Chapter 3

Table of Contents

Chapter 3

  “You did real good back there kid,” Tony said as they left the parking lot of the Cornudo café, so big you could plant a decent crop if there was water to make it grow.  “But don’t drive back to the motel.  Get on the Interstate and head east for a while.  We’ve got to throw that asshole off your trail. We told him we were going to Tucson, so let’s head that way.”

     Michael was inclined to believe him, because between Tony and Catalina Eddy, Tony seemed the less creepy of the two.

     “Who was that guy back there?” Mike asked, turning onto the freeway.

     Tony was looking over his shoulder.  “His name is Eddy Rankin but he calls himself Catalina Eddy because he thinks it makes him sound like a high roller, but it really makes him sound like a carnival con man, which he once was. He’s the chief of a group of border militia scumbags that call themselves the Freedom Frontiersmen.  I’ve known him all my life.  I went to school with him.  Now, someone needs to protect the border from all the criminals that come across it, but those asswipes ain’t protecting anybody except themselves.  Anytime people have the words ‘Freedom’ in the name of their group, watch out for those people.  It means they like their freedom, but will take away yours if they can benefit from it."

     “Hey, I’m American.  What can they do to me?” Mike protested.  He thought Tony something of a carnival shyster himself now that the concept was being bandied about, an idea he would have never thought of.

     “Just trust me on that one,” Tony answered.  “You don’t know the ways of the desert yet.  Eddy wasn’t in the diner by accident.  He was sniffing around, trying to find out who the new owner of the Motel is.  He probably already suspects it’s you, but the longer we can postpone the truth, the better.”

     “Why does he want to stick his nose in my business?”

     “The FF claims its mission is to protect the United States from invasion,” Tony said.  “But it’s really just a white gang.  They consider this their territory, and they are going to demand some kind of cooperation from you.” He held his hands up in double quotes around cooperation. “They will appeal to your patriotism to get it, but if that doesn’t work they’ll kick your ass because they are, how you say in ingles, an extortion racket.”

     Michael looked troubled.  His real estate agent had definitely left out these little details.  His real estate agent had also neglected to disclose there was a fat, freeloading, loudmouth old man squatting in one of his rooms.  Who was really extorting who?

     “Welcome to the Gadsden Purchase, kid,” Tony said.

     “Did Mr. Müeller give them kickbacks?” Michael asked.

     “Who, Joe?  Hell no.  Josef was an ornery old prick.  He gave them both barrels of a twelve-gauge shotgun, and told them to get the hell off of his property.  But Joe was here a long time, and had a lot of friends to watch his back.  You don’t have that kind of goodwill to draw on yet.”  Tony shook his head sadly.  “It’s going to be a tough road ahead for you, kid.  If you really wanted to run a motel, if that was your dream, why didn’t you pick some peaceful white bread, pea soup town in Wisconsin, or something?”

     Michael was tired of everybody telling how and where to spend his own money.  “You don’t think Linda will tell them, do you?”

     “Oh no,” Tony answered.  “Linda’s a bitch.  She’s a dried up old Milf bitch, but she won’t tell them shit.  Linda can be your best friend, and she likes you.  I can tell.  But Linda ain’t the only one you got to worry about.”

     They cruised the freeway eastbound, went all the way to Dateland, then Mike bought milkshakes at the shop in the date grove before doubling back.  When they approached the Cornudo/Tacna exit again, Tony looked out the window to make sure it was clear.  Then they drove another dozen miles to Wellton before doing the opposite U turn.

     They turned around in the shadow of the three story Microtel Inn.  “They got all these fucking fancy hotels here now,” Tony commented. “That’s why nobody stays at your motel, anymore.  We used to be able to sucker in all the tired drivers who couldn’t make it to Gila Bend, or Yuma the other direction. Now they stop here instead because, let’s face it kid, your place is a dump.  It looks like that motel in some movie I saw where they make snuff films because the place ain’t paying.  Have you thought about snuff films?”

     “It’s not going to be a dump for long,” Michael protested. “We’re going to fix it up, starting today.”

     “I like that kid, I like your guts.  Can I take a nap first?”

     Mike parked his truck around the back of his motel, out of sight from the freeway.  The motel had not officially reopened for business yet, and he wanted to do some extensive remodeling before it did.  To this end Mike had brought in some rolls of carpet and padding last night, since stowed away in a shed on the lot, but he didn’t know what to do with them yet.  So while Tony napped off his milkshake, Mike cruised You Tube for carpet laying tips.  It looked easy enough but, being a perfectionist, he didn’t want to do it half ass.  Some people called him “anal,” but he hated that word and refused to apply it to himself.

     After a couple of hours assiduously absorbing every possible detail of carpet installation on the Internet, Mike decided to go check on Tony in room 20. Tony’s door was wide open, which Mike found peculiar at first, but then he remembered the power breakers were cut off down there and it had to be hot, even though it was technically autumn. Mike wondered how the hell Tony had been holding up, squatting in a room without air conditioning the last few weeks, when the temperatures still sometimes hit 100.  He felt a pang of pity for the man, even though he still wasn’t quite sure what to do with him yet.

    Mike peeked inside and found Tony sitting up in a chair, wide awake in a damp wife beater T-shirt.  A hideous hairy spider as big as a fist sat atop one sagging man boob that was rather distastefully demarcated by the stretched fabric.  “Holy crap!” said Mike.  “You’ve got something crawling on your chest!”

     Tony looked down with drooping eyes toward the bug, which Mike now noticed was missing a leg.

     “Oh that,” said Tony sleepily.  “That’s Molly.  She lives here, she keeps me company.”

