Half Life

by Helen Cothran

  As we shoved our water bottles and snack wrappers back into our hip packs, I turned around and surveyed the desert we had traversed. That’s when I saw it. I grabbed Eddie’s arm and pointed. “Well, look at that.”

  “What?” His voice sounded suddenly hopeful. He looked where I pointed, down the slope over which we had come.

  In the distance two headlights pierced the darkness.

  Eddie whistled. “Miguel will live to see another day.”

  We decided to abandon the road and hide ourselves until the vehicle passed. As it went by, we would ascertain who was driving. I wanted to be in control of this thing as much as possible. Then, we’d follow the vehicle up the tract to wherever it was going, hoping it wouldn’t be so far that we’d lose it. We had to be close to the mystery location. We had hiked for about two hours, which would be about right.

  I snapped the leash onto Lacy’s collar, and the three of us lodged ourselves in the space between two elephant-size boulders. We watched the vehicle labor up the dirt road, headlights raking first the dirt then the sky as the vehicle bounced along on the rutted road. Its progress felt painfully slow, but finally we heard the engine rev as the vehicle labored through the ruts of soft sand. In five minutes it passed us.

  It was a black four-wheel drive truck. The dash lights faintly illuminated the face of a big man with an oddly shaped head. Well well well, if it wasn’t Raul.

  After he passed we let two minutes go by, then we left our hidey hole and followed him through the swirling dust.

  .

  We had walked for only a few minutes when we came around a bend and saw Raul’s truck, the headlights pointed right at us. As one, Eddie and I leaped for the north side of the road. I could hear Lacy choke as I dragged her with us. The three of us landed in a heap in a creosote bush behind a boulder the size of a couch. I smacked my elbow on a corner of the rock and nearly exploded suppressing a “shit!” Eddie somehow landed on Lacy. Ordinarily the dog would have gone into paroxysms of pathetic howling. But she sensed our fear, intuited danger, and merely squeaked. I lay on Eddie’s right hip, and I could feel his water bottle dig into my ribs. What I took to be a stone under my butt turned out to be Lacy’s paw. Brave dog, she merely whimpered when I shifted my weight so she could remove it. We all gasped for breath. My breathing rasped so loudly I couldn’t hear the truck’s engine.

  Then I realized the engine wasn’t running. Raul wasn’t driving back down the road. He had simply turned the truck around, cut the ignition, and left the headlights on.

  Well, duh. He hadn’t been trying to run us down after all.

  I attempted to untangle myself from Eddie and Lacy and conked my head on the rock.

  “Shit!”

  “Shhh!” Eddie hissed. Lacy whimpered, confused about why we were acting so weirdly.

  I said, “He’s not trying to run us down. I think he’s unloading something.”

  With our breathing less labored, you could hear loud scraping noises and thuds coming from the direction of the truck.

  “Oh,” Eddie said. He sounded disappointed that we were not going to die in the next two minutes.

  We got up and crept over to the truck. With a start, I saw a second figure, illuminated red from the tail lights: Miguel. He and Raul were unloading stuff from the back of the truck. I moved a few feet further and came to the lip of the declivity into which they were tossing whatever was in the truck. I gasped.

  Inside the crater, as far as I could see in the dim light of the moon, jagged hunks of concrete and busted up drywall covered the desert floor. Chicken wire, paint cans, electrical wire, asphalt shingles, and rusty rebar littered the sand. Right in front of me lay a bank of kitchen cupboards, doors hanging open. Five-gallon orange containers with “Hazardous!” written on the side lay scattered, some with their tops popped, black gunk oozing into the ground. Broken glass and slivers of metal glittered in the moonlight. Raul and Miguel were busy adding to the mess by heaving an old dishwasher onto the pile.

  I heard Raul growl, “Pick up the pace, Miguel! Christ, what is your problem tonight? You’re as nervous as a pole cat.”

  Miguel didn’t say a word, but I could see him glance around furtively as he tossed a toilet in the dump.

  I heard a growl beside me and reached down to calm Lacy. But it hadn’t been her, it was Eddie. I grabbed his arm and squeezed. “Remember,” I whispered, “Miguel came clean.”

  He shook his head fiercely, and hissed, “Only because we made him. God damn him, Sam.”

