Ariel Gore - Santa Fe Noir

I parked across the street from the house.

They said, “What do you want to do?”

I tried to pull my partner’s body to mine but the Mustang’s bucket seats prevented any kind of physical intimacy. I stepped out of car and walked around. I opened the door and saw the illuminated horse appear as if it were racing across the desert sand.

“Holy shit. That’s got to be a sign,” my partner said as they sprinted away from the car into the wide-open space across the other side of the street. I could see their body jumping this way and that. I could hear them calling: “Baby Chino. Come here, baby Chino. Where are you?”

I ran after them, loving the way the earth seemed to grab onto every footstep, pulling me back, pulling me down. When I caught up, we were both huffing air. They looked at me in blue light and breathed heavy and hard. They put their finger to their lips: Shush . I held my breath and closed my eyes and could feel the pounding of my heart, hear the slight rustle of wind moving through the bushes.

My partner whispered, “My little baby Chino, I knew I’d find you.”

They placed their hands on my face. Delicate. Tender.

Something made a noise and we both looked quickly. Then we laughed. We howled. We held hands and jumped up and down. The sand felt warm when I sat and pushed my fingers into it.

“Isn’t this state called the Land of Enchantment?” my partner asked, and made a gesture with their arms like, Look at all this world in front of us .

“It is.”

“I see why. I bet this is the best part of Santa Fe. Perhaps the state. Rancho Viejo. Away from everything. Maybe your father was right to bury the first part of you here. Maybe he did it so that you’d always come home.”

“Or maybe so I could do this,” I said, and pulled them to me. I tasted honey on their lips. I laughed because that’s like the biggest cliché possible: honey lips. As if next, I would come across a running horse or the very spot my father buried the placenta.

They pulled away and said, “Do you believe in ghosts?”

I looked out at the world spreading away from us. I remembered the last time I saw my father. I had woken early in the morning to head out on the road. I entered his room while he slept. Already sick inside. Already dying. I didn’t kiss him goodbye. But I placed my hand on his chest. The rattling breath. The slow beating heart. Proof of being alive, of a living body.

“No,” I said, “I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe things can haunt you.”

We walked back to the car because we still had forty-five minutes more to drive, yet I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I clenched my fists as we meandered across the sand. My jaw locked tight. I wanted to grab something, to take control of everything. I realized perhaps the question wasn’t, Do you believe in ghosts or things that can haunt you? Perhaps the question was, How do we get away, how do we free ourselves from something like legacy?

I pushed my partner against the car.

They said, “You look scary. And sexy. But scary.”

“You ever wanted something but don’t know what it is?”

“Every day.”

“You ever get angry enough you want to hurt something?”

They just stared at me. Unflinching, but waiting. Not challenging, just curious. I had that feeling of when you step up to someone too fast and they flinch, that sick feeling of scaring a woman by just being a man. I looked away.

They said, “It’s okay to be full of anger.”

I fell against them. Let myself drop to my knees wanting to be filled with anything other than all of these memories. Without rushing, I undid their belt and unzipped their pants. I took them into my mouth, so warm and soft and squishy. I craved that power to make something so defenseless into something rigid and unyielding, to feel a person become desperately alive. They made sounds guttural and full of surprise and pleasure. I looked up into their face and, to see such desire, let me tell you, it’s like finally seeing the end of something and racing to it screaming: Almost there, almost home!

Santa Fe National Forest

I like my job. Maybe it’s not for everyone, but I don’t mind being out there. Santa Fe National Forest, about 100,000 acres scattered across the mountains of northern New Mexico, with some choice skiing, hunting, and the most beautiful sunsets on the planet. Not a bad place to spend your days, but I hate getting these sorts of calls. The ones with, you know, the bodies?

It was around seven twenty in the morning when my radio crackled, and Alicia’s voice came over. She’s been a dispatcher with me for six years now. “Andy, you copy?”

“Apodaca here, I copy,” I said back, trying to edge the truck over a rut in the road.

“Hey, firewatch twelve reports lights at Porvenir Campground. Mind checking it out?”

“On it,” I told her, and clicked the radio back down. There was probably a solid five minutes before I could get turned around and back to the main forest road and head north toward El Porvenir. It’s a small campground by Beaver Creek, decent fishing if we have enough snow in the snowpack. This is most of my job, honestly, going out to remind campers who got a little too drunk last night that they still need to put out their fires. If I’m lucky they’ll be a little embarrassed and move on. The real annoying ones are those who get belligerent like I’ve never killed a weekend getting shitfaced in the woods and couldn’t possibly relate.

I pulled my truck up to the campsite; there was a gray Toyota parked there already. I got out of the truck and stretched, trying to ease my back a little bit. I’m a big guy all around, but I’m not in the best shape anymore, and driving a government pickup with busted shocks wasn’t doing my back any favors. The car was nice, real nice, with Utah plates, and some driving dust around the tires.

It was spring here, but there was something about the campground that felt off as I walked over. There’s a tension the morning after a frost, and it felt stronger than normal. There was the campfire, almost all embers by now, contained in the fire ring. The tent that was pitched here had collapsed on itself, and there was a backpack and a couple jugs of water around the fire. I looked around and gave a small call: “Hello! Forest Service here! Come on out. I just wanna have a word.”

Nothing.

I tried to listen. In chilled air, sound feels like it travels farther, but really your ear is just focused on getting ahold of any little thing out there: bugs crawling in the leaves, wind whistling through the trees... that was all here, but I didn’t hear any footsteps or breathing. Nothing human. A crow, somewhere far above me, fluttered from tree to tree. Okay, fine, I’ll walk around . If they abandoned their car, it was gonna be a long, chilly walk back to civilization.

It took me about ten minutes of circling the campsite before I found the body. The crow gave a couple of short caws and flew off, heavy wings echoing across the forest as far as I could hear. Between that and the long shadows that cut between me and the body, the day had taken a turn for the Fucked.

He was about my age, maybe a bit older, white, in camping clothes that he probably hadn’t looked at for more than a minute before buying at REI. The brown insulated jacket was too thin, I could see that. If he’d been near his campfire, he’d probably have been fine, but we’re at almost eight thousand feet out here. Temperatures can drop like crazy at night. He was still wearing hiking boots that had mud caked along the grooves of the sole, but other than that they looked too spotless and sterile to be used.