Percival Everett - The Body of Martin Aguilera

Lewis decided he could wait the forty-five minutes. There was no sense in getting started on the wrong foot by rushing the man back. Lewis looked at back issues of Popular Mechanics and Motor Trend . Flora burped and excused herself. Lewis smiled at her.

Flora got up and left the room. Lewis assumed she was off to the restroom. He looked at the clock. He had twenty minutes. He stood and walked to the door of Manny’s office. He went inside and pushed the door to gently. He stood there and searched for his breath and thoughts. He went to the sheriff’s desk and glanced at the papers atop it. He looked at everything. There was an unsigned complaint of a woman accusing her husband of assault and an accident report saying that the teenage driver had been drunk.

He pulled back the blinds and looked at the lot. Back at the desk, he found a television schedule open and a program circled: Invisible Weapons . The guide said it was a documentary about the chemical warfare agents of World War I. He found a letter from the State Association of Law Enforcement Officials reminding Manny of an upcoming meeting in Las Cruces. There was nothing on the desk that helped him. He went to the file cabinets. He looked up Aguilera, Martin. The folder was thin, containing only the report which stated that an old man had drowned in the Rio Grande. He paused and listened. He guessed that Flora had just assumed he’d left. He looked at the report. Aguilera, Martin; born 1919, five-feet-six-inches tall, brown hair, brown eyes. Lewis closed the folder. He dropped it on the floor, not absently, but defiantly and he kicked it. He snatched open the Ñ-through-S drawer without a thought to Flora in the next room. He was looking for Peabody.

Lewis could hear Flora at the door. She knocked. “Manny?”

Lewis pulled files, leafed through them and dropped them. He turned when Flora opened the door. They looked at each other for a full ten seconds, just standing there. Lewis went back to the desk and pulled open drawers, dumping handfuls of things onto the top, loose bullets, plastic toy handcuffs, mint candies.

Flora came back to the doorway, more composed. She said, “Manny wants to talk to you on the radio.”

Lewis stared at her for a few seconds, then followed her to her desk. She picked up the handpiece and said, “Here he is, Manny.” She gave the thing to Lewis.

“What’s going on, Lewis?” Manny asked. His voice sounded strange through the speaker.

“What’s going on?”

“You have to push the button down to talk,” Flora said.

He held the button down. “What’s going on, Manny?” He felt Flora’s chair behind him and sat in it.

“Tell me what you’re talking about,” the sheriff’s voice cracked with static.

“Maggie’s missing.”

“What do you mean, missing?”

“I went to the state police, Manny.”

“What’d they say?”

Lewis began to think that Manny was trying to keep him on the radio and became anxious. “I’ve got to go.”

“No, wait until I get there, Lewis.”

He put the handpiece down and backed away from it.

“The sheriff wants you to wait,” Flora said.

Lewis said nothing to her. He got up and walked past her and out of the station. He got into the truck and sped off. He rubbed his head at a four-way stop. He stopped for gas, nervously checking for Manny or anybody. No one was following him, he was confident of that.

He parked across the street from the house of boots and just sat for several minutes. He decided he just couldn’t watch Salvador cry again and left. He needed to go home, though he didn’t think that was the safest place, get his shotgun and hike up into the canyon behind Martin’s cabin. The answer, some answer, was up there. He didn’t feel afraid anymore. He didn’t care what happened to him.

As Lewis drove up the mountain he thought about what he had done in Manny’s office. He’d let off steam and perhaps made some kind of statement, but he had learned nothing and had maybe alienated the only person who might have come to his aid. He wondered if subconsciously he was attempting to lure the sheriff into following him. He laughed at himself. Would that he were that smart. He glanced again at his mirror, looking for flashing blue lights.

Lewis went into his house and grabbed the shotgun. He stopped at the door. For all his holding it and gaining comfort from it, he had not loaded it. He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and snatched up a handful of shells. He put them in his pocket. If the situation did arise that he would have to shoot at someone, if he could at all, he would not need many shells, the loading of the double-barrelled gun being so slow. He went to the kitchen and filled his canteen with water from the tap, then left the house and put the gun in the back of the truck under a tarp.

As he rolled down the dusty trail to the highway, he spotted a blue van parked a ways up a fire break. He backed up and studied it for a while. Then he was out of the cab and grabbing the shotgun. He approached slowly, looking behind him as much as forward. He stood by the back doors. So, it wasn’t brown, but blue. What was it doing here? He heard moaning from within.

He wondered if Maggie could be inside. He stepped wide cautiously to see that the driver’s seat was empty. He did the same on the other side. He walked forward and looked through the window, but could not see into the back. The moaning continued. He went to the back doors and grasped the handle, pushed down slowly. The handle clacked loudly so he jerked it quickly, pulled the door open and swung the shotgun up.

A woman screamed. She pulled a blanket over her body and the young man beside her pulled discarded clothes into his lap. Lewis knew he had made a mistake, but he was embarrassed and adrenaline filled his bloodstream and heart.

“What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked, letting the gun down.

“We didn’t mean to trespass, mister,” the young man said.

Lewis looked at the woman. She was considerably older than the man. The situation was painfully obvious, Lewis thought.

“Well, you did,” Lewis told them. “So, get your clothes on and get out of here.” He closed the door and walked away from them, back toward the truck. He put the gun under the tarp. It slipped from his sweaty palms and banged against the metal of the bed. He got in and just sat behind the wheel for a while. He could have shot someone. His head ached. He could have shot those people, taken them both out with one squeeze of the trigger. He looked up the fire break and saw the back-up lights of the van come on. He started the truck and drove on down the mountain.

The way to Martin’s seemed longer, though there was little traffic. On his way through town, he thought he saw his pickup at a gas station. He looked at everything, trying not to think. He watched young women, fashionable and pretty, walk through the downtown area. He watched one of Manny’s deputies, idle at a red light, not noticing Lewis, and again he was thankful for having switched trucks. As he rolled out the other side of town, he looked closely at the eroding adobe dwellings of poor Mexicans.

He drove on, across the river, past the cafe and up the road to Martin’s cabin. He considered hiding the truck off the road, up a fire break covered with brush, but he thought if he ran into trouble, he might need it in a hurry. He told himself again that he might not find anything up there, but he might luck up. He was overdue. He might find Maggie, alive and uninjured. He shook his head. He had a feeling that Maggie was dead.

He took the shotgun from beneath the tarp, left the truck and started up the trail into the canyon. Again, even more, he was struck by the absence of the sounds of birds. The trees seemed to be suffering now as well, browning, the bark of the firs reddening. He climbed higher and found the leaves of the aspens curling. There were no flies, no bees. He turned over a log and found nothing. If things were dying, they still had to be somewhere, he thought. He walked past the point where he had stopped before. He paused to catch his breath, leaned the shotgun against a tree, and drank from his canteen. He looked at the gun. He broke it open, observed the shells, and engaged the barrels. He walked on.