Hot Springs Eternal

by John M. Daniel

  “In fact, that’s just fine with me,” Jeff continued. “Do you know how hard it is for a gay business to get permits in this county?”

  “No,” Casey replied. “But if you hum a few bars—”

  Diana shrieked with laughter.

  Casey turned to her with a grin and said, “Wait a minute. Let me get this straight. Are you gay too?”

  Diana kissed him on the lips. “No,” she said, “but I’ll gladly hum a few bars with you.”

  Casey offered her his arm. “Shall we?”

  She took his arm and said, “Home, James.”

  She picked up her purse and they were out the door without saying goodbye.

  Jeff followed them to the door and watched them bumping into each other as they danced away, down the hall, giggling like little assholes. He shouted after them, “I know where to find you, assholes!”

  ———

  They made out in the parking lot behind the Hope Springs hotel, steaming up Casey’s Volkswagen windows, groaning and groping like teenagers going steady and ready to cream in their jeans.

  When they took a breather, Casey said, “That has to be the worst date I ever went on.”

  They laughed. Diana said, “I didn’t have all that good a time, either.”

  “At least you knew what you were doing.”

  “Hardly. I was faking it all the way.”

  “I thought I’d lost you,” Casey said.

  Diana said, “You’re never going to lose me.”

  They kissed.

  “You did good work tonight,” Casey said.

  “We have a lot of work ahead of us,” Diana said. “That man means business.”

  “We’ll get busy tomorrow.”

  “And tonight?”

  “Well, we’re both too old and too big to do it in a Volkswagen. I suggest we tiptoe up to my room. It’s time for you to give me that slow boat ride to China.”

  “All aboard,” she answered. “Anchors aweigh.”

  9. Ashes to Ashes

  Midmorning in the high meadow. The day was already warm, nudging hot. The scent of spring was pungent and spicy: moist, productive earth, pine trees flexing with sap, purple lupine and owl’s clover on the meadow floor, keeping company with golden poppy patches. Yellow bugs moved among the flowers; their swarming orgy had passed and now they were enjoying the relaxed pace of warm spring business.

  The Hope sisters stood on the steps of their mother’s shrine, gazing out across the meadow, through the break in the trees to the Channel Islands floating on the far-off horizon. Karen wore her yellow muslin caftan, the one with rainbow stitching and mirror spangles. Nellie wore a red leisure suit with gold buttons. Gold also hung from her ears and wrists, and a gold pendant rested in the showcase of her low-cut neckline.

  Nqong, wearing only a yellow loincloth, watched the twins from a tree limb in the woods, the same hiding place where he had hidden to watched the burial of his Auntie Clara, nearly fifty years before. The twins had been babies then; now they were middle-aged women, growing older but not as old as Nqong. He observed them closely with his binoculars, and the acoustics of the meadow bowl allowed him to hear clearly every word of their informal ceremony. He had not been invited, nor would he have gone. But he had a right to observe, and a reason. If anyone still harbored loathing for that container of ashes, it was Nqong.

  Karen set the urn on the floor of the shrine, before the base of the statue of Clara Bianca Hope. She spoke first, in a clear, firm voice.

  “Joley, you little shit, there was never anyone, and there will never be anyone, not even the big-business bureaucratic stooges you’ve left in your wake, who could piss me off the way you pissed me off, repeatedly throughout your life. You never knew the first damn thing about me, or about human nature, or about nature, and you never had a clue why you were placed on this planet. You carved up and sold off, parcel by parcel, the estate where we grew up in Santa Barbara, and you had even worse designs on this sacred place where you will rest. You sided with our father against me, even though you hated him as much as I did. You made me an exile in my own family, although I was happy to be exiled, so I forgive you for that. So in the long run, Joley, it’s all worked out okay. My fight with you isn’t finished, and it won’t be over until we send Pacific Power and SoCal Development packing. But when that happens, and it will, I will be at peace with you. I will have won, and you will have won your rest. Maybe at rest you’ll find peace. I hope you do. Because I find that I still love you, you little shit. The struggle with you was a part of my life that I still cherish. And occasionally you could make me laugh, and occasionally I still laugh, thinking about you. Goodbye for now.”

