paid the cashier for his coffee and toast, and gazed out the front door at the sun lighting the landscape, breaking over arid mountains that seemed transported from Central Asia and affixed to the southern rim of the United States.

He walked back to the service counter. “It’s gonna be a hot one. I might need one of those singles with lunch,” he said.

“I don’t have any cold ones,” the Mexican woman said.

“I’ll put it on top of the air conditioner at the motel,” he said. “Fact is, better give me a couple.”

She put two wet bottles in a paper bag and handed them to him. The top of Pete’s shirt was unbuttoned, and the woman’s eyes drifted to the shriveled tissue on his shoulder. “You was in Iraq?”

“I was in Afghanistan, but only three weeks in Iraq.”

“My son died in Iraq.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s six-thirty in the morning,” she said, looking at the bottles in his hand.

“Yes, ma’am, it is.”

She started to speak again but instead turned back to her work, her eyes veiled.

He walked back to the motel and stopped by the desk. Outside, he heard an eighteen-wheeler shifting gears at the traffic light, metal grinding. “We got any mail?” he said to the clerk.

“No, sir,” the clerk said.

“What time does the mailman come?”

“Same time as yesterday, ’bout ten.”

“Guess I’ll check by later,” Pete said.

“Yes, sir, he’ll sure be here by ten.”

“Somebody else couldn’t have misplaced it, stuck it in the wrong box or something?”

“Anything I find with y’all’s name on it, I promise I’ll bring it to your room.”

“It’ll be from a man named Junior Vogel.”

“Yes, sir, I got it.”

Outside, Pete stood in the shadow of the motel and looked at the breathtaking sweep of the landscape, the red and orange and yellow coloration in the rocks, the gnarled trees and scrub brush whose root systems had to grow through slag to find moisture. He slapped a mosquito on the back of his neck and looked at it. The mosquito had been fat with blood and had left a smear on his palm the size of a dime. Pete wiped the blood on his jeans and began walking down the two-lane road that looked like a displaced piece of old Highway 66. He walked past the miniature golf course and angled through the abandoned drive-in theater, passing through the rows of iron poles that had no speakers on them, row after row of them, their function used up and forgotten, surrounded by the sounds of wind and tumbleweed blowing through their midst.

He walked for perhaps twenty minutes, up a long sloping grade to a plateau on which three table sandstone rocks were set like browned biscuits one on top of another. He climbed the rocks and sat down, his legs hanging in space, and placed the bag with the two bottles of beer in it by his side. He watched a half-dozen buzzards turning in the sky, the feathers in their extended wings fluttering on the warm current of air rising from the hardpan. Down below, he watched an armadillo work its way toward its burrow amid the creosote brush, the weight of its armored shell swaying awkwardly above its tiny feet.

He reached into his pocket and took out his Swiss Army knife. With his thumb and index finger, he pulled out the abbreviated blade that served as both a screwdriver and a bottle opener. He peeled the wet paper off the beer bottles and set one sweating with moisture and spangled with amber sunlight on the rock. He held the other in his left hand and fitted the opener on the cap. Below, the armadillo went into its burrow only to reappear with two babies beside it, all three of them peering out at the glare.

“What are you guys up to?” Pete asked.

No answer.

He uncapped the bottle and let the cap tinkle down the side of the rocks onto the sand. He felt the foam rise over the lip of the bottle and slide down his fingers and the back of his hand and his wrist. He looked back over his shoulder and could make out the screen of the drive-in movie and, farther down the street, the steak house and beer joint where Vikki had used another last name and taken a job as a waitress, the money under the table. He wiped his mouth with his hand and could taste the salt in his sweat.

At the foot of the table rocks, the polished bronze beer cap seemed