Finally, with a heavy heart, Jude looked for the third birth certificate, the one he hoped he would not find — but of course it was there, too. He stared at it for a while.
He spent more than an hour combing the files, looking for more cards in that script, but there were simply too many to go through. The heat made him dizzy, and his discovery depressed him, so eventually he closed the sixth file drawer, leaving a dozen more unopened, and left the room. The elderly man nodded to him in farewell. He opened the door to step outside, and there was the lizard, still gripping the fence, looking inscrutable and almost malevolent.
He got in the car and drove back to Camp Verde.
By the time Jude returned, Skyler was feeling a little better and he looked better, too. He sat on his bed, watching reruns of sitcoms. Tizzie was pacing around and complaining; she said she was going stir crazy. So they decided to drive to Phoenix for the evening to "take a break," as she put it.
On the way down Route 17, plunging south alongside the Agua Fria ravine and losing altitude so fast they could feel it in their ears, Tizzie and Jude argued. It had begun in the Best Western parking lot when Tizzie had offered to drive them in her car.
"Your car?" demanded Jude. "Where did you get a car?"
"I rented one. You don't think I'm going to just sit around all day."
"And how did you pay?"
"Credit card."
At that, he exploded. "They can trace us," he said. "Why the hell do you think I've been so careful to pay cash everywhere?"
"Maybe it's not so easy," she retorted. "And even if they could, by the time they do, we'll be long gone."
"It was a dumb thing to do. They were watching me in New York. They'll be looking for me and Skyler everywhere. And now you may have just told them where to start. If they're looking for me, they're looking for you, too."
She was quiet.
"Only yesterday you were worried about the Orderlies coming after us. Have you forgotten?"
"No."
They passed a runaway truck ramp — a turnoff that led to a road looping up a long incline that stopped in midair like a ski jump. Then they came to the sign for the turnoff to Route 260 that Jude had taken earlier.
"Where did you go, anyhow?" asked Tizzie. "You just left us there for hours."
Jude ignored her question. He had to impress upon her how serious their situation was. He told her about Hartman's e-mail message.
"The FBI?" she said. "Why would they come after us? And how come they're involved in something like this — whatever this is?"
"I wish to God I could answer that. If I knew that, maybe I'd know what the hell we're in for. All I know at this point is not to trust anyone. Anyone at all. And not to make their job easier for them by leaving clues all over the place. Credit cards are the first thing they'll look for."
Tizzie had fallen silent, and Jude took that as a sign that his point had sunk in. Forty minutes later, they had crossed the desert and arrived in Phoenix. The transition from dirt and cactus to freeways and malls was so abrupt, it felt as if something in between must have been removed. They passed an Economy Inn and a Souper Salad and a succession of gas stations, drive-through banks and doctors' clinics. The streets all looked the same. There was no one on the sidewalks, and the bus stops were deserted.
Eventually, they found Mr. Lucky's, a country bar on Grand Street. It sat under a big neon sign of a joker, a two-story light blue building bursting with sound. They pulled into a parking lot filled with pickup trucks. When they opened the car doors, the heat struck them in the face like a wall. They walked past a couple necking in the shadows.
"Well, Skyler, now you're going to see the real America," said Jude.
They stepped inside, and the screeching fiddles of a country music band bounced off the walls and drowned out speech, and clouds of cigarette smoke billowed through the room. On a wooden dance floor, men in cowboy hats, tight pants and boots and women in halters and shorts were line dancing. A loudspeaker announced a drinks special in a drawclass="underline" "Fifty cents, long-neck beer." Stand-up tables were placed not far from the long wooden bar.
Jude lighted up a cigarette, grinning, and shouted: "My kind of place."
He pushed through to the bar and emerged sometime later, clutching the handles of three frosted beer mugs. They made their way to the rear and out a back door, where there was a corral encircled with a thick wooden fence.
On it was written, WHERE THE PAVEMENT ENDS AND THE WEST BEGINS. They found seats in a grandstand and sipped their beers in the heat.
A placard with a name was displayed on a nearby wooden tower, a public address system mumbled the name of a cowboy, and on the other side of the ring a wooden door suddenly swung open. Out came a man with a number on his back riding a bucking steer. He held on with a hand between his legs while his other arm flailed at shoulder height, his body flopping in counter rhythm to the bucking animal beneath him. Five seconds later, he toppled onto the ground, a blur between the steer's legs, and then when two men ran out with flags to distract the animal, he leapt up and ran off, limping slightly only when he reached the fence. They finished the beers, and Tizzie went for refills. Another rider came out the chute.
Jude watched Skyler, who was totally engrossed in the spectacle.
"I know what you're thinking — that you'd like to try that," he said.
Skyler looked at him and smiled, and Jude knew he was right.
"Me, too," he said.
"You know, I'm not exactly like you," Skyler replied.
They downed the beers, and the next time Jude ordered a shot glass of whiskey as a chaser and then another. Soon he was having difficulty focusing on the people around him. When the next wrangler came out the chute, Jude's head swayed slightly as he looked at the spectacle; he felt it was incredibly moving and he wondered who he should root for — the man holding on for dear life or the animal desperate to throw him off his back. He bummed a cigarette from a man behind him. Shielding the match from the wind, he almost burned his fingers.
Tizzie was looking at him.
"You ought to take it easy, Jude," she said.
"Well, it's tough. This stroll down memory lane. Nostalgia for the past and all that. You ever feel that?"
His tone seemed freighted with meaning.
"You're drunk."
He took that as an invitation to have another round. They didn't join him, so he went inside to the bar alone and sat on a stool. He downed another shot and ordered another.
"Hold on there, friend," said the woman bartender, dressed in a flannel shirt in the air-conditioning. "You've had enough for one night."
He fixed her with a bleary eye.
"Enough celebrating for you," she said, not unkindly.
"Not celebrating," he muttered. "The opposite."
At that point, Tizzie and Skyler came and told him it was time to leave. They helped him to his feet and made their way back through the bar and the music and out the front door. Jude felt his head spin in the heat and someone fishing through his pockets for the car keys. He heard Tizzie say to Skyler: "I better drive."
They deposited Jude in the rear, and he laid his head upon the backseat.
"Don't trust anyone," he muttered. "That's the truth — no one."