High Desert High

by Steven Schindler

  “Didn’t they write a book in the Bible about that?” Asked Paul.

  “What’s that?”

  “The Book of Revelations.”

  They were both exhausted and relaxing after showers and late-afternoon cups of tea. It was a long day’s journey from UFO headquarters to Venus and Mars and then on to dinosaur fields and through to biblical times.

  Paul made arrangements for Tracy, Heidi, and Kate to meet up at Pappy and Harriet’s for dinner. It’s a local roadhouse in the middle of the nearby Pioneertown, an historic western town built by Hollywood cowboys as a working movie set in the Fifties. Still intact, it has been converted into a hipster tourist destination compete with post-modern art galleries, alternative music recording studios, and staged Old West gunfights complete with shotgun blasts, pistol packin’ mammas, and instant justice from quick-shooting sheriffs.

  The drive to Pappy and Harriet’s was yet another awe-inspiring experience for Mickey. The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the gold and purple rocky landscape as the two-lane blacktop road rolled, swayed, and wound its way past horse ranches, mobile homes with big rigs parked in the front yard, geodesic dome homes, and assorted Santa Fe style southwest mansions perched on rocky hilltops.

  “It just keeps going and going, doesn’t it?” Mickey wondered.

  “Off to the right, which actually hooks over to my property, this road goes up almost fifty miles to Big Bear, which is a winter ski resort town. And just about all of that land is Federal property. The BLM. Bureau of Land Management.”

  “It’s called BLM?”

  “Yeah. Bureau of Land Management. Why?”

  “Who was protesting that night you snapped and retired faster than a politician caught in a sex scandal?”

  “Black Lives Matter. Oh. BLM. I get it.”

  “And why did you buy that piece of property you own. Because it’s next to the …?”

  “BLM. Yeah, and?”

  “I’m just saying. So it’s protected land?”

  “Yup. It will look like this forever. That is why I bought where I bought. It’s what makes this little piece of the earth magical.”

  Paul pulled in to the Pappy and Harriet’s parking lot and noticed Heidi’s pickup just behind them.

  “Mickey, I told you we’re meeting Tracy and her friend. But there’s more to it.”

  “More to it? Are we are on some kind of undercover op or something?”

  “It’s not just Tracy’s friend.”

  “Yeah, go on.”

  “It’s her fiancée?”

  “Hey, mazel tov! Since you retired, Jeanie Espinoza and Kitty O’Brien married each other. Nobody in the entire precinct even suspected they were dating. Oh yeah, remember Ryan? He dropped dead. Retired for all of three weeks. They were packing the van for the move to Lauderdale, and phhht. Dead.”

  “It seems like yesterday, we were underage trying to sneak into bars. And now, they’re calling our row for last stop. Let’s go meet the girls.”

  “I think the last time I saw Tracy was at graduation from grade school when you and I drove up there.”

  “I’ve only seen her a handful of times since then myself, up until very recently.”

  Paul was always interested in Mickey’s reactions to things. Whether it was a bet on a horse, It says it’s going to rain tomorrow in Miami, is he a mudder? or if he should wear a wire on an undercover drug sting It’s 80 degrees out! How the hell you think you’re gonna conceal a wire? or whether or not he should get married? If you want a kid, get married. Otherwise fughedaboudit. Sometimes it was just a look Mickey had that told Paul if he was doing something that would end in a laugh or a trip to the ER. So Paul was thrilled when Mickey, Tracy, and Heidi exchanged loving bear hugs with laughs, smiles, and some tears between Mickey and Tracy. With just the ambient light from some beer signs in the windows, Tracy resembled her mom so much that Paul couldn’t help but be yanked back to those crazy days of bar trips, softball games in Van Cortlandt Park, and wild summer group-home parties in the Hamptons when couples started pairing off. These were soon followed by wedding after wedding, then christening after christening, in a grand parade marching down the avenue of life. It seemed that new marriages, babies, and careers would lead to nothing but better days. Until the parade and parties ended, and everyone went back to their three-room, four-story walk-up apartments, and started balancing check books on Formica kitchen tabletops with up-all-night babies and moms and overnight-shift dads and crappy cars that wouldn’t start. Then reality really kicked in.

