The Best American Mystery Stories Part 26

We got back in the car. Cheyenne cried out in salutation or complaint.

"And who or what is Truck?"

"Truck's my cousin," she said. "He's a genius at getaways. An escape artist practically."

Gwen was fishing in her bag, laying makeup compacts and emery h.o.a.rds on the dash. There was something else in there, among her women's things - a little revolver with a pearl handle.

"What's that for?" I said.

"In case something happens."

"In case what happens, exactly?"

She weighed it on her palm. "Something unforeseeable."

"If it's unforeseeable, you can't plan for it."

"Later," she said, "you may thank me."

It was dark when we left the highway. We drove a while on desolate back roads before reaching our destination, a whitewashed motel on the rubbled lunar plain. Our headlights caught the fender of a station wagon, and Gwen shot upright in her seat.

"That's him," she said. "That's Truck's car."

It was an old model Chevy, taupe-colored with polyps of rust on the side and cardboard in lieu of a window. The night air had a vague chemical taste, and it was clear that I had made a serious mistake.

I parked behind a Dumpster, then followed Gwen across the lot toward a half-opened door. All I could see of the room was the corner of a bed and a pair of large, vegetably feet. My stomach was doing a particular stock car maneuver I remembered from my glory days on the junior tennis circuit. Once, on a gra.s.s court in Flagstaff, I'd rallied with Ilie Nastase. It was a pristine day: high wind, and planes crossing overhead, contrails etched against a soft blue sky. The careering in my gut was such that I could barely execute a serve. Now with every step I took, the idea of return seemed more remote. As if sensing my doubt, Gwen hooked a finger in my belt loop and gave it a tug.

Truck wore a hunting cap and a suede jacket with ta.s.sled arms, and his eyes never strayed from the television screen, not even when you asked him a question. For the most part, he spoke to me through Gwen, as if I were immaterial, a phantom she alone could see. As for Gwen herself, she seemed positively enraptured by his company. She took off her shoes, sat on the dusty carpet, and laughed at all his comments, none of which were funny in the least. When she asked me to pick up whiskey, sandwiches, and corn nuts ("for baby Cheyenne"), I felt something close to grat.i.tude.

It was twenty minutes to the store and back, and the bird flapped plaintively all the way.

Truck took so long with the door that I wondered momentarily if I'd knocked at the wrong room. I could hear the shower running in the bathroom, and Gwen's things were piled on a chair. Truck lay across the bed. On TV a couple of old-fashioned pugilists boxed primly in black and white.

"Getty," Truck said to the screen, testing the sound of it. "What kind of a name is Getty anyway?"

"You'd have to take it up with my father," I said.

"I don't like it much."

"It wasn't my idea," I told him. Why was I defending myself to a person called "Truck"?

After a while, I said, "That's an interesting car you've got."

"You expected a PT Cruiser?" he asked.

I said that I hadn't. Still, his Chevy wasn't worth the speakers in my Volvo, and I told him so. He frowned at me and looked away. His fists were balled, and he tensed now and then as if to deflect televised blows.

"Actually, you're a help," I said. "Otherwise we'd have to steal something. And I wouldn't know how to begin."

"Thought you were outlaws," Truck said, glancing vaguely in my direction.

"That's Gwen's thing," I said. "Honestly, I'm not built for it."

"You said it, not me," Truck said, and snorted.

The bathroom door opened, loosing generous clouds of steam. Gwen appeared, her hair wrapped in an elegant nautilus-curl of towel, and briefly the room was an alpine spa. She had changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt, which read: IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING, SET IT FREE. IF IT DOESN'T COME BACK, HUNT IT DOWN AND KILL IT.

We ate our sandwiches on the double bed, with a fresh towel for a picnic blanket. Truck took the whiskey bottle and poured tall drinks into plastic cups provided gratis by the motel staff. I held mine for a minute or two, then set it down on the floor. Truck regarded me warily.

"I don't drink," I said.

