The Never-Open Desert Diner (11 page)

“No,” I said. “We shouldn't.”

Josh didn't say a word during the drive to the Lacey brothers' place. He sprinkled water on the rags and a couple of times tried to get Duncan to sip from a water bottle.

Duncan's jeans were torn out at the knees as if he'd been crawling, which I knew he had. His fingers were dirty and raw. I counted back the days since I had seen them both and calculated how long he might have been out in the desert. My best guess was no more than three days.

Contrary to popular opinion, without water, a few days is all you'll have, and the third day you can't tell your toes from your nose. Without water your muscles stop working and you can't walk even if you have the energy. I was afraid of what we might find at the Lacey brothers' place. Whatever had happened to Duncan might have also happened to Fergus. For all I knew, Duncan was the lucky one.

Josh tended Duncan. When Duncan moaned, he winced as if he could feel the pain himself. The edge of the water bottle against Duncan's raw lips drew blood a couple of times. Josh patted the red away and moistened his lips. I'd seen people in worse shape than Duncan, but none better or more tenderly cared for. Though I wouldn't have said so, I was grateful to have Josh along.

The truck bucked and banged along over the ruts on the road to the Lacey place. Josh did his best to keep Duncan comfortable. He put his arm around Duncan and held him close to absorb the blows.

I saw Fergus on horseback galloping at an intersecting course to ours. He pulled up next to the window and glanced past me to his brother. He did a quick double take when he saw Josh. He didn't bother to speak. He rode alongside the truck the last couple hundred yards into their turnaround.

Fergus dismounted. “How bad is he?”

“Bad enough,” I answered. “He'll probably live. You can thank the preacher for that. John just happened to be on 117 when he saw Duncan.”

It was my turn to hoist the man over my shoulder. Maybe Fergus could have done it, except that he didn't appear to be in much better condition than his brother. I doubted he had eaten or slept much since his brother had disappeared. No doubt he'd been out searching day and night. I didn't have to tell Josh to stay put. He slipped down into the passenger seat and pulled the door shut with only a nod to Fergus. Fergus took no notice of him. His concern for his brother outweighed anything else, even the presence of a stranger.

I'd never been inside the boxcars before. I was surprised. I'd been in contemporary tract homes that weren't as comfortable, or as spacious. The interior had the feel of one of those cartoon Arab tents that held tennis courts and a swimming pool.

Fergus pointed me toward one of two twin beds at the far end of the boxcars. I walked past two tinted panoramic windows that had been cut out of the metal side of one of the boxcars. A sliding glass door had also been added. The view was north, out over a nice wooden deck and into unobstructed miles of desert filled with the slanting golden light of late afternoon. An awning covered most of the deck and helped to keep the heat down.

I lowered Duncan onto one of the twin beds. “You know what to do?”

Fergus stood quietly over his brother and didn't answer me. I went back to my truck and brought back my first-aid kit. Fergus was sitting on the edge of his bed. Tears streamed down his sunburned cheeks.

“You need to rehydrate him,” I began. “Do it slowly. Warm water, not cold. If the water is too cold you could send him into shock. You have something to take his temperature with?”

Fergus stared at his brother and nodded.

“Take his temperature. Put him in a tub of tepid water. When you get his temperature back to near normal, then you can worry about the burns and blisters.” I set a tube of antibiotic and bandages on the nightstand between the two beds. “It's going to take a while. Afterward he's going to have a hell of a headache and a lot of pain. You got something for the pain?” I put a mostly full bottle with the supplies on the nightstand. “Here's some ibuprofen.”

“Where are his boots?” he asked.

“He wasn't wearing any when John found him.”

“Preach?” he asked.

“One and only,” I said.

He seemed relieved that it had been John and not someone else who had found his brother. “I woke up early in the morning a couple of days ago. He wasn't in his bed. I waited until noon to start searching. He's been acting strangely lately, but…” His voice caught and he turned his head away from me and coughed. “We can't go to a doctor.”

“Can't,” I said, “or won't?”

