by BJ Mayo
I trembled for a long while on that occasion. If worse came to worse, I could always sprint over to Birdie. Once inside, she would protect me. That really scared and unnerved me. What would I do if he came into my camp? I heard they always hit from behind, and on the back of the neck, just like they kill a deer. I still get chills, thinking about it.
I peeked outside the tent at her silhouette in the cool November night sky. The moon was half-full and I could see Birdie’s full outline. Even with her 236,000 miles and two overhauls she was still running strong, and she was one thing I could depend on, never once lying, spitting in my face, arguing, or hitting me back. She started when she was supposed to, and could be counted on to get sixteen miles to the gallon, uphill or down.
There was still that dark spot on the seat from the bleeding. I never could get it out. At least now you could not tell it was from blood. I never even thought about it much anymore. It was just part of Birdie now. Stepping out into the night air, I quickly relieved myself a short distance from my tent. The cold night air invigorated me. The sky was brilliant with stars, and the Milky Way was there for the touching. Before turning in, I quietly thumbed through the daily Desert Plains I had purchased before I left Spring many hours before. My old habit of studying the obituary columns would not show me relief tonight. I was drawn like a moth to a flame. As I studied what was written about each person, I would parlay that against my own existence and see if I measured up to them, or, if they were poor enough, see how they measured against me. Some of the older folks would have long writeups, following their entire family tree and every detail of their lives. I guess back then they called everyone by their first and middle names. I would typically rank myself well below someone if they grew up in an affluent family, particularly a well-bred ranching family that sent all of their kids to college, or if they were a family of the military. I could somehow see the older ones laid out in their caskets at the funeral home, other oldies passing by, saying how good they looked dead. How peaceful and content they looked. And younger, too, I heard them say. I might go see one, but I’ll be crap if I will say how good they look dead. Never could stand those funerals.
After carefully reading about the four dead folks in the obit column, I quickly conducted my comparative analysis and figured I was ahead of two of them, mainly because they were south of I-30. A clear separation point for the uppity and white trash like me. But that gave me the upper hand, because I was still alive and they were dead. The other two were military guys who fought on D-Day, so I fell in behind them. Knowing how I ranked on this night, which was clearly a 50/50 deal, I was able to drift into a somewhat peaceful sleep. Other nights, when I was less than 50 percent of the deal, I could easily spend hours backtracking on my history, and wishing I had been born an affluent person from a college family, or maybe been the son of an army captain instead of the son of an alcoholic roughneck. I would examine every detail and crossroads from the time I could remember until the present day. It was always an exhausting exercise, but trying to stop or control it seemed futile. It was like my brain could not turn off this kind of activity.
No living person knew about this particular piece of my identity. Not even Beatrice. I always hoped I could shake it before anyone ever found out because of the sheer foolishness of it all. Why in the world would anyone think like this? If anyone ever found it out, they might reason that I was crazy and not in charge of my faculties. An officer of the law might not be one very long if they found out.
* * *
I awoke the next morning to the howls of coyotes, at approximately 5:00 a.m. Such eerie yet beautiful, wild sounds were rarely heard inside the city. I stepped outside the tent and could hear the slow movement of the stream. It always sounded like there were thirty or forty of the coyotes. They howled for a good ten minutes and then went quiet as a mouse. Maybe they were doing some type of clan roll call. It had been said they roll-called nightly. When certain members did not answer, the others assumed they were dead. The females, it was said, would go into heat and therefore produce sufficient offspring to perpetuate the species. Maybe that is true, because there is never a shortage of coyotes, it seems.
My nighttime log was now a smoldering ember. I added wood to the fire. I filled an empty orange juice can with lantern fluid and tossed it on the fire. The volatility of the liquid always amazed me. The explosion of the liquid when hit by a lit match was impressive. Out in our country, everyone burned their trash in barrels. No one had the money to take their trash to the county dump. That cost two dollars per load, plus the gas to get you there. Most poor folks figured that was money badly spent. Some of the oil field hands, like my father, would steal empty drums from the oil field leases and bring them home. A good chisel and hammer could take the top out. Then you punched holes in the sides for air flow. Two small pieces of metal rod wired to the lid, and you had an instant burning barrel. Sometimes Mama’s empty cheap hairspray cans would blow up and blow the lid off. Prowling cats were always looking for food in the barrels. Sometimes you could sneak up on the barrel with a baseball bat and hit the side loudly. The cat came out like a quail.
