Some guy decides to use my cab as a confessional, I’m supposed to ignore him?
I’m the last wildcat hack around here, white to boot, so word gets around. They pass my card hand-to-hand at bridge games, back porch barbecues, bible study. I’m not complaining. Long days behind the wheel suit me fine. Less time spent inside my head.
Sure, I’ve had rides open up to me before, usually to tell me how they don’t feel safe with those other drivers, you know the ones. Uber, Lyft, they’ll hire anybody, and migrants like to moonlight. Who knows what they’re thinking, and why’d they come here in the first place? This used to be a nice, clean, safe community. Everybody knew everybody. Kids respected their elders. Nobody locked their doors.
No point calling bullshit—the Salton Sea’s been a shithole since long before San Diego stole its water. And those ‘others’? They’ve been here since the Imperial Valley discovered irrigation, generations longer than those complaining. But why say as much? Just thank them as they pass along a nice little tip, letting me know how grateful they are that a nice man like me remains available.
This one guy, though, the one that spills his guts—fortyish, ramrod stiff, dressed for church—no telling why he called me or how he got my number, but once he’s in the back seat he tells me to drive around for a while. He needs to think.
Fine with me. I slip the car into gear. We head off for a leisurely tour of the “Accidental Sea,” the “Salton Riviera,” the “miracle in the desert”—200 feet below sea level, its water twice as saline as the Pacific Ocean, the “beach” nothing more than a salt flat now, the stench intensified by bird and fish carcasses, chemical runoff from the irrigation canals—pesticides, arsenic, hydrogen sulfide.
And so the relentless attrition grinds on, the lake dying bit by bit, like everything and everyone around it.
I check my rearview—the guy’s just sitting there, quiet. Too quiet. Clamped down, ready-to-explode quiet. His ash brown hair’s impeccably combed, like he suffers over it. Face shiny as a penny from a fresh shave. White wing-collar shirt, clip-on tie, off-the-rack sport coat.
For all that Walmart tidiness, there’s still something off, something invisible. Like the closet of his soul is piled high with putrid rags.
He stares out the window, hands clasped so tight his fingers flare red. We’re passing the Red Earth Casino when he starts in.
“Hear me out, okay? You don’t know me, I don’t know you, but hear me out.”
His voice quavers. Eyes blink, blink again. Still staring off.
“If I could make it all unhappen I would. If I could’ve looked into the future—but I can’t, neither can you, nobody can but God.”
Mentally, I’m gearing up for a sermon wrapped in a lecture tucked inside a harangue.
“At this point—I don’t mean just now, today, this minute, I mean for all time—at this point the question is: Who’s really to blame?”
Isn’t it always?
“That school counselor, she was filling our kids’ heads with all sorts of sickness, and we just said, ‘Enough!’ Okay? Parents have rights. Christians have rights. You wouldn’t know it from the way this country’s going but both those things are true. Not that anybody’s listening. The principal, the joke of a school board, couldn’t care less. Did the meetings get loud? You bet. People are angry. We’re sick of being ignored. Sick of being talked down to like we’re imbeciles. Bad enough they’re teaching our kids to hate themselves—because of what they believe, because of the color of their skin. That’s the rich part. I remember somebody saying people should be judged by the content of their character—you remember that? Guess it just applies to them. Doesn’t apply to us. Content of our character doesn’t amount to a thimble of snot.”
I glance again into the rearview. Not sure he’s even directing his spiel at me. Some invisible other. His conscience, maybe.
I slam on the brakes—a tumbleweed the size of a F-150 bounds across the two-lane road. Misses my front end by an eyelash. The guy and me, we lurch back and forth in our seats.
I turn around. “You okay?”
He says nothing, just nods. Just as I’m wondering if he’s worn himself out—point made, fury spent—he launches back in.
“That counselor, the one I was talking about, she was at the center of it all—not just the racial stuff. Saying it’s okay—you’re a boy? Act and dress up like a girl, no problem. Vice versa, too, it’s okay, no big deal. God made you one way but fine, sure, what does God know? What does your family know—your family that loves you for who you are.”
He starts to tremble, and I’m thinking: here it comes. I glance over at the tissue box on the passenger seat, ready to pick it up, pass it back.
“I’m sorry,” he says, clearing his throat. “But it hurts. What they did. Twisted up my boy’s mind. And now look. Look what’s happened.”
I’m not a big one for following the news, local news especially. What good does it do? But this I’ve heard about.
“Sure, I bought the gun. Way things were going, I thought a little added protection in the house was wise—and owning a gun, that too is a right, something else people tend to forget. Not convenient, that right. Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist. Let’s attack people for exerting that right—a God-given right. Read the damn Constitution!”
