by Logan Miller
“Hand me that will ya?” Jake injected more nicotine into his system. Then he said, “We’re gonna lose the wood yard if we don’t find us a loan soon. We got too much debt. Got nearly four thousand dollars in bills and operating costs each month. Our saws ain’t even paid off yet.”
“We should try some banks down in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.”
“What makes you think it will be any different down there?”
The truck drove out of the pine trees and made a right onto the interstate where the land opened up again and flat-bottomed clouds rested on the doldrums of a skyward ocean.
“The money will work out, bro,” Caleb said. “It always does.”
“It’s just never as much as you need.”
9.
Jack and Coke. Jack and Coke and real coke. Another Jack and Coke. More real coke, the powdery kind—the kind they used to put in Coke.
He was making a ditty out of his night. He was sitting on the toilet. But he wasn’t shitting. Sitting and shitting, he said. Shitting and sitting. The world was a song for Darius Gates right now, off-duty, on the toilet in Buffalo Thunder Indian casino, sitting but not shitting on shit land given back to the Redman after his near extinction by the Great White Man. He wrote the song and visualized the stanzas in his head:
Jack and Coke.
Jack and Coke and real coke.
Sitting without Shitting.
Shitting without sitting.
Buffalo Thunder.
My Buffalo Thunder is in the toilet, thank you very much. Don’t flush it. Let some sap discover it. Blow his mind.
A Buffalo Thunder Pie.
My, my—my Buffalo Thunder Pie.
He snickered and bumped one last charge of white power up his nose.
Toot.
Toot.
He launched from the toilet seat and nearly kicked the stall door off its hinges with the heel of his lizard skin Lucchese’s. He was looking at himself in the mirror that spanned the opposing wall above the line of porcelain sinks, legs bowed, hands poised, gunfighter-like. Billy-the-goddamn-Kid. He loved what he saw right now. He loved his image. He was enraptured. He could starve to death staring at himself. He was so powerful and handsome and doing everything right with his life.
Dashing, came to mind. He’d never used the word before. But he’d heard it spoken in movies with British actors.
Dashing. You’re goddamned right.
He snapped to attention and saluted himself.
The war on drugs, sir? We’re winning.
Darius, you’re hilarious.
He strutted out of the bathroom and across the gaming floor and plunked himself back down in the stool beside Sparks at the blackjack table. The waitress minced along with a tray of drinks. He nearly pinched her ass to get her attention. She turned to face him. She was smiling. Of course she was. He was so goddamn powerful right now. It was like some sort of undeniable supercosmic force. The Secret: Cocaine. Why couldn’t he always feel this good?
“Another Jack and Coke please.” He tossed a twenty-dollar chip on her tray. He wanted to say, I got a hard dick too, hard as the wood on this table, but refrained, merely adding: “With a heavy hand, sweetheart.”
The waitress winked and minced along with her freight of beverages. He watched the sway of her childbearing hips.
I can keep it hard all night for you… All fucking night… I’ve got special powers. I’ll lift up that tight skirt of yours and bend you over in the parking lot and blow my balls all over your back.
The sudden impulse to commit acts of extraordinary violence rushed fiercely through Darius Gates as he took in the faces huddled around the card table, drawn and spiritless, ruddy from drink, ruddy from the soil of poverty, ruddy from the slur of history, ruddy from abuse and neglect. A bunch of degenerates, he shouted to himself. You’re all a bunch of degenerates. He wanted to scream at them. You fucking degenerate goats!
He wanted to leap onto the card table and issue the diatribe publicly, hose them down with pepper spray and a couple of hard whacks to the ribs with the old club, throw them in handcuffs and let them ride out the night on the putrid cement of a jail cell—when a bucket of shit-water was dumped on his delicious reverie. His face creased with anger as he stared across the casino. Ruben. Ruben. Ruben. Ruben. What the fuck was he doing down here?
Gates elbowed Sparks and motioned with his chin.
Sparks followed the gaze of his superior through the tangles of cigarette smoke and card tables and across the burgundy carpeted floor to where Ruben staggered drunkenly over to a slot machine and braced himself against the gaudy electric payday.
A quarter slipped from Ruben’s sweaty fingers and rolled under the machine. He got down on his knees and peered underneath, then moved into a push-up position for a better view. He spotted his quarter amid the fuzzy lint and candy wrappers and reached for it with his right hand. He touched the quarter with his fingertips and tried to scissor out the coin when a boot heel pressed his cheek into the carpet.
“What are you doing down here, Ruben?”
“I dropped my quarter—”
Gates grabbed onto Ruben’s belt and jerked him off the carpet. Then he ran him through the glass doors and into the parking lot where his face met the side of a Chevy truck. The force of the collision buckled Ruben onto the asphalt.
“I got my girlfriend watching over it,” Ruben said. “She’s up there right now.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
Gates pinned Ruben against the hood of a green Taurus and ground his forearm into his throat.
“I swear,” Ruben said. “Everything is safe.”
“You’d better hope so. You’d better pray that it is. Now get your ass back up there.”
“I’m too drunk to drive.”
