I had no intention of doing any more than taking money for a ride-along. When that was done, I was done. I was only buying time anyway. I would still be broke and out of business. At least I’d have a little cash in my pocket. Or, if I got real lucky, I would figure a way to keep Ben’s Desert Moon Delivery Service going and also have some extra cash. Either way, I got to keep my soul.
I pulled away from the diner explaining it that way to myself with the hope that by the end of the week it would seem like it had been a smart decision. If it didn’t work out that way, I promised myself there would be no blaming the devil. When we mortals pray for a miracle and get one, why do we always assume it came from God? Strings. That’s why. We think there are no strings attached to a miracle from God. But God has more strings than the devil. The devil at least tells you up front what the strings are.
My trailer was as packed as I could get it. If I was fast and stayed on schedule I wouldn’t make it back to the transfer station until after seven. There were a lot of deliveries that could have waited until later in the week. My plan was to take as much as I could. The next day, when the television man started his ride-along, he wouldn’t have much to do but enjoy the scenery. It was after five when I parked my truck in the turnout and trudged up the hill to deliver Claire’s butter brickle.
I stood beneath the arch of Desert Home. She appeared on the porch and waved her spoon in the air as I started down the hill. The sun had been behind a layer of dark clouds all day, letting the heat in but not allowing it to escape. Without a breeze to move it around, the heat was scorching dry. If I had thrown a glass of water into the air it would have evaporated before it hit the ground.
I handed Claire her ice cream. “No need to pay me,” I said. “I’ll just put it on your husband’s account, ma’am.”
She didn’t waste a minute and sat down on the porch step. The ice cream had been frozen solid five minutes earlier. Now it was the consistency of a milk shake. Three heaping spoonfuls had disappeared before she slowed down enough to talk.
“I pay my own bills, thank you.” She took another bite. “I paid almost all of his while we were married. Correction. Even before we were married.” The sweet ice cream had little effect on the bitterness when she spoke.
I apologized. “None of my business.”
“This time I am going to pay you. No more charity. How much?”
“Ten dollars.”
She pulled two twenty-dollar bills from the pocket of the same denim dress she had worn on Friday. “Here’s twenty for this one and the first one. And another twenty in advance for the two you’re going to deliver this week.”
I handed one of the twenties back to her. “I can’t make any more deliveries to you this week.”
She took the twenty back and nibbled her lower lip. “Not worth it? Or tired of me?”
I debated with myself whether to tell her about the television producer and decided not to say anything. “Busy week,” was all I said. “Maybe next week.”
“I’ll be dead from sugar withdrawal by then.” She held the cold half-gallon container against her forehead. “Damn this heat today.”
I hunkered down on my heels. We were a few feet apart and eye to eye. “I don’t know if your name is really Claire, but let’s assume it is. Claire,” I said, “I don’t know how long you’ve been here. I don’t know how you’ve managed out here as long as you have. You have no running water. No electricity. As far as I know ice cream is what you’ve been living on. Any day now I figure you’ll decide to move on, either back to your husband or to someplace with room service and air-conditioning.”
She peeked out from behind the ice cream. “Is that what you figure?”
I stood up. “If you don’t move on somewhere else soon, you’ll die out here. Is that what you want? If it is, if he’s hurt you that bad, you’ve come to the right place. Things aren’t always as bad as they seem.”
“Then again,” she said, “sometimes they’re worse.” She placed the ice cream on the porch, got up, and reached inside the door. The porch light came on and off. “You’re right about running water, though. But the reservoir is full. For a while longer anyway.” She pointed to the south, to what I had thought had been a mirage. “Take a walk with me, Ben.” She picked up her ice cream and started walking toward the mirage. I followed her, shaking my head, still baffled by the display of electricity.
It was a short, hot walk. Within a few minutes we had crested a small rise and looked out over a beautiful expanse of shimmering blue water, two or three acres at least.
“It’s a self-cleaning reservoir—fed by those hills over there.” She pointed to a few bare spikes of earth a mile or so away. “When it rains the water fills the reservoir. The bottom is built at an angle so the dirt and sand wash out over there into a settling pond, and what’s left is stored in an underground cistern.”
I was stunned, both by the reservoir’s existence and her knowledge of its design. “How do you know all that?” I asked.
“I just do.”
We began the walk back to the house. “And the electricity?” I asked.
“It’s run off an old-style solar array. There’s a backup gas generator behind the house. It has a full tank. I try not to use it very much.”
The ice cream was just a puddle by the time we got back to the house. She poured it out onto the dirt next to the porch. “As you can see, I have no intention of dying out here. I can’t explain it, but I’m at home here. Sometimes I feel happier here than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“Food?” I asked.
“Enough to last for a while. Except for ice cream. There’s a refrigerator with a small freezer. I can keep things cool but not frozen.”
“So you’re going to be around for a while?”
“I could be. I don’t know. When I leave, it will be my choice.”
What she said about choice reminded me of one more obstacle she hadn’t mentioned. “This place might be abandoned,” I said, “but someone owns it. He—”
“Or she,” Claire interrupted.
