This series continues the life of Cormac McCarthy’s character Billy Parham, from Cormac’s stunning BORDER TRILOGY. Billy was left alone in the world without a true friend—So I gave him one—Strongland…

A Job Offered - Part 1

Strongland backed off the gas, “Shit.” He saw the man again, no more than a slumping heap of litter.

Solid cuts of shadow peeled away backwards in blocks across the open truck bed crammed with pieces of rusted metal and fire-scorched wood scrap, before in the blink of an eye his truck broke out into a clear and piercing sunlight. The man who had been there in the shadows disappeared back into them like the fluke of a whale cuts back underneath the skin of the ocean into a tear of swarming surface that heals itself in a moment than is gone as gone as a thing that never was; sorta like some folk’s lives, Strongland considered.

He checked the rearview, brushed a steel-toe across the brake pedal, and then wheeled his rig in a two-turn lock back towards the staggered patterns of shadow and light tumbling down from the railway bridge that crossed the road at an angle that wasn't quite parallel to the pavement below but was near enough to it that the span of bridge seemed to stretch on endlessly even though the junction of light and space and the moving and the still objects that shared this place come bound together like the tail end of a dream or a handshake between two men that never spoke before, were somehow similar to the other, then went on their way and never spoke again. These things weren't as clear to Strongland when he tried to cobble them together in his mind as that, but they were plain true as a shadow, even though a shadow is a thing one can never touch; a shadow just is.

Strongland eased the truck back into the shadows. The man reappeared. He sat with his back pressed flat against the juncture of creosote covered trestle, and pumice stone, that covered the dirt underneath the bridge to keep the red dirt from turning into slicks of Georgia mud that will sweep across the southeast with the spring rains that would come soon and come hard from the moisture building up in the Gulf of Mexico five hundred miles south west. Give it two more weeks and this place might as well be in the damn jungle.

Two truck lengths passed the man Strongland eased to a stop. Glancing in the rearview, "You're a dumb-ass ya know?" Strongland nodded at himself in the sliver of chrome, Yep. He got out and walked slowly towards the man, hand hooked into his back pockets by his thumbs, palms out and visible looking to make it clear he wasn’t approaching with any malice. He stopped a shovel’s length from the man and was about to speak; his mind caught itself in a glitch of surprise when the man, still set there on the ground, partially lit by a jagged break of sunlight streaming down between the tracks above; the man looked him over, casually, but Strongland had the feeling the man had taken in every detail of him.

  The man asked the very question Strongland had intended, "Can I help you, bud?"

  Strongland shifted a half step further back, took off his ball-cap, ran his fingers, coated with flecks of rust grit that come off the metal scrap he had bullied into the bed of his truck just a half hour earlier; shit, even though the spring rains hadn't pushed in yet the daily swell of heat sure had... it had been an early start to what was gonna be a long-ass day. Breakfast was next on the list, fried green tomatoes, a biscuit, bacon, hell, prolly pancakes too if he was honest with himself. Even though he felt the softness of winter had layered on around his belt buckle he still had a hard time when it comes time to order from Laura; she'd usually be a step away from his table, pen tucked above her right ear already when he found himself saying "and a short stack". She'd trail away without missing a beat with an "umhumm" that was as thick and sweet as the syrup that come out of the white bottles with the silver thumb-slide pourer that took their place besides the ketchup and bowl of plastic creamers.

Strongland grinned when he realized the man had repeated the same dang question as he stood there contemplating his lack or pancake resistance. "Well sir, I had stopped to ask you that very question."

The man sitting there patted his chest, reached around his drawn-up legs, folded near to his chest, patted his knees, and looked around like a man that was certain he had set something in one exact spot not a few seconds ago but now couldn't find it for the life of him.

  "Sir? Did you lose something?"

  The man raised his hands, palms up, clapped them together with a sharp bark that sent a group of mourning doves scuttling in a burst of gray and complaints.

  "Guess I lost my sign."

  "What sign is that?"

  "Well shit kid, the sign that said I need something from people that happen to come this way."

Strongland and the light and the light shifted again, Strongland uncomfortably, intentions derailed like an unhitched train car, the light shifted without intention or perception or the same sense of foolishness that Strongland felt. Dad’ll get a kick out of this when I tell him; a laugh broke from his throat. “Oh, heck sir, I come this way every Saturday, on my way to breakfast at a place up that way” and hooked his thumb in the direction of his U-turn, “and this is the third Saturday I saw you here. I figured I’d offer to buy you breakfast is all.”

  The man’s head cocked towards the truck, “What’s the story with that?”

  “Scrap. A place burned down mid-week up in Harris County, I sell the scrap, well, some of it anyways… some I keep, just depends on how it looks. That stuff, I am keeping the metal, gonna burn the wood.”

  The man nodded. “You haul it up there yourself?”

  “Like an idiot, yes I did.”

  “Looks a two-man job at least.”

  “I thought that myself about half away through.”

  That earned a smile from the man. The man’s hands ran across his stomach, and he swallowed hard. “Is it worth breakfast to you if I were to help with the unloading?”

  “It’s worth a day’s worth of meals, at the very least, if we don’t break our backs first. Thing is, we eat first.”

  The man shut his eyes. A beat. Another beat. The morning doves returned, bickered as they sorted themselves into order. The man’s eyes opened. “Deal.” The man stood. A warm stench of mildew, the same kind that comes from a decaying cardboard box, peeled away from wet concrete, alive with slick grubs and scurrying crickets.

  There was only one thing to do; Strongland held out his hand, “Deal.”

  The man didn’t carry a thing with him when they walked back to the truck. He brushed his backside off and scrubbed his leather logging boots on the concrete before swiveling into the truck. He wiped his hands on the underside of his waxed canvas barn jacket, gray and faded, with copper metal buttons worn to near gleaming with eons of buttoning and unbuttoning, before he pulled the door shut.

Another U-turn. They drove in silence. Across a set of railroad tracks, passed an old depot, an ice warehouse, a used mattress store, a bail-bond outfit with a parking lot full of a mix of high dollar and big-rimmed SUVs and junkers; hard to tell who a customer was and who was the proprietor just by eyeing the cars. The passed a CHEVRON, a MITCH’S PRIZED WHEELZ, a cluster of package stores, then a block nothing more than ankle high grass intersected by busted and cracked cement sidewalks and the remnants of a playground where no kids dared play.

  Self-conscious of it all Strongland muttered, “Sad, ‘it’s seen better days.”

  “It’s the same all over.”

  “You’ve been all over?”

  “All over… and then some, yes.”

  Strongland rolled a stop sign, his right hand came off the wheel, pointing to a squat concrete block of a place, painted sage green with a neon ruby red sign above the front door “PALS”. It’s not all that much to look at but the girls are kind, and most of them are pretty enough to make you excuse the food if it was bad, but believe me, a starving man would think he was in heaven eating with the Lord when the start digging into a breakfast special.” He felt like an asshole for saying it as soon as it come out. It earned another smile from the man, and he let it go at that.

A weary looking cop carrying a Styrofoam container on his way out held the door open for them, 7:30, twelve-hour shift in the bed, stuffed with breakfast, on his way home. Strongland figured that’s how he would do it to in their shoes. The man nodded to the cop, it was returned.

  “Precinct is just up the way,” Strongland told him.

  The man nodded. “Let me wash up.”

  Strongland waited by the door, picked a curl of rust out from under his nail. A baby bawled about something. A group of cops came in, got a table. Laura appeared out from the swinging kitchen doors, winked at him, then disappeared around the corner balancing a years- worth of cholesterol and white sugar off to a table.

The man returned and in a way it sorta surprised him; Strongland half-figured the man was going to pry open the bathroom window , leap out, and disappear forever. The hostess led them to a square Formica covered table, they sat down on wood chairs that burped hollowly on the linoleum floor as they pushed back from the table just enough not to crowd each other. Strongland thought of the last time he sat with his father, just the two of them, to share a meal. It had been a long-ways back, but not long enough so much as to make it not hurt.

  Coffees appeared. It wasn’t Laura’s table, Strongland knew it, but she’s the one that brought em’. “Creams are in the bowl darlin’s,” and then was gone, leaving only one menu on the table in front of the man.

  Strongland shrugged at the man’s cock-eyed look. “Ehh, I always get the same thing.”

  The man nodded.

Strongland pushed his thumb under the waxy foil lid of the creamer, poured the thumb-nail sized amount of room temperature half-and-half swirl across the surface of the coffee dark as Seminole Swamp Water. The man eyed his mug for a long time, a long time. Strongland watched Laura. He loved her, but she was taken. The closest he would ever get to sharing a meal with her was breakfast at PALs.  She turned back to him, caught him looking and he blushed. Hell, fifty men a morning fall in love with her anyways… And she knew it and yet she was above nobody and didn’t put anybody down or act like she was anything but a girl giving a man everything he ever wanted, as long as it was just breakfast.

  “Well, this morning is full of surprises isn’t it?” She smiled at the man. “S.L., you gonna keep me guessing or you are ordering the usual?”

  Strongland’s skinned flushed like a school -boy just busted staring at a girl in class and he took a swig of coffee to try and hide it. Nobody really called him Strongland, just S.L. “Put it down just like all the times before I guess.”

  Laura nodded and then with an ease and kindness that comes from having a sweet heart and knowing how to work a table without making it ever feel like you just got worked, looked at the man, “And for you?”

The man smiled at her, showed a gentlemanliness that showed clear through the crud that he hadn’t quite managed to scrub off his face in the bathroom. “Double it up, ma’am.”

“Well that was easy enough, done and doubled.” Laura reached out, took the menu. “You know, S.L. don’t ever come in here on Saturdays but by himself, and I always take his order, and he has never, not once, shared the table with someone else. Are you his father?”

  Strongland realized his lower jaw had gone slack and clomped his mouth shut,

(Time-out! At this point the real Strongland had woken up from his nap. His mama brought him over and he sat on my knee; I guess he had something to add, the following is what it was; dxxxxxxxxxxzxx ngggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggbgerggggrgrgrrrrrrrrer; I appreciate you not minding I left his input intact)

feeling he prolly looked as much the fool as he felt. He looked at the man.

            The man returned the same easy smile, if he was off-put it never showed itself. “No ma’am. I guess S.L. here is sorta like my boss for the day.”

