River Runs Red (The Border Trilogy)

by Jeffrey J. Mariotte

  “Thanks, dude. You’ve looked better,” Wade admitted.

  “I know. You want to see my peri-rectal abscess? I can’t get a good view of it myself, but I’m told it’s a beaut.”

  “I’ll pass on that particular pleasure.” Wade crossed the room and leaned over the bed to embrace his friend. Byrd seemed almost weightless in his arms, as if he held a bundle of dry sticks instead of a man. “How’re you feeling?”

  “You see how I look?”

  “Yeah?” Wade released him and backed away a couple of steps. Byrd waved him toward a guest chair.

  “That’s about how I feel. Pretty shitty, most of the time. The doctors do what they can, and the nurses. There’s this one nurse, a little Latina, yum. If you can stick around until shift change, I think you can meet her. Single, too.”

  Wade lowered himself into the chair by feel, unable to tear his gaze from Byrd. “God, man, this is so…I can’t believe it. I just can’t.”

  “Believe it, bro. Acute myelocytic leukemia, they call it. Came up out of nowhere, and the docs were amazed at how fast it progressed. Not exactly my definition of progress, but you know what I mean.”

  “Right. You always were an odd one.”

  “I am this time. A regular showpiece. They’ve had all sorts of visitors, doctors from all over the place, comin’ in to look at me. It’s comforting to be a visual aid for disease studies, let me tell you.”

  Wade wasn’t sure how to approach his next question, so he just stepped right up to it. Journalistic instincts kicking in. “Do they know…?”

  He couldn’t finish, but Byrd took it from there. “How much longer? No. Could be months or years, under normal conditions. I, of course, haven’t presented them with any normal conditions yet, and they don’t expect me to start anytime soon. In technical terms, my monocytes and granulocytes are fucked. They’re not maturing properly—”

  “Well, that’s in character, at least.”

  “Thanks. Pick on the sick guy. Anyway, my immature cells—they like to call them blasts, maybe so they’ll sound like they’re watchin’ an action flick instead of a bunch of microscopic gunk—affect my ability to create red blood cells and platelets, and interfere with…well, just about everything else my body has to do to keep goin’. It’s been a real learnin’ experience, bud. And a treat. Blood in my urine, shortness of breath, weight loss. What they call ‘abdominal fullness.’ Bone marrow transplants, now there’s a joyful time. Thank God for Molly…I’m sure bein’ a donor was no picnic either. And then there’s the chemo. And buyin’ clothes in the boy’s department because they don’t come skinny enough in men’s. You’ve really been missin’ out on the good stuff.” Byrd smiled again, a death’s-head grin that chilled Wade to the core. “But you didn’t come here to talk about my illness.”

  “Actually, I did.”

  “I heard you went missin’ in Iraq, though. That must have been interesting, at least. What happened?”

  “I got kidnapped by insurgents, they smacked me around for a while, and then I got away. No big.”

  “That’s not what CNN says.” Byrd indicated the TV mounted high on the wall. “You’ve been all over it. I told the nurses I knew you. Thought it might get me a hand job, but you know, no luck yet.”

  “Juárez isn’t far away,” Wade said. “Can’t you take field trips?”

  “I don’t know how much good it’d do, but I can go anywhere I want. It’s just a matter of stayin’ awake, out of pain—and in Juárez, I guess, of gettin’ it up.”

  “You’re not taking my brother to some Mexican whorehouse, Scheiner.” Wade glanced up to see Molly walking in carrying a brown paper bag with the top folded over several times. “You want him to get syphilis or something?”

  “Like that’s my biggest worry right now,” Byrd said with a dry chuckle.

  Wade hadn’t seen Byrd in a couple of years, but it must have been eight or nine since he’d seen Molly. He had met Byrd for runs on various rivers, and a couple times Byrd had flown out to Atlanta or Washington, when he’d been living there. Escaping west Texas had, for him, been like escaping from the cell beneath the mosque, on a far grander scale. He had been in no hurry to return.

  And Molly, who had been a lovely, grown-up college graduate the last time he had been to town, had matured even more in the intervening years. Her face had filled out a little, and a minute tracery of lines around her eyes and the corners of her mouth hinted at plenty of laughter, and maybe some worry—living, anyway—in that time. Her hair was almost black, lustrous even this late in the day.

