Descent (12 page)

21

The boy awoke with
a start,
disoriented, lying in a narrow bed in a small room. It was the sound of animals that woke him, a high ungodly yipping nearby, and the distant baying of hounds. His heart pumping and his T-shirt soaked, staring in utter confusion at these ceiling poles, these blank walls.

He smelled the smoke and then he saw the ember arcing and lastly he saw the girl, sitting not far from the bed on the only other piece of furniture in the room, which was a rickety wooden chair. She sat with one bare knee drawn up to her chest, one thin arm roped around the knee.

“Christ,” he said, getting onto his elbows. “What is that?”

“What’s what.”

“That sound.”

“Coyotes. Fucking coyotes. Or, perhaps, coyotes fucking.”

He looked away from her, listening to them. She was watching him.

“What time is it?” he said.

“Three a.m. I couldn’t sleep with all of this.” She drew on the cigarette and exhaled. The chair creaked. “Do you want me to go?”

He stared at her, the milky shapes of her arms, her legs. She seemed to be wearing almost nothing.

He shook his head to clear it but it would not clear.

“Is that a no?” she said.

After a moment, he said, “—What?”

The girl watched him. If he moved just a little, toward the wall, she would take the space next to him, the way his little dog used to. The warm little body against his stomach.

She peered at him in the poor light. “Are you all right? You don’t look
so hot.”

The animal sounds abruptly stopped, and the girl cocked her head, listening. Then she lowered her leg and leaned toward him. “Who’s Caitlin?”

“What?”

“You said Caitlin in your sleep. Is that your girlfriend?”

Before he could answer, the door swung open and they turned to see it fill with the shape of Tom Carl.

The ember flew like a firefly to the stone floor.

“Hello, Thomas,” said the girl.

Tom Carl stood there. The brindle dog panting just beyond his legs. With surprising grace he stepped forward and took the girl by the arm and hoisted her to her feet and pushed her toward the door.

“Having a conver
sation
here, Thomas!”

“Conversation over. Go into the house. Now.”

She stood at the threshold rubbing her arm. They glared at each other, their kinship undoubtable, until at last she sighed and turned and strode away, her white legs scissoring at the dark. Tom Carl turned to the boy.

“Did you touch her?” His tone was not accusatory, nor hostile; no question in it as to what the boy had wanted to do—and no judgment about that either. There was only the wish to know if he had done it.

“No, sir.”

Tom Carl shook his head. He ran a hand through his hair. “I gave you work. I gave you a bed to sleep in. She’s fifteen, did you know that?”

The boy sat up and reached for his socks. His boots. “Nothing happened.”

Tom Carl watched him work his feet into the socks. He sniffed the air, looked about him, and stepped forward and brought his sandal down on the cigarette. He left without another word, and the dog, putting a last look on the boy, swung its square head and followed.

Outside, the moon was high and a weird spectrum of light lay over
everything—the trucks and the ruins of trucks, the looming mesas and the juniper and piñon that grew from their walls. All of it saturate, phantasmal.

The boy drew on his cigarette and looked to the north, to the place in the sky where he thought the mountains of Colorado must be, the white backbone of the Rockies, and there was nothing there, only the black, star-blown heavens on and on. A falling star put a scratch across Cancer and was consumed again, and with that signal the coyotes resumed their crying, their yelping and keening, very close.

He walked around the casita, but when he reached the opposite side he was sure the animals must be on the side he’d just left. He went back around and experienced the same certainty. There were things in the world that would not be explained. Entities were birthed from moonlight or from their own uncanny wills to be, to howl and to run and to mate and to hunt.
Andromeda on her rock watches the sea for the thing it hides, the black scales and the black mindless eyes, the hungry smile. Not far away, in mountains to the north, in the highest ranges, she knew these beings well. She fought and wounded and escaped them but more came on to snatch at her and carry her back, and
Don’t go,
she was about to say in the dream,
Don’t leave me,
and she fought and she ran, and the moon looked down from its bed of stars and did nothing.

22

Don’t do it, don’t you do it, don’t you get into that car, but she did, and he told her to buckle up and she did that too and they picked up speed, rocking along over the dirt road, his hand on the upright stick shift as upon some elegant cane, until he would suddenly throw it with slamming violence, as if this were the only way it would work.

Th
ey abandoned the dirt road in a hard right on the blacktop and she twisted around but there was nothing to fix in her mind but the red cloud of dust and the featureless world of trees and You just left him there, with nothing but the animals. Busted up and all alone and just a boy and you left him there.

She tried to read the odometer but couldn’t—and then remembered her watch.

What’s that? said the man. What are you doing there?

