River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy)

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  She had a green iced tea and a Power Bar in the car with her. The hard part would be if she had to pee. The nearest restroom would be inside the hospital, and if she went in there, there was a remote chance that she would run into Wade. It wouldn’t be hard to explain her presence there, but it would be awkward to turn around and follow him if he was on his way out. She sat in the car and watched, worrying at her dry skin and wishing he’d hurry up.

  She saw his rented Focus pull out of the lot around seven thirty. Darkness had fallen while she waited, but headlights from an oncoming car illuminated Wade. A steady flow of traffic blocked his left turn, so he made a right. Molly started Byrd’s Xterra and followed. He worked his way down a few blocks, made a left, then another. She stayed about a dozen car lengths behind, able to keep him in sight because she sat much higher than he did, until he parked in the Hilton’s lot.

  Walking from the car to the hotel, he looked tired, his head drooping, shoulders slumped, dragged down by his captivity and escape, his whirlwind tour of hospitals and debriefing rooms, and the emotional journey to El Paso. She hadn’t been through nearly that kind of hellacious experience and she felt exhausted.

  After waiting outside the hotel for an hour, Molly decided he was probably in for the night. She risked entering the lobby and using the ladies’ room, then dashed back to the SUV. Wade’s car sat where he’d left it. She settled back in. A wind blew up out of nowhere, buffeting the car, and later a light rain fell, tap-tap-tapping on the roof.

  She didn’t realize she was dozing off until the sound of a car engine close by brought her around. She sat upright, eyes wide open, and tried to shake off the slumber that had enveloped her. Seconds ticked by while she realized what she had seen: Wade’s rental car, driving out of the hotel’s lot. A quick glance at the empty space it had occupied confirmed it.

  Adrenaline raced through her, waking her all the way. The Ford was already gone, somewhere up Oregon Street. She started the Xterra, checked for traffic, and pulled into the street. The hospital loomed at the top of the hill, but when she passed it and got a good look down Oregon, Wade’s car was nowhere in sight. Just in case, she drove down the street, peering up every side street she passed, watching the cars parked along the way.

  No sign of him.

  He had wasted no time getting lost. Had he seen her, snoozing in her brother’s SUV? Had he just been in a hurry to get somewhere? It was almost ten o’clock at night, late for an appointment.

  Molly drove around the neighborhood for another twenty minutes, searching fruitlessly. Finally, exhausted, she drove home.

  * * *

  On a hunch, when she woke up in the morning, she grabbed the TV remote from her bedside table and turned on the morning news.

  Sure enough, the anchors were talking about a double homicide during the night. Two young Latinas had been heading to their home at the South Chihuahua Apartments, just blocks from the border, after drinking in a downtown bar. An unknown assailant had used something like a pipe or a bat to beat them to death, in a manner so gruesome the local network affiliate wouldn’t show the crime scene. Their reporter did a stand-up on the other side of Montestruc, with a mural behind him (Molly thought there was blood on the mural, but she couldn’t be certain), only hinting at the carnage he saw across the street.

  Molly suspected Frank would have all the gory details ready for her when she reached The Voice offices.

  Wade had left his hotel room late, seemingly in a hurry. Twenty minutes later, he hadn’t returned. Two women were killed at some uncertain point during the night. That still didn’t necessarily mean it was Wade who had killed them.

  But it sure as hell didn’t rule him out.

  PART TWO: MALO DURO

  “I am fulfilling at last a dream of childhood and one as powerful as the erotic dreams of adolescence—floating down the river. Mark Twain, Major Powell, every human who has ever put forth on flowing water knows what I mean.”

  —Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

  “The River, spreading, flows—and spends your dream.

  What are you, lost within this tideless spell?”

  —Hart Crane, “The Bridge”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Molly drove.

  Wade sat beside her, in the passenger seat. Byrd rode in the back of his own SUV.

  She tried to ignore her growing suspicion of Wade. Byrd wanted his best friend along, and the whole trip had been Wade’s idea, anyway.

