Chapter Five

The electricity had been flickering off and on all evening, causing Maricruz to fear the phone lines might go down at some point as well.  She used two of her fingers to tuck a strand of her shoulder-length black hair behind her ear and then held the telephone up to it, nervously wrapping the spiraling phone cord around her arm.  Still busy.  She had tried to call Rick four times already and each time the result had been the same.  Lyle was not answering his phone out at the trailer house, and when she had spoken with his boss, Mr. Stockett, he told her that the other hands had said Lyle finished his chores early and that he had offered to do one of the men’s work for a full weekend if he would take Lyle’s shift of checking on the cattle and busting ice that night.  Even so, Maricruz thought, surely he hadn’t been foolish enough to drive to Pueblo.  She prayed this was the case but she knew Lyle well enough to worry that it might not be.

Although she had not actually talked to Lyle in those ninety days, he had sent her several letters, long letters filled with short sentences written in an apologetic cursive.  In one of the most recent letters he’d confessed, “I have failed everyone in my life.  Every single person.  But that man—that failure—died that night out in the hallway outside your door.  I will not fail you and Benny.  I would rather die all over again.”  Maricruz was desperate to reach Rick in hopes that if Lyle had been reckless enough to make the drive to Pueblo that he had made up for it by being smart enough to stay at Rick’s place until the roads were cleared the next day.  If she could just get through to Rick he could put Lyle on the phone and she could tell Lyle he did not need to worry; he hadn’t failed her.  He’d done everything he’d said he would.  She still wanted him and, as long as he stayed dry, she always would.  She dialed the phone again.  Still busy.

Wondering who Rick could be talking to for so long, she hung up the phone and walked across her apartment’s living room and pulled the curtains away from the window.  The wind groaned and the snow pounded against the panes.  She could see her reflection in the glass, a version of herself that was almost like an icon, with the golden light from the lamp on the end table behind her giving the reflection of her light copper skin an ethereal glow.  She did not always like the way she looked, but she stopped in that moment, just briefly, to note how much she resembled the other women in her family.  She often remembered the time when, tired of not knowing how Lyle truly felt about her, one night while they were sitting on her couch watching a movie they’d rented at the video store, Maricruz asked him, “Do you think I’m pretty?”  As soon as she asked that question she felt silly.  What was she, fourteen?  She was an intelligent, independent, strong woman and the best she’d come up with was, “Do you think I’m pretty?”  Lyle answered, “Of course I do,” without even looking away from the television as Kiefer Sutherland tried to woo a Chinese woman carrying a black parasol in a dusty old west town.  But even though Maricruz’s own question embarrassed her, she decided to go with it, pressing Lyle for more of an answer.  She used the remote control to pause the movie.  “Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked again.  In response, he began that stumbling dance of words a man does when he’s trying to figure out what a woman wants him to say. 

Finally after several starts that all began with, “Um, uh,” he actually tripped over the truth about Maricruz’s appearance.  He said, “Let me put it, uh, this way… These days everybody thinks a woman has to look like, um, a Barbie doll… like she’s allergic to food or something.  You don’t look like a Barbie doll.”  Maricruz looked away from him, feeling hurt even though she had neither interest in, nor the genetics for, looking like a Barbie.  He reached out and placed his calloused hand on her cheek and turned her face gently back toward his, then he whispered to her in words that had a hint of Crown Royal on them, “You look like a woman... like a woman from a long time ago that you might see in a fancy old black-and-white photo.  Pretty isn’t a strong enough word for the way you look, Maricruz.  You look like a real woman.”  She smiled.  Looking like a real woman beats looking like a Barbie doll any day, she thought. 

“Can you see him out there, Mom?”  Abenicio’s question startled her back into the present.   She turned to answer him.  He’d been reclining on the couch, under a black and yellow blanket with a buffalo on it, reading a book from the school library about a young boy who runs his own detective agency.  He had a flashlight beside him on the couch just in case the lights did go out.  The book rested open, pages down, on his lap.  “Where’s Lyle?  Is he still coming tonight?" 

