PART THREE

Four men, myself included, set out to find the remains of my father and track down the man suspected of killing him, a fellow by the name of Louis Loving. Never did find Louis. Don’t suspect anyone ever will. Instead, we found something so much worse.

Wish to hell we’d never gone out there.

I had a responsibility to the three men I took with me into the desert. Owed my dear friend most of all, but the others demanded a debt as well. A good man ought to have every intention of paying back what is owed. And once delivered, I could attend my own grave matters with a clear conscience.

No way to forget what transpired during that long night. I dare any man tell me he could. Who would possibly believe any such thing without experiencing the perversity themselves? Only recourse seemed to be one of embrace and acceptance.

Knew but one way to reconcile all what come before. I set about to preparing reparation. Only when amends were made, in full, could I dare go back to that darkness.

I wanted to see him again.

***

My childhood friend Daniel Loving entered the world during a red evening in a late spring, according to my father. Nineteen Forty. Danny’s mother, Ruth, delivered the boy at a very young age when her heart still loved poetry, as she’d said on more than one occasion. Like a second mother to me. She often recalled that Danny seemed to be born searching. His father said little to, or of, Daniel.

Louis Loving cared for the boy and his wife but kept his emotions private. Man extended affections to my father but rarely anyone else. His love expressed itself through his distance, or so he thought. Danny grew up a wild youth because of this though his mother’s affections informed his actions, so, wild but not entirely reckless. Young man became a good fisherman and a skilled hunter. He learned to fight. And he believed these trades would make his father love him.

In all of the many things young Danny did, or set out to do, he searched most of all for a love which seemed missing. In all things, I believe, Danny spent his formative years searching for his father. And so, Danny’s affections were scattered like stars and, like stars, he seemed to wander when he became of age to do so. He never did wander too close to me. I’d have let him if he ever wanted, but we were not alike in that way. Eventually, his affections bought him no small amount of trouble in the form of a young woman’s growing belly and her aggrieved father, so Danny thought leaving town for the best. Though we’d grown apart, I found him work on a ranch not one day’s distance and for several months he earned keep and meant to save as much as possible in the hopes of making right the situation at home. But bad news cut his plan short and Danny found himself on the road back to Klamath Falls.

Word travelled over the mountain ridge and to that ranch that Louis Loving had gone missing and maybe worse. I sent the letter myself. But I forged his mother’s signature. Knowing Danny as I did, I knew he’d return for Ruth before he ever came to my beck and call. And his father, in a relative sense, had always been missing, so nothing new there.

I intended to settle the matter of my father’s murder, and I meant for Danny to be by my side when it happened. We’d already grown distant, and I knew if I acted on this by my lonesome that a gulf would come to divide us for our remaining days. Raw as my heart may have been, I simply could not have that.

In the day leading up to Danny’s return, memories washed over me of this place where we grew up. Events and ages of our respective times crisscrossed one another like a life lived all at once. Not a year had passed since he left, but my recollections seemed so far away from my present state of mind, and so removed from the life he’d since chosen to live. Childhood crushes, scraped knees, learning to drive, fights with father and mother’s tears, all of it may as well have been a stranger’s memories. But they were mine and I knew it. Why else would they hurt so much?

The sun finally fell beyond the horizon. A lack of light offered me some small relief. Wasn’t sure how much I wanted to see quite yet. If memories of Danny taxed my heart to such a degree, then the reality of seeing him might just have devastated me. Somber shadows acted as balm for the queasy homecoming. I felt thankful for the dark.

And nighttime is kind to Klamath Falls. The city sits near the river and its businesses and houses pepper the basin valley like wildflowers fed by the currents. After the sun does fall down, all the telling details of a hard-living town vanish amidst the glow of artificial light. Even an ailing tree can have a kind of majesty when wrapped in colored lights in a darkened room. A city is no different.

Downtown Klamath sprang from the riverfront and ran towards the hills to the north. There were a handful of bars within walking distance of the Link River Bridge, which Danny would certainly cross as he came home. And I suspected his arrival. The owner of the ranch rang me up and let me know Danny took off. I had a strong suspicion he’d end up in Peterson’s bar. Place had been our fathers’ old haunt, after all. Booze would help ease through the feelings, of which I’m sure he had as many as I.

And though eager to see my friend, I carried with me no small sense of defeat as I made my way into the darkest and most deserted of the downtown watering holes. I sat in the corner, in the dark, as far from everyone else as possible. There I waited and hoped in vain that no violence would come of my machinations.

Handful of men sat at the bar itself. Three more played pool in the back, adjacent my dark corner, but they paid me no mind at all. An older woman sat and fed a bobcat chained to the end of the bar nearest the entrance. She made baby talk to the animal. No one else said anything. And no one looked familiar. Wouldn’t be the first time I felt like a ghost in the very town where I grew up.

Nicotine hung heavy in the air. So did suspicion. It’d been years since I had a smoke. Rolled my own when I could, but rolled my last after an uncle was chewed apart by cancer. I sucked in and tasted the air and hated to think I’d have to make do with the second-hand variety. But I couldn’t imagine asking to bum a smoke from anyone in Peterson’s bar.

“No sir,” I whispered.

Then the door cracked open and my heart jumped. He didn’t see me, and I found myself at a true loss for words. Daniel sat several stools away from the nearest drinker at the bar. He nodded to the bartender. And the bartender shuffled over and leaned on an elbow and delivered some side-eye to the young man.

“What’s yer poison, Mac?” asked the bartender. The lanky fellow wiped a glass with an off-white rag. He flashed a smile right about the same color. Bad teeth made Danny uncomfortable and he unconsciously ran his tongue across his top teeth and gums.

Danny leaned forward when he spoke and offered a grin. “Buy some smokes?” he asked.

“Sure,” said the bartender with a nod.

“Okay to smoke in here, I guess?”

The bartender raised an eyebrow and motioned around the establishment. “Don’t put it out on the bar or the floor,” he said. The bartender grabbed an ashtray from beneath the bar and set it in front of Danny.

“Fair enough,” said Danny. “How late are you open tonight?”

“Shit,” said the bartender with a laugh. Then, he spoke up for the whole bar to hear, “I guess maybe when I close depends on how much I’m selling.” He looked around but none of the patrons seemed to give him notice.

Then, one of the fellows at the end of the bar laughed a little, a glimmer of mirth.

“Gimme your cheapest beer,” said Danny.

Bartender shrugged his shoulders. “We only got but the two kinds,” he said.

“Whatever costs less,” said Danny. “I’m not picky.”

“Bottle okay by you?”

“Bottle’s fine.”

“A’ight, then,” said the bartender, and he crossed his arms. “Sixty-five cents, Mac. A bottle of beer is cash up front. Too many try to run out on a tab.”

Danny reached into his pocket. “I can do that,” he said, and tried to work out a loose bill. Unfortunately, and quite by accident, his entire savings spilled onto the floor. He may as well have shattered a glass or banged on a piece of metal siding.

I didn’t make a move, then, though I should have. Knowing I had my knife on me set my mind at ease a bit. And Danny was always good for a show. He had fast hands, stronger than he looked, too.

If he didn’t have everyone’s attention before, he surely did after seven months’ worth of earnings hit the ground. Every fellow in the bar watched as young Danny picked up his cash. Only person to pay him no mind sat up front, feeding a wild cat. All those men, even the bartender, made eyes at Danny the way that bobcat looked at the old lady who fed it.

Peterson’s bar only had the one entrance. Danny surveyed the room and I held my breath. I think he saw me but I couldn’t have looked like much more than shade dressed in clothes. I wasn’t as antsy as the rest, either. Two guys, younger than everybody else and probably looking to live it up, correctly surmised this was not their crowd, so they beat feet. Their exit left but one other guy at the bar. Then there was the lady jabbering to the goddamned cat. Two of the guys playing pool must’ve gone into the john. The third guy in that party leaned on his pool cue and stared towards the bar and probably at Danny, since Danny had an unfamiliar face and, apparently, a lot of money.

Or, god forbid, the fellow recognized him. After all, Rae’s daddy had supposedly offered a reward for the man that knocked up his little girl. People do all manner of crazy things for money. And love.

So, that was a total of six, which included the barkeep. I figured the number could probably be whittled down to five, since the old lady didn’t seem to be a part of their little universe…or anyone else’s. And it made no sense to include the bobcat, chained as it was.

The guy at the end of the bar, who chuckled to himself, he got up all casual and sauntered up to the entry and took a seat by the door. Danny, clever as ever, pretended not to notice. He tapped the bar and said, “I think I’ll take another beer.” Danny never carried a weapon, but I’ve seen him knock a man unconscious with a bottle on two separate occasions.

Like a lot of dive joints, the place was long but not wide. The bar itself ran a good sixty feet and probably sat a lot of thirsty folks on a busy night, but this was late Wednesday in a blue-collar town. Busy nights kept relegated to Fridays and Saturdays, while the rest of the week went to the hardcore drinkers and dealers. Depression and bad intentions patronized a joint like this on off nights.

What light the place had going burned low enough to make rotten decisions look like great ones. The floors consisted of dark wood and a rough finish, typical of a place like Peterson’s. Probably saw its fair share of beer and bodily fluids. If a community had a magic mirror, it was the local dive, the dark corner of a city’s soul.

That fellow still sitting by the entry, he didn’t try to hide the fact that his eyes were trained on the kid with too much money in his pocket. No good would come of trying to run for the door, so Danny drank his beer and waited and watched and wondered when the fight would kick off. When that beer finished, he drank another and waited a while longer. I waited with him like a guardian angel. It wasn’t the first time, didn’t figure it being the last.

Near half an hour passed before our patience seemed to pay off. One of the pool players walked up to the bar and tapped on Danny’s shoulder. I didn’t think to draw my knife and I didn’t want the attention. I doubted one fellow would pose much of a problem. Couldn’t guess how long it’d been since I’d seen my friend in a fight.

Danny saw the fist and immediately scowled as he turned around. In that moment, he wasn’t even one-hundred percent sure whose fist flew at him. Not that it mattered. He’d find out soon enough. And as long as it remained one-on-one, the fight ought not to be a problem. He wouldn’t want to have to take on a bar full of bored drunks, but he worked too damn hard for that money. I’m sure he didn’t plan on giving it away for free. Not that I’d let it come to that. I just hoped to hell no one in there was packing.

Danny leaned back, but not far enough, so he rolled with the right hook and let those knuckles slide off his left cheekbone. The punch would’ve done a lot of damage if it’d made full contact. A fist clocked to the head isn’t at all like on television or in movies. Fists always hurt, every time, though if you get socked enough then you have a better chance of taking the blow and moving on. Still, a well-placed crack to the head can knock anybody out, no matter how big you are or how often you go to the gym. A good boxer, even a golden glove out of the Windy City, will fall as hard as the laziest sack of shit you can think of. Hell, a single punch can kill a person if you know what you’re doing. The human head doesn’t take too kindly to being rattled about.

Daniel’s childhood had been filled with bloody noses and wild fisticuffs, the kind of fights kids have, arms swinging all over the place, each boy too worked up to do any real damage. He’d get a bruise or a swollen eye. Mom would overreact. Dad would worry about it happening again, since dad likely went through the same thing. Parents, as a general observation, do not like seeing their children’s blood. Most folks will try to hash things out with the parents of the offending party, which often leads to fights of their own. Others will enroll their precious little angels into the local boxing classes. The Lovings had been of the latter variety.

