Percival Everett
Assumption
For Beth
~ ~ ~
Dusk came on and the pinacate bugs were out of their holes and trudging along the wash. Ogden Walker pushed his toe into the path of one of the large beetles and watched it stand on its head. He glanced up at the shriek of a chat-little and noticed the pink in the sky and though it showed no promise of rain he walked up to higher ground to settle in for the night, remembered how quickly desert floods could occur, how his father would not drive across a dip in the road if there was even an inch of water standing in its trough. The chill of evening was already on him. He built a fire, ate the sandwich he had bought some miles back near Las Cruces, and then rolled out his sleeping bag. He stared up at the new moon and the clouds that threatened to obscure it and tried to recall the last time he had been able to sleep in the desert. The desert he and his father had shared was not like this one. The high desert was not so severe, was not so frightening, relentless, was harsh only for its lack of water. His father spoke to him, a dead voice telling Ogden that he was a fool, a fool to love the desert, a fool to have left school, a fool to have joined the army, a fool to have no answers, and a fool to expect answers to questions he was foolish enough to ask. And his father would have called him a fool for working as a deputy in that hick-full, redneck county. His mother would be waiting for him in Plata. She wouldn’t call him a fool. He thought about the desert around him, thought about water and no water, the death that came with too much water, flooding that carried mice and snakes and nests and anything else in its way. To drown in the desert, that was the way to die, sinuses replete with sandy water, dead gaze to dead gaze with rattlers in the flow. Ogden closed his eyes and thanked the desert wind that it was all over.
A DIFFICULT LIKENESS
Ogden Walker put his finger, a once-broken index that still held a curve, to the hole in the glass of the door through which two bullets had passed, a neat hole with spiderweb etching out and away. He felt the icy air, the rough exit hole, and he traced the netting of cracks to the wood. Neither the neighbors nor Mrs. Bickers knew who or what had been on the porch, but all were certain that he, she, or it would not be returning. Ogden marveled at the fact that Mrs. Bickers had been able to put two bullets through the same mark. He certainly could not have fired two shots like that, but still it was his job to relieve the old woman of her firearm and any others she might have. It wasn’t that he believed she should not have the gun, an old woman alone like that, but that she’d pulled the trigger without so much as a glimpse at the person on the porch. It could have been the meter reader, the postman, ringing only once this time, or Ogden himself.
“I need to talk to you, Mrs. Bickers,” Ogden said through the slim crack she offered at the door.
“Not now,” she said, her voice hoarse, perhaps thick with the morning. She pulled her terry-cloth robe tight around her bony frame. “Can you come back?”
“No. I have to talk to you now. Okay? Open the door and let the not-yet-fully-awake deputy in.” Ogden looked her in the eye. “Please, ma’am.” He always sensed that the old woman didn’t like him because he was black, but that was probably true for half of the white residents of the county.
She opened the door and stood away. Ogden walked past her into the tight space of the foyer. He caught sight of his tired face in the mirror of the combination coat rack/bench. He watched as she closed the door, attended to the bullet hole from the other side.
“You got any coffee, Mrs. Bickers? I’m dying for a cup.” He knew that the old lady had never been comfortable with him, but he believed he could somewhat control the tension by having her feel he didn’t notice.
“Don’t have any coffee,” she said.
“What about tea? Listen, I need to sit down with you and have a little chat. Sheriff wants me to do it. So I have to do it.”
“Come on back.” She led the way to the rear of the long house and into the kitchen, across the buckled linoleum to the table.
He held his holster away from his hip as he lowered himself into a chair. “A lot of excitement last night,” he said. “Are you all right?” He watched as the old woman filled a mug with the coffee she’d said she didn’t have and set it down in front of him. “Thank you, ma’am.”
She wiped both hands on her apron.
Ogden wrapped his hands around the mug. “Strong tea,” he said.
She sat. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Pretty fancy shooting last night, Mrs. Bickers. I’d never be able to hit a mark twice like that.”
“Well, I didn’t see much point in putting two holes in a perfectly good door,” she said without a hint of a smile.
“No, I guess not. Mind if I take a look at your gun?”
She frowned and twirled a lock of her loose gray hair between her fingers.
“I need to see it.”
She nodded, got up, and walked out of the kitchen and across the hall. She opened the door and slipped inside, closing the door behind her. Ogden watched the door and was still watching when she came back out with a long-barrel.22 target pistol.
“That’s a hefty weapon, Mrs. Bickers.”
“Yes, it is.” She put it on the table, her hand lingering on it.
Ogden was impressed that the woman could even lift the pistol. She even seemed to have trouble raising it from her hip to the table. He figured that adrenaline had done the lifting and shooting in the darkness.
“Are you going to take it from me?” she asked.
Ogden didn’t answer that question. “Is it true you didn’t have any idea who was on your porch last night?”
She sat across from him. “That’s true.”
“You didn’t even see them a little bit? How many? Man or woman? Tall or short? Wearing a jacket? Did he have a head? That’s a high window, ma’am.”
“I didn’t see anything. I heard a noise and shot at it. That’s what happened.”
“Then I’m afraid I’m going to have to take your gun.”
She sighed, looked past him out the window of the back door. “A person’s got a right to protect herself.”
“Protect is one thing. Shooting at noises in the night is another. That could have been anybody out there.”
“I shot high.”
“Could have been a tall somebody.”
“Just take it,” she snapped.
Ogden looked around the floor and then across at the litter box. “Where’s your cat?”
“She’s outside somewhere, been gone all morning.”
“Are you sure you’re all right, Mrs. Bickers?” He suddenly felt uneasy. He wondered about the way she was looking away from him.
“I’m fine.” She looked him in the eye. “I had a prowler last night and I shot at him and I scared the hell out of him and now you’re taking my protection away.”
“Look at it this way. What if it had been me at the door?”
“What if it had been you?” She pulled hair from her face. “First off, you wouldn’t have been coming around that time of night unless you had a reason and you wouldn’t have pounded on the door like that.”
“Prowlers don’t usually knock.”
“Pound, not knock.”
Ogden granted the distinction with a nod. He looked for the cat again and then realized just how cold the house was.
“Go on, take it,” she said.
“I’ll come by and check on you now and again,” he said. He picked up the pistol. “It’s warm.” Ogden observed that there was no clip. He pulled back the slide and saw that a round had been chambered. He removed it.
“I don’t need no babysitter.”