Sulfur Springs

by William Kent Krueger

  We passed a little taqueria with an old Coca-Cola sign hanging out front. From inside came the muffled sound of music.

  “Mariachi?” I said.

  Rainy laughed. “White North Americans think it’s all mariachi. That’s norteño. Hear the polka beat?”

  From behind a shade-covered window came the high laughter of children, and from a distance, insect-like, the buzz of a small gas engine.

  “This is the El Dorado so many people risk their lives for?” I said.

  “They keep going, Cork, to Tucson or Phoenix or L.A. or Chicago. But bleak as this seems to you, it’s better than what so many of the refugees are leaving behind.”

  We returned to the pickup, but before we got in, Rainy’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the display.

  “I have to take this.” She walked away.

  Across the street at Rosa’s Cantina, the young waitress stood in the shade of the porch awning, fanning herself with a menu. I walked over to her.

  “Took the grand tour of Gallina Town?” she said.

  “Pretty quiet place. Didn’t see anyone, not even children.”

  “They’re around. Their parents are off working, so they’re staying with their abuelas or their tías. Hottest part of the day now. They’re inside, probably napping. Siestas aren’t just a quaint joke out here. Me, I could use one about now.” She looked south across Sulfur Creek. “You come back in the evening, it’s different. People are outside, visiting with each other, catching up. They’ll gather in the street in front of the taqueria, play dominoes, music, maybe even dance a little.”

  “Sounds like a good place.”

  “People with money, they think wealth is happiness.”

  “You don’t?”

  She laughed. “I’m an artist. If I believed that, I’d really be screwed.”

  “If undocumented immigrants came knocking at a door south of Sulfur Creek, would it be opened to them?”

  “Depends on the door. Like everywhere else, there are people whose hearts are great and others, well, not so much.” She saw something behind me and her face changed. “Back to work. See you around.”

  I turned and watched the town’s police car pull up beside the pickup. Rainy put away her cell phone and walked to meet the cop when he got out. I headed that way, too.

  “Afternoon, Officer Sanchez,” I said.

  He wore sunglasses and a brimmed hat. He leaned against his cruiser and folded his arms across his chest. “Heard about what happened this morning. Surprised to see you’re still around. Still looking for that son of yours?”

  “Still looking,” Rainy said.

  “In Gallina Town?”

  I hadn’t seen him there, but somehow he knew.

  “Just sightseeing,” I said.

  “You folks sure must’ve pissed somebody off.”

  “Maybe somebody named Rodriguez?” I said.

  “If that’s the case and I was you, I’d skedaddle just as fast as I could.”

  “You told us yesterday that you’d ask around about Peter,” Rainy said.

  “True to my word, ma’am. Nada. Nobody here knows that name. Sorry.”

  “You have any problem with White Horse in Sulfur Springs?” I asked.

  He removed his sunglasses and wiped sweat from his forehead. “I know about White Horse, sure, but I can’t say they’ve caused any trouble here.”

  “Maybe they don’t cause it, but maybe they bring it. As in a car bomb.”

  “You heard about that, did you? Then maybe you heard the sheriff’s people still don’t have a clue what that was about.”

  “We heard it was about the Rodriguez family and White Horse.”

  “I’m betting you didn’t hear that officially.”

  “What’s your official line?”

  He shrugged. “Shit happens. Will we be seeing more of you folks around here?”

  “We like the food at Rosa’s Cantina, so maybe,” I said.

  “Try the chiles rellenos. To die for.” He tipped his hat and put his sunglasses back on. “You folks take care.” He left us and headed toward the cantina.

  I reached for the handle on the pickup door, and it was like touching a branding iron.

  “You learn to be careful,” Rainy said. “And to park in shade whenever you can.”

  I cranked the air conditioner as soon as we were in the truck, but it took a while for the heat to drop below broil. I started out of Sulfur Springs.

  “Who called?”

