Assumption (22 page)

A young woman opened the rickety door. She was tall and thin, unhealthy, emaciated, her arms just cords of muscle and skin stretched over bone, her clavicles making deep hollows below her neck. Her green eyes were like sea glass, that sick color of the unwell, not quite clouded. Her lips were chapped. Her sleeveless T-shirt was, however, bright white, clean, the light cotton ribbed and accentuating the length and thinness of her torso. It was her hands that Ogden studied. Her hands were twisted, gnarled, like an old woman’s, her unpainted nails showing bluish in the strange light of the overcast day. “What?” she asked. That was it, only, “What?”

“I’m looking for Conrad or Leslie Hempel.”

“I don’t know either one,” she said. She found her words deliberately, as if each and every syllable was something she was reluctant to let go.

“I was told one of them might be around here.”

“There are a lot of people around here.”

Ogden looked around. There were more yurts than he thought, twenty, twenty-­two of them. “One of them might be known as Meth-­mouth.”

The woman didn’t exactly freeze, but something happened to her face. Perhaps it was suspicion, perhaps fear, or perhaps, and it was likely given her state, she had just recalled a dream or some substance had kicked in.

“Meth-­mouth,” Ogden repeated. “One of them has a tattoo on his arm.”

“Who doesn’t have a tattoo on his arm,” the woman laughed. When she opened her mouth Ogden could see the rotting teeth in the back and the stud piercing her tongue.

“Let’s try this a different way,” Ogden said. He was light-­headed. There was a trembling inside his hand as he rested it on the rusty spring of the screen door. He stared at the woman’s feet; her shoes at least were different sizes. “Can you tell me if there are any men around here in the yurts?”

“Yes,” she said. “I can tell you.”

“And?”

“There are some men around here.”

“Are any of them white?”

“Yes.”

“Any of them have light-­colored hair?”

She was silent as she thought. “Maybe.” Her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she almost took a step backward.

“Are you all right?” Ogden asked.

“Yes.”

“Do any of the men around here that you’ve seen have tattoos?”

“All of the men around here have tattoos.”

“Do you know where one of these men is? Any man?” Ogden looked around the quiet compound.

“Do you have any drugs?”

“No. What kind of drugs?”

“Any kind of drugs. Meth, heroin, alprazolam. Can you get me some drugs?” Her eyes changed again, from probable suspicion or fear to desperation, anxiety, or even eagerness.

“If you help me I’ll try to find you some drugs,” Ogden lied. What struck him as odd, unusual, was that he did not feel bad lying to this woman. Ogden believed he had never been able to lie about anything. “I promise.”

“I know somebody they call Meth-­mouth.”

“Do you know where he is?”

The woman leaned around the door and pointed. “Over there. The light blue yurt,” she said. “The light blue one. Over there. Light blue.” She was close to Ogden. Her lean frame was like a coat rack and she smelled of body odor.

“Thank you,” Ogden said.

“My name is Mary,” she said. “You know, like in the Bible. Jesus’s mother. The light blue one.”

“Got it.”

The light blue yurt was thirty yards away. Ogden zipped up his jacket as he walked. It was colder now, raining still, making noise on his shoulders and head. The light blue yurt didn’t have a door. Someone had been pissing and shitting just yards from the side of the building and it smelled awful. Worse than decomposing flesh, Ogden thought, mainly because it was a harbinger of decomposing flesh, the living conditions of those about to die, those as good as dead.

He stepped through the doorway of the yurt and stood just inside. The weak light from the outside did not penetrate very deeply into the round structure, but the felt walls kept it from being terribly dark. There was a man sleeping in the middle and two women curled up together at the back. There might have been another person, but it could also have been a pile of clothes or blankets. The inside of the yurt stank nearly as bad as the outside. The man sleeping on the floor was not the Conrad Hempel he had met, but he walked over and kicked him in the thigh anyway. Ogden didn’t say anything, but kicked him again. “Hey,” he said. “Hey.” He glanced at the women. They were awake, but weren’t concerned or impressed enough to stand or sit up. The man slowly came around, blinked, and looked up at Ogden. His eyes were blue and red, puffy, and as he rolled completely over onto his back the blanket fell off and revealed his naked body, his ribs showing above a belly covered with bruises. “Leslie Hempel?”

