Dove Season

by Johnny Shaw

  I found Yolanda outside walking along the side of the house and eating pomegranate seeds one at a time from a cracked open pomegranate. She daintily took each seed out of the husk and put it in her mouth. I could see the subtle motion of her jaw positioning the seed and then grinding it between her front teeth. One seed at a time. At that rate it would take her three days to finish that pomegranate. She turned to me, smiled, and held out the pomegranate to me. I shook my head as I walked to her.

  She sat down on the concrete slab next to my nemesis, the water pump. I gave it a wicked sideways glance, reminding it who was boss. (It was.) Yolanda continued to eat the pomegranate, her fingers stained red. I sat down next to her. And for the next hour, we just sat. Yolanda worked through one seed at a time and I watched her. Talk was even cheaper when you didn’t understand each other. All in all, Yolanda was excellent company. I hadn’t had a morning that pleasant in a long time.

  We got to Harris Convalescent around twelve thirty. I had called Angie on the drive to give her fair warning that we were on our way. She had assured me that Pop and Yolanda would not be disturbed.

  Angie was at the front desk when Yolanda and I came through the double-glass doors. Yolanda wore the same sundress and carried her small overnight bag over her shoulder. Angie gave a noticeable eyebrow lift when she saw Yolanda. Angie gave me a smirk and an overexaggerated flourish and bow, with an elaborate, “You may enter.” I was going to introduce Yolanda and Angie, but it not only felt unnecessary, but inappropriate. I kept it to a nod and headed down the hall. Angie caught up to me and without a word put a blue pill in my hand.

  At Pop’s door I motioned for Yolanda to wait. She nodded, switching her bag from one hand to the other. I gave the door a light rap and entered as I usually did, not waiting for permission.

  There was another man in the room. A man in a suit. He sat next to Pop’s bed. Papers littered Pop’s tray and covered the man’s lap. Pop saw me and said softly to the man, “We’ll finish this later. Tomorrow maybe.”

  The man turned and I recognized him as Clem “Red” Fidler, Pop’s lawyer and one of his closest friends.

  “James, how you been?” Red stood, holding out his hand. “Your father and I will take care of this some other time.” Red might have had red hair at some point in his life, but he had been completely bald the whole time I had known him, his pate speckled with dark spots. I had always liked Red. He was a straight shooter. And as lawyers go, that was rare.

  I shook his firm grip. “Thanks, Red. Doing good. How’s Bertha?” Bertha was his oldest granddaughter. We had gone to high school together. I wasn’t that curious, but I thought it polite to make small talk.

  “Married to a preacher. Four kids, if you can believe it,” he said proudly. Pop shuffled the pages in front of him into an orderly stack and handed them to Red. Red stuffed them in his open-top briefcase and headed for the door.

  “Jack, I’ll come by in the next couple of days to get the last few signatures,” Red said. “It’s good to see you back down, James.” He walked out the door, almost bumping into Yolanda. He gave her an extended stare. He looked back at me and Jack, then at Yolanda, then disappeared down the hall. The door closed. Yolanda remained outside.

  “I thought you got all the paperwork finished months ago. Or did you think better of it and take me out of your will?”

  “I didn’t tell you? I’m a Hare Krishna now. Leaving everything to the ashram.” Pop smiled. “Had to cross some t’s, dot a couple of i’s, and umlaut a few o’s. Is that Yolanda in the hall? My eyes were too far.”

  “Sure is. How long should I skedaddle for? A couple of hours?”

  “What time is it now?” Pop asked, squinting at the clock on the wall.

  “About twelve thirty.”

  “How about three? You entertain yourself until then?”

  “I’ll be waiting in the lobby at three.” I silently set the blue pill on the nightstand and walked to the door.

  Yolanda with her ever-present smile walked into the room as I exited. As the door closed, I watched Yolanda approach Pop in his hospital bed. Life returned to his eyes and smile. I saw something special happen, something important, and I was glad that I was able to give Pop that moment. All week, I had failed to give him the Big Laugh, but somehow Yolanda’s presence gave him something more real.