  She had stopped in at the hospital after a rough morning at the office—Frank had, indeed, horded all the gruesome details of last night’s double murder for her—and found Byrd and Wade sitting in what she could only describe as morose silence.

  “What’s up?” she had asked.

  “I’m gettin’ transferred,” Byrd said.

  “Transferred where?”

  “La Mariposa.”

  “Which is…?” She sat down heavily in the guest chair Wade didn’t already occupy and stared past Byrd at his broken oar.

  “Sierra Providence’s La Mariposa Hospice.”

  “Hospice.” The word was so close to “hospital,” but the meaning was so different.

  A hospital was where you went to be fixed.

  You went to a hospice to die.

  “Byrd, no…”

  “Byrd, yes,” Wade said, pointing to each of them in turn. After years of watching him on TV, it was still a shock to see him with his beard growing back in. “Wade yes. Molly yes.” A small joke, accompanied by the trembling ghost of a smile.

  Molly couldn’t return it. Tears forced themselves from her eyes, despite her best efforts to hold them back. She went to her brother, put her arms around him. His thin arms encircled her neck like a bony collar.

  This is ridiculous, she thought. He’s the one who’s dying, and he’s comforting me.

  “Wade had a great idea,” he said. Subtly but unmistakably, he pushed her away. Having learned to read his cues, she took her seat again, biting back the sobs she wanted to release.

  “What is it?”

  “We’re going to Malo Duro,” Wade said.

  “You are?” She looked from Wade to Byrd. “You’re going?”

  “All of us,” Byrd said. “You, too.”

  “When? Byrd, I’m swamped—” She cut herself off midsentence. She still had to get Wade’s story, despite her growing suspicions. Going on a nostalgic trip to their old hometown might loosen his tongue just enough. And without real evidence-—although she had every reason to be cautious—she couldn’t spend her life worrying about what he might do. Besides, Byrd would be with them. Byrd, who had always been her protector. He couldn’t fight now, couldn’t stand up to danger the way he once had. But Wade wouldn’t try anything in front of Byrd, no matter how far over the deep end he might have gone.

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Byrd pointed out. “You have Sundays off anyway.”

  She scraped hair away from her eyes and nodded her assent. “You’re right, Byrd. I’m in.”

  “Excellent,” Wade said. “Bright and early in the morning.”

  “You’re sure you feel good enough?” Molly asked her brother.

  “I’m not likely to get another chance,” Byrd said. He betrayed no emotion as he said it. Just a fact, like any other. I’m warm. I’m hungry. I’m dying. All the same.

  So here they were, making what amounted to a holy pilgrimage. Back to Palo Duro, the town of Byrd’s birth, and hers. The place where they’d met Wade. Molly drove east through El Paso, on the freeway that sliced through the city, parallel to the Rio Grande. They passed fast-food joints and cowboy boot outlet stores, strip malls and porn shops. Mexico climbed the hills to their right, always a presence. Then they left the city behind and struck southeast, still parallel to the river, slicing through open country now, ranch country, hills and valleys and mesas defining the skyline. The sky outside the city turned from brownish gray to blue and the air stopped smelling like baked sewage.

  When they passed a re
staurant with a huge sign offering roasted chicken, Byrd broke out in laughter that quickly became a hacking cough. “What is it, Byrd?” Molly asked.

  “That restaurant. It reminded me of one of my favorite exit lines this week.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “No, listen. Saint Lawrence, a Roman martyr, was bein’ burned to death over hot coals. His last words were, ‘Turn me. I am roasted on one side.’ I’m just not sure how applicable it is to me.”

  The exit for Palo Duro appeared about an hour outside of El Paso. The Palo Duro Motel stood beside the interstate, its three signposts stark against the cloudless sky. The tallest of the signs had blown out altogether and its frame stood there empty, surrounding a patch of blue. The next was weather-faded but still legible when you got close. The shortest, still thirty feet tall, was an illuminated sign with most of the plastic intact, and Molly suspected it was visible from a great distance at night.