I have. No one seems to want to discuss Article I, Section 8, paragraphs 14-16, about what a well-regulated militia really means. Hint: It doesn’t mean a million angry chucklefucks walking around armed to the tits.
“And yes, I taught Robert—how dare they call him Bobbi, how dare … I swear to God… some people …”
His voice drops into a guttering whisper. Outside, dust devils kick up swirls of salty, toxic sand.
“Yes, I took Robert out in the desert, taught him how to shoot. Thought it would help. Get his thoughts straight. We had a long talk. I told him that no one is perfect but we are forgiven, thanks to the love of Our Savior. I told him he had done nothing wrong that could not be taken back. ‘I love you,’ I said. ‘Your mother and your sisters and most of all Jesus Christ loves you and you don’t have to be different to earn that love. It’s already yours. Don’t even need to ask.’”
Lucky kid.
“He started to cry then. Robert. I held him and we wept and we prayed and…”
Finally, the tears come. Almost despite himself. No shaking sobs, no blubbering. Just a pair of glistening eyes, a thin wet trail down each cheek. Just as I’m reaching for the tissue box he takes out a handkerchief, wipes his face.
“Excuse me. Yeah. It’s… emotional. How could it not be?”
So far he doesn’t seem to mind my staying quiet, just listening, so I stick with that, let the question go unanswered.
“I told him, told Robert, ‘You have to go into school—not tomorrow, not next week, today—tell that counselor to leave you alone. You don’t want to talk to her anymore. She’s got nothing to say you need to hear. Your parents and pastor have all the guidance you need. They’re the ones with your best interests at heart. She needs to hear it from you, not your mother and me. Straight from the source.”
A deep, shuddering breath.
“And he said he would. We left it there.”
By now I’ve hit Bombay Beach, a junkyard-cum-ghost town that an influx of renegade freaks have turned into an open-air museum. Houses stripped to their framing, abandoned cars, rust-eaten signage, it’s all been reimagined as sculptures, art installations—a Cessna fuselage transformed into a giant flying fish, a pile of scrap lumber refashioned as a shipwreck, an abandoned motel turned into a pastel labyrinth—all with a weather-worn patina from the relentless wind, the salt, the dust.
Unofficial town motto: My Heart Belongs to Dada.
Four hundred lunatics, give or take, live here now, not that you could tell by looking. Midday temps can reach 120 degrees, so no one ventures out of their shabby little trailers except to go to the Ski Inn to play billiards, drink Fish Asshole bear, and luxuriate in the circulating air, courtesy of a ceiling fan over the bar.
I can only imagine what my pious passenger thinks of all that. Only thing the holy rollers hate more than Bombay Beach lies out beyond Slab City: Salvation Mountain. East Jesus. “Cranks, not Christians,” is one of the more charitable things said.
He’s gone quiet now. Not so much as a sigh from the backseat for some time. No sooner does this cross my mind than the guy speaks up.
“How was I supposed to know?”
I was wondering when he’d finally get around to this—Robert, Bobbi, whatever—the kid killed that school counselor. Woman in her twenties, unmarried, “highly respected … much loved …” Three shots, close range, the face, and not just her. Student sitting with her in the office, a girl, sophomore. Got more counseling than she bargained for.
“Only God can see the future. Only He who sits on high with the sword of judgment. Only He who, out of love for all mankind, sent his only son…”
Right. The kid killed himself as well.
The guy suddenly reaches out, grabs the back of my seat.
“Stop the car!”
“Here?”
“Stop the car!”
I pull to the side of the dusty, sunbaked two-lane road. The guy reaches inside his jacket to dig out his wallet. I hold up my hand. “It’s okay. It’s fine.” He stops, eyes blank, breathing hard. Then he’s opening the door. “I need to walk.” Halfway out he stops, glances back, and for the first time his eyes meet mine. They look raw, like scraped flesh. “Thank you,” he says.
He staggers out toward the hazy water. I check my phone. Two calls. I’m about to hit them back, apologize for the wait, but then think better of it, telling myself: Stay put, watch.
Standing out on the salt flat, his jacket and pant legs billowing in the harsh wind, he’s watching two kids, a boy and a girl—barefoot, swimsuits—out where the mud resembles a mass of dead flies. They’re poking at a beached pupfish with a stick.
After a moment they notice him staring at them. One by one, they stand upright, stare back, hands shading their eyes.
I get out of the car, not sure why.
The kids whisper back and forth, drop the stick, then tear off in the direction of a camper-back pickup, parked a hundred yards up the road.
