The Far Empty (33 page)

MÁXIMO

P
ilar’s apartment was small, and she talked far too much. She had two little dogs he hated, who got hair all over everything, and she reminded him of his
abuela
. She talked about her
hijo
in San Elizario who never visited her anymore, and watched Máximo with her small eyes—always wanting to know what he liked on TV or what he wanted to eat. She burned the tortillas and her rice was no good, but if he asked, she always drove down to the market and got him cold Tecates.

More than once he caught her staring at him as he tried to sleep on her couch, as large and pale as the moon and blocking the kitchen light behind her, breathing heavily. He knew he was going to have to fuck her. The money America had given her would not keep her quiet, not for long. Her
hijo
was far away and she was lonely and her little apartment felt empty, even with both of them in it. She worked with America’s mama at the dry cleaners, and she would talk if he didn’t do something about it, something for her.

So he had her buy him beer—he wouldn’t drive on his own, careful because he’d never really driven a car and didn’t have a license—and sat on her bed and drank as many as his stomach could take and told his jokes and she laughed too loud and too long. He even sang “Cielito Lindo” to her.

He thought the beers would make it easier, but it didn’t. Her eyes were
pesos
and she talked so fast, so nervous, he thought tiny birds would fly from her mouth. Finally he unzipped and grabbed her fat hand and put it down the front of his jeans, heard her gasp as she fumbled with him while he finished off a Tecate and tried to watch
fútbol
on the TV over her shoulder.

She may have even started crying as he pushed inside her. She said a name that wasn’t his—her
hijo
, that rotten boy, in San Elizario. But he was thinking about America all the time.

•   •   •

All America wanted to know about was the
rancho
.

He told her other things he thought she might want to hear—some true, some lies. She wanted him to take her there, but she didn’t know what she asked. They wanted him to bring her there, too. But it was no place for her . . . no good would come of it. If he took her there, he would never see her again.

He’d beaten men to death with wooden planks, helped shoot crossers in an abandoned house down by the water. He’d stacked heads in a bloody pyramid and pointed a rifle at two dozen
niños
and
niñas
no older than him and walked them ten miles to the border, one carrying two bundles of
heroína
taped to her legs. He’d tossed a grenade from a ten-speed bike into the open door of a disco.

He’d seen worse things at the
rancho
.

Instead, he asked her about Hollywood, where they made movies, and Houston and New York and Miami—cities he’d heard of. She’d never been to those places, but she said she had pictures of them all, taped to her walls. Then she showed him a picture that the
ayudante del sheriff
had sent to her phone, this gringo she knew as Dupree, who the others at the
rancho
had named Perrito. He read the words with the picture and deleted it for her.

Staring hard into his eyes, she finally demanded to know if he’d come for her at all, or just for Perrito, and this other gringo she called El Juez. Did she matter? Did her
hermano
, Rodolfo? He asked her what
she
wanted, and after she told him—after she told him all the things Perrito had done to her and all the bad things he’d promised—he said with a smile,
Te prometo que nunca te hará daño de nuevo
, and they never talked anymore about the things he’d come to do.

•   •   •

They borrowed Pilar’s car and America drove, as she showed him her town and the places he’d asked to see. On the road near Mancha’s they sped by three Mexican boys and a Mexican girl, running in the tall dead grass. The
niña
was smallest of all, with a dirty baseball hat shoved down on her head, but she was running so fast, faster than her
hermanos
, laughing at them and leaving them behind. He laughed too; pointed her out to America, who watched and smiled. After they passed her, the
niña
was still running beneath the biggest sky he’d ever seen, trying to race their car.

On their way out to the place where her own
hermano
was found, they went past the
ayudante
’s little house, but America didn’t say his name. She didn’t have to. She just pointed it out, tucked past a pecan
grove, and kept going. Later, when she finally parked, they leaned against the car, against the wind. He put an arm around her, careful, because she was shivering.

She didn’t know exactly where Rodolfo had been found, couldn’t point it out, but looked out over the fence line as if she could still see him there; then past that, to the scrub and caliche and the mountains in the distance—everything purple and gold and red. A couple of big black birds sat on the wire fence itself, bouncing in the breeze, staring at them with small eyes. Máximo waved his arms at them, made cawing noises to drive them away, but this was their place.

She asked him if he’d ever met Rodolfo, and he wanted to lie and say
sí
,
claro
, but told her the truth instead. He hadn’t known him, may have met him once in passing, but couldn’t be sure. Either way, it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know him.

They stood and counted the birds together for a while, letting the sun go down around them. She could have gotten back in the car, where it was warmer, but seemed content enough to let him keep his arm around her, as if for the moment, there was just enough warmth and safety there.

CALEB

M
y mom disappeared without her truck, her phone, or her wallet. Anything that might have been used to find her, trace her, was left behind. Every connection to her life in Murfee was discarded, including me. Some people asked—not many, not enough—how a woman could leave a note and simply vanish from a place as small and rural as Murfee. Did she hitchhike? Did an old friend come get her? Did she make her way to the bus station in Midland and buy a ticket with cash, heading nowhere, to lose herself from all of us?

It’s unthinkable that my mom chose to abandon my father and me. I’ve heard her called a coward or worse. But if that’s what she did—run away—there’s another way to look at it. That it took unbelievable strength and courage—the sort of courage that makes the unthinkable bearable. The only choice.

Dear Mom,

I have started this a hundred times, and I never finish it. There is so much I want to say, but you’ll never hear these words, never read them.

They’re like messages in a thousand bottles that will float forever lost, like you.