Setting the mileage, she said. She saw her heart rate and took a slow, deep breath.

You don’t need to do that, the man said. You just tell them take Fox Tail Road offa County Road 153. Sheriff’ll know exactly where to go.

She checked her phone.

Down the blacktop they went, banking left, right, the rubber sending out faint cries, the wind lashing the unravelings of her ponytail across her face.
Th
e pines stood back and blurred like bicycle spokes.

If he slows down you could jump, you could jump out and go into the woods and go back up to him. Or down.

She wanted the ground, the forces of the earth against her, each tree as she passed it singular and essential, like girls on the track. She would know what to do. Primally agile in flight, the pattern of the woods opening up to her, she would see path upon path and all of them going down.

Down to where? It might take hours. You could get lost, and what would happen to him then?

So, the man called, as if over a greater noise. What were you all doing up there, anyway?

She might have asked him the same thing. She checked the phone.

I say what were you all doing up there, anyway?

Running.

Running?

Yes.

Running from what?

She was watching the phone. What?

I said running from what?

From nothing. Just running. For training.

Oh. He braked into a sharp turn, downshifted, hit the gas again. Training for what?

For running, she said.

Th
at’s good, he said.
Th
at’s funny. You got a good head on your shoulders, don’t you.

Will you just please shut the fuck up? said the good head but not aloud.

Th
e road intersected another unpaved, unmarked road and he took it, plunging them down through the trees until they landed abruptly on another blacktop, or the same blacktop, and he took that road and she lost all hope of being the one to lead the way back. But the sheriff would know.
Th
e sheriff would know. How could you just leave him?

What’s your name, anyway? the man yelled.

What’s yours? she said automatically. Like a child.

He grinned and said something but she didn’t hear it, she’d turned back to her phone. It had changed—the tiny array of icons had changed. She thumbed the keypad, and waited, and her heart leapt as the radiant pulses of dialing graphed across the screen.

So what’s yours? said the man.

She pressed the phone to her ear.

It was late morning.
Th
ey’d be up by now and showered. Sitting in the cafe next to the motel drinking coffee and reading the local paper and trying not to look too often out the window—trying not to even though they’d chosen the table, without discussing it, for the view that would include, any second now, the paired familiar shapes of daughter and son, exactly as their minds saw them, demanded them, moving carelessly up the strange street. Maybe, waking up in the strange rooms, even in separate strange rooms, but waking up without kids in the strange rooms in the strange mountain light and the air that made the heart work, maybe they’d felt closer to each other. Maybe they’d laughed. Touched. Maybe their hearts were beating with a new old love over their coffees when the phone rang.

She was smiling, she was crying, already hearing his voice:
Hello? Caitlin? Where are you, sweetheart?
And then she did hear his voice, deep and steady and familiar in her ear, and though it was only his voice mail she began to sob.

Daddy,
she said, before the first blow landed.

23

A
t the end of
sleep
there was music,
low and thumpy and harassing him back into the world. Grant lay on the sofa with his knees drawn up, her lap replaced by a coarse little cushion she’d somehow slipped under his head. He sat up, boots to the floor, and passed his hand roughly over his face. The music was outside, the deep bass pulsing over earth and floorboards. He looked around the darkened room. What had he done? He’d kissed her, there on the dusty sofa. He’d put his hand on her breast and she’d put her hand over his. But when he began on the buttons she stopped him. Rubbed his shortened fingers in hers like coins. She didn’t want to be a drinking accident, she said. He’d put his head on her lap then and she’d traced slow circles on his temples with her fingers. She’d turned off the light when she left.

But no, here she was—the shape of her, at the kitchen window, framed in the blue light beyond.

“You’d better come look,” she said.

He got to his feet and went to her and they both looked out.

Six of them over there on Emmet’s porch. Three boys, two girls, and Emmet. All but Emmet holding beers. Two of the boys and one of the girls sat on the steps while above them in the rockers like lord and lady sat Billy and the Gatskill girl, the rockers close so she could keep her fingers in Billy’s hair. The El Camino was parked before them in the dirt, the beat pumping from the open windows like blood.

“There’s your hootenanny,” Maria said.

Emmet stood in the light from the screen door, one hand yet on the latch, his white hair wild on his head. He had taken the time to pull coveralls over his pajamas and to put on his old brogans though not to lace them. With his free hand he gestured toward the El Camino and spoke to Billy, and Billy said something in reply over his shoulder, and the others ducked their heads in laughter.

Grant raised his watch to his face. “Almost midnight,” he said. “Your daughter will be home soon.”

Maria stared at him in the dark. “This is a good time for me to go, you’re thinking?”