  “It does my heart good to see you two back together again,” Mickey said, putting his arms around Tracy and Paul.

  Tracy motioned for Heidi to get between her and Paul. “They say when one door closes another opens. But sometimes, one door closes, and you have to knock down a wall or two to get on your way,” Paul said.

  Paul had been meaning to check out Pappy and Harriet’s since he arrived. He knew they had live country music most nights, an outdoor barbeque pit, and an Old West theme, but had no idea that this roadhouse in what looked like the middle of a moonscape was packed to the rafters from the first breakfast Bloody Mary to last call. They got on a wait list and stood at a crowded bar for the next available table.

  “Here she is!” Paul said, seeing Kate pushing through the crowd towards them.

  Kate was resplendent in a gauzy pink cotton dress that went below her knees, and embroidered denim jacket. “Sorry I’m late! My shift replacement wasn’t on time. Again.”

  Introductions and hello kisses on the cheek went around, as Paul watched and waited as Kate and Mickey interacted.

  With his arm around Kate, Mickey chortled, “Kate says Paul’s a sweetheart! So, I told her how you must’ve changed a lot since moving here!”

  The crowd was growing around their group at the bar. Paul and Mickey wound up standing at the bar, while the ladies stood behind them chatting and laughing with non-alcoholic drinks in hand.

  “Am I the only one drinking? That makes me nervous,” Mickey said, taking a gulp of Jack Daniels.

  “I stopped drinking just recently. And I don’t even know how or why I did it,” Paul said taking a sip of his club soda with lime.

  “How long have we been here?” Mickey asked. “Ten, fifteen minutes?”

  “Yeah, so. What, you never waited for a table before?”

  “Look around. What do you see?”

  “Okay, Mr. Observant. Clue me in,” Paul said in anticipation.

  “This group at the pool table? They look like they just came from a Hell’s Angels hazing party. That table over there. Those four look like the winners of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young look-alike contest. Then across the room, I see a long table of Marines in t-shirts and jeans with their girlfriends, who could probably take out an ISIS base with some baseball bats. And this group behind us is speaking some language from who-knows-istan.”

  “So what’s your point?”

  “Paulie, this place is like St. Mark’s Lounge. Back in the day! Don’t you see it? All the different factions. The bikers, the artists, the immigrants, the tourists, the military. Before every bar, every neighborhood in New York was taken over, gentrified, homogenized, and sterilized.”

  “These are the people who live around here.”

  “Exactly!”

  “It’s like an ancient, pre-urban, East Village.”

  “Excuse me, but your table is ready,” said a seventysomething bartender with a Polish accent.

  The hum of the crowed was getting louder as the evening wore on. A band was setting-up on stage in front of a huge tie-dye banner. Its members looked like they got their style from looking at album covers in the psychedelic bin of a used vinyl store.

  The food and service were good, and there was an electricity in the air, as if the crowd felt they knew they were part of something new in this last frontier of open space and freedom. It would take decades for this place to be ruined by urban planners.

 
Paul got a kick out of Mickey bantering back and forth with the girls. It reminded him of the old days, when they were single and on the prowl. Obviously there was nothing sexual about Mickey’s hilarious storytelling of Keystone cop-like NYPD escapades to three beautiful girls in a noisy bar. And neither Mickey nor Paul had any kind of a look about them that would attract young ladies. It was just pure enjoyment to watch Mickey’s personality and charm in full swing with eager-to-listen friends who haven’t heard these stories before. Or lived them, like Paul had.

  “Dad, we’ve got something we want to tell you,” Tracy said in a quiet moment when Mickey got up to hit the head.

  “Oh, would you like me hit the powder room, so you could have some privacy?” Kate asked.

  “Not at all. Please stay,” Heidi said reassuringly.

  “I’ve been doing some thinking. We’ve been doing some thinking. And we decided it’s not a good idea for two people in a relationship to be in the military at the same time. There are just too many variables.”

  Paul closed his eyes and gave a sigh of relief, but tried not to be too obvious. He remembered those around him who advised him against being a cop, but he wouldn’t have any of it. In fact, hearing those naysayers bleat on made him want to be a cop even more. And he knew there was a lot of himself in Tracy.

