Ryan Jahn - The Dispatcher

Henry walks out of the classroom and into the corridor.

‘All taken care of?’ Ron says, pulling himself up from his leaning position against a wall of lockers.

‘Yeah.’

‘Good.’

He hands Henry back one of the two rifles, what was once their dad’s.30–06, an old army job that takes an eight-round en bloc clip. When their dad got drunk he would shoot bottles off fence posts with it and tell them, ‘Patton used to say this was the finest piece of military machinery ever made, and you know what? That crazy motherfucker was right.’ Henry checks to make sure it’s loaded, and then nods to himself.

‘To the roof?’ he says.

‘To the roof.’

They climb an access ladder in the janitor’s closet, push open a hatch, and make their way out onto the asphalt roof. It is early evening now and the sun is low and red in the sky. For some reason it makes Henry think of cracking a fertilized egg into a frying pan. That yellow yolk, that seed of red upon it cooking and dead. The evening sun. He turns in a circle and looks at the deserted town around them. He stops and looks down the long gray strip of asphalt leading to town. He can see for miles. If he had better eyes he could see all the way to the interstate.

‘Good place,’ Henry says.

‘I know it,’ Ron says. ‘Only the Jackrabbit Inn’s taller, three storeys instead of two, but you can’t see the road leading to town as good.’ Ron nods to his right and says, ‘Let’s take a load off while we wait.’

There are two lawn chairs sitting out in the red evening light and between them a styrofoam ice chest. Ron walks over and eases into one of the chairs. The thing protests under his weight. He pulls the lid off the ice chest, reaches inside, and pulls out a Coors. He breaks it open. It foams and he sips at it.

‘It’s warm,’ he says, ‘but it’s beer.’

‘Who’s the other chair for?’ Henry asks.

‘For you.’

Henry sits beside his brother and looks west toward the falling sun. A warm beer rests between his legs. He felt panicky before when he was unarmed and simply waiting to be killed, but now he feels oddly calm. He’s here and ready. Beatrice is safe. Sarah is locked up and incapable of doing any harm. And soon Hunt will be dead.

He glances over at Ron. ‘It’s been a long time,’ he says.

‘Too bad it’s under these circumstances.’

‘I think he got Donald. I didn’t tell you that part at the house. It’s the only way he could’ve found out where I was heading.’

‘Got Donald?’ Ron says. ‘You mean kilt him?’

Henry nods.

‘You think or you know?’

‘I think.’

Ron shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says, ‘he didn’t kill Donald.’

‘I think maybe-’

‘Donald’s the only one of us who’s any good. He couldn’t’ve got killed.’

‘I think he-’

‘Hush up and watch the sunset.’

‘I just-’

‘Hush up, Henry. You never did know when to keep your goddamned mouth shut.’

Henry picks up his beer and takes a swallow. He squints toward the sunset, then looks left at the gray road to the south leading from the interstate into town. It is empty.

By the time they each finish their second beer and grab their third Ron is smiling again.

‘I missed you, Henry.’

‘I missed you too.’

‘This kinda feels like fishing, don’t it?’

Henry nods. ‘It’s nice.’

But suddenly the smile is gone from Ron’s face and he is no longer looking at Henry but past him. He nods his head.

‘Look it.’

Henry looks left, to the south, and sees it. A dirty red car coming toward them. At this distance it looks like little more than a matchbox, a toy you could lose under your bed, but it’s Ian Hunt all right. And suddenly Henry’s heart is beating very fast in his chest, a percussive blood-drum pounding out the rhythm of his fear. And even now, even up here with his older brother, two rifles, and a couple boxes of ammunition, the sight of Hunt’s red car coming toward him does make him feel fear. He does not know why, but it does.

He finishes his warm beer, tosses the can aside, and drops into a prone firing position, up on his elbows, butt of the rifle in his shoulder, legs forming the number four behind him. He leads the red Mustang with the barrel of his gun. It grows larger as it comes nearer. A dusty old beater of a car.

He breathes in and out in tight, jerky fits. He’s going to have to get himself under control if he’s to make this shot count. A man has only one unexpected shot, and he’d do well to make it count. That means creating a calm in his center. At this distance a small shift can mean putting the bullet off target by a foot or two. The throbbing beat of his heart or a poorly timed inhalation and that is it: he’s missed.

Ron remains seated in his lawn chair. He takes a loud swallow of his beer, sets it down, then drops to a knee. Henry doesn’t see it, but he hears it, and he knows that’s the position Ron likes to shoot from, for some reason.

‘You got him?’

‘Hush it up,’ Henry says. ‘Lemme concentrate.’

‘So you got it.’

‘Yeah, now quiet.’

As the car gets nearer Hunt’s face becomes visible. As does the face of the man beside him. He is not alone. He brought someone with him. Henry is sure that he was alone when he saw him on the interstate yesterday. Somewhere along the way he picked someone up. He squints, trying to see if he recognizes the man in the passenger seat. Officer Peña. Diego Peña.

‘Oh, fuck,’ he says under his breath.

‘What is it?’

‘I said lemme concentrate.’

‘Then stop cursing and start concentrating.’

Did Hunt involve the police after all? No, that doesn’t make any sense. Peña’s just a city cop and this is way outside his jurisdiction. Peña doesn’t even count as a policeman this far west. He’s just another si habla español with a gun.

He looks past the Mustang and into the distance. There are no other vehicles within miles. Hunt and Peña are alone out here. They’re alone out here, and Henry has to make sure they never leave. He has to kill them. Then it’s over.

He licks his lips. He inhales and holds his breath. The world is a storm but he is its eye. He lines Ian up in his sights.

The cold metal of the trigger dents the pad of his finger as he puts pressure upon it, then it moves beneath that pressure.

It is nearly seven o’clock when Ian pulls the Mustang off the interstate; the sun is low in the sky and has lost much of its midday polish and the sky itself is reddening. They drive past a place called the Desert Cafe, and then past a shotgunned sign that says KAISER 8 MILES. Beyond the sign there is no evidence of human life save the road itself, the desert stretching out on either side of them dotted only with shrubbery and Joshua trees. A rattlesnake is stretched out on the other side of the road to catch the last of the day’s sun before slithering off for the night. The corpse of a jackrabbit half a mile past it.

Neither he nor Diego say anything for a long time.

Then Ian breaks the silence: ‘You don’t have to be here for this.’

‘But I do.’

‘You don’t. You have a wife and a son and you don’t have to be here for this.’

Diego looks at him a moment, and then out toward the desert to his right. Ian glances at him, but he is silent and his head is turned away.

‘When I was in grade school,’ Diego says after a while, still looking out his window, ‘around twelve or so, I was hanging out with these older kids at recess. They walked up to this kid sitting on one of the picnic benches next to the basketball courts, just this kid about my age reading a Stephen King novel or something, and started harassing him. ‘Nice shoes,’ someone said. They were the cheap plastic kind and the tops were already cracked. ‘Thank you,’ he said. You could hear the nervous tremor in his voice. I remember that very clearly, that nervous tremor. ‘You find ’em in the trash?’ That kind of thing. I just stood there. I might have even thrown out an insult of my own, you know, to fit in, but I felt ashamed of myself, Ian. My heart felt sick. I’ve never forgotten that.’