            Laura topped off his coffee. “His boss huh? Well, like I said, this day is full of surprises, and they keep coming in,” nodded at the direction of the door, a group of ARMY kids, starched and clean cut and most likely ravenous, and more than likely, about to fall in love with Laura, filed in, unconsciously, in a precise line, just like they were trained to, “like this line of customers that doesn’t seem like it will end either.”

            “I wouldn’t know about that at all, ma’am, I mean, anything else that might surprise you, but you are right about the line of customers. It’s a good sign I’d say.”

            Laura grinned and then pulled a handful of tin-foil jelly packets out of her apron and stacked them in the jelly holder like a roulette-wheel dealer stacking poker chips on the felt.  “Can’t argue with that… as long as everyone’s tipping.”

            The man grinned. Strongland felt his flush subside. How could you not love her?

            “Okay, anything else boys?”

            The man shook his head no.

             Laura tucked a pencil above her right ear. She turned to go, paused. “It just doesn’t sit right, me not knowing who all works for S.L. here, especially as I will be bringing the man his breakfast. I’d feel better about the whole thing if I knew who I was bringing it to.”

             It struck Strongland that he hadn’t asked the man’s name. Somehow, before it hadn’t mattered. But now it did, and he was ashamed for not asking.

             If the man was put-off, it never showed itself. Strongland began to understand that it was just the man’s way.

             “It’s Billy, ma’am, Billy Parham.”

             Laura nodded. “Alright then Mr. Parham.” She offered an easy smile, like butter melting on a hotcake, at Strongland, “before I get too far away, are you sure you aren’t forgetting something?”

             Strongland grinned. “Yeah, go ahead and put down a short-stack.”

             Laura studied Billy Parham. “Same for you Mr. Parham?”

             “Seeing as how the boss is buying, I’ll take a tall-stack… And ma’am, when you come back, just call me Billy.”

             She turned and was gone. Billy Parham picked up his porcelain mug, the rim was chipped, and had been washed smooth by a million journeys through a commercial dishwasher.

  Strongland took a swill of coffee and studied the man; he hadn’t ever seen a man appear lonelier. He recognized the look, he thought of his mother and the last time they had a chance to really talk to each other, and the last meal he shared with his father. As he sat there, he considered that offering his hand, and now, his friendship, was the exact thing he ought to offer. You ain’t a dumbass… Not always.

“God damned black holes.” - Part 2

Billy didn't say another word until he set his fork down on his cleaned plate. His jaw moved up and down slowly with a hitch. As far as Strongland could tell it looked like it had been busted and healed badly. The chrome fork moved methodically, Strongland got the sense Billy was working really hard to pace the meal out, as if it was his last.

Strongland hadn't said a word either. It was hard not to watch him eat— just as much as it was damn hard not to look away. Strongland thought about a time he drove down from his old place on the mountain into town in a rain so heavy he half expected to get caught in a flash flood boiling off the granite and cement above him. Down in the city, the streets swelled with water a chalky blue from the clay and the trash and the grime. Strongland found that damn cat just where he expected to, hunched and shivering and scared most all the way to death, rain thundering down almost like hail, hammering that beat up Impala parked across from his work.

He knew the cat wouldn't come out. Sure as hell didn’t, just clutched the cement, yowling low at him from its throat, then just bore its eyes at Strongland’s jaw, refusing to meet his eyes, just enough to show that even if he might learn to trust him somewhere down the line, if he even so much as stuck a finger under that car that cat would rather ditch out and take his chances in the flooding street than let him get closer. So Strongland lay on the street, soaked to the bone, until the rain eased back enough that he could set a can of cat food out for him without worrying it would wash away.

Strongland backed away, rocked back onto his boot heels and waited and watched as that cat leaned into the can and ate in gulps and snarls and licked that can spotless. Strongland waited beside the cat until nightfall. By that time the streets had drained clean and the sky shone black like a thickly-glazed porcelain bowl was turned over atop the city. A city utility truck, outfitted with eye numbing yellow and orange strobes flaring against the darkness wildly, broke the night wide open; his eyes followed it across the far intersection until it disappeared behind a row of apartments, hunkered down into the inky atmosphere, blending into nothing. Strongland hadn’t realized until then that the power was out in this section of town. Strongland whispered to the cat, “Did you see all that action?” He peered underneath the Impala and there wasn’t anything under there but darkness.

Strongland realized he had been staring at Billy; a look came over him, and Strongland took it for guilt, or worse than that. Shame. A starving man ought not to feel ashamed for surviving long enough to eat. Strongland remembered a story his dad told him when he was a boy when they worked the soup kitchens; a man is ashamed not because he's hungry, he’s ashamed that anyone knew about it. It is only a survivor that can walk into a soup kitchen with enough dignity to keep himself from dying. 

Laura saved them, for a moment at least, fluttering to their table like a landing mourning dove, "You boys need another coffee?"

Strongland shook the offer off.

Billy half-looked her way. “No ma’am.”

She put her hands on her hips. "Suit yourself.” She cocked her head at Strongland and then winked before turning to look over at Billy. “Well, this is your boss's lucky day Mr. Parham, breakfast is on me."

Billy folded his paper napkin as if it was finely woven linen, set it on his plate, dead center, placed his hands on his knees and eased the chair back from the linoleum table and then stood. “You ought not do that to an old and broke man.”

Laura’s tanned skin flushed, first time Strongland ever saw that happen. “Do what Mr. Parham.”

Billy took in the room. He looked at the cleared plates and empty coffee cups and unopened paper creamers in their bowl and the ketchup squeeze bottle and stacks of jelly and his perfectly folded napkin. “Be so kind to a man that can’t repay.”

Strongland stood, leaned a little towards Laura, gave her a half smile and nodded as he pulled out his wallet. “I’m still tipping,” and attempted to flip a ten dollar bill towards the table, it had a mind of its own and spun across the edge of the table and slid under the next table. Strongland reached down to pick it up. When he stood, Billy was walking out the front door.

Laura put her hand on Strongland’s shoulder. “I feel awful... I didn’t.”

Strongland covered her hand with his. “Forget it. That was really sweet.”

She nodded towards the door.

“Yep.” He handed the ten over and then followed after Billy, pushed out the door and found him kneeling in front of a Ledger newspaper vending machine. Without taking his eyes off the machine, Billy spoke in a near whisper, “Give me a minute?”

“See you at the truck.” Strongland left him there, his hands on top of the box like he was stooped down with his hands on a child’s shoulders and was about to explain something of paramount importance. He fired the Chevy up, cleaned his sunglasses, and looked the trucks in the parking lot over, comparing lifts and wheels, picking out the ones he would want if he had the cash to lay out.

Billy opened the passenger door, slid into the seat.

“You good to go?” Strongland asked him.

Billy grunted, nodded slightly.

They drove back the same way they had come into town. Several blocks slipped by in silence. Billy faced his window. It wasn’t until Strongland checked the passenger side mirror that he realized the old man was crying. Strongland looked away, embarrassed for both of them. Several more blocks faded behind them.

Again, in a near as much a whisper as it could come out, “It’s hard to believe the truths about anything anymore.”

Strongland kept his eyes on the road ahead, unsure if he should offer a response, but seeing as he sure as hell didn’t have one he kept his mouth shut. A railway gate lowered at the end of the block. Strongland rolled the Chevy to a stop. A train clattered and swayed and shoved the air hard and pushed the truck and reverberated through his lungs like he was front row at a rock concert.

Billy went on, softly still, so much so that it was hard to make out what he said as the train hammered by. “How’s it even possible to see a nothing thing like that. Black holes…just, how in the world can you see a thing like that?”

He didn’t look at Strongland as he spoke, and Strongland didn’t dare look to see if he was still crying. Strongland got the sense Billy was mostly talking to himself.

“How are they so damn sure? One more black thing out in the nowhere of an entire solar system and then one day, sure as hell, they claim they found a black hole. God help us. A man ain’t supposed to see a thing like that. Hell, I’d be half afraid just looking at it in the paper could yank out my soul and squeeze it into nothing.”

The Chevy rocked. The blur of yellow and gray and chrome and stainless and smears of graffiti crashed along, tormenting the metal rails. The last box car roared passed and Billy’s words trailed away with it. Strongland struggled to catch the words, but was less sure of them, even as the echo of the thundering train faded.

“I ain’t anything. Just ain’t anything, nothing left of me. All my life and now look. God damned black holes. Jesus Christ.”

Strongland reached out the window and adjusted his mirror just a fraction. Yesterday at work he’d heard about the first picture shared of a known black hole, and he hadn’t wanted to see it for himself. It hadn’t set well with him either. We were making advancements in all kinds of technical things, seemed like if you paid attention there was something new discovered every day; most good things, some curious, and others, just damn terrifying. This black hole business had left a cold hollow in his guts. Hearing Billy carry on to himself in that manner made him wonder who might possibly feel different about discovering such a thing, and if there was any to come with it, feel some sort of comfort. At the time, and more so now, he just couldn’t see how it would. Being able to prove that there is a thing out there just waiting to swallow every last thing until nothing was there but nothingness. Hell, how could that sit right with anybody?

Aside from the muffled burble of the Chevy’s V-8 there wasn’t a sound. Billy wiped his right forearm across his face as the track gates rose back up, clearing the way for them. The air around them settled and that last train car was out of sight.

Strongland pulled his foot off the brake and they eased forward. As they rolled over the tracks a shudder rolled up Strongland’s spine and across his shoulders. “The world sure seems simple until you decide you have questions for it.”

Billy wiped his face again with his sleeve. “Some things maybe should be left alone…forever.”

Strongland’s spine and shoulders shuddered again. Yeah, God damned black holes, someday those damn things are gonna swallow the last of the light that ever existed. He nodded and drove on. It was the only thing to do.

Somewhere out there that black hole, and untold others, are working away. And just sat there next to him, was an old man who had just seen a universal reckoning, and Strongland got the sense that like a shadow the sun itself couldn’t pry away from the man, all the dark things that were held inside the old man just stared back at him from the places that should be left alone forever.

Route 4 Men - Part 3

Strongland drove through the city. Streetlights set on timers, opaque green-yellow pods like butterfly pupa, hanging from bowed street posts, softly buzzed to life. Connected by their electric umbilical cords they radiated queasy, popping light into an ink-swelling evening sky.

The last six hours Billy hadn’t said much of anything. He lifted when Strongland asked him to lift and he stacked where Strongland asked him to stack. He didn’t sweat or swear. The man just worked.

When they neared the overpass where Strongland had picked Billy up Strongland decided he’d ask a second time, and if Billy said no, well, then he’d leave it alone. “You sure you don’t want to take the apartment above the garage? It’s just sitting there entertaining ghosts.”