     Mike next spotted a terrarium on the desk that contained a snake with red, black, and yellow stripes.  To the side of this glass enclosed habitat were several smaller containers, all holding lizards, insects, and other creatures of varying degrees of loathsomeness.

      Tony took note of Mike’s scrutiny.  “I take in every ugly, handicapped, or abandoned stray animal,” he said. “Birds of a feather.  Don’t worry, I got ‘em under control.”

      Michael nodded uncertainly.  “You ready to go to work?”

      “Sure,” Tony answered.  He rose up slowly and put Molly gently back in her jar.

     Michael was soon to learn that Tony’s idea of work consisted of sitting on a lawn chair outside the door of the rooms where Mike laid carpet, pontificating on every subject from politics to pornography.

     “They don't make that fucking porn like they used to," he opined from his ivory tower as Michael cut through carpet.  "There used to be some mystery and mystique to it.  The women looked like real women.  They sagged in all the right places, and some were pale as ghosts, because they didn't have the sprayed on suntans the chicks got now.  All these porn girls today look like they're genetically engineered in the same lab. They all have the same curves in the same places and the same fake boobs, they just shake the test tube so one comes out blonde, another brunette.  Oh, and I forgot, they had some real nice music in those old porno movies.  Some of the soundtracks were real artsy stuff."

     At first, Michael had been annoyed by this constant babble, but then had come to think of it as background noise, same as the interminable drone of big rigs on the interstate in the back yard. After a while the monologue became almost soothing, but if you would have quizzed him on it five minutes later he couldn’t remember ten percent of what Tony said.

     How was he supposed to tell Tony to go away?  It wasn’t that he couldn't pay him so much as he didn't want to, because Tony didn't do anything.  Tony said he got up early to pick up the cigarette butts and other litter on the lot, but all of that litter was made by Tony, who in the evenings, instead of blowing smoke out of his ass with his wildly exaggerated and embellished tales, would chain smoke in the gazebo in the parking lot,  always wearing a contemplative, almost beatific look.  His mouth might be closed, but the monologue was still going on in his head.

     "We had a bum once here in Cornudo," Tony told Mike, "A fuzzy haired guy named Gilbert.  I don't know why he chose this place or how he got here.  I guess he got tired fighting for pennies in the city and decided he wanted a place with no competition, but he found out the reason there are no bums here is that people ain't got shit to share.  Besides that, this heat makes you hostile, and even 118 fucking degrees is not enough to warm your soul with the spirit of charity.  In the city you can get away with it, but here when you see some bum sleeping under your doorstep while you are sweating your ass off it just makes you run him off your property."

     "Anyway," Tony continued, "the last time I saw Gilbert he was going the wrong way.  He was heading south, into the desert at high noon in August.  Some illegals tried to stop him.  You're going the wrong way, they told him.  Come with us, there ain't shit down there.  There ain't shit here either, Gilbert told them, and kept walking.  Of course I'm paraphrasing this from Spanish, where it is ten times more poetic, but that's the gist of it."

     "I gave Gilbert a dollar once, so I guess he thought of me as a friend.  He sent me a postcard from Puerto Vallarta, and it looked like things worked out for him.  He hooked up with some well to do lady who wanted to drop an anchor baby in the US.  Now Gilbert still don't do shit but the lady bitches at him all day, doesn't let him drink, and makes him take a bath.  He wants to come back here and get a job.  Amazing how much that fucker could write on the back of a postcard."

     Little by little Mike finished laying the carpet, then began painting. At first he would let Tony drive to the cafe to pick up his breakfast, but Tony would disappear for hours then come back with lunch. Mike started eating pop tarts for breakfast instead.

     "Tell me the truth, kid," Tony prompted him one day.  "I haven't heard you talk to anyone since you got here.  You're running from somebody.  You got a girlfriend?"

     More than anything else, Michael hated being asked if he had a girlfriend.  He turned away from his brush strokes with a perturbed look.  "I have a fiancé," he said.

     Tony smiled slyly.  "Must be one hell of a fiancé, if you left her to come out here."

     "She can't get away from work right now," he said.  "She's got vacation in a couple of weeks and she'll be coming out then."

     "What kind of work does she do? Must be a real good job because you're kind of loaded and she still don't want to leave town to see you."

     Mike tried to put on a mask of offended outrage, but it didn’t quite work.  "She's got a law degree.  She's a community activist."

     Tony laughed with thinly veiled sarcasm. "Community activist?  They pay you for that shit?  I thought that's what you do when you're broke and need a free meal.  I had a cousin..."

     Michael returned to his paintbrush. He was learning quickly about the danger of answering Tony’s questions.

     The next morning Tony informed Michael that "we're out of supplies, chief."  All at once, from one day to the next, Michael had graduated from 'kid' to 'chief.'  It didn't take Michael long to learn that when Tony wanted something really badly he dropped the diminutive in favor of the honorific.  "You ate all the pop tarts.  We gotta restock.  Let me shave and we'll head to the Costco in Tucson."

     "Tucson, why Tucson?  Yuma's a lot closer."

     "There’s only Sam’s Club in Yuma.  Good enough, but I can't cross the river," Tony’s tone lowered uncharacteristically.” You gotta cross the Gila to get to Sam's Club in Yuma.  I can't do it."

     The real problem with Tony is that one couldn't filter out the rare grains of truth from the mounds of bullshit. That was why this statement made Mike lift his paint splattered eyebrows.  "What are you looking at me like that for?" Said Tony.  "I ain't bullshitting you.  I don't never bullshit.  I got what they call Aquaphobia.  It's a real medical condition.  I mean, of course I can drink a glass of water, although, truth be told, I try to stick to beer for health reasons.  But I can't cross anything bigger than a puddle without freaking out.  I mean, going completely spastic.  The CIA could water board me and I would be okay with it, but I can't cross a running gutter."

