?Somebody else couldn?t have misplaced it, stuck it in the wrong box or something??
?Anything I find with y?all?s name on it, I promise I?ll bring it to your room.?
?It?ll be from a man named Junior Vogel.?
?Yes, sir, I got it.?
Outside, Pete stood in the shadow of the motel and looked at the breathtaking sweep of the landscape, the red and orange and yellow coloration in the rocks, the gnarled trees and scrub brush whose root systems had to grow through slag to find moisture. He slapped a mosquito on the back of his neck and looked at it. The mosquito had been fat with blood and had left a smear on his palm the size of a dime. Pete wiped the blood on his jeans and began walking down the two-lane road that looked like a displaced piece of old Highway 66. He walked past the miniature golf course and angled through the abandoned drive-in theater, passing through the rows of iron poles that had no speakers on them, row after row of them, their function used up and forgotten, surrounded by the sounds of wind and tumbleweed blowing through their midst.
He walked for perhaps twenty minutes, up a long sloping grade to a plateau on which three table sandstone rocks were set like browned biscuits one on top of another. He climbed the rocks and sat down, his legs hanging in space, and placed the bag with the two bottles of beer in it by his side. He watched a half-dozen buzzards turning in the sky, the feathers in their extended wings fluttering on the warm current of air rising from the hardpan. Down below, he watched an armadillo work its way toward its burrow amid the creosote brush, the weight of its armored shell swaying awkwardly above its tiny feet.
He reached into his pocket and took out his Swiss Army knife. With his thumb and index finger, he pulled out the abbreviated blade that served as both a screwdriver and a bottle opener. He peeled the wet paper off the beer bottles and set one sweating with moisture and spangled with amber sunlight on the rock. He held the other in his left hand and fitted the opener on the cap. Below, the armadillo went into its burrow only to reappear with two babies beside it, all three of them peering out at the glare.
?What are you guys up to?? Pete asked.
No answer.
He uncapped the bottle and let the cap tinkle down the side of the rocks onto the sand. He felt the foam rise over the lip of the bottle and slide down his fingers and the back of his hand and his wrist. He looked back over his shoulder and could make out the screen of the drive-in movie and, farthe
r down the street, the steak house and beer joint where Vikki had used another last name and taken a job as a waitress, the money under the table. He wiped his mouth with his hand and could taste the salt in his sweat.
At the foot of the table rocks, the polished bronze beer cap seemed to glow hotter and hotter against the grayness of the sand. It was the only piece of litter as far as he could see. He climbed down from the rocks, his beer bottle in one hand, picked up the cap, and thumbed it into his pocket. The armadillos stared up at him, their eyes as intense and unrelenting as black pinheads.
?Are you guys friendlies or Republican Guard? Identify yourself or get shot.?
Still no response.
Pete reached for the bottle of beer on top of the rocks, then approached the burrow. The adult armadillo and both babies scurried back inside.
?I tell you what,? he said, squatting down, a bottle in each hand. ?Anybody that can live out here in this heat probably needs a couple of brews a lot worse than I do. These are on me, fellows.?
He poured the first beer down the hole, then popped off the cap on the second one and did the same, the foam running in long fingers down the burrow?s incline. ?You guys all right in there?? he asked, twisting his head sideways to see inside the burrow. ?I?ll take that as an affirmative. Roger that and keep your steel pots on and your butts down.?
He shook the last drops out of both bottles, stuck the empties in his pockets, and hiked back to town, telling himself that perhaps he had just walked through a door into a new day, maybe even a new life.
At ten A.M. exactly, he went down to the motel office just as the mailman was leaving. ?Did you have anything for Gaddis or Flores?? he said.
The mailman grinned awkwardly. ?I?m not supposed to say. There was a bunch of mail for the motel this morning. Ask inside.?
Pete opened the door and closed it behind him, an electronic ding going off in back somewhere. The clerk came through a curtained doorway. ?How you doing?? he said.
?I?m not sure.?
?Sorry, I didn?t see nothing in there for y?all.?
?It?s got to be here.?
?I looked, believe me.?
?Look again.?
?It?s not there. I wish it was, but it?s not.? The clerk studied Pete?s face. ?Your rent is paid up for four more nights. It cain?t be all that bad, can it??
THAT NIGHT VIKKI took her sunburst Gibson to work with her and played and sang three songs with the band. The next morning there was no mail addressed to her or Pete at the motel office. Pete used the pay phone at the steak house to call Junior Vogel at his home.
?You promised Vikki you were gonna pick up my check and send it to us,? he said.
?I don?t know what you?re talking about.?