Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Table of Contents


One common characteristic that people passing through the Gadsden Purchase, or having the misfortune to live there, both have taken note of is that time does not touch it. The chronology of Civilization has completely altered the face of most of the rest of the planet, but civilization has only passed through the Gadsden Purchase, as if it is in a hurry to escape the suffocating wasteland on the way to a beach cottage in San Diego. The proof of this is that the only notable works of engineering in the region are transportation corridors, none of which either terminate or begin there, the notable exception being Interstate 8. But the I-8, like many a desert stream, grows despondent of its unsustainable load and eventually fizzles out in the middle of nowhere, better known as a spot southeast of Casa Grande.

The only humans who have settled in the Gadsden Purchase are those who service the transportation corridors, and these only reluctantly and fleetingly, departing for a better place just as soon as they have accumulated enough loot fleecing bug-eyed, hallucinating, head bobbing travelers. Some would cite the legions of snowbirds in sprawling trailer parks as evidence against this assertion, but the frost-adverse migrants are also only passing through, just taking longer to do it, waiting for the thermometer to rise above 50 in their much more agreeable homes in Northern climes before getting the hell out of hell.

The only person who was condemned by confining watercourses to stay in the Gadsden Purchase forever was Tony Vargas, and he was making the most of it. To say he liked it there would be a stretch, but one couldn't say he disliked it either, because he had no frame of reference to compare relative levels of like and dislike.

Tony had inherited, or rather expropriated the clunky old Ford Explorer Mike had bought for a lifeboat in Nogales, and he used this on frequent forays to Tucson and all points between the Gila and unspecified points south. Mike left the vehicle abandoned in the parking lot and Tony had taken the liberty of getting it tricked out by a cousin, who removed the back seats to turn the rear compartment into a love nest. The rust bucket was now adorned with thick carpet, curtains, a mini bar, and plush cushions worthy of a Turkish Sultan’s harem. The Explorer soon became known around the neighborhood as The Love Machine, and Tony did nothing to discourage this. To compliment the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror and the playboy bunny ears on the dashboard, he thought about actually painting Love Machine on the side in bold letters, but that would be in bad taste.

Noting that he had seemed distracted for a while, one day Tony talked Mike into golfing with him at the local links, located within the property of the RV park. To make it sound exclusive, Tony claimed to have an "in" at this club. Mike had been here long enough, however, to know they could replicate the same effect by hitting golf balls into the desert from the back of the motel, since said “course” was essentially a vast expanse of sand, with clumps of cactus for hazards. Reversing the rule of practically all golf courses everywhere, the sand was the fairway and the vegetation the traps. In spite of the degree of difficulty involved Mike agreed to go, although Tony insisted they fortify themselves with a cooler full of beer and Mike's fruity flavored girly drinks.

Tony and Mike would be hooking up with golf buddies who had Saturday off, so they left Little Fucker with Aunty Linda. Because of strange but stern doodlings the boy made on the wall of Tony's deranged den, Mike had taken to calling him Little Fatwa. To Mike, the bold, accusing proclamations seemed spookily similar to the letters on the postcards, but how could a child barely walking be writing already? Mike was certain these were just crude baby attempts to copy letters, but Little F would gesticulate toward them and righteously rave in his incomprehensible language, so that Mike said he was issuing fatwas. From then on he called him Little Fatwa, but Tony still called him Little Fucker, never being able to, or never wanting to distinguish between Fatwa and Fat Ass.

Hal Owen was already on the golf course, leaning on a club around the head of which a small dune was forming from the breeze. He and Tony high-fived and exchanged a chest bump bro hug. A few minutes later the lights of a sheriff's car were seen flashing their way up the road. Sheriff Hal Owen emerged from it wearing a white golf hat, ivory white pants and a fluorescent orange polo shirt that stretched across his belly like the expanding magma dome of St. Helens. Everone exchanged friendly expressions of goodwill that were bound to change to accusations of cheating and other underhanded dealings once they started swinging clubs.

How you doing son?" Dustin said to Mike, clutching his hand in a bone breaking grip. “Did you make it home okay?” His light-hearted tone implied that Mike’s sojourn in Nogales had involved nothing more serious than a Sunday School picnic.