     Mike tried to suppress a smirk, somewhat unsuccessfully.  "So how do you travel?"

     Tony looked at his nervously shuffling feet. "I don't," he said.

     Michael had learned that with Tony, it was better to pretend to believe him.  "So what are you telling me?  That you've never left this place?"

     Tony could not peel his eyes from his wrapped ankles.  "No, I never have.  I've stayed in the Gadsden Purchase my entire life.  Well, I joined the army when I was 18, thinking it would be fun to go somewhere else, someplace green for a change.  I didn't know I had the aquaphobia so bad, then.  Yeah I avoided swimming pools and all that, but I didn't know I couldn't cross water.  Do you know they say spirits can't cross water?"  He laughed, but in a single hoarse burst.  "Maybe I'm just a ghost.  Anyway, they flew us out of Tucson, but as soon as the plane crossed the Santa Cruz river I had a seizure.  I unbuckled myself and started flailing on the floor.  They had to turn the plane around."

     Michael lowered his paint brush and looked at Tony.  "So you've never even been to like, San Diego?"

     "Hell, I've never been to fucking Phoenix."

     Mike took a moment to contemplate the logistical difficulties of his association with Tony.  "Well, I guess we could go to Tucson, but aren't there any rivers between here and there?"

     "Ah, hell no," he said, his smile returning.  "They're all dry now.  Thank God for global warming."

     Mike knew he was probably being bullshitted, but he went along with the plan because a change in the bleak, bleached, sandblasted scenery would probably be good for him.  Everything in this town looked like it was eroding into dust.  You couldn't tell where the buildings ended and the dirt started.  The dwellings were mere sculpted sand, waiting their turn to disintegrate and blow away.

     That said, they headed for Tucson.

Next >>





Image from Wikimedia Commons - Flash flood in the Gobi of Mongolia, 2004

Chapter 2

Table of Contents

Chapter 2

          The merchants of the census-designated place of Cornudo, Arizona, not numerous or prosperous enough to call themselves a chamber of commerce, once met informally and decided that if their place was ever to become more than a place, but a full-fledged town, they needed to carefully control the message. 

     For this reason they put together a Facebook page in which every photo of their settlement was captured during a rainstorm. This took some doing.  Nobody had bothered to take a rainstorm  smart phone picture since the advent of smart phones, simply because there was nothing goof to take a picture of, dry or wet.  So some of the members went home and rummaged through faded family albums and forgotten shoeboxes in mice infested corners of cobwebby garages, until an acceptable half dozen or so pictures were found of Cornudo being battered by rain like the Pacific Northwest.

     This is why if you google Cornudo, Arizona, it looks as soggy as Seattle, as drizzly as London.  There is not a single photo extant depicting the dreary dryness that is daily life there.

     The merchants of Cornudo did this because they thought that the commerce of their designated place was suffering from its reputation as a dry desert shithole. 

     The problem with the online photographs, however, is that they just made Cornudo look like a damp desert shithole.   There was nothing water could do to improve Cornudo's appearance, short of flooding it off the map, so business continued as mediocre as ever. 

     As they cruised down Cornudo's main street in Mike’s F-150, the view facing Michael Gasden and Tony Vargas was the same one that a couple dozen fat finger computer visitors had accidentally found, minus the rain. 

     “Nice truck, kid," said Tony as he reared back with the seat controls, as if permanently settling in. “Did you buy it new?"  

     "Um-hm.”  Mike was eyeing the unauthorized fondling of his seat controls with paternal territoriality.

     “Wow, you must have made some scratch, or you got a rich Daddy."

      “My Dad is broke," said Michael, a bit peeved that he was constantly being put through this line of questioning.  Nobody expected a young person to have any money, and the next comment from the passenger's side would imply that this must be ill-gotten gain.

     Tony winked. "You didn’t steal it, right?  Not that it's any of my business."

     Michael sighed.   People had warned him unwanted pests were going to crawl in from the desert, and they were right. 

     "I had a software company," Mike said wearily. "I sold it."

     Tony snuggled down a little more in the seat, like a bird preparing to dump an egg in its nest.  

“Wow.  Did you have your own factory and everything?"

     Mike tried not to roll his eyes, but they still did a little half revolution in their sockets.  "We made computer programs. We had an office, not a factory."

     “Your own goddamm office, that's sweet. Did you have cute little sex-retaries running around getting frisky with the boss?"

     This time Mike did roll his eyes, full circle.  "No secretaries."

     "Too bad."

      They pulled up into the dirt parking lot of the Cornudo Cafe.  The café was announced by a sign containing a poorly rendered rattlesnake, or perhaps it was a centipede.  Nobody could remember what the artist was thinking when he painted it, or even who the artist was.  The sign made Mike’s stomach squirm.

     "You're going to love this, kid,” said Tony.  “This is better than your Momma's home cooking."

      As they entered the café there was another, lower sign with a floral decoration that had been intended to be bright and cheerful, but for lack of artistic ability turned out wilted.  The faded flower announced the Rosebud Lounge, a bar around the back that was open all day and most of the night, just like the diner.

     “They start drinking early here,” Tony told him.

     The Cornudo Cafe was packed on a midweek morning, a fact that somewhat reassured Michael’s stomach, unsettled  by the venemous diner sign.

     "Morning boys," said a blonde waitress wearing a Henry's Hard Soda T-shirt and slightly faded jeans, of the purposely ripped variety.  

     “Don’t this job pay enough to buy new pants?” said Tony, sticking a stubby finger in one of the tears. The waitress slapped his hand down, then held up a cheek for Tony to kiss, which he did not hesitate to do. Michael thought the waitress had hypnotizing blue eyes, their sparkle having resisted the harsh weathering of the desert.

