The Carrion Birds (22 page)

When she was gone he drove the Volkswagen up a
block and parked it. Leaving the keys up under the back right tire, he came down
the street with Jeanie trailing him on her leash, and crossed toward Main and
the front entrance of the courthouse.

It wasn’t till he passed the courthouse parking lot
that he slowed, looking at the one cruiser outside. No idea if it was Kelly’s
car or if it was one of her deputies’. Only two cars left in the department
after the one at the hospital had burned. He checked his watch. Still plenty of
time before something needed to be said and he would drive his father’s truck
back north, he owed Ray that at least.

“Claire told me you were a pig farmer now.”

Tom turned to find Eli at the top of the courthouse
steps. The mayor taking the stairs quickly, stopping only when he was a few feet
away from Tom. Ten years since they’d said more than a greeting to each
other.

“I also heard you’ve been assisting Edna with the
killing of that boy.”

“I’ve been trying to help out,” Tom said.

“Pigs,” Eli said again. “I guess I should have seen
it on you from the start.”

“I’m not in that business anymore,” Tom said. The
anger growing inside him as he stood there and the thin smile on Eli’s lips that
Tom had always hated. “I left it a while ago to get into cattle. I thought maybe
you’d heard that from Claire, but maybe not.”

“I didn’t know you two were still together.”

“We’re not,” Tom said. At his leg he felt Jeanie
yawn and lean into him. Her canines showing as the air whistled up out of her
throat.

“I see you still have that mutt.”

Tom didn’t say anything. He knew exactly where this
was going, and he didn’t have any desire to help it along.

“It’s a poor replacement for a woman,” Eli kept on.
“But I guess there’s not too many that will still have you.”

Tom smiled, forcing the muscles in his face. Eli
and him on the sidewalk and Tom knowing that if they kept on this way he was
going to hit the man. “Have you seen Edna?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know where she is,” Eli said. “I told Edna
to fire that young deputy two days ago but he’s still around, waiting in the
department office with the DEA agent that came down from Albuquerque today.”

“Who’s that?”

“You know him,” Eli said. “Tollhouse or something?
The same one who came down for your hearing.”

Tom shifted his weight from one foot to the other,
his palms grown sweaty where he clenched them at his sides. “I think I better be
going,” Tom said. He nodded a good-bye to Eli, taking the first couple steps
toward the department doors around the side of the building.

“You know Edna’s not going to need you anymore,”
Eli said, still standing there on the sidewalk, watching Tom until Tom tugged at
Jeanie’s leash a little, urging her on. “This is out of your hands now. The
sooner you and Edna understand that, the better off this town will be. You know
that, right?”

“I’m not much more than a farmer these days,” Tom
said, walking now, not looking back as he made his way toward the basement
offices and whatever he’d find there.

R
ay
leaned his weight onto the shovel and looked in the hole. It was about six feet
in length and three feet in depth. Sweat collected on his brow and then ran the
length of his face, dripping from his chin and speckling the ground. Across the
grave from him, Luis sat with his back to the big oak tree, drinking from a
canteen of water. The wrapped body of Ray’s father lay next to him on the
ground. Farther on, he saw Billy where he sat fifty feet off, resting against a
far oak watching Ray.

“You could have gone with them,” Ray said, looking
across at Luis. “You probably should have.”

“Here,” Luis said, tossing the canteen to Ray.
“Rest a little and let me work.” He lifted himself from the ground and brought
with him a pick that was leaning against the trunk of the oak.

Ray unscrewed the top of the canteen and stood
staring into the darkness within. The feel of water inside the thin metal body,
cold against the sides. For a while now he’d felt life sliding away from him.
His daily routines gone. The guilt risen inside him over what had happened to
Marianne, about what he’d done all those years before, working for Memo and
putting his wife in that position. The pills his only defense against much of
it, the dried look of his wife’s eyes as he’d looked into them for the last
time, always open in his memories of her. Like some part of him that was forever
awake, but would never rise. She was many things to him, but the most she would
now ever be—Ray knew—was a body in a grave only fifty feet away.

