Chapter 23

Table of Contents

The untimely, uncomfortable, and undesired discovery of the Little Fucker came about as follows:

It happened the day Mike discovered the war hero medals of Josef Müeller in the office wall of the Gasden Motel. It occurred approximately the same time the Right Honourable Earl of Easely, Royal Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, Keeper of Her Majesty's Poultry, Pork and Petunias, along with various other sundry titles much too extensive to elaborate upon except in dull, extraneous footnotes, was tramping around the desert dirt with Lady Easely. He was carrying out his duty as a proud subject of the British realm by flying the Union Jack over the field of American Ornithology, repeating symbolically what British General Robert Ross did when he marched up the Potomac to burn Washington after the Battle of Brandenburg in 1814, but with no Francis Scott Key to immortalize the fireworks.  The Lord and his Lady were searching for the elusive LeContes Thrasher, which they planned to repatriate to the realm of her Majesty the Queen via their field notes.

Actually, it was Lady Easely who was doing most of the repatriating.  The Earl had set himself up in fine Earl style, reclining in a folding chair beneath a large umbrella, slightly modifying the old adage to read that only mad dogs and Englishwomen go out in the midday sun.  While the Earl sipped tea and surveyed his newly acquired fiefdom with a pair of military grade binoculars, a legacy of his service with the 9th Royal Lancers, the Lady tramped through the sand and spines of a wash that was situated between the open desert and the distant squat buildings of the Gasden Motel.

"Try that little thicket over there my dear," said the Earl, gesturing with an ivory handled cane toward a copse of Palo Verdes in a bend of the wash.  The cane bore the coat of arms of his house, a field of purple petunias the color of kidney beans overlaid by a boar's head and the silhouette of a rooster.  "That's right love," he urged her gently.  "This tea is absolutely dreadful.  Make that squeaking distress call again, darling.  My but you do that well."

The Lady Easely cupped her hands together, licked the place where her joined thumbs created a rather vulva-like opening, then pursed her pedigreed lips and blew into the aperture, producing a sound that rather resembled the death throes of a cat.  Nothing feathered stirred, but a Desert Woodrat deserted its untidy nest beneath a Palo Verde and skittered away to take its chances in the open desert, more out of annoyance than fear.

"Pity," said the Earl, when nothing became of her theatrical efforts. "Where is that little Tory?"

  Despite the absence of avian life in the clump of Palo Verdes, the Earl scanned the length of the wash with his binoculars to see if there was anything flying, flitting or scratching about upstream.  To use the word upstream is rather imprecise because there was no stream there at all, just gravelly dirt.

It was at that exact moment, just when the Earl was long distance scanning the area in front of the motel, that Mike popped out of Tony's room to go to his office, leaving Little F behind.  Not because he was spying or committing any other non-Earlish improprieties, the Earl had his binoculars trained at the open door of Tony's room as it swung closed, and in that fleeting instant he glimpsed the glow of Little F’s face through the lenses.

“Dashing little fellow.  Seems our good host has a son.  Blast it, we are out of tea.  I say, my Dear, we shall have to repair to our quarters to reprovision.”

With the Lady Easely lugging the lawn chair, heavy umbrella and teapot, and the Earl clutching covetously to his voluminous bird book, the pair took their stiff upper lips back to the motel, shuffling their feet through thick sand.  When they reached the parking lot they encountered Marisol heading toward the rooms recently evacuated by the FF militia.

"Good afternoon young lady," the Earl greeted her.  "Would you be the proud mother of that fine looking young fellow in this room?"  The Earl was pointing to Tony’s quarters.

Marisol looked at the tall horse faced gentleman, decided by his accent that he must be the visiting royalty, then looked at the door he was referring to.  She was not intimate with the operation of this motel, but she knew this particular room belonged to her Uncle, so the young fellow he spoke of must be Mike.  Had this goddamn desert worn her down so much she could be confused for Mike's Mom?

"Oh, you mean Mike, the owner?" she said, ready to take offense if the answer did not please her. The Earl laughed. "I don't believe so, my Dear.  You're much too young for that.  There was a child in that room, and I just assumed you must be his Mum.  No matter, we'll be off.  Good day."  The Lord and Lady ambled away.

As far as Marisol knew, this room was only used by Tony, but perhaps since her Uncle had left Mike had fixed it up again for customer lodging.  She didn't think so, because she had seen Mike come and go from there on repeated occasions.

So who was the kid the Earl was talking about?  Had his royal head been in the sun too long?  That was a possibility, but curiosity nagged at her.  She liked this guy Mike.  He was awkward and slightly flabby, not like the muscle-bound mental misfits who normally haunted her shadow, but he was also handsome, sweet and smart.  Was it possible he had children?  These were the kind of things a girl had to know.

She looked down at the lanyard of keys in her hand.  There were two card keys and three regular ones hanging there.  Her Uncle's room did not have a card key reader, so obviously one of the regular ones would open the door.

