by John Harvey
On the rear floor there were two-hundred-dollar running shoes, in the back seat itself a sweatshirt and windbreaker from Land’s End, a red baseball cap, a deflated soccer ball, a thick yellow towel. In the bin just fore of the gearshift he found the notice of a bank overdrawal that George Hassler (he knew the name from the registration) had crumpled and thrown there. Angrily?
America.
Was there any more alien a landscape than the one in which he found himself – this long, trailing exhaust of desert, mountains forever in the distance – anywhere? He drove across dry runnels marked Coyote Wash or Aqua Fria River, chugged in the new carapace past piles, pillars and Πs of stone to challenge Stonehenge or Carnac, past crass billboards, cement oases of gas stations, fast-food stalls and convenience stores chock full of sugary drinks, salty snacks, racks of sunglasses, souvenir T-shirts, Indian jewelry. Past those regal cacti.
They stood like sentinels, in an endless variety of configurations, on hillside and plain, some of them over forty feet. Most never made it through their first year of life. Those that did, grew slowly. A saguaro could take a hundred and fifty years to reach full height; in another fifty years it died. Some would never develop arms, while others might have two or four or six all upraised like candelabra, or dozens of them twisted and pointing in all directions. No one knew why this happened. Shallow and close to the surface, root systems ran out as much as a hundred feet, allowing the plants rapidly to soak up even minimal rainfalls. As the cactus took on water, its accordionlike pleats expanded. Woodpeckers and other birds often made their way into it to nest. Some, particularly hawks and the cactus wren, preferred to nest at junctures of arm and trunk. Red-tailed hawks would build large platform nests there; they’d come back again and again, every year, till the pair stopped nesting altogether. Over a six-week period in May and June, brilliant flowers emerged atop mature cacti. These would bloom for twenty-four hours only, opening at night, closing for ever against the heat of day.
Lizards were everywhere and just as ancient. They scampered out from beneath tangles of cholla, crouched soaking up sun atop stones, skittered across the highway, minds clenched on memories of endless rain forests, green shade, green sunlight. Brains the size of bb shot enfolded dioramas, whole maps in stark detail, of worlds long gone, worlds long ago lost.
At a truck stop near Benson, Arizona, where the pie was excellent, a young man came up to say he’d seen him arrive in the Honda Accord. On one wall dinner plates with figures of wildlife hung among framed photographs of motorbikes and vintage automobiles; on the other, portraits of John Wayne, Elvis, Marilyn and James Dean. Out back, a crude hand-painted sign with the cameo of a Confederate soldier and the legend Rebel Café leaned against a crèche of discarded water heaters, stoves, sinks and minor appliances from which a rheumy-eyed dog peered out, as from an undersea grotto.
The young man wore an XXL purple-and-blue plaid shirt over a red T-shirt gone dull maroon, and well-used black jeans a couple of inches too long. The back half or so of the leg bottoms had been trod to shreds. Quentin’s first thought as the young man approached was that he wore a baseball cap in the currently fashionable front-to-back style. But now he saw it was a skullcap. Knit, like those he’d seen on Africans.
‘Had the Accord long?’
Quentin looked up at the young man. For all the alarm his question set off, this was obviously no cop. No more challenge or anxiety in those eyes than in Quentin’s own. He approved, too, of the way the young man held back, staying on his feet, not presuming. Quentin nodded to the young man to join him. A corner booth. Nondescript beige plastic covering, blue paint above. Carpentry tacks stood out like a line of small brass turtles crossing the horizon.
‘Had one myself,’ the young man said. ‘Accord, just like yours. Got off from work one day, came out and it was gone. First time I ever talked to police face to face.’
The waitress came to refill Quentin’s coffee. He asked if the young man wanted anything. He shook his head.
‘Same week, my apartment got broken into. Took the stereo, TV, small appliances, most of the clothes. Even hauled off a footlocker I’d had since college, filled with God knows what. I came home from a six-mile run, took one look around and said fuck it. Knew at some level I’d been wanting this to happen. Clear the decks. Free me to start over.’
Sipping his third cup of coffee, Quentin watched truckers as they bowed heads over eggs and ham, looking to be in prayer. From nearby booths drifted strains of pragmatic seductions, complaints about jobs and wives, political discussions. A hash of all the age-old songs.
