“Is this where you put Martin?” Maggie asked.
Lewis nodded. “I carried him from his grave, Maggie,” he said, his eyes forward. “Maggie, he wasn’t buried in a coffin. Can you smell it. Can you smell the death?”
“Yes.”
“I have to carry him again.”
“I’ll help you, Lewis.”
“No, no. You didn’t see him, Maggie. I can’t let you near him. I’ll do it.”
“I want to see,” Maggie said.
Lewis looked at her face. He realized that she didn’t want him to have to feel it alone. “I love you.”
“I want to see it.”
“He’s in the shed.”
Out of the truck, they walked, holding hands, to the back of the house and to the shed. When Lewis pulled open the door, the stench wafted out and made them back up.
“Come on, Maggie, go back to the truck.”
“Let’s do it,” she said.
Lewis was glad he had wrapped the body in the tarp. He went in and pushed the body over, the upper part falling out into the daylight. He took the shoulders and pulled him clear of the shed. Maggie grabbed the feet and they began the walk to the truck. The smell bothered them, made them turn their heads to take deep breaths to hold.
Maggie was doing well. At the truck, she struggled to get the lower part of the body high enough to go over the side wall. She heaved and Martin rolled in. The tarp came away from his face. Maggie saw the maggots and the mud-caked neck. Lewis reached quickly and covered him.
Maggie walked absently toward the cabin. Lewis followed her.
“Maggie?”
“I’m okay. I just need to sit down.”
She sat on a stump to the side of the door. Lewis leaned against the house.
“Want me to tell you what I think?” Lewis said.
Maggie nodded.
“I think the army or somebody let something loose up there, chemicals or something, and it’s killing everything. There’re no animals up there, not even bugs.” Lewis was starting to cry. “The trees are dying, Maggie. The only thing up there is a fence.” He rubbed at the mark on his hand.
Maggie stood and hugged him.
He took a breath and let it out slowly. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
They did not speak. Lewis drove and thought about the blemish on his hand. Would it become a wound like the ones he had seen on Martin’s legs? Would Ignacio and Ernesto get them too from being up in the canyon? Would everyone who had contact with the dead man develop them? Maggie? Maybe you had to touch something to become infected. Perhaps he’d already been exposed by picking up the squirrel. He was mad at himself for having let Maggie handle the corpse. Laura had even been close to him. He had no idea of the extent or range of this thing. It could have been in his imagination. But the squirrel was real. The absence of the animals in the forest was real; it had even scared young Ernesto.
Lewis didn’t know what he was doing, where he was taking the body. He was hungry, needed to eat. His brain needed food. He didn’t have cash, but he had credit cards. He pulled into a gas station/fast food place and killed the engine.
“We have to eat something,” Lewis said. He took out his wallet and handed her a credit card. “One of us has to stay and make sure no one comes near our cargo back there. Try to get something that’s not too disgusting.”
“Hot dogs, something like that?”
“Whatever.”
Maggie got out and walked into the store.
Lewis pumped the gas.
Lewis could easily imagine getting to the Capitol steps with Martin’s body and being put away for being a crazy man. He could dump the body onto the desk of the editor of the Santa Fe newspaper and say, “Feature this: NERVE GAS THREATENS THOUSANDS.” He’d always wanted to say, “feature this,” but it sounded stupid. It still did. He topped off the tank and put the nozzle back. He looked inside and saw Maggie at the counter. The cashier read the pump through binoculars.
Lewis looked at the highway. A state trooper passed by. He wondered if they were on the lookout for an elderly couple, a black man and a Japanese woman, driving a Ford F250 pickup with a dead Mexican in the back. He pictured Peabody and his men trying to drive across that arroyo in the van, but then he realized that the ground had soaked all the water from yesterday’s rain and so the arroyo was now no more than a trickle. By now, they had found the empty grave and were swearing and loading pistols.
Maggie came back. “I got you a jumbo dog with the works,” she said.
“Did you get me a coke, too?”
“Yep.” She pulled a can from the bag and handed it to him.
He popped the top and took a long drink. “Ready?”
“Are you okay?” Maggie asked.
“No. Should I be?”
“Where to?”
“I really don’t know. What do you think of the newspaper? We could dump it in the city editor’s office.”
Maggie seemed to consider it.
“The television station?”
“That might be better,” she said. “I don’t know why.”
“Well, we can’t stay here all day. Get in.”
They returned to the highway. “I found your truck at Camel Rock,” Lewis told her. “The state police have probably towed it by now.”
“What’s that on your hand? You keep rubbing at it.”
“Nothing.”
“Lewis?”
“Nothing, I said.” He switched on the radio. A woman whined a country song.
Maggie killed the radio. “What is it?”
“I think it’s going to be a burn like the ones I saw on Martin’s legs. I think we’re in trouble.”
Maggie focused on the road.
“I think things are really bad, Maggie. I mean really bad.”
Maggie was crying again.
Lewis stopped the truck and held her for a few minutes.
She sat up straight and looked at the hills. “You know how long I wanted to come live here? A long time. This was my dream place. No one to bother me, no relatives nearby.” She laughed.
“I know what you mean.”
“Yeah.”
Lewis cleared his throat. “Look at it this way; at least we’re old.”
“Yeah.”
He started the truck.
They passed through Española. Lewis looked in his mirror and saw a brown van. Again, he thought that there must be many brown vans in the state. But this one rammed into the back of them.
“Shit,” Maggie said.
“Buckle your belt,” Lewis said.
The van hit them again, then tried to pull even with them. Lewis turned his truck left and bumped them. He swerved off the highway onto a rough, but paved road. The van overshot the turn.
