The Far Empty (28 page)

MELISSA

C
hris was already out of bed when she woke, moving around in the house, and there was the smell of coffee; a hint, the potential, of other cooking. It was Thanksgiving, and although he could have had some of the elk meat he and the sheriff had killed up at El Dorado, he’d passed on it. Yesterday he bought instead a boneless Butterball turkey breast at the Hi n Lo. It was in the fridge when she got home last night, next to a six-pack of Mexican beer, with one bottle missing.

She wandered through the house, noticing that most of the boxes in the hall, in the living room, had disappeared. There were just a few left, only a stray book or two to be tucked away. She picked up one and slipped it into the box waiting for it.

She found him in the kitchen, sipping coffee, with the makings of a Thanksgiving dinner spread out around him on the counter. She hadn’t thought about cooking, but here he was, picking through cans
of green beans and corn, a box of Stove Top they might have brought with them from Waco. He had a random assortment of spice shakers arrayed like soldiers on the kitchen table and was holding one now, squinting at it; too small in his hand.

He caught her staring, laughed. “Hey, babe, hope I didn’t wake you. I thought we ought to have a meal. It’s silly, I know.”

“No, no, it isn’t.” Mel wasn’t much of a cook; blamed the mother she’d never known for that, and had never in her life thought of making a Thanksgiving meal. If she remembered right, last year she and Chris had eaten at a Luby’s. Still, she could try. They could figure it out together. About mid-morning, as they fumbled around in the kitchen, talking, he switched to the beer he’d bought, and then, a little later, while she was taking a shower, he turned on the TV. She came out with her hair wrapped in a towel to find him watching football for the first time in forever, a warming beer bottle in his hand.

They ate their scraped-together meal, and afterward he went out to his truck, limping a bit from the hunt with the sheriff, and came in with a bag. It was turning dark outside, so he cranked up the big stadium lights and the backyard glowed beneath them, taking on a whole new dimension. Light poured through the back windows, pooling on the floor, and dust floated through the halls of the house, glimmering.

Chris shrugged on a jacket and took a fresh bottle of beer and his mysterious bag and went outside, standing for a while just looking up at the lights, before dumping the bag, spilling eight or ten brand-new footballs on the ground. Mel watched from the kitchen window as he picked one up, bounced it in one hand while holding the beer in the other. She could tell it felt uncomfortable—he almost dropped it
before he found a good grip, swung back, and let it go into the night. It wasn’t the tightest spiral, but it sailed high, got lost in the lights, falling silent on the ground at the back of the yard.

Warming up a bit, putting the bottle down, he got another ball. He gingerly bounced on the balls of his feet, scanning downfield like there might be receivers there, patting the ball with his free hand, timing a pattern that didn’t exist. He put some muscle into this one, and it vanished into the night.

Even craning around the window, she couldn’t see where it landed, if it ever did.

He blew out, really starting to crank up. The next one he fired straight upward through his own cold, hanging breath. It trailed smoke, like a rocket ship, pulling free from the earth. He kept throwing deep balls into the night, to people who weren’t there to catch them. Maybe just to ghosts. He had one ball left to throw when he stopped to reach down to answer his phone, although she couldn’t hear it ring through the window glass. He looked at it for a long minute before taking the call, but once he did, he forgot about the ball in his hand. When he came inside, he left the football behind, resting on that old chair on the porch.

The night following his bloody shower, after he’d mysteriously gone out for a while and then came back in, he sat her down and told her what had happened. Out on Route 67, and with the sheriff at El Dorado. He told her a little about a man named Garrison. So she told him some of the things she’d let slip to Duane Dupree, things that might have made everything worse. He held her and told her it was okay. It started and ended with him.

“I gotta go,” he said. She stood with her arms still crossed, waiting for a better explanation.

“It was Dupree and the sheriff. There are lights, engine noises out south of Indian Bluffs, way out at the Far Six. Something’s out there, maybe a plane landing.” He’d talked about that before, stories he’d heard of small planes out in the badlands, dropping off drugs.