Earnest Ham was the first kid to do real damage to Danny. He had been a grade older than the incoming freshman and the boy’s fathers hated each other. Herman Ham goaded his son into picking on the younger boy. Louis Loving warned Danny Loving to expect a hard time from the Ham kids and they did not disappoint. On the first day of freshman year, the right zygomatic bone in Danny’s face was fractured by Earnest.

It was a sucker punch that had caught Danny off guard and when he leaned forward to catch his breath, Earnest cold-cocked him. Danny woke up in the emergency room. His jaw would be wired shut for the next ten weeks. Earnest broke two fingers, though since the altercation happened off school grounds and outside classroom hours, he faced no disciplinary actions from the school. My dad begged me not to do anything stupid in retaliation.

“It’s Daniel’s fight,” he had said.

Louis Loving bemoaned the money wasted on boxing lessons and washed his hands of the whole thing. He was no fighter, himself. Ruth Loving’s approach was both warmer and colder than her husband’s. Danny told me that she kissed him goodnight and brushed his hair with her fingers for a long time. “I love you,” she had said to him, “but you simply have to fight back. It doesn’t even need to be a fair fight, really. Pummel him when he least expects it.” That was her sage advice. “Go after him in the middle of class, in front of everyone,” Ruth said, “even the teacher. Not right away, mind you. Wait till your teacher is in the middle of reading, or going over a lesson, and then casually go over to Earnest and hit him just as hard as you can. You’ll get into trouble, but not with me. Not with your father. I promise you that. The world is full of people like Earnest. You’d better learn how to deal with them.”

I admit to some amount of jealousy with regards to Ruth. My mother did not live long enough to give me such advice. Whatever maternal relationship I had was fostered vicariously through my friend and that luminous woman.

Danny braced himself against the bar. The attacker meant to have another go but Danny kicked the guy in the gut and sent the fellow ass over elbow. Danny leaned down and grabbed his attacker.

“Get up, you sonofabitch,” he said.

I should have jumped up and put an end to it right then and there. But the moment got away from me. Truth be told, there was a small part of me that kind of wanted to see him hurt a little.

A loud snap echoed in the bar and Danny threw a hand out to his upper back. Shattered chunks of pool cue clattered to the floor. One of the other pool players stood beside Danny. Terrible idea, if you ask me.

Danny swept his second attacker’s legs out from under him. The guy hit the floor hard enough that it winded him and he gasped and choked. Danny crushed that man’s groin with an elbow, and then he bounced back to his feet.

Two of the pool players were down and out. But the other guy, the third party, he stood a couple of feet away and held his pool cue like a baseball bat. “You some kind of fucking cop?” the man barked. He lurched forward with quick jabs in an attempt to intimidate and jerked the pool cue as if he might swing at any second. Those boxing lessons came in handy for guys like this.

Danny studied the fellow’s body language, looked that man up and down. He might swing that cue awful fierce but he definitely didn’t look like he wanted to fight, and that was certain. Not that he really knew how to fight, seemed to me, and the way he held himself was purely defensive. He didn’t want to get hurt. Nobody ever does. Fellow stood at about five-nine and weighed a buck-fifty at the most; dirty blond hair in a crew cut, wiry little arms defined more by malnutrition than by strength.

Danny took a step towards the guy. “I’m gonna make you eat that fucking cue,” he said.

But Danny received a surprise blow to the back of his skull. He staggered for a moment, reached up and felt the back of his head. He looked at his hand and it was as bad as I feared. The palm was slick with red. Blood dripped to the floor and splattered amongst pieces of a shattered beer bottle. He glanced behind him at the offending party. The guy at the door had gotten off his stool and snuck up behind him, used Danny’s own beer bottle to do the deed, which added insult to injury. The bartender wasn’t too far behind and he had a baseball bat gripped in his right hand.

Shit, I thought.

Bartender pointed his bat at Danny and said, “You done started trouble in the wrong bar, Mac.”

Danny steadied himself as best he could. “You know, I believe you’re right,” he said. “I’ll just be seeing myself out—

Mister skinny-arms with the dirty blond hair creeped up and used his pool cue to put Danny in a choke hold. The guy that busted the bottle on his head reared up and punched Danny square in the gut. “Hold him up, Marvin,” the guy said. “I’m a bust his face real good.”

Not a one of them saw me stand up in the dark.

The bartender smacked his bat against one of the high-top tables and hollered. “Now you hold on a god damn minute.” He marched up and shoved the eager pugilist backwards. “You done had your turn. I ain’t played baseball in a long time.” He tapped the end of the bat on the floor, twice. “You like baseball, Mac? I used to play when I was yer age, wasn’t half bad. Not a lot of homeruns, but I always got a hit.”

I figured I waited too long and Danny only had two ways out of this mess. One scenario saw him going to the morgue. The other scenario involved God Himself coming down from Heaven to lend a helping hand. Can’t say I minded being his guardian angel. Made me feel like he needed me, even if a part of me knew I had a hand in his current predicament.

Then, the bartender hunkered down into a real hitter’s stance. He spread his legs evenly and kept his weight balanced in his hips. He held the bat out to test the distance and rested it lightly on Danny’s cheek. And then, he pulled back as if waiting for a pitch.

“Too high,” Danny gurgled.

“What’d you say to me?” asked the bartender.

“Elbow’s too high,” said Danny. “Your back arm should be in the same plane as your rear shoulder. No wonder you didn’t get any homeruns. You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing.”

“You sack of shit,” said the bartender. He spat on the floor and raised his bat like a club, like a caveman would.

Even though I carried the knife, I’d never had to use it, not once in my whole life. The blade looked as nice as the day I bought it. Thought that was about to change. My daddy told me everything changes when you kill a man, every little thing, even the taste of food. I didn’t believe him at the time.

Danny closed his eyes. I came out of the shadows intent on putting my blade into any man that wanted it. But I didn’t even get to raise my weapon.

Now, normally, when folks hear the loud report of a hand gun, it rightly fills a person with terror, but I daresay Danny flushed with relief, even if his ears rang like crazy. Mine certainly did. When he opened his eyes, I think he expected to see a cop or two standing at the entrance, like angels from on high. Maybe they’d flash badges and yell at everybody to get their hands up, like on the teevee. State he was in, I’m sure he hoped they’d radio in an ambulance. Danny had been worked over and looked like he meant to pass out.

Except, what he saw in front of him wasn’t anything like that at all.

I had forgotten about the old lady and the bobcat. From the looks of things, everybody else forgot about her, too. The baseball bat sat on the floor. The slugger had a huge chunk taken out of it by the bullet she fired, which knocked it clean out of the bartender’s hands. The old lady was a good shot and I thanked my lucky stars for that.

“You boys had your fun,” she said, and motioned toward the back of the bar. “Now go on. Put those hands on the pool table where I can see them. I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

Smoky tendrils crept from the barrel of her gun and wrapped around the woman. She seemed to simmer and steam, like an angry spirit. Gunpowder smelled like Hell. The bobcat stood with its back arched high and screamed like a witch in a nightmare I had as a child.

Danny woke up in a white claw-foot tub. The old woman and I had sat him upright, with his head rested against the rim. She filled the water up to his waist. May have started out warm but I figured it got plenty cold since, enough so that the sensation dragged him back into consciousness. Surely, Danny’s body still hurt from the whipping, so I couldn’t imagine he didn’t appreciate the chill. His skull must have felt like it weighed a million pounds, the way he let it roll on his shoulders. Danny reached up and found a towel had been wrapped around his head. Finally, he noticed me on the toilet, sitting and watching him.

Not using it, just to be clear, only waiting for him to wake up.

“You sent that letter, didn’t you?” Danny said.

I said, “How you figure that?”

“Mom’s handwriting,” Danny said, “isn’t nearly as nice.”

“But you came anyway” I said.

Danny shrugged his shoulders. “Figured you impersonating my mom meant something mighty important. To you, anyway.” Danny groaned and shifted his weight in the tub, trying to move to his side. He faced the wall, his back to me.

My mind raced. I wanted to say so many things, too many things, and I felt like if I opened up, then everything would rush out in a flood and we’d drown. I opted for keeping my mouth shut. Let him do the talking if he wanted.

The bathroom itself appeared immaculate. Soft, recessed lighting above, no dust, no offending odors, you’d almost assume the room went unused. Bottles of shampoo and soap, each filled to varying degrees, were the only signs of life.

The tiled floor wasn’t solid white, there was a hint of blue, and the grout was without stain, likely as gray as the day it was set. White wood trim lined the bottom half of the walls and stood as high as the tub was tall. From the top of the trim to the ceiling, everything was robin egg blue, a cool and tranquil color. A couple of framed black and white photos of flowers hung parallel to the door. I swear I could smell them, a perfume I couldn’t quite place.

The room must have meant a lot to the woman if she kept it in the present state. Clean as a hospital ward, or, perhaps even more fitting, a sanctuary. The old lady had been nice enough to let us into her private getaway. I felt very much like an intruder.

The bathroom door opened, slowly. She poked her head in and smiled at me. Gave me a little wave, and then whispered. “Haven’t seen so much blood since the war,” she said. “But I’ve stitched up worse, believe me.”

“I thank you, surely I do,” I said. “I imagine you’ll want us out of your hair directly.”

Danny looked over his shoulder and said, “Who the hell are you, lady?”

“Surprised you don’t remember me,” she said.

Danny sat up, sloshing the water, and turned to face her. He stared her up and down, and then looked back and forth from the old woman to me, as if I could solve this puzzle for him. I shook my head.

“No, ma’am,” Danny said. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a clue.”

“Eunice Smith,” she said, “I taught English at the high school. Ernie Ham beat the holy hell out of you, if I recall. I never liked that boy, but you always seemed like a good kid. A smart kid. What the hell were you doing in Peterson’s?”

“Getting my ass kicked,” he said.

“Well, you certainly did a stand up job of that,” Eunice said. “Shame your friend here didn’t jump in any earlier. Imagine I’d have you both in my tub.”

“Nicky’s a lover, ma’am, not a fighter,” Danny said and laughed.

“Well, you should be grateful for him,” Eunice said, as she stood next to me. “He limped your sorry butt to my car, not that you probably remember any of that, or the nonsense you talked while I drove the two of you back here. Passed out before we could get you in the tub. But we managed.” She patted me on the shoulder.

Felt good to have someone in my corner.

Eunice snapped her fingers and pointed at Danny. “You go on and wash up now,” she said. “There will be clothes on the bed in the room at the end of the hall. I took the liberty of throwing yours away since they were covered in blood and looked dreadful. I’ll be waiting downstairs.” She walked out and into the hallway.

“The money?” Daniel said.

“Don’t you worry,” Eunice said. “I’m no thief.”

I winced.

Danny called out. “I didn’t mean that!” But Eunice didn’t respond. Danny cringed at his own remark and rested his forehead against his palm. I felt even more like an intruder than before.

“Hurry up,” I said, and then got up and walked out.

The upstairs hallway was without a window. The only light present crept from the open doorway at the opposite end of the hall. A second door in the middle of the hallway had been shut. Guessed it to be the master and I let my fingertips brush against the door as I passed. I wondered if that room was as well-kept as the bathroom.

The open room faced east and soaked up the morning gloom. A pair of folded denim and a plain white button down sat on the foot of the bed, as promised. They were clean, for sure, but smelled as though they’d sat in a drawer for a long stretch, maybe years. I glanced around and sitting on top of the dresser sat a framed picture of a young man. A Purple Heart hung off the corner of the frame.

These had been the clothes of a son and this had been a son’s room.