     “This is Linda Lloyd," Tony said to Mike.      Le dicen Linda porque es muy linda.

     “Flattery won't improve your credit here," said Linda.  She had just the slightest hint of a charming small town drawl common in these older towns south of the Gila where cotton was still king and trailer parks stretched to the horizon.  “Welcome to town, tootsie pop.  You spelled your sign wrong.  Supposed to be G-A-D-S-D-E-N."

     "Leave him alone Linda," Tony growled.  "The kid knows exactly what he's doing.  He happens to be an entrepreneur."

     “Being the big fat tick you are," said Linda, “he’s not in town five minutes and you’re already sucking him dry.”

     “I just make friends easy, unlike some people.  That’s his last name up there on that sign.”

     Linda laughed and almost dropped her coffee pot.  "Are you kidding me?  Is that really your name up there, buttercup?”

     Mike nodded and blushed as Linda stroked his arm lightly.  Despite pushing five decades, she still knew how to excite the hormones of the opposite gender with just the slightest touch. "Honeybear,  you're going to fit in good around here.  Say, you're handsome.  I have a daughter about your age."

     Tony nudged Mike along toward a table.  "Come on Linda, he just got here.  Don't get him mixed up in your trailer trash family baggage."

     “Look who's talking!" She snapped back.

     The Cornudo Cafe was a study in the word utilitarian.  Outside of a few uninspiring cowboy themed pictures hanging between its broad windows, no attempts had been made to conform to a scheme of interior décor. There was nothing so cosmopolitan as a booth on the premises, just a few randomly scattered cheap patio tables which may have been there since the advent of plastic. Opposite of most diners, there was no window into the kitchen.  The cook, a burly bearded man named Max who had been birthed in the kitchen and never left, didn't like to be gawked at.  Maybe he was spitting in folks food back there, maybe his culinary methods would not pass health department muster, but no one was complaining.  So far as anybody knew, nobody had fallen seriously ill eating food prepared at the Cornudo Cafe.  The joint was once accused of food poisoning, but the outbreak turned out to be from the Cracker Barrel in El Paso.  

      The Cornudo Cafe was Interstate 8's best kept secret.  The truckers knew about it, which was why the parking lot was about half a football field.  Passing motorists mostly shunned it, dissuaded by the venomous beast on the sign or just the general look of the place, which might as well have said botulism in blinking lights above.  It’s dilapidated nuclear test ground look gave the vibe that it served as a way station for a host of experimental diseases that might have escaped from secret government facilities that dotted the desert, or crawled over from Mexico.  The locals didn't care that their little restaurant created negative perceptions for passing drivers.  It made it easier to get a table. 

     You could get just about any kind of cuisine you wanted to at the Cornudo Cafe and if it wasn't on the menu Max was willing to give it a try.  He cooked Mexican food, hamburgers, and Chinese with equal aplomb.  People would come from as far as Yuma for pizza carry-out.  As far as anybody knew, Max never left the building.  Since 1977, there had never been a documented sighting of him outside.  There were rumors he was chained to the stove but they could not be confirmed because nobody was allowed in the kitchen.  For the most part, locals approved of Max being held prisoner because they loved his cooking any time of the day.  In it's treatment of Max, the Cornudo Cafe was violating a host of labor laws, even in Arizona, where there are very few ways to abuse an employee that you can't get away with. 

     Mike and Tony took a table.  "She seems nice," Mike said, hissing the 'c' sound like a snake.  Mike regularly hissed his 's' and 'c' sounds.  It was a California androgynous thing.

      "Who Linda?  Oh yeah, she's great.  You ever got a problem, come down here and talk to her.  Don't talk to me, I'll just make you feel worse."

     They enjoyed a delicious breakfast of eggs, hash browns, toast, and sausage that actually had flavor.  "The meat comes from Mexico," Tony told him.  "They got real pigs with flavor down there.  Instead of pumping them with steroids they let them roll in the mud and eat their own shit.  That’s why it tastes so good.”

     Mike looked up from his plate but there was no hint in Tony’s gleaming, mischievous eye that he was joking.  What the hell best fucking sausage I ever had.

     The café door chime sounded.  Tony looked back then Tony got nervous and leaned in closer to Mike.

     “Hey kid, just go along with everything I say, okay?  You don’t want anything to do with these guys who just walked in.  Don’t look up, don't call attention to yourself.  Just trust me.  For once in your life, trust me."

     Michael thought it odd that he was being called out on a lifetime of distrust when they had met less than an hour ago. He heard some chattering and empty giggling behind him as some new arrival flirted with Linda, then a beaming bullshitter's smile lit up Tony's face.

     A tall, husky man in a huge cowboy hat and wardrobe inappropriate khaki shorts towered over their table.  He had on an olive green hunting vest with several patches embroidered onto it.  The largest of these had the double blue letters FF  set against a white and red striped background. 

     “Well, look what the cat dragged in," said the big man in the cowboy hat.  His huge sombrero had assorted pins of various military units stuck into it, but unknown to Mike, he had never served in any of them. Tony and the tall man exchanged a ghetto handshake, which looks stupid when white people do it but does not stop them.  “If it ain’t Tony Vargas, the man who chokes on his own jokes.”

     "Morning Eddy" said Tony. "Didn't your Momma teach you you're supposed to take off your hat inside?"

      The big man, known around here as Catalina Eddy, though he had never set foot on the island, jumped back a little in surprise then removed his imposing lid. "Goodness me where are my manners?"

     “That fucking hat doesn’t let your brain breathe, cabron," Tony said, and they both laughed.

