Desert Redemption

by Betty Webb

  Jerry wasn’t moved by his protest. “Whatever the provocation, it makes no difference. Now let’s go pack your things. You’re going home.”

  “But…”

  Jerry flexed his huge muscles. “Violence is not allowed at Kanati under any circumstances. You were told that on your first day and you signed an agreement to that effect.”

  “But…”

  Without further ado, Jerry hustled him toward one of the log cabins at the rear of the compound.

  “Then I want a refund,” the Kanati reject whined, attempting without success to pull away. “I paid for three months!”

  “You should have read the fine print.”

  As the two disappeared, I turned my attention to Leo’s bleeding victim. I couldn’t tell if his nose was broken or not, but it was a gusher. “This is why you need a medical staff,” I told Gabrielle.

  “Noah was a medic in Afghanistan,” she replied, gesturing to the man attending to the victim. Despite her reassuring tone, she appeared shaken. “If he feels poor Walter needs further treatment, he will drive him to Tucson Medical Center.”

  “Does that kind of thing happen often here?” I expected Gabrielle to go into full whitewash mode, during which I might learn even more about the way Kanati operated.

  She surprised me by answering, “It happens more often than we would wish. We take in troubled people, and some of them have backgrounds in violence, especially the recovering addicts. Not, you understand, that I am saying Leo is or was an addict. We observe our newcomers carefully during their first few weeks among us, and structure their days in such a way that they seldom experience stressful situations. But with Leo…” She shrugged. “Even standing peacefully in line has proven too much for him.”

  “Jerry and Noah, the guys who broke it up, their headbands had beading all over the place, even more beads than yours. Which means?”

  “They have reached a higher state of Elevation than I.”

  Her admission shocked me. “May I ask what’s holding you back?”

  She stopped smiling. “You may ask, but the best answer is another quaint Americanism, ‘It’s complicated.’”

  Behind her, the line in front of the large teepee began to form again. I looked around, hoping to see the elderly man again, but he was nowhere to be found.

  Upon leaving Kanati, I drove straight to Marie Gorsky’s house and told her what I’d learned. At first she had trouble believing it.

  “Nobody disappears just because they get up one day feeling empty.”

  “His words, not mine, Marie.”

  “If feeling empty on occasion was reason enough to disappear, every new mother experiencing postpartum depression would hit the road.”

  “That sometimes happens.” And worse. I remembered Kyle’s mother. And my own. After shooting me, however accidentally, she had never shown up at the hospital to claim me. Why not? Was she dead?

  “What did Roger say when you served him the divorce papers?” Marie’s question jolted me out of the memory.

  I gave her a weak smile. “Well, at first he called me a bitch, then kind of backtracked, saying, ‘I accept whatever happens to me as a result of my actions.’ It’s part of the Kanati teachings, apparently.”

  Glen, who had been lifting weights on the patio when I arrived, laughed. “Accept? That’s rich!”

  Marie didn’t find it quite so humorous. With a worried look, she turned to him and said, “You don’t feel empty, do you?”

  The big man put a comforting arm around her. “Only when you’re not around.”

  “Nothing Roger said makes sense.”

  He hugged her tighter. “Does it have to? It’s just life, honey, and life doesn’t always make sense.”

  On that, Glen and I were in agreement. I didn’t think life—especially the love part—made any sense whatsoever.

  Chapter Ten

  “But it’s Sunday!” Jimmy still hadn’t reconciled himself to my schedule, and made his unhappiness known when we put the horses away after a too-short morning ride.

  “I’ll only be gone an hour or two.”

  “It’ll take you an hour to get to EarthWay, at least an hour to look around, then another hour to get back. I thought you were going to help on the house. The plumbing’s about to go in, and you know what that’s like.”

  Thanks to the aid of Wolf Ramirez’s teen mentorees, the new house was coming along nicely, while my own contributions continued to fall short. Other work, especially the Desert Investigations kind, kept getting in the way. Maybe EarthWay wasn’t officially our case, but if the information Gabrielle had given me proved correct, I might need to tip off the Department of Child Safety, the new name for Child Protective Services.

