The Dispatcher (26 page)

‘You all right, hon?’ the woman says.

‘Yeah,’ Ian says. ‘Thank you. Sorry about crashing into you.’

‘Sure you’re all right?’ the man says.

‘Yeah,’ Ian says. ‘Cough just ran away with me is all.’

‘You don’t look so good,’ the man says. ‘Maybe you should sit down.’

‘Do you want some water?’ the woman asks, proffering a bottle. ‘I ain’t drunk from it yet.’

‘No, thank you,’ Ian says. ‘I’m okay now.’

 

 

 

He sits on the toilet in the bathroom a moment, face in his palms, trying to breathe like normal humans breathe. Every exhalation creates a high-pitched wheeze bordering on a whistle. He looks down at his shirt and sees a brown spot about the size of a quarter and spreading. But not quickly. He feels hot and cold simultaneously, and though he’s covered in sweat a shiver snakes up his spine.

He gets to his feet and walks to the sink. He pours two or three tramadol into his mouth, palms water in after them, and swallows.

 

 

 

He grabs a bottle of water, a pre-packaged tuna fish and cheddar sandwich, a bag of barbecue-flavored corn chips, and a box of caffeine tablets. The pain medication makes him drowsy and he’s afraid he might fall asleep at the wrong moment. He walks to the counter. His knees feel wobbly. When he gets to the front of the line he sets his purchases on the counter and the woman behind it asks if that’ll be all, dear, and he asks for a cigar. All they have are dollar shits, but he says that’s fine. He doesn’t plan on smoking it, anyway, just wants something to gnaw on while he drives, another way to keep himself awake. She rings him up and bags his purchases and he heads back into the mean Texas heat.

The Dodge Ram across the street is still there. He’s not a hundred percent it’s Henry, but the damned thing has been behind him for hours. Still, it could be a coincidence. Sometimes when driving long distances you find yourself next to someone, or behind someone, or in front of someone, and you just happen to pace one another for hours, popping into and out of sight of one another as you progress on your respective journeys, and then as the sun sets you find yourself in the same diner with them, grabbing a quick bite before bed, and when you make eye contact it’s like running into an old friend. Howdy, fellow traveler.

Sometimes that happens. There’s no reason it has to be Henry. But a feeling in his gut tells him it probably is.

 

 

 

Ian falls back into his car and pulls a sheet of caffeine tablets from its box. He pops four pills through the sheet’s foil back and puts them into his mouth, dry swallowing one after the other. They are very bitter. Once the pills are down he tears the plastic off his sandwich and takes a bite. It’s dry and flavorless, as he knew it would be—gas-station sandwiches are never otherwise—but his stomach grumbles all the same, anticipating its descent. He chews and swallows. A piece of cheese sticks to the roof of his mouth and he scrapes it off with a finger, chews, and swallows that as well.

He starts the car, shoves it into gear, and pulls out into the street, looking for a sign that will guide him onto Interstate 10.

He shifts into fourth and looks at his speedometer. Eighty-two miles per. His old car rattles loudly at this speed, and a loud wind whirs even with the windows rolled up, the rubber seals long ago rotted away.

He glances into his rearview mirror. Sunlight stars off the hood of a gray pickup truck about a quarter mile back.

He imagines letting it come up on him. He imagines slamming on his brakes and letting it rear-end him. He imagines stepping from his vehicle and—

He cannot do it like that. Maggie is in the truck. If it is Henry, then Maggie is in the truck. And he has already been shot. If he is going to kill Henry and get his Maggie back he will have to be much more subtle than that. Much more careful than that.

He sighs, curses under his breath, and rotates his left shoulder. He figures he’s got another three or four hours of driving left in him today, and then he’s done. He’s tired and in pain and having trouble breathing. The heat is tremendous. Cold chills run through him, giving him goose-flesh. He is covered in a sickly sweat.

‘Shit,’ he says about everything and nothing at all.

Then turns on the radio to block out his thoughts.

 

 

 

From Fort Stockton to Sierra Blanca the land empties further. Traffic is sparse. Rock formations litter the horizon, and the scrublands spread out before you like a sheet.

Looking at this while he drives and eats barbecue-flavored corn chips and the second half of his dry tuna fish sandwich Ian thinks, not for the first time, about how ancient this land is. After he finished high school his mother—still mourning her husband’s suicide—sent him traveling through Europe, visiting London and Paris (where he met his first wife) and Rome, and the history there made him feel very strange about coming from such a young country. It made him feel like an orphan somehow, without any real history to call his own. The curse of the American mutt: you come from nowhere, son. In America you build yourself from scratch, from the ground up, making your own bootstraps to pull yourself up with, or you don’t exist. Don’t expect to stand on the shoulders of those who came before: this is a land for which there is no before. But Burroughs was right: America is
not
a young land. It is old and dirty and evil. It lay here for millions of years in silence, waiting; it lay here home only to beasts with no language but the hunt, waiting; it lay here ancient and scabrous, waiting. And finally twenty thousand years ago, thirty thousand years ago, people arrived, but still the evil of the land remained trapped in the soil. Then the Europeans came to the eastern shores, and they pierced the soil with their flags, and released it. And it spread across the land and polluted the waters and the vegetables and grains whose roots the waters fed. And through the food it got into the people.

Ian pops the last of the sandwich into his mouth and washes it down with a swig of water.

 

 

 

As he nears Sierra Blanca he decides, because he wants to see if the gray Dodge Ram follows him, to stop someplace and buy a Coke. The town is less populated than the last one he went through, and if it is Henry behind him, perhaps he can end it here. He pulls off the interstate and onto El Paso Street, glancing in his rearview mirror. The gray Dodge Ram is just in view, a glint on the horizon. Which means his car should be just in view too.