  “A friend,” she said. “Wondering how things were going.”

  “I know this friend?”

  “No.”

  I waited, got nothing more.

  Then my cell phone rang.

  “You left your number,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

  “Old Turtle?”

  “Who is this?”

  “My name’s Cork O’Connor.”

  A long pause followed, then: “I can’t talk now. I’ll call you again later.”

  “When?”

  “Later.” And he hung up.

  “Old Turtle?”

  “Yep.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said he’d call again later. But I think we’ll talk to him before that.”

  She gave me a questioning look.

  “I recognized his voice,” I said. “Old Turtle also goes by another name that’s not really his own. When we met him yesterday, he told us to call him Jocko.”

  CHAPTER 11

  * * *

  We took the same road we’d driven the day before to the Sonora Hills Cellars. Outside Sulfur Springs, we passed the barren flat where the trailer homes of Paradiso baked under the sun. The Border Patrol didn’t stop us this time. In fact, we saw no sign of them or any other animals, human or otherwise. The only movement was the shimmer of the land all around us as waves of heat rose up. We were both quiet. I didn’t know what Rainy was thinking. Me, I was chewing like crazy on the question of her mysterious phone calls.

  Trust. An easy word to say. One syllable. Comes readily off the tongue. Also a thing easy to believe in, to advocate for, to hold in lofty regard. But putting it into practice? Good luck with that one. You share your life, your body, your dreams with another human being. You tie your fortunes together with sacred vows. But the truth is that you always keep some deep part of yourself separate from all that. You hold a place inside that’s only for you and that you never let anyone else into. Hell, after she died, we found out even Mother Teresa had secrets too dark to share.

  That’s where I was, driving through the desolation on Old Douglas Road.

  “Cork,” Rainy finally said.

  “I’m right here.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  Like she’d been reading my mind. Or with Rainy, more likely my heart.

  “You asked me that same damn question this morning. You’re not making it easy for me, Rainy, but the answer is still yes.”

  She was quiet, her eyes to the south. “There are things I can’t share with you, not yet. Other people are involved. It’s terribly complicated. And I can’t imagine that it has anything to do with Peter’s disappearance. I know what’s going on is dangerous for us, but this is about my son and keeping him safe. When I can, I’ll tell you everything, I promise.”

  “Could I be dead before that happens?”

  She looked at me, her eyes serious and beautiful. “God, I hope not. Because wherever you are, there I am also.”

  We turned onto the lane that cut through the vineyards, under the stone arch, and pulled up to the warehouse, with its great stainless-steel vats. The door was closed. No motorcycle, and the F-150 pickup was gone. We got out and walked to the house. The bell, when I rang it, gave out three deep, sonorous chimes. It was almost a full minute before Jayne Harris opened the door, clearly surprised to see us but smiling.

  “We don’t mean to bother you, Jayne. We’re looking for Jocko.”

  “He and Frank are checking the new plantin
gs in the south vineyard,” she said.

  “Still expanding?” I asked.

  “Diversifying. Adding new resistant varieties.”

  “Resistant to what? This heat?”

  “Would you like to come inside?”

  “Thank you,” Rainy said.

  It was blessedly cool in the house and just as quiet as the first time we’d visited.

  “May I offer you something to drink?” Jayne asked.

  I shook my head. “No, thanks.”

  “If you have a moment, let me explain a few things,” Jayne said. She indicated the living room, and we all sat down. “To answer your question, Cork, the heat isn’t the problem. A few years ago we lost a major part of our vineyard to GLD. That’s short for grapevine leafroll disease. A lot of the vineyards in the area suffered. Since then, we’ve been working with more resistant varieties. It’s slow going. Vines take quite a while to produce. This new variety seems to be doing well, but we monitor everything closely. Or Frank does. That’s his territory of concern. He’s the wine guy.”

  “And you’re all about the business,” I said.

