The Other Mr. Bax (26 page)

“So, you think my family’s searching for me? Right now, in a… this—?”

“This is the only reality I have any certainty of.”

“But you said you saw Joyce and me… at the cactus.”

Fred nodded. “A dream, like you said.”

“I don’t get it.” Roland’s gaze drifted inward. “Why would they be looking for me, if I wasn’t here to begin with?”

“Maybe they’re not looking here… in Arizona, but somewhere else.”

“You mean looking for a different person? The one… like another me that existed here before me? Like a switch?”

He nodded. “A switch.”

“I don’t believe that.”

Fred repositioned a charred piece of wood with his stick. Flames began to flick up around it. “My grandfather once told me this story. It happened a long time ago… in his time.” He poked at the embers; a small chunk of wood fell, sending a shower of sparks rising toward the sky. “A woman vanished.” Fred pried another piece back. “Her husband, a respected man and a member of the council, claimed he’d witnessed her disappearance. He swore she vanished, like magic, right before his eyes. The same woman was later discovered stumbling around the village, hysterical, babbling, dressed in strange clothes… this, while her husband was giving his report to the chief. Everyone was convinced the man and his wife were crazy. She claimed her lodge had vanished, while also claiming her husband was not the council member they all knew she’d married, but a man who everyone knew had been dead for years. She was convinced the man had only just disappeared, along with her lodge. My grandfather, though, was not among those who thought they were crazy.”

The fire, mostly a pile of dying embers, produced a dull pop.

“That really happened?”

“I was told it did.”

T
iny sunlit particles floated
within a shaft
of light angling down from the window above. Roland pushed himself up from the sagging couch, a few inches short of his height, dropped his feet to the wolf rug, then sat there trying to ignore a dull pain in his lower back. He stretched, yawned, then reached back and rubbed the sore spot. Fred stood over the stove in the next room, pouring a yellowish mixture into a hissing, hot skillet. The smell of cooking onions filled the room.

“Sleep okay?”

“Better than last night.” Roland again yawned, then stepped up to the screened door and squinted into the brightness beyond it. He turned and watched as Fred turned scrambled eggs in the skillet. “Need help with anything?”

“Nah... I make this stuff every morning.” Fred scooped a pile of scrambled egg onto a piece of flat bread lying on a plate, then handed that to Roland. “There’s salsa in the fridge.”

Roland grabbed the salsa, then slid onto the bench where he’d sat the night before. Fred scooted in on the opposite side. “Same as yesterday,” he said.

Forking a chunk of bread and eggs into his mouth, Roland nodded his approval. He glanced toward the stove and scanned the counter. The aroma of coffee was there in his mind, but then vanished upon the realization there was no coffee. He pictured the coffee maker on the countertop at home—a morning ritual, he and Joyce and coffee. He imagined her in a T-shirt, no make-up, no bra, yet a little sleepy-eyed, her unbrushed hair held back by her ears.

“You paint?” Fred looked at him from across the table, chewing on his breakfast.

“Yeah…”

“Whaddaya paint?”

Roland struggled to describe his work—abstract ideas, which were mostly intuitive. Fred showed a polite interest, though the only art he’d ever owned, as he casually pointed out, was the portrait of Elvis he had hanging in the front room. “Bought it thirty years ago… five dollars. I can’t recall the painter’s name. The guy had his pictures set up in a parking lot in Phoenix, across the street from Harold’s Hamburgers… where it used to be, anyhow. What’s in there now?”

With the last crumbs of food forked from his plate, Roland scooted out from the bench and started on the dishes.

“I’m goin’ out for a smoke.” Fred nodded toward the door.

A minute later, cigarette smoke drifted in through the screen door. Roland wiped down Fred’s old propane stove—five bulbous knobs along the front, no extras, not even a clock. He scanned the walls of the kitchen. “Fred, do you have a clock?”

“It’s about eleven.”

“You don’t have a clock?”

“I never needed one ‘til now.”

Roland set the last fork on the drain board, dried his hands, then went to the door. Fred was there sitting on the stool to the right of the steps.

“You think Anna would mind if I used her phone?”

