Now and Again (46 page)

The men were only halfway finished, but already the driveway looked fresh and welcoming, and Dolly could easily envision how lovely everything would be once she had filled the new planters with geraniums and ornamental sweet potato vines.

“Speaking of sweet potatoes,” said Dolly, holding the baby up to her face and breathing in his milky fragrance. “You're just about sweet enough to eat.”

“Did you pick a name yet?” asked Tula. “You can't keep calling him Tadpole.”

“I'm thinking Danny Junior fits him. He's the spitting image of his dad.”

As she said it, the baby blinked its long eyelashes and gaped at them with the wisdom of the ages shining from his eyes. Miracles were everywhere—to see them, you only had to look.

L
yle tried calling Maggie at work, but it was the attorney who answered the phone and said he hadn't heard from her in over a week. “May I inquire who's calling?” he asked.

“No, no,” said Lyle. “I'll call back.”

“I'm sure it's nothing to worry about,” said Lily. “You can try her again tomorrow.”

Some nights Lyle slept on Lily's couch, but most nights he slept in the truck. He had a few leads on jobs, but if those didn't work out, he'd go to Phoenix. There's nothing stopping me now, he thought. Nothing he could put his finger on anyway.

He'd had an interview at McKnight's earlier in the week. The manager had said he'd get back to him in a day or two, but it was already Friday and he had heard nothing. He knew by now to talk in terms of the interviewer's interests, but it was hard to know what those might be for the pencil-necked man with the rash of acne who had beckoned him in from the waiting room. Lyle had mentioned cars, the war, and the Texas-OU rivalry in quick succession, and then he decided to turn the tables and ask the manager right out.

“What are your interests?” asked Lyle, and when the manager just stared at him, he added, “What is it you want most in the entire world?”

“I'd kind of like a cheeseburger,” said the manager. “Can you get me one of those?”

“You need to be thinking bigger,” said Lyle. “You need to be thinking of your career, which is something I can help you with.”

“O-kay,” said the man, smiling for the first time.

The interview had lasted only ten or fifteen minutes, but it got Lyle thinking about the munitions plant and how when it came to bosses, you couldn't do much better than MacBride.

“I know the manager,” said Lily as she headed off to work. “I can put in a good word for you, but you still oughtta go on over there today and see what's what.”

“Good idea,” said Lyle. “I guess I will.”

It was almost noon when Lyle got in the truck and started it up, but instead of driving toward the chicken farm, he found himself in the part of town where Tula lived. The houses on Ash Creek Circle had once been identical, but over the years their owners had made additions and improvements. The Santos house was one of the few without a second story or a sunroom added on. A dilapidated swing set squatted in the dusty yard, and the spokes of an ancient wash rack clattered in the wind. Over the past weeks Lyle had driven by several times, but except for once when a load of washing was hanging out, he never saw any signs of either Tula or her mother. He wanted to know if Tula had heard from Will, but he hadn't seen her since the day of the high school graduation.

Now he got out of the car and knocked on the front door; he didn't expect anyone to answer it and no one did. His reflection in the glass panel startled him because it looked like someone else's face, and he couldn't help thinking about killers lurking in the dark and waiting to attack him.

After checking behind the house, Lyle returned to the truck and drove along the creek before circling back toward town. He had just turned onto the Main Road when the sheriff's pickup pulled him over and Hank Conway got out and swaggered over. “What did I do?” asked Lyle. “Is my taillight out again? And I've been meaning to get that muffler fixed.”

“No, no, nothing like that,” said the sheriff. “I'm just wondering where you're headed, is all.”

Lyle knew he didn't have to say anything. He knew a man's thoughts were his own and nobody had a right to force them out of him. He knew it wasn't legal to pull people over and interrogate them without just cause, so he didn't say anything, only waited for the sheriff to continue.

“I want to show you something,” said the sheriff. “Something you might appreciate. Something that might make you sleep a little better at night.”

