Desert Discord

by Henry D. Terrell

  “Wait,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Zamara, I don’t want a boyfriend, you know. I just want to play right now. Is that okay?”

  “Well, Miss …” He paused, thinking. “Strangely, I don’t think I’ve ever known your last name.”

  “Kee,” she said.

  “Well, Miss Kee … I don’t want a girlfriend at this time, either. However, since I am very fond of you, let us make sweet music together.”

  “Take it from the top!” said Victoria Kee.

  “From the top,” agreed Andy Zamara.

  She pulled her shirt off, and after a few moments of struggle lying on her back, unsnapped her bra and flung it away. She then started working on Andy’s belt buckle.

  It was a fine night, which neither of them ever regretted. Before the semester concluded, Andy and Victoria landed in bed together a dozen times. Senior year, she transferred to Tulsa University. They wrote a few letters back and forth but gradually lost touch.

  After graduation, Andy moved back to his hometown and returned to being a closet heterosexual.

  – 27 –

  Vixen Becomes Vick

  They named the plants Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen (Andy’s contributions), Aphrodite, Demeter, Hera, Artemis, Athena (Saskia’s), Sleepy, Happy, Bashful, Dopey (Douglas), Rowdy, Wishbone, Pete, Gil (Reed), Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Schubert, Mahler (Andy again), Mary, Elizabeth, Victoria, Ann, Wally, and Beaver (group brainstorming).

  The names were written twice on masking tape with a marker pen so chemically odorous that it made everybody dizzy. Douglas opened the front and back doors of the house to air it out. One name was affixed to each of twenty-eight mason jars, which were carted out to the greenhouse and put on the long bench inside the storeroom, and then filled with water and a teaspoon of Listerine. Andy told them to add the mouthwash. It was something his mom did with cut flowers, and she swore it kept them going longer than anything else.

  When the names were taped to the potted plants, two leafy cuttings were taken from each to increase the chance one would survive long enough to complete the test. The cuttings were placed in the correspondingly labeled mason jars. Douglas hooked up the double row of four-foot fluorescent lights to a timer, which was set to turn the lights off at six p.m., and back on again at ten a.m. During the fourteen-hour dark period, the cuttings had to be left alone, said Andy. No peeking.

  “How long is it supposed to take?” asked Douglas.

  “I don’t know,” said Andy. “Just check them every morning at ten.”

  The answer was six days. The plant cuttings were put in water on Tuesday morning. Sunday morning, when the automatic timer switched on the overhead lights, Douglas inspected the cuttings and found a distinct change in most of them. Little tufts of fuzzy leaves were starting to sprout right where the stem met the branch.

  Reed was asleep after a long night defending the outdoor field from whitetails, but Douglas woke him up. He was sleepy and grumpy until Douglas told him what was happening. Reed went straight out to the greenhouse and inspected the cuttings closely.

  “Yep. They’re declaring,” he said. “Andy was right.”

  “Can you tell what kind they are yet?”

  “Give them two days,” said Reed.

  “What will happen?”

  “The males will grow balls.”

  And so, by Tuesday, it was determined that Dasher, Vixen, Aphrodite, Artemis, Sleepy, Bashful, Wishbone, Mozart, Haydn, Mary, Wally, and Beaver were males, and would have to be culled. It was a lucky ratio, because it left them with sixteen females. Douglas was disappointed about Vixen. It was the largest and most vigorous plant in the brood, and he hated to let it go. But the sad truth was, Vixen was a dude. It would be like killing a favorite stallion for its underbite.

  “We’ll leave that one as our rooster,” said Reed. “Just move it to the corner away from the others, and away from the vent. It will let the females know it’s okay to be female. Otherwise, some of them might change sexes on us.”

  They pulled the unwanted plants and rearranged the pots to give the chosen ones room to breathe and grow. It was pretty exciting. (If only their greenhouse success had been matched in the outdoors, where the nightly ungulate dinner parties continued apace.)

  Douglas called Saskia to give her an update and to have her let Andy know his sexing technique had been a rollicking success. Ramona Piedman answered, but she sounded distracted and out of breath.

