Brody Tucker shot a man in ’89 following a typical blend of conflict: lady friend, cards, and snifters of whiskey.
Dylan Redmond, or just “Red” in those parts, had a wind-honed face and square jaw that bled like a faucet from the bullet of Tucker’s Smith & Wesson .44.
Tucker was a kid at the time and known by another name now forgotten. He said he’d never shoot again, unless fired upon first.
Before he could be charged, he fled the Territory to Carson City, changed his identity, and later became the law. He kept the peace in that town for many years, living an honorable life in search of redemption.
***
Sheriff Tucker surveyed his town from atop his favorite Quarter Horse, at the corner of Washington and Mountain.
He learned to love the bustle of the city, but the frontier was still in his blood. He wore the hat of a Western man and cow-country boots he kept polished slick. He carried the same .44 of his youth and also a shotgun named “Charlene.”
The Celestial Laundry daughter, Emma, went missing months ago. The disappearance remained unsolved, and that ate at his core. Rumor, some say circulated by a stranger, had it that she was abducted and held in an underground bunker made of railroad ties near Joshua Tree.
While deep in thought about the lead, his horse startled and Tucker felt a tap on his leg. He looked down to see Mrs. Chin, the owner of Celestial, standing next to him in tears.
“Please, Sheriff, please find her. She’s our only daughter.”
***
The next day Tucker loaded his horse with gear, water, and food.
“Where are you going?” his first deputy asked.
“Where the Mohave meets the Colorado.”
The trail took him south through Tahoe, then alongside the Sierra Nevadas. Mono, Convict, and the Mammoth Lakes were the last waters he saw for some time.
He pressed as far west as possible to skirt the inferno of Death Valley. He hugged the rim of Sequoia and passed the road to Bakersfield. It became drier.
He welcomed the mirages he knew would come as he traversed the desert. He saw his childhood home and his mother’s grave in Scottsdale. As he became thirsty, he saw waves of the Pacific. Later, a giant magpie flew by and seemed to call his name, Tuk-ker, Tuk-ker, and then cackle.
When Emmas’s smooth face and fearful eyes appeared in the mirage, his vision cleared, and he realized he was there. Thousands of Joshua trees, with their shaggy brown angular arms in irregular postures, posed around him. They were capped with bunches of green blades, like porcupines resting on branches.
He took a swig from his canteen and chewed some jerky. Not far before him, near a mound of metamorphic rock, was a bleached wood door framed by railroad ties.
***
Tucker tapped the door with the barrel of his .44.
“Anyone there?”
Silence.
He tapped the door and announced himself again.
This time shuffling, but from below.
He stood to the side, turned the handle, and threw open the door. The aroma of sun-baked wood, not unlike that of a shithouse, but with tar-ish notes of tie creosote instead, filled his nostrils.
“Who’s down there?”
Light murmurs, more shuffling.
“I’m the Sheriff from Carson. Show yourself.”
He heard a faint “help” and looked through the door. A small landing and then rickety, makeshift stairs led down.
Another “help” came from the darkness, but not in a pitch he’d expected.
Tucker edged forward onto the creaking landing.
“Emma?”
“Help me,” this time unmistakably in the husky voice of a man, a tired old man who must have lived a life of late nights, cigars, and drink.
Tucker ignited a small kerosene torch and held it toward the blackness.
The man lay at the bottom of the stairs, his legs mangled and pierced by strategically positioned metal spikes.
“You okay, sir?” Tucker asked.
“I’m injured.”
Tucker took three steps down and shined the torch.
He saw a weathered face and smelled copper. He knew it was not possible, but he swore he’d smelled that blood before.
He took another step and could now make out the man’s features: a gin-blossomed nose, wind-honed face, and square jaw bearing a keloid scar.
“Funny,” the man said, “I lured you way out here, but things didn’t turn out as expected. Slipped on the stairs while preparing this grave for you.”
“Red?”
“Yessim.”
“Trap, huh?”
“I’ve bled now twice on your accord, Good Sheriff.”
“You shoulda left well enough alone after all these years. No Celestial daughter with you, I reckon?”
“You figgered it, and that’s why you the law. I released her outside the desert when I heard you left town.”
“You’re going to die down there this time, Red, you know that.”
“But you’re the Sheriff who don’t shoot; you won’t hurt me.”
“I’m not gonna do anything. I’m leavin’ ya to die by your own doing.”
Tucker retraced his steps up the stairs, and blew out the torch. He stood in front of the bunker and studied the land, the contortions of Joshua trees abruptly breaking the pale horizon.
He pulled a roll-your-own from his chest pocket and lit it on the torch embers.
Even in their present stillness, the trees brought life to the land, but he knew there was so much death out there. If Red didn’t bleed out, something would come from that oasis and finish him. Coyotes, or perhaps bats, would arrive by night. If mirages were true, maybe the magpie would come for his eyes, or the trees might rise, claim him with their bladed hands and crush him in their twisted arms.
Tucker exhaled and palmed the ivory handle of his .44.
He turned back to the bunker, and drew.
There was no way he could let a man die like that.
by 
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- To Joshua Tree - January 28, 2021
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