After the site was secured, Phillip rode the bus home, glared at his reflection in the opposite window, the fluorescent lights making him ashen, his negative-like image superimposed over the dated storefronts the bus rumbled past. He dozed, tried to ignore the lurch from potholes left after winter storms and the conversations crackling around him.


*


The dusk sun left the clouded and smoke-filled sky a flare of fire as Phillip walked across the parking lot of the Elden Motor Inn to the office. Inside the heavy glass door, he set down his tool bucket and drill bag, rang the bell like he’d done every week for the past few months.  

The motel owner-manager appeared in his typical collared rayon shirt rolled to his knotty elbows, a brightly patterned tie, and tight Wranglers stretched painfully over his large and well-sat ass. Boots fashioned out of ostrich skin creaked as he positioned himself behind the front desk. He often wore a white cowboy hat, but today he appeared with black hair bushed on top of his head.

‘You just missed the hura cabrón,’ he said. ‘Rolled out of here ten minutes ago.’

‘No shit,’ said Phillip. ‘Saw a couple cruisers from the bus on the way in. What was it? A little domestic violence, meth-heads exposing their freaky, fucked-up nature?’

‘None of that, ese. Just the locotes from 1A and 2D arguing and coming to a half-assed fistfight over going halfies on the last bachita and who hotboxed it. Pinche borrachos. You’d think they die of agua or straight oxygen.’

Phillip nodded. More of the same down-and-out, struggling-to-keep-one’s-head-above-water bullshit. Generally meaningless and harmless, though as consistent and disheartening as shirked overtime pay. He slid $270 over to the manager, who pressed his tree-trunk-like fingers on the crinkled bills until Phillip released them so he could pocket the money. Phillip never saw him use the register or any sort of record book. The couple of times he’d asked for a receipt, the manager had simply pulled a notepad from behind the counter; written the name of the motel, the date, Phillip’s name, the amount paid; and scrawled figures resembling a T and an M.

‘That chica of yours not being too hard on your pockets, hombre?’

‘No,’ said Phillip, ‘she’s too busy keeping her head in her books and exercising. What makes you say that?’

The manager shrugged, tongued at something between his teeth, and opened his mouth to say more. Phillip palmed the counter, waited for whatever might be said next.

‘Well, hombre, just before the hura got here, I found your niño playing around back, close to the basura. Nothing to stress about, I took him back to your pad. The puerta wasn’t locked and your chica was laid out cold, snoring on the bed. Don’t worry, ese, I didn’t see her tetas o coño. She was wearing una fantástica tracksuit.’

‘Fucking hell,’ said Phillip.

The evening reds had faded, the night air was warm but cooling. Many of the other tenants had their doors open, the noise of reality television mixed with the dying traffic on Route 66. Phillip’s tool bucket and drill bag banged against his numbed calves; his shoulders felt as if they’d been pulled from their sockets. The single window of his room glowed at the edges of the drawn curtains. His eyes itched, watered slightly from the ever-present smoke of the first series of controlled burns. It was still early in the fire season, but he and the rest of the mountain town hoped a substantial monsoon might dispel the previous decade of drought.

*

Before Phillip moved into the Elden Motor Inn, his lady, Benita, had been living in the dorms at the university, which was required of freshmen who didn’t already live in town. They’d been dating a year long-distance by then. He’d been working for a large commercial electric company that landed most of its contracts with a developer that built resort hotels in and around Phoenix. A large and temporary employee pool ensured he’d have work for no fewer than six months and also the knowledge that he’d be laid off once a certain phase of the work was completed. He never saw the resorts in their final glory, never got to finish or trim out the receptacles, switches, or lighting fixtures. He only bent and secured what felt like miles of half-inch-to-two-inch conduit, pulled circuit boats to and through junction boxes, and made up and readied the wires for the eventual installation of chandeliers, sconces, dedicated circuits, and smart-dimmers. His work was invisible, necessary to get right the first time with nothing left to troubleshoot once the main power was turned on. He would hump a slow Greyhound north every other weekend to play stowaway in Benita’s dorm room, flipping idly through her textbooks while she studied and he waited for sex or a meal. It felt perfect: fucking and eating, cuddling to movies in bed. They frequented house parties—five years older, he purchased and delivered the booze—where she drank skinny-something-or-others. The low calorie count allowed her to indulge in one or two, three, maybe, while Phillip sipped ginger ale and watched the throng of youthful exuberance waste away in a random student’s living room. Benita counted and calculated consistently: calories, miles, reps, fat percentages, heart rates, cholesterol levels, grade point averages. She was a health solutions major with a focus somewhere in nutrition; her ambition to become a role model who battled obesity and diabetes in Navajo communities by addressing the lack of education about healthy cooking and eating. She wanted to dispel the myth of fry bread, which was a significant health hazard, due to its high calorie content. Fry bread was a remnant of colonization and forced removal, the Long Walk. All of which Phillip understood, though at the end of his long workdays, he could give a shit about it.