  I grabbed his other arm and made him look at me. “You can deal with Miguel later. Right now we have to protect him, or Raul will kill him.”

  “Let him!” Eddie spat.

  “Come on,” I let go of him. “We have work to do.”

  I unsnapped Lacy’s collar, and she bounded off toward Raul and Miguel as though welcoming long lost friends. I heard a “What the fuck?!” and saw Raul bound up into the truck bed. The big coward. Lacy stood looking up at him, her head cocked, wondering why he didn’t want to come down and play. Miguel patted her head and glanced around.

  I sauntered toward them, Eddie by my side. I began to whistle a little tune and shoved my hands into the pockets of my jacket.

  “Hey, boys,” I said as I rambled over to the truck.

  “What the fuck?!” Raul said again, showing off his big vocabulary. He stood in the truck bed, glaring down at me—when he could peel his eyes away from Lacy.

  “What ch’all doin’?” I chirped.

  Beside me, Eddie said out the side of his mouth, “Sam. What are you doing?”

  Loud enough for Raul to hear, I said, “This has got to stop.” I waved my hand at the mountains of garbage that Raul had dumped over who knew how many months or years.

  Raul growled. “Miguel, I’m going to rip your sorry face off.”

  If it hadn’t been so windy, we would have heard Miguel gulp.

  I strolled over until I was standing directly behind the truck. “Don’t bother. He didn’t have anything to do with this. You’re so dumb, you let us follow you.”

  He looked around, undoubtedly wondering where our vehicle was and why he hadn’t seen us. He seemed to see Eddie for the first time. “Eddie Martinez,” he sneered.

  Eddie stood up straight and didn’t move a muscle. The look on his face was pure rage.

  “Raul,” I said, “Why don’t you grow a pair and come down here?”

  If he’d been standing beside me, he probably would have slit my throat. Instead, he glared at Lacy. “Tie up that fucking dog.”

  It was laughable. A big bully like Raul, scared of the dumbest, sweetest dog on the planet. I whistled her over and snapped on the leash. Raul climbed down out of the truck. The first thing he did when his feet hit the ground was to light a cigarette with shaking hands. After he had it going, he tossed the empty pack in the dump.

  I heard a sharp intake of breath and saw Eddie take a step forward.

  Quickly, I said, “All right, Raul. Let’s see if I have this right. You could not have killed Pete three weeks ago because you were out here, like you always are on Thursdays, dumping shit. Only, you couldn’t tell anyone that because what you’re doing is illegal. Do I have it right?”

  He took a long drag on the cigarette, stared at me malevolently. He took two more drags before he said to Eddie, “You’re a piece of work. Making her do this for your girlfriend.” He tossed his head at me when he said “her.”

  Eddie made another move toward him, but I grabbed his elbow. Raul may be a bully, but we all knew he could do serious damage when pissed. As much as Eddie wanted to pummel the jerk’s face in, and as much as I would have liked to see it, Raul just wasn’t worth it.

  Having been restrained, Eddie instead growled between clenched teeth, “What are you talking about?”

  Raul took another drag, blew the smoke out. “She told me that she is sticking her nose into my business because you asked her to. For my ho of a sister. Nice move, man, getting your old
girlfriend to do the dirty work of your new girlfriend. What you see in Gabby is beyond me.”

  In the red glow of the tail lights, I could see tension ripple Eddie’s face. The arm muscles beneath my restraining hand were hard as granite. I held on tighter.

  “Come on, Raul,” I said quickly. “Let’s quit screwing around. Just answer me. Were you out here dumping the night Pete went missing?”

  He knew the gig was up. “Yeah. Whatta you gonna do about?”

  I shook my head. “You would rather be accused of murder than admit to illegal dumping. Wow.”

  Raul tossed his burning cigarette onto the trash heap. I held my breath, expecting the pile to ignite. “I didn’t think they’d ever charge me. They got no evidence.”

  “And in the meantime, you could continue your good work out here. Let me guess. It’s a lot cheaper to dump your construction debris out here than to dispose of it properly. Especially the hazardous waste.”

  Miguel, who had hitherto been silent, piped up. “It’s better than that. Other people pay Raul to take this stuff. Like, Desert Autos. They pay for some of the oil to be collected, for, like auditing purposes or whatever, but I take most of it, they pay us half the price, and we dump it out here.”

