FOURTEEN
Max was not a man to cling to a mood, Sabrina had to give him that, and breakfast always seemed to make him positively sprightly. Her storied father had been a spiky bundle of negativity in the morning. Set your juice glass down too hard on the kitchen table and he’d reach across and give you a swipe on the ear. All you usually saw of him were his hands gripping the newspaper, which he snapped and rattled as if it were responsible for the outrages it reported. His moods made mornings a time of trepidation for Sabrina and her mother, and she realized now, sitting in the sunny nook of the Rocket, that they coloured her perception of breakfast to this day.
Max was humming and whistling in the galley, fixing coffee and poached eggs. He commented, cajoled and exclaimed over his cooking in several different accents. Just in the course of cracking eggs he went through Scottish, Irish, Indian and a Southern black bluesman accent that made Sabrina laugh in spite of herself.
“You’re a one-man United Nations,” she said. “Doesn’t it get crowded in there?”
“Desperately, my dear, desperately,” he said, setting a plate in front of her. “Eat ’em while they’re hot.”
“These are great,” she said, sprinkling salt and pepper on two perfect eggs. “I never actually ate poached eggs before. It must be an English thing.”
“One of the many amenities we gave to the world, along with Shakespeare, Sir Larry and the Beatles.”
“Don’t forget slavery,” Owen put in.
“Slavery existed long before the British Empire, boy.”
“Not in this country.”
“Please. No politics at breakfast.”
Owen switched on the television at low volume, flipping channels until he found a local news show,
The male half of the show went solemn at the next item. “A dinner party ended in bloodshed last night as two armed men robbed and terrorized guests at the home of Bradford and Cassandra Blake. Tork Williams is live at the scene.”
A shot of the Blake residence showed crime scene tape and forensic officers coming and going. The reporter breathlessly recounted how the two men had interrupted the dinner and robbed the guests of cash and jewellery that “could be” worth up to half a million dollars.
“Local businessman Reeve Chandler was shot as he tried to stop the men. He was taken to County General, where he’s in critical condition with gunshot wounds to the chest and abdomen.”
Sabrina didn’t like morning television, but Owen seemed riveted. Even Max had gone still to look at the screen.
“A security camera got a shot of the two men as they made their getaway out the front door. One of them is an older man-described as an Australian with a shaved head. The other is late teens/early twenties with dark hair and long sideburns.”
The screen showed low-definition, jerky shots of the two making for the door, looking back over their shoulders. Their panic was obvious, the bald man with the gun still in his hand stopping at the door to turn around and brandish it again at the people they had robbed.
Max sat down and shook pepper all over his eggs, then let fly with a mighty sneeze. “Navigator,” he said to Owen, between blowing his nose and wiping his eyes, “what’s our heading?”
They set out east on US 80, straight into the morning sun. Sabrina sat behind Max and Owen, listening to Feist on her iPod. Her T-shirt and jeans were feeling a little lived-in, but there had been no question of going back to the hotel to retrieve her luggage, not with Bill parked in the lobby.
They passed a sign announcing Bisbee.
“How now, good Bisbee, what news?” Max said. “Owen, instruct us in the lore of Bisbee. How came it hither and wherefore.”
Owen pulled out a Blue Guide and flipped through it. “Used to be a big silver mining place,” he said. “Copper, too. Home of the famous Queen Mine and the Lavender Open Pit. In July 1917, a thousand striking miners were rounded up and hauled out of the state and dumped in the New Mexico desert.”
“Respect for the working man,” Max said, “is what made this country great.”
The Rocket creaked and rattled along at a stately pace, Max tapping out rhythms on the steering wheel to music only he could hear. Owen turned a couple of times to look back at Sabrina and give her a small smile. He was cute, she had to admit. His uncle was peculiar, but Owen seemed much more solid than most guys his age, despite an upbringing that had to have been at least as unconventional as her own.
They passed Douglas, and continued through the Pedrogosa Mountains. Not that they looked much different than all the other mountains in Arizona-scrubby, with rounded tops, more like big hills than what she thought of as mountains. The light turned purple in the long shadows they cast, and there was something unsettling about them.
“The Chiricahua Apaches used to hide out in those hills,” Owen told them. “Outlaws, too.”
“Outlaws like who?” Sabrina said.
She wanted to hear Owen talk more. She liked his voice, and the way he was interested in different places and things. But he just shrugged and said, “Billy the Kid.”
To pass the time, Sabrina tried to read some of
Here and there US 80 offered a few miles of ragged asphalt, some abandoned buildings and more tumbleweed than anyone needed to see. They listened to country music on the radio and didn’t talk much. Sabrina had never been on any road trips that took longer than a day. It was strange how you settled back into a reflective state. The washed-out glare of the sun, the procession of hills and cactus, the odd herd of goats, took on a gauzy unreality, totally disconnected from the air-conditioned interior of the Rocket.
“We have reached the City of God,” Max said during one of the better stretches. “Somehow I didn’t expect to find it in New Mexico, U.S.A.”
He was referring to Lordsburg, which he slowed to cruise through. The place looked flat and insubstantial. Everything about it said “mining town of the 1880s” or thereabouts. The sun hammered down on the empty streets. The only thing moving was a ratty-looking yellow dog that trotted along with a self-important gait as if late for a meeting.
“Looks like no one’s left in Lordsburg,” Owen said. “Including the Lord.”
“I hope that dog’s all right,” Sabrina said.
“That dog
There was a brief flurry of excitement when Max saw a sign for Shakespeare.
“The Swan of Stratford lives! And who would have suspected it would be in the desert?”
“Relax, Max. It’s just a ghost town.”
“All the better. Hamlet, Banquo, Pompei? Will adored ghosts! An obvious must-see.”
Owen waved the guidebook at him. “It’s got nothing to do with Shakespeare. It was a silver mining place that went out of business. It’s privately owned, and it’s only open for tours on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
But Max would not be dissuaded. So they drove along miles of dusty highway until they came to the gate that contained the same information Owen had already reported.
“Bugger,” Max said.
Beyond the gate they could see the main street, the low storefronts and what looked like an old hotel.
“Billy the Kid worked in that hotel,” Owen said. “But he didn’t enjoy washing dishes, so he turned to a life of