He stares after them, a scarecrow in the wind. Finally, he turns around, spots me, trudges back to the car.
“Couldn’t just leave you out here, middle of nowhere. Come on, let me take you home.”
We drive in silence along the southern shore, past Slab City, the Sonny Bono Wildlife Refuge, the mudflats where the geothermal energy plant and the lithium mining operations are under construction—the region’s last great hope for prosperity, jobs—then back around to Salton City where I picked him up.
The streets wind around twenty square miles of barren flatland, laid out in expectation of 80,000 residents who never showed up. Individual houses rest alone on whole blocks, like manor houses on plantations of sand. The occasional date palm or Fremont cottonwood rises above a roofline, solitary reminders of what it takes out here to survive.
His home is like the rest: ranch-style, sun-bleached, decorative stones here and there. All the blinds are drawn. Nothing else lies within a hundred yards in any direction.
Once again he tries to pay me. Once again I wave him off.
“Keep my number,” I tell him. “You need a ride, just want some time alone, call.”
***
The wind’s picking up again as I reach Desert Shores, where my single-wide trailer rests on a concrete slab a stone’s throw from the main road. Bottled water from the fridge, a lazy sandwich, and I’m parked in front of my laptop, scrolling through news stories of the shooting. Jot down the names of the shooter, his parents—the Halbrecht family, Peter (my fare), Sarah (wife), Mary and Martha (sisters), Joshua (deceased)—plus the two homicide victims, their family members. Easier for me to memorize something if it’s first written down, then I tear up the paper, flush it down the john.
Search some more under each of those names until I’m getting nothing but the same old details. One name stands out: Richard Fitzgerald. Not just because it was his daughter that died. He served two tours with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq. And the girl wasn’t just his only child—she was her killer’s best friend.
I erase my browsing history, power down my laptop, get undressed. For the first time in a long while I don’t drink myself to sleep.
***
The Fitzgeralds reside in Salton Sea Beach, little more than a mile away. The home is single-story, flat-roofed, pre-fab construction—a modest upgrade from my trailer. Potted cacti line the walk, and a single scrub oak, withering in the arid heat, provides a freckling of shade. The yard’s raked gravel, surrounded by a waist-high hurricane fence. An A/C window unit hums and rattles just beyond the doorstep, dripping condensation onto the bleached stones.
A rubber doormat, decorated with sunflowers, reads, “Welcome to Our Happy Home.”
I press the bell, triggering a rattling buzz just inside the door.
Wait. Wait some more.
Shuffling footsteps approach from within, the door cracks open.
“Mr. Fitzgerald?”
His plaid cotton robe hangs open, revealing an unwashed t-shirt, cargo shorts. He’s barefoot, unshaven, eyes beyond bloodshot. A deep scar runs from his temple to his jawline. Though no longer rock solid, he’s still fit, barrel-chested, well over six feet tall.
“Whatever it is, we’re not interested.”
“I don’t mean to intrude, seriously—but I used to be a cop. Responded to a school shooting when I was on the force. Three years ago, eleven dead, including the shooter. I’d like to talk with you for just a minute.”
His head turns just slightly, so he’s in three-quarters profile. He squints. “About what?”
“Can I come in?”
“No. What the— What’s this about?”
“The court system isn’t designed to deal with what you’re going through. It’s a meat-grinder, run by snakes.”
He leans against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Who’s going to court? Our daughter’s dead, so’s the freak who killed her. What’s going to court gonna do?”
“Exactly.” I edge a little closer, lower my voice. “That’s why I’m here.”
***
In the coming weeks I get three more calls from Peter Halbrecht. He says he appreciates my understanding, since anything of the sort seems to have fled his life. Not even the family’s church welcomes them anymore. The girls have turned to homeschooling, and beyond her duties in that regard the wife has retreated into a morbid solitude.
Each time, we return to that same spot on the eastern shore south of Bombay Beach. He walks alone across the salt flat, leaning into the gusting wind. I imagine him hoping the boy and girl we saw here the first time will magically materialize in the haze off the water.
On the fourth trip, using a burner phone, I draft a preliminary text, plus a message I don’t send, then pull away from his house. “Mind if we go somewhere else today?” I glance into the rearview. As always, that perfectly combed hair, the freshly shaven face, the tightly clasped hands. “It’s where I go when I need to think, sort things out.”
He clears his throat. “I suppose—”
“It’s time I shared something. Something I wasn’t sure I should tell you.”
He says nothing, just meets my eyes in the rearview mirror.
“We’re not that different, you and me. We both have our burdens.”
