The Far Empty

by J. Todd Scott

  As for the game itself, Anne knew how serious Texas was about its football, and Murfee was no exception. The stadium seated over eight thousand—a huge concrete bowl open at both ends to knots of sweet acacia trees. It had a full press box and reserved seating and the latest artificial turf and a scoreboard with video replay. What it did not have, not at the moment, was a winning team. BBC was down early just as they’d been in nearly every game of the season. But the stands were full, and under the huge lights, with everything polished and painted and perfect, the entire stadium glowed. She could only imagine what this all looked like from high above, the surrounding darkness of the desert anchored by all this heavy light—a great bonfire, burning and bright, trying to escape skyward.

  Marc would have loved this crazy stadium in the middle of nowhere, the circus atmosphere. Electricity—excitement—ran through the bleachers, through the entire town, even as Presidio scored another touchdown and BBC’s coach screamed on the sidelines and tossed what Anne imagined must be a very expensive headset into the stands.

  She was sitting with Lori McKutcheon and her small, silent husband, as well as two other teachers. They’d been nice to wave her over, passing small talk back and forth and including her in their chatter about the school, the carnival, the team. Lori’s husband said one thing and one thing only—BBC sure missed Chris Cherry—drawing nods and agreement from everyone around them. Anne pieced together that this Chris had been a great quarterback in Murfee and had even played some in college, but was back home as a deputy sheriff. The same deputy she’d read about in the Murfee Daily, something about a body discovered on a ranch. No one cared about that now. Instead, the town just wished he could trade his deputy’s uniform for a football one again.

  • • •

  She burrowed into her jacket, her cold breath adrift. Lori talked, and she nodded in all the right places and said more or less the right things, a well-honed ability since Austin. She was here but not here, a ghost, turning in a lifelike performance; maybe a mime, forever pulling at invisible strings and failing to escape from invisible boxes.

  At one point she thought she saw Caleb Ross sitting with Amé Reynosa, but when she looked again, they were gone. She lost herself in the game, the rise and fall of small voices around her. There was another reason she was glad to get out of the house, not face the thought of being alone. She knew that on this night more than any other, she needed to drop into this ocean of unknown people, let the tide of their lives and conversations take her away. Tonight she needed to hide. There was another cheer, a roar like pounding waves. Lori said something to her and Anne smiled, not knowing or caring what she smiled to.

  She’d already deleted the inevitable cellphone messages from her parents, unheard, because she knew what they would say, and she’d spent the whole day keeping busy, trying to ignore the calendar and the time. After the game she was going to walk the midway a bit, buy one of those stupid soda cups or an elephant ear, let herself get cold and numb until she couldn’t feel her fingers . . . until she was so frozen by the night’s cold, hard edges that the tears she’d been afraid of all day would be little more than stray frost on her cheeks—invisible, unable to flow. She’d stay away from the house until late, well past the witching hour, and then race her fears inside and take a couple of Ambien or something even stronger, pray she slept until tomorrow afternoon; so by the time she finally struggled awake, this particular day—this awful date—would already be behind her again for one more year, locked away in a box with all the others, and all the others to come.

  But it was never that easy, no matter what games she played with herself, no matter what silly tricks she tried. The date always fucking won; impossible to outrun, to hide from. No amount of deleted messages or pretending ever made it truly go away. Because there was always that one moment, like right now, even as she tried so damn hard to pay attention to Lori’s stories about her sister’s lying, cheating husband, that she instead suffered an all-too-brutal flash of Marc, her once husband, all bloody and broken, with his hands reaching for her from their open front door.

  Reaching to protect her, to shield her, as she tried to help him stand because he just couldn’t do it anymore . . . knees buckling and his face pale as he lay dying against her. Feeling the last breath he ever took against her face, eyes blinking as his soul passed by her . . . through her and beyond. Blinking away tears.

  So now here she was again, against her will blinking away the goddamn tears she’d held back all day. Now turning her face from Lori and the others, facing upward, to blind herself in the stadium lights.

