The Far Empty (3 page)

ANNE

A
nne stood in Tancy Garner’s—the dead woman’s—room, trying not to think about her. She had all the windows open, letting the October air wander through. A damp breeze shuffled the papers on the woman’s desk. A ratty old solar system hung high in the corner, turning circles, orbiting itself and nothing at all. Saturn’s cartoon rings bumped against water stains on the ceiling tiles.

Anne hoped the breeze, cold enough to pucker skin, might blow the dead woman’s spirit away. Send it off to wherever it needed to go. She was ashamed that she was so grateful for the call that brought her here to Big Bend Central over a month into the school year; ashamed that it took another woman’s death to get her back on her feet again. At least Tancy Garner hadn’t died
in
the classroom.

She was found in her kitchen, facedown in blood and milk, where she’d passed away the night before while putting away a glass bottle. A strange fall, an accident, clipping her head on her counter on the
way down. She’d taught science, later English, at Big Bend Central for nearly twenty years. She’d been a school fixture—more like a monument—respected and feared in fair measure, with her stern face, carved and weathered like rock, still staring out of old yearbooks and copies of school newspapers. And she was local, having spent her entire life in Murfee. Anne figured the old woman had been able to rope and ride and milk and whatever the hell else people who grew up on a ranch knew how to do. Things Anne had read about and seen a few times on the Discovery Channel. Of course, no one expected Anne to
replace
Tancy Garner, just get her classes through the end of the school year . . . finish things without too much disruption or chaos. Philip Tanner, BBC’s principal, had made all that clear. Very clear. They’d talk about a permanent position at the end of the year, if at all.

We’ll just see, Ms. Hart. We’ll just see then.
Anne shuffled things around on the desk—
her
desk, for at least a while. It was a holiday, Columbus Day. The school was pretty much empty, except for her.

She’d pulled into Murfee late on Thursday, got the keys to the little house she was renting the next morning right after she’d met with Tanner, and had spent the past three days over the long weekend getting settled. Tomorrow there would be students sitting in these old chairs, staring at her while they texted and whispered. A few had gotten a glimpse of her on Friday, had maybe already picked up on their new teacher’s name, and if BBC was like every other school—and it was—the rumor mills would’ve been turning since. She figured she would know by the second period on Tuesday, or Wednesday morning at the latest, just how much anyone knew about her.

Still, she’d reach out to Dial Montgomery tomorrow and thank him, and soon Sheriff Ross too, although he’d plead ignorance. She’d been searching for something permanent in Dallas or Fort Worth
since Austin was still out of the question, even with Dial’s help, and had been prepared to sub for the rest of the year in Arlington before heading back home to Virginia. Now Murfee was all she had. Her parents waited for her back east, unable to understand or accept why she hadn’t already returned. They thought it was foolish that she had remained in Texas.

Destructive
was the word her father used, over and over again. She wanted to believe it was rebuilding.

•   •   •

She went to one of the open windows. From the second floor, Murfee spread out around her, so small against mountains whose names she didn’t know, painted charcoal and purple in the background. She could see the big lights of BBC’s football stadium, the long edge of an end zone upright, and caught the echo of whistles, rising and falling along with the wind. The team was practicing hard, even on a holiday. She guessed there were rules against that, but who was going to say anything out here? Tanner had already mentioned the October game with Presidio, and Murfee’s Fall Carnival, both of which sounded like big deals—
very
big deals. Murfee was a small town in every way. Sure, the mountains and the open sky gave the illusion of size—of infinite, unfillable space—but take that away, and it was no different from any of the small towns around Virginia. In that way, it was
too
small for Anne—her past couldn’t help but overtake her.

For her, no place might ever truly be big enough.

She knew she wasn’t going to have to worry about Tanner offering her a full-time position. She’d be here a bit, try to find her bearings again . . . find herself, really, and then move on when they asked.

Rebuild.

•   •   •

Dial, the only member of the Austin Independent School District’s board of trustees who never completely turned his back on her, had mentioned the sad story of Sheriff Ross’s wife when he’d called out of the blue about the job. Principal Tanner had touched on it too, just in passing—like giving away a secret he wasn’t supposed to share, but enjoyed doing anyway. Maybe he thought it would make some sort of sense to Anne, explain everything to her; as if she and the sheriff shared a tragedy that really wasn’t the same at all, not even close.

Evelyn Ross had disappeared about a year ago, running away with or without another man—no one was sure. It was a scandal—in a place this small, everything is—and the wife had been popular and well liked. She had volunteered at the school, worked in the front office, sold concessions for football and basketball games, and handled other odds and ends. Her son was still a student, one of Anne’s.

A good student—or at least he had been. Over the weekend she’d glanced through Ms. Garner’s gradebooks, the older woman simply refusing to use any of the new computer-based grading modules, sticking to her old Whaley Gradebooks instead. She had stacks of them neatly filed away from the last decade or more, each filled with her small, blunt writing.

