Desert Crossing

by Elise Broach

  Between the hourglass and the horseshoe was a link hanging down empty. I felt around the pocket of my jacket and my backpack to see if the other charm had fallen off. But I couldn’t find it. Maybe it was back on the road somewhere.

  I looked out at the desert, which was grayish-pink in the early light and rough with shrubs and rocks. The creased red slopes of the mountains rose in the distance. It was too early to get up. The whole house was quiet. I took the phone from the cradle and punched in the code from the phone card, then Ginny’s number. Was it an hour later back home? I couldn’t remember.

  “Hello?” Her voice was husky and muffled. Maybe it wasn’t an hour later. “Who is this?”

  “Me. It’s me.” I whispered back. The dog flicked his ears and raised his head, watching me.

  “Lucy? Jeez.” I could hear her stirring under the sheets. “Where are you?”

  “New Mexico. We had an accident.”

  “What?” She sounded more awake. “What happened? A car accident?”

  “Yeah, a car accident.” I told her quickly, still whispering. I told her about the beer and the rain and the girl lying next to the road. It seemed real suddenly, all of it, as if the words were pinning it down and making it something you could stand back and look at.

  When I stopped talking, Ginny was quiet. “Holy shit,” she said finally.

  That was why I’d called her. She always said exactly what I felt.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Jamie’s at the police station. They have to check the car, and, I don’t know, other stuff.”

  “But what’s going to happen to you guys? I mean, to Jamie? He was the one driving.”

  “I don’t know.” I thought of Jamie and that smile he used on everybody: Maddie Dilworth, Kristi Bendall, the waitresses at the diners. It seemed so long ago.

  Ginny exhaled into the phone, a long whoosh of breath. “Is he in jail? I mean, did they arrest him?”

  I flinched. “No! No. Don’t say that. It wasn’t his fault.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “I know. I’m just thinking.”

  “It was Kit who bought the beer.”

  She groaned. “Kit the zit.”

  I heard footsteps in the hall. “I’ve got to go,” I whispered quickly, snatching the bracelet from the nest of blankets.

  “Okay, call me later.”

  “I will,” I promised. I dropped the bracelet in my backpack just as Beth pushed open the door.

  “You’re up,” she said. “I was looking for Oscar.” She snapped her fingers and he bounded off the bed, tail wagging. “I thought he’d end up with you. He considers this his bedroom. I should’ve told you to latch the door.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I like dogs.”

  She turned away. “Do you? I don’t. But I’ve gotten used to these guys.”

  I pulled on a pair of jeans and followed her into the kitchen. It was a long white rectangle at the back of the house: white cupboards, white tile, white wooden table at one end. There was a chipped red bowl of bananas on the counter, the only color in the room except for the window’s pale square of sky.

  The desert looked different now, sparkling with colors. I could see tiny clumps of yellow flowers, a cluster of lavender buds. “Hey,” I said. “Look.”

  Beth smiled. “The desert after a storm. Everything grows at once. Flowers shoot up and bloom in a day, and you see insects and animals you never knew lived here. All because of the rain.”

  “How long does it last?”

  “Not long. We’ve had hot weather lately, much hotter than usual. Everything will die back to nothing. But water does amazing things in a place as dry as this.”

  The phone rang, a long, shattering brrrring. Beth lifted the receiver from the wall.

  “Hello? Oh, hi, Stan. You’re at work early. Yeah, she’s right here. He’s still sleeping. Oh, okay. That’s no problem. Around ten o’clock? Okay. What? No, I don’t think so. Why don’t you ask Lucy?” She handed me the phone.

  I swallowed, suddenly nervous. Now what? “Hello?”

  “Miss Martinez? This is Sheriff Durrell. I just wanted to check on something. Last night, none of you kids happened to take anything off the person of the victim, did you?”

  He knew about the bracelet. But how could he?

  I twisted one hand in my T-shirt and turned away so Beth wouldn’t see my face. “Um,” I said, trying to keep my voice ordinary. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, from what your brother Jamie and the other boy…,” he paused, “Freder—”

  “Kit,” I said.

