Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

Nor does he want what happened to him to happen to anyone else.

Diego is a good man with a loving wife and a beautiful boy he is raising as his son. He should remain a good man with a loving wife and a beautiful boy he is raising as his son. For that to happen he needs to keep his distance. Which means Ian has to stay ahead of him and take care of Henry on his own.

When he decided how far he was willing to go with Donald-all the way-he knew it was a negation of things he had believed all his life, of things he still believes, but he did not care, nor does he now. His only want was for the information he knew Donald had and he was willing to do everything to get it. He knew the cost going in and he was willing to pay it. He knows there will be greater costs ahead. He will pay those too. He is getting Maggie back. He knows he won’t get his life back with her, but that doesn’t matter: it will make his life mean something again. And that does matter.

He looks out at the unpeopled land to his left and his right. He imagines his daughter in a yellow dress with the wind blowing through her golden hair. Just her and the landscape. She is beautiful. She is everything that ever meant anything in this entire fucked-up world, all of it within those green eyes. Everything his heart ever needed in four words from her lips: I love you, Daddy.

And that does matter.

Maggie sits between Henry and Beatrice in a gray Dodge Ram pickup truck, sweat trickling down her face. The cab smells of their sweat, a dense odor that makes Maggie’s eyes water. Henry will not turn on the air conditioner. He refuses to do so, saying it’ll ruin their gas mileage and he doesn’t want to be stopping to fill up every hundred miles.

They’re about an hour out of San Antonio now. Maggie thinks it’s been about an hour, anyway. She counted to four-thousand-two, four-thousand-three, four-thousand-four, and there are only three thousand six hundred seconds in an hour, so unless she was counting far too fast, it should have been just over an hour.

She thought that she might have a chance to escape while there, but she did not. They stopped and got fast-food sandwiches for breakfast, and ate them in the truck, Maggie the entire time squeezed between Henry and Beatrice.

Every time she took a bite she would think of the people Henry buried earlier this morning. They would never eat again. She doesn’t understand why Henry had to do that. He didn’t have to do that. He said he had to because he needed their truck, he said he didn’t have a choice, but Maggie thinks that is a lie. Maybe a lie he believes himself, but a lie nonetheless. There had to have been ways of getting a new vehicle without killing anybody. Maggie thinks that maybe Henry likes to-

‘I’ll be goddamned,’ Henry says.

‘What?’ Beatrice says.

‘Look.’ He points through the bug-spattered windshield.

‘A Volkswagen?’

‘No, just in front of it.’

Now Maggie sees it too: a 1965 Mustang. It could be Daddy’s. It almost has to be Daddy’s. It’s red except for the trunk, which is primer gray.

She remembers riding with Daddy in his Mustang. Sometimes he would let her shift the car if they were alone and no one else was on the road. He’d push down on the crutch-clutch, Mags, with an L-and she would move the shifter, jamming it into gear. It was fun and exciting: she could feel the whole car’s power in the black knob at the end of the shifter, and it vibrated into her body through the palm of her hand. That made it scary, too, but that was part of why she liked it, part of why it was fun. Sometimes he let her sit in his lap and steer. She would swerve all over the road, laughing and honking the horn, and when it was over Daddy would be covered in sweat and saying she was the bravest person he ever met or the craziest. And she would stick out her tongue and shake her head and make crazy noises and laugh.

‘Well,’ Daddy would say, ‘that answers that.’

Henry closes the distance between the Dodge pickup and the Mustang. He has to change lanes and pass the Volkswagen and then swing in front of it to do so, and the driver of the Volkswagen honks and Henry waves his middle finger at him through the truck’s rear window.

Maggie looks at the Mustang in front of them. It is Daddy. She can tell by the back of his head, the shape of it, the thin blond hair. It is him. She was afraid it might not be, she was afraid that he was dead and it couldn’t be him, but he isn’t dead and it is him. After yesterday, with all that blood, with the way he just lay on the gravel after Henry kicked him in the head, with the way his head fell limp and he just lay there, she was so afraid he was dead. She told herself he wasn’t, but she was afraid he was.

No: she knew he wasn’t dead.

‘That’s my dad.’

A slap across the back of the head.

‘Shut the fuck up.’

She looks at Henry and sees that he means it.

He looks from her to the windshield.

‘Fuck.’

She thought Daddy was dead but he is not dead. It makes her chest feel warm in its center. As if she had her own personal sun. A sun on the inside. She thinks maybe she does.

‘Daddy,’ she says, waving her arms, hoping he looks in his rearview mirror.

Another slap to the back of the head.

‘I fucking mean it, Sarah.’

‘I told you he was coming for me,’ she says. ‘I told you.’

Mouthy little bitch. Where does she get off talking to him like that? If it weren’t for Bee, he’d just get rid of her. Put her in the ground. She’s nothing but trouble at this point. All of this is because of her: his having to kill Chief Davis and that county boy Bill Finch, his having to kill Flint and Naomi, their being on the run, all of it. She brought this upon them. She brought this upon them and she deserves to pay for that betrayal.

If it weren’t for Bee, she would pay for it.

Unless a man wants to find hisself with a bloody feeding-hand some day, his daddy had told him once before getting out his.22 and putting it into Henry’s hands, it’s best to kill a bad pup before it gets to be a big dog. Now let’s take care of this. I’ll get the shovel.

If it weren’t for Bee, he’d take care of Sarah. She’s a bad pup if ever there was one. But women don’t understand facts. They just see something cute and want to cuddle it. They don’t understand that cute has nothing to do with whether something needs to be put down.

He can’t believe that son of a bitch Ian Hunt found them. Found out where they were heading, anyway. And must have managed to get in front of them while Henry was busy burying the previous owners of the truck he’s now driving. It occurs to him that there was only one person from whom Ian could have gotten that information. But Donald would never give him up. Henry practically raised him. After Dad had the stroke when Donald was seven Henry did raise him. Donald would never give him up. He would sit through any and all threats of imprisonment giving nothing but a dead pan to the cops and answering nothing.

Unless someone did something much worse than merely threaten him.

But Hunt is a cop.

Except he ain’t exactly acting like a cop right now, is he? Out here in his own car and no other cops in sight.

If the police knew where he and Bee were heading they’d be all over this stretch of road. He’d have seen them. Seen them and holed up someplace. Or else he wouldn’t have seen them but they’d have seen him. They’d have seen him and flashed their lights and he’d be in a high-speed chase or captured or escaped. Or there’d be roadblocks. Something would have happened. But nothing has. Which means the police don’t know where he’s heading, even if Ian Hunt does.

And there’s only one way Donald would have given Henry up.