The Desert King: A Jack Trexlor Novel

by T. F. Torrey

  “Oh, yeah,” Macy said.

  “That’s a nice piece,” I said to John, still looking over my shoulder at him and Erica.

  “Thanks,” John said. “I try to take good care of it.”

  I wondered what had made him think I had been talking about the gun and not Erica. I wondered why I was wondering this at all, tried to forget it, and instead asked a good question: “Why didn’t that gun burn up or melt or something in the fire?”

  John thought about this before answering slowly. “I took off the holster before we went downstream,” he said. “I left it in the bed of Macy’s truck. I didn’t think I would need it, but I wanted it close by.”

  “It wasn’t close enough,” Erica said, almost wistfully.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I wish you had had it with you when they first started chasing us.”

  “Well, that’s just the way things worked out,” John said. “The tailgate was down, and the blast must have knocked it clear of the fire. We saw them looking around by the truck. They must have found it and taken it then. We didn’t see Macy’s rifle in the wreck of the truck or at the poacher’s truck, so I don’t know where that is.”

  “We didn’t really look around at their truck too much, though,” Macy said. “We came back as soon as we realized they weren’t there.”

  “That’s right. They probably have it,” John said, then added, “they know I have this one now, though, so they’ll think twice before coming after us.”

  Sharon had been thinking. “You really don’t think they’ll come back?” she asked.

  “Nope,” John said.

  “Then we’re sitting here watching for nothing?”

  “No, we’re watching for them to come back.”

  “Why would they come back if they know you have your gun?”

  “Because,” he said, “they also know I shot at them three times last night. And they know this gun only holds six bullets. And they know I didn’t take any bullets from their truck.”

  “Oh,” Sharon said.

  “Wait a second,” Erica said. “You only have three bullets left in the gun?”

  “No.”

  “But you said you didn’t take any from their truck.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So where …” She didn’t finish her question.

  John patted the pocket of his vest and we all heard the dull clinking noise. Bullets. “I try to be prepared,” he said. “Sometimes things get out of hand, but I try to do what I can.”

  “Cool,” Macy said. “Now I hope they try to come after us.”

  Whether we agreed or disagreed, we did so in silence.

  Then the bombshell dropped.

  “I don’t see why,” Sharon mused after a few minutes, “we don’t just turn Jack loose and let him go torture the poachers.”

  I wanted to kill her. I heard John and Erica turn to look at her, then at me. I said nothing and kept watching the sunrise.

  “After all,” Sharon continued, “he’s got experience.”

  “Sharon, why don’t you just shut up,” Macy said.

  “What are you talking about?” Erica asked.

  Sharon forged on, and I loathed her. “Jack tortured some guy up in Kingman a few years ago. I thought everybody knew.”

  “Sharon, just quit,” Macy said.

  “What? Why?” Erica asked.

  “I’m sure he had some good reason,” Sharon said.

  “Now,” Macy said.

  “He raped Diane,” I said. I really didn’t want to get into another discussion of it.

  Sharon was sharply quiet. Apparently she hadn’t known.

  “You tortured the guy?” Erica asked.

  I sighed. “Diane didn’t want to press charges. I had to make him pay—somehow.” I felt pleased with this admirable brevity.

  Erica said nothing. Sharon said nothing. She hadn’t known the full story before, not that anyone knew the full story now. Macy and John said nothing.

  Silence settled among us thicker than fog.

  Through that moment of quiet came the distant rattle of a truck’s engine. We perked up in curiosity and apprehension. I was grateful for the distraction.

  “Is that the poachers‘ truck?” Erica asked.

  “Sounds like it,” Macy said.

  He couldn’t tell. All trucks sound like trucks, especially coming from over the bluff and across the river. I abandoned my eastward watch and joined the others in scanning the ground to the west for the source of the noise.

  “It’s coming from about where they were parked last night,” John said. I trusted him.

  “I can’t see anything there,” Erica said. “Is it them?”

  “It’s got to be,” Macy said.

  “It could be someone else,” John said.

  “Great,” I said. “This is the same situation as last night with the fire. If it’s them, we stay. If it’s someone else, we go.” I sat down again, tired and disgusted. “I suppose you and Macy will go over and check it out?”

  A thoughtful pause followed, but not for long. A moment later we heard the engine noise growing softer.

  “Are they slowing down?” Sharon asked.

  “No,” John said, “they’re moving away.”

  “Great,” Sharon said. “It was probably somebody else, then.”

  “I doubt it,” John said. “That’s probably the poachers, leaving now.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “Because if they had left last night I probably would have heard them.”

  “Then where are they going now?” Erica asked.

  “Same as before,” John said. “They could be trying something tricky. They could be going home.”

  We listened. The truck growled more and more softly as it moved away, headed downriver. We never did get a glimpse of it to confirm that it was the poachers. However, we didn’t doubt it. Finally we could hear it no more.

  I sighed deeply. “What do we do now, John?” I asked.

  He sighed, too. “You don’t want to know,” he said.

  “You’re right,” I said. “But what do we do?”

  “Now, we wait.”

  “Wait?” Sharon said. “For what?”

  “For a while.”

