James Burke - Light of the World

“I look like I can’t buy my own drinks?” Kyle replied.

A couple went out the front door and started their automobile. The bartender began rinsing glasses in an aluminum sink. The interior of the saloon was paneled with lacquered yellow pine and seemed to exude a honeyed glow from the green-shaded lamps hung on the walls. The ambience created a sense of warmth and belonging that Kyle did not want to let go of.

“Give me a couple of Dos Equis to go,” Kyle said.

“You drank the last one.”

“Then give me any import you got.”

“You staying up here with that Mexican gal?”

“Who says I’m staying with anybody?”

“I thought you had a girlfriend up here.”

“I don’t remember saying that. Did somebody tell you that? Is this some kind of information center?”

“What do I know?” the bartender replied.

“That’s a good attitude.”

The bartender propped his arms on the bar and looked toward the front door and seemed to concentrate on what he should say next. His head resembled a white bowling ball with dents in it. A nest of blue veins was pulsing in one temple. He glanced at his wristwatch. “I forgot. That clock is slow. Happy motoring.”

Kyle walked outside and got in his truck. The sky was as black as India ink and blanketed with stars, the cherry orchards on the shore and up the hillsides in full leaf, swelling with wind. Why should he be worried? No one knew where he was. He had told Caspian he might head down to Elko and shoot some craps and chill out. Caspian didn’t like it? Too bad. Kyle hadn’t signed on for that boot gig in front of all those people. Neither had he signed on for getting into a shit storm with a psychotic cowboy who had a body that looked like skin stretched on spring steel.

As he drove down the narrow two-lane toward the cottage on the hillside where the Mexican woman lived, he could not rid himself of the fear eating a hole in his stomach. He wanted to roll a fatty and get stoned and get laid and disappear inside a safe place where he didn’t have to think about Wyatt Dixon and all the other issues that came with working for the Youngers. Then it would be daylight and he could score some coke or hang out in a bar and sip drinks on the deck through the day and figure out an answer to his situation. He fished his stash out of the glove box and held it up to the light. There was only a thin band of seeds and stems at the bottom of the Ziploc. Great. He held the bag out the window and felt the wind rip it from his hand.

He felt under the seat for his .357 Mag and inadvertently touched the baton he always carried to iron out differences in traffic situations. He had forgotten about the baton. How dumb could he be? He shuddered at the thought of Dixon finding it under the seat and stuffing it down his throat as payback for the lick Kyle had laid on him. He rolled down the window and flung the baton into the darkness and heard a sound like glass breaking. This couldn’t be happening. Nobody’s luck was this bad.

He turned up the dirt road that led through five acres of cherry trees to a cottage where an overweight Mexican woman with two children waited for him, convinced he would keep his promise and marry her that summer and get her a green card.

The light was on in the kitchen. The wind was blowing hard off the lake, bending the cherry trees that grew in tiers from the top of the slope down to the road. The mountain peaks looked as sharp-edged as sheared tin against an electric storm building in the west. Kyle saw someone get up from the kitchen table and look through the blinds and then go away from the window. Was that Rosa? If so, why didn’t she come to the door? What if Dixon was inside?

Kyle turned off the interior light before he got out of the truck. He removed the .357 from under the seat and snugged it inside the back of his jeans. Get a grip, he told himself. So what if Dixon was inside? Kyle had been in Tracey before he took a fall on the statutory beef, which involved getting it on with a sixteen-year-old runaway who turned out to be a cop’s daughter. Three years hard time for doing a good deed. How bad does it get? He did the three-bit straight up and went out max time and survived the black and Hispanic gangs in Quentin without joining the AB. He pumped iron and stacked his own time and didn’t get in anybody’s face. He even earned a degree of respect out on the yard. Could Dixon say the same? From what Kyle had heard, the state had melted Dixon’s brain with chemicals and electroshock treatments, and he thought he was a player in that end-of-times bullshit you hear about on late-night radio in the San Joaquin Valley. How nuts does it get?

By the time he reached the back steps of the cottage, he felt a sense of indignation and self-righteousness that almost relieved him of his fear. Time to concentrate on getting his ashes hauled. Rosa wasn’t half bad in the sack. Through the pane in the kitchen door, he saw a shadow on the wall, not far from the stove. He put his right hand behind him and gripped the checkered handles of the .357 and opened the door.

“Where you been?” the Mexican woman said. She wore an apron splattered with tomato sauce and held a wooden spoon. There was a half-eaten birthday cake on the table. “You said you was gonna be back at seven.”

“I had engine trouble. Was anybody here?”

“Yeah, me and the kids, waiting on you, you piece of shit. I tole the minister I’m tired of it. He said we was living in sin. I tole him he was right.”

“What minister?”

“What do you care? It’s Miguel’s birthday. He waited up.”

“I forgot.”

“Get out,” she said.

“Say that about the minister again. Did he have red hair and a Texas accent?”

She studied his face. “Somebody after you? I hope they are. You’re a cobard. That means ‘coward.’ A gusano, a yellow worm.”

“Shut your mouth,” Kyle replied.

She picked up a pan of tomato sauce from the stove and threw it in his face, almost blinding him. He stumbled down the steps into the driveway, his eyes staring out of a red mask. She slammed the door and shot the bolt.

He couldn’t believe how his life had changed in under two minutes. His hair and face and clothes were dripping with tomato sauce, his suitcase was locked in the house, and he was shivering in a cold wind blowing off a lake that offered no safe harbor for the likes of Kyle Schumacher. And he was absolutely convinced that the most frightening man he had ever encountered, a man whose face was as mindless as a Halloween pumpkin’s, had just missed catching him at Rosa’s cottage.

He thought about heading for British Columbia, except his passport was in his suitcase and his suitcase was locked in the house. This was a plot. It had to be. He picked up a brick and flung it through the kitchen window. “What did this minister look like?” he yelled.

“Chinga tu madre, maricón!” she shouted back.

He got in his truck and roared down the dirt road and fishtailed onto the Eastside Highway. Immediately, his engine began lurching and backfiring. He hit the brake and shifted into neutral and pumped the accelerator until the engine caught and started firing on all eight cylinders again, then sped down the two-lane in the dark, toward Polson, the storm clouds on the far side of the lake flickering as though strings of damp firecrackers were popping silently inside them.

There was not a soul on the highway. The stars had dimmed, and the lake was as black as an enormous pool of prehistoric oil. His engine was running hot and making a sound like the cylinders were firing out of sync. What was wrong? He’d had a tune-up only last week. Polson was at least fifteen miles down the road. He had to take control of his emotions and think. He had his .357. He had two hundred dollars and the credit cards in his wallet. He could check into a motel and come back to the cottage in the morning and reason with Rosa. She wanted a green card, didn’t she? He had always been nice to her kids, hadn’t he? So he forgot the boy’s birthday, for Christ’s sake. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a couple of problems on his mind. Why didn’t she try a little empathy for a change?