The Never-Open Desert Diner

by James Anderson

  “The men who died were truck drivers?” Josh asked.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “One drove for UPS and the other for FedEx. They got lost in a snowstorm the December after the mine closed. When they couldn’t find anything else they managed to find each other. They froze to death in each other’s arms in the UPS van. It took search and rescue over a month to find them.”

  “That seems like a long time.”

  “Think so?” I asked. “Look at your phone. Got a signal?”

  Josh checked and shook his head.

  “Spotty reception at best. GPS and homing beacons aren’t much better. Same with radios. Even satellite phones. This desert is like a Bermuda Triangle of sand and rock. I heard once it had something to do with the mesa and a weird magnetic iron content. Someone else told me it was sunspots. Personally, I think aliens have a secret base out here somewhere, and they jam everything.”

  Josh nodded, caught himself, and smiled sideways at me. “Makes sense to me.”

  “Makes as much sense as anything else in this world,” I said. “All I know is I’ve gotten along okay with nothing more than common sense and a lucky star. Almost twenty years now.

  “Those two Mormon boys couldn’t be thawed so they could be separated. It was minus ten degrees the afternoon search and rescue located them. It was night by the time the Guard helicopter came. They had to be airlifted in one piece suspended from a cargo net like an ice-blue statue of reconciling lovers. A lot of folks in Price still remember that night, seeing the copter coming in low over town with its grisly cargo swinging in front of a full moon.”

  Josh cringed. “God, that’s terrible.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “Except for one thing,” I said. “There wasn’t any moon that night. You can’t argue when tragedy collides with a bored population’s power of imagination. Around Price it’s like JFK’s assassination or 9/11. People can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they saw that copter. One more thing.”

  Josh glanced at me. “What?”

  “The copter never flew over Price at all. It landed at the small airfield outside of town. The bodies were thawed in a hangar and taken separately in ambulances to the hospital morgue—two days later.”

  I started to laugh. Josh joined in. “Crazy. Is that behind the logo on your truck?”

  The sides of my trailer had a drawing of a full moon with a helicopter dangling a cargo net. “About a week later both FedEx and UPS came and offered me an annual contract to deliver for them. I get a flat monthly fee. Not much. A little cushion. The 117 route wasn’t profitable for them by a long shot. With the driver deaths, no one was in a hurry to take it on. My logo is just my way of keeping my job. I don’t want UPS and FedEx, or anyone else, to forget. The area out here had a reputation for strange occurrences long before that.”

  “Like?” Josh asked.

  “An entire Boy Scout troop vanished for a week. The boys all eventually showed up in good condition, though with no memory of what happened. The adult leaders were never found. Various tourists and campers have been reported missing and never found. Trucks and their drivers. A deputy sheriff disappeared. All that was found of him was the red and blue bubble light off his cruiser. Of course there are the UFO sightings. Those usually come from one person.”

  Josh was catching on. “Let me guess. You?”

  “There was another reason why UPS and FedEx offered me contracts.”

  Josh raised his eyebrows. “Because you know the area and the people?”

  “Because,” I said, “I have no family and no one gives a shit what happens to me, out here or anywhere else. I’m not a Mormon, either, which is the same as having family in Utah. If I disappeared, the search would last about a minute. No helicopter would be sent for my body. Guaranteed.”

  Josh didn’t have anything more to say. Neither did I. We stood in front of the roadside marker in silence for a few moments.

  “Nice of you to remember them with this little monument,” he said.

  “Mine was nicer,” I said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t meet with the approval of one of the widows. I saw a woman out here one day about six months after they were found. It was spring, like it is now, some green—desert flowers getting a foothold before summer. I figured she might be one of the widows. I stopped to pay my respects. I assumed she might be grateful and thank me for the roadside shrine I had built to the memory of the drivers. Took me hours one weekend. Found a beautiful cross at a secondhand store in Price. Not a cross, exactly, but I liked it.”

  Josh walked over to the cross and put his fingers to the wood. “This is a nice cross,” he said.

  “That’s not the one I put up. Instead of thanking me, she read me the riot act for the better part of a half hour. Turned out I had chosen something called a Star of David. It was a pretty thing, but it wasn’t a cross. She gave me a lecture I didn’t want or need about how her husband was Mormon, and the differences between crosses and stars.”

  “Wow,” Josh said. “She did that?”

  “She did. Then she kicked over my star and broke the hell out of the mortar-and-rock base I’d made. You know much about Mormons?” I asked.

  “Not much,” he said. “I know more about Jews.” He patted the cross affectionately. “I should probably know more than I do.”

  “You’re Jewish?” I asked. When he nodded, I volunteered that my mother was Jewish. “At least that’s what they tell me.”

  This was a subject that held some interest for him. “Technically,” he said, “since your mother was Jewish, that makes you Jewish. I don’t think there are many Jewish truckers.”

  “Why not?”

  He seemed either unwilling or unable to answer my question.

  “You know,” I said, warming to my point, “Mormons don’t get married till death. A lot of people don’t know that.”

  He admitted he didn’t.

  “They get married for eternity. Can you imagine that? Eternity. Whenever I pass this cross, I think of that poor Mormon bastard. Not so much how he died here, but his widow. What a bitch she was about that marker I put up. I think he must be in Mormon heaven trying his best to enjoy himself before she shows up and ruins eternity.”

  Josh laughed. “According to my mother and father, some marriages just seem like an eternity.”

  “Difficult marriage?”

  “To hear them tell it, pure hell.” Josh laughed. “Not mine, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  We were quiet on the short hike back to the truck. Inside the cab Josh turned to me. “Eternity? Damn. And I thought Jews were masochistic.” He hadn’t taken any photographs of the monument. I liked him for that, assuming it was out of respect. Then he asked, “You know what masochistic means?”

  I told him I probably might if I’d taken the sixth grade again like they’d suggested.

  “Sorry,” he said. His apology only made me angrier.

  He shut up the rest of the way back to the transfer station. It occurred to me that he might have been so moved by the shrine, he’d simply forgotten to take a photo. The easy truth was probably the case: he just hadn’t been all that interested. Either way, it didn’t matter to me. We said our good-byes with only a wave.

  Bob was waiting for him. I overheard the offer of a steak dinner and a “meet the missus” invitation. Josh looked tired after his day of checking out shades of brown and squinting into the road glare. My guess was that he’d be facedown in his baked potato within a couple of hours.

  I put my hand in my jeans pocket and caressed the lion’s share of the fifties. Tomorrow’s plan included more of the same, with whatever dash of excitement might come with a tractor-trailer wash. Josh might make it another day or two before he ran screaming back to Los Angeles, taking his opportunity and his money with him.

  I had a nice dinner out, alone, at a large cheap restaurant filled with rowdy children and parents staring blankly at one another. There was no one in the restau
rant I knew. The place setting across from me dared me to engage in conversation. I resisted. I pulled the rumpled bills from my pocket and counted and recounted the money as if it might eventually come to an amount that could change my future.

  The place cleared out and the waitstaff joked near the kitchen door while I picked at my dinner. A small Hispanic man ran a noisy vacuum cleaner over and over the dirty carpet that refused to give up its stains.

  Feeling small, I left a big tip.

  Josh climbed into the cab the next morning looking dead tired. He held a flimsy cardboard tray with two big foam cups of coffee. “What’s going on today?”

  I took the coffee. It was a small gesture, maybe even a trivial one. It meant more to me than perhaps it should have. “Nothing’s going on,” I said. “Not until I get my money.”

  He passed me an envelope that I didn’t inspect and threw on the dash. “To answer your question,” I said, “not much.” The truck lurched slowly out of the yard into the predawn darkness. “Sometimes the fun never starts.”

  Josh closed his eyes. “Do you always have to be such an asshole?”