“Chris, it’s Thanksgiving. You’ve had a beer, or five. Isn’t there anyone else who can go?”

“No, guess not. The others are with their kids, the rest . . .” He let it go—there weren’t that many to begin with. “It’s me and Duane. I’m going to meet him near there.” Chris was doing a few things at once, none of them well: looking for his duty gear, trying to talk to her, taking off and putting on his jacket at the same time.

She put her hands on him. “No, no, you’re not. You’re staying here with me. You’re not going with fucking Duane Dupree anywhere.” She searched around for his phone. It was sitting unattended on the kitchen counter while he fumbled around. All she could think about were all those boxes and books finally disappearing, those moments of watching him throw balls into the dark, so hard and so high no one might ever find them again. They might still be circling up there now, a handful of new stars. That’s how she wanted to remember today. That’s how she was going to remember it.

“This isn’t right, Chris. You know it isn’t. You stop and look at me.”

But he didn’t. “Mel, I have to go. That’s the right thing. If I don’t go, it all comes back here, to you . . . the town. I gotta see this through, all the way. Besides, nothing’s going to happen. You . . . the sheriff . . . hell, everyone knows I’m going out there. It’ll be fine.”

She kept her hands on him, trying to hold him down. “You better not be lying to me, Chris Cherry. Goddamn you, you better not be lying to me.”

He got to his phone before she did, didn’t know quite where to
put it; he had the phone in one hand and his holstered gun in the other. To keep from crying, to hold it all in since she couldn’t hold him back, she hit him in the chest, hard. “All right, slow down, cowboy. If you gotta go, you gotta. But let’s get your shit together first.”

She kissed him before he went out the door, tasting that shitty Mexican beer on his mouth. She didn’t know why he’d bought it. But he wrapped her in his arms, strong as always, strong as forever. He kissed the top of her head, told her to watch TV. She wanted to say more, something that would keep him with her forever. But she’d said everything she knew how, and he was already gone.

ANNE

S
he told him she was sick.

She’d called the sheriff first thing Thanksgiving morning, embarrassed, begged off that she couldn’t make supper later that day. He held his end of the phone silent for a long time before telling her it
was fine
. He completely understood, hoped she felt better. If he was angry or hurt, he hid it well. After that, she’d curled up on her couch watching old movies.

She was still there, asleep without dreams, when Chris went out to meet Duane Dupree.

CHRIS

W
hen Chris was far away from the house, before he hooked up with Duane, he pulled over to the side of the road and checked his gun, then checked it again. He hadn’t wanted to do that with Melissa watching him.

His hands were shaking.

He also called Garrison, left him a message when he didn’t answer. They were due to meet in a week, but he wanted the man to know what he was doing out here now, in case he wanted to talk Chris out of it. A part of Chris really hoped he could talk him out of it.

When his mother had been diagnosed, she came back from El Paso with his dad and they’d gone directly to their room, sat behind the closed door for two or three hours. Although Chris couldn’t hear them so well through the door, he thought she was crying. They both were. But when they came out, Chris saw no tears. They didn’t want him to know, as if he couldn’t understand why they all might
need
to
cry at the news she had to tell. She’d put herself back together—what little makeup she wore was movie-star perfect—and held his hand as she told him she was going to die.

Yes, there were treatments, things she could do. But all of them would take her away from home, away from her husband and son. They’d make her feel worse than the sickness itself. It was no way for a person to live or die and no way to leave this world, so she would have none of it. She was going to stay there with them, with her little flower and herb garden at the side of the house. Life would go on without change, without panic. He wanted to argue, to fight with her, but there would be no more discussion, because there was nothing more to be said. Then she’d reached up, held his face with her fingers to steady them, so he wouldn’t see them tremble, and told him: “Chris, I love you, but I have to do this my way.” Then she went to the kitchen to finish the pot roast she’d planned for dinner. She walked away, smoothing her dress with her hands, and started to die.