In the car the young man fell asleep almost at once. He’d propped feet on his duffel bag; the world bucked up unseen, unfired upon, in the notch of his knees. Choppy piano music played on the local university station. Quentin hit Scan. Sound and world alike tilted all about him, falling away, rearranging itself. Rock, country, news, chatter. Stone, cactus, wildflowers, trailer park.
Awake now, Quentin’s passenger said, ‘Where are we?’
‘Pretty much where we were before. It’s only been a couple of hours.’
He thought about that.
‘Damn.’
Roadside, an elderly Latino sold cabbage, cucumbers and bags of peppers out of the bed of his truck, the cover of which unfolded and sat atop rough wood legs to form a tent. A younger woman (daughter? wife?) sat on the ground in the shade of the truck, reading.
‘Where we going?’ Quentin’s passenger said.
‘East.’
Towards El Paso, one of America’s great in-between cities. They ate in a truck stop on I-10 just outside Los Cruces, a place the size of a gymnasium smelling of onions, hot grease and diesel. Meat loaf was the daily special, with mashed potatoes and boiled cabbage on the side. Using his fork like a squeegee, Quentin’s passenger scraped his plate clean, then caught up with a piece of bread what minuscule leavings remained.
Eschewing the Interstate, Quentin took the long way in, the back road as locals say, Route 28, skirting fields of cotton, chilis, onions and alfalfa, tunneling through the 2.7-mile green, cool canopy of Stahman Farm’s pecan orchards, up past San Miguel, La Mesa, Chambertino, La Union. The sun was settling into the cleft of the mountains to the left, throwing out its net of evening to reel the world in. As they pulled onto Mesa, parking lots outside shops and offices were emptying, streets filling with cars, street lights coming on.
‘You can let me out up at that corner,’ Quentin’s passenger said. ‘Appreciate the ride. Looks like a good place, El Paso. For a while.’ He leaned back into the window. ‘They’re all good places for a while, right?’
Dinner became caldo and chicken mole at Casa Herado, the rest of the evening a movie on the cable channel at La Quinta off Mesa on Remcon Circle.
In the space between seat and door on the passenger’s side, Quentin found a well-worn wallet bound with rubber bands and containing a driver’s license, social security card and two or three low-end charge cards for James Parker. Left behind, obviously, by his passenger. Had the young man stolen it, lifted it, liberated it? Much of the gypsy about him, no doubt about that. But mostly Quentin remembered the young man’s remarks about becoming free, starting over.
By five in the morning, light in hot pursuit, Quentin was on Transmountain Road heading through Smuggler’s Pass to Rim Road where, at one of the slumbering residential palaces there, he swapped the Honda for a Crown Vic. Some banker or real-estate salesman would greet the morning with unaccustomed surprise. Quentin hoped the man liked his new car. His own smelt faintly of cigars, spilled milk and bourbon. Wires had hung below the dash even before those Quentin tugged out and touched together. But when he goosed the accelerator in query, the car shuddered and roared to let him know it was ready.
Years ago in Texas, Quentin had witnessed an execution. The whole lethal injection thing was new back then and no one knew just how to proceed. Some sort of ritual seemed in order, though, so things were said by the warden, a grizzled, stoop-shouldere
d man looking twice his probable age, then by a tow-headed chaplain looking half his. It was difficult to find much to say. Casey Cortland had led a wholly unremarkable, all but invisible life before one warm Friday evening in the space of an hour killing his wife of twelve years, his ten-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter, and the lay minister of a local church. Cortland was brought in and strapped to a table. Beneath prison overalls, Quentin knew, he was diapered. Unlike the warden and chaplain, Cortland had no final words. When they injected the fatal drug, he seized: the IV line pulled out and went flying, dousing all those seated close by with toxic chemicals. State police took Quentin, who’d caught the spray directly in his eyes, to Parkland. Though basically unharmed, for several weeks he suffered blurred vision and headaches. Hours later on the prison parking lot Quentin reclaimed his Volvo, then I-30. Hour by hour, chunks of Texas broke off and fell away in his rear-view mirror. That night he had the dream for the first time. In the dream, along with an estimated half-million other viewers, he watched as Tiffany’s father was eaten on camera, the mid-morning show live, producers and cameramen too stunned to shut it all down. Tiffany used to have a pair of earrings with the bottom half of a man hanging out of a shark’s mouth. That’s not what it was like. It wasn’t like anything Quentin or other viewers had ever seen. Tiffany’s father’s legs rolled back and forth, feet pointing north-north-east, north-north-west, as the tiger chewed and pawed and pulled back its head to tear away chunks. There were sounds. Screams at first, then not so many. Gristle sounds, bone sounds. Growls. Or was it purring? Panels of experts, rapidly assembled, offered explanations of what this event said about society’s implicit violence. Then Tiffany herself was there, sobbing into the microphone held close to her face like a second bulbous nose. Daddy only did it for her, she said. He did everything for her.