  “I’m not being an asshole. I’m being colorful.”

  From behind his closed eyelids, Josh said, “Yeah? Well, you’re a colorful asshole.”

  “How’d your dinner with Bob and Missus Bob go last night?”

  He moaned and blindly guided the coffee to his lips. After a sip, he swallowed hard. “Excruciating. Do you know how much genuine hardwood floors cost? I do. I will never forget. He told me three times. He told me everything three times while his wife just smiled. She has to be on some serious drugs.”

  “I didn’t know she was ill.”

  “Anti-Bob drugs. Or should be. When I get home the first thing I’m going to do is fall on my knees and kiss my wife’s feet. Then I’m going to kiss our little boy’s feet. I hate this fucking job.”

  “I imagine you have to travel a lot.”

  Neither one of us said anything for a minute or two. The coffee was listing dangerously to one side in his hand. He looked as if he might have fallen asleep. I lifted the cup from his hand and put it into the holder.

  Sleepily, he continued. “I almost never have to travel. I stay in my shop and people come to me. I don’t know how I got talked into this. Never again.”

  “You’re quitting show business?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Whatever you call it. Television. The entertainment industry.”

  Josh’s head jerked forward. He opened his eyes. “What?” He had the scared, disoriented expression of someone who has awakened suddenly in a public place. “Did I fall asleep?”

  I didn’t know if he had or not. “You said something about staying in your shop. I guess that’s what you call your office? Oh, and you were kissing your wife’s feet,” I said. “You were slowly working your way up her dress while a choir of angels sang.”

  He leaned back again and closed his eyes. “Fuck you, Ben.”

  “Don’t piss me off,” I warned him. “Or I’ll throw your ass out in the desert.”

  A minute or two passed before he answered. “Any time.” His breathing became regular and his head dropped to one side.

  Mr. Josh Arrons, television producer, slept through fueling and the truck wash and went on sleeping through my first delivery. The truck was gaining speed on a long, straight piece of 117 when he awoke and stretched. “I think this will be my last day,” he said.

  “Three-day minimum,” I reminded him.

  “Right now I’d give you my kid and his college fund to never get into this truck again.”

  “I’d have to pass on the kid,” I said. “You have any photos?”

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and held it out in front of me. “Sometimes a man just gets lucky. Married eight years next month.”

  The screen held a photo of a petite brunette in jeans and a powder-blue sweater. She was holding a small child, who had his fingers in her hair, and the two of them were laughing. They shared the same blue eyes that matched their mother’s sweater. Behind them an ocean sparkled. Josh took the phone away.

  John and his cross appeared in the distance. We were closing on them fast. The bright eastern sun threw a disfigured shadow from the cross back toward us. Josh leaned slightly forward into the windshield, uncertain what he saw, or if he was seeing anything at all. We sped past John and his mobile cross. Josh’s head whipped around. “What the hell was that?”

  “What?”

  Josh’s eyes were fixed on his side mirror. “That!”

  “What?” I said. We dropped into a slight hollow and began rising onto another straightaway. I made a big deal of looking into my side mirror. “I don’t see anything. What did you see?”

  “Okay,” Josh said. “If that’s the way you want to play it. But when a Jew starts seeing Jesus carrying his cross through the desert, I’m telling you the apocalypse can’t be far off.”

  A little ways down the road, I gave in. “It wasn’t Jesus,” I said.

  Josh said he was relieved to hear it. “I didn’t think so. For one thing, Jesus is shorter and his hair is longer. That’s the way it is with all celebrities. They just don’t look the same when you meet them on the street.” Josh grinned at me. “So, who was the stunt double for Jesus?”

  I had to give that one some thought. In a way, my telling him it wasn’t Jesus was enough. It was enough for me. As far as I knew, no one knew John’s last name, or his story. He had a past, as we all did, but it didn’t matter much. If it did matter, sooner or later such curiosity would end badly. What could I say about John and his cross and his seasonal wandering up and down 117?

