Cry Father (14 page)

36

sunsets

P
atterson doesn’t stop to see Laney after visiting with his mother. He can’t. He knows that if Laney gets him in the same kitchen they used to sit in with Justin she could probably talk him into signing anything. She knows it, too. When Laney knows what she wants, she knows how to get it from him. And she always does if Patterson doesn’t plan the occasional strategic absence.

He’s driving up the mesa, pulling around the last switchback before the dirt road tops out, when he sees Junior’s Charger pulled off by the side of the road. Junior’s stretched out on the hood of the car, his hands on his chest, the last of the sunlight scattering across the broken horizon created by the San Juans.

“Visiting Henry?” Patterson asks, stepping out of his truck.

A faint grin plays across Junior’s mouth. “You’d be late if I was.”

Patterson reaches in his pocket for his cell phone.

“Relax,” Junior says. “I’m passing through.”

“Passing through?”

“On my way south. El Paso.”

“What’s in El Paso?”

“The Mexican border. I detour past here when I get sick of I-25.” Junior looks sidelong at Patterson. “He’s a charmer, but most of the bitches who fall for his shit are broken-down rodeo groupies. You’re the first grown man.”

“You don’t have to work to start a fight with me tonight. You can hop off the hood and I’ll kick your ass right here.”

Junior chuckles.

“You ain’t the only one that’s had a rough childhood,” Patterson says. “They’re writing books about it all the time.”

Junior waits a minute. Then, “One of these days, I’m going to lead you right up and introduce you to that old asshole.”

“That’s what you stopped by here for? To tell me that?”

Junior shakes his head, eyes still closed. “I stopped by here to see the sunset. There ain’t a better sunset anywhere in all the world than right here on this mesa.”

“And then you’re headed to El Paso?”

“El Paso.” He opens his eyes as if Patterson had just reminded him that was where he was going. “You want to ride along?”

“Ride along where?”

“El Paso.”

Patterson doesn’t even think about it. He opens his mouth to say “Hell, no.” But just before he can get the words out, his cell phone rings. He pulls it out of his pocket and looks at it. Then stands there for a beat or two holding it in his hand with his thumb ready to answer it while it rings. He slides it, still ringing, back in his pocket. “How long will it take?” Patterson asks. “I gotta be back to work on Monday.”

“Shit, we’ll be back by noon tomorrow. There’s money in it, too. I ain’t slept in too goddamn long. I could use somebody to help me stay awake on the drive.”

“How much money?”

“Two hundred bucks.” Junior grins.

T
hey drive, listening to Brother Joe until they get out of range. The show is about the Branch Davidian raid in Waco. About the FBI and ATF’s solution for rumors of child abuse being to pump poison gas into the compound and set all the children on fire. How they claimed not to have fired into the compound at all, even though FLIR footage showed assault rifles and grenade launchers popping off. Brother Joe says that it’s the Waco siege that turned him from being a liberal. That he was a good Democrat right up until that day.

“You know what gets me about this shit?” Junior asks, punching the power button on the car radio.

“What shit?”

“Waco. 9/11. All that shit Brother Joe and Henry go on about.”

“Tell me.”

“People die. All the fucking time, people die. They get blown up, they get set on fire. Shit happens. I’ve had that goddamn television for about two weeks now and I can’t turn it on without seeing some poor son of a bitch getting blown out of his socks.”

“It’s all reruns,” Patterson agrees.

“So how the hell do you pick one set of motherfuckers and decide that’s the one you’re gonna spend the rest of your life obsessing about? Waco, 9/11, all of that shit, it’s ancient history. Find some new shit.”

“I think they’d say it’s different when it’s your own people doing it
to you,” Patterson answers. “That’s what they’d say.”

“My people, shit. I don’t even know what a Branch Davidian is. They’re about just as much my people as the people in the World Trade Center. You know how many Manhattan bankers I’ve met in my life?” Junior sticks one finger up under his eye patch and rubs. His finger comes out wet. His hand is trembling.

“How’s about I drive for a little while?” Patterson asks, wondering exactly how long it has been since he’s slept.

“None,” Junior continues, ignoring him. “Not fucking one. I got more in common with an Afghani goatherder than I have with a Manhattan banker. I guarantee you that. They just like finding shit to get upset about so’s they don’t have to worry about their own fucking lives.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you.”

“I know you aren’t. That’s why you’re up on the mesa drinking yourself stupid. You know just as well as I do that it’s all bullshit.”

37

immigrants

I
t’s a storefront bar in El Paso, standing a couple of blocks in the wrong direction from downtown, the name, Green Gables, painted in faded letters beside the barred door. When Patterson and Junior pull up it’s opening for breakfast, and a line of old men who’d been sitting along the whitewashed brick wall are filing inside for $2.99 eggs and pork chops. They move in a busted, rubbery shuffle, like they’ve had most of their bones broken and reset with contact cement. Patterson follows them in and Junior leaves to take care of his business.

