Desert Discord

by Henry D. Terrell

  Desmond Mitchell, at thirty-three, was the oldest of the crew. He imagined himself to be handsome, and he was, sort of, in a greaser way. He used generous amounts of Groom & Clean in his hair and shaved every day, leaving his sideburns bushy and pointed at the corners of his mouth. He had a low, quiet voice made worse by unfiltered Chesterfields. Mitchell had a reputation for reacting before thinking, a trait that had landed him behind bars more than once. He wasn’t a great asset to a dangerous job, but in truth Tank had recruited him mostly because he owned a van.

  About one thirty a.m., they slowed down as they came to the tiny town of Wink—just a few stop signs and a closed gas station. The guy in the back of the van spoke up.

  “Man, please. Listen. Just let her go here. You don’t want her. Just stop and let her get out here.”

  “Shut up, fuckhead,” said Tank.

  “It doesn’t make any sense, man. She’s just my friend. Let her go. She doesn’t know you guys from Adam.”

  Tank, who was sitting on the shotgun side, got up and went back to where Timothy Kaufman sat on the floor of the van, hands and feet tightly bound. Bobby Downs sat there too, leaning against the side with his jacket for a pillow, trying to sleep. He wasn’t the brightest guy Tank had ever worked with, but he was reliable and did what he was told. Tank stepped over Downs, knelt down and grabbed Tim by the front of his collar, and jerked him roughly forward so his face was inches from Tank’s.

  “Do I stutter, shithead?” said Tank. “I said shut … the fuck … up. If I hear another peep out of you, I’m gonna gag you too.”

  The girl had made such a shrill commotion when they grabbed her, they had to gag her with a bandanna as soon as they got her in the van. Now she lay on her side, hands tied behind her, watching Tank warily by the yellow light of the small-town vapor lights.

  “I’m sorry; I’ll shut up,” said Tim. “Just don’t hurt her. She can barely breathe.”

  Tank looked at Erycca. “She can breathe,” he said. He crawled back to the front seat.

  Mitchell spoke quietly, just loud enough for Tank to hear him over the sound of the Ford engine.

  “We really fucked this up, man,” he said. “We shouldn’t have grabbed the girl. That wasn’t part of the deal.”

  “I know,” said Tank. “But what else were we supposed to do? She was in the car. She wasn’t even supposed to be there, but dumbfuck back there brought her along. She got a good look at all of us. She’d have called the cops within five minutes. We had to grab her, too.”

  “It was just dumb,” said Mitchell. “Jerry is going to go ape shit.”

  “Just let me talk to Jerry,” said Tank. “I’ll explain it to him. We had no choice.”

  Mitchell shook his head. “Ape … shit,” he said. “This is not going to end well.”

  After the second stop sign, the van picked up speed and cruised through the night, air whistling past the side-view mirrors. Mitchell looked for their turnoff, which wasn’t marked—just a gate and a cattle guard.

  Back in Duro, the Dustins were awake—except Grandma, who could sleep through a ten-car pileup.

  “I was going to wait till morning,” said Phil Dustin. “But my wife wanted me to call the police right away. It is her car. I know you guys have better things to do in the middle of the night.”

  The patrolman had just finished filling out the Grand Theft–Automobile short form. It was just the basic info—make, model, color, plate number, date reported missing.

  “No, this is exactly when you should call us,” said the officer. “In the morning, five thousand vehicles are going to be out on the streets. Tonight, we have a fair chance of spotting your wife’s car. We’ll have the description and license plate out to the dispatcher as soon as I call it in.”

  “Well, I hope you find it,” said Phil.

  The officer looked at his watch. “It’s about three o’clock now. What time did you notice the car was missing?”

  “I guess it was just before two. I always get up once or twice in the night. For some reason, I got worried that I had left the windows in my car rolled down. When I looked outside to the driveway, I saw that Sherry’s Rambler was gone.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “No. It could have been stolen anytime after we went to bed,” said Phil. “My son stays up later than we do. He might have heard something. We could wake him up and ask.”

