He unwrapped the yellow cloth from his loins and urinated on Joley Hope’s remains. Then he turned his back on the dead man forever. He rewrapped the loin cloth, lifted the urn, and walked back up to the ridge and down the western side of the mountain, to his lifelong home in exile, in a cave high above the valley of Hope Springs.
10. Conversations
“How do we know this is a genuine endangered species,” Nellie asked, “and not just some dumb bug?”
“This pamphlet,” Diana answered. “By Professor Livingston Pomeroy, R.A.E.S., Ph.S., Sc.E.B. Famous authority from Hobart, Australia.”
Nellie shook her head. “Diana dear, I don’t mean to be a spoil-sport, but a cheap pamphlet printed back in the twenties by some bug nut doesn’t pass the mustard. Especially in Southern California, screwball capital of the universe. Tell me, has anybody else ever heard of the so-called Mathilda Beetle, like the Sierra Club or the National Geographic, or even the National Enquirer?”
No one spoke up. Fifteen people, cross-legged and silent, in a circle on the hotel library carpet.
“I doubt it,” Casey finally admitted. “But if the professor was right, Hope Springs is the only place on earth where the sulfur beetle can live. Livingston Pomeroy was the only man to study the bug before it was wiped off the face of Australia, and the native people who worshiped the bug were wiped out too.”
“And that was like sixty years ago,” Karen added. “Which means the sweet man has died by now too, or maybe gone on to another stage of life, wrapped in a cocoon or something.”
“See, the thing is,” Nellie said, “if we could prove this stupid little bug is endangered, and not just in danger of being swatted by yours truly, I could turn this thing into a national campaign. Forget the Sierra Club; I’m sure I could persuade Lorraine Evans to go on the cover of People wearing a tight tee shirt that says “Save Mathilda!” right across her assets. But not on the strength of this one pamphlet.”
The staff mumbled, then tapered off to silence again. Arthur raised his hand. Great, Casey thought. More gloom. “Yes?”
“Phone Hobart,” Arthur said. “The university there must have the professor’s archives in the library. Maybe there’s more about this insect. Maybe not, but it’s stupid to give up hope.”
“Good God,” Nellie said softly. “Is this our Arthur?”
Arthur blushed, and Beatrice, sitting across the circle from him, began a round of applause. All the yellow people joined in.
Nellie held her hand up and shouted, “But!” When the room was quiet, she continued. She looked straight at Karen and said, “If you expect any of my celebrity crowd to help this cause, you’re going to have to get rid of that illegal garden.”
Karen said, “You’re not serious.”
“I am. And you’ll have to stop smoking dope, too.”
Karen scowled, her lower lip trembling. “This isn’t fair. I’ll give up smoking when you give up drinking. You’re always criticizing me.”
Nellie said, “Sister dear, this isn’t about you and me for a change. As I understand it, Nick Renner is planning to lead the sheriff right to your parsley patch and bust your ass to save his own. I won’t let any of my friends risk bad publicity like that. So if you want Sweet Lorraine to promote the beetles, you’d better get squeaky clean, or else the bad guys—we’re talking SoCal Development, we’re talking Pacific Power—are going to have a field day and this place will be a goner. Just another hippie commune in the way of progress.”
Karen looked across the room at her sister and said, “Bitch.”
“Nellie’s right,” Casey said. “Karen, you have to listen to this.”
“Oh, you shut up,” Karen snapped. “You’re as bad as she is. Gone goody-goody on me. My garden has never given anyone anything but pleasure, and I’ve always been generous with my crop. You’ve smoked plenty of it, so don’t get in my face.” She looked around the circle. “What about the rest of you? Is everybody against me?”
Diana said, “Nobody’s against you, Karen, but times have changed. Nqong says—”
“Fuck Nqong.”
The room was instantly silent, as if nobody was even breathing. Karen began to weep quietly. Baxter rolled forward onto his hands and knees and trotted like a puppy dog into the center of the circle, where he stopped and looked around, his nose in the air. When he spotted Karen he ambled over to her and touched his nose to hers.