  At 8:45 p.m. a lifetime ago, Anne Hart, then Anne Devane, had felt her husband Marc Devane die in her arms trying to protect her, never understanding she’d never really been the one in danger at all.

  13

  CHRIS

  He waited on the midway until the game let out, until the cheering and the noise died away. It was bad enough out here, but still better than standing in the shadow of the stadium or sitting in the bleachers. Days before, he’d tried to describe the scene at Mancha’s to Mel, doing a bad job, failing to paint the right picture, failing harder to pierce the silence between them. She was unable or unwilling to see it as he had: the light and the dying and the noise, that horrible and calm look on Dupree’s face.

  You can’t get that smell out. No sirree, it’ll stay in the leather, never quite go away.

  Maybe that was too much to ask of anyone. Later, though, he caught her looking close at a stain on his duty shirt, her fingers tracing Dupree’s handprint in another man’s blood. Tonight he’d thought about suggesting she come out to the carnival, and almost got the words out a couple of times. But in the end he’d let it go, not wanting to burden her with having to say no to his face, finally leaving her on the back porch listening to the radio, dropping spent cigarettes into a coffee cup. He did call once, standing next to a rusted merry-go-round, just to ask if he could bring her anything. She said no, she was fine, both of them knowing that wasn’t close to being true.

  If he heard it once, he heard it a thousand times, even before the game was done. All variations of the same thing:

  Wish you were out there, son.

  Boys could’ve used you out there, Chris.

  Might want to give some throwing lessons to that number twelve.

  How’s the knee?

  He passed the sheriff a few times, holding court, moving through the crowd. One moment he was shooting out a red paper star with a rusty BB gun; the next he was having his picture taken next to the Ferris wheel for the newspaper.

  Chris had seen Dupree early, before the game, wandering around in uniform even though he wasn’t working, eyeing girls in their tight sweaters and jeans. They hadn’t really talked about Mancha’s or much after it; Chris was still relegated to the punch line of Dupree’s stories, and word was that Aguilar and Delgado would likely live, although both would probably wish they hadn’t. Delgado was breathing through a tube, might be for the rest of his life.

  Whereas Chris felt bigger, slower, all the time, Dupree only seemed to get smaller with each passing day, folding in on himself like a knife. Standing and smoking a cigarette at Mancha’s while waiting for the ambulance, Duane had been all edges and angles, his bloody uniform a little too loose but still creased sharp, his duty belt too low on his waist, with his gun heavy against his knee. A gunfighter. He’d finger-popped to his own beat, drunk two or three Dr Peppers, and read the riot act to Eddie Corazon about everything and nothing at all.

  Chris had found a small meth pipe and residue on Delgado, a glimpse of his demons, but there was no telling what demons possessed Duane Allen Dupree. Duane’s father, Jamison, had been a little bit crazy and a lot of the time drunk; he was once found naked in his car with an empty wine bottle and a homemade tomahawk in his lap.

  But crazy or not, Chris accepted that he’d needed the chief deputy at Mancha’s, unwi
lling to imagine the ending if he’d been left out there all alone or one of the other deputies had shown up in Dupree’s place. Even though Hawes and Miller and Busbee had all carried a badge and gun longer than Chris, they had even less of a clue about their job. Miller pulled some weekend shifts at Earlys, tending bar, and Busbee owned a goddamn tow truck. It wasn’t unusual for Busbee to pull people out of ditches while still in uniform and then write them a ticket afterward. Chris didn’t understand Dupree; didn’t like him much and trusted him less, but other than the sheriff himself, he was probably the only real lawman in Murfee.