"That's right," said Gwen, as if I'd answered a question that had plagued her all week.

I rolled and lit a joint. Truck watched it hungrily as I smoked, but he never asked and I didn't offer. We all lay down on the bed, Gwen in the middle. The two of them drank and talked about old friends who had come into money or disappeared or suffered unexpected injury. As far as I could tell, half their friends were either locked in jail or on their way. It was all surprise and reversal. Presumably there were others, friends who persisted stubbornly in their same dull orbits, but Gwen and Truck neglected to mention them. Time pa.s.sed and the two of them grew louder and happier.

I suggested that we get on the road.

"The room's paid," Gwen said.

"That may be true," I said. "Still, I'll be tired in the morning."

"Then Truck can drive."

She leaned over as if to embrace me. Instead she collected my cup from the floor and pa.s.sed it to Truck.

"Tell Smokey to relax," he said. And then, buoyant, "Relax, Smokey."

I told Gwen I had to speak with her privately, and we left the room and walked to the rear of the motel. Overhead a harsh yellow bulb flashed to life, and suddenly we were exposed among beer runs and other flotsam.

"Truck can drive?"

She blinked. "It's his car."

"You're saying that Truck is coming with us. That's what you're saying, isn't it? Jesus."

"Hey," she said, touching my chest.

"And for another thing, it's clear he's not your cousin."

"Of course he's my cousin," she said. "He's my favorite cousin, and the only one I've got."

"If this gets strange, I'll kill him," I said, and let this sink in. "That's what I am, a murderer, same as you."

She moved in close and clasped her hands on my sides. Together, we managed a lurching backward dance step.

"Trust me," she said.

She wore that beatific white smile of hers under which, ordinarily, I was defenseless as a fawn in a poacher's beams. But some change in the timbre of the night - the dogfight of moths around our heads - cleared my mind of love and s.e.x, and perhaps because I sensed that my anger could not possibly survive the ordeal of her holding me for even fifteen seconds more, I shook her off.

"This whole ornithology deal," I heard myself say. "You know what it is, don't you? It's a joke. It's f.u.c.ked. First off, you don't have a bachelor's degree."

Gwen didn't flinch.

"I mean - let me ask you this. Did you finish high school even?"

"And you're supposed to be some kind of role model? So the point of life is wearing your robe all day like a schizo patient. Well excuse me for trying to improve myself. There's more to life than weed and Cinemax."

Back in the room, Truck had removed his shirt. He was muscular in a Byzantine, plated way that made me think of lobsters in a tank. He spread out on the floor, with his pants and shoes on. Gwen gave him the bedspread and a pillow, and shut off the light. I undressed and inched carefully into bed, listening to the faint oceanic sounds we made. Gwen lay very still. I would have liked to hear her voice.

Some time later there was a cry of sirens in the distance, and cold fingers probed the flap of my shorts. All I could think of was Truck, three feet away. I turned over and fought my way to sleep.

In the morning sun fell on the lot in golden sheets. Gwen and Truck were sleeping, and I sat on the hood of my car.

Inside, the bird was dead. You could tell by the way she lay there on the seat, sideways like a tiny person, her wings askew. I didn't care. I had a new plan, and I was silently mulling it.

If I was going to live in Mexico, which apparently I was, and with Guinevere, and also temporarily with Truck, I would need money. And something else, something more elusive, like authority. And both of these were readily available, not three hundred miles east.

We would drive to Prospect, to the Chateau Syphilis - where my mother lived alone, or with some callow tennis coach or gardener from the third world. In the master bedroom, there was a safe that contained, among antique coins and articles of jewelry, a stack of bonds as thick as a phone book. I would borrow against the trust that was rightfully mine. It wouldn't be theft, only a form of accounting.

Gwen emerged from the room wearing her gauzy yellow blouse, through which her bosom showed clear as a Christmas present wrapped in cellophane. I was so transfixed that I forgot to prepare her for the spectacle waiting in the car. She held her stomach and bent as if she might be sick.