All of us learned at a young age to use gasoline to start the fire. Of course we always used more than was required. Sometimes it blew the lighted trash out of the barrel like a Roman candle—particularly dangerous in fall and winter, with dead grass and all. That’s how Mr. Reddy’s chicken house burned down, with all the chickens in it. Nubbin, his son, told him that a neighbor kid shot a bottle rocket over the fence and caught it on fire. We used to shoot them at each other all the time during firework season, so it was a little feasible. I guess he believed him.
Normally, he would have beaten him for just about any reason. I saw him beat Nubbin with a water hose until I thought he was dead. And I ain’t just talking on the ass, he hit him all over. Even a couple of times in the face. Nubbin had cussed him over him beating his mama.
I seldom saw him when he was not drunk, and when he was drunk he was violent and mean. I never knew of anyone named Nubbin in my whole life except Nubbin. I think his real name was Travis. His mama told me that his daddy called him Never Nothing, because he figured he would never amount to nothing. His father made him repeat the name he had given him, one night when he was drunk. Over and over he tried to make the boy say “Nothing,” laughing and gee-hawing when he would mispronounce the word. He could not say it correctly and kept saying Nubbin instead. “What did you say your name was, boy?” “My name is Nubbin.” They old man would laugh until tears came down his face. “Whatever you say, Nothing,” he would proclaim. “Go get yourself a sugar-tit and go to bed. Mama,” he would proclaim, “get some sugar in a sock and give it to Little Nubbin so he can get to bed.” I guess they were the only family I knew that was poorer than we were growing up, with maybe the exception of the Pattersons, who lived at the end of Creek Road. They had seven kids and a father that ran out on them. Their mama worked as manager at the Silver Dollar to support them. There was no sheet rock on their walls, and sometimes they ate only cucumbers for supper. I always thought deep down that maybe Nubbin was somehow responsible for the dead dogs I found hanged by our old swimming hole. There were four of them, and they were all hanged from the neck with baling wire on cross tie posts on the fence line. Later, about two years after high school, Nubbin beat his father to death with a baseball bat, shortly after witnessing his father beat Nubbin’s mama within an inch of her life. All for spending an extra fifteen dollars on groceries. She was only allowed thirty-five dollars a week. He went to the federal pen. I guess he became something more than a “Nothing,” he became a killer. I was surprised he hadn’t done it sooner.
I drank three cups of camp coffee and shoveled dirt over the fire. It was an automatic fine from the ranger if you left live coals and got caught. I had heard that for twenty years, but had only seen one ranger. Being a law officer and all, I had to err on the side of caution. I could always envision the Desert Plains headline: “Alfie Carter, Law
Officer, Leaves Campfire Unattended in Gila Wilderness.” Responsible for ten-thousand-acre forest fire. Currently being held by Silver City, New Mexico, authorities awaiting trial.
Birdie fired right up and we began to head toward the high country to the north. She never sputtered once while we were making our way up the treacherous switchbacks on the mule trail to Dead Tree Ridge.
The stubble on my chin was beginning to irritate my face. Even though it felt good being off-duty and not bound to the drab dress code I religiously followed, the red hair on my face itched beyond belief. Maybe it made me look like a real person in the real world, rather than a rank-and-file squeaky clean officer of the law.