“No you’re not.” Gates kicked Ruben in the tailbone. Ruben staggered over to a four-wheeler ATV parked under a street lamp.
“I’m gonna tell my uncle about this shit,” Ruben said.
“I’ll tell him myself.”
Ruben climbed onto the ATV and hit the start button. “Fuck you, Gates. Fuck you too, Sparky—you fucking pussy.”
He throttled the ATV and attempted to speed away.
But Gates vaulted the short distance that separated them and punched Ruben in the face. Ruben flopped onto the asphalt with a painful wet smack. Then a swift boot from a Lucchesi knocked the wind out of him.
“Apologize,” Gates said.
Ruben rolled over and rested on all fours. Blood dribbled from his nose and freckled the asphalt between his hands.
“Apologize,” Gates repeated.
Ruben raised his chin and the words frothed out his bloody lips. “I’m sorry.”
“To Sparks as well.”
“Fuck him,” Ruben said. He was in terrific pain and disorientation and as soon as the words left his mouth he tried to suck them back in.
Gates plowed a short jab into his ribs.
“I’m sorry…” Ruben said, coughing. “Sorry… Sparks.”
Gates lifted Ruben and threw him onto the ATV. Ruben wobbled in the saddle and grabbed hold of the handlebars. The ATV kicked out exhaust and he pulled down on the throttle and shot forward. He swiveled around and flipped off the cops before disappearing into the night.
10.
He came inside her and rested in the warmth of her body, the two of them coiled together and panting with pleasurable fatigue until their breathing calmed and heartbeats slowed.
“That’s the best lunch I ever had,” Lelah whispered into his ear.
“Free delivery seven days a week.”
Caleb traced the contours of her breasts, the sheen of sweat around her nipples, his fingers barely touching her skin. Her breasts were at their peak of life and the full ripeness of them in his mouth made him hunger again to be inside her. He bit her nipple. She shuddered and kissed the top of his lip and pulled on it with her teeth. Then she kissed his chest and down his abs. He had no chest or stomach hair above
his bellybutton, not from the razor but from genetics, smooth and soft and tight with muscle.
“My boss said they have an opening for security guard at night,” she said.
“How much they paying?”
“Seven fifty an hour.”
“That much?”
They shared a laugh.
“I’ll see if I can get him up to eight,” she said.
“If you wear that pink push-up bra, you might even get him into the double-digits.”
“You smell so good I could eat you.”
“I’m gonna eat you first.”
His mouth slid down the centerline of her torso and his lips kissed along the way. Her back arched and she moaned softly as his tongue massaged her and licked the wetness running down her inner thighs. She rocked her hips and moaned louder and grabbed his head with both hands and pushed it down harder, deeper, with greater pressure. Her head flopped back onto the bed and she turned her cheek to the side and her eyes wandered over to the digital bedside clock—
“Oh my god,” she said, trying to push his head away.
That’s right. Her words encouraged him. He was pleasing her, on the path to ecstasy, and he slid his hands around her hips and cupped her butt with the raw strength of his workingman hands and pulled her deeper into his mouth and probing tongue.
“Oh my god!” This time she managed to push him off and she sat up. “Oh my god! I gotta get back to work. We gotta go.”
She jumped out of bed, slid on her panties, snapped her bra and stepped into a pair of slacks, and buttoned her blouse with her nametag fastened over her left breast.
“We were so close,” he said, catching his breath.
“Wipe your face, baby. You have me all over you.”
He licked around his mouth, slow and dramatic, his tongue curling and making a circuit of his lips.
“Gross.” She giggled.
Caleb took his prosthetic from the floor and slid into the sleeve.
“I think my penis has grown since I lost my leg. All that extra blood that used to be in my calf now flows straight into my pecker.”
“I didn’t notice,” she said with a smirk.
“It was just a theory.”
“I was kidding, babe.” She bent down and kissed him. “You’ve never had an issue there.”
He threw on his jeans and shirt and laced his work boots.
“Help me make the bed, honey,” she said. “Room service already came.”
There was a distracted hitch to Lelah’s movements as they tucked in the sheets, fluffed the pillows, and smoothed over the bedspread. She glanced nervously at Caleb several times and tried to make eye contact with him. There was something she needed to say but she was having trouble coming out with it. She had been having trouble coming out with it for the last two weeks.
When Caleb reached to open the door for her—
“I missed my period,” she said.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob and said the first thing that came to his mind.
“Thought you were on the pill?”
“I am. It’s probably nothing.”
“I’m not afraid if it isn’t.”
His words were warm with feeling and they comforted her.
“Neither am I,” she said. “I just always wanted to be married first. I don’t want to look like a big white blimp in the wedding photos.”
“We can go down to the courthouse and get married any time. Have a real wedding later on.”
“I’m not getting married in a courthouse. But you’re cute.” She kissed him on the lips. “It’s probably nothing.”
They stepped out of Room 17 into the bright midday sun and strolled down the cement walkway in an attempt to conceal their clandestine sexual romp.
“Shit, I knew it,” she whispered as they approached the office. There was a tourist couple waiting in front of the “BACK IN FIVE” sign that hung from the door. “Every time you talk me into this I get in trouble.”
