The Never-Open Desert Diner (20 page)

I
finally made the first of my farewell deliveries around noon. I had decided to drive east most of the way to Rockmuse for my first delivery and work my way west up 117 back toward Price. Either way involved backtracking. Doing it the way I had chosen simply meant I would do the long drive at the beginning, which suited me fine.

The two hours it took to get to my first delivery allowed me time to get my mind straight about accepting whatever happened with Claire. In Walt's version, which was the only version possible for Walt, everything went just the way it was supposed to go. Claire would hand off the cello to the husband. The husband would say thank you, more or less, and leave. Anything more, and Walt would be there to see that it wouldn't be much more. End of story.

My versions allowed for every possibility I could imagine, including the husband leaving with Claire and the cello, Claire refusing to hand over the cello, Claire returning with the cello to New York. Maybe it was being orphaned and alone all my life, but I always steeled myself for the worst outcome I could envision. That way I could shrug and be almost happy with anything that fell short of the worst. It was a peculiar life skill and one I had gotten damn good at.

I'd done my worst-case-scenario preparation. There would be no surprise, no matter how it went.

My first stop was the University of Utah dig site three miles south of 117 in the center of a one-mile-square depression. I had been told the area once held the last large body of fresh water as the great inland sea disappeared. It was a depository of sorts, a prehistoric landfill, where creatures, and later people, had gathered and lived and eventually settled to the bottom like so much solid waste in a treatment pond.

University faculties and students from all over the West converged there over the summers. I had delivered all their supplies for years. Now, with budget cuts, they used more student interns to bring in supplies and equipment. A lot less supplies and equipment were brought into the dig site because fewer faculty and students could afford to come to work at the site.

As access roads go, the dirt road to the site had been kept in good shape. The county had seen to it that the surface was regularly scraped and the ruts leveled out.

This year was different. The slashes were long and deep. The drive was slow and tedious. When I began to descend into the depression I saw why. The site
—
usually full of activity, tents, workers, cars, and pickups
—
was empty, except for a small travel trailer and a beat-up old Nissan SUV. I could see the shape of a man sitting on a camp stool beneath a makeshift awning that flapped lazily in a light breeze.

I parked near the trailer, climbed down out of the cab, and waved to him. He waved back without lifting himself off the stool. As I approached, he said, “Didn't you get the memo? The apocalypse has come and gone.”

Up close he was older, his face sharply lined like the ruts in the road that led into the site. “Where is everybody?” I said. “I've got a load of Schedule 40 galvanized pipe.”

“Take it back,” he said amicably. “The university hired me a week ago to be the caretaker for the summer. Make sure no one gets away with any illegal bones. Big budget cuts.” As if he wanted me to get the idea of the size of the budget cuts, he made a slow sweeping motion that took in a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the site and the desert in all directions.

“I can't take it back,” I said. “There's nowhere to take it. It's been paid for.”

“Well,” he said with a sad smile, “that's the government for you. Buying shit they can't afford that will never be used.” He pointed to a stack of wooden pallets and crates a hundred yards away. “Put the pipe over there.”

I spent the better part of an hour unloading the pipe. It was hot and unforgiving work beneath the hard noon sunlight. Sweat poured down my face and chest as I worked. I enjoyed the physical exertion. My muscles began to loosen as I got into a rhythm of lifting the lengths of pipe and tossing them into neat piles. When I was done I sat on the liftgate for a well-deserved rest.

The old man appeared at my elbow with a canteen of water. “The name's Jasper.”

I told him my name and took a long pull on the canteen. “You're out here all summer alone?”

“Yep,” he said. “And my pay is commensurate with what I do. Which is absolutely nothing. Government work,” he said by way of explanation, and spat dark brown tobacco juice onto the dust. “For entertainment I watch the sun rise and the sun set. Between the two I
wait
for the sun to rise and the sun to set.” He spat again and winked. “It's not honest work, but it's work. The first real steady job I've had in two years. I'm not complaining.”

I started to tell him that I drove 117, and if he needed anything to let me know and I'd deliver it. Force of habit. I caught myself and said nothing when I remembered I wouldn't be driving 117. “My guess is,” I said, “you kind of enjoy your work out here, such as it is.”

He smiled. “I do at that,” he said. “At night I've been climbing up to that ridge over there and watching the stars. Television for the desert rat. Couple nights ago I took in the sights of a desert fire. Didn't last long, though. Beautiful while it lasted, like fireworks.”