  Angie was still at the reception desk. I strolled up, knocking on the counter. “They’re in there,” I said.

  “I can’t believe you talked me into helping you,” she said. More as conversation than any real complaint.

  “You’re not helping me, you’re helping Pop. But both of us thank you, Angie,” I said, meaning it.

  She waved it off, pretending to work.

  “Do you want to go to the movies with me?” I asked.

  She looked up.

  “I know you can’t play hooky right now, you’re working, but we used to go to movies together all the time, and it was fun, and I thought maybe, you know, we could see a movie together and then talk about it after, over coffee or a drink, just a movie. Not dinner. Dinner seems too much. A moving picture,” I said, realizing how ridiculous I sounded as I said it. But for whatever reason, I couldn’t stop the flow of words coming out of my mouth.

  “Maybe,” she said after a few seconds.

  “What? Really?” said Mister Cool. “Really?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Thanks. I don’t have many people down here. People I really know, you know. And as much as I like Bobby, we always end up hammered or worse.”

  “He’s a good friend.”

  “The best. No question. Shit, Angie, I’d just like to spend some time with you. We’re different people now. Like to see how we’ve both changed.”

  “Just friends.”

  “Just friends,” I lied.

  And Angie and I left it at that. Not making any real plans, but opening up the possibility of seeing each other outside of the building where my father was dying.

  I drove through El Centro. Just crisscrossing streets and getting nostalgic over different buildings that sparked forgotten memories. Because gas isn’t free, I parked downtown and walked among the mostly vacant storefronts. I tried to remember what businesses had been there when I was a kid.

  El Centro Jewelers was gone. And so was Sports Mart, Valley Music, the Central Buffet, the Fashion Boat, and Desert Office Supplies. There had once been a magazine shop where I had bought comic books every Sunday as a kid, the name escaping me. The storefront was now being used as an office for the United Farm Workers.

  Luckily, Book Nook was still around. The only used bookstore in the Imperial Valley and air-conditioned to boot. I browsed the stacks and picked up a couple of mysteries and a Hubert Selby book I had never seen. I remembered a conversation I had had with Pop, him telling me that he had never read Nathanael West’s A Cool Million. He had made the mistake of reading The Dream Life of Balso Snell. And due to his policy of not reading everything by an author, he had never read it. I picked up a copy.

  El Centro is not an easy town to kill a couple of hours in. There is nothing to do. Especially when it’s hot. Luckily, I liked to drink. So I went to the Owl Café to join the lunch crowd for a couple of beers. The interior of the Owl is unique. It is a long, thin building, with a long counter running along each wall. On one side was the restaurant counter, and the other counter was the bar. When the Owl was full, it was almost impossible to squeeze between the backs of its patrons. Many of the regulars would just shift their weight from one stool to another, depending on when it was time to eat and when it was time to drink.

  The lunch crowd looked like they may have also been the breakfast crowd, only a couple of people at each counter. Two Mexicans scarfed down burgers at the lunch counter, while a couple of barflies that I recognized by sight, but not name, stared at the labels of their bottles of Coors Light at the bar. When in Rome. I order a Coors Light, sitting two stools down from the nearest barfly.

  About halfwa
y through my beer, I noticed that the barfly closest to me was staring. His weather-worn face looked like an overused catcher’s mitt with eyes. From five feet away, I could smell his sour alcohol breath as it wafted toward me. The overhead fan was too weak to dissipate its weight.

  “You’re Big Jack’s boy, aintcha?” he slurred, practically one word.

  I nodded. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Look like him. I know your pa, Veeder.”

  “I’ll tell him you said hello.”

  “You do that, you do that. But, and this is important, you tell him Squatty ain’t found it yet.”

  “Okay, Squatty.” Then out of curiosity, I asked, “Found what?”

  “The fucking fort,” he shouted, his voice piercingly high. He wasn’t angry, just uncontrollably excited. Nobody reacted, save for the bartender, shaking his head in that “now you’ve done it” way.

