They bought the tickets and waited for the bus; it was on time and they found seats without difficulty. He was speculating on how long it might be before someone spotted the keys in the ignition of the station wagon he’d left behind. Probably it would be stolen within twenty-four hours.

The Tucson stop was a dinner stop; they were on the road again at nine, out of Phoenix by midnight and barreling westward along the same route they’d taken last week coming the other direction with Caruso’s three-car convoy. The starlit desert was nearly invisible through the tinted windows; the air conditioning was too cold in the half-empty bus and condensation gathered along the chrome strips of the overhead luggage racks. Mathieson slowly blinked his raw eyes and felt the anger eat at him like an ulcer.

It was nearly three o’clock when the bus stopped in El Centro. He made several calls from a booth and finally found a motel that was still open for business and had vacancies. He booked a double room with a cot and they took a taxi from the depot. At half past three they carried their bags into the room. Mathieson said, “We’ll buy a car tomorrow. Let’s try to get some rest—we’ll talk tomorrow.”

3

The Gilfillans were at the cabin waiting for them and he watched to see if the reunion would revive Jan. She was nodding and talking and smiling in response to things addressed to her but it might be automatic.

Finally the luggage was carried inside, Ronny and Billy were dispatched to the creek with Roger’s fishing tackle, four chairs were set out on the porch, drinks were distributed.

He hoped that telling their story to Roger and Amy would restore reality to the nightmare experiences they had endured.

He let Jan tell it; he watched Roger’s and Amy’s reactions. As she spoke Jan became more animated, angrier; twice she laughed but it was laughter twisted inward. She drank too much too quickly and slurred. She’d had a headache all day; it became blinding and she went inside, moving like an old woman, Amy taking her along with an arm across her shoulders like a practical nurse.

It left him alone with Roger on the porch. Roger stood up. “Bourbon and branch again?”

“All right.”

“Girl needs rest.”

“Yes.”

“I reckon you do too.”

“I’ll put the car away.” Mathieson walked down to the old Ford they’d bought in El Centro and drove it around the house under the carport. When he emerged he found Roger on the steps holding both drinks.

Amy stood in the doorway. “She’s out for the night, I expect. But the rest of us got to eat. I better repair to the cuisine department. You boys take a hike or something.”

The men walked down along the edge of the pines. “We’re right proud you decided to come to us, old horse.”

There was nothing to say to that, nothing that wouldn’t sound saccharine.

“Y’all welcome to stay on up here as long as you want. You know that.”

“We don’t want to weigh you down, Roger.”

“Ain’t no weight. But winters up here get pretty hard and kind of lonesome. You got to drive fourteen mile to the country store on the main highway. Sometimes it’ll take you the whole day to do it.”

Roger gestured with his drink toward the heavy interior of the forest. “Ain’t likely to ever run out of firewood but this shack wasn’t never built for winter living. You likely find yourselves spending two-three hours every day just cutting up dead trees to feed the fireplace. If y’all decide to stay on why I reckon I could bring in a Kohler plant.”

“Roger, we’re not going to move in permanently.”

“Winters you need to keep the cover on the well when you ain’t using it and keep a big rock on the end of a rope to bust the ice down there.”

“We may only be here a few days.”

“And then what? Where else you got to go?”

“I only came here to give us a chance to get our wind back.”

“Where do you go afterward? Why not stay right here?”

Mathieson only shook his head, mute. They stopped along the edge of a mountain track that passed for a road. Roger said, “Jeep trail. The fire rangers use it. I brought in a grader last year, smoothed it out down to the county road. See, the reason we didn’t spend anything on work up here, we don’t own it. It’s National Forest land. We got temporary possession—tag end of a forty-nine-year lease. When the thing expires the land reverts to the government. They’ll demolish the cabin. They want to go back to virgin forest, all these old lumber and mining leases. Matter of fact that’s why I figured we ought to meet up here. My name’s not on any public record.”

Roger hunkered down with his back against a pine. He balanced the drink carelessly on his knee. “Old horse, you want to talk?”

“I don’t know, Roger.”

“You never did wear your feelings on your sleeve but this thing’s got you clamped up tighter than a schoolmarm’s cunt. You keep it all bottled up it’ll start to rot inside you.”

The stillness and the whiskey began to relax him. He watched the late sun rays flicker through the high trees. Needles and cones made a crisp resin fragrance.

Finally he said, “When you think about hiding out it looks like retirement. Pension, sixty-five years old and a gold watch. Spending the rest of your life trying to think of ways to kill time until you crumble away of old age. That’s the vision I keep having and I can’t stand the sight of it.”

Roger tipped his head back against the tree and watched him. Mathieson said, “You know I grew up in New York. We had, you know, La Guardia and the Yankees and the Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers. We were about a half a block from the Second Avenue El. My father was a druggist, we lived in the top two floors of a converted brownstone. It wasn’t an elegant neighborhood then. It is now. But it was just middle class at the time. A lot of grit and that God-awful noise from the El trains. It was just New York, hell, nobody thought of it as a pesthole in those days.”

“Uh-huh.”

“We grew up on stickball and comic books and movie matinees, you know. Gangsters—to me a gangster was the same thing as the crooked banker in the Western movie, the guy that twists his moustache and forecloses on the girl’s ranch. Bad guys—all right. But as far as I was concerned they were pure comic-book fictions. Something Hollywood dreamed up for the B-movie formula. To give Alan Ladd and Pat O’Brien somebody to fight it out with.”

“I was raised on Jesse James, myself.”

“The whole idea of willful evil was a comic-book fantasy. I guess I didn’t grow up for the longest time. I mean, even combat in the army was like a movie. The reality was a bunch of ordinary people digging holes and eating out of mess kits and swapping dull stories to pass the time. It was like getting through your junior year. Waiting for mail, waiting for new orders. Thinking about girls. Lying a lot. Hell, there was an enemy army out there, there was a lot of noise and confusion but that was all part of the unreality. Am I making any sense?”

“Reckon you are, some.”

“Frank Pastor, that whole world. Inside my head it’s still a B movie. I keep thinking all I need to do is tell the writer to do a script rewrite.”

Mathieson leaned forward and coiled his arms around his knees. “I want a crack at rewriting this script.”

“Now I ain’t sure I see what you’re talking about there.”

“Frank Pastor’s had all the initiatives. He acts, I react. He shoots, I duck. He’s the star, the writer and the director—the hell with it, Roger, I’m sick of being an extra in Frank Pastor’s grade-B programmer.”

“Well you had those cards dealt to you, old horse.”

“If you’re the mouse in the shooting gallery, sooner or later you’re bound to get an urge to pick up one of the rifles and start shooting back.”

Roger rolled his glass between his palms. “You mean that literally? I mean, picking up a gun and going after the son of a bitch?”