The Dispatcher

by Jahn, Ryan David

  Maggie opens her mouth to speak, but too late.

  Henry pulls out a gun.

  Henry can feel the wooden grip of the Lupara in his sweaty palm. It feels grimy there and foreign. His face is hot. He looks to his left and can see the deputy aiming his service weapon at him. He can’t be more than thirty-five, and he’s scared, which makes Henry nervous. Scared people are jumpy and jumpy people are dangerous.

  Henry’s eyes feel hot in their sockets. They sting. Sweat trickles down the bridge of his nose and drips from the end of it. He can feel the rhythm of his heart in his temples. He swallows back bile and wishes he could chew an antacid.

  Did the cop recognize him? One second the guy was cool and the next he was pointing a gun in Henry’s face. Something happened. Did he recognize him? Did Sarah signal him in some way? Did Beatrice?

  He wants to believe that Bee would never do anything like that, but he does not. She might. She has not been herself. If she has become scared of him she might do something like that. He doesn’t want it to be the case, but he knows it’s a possibility.

  Stop. Focus.

  It is silent now but for the sound of his heart beating. Slowly he pulls the weapon from under the seat. Waiting for his moment. Waiting for his—

  The deputy shrugs a trickle of sweat off the side of his face.

  Now.

  Henry whips the Lupara from under the seat of the truck. It almost catches on something, he feels it bang against a metal bar, but it does not catch. He brings it around quickly without raising it, just turns it in his fist, and pulls the trigger with his thumb.

  The first shot hits the deputy in the hip and spins him around. Maggie screams and the smell of gun smoke fills the cab. He pulls the Lupara up and gives the deputy the second barrel. It takes away the left side of his chest, simply wipes it off like the skin from a rotten peach, revealing the meat beneath. He staggers backwards and then falls to the asphalt.

  A screeching of brakes.

  Henry looks left and sees a red Chevy sedan coming to a stop, turning sidewise on its locked tires and leaving a trail of burned rubber behind it. It comes to a stop only inches from the stricken deputy who even now is exhaling his last two or three breaths from colorless lips.

  Henry opens the break and pulls out the spent shells, dropping them to the asphalt (there’s no point in pretending he needs to be careful now), and reloads the Lupara with shells from his Levis. He aims the shotgun at the blond woman behind the wheel of the Chevy and says, ‘Get the fuck out the car right now or I’ll shoot you dead.’

  He looks to see how many cars are around and finds the road mercifully empty. For the moment, anyway.

  The woman behind the wheel is frozen in place, staring at him with wide cow’s eyes.

  ‘Get the fuck out now! Do you wanna die?’

  Still she does not move.

  Henry walks to the car and yanks open the door and pulls the woman out. He throws her to the ground, and is taking aim when he hears Beatrice’s voice.

  ‘Sarah, get back here!’

  He looks toward the truck. It is empty.

  Beatrice is limping pathetically after Sarah as she runs across the flat, dry West Texas landscape toward the low, weathered buildings of Sierra Blanca.

  ‘Sarah, no!’ Bee says. ‘Come back!’

  Henry runs after them, saying, ‘Sarah, stop, goddamn you!’

  Beatrice trips and falls and lets out a wounded-animal yelp.

  Henry runs, feeling heavy and uncoordinated, and as he does the Lupara slips from the grip of his sweaty hand and drops to the ground. He stops for it, looking around. It is lost in tall dead grass. He cannot see the goddamn thing anywhere and—

  ‘Henry! Henry, get Sarah!’

  He looks toward Beatrice. She is still sitting where she fell. If he lets Sarah go, Bee will never forgive him. He can see it in her face.

  He nods, leaves the Lupara—he can get it on the way back to the truck—and runs after the small girl frantically fleeing across the scrublands toward the white and brown buildings of Sierra Blanca, which are scattered across the ground like a child’s forgotten toy blocks.

