Red drove out into the desert.
He remembered a time when he was little, sitting in his mother’s prairie church. It was a funeral. He sat there fidgeting in his seat, five years old and in his brother’s hand-me-down suit jacket that was still two sizes too big. The wooden pew getting more uncomfortable with each passing drone of the preacher.
The funeral was for a young man knifed in a bar fight. A son of one of his mother’s friends. He remembered his mom with her arms around a weeping woman, sobbing uncontrollably. The sunbeams cutting swaths across the thick air of the sanctuary.
“It will be all right,” his mother said. “There is a reason for all this.”
That was what she always said. Anytime tragedy struck her orbit. Repeated words that became more meaningless with every utterance.
Red could see the day in photographic stills. Not a fluid memory, but snapshots of anguish, boredom . . . too young to grasp the full weight of what he was witnessing.
Propping himself up on his knees, he had looked to the back of the church. Through the neighbors and townsfolk. He remembered the face of an old man.
The man sat in the last pew, by himself. His weathered face cracked like leather, his beard hanging down in front of him. Unwashed and haggard, the old man stared at Red.
The young boy stopped his fidgeting and stared back. All the other people at the service disappeared, and there was only the two. Old and young.
The man smiled with his eyes, placed his hands on the pew in front of him, and stood up. He stepped out of his seat, turned, and walked out of the church, the opening door letting the morning light rush in like a tidal wave. Red got up from his seat, and walked out behind him.
“Mister?”
The old man turned to him.
“What are you doing, mister?” Red said from the church steps.
“I’m just checking in.”
“But we aren’t supposed to leave until it’s over. Mom says we got to wait for the preacher to say bed’iction.”
The old man laughed to himself. “Is that what she says? Well, you best get back in there before she finds out. Don’t want to end this day with a whipping now.”
Red stood there staring. Silent.
“Is there something you want to ask me?” the old man said.
“Is there a reason for this? Mom says there’s a reason.”
“What do you think?”
The boy shuffled his feet, looking down as he prepared his answer. “I suppose so.”
“Well, you listen to your mom. She’s a good woman,” he said as he turned to leave.
“Mister . . . where’re you going?”
The man with the boots stopped. “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be around.”
And with that, he sauntered off, leaving Red on the church steps.
Through the years, he had thought of this encounter. When his wife died, and his mother was spitting out her clichés, he thought he might see that old-timer pop up again. It wasn’t rational, he knew that. But Red didn’t care. In his heart, he knew who the man was. The story from the couple and the runaway brought back the memory.
Red kept driving, the hardpan and rock stretching out before him. The image of the old man etched in his mind deeper than the chisel marks on an old grave marker.
And so he drove, not knowing where to go, but letting the wheel flow smoothly in his hand as if the car directed his path. The sun blazing overhead in its unending beatdown of the knocked-out desert floor. The suspension on the vehicle sweating under the constant jarring of uneven rock, sand, and brush. He drove throughout the morning, starting on the two-track that led up the mountain to where he had shot Colten, but turning north off road at the mountain’s base.
He kept going, a mile past where all reason told him to turn back, his mind telling him that he was being ridiculous, that nothing was out here. He then turned the wheel east, the mountain range reflecting off the rearview mirror as the sun passed through the windshield and warmed his chest. He kept driving.
In the distance he saw the faint shimmer of a tin roof, reflecting briefly and then disappearing. Appearing again. A beacon out in the wasteland. Words, dancing in his head.
I’ll be around.