To be direct, neither of them knew what myelofibrosis was. The young man in front of them explained that their policy would not cover a procedure as expensive as a transplant. They had not missed a payment, and perhaps if they had picked a better policy they would not be facing this issue. Of course, money was the main problem; the Sheriff’s income bracket had sealed the fate of his wife long before they knew of how terrible her condition would become. The young man adjusted his seat and continued to explain the clause in their policy. His demeanor was clear. The Sheriff thought about raising the money, and asked what would happen if he could. The young man sat up, put his palms together, shifted his eyes from the beige CRT monitor on his desk to the Sheriff and his wife and stated “Yes sir, that would mean we are in business.” And that was it for twenty-two years of marriage.
Months had passed, weight was lost, and the Sheriff said his final goodbyes. The Sheriff scattered the rest of his beloved’s ashes onto the coffin as it sat in it’s grave, returned to his seat, and stared out on to the grand basin that surrounded the cemetery. The funeral was not bare as family and friends had all come together to say goodbye, but to him there was no company, only a solitary feeling.
~
The Sheriff drove along Route 10 on his way to Van Horn. He passed the lonesome Exxon and pulled over to where he was called. “Two miles west from the Exxon” he was told. He saw three men standing around a pick-up truck, and approached them. Migrant workers, oftentimes illegal with no bearing of English were commonplace in this area, and here two of them were with the local source of labor, Barato, as they called him. He had heard it meant cheap, which made sense considering the pittance pay that these men received for the work they had to do as there was no other work available in west Texas. The Sheriff exited his black-and-white Plymouth Gran Fury. The air-conditioning that he had surrounded himself with all but vanished as the unforgiving Texas sun beat down on him upon exiting his office on wheels.
“Hello Sheriff.”
“Morning Barato.”
“I’ll show you why I called, follow me.”
They walked and left the two laborers behind to continue with their discussion. Fifty or so feet away from the road lay a corpse of a migrant. Flies buzzed and the blood that the corpse sat in had almost completely dried, but this body was recent. It was only noontime, and as such the Sheriff figured that the 95° weather had played a role in vaporizing whatever liquids remained in the fellow that lay before him. The Sheriff squatted down, tipped his hat up, and turned the body over. As per the last several cases over the years, the corpse’s right arm was completely mangled; a spiral of flesh and muscle wrapped around chipped bone. The scene did not disturb him. All he could think was of the inconvenience of dealing with it. Barato kicked some dirt.
“I am terribly sorry to bother you about this. It’s on our property, and well-”
The Sheriff rose and readjusted his hat. He pointed at the corpse.
“He’s from your plant. He’s illegal, and I know he took meth to try and work another few hours. His arm got caught, but he’s so high he doesn’t know what to do so he wanders out here and bleeds to death just like the other two last month.”
Barato smirked and looked down, he knew the procedure: He would take a verbal beating from the Sheriff and then work would continue as it had for years. The two walked away from the corpse and towards the laborers. The Sheriff handed one of them his keys.
“There is a tarp in the trunk. Cover him up.”
“Ese era mi hermano.”
The Sheriff nodded. Barato put his hand on the Sheriff’s shoulder.
“Can you call the doctor? I want to get this wrapped up.”
“Signal doesn’t carry around the plant. The hills, interference.”
Barato sucked his teeth in frustration.
“I am sorry to hear about the missus. We didn’t talk much, but she came off as very nice.”
The Sheriff started off towards the back of his car to shut the trunk.
“It’s been a few years, how have you been? You know, with that?”
The Sheriff slammed the trunk.
“Barato, please don’t talk about my wife. Her name sounds like shit in your mouth.”
The Sheriff entered his car and drove off. Time was he’d never have said a thing like that to anyone, still less a man in Barato’s position: a figure of pseudo-authority, a pillar of the local business community. Just lately, something had been telling him the hell with it. It might have been the air that soured him, that sick-sweet stench you could smell all the way down main street. That was more than almost half the folks in town could stand, the latest family leaving only yesterday. The workers at the plant— once they found out where the meat was going— had dubbed the place McHell. The Sheriff drove past the lake of cattle that were fenced in next to the plant. The Sheriff recalled the only time he had been inside— the first night one of those poor bastards had been found, lying wide-eyed in the desert with the dark, gleaming ribbons in his wake. Barato, fresh-faced then and learning slowly, had thought a tour of the facility would serve as reassurance. They’d seen men punch-drunk with exhaustion, working in rooms full of blades. Brawny arms with scars where flesh was scalloped out in quarter pounds by “accident”. Shit and piss on the killing floor, the schedule not allowing time for breaks. The killing was inexpert, the gutting a disgrace: bowels spilled their contents into shipments that went out within the hour. Reports were filed and fines were paid. The job earned next to nothing, hence the illegals. On it went. So maybe it was the air that soured him, but anyone who knew the Sheriff said it was the empty house that he went home to every night. The Sheriff crossed a bridge on his way home. Below it a river of sludge consisting of blood and feces.