Tancy Garner had taught the missing woman’s son English for the last two years. Even though there hadn’t been a lot of grades thus far for the new semester, the pattern was pretty clear. The town might have recovered from the scandal, but Anne was pretty sure that Caleb Ross had not let his mother go.

What did it take for a mother to up and leave her son, disappear? She’d heard of this happening, of course, but it was still hard to wrap
her head around. What could be so bad to make a mother flee, run off into the night, leaving everything behind?

Maybe there was something about this wild and distant place that made such an idea acceptable, even possible, at the outer edge of so much emptiness.

October wind brushed her hair, stung her eyes. She stared down mountains both faraway and close at the same time. She didn’t know their names, didn’t even know if they were in Texas or Mexico. Marc had called her
geographically challenged
, laughing at the broken compass she carried in her head—her inability to remember directions or state capitals and the trouble she had reading maps, even following MapQuest printouts. He bought her a GPS once, expensive and idiot proof, but—not surprisingly—she didn’t know where it was anymore.

Like other bits and pieces of her life, it had been left behind somewhere.

Although she really couldn’t comprehend abandoning a child, your own flesh and blood, the rest of
running
made so much sense that it hurt.

Like a sharp pain, cutting your finger on paper. Just like now, whenever she thought about Marc. She knew that desperate need to disappear; to leave broken, unfixable things behind; to run into the wild dark and get lost in it until the storm passed, if it ever did.

That
she understood far too well. She’d make the best of it here while she could. Even if she couldn’t lose herself in Murfee, she’d lose herself in the work; try to, anyway. It was all she could do, and with all she’d left behind, it was all she had. She turned away from the window and back to the classroom, continuing to put the dead woman’s things away.

DUANE

H
urting someone was easy, too easy.

But showing restraint? Not raising your hand? Now, that was goddamn hard . . . a cross made of razors and nails, too heavy and sharp to bear. She didn’t understand that. Not yet. But she would, even though in this moment—right fucking now—he couldn’t remember her name. It was somewhere out of reach, circling. Soon he was going to have to let his hands do all the talking, anyway.

•   •   •

It had started first with messages, little texts. His first words were sweet before turning ugly. Next were the pictures: the wind in the trees behind his daddy’s house, the sun glowing red like hell over the Chisos; his gun in shadows on the kitchen counter. Even a dead jackrabbit rotting by the road, all tore up, dead eye marbled and staring right into the phone camera. He couldn’t explain why he sent these
things to her, what they were supposed to mean. Couldn’t even remember sending most of ’em.

He’d watched the little Mex girl grow up, but really first
saw
her sipping a Dr Pepper outside Mancha’s. Maybe it wasn’t even a Dr Pepper, and it was possible she hadn’t winked at him either, but there she was: dark hair, dark skin . . . dark mouth kissing a straw. He hadn’t even realized how much she caught his eye until he started having all those dark dreams about her. He’d been having them for a long, long time since.

Now, finally, he was in her room—a first—one hand holding steady his duty trousers and the other his goddamn prick—embarrassed—limp and not working, although he’d wanted her to see it for so long. He might have already sent her a picture, but didn’t remember whether he’d done that, either. He wouldn’t touch her, not yet, not now, because once he started he knew he wouldn’t stop, so better not to start at all; all that restraint he possessed that she didn’t yet understand. Worse, there was no way she was going to touch him, not willingly, so he was left with his pants down around his legs, and none of it working out the way he’d wanted or dreamed about. He was too distracted, too busy cutting his eyes away from her to his portable on her nightstand, standing tall next to a pile of books and her cellphone. Taller than his prick, for damn sure.

That damn phone distracted him. Oh, how he wanted to have a little look-see beneath its bright pink case, to find out if she’d been saving his texts and his pictures and who else she was talking to—peek at her dirty secrets and make sure there was nothin’ in there about him. She wasn’t to talk about him to anyone. He didn’t exist. He was smoke and dust and the wind in the picture he’d sent her—he was empty spaces. He’d told her what would happen if she ever
snitched about the things he shared with her, and was pretty goddamn sure she’d gotten the message, ’cause he’d also put something sharp up near her eye or left a stray bullet in her book bag or sent her a picture of someone else’s blood, although he couldn’t quite recall which of those he’d done, maybe all of them.

No . . . taking a gander at her phone wasn’t so much about her as it was about
him
—it might help him remember some things, that was all. It had been getting bad lately, all the little things he was forgetting. It was cigarette holes in a newspaper, black scorch marks where words should be. His daddy, Jamison Dupree, had known a thing or two about cigarettes and scorches. Duane still had the marks on his arms and back to show for it. The forgetting had gotten worse with the
foco
he’d been snorting, and if the Judge knew about
that—
well, he’d beat the dog piss out of Duane, so Duane had been keeping this dirty little secret to himself.

He did like that
foco
, oh yes sir, he did . . .
yes sir, yes sir, three bags full, sir
. Duane loved its strange magic—the way it sped everything up and slowed it down at the same time. The way it made him
sharp
, like he was all shiny knife edge and cut the goddamn air when he walked, drawing blood, and the way it let him see things that weren’t there . . . see
right through
things.