When Phillip entered his one-room domicile, he found Benita snoring open-mouthed on the bed, hands clasped death-like over her stomach. He grabbed her leg and shook it, her body moved limply. This incensed him and he shook her violently until she woke.

‘You can’t stay awake another hour to keep an eye on the kid?’

‘What?’ she asked drawing out the vowel. ‘Don’t shake me like that. I’m not some wasted, passed-out adláanii.’

He let go of her leg, removed his hoodie and T-shirt, threw both toward the clothes piled beneath the sink outside the bathroom, and attempted to pull off one of his steel-toe work boots without completely unlacing it. Once free, it nearly hit him in the face and he shouted, ‘Fuck,’ threw it against the wall, and received a muffled yell and pounding in response. While he fussed with the other boot, Benita said she’d wanted to fit in a BodyPump class before picking up Jared from after-school daycare. This was a growing tension between them. Her overcommitting to Phillip’s needs and agreeing to get the kid no later than five so he wouldn’t risk losing overtime. There was no one he could afford to pay to watch the kid, no matter how much overtime he worked. And, anyway, who would want to babysit a nine-year-old with Down syndrome whose trust in strangers was lacking at best and who also took issue with anyone other than Phillip touching the back of his neck or ears?

‘Jared was asleep. I locked the door. I thought we’d both nap until you got back. He’s never wandered out alone before. It’s something to pay attention to now. It won’t happen again.’ 

Benita faced him, smoothed the plushy green warm-up top fitted over her curves. Fuck his anger, he thought, and hoped she would turn away from him so he could see her from behind, approach, and press his tired body to hers, caress the firmness of her abdomen.

‘Fucking shit. You know the manager found him playing in the trash around back? What if those cops from earlier found him? Deep shit. We’d be in deep shit. Hell, his mom already fucked him over. We don’t need to too. Even if it’s ... because one of us fucks up.’ 

She turned away, blamed her distraction on the stress of her final semester, the need to carve out time for self-care. 

Their argument waned, and Jared, hunkered quietly beneath the round two-chair table next to the window, called out, “Hello.” Strange how he became invisible, thought Phillip, despite his being what occupied his mind and energies most. Maybe that’s how he had escaped earlier. His presence demanded all of one’s faculties, yet he could vanish and still seem to be in all places.

‘Hey, little man, I’m sorry. We didn’t mean to yell so much. We’re both tired.’ 

The kid emerged from beneath the table and hugged Phillip, forcing the breath out of him. He wondered if the kid would ever become strong enough to crack his ribs.

‘I’m cool, man. I’m cool, man,’ Jared said.

Certain Jared hadn’t been in any real danger, and that the manager was a person he could count on, though he’d never make it a thing between them, Phillip reassured himself by squeezing Jared’s shoulder lightly, and headed toward the bathroom.

‘You need to pee or anything? Or is there some homework Benita can help you with?’ he asked over his shoulder.

‘I don’t need to pee. Benita already helped me with my homework. I need to make more bats now.’

While Jared got out scissors and the Bible, Benita sat quietly on the edge of the bed, facing the window. Rather than reengage the argument they were having, or were about to have, Phillip thanked her for helping Jared with his homework and asked if she could keep an eye on him. She acknowledged the request by looking toward Jared, who waved at her. She waved in response and turned the TV on.  

