Laura was a mess. Her frantic mind going haywire. She searched for normalcy, for understanding. This calmer-of-the-storms just sat there spitting chew without a care in the world while chaos was forming all around him. She wished she could will him to action, but he just kept the impish grin on his face.
“Tell you what,” he started, his eyes reflecting a twinge of sympathy at her anguish, “when it cools down, I’ll go get him. Bring him back, and we can start this all over again. I don’t know what you expect to find when he’s back, but I’ll bring him back.”
She paused.
“Thank you,” she said with a whisper.
“What are you hoping to get back? That’s the question you need to ask.”
“What do you mean?”
“You holding out for him? Think he’ll come back fixed? That he’ll look at you and mend his ways?”
“I don’t know.”
“But that is what you want, ain’t it? Deep down, that is what this is all about? You don’t want the Jack back that was just here, you want the Jack back that walked out a long time ago.”
She rubbed her hands together slowly. A nervous tick. She knew Boots was right. That was what this whole vacation-turned-survivor-camp had been about. She wished to find the one she lost years ago. In her heart, she always wished the person coming back to her every day, whether it was from work or a trip, was the man she remembered, who cared about her. Laura eyed Boots. For his rugged and brutish exterior, he could lay bare the soul and spread it out before a person like a potluck dinner.
Boots came up to her and put his dirty hand on her shoulder. She could feel his pulse in his hand, a slow, faint drumming reminiscent of a thumping grandfather clock.
“Let me ask you something, Laura,” Boots said, his voice soft as a whisper. “Are you willing to do what it takes to get what you want? You willing to put yourself out there to help get back what’s been lost?”
A tear fell down her cheek. She nodded her head while staring at the ground beneath her feet.
“Okay, then you need to trust me. I got it all worked out. Jack will be all right. When all is said and done, you’ll get what you’ve been hoping on.”
Boots removed his hand and returned to his chair.
Laura walked back inside and sat down at the table, resuming her gaze out the front window for any sign of a lonesome wanderer in the distance. Molly sat quietly sipping her water.
“What he say?” she asked.
“That he’ll go after him.”
“When, now?”
“Later, when it cools down. I think Boots wants Jack to suffer. I don’t know why.”
“He’s got a bit of a sick streak in him, doesn’t he?”
“I think so.”
“I’m sure Jack will be okay.”
“I hope so.”
They sat in silence.
“It would be fun to be there when Boots finds him, huh?”
Laura managed a shallow smile. “Yeah, it would be.”
46
The spider sat on his chest, rubbing its front legs together in gentle rhythm. Jack opened his eyes and froze, his heart in his throat. The spider stared back at him with eager eyes as it reveled in the fear it created. This tiny soldier of fortune.
“Where’re you headed, Jack?” it asked with a voice he recognized but could not place. A distant remembrance.
“Home,” Jack whispered.
“That’s a long way. You know you’ll never make it.”
“I can make it.”
“No, you won’t. Why’d you leave Laura behind?”
“She didn’t want to come, it was her choice.”
“Was it really?”
“Yes.”
The spider crawled slowly up his chest. Its fat body buoyed by eight points of creepiness. Jack could see the hair on its legs move in the air stirred by his own breath. He wanted to move but couldn’t.
“Why don’t you love her?”
“Who?
“Laura.”
“I do.”
“No you don’t. Admit it, you’re glad she’s not here.”
Jack didn’t answer. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to hear himself say it.
“So you think this is your new life? Out here running on your own? What happens when you get home?”
“We go back to living.”
“That’s not what you want, is it, Jack?”
“Yes.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you. There’s a piece of you that wants this to go on, isn’t there?”
“No.”
“Stop lying to me, Jack!”
The spider crawled a few inches more. Its front leg reached out and started stroking Jack’s bottom lip in slow, tantalizing motions. He could feel the coarseness of its hair, the sound of it stroking the stubble on his chin. Jack tried to breathe but couldn’t.
Panic.
“What do you want, Jack?”
“I don’t know.”
“A new life? The old one? You want it to end right now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Really?”
“I . . . I . . .”
“You what?” it whispered.
“I . . . don’t . . .”
The spider moved slowly. Its front legs worked at Jack’s lips and pried his mouth open like a dentist performing a root canal. Jack could feel the sensation of pipe cleaners brushing against his teeth and on his tongue. The spider crawled into his mouth, the body crammed into the opening. A scream echoed in Jack’s throat but had no escape.
He awoke and vomited on the rock floor. Jumping up, he ran his hands frantically over his clothes and danced around the cave, looking for the bug. He was alone. Wiping the vomit from his mouth, he tried his best to slow his racing heart. It was a dream. There was nothing here but him and silence.
I’m going crazy, he thought.
He didn’t sleep the rest of the day. Watching the sun set over the western hills, he felt the phantom scratches of imaginary insects crawling inside his clothes.
47
He waited for nightfall to leave the cave. Several times during the day he had stepped out to survey the ridge and plot his way down, formulating his plan and gearing himself up for another trek in the dark.