There was a time where every single night I dreamed of finally finding you, of catching a glimpse of your face in a huge window, or seeing someone on a street corner I know without a doubt is you. In those dreams, we look right at each other, and for a moment—an eye blink—I think I see you smile, but when I run to catch you, calling your name over and over again, you are already gone—just another faded reflection in glass, another stranger’s face in the crowd.

After a few months my dreams changed.

Then when I see that hazy reflection or the face in the crowd, I don’t quite recognize it. I think it is someone I once knew, but I’m not so sure anymore. I don’t run to catch you. I stand in place, trying to recall who you might have been and why it once mattered so much that I remember you.

Now I don’t dream about you at all.

Please know I haven’t given up.

I just don’t know where to look anymore.

ANNE

S
heriff Ross picked her up from the house an hour or so after she’d left school, just like she’d asked. She’d stayed late that last day before Christmas break, getting her final work done, so it was dark by the time he pulled up. Most of the students had long ago headed over to the Hamilton for burgers and were going to a bonfire after that. She told him she thought Caleb was one of them. She had him for the last period of the day, and overheard him talking with Carl Tippen and Dale Holt about it.

The sheriff knew all about the bonfire. It was a high school tradition. The kids had been doing it for years on the last day of school before winter break. A lot of the kids drank there and it was never a problem, but he always kept a deputy nearby, just in case. This year it would have been Chris Cherry, but now it was Miller or Dupree. They’d planned it for Tippen’s place, but he asked them to keep it a
little closer to home this time around. He wasn’t sure where, but Duane would tell him.

It was still early, though, and as they drove north out of Murfee, they both saw Caleb’s little Ford Ranger parked with all the other cars in the lot at the Hamilton.

They didn’t go to the same place in Artesia, but another place, much farther away, that she’d picked outside Terlingua. She told him that Lori McKutcheon had told her all about it, and she wanted to try it herself. But it was Caleb who’d given it to her. He’d calculated the mileage, worked out the timing. The sheriff said it really was a good Mexican place, authentic, although the menu wasn’t that extensive, and it was a helluva drive.

Over cold margaritas he told her about all of his media interviews, his time in El Paso, and his visits with Chris. He said Chris had been shot in the left shoulder, the right hand, and most serious, a bullet to the chest, but eventually he’d be all right. He said Chris was as strong as a horse. It would take more than a little lead to bring him down.

“I’m surprised you called, Anne, pleasantly surprised.”

“I am too, I guess. There’s so much going on right now, I know, and it’ll only get busier. But I wanted to apologize for Thanksgiving. I owed you this second invitation.”

“Well, given how it turned out, it was probably for the best. You really must not think much of our little town right now.”

“Do you mean Chris and Duane? That can happen anywhere. As horrible as it is, it seems to happen everywhere.”

The sheriff turned his glass up to the light, content to watch the last of the ice slide to nothing. “True, but it has been rare here. This
has been a safe place for a long time because a lot of blood was spilled in Murfee’s early history to make it that way. There was a time when all of this was bandits and Indians and Mexican rustlers. Wearing a badge in these territories was deadly work. Many men sacrificed. Their families did. I don’t want to see it like that again.”

“I’m sure they’ll catch whoever who did this.”

Sheriff Ross ordered her the fresh margarita she’d asked for. “I’m sure we will.”

He was distracted throughout dinner; still charming, witty. And she did her best as well. Talking, laughing, making sure to order more drinks for the both of them. She checked her watch twice when she went to the bathroom, but otherwise ignored it and her phone. That was the hard part, not looking at her phone. But all in all, she thought she did a pretty damn good job. Thespian troupe good.

She even pretended not to notice how when they walked across the parking lot toward his truck, he kept one step behind her, one hand at her elbow, his eyes searching the shadows. Once on the road he glanced at his mirrors and drove back a slightly different way from how they’d come.

He’d had a lot to drink, refusing to turn down the ones she’d ordered, and she could see each one in the red cast to his eyes, the slight sway in his step when they’d walked out to the truck. Driving, he was still observant, careful. Sitting near him in the cab was like holding a hand over a naked blade. He told her how he hoped she might decide to stay in Murfee, said it a second time about halfway back to town. He made a point of letting her know he would really enjoy seeing her again.

Later they sat in his truck in front of her house while she thanked him, not for the dinners but for everything else he’d done for
her—getting her to Murfee, making her feel welcome. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure she could or should stay, but was warming up to the idea. She leaned forward, forced herself to hug him, smelling alcohol, and let him kiss her on the cheek good night. He lingered there, a bloodless gesture, without warmth.

She guessed his eyes were open, staring into the dark, the whole time.

He got out and opened the door for her, his hands brushing her shoulder, her breasts, and it took all she had not to recoil. He waited as she walked toward her door, watching both her and the night. She braced then for him to call out, not believing he wouldn’t. He’d been so careful all night, always on guard. After all, there was no way he could miss it, but she finally shut the door on him still standing silent by his truck. She turned on a light, too afraid to stay in the dark, and stood by the front door, listening for his truck to leave.

He lingered out there forever, waiting for her to come back out and invite him in, before his truck roared to life. He drove away, leaving her shaking and holding herself up against the hallway wall. She wanted to throw up dinner, get in the shower and scrub him and this entire night off. Then she wanted to get in her car and drive as far away as possible and never look back. But she couldn’t do that, not now, and she was thankful that he’d missed it, too. That he never got around to asking her why her little driveway was empty.
Where on earth might her car be?