In the hole, Luis raised the pick and began to chip
away at the earth, loosening the clay soil. “You didn’t have to stay,” Ray
said.

“I stayed because it’s my place to stay,” Luis
said, pausing in his work. “I saw who did this to him, and I didn’t do a thing
about it. I was scared, and I wanted to do something but I couldn’t.”

“You did nothing wrong, Luis.”

“I did everything wrong,” Luis said. He was looking
up at Ray, and already there was a fresh sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“The ones who did this,” Ray said, “you know them?
You’ll testify against them if it comes to that?”

“I’ve done my part to hurt this town. I’ve drunk
their liquor and paid their way through this town and it’s all led to this.”

“Dario?” Ray said. “The bar in town?”

“You know the one, same place it’s always been.
Everything has changed through the years, and I’ve been too much of a fool to
see it.” Luis raised the pick and brought it down into the earth. He raised it
again and brought it down again, the huff of his breath now heard. “I’ve been
drunk for too many years,” he said. “I should have seen what I was doing. Going
through life with blinders on. Your father saw it. This last year, spending time
with the unions trying to build the town, while I spent my time investing in its
fall. Now the workers are leaving, the wells drying up, while Dario keeps
digging farther in.

“Two nights ago I was sitting in that bar,” Luis
went on. “The place seemed ready to self-destruct—the whole town, like a black
hole opening up to swallow down every street and building. Everyone talking
about how they were going to burn the Tate Bulger wells out. All of it seems so
stupid now, your father dead, and all he’s done to protect this town at an
end.”

Ray watched him where he worked in the grave.
Nearby, under the oak, his father’s body wrapped in a patterned floral
tablecloth of forget-me-nots. The blue coloring of the sheet stained red in
places where the blood came through. “What’s going to happen to Billy?” Ray
asked.

“He’s my responsibility now,” Luis said. “You don’t
have to worry about that. I’ll watch over him most of the time, and Tom will
take him sometimes. It will be just like it’s been.”

“I’m sorry about all this,” Ray said. He didn’t
know what else to say. He knew he couldn’t stay. At one time, only days before,
he’d thought something different, but he knew he’d given that right up and it
wasn’t his place anymore, not at all. “Gus was his real father,” Ray said.

He tried to remember his father the way he used to
be, the way things used to be, before Ray had taken up with Memo. Before the
wells on his father’s property had gone dry and Ray had been forced to leave the
land he worked every day with Luis and his father. “You’ve done nothing wrong,
Luis,” Ray said. “You’re not like me. You’ve got nothing to blame yourself
over.”

Looking up at the sun now slowly beginning to set
beyond the western hills, Ray estimated the time. His father’s body on the
ground next to the grave. Never enough time. Everything running out on him and a
world he’d long since pushed away now collapsing all around him. He tried to
remember how he’d felt all those years before, when life had seemed so figured
out and solid. What had he thought? Who had he been? The image of himself all
those years ago nothing but a paper cutout of a man that seemed to bend now with
the wind.

“Luis,” he said, waiting for his uncle to look up
at him. “I can’t stay around here anymore. I know I should, but there just isn’t
time.”

“I know,” Luis said. He had turned to face Ray,
putting the pick aside and climbing from the hole. “You be careful out there.
Gus would have said the same.” Luis reached a hand out to Ray and waited.
“You’re going to be okay, you know that, right?”

Ray took Luis’s hand. “One way or another I know
that,” Ray said. “I wish I could stay and see this finished.” He let go of his
uncle’s hand and nodded a good-bye, pausing to look to his father there on the
ground, before turning and walking toward the house, the boy watching him
still.

“Tom told me you read lips,” Ray said, stopping for
a moment and waiting for the boy to nod his head. “I’m sorry about Gus. None of
this should have happened and I don’t know if you’ll ever understand quite what
I mean. I don’t expect you to and in some ways I don’t want you to either.” He
stepped a little closer, scrubbing at his face with a single hand. “I’ve never
been a good person. I’m not made for this world, not anymore. You’ll figure that
out someday, like I figured it for myself.” He paused, taking time, but not
really knowing what else to say. Ten years had passed and he’d abandoned the boy
without even a postcard sent in all that.