  Nellie took a deep breath. “We fought a lot,” she told the urn. “Sometimes I thought your only pleasure was in stopping mine. That’s what I thought when I was a little girl, and still thought when I was—a big girl. We argued all the time, and now you’ll never get a chance to see things my way, which means maybe you won all those fights. I do see now that sometimes you were right. I admit you did know how to take care of money, and I always did admire you for that, even if I was too proud to tell you so. You were right about the way I let Hope Springs go to seed when the place was mine in the sixties. You never spent much time here in the fifties, when the place was yours, but at least you took care of business and kept the place from falling apart. It’s too bad you didn’t join us in the eighties, because together the three of us would have made a dream come true, would have restored the Hope Springs Hotel to its former legendary glamour and glory. As it is, you’ve left Karen and me a bunch of problems that may be too great to solve, in which case we’ll have a reason to resent you for the rest of our lives. But you know, Joley, this place, and the hornet’s nest you made for us, have finally brought Karen and me close together, as twins should be, and I have to thank you for that. Looking back, I can see that you always were something Karen and I could agree about. I somehow love you for that, and I always have. So if we succeed with Hope Springs it will be in spite of your interference, but it will also be because of you that we made it.”

  Nellie wept. “I miss you, my little big brother.” She gnawed a knuckle and turned to her sister, who held her and let her cry against her shoulder. Karen’s face squinted at the sky.

  Without another look at the urn containing the remains of Joel Hope, Jr., his sisters walked away from the shrine, through the meadow, and onto the path that would lead them down the mountainside.

  When he was sure they were out of earshot, Nqong climbed down from his tree and walked into the meadow. He approached the shrine and bowed, as he always did, to the smiling statue. Then he picked up the heavy urn. Holding in his hands what was left of his childhood enemy he left the shrine, left the meadow, and began hiking uphill, into the forest.

  ———

  Later that same morning, Casey and Diana drove into the town of Tecolote. Casey had an eleven o’clock appointment in town to meet with Howard Ralston, president of the Anacapa County Historical Society. Ralston was also the president of the Tecolote Chamber of Commerce, which got two meetings accomplished in one shot; that was the good news. The bad news was that Mr. Ralston had recently been elected to the board of directors of SoCal Development. Casey was not looking forward to the meeting, because he had difficulty controlling his temper in the presence of assholes. A standard piano bar joke: What’s the difference between a proctologist and a piano player? A proctologist only has to deal with one asshole at a time.

  Diana was more optimistic about her hour in the library. She planned to research the Mediterranean Fruit Fly, hoping to find that it bore no physical or behavioral resemblance to the yellow beetles of Hope Springs. Then she hoped to find out how to legally prevent the spraying of malathion. If she had any time left, she would find out more about eminent domain, to see if it would behoove Karen and Nellie to hire a lawyer to help keep the Vandals from the gates.

  Casey dropped Diana at the library and drove two more
blocks to the Anacapa County Historical Society parking lot. He parked the Hope Springs truck, got out, and entered the building, where a receptionist led him to the president’s office.

  Mr. Ralston had a military haircut, a thin necktie, and the grin of a recruiting Rotarian. He shook Casey’s hand and said, “Call me Howie. Everybody does. Can I get you a cup of coffee there, Casey?”

  “No thanks, Howie.”

  “Sit down. Sit down.”

  Howie’s office was tidy and handsomely furnished. One wall had built-in shelves full of history books; another was decorated with grainy blown-up photos of early Anacapa County settlers chopping down forests.

  Casey took a seat facing Howie’s desk. Howie said, “Now then. What can I do you for?”

  Casey said, “Well, Howie, I live out at Hope Springs.”

  “Gotcha. Great place, Hope Springs. I’ve heard about you. Small town, and whatnot.” Howie chuckled.

  “I’m trying to find out if Hope Springs has any historical significance. You may have heard, we’re planning to open the hotel for business, and maybe if we could put together some—”

  “Historical significance of Hope Springs?” Howie’s eyes popped wide open. “You bet. That place of yours is a historian’s dream.”

