Monday December 27th, 6:05 pm
The harsh prairie seemed to begrudge the two lanes of cracked asphalt snaking north out of Amoret, rejecting them like unmatched organs. My tires skipped in the pavement’s buckles, and sandblasted grit had faded patches of the solid yellow stripes into dots and dashes, decrepit Morse code for, “This land owes you nothing.”
Twelve miles out from the city limits I saw my landmark, a pony truss bridge straddling a dry creek where two coyotes were feverishly working over fresh roadkill in their own race against the weather. As the spooked varmints grudgingly loped a short distance away, far enough but not too far, I checked the temperature. An electric blue “38.0 F” glowed back at me from my rearview alongside a cheery snowflake icon, a drop of twenty degrees in as many minutes.
A quarter mile past the bridge I came upon a pipe-rail gate just off the gravel apron’s declivity. A diamond-shaped sign warned potential troublemakers there was No Trespassing, and in case they still didn’t get the message a second announced We Don’t Call 911 with a picture of a pistol. The first pellets of sleet started, like finger taps on the crown of my head as I spun in the padlock’s combination and unwound the heavy chain with a hollow rattle. Then it was across the cattle guard with a thrum, the brief vibration making my bladder yawp in protest. I thought about pulling over to pee, but the spattering of sleet on the windshield picked up so I figured to wait until I got to the cabin where even though I’d still be using an outhouse— the place had neither running water nor power— at least I’d be out of the elements while I piddled. The ice pellets dappled my view of the rutted dirt road and cast the horizon’s shale cliffs in a liminal haze, as though they were a smudged pencil sketch.
The rental car bounced past stands of juniper trees bending and righting themselves in the gusts, and through a yucca field that from a distance looked like green sea urchins scattered across the sand of the ocean floor. In better weather, I’d seen prairie dogs dart among the rosettes of sword-shaped leaves. By and by I came upon a low limestone ridge cleaved in two by the dirt road, like a gate in a caste wall. The short draw funneled the wind, rocking the compact car with a low-pitched whistle and wobbling my high beams as they probed the heavy gray air, illuminating the wet pellets like stage lights.
I couldn’t help but start to feel excited at the prospect of finally getting the manuscript. The remoteness helped build the sense of anticipation, the journey to the cabin feeling like a metaphor. I was in the midst of a train of thought about possible cover concepts when my headlights finally washed across the one-room cabin, bringing it to life. Low-walled and rugged, the squat building was originally constructed as a school house, a fact that seemed hard to believe given its modern isolation in that harsh stretch of west Texas desert. Twelve miles from Amoret in space and a century back in time, the cabin had scraped a bare space for itself, elbowing aside the creosote that smelled like pitch after a rain and the spiny ocotillo scrub dotting this stretch of bench land to lay claim to this fragment of prairie where it could burrow in and put down roots to keep from blowing away in the caldera’s winds.
My headlights’ glare put the small cottage on stage, separating the structure from the monochromatic gray world surrounding it. In my haste, I left the motor running as I hobbled toward the outhouse past the windmill that supplied the cabin’s water. Its blades whirred madly with the cold front’s gusts, squeaking like a dog toy as its pump sucked hard on the aquifer.
The privy door was stuck. I danced a jig as I pawed at it with my casted hand while I fumbled at my belt with the other, cursing until the door creaked open, then yanked my pants down and without modesty plunked down on the hole’s thick styrofoam ring amid the popcorn sound of sleet pelting the outhouse’s corrugated tin roof. After my initial groan of relief, my gaze drifted through the open door toward a pumpjack that bobbed away a stone’s throw behind the cabin. As a child would bedazzle a hobby horse, someone had festooned its hammer-shaped head with white Christmas lights, a festive touch that contrasted with the functional thrum of its piston and the whine of its gears.
I hustled past the windmill’s sheet metal trough and back to my car, shoulders hunched as the frozen rain pelted me. I leaned in to grab that month’s white paper pharmacy bag off the passenger seat and stuck it in my coat pocket, then turned off the headlights. I was just about to kill the engine when I paused.
Something wasn’t right.
In the ash-gray light the cabin seemed to have transformed, had turned— I don’t know, sinister. It seemed to skulk. It beckoned to me, but like a stranger inviting a child into his car with the promise of candy. Disquiet gnawed at me, and I could feel goose bumps prickling my arm.