“See?” Nellie said. “Even Baxter thinks you’re a bitch.”
Karen screeched, “Shut up!” As she stood, she snatched the red wig from Baxter’s head. She flung the wig at her sister’s face, then stamped out of the circle. She left the library, closing the heavy door gently, gently behind her.
Nellie said, “Oops.”
Baxter stood and left the room.
Emily stood up and left the room after Baxter.
Casey said, “Can we get back to business please? There are a couple more things to discuss before I call that university in Australia.”
“You can’t do that now,” Arthur said.
Casey said, “Huh?”
“Can’t,” Arthur repeated.
“Well,” Casey said, “we may have lost our train of thought, but I’m glad to see we have our old friend Arthur back. For a minute there I was afraid you’d gone soft.”
“I just mean you can’t call Australia right now. It’s the middle of the night there.”
———
Karen slammed the tool shed door shut and wheeled her stuff across the parking lot to the truck. She threw the God damn shovel and the God damn trowel and her God damn gloves into the back of the truck and then let down the tail gate, pulled out the ramp, wheeled the God damned wheelbarrow up into the back of the truck and turned it upside down. Shit. Shoved the ramp back in and slapped the tail gate back in place. She climbed up into the cab, turned on the ignition, fired up the engine, lit up a joint, and screeched out of the parking lot without fastening her seat belt. Nobody was going to make her buckle her seat belt. Assholes.
By the time she was out the front gate and onto the road, she was on her way to being stoned and feeling much better.
———
“Baxter, baby, did Karen make you feel bad? Did she hurt your feelings?”
Sweet Emily pulled off her yellow tee shirt and blue jeans and hung them on a wooden peg. She slipped into bath one, waded down the length of the bath to Baxter, sat down beside him, and laid her hand on his knee. “Cheer up, sweetheart,” she said. “Don’t be a mopey-dopey. We’re all alone in the bathhouse. Let’s have some fun.”
Baxter turned his face away.
“Baxter, like it or not, I’m going to make you happy.”
Baxter shoved her hand off his knee.
Emily put the same hand high on his thigh and gave it a squeeze. “You know what?” she said. “Let’s play a game I just invented. It’s called ships and harbors. You be the ship and I’ll be the harbor. What do you think?”
Okay, Baxter thought. Okay. But one of these days I’m going to get serious. I’m allowed to have bad moods just like everybody else. Just not now. He turned his face to Emily and grinned. He stuck out his tongue and wiggled his ears.
———
On her way back from town, Karen pulled over to the edge of the road. This was her land on both sides, even if the road itself was not Hope property. But the land was her home, and this was her lookout turn-around, where she often parked her truck.
She got out and gazed over the valley, down on the town of Tecolote below. All this forest, they wanted to wipe it off the face of the mountain. It was crazy. Even if it weren’t her property, she wouldn’t stand for it.
It had to be stopped. Who knew whether what she was about to do would do any good? Still, the time had come.
She got her equipment out of the back of the truck and pushed the wheelbarrow onto the forest path that had led her toward so many happy hours of peaceful gardening over the past ten years.
——
—
“All right, hold it right there. I want to know what’s going on. Baxter, exactly what do you think you’re doing?” Nellie Hope stood stark naked, statuesque and thundering, on the tile above bath number one. She held Baxter’s wig in her right hand. She slapped it against her thigh. “Huh? Baxter?”
Emily, the little slut, grinned up at her from the other side of Baxter’s blond crew cut. She was bobbing slowly up and down like a child on a see-saw.
“What is going on?” Nellie repeated. “Answer me!”
“We’re playing ships and harbors,” Emily said, without breaking her stride. “Baxter’s the ship and I’m the harbor. Ooh, that was a good one.”
“Sweetheart, I don’t give a french fried fart if you’re the Statue of Liberty,” Nellie told her. “But that little toy boat you’re playing with belongs to me. Baxter, I brought you something.”
Baxter slowly rose to his feet, with Emily still astride, her legs wrapped around his hips. He turned around so he could face Nellie. He looked up at her with the expression of an overworked pharmacist. “Take a number,” he said.