“Or she,” I added, “could show up anytime. What then?”
“You think too much, Ben.”
That was true. I usually waited until there was very little I could do, and then I gave the matter a lot of thought. I needed to think ahead, which was what I was trying to do for Claire.
“Suit yourself,” I said. “If the owner shows up you won’t be the one making the choice about leaving.”
She still didn’t appear concerned. “Well, that will be my problem, won’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
We were both sweating from the heat and the walk. Perspiration had settled into the small wrinkles around her eyes. A dark object fluttered above us and squeaked before veering off. It was dead quiet. You could almost hear the sweat seeping through the pores of our skin as we stood beneath the oppressive sky. It was dusk and the surrounding hills had begun to fade into brown silhouettes. I wanted to kiss her, and I could feel myself beginning to lean helplessly toward her. The dark object returned and darted between us.
She jumped backward and swatted at the air. “What was that? A bird?”
“A bat.”
She shivered. “Oh God!”
My urge to kiss her had been broken. I was suddenly relieved to be reminded of why I was there and why I was leaving. I began walking away. “Remember,” I said. “You’re happy here.”
There was something in her that liked to wait until I was a safe distance away, as if she found joy in calling my name and seeing me turn toward her.
“Ben,” she shouted. “I’ll pay you a special delivery charge if you can bring me some ice cream on Saturday.”
I shouted back that I would try. No promises.
“Ben,” she called out again. “Don’t make me go to your competitors.”
I didn’t respond to that. She shouted my name again.
When Claire was certain I was looking at her, she raised her arms
wide as if to embrace the approaching evening. She was a small and indistinct figure, equal parts body and shadow, standing at the edge of the porch.
“Children of the night,” she shouted in a terrible imitation of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula. Her voice echoed across the sandy streets. “Children of the night, I love you little fuckers!”
The diner was dark when I drove by. There was no dancing going on, and I had begun to doubt there ever had been.
Josh Arrons was waiting for me when I arrived the next morning. I didn’t have any idea what I thought a television producer would look like, but certainly over thirty, which he couldn’t have been. His blond hair was combed straight back in a way that highlighted his diamond stud earrings and dark sunglasses. A wispy little goatee dangled from his chin. He was impossibly slender but appeared fit. My first impulse was to ask him where Scooby-Doo was these days, except he was dressed like he’d been Dumpster diving behind the local Eddie Bauer outlet store.
We took care of the release and the agreement. He counted out the $750 in fifties and I signed a receipt. Bob the Station Supervisor hovered over his shoulder, grinning.
“Climb in,” I said. “We’ll be on our way.”
Bob, for some unknown reason, repeated exactly what I had just said.
“Are you going, too, Bob?” I asked. “If you are, the price just tripled.”
He grinned at me. “No,” he said, as if for a moment he had been considering it. “Just glad we all worked through the details.” He slapped Josh on the back. “It was touch-and-go there, right, Josh?”
“Right, Bob,” Josh answered. He glanced at Bob’s hand on his shoulder. “But the touching part is over. This man has work to do.”
Suddenly I was in danger of liking Josh.
Josh didn’t say a word and sat in the cab while I fueled. I got the cash discount on top of the one I got with my CDL card. It wasn’t until we had turned off 191 onto 117 that he reached into his pocket and took out his cell phone. “Mind if I take some notes?” he asked.
I answered that I didn’t mind. He spoke into his cell phone for about five minutes. The date and time we left, the address of the transfer station, taking on diesel, even our average speed and the approximate time we turned onto 117. He ended with, “Driver, Ben Jones, owner and operator of Ben’s Desert Moon Delivery Service, Price, Utah.”
I admired his thoroughness.
As we passed the diner, he said, “That’s an interesting place. Ever stop there?”
“When I have to,” I said.
“It looks familiar.”
I laughed. I figured there was no harm in telling him about the movie years. But that was all I told him, nothing about Walt, Bernice, or the motorcycles. He listened and, I noticed, so did his cell phone, which he had pointed discreetly in my direction.
“Any chance you might introduce me to the owner?”
“Nope,” I said. “Even if I tried, he might not open his door. No story there. Just a cranky old man.”
Josh wanted to know how old Walt was. I knew exactly how old Walt was but I took my time answering. “Somewhere between eighty and a hundred.”
“Bet he has some stories to tell.”
“Maybe,” I said, “except no one will ever hear them. I expect his memory isn’t too sharp. I wouldn’t be surprised if he kicked off pretty soon.”
Josh stuck to the letter of our deal. He didn’t ask many questions and I answered even fewer.
The long miles ticked off through the desert while he made notes into his cell phone about things I had long since stopped noticing, like how the ground seems to reach outward in evenly spaced swells from the mesa to the Wasatch Range. He picked up on the fact that at a certain point the milepost markers disappeared and there were no telephone wires or utility poles along the shoulder. He was alert every minute of every mile. The few times we stopped to make a delivery, he not only stayed inside the cab, he pushed himself back in the seat so it would have been hard for anyone on the ground to see him.
