THE GAS STATION OWNER
Walking away from Lofte, he thirsted for the arrival of night and the true cold. He had been close to putting it off again, close to not leaving for yet another day, those days that turned into weeks and into worse, but he had not put it off this time. He’d eaten his last meal from the diner. He’d chugged a beer and slammed the can down and locked the doors of his house. He’d laced up his boots. He’d spat on the tame dirt of Lofte and had put one foot in front of the other. He was scared but he didn’t care about that. He headed west, his pack already heavy, his face to the sun. His legs were prickly with exertion. Parts of him were being roused from long disuse. He was doing it, going into the desert. In no time Lofte looked tiny behind him. In no time he had the town in perspective. It wouldn’t disappear from view, though. It stayed, minute but stuck on the horizon, until the gas station owner got rid of it by veering north around a hulking dune.
Forty days and forty nights. This was day one. The direction he was heading there were no towns. If he spotted an over-serious hiker or drug lab he would give a wide berth. He didn’t have enough food for forty days, and his water would be gone in a week. Forty days and this was day one. The gas station owner thought of all the nuclear geeks shipped over to this bleak land and charged with creating a weapon that could make any land bleak. He thought of these men who’d never wondered about their purpose, who’d fallen asleep and awakened thinking of the same thing always, whose greatest love and greatest fear had been in their brains all along. The gas station owner lived in his body and keeping that body alive would become his obsession. Forty days and forty nights. He knew he was mixing science and religion, but neither had a claim on him. He was going to force the desert to claim him, to claim his life or claim him as an equal.
DANNIE
She didn’t want the vigil to end, but as always the hour came when the group naturally and wordlessly felt that it was time to rise. There were seven of them remaining. They’d lost the painter. Dannie had no idea what kind of painter he was, if he wiled away his mornings on corny watercolors or if he painted houses or if he touched up signs for the city. The fewer people that remained, the more it troubled Dannie when they lost someone. Each departure, at this point, felt like a betrayal of the group. They weren’t a mass anymore. They wouldn’t have been able to field a softball team. Dannie had seen bands with more members. They’d lost the fat hopeful women. They’d lost the guy with the sunglasses. Dannie had singled out one of the remaining vigilers, the college girl who was getting skinnier by the week but only ever wore baggy clothes. This girl would not abandon Dannie. When the others left, as they were bound to, Dannie wouldn’t despair. She had the girl. Maybe she didn’t have Arn the way she used to, but Dannie had this girl.
Arn had sat next to Dannie and had held her hand for a while, out of obligation, but the quiet charge of intimacy was gone. Now it was simple wordlessness between them. It was like they were relieved to be at the vigils because they couldn’t talk. They had made love that afternoon and it seemed to Dannie they were performing out of fear, acting. Arn would never admit they were growing apart, and Dannie hated him for that. She was the one who had to initiate anything unpleasant. Like she had initiated everything pleasant. They never raised their voices with each other, which made the idea of breaking up seem unapproachable. She’d never slapped him. He’d never wrenched her roughly by the arm.
Dannie drove them back to Lofte and when they arrived at the condo she said she was supposed to meet an old friend for coffee back in town. She told Arn she’d be home late. He looked at her puzzled but he didn’t protest. He went inside and Dannie pulled onto the road and went all the way down to Route 66. She wanted to feel free and aimless. She wanted Arn to be the one sitting at home and wondering.
THE GUIDE
She drove without thinking, hitting the likely spots. She was supposed to be talking about how plants and animals survived in this harsh habitat, but her mind was full of what had come in the mail the day before. She was going to Las Cruces. There wasn’t anything for her to do in Las Cruces until the summer, but she was going right away. She was going to lose two weeks of rent, and so be it. She was going to pack her old Subaru to the gills and aim it south on I-25 and not stop until she saw a sign that read NEW MEXICO STATE UNIVERSITY.
This would be her very last desert safari. She had one guest in the jeep, an old guy who was in great shape, who looked like he could still play football or build a barn. His hands weren’t knotty. He sat placidly as she motored them across a flat of sagebrush.
“It’s okay if we don’t see javelinas,” the man said. “Don’t worry yourself.”
She looked at him in the mirror. They’d seen roadrunners and woodpeckers and hummingbirds and several rodents and a big scorpion, but still no javelinas.
“I like the scenery,” the man said. “The scenery is enough.”
“Oh, you’re going to see a javelina,” said the guide.
The man waited. He wore a bright gray jacket the same color as his hair.
“My insurance policy,” the guide told him. She popped open the glove box and removed a gallon-sized zipper-bag of sweet rolls and cantaloupe. “I don’t leave it up to chance. When the little suckers hear the Jeep they’ll run out and meet us. There’s one that’s bigger that sort of leads them.”
“Lucky pigs,” the man said. “Better breakfast than I had this morning.”
The guide downshifted for a hill and when they crested it she and the old man saw all the light pouring into the valley before them, casting long shadows behind the cacti and behind the carcasses of dozens of miniature hogs. The guide let the Jeep roll halfway down the slope and then held the brake to the floorboard. There was hardly any blood. Some of the creatures’ snouts were pointing straight up in the air. They didn’t look surprised or scared. They looked as helpless as they’d always looked. The guide could smell the animals. They weren’t rotting yet; this was how they always smelled. The buzzards had not yet arrived. This was the guide’s last day in the basin, thank God.
She looked over into the old man’s steely eyes and could feel that her own were moist. He put his hand on her shoulder. All he said was, “Jesus, sis, sorry about your pets.”
CECELIA
She had been flat on her back on her bedroom floor, had sensed another song on the way and had stilled herself in order to let it arrive peacefully, but then she’d heard her mother out in the living room talking to someone. She got herself up and went to the hallway to listen. Concerning her mother, this was what she’d been reduced to — spying. Cecelia had never gone back to getting her mother up in the mornings, and her mother seemed to be managing that on her own, rousing herself at a reasonable hour with no help. Maybe Cecelia was doing the right thing, leaving her alone. She needed space. She didn’t need an enabler or a critic. Maybe Cecelia’s uncle was a good influence. Cecelia made her mother feel guilty, but Cecelia’s uncle could talk to her mother as a fellow over-the-hill half-depressed person. Cecelia didn’t feel sorry for either of them — someone they loved had died, just like had happened to Cecelia — but her life would be a lot easier if her mother got better.
From down the hall Cecelia could see her mother’s stiff, dull hair hanging over the back of the wheelchair. Her mother was ordering something over the phone but she was watching the church channel, not a home shopping channel. Cecelia heard the TV, the guy with the shiny beard and the headset who’d once been penniless but had depended on faith and had been rewarded with a corporation. Cecelia’s mother was telling the person on the other end of the phone that she felt her faith multiplying in strength.