Bedrooms often told stories of those who slept within their quarters. Unlike the formality found in living rooms and parlors, a bedroom was home to more personal accents. Candid photos of lovers and friends, keepsakes and trinkets, it all served as commemoration for moments made memory, the kind of bittersweet affects that would cause the owner to pause and reflect.

This entire bedroom was a keepsake, but it didn’t belong to the deceased son. I gathered this was Mrs. Smith’s museum to a life snuffed out. I wondered if the bedroom was as it had been, or if the woman had arranged it just so. Perhaps the room was as her son left it, only tidied up a bit, as it seemed the woman was wont to do.

Everything was clean. Everything was ready. This room waited for a return that would never, ever happen. I stood in the center of a broken heart.

Mrs. Smith sat at her linoleum kitchen table. She read the morning paper with one hand and held a steaming mug of coffee in the other. Two more cups sat across the table and two chairs had been pulled back and obviously meant for Daniel and me. Neither of us could help but notice the gun which sat on the table by her elbow.

Danny motioned to the revolver. “I’m not some kind of criminal, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he said. “I’m not wanted or anything.”

She did not look away from her paper. “It had crossed my mind,” she said.

“I’m trying to keep a low-profile,” Danny said. “I mean, I was. I kind of mucked that up.”

Mrs. Smith let the paper fold over and she looked at him. “I hear your daddy is in trouble,” she said. Her eyes turned towards me and she added, “Among other things.”

I nodded and said, “You heard right.”

“And you think you’re going to swoop into the desert”—she paused and smiled, looked down at her feet and shook her head—“and play the hero.”

“Say it like that and it sounds silly,” I said. “But, yeah, guess that’s what I aim to do.”

Eunice said, “You know, I hate to say it, and I hated hearing it for so many years.” She rested a palm on the handle of the revolver. “But is there anything I can do to help?”

I considered the beating Danny took at the bar. He tried to take in a deep breath but his ribs hurt like hell. I could see it in the way he screwed up his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. Odds were high we’d run into trouble of that sort again. I needed as much of my cash as I could keep, but parting with a little bit wasn’t going to hurt.

The price of the gun was negotiated quickly and a little extra thrown on top for the woman’s kindness. Eunice Smith wished us well and hoped the best for us both. Finally, she made mention of her son, and how Danny reminded her of him. She retrieved her son’s leather bomber jacket from the living room closet and presented it to Danny. “It gets cold at night in the desert,” she said. And, as it had been with her son, Eunice Smith would never again see Daniel Loving. He walked through the front door of her home and into forever.

The sun threatened to crest Hogback Mountain as Danny and I walked up to my car. Sunrise was an event I had always held in high esteem. Hardly anything more beautiful existed in the world than a sunrise on a clear day. It was unfortunate that it happened so early in the morning. I always fancied myself a night owl, fond of brunch but never breakfast. But Danny, he was worth the inconvenience of dawn.

“You’re better off asking the police for help,” Danny said. “Nothing good’ll come of this. You have to know that. There are people that don’t want me back in town. Rae’s old man, most likely, is one of them. You have to understand something. I didn’t leave town because I wanted to. I left town because I was asked to do so. Now, you seem to be a fine little detective, digging up clues, meeting me out here and forging notes. That’s why I don’t think you need me for this thing you’re setting out to do. I don’t need you piecing that mess together. I don’t want to find out what you want to find out. It’s not going to help you, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna help me none. You think my dad’s guilty and you came looking for a ghost to help you prove it.”

I sprang in front of him. “I’m not looking for a ghost, goddamnit,” I said. “I’m looking for my friend. I cannot do this without you.”

Danny said, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I don’t need to hear a goddamned peep out of you,” I said.

“Because you think I’m going to do the right thing,” Danny said. “Is that it?”

“After you knocked up Rae, I watched you throw your whole life away because you thought it was the right thing to do. You left town, left everything and everyone behind, no questions asked,” I said. “That’s a hell of a resolve. I hate you for it. I surely do. And I miss you something fierce.”

Danny said, “I didn’t have anything to do with your dad getting killed.”

“Never crossed my mind,” I said.

“You asked me to come home, so I did,” Danny said. “Simple as that.”

“Louis is a suspect,” I said.

“There can be more than one,” Danny said. “Is he an official suspect, or is he just your suspect?”

“About a month or two ago,” I said, “I get into this really weird conversation with a city clerk. I don’t know him very well, but he’s nice enough. As he’s passing me on the sidewalk, he grins real big, asks if my dad is going to be looking for a new line of work. I shrug my shoulders. Not unless surveyors office goes out of business. To which he says, I don’t know about out of business, but it looks like it may change hands real soon.”

Danny said, “How would a city clerk know any of that?”

“Exactly what I asked him.”

“Let me guess,” Danny said. “He heard it through someone else.”

I laughed. “Of course he heard it from somebody else,” I said. “Living in Klamath is like playing a giant game of telephone.”

“Friend or relative?” Danny said.

“Neither,” I said. “His wife, turns out, she’s a secretary at Noble & Sterling.”

“I thought they did wills and estate stuff.”

“They do indeed,” I said. “But this wasn’t about a will or anything like that. It was a contract, a sales contract, to be precise.”

“And my father was the one asking for it,” Danny said.

“Bet your ass he was,” I said. “Didn’t think squat about it at the time. The business never interested me, really, couldn’t have cared. Always left that shit to the old man. But when the police found his body out in the desert, that weird conversation came roaring back to me.”

Danny said, “You reckon he tried selling the business without your dad finding out?”

“I do not think your father was selling anything,” I said. “Bet you he was trying to buy.”

“Guess your dad wasn’t selling,” Danny said.

“That,” I said, “is a helluva way to put it.”

“And you,” Danny said, “want my help finding the man.”

“If he did it,” I said.

“You think that will make everything square between you and me,” Danny said. “Right?”

“I guess shit will never be square between us, Danny. But maybe you won’t think we need to be enemies. Hell,” I said, “you do this thing I’m asking and I might even try to forget you exist.”

“Sounds alright by me,” he said.

“Let’s call it a deal, then.” I held out my hand. “You and me are going to shake on it,” I said, “like gentlemen.”

And we shook.

Not a word passed between us during the whole drive out to Adel. We met with the two men I’d hired to help track Louis Loving. They claimed to know the desert like the back of their hand. They knew every coyote well. No trouble whipping up jackrabbit stew, either. Even claimed to have helped build a church out there, years ago, for a mad preacher who found himself gunned down.

We ate one last civilized meal in the town’s lone diner. The hired hands talked amongst themselves, with both Danny and I interjecting on occasion, but never addressing each another. If the men noticed, then they kept it to themselves or didn’t care. They’d get paid either way.

After dinner, those fellows took us to a livery stable at the edge of town and arranged for our transportation. Four horses, one for each of us. Dark crept across the sky by the time we hitched up and rode southbound into the desert.

When I looked up, I didn’t see a single star in the sky.

Ed Best was running his trap but Ed was taller and wider and meaner than the rest of us so we let him.

The four of us were sitting around the campfire drinking whiskey to stay warm. Oregon desert is cold at night and dark and the stars never did come out, as if we wandered into some other reality, even though it was just the clouds. You couldn’t see them, but it had to be the clouds. Ed and me and his buddy, Ezekiel—Zeke, we were told to call him—and the most sullen member of our little hunting party, Danny. We were all out here on the same job. But I guess we all had our own reasons for taking the work.

We had no ice but that didn’t matter much since we had no cups either. The whiskey bottle moved clockwise, from man to man, except when it reached Ed. He’d take his sip and toss the bottle at Danny, even though Ed could just as easily have leaned over and handed it to the kid. About a quarter ways through the bottle our conversation crashed into the subject of God.

Ed thought God was just and kind and all things happened through His guidance whether or not we saw His hand. He said he spent three years in prison with only a bible to read. He told us that those three years behind bars were a revelation. He knew the Truth, he said.

Zeke rolled his eyes and said miracles were bullshit and if God loved us so much he wouldn’t spend so much time killing us or letting us kill each other. Zeke turned away from the fire and said, “You know my old man beat my mom to death? Beat her so her head swelled up like a balloon. Skin stretched out till it split and she didn’t hardly have eyes to see, just two lumps of black and blue flesh. Can’t look at a ripe plum without thinking of the old lady. Whole time he’s beating her he’s yelling at me to pray for her, and don’t you know I did. Prayed for Him to save my momma and strike the old man dead. When she died he said I didn’t pray hard enough. I haven’t seen her since 1923, but my old man, that sonofabitch, lived another thirty years, and I never prayed a single time since.” Zeke sat still and after a quiet moment or two he turned back towards the group. “What kind of a goddamned God does that to a little boy?”

Both Zeke and Ed were in their forties but looked much older, with hard lines in their faces and rough skin over their hands. Their lives shone through their eyes. Zeke’s lifeless gaze only ever animated by anger. Ed was more like a spooked horse, brown islands lost in too much white, and they bulged as if each orb wished to escape his skull.

“Bullshit,” Ed said. “You can’t blame that on God any more than you can blame that on your poor momma. Man does what he does and sometimes what he does can’t be reconciled.”

“Maybe that’s just some of His unseen handiwork you’re so fond of,” Zeke said. “Look, Ed, I get you’re happy God found you in a hole and pulled you out of it. Don’t mean I gotta be happy he shoved me in one and left me there. God watched my old man beat a saint to death. Don’t give me that shit about all things through Him in one breath, and then deny it in the next. Don’t do me that way.” Zeke could speak this way to Ed because they were friends and shared secrets. Daniel and I would not dare.

Ed sipped from the bottle and then pitched the whisky at Danny. He spoke to us both but leaned towards Danny and stared him square in the face. “You know Zeke is lying through his teeth, don’t you?” Ed motioned to the bottle, then pointed to Daniel and pantomimed drinking. Took Daniel a second, or maybe he didn’t cotton to being told what to do, but he finally set to taking his turn, and Ed continued. “The man claims to believe in nothing, prays to no one, but you ought to hear him curse God all the same. Man don’t believe in God ought not to curse him, don’t you think?” Ed cocked his head towards Zeke and grinned like a baby who just shit their drawers.

“Aint you a right proper Christian,” Zeke said. “Hold dominion over something that ain’t yours to claim and deny a man his autonomy.”

“Now you’re just making up words to sound smart,” Ed said. “I don’t claim you, Zeke, but I know the Truth. Simple as that.”

“I wish you’d talk about something else,” Zeke said. He held out his hand and shook it at me and I gave him the whisky. “You get insufferable with that shit,” he said. Zeke took a swig and ran his hand across his mouth, sucked through his gritted teeth. “What’s the use in talking about something you can’t really know no how?”

“Now you’re just flashing your ignorance, see. All you got to do to know Him is pick up His book,” Ed said. He swung towards us and pointed. “I suppose you two are familiar,” he said. “Don’t tell me I’m out here in the dark hunting murderers with nothing but a bunch of heathens.”

“I believe everything that’s in the bible and the things I can’t understand I believe the most,” I said, keeping as straight a face as possible, even after I heard Danny laugh a bit.

Ed stood up. “That supposed to be funny, wise ass? You best keep that Mark Twain shit to yourself.”

“Josh Billings, actually. But you were close, Ed. Not that I fault you one bit. Fellow isn’t exactly Virgil.”

“I’m asking you two shitheels if you believe in God and one of you cracks jokes and the other laughs like a buffoon.”