  Mickey came back to the table and sensed there had been a change of mood. “You want me to go outside and have a smoke?”

  “You don’t smoke!” Paul said.

  “I could start.”

  “Sit down!”

  Mickey sat. “Go ahead, I’ll be good.”

  “I was just telling dad that I’m not joining the Marines, because it’s too difficult for both parents to be serving….”

  “Whoah! Parents? You didn’t say parents before!” Paul said excitedly, spilling some of his club soda.

  “Oops. I’m having a baby,” Tracy said, as Heidi put her arm around her.

  “That’s fantastic!” Paul said, then stopped dead. He closed his eyes, and saw his wife Marcy’s smiling face. He flashed on his departed mom and dad, and how happy they would have been to hold their first grandchild. He opened his eyes and for a moment saw Marcy, but it was Tracy, crying with Heidi and Kate.

  “There’s more,” Tracy said, wiping her tears with a paper napkin. “I’m going back to school to become an RN.”

  “Your mother would be so proud, Tracy,” Paul said, holding her hands, as their eyes locked.

  “You know dad, I had a strange dream last night. I dreamt that I was a toddler, back in our old Bronx apartment. Mom was busy in the kitchen. It was sweltering hot, and for some reason, I was out on the fire escape all by myself. Did we have a fire escape? I don’t even remember the apartment, really. We moved when I was, how old?”

  “About two. Yes, we had a fire escape,” Paul said, looking at Mickey and giving a very subtle wink.

  “I was out on the fire escape, holding onto the bars, leaning out, and then in slow motion I slipped through and fell, how many stories were there?”

  “Six,” Mickey and Paul said in unison.

  “But it felt like fifty. And I was falling in slow motion down, and I looked down and below there was a police officer, standing there, with his arms open. And he was calling my name, It’s okay Tracy, It’s okay, I got you. And as I got closer I could see it was grandpa.”

  “Her mom’s father was a cop,” Paul interjected.

  “Of course I remember the picture of him in his police uniform, which was always displayed on our wall at home. But I don’t remember meeting him. And I wasn’t even scared. I landed in his arms with a thump. And when I looked up at his face, it wasn’t grandpa at all. It was an African-American cop. Then I woke up.”

  Paul turned pale. His face ashen and disturbed. He turned to Mickey. “Did you tell her?”

  “I swear. Never,” Mickey said, just as shaken as Paul.

  Now Tracy, Heidi, and Kate had worried looks on their faces, as glances and perplexed expressions shot around the table while the band began tuning up their instruments.

  “It’s getting noisy in here,” Paul said, picking up the check. “Let’s meet out by my car and we’ll talk.”

  Tracy, Heidi, and Kate got up and left Mickey and Paul at the table.

  “You didn’t say anything? She has no idea?” Mickey asked.

  “Well, I guess, her mom or grandma could have said something.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably it. You know how the mind can block things out. I can’t remember where I parked my car half the time.”

  “But you’ll never forget the time Joseph Greeley threw up on Danny Daly’s back during morning prayers in seventh grade,” Paul said stone-faced.

  “Of course not.”

  “You don’t forget the big stuff.”

  It was a surreal scene outside. The car was parked at the end of the bar’s parking lot, right next to the start of the Old West TV town, underneath another starry desert sky. There were a few bare light bulbs on some storefronts, putting the entire length of the faux town in view as if a backdrop for a Twilight Zone episode.

  “Tracy, do you know anything about a story where you fell out of a window?” Paul asked.

  “No. Should I?”

  “You fell off the fire escape when you were about 18 months old. You got out there when your mom turned away for a second. You fell six stories.”

  Tracy got chills as she hugged herself tightly. “Oh my God. What happened? Tell me!”

  “A cop just happened to see you who was walking by. He caught you. He was a black guy.”

  The band could be heard playing their first song in the distance. But that was the only sound that could be heard. All were silent.

  Paul absentmindedly kicked some dirt. “And there’s something else. Your grandfather had died about a week before this happened. Dropped dead of a massive heart attack.”