     When the insincere laughter had died down between these two dudes who obviously hated each other, Eddy turned to Mike and extended a hand.  “To whom do I owe the pleasure?” he said.

      Tony shot Mike a covert look of warning.  “This is my nephew Mike, from California.”

      Eric's ample gut jiggled with humour. “I find that almost impossible to believe.  First of all, he doesn’t look beaner enough to be your nephew.  Secondly, It begs credulity that someone would drive out to this goddamn desert just to visit you.”

     Tony laughed in rapid fire stacatto.  It was clear that both these men were hiding their mutual loathing behind a mask of mirth.  “Well you know people are marrying whoever over there in California.  You got all kinds of half beaners And half gooks running around, not knowing which end is up.  He came out here to find himself.”

      Eddy gave a smile that had menace and charm in equal proportions.  “Are you going to help him find his identity on the strip club circuit, like you did?”

     “Come on, Eddy,” Tony laughed, “only the fat strippers work this early.  We're heading over to Tucson to see the Sonoran zoo, then later we’re going to hit the bars.”

     “Always a man of impeccable taste,” Eddy said.  “No good zoos in California?”

     “The kid wants to see a desert zoo,” he said.  “He thinks he likes the desert.”

     Eddy and Tony both exploded in laughter, simultaneously, and this time it sounded real.  “Well, I hope you get that out of his system quick,” Eddy said, and slapped Mike playfully on the shoulder.  “Hope to see you around, young man.  You seem like a nice kid, and if you want to stay that way don’t visit your Uncle here too often.”

     Eddy walked over to a table with a small group of similarly patched associates, all of whom having an unwashed, disheveled look, as if they had slept beneath cacti.  Tony and Michael finished their meal, then Tony began patting his pockets.  “Oh shit, I forgot my wallet back in the room,” he said.  “Let me go see if Linda will let it slide until next time.  I got good credit around here.”

     “Don’t worry,” said Michael.  “I got it.”

     Linda was shaking her head, watching the scene from behind the register.  Poor kid, she thought.  They’re going to eat him alive, out here.

     After Tony and Mike had left the restaurant, Eddy pointed out the window to the Gasden Motel sign in the distance.  “I might be mistaken, he said to his rough associates, “but I think they spelled the sign wrong.”
   

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Image of:  Rattlesnakes sign, Route 66, near McLean, Texas by Carol M. Highsmith

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rattlesnakes_sign,_Route_66,_near_McLean,_Texas_LCCN2010630154.tif

Chapter One

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1

   "You spelled it wrong," growled a voice down below, and Michael Gasden nearly fell off the ladder.

     His eyes tilted earthward to spy a grizzled, medium height, somewhat stocky güero of Hispanic descent looking up at him from the gravel parking lot, pointing toward the sign reading “GASDEN MOTEL."

     "What do you mean?" Mike asked.   As yet,  he didn't know anyone out here and felt isolated and alone in the immense, unbroken nothingness. He had arrived just last night, using a cool September evening to traverse the scorched earth between here and San Diego. Like Columbus on San Salvador, this was the first native contact he had.

     "It's Gadsden, G-A-D-S-D-E-N," the man on the ground said.  The observer was smiling smugly because he knew it was going to be a pain in the ass to get the money back on the misspelled sign.  "If you really have to embarrass people around here about their Mexican history, at least spell the word right."

     It occurred to Michael that this man's sudden appearance was nothing short of a miracle, even by the strict Vatican guidelines.  The closest human structure was a gas station about 100 yards down the road.  Both of this old dude's knees were wrapped in thick braces, so there was no way he had stumbled across the street that fast.  Furthermore, Mike had been high up on the ladder, facing this only possible approach.  In the other direction lay empty dirt between here and Mexico, and nothing this clean hobbled in on two legs from there.  This vision had materialized from the desert dust.

     Then Mike noticed that the door for room 20, the last occupancy at the end of one of two squat, one story brick buildings of a dusty tan that blended into the desert, had been left ajar.

     "Where did you come from?" Mike asked.

     "I'm the caretaker, Tony," he said with a proprietary air, as if he could be no more easily moved from this property than the cracked pavement beneath him.

     "How did you get in?" Mike asked as he connected a wire through a hole in the side of the sign.  Inevitably there were going to be unexpected encounters like this with the locals, but he wished they would wait for coffee.

     "I didn't, " said Tony unapologetically.  "I was already inside.  Josef must have forgotten to give me the key when he left.  I've been hanging around here three days.  I'm a little hungry."

     Michael gestured to the open door.  "You're letting the air conditioning out." That was something his Dad would say, one of many things he swore he would never say but had now already said, due to the exigencies of adulthood.

     Tony shuffled uncertainly on his two bad knees.  "Well, like I said, I don't have the key and I didn't want to lock myself out by accident."

     Michael descended slowly from the ladder.  "Mr. Mueller didn't tell me I had employees."

     Tony grinned broadly.  He had large, blanched, unblemished teeth, as if the desert wind and sun had scoured them.   "I'm part of the package.  I'm not really an employee, I'm the caretaker."

     "Well, I can't pay you Mr..."

      "Antonio Vargas at your service." He tipped his green ball cap with a red M in the middle by way of a bow.  He didn't know what the M meant and didn't care.  He had bought it cheap. "That's all right.  You don't have to pay me if you can’t right away. I got railroad retirement and social security."

     "Well, what happens if I need to rent your room to a customer?"

      Tony kept grinning.  "Don't worry, that will never happen. Now about your sign."

     Tony didn't seem to make the remark about the business prospects in Cornudo out of pessimism, but as a truism. No matter how many bold, flashy signs were staked into it the desert did not change.  No chilly seabreeze summer evenings, and no hope for prosperity.  But Tony seemed okay with the unshifting reality of having to eke out a precarious existence. It appeared to make him happy.