In the shower, Phillip imagined his life unfolding differently. Not quitting the high school club soccer team before a couple of college scouts had taken the time to watch a few matches. Had Phillip stayed, it was likely he would have been one of the guys selected to play with a full ride to one of the state universities or, at the very least, a community college. Had he stayed, he would have gone. From there would have proceeded a life he had never fully envisioned. Pro, semi-pro? Would he have finished his degree? Would he have had a major? Construction management or hotel and restaurant management? Something that required little academic effort but that would have had the potential to make him more money than electrical work. Would he have homed in on the young Benita giving him eyes, seemingly the bad boy, though in truth he was decent enough for her. Stable, mature, and in no way related by clan, a consistent roadblock for both and potential romantic relationships. Instead, he was living check to check, with his cousin’s abandoned retard and a girlfriend who would probably leave him once he got fatter, once she graduated and found her dream job. There he was, beholden to everyone else, with the soap and hot water rinsing off the grime of another fucking day and, maybe, more of himself.

Relieved to be clean, he slid open the shower curtain and found Benita leaning naked against the door, her clothes piled neatly in the corner. He hadn’t heard her enter, so deep had he been in his own head. Her brown body was toned, evidence of her increased physical strength; her black hair lay in strands across her small breasts, covering her darker areolae. He felt himself get hard.

‘You’re leaving him alone again,’ he said.

‘That’s what’s special about you. You never think of yourself first.’ 

She grabbed a towel, dabbed his body, and used it to dry clumps of his wet hair. She frowned, whispered that the kid was occupied with his bats; she would pay more attention to him later. He kept quiet, didn’t want the momentum to be lost, and guided her to the top of the toilet tank, lifted her leg, slowly pressed into her. He’d go to bed hungry, exhaustion and an apology his dinner.


*


He dreamed of volcanoes erupting suddenly, all at once. The town was the town he lived in but different, spread out, with houses overlooking cliffs that didn’t exist. Lava poured from the angry cones, fire ash fell from above, and cracks opened in the earth. Escape wasn’t likely. Standing on a strip of land, he watched the black sky descend. Heat from beneath and above consumed him. 

At 4:30 a.m., startled awake from the dream, Phillip staggered to the bathroom to piss, began to dress. Work pants from the day before, a fresh T-shirt, and a collared buttonup. Back in the single room, he kneeled over Jared, woke him by smoothing his hair. 

After the kid was showered and readied, he took Benita’s keys from her purse and drove him, half-awake, staring out the window, to his elementary school.

‘Hey, kid,’ he said poking him. ‘Before we get you to school, tell me what you’re going to tell the bats when we find them.’

‘I love them being my friends,’ he mumbled. ‘What will you tell them?’

Phillip wasn’t sure, but maybe something about how he appreciated the bats being Jared’s friends. He added that he thought it’d be a good idea if Jared brought along the bats he’d been making so that his paper bats and the bats supposedly in the caves at the mountain base might become friends. The kid told him, duh, that was why he’d been cutting them out. 

Benita was never awake when he returned her car in the mornings. Wouldn’t stir even if he bumped the furniture or creaked the door open and closed. Girl can sleep through anything, he thought. A quality he both admired and looked down on.

He retrieved his tool bucket and drill bag, walked the two hundred yards to the bus stop. Every day the same ride across town: sparse traffic; chemical-white billows hovering above the toilet paper plant south of the train tracks; an abandoned steel mill turned junkyard that advertised auto repair and estimates; the refurbished historic downtown, beyond his price range. 

At twenty past seven, he arrived at the jobsite, where Vick was waiting to tell him he was late.

‘I’m this late every day,’ said Phillip. ‘I don’t control the bus schedule. No one else arrives on time. I’ve got the kid to take care of, and there’s no use jerking off here before seven if the gate isn’t even open.’ 

Vick waved him off, muttered, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ even though none of the other trades ever arrived before eight, and if they did it was only to stroll around with doughnuts, then fuck off for the day. Phillip was the only electrician on-site. He was reliable, his lack of a vehicle the assurance he’d stay put, and still he’d never been given a key to unlock the gate in the mornings.

While Phillip unchained and positioned the ladders, Vick brushed the rat end of his ponytail against his lips and examined the conduit runs across the ceiling, traced each run to where it ended at the service panel or hung unfinished.

‘Might get close to completing the runs today,’ said Vick, ‘if you can hustle and don’t fuck up. How are you on materials?’

