The Desert King: A Jack Trexlor Novel
Page 24
Neither Erica nor I mentioned what had happened to her. Nobody was going to punish the dead. What the police didn’t know didn’t make any difference.
John and Macy’s boss threw a fit at losing John Lupo. Then he gave Macy the rest of the week off and promoted him to foreman the next week. Another man was hired to work on Macy’s team. After a couple of months, Macy started taking him to the desert, fishing.
Sharon’s boss was not so understanding. When she showed up Thursday and asked for the rest of the week off he told her to take a permanent vacation. I hear she’s a veterinarian’s assistant part-time now and she likes it better anyway.
I found all this out later. I didn’t see them for about five weeks after we got back. Well, after John’s funeral.
***
Macy and Sharon are still together. It got rocky for a while and I suppose now and then it still does, but Sharon stayed with Macy.
Sharon had a boy. She and Macy fought for a while about the name, but in the end Macy won, or Sharon gave up. They named him Jonathan Lupo Barnes. All Macy talks about is taking him fishing and hunting in the desert. The kid can’t even walk yet and he owns a rod and reel.
***
My job was never really in danger. Buddy Robinson, the owner of Gridlock, covered for me the nights I was gone, and he was damn glad when I came back. After hours we sipped bourbon and I gave him the whole story. Well, all of it except for what happened to Erica. He listened intently, shaking his head a lot. When I finished, he told me that next time he’d call the park rangers the very minute I was late. I told him there wasn’t going to be a next time.
For a while business boomed. Everyone wanted to hear the story of the bartender who’d seen John Lupo die. Tabloid reporters and television yellow journalists—they all stopped in to Gridlock to hear the story of the crazed poachers.
I never did tell them that the story really began in Phoenix, when we were skating. I never told a soul. No one needed to know.
Buddy Robinson ate it up. Some versions of the story he tells have him along on that voyage to the desert. I let him have his fun.
Sometimes people would mistake me for one of John’s oldest friends. They’d ask me if I missed John Lupo.
They just don’t understand.
***
It was about three weeks after we got back that Erica stopped into Gridlock.
I’d been thinking about calling her, but every time I picked up the phone to do it I thought of how that would look. I still had John’s hat. It would seem like I was using the death of John Lupo to get into the sack with his undeniably voluptuous girlfriend. So even though I wanted to call her, to find out how she was doing, to see if she needed someone to talk to, someone who might understand, I never did.
And I suppose I felt just as guilty for not calling her as I would have if I’d called.
Anyway, a few weeks after we got back I saw Erica for the first time since John’s funeral. The door to Gridlock opened and there she was. At first I thought she might be meeting someone. Then I realized that it was close to midnight—a little late for a rendezvous. Then she sat at the bar, where she couldn’t see the door, and it was pretty obvious that she’d come to see me.
Just in case, I cautiously said, “Hello, Erica. Meeting someone?” It was a casual enough question, so why was my heart beating in my throat?
“Actually, I wanted to talk to you,” she said, and her eyes locked with mine.
She left with me that night, in her car, and we talked until it was daylight.
As the days grew into weeks, we saw each other more and more. After a month, if you had asked me who my girlfriend was, I would have told you Erica Bailey.
***
So Erica and I had our experience. We didn’t run away and get married, but it still seemed terribly romantic to me.
Some people, mostly Sharon and Macy, called it a “fling”. Others, mostly Erica, called it a “relationship”, but I never liked that word, either.
It seems to me that people say “relationship” to denote an association that’s going to last a while but which in the end is doomed to failure. To me, a relationship is just a long fling. Maybe with the charade and costume of infinite longevity, but finite just the same. Something you’re going to be looking back on before you know it.
I thought what we had was—different somehow.
The first time I walked into her bathroom late in the evening and in the mirror caught sight of the double row of pink teeth marks in my shoulder, it seemed as if the whole desert trip had been a dream, as if it was the first time I had driven her home from Gridlock, and everything in between had been just a scrap of an ugly dream.
Sometimes we’d talk about what had happened and she’d end up with her face on my shoulder, her tears hot and wet on my chest.
“I just don’t understand,” she would sob, “why they ever started chasing us in the first place.”
I never told her. I never could.
I don’t know what happened. It was spontaneous and intense and emotional. I don’t know if I ever really believed it would go on forever, but somewhere in there we both got the feeling that it would end.
And one morning I woke up alone and found myself looking back on the whole experience.
Maybe it was a relationship after all.
***
Hands on my hips, I stood up straight, gazing proudly out over the bluff at the sparkling clean Verde River bubbling merrily toward the Gulf of California. The sun rose over my shoulder, already burning the chill off the morning. I looked behind me, back at the circle of stones where my campfire had been, to make sure it was out. Facing the river again, I took John Lupo’s outback hat from my head and threw it like a Frisbee across the river to the opposite riverbank. With one last look at the river below, I put my hands together over my head and gracefully dived off the bluff.
This was the next spring, and this was my first return to Tonto National Forest since my trip with John and Erica and Macy and Sharon. Macy had asked me to go with him several times, but I had declined. Nearly a year had passed before I returned to the desert.
This time, I’d gone alone.
