The Son of Every Man

Chapter 6.2

Miguel sat in silence for the next half an hour, moping in secrecy, feeling like he had been left out of an inside joke. Or worse, had managed to become the butt of one. Neither Eddie nor Gabe made a peep during this time. It always astonished him to remember that some people were content with saying nothing at all.

They were approaching the godforsaken outer-border of the reservation lands before Miguel realized that any hope of conversation rested squarely on his shoulders. The urge to speak up built inside him until he didn't care anymore if Eddie and the kid had formed an alliance against him.

"Are we going all the way to Headwaters today?"

Eddie nodded.

"How long will that take?"

"As long as it takes."

"As if you don't know," protested Miguel, brushing some black lint from the shoulder of his boss's white t-shirt.

Eddie eyed the clock in the corner of the car's vast digital display, perched above a woefully silent stereo. "Four. Maybe five. I hope that works with your busy fucking schedule."

Miguel looked over and saw, with immense relief, that a grin a taken over Eddie's face. "Fuck you."

"You're going to talk to your own boss that way?" Eddie gave him a playful punch in the shoulder. "You're stuck with me for the next however-many hours, and that's how you want to kick things off?"

"Sixty," Gabe said suddenly.

Miguel twisted around. "What?"

"We're stuck with each other for about sixty hours, if we get back at midnight on Monday. Not that I'm counting."

"Sounds like you are," said Eddie into the rearview mirror. "Be careful, Gabe. Counting the hours is the kissing-cousin of marking time. Doesn't matter if you live to be twenty or a hundred—death will come too soon to anyone who lives that way."

Miguel scoffed. "And what makes you the authority on these things?"

"I never claimed to be an authority," said Eddie. "It's as much my right as anyone else's to dispense advice as I see fit."

"You're one of a kind, Eddie." Miguel meant it as a compliment, and he gathered from Eddie's amused expression that he had taken it that way.

The burst of conversation faded quickly back to nothing. Another forty-five minutes passed in silence, pushing Miguel to a second breaking point. Without permission, he reached out turned on the stereo. All hope of entertainment was soon lost, though, as the only clear stations turned out to be Christian rock, which he hated, and Christian evangelism, which he both hated and feared. Defeated, he turned the unit off. "Amazing that none of us thought to bring one fucking CD."

"You don't like hearing what they have to say?" asked Gabe.

"Who?"

"Evangelists."

Miguel balked at this. "Hell no. I can't think of one reason why they would deserve my attention."

"They don't know you're listening," Gabe said. "Anyway, sometimes I tune in at night just to know what they go on about. It's not all bad."

"Well that's good for you," said Miguel. "Not my way of doing things, that's for sure."

Miguel waited, but no response issued from the back seat. In the miles that followed, he wondered whether he had hurt the kid's feelings yet again, deciding he had better stop being such a fucking asshole before it got him into even more trouble. There were kinder ways of relaying his opinions, he knew, no matter how tightly he held them to his chest.