It feels good to be somewhere new. Patterson’s never made it to El Paso before, and nothing will empty your mind like being somewhere you haven’t been. He reads the local newspaper at a table by the door, the June sun rising through the screen door. A dog that looks to be half pit bull comes over from the bar and curls up on the floor beside him. Patterson scratches his neck and misses Sancho while the old men finish their breakfasts and start to drinking beer.

After an hour or so, Patterson folds the paper closed and takes a walk, looking for the Acme Saloon where John Wesley Hardin let himself get killed. That’s the only thing he knows about El Paso. Turns out it’s a dollar store now, but there’s a plaque:
Hardin was shot in the back of the head by El Paso constable John Selman
. Patterson keeps walking. It’s boarded-up burger joints and homeless men who’ve been shrunk down to nothing by drinking in the dust and hot sun. At least until he lucks on Dave’s Pawn Shop, where he sees Pancho Villa’s trigger finger, a baby vampire’s heart, a mummified dog, and a collection of Nazi mother’s crosses. He buys an old copy of
Omoo
and returns to the bar to read it.

Lunch comes and goes. There’s a dark-skinned woman trying to feed an armless boy, but now and then she forgets what she’s doing and gets lost in her tequila glass. So he sits there with his mouth open for so long that his eyes tear up. Patterson watches them until he feels bad. Then he watches them some more. Then he reads.

It’s almost three o’clock when Junior returns and sits down at the table. “We’ve got company coming,” he says.

Patterson closes his book, carefully.

“Relax,” Junior says. “We’ll just have a beer or two. He ain’t the kind of person I can say no to.”

It occurs to Patterson that there are good choices, there are bad choices, and then there’s this one, which isn’t even on the map. It’s amazing the flat stupidity to which he’ll resort when trying to avoid a woman.

“A friend of yours?” he asks.

“You’ll love him, he’s even crazier’n Henry,” Junior says. “And I ain’t got a choice.”

Patterson stretches and looks around. “I pictured more of the border.”

“Trunks open?” Junior says. “Out in the desert somewhere, pulled off Interstate 10 across from the Juárez slums?”

“Maybe Juárez,” Patterson says. “Juárez would’ve been nice.”

“Nice, hell. You wouldn’t even see it coming in Juárez. El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States. Juárez is a goddamned slaughterhouse.”

“How is El Paso one of the safest cities in the United States and Juárez a slaughterhouse?”

“El Paso’s an immigrant city,” Junior says. “Immigrant cities are safe.”

“But the immigrants are from Juárez, right?”

“Yeah, but Juárez ain’t an immigrant city.”

Patterson gives up. “So who’s your friend?”

“You’ll know him when you see him,” Junior says.

38

disneyland

P
atterson does know him when he sees him, there’s no doubt about it at all. It’s sometime around dinner and a construction crew has come in off work. They’re pounding pitcher beer and yelling at each other in Spanish when he walks in wearing a Border Patrol polo shirt. Everyone goes suddenly silent as he pulls off his sunglasses and folds them shut, his blond hair swept breezily off his tanned forehead. “Junior,” he says, walking to them.

“Carmichael.” Junior returns. “This is Patterson.”

“Patterson,” Carmichael says, and drops into his seat. He’s somewhere in his thirties or forties, but his skin is so clear it’s hard to tell. He looks like he’s spent the better part of his life preserved in Vaseline.

“You really Border Patrol?” Patterson asks. He knows he probably shouldn’t be asking questions, but he can’t help it.

“Remember the Alamo!” Carmichael yells. Every head in the bar snaps around. He flashes his badge and they all return to what it is
they were doing. “I’m fucking with them. I wouldn’t bust them on a bet.” He sighs happily.

“Isn’t that your job?” Patterson asks.

“On the clock.” Carmichael shrugs. “These’re the only things keeping us free, these places.”

“How do you figure?” Patterson asks.

“Think about it,” Carmichael says. “You’re out on the street, you’re on somebody’s radar all the time. And you’re always breaking the law. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because there’s too many of ’em to even count. There’s laws about everything. Smoking. Eating. Mattresses. Even crossing the street. You know how many laws apply to you in Mexico when you need to cross the street?”

“No idea,” Patterson says. “I’ve never been to Mexico.”

“None, that’s how many. In Mexico, if you need to cross the street, you cross the street. They figure if you’re a fully functioning adult you can probably make it across a street without state intervention. That’s freedom, son. And it ain’t here. Here they’ve got things like jaywalking ordinances. If you can think of anything more insulting to your freedom I’d like to hear it.”

“I’ve thought about it.”

“Think you could name all the laws you’re subject to? Right now at this very moment?”