  “It’s what I do,” she said. “I’m a Minnesota girl, Cork. I met Frank ten years ago at a conference in Minneapolis. I was there offering advice to small business people on planned growth. Frank was a widower, I was divorced, we hit it off. His family had been in cattle here, but raising beef profitably is tough, and Frank wanted to do something different with the land.”

  “The vineyards,” Rainy said.

  “They call this area Napa-zona. The soil here on the plateau is similar to the area around Burgundy, France, and the microclimate is Mediterranean. It’s perfect grape country.”

  “So this is home now,” I said.

  She smiled. “For better or for worse, isn’t that how the vow goes?”

  I heard it as resignation, and I understood. I’ve always believed that if Minnesota is in your blood, it’s hard to be completely happy anywhere else.

  Rainy said, “Would it be difficult for us to find Frank and Jocko?”

  “Not at all. Just go back to the main road and head south. You’ll come to a little dirt lane that runs along the edge of that section of our vineyards. Can’t miss it. We planted a row of yews. You ought to see Frank’s pickup from there. But I can call his cell phone and have him and Jocko meet you here.”

  “That’s all right. We’ll find them and let you get back to your business.”

  “You wouldn’t believe the paperwork,” she said and stood to see us out.

  We returned to the main road and headed south. At the end of the vineyards, we found the line of yew trees marching toward the hills and the dirt lane that ran alongside them. We saw no sign of Frank’s pickup. We stepped out of the truck and stood in the silence of that landscape, the deep green rows of vines on one side of the yews, the pale green-yellow of the grasslands on the other.

  “What now?” Rainy asked.

  A hot wind blew up from the direction of the border, and carried on it was a peculiar sound.

  “Listen,” I said.

  Rainy cocked her head, then pointed. “There.” A black shape cut low across the sky. At that distance, it appeared no larger than one of the vultures we’d seen circling earlier in the day. “A biplane.”

  We found the landing strip cut into grassland near a gathering of cottonwood trees in whose shade stood a little ranch house and a couple of outbuildings. The biplane sat at the end of the strip in front of a small hangar. Frank Harris’s pickup was there, too. As we drove up, Harris and Robert Wieman, the man who called himself Jocko, turned and watched us come.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” Frank said amiably.

  “Spotted Jocko’s biplane,” I said. “I thought you gave up crop dusting.”

  “I still fly. Just not for money,” Jocko said. “Something we can do for you folks?”

  “We’d like to talk with you. It’s important.”

  The old man studied my face, then Rainy’s, then glanced at Harris.

  Harris shrugged, gave a nod, and said, “Looks like they made you, Old Turtle.”

  * * *

  We sat at the kitchen table in the cool of the ranch house. Jocko had poured us lemonade, cold from the refrigerator and colder still with ice.

  “My father and Frank’s grandfather, Gus Harris, were prospecting partners,” Jocko explained. “Back when they were young bucks and this was all still pretty wild country. They did a little wildcat mining together, up there in the Sonora Hills. Never got enough ore out of it to get real rich, but Frank’s grandfather used his share to buy land around here and started running cattle. My father kept prospecting, never got anywhere. When he married my mother and needed regular money, he hired on with Frank’s grandfather. When Gus died, he left my father this section of land so that he could start his own spread. We did okay, but it was a brutal life, hard on us all. My father wanted me to run cattle with him, but at the county fair when I was twelve, I took a flight in a biplane and from that moment on my heart was always in the sky. When we went to war in Korea, I enlisted in the air force, and that was that. After I retired from flying for employment, I came back home. Too old to run cattle, so I went to work for the Harrises, just like my father had.”

  “You’re both Desert Angels?” Rainy asked.

  “Old Turtle,” Frank said nodding toward Jocko. “Me, I’m Armadillo. How’d you get the contact email?”

  “Nightingale.”

  It was clear that neither of them could connect the name to a person. Peter’s plan.

  “So you know all about Los Angeles del Desierto?” Harris said.