Her Uncle had asked her to give a report on anything unusual going on over here at the motel.  Her Uncle could investigate things on his own, so fuck him.  What exactly was she contemplating, then?  Why exactly was she about to pry into Mike Gasden's personal life?  She didn't know, she guessed it was the curse of the female, the one that trapped Eve into eating the apple in the garden and made Pandora open the box.  She couldn't help it.  She had not been able to help a lot of things in her life.

Marisol reached for the keys, and got it on the second try.  She peeked past the door and saw that the Earl's noble head had not been overly baked by the sun, after all.  A little boy was sitting on the bed.

To say that the kid was cute did not do him justice.  He was beautiful.  His eyes were the same unbroken blue as a cloudless desert sky.   His hair was golden blonde with tawny streaks at the roots.  All of his facial features - nose, lips, and ears, were architecturally perfect.

But the boy did not know he was beautiful - that much was plain to Marisol.  His beauty had been wasted on war, and though she could not know that, she could read the struggle in his face, it being out of place on one so young, but more out of place on a being so beautiful.  Beauty and suffering do not mix well.  Marisol did not know this, because a defining characteristic of the truly beautiful is that they do not believe themselves to be beautiful. Other people, however, would have observed that her own beauty and suffering did not mix well either.

The boy was focused on something when she opened the door, but immediately looked up.  At first he froze in fright, but there must have been something in Marisol that suggested a kindred spirit. Although Mike had been doing a satisfactory job taking care of him, he was also starved for female attention.  He extended his arms and Marisol, equally starved for a kindred spirit, picked him up.  Their souls bonded.

Marisol embraced Little F and spoke in gentle words.  "You poor little thing.  Where are your Mommy and Daddy?"  At that point, she was still not connecting him with Mike.  "Let's go find them."  She put the boy down, took his hand, and led him out the door.  He stopped in place and protested with sounds that were probably words, but she couldn't understand.  Only one word made sense and that was "Mike."

"Yes, Mike," she agreed.  "Let's go get Mike."  She started out again and this time he followed.

By that time the suffocating heat of the afternoon had descended to smother the life out of the land, and the inhabitants of the desert, two legged and otherwise, were all hunkering down. Way out on the empty horizon the occupants of a dirty jeep were catching a nooner, filthy ballcap visors tilted down over their eyes.  Nobody saw Marisol and Little F as they waddled hand in hand to the front desk.

Being engrossed in his archaeological discovery, Mike didn't focus on them either. He was so lost in concentration he did not process what was taking place when they appeared.  There was Marisol, there was Little F.  Two of his favorite people. The two of them together made sense.

Then he dropped the box and ran out into the lobby.  "Holy shit shut the door!"  He dashed behind Marisol and quickly sealed the entrance.  "Take him in the back, quick!"

"What's wrong?  Who is he?"

"Just take him back there.  I'll explain."

Marisol scooted the boy along but maintained a puzzled expression toward Mike.  He checked the parking lot, flipped the No Vacancy sign, dropped the drapes, then followed Marisol and Little F into the back and locked the door.

Little F tugged at Marisol's hand, wanting to be picked up.  She complied but kept her attention on Mike.  "Who is this kid?  Is he yours?"

Mike stared at her bug-eyed, incapable of answering.  He had known Marisol for less than a complete day, and had no idea whose side she was on, if there really were sides.  Should he lie and say Little F was his son?  Then he would be forced to allow the boy to move about openly.  Should he grab the child and make a dash for his truck?  That would be weird and definitely attract attention, possibly from Agent Smith and his associates, who were probably patrolling somewhere outside.  The only thing to do was tell the truth and hope for the best.

"The boy is a fugitive," he said.

Marisol lowered her eyes.  "Why are you bullshitting me if we just met?"

Mike's mouth dropped open.  "I'm not bullshitting.  People are looking for him in very high places."  Being aware he sounded like a paranoid lunatic, he went on to explain to Marisol how the kid had wandered in from the desert, how his mother was suspected of being connected with a terrorist cell, and how government agents had been hounding his motel.

"So you're just going to keep him?" Marisol asked.

"I didn't want to.  I tried to find his family but it didn't work out.  Look at him.  Look at you.  What would you do?"

It was obvious that Marisol had already fallen in love with the boy.  Their arms were inextricably entwined.  "Well shit we gotta hide him.  At least until we figure out something."

"We?"

Marisol rolled her eyes.  "Yeah, we.  I like this kid.  I like you too. It's been a long time since I liked anybody.  I don't want either of you to fall into the wrong hands."

Too late for that.  Mike had already fallen.  Whether she was the right or wrong hands remained to be seen, but Mike Gasden was a goner.



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Image of Le Conte's Thrasher, from a C. Hart Merriam article in the Jan 1895 edition of The Auk, illustrated by Ridgway?, courtesy of Wikipedia