Multiplex Fandango

NOW SHOWING ON SCREEN 16



Redemption Roadshow

(Espectáculo de Redención)



Starring the Long Cool Woman, the Burned

Man and the souls of our beloved dead


“Never get on a bus with a burned man and a woman who can speak with the dead unless you are prepared to hear things that will singe your soul.”

– Sonoran Desert Herald

An IMAX Presentation

“After a while he sat in the road. He took off his hat and placed it on the tarmac

before him and bowed his head and held his face in his hands and wept. He sat

there for a very long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the

right and god-made sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction.”

From Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing





Dolan Gibb sat at the counter and nodded when the waitress asked if he wanted coffee. She poured with a flourish, then placed a menu in front of him. Dolan glanced over it to see if they'd added anything new, but he really wasn't hungry. He never was when he patrolled this stretch of I–10.

Too many memories.

Too many regrets.

"How ya doing, Officer?" came a gruff voice from next to him.

Gibb turned and regarded the grizzled trucker with the Coyote's baseball-style hat perched high on his hairless head. Jake Robinson. Gibb had known the trucker for over ten years. They weren't friends, but ran into each other about once a month. "Same as I ever was, Jake," replied Gibb. "And you?"

"Not bad. Pulling a load of avocadoes out of San Fernando. Bound for Tucson tonight."

"That's where you live. Right?" Gibb asked.

"Yep. Gonna see the wife for the first time in a couple weeks. Been so long, I may have to re-introduce myself."

Gibb nodded and sipped his coffee. He held back the obvious reply because it was so obvious. Instead, he watched the truck stop patrons out of the corner of his eyes, aware that his presence was a deterrent to delinquency. Seventeen years as an Arizona Highway Patrol Officer had taught him that less is more. So as an alternative to stalking around like a rookie, he sat and soaked up the bright lights and the ambience of the restaurant. His shift didn't end for six more hours, so he needed the light. He needed the company, because there was nowhere a person could feel more alone than in the desert at night. There was nowhere as dark as a desert at night.

"You see them lights over by Burnt Well," Jake asked, digging into a double helping of cherry pie.

"Where? What lights?" Gibb resurfaced from his malaise.

"Burnt Well out west of Buckeye," Jake said. "There was a bunch of lights down in the wadi near where them crosses were planted last year.

"That where the kids died after graduation? The minivan?" Gibb asked, already pretty sure of the answer. Still he had to ask. Shrines to the dead along Southwestern U.S. highways almost outnumbered the cacti. In fact, the number seemed to have increased in recent years. When he'd first began working as a highway patrolman, it was only the occasional cross placed by some Mexican Catholic to bless the ground a loved one had died on. Now it seemed as if crosses grew out of the ground. Almost every fifty feet was a shrine placed in memory of some driver who'd lost control of their vehicle, or fallen asleep at the wheel, or been the victim of a drunk driver, standing like mileage markers for the dead along the highways of the living.

"If you mean the kids from Luke Air Force Base, then yeah. Must have been twenty cars there when I passed by last night."

"Did you see what was going on?" Gibb asked.

"Naw. I was passing a double-tanker and only glimpsed the goings on for a second."

"What's the word about it?" Gibb asked, meaning had there been any chatter on the radio.

"The others are saying it was that comatose woman," said Jake, his eyes bright as he finally delivered the news he'd been getting around to.

"The who?"

"You know. She was all over the news last month when those folks out by the Salton Sea made off with her body for a spell. La Mujer Fria Larga de la Muerte is what the locals call her. But us white folks call her—"

"The Long Cool Woman," Gibb murmured, the words coming out slowly as he remembered who she was. "What's she doing around here?"

"Depends on who you ask," Jake said, as he stood and flipped some bills on the counter. "Some say she's here to help the dead. Others say she's here to take people's hard earned money."

The waitress refreshed Gibb's coffee. He added cream and watched as it swirled within the darkness like a ghost trying to hide. Gibb never did like to talk about the dead.

"What do you think?"

Gibb shrugged. He hadn't thought much about it.

But by four o'clock in the morning, that's all he could think of. Why was she here? What made this stretch of road special enough for the Long Cool Woman to come to?

Gibb had seen television specials about her for years, but had treated them as if they were hoaxes. Like the headlines in the Weekly World News at the checkout stand of the grocery stores, the reports of a woman in a permanent coma who could converse with the dead were just too much to believe.

It wasn't until one of the learning channels ran a special that he'd even paid attention. On the program, they'd shown a black and white photo of a smiling five-year-old Mexican girl. Then the photo had faded to a video of the same girl in a hospital bed. She'd been struck by lightning and been rendered comatose.

The doctors said that she'd never recover.

But she had.

Sort of.

Somehow along the way she'd managed to rise and speak in the voice of her dead uncle. They'd tested her and she'd known things only her uncle could have known. Medical specialists had dismissed it, but the religious nuts had come from everywhere to see what else she could do. One of her cousins pointed out that she was in the same hospital bed her uncle had died in. No one paid attention to him.

That had been forty years ago.

Now, her living body was being carried all over the Southwest and, if one was to believe the talk on the street, used as a conduit between the living and the dead. Not all the dead, but those who'd died so violently that their souls were unable to travel to whichever place they were destined to go. The television show Gibb had seen had ended with a recent video. Her face had matured to middle age. She'd grown to become a woman, filling the long, black dress that covered her as she lay on the portable pallet.

Gibb remembered how still her face had looked.

He remembered how dead she'd seemed.

He remembered how he'd thought of the zombie flicks of his youth.

Gibb considered the place where the kids from Buckeye had rolled their minivan. Not too many things more violent than that. If the Long Cool Woman was real, he wondered what she was saying this night. He wondered if the parents were there, unable or unwilling to deal with the deaths of their children.

Gibb could relate. His heart beat faster as he pulled the highway patrol car to a stop beside a mile marker east of the Old Republic Mine, the number 43 of the marker reflected in the halogen headlights.

He hadn't been able to eat after he'd spoken with Jake. He hadn't even wanted to come here, but it would have been childish and irresponsible for him not to. He stared at a lonely white cross protruding from a small concrete base about a dozen feet off the road. The name engraved on the metal plaque on the front read Stephen Jones. Gibb knew the name without reading it. After all, he'd paid to have the shrine placed there. He swallowed a lump, before it could escape and gritted his teeth.

Gibb radioed in the stop and got out of the cruiser. He approached the cross, knelt down and pulled the weeds that had begun to encroach. A Twinkie wrapper had found its way nearby and this too he picked up. He noted that the paint was chipping and made a mental note to get a pint of paint and put it in the back of the cruiser.

Looking once again at the letters of the man’s name, a lump once again formed in Gibb’s throat. After all these years, the guilt was as fresh as it had been that day it had all happened. The shrine was the least he could have done for killing the man.

***

From a Text on Philosophy: Existentialism is as much a way of life as it is a philosophy. It is a life-view where the individual is ultimately responsible for his actions. With man at the center of all things, it is up to each individual to create an essence out of the facthood of his own existence

***

Gibb slept fitfully the next day. When his shift began that night at seven o'clock, his was the first car out of the lot. He left the barracks in North Phoenix and sped toward the California border. Somewhere along that 120 mile stretch of highway, the Long Cool Woman was resting. He switched his police scanner to roam so he could also eavesdrop on the truckers.

Gibb wasn't sure what he intended to do, but he felt compelled to see the Long Cool Woman. He'd spent seventeen years feeling guilty. If the news and television hadn't exaggerated in their reports, perhaps she could free him from bonds that had kept him from living the life that he'd intended to live. At the very least, she could tell him if Stephen Jones had passed on to a better place.

Perhaps.

A silver Corvette shot by at 110 miles per hour. Gibb flipped on his siren and radioed dispatch. He floored the Crown Victoria and nearly grinned as his 650 horsepower supercharger chewed the distance between the sweet-lined Corvette and an ugly $500 ticket.

