The doors swung open of their own volition, admitting Joe and Amanda into the foyer, a circular, chandeliered room with blue and green lights moving along the black walls. With his hand on her waist, Joe gently steered Amanda up to the peroxide-blonde hostess, thinking quickly about what to say. All that came out was: ‘For two.’
‘Very well, sir, would you like inside or patio seating?’
Joe looked at Amanda. ‘Whatever you want.’
‘Patio seating sounds nice. Does it overlook the river?’
‘Yes ma’am.’
She led them through the main dining room, weaving past tables full of people chattering noisily. The floor seemed to be made of glass and Joe swore he saw fish swimming beneath his feet. The hostess threw open the patio doors and found a spot for them beside the railing, directly beneath an overhanging heater.
Joe ordered a beer. Amanda ordered water.
‘You don’t drink?’ he asked.
‘My dad…I’m worried it might be in my blood. That’s the last thing we need. Two alcoholics.’
After a couple minutes, their waiter, a broad shouldered man with a small head, brought out their drinks and handed them two menus. While they looked over the menus, a mariachi band began playing a slow ballad before transitioning to a lightning fast song, the guitarist’s fingers moving in a blur over the frets while another man pounded the accordion in and out, in and out. Most territories had outlawed Mexican music; some had even gone so far as to hold burnings of all things Mexican. The stigma might have died away, Joe thought, after the Purging of Mexico. The obliteration of an entire country was punishment enough for a war they didn’t start.
When the band finished, Joe brought out some money to tip them, but Amanda put her hand on his, saying, ‘Told you it was my treat.’ She handed the guitarist a wrinkled bill.
After they ordered, the waiter asked if they would like to take a tour of their walk-in aquarium to pass the time. ‘We are famous for our exotic species of fish,’ he explained. ‘They come from all over the country. Even overseas.’
Glass circled them, keeping at bay the crystal clear water full of sea urchins, anemones, coral, and some man-made structures, like the large image of Buddha meditating soulfully in the pebbles. Colorful fish danced around them in constantly moving schools. Joe’s fingers met Amanda’s and intertwined as they slowly walked along together.
‘I got some more information about your Ararat,’ Amanda said as they walked.
‘Yeah?’
‘I heard my dad on the phone with Tesh. Whatever Ararat is, it’s in Mexico.’
Joe scrunched up his nose. ‘There’s nothing in Mexico.’
Amanda shrugged. ‘That’s what he said. Tesh will take you tomorrow. I’m going to see if I can come too.’
Joe thought about it as they walked along the corridor looking at the fish. He hadn’t crossed the border into Mexico since he’d been very young; the family had gone to the Gulf for vacation. Perhaps they had started rebuilding down there—not likely, but possible.
He and Amanda stood on the balcony overlooking the river, telling stories about their pasts while they sipped their drinks. They had a perfect view of Slushland’s skyscrapers. The fires had gone out days ago after a downpour of heavy rain. Joe thought of the Guttermen hiding in the sewers, peering out at the madness in the streets. How many people had died, he wondered. Three that he personally knew about; one by his hand. The regret he felt for that dreadlocked woman had faded with his burns.
Amanda slid her fingers back into his. ‘What’s Hell Paso like?’
‘Dirty and hot. A lot like Slushland without the tall buildings and Slummers.’
‘Are your parents still there? You mentioned your mom, but your dad…?’
Joe looked out over the water, trying to picture his dad’s face. ‘He died protecting the border. I was just a kid at the time.’
‘He sounds brave. I can see where you get it from.’
It was nearing eleven o’clock when they decided to head back to Midland. Amanda paid the waiter a generous tip on their way out. It had been raining lightly, and now the steps outside were slippery and perilous. Joe held tightly to the railing while he helped Amanda down the long, winding steps to the parking lot. When they reached the lot, he loosened his tie and craned his neck, gasping for breath.
‘I’ll never get used to one of these,’ he said.
Amanda tugged down on the tie. ‘But it looks so good on you. I could get used to this new look.’
‘We’ll see,’ Joe said, smiling.
