No Such Creature

FIFTEEN

Stu Quaig was staring into the mirror on the open closet door, checking out his hair for the forty-seventh time, it seemed like, pinching and prodding it into artful little peaks. Clem had to admit the colour looked good, some kind of mustard yellow highlights he’d had added to relieve the monotony of brown.

“Did I tell you how much I hate my haircut?”

Clem picked up the May issue of Handyman and thumbed through it. “Why, no, Stu, you didn’t. Please go ahead.”

“I hate my haircut.”

“There, you feel better now?”

“I told her a quarter inch, no more.” Stu held up thumb and forefinger to show him what a quarter inch looked like. “And she says sure. Starts off fine, cutting the back, the top, I don’t see anything wrong. Then she gets to the front, I’m seeing two-inch hunks of hair falling into my lap.”

“You should of stopped her.”

“It was too goddamn late to stop her. What am I going to tell her, put it back? Reattach it? Hey, Ming, you think you could graft that back to my head so I don’t go out of here totally fucking bald?”

“I hope your dissatisfaction was reflected in the tip,” Clem said, flipping pages.

“Tips are how they make their living. I’m not gonna cut off her income over it.”

“I’d have given her nothing. Asians don’t feel pain like we do.”

“She holds up a mirror to the back of my head, where there used to be hair, and says, ‘What do you think?’ and I say, ‘I think you cut it too short.’ And she says, oh, she had to do this and that to make it sit right. I expect to come out looking like Jude Law, instead I’m sitting here with a head full of nubs.”

“So why go to Sassoon?” Clem said. “You spend like eighty bucks or something and you’re coming back in tears.”

“Because they’re the best, that’s why. They have a training program. It takes time to become a Sassoon stylist.”

Clem tossed his magazine onto the floor. “I been going to the same barber for twenty years. Mikos. Eight bucks, I get a great haircut and Mikos is happy with a two-buck tip.”

“Yeah, but your hair looks like shit.”

“It suits me.”

“Let me tell you,” Stu said as he shut the closet door. “A total makeover would not be wasted on you, Clem. You could stand a little improvement in the presentation-of-self department.”

“At least I don’t got a head full of nubs.”

There was a sound of rattling chain from the bathroom. “You ever try Hairlines?”

“The dog is speaking again,” Clem said. “Shut up in there, Rover!”

“Hairlines. Small chain out of New York. You get the best of both worlds. Trained stylist, but they don’t charge you Sassoon prices. I’ve been going there for years.”

Stu stepped back into the bathroom for a second, looking down at Roscoe. “You got good hair,” he said. “What do they charge?”

“Twenty plus tax and tip. And the girls are major cute.”

“Twenty bucks, huh? Maybe I’ll check ’em out. Place nice?”

“Sure. You know, lots of black. Lots of mirrors. Music’s too loud for my taste, but I got sensitive hearing.”

Stu left the bathroom and Roscoe climbed out of the tub. He put the toilet seat down again and sat. It seemed like a year he’d been chained to the bathroom sink in this motel. According to the soap, it was a Motel 6. He had to sleep in the bathtub, and every time one of these bastards took a dump, he had to be in the damn bathroom inhaling it. At least the one called Stu had the decency to pull the shower curtain shut.

He looked at his bare feet, the two gauze bandages where his baby toes used to be.

“Hey,” Roscoe called out, “he claimed to have shot forty-four men with his Colt Thunderer before he himself was shot in the back following a barroom altercation in 1895.”

“Who the fuck knows?” the one called Clem said. “Theodore fucking Roosevelt.”

“Was it Billy the Kid?” Stu said.

“John Wesley Hardin. Known as the Fastest Gun in the West. There were several songs about him, none of them true, however. Bob Dylan, you have to wonder if he did any research whatsoever.”

“You really get a bang out of this trivia shit, don’t you?” Clem said.

“It passes the time.”

There was a long pause after that. Just the sound of the television as someone flipped channels, and magazine pages turning.

“So, you got any more questions for us?” Clem said.

“Yeah, how about you unlock this chain and let me out of here.”

“No,” they said.

The theatre department at the University of El Paso was planning a production of Lady Windermere’s Fan, and Max took the opportunity to provide them with several high-quality wigs. It was not a huge sale, but it was excellent cover, and the university itself was quite entertaining, having been built for some reason in the manner of a Tibetan lamasery.

