“You like a chart, Marcus?” she said.
“I do love a chart.”
“I wish you’d make one for me, then. I could use a chart to give out to my help so they’d know when to show up and when not to. And what time they ought to get there, because some of them don’t know what a watch is.”
Valentine, Texas, October 2004
The ranch hand out searching for stray cattle found, hidden under piles of cut brush, a sky-blue Buick Electra. He did not see at first that despite having no battery and no tags, the car was in relatively good shape and perhaps salvageable if you were inclined to drive a Buick. He did not know anyone in the area, save some of the older couples he had seen in town driving slowly down the streets toward church or the grocery store, who might drive a car like this. It wasn’t a very good car for the terrain.
He wondered how in the devil it got down here in the draw. It had rained some in the past few weeks, so it wasn’t possible to track it. He didn’t carry a cell phone. He couldn’t call the sheriff, so he poked around a bit, trying to figure out why someone would leave this car out here.
Someone went to some trouble to hide this Buick. Opening doors and glove compartments and looking up under seats did not enlighten him as to why. In fact the longer he stuck around out there, the more he felt like it wasn’t any of his business, this abandoned Buick. Could be any number of things led to it being left out here, and none of them, to his mind, called for him to meddle or squeal. He had parked his ATV over on the rise and someone might come up on his tracks, but if he told his boss man, Sure, I saw it but I didn’t feel like it was any of mine, his boss man, who had been known to lie to the Border Patrol because they had gotten to be more and more a nuisance, would take up for him. But the hand did not think it would come to that. He had this feeling he’d be the last to see the Buick.
The last human. Antelope came to poke. And javelina, set on something to eat. Coyotes came down out of the mountains. The ranch hand in his examination of the Buick had left its right rear door cracked open enough for anything smaller than a burro to squeeze in wanting shelter from a wind. Grasshoppers, tarantulas, snakes—all the crafty species adapted to survival in a place not known for its bounty. Tumbleweeds in time added to the brush piled atop it, some of which blew away, only to be replenished by the wind. Rust came slowly in this thirsty draw but dust was so thick across it that within weeks the Buick blended with the desert but for a patch on the hood as clear blue and startling as cloudless sky.
Acknowledgments
The author wishes to acknowledge the help and expert guidance of Peter Steinberg, all of the good people at Algonquin Books (especially Lauren Moseley, Kathy Pories, and Craig Popelars), my generous and attentive first readers (you know who you are, and please know this book would be so much less without you), Balmorhea State Park, Jesse Donaldson and Kevin Jones, and B.K.W., who always kept my seat warm at the Table.
Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225
a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014
© 2014 by Michael Parker.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
eISBN 978-1-61620-392-4
All I Have in This World Page 26