I didn't wait for him to answer. I didn't really expect him to. I turned to leave. “Just stick close by him. If he gets away from you again, you won't need a doctor.”

Fergus came suddenly to his feet and took my hand in a jerky shake. He was saying thank you, or trying his best.

I told him to tie a rope to one of Duncan's belt loops. “And tie the other one to yourself. You need to get some sleep, too.”

Fergus found his voice. “You take credit cards?”

“What?”

Fergus twisted his own swollen lips into a painful smile.

I told him I'd check back in a day or two.

As I passed the windows again the angle gave me a clear view of a bright patch of close-cropped green grass. I turned back to Fergus. “Is that a putting green?”

Fergus looked up from his brother with an embarrassed smile. “It is. You know,” he said, “these days there are some prisons that have them.” He glanced down at his brother's bandaged head. “It helps keep the inmates from going crazy.”

J
osh wasn't expecting me back so soon. The sound of my door opening spooked him. The silver discs tumbled out of his hands to the floor. “You scared the shit out of me.”

The center console was open. So was my glove box. Josh had turned the air-conditioning to high. Pieces of paper and dust were circulating around the cab. I felt as if I'd just caught someone with his hands in my pants. There was a guilty expression on his face.

I got behind the wheel. “What the fuck are you doing?” The good feeling I'd had about him had vanished.

Josh picked the CDs up off the floor. “Relax. You've got this fine Bose sound system. I thought you might have some music. I was bored.”

“Don't you have music in your i-fuck or whatever you carry? I thought all you dizzy little punks carried your lives in your phones.”

What I said seemed to catch him off guard, as if he was shocked I knew phones could be loaded with music.

He shook his head. “My i-fuck?”

“You know what I mean.”

There had never been a CD in the player. It had come with the truck. I didn't even know how to operate it. The two CDs were the ones that Ginny had made for me that night at Walmart. I'd forgotten about them after my brief but passionate interest in the cello had passed.

I pulled back onto 117. My heart rate was returning to normal. Josh was cowering against his door with the two CDs in his hand.

I apologized. “It's been a long day.”

“You mean it's only been one day?”

“Go ahead,” I said. “Put them in.”

He asked me how to work the sound system.

I told him I was busy driving. “It's easy. You can figure it out.”

It only took a minute for him to get the music going. A man's voice asked, “Are we rolling?” The notes of a guitar began. I drove and we listened. Josh smiled. “I never would have figured you for a Nirvana fan. ‘Heart-Shaped Box.' A classic.”

It must have been one of the songs from Ginny's not-so-distant youth. I gathered from the lyrics that the guy was in love with someone and neither one of them was very happy about it.

“Yeah,” I said, “I'm a big fan. It's practically all I listen to.” This was partly true. I hadn't listened to any music in a long, long time.

For a moment I was returned to that evening at Desert Home and Claire naked in the pink light with her silent cello. I couldn't say I'd heard music, though I knew I had somehow felt it.

Josh hummed along for several bars. “That surprises me. I figured you for a George Jones or Clint Black aficionado. But Nirvana? Some of the best songs from the worst musicians I've ever heard.”

“You know a lot about music?”

Josh seemed to be shaken by my question. “Me? No. I mean, I took piano lessons as a kid. Didn't everyone?”

“I took lessons on the bagpipe for a while.”

Josh looked out the window. “Okay, now that really surprises me. Were you any good?”

“Nope,” I said.

Mr. and Mrs. Jones had kindly offered me lessons on any instrument I wanted. I'd never mentioned my love of bagpipes to anyone before. A Jewish Native American half-breed orphan playing bagpipes wasn't the sort of impression I ever wanted to make.

“Didn't stick with it. No one in the neighborhood was sorry when I gave it up. Most of the pets took off. Some never came back.”

I had gone on playing a little. When I was a teenager I would ride my bicycle or drive the Joneses' old pickup out into the desert at night and play to my heart's content. With the certainty that only a kid can have, I was certain I was alone.