Three cars were parked in a row beside theirs. As they passed the second car, Joe noticed a shadow cast near its rear tires. He tensed when the two Slummers from earlier appeared, blocking their way. Both fidgeted, their hands wringing themselves out like wet rags. One of them ran his shaking hand through thinning, unnaturally gray hair. Joe put his arm in front of Amanda and moved her behind him.
‘C–c–can you sp–spare su–su–su–some cuh–coin, brother?’ one of the Slummers stammered. His eyes were dilated. Joe noticed track marks running along his forearm. The gray-haired Slummer glared lustily at Amanda, before his eyes moved to Joe.
Joe held out his hands, palms up. ‘I don’t have anything.’
‘D–d–don’t lie tuh–tu–tu mmm–mmm–me.’
‘I’m not lying to you.’
‘Joe,’ Amanda whispered, ‘let’s just give them—’
The stammering Slummer pulled a pistol from his pocket, and it quivered in his hand, the barrel pointed at Joe’s waist. Amanda sucked in a pocket of air.
Joe took a step back, pushing Amanda back with him. ‘Put the gun away. We’ll give you what we got.’
The lusty-eyed Slummer licked his lips and pointed at Phillip’s truck. ‘Gimme the keys to that—and her bra and panties,’ he said, cocking his head like a rabid dog at Amanda. That was when Joe remembered where he’d seen him before. It was Rook.
‘Take what we have,’ Joe said, emptying his pockets, handing them his wallet that contained only a few dollars.
‘I want her panties,’ Rook repeated. ‘Give me ’em. Give me her cunt, too.’ The words dripped from his mouth, slathering his chin with their vile intent.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ Joe asked desperately. ‘I freed you that night in Almost Sunny Springs. I got you out of there, Rook.’
Rook glared at Joe, his pale, twitching eyes showing no recollection. ‘I don’t know you,’ he said. ‘But if ya know me, then ya gotta know my stepmom. When I came back to beg forgiveness, she’d blown a hole in her face. Or did you do that to her after freein’ me?’
Joe shook his head. ‘I never hurt her. Here, take our money and let us leave,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to work with you.’
‘Wha–what’s she gu–gu–got inner p–purse,’ said the other Slummer, pointing the gun past Joe at Amanda.
Joe edged in front of the barrel and noticed that the Slummer was holding the gun’s stock in his fist, his finger not even on the trigger.
‘Here,’ Joe said, lifting his open palms slowly into the air. ‘Take my tie.’ He pulled it off over his head.
The Slummer blubbered. ‘Wh–wh–hat do we wa–want th—’
Spit burst from his mouth as Joe lunged into his chest, driving him to the ground. The gun skittered across the parking lot. The tie fluttered atop the Slummer’s chest. Joe grabbed him by the throat and punched him in the mouth, shattering his front teeth, splitting open his own knuckles.
Rook began screaming, screaming at Amanda. Joe punched again, cracking the Slummer’s nose, and felt his body go limp beneath him.
‘Joe!’ Amanda yelled.
Behind him, he heard a wet coughing, choking. Still on top of the Slummer, he spun on his knees.
Rook stood just inches away from Amanda touching her stomach; Amanda’s eyes were wide with surprise, her mouth torn open, making that hacking cough. Then Joe noticed blood bubbling around Rook’s hand, dripping through his finger
s and down Amanda’s dress, pooling between her legs. Rook was regarding her greedily. Joe screamed. Rook pulled the shiv out of Amanda’s belly and stabbed again.
Joe’s blood turned to ice and filled his entire body in an instant. He didn’t register Rook’s cackles or him running beneath the streetlight to whip the shiv through the air, slinging Amanda’s blood onto the asphalt. Joe ran to Amanda and caught her before she hit the ground. Her weight forced him to his knees.
‘Amanda, Amanda,’ he said over and over, as if she would be revived by hearing her own name, as if, being reminded of his existence, she could find the will to stay alive.
Her eyes were slits. She coughed blood.
‘No,’ he said, determination mounting in his voice. ‘Stay with me. Please, Amanda.’
His determination turned to a plea. He scooped her up and carried her to the car, refusing to look at the two gashes cut in her dress from which leaked her blood. Joe swung open the car door. It bashed into the car next to theirs and set off its alarm.