  She dropped the sack onto the bed and opened her arms as Wade thrust himself out of the chair toward her. After Byrd, he was glad to hug someone who he wasn’t worried about snapping in two. Plus, she smelled better than her brother. Wade breathed in the aromas of shampoo and soap, lotion and sweat, all helping to dull the bitter, sharp stink of Byrd’s encroaching death. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, her face pressed against his collarbone.

  “Me, too,” he replied. The words almost caught in his throat and for a moment he was afraid he would burst into tears. “I’ve missed you guys so much.”

  “Enough of that mushy shit,” Byrd interrupted. “What’d you bring me, Molly?”

  Molly disengaged from Wade and shoved the paper bag to where Byrd could reach it. He pawed at it eagerly, unrolling the top and shaking a couple of magazines onto the bed.

  “Porn?” Wade asked.

  Byrd held them up so Wade could see. Outside, National Geographic Adventure, and Outdoor Explorer. “Nature porn,” Byrd announced. “The only thing that gets me off these days.”

  “Why the brown paper bag treatment?” Wade asked.

  “He has a reputation to uphold,” Molly said. “The nurses would be horribly disappointed if they thought I wasn’t sneaking tittie mags in for him.”

  “That’s right,” Byrd said. “I’m the ward perv.”

  “Didn’t Elena divorce you because she didn’t think you’d ever grow up?”

  “I still can’t decide if she was a bitch, or just prescient,” Molly said. “Can’t argue with her conclusion, though.”

  “If it hasn’t caught up with me yet, it’s not goin’ to,” Byrd said.

  “How’s she doing, anyway?” Wade asked. “She been around to see you?”

  “She’s living in Indiana, for fuck’s sake,” Byrd answered. “With her new husband, who’s a dentist or something like that. Orthodontist. Somethin’ serious and grown-up and boring. They have a munchkin, too.”

  “And you sold the store, right?” McCall Adventure Gear, Byrd’s attempt to extend his river rat lifestyle into something that the former Elena Oliveros would have considered a respectable trade. Most days Byrd had spent behind the counter trading lies about river runs with the customers, in between selling maps, guidebooks, backpacks, GPS units, and bags of GORP. The only indication of his passion in the room, besides the magazines Molly had brought and a stack of similar ones on a bedside table, was the handle half of a broken wooden oar leaning in one corner.

  “What do you think’s payin’ for a private room?” Byrd said. “The McCalls are nothing if not bad with money.”

  “Financial incompetence was our only inheritance from our folks,” Molly added. She sat on the edge of Byrd’s bed, and Wade took his seat in the guest chair again. The room had seemed to brighten when she came in, its peach-colored walls lighter by a shade or two, the dying sunlight leaking through closed blinds more golden than before.

  “How long”—Byrd stifled a yawn—“are you stayin’, Wade?”

  Wade had hoped the question would not be put to him in quite that way. The visit would be finite, but he didn’t want to talk about its ending. “As long as you want me to.”

  “Shit, buy a house then,” Byrd said. “Settle in.” He yawned again.

  “We should let you get some rest, Byrd,” Molly said.

  Wade expected Byrd to argue (the old Byrd would have, and he would have
won the battle), but he simply nodded. “Come back in the mornin’?” he said.

  “I’m here for you,” Wade assured his friend. “If you want me here. I’ll be here.”

  “Oh, I want you, baby,” Byrd said. He laughed, a ghastly, weary sound. “So bad.”

  “I’ll be here whenever they open the doors,” Wade promised. He and Molly started toward the door.

  “Wait, listen up, y’all!” Byrd called. “How’s this? ‘That guy has to stop. He’ll see us.’” He grinned fiercely at them.

  “What’s that from?” Wade asked.

  Molly gave a dramatic sigh. “Byrd’s been studying up on famous last words.”

  “Got to be ready for it,” Byrd said. “That was James Dean, right before someone smashed into his Porsche Spyder. 1955. What do you think?”

  “Doesn’t apply,” Molly said. “Keep hunting.”

  “Don’t worry,” Byrd said. “I got a million of ’em.”

