Gabe threaded his way through the narrow parting in the brush with the windows down. The only sound to denote his low-gear crawl back out to the highway was the undulating grumble of the four cylinder. He often imagined what he might look like to a spectator high above the dry earth—perhaps a passenger on a departing redeye flight: two dots of light, red and white, a tiny glowing insect roving through the empty vastness of the desert.
Much to Eddie's annoyance, Dan and Whitey had loaded the car early, during the meeting inside the trailer. The clock in the dash now read twelve-thirty. Gabe had passed out of the checkpoint more than a mile ago. He was ahead of schedule, so he picked his way off the road into a clearing in the brush. He shut off the engine and climbed onto the roof, listening as coyotes made themselves known from scattered, far-off ridges.
There was an unsettling presence that resided in the night air of the desert. Some in the area believed this presence took on a physical form known as the Willow Man, whose apparition was alleged to be the most horrific of potential ends. Pray you will never come to see it, warned his shriveled and elderly neighbor. (Anyone who had been around as long as Mrs. McAllister had would know.) Pray you will never see the way he dances before you, jangling his bony, sinewy appendages, wearing his lipless smile. Avert your gaze from the empty sockets where his eyes should be. They are bottomless voids, like black holes, and with the very same will to consume. Only a strange blue light flickers dimly, she told him, deep within those eyes.
Most believers also claimed that the threat of the Willow Man depends absolutely on one's own fear of him. Gabe had no cause for alarm. He was not afraid. If the car's engine had shut off on its own, if a sickening form had clattered in on moonlit, spindly limbs and pinned him against the base of a saguaro, perhaps Gabe would have been able to meet his father again, in whatever place he had gone to, which did not sound like a bad fate.
A brief, hot wind arrived at his face, swept up out of a large basin to the east. A supernatural hum flowed within it, metallic taste lingering on his lips. But he was alone in the desert tonight. He knew that. He was alone here with the coyotes, and the scorpions, and the beetles creaking in the bushes.
His mother's western name was Bonnie. She spent the first sixteen years of her life in Vietnam, where, Gabe was certain, she had known few men of much integrity. Her father was a man of none. Bonnie's mother passed away when Bonnie was seven years old. Her death had been a suspicious one, though no investigation ever took place. Bonnie managed to run away from her father's home three times in adolescence, and each time was forcibly returned to him. She finally escaped pregnant and alone by way of a small, severely overcrowded vessel, on which she miscarried her child and nearly lost her own life before finally reaching asylum in Hong Kong. By the time she reached California, it was 1979 and she was eighteen. She worked as a maid in a large hotel by day and took classes for english at night, where she met Marco, forming a fast bond with him as they shared their histories. His interest in her was an eager, flattering one, and it was also respectful—the first of its kind she had ever known. They were married three months later, and around that same time, she became pregnant again.
Gabe could recall evidence of his mother's profound sadness from an early age, though she managed to keep its effects away from him until he grew older. Gabe's father never wavered in his dedication to her, offering an endless supply of strength and optimism. In turn, Gabe knew, his mother felt a deep gratitude and love for her husband.
He hoped she had made it to bed already, and he hoped that she was sober. Increasingly in the year since his father had departed, most of her went away to be with him. Always, as she returned to her senses, grief welled inside her and spilled over, flowing from room to room. When he was at home with her he waded through it, level still rising by the day.
The trunk of the car was loaded up once again, pregnant with fresh product. Just below him lay goods worth a total dollar sum he chose not to estimate. It was far better not to think about it. One thing he could be sure of was that he would soon receive a better car for the job. The car was nothing at all, an afterthought: For centuries, ships had borne unspeakable treasures across the sea, worth ten times—one thousand times—their own weight in scrap wood and metal. This was the same.
