The bench was warm from the sun and Micah had been sitting on it long enough that the metal had started to feel like part of him.
Kayla was next to him with her knees pulled up, her phone in her lap, the screen dark. She hadn’t touched it in a while, afraid it might lose charge before they got there. The gas station was quiet for a Friday afternoon. A truck had pulled in twenty minutes ago and the driver had gone inside and come back out with a bag and left. Nobody else.
Micah watched the road. The asphalt shimmered in the heat and the air above it moved in waves. He could see the highway stretch out in both directions, flat and straight, and he could see the point where it disappeared into the distance toward Show Low.
A white sedan came over that point and got bigger.
He knew the car before he could see the driver. He stood up and tapped Kayla’s shoulder. She looked up from her phone and then at the road and then she stood too. They walked across the parking lot together. The sedan pulled in beside the pumps and stopped.
Micah opened the front passenger door and got in. Kayla got in the back.
“Hey,” Valerie said.
“Hey,” Micah said.
“Hey,” Kayla said from the back.
Valerie looked at them in the rearview mirror and then at Micah. “How long you been waiting?”
“Not long.”
“Your father dropped you off?”
He nodded.
She didn’t say anything else. She put the car in drive and pulled out of the gas station and onto the highway.
The road ran south. Micah watched the mesas slide past on the right side, low and red in the afternoon light. The car was quiet. Valerie turned on the radio and then turned it off again and then found a podcast on her phone and let it play through the speakers.
The podcast was two women talking. They had the kind of voices that sounded like they were sitting across from each other at a kitchen table. They talked about something for a while, Micah wasn’t really listening, and then one of them said they were going to the mailbag and the other one said great and they started reading questions from listeners.
The first question was about a boyfriend who wouldn’t do something. Micah didn’t catch what. The second question was about a woman who wanted to know if it was normal to feel a certain way about a certain thing. The third question was about sex.
Valerie reached over and turned it off.
Kayla snickered in the back seat. Micah felt the corner of his mouth pull up and he pressed his lips together and looked out the window at the passing scrub.
Valerie didn’t say anything. She kept both hands on the wheel and drove.
The highway ran for another forty minutes. The mesas gave way to flatter land and then to houses set back from the road and then to neighborhoods. Valerie turned off the highway and onto a street with sidewalks and trees and then onto another street and then into a driveway.
Miguel’s car was already there. A gray SUV parked in front of the garage.
The house was two stories. White siding. A front porch with two chairs on it. A garage door that was closed. A real driveway, not dirt, with a crack running through the middle of it that had been patched at some point.
Micah opened his door and got out. Kayla got out behind him. Valerie was already walking toward the front door with her keys in her hand. They followed her up the walk and she unlocked the door and held it open and they went inside.
The truck bounced over the last stretch of dirt road and Jace braced his hand against the dash.
The property came into view through the windshield. A gate across the road, black iron, tall enough that a man couldn’t climb it without effort. Beyond it the land opened up flat and wide. Farther out, three houses sat low against the horizon, spaced apart like they’d been set down by different hands at different times.
“What kind of job you need to have a place like this?” Jace said.
Delvin pulled up to the gate and put the truck in park. He looked at the property through the windshield and didn’t turn his head.
“You don’t got a job if you got a place like this,” he said.
The gate opened. It swung inward on its own, slow and quiet, and Delvin put the truck back in gear and drove through. The road inside was gravel, packed hard, and it ran straight for a quarter mile before curving left toward the back corner of the property. Delvin took the curve and kept going past the houses without slowing.
The corner was raw dirt. A mini excavator sat in the middle of a dug-out area, its tracks caked with mud, its bucket resting in a pile of earth. A man was in the seat. He saw the truck and killed the engine and climbed down.
He walked over to Delvin’s side of the truck and Delvin got out and they shook hands. The man nodded at Jace through the windshield. Jace got out.
The man pointed at the dug-out area. He walked them to the edge of it and used his hand to trace a line in the air, showing them where the ground needed to come out and where it needed to level. He talked about the debris that had been building up along the fence line for the last few weeks, old lumber and broken concrete and rusted rebar that needed hauling. He pointed at the fence on the far side of the property where the posts were set but the wire wasn’t hung yet.
“Monday morning,” the man said. “That’s when they come back. They expect it to be done."
Delvin nodded. “Like I said on the phone. We’ll have it done."
The man reached into his back pocket and pulled out a folded wad of cash. He counted out a stack and handed it to Delvin. Delvin took it and put it in his front pocket.
“The rest when the job done,” the man said.
He walked to his truck, a white F-250 parked behind the excavator, and got in and started it and drove away down the gravel road. The dust hung in the air behind him and then settled.
Jace watched the truck disappear around the curve. He looked at the dug-out area. He looked at the debris pile along the fence line. He looked at the fence posts standing in the dirt like a row of teeth with nothing between them.
“Don’t we got the highway later tonight and tomorrow night?” he said. “Ain’t no way we getting all of this shit done. I thought you said it was a small job.”
Delvin was already walking toward the excavator. He didn’t stop or turn around.
“Sounds like you need to shut the fuck up and we need to start digging,” he said. “Don’t you think?”
The table was set. Four plates, a bowl in the middle for Marco. Miguel sat across from Micah with his elbows on the table and his hands folded. Marco was next to him, banging a spoon against the tray. Micah kept waiting for Miguel to get him to stop. He never did.
Kayla sat on Micah’s left. She had her phone face down on the table and her hands in her lap.
Micah could hear the pan on the stove, the scrape of the spatula, the click of the burner when Valerie turned it down.
“So,” Miguel said. He picked up his water glass and set it back down without drinking. “Football season coming up.”
Micah looked at him.