“Talk you into it? You texted me and said, ‘Meet me in room seventeen.’”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know you were going to attack me. I thought you were just going to bring me lunch.”
“Then you shouldn’t have been waiting for me with your clothes off.”
“I was hot,” she said.
Caleb stole a pinch of her butt before heading toward his truck in the gravel parking lot.
Lelah ran her fingers through her hair and gave it some body and life. She flattened the wrinkles on her blouse and plucked a piece of fuzz from her slacks.
“Hi,” Lelah smiled. The couple turned around. “How are you doing today?”
“Oh hi,” the man said. “Do you have any rooms available?”
“I believe room seventeen just opened up.”
11.
A few miles up the interstate, Sheriff Gates and Deputy Sparks followed an eighteen-wheeler down the empty stretch of asphalt. The eighteen-wheeler downshifted and its blinker lights flared and it made a wide right turn onto a dirt road. Out in the open, middle of the day, was the time they made their runs, most of them at least. Amateurs made runs at night—or those without a police escort.
They followed the eighteen-wheeler through a saddle of mesas and into the scattered shadows of a pinyon forest where the road opened to a clearing with an adobe ranch-style compound perched on a grassy bluff.
The eighteen-wheeler pulled inside a pre-fabricated metal warehouse and dragged the swirling dust with it.
Gates parked the American flag cruiser in the gravel.
Marlo nodded from the doorway. He was shirtless, shoeless, sweating from exertion of some kind. He walked across the gravel without a wince or hint of discomfort, his feet tough as moccasins. Gates shook his hand and hated it. Marlo had long spidery fingers and a strength in his grip that Gates despised and could not match. It was the kind of handshake that Gates had always wanted but could never produce with stubby fingers and a shallow palm.
“How come your partner never comes inside?” Marlo said. He smiled at Sparks through the windshield and waved at him flirtatiously with his long spidery fingers. Sparks turned away.
“Queers scare him,” Gates said.
“Let him know it’s not contagious.”
“I’ve told him. He doesn’t believe me.”
They walked through the warehouse where several men had begun to unload bricks of what Gates assumed was cocaine or heroin from the eighteen-wheeler, the product concealed behind cellophane wrap and duct tape. The specific contents of the product didn’t concern him. He was paid for the safe delivery of the truck, a thousand dollars per wheel.
Marlo and Gates strolled through the cholla cactus garden and along the adobe walls that were tiled with spirals of lapis and malachite and then through an arched oak door.
“Would you care to dance?” Marlo asked. He pirouetted across the laminated floor of his dance studio and the mirrored walls captured his reflection on all four sides. “I can teach you.”
“I think I’ll pass today.”
They crossed the dance floor and through another arched doorway into an unusually large kitchen of stainless steel and chop-block cutting boards for the preparation of lavish meals and then down a long hallway decorated with a grim mélange of artwork from Cindy Sherman and Hieronymus Bosch and Durer and Goya that showcased death and the sexual macabre and then into a workshop where a sixteenth-century naval cannon was in the process of being restored. The heavy vapors of lacquer and paint thinner made the air taste flammable.
“Does that thing fire?” Gates asked.
“What good would it be if it didn’t?”
“Did you build it?”
“It belonged to Coronado.”
“Who was he?”
“A criminal.”
Marlo lifted a manila envelope off the work shelf and handed it to Gates.
“Do you think about retirement?” Marlo asked.
Gates paused at the oddness of the question. But t
here was nothing in Marlo’s expression that suggested it was anything but a normal piece of conversation.
“Sure,” Gates said.
“What would it look like for you?”
“I don’t think too deeply about it.”
“But you must think something.”
“I can’t wait for the day when I don’t have to clean up other people’s shit.”
“There is no such day,” Marlo said.
“Maybe not.”
“But you know you can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Retire.”
The conversation was becoming absurd and Gates had little patience for absurd conversations, especially deep ones, or more specifically, those of a philosophical nature. Such nonsense was a waste of time. But his business desires and personal finances compelled his patience to endure the claptrap for a bit longer.
“I’m going to retire some day,” Gates said. “Soon. Very soon.”
“No. You never will. You crossed a threshold years ago upon which there is no future, only evasion from the past, which, by the sheer force of it, permits no future. Only those without a past can retire.”
“And who’s that?”
“A forklift driver at Costco. Do you think he can look back on his employment career trundling from one section of the dusty warehouse to the next and remember one day from the other? He has created nothing more than a mathematical accumulation of time, calendars burned from the wall, until the day his employer tells him—thank you for your life, now go enjoy yours, what little you have left, that is: retirement. Suddenly he finds himself on alien ground, with no one telling him what he must do each day. He is lost in his own mind, a tenant he never cared much to know, and he is now forced to create his own world, unhindered and unpursued by a past that he never created. There are no years following him.”
“If you say so.”
“He is free to create his future.”
“So are we.”
“No. We already traded that away.”
Gates opened the door to leave. He’d had enough of this street-poet-hippie-crystal-vagabond-woojie gibberish, he’d indulged the crackpot for a time because of the money in his hand and had now fulfilled his fiscal obligation.
