Michael McGarrity: Tularosa

Early-morning clouds, shreds of a heavy late-night rainstorm, masked the Ortiz Mountains. Wispy tendrils drifted over the foothills, turned into translucent streamers, and vanished in the sky. The cabin roof had leaked during the night, soaking a stack of unopened junk mail and the borrowed copy of a Winston Churchill biography left on the cushion of an easy chair. The chair smelled like wet cat piss, and Kerney didn't own a cat. Kerney mopped up the floor, dragged the chair outside into the sun, and tipped it over. The junk mail and catalogs dribbled into a brown puddle in the driveway, floated momentarily, and sank out of sight. The cover model on the Victoria's Secret catalog pouted up at him as the brown stain seeped into her eyes.

The saffron sun in the east, an extravagant eye, washed the mesa in soft light. Inside, Kerney popped the Tchaikovsky tape in the cassette desk and cranked up the volume. The music, pushed along by a slight breeze, followed him to the horse barn, where a gallon of roof asphalt sat next to the ladder, both conveniently at hand for the leaks that never failed to materialize after a soaking, windblown rain. He had patched the roof so many times it was now nothing more than a routine challenge. Given a few more storms, every seam, nail hole, and protrusion on the pitched roof would be coated with asphalt gook. The old cabin wanted to sink into oblivion. Listing on a stone foundation, it was pretty to the eye, with a fresh coat of white paint and dark green trim around the windows and doors, but sadly in need of major renovation. Kerney strapped on a tool belt, deciding he would pull up the whole strip of roofing paper and slop gook directly on the boards over the leak. He carried the ladder to the cabin, set it against the side of the house, and stripped off his shirt. With the asphalt can in one hand, Kerney hauled himself up the ladder, dragging his right leg slowly to each rung. The knee just didn't bend the way it used to, in spite of the best efforts of modern medicine. He nailed a two-by-four to the roof to serve as a brace, crawled off the ladder, and planted his left foot against the brace to keep from sliding backward. In position, he stretched out on his stomach and got to work with the hammer pulling nails and stripping off the tar paper in the area of the leak. His reconstructed right knee, extended as far as it would go, protested. The planks under the tar paper had separated, leaving an inch gap between the boards. He smeared asphalt into the crevices and on the boards, thinking it was time to ask his landlord to spring for the cost of materials for a new roof. Quinn would oblige, and Kerney would have another project to occupy his time. The Tchaikovsky concerto recycled several times on the stereo before Kerney finished the patch job. He're nailed the tar paper, coated the nail heads with gook, and looked out over the basin. There was a flash of reflected light on the dirt road that cut through the rock escarpment to the ranch. The road, still filled with runoff from the storm, glistened like a wire ribbon in the sharp morning light. He dropped the empty asphalt can to the ground and climbed down the ladder, using his left leg to hop from rung to rung. He walked to the gate and swung it open, leaving sticky black fingerprints on the railing, and watched the vehicle bounce in and out of the ruts of standing water, spewing mud as the tires dug through the puddles. There was no reason for a visitor. Quinn, his landlord, employer, and chief book lender, was presenting a paper at a medical convention in Seattle. After that, he was flying to Germany to attend another conference and take a long vacation. Kerney liked working for a wandering landlord. Most of the time he had the place to himself.

The car splattered through the mud and swerved through the slimy dirt in the roadbed, the tires throwing up a heavy spray of brown paste. Windshield wipers, operating at high speed, smeared the ooze over the glass, making it impossible for Kerney to see into the vehicle. He walked to the porch, sat on the step, and started cleaning the asphalt gook from his hands with a rag drenched in paint thinner. The fumes of the solvent made him sneeze, and he covered his nose with sticky fingers. Before he could go in and clean his face, the car plowed through the last puddle by the gate and rolled to a stop on the packed gravel driveway. It was a new, slick-top police cruiser with emergency lights mounted on the front bumper. Even close up, with the wipers going full blast, the man behind the wheel was obscured by a grimy film of dirt. In Kerney's time at the ranch-well over a year-this was the first visit by a cop.

A stocky man in a white uniform shirt got out and stood behind the open door of the cruiser, with the engine still running. He wore a tribal police badge over the left pocket of the uniform shirt and a Sam Browne belt with a. 357 pistol in a high-rise holster.

From the waist down he wore blue jeans and cowboy boots. The two men stared at each other cross the ten yards that separated them.

"Goddamn mud," Terry Yazzi muttered, reaching in to turn off the engine. Kerney stood up and said nothing as Terry left the car and walked toward him. In the cabin the tape deck recycled once again and the lyrical first movement of the concerto began anew. Terry stopped three feet from Kerney, his eyes avoiding contact. Instead, he looked at the foreman's cabin, a white clapboard box with a small covered porch, then switched his gaze to the ranch house behind it, nestled at the base of a mesa. He took in the horse barn and corral off to one side across a small meadow, and the upended chair in front of the cabin porch. He compressed his lips and finally looked at Kerney. As he opened his mouth to speak, Kerney hit him flush on the jaw, knocking him flat on his ass. The blow made Terry's teeth ache. He got to his feet and brushed himself off.

"Feel better?" he asked.

"No. I hurt my hand," Kerney replied. "What are you doing here, Terry?" Terry's face had a healthy glow. His brown eyes were clear and serious. He had shed some weight and looked fit. Three years could bring changes.

"I asked you a question," Kerney said. God, he wanted to hit him again.

"I heard you," Terry answered. He glanced at Kerney's naked stomach, turned away, and looked out at the expanse of the Galisteo Basin, trying hard to regain his composure. The land rolled down from the ranch through thickly studded stands of pinon and juniper trees. It gave way to rangeland that butted against an escarpment that looked almost like an enormous, ancient man-made fortification. He took it in indifferently, and swallowed hard to keep down the bile that welled up in his mouth from the sight of the scar on Kerney's stomach. The ugly entry wound and the long surgical incision brought the memory smashing into his head like a freight train. In spite of himself, he remembered the day three years ago at the stakeout. The image of Kerney curled into a ball clutching his gut as the blood came gushing out made Terry wince. He turned around and glanced at the scar again.

"You've got some tar on your face," he said finally, raising his eyes.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Around your nose and mouth."

"No shit?" Kerney rubbed his nose and inspected his fingertip.

"You're right. Thanks for pointing it out. Now go away, Terry." Terry stared back at him. His long, black hair, tied back at the nape of his neck, accentuated his Navajo features: a high forehead above dark brown eyes and round cheeks. His tense lips were pressed thin.

Kerney wondered how long it would be before Terry stared at the scar again. It gave him a perverse sense of satisfaction.

"Did you get my letter?" Terry finally asked, shifting his gaze back to the scar.