As a matter of fact, I had decided to not change underwear for the entirety of my trip, or at least not until the last day before heading home. With only four days remaining off, that would be a stretch. That’s how the real men did it. I would throw them away at the first KOA campground I came to. Beatrice would never know. Hell, she probably would not even care. She did seem to know which kind of underwear I preferred, as if it was any of her business. “Alfie, why do you keep shoving that blue pair of Fruit of the Looms to the bottom of the pile? I thought you liked blue.” Hell, I like black, not blue, not gray, not green—just plain old black. But I never said a word. She was like a bad rash sometimes. Men’s underwear are not supposed to be every color of the rainbow.
We topped out at Oz’s camp and I stopped to sniff around a little. Having spent many an hour sprawled out around a campfire on this very ridge at this very camp site, I smiled to myself, remembering my surprise at seeing men with pistols on their hips when I first rode my horse into their camp. They asked me what kind of saddle gun I had. I said my old faithful .30-30. “Hell, boy, we use those for crutches up here. We shoot 7mm. We shoot mountain-to-mountain guns.” Now that pissed me off. That .30-30 had killed many a white tail in Texas. The smell of the mountain cedar in their campfire that day is still etched in my memory. I listened to them argue over dominos, boo-ray, and whores. It seems like a lifetime ago, even though it has only been eighteen years.
I decided to drive the last short section of trail out of Oz’s camp to the northwest and park at the trailhead. I hid Birdie as best I could behind two large mountain cedars and took out my poke bag, and was careful to load my flashlight. Since I was in mountain lion country, I always took my .44 mag pistol along, just in case I needed it. That witch would knock a bear’s ass down in a pinch and definitely a mountain lion if I saw him first. I passed the same discarded plastic Pennzoil can that was at the trailhead. I stopped to inspect it years ago, and here it still lay. Amazing how long it takes nature to degrade plastic. I suppose it will be there for the next generation or two, if they happen by this way. However, I never picked it up and carried it away, as it was a good trail marker for me.
I hiked approximately one mile to the top of the ridge, and peered down into the gorge below. It was here I had happened upon when I was lost, trying to return to camp during my first mountain trip years ago. It was here I lay for hours under stands of pines, listening to nothing but the wind. It was here I could look down to the south and see the Arizona border, with no signs of humanity as far as the eye could see. It was also here that I did my best reflecting. It seemed the reflecting always turned to growing up in that sorry place with my worthless father and my poor mother who had to put up with him.
My watch said 10:00 a.m. I had already been sitting for nearly three hours, and was completely lost in the beauty and majesty of the mountains. Chipmunks scampered from log to log, and there was almost imperceptible movement below, in the brush at the bottom of the gorge. Probably an elk or a mule deer. Navajo messenger crows cawed back and forth. They had disrupted many a hunt for me in past years, with their relentless cawing at the precise moment a muley stepped into my sights. I had seen them flying with pieces of paper or shiny tinfoil in their beaks. Maybe they were messengers, as the Navajo said, but messengers to other animals was my thinking, because every time their sorry asses were around, there were no mule deer in the area. I swear they called down and warned them.
I remember Beatrice’s narrowed gaze when I told her of my plans to go to the mountains for a few days. She gave me her black widow stare. From immature mama’s girl at eighteen years of age when we married twenty-some-odd ago, to a strong, independent, no-bluff kind of girl at forty-three. No longer could I get by with much of anything out of line without immediate and strong rebuttal. Although she was one of my strongest private defenders, especially as far as my cases were concerned, the woman was mean as a one-eyed snake. I thought about her often when I was here. I thought about things here that we never discussed at home.
Somehow it seemed okay, here in the mountains, to think about our daughter who only lived for a few short hours after birth. Beatrice could not attend the simple graveside service, as she was still in the hospital. It was nearly unbearable to go it alone at the funeral, with only her parents and mine present. My roughneck father did not even wear a suit, and had his standard pack of unfiltered Camels in his front pocket. It was surprising that he wore clean clothes and was sober.