A flash of flush, instantly followed by a drain of pale leached from Billy’s brow before emptying below his dirty shirt collar. Billy hooked his thumb towards the murk of the underpass. He got out; reached his hand back through the open window. “Thank you for the work and the meal SL… I’m all set here, for now.”

Strongland took Billy’s hand, both still crusted in grit with the labor of the day. Strongland knew something he said was a wrong thing; months would pass before he learned the reasons.

Strongland wanted to move passed his fuck-up. “I got more work, all you can handle. Can’t pay you all that much but I can feed you. Actually, if you are interested I could see if the city has anything they could use your help with. It’d prolly be all under the table, but after today I’d vouch for you Billy.”

Billy nodded. “Let me think about it. Either way, I guess you know where to find me.”

“I guess I do.” Strongland nodded back, worked the transmission into gear and then slowly pulled away. Strongland checked the rearview mirror. Billy stepped backwards behind a trestle and then vanished. One thought came clear and instantly to Strongland, A goddamned Route 4 man…

His father pointed out the Route 4 men when Strongland was just a kid, maybe twelve, riding shotgun in his dad’s Chevy through a small town just south of theirs. His dad nodded towards men walking the decaying and chaotic sidewalks along Route 4. The locals called it Main Street; Strongland and his dad weren’t locals, so they called it Route 4.

As Strongland grew older he realized that you could only ever truly be a local to one place, but nearly everywhere had a Route 4, and Route 4 men. These were the lost and the losing men. Swaggering or shuffling, darting eyes or blunt stares like just waking calves standing with unblinking eyes numbly observing cars that don’t make any sense to them rolling by their pasture. Men looming with untrue bravado or outright despair and most damn things in-between.

His dad had noted the headphones many of the men had on. “I bet you none of ‘em even has batteries to run those things. I bet you those men are just hiding within words they wish they heard, hiding from the insults that come from open car windows from graceless cowards—damn—they just want someone to think they have something of value.” Strongland remembered how his dad looked at him, like he was so full of love that it came across as hurt, and then after a long pause he spoke, “Don’t ever be a coward and insult another man as you drive by. Just don’t ever do it.”

Strongland nodded and it was as good as a promise and then he looked out the window and began establishing an inventory of what identifies Route 4 men; white off-brand prison-release sneakers, soiled pants, ill-fitting t-shirts, open coats even when it was cold, hats of any kind to cover unwashed hair. Belongings were reduced to plastic grocery bags and frayed backpacks and duffel bags held together with safety pins and unlit cigarette butts saved like prized possessions of dying men. Men of desperate thirst, gripping Styrofoam cups and plastic Mountain Dew bottles and paper sacks wrapped tightly around glass bottles. Some men laughed to themselves, others mumbled, some wept. Some men moved on in silence. There were old men, and young men, and some men walking step in step, or just behind one another in some kind of street survivor hierarchy. Some men walked alongside their woman, and maybe a child, a doomed child who would evolve knowing despair and trauma and broken hearts in a broken world.

All of them were desperate to make some kind of headway into this world, navigating along the broken sidewalks and entrances to fast-food joints, moving like moths from one street light to the next, or shifting along from one shadow or vacant doorway to the next, seeking safety from the harshness of their lives. Somehow to Strongland, even then, the ruined sidewalks seemed to be the perfect reflection of these men; once laid straight and clean and true, pathways with purpose and investment, now broken, run-over, spit on, used and disregarded and left to break down as an afterthought of usefulness. “God help them,” his father had said.

It had always stuck with him, what his dad had said about the Route 4 men not having batteries. One time when he stopped to get gas there was a Route 4 man loitering outside the gas station. The man asked Strongland to buy him something to eat. Strongland looked him in the eye and then stepped inside the harshly lit gas station by fluorescent lights littered with the trapped then doomed bodies of dried out dead flies. He walked between the aisles piling food into the crook of his arm, and set it all on the counter along with a hundred dollar bill. He asked for a four-pack of AA batteries and paid. Before he walked out Strongland stuck the change in the paper sack and then stepped outside. The man was there waiting.

Strongland let the bag hang at his side. “Can I ask you a question?”

The man reeked of coming rain and sour, he eyed the bag. “I ain’t no drunk.”

Strongland shifted on his feet, second guessing his right to ask the question like he always did and then found himself asking anyways like he always seemed to. He pointed at the man’s headphones. “You have any batteries for those?”

The man standing before him looked down at his grimy shoes, shoes that carried this man along the filthy streets from one place he didn’t belong, to the next place he didn’t belong. Then the man’s eyes swiveled out towards the rush of the street beyond them. He shook his head and shoved his hands into his pockets; his eyes weren’t ever going to meet Strongland’s again.

Strongland knew it too, and set the bag down at his feet, turned, walked back to his truck, filled the tank and drove away. He checked his rearview as he swung out onto the street. The Route 4 man and the bag had vanished—just like Billy.

“Lucky, Might Not be the Right Word” - Part 4

In the middle of the night his phone rang—the kind of the middle of the night that when a ringing phone rips you from your dreams you answer—so Strongland did.

  A women's voice, "I'm sorry to call so late, I’m trying to reach S.L.?" A low-tone beep in the background. 

  "Yes… This is him."

  "I have a man here, he's been asking for you...”

  Strongland pushed the sheets off his legs, set his feet onto the pine hardwood, brushed the hair away from his forehead and clicked his bedside lamp on. He cleared his throat, hoping his head would follow suit. "I'm sorry, who are we talking about?"

  "Parham, a Mr. Billy Parham. Is he your relative?"

  Strongland caught his reflection on a framed photograph of his mother and father, the three of them layered into one. He felt a rush of relief that this call wasn’t about either one of them. "No ma’am. Where is he?"

  The beeps in the background slowed; the sound of a cart rolling and hushed middle of the night voices. "Alamagordo Hospital, sir. He had a number written on a piece of paper in his pocket. I decided to take a chance that it might belong to you.”

  Strongland wiped the sleep out of the corners of his eyes. Guess my head ain't cleared. “Sorry, where is he again?”

  "Alamagordo, in New Mexico. Just north of the border."

  Strongland exhaled, it came out a soft whistle. "Let me get this straight, if you don't mind; Billy is in a hospital in Alamosomething, New Mexico, and he asked for me?"

  "That nearly sums it up?"

  It wasn't like he forgot about Billy, but he stopped checking under the bridge two months since the last time he saw him; hell and that was the first day they ever spoke. Here it was three months later when he answered this middle of the damn night call and it sure as hell caught him off guard. Her use of the word “nearly” came back at him. "You said nearly? What haven't I accounted for?"

  “S.L., it is S.L. right?"

  "Yes."

  “I hate to tell you this, and even more, I hate to question the situation and honestly it ain’t a single iota of my business, and now, don't get me wrong,  but many more times than I ever cared to see it happen,  a man like Mr. Parham ends up here out from nowhere, and nobody knows them, and nobody cares, and they are way too near to being dead then they ever saw coming, and from deep in a medical stupor they cry out for a person, say that person's name and maybe we get lucky and get a phone number and then we have a conversation like this and sometimes it's hard to tell if the call comes as relief to the person on the other end of the line in knowing that their person is alive, or maybe they are relieved they never have to wonder when that call was coming, they can finally just let go or..."

  Strongland couldn't follow; "Sorry, or, what?"

  "No need to apologize, in fact I'm relieved that you don't follow already. So, never mind okay?"

  Strongland went downstairs, pulled a bag of coffee grounds out of the freezer. "Okay…are you asking me to do anything here?”

  There was a long pause. Strongland filled the coffee pot enough for three cups, which was enough to get him to his drive to work. 

  She spoke again, easy and matter of fact and with a narrower drawl than he was accustomed; Strongland pictured a heavyset white woman with a pronounced dye job that made it appear that a dusty tarantula was easing its way down her forehead.

  "I don't have any other way to say it but Mr. Billy Parham is nearly dead, and I do mean nearly but don't count that as a medical diagnosis, just take it as fact…I don't think he has much time left."

  Strongland, not paying attention, heaped a quarter cup of grounds straight into the coffee maker without a filter and closed the lid and then started the coffee maker. "Jesus...okay. I mean, Jesus. If I was to come out there to see him, how long would you say I have to do that?"

"If he makes it through the next twenty-four hours you might be lucky enough to catch him still among the living."

"Don't you mean he'll be lucky?"

"Actually I don't know; lucky might not be the right word. He's an awful mess. Either got run over by a bus, which is my first bet, or got beat so bad he might never walk again. But like I said, that's if he makes it twenty-four hours."

  The coffee pot filled. The sun encouraged her first rays to break the stronghold of the night. A mourning dove complained. Strongland poured a cup of the coffee, pulled a mouthful of scalding grounds into his mouth, spit them into the sink. "Jesus..."

She came across as a smart-ass, and it surprised him. "No, it’s still just me, but if you care to see him before Jesus does you better get moving."

  Strongland dumped the coffee out, rinsed the sludge of grounds out, watching them swirl and disappear down the drain. "Which hospital do I go to, where are you again?"

She laughed, "Alamogordo, and its the only one we got, heck, except for illegals and bars we only have one of anything."

  The line went dead.

  "Jesus..."

Strongland threw clothes in a duffel, pulled a pair of boots from the line and then went online. Five minutes in of the twenty four hours to see Billy Parham alive he sank eight hundred dollars on a one-way ticket to Albuquerque, NM.

***

Strongland locked the door behind him and stepped off the narrow wood step down onto the gravel walkway leading to the garage set back a ways from his house. He pulled himself into his truck, checked his phone again to double check his plane ticket was in his email. Strongland hated flying, damn well hated it, hurtling through the freaking sky in a metal tube. Of course he would have rather just driven, but what the nurse said had hit him hard “If he makes it twenty-four hours…"

  He called his boss. “I might be back Monday; then again I might not be back till the Monday after that.”

“What in the hell S.L.,” was what his boss said.

“That’s a reasonable question. Want a complete answer when I get back, or a half-ass one now?”

“Get back next Monday if you want me to even hear what you have to say,” is what his boss came up with.

“Fair enough.”

Strongland laughed at his reflection in the rearview, just wasn’t a way to know what was coming. Hell neither did Laura. There was something about this trip made him desperate to see her before he got onto that damn plane. Checking his watch, she’d just be setting the coffee on about now. Intent on staying a dumb-ass aren’t you? He was going there anyways.