Phillip needed spools of ground and neutral wire to begin pulling circuit boats by the end of the day, and asked if he could get off early, hoping Vick wouldn’t put too much thought to it. Vick sucked the tip of his rattail, took more than a minute to respond. Wouldn’t be possible. Not with all the added dedicated circuits, subpanel, phone, co-ax, and ethernet for the reception area, break room, and bathrooms. The facility was going to be top-of-the-line, filled with as many distractions as possible. The patients would want to ignore the fact that they were in a dialysis center. There would even be TVs in the pisser. All overtime for the week and, Phillip suspected, through the weekend. He reminded Vick that he’d requested time off; Vick responded that it was out his hands. But with Phillip’s request in mind—which was bullshit—Vick had hired a helper. Older guy who claimed ten years’ residential wiring experience and countless skills in other trades.

‘Sure that’s all a load of shit,’ said Phillip.

‘That’s what I’m thinking. But he’s got no qualms working for ten an hour without overtime despite the experience he claims to have. Shit, if he were a Mexican, I could pay him five. Anyway, you’ll probably have to teach him to bend pipe, pull wire, and whatever else. You’re going to have your work cut out for you. And I don’t imagine he’ll be too keen on a young tonto telling him what to do.Guy’s name is Nolen or something.Told him to show up around nine. Give you time to set up and get going. I should have your materials here by then.’

Vick spit a loogie on the polished concrete floor, smeared it with the toe of his boot, and walked to his truck.

After he drove away, Phillip cursed him for being an inept and ignorant piece of shit who had managed to fuck him by hiring some old lackey, probably a drunk, who would only slow Phillip’s progress. Just another benign action from the managers, reminding Phillip that he was an unappreciated and unacknowledged electrician who made twelve to the ten dollars an hour his helper was going to be paid.

Around nine thirty Phillip smelled the sour stench of cigarette smoke and days-old body odor. He turned, looked down from the twelve-foot ladder at a man, probably six foot six, wearing clothes that hung off him like the tattered sails of a ghost ship, a frayed canvas duffel with black splotches slung across his back. Phillip couldn’t help thinking that some carcass had bled through the bag. The man clomped across the jobsite in large desert boots, reached into what remained of a shirt pocket for a pack of cheap cigarettes, lit one using the one he’d smoked to the filter, and flicked it behind him aimlessly.

Phillip descended the ladder, uncertain if this was the guy Vick had hired or a random homeless.

‘Can I help you with something?’ he asked.

‘That’s what I’m here for,’ said the man. ‘To help you.’

‘All right. Vick said your name was Nolen. I’m Phillip.’

The derelict man shook his head, his eyes a glacial blue.

‘It’s No-Lee,’ he said.

Phillip listened to the man’s explanation: people always asked if he had any leads on any jobs and he’d tell them no, no leads. So the name No-Lee stuck. The two stared at each other until Phillip told No-Lee that he would start him on running conduit. They’d work together until No-Lee got the hang of it. It’d be easy since they were only using half-inch, a little three-quarter.

They worked atop ladders eight feet apart, the length of a single stick of conduit. At the butting end, No-Lee tightened the coupling with channel locks and secured the conduit to the base of a wooden truss with a half-inch strap, eight inches from the coupling. Phillip held the opposite end, measured off the wall to ensure a straight run, and strapped the conduit loosely. They moved across the trusswork in leapfrog fashion until they reached a point in the run that required a ninety-degree bend toward the service panel. Phillip explained the fundamentals of conduit bending: from the point of measurement mark back five inches, toward the dumb-end of the tape—six inches if using three-quarter—make sure the footpad of the conduit bender faces the foot; make sure the bend is a perfect ninety by applying equal pressure on the footpad and handle, and use a level to be precise.

No-Lee repeated the instructions, and the conduit installation continued smoothly, faster than Phillip had expected. By two in the afternoon, he estimated they’d accomplished a little more than the day’s anticipated tasks. Two more days of working like this past sundown, and Saturday would be secured.

‘I’m going to hit up the gas station on the corner for a quick lunch,’ said Phillip. ‘Need anything?’

No-Lee limped to where the breeze was strongest and sat, lighting up a cigarette, his eyes closed as if prepared to gather substance from the tobacco smoke and wind. He hacked to clear his throat and swallowed.