He drives past a dirt lot, then the firehouse, a red fire engine parked inside and a sign on the garage door that says DO NOT BLOCK. Beyond the firehouse, an empty parking lot. He stops at a stop sign. There are no other cars around. Brown hills float in the distance. He takes his foot off the brake. On his right he passes a white Spanish-style building and on his left a brown structure advertising ICE and COCA-COLA. Sweat trickles down the side of his face. The ICE is very tempting.

He glances at his rearview mirror. The road behind him is empty.

If the truck was going to follow him into town it should have done so by now. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Henry Dean did not own a gray Dodge Ram pickup truck. But of course even a dumb man would know to get rid of his own vehicle while on the run, and while Henry probably isn’t well-read—ain’t book-smart, as they say—Ian does not think he’s dumb. He thinks he’s sharp as a blade and merciless in exactly the same way.

He passes a grocery store and then a place called Best Cafe with a wood shingled roof and tables draped in red checkered cloth set out on a concrete slab. He passes a motel and a Southern Pacific train car sitting on a plot of dirt. He passes the Historic Sierra Lodge and a turquoise-painted gift shop with a Dr Pepper machine out front and an American flag hanging limp in the dead heat. He glances into the rearview mirror once more.

Nothing.

He pulls to the dirt lot in front of a place called the Branding Iron Steakhouse and steps from his car. The white hot sun beats down on him.

He squints at the road behind him and sees nothing.

‘Fuck,’ he says.

He no longer wants a Coke.

 

 

 

He’s shifting into third when he sees the gray truck on the side of the interstate, a Hudspeth County Sheriff’s Department car parked behind it and a sheriff’s deputy standing at the driver’s side window.

As Ian drives by he tries to catch a glimpse of the man behind the wheel but the deputy is blocking his view. Then as he passes he glances over his shoulder thinking maybe he can see through the windshield, but it’s late afternoon now and the sun is in the west, and its light glints off the glass making it impossible to see anything.

He shifts into fourth and looks behind him once more. He simply can’t tell. It could be Henry. It could be anyone. It could be Jesus behind the wheel with a couple apostles piled onto the seat beside him.

‘Is there wine in that jug, sir?’

‘It was water when we left. I swear it, officer.’

As he continues on he can see eastbound cars pulling off the interstate and into a lane leading through a border checkpoint.

He wonders again if that was Henry back there. If his daughter was in that truck.

He doesn’t know if he hopes it was—or if he hopes it wasn’t.

Maggie is looking through the cab’s rear window, watching the road fly out from under the truck like a gray ribbon, when she sees the police car flash its lights.

‘Shit,’ Henry says.

He slows the truck, downshifting, and the police car comes nearer. The man behind the wheel is big, with a round pink face and a mustache. Maggie smiles and waves at him and he waves back without smiling. His hand looks very big.

‘It’s the police,’ Maggie says.

‘Shut up.’

Henry flips his turn signal on and pulls the truck to the shoulder of the road.

‘Turn around in your seat,’ he says, grabbing Maggie by the shoulder. ‘Buckle up.’

‘He already saw me.’

‘Just buckle the fuck up.’

She sits down and fastens her seatbelt. She looks up into the rearview mirror to see where the policeman is, but cannot see him. The angle is wrong. She listens to traffic. A car flies by. A moment later another one. She hears footsteps on asphalt. She leans forward, past Henry, and sees a policeman appear in the window. He is broad and has black hair and for some reason his mustache looks kind of fake up close. Maggie remembers a friend having a mustache like that. He wore it when he dressed up as a pirate for Halloween.

‘Afternoon,’ the policeman says.

‘Howdy, sir,’ Henry says. ‘Hot out, ain’t it?’

‘Do you know why I pulled you over?’

‘Can’t say that I do.’

Maggie wants to mouth two words to him. She wants to but he will not look at her. He only looks at Henry.

‘You were going ninety-two miles an hour.’

‘Was I really?’ Henry laughs. ‘I’ll be goddamned, I sure am sorry about—’

‘There’s no need to take the Lord’s name in vain, sir.’

‘Aw, shit, I’m sorry. My mouth runs about five steps ahead of my brain sometimes.’ He flaps his right hand like a talking puppet.

‘I’m gonna need to see your license and registration.’

Look my way, look my way, look my way. Maggie thinks this with great concentration while staring at the policeman’s sweaty pink face.

And for a wonder he does look at her. The policeman looks right at her and their eyes meet and he has green eyes like her daddy has green eyes, like she has green eyes, and he nods his head slightly.

Help. Me.

He blinks at her, not seeming to understand.

‘You mean a sorry don’t cut in this county?’

‘License and registration, sir.’ Then he glances back toward her.

Help me. Please.

Another blink. And then, as if suddenly poked in the back by a sharp stick, his whole body stiffens and a light flashes behind his eyes. He licks his lips and his right hand drops toward his weapon. He takes a step back. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat.

‘Step out of the car, sir.’

‘Hold on, now,’ Henry says, reaching under his seat. ‘I think I got the registration down here under the—’

The policeman draws his gun and aims it at Henry. ‘Put your hands where I can see them,’ he says. ‘No, freeze. Freeze.’

‘All right.’

The policeman licks his lips. He looks confused. He takes a step back and then a step forward. He licks his lips again.

Henry is leaning forward with his right arm underneath his seat. He moves slowly, pulling away from there. Maggie thinks he has a gun under the seat.

‘I said freeze!’ the policeman says. ‘That means don’t move.’

‘I’m froze, sir,’ Henry says. ‘I’m a fucking popsicle.’