Steven Havill: Privileged to Kill

I saw Wesley Crocker for the first time on a cold Thursday afternoon in October, three weeks before Election Day. He was pushing his bicycle eastward along the shoulder of State Road 17, an asphalt-patched remnant of highway that the interstate had made obsolete.

When I saw Crocker, I was sitting warm and comfortable in the Posadas County patrol car, cruising west, looking for no one or no thing in particular. Lenticular clouds formed, spread, and shredded over the San Cristobal mountains that separated Posadas County from Mexico, and rain had been predicted by morning.

The wind was driving out of the northeast, gusting strong enough to rock the car. Moisture might have been in the offing, but at that moment the only thing in the air was the New Mexico prairie. Fine, stinging sand scudded across the macadam like tawny snow, the larger pieces rattling against the white paint of the Ford. Occasionally a kochia , its brittle stem snapped off at the ground, would perform a clumsy imitation of a tumbleweed, jouncing across the road to pack against the barbed-wire fencing.

Crocker was walking toward Posadas, head pulled into his heavy coat, chin against his chest. His methodical pace planted one foot in front of the other in a rhythm that said he was no stranger to the asphalt.

His bicycle was an old, heavy thing with balloon tires, the sort of bike that paperboys with calf muscles like steel springs peddled around their paper routes in the 1950s. The top frame between seat and handlebars was bloated with stamped steel into a fake gas tank. My oldest son had once had a bike like that. He’d regularly stolen his mother’s clothespins so he could clip playing cards to the front forks. When the wheels spun, the cards barked against the spokes-an impressive motorcycle for sure.

But Wesley Crocker was long past the playing-cards-on-spokes stage and the bike was a handful to push, even if there had been no quartering wind gusting in his face.

I slowed to thirty-five as I drove past and saw two enormous saddlepacks that bulged with Crocker’s belongings. Another duffel bag was lashed to the front basket.

It wasn’t just the wind that was giving the man trouble. The back tire of the bike was flat, the weight of the saddlepacks digging the rim into the asphalt. The three miles into Posadas was going to be a lifetime.

He didn’t lift his head as I drove past. Maybe he didn’t see me. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he knew how far the next village was and all his determination was focused on the ten thousand steps it would take to get there.

I glanced at my watch. At his pace, by the time he reached Posadas the sidewalks would be rolled up and stowed. He wouldn’t find a store open that carried a tire or tube or patch kit. If he could manage to fix the tire himself, one or two places could supply the air.

For a quarter mile after I had driven by, I watched him in the rearview mirror, wondering who he was, where he was from, where he was going. With a shrug I slowed the county car, swung wide, and made a U-turn.

I idled up behind the man and his bicycle and when I was within a dozen feet, he stopped, looked over his right shoulder at me, and then with great patience lowered the kickstand and balanced the overloaded bike against it, making sure that the stand wasn’t going to sink in the loose gravel of the highway shoulder and capsize the whole mess.

He ambled back toward the patrol car, and I buzzed down the window.

He bent down and placed his hands on his knees. “And a good afternoon to you, sir,” he said. Older than I had first thought, he was ruddy faced with a tangled thatch of salt-and-pepper hair held in place by a black knit cap. His smile didn’t show many teeth.

I hesitated, loath to encroach on his world, and I suppose he mistook my hesitation for the arrogance of disapproval.

“Wasn’t speeding, was I?” he said, and grinned even wider.

“No, sir,” I said. “Do you want a lift into town?”

One of his eyebrows shot up. “Say, that would be welcome, kind sir, but I tell you what. I sure do hate to leave my rig unattended along the highway.”

I looked at the mammoth bike and tried to calculate how it would fit.

“It’ll go in the trunk,” I said.

He straightened up and surveyed my county car. “That would be a mite tight.”

I popped the electric trunk lock and then opened the door and heaved my two hundred and ten pounds out of the car. At five feet ten inches, I stood nearly a head taller than the traveler, but when the two of us grunted to pick up the bicycle, his proved to be the stronger back.

After he unstrapped the various packs, we pushed, heaved, and shoved until the bike’s back tire was planted in one corner of the trunk and the front forks were cranked around so that the front wheel stood vertically.

He then nestled the packs on top of the bike.

“She’ll stay,” I said. “We’ll go slow.”

“What about the trunk lid, sir? You want to tie it so it doesn’t flop up and down?”

He produced a piece of brown twine from one coat pocket, and in another minute the trunk lid was secured, lashed down through the bike’s chain crank to the lower trunk latch.

I started around to the driver’s door, and he hesitated. “Come on,” I said, not the least bit eager to stand out in the chill wind a moment longer than necessary. “Climb in.” I saw him glance toward the backseat and added, “Up front.”

We settled into the car and both of us sighed with relief to have the wind and cold locked outside. My passenger thrust out a hand. “Wesley Crocker,” he said.

His grip was firm, his hand callused and rough. “Bill Gastner,” I replied.

“My pleasure,” Crocker said. His gaze wandered around the inside of the county car, taking in all the expensive junk that goes with the profession.

He reached out and ran a finger along the top of one of the radios as if he were checking for dust. “Things have sure changed, haven’t they?” he said as I pulled 310 into gear.

“Changed?”

“The law used to be just a man on horseback, wearing a badge and a gun,” Crocker said. He indicated the radio and computer stack that sat astride the transmission hump, then patted the fore-end of the shotgun that rested in the electric lock. “Now look at all this.”

I shrugged. “Times change. I’d hate to be sitting on a horse in this weather.”

“You don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you?”

I grinned at the sudden change of subject. “Sorry. I don’t smoke, Mr. Crocker.”

“You used to, though, didn’t you?”

I looked over at him with amusement. His eyebrows were enormous, tipped with the same gray that was creeping into his hair and week-old beard.

“Yes, I used to.”

“Quit, huh?” I nodded and Wesley Crocker continued, “I should, too. I could make better headway against this wind if I had more wind.”

“And some air in your tires,” I added. “How far did you come today?”

“From just outside Playa. You know where that is?” I nodded. I almost said that my twenty-four years with the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department probably had been enough time to learn the names of all seven villages in the county, but I spared Wesley Crocker the sarcasm. His seventeen miles of travel wasn’t much to show for a day’s work, but it was a hell of a lot more than I’d accomplished.

“Tire went flat about five miles back. ’Course, I don’t hurry, you know. I just kind of mosey along. There’s a lot to see in this big country.”

“The middle of nowhere is what most tourists say,” I chuckled.

“But see, I just bet that they aren’t really looking when they say that. If they looked , they wouldn’t say that. Do you know what I saw back up the road a ways? Just the other side of the Guijarro wash?”