"Take it slow," I said.

The doors were still locked, and when I offered her the keys she looked at me with such utter desolation you'd have thought it was her infant laid dead across a bier of accordion-fold state roadmaps. For a long minute, she didn't move. She clambered across the seat and lay down awkwardly next to her bird. When she touched it, I half expected the thing to shudder into flight. She was talking, but not to me. It was the sort of voice TV parents adopt when they're tucking their kids into bed. Then she climbed back out, and it was just as if the channel had been switched. She cradled Cheyenne in her arms and said some terrible things about G.o.d, the world, me and Truck, and also herself. "Human love is f.u.c.ked," she said, poisoned with self-centeredness, jealousy, and doubt. "But an innocent bird loves with its whole heart." It struck me that the organ in question is roughly as large as a cashew, but I reserved this thought for myself. Truck stood shirtless in the doorway, looking lost. We were no comfort to Gwen in the least.

Truck drove with one hand and smoked with the other, and I watched through a gray window as houses reeled by and receded. It seemed incredible that each of these structures was someone's home.

After an hour or so, I said to the horizon, "We're going to make a detour not too far ahead. You'll both have to trust me."

Truck whistled. "He's your mess," he said to Gwen. "You clean it up."

When I turned and looked, her eyes were red from crying.

"Whatever he says," she told Truck. "Getty and me are in it together."

When the highway split, we proceeded east, toward Prospect and a house I hadn't seen in seven years.

When you're wanted for murder, and you're high on Humboldt Gold, even teenage girls in Saturns look like undercover cops. We were nearly home. Truck lay sprawled across the back seat, asleep with a hand thrust down his pants. He looked almost childlike, except for the lightning bolt tattooed across his neck.

Hours had pa.s.sed since Guinevere had opened her mouth. She just sat there pulling loose hairs from her scalp and holding them up to the light. My brain ran hot and dry imagining the many trials ahead. As if conjured out of thin air by my dread, a convoy of sleek, malignant eighteen-wheelers bloomed in the rearview and overtook us. The trucks were full of cattie - lean, pathetic things. They crowded at a line of portholes, angling their noses like dogs on a Sunday pleasure drive. Did they know, in their dusky bovine skulls, about the holocaust to come? It seemed a glimpse into my own future. A road sign promised gas and food in half a mile; there were sure to be police. Nothing would be simpler than to turn myself in. But to do so would mean parting ways with Gwen. In spite of everything, she filled me with the kind of grievous longing I hadn't felt since seventh grade. She was all I had left.

"Look," I said. "Cows."

She unbuckled her seatbelt and hugged her knees to her chest.

"I wish I hadn't done it," she said. There was a perfect freckle at the corner of her mouth. The sight of it gave me a feeling of hope.

"It's plain shoddy luck is all," I said. "One of those wrong time wrong place deals. Think of it this way. The night you were conceived, if your parents had gone to see Rocky instead, or if they'd ordered in Chinese. If your father wore a different pair of slacks, whatever, you could be skiing down the Alps right now. You could be a world-famous tennis champ. You could be chauffeuring those cows around. Blame the stars." I took her hand in mine. It was utterly dead in my grip. "Accidents happen," I said. "Everyone's a victim in this thing."

"No," she said. "It wasn't though. Not really I just - wondered if I could."

I looked straight ahead through the windshield. The sky was a rusty wash. Through an aperture the size of a volleyball, two gaunt Herefords peered back at me. One opened its mouth, disclosing a pink slab of tongue. Eventually I risked a glance at Gwen. She looked like somebody's daughter, perched there in the pa.s.senger seat. I gave her fingers an exploratory squeeze.

"OK, but my point is, you regret it, right?"

She squeezed back then, twice, as if signaling in code. A giddy warmth settled over me.