  “I’m sorry, Douglas,” said Ramona. “Saskia can’t talk now. We’re having some … problems here.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Douglas. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine … yeah,” said Ramona. “We’re all just … in the middle of something pretty serious. It’s … uh … my daughter Erycca. She’s disappeared. Nobody knows where she is. And her boyfriend is missing too. We don’t know what to think.”

  “Oh, Lord,” said Douglas.

  In the background, he heard Saskia’s voice. “Let me talk, Mom.” She came on the phone. “Doug, do you know Tim Kaufman pretty well?”

  “I know him. We’ve never really been friends. What happened?”

  “We don’t know,” said Saskia. “He took off, and apparently my sister Erycca is with him. You don’t have any idea where they went, do you?”

  “No. You think they … ran away together somewhere?”

  “We really just don’t know. It was a couple of days ago. She didn’t take any clothes with her, no toothbrush or anything people take when they travel. She didn’t say anything to me or her friends. She just isn’t here, and neither is Tim.”

  “That’s weird,” said Douglas. “But they may have just said ‘fuck it all’ and decided to take a little trip somewhere.”

  “Erycca wouldn’t do that. Besides, some friends of Tim’s found his car. It’s parked down on 5th Street where the bars are. It’s just like he left it there and walked away. The police said they will talk to the bartenders to see if anybody knows anything.”

  “I’m really sorry,” said Douglas. “Any way I can help?”

  “No … just if you hear anything … anything … about Tim or Erycca, call us, please.”

  “Of course.”

  “Listen, I gotta go. My mom and dad are talking to a cop. I’ll call you later.”

  When it came to the police, or any authority, Apollo wasn’t helpful, even when his own child’s life and safety were in question. He was combative when he didn’t need to be, was curt to the point of rudeness, and kept implying that the whole problem was that the police didn’t take honest, tax-paying citizens seriously. Sergeant Pence showed admirable restraint but thought the whole thing most likely a family issue. When they found the boyfriend, they’d find the girl, and when they did, Casanova could be in deep shit, because Princess was underage.

  When the officer finished filling out the report, Apollo signed it. He was torn between contempt for the law, which had caused him nothing but grief in his long life, and an opportunity to get rid of Tim Kaufman, a useless freeloader. He told the cop they were willing to press charges and, without thanks or good-bye, left the room.

  Ramona read the report and handed it back to Sergeant Pence. Rather than a Missing Person report, this one was a criminal complaint, directed at Timothy Kaufman.

  “Very well, I guess we’re done here,” said Pence. “Obviously, if you hear from either your daughter or Mr. Kaufman, let us know.”

  “Certainly,” said Ramona. “And please, if you learn anything about Erycca, call me. I’ve been pretty worried. I’ll be totally honest with you. My daughter’s not the smartest girl in the world, and she’s done some really dumb things. She doesn’t see the world from other people’s points of view, so I think she’s probably okay, just not caring how much it worries her family.”

  “I assure you we’ll have the best people looking for her,” said Pence. He turned toward his car.

  “I’ll hold my breath!” called Apollo from his bed
room.

  – 28 –

  The House in the Country

  The ranch house in Winkler County was six miles outside the hamlet of Wink, which was the smallest town in the state to serve as a county seat. The census of 1970 counted 1,044 residents. Its only claim to fame was country singer Roy Orbison, who had lived there as a teenager in the 1950s and played six-man football.

  The house had been built as the residence of Jerry De Ghetto’s maternal grandfather, Fred Sykes. The surrounding land was called Sykes Ranch, but it had not been operated commercially since before the Great Drought of 1951–57. It was a single-level ranch house with three bedrooms. Fred Sykes died in 1966, and the family had leased the house to an oil-driller’s family for a couple of years, but it had stood vacant for a while. There was still electricity, a functional water well, and a septic tank, but no working telephone. The mailbox was on the highway half a mile from the front door, but no mail had been delivered in a long time. The house was cozy and isolated. Perfect for an extended kidnapping.