“What the fuck?”

“Are you Leslie Hempel?”

“I’ve seen you before. I know you.” The man nodded.

“What’s your name?”

The man yawned and Ogden saw why he was called Meth-­mouth. There was one yellow tooth in the front of his mouth and the rest were decayed nubs. His breath stank from six feet away.

“What do you want?”

“Leslie?”

“My name is Beetle,” he said.

“What?”

“They call me Beetle.” The man smiled without showing his bad teeth.

Ogden studied him, was immediately and completely irritated by him. He couldn’t tell what Beetle’s hair color really was. He had no tattoos on either arm, but a word was written in black ink across his neck.
Rose
or
Rosa.
He had probably lost weight and so the last letter had folded in on itself. “It’s like this,” Ogden said. “I’m looking for a man named Conrad Hempel.”

“You’re sure that’s his name?”

“Yes, I think that’s his name.” Ogden watched as Beetle pulled on a pair of sweatpants and a soiled light green T-shirt. He took a step back to give him some room. “Do you know him?”

“Let’s go outside.”

Ogden allowed the man to go first.

Outside Beetle pulled a pack of clove cigarettes from his sweatpants pocket and shoved one into his mouth. “Those bitches won’t let me smoke in there,” he said. He laughed and lit it with a match from a book. “I’d offer you one, but, hey, I can tell you don’t smoke. Do you want to know how I can tell?”

“Tell me.”

“You kept your hands in your pockets while I lit up. Cool, huh? Little things like that can tell you things. I’m almost psychic because of my attention to body language.”

“Cool. Hempel?”

“You sound like you really want to get ahold of this guy.” Beetle smiled ever so slightly.

The smile confused Ogden and he felt an urge to punch the man. He looked up the mountain and saw that more clouds were rolling in, this time from the east and that seemed bad.

“I mean I can probably help you find him, but, you know, he might be a friend of mine and I think I ought to know what kind of mess I’m getting him into.”

“I just want to ask him some questions. So, you know Conrad Hempel.”

“I don’t know if I know him. I run across a lot of people. Do you have anything to trade?”

“Trade?”

“You know, you scratch my back and I scratch yours.”

“What if I just beat the shit out of you?”

“Look at me.” Beetle held his arms up. “What can you do to me that matters, motherfucker? If you beat me up, I’ll probably feel better. You want to find this guy?”

Ogden stood down. “Yes, I do.”

“Then first you can give me a ride. You got a car, right?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

“You need to get dressed?”

“I’m as dressed as I get,” Beetle said. “Now just let me grab some shoes.”

Ogden watched him walk back into the yurt. While he waited he turned his face up and let the rain hit him. What was he falling into? He didn’t sound like himself. How long hadn’t he sounded like himself? How long had it been? He was losing track of time, it feeling like days since he’d talked to Fragua, weeks since he’d been at his mother’s house, a year since he’d last seen Terry Lowell.

Beetle came back out and now he was wearing flip-­flops that didn’t match.

“Aren’t you cold?” Ogden asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I am. It’s freezing out here.” Beetle grabbed a blanket from the floor just inside the door and wrapped it over his shoulders. “Okay, let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“A house up north. Near Red River. Well, just past Red River, but off that road, you know?”

Ogden looked at the mountains. “How far past Red River?”

“I don’t know, man.”

“Red River’s quite a drive.”

“The man I know up there might know the man you want to find,” Beetle said.

“Who’s he?”

“He. You got any money?”

Ogden shook his head.

“That’s okay, that’s okay. Let’s go.”

Nearly as soon as he was seated in the passenger’s seat, Beetle was asleep with a second unlit cigarette stuck to his slack lower lip. Bad weather or not, Ogden was going to do his best to stay off the county roads and highways. He’d driven these mountains his whole life and though it would have been impossible for him to instruct someone on how to get from where he was to Red River, he knew he could do it. Miles and miles of logging, mining, and forest service roads made it possible to get anywhere, though never directly and never never never quickly. Some of the trails were treacherous, a few downright deadly, but they were there and he was going to use them, bad weather or not. He was wishing he’d driven his county rig instead of his pickup. Even though his truck had four-­wheel drive it was still empty in the back. After a couple of fishtails over the slippery road, he stopped and began to pile the heaviest wood and rocks he could find into the bed. He shook the truck with a big log and woke up Beetle. Beetle opened his door and got out. He leaned against the wheel well, asked what Ogden was doing. Ogden had half a mind to make Beetle ride in the back, but his weight would have been negligible. Beetle irritated the hell out of him, but the man hardly mattered in the long run and Ogden realized this. But it was annoying how the rain, which was coming down harder now, and the cold didn’t seem to bother him. This, even though he appeared very near death.