  Two and a half hours after passing through Sierra Blanca Ian reaches his limit. He has driven through the seemingly alien landscape of far West Texas, reaching Sparks and Southview and other suburbs of El Paso, then plowed through the city itself, Mexico visible on his left as Interstate 10 scooped down near the border, passing Holy Family Church America-side and Doniphan Park in Juarez. He left the city behind, tempted to stop only once, as he passed a place called Rudy’s Country Store & BarBQ near a hotel, the thought of a hot meal and a soft bed in a cool room briefly causing him to pull his foot from the gas pedal. But he was tired of Texas—it seemed to stretch on forever, and after fourteen hours on the road just getting across the state line became a goal—so he continued on, into New Mexico, and through Las Cruces and a closed border checkpoint. And now, after having passed through it, with airplanes flying overhead, landing at and taking off from Las Cruces International Airport just to his north (he can’t see it, but he knows it’s there to his right because he saw a sign pointing him that way), he is finished. He has made it through Texas and into New Mexico. He hasn’t seen the gray truck since Sierra Blanca, and he has convinced himself that it wasn’t Henry at all. Henry is on the road up ahead. And by tomorrow he will be waiting for Ian in a town called Kaiser, California, and that is where Ian will kill him. Ian will kill him and he will get Maggie back. That is the plan.

  But that is for tomorrow.

  The orange sun is sinking into the ground for another night. The sky is turning gray, the color spreading in the clear sky like a cloud of kicked-up mud in a once-clear pool of water, and soon the entire dome will be tainted by night.

  He is done. Done and done.

  He pulls off Interstate 10 and cruises along on an unnamed county road that runs parallel for half a mile before pulling into a dirt parking lot in front of a place that seems only to be called Motel/Food. The sign is hand-painted in white on the front of a rotting wood facade, behind which, he assumes, the food is served. The motel part of the operation looks to be about a dozen mobile homes parked willy-nilly behind the restaurant.

  His tires kick up a cloud of dust as he brings the car to a stop. He kills the engine and waits for the dust to settle. With his lung in its current state he doesn’t think it’s a good idea to breathe it in. But once the air is clear he pushes open his car door and steps out into the hot day. He pulls his soggy cigar from his mouth and spits into the sand. He puts the cigar into the front pocket of his shirt and squints out at the interstate.

  It is just empty asphalt.

  He straps the satchel containing the Pleur-evac system over his shoulder, takes off his sunglasses, hangs them on his shirt, squints in the suddenly bright light, and heads, past a couple tables with salt and pepper shakers set upon them, into Motel/Food.

  A stainless steel counter in a window between Ian and the kitchen. A short-order cook, guy in his sixties with tufts of gray hair sprouting from every orifice like shrubbery, is hunched over the counter, flipping through a titty book with a limp cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. A cloud of smoke around his head.

  As the bell above the door rattles—it certainly doesn’t ring—the guy stands, straightening the greasy white box of a hat on his head. A couple inches of ash drop from the end of his smoke and fall onto a centerfold model before rolling down into the fold between the pages. He pulls the cigarette from his mouth, blows the ash to the floor, folds the magazine, and stashes it under the counter.

  ‘Howdy. Food or bed?’

  ‘I could use something to drink.’

  ‘Monica’s in the shitter and Betsy’s stepped out a minute, so that’ll have to wait a sec. Not hungry?’

  Ian coughs into his hand, then wipes his palm off on his Levis.

  ‘I could have a burger,’ he says.

  ‘Cheeseburger?’

  ‘Okay.’
/>
  ‘American, Swiss, cheddar?’

  ‘Swiss.’

  ‘Fries?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Fried egg on top?’

  ‘Of the fries?’

  ‘Burger.’

  Ian shakes his head.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yeah, no egg.’

  ‘All right. Coming up.’

  He turns left, peels a patty off a stack of them, and tosses it onto his waiting grill. While that’s going, he pulls out a bun, smears it, drops some fries into the fry basket, and gets to humming what Ian thinks is supposed to be ‘Under My Thumb’.

  Somewhere a toilet flushes, and a moment later a door opens. A woman walks out, saying, ‘We’re low on toilet paper, Uncle Hal. A whole roll in a day. Someone needs to change their fucking diet!’ Then she sees Ian standing there and blushes. It makes her pretty. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t realize.’