Daniel said, “I can’t speak for anybody but myself, or about anyone but myself, but my momma taught me people believe all kinds of things, and every one of them think they’re right and you’re wrong. Maybe we’re all wrong.”

I nodded. “Hear, hear,” I said. But Daniel didn’t seem to notice. He said nothing more, but his eyes locked onto Ed, and finally Ed sat back down and grabbed the bottle from Zeke.

We looked like four castaways on a little island of flickering light. And there may not have been a star in the sky but there was still whisky in the bottle. Our meager campfire looked desperate, as if it were afraid to die, or like it held on just to keep us safe and warm, a dying parent, and the last source of illumination in the entire universe.

“My old man tried hanging himself,” Zeke said. He held the bottle just below his mouth and stared off into the distance beyond Daniel and I. He stayed like that long enough that it spooked me, like I’d turn around and see Zeke’s dad hanging in the darkness. “Broke his neck but didn’t kill him. They took him down to Klamath Valley Hospital but didn’t keep him long. He looked like—did you ever see the Frankenstein movie where Bela Lugosi played Igor? His neck was all wrong and he walked hunched over. Nerve damage caused him to smile all the time. And the sounds he’d make just breathing. Sweet. Jesus.” Zeke finally took his drink.

“Sounds like he deserved it,” Daniel said.

“God works in mysterious ways,” Ed said.

I eyed the bottle as it passed from Zeke to Ed. Whisky sloshed back and forth in its glass prison, glowed like amber when the fire light hit it just so.

“God works mysterious, alright,” Zeke said. “When He works at all. And my old man may have been rotten, but I don’t know if he deserved any of what he got. It ain’t normal for a man to live through all that.”

“He deserved it,” Ed said. “Hell, he earned it after what he did to your momma. And to you.”

Zeke had the eyes of a man on the verge of tears. Whether he was actually that sad or just a drunk was anybody’s guess. One got the sense Zeke knew all about pain, and maybe he was one of those types for whom pain was all he knew. Man crack a smile, it’d send him to the grave.

“God saw over him, birth to death, right?” Zeke asked Ed. “That’s what you believe, isn’t it? And no talking around it, you hear? I want a yes or a no, and that’s it. You really are a friend, you can do me that favor.”

“Live through what, exactly?” I said. “The hanging?”

Daniel shifted from the ground. He stood up and brushed the desert off his back end, then grabbed the whisky but never took his eyes off of Zeke. There was a story coming and he knew it. Boy was still young enough to be excited for stories, and I felt my affection grow for him.

“What did you mean by live through all that?” Daniel said.

“God didn’t want the man,” Ed said. “Devil didn’t seem to want him none, either. Damn, Zeke, how many times your old man try to kill himself? Yes, that is what I said, times. Got to be so the man would have to be tied down at night. Kept me and Zeke here on our toes. We were thick as thieves by then. I’d done my time and wandered down here to find work on a ranch. Done some bronc riding as a youngster, some wrangling, so I figured I could work horses or help with cattle. I’ll be dipped in shit if Zeke here didn’t need help on the old man’s ranch. This was after he’d hanged himself the first time, so his body was done bent and he always had that grin. If you couldn’t see him directly, chances are you could hear him. And if he got excited his breathing would get shrill and watery. Got so I’d taken to calling him Tea Kettle, but Zeke didn’t like that none so I stopped. I found him on his second go at a rope. Zeke gone into town. I was in the sty tending pigs. Couldn’t see the old man but he was making his little noises, until he wasn’t. I got curious and found him swinging in the barn, face all red, pissing his self and smiling. Well, I cut him down right quick and the names he called me. Shit, I’m blushing just thinking about it. He grabbed my knife and started to cry and he said, ‘Kill me or I’ll cut your throat in your sleep.’ And the whole time, grinning up at me, tears rolling down his face. He was a spooky sonofabitch.”

“I still don’t think he deserved none of that pain,” Zeke said. “And that weren’t no yes or no answer.”

“Guess he really wanted to die,” Daniel said. “Was that it, or did he try again?”

Ed grunted out a laugh but Zeke only looked down at the ground.

Daniel used to do odd jobs around the surveyor’s office. Our fathers co-owned the place, so that’s how we came to know each other. We had an easy way with one another. He’s several years my junior, so I played the part of big brother, which was difficult because I loved him something fierce. He had no idea and I had no intention of letting on for fear he’d never want to speak to me again. Damn fool, got that Klamath girl pregnant, so getting him out of town seemed like a good idea. And I find it no small irony that we are two lost boys looking for their fathers. I figured it might be our last time together before his life changes for good and I’m stuck watching him from a distant cage, till he goes in the ground. Or I do.

“Did he ever manage?” Daniel said.

“You’re darn tootin’ he managed,” Ed said. “Took him two more goes at hanging and one time he even opened up an arm real good. I was there for that one. Zeke is hollerin’ up in the house and I get upstairs and, well, he was thrashing about and blood was up the walls and all over the floor. I knocked him out and we hitched up and tore off for the country doc. Klamath being too far out and too expensive. Had to throw away my shirt and pants. So did Zeke. Old coot lost that arm. You imagine that? Bent up the way he was, that smile, and now him missing an arm. Telling you, if that weren’t no punishment, I don’t know what is. Still, even in that mangled shape, he finally managed.”

Daniel whistled. “Well, damn, how’d he do it?” he asked.

“Ed would tell you all about it ‘cept he weren’t there that day,” Zeke said. “The old man put a bullet in his chest. I didn’t even try to stop him. Wasn’t entirely sure he didn’t want me to go with him.”

“He was forever begging you to kill him,” Ed said. “Even woke up one morning to him sitting at the foot of my bed, smiling at me and saying, ‘Kill me, Ed. It won’t be nothing for ya to kill me.’ Still get chills thinking about that. Not ashamed to say I prayed for him to die.”

“Another unanswered prayer,” Zeke said. “Shit in one hand, pray in the other. Course, I guess he did finally manage, so maybe all your prayer finally did some good.”

“I wouldn’t call an old man shooting his self in the chest the answer to a prayer,” Ed said. “God wouldn’t answer a prayer like that even if that was exactly what I was praying for, which it wasn’t. I only wanted a peaceful end, is all.”

Ed stood up and passed the bottle to Daniel, who had taken to warming his hands on the campfire. The nature of the conversation seemed to take some of Ed’s bluster out of him. Maybe this was just the calm before the storm. Felt like we’d never finish that damn bottle.

“May be that God don’t care right from wrong,” Zeke said. “Not like you and me. Maybe your prayer is what let the old man finally do himself in, like God had no reason to take him until someone else wanted him gone. I mean, hells bells, I hated the man but I didn’t want him dead. He was the only kin I had. Maybe you killed him, Ed. You and God, together. People are always killing in the name of God. Maybe God killed my pa in the name of Ed?” Zeke said, and laughed.

“I don’t much care for your sense of humor,” Ed said. But the way he said it, quietly, and how he stood there looking at the ground, a part of Ed wondered about the power of prayer. You could see it.

And the stars were still gone. And we still had whisky. Our little hunt would wait for sunup and sobriety. While I wasn’t exactly warming up to these hired hands, I was happy enough spending time with Daniel. It had already been a strange trip. Couldn’t imagine it getting any stranger. My pop always said I didn’t have much of an imagination, though. Rest his soul.

“Tell you what, if God don’t exist then what’s stopping me from getting up and beating the shit outta you right now?” Ed said. He sauntered around the fire, a dirty look for each of us. “Not got nothing smart to say to that, I guess.”

Zeke stood up. Not quickly, just kind of rose to his feet like a man resigned to getting out of bed come morning. He kept his hands to his sides.

“You got no authority over me, you gutless turd,” Zeke said.

“Put your hands up if you want to challenge me,” Ed said.

Daniel whistled. “You got yourself a conscience, don’t you, Ed?” he said. “I thought all decent folk ought to come armed with the same moral equipment, so to speak.”

Ed took a step towards Daniel. “You saying I ain’t decent?”

“I say no such thing,” Daniel said. “You make that argument all by yourself.”

Ed raised his fist. “Boy, it is taking everything I got not to knock you upside the head.”

Daniel laughed and Ed screwed up his face, more confused than agitated, but he did lower his fists.

Daniel smiled. “The impartial spectator,” he said. “That’s what Adam Smith called it.”

“I don’t know who the fuck that is,” Ed said.

“Just another man trying to save us from ourselves,” Daniel said.

Ed blew a raspberry. “Yeah, well, somebody done come along and saved what need saving,” he said.

“Sure,” Daniel said. “And He’s coming again, right?”

“First smart thing you said all night.”

“Guess He messed up the first time?” Daniel said. “What kind of almighty god is that?”

Ed, hands out, made for Daniel, and I pulled my gun and cocked that hammer before Ed could take a second step. Just like that, Ed came to his senses. He sat down and mumbled an apology.

Zeke said, “Take a drink, Ed. May as well.”

“Pulling a gun on an unarmed man,” Ed said. “Not very Christian.”

“Hired you two because you swore up and down you could track any man or animal out here,” I said. “Don’t bother much with sermons when they’re free, sure as hell not paying you for one.”

“What’s this Louis Loving to you, anyhow?” Zeke said.

I looked to Daniel and he met my gaze and it dawned on me that the truth of the matter had yet to be said aloud. Not that I could blame Daniel.

“Louis Loving is the man that killed my father,” I said. “Or so say the police.”

Daniel looked away and wired his mouth up in a pained kind of embarrassment that was unbecoming of him. Age crept into his youth. He had to feel much older than his age. An absent father surely did not help.

I stood up and then walked away from the fire until I swam in the night and the crackling of wood was but a whisper to me. The dry earth crunched beneath my stride, the sound of sand scratched along the nighttime breeze. All that earth then settled like a sigh. I wondered if my father was buried or scattered. And I wondered about the parts that weren’t found, the bits of him that never made it to his grave back in Klamath.

Sounds of camp were as rare as light as I walked further into the dark. The desert spoke only in a strange tongue of peculiar silence, not unlike the moments after a heavy snow, but missing the icy echo which accompanies that winter phenomena. The silence of the desert can swallow a man whole, scatter words like so much dust to be carried off on dry winds. Sound here is pulled taut and stretched thin until it is rendered madness. A man left too long in the desert will forget the sounds he once knew. Owls in the early bruised hours, the robins praising morning embers, a dove’s spiritual at that time when shadows are shortest, all the beautiful music sung as blood lines the western horizon. In the absence of sound, man will hear what he wants, however mad the tenor may be. He becomes the song he hears in his mind. I wondered what kind of silence must have sung us into creation.

A hand came down on my shoulder and I knew who it was without looking. I think it must be that way when there is love. I could see Daniel in my heart. Like faith, I thought, and I laughed at that.

“Doubt anybody knows less about God than Ed,” Daniel said. “I mean, damn, where did you find those two? Hell’s bells, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know what crazy places you been hanging around. Can’t spend my nights worrying about you.”

“Ed likely knows as much about God as the next person,” I said. “By which I mean he knows a whole lot of nothing. The hell any of us know about anything, Danny? We split an atom, so what? All we did was make a bomb and kill folks with it. Way I see it, that is all we ever been up to anyway, since man first stepped foot out of the cave. All fire ever did was help us kill each other at night. Tell me you know your daddy any better than Ed knows God. No, sir, you cannot. By all accounts, our fathers were best friends since they were little boys, but here my father’s dead and the authorities think your daddy did him and a couple other folks. Breaks my goddamned heart. Can’t believe this madness hasn’t driven your poor mother crazy. I know it sounds awful, but I am glad my mother’s done in the grave.”

