Chapter 24
We worked under the floodlights in the Bonney lot.
Coyote uncoiled the same length of fresh rope the carpenters had cut for the noose, and I sat on the open tailgate watching him do it with my ribs going slow and shallow.
Mateo had brought me a dishrag from the gift shop counter for my mouth.
I held it there and tasted cotton, my own blood, the chemical smell of whatever they used to clean the postcard carousel.
Ransom stood by the driver's door and didn't look at me.
"Where's Rafe and Sierra?" I asked.
Ransom didn't turn around. "Not here."
"They know you're here?"
He didn't answer.
I lowered the rag from my bloody lip. "Can you go back?"
"Don't know."
That makes two of us, I thought.
Coyote tied the rope to the trailer hitch and tested the knot with one slow pull. He tied off the other end in a loop, big enough to go around a man's ankles twice, and laid the loop flat in the dirt so the rope wouldn't bind when the truck pulled.
"You ever done this before?" I asked.
Coyote looked up at me from the knot. "Drug a man behind a truck? No, Ranger. First time."
"You tie a real pretty knot for a first-timer."
"I tie a real pretty knot, period." He gave the loop one more tug and stood up, dusting his hands on his thighs. "Mama taught me knots before she taught me reading. She had her priorities."
"What'd she think of reading?"
"Overrated."
Nimue lifted her head off Coyote's collarbone like she agreed.
"Ready," Coyote said.
Linc and Mateo brought Rex out of the gift shop on his good leg, with the bad one dragging.
Rex had stopped talking somewhere around the second time he'd asked me to call my captain.
He'd pissed himself a second time on the carpet when he'd figured out the conversation was over.
The smell came off him in a wave when they got him out into the night air. Linc made a face. Mateo didn't.
"Ranger," Rex pleaded. "Ranger, you're a lawman. You can't let this happen."
I leaned my elbows on my knees on the tailgate. "I'm taking the night off."
Mateo and Linc walked him to the back of the truck.
Coyote crouched and slipped the loop around Rex's ankles and pulled it snug.
He worked the knot like he worked everything: quick fingers, tongue between his teeth.
Rex tried to kick him. Coyote pinned his knee, humming through it.
The knot settled flush against Rex's anklebone and stayed there.
"That'll hold, Rex," Coyote said. "I do good work."
I slid off the tailgate.
My ribs protested, and the right knee buckled when I put weight on it. I told them both to hush. I walked around to the driver's side where Ransom was standing, favoring the leg.
"You sure about this?" he said.
"I'm sure."
"This ain't going to undo it."
"I know."
"Your daddy's still going to be where you left him."
"I know that, too."
His jaw worked, and he looked past me at Rex, who was lying on his back in the dirt. "You want to drive?"
I'd thought about it on the walk to the truck.
I'd thought about putting my hands on that wheel and putting my boot on that gas pedal and feeling the tug of the rope through the chassis when it took up slack and started to pull.
I'd pictured it. I'd pictured it like a thing I'd been owed a long time.
And then I'd pictured my daddy on his porch in Graham, his eyes pointed at nothing. He'd died with a lot of unfinished business in him, my daddy. He hadn't wanted me to be a Ranger. He'd told me so the day I'd put the badge on. I'd done it anyway.
"No," I said. "You drive."
He adjusted his hat. "All right."
I walked back to the tailgate and hauled myself into the bed, putting the weight on the good leg.
My ribs lit up the whole side of my body.
I sucked air through my teeth and put my back against the cab.
Coyote climbed up after me and sat down on the wheel well with Nimue over his shoulders.
Mateo and Linc climbed in after with rifles, and Fenix followed with a flashlight.
"You good back there?" Ransom called out the driver's window.
"I'm good."
"Hold on."
The engine turned over. The headlights came on and threw two yellow cones across the gravel and out onto the caliche road past the back fence.
The same road Joe Dancing had named for us in a prison storage closet a week ago.
The same road Otis had used for Castillo, four miles of bad caliche running south out of the back of Bonney's land toward nothing.