Anything to occupy his mind.

As he’d been doing for seventeen years.

His father had once told him that to be responsible was the epitome of manhood. “There’s responsibility for country, for family, and for one’s actions,” he’d said on more than one occasion as he waxed poetic in the cool desert night after too much wine. “Being responsible to the country is the easiest. All one has to do is to serve. Whether it’s as a soldier or a teacher or even a garbage man, as long as it contributes to the general welfare of society, that’s all that matters.”

Radio dispatch returned with no wants or warrants on the corvette and the driver, Greg McGill. Just another middle-aged tweed with too much money and not enough sense to keep his testosterone from dripping on the accelerator.

The Corvette swerved between the rear of a tomato truck and the front fender of a South Carolina Cadillac, barely avoiding becoming the missing link between the two. Gibb took the shoulder, spitting gravel as his tires sought traction. As he passed the Caddie, he glanced at the horrified faces of the septuagenarians behind the wheel. By their expression they were ready to stop for the day. They might even turn around and go back to the land of mint juleps and courteous drivers.

“Being responsible for your family is a harder prospect altogether,” his father had drilled into him. “Attaching yourself to a higher principle is easy compared to a wife and kids and cousins and aunts. Familial responsibility is something that everyone can attain. Who was it who said that marriage is the great equalizer?”

Certainly someone who’d never been divorced thought Gibb as he surged forward, siren blaring as his Crown Victoria bore down on the Chevrolet. Divorce was the great equalizer. Knaves rose as great men tumbled.

Just as Gibb was about to shout commands from his loudspeaker, the driver of the Corvette eschewed a felony and rationally slowed the vehicle. An arm emerged from the driver’s side window and waved back at him as if Gibb were an Avon dealer invited in for tea and an order of soap.

One thing was for sure, the person who initiated the divorce could be accused of gross irresponsibility. His father never would hear of it. Once, when a good friend fell ignobly out of love with his wife of ten years, his father had given up the friendship without even a care. Never again did his father speak to the person whom he’d fished with and played poker with every weekend for ten years. Never again would he be in the same room with the man who'd been forced to resort to divorce. So polarized was his father by his beliefs, that young Dolan grew up with two choices—either be with Dad or against him.

The Corvette coasted to a stop beside a worn saguaro. At least three hundred years old, pieces of the immense cactus had fallen dead from the affects of vehicle exhaust. Other parts showed signs of drive-by cactus shootings.

After radioing his location to dispatch, Gibb stepped from his cruiser into the still warm night. The temperature had fallen from a daytime high of 100 degrees to 80. Dolan could still feel the heat of the day radiating from the asphalt through the soles of his shoes. It might drop another ten degrees by midnight if they were lucky.

He placed his hat on his head and adjusted his baton. Although wary, he wasn't too concerned with the driver. This one was the type to throw money at a problem rather than fight it.

"Sir, please place your keys in your hands and hold them out the window."

Once the driver complied, the rest was paperwork. Gibb found that he'd been right about the man. No hardened criminal here. In fact, he was a fire chief in San Diego.

"I didn't see you back there, officer. Sorry about that," the driver said.

Gibb allowed the man to believe his own lie and wrote him a ticket for the maximum.

“Taking responsibility for one's actions is sometimes the hardest,” his father had said to young Gibb as he was growing up. “Not only do you have to make up for your own mistakes, but if those mistakes affect others, you have to make it up to them as well. What was it the Chinese do? If you save a life, you're responsible for guaranteeing that life forever? Once again they got it all wrong. The truth is that if you adversely affect someone's life, it is your responsibility to correct it. If you save a life, you're a hero. But if you kill someone... if you kill someone outside of war, or protecting your family, your life is no longer your own.”

Gibb finished writing the ticket and passed it to the indifferent driver. The sun was nearing the horizon, etching the sky in reds and yellows. The driver stuffed the ticket into a glove compartment already overflowing with paper and sped off towards Los Angeles and the sunset.

He glanced around at the landscape. Amidst the scrub and skeletal remains of tumbleweeds, Gibb counted seven sets of crosses on his side of the road. There was nothing especially dangerous about the area. The road ran straight for miles. So why so many deaths? The only logical explanation he could come up with was the night drivers from Los Angeles to Phoenix and back falling asleep at the wheel.

Gibb's father's belief was nearly existential, something Gibb had taught his students so long ago. The essence of existentialism is a life-view where the individual is ultimately responsible for his actions. Gibb slipped into his cruiser in time to hear the squelch of the radio and a trucker asking about the strange lights over by Sore Finger Road. If Gibb remembered correctly, that was just east of Pyramid Peak. He put the patrol car in gear, waited for traffic to clear, then sped across the median and back towards Phoenix.

Ten minutes later, with the sun all but set behind him, he slowed to a stop behind a black panel van parked along the shoulder of the highway. Two Harley Davidson choppers and an immense Lincoln Towncar with gold-fleck paint were pulled onto the grassy shoulder. Parked in the front was an old fashioned red bus with large letters scrawled across the side in white paint — Espectáculo de Redención. Gibb's Spanish wasn't as good as it should have been since he lived in the Southwest, but he made the words out to mean Redemption Roadshow.

Technically, the vehicles shouldn't be parked there. The shoulder was for emergencies only and the presence of the vehicles represented a safety hazard. There were some drivers who unconsciously drove towards what they stare at; highway patrolmen dying every year from this same luckless event. The vehicles shouldn't be parked there, but Gibb wasn't about to disrupt the service. The highway patrol had an understanding about the crosses and, when possible, allowed people to mourn the loss of their loved ones.

A crowd of at least twenty people had gathered around a large white cross embedded in the earth thirty feet from the road. Three large Mexican bikers, their arms crossed over shirtless, tanned chests, watched Gibb as approached. Their heavy-lidded gaze defined disdain for his authority. They didn't even look at his gun. They had larger ones in holsters on their own hips. As Arizona was an open carry state, this was perfectly legal, if not a little Wild West.

Gibb stopped several feet away and stared over their shoulders at the large cross embedded in the earth. He'd seen it for several years now. He tried to remember the circumstances surrounding the death, but could only remember that it had been a young woman in a single car accident. Probably fell asleep at the wheel or something equally tragic.

"What do you want?" the one in the middle asked. His Fu Manchu mustache barely camouflaged an upper lip that had curled back into a snarl. "This is a private thing we do."

Gibb glanced at the speaker, then returned his gaze to the service. He watched the people situated around the cross in different states of mourning. All dressed in their Sunday best, most had their heads down and their hands clasped in front of them. A tall thin man wearing a black coat with tails stood in the center, his back to Gibb. Beside the tall man knelt another, his hands covering his face as his shoulders shook with sobs. Lying in front of them at the base of the cross was what could only be the Long Cool Woman.

Gibb felt an icy finger slide the length of his spine.

"Hey," the biker on the left said, stepping forward. "Ronnie said this is private."

Gibb turned, conscious of where his own hand was in relation to his pistol grip. "This is public land." He glanced down at the pistol on the man's hip and nodded his head towards the weapon. "I suppose you have a permit for that?"

Fu Manchu stepped forward beside the other biker.

Gibb took a step back.

“Why you want to interrupt, man?” Fu Manchu asked.

“I asked a question, sir. And what about you? I suppose you have a permit, as well?”

“We don’t need a permit. This is Arizona,” said the third biker remaining in place.

Gibb looked from one to the other. He knew they didn’t need permits, but his question often gave him indications of wrongdoing. He’d once had a guy turn tail and run when asked the question. It was a professional ploy, nothing more.

Before the situation could escalate any more, the tall man intervened. "Can I help you, officer?" His long gray hair flowed down his back, tied in an Indian braid. He put his hand on the shoulder of the biker who stood on the left of Gibb and squeezed gently. The tall man nodded to the biker, then gazed steadily at Gibb. "We're in the middle of a service and would appreciate if you’d refrain from speaking so loudly."