‘Pack of their cheapest unfiltereds. Bottle of honey and cayenne powder or hot sauce if they got it,’ he said, shoving his hand into his pants pockets and removing a bill that looked like rotten spinach.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Phillip. ‘Get me back on Friday when we’ll get fresh bills.’

No-Lee returned the money to his pocket, shrugged, and said, ‘Your loss.’

Phillip returned with a microwave burrito, a dollar bag of chips, and a gallon of water for himself. He placed a bear-shaped bottle of honey, a small bottle of Tabasco, and a nondescript pack of cigarettes next to No-Lee, who appeared to be napping, then opened one eye.

‘You eat that shit every day?’ he asked.

‘It’s cheap,’ said Phillip. ‘I don’t have time to make lunch. I’ve got the kid I take care of. Eats up most of my time.’

‘You got a kid?’

‘Not mine. My cousin’s. I raise him here so he can go to a decent school, have more opportunity or whatever.’

‘Mother drank herself to death, huh?’

Phillip crumpled his burrito wrapper, threw it, and it was suspended for a second, then was blown backward.

He was used to this passive-aggressive, often plainly aggressive, shit-talk from White, conservative coworkers and bosses. Back in Phoenix, the ignorance strong, and everywhere, as much as there was heat and blowing dust. Proud right-wingers who boasted about the guns kept locked in their glove boxes, some with handguns strapped to their hips, talking God and country, rights, and who deserved to live and who to die. Sad harbingers of death that Phillip could only do his best to ignore, though he was often confronted by them because he was brown, often mistaken for a Mexican, and always given a pass because he wasn’t them, but neither was he an us.

‘No one in my family drinks,’ he said. ‘The kid’s mom fucked off to Portland with a bunch of vortex, vision- questing dykes.’

No-Lee drew long, the cigarette ember flexed; dragon smoke poured from his nostrils.

‘Bitch can’t appreciate her own dying culture. Funny. All that pride you redskins powwow about, and most of you fall for new age bullshit. You sell out your faith, then build fucking casinos.’

Phillip ate his last chip, dropped the bag, and told his helper to sit and smoke for the rest of the lunch hour while he got back to it. No-Lee responded, ‘I work when you work, and I was told to clean up.’ He stood, examined the jobsite, which was without clutter except for some unusable scraps of conduit and the trash Phillip had tossed. No-Lee picked up the burrito wrapper and chip bag, stuffed them into his pocket, and organized the material without comment. The exhalation of smoke and the gurgled hack of clearing his throat were his only noises.

Phillip called the day sometime after seven, watched No-Lee walk east beneath the streetlights until he became a burned match in the distance. He made note of the next day’s work—pull boats, pull lighting circuits, low volt, land the panel—grabbed his gear, and trudged to the bus stop.


*


He arrived back to his place late. It sat dark, lifeless, between the noisy brightness of the rooms on either side. The curious tunnel of it drew him in. Benita had left a folded note on the table. The explanation was simple: she needed to finish out her final semester in the dorms and concentrate and had left Jared with the manager. Anger shook Phillip’s throat and he punched two holes in the wall: one for being abandoned, the other for having to bear the burden of an abandoned child. He smashed one of the two chairs against the matted carpet until no right angles remained, and cursed and hit himself over the head before hurrying to clean up the splintered pieces.

On his way to the manager’s office, he gathered himself by tapping his chest, imagining himself and the kid excited, standing, out of breath, before the mouth of a cave. They’d enter a cool, damp darkness, shine lights on walls that held something he couldn’t think of. In the office, Jared and the manager watched a cartoon show Phillip didn’t recognize, their laughter settling the tension in his shoulders. He watched for a few minutes before announcing himself. It wasn’t a big thing for the manager, since Jared hadn’t ever been a problem, but it also couldn’t keep happening. Phillip needed to figure it out. Back in the room, he and Jared continued watching the cartoon until both dozed and slept, their shadows playing oddly on the wall behind them.


*


The morning bus that took Phillip and the kid to a stop a quarter-mile walk from school was empty. At the school, they waited until the doors opened for students who needed an early drop-off. The kid told Phillip that Benita would come back, that she’d cried before taking him to the manager’s office. The kid was probably right, Phillip told him. They’d have a boys’ weekend. Afterward everything would be the same.