He’d once spied a mangy Mexican gray wolf out on his property and swore the
foco
gave him wolf eyes, just the same—afraid now people might even see them glowing, reflecting in his own dashboard light or the high beams of passing cars on Route 67.

It wasn’t even a matter of liking the
foco
anymore as much as fucking needing it. It made him desperate, longing for his sharp skin and wolf eyes to protect him when he was awake, which was getting to be all the goddamn time, since he wasn’t sleeping so much
anymore; or maybe he was and just was forgetting that, too. His daddy always said they had Comanche or Mescalero in them, which by birthright gave the Duprees a weakness for drink . . . burned as it was into their very blood, so they couldn’t help but lust for it. It had been for Duane’s own good that his daddy had touched those Lucky Strikes to his skin, the sweet stink of Four Roses on his breath . . . whisper-screaming never to pick up the bottle the way he’d done, ’cause he might never put it down.

And Duane
had
listened to Jamison Dupree. Still did, because even before the
foco
took hold of him with its skeletal hands, before it had scorched him in its own way like his daddy’s cigarettes, he’d been dreaming of his daddy’s long-gone voice at his ear. Sometimes, worse—not just his voice, but
all of him
, rotted near away, standing right next to Duane, smiling lightning and blackness. If nothing else, he came by his needs honestly. They were in his blood.

Then he was done, spent, barely realizing it . . . having forgotten she was even there. She stared at him, waiting for him to leave or whatever he was going to do next. He struggled with his pants, tried to focus on her walls, the posters and pictures there . . . magazine cutouts of places she would never go because he’d never let her. School was out for the day, a holiday, but her daddy was off to work or out at Mancha’s drinking a cold one. Maybe Duane had threatened to kill her daddy or her mama, or both of them. That’s what he’d done, or something like it. Then it came, slow, like a catfish surfacing in muddy water—
why
it had been so hard to concentrate on the task at hand.
In his hand
. It wasn’t about her phone, but his portable radio, black and sleek, and knowing in a way he couldn’t explain that it was about to crackle to life and summon him.

He’d been forgetting things, true, no two ways about that, but
that was because he now knew other things, too. Weird things, things he had zero reason to know. He tested himself all the time. Like guessing the color of the next car that would pass him or the next stupid words someone might say to him. Knowing when his dead daddy would be waiting for him in the porch shadows . . . staring with eyes like hard white stones, the air around the soapberry and the shin oaks ripe with Four Roses and dead skin.

So he knew all sorts of things, some useful, some not; secrets and mysteries and little peeks around the corner.
Gifts
—a fair trade, he figured, for all the things he was forgetting. Like he knew right now his radio was going to call him. Maybe it was his blood talking or the wolf eyes or just the
foco.
Maybe it was all his imagination. Or most likely, he was just going goddamn crazy.

•   •   •

She stayed across the room, wary, like a kicked dog. She was in a T-shirt and BBC sweatpants, and it was still kind of early, so she had no makeup, with her hair all a mess. But he loved her dark skin, like that bruised time of day when the desert sky was shot through by the setting sun and the ground was long with shadow, right before he was most likely to see his daddy standing beneath the leaves of the shin oaks.

He could make her come and sit next to him, make her hold his hand and say things she didn’t mean, but he wasn’t in the mood for it. Not anymore. Messing with her was like messing with a kicked dog, and sometimes even a whupped dog might bite. Or at least bark. Duane smiled, chuckled. He finished with his pants.

“Vete a la mierda,”
she said through her teeth. Tough words, even if he didn’t know the exact meaning. She might have learned to talk like that from her brother, but her brother had never been tough at
all. She hugged her arms. No need to waste a breath telling her to keep that fucking pretty mouth shut. That threat was already deep down in her eyes . . . all the things he’d swore to do, the horrible world he’d shown her in
his
pictures, not her magazine cutouts.

•   •   •

They both jumped when the radio came alive, with Miss Maisie from dispatch calling his name. He couldn’t hide a smile as he reached for it. Happened just like he knew it would. The girl inched around her room to give Chief Deputy Duane Dupree a wide berth. He skinned back his lips, flashed a bigger grin, let his wolf eyes
really
shine. Revealing them, wondering if his teeth looked sharp, too.

Before he got out the door they both heard Miss Maisie on the radio going on and on about something, a trouble or mess, out at Indian Bluffs. A body? That’s what she’d said.

The Bluffs was Matty Bulger’s place, farthest out near Chapel Mesa and damn near north Mexico, part of the Cut. The only property beyond that was the Far Six, and that hadn’t been worked in years, at least not for cattle, although Duane knew it well. It seemed Bulger had found a body rusting out on the caliche. Chris Cherry had caught the call and was out there now, probably fuckin’ it up.

A body.

Duane thought that should mean something to him, but like so much else, he’d forgotten what that could be.