  He moved along, tipping his hat, trying not to slow down enough so that someone might really be able to talk to him. The sheriff saw him, gave him a passing wave—a kind of cocked finger-gun effect—before disappearing again. He could make this walk blind anyway, the fall carnival remaining unchanged since he was kid—same games, same stalls, all sitting in their assigned places, like students in a classroom. Chris suspected even the carnies were the same too, just older, with a few more years of wear and rust—peeling paint and breaking down, just like the games and rides they brought with them. He’d be out here again later tonight, breaking up a couple of drunken fights. As a kid he’d always wondered where the carnival went when it wasn’t here, and because he loved Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes, he often imagined this place as Murfee’s own Pandemonium Shadow Show, with its own versions of G. M. Dark and Skeleton and Dust Witch and Tom Fury. He was so busy trying to remember if his old copy of the book was still up at the house that he nearly ran over the new English teacher.

  “Damn, ma’am, I’m sorry,” he said, holding her up with one arm.

  “No, no . . . I am, Deputy. I was trying to decide between the elephant ear and the cotton candy, a very important decision. Got caught standing here in your way, and to be honest, I don’t need either.”

  Chris laughed, making sure she was going to stay upright. She was wrapped up in a brand-new BBC sweatshirt and a scarf, her hair tucked beneath a Houston Texans ball cap.

  He pointed at the hat. “You might not want to wear that hat, ma’am, we’re all Christians and Cowboy fans down this way.”

  She touched it, self-conscious. “Guess you can’t be just one or the other? It was all I had. I’ll be sure to do better next time.” She squinted up at him, searching his chest for a nametag. “I’m Anne, Anne Hart.”

  “That’s what I thought. New teacher, right?”

  “Substitute teacher, for a while anyway, but that’s the one. And you?”

  “Someone who forgot to mind where he was going and his manners. Deputy Chris Cherry. Nice to meet you.” He stuck out a hand and she shook it formally as a crowd parted around them.

  “I just heard a lot about you, Deputy Cherry. You were quite the quarterback at one time. They could have used you in there.” She nodded back at the stadium. “Did you watch the game?”

  Chris considered lying, but thought better of it. “Not tonight, all official business.”

  “I see,” she said. “Well, tonight, the team officially got its butt whipped.”

  Chris grinned. “So they’re saying. Everyone’s used to it by now this season, so it won’t kill the fun. They’ll still enjoy themselves at the homecoming dance, and out here.” Anne Hart nodded in agreement, taking in the people and the rides, the colored lights reflected in her glasses.

  She’d said she’d heard a lot about him, and of course he’d heard a few things about her as well, which is why he’d recognized her to begin with. She’d been teaching near Austin where there was an incident, some sort of trouble, but he never paid much attention to the story itself. It was just Miss Maisie talking to Duane; she was a known gossip and also known to be wrong more than half the time.

  Still, Anne Hart was a reasonably attractive young woman who’d come all alone to Murfee, and that would have raised plenty of talk all by itself. Busbee with his tow truck kept saying he hoped her car broke down so he’d have the chance to “hitch ’er up, if you know what I mean,” and everyone always laughed and said of course they did, even when they’d heard it a thousand times.

  “So you grew up here in Murfee?” She started walking, so he fell in step next to her.

  “Yes, ma’am, I did. A pure native. Went away for a bit and came back.”

  She looked up at his Stetson, down at his Justin boots. “Native? You really do take that cowboy stuff seriously here, don’t you?”

  “Well, it is kind of the uniform. Kind of expected.”

  She laughed. “Okay, but please, no more ma’am stuff. It makes me feel old, like I’m talking to one of my students. How about just Anne?”

  “No problem, just Anne.” She smiled, and he wanted to shove his hands deep down in his pockets, not quite sure what to do with them as they walked.

  “How do you like Murfee so far?”

  She considered. “I haven’t seen much, to be honest. The school, that’s about it.”

  “You mean you haven’t seen Murfee’s great attractions? The burgers at the Hamilton, the Comanche Cattle Auction? Our Ghost Lights? You’ve been missing out.”

  “The Lights I’ve read about. I haven’t gotten over to the Hamilton, but the other teachers swear by it.” She scrunched up her nose. “I think I’ll skip the cattle auction, if you don’t mind.”