Jesus, girl. Get a grip. But I couldn’t shake that feeling of unease. I continued to stare at the building, trying to suss out the reason for my discomfort. Like it or not, a primal vestige had grabbed me by the shoulders and shaken me, screaming in my face that something was wrong.
At first glance, the only difference I could see from my past visits was the jackrabbit hanging by its heels from a short piece of paracord on the porch, the product of a successful hunt. Then it came to me. The chimney. There was no smoke. Rulo never let the fire go out. Ever. The cabin had no other source of heat, and I remembered the eighty-year-old chimney didn’t have a damper, so if the fire went out, the cabin was effectively left with a ceiling hole straight into the cold desert air.
As I ruminated on that, I noticed something else. Of the four walls, the brick fireplace took up most of one. The three remaining walls each had a single inset window covered by spruce wood shutters that at the moment were battened shut. These were the only sources of natural light, so I’d have expected to see the shutter edges outlined by thin slivers of an interior glow from Rulo’s Coleman lanterns. I could see no such illumination now, though.
He knew I was coming. Did that son of a bitch leave without telling me?
When I limped to the door, I was already planning my next step in case he wasn’t inside. Acts of inconsideration like this usually occurred when he was drunk, so as much as I hated to think it, despite his progress in working the AA program over the last few months, odds were he was cooling his heels in the Amoret drunk tank. Rulo’d described his recent sobriety to me as “driving on an icy road,” so as I gave the knob a twist I decided the sheriff’s office would be my first phone call.
The door didn’t budge. Locked. Goddamnit.
I remembered from past visits it stuck at times. My bare skin burned from the brass knob’s cold metal and I pushed the heavy oak door with my shoulder as hard as I dared without snapping my delicate shoulder girdle. The door still refused me.
I banged with my fist, already breaking my new resolution as I yelled, “Rulo! It’s Abby! Open the door fuckhead, it’s freezing out here!” No response. The door had a single pane of inset glass, but all I could see was my reflection, another frustrated me looking back. I cupped my hands against the small window and peered inside. The glass was cold to my touch, but I still saw only darkness.
I slapped my palm against the heavy door. Why? Why bug out when he knew I was coming? I’d told him delivering the last novel on his three book contract was important, I’d stressed that to him a hundred times. Had he finally had his fill of the isolation? Had he made his way to town and gone on a bender? I could see him just never bothering to come back, preferring instead to go off on one of his peripatetic “adventures,” floating down life’s river to see where it would take him, consequences and responsibilities be damned.
I sighed. Deep down I knew, this was just the price of doing business with genius. You had to hold him like a dandelion, shielding him lest any breeze take him away.
I paced back and forth on the porch, blowing in my hands and rubbing them together to keep warm. I noticed the hanging rabbit smelled, and looking closer maggots squirmed around its eyes and in the ragged bullet hole in its flank. It’d been dead a while, at least a few days. Now why would he shoot a rabbit for supper, then bolt before eating it?
It occurred to me this might be good news. In a celebratory mood, I could see him dropping everything and heading out. Could this have been his response to completing the novel? That thought lifted my spirits. Maybe there was a silver lining here after all, that after three months in this retreat to the hinterlands he’d finished what he came to do. In fact, knowing Rulo it wasn’t out of the question he saw this as the most efficient way to deliver the finished draft of the third novel to me, just leaving it on the table knowing I was coming.
I needed to get inside to at least check and see if the completed manuscript was there waiting for me.
I had no cell signal, nor did I have a key, but the dirt road continued past the cabin for another half mile before terminating at the land owner’s homestead. In dry weather, if the wind blew right it carried the sound and smell of his goat pen all the way to the porch where I stood. The rental listing said the land had been bought by the present owner’s family sometime around the Eisenhower administration, and now they mostly rented the cabin to pronghorn hunters.
I had just climbed in my car to drive up when I heard the sound of a big vehicle approaching. A tawny Silverado blew by, heading in that same direction, the driver raising two fingers off the steering wheel in a quick greeting. I nosed in behind and followed for the short drive to the main house.
In his driveway, the crew-cutted driver got out and stood with his hands stuffed in his insulated Carhartt, squinting against the cold as he watched me pull in behind.
“Hallefuckinlujah,” I said as I raised my hands in a pantomime of a revival. “Your timing’s perfect.”
He smiled pleasantly, not seeming put off by my profanity. “Afternoon, ma’am. Everythin’ okay?”