After that, he drove over to the hospice affiliated with Thomason General, where John-Paul Bertrand, alias the Pontiff, alias Sabrina’s father, was dying on the third floor. Sabrina and Owen were sightseeing. Even at his age Max found it difficult to believe someone so young and pretty could be so heartless.

The Pontiff lay in bed in a wash of sunlight, a shrivelled, shrunken thing. His previous address had been the Huntsville state prison, and usually inmates put on weight from the lack of activity combined with a steady diet of television and candy bars. Either that or they inflate themselves into rippling muscle-men by relentlessly pumping iron. But the shape under the sheets was scarcely more substantial than a child’s.

His face was turned away from the window, the mouth slightly open. A comb-over was plastered to his skull, and a hundred hairpieces appeared in Max’s mind as improvements. One bony hand was splayed on his chest, no watch, no jewellery. The stalky neck, the bony hand, the hollowed cheeks-the Pontiff was Coventry after the Blitz.

Max sat down beside the bed, the small chair creaking under his weight.

The eyes fluttered open. Bombed-out eyes.

“Magnus Maxwell at your service.”

“How long you been here?”

“Mere moments, squire. Moments.”

“Sorry. All I do is sleep all the time. Well, doze. I never actually sleep. Sleep …” He let the word dangle, as if it were the name of an old friend fallen in battle.

“I brought you something.” Max propped the stuffed angel he had found in the hospital gift shop on the nightstand.

“To see me on my way. Thanks, Carl. That’s kind.”

“Max, old son. There are a million Maxwells in the universe, and no doubt one of them is Carl. I, however, am Magnus-known to all and sundry as Max. You asked me to look in on Sabrina, remember? I’m happy to tell you she is very bonny. Socking away the gold, planning to go back to school.”

“Sabrina.” The Pontiff coughed weakly, but even that small strain made his eyes water. “She’ll be glad to see the last of me.”

“Not a bit of it. She was so happy to hear they let you out,” Max said. “Finally saw the error of their ways.”

“Department of Corrections is not equipped for …” The bony hand gestured at the curtains, the television, the pale blue walls.

Max touched the IV unit. “Stoli?”

“No.” John-Paul looked at the saline drip and grimaced. “We’ve had a parting of the ways, vodka and me.”

Where was the Pontiff? Where was the sly thief? The party animal? The robust friend yelling jokes and insults, slapping you on the back? Who was this thing, this carcass that had taken his place?

Max pulled out a bottle of Stolichnaya from his sample case, and two glasses. “It’s time the two of you made up,” he said, proffering a shot.

The Pontiff made no move to take it. “Only good thing about all this,” he said, in the dry remnant of his old voice, “you lose your taste for alcohol. Stuff never did me any good.”

“Rubbish,” Max said. “I’ve seen you hold forth in bistro and tavern, in song and rhyme and just about any form that would suit one of the world’s natural born master thieves.” He leaned forward confidentially. “You remember the party after the Chemical Bank job? You rented the house in Seaview? What a time we had then, hey?”

“Stupid.”

“It was worth it just to see Bobo Valentine dressed up as Wonder Woman.”

“It was all stupid.”

“Ach, man, don’t tell me you have regrets! Regrets aren’t for the likes of us.”

“What’s your name again? Sorry, between the chemo and the radiation …”

“You remember me-Magnus Maxwell. Old Max. The one and only.”

“Let me tell you, Max, you and me, we’re a dime a dozen. Not even a dime. A thief is nothing but a parasite.”

“But I only prey on parasites, your grace. That makes me a metasite, a net contributor to the economy.”

“Call it anything you want, pal. A thief’s a thief.” The Pontiff was taken by a series of feeble coughs. With the bruise-coloured circles under his eyes, the sunken cheeks and papery skin, he was a wisp of life, as if there would soon be nothing left of him but the tiny rasp of a voice, and when that was gone, nothing at all.

He took a drink of water-a slow process, even with Max’s assistance with glass and straw-then he continued.

“I took things that didn’t belong to me-out of greed and selfishness and laziness. Couldn’t be bothered to get a real job, do something positive in this world. I got more respect for the guy mops this floor. I got more respect for the guy fixes the toilet. Those people are adding something, and they don’t do it for big bucks and they don’t do it out of some cockamamie philosophy and they don’t think the entire world should pay them to do nothing.”

“You were a tower of strength,” Max said, “a leader of men.”

“An asshole leading assholes. It’s not like I was running a research team. My advice to you is get out while the getting’s good.”