  “That’s good news. I—”

  “Take a look at this,” Howie continued, handing Casey the newest issue of The Owl’s Nest, the monthly newsletter of the society. “We gave you the lead story.”

  HOT TIPS FROM TECOLOTE VALLEY’S HISTORY

  George Santayana warned us to learn from the mistakes of the past, lest we be doomed to repeat them. The flip side of course is just as valuable: buried in the past—sometimes literally buried in the earth—are historical records of the way people once did things right. And there in the past lie solutions to the problems of the future.

  The problems of the future, according to the article had to do with energy. The solutions from the past were to be found in the ground at Hope Springs, in the study of the economy and life style of the native Chumash people who had lived there since the Stone Age began. The Chumash never worried about dependency on Arab oil. The Chumash never had to wait in gas lines. The Chumash never had power failures, nor were they ever late with their electric bills.

  The Chumash, said the article, were among the first people in California to understand geothermal energy. They had warm houses in the winter, they had hot and cold running water, they never paid a cent on heating bills, and yet they had all the hot water they needed for washing the dishes. They even took hot showers.

  Casey finished reading the article and looked up at Howie Ralston. He said, “No mention here of the Hope family.”

  “Well, they came later, of course,” Howie explained. “Much later.”

  “You’d think people interested in the history of Hope Springs might like to know that royalty from all over the world used to visit there in the early twentieth century. That the Maharaja of Punjab gave Joel Hope a flock of peacocks whose descendants still live there? That in the twenties Charlie Chaplin was a frequent guest? That Clara Bianca, America’s Sweetiepie, used to live there?”

  Howie Ralston shook his head, chuckling. “That’s not the kind of history that interests our members, thank God. That’s the sort of thing you find in the archives of People Magazine or The National Enquirer. People who want historical gossip can go to San Simeon. That’s the place for Hollywood-style history. But in the long run, what we have right here in the Tecolote Valley, and especially what’s buried in the ground at Hope Springs, will be where future historians will look when they want to see how history was changed for good. We’re fortunate, Casey. We’re going to witness the dawn of a new age, energy-wise. That’s history for you. History in the making.”

  The Owl’s Nest did not carry advertising, but it had a list, on the inside back cover, of the people and organizations whose generosity made the newsletter possible. Pacific Power was first. SoCal Development was second. Joel Hope, Junior was third.

  “We miss Joley,” Howie said. “He was a great guy. How’s the family doing? How’s Karen these days?”

  Out on the sidewalk, Casey took stock. Bad week. The Anacapa County Historical Society was only the latest in a series of strike-outs. He had been given the bum’s rush from the Anacapa County Planning Commission (“These plans have been approved for two years. It’s a little to late to question them now”); with the Board of Supervisors (“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to take this matter up with the Planning Commission before we can schedule any discussion”); with the California Department of Agriculture (“You must understand that we can’t afford even the slightest risk of another medfly infestation. The economy of this county is seventy-three percent ag—lemons, mainly, lemons and avos. Medflies are bad news. Just be glad we spotted them in time”); and with Craig Gordon of the Anacapa County Department of Health (“Well, sir, have you worked out a chlorination system for those swimming pools of yours?”). Casey climbed into the truck and killed the motor twice before leaving the parking lot.

  The good side of the week had been Casey’s love life, the second gravity-free week of a new affair with an angel. And there she was, standing on the sidewalk in front of the library, smiling and waving, standing tall, strong, and happy. He pulled over to the curb and stopped, and she climbed aboard, lugging her big straw purse, planted a wet kiss on Casey’s lips, and said, “We’re saved.”

  “That’s good news,” he said. “What happened? Did somebody hand you a copy of Watchtower?”

  Diana grinned like a child bringing home a perfect report card. “Look,” she told him. She opened her straw purse, pulled out a small yellow pamphlet, and handed it to him. The cover had line drawing of a beetle and the title Organism of My Delight. The subtitle was The Remarkable Sulfur Beetle of Mathilda Springs. The author was one Livingston Pomeroy, R.A.E.S., Ph.S., Sc.E.B. Professor of Entomology, Hobart University, Tasmania, Aus.