     "You're definitely going .to have to change your sign," Tony continued.  "Not only do you need to fix your spelling, but I would pick another name altogether.  That word is a fucking thorn in the side for people around here.  We got enough fucking thorns, believe me."

     "What are you talking about?" Michael said in the somewhat effeminate manner men from the Bay area effect because they are forced to subdue their masculinity in the interests of political correctness. Alongside Tony, he looked out of place in the Gadsden Purchase, like a verdant vine growing on a sand dune.  Not exactly thin, there was a hint of suppressed pudginess about his belly that could have definitely turned to fat without a trendy diet, whereas Tony unabashedly stretched his Hooters T-shirt to the point of popping rivets.  Tony's white hair was the same shade as a sun-bleached cow skull, whereas Michael's dark coif was straightened and soft like country club grass.  For facial hair, Tony's beard was as grizzled and unkempt as a creosote patch, whereas Mike's face was groomed and plucked like a Japanese tea garden. The two did not have much in common now yet, standing side by side on a gravel parking lot,  it was clear that one could have easily become the other.

     Mike gestured upward.  "That's my name," he said.  "Gasden is my last name.  I went to school in California, but I think I know how to spell at least that.”

     Tony looked hard at Michael, then looked at the sign.  Then suddenly he exploded in a laugh that was half Daffy Duck, half Beavis without Butthead.  With no reciprocated mirth he cut it short and stroked spittle out of his beard. "That - " he pointed, "is your name?" He laughed again, slapped Mike on the shoulder and added "You're going to fit in good around here, kid."

     Michael stood stoic and immobile.  He was suddenly wondering what insanity had possessed him to abandon the ocean kissed climes of Northern California and move to this desert shithole.  "I'm sorry, but I don't get what you mean."

     Tony looked nervous. The job interview wasn't getting off to a good start.  "Well, you see kid," he said, making a sweeping gesture toward the south.  “This whole area is called the Gadsden Purchase.  Pretty much sounds the same as your name, but spelled G-A-D-S-D-E-N.  You never heard of the Gadsden Purchase?"

     Michael shook his head.

     "You ain't too bright, are you kid?" Tony said with another playful laugh, then realized he had fucked up double because the blank look on the kid's face meant he had no sense of fucking humor.  These politically correct asswipes from out of town took themselves way too seriously.

     Michael Gasden was more humbled than angry for being accused of not being bright, since it had been a while since such an attack on his brainpower.  He was only 28 years old and considered a wunderkind,  having already sold off a successful tech company for millions. This motel was his retirement, 40 years before most people do it. Yet it could be said that his choice of retirement locales wasn't turning out to be so bright.

     "I'm sorry kid," Tony said, lowering his head.  "Shit just comes out of my mouth sometimes.  You get old and the fucking filters on your mouth get clogged by all the bullshit you said in your life."  He looked for sympathy, or at least understanding in Michael's face, but didn't get it.  "Anyhow, in 1853 the United States bought all this land from here South from Meh-heeko, I mean Mexico."

     Michael nodded rapidly.  He wanted the history lesson to be over.  He didn't like history.  He didn’t much like this fat fuck in his parking lot, either.

     "You ask why the fuck would they do that? The answer is the railroad.  Too many mountains North of the Gila River to cut through, so they bought everything south of it.  In those days Mexican politicians were willing to sell off chunks of their country.  The guy who bought it was named Gadsden, I guess, so they called it the Gadsden Purchase.  Just think kid, I came this close to being a Mexican."  Imagine me a beaner, of all people!"  He laughed again, and the fact that he was the only one laughing didn't bother him at all this time.

      Michael furrowed his eyebrows. "I have heard of that.  I think my Grandpa wrote his Master's thesis on it.  I always thought it was in Texas."

     Tony laughed again.  "Kids today think everything is in Texas.  They don't teach geography too fucking good, these days.  Well I got news for you kid, there's this place called Arizona and it ain't part of Texas."  He grew somber again.  "At least, not anymore."

      Tony lowered his head for a moment, as if praying, then looked up at Mike “Did your Grandpa really write his thesaurus on this place?"

     Michael wriggled his face in a way that communicated it wasn't his fault.

     "No offense," said Tony, "but you got some strange fucking people in your family."

     Michael went back up on the ladder to make a few more adjustments, while Tony supervised down below.  From there, Mike could see his newly acquired lodging establishment in all of its eroded glory.

     Although the famous and brilliant architect Frank Lloyd Wright had designed buildings in Arizona, the Gasden Motel, formerly known as the Roadrunner Inn, was obviously not one of them.  If the structure had anything that could be called architecture, it would be of the Dadaist school, where vague, disconnected ideas are pieced together as a slap dash solution to previous fuck ups. Two buildings stretched out in rows that looked straight on the ground but were slightly askew from the top of the ladder.  There were ten habitations in each building, one of which was the combined office/proprietor's living quarters, with another unrentable room at the end of the back building being the one where Tony was squatting. All the rooms faced east, as if Bedouin caravans had been expected to roll through here and the accommodations had been set up for easy praying to Mecca, not an entirely preposterous prospect in view of the surrounding landscape.   All rooms but the office were numbered starting at two,  the number one being assiduously avoided.  This labeling system had been done on purpose by the former owner Herr Mueller, who interpreted his complimentary Gideon's Bible with proper humility, sincerely believing when it said the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

     Along the motel roof, a sloping overhang was haphazardly nailed together to provide shade for the rooms, more to reduce the air conditioning bill than to please the customers, whose pleasure was not a priority because nearly all of them had been forced to stay here of last resort because of a broken radiator, or unbearable desert fatigue. The shingled roof was frayed and dry rotting, so much so that from a distance it gave the impression of being thatched.  Taken with the towering palm trees above, if the desert could be removed from the background and replaced with turquoise ocean. the overall effect would be of a row of huts on a Fiji beach.