  “Why?”

  John sighed again. “With the poachers gone it’s just us and the desert.”

  “And the buzzards,” I added.

  “Nobody is going to come out here after us,” John continued. “Probably no one will be out here at all till this weekend at the earliest. The weekend is still three days away, and it’s still forty miles back to Phoenix.”

  “We’re not going to wait here till this weekend, are we?” Macy asked.

  “Of course not,” John said.

  “How are we going to get back, then?” Sharon asked.

  “You’re wearing them,” John said. He pointed at her shoes.

  “We’re going to walk forty miles?” she asked.

  “Actually, we’ll only have to walk till we find someone to give us a ride.”

  “How far is that?”

  “Probably only to Sheep Bridge. Maybe all the way to Horseshoe Lake.”

  “How far is that?”

  John looked downriver, thinking. “Along the river, it’s about twelve miles to Sheep Bridge. Probably twenty to Horseshoe Lake.”

  “That’s not far,” Macy said. “We can make it to Sheep Bridge in about four hours.”

  John shook his head. “We could if it was level ground, but we have to deal with the hills and the vegetation.”

  “So it’ll slow us down a little,” Macy said. “If we leave now we’ll be to Sheep Bridge by about noon, Horseshoe Lake around four, and home by dinner time.”

  John shook his head again, smiling gently. “If we leave now, we won’t even make it half way.”

  “Why not?”

  “You’re forgetting,” John said. “This is the desert, and this is July. In a couple of hours it’ll be up over a hundred
degrees out here. That kind of heat takes your breath away even when you’re doing nothing, let alone hiking.”

  “Couldn’t we just cut across the desert to Sheep Bridge?” I asked. “I mean, the river surely doesn’t go straight, and couldn’t we save time if we did?”

  John gave me a dark look. “No way,” he said. “We better stay by the river.” He took a deep breath, like he was choosing his words carefully, then gestured toward the river with one arm. “Not only is the river our only source of water, it’s our only sure guide out of here. The desert is a big place.” He paused and shook his head, looking out toward the distant mountains. “It’s easy to get lost there.”

  “So what do we do?” Macy asked. “Wait here until dark?”

  “Exactly,” John said. “Anything else would be foolish.”

  “Shit,” Sharon said. “Another day in the fucking desert.”

  “Yeah,” John said glumly. “I know something that will make it a little better, though.”

  “What?”

  John didn’t answer. Instead he walked slowly down the hillside, alternately looking for something on the ground and something in the sky. After a few steps, he paused and picked up a stone about as big as his fist. Stopping in front of a big saguaro cactus, he cocked his arm back, taking aim at something up in its branches.

  “What?” Sharon asked again.

  “Cactus candy!” Macy said excitedly. “Come on!”

  We followed him down the hill as John let the rock fly. It arced into the air and thudded into the cactus, knocking a roundish red thing down to the ground. Macy picked it up and showed it to me and the girls triumphantly. “Cactus candy,” he said again.

  “What do you do with it?” I asked.

  “You eat it,” Macy said.

  “It’s a fruit,” John said. He was already taking aim at another.

  “And it’s gooood,” Macy said. As we stepped back out of the way of John’s next rock, Macy broke the fruit open and showed us. The inside was pink and seedy, kind of like a pomegranate. He took a bite out of it and offered it to Sharon as another one thudded to the ground.

  “Mmm,” Sharon said, “it is good.”

  “I’ve heard of these,” Erica said, going to pick up the one John had just knocked down. While she split it open and began eating, Macy joined John and they both moved slowly down the hillside, throwing stones and knocking the fruit out of the cacti. Soon we were all eating our fill of the watery, tasty treats.

  Though I didn’t feel sociable after Sharon’s surprise revelation, I was very hungry, and I joined in the breakfast of the cactus candy. I was amazed at how good they tasted, considering that they were growing wild in the desert. I could see how they had gotten their nickname; they were sweet and delicious.

  After a while we’d eaten our fill, saved some for later, and settled down for our wait through the heat of the day.

  I sat apart from the others.

  ***

  Somehow, the day seemed both longer and shorter than a day. With the poachers gone and the heat rising, the desert stayed mostly quiet. We spent rest of the morning catching up on the sleep we’d missed the night before. I spent quite some time thinking about coffee. I hadn’t had any since we’d left Macy’s house two mornings earlier, and even as the day heated up I was yearning for a hot cup of coffee. I hadn’t noticed if Macy had brought any with him, but even if he had it was stuck or destroyed in the wreckage of his truck. I wasn’t going to get another cup of coffee until we got back to Phoenix. Damn.

  By afternoon we were well-rested, and the others had come to accept the waiting. Except for constantly keeping vigilant for the return of the poachers, they might have been having a good time. They talked about what they’d see on the walk downriver. John agreed to leave a couple hours before sunset so that we could take in some sights before the sun went down. Macy scouted around, looking for a good walking stick. Erica helped Sharon fix her hair and face. John got a stick and drew designs in the sand, asking the others what they thought about a new tattoo.

