Chapter Eight

Pete was back home by the time he had the courage to respond to Seth’s text. He shouldn’t have even responded to his email. What was he thinking?

He was thinking about the way Seth’s chest muscles bulged beneath his shirt, and the heat of his breath on Pete’s neck.

Are you serious?????? Pete typed.

Before he could even walk away from his phone, it buzzed again.

Come pick me up at Hell’s Gate, Seth had texted. As Pete was reading, his phone buzzed again. I wanna show u the formation from last class.

Pete frowned. He knew he didn’t have much of a poker face. Seth had to know exactly how badly Pete was tempted to indulge him one more time.

I can’t stay late, Pete texted back. I have an 8 AM class.

Again, his phone buzzed before he could set it down. Ok :)

Pete sighed and shook his head. See you in 45, he wrote as he walked to the shower.

***

Seth was outside the tattoo parlor standing relatively upright when Pete rolled up at the curb. He nodded to Pete as he pulled up and opened his door with a quiet nod.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Nothing.” Pete got out of the car as Seth got himself into the passenger’s seat. He gingerly put Seth’s walker in back, trying to ignore the feeling that he was being watched as he walked back around the front.

This was stupid. This shithole town was not big enough for him to be doing stupid things like this.

“Hey, you like burgers?” Seth said.

“Now and then,” Pete said.

“There’s a little drive-in place in Lizard Springs.” Seth pointed toward the hills. “I’ll buy. I’m starving.”

“Sure,” Pete said. “Get on the highway?”

“You got it,” Seth said. “The rocks are on the way there.”

Lizard Springs was a little tourist trap about an hour into the mountains. Pete had been there a few times, to go rafting or do job interviews or just kill a dead afternoon.

It was a nice drive, once you got out of Canyon Bluffs. The hills got steep fast along the highway, and pretty soon you were in the canyon that gave the town its name. The sun was getting low over the mountains, and there was a chill on the evening.

“How’s work been treating you?” Seth said.

“Pretty well,” Pete said. “I guess since I’m taking you on a date, I may as well tell you that my morning section is full of even worse little shits than your section.”

Seth laughed. “Man, some of these kids are little assholes. I don’t know what they think they’re gonna get out of college.”

“I think some of them are just going so they have an excuse to hang around their parents’ houses for a couple years,” Pete said. “I wish they’d just be quiet if they can’t pay attention.”

“They oughta spend a couple years actually on their own before they let ‘em back in,” Seth said. “None of these kids actually need a degree. Except maybe that Mary girl.”

“Yeah, the, uh…”

“The other one walking like she’s in a nursing home?” Seth laughed. “I scare the shit out of that kid.”

“You scare the shit out of all those kids,” Pete said. “Have you noticed they’ve gotten quieter since you got out of the wheelchair?”

“I guess not,” Seth said. “I guess the scenery up front of the room must be too good.”

Pete rolled his eyes. “Sure,” he said. “You’re doing way too well on your quizzes for me to buy that one.”

“All part of my evil scheme, Professor,” Seth said.

***

As you left Canyon Bluffs, you went up a steep set of switchbacks cut into a hill of red sandstone. Pete liked the view as he climbed. It kind of felt like he was flying away from that grubby little city, ascending to better places and better things.

“Where are you from, by the way?” Seth said.

“Ohio,” Pete said. “I guess my hometown’s not that different from this one.”

“Shitty and made of strip malls?” Seth said.

Pete laughed. “I mean, I don’t want to harp on Canyon Bluffs…”

“Oh, I hate this place,” Seth said. “Have you ever hung around someplace so long, it starts feeling like everything you look at is just dirty? Like, you can wipe it off or scrub it, but it never looks clean?”

Pete shrugged. “Not really,” he said. “But that is kind of how Canyon Bluffs feels in the summer.”

“Like you can go past a car dealership and all the cars are brand new, but, you know…”

“Yeah, like your brain knows they’re absolutely new, but you just feel like they’ve been sitting there since the 50s,” Pete said. “You know, I think that’s just a Southwest thing.”

Seth was leaning back in his seat, brows furrowed. “Yeah?” He nodded. “I mean, I guess New Mexico is that way, for sure.”

“New Mexico totally has that vibe,” Pete said. “I was stationed there for two years right after college, and I never want to go back there again.”

“Was that where you saw the UFO?” Seth said.

“No, that was in California,” Pete said. “New Mexico, though…” He shook his head.

“No, I know what you mean, dude,” Seth said. “I was on this job for my dad, taking care of some business.”

“Uh-huh.” Pete swallowed, wondering what “business” meant here.