~
A shack sat in the desert as a wounded Veteran played chess with his Host. They both looked out at the Sheriff’s car as it drove off.
“He didn’t even slow down. It must involve that weasel that runs the plant.” Uttered the Host.
“Right.” Grunted the Veteran. He gestured at his cast.
“I want this thing off my leg today.”
“You’re simultaneously the best opponent and worst patient I’ve ever had. Are you aware of that?” He handed the Veteran scissors.
“You’ll have to do the cutting.” He rose up and started towards the window of his shack. He looked off into the village that he occupied.
“Back in Peru I was a nurse: The lowest of the low. Trusted barely enough to write a prescription. Now I am here, all that stands between life and death for almost two hundred people.” The Host turned around and saw that the Veteran had almost removed his cast.
“Let me see.”
The Veteran’s leg was healed, albeit with bullet-hole scars. He stood up and walked around the small room. The Host crossed his arms and smiled. He looked at the Veteran awaiting approval. The Veteran looked back, nodded his head and started to prepare his bags to depart. All ready to go, the Veteran approached the door to exit and continue his journey.
“My name is Manuel De la Rosa…” stated the Host. The Veteran turned around and locked eyes with him.
“I’m not asking for yours, I simply want to be remembered by a man of substance.”
~
The Veteran watched Manuel and his wife drive away while he waited for transportation to take him to El Paso. He knew they had an apartment on the edge of town, in a building little better than the village he had stayed in. It was there he’d first been taken by his rescuers. Later, senses smudged by morphine, he’d hear the couple argue. Though, not about his being there. An old, familiar sadness for them both he’d come to realize: the plant Manuel’s wife worked at, the place that claimed the arm and hand. The manager there. The things she had to do to keep not just her job, but those of several cousins too. He’d brooded on it since they moved him here. This plant: that made Manuel a cripple, that left him as a doctor to nothing but the shanty town that grew up in its shadow, that made his wife a whore. The young man’s pride was gutshot. Somehow— it stripped a memory of kindness.
~
The flickering lights’ hum in the morticians room were a familiar sound to the Sheriff. He and the mortician sat after examining the corpse from earlier.
“What did the blood test say?” Murmured the Sheriff.
“Methamphetamine, full to bursting. Just prove it came from Barato and you can have him locked up. I must admit though, you are swimming uphill. You think you can make something stick against that damn place?”
The Sheriff starred at the tile below his feet.
“How have you been?”
“I’m okay. Appreciate you asking.”
“Come over for dinner tonight. My wife has an excellent steak marinating and I know it’s miles better than whatever God-awful microwavable meal you have sitting in the freezer.”
“It would, but I got things to do, paperwork…”
The mortician rose, his brow risen and wrinkles exasperated.
“For Pete’s sake! I think of you alone in that house with just those guns of yours and I fear for you.”
“I’m not about to off myself. I promise you.”
The Sheriff put his hat on and exited the office. He entered his car and drove off into the night.
The mortician watched as the red taillights that illuminated the road became more and more distant before eventually vanishing.
“There goes the last American.”
~
That promise that he made, that was the first real lie he’d ever told the mortician. He thought about it often, long before her time was up. Since the day they sat together in the awkward young man’s office, and he realized he was twice as scared as she was. He walked, now. He talked. He made it look like living. But really it was only breathing, and he was getting good and ready to switch off the life support. He sat down on the couch surrounded by almost complete darkness. Not with the Winchester, rifles being somehow sacred. He drew his service pistol. Colt 1911 emblazoned on the side of it’s slide. No less an icon: but a close-up, last chance killing place that meant all doubt was gone. With this, you faced it. You looked your man in the eye as you trapped him in the front sight, and then you sent him on his way. Catching the sunlight as they jumped from the breach, to the Sheriff the casings always seemed like gold, not brass. He looked at a photo of his wife on the table before him. All of a sudden, tonight was as good as any other. He pressed the muzzle to his temple.
“Comm one?”
His call sign. He had forgotten to shut off his scanner.
“We have a 9-11 call. We have a report of an intruder at the plant. Comm one?”
~
The Sheriff arrived at the scene, like earlier, darkness had surrounded him, but unlike the daytime, the Texas nighttime was harsh and cold. “I had a pistol to my head not ten minutes ago” he thought. “Finger just about to take up second pressure”. He turned on his under barrel light and scanned the entrance to the plant. He noticed a guard dog with it’s throat slashed and proceeded into the offices of McHell.
The Sheriff scanned the corridor before him and made his way to Barato’s office. He kicked the door open to a shocking yet relieving sight: Barato, in his boxers, throat cut open, laying in a pool of his own blood on the desk. The Sheriff scanned the dark office and noticed a woman balled up in fear in the corner of the room. He approached the window and pressed the transmitter on his walkie-talkie.
“Comm, this is one. Ten-thirty-three at the plant—“
Then he saw it. A glimmer about sixty feet away; a man running in the opposite direction with a light limp. He proceeded to empty his pistol’s magazine in an instant in the direction of the assailant. The brass spat out of his pistol with ferocity and littered the office floor.