  She peeled off the freeway and onto Palo Duro Road. The motel was on the right as they exited, Café on the left. It was almost noon, and a couple of pickup trucks were parked outside Café. The motel had parking in front and back, but the front part that they could see was deserted.

  “Well, this hasn’t changed a bit,” Wade said. “It’s like I never left.”

  “Did you think it would?” Byrd asked. “What would change it? The motel never relied on business from town. I’m sure it’s strictly a stopover for people who can’t make it to El Paso comin’ from the east, or who want to get past it headed that way.”

  “You’re probably right,” Wade said.

  “Anyone hungry?”

  “Byrd?” Wade asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Let’s keep exploring,” Wade suggested. He caught Molly’s gaze with eyes as blue as a mountain lake. The beard was coming in fuller as the days passed, and somehow it made him look young again.

  Molly drove past Café and on down the two-lane that led into town. Some of the farmland they passed was in use, mostly growing cotton, as the McCall family had done for years. This time of year, the fields were brown and white, with cotton strewn along their edges and beside the road like snow. So much cotton, it was hard to imagine anyone going bankrupt. Molly knew it happened all the time, though, just as it had to their parents. Debts grew unmanageable, crops failed, prices fluctuated. Sometimes people just got old, and their children didn’t want to stay on the farm.

  Other properties were abandoned, their fields fallow, vast stretches of bare earth. Some were thick with weeds; others had been so farmed out, toasted with chemicals and overuse, that nothing would grow anymore.

  “God,” Byrd said when they reached Palo Duro’s “downtown” at the intersection of Palo Duro Road and River Road. A few buildings flanked the corner in every direction. Most were vacant: the bank, the barbershop (supports for its once cheerful red, white, and blue pole holding nothing but a couple of blown leaves), Betty’s Night Owl Saloon, Irene’s Cantina. Two adobe walls of Lou’s Hardware had crumbled under the weight of weather and time, although the painted sign could still be read through a patina of rust and dirt, above what remained of the door.

  Weeds choked the sidewalk around these buildings, even threatening to overrun the businesses that were still operating. The post office was open, and a car was parked in front of it. Next door was the firehouse, its big door open and the single fire engine visible in the gloom. Willie’s Laundromat was empty but obviously remained a going concern. Across the street from it was Jo’s Burgers Pizza Ribs. “Didn’t that used to be something else?” Molly asked. The sign was newer than most of the others in town, the paint job fresher, glass intact in the windows.

  “It was that liquor store. The Bottle Shop,” Byrd said.

  “That’s right!” Wade said. “My dad used to spend more money there than we did on groceries.”

  Molly turned left onto River Road, named because it ran parallel to the Rio Grande. From the road, one could get occasional glimpses of the river, fringed with trees in spots, beyond the farms and ranches. Mexico lay on the other side, but Palo Duro had never had a legal port of entry. Fort Hancock was the nearest.

  A rangy, dun-colored coyote stood in the middle of the street, its ribs showing clearly through short fur, staring them down for a moment before darting between two buildings and out of sight.

  To the right they saw more shut-down, crumbling businesses. The route took them past the Palo Duro Mercantile, which looked like it had closed its doors a hundred years ago. But when she was growing up, Molly had loved wandering its aisles, looking at toys and housewares, clothing and household appliances. Byrd had worked there a couple of summers. Through the Mercantile, her dad had bought a tractor once. Now it was gone, seemingly blown away by the west Texas wind like most of the town.

  She opened her window and took a deep breath. The town’s odor was different than she remembered. The Mercantile had had a bakery attached, so especially on still winter mornings the fragrance of fresh breads and doughnuts and cakes had hung heavily on the air. The humidity of the Laundromat had leaked out into the street, back in those days, but today it was cool and odorless.