“By your reasoning, no one knows anybody,” Daniel said. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. Seems you want to find my daddy so you can find out you’re right and I want to find him so you can see you’re wrong. You stand out here in the dark judging Ed for what he claims to know but here you are doing the same damn thing. Hypocrisy is its own kind of violence. Don’t much matter the source.”

“Shit fire,” I said. “Now you’re just extrapolating. I never said he was a killer, just stating the same facts told to me that were told to you. I hope to hell he didn’t do it. Pete’s sake, I just hope we find him, is all.”

Daniel walked around and stood in front of me so that his person was in silhouette and all around his body glowed the light of the fire, like he was an angel before me. A halo of gold. Wings made of flame.

Daniel said, “For all I know you could well be the death of me.”

The way he said it cut through me to my very core and for a moment I lost all sense of time and place. And I struggled with my words.

“I would give my life for you,” I said.

Daniel turned away. He walked back to the fire, preferring the company of strangers to my own. What love he may ever have had for me went with him.

I stood alone in the darkness.

Ed said, “I want you to know how come I ended up in prison, how come that bible meant the world to me. I know I come on strong and I can see yous’ all distaste for my attitude. I ought maybe to apologize but I’ll tell you this story and maybe you won’t think I need to.”

“You don’t owe them two nothing,” Zeke said. He looked at us. “No offense. Ed, you don’t need to open that wound if you don’t want. That boy over there sees you as a hired hand and that is that. You don’t owe him your soul.”

“It is not my soul,” Ed said. “Just lucky to have it on loan.”

“I am begging you,” Zeke said. “Ain’t nothing need be told. Don’t do this to yourself. Not with all that drink in you.”

“Wound is already open, Zeke.” Ed laughed but it was a hollow mirth. “Wound like that don’t ever close. Not ever.”

Zeke looked at us and shook his head in disappointment. He worked at his lip a bit and his agitation infected me. Before I knew it, before Ed said a single word, I found myself anxiously tapping my heel in the dirt. Daniel sat with his arms crossed over his chest like a man braced for strong wind.

Zeke handed the whisky to Ed.

“I beat a man to death,” Ed said. “I beat his ass to death with the hand holding this here bottle of whisky. Had to been June because I were locked up for Independence Day. Could make out the colored lights reflecting off the bottoms of faraway clouds. Sure as hell heard the explosions. I’d had my heart set to forgive, I swear it. But there were one moment I saw her face and all that forgiveness got drained out of me and I became a monster and I did what monsters do. Before I knew it, I stood in front of a judge, and then I was staring through bars wondering what fireworks looked like. You see me now and you’d never think I’d been a married man. Oh, but I was. Got married young, fell in love with a girl I met at a county fair. She said she loved horses and I learned to ride. She came to see and when I got good—damn good—she said she’d marry. Made me the happiest man on earth, I do say. I guess we did what lots of couples do. After getting hitched, I took a summer to make some extra money. Took that and what I’d won riding bronc and bought a plot and built a home. We had ourselves a little girl the next spring.”

“You two did this,” Zeke said. He pointed at Daniel and I like we were two mischievous kids in a classroom. “This pain is on you now. I can’t say where it leads, but it ain’t nowhere’s good.” Zeke clenched both his hands. “You can’t know a man’s pain unless you share it,” he said. “A broken heart recognizes its own kin.”

“Zeke and I, we got our differences,” Ed said. “But we got our similarities, too. We hurt much alike, he and I.”

Ed raised the bottle to Zeke. Zeke placed a hand to his chest and nodded. Both men smiled at one another.

“Zeke’s not wrong,” Ed said. “But that’s why I agreed to this job in the first place. You two seem to have a shared pain and I don’t mind helping you through it if I am able. Guess that is up to you, though, if you feel you are willing. Judging by your silence, I reckon you both want to hear me out. Or maybe you just like a story. That’s fine, too.”

Ed guzzled whisky. “I miss you something fierce,” he said, looking up to the great nothing overhead. “My baby girl, she lived for five years. Wonderful years. Likely my best. She lived long enough for me to see who she would’ve become. Long enough to replace my heart and my entire world. A man—wealthy feller—he run her over in his fancy car. She got pulled up in his wheel well and when he hit the brakes the car sounded like it was screaming right along with my wife. I can still hear the harmony they made.” Ed closed his eyes. “I hear it all the time,” he said. “Her little eyes were wide open. Body all twisted. He face were upside down. Didn’t kill her right off. I seen her eyes move. She watched us for a moment as we came running. I were afraid to touch her but I told her I loved her and she blinked once and that was it. Looking back, I suppose lots of things died right along with her.”

Ed looked at us. He handed the bottle over to Daniel. “Cheers,” he said. “Drink to my little girl. And you”—he pointed to me—“drink to the wife who left me. Zeke, I want you to drink to the man I was. Let’s finish this damned bottle and go to bed. Not before, mind you, to the very last drop. I’ll drink to the man I killed. And his poor woman, if there’s any whisky left.”

Zeke said, “L’chaim.” And immediately, Zeke shot a look to Daniel and me, as if he’d committed some grievous error. Daniel said nothing, likely because he didn’t cotton to religion much at all, so people’s beliefs were their own, and no trespass against him.

I nodded. “To life,” I said. And that seemed to settle Zeke a bit.

Ed laughed. He slapped his thigh and stared into the dark. I imagined he saw his wife and kid out there, floating next to Zeke’s father. Ghosts likely enjoy a good campfire and story as much as the living. Ghosts probably have more need for it, being removed as they were.

“Zeke is a good man,” Ed said. “I give him a bunch of grief even though we believe in damn near the same thing. Maybe if I could start over I’d be a Jew. Forget all about this New Testament. An angry God might be easier to reconcile in light of this Nazi business. Maybe I’d have been more forgiving. Who’s to say?”

“Ed thinks accepting Jesus excuses his actions,” Zeke said.

“A single action ought not define a man and Jesus knew that,” Ed said.

“Jesus wasn’t but a man himself,” Daniel said.

Ed wagged a finger. “Shame on you,” he said.

Zeke said, “Make believe you were my kin, my tribe. Tell me what you did was kosher in the eyes of God. Maimonides believed a thousand guilty be acquitted than kill a single innocent. You cannot justify. Though, I do not judge you.”

“Innocent is a rare word, indeed,” Ed said. “That man run her over, of that he had no innocence. At the time, I absolved him, thinking there weren’t no malice in his actions. An accident is just that, no matter how horrible. I were wrong. I do not think even he saw his own dark heart. Many do not. Is that not the way of most men? Year on, I ran into him in a pub. Bought that man a drink. He bought mine. We shared tears, gave each other condolences. He seemed pitiable enough. Until he got talking about his wife—his barren wife, as he called her—and he looked me in the eye and he said, ‘I never wanted a kid.’ And I decided, right then and there, that he would never have one. Weren’t nothing he would ever have to worry about. I followed him out to his car. Same god damned car. Like going to her grave. And I caved that man’s skull in,” Ed said. “Man bought the bottle what killed him. Eyes bled. Brains poured out his ears when I left him. He’d never be any deader.”

“The bible,” Daniel said.

Ed side-eyed Daniel and barked out, “The what now?”

“Your bible,” Daniel said. “I get how you ended up in the clink but you said nothing about your bible.”

“Yeah, suppose you’re right,” Ed said. “Guess I owe you. Not enough to see the wound, is it? Gotta get in there,” he said. He waved a hand at Daniel. “Nah, I admire your attention to detail. I ain’t got nothing but wounds anyhow. Suppose that’s one generation’s gift to the next. Wounds.”

“Gift that keeps on giving,” Daniel said.

I said, “Ed, I propose we wait and hear the rest of your story in the morning. We’ve been up far too long and tomorrow ought to be taxing enough without us getting no sleep and drinking as much as we have. I suspect the day to be long, and the desert is an adversary on a good day. Let’s not tempt fate any longer, shall we? Surely this can wait for sunup. Hell, I’ll fry up some bacon, first thing.”

“Here I am, opening up my heart,” Ed said, “and you expect me to just close it up and call it a night because you’d like some shut-eye. Goddamnit, Nicky, I guess you’d tell me to roll over and die if I were an inconvenience to you. You want me to leave you and your young friend here to while away in the dark? Far as I am concerned, you can just shut the fuck up and listen.”

“I want to hear about the bible,” Daniel said.

“I know you do,” Ed said. “And if I were you I’d want to hear about it, too.”

“I guess I’m a sucker for a good story,” Daniel said.

Ed said, “We aren’t so far removed from the cave, you and I.”

Ed smiled at that, and it was an honest smile. Color came to him, even in the dim, orange light we shared. Slits for eyes as his cheeks rose. A row of good teeth shone in the firelight. Whatever animosity he had shown to Daniel was now gone. Couldn’t blame the man. Daniel was easy to love.

Ed took another drink. He looked at the bottle, curiously, as if he had never seen this drink before. Strange, I thought, as I’d assumed it was his bottle. He counted silently on his fingers and even looked up into the night sky for a moment. Then, he passed it on with a smile of sorts.

“So, what about your bible?” Daniel said. “Finish the story. I’d like to go to bed, you know?”

Daniel no longer braced himself. Perhaps Ed’s disarming tone leant familiarity which caused his guard to let down. Seemed a silent truce had sprung up between the two. Maybe they were both simply comfortable in their certainties. Show me two men more sure of themselves than an evangelical and an atheist. Such a person does not exist. I suppose their camaraderie should not have surprised me.

Ed watched as Daniel took his swig, and then as Daniel passed the bottle to me. I might have tried to pass on any further drinking had Ed not been burning holes right through me with those eyes of his. Looked at us as though he not only wanted us to drink, but needed to see us do so, though, at the moment, I only expected it was that he wished not to drink alone.

“What is on your mind, Ed?” I said.

“I just wonder how come I see things you can’t,” Ed said.

Zeke cocked his head and squinted at Ed.

Daniel said, “Well, get on with it, man. I don’t think I could get drunker if I wanted. Tell me how you come to love a book.”

“Boy, I swear,” Ed said. “You joke, but something is mighty wrong.” Ed looked at me. “Can’t you see it? Don’t you feel it none?”

“If you mean the whisky, hell yes I feel it,” Daniel said.

Daniel and Ed held each other’s steady gaze.

“Get on with it, Ed,” Zeke said. “Let’s be done.”

Ed turned. His sight was like a grip on his friend.

Ed said, “Zeke, can you think of a world where I could love you as fierce as I loved my wife? My god, man, I’d carry you off and wouldn’t never again think of all this pain I caused, what pain I endured. And I think that’s what done separates us from Him. The love. Sometimes, I don’t think He feels it at all. And that’s how come he created us, so we could feel it for Him.”

Zeke had an uneasy smile as his eyes darted from Ed to the two of us.

Daniel whistled. “You sure you want to tell this story at all?” he said. “Seems to me you been stringing us along.”

“Fair enough,” Ed said. “Suppose I’ll start where I left off,” he said. Ed looked again at the dark above us at spirits only he could see.

