Darkness.
A cave entrance.
Her eyes began to focus and she could see where she was. A cave.
Next to her lay Molly. Tied up also and unconscious. Across the room she could see Colten staring at her.
“What are you going to do with us?” Laura asked, still dazed and confused, forcing herself to stay conscious.
“Shut up!”
“Where are we?”
“I said shut up!”
Colten walked across the cave and slapped Laura in the face.
———
He was impatient. He looked at Molly and wanted fulfillment. Completion. He wanted to end the task he had halted several days before. But his hand was stayed by Seth’s command.
Colten stepped outside to calm his nerves. He wouldn’t be able to restrain himself if he remained in their presence, he knew that much. He was itching to get started. It was Christmas morning, but he was told he couldn’t open his presents. He stewed in his own inertia.
Seth came walking up the two-track, his stature not as strong as usual, but carrying just as much venom. He resembled a kid returning from a scolding in the principal’s office who then goes on to plot the means to blow up the school. He walked straight up to Colten and looked him in the eye but said nothing. Only stared deep into his heart. Colten flinched and diverted his eyes.
“What happened to you?” Seth asked.
Colten dismissed his broken nose. “Let’s just say it wasn’t a walk in the park.”
“So, did you get her?”
Colten looked back up and smiled an evil grin. “I got more. I got the girl too.”
The man did not respond with the enthusiasm that Colten had hoped for.
Colten erased the impish grin from his face and looked back to the cave. “They’re in there. All that’s left is to do the job.”
“No, that’s not all that’s left.”
“What do you mean?”
“Somebody’s coming. Coming up here after them.”
Colten looked around. “Who?”
“Jack.”
Colten searched his memory.
The woman’s husband. He remembered Jack vaguely like a memory easily discarded that lingers in the back of the head, refusing to be tossed aside. It came back to him.
The man who was with the woman.
The weak guy.
The one acting.
“Jack . . . ,” Colten whispered. He shrugged his shoulders. “What’s the big deal? He should be easy to put down.”
Seth looked up. His malice, his rage, his fear burning in his eyes and staring a hole through Colten’s head.
“He’s not coming alone.”
62
The spider stood in the dust, staring at the collapsed man on the ground. Jack forced his eyes open, a now common struggle that he wasn’t getting used to. He could see the eight-legged demon staring him down—like the time in the car, like in the cave. This nagging creature following him around at his lowest points. A creature kicking him while he was down.
All seemed lost. He had never felt so alone.
Laura.
Her name floated through his mind. How had he come so far without realizing that he needed her? She was his strength. The one person who would have been by his side if he had just noticed.
We become immune to the sweet smell of beauty when it walks daily in our ordinary lives, but once removed, the pain of its loss is irreplaceable.
How he wanted her there with him. To hold her. To tell her that she meant everything to him. To tell her that he was wrong. That he had invested in all the wrong things. That she deserved better than what she got. But it was too late. She was gone. And so was he.
Jack stared at the spider but did not care anymore. The bug could come over and devour him and he wouldn’t resist. He had no strength in his soul to think of himself as a warrior. A façade he had built up. It was now demolished.
He was nothing. She had been everything.
“I’m sorry . . . Laura,” he whispered.
A shadow passed over his face, temporarily blocking the sun, and a boot came crashing down on the spider. Its eight little legs spasmed at the blow, its body turned to mush. Then, a flood of cold water washed over Jack’s body and all his senses came alive. He gasped in shock.
Strength returned to his arms, and he pushed himself up. He wasn’t dead . . . though he wished he were. No, he was still here, clinging to this mortal coil. He looked up into the sun and saw him, standing over him with an empty bucket, chew dripping down his beard and a grin on his dirty face.
“You done sleeping?”
Boots. He was alive.
“But . . . I . . . killed . . .” Jack struggled to get up.
“Takes more than that, Jack. You think I ain’t been struck before?”
The old man threw down the bucket and walked over to a stool. He sat down and rubbed his side. He looked no worse for wear, like the shovel that Jack had unleashed on him made no effect in dimming his dingy exterior. The man before him made no sense to Jack. He had seen him, dead to rights, flat on the ground.
“But I saw you. You were . . .”
“Naw . . . I’ve gotten it worse than that. You’d be surprised what some people can think up to throw at you.”
“Who are you, Boots?”
The old man hesitated. Thinking, searching. “Doesn’t much matter, does it, Jack? Point is . . . you’re finding out who you are. And by judging it . . . you can swing a shovel, for starters.” Boots laughed at his own joke, the way he always did, and crossed his leg, rocking back and forth on his stool. “Naw . . . I ain’t so much a mystery. I’m what people think of me. At least in their minds. Crazy, mean, useless . . . don’t really much matter though. I am who I am.”
“Is Laura dead?”
Jack waited for the answer. All his reason told him she was. He had convinced himself of that. But his heart in its newfound rhythm sang to him a song of hope.
“She ain’t dead, Jack.”
Elation poured over his body and tears came to his eyes. Jack began to shake, releasing himself to his feelings for her.