  “God damn it, Miguel!” That was Eddie, who trembled under my hand.

  I held on to my friend, said to Miguel, “And Raul pays you handsomely for helping him.” I heard Eddie groan beside me, obviously thinking about the money Miguel had loaned him. Then I heard growling from Raul. Miguel might have thought he was scoring brownie points with his boss by portraying the operation as a brilliant scheme, but Raul was ready to scalp him. He’d been caught for sure, but the fewer details known of the business the better. I hurried to say, lest Raul truly become guilty of murder, “The details don’t matter. Look, here’s the deal. You stop dumping, and you clean all this up—the right way. And Eddie and I don’t say anything to the police.” As much as I would have loved to rat Raul out, I didn’t want to get Miguel in legal trouble. I knew Eddie wouldn’t want that, as angry as he was at his brother. It would devastate their parents.

  “Nobody tells me what to do,” Raul snarled at me. “Especially not some skinny bitch the size of poodle.”

  Eddie ripped his arm from my grasp and started for him. “Eddie!” I barked. “Nobody cares what this buffoon says.”

  But Eddie didn’t stop. He took three quick steps and shoved Raul so hard the big man nearly fell on his ass. Miguel and I both leaped over to Eddie and grabbed his arms. Raul regained his balance and started for Eddie. I made as if to unsnap Lacy’s leash, and Raul stopped dead.

  Eddie shook free of my grasp, but Miguel held on. “Come on, bro, listen to Sam.”

  Eddie ripped his arm from his brother’s grasp. He stood still, breathing hard, arms stiff at his sides, hands clenched.

  I needed to get this thing concluded as fast as I could before Eddie was beyond reason. I had never seen this even-tempered man reduced to such primitive rage. He loved the desert and hated to see it despoiled, but I knew what really angered him was that Raul had involved his family in this illegal and appalling scheme. “Raul, do we have a deal?”

  “What’s in it for you?” he sneered.

  I didn’t look at Miguel at all. “All I care about is this dump getting cleaned up. And for you to never do this again. I’m not interested in getting anyone busted.”

  “If you don’t tell anyone, and I don’t tell anyone, how will the cops know I didn’t kill Pete?”

  Good question. Raul was smarter than I’d given him credit for. After thinking on it a moment, I said, “I have a friend at the sheriff’s department. He’ll believe me if I say you didn’t do it. If push comes to shove we might have to come clean, but it probably won’t come to that.” I couldn’t help feeling angry. Raul was going to get away with it. I felt such deep rage that for a moment, I felt dizzy. Eddie sensed my distress and came over to stand beside me. He put his hand on my shoulder. He knew that I hated doing this, knew that I was doing it for him.

  “Deal?” I said to Raul.

  He muttered and spat. Made me wait. “Yeah, fuck, okay,” he said finally.

  “Good. And there’s no time like the present. Put back in the truck everything you just dumped. I’ll be coming up here periodically to see that progress is made. And I’ll be watching you. This shit better not end up in a dump somewhere else in the desert or I go straight to the cops.” I started to turn away, but then a thought struck me. “That’s what Pete threatened to do, wasn’t it? Tell the cops about your little scheme?”

  Those photographs of the dump I’d seen in Pete’s apartment were of this place. He had known what Raul was up to, had collected evidence of it.

  Raul spat. “Fucking Pete found out from his little faggot buddy over at Desert Auto. He wouldn’t let it go. Even after I beat the shit out of him. Then someone solved the problem for me. Good riddance, Petey-boy.”

  Raul’s complete lack of feeling for his brother was chilling, and I felt Eddie stiffen beside me. He said to Miguel, his voice rough, “I’ll deal with you later.”

  Raul grunted to Miguel, “Come on, you sorry son of a bitch, get that shit back in the truck.”

  Poor Miguel.

  Eddie, Lacy, and I left them to it. The cussing and muttering and bangs and clanks gradually receded as we made our long trek back down the moon-washed slope toward home.

  We walked in silence for a while, the wind at our backs, pushing us down the hill. Finally, Eddie said, “Thanks, Sam.”

  He was thanking me for getting Miguel off the hook, for letting him take care of his brother in his own way so that his parents wouldn’t have to know. He was probably also thanking me for keeping him from going after Raul. Having an intact face probably seemed pretty sweet to him right now. Fighting Raul would have accomplished nothing, anyway.

