben wasn’t right about me being a good man.”

  “¿Por qué es eso?” she asked, holding on tighter to the badge she’d almost unpinned from her shirt.

  “When I shot Earl, he had a gun aimed at you, at both of us . . . but for a moment, and just a moment . . . I could’ve sworn he was about to drop them and give up. Another second . . . maybe . . .”

  She shrugged. “Another second? Maybe he kills me. Está hecho. And anyway, you didn’t kill him.”

  The sheriff’s jaw was set, hard, like he was biting down on a bullet. “Not for lack of trying. I wanted to put that sonofabitch in the ground.”

  “Well,” she said, “next time, aim higher . . .”

  * * *

  • • •

  HE TURNED AWAY FROM HER and got lost staring at the house. Maybe he was embarrassed, or saw those scorched bills as well. “Are you still checking in on Danny?”

  “A couple of times,” she admitted. He glanced at her from beneath his sunglasses, and she raised her hands. “Okay, more than a couple of times. He’s alone and the doctors are still not sure if he’s going to keep his eye. We just talk. Or he talks, and I listen. Not about his time with the Earls, that’s all been with Agent Nichols and Texas DPS, but before that, when he was in Afghanistan and the undercover work he was doing. I don’t think he’s ever really had anyone to talk to about it all.”

  “I’ve checked with Major Dyer. None of his resignation paperwork was formally put through. He was supposed to be seeing a police psychiatrist before he bolted to track down Earl, and probably should be now. They’ll take care of him, if he’ll let them.”

  “I don’t know that he’s ever going back. I think he’s going to be around here awhile.”

  The sheriff sighed and got ready to get back in the truck. “That’s what I was afraid of.” Then, “He’s staying because of you, you know that, right? There are a thousand worse reasons, but that’s the one.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “Hey, it’s not entirely my business. I’m just your boss. I think I told you Danny Ford wasn’t your brother, and he isn’t Caleb Ross, either.”

  “Lo sé.” And she did know that, better than anyone.

  “So, now that you’ve been doing all this listening, what do you think about him?”

  She
hesitated, remembering sitting next to him in the hospital. The way the uncomfortable chair felt; the way his hand felt, when the room was dark and he reached out to hold hers to remind him that someone was there. He asked her once or twice to watch him while he slept and to be there when he woke up, but he never said why.

  “I think it’s like he just woke up from a very bad dream. He’s not sure where he is or how long he’s been asleep, and the whole world’s changed. He doesn’t know where he fits into it anymore or what happens next.”

  “He’s not the only one, Amé, not by a long shot.” The sheriff opened the door for her. “Let’s get out of here. After Buck’s funeral tomorrow, his brother is throwing a barbecue at that place they have in Pecos. Mel and I are going to stick around for that, and most of Murfee will be there. I know that’s not typically your thing, but this is your town, and these are your people, just as much as they are mine. All these whispers you worry about will stop when they see you the way I do. Stay with us, and we’ll bring you home.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Oh, and one other thing, please get that gun back from Vianey Ruiz.”

  “I already have,” she said, not mentioning that it was Santino Paez who’d returned it. She owed him that, and more. But it made her think about Billy Bravo. “Did you ever get the results on the DNA?”

  He looked at her. “Not yet. Soon, though. Given what happened, and how it all turned out, does it matter anymore if we prove that Jesse Earl killed Billy?”

  Again she hesitated. Her hand went briefly to the Saint Michael’s pendant around her neck, turning it in the sun; the one she never took off. “¿Honestamente? No, not to me it doesn’t. But does it matter to you?”

  He started the truck, and if he had an answer, he didn’t share it.

  68

  ONE MONTH LATER

  He’d thought he was going back to Walls Unit at Huntsville, but he needed more care than that, a lot more, so they transferred him instead to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Hospital in Galveston, where he shit and pissed in plastic bags under the watchful eyes of armed guards. Not that he could do a damn thing about it, because his body refused to move below the waist, no matter how much he willed it. So he had to lay there and listen to ’em make jokes about him, laugh about the way the nurses had to come in and clean up after him like a goddamn baby, and how there was still a stink on him that they could never scrub off.

  It wasn’t just the prison walls that trapped him now, but also his own fuckin’ flesh.

  Earl wouldn’t look at his reflection in the chrome and glass of the machines that helped keep him alive; always making sure he looked the other way instead. He didn’t want to see himself like this, so he just spent a lot of time with his eyes closed, in darkness.

  He tried to ride his motorcycle in his mind, the way he used to, but even that didn’t work anymore.

  * * *

  • • •

  HE WOKE FROM A DREAM OF WIND—hot wind moving over dry grass, the touch of it against his skin and the weight of a scattergun in his hand—to the face of Agent Nichols. Nichols was reading something on his phone, and when he realized Earl was awake, he lowered it and didn’t smile.

  The guards were all gone.

  “My star witness, how are we feeling today?”

  “Fuck you, I ain’t got nothin’ to say to you.” His voice was strange to him since he hadn’t used it in a while.

  Nichols looked down at his phone again and then slipped it into his pocket. “You had a lot to say months ago, a whole lot, John Wesley.”

  Earl remained silent and looked at the far wall, where he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of himself.

  “You’re alive, you’re getting better. Not good enough to walk, you’re never going to do that again, and certainly not run. That’s really what you’ve been doing all along, right? Running.”