Toward the end of our morning Josh stared out his window for a long time. From time to time he would shake his head. I could tell something was gnawing at him.
“What do you see out there?” I asked.
“It’s what I don’t see.”
“Go ahead,” I said. “Ask.”
“No road signs. No utility poles. And—”
I finished for him. “No mailboxes.”
Josh nodded. “Isn’t there mail service out here?”
He was an observant little bastard. “Yes,” I answered, “there is. All the way from Rockmuse to the junction with U.S. 191. But no one uses it. Or wants it.”
“No one?”
“A few, close to Rockmuse. None that I can think of this far out.”
“Why is that?”
There wasn’t any harm in explaining, though what I could provide was far from an explanation.
People on 117 needed me. And I needed them. That was simple enough. What wasn’t simple was exactly why they felt they needed me when a lot of what I delivered, at a fair but significant expense, could be obtained free or at a much lower cost through the U.S. Postal Service.
I shrugged. “No one knows why.”
“There has to be a reason,” Josh said.
“You would think so,” I said. “It must make a kind of sense to them, if not to anyone else. It’s like they’re all related, which they aren’t. They do share a stubborn nature and a perverse distrust of any and all government institutions.”
“You mean they’re anti-government?”
I laughed. “Hell, no. They don’t even talk to one another. They sure as hell don’t agree on anything except a desire to be left alone. They’re anti-everything.”
“There’s got to be more to it,” Josh said.
“If there is more I don’t know what it is,” I said. “It’s best just to say they prefer it that way and try to leave it at that. Every damn one of them steadfastly refuses to put up a mailbox of any size or description. Without a mailbox the U.S. Postal Service will not, cannot by law, deliver mail.”
Josh was convinced I was playing with him. “Come on, Mr. Jones,” he said. “I’m not falling for it.”
“Then don’t,” I said. “Of course, there is general delivery.”
“I thought so.”
“Think again,” I said.
Josh listened, periodically shaking his head. I might have done the same thing if I hadn’t long ago accepted things as they were.
General delivery mail was held by name at the small post office in Rockmuse. Predictably, if irrationally, such mail was only infrequently claimed. The infrequency had, in some cases, stretched to decades, even when the postmaster knew the recipient was alive because he or she walked or drove by the post office, sometimes several times a year.
Though I didn’t tell Josh, this preference, or game, if that’s what it was, included Walt Butterfield. The Well-Known Desert Diner was forced to have an address for the business license, which Walt faithfully and inexplicably renewed annually and displayed on the wall of the diner. No mailbox or mail slot in the door. The diner had a Rockmuse address despite the fact that it was closer to Price than to Rockmuse.
“Maybe,” I continued, “in some dark, desert past, there was a good reason for such nonsense. No one knows or remembers what that reason is anymore. Like a lot of things in the world that defy explanation, if they go on long enough, you just give up and accept it. Out here we acknowledge such a mystery by referring to it as a ‘tradition.’ ” I winked at Josh. “The desert is lousy with traditions.” I added, “And here’s a bit of free advice: don’t ever screw with traditions. Especially out here.”
Josh didn’t ask any more questions about mail service. He did appear to go on thinking about it. Every few minutes for the next hour he would stare out his window, slowly shake his head, and smile. For my part, I did what I could to make his day as boring as possible. Eventually I realized that I didn’t have to work so hard at
it. To most people my days were boring. Sometimes they bored me.
—
At three thirty we were already on our way back to Price.
“You never asked me how I got my start,” I said.
“Okay,” he said, looking out the window. He made no move to get out his cell phone to record my story. “How did you get your start?”
“Showing is better than telling. I’ll do both,” I answered. “In a few miles we’ll pull over and I’ll give you the grand tour. You should be ready to stretch your legs.”
“I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I lost the feeling in them about ten this morning.”
I eased the truck and trailer along the narrow shoulder, careful not to grab too much ditch in the process. There was barely enough room to park safely. Josh waited for my nod and hopped out of the cab. The wind blew some sagebrush to his feet, where it attached itself to the laces of his fancy new hiking boots. He stood there as if a wild but loving animal were harassing him.
“This is where you got your start as a desert trucker?”
I asked him to follow me. Every few steps he paused and tried to shake the sagebrush loose. “Right there.” I pointed to a cross sticking up out of a pile of rocks.
“Someone died here?” he asked.
“Two men died here.” For the sake of accuracy, I added, “They died over there.” I pointed ahead of us to the northeast. “About a half mile away, on an access road that doesn’t access a damn thing except a steep ditch and a hundred miles of nothing.”
I explained that Rockmuse had once been a viable little town until the coal mine shut down. “Fresh out of high school, I drove back and forth from Price to Rockmuse for Utah Express Provisioners. I did that for about five years. Every day, five days a week. I hauled everything from a baby mule to a wedding cake. When the mine closed, the trucking company pulled out and let me go. People on 117 would phone me or flag me down and ask me to deliver this or that. I used my little Toyota pickup and pulled a small trailer—mostly on weekends for about six months.”
The Never-Open Desert Diner Page 8