Gibb couldn't help but grit his teeth at the man's visage. The tall man's face had been horribly burned. The contour of the skin was like the surface of the moon. Smooth and rough patches were separated by painful dimpled crevices where skin had failed to graft properly. The man's blue eyes gazed startlingly upon him, capturing him, daring him to look away.

"I'm sorry," Gibb heard himself saying. He forced himself to stare, knowing that to look away would be the worst offense. "I didn't know I was so loud." He could only imagine the pain the man had gone through.

The man nodded once. His ruined lips pealed back into a feral grin. He ran his right hand down the lapel of his six-button suit coat in a smoothing motion, and turned back to the service.

"Wait," Gibb said, stepping forward. The three bikers intercepted him, one placing his hand on Gibb's chest. He ignored this, his pleading gaze on the tall man.

The tall man turned and stared at Gibb, his posture clear that he was awaiting the reason for the further disruption.

Gibb gulped. He wasn't exactly sure what he was going to say. He glanced once at the three bikers, thought of trying to push his way past, thought of arresting them, then changed his mind. His shoulders sagged. His eyes turned sad. "Can I watch? I mean, can I attend the service too?"

The tall man stared for several seconds, then nodded slowly. "I see there is pain in your soul." He held out a hand that had also been scarred from fire. "Come and watch the Long Cool Woman. Perhaps you will find her words soothing."

The bikers stepped aside. Gibb walked between them and accepted the proffered hand. He felt strength and the smoothness of scar tissue as the tall man tightened his grip into a handshake. Moreover, the hand felt dead cold.

"Thank you," said Gibb, his voice barely above a whisper.

"They call me El Hombre Quemado," said the tall man.

The Burned Man, Gibb translated to himself. The name was a good fit, if not a little morbid.

"But you can call me Rev Boscoe," the Burned Man continued, pronouncing the word Rev, making it seem more like a name than a title.

"My name is Gibb," said Gibb.

"I know.”

Gibb raised his eyebrows in surprise.

Rev Boscoe grinned a horrible grin. “I see it there on your uniform." Rev Boscoe released Gibb's hand and pointed towards the nameplate. Then he turned, walked back to the circle of mourners and resumed his place directly opposite the cross.

Gibb's hand had grown cold from the handshake, and as he walked to the circle, he rubbed it, working the warmth back into the bone and tendons. He found a place between a young Hispanic boy and an older Hispanic woman. They shifted allowing him a space of his own, their heads down in some private misery. It wasn’t until then that he finally got a good view of the Long Cool Woman.

She wasn't beautiful. Nor was she ugly. Yet she had a presence that surpassed such earthly applications. Firm lips sat beneath the arch of a patrician nose. Lipstick had been applied to her slightly frowning lips. A somewhat pointy chin and high cheekbones complimented the delicateness of her eggshell white skin. Her long black hair held gentle curls, and had been arranged so part of it lay upon her shoulders. She wore a turn of the century black dress that covered her legs and her feet. She lay upon a specially constructed black cot that held her nearly two feet from the ground. The way her dress cascaded over the edges, it almost appeared as if she were floating. One hand rested palm up on her stomach, the other was held to by the hands of a weeping man.

Gibb watched closely and, only after a concerted effort, noticed the rise and fall of the Long Cool Woman's chest. So intent was he upon his gaze, that when she moved, he let out a gasp.

Her hand on her stomach twitched like a spider coming to life. Once, twice, then the fingers curled upon themselves into a fist as she grasped the cross.

Gibb's spine sizzled with electric alarm. His attention was trapped, as surely as if the woman's hand had closed around his throat. He felt the electricity encompass the circle, as if the mourners represented a closed circuit: the mourners, him and the sobbing man, a generator for the Long Cool Woman's magic.

Suddenly her back arched so high that he felt her spine might break. Her head fell back on a limp neck. Her hand threatened to shatter the cross, the wood trembling with the pressure of her grip. The man cried out as his hand became trapped in a furious grip. He surprised himself by trying to pull away. Then the man’s attention jerked as he realized what was happening, his attention instantly shifting to the Long Cool Woman as he relaxed his arms and ceased his attempts to flee.

The Long Cool Woman settled and turned towards him. She opened her eyes and cast an emerald-eyed gaze upon him, her words fast and low.

"¿Por qué has venido?” she asked.

Why have you come? Gibb translated to himself.

The man wiped his eyes with his free hand, and tilted his head as if he were speaking to his long lost. "Por qué te extrano."

Because I miss you.

"¿Por qué usted me molesta?" she snapped, her voice anything but loving.

Why do you bother me?

Undeterred by the anger, the man answered slowly, his heart and soul merging with every syllable. "Quisiera que usted estuviera aquí.”

I wish you were here, he said and Gibb felt every word.

The Long Cool Woman stared into the man's eyes as each of the assembled mourners held their breath, Gibb included. When she finally spoke, her voice slow and filled with passion, they exhaled and their breaths became an audible wind.

"Estoy aquí," came the words as if they belonged to the desert wind.

I am here, she said, as her hand went from gripping the man's hand to caressing his cheek.

The man sobbed once more, and then gulped as he swallowed heavy emotion. He cast his eyes to Hell for a moment, before he raised them and gazed into the eyes of the Long Cool Woman. "No. Me refiero a que desearia que estuviera viva," he sighed, a lifetime of need encompassed in those seven words.

No. I mean I wish you were alive.

The Long Cool Woman stared into the man's eyes, stroked his cheek one time, and then answered softly. "Desee la lluvia, desee la felicidad, pero no desee que Dios le devuelva lo que se ha llevado.”

Wish for rain, wish for happiness, but do not wish for God to return what he's already taken.

Roles reversed as her earlier anger became his. He frowned as he spat the words, "Entonces no quiero a Dios."

Then I don't want God.

"No digas eso! No sabes lo que dices," she hissed.

Don't say that. You can't mean that.

"Pero yo se, es a ti a quien amo," he said kissing the hand of the Long Cool Woman's as if it were his wife's. "Es a ti a quien siempre he amado.”

But I do. It's you I love. It's you that I've always loved.

"Entonces amame dejandome ir," she smiled sadly.

Then love me by letting me go.

"¿Qué?"

What?

"Dejame ir," she said, her voice little more than a sigh. "Estoy muerta, asi que dejame estar con Dios."

Let me go. I am dead, so let me be with God.

"No puedo." His own sigh merged seamlessly on the end of hers.

I can't.

She stared at him, then removed her hand from his embrace. She placed it on her lap and spoke through pursed lips. "Entonces eres un egoista."

Then you are selfish.

"Deseo solamente amarte," he pleaded, reaching out, but afraid to actually touch the Long Cool Woman, but desperate.

I only want to love you.

"Entonces amame y dejame ir," she said shaking her head.

Then love me and let me go.

"Te amo," he said, staring into her eyes.

I love you.

She turned and stared towards Heaven. She continued to shake her head slightly, until finally she was still.

"Te amo," he said once more, this time softer.

The Long Cool Woman smiled once, a ghost of love escaping, then closed her eyes. She returned to her coma, no longer a part of the living, nor longer a part of the dead, rather caught in the middle somewhere in the static of a neverland fugue.

The man stood slowly, his right hand holding the side of his face that she'd caressed. "Adiós, mi amor," he said, then he turned and pushed his way through the crowd. As he passed, his gaze momentarily met Gibb's and there was a cast about them that he recognized.

Acceptance.

Gibb watched the man stagger to the Cadillac. One of the bikers held open a door so the man could climb inside. Before the door shut, the man glanced one last time towards the Long Cool Woman and the cross. When the door closed it marked the end of the service. Some of the mourners left quietly, heads down in contemplation as they made their way to the bus. Others talked amongst one another, some happy, some sad.