Desert fires are rare and don't last long. There simply isn't enough to burn. Unlike a forest fire, desert fires are left alone. Usually a fire is the result of a lightning strike or, once in a while, a careless camper. Campers might have been the cause of the fire Jasper saw. There hadn't been lightning for over a week.

“Where did you see the fire?” I asked.

He pointed north, in the direction of 117. “Out there. Like I said, it didn't last long. One big flare-up. It blinked for a while. Why?”

“No reason,” I said. “Just curious.” I faced north and pointed. “You stood on that ridge up there?”

Jasper rubbed his face with both hands as if to wake up. He squinted upward and nodded. Dreamily, he said, “Once in a while you can catch a shooting star. The night sky kind of reaches around you up there like a starry bubble.”

I asked him to sign for the pipe. He scribbled his initials and I gave him his copy. I told him to be safe. Almost as an afterthought, I asked him if he had lived a long time in Utah. His answer surprised me.

“No,” he said. “Born and raised in Washington State. Lost my job to the digital revolution and my pension to Wall Street. My wife died. I've just been moving from place to place. I like it here, though. You?”

“All my life,” I said. “And probably what comes after.”

We left it at that. On my way out I slowed near the ridge he had indicated and followed the line of sight due north. There was nothing out there that I knew of, and not an area where you'd expect hikers or campers to go. In fact, there had only been one person out there two nights ago
—
Josh.

The next few deliveries went quickly. I wondered about the fire Jasper had seen. Maybe it was just a campfire. Josh would have been cold while he waited for daylight. What concerned me was that for Jasper to see it, it would have had to be one hell of a big campfire and there wasn't much there for Josh to burn. Jasper's choice of the word
flare-up
made me think of
flare
. Perhaps Josh was attempting a signal fire with the hope of being rescued. Maybe he had been rescued. Jasper only saw it the one night.

Layers of soft wide clouds were building to the west in front of a late-afternoon sun as I headed my empty trailer back toward home, which for a moment I envisioned not as my duplex in Price, but Desert Home and Claire. My place in Price had never been my home, only where I slept. After two nights with Claire, it seemed as though it wasn't even that anymore. Dennis might be in Desert Home with Claire, or have been there and gone. Or they were both gone. I wanted to know which it was. At the same time I didn't want to know. The compromise presented itself as I approached the turnoff to the Lacey brothers' place. My intention was to occupy myself for a few minutes by checking in on Duncan.

A red handkerchief twisted in the wind from where it had been anchored to a pile of rocks. Though seldom used, many of my customers put out a brightly colored rag of some description to request me to stop for a pickup, or to place an order.

F
ergus was sitting on one of the plastic crates beside the cable spool table. On the table, partly hanging off the edge, was an oblong package tightly wrapped in black plastic and sealed with silver duct tape. Fergus looked like he was expecting me. There was no way he could have known when I would show up. He didn't wave or stand. I parked in their turnaround. He sat with his hands folded in his lap and watched me as I climbed down out of the cab.

There was no use hurrying. It was maybe twenty-five steps to the table. By the twelfth step I knew what lay stretched over the table in front of Fergus. I took the crate across from him and sat down. Neither one of us said anything for a few minutes. We just sat there with the crude body bag between us like a centerpiece at a sad dinner party. Fergus didn't look at me or the bag that held his brother. He stared south toward 117.

“When?” I asked.

Fergus gently rested his hand on the black plastic. “Yesterday.” I waited for him to continue. He began to stroke the plastic. “He was feeling better.”

Fergus had been sleeping. When he awoke he saw Duncan stringing barbed wire from their old Jeep along a hillside behind their boxcars. The roll of wire was in the back of the Jeep. The end was nailed to a fence post. Duncan stood between the two.

“He was just standing there, looking back toward me with this silly grin on his face. He sort of waved. I saw the Jeep begin to creep down the hill. He probably didn't bother to set the emergency brake. He didn't even try to get free. Maybe Duncan didn't notice the barbwire tangled around him until it was too late. I didn't even make it out the door before the barbwire cinched him around the waist like a tourniquet. Damn near cut him in two. He was still alive when I got to him. Not a damn thing I could do, Ben.” He paused. “I keep telling myself it wasn't a bad way to go. We had a few minutes for our good-byes.”

“It's got to be tough to lose a brother,” I said.

Fergus stopped stroking the plastic and gave it a pat. “Even harder to lose your only son.”

