Rattlesnake & Son

by Jonathan Miller

  From the window, Luna glanced at me and then looked in the opposite direction, at the Organ Mountains. Korn and Most half-heartedly yelled at me to stop, but like Chino, they wanted to see me fall and break my neck.

  When I hit the first frond twenty feet up, all I found was toilet paper and a used condom.

  The tree shook in the wind, and my hands and feet began to bleed. I couldn’t last much longer up here. Then I reached the next level of fronds and found remnants of a broken Dos Eques bottle which had become that impromptu prism in the light. Below the beer bottle was the remnant of bathmat, stolen from a Holiday Inn covering a wide swath of palm frond.

  The bathmat must have protected everything beneath it from the elements. Clutching the trunk with my legs, I carefully lifted it and found a crumpled piece of paper with chicken scratch on it. I knew without un-crumpling that it was page 237. Just behind the paper ball was a dead cell phone. I grabbed both with my bloody hand.

  Somehow, I made it down the tree without ripping the paper, but I did drop the cell phone. It landed on the ground with a crash. I shimmied down as quickly as I could and recovered it. Unfortunately, the case was cracked, and I didn’t know whether the inside of the phone was broken or not. I was acting on faith anyway. Hell, my wounds looked like stigmata.

  Pat Chino stared at me, his hands still on his holsters. He might put two and two together, so I didn’t even bother to put on my boots on and just hurried back into the conference room with the “evidence” under my arm. I sat down, plopped the items on the table, before anyone would notice that I was barefoot and bleeding.

  Tran looked at me, mystified. She now remembered me and that wasn’t a good thing. If she had reverted back to her bad-ass cop days, I had just given her reasonable articulable suspicion to put a mental health detention order on me. Luna’s head was in still in her hands. Judge Most was talking, and played with a pen as if it was a dagger. The two men in black hadn’t moved a muscle.

  “Mr. Shepard, what are you doing?” Tran asked.

  “Your honor,” I said, still seated. “I have something to show you. It is my understanding that the rules of evidence are relaxed here, and I will ask that you take judicial notice, or arbitrator’s notice, or whatever notice someone like you would take, that I just took these items out of that palm tree over there, the tree with all the junk in it. I learned that my son’s belongings were thrown out of that classroom window and got stuck in the palm tree.”

  Even the men in black had to stifle laughter when I said that.

  “Madam arbitrator,” Judge Most said with disdain as if speaking to his law clerk. “This man is currently on Supreme Court ordered attorney probation for six months under the supervision of Ms. Cruz. He’s not a lawyer, he’s not even a party to the petition.”

  I looked at Luna. Tag.

  “He has information crucial to the case, and he’s my umm…assistant. I can still call him as a witness,” Luna said. “Madam arbitrator?”

  “We’ll pretend he’s a witness then,” Tran said. “But he will have to be sworn.”

  She swore me in. Thankfully, as I now sat at the table, she hadn’t realized that I didn’t have shoes on.

  “Mr. Shepard, you may proceed.”

  “This is the page I took out of the tree. Pat Chino witnessed me doing that if you need to establish chain of custody.” I tried to hand her page 237, but she did not accept the hand-off. “Madam,” I said, “I will stipulate that the blood on the page is mine.”

  “And what do you want to do with these items?” Tran asked.

  “Offer them into evidence.”

  There was another long pause, during which I said a silent prayer. My prayer must have been answered, as Tran seemed to be getting guidance from a higher authority. She closed her eyes and nodded, “You may do so as the rules of evidence are relaxed in this arbitration. Put the page on the table.”

  No one wanted to touch the bloody page, so Luna took out a handkerchief and used an app on her phone to project it onto the Mondopad. The chicken scratch matched the other pages. On the page, Marley had detailed his hazing on hell night with the full knowledge, and even acquiescence of, the staff.