  While the others planned and played in the sunshine, I brooded in the shade. I wasn’t having a good time. I felt like an outcast. I didn’t dare to talk to anyone because I could feel the questions Erica and John wanted to ask. I didn’t want to talk about it, and it wasn’t any of their business anyway.

  So I sulked in silence, and the day dragged on. I knew exactly whom to blame for my solitude. And when Macy and John and Erica went down to the river in the afternoon to catch some fish, they left me alone with her on the hill.

  ***

  Once Sharon and I were alone I popped the question, the big one I’d been dying to ask ever since I’d met her again back in Phoenix: “How come you’re such a bitch?”

  My bluntness shocked her. “Excuse me?” she said.

  “Are you this obnoxious with everyone you meet,” I asked, “or do you save it up for special people?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the way you treat Macy and me and everybody,” I said. I was on a roll, and it felt great. “Nothing anyone does is ever good enough. Every problem you have is someone else’s fault, someone else’s responsibility. Is this just your new personality, or are you on some kind of bitch crusade?”

  “I’m not that bad,” she said.

  I laughed out loud and shook my head, gesturing now with both hands. “Yes, you are, Sharon,” I said. “You’re worse than that. Especially to Macy. Nothing he does is good enough for you. You constantly have to nag at him.”

  “It’s not my fault,” she said quietly.

  “See, there you go again. It’s somebody else’s fault.”

  She turned away from me. I jumped back in front of her and kept going.

  “When I knew you before you weren’t this way,” I said. “You and Macy got along great. You were each other’s best friends. Now you’re—”

  “That was then,” she snapped. “Everything’s different now.”

  “Because you’re married?” I asked. “Lots of people—”

  “No, not because we’re married. It’s because of Macy, your buddy.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Married people have problems, but it’s a two-way street.”

  “It’s not like that,” she said. She turned away again. This time I didn’t jump in front of her. “Macy ruined everything.”

  “How? By coming out here?”

  “No. Way before this. Back in California.”

  Now I was at a loss for words. Except one: “How?”

  She sighed. “Back in California we—we didn’t have to worry about things,” she said, speaking softly. “Everything was safe. Now, now I think about having this baby, and I wonder if we’ll be able to afford diapers and formula. I wonder if Macy will even be around to see the baby. If he’ll be out here gallivanting with John and not even see me.”

  I heard her sniffle. I said nothing.

  “My family back in California,” she continued, “they keep saying they’ll take me in if I just leave Macy. But … I don’t want to leave him. I love him. But he’s ruined everything.”

  I heard her sniffling again, and I realized that she was crying. Way to go, Mr. Tough Guy, I thought, make the girl cry. I said, “I—I had no idea.”

  “Well, now you know,” she said, straightening up, brushing away her tears with the back of her hand. “And now I know that I’m not the only one who can criticize things without knowing about them.”

  She walked away then, leaving me with my thoughts. Walking carefully and slowly, she moved down to the edge of the bluff and sat where she could see the others fishing.

  I sat down and stayed where I was, feeling foolish. I used John’s drawing stick and drew crude pictures in the sand, thinking. After a while I smoothed over what I had done and drew the word NO and practiced using it in a sentence: “No, I will not go fishing with you in the desert.”

  John and Macy and Erica came back a little while later with a stack of fil
lets. Because it was daylight, John built a little fire and cooked the fish. Everyone was grateful. I wasn’t hungry, but I ate anyway. I didn’t want to die in the desert, either.

  While the sun descended to sunset, John extinguished the fire and we napped more. Macy and Sharon talked quietly. So did John and Erica. If it hadn’t been so hot, I would have felt left out in the cold.

  I was napping again when John nudged me and said it was time to move out. The others were already ready.

  ***

  Someone wise once said that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Apparently we weren’t the first travelers to have their truck blown up out in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, with our flurry of single steps, our journey began.

  John, of course, with his outback hat slung low, took the lead. Erica stuck close behind him. Macy, with his walking stick in his hand like some kind of commanding general, trudged along behind Erica. Sharon stayed close to his side.

  I brought up the rear, not feeling as depressed as earlier, but not ready yet to dance a jig, either.

  Downstream, the bluff sank slowly to the riverside. Today the river seemed swollen considerably. It looked older, darker, somehow angrier. The vegetation grew thicker as the bluff became a riverbank, and we had to go slower, as John had said we would.

  Soon we came to a wash flooded by the swollen river. At the edge of it we stood in a bunch. It was about six feet wide, all dark and murky. To our left it cut through the riverbank and snaked off through the underbrush.

  “What do we do now?” Erica asked. “Go around?”

  “Mmm,” John said, looking around quickly. “That seems like a waste.”

  “I’m going to catch my breath,” Sharon said. She was already getting winded, and we’d only gone maybe a mile.

  “We could jump over it,” Macy suggested.

  “Mmm,” John said. “Maybe we could, but it might be kind of far for the girls.”

  The girls didn’t argue.

  “They could use my walking stick and vault over,” Macy suggested.

  Nobody argued with that one.

  “Why don’t we just wade through?” I asked. “It can’t be very deep.”

  “Mmm,” John said. “Tonight will be cold enough without being wet. Besides, we can’t tell how deep it is, especially after that storm last night.”