  “Don’t wake him,” said Sherry Dustin. “It doesn’t matter that much.”

  “It’s up to you,” said the officer, “but it might help, if he heard anything unusual.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll just talk to him real quickly and let him go back to sleep.” She went into the hallway and tapped on Del Ray’s bedroom door, then went in. The two men heard her speaking softly. “Del, honey. Can you wake up for a little bit?”

  After a few moments, the overhead light went on in the bedroom. “Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “Phil! Phil, come here! He’s gone.”

  Phil Dustin went to the bedroom door and saw the ruse his son had attempted with pillows and bedclothes.

  “Oh, God!” he said. “I can’t believe it. That’s the kind of bullshit Billy would do, not Del Ray.”

  The officer came to the bedroom door.

  “Uh-huh,” he said. “Well, if it makes you feel better, he’s not the first teenage boy to pull a stunt like this. The good news is we have a pretty good chance of solving the case tonight.”

  – 26 –

  Andy’s Big Secret

  After the hearing was over, Peggy Zamara was so angry she couldn’t go home right away. She was supposed to take Andy home for the weekend, but she couldn’t leave town just yet. She didn’t want to face what would be a mostly silent drive with her wounded son. She had to go somewhere and unwind, decompress, talk to somebody. The pain of having her family humiliated publicly was too much to bear alone. Ramona Piedman invited Peggy and Andy to eat lunch at the Shrimp Hut. Peggy didn’t like seafood, especially greasy fish sticks and rubber scallops, but she needed to commiserate with someone, and her new friend Ramona was a good choice.

  Ramona was on Peggy’s side. Aside from her own family, few others were. Even Andy didn’t seem to care much. He had sat emotionless throughout the hearing, even during Chris Rhodes’s description of the violence. The city attorneys, who were responsible to the city and its citizens, didn’t seem to care. Why would they? To them, Andy and Simon were just strange men of a suspicious nature who somehow got into a fight with some high school boys. It was a shame the fight got out of hand, and especially a shame that one of the men had a traumatic brain injury, but, hey, young men are a volatile breed, and things get out of hand sometimes.

  They said it wasn’t over, that the investigation would continue and there could be further hearings, but nothing was scheduled currently. Peggy wasn’t stupid. She could see they were doing their utmost to sweep everything under the old boys-will-be-boys rug.

  Peggy ordered a Dr. Pepper but nothing else. Ramona had the shrimp cocktail and french fries, while Andy ordered the catfish plate. It looked repulsive to Peggy, but her son ate it happily. He daubed on lots of catsup.

  “I think one problem was that only two of the boys showed up for the hearing,” said Ramona. “They said the other one was sick, but according to Simon, that was the boy who kicked Andy on the ground. So I don’t believe it for a second. The way that one lawyer played it, it was just two grown men versus two teenagers. That way, it looked like a fair fight instead of what it was—an assault.”

  “They should have let Andy talk,” said Peggy. “If they had just asked him some basic questions, it would have been obvious to everybody how badly those three boys had hurt him, and the city attorney would have to bring it to a grand jury.”

  “Andy doesn’t remember that night, so he couldn’t contribute anything,” said Ramona. “At least that’s how those men saw it. The point of the hearing was to get the facts about what happened.”

  “W
hat those boys did to my son,” said Peggy. “There’s a big difference between a fight and an attack. They made it sound like Andy got a little punch in the nose or something. They kicked him! On the ground. For the love of Jesus, there better be some justice somewhere. I haven’t hired a lawyer, but now I might. We may not have much money left, but there’s bound to be a lawyer who would help us. Those boys came with a lawyer. The prosecutor said no attorneys were necessary, because it was just an ‘informational hearing.’ Yet, there the lawyer was in his suit and tie.”

