You know how the interior of an old American car smells?  That baked vinyl and nylon carpet smell?  There was that, and hot coffee, and a dozen of Bosa Donuts' finest sitting on the seat between us.  It was sunrise, and shafts of light filled the sky over the Organ Mountains.  Sitting in a Ford Bronco, staring at the sunrise, at the fence in front of us, Steve and I contemplated little.

We came from very different backgrounds.  He worked for the BLM as a ranger, a law enforcement officer.  I volunteered for the BLM, often riding with him, but I worked for a law firm as a runner, a minimum wage slave dedicated to driving fast from point A to point B.  He had a wife, kids, a mortgage.  I had a sometimes Girl, an apartment filled with empties, and a hangover.  He lit one of my Marlboros and regarded me, cop eyes over cop sunglasses, cop haircut, cop mustache.

"Ya know, you never ask me anything about what I've done," he said, exhaling smoke and donut.

"Whaddya' mean?  I've asked you about all kinds of crap.  Like that abandoned cabin up there, or the trailhead that leads over the canyon into Cimmarron Flats...." he cuts me off with a shake of the head, takes another drag, sips some coffee.  He drinks his with tons of cream and sugar.

"Nah, nah.  The cop thing.  You never ask me if I've shot anyone, or if I've been on a chase, or any of that shit."

"My uncle was in Vietnam," I say, by roundabout response.  "He was a LURP.  I asked him about being a soldier before he died.  He told me it was like asking someone how much money they made.  Said it wasn't polite."  I lit up as well.  The windows were open, and the cool desert was rapidly heating, from 60 degrees to 80 in the sun.

"Well, he's right.  I mean, it's not polite to ask in polite company.  It'd be like asking your ladyfriend what size bra she wore," he winks.  "By the way...."

"Thirty four C.  Have you shot anyone?" I smile into my coffee cup.

"Yeah.  Yep.  I was on patrol west of the Brokeoffs, north of the road to Timberon, near Alamo..."

"My parents have a place in Timberon that we built.  I always hated that road"

"Rough fucking road.  They never grade it.  Anyhow, there's a road north of there near Dog Canyon, and we have some protected land there, a 'no wheels' place."  'No wheels' trails meant just that: feet and horses were OK, but anything with wheels was forbidden.  In that part of the world, where you saw maybe one person a week?  Those were light suggestions, not laws.  My stepbrother leaned to ride his dirtbike out on that road.  I kept quiet.

"So I'm out there, checking on some complaints phoned in from the Otero sheriff.  Seems the old lady who owns the land around Frenchy's cabin had been 'terrorized' by this group of kids.  They were on three wheelers, ATVs, ya know?  Motorcycles and shit.  They had rifles and were shooting at that little shack two miles southeast of Frenchy's, and they were ripping the trails up, scaring the animals."  I knew the area.  Frenchy's cabin was a mis-nomer: the frenchman who settled in Otero in the 1900's had a small place much further up the trail, towards Rim Canyon.  The building everyone called "Frenchy's" was built in the 1930's by some of Al Fall's old crew.  Used to be a hangout for cattle rustlers.  I had stayed overnight in it once on a search for some lost kids.  The shack Steve was talking about was a rotted adobe guardhouse, probably built in the late 1800's.

"So, the Otero sheriffs can't do anything about it.  The kids are gone when they get there, burning sand ten miles west into WSMR land," he says.  Like everyone here, he pronounces the acronym for White Sands Missile Range 'WhizzMer.'

"That's gotta' piss a cop off," I say, opening the door to get more air in the stale cabin.  Marlboros and hours of breathing have taken their toll on the air in the Bronco.

"No shit.  So, we get the report a day or so later.  I drive out there, cutting through WhizzMer, through Orogrande, across 54.  Drive up the two-rut, and wait.  Sure enough, about three hours later, here's a gang of kids driving like bats out of hell from Alamgordo.  They were from that little trailer park south of town, that one...what's it called?"

"Sunrise Acres.  My stepbrother and his wife lived there."

"Yeah, so they're driving down, goddamn bikes and ATV's sound like a pack of hornets.  They're doing sixty if they were doin' anything.  I get out of the truck, get on the PA, and wait for 'em.  I know they won't see me 'till they get close," he's leaning into the story now, hands active, eyes unfocused, lost.  Bureau trucks are painted a khaki brown, or white.  They blend in very well.

"So these kids jump up over this dune about sixty yards from where I'm at.  All of a sudden, there's this....this...backfire noise."  Steve stops.  Sips his coffee.  Lights another of my Marlboros.  Checks the horizon.

Shafts of light defined by the dust shoot through the ragged canyons and peaks.  Literal rays of sunlight, defined harsh and yellow against the deep blue. He continues, softly.

"There's this other car, a Ford Falcon.  I didn't even see it.  Guy has a rifle with a scope.  His grandmother is the old lady who owns the land.  He'd just shot one of the kids, just shot him."  Steve pauses.

"He kill the kid?"

"Nah.  Just shot him, hit him in the leg.  He was using some full metal jacket rounds, made a nice clean hole in the kid's leg.  But I turn, start yelling into the PA.  The guy turns the rifle toward me.  I jump in the truck, crank it up, drive right at him.  I drive over these dunes, full speed, all kinds of brush and shit hanging in the grill. He was maybe twenty yards initially, behind some dunes.  I damn near broke that truck driving to him.  He didn't even move, though.  Guy just wasn't scared.  Just sighted me in that scope.  Just not scared."

Steve cleared the inquirey after the shooting.  He was acting in self-defense.  The guy had already shot a kid in the leg.  Two days previous, at a little bar in High Rolls, the guy had been blathering on about how he'd like to shott up some BLM trucks.

The first shot tore through the grill of Steve's truck.  His second shot came after the truck had stopped, left a hole in the fender big enough to put your finger in.  Steve's first answering shot was wild, hit the windshield of the Falcon, but his second shot hit the man's collar bone, close to the neck on the left side. Part of the bullet ricocheted and sliced an artery.

Steve was quiet, again.  The sun was fully up.  We contemplated the mountains.  I lit another cigarette, not knowning...never knowing...what to say.  He looked at his watch.

"Well," he said, "I don't see our mystery fence cutter coming out in broad daylight.  Let's hit the Village Inn, get some breakfast."

On the way back, Steve stops for cigarettes, hands me a pack.  "You don't have to tell anyone about the thing I told you about."  He says it as though it is a favor to me, and not to him.  He calls it a "thing," and not a shooting.  The ride to pancakes and eggs takes twenty minutes.  He sheds the intimate skin.  His uniform becomes him, again.  "You don't have to say nothin' to anyone," he says, authoritative.  "They know the story already, and I don't need the questions."

The questions.  The verbal embodiment of a ghost.