At the jobsite, No-Lee sat against the locked gate smoking, his empty, dirty duffel crumpled on his lap. It was close to eight, with no sign of Vick. Phillip made the decision to dismantle the tension bands, the chain-link fence fell slack, and the two crouched and went through. Let Vick fix the goddamned thing, they needed to get to work.

When they stopped for lunch, No-Lee asked for honey and hot sauce again.

‘What do you need those two things for?’ asked Phillip.

‘Mix them together to create a perimeter when I bivouac or shelter in a cave. Keeps the bugs off me, especially the goddamned ants.’

‘So you’re not staying anywhere,’ said Phillip.

‘I just said I bivouac or shelter in caves. You’re a trog. You should know about shelter and caves. Or has that been lost to you too?’

Vick arrived well after lunch and shouted at Phillip for fucking up the fence, went on about added cost and time. But the fence wasn’t damaged, Phillip said, only taken apart, and if Vick actually knew anything, he could reassemble it. In response, Vick threatened to fire Phillip, who packed up his tools and walked furiously out of the gate, where he was stopped, told to calm down, and asked what was needed to fix the fencing. Phillip told Vick that No-Lee knew. So the two of them reassembled the tension bands, spoke quietly, and looked and nodded toward Phillip, who hung the wire spools and began pulling circuit boats to the junction boxes like a man possessed. Something he did alone easily, hoping that Vick took his time before fucking off again.

Before the day’s light began to fade, Phillip told No-Lee he needed to leave to pick up and then return with the kid.

‘You work late Fridays?’ No-Lee asked.

‘Twelve to fourteen is average. I don’t care if we work all night. We’re getting this shit done.’

‘Whatever you say,’ said No-Lee. ‘I’ve got my money. See you later.’

It took an hour to get the kid. What daylight remained cast long shadows. The gate was locked. Beyond the cold links, Phillip saw that the ladders had been left standing. He told the kid to wait and jumped the fence. Inside, the material lay scattered, ransacked for any pieces of value. His tool bucket was gone, along with a couple of spools of solid ground wire. An old, stained dollar bill was attached to one of the exposed metal studs with a drywall screw. Written in black marker, almost clownishly, along the galvanized steel stud was the word Tanks.

Phillip’s head spun. A hollowness opened in his chest, dropping him to his knees. He screamed into his shirt. No-Lee had certainly waited for a moment like this, Phillip’s stressed modicum of trust, so he could leave him fucked. No regard for his livelihood, his need to care for himself and the kid. He dialed Vick, got voice mail right away. Piece of shit had already disappeared into the weekend, obviously hadn’t even returned to check on the jobsite.

He stood, pixelated among the shadows, and threw his phone against the polished concrete, its shattered pieces skipping outward. He turned and jumped the fence again.

‘To hell with all this,’ he said. ‘I’m fucked.’

The kid pulled at Phillip’s dry and hardened hand. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay. We can be okay. There’s a phone in the room and the bats are there. We can be okay.’

Phillip squeezed his temples with one hand, and with the other he returned the kid’s grip. They walked to the corner gas station for a couple of dinner burritos and provisions for their cave trek.


*        *        *


Phillip stirred, woke to see Jared dressed, his pile of cutout bats ready on the table. The kid didn’t mess around. He sat in the unbroken chair gazing out the window at thunderheads separated by cuts of sunlight that made dew of the predawn sprinkle. It was well past their planned departure time. The kid slid off his chair, opened the door: the crisp, cool scent of vanilla from the ponderosas and the dusty mold of the morning’s moisture engulfed the room.

‘Guess I better get my lazy ass in gear, huh? Let me shower and we’ll get the hell out of here,’ he said, rubbing his puffy face.

The kid nodded, shut the door, and began to gather the bottles of water, granola bars, and two Snickers that Phillip had bought the day before. He took the flashlight from the nightstand drawer, located both his and Phillip’s bus passes.