“You know my nephew plays for Show Low High. He’s alright but he don’t got your size,” Miguel smiled. “They could use someone like you on that team. You ever think about playing over there? I know some of their guys be getting recruited to 'Zona and schools like that."
Micah picked up his napkin and set it in his lap. He smoothed it flat with his hand.
“I’m just saying,” Miguel continued. “You’d be a problem on a team like that. They wouldn’t know what hit them.”
Micah didn’t say anything. He looked at the plate in front of him.
Kayla snorted. She pressed her lips together and looked down at her lap.
Miguel looked at her and then back at Micah. The smile was still on his face but it had changed shape.
The kitchen was quiet except for Marco’s spoon and the sound of Valerie plating the food. She came around the corner with two plates in her hands and set one in front of Miguel and one in front of Marco. She went back and came out with two more and set them in front of Micah and Kayla. She went back one more time and came out with her own plate and a serving bowl of yellow rice and set the bowl in the middle and sat down at the head of the table.
She put her hands together on the edge of the table. Miguel put his together. Marco stopped banging his spoon.
Valerie bowed her head. “Heavenly Father,” she began.
Kayla had started to close her eyes but she opened them and looked at Micah. His eyes were open. He was looking at the serving bowl in the middle of the table. She kept her eyes open too.
“Thank you for this food and for bringing us together tonight. Bless this meal and bless those who prepared it. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
Jace threw the last piece of rebar onto the pile in the bed of the truck and the metal rang against metal and then the truck was quiet again. He wiped his hands on his jeans and looked at the dug-out area. It was flat now. The fence line was clear. The posts stood in a straight row with wire strung between them, tight enough that he could hear it hum when the wind moved.
Delvin was walking toward the truck with the shovel over his shoulder. He set the shovel in the bed and climbed up and pulled the tarp over the debris pile and tied it down at the corners. The tarp snapped in the wind.
Jace leaned against the tailgate. The sun was low over the mesas and the light had gone orange and the shadows were long across the dirt.
“You text him yet?"
Delvin jumped down from the bed. He dusted his hands on his shirt. “Guy said he’d come by the rec site tomorrow morning."
“Tomorrow morning," Jace looked at the property. The three houses sat quiet in the distance. No lights on in any of them. The gate was closed at the end of the road.
“DeLuca knows him,” Delvin said. “He’s good for it.”
Jace didn’t say anything. Delvin walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door. He put one foot on the running board and looked back over the roof of the cab.
“Come on,” he said. “We still got to pick up Micah and Kay.”
Jace didn’t move. He stood at the tailgate with his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground.
Delvin waited a beat. Then he got in and closed the door. The engine turned over and the truck idled. Jace heard the window roll down.
“Jace.”
Jace didn’t answer. He reached up and pulled the tailgate down and sat on it. The metal was warm from the sun. He swung his legs over the edge and let them hang.
The engine cut. The door opened and closed. Footsteps came around the back of the truck.
Delvin stood there. Jace was sitting on the tailgate with the cooler beside him. He had the lid off and his hand was in the ice. He pulled out a flask and set it on his thigh. The metal was cold and wet.
Delvin sucked his teeth.
Jace unscrewed the cap and took a drink. He held it in his mouth for a second before he drank it.
He held the flask out. Delvin looked at it. He looked past Jace at the property, at the dug-out area, at the fence line. The sky was going from orange to purple along the horizon. The first star was out already, low and bright.
Delvin looked away. He looked at the flask again. He took it.
He sat down on the tailgate next to Jace. The metal creaked under his weight. He took a drink and handed it back and Jace took another and handed it back and they sat there.
The sedan was parked at the gas station with the engine off. The windows were down and the evening air moved through the cab, warm and dry, carrying the smell of gasoline and dust.
Micah sat in the passenger seat with his arm on the door. Kayla was in the back with her phone in her lap, the screen dark, the charge giving way about twenty minutes ago.
“I told you it’s fine,” Micah said.
“I know it’s fine,” Valerie said.
The silence came back. Valerie’s hands were on the wheel even though the car wasn’t moving. Kayla’s thumb moved over the edge of her phone case in a slow circle.
Micah watched the road. The highway ran north and south and the sun was behind them now. The gas station lights hadn’t come on yet. The pump island was empty. A moth bumped against the inside of the windshield and then found the open window and was gone.
Headlights appeared on the horizon. Two points of light, low and steady, coming from the north. Micah knew the shape of them before the truck was close enough to make out.
He unlocked the door and pushed it open. The hinges creaked. He stepped out and the gravel crunched under his boots. He walked around the back of the sedan and opened Kayla’s door. She slid out without looking at him.
Valerie sighed as she opened her own door.
Micah was already walking. Kayla fell in beside him. They crossed the parking lot together, past the pump island, past the bench where they’d waited earlier. The gravel gave way to asphalt and then to dirt at the edge of the lot.
“Thanks for visiting!” Valerie called.
Micah didn’t turn around. He raised his right hand, just a slight lift at the wrist, and kept walking. Kayla glanced back once and then forward again.
The truck pulled into the lot and stopped. The engine idled. Delvin was behind the wheel and he didn’t look over. His hands were at ten and two and his eyes were on the road ahead.
Jace was in the passenger seat. He turned his head and looked through the windshield at Valerie standing by her car. He raised his hand and waved. Valerie raised hers back.
Micah opened the back door of the truck and Kayla climbed in. Micah got in and pulled the door shut.
Delvin put the truck in gear. They pulled out of the lot and onto the highway and the gas station fell away behind them. The headlights cut through the darkening air and the road stretched ahead, flat and straight, and the mesas rose on either side, black against the purple sky.
Micah watched the road. The truck ran steady under them. The radio was off. Nobody spoke.