Maybe the reason that things didn’t work out between Erica and me was that somewhere in my heart I held myself to blame for John’s death. I saw myself sealing his fate the very instant my shoes touched the grass inside that dark back yard. In the back of my mind I envisioned my master plot for stealing his girlfriend. That had not been my plan, of course. But I got her, didn’t I?
I never told Erica this, and by the end of the summer I had driven her away completely. All the way to Boston. I felt no better in her absence.
Autumn gave way to winter, and still I was alone, still pushing drinks and pulling tips at Gridlock. It was then that I tried to paint something from the desert trip. I never did get my sketchbook back, but I made new drawings from old, though vibrant, memories. I started several paintings, but the only one I finished was that scene I’d sketched where Erica sat watching John fishing. Except where Erica had been I instead painted a close-up of a bald eagle in flight, his talons stretched wide to capture his prey, his beak open in a silent scream. As closely as I could remember, it was John’s tattoo. John I left the same, his outback hat slung low against the sun, his tan fishing vest open in the front, his left hand holding the rod, his right holding the line, feeling the nibbling of a flathead or a carp. I must say it turned out well.
I still haven’t put together my Desert Sunset Panorama. Yet.
The onset of winter tucked a new idea into my mind like a harsh grain of sand into an oyster: I could go to the desert and live on my own as John Lupo had done.
By the beginning of spring, that idea had become a pearl in my mind. I sold my car, put my stuff in storage, told Buddy Robinson I’d be back when I got back, and hitched a ride out to the desert. Right before I left I got a tattoo—an eagle in flight, talons stretched wide, beak open in a silent scream.
I took som
e spray paint with me, and on the way out I decorated some development billboards with the word RAPE.
Quickly I learned how to live off the land. In the open wilderness, living with the mountains and the stars, I finally learned a sense of direction. I learned to build a fire with a pocket magnifier. I learned how to catch a rabbit in a snare and how to cook it on a spit. I learned to fish with just a hook and a line. I haven’t learned how to catch a rattlesnake with my bare hands yet, but I’ve learned how to back away from one. And I, too, have grown to hate hellgrammites.
I wore John Lupo’s hat. I thought a lot about him.
Somewhere in there, too, I learned that it wasn’t my fault that Erica got raped and it wasn’t my fault that John had died. By jumping over that back fence I’d been stopping them from raping that girl on the couch. I was sure of it. The decision had not been mine. I was not the criminal.
John Lupo’s philosophy struck me as most sensible: Avoid lust, avoid anger, avoid greed. In the desert, I’m learning to do that.
The crisp water in the pool chilled me, but I didn’t let it distract me. I swam to the bottom and looked around, searching through the water for something. I found it pinched between two rocks on the riverbed, and it became mine.
Panting just a bit, I walked up the riverbank and found the outback hat. I plopped it back on my head and sat down to examine my river treasure: John Lupo’s .357. A year under water had left it rusty and dirty. Living in the desert had given me an appreciation for guns. It would take quite a bit of time to restore this one to its original condition. But there in the desert, I had nothing but time.
I could go back to Phoenix at any time. Only two nights of walking separate me from Horseshoe Lake.
Or I could stay a bit longer.
I sat in the sunlight, letting the heat dry my clothes as I started cleaning John’s revolver. Something high off in the azure sky caught my eye. This time I could recognize them even in the distance. Bald eagles, circling, hunting for breakfast.
This year, there are four of them.
Do I miss John Lupo?
No one should.
All you have to do is go out into the desert, out past the housing developments and the billboards that Greenpeace (or somebody) painted RAPE over. Go out to a little clearing next to a high bluff on the Verde, with the hot breeze on your face. And he’s there, just like in my painting.
On a clear day you can almost see him.
He’s the desert king.
What’s Next
If you liked this story, learn how Jack got started down his dark path in The Crazy Jack. In it, Jack tries to get help for a damsel in distress while battling his own artistic block, and when she rejects his help, he comes up with the drastic plan that gained him his nickname, but lost him most everything else. It all adds up to another ending you won’t be able to turn away from.
Or skip ahead in time and read The Dancing Queen, in which Jack is a little older and a little more lost. The story is set in 1991, when Jack is adrift after the loss of his mother. He gets mixed up with strippers and drugs, but everything is still all right until he tries to save a damsel in distress. And then it gets much worse, with sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and an ending you will never forget.
Also, be sure to sign up for my newsletter, so you can be the first to know of new books, short stories, and other things worth reading. It’s always free, never spam, and easy unsubscribe.
About The Author
T.F. Torrey is part of the new revolution of publishing, combining classic narrative form and flair with contemporary, long-tail publication venues, and he operates his growing publishing empire with Free Software and without DRM. He lives in sunny Arizona with his beautiful wife, lovely daughter, and layabout cats. His work can be found online at www.tftorrey.com.
One Last Thing
If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review where you bought it. In the modern book industry, even with more books to read than ever before, it can be difficult to find something perfect for you, and nothing works better for connecting a good book with a like-minded reader than a thoughtful review. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just a short note saying what you liked about it would be perfect, and it would really help other readers to find something worth reading.
Thanks a million!
—T.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Front Matter
Copyright Page
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part 2
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part 3
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part 4
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Back Matter
What’s Next
About The Author
One Last Thing