‘You’re gonna make it, you’re gonna be fine.’
He positioned her in the passenger seat and wiped the hair out of her face. Her eyes moved slowly from his chest to his forehead, not really focusing on anything. He thought he saw the smallest flicker of a smile cross her lips, but then it was gone. She’s afraid. She knows…she knows I’m lying to her…
29
‘Take it easy with her, Joe. She’s an antique,’ Phillip called out, half-laughing, from the front porch as Joe screeched to a stop in front of the brightly lit house. His face wilted when he saw Joe sprint across the front of the truck, his jacket soaked in blood to open the passenger door. There sat Amanda, pale, bloodied, wide-eyed, slumped in the seat. Phillip’s whisky glass hit the deck, amber liquid spilling around his feet, flowing beneath the cracks.
‘Help me,’ Joe screamed, unbuckling her seatbelt, his hands slick with blood.
Phillip threw Joe to the side and moved his hands frantically over Amanda, over her belly, her face, the dress his wife had worn so many years ago. ‘God, God. No, it can’t…this can’t…’ He lifted his hands and they were covered in her blood.
He turned to Joe who was sitting on his ass in the gravel. ‘You killed her, you…you…’ The words dried in his throat as Phillip said something so softly that Joe couldn’t hear.
Joe lifted his head and through his tears saw the rage and despair pouring out of Phillip’s eyes. Then there were hands around his throat, hands covered in thick sticky blood, and fists being driven into his ribs and chest. Joe didn’t put up any resistance. Another voice came from nowhere and Phillip’s weight was lifted from him.
Phillip fought to get back to Joe. ‘He killed her! He killed my daughter!’
Gravel and dirt flew as Zeb held Phillip by both arms. Finally Phillip stopped, breathing madly, insanely, sobbing. Then he pushed past Zeb to the truck. He picked up his daughter and carried her to the garage. The light flickered on. The garage door groaned closed behind them.
Zeb knelt down next to Joe, his blonde hair hanging across his eyes. ‘What happened?’
‘I tried to stop them.’ All Joe could think about was Amanda’s face when the shiv was in her stomach—her horrified, surprised expression, unable to control her own features. What if he hadn’t tried to get the gun? Would she still be alive? ‘I couldn’t…’ Joe began to cry. ‘I couldn’t stop him. I was right there. So close to both of them.’
Zeb put a hand on Joe’s shoulder. ‘This isn’t your fault.’
Joe didn’t know how to respond to that. How couldn’t it be his fault? He was supposed to protect her. He should have been the one who was killed, not her. He dug his fingers into the gravel and dirt, cutting his fingertips and bending his nails back.
Zeb sat with him for close to twenty minutes before leaving to check on Phillip. When Zeb was out of sight, Joe stood up and wandered to the porch. He stripped off the bloodied jacket and threw it in the corner out of sight. He sat on the porch swing. Amanda’s book of poems lay beneath it. Instantly, she was there with him, alive and beautiful, her hair pinned back, wearing a loose-fitting t-shirt and torn jeans, laughing and joking about something. He felt like he could reach out and touch her.
Bravery. He laughed bitterly. What good did bravery do him in the end?
………
Joe jerked awake to the smell of gasoline, scorched rubber, and burning grass. The porch swing rocked beneath him. In his hands he held Amanda’s book of poems, though he didn’t remember picking it up. Bloody fingerprints smudged the cover. The sky remained shrouded in a veil of silvery black. In the field in front of the house, something burned. Joe stood up and walked unsteadily to the railing where he stood staring out.
Fire bloomed from the truck’s roof and open doors. There didn’t seem to be an inch of the truck not consumed by flames. The smell of it wafted all the way to the house. It was a horrible smell, but Joe refused to turn away. He let it hit him with full force.
Phillip appeared out of the field, striding up the gravel path towards the house holding a can of gasoline. He looked dreadful—haggard, ashen, as if the life had been sucked out of him. His hands still wore the maroon cast of dried blood. He dropped the gas can and began up the steps. Joe looked at him, wanting to say something. But Phillip brushed past without looking at him and went inside. Joe watched him through the window, moving through the kitchen to the sink where he began washing his hands feverishly, ripping at the skin with his nails to peel off the blood. Joe turned back to the field where the truck burned, spitting yellow and red flames into the air.
