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Author's Note: The Prologue has been rewritten. To understand this Epilogue, you must go back and reread the Prologue. The change does not affect the rest of the narrative. I apologize for the inconvenience. REREAD PROLOGUE>>
"That's it," said the Father, when he got to the part where Tony Varg - Von Mueller, died and the familial trio – bound together by the doctrines of escapology, not biology, were lugging the Gasden Motel caretaker’s body back across the river. He had hoped to let his saga vaporize slowly, gracefully, into the imagination of his listener, where it could provide fodder for future contemplation, but the passenger was still raptly tuned in, obviously expecting more and forcing this crude, clumsy punctuation on the tail end of a beautiful tale. The Father was disappointed.
The Father had perfectly synchronized the speed of the car with the speed of the narrative. They were just a few miles from Nogales now, climbing into the Patagonia foothills here in the western Chihuahuan desert. In the fading light the surrounding scrub was colorless and skeletal, its bare fingers like the ghostless bones of invaders northern and southern, past and present. It was the fitting setting for the end of the story, a nexus of colliding worlds and cultures, but either the passenger had been an unworthy audience, or the Father had failed as a storyteller. The mighty itinerant bard Homer looked down from Olympus with a scowl of disapproval.
“That’s it?” said the passenger, surprised. He seemed equally disappointed by the performance.
The Father curled up into a protective cocoon behind the wheel, bracing himself for the critique to come. Perhaps this young man was an even less appreciative audience than his eternally unsatisfied daughters.
“You were expecting more? The rest is up to your imagination. All I know for sure is that they are still hiding down in Mexico.”
The passenger had to admit to himself that this man spun a damn good yarn, but he had come to the conclusion that that was all it was – a fable, a folk tale conveying a cautionary message. Yes, it had elements of the truth - if he was to do a Google search he would most certainly find many hits about a Roll Bridge massacre, but he found it really hard to believe that this prototypical suburban WASP behind the wheel of this automobile would have access to the details the news media could not provide. Who were his clandestine sources?
“Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the story. But what was that mysterious object the government was after Mike Gasden for?”
The Father looked over with lowered eyebrows, as if to say really?
“I will leave that one for you to contemplate, my young friend. Your company has been a pleasure through this interminable desert, but Nogales is up ahead, and I’m afraid we must part ways soon. Where would you like me to let you off?”
The passenger wasn’t quite ready to make the hyperspace leap into Mexico. He wanted to think about a couple of things first, and he preferred to do it a safe distance from the prying eyes of border security. “Right here is perfect,” he said.
“Here? Seriously?”
“Yes please.”
The Father became a bit circumspect. Up until now the passenger had behaved like a perfect gentleman. Was this the part where he pulls over in the darkness and the hitchhiker turns into a fiendish, soul-sucking ghoul, like Dan Akroyd in that Twilight Zone movie, where they were rolling down a dark road, merrily singing along to The Midnight Special, when Akroyd transformed into a murderous, bone-crunching beast?
But he still did not detect any bad vibes percolating off this young man. His companion for the last 450 miles was a wayward soul but a good one, an inquisitive spirit searching for answers, much like he had been in his youth.
He found a safe shoulder on the curving highway and stopped the car.
“Thank you,” said the young man as he got out of the Auto without growing fangs and feasting on the Father’s flesh. “I’m pretty sure I took you out of your way a little.” The passenger was confident that this man was not a resident of Nogales. He just didn’t look the part. He was guessing Southern California.
“The pleasure has been all mine,” said the Father. “Good luck to you.”
The traveler moved down a sandy wash meandering between steep hills, where he took refuge beneath the boughs of a hackberry. He was not a stranger to such sanctuaries and immediately dozed off, to dream the dreams of the prophets that had preceded him there.
When rosy-fingered dawn was kissing the horizon he arose and tread down the slot canyon some more. Although he had know way of knowing it, it was the same ravine combed by Dustin Diesel’s deputies in the story he had been recently regaled with. As he slogged along ambivalently, the youth remained uncertain of his future path. He was familiar with this canyon, knowing that it lay in an almost perfect north-south line, as if laid out on paper with a compass, but which way should he go? Though he was a Dreamer – having been brought into this country as a boy before being deported with his family, he still considered Mexico home. Yet his was a soul in limbo, he was a man without a country. Mexico rejected his gringo-accented Spanish, and the US rejected his dark-haired ethnicity. What would be his choice? Should he flip a coin? He didn’t have one.
So the traveler continued tentatively northbound, making meager, reluctant progress as the sun peered over the top of the canyon walls. He decided to take refuge in the heat that would soon become stifling, and in the bend of the wash he found a thorny thicket that looked like just the ticket. Approaching with the caution of the seasoned desert dweller before the unforgiving spines of mesquite and its spindly relatives, the young man perceived a peculiarly colored clump clinging to the end of one of the thorny branches.
He crept in to investigate this uncharacteristic, unidentified lump of fuzz. For a time he had actually studied botany at Unison in Hermosillo, before the economic circumstances of time and place succeeded in forcing him and his college education to the desperate extreme of an illegal border crossing. Still being a scientific soul, however, he was interested in finding out what species of mold or fungus might be growing on that tree.
The young man approached for a closer look. From about three feet out he could see that the shaggy ball was colored in a curious shade that was not quite orange, not quite red, but more like the nauseous tone of vomited spaghetti sauce. In the rapidly increasing illumination of the sun the clump gave off the appearance of hair - human air. He yearned to examine this curiosity more closely, but dare he touch it?
After stroking his unshaven stubble for a moment he decided he had hit rock bottom and had nothing left to lose. The situation called for boldness. He raised himself up on outstretched toes and pulled down the hairy blob.
It turned out to be not exactly hair but a wig, a very well-made wig, you could say the biggest, best wig in American history. He was no expert on faux follicles, but he could tell. He just knew. What a score. It was just the thing for his prematurely receding hairline.
Feeling emboldened, the traveler shook out the debris that had accumulated in the hairpiece, then slapped the wig on his head. Immediately he felt transformed. He felt like a different being. "They're going to love me here now," he said, "they're really really going to love me."
With lightened steps the emigrant now made his choice. He went back into the wash, adjusted the hairpiece tighter around his skull, then worked his way further North, toward unclaimed opportunities beyond the Gadsden Purchase.
THE END
Photo by Robert Bushell, Public Domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons:https://www.flickr.com/photos/cbpphotos/46293165494/