  Nichols looked at the ends of his fingers. “When you’re done here, I’m having you transferred to the U.S. penitentiary in Beaumont. That’s a fed facility, no more state prison time for you. I’m actually probably doing you a favor, and trust me, I’m not in the mood to do you any favors. You really wouldn’t want to be back in any of your old haunts anymore. My sources tell me word’s gotten out about you.”

  Earl didn’t want to ask, but he did anyway. “What the fuck you talkin’ about?”

  Nichols stopped looking at his hands and stared right at Earl. His eyes were as dusky as his skin. Earl thought he should be at a country club, playing tennis or something, and realized just how young he really was, a kid, not any older than Jesse.

  Nichols leaned in close and Earl caught a whiff of his heavy and expensive aftershave and saw a spot of blood on his chin, where he’d nicked himself shaving in the hotel bathroom mirror in the morning. The blood had dried as dark as his eyes. “The Wheel’s figured out the real reason you did George Chives. They know he wasn’t the federal snitch. Word gets around, even behind bars. You were just cashing out George’s chips, too, right? So when you made your run for the border, you had all the money?” Nichols reached into his suit coat pocket and pulled out a brand-new deck of Kem Arrow playing cards. He opened them and began a slow overhand shuffle, practiced and easy. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve run down the Manny Suarez connection.”

  “Don’t mean shit,” Earl said. “Like Manny would say, fuckin’ nada.”

  Nichols laughed, still shuffling. “You are one fucking tough nut, Earl. And you almost made it. By the way, when we kicked in the front door of Manny’s nice house in Arizona, he didn’t say nada. As a matter of fact, when I threatened to really hammer down on his son, Miguel Suarez, aka Azahel Avalos, he fucking sang.”

  Earl opened then shut his mouth, and searched the far wall again.

  “It seems your federal cooperation leaked. It’s rare, actually I’ve never heard of it happening, but the ABT is now well aware it was you that tried to sell them out. And because of what transpired down in Killing, now I can’t, and won’t, put you on the stand. Your grand jury testimony is so much worthless paper. Plus, Sheriff Cherry has been very vocal about your little bloodbath in the Big Bend. So there is no deal anymore, that’s gone up in flames like that fire you had that fucking worthless son of yours start in Murfee. There’s no WITSEC, nothing, nada. All I can do is fucking bury you. You will never be a free man as long as you live.”

  “If the word is out and there ain’t no protective custody, they’re gonna kill me, even in a federal pen,” Earl said. “I’m a dead man already.”

  Nichols shrugged. He looked down at a card and slipped it into the middle of the deck. “Yes, most likely. I figure your name finally went ‘in the hat.’ Isn’t that what you and your inbred friends call making a hit?” Nichols stood up, cards in hand. He slipped into a picture-perfect Hindu shuffle.

  “I talked once to Deputy Harper, and he said for a good cop, sometimes the work should be personal. I told him I thought that was bullshit, but just like you, this whole time, I wasn’t being completely honest. You see, hanging Flowers was personal for me. I was very close with my grandfather, a good, decent man, and then there was this church shooting in Georgia . . .” And then Nichols leaned down and whispered some more in Earl’s ear, and when he was done, he stood up and patted Earl on the cheek.

  But not before dealing out a final hand of Texas hold ’em, two hole cards facedown for each of them, and tossing the rest of the deck into the trash.

  “You aren’t the only cardplayer, Earl.”

  “It was you, you fuckin’ prick. You let ’em know I cooperated.”

  Nichols stopped, thought about it, and pulled out his phone to make a call as he walked out the door.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER NICHOLS LEFT, he dozed again, fitfully. He expected to dream of Jesse or Jesse’s
mom or Little B or T-Bob, even Sunny, but that wasn’t who haunted him. It was only Phyllis, and she came for him with fire in her hair from the muzzle blast of a shotgun, the one that had killed Robert Ford in Sweetwater. Her hair was burning and there was sea salt on her skin and her eyes were rolled up in her head and she told him over and over again that she and their baby had been waiting, just waiting, for so long . . .

  When he woke, the four cards Nichols had dealt were still there, untouched, and he realized that if he made it as far as USP Beaumont, he’d be home.

  He also realized that the guards that had been around his room and sometimes his bed were gone.

  * * *

  • • •

  HE RECOGNIZED THE ORDERLY, even though he’d never seen him before. He knew the eyes. They were his own, staring back at him from over twenty years ago. The boy was nervous, but determined.

  A prospect . . . Blood in.

  He had on a long-sleeve T-shirt underneath his uniform, probably to hide the tattoos; the ones they’d given him with pen ink and needles and sharpened guitar strings, attached to the small motors of electric toothbrushes. The boy’s first stint inside wouldn’t have been for very long, maybe just a few months for robbery or assault or something, but the next one would be for longer, a whole lot longer, if he got caught for what he was about to do. And Earl wanted to tell him it really didn’t matter anyway, that he was already going to spend the rest of his life in some kind of prison whether he was ever put back behind bars are not. A prison of his own making; ’cause you made your choices, placed your bets, and you lived and died with them.

  You made your deals with the Devil only to realize it was just you all along.

  The kid slipped the cards away that Nichols had left behind without looking at them, leaving Earl still wondering what they were . . . but jokers or aces, it was all the same now.