  I would’ve let it go, but what the hell else did I have to do. “What fort?”

  Out of Squatty’s sight line, the bartender held his finger to his head like a pistol and fired, miming suicide.

  “Out there in the dunes. Out past Buttercup. Where nothing lives. That’s where they filmed Beau Geste. You’re too young.”

  “Beau Geste with Gary Cooper. I’ve seen it.”

  Squatty laughed, although it sounded more like he was dying. The kind of laugh that is nauseating to hear, thick and viscous.

  I took a cigarette out and held it up to the bartender, raising my eyebrows in question. He nodded and shrugged. I lit the cigarette and listened.

  “Was a time, used to be able to see the fort from the I-8. They built a full-size fort for the movie, you see. Used to be able to see it from the highway. ’Til about the sixties. See it on the way to Yuma. Then the dunes, the sand, swallowed her up, buried her. But it’s still out there. That fort’s still out there. And I’m going to find her.”

  “If you could see it from the highway, don’t you know where it is?”

  “That was some time ago. Before you were born. Do you remember anything from that long ago?”

  “Do I remember anything from before I was born?”

  Squatty thought about it for a few seconds. “Exactly. Do you remember when you were five years old? Do you remember it right? I remember it, but I don’t remember it right. I remember it sorta. The dunes, they play tricks. They change, they turn, they’re alive. You can’t draw a map, ’cause it’d just get you loster.”

  “I don’t mean to be a jerk, but why look for it? It’s just an old prop building, right? Just some wood and nails and plaster under the sand. Probably collapsed. You just looking for something to do?”

  “You don’t understand. It’s Beau Geste. It’s Gary Cooper. It’s a classic. It’s important. It’s more than you. More than me. It’s history. We’re people. We die and it’s done, but history is always. History is forever or at least for longer. Nobody knows it’s there, nobody but the old-timers, nobody but the dying, nobody but the dead. If I don’t find it, nobody will. If I don’t look, it’s gone. Forever. If nobody finds it, then it’s lost. I ain’t ever done nothing important, but if I do this, if I find that fucking fort, then I can. We ain’t who we are, we’re what we do.”

  Squatty drained the rest of his beer and then shook the bottle, looking at the liquid at the bottom. Did he really go out to the desert? Or did he just talk about it? It didn’t matter. He was what he did.

  I crushed out my cigarette, finished my beer, and threw a ten on the bar, pointing at Squatty to the bartender. The bartender set another Coors Light in front of the one and only Squatty, the Finder of the Fort and the Keeper of History.

  “I’ll tell Pop you’re still looking.” I opened the door, blinded by the harsh white light of the midday sun.

  It wasn’t quite three, but I had completely exhausted all forms of entertainment that El Centro had to offer, so I headed back to Harris Convalescent. Angie wasn’t at the reception desk to bug, so I parked myself on the couch in the small waiting area.

  It was probably half an hour and two issues of Woman’s Day later when Yolanda walked into the front. Her smile was radiant. “Siéntese?” I asked, motioning toward the chairs. I pointed to myself and then down the hallway. “Yo quiero dice adios a Jack, my padre. Sí?” Yolanda nodded her head and sat down on the chair, her overnight bag in her lap like a schoolgirl holding her lunch pail and waiting for the bus.

  Pop was asleep when I opened the door. I thought about waking him, but he looked peaceful. That’s really all I needed to know. I noticed the pill still on the nightstand when I set down the copy of A Cool Million. Good for Pop. I backed toward the door as quietly as I could.

  When I reached the door, Pop’s faint voice said, “Thanks, Jimmy.”

  I just smiled and said, “See you tomorrow, right? Back to the regular grind.”

  “Sounds good,” Pop said, turning his head to the ceiling and then closing his eyes again.

  I had to pick up some stuff, so it was five by the time we got back to the house. Bobby was in the drive, sitting on the hood of his Ranchero when we pulled up. Yolanda gave me a look, her eyebrows knitted in concern. She gripped her bag tighter, but when she saw me smile, her face and hands unclenched.