  “I know some attorneys who are Playhouse patrons,” said Ramona. “Let me make some calls.” She dipped a fry into a little paper cup of malt vinegar. “You know, I wish Simon Frost had talked more. He didn’t help Andy much. He did say he saw that one boy, the one named Del, standing over Andy when he was on the ground. But Simon kept saying, ‘I’m not sure what happened, I was across the street.’ He said that after almost every question: ‘I was across the street, so I didn’t get a good look.’ It didn’t help our case any. I don’t know what he was thinking.”

  Andy spoke quietly. “Simon doesn’t want to think about it anymore.”

  “Of course he doesn’t,” said Peggy. “But he owes it to you to tell what happened. I’m going to go talk to him. There’s something strange going on with him.”

  “Please don’t, Mama,” said Andy. “If Simon wants to put a rest to it, then that’s okay.”

  “Those boys hurt you, and I’m so mad I could scream.”

  Andy patted Peggy’s hand. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay.”

  “Honey, I know you want to let it go, but you are not okay. You’re better, but you’re a long road from the way you were. Those boys hurt your brain and wiped out our savings.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Don’t be mad.”

  Peggy shut her eyes and squeezed Andy’s hand, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “You don’t be sorry,” she said. “But I have to be mad for both of us.”

  “I’m mad too,” said Ramona. “What makes me the angriest is the way they kept implying that Andy and Simon had it coming, like it was somehow their fault for being in Murchison Park at night. The lawyer kept saying, ‘When these two young men were walking in the park together …’ as if that explained everything. And why didn’t Simon mention his fiance?”

  “Fiance?” said Peggy. “I didn’t know he was getting married.”

  “He is,” said Ramona. “In fact, he said the wedding is coming up later this month. He’s marrying that plump Spanish girl who was sitting with him.”

  “Anita,” said Andy. “She loves him. He was not sure about her … I guess he changed his mind.”

  “Anyway, it would have helped if he had brought her up,” said Ramona. “He could have mentioned that he was engaged. That would have helped deflect all those things the lawyer was implying about Andy.”

  “What things?” asked Andy.

  “Oh, you know, honey,” said Peggy. “Things like how you and Simon were ‘really good friends.’”

  “We are good friends.”

  “Of course,” said Ramona. “But the lawyer was trying to suggest that you are homosexuals, and that’s why you were in the park.”

  “Oh,” said Andy.

  Andy wasn’t quite sure how it came about that he had kept his big secret so close all these years. Partly it was just the circumstances of his upbringing, the fact that his mother usually kept personal feelings tucked away and didn’t let them color her decisions about what was best for herself and her family. It may have partly been an unconscious attempt to be different from his father, a physically strong man who was sometimes reduced to inaction and confusion by his own deeply felt emotions. He had witnessed his father crying, but never his mother.

  Mostly, he thought, what I am, and what I think, is nobody’s business but mine.

  Andy’s big secret was that he liked girls. He liked them a lot. His attraction to them was both physical and intellectual, and had started early. He liked being around them, especially the smart ones, loved the way they looked and smelled, the way they talked.

  It might have been Debbie Bauer’s fault. In eighth grade, she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. She was his first breathtaking crush. He loved to watch her from a distance, and to watch her face when she talked to him. He liked talking to her, too, but knew better than to let it morph into mere friendship. That could be a roadblock to the kind of intimacy he dreamed of.

  Debbie had developed physically a bit earlier than the other girls—she had proud, high breasts and lovely medium-wide hips with a shelf behind—so it didn’t help that Andy matured a little later than his friends. He was fourteen before his voice changed. Though he would grow up to be strikingly handsome, as an adolescent his body was thin and lanky, and his hair had a permanent Alfalfa cowlick at the crown. Allergies left his eyes watery and his nose red. Worst of all, he was an orchestra nerd, toting his violin and music bag back and forth to school every day, since in those days the Zamaras lived in town just four blocks from the junior high school. He was also enrolled in the dance program at the Duro chapter of Junior Cotillion, the least masculine pursuit a boy could do in West Texas. The only reason Andy voluntarily put that particular target on his back was because Debbie was a Cotillion member, and he could dance with her.