Max decided to change tactics. “Sabrina’s hoping to visit soon.”

The Pontiff closed his eyes and shook his head. “Girl hates me.”

“Not possible, my liege. Nothing ill can dwell in such a temple. I told her I’d be visiting you and she said, ‘Tell him I’ll be there, soon as I can.’ Absolute monster of a boss, Luigi. Wouldn’t give her even two days off.”

“Sa-bri-na.” The Pontiff’s thin rasp separated the three syllables as if they were unrelated, as if they didn’t add up to a word, let alone a person.

“The very girl,” Max said. “I remember you requisitioning a bicycle for her first Communion.”

“Uh-huh. You see any family here?”

“Well, hmm, time and distance do sometimes beggar the sweetest intents.”

“No, my friend, no one’s coming. My family got sick of me a long time ago. All those years, I never cared what it meant to Paula, my line of work. She never knew if she’d be seeing me from one day to the next, one year to the next. Finally got sick of my lies and evasions. I don’t blame her. It just wore her down, and she offed herself. Sabrina’s never gonna forgive me for that. Why should she? So spare me your bullshit, old man.”

Max tried again. “Listen, Ponti. Why don’t you come on a road trip with me and my boy? We’re travelling cross-country in a luxurious vehicle.”

“I don’t want to die in a vehicle.”

“Your holiness, allow me the honour-”

“Your holiness. What is that?”

“Don’t you remember? You were known as the Pontiff, being named John-Paul-and also owing to a certain infallibility.”

“Obviously. Which is why I spent seventeen years in jail.”

It was amazing to Max that such a frail creature as the Pontiff had become could contain such quantities of negativity. Of course, the dreary little room with its plastic glasses and straws, its faint smell of urine, its lurid TV clamped to the ceiling, was not conducive to good cheer.

“Come for a ride with me,” Max said. “Get some fresh air! Make a world of difference.”

“Tell you the truth, pal, I don’t even remember you.”

Max bowed his head. “I grieve to hear it.”

“I don’t have a clue who you are.”

“Max Maxwell, ne Magnus.”

“I know who you say you are, but I just don’t know who you are. You think you’re a character, right? Think you’re colourful. But you’re just another blowhard got lots of personality and no fucking character. There’s no person inside that belly of yours. And one day the belly shrivels along with everything else and you end up a fucking zero. Less than a zero-a minus sign, a decimal point, empty fucking space. Get used to it, my friend.” The bony hand gestured again: the empty chair, the nightstand devoid of gifts and cards. “This is the way a thief dies.”

Max was uncharacteristically quiet as they drove through at least a hundred miles of the desert that is west Texas. The plains and cactus looked as if all moisture had been sucked out of them thousands of years ago. A pale yellow light cast the world in a sickly, overexposed glow.

But Owen was feeling great. He had to look back at Sabrina every five minutes or so just to make sure she was real. He could not believe he had slept with so beautiful a creature. And she for her part had developed a new smile, where just one corner of her mouth lifted, a smile of complicity. He wished Max hadn’t confiscated her cellphone. Even though she was sitting about two feet away, he would have sent her a text message saying, “Stay Forever,” followed by a million exclamation points.

Max was driving with fierce concentration. He spoke without taking his eyes from the road, as if addressing the hot asphalt and the desiccated landscape it traversed. “Young lady,” he began, “you have made no inquiry concerning your father.”

“No,” Sabrina said from the back seat, “and I’m not going to, either.”

“I shall tell you how he’s doing anyway.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Your father, I regret to say, is clearly mortal,” Max said. “Growing more mortal by the hour. The body is suffering, no question. But the spirit of the man! He’s driving the staff crazy with all the visitors. People bringing gifts, telling stories about the old days, wishing him well. Wanting to touch the hem, so to speak. I was moved, I don’t mind telling you.”

Owen feigned deep interest in a Blue Guide.

“And not a word of complaint about his illness,” Max went on. “Well, you could see it in the sweat on his brow, of course, and his eyes watering from the pain. Blamed it on allergies, the old master.” Sunlight glinted on the tears that now wet Max’s own cheeks.

“We saw this tiny Napoleon museum,” Sabrina said brightly.

“The man is on his deathbed. Can you not relent?”

No answer. They drove awhile in silence. Then Max said, “Why on earth is there a Napoleon museum in El Paso?”

