And West Is West (29 page)

Authors: Ron Childress

Jessica unhooks the headset and stands away from the driver's seat.

When Bob's settled in, she asks, “Mind if I borrow your jeep?”

SAHIRA. AZHAAR. THE
names of the village girls, fourteen and fifteen, vaporized in a heat blur twenty seconds after she obeyed Voigt's order. What she believed then, what she
needed
to believe, was that the colonel was carrying the burden of conscience for their deaths. But the burden was hers . . . and it still is even if she no longer pilots vehicles that can launch missiles. When Voigt finally gave her their names he must have been hoping Jessica would be able to forget them. Sahira. Azhaar. But she hasn't. She won't.

Sanders' GPS turns her off El Camino del Diablo, the Devil's Road, which is less a road than a worn groove in the desert. Jessica is traveling over open country as the crow flies, or trying to. The ancient jeep doesn't have power steering, and the soft sand and sagebrush are giving her arms a workout. Ahead the sun is dipping toward the horizon andâaccording to her coordinatesâshe is not a mile from the jacal. Her immigrants will be there. They
must
be there. For if not, she knows what will happen next. She will drive circles through the night until she finds her couple. And find them, she will.

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ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

Acknowledgments

Thank you: Barbara Kingsolver, Kathy Pories,

Terry McMillan, Nancy Pearl, Sam Stoloff, everyone

at PEN American Center, Algonquin Books,

and Workman Publishing.

And also: Sondra Arkin, who never wavers in her support

of my writing and always gives me the space in which to do it.

RON CHILDRESS started work in boatyards up and down the New England coast, but at nineteen enrolled in community college and went on to earn his BA, MA, and PhD in literature. Childress worked for several years as a communications manager for a professional association near Washington, DC, before joining his wife in her tech marketing agency. In 2000, he left the business to pursue long-form fiction full time. (Author photo by Sondra N. Arkin.)

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