The truck rolled forward at a crawl. The rope at the hitch tightened and went taut. Rex's body slid an inch in the dirt and stopped.
"Rex," Ransom called back. "You comfortable?"
Rex screamed something.
The truck eased forward.
The rope took up the slack with a small, dry creak. Rex's body left the gravel of the lot and hit the dirt of the road, then the caliche. The sound a man makes when he goes from gravel to caliche behind a 1978 Ford was a sound I'd never forget.
Rex made a high, broken sound through his teeth, but I wouldn't have called it a scream. I wouldn't have called it any sound that had a word in English except maybe painful.
I sat with my back against the cab. Every bad shock from the truck's springs went up through the bed, into my spine, out through my ribs. Coyote watched the road behind us with his chin on his hand and his snake on his shoulder.
Behind the truck, the dust caught the floodlight from the truck and came up in a long wall, obscuring the end of the rope where Rex was.
The night carried sage, creosote, and alkali dust kicking up off the caliche.
Underneath was the smell of human meat. I knew the smell.
I'd worked enough bad scenes to know it.
The desert was getting the first crack at Rex.
I had the dishrag in my hand, pink now, and the slow, steady throb of my nose against my collar where the bone had gone the wrong way under a rifle butt I never saw coming.
And I had Ransom Lanza's shoulders through the back glass, hat low, both hands on the wheel, the truck rolling slow enough that the dust caught up to us at every curve.
There he is. There's my cowboy.
I'd loved him with a rope around my neck.
I loved him in a Ford going twelve miles an hour with a man dying behind the bumper.
And I'd keep loving him after Rex was dead and buried, after they took away my Ranger star, and my gun, and everything I thought I wanted.
None of it mattered now because what I really wanted out of life was sitting behind the wheel of a 1978 Ford driving through the New Mexico desert at night.
I'd thought love was supposed to flinch at this kind of thing. I'd seen plenty of love that did.
What I had in my chest right now didn't flinch.
"You're smiling," Coyote said.
"Am I?"
"A little. At the corners."
"Huh."
"It's a good smile, Ranger." He tilted his head, considering me, like he considered everything. "You don't smell scared anymore."
"I'm not."
"I know. That's why I'm telling you." Coyote shifted Nimue across his shoulders.
"Mama used to say a man's first kill smells different from his hundredth.
The first one smells like fear underneath.
The hundredth smells like dinner. But there's a third smell.
It's the rarest. She said I'd know it when I caught it, and I'd know not to ask. "
"What's the third smell?"
"The smell of a man getting back something somebody took from him."
The truck went on. Ransom drove like a man hauling hay on a Sunday morning. Steady, no rush, taking the curves wide. I didn't watch the road in front of us. I watched the rope.
After a few miles, Ransom's hand came up off the wheel and the brake lights came on. The truck rolled to a stop. Coyote dropped over the side, taking the flashlight from Fenix, and walked back to crouch next to Rex's still body.
The flashlight beam moved across whatever was in the dirt at his feet for what felt like a long time. He put the back of his hand near Rex's mouth and moved the beam up the body.
Up at the bumper, Mateo shifted the .30-06 across his thighs and said something low to Linc. Linc snorted. I didn't catch what Mateo had said. I didn't have to. The two of them stood too close together, shoulders touching, Mateo's elbow in Linc's ribs.
Linc said, "Shut up, you ghoul."
Mateo grinned at the dirt.
Then Coyote stood up, walked back to the truck, and tapped the side of the bed.
"Still with us," Coyote said.
Ransom started the truck again.
We stopped the second time another mile down.
Same procedure. Coyote dropped down. Coyote walked back.
The flashlight beam moved across the body in the dirt.
This time the beam hovered longer. This time Coyote went down on one knee and put a hand on Rex's chest and held it there.
I couldn't tell if he was checking or saying goodbye.
With Coyote, it was always hard to tell.
"Still breathing," he called up the road, lower.
Ransom started the truck again.
"Fucker's dying slow on purpose," Mateo muttered with a sigh.