Lyle unbuckled his seat belt, got out of the truck, and walked with the sheriff around the back of the glossy pickup. The sheriff ran his hand along the truck's flank where
COUNTY SHERIFF
was painted in gold letters outlined in black. He pointed to a gun rack bolted to the reinforced frame of the truck, drawing Lyle's attention to two hunting rifles and two military-style weapons, and then he waved at a pile of SWAT team vests that were stashed in the cargo bay and also at a locked box that contained, he said, a thousand rounds of ammunition. “We've got the exact same gear as Will's got in Iraq,” said the sheriff. “Only some of it's a different color. And when the current conflict ends, where do you think all that surplus military equipment is gonna go?”

“Where?” asked Lyle.

“Cities and towns just like Red Bud, that's where. It's amazing what you can get if you agree to certain priorities.”

“What priorities?” asked Lyle.

“Drugs, terrorists, illegals, that sort of thing. Those are Uncle Sam's priorities, and there are a lot of financial incentives for communities like Red Bud to make them ours as well.”

Lyle didn't know what the sheriff was getting at, so he asked, “What are you getting at, Sheriff? Do you think I'm into drugs?”

“Heck no, Lyle.” The sheriff gave a snort and squinted up at the sun before fixing his sights back on Lyle, who asked, “Are there terrorists in Red Bud?”

“I'm just thinking you'd like to know that for a tiny little town, we're pretty well equipped for keeping the peace 'n' all. You might like to know that we're dedicated to keeping our citizens safe and that it's better for a person who's done something wrong to turn his or herself in.”

“How does a person know if he's done something wrong?” asked Lyle. His heart sank with misgivings. He wondered if it was legal to sleep in his truck or if he was breaking the law on the nights he didn't stay at Lily's.

“Jeezus, Lyle. What kind of a question is that?”

As the sheriff drove away, Lyle tried to think of what else he might have done wrong. If it didn't have to do with the truck, then perhaps it had to do with the house, but the house no longer belonged to him. His bank account was overdrawn—that was sure to get him crosswise with the law. It was possible it had to do with the munitions plant, even though he didn't work there anymore. And then it dawned on him—the sheriff wasn't interested in him at all.

T
he first driver took Maggie as far as Flagstaff. “In case you're interested, it's a straight shot to the Grand Canyon,” he said. “You may as well see it, now that you're here.”

Why not? thought Maggie. She had always wanted to see the Grand Canyon, and there was no telling when she'd get another chance.

When the second driver let her out at a visitor's center, it was as if she'd been dropped onto another planet, or as if she were seeing her own planet for the first time. It was as if all the churches of the world had exploded or turned inside out or been transformed in some way so that all that was sparkling and glorious now lay before her. Every stained-glass color, every vertiginous drop, every astonishing element of the universe was spread out like an all-you-can-eat buffet of miracles. Even surrounded by a crowd of sightseers, she felt alone with the majesty. Even hemmed in by the safety barricade, she felt as if she could fall at any moment, as if she was falling, as if she had fallen and then her wings had caught and held the way the wings of the birds that drifted in slow circles over the chasm had caught and held and lifted. Her breath came in short gasps. Her heart expanded in her chest. Her eyes bulged and didn't blink. How she had come to be there seemed both strange and inevitable. None of it made sense to her, but perhaps that was not a useful way to think about things. Perhaps senselessness was the entire point.

Maggie made her way to the big wooden map that showed her location in the string of parks that stretched north almost to Utah and west nearly to Las Vegas. Only slowly did she realize that the spot where she stood was a speck in the vastness, that there were other observation points, just as stunning and true. There were boat rides and dangerous rapids and treacherous paths and hot air balloons and helicopters and so many points from which to view the canyon that no one lifetime could absorb or comprehend them. And the canyon was only one part of the world, just the way the world was only part of the universe, and the universe…It was too much to contemplate all at once, so she shut the thinking part of her mind and opened up the part that allowed creation to fan out before her without asking her to ponder what it meant.

