Giles Blunt - No Such Creature

Owen found himself getting angry at the Pontiff on Sabrina’s behalf. “Sounds like it was pretty hard on you,” he said.

“It was harder on my mother. When he got sentenced to ten years this last time, she just fell apart. She lost all interest in her job-she was a teacher for special-needs kids-and stayed home all the time watching TV. Stopped looking after herself, stopped cleaning the house. Then one day Dad’s lawyer called to let her know they’d tacked another two years onto his sentence for some scam he’d been running from prison. That was it. A week later she took an overdose of sleeping pills and never woke up.”

They were sitting on a picnic table out of the sun, watching Max, who was now attacking the Rocket’s tires with an air hose that was too short.

Owen touched Sabrina’s shoulder, feeling the heat of her skin through the fabric of her top. “I’m sorry you went through that,” he said. “How old were you?”

“Sixteen. Luckily, my best friend’s family really liked me. They took me in, and I finished high school living with them. That was pure luck, though. If it hadn’t have been for them, I don’t know what would have happened to me. I could have gone to live with my aunt in Dallas-but I didn’t want to leave all my friends.”

Max was approaching now, all belly and sunglasses and a jaunty hat with chinstraps that he’d picked up in the Australian outback decades ago. He was rarely able to resist the call of candy stores, and his pockets bulged with chocolate bars and licorice.

“Gas prices,” he said, “are going to put me out of business. I ask you, how’s an honest man supposed to make a living?”

“You managed to find the candy store, I see,” Owen said.

“Take two,” Max said, proffering Kit Kats. “I’m nothing if not a good provider.”

Clem piloted the Prius through the gate with tremendous care, as if he were docking a spacecraft. The Vegas lights blinked and swirled off to the south, but it was quiet out here. Not surprising, since the area had been condemned several years back, owing to its being the former site of a chemical plant. There were danger signs posted all over. Clem waited while Stu closed the chain-link gate.

Stu climbed in and said, “Car’s so quiet I thought you were switched off.”

“Gotta love hybrids,” Clem said. “Did you know blind people have actually asked Toyota to make them noisier so they don’t have to worry about getting run over with no warning?”

“Yeah, I read something about that.”

Clem killed the lights and they glided forward.

“Hear that?” Clem said. “Thing’s a stealthmobile. Plus you’re doing good for the environment.”

The terrain turned jagged and they bounced for a while over broken tarmac and potholes, bits of metal and broken glass. Acres of wasteland, lit by two high lights hundreds of yards apart. They stopped in the darkest area, halfway between them.

“Grab a shovel,” Clem said.

For the next forty-five minutes they assaulted the mixture of clay and sandy soil that lay beneath the rubble.

“Easy work, he says. Good money, he says. You can’t lose,” Stu said, his voice heaving with the rhythm of his shovel.

“You’re not complaining, are you?” Clem said. “I can’t stand whiners.”

“This the sort of job you get a lot?”

“Not that often. Once in a while.”

“Well, listen, Clem. I didn’t sign on for killing anybody. I’m not interested in a murder rap, thank you very much.”

“The people we deal with, I guarantee you, are not fine upstanding citizens.”

“I don’t care what they are. I’m just saying.”

Clem jammed his shovel into the ground and looked at him. “I’m doing you a favour bringing you along on this, cupcake. Zig don’t exactly trust you yet, but I do. I wanna be able to tell him you’re solid.”

Stu kept shovelling. “Fine, man. I’m not complaining.”

“This is deep enough.”

They opened the trunk of the Prius.

“Garbage bags,” Stu said. “Man, that’s rough.”

“What, you wanna purchase a nice casket on a layaway plan? You never even met the guy.”

“So, what’d you do to him?” Stu said, taking the feet.

“Nothing. Guy threw a heart attack.”

“Uh-huh. Good one, Clem.”

“Swear to God. Guy suddenly looks like he’s got gas pains, and boom. Dead.”

They waddled toward the hole, their glossy green burden swinging between them. On Clem’s count they slung it in. They stood at the edge, hands on hips, staring down. Stu looked like he was about to say something when a cellphone went off, its ring a digital copy of an old telephone’s.

“You gonna get that?” Stu said, pointing into the pit.

“Shit,” Clem said. “We can’t leave that on him. Someone might hear it.”

“How they going to hear it through four feet of dirt? Not that anyone’s gonna come out to this fucking dioxin fiesta in the first place. Whole place reeks of acetone or some damn thing.”

“We’re not leaving it on him, Stu. Go get it.”

Stu climbed into the pit, carefully straddling the body. He cut open the garbage bags with a pocket knife and rooted around until he found the phone. He handed it up to Clem and climbed out. Clem put it in his pocket and reached for his shovel.

“Don’t seem right to just dump him like this,” Stu said. “You think maybe we should say a few words?”

Clem made the sign of the cross and cleared his throat. “Here lies a dead guy,” he said. He looked over at Stu, then back to the green package below them. “End of story.”

Sabrina sat in front while Owen drove and Max took his siesta in the back bedroom. It was unlawful to be out of the seats while the vehicle was travelling down a highway at sixty miles an hour, but it was useless to try and talk Max out of it. The afternoon nap, according to Max, was just one of many things he and the great Winston Churchill had in common.

The desert rolled by on either side. They passed the turn-off to Laughlin, and the huge letter C that marked the town of Chloride. They sailed by Kingman, and then it was miles and miles of cactus.

“They look fake,” Sabrina said. “They look just like the plastic ones, except they’re all different sizes.”

The temperature gauge said it was 104 Fahrenheit outside; the air conditioner was working overtime. Owen became acutely aware of the scent Sabrina was wearing, something incomparably fresh and clean that increased his desire to bury his face in her graceful neck.

“Those are the Hualapai Mountains,” he said, just for something to say.

“So that’s what the Hualapai Mountains look like.”

“You’re making fun of me, aren’t you.”

“Why, yes, Owen. I am.”

He tried to find a music station that wasn’t playing country, and finally gave up. Sabrina pulled out an iPod with an FM attachment, so for the next stretch they listened to Dido.

“I like her,” Sabrina said. “She’s a bitch, but vulnerable-like me, I guess.”

“Don’t say that.” Owen pulled out to pass a spavined Buick that was belching black smoke. “You may be vulnerable, but-”

“Tell me something, Owen.” She turned her whole body round to face him. “What’s a grown boy like you doing travelling around the desert for the summer with his uncle?”

Owen smiled and pulled back into the slow lane. “Pretty weird, huh?”

“Tell me, though. Isn’t he too old to be your uncle?”

“He’s my great-uncle. But really he’s more like my stepdad.”

“What happened to your parents?”

“It’s kind of like what you went through, only I was younger. I was ten.” Owen told her the story of the car crash, and his brush with foster care.