A Stranger Like You (32 page)

“Twenty bucks a question and we got a deal.” The old man lets him in. The man’s wife is in bed, staring up at the ceiling.

“Don’t mind her,” the man says.

“What’s the matter with her?”

“You gonna waste your money on her?”

Hugh looks around. “I heard he stole your truck.”

“Yes, sir. Cleaned me out of house and home while he was at it.”

“What color is it?”

“Red.”

“Any idea where they might be at?”

The old man holds out his hand and Hugh obliges him.

“I have no idea.” He grins at him, enjoying his little game. “I would doubt they’d gotten very far, though. Now that it’s been on the TV and all.”

Hugh glances around at the distant canyons. “You wouldn’t have a pair of binoculars I could use?”

“For a small price you can have anything you want. Even her.” He gestures to the old woman. Hugh contemplates her deeply lined face, her ragged breath.

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that,” he hears himself say.

The old man looks over at his wife.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“She had a stroke.” His eyes mist up a moment and he catches himself. “We get along all right.” The old man fishes his binoculars out of a drawer. “Now, look. There’s a road just down yonder—you don’t even have to drive into the park—it’ll take you up past Monarch Canyon, give you a real nice view of the valley.”

“That would be fine,” Hugh says, and the old man draws him a map.

“We can settle up when you bring those back.”

Hugh thanks him and gets back into Tom Foster’s jeep and drives down where the old man showed him and turns up the road into the canyon. The road is rough and deserted and he’s grateful for the jeep. He goes up about eight miles to the top of a peak then pulls the jeep off to the side and parks. He gets out and looks through the binoculars across the valley. The sun is lower now, a white disc. The sand is golden white, studded with sagebrush and cactus flower. It is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen and it makes him melancholy that his life has come to this.

He switches direction to the west and comes upon a herd of horses. They are running together across the plain, dark browns and bays and paints and palominos. Abruptly, the landscape changes to a cluster of houses in the shape of a horseshoe. There isn’t anyone around, no people or anything, except for this one truck parked alongside a house. A red Chevy pickup.

Hedda had thrown up the crackers and water. When he feels her head it’s hot. Her fever has returned. The Coke bottle had drained out and he’d removed the needle from her thigh. Now her skin has a pasty, yellow color to it, and her eyes are glassy as a drug addict’s. It is dusk; time to find a doctor; time to get the hell out of this place. He lifts the woman off the floor and carries her out to the truck. The air is cooler, and a swift wind blows. Daisy is picking wild flowers along the side of the house. There is beauty everywhere, he thinks, you just gotta know where to look for it. “Daisy,” he calls. “Let’s go.”

He sets the woman down on the seat. She’s flushed, enervated, and when she speaks it’s in a raspy whisper. “There’s something I want to say to you,” she says. “Before we go.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says gently. “What is it?”

“It’s about whatever it was you did. What the army wants you for.”

Avoiding her eyes, he looks around the empty cul-de-sac. Tumbleweed. Dead houses. A red sky.

“You can’t run forever.” She takes his hand and holds it tight. “You’re a good man. You’re not a man who runs away.”

He nods to let her know he understands, but he’s of a different opinion. She is a woman of dreams, not reality. And dreamers don’t make the laws.

Faintly, he hears Daisy singing. And then it goes quiet. Eerie quiet. He walks around back to look for her, but she’s disappeared. With his heart clanking he goes back into the house. “Daisy?” But the house is empty, like they’d never even been there. A chill washes over him.

Maybe she’s waiting in the truck, he thinks, and walks back around to the front to check, but it’s just the woman in the truck, no sign of her. And then he sees her coming round the corner of the house, only she’s not alone. There’s someone with her, holding her around her neck. Someone he recognizes. And he has a gun.

“I had to get stitches because of you,” he says, holding up the gun.

Denny thinks of his gun in the truck, under the seat.

“Get down on the ground. Go on. Do it now.”

Daisy squirms and he grips her hard.

“At least let her go,” Denny says. “You don’t want her getting hurt.”

