The Far Empty (38 page)

MÁXIMO

I
t was cold outside, and he hugged his arms against his body to keep warm.

She’d dropped him at Pilar’s, still crying, and wouldn’t talk. But he’d gone out right after she left, begging Pilar to show him how to start and stop her little car, giving her a kiss with lots of tongue for her efforts and leaving her smiling. He’d paid close attention when America first brought him out here, and it wasn’t hard to find again. Everything here was straight lines, one direction. The roads had been his alone, and although he had trouble bringing the car to a nice stop, he did well enough to leave it crooked in the dark against a fence line, off the road. The only crooked thing in forever, all the fences like chewed toothpicks, thin and broken, marching off into the distance. He walked the rest of the way, cutting across pasture and broken land and pecan groves, guided by moonlight to the little house out here all alone. He curled up at the corner of the porch, and waited.
Ten paciencia.
He was still there when truck headlights came down the gravel drive.

•   •   •

He smelled blood, a smell he knew all too well. The man reeked of it as he stumbled free of the truck, tried to walk toward his front door, and Máximo knew in a way he couldn’t say that not all the blood on the man was his own, but enough of it was. Enough that if Máximo melted back into the darkness, this man might fall down and die on his own. But he might not. And all Máximo had to do was remember America screaming and throwing her phone after him, her tears and the darkness of her eyes, to push him forward. He remembered what his
abuela
once said, while he sat with a face like a rock after his papa had gone away—

Llora, niño, porque los que no tienen lágrimas tienen un dolor que no se acaba nunca.

Cry, for those without tears have a grief that never ends
.

He hadn’t cried, not then, not later. He’d since learned there were so many other ways to deal with grief. He rose out of the darkness by the porch, came straight at the man, who rocked on his feet and spotted him, neither surprised nor afraid nor anything at all.

The man might have said, “Daddy?”

He didn’t even bother with Rodolfo’s old gun. Máximo brought a knife to the man’s throat. It was bloody work, so much blood, to take the man’s head. And the knife wasn’t a good one, just something he’d taken from Pilar’s
cocina
. Not that he needed the head—not that America would want to see it or that he could take it back across the river to show what he had done. He did it so that
after
, when he went to her and said something funny and made her laugh and wrapped his tired arms around her, she would feel them still quivering from all his
effort, and she would
know
that it was done. He knew, in the same way he knew that all the blood was not the man’s own, that the other gringo he’d come for—the real
jefe
—was already dead as well. The killing was done.

He set the head aside and pissed on the body, and then kicked in a window of the house and searched around. He was supposed to look for the
dinero
, but there was very little, not enough, and those across the river did not want it anyway—it was tainted,
venenoso
. They would not dirty their hands with it—planning to burn it as a sacrifice—because it was never about the money for them, until it was. Just ask Chava. No, the
ayudante
’s ruined body was the
mensaje
, all because they’d felt disrespected, cheated, and because of whatever visions floated in that oily mixture of blood and water swirling in their big bowls. Whatever their reasons, they were not his reasons now. He did this thing for her.

He kept looking until he found enough matches and oil and dirty clothes, piling them throughout the living room and out onto the porch, dumping an armload of newspaper over the body. He sat the head on top of that and filled its mouth with the small amount of money he’d found, and lit that on fire. Flames moved inside the skull, behind the eyes, glowing, as Máximo set the rest of the house on fire.

When he jumped off the porch, he thought he spied a creature slinking off into the darkness with him, something that had been watching him all along—a
lobo
. The only ones he’d ever seen before were caged at the
rancho
—dirty, desperate things, and he had always wanted to see one free, running wild. He would tell America about it, and they could guess together at what it might mean.

He didn’t look back, not once, didn’t think any more about the
man or the house or the blood or the fire. He kept walking until the burning house was well behind him; then he broke into a run, pretending that he was a
lobo
, wild and free, forever. The flames at his back rose higher and higher and higher until they washed away the whole sky.

ANNE

T
hey saw each other every once in a while in passing, as they had before, but different. They couldn’t really talk, not then, but he smiled at her and she smiled back, if they thought no one was looking. It had finally started to warm up, the wan earth gaining color, coming back to life.

Like so many things.

•   •   •

It was a week before school was due to let out when they ran into each other outside the Hi n Lo. Chris looked so different, thinner but healthier, even with the cane he needed to walk. But she looked different too, letting her hair go back to its normal shade, wearing her contacts again. She was afraid he might just say a quick hello and keep going, but he didn’t. He asked her to stay awhile, and she did.