He nods absently. His eyes remain doubtful. I return my gaze to the road, head for the prearranged spot.
It’s in Bombay Beach, beyond the Drive-In with its gutted cars and the other various “artworks”—the TV garden, the hubcap-encrusted yurt—and far away from the Ski Inn with its midday crowd of boozers escaping the heat.
I pull onto a patch of broken road—six-foot-high dirt levee on one side, on the other what remains of the Dusty Dawn Diner, a favorite hangout among the locals in the area’s heyday, until one morning a short-order cook named Claude Borgeron decided he’d had enough—enough of what remains unclear—and slammed a Mueller cleaver into the owner’s head, slicing it in two like a melon. Now the place is gutted, all the hardwood and chrome and frosted glass carted off by scavengers, the plywood nailed across the window framing slathered with graffiti, the front doorway an empty maw swallowed in shadow.
I kill the motor, turn around. “Not what you were expecting, I imagine.”
He doesn’t answer, just looks around as though afraid ghosts might appear from the haunted diner.
“I come here, like I said, when I need to think. Call it Bombay Baptist. The whole post-apocalyptic vibe, I dunno, reminds me of that quote, ‘I saw seven angels with the seven last plagues—last, because with them God’s wrath is completed.”
He nods. “Revelation, Chapter 15.”
“‘And I saw what looked like a sea of glass glowing with fire.’ I mean, I know you can’t see it from here, because of the levee, but you know what I mean.”
I turn fully around, shoulders square in my seat, facing him.
“You’re not alone,” I tell him, “having to deal with what you’re going through. Don’t know if you remember, but three years ago, this little town in southern Illinois, some teenager with a Bushmaster locked himself inside a third-grade classroom, all the kids in there with him, teacher shot dead first thing, right in front of her students. They’re all of nine years old.”
“Elmerton,” he says softly. Clears his throat. “Elmerton, Illinois.”
“Right. Exactly. Well, I was one of the responding officers. The ones who stood outside the classroom while the shooter murdered over a dozen kids one-by-one.”
“I remember,” he says, even more quietly.
“CO says sit tight. We have the gunman locked down. He can’t kill anybody outside that room. Situation’s under control. First rule of business, you’re facing an active shooter? Stay safe. You die, the gunman is free to kill whoever he wants. That’s what they teach us. That’s what we tell ourselves. Honestly, though? We just didn’t want to get shot.”
He stares at me like I’m only now coming into focus.
“So we’re just standing there, protecting ourselves, while those kids are left alone, in that barricaded room. The fucker reloads, keeps at it. We can hear the shots.”
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“Get in line.”
“No, I mean, why are you telling me this?”
“I know what it feels like, the aftermath, when your conscience kicks in. The guilt. The shame. We’re not so different, you and me.”
“No,” he says. “You’re mistaken.”
“Can I ask you something? Do you think your son is in Hell because of what he did?”
“How dare you ask me that.”
“He took his own life. Suicide’s a sin, the sin of despair.”
“I believe in God’s mercy. His forgiveness. My son was confused.”
“Yeah, the girl who died, Sheila Fitzgerald? Her old man said pretty much the same thing—to the press, I mean. I’ve been reading up on it. He said your son was a sweet kid, confused but sweet. Said his daughter—tough little bird, hated bullies—she stood up for him, while the other kids—”
“That girl was no friend to my son.”
“Not the way he tells it.”
“His daughter poisoned Robert’s mind.”
“Maybe you’re the one who did that. Filled his head full of hate. For himself. And now he’s dead, she is too, and for—”
“You want hate?” He leans forward, eyes hard as glass. “That girl, once Robert returned to church, got himself right with Our Lord, know what she did? Think she stood up for him then?” He leans in closer. “She mocked him. Mocked him! Called him ‘Saint Bobbi.’”
“So she deserved what she got.”
“She was no different than the others.”
“In the end, you mean. But he didn’t kill them. Just her.”
“I taught him to trust in God.”
“God’s in the murder business?”
He sits back, as far from me as he can get and still be in the car. “Drive me home. Now.”
“The girl’s father, he says, ‘You have any idea what it’s like—you spend two tours overseas, living through ambushes, suicide bombers, IEDs, hearing your buddies scream in pain, watching them lose limbs if they’re lucky, worse if they’re not, telling yourself the whole time it’s good, it’s right, you’re keeping America safe—only to come home and have some self-loathing Jesus freak murder your kid?’”
“Of course, he insults my son.”
“That’s all you’ve got to say?”
“He’s not the only one who lost a child.”