  “I promise to help as soon as I get back,” I assured Jimmy.

  He harrumphed. “You’re overloading yourself again. Remember me warning you that you can’t do everything?”

  “Yeah, and I remember my comeback: I’ll always try, especially when children are involved.”

  It took only forty minutes to get to EarthWay, which was located in Hopi County just off the Beeline Highway. At an elevation of fifteen hundred feet, the mile-long Orange Valley didn’t experience the blistering summers of Scottsdale, which decades earlier had allowed it to gain fame for the orange orchards specializing in Arizona Sweets. Twenty years ago most of the trees died during a prolonged drought, almost bankrupting the orchard owner, who then sold out to a thoroughbred training stable which also went bust. The valley was then parceled off to four back-to-the-land-type communes, two of which coalesced into EarthWay. Perhaps thirty of the original orange trees remained, and as my Jeep nimbly navigated the rutted dirt road, I could still detect their citrusy aroma.

  Gaining access to EarthWay proved easy. Unlike Kanati, there was no gate and no Ernie, just a sign announcing HANDMADE FURNITURE, QUILTS AND GIFTS. FREE PARKING!!! EarthWay did have one thing in common with Kanati, though. Its members had moved lock and stock into pre-existing buildings, which in this case meant sharing three houses, two barns, and a long row of horse stables turned into living quarters. All the structures were more ramshackle than Kanati’s well-maintained buildings, and the wooden privies—located alarmingly near a large vegetable garden—smelled very much in use. At the other side of the garden grazed a small herd of goats and milk cows. They shared their space with a flock of molting red chickens and several collarless dogs. The only sign of modern technology was a neglected-looking water tower looming at the end of the property, where the words ORANGE VALLEY STABLES were fading away.

  After parking (FREE!!!), I bypassed the hut with the FRESH UNPASTURIZED MILK & EGGS sign, circumvented a group of runny-nosed children playing hopscotch, and headed for a general store that boasted a HANDICRAFTS sign above its open door. Once across a porch lined with wooden rockers, each bearing a price tag, I entered a large, gloomy room lit only by three kerosene lanterns. For effect? Or did EarthWay have no electricity? While driving down the dirt road I had noticed power lines leading to the compound, but they might not have been operational. Electricity costs money, and EarthWay was no Kanati.

  “May I help you?”

  In the dim light I could see a fifty-something woman behind the counter. She wore her graying hair pulled back into a schoolmarm bun, and the ankle-length dress she wore was a loose weave of unevenly dyed blue cotton. It hung loosely on her too-thin frame, making me wonder if she’d recently lost weight. Her soiled white apron added to her bedraggled appearance, as did the angry red rash along her arms.

  I had decided that the easiest way to check out the commune would be to act like a fat-pursed tourist, and so I wasn’t averse to spending a little money out of Desert Investigation’s petty cash. The coverlet on Jimmy’s bed had already proven too light for the season, which was growing cooler as we headed into November.

  “I’d like to see som
e quilts,” I said.

  The woman’s smile revealed yellow teeth flecked with small cavities, and her breath when she neared, had a sour smell. “Oh, we have lovely quilts, all handmade on site. Are you looking for any particular pattern or color family?”

  I knew nothing about quilts, only that many of them qualified as works of art, thus the popular quilt competition at the Arizona State Fair. I’d yearned for the prize-winner one year, but its price turned out to be not much less than a new motor for my Jeep. I hoped the prices here were more affordable.

  “Maybe something with a lot of blue.” Blue was Jimmy’s favorite color.

  “We have a nice selection of blues. I’m Sally White Flower. And you?”

  “Lena Jones.”

  As Sally White Flower led me past a pottery display table where the offerings were considerably more accomplished than any of those I’d seen at Kanati, I noticed she was barefoot. “You don’t get splinters?” I pointed to the rough-hewn floor.

  She chuckled. “After a while your feet toughen up so much you don’t even feel it. Besides, going barefoot is Nature’s way.”