Maricruz did not want to worry him so she responded, “No, Benny, I think he’s at a friend’s house in Pueblo.  I know you've been looking forward to this for a long time, but he can’t make it tonight because of the storm.  We’ll see him in a day or two.  Okay, Sweetie?”  Benny groaned and then picked his book up, found the sentence he’d left off on, and kept reading.  She held her gaze on him, finding it hard to believe he was already nearly nine-years-old.  She also wondered whether she should have accepted her parents’ invitation to wait out the storm at their house with the rest of the family.  With his grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins all packed into her parents’ four bedroom home Benny would be too distracted by playing peak-a-boo with his baby cousin, Manny, or by a game of Parcheesi with his older cousins, to worry about Lyle.  But since she was the one who had given Lyle that ultimatum ninety nights earlier, she couldn't stand the thought of Lyle somehow showing up and her not being there. 

When the phone rang she ran across the room as Benny popped up like a prairie dog from the couch.  She pulled the phone receiver from its perch on the wall.  “Lyle?”

“No, Maricruz, it’s Rick.”  Good, he seemed calm.

“Is he with you?” she asked, impatiently.

“I guess that means he’s not with you either, huh?”  He didn’t seem quite as calm anymore.

Benny called out to his mother, interrupting her as she was about to ask Rick a question.  “Is it Lyle?  Where is he?”  Maricruz shook her head. 

“Did you see him tonight?” she begged Rick.  “Please tell me he didn’t go to Pueblo.”

“I begged him not to when he called, but he came anyway, said he was going to make his 90-in-90 no matter what.  He said he was done breaking promises.”

“Why didn’t he just stay at your house?”

“I pleaded with him but he wouldn't hear of it.”

“How long ago did he leave?”

Rick was silent.

“How long ago, Rick?”

“It was about an hour and a half ago, Maricruz.”  His voice revealed his concern.

“My God, Rick, why didn’t you call me then?”

“I didn't want to upset you until I absolutely had to.  What would you have done, anyway?  I kept thinking he’d come to his senses and show up back at my place.”

“Rick, I’ve been trying to call you for the past thirty minutes.  Who have you been talking to all evening on the phone?”

Rick hesitated for a moment before saying, "That's what I'm calling you about, Maricruz.  I think you might want to sit down."

Chapter Four

Still sitting in the snow, reeling from having touched the bottle, the thought that he was likely the only living thing for miles in each direction rolled into Lyle's mind like a boulder.  As cold as he was, he closed his eyes and tried to breathe slowly, deeply, the way Rick had taught him.  “Breathe out emptiness,” Rick would say.  “Breathe in fullness.”  As he breathed intentionally, deliberately, Lyle could almost feel the steam rising up to his face from the bowl of beef stew in his memory.

Two months earlier, on a chilled evening, Lyle sat on a seat covered in cracked and sun-faded green vinyl in a booth across from Rick. Beneath the sterile fluorescent lights, the air in the diner was still heavy with a mixture of that morning’s bacon and sausage orders and the chicken and noodle supper special. The waitresses and cook called out to each other over the sound of a radio behind the counter that was playing a country version of a Christmas song. Their waitress had a ponytail that stretched down to the middle of her back. There was a sweetness to her face when she smiled that cheered up the weathered creases beneath her eyes.

Lyle's gray felt Stetson, a hat that had been nice enough at one time that he'd worn it to a few graveside funerals, sat beside him in the booth. He'd started growing his winter beard earlier that week so he could not keep from scratching his face.  Rick, who taught English at the community college, wore a lapel pin on his corduroy jacket that displayed the last year he'd taken a drink. Lyle read the date to himself over and over again. 1979. Lyle knew very well what it meant to be drunk for a decade, but he could not imagine what it would be like to be sober for that same amount of time. Rick blew on a fork full of the special, while Lyle, usually as talkative as a fencepost, confided in him that the urge for just a sip was as strong each morning as it had been the night before and stronger as the day went on.  Rick gently scolded Lyle for never calling him during his times of temptation.  After Lyle finished making excuses, there was a brief pause for them to take of couple of bites.

When he’d swallowed, Rick asked, “Lyle, have you ever heard of Sisyphus?”