  “Mi amigo,” I said to her.

  I got out, grabbing a bag of groceries from the bed of my truck. I picked up the two Hungry-Mans that had slid to the back of the bed and turned to Bobby. “What’s up?” I said, in the form of a greeting.

  “I need a favor,” Bobby said.

  “I’m kind of busy,” I said, glancing at Yolanda.

  “Doing what? Mission accomplished, right?”

  He had me. I wasn’t actually busy. In fact, I had no idea what I was going to do until night when I had to bring Yolanda back across the street. “What do you need?” I asked.

  “Take about an hour. Two, tops. I ordered water on the forty I got down off Holt. The plot by the big tree. I had a guy that was going to dig out the gopher holes. He didn’t. If I irrigate with that system of tunnels, the water is going to go all flibberty-gibberty, fuck up everything. But I already ordered the water. I’m stuck. Snout and Buck Buck, I can’t find. Probably looking for Bigfoot again. I try to do it myself, I’ll kill my back. I don’t do it, I’m throwing money in a hole. It’s a lot of digging, but not for two people. I got a fuck-ton of beer in a cooler and a bottle of to-kill-ya.”

  “Bobby, I’d help you,” I said, “but I’m supposed to leave Yolanda here?”

  “She can come. I got three shovels.” He smiled and then went to his serious face. “Look, man. It’s fucked up. I know. But I’m screwed. Like every farmer down here, I’m playing it close to broke. I work my ass off and still might lose money. It might be good money after bad, but I could use your help to try to get to break even. You don’t know how much it sucks to work your ass off and not get paid. The farmer’s fucking life.”

  I glanced at Yolanda, who smiled at me, still sitting in my front seat with her overnight bag in her lap. I may have been a bad host, but she should be happy that I trusted her.

  It took Bobby and me four hours to dig up all the gopher holes. Fucking things had an underground system that made the Chinese tunnels in Mexicali sound like an ant farm. I officially hated all rodentkind.

  Bobby asked me relentlessly about Yolanda and Pop. I took the fifth, and when I say the fifth, I mean the fifth of tequila that Bobby used to try to loosen my tongue. Luckily, I had no real information to reveal.

  I did, however, make the mistake of mentioning that Angie worked at Harris Convalescent.

  “You going to make the big move?”

  “I have enough bruises all over my body, I need to provoke that kind of violence. It’s great to see her though. Brings back a lot of memories.”

  “I thought the two of you would be together forever. You never told me how you fucked that up.”

  “I never talked to anyone about it. Don’t matter now, I guess. In high school, we never thought ab
out it ending. Hell, we survived senior year, even when she missed her period and for a horrifying four weeks we thought she was pregnant. Scared my shit. We didn’t do it again for three months. I’m talking teenage libido and I was too scared to fuck.

  “After we graduated and every day the end of summer got closer, we started getting further apart. We both knew I was going to college and she was staying at IVC, and I think we both knew that it would be the end. Two years and in a couple weeks it would be over.”

  “Did you try?”

  “Until first Christmas vacation, but we were fucking kids. I finally had my freedom. We never really broke up, we just slowly stopped writing, slowly stopped calling. We both just let it go.”

  “That sucks. Least with a big blow-up you know where you stand. I like to end a relationship with explosions. Sometimes literally.”

  “I always regretted how it ended—didn’t fit how we felt. We were just too young to know what the hell to do with it. I think about her more than I should.”

  Maybe it was the liquor, maybe it was just the need to hear it aloud, but it felt good to tell someone.

  Yolanda had cleaned both the kitchen and dining room by the time I had returned. She had swept, mopped, organized papers, and even found some flowers and a vase for the center of the dining room table. I didn’t even remember seeing flowers anywhere outside. They smelled horrible, but they made the table and the room glow. They made it look even cleaner.

  By the time I took a shower and got dressed, it was time to take Yolanda back to Morales Bar.