“I beat that man to death, and sometimes I wish I hadn’t but sometimes I think it were for the best, like I were meant to, like he and I both needed punishing and we were sent to one another to deliver. Can’t say I know what he done or I done to deserve what we got, but we got it sure enough. Maybe living is justification enough? Sometimes you have to start at the end and work your way backwards to make sense of the story. Ain’t that the way of a good mystery? Sherlock Holmes comes in at the end and tells you how everything fits together. I think God is Sherlock Holmes but the mystery is our lives, and He came to make sense of the senseless. I stood in court and listened to that judge as he read out my sentence. I didn’t cry, then, but when I got up to go, there were that man’s wife. I thought maybe she’d whoop and holler me down, but no lie, she just reached out and hugged me and said she forgave me. She held me as tight as anyone ever has, and then I cried. I cried as if she were my own mother come to comfort me. No one said a thing. No one pulled us apart. Whole court was stunned to silence. My tears and her whispering words echoed off those walls and everyone in that room got to witness real judgment. She told me she’d visit as soon as she were able and she did. Weren’t no one in the whole world I wanted to see more. I lost my own mother when I were but a young man. Spanish flu. Somehow, this felt like she come back to me. She come that first week and you can guess what she gave me. She said long as I were willing, she’d bring her own bible and we could read together. And we did. That whole stretch, we read to one another. Telling you all, that cell may well been a womb. I was born in there. State looked kindly upon me and my time with her and they decided I could be let out early. Only person I could think to tell about it were her, but damndest thing happened. She gone and killed herself at the man’s grave. She got no stone of her own in the cemetery, so I been saving money here and there. That’s how come I took this job. Give her a right proper headstone, saint as she were.”

Ed looked at each of us, though I couldn’t help but feel he looked through us to that very moment when she died. He stared, then, into the fire. The man shook his head and sighed.

“It’s like someone took out all my insides and all that’s left is a howling wind. It never stops, this wind, but goes and goes in a circle, like retribution is a punishment you carry forever,” Ed said. He motioned around and said, “Just like this eternal blackness we’re sitting in. Like this whisky that won’t finish.”

Zeke, Daniel, and I looked at Ed, each of us adorned with our own confounded expression.

“Truth is usually hard to see,” Ed said. “You’re just too wrapped up in what’s going on in your own life to notice.”

We were all a little dumbfounded. I knew we got an end to his story, but it wasn’t quite what any of us wanted or expected. Ed seemed to be trying to tell us something, that much felt certain. If this speech acted as a last-ditch effort to proselytize, then I am not sure he had any converts. I certainly felt as though he were deliberately leaving some detail out.

“Watch,” Ed said to us. “Nicky, you pass the bottle to Zeke. Alright. Now, Zeke, go on and take a drink. Same as you been doing. No more, no less. Go ahead and give it here.”

“You sure are acting funny,” Zeke said. “What are you getting on about, anyways?”

Ed frowned and said, “Tsk, tsk.” He shook his head. “Guess I am on about the same thing I always been on about.”

“You talk a lot of nonsense,” I said.

Ed said, “Some people need that nonsense.”

He pointed to me and then to Daniel, but then he seemed to stare at his feet, as if he realized he may as well be pointing at himself. His hand dropped to his lap and he wore a frown, sad at first, but the way he furrowed his brow spoke of a deep concern. The lines drawn across his face reminded me of the maps my father would draw and hang on the walls of the surveyor’s office. And like those maps, I did not understand the terrain before me.

“I think everybody ought to check the time,” Ed said. “Go on, now. Check yer watches,” he said, “I’ll wait.

Daniel said, “I ain’t got a time piece.”

Zeke said, “What are you getting on about, Ed? You gonna start performing magic tricks for everybody? Can’t dazzle us with brilliance so baffle us with your bullshit? Don’t dig your hole any further, man. Let us go to bed.”

“Going to bed ain’t gonna help you none,” Ed said. “You’re already asleep. We are all asleep. Born sleeping.”

“Boys, I apologize,” Zeke said. “Ed is always preaching. You know how some folks are. Using their own tragedies against you. It always ends the same way,” he said, “repent or else you’ll be damned to Hell. Well, I’ve been hearing it for years, if it’s any consolation. He’s just drunk and getting spooky, is all. How could he not be, all that drink in him? Nobody is gonna fault you boys none for rolling over and getting some shut-eye.”

“I’m not drunk,” Ed said. “And neither are you. Neither these two young men, either. Go on, wave a hand in front of your face. Get up and dance in a circle.”

Zeke said, “Shit on you, Ed.”

Ed placed a finger to his lips. “Shh,” he said, and then he pointed to the black sky. “I done asked you to check the time.”

“I got three,” I said. But I looked at it, shook it, and held it up to my ear. “Damn, I guess it’s busted,” I said.

“Of course it is,” Ed said. “Here, check mine.”

Ed tossed his wristwatch to me.

I caught the watch and looked at the face, and then felt my stomach drop a little. “Three,” I said. “And this one is busted, too.”

Ed nodded sagely and said, “Now, Daniel here ain’t got no time piece but I know Zeke does. Zeke, how about you pull out yer daddy’s pocket watch and tell me the time you got.”

Zeke reached into his coat to some unseen pocket in which I presumed he hid his father’s watch, but what he pulled out was a gun, instead. There he was, working at that lower lip again. He kept the piece in his lap.

Zeke said, “I don’t think I am gonna do that, Ed. And as a matter of fact, I am gonna ask you just as polite as I can that you go to sleep now. No need scaring these boys any longer with your crazy talk. Just roll over and close those eyes and I will wake you when it’s light.”

Ed stood up. He took his time. Guessed he must not exactly desire getting shot by his friend, or whatever Zeke was to the man, directly. He breathed as deep I ever seen a man breathe. Stuck his chest out. Kept his shoulders back. Seemed, though, Ed aimed to die with pride if it came to it.

“I don’t need to see your daddy’s watch to know what time it reads. Same as mine,” Ed said. “Same as his.” Ed jerked a thumb at me. “Be the same as Daniel’s, if’n he had one.”

“I don’t aim to give you the satisfaction,” Zeke said.

“That is fine by me,” Ed said. He held up both hands. “I do not need to face your fear. That is on you and you will cross that bridge when it comes.”

I said, “What in tarnation are you getting at, Ed?”

“I know what it means,” Daniel said. “Don’t need no time piece, either. Thought about it myself but figured I was too drunk to be making much sense. You’re right, though, Ed. I ain’t drunk at all,” he said. “I reckon Ed is talking about the dark.”

I looked around us. “Dark is dark,” I said, “so what?”

“I’ll show you so what,” Ed said.

But Ed said nothing about the dark or the time or about God. He didn’t say a single word. Ed held out that bottle of whisky and looked, again, at each of us, as if to make sure he had our attention. Then, he turned the bottle upside down. The liquor splashed against the thirsty earth.

Ed smiled. “Bottle never ends,” he said. “Just like this darkness, it just goes on forever.”

Whisky poured and poured. The sweet-smelling spirit spilled into a puddle which fanned out in an ever-widening circle, until Ed’s feet had been baptized. Daniel laughed, the nervous laughter of one who feared what transpired before his very eyes.

“Sun should’ve been up at least two hours ago,” Ed said.

“That don’t mean nothing,” Zeke said. He stood up, eyes wide, mouth pulled back and showing off bad teeth. He raised the gun, pulled back the hammer, and yelled, “You make it stop, you hear? Or I swear I’ll put a bullet in you.”

I heard the stillness of the desert creep over the crackling fire. I heard the blood rush through my veins, heard that same rush through Daniel’s, and the two men who dared each other to accept one another’s reality. Each of us a rush of wind, becoming a maelstrom.

How long had it been dark?

Where were the stars?

Screams blossomed in the distant dark. Blood-curdling. Each of us turned towards the sound. Screams like a distant revival, like music.

Each of us stood frozen except Ed, who grabbed a protruding piece of firewood and wielded it like a torch. The man neither waited nor gave direction. He ran towards the terror.

Not to be outdone by his friend, Zeke grabbed his own torch and raced after Ed.

“Jesus H. Christ,” Daniel said, hardly more than a whisper. He, too, took up a torch and went into the night. Only I went without fire. No need, as I followed the only three stars along the horizon.

The screaming most certainly belonged to a man . . . and something else I could not quite place in the moment. They were animal sounds, I guessed, high and shrill, but of an anger. This harmony vocalized a struggle, such an awful struggle.

For one moment, in that darkness, I thought I spied a ghost run past me in the dark. A wisp of a man whose terrified face looked all the world like Daniel’s father, but he vanished as he passed and I reckoned him an apparition brought on by distress, terror, and too much drink. And I ran and ran after the three stars in the distance.

Screams raged.

One of the stars stood idle. In my temerity and terror I approached without caution. The star revealed itself to be Daniel, and in the distance, close to the other two stars, rang out a constellation of shrieks both man and animal, two tongues fused in a language of pain. I grabbed Daniel by the collar and drew him close but his eyes refused to meet my own. His vision locked on to the unseen and his mind conjured sights that supplanted the reality before him. He would neither advance nor retreat and I left him for the other two points of light.

I pulled out my gun and held it before me, like some ancient knight entering a joust.

Ed and Zeke stood far enough apart so that their torches flooded the scene like amber spotlights. They were the only stars whose light shone on this part of endless Hell. I moved through space like an unseen satellite, a pallid moon unencumbered by illumination, a silent witness to the demons which thrashed before the dull eyes of a terrified universe.

Four of these demons yielded flesh as black as night, skin pinned tight over muscle and bone, the famished nature which expressed itself through ribs and knotted joints quite visible in the yellow tenebrosity. They were, I thought, horses—foals, perhaps—but their mad tenor belied their stature. Beasts of burden, I realized, hopped and kicked and bellowed their song, which could be mistaken for no other. Feral ass, practically carbonized, colored as though each were forgotten in some inferno and left to cinder, now free to burn where they pleased. Each animal incandesced among those stretches of hide where blood ran and splattered their jagged frames. Blood worn on haunches and blood draped on withers. Their collective eyes glittered and shone like great black marbles.

A fifth demon looked very much a man. His clothes hung in tatters, flayed by gnashing teeth, and his exposed skin glossed with black blood. Whether the ichor belonged to him alone was anyone’s guess, for as they tore at him and bit, the man gave back to them in return. Somehow, to my eyes, he was more feral than the menagerie which surrounded him.

One of the animals bore a hatchet that had been buried in the withers. The man leapt to the animal’s back. He seized the handle and withdrew the blade. And then the man rolled beneath the creature and hacked into the inside of its thigh. The donkey reared up and arterial spray hit me in the mouth. When the beast fell over, the others erupted in screams and one even sounded as though it cried out, “No!” But it must have been a trick of my impassioned state of mind.

They bit at the man’s flesh and he swung at them. When they retreated from his lacerating blows, the man turned to the fallen member and split open the donkey’s belly, cock to sternum. Pitiful remains poured forth in a torrent of gore. White bone rose like ice from the ocean of viscous fluid. Human bones, some of which surely belonged to a child, floated amongst the effluvia. Shards of a skull caught my attention. My imagination draped the bone in familiar flesh, gave it eyes that looked not unlike my own. I fell to my knees before the skeletal gaze of my late father. This demon had been his killer and his grave.

The man, now nude save the black blood running head to toe, brought the hatchet down. Again and again he hacked at the sinewy neck and crushed bone, until the head loosed itself and what ran through a demon’s veins poured from the ragged stump to be drunk by the hungry earth.

The other donkeys screamed in the distance, but no longer in anger. They screamed in pain. The anguish of loss tore through the pitch.

The man, exhausted by his brutal triumph, collapsed.

Ed handed me his torch. He picked up the man, put him over his shoulder, and carried the fellow all the way back to camp like that. I carried my father’s skull in a kerchief, cradled the remains like a football. Danny, I reckon, carried nothing but his own torch. We did not pass him in the dark. By the time we made it to camp, there he sat by the fire. He never once looked up as we approached.