  “Not all, but enough,” Rainy replied. “Is Jayne a Desert Angel, too?”

  “For Jayne, putting out water and food is one thing. Helping guide these people through the desert is something else altogether. She knows that Jocko and I are involved, but she doesn’t approve. For my part, mostly what I do is give Peter a modest income working for me and give him a lot of time off to do what needs to be done. Small stuff in the grand scheme. I don’t think there’s a lot of risk involved in any of that, but it makes Jayne nervous.” He gave a little, disappointed sigh. “The only risk that interests her is the business kind.”

  “When we spoke yesterday, you knew Peter was in trouble,” Rainy said.

  “Not for sure. And I certainly didn’t want to say anything that might put you two in danger.”

  “Moot point now,” I said. “Do you know anything about what’s happened to him?”

  Harris looked to his companion. “You want to take this one, Jocko?”

  The old man put down his lemonade. “You know that Peter is what the refugees call a guía?”

  “A guide,” Rainy said. “Like a coyote?”

  “Not a coyote.” The word was clearly distasteful to him. “He takes nothing and he cares about the people he leads through the desert. He brings them across in many different places. Those places are often at a distance. I fly him there, he leads his people to safety, I fly him back.”

  “Safety?” I said.

  “Sometimes to others waiting with vehicles. Sometimes to a safe location, out of the sun and the heat, until arrangements can be made.”

  “What kind of safe location?”

  Jocko shrugged. “Peter’s always secretive. In case of a leak. The less any of us know, the better.”

  “But there was a leak,” Rainy said. “Somehow the Rodriguez family knew.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  “We know Peter had a rendezvous set up two nights ago,” I said. “Did you fly him there, Jocko?”

  The old man nodded. “We had a prearranged pickup time yesterday. When he didn’t show, I knew something was wrong.”

  Harris said, “Then you two pop up asking about him and the Rodriguez family. It wasn’t hard to put two and two together.”

  “We just saw you come in for a landing, Jocko. Where were you?”

  “Flew over the area where
I dropped Peter. Been at it the last two days, looking for whatever. So far nothing.”

  “Could you fly us there?”

  “I’ve got a single-passenger biplane. I can fly only one of you.”

  “Today?”

  “Got to fuel up first.”

  “Okay if I go, Rainy?” I said.

  “I’m heading home. You can come with me and wait there,” Harris offered her.

  “I’d rather wait here,” Rainy said. “If it’s all right with Jocko.”

  “Mi casa es su casa,” the old man said with grin.

  “You men be careful out there,” Harris said. “There are a lot of names for that desert. The one that covers it all is an old one. The earliest inhabitants called it simply Desolation.”

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  I’ve been in small planes before, and choppers, but Jocko’s biplane was something else. He’d given me goggles, which helped, because in the open passenger cockpit the wind smacked me around a lot. Jocko had given me headphones so that we could communicate, but between the roar of the engine and the rush of the wind, I couldn’t hear very well. We were bounced by sudden currents, and I felt like the ball in a circus act of trained seals. Jocko flew west into the sun and south of the Coronados. I saw Sulfur Springs below us, green tendrils against a canvas that was mostly dirty yellow. Not far away was Paradiso, the trailers like Legos in a sandbox. We dropped low and followed the southern edge of yet another mountain range whose name I didn’t know. Then came desert. Real desert. Mesquite and barrel cactus and jumping cholla and saguaro and prickly pear and pipe organ. Most of these things, I knew, were covered with long thorns or short prickles or little hairs whose barbed ends, though delicate, could still drive you crazy trying to get them out of your skin. They gave no shade, no sense of comfort. Nowhere on the hardpan of that desert was there anything that might offer relief from the baking sun. I understood the ancient name for the place: Desolation.

  More than an hour after we’d taken off, Jocko circled a landing strip in the middle of nowhere. He touched down, we rolled to a stop, and climbed out.