  Bubonic plague was Nature’s way, too. And malaria. And more to the point, hookworms, a parasite you could contract by walking barefoot over ground where animals had defecated. Sally White Flower’s rash was one symptom of hookworm infestation, making me wonder what other symptoms she might have: abdominal pain, cramping, fever, loss of appetite? Judging by her condition alone, I could understand Adam Arneault’s concerns about EarthWay.

  Health issues aside, the store was a treasure trove of highly skilled handmade crafts. A display of sweet-scented soaps and candles stood next to a rack offering handmade jewelry, all the pieces quite beautiful. At the back of the room, a pile of quilts was stacked waist-high beneath an open window through which I could hear children playing and chickens clucking.

  After a brief flip through the quilts, Sally pulled one out. “How about this? The pattern’s called Steeplechase, and as you can see, it’s a lovely blue on white.”

  While the blue was a lovely shade, all those squares cocked at angles made it look like an Escher drawing. Hardly restful. “Perhaps you have something a little less eye-crossing?”

  “Then how about this Sunbonnet Sue?” The quilt she held up was covered by little girls in blue dresses and matching bonnets.

  “Pretty, but it’s a gift for a man.”

  “Straight or gay?”

  The question, coming from a woman who looked like something out of a nineteenth-century photograph, made me chuckle. “Very straight.”

  “Would you describe him as bold?”

  That gave me pause. Jimmy was one of the gentlest men I’d ever known, but he had a backbone of steel. And he’d certainly been bold enough to take me on. “Very bold.”

  She nodded, flipped through the stack some more, then pulled out a multi-colored quilt that could have been put together by Pablo Picasso, if the artist had ever dropped acid at a quilting bee. Blue was the predominant color, but I also saw splashes of red, yellow, green, purple—the entire color spectrum. It was such a wild-looking thing I could already see it on Jimmy’s bed. He had a wild side, too.

  “What’s this pattern called?”

  “Foundation Pieced Crazy Quilt.”

  Crazy Quilt? I fell further in love. “How much?”

  Her answer made me gulp, but I fished for my wallet. Then stopped. Everything about EarthWay telegraphed its back-to-basics philosophy. “Um, how do I pay you? Personal check? I never carry that much cash.”

  “We don’t take checks, but how about this?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a smartphone with an attached card reader. “Visa, MasterCard, or American Express, we take them all.”

  Well, of course. No matter how back-to-basics a commune proclaimed itself, it still needed to make money. I handed over my Visa, and within seconds, Jimmy was the proud possessor of a handmade Crazy Quilt. Instead of a plastic bag, Sally wrapped it up in a long sheet of butcher paper.

  “This’ll keep the dust off,” she explained. “Would you like me to hang on to it while you look around the store? Maybe sit in one of the rocking chairs? They’re handmade, too, as is our one-of-a-kind jewelry. Our artisans find and polish the stones themselves. We also offer a nice line of handmade dresses and aprons, like what I’m wearing.”

  Bless Sally White Flower. She had given me the perfect opening. “I’m full up on dresses.” A lie there, I didn’t even own a dress, much less an apron. “Same with jewelry, but I might as well do a little grocery shopping while I’m here. Since I can see chickens right out your window, the eggs have to be fresher than anything I can get at the supermarket. Your produce is guaranteed organic, right?”

  “Absolutely. Everything here is homegrown and pesticide-free. No GMOs, of course.” She actually shuddered. Recovering, she motioned to my tote bag. “If you can’t fit everything in there, the produce stand has a nice collection of reusable cloth bags. All handmade, and very attractive.”

  After seeing those beautiful quilts, I had no doubt of that.

  From the general store I ambled over to the produce stand run by a man who introduced himself as Jeremiah Blue Sky. Thin, pushing fifty, he was ruddy-complexioned and had eyes that matched his name. Like the other men I’d seen walking around the compound, he wore a long-sleeved lumberjack shirt underneath his bib overalls, and his blond hair hung in foot-long dreads. While he filled my new handmade grocery bag with an expensive selection of guaranteed no-GMO carrots, salad greens, oranges, and apples, he chattered away.