Zeke stayed behind with the carnage and for a few minutes the distance seemingly snuffed out his torch. Then a pinprick of light grew and grew until the man slipped from the darkness and into the glow of our campfire. He carried the donkey’s severed head in his free hand. Like the whisky bottle, its contents yet poured forth.

“What you bring that awful thing back for?” Ed said. “Leave it be.”

“Didn’t think you would believe me,” Zeke said. He dropped his torch and held the head up. “Thought I heard a whisper, but then I got close and heard him talking.”

Ed shot a look in my direction. “He’s spooked is all,” he said. “Don’t listen to him.”

“It’s not me you have to listen to,” Zeke said, and then he tossed the severed head into the fire. Sparks issued from all sides. Flesh and hair sizzled. The rank odor hurt to breathe and stung the eyes.

Ed yelled, “Have you lost your mind?” He swatted at a burning ember that graced the sleeve of his coat.

Zeke raised an arm slow and pointed and spoke in a drawn-out hush, “Look.”

The head quivered in the fire and the eyes fluttered, then shot open. Those black marbles rolled in their sockets and the thing looked at each of us. Muscles in the jaw flexed and the mouth widened. Black sludge rolled over the tongue and past the teeth to settle and sizzle in the flames. And when it spoke, its voice sounded like a man’s and woman’s simultaneously, and as though the voices were trapped in the deepest well. All the hair on my arms and legs tingled and my stomach sank and my heart beat against its cage like a distraught prisoner. Zeke clasped his hands together and openly wept. Ed crossed himself. Danny never moved.

“You will be lost to time,” it whispered. “This planet is an unmarked grave floating through a black sea and lit only by a distant torch.” The donkey’s eyes bubbled over, running out of the sockets and into its mouth. “Pray if you must, supplicate. Scream into the casual void that swallows all life and light. All answers are the same.”

Shrill and mad laughter burst from Zeke who now rocked back and forth on his knees. Ed marched over and struck Zeke across the face with an open palm and yelled, “Shut up, damn you.” Ed looked at us and saw the blank expression on Danny’s face so he pointed to me. “Get my shotgun,” he said.

I scrambled past Danny and into the edges of frayed light where the horses had been staked, but I found only the stakes. I tried to speak. Fear choked me and tears welled in my eyes. I bit my hand to get ahold of myself.

“Horses are gone,” I said.

Ed stuck his chin out and he wore a righteous angry frown. Veins throbbed at his temples. He rolled his wide eyes over me and Danny and then he hauled off to where I just come from. I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him kicking and feeling around in the dark. “Goddamnit,” he yelled. And he stormed back into camp with one of those long metal stakes gripped in his hands. He made way for the fire.

The donkey saw Ed coming and it screamed like I never heard in all my life. Not even in my worst nightmares. Zeke shot up off the ground with hands over his ears and he ran away. Ed brought down the spike like a hammer. The donkey’s skull caved in on the second strike and pink matter belched from the open wound, but it kept talking.

“You’ll die alone,” it said.

The charred thing slid from its pyre to the ground and smoke billowed from its hollow eyes and its mouth and Ed kicked it back into the flames. No more words uttered, but it popped and sizzled and smelled like sulfur. The skin split and pulled away and revealed bones the color and texture of coal. Thick smoke rolled off the fire and did not rise in a plume but fanned out over the desert like a black fog until the ground was as dark as the sky and we could not see our own feet.

“Where are the stars?” I said.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Ed said. He kneeled down to check the unconscious man’s pulse. “I think he’s dead,” he said. “Or damn close to it. Done what we could.” Ed looked at me but pointed to Danny. “Get him on his feet,” he said. “We’re going after Zeke.”

I shook my head. “That’s suicide,” I said.

“It’ll be murder if we don’t,” Ed said. “Now get him up and let’s go.”

“I won’t do it,” I said. I held out an arm to Danny. “He can’t,” I said. “Look at him.”

“He’s fine right where he is.” Ed said. “Fire’s good company.”

“I won’t leave him,” I said.

Ed cracked his knuckles. “I’m not asking you,” he said. “I’m telling you. Leave him and let’s go.” He took a step, but stopped.

I pulled my gun and pointed it at Ed.

Ed laughed. “You gonna shoot me, huh? Tell you what, you little shit, you better kill me with the first shot ‘cause I’ll snatch that gun outta your hand and beat you to death with it,” he said. Ed took a deep breath. “Now let’s go get Zeke.” He stuck his chest out and kept his shoulders back like he did before and I shot him in the head.

The darkness of the open desert swallowed up the pistol’s report.

Ed’s head whipped back and blood sprayed out his nose. He took two janky steps backward. Man tried moving his arms but his body would not cooperate. He stumbled for a second and opened his mouth like he had something to say, but there was only more of that black blood. His front bathed in the thick lacquer. Ed didn’t fall so much as crumble. His last breath hissed like a popped tire. The fog rolled around him as his body shuddered its last and he looked like a night swimmer relaxed in a black lake.

“What did you do?” Danny said. He must have snapped to because now he stood upright and by my side. I didn’t notice, preoccupied as I had been.

“It was a mistake,’ I said, “helping you leave Klamath. And it was a mistake bringing you back.”

“You shot him,” Danny said.

“He meant for you to die,” I said. “I wouldn’t have that.”

Danny said, “Zeke is out there somewhere.”

“You and I are heading towards Adel,” I said. “If that man still has his wits about him, then that’s where he’s heading. Sunup can’t be that far off.”

“What about that man we found?” Danny said. “We can’t just leave him here.”

“Can’t take him, either,” I said. “Not where he’s going.”

Danny crossed over and knelt down. He placed a hand on the man’s chest and tried appealing to me. “He’s breathing fine,” he said. Danny placed two fingers along the fellow’s neck just under the jaw. “Heart’s beating like a drum,” he said. “Ed lied to you. He meant to leave him, too, I guess. Why he bother bringing him back at all?”

“Ed fancied himself a man of morals all the way to the end,” I said. “But the heart wants what it wants. Force him to pick between you all and Zeke, well, morals be damned.”

Danny stood up. “Maybe this guy wakes up,” he said.

“Maybe he don’t ever,” I said.

“Sun’s got to rise soon,” Danny argued. “You said it yourself.”

“Bit of light won’t keep you safe.”

“Suppose you will.”

“Told you I’d die for you.”

“Heart wants what it wants, right?”

“I never once in my life put on airs,” I said. “You know how I feel.”

Danny got down on his knees and put an arm under the man. He gripped a limp arm and put it around his neck, then stood that man up. He staggered his breath and said, “Lead the way.”

“You’re a damn fool,” I said. I shoved the gun into the waist of my denim then walked over. I took the other limp arm and put it over my shoulder. “On the count of three,” I said.

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

We walked like that for some time. Heard nothing and saw less. Stumbled once but caught ourselves right quick and went on, not a complaint out of either of us, not a word. Not a star in the sky. No sun on the horizon. I hoped beyond hope that we were actually heading towards Adel and not further into the abyss.

Our eyes adjusted to the dark as much as they were able. We found that there were sights to see, as long as we were right on top of whatever it was we were seeing. That’s how both of us came to a dead stop before crashing into a large boulder. Huge slab of rock had to be the size of a small house. Looked for the life of me like it had landed there, and maybe it had. Place had been nothing but volcanoes throwing fire and brimstone around long before man or animal lived and died here. We whispered to each other.

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “Think we could get to the top?”

“We could wait out this dark up there,” Danny said.

I gave a low whistle. “Well,” I said in my best drawl, “no shit.”

Danny said, “How you figure on getting him up there?”

“I don’t figure,” I said, and I would have said more if not for the terror I felt.

A snap of a dry twig issued from the distance. If we had not stopped and weren’t already whispering then we wouldn’t have heard a damn thing, which I figured had to be on purpose. We had a mystery guest bringing up the rear. Three guests if I were a betting man. And there was something else, something closer, like pebbles ground underfoot. Loose rock dribbled onto my shoulders from above and I looked up. A figure rose in the dark and stood atop the massive rock before us. Whether friend or foe we could not yet know, until the figure spoke.

“Ed,” Zeke said from up there. “Is that you?”

Zeke was alone, but I knew him armed, which meant dangerous. I gripped Danny’s shoulder as tight as I could. “He went looking for you,” I said, before Danny could admit to anything that’d see us come to a violent end. “Help us up, will you?”

“Us?” Zeke said.

“Danny’s with me,” I said. “And the feller we found.”

“He awake?”

“We carried him the whole way.”

“God damn,” Zeke said. “Could have left him, you know, state he was in.”

“Help us up, man,” I said. “There’s something out there.”

“I know it,” he said. “Heard them beasts clomping around earlier. Think they were trying to suss out how to get me, but they don’t climb none, so here I sit.”

We didn’t say anything in return. Zeke squatted down and reached out a hand. Danny went up first. Then he and Zeke dragged up the unconscious fellow. Only Danny helped me up. Zeke sat damn near like a dog at the edge of the rock. His eyes were as wide as they could go, as if looking like that might help him see any better. Then he turned his ear out and I understood. Zeke listened.

We all listened.

“Three of you breathe too damn loud,” Zeke said.

He didn’t have to ask. Danny held his breath and so did I. Nothing much to do about the passed out fellow, but he seemed to rest easy.

The three feral asses posted themselves in the distance straight across from where we perched. You could hear them even though they walked with a light step. Unintelligible whispers seemed to ride the silence. Never in my life would I entertain the idea that they talked to one another, but I could not deny what I saw with my own eyes at the camp. These bastards plotted our doom, but the thin chatter ceased and their gait seemed to fan out. They were moving away from one another and around the rock in three points. Nothing more for a minute or two until a grunt sounded directly ahead. Those savage beasts began to close in. Without a thought in my head I drew my weapon.

“I got five bullets left,” I said. “How about you?”

“Not got but what’s in my gun,” Zeke said. “Wasn’t exactly counting on . . . whatever it is that’s happening.”

The desert spoke to us three in its strange tongue of peculiar silence. Shallow breath interrupted occasionally by the snap and smash of dry sage and brush. Sometimes these sounds came from the left and sometimes from the right, but never from the front, and I wondered if that bad beast waited and watched like a commander. We three imagined sounds when there was an absence of sound and with those phantom sounds came phantoms themselves. In our desperation to understand and know these creatures we conjured spirits in the distant dark. We saw what we wanted and kept those visions to ourselves. Zeke’s dead father hanged above us and he stared at me and smiled and put a finger to his lips and shushed me. The rope cinched around his neck stretched up and up into the infinite night, to where I cannot say.

In this silence we sung all manner of atrocity into creation and in that way we were as God must be. Mad and alone and dreaming in the void. We become the songs we hear in our minds. Heaven is a desert you cannot see but for the phantoms you give life. They are in your image.

God is insane.

The sun remained hidden. An hour passed since we last heard those brutes trampling parched earth. Got so we felt like talking again as a way to pass the time and Zeke told what he knew of the area and the animals.

“Used to be a big operation out here called for hauling borax,” Zeke said. “Mostly by jerk line, mule power, but they had donkeys too. Lots of mining companies did back then. But the rails saw an end to that when I was still a young man. Well before your time. Borax mine shut down. Sold off what they could. Lots of animals were just let loose. Most died, but some kept on in pockets,” he said. “Find food where you can in the desert.”