~
The Veteran was hit mid-sprint but did not let up his stride. He entered a large building and slammed the door behind him. He took a corner and rested for a moment against the wall. No nine millimeter this. A long, long time since someone shot him with a real gun. As the Sheriff approached the door, blood poured out of the Veteran’s abdomen. He assumed it was a superficial wound, and as such it would leave a trail.
“Comm, this is—“
The hills, of course. The signal wouldn’t carry. He kicked open the door to the structure the Veteran had entered and scanned his surroundings. He noticed a trail of blood in front of him and followed it post haste. He turned a corner and was greeted by the killing floor of McHell. They ran through two red inches, sliding in the slop of cattle guts and human excrement. To the men and women on the line they were invisible: see nothing, say nothing. That was the first lesson learned. Say nothing while you worked yourself to death: while you cut your arms and shoulders to the bone. Too high to feel it, while meat unfit for dogs went out to feed a nation. Say nothing and you got to keep your job. On they ran. Two killers. Two artists overwhelmed by industry.
The Sheriff sprinted past workers drinking tequila from the bottle and pissing on the killing floor. He slipped and once again the distance between he and the Veteran increased. Smart thing to do, the Sheriff knew, was find a phone and call for back-up. A chopper would arrive and a couple hundred men would be here in the morning. But one look in those eyes had told him: you gave this bird a head-start and that’d be the last you ever saw of him. He ran over to his cruiser and retrieved his rifle from the trunk, took aim towards the hills where his target was getting smaller and smaller, put pressure on the trigger and fired a single round.
~
The Veteran dropped and rolled down the hill away from the Sheriff. He grabbed his leg, and realized it was the one that had just healed. The bad leg. No where near the bone, but the bad leg all the same. He could sense the Sheriff approaching, marching up the hill with the intent to kill.
“Has your head gone light from loss of blood? Enough to stop for breath on the ridge-line and silhouette yourself against the stars?! ” taunted the Sheriff.
The Veteran saw it now. This man would kill him, if anyone would. Out there in the rolling hills of central Texas in the cold dead of night, they knew the thing wolves knew. Hunter and hunted, eyes agleam as lizard brains kicked in. What they did not, could, would never know was that they ran with the ghosts of gunfighters. And all the rest who raised the country up. For this was old, old ground. And who could tell what feeding it might bring? History echoed through the canyons. This was the place where colony met wilderness. But even wilderness was owned, and deeds were filed in certain offices, claims staked in nameless places under the sky. Disputes resolved in unimaginable courts. This was the place they birthed a nation. Where they cut this country from the raw meat of the land. Something else was born, that could not stop. The ghosts began to multiply. The ground drew in the years that followed, the other lands that lay on the great road west. There were ghosts of peoples used, then left on hotel roofs by fleeing helicopters. Of men carved into sad black panels, kin to others who could never quite come home. Desert turned to jungle, then full circle. Back to desert. For manifest destiny cut both ways. Cut all it touched, except its architects. With all this in mind the Sheriff found himself wondering if he was watched? Followed? Surrounded, even? One overwhelming certainty: when he brought the rifle to the aim, he was not the first to do so in that place, that blood gulch that he found himself in. Idea now is, he thought, “I just walk right on in there and lose it all: light, killing distance, every Goddamn advantage that I got. Like the dumb son of a bitch I guess I am.”
The Sheriff proceeded into the valley of death. Attention freed by the certainty of how the thing would go, he saw himself again then the pistol to his head. “Could have got what I was looking for in that little canyon. Wouldn’t have even heard it, much less felt it. Fifty, maybe sixty paces ’til I was right in this boy’s sights. Now I put him down, walk out of here, write up the report and go on home.”
The Sheriff approached a large stone before him. If the assailant were to hide anywhere, this would be it. Duty drew on him, but it had never seemed so hollow. His next thought took a long half second:
“Why am I thinking rifle? Barato’s throat was cut. Why rifle?”
~
Sudden pain erupted in the Sheriff’s body. A blade had been buried into his back by the Veteran. The Veteran felt the huge, sad strength in the Sheriff’s frame. The moment of resistance that died as it began. The blow was fatal, yet every man he’d killed this way had fought it: raw instinct made them claw and scrabble, reach up to haul themselves above the pain. Not this one. This one had fought the very will to live. The Sheriff embraced the warmth that greeted him following the jolt of pain, and in an instant motion left his body. The Veteran removed his blade from the Sheriff’s back, lowered his corpse, and sat down. He grabbed his wounded torso, and suddenly pain overcame him. The Veteran realized that his Descending Aorta was damaged, and at any moment death too would come for him. He looked up at the stars overhead and strangely anticipated who would greet him on the other side. Would it be his fellow men from the Flying Calvary? Would it be the NVA that he liquidated? Would he be greeted by his father? He did not know. He grabbed the rapidly chilling hand of the Sheriff, shut his eyes, and awaited his departure.