  “It was one of those dreams that felt so real. So vivid,” Tracy said, her alabaster skin given a glow from the bright full moon. “But I wasn’t scared as I fell. It was like I knew everything was going to be alright. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about this?”

  Paul and Mickey looked at each other, in what could be described as shame. “Well, your mom was home alone at the time. And we wanted as few people to know about what happened as possible.”

  “Was mom … drinking at that time?”

  “Yeah. And I was working a lot. I was new on the job and couldn’t turn down the hours. It wasn’t long after that incident that your mom and I separated, and you moved upstate to move into grandma’s house. It was best for you.”

  “I don’t know why your generation doesn’t talk about these things. Why is everything so secretive?”

  Kate took the few steps to be by Paul’s side and put her arm around him. “It’s not that they’re secrets. It’s denial,” she said. “My husband died from drugs and alcohol abuse, and I know I was in denial. He’d stop for a few weeks or a month or two, and I’d tell myself everything was going to be fine. He’d get better. I called AA one time and was asking a bunch of questions about treatment. They guy on the phone said, ‘Lady, are you calling for yourself? Because if you’re calling for somebody else, you’re just wasting your time. He needs to be the one to pick up the phone and dial.’ It was shortly after that I started going to Al Anon.”

  “Grandma and I went a bunch of times. That’s where we learned that Serenity Prayer.”

  “Oh yeah,” Mickey chimed in. “That Serenity Prayer is on more refrigerators than Homer Simpson. I heard a good joke at an AA meeting,” Mickey said, trying to lighten up the mood. “A pompous monsignor is in the rectory and gets a warning on the radio about a flood coming, but he thinks, ‘No need to worry. The good Lord will take care of me.’ So the street’s flooded, and a guy in a 4x4 Jeep honks and yells, ‘Hey monsignor, come on out, I’ll take you to higher ground.’ ‘No need,’ said the monsignor. ‘The Lord will take care of me.’ Then the waters rise above the first s
tory, and he’s on the second floor, and a boat comes by, and the guy yells, ‘Hey monsignor, hop in!’ ‘No need,’ he answers. ‘The Lord will take care of me. So now the flood’s up to the roof, and he’s up there by the chimney. A helicopter flies overhead and a guy drops a ladder and yells, ‘Come on Monsignor, it’s your last chance.’ ‘No need. The good Lord will protect me.’ So of course he drowns, and next thing you know, he’s at the gates of heaven, and in a huff he asks Saint Peter, ‘Why didn’t the Lord help me?’ Saint Peter goes through his notes and says, ‘Are you kidding me? It says here we sent a Jeep, a boat, and a freakin’ helicopter!”

  They all laughed, and when the laughter starts to die down, Paul asks, “What about the UFO?”

  “What UFO?” Mickey asks.

  “I thought I remembered hearing that joke but there was also a UFO sent.”

  They all looked at Paul like he was nuts.

  “Yeah, there was a UFO, and then something about the Serenity Prayer …,” Paul said, eyes squinting, head turning as though he’s trying to force himself to recall something important.

  “I think this high desert high is getting to you,” Mickey said laughing. “Earth to Paulie! Earth to Paulie!”

  “Okay, Okay, so I’m a little tired. Let’s call it a night,” Paul said, exchanging hugs and goodbyes.

  Paul decided to take some back roads home, rather than the two-lane blacktop. The moon was full and the rocky landscape looked more like an actual moonscape in the brightness of the moon’s glow. The road was winding and undulating, creating almost a hypnotic effect.

  “Do you believe in UFO’s?” Mickey asked, gazing on the strange scenery passing by.

  “Oh boy. Here it comes.”

  “What? I’m just asking,” Mickey said.

  Paul keeps his eyes on the road. “Something happened to me out in the desert one night. I thought I saw a UFO and I was chasing it down. I crashed the car, wound up in the hospital for a day or two and it’s a long story.”

  “I got time.”

  Back at the house Mickey was sipping whiskey in a comfortable chair facing Paul as he told the story of the night he chased a UFO, crashed, thought he was slipped a mickey, got busted screaming at giant statues of Jesus, was almost committed to a mental ward, and was on his way to have a shoot-out at the O.K. Corral with Ash until his car conked out and he blacked out.