  “That’s hearsay,” Most declared. “Even if it is admissible under the relaxed evidentiary rules for arbitrations, that document had not been properly authenticated, and besides, it is more prejudicial than probative!”

  “Madam arbitrator,” I said. “Judge Most, excuse me, Mister Most has already offered my son’s diary into evidence. This would be an exception to the hearsay rule as a prior consistent statement. Besides, when he offered the diary into evidence, he opened the door!”

  “The door had been opened.” Tran did not change her expression. “I will give Plaintiff’s exhibit number one the evidentiary weight it deserves.”

  “Is that it, counsel?” Tran asked Luna, not me. “Do you have any other evidence you wish to introduce?”

  “Anything else?” Luna asked me. She stared at my bare feet.

  I had put the cellphone on my lap. I picked it up and then came the moment of truth. I had to attempt to turn on the cell phone.

  How many leaps of faith was I taking based on a coma dream? First, I was betting that this phone, which had been exposed out in the elements for months, could even be turned on. Second, that in a mass text the sender had included Marley. Third, that said text was a direct order from campus administration to cover up the actions of a campus employee. Finally, the administration would have been unable to delete this message.

  I only had one shot. The message would disappear once we displayed it, right? But, I couldn’t even turn the phone on. It required a thumb print. Unless Marley’s ghost appeared and made his thumb materialize solidly enough to unlock a phone, we were doomed.

  “Is that all you’ve got, a dead phone?” Most asked.

  “Counsel?” Tran faced Luna.

  If this was tag-team wrestling, I was tagging Luna again. Would she accept the tag?

  “Madam arbitrator,” she said. “I bought my son that phone. As an officer of the court, I will authenticate it. You’ll see he has his initials carved into it. I can unlock it with a password, his birth date.”

  I had forgotten Marley’s birthday, but Luna turned on the phone by punching in the four digits. The phone flickered to life, but the charge was weak. The battery light was flashing, and even worse, we must have been using a cell phone provider from the great beyond, because here in the valley, there were no bars.

  Luna looked back at me, she was tagging me now. Without asking permission from Tran, I tapped on a few apps and quickly found the final text in Marley’s phone.

  “We only get one chance!” I said. “Shall I continue?”

  “Proceed, sir,” Tran said. She was looking at me at least.

  Luna, Tran and Most all huddled in over the phone. Korn leaned back.

  remember, the text read, if anyone asks you, cruiser threatened to kill each and everyone one of you!

  Sure enough, as in my dream, the message appeared verbatim and then it vanished into the air.

  “We ask that you take judicial notice of the text message,” Luna said.

  Most made the standard objections—hearsay, prejudicial, whatever.

  Luna gave the standard responses, not being offered for the truth of the matter asserted etcetera.

  Tran kept a poker face. “I will give this piece of evidence the weight it deserves. Anything further, counsel?”

  Luna looked at me. “As a lawyer under my supervision, as a father, is there anything you wish to add, Mr. Shepard?”

  “Sir?” Tran motioned for me to continue.

  “Madam arbitrator,” I said. I wasn’t a lawyer anymore, but this was my closing argument. “I only knew my son for a few weeks after he moved back to New Mexico from New York. He had just turned fourteen. I only got to s
pend a few hours with him. But while he had issues, he had gifts. He escorted me to several hearings and I could tell that he had the potential to be a far better lawyer than I am, a far better lawyer than his mother even, and she’s the best lawyer I know. He was the best of all worlds—he had a heart, he had a mind, and he had a gut. He had instincts to see what wasn’t visible to others. I just wish that I could have worked with him for longer and gotten to know him better.”

  I looked at Luna. “My wife, excuse me, my ex-wife, sacrificed everything for her son. She left me here in America so that he could have the experimental treatment that he needed in India. I think she married a man, a knight, so he could provide for her son and she had hoped would be a positive male role model. She followed a career path in something she had no training for, just to provide for him. Since she lost her son she doesn’t sleep, doesn’t eat, and had to take a powerful anti-depressant just to function.