  Timothy had no idea where he was. It was a small bedroom with beige walls and a single overhead light. There was no shade on the light, so it hurt his eyes if he looked up. When he turned the light off, the room was utterly black. There was a row of double windows along one wall, but they had been nailed shut from the outside and plywood placed over them. A heavy padlock was on the outside of the door.

  Tim hated when it was totally dark, but that was the only way he managed to sleep. A single mattress lay on the floor, with no sheets and no blanket, just an old pillow with rust-colored stains. The men took away his wallet, watch, belt, and boots.

  Three times a day, he was allowed to use the bathroom. There was a rusty tub with no faucet handle, an even rustier toilet, and a single window. The window was not covered, so Tim could roughly guess the time of day. Brief glimpses out the window revealed brown prairie and little else.

  The first couple of times, one of the dudes had pointed a shotgun at him, which made it difficult to do his business, even though he needed to go badly. By the second day, the gun was no longer there, but the point had been made. Tim knew they could easily overpower him if he tried to fight or run for it.

  He tried to talk to his captors from time to time, but they wouldn’t respond with more than a bare minimum of words.

  “Hurry up.” “Get back in the room.” Or, most often, “Shut the fuck up.”

  Tim guessed he was being held to extract ransom from his grandfather, though his captors didn’t respond when he asked. He knew Erycca was being held in the house somewhere, because he heard them talk to her and sometimes could hear her small voice.

  Twice a day, Tim was given six slices of white bread and a glass of water. After ten minutes, they took away the glass and whatever bread he hadn’t eaten. After the first day, he ate all the bread each time. He could barely choke it down, but he had to eat.

  He sat on the mattress most of the time. Occasionally he paced the room. He wished there was something to read—anything at all. A phone book would have been a relief. If he’d had a pencil and paper, he could have passed the time writing or drawing, but there wasn’t even that. He could make marks in the dust on the floor, but that was about it. He had never known time to pass more slowly. What was going on? Why wouldn’t they tell him anything? Sometimes he pressed his ear to the door, and once in a while he could make out snatches of conversation. Nothing made any sense.

  Once, he got lucky and caught a brief exchange between two of the dudes as they stood close to his door.

  “… we’ve got to tell him about the chick,” one guy was saying.

  A second guy’s voice: “When he comes out tomorrow we can …” and the voices became unintelligible as they moved away.

  Well, that was real information. Some other dude was in charge, and these guys were just working for him. It also sounded like kidnapping Erycca had not been part of the plan. Tim regretted bringing her along on the deal. Why had he done that? She wanted to get enchiladas for dinner, and he’d said sure but he had to meet a guy first for just a few minutes, and she said she’d just go along and stay in the car and they could go to Little Mexico’s after.

  Tim should have been suspicious from the get-go. The dude had come up to him out of nowhere at the Silver Cue and said his name was Larry, that he was a friend of Saskia’s, and asked if Tim would sell him some mandies, Mexican quaaludes. The guy didn’t look like the type who took ’ludes—he had a good complexion and a crew cut and pronounced muscles on his forearms. He also didn’t come across as a dealer, because he was willing to pay five-for-two—full retail street price. All Tim would have had to do was ask Saskia, Hey, do you know a guy named Larry? How hard would that have been? But it was such a good deal for Tim, selling ten mandies for fifty bucks, he’d fallen for it.

  At least they probably won’t kill us, thought Tim. But they also had not done anything to prove he was alive, like let him speak to his grandfather on the phone, and they hadn’t taken his picture. Tim read once about a kidnapping where they cut this guy’s finger off and sent it to his family to prove they had him, but he tried not to think about that.

  At his office behind Davis Pawn Shop in Duro, Jerry De Ghetto had other things to think about. He wasn’t sure how long he should hold Timothy Kaufman in isolation before talking to him. He read the magazine article that Pinky provided, and it did describe some of the techniques used by the people, these “deprogrammers,” to get their subjects to return to normal. Most of what they said didn’t really apply in this case. One guy who was quoted in the article said it was important “to discredit the cult leader.” Well, who would that be? This old guy named Apollo seemed to be the head of the hippie house, but Jerry had no idea if he’d said anything to Timothy to make him reject the outside world and embrace a hippie lifestyle. Maybe he wasn’t even the main one—it could have been somebody else who lived at the Duro house, like the girlfriend.

