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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Deck insisted on driving and wouldn’t even tell me exactly where to find Tristan until we reached Emblem. He knew I would have tried to convince him to let me go alone and he didn’t want to hear it. Deck was determined to stick by my side in case trouble came up and while I appreciated his intentions I didn’t want him to feel obligated. After all, I wasn’t going down there to look for trouble. I just wanted my brother back.

We were on the long stretch of the dark desert road that led to Emblem. I could probably drive it blindfolded and Deck likely felt the same way. The lights of the prison were visible before the lights of the town appeared. I could make out the fences and the guard towers and wondered how many inmates slept within its ugly walls tonight. If events had gone just a little bit differently in my life I could easily have been one of them.

Deck wasn’t heading for the center of town. He turned down a rural road that snaked just north of the Main Street strip. From what I recalled, there wasn’t much in that direction except for some scattered and dilapidated houses, plus the shell of an old warehouse that had once been used to store hay but had been empty since the mid nineties. I figured Deck knew where he was going though.

He turned onto a narrow dirt road about a quarter mile from the hulking shape of the warehouse and cut the engine.

“It’s better if we walk up,” he said.

I pointed to the warehouse. It looked impossibly dark. “There?”

“No.” He gestured to some scattered lights in the distance.

“I don’t recall a trailer park being out this way.”

“There’s not. Just some old prefab homes that were recently deposited in the same area.”

I stared at the lights and tried to imagine Tristan somewhere in their midst. I couldn’t. This was not the place for him, this bleak desert outpost of criminals.

“You keep your cool,” Deck warned me. “Even if this doesn’t go the way you want it to.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, thinking of Brecken back home waiting for me, depending on me. “I’m not here to pick a fight.”

We started walking toward the lights in silence. I wondered if Deck was carrying a gun underneath that leather jacket. He may be a tame family man now, but he was still Deck Gentry. Once I’d heard my dad say that having Deck Gentry as a friend meant there was nothing he wouldn’t do for you. But anyone foolish enough to turn him into an enemy ought to run like hell. I wondered what my dad would think if he knew that someday I’d have his old friend beside me in this pitch black desert as we searched for Tristan.

Deck seemed to read my mind. “You know, I was visiting your old man the night he found out he was going to be a father. He was over the moon. Your mom too. She came running out of the bathroom waving the pregnancy test around and they were both ecstatic. They already had your name picked out, after the Curtis brothers in The Outsiders. He said his dream was to have three sons and he always called you boys his greatest accomplishment. He was so proud to be your father.”

I lowered my head and didn’t answer because I doubted my father would have been proud of me if he’d lived to see how I joined a gang and dropped out of high school.

“He would be proud of you now, Curtis,” Deck said, indicating once more that he just might possess extrasensory powers. “And I know you are rightly furious with your mother, but wherever she is she’s got to be proud of you too, for taking the reins of the family when she failed.”

I swallowed. The topic of my mother was still a bitter one. But I kind of wanted to hear Deck’s input so I asked the question that haunted me every day. “Do you think she’ll ever come back?”

“She’ll come back,” he said with certainty. “And then it will be up to you boys to decide whether you want to forgive her.”

He might be right. My mother was never the resourceful type and she wouldn’t last on the run forever. Plus even though she’d never said a thing in all those silent phone calls I knew the guilt was crippling. It had to be.

“What the fuck do you want?” A low voice emerged from somewhere in the darkness. There was a familiar click, the sound of a gun being cocked. I tensed, ready to charge or bolt or do whatever was required but Deck took the situation in stride.

“It’s Deck Gentry,” he called in a friendly voice. “Who’s that out there?”

“Gentry?” The voice was infinitely less hostile now and I pictured the gun being lowered. “What the hell are you doing skulking around out there, huntin’ rattlers?”

“Come closer and we can talk about it.”

Footsteps crunched in our direction and then we were bathed in the weak glow of a cell phone flashlight app.

“Hey man.” The guy greeted Deck with a fist bump. “Been a long time.” He turned to me. “Who the fuck is he?”

“Curtis Mulligan,” I said, now able to see enough of the guy to recognize him. His name was Ray Pritchett. “You know me.”

In fact I used to sell him stolen merchandise when I was about Tristan’s age. He was an asshole, once sliced the lower ear off a guy who worked for him when he thought he’d been cheated. When it turned out that he hadn’t been cheated and in fact he just couldn’t count correctly, he shrugged and had a hearing aid delivered to the poor bastard as a joke.

“Yeah, I know you,” Pritchett said and he sounded wary. “Thought you weren’t around these parts no more.”

I didn’t see any reason to beat around the bush. “I’m down here looking for my brother. Tristan Mulligan. There’s a rumor he’s been seen around here. He’s underage,” I added, as if this guy would give a fuck.

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