They talked about all that happened
after
—all the noise that had surrounded Murfee, as if the Fall Carnival had returned and spilled out over the wide streets. There had been so much shock and sadness
at Sheriff Ross’s death at the hands of Duane Dupree, and then Dupree’s own fiery demise. Everyone knew the story, or as in any small town,
thought they did
—a popular sheriff betrayed by his chief deputy, his best friend, who’d been corrupted and paid for it all with his life. They both agreed it made a good story—a damn good one. And when all the investigations and media inquiries failed to turn up anything different, and then after those had all gone away too, the story was all anyone had left.

Sheriff Ross was buried a hero, a true lawman of the West. Over two thousand people showed up at his funeral.

She asked how he liked being sheriff now, and he said it wasn’t permanent, not yet. He’d cleaned out the department, fired nearly everyone except Miss Maisie, and although the town council had handed him the badge, there was still an open election set for later in the spring. So far no one had come forward to oppose him, but he’d have to wait and see. He guessed everyone liked a hero.

Truth be told, he wasn’t sure Murfee was ready for a sheriff with a bad leg and a damaged shooting hand and a weak heart, but she laughed and said that was the exactly the sort of sheriff they needed, now more than ever.

She said that Caleb had been doing all right, all things considered. He’d missed a ton of school the past semester, but was going to enroll in a prep school in Virginia for the summer to finish up his credits and try to get started on college the following spring, maybe at Brafferton, or even Mary Washington, the same brick-and-ivy place where she’d done her undergraduate work. Her father had not so subtly mentioned it to Caleb a couple of times, having taken a real interest in the boy’s well-being.

Caleb talked about writing. He thought that’s what he wanted to do. Be a writer. He’d turned eighteen two weeks after his father was
buried, so he really was free to do anything he wanted. For now, Caleb was going to stay with her and her family in Virginia until he sorted it out.

Everyone thought it best he get out of Texas for a while, maybe forever.

“What about you, what are you going to do?” Chris asked, squinting at the sunlight, at her.

“I don’t know. I’ll go back with him, of course, get him settled. My parents are thrilled about that. After that, we’ll see.”

“No chance of staying here? The school could use you.”

She laughed. “I’ve heard that line before. No, no chance.” She measured his thin face, the way he leaned against his cane. The gun at his hip, now on the left side in reach of his good hand, helped pull him back to center, kept him balanced. He looked more like a cowboy than ever, even more than that first night they met, beneath carnival lights. “What about you? Are you ready for all of this? Is this what you want?” She waved at Murfee, at everything around them.

“I don’t know, either, to be honest. But for now it’s what I have to do. After that, we’ll see.” He twisted his cane in his hand, the one he kept gloved. “What about Amé Reynosa?”

Anne shook her head. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

He joined her. “Nothing, gone.” He looked down the road. “I met her, talked to her just before everything went bad at the Far Six. She told me to be careful. Guess I should have listened.” He smiled. “She seemed tough, tougher than all of us. A real survivor. I’ve talked to her father and mother a few times, and all they’ll say is she went back to Mexico, to stay with family there.”

“Do you believe that?” she asked.

“Do you?”

She let it go, not willing to ask if he thought Amé had anything to
do with what happened to Duane Dupree. Not wanting to know. “I’ve asked Caleb once or twice about the money, the money he found hidden in his mother’s things in his attic. He still won’t say what happened to it.”

“It doesn’t matter, I guess. I’m not looking for it. Garrison isn’t, either. It might as well not exist, if it ever did.”

Anne let a car pass them and then drive on before she got to the question she’d had all along. “Do you think the sheriff really killed Evelyn?”

Chris frowned. “I still don’t know.” He poked at the gravel, digging with his cane, like he might uncover an answer there. “So many things I still don’t know. Don’t understand . . . and guess I probably never will.”

And they left it at that.

•   •   •

He walked her to her car, tried to be a gentleman and hold the door for her, but it was too much. She reached in for the present she’d made for him—had been driving around with it for weeks like he’d once driven around with a book for her. She got them off eBay, had them framed: a pair of vintage carnival tickets, sepia-colored; a Wild West show, from long ago.

She took his hand, held it gently, didn’t care who was looking. He squeezed back with all that he had and that almost brought her to tears. In that moment, in their fingers, passed all the choices and chances and roads they would never have and could never take. It was done.

“Take care of yourself, Sheriff Cherry.
Please.
”

“And you do the same. Do the same.”

She shut the door—too fast, far too fast, so he couldn’t see her cry. Still, goddammit, it seemed to take forever.