Gibb didn't know quite what to do. He stared at the Long Cool Woman, whose countenance was as immutable as the Venus de Milo's. The rumors, the cable news shows, the late night wonderings had all been true. Everything he'd heard about this woman had proven itself before his eyes.

"Time to go, officer," Rev Boscoe said, his cold, scarred hand resting on Gibbs shoulder.

Two of the bikers approached and busied themselves securing the woman to the cot. They scooped her dress from the earth and tucked the edges beside her. From beneath, they brought out three sets of straps that they snapped in place across her body. Rev Boscoe tested the straps to make sure they were secure, then nodded to the one nearest the woman's head. Gibb stood silently as they lifted and carried the woman to the back of the black van where the third biker waited with the doors open.

The third biker approached the cross, wrapped two meaty hands around it, and snapped it at its base. He laid it against his shoulder, walked to the back of the bus, opened the door and slid it behind the back row of seats.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Gibb said, suddenly realizing what was going on. “You can’t do that?”

“It’s no longer needed,” Rev Boscoe said.

Gibb turned to look at the inscrutable face.

“The purpose of the cross no longer exists.”

Gibb nodded absently, but didn’t quite understand.

"Was it what you expected?" Rev Boscoe asked.

"I didn't know what to expect," Gibb said, not knowing why he lied.

"No? You hadn't heard of her before?"

"No, I—" Gibb shook his head. Although grown men weren't supposed to believe in ghosts, they also weren't supposed to lie. He smiled weakly. "Let me start over," he said. He swallowed, evaluating his thoughts carefully. "To tell you the truth, I thought she was a fake," he said.

Rev Boscoe nodded his head as if he'd heard it before. "Are you disappointed?"

"No."

"Then what is it? I see something in you that I almost recognize."

Gibb stared into the terrible face, his brain attempting to soften the harsh ridges and scars that scoured the man's face. "You don't know me," he finally said.

"No," agreed Rev Boscoe, "I don't know you. But you are of a type and I know that type."

"What type is that?" asked Gibb, feeling more and more like a child caught trying to do something.

"You've led an incomplete life, Mr. Gibb. Moreover, you've led someone else's life."

"What are you—"

"You long for something that cannot be. You live for someone that cannot care. You exist as something that you cannot become."

"Bullshit." Gibb felt the blood rush to his head. He frowned, trying to think of something to say that wasn't the truth.

Rev Boscoe waited a moment longer, and then nodded. "Fine, Mr. Gibb."

The tall man strode to the Cadillac and slid into the driver's seat. Everyone else in the Long Cool Woman's entourage seemed ready to go. Rev Boscoe waited for a break in traffic, and then the Bikers pulled out leading the way. Rev Boscoe pulled out next, with the van and then the bus following closely behind.

Gibb watched the taillights disappear past the eastern horizon as the convoy headed toward Phoenix and places unknown. By now the sun had set and had turned the desert dark. With the departure of the Long Cool Woman and her followers, he was reminded how dark the desert could actually be. He glanced once at where the cross had been, then to the space that the Long Cool Woman had occupied. There was a certain amount of fear enveloping his acceptance of the woman and her powers.

It was true that he'd sought her out. It was true that he felt that she could be provide him a sense of release... a sense that he'd done it right these last seventeen years.

But then there was the part of him that had never felt the need to ask anyone for help. There was that part of him who felt that anything worth doing, he could do himself—except of course speaking with the dead. Try as he might, he'd never been able to accomplish that task. So then why won't you ask them for help? the voice in his head shouted, putting to words the emotions that had been battering around. Because I'm scared, whispered the answer, and that answer pissed him off.

Gibb stalked to his police cruiser, checked the computer for messages, then pulled into traffic. In no time at all, he had the engine pushing 5000 rpm as he surged through the night at 110 mph.

Because I'm scared had been the wrong answer.

Gibb despised fear and all the knee trembling, heart palpitating and wringing of the hands that went with it. He was a cop and cops weren't afraid. He'd been to a hundred seminars where the first message out of the speaker's mouth was Fear can kill!

Fear wasn't something that he was supposed to feel. If he was truly afraid, then he needed to deal with it. Here was a chance for Gibb to deal with something that he'd set in motion seventeen years ago. All that was standing between him and closure were the words of the Long Cool Woman.

He was determined to get answers. He caught up to the convoy at mile marker 92. But before he could pull them over, the radio blasted a call for all cars. There was a huge accident in Plomosa Pass, which was just east of Quartzite and north of Black Mesa. He glared accusingly at the radio for a moment, then sighed. He checked the westbound traffic, waited for a break, then slowed enough to tear across the median and head the other way.

There were deaths at the scene and he needed to get there. His problems could wait. Twenty minutes of screaming down the highway later, he reached the accident site. Traffic was backed up and the last eight miles he had to crawl along the emergency lane, careful of pedestrians and motorcycles.

When he got there it was as bad as he’d anticipated. A U–Haul carrying illegals had been crunched by a semitrailer. Another car, an older Oldsmobile station wagon, lay twisted and on its side down an embankment.

He was the fifth patrolman on the scene. They needed him to control traffic. He tossed on his yellow emergency vest, grabbed his flashlights and set to work. Cars crawled by at five miles an hour. Faces of children, wide-eyed and fearful, pressed against the windows. Mothers sat in passenger seats aghast at the scene, but with a hint of mad glee that it hadn’t happened to them and theirs. Fathers, more often than not, refused to look, their own guilt at driving fast, past events of shameful road rage, and their own feelings of vehicular-propped masculinity all mixing to create a chain of guilt that they refused to acknowledge by refusing to look. No better than children, if they didn’t see it, it didn’t happen, their ignorance mollifying their egos.

Behind him, Gibb could hear the emergency medical technicians working on the living. Occasionally, the shrill whistle of a flatline would pierce the canopy of noise surrounding the accident. Everyone would silence themselves as they prayed for the sound to modulate and return to the beating of a living heart. All but once they were rewarded, and that last was a mother of three who’d been in the passenger seat of the station wagon.

By the time the U–Haul and the station wagon were loaded onto flatbeds and taken away and the traffic had resumed a two-lane flow, Gibb had learned what had happened. The U–Haul had been on the side of the road, when for whatever reason it had pulled out in front of the eighteen-wheeled semi truck. The driver of the semi had tried to avoid the accident by swerving to the left, but unbeknownst to him, the station wagon was coming on at high speed in the left hand lane preparing to pass. Suddenly finding the semi blocking his way, the station wagon swerved off the interstate on the left, found traction, then shot back across the road where it went airborne, twisting and turning like a car should never do. The driver of the U–Haul seemed oblivious to it all. The semi had no choice but to plow through the back of it, crunching the tin box container which held seventeen illegals like a beer can.

The results were seven dead illegals, a mother and two children dead from the station wagon and lives irrevocably shattered.

The driver of the station wagon was in critical condition along with the lone surviving child.

The driver of the U–Haul had miraculously survived and had disappeared into the desert. A helicopter scoured Black Mesa in the hopes they could find him. He was most assuredly a human smuggler or coyote, as they were called.

The driver of the semi was uninjured, but rattled by the loss of life and blood that still dripped from the front grill of his truck. As it turned out, it was Jake Robinson. He throttled his baseball cap in his hands as he sat on the rear bumper of an ambulance retelling the story to the sergeant who’d come on the scene to supervise cleanup. It was only yesterday that he’d shared a meal with Gibb at a truck stop and now the man’s life had irrevocably changed. Gibb knew only too well the weight of responsibility that must be pulling on the man’s psyche. When the sergeant moved on, Gibb took a moment to speak with Jake.

“How you doing?” Gibb asked, already knowing the answer.

Jake looked up with haunted eyes. For a moment, he seemed happy to see a friendly face, then lost it as his nose scrunched in an effort to keep a sob from escaping. When he finally got himself under control, he spoke. “I didn’t have time to react.”