“But she ain’t in a good spot either. Her or Molly. Naw . . . the way I see it, they’re going to need you right about now.”
“What do you mean? What are you saying, Boots?”
The old man stood and put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. The fleshy mitt felt warm through his shirt. Vibrant. Strengthening.
“I’m sayin’, Jack . . . you think you’re ready to get your life back?”
63
They started into the west as fast as the horse could carry them. The poor beast had gotten a workout the past twelve hours, but she poured her heart into carrying the riders through the sagebrush. Her hoofbeats drummed a driving rhythm, a staccato that matched Boots’s whip of the reins and Jack’s pounding heart.
They reached the base of the mountains in no time at all, as if the horse had sprouted wings and flown. Once to the base, they headed south, the shadows fully encasing them as dusk settled across the land. Jack’s thoughts were solely on Laura, as if he had turned into a knight from the round table, galloping toward a castle tower for his princess. But though the scene smacked of old-school chivalry, the fear welling up in his stomach scared the life out of him.
For all the daydreams of laying the wood down on people who ticked him off, he had never been in a fight. Had never thrown a punch, save for the swing of the shovel at an old desert hermit not more than an hour ago. He didn’t know what to do. All he knew was that Laura and Molly were in trouble and he had to do something to save them.
Boots had grabbed the shotgun and slung it in a sleeve attached to the saddle horn. Perhaps Jack would just follow the old man up to wherever Laura was and let him do the talking, the bullying. It was the only thing in this whole chaotic mess that brought him comfort. Somehow, Boots seemed like he had this under control. Best to rely on him—a thought that Jack still could not believe was racing thro
ugh his mind.
The slope to their right slowly subsided, and Jack could see a worn depression running across their path that headed up the mountain. A two-track. The entrance to Mordor. Boots pulled back on the reins and the horse came to a grateful stop. They got off and Boots patted the mare, thanking her for her good work.
“We walk from here.”
Jack looked up at the winding path, walled in on both sides, as it snaked upward out of sight into the increasing blackness. Once on that road, anything coming up or down would plow right into them. There was no escape exit on either side. Boots sensed the apprehension in Jack and stepped up next to him.
“What are you waiting for, Jack? Laura is up that road. No use wasting time.”
Boots started walking up the trail without hesitation. Jack followed, his bravery razor thin as he forced one foot in front of the other. Once inside the mountain walls, he looked behind. The desert floor stretched out to the horizon behind him. He wondered if it would be the last time he would see it. A photograph of emptiness forever etched into his mind. Turning his back on the entrance, he looked up at Boots, who was standing a few yards ahead. The old man didn’t say anything, no biting jab for this singular moment. Instead, he gave him a look of weathered reassurance.
The walls seemed to be moving in on him, their mottled jaggedness resembling an animal’s jaw ready to devour him whole. The rock appeared to feed on his trepidation. But Laura was up there, somewhere past the winding bends and the dark.
The vision of Laura in the car, baking in the heat, her life ebbing away from her, returned to him full force. He could not do anything then. He could not save her from the highway and his foolishness. Now, he could do just that. Now he could become something she needed.
“Come on, Jack,” Boots whispered in a voice he had not used before.
Is it the actual blow that causes so much suffering, or the anticipation of it? The waiting for the strike of pain that we know is coming and every fiber in our body tenses in macabre expectation. The road before him was the physical embodiment of the question. He could not will himself to the end of the story; he had to walk the gauntlet of fear.
And with nothing but guts and faith in Boots, Jack stepped, and stepped again, slowly up the mountain to whatever fate was in store for him. He did not look back again but trained his gaze forward on the rock, the trail, and the slow swaying of Boots’s awkward cadence.
64
Red sat in his little office with the breeze of an oscillating fan blowing across his face and ruffling the pages on his desk. After leaving the gas station, he drove over to PJ’s parents’ place. The local minister had gone over as a favor to Red and broke the news. He didn’t know how to do it, but in the daylight he felt it was not only his duty but a need to go. A way to grieve openly with those who would grieve too. It had worked. They all cried like babies in each other’s arms.
Now he sat in the dark. The fading light of sunset breaking through the slats in the venetian blinds. A bottle of bourbon sat close by with a full, unsipped tumbler close at hand. He hadn’t drunk since his wife died ten years ago from a heart attack while walking their dog. Another inexplicable, unnecessary death. It took him a couple years to come to terms and lose the booze. But now he just wanted some easy comfort.
He could see Officer Morey coming in through the front door of the station for her first day of work. She was overly excited for such a dull assignment, as if anything exciting ever happened out this way. But she brought with her a breath of fresh air. Before, it had just been him and James, and the occasional local posse that formed when someone’s kid had wandered off. Now she was gone, and it would be back to just him and James wasting the hours for the next twenty years.
Red did his best to rationalize, to reason. But he fell short. He remembered sitting with his mother when bad things happened as a child, and she would say, “All things happen for a reason.” The same woman sat with him at the funeral of his wife, looked at him, and said the same stupid thing. He wanted to slap the words out of her mouth. Sitting now in the twilight, staring down a bottle of whiskey, he could hear those words as if they were on a recorded loop in his head.