“No one knows,” Owen said, “but they had a pair of his boots and a bunch of books that he owned. And we saw the cemetery where John Wesley Hardin was buried.”

“John Wesley? The religious founder?”

“The gunfighter,” Owen said. “One of the meanest ever. He shot one guy just for snoring.”

“No one could hold that against him,” Max said. “And what delights do you have in store for us today?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

The Guadalupe Mountains brought some relief to the monotony of the drive as they continued east through fields of prickly pear, cholla and agave. They stopped for lunch at a state park, where they saw mysterious pictographs. Whenever they stepped out of the Rocket, the ferocity of the sun seemed to suck the breath out of their lungs.

When the sign came up for the Carlsbad Caverns, Max was all for it until he saw the vast squat oval of the natural entrance. “No, no,” he said. “Impossible.”

“Come on, Max, they’re supposed to be spectacular. They’ll be all lit up inside.”

“I refuse to go underground until such time as mortality may require. You two go ahead. I shall meet you here in the Rocket exactly two hours hence.”

So Owen and Sabrina got to explore the caves in the company of sixty or seventy tourists. After the brutal sun of the parking lot, the cool of the caves was pure balm. Owen lent Sabrina one of his sweatshirts. The sleeves hung down past her wrists, giving her a waiflike look that didn’t suit her at all.

They walked through strange cathedrals and chapels of limestone. The immensity of the earth lay above them, but the soaring ceilings relieved any gloom. A couple of times he took her hand to help her up a slope, thrilled by the heat of her small fingers against his palm. He would have held her hand for the entire rest of the day, but Sabrina detached herself each time.

Stone glittered and gleamed in shapes of waterfalls and organ pipes. Clusters of stalactites tiny as straws pressed up against columns bigger than anything that had supported the Parthenon. They saw dazzling mineral deposits, carpets of gypsum dust, and the shimmer and bustle of microscopic cave life.

When they came out into the sun again, Sabrina said, “Thank you for taking me there, Owen. It’s something I’ll never forget.”

She pulled off the sweatshirt and handed it back to him. A photographer operating a small stand near the exit asked if they’d like a picture for two bucks, and Owen said sure. He took one of Sabrina and one of them together, and Owen bought both.

“I look silly,” Sabrina said, handing back the photo.

Owen shook his head. “You are so wrong.” As they crossed the parking lot, he said, “You know, I think being around you makes me dumb.”

“Dumb as in quiet or dumb as in dumb?”

“Both. I’m having trouble speaking. Am I just, like, the nerdiest guy you ever met? I can’t handle this.”

“Can’t handle what?”

“You. Being around you. You make me too happy. I keep feeling like there’s something urgent I have to tell you, but then I can’t speak.”

“Sounds like a nightmare.”

Owen shook his head. “Definitely not. Whatever the opposite of a nightmare is, that’s what I’m having.”

The Rocket was dark, the bedroom door closed.

“I better wake him up,” Owen said. “He tends to get confused if he naps too long.” He rapped on the bedroom door. “Max? Max, you really missed something. The caverns were awesome. Max?” Owen knocked louder before opening the door. The bed was empty. “Shit. He’s gone somewhere.”

“It’s awfully hot,” Sabrina said. “Maybe he decided to wait inside the shop.”

Owen pulled out his cell and dialed Max’s number. There was a dull humming sound. Sabrina checked the far side of the bed and found Max’s vibrating phone, holding it up for Owen to see.

Coming in for the landing, that’s the tricky part-or at least that’s how Max thinks of it. He is aloft somewhere (where exactly is another blank spot on his instrumentation), and he is flying blind, drifting blind really, because he has no sense of direction. He is a balloon, not a powered craft.

He might call himself a UDO if that term were available to him at the moment, an unidentified drifting object, because he is certainly drifting, having no clue as to his exact location, and definitely unidentified, having for some reason no mental access to certain personal records-for example, his name.

The (he assumed temporary) misplacement of his identity was not nearly so alarming as the monolithic unfamiliarity of his surroundings. It was not for lack of signs, landmarks, hints and indications. There was that greyish breast of a mountain in the distance, surrounded by less impressive folds of agricultural cellulite. It was the sort of geographical formation you looked at and said to yourself, Ah yes, there’s, I must be near (home, Mum’s place, the office).