Lyle laughed. “Thought I had it once.”

Rick smiled. “It’s a Greek myth.”

“Then, no,” Lyle shook his head. “Never heard of her.”

“Him,” Rick corrected. “Sisyphus was a man, but I think you might like the story anyway.” The waitress stopped by to freshen their lukewarm coffee.  "According to the myth, Sisyphus tried to cheat death.”

“I like this guy already,” Lyle interrupted.

Rick continued, "This really pissed off the gods. So when it came time for Sisyphus to actually die, the gods punished him by forcing him to push a giant boulder up a mountain. Whenever he would finally get to the top, the boulder would roll all the way back down to the bottom. Then Sisyphus would have to hike down the mountain and do it all over again.”

“Seems pretty pointless to me,” Lyle said, before sipping his coffee.

“And he was doomed to do this for eternity."  Both men turned when they heard the bell above the door ring, and then watched as an older couple walked in and found a seat.

“Sucks to be Sisyphus."  

“Lyle, we are Sisyphus."

“What are you getting at, Rick?"

"I just want you to remember that you can't push that boulder up the mountain on your own.  There can't be any more of your desperado lone ranger BS. You'll die if you try to do this by yourself."

Lyle wished Rick was with him out in the pasture. Even though Rick was several inches shorter than Lyle and had chalk dust on his clothes instead of dirt, Rick would have walked straight up to the pickup, yanked that bottle out from under the seat, poured it out onto the snow, and then thrown the empty bottle as far as he could. He'd probably quote Charles Dickens or Mark Twain while he did it, but he would do it nonetheless. Rick could do that kind of thing, though, because his pin said 1979, while the coin in Lyle’s jeans pocket only said 90 days. Over the years Rick had built up whatever muscles it takes to push and grunt that boulder to the top of the mountain each day but Lyle could barely even gather the strength to get up off the snow. He just wanted to be warm, even if it was only on the inside.  Lyle looked around.  What did it matter? Who was he kidding? Who cares if you’re sober if you're dead? At least he could die with warmth and without pain.  He'd done his best and this is where it got him.  Lyle closed his eyes again.  Breathe out emptiness.  Breathe in fullness. 

Lyle forced himself up and trudged resolutely toward the truck, reached his hand under the seat like he was birthing a calf, and slid the bottle out from the womb. He put his hand on the cap and started to turn it, hearing the sweet old song of the seal breaking.  He stopped himself and closed his eyes.  Breathe out emptiness.  Breathe in fullness.  When he opened his eyes they yearned to read those familiar words like poetry. His trembling thumb wiped the dust and cigarette ashes away from the label. “Established 1855,” he recited to himself.  “Austin Nichols. Wild Turkey. Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Real Kentucky.”  He read the final words, “101 Proof.”  Breathe out emptiness.  Breathe in fullness.  

He started to open it again, tilting it toward the ground at the same time.  A new thought came to his mind.  This whiskey could be useful out there.  He might regret pouring it out.  He might need it later.  He could always pour it out somewhere else along the way, right?  He could almost hear the laughter in his mind, all those years filled with laughter and dancing.  But what would Rick say?  What would Maricruz think if they found his body with an open bottle beside it?  If it was a full bottle it would prove that he’d done it.  It would be a gift to her.  But what if the bottle wasn’t full when they found him?  Breathe out emptiness.  Breathe in fullness.

Lyle set the bottle on the floorboard and reached under the seat again and found the flashlight that must have been set free when the bottle came out.  The batteries worked for now.  He pulled his coat on top of his coveralls, tied the red bandanna around his face, and pulled the picture of Maricruz down from his visor and unzipped his layers enough to tuck it behind his half empty pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket of his flannel shirt.  He stuffed the bottle of Wild Turkey into the torn lining inside his coveralls, and put his glove back on.  The wind was picking up, the snow was growing deeper, and the temperature was dropping.  He left his keys in the ignition with the dome light on for the slim chance that someone might see a dim light out in the middle of a field and come to investigate.  He grabbed the flashlight and slammed the truck door behind him.  He looked around for a second, wiping his eyes, and then started walking.  “First thing's first.  Where’s that damn road?”