Bright chrome flashed in my eyes as we emerged from the S-turn. I locked up the brakes and wrestled my truck over to the shoulder. Another short straight of a few hundred yards ended with a low rise and a gentle right-hand turn. Both lanes of the highway between us and part of the rise were scattered with what remained of the circus train and, though I didn’t spot them, its ringmaster and circus boy.
This was the textbook definition of a debris field, in living color and chrome, spreading everywhere like a metal nightmare. The pickup was a twisted piece of expensive junk. It had separated from the Airstream and rolled several times before coming to rest on its side a hundred feet off the left shoulder, its engine releasing an acrid smoke that drifted across the highway. The Airstream had gone right, rolled, and broken in two like a stainless-steel egg. The trailer with the ATVs was nowhere to be seen, leaving its contents strewn in every direction. No sign of the man or his kid that I could see, though any pile of wreckage could be hiding a body, or parts of one.
I grabbed a handful of road flares and hopped out of the cab. Manita had slipped out from beneath the seat belt and she and the dog were both standing on the passenger seat staring out the front window, hands and paws on the dash. I jabbed the air with my index finger to tell them to stay put and hoped to hell they got the message.
I walked back down the road a couple hundred yards and lit flares, placing them near the center of the highway where the S-turn became the straightaway. Little by little I made my way up the highway dodging pieces of jagged metal, chunks of spidered safety glass, coolers, bedding, wheels and miscellaneous shit that was so damaged I couldn’t even tell what it was. I couldn’t go five steps without having to go around or step over something. At the top of the rise, I lit two more flares and figured that was enough to get anyone going east to slow down or stop. Coming back the way I had come I saw the legs of the guy protruding from beneath the chassis of one of the ATVs that had come to rest on the southbound shoulder.
Not knowing what I would find, I pushed the ATV to the side. His body was intact, eyes open. He blinked blood flowing from a gash in his forehead. Both legs had been snapped at the knees and were tucked at a cartoon angle beneath him. So much for seat belts, if he had even been wearing any. Airbags only worked if you’re where you’re supposed to be. In a continuous roll, as they must have been, the man and his son were as loose as two ball bearings in a tin can.
His lips moved. I got down on one knee and bent over him. These were probably his dying words. In a hoarse whisper he repeated, “My son, my son.”
“You mean the brat?”
He blinked his eyelids.
“I don’t know. Haven’t found him yet. Let’s just hope I don’t need garbage bags to bring him to you.” Even as I spoke, I was regretting what I said. “Maybe he’s okay,” I added, though I didn’t believe there was a chance in hell that he was. Kicking a man when he’s down had never been my style, but in the moment I was running short on style, and forgiveness.
A deep moan rumbled up from his throat and I stood and surveyed the debris all the way back to where my truck was parked. Flames were licking upward from beneath the pickup’s hood and I ran over and looked through the broken windows. No boy. Off to my left, not far from my truck, I saw Manita and the dog in the desert near a stand of dwarf juniper. They weren’t moving.
Up closer I saw they had found the boy. She was sitting cross-legged in the dirt with his head in her lap. Manita was busy brushing wisps of wind-blown blond hair from his face. Before I could get over to her an old flatbed honked and skirted the wreckage by going out into the desert. A man got out and I recognized him and his wife, residents of Rockmuse, though I didn’t know them or their names. He knew mine, or saw it on the side of my trailer as he passed by. Manita looked fine to me where she was. There was nothing I could do about whatever horror rested in her lap. I walked over to the man.
He stood by the door. “Jesus H. Christ, Ben. Anyone left alive?”
“One, at least,” I said, “probably not for long.”
His wife leaned over and said, “What can we do?”
That was always the big question when something bad happened on 117. No houses. No cell phone reception, if you had one, which few, myself included, bothered to own. Someone needed to go for help, either back to Rockmuse, where there was no help but you could find a phone; or ahead to Price, or use the old pay phone at Walt’s diner. Help, if it ever came, was almost always too late.
“I’ll stay,” I said. “You go ahead and call the Highway Patrol from the pay phone at the diner.”
The man got back inside his truck. “I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
“Be careful,” I said. “You don’t want to end up like this.”
He nodded. “Wind?”
I told him that would be my guess. “And speeding without a brain. Get going. If dispatch wants to know how many victims, tell them two.”
The flatbed took off and disappeared into the glare of a low sun. The highway was impassable and he knew it would be easier to bump around in the desert for a half mile or so until he could get clear of the mess and rejoin the road. It would be dusk within ninety minutes or so. I could already feel the temperature dropping and the wind rising.