“We hit this stretch of road on our way back, and we had stopped for some bullshit reason, I forget exactly what it was.” Seth shook his head. “Tire trouble, I think. This was about twelve years ago.”

“Yeah,” Pete said.

“And we keep hearing voices around where we’re stopped. Thought there were kids partying in the arroyo or whatever, didn’t think too much about it, but we didn’t stay stopped for too long.”

“Sounds fair,” Pete said. See, they were already to the point in this story where Pete would have shit his pants and physically run back to where he’d come from.

“So, we ride on, the tire or whatever-the-hell is causing problems again. We pull off the road, and we get back to seeing what’s really wrong with it. We start hearing this chatter again, like there’s people just on the other side of the highway.” Seth’s face darkened. “The first time this had happened, we were in these breaks, and it looked like maybe the kind of place where kids hung out to smoke dope, or drifters might be hanging out there.”

“Oh my God,” Pete said. “Stop. We’re driving into the middle of nowhere.”

Seth cackled. “I thought you were all into science,” he said.

“Yeah, I mean, that’s still fucking freaky,” Pete said. “Even if there is an explanation.”

“We all agreed it must have been coyotes or something,” Seth said. “Or we’d just all been on the road too long, or we’d taken some bad pills the night before when we were partying.”

Pete shuddered. “The perfect story for driving to a rock formation in the middle of nowhere.”

“What? You don’t like ghost stories?” Seth said.

“You’d better not start telling me ghost stories!” Pete held up a warning finger.

The wicked grin stayed on Seth’s face. “So you know the one about the River Lady, right?”

“Oh my God, you’re awful,” Pete said.

“Well, I’m not gonna tell it if you don’t want to…”

“No, you started telling the story and now I have to hear it!” Pete laughed.

“So, you see this river we’re gonna come up alongside?” Seth pointed to the bottom of the hill they were coming down, where they went over a bridge and along a river as the mountains rose high on either side.

“Obviously,” Pete said.

“You know how there were a bunch of mines and stuff up here back in the day?” Seth said.

“I’m quizzing all of you little punks on them in three weeks,” Pete said, “so I hope I know.”

“Well, the story goes, if you go up to one of the mines after dark, on the way back, there’ll be a girl on the road asking for a ride,” Seth said.

“Is she by any chance secretly a demon goat skull who’s simultaneously rotting and on fire?” Pete raised an eyebrow.

Seth made an indignant noise of surprise. “You told me you hadn’t heard about…”

“That’s La Segua,” Pete said. “It’s an old Central American version of a drunk driving PSA.”

“What?” Seth tilted his head.

“Yeah, it’s like the Chupacabra or a Sasquatch or...or Mothman!” Pete grinned. “There’s a young girl who stands on the road, and she asks for a ride, and she gets in the back of your car or on the back of your horse, and she grabs you, and you turn around and she’s some horrible demon with an animal skull, or a flaming skull, or a rotting flaming animal skull.”

“No shit?” Seth said. “I have a cousin who swears he’s seen her.”

Pete shrugged. “I’m not saying it’s fake,” he said. “I mean, I’m not big on ghosts, but…”

“I mean it’s pretty cool either way,” Seth said. “I always kind of wanted to live somewhere with like, a bigfoot kind of deal.”

“Yeah?” Pete said. “You think they’re out there?”

“Maybe,” Seth said. “I dunno. I always thought it was kind of boring that Canyon Bluffs never had any freaky legends around it.”

“River Lady’s pretty freaky,” Pete said.

“You know what I’m saying, though.” Seth gestured in front of him. “Roswell’s got the aliens, the Great Lakes have the Sasquatch, Scotland has Nessie…”

“West Virginia has Mothman,” Pete said.

“I mean, I guess Canyon Bluffs has the Double Eagles,” Seth said. “Kinda different when, you know.”

“Yeah,” Pete nodded. “I mean...it’s not really a legend for...for you.”

“I dunno,” Seth said. “Our family has its share of tall-ass tales they can tell when they think you don’t know any better.”

“Oh yeah?” Pete kept his eyes on the road. “Not just the cousin who saw River Lady?”

“I’ve got uncles who swear to God they escaped KGB assassination plots and stuff,” Seth said. “Maybe if KGB stands for Karl your Girlfriend’s Brother.”

Pete had to laugh. “Jesus Christ!” he said.

“Those old guys talk so much smack,” Seth said. “You’ll hear them talk about the 80s like they were these big badass enforcers when they couldn’t even wear colors until ‘98.” He chuckled.