All that day off and on, Back Then as he now thought of it, Quentin had spent writing a letter he hoped might persuade Allied’s insurance carriers to reconsider Sandy Buford’s claim. Every two minutes the phone rang, people kept washing up from the passageway outside his cubicle, his boss broke in like a barge with queries re one or another file, the list of calls to return and calls to be made seemed as always to grow longer instead of shorter. Sandy had hurt his back on the job and now, following surgery, wasn’t able to lift the poundage Allied’s job description required. He was a good worker, with the company over fourteen years. But since the surgeon had released him and he couldn’t meet the job’s bottom line – even though Sandy’s actual work from day to day didn’t call for lifting – the insurance carrier had begun disallowing all claims, refusing payment to physicians, labs and physical therapists, and effectively blocking the company’s efforts to re-employ him. Quentin’s letter summarised the case in concise detail, explained why Allied believed the carrier’s disallowment to be inappropriate and in error, and put forth a convincing argument (Quentin hoped) for re-evaluation.
Pulling out of the parking lot at 6.18, just a little over an hour late leaving, on the spur of the moment Quentin decided to swing by Sandy Buford’s and drop off a copy of the letter, let him know someone cared. Quentin had called to let Ellie know how late he was running; she was expecting him home. But this would only take a few minutes.
Buford’s address bore him to a sea of duplexes and shabby apartment buildings at city’s edge. Many of them looked like something giant children, given blocks and stucco, might erect. Discarded appliances formed victory gardens in side and back yards. Long-dead cars and trucks sat in driveways, ancient life forms partially reconstructed from remains.
Quentin waded through front yards that may well have seen conga lines of children dancing their parents’ preference for Adlai Stevenson over Ike (when had people stopped caring that much?) and climbed a stairwell where the Rosenbergs’ execution could have been a major topic of discussion. One expected the smell of cooking cabbage. These days the smell of Quarter Pounders, Whoppers, Pizza Hut and KFC were far more likely, maybe a bit of cumin or curry mixed in.
Buford’s apartment was on the third floor. There was music playing inside, sounded like maybe a TV as well, but no one responded to Quentin’s knocks. Finally he pushed a copy of the letter, tucked into an Allied Beverage pay envelope, beneath it. He was almost to the second landing when he heard four loud cracks, like limbs breaking. Instinctively he drew back against the wall as two young men burst from the apartment nearest the stairwell. Both wore nylon stockings over their faces. Quentin moved forward, peered over the bannister just as one of them after pulling off his stocking glanced up.
That was the footprint he left.
Careful to give the two men ample time to exit, Quentin continued down the stairs. He was turning the corner on to Central in his Taurus when the first police cars came barreling down it.
A dozen blocks along, he began to wonder if those were the same headlights behind him. He turned on to Magnolia, abruptly into the parking lot at Cambridge Arms, pulled back out on to Elm. Still there. Same brilliance, same level, dipping a beat or so after he dipped, buoying up moments later. He pulled into a Sonic and ordered a drink. Drove on a half-mile or more before pulling up at the curb and getting out, motor left idling, to buy the early edition of tomorrow’s newspaper. No lights behind him when he took to the street. Whoever it had been, back there, following him, was gone. If there’d been anyone. Only his imagination, most likely.