How does a child express sorrow? The boy didn’t seem to have a mark on him that I could see. He was conscious and in shock, and I knew he had to be busted up inside. His eyes were open but unfocused and he seemed somehow comforted by the presence of Manita, and maybe the dog too, whose big head hovered over him, snout lowered as if in mourning. I didn’t know the girl and would never get the chance, but the kindness in her dark eyes and her gentle way with the boy told me both who she was and who she would become. I looked back toward the father and then at Manita again. I wondered if I’d ever grow up to become a child like her.
The sound of a gunshot startled me. I wheeled around trying to locate where it had come from. The thought that someone might be shooting at me occurred only when the dog lifted his head and the girl turned. It wasn’t until that moment that I threw myself on the ground and tried to shield them. We stayed that way for a couple minutes. Even the dog seemed grateful to have some cover. Suddenly I knew where the shot had come from—and who had fired it. I remembered the open-carry handgun the man had been wearing and jogged as fast as I could up the road, afraid of what I knew was waiting for me.
The gun was on the pavement inches above his head. He was straining with his fingers to reach for it and finish what he’d started. I kicked the gun away and it clattered across the highway and into the sand shoulder. His tears mixed with the blood and rolled a dark pink as they slipped over his face. He’d almost succeeded. Only his injuries and the odd angle he was forced to use caused him to miss his right temple. A deep, bloody furrow ran from his forehead into his shaved scalp.
His eyes blazed up at me. “Let me—”
I didn’t kneel and spoke to him from where I was standing. “Your son is alive. Badly injured. Help is on the way.” That was all the kindness and comfort I had in me; the remaining room was rising with guilt.
I left the gun where it was and walked back to my truck to pull out some cheap thermal blankets I always carried. I covered the boy first and then the man before returning to the girl. No vehicles appeared from either direction. There wasn’t anything else we could do.
We waited as the sun hovered over the peaks of the Wasatch Range and dusk came on in stages of lavender and gray and the evening wind kicked up brown clouds of dirt and sand and sent them swirling in and out of the wreckage. Some of the lighter debris skittered and scratched against the rough pavement and then tumbled and went airborne out into the desert, some catching in the grasses and sage like sad ornaments.
At first I didn’t quite believe I heard the siren, its wail muted by the shifting winds. Perhaps only as long as ten or fifteen minutes had passed. The red and blue lights of Andy’s Highway Patrol pickup appeared on the rise and steered cautiously into the wreckage a little ways before he stopped and positioned his vehicle diagonally across both lanes. His headlights and their blue flashing grille markers stayed on, strobing the whole stretch of highway.
A hatless Trooper Smith and I approached each other. He was covered from head to toe in sand and dirt, some of it still wet and muddy. I didn’t comment and we walked in silence to where the man lay. Trooper Smith introduced himself and dispensed some brief, vague encouragement, for which the man attempted to whisper his thanks. Andy anchored a red whip flag with a flashing light. We continued on to the boy, where he did the same. Marking the locations of the injured or dead at an accident scene made evacuation easier and faster, especially in darkness.
When Andy knelt by the girl and the boy and introduced himself she remained solemn and ignored him. The boy only gazed upward into the face of the girl, almost at ease, the white corners of his eyes beginning to redden with blood. This was part of Andy’s job, and he’d done it too many times in all kinds of conditions.
I gave Andy and his dirt coat the once-over. “Long day?”
“Long week,” he answered.
He motioned for me to join him several feet away. “Life Flight is en route.”
“Figures,” I said, thinking of John. I asked Andy how in the hell he managed to get to the scene so quickly.
“I was just down the road turning onto 117 from Dan Brew’s place. The old couple flashed their lights. Pure luck. My radio was even working—just one of those things. That the girl?”
“That’s her,” I said. “She was out of my cab and next to the boy before I could stop her. Calm as she could be, so I let her stay. Damage done, if any. I get the impression the kid has seen worse. If he dies, at least he won’t be alone.”
“Wind?”
“Of course,” I said, and mentioned that when the guy passed me I estimated his speed at eighty or better. “I suppose you’ll want to take the girl with you from here.”
“Can’t.” He tipped his head in the direction of his pickup. “I got Dan Brew’s fiancée with me. Or maybe she’s his widow. Doesn’t matter.”
Andy briefly filled me in on Brew, which also explained why in his present condition he resembled a bigger version of a rain-soaked prairie dog. Brew had thought his sod house sat on a gold mine and had honeycombed the entire area for the bits of gold that had washed down from the mesa over hundreds of thousands of years. What little he had found only drove him harder and crazier until one of his tunnels collapsed on him and the woman. It hadn’t been my imagination when I noticed during my last delivery there that the ground seemed sunken. Brew had been partially buried and crushed and eventually died. The woman had been trapped with him until Andy heard her cries for help and dug her out. She was half-naked and wrapped in a blanket sitting on his front seat.