And there was a black and white sign, a shield-shaped piece of tin fixed to a metal post that said East 180. It was full of meaning, Max knew. It was like looking at a bottle full of a rosy translucent liquid, condensation dripping down its elegantly curved sides. It was meant to be drunk, begging to be drunk, but what it might be, or be called, or taste like, he had no idea. How could he? He had never seen this sign before. But he had the feeling that it contained important information, information that someone would understand.

Family, said the picnic bench on which he was perched. Definitely a sense of family at this currently empty table. But unmoored Max had no idea at this moment if he could expect a family to claim him or even if he had a family. Vehicles, said the line of cars, trailers, SUVs parked just to his left between the picnic tables and the washrooms. Yes, he retained the fact that those were washrooms, his underwear still a little damp from his having recently peed in one of them. But as to vehicles, well, he had walked up and down that row of angled chariots several times now and not one of them looked familiar. His anxiety was further stoked by the undeniable observation that the vehicles were constantly pulling away, only to be replaced by other, no less unfamiliar, vehicles. The tool of logic was still apparently available to him, and he employed it now, caliper-like, on this observation: he must be connected either to one of the vehicles that had already departed or to one that had not yet arrived.

His mind perched on this pillar of reason for a few moments, but the perch was not nearly as secure as he wished, because the logic widget had a certain implacability about it and was now presenting to his awareness two other possibilities: 1) that he had no connection to any vehicle that had ever been anywhere near this place, wherever it was; and 2) that no such vehicle was ever going to arrive.

An unfamiliar thrumming set up in his chest, which he supposed was fear, and he was hoping it would go away. O, let me not be mad-where did that come from? He could see the letters, black Gothic script snaking across the pale fog of his mind.

Family, the bench said again. Did he have one, whoever he was? Had he lost track of them while he was in the washroom relieving, none too nicely, his bladder? Here came a family now. Father: khaki shorts past the knee, colourful shirttail out, and enormous running shoes; Mother: honey blonde, ponytail, midsize breasts under T-shirt emblazoned with obscure image; Child: girl, elevenish, body straight as an arrow, with the skinny legs disproportionately long, sipping from an enormous drink.

Max sat a little more erect on his perch. He tried for an expression that was alert, approachable, a face ready to be recognized. This could be them. This could be the family he belonged to. I would have to be the grandfather, he reasoned. He further arranged his face into bland benevolence, the way a deaf person hedges his expression into a smile that could be taken either as agreement with the statement he has just failed to hear or simple recognition, possibly even the anticipation of a disagreement.

The little girl handed off the large drink to Mommy and looked toward him. Max smiled at her, saying nothing; he was a last Christmas present under the tree, waiting to be opened. She should be yelling something like, Hey, Grampa, aren’t you getting into the car? We’ll leave you behi-ind! Then he would hop off this uncomfortable table and join them in their private conveyance.

Time formed a cocoon of sorts around him, seemingly disconnected from other people’s hours. Within this cocoon, an image visited him, fleeting and gossamer, tantalizing: a woman, roundish in proportion, friendly of face, holding a shirt as if caught in the action of ironing. She asked him a question. It was English, but he didn’t recognize the words. She finished with an interrogative lilt on a single syllable. His name. His mind reached out for it, a feather hammocking its way down to the earth. He snatched at it. Gone.

Wisps of identity threaded the air before him, ungraspable. Self-knowledge dancing on the tip of his mind. Come, let me clutch thee. Had someone said that to him? A frisky nun, perhaps? Was he perhaps a priest of some sort? No prayers came to mind; very little of anything was coming to mind.

Certain intelligences were reaching him from the periphery of his being. Sweat was beading on his brow, rolling down his ribs. It was hot sitting on this bench in the open sun. No one else was doing this, he noticed. The only tables that were occupied were in the shade.

But best not to move. Someone would come to claim him. Yes,would come. And she would be … female. His wife. The lack of a ring told him that he was likely not wived, but surely would come. A son-in-law? That would imply relationships that seemed as remote to his ken as yet-to-be-discovered moons.

Ah. Another family group approaching. Twelveish boy, fourteenish girl, short round dolphin-faced momma, and a choleric man muttering red-faced into a communications device. Arrange brows, lips. Bring cheek muscles to bear. I might be yours. I can be safely approached and even transported out of this hot, lonely sun.

Owen and Sabrina left the Rocket and headed back across the scorching parking lot. The gift shop was packed with tourists examining Carlsbad books, DVDs and geological samples. No sign of Max. They checked the washrooms, the video exhibit. Nothing.

