Devils And Dust. J.D. Rhoades

      When he returned, Lucas had pulled out a ragged blue terrycloth robe that looked as big as a tent and wrapped it around him. “Better?” he said.

      “Much.” Keller sat on the edge of his bed and pulled on his jeans.

      “So what was the dream?” Lucas said.

      “I don’t remember.”

      “Bullshit,” Lucas said.

      Keller sighed. “Okay. I was on the mountain.”

      “The mountain?”

      “Where it happened. Where I shot DeGroot.”

      “Let’s start by reframing that. The mountain is where you saved Marie’s life. And her son’s. And your own. She told me all about it.”

      “Did she tell you that I shot DeGroot when he was on his knees? Unarmed? Helpless? Did she tell you I shot him again and again, until the gun clicked empty? Did she tell you I was laughing like a goddamn lunatic while I did it?”

      “Yes,” Lucas said softly. “She did. And she told me why. She told me DeGroot had some sort of juice. Someone high up looking after him. He was going to get out. He’d told her was going to come back after her. And her boy. He was going to torture them to death because that’s what he did. And he’d get away with it, because that’s also what he did. He had that juice. So he had to die. She also told me that you took the gun from her to keep her from shooting DeGroot in front of her son. You did it so she wouldn’t have to.”

      Keller looked down at the floor. “Angela says she’s afraid of what this will do to me.”

      “Are you?”

      Keller thought for a moment. “A little.”

      “So don’t do it,” Lucas said. “We’ll find Oscar some other way.”

      “No,” Keller said. “This is something I have to do. Oscar’s my friend. I owe him.”

      “You’ve said that. But is that the only thing that’s going on here, Jack? Just duty? A sense of obligation?” Keller didn’t answer. “Back in Arizona,” Lucas said after a few moments. “How was your life?”

      “It was fine,” Keller said.

      “Looked like it. You had a job. A place to stay. That girl Jules…she seemed nice.”

      “She was. I mean, she is.”

      “So why leave?”

      “I told you—”

      “Yeah, yeah, you owe Oscar. But I couldn’t help but notice how much more engaged you seem now than you did back there. Your eyes are brighter. There’s a spring in your step that wasn’t there before. Face it, Jack, you’re enjoying being on the hunt again.”

      “Angela says the same thing,” Keller said. “But so what? Are you saying that’s a bad thing?”

      “No,” Lucas answered. “Not at all. But you need to recognize that about yourself. You’re a hunter. A warrior. Not a killer. Embrace it. Don’t try and run from it. You tried to run back to the desert. And it didn’t work for you. If it had you wouldn’t have come back.”

      “Embrace it?” Keller said, his voice rising. “I killed a man, Lucas. And I liked it.”

      “Not the first man you’ve killed,” Lucas observed. “Maybe not the last. But as far as I can tell, you never killed anyone that didn’t try to kill you first. Maybe that’s why you enjoyed it so much. How does the song go? ‘It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive’? It doesn’t make you the monster you apparently think you are. You did what you did to protect what you love.” He looked at the clock and sighed. “It’s almost six thirty. I’m going to grab a shower and try to find some breakfast around here. How about you?”

      “Yeah,” Keller said. “Breakfast sounds good.”

      There was a knock at the door. Lucas got up and answered. Angela stood there, holding a cell phone. “I just got a text…from Delgado.”

      “He gets up early.”

      “His contact will talk to us. And she’s seen Oscar.”

      “She?” Keller said.

      She held out the phone. “Rosita Miron. She’s Delgado’s aunt. And she lives a few miles from Fayetteville.”

      

      THEY HAD started out as ten men and five women; now there were only eight men. The women were kept separate, in another one of the long, narrow barracks. The men rarely saw them, but they knew what was going on in that sealed building. They saw guards going in and out, heard the crude comments and jokes they made. It was making them all crazy, but none dared make a move against their captors. Not after what had happened to Diego.

      They worked every day from just after dawn until just before sunset, in the blazing heat of summer. Some worked the fields, some were marched to the forest at the back of the compound to cut down trees and clear-cut land. A sawmill built at the edge of the cleared area turned the usable trees into lumber. Every morning, they’d be rousted from their beds by one or the other of their guards banging a metal ladle on a galvanized bucket, which he’d then leave inside the door. The bucket held their meager breakfast, usually thin oatmeal, occasionally a white corn porridge, similar to the mazamorra they’d grown up eating. Diego, who’d been north before, told them the dish was called “grits.”

      That was before he was executed.

      They’d been working the field three days after their arrival, always under the watchful eyes of two men with guns, radios, and belts hung with equipment that Ruben couldn’t identify. The guards varied, but the most common one was the blond man who’d been among the group that had first taken them prisoner. He liked to walk up and down the rows, weapon loose in his hands, and carry on a conversation with his fellow guards about what he’d done the night before, inside the women’s barracks. He always pitched his voice loud enough for the workers to hear. Most of them didn’t speak English, so the words meant nothing to them, but Blondie’s hand gestures and the kissing and slurping noises he made with his thick, wet lips were enough to get the message across. Ruben understood most of it, but he kept his head down. The guards also carried stiff hide whips like the one Blondie had wielded the night they were taken. The whips were used to “smarten up” anyone who lagged in their picking or “eyeballed” a guard, which was the word for anyone daring to look them in the eye. He’d heard Blondie refer to the crop as a sjambok, and he claimed it was made of rhino hide from South Africa. Whatever it was made of, it left nasty painful welts with even the lightest stroke. No one wanted to feel what it could do with real force behind it.

      Ruben had been picking in the row next to Diego, his mind far away. He’d quickly learned the trick of letting his thoughts drift, going elsewhere. Going home. He thought about breakfasts with his aunt and uncle, who’d been raising him since Papa left. They told him Papa would come for him, would take him to America, away from the violence and the threats of kidnapping that still hung over the cities. He didn’t think of this place as America. America was the country of basketball and fast cars and pretty women. This place…he didn’t know what this was. Sometimes he wondered if the truck had crashed and he was in hell. But he didn’t see how that could be. He’d gone to Mass, made his confessions, said all the words and been granted absolution by Father Enrique. He looked up and saw Diego. The look on the older man’s face startled him out of his reverie. He heard Blondie coming up the row, chattering as usual.

      “I tell you, bro,” he said, “I had that pretty lil’ chica, the one with the ponytail, an’ I was doin’ her from the back. I had that ponytail in one hand.” He demonstrated with a clenched fist. “An’ I was slappin’ her ass with the other. She starts goin’,” his voice went to a high,