The trailhead lay northwest of them. The nearest bus stop was next to a grocery store, where Phillip lifted two oranges from an outside display of produce. He told the kid they needed to survive, and they started their trek. Beneath the shade of large ponderosas, they paused to eat the oranges. Phillip asked the kid if he was hanging in there okay, there was a mile and a half left to go. The kid said he was fine; they’d go on, they’d survive. The two pushed forward and the day warmed up, a little humid from the morning’s rain. Phillip felt the hardened shell of his heel crack, the tender flesh beneath sticking to his sock, and slowed his pace. The kid noticed, told Phillip there was no need to rush, the bats would be there. They stopped once more where the tree line broke into a clear-cut for a natural gas pipeline and service road. Logs were piled into long triangles about twenty feet from the treed edge, the brush cleared for the fire crews who would complete the controlled burns. Across the road the trail ascended into tree shade.

The mountain base was a jumble of volcanic boulders and hardened lava flows where climbers might easily traverse the rock face. Lichen and an assortment of small trees, ferns, and cacti covered the unreachable parts, higher on the rocky ledges. The cover of tall ponderosa pines made the day appear later than it was. Phillip and the kid walked along the base until they came upon a faint path that led off the trail and into a cluster of ferns. 

‘Looks like a deer trail, maybe some other animal,’ said Phillip. ‘There are too many dead pine needles to be sure.’

Beyond the green fanlike leaves, a patch of hard-packed earth and seat-sized rocks lay below a small, man-size entrance into the boulders. Phillip suggested they eat more before entering. The kid ate quickly, reached into his pocket for his pile of bats, peeled one off, and handed it to Phillip, asked him to read its body.

‘It just looks like notes from the bottom of the pages,’ said Phillip. ‘This bat must be a nerd. Hand me a different one.’

The kid laughed, set the bat in what he deemed the nerd pile, and peeled another off.

‘Let’s see, it says, “11 Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? 12 And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. 13 Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.” Damn, kid, these Bible bats are fucking intense. Let’s see one more.’

The kid peeled off bat after bat while Phillip read their bodies. He admired Jared’s meticulous handiwork as the small pile grew.

Some dexterity was required to enter the cave’s mouth, though it wasn’t a tight squeeze. Cool air caressed Phillip’s face with the faint scent of honey and chili; a heavy waft of rancid urine, body odor, and alcohol followed. Water trickled in the darkness. Once inside and on flat ground, Phillip flicked on the flashlight the kid had packed and shone it toward the sound of the trickling. A wavering figure, more beast than man, pissed against the far wall.

‘You gonna come suck this thing or fuck off with that light?’ A voice broken by smoke and drink emanated from a grotesque swell of skin that was a face, a bloodshot rage in its eyes.

Phillip panicked, more for the kid’s safety than his own, and hurried to push Jared back before he fully entered, but the kid tumbled off the rocks and onto the cave floor. He yelped painfully, and lay holding his ankle in the faint light of the entrance. Phillip knelt to urge the kid up, didn’t see the spool of neutral wire come flying through the darkness. The hard weight struck his temple and he swirled into the void of his volcano dreams: pools and rivers of lava, the burning of his face and body, the burning of Jared’s and Benita’s bodies, screaming and laughter from someplace far.

‘I was hoping you were some bitch,’ echoed the voice. ‘Ain’t easy for a guy like me to get any gash out here.’

Phillip stood unsteadily, felt blood beating out of his head, and fell back on his ass. He’d fucked up, he knew, in the whirlwind of the week’s events. He recognized the grated voice, the degenerate man who owned it.

He couldn’t see No-Lee or the kid, but he heard Jared’s frightened sobs, the twist of a plastic cap against glass. He listened as No-Lee swallowed hard twice, twisted the cap back on. Heard the whoosh of some- thing tumbling through the musty cave air and shattering near the kid’s whimpering. No-Lee laughed, gagged from the effort. Phillip rose and rushed into the black toward the sound; arms bent to ninety at the elbow, hands curled to grasp what he could of No-Lee. When his hands met the man’s chest, he gripped and drove his shirt collar into his neck. The two grappled, staggered in the darkness, until No-Lee began to vomit and threw his body into Phillip’s, and they fell hard against the wall and ground. An object was knocked over and others crashed out of it. From what Phillip could feel with his hands and body, No-Lee was on his side, back against Phillip’s knees. He skimmed his right hand across the dirt, found what felt like a screwdriver. His left hand found the hair on the back of No-Lee’s head, gripped it tight. He rolled himself over until he felt he was on top of No-Lee’s back. He brought the screwdriver down onto No-Lee’s head quickly, with force. The body beneath him bucked. Phillip struck his own left hand deeply on his second stabbing attempt, and his grip on No-Lee’s hair went slack. So he hugged No-Lee’s head, shook it like he had Jared’s head when he was a small child and would ask to be picked up by Phillip, to be swung back and forth so his legs looked like a pendulum. No-Lee’s neck cracked; his body went limp. Phillip collapsed, took his gashed hand in his shirt, and tried to focus on the dimming light at the cave entrance.

