Mister has spent the day hiking in the desert. He has been hiking for more than five hours. He has brought plenty of water and a hat and the right clothes. He has hiked through the desert many times and has learned to respect the sun and the landscape. As he walks, he is thinking of Grace. He remembers how she used to watch him when he was a boy. That is how he knew she loved him. Often, when she looked at him, he felt as though he was the most startling and beautiful creature in the world. He understood her looks to be the way she touched. The thought suddenly occurs to him that she’d looked a little thin, and much more vulnerable than she had ever appeared. He keeps running her image over in his mind. Something is wrong. He cannot let go of that thought. Something is wrong with Grace.
He is glad to be spending the morning in the desert. He loves the sand, the plants that fight each day to live. He loves the light.
Grace is sitting in a jury room in the courthouse. A judge has lent her the room for the afternoon—to have a session with Andrés. As she sits in the small room, she smiles at the thought of Dave. He has managed to put the session together. She knows it was not an easy thing to accomplish. She admires people who do not understand the word no. She looks at her watch, then gets up from where she is sitting and looks out the window. She has a perfect view of Juárez and the pale blue summer sky. She cannot remember a time when she did not feel small in the presence of the sky.
Rosemary Hart Benson buried her brother today in Lafayette, Louisiana. The funeral was small: herself and her husband, two frail aunts, and her next-door neighbor. He’d had no friends. The priest kept the mass simple and short. Her eulogy was two sentences long: “He was a sinner in need of salvation. Let us pray that God is even more generous than the most generous of us can dare imagine.” She did not call her children. She did not want them to attend her brother’s funeral. Though she did not fully understand how her brother came to be killed in El Paso, Texas, she did not doubt that he had a hand in his own murder. She does not hate him—but neither does she forgive him for his crimes. She has always been aware of his proclivities, and when her twin sons were born, she never allowed him near them. Once, when they were nine, he showed up and offered to take them to an afternoon movie. “Of course,” she said. “We’ll all go.” She was relieved when he moved to Texas.
She is in her kitchen, recounting all these memories. She is cooking a small dinner for her aunts. She feels numb and relieved. She does not understand why life is like this. She breaks down and sobs. Her husband finds her in the kitchen and holds her.
Dave is sitting in his office. He is thinking of William Hart. He decides he will send an investigator to talk to his sister in Louisiana. Or perhaps he will call her himself. He knows William Hart was a sick man. He is looking at his criminal record. The whole thing turns his stomach. He decides, yet again, that in his profession, he must take the low road to morality. I will put the victim on trial. That is what I’ll do. What I have to do.
Andrés is walking down a tunnel. The tunnel leads from the basement of the jail into the courthouse. As he walks down the tunnel, he feels the shackles on his ankles. They have spared him the handcuffs. “We just don’t want you to run, that’s all.” The officer smiles. Not a bad sort. He is doing his job. He walks down the tunnel, and it seems to go deeper and deeper into the earth as he walks. Maybe he is walking toward hell.