  “Right, Kit. From what they said, none of you moved the victim.”

  “No, we didn’t do anything to her,” I said quickly. “I mean, I pulled down her shirt because it was up over her stomach, but—”

  “The reason I ask is that we’re not finding any ID on her. No wallet, no license, no purse or other kind of personal effects. It’s—well, it’s unusual, and it’s going to make our job a lot harder. I wondered if you or the boys might have picked something up at the scene. Something that belonged to the victim.” He hesitated. “I understand you were pretty upset, and maybe you didn’t realize…” He was waiting for me to say something.

  But I couldn’t do it. He wasn’t looking for a bracelet, anyway. He was looking for something with her name on it. The bracelet didn’t matter to anyone but me. “No,” I said. “That’s how she was when we found her.”

  “Hmmm. Well, okay, then. We’ve examined the car, and we should have the preliminary coroner’s report in a few hours. I told Ms. Osway that I’m going to release your brother for the time being.”

  “You are?” I gripped the phone, my stomach fluttering with hope. “It’s all right for him to leave?”

  “Not leave the area, no. But his alcohol level and everything else checked out okay. We don’t need to keep him here at the station, as long as I know where to reach him.” He paused. “I’ll see you later today, Miss Martinez.”

  “Okay. Bye.” I hung up the phone and turned to Beth, who was watching me. “He said Jamie can go.”

  She nodded. “Yes, we can pick him up around ten. That’s good. I guess the Breathalyzer test turned out fine.”

  “So they know it wasn’t his fault? They won’t, like, press charges or anything?”

  She poured coffee into two mugs. “He didn’t say that,” she said carefully.

  “But don’t you think—”

  “I think it’s good that they’re releasing him.” She looked at me with the same appraising gaze she seemed to wear, not sympathetic, not even polite, just watchful and assessing. “But I wouldn’t assume anything. Not when someone’s dead.”

  I flinched.

  She pushed one of the mugs across the counter toward me and cupped hers with both hands. She was silent. I sniffed the bitter steam. It reminded me of my mom having breakfast at home. I didn’t usually drink coffee, but now I tasted it, somehow afraid not to. It scalded my tongue.

  I tried to think of something else to talk about. “How long have you lived here?”

  “Nine years. I came from Detroit.”

  “Really? By yourself? You don’t have a husband or kids or anything?”

  “No. I’m divorced. He took the house, I got the dogs.”

  “But you said you don’t like dogs.”

  “Right. That’s divorce. You each get half, but not the half you want.” She smiled a little, running her hands through her hair and tucking it behind her ears. “I’m used to them now.”

  I thought of how this place seemed at night, as vast and bottomless as the ocean. I couldn’t imagine living here by myself. “Aren’t you scared? Being out here alone?”

  Beth sipped her coffee. “No, not really. The dogs are too friendly to be much protection, but they make a lot of noise.” She looked out the window. “I like it here. It’s quiet. And when you get used to it, the desert’s beautiful.”
r />   “But it’s so empty,” I said.

  Beth nodded. “It is empty. But it changes in little ways, all the time. And it’s not … distracting, like so many other places are.”

  I thought about my town in Kansas, a few miles from Kansas City. It didn’t seem distracting. Just inhabited. Roads, houses, stores, farms, the cross-hatching of people’s lives. I missed it, the way everything was connected to something else.

  I put my mug in the sink. “I’m going to see if Kit’s awake.”

  He and Jamie would sleep till noon if nobody woke them. I tried each of the closed doors along the hallway—two closets, a bedroom, a bathroom—before I found the study where Kit was stretched across a lumpy knot of blankets on the floor. He lay flat on his back, his hair curling over his forehead and his mouth loose and full. If you didn’t know Kit, you would think he was cute. It was his personality that ruined things.

  “Hey,” I said into the silence. “Hey! Wake up.” I nudged him with my foot. He rolled over.