The shrill wail of the pipes beat back the darkness. I walked and played the only two songs I knew, “Amazing Grace” and “Loch Lomond.” Up and down trails and into small canyons, I blew and blew. The pipes seemed to echo in all directions when I stopped. One Saturday night I took a girl out to the desert and played for her. She laughed for five minutes. I refused to go to school for a week.

We listened to the songs on the rest of the CD. A few he skipped through. None of the songs was familiar to me. They did give me a glimpse of Ginny
—
innocent, gritty, and filled with a teenage cynic's love of disillusion and failure. She didn't have to listen to it anymore. She had to live it now and, hopefully, get through it. With any luck it might drive her into country music or gospel, though I doubted it. Maybe it would drive her into a love of silence, which, with a baby, she wouldn't be getting much of, or sleep.

I didn't see Josh switch out one CD for the other. When it began, I started to say something. The words stopped on the inside of my mouth. The instrument we heard was a cello, just the cello, a line of quiet notes, some short and some long, vibrating with a sadness I hoped Ginny would never know, or her child. What stopped me cold was the expression on Josh's face, as if he had quit breathing. The fingers on his left hand began to twitch.

He punched the eject button and muttered something about hating classical crap. I didn't buy it. There was the recognition of something in the sound of the cello that drove him deep into himself. He didn't say another word all the way back into Price.

If the first CD surprised him, why didn't the second? That was the point. The second CD surprised him so much that he couldn't even say he was surprised. I told myself it was nothing. But it was something, something that wasn't good. All I knew for certain was that the cello music connected with Josh. The only other person I knew it connected with was Claire, who was hiding out from her husband.

Josh was in a hurry to get back to his family, or so he said. He kept his hand on the door handle the entire time I was backing my rig up against the cyclone fence.

Before I set the brakes, he pulled the handle. I reached over and gently gripped his left arm. “Hold up, Josh.”

He looked at my hand on his arm and did his best to stare me down.

“Why are you in such a hurry?” I asked.

“I'm not,” he answered. He was doing his best to sound casual, and he was failing. He was distracted, and defensive. “Thinking of home. You know.”

I let go of his arm.

Josh said, “I know. I know. You want tomorrow's payment, right? Well, you're going to have to trust me to drop it by Bob's office before I leave town.”

“How about dinner?” I didn't really want to eat dinner with him. I wanted to hear how he responded to my offer, or maybe just see the look on his face.

“Can't.”

“Yeah,” I said, “you're tired and probably want to get a good night's sleep at the hotel before you leave. Call the wife. Discuss your day, that sort of thing.”

He wasn't sure what I was getting at, if anything. He put his shoulder into the door. “That's pretty much it.”

“How about a photo, Josh? You and me and the truck? Something to remember our adventure? Little boys love trucks. Your son would get a kick out of seeing Daddy and a big truck and trailer. Wouldn't he?”

He hopped down out of the cab. “Maybe,” he said. “No camera.”

“How about your phone? Let me take it. What do you say? Dad behind the wheel?”

Josh walked quickly away and threw his regrets back at me from over his shoulder. “Just don't have the time, Ben. Thanks for the offer. And thanks for an interesting couple of days.”

I watched him cross the yard, moving fast but not too fast, dodging the trucks coming and going. He got into a compact Ford rental and wasted no time getting on his way. There were only two car-rental agencies in Price
—
one rented Chevys and the other Fords. You had your choice of an SUV or a compact. If he hadn't turned to give me a halfhearted wave as he exited the gate, I never would have identified Josh as the man I had noticed parked on the shoulder just minutes before the stranded elementary schoolteacher flagged me down. Two compact Fords.

And something else.

Light doesn't reflect off people, only objects. I hadn't seen the man's face that same morning the schoolteacher flagged me down, but I remembered the light catching something. I knew what that something was
—
a diamond stud earring. It was the same flash I saw as Josh waved good-bye to me. He was the man sitting in the Ford along the grade going up out of Price
—
the man on the cell phone, the man calling the schoolteacher a few miles ahead to tell her I was headed in her direction. Whatever they were up to, they were up to it together.