“Now that’d be a stick in the butt, wouldn’t it?”

“Excuse me?”

“She won’t mind.”

“Stick in the butt?”

“Well, a stick in
something
, right?”

“Yeah, a stick in the butt.” Roland pushed the door open. The spring popped and twanged. He took a seat on the steps, and squinted into the bright, late-morning light. “How far is it to her place?”

“Little over five miles. You thinkin’ of walkin’?”

“It’d take me two hours, I think. Maybe I can get a ride back with her when she comes out later. She
was
planning on coming, didn’t she say?”

Fred nodded. “Ain’t a bad day for a walk.”

Roland gazed out over the desert, rippling with heat. A flock of vultures circled high in the distance, gliding, rising, falling, as if playing. “That story you told me last night… What became of the woman? Do you know?”

Fred took a final drag from his cigarette, smoked nearly to the filter, and flicked the butt away. Smoke leaked from his nostrils and mouth as he spoke. “She was cast out by her husband and family… divorced, you might say. My grandfather gave her shelter and eventually took her as his wife. She was my grandmother… a quiet woman, as I recall. I knew her for only a short time, but I never felt she was crazy.”

The sun was high, a little beyond its zenith when Roland tied the arms of his shirt around his waist and started down the dusty lane leading to the road to Olberg. As he reached the top of the first rise, he turned and looked back. The trailer appeared small against a landscape spotted with bushes, cactuses, and gnarly little trees. Mineral Butte was visible in the distance to the right of it.

The lane, for the most part, ran parallel to a deep gully, a few yards to the left of it. At one point the two drifted close together, and there, where they were closest, a series of rocks, nearly as regular as steps, descended to the floor of the gully. Roland stopped for a moment and gazed off toward the monotony of desert, divided by the set of tire tracks he’d been following, then glanced down into the ravine, where a lizard scampered from the shade of a rock to the shade of another. Roland climbed down, stepping from rock to rock, to a sandy path at the bottom of the ravine. A roadrunner darted from behind a small boulder, paused, then sped down the path ahead of him. The bird again hesitated, turned its head to the side, then scurried on some ways further. A movement near Roland’s foot caught his eye. A large, shiny, black beetle waddled over an obstacle course of pebbles, and just inches from it was a speck of blue. Roland stooped and brushed sand away, revealing a stone roughly the size and shape of a date. He picked it up and turned it over in his hand. Half of it was covered in a matrix of dark-gray, sprinkled with tiny flecks of rust, the other half was the color of turquoise. He peered down toward the spot where he’d found it, stirred the soil with the toe of his shoe, but saw only the common red and pink sandstone.

Perhaps a flood had carried the stone there from a vein farther up the gully. How long had it been lying there waiting for someone to claim it? He studied the area again, and then, keeping an eye out for other treasures, continued his hike.

The ravine widened before coming to a large culvert passing beneath the road that would take him into Olberg. Roland climbed in to enjoy its shade before continuing down the hot pavement above. Leaning against the corrugated metal wall of the culvert—its cool ribs pressing into his back—he shoved a hand into his pocket and rubbed the surface of the stone he’d just found. As a boy, his father had given him a binder to keep postage stamps in—a hobby. Some years later he began collecting coins, and in his late-teens, rock and roll records, then, more recently, art—always collecting something, accumulating more and more. As he rested in the culvert, a strange thought crossed his mind. What if it was all gone? What if the stone was his only possession? He lifted the rock from his pocket, turned it one way then another, rubbed its smooth blue surface, then dropped it back in. “No,” he whispered.

Continuing up the road, the desert ahead appeared no different than that behind him. Mineral Butte was about four miles off to the right. Ponds of glistening blue air stretched across the road ahead, quivering as though hiding behind a thin sheet of running water. Two cars passed—one from either direction. He turned at the sound of a third vehicle approaching from behind. An old Chevy pickup truck pulled up alongside him. The driver leaned toward the open passenger window.
“Need a lift?” He was clean-shaven, thirtyish, and dark-skinned, his black hair trimmed so neatly it appeared fake.