  “And she sent him to this school, to Caldera Academy, after seeing a video on her phone that promised her that her son would flourish here, that here, her son would be safe. But every image in that video was a lie.

  “My son was hazed here on this campus, he was shit on by students at this campus and pissed on here at this campus. These acts were done with the full knowledge and perhaps even the encouragement of the faculty and staff. You cannot consider his words of revenge on page 239 without considering what happened to him on pages 237 and 238.”

  I now looked directly at Korn. “Pistol Pat Chino is no hero. This school should never have hired him, and they knew it or should have known it. My son had his back to him and was running away from campus. Pistol Pat Chino did not have to shoot at my son, shoot him in the back. He shot to kill, to subdue with extreme prejudice.

  “And in that text we just saw, it was clear that Dean Korn knew this had happened and told the students and staff to cover it up. Dean Korn lied. Madam arbitrator, I know that Dragon Moon and its corporate parents donated millions to this campus and as a result my son was admitted here, despite his emotional problems. That money should go to his mother.”

  I was about to keep going when Judge Most stood up. Once a judge, always a judge indeed. “This man is no longer an attorney admitted to practice anywhere in New Mexico. He is on probation and I ask that he be removed from this hearing. Besides, he isn’t even wearing shoes in violation of county ordinance number….”

  “Any last words?” Tran asked. “Before I have you removed.”

  “Res ipsa loquitur,” I said.

  Luna tagged in by putting her hand on my shoulder. “I can take it from here.”

  Tran looked at me, “I think it might be best if you leave this conference room, Mr. Shepard and put some shoes on. I will give your evidence and testimony the weight it deserves.”

  What did she mean by that? The two men in black stood up. I hurried out the door, leaving bloody footprints on the dusty floor.

  I went outside, put on my boots and sat with my back against the ragged palm tree for the next hour or so. Pat Chino eyed me from a distance, praying I would make a move so he could take me down just like my son.

  Finally, Luna came down, ashen face. She avoided eye contact as we walked to the car. “Could you open the trunk, please?”

  I tried to open the trunk repeatedly, but it wouldn’t open.

  “That’s odd,” she said.

  • • •

  We hit the intersection of US 70 and Interstate 25. Ahead a billboard advertised a pharmacy in Juarez, Mexico, less than an hour away. I was unsure about the latest pharmaceutical law. I believed it was still legal to import a prescription drug if you had a valid Mexican prescription. Luna looked at the southbound exit with eyes wide open.

  “I can drive you south, to Mexico, if you really need to pick up Crotaladone,” I said.

  “Just go north.”

  We drove up the freeway, and passed Exit 32, the exit for the spaceport. She tensed, and when I looked over, her eyes were wet. Just as we came to Exit 78 for Truth or Consequences, she touched my shoulder. “This is our exit.”

  “You got your house back?” I asked.

  “I got my house back, yes. Hell, I got my life back.”

  When we pulled into the driveway of the Luna Landing, Tyler was still there. I guessed he had been hired by Dragon Moon to renovate the place. “I was told to give you the key,” he said to her at the passenger window. “The place is done.”

  “Do you know who the two other men in the room were?” Luna asked me as she got out of the car. She indicated I should stay in and came to my window.

  “Bodyguards?”

  “Not even,” she said. “One was the state risk management director who is responsible for payouts of lawsuits against the state. The other guy works for the US government in a similar position. Let’s just say that the landlord is responsible for the sins of the tenant.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They figured Marley would have a thirty-year career as a lawyer,” Luna said. “Not as a game designer. As a lawyer, like his father. If his father had put his mind to it.”

  “So?”

  “If you do the math you come up with a fairly big sum. In addition, during those thirty years, my son would also have been able to provide comfort for his poor, unemployed ailing, possibly drug addicted mother who suffers from emotional distress.”

  “So how much did you get?”