“Damn good luck for her,” I said.
“Not so much for him.”
“Where’s your hat?”
“Buried under a ton of dirt and sand.”
Andy returned to the man to see if he could make him more comfortable. The next time I caught sight of him he was on top of the rise taking photos of the scene. Within a few minutes the helicopter, lights flashing, came in low from the north, pitching and yawing as it fought the gusting wind before setting down in the desert nearby. Everyone had their job to do and they did it.
Two tow trucks even made the scene, another miracle, and began spraying the pickup with flame-retardant foam. After that they began pushing and dragging heavier pieces and generally clearing the highway. I helped out as I could, careful to keep an eye on the girl. It all went efficiently and quickly, the result of too damn much practice.
By the time two EMTs had the man and the boy stabilized and on board, one wrecker had already winched up the carcass of the pickup and left. The other was clearing the last pieces of wreckage from the road. Andy had his head in the open door of the helicopter talking to the EMTs. When he pulled his head out, he scanned the road until he saw me. The helicopter rose and wobbled and then disappeared into the twilight. Andy walked to where the man had been and started searching the roadside for something. He picked it up. “Jones!” he shouted. “A word.”
I was in no hurry as we walked down the centerline of 117 toward each other. He started talking when we were still several feet apart. “Please tell me what I just heard is not true.” He tucked the man’s handgun into his belt. “Well?”
“He was an asshole,” I said. “And a stupid asshole at that.”
“So you told him you had to collect his son in a garbage bag?”
I hadn’t said that, exactly. Close enough, I guessed. There was no use in denying it. Part of me wasn’t all that sorry.
“You bet I did, Andy. He damn near forced me off the road on Monday. When we caught up to each other in Rockmuse I told him to slow down. Warned him of crosswinds and high-profile vehicles. He basically told me to fuck myself. He was stupid.”
Andy just gave me a long, weary stare. “He was stupid, huh? That’s it? Jones, you take the prize. Stupid? I don’t even know where to begin with you. You win stupid. Worse than stupid—mean stupid.”
I shrugged and started to defend myself, not that I had a damn thing to say in my own defense. He closed the distance between us. “Shut up, Jones.” I did, and he continued. “I spend most of my days dealing with stupid, just like most cops. Stupid is our stock-in-trade. Murder, drugs, and worse get a pass because of days busy with stupid. If I could give citations for stupid, I could paper the desert with them, not that they’d do any good. But you, Jones, what you did to that man, that was felony cruelty in the first degree. It’s no wonder he tried to shoot himself. If he’d succeeded you’d have been the one responsible. Think about that.”
“So give me a ticket,” I said.
I could say it was getting dark. I could say I wasn’t ready. Both true. I just didn’t see it coming because I didn’t expect it. Andy’s fist connected with my chin and the impact lifted my heels and down I went, my ass hard against the pavement. I’d been punched before, and by men who knew how to do it and where, and what had just hit me deserved an award of some kind. I rolled to my side and tried to get my feet beneath me.
“There’s your ticket, Jones.”
“Goddammit, Andy,” I said, trying to shake my eyes back into their sockets. “What kind of Mormon are you? You learn to punch like that at temple?”
I managed to get to my knees, my fists tightening.
“Don’t even think of getting up, Jones,” he warned. “Stay right where you are, you cruel asshole.” He was angry enough he was shaking. “Report me if you’ve got the balls. I’ll gladly take a suspension. I could use the break. And considering who I punched, there might be a commendation in it for me.”
My head was clearing, though I wisely took his advice and stayed down and wiped a trickle of blood away from a split lip.
“I’m going to get in my pickup and head into Price. You just stay in the middle of 117. Take your time. Maybe a truck will come along and hit you and knock some simple common decency into you.”
I stayed put and watched him march to his pickup and leave, and followed the blue and reds as they went spinning west behind the rise and faded into the early evening dusk. I got up. Andy was right, and I didn’t need a truck to hit me. That short Mormon trooper’s right hand was almost the same thing.
I’d only taken a couple steps when I started to run. The girl and the dog were gone. The driver of the second wrecker was just getting into his cab to pull out.
“Did you see a kid and a dog?”
He pointed northeast, into a wall of shadowed desert. “I’m pretty sure I saw them go that way.”
I asked him why in the hell he didn’t stop them.
“Fuck you,” he said, “not my kid.”
With that he drove away and left me in silence staring north into the absolute last rays of sunlight fading into a roiling bank of gray clouds. I took off in the direction the girl went and quickly stopped. This was my fault, all of it, and beating myself up about it was just using up precious time. There was no question I had to go after her, and as soon as possible. The only question was how.