  He drove through his just waking town. A thin veil of dawn was still draped across the border between the solid things attached to and set upon the earth and the ethereal makings of everything above those things that belong to the lower seam of the horizon. Clusters of grackles invaded the upper fold of the seam, and then dive-bombed in stuttered breaks and changes of direction to collect and organize on power lines and branches. One cop rolled by but that was it.

  Strongland parked in the lot, Laura’s car was there in her usual spot. He searched the panes of broad glass and found her standing over a table wrapping silverware in paper napkins and setting them in neat stacks. His eyes followed her hands. Never had such a menial task looked like a god-damned ballet, not that he’d ever seen one in person. He checked his watch again. There was plenty of time to wait till they opened, plenty of time to order and eat slow and watch her and plenty of time to never say a word about what was on his mind and plen…

Tap, tap. Laura rapped on his window.

Shit… He rolled it down.

Laura grinned at him. “We don’t have a drive-thru, you know that don’t you?”

Strongland felt his face turn as red as a late July tomato. “Yep.”

“I’d ask how long you have been sitting here, but I know exactly how long you have been sitting here because I saw you pull in.”

“Oh, how long ago was that?”

“Ten minutes, smart ass. You aren’t drunk are you?”

“Nope.” He could have told her he never drank, but like with most things he didn’t tell her, he stayed consistent.

“Headed to work?”

Hell. Sweat beaded at his hairline. “No.”

Laura looked out into the street, her eyes followed a semi as it lumbered by. It seemed like she was taking here time. Thinking. Without looking at him, “You sure you aren’t drunk?”

“One hundred percent certain.”

Laura studied him and then leaned in. For a heartbeat he thought she was about to kiss him, but she inhaled deeply though her nose, and then drew back. “Okay, well, you don’t smell drunk.”

Strongland turned red again, this time about an early July tomato. “I’d be surprised as hell if I did.”

“Come on in S.L.”

      He followed Laura inside and half-smiled at the other waitresses. Laura pointed at a two-top, and he sat. She returned with a coffee, set it down and then disappeared. Strongland rolled a bundle of silverware in his fingers. She returned again with two plates of pancakes, set one in front of him, and then such to his surprise as if someone set a case full of cash in front of him and told him it was all his, she pulled the chair across from him out, and then took a seat. Strongland gawked at her.

            Laura unrolled a package of silverware and then arranged the tinny chrome fork and spoon next to her plate. Her eyes never came off his. “S.L.?”

        “Yep.”

       “What is it?”

  Strongland told her, he told her about the call and his boss and his plane ticket. He never sank a fork into his pancakes. She never did either. She never interrupted or asked a question but just leaned into his words and soaked them up like the dry ground pulling in first deluge of rain after a long drought. Their coffees went cold. A waitress tapped her shoulder. Laura nodded and got up from the table. Strongland sat stunned and quiet.

The same waitress that tapped Laura’s shoulder went to the front door, flipped the CLOSED sign around and walked by him and gave him an odd smile. Time went by in starved mouthfuls. Strongland felt embarrassed as hell. Yep, definitely still a dumb-ass.

  Laura reappeared. Her crisp white server’s apron was gone, replaced by a faded blue button down. In her right hand she held a to-go cup and this she handed to Strongland; in her left hand she held a second to-go cup, and this one she kept for herself. She smiled at him, “Next Monday right?”

  Strongland held the coffee cup, the contents of which could have been scalding hot and he wouldn’t have noticed. “What’s that?”

“You’ll be back at work by next Monday?”

     “I better be if I want a job when I get back.”

     “Okay then S.L., and if you aren’t then you are going to have to find two jobs.”

       Strongland started to say “Wha…”

      “Don’t you say it again; I’m going with you so let’s go.”

Strongland considered her words, just as much as one can consider these matters when stuck in the eye of a hurricane and the hurricane was his heart the the revolving destruction was an old man, battered and broke and breaking apart and hanging on to what was left of his life, alone, surrounded by the sounds of machinery that were the only things that were accounting for that man’s life. Strongland nodded, just to himself really. He thought of his dad, and when his dad’s time got close to being drawn closed and the thin veils of darkness were laid over him he needed to know his mother would be there next to him and if those events befell her before his father’s Strongland knew his father would be with her just the same even though it would tear their hearts into pieces with such destruction that a hurricane would not compare. Billy Parham didn’t have anyone. Hell, I must be Billy Parham’s last friend.

Laura hadn’t sat down. She waited. Strongland looked up at her, did his best to keep his tears deep down in his gut. “Well hell, if I don’t get you back in time I ain’t gonna have a place to get pancakes so we better get going I guess.”

She nodded, slid the pancakes from their plates into a Styrofoam container, closed it and headed for the door; just as she reached the table with the bundles of silverware she took two off the stack and slipped them into her back pocket. One of the waitresses hugged her. Another waitress reached into a big glass jar that said “TIPS” and handed Laura all of the paper money.

Strongland checked his watch as he wheeled out of the parking lot.

Laura put her hand on his as he drove them north out of the city. “We okay on time?”

“I just can’t say.”

It Ain't Done - Part 5

Strongland and Laura left El Paso behind in a white Chevy Tahoe rental. It crossed his mind they were gonna look like the Border Patrol in the rig, something he was in no way interested in. He considered trading out but time was wasting. Not theirs, Billy’s. They traveled north. An hour and a half would get them to Alamogordo. “Have you ever been out west?”

     Laura’s eyes fixated on the expanse of desert rushing at them. “Well, the Northwest, not Southwest. This, this is…”

      Strongland nodded. He wasn’t sure what to make of this world either. Maybe God decided he wanted a do-over and scraped every living thing off the earth before getting sidetracked. More likely he decided it wasn’t worth the hassle and left nothing there but space and heat. It was hot as hell. And vast. Enamel layers of sediment of ochre and tan and bleached crimson, a blood smeared serrated knife dropped on a bed of bone-dry dirt left out to get its ass kicked for eternity by the sun and the wind and the grinding detritus.

  Somehow, people figured out how to exist here. Even though he disliked the city, this was something else altogether. “Jesus, there aren’t even trees out here. Not many anyways.”

  Laura laughed, “I get the feeling you don’t like it?”

“Just uneasy I guess.”

Laura tucked her behind her ears and then put sunglasses on. “Let’s just try to not go blind.”

Strongland squinted, wishing he brought some sunglasses, made him wonder what else he didn’t pack. Glancing across at Laura stunned by just about everything that happened since his phone rang that morning. “Yep, alright.”

Another span of time and distance blurred; sparsely clipped with scrappy pinion, smears of sage connected by hare and coyote tracks. Then Alamagordo appeared; a low canyon of two-story buildings, a single water tower, squatting like a giant black beetle preparing to lower its armored abdomen onto the kiln-hot hardpack. As far as they could tell the second largest structure in town after the Motel 6 was the hospital, floating in a black asphalt lot awash in shimmering heat and blistering cars resembling dinosaurs caught in a tar pit. They parked. Laura pushed the door open.

Strongland hooked a thumb backwards towards the main drag. “You need something to eat, before we go in?”

Laura tapped her wrist where a watch would be.

Strongland sighed. Pushed his own door open, raised his hand to cover his eyes, exhaled hard to push the first draw of furnace hot air back out of his lungs. They approached the information desk. Strongland knew it was her as soon as he saw the swarm of bleached bangs struggling to conform to the manner in which she shellacked them. Her badge said Kristin.

She knew it to and pushed her chair away from her computer. “You made it.”

Strongland felt a need to apologize the second they locked eyes, hers a well of compassion, his, he figured, showed nothing but guilt. Reaching out, took her hand, shook it. “Thank you again for calling. Did we…”

“Yes, you made it.”

Strongland and Laura followed Kristin down the hallway, a chilled funnel of white walls, polished floors, open doors and beeping machines.

She stopped them at the last doorway, leaned in to Strongland and whispered “This is his room. Come see me before you leave, will you? I’m here till seven tonight.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Laura thanked her, and Kristin left them. Laura put her hand on Strongland and guided him into the room.

Ash pale except for a black eye and an eggplant purple bruise running between his temple and jaw, Billy lay prone on his bed. A clear plastic tube clipped into his nostrils. An untouched plate of pureed food congealed on a wheeled cart. His mouth hung open. Part of Billy’s head was shaved, a white bandage floated on a section of bald scalp.

Strongland was pretty sure the Billy he saw last had all his front teeth, this Billy didn’t. “Holy hell Billy.”

Laura took a seat next to the bed and squeezed Billy’s right hand. His left was in a cast. Her eyes met Strongland’s. “What the hell? Someone did this to him?”

Strongland sucked in air. “They ain’t sure.”

“Oh my god.”

If Billy dreamed, or had conversations with the near angels or if he felt like he was suffocating inside his own skin, he never remembered, or never said.

They waited, trading trips to the vending machine as Billy laid there. At five-thirty Kristin told them that the cafeteria closed at six. They ate roast beef sandwiches and potato salad and left when someone started mopping the floor.

Strongland stopped outside Billy’s door. “Will you wait with him? I guess I should see Kristin.”

Laura pushed Strongland’s bangs back off his forehead. “Go.”

Kristin was back in the spot he had first seen her. She came around the counter, patted his shoulder. “How ya holding up?”

“Better than him.”

“That’s not saying much.”

Strongland grinned that came across more of a wince.

“Any chance you have any idea if he has a Social Security number, insurance, anything that could pay for this?”

Strongland thought back when he first saw Billy; something between a shadow and trash. “Nope. None, at all. I barely know him. It wouldn’t surprise me if the man never had a bank account.”

Kristin tapped a pen against the desk. “Can I ask, how long you have known him?”

“Half a year at most. I found him under a bridge, took him to breakfast. He did some work for me. I, um, I tried to offer him a place to stay. And then…”

“He ended up here.”

Strongland looked back down the hallway to Billy’s room. “Pretty much.”

Kristin sighed. “Okay. We have a social worker on staff. I’ll see what she can do about the bills. I don’t figure you’d sign for him, be responsible for him?”

Strongland scanned the parking lot through the sliding doors of the main entrance. A dusty pale sky bled into a dusty khaki horizon. He thought of Billy dying. And how old his folks were getting. The sky seemed to shift, nothing more than clothes hanging from a clothes line. He choked back tears and he wasn’t sure why. He waited for it to pass. The sky and the horizon settled back into their rightful places, just darker. Okay… “If you all save him, I will pay every last penny if I have to.”