  “Kit,” I said. “Wake up. We’re going to get Jamie soon.” Not soon, actually. More like two hours from now, but he didn’t need to know that. I was tired of talking to Beth by myself. “The police are letting him come back here.”

  Kit’s eyes opened. He rose up on one elbow, rubbing his hand over his hair. “They are? What happened?” He looked at his watch, then burrowed back into the pillow. “Whoa, it’s early.”

  I pushed at him again with my foot. “You need to get up.”

  “Quit kicking me.”

  “Come on. Don’t you want to get Jamie?”

  “Yeah, yeah, sure,” he mumbled. “But jeez, do we have to go now?”

  “Soon,” I said again. “Come on, Beth made coffee.”

  For some reason he didn’t ask any more questions. He sat up and stretched, throwing his arms out in a big, exaggerated way, like somebody coming out of hibernation. He pulled his T-shirt off in one quick motion, and when I blinked and backed away, trying not to look at him, I could feel him smiling.

  10

  The police station was half an hour away, toward Albuquerque. I was glad we didn’t have to drive by the place where we found the girl. But I wasn’t sure I’d even have recognized it. The landscape looked different in the daylight, not as threatening. The dirt was salmon colored, scattered with little shrubs and feathery grasses. Beth drove fast, way above the speed limit, one hand resting lightly on the wheel. Kit kept looking at the speedometer, impressed. He tried to talk to her a couple of times but she barely answered him.

  “So you kind of know those cops, huh?” he said at one point.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it seemed like you were friends with them.”

  “It’s a small community. Everybody knows everybody.”

  “But the sheriff, it seemed like he—”

  “We went out for a while.”

  “Oh,” Kit looked at her, interested. “Oh.”

  I poked him, but he just grinned, satisfied. Beth didn’t say anything. We were in a town suddenly, or what must pass for a town in a place like this. There was a low assemblage of buildings, a couple of gas stations, a grocery store. The police station was a dull-looking white building close to the road.

  “Just wait here,” Beth said, slamming the door and striding across the parking lot.

  “Look. You made her mad,” I said to Kit. “Why were you asking her all those questions?”

  “I knew there was something between her and that cop,” Kit said. “I always pick up on that kind of thing.”

  “Oh, yeah, you’re so perceptive,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “I am,” he said. “At least about that.”

  When Jamie came through the doors with Beth, my heart clutched. There he was in his wrinkled T-shirt from last night. His hair was clumped and tangled the way it always was first thing in the morning. But he looked different. His shoulders were hunched. His eyes were too bright.

  “Hey,” he said, climbing in on Beth’s side. “Hey, you guys.” The truck had a wide cab, but not wide enough for four. I was squashed between Jamie and Kit, their shoulders pressing hard against me.

  I grabbed his arm and held it. “Are you okay? Jamie? What happened?”

  He didn’t look at me. “I’m okay.”

  “But what did they do to you? Were you in a cell?”

  He frowned, staring through the windshield.

  “What is it?” I tried to get him to look at me, but he wouldn’t.

  “Nothing. I just … I’m just tired. I didn’t get much sleep.”

  “But did they—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

  I watched his face. “Okay.”

  He was quiet for a minute. He kept glancing at Beth, and the tight, worried look on his face suddenly shifted. I could see him trying to shake off the strangeness that had settled over him, trying to force his old self back into place. He arched his back a little, stretching, and said to Beth, “You ever give this many people a ride before?”

  “No,” Beth said. “It’s pretty tight.”

  “This will make more room.” Jamie lifted one arm and settled it along the seat behind Beth’s shoulders.

  Beth looked at him but didn’t say anything.

  I couldn’t believe it. For a minute I thought I was wrong. But no, the expression on his face, the way his hand dangled close to her arm. What was she, twenty years older than he was? And hadn’t he just been arrested for murder? Or whatever it was they’d done with him? But here he was, hitting on a woman almost our mother’s age. I dug my elbow into his side.

  “Ow! Hey! What’d you do that for?” he gasped.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I was just trying to make more room.” Next to me, I heard Kit stifle a laugh.

