Here and Gone(11)
Whiteside took the turn onto the Silver Water exit fast, and Audra had to plant her feet wide apart on the floor to keep from tipping over. The road twisted as it climbed through the hills and soon her thighs ached with the effort of staying upright. The shallow incline seemed to rise for an age, slopes of brown either side spotted by the green of the prickly pears and the coarse bushes.
The sheriff remained silent as he drove, occasionally glancing back at her in the mirror, his eyes hidden by the shades once more. Every time he looked she opened her mouth to speak, to ask again for her children, but each time he looked away before she found her voice.
They’ll be all right, she told herself over and over. The deputy has them. Whatever happens to me, they’ll be fine. This is all a terrible mistake, and once it’s settled, we’ll be on the road again.
Unless, of course, they discovered she had run from Children’s Services. Then surely they would send her and the kids back to New York to face the consequences. If that was the worst of all things, then okay. At least Sean and Louise would be safe until Mel could come get them.
Oh God, Mel. Audra had called her from the road, said they were on their way, and Mel had answered with silence. And Audra knew that the offer to have her as a guest in San Diego had been made in kindness, but without expectation of it being accepted. So be it. If Mel didn’t want them, Audra had enough money left to pay for a week in a cheap hotel. She would figure something out.
One last sweeping bend as the car crested the rise, and a deep basin came into view, a flat bed of land like the bottom of a pan. At its center, a sprawl of buildings. Orange and red scarred the foothills on the far side, unnatural shapes dug out of the landscape below the mountains. Whiteside steered the car down the series of switchbacks, and Audra leaned against the door to keep from being thrown onto her side. Through the window, she saw the first dwellings, prefab shacks and double-wides, among the twisted scrawny trees below. Chain-link fences around the properties. Some had satellite dishes on the roofs. Pickup trucks parked next to a few, others with tires propped against the walls, car parts piled up in the yards.
The sun-bleached asphalt turned to compacted dirt as the road straightened, and the car juddered and rattled. Now they passed the houses Audra had seen from the hillside, and the disrepair became clearer. Some of the owners had done their best to cheer the buildings with bright paint and wind chimes, particularly those with For Sale signs staked in the yards, but she could sense the desperation through the glass.
She knew poor when she saw it because she was only a generation removed herself. Her mother’s parents hadn’t lived in the desert glare, rather the gray skies of rural Pennsylvania, but their dying steel town had the same ragged edges. On the occasions they travelled there from New York, she had played on a rusted swing set in the garden as her mother visited with them, her grandfather years out of work, their last days looming bleak before them.
Audra wondered why this place got the name Silver Water. Must be a river or a lake nearby, she thought. Communities in a desert must have gathered around a source of water. And what kept them here? Who would choose to make their lives in such a hard place where the sun could strip the skin from your back?
The houses on either side of the road grew more concentrated, but still hardly enough to make a street. Among the prefabs, a few more permanent dwellings made of wood, the paint blistering and peeling on the walls. An elderly man in shorts and a vest paused from checking his mailbox to raise a forefinger in greeting to the sheriff. Whiteside returned the gesture, his forefinger lifted for a moment from the steering wheel. The old man eyed Audra as they passed, his eyes narrowing.
An auto repair shop, long since closed down, its signage faded. More houses, aligned along the roadside now, some tidier than others. The road smoothed and widened, and a sidewalk joined its path toward the town. A church, so brilliant white it hurt Audra’s eyes to look at it. She averted her gaze, out through the front windshield, and saw single-and two-story buildings stretch ahead for perhaps half a mile, and she realized the main street lay on the other side of the wooden bridge they approached.
She looked over the railing as they crossed, expecting to see a flowing river. Instead she saw a dry bed, no more than a muddy stream creeping along the middle. The water, silver or not, from which this town had taken its name had withered away to almost nothing. Dying, like the town itself. Through the clamor in her mind, she felt a small sadness for this place and its people.
Dark windows along the main street where stores had once done business. To Let and For Sale signs cracked and faded above many. A general store, a Goodwill place, and a diner were all that still traded. A few side streets crawled away, and from the brief glimpses she caught, they were every bit as desolate. Eventually, at the far end, Whiteside pulled into a lot beside a low cinder block building with the words ELDER COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE in dark letters on a white board. The lot had room for maybe a dozen vehicles, but Whiteside’s was the only one here.
Where was Deputy Collins’ car?
Whiteside shut off the engine, sat still and quiet for a moment, his hands on the wheel. Then he told Audra to wait, and he climbed out. He went to a shallow concrete ramp, enclosed by a railing, that led to a metal door in the side of the building, found a key from the chain on his belt, and opened it, before returning to the car. His fingers gripped Audra’s arm tight as he helped her out and guided her toward the building, a few seconds of blasting heat before the relative cool of the office.