  “We’ve been wholly organic for three years, but we’ve only been doing the raw water thing for one.” His nasal accent placed him from the southern Midwest, Arkansas or Missouri. “When we found out about the chemicals getting flushed into people’s water systems—Xanax, Librium, Premarin, and a whole witches’ brew of painkillers—we decided raw everything was the only way to go. With raw water you cut the processed crap and stay with the Earth’s own natural bounty.”

  “My thinking exactly,” I lied. “But where do you get your water? I didn’t see any streams on my way in.”

  “There’s a nice little stream in the woods back there,” he gestured toward a stand of pine trees, “but it’s a little risky. I mean, you never know if something has died upstream somewhere and fallen into water, do you? Microbe City, baby. One of the reasons we moved here was because there’s an artesian well on the property. Some of the best-tasting water you’ve ever had, guaranteed pollutant- and chemical-free.”

  “I wouldn’t mind tasting that.”

  He thought for a moment. “Selling you water would be illegal, and since that damned documentary and last month’s incident with the marijuana patch, the Feds have been keeping a close eye on us. So, here, take this.” He handed me an empty but recapped Coke bottle that appeared clean. “Just take it to the well behind the big barn and haul up the water yourself. We always recommend that our produce be eaten raw. Just wash everything down with a vegetable scrubber, blot dry, and you’re all set. Within a week you’ll start seeing a change. Stay raw and you’ll drop a few pounds, not that you need to, because you look super-fine, if you don’t mind me saying so, but lean and mean is the way we roll.”

  After paying a king’s ransom for the produce, I bid Jeremiah Blue Sky goodbye and set out for the artisan well. As I crossed the compound, I took note of the children. They wore homemade clothes and all were barefoot. More worrying was the fact that every child I saw appeared underweight. Instead of the pink cheeks you might expect from children who spent so much of their lives outdoors, most were paler than I would like. Almost all of them had runny noses, but they seemed happy. No bruises that I could see, no broken bones.

  Like the general store manager, the women wore ankle-length dresses similar to those I’d seen in polygamy compounds at the northern end of the state. Although they wer
e as thin as their children, they looked considerably more cheerful than the polygamists’ beaten-down “sister wives.” As I studied them, I realized their long dresses reminded me of the dress worn by Reservation Woman. Hers had had a similar pattern: long, short-sleeved, but high-necked. And she’d been thin, too. Overly so.

  As I rounded the compound’s barn, I was so deep in thought that I almost collided with a young woman carrying a bucket of water in one hand, a baby in her other arm. Both were redheads. She also wore an ankle-length dress, but unlike most of the others’, hers had a lower neckline and a row of buttons down the front. A nursing mother, I guessed.

  “Oops,” I said, side-stepping out of her way.

  “My fault. I should’ve watched where I was going. Hey, are you the lady who bought my Crazy Quilt? I was up at the store a few minutes ago and saw it sitting on the counter. Sally told me some blond woman bought it.”

  “You’re the quilter?”

  “Yep, that’s me. Born Sara Jenks, but my artist’s name is Sunflower. I sew it into each of my quilts on the lower right border. I’ve got five more quilts in the store, in case you’re doing some early Christmas shopping. Handmade quilts make lovely gifts, and even become heirlooms. They’re one-of-a-kind, not the products of some soulless production line.”

  Her infant made a kitten-like mewl, shifting Sunflower’s attention from sales to the little redhead. She put the bucket down, unbuttoned the front of her dress, and hauled out a vein-marbled breast. Little Red latched on.

  “Sally displays my pottery, too,” she said, ignoring the snuffling and smacking noises. “Mugs, vases, even complete place settings, each piece signed. Natural earth colors, browns and soft greens. They go with any décor.”

  Impressed by the young mother’s lack of self-consciousness, I smiled. “That’s some sales pitch you’ve got there. May I ask what you did for a living before you wound up in EarthWay?”