The stars were out and the moon illuminated his path through the desert. He didn’t run tonight. His muscles were sore, and fatigue racked his body. The sound of crunching dust below his shoes beat a cadence with his heart, and he marched on.
Several hours later, his heart skipped as he saw a sign of civilization.
A road.
Two lanes of paved blacktop running perpendicular to his path. He quickened his pace and jogged up to the pavement, standing on the shoulder.
Jack thought for a moment that he would see his rental car still sitting on the side of the road, but he knew this was foolish. He had no idea if this was the same stretch of highway, and so after looking down both horizons, he tried to knock the irrational thoughts of finding the broken-down Mustang out of his mind. He sat down on the shoulder and rested, trying to suppress the feeling that he was almost home. Almost done.
He recalled the night this all began, sitting on the center line and wishing for a quick end to it all. He was happy that he was alone. No burden of another’s suffering on his conscience. For all he knew, Laura was resting peacefully in the bed in the back of Boots’s cabin. Sure, she’d probably fumed at being left, but the way she got on with the old man, she more than likely spent the day on his front porch listening to stories, like a cheap lemonade commercial.
Jack felt the dimples in the road as they rested under the white shoulder stripe. Unchanging.
He thought about which way to go. The road must have led out from some town, or was on its way to one. Picking the wrong direction could kill him, leading him farther into the desert and away from people. Or he could keep going on the path he’d chosen, cutting cross-country toward
the east. The only certainty he had was that he was not going to go back.
He got up and crossed the road, delaying his choice for those fifteen steps. The blackness of the night gave no indication of city lights on any horizon. It was a shot in the dark. A simple decision with the greatest ramifications. He stood there for several minutes, the supposed self-made man unable to choose his fortune. And then he saw it. Slowly building like a halo over the southern horizon. A white haze that grew in intensity until two halogens popped up over the road. A car. Driving fast and headed his way.
Excitement filled his heart as he pondered this development. He started thinking of rescue, but as the car approached, mile after mile, his stomach rose into his chest. The hair rose on the back of his neck with each passing second until it told him to move his feet. Whatever was coming down the road was forcing foreboding before it. Fear ran through his body and Jack knew that he needed to get off the road, to run as fast as he could east into the desert. His muscles ached and the sweat poured down his face as he ran, but it was as if his feet were in quicksand. Jack spotted a large boulder several yards ahead. With his body screaming at him, he leaped behind the boulder as the black pickup truck roared past. Jack cautiously peeked back at the road.
The truck went by the place he had been standing minutes before. The black pickup. He recalled Molly’s story, the sadistic kidnapper. The black pickup. What was this twisted narrative he was being forced to partake in?
As soon as Jack’s muscles began to ease their tension, he saw the brake lights turn on. The truck stopped in its tracks a quarter mile down the road. Then the white lights of its reverse gear kicked on as it squealed backward down the asphalt. Fear smothered Jack as he brought his legs in and cowered behind the rock.
The truck stopped. Suddenly a bright halogen light illuminated the desert in a narrow swath. The driver had gotten out and was using a flood lamp to look for something. His back to the boulder, Jack could see a beam of light pass over him to the left and disappear into darkness, the shadow of the rock shielding his presence from the giant flashlight. The beam disappeared for several minutes and Jack braved another peek.
The driver was on the other side of the road, several hundred yards off, searching with his light. Jack looked at the pickup idling on the highway a football field away. He could run for it, jump in the truck, and take off. Home free. But what if the guy had a gun? All it would take would be one noise, one pass of the lantern, and he would be spotted. He doubted he had the strength or speed to make it.
Suddenly his own position felt exposed. He looked east but could find no better cover. He wanted to run, farther into the desert. To find a better hiding spot. But again, the fear of being spotted filled every ounce of his being. He huddled himself down behind the boulder.
The light returned to his side of the road, and Jack thought he could make out the clicking sound of feet on pavement below the idling engine sound. He was in full-blown panic, waiting for the beam to stop on his position, for the boogeyman to come and do his work. But it never came.
Jack heard the sound of a car door slam, then the engine engage. The truck drove up the highway until the taillights faded from view.
He waited awhile to move, remembering every bad horror movie he had ever seen, expecting the truck to be lurking out of view, ready to fire up and chase him once he got up. But out here, there was no place to hide a truck. Boots was right. Out here, you can see ’em coming.
Jack stood, brushed himself off, and walked into the night. His heart rate settling back down as he thought about the irony of it all: he was now reciting Boots’s lines.
48
Laura stared up at the darkness of the ceiling. Her thoughts drifted to earlier times of life back home with Jack. She missed him. She couldn’t force herself to write him off. To hate him. No, her heart was attached to him no matter how hard she tried to think otherwise.
She had missed him for a long time. Longer than just this day. She couldn’t remember how long.
The silence of the desert was all consuming. She felt so small, tucked away in this unseen corner of the world without relief from the loneliness. All she wanted was simple. She didn’t want all the things that Jack’s career afforded them. She just wanted someone to sit across from her at the dinner table and talk with her. To listen to her. To be interested in what she was thinking.