Gabe remembered distinctly how exciting it felt the first night he had done the run alone, just two weeks after his father died. It was irrefutable proof, for the first time in his life, that he was truly trusted. He had earned the confidence not only of his father, but now also Eddie, the alluring enigma, his new mentor. The two had privately convened and agreed that Gabe was capable enough to successfully convey something that was not his, something of tremendous value. It was a source of stress for Gabe, but also of genuine power. He longed for this powerful feeling when squeezed in the grips of the off-hours, cooking, or cleaning, or rising late in the hot morning to the wailing of his mother through a gap in the balcony door.
;-;
Half an hour later he was on the highway, fast approaching the edge of town. Because much of the land to the east was part of the reservation, the city began suddenly: massive blocks of suburban housing, mountainous Eastbrook Mall, the park-and-ride (where he would later return the car) and Sunbird Boulevard, building toward its ten-lane glory, split down the center by the dormant, gleaming tracks of the Orange Line.
By now, Gabe's route had become well-worn; shredded semi truck tires and battered mileposts greeted him like old friends. Along it, nearly everyone slept, as they did in uptown, and in the two other boroughs that slammed against the shores of the Paiute Freeway. He entered the freeway now via onramp, northwest-bound, proceeding quickly through the gears, setting cruise control at seventy miles per hour. He thought of Otero's earlier revelation that some of the officers were on his side. It rattled him still—though it should not have. The days of Gabe's innocence, of his belief in the sanctity of any organized group, including the Las Sombras Police Department, were long behind him. He wondered now how far this collusion reached, whether it included officers who trailed their long fingers through the endless trenches of downtown, or even farther south, in the mix of decay and rebirth that was old town. Could it even have sullied the royal-blue-uniformed men in the heart of the mild southern boroughs, where his mother had now surely gone to sleep?
Warm night air spiraled all around him in confused, manic gusts, whipping his black hair in and out of his vision and waking a carpet of dust from the dashboard. He slowed the car, exited and then flew west over the freeway via elevated connector onto the Odinberg Expressway, straight toward the ocean. Odinberg was the last urban borough before the city fell away once again to the northern suburbs. It was one of the largest by population, boasting its own police force. Eddie had relatives through marriage who lived here, and he insisted it was every bit as vanilla as the sprawling suburb he, Lydia and the kids called home. Tall buildings, narrow alleyways, a million places one could hide, sure, but what had he called it? A bedroom borough—that was it. Nothing ever happened in Odinberg, which was exactly why a storage location had been chosen within its bounds.
Gabe arrived at the warehouse once again, in the heart of a sleepy marine shop district, just a few blocks from the water. He believed that Miguel did not live far away from it, because one time (and only one time) Miguel himself was late to unlock and raise the overhead door which barricaded the narrow, deep garage. As the car had idled with Gabe waiting nervously at its helm, Miguel had come running from the direction of an adjacent neighborhood, breathing hard, beads of sweat forming on his brow. His dark brown hair shed a drop or two, not of sweat, Gabe had realized, but of water, and he bore the mildly soapy scent of a recent shower.
Even then, hardly a word had been shared between them. As with nearly everyone else Gabe had encountered since beginning work in the trade, Miguel's outside life was a mystery. But Miguel managed to bolster his own enigma somehow. He spoke less, far less, Gabe noticed, and more softly than any of the others. His expression changed little, shifting itself along a narrower spectrum than Gabe observed in the others. Compared to the likes of Whitey, Miguel was a stone. Maybe it was how exchanges were meant to occur at the warehouse (Gabe had been mirroring Miguel's behavior in case this was true), or maybe it resulted from nuances in Miguel's personality which were unknown to Gabe.
Whatever the case, mystery had slowly turned into mystique, and at times, Gabe found himself drawn to Miguel. This feeling was confusing and whenever it came crawling in, he would once again cast it out, banish it. It had not yet formed into any kind of recognizable shape and he would not let it; at the very least, it threatened to puncture a hole in the sterile dome he had constructed over his deliveries. And beyond that? He didn't know. He wouldn't think about it, wouldn't let it come to that.