“No, probably not. But—”

Something was happening over there; Emmet was crossing the porch. He took two steps down between young hips before Billy stood from the rocker and seized him by the upper arm. Emmet looked in amazement at the hand on his arm and then into his son’s face. His glasses flashed blue in the farm light.

Maria took Grant’s wrist and said his name.

“Hold on,” he said. “Hold on.”

“He’s going to hurt him.”

“Hold on.”

Billy said something to Emmet and Emmet said something back and then Billy was hauling him back up the steps by the arm. Emmet dug at his son’s fingers and planted his feet but with a modest tug Billy yanked him off balance and got him clomping pitifully toward the screen door. Billy opened the door and guided the old man through and shut it again. They stood staring at each other through the screen. Then Emmet turned away and his shadow on the porch floor grew small, and then it was gone. Billy took his seat again to cheers and raised bottles.

“I’ll be right back,” Grant said.

“Grant, we should call someone.”

“Who?”

“Sheriff Joe.”

“He’s way up there in the mountains.”

“Then Sheriff Dave down here.”

Grant opened a drawer and began rooting through batteries and old tin flashlights.

“What are you looking for?”

“Nothing.” He stood and slipped the cartridges into his pocket.

“Grant, you know what he did to that Haley boy.”

“I heard about it.” He went out the door and down the steps, and the old dog came out from under the porch and limped along behind him.

“Evening, neighbor,” Billy said, hailing him from the rocker. “Everyone, this here is Grant, the old man’s hired gun, as it were. Grant, this here is everyone.”

The young people raised their beers and bid him good evening.

“And you brought my dog too, I see. Where’s he been hiding you girl, huh? Get on up here. Get up here girl. Come on now.” Billy leaned forward in the rocker and the black leather jacket, hangered on the high chairback behind him, stirred like wings.

The dog lowered to her belly and flattened her ears.

“God damn it,” said Billy, slapping his thigh.

“Let her be, Billy.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Grant.”

“She’s just a scared old dog.”

“She’s my scared old dog. Now get up here girl goddammit before I come down there and get you.”

Grant turned to look at the dog. She looked up and he made a shooing motion and she rose to all fours and slipped away into the dark.

“There goes your dog, Billy,” said one of the boys on the step. A lank and pimpled boy with a cigarette in his grin.

Billy stared at him until the boy’s grin collapsed and he looked away.

“I think maybe you better call it a night, Billy,” Grant said. “I don’t think your dad can sleep with all this. And fact is neither can I.”

“Really,” said Billy. “I didn’t think you had sleeping in mind, Grant.”

“That’s that waitress’s car,” said the pimpled boy. “The one what’s got that nigger daughter.”

Grant stepped up closer to the boy. He was truly a boy, younger than Billy by perhaps ten years. They were all younger, including the Gatskill girl. “You need to watch your mouth, son.”

“Is that right, Dad?”

“That’s right.”

“Shit, Vernon, that is right,” said Billy. “You talk like your dad fucked his sister and out you popped whistling Dixie.” There was laughter, and Vernon bared his bad teeth and said, “Hilarious, Billy.”

“I’m going inside for a minute,” Grant said. “I’d appreciate it if you all went on home like I asked.”

“I am home, Grant,” Billy said. “And there’s your irony: this wouldn’t even be happening if my old house over there weren’t otherwise occupied.”

Grant glanced back at the ranch house. The kitchen window a dark and featureless square in its face.

“There’s nothing to do about that tonight,” he said.

“No,” said Billy. “I agree with you there.”

Grant went up the steps and on inside and climbed the stairs. Emmet was in his bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed. He appeared to be giving great thought to his boots, down there on his feet. Grant sat beside him, raising a faint cry from the coils.

“I’m sorry if they woke you, Grant.”

“Oh, I was up.”

“They got no respect. Not one speck of it.”

“Em. Maybe we should make a phone call.”

Emmet looked up, his eyes behind the lenses bleary in their folds. “Who the hell to?”

“Maybe Joe needs to know about this.”

“I ain’t doing that, Grant. I ain’t calling one brother on the other. I told you that before.” He shook his head. “These kids will get tired in a bit and go home.”

“It doesn’t look that way to me, Em. Looks to me like they’re gonna make a show of it, especially now that I’ve come over.”

Emmet ran a hand over his face. “Who is that boy? I don’t even know who that boy is.”

They sat there, the beat from the El Camino like a heartbeat in the bed. Old sunken bed of marriage where the old man went on sleeping year after year on the side nearest the door.

“Where do you keep that shotgun, Em?”

“That what?”

“Just for show.”

Emmet looked at him. Then he flung a hand toward the closet.