Gibb nodded and understood perfectly. At seventy-five miles-per-hour no one had time to react. There were fewer accidents since the speed increased from fifty-five to seventy-five, but there were more fatalities.

“It’s a hard thing,” Gibb said.

Some of the other patrolmen had told Jake that there was nothing he could have done, that it wasn’t his fault, but that wasn’t really true. In fact, there was plenty that could have been done. He could have jackknifed the rig. He could have seen the U–Haul and anticipated it pulling out into traffic. He could have jerked his wheel to the right and maybe saved everyone, except himself. He could have stayed home an extra day and taken the next load. The fact remained that Jake had chosen to preserve his own life first, then take evasive action. In that first decision came the onus of responsibility for everything that came after.

“I thought I heard them scream, but I couldn’t have.”

“Probably the airbrakes,” Gibb said, “Or the metal.”

“Probably.” He stared at his hat in his hands for a moment, then looked up into Gibb’s eyes. “But I’ll never unhear that sound. It’s going to stay with me. Scream or no scream, I’ll remember that sound.” Jake shook his head. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

Gibb knew only too well what it sounded like. The way to make metal scream was to make it twist through the air. He’d heard fist hand what it sounded like and it did sound like a scream, as if the metal were alive and tortured.

A tow truck had arrived to remove the semi. Gibb said farewell to Jake and walked back to his car. He opened his door and climbed in. Within moments, he was ensconced in his electronic web, receiving emails and updates on crimes past and present. The map on the screen was lit where activity remained.

Through the window he watched as a car pulled to a stop just past the scene of the accident. An elderly woman climbed out. She held the hand of a child and they both walked to a space about a dozen feet off the road near the crash. The woman put down a votive candle and lit it. The child laid a stuffed elephant beside this. With the driver of the U–Haul still at large, Gibb had no choice but to check it out in the event she was related or knew him.

He strode over to where they stood. As he approached, they looked up at him. Tears danced in the woman’s eyes. She looked anything but Mexican, maybe Middle Eastern with her hooked nose and downturned full-bodied lips.

“How long has it been?” she asked.

“About two hours,” Gibb said. “Did you know the deceased?”

“I babysat the kids,” she nodded.

“How did you—“

“I got the call from Al Foster. He’s their grandfather, er the father of the man who drove the car. Al knew that I’d want to know.” She looked around at the ground littered with broken glass, bits and pieces of metal and footprints. “Which one survived?”

“The children?”

She nodded.

“The youngest.”

“Ahh.” She swallowed slowly and stared at the votive candle. “That would be Alice then. The others were Peter and Dolan.”

Gibb jerked when he heard his name. Dolan was pretty rare. No one used it to name their kids these days.

“Did they suffer?”

“I don’t think so. High speeds. The truck. I think it happened pretty fast.”

“Are we going to put a cross here, Ooma?” the little girl asked.

“Tomorrow honey. We just need to keep the light on for Peter and Dolan tonight and then tomorrow we’ll bring a cross.”

The use of his name was throwing Gibb. It was as if he’d died. He tried to ignore it as he realized what they planned. “You can’t stay here, ma’am.”

“But we must. Without us, the boys will be scared.”

“It’s too dangerous. There’s already been one accident here and the rubberneckers will be slowing to see what’s going on all night. Having you here will just exacerbate the problem.”

“What’s a rubbernecker?” the girl asked.

“Officer Gibb—“

“Patrolman,” he corrected.

“Patrolman Gibb, I’m not going to leave these boys out here alone in the dark without someone here to take care of them.”

“But ma’am,” Gibb said, looking at the girl first, then back at the woman. “They’re passed on.”

“Passed on where? They’re right here. I feel them as surely as I feel the arthritis in my knees. If I could speak to them, I would. At the very least they can take comfort from my presence until the sun rises.” Seeing Gibb’s resolve crumbling she hurriedly added, “You wouldn’t want someone to die out here all alone and no one know about it, would you? Have no one to care?”

Gibb felt his head shaking and followed it up with a weak, “No ma’am.” Then he added, “You just be careful here and stay away from the road. Might want to pull your car off farther if you can.”

She nodded, then turned back towards the candle.

Gibb felt dismissed. He took one step back then returned to his cruiser. He sat there for an hour watching the woman sit and talk to the spot on the ground. He couldn’t help but think of the event he’d witnessed out by Sore Finger Road and the words of Rev Boscoe. There was little doubt in his mind that the ghost of the woman had been there. "Entonces ámeme dejándome ir," she’d said. Love me by letting me go. It was as if the shrine, the cross that had been placed there, held her soul there like a butterfly pinned to a board. It kept her from leaving.

Now watching the woman preparing the accident site for a cross that would be placed tomorrow, Gibb wondered if the same thing was going to happen to the children, Peter and Dolan, and their mother. And what of the seven illegals? Would all of their souls be kept there or just the ones who were enshrined by the roadside ceremony?

So many questions.

The radio finally interrupted him and called him back towards Buckeye. There was yet another wreck and more bodies to deal with, which meant very soon there would be more crosses.

***

He dreamed that he was buried beside the road. He tasted gravel and fuel fumes. The head burned and singed his skin. He tried to move, but felt a great weight that kept him in place. There was a brightness above him that he couldn’t see past. Above it he knew was salvation. He could almost see it. If he could only rise, he could reach it.

Then came a hand, a cold skeletal hand. He didn’t want to grab it but he felt impelled to touch it. When he did, it was like a magnet and his hand was fast affixed to the cold, dead thing.

Then he heard the voice, her voice, the voice of the Long Cool Woman.

Gibb shot awake.

She’d said something to him that was already caught by the gossamer wings of his dreams. It was gone, but not in real life. He could always track her down, all he had to do was put out the call and the truckers would let him know.

He went on shift an hour early, so eager was he to talk to Rev Boscoe and the Long Cool Woman. He had an idea, something that would help sooth his soul and allow him a modicum of peace.

He tracked the convoy down heading just past West Indian School Road. He caught up to them with ease. The mourners in the bus stared at him as he screamed past. With lights flashing and siren blaring, he pulled in front of the three Harley–Davidsons. The convoy slowed as he applied his brakes. After a hundred yards, they all eased to a stop on the side of the road. He watched the bikers in his rearview mirror. Two straddled their bikes and stared at him making eye contact through the mirror. The center biker, dropped his kickstand, and sauntered back to the Cadillac.

Gibb radioed in his position and exited the car. He kept to the shoulder, positioning the vehicles between him and the traffic. He passed the bikers, ignoring their impertinence and stepped to the back window of the Cadillac. He rapped on the window with his right hand. After several seconds, to the electric whine of a hidden motor, the window lowered. Gibb knelt and glanced inside and saw that Rev Boscoe stared back at him. Gibb turned and stared east.

"What did you mean, what you told me yesterday?" he asked.

"I said many things."

"About my life being incomplete...you don't know me. How can you say that?"

"You know better than that. You are of a type. I may not know you, but I know your type."

"What type am I?"

"Mr. Gibb, we don't have time for this."

"Then make the time." Gibb faced Rev Boscoe, but out of the corner of his eye he also caught the gaze of the biker, who'd been leaning down and glaring through the other rear window. They exchanged a look that only cops and robbers knew.

Rev Boscoe saw this and toggled the window nearest him closed, shutting the biker off from the conversation. Then the Burned Man scooted across the leather seat until he was next to Gibb. "You don't want to do this."

"I'm not afraid," Gibb said, forcing himself to stare at the place on the man's face where a nose should have been. "I am not afraid," he said again.

Rev Boscoe shook his head. "You should be."

"You said before that I am of a type. What type am I?"

"You are a practical man."

"You say it like it's a bad thing."

"When you see a problem you fix it," Rev Boscoe said.

"That's right. What's wrong with that?"

"You place responsibility as the most important character trait and strive to be responsible at all times and in all places," Rev Boscoe said.

"Of course. Doesn't everyone?"