Emily panted, “Baxter belongs to everybody, huh Baxter?”
“Here,” Nellie said. She bent at the waist and placed the red wig on his head, askew. Then she turned, mooned the rutting Siamese twins, picked up her bathrobe, threw it over her shoulder, and strode out of the bathhouse and into the noon sunlight.
As she went down the steps she was pleased to hear Emily cry, “Aw, Baxter, what happened to it?”
———
When Diana came into the kitchen at three that afternoon, she found Karen there waiting for her. On the counter in front of Karen was a brown paper grocery bag. Next to it sat a mixing bowl half-full of pale bright greens, which Karen was fondling with both hands. Karen looked up with a wistful smile and said, “I brought you some leaves for tonight’s salad. Some leaves and tender shoots. Youngsters. I yanked them from the ground, ripped them from their mother’s womb.”
“Are these from your garden?”
Karen nodded. “They’re the entire crop. They were just sprouting. They’re just babies, really. Just little babies. Don’t worry, they won’t do anybody any harm. The THC doesn’t kick in until you heat it up. You know, cook it or smoke it.”
Karen’s eyes began to leak tears, and Diana held her in her arms and rocked her slowly back and forth. When the hug ended, she said, “Karen, are you going to be okay?”
“Once I get used to being straight. That may take a few days. But it’s for the best.”
“You’re giving up dope?”
“I am. Giving up farming it, giving up using it. It’s for the best.”
Diana picked up a marijuana leaf and nibbled it. Weird, sour, stringy, boring. “Are you sure these will be good for a salad?” she asked.
“That’s not the point,” Karen answered. “I promised my babies they’d get eaten. I think the community owes me that much. It’ll be good for them. Fiber. And another thing.”
“Yes?”
Karen picked up the paper bag and set it in front of Diana. “Open it. Sniff.”
Diana opened the sack and took a deep whiff of the pungent, stinky buds inside. “Whew. Talk about THC. What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked.
“That’s all the dope I own in the world. I want you to get rid of it for me. Actually half of it belongs to Nick Renner, and I want you to get rid of that, too. Don’t worry, I’ll take full responsibility.”
“How am I supposed to dispose of this?” Diana took another whiff and shook her head.
“Burn it in tomorrow’s trash. But first, I think you should cook up a batch of fudge. It’s something for you and Casey. Don’t share it with the others. This is for you two. Enjoy.”
———
Casey was no great fan of the telephone. His worst recurring nightmare involved a pay phone in a noisy saloon, with incorrect change and not enough light to see the number scribbled on a cocktail napkin, a series of wrong numbers answered by people who didn’t speak English, and an operator who wouldn’t complete the call until Casey told her his mother’s maiden name, which he couldn’t remember.
But nightmares be damned. There was no time to spare. Here it was almost April, and the malathion raid was due in a couple of months. So at six in the evening, when by his reckoning it was nine in the morning the following day in eastern Australia, he lifted the receiver at the front desk and dialed 0.
“Operator.”
“Operator, my name is Casey, and my mother’s maiden name was Bowen. I need a lot of help. Can you help me?”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“I want to call Tasmania. Do you know where that is?” Casey asked.
“Is that within the 805 area code, sir?”
“No. It’s barely within the planet Earth. What’s your name?”
“Janey.”
“Janey, I hope they pay you by the hour.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Good. Let’s get to work.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want to talk to somebody, maybe a librarian, in a science department, maybe a biology or zoology or even an entomology department, in Hobart University, in Hobart, Tasmania, which is an island off the south coast of Australia. That’s all I have to work with. I don’t know if there even is a Hobart University anymore, in which case I’ll settle for a public library. They must have a public library there, wouldn’t you think?
“One moment, sir,” Janey answered. “I’ll connect you.”