Gabe snapped the car into reverse and white light leapt into corners of the garage. As he backed through its mouth, Miguel stood by, hands in his pockets, staring blankly out into the night. Gabe backed in completely and then Miguel turned, regarded the car and raised a clenched fist. Gabe shut off the engine and lights.
Miguel was silhouetted before him now against the lamplit street. He was a couple inches taller than Gabe, his muscles larger and cultivated. He chinned-up to the lip of the garage door, feet leaving the ground briefly as he pulled with his entire weight. It ground noisily downward and then everything went dark. He continued his routine in the pitch black, the noises as dependable as recorded sound: footsteps leading to the right, the metallic shriek of the first locking pin being kicked into place, footsteps from right to left, a second shriek.
The lights flickered on and began their murky, fluttering sequence. In a few minutes, they shone bright. Miguel had moved a few of the larger packages out of the trunk and sorted them in the stacks; presently he returned and Gabe felt the car sway a bit as he shifted things around in the trunk.
From out of nowhere came a voice, muffled but audible: "You're allowed to get out of the car, you know."
No one else was around to speak but Miguel. It had indeed been his voice, and he was apparently capable of stringing many words together. There had been so many nights already, just the two of them, and yet Gabe had never noticed. Incredible. But had Miguel ever spoken Spanish to him before? He wasn't sure; Miguel had hardly ever spoken at all. Gabe twisted around in his seat, but the open trunk lid blocked his view of Miguel entirely. Did this sudden outburst call for some kind of response? For how many nights had Miguel thought to say something, but remained silent? Had there been two hundred deliveries already? Jesus, he thought, it was probably closer to three hundred.
In English (the only person he ever spoke Spanish to was his father), Gabe said, "I don't think so. I'm not allowed out at the camp except for special occasions."
The shuffling in the trunk stopped. "Well, we're not at the camp, are we?" His strange Spanish was singed, Gabe guessed, by the flames of Rioplatense.
Gabe waited and soon Miguel started moving again. What the hell was going on? Apparently the floodgates were open now. Again in English: "No, we're not."
"What's wrong with your Spanish? Can't you speak it?"
Gabe switched over. "Nothing. What's wrong with yours?"
"Nothing," came Miguel's voice. "My father is from Argentina. We used to live there."
"Oh." Then Gabe had heard right. "How long ago?"
Silence for a few seconds. "Eight years."
"Are you a US citizen?"
"Yes. I was born here. You?"
"Of course."
Gabe checked the dashboard clock. Still on schedule. "What about your mother? Where is she from?"
"She's from here. But most of her family is back in Mexico." Miguel didn't say anything else for a little while, just kept working away. But then Gabe heard a sigh. "What I mean is, you won't burn your eyes out by seeing what goes on."
"I know."
Miguel continued to work. Steadily, almost unthinkingly (if Gabe thought about it any longer he would have talked himself out of it), he stood up out of the car, shut the door and leaned against it, facing the wall. He looked over his shoulder at Miguel, who, in a flash, glanced up at him and then away, muttering, "Thought you would be taller."
Gabe looked back at the wall. He listened as Miguel kept working. He turned around and pressed his stomach against the side of the car. "I'm not really supposed to be a part of the package-handling stuff."
Miguel studied what was left in the trunk. "I know that."
"This early in the game, they don't want me involved, besides just transporting it. Once I get more familiar, take on more responsibility, all that, I'm sure they'll let me do more."
"All right."
Gabe waited, but Miguel said nothing more. "I'm going to get back in the car now."
"All right."
And just like that, the conversation halted. Gabe sank down into the car, and Miguel, quickly as he had emerged, withdrew back into himself. At most, one or two words (perhaps only nods) were exchanged before Gabe idled out of the garage and into the night, and Miguel dragged down the overhead door, disappearing into the black.
;-;