Fenix nodded in agreement. "Bodies are stubborn."
It took another three miles for Rex Rawlins to die, and the better part of an hour. When it was done, Ransom got out and walked back to crouch next to the body. He was out of my sightline a moment. Then he stood up and walked back to the truck.
He came around to the tailgate and looked up at me.
"You want to see?"
"No," I said.
"All right."
"Did you check?"
"I checked."
"Pulse?"
"None."
I nodded and fished out my gun to hand it to Ransom. "Put one in the back of his head anyway."
Ransom held my eyes. "Yeah."
He turned and walked back down the road. The shot came a minute later, sharp and close, the kind of sound the desert eats clean. Then his boot steps came back.
"You want to ride up front?" he said.
"Yeah."
I took his hand, and he helped me out of the back. The knee didn't want to take the landing. He didn't say anything, but he knew.
The headlights threw both our shadows long across the caliche. Coyote was crouched beside whatever was in the dirt past the rope, talking to it low, like he did with dead things. Rex's last audience, and the worst he could've drawn.
Ransom walked me to the passenger door, helped me in, and shut it behind me. Then he walked around through the headlights and slid into the driver's side. The door closed with a final thump, and the night settled in the cab around us.
"You all right?" he asked.
"That ain't a question I know how to answer right now, cowboy."
Ransom turned his head and looked at me.
The dashboard glow caught the line of his jaw.
There was blood on his knuckles, dust on his cheek, and the smell of caliche and Rex still on his clothes.
The man had killed the man who'd put my daddy in a hole.
He'd done it with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the radio dial.
I had never wanted anybody as badly as I wanted him in that cab.
I reached across the bench seat and got a fistful of his shirt, and pulled him to me.
The kiss took the wind out of both of us.
My ribs lit up, and I didn't care. His hand came up fast and caught the back of my neck.
He kissed me back like he'd been holding it since the gift shop.
He bit my lip. Not on purpose, I don't think.
His teeth caught it, and he made a sound in his throat I hadn't heard from him before, low and hurt-sounding.
It landed somewhere south of my belt. The want I'd been carrying since the gallows came up the back of my neck. It went hot.
His other hand found my thigh, and his fingers dug in hard enough to bruise. I wanted that bruise on me before I wanted my next breath.
I held him there by the shirt. If I let go, I was going to come apart. I would not come apart, not yet, not before I'd said it. His hand moved from my thigh to my side. Then he pulled back an inch. His forehead stayed against mine.
"Ranger," he said, voice low and husky.
"Don't stop."
"Your ribs."
"Fuck my ribs."
"Working on it."
I laughed. The laugh hurt. I didn't care about that either.
I pulled back an inch, but kept my fist in his shirt.
"I love you," I said.
His eyes went somewhere behind mine for a second. Then they came back.
"Winston."
"I been working up to it," I said. "I had a whole thing planned. Was gonna wait till the asphalt. Wait till the radio came back in clear." My voice was rougher than I wanted it. "Then I sat in that chair tonight and I figured out I might not get the asphalt. So you're getting it here."
He didn't say anything.
"You don't have to say it back. Not tonight. Not ever, if it ain't there. I just needed you to know."
His hand was still on the back of my neck. His thumb moved against the nape of my neck. He'd touched me there before, in his bed the morning after the flowers. I'd thought then he didn't know he was doing it. I thought now he knew exactly what he was doing.
"I been yours since the shack," he said.
Something in my stomach went cold. Then it went warm.
I let go of his shirt, and he started the engine.
We sat for a minute with the engine running.
Outside, the others were finishing what we'd left for them.
Coyote was pointing at something, his snake slithering down his arm.
Fenix had a shovel and was leaning on it, paying close attention to Coyote while Linc held the flashlight one-handed.
Mateo was looking through the scope of his rifle up at the stars and laying on his back in the dirt.
They knew the work. They didn't need me for the rest of it.
"Take me home, cowboy," I said.
Ransom put the truck in gear and drove.