“She’s already been hurt,” the man says. “It’s not right. It’s not right what happens in this world. She’s just a girl. She shouldn’t be here, with you. You should have known better. She needs a home, her parents.”

You can smell evil on people, Denny thinks. And this asshole reeks of it.

“Down on your knees. Put your hands behind your head.”

They had made their prisoners do it in Iraq. They’d lined them up on the side of the road. Denny could remember the look in their eyes. The bitterness. The hate. When you come to a point and you know it’s over and there’s nothing you can do about it. He doesn’t guess there’s anything worse than that.

“No, please,” Daisy cries. “Let him up.”

“It’s all right, honey,” Denny tells her, even though it’s not. Not even close. The ground is warm; it smells of dirt and life and death, too. It smells of everything he never did, or forgot to do. As a boy he’d wanted to go to medical school, something he’s never told anyone. But he wasn’t very good at school. And his aunt and uncle didn’t have the money to send him to any college. Still, he could have done it; he could have worked harder. Maybe taken classes someplace. One step and then another, that’s all it takes. He’d been distracted by stupid things, that was the truth. Thought he wasn’t smart enough; wasn’t good enough. It’s why he’d enlisted, he realized. He thought the army would be good for him. Make a man out of him and all that nonsense just like the commercials said they would. And the army was good; there were good things about it. But not the war. Nobody deserved to go to war. Nobody.

The man walks over to him and steps on his head.

If he survives this, he thinks, he’s going to turn himself in. He’s going to tell his version of the truth and hope for the best. The woman was right about him, he realizes. He’s not a man who runs.

It’s your turn, you think, your turn to make things right. You owe it to Denny. The gun feels heavy in your hand. Still, you are all right. You can make it. You get out, feel the ground beneath your feet. Your legs are shaking and your back aches, your kidneys, but it is of no consequence now. You have other things to worry about. The man’s name is Hugh Waters. It comes into your head, clear as a bullet. As you come around the front of the truck he sees you. Something registers on his face, a weary dissatisfaction, as though you have disappointed him somehow. “Drop your gun,” you say, because there is nothing else to say at a time like this, and you have thought about these sorts of scenes a million times, the fact that they never quite make sense, the fact that when there are two guns involved somebody has to fire first. And somebody has to die. You raise the gun, but you are shaking so miserably you’re not sure you can even fire it. Sweat burns your eyes, blurs your vision. Your heart pounds inside your chest.

He laughs abruptly. “So you were right after all.”

“Right about what?”

“The ending. You got out. You were saved.”

“That’s right. I was saved.”

“Kind of a shame about your boyfriend, though.”

“What?” You move a little closer.

“Tom Foster. Not much of a fighter.”

You stand there shaking, thinking about Tom. “What did you do?”

“It’s not like you were married to the guy.”

You don’t know how to fire a gun, that’s your trouble. You don’t know anything about guns. You assume there’s a safety release, but you can’t find it; maybe you just need to pull the trigger. Could it really be that easy? You’re afraid to do it. You’ve never been so frightened in your life. Tears stream down your face. You stagger closer to him, trying to get a better aim. That’s the whole problem with your life, you think, right there in a nutshell. Not having all the facts. Not being totally prepared. You’re so damn smart you get by with just a little effort. But where’s your commitment? Never really been committed to anyone, have you? Nope. True love and all that. Not for you. You’re way too cynical to buy into that crap.

If only you could see straight, you think. If only the world weren’t spinning.

“Put that thing down before you hurt yourself,” he says, and the line is familiar to you. It’s familiar because you’ve heard it in a thousand different movies, only this time it’s not a movie, it’s real, and he is not some endearing cowboy, but a man who wants to kill you. You want to tell him what a stupid line it is, but it’s too late. Your finger squeezes the trigger. And just before you pass out, you watch him fall.

In Foster’s jeep, they have no trouble getting through the checkpoint. The town’s a tiny grid. The clinic is on Irving Street. They spend some time trying to find it. It’s a small square building with a few parking spots out front. Denny pulls right up. He and Daisy get out and they walk around and open the door for Hedda. He pulls the woman into his arms.