  “Tell you what, I’ll pick you up a Comanche ball cap. They sell them along with shirts, mugs, that sort of thing. You can ditch that Houston hat. It’ll make everyone feel like you’re going to stay a while, a native in your own way. Or better, I can get you a good ole Stetson, like mine.”

  “Well, Deputy Cherry, I’m not sure that I will be—staying, that is. I’m on a year contract. We’ll see after that.”

  They came to a stop near the carnival’s edge, where the lights gave way to the dark. To a roped-off area that served as the carnival’s parking lot, the desert and the town lost beyond.

  “Before your time here is up, I hope you see something you like.”

  She looked down. “Too early to tell, Deputy, but I hope so. Murfee is interesting, very much so. You came back here, so that’s saying something, right?”

  He shrugged. “It does, yes. Not sure what, to be exact. Not sure at all. But welcome . . . and enjoy your stay, however long it is. If you need anything, just look me up. And please, call me Chris. Deputy makes me feel old or too official, like I’m talking to a person in cuffs.”

  Something passed her eyes, a dark flicker hidden in her glasses, but not completely. Eyes a little too red, too weary, as if she might have been crying earlier. She smiled, a mask, even before it dawned on her he was just respinning her own joke from a few moments before.

  She held up her hands, in mock arrest. “I’ll do my best to stay out of trouble, Chris.”

  • • •

  Even after they said their goodbyes, neither walked away—a certain gravity holding them in place, close. They talked for a few minutes more, mostly about books. He asked what they were reading in her class, all about her favorite books, and admitted he’d been thinking about Something Wicked This Way Comes when he almost knocked her down. She looked out over Murfee’s carnival, at the lights and noise, saying she wouldn’t be able to see it the same way now. She said she might even pick up a copy of the classic to read again, but he told her not to bother, he’d dig up his old one for her.

  She glanced down once at her watch, so he offered to walk her out to her car, but she didn’t want to be any trouble. It ended up not mattering, because the sheriff appeared to do the honors himself.

  • • •

  He walked right up, smiling, always smiling, tipping his hat to reveal his brush cut gleaming silver, a razor’s edge. The sheriff asked Anne if his deputy was treating her okay and she said he was—a complete gentleman, extolling the virtues of Murfee. The sheriff put a hand on Chris’s shoulder and said Chris wa
s the best damn quarterback to ever play at BBC, maybe all of West Texas, and that he might turn out to be a pretty good deputy too if he shot a bit straighter and wasn’t so nice all the time. He said Chris’s idea of deputying was saving cats out of trees and escorting pretty ladies on the midway.

  Chris took the cue. He excused himself, smiled at Anne, who smiled back, and turned into the heart of the carnival. He glanced back once, but Anne and the sheriff were already gone.

  • • •

  He saw the sheriff once more a little bit later. Sheriff Ross was near the entrance, saying bye to folks, shaking hands, telling them to come again tomorrow night. He reminded parents to check in on their kids as they left the homecoming dance, and pointed out that his deputies—his boys—would be out on the road tonight to make sure everyone got home safe.

  Chris knew that before the night was done he’d pull over a couple of kid-filled trucks, beer cans and flasks rattling around their feet or being tossed out windows. But there would be no tickets, no punishment, just an escort home. It would be the same at Christmas break, when the kids had their winter bonfire. As a senior, he’d had too much to drink there, throwing up in the hay, and had been taken home by Duane Dupree, a long-ago moment the chief deputy probably didn’t remember.

  No trouble. That was the word handed down by Sheriff Ross.

  The town loved him for it; they loved him—eating brisket and shaking hands and looking after their kids. In many ways Sheriff Ross was Murfee, and Chris wondered if either could exist without the other.

  Before all the lights went down, Chris caught one glimpse of Caleb Ross, guessing he never went to the game or the dance, either. He was enveloped in the same sweatshirt he always seemed to be wearing, hood up, wandering the dark paths between the games and rides. He wasn’t joining in any of them, just watching. By the time Chris thought to say hello, he was gone, too.

  • • •