  Casey turned off the ignition. He opened the pamphlet and thumbed through it. Thirty-two pages, and no pictures except for a frontispiece portrait of the author, an unsmiling bald middle-aged man with wire-rimmed glasses and a Rudyard Kipling mustache. According to the title page, the pamphlet was printed in Anacapa, California, in 1928. Casey turned to the table of contents.

  1. Coleoptera hydrophilidae mathilda. The world’s most remarkable insect. Her physical features, including her lemony elytra, her exquisite filiform tarsal joints, her superior mandibles, and the geniculate antennae which make her unique.

  2. The quest for perfection. The larva, the pupa, and the crowning achievement.

  3. The tragedy of Mathilda Springs. How man’s greed threatened to end life on Earth as we know it today.

  4. My search for Paradise.

  “This guy is a complete nut,” Casey said, handing back the pamphlet.

  “Maybe so,” Diana agreed, “but he was a lovely man. I read the whole thing. Oh, I only skimmed the first and second parts, but that business about Mathilda Springs is scandalous, and wait till you read Chapter Four. Casey, what are you staring at?”

  At her. God, what a smile, what a face! “Diana, let’s go steady.”

  She laughed. “Turn on the ignition,” she said. As they drove back to the hotel, she recounted the story of Professor Pomeroy’s obsession. “He discovered this bug, this yellow beetle,” she said. “In the Northern Territory of Australia, at a place called Mathilda Springs, where the bug was sacred to the aborigines there. No white man had ever seen the bug before. He named it. He loved it. He lived with the aborigines and wrote articles about this bug, which were published by his university in Tasmania. The Mathilda Beetle was his whole life. And then one day a bunch of white assholes showed up and killed off all the aborigines and ruined the springs. They were mining sulfur for explosives or something. And mercury, they were mining mercury too. The professor calls it quicksilver. These white miners killed off the native population, destroyed the sulfur springs, and the sulfur bu
gs died out. It broke his heart.”

  “Sad story.”

  “Wait. So the professor decided to search the world over for more sulfur beetles. He figured that if he found the right climate and the right water and the right everything, he might find more of these yellow bugs that meant so much to him. So off he goes, spends six years hopping around the hot spots of the world. Japan. China. India, Afghanistan, Palestine, the Alps, the Ozarks, and guess where he ends up?”

  “Well, this booklet was printed in Anacapa.”

  “You got it. Check out Chapter Four. Turns out Paradise is our own Hope Springs!”

  “No shit? And the sulfur beetle is—”

  “Bingo. Our own sweet little yellow bugs. According to Professor Pomeroy, Hope Springs is the only place left on earth where they can live. Isn’t that great?”

  “So they’re not medflies after all. And we’ve got the proof right here.”

  “Better than that,” Diana gloated. “Those little suckers are an endangered species!”

  ———

  It was late afternoon by the time Nqong reached the saddle of the Matilija Mountain range and walked a few paces eastward, downhill toward the desert valley below. Nqong was hot, tired, and furious. His nearly naked body was dripping with sweat. He had carried the heavy pewter urn the entire uphill distance without setting it down to rest. He now placed the urn on a charred stump and looked about him at this place. He was standing in the remains of a recent fire. The entire eastern slope of the mountain range was a scar of gray and black that stretched down to the oilfields in the flatlands.

  Nqong, who believed more than anything in the power of love, who loved rattlesnakes and spiders, feces and fungi, had hated Joel Hope, Junior for more than fifty years. Now, as the guardian of the Hope Springs water, he could not allow the poisonous ashes of this man to seep into the soil that fed that water, lest it sour the flowers that grew in the meadows, the flowers that nourished the yellow bugs in the spring.

  Nqong picked up the pewter urn and pried it open. With the wind at his back, he poured the contents of the vessel out onto the ashy eastern side of the mountain’s watershed. He scooped handfuls of clean pure wood ash and put them into the urn and replaced the top.