The Far Empty Read Online Free PDF Page A

shadows . . . staring with eyes like hard white stones, the air around the soapberry and the shin oaks ripe with Four Roses and dead skin.
    So he knew all sorts of things, some useful, some not; secrets and mysteries and little peeks around the corner.
Gifts
—a fair trade, he figured, for all the things he was forgetting. Like he knew right now his radio was going to call him. Maybe it was his blood talking or the wolf eyes or just the
foco.
Maybe it was all his imagination. Or most likely, he was just going goddamn crazy.
    •   •   •
    She stayed across the room, wary, like a kicked dog. She was in a T-shirt and BBC sweatpants, and it was still kind of early, so she had no makeup, with her hair all a mess. But he loved her dark skin, like that bruised time of day when the desert sky was shot through by the setting sun and the ground was long with shadow, right before he was most likely to see his daddy standing beneath the leaves of the shin oaks.
    He could make her come and sit next to him, make her hold his hand and say things she didn’t mean, but he wasn’t in the mood for it. Not anymore. Messing with her was like messing with a kicked dog, and sometimes even a whupped dog might bite. Or at least bark. Duane smiled, chuckled. He finished with his pants.
    “Vete a la mierda,”
she said through her teeth. Tough words, even if he didn’t know the exact meaning. She might have learned to talk like that from her brother, but her brother had never been tough atall. She hugged her arms. No need to waste a breath telling her to keep that fucking pretty mouth shut. That threat was already deep down in her eyes . . . all the things he’d swore to do, the horrible world he’d shown her in
his
pictures, not her magazine cutouts.
    •   •   •
    They both jumped when the radio came alive, with Miss Maisie from dispatch calling his name. He couldn’t hide a smile as he reached for it. Happened just like he knew it would. The girl inched around her room to give Chief Deputy Duane Dupree a wide berth. He skinned back his lips, flashed a bigger grin, let his wolf eyes
really
shine. Revealing them, wondering if his teeth looked sharp, too.
    Before he got out the door they both heard Miss Maisie on the radio going on and on about something, a trouble or mess, out at Indian Bluffs. A body? That’s what she’d said.
    The Bluffs was Matty Bulger’s place, farthest out near Chapel Mesa and damn near north Mexico, part of the Cut. The only property beyond that was the Far Six, and that hadn’t been worked in years, at least not for cattle, although Duane knew it well. It seemed Bulger had found a body rusting out on the caliche. Chris Cherry had caught the call and was out there now, probably fuckin’ it up.
    A body.
    Duane thought that should mean something to him, but like so much else, he’d forgotten what that could be.

4
    MELISSA

    S he hated nearly everything about the place, but mostly the smell. That constant wet, heavy stink of cows—the high, ripe tang of cow shit. It was everywhere and it hung in the air and crept into her food; she even dreamed of it. It reminded her too much of the oil fields, of the stench of burning gas and rusted metal. Chris kept telling her it was all in her head, and maybe he was right. This place was all up in her head, holding her hostage.
    •   •   •
    Mel took another drag on her cigarette, tried to inhale all the smoke, but even that did little to make the cow shit go away. The cigarettes were her secret, stowed away like pirates’ treasure around the house, even though Chris must have known about them and just wasn’t saying anything. He must have smelled them on her too; ignoring it like he did the cow shit stink, figuring the fight wasn’t worth it. Sincethey’d come here, back to his home in Murfee, a lot of things hadn’t been worth a fight.
    Except now . . . except for
the body
. Chris was all wound up about that in a way he hadn’t been