When the sun came up, Joe, Phillip, and Zeb went to the hilltop overlooking the house. Phillip walked ahead of them, a shovel pitched over his shoulder like a rifle. They followed a well-worn path to the top, where a beautiful tree grew, casting its shade over a cross and grave.
Phillip’s wife, Joe thought.
Phillip went to work digging a hole. Dirt arced through the air as he grunted and heaved and sweated, his pale face turning red and his cheeks puffing out like sails. His yellowed eyes were distant, spent. Exhausted, he handed the shovel to Zeb who, after some digging of his own, handed it off to Joe. Three hours later, they had a hole dug that a man could step inside and not be able to see out of.
Phillip wiped his face with a dirty, blistered hand. ‘The funeral’s in an hour,’ he said, his voice hollow. ‘Let’s get cleaned up.’
As he spoke, a prop plane curved round from the north. Joe raised a hand to block out the sun. It skimmed close to a clump of trees, circled them three times, then came in to land below, next to the house. Two men stepped out.
‘Tesh,’ Zeb said.
Phillip nodded.
Joe watched as one of the men from the plane walked towards the truck smoldering in the field and waved the other one over. As the plane’s propeller groaned to a stop, they stood staring at the truck quivering with trapped heat.
30
And then they lowered the casket Phillip had been saving for himself into the ground. Zeb and Phillip stepped back from the grave, their shoes crunching over dirt and rock, clothes clinging to sweaty skin.
Tesh and someone named Ben had joined them for the funeral. Ben stood solemnly off to the side, watching the proceedings from afar, while Tesh remained near Phillip, a hand clasped on his shoulder.
Tesh looked like the kind of big-game hunter Joe had read about when he was younger. All he needed to match his earthen-colored clothes and crocodile skin boots was a musket strapped over his back. Ben was harder to work out; he looked hard, like stone.
For several minutes, they were all silent. The only sound was the wind whipping up from the valley, scattering debris and rustling through the leaves of the tree looming over them. Then Phillip began speaking, more to himself and his daughter than to those around him.
‘If your mother was alive, she would have been proud of the woman you became. You were strong. So much stronger than I ever was. You handled eve
rything so well, never letting anything…not even my drinking…get to you. Always smiling and sarcastic. So funny. Lord, you could make me laugh.’
Phillip choked and cradled his face in his hands. Zeb put an arm on his back. Joe couldn’t bring himself to look at Phillip. He stared at the indentions in the casket, thinking back to his time with Amanda at the Queen Bean. Phillip wiped his eyes and went on.
‘I remember once when you made me laugh so hard, milk and eggs came out my nose.’ He chuckled softly to himself through his tears. ‘I was mad at first, but that was on me, never you. How could I blame you? Being who you were. I wish I’d been as good a father as you were a daughter to me. I can’t tell you how lucky I was to have known you, to have had the honor of raising you. I’ll miss you more than you can know.’
Silence fell once again, and in that silence Joe thought of his father’s funeral, the only funeral he’d ever attended before Amanda’s.
A massive memorial had been held for all the men who had died protecting the border. There had been too many bodies and too few caskets. So anyone who had lost a loved one was encouraged to walk up to the front where a huge cork board frowned down on the congregation. Joe could still remember the noise around him as he waited his turn, clutching a picture of his dad that his mom had given him. People had wept as they’d hobbled to the front, barely able to contain their emotion, and with shaking hands pinned their photographs to the board. When Joe’s turn came, he made his way to the front and sunk the pin into the cork board over his dad’s head. The paper around the pin had wrinkled, but his dad’s face remained smooth, unblemished. He could remember looking at the rows of closed caskets, wondering if maybe his dad was in one of them, just sleeping peacefully.
Then Joe’s mind went to the woman who had been raped at the truck stop. She’d died alone, surrounded by vicious men. The last thing she’d seen was a naked man towering over her like an evil god. Joe shook his head imperceptibly; he hated the places his mind wandered to now. Ever since leaving Hell Paso, all he’d seen was death.
Our Home is Nowhere (The Borrowed Land, Book 1) Page 16