By the end, when the porch was where she most often sat, wrapped in blankets against a chill that may not have existed, he’d watch her from the back door, wondering if she was already dead. She sat statue-still for so long, too weak to make the porch swing sway, with only the thinning wisps of her hair shifting in the breeze, and her eyes sunk into hollows so deep that her face seemed unfinished, incomplete. And in those moments, wrapped in anger and sadness as much as she was in her blanket, he absolutely wished her dead, so that the
always
waiting
might finally fucking stop; hating himself for thinking such a thing, for believing his mother’s dry-eyed acceptance of her end was somehow selfish. But just when he couldn’t take it anymore, she would move, a slight uplift of the head; a subtle shift beneath the blanket, trying to follow a bird’s mysterious flight across the sky. A hawk
rising higher and higher, turning in great circles, leaving everything below it until it was lost in the blue and haze.

He went to her then, always, adjusting the pillow behind her head—covered with the same pillowcase he’d been thinking about replacing when Garrison first called him but still hadn’t—and held her hand and felt its papery weight and tried, as she’d done for him, to not let her see how he’d been crying.

•   •   •

Yesterday, after getting the turkey at the Hi n Lo, he’d driven all the way out to Mancha’s, looking for Eddie Corazon. He wasn’t in uniform, and it was the first time he’d been out there since the incident with Delgado and Aguilar. Before he found Eddie, though, he found Amé Reynosa.

She was coming out of Mancha’s, lost in thought. She didn’t see him at first, maybe didn’t recognize him without his uniform. She was a pretty girl, prettier than even Caleb or Anne had described. A girl used to being looked at who had mastered the art of ignoring all the stares; staring right back, staring down everything and everyone. She reminded him of Mel, destined—he desperately hoped—to escape this fucking place if that’s what she wanted, to grow into one tough woman.

She wore a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, big sunglasses, although there wasn’t enough sun for them. She was smoking a cigarette, blowing smoke sideways, and nearly ran into him.

“Hey, you’re Amé, right? America? It’s Chris.”

She stopped, took a step back to open some space between them. “
Lo siento.
I wasn’t paying attention.” She hesitated, brushed her hair
back with a hand and looked around the parking lot, probably for more deputies, more gringos. “Why are you here?”

“Sightseeing,” he joked. When she didn’t smile, he pushed on. “Anyway, I wanted to talk to Eddie. Is he in there?”

She nodded, shoved more hair back. “He’s there. A piece of shit.”

“I’ve heard that,” he agreed. “Actually, I know it firsthand.” She was sizing him up from behind her glasses, waiting. He wasn’t sure if Caleb had told her anything yet, was less sure that Mancha’s parking lot was the place to talk about it. There was still so much he didn’t know, but he wanted her to know he was trying. That she wasn’t alone. “I’m working on this thing with your brother, Amé, I hope Caleb has told you that. I believe both of you.” He hit the last words slow and hard, but soft; hoped she understood.

She abandoned her cigarette, let it fall to the ground, and stepped on it. Her hidden eyes were drawn to the badge clipped to his belt, his department gold star. Even out of uniform, the sheriff felt his deputies were never really off duty, and he wanted them to wear the badge and their guns. “Do you think it matters, really?”

He looked past her, past Mancha’s, through the parking lot and the chain link to the little houses beyond. “It has to, right? We have to try. This is our goddamn town.” He was surprised by his own anger, his quick defense of a place he’d spent a good portion of his life trying to get out of.

She laughed, mocking. “
Our
town?
No lo creo
. This isn’t
my
town.”

He wanted to reach out a hand to her. “But it should be, Amé. It’s supposed to be. And it will. I’m going to do everything I can, but I just need a little more time. And I’m going to need your help . . . both yours and Caleb’s. I don’t think I can do it alone. I wish I could.”