“No,” Patterson says. “No idea.”

“Fuck no, you can’t. Nobody can. You couldn’t follow all the laws if you tried. You can take it from me. I can’t even name all of them. If somebody wants to put you away, they don’t have to invent a reason. They can just scan through the law books, find one or two you’re breaking, and there you are, you sorry son of a bitch, you’re
in jail. Because they’re always watching you. You can take that from me.”

“They hate us for our freedom. That’s what I heard.”

“Horseshit,” Carmichael says. “That’s the thing about Mexicans, we hate them for their freedom. That’s what all those peckerwoods down on the border with their rifles and their lawn chairs are protesting. That somebody has the right to just act like they’re free. To go wherever they want, freely. Drives them bugshit. I know, I have to deal with them.”

“So why is here free?” Patterson asks. “Why this bar? It’s in this country, subject to the same laws as everybody else.”

“No it ain’t.” Carmichael shakes his head. “Nobody’s watching here. You’re invisible. None of these fuckers even exist. They can come and go and nobody even notices. Nobody wants to notice. This country hums along on the simple fact of them not being noticed.”

“They’re free because they don’t exist?”

“Exactly. There’s nobody watching them, and when you’re in one of their shitholes, there’s nobody watching you. With them it’s almost like you’re living in America.”

“You really do love your job.” Patterson’s a little impressed.

“Fuck yes. I love every one of these little son of a bitches. Those who think they’re protecting America by keeping these people out, they’re full of shit. There ain’t no America left in the places they’re protecting. Their fucking malls and their fucking crosswalks and their fucking subdivisions. Freedom’s something that’s been designed out of those places.”

“That’s been my general impression of malls,” Patterson says.

“That’s because you’re a thinker. I could tell it by looking at you. Malls are prisons. They are. They’re prototypes for the concentration camps. You can believe that. They make it look like they ain’t because they control your mind.”

Patterson laughs out loud. Now he’s truly impressed.

“It’s true,” Carmichael says. “And you know the worst part?”

“Tell it to me.”

“Here it is,” Carmichael says. “They’re using your own imagination to control it. That way you won’t use it yourself to imagine something better.” He points at Patterson with his beer. “That’s why Disneyland is there, to hide the fact that it’s the rest of America that’s the real Disneyland. Just like prisons are there to hide the fact that it’s the rest of the society that’s the real prison. That’s a quote.”

“You’re one of the people building the walls,” Patterson says. “It’s you, boss.”

“True. True.” He nods.

“I read somewhere that there are more atheists in the Catholic clergy than anywhere else in America,” Patterson continues.

“Also true,” he says. Then he says to Junior, “I like this one. You can bring him along anytime.”

“Good,” Junior says. “And at some point I hope one of you two dipshits will let me in on what the fuck you’re talking about.”

39

horse. shit.

I
t’s exactly the night they deserve. They drink beer until Junior gets bored of beer and starts cutting lines of cocaine on the table. There are women, too. Brown-skinned women. Not really flocking to them, but circling Junior, anyway. Patterson starts to wonder about the virtues of an eye patch for himself. Junior, for his part, seems to be ignoring them. Which Patterson is mostly glad of.

“Where are you from?” Carmichael asks Patterson.

“The San Luis Valley,” Patterson answers.

“See, I know about the San Luis Valley,” Carmichael says. “There are energy vortices in the San Luis Valley.”

“There are what?” Patterson says. It’s one of the girls distracting him. She’s wearing a blue blouse, sloping down over her like a waterfall.

“Energy vortices,” Carmichael says. “Why you think there are all those churches? They got Buddhist retreats, Hindu temples, all of it.”

“That’s being free, too?” Junior says. “Being up on Patterson’s mesa?”

“You tell me,” Carmichael says. “You’re up there nearly as much as he is.”

Junior leans forward and snorts a line through a rolled-up five-dollar bill. He straightens, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “How’d you hear that?” he asks. “About the energy vortices.”

“It was on a radio show,” Carmichael says. “I used to have to run up to Denver almost as much as you do, at least when I was starting out. And you ain’t the only one to get bored with I-25.”

“Brother Joe,” Junior says. “Please don’t tell me it was Brother Joe.”

“You’ve heard it,” Carmichael says.

Junior shakes his head and descends for another line. Patterson tries not to watch him too hard. It’s nearly impossible. Patterson could use another line himself.

Then Carmichael says, “I met him.”

Thoughts of cocaine and brown-skinned girls, they both flee Patterson’s head.

“You met who.” Junior tosses the rolled-up bill on the bar table. “Who did you meet?”

“Brother Joe,” Carmichael says. “I met him.”

“Horse. Shit.”

“You want to hear the story?”

“Yes,” Patterson says. He picks the rolled-up bill off the table, snorts a line. “I most definitely want to hear that story.”