"No. Everyone doesn't." Rev Boscoe stared pointedly at Gibb. "In fact, some see it as a weakness."

"That's just crazy. Responsibility is a good thing. It's a strength, not a weakness."

"Corinthians 12:9 says My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness," Rev Boscoe said, his hands clasped beneath his chin. "You see your responsibility as a strength, but this very essence of your practical nature is your weakness."

"What? What?" Gibb sputtered. "But that makes no sense."

"There is a pattern to things. There is a holy promise that was made from the moment time began. The verse I quoted speaks to Christ and how he, as a humble man, ascended into Heaven and gave us grace."

"What does humility have to do with responsibility?"

"Do you know the limits of your responsibility? Do you understand where you must stop?"

"What limits? This is just responsibility we're talking about. How do limits apply?"

Instead of answering, Rev Boscoe steepled his hands beneath his chin and closed his eyes. He shook his head twice. "No," he mumbled. "We shouldn't—" he began but was cut-off by some internal dialogue. "Yes. Okay," he finally whispered. Without opening his eyes he said, "She will honor your request."

"My request?" Gibb sputtered.

"You were going to petition the Long Cool Woman, yes?" Rev Boscoe asked, his tone that of a patient professor.

"Well, yes. I mean, I was going to, but how did she know? How did you know?"

Rev Boscoe smiled, the sight utterly lacking in humor. "You're willing to accept that the dead can speak through a comatose woman but have a problem with the fact that I can communicate with her?"

Gibb processed the question and saw the reason within the unreasonable. "So she'll do it?"

"Yes," Rev Boscoe said. "She'll do it."

"Then it's back the way we came. You'll follow me, right?"

"Right." Rev Boscoe toggled closed the window signaling the end to the conversation.

Gibb rushed back to his police cruiser. He hadn't missed the tired resolve on Rev Boscoe's face. He'd just decided to ignore it. After all, his most private wish was about to be fulfilled. What was he to do? Trade his dream for the nightmare of a burned preacher?

A break in traffic found them accelerating until the next exit, where they were able to regroup before heading West towards mile marker 43. And with each mile they drew closer, the more excited Gibb became.

Excitement not like when he chased down a perp or during a high-speed chase. Gibb had never intended on being a policeman. No, not the adrenaline surges of the physical, more like the endorphin highs of higher learning.

Like when he'd received his scholarship to Princeton. No one in his family had even gone to college, much less received a scholarship. But after four years of perfect grades and an inspired letter from his guidance counselor, Princeton had tendered him the Soren Kierkegaard Scholarship in Philosophy.

Or when he'd graduated Phi Beta Kappa and slid into graduate school.

Or when he'd been offered a teaching position at Arizona State University, charged with shaping the thoughts, ethics and futures of a hopeful generation.

After passing mile marker 44, Gibb did something he'd never done before. He didn't call in. He didn't text a message. Instead, he turned everything off. The computer, the portable radio, the console radio— all turned off. He didn't need their interruption. He didn't need for something to spoil the moment.

Usually, the interior of the cruiser was alight with police technology. But as he pulled to a stop beside mile marker 43, the interior was as black as the universe Gibb saw from behind his closed eyes. He waited several moments, remembering the words he'd said on that night his life had changed, words he'd borrowed from Kierkegaard himself. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. An imperative of understanding must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing. That is what my soul longs after, as the African desert thirsts for water. What is truth but to live for an idea?

And that idea had been responsibility.

Gibb's eyes shot open as knuckles wrapped at his window. More time had passed than he'd realized. The interior windows had begun to fog. He turned and toggled his window down. He watched as a gloved hand gripped his door and a face hove into view.

"You gonna do this?" the biker with the Fu Manchu mustache asked. "The reverend's waiting and wants to know if you’re ready."

Gibb rubbed his face. His hand came away wet with sweat. Where had he gone? Where had the time gone? He stepped from the cruiser, leaving his hat on the seat. He glanced once at the baton resting in its door sleeve, but decided to leave that alone as well. Where he was going, he didn't expect to need either.

The other two bikers were lowering the Long Cool Woman to the ground as he approached the shrine. The Burned Man stood nearby, hands clasped in front of him, head down as if in prayer. Gibb glanced towards the bus where the mourners sat facing forward in their seats, ignoring his episode. Clearly they were not his mourners.

Gibb grinned nervously. To be able to finally speak to the man he'd killed was something very significant to him—something he'd never thought he'd be able to do from this side of the shroud. He understood that his need was selfish. Redemption was a private thing.

What had changed his mind and made him seek out the Long Cool Woman was the constant wondering about Stephen Jones and whether or not the man's soul had passed to the other side. The accident had been horrifically violent. Superimposed upon the desert, Gibb watched as a phantom car careened out of control. The car twisting through the air. A head slammed against the driver-side window as geometry and torque merged. Blood plumed. Then an explosion of earth, plastic, glass and metal as what was left of the car hit, tumbled and split asunder.

They say that the soul remains at the scene of violent deaths. Gibb remembered the crash as if it were yesterday and there was no death as violent as the one that had taken the life from Stephen Jones. If the soul remained, the Long Cool Woman would help it across. If the soul remained, perhaps Gibb would be able to tell it all the things he'd done to make up for the untimely death.

The bikers finished arranging the Long Cool Woman, then backed away. As they passed Gibb on the way back to their bikes, he noticed that they seemed afraid to make eye contact.

Rev Boscoe walked to the body and gently grasped the Long Cool Woman's left hand and placed it against the shrine. He knelt beside the body and held the right hand in an embrace. Slowly, he petted it.

"Come, Mr. Gibb," Rev Boscoe said.

Gibb gulped and stepped forward.

"Allow me to tell you a few things, before we begin," Rev Boscoe said.

Gibb nodded, suddenly very nervous as the moment of his confrontation neared. He didn't mind postponing it a moment or two longer.

"You never asked me how I became this way?"

Gibb had thought about asking, but knew it would have been presumptuous and rude. What must have happened must have been truly horrible.

Rev Boscoe smiled and, without moving his head, glanced up at Gibb. "It was truly horrible; more so because of the betrayal. It was my mother who did this, you see."

Gibb felt his breath hitch.

"You don't have children, but let me promise you, there is nothing more terrible than a mother who hurts her own child. The shattering of the trust alone..." Rev Boscoe's voice trailed off.

Gibb didn't have children. He'd wanted to, but since he'd taken away Stephen Jones' chance to be a father, it hadn't seemed fair.

"We were always poor. She was always high. When she couldn't get hold of morphine or heroin, she'd have to settle. My father painted houses, you see, so there were always a lot of paint cans lying around. He'd collect them until he'd have enough for a full can, then charge the client as if he'd purchased the paint special for them. Not really cheating, just frugal."

Gibb watched Rev Boscoe petting the hand of the comatose medium and tried to imagine the Burned Man as a child. Try as he might, he couldn't.

"Yes. Would you believe I don't even know what I looked like back then either? I was so young, I just don't remember." The Reverend shrugged. "No matter. Like all of us, I am what I've become." He glanced up suddenly, confusion in his eyes. "Where was I?"

"Your father was frugal," Gibb murmured.

"That's right, ever the frugal man. What he didn't know, is how my mother would go into the paint shed when he was gone during the day. She'd take a plastic drop cloth and drape it over her head. That day she hurt me, I watched her through the window as she opened up cans of blue and red and white. I remembered thinking of the flag and wondering if she was going to paint something patriotic." He glanced up and smiled weakly. "Of course, I didn't know the word patriotic until much later."

Gibb matched the smile and nodded.

"Then she began to sing and sway like we were back in church."

"What'd she sing?" Gibb surprised himself by asking.

"Showtunes. She sang showtunes. We had these old records that she'd play. She had all the words memorized. I broke one of the records once and was soundly trounced. I deserved that one." Rev Boscoe stopped petting the hand, and placed the Long Cool Woman's hand over his eyes as he continued.