  Molly led Wade from the room, shaking her head. “He does, too. Whole books of them.”

  “At least he’s thinking ahead,” Wade said. “I didn’t think he ever did that unless he was planning a river trip.”

  “He’s matured in some ways. Obviously not completely. If he lived another forty years, maybe…” She swallowed hard, pressed her knuckles against her lips so hard the color vanished from them. “Where are you staying, Wade?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ll get a hotel, I guess, somewhere close by.”

  “The Hilton Garden Inn is just down the street,” Molly said. “You can walk there from here. But you might want to think about something longer-term. It could be days, Wade, but it could be weeks too. Or longer. Nobody knows, because nobody’s seen a case move as fast as his. The doctors think he’s had chronic leukemia, maybe since childhood, that never exhibited any symptoms, was never caught. When it turned acute and he started to fall apart, they were amazed by how quickly it spread.” She had stemmed the tears, but her green eyes glistened in the overhead light of the hospital corridor. Ahead, someone pushed a patient in a wheelchair through an intersection. “What I’m saying is you should think about an apartment, maybe one of those short-term places that come furnished. You could be here a while.”

  “I hope I am,” Wade said. “There’s a lot of lost time to make up for.”

  “It wasn’t lost if you were doing something with it.”

  “You know what I mean. Time I wasn’t with Byrd, when I would rather have been.”

  “He’s thrilled you’re here now. You don’t know what he’s been like. I mean, he’ll always be Byrd, you know, funny and goofy and profane. But it’s been an effort for him. It’s taken a toll. With you here, though, it comes more easily, more naturally. So thanks for that.” She started walking again, reached an elevator and pushed the down button. The elevator dinged and the door opened immediately. “I’ll try to find you a place,” she said. “After all, I’m the star reporter for the fastest-growing independent weekly newspaper in El Paso County. What good is all my power if I can’t sneak an advance peek at this week’s classifieds?”

  NINE

  Molly took Wade to dinner at the Greenery Restaurant in the Sunland Park Mall, which she said had become one of her favorites in town. He couldn’t fault the choice. After his time in captivity, followed by hospital food and the ceremonial fare he was fed by CNN, he was happy to order a hamburger, happier still to find it big and delicious. He had checked into the hotel she recommended, and decided to stay there for a while, to see what the future would bring.

  While they dined, they talked about things other than Byrd’s condition. She told him about the Voice of the Borderlands and her work there, and threatened to pick his brains for tips on career advancement. “I don’t think you’d want to listen to my advice,” he said. “I wanted to be an environmental reporter. If I knew how to manage my career, that’s what I’d be—Byrd would be reading my stuff in Outside, maybe. But someone thought I’d look good in front of a camera, and the money was better, and the next thing I knew I was anchoring in Philly, then a network reporter in D.C., and then CNN came calling with buckets of cash.”

  “There are worse things than buckets of cash,” Molly said.

  “Sure there are. No buckets, for one. Or empty buckets. But the point is, I didn’t guide my career in any direction at all. I just took the cash, let it lead me around like it had my nose in a death grip.” Bad word choice, but it was already out so he left it there. “I went where the money was instead of planning my moves.”

  “Well, that’s a problem I don’t have,” Molly said. “The Voice is definitely not where the money is. But I like it there. It’s a good fit, at least right now.”

  “That’s the important thing,” Wade said. “If you’re making enough to live on and you love what you’re doing, that’s great.”

  “I think there’s an inalienable law of physics. Only one superstar can come from a place like Palo Duro, and you’re it.”

  “Malo Duro, you mean.”

  Molly genuinely laughed for the first time since he had seen her in her brother’s hospital doorway. “Malo Duro.”

  “I’m glad you’ve kept some of your accent,” Wade said. When she said “Malo Duro,” she stretched out the a in Malo and almost turned Duro into two words: Doo Row. Of the three of them, though, Byrd had the strongest Texas accent by far.

  “I cain’t even hear y’all’s,” Molly said, intentionally exaggerating. People from East Texas were Southerners, but in west Texas, they were Westerners, and the accent differed accordingly. “A body’d think you’d never even set foot in Texas.”

  “You can thank my voice coach for that. She worked me over good.”