  She showed me a piece of paper signed by all parties under the arbitrator’s seal. The amount was significant. She also showed me the Caldera Academy purple pen. “They threw the pen in as well, so don’t chew on it.”

  She handed me the pen. “Could you try opening the trunk now from your side?”

  Again, the trunk didn’t open.

  Luna came back around to my window and sighed. “I guess my part here is done.”

  “What’s in the trunk?”

  “The backpack with Marley’s urn. I was hoping to drop off a few ashes at Caldera, but apparently, he didn’t want any part of himself to be there. And now, it seems he doesn’t want any part of himself at this house. He never liked this house.”

  “So what does that mean?”

  “It’s your turn now. Tag.”

  She gave me a high five tag, then hurried inside the front door of the Luna Landing and closed it behind her.

  I knocked on the door, but she didn’t open it. “You’ll know what to do,” she said out a window.

  Stunned, I drove the one hundred and fifty miles home in silence. I would take the car to the shop in the morning and deal with the trunk.

  When I pulled into my driveway it was nearly midnight. I turned off the motor. The trunk opened all by myself and I felt a ping in my head.

  Chapter 35

  Walk the Earth

  The trunk was empty except for the backpack. I opened the backpack and the urn was inside, bound by a few rubber bands. I thought about what Luna had said. “It was my turn,” presumably my turn to spread the ashes.

  Well, it was too late to spread them now. I was too drained for the rattlesnake to rattle. I took the urn inside. The trunk door closed by itself.

  I kept the urn inside the house, but my car didn’t start. I took an Uber to my office the next cold, dry December day. It was time to get off the breakdown docket and start anew. The complex was empty again, all of the three tenants had moved on to greener pastures. It hadn’t been a coincidence that they had all ended up in the building right after my disciplinary complaints. Luna must have pulled some strings to get them there, but now she had loosened the strings and they went their separate ways.

  I contacted the attorney-author about taking over my cases. He came over a with a U-Haul and picked up my pending files. I wonder how long he would last handling the breakdown docket before he broke down.

  “Do you have anything exciting goi
ng on right now?” he asked.

  “Not really,” I said. “My last few months have been pretty dull.”

  “Well let me know if you have any ideas,” he said. “I have a new publisher.”

  We didn’t say another word as we loaded the last of my files.

  • • •

  That night, I called Luna. She was indeed serious in her communications with Anna Maria about adopting Juanito.

  “I can see why they want to give up the baby with Chuy now doing the hardcore rehab at Delancey thanks to Garry, and with Penny in prison,” I said. “But why do they want to give up Juanito to you?”

  “They see me as a rich, successful woman, a role model. I can give him a life that they never could, living with his own blood.”

  We had a long discussion about the wisdom of her adopting a child, as a single mother of an advanced age. “I don’t know if I can do it alone,” she said.

  “Do you want me to come down to help?” I asked.

  There was silence on the other end for a long beat. “By the way, have you spread Marley’s ashes yet?”

  I didn’t reply, tried to think of a lame excuse.

  She hung up.

  Alone in my living room, dark except for moonlight coming through a skylight, I went over to the urn. I did hear a faint rattle, but when I looked inside, all I saw was ashes. As I started to turn away, though, I heard the rattle again. Then I heard a beep from my phone. I had a text from an unknown number. it’s denise. you need to walk the earth. you’ll know what to do.

  I picked up the urn. It felt heavier than before, so heavy that I almost dropped it. I did know what needed to be done. I would spread Marley’s ashes to the four winds. Luna had done her part, and now I had to do mine.

  But where to begin?

  • • •

  The next morning, December 23, I took the urn and closed the lid with a rubber band. I put on jeans and a University of New Mexico sweat shirt and got into the Lincoln. I wasn’t going to walk the earth like Caine in Kung Fu, I was going to drive the earth in my Lincoln. I sure hoped I wouldn’t have to use any Kung Fu, I was a bit rusty with my martial arts much past long form one.