Everyone’s hopes and dreams lay before us, or at least mine and Beatrice’s. Their tearful eyes watching me kneel beside the small, white casket. I was in a little too much shock to really give a shit about how anyone else felt. How could a loving and caring God take our daughter? It changed my thinking on whether or not He really exists, to have let that happen. I never went back to church, from that day. I never missed those hypocritical assholes. Kind of like my pa, going to church on Sunday after an all-night drinking binge on Saturday. Hell, he beat Mama sometimes when he came in, and then stood beside her in church on Sunday, singing, “Bringing in the Sheaves,” like nothing ever happened. Most folks did not stare as much as they could have, looking at the puffy side of Ma’s face. She once covered up the black eye he gave her with makeup, but you could still tell. It looked like she had a broken vein in her eye. Anyway, he mostly did not hit her in the face, because he didn’t want folks to see. He was a sorry and mean son of a bitch. I would just run and hide and cry for my mama. He was too big for me to take on.
Her name was Patricia Jean Carter. The doctor and the preacher said she had jet-black hair, like her mama. She was so premature, so little, I guess she didn’t even have a chance. After all of these years, her name is still not spoken, nor is the event referenced in any form or fashion. If Beatrice has visited the grave, she has done it privately, without me being there to hold her hand.
Hell, I bet she has been there. The fact is, I never returned to the grave. Time has eased but not erased the pain. Beatrice’s mama tries to talk about it from time to time, and I just walk out on her talkative loudmouth ass. She’ll say Patrica Jean would be about eighteen now. Do you ever think about her, Alfie? As if that is any of her nosy-ass insensitive business. I just get up and walk out. She seems to take great satisfaction in dragging it out of the closet.
Tears streamed down my face. The fall sun warmed it as it made its way steadily upward, above the line of trees. I guess it is okay to cry, as long as it is not in public, as my father used to say. Don’t be a sissy boy, he would say. Sissies don’t make it in this world, dry up that crying.
It was a release to shed tears. I guess that is why women do it so much, and men stay tied up in a knot. Such a dispassionate shithead he was.
I am usually with steadfast gaze and my emotions in check, giving the appearance of an oak tree. However, up here it was more like a willow. I always seemed to hold it in for at least a year and somehow could react emotionally while sitting on this mountain. Up here, I had to let it all drain out. Empty the till. Drain the piggy bank. Or, as my pa would say, shovel the shit out of the barn. And my barn was always full when I got here.
Beatrice’s parting comment about maybe thinking about adopting a kid someday angered me beyond imagination. I did not respond. I jumped into an already packed Birdie and left her standin
g at the door. How dare she bring up adoption at this time in our lives? Hell, she had probably never been to the gravesite of our daughter and paid her respects. We were forty-three years old, for goodness’s sake. What a foolish, stupid and irrational notion. We were trying to run a farm while I was busy being an officer of the law. And a detective with investigations to handle, for crying out loud. We damn sure did not have time for kids. Especially an adopted one.
I figure if God wanted us to have our own, He would have given us Patricia. Our animals, those goats and horses, were our kids. And besides, she had never dared to speak Patricia Jean’s name to me after she died. She keeps bringing up maybe wanting to adopt a child. The woman has never even reconciled herself to the death of our daughter.
Who would put such a foolish notion into her mind? I bet it was her preacher. Ever since she started going to church a couple of years ago, she has been acting strange. Some kind of do-gooder / voodoo crusader.
The further I stayed away from the church and its hypocrites, the better I liked it. All they want is your money, and they damn sure can’t bring back a little one.
I stayed pissed all the way to my campsite with fourteen hours to build as I traveled down the interstate and backroads, into the heart of the mountains. And another thing, why would Beatrice’s “God” let another girl live over my girl? I guess Beatrice wanted to save the world or something. I know God don’t have no use for me—well, brother, it goes the same way here. If He don’t need me, I don’t need Him.
CHAPTER FOUR
I pulled the picture of the young lady out of my pocket and studied it for some time. Her family had long lived in the county. Her father was Jerald Couch, refinery worker, and her mama Irene was said to be an athletic tennis player with an affinity for men other than her husband from time to time, as it was told down at Merle’s Café by Merle himself, which means it probably was not true. His gossipy ass was always listening to other folks’ conversations.