You look like a fucking Easter egg in that get up," said Tony. "How did you get away from Doris?"

It wasn't hard," Dustin said. "There's so much crap going on down by the border that I just told her I had to set up road blocks. The area is swarming with Feds in helicopters. They're doing something so secret they won't even clue me in on it. I'm just responsible for blocking off the search area. It's so gosh darn stealthy that nutcases from all over the country are showing up thinking it's a UFO crash."

"Well by the time you get done golfing she's going to think you were rolling in the dirt with your girlfriend. Who the hell wears white in the goddamm desert? You look like fat Arnold Palmer."

The golf game got underway, but everyone needed a little while to get warmed up. Instead of raising divots while they found their swing, they lifted up clumps of sand that turned into little dust devils in the breeze. Tony laughed himself purple because Hal's shots kept falling short of the greens, which weren't green at all but just more desert, with long ocotillo ribs marking the holes. In contrast, Dustin Diesel had a powerful stroke but no finesse, and kept overshooting the pin. Mike, who did not want to play at all but was strong-armed into doing so by threats of incarceration or deportation, kept slicing in random directions, one time knocking an unwary Cactus Wren off a Mesquite. Only wobbly-knee Tony had a smooth stroke, hitting the ball effortlessly into putting distance every time.

As the beer was guzzled down, everyone's stroke smoothed out and the quality of play improved. Tony lubricated Mike with beer, insisting that his pussy drinks wouldn't grow enough hair on his nuts to help his swing. The strategy seemed to work, because Mike began to sneak up on Tony, becoming increasingly tenacious and competitive until they reached the final hole neck and neck. Then after hitting the ball into a creosote bush, Tony made an illegal drop so obvious that even Mike noticed it, and he didn't know squat about the rules of golf. Tony wound up winning by a stroke.

"You fucking cheated," said Mike. “You practically threw the ball into the hole.”

"Sorry boss, course rules," Tony answered.

"You change the rules every time," said Hal, and Dustin nodded assent, but everybody was too buzzed to really care.

After the game, as they stood leaning on their clubs in wobbly fashion downing more brew, Hal Owen remembered something.

"Hey wait a minute. While I got you all here, have any of you seen this woman?"

Hal pulled out a flier that had an artist's rendering of an olive-skinned woman with large doe eyes, full sensual lips, and lovely scissor eyebrows. Although she was dark skinned, there was something undefinable about her that said she was not Mexican.

"If I had seen her, she'd be in back of the Love Machine right now," Tony bragged. "Who is she?"

"She might be the reason the border is crawling with Feds as we speak. We suspect that this woman is part of a terrorist plot, and is carrying messages to terrorists inside the United States."

"Why are you fucking up the golf game with work, Hal?" Tony complained.

"Hear me out," Hal said. "This will just take a minute. This woman crossed the border in my sector. I think the Feds are barking up the wrong tree looking for her over by Nogales. An illegal we scooped up warned us about her. She said the woman was carrying postcards containing messages for a terrorist cell in New Jersey. She had a small boy with blue eyes travelling with her. Our witness claimed she crossed the border on foot, but may not have made it, because she and the boy just disappeared into the desert."

Dustin said "These terrorists got so many ways of communicating on the computer and social media, why would they send messages on postcards with a lady traveling on foot? That doesn't make sense to me."

Mike looked over at Tony, who looked bored and peeved that Hal was ruining the fun talking shop. Somehow this attitude stimulated Mike to become protective of Little F.

"Maybe you're right," Hal agreed nervously. "But we would like to talk to her or find out what happened to her all the same. I think I'm on to something big here."

"This is why I'm glad I got no women in my life," Tony said. "Dustin here has to sneak out to the goddamm desert to have a beer with the boys, and you Hal have to chase shadows to keep getting promotions, to satisfy Mrs. Bates in the house up the hill from the loony motel. This isn't even in your jurisdiction, is it?"

"Well, not technically, but..."

"So let it go, bro. Let the FBI chase this bitch. Now look what you did, you ruined the party. I'm out of here."