“Yeah, right.” Casey wondered how many times he’d have to repeat the same song and dance, and to how many uncaring operators between California and Australia. He decided to quit clowning around and play it straight, even if it meant sounding like a dork who didn’t know what he was doing, which he was. He hoped he wouldn’t miss dinner. Beckoning aromas were reaching the lobby. At least all the lamps were lit; he’d gotten that out of the way early. The globes on the outside lanterns were looking smudgy. He’d have to talk to Baxter about that. That was Baxter’s job, cleaning the globes of the lanterns and the chimneys of the inside lamps. He did a great job, even if he insisted on juggling the slippery, soapy chimneys in the air over the sink while he worked. But lately the globes and chimneys weren’t looking so clean, and for that matter, Baxter had seemed off his feed lately, which.…
“Sir?”
“Janey?” Here goes. Casey reeled his attention back in and positioned a pencil over a yellow pad of paper.
“I’m sorry that took so long,” Janey said. “I’ll put you through now.”
“Thank you, Janey. It’s been nice talking to you.” Casey wondered whom he’d talk to next, and whether she’d sound like an Aussie or another California teenager.
The phone began to ring. Or buzz. Three buzzes in a row, repeated, repeated.…
“This is the Pomeroy Foundation for Insect Research. May I help you?”
“I beg your pardon?” Casey said.
“You’ve reached the Pomeroy Foundation. Did you misdial?” The woman had a decidedly Australian accent.
“I don’t believe this,” Casey told her. “As in Livingston Pomeroy?”
“Yes, of course. Now how may I help you?”
“Do you happen to know anything about a yellow beetle named Mathilda?”
“Yes, of course,” the woman replied. “That’s Doctor Pomeroy’s Volkswagen. Are you calling from the auto shop? Has there been another accident?”
Now just take your time, Casey told himself. I have not smoked dope for ages. Weeks, almost. So this is really happening. “Are you saying,” he asked the helpful woman, “that Professor Livingston Pomeroy is still alive? This is too good to be true.”
“Oh dear! Has Doctor Pomeroy been injured? Who are you? What is this about? Are you calling from the hospital?”
“Stop,” Casey said. “I’m calling from Hope Springs, California. Home of the Mathilda Beetle. I’d like to speak with Professor Pomeroy, if I
may. This is not about a Volkswagen. It’s about a bug. Small b. Is the professor there?”
“A bug? An insect?”
“That’s right. Mathilda the Bug. I understand that Livingston Pomeroy.…”
The woman cut him short. “Don’t you have insect people in America to call? Doctor Pomeroy is quite busy, you know.”
“Yes, I expect so. But there’s really nobody in America who knows anything about this particular bug.”
“I see. Well, the professor hasn’t arrived yet this morning. I’ll be happy to relay a message, but I can’t make any promises, you know.”
“Just say Casey called from Hope Springs, in Tecolote, California. Say I have a question concerning the Coleoptera hydropohilidae mathilda. Livingston Pomeroy is the only person in the world who can help me.”
“You and everybody else,” the woman said. She sighed. “Very well, I’ll put a note on the professor’s desk.”
“Tell me something,” Casey said. “Just between us. Professor Pomeroy must be old as the hills. Am I right?”
The woman on the other end laughed out loud. “Well, I will say the professor should have stopped driving that Volkswagen years ago. Now then. What’s your telephone number?”
———
“So I have good news and bad news,” Karen announced to the yellow people at dinner, after they had finished their salad course. “Diana, why don’t you tell us what we’ve just eaten.”
Diana smiled and said, “Your basic salad: Boston and red-leaf lettuce, plus various veggies. The dressing was bleu cheese, with olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice, black pepper, cumin seed, Dijon mustard, garlic, of course—”
“Let’s hear about the various veggies,” Karen said.
Diana shrugged. “Radishes, mushrooms, green onion, red bell pepper, cucumber, celery, plus some sprouts.”
“Tell us about the sprouts.”
Diana shook her head. “No. You tell them.”
“Okay.” Karen looked straight across the table at Nellie and said, “You folks have just eaten my entire crop. As of today, I no longer cultivate marijuana. Or smoke it.”
Hot Springs Eternal Page 15
