“I reckon they found us,” Pete said.

Danny Boy pulled back onto the road, his shirt open on his leathery chest, his neck beaded with dirt rings. “Maybe this ain’t the best place for y’all.”

“We don’t have any other place to go,” Pete said.

“If it was me, I’d get on a freight and go to Canada and follow the harvest, maybe. A cook on them crews can make good money. I’d find a place that ain’t been ruined and settle down.”

Pete stuck his arm out the window, turning his palm into the airflow so it would vane up his arm and inside his shirt. “We’re working on it,” he said.

“Them people you got mixed up with? They’re out there.”

“Which people? Out where?” Vikki asked.

“They’re out there at night. They come up the arroyos. They ain’t wets, either. They go past my place. I see them in the field.”

“Those are harmless farmworkers,” Pete said.

“No, they ain’t. See the sky. We had one night of hard rain, the way it used to be. But we didn’t get no more. Them rain gods were giving us a chance. But they ain’t coming back while all these drug dealers and killers are here. There’s a hole in the earth, and down inside it is the place where all the corn came from. That’s where all power comes from. Don’t nobody know where the hole is anymore.”

Vikki looked sideways at Pete.

“Tell her,” Danny Boy said.

“Tell her what?”

“That I ain’t drunk.”

“She knows that. Danny Boy is okay, Vikki.” Pete gazed out the window, the wind climbing up his bare arm, puffing inside his shirt. “That’s Ouzel Flagler’s place. I wish I hadn’t been there when some bad hombres came in.”

“That’s where you met them guys?”

“Probably. I’m not sure. I was in a blackout most of the day. I know I bought mescal from Ouzel that day. Ouzel’s mescal always leaves its mark, like an earth grader has rolled over your head.”

Ouzel Flagler’s brick bungalow, cracked down the middle, with a plank bar built on one side of the house, was veiled briefly by a cloud of dust blowing off the hardpan, balls of tumbleweed skipping across its roof. Under a white sun, amid the tangled wire and all the rusted construction equipment Ouzel had hauled onto his property, a cluster of rheumy-eyed longhorns was standing by a recessed pool of rainwater, the sides of the depression strung with green feces.

“Don’t look at it,” Vikki said.

“At what?”

“That place. It’s not part of your life anymore.”

“What I did that night is on me, not on Ouzel.”

“Will you stop talking about it, Pete? Will you just stop talking about it?”

“I got to get gas up yonder,” Danny Boy said.

“No, not here,” Vikki said.

Danny Boy looked at her, his eyes sleepy, the muscles in his face flaccid. “The needle is below the E. It’s three miles to the next station.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you were out of gas when we got in?” she said.

Danny Boy shifted down and angled the truck off the road into the filling station, steering with his hands in the ten-two position, bent slightly forward like a student driver beginning his first solo, his face impassive. “You can walk across the highway and maybe catch a ride while I’m inside,” he said. “I got to use the restroom. I forgot to tell you about that when you got in, even though it’s my truck. If you don’t have a ride by the time I leave, I’ll pick y’all up again.”

“We’ll wait in the truck. I’m sorry,” Vikki said.

Danny Boy went inside the station and paid for ten dollars’ gas in advance.

“Why were you getting on his case?” Pete said.

“Ouzel Flagler’s brother owns this station.”

“Who cares?”

“Pete, you never learn. You just never learn.”

“Learn what? About Ouzel? He has Buerger’s disease. He’s a sad person. He sells a little mescal. What’s the big deal? You stood up to that killer. I’m really proud of you. We don’t have to be afraid anymore.”

“Please shut up. For God’s sake, for once just shut up.” She blotted the humidity out of her eyes with a Kleenex and stared at the highway winding into the sun’s white brilliance. The terrain, untouched by shade or shadows, glaring and coarse and rock-strewn, made her think of a dry seabed and huge anthills or a planet that had already gone dead.

Danny Boy pulled the gas spigot out of the tank and clanked it back into place on the pump, then used the outside washroom and climbed back into the cab, his face still wet from a rinse in the lavatory. “On a day like this, ain’t nothing like cold water,” he said.

None of them took note of the man on the other side of the black glare on the filling station window. He had just come out of the back of the store and was drinking a soda, upending it, his neck swollen by a chain of tumors. His head seemed recessed into his shoulders, reminiscent of a perched carrion bird’s. He finished his soda, dropped the can into the wastebasket, and seemed to think for a long time. Then he picked up the telephone.

23

PETE AND VIKKI had climbed down from Danny Boy Lorca’s truck cab, retrieved a duffel bag and guitar case from the truck bed, and entered the building dehydrated, sunburned, and windblown with road grit. Their clothes stiff with salt, they sat down in front of Hackberry’s desk as though his air-conditioned office were the end of a long journey out of the Sahara. They told him of their encounter with Preacher Jack Collins and Bobby Lee and the man named T-Bone and the fact that Collins had let them go.

“We got on the bus early this morning, but it broke down after twenty miles. So we hitchhiked,” Pete said.

“Collins just cut you loose? He didn’t harm you in any way?” Hackberry let his gaze linger on Vikki Gaddis.

“It happened just like we told you,” Vikki said.

“Where do you think Collins went?” Hackberry asked.

“Collins is y’all’s business now. Tell us what you want us to do,” Pete said.

“I haven’t quite thought it through,” Hackberry said.

“Repeat that, please?” Vikki said.

“I’ve got two empty cells. Go up the iron stairs in back and check them out.”

“You’re offering us jail cells?” she said.

“The doors would stay unlocked. You can come and go as you like.”

“I don’t believe this,” she said.

“You can use the restroom and the shower down here,” Hackberry said.

“Pete, would you say something?” Vikki said.

“Maybe it’s not a bad idea,” he replied.

Pam Tibbs came into the office and leaned against the doorjamb. “I’ll go with you, honey.”

“With luck, we can probably find an iron staircase by ourselves,” Vikki said. “Excuse me, I forgot to call you ‘honey.’”

“Suit yourself, ma’am,” Pam said. She waited until they were out of earshot before she spoke again. “How do you read all that stuff about Collins and Bobby Lee Motree and this character T-Bone?”

“Who knows? Collins probably has psychotic episodes.”

“Vikki Gaddis has a mouth on her, doesn’t she?”

“They’re just kids,” Hackberry said.

“That doesn’t mean you should put your ass in a sling for them.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Maydeen Stoltz walked into the room. “Ethan Riser is on the phone. Want me to take a message?”

“Where’s he calling from?” Hackberry asked.

“He didn’t say.”

“Ask him if he’s in town.”

“Like that? ‘Are you in town?’”

“Yeah, tell him I want to ask him to dinner. Would you please do it, Maydeen?”

She went back into the dispatcher’s office, then returned. “He’s in San Antonio.”

“Put him through.”

“I’m going to get a job on a spaceship,” she said.

A moment later, the light on Hackberry’s desk phone went on, and he picked up the receiver. “Hey, Ethan. How are you?”

“You called me by my first name.”

“I’m trying to get a perspective on a couple of things. Is there any development with Nick Dolan’s situation?”