What reason could there be for a young vibrant cop to get smashed to bits on a road, left to die alone in such a barbaric way? If there was a reason, a great plan mapped out, then the writer of the script was simply a sick, twisted sadist.
The front door of the station opened and James walked in. He took off his cowboy hat and wiped his head off, showing the sweat stains in his pits that had soaked through his shirt. It had been a long day.
“Hey, Red.”
“James.”
James looked at his boss and the bottle. He didn’t attempt to say anything. Every man has to wrestle with his own demons. Hat in hand, he let Red know what he found out.
“I think I got something, Red. Not too many people in town know too much, ’cept that Cole runs the gas station. But I ran into Mrs. Kennedy over at Gladys’s, and she said she remembered seeing Cole up beyond Mule Deer just last week. Said she tried to wave to him, but he just sped on past. Don’t remember much else after that though.”
“Mule Deer?”
“Ain’t much up there.”
Red sat back in his chair thinking it over. “All right. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep. You look whipped.”
James turned to head out, but then stopped. He looked as if he had just broken his mother’s china and was attempting to confess. “Don’t know if I’ll be able to though. I just keep seeing her . . . I can’t get it out my mind.”
“You okay, James?”
“Yeah . . . I think so, Red. It’s just . . . I don’t know . . .”
“I know, son, just go home and try to clear your mind.”
James glanced back at Red, the bottle of bourbon, and then back to the floor.
“All right, boss,” he said as he left.
The emptiness of the station suddenly became apparent to Red and he got up out of his chair. He grabbed the glass of whiskey and slowly poured it back in the bottle. He wouldn’t drink tonight; he didn’t want to start down that road. He tucked the bottle into the bottom drawer of the desk for the time he knew he would change his mind.
He left the station and started to drive north, the headlights still not competing with what sun was left. He looked out the open driver’s window to the mountains now stripped of their color by shadows. Maybe Cole was up there, hiding from the awful thing he did. Or maybe he was on his way to Mexico. Who knew?
Why couldn’t it have been Cole who killed PJ? Sure, he had seen him every couple days when he stopped in to the store to grab a drink. They had made small talk each time. Weather . . . mostly just weather.
“You can’t much know someone when that’s all you talk about,” Red said to himself as he recalled his stops there, trying to find a clue. The majority of the people in Goodwell didn’t know Colten either. Most knew him like Red did, as the guy who would take their money after they had pumped their gas. A simple “thanks” would be the extent of what many ever said to the man. The few who thought they knew Cole steered clear of him, something in their gut telling them that he was no good.
Red drove, aimless. He didn’t want to go home and sit in front of the TV set and mindlessly burn away the hours.
He found himself coming up to the road, and eventually the spot where he was last night. He parked the car and stepped out. The wreckage was gone, towed back to Goodwell. The ambulance had taken what was left of Officer PJ away quietly, its lights off and silent.
Red squatted down and looked at the darker shade of asphalt where she had bled out her life. It would take a good rain to wipe the slate, to erase the physical memory from the road. He wished he would have brought some water to scrub the pavement, a small symbolic act of kindness. A washing away of brutality.
A light westerly wind blew across his face, bringing with it the faint scent of moisture. He looked up and could see the early signs of
thunderheads forming over the mountain peaks. Somewhere up on top of the world, a storm was brewing.
65
“There was this man, ways back, a lot like you, Jack. He had life figured out real well. Had all the fixings you need to scratch a living. Well, one day, he got the notion in his skull to go get some more out in California. So he builds himself this huge wagon, ’cause you know, a man like that can’t just travel like normal folk.
“Anyway, he stuffed his whole family in there and headed out west. Slow goin’ for a long time. Passed just below Utah. Time kept wearing on them, and winter was coming.
“Folks in the train started getting antsy and second-guessing each other. Tempers got hot. They always do when things go bad. Folks get downright mean.
“One day, that man got into a fight with someone he’d been riding with. Ended up killing him dead before he knew what had happened. City man, clean hands, now finding himself standing over a dead body. Something he never reckoned he’d ever do. He couldn’t imagine at what he’d just done.
“As you can reckon, folks don’t get too comforted with having a murderer around them. Naw, they prefer their killers pushed out away from sight. So they all got around and tried to decide what to do with him. Some said to kill him, some said turn him out.
“Folks who said ‘turn him out’ won over. So they put him on a horse and made him ride out. No food. No gun. Out in wild country. They thought it’d be the easy way to kill him. He’d end up dead, but they wouldn’t have to do it themselves.
“Can you think what went through his mind, having to leave behind his wife and kids in the wilderness, winter comin’ on and still a long way from where they were going? He knew he was a goner, but then he must’ve known they were goners too.”
They kept walking, Boots talking, Jack listening, up the mountain.
“That man was strong, however. Most would have given up at that point. Not him. That’s the time that stubbornness comes in handy. He refused to give up the ghost. He made his way on his own to California. Alive. Then he waited out there for his family to come. They never did.
Purgatory Road Page 17