They approached a gallery attendant seated on a stool just inside the door, an Asian girl in a uniform that was too big for her.

“Have you seen a big English guy wandering around on his own?” Owen asked her. He gave her a detailed description, right down to the shorts and the argyle socks.

“No, I’m sorry,” the girl said with a jarring Texas accent. “Y’all might ask in the shop, though. Maybe he might coulda gone there?”

“Thanks.”

A cashier in the shop remembered seeing Max, but it had been at least an hour ago.

“Here’s what we do,” Owen said to Sabrina, trying to keep calm, although his heartbeat was shifting from allegro into presto. “You go that way through the galleries and I’ll go the other way, and I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes. There’s no way we can miss him if he’s in there.”

“Ten minutes. Okay.”

Owen walked to the end of the gallery tour and went in through the exit. The attendant was chatting on a cellphone and didn’t notice him. Sabrina passed him on her way through in the other direction.

“Well, he’s not in the washrooms, he’s not in the gallery, he’s not in the shop,” Owen said when they met up again outside the shop.

“Maybe he changed his mind and decided to tour the caverns.”

“Max never changes his mind. If caverns are bad, they’re bad forever.”

“Well, where else could he be?”

They checked the Rocket once more, but Max was still not back. They went to the main pavilion and reported their problem. A couple of minutes later Max was paged over the PA and asked to report to the information desk.

“Sometimes he gets a little, uh, bewildered,” Owen said to the woman at the desk.

“You mean he might not know who he is?” She had hair that was way too blonde for her age.

“It’s possible. It hasn’t happened before, but it’s possible. If I give you a description of him, could it be given to all the rangers?”

“We can give it to them by radio, hon. But it won’t reach into the caves, just to the entrance and exit.”

Owen left his cell number with her in case Max should turn up.

When they were back outside, Sabrina said maybe they should call the police.

Owen laughed. “Are you kidding? He’d never forgive me. It’s possible he wandered off along the highway. I’m just gonna have to look for him.”

They detached the Taurus and left the Rocket in the lot. Owen made a left at the entrance and continued in their original direction. Air shimmered and seemed to liquefy above the asphalt.

“It’s so hot,” Sabrina said. “I hope he’s not walking along the shoulder.”

“You keep an eye on the right side, I’ll keep an eye on the left.”

They drove a few miles, taking it slowly, annoying the cars behind them. Owen stopped at a service centre with a McDonald’s, but no one remembered seeing Max there. A little farther and they came to a rest stop, just washrooms and a few picnic tables in the shade.

“There he is,” Sabrina said.

Max was seated at a picnic table, contemplating an apple in his hand as if it were a grenade. Owen called to him the instant he stepped out of the car, but Max didn’t even look.

“Max?” he said again as they got closer.

This time Max looked up, but the expression on his face was vague, uncertain, unMaxlike.

“Max, are you all right?”

Max looked from Owen to Sabrina, his brow a landscape of perplexity.

“It’s me, Owen.”

“Yes, yes. Well, of course I know that.” There was no conviction in his voice. “And the wife, obviously.”

“Max, what are you doing here? Why did you take off?”

“Bit tired, to tell you the truth. Needed to sit down.”

“You wandered away from the caverns, Max. We were scared to death. We didn’t know what happened to you. How did you get here?”

“I don’t know. We’re related, you and I?”

“Max, I’m your nephew. Your adopted son. I’m Owen.”

“Owen, yes. And your lovely wife.”

“We’re not married, Max-Sabrina is a friend. Let’s get back to the Rocket.”

“Rocket? No. You frighten me.”

“Not a real rocket, Max. The Winnebago. Come on, you better lie down for a while.”

Eventually they talked Max into the car and drove back to the caverns. Max gave no sign of recognizing the Rocket, but he was happy to lie down in the bedroom and close his eyes. He was asleep within seconds.

Owen was afraid to make any more stops after that. They drove for hours, not saying much. The highway unfurled across the Llano Estacado, an endless mesa dotted with tiny, unexpected lakes. Finally there was something green other than cacti-fields of cotton and alfalfa that stretched to the horizon. It was dark when the first oil pumps began to appear, and then they were in the land of stampedes and rodeos. Sabrina read out directions well in advance of the crucial turnoffs as they rolled along the vast expressways of Dallas-Fort Worth. With a minimum amount of confusion they found a suitable campground not too far out of town and parked the Rocket for the night.

Max was still fast asleep.