*        *        *

Phillip had never carried a gun before working in Phoenix. He’d only plinked cans off dirt mounds with small-caliber rifles out on the rez with his cousins. The day he decided to carry, a short Guatemalan man was hired to remove the stucco and chicken wire siding for an addition. Racial slurs and death threats were being slung at the man because he hadn’t completed the task before Phillip and his boss showed up to remove the electrical wiring and outlets so the framing could be redone. He remembered the man’s fearful expression and watery eyes, the erratic swing of his sledgehammer and his pleas in Spanish. The other contractors stood by in a semicircle, showed one another their pistols and crossed the man with the short barrel ends. Carrying a piece would be a temporary thing for Phillip. He decided to sell the handgun to a cousin for a couple hundred less than what he had paid for it after he became the target, the contractors and other tradesmen directing their attacks at him. He was viewed as no different from the hated Central and South American migrant workers, his skin as brown as theirs. Outgunned, with no recourse to the Phoenix police, because they would certainly shoot him down, Phillip felt his anger and humiliation fester. He judged, began to hate anyone paler than he was. He often dreamed of shooting the racists, the far-right- wingers, torching whatever ignorant, upper-class project they were working on, and letting everyone and everything burn to ash.

The kid wasn’t crying anymore when he shook Phillip awake, shone the flashlight in his eyes.

‘Are you cool? Are you cool?’ he repeated, until Phillip told him he was.

‘I want to go home,’ he said. ‘We need to go home.’

Phillip sat up and held the kid, told him, ‘Okay.’

Outside, a breeze rustled the pine needles, and a faraway dog barked once. Phillip felt nauseated and weak, the sensation of the air on his skin made him aware of the heat flaring within him. He was lost, without purpose, and wanted a solution, needed one to be given to him. He thought of the body in the cave, his tools. He told the kid to wait and gathered his livelihood scattered around the cave, leaving the tainted screwdriver plunged into No-Lee’s cheek. Outside, he smoothed Jared’s hair, told him to keep watch over the tool bucket and drill bag with his bats. The kid nodded, took the bats from his pocket, and held them. Phillip headed toward the pipeline road, some sixty feet through the ponderosas, to a burn pile. Something needed to be done about No-Lee’s hateful body, it’d be found sooner or later. Phillip estimated half an hour to forty-five minutes, if he hustled and didn’t fuck up, in order to remove enough logs to cover No-Lee’s body back in the cave before the forest gave way to complete darkness. He would burn the motherfucker. Char any evidence of his or the kid’s ever being there. After, he and the kid would walk beneath the night, find a pay phone, if pay phones still existed, and call Benita, beg a ride back to the motel. She’d give in; she would, for him or the kid, it didn’t matter.

When Phillip had finished building a pyre of logs over the reeking body, he stuffed the gaps with dried pine needles and twigs. Jared climbed into the cave quietly and sat next to where Phillip knelt, peeled off one of his Bible bats, and placed it in a space between the logs.

‘We’ll leave them. The bats will protect us,’ said the kid.

Phillip hiccupped and fought back tears. He smoothed Jared’s coarse hair and helped place the bats in cracks along the perimeter of the stacked logs. He ignited the kindling on the far side of the pyre while the kid watched. It took flame, illuminating the already-blackened walls of the cave, and the two noticed how the smoke wafted up through a natural chimney in the rock. As the paper bats burned, their curled bodies drifted upward until the ash and char of them filled the interior. When the whole pyre began to burn and the smoke was too much, they left, retrieved Phillip’s tools. On the far side of the service road, they turned around, saw nothing of fire or smoke in the darkness.

Phillip’s tongue fat and coarse in his mouth, he asked the kid if he was thirsty. He was. But both were without water.