James and I walked for five hours yesterday. We prowled the neighborhood’s open fields, following paths Pete would walk, veering from those paths to scour drainage ditches many of which are now full of tumbleweeds. Today, we’ll do more of the same though my legs may protest and drive themselves to the airport.

James, with his wife and three daughters, moved from Germany to Nevada to retire. Married twenty-seven years his wife promptly ran off with another woman. James ended up living out of his car before moving into the house across the street from Pete. James’ father built houses in Germany which is why James acquired a union job excavating. Not limited to heavy machines, James is an all-trades guy who knows when to use who and whom. While building a motorcycle from junk yard parts he whistled Pete over one day and shared his bottled water. Fast but respectfully distant friends.

James is an outside neighbor and he knows Pete’s routine which is, as he says, clock setting. Out of the house every morning at 5 and back by 7:30.

“That field over there. I’d see Pete’s headed bobbing above the sage brush. Over there too, but he’d walk anywhere, always off the road. He’d come back with fossils, scraps of wood, all kinds of things. You saw that big rock in his yard? Has fossils in it. It must weigh eighty pounds, he brought that back from the water tower. Two, three miles away. I said how, he said he stopped often. Sometimes I’d see him walking home, sometimes he’d return through my back yard. And the dogs? He’d bark at some and feed others. The neighbor over there had a pig. Pete fed the pig.”

James knows Pete’s habits and that’s why he always wanted the search concentrated in the fields near his home. The heat and the clockwork.

“That week was hot. 110 degrees. He never would have walked to the tower. Look how far away it is. He always came back before the heat. He tripped and fell or had a heart attack or was bitten by a snake. Something. He’s not far away. Some people said he hitched rides. I never saw it. He turned them down from me. I’d be driving back from Smith’s and I’d offer but he’d say no.”

Our conversation while scuffling through the sage brush was peppered with speculation. Every sentence ended in a question mark. Pete could be anywhere and by the end of the day even James’ optimism was covered in desert dust. The fields which look dense at street level are not so from horseback, and many are scarred by ATV tire tracks.

And, by the end of the day it’s impossible not to think about a foul ending. Both Sam and I began the day knowing Pete fell in a field, but by the end of the day we were far less certain. All born of rumor, newspaper clippings, John’s comments about abusive tenants and our real frustration at the sad futility of it all.