He said nothing of this to Ellie, neither as they had a pre-prandial glass of wine before the fireplace, nor as she pulled plates of flank steak, mashed potatoes and brussels sprouts, foil covered, from the oven, nor as, afterwards, they sat before the lowering fire with coffee. He spoke, instead, of the minutiae of his day. Office politics, the latest barge of rumor and gossip making its way upriver, cylinders banging, his concern over Sandy Buford. She shared in turn the minutiae of her day, including a visit to Dr Worrell.
Head against his shoulder, 12.37 when last he glanced at the clock bedside, Ellie fell fast asleep. Quentin himself was almost asleep when he heard the crash of a window downstairs.
The car hesitates, only a moment, though it must seem for ever, there at the lip.
He’s not sure of any of this, of course. Not sure if it really happened, how it happened, where or when. More than once he’s thought it might be only something suggested to him by a therapist; something he’s read or seen on the dayroom TV whose eye is as bleary and unfocused as those of its watchers; something that he’s imagined, a dream breaking like a whale from the depths of that long sleep. Yet it keeps coming back – like that other dream of a man being eaten by a tiger on live TV. Again and again in his mind’s eye he sees it. It’s as real as the plastic furniture, coffee makers and floor polishers around him – realer than most things in this world he’s begun re-entering. But mind is only a screen, upon which anything may be projected.
Go on, then.
The car hesitates there at the lip.
With no warning a woman’s nude body, pale as the moon, had stepped into his headlights on that barren stretch of road. Flying saucers might just as well have set down beside him.
He’d left Cave Creek half an hour past. No houses or much of anything else out here, no lights, headlights or other cars, this time of night at least, few signs of human life at all, just this vast scoop of dark sky above and, at the edge of his lights, vague huddled shapes of low scrub, creosote, cholla, prickly pear. Further off the road, tall saguaro with arms upraised – then the heavier darkness of sawtooth mountains.
Had he a destination in mind? Into Phoenix via some roundabout route to take dinner at a crowded restaurant perhaps, hopscotching over his isolation, his loneliness? Or, as he pushed ever deeper into the desert, did he mean to flee something else altogether, the dribble of headlights on gravel roads about him, high-riding headlights of trucks and SUVs behind, silhouettes of houses on hills half a mile away, himself?
His name was Parker.
He’d taken over a light-struck house with exposed
beams and white shutters, leaving behind, at the apartment where he’d been staying, the pump of accordions through open windows, songs whose tag line always seemed to be mi corazon, afternoons filled with the sound of stationary racing motors from tanklike ancient Fords and Buicks being worked on in the parking lot. Coyotes at twilight walked three or four to the pack down the middle of streets. First night there, he’d sat watching a hawk fall from the sky to carry off a cat. The cat had come over to investigate this new person or say hello. It had leapt onto the half-wall facing his front door, ground to wall in that effortless, levitating way they have, here one moment, there the next. Then just as suddenly the hawk had appeared – swooping away with the cat into a sunset like silent bursting shells.
He remembered eating dinner, some pasta concoction he had only to pop into the microwave. Then he’d gone outside with a bottle of wine, watching day bleed away to its end, watching the hawk make off with the cat, watching as night parachuted grandly into the mountains. He’d gone in to watch part of a movie, then, bottle depleted, decided on a ride. In the car he found a tape of Indian flute music. Drove off, empty himself, into the desert’s greater and somehow comforting emptiness.
Till the nude woman appeared before him.
Again: he has no idea how much of this is actual; how much remembered, suggested, imagined. Why, just returned from a turnabout trip to New York, and at that time of night, would he have driven off into the desert – driven anywhere, for that matter? What could have borne him off the highway on to that road, through fence breaks and boulders, up the bare mountainside, to its edge? What could the woman have been doing there, nude, in his headlights?
Seeing her, he swerves, instinctively left, away from the rim, but fetches up against a rise there and slides back, loose stone giving way at his rear when he hits his brakes.
The car rocks back.
In the moment before his windshield fills with dark sky and stars, he sees her there before the car, arms out like a bullfighter, breasts swaying. Braid of dark hair. In his rear-view mirror, a canyon of the sort Cochise and his men might have used, subterranean rivers from which they’d suddenly rise into the white man’s world to strike, into which they’d sink again without trace.