He took another step and now he was close to the
boy, his son, and he knelt within arm’s reach of the boy and put a hand out to
Billy’s cheek, trying as best he could to make the connection. “I’m sorry,” Ray
said. “I can’t say anything more than that.”

Billy turned and looked away. The brief warm touch
still there on Ray’s hand where his fingers had grazed his son’s cheek.

He was aware that behind him Luis had stopped
working and was listening to everything Ray said. The boy, his son, just sitting
there, looking away from Ray. “I deserve that,” Ray said, “I deserve far worse
and someday I hope it will be better between us.” He had no idea if the boy
understood him. His face turned away as Ray stood, waiting only a moment before
walking away. His feet carrying him toward his father’s house, where he knew
everything inside was just as it had always been.

T
hese
bodies,” Dario said, “you thought I’d know something about them?”

Kelly looked across the bar at the men sitting
opposite. “They seemed like the type of customer that might be in here.”

This made him smile even bigger. “What,” he said,
“Mexicans?”

“Out-of-towners.”

Dario smirked and looked across the bar at the men
on the other side. Medina down the far side of the bar, polishing the same
glasses over and over again.

“You always this busy during the day?” Kelly
asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Around lunch we get a lot of
these guys coming in here.”

“I don’t see much food.”

“We don’t have a lot of customers come in here
looking for food,” Dario said.

“I bet.” She made a quick pass of the room with her
eyes. “What type of customers would you say you get in here?”

“The hardworking American type,” he said.

“I can see that,” she said. “There’s not much to
it. Just you and Medina?”

“It’s usually about all we need.”

“And if you need more?”

“We make do.”

“These men oil workers? They hardworking American
types?”

“After the layoffs they’ve been coming in less and
less, saving their money or heading north for work.”

“Worry you?” Kelly said. “Your business drying
up.”

“There’s always other ways to make a little
extra.”

“Blue-plate specials?”

“There’s always something,” Dario said again.

Kelly finished her soda water. She thought over
what had just been said.

“Would you like another?” Dario asked, motioning to
the empty glass on the bar.

“No,” Kelly said.

Dario held her gaze for a moment. She could tell he
wanted her to say more, to keep talking, but there was nothing left to say. She
got up to go. She could feel the weight of the gun belt around her hips, the
cuffs, the flashlight, the radio. All the various things that made her what she
was. Sheriff, law, protector—though she was starting to think there wasn’t much
point in it. She was standing with a hand on the bar, aware that everyone’s eyes
were on her, almost willing her to leave. “Do you mind if I ask you one more
thing?”

“Go ahead.”

“You heard about the boy in the hospital?”

“I heard about him.”

“Does that seem strange to you? Nothing for years
and then in the same day this boy is murdered, followed that night by three
more?”

“It’s a horrible thing.”

“Yes,” she said. She looked at the empty glass on
the bar, just for something to look at, a distraction from what she really
wanted to ask. “There’s a rumor going around that the boy was related to the
cartel in some way.”

“Is that what you think?”

“The same rumor has been going around about you,”
Kelly said.

Dario smiled. “Cartel.” He blew off the word with a
little passing movement of his hand. “That type of thing is back home in Mexico.
Not here.”

“Back home?”

“Juarez.”

“What did you do before you moved to the
States?”

“I was a police officer.”

Kelly looked at him, trying to decide if he was
being serious.

“Hard to believe?”

“Honestly, yes.”

“It’s the truth,” Dario said. “You can look it
up.”

“Rough town,” Kelly said.

“Very rough. There was a lot of violence. A lot of
murders.”

“Is that why you left?”

“Yes,” he said. “It is very peaceful here.”

“It
was
very peaceful
here,” Kelly corrected.

“Yes,” he said. “You are right. It was.”

She looked at the empty glass again. The men
talking in low, controlled voices, occasionally glancing over at them. Kelly
knew just by standing there she was making them uncomfortable and in the same
moment she wondered if she had pressed her luck coming here.