“I’m getting kind of used to this service,” she says.

“Don’t get too used to it.”

“I guess we’re even now.”

“That’s right. Fair and square. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Her eyes shine.

People in the army used to say once you stood at death’s border you never came back all the way. You left something behind. Hocus pocus, he thinks now. Still, he feels something for this woman. Something profound. And she feels it too. And he doesn’t think either of them will ever forget it.

He brings her inside and raps on the shaded glass. The little door slides open and a nurse looks out and gets up right away and opens the door and tells him to bring Hedda inside and put her down on the gurney. Other people come over and get busy hooking her up. Denny identifies her as the missing woman from Los Angeles, the one on the news.

A doctor comes over to examine her and notices the bruise on her thigh.

“I had to make an IV,” Denny explains. “She was dehydrated. She’s been through a lot.”

“Lucky you did. I doubt she would have made it otherwise.” The doctor puts his hand on Denny’s shoulder, heavy and sure. “Good work, son.”

Denny backs out the door and his eyes go damp with pride. His work is done here. Plus he doesn’t want any more questions. Somehow he knows it’s the last time he’ll ever see her.

Daisy waits for him on the steps, the sun on her face. Sirens, fast approaching, fill the air. “She okay?”

“She’ll be fine.”

“What’s it like to be a hero?”

He shakes his head, about to deny it, but she’s waiting for his answer, her arms crossed over her chest with expectation.

“What’s it like? It feels pretty good. Now tell me this: What’s it like to be so beautiful?”

She just grins at him.

An ambulance pulls up in front of the clinic. “We better get going. There’s a bus station around the corner.”

“What about Tom’s jeep?”

“We’ll leave it. They’ll think we’re still here someplace.” He takes her hand. “You’re not scared, are you?”

He knows she is but won’t admit to it. Instead, she asks, “Are you?”

“I got you to protect me, don’t I?”

She smiles, humbly.

“Of course I’m scared. But being scared’s a whole lot better than being dead. Anyway, two scared people are better than one, that’s what I always say.”

The EMS attendants pull Hugh Waters out on a stretcher. As they pass, Waters gives Denny a look that leaves him cold. It’s the look of a man who’s already dead, but somehow, out of spite maybe, keeps on living, determined to drag the rest of the world down with him.

“Don’t look at that, it’ll hurt your eyes.” Denny puts his arm around the girl and pulls her close. “Come on, darlin’. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Just seconds after they turn the corner the cruisers pull up in front of the clinic, the whole place crawling with cops. They catch the next bus to Vegas and sit crammed together, holding hands. The bus is full of gamblers and servants. People trying to change their luck. Just now he is one and the same as them.

Daisy rests her head on his shoulder and he watches out the window as the little town fades behind them and the golden plains spread out, studded with sagebrush and cactus and Joshua trees. They pass shacks and ransacked pickup trucks and clotheslines strung up with sheets billowing and a flag-pole in the middle of goddamn nowhere, its flag snapping in the wind.
Let freedom fucking ring,
he thinks.

He closes his eyes for a moment and says a prayer for him and Daisy, then opens them with confidence, having negotiated their fate with the man upstairs.

You wake in a strange room, hearing a familiar voice. Tom.

“Son of a bitch almost killed me,” he explains to the nurse, a humorless woman with fastidious hands who is writing notes in a chart. “I guess I got lucky.” You feel him take your hand. “I guess we both did.” He looks at you. “Good morning, gorgeous. Feeling better?”

You don’t answer because you don’t feel better. You feel weak and sad. And you don’t want to talk. Not yet anyway. You study his face, the bruises and welts, his swollen hand.

The nurse opens the curtains, an assault of sunlight. You shut your eyes, sprouting tears, hearing her say, in an uncharacteristic tone of frivolity, “Oops, you lost one.” She bends to retrieve something off the floor and drops it into Tom’s palm, the petal of a rose.