     “Do me a favor,” Michael said from atop the ladder.  “Go in the office and flip the switch for the sign.  You know where that is, right?”

     Tony stood there a little shakily, wobbling back and forth on his knees, like an old clunker that couldn’t quite crank over.

     “That’s all right,” said Michael.  He was only 28, but he could see the direction this relationship was going.  He scampered back down the ladder again.

      “Did it light?” Mike asked Tony, standing side by side with him in the lot, squinting upward. It was hard for him to tell in the desert glare.

     “Fuckin A,” said Tony admiringly.  His eyes were adjusted since birth for desert life, so he could readily discern the dim glow from the bulbs.  “You wire things real fucking good.  Who taught you, your Dad?”

     “You Tube,” said Mike.

      “Who is You Tube?”

      “You guys don’t have the Internet out here?”

      Tony seesawed a hand in the air.  “About half,” he said.  “On good days.  Good enough for porn, but only the pictures.  Not the videos.”

     “Good,” said Mike.  He wasn't disappointed.

      “Tell me something, kid. You look smart, even if you don’t know no fucking history. Why the hell did you decide to move out here?”

     Mike returned a dizzy, bewildered look, as if he was snapping out of a heat stroke episode. “I like the desert,” he said.  “I’ve always liked the desert.  There’s something spiritual about it.”

     Tony winced.  He looked like he had stepped in a puddle of puke. He even wiped his feet symbolically on the faded asphalt.

“Do me a favor kid,” he said.  “Don’t say that too fucking loud around here.”

     “Why not?”

     “Because it’s bullshit,” Tony said.  “Nobody likes this fucking desert.  If you’re living here, it’s because you hit bottom and you got nowhere else to go.”  He pointed south.  “The next step down the ladder of life from here is Mexico, and it’s a short trip.  I get the feeling you’re here because you’re hiding.  What else could it be?  This is a great place to hide, because who the hell wants to come to this stinking shithole and look for you?”

     Michael appeared unsettled.  “Why would I be hiding?” he asked, but only rhetorically, because only he knew the answer to that.   “I’m not hiding.”

     “Okay, okay, you’re not hiding.  Maybe you’re not hiding.  I’m just saying, just don’t go around thinking you’re going to impress the locals by saying stupid shit like, Oh, I just love the desert…” Tony did a limp wrist hand motion for emphasis,  “because it won’t work.  They’ll think you’re fucking crazy and stay away from you.  Just let them assume you’re hiding.  It’s better if they think you’re hiding.  That’s normal around here.”

     Tony snorted a couple of times. then stamped his feet like a rhino.  Michael nervously brushed the dust off his skinny jeans.  Finally, Tony put a gentle hand on Michael’s shoulder.  “Don’t worry about it, kid.  Come on, I’ll buy you breakfast.  You got a car?”

     Mike’s response was muffled by the low frequency buzz of two unmarked helicopters that whipped out from behind the mountain intervening between there and Yuma, then whirred south, framed by the signposts of Mike's motel marquee.

      “What’s that all about?” asked Mike.  “Where are they going in such a hurry?”

      “Hmm?” said Tony, who had not seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. “Oh.  Probably just more dead bodies in the desert.  You’ll get used to it.”


Next >>


Image of Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.
http://salvadordalimuseum.org/collection/classic/discovery_of_america.php


   
 

Prologue

Table of Contents to Date:


"Sing to me of the man, muse, the man of twists and turns..." the Father intoned from the driver's seat of the automobile.

Although he could have taken his time on this empty, desolate stretch of road, he was a responsible driver that liked to keep his eyes on the road and his hands upon the wheel. So his eyes strayed but quickly into the back seat, where he expected to find his daughters snickering and making mock expressions of horror. Oh God, he's going to recite the entire Odyssey by heart again!

Alas, the girls were not there. He felt lonely. He would have to recite the epic to himself, to stay awake. Oh well, better than coffee.

It had been a long and exhausting road trip, from San Diego to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania then back again after two miserable weeks in his aunt's non airconditioned house.  His aunt was on the blink and he felt obligated to see her one last time, but his girls were now of the age of volition and declined to accompany him, making excuses that sounded legitimate but were, of course, contrived. Enduring the sweltering abode of their stuffy, humorless old aunt was understandably not their thing.

So it was that the Father found himself alone now on a mind-numbing stretch of Interstate 10 (UTEP 0, some football-frustrated hack had painted on a freeway sign), deeply embedded in West Texas, preparing himself mentally for the even more mind-numbing submersion into the Gadsden Purchase, still some hours ahead. In the suffocating summer heat the thinly clad, skeletal scrub outside, so frighteningly hostile it appeared indigenous to another planet, shimmered in the sun like melting Dali watches.  He was only 800 miles from home, but some kind of sun-melted wrinkle in the space time continuum always stretched this leg of the voyage to near infinity.

Before continuing his recitation, the Father turned to his phantom daughters in the back seat and said "You are seething with jealousy over my supreme rhetorical skills and astounding powers of recall.”

No, it's just that if I hear the words 'bright eyed Athena, thoughtful Telemachus or wily Odysseus again I'll puke in the car, one of the ghosts laughed, and the other high-fived her.

The Father hunched over a bit in the front seat, hunkering under this imaginary hailstorm of mockery and filial ingratitude.  Then he espied something along the otherwise dreary, featureless road that elevated his level of alertness, pumped up his morale, and recharged his mojo.

