Michael McGarity - Serpent Gate

Gasping for air, he turned and looked back. The setting moon behind the church made the spire look like a dagger stabbing the sky. He shivered in the cold, but the tension in his body lifted, and he felt better now that he was outside. Then the voices returned.

He could only use his right thumb to plug his ears; somebody had put a plaster cast on his left arm. He tried to rip the cast off, but the plaster was too hard and thick. He gave up and started walking down the road.

Snowdrifts buried the road and covered all but the tops of the fence poles along the highway.

Somewhere, Robert had gotten a new coat, and it felt warm. But the air was frigid and his feet were cold.

He looked down at the boots that flapped against his ankles, wondering where they had come from. As he walked, snow seeped over the boot tops, soaked his feet, and made it hard to move. He stepped carefully to keep the boots from coming off in the snow.

There was no traffic on the road. Everything was silent and still. He stuck his thumb out as soon as he heard the sound of an engine and the scrape of a plow on the pavement behind him. An orange highway department snowplow slowed to a stop. Robert got in.

"Did you go off the road?" the driver asked.

"I didn't see your car."

"No, I'm just walking." Robert stared at a pack of cigarettes on the dashboard.

"Got a spare smoke?"

"Help yourself."

Robert grabbed a cigarette and lit it.

"Looks like you got banged up a little," the man said, eyeing the cast on Robert's arm and his missing teeth.

"Got in a fight," Robert replied, thinking maybe it was true.

"No big deal."

"Where are you heading?"

"Mountainair."

"I can take you as far as the maintenance yard in town."

Robert nodded.

"That's cool. Got any coffee there?"

"The pot is always on." The driver dropped the transission into gear, lowered the blade, and began plowing his way toward Mountainair.

Robert puffed on the cigarette and tried to concentrate on where he was supposed to go after he got to town. Nothing registered. The voices were gone, replaced by a noise like radio static.

Close to town, with the sun just up and the glare off the snow bouncing into the sky, a state police car passed them. Robert turned his head to follow the car, thinking that if he got out and waited, the cop might come back and take him to jail. He shrugged off the thought and snorted. Cops were assholes.

The driver gave him a strange look.

Robert bummed another cigarette and stared out the window. He liked the way the snow covered everything and made things look clean. His feet started to hurt as the driver turned into the maintenance yard. It felt like somebody was sticking pins into his toes.

He jumped out of the truck and went with the driver into the empty office.

"Got any rubber bands?" Robert asked.

The driver rummaged through a desk drawer and held out a handful.

Robert pulled them over his boots.

Maybe they would help keep the snow out.

"What happened to your laces?" the driver asked.

"I don't like them."

The driver filled his thermos, gave Robert a cup of coffee, and went outside to load sand into the truck's spreader. When he returned the hitchhiker was gone. nita found Kerney sitting in the Shafier Hotel dining room picking over a light breakfast. The room was full of railroad workers just in from a night of clearing a freight derailment at Abo Pass. Snow and mud had been tracked into the room, and small brown puddles had formed under the tables where the workers sat.

Nita dropped her coat over the back of an empty chair and joined Kerney at the table.

"Good morning," she said.

"Morning," Kerney answered, inspecting her outfit.

She wore insulated boots, jeans, and several layers of sweaters.

"Going somewhere?"

"With you," Nita replied.

"That's not possible."

"Do you want to waste time trying to find your way to Serpent Gate, or do you want to get there in a hurry?"

"There are a lot of other places Robert could be," Kerney said.

"I've already looked everywhere else."

"Then I'll start at Serpent Gate."

"It's not that easy to get to. Do you have a four wheel-drive vehicle?

It's going to take one to get in."

"No, you're not going."

"Then I'll go by myself," Nita said as she started to rise.

"Hold up."

"Robert is out there, and I'm going to find him if you won't."

"Why are you so sure he's there?"

"Can't you figure it out? What happened to me-and Robert-took place at Serpent Gate. He's always gone back; I never have."

Before Kerney could respond a patrol officer entered the room and walked quickly to the table. He gave Nita a questioning glance and a tight nod before addressing Kerney.

"No luck so far. Chief," he said.

"I covered all the major roads in a ten-mile radius."

"Robert may come here," he said as he laid some bills on the table to cover the meal and the tip.

"Pick him up if he shows. Don't scare him off. He doesn't like cops much. I'll be on my handheld radio if you need me."

Kerney stood up, took Nita's coat off the back of the empty chair, and held it out.

"Let's go to Serpent Gate." carlos tried to act cordial and relaxed with Felix and Delfino, but his attempts at small talk were rebuffed. He drove through the night while one man slept and the other stayed awake, watching him. Even when he had to take a piss along the side of the road, he had company. When he suggested a meal stop, the idea was rejected. Carlos had to come up with a plan to save himself, and soon.

The blizzard had made travel almost impossible. Felix had ordered him to take the interstate in the hopes that the road would be in better condition. But south of Albuquerque the highway became a nightmare, and Carlos missed the exit to Mountainair because of a fierce whiteout that obliterated the road signs. When he got back on track, it took hours to travel fifty miles to Mountainair.

Carlos drove into the village with a low sun in his eyes. It wasn't much of a town from what he could see: a cheap motel or two, boarded-up businesses, a school, and a main street that sputtered to a stop after two long blocks.

"I need some coffee," he said to Felix as he slowed to let a crazy-looking man with missing teeth scurry across the street, the coat draped over his shoulders flapping in the breeze.

"We'll get some to go," Felix said.

"I saw a sign for a hotel restaurant. It should be on the right, a block down."

Carlos made the turn and saw the man in the flapping coat run across the road toward an abandoned warehouse next to some train tracks. In front of the hotel, a man, woman, and a cop came out the front door.

Carlos accelerated.

"That's Kerney," he said as he passed the trio in front of the hotel.

He went around the block and returned in time to see Kerney and the woman pull away in a pickup truck.

"Are you positive?" Felix asked.

"Completely."

"Don't follow too closely."

The cop paid no attention as Carlos cruised by.

Carlos let several vehicles pass him, but kept the truck in view. The road had been sanded and plowed, but black ice slowed traffic. Several miles beyond the village, Carlos topped out at the crest of a hill and panicked.

The pickup was nowhere in sight. He started scanning for the truck off the roadway.

"You've lost them," Felix snapped.

The highway divided a slender valley cut by wandering arroyos that gradually opened to a large pasture.

To the south, a half circle of hills hid the mainline railroad tracks from view. Fresh tire tracks entered a ranch road.

Carlos squinted against the glare of reflected sunlight on the snow and caught sight of the truck traveling toward the hills.