“I’d pay good money to watch you say that to his face.”
He reaches over for the door handle. Nothing happens.
“Child locks. I’m the only one who can release them.”
“I want to get out.”
“You will. In a minute. Just hear me out.”
“This is a crime. This is kidnapping.”
“I’m almost done. Got a question. Do you really believe that stuff about, if you ask for God’s forgiveness at the moment of death, even a lifetime of sin can be washed away?”
He’s still clutching the door handle—trembling, breathing hard. “If the request is sincere, the Lord forgives.”
“‘I’m not perfect, but I am forgiven.’ Right? That’s what you said, first time we were in this car together. Or is that just more sanctimonious bullshit.”
“You’re nothing like who you pretend to be.”
“Who is? My question—can God forgive even what I’ve done? What you’ve done?”
“I have confidence in my faith.”
“Know what the PD chaplain back in Elmerton told me? ‘The opposite of faith isn’t doubt. It’s certainty.’”
“Your chaplain was a fool.”
“Not so. One of the smartest, kindest, strongest men I ever met.”
“So why aren’t you still there, with him, where you committed your sin, letting all those children die?”
My skin prickles with sweat. My face feels hot.
When we finally burst through the door, the gunman blows his head off—Jerome Peterman, age nineteen. We find him lying in his own blood, just like over a dozen other bodies, small bodies. The smell, like the meat-packing plant where most of these kids’ parents work. Two of the cops upchuck as soon as they’re in the room.
Among the survivors, all of them slathered in gore, one girl lies on her side, holding the hand of her dead twin sister. Another refuses to pull her hands down from her eyes until a psych nurse assures her it’s okay. One boy, wearing a Chicago Bears cap, stands over the killer, as though puzzled by him, or waiting to make sure he doesn’t spring back to life. A girl in pigtails stands at the window, staring at all the swirling lights atop the squad cars, a bloody handprint on her cheek.
“Know what the Supreme Court says? Cops can’t be held responsible for not protecting people. Not even kids. Not their job. Look it up, you don’t believe me.”
“You want to be held responsible. You want punishment, penance.”
“You don’t?”
“I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” I take out my phone, thumb the send button. A slight whoosh as the unsent message sails off. Dropping the burner in my pocket, I turn back around, face the front, but my eyes meet his in the rearview mirror. “Guess why I really brought you here.”
From inside the diner, a figure appears, taking shape in the shadowy doorway—simple gray jacket, gray pants, balaclava hiding his face. Large man, solidly built, over six feet tall. In one gloved hand, a pistol with a sound suppressor. As soon as he reaches the car he opens fire, four thudding shots through the rear driver-side window.
Halbrecht raises his hands, like he can just swat the bullets away. His whole body jerks with each impact—three, four, five. Then one final shot, this one to the head. He slumps to one side, reaching for something, an invisible hand.
I close my eyes, hold up the phone for the gunman to take, waiting for what comes next.
Eliminate all witnesses—botched robbery, both victims dead at the scene, shooter unaccounted for.
What is meant by imperfect contrition?
Imperfect contrition, otherwise known as attrition, is sorrow for sin that arises from a motive that is less than a perfect love of God.
The shot doesn’t come. Instead Dick Fitzgerald is standing outside my window, banging on the glass with the butt of his pistol, shouting through the mouth hole of the balaclava.
“Did you leave anything in your house, on your computer—a note, a confession, anything?”
It takes me a second to mouth the word, “No,” shaking my head.
“Are you fucking me here?”
“No. No! Just shoot for God’s sake!”
“You die, maybe I’m left holding the bag. You live, we’re in this together. You try to screw me, I can screw you right back.”
“No, no. You’ve got it—”
“There’s gonna be questions. Lots. Get ready. But I’ll bet you’re good at that. Lots of practice, lying on the stand.”
“Wait, no. That’s not—”
Finally he shoots—inches from my head, just beyond the glass. The sound’s dull, a punch to the head. The bullet only grazes my shoulder. He doesn’t fire again, finish me off—he’s already vanished.
The pain, like my skin is on fire. I press my hand to the wound, blood seeping between my fingers. And that room comes back to life in my mind, all those tiny bodies. All that blood. God’s wrath, completed.
I get out of the car, stand as best I’m able, and pitch the burner phone over the levee before dropping back behind the wheel. My breaths coming in shallow, ragged bursts, I dig my cell phone from my pocket, hand trembling so hard I can barely thumb in the numbers.
Several rings. There’s gonna be questions.
A woman’s voice. “What is the nature of your emergency?”
[Image Credit : Photo by Alex Shuper on Unsplash ]
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