  ‘Quite all right. Monica or Betsy?’

  ‘Monica. Betsy’s with a . . . checking on a room.’

  Ian nods.

  Monica’s in her thirties with reddish-brown hair set atop a pale and freckle-spotted face. She is shaped like a twig, no hips at all, and wearing a denim skirt and a T-shirt.

  Ian finds her unaccountably sexy. But he has always been attracted to unconventionally pretty women.

  ‘I see Uncle Hal’s already cooking.’

  ‘Cheeseburger and fries.’

  ‘Fried egg on top?’

  Ian shakes his head.

  ‘Want anything to drink?’

  ‘What do you got?’

  She pokes her thumb over her shoulder, toward the small glass-doored refrigerator humming dully against the wall.

  ‘Couple Buds, I guess, and a bottle of water.’

  ‘All at once?’

  Ian nods. ‘Thirsty.’

  ‘Will you be staying with us tonight?’

  ‘Yeah, if you got the space.’

  She lets out a brief laugh. ‘Yeah, I think we can squeeze y’in. Just you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’ll be seventy-two forty-five,’ she says. ‘Plus I’ll need a credit card on file. We got pay-per-view.’

  ‘I won’t use it.’

  Monica smiles. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but if we trusted every stranger walked through the door we’d’ve been broke a long time ago. Ain’t that right, Uncle Hal?’

  ‘Sure is, Monocle.’

  ‘I reckon that’s true,’ Ian says. ‘Monocle your nickname?’

  ‘Don’t get any ideas.’

  ‘Mean anything?’

  Monica shakes her head. ‘Just an Uncle Hal-ism.’

  He pays with a credit card and puts a five-dollar bill in the tip jar (an emptied tub of red vines with a few loose bills floating around the bottom).

  Monica hands him a key.

  ‘You’ll be in room four, first trailer on the left, door on the left.’

  Ian nods.

  Monica turns around and pulls open the fridge. When she turns back, she has his two beers and his water. She sets them on the counter next to a tub of ostrich jerky.

  ‘You can sit wherever. I’ll bring your food when it’s ready.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He grabs his drinks and walks to a table by the fly-specked window. He sits down and looks out at the desert. A truck hauling groceries rumbles past, and then emptiness. After another five minutes a 747 roars by overhead, shaking the windows in their frames. And then more silence. Ian’s eyes sting. He closes them.

  ‘You want some TV?’

  Ian is about to say no, thanks, I don’t reckon there’s anything much on right now, anyway, but Monica doesn’t wait for a reply. She grabs the remote from the counter, aims it, and presses a button. The TV comes to life, and a situation comedy flickers across the screen, all set-designed studio and laugh-track laughter. Ian pops a beer and takes a swallow. It is good and cold and soothing on his dry throat. He wonders if he shouldn’t be drinking. Alcohol thins the blood. Fuck it. It’s only beer and he’s only having two.

  He nods to himself.

  ‘Fuck it,’ he says, aloud this time, and takes another swallow.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Ian shakes his head, nothing, sorry, and turns back to the smudged window. The right half of his body is throbbing with pain.

  What if that was Henry Dean pulled over to the side of the road back near Sierra Blanca? Maybe he was arrested and even now is sitting in a Hudspeth County jailhouse. Maybe Debbie is on her way now to pick Maggie up. Maybe there’s a message on his answering machine telling him all about it. ‘Where the hell are you, Ian? I’ve called your cell twenty times but it keeps going to voicemail. You’ll never believe what great good fortune we’ve had. Henry Dean was—’

  No: that isn’t how it happens.

  His stomach tightens at the thought of it happening that way. He isn’t sure why.

  Because you want to run toward oblivion and this gives you an excuse. You know exactly why, Ian, so stop lying to yourself.

  He pushes that thought away. He will not accept that.

  Even if that were true, it wouldn’t—

  ‘You’re a million miles away, aren’t you?’

  Ian jumps and a startled grunt escapes his throat. After a silent moment of nothing, he laughs at himself.