I gave him my most disarming smile and stuck out my hand. “Not sure. Hi, my name’s Abby Huxford.”
He took it and smiled. “Pleasure. Owen, Owen Fisher.” Looking as though he was searching his mental Rolodex, he said, “You the lady who set the rental up a while back?Glad I can put a face to the name now.”
“Yep, that’s me. I’m looking to see if Rulo’s finished the book he came out here to write.”
The tips of the landowner’s nose and ears were turning red and he sniffled. “You’re prob’ly in luck, then. He said he was gettin’ there tail end of last week. Told me when I swung by to see if he needed anythin’ goin’ into Christmas that he was close to done.”
“Well, he’s not here right now and I really need that manuscript if it’s finished. I was hopin’ you might open the door for me so I can check?”
A look of unease crossed the man’s face. He removed his mesh ball cap and scratched his shaved scalp before tugging it back down in place. “I dunno, ma’am. I really try not to be goin’ in the place when the renter’s not there.”
“I hear you, but here’s the thing. I’m payin’ the bills, so I think it’d be fair to say technically that makes me the renter. I’m just sayin’. And all I need to do is pick up the manuscript, I won’t go pokin’ around. I won’t even wait inside. If he’s out and about, I’ll hear about it from him when he gets back but for right now I just need that draft of the novel, assumin’ it’s in there.”
The owner chewed the side of his bottom lip while he thought, and gave me one more look up and down. “Well, you got a point.” Then he cocked his head and said with a half smile, “But if we barge in there and he’s, umm, ‘Lone Rangerin'’ if you know what I mean, well, that’s on you. Gimme just a minute to get the key.”
He trotted into the house, then reappeared a moment later and jumped in his truck. I followed him back to the cabin where he parked with his head lights on the front door. As he got out he looked at the angry sky. “That northeast wind smells like rain,” he said matter-of-factly as he one-stepped onto the porch. As if on cue, a peal of thunder rolled.
Banging on the heavy wooden door, he shouted, “Mister Gatlin, you in there? Hello? Anybody home?” He paused, looking at the ground as he listened. Then he banged again. “Mister Gatlin, me and Miss Abby are gettin’ ready to come in, ‘kay? Last chance!” Still no answer. We looked at each other and he gave me a shrug.
He placed the brass skeleton key at the mouth of the lock, but struggled getting it to seat. He pushed again and wiggled the handle at various angles, but the key refused to enter the opening.
“’The hell?” he mumbled, his brow wrinkling. Squatting, he peered into the black hole of the lock, then probed the key hole with the tip of his index finger, staring up at my face with unseeing eyes as he concentrated. The corners of his mouth inverted and he nodded once again. He stood and stared at the lock, holding the key by its end and patting the circular handle against his other palm in deep thought.
“What?” I asked.
In a low voice he said, “There’s already a key in the lock from the inside. He’s gotta be in there.” He beat on the door once again, shouting Rulo’s name, but still only got silence as an answer.
With a worried expression, the owner asked, “He a sound sleeper?”
“Not that sound.”
“He told me somewhere along the line he’s got a drinkin’ problem. Could be that he’s just passed out drunk you think? I dunno, may be that we oughtta just give him some time and come back later?”
Sensing where that was going I pressed. “Or maybe he fell and hit his head. Maybe he can’t come to the door.”
He paced around, hands on his hips. Then he squatted and probed the key hole again. Finally, he leaned with one hand on the door jamb just staring. Eventually he said, “Fuck a duck. Okay, watch your eyes.” He absent-mindedly handed me the key he’d been trying to push in the lock, and as I shielded my eyes for a moment from the shattering glass, he used his jacketed elbow to stove in the small window set in the door. I inhaled through clenched teeth as he gingerly reached inside, cringing when the sharp edges scratched at his heavily padded arm until he was in the hole up to his shoulder. He pawed blindly in the direction of the key hole, making worried eye contact with me the whole time. His face squinched at the awkward effort, then I heard the key in the inside lock turn. Carefully, he withdrew his arm from the hole and pushed the door open. Backlit by the Silverado’s high beams, the cabin’s interior filled with a cone of indirect light.
There, in the simple cabin’s single room, our silhouettes fell on the bloated body of a purple-faced, bug-eyed Rulo Gatlin, dangling by his neck from a noose that disappeared into the rafters.
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