She stayed silent, her face turned away from the cold or from him. He wondered what she was thinking, what lay ahead for her—for all of them—despite all of his promises.

“Ya
veremos.”
She started to walk past, but whispered to him as she went by—urgent, honest. “Be careful. Our town is a very dangerous place . . . even for you.”

Inside Mancha’s he’d wandered the shelves, finally picking up a six-pack of Mexican beer he’d never had, while Eddie eyed both him and a busted-up TV turned down low. The store was tight, brightly lit, filled floor to ceiling with packages and things he couldn’t read, didn’t understand. In the back there was an old air hockey table, scuffed, unplugged, where some ranch hands played dominoes.

The cooler where he got the beers wheezed and chugged, pissing water on the linoleum floor. The beer bottles were warm in his hand when he placed them on the counter. Eddie looked at them, eyes bloodshot, waved him off.

“Take it, you don’t pay here.”

“I do.” Chris fumbled for some bills, far too many, slipping them between the long necks of the bottles. Eddie shrugged, picked at the money with a finger and a tipless thumb before deciding to ignore it all and going back to whatever he was watching on his TV.

Chris tapped the counter. “Okay, I’m not paying for the beer. I’m paying for you to talk. I want to know about Rudy Ray . . . Rudy Reynosa. Did you know him? Ever see him around? Who did you see him with?”

Eddie looked over Chris’s shoulder at the men playing dominoes, who ignored them.

Again: “I’m asking if you ever saw him with Duane Dupree. Did they know each other?”

Eddie bit his lip, showed teeth as dirty as his hands, smiling. “You say you care about Rudy Ray? Now?
Ha estado fuera mucho tiempo.
Anyway, go talk to his little
hermana
. She was just in here. Pretty, yes? Sexy?”

“I’m asking
you
, Eddie. Just fucking you.”

Eddie winked in slow motion, a clown. “No, I think you are really here to ask about Dupree,
verdad
? Nothing to do with Rudy, not anymore.” Eddie made a disappearing motion with his hand, turning a closed fist into waving fingers, waving goodbye. “He’s gone forever.
Por los siglos de los siglos.
”

“Just tell me what you know.”

Eddie took a sip of his own beer, hidden behind the counter. “Nothing changes,
mi amigo
.”

“You’re right, nothing changes if you don’t talk, right now.”

Eddie pulled the money out of the beer bottles. “Are you sure you want to know these things, gringo? I can get you
drogas
,
mujeres
 . . .
niñas
.” He arched his eyebrows as if he knew all about Chris’s talk with Amé in the lot. He counted the bills, pretended to. “All cheaper than what you ask.”

Chris waved at the money. “That’s all I have now. I can get more.”

Eddie neatly arranged and folded the bills, tore them in half, shoving the ripped money back into the six-pack.

“
No todos somos a la venta
. But okay, gringo, the price is you answer my questions.
¿Claro?
”

“Like what?”

“Like why Señor Dupree made me pick him up one night smelling of gas. So bad I had to wash my truck out with a hose. Like a fucking barbecue.
La parrillada.
”

“What the fuck? What are you talking about?”

Eddie took one of the beers out of Chris’s six-pack, popped it open, and slid the rest over to Chris as torn pieces of money drifted to the ground. He gulped most of it, turned back to his TV that was little more than static, the sound of whispers, but not before raising the beer bottle, a mock salute; another wave goodbye.

“Gasolina, mi amigo. Gasolina.”

•   •   •

This is our goddamn town.

He waited as long as he could, giving Garrison every chance to call him back, but when he didn’t, and when Dupree started reaching out for him on the truck radio, wondering where he was, he knew his time was up. He thought about Mel and Caleb and Anne and dark-haired Amé Reynosa.

Be careful. Our town is a very dangerous place . . . even for you . . .

And he thought about his mother—
I have to do this my way
—searching the sky with clear eyes. Without tears . . . without fear.

He pulled the truck back onto 67 and drove on, with one hand on his Colt.