"Then later after the red, white and blue paint, when I was playing with my trucks in the kitchen, she came inside with a hammer and two ten penny nails. She called me over, and like a good boy, I came. I was so surprised when she nailed my left foot to the floor, I didn't even cry out until she started pounding the other nail home in my right foot."

Gibb brought his hand to his mouth. Although he'd seen horrific things in his fifteen years as a policeman, the matter of fact way the story was being told was almost as shocking as they events they retold.

"Then she began to boil water. She told me I was dirty. She told me I had bugs. She said that she knew how to get them out. She said that she knew how to make me clean. So there I stood, crying and begging my mother to let me go, trying to move my feet, when the first pot came to a boil. Do you know that she smiled when she poured it over my head?"

Gibb shook his head, but it went unnoticed.

"My brain shut down at that point. It took three years before I could think straight again."

Gibb stood, hand to his mouth, eyes wide, staring at the Burned Man. The words ‘when the first pot came to a boil’ reverberated through his mind. Part of him wondered how many pots she'd boiled.

"You were right about something," Rev Boscoe said, abruptly changing the subject. "The soul of the man you killed is still here."

"What?" Gibb was taken off guard by the pronouncement.

"Do you know why the Long Cool Woman never came to you?" Rev Boscoe asked, removing her hand from his eyes and staring at Gibb. "You do know that the normal way this happens is that she comes to you, right?"

"I didn't know."

"Clearly. There's a reason why she didn't come to you."

"What's the reason?"

"Better let her explain." Rev Boscoe stood.

Gibb suddenly noticed that the Long Cool Woman's eyes were open. Her attention was fixed on him. Her face was unreadable, yet her eyes were alive.

"Take her hand," Rev Boscoe said.

Gibb stepped forward, took the hand into his own, and felt the grave. If possible, her skin was even colder than the Burned Man's. But he didn't have time to contemplate this. Her gaze held him as firm as the gripping hand and he was unable to look away.

"What do we do now?" he asked.

Then he watched the lips writhe upon the Long Cool Woman's face like two red worms. A hiss escaped as the eyes narrowed. Gibb felt the grip on his hand tighten. Her nails dug into the inside of his wrist.

"You are the one," the Long Cool Woman said, her voice low and mean.

Gibb tried to pull his hand free.

"You did this. You killed me."

Blood began to seep from where her nails had pierced his wrist. With his other hand, he tried to pry her fingers away. Then a hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed it.

"You wanted this, so stop fighting it," Rev Boscoe whispered.

Gibb shook his head, but knew the truth of the words. He could take a little pain. He should take a little pain; after all, he was the one still alive.

"Yes. I killed you," he said slowly, gritting his teeth so as not to cry out from the pain and the guilt.

The soul that had once been Stephen Jones hissed in reply. "Why?" asked the Long Cool Woman.

"I wanted to make sure that you made it to Heaven. After all that I did, I wanted to make sure you were—"

"No. Why did you kill me?" asked the voice. "Why did you run?"

"Because I was afraid."

"You were driving drunk," the Long Cool Woman stated matter-of-factly, the voice authoritarian and with a sudden mannish quality.

"Yes. I'd been at a party at the Dean's house and had a few too many martinis," Gibb said, remembering the event. He'd just been promoted to full professor and the Dean of the Humanities Department had thrown a party for Gibb at his resort home west of Phoenix. "I didn't know I was drunk until I hit the interstate and by then it was too late."

"Too late," mimicked the voice.

Gibb continued, but he was flustered by the sarcasm. "I should have stopped. I should have let you give me a ticket or take me in, or anything other than what happened," he said, stumbling over the words in his rush to get them out.

"Why were you afraid?"

"Because I would have been fired." Gibb looked into the Long Cool Woman's face. "I know. It's stupid. Incredibly stupid. I want you to know that I would have done anything, would do anything to erase that day."

"Why are you here?" the voice asked.

"To make sure you were released to Heaven," Gibb said, his eyes hopeful.

"Bullshit," spat the Long Cool Woman. "Who the hell are you trying to kid?"

Gibb jerked back as if he'd been slapped. He opened his mouth to say something, but he didn't have the chance.

"You came here to make yourself feel better," the Long Cool Woman said, drawing the words out into one long snarl.

"I did not," Gibb said. "I've been—"

"—keeping me here for seventeen years while you made yourself feel better. Don't think I didn't know what's going on. I felt you thinking about me every day. Each thought, each wish was a tug on my soul. Your pathetic conscience needed to be soothed because killing me made you feel bad."

"But that's not true."

"Boo f*cking hoo! You felt bad and did all this to make yourself feel better."

After the accident, Gibb had high-tailed it home. It wasn't until the next day that he'd discovered that the police officer had died. He'd attended the funeral, but kept to the back. Seeing Stephen Jones' young wife weep as she was handed the flag had broken him inside. He'd felt responsible and knew that the responsible man would do something to make things right.

"That isn't fair," Gibb said. "I did this for you. I changed my life for you."

"Not fair? Not fair?" sputtered the Long Cool Woman. "You kill me and tell me I'm not being fair?"

After the funeral, Gibb had quit his job, the same job he'd been worried about losing that night of the accident. Keeping it would have been a laugh in the face of responsibility. Kierkegaard would have rolled over in his grave. So Gibb had taken a sabbatical at St. David's Monastery down by Tombstone as he contemplated his future. Three months later, his conclusion was that the ethical thing, the existential thing, the responsible thing, would be to live the life of the man he'd killed. His goal was to fulfill the dreams of the dead man, so at the age of 29 he'd become a highway patrol officer.

"I was trying to be responsible. I was trying to—"

"Shut up. Just shut the hell up. It's because of your irresponsibility that I died. It's because of your misplaced responsibility that I have not passed through the shroud."

"No. The violence of the accident is what kept you here." He glanced up at Rev Boscoe. "Tell him, Rev. Tell him it was the violence that kept him from passing on." Gibb trailed off as he noticed the sad look in Rev Boscoe's eyes. "What? Tell me."

Rev Boscoe cleared his throat before he spoke. "Memory and heartache. Sure, the violence of the death carries a certain resonance. But unremembered, the soul will pass on just as quickly as if he'd died in his sleep."

"I don't understand," Gibb said, looking at the shrine he'd erected. "Do you mean that these," he said pointing to the cross atop the concrete based, "are responsible for keeping the souls in place."

Rev Boscoe nodded.

"But they're no different than tombstones in a cemetery," Gibb argued.

"They are very different," Rev Boscoe said. "These things along the road commemorate the event, rather than the person. In a graveyard, only the person is remembered. Graves are where people are buried. Shrines are where memories are buried."

Gibb stared at the shrine in shock. What had he done? He hadn't meant to make matters worse. He'd only thought to pay respect and be responsible. "But these are everywhere," he said.

"Yes," Rev Boscoe sighed. "They are."

"And now you're a policeman," came the edgy voice of the Long Cool Woman.

"Yes. I thought it was the proper thing to do."

"To replace me?"

"No," said Gibb. "To show respect for you."

"By becoming me?"

"Yes. No." Gibb suddenly found the need to defend himself. "By doing the things you had done so that the world wasn't at a loss."

"What the hell kind of logic is that?"

"It's good logic. It's the way a great many people believe. It's about responsibility and existentialism."

"It's about you wanting to make yourself feel better," said the Long Cool Woman. "That's it. Nothing more."

Then the Long Cool Woman released his hand. Her eyes narrowed, then closed, her face returning to the soft features of a woman asleep.

"Wait," said Gibb, picking up the limp hand. "Come back. Please," he sobbed.

Rev Boscoe knelt beside him and gently, yet forcefully, removed the hand of the Long Cool Woman from his grasp. He placed the hand back on the woman's chest, then placed the other on top of this one.

"You wanted forgiveness, didn't you?" Rev Boscoe asked.

"I—" Gibb's chest felt incredibly tight. Tears burned his eyes.