  Beside the Mercantile was the BBQ Shack—also closed—its big screened porch covered with sheets of plywood, which were layered with graffiti and pocked by bullet holes. That place had always smelled like cooking fires and burning meat and spilled beer, and on warm autumn nights you could usually find much of the town sitting at the rough wooden picnic tables on the porch listening to Hank Jr. or Waylon or George Strait on the jukebox in the corner. Colored Christmas lights hung on the inside walls all year long. Bugs dashed themselves against the screens, moths fluttered unsteadily against the lights, and cool breezes wafted the aromas of ribs and chicken and corn and burgers out to the gravel parking lot. The teenagers usually sat at a table of their own, laughing and swearing, sneaking out for smokes now and again, while their parents did more or less the same thing. The Mercantile and the BBQ Shack had been the town’s social centers, and now both were history.

  After that, they hit empty farmland again. The houses they could see from the road were wrecks, tumbling back into the land. The scene wrenched Molly’s heart. She had known families who had lived in these houses—she had gone to school with their children. She remembered riding her bike along this road—maybe headed to the Mercantile for some candy or a soda, maybe to the post office to pick up mail—and waving to people working their fields or sitting on front porches. Now they were gone. Palo Duro had become a ghost town.

  When they reached the school complex, tears stung her eyes and she pulled the SUV off the road. Both school buildings, elementary and high school, were boarded up. Their brick walls looked as substantial as ever, but the covered windows (and those without covers, glass smashed out of them) destroyed this impression, leaving instead a sense of promises unfulfilled and dreams dashed. The lawns, athletic fields, and playgrounds were overgrown, the absence of children’s cries of joy, of tennis shoes on the grass, of backpacks and lunchboxes thrown aside for playtime was palpable.

  “Fuck, look at that,” Byrd said quietly. “It’s just…a shell.”

  “There’s hardly any population left to sustain it,” Wade said. “All those empty houses we’ve seen? I wonder where the kids go to school, though. The ones that are left. Fort Hancock? Sierra Blanca, maybe?”

  “Either one’s a long haul,” Molly said. “It’s hard to imagine how it got this bad. I mean, I know, I know how these things go. But this was a real town once, you know?”

  “I seem to have a vague memory of that,” Byrd said.

  Molly put the vehicle in gear again. “I hope coming here wasn’t a bad idea,” she said.

  “It’s not that awful, Moll,” Byrd said, using a nickname for her that he rarely employed in recent years. “It’s not like it’s a surprise or anything. Rural flight and all. For the first time in history, more human beings live in cities than in rural areas.”

  “I get th
at, Byrd,” Molly snapped. “I’m just articulating an emotional response, not writing a fucking thesis.” As soon as the words escaped her lips, she regretted them. Byrd would be the first to insist that people treat him like anyone else, not to handle him with kid gloves. Although she had tried to live up to his wishes, guilt still wracked her whenever she lost her patience with him. “Sorry,” she said. She pulled the Xterra back onto the road. Not a single vehicle had passed while they’d sat outside the school.

  “Next stop, Downerville, USA,” Byrd said.

  He was right. Molly and Byrd had lived on a farm property adjacent to the school. She could see it already, the fields as vacant as the school buildings, pushing up no vegetation to block the view. No matter what shape it was in, it wouldn’t be what it once was. It wouldn’t be the happy home where she had grown up.

  Byrd had been away at UTEP when the foreclosure happened. The cotton crop had been bad for three years running—drought, insects, you name it. Her folks had borrowed to the hilt, and then those grim days came when they couldn’t buy food and pay the bills. Then they couldn’t do either. Finally, they had to pack up both pickup trucks and leave behind everything they couldn’t carry. The bank had already staked auction signs around the property. Molly cried for three days before they moved, visiting her friends (those who hadn’t already been foreclosed themselves), choosing what she could take and what had to be abandoned.

  Byrd drove down from El Paso to help with the move, but he had been away during what she considered the worst of it, the months of uncertainty, the constant phone calls from creditors, the mailbox full of dunning notices, the questions her classmates asked about rumors they’d heard.

  Within a year after winding up in a mobile home park on the northeast side of El Paso, their father was dead. Two years later—Molly had just started at UTEP, living at “home,” in the doublewide, to save dorm money—their mother followed him. Byrd had always been Molly’s rock; now he was all she had in the world. She couldn’t imagine the shape of a life without him in it.