  I said, “It’s okay. This is a win-win, right?”

  He didn’t say anything. Neither did I. We had gone on this adventure together, had accomplished what we set out to do together, but somehow I felt more distant from him than I ever had. Whatever reconnection we had felt during dinner at his house three nights ago had severed. The mysterious chasm that had opened up between us over Gabby had reopened. I hated it. But I didn’t know what to do about it. In silence, we walked back the way we had come, the only sounds the crunch of our boots and the eerie moaning of the wind. Even the coyotes had stopped talking. The cold desert stretched out before us, brutal and vast, empty as the sky. I thought of mushroom clouds and meltdowns and toxic dumps and the law of unintended consequences. I thought of fear and rage and loneliness and the difficulty of seeing clearly when something really matters. I felt detached from the world. Everyone needs a warm body, I thought. Everyone.

  It was a long way home.

  24

  I sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee, watching Connor plunk shrubs into the ground outside the patio door. He struggled to remain upright in the frigid wind blasting from the west. Probably another storm hitting the coast. My brother seemed undeterred, acting as if he would finish renovating the garden in a hurricane if he had to. This uncharacteristic tenacity and focus amazed me.

  At the moment, I felt singularly un-tenacious and unfocused. I had crawled stiffly out of bed around ten, feeling every mile of the walk the night before. Lacy looked dead tired, too. She lay on my feet as if dropped from a great height, legs akimbo, head lolled to one side. Her snores filled the room. I should have been working on my book—I had promised Vince to send him a mini-outline—but that obviously wasn’t going to happen. I hardly had the energy to lift my cup. Feeling paralyzed, I let my thoughts drift to the events of last night.

  Poor Eddie, having to bail out Miguel once again. It was good of Eddie to want to help Miguel, to want to spare his parents from knowing who their youngest son really was, but I wondered if Eddie wasn’t a little misguided. His parents aren’t stupid. I guessed they knew Miguel used bad judgment and got into scra
pes on a regular basis. And I wondered if Miguel might have grown up by now if Eddie hadn’t bailed him out every time he got into a mess. With Eddie around, Miguel never had to deal with the consequences of his actions. I knew my friend, though, and he simply could not abide Miguel’s irresponsible behavior. Eddie lived his life nobly and expected his brother to do the same. Eddie didn’t have a lot of faults, but expecting Miguel to live his life on Eddie’s terms showed a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature.

  Given Eddie’s code of conduct, I could only imagine the self-loathing he felt on discovering that the money he took from Miguel had come from the illegal dumping operation. I suspected that he was kicking himself for not listening to his gut about that loan. He knew his brother only too well. But he had ignored the inner warnings because he was so keen to open a second coffee shop. Again, I marveled at his ambition. I had never realized how important it was to him to succeed. I admired that quality in him, but I also knew that wanting something too badly can lead a person to make bad decisions. The Coffee Buzz 2 loan provided evidence of that. I wondered what Eddie would do now that he realized the money was tainted. I had never had a chance to talk to him about how far along the new shop was. He might have already committed the money for construction or to pay the lease. Taking that loan from Miguel had put him in a quandary, that’s for sure. Eddie must feel like a hypocrite. He was always criticizing his brother’s iffy decisions, and now he suddenly found himself in the position of benefiting from one.

  I took a sip of tepid coffee. I hadn’t the energy to get up and refill the cup. I stared at the coffee maker on the kitchen counter as if wishing could make it come to me by itself. Even if I could have mustered the resources to get up, I was pinned to the spot by eighty pounds of dead weight. My foot had gone to sleep where Lacy lay on it. She snored, I sighed. This was not going to be an auspicious day.

  Since action was out of the question, I let my mind wander some more. I realized that my investigation into Pete’s disappearance had taken a major turn—the events of last night had cleared Raul once and for all. That meant the prime suspect had gone away, leaving the sheriff’s department with nothing. Clearing Raul also meant that Gabby had been wrong about her elder brother. In a weird way, I think blaming Raul for Pete’s disappearance made her feel better. A guilty Raul allowed her to turn her grief into anger and direct it at something tangible, a brother she loathed. With Raul off the hook, she might cave in under her grief. Despite my dislike, I pitied her.