Kristin’s hand settled on his shoulder. “Where are you and your wife staying?”

“My wife, no, just a friend. And we haven’t picked a place.”

Kristin winked and her eyebrows slid up behind her bangs and then reappeared. “Well, you and your friend should avoid the Motel 6 at all costs. There’s a little B&B a couple miles north. I’ll call them and get you set up. The Dollar General closes at 9:00. After that, nothing is open but the hospital and the bars.”

Strongland set his hand on Kristin’s. “I can’t tell you how mu…”

“It’s my job honey.”

Laura was reading a magazine when Strongland returned. The white walls turned purple and gold as the sun folded itself into a thin line and disappeared. “I don’t think he’s waking up today.”

Strongland studied him Billy. The golden light wouldn’t stick to his pale skin. “If ever.”

Laura took his hand.

“Kristin is going to get us set up at a B&B. She says the Dollar General is open for a bit longer.”

“Are you sure you want to go?”

“Nope, but he don’t know either way.”

“Don’t say that!”

Strongland’s skin flushed. Laura kissed Billy’s forehead. They went out into the growing dusk.

***

Strongland had never seen anything like it. Without discussing it they pulled two wooden chairs off the porch of their casita, and set them in the sand, leaned back in their chairs and watched the legions of stars swirl like God’s memories across the sky that spanned from the very delicate tips of their eyelashes past time in an ever deepening well of the incomprehensible beyond them. Coyotes pleaded their case to the jury of some unknown courts. Whatever winds might have blown, churned from the heat of the day, settled down on the hard pack, nothing more than a thin wash of air, hovering about them at their necklines. When he shut his eyes the piercing dots of spinning light worked their way into his synapses and he dreamed of things that for many only display themselves with the chemical compounds of hallucinogens. He wandered far beyond the convex border of the world and was no different than a whale or a crow or an antelope and the whale and the crow and the antelope were no different than he.

When the sun unfolded herself at the far reach of horizon, Strongland woke underneath a thick wool blanket. Laura sat beside him.

Strongland pushed his hair back and shifted underneath the blanket. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Strongland sat upright. “No, I mean, not for just the blanket. I never even thanked you for coming.”

She grinned. “If you recall, I didn’t really ask.”

“Yep, I remember. You sure didn’t.”

***

Billy was awake when they got there. His jaw unhooked in surprise. "Oh hell", is what he said when they appeared at his door. His fist, a mess of needles and translucent IV tubes, clenched. “S.L., I didn’t get him.”

   Strongland stepped inside the room. “Didn’t get who Billy?”

Billy wept.

Laura whispered at the foot of the bed. “It’s okay Billy.”

   Billy wiped his eyes, dragging the IV tubes across the bed, twisting them. “It ain’t okay, I didn’t get him.”

     Strongland restored order to the clear tubes. “She’s right Billy, take it easy now.”

     “Hell, it ain’t done S.L.”

     “What Billy, what isn’t done.”

      “I didn’t kill him.”

Secrets - Part 6

Laura’s shadow slipped across the pale-yellow walls, steady and silent such as an ocean liner, pushed at the seam of some horizon at a distance measured by a landlocked sailor’s daydreams. We hovered about him like angels drawn to an accident or vultures to address his carcass one way or another. Here was a man not prepared to relent to either.

           “Get me out of here S.L.” Billy implored.

            Laura spoke before S.L. could consider a way to say no and come across reasonable and not prepared to do it. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea Billy. You don’t look up for anything much more than laying there like you already are.”

            Germinating from a long-instilled respect towards women, Billy let her finish. A softness worked away at the age lines that radiated from the outside corners of his eyes. “You’re absolutely right. And I appreciate it.”

            Billy’s head lolled towards S.L. as he raised his hand, pulling the mess of IV cords with it. His epic fist wrapped around my forearm and he pulled S.L. close in. “Today.”

            S.L. let him keep his hand there, figuring he needed something to hold on to. “Damn Billy, come on. I know you are tough, tougher’n me. But Laura’s right. You don…”

            Billy yanked S.L. closer. His eyes lost any softness they might have had. “Now.”

            S.L. looked away from him, at Laura. Her eyes went wide. She shook her head. And she was right to do it.

Billy let go. “Hell—you come out here to help me—or watch me lay here like a useless fool in this damn bed?”

S.L. pushed his chair away. “They both seem like bad ideas. Billy, stay in that damn bed till I get back. If the nurse says leaving here won’t kill you, I’ll do it. But I swear, you try leaving on your own, that’s just what you’ll be.”

Without waiting for a reaction S.L left them, made his way down the hallway.  Kristin’s bangs hovered like a levitating tarantula above the nurse’s station. It was an odd thing; S.L. realized he was going to hate to leave here and not see her again. You always remember the kind nurses.  

Kristin looked up, pulled a pair of turquoise colored reading glasses off and pushed them into her bangs.  “Good morning, S.L. You got here early. How is he?”

“That’s what I need to know. He saying he needs to leave. Today.” S.L. glanced back down the hallway. “Now, actually.”

Kristin closed her laptop. “Nope.”

“Nope?”

“N.O.P.E. You ask the doctor, you’ll get the same answer.”

“Nope…”

Kristin grinned. “You catch on fast for an easterner.”

“Don’t overestimate me—what if I agree to take him.”

“You won’t want to do that. You do understand his head is broken right? He’s a compromised man. What might not have hurt him a week ago could kill him now. A bad fall. Getting rear-ended at the Dollar Tree.”

“Billy’s leaving. I know that man can disappear. Already happened once.”

“Well that’s just fine. Let him leave. Take your girlfriend and go home. Without him.”

S.L. made his way back down the hall; Laura stuck her head out the door, “Nurse!”

S.L. entered as Billy disconnected the last IV tube from his hand. “Damnit Billy.”

Kristin said the rest, spoken like a nurse that had to cut right to the point. “Don’t you be a damn fool.”

Billy glared at S.L.

Kristin took Billy’s hand, and reached for the IV tubes to reconnect them. “If you leave here in this condition it could kill you. You are bleeding internally. Your ribs are broken. Your hand is broken. And clearly, more than just your jaw is broken, your brain must be broken.”

One at a time, Billy looked at S.L. and Laura and finally Kristin. “I’ll pay my bill, every cent of what I owe tomorrow morning.” Turning to me. “You can quit on helping me if you don’t want the risk. I understand and thank you for everything you done. All I ask is for a ride. And a shovel.”

***

“You’re well on your way to desert crazy.” Laura didn’t look at S.L. as she said it.

The Tahoe’s AC blasted his face, a degree from freezing him out. S.L. fiddled with the vents, killing time. “It’s the heat.”

“Bullshit. It not just the heat. You’re crazy. I must be too for getting in this truck with you two.” She studied the Dollar Tree. “If he dies out here it’s on you.”

“Hell, I know… and I wish you weren’t right.”

Grit pinged against the truck, caught in the wind and helpless. Billy wasn’t helpless. Far from it. But he was wounded. And S.L. wasn’t leaving him. The doors of the Dollar Tree swept open. Gingerly, Billy shuffled out with plastic bags hanging from his hands. He wore a pair of starchy denim jeans and a white t-shirt covered with sharp creases. His feet were still in his hospital ankle socks. He eased his way into the back. “There used to be a ranch supply outfit just north of town.”

S.L. figured that was Billy’s way of asking to stop there and he pulled the transmission down into drive.  It was noon which meant the sun bore straight down onto every surface like a with the power of an X-Ray machine burning the color out of most everything. The horizon hovered miles away, nothing more than a bleached carcass. The road melted. Not even tumbleweed ventured.

They’d been on the road for twenty minutes when Billy spoke up with a rasp. “Stop here.”

S.L. glanced into the rearviewmirror and then pulled onto the berm.

Billy scanned the side of the road. “I swear it used to be here.”

S.L. surveyed the dirt. A foundation of sorts was visible under a layer of sediment.

         “What was Billy?” Laura asked.

         “Rathburn’s. Ranch supply outfit. But that was forty, maybe fifty years ago…” Billy cupped his forehead in his hands and then put his window down and vomited onto the dirt.

         Nothing to do but let him finish. When he was, S.L handed Billy a bottle of water. Billy took it in one draw. Laura glared at S.L. and he raised his palms in resignation. “Jesus Billy. We got to take you back to the hospital.” Laura nodded emphatically.

       “You might as well let me out. I’m not going back there. If I die, it won’t be in that freezing cold light bulb.” Billy vomited again. When he was finished S.L. handed back another water. Billy drank it just as he had the first one. “I just need to sleep S.L.”

       S.L. waited until Billy put his window back up, pulled back onto the road, arched the Tahoe into a U-turn and headed south. At a county road he headed east, caught another county road heading north and took it. Soon their casita materialized from an endless wash of mirages.

     They helped Billy inside, laid him on a twin bed in one of the bedrooms.  They let him sleep and S.L. made a call to the hospital. When Billy came too, night had already lowered itself onto the desert floor.

Kristin greeted him when he opened the door. “It’s either a house call or you go back right now. I’ll admit you myself.”

Billy nodded, shuffled to a chair and slumped down. Kristin gave him an antibiotic and changed his bandages. When Kristin finished, she led Billy outside. S.L. and Laura and helped him into a faded wood chair, Kristin pushed a pillow behind his back. Laura reached out and placed her hand on Billy’s shoulder.

Coyotes cackled in the cooling air. Desert Quail broke cover before resettling in tall grasses. The sun had long since begged her leave and took her robes of scarlet and speckled orange with her. An incandescent ink sky slid slowly, exposing ever deeper pools of black blue above them. Stars emerged in the universes skin, bleeding pinprick drops of golden and white light, the incomprehensible distance belied these campfires of long-forgotten gods dispersed throughout the forever.

They sat a long while before anyone spoke. It was Kristin who asked what we all wanted to know. “Billy, how’d you end up at my hospital?”

Billy didn’t hurry his answer. Finally, he uttered one word. “Coyotes.”

Laura sought clarification. “Coyotes?”

Billy stared straight ahead. “Things are so different now. This is the last place I figured things would change. I come to realize the only thing that hasn’t changed is me. I’m older, but still out of place. That’s the same…” Billy reached down, dug his fingers into the dirt, then let it slowly trickle through his fingers. He exhaled. Maybe choked back tears. “Hell, what does it matter? You have to understand, I came here to kill him. I don’t want him still alive, enjoying his life on the bodies and blood of the girls he’s helped ruin. I should have killed him when I had my first chance. Not that it would have saved my friend. He’s dead just the same… Just the god damned same.”