Lewis hoped he hadn’t made a mistake. He hadn’t made the turn with any plan in mind. He thought he could find a dirt road that would give them trouble, the ground clearance of the van being lower than his truck.
Maggie held on, one hand on the dash, the other on the strap over her door. The van was behind them again. Lewis spotted a dirt road and took it. He did put some distance between them. He didn’t hear the report of the weapon, but his outside mirror shattered.
“Get down, Maggie. Jesus Christ, they’re shooting at us.”
Maggie leaned over on the seat. Lewis slouched down. The truck bounced wildly because Lewis couldn’t see to miss the bumps. He wanted to just stop and say, “Shoot me.” He was just so tired of it all. But he wouldn’t give up. The bastards were going to kill everybody.
The road threw them high. Lewis sat up more to see the road better. Maggie looked up. She smashed forward into the dash and bloodied her lip.
“Stay down, Maggie!” Lewis shouted.
Maggie looked at him, like she was lost, confused, like she wanted to say something.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Maggie slumped over the seat. Lewis accelerated through a tight curve. The van swayed
. The rain had not made the road muddy and it wasn’t slick, but because of it there was also no dust. Nothing was working to advantage. Another curve came up suddenly and he took it on two wheels. The van didn’t take it, it skidded, turned sideways and began to roll. It came to rest upside-down. Lewis kept going for a few minutes, then stopped by a small lake. He realized that he was on Indian land; he’d come to Pito Lake from the back side.
He turned to Maggie, held her head in his hands. He saw the hole where the bullet had passed through the back window. She was unconscious. Her hair was filled with blood. His fingers were wet with her blood. He could hear her voice, but she wasn’t speaking. He didn’t know if she was dead.
Why had he turned off the main road? He cursed himself. He cried. He hugged Maggie and felt the life leave her. He felt heat lift from her and she was left cold in his arms. He wrapped his fingers about her arm, so small, so frail it had seemed, and he recalled how tough she was and he yelled at her, told her to wake up. He couldn’t remember how to breathe, didn’t know if he was doing it right. His eyes opened wide and he saw the light of the sun reflected off the water. His head hurt. His leg throbbed. His heart ached. He turned Maggie’s head and looked at her face. Her open eyes scared him and he gently closed them. He put his head back on the seat and lowered his lids against the sunlight. Two bodies now. Two bodies and he was still alive, all his damn fault and he was still alive. He tried to start the truck, but it wouldn’t crank. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Exhaustion overtook him and he went to sleep.
Lewis woke up to find that it had not been a bad dream. Maggie was still dead beside him, Martin was still dead behind him. Could he just go to the state police now? Maggie had been murdered. Nothing fancy and no way to misinterpret it. Murdered. He put his hand on her body and it was no colder than before, the face no more serene.
He opened his door and started to get out. The back window of the truck shattered. Lewis looked and saw Peabody standing some thirty yards away, his jacket ripped, blood over the right side of his face. He limped forward. Lewis wanted to attack the man, but he wouldn’t, he didn’t. It was hard for him to leave Maggie, but he did. Her dead face screamed for him to run.
He ran along the road that circled the lake. There was no one fishing today. The weather had been hot and Pito Lake was always poorly stocked. He heard another pistol report. Maybe if a bullet hit him in the back of the head, he would not feel anything, just die and find some kind of peace, the light that all the people he thought were crazy had claimed to see when on death’s edge. But there would be no light, he knew that. Not in this America and he tried to run faster, but his legs complained. It was more than the pain, though. He was tired of running. His brain hurt, felt like it was going to sleep again. He felt sick and expected to vomit at any second. He limped. The man chasing him limped. Lewis yelled back at him.
“Who are you?” Lewis asked.
“I’m just doing my job, Lewis.”
“And just what is your fucking job. To poison every-goddamn-body?”
“You’re a loose end.”
“I’m not going to run anymore,” Lewis said.
“I’m pleased to hear it.”
Lewis looked at the man. “You’re what got loose, aren’t you?”
Peabody said nothing.
“Are you supposed to be killing people? What got loose? Tell me! You’re going to kill me anyway.” Lewis looked at the man’s eyes. They weren’t cold. They weren’t hard. They were hollow, vacant, stupid, a robot’s eyes. They weren’t cold. Lewis laughed. “What, are you some kind of government agent or something, some shit like that? Well, fuck you!” He held up his hand and pointed at the blemish. “See that? See that? I’ve got it, don’t I? Well, you’ve got it, too, I’ll bet. I don’t care anymore.”
Peabody raised the weapon and aimed.
Lewis stared straight down the barrel of the pistol and it felt good. He wanted to be closer, to help the bullet. He managed a step, then another. “Go ahead and shoot! Shoot, you bastard.” Lewis felt great, he felt like dancing and so he did a little jig. “Shoot!”
The shot was loud, but Lewis felt nothing. Peabody fell forward. Manny was behind him, lowering his pistol. Lewis sank to his knees. Manny kicked the gun away from the fallen man’s hand.
Lewis looked at the dirt. Manny helped him to stand, helped him to walk.
“What the hell were you doing?” Manny asked.
“I was dancing.”
They walked many steps in silence.
“Maggie’s dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Manny said. “I didn’t know.”
“Why?” Lewis asked. “Why, Manny?”
Manny shook his head. “I just nodded and turned away. I should have seen what was happening. I’m sorry.”
“Were you scared?” Lewis asked.
“Yeah, I suppose that was it.”
Lewis looked at the lake. “Manny, they’re killing us.”
“I know.”
Percival Everett is the author of Suder, Walk Me to the Distance, For Her Dark Skin, Cutting Lisa, The Weather and Women Treat Me Fair, The One That Got Away, Zulus, God’s Country, Big Picture and Watershed. He is currently teaching at the University of California at Riverside
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