Alix Ohlin - The Missing Person

After a few minutes of loading the van with backpacks and boxes of tools, Wylie, Berto, and Angus climbed inside it. As they left, Angus kissed me good-bye and whispered, “Stay close.” I said I’d try, and got behind the wheel of the Caprice. Without Berto beside him, Stan seemed a bit lost, crossing his arms and frowning at me when I met his gaze in the rearview mirror.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“Just follow the van, please,” Irina said.

I trailed the van through light evening traffic onto the interstate, switching lanes every time Angus did, worried that I’d lose them. These maneuvers continued even when there were no cars to pass, and I suspected he was just playing a game, smiling and watching me follow in the rearview mirror. Irina sang “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” over and over to Psyche, the repetition — like some inventively childish form of torture— driving me insane. I kept glaring at her, to no avail, but after a while she switched to a Czech melody whose words, at least, I couldn’t understand, and Psyche’s irritated babble finally subsided.

“Where are we going — Bisbee?” I said. Nobody answered.

We were west of town when the van signaled for an exit onto a rough, one-lane road. The car jostled and shuddered, and Psyche woke up and started crying again. I sighed, staring out at the dark, empty land around us and the black silhouettes of power lines snaking along the horizon. When I followed the van onto a dirt road, the Caprice bucked in protest, and rocks sprayed across the windshield. On Irina’s side the glass began to spiderweb.

“Shit,” I said.

“Are we here?” Irina said.

“How should I know?” I said. The road weaved and turned back on itself, heading up into hills. It was too dark to see very well, and the car kept bouncing into ruts or scraping its bottom against the dirt and gravel. The shuddering kept getting worse, even at this low speed. I gripped the wheel at ten and two, as if this would prevent anything bad from happening. At one point the headlights flashed over the bloody remains of a deer or antelope, and I veered around it. Five minutes later, I parked beside the van in front of a cabin that was cobbled together out of adobe and two-by-fours. Sledge stood outside, barking, and next to him was Gerald Lobachevski.

I got out of the car and stretched; my right leg was numb. Wylie climbed out of the van and waved at me as Angus and Gerald disappeared into the darkness. I walked back down the road and looked up at the sky — it was a true New Mexico black, flecked with bright stars. There was just enough light to limn the contours of the desert below, indeterminate and lovely. The land rose and fell like breath. I sat down on a long flat rock. Outlined around me, somewhere between object and shadow, were cacti and boulders and squat juniper scrub. I could feel the edge of a chill in the air.

From above I heard the murmur of voices and the flat scuffle of shoes, and moments later Angus and Gerald came walking slowly toward me, their heads swaying together rhythmically as if they belonged to a single animal. Angus was talking, but I couldn’t make out the words. “Ache back,” I thought I heard him say, not once but twice, and I wondered what language or code he was speaking. Gerald wasn’t saying anything at all. I knew they couldn’t see me, so I coughed.

“Well, hello there,” Angus said. “You remember Gerald.”

“Hello, Gerald.”

“Wylie’s sister,” Gerald said flatly.

“That would be me,” I said. He turned around and walked back to the house. “He’s so gracious,” I said to Angus.

“I know it.” He sat down next to me on the rock, and I moved over to a less smooth and comfortable part, resenting him and trying not to, our hips pressed close together. I have slept with this ragged, red-haired person, I thought, multiple times. His freckled skin was practically glowing in the dark desert night. An owl hooted in the quiet. Angus put his hand on my knee, then turned and kissed me full on the lips. It was a fine kiss; there was nothing wrong with it; but it was not what it had been at the beginning of the summer. Somehow, and so soon — a fact that burst sadly inside me — I had gotten used to Angus Beam. I pulled my head away and stared down at the ground as he put his arm around me.

“Let’s go back,” I said, and stood up. Just then a thin, plaintive cry rose through the air. “Is that a coyote?” I said.

Angus laughed and said, “No, it’s Psyche.”

Inside the cabin, in the gloomy light of a camping lantern, Stan and Berto were looking freaked out as the baby screamed her head off. Wylie and Irina were bent over a blanket on the floor, making shushing and humming sounds, but Psyche ignored them, wrapped up in her own distress, and I thought I detected a certain satisfaction in her wailing. Her face was screwed up tight and red, with a kind of rash on her forehead; when I got closer, I could see it had spread down her neck and shoulders all the way to her little hands.

“Did you try feeding her?” Angus said.

“Of course I tried feeding her,” Irina said, looking sweaty and worried, her accent suddenly thicker.

“I think she has a fever,” Wylie said.

Angus crouched down next to them, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet and touching her pudgy shoulder. After Wylie finished changing her diaper, Irina picked her up and said, “I’m taking her outside.”

From the other side of the room, Gerald growled, “Ridiculous to bring a baby up here.”

“You be quiet,” Wylie told him.

“He’s got a point, man,” Berto said.

“What’s she supposed to do with it?” Stan muttered. “She can’t just leave it behind.”

“I’m just saying, man,” Berto said.

“You drag that baby around like a dog,” Gerald said.

Irina was staring straight at him, ignoring everybody else, the baby wailing over her shoulder.

Gerald’s voice was harsh and rasping with scorn. “You’re like a girl with a doll.”

“I’m her mother,” Irina said.

“She’s compromising this whole operation.”

“She will stop soon,” Irina said, “I know it.”

“You don’t know anything,” Gerald said, louder, glaring right back at her. “It’s a game to you.”

Irina was scowling, her face transformed without its trademark smile. “You could help,” she said. “She is yours too. You could help me!”

“I told you I wouldn’t,” he said flatly.

“You son of a bitching!” Irina said wildly. “You!” Then both she and the baby were wailing, a high and awful noise like bagpipes or cats.

“Oh, shut up,” Gerald told her.

“You shut up,” Wylie said, standing there with his fists clenched.

Angus unfolded himself from his crouch and lifted his palms to calm the two men. Gerald turned away, shrugging, and Wylie glowered at Angus — an equal contest, it seemed to me — but then subsided, shaking his head and relaxing his fists.

Cradling the baby in her arms, Irina walked resolutely outside, where we could hear Psyche’s shivering cries and her mother’s shaky, delicate singing in counterpoint harmony. Wylie glanced around, his face torqued with worry, and then went outside. Before long, the howling grew thinner and higher, falling away in the dark, until it was only a sliver of sound.

The lamp swung back and forth, pushed into motion by the door Wylie had closed behind him. Sledge had gotten inside, and now started licking the backs of my calves, so I scolded him away to the far corner of the room. Angus and Gerald spread out maps and sank deep into private conversation. Closer to me, Stan and Berto were arguing with each other, muttering and shaking their heads like some old married couple with longstanding disagreements.