       The sky bled out, one star at time.

      Billy ran his hands down his beard, twisting in around his fingers. He’d been bathed at the hospital; S.L had only seen him covered in street grime, he looked near a different man to him now. “You should have seen them together. It was something to be in awe of, like the moon and the sun. But as common as those two things just the same.” Billy looked out the window. “And just like them, they were doomed to always chase each other across every horizon. He’d never catch her. And she could never wait…”

Every star dies.

Laura adjusted her legs in her chair and from the darkness a coyote admonished her for shifting the balance of things. “Who Billy?”

Billy smiled in the dark and spat onto the desert floor. “John Grady. John Grady Cole. And Magdalena. I don’t know her last name. She was a whore for so much of her short life she probably didn’t dare remember it. She was going to take his last name. Her forgotten name wouldn’t have ever needed to matter again. She would have been known to the world as Magdalena Cole—if she had made it across the river.”

The sky is littered with the ghosts of dead stars.

Billy spat again; nearly desiccated of water. “It’s because she didn’t, that’s why I come out here.”

S.L. leaned in towards Billy. “What happened to her?”

Billy hooked a thumb toward the southern hemisphere. “He killed her—just to prove a point to a kid that she wasn’t worth a peso, when to that kid, she was worth every penny he could come across—now I’m here to equal that one thing out. The only way I can seem to measure it is to kill Tiburcio. He’s the worthless devil that killed her.”

S.L. worked it out through his mind. There was a missing piece. “What happened to John Grady?”

“Dead. Gave himself up to a blade so’s he could get close enough to cut back. John Grady outlasted him. But not by mu…” Billy crumpled within the wood rocker; nearly desiccated of heart.

If the coyotes knew of an unbalance, they kept it to themselves and waited through the pattering of shifting dust against objects of solid surface. Wind shuffled their dingy gray coats and carried scents of unseen worlds across their noses, dampened with perspiration and flicks of their sharp tongues.

“He bled out too… in my arms. I figured he was the last friend I’d ever have.” Billy looked at S.L. “Was I wrong?”

S.L. reached out his hand. “You were.”

Billy took it.

No more words were spoken. The air reshuffled. Coyotes slinked away. Stars blossomed, such as God declared the Universe was free to celebrate its independence. Cactus held their waters hidden within their scaled and tough skins. Dreams were released and forgotten. Some things that a man or a woman could feel harmed by, things that had come to cause pain, became obliged to recompense and harm them no more. There was no awe given to these events. They were what they were and you couldn’t fight it. Every once in a while, you can choose to let things be. For the better part of this night, these four let them.

***

“S.L.”

           “Yah.”

           Laura shook him. “You awake.”

          “Nope.”

          “Go see if he’s ok.”

          “Billy?”

          “Yah. Billy. He’s outside.”

          “Still?”

        “Like I just said.”

            “What time is it?”

            “Time to be inside.”  

            “Let him be. Heck. We slept outside last night.”

           “True. But we aren’t the ones who should be in a hospital.”

           “Where are my boots?”

           “Wherever you left them.”

          “Shit.”

          S.L. slipped out the back door of the casita into a trough of stars and wind. Billy was out there just as Laura said.

         “I was waiting on you.”

        “Hell Billy, come on inside. You can’t be out here all night.”

        “I got something I need to show you.”

        “Is it inside.”

        “Depends on what you mean.”

        “I mean, is it something that isn’t out here.”

        “Sort of.”

        S.L. ruffled his bed head. “Your meds are making you ornery.”

       “I ain’t taking them. Pain is the culprit.”

       “Is that why you aren’t asleep?

       “Most of it.”

      “What’s the rest”

       “I already told you. I have something I want you to see.”

        Grit harvested in the corner of S.L.’s eyes. He ground it out with his thumbs. “Shit. Can I tell you a secret?”

       “Only if I can tell you one.”

       “Deal. I hate the desert.

        “That’s your secret?”

        “Yeah.”

         “You need better secrets.”

          S.L. grinned. “Well what’s yours then?”

       “I’ll let it speak for itself.”

       “I’m going to get your meds.”

        “Get the shovel instead. It’s leaned against the side of the casita. And get some waters. I’ll meet you at the rig.”

       “What are you talking about?”

       “You forgot what rig yours is?”

      “Hell Billy. You have any idea what time it is?”

      “Still the time when reasonable people are asleep. Including ranch hands. But they’ll be up in two hours so we better get moving.”

      “Shit… Billy?”

     “Yep.”

       “Is this the kind of thing a gun would be as useful as a shovel. If so, well, I am a whole hell of a lot less inclined to do whatever it is your have on your mind.”

       “You have a gun with you S.L.?”

       “Nope.”

       “Well then, a gun won’t be useful.”

PEACEMAKER - Part 7

“What’s the shovel for?”

Strongland stopped in his tracks, turned to face Laura, already shrugging. “Digging.” Strongland felt like an ass as soon as he said it. He saw the hurt in her eyes.

“Oh, so they use those the same way they do in Georgia. Good to know.”

“I’m sorry…Heck, I wish I knew… But I don’t.” He nodded towards Billy and the Tahoe.

“Where in the hell are you going with it?”

“I’m about to find out I reckon.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now,” Billy quipped.

Strongland and Laura turned to Billy. With his brand-new white t-shirt and his clean beard, he appeared nearly phosphorescent in the starlight.

“I ain’t trying to sneak him away in the dark, but I figure maybe it’s best we got to where we need to get with just me and SL.”

Laura wasn’t impressed and started walking towards the truck.

“You ain’t comin. You can’t.” Billy stared at Strongland. “Tell her SL.”

Laura crossed her arms. “Well god damnit.”

They left without her, still standing there with her arms crossed, and SUV wheeled onto the road as solitary as a satellite across the heavens.  Tumbleweed asteroids appeared in the white light of the headlights and disappeared back into the dark. The tires rumbled across the asphalt, finally cool after another day baking in the high-altitude kiln. A rattlesnake tried his luck and lost out.

Strongland rolled up his window, shutting out the rush of cold air. “You remember this place well enough to get where you need to?”

A mile of road slid beneath the Tahoe before Billy answered. “Better than it remembers me.”

“Is that good enough?”

Billy nodded and spoke quiet like he was embarrassed. “I don’t know.”

Strongland imagined Laura was in the back seat scolding him with her eyes, shaking her head, concerned. Hell so am I, he realized. He could feel something radiating from Billy. As close as he could get to it was standing next to his best friend in high school ready to take on a fight on a Friday night with some older boys who thought they could put some fear into them, but got it wrong and were about to find out they pushed too hard on the wrong kids. But it had been a long time since he squared up. He imagined Billy squared up against things he had no idea of and probably come out ahead most times. But judging by his time in the hospital, those days were long gone for Billy too.

The night sucked them down the highway deeper into Billy’s past. He indicated for Strongland to head east at a fork in the road and Strongland eased the rig left. They went on for some time.

Billy tapped the dashboard, “Slow down.”

Strongland lifted off the gas.

Billy swiveled in his seat, craned his neck, searching. “Go back.”

Strongland arched the Tahoe around.

“I missed it.”

“What could you have missed Billy? There isn’t anything here.”

“I don’t disagree. But I’m right. Hit your brights.”

Strongland did and lit universe expanded slightly.

“There.”

Strongland saw it and eased forward. The edge of the road squared off sharply then dropped into a shallow depression. Fifteen feet off the berm a tall wooden post, leaning at an angle, stood by its lonesome.

“This was the entrance to a ranch I worked…” Billy trailed off. “Stop here.” He pushed his door open and stepped onto the desert floor.

Strongland watched him limp across the sand and rest his hand on the post. He leaned into it but it held steady. Coyotes bickered about something inconsequential and then fell silent. He could see there used to be a road of sorts heading east from the road. Billy walked twenty paces and began to root around in the dirt. He stood, holding what looked to be a piece of square metal, and walked back to the truck.

“Pop the back.”

Strongland hit the button and the tailgate rose.

Billy set the object onto the floor of the Tahoe, it clinked against the shovel.  He got back in. “It’s two miles in from here. I’m guessing by what I seen so far, the place ain’t gonna be standing. How I outlived this old place I just can’t figure. You shoulda seen the action here.” Billy swept his hand across the star lit vastness. “You would have bet your best horse that the number steer that got cowboyed through here was more than equal to the number of stars. Dust would kick up so high you’d get to think you’d get lost in it. Hell, some did, a good many did. Near everything is lost now. Nearly.” Billy put his hand on Strongland’s forearm. “I don’t aim to find most of what I lost in my life. Most of my life is as about as useless as a tossed away horseshoe. But there is something I need to find. If I don’t—well shit on what’s left of this old man—and god damn the man I was once.”

Strongland realized he’d been holding his breath, he let it out slow and tried to steady his heartbeat. Billy come across like he was apologizing to God and giving God the final say on where he’d spend eternity. The thing was Billy made it sound like he was prepared to end up in hell.

Billy pulled his hand back. “Sorry. Don’t pay attention to me. Just, just a lot is coming back to me.”

Strongland nodded. He wanted to say something but couldn’t come up with a damn thing so he kept driving.

The headlights swept across what was once a solid, wood barn; even metal didn’t last out here, the barn didn’t have a chance without someone tending it. There was enough still standing to visualize the length of it, stretching nearly fifty yards long. Remnants of the stockade lay decaying, nothing more than dirt covered skeletons surrounded by heaps of tumbleweed.

Billy gasped. “It’s gone.”

Strongland waited.

“Damn bunkhouse collapsed… Time took that too I guess.”

“Should I park?”

“Yeah. Anywheres. Leave them lights on, we’ll walk the rest.”

They got out. Strongland checked their distance from the road, satisfied they were far enough off it that nobody could see their lights, collected the shovel and followed Billy as he hobbled between the posts of the ruined stockade. Everything was lit in washes of white halogen light and Strongland couldn’t shake the feeling that he had been transported into an old black and white western movie.

“There wasn’t but four trees when I was last here. Looks like there’s but just them two now. But it could be only this one.” Billy pointed at a pinion, frozen in twisted agony from decades of wind. “Looks just like it did forty years ago.” He ran his hand over the bent trunk. “Poor thing looks like I feel.” He turned and grinned wistfully at Strongland, then slowly circled the tree. “Hand the shovel over.”