“Your son?”

“We wanted it that way. You and the few others we've had contact with over the past forty years assumed we were just a couple of crazy brothers living out here. It got easier to sell as we got older. I was only eighteen when he was born. His mother was seventeen. We figured being brothers kept us a little safer.”

“Safe from what?”

Fergus needed to think about my question. I let him think. He made his decision. “From the law, Ben. FBI mostly. Our name isn't Lacey. It's Tinker. I'm Joe. My son's name was Teddy. Ted. We're originally from Baltimore. Showed up out here in the middle of the night. Before that, the closest we ever came to this much sand was the Atlantic shore.”

It didn't seem all that important to know why they were wanted men. The bullet scars I'd seen on Duncan's chest made sense. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Don't you want to know why we've been hiding out from the law all these years?”

I told him I didn't care. I did care, though only a little.

He wanted to tell me anyway.

“Teddy and a friend robbed a bank. Only trouble he was ever in. Thought they'd do it just the once. He was only twenty years old. It's not like he had a brain in his poor little head at that age. His friend shot the guard. Killed him. The guard shot his friend. Toby, his name was. He died where he fell. They'd known each other since they were in kindergarten. A teller emptied his revolver into Teddy. He was half dead when I broke him out of the hospital. We drove for three days. The whole time I was expecting him to die. If he'd lived or died, better with me than in prison or by lethal injection.”

“What about his mother?”

“She gave her blessing. Knew we'd never see each other again. And we didn't.” Fergus, or Joe, smiled up into the sky. “As prisons go, this was a good one. Still a prison.”

“I saw the putting green,” I said. “Just like the Wall Streeters and bankers.”

“Yep,” he agreed. “We even supplied our own barbed wire.”

I didn't think there was much left to be said. “Give me a hand. We can put him in the refrigerator unit. I'll take him into the funeral parlor in Price.” Fergus made no move to help me. “Or do you want me to help you bury him here?”

He sighed. He took his eyes away from Duncan's body. “There's something else you should know.” I let him take a moment to find the courage to tell me what I already suspected. “I'm wanted, too. When I took my son I didn't have much money. It ran out fast. Outside Muncie, Indiana, I robbed a gas station. Then a bank in Trinidad, Colorado.”

“Anyone hurt or killed?”

He shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “Probably. I was out of my mind. I'd been driving for two days. I didn't really know how to use a gun. It just seemed to go off by itself. Teddy was lying in the backseat bleeding and unconscious.”

“You want my sympathy?” I asked.

“Your understanding, maybe.”

“Sure,” I said. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

“Take him into Price or Salt Lake. Somewhere he'll get a decent funeral. That's it.” He thought a moment more and added, “The boy was so lonely out here. I guess I don't want him to spend eternity the same way.”

There was nothing in his tone to suggest that was all he had to say. I just waited on him to get it all out. When he didn't, I grew impatient and finished for him. “You want to be left out of it?”

He nodded, and I added, “You think funeral homes have night deposit slots for bodies?”

“I got lucky with the bank in Trinidad,” he said. “If you want to call it luck. Two hundred thousand and change. I could make it worth your while.”

“You couldn't possibly make it worth my while,” I said, with no room in my tone for misunderstanding. The thought of starting a life with Claire that way, with stolen money, wasn't something I could have lived with.

“I've never taken money for doing something illegal,” I said. In fact, I had never really done anything illegal, for gain or not. At least not something I'd had a chance to think about. “Your money is stolen,” I said. “Even if it weren't, taking payment might take the fun out of what for me could be considered a crime spree
—
if I get caught.”

“You'll do it, then?”

“I'm not sure what I'll do. No promises. I'll take the body. If I turn you in, either because I want to or I don't have any other choice, you have to go without trouble. You understand? That's the best I can offer.”

He took my offer. We slipped Duncan in over the butter brickle ice cream. “There is one thing you can do for me,” I said. “You have any idea where those boxcars came from?”

Fergus said he did. “That's where the railroad left them. We covered up the tracks. This used to be a siding.”

“You built your house on the tracks?”

“Sounds stupid, doesn't it?” It wasn't exactly a question.

I opened the little inspection cubby on the exterior of the trailer and took a peek in at Duncan in his black plastic sleeping bag. “No,” I said, “not at all. Especially when you compare it to everything else you and your son did.” I closed the inspection door.

“Didn't have a choice,” he said.

I avoided looking at him. “Sure you did.”