by Daniel Pyne
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
And that’s the end. He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten, unforgiven, and excessively romantic. Not in the wildest days of his boyish visions could he have seen the alluring shape of such an extraordinary success! For it may very well be that in some short moment of hi [bullet hole] nd unflinching glance, he had beheld the face of [bullet hole] tunity which, like an Eastern bride, had come veiled to his side.
She puts the book down and turns off the light.
“He is gone, inscrutable at heart, and the poor girl is leading a sort of soundless, inert life . . .”
Eighteen-wheelers grind gears down the highway, and the minibar kicks on with a shuddering sigh.
“. . . ‘preparing to leave all this; preparing to leave . . .’ while he waves his hand sadly at his butterflies.”
Neon dusts the curtains. Sentro closes her eyes. Someone is moving around in the motel room above her. As she sinks into the mattress, her body thrums with the weary rhythms of the road: sixteen hundred miles from Baltimore on I-40, then south, the whine of the tires, talk radio, the slap of the lane markers, the bright green-and-white flare of off-ramps and mileage signs. Her lungs fill with the air of her father’s world.
And she sleeps.
He said, “I’m having second thoughts. Is all.”
And all the motels, hotels, boats, vans, containers, warehouses, abandoned buildings, rented rooms, safe houses, and sanctuaries run together, all the missions strung together like the lanyards Jenny used to make, an endless litany of waiting and watching and tackling and resolving that she’s not disappointed has been fractured by this forgetful condition they say she’s suffering.
“Second thoughts about the divorce? Or everything you’ve done to make it inevitable?” It was a cheap shot, but she was emotionally bankrupt. The only man besides her father who she’d ever loved, her forever boy; she didn’t want to lose him but feared what might happen to them if he didn’t let her go.
Cellophane streamers taped to the AC fluttered like ashigaru battle banners. She lay on the bed, mute, stared through her angry tears at the blur of the ceiling fan, and decided she would not blame him for his infidelity or herself for being so wounded by it.
“You fight for everything but us,” Dennis said. Or that’s what she remembers. He recanted, then, regretful: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just . . .” And she didn’t need him to finish the thought.
“We’re all hostage to something,” she said then, and in her dreams, now, she and her husband lie together, entwined, and she tells him the tale of how their children fought for her.
Three far-flung dust devils line dance, spectral, along the horizon, as if in tribute to the vainglorious emptiness of West Texas, last gasp of endless prairie, and the harsh freedom her mother found there.
Only the big sign remains, like a gravestone, outside of Marfa, rusted, peeling: STARDUST MOTEL.
Sentro eased her Audi and U-Haul onto the shoulder of Highway 17 and walked into the weeds to find the rectilinear concrete stubs of foundation that still survive, and she traced them to the place where she remembers her mother unlocking the pale-aqua door, the blast of air-conditioning, the sour smell of stale cigarettes, disinfectant, and air freshener, and the big bed and soft shadows and scratchy sheets and ice buckets and sodas and sweets from the vending machine in the breezeway.
She stands among scattered trash and mounded prairie dog holes and remembers her mother’s sad smile.
I’m a cowboy who never saw a cow,
never roped a steer ’cause I don’t know how—
“You’re good at what you do,” Dennis had said, as she sat in that different motel, Corpus Christi, waiting for her call.
“Bargaining for people’s lives?”
“Saving them.”
She’s forgotten to breathe. Fighting tears. What if she forgets him? What if she forgets her children?
Not for the first time her heart aches, never for what she’s done but for what she couldn’t because of it.
The brain doctor said to her before she left, getting colloquial, “The jury’s out, Ms. Sentro.” Her tests showed contradictions; the projections were inconclusive. “The more we study the mind, the less we understand. You won’t know if you really have it and what it’s wrought until it’s too late and you’re dead and we crack your skull and get a good look at the gray matter in there.
“It’s a crapshoot,” he admitted.
Typical. But she can live with that.
An impasse is often the best she can manage.
The distant twisters have been raptured into sandy heavens, where they hang like threadbare curtains. It smells like it might rain. Above her, a hawk floats, almost motionless, on hot thermals, like a scrap of black fabric thrown up there as well by an absentminded God. She hears her mother’s song whisper in the relentless wind. She has a long drive ahead of her and no plans once she gets there.
Sentro walks back to her car through the honey mesquite and buffalo grass, high-tops crushing the parched, stubborn, unforgiving soil.
Home.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Some say a book is only as good as its editors, and if that’s true, I’ve been fortunate to have worked with some of the best. Benee Knauer is my anchor and my secret weapon; somehow she continues to make me a better writer. Tiffany Yates Martin piloted my story into safe harbor, with notes and suggestions that have proved invaluable. I’m extremely grateful, as well, to Liz Pearsons and the crew at Thomas & Mercer for their support, collaboration, and enthusiasm.
Many years ago, the cinematographer Tak Fujimoto, during a long location scout, told me about a cargo freighter he’d just traveled on between films. The strange setting, the vivid imagery, and the undisturbed quiet of the trip he described stuck with me, and years later, a troubled character who had been rattling around my thoughts unmoored made the decision to book passage on a tramp line, hoping to clear her head, and an adventure unspooled.
The insights of my usual gang of early readers—Scott, Julia, Erich, and Aaron—were instrumental in shaping the story and discovering where it was initially left wanting. As always, I owe a debt of gratitude to my agent, Victoria Sanders, for once more believing in a book and in me. My family sustains me; my old dogs reserve judgment as long as they have chewy treats. Conrad, Graham Greene, and Katherine Anne Porter were my muses as I wrote, but because (for myriad reasons) I was unable to take a container ship cruise of my own, Robert D. Rieffel’s warm, unpretentious Twenty-Eight Days on a Freighter helped me get at least some of the factual details right. The Jeddah’s journey is, however, a work of fiction. Dramatic license has been liberally taken.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © by Katie Pyne
Daniel Pyne is the author of four novels: Catalina Eddy, Fifty Mice, Twentynine Palms, and A Hole in the Ground Owned by a Liar. Among his many screenplays are Pacific Heights, Doc Hollywood, the remake of The Manchurian Candidate, and Fracture. He made his directorial debut with the independent film Where’s Marlowe? His list of television credits (creating, writing, and showrunning) spans Miami Vice to Bosch. Pyne has worked as a screen printer, a sportswriter, an ad man, and a cartoonist and has taught screenwriting at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television for more than two decades. He splits his time between California and New Mexico with his wife, their two rescue dogs, and a surly turtle.
