It wasn ’ t all he wanted to say.
“It ’ s no death wish. I ’ m afraid I ’ ll get hurt, that I won ’ t come back. But I ’ m more afraid of not going.”
She found his strength contagious and she remained infected with it now. “First go and find out what happened to our son, or someone else ’ s. Then come home to me,” she said.
She felt him smile. Her hand slipped into his in the coming dawn. Their hands began a familiar, playful wrestle that was their lost ritual in moments of intimacy. Their thumbs danced together, brushing softly, speaking silently their love.
Behr sat outside in his idling car. He saw a few lights on inside the house piercing the morning semidarkness. He wondered why he was even there, when driving on alone and leaving Paul behind was the smart move. It was out of allegiance, he realized. And then there was the fact that Paul would show up on his own if Behr left him behind. He considered honking the horn despite the hour. All the times he ’ d picked up his employer in the past he ’ d never needed to do that, for Paul would be waiting for him outside or would come out within an instant of his arrival. And of all those times he ’ d only seen Carol pass by a window once or twice. She was either out most of the time or moving about the depths of the house like a spirit.
Today, though, the screen door swung open and she appeared, in the flesh, wearing sweat pants and a faded sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her face was fresh and clean of makeup. She looked both young and ravaged at the same time, and the combination was a beautiful one. He lowered the window as she approached. He half expected to hear that Paul wouldn ’ t be going, that the trip seemed too dangerous, and that he shouldn ’ t come around anymore.
“Come in,” she said, “I ’ m going to cook you two a hot breakfast before you go.”
THIRTY-ONE
They drove toward a horizon of gunmetal blue. As they crossed out of state they passed the custom cutters working their way north on the harvest run. They were out even though it was just past dawn, as there was no dew and the wind was blowing from the south. Formations of combines swept across stands of red clover. In the distance, the massive machines trembled under dust clouds of their own making, as they cut and gathered the standing crop, threshed the seed from the stem, separated the chaff, and spit the stem back to the ground.
The radio was tuned to AM and pulled in a broadcast of a farm report. The familiar cadence brought Behr back to his own youth, to his father ’ s pickup truck as they listened to news that was vitally important to their survival. “Though acres and yield will be down,” the local elevator man informed, “late winter conditions were ideal. Wheat broke winter dormancy and went into its final growth cycle early. Moisture level is fourteen percent now, perfect for a young harvest and a chance to double crop…”
The station didn ’ t last much longer before it lost reception. Paul switched off the radio and they rode in silence, looking out the windows. Cutting was fast work, and before long the fields they passed held only stubble. They continued on over featureless plain under an empty sky.
Behr nearly detoured past Linda ’ s out of habit as he did anytime he drove south. It was an automatic response whenever he was near Vallonia. There had long been an ache inside him, a throbbing sense of emptiness in the place she used to fill, like the phantom pain people claimed after they ’ d lost a limb to amputation. It was a feeling he took for granted for many years, and he had developed an almost perverse familiarity with it. But as they blazed past the exit he would ’ ve taken to get to her, the ache was only a brief, reflexive thought that didn ’ t occupy nearly the amount of space as his thoughts of Susan. As they drove on, though, she, too, was pulled from his mind, replaced by speculation on what they would find and face in Ciudad del Sol and of what he ’ d packed in the trunk under a piece of carpet in the large spare tire well.
The sun was high in the sky and sliced through the windshield like an acetylene torch when they crossed into Missouri, and almost by force of momentum they started talking.
“What went down between you and Captain Pomeroy?” Paul asked.
Behr drove for another mile or so looking for a comfortable way to rest his injured arm while he considered how best to answer.
“When you ’ re a cop,” he began, easing the car around a road-killed possum drying in the sun, “the city you work in becomes your city. It ’ s your concern. You give yourself to it. Accidents. Emergencies. Fires. Riots. Shootings. Whatever. If it happens, you show up, whether you ’ re on duty or not, even after you retire. And you expect something back for that. Something small. You expect to belong to it as much as it belongs to you.” Behr told Paul about the relationship between his partner and Pomeroy, the shooting, the grudge. “The way he ran me,” Behr finished, “Pomeroy took that belonging away from me.”
They filled up in Sikeston and Behr stayed behind the wheel. They approached the next topic like swimmers entering an extremely cold mountain lake.
“He was full of contradictions, Jamie was,” Paul said. “Shy, but also self-possessed. It would take him a minute when he walked into a new situation, the first day of school, or a kid ’ s birthday party, or whatever. He ’ d just take it in quietly, start figuring out his place there. Before long he ’ d start picking up volume and speed. Then he ’ d become himself again, like he was at home, running around, laughing, and talking…” He taperedoff, not used to the subject despite it all. As much as they discussed the details of the case, Paul had never ventured to discuss personal memories with Behr. But the man ’ s simple recollections pushed him to his own.
“Tim was laughing all the time. He was a big boy.”
“Not a surprise.”
“A bruiser. A lineman in a diaper even when he was a baby. The world seemed to bounce off him. He broke everything in the house at least once.” Behr smiled and grimaced as the humor still carried an edge of pain.
“How come you didn ’ t have more?” Paul asked.
“Couldn ’ t. Linda, my ex-wife, had complications with Tim. You?”
“Should ’ ve. Thought we would. But as the years went by with Jamie we just seemed…complete.”
They had waded in ankle-deep, the water ’ s temperature seizing their breath and discouraging them from going further. But they braced and continued.
“I know…” Paul began, and then adjusted his words. “I mean I try and tell myself…that every minute with him was a gift to be appreciated. I keep waiting for the sense of failure to lift so I can do it that way.”
It was a partial question and Behr ’ s answer was wordless, a shift of body, a sound related to a sigh from which only an unfortunate few could draw meaning. Silence reigned for another sixty miles. The dark greens of the blooming deciduous trees gave way to a more faded landscape of pale yellow and sage.
“I wish I would ’ ve just been happier every day, with my wife and son, back when I had everything,” Behr said as they passed by a sign advertising the turnoff to Jesse James ’ s birthplace several miles ahead. “I found myself always looking forward to another time, though, to a vacation or a promotion or the summer, when things were gonna be perfect. I didn ’ t realize it was already those times every morning or at the end of the day, depending on the shift I worked. And during the Little League games…the shit he ’ d come home from school having learned — ”
“From his friends, not in class — ”
“Exactly.” Both men ’ s smiles slid away.
Paul ’ s head nodded slowly, as if the inside of the car was a space capsule at zero gravity. “Luck always seems like it belongs to someone else,” he said. He thought of the breakfast before they ’ d left. Carol had cooked the bacon and eggs just right and the coffee had been the proper strength. Though there had been little talk, it had been abidingly pleasant between the three of them, as it might ’ ve been if he and Behr were setting off for a day of fishing and not into the unknown. He ’ d once heard an idea that at the end, one didn ’ t remember life as a whole but as just a string of moments. If that was the case, then that morning ’ s breakfast was one of them.
“All we have are moments,” Paul said aloud, as if Behr were privy to his thoughts.
“Yeah,” Behr agreed, sounding complete in his understanding.
They drove through the night, a blanket of blackness pierced only by the headlights of big rigs and the bright gas station signs along the highway, as Arkansas and Texas passed beneath their wheels. They pulled off the interstate to buy chips and sodas and to switch drivers, but didn ’ t stop for the night. The distance was twelve