“Thank you.”

The man leaned farther and opened the door. The thumb-button below its handle was missing—a dark oval hole attested to where it once was. Roland climbed in, pulled the door shut with a firm tug, but it didn’t latch. The truck accelerated. With a couple hesitant jerks, the driver pushed the long gearshift lever forward.

“Flip the little gear on the side.” He gestured toward the door.

Roland looked down at the side panel, expecting to find some unusual, exposed gear mechanism.

“The latch.” He pulled the stick shift down, right, bumped Roland’s knee, then pulled it down again. “Where it latches… the edge of the door.”

“Oh.” Roland felt for the mechanism the man was referring to, flipped it to its open position, then pulled the door shut.
Slam
!

“Where’ you headed?” the driver said.

“Just a little way up the road… The Trading Post.”

The driver glanced at Roland, then turned back to the road. “Long walk for a souvenir.”

“I’m a friend of the owner’s.”

He again looked his way. “A friend, huh?”

Roland nodded. “Yeah.”

The store appeared in the distance, about a mile and a half farther. The driver said nothing more until he pulled into the parking lot and turned the truck’s engine off. “Here you go.”

After thanking the man, Roland climbed down from the truck, then, forgetting about the dysfunctional latch, slammed the door. It bounced open. “Oh.” He adjusted the catch, gave the door another slam, then gave the driver a quick smile and a nod. As he climbed the porch steps he heard the other door open, then—
thump
! He glanced back over his shoulder. The driver was coming around to the front of his truck.

Ignoring the clip-clopping of boots on the steps behind him, Roland stepped across the porch to the store’s entrance and went inside. Anna stood behind the checkout counter chatting with a customer. Their eyes turned his way as he entered.

“Roland? You walked here?”

“Part way. I got a ride.” The door behind him opened and the driver stepped in. “This gentleman gave me a lift the last few miles.” Roland gestured toward the man.

Anna said, “You shouldn’t be picking up hitchhikers, Rick.”

“You know this guy, huh?” the man said.

“Roland, this is my cousin Rick Booker.”

Roland offered his hand. In return he got a firm, competitive handshake.

“So, how is it you know Anna?”

“Uh… actually we just met,” Roland said, “at… I guess your uncle’s place.”

Rick gave him a lopsided look—his left eyebrow higher than the right.

“He’s been staying with Dad for the last few days,” Anna said.

He nodded, though he appeared as if he expected more.

“Rick, can we just not worry about it for a change?”

“Worry about what?” He produced a quick smile.

The customer, who had been standing there watching throughout the exchange—a woman, who apparently was not there to shop—dismissed herself, claiming she had someone waiting for her. As she walked past Roland on her way out she studied him through a series of peripheral glances.

Anna looked at Roland. “What’s up?”

“I have another favor to ask of you.”

“Okay.”

“Your phone… May I use it?”

Anna’s cousin jumped back in. “You came all this way just to use her phone?”

“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be, Rick?”

“No, I just thought, being I was here, I might as well come in, say hi.” He looked from Anna to Roland, then back to her. “Guess I’ll be seeing ya.”

“Say hi to Sarah for me,” Anna said, as her cousin turned for the door.

“Yeah.” He pulled the door shut behind him.

Anna turned to Roland and quietly said, “The man’s a lug. He thinks all us frail, little squaws need his protection.”

Roland glanced toward the door. “I wasn’t sure what to make of him. But I’m not really in much of a position to make anything of anybody.”

“You want to use the phone upstairs. You’ll have more privacy there.” She nodded. “Go ahead, the door’s unlocked. It’s just inside, to the left.”

Roland sat at Anna’s kitchen table, gazing down at a light-brown coffee ring on the white tabletop, the receiver pressed to his ear.

His niece answered. “Hello?”

“Molly?”

“Uh… yeah?”

And just like that, something shifted, as though his fractured world had begun to coalesce into something less alien.

“How ya doing?” he said.

“Fine.”

He pictured his fifteen-year-old niece holding the phone to her ear. A familiar face—still, though, there was something off about her manner, like a degree of
reluctance or uncertainty.