A man leading a scrawny donkey by a rope approached to ask if she wanted her picture taken with it. He showed her a Polaroid camera that hung from his neck by a greasy strap. “Only ten dollars,” he said. All around them tourists were pretending to ignore the man as they surreptitiously snapped pictures of the donkey with their phones. The photographer's hands were grimy and his gaucho hat shaded his face so that Maggie couldn't see his eyes. “Nobody wants Polaroids these days,” he said, his lips curling over broken teeth in a smile that couldn't quite mask his desperation.

“Well, I want one. I don't even have a cell phone,” Maggie told him.

“Why not?” asked the photographer.

“Money, for one thing,” said Maggie. “But I'd love to buy a photograph from you.” She searched her purse and found the envelope the attorney had given her on her last day of work. “I wish you weren't going,” he had told her. “You're the best office manager I've ever had.”

“My family needs me,” Maggie had said.

She handed the donkey's owner a ten-dollar bill, and a few minutes later he handed back a smeared Polaroid. “A souvenir of your trip,” he said. “Something for your memory book.”

“Yes,” said Maggie. “Thank you very much.”

In the photograph, the canyon was a featureless gulf behind her, but despite the runny colors and the sad expression on the donkey's face, it made her smile. The image only hinted at the grandeur that surrounded her, but it was enough to prove to Lyle, and more importantly to herself, I was here.

A
fter his encounter with the sheriff, Lyle drove to the Redi Mart and called Phoenix again. This time he told the attorney who he was.

“I think she might be headed home,” said the attorney. “Hasn't she called you?”

“It's a long story, but she can't,” said Lyle.

“Well, when you see her, tell her I have some good news to report.”

Lyle wished he and Maggie had made one of those plans everyone talked about after 9/11—a plan of where and when to meet in case of a national emergency. Then he and Maggie would know where to go now, not because they were facing a national emergency, but because they were facing a personal one.

What did a person do in the absence of such a plan? He wished he had ESP. He wished he or Maggie were clairvoyant, the way True Cunningham claimed to be. Then the one who wasn't clairvoyant could just choose a time and place to meet and think about it really hard, and the one who was clairvoyant could pick up the signals merely by concentrating—problem solved.

But that was wishful thinking. Wishful thinking was why Maggie had started down this path, and he guessed he wasn't the only one who had been unable to see where it would lead. Lyle sat in the truck while the sun reached its zenith and started its slow descent over the boxy Multiplex. Finally, he jiggered the key in the ignition and drove down the street to the diner, where he ordered a cup of coffee and tried to piece together a plan of action. The clock above the counter ticked past four o'clock and then past five. All around him noisy families were gathering to celebrate the weekend by ordering from the giant plastic menus that had always fascinated Will and that Lyle still saw as evidence that the world was big and filled with opportunity. When the waitress began to frown and snap her gum, Lyle realized that instead of pondering the problem, he was only staring blankly at the Formica countertop and waiting for inspiration to strike.

He had to think, but he didn't know what to think about. It wasn't until he had paid the bill and stepped out into the soft June breeze that it occurred to him that instead of bemoaning the way things were, there were two questions he should be asking himself. The first was, How would Maggie solve the where-and-when-to-meet problem? As if that was not difficult enough, he would also have to ask if Maggie even knew about the problem.

Since there was no way to answer the second question, he could only assume she knew and work on an answer to the first. He should have made sure she wouldn't come home unexpectedly by telling her the police investigation wasn't over instead of trying to protect her by holding information back.

Then he remembered what Jimmy had said about goal-setting, about tactics and execution. The goal was to meet up with Maggie. As for tactics, he had to put himself in her shoes. What would she be thinking? Even more critical to the solution was, What would she be thinking he was thinking? Was there something so obvious that it would not only be obvious to her, but it would also be obvious to her that it was obvious to him? And it struck him with the eureka force of discovery that there was an obvious time to meet! It was noon. They had met in the lunchroom after the twelve o'clock bell for the four years they had worked together at the munitions plant, and he knew with absolute certainty that noon would be obvious to Maggie just as it had been obvious to him. Just in case he was clairvoyant after all, or Maggie was, he closed his eyes and sent a message to her, wherever she might be: Noon, Maggie. We'll meet at noon.