"I never forgave my mother, either. Not only didn't she deserve it, but I can hold a grudge if I want to. I can be pissed off. If she'd killed me, I'd have haunted her," Rev Boscoe said as he finished smoothing out the Long Cool Woman's dress.

Finally the fist around Gibb's heart relented allowing him to release a long sob-filled sigh.

"Kind of selfish to take things into your own hands, don't you think?"

Gibb stared miserably at Rev Boscoe as he stood, then extended a hand to help Gibb to his feet. When they were both standing, Rev Boscoe continued. "Did you think he'd be eager to accept your apology? Life and death is not some Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway show. My mother found that out when my Dad shot her with the pistol we kept up on the refrigerator. According to the police report I read when I'd reached adulthood, she was singing a song from Oklahoma." His voice switched to a cappella sing-song as he sung, "O what a beautiful morning, O what a beautiful day. I've got a beautiful feeling, everything's going my way." Rev Boscoe shook his head, as he gestured for the bikers to come over. "Pretty f*cking audacious that you'd think so highly of yourself to take on his life."

Gibb couldn't take anymore. Everything he'd become, everything he'd done, had been put to the test and found to be wrong. How could he have done it so badly? He took off at a dead run towards his police cruiser. He reached it, unlocked the door, leapt inside, then jammed the car into gear. Within seconds he was racing down the highway at a hundred miles per hour, lights flashing, siren keening his agony into the night.

The essence of existentialism is that the individual is responsible for his actions. He'd killed, been responsible, punished himself, and attempted to redeem himself. He'd thought he'd done right, only to find out that by doing what he did, he'd denied the dead man's soul heaven.

Had he been too prideful? Sure he was proud of himself for his sacrifice. Was that why he was being punished? Was that why he felt so horrible?

A hundred more questions shot across Gibb's mind, every other one piercing his psyche, wounding him with doubt. Who had he become? He'd lived someone else's life for so long, where did he end and where did Stephen Jones begin?

The rage built inside him until he finally exploded with emotion. Gibb hammered at the steering wheel with both hands until they ached. He beat the dashboard with the flat of his hand. He screamed over and over, his anger trying to overwhelm the mechanical whine of the siren. When he finished he was out of breath.

Spent.

Gibb turned off the siren and slowed the car until he pulled to a stop on the side of the road. He turned off the ignition, but left the keys. He opened the door and stepped out. He removed his utility belt and threw it in the passenger seat. He removed his star and placed it carefully atop the dash. He took out his wallet, and flipped through the credit cards and memberships to different police benevolent associations. Instead of deciding what to remove, he just tossed the whole thing into the car. There was nothing in there that was really him.

The last thing he did was lock the door and close it. They'd find the car and wonder what had happened. They'd check his house. They'd wonder where he went to, but never find out. Gibb was done with it all. It was time for him to discover who he was. It was time for him to let go of everything.

He stood on the side of the road for about fifteen minutes. Cars automatically slowed when they saw the flashing lights of the cruiser. They didn't know what was going on, their greatest fear to get pulled over for some violation.

It wasn't until the convoy came into view that Gibb finally stirred. Led by the three bikers, the convoy pulled to a stop in front of him. Rev Boscoe stuck his head out the window. Upon seeing Gibb, he nodded, then pulled himself back inside the Cadillac.

Gibb stepped to the door of the bus. With a whoosh it opened. The driver was a middle-aged black woman and her smile embraced him. "Come on, honey. If you wanna ride, you better get on," she said.

Gibb stepped aboard and found an empty seat. No one paid him much attention. They seemed intent on their own problems, their gazes towards independent horizons.

This was not a problem.

Gibb completely understood.

He'd need some time to himself before he could be himself, whoever that was. He’d have plenty of opportunity to figure it out, too.

Shrines to the dead along Southwestern U.S. highways almost outnumbered the cacti. In fact, the number seemed to have increased in recent years. When he'd first began working as a highway patrolman, it was only the occasional cross placed by one of the local Mexicans to bless the ground on which a loved one had died. Now it seemed as if crosses grew out of the ground. Almost every fifty feet was a shrine placed in memory of some driver who'd lost control, or fallen asleep at the wheel, or been the victim of a drunk driver.

These shrines stand like mileage markers for the dead along the highways of the living, mostly ignored, sometimes remembered and forever present. And they’d remain that way until the wood of the crosses crumbled, the shrines collapsed and all who knew the deceased had themselves died and forgotten the reason for the enshrinement. Then, and only then, would the souls be free to travel on to that far country, past what is known, to continue a journey long postponed.

Their only chance of early release lies with the Redemption Roadshow, El Hombre Quemado and the Long Cool Woman, envoy to the living, arbiter for the dead and speaker for the millions of imprisoned souls held fast by the memories of who they once were.

***

Story Notes: Monica Kuebler of Rue Morgue and Mistress in-charge of Burning Effigy Press pulled me aside in Salt Lake City and asked me for a novella for her new imprint. She gave me the pitch and I was impressed. I said yes, then submitted a long story I had called Long Cool Woman. Monica loved it, but told me it wasn’t long enough. Five thousand words later Long Cool Woman became Redemption Roadshow. The sense of place and the shrines along the road in Arizona are a real thing. I just took it one step farther and asked a few questions which became the underlying themes of the story. As you know by now, I write a lot about responsibility. This story takes it to the nth degree. I’ve had a lot of folks ask me to write more stories featuring the Burned Man and the Long Cool Woman. I think I’m going to. I just haven’t thought of a good idea yet. This one was also a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award.





Weston Ochse (pronounced 'Oaks) (1965 – Present) lives in Southern Arizona with his wife, and fellow author, Yvonne Navarro, and Great Danes, Pester Ghost Palm Eater, Mad Dog Ghoulie Sonar Brain and Goblin Monster Dog. For entertainment he races tarantula wasps, wrestles rattlesnakes, and bakes in the noonday sun. His work has won the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel, been finalist for Bram Stoker Awards for Long Fiction and Short Fiction, and been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for Short Fiction. His work has also appeared in anthologies, magazines and professional writing guides. His novels include Scarecrow Gods, Empire of Salt and Blaze of Glory. He thinks it's damn cool that he's had stories in comic books.

Weston holds Bachelor's Degrees in American Literature and Chinese Studies from Excelsior College. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from National University. Weston is a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer. He has been to more than fifty countries and speaks Chinese with questionable authority. Weston is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, a purple belt in Ryu Kempo Jujitsu and a green belt in the Hawaiian martial art of Kuai Lua.


Visit him online at www.westonochse.com.





Dark Regions Press



Dark Regions Press is an independent specialty publisher of horror, dark fiction, fantasy and science fiction, specializing in horror and dark fiction and in business since 1985. We have gained recognition around the world for our creative works in genre fiction and were awarded the Horror Writers Association 2010 Specialty Press Award and the Italian 2012 The Black Spot award for Excellence in a Foreign Publisher. We produce premium signed hardcover editions for collectors as well as trade paperbacks and ebook editions for more casual readers. We have published hundreds of authors, artists and poets such as Kevin J. Anderson, Bentley Little, Michael D. Resnick, Rick Hautala, Bruce Boston, Robert Frazier, W.H. Pugmire, Simon Strantzas, Jeffrey Thomas, Charlee Jacob, Richard Gavin, Tim Waggoner and hundreds more. Dark Regions Press has been creating specialty books and creative projects for over twenty-seven years.



The press has staff throughout the country working virtually but also has a localized office in Ashland, Oregon from where we ship our orders and maintain the primary components of the business.



Dark Regions Press staff, authors, artists and products have been interviewed/mentioned/listed in Rue Morgue Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist Online, LA Times, The Sunday Chicago Tribune, The Examiner, Playboy, Comic-Con, Wired, The Huffington Post, Horror World, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Sony Reader store and many other publications and vendors.



Visit us at: http://www.darkregions.com