"We'll make up for it in Mexico," I said. "Plant a tree or something. It's going to be a whole different deal down there." I meant it. I could see the whole thing, with the vividness of recollection: sand in the sleeping bags and afternoon dips and the tang of grilling fish on the air.

"I wish I could take it back," she said.

"So do I," I told her. And as soon as I'd said it, I knew it was a lie.

We waited until nightfall, then made for the house. It stood atop a low ridge, a grand stone structure with wings that embraced the sculpted grounds, though coldly. We stopped at the gate. I directed my instructions to Truck. Kill the radio and headlights. Relax for a while. Then I got out and eased the door shut.

The night was electric with that wide-open amphitheater sound of insects chirring in gra.s.s. Right then, I knew that Gwen and Truck would be gone when I returned to the car. I stopped and held both hands open in the air. Ten minutes. The red point of Truck's cigarette bobbed a little, but if either of them waved I couldn't tell. The chalky driveway shone like a river in the dark. There was a wind, and I could hear the knell of cords lashing the flagpole in the yard.

In the 1980s, Sid had hosted lavish dinners at the house, big raucous affairs attended by some of Arizona's wealthiest and most influential drunks, people who filled our house with cigarette smoke and braying laughter. Those evenings followed a time-honored protocol: after an hour of c.o.c.ktails in the foyer, the peal of an antique bell summoned all present to the dining room where, through the addition of leaves, a table would be set for as many as thirty guests. An hour later Sid would charge his gla.s.s and deliver an interminable toast, thanking Phyllis and G.o.d and the GOP. Then he'd call out to his children. We came in from the hall. Antietam led the way, beating a slow somber march on a drum, and under die rheumy watch of my parents' guests, I would sing all five verses of Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic." On a good night I was allowed to leave without fanfare. Usually, though, there were compulsory handshakes and kisses, and occasionally I had to sing it twice. Then in junior high, a girl I knew vaguely from school accompanied her parents to one of Sid's soirees, and the sight of her leering through the bit about "the beauty of the lilies" so riled me that afterward I kicked a six-inch hole in my bedroom wall. It was the first shot fired in a war I'd been fighting ever since.

There were no cars at the house, and no lighted windows, which came as a relief but no surprise. My mother lived her life on an outpatient basis, dividing time between bridge, church, and her philanthropies. Often she was gone for weeks at a time, to places like Antigua or Palm Springs, for symposiums, concerts, or luncheons. Anything to save her from the house and its photographic memory, its clutter and familiar smells.

I found the front door locked, so I stole back to the greenhouse where we'd kept a key in a rusted watering can. To my great satisfaction, I found it with ease. I walked back to the door and unlocked it and stood for a minute, breathing. Then I crossed the threshold and shut the door behind me.

The house was mausoleum still. You could almost hear dust motes falling. I moved across the floor in small, uncertain steps, hands extended as if I were blind - which, temporarily, I was.

On the second floor, tall windows surveyed the grounds. My mother's topiary, once a skyline of Platonic forms, had a.s.sumed a kind of gothic disarray. Moonlight skipped across the parquet floor. I crossed the threshold into my father's office. The room was crowded with furniture under painter's tarps, so that it appeared as if I were standing among the ghosts of tables, chairs, and lamps. I sat down on a long sofa. Time pa.s.sed, and I spread out so that my face touched the plastic sheet.

Then the lights were on, and I lay there stiffly.

"Don't even breathe," came a voice from behind me. "I'm heavily armed." Unmistakably, this was Antietam, my brother.

There was the sound of a lamp overturned.

"Hey," I said from the sofa. "Ant, it's Getty. It's me."

"The h.e.l.l it is," he said. And there he was, white and disheveled, his hair so long and unruly that I took it, at first, for a wig. He wore a jersey with a picture of Che Guevara on it, and his arms were full of what appeared to be a Confederate infantry rifle, complete with bayonet.

"Unbelievable," he said, with something like a smile on his face, but he didn't lower the gun. "You're the spitting image of Sid, do you know that?"