A man in a faded green foul weather jacket, strangely out of place in this July heat, probably lifted off of some sailor, but where the hell was the navy in this waterless waste, was leaning against an old sign post that marked the Highway 90 path to Marfa, a relic from before the time before they installed the 14 foot freeway marker above. The Father posited that the man had taken his garment from a member of the Interstellar Fleet that famously docked in yonder ghost-light burg. The drifter was Latino, he could have been a footsore illegal immigrant who had traversed the rugged Big Bend canyons between here and the border, but something in the wideness of his eyes, as expansive as the Great American Desert between here and San Diego, advertised unbroken honesty and innocence. Even though the weary traveler did not have a thumb in the air to announce hitchhiking intentions, the Father stopped his car by the sign post.

This was not typical behavior for him. Since leaving Pittsburgh, he had encountered 29 hitchhikers with fully extended thumbs (to stave off road weariness he had actually counted), and zoomed past all without a second glance. Perhaps it was the look of serene indifference as to whether anyone would give him a ride or not, displayed on the face of this particular interstate vagabond, that prompted the Father to offer a lift.

“Where you going?” the Father announced through his rolled-down window.

“Nogales,” the man answered in the lazy English pronunciation of the word.

“What a coincidence, me too,” lied the Father. He wasn't going anywhere near Nogales. Tuscon to Nogales then back again would take him 130 miles out of his way.

The footbound man lowered his duffel bag gently into the back seat, seeming to be respectful of the upholstery, then settled softly into the front. He did not have to be reminded to put his seatbelt on. The Father stole a furtive glance at his passenger, thinking that if he was going to haul this unknown cargo all the way to Nogales he better size him up a little. In the periphery of his cone of sight he saw the blurred image of a young man, probably only in his late twenties, but having a look of somber earnestness that belied his age, signifying that he had been around the block a couple of times and had learned a thing or two in his limited span of years. The young man sported a layer of stubble where a beard could grow if left unchecked, but other than that he was well groomed. There was no air of menace about this youth, no bad vibes that would foretell his eventually repenting having picked him up.

The pair cruised quietly a couple of miles, each adapting to the presence of the other. Then, to break the silence that was not awkward but more annoying to the Father, who had been planning to cycle through a complete litany of Homeric epics out loud, he said to the passenger “Where are you coming from?”

“Down South,” the young man replied. “Alabama way. Picking cotton, if you can believe that. It turned out to be just a little too degrading for my taste. I don’t mind working with peaches or peanuts, but I just can’t swing low enough to work on a cotton farm.”

The Father laughed. His passenger was obviously intelligent. Thinking the ride to Nogales might not be such a dull one, after all, he ventured a more sensitive question. “Do you mind if I ask where you are going to – I mean, once we get to Nogales. Or is that your home?”

The Father feared he had struck a nerve, already typecasting this man as an illegal alien though they had barely met, but the youth was surprisingly candid in his reply. “Not at all, sir. I’m going back to Mexico. I’ve been back and forth across this country the past year and a half. I’ve met a lot of nice people, more than bad ones, but overall I don’t think it’s for me. No matter how hard I work, no matter how I try to convince them I have the brainpower to rise above the herd, I still get those looks. You know, those Hey kid, the crop is in the barn, why are you still hanging around looks.

“Unfortunate,” said the Father.

“Yeah, I guess so,” said the young man. The conversation seemed cathartic to him, so he continued without prompting. “Before I headed down South, I spent a lot of time in the Gila River Valley, Arizona. Working on cotton farms too, but because it wasn’t the deep South, it didn’t have the same kind of depressing connotations. I stayed in this little wide spot in the road, there in the Antelope Valley. You’ve probably never heard of it. A little town you could spit across, name of Cornudo.”

The Father’s eyes went wide. He strayed a little into the opposite lane, then steadied the car.

“Whoa,” said the passenger. “I guess you have heard of it.”

“Did you say Cornudo?” asked the Father, by way of clarification.

“Yes sir,” answered the passenger, “that’s the place.”

“And you say you left a year and a half ago?”

“Approximately. More or less.”

The car passed an abandoned roadside motel, its peeling paint, boarded windows, and the accumulation of tumbleweeds swallowing its facade seeming to signify an extended period of decay. In front there stood a tall, rusting metal sign that resembled a middle finger pointed heavenward, either in false hope or as a big eff you to anyone who was stupid enough to stay there. In reality, despite the dreary condition of the place, the motel had only been shuttered about a year and a half. It was a monument to the truth that once man washes his hands of his temporal creations, nature takes them back really fucking fast.

The Father glanced at the dilapidated inn, then gripped the wheel tighter. His absent, phantom daughters would have recognized this as an indication that the wheels of his brain were turning and he was about to go off on one of his extended rants.

“Are you familiar with Cornudo, sir?” the passenger said with a touch of disbelief.

“Cornudo - ha! Am I familiar with it? You betcha.”

The Father grew quiet for a moment, then took a deep breath for dramatic pause. “You know, young man, a lot of interesting things have happened in Cornudo, Arizona, that sleepy little town embedded deep in the Gadsden Purchase, since you left a year and a half ago. Are you up for a story?”

The passenger shrugged. “Sure, why not?” It was still a long way to Nogales, what else were they going to do? In his travels, the youth had realized you could learn a lot from these old farts, if you just listened.

The Father forgot all about Homer. He eased off the accelerator a bit, synchronizing the speed of the car to the predicted pace of his narrative, then began his tale. There was this young man of twists and turns, a kid named Mike Gasden, name sounding like but spelled differently from the vastness of the Gadsden Purchase we shall shortly enter into, who...

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Image from John Margolies Roadside America collection, Library of Congress, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, altered by author into black and white.