On that sour note the gathering dispersed, but now came the fun part. Because Dustin Diesel was a Sheriff of great integrity, his conscience would not allow him to let everyone get away with driving drunk on home. That would be corrupt cronyism, of whick he would have no part. So in the time it took him to relieve his bladder beneath a Palo Verde tree and stagger back to his patrol car, he gave everyone a head start to their cars. After that his driver deputy would head off in hot pursuit of the offenders.

It was an exciting game that had resulted in a few near crashes and several DUI arrests over the years, but no one took it personally. It was the price of admission.

The Love Machine would not start the first couple of times the key was turned, and Dustin Diesel actually got his zipper up before Tony and Mike got away. Fortunately, Tony knew a bumpy back road through the desert. It almost took out their oil pan, and Tony had to stop once to hurl out the window, but they made it.

Back in town, they went and picked up Little F in a hurry. Tony whispered some words to Linda and she nodded eagerly. Little F smiled happily and on the way back to the motel showed off his new stack of postcards.

"That's Little F's Mom, isn't it, that Hal was talking about?" Mike asked as they drove, and Tony nodded. "What do you think happened to her?"

"I think the vultures are picking her bones clean in the desert."

"Look, we have to do something. We could be in a lot of trouble here."

Tony became angry. He was pissed off sometimes, but rarely angry, and it made the Love Machine rattle harder. "You don't know what will happen to Little F if they take him away, I do. Leave the boy to me."

"What does that mean? You scooped the kid up out of the desert and now you're going to keep him locked up in a cage with the rest of the critters? How fucked up is that?"

"Either way, he winds up on a cage. It's better to be in a cage with people who love you."

Mike had to think about this. Did the affection and protective devotion they felt toward Little F really constitute love? Had the boy somehow ingratiated himself into his own impenetrable heart? A child was definitely not part of the business plan, but somehow these three outcasts, uncomfortable and unwelcome in the environment in which they had been spawned, were now orbiting about a common gravitational center in which Little F was the sun.

I get what you're saying," said Tony. "I really get it. I know this situation can't last like this forever. But you've got to give me some time to work out a plan."

Mike threw his hands up in defeat. He went back to his own room, threw his feet up on the bed, and began scrolling through his phone notifications. There were half a dozen texts or Facebook messages from Lisa that he had not responded to. "R U alive?" with a smiley face emoticon attached. "We need 2 talk - I ❤ you" and the like. All of this made Mike want to hurl, just like Tony had lost his cookies on the bumpy desert road. He didn't want this faithless female who had left him rotting in prison to wriggle her way once more into his heart, via cutesy emotions and other sneaky feminine devices.

But then he scrolled to the bottom of the list, where he found an emoticonless message that made him think, a dangerous impediment to his determination.

"Look, I know you're angry and I don't blame you. The truth is that I wanted to go back for you, but that sexist bigot you have working for you was making me really uneasy. I was hanging around anyway, trying to see if I could get any information about your whereabouts, but Tony told me I better get out of town and let him take care of it. I went back to the motel but your friend showed up a couple hours later, drunk and acting really sleazy. I got scared and didn't know what to do, so I drove home. This is the truth. Please call so we can talk about it. Love U."

Mike put the phone down on the bed. Drunk and sleazy? That part was perfectly believable, but if it was true why had Lisa not told him this story from the start? Why had she waited so long to contact him and then, once she finally did, leave this very plausible explanation for last? Bitch was lyin', he concluded.

The next morning things were back to their usual state of monotonous normalcy at the Gasden Motel. Mike hit the buzzer, and Tony came out and beat up a pimp who was trying to pander girls in the parking lot. Tony had to admit that he earned his keep sometimes. After the pimp was disposed of, Tony went back to his room and Mike didn't see either him or Little F the rest of the day, so he spent the late morning and early afternoon tidying up rooms, folding toilet paper ends into neat little triangles, and the like.

Mike was lugging a load of trash out to the dumpster when he looked around the corner to see a Prius pull into the parking lot. When the driver saw Mike, the car steered away from the office, over to where he was standing with the garbage.

The driver of the Prius skidded to a stop, then sprang out and ran in his direction. "Mike!" Lisa shrieked, and threw her arms around him.

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