Chapter Six

Maricruz took Rick’s advice and sat down on the basket-woven seat of a ladder-back chair that rested near the phone, just under the two framed art prints that added to her apartment’s air of simple sophistication. The two posters, which were hung side by side on maize colored walls, seemed to argue with one another.  On the left were the lively sunflowers of Diego Rivera’s “Muchacha con Girasoles.” On the right was the very strange and dark “Self Portrait with Thorn Necklace, Hummingbird, Cat and Monkey” by Frida Kahlo.  Everyone loved the Rivera, but she used to have to take down the Frida every night before Abenicio could fall asleep.

“Hello?” Rick asked through the phone.  “Maricruz?  You still there?”

She drew in a deep breath like she was about go under water.  “Yeah,” she said as she exhaled. 

“Well, first I started to call the hotels here in town just in case Lyle might have been too proud to come back to my place.  He’d been so sure he could make it back to Rocky Ford tonight.  But then I realized that Lyle’s too broke to afford a room.  He’d refused the five bucks I tried to give him for gas when he left, but I’m pretty sure his wallet’s empty.  He keeps sending all his money back to Oklahoma.”

“So are you telling me he’s stuck on the highway somewhere?” she asked.

“Well, next I called my neighbor, Shirley.  That’s who I was on the phone with for so long.  She’s the second shift dispatcher for the Pueblo County Sheriff and she’s working tonight.  I told her about Lyle and she told me that only two vehicles tried to get on the highway headed east this evening but both were turned around by the deputies.  One of them was some irate asshole in an eighteen wheeler but the other one was a man fitting Lyle’s description in a truck like his.  It sounds like he was a real gentleman compared to the trucker, but he did try to talk them into letting him through.  They wouldn’t budge though, and they just told him he was going to have to spend the night in Pueblo, that in less than a half hour or so the highway was going to be impassable and nobody would be able to--- Anyway, they turned him around.”

Maricruz sat up, hopeful.  “So he has to be in Pueblo somewhere.”

“That was my hope too, but then Shirley brought up that if he was really desperate to get back to Rocky Ford he may have tried to take the county road a couple miles north of the highway.”

“So that’s why you wanted me to sit down.”  She used her free hand to cover her mouth.

“Yeah, Shirley said there are a few families that live out on that road but they’re all just outside Pueblo.  If he made it more than ten miles or so east of town then there’s not a soul that lives out there, just a few old farmhouses abandoned since the Dust Bowl.  But she told me something—”

Maricruz interrupted, “Do you really think he’d be crazy enough to take that road with a blizzard blowing in?”

“Well, before he pulled out of the church parking lot, he told me nothing was going to keep him from seeing you tonight, and I think he meant it.”

Maricruz stood up and paced.  “Well, they’re going out to look for him, right?  I mean, they’re sending a car or a truck or something.  They’re not just going to leave him out there are they?”

“I’m really sorry Maricruz but Shirley said by now the snow’s so deep not even a 4x4 can get out there, that the sheriff said there’s no way they can send someone east on that county road until the plows can clear it and that won’t be until tomorrow sometime.  Those deputies have their own families to think about too, you know.  But let me tell you what else Shirley—”

“We have to get to him, Rick.  We have to go out there.”  The lights flickered off then on again.

“You know we can’t do that.  You or I wouldn’t last twenty minutes out there.  Besides, Lyle is tough as an old boot.  If anyone can make it it’s him.  Like I said, I think he meant it when he said nothing would keep him from seeing you tonight.” 

“That dumb son of a---”  She looked over at Benny who had been listening to her side of the conversation.  His eyes were wide and wet.  “I’m sure you’re right, Rick.  He’ll be fine.  He’ll probably show up here anytime now.”

“Benny can hear you, can’t he?”

“Yes.”  She made herself smile as she told Benny, “Rick says hello, Sweetie.”

“Maricruz, I keep trying to tell you something else.”  Rick paused, expecting her to interrupt again.  When she didn’t he continued, “Shirley also said that about twenty minutes before Lyle showed up at the roadblock, not long before the scumbag in the semi truck did the same, somebody stole a car from the covered drive of a motel on the east side of town while the owner was in the office asking about a room.  They have no idea who took it, but the police and sheriff got calls from all over the eastside about a car speeding through neighborhoods right when the storm was starting.  She said the calls were kind of conflicting but that a couple of those calls came from just east of town on the county road.”

“The same county road Lyle might be stuck on?”

“Yes.  I don’t know if it’s good news or bad news, but Shirley thinks that if Lyle’s out there somewhere west of Rocky Ford, he might find out he’s not alone.”

“So there might be someone out there who could help him?”  Maricruz was willing to grasp at any hope.

"Theoretically, yes," Rick responded.  "But whoever it is, it's someone who had no problem stealing a car, someone who needed to get the hell out of Pueblo in a hurry, and probably someone who was counting on the fact that, with the storm rolling in, the police wouldn't chase them.  Somebody else may be out there with Lyle, but I’m not sure it’s the kind of person Lyle’s going to want to run into.”