  He took another bite of burger and the conversation faded. Palo Duro meant “hard wood” in Spanish—literally, “wood hard.” The town had been named after a peculiarly hardy stand of mesquite trees near the river. As bored teenagers in their small rural town, they had christened it Malo Duro, which meant “bad hard,” or idiomatically, “long-lasting bad.” Although Wade could no longer recall the new name’s precise origin, that had to have been Byrd’s idea. He had always been the cleverest of them. The biggest and oldest, too, the natural leader.

  It just wasn’t right that he should die first. He was the best of them, and always had been.

  And this, Wade reflected, was why he had stayed away from west Texas for so long. All coming back did was dredge up the past, and the past was something that he would rather leave undisturbed. In his job he could focus his attention on the present—what happened today, rather than what had happened twenty years ago.

  That was exactly how he liked it.

  “How’s that burger?” Molly asked, dragging him back into the now. “You’re eating it with a great deal of relish.”

  “No, just—” he caught the narrowing of her eyes and the crinkling around her nose that had always meant she was teasing, all the way back to when she was ten. “Okay, you got me. Sorry, I was kind of drifting there.”

  “I’ve been kind of drifty myself today.”

  “So how’s your love life?” he asked, completing his return to the present. “I’m surprised you’re not married. If, y’know, marriage is your thing these days. Or women, or whatever.”

  “Oh, I’m straight, for what that’s worth. Not really looking too hard at the moment. There was a guy, but…I’ll come off as some kind of a man-hater or something, and that’s totally not me. I understand that some guys are nice and some guys are jerks, and I just don’t get why some women decide that it’s better to be with the jerks and hate it and complain incessantly about it, rather than being alone and maybe waiting for one of the decent ones to show up. I was with a guy, and we were starting to talk about moving in together, maybe getting married.”

  “And he turned out to be one of the jerks?” Wade asked.

  “Bingo.” She punctuated this by pointing a french fry at Wade. “I found out before we took the next step, which was l
ucky. Turned out he liked booze more than women, and he thought a wife might make a handy designated driver. It wasn’t just that either. He was sincerely convinced that he was surrounded by what he called ‘haters.’ He thought everyone was lying to him all the time, even me. I eventually figured out he was paranoid, suspecting everyone of some ulterior, sinister motive.”

  “Did he run for political office? Sounds like a natural.”

  “For all I know, he could be in Congress by now. When I broke it off with him, he made it abundantly clear that he didn’t want me in his life at all. He was such an asshole about the breakup that I was happy to oblige. I haven’t even Googled him since then, and I’m not curious in the least.”

  “Sounds like you’re better off,” Wade said. He rubbed the palm of his left hand. The skin there was dry, itchy. He’d need to put some lotion on before bed.

  “No doubt.”

  “And you’re happy?” He hoped she would say yes. One troubled McCall at a time was plenty.

  She hesitated for a long time, dabbing a couple of fries into ketchup and eating them as she considered his question. He had anticipated a quick response, even if it was a facile one, but she had obviously decided to take the question seriously. “I guess I’ve mostly put my life on hold while I worry about Byrd,” she said finally. “That takes over everything else. But except for that, you know, there are some pressures on the job but I basically love that. Would I like to get laid more often? Who wouldn’t? I don’t mind waking up in the morning and I’m not afraid of going to bed at night, so I guess I’d have to say that makes me pretty happy. Happy with reservations.”

  “That’s not a bad summation,” Wade said. “A lot of people couldn’t say that.” Himself included, although he left that bit of fluff in his pocket. He couldn’t point to a time that he had believed himself to be genuinely happy in the last decade or so. Content, sure, satisfied, but not happy, in the word’s truest sense. Longer, really, when he pushed it. The last truly happy times he remembered were days and night on rivers, with Byrd; floating or paddling to keep the bow headed down the chute, or driving Byrd’s clattering old pickup hundreds of miles to or from a river, spinning the radio dial to pick up distant AM stations at night when their signals bounced around the atmosphere, or simply lying at night on a sand spit looking at whatever stars could be seen between tall sandstone walls while a fire burned, smoke and sparks rising into the darkness as meager offerings from the river rats to the river gods.