  It took two years of the “instruction and practice in the courtesies that make life more pleasant for young men and women, and those around them” before he worked up the courage to ask Debbie if he could escort her to the Cotillion Fall Ball of 1959.

  Andy called her, asked Debbie’s mother if he could speak to her, then sweated for forty agonizing seconds before she finally picked up the receiver. He heard some other girls talking in the background. He tried to make some small talk he had prepared for the occasion, but was too rattled to be coherent.

  She kept giggling and muffling the phone, but he could still hear her talking to her friends, and hear them giggling too. He blurted out his invitation, and at first she seemed to accept, but in a silly and exaggerated way.

  “Oh, Andy, I am so … thrilled. Does this mean we’re … going together?”

  “Uh … yeah … to the dance together.” Andy wasn’t sure if she was making fun of him or not. Or maybe she was just nervous and it was coming out in giggles.

  “Will you pick me up in your … car?”

  Okay, now she was messing with him.

  “My … mom has a car. Yeah … I’d pick you up.”

  “I don’t know, Andy, I’m pretty heavy … Are you sure you’re strong enough?” A flurry of muffled giggles.

  He hurried to escape the call, but he hung up thinking she might be saying yes. He wasn’t sure.

  The next day in school, he saw Debbie in the hallway and tried to give her his sincerest smile, but she looked at him like he was crazy. This was the first time he got that look from someone, but it wouldn’t be the last. Two of her friends were with her. Before he could say a word, she poured on the derision.

  “Andy, did you seriously think I’d go to Cotillion Ball with you? We’re both in Cotillion. Of course we’ll both be there. But I don’t want to go there on a date. Gaw! Besides, I’m going with Neil Waterberg.”

  “He’s … not in Cotillion,” said Andy, confused.

  “I just mean I’m going steady with Neil. You can’t be my boyfriend. As … if! Gaw, Andy, don’t be stupid!”

  Supporting giggles were provided. She turned and left with her entourage. He watched the shelf swaying away, and felt only shame.

  Andy never went to the Cotillion Fall Ball of 1959. He never asked another girl to go with him anywhere. Except once, and that was years later.

  They met in college. Her name was Victoria, and she was half Cherokee. (She didn’t tell Andy that; somebody else did.) Victoria was short and tended toward the round, but was pretty cute. She played clarinet.

  It was junior year at Tech. Andy and Victoria were both taking Advanced M
usic Theory. It was what they called a “weed-out” course, brutally hard, with dense information thrown at the students at a furious rate, with the intention of driving the insufficiently serious music students to quit the program or to commit suicide, whichever came first. Since they both were serious music students, Andy and Victoria banded together as study partners to try and keep their heads above water.

  Toward the end of the spring semester, Andy invited Victoria to a dance sponsored by Kappa Alpha at the Lubbock Legion Hall. It was billed as a twelve-hour “Dance for Those Who Never Can,” to raise money for muscular dystrophy research. Victoria danced with Andy about an hour and a half, then they mutually conceded that dancing all night was not possible or necessary. Victoria invited Andy to a private party at the off-campus apartment of some graduate students that she knew. They drank lightly spiked punch and sat close together on the couch.

  Around midnight, Andy and Victoria found themselves alone, kissing on the bed in the room of a girl who was out of town for the weekend.

  At some point, Andy was straddling her on the bed, clothing disheveled, both of them out of breath from laughing. They paused as the implications sank in.

  “You want to keep going?” asked Andy.

  “You bet. What … exactly … do you want to do to me, mister?” Victoria attempted a stern look.

  “After much consideration, I believe I would like to … [long pause for drama] … lick your stomach!”

  “Very well,” said Victoria, and pulled up her shirt to expose the brown expanse of her torso.

  Andy dived and, true to his stated intentions, gave her a long lick from navel to sternum. She squealed with laughter, then took Andy by both ears and raised his head up to look him in the face.