We crested the hill that led to The Well-Known Desert Diner just as the sky entered the precious golden moments between sunset and twilight, when the light was losing its battle against the shadows. Dawn and dusk were usually the times I stopped at the diner, and it was in those gentle, turning seconds the diner was transformed into a rare, timeless dinosaur that was both vanishing and appearing in the distance like the ghost it was. I wanted her to see it as I saw it, in that insubstantial phase.
All that was missing was a full moon. Manita was sleeping so soundly.
What I thought were the last slanted stabs of sunlight did not diminish as we approached the diner. The habit of seeing what I always saw delayed the truth of what lay before us: the interior lights of the perpetually closed diner were on and cut across the antique bubble gas pumps and pale gravel parking lot. The old neon sign that sat on top of the roof suddenly flashed its purple and pink news—COOL DRINKS! GOOD EATS!—which was a first. In twenty years I’d never seen that sign lit up. No one had, probably since the ’80s or earlier.
My shock was so complete my foot slipped from the accelerator and the truck came to a rolling stop on the highway a handful of yards before the gravel apron of the parking lot. I dropped into neutral to keep the engine from stalling and just idled there in the middle of the road.
Walt was crazy, but his craziness was consistent and oddly predictable, if that’s possible. As far as I knew, I was his only regular contact with the outside world. Lately, even that small interaction had been missing. He had been acting strangely, though that word took in a lot of territory when it came to Walt, except for this, which was far beyond his established limits of strange and crazy. It was like coming upon an empty carnival ride at the edge of the world, a beacon for respite in a darkening wasteland—and it was anything but welcoming.
I put the truck into gear and lurched and crept onto the gravel apron as if stalking a well-lighted desert apparition. The dull crunch of rocks beneath my tires came through my partially open window as we drove toward the diner. I stopped with the nose of my rig facing the pumps in front of the diner and set the brake. The headlights traversed the light escaping from the windows. No one was visible inside. I got out and stood on the running board, watching, listening, and hearing the faint melody of some old record playing on the vintage Wurlitzer jukebox.
I glanced at Manita. She was still asleep.
On Monday morning, when I’d last seen Walt, he was lying on his single bed with the revolver by his side. I’d wondered then if he’d been toying with the idea of suicide and dismissed it just as quickly. As I took in the diner, all its lights ablaze and the jukebox playing, maybe I shouldn’t have. Maybe this was exactly as Walt would have wanted it, the diner alive again for a while as he put the gun to his head. I walked to the door and peered through. Everything, the stools, salt and pepper shakers, spit-polished linoleum floors, even the ticket from the last paying customer hanging in the stainless-steel pass-through, was perfect, untouched, preserved as they always had been.
The song ended and the machine clicked and then came the sound of static and the needle settling on vinyl. A new song began, a song I recognized—“Blue Moon.” It was playing the night I showed up at the diner and found Claire and Walt dancing. To my left, hugging the corner of the diner, sat the phone booth. The heavy black receiver was missing. The Closed sign on the door and been turned over. It now read Open. I tried the door. It was locked.
I stepped several paces back and stood just outside the light and listened to the soft music and the crackling of the neon lights on the roof. I was stalling and I knew it. Walt was in there, somewhere. I could almost feel his presence. I walked to the east side of the diner, steeling myself for what I would find in the bedroom off the kitchen or in the Quonset workshop.
The flashing neon light of the sign fell across some long, rough gouges in the dirt and I knelt to run my fingers along them. A heavy vehicle of some kind with deep treads had recently driven over the moist ground. There was another set of tracks inside those, a smaller vehicle, a pickup or car. The one time I had parked on the side of the diner Walt and I had almost come to blows. He was particular in the upkeep of his frozen world.
I followed the tracks past the flagstone patio between the diner and the Quonset and continued all the way to the back. Snugged up against the rear wall of the Quonset was a semi-tractor, a cab-over, painted a dark blue. The passenger-side mirror had recently been replaced, and I ran my hand over the puckered metal of the door skin where the mounts had been jerked clean. The paint was fresh and hastily done. From the running board I reached across the windshield to the fiberglass visor. The sharp edges of the words that had been removed allowed me to trace them out in a braille of sorts—not “Red Hell.” The two words were “Red Heaven.”
I knew of Red Heaven. It had been the original name of the town of Rockmuse, though that site was several miles away from where the town was now. I’d never been there—until that long night searching for the girl.
I was so intent on the truck I almost missed the other vehicle parked nearby in the darkness: It was a Utah Highway Patrol pickup, the hood still warm and popping softly as it cooled from the drive in from Moab. Andy was nowhere in sight. None of this was Walt’s doing, and my guess was that he and Andy were already dead. If I didn’t get the hell out of there, the girl and I would be joining them.
At the corner of the Quonset a friendly male voice said, “Welcome to the party, Mr. Jones.”
I glimpsed a tire iron as it swung out of the shadows and caught me just above the waist. The impact folded me like a cheap deck chair and I fell forward, my face in the sandy dirt, gasping for breath, and feeling the all-too-familiar sharp pain of broken ribs. I heard the iron spin through the air and land in the brush. He checked me for weapons and shoved a gun barrel into my mouth and knocked a tooth out in the process. The pain was so intense I almost passed out.
The jovial host whispered, “You’re the last guest, but that’s okay. You’re the most important. You can stand up now. Slowly.”
I couldn’t stand. He decided kicking me a few times would help motivate me. Having to hold the gun so close to my face hindered the force of his kicks until he gave up and simply raised the barrel against the roof of my mouth and used his free hand to lift me by my belt. He had all the strength he needed to do it. From there he walked me backward down the flagstone patio. My tongue fought to keep the gun barrel from going down my throat and choking me. When we reached the fuse box he pulled the main breaker, and the lights of the diner, including the sign, went out.
“Closing time,” he said.