“Heck Billy, you only have one working hand. Why don’t you let me dig?”

“Nope. I buried it. I’m digging it out.”

Strongland handed the shovel over and Billy started working the earth with the wide blade. There was no moisture held in the hardpack but decades of mud developed, baked, turned to mud again, and baked. The shovel sounded like it was breaking bone. Billy never said a word. Strongland didn’t either. Wind caressed the living and the dead just the same as the stars offered the living and the dead bathing light. Heap-fulls of dirt broke and settled on the perimeter of the hole. Within a half hour Billy worked himself down till the he stood thigh deep. Strongland figured Billy was six foot three so he was what, a good three feet down?

The then sound of breaking bone ended with a hollow thunk. Billy knelt and worked the dirt with his hands, clawing methodically. Strongland realized this last part Billy wasn’t going to rush.

A wooden box was exposed, about the size of a large suitcase. Billy wedged the blade underneath the box and pried the box up. The dirt relinquished what it must have thought was its forever. Using a metal handle Billy dragged the box out of the hole. When it finally broke the plane of the rim it slid backwards with ease, plopping Billy on his ass. “Well okay John Grady...”

Strongland wasn’t following. “What’s that?”

Billy stood and brushed himself off, raised his throat straight heavenwards and let out a soulful howl. “Son of a bitch…”

An owl hooted and lifted off the remains of the bunkhouse, arching silently above them and then disappeared. The two men stood in silence for a long while, studying the wooden box.

“I can’t get it the rest of the way.”

Strongland nodded. Billy laid the shovel across the top of the box and they each grabbed a handle and carried the box to the Tahoe.

“You gonna open that here?”

Billy stared at it and ran his hands down his beard. His white t-shirt was smeared with khaki colored dirt. “I thought I’d open it up when I got ahold of it.” He shook his head and gazed at the stars. They were diming as the sky warmed with the first purply wash of dawn. “I can’t hurry this along any more tonight.”

The men got in the Tahoe and left the ruins and the freshly excavated hole to the elements and the procession of time. Billy never said a word. Just fell asleep like a baby. Strongland backtracked their route and left him there in the Tahoe to sleep.

Laura was up waiting on him. Strongland started to apologize. She stopped him. “Don’t give me boys will be boys crap. He’s near dead and you have no idea what the hell’s chasing that man.”

Strongland nodded.

She pulled off her shirt. Strongland got in bed.

***

Kristin was gone when they woke up. Strongland and Laura found Billy sitting on the tailgate of the Tahoe.

     “Did you stay out here all-night Billy?” Laura asked.

     “Yep. Guess I couldn’t just leave this damn thing outside. After all this time, I just couldn’t.”

      Strongland nodded. “Alright. What’s next?”

      Billy pointed to the casita. “It’ll be the last time I ask you to help carry it.”

     They set it next to the fire pit. Billy pulled a chain from around his neck. Attached to the end was a black iron key. “You got a blade?” Strongland pulled a folding knife from his back pocket and handed it over. Billy took it and scraped away a layer of caked dirt and cleaned the inside of the lock out. He closed the knife and returned it to Strongland. Billy inserted the iron key and twisted it; the lock opened with a gritty click.

      Strongland and Laura looked at each other, Strongland shrugged. She nodded. The sun examined them all. Wind shifted across the dessert, scuttling the dirt. A beetle walked towards them, and then turned away. The sun moved a degree or so and the shadow of the box reached towards Billy.

      Billy lifted the lid. A black, oiled canvas cover laid across the top of the contents; a wash of sifted dirt coated the canvas. With no fanfare, Billy pulled the cover off. A metal box was the first visible object. Billy lifted it up and set it on his knees. Sweat dripped off his nose, landed with a splot on the metal, darkening the metal to a near conifer green. He opened it. A cowhide leather bundle tied together with rawhide. He set the box at his side and unraveled the parcel. An antique Colt Single Action Army Revolver, with a somber patina, lay across his lap. Billy ran his fingers along the weapon. He picked it up, examined it, depressed the cylinder release, and spun the six-bullet cylinder, how freely it whirled. He pulled the hammer back, then pulled the trigger, and controlled the hammer as it settled without as much as a click.

      “This is the Peacemaker. A Colt Single Action Army revolver. It belonged to John Grady Cole. It belonged to his grandfather before him. John Grady pawned it… After he died, I went and bought the piece back. I used it—Just once—To get this…”

       Billy lifted out one of the two remaining metal boxes, set it on the dirt and flicked the small latch, and opened the lid. He stared at the contents for a while before speaking. “It wasn’t damn near worth it, was it John Grady? You can’t tell me it was no more than you can hold her.”

      He swiveled the box so Strongland and Laura could see the contents.

       Strongland rocked back in his wood chair and swept his eyes across the desert. He whistled at just about the same time Laura said Jesus Christ. “Well damn Billy. What in the hell?”             

       Billy squinted at them against the sun breaking over the casita roof. “I took it from the pimps that killed John Grady and his girl. Shit, I never as much counted it. I had no intention of spendin’ a dime of it. I took it to make them think about what they done is all. Thing was, it probably made things worth for the whores that brung this money in. I would ‘a killed the one bastard left that had it coming but he was gone by the time I got there. So, I took this. But I still owe him. For John Grady and his girl Magdalena. He might have forgotten about me. I doubt it. But he remembers now. He probably don’t think I’m coming back.”

      He kicked the lid of the box shut and stood, revolver in hand. “But I am. One last time.”

Billy Tells A Story - PART 8

“How much do you figure was in there?”

Strongland studied Billy as he made his way to the casita. When Billy stepped inside Strongland shook his head. “I couldn’t really say. What do you think? You see more cash than I do.”         

Laura shifted in her chair. Sunlight bathed her in yellow gold. The air smelled of creosote and pine and drought. “Not money like that. Maybe you mistook me for a pole dancer, not your average broke waitress one measly class shy of a college degree.”

    Strongland turned scalded lobster red. “You are one class shy of a college degree?”

     Laura sighed. “One class.”

     Strongland grinned. “Well shit.”

     Laura smiled back. “I figured it would come up eventually.”

     “You did?”

    She nodded, “So, how much?”

     “A lot of it looked like Mexican cash, so I don’t know. But there were stacks of U.S. dollars.”

       Laura toed the sand. “Shit.” Sweat formed on her skin, she was already getting tan.

       Strongland eyed the boxes. “Yeah. Shit.”

       A hawk swirled above them, bombed down to the dirt and reappeared in the air with a writhing snake in its talons.

       “You think he’s okay Laura?”

        “In what way? Physically? No. Emotionally… Not a chance.” She shrugged. “What next?”

        “Not sure.”

        “Kristin is coming by here at noon to check on him and take me into town to stock up at the Dollar Store.”

        “Well then I guess breakfast is next.”

         Billy was out cold on the sofa, the revolver laid across his chest like a cross on the dead. They made blue corn pancakes, eggs and coffee. Billy was still asleep when Kristin got there. Strongland set a blanket over Billy, concealing the weapon before letting her in. She made her way to him and sized him up. In a hushed voice she asked Strongland, “What size shoe do you think he wears?”

          Strongland looked at his feet. “Tens.”

           I thought so. From a bag she pulled out a pair of barely creased Luchesses. “These might could do.”

           Laura studied her.

           “My ex’s. That fat dumb-ass left a good woman for some little thing that must be as stupid as she was pretty. Shit. He left a closet full of boots. I tell you one thing. If he ever comes back begging for me or the boots, I’ll shoot his sorry ass right in the balls.” She laughed. “Isn’t very nurse like but tough shit for Gerald.”

          “Yep. Tough shit for Gerald.” Strongland joked.

          Laura repeated it for good measure.

         Kristin appeared satisfied in berating Gerald and was ready to get a move on. “Ready for a girl’s trip honey?”

         “Yep!” Laura said as she walked towards the door with Kristin behind her.

         “What am I supposed to do?” Strongland inquired.

          Without looking back Laura said, “Don’t accidentally shoot yourself with that gun.”

         “Gun?” Kristin asked?

           The door shut behind them. Kristin’s Subaru wagon crossed the dirt drive then turned onto the highway. The casita fell into a dense silence. Strongland studied the walls for the first time. Coyote skulls, snakeskin and large, hawk feathers covered a small table in the manner of an altar. Wool blankets with intricate patterns hung from the walls. A simple wood cross nailed into the door seemed as if its purpose was to be a reminder to go with God when you went out into the world.

       Strongland stepped to the back door, pulled the turquoise colored curtain aside and stared at the boxes. “An actual fucking treasure.”

“Blood money.”

Strongland turned.

Billy sat up, pushing the blanket off him. He wrapped his hand around the revolver’s grip, like he was making sure it was in fact still in his possession. “It’s blood money—not treasure—maybe to the devil those things are one in the same… Guess it’s just deciding what it’s worth to get.”

Strongland leaned against the counter, stuffed his hands into his jeans’ pockets. “I didn’t mean for you to hear.”

Billy stood unsteadily, a mass of white beard and lumpy purple contusions. “I spent decades waiting to go to Hell for it. Seems like that time is close. I still don’t feel prepared.”

Strongland looked out the window but could not avoid the statement forever; he nodded in the direction of the money. “Can’t you just take all that and live the rest of your life in peace in comfort? Maybe you don’t have to do whatever you have been figuring these past years.”

Billy closed his eyes and shook his head. “Some things don’t play out but in one way. Sometimes me and John Grady seen migrating birds cross over Texas and New Mexico. There’d be so many birds you’d have been halfway right to believe the sun was disappearing forever. The thing was, each species we saw, season after season, for as much as things were different, they were all the same for them birds. They go where they go without knowing why. It’s just a switch. It turns on, they head way till it turns off. Then they stop till it turns on again and they reverse course. That’s how I feel. That kid dyin’ all them years in my arms flipped the switch. I worked hard pulling away but time is getting away from me.”

Strongland met Billy’s eyes. “Billy, what happened?”

Billy looked away, made his way to a kitchen, set the revolver on the counter, and with his back towards Strongland he opened a cupboard, took out a tall glass and then turned the faucet. He held is right hand in the water for a long time before he filled his glass and drank it all in one steady draw.          

    Billy pushed the glass underneath the stream of water and refilled it. He turned the water off and finished the glass in the manner of the first before setting the glass into the sink.  Without replying Billy opened a drawer, closed it, then opened another. He took out a screwdriver and set it on the counter. He tried one cabinet drawer, then another, and a third, from which he took a can of WD-40 and set it next to the screwdriver such as a surgeon preparing his equipment. Finally, Billy pulled off sheet of paper towel and rolled it tightly before twisting it until the white paper resembled a pipe cleaner.