She had put her life on hold for him. Supported him emotionally and invested all she had into him. But as he climbed, he seemed to grow tired of her. She was of little value to what he now put his worth into. She felt that down to her bones. And she cried.
Where was he? Sitting out in the dark? Alone on some rock, looking up at the stars and basking in his freedom? Was he now happy? Running free on his own terms. She thought of her last words to him. “Don’t say ‘we.’” They had always been an “us,” or so she had always thought.
The idea of him dead or dying out in the vast Mojave was something she would not entertain in her mind. No. He was well. Laura couldn’t imagine him any other way. She relied on Boots’s promise that he would go get him. That everything would be all right.
She got up and walked quietly through the cabin, fetched some water, and walked back toward the bedroom. Molly was sound asleep on the couch. This little vagabond running wild in a madman’s world. Laura stopped and adjusted the covers on the young girl before heading back to bed. Back to the endless racing of her mind. Back to her loneliness. She stopped herself and decided to sit at the end of the couch next to Molly’s feet. She just did not feel like being alone. No, she had had enough of that feeling.
49
The cave welcomed him that night with open arms. It was now his home. His hideout. His refuge. Colten could no longer go back to Goodwell. His days manning the gas station were done. He thought of this as a good turn of events.
Killing the cop had thrown everything into helter-skelter. It left him ill-planned for life as a fugitive. Had he thought it out better, he would have stocked supplies to hold out, but as it was, he was weakly equipped. The store would be watched. He couldn’t go back. It would be instant capture.
Driving up to the next town wasn’t a possibility either. On the roads he would be a sitting duck. He had been too careless that afternoon after the cop, driving like a madman late into the night looking for the girl, stopping and searching every slight movement that had caught his eye. He was playing with fate out there. Better to be up here in his cave. In his tomb.
It was dark. Cold. Empty.
Colten thought about sleeping in the truck, but after sitting in it all day, he had to get out and stretch his legs. He walked to the back of the cave and felt the chain in the wall. He rubbed the clasp in his hands, trying to catch the latent feel of its last occupant. He had been so close. He remembered kneeling in this very same spot. A missed opportunity. He hated himself at that moment as much as he hated anything.
He lay back on the stone floor and lit a cigarette. The white smoke escaped his lips and hung in the air above his head. The crack in the rock above him exposed a small sliver of the night sky, and he could see a couple stars shining down on him. Two celestial observers of his depravity. How much had they seen in the time since he opened the cave for business? Enough, he thought. And they burned on without ceasing, uncaring of the carnage he unleashed in this corner of the universe. No, nothing up there cared what he thought up.
“You’re not getting sentimental on me, are you?” Seth said. He was seated by the entrance, watching Colten, supine on the floor.
“No.”
“You have to keep on track. Focused. This is where many have been lost before.”
“I know.”
Colten thought of others in the past that were in his line of “work.” They were all known because they had all been caught, usually by some stupid twist of fate or idiotic miscalculation. Much like the one he had performed on the highway today. He thought about the cop looking up at him from the hood of the cruiser, lookin
g at him as she resigned her soul to her inevitable fate. He had taken no joy in it. She had not given him anything to bask in. She had kept her secrets, and died without pleading.
It would be his mistake. The Grand Mistake.
“You need to get your rest and then, in the morning, find that girl.”
“I know.”
“You can’t give up on that.”
“I know.”
Colten took another drag of the cigarette. He couldn’t get the scene with the cop out of his mind. He kept going back to his reaching up to the visor to pull the license. If he had not been panicked, if he had not been pushed into hysteria, he would have been fine.
“It’s your fault, you know, why I’m messed up now.”
“Why’s that?” Seth asked as he got comfortable.
“If you hadn’t been pushing me, getting me all worked up. I could have thought clearly. Been thinking straight.”
“You want to blame me for this?”
“Yeah . . . why not.”
Seth stood up and walked over to Colten. He stared down at the killer with an unearthly malice. Colten could feel the seething hatred pour from the man like a breeze chilled to absolute zero.
“You need to remember something. You are nothing without me. You are just a puppet. A piece of meat. You are in this ‘mess’ because of your stupidity. You have everything you have had because of me.”
Colten put his cigarette out beside him but kept looking up. “All right,” he said with a subtle attempt at sarcasm.
The man bent down low, his mouth next to Colten’s ear. “I can kill you anytime I want. I could do it now. Reach down your throat. Grab your spine and rip it out. It means nothing to me. Just remember that.”
An involuntary shiver ran through Colten. “All right, I got it.”
“Good.”
The man stood and walked to the cave entrance. “Now you get some rest. Tomorrow, this gets resolved.”
50
Pegasus looked down on the lonely wanderer trekking the blackness of the desert night. Jack trudged on, always hopeful that the next rise would reveal salvation, but it never came. He began to question himself, his decision. He thought of the bed in the back of Boots’s cabin, of Laura sleeping soundly, and longed to take off his shoes and crawl in bed with her. To experience the feeling of a long sleep. But the sagebrush proved a poor bed, and so he kept walking.
Purgatory Road Page 13