If Zeke knew anything more then he decided to keep it to himself. Nobody spoke. My mind circled back to the earlier conversation. I’d poked fun at Ed, but present conditions forced me to reconsider the totality of my beliefs.

“It is odd,” I said, “the internal and gnawing suspicion that you are an imposter in your own skin. I don’t belong here, I think. But then again, I don’t think anyone belongs here. I think all this . . . life, I guess you’d call it, is really nothing more than a vacation. We’re taking a break from an endless nothing. A womb and a grave—though not mutually exclusive—are really nothing more than a terminus. Where are you going? Where have you been? Did you have fun pretending to be a human being with a name and a job? Did you hear Love and did Love call to you?” I said. “You know, of course, what that is, don’t you? Love is tapping out. Love is the void, beckoning your return. You’ve had your vacation, imposter, it’s time to let someone else pretend for a while.

“And you dream. Sometimes, dreams are filled with people, some of them you recognize, some of them you don’t, but there are always people. In almost every dream,” I said, “maybe it’s only one other person or maybe it’s a whole roomful of people. When your dream ends, do you ever wonder where they go? They aren’t you, right? It’s not like they’re acting under your purview. What happens when the dream is over, I think that’s what God is. I think God dreamed us into reality and He wants to see if we can do the same thing for Him. I don’t think He can exist here unless we make it possible. In science fiction stories, the scientists are always looking for holes in space and little slips in time or gateways to other dimensions. What if we never had to go looking for any of that? What if we are the gateway? We were made in God’s image and then we created all manner of things in our image. Maybe that is the way God comes here. Maybe all this toil and hardship is really just God slowly making His way through the gateway.

“You ever hear folks say that their work is a compulsion? It is not, no sir. It is an order. We are programmed to work and to create. We were programmed to create since the beginning. Don’t you see? Creation begets creation. All these facsimiles, bearing children, building homes, painting, sculpting, writing, busting apart atoms to win wars . . . one way or another, all creation leads to God. One cannot simply walk into reality. We dream. Our dreams inspire. We create lives from these dreams. We inspire others. We create children, and we give them our dreams and our work and they pick up where we left off. It has always been that way. Love is nothing more than a piece of programming meant to keep us going. To keep us creating.” I sighed, quite satisfied with myself, and said, “It’s all for Him.”

Zeke’s riotous laughter caused me to jump and then he said, “Nobody is as important as a man at his own funeral.” He laughed again but calmed himself and cleared his throat. “If you must feel sorry for yourself,” he said, “at least make it short.”

“You go to Hell,” I said.

“My boy,” Zeke said, “we are already there.”

More laughter cracked through the dark, but of a humor altogether meaner and knowing and not of man. I’d once heard claim that all creatures were capable of laughter. How nice to know that fact extended to demons. It felt strange to consider laughter in a place like Hell. Though I had once been reprimanded for laughing during a Christmas service. Inappropriate was what my father had levied at me, but he should have said what he meant. I sinned in my merriment. Maybe Zeke was right.

Danny said, “I just remembered something wild.” Rock scraped from behind as Danny shifted his weight. “Not even sure it’s worth sharing,” he said, as he crawled closer to Zeke and me. Danny patted my shoulder.

“Remember my mother said she knew a man who believed that God’s face was black as night,” Danny said. “That he thought the shadows were God’s eyes watching over us.”

The unconscious man drew a sharp breath. I feared him having an attack of some kind or another. None of us were capable of much more in the way of medicine than sitting bedside and witnessing last rites. But then he sat bolt upright as if he’d been startled from nothing more serious than a nap.

“Your mother’s name is Ruth,” he said.

And the dried blood seemed to glow on his skin because the dawn had finally come.

“Who are you?” Danny said.

I stood and held out my hands as if I could will the light to me. I felt like an abandoned child reunited with family. The morning gloom promised loving embrace. I reached for the light in the east and I cried.

“Your father’s name is Louis.”

I looked above to the faded luminance of retreating stars. I covered my mouth in an act of repressed joy. I pointed to the sky. “Look,” I said. “It’s a miracle.” And I turned to my companions but they looked neither to sun nor stars, but at this creature clothed in blood.

“I am the indifferent teeth which rends you to pieces,” he said, “the jaw that grinds your bones to dust. Ruth delivered you to me and, before you die, you will deliver me to Ruth.”

I placed myself in front of Danny. Zeke stood in front of me. The man smiled at us as I had smiled at the sun and I felt terrified.

“My sermon is blood,” the man said. “My benediction is death.”

Zeke raised his pistol.

“I have killed so many,” the man said and pointed at us, “but only you will die a dozen deaths with me in the dark.”

Zeke fired off a round. A blossom opened up in the man’s cheek the color of deep red. The color ran down his face and dripped off his chin to his chest and the rock below. The man bared his teeth like an animal.

Ed had told us he had punishment coming and that he and the man who killed his daughter were sent to one another to deliver. Ed claimed not to know what trespass he had committed to deserve the death of his little girl but that he got it all the same. But I knew what I’d done to deserve this man’s wrath. I made of myself a murderer. And now the howling winds of retribution circled within me. I feared death and this man most of all.

“Run,” Zeke said.

And we did.

Not sure how many minutes passed before I realized I ran alone. Danny had jumped down from the rock ledge same as me, but somewhere between hitting the ground and taking off, we lost one another. Zeke fired off two more shots in quick succession. I almost stopped running right then and there, but all of a sudden, Zeke screamed and the sounds he made were unnatural and pitched high. Another shot fired off, but the screaming didn’t stop, so neither did I. Could have run forever after that.

And then sounds like the distant thunder of three separate storms gathered behind me. Didn’t have to look because I knew what was coming. Figured I had a minute before they overtook me. Five bullets were all the currency that remained with which I might purchase a little extra life. Their punishment could be me, but only if I were a deadeye.

I spun around and took a knee. Aimed. Fired.

I couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn and they kept roaring across the expanse.

Aim.

Fire.

Sonofabitch.

I only had but three shots left and I missed two more times so I put the gun in my mouth. No way in hell I’d miss this one. Felt awful sorry for myself. They got damn close and I shut my eyes real hard but I went on living and the thunder halted. I cracked open one eye and then the other. Took the gun barrel out of my mouth and stood up.

Two of the donkeys stood on either side of the third that lay in a heap on the ground. They nudged the body but their friend did not respond. There was a faraway report what sounded like the crack of a baseball bat and, about a second later, one of the standing donkeys jerked its head to the side and fell over dead.

That last donkey looked in my direction and brayed and then bolted westward away from the rising sun. Reduced by all that transpired and from such a close brush with death, I let the pistol fall to my side and I sat on the dust and watched and waited for my savior. A figure approached from the south and waved. It was Danny.

I attempted a wave of my own but weak as I was I only raised my hand and let it fall back to my lap. I smiled at the thought of reunion but the smile did not last. This was not Danny, but he wore Danny’s clothes. I raised my pistol.

He called out my name and said, “You know who that bullet is meant for.”

“You killed him,” I said, not without struggle. “Killed both of them.”

“They’re waiting for you,” he said, and pointed to the south. “They’re back at the rock. You can join them if you want,” he said, and he offered his hand to me. “It’s what He would want.”

I put away my pistol and the man lifted me to my feet as though I weighed but a feather.

“Do you think God is good?” I said.

“No,” he said. “Nor is He evil. Nihil is bereft of all morals, transcendent and passed through the Gates into Immaculate Void. Morality is just another punishment for the damned,” he said, “another trick bestowed upon us by the Deceiver. Flesh is a cell and life a sentence.”

I said, “Are you going to kill me?”

He smiled. “I don’t have to,” he said with a nod. “Do I?”

The man left me and walked on and I watched until the desert distorted his frame and swallowed him whole. The rock was much further than I had anticipated. Zeke remained stationed where I’d last seen him, though I could not find his head or right hand. Danny lay face down in the distance with his arms and legs twisted at unnatural angles. I did not dare to go any closer for Danny was now as far away from me as it was possible for a human being to go.

What love he may ever have had for me went with him.

I was alone.

Each one of those men got a proper headstone. I made sure of that. A good man ought to have every intention of paying back what is owed. Ed and Zeke and Danny were three lives forfeit on my account.

“Every epitaph I write is a story,” Earnest Hamm said, “for the best parts of us that live on forever.” And he just beamed. Probably practiced that shit in front of a mirror.

There was a lot of shame inherent to a place like Hamm Monument Company. Not so much from the people that worked within because good sales people are shameless, but it was palpable coming off visitors. Spending small fortunes on rocks for a person who will never see the damn thing felt like a strange kind of extortion.

But I knew where my grave would be. I had seen the headstone. It said nothing aside from my given name, the year of my birth, and the year of my death, separated by a cross. A strange request, Earnest Hamm had said. I lied and said that a cancer was eating my insides. He apologized. And the stone was made to order, simple, formal, and cheap, not unlike the people who would surely oversee its fabrication.

The funeral, if there was one, would be small. Immediate family, I imagined, with none of the extended showing up, which was only fair. I wouldn’t go to their funerals, either.

To what did I owe those dusty devils whose beliefs fall utterly short of reality?

Nothing.

The hour was still early, and I figured Danny’s mother yet slept. I would surprise her if I could. But, as it turned out, she surprised me. Ruth Loving neither slept nor stayed inside. I wanted it to be a coincidence, Danny’s mother standing on the front porch as I came up the walk, though I couldn’t help but feel like she had been waiting for me. And maybe she had, for Danny’s mother always had peculiar insight and feelings she claimed not to understand. And I was—reborn since the desert—much more open to her inclinations than I’d been in the past.

Ruth Loving stood tall and rail thin with blue eyes, like glass, and hair the color of a raven. Not a streak of gray lay in that black pool. And despite a few wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, her appearance belied her years. Her hair looked like it had been spun out of fine black metal strands, very regal, and cut in the pageboy style. She looked like a person out of a different era and she reminded me of a silent movie star whose name I could no longer recall.

Ruth was a lifelong smoker. Besides her marriage to Louis, nicotine was her longest running commitment. I was the only one who had never given her grief about it and she even suspected me of lifting a cigarette or two when I was younger. Danny had begged her to stop, as did Louis. She always responded in the same way and with the same tone and the phrase became her mantra. “I’ll think about it,” she’d say and smile and then take an extra-long drag. She’d let the smoke creep out in a breathless exhale. The act personified her defiant attitude.

The hour must have been incredibly early when Ruth headed out to the porch as judged by the pile of spent butts at her feet. I had not yet arrived so she stood there and smoked and bided her time. She was not prone to pacing. Instead, she expressed anxiety by holding her right arm across her body and tapping her left elbow. One hand held her cigarettes aloft, while the other tapped an incongruous beat against the hardest bone in her body. This activity greeted me upon arrival.

Ruth lit another cigarette and said, “I dreamed you coming here, this morning.” The words escaped her in a whisper, accompanied by tendrils of smoke. She looked, briefly, like a dragon.

I stood before her at the bottom of the front steps. “I’ve seen his face in the dark, his eyes in the shadows,” I said, and I fell to my knees. “He’s coming for you.”

“I know,” Ruth said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d rather not see this.” And she went into her home and shut the door.

You’ll die alone

I closed my eyes and put the gun barrel to my chest and pulled the trigger though not because of malice or madness. I’ve not been driven insane by what I’ve seen. No. But my debts had all been settled. Amends had been made in full.

And I wanted to go back to that darkness.

I wanted to see God again.

I wanted to see.

Nothing.