Grant found the softcase and set it on the bed and unzipped it, releasing a smell of walnut and steel and gun oil. It was an old Remington 20-gauge side by side.

“You know how to handle that?”

“I used to have one not too different. It was my dad’s. Angela wouldn’t have it in the house once the kids got older.” He unbreeched the barrels and sighted the bores and snapped the barrels back. “You took good care of this,” he said, but the old man didn’t seem to hear him.

GRANT WENT DOWN THE
porch steps and reached into the El Camino and turned the key, killing the engine and the music. The chromium tailpipe shuddered out a final blue cloud and was still.

“Fuck me,” the pimpled boy said, “the hired gun’s got a gun.”

“What are you up to, Grant?” said Billy.

“I asked you to call it a night and now I’m not asking.”

“Did that old man put you up to this?”

“No, he was against it.”

“Well, what do you intend to do, shoot us?”

“No. I’m going to shoot the tire on one of these cars. After that, if you’re still here, I’m going to shoot another one. If I have to buy new tires tomorrow I will, but tonight the party’s over.”

“How we gonna leave if you shoot our tires?”

“Shut up, Vernon. Grant, I don’t believe you’ve got any ammo in that old gal.”

“You’re right about that.” He thumbed the lever and broke the shotgun, chambered two red shells and snapped the gun shut again.

“All right,” said Billy. “There’s phase one. But I guess we’re going to have to see phase two before these negotiations go any further.”

“Jesus, Billy,” said the girl on the steps. “Let’s just go somewheres else before this old man does something crazy.”

“Sit down and shut up, Christine.”

“These aren’t negotiations, Billy,” Grant said. “This is what’s going to happen next if you go on sitting there.” His voice was even, his chest calm. He thought about that as Billy lifted his cigarette to his lips and crossed a black boot over his knee. Billy tugged the hair under his lower lip, that shapeless brown tuft. Then he nodded, and Grant stepped around the El Camino and raised the gun on the front tire of a battered GMC pickup and with the stub of his forefinger squeezed the forward trigger. The gun kicked and a flap of rubber flew from the tire in a gaseous cloud and the truck buckled like a stricken horse and swallows burst from the spruce and wheeled amid the stars while the boom echoed away in the hills. The night air bittered at once with the smell of cordite and the rubber tang of old tire air.

“You shot my tire,” said Vernon, rising. “You fucking whackjob.”

Grant took a step and raised the gun on the toylike tire of a small red Honda.

“Billy!” cried the girl on the steps, and Billy laughed and said, “All right, all right.” He put his cigarette in his lips and gave a few claps. He stood from the rocker and offered a hand to the Gatskill girl. “Time to go, those who can.”

“What about my goddam truck, God damn it?”

“You heard the man, Vernon. Said he’d get you a new tire tomorrow, and you’ve already seen he’s a man of his word so quit your crying and get in
the car.”

As the young people loaded into the El Camino and the Honda, Grant looked at the stars. The patternless bright birdshot of ancient, monstrous bodies. Forces unthinkable. Passing him, Billy stopped and looked beyond him, peering into the dark foothills. He squinted as if he saw something out there and spoke: “What the hell—?”

Grant didn’t turn to look, and Billy dropped his cigarette and ground it into the dirt with the toe of his boot.

“Thought I saw somebody,” Billy said. He looked up into Grant’s eyes. “But there ain’t nobody out there. Is there, Grant?” He winked, and tossing the leather jacket ahead of him onto the Gatskill girl’s lap he swung down into the El Camino.

Taillights withdrew into the night. Grant stood with the Remington on his shoulder, the weight of the barrels, the shapely walnut grip, the warm triggers, the slam of the stock yet playing in his bones—all a strange pleasure to him.

Emmet stood at the screen door, one hand on the handle as if he were making up his mind whether to step out into the dark or latch the door against it. Grant held the old man’s eyes a moment, then he turned and began to walk back to the ranch house. A black shape separated from the shadow of the spruce and slid along the ground toward him and became the old dog at his heels, half crippled in her hips, panting softly, halting suddenly when Grant halted: there was movement at the ranch house, someone passing through the dark square of the kitchen window. A woman. She came back and remained there in the frame of the window, doing something with her hands, preparing something, as if she belonged there.

Grant stood beside the spruce with the gun in his hands, the dog quietly panting. He looked to the north and made out the shape of the mountains by their erasure of the stars along the base of the sky. In his dreams she was running—always running. Her heart strong and her feet sure, never stumbling, never tiring, mile upon mile, coming down like water. He looked to the north and he began to speak, as he did every night. He began to speak and the old dog stopped panting and grew alert, cocking her ears to the dark.