“Uh-huh,” Pete said. “You, uh, seem like you’d know the real story pretty well.”

“There’s so much bullshit around the stories from the old days,” Seth said. “It don’t even matter anymore what’s real and what’s just some old guy lying his ass off because he’s wasted.”

“Not a bunch of big history nerds in the Double Eagles,” Pete said.

Seth shrugged. “Man, just, a lot of those guys are dead or in prison for the rest of their lives,” he said. “A lot of them went back to the Old Country. Lot of ‘em went back and got killed.”

“Jesus,” Pete said. He was starting to realize how little he had to contribute to this conversation. “That’s gotta be a tough way to grow up.”

“I mean, it didn’t bother me too much,” Seth said. “Although I guess this guy tried to kidnap me and my sisters when I was real little.”

“Holy shit!” Pete almost slammed on the brakes. “Are...were you okay?”

“I don’t even remember it,” Seth said. “Jessica was like, six, and I was four or five, and she took us to go hide in a culvert while these assholes tore our house up. I guess they shot my aunt who were watching us. It was pretty fucked up.”

“That’s terrifying,” Pete said. “No wonder you don’t remember it!”

Seth shrugged. “It happened,” he said. “Can’t make it go back and un-happen.”

“But still,” Pete said. “I can’t imagine going through something like that, at that age.”

“It did really mess my sister up for a long time,” Seth said. “I love her, but that husband of hers has to put up with some crap.”

“God.” Pete shook his head. “I...wow. That’s a lot.”

Seth nodded. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m just kind of in a mood today.”

“No, don’t be sorry,” Pete said. “Do you ever, like, get to talk about that stuff with your family?”

“Oh yeah,” Seth said. “You have to trust your frickin’ family.”

“You really do,” Pete said. “I don’t think I trust anyone in my family that much.”

“Yeah?” Seth said. “You guys pretty tight?”

Pete laughed. “I mean, my mom’s had three facelifts,” he said. “So she looks pretty tight, but…”

That cracked Seth up. “That’s savage, man!” he said. “Your own mom?”

“Look, it’s complicated,” Pete said. “I love her. I really do. I pick up the phone every time she calls. It’s just...ugh.” He shuddered. “She just can’t pull her own weight emotionally, you know?”

“Like, she always needs a babysitter?” Seth said.

“I mean, not like a babysitter, because she needs the babysitter, and she needs to be the world’s best babysitter and get that award, onstage, in front of the whole world.” Pete snapped his fingers. “An audience! She needs an audience.”

“Oh, one of those,” Seth said. “Yeah, we get a lot of those around our family.”

“Are you still pissed at your aunt?” Pete said.

“You bet your sweet ass I am,” Seth said. “We’re in the middle of getting ready for this frickin’ wedding, and it’s already a mess, and she was supposed to be in charge of all this crap with the church and the food, and now all these bitches are getting ready to kill each - oh, man, there’s the turnoff!” He pointed to a little sign on the right.

“Oh, crap!” Pete had to slam on the brakes to make the turn onto the little dirt road. “Um, where does this go?”

“We’ll just cross the river and follow the other side for a little bit,” Seth said. “The rocks are on private land, but my dad knows the guy. We’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Pete said, “but if a ghost murders us, I’m going to kill you.”

***

When they got to the Devil’s Garden formation, Pete pulled the car off on a little dirt road. They parked in a sandy lot where people apparently came to look at the twisted sedimentary spires rising out of the sand.

The two of them leaned their seats back and bullshitted for a couple hours while they watched the sun go down behind the mountain. Pete couldn’t remember the last time he’d sat down and gotten to actually know someone like this. It was nice. And not just the talking. It was nice to be able to run out of things to say and then just sit there, comfortable in silence with Seth’s calm presence beside him.

“You know what?” Seth said, ending one of those peaceful lulls in the conversation.

“What?” Pete said.

“I think I like you, man.” Seth gave him an approving half-nod. “We should, you know… hang out.”

Pete smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “I just...look. I could get in big trouble. Massive, you’re-fired-get-out trouble…”

“For what?” Seth said. “I’m four years older…”

“It’s not about age, Seth,” Pete said. “It’s about power, and authority, and being fair to the other students.”

“Fuck those little shits, though,” Seth said. He frowned. “Except for that Mary chick.”

“Yeah, she’s a good egg,” Pete said. “Look. I’ll think about it,” he said. “Just...just give me some time, okay? I cannot afford to lose this job.”

“Whatever you say, Professor,” Seth said, “but I just said we should hang out. Didn’t say anything about getting caught.”