by David Hirst
This was all a bit disconcerting, and was to get more so. I began to feel dizzy as we made our way back to the car. When we reached it, my leg was so swollen that my jeans were stuck above the knee, under which extended an increasingly bloated, brilliant calf. It was so bad I allowed Boo to drive. She found a bar in this godforsaken stretch of untempered ugliness, and I staggered into it, dragging my horrible leg. The assembly was sympathetic, and delighted that something had happened to enliven their day. They explained that I was a victim of Jumping Cholla, going so far as to point out that the bar itself was called ‘THE JUMPING CHOLLA’, something we had not detected in our haste. One chap was kind enough to offer me a T-shirt advertising the bar and its famous barb, but little useful advice was forthcoming.
‘Kerosene is best. Rub some kerosene on it,’ suggested the barman.
It was one of those rare days when we had ventured out sans kero, so I inquired whether there was any on hand. There wasn’t. ‘Beer might help,’ a customer suggested in a forlorn tone.
I took him at his word, and drank two. Even in this dark place, it was evident that my calf was continuing to grow and to increasingly resemble an album cover from the late sixties. We were due to return to LA that day, so we departed henceforth. By the evening the fever had passed, though the swelling remained for a few embarrassing days while I waited to remove the wranglers.
I was luckier than many others.
The Jumping Cholla has, since the horse, camel, and the llama fled, