MAX ORDOS DOES NOT EXIST

MAX ORDOS DOES NOT EXIST: CHAPTER TEN

"Shit," Jane says. "Shit shit shit. Is that a sheriff's department car?"

"Does it matter?" Pearl says, not opening his eyes.

"No," Jane says, pulling onto the shoulder and stopping. She turns the engine off and her shoulders sag. Pearl can't tell if she's crying or not, but he wishes she'd have put up more of a fight. Then again, would he have led the cops on a chase in her position? What good would it have done? Pearl asking himself these questions means he's more alert than he was, which also reminds him that his knee hurts. He winces as one of the big, farmboy cops who assaulted him in the hotel parking lot approaches Jane's car with a smirk on his face. Jane rolls down her window.

"License and registration," the cop says, his face slick with rain. The doctor obliges, and the cop looks at them before yelling "it's her, call it in" back to the cop car. He turns back to Jane, his smirk widening into a grin.

"Sheriff's been looking for you," he says, then looks past her at Pearl in the backseat. "Both of you. Unlock the back door please, ma'am." Pearl hears the door locks disengage, at which point the cop opens the door near Pearl's feet and grabs his bad leg. He pulls Pearl out of the car and down onto wet gravel as cars whip by. "You'll wait in the car with us," he says, then spits right next to Pearl's head and turns his attention to Jane again. Then he screams as she sprays him with Chemical Billy.

Pearl pulls himself up to his feet and manages to slam the cop's head into the roof of the car a few times before he is pulled away by the second cop and thrown to the ground again. The second cop draws his gun, but his eyes are watering from the mace residue in the air and the doctor is already running into the trees bordering the highway.

"Dammit," the cop grunts, trying to decide whether the doctor or Pearl is his priority. After stomping on Pearl's injured leg, he runs off after Jane.

Pearl crawls away from the road and behind the car, beating the first cop there by a few crucial seconds. A passing car splashes water their way as Pearl grabs a rock and hits the cop in his already-bloody face until he feels safe going for the cop's gun. The pain in his leg gnaws at him, and as soon as he's armed, he rests against the car. He considers, as rain soaks his throbbing leg and a uniformed cop writhes in the wet gravel nearby, the choices he made in his life that led him here. Maybe he should have been an architect, or followed his childhood ambition to be a cartoonist. Cartoonists don't run afoul of jarred brains or jarhead sheriffs too often. Even becoming a private detective and working with a different lawyer would have been smarter, all told.

Oh god, the lawyer. How many messages has she left at the hotel? God forbid she called the local police since he fell out of contact. Maybe he should let the sheriff kill him and spare himself that phone call.

A siren in the distance compels Pearl to once again pull himself to his feet. It's harder this time, and he braces himself upright against the car's trunk as Sheriff West's car pulls to a stop behind the other cop car and the siren cuts off. The rain is steady now. Little rushes of wind blow water into Pearl's face as he steadies his gun at Sheriff West, whose left hand rests on his holster.

"Don't be stupid, Mr. Pearl," West says. "Got you dead to rights. Even if you kill me, you can't go nowhere on that leg." He looks left and right for the other two cops, doesn't see them, scowls. "Either way this goes, you'll never see daylight again after today. So — "

Pearl interrupts him by shooting him in the leg. He was aiming for West's gut, but it turns out he isn't a great shot. The exertion, though minimal, buckles his bad leg and he collapses, losing the gun on his way down. He lands hard on his side and rolls over. The other cop is crawling away from this confrontation altogether, leaving a spotty trail of blood behind him. West limps over to him and spits on him. "Get back to the car, you asshole," he says, as traffic speeds by without stopping. The other cop ignores him and leans up against the roadside barrier. West sneers at him, then turns and looks right into Pearl's eyes.

Blood spreads across the sheriff's left trouser leg as he limps closer. Pearl forces his eyes to stay open. He wants to stare down this piece of shit right up until the end. It feels more honorable, more masculine in a small and pointless way. He watches the sheriff aim the gun, holds his breath, wills himself to accept the situation as it is. His ratty suit clings to him, his skin clammy from the rain. He imagines the sheriff feels the same way.

A serenity of sorts, can be found in this moment. It is broken by Jane, wet and dirty and spattered with blood, running up behind West and braining him with a police-issue nightstick. The blow doesn't knock him out, but it does knock the gun from his hand as he hits the gravel. She wipes rain and wet hair out of her eyes as she picks up West's gun.

"Where's that other cop?" Pearl asks.

"In the woods," Jane says. "Can you get up?"

"No," Pearl says. The doctor helps him stand as two cars drive through a puddle between the road and the shoulder, spraying them with dirty water. It gets West, too. He spits it out, along with some blood, as he staggers to his feet.

"You took the same oath I did," he says to Jane, though he's having some trouble focusing. "You're in it as deep as I am." He spits out more blood. "We can kill this asshole" — referring to Pearl — "and walk away. Couple more years and we'll be done."

"I'm tired of it," Jane says. "It's cruel."

"They're old brains in jars," West says, stepping closer to them. "And one of 'em drove Ken Carlisle and his cousin crazy. We're doing the right thing."

"We promised it a body and left it in a jar to rot," Jane says. "Giving it what it wants would be doing the right thing."

Pearl isn't sure which side of their argument is the right one. West has a point that the brain under Ken Carlisle's farmhouse should be destroyed. Something that can put thoughts in a stranger's head at will is too dangerous to let loose without supervision. West also tried to kill him as recently as five minutes ago, and Jane has a good point, too: these brains are living things. Conscious things. Really, what Pearl wants to do is go home and tell the lawyer to tell that developer not to buy this stupid house, and never talk to any of the involved parties ever again. He never asked for any of this.

"I'm gonna smoke while you two hash this out," he says, fishing around in his pocket for his cigarettes, most of which are soggy.

"Get your hand out of your pocket," West says, which distracts him enough for Jane to hit him with the nightstick again. He doesn't get up this time.