  Another point the deprogrammers emphasized was getting the subject to open up, to argue with his captors. That was a sign they were thinking critically and could be persuaded. Jerry thought that might be the best approach. But how should he go about it? He had no idea.

  Jerry’s greatest fear was that Timothy would readily agree to anything just to get free. He’d say that he had been brainwashed by the hippie cult, wanted to return to the responsible adult world, accept his grandfather’s love, renounce the counterculture, all that shit. But then, as soon as they let him go, he might turn around and go straight to the cops, and Jerry would be in deep, deep trouble.

  Jerry had told Tank to avoid any rough stuff. On the second day, when Jerry had gone out to check on them, he saw one of the guys had a shotgun. That pissed him off. He told them to get it out of sight.

  Gradually, he came up with a coherent plan. He figured four days of isolation was probably enough. He’d let Timothy out of the room, give him a hamburger and french fries, and let him blabber about whatever he wanted. When Jerry thought the time was right, he’d lay it out for him, tell him what a great opportunity he was being provided and how great the future could be, all courtesy of a grandfather who loved him more than anyone. All Timothy had to do was reject this hippie nonsense and come back home to the real, common-sense world. Then Jerry would drive him to a café in some nearby town where Pinky would be waiting to take him home.

  What if Timothy didn’t buy it? Was it back into isolation for a few more days? Jerry didn’t know. This was uncharted territory.

  The most important thing was for Timothy to understand that the whole thing was his grandfather’s idea. Maybe Jerry should wear some kind of disguise in case everything went to hell, Timothy rejected Pinky, and the law got involved. Timothy might or might not recognize Jerry—it had been so many years—but he couldn’t take the chance. As long as Pinky didn’t rat on him—and Tank and his buddies kept their mouths shut—Jerry should be safe. A disguise didn’t have to be fancy, but it also shouldn’t look like a disgu
ise. Maybe Jerry could grow a beard and wear shades. But there wasn’t time to grow a good beard.

  That’s when Jerry remembered a time when his daughter Angela had been in a play at the Duro Playhouse. One of the characters had sported a dark, full beard, but when Jerry met him later, the man was clean-shaven. It was impressive, and Jerry had said so. Angela explained the technique:

  “It’s spirit gum, Dad. It’s a kind of glue that holds a beard on and looks really realistic, but it’s easy to wash off. If you do a good job applying it, the audience can’t tell it’s fake even from close up.”

  Maybe Angela could borrow some supplies from the theater and give him a temporary beard. He couldn’t tell her why, of course.

  He’d make up something. He was good at that.

  – 29 –

  Lessons Are Called For

  On the northeast side of town, in a neighborhood hopefully named Pine Forest, Mrs. Usher Kellogg wrapped up little Margaret Blackwell’s violin lesson early so there would be time to prepare for her guests.

  “That’s good for now, Margaret,” Mrs. Kellogg said. “I need to stop a little early today. I’ll make it up to you next week. Do your finger exercises. Every day, for at least fifteen minutes before you practice.”

  “It makes my fingers hurt,” said Margaret. She was only ten years old, a second-year student with modest promise, but something of a back-talker.

  “That’s why you need to do the exercises,” said Mrs. Kellogg. “Build up your strength. Especially in these fingers.” She tugged gently on Margaret’s ring finger and pinky of her left hand.

  “Okay.” Margaret was happy to be done ten minutes early and hoped Mrs. Kellogg would forget about adding time next week.

  “And remember, practice the Kreisler etudes. Numbers four and five. I want you to memorize number five. And don’t hurry through it. Accuracy, not speed.”

  Mrs. Kellogg turned to the fifth etude in Margaret’s Kreisler book and wrote “DON’T RUSH!!!” across the top in ink and, for good measure, drew a little cartoon of a tortoise. She was brutal to music books, even expensive ones.