  ‘Guess I was,’ he says.

  ‘I didn’t mean to scare you,’ Monica says, setting down a white plate with a cheeseburger and fries on it.

  ‘I know it,’ Ian says.

  ‘Mind if I sit down? Betsy’s back so I can kick up my heels a minute.’ She gestures toward the counter. Ian didn’t even hear the bell above the door rattle, but there she is, Betsy, standing behind the counter, sipping a Cactus Cooler and looking up at the TV in the corner of the room. She’s a little younger than Monica, and a little bit prettier, and a little bit curvier, but obviously her sister.

  Ian pushes a chair out with his foot. ‘Take a load off.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She sits down.

  Ian flashes her a brief smile, then turns back to the window. The desert stretches on and on, dotted here and there with creosote bushes. Hills float in the distance.

  ‘Nothing out there worth looking at,’ Monica says.

  ‘You don’t think so?’

  She shakes her head. ‘Just desert and glimpses of people going to and from places you’ll never see yourself. Every once in a while, maybe they stop in, maybe they tell you a little bit about where they’ve been, but it’s just a story you heard, and then they leave again.’

  ‘Is it that hard to pick up and go?’

  Monica shrugs. ‘Harder than it should be. I’ve packed my bags a dozen times.’

  ‘Yeah? How come you never went?’

  Monica is silent for a long time. Then: ‘I guess I don’t want to talk about that.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Ian takes another swallow of beer.

  ‘What about you?’ Monica says.

  ‘What about me what?’

  ‘Where you headed to?’

  ‘California.’

  ‘Los Angeles? Hollywood?’

  Ian shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says, ‘not this time.’

  ‘But you been before?’

  Ian nods.

  ‘Do you know anybody famous? Is it glamorous?’

  ‘No. It’s just a big suburb surrounding pockets of city.’

  ‘No, I bet it’s glamorous.’

  Ian shrugs.

  ‘I was in a play once. A school play. Macbeth, I think. Is Macbeth the one with the witches in it?’

  ‘It has witches in it,’ Ian says, ‘the weird sisters.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Monica says. ‘I played one of them.’

  ‘Do you remember any of it?’

  ‘Oh, God.’ She looks far away for a moment, and then a smile lights up her face. ‘ “When the hurly-burly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won.” That’s all I remember. I always wanted to go to Hollywood and be f
amous.’

  ‘It’s never too late,’ Ian says.

  ‘You really think so?’

  Ian doesn’t answer for a moment. Then: ‘I guess I don’t.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. What are you going to California for?’

  ‘It’s my turn to not want to talk about it.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

  Ian shakes his head. ‘You didn’t.’

  He picks up a couple fries and shoves them into his mouth. They taste good. Warm and salty and over-cooked by normal standards, which is how he likes them.

  ‘It’s so lonesome, isn’t it?’

  Ian looks at Monica. She is staring out the window at the desert landscape.

  ‘I guess it is.’

  ‘Do you ever get lonesome?’

  ‘Doesn’t everybody?’

  ‘You married?’

  Ian shoves a couple more fries into his mouth and holds up his left hand. There are no rings upon his finger. ‘I was once. Well, thrice, actually. None of them stuck.’

  ‘You were married three times?’

  He smiles. ‘I believed the vows every time, too.’

  ‘Wow. Do you miss it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Being married.’

  ‘Sometimes. Mostly at night.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll miss it tonight?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘’Cause we could pretend.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  She puts her hand on his knee. ‘We could pretend. I could . . .’ she licks her lips, ‘we could lie together.’

  Ian smiles at her, suddenly understanding. But after laying his hand upon hers and letting it rest there a moment, he pushes her hand away. Gently. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘It would only be seventy dollars. We work it out where we charge for an extra room. You could use your credit card.’

  ‘It’s not you, Monica. I have a medical condition.’

  ‘What, like herpes?’

  Ian is so startled by the question, and the blankly serious look on Monica’s face, that he actually laughs. The laugh turns into a cough, but he manages to stifle it early. He clears his throat. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘No, not herpes. It’s just—it’s not a good idea.’