     With his back towards Strongland, the old man’s shoulders and arms moved as he methodically cleaned the revolver with the attention to detail that comes with ranching; do it right the first time, do it right every time, or don’t do it at all. Finally, Billy spun the barrel, clicked it back into place in the frame and set the revolver on the counter. Then Billy started talking.

…

“It wasn’t long after I met you, I started getting these son of bitch headaches. Hell, I couldn’t do much more than wrap a shirt around my face to block out the light and any sound. In my entire life I ain’t never felt a thing like that. Sometimes it would get so bad I’d vomit until there was nothing left in me. Got to where I felt like maybe I was dyin’. I hitched a ride to a clinic. Some pretty lady doctor told me it was migraines. Gave me some sample meds. They work okay I reckon. I had a stretch of good days when I could think straight. It was during them clear days I got myself together and made my way back to New Mexico.

     Billy raised his hand up, a mea culpa, “I’m sorry I never said goodbye. I’ll always appreciate what you did for me. I thought it was gonna be easier that way. It wasn’t. Especially with you coming all the way out here on my behalf… I’m old S.L. And distracted. In case I might forget to thank you, I am now.” His hand lowered.

     “You might have thought after all this time I would have come straight here and killed the man the murdered John Grady’s girl. Tiburcio is his name. I don’t know his last name. Like Satan I guess he’s but just got the one name. He’s death in a man’s skin.” Billy paused. Took a deep breath.  

     Strongland took one too.

    “I thought I met him once. That perhaps he had come.”

     “Who Billy?”

     “Death. But it wasn’t. Just a man. That’s all I am. But for this one time, this one time, I do intend to be death.” Billy picked the revolver up, held it, set it the metal and bone and wood mechanism down again. “When I left Georgia I headed to Texas, tiny little nothing of a place. Bell Springs. John Grady fixed himself up a place for him and Magdalena. She never made it. I needed to see that place, or at least see if it still stood. It’s gone—like the past….

     Strongland was convinced Billy was crying. He waited.

     “Ain’t it a thing, an old man’s pain from a long time ago last longer than a building.” Billy laughed. “Well shit anyways. Like I said, at least I think I did, I didn’t go there to kill him. Things turned out so I decided to, but like you can see, things turned out that I couldn’t.” He whistled low. “I couldn’t have imagined Juarez from what it used to be. Them boys at the border minded me to not even bother with stepping into Mexico. I believe they called it the worst place on God’s dusty earth. I see the papers. I know. Cartels. I can’t fathom them. It wasn’t like that back, let’s see, in the early fifties there was pimps, alcohol and girls, that’s about it. Nothing like you see now, with bodies hanging from lampposts, severed heads, and all other brands of brutality. Don’t mishear me. I know a handful of people that crossed into Mexico, or lived there and out of them, two were killed with a blade, one of those being cold blooded murder. I know now John Grady as much committed suicide when he went looking for blood. He got it, all the blood a man can’t lose and survive. I should have stopped him… But didn’t. God damn I didn’t. You see?”

     Maybe Billy was waiting on an answer.

    Strongland didn’t have one.

     The casita darkened a measure. A ballet of shadow, eased in unison, without fanfare, across the walls and floors.

     “So, I crossed over. An old man exercising free will. Like everything else that’s changed, so had Juarez. The pavement was the same, but the world built around it is different. Even still I remembered exactly where it was that all this started, a whorehouse called The White Lake. It wouldn’t have surprised me if the man I come to see was long dead. Part of me wished someone did my job for me. But a man like him, if he were still alive, would be there, working away with his murderin’ hands counting the money made off girls’ souls.”

     Billy poured himself another glass of water, drank half, set the glass down. He pressed his fingers against his right temple, rubbed it in a circular motion. “At the door I told them they didn’t have anything I was going to pay for. I was there to see the patron. They laughed at me. I called him out by name, Tiburcio. One of the hoods at the door walked away. When he came back, he patted me down. He did not need to tell me to follow him. I could have found my way in the dark. He was there.”        

     Billy turned. “I asked him if he knew who I was. Even if he had said no, it would have been a lie. The man, nodded. I told him to say it. You should not have come here. I asked him if he had enjoyed his life. The man nodded. I told him to say it. The man said he had. I told him he had not deserved to. The man said my considerations of this were only of my concerns. I told him he was wrong. The man shrugged. He asked why I had come. I told him he already knew the answer. I gave him one week to get his things in order. The man nodded and said that he would…”

     “I don’t remember much until the hospital. There are flashes, a van, a girl. I was beaten. They threw the girl and I into the river. I reached out for her and held on.” Billy closed his eyes. “I tried to save her. I don’t think I did. I couldn’t save any of them.”

     Billy wept.

“Where Billy?” - Part Nine

“A man ain’t ever supposed to wear another man’s boots,” Billy stated as he pulled on the Luchesse with a muffled pop as his ankle cleared the throat of the pristine oiled cowhide, “but I’ll lessen off that hard and fast one.” He stood. “Kristin said her old man left her, and these boots?”

            “In so many words.”

            “Well, some people are dumb, some are sons of bitches; in this case I guess she got one in the same.” Billy looked around the room. “Where is it?”

            “The what?”

            “Everything I got claim to.”

            Strongland hooked a thumb towards the desert. “Right where you left it.”

            “You try counting it?”

            “I attempted to guess, but, well, it’s not mine to count.”

            “I never counted it neither. It would never add up to a sum worth an equal to what this world keeps losin’. A whole army of accountants could keep stacking and counting currency of any sort and it’d never come near equaling what another army of pimps and murderers rob this world of. I hope me taking this from those bastards at the very least inflicted even a minor blood lettin’. That could generally appease me till I rid the earth of that Mexican pimp.”

            Strongland watched Billy step out into the expanse of hardpack, kneel, run his fingers through the dirt, touch his finger to his tongue, swirl the dust around in his mouth, then spit it back onto the ground. Billy rose, returned to the kitchen. “We better get out of here before the women come back…” He studied Strongland, “that’s if you are comin’.”

            “Where Billy?”

            “To deliver me to the gates of Hell.”

…

“Every Saturday I volunteer here… The feds can’t shut you down if taxes aren’t involved.”

            It had not even occurred to Laura what day it was. That it was Saturday felt halfway between irrelevant and absurd. “Where are they all from?”

            Laura followed Kristin between the moveable partitions doubling as walls.

Kristin caught her looking, read Laura’s mind accurately, “HIPPA doesn’t really mean anything here. Most everyone comes in with their entire family. We treat what we can, with what we have, but it isn’t enough frankly.”

Laura smiled at a small boy, dusted with desert grit, once black shoes, now a bleached khaki, but eyes as bright as sunlight reflecting off a chrome hubcap; he smiled shyly, then made a rapid succession of signs with his hands, as fluid as a dancer pirouetting across a stage. The boy’s father signed back, and the boy rummaged through a threadbare backpack, removed two water bottles, stood, and offered them to Laura and Kristin. Laura was about to decline but followed Kristin’s example and accepted the crinkly plastic bottle and thanked the boy.

Kristin smoothed the boy’s hair. She then pulled a packet of raisins from her pale blue scrub jacket and offered them in return for the gift of water. The boy grinned and turned.

Laura watched as the boy maneuvered though a makeshift waiting room and delivered the small box of raisins to an old man who sat by himself. The man, who seemed as if he would fall apart if it were not for the clothes he wore, nodded, and slipped the small box into a vest pocket.

Laura’s eyes followed the boy as he made his way back to his father’s side; filling the chairs were people of extreme poverty, a collection of moths bouncing off a streetlight, futile, hunting warmth, seeking something... Voices speaking in Spanish, English, a smattering of words that she could only imagine as Native American. She turned to Kristin, “Is there a bathroom?”

Kristin pointed. “Use the one on the right.”

As soon as the door shut behind her Laura choked back a sob.  This trade of water for raisins among the impoverished wrenched her heart and it felt to her as if God graced this dilapidated structure. She wiped her tears at the rate they broke from her eyes and gritted her teeth to stifle a wave of a sense of hollow ineptness.  As this foreign swell of grief subsided, Laura swore she felt as if her life shifted as dramatically as the moment a butterfly breaks from its pupa, unfurls its wings and comprehends that it is no longer a caterpillar.

Overcome by this experience of grace, Laura found Kristin tending an adolescent girl who had not been educated about the course of the maturity of the reproduction cycle. When Kristin finished speaking with the relieved girl, she asked her to wait outside and to send her father in. For the next few minutes Laura sat silent as Kristin chided the girl’s father for not letting the child know what was coming. Laura was not sure who blushed more, her, or the man.  Kristin handed the man a plain backpack full of hygiene products and sent them on their way.

“Poor man. Poor girl. His wife passed giving birth to her. They most likely don’t leave their homestead but once a year. I can count the times I have laid eyes on her, and this makes six, in all her twelve years. Her father tries, it is a miracle he even brought her here in the first place. But she best remember all I told her before the boys around here decide that she’s gonna be theirs. Her dad will remember, as embarrassed as I made him. But it’s on her to decide how her life goes by-God.”

Laura nodded. “What can I do?”

                                                             …

Hovered over two piles, Billy counted the Mexican currency, and Strongland counted the American. It took fifteen minutes to get to seventy-eight thousand and some odd dollars.

            Billy wiped the sweat off the side of his head that had been shaved to the scalp so the doctor could suture the gash he got in his beating. “That’s an awful lot of carnal knowledge…”

            Strongland nodded. “Jesus. Especially since this was what, fifty years ago?”

            “Bout that. Yep. Must be.” Billy peeled a thousand dollars off the American stacks, five hundred in hundreds, five hundred in twenties. “This should buy me a box of .45 ammo, cept’ I only need two rounds.”

            “How’s that Billy?”

            “On account I’ll fire one round into American dirt to make sure when it comes to putting the second round, into Mexican dirt, I’ll know if John Grady’s Colt can manage to not eat the barrel and send the metal back through my goddamn face.” Billy laughed.

            Strongland did not laugh, did not break a hint of a grin neither, he sure as hell did not find it funny. “Don’t you think we should stop by the hospital in Alamagordo and shove your ass into an MRI tube before you set off on this senior citizen revenge tour of Mexican whorehouses?”

            Billy kept on laughing.