Color of Blood(105)

“I’ve come to the conclusion that this guy Garder and I are the same person. Well, not identical, of course, but the same kind of person. The harder they fight to keep us out, the more driven I am to find what they’re hiding. Whatever they’re doing, I just know it’s really bad. I’m not pretending for a second that any of this is logical, but there you have it.”

He looked at Judy in the darkened car, the side of her face lit by the parking lot light.

“That sounds hopelessly childish,” she said. “What is it about men that they justify the silliest things by resorting to concepts like honor and truth? The world doesn’t operate like that, and you know it, Dennis.” She closed her eyes again, and Dennis wondered if she was going to fall asleep.

“I’m telling you, this guy Garder wasn’t crazy, Judy.”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, Dennis,” she said quietly, her eyes still closed.

“Judy, you and I are going to be fine. Nothing bad is going to happen to us. You’ll see.”

“Right,” she said, her eyes blinking slowly several times. “There’s just too much going on around me. I don’t even know what I’m doing sitting at an airport in Newton trying to escape some bloody mad Yanks. I’m being assaulted by men everywhere.”

“Hey, listen to me,” he said, gripping her wrists. “It’s the drug that’s breaking you down. Go home and start back to work just like nothing happened. I told you they won’t dare mess with you, but they might tap your phone and hack your email. Don’t talk about me to anyone, either on the phone or in an email. I’ll contact you; don’t worry about that. Now go inside and buy a ticket.”

Judy did as she was told, sniffling and wiping at her smeared mascara as she got out of the car. Afterward they waited silently for the plane in the dark car, holding hands like teenagers.

Before the plane landed, he canvassed the airport one final time.

“See you soon,” he said, kissing her hard on the lips. “Get some rest.”

She put her arms around his neck, holding him tightly for nearly half a minute. Then she let go and walked away, dragging her roll-on suitcase behind her in a weak zigzag pattern.

***

Dennis watched the plane take off from the LandCruiser. The lights of the SkyWest jet disappeared into the desert air, and he finally relaxed. He was incredibly tired and his throat hurt, but at least Judy was no longer in harm’s way.

Dennis had perfected a method of compartmentalizing his life’s experiences and he anticipated—yearned for—the chance to put this day behind him.

One compartment included being chased across the desert by men in four-wheelers. One compartment included a man nearly strangling him to death. Those compartments were now closed and he would not open them again unless forced to.

Another compartment included shooting a man in the shin and putting Judy on a plane to Perth. That compartment was mostly closed, but he still experienced anxiety when he remembered looking at her bound on the bed in the hotel room. At that moment he feared she was dead. He had trouble putting a lid on that compartment. He missed her already.

Yawning loudly, Dennis started up the LandCruiser and pulled slowly out of the airport parking lot, looking for other problematic vehicles. He saw nothing and prayed the wounded agent was still drugged in the closet.

It was a five-hour drive to Port Hedland and would call for driving through the night on the two-lane highway. The airport was south of Newton, so Dennis drove carefully back through the town, avoiding the downtown stretch by cutting through the grid of neighborhood streets.

Outside of Newton though, the bleakness of the desert emerged and Dennis kept his foot on the accelerator, trying to get far away from the trouble in Newton. He played with the heater so that it wouldn’t overheat the car’s interior and soon found that by turning the fan to low and keeping his speed to about sixty miles per hour, the engine warning light would disappear.

The first hour went smoothly; he saw only an occasional vehicle coming in the opposite direction. A large truck once flew up from behind and raced past him, showering the Cruiser with grit and dust. By midnight he was halfway to his destination but was fighting exhaustion. He strayed onto the dusty roadside at one point, sending a shower of rocks and sand into the undercarriage of the car.

He sometimes forgot which side of the road he should drive on and wandered over the center line. With scant traffic, he was not worried.

At one a.m. he saw something large appear on the highway directly in front of him. Reflexively, he hit the brakes, but the object, which did not move, was on him in a flash.

The sound of the collision was deafening, and Dennis struggled to control the vehicle as it fishtailed, cutting into the dirt at the side of the road and spraying the car with pebbles and branches from shrubs. He fought the Cruiser back onto the highway, where he finally came to a halt fifty yards from the collision.

Dennis tried to reconstruct what had happened. He got out of the vehicle and used the light of the high beams to examine the bar protecting the engine compartment. A small smear of blood and fur clung to the left side of the roo bar. Dennis got in the car, slowly turned around, and drove back down the road to the scene of the crash.

At first he saw nothing, just the sparse spinifex clumps at the side of the road. Then he saw an animal’s huge hind leg emerging from behind a small hillock. Walking over, he saw a gray-colored kangaroo, perhaps six feet tall, lying on its side. A pool of black-red blood collected in the dust next to its open mouth.