“Your father died. I don’t expect you to punch a damn clock. I just expect you to come back.”

“I will.”

Stepping out the door, Hunter walked down to his knucklehead motorcycle. With an onyx hand-painted Sportster gas tank, a rigid Big Twin setup, chrome ape-hanger handlebars, and tall sissy bar in the rear, with a 93ci S&S engine and a five-speed Indian transmission case. Hunter loaded his pack onto the sissy bar; grabbed his sleeping bag, small tent, and from the garage his bass-tube-looking black barrel bag with a few tools, spark plugs, and flat repair kit, just in case, and tied it all down. Then he latched on his flat-black skull half helmet, kick-started the bike, inhaled deep, gave the bike some gas, and roared down his driveway, knowing his next mission.

JACK

JACK

He can’t stay here, in this woman’s mud-brick home with a straw roof, just outside San Pedro de Atacama.

Outside, orange dust funnels up into the clear blue, obscuring the view of sunbaked mountains and salt flats. It reminds Jack of something from a Sergio Leone Western.

Inside the house, behind the electric-azure-blue door, wanting to leave, Jack starts to get up from the table carved from a hefty slab of tree. Slickplaned with rounded corners, nails set and filled. The chair he sits in is similar, built by hand, not mass-produced in some soulless factory. Sanded smooth, stained, and sealed.

The woman sits across from him, her liver-spotted hand pressing down on his thigh. Her touch is a working woman’s—strong and callused, knowing. “Stay,” she tells him.

Silver streaks the thick black hair hanging to her neckline. Her lips, smooth and dry, look penciled on as if from a portrait of Frida Kahlo. The woman’s complexion is a pecan shade, as if toasted by the high-desert sun, and her face frames eyes that glitter black and bottomless and seem to read his soul.

“Ma’am, I cannot accept your offer of kindness,” he tells her.

She laughs. “I welcomed you into my home. And here you sit. Un gringo loco.” She gives him an appraising look. “Cálmese, señor. You need rest. To talk. Forget. Let go of your demonios. Then you can leave. After some good drink. Some food. Relaxation.”

Money. It was all he contemplated, all he had ever worked for. And right now he had nothing. No medium of exchange. No currency of any kind. Couldn’t get a hostel. Couldn’t argue. It would be dark soon. Too late to hitchhike. To walk out from wherever this was and into the Atacama Desert, which would soon turn cold. He might not even get a lift. Or he might get in with the wrong people and get beaten and mugged for being dumb, attacked and maybe eaten by a cougar. Come morning, maybe he could find a Western Union, get money wired. He could at least pay her for her troubles.