“Get back in the truck,” Ogden said.

“Why all the wood?”

“Just get in.”

“You’re a bad man, right?”

“Just get in.”

“Yeah, we understand each other.”

Ogden drove up a forest road that traversed a precipitous slope and really worried that the road might crumble and give way. It hadn’t been used in some time, much less maintained. Beetle was asleep again and it was now afternoon. It would be late afternoon by the time they reached Red River on these roads, maybe dusk, and that was all right with Ogden, though he wanted to be off these deadly dirt tracks before darkness fell. He slipped and skidded down a steep grade into a back valley and dreaded what he might find at the bottom. He had been correct to worry as when he reached the trough there was water there and it wasn’t standing, but moving and rising. He drove slowly into the stream and then the truck dropped down off a shelf he could not have seen and the transmission slipped out of gear, stalling the engine. Ogden turned the key back and tried the engine. It worked to turn over, but wouldn’t. Beetle awoke to see the water flowing in their direction and for the first time showed some kind of concern for something in the real world. He screamed and slapped his palms up against the ceiling of the cab. Ogden got the engine started and the truck in gear and rolled on out and just like that, as if nothing had happened, Beetle was drifting again into a peaceful sleep. The rain let up, but the drizzle continued. The slope back up was not so scary and so Ogden had a moment to catch his breath, which was both good and bad. He was terrified of having been implicated in the murder of Terry Lowell and more terrified that he felt so lost and unsure of what had actually happened and of what he had seen. How could there be no trace of the boy? Warren was good at his job and didn’t miss much, so where was Willy Yates? Was there a Willy Yates? That he could even ask that question made him feel strange and sick to his stomach. He could feel the lack of sleep catching up to him. His head hurt, his gut felt hollow and icy cold, his eyes itched and burned, but even if he could have pulled over and killed the engine he would never fall asleep. He looked at Beetle, who was twisting to make himself comfortable. Why was he going anywhere with this man? What did he hope to find? The answer was a desperate
anything.
The last mining road down before the steep rise to the highway that would take them through Red River was frightening. Nearer to civilization, someone had gotten a notion to try grading the road and had made a terrible washboard mess that managed to channel the water anywhere but off the track. At one point, when the grade might have been fifteen percent, the pickup began to slide and there was nothing Ogden could do. Ogden pumped the brakes and twisted the wheel in the direction of the skid, but it turned out to be just something to do while disaster approached. Luckily the truck bumped and scraped along the upslope side of the trail and Ogden regained control. His heart raced. His flannel shirt was soaked with perspiration beneath his jacket.

Ogden had to take his mind off the driving and so he punched Beetle in the shoulder. “Wake up.”

“What?”

“Wake up, Beetle. We’re almost to the highway. Which side of Red River is this place?”

“East.”

“You sure you know how to get there?”

“Sure I’m sure.”

The short stretch of trail up to Highway 38 was not so bad after all. Ogden was glad that he didn’t have to find a way across the river, small as it was up there. He halfway expected to find the state police waiting for him when he hit the pavement, but there was nothing there but wet, empty highway.

He drove them through the dead town of Red River. It was too early in the season for skiing and the RV traffic was gone after summer. Like this, the town was dismal and uninviting. The one open restaurant looked lonely, but right at that moment welcoming. Ogden reluctantly drove past it.

“How far?”

“Keep going.”

Ogden did. Now, off the back tracks and on the smooth and monotonous pavement, he began to feel tired and sleepy. He rolled his window down all the way and let the wet, cold wind slap his face. They rolled through the tiny blink Elizabethtown and Ogden realized that just a few clicks away was Eagle Nest.