  * * *

  When we got back to Beth’s, she drifted away from us, preoccupied. “I have to work,” she said. “Help yourselves to whatever you need.”

  She twisted her hair into a thick rope and wound it against the back of her head. Then she stuck a pen through it, holding it in place.

  “How’d you do that?” Jamie asked, watching her.

  “Lots of practice.”

  He smiled at her. “You have great hair.”

  Beth’s brow twitched and she looked at him curiously. “Thanks.”

  “Jamie,” I said, trying to get his attention. “We should call Dad.”

  He hesitated. “Yeah. Maybe you could do it? Tell him we probably won’t get there tonight.”

  I went back to the bedroom, and as soon as I opened the door, the dogs came pouring out, snuffling and whining. They raced toward the living room, and I heard Beth yell at them. I sat on the edge of the bed, dialing my dad’s work number. He wouldn’t be in his office; he almost never was. He was a sales rep for an insurance company, and he spent half his time on the road.

  I listened to the four short beeps of his answering machine, then the impersonal friendliness of his work voice: “This is Bob Martinez. I’m away from my desk right now, but leave me a message and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”

  I took a deep breath. “Dad? It’s me, Lucy. We’re calling from New Mexico, some place outside Albuquerque. We…” I tried to think how to say it. “We had kind of an accident, you know, with the car. Nobody’s hurt—” I took another breath. “Well, we’re not hurt, but we think we hit somebody, a girl, and she’s—” I scrunched the hem of my T-shirt and pressed it against my stomach. “We don’t really know what happened. It was raining so hard, we couldn’t see. But she’s dead. The girl is dead. So now we’re here and we’ve been talking to the police. And Mom said, well, Mom wondered if maybe you could come…”

  As soon as I said it I wished I hadn’t. I didn’t want to ask and hear him say no, even though the reason would be a good one, and when he explained, it would make so much more sense for him to stay in Phoenix and for us to work things out on our own. I held the phone closer. “But, um, probably you d
on’t need to do that. I mean, we’re at this woman’s house and things are sort of under control now. But we won’t get to Phoenix tonight. We have to stay until—” A long, sullen tone cut me off. The machine clicked.

  I carried the phone back into the living room, which was filled with the smell of fresh paint. Beth knelt on the speckled drop cloth, her face tense with concentration. She had a brush in one hand and was dabbing the bottom of the sculpture with turquoise.

  “That’s pretty,” I said. “That color.”

  She didn’t look up. Jamie and Kit were sprawled on the couch, watching her.

  “Did you get him?” Jamie asked.

  I shook my head. “I left him a message.”

  “That’s okay. We can try him again later.”

  I held out the phone to Kit. “Want to call your parents now?”

  Kit kicked at a pile of newspapers. “Maybe later.”

  I walked past them and sat on the floor, next to the wild twist of metal at the base of the sculpture. It was hard to figure out what it was made of, but when I looked closely, I could see a tailpipe, two dented license plates, and something that looked like a barbecue grill.

  “When do you think we’ll get our car back?” I asked.

  Jamie frowned. “When they get the lab results, I guess.”

  “Are they…” I swallowed. “Did they say anything about the beer? They aren’t going to … arrest you or anything?”

  Kit blew out his breath hard. “God, you’re so negative.” He turned to Jamie. “I can see why you didn’t want to drive the whole way with her by yourself.”

  I looked at Jamie, stung. But he was ignoring us, watching Beth paint.

  “So why do you use car parts and pipes and stuff?” he asked.

  She moved the paintbrush over the steel with bold strokes. “I like using things people get rid of,” she said.

  Kit trapped a sheet of newspaper under one foot and slid it back and forth on the floor. “How come? I mean, I’ve seen things like this before, made out of metal. You could get a piece of stainless steel, brand new, and really do something cool with it. None of this crap with old license plates.”

  Jamie smacked his shoulder. “Shut up.”

  “Hey,” Kit said, rubbing it. “I was just asking.”