  Finally, I said all I could. “He’s just a religious nut.”

  “That cross is huge!”

  “It’s heavy, too,” I offered. “Solid oak.”

  Josh thought for a moment. “What makes a man do something like that?”

  It was another question that couldn’t be answered. I’d heard rumors, and the little bits and pieces John had volunteered during our imaginary roadside smokes. Even if I knew the details, I doubted they could sufficiently answer the question. That was the thing about curiosity, especially about people: the real questions never had answers that meant anything for very long. Pretty soon you had a batch of new questions.

  “Leave him alone,” I said. “Even if you come back here. If you’re a decent man, it’s the decent thing to do.”

  Josh nursed his cold coffee the rest of the morning without saying much. He wasn’t as alert as he had been the first day. His cell phone didn’t appear once. With my permission, he got out of the cab at the Rockmuse Shell.

  We sat at a picnic table beneath a lone cottonwood and lunched on barbecued rattlesnake subs. It was all for the tourists, the few who wandered down 117. It was really chicken, which explained why so many people said, “It tastes like chicken.” Josh looked a little squeamish. It made him feel like an insider when I told him the truth. We washed the sandwiches down with venom punch, which was really Mountain Dew and Hawaiian Punch. The taste was appropriately terrible and as such seemed genuine enough.

  Again it was only midafternoon when I finished my last delivery. Josh had been napping on and off since lunch. When he was awake he stared out at the passing desert, probably not thinking about the desert at all but the end of the day and returning to his son and wife.

  The wind had kicked up. Tumbleweeds bounced across the road, and the sun baked the tar into sticky black ribbons. A particularly hard gust shook the trailer. I swerved over the centerline. It woke Josh up.

  “Are we there yet?”

  “This is the desert,” I said. “There is no there here.”

  Once again, the cross loomed ahead on the highway. It wasn’t moving. Something didn’t look right.

  Josh straightened up in his seat as I slowed. “What’s going on?”

  I didn’t answer him. The cross was propped up at an odd angle far off the shoulder. A blue
plastic tarp had been pulled over part of it to form a rough tent. The tarp’s ragged corners whipped back and forth in the wind. Protruding from beneath the tent were two pairs of legs. In quick order I had my rig off the road and was setting the brake even as I jumped from the cab. If there had been another vehicle on the road I would have been struck and killed in my haste to get to the cross. I couldn’t take my eyes off the legs.

  My knees hit the hard dirt of the shoulder. I yanked the tarp back, afraid of what I might see. The feet of one set of legs were bare and bleeding, the socks nothing more than rags around the ankles. They were the feet of Duncan Lacey, though I recognized him by the calico hair and the red suspenders. Duncan’s face was burned by wind and sun into blistering sores. John was cradling Duncan’s head against his shoulder, trying to get him to drink from an old army canteen.

  John held up his free left hand to keep me from speaking. Duncan opened his swollen eyelids. He acknowledged me with a smile, though considering the condition his face was in, particularly his lips, it would have been difficult to identify it as a smile. In a hoarse, guttural croak he began to sing “Happy Birthday.” John shook his head but didn’t try to stop him. When Duncan got to the part where he should have said my name, he paused and stumbled again into “Happy Birthday.” John coaxed him into taking a couple of sips of water and Duncan closed his eyes.

  “What the hell happened?” I whispered.

  John scooted out from around Duncan and gently positioned his shoulders against the cross before he motioned for me to back out from beneath the tarp.

  “It’s Duncan Lacey,” he said. “Or what’s left of him. He came wandering out of the desert from the north. I couldn’t believe my eyes. God was looking after him, all right. Another few hours and he would have died.”

  “I know who he is. How’d he get way out here? We have to be thirty miles from their place. How do you know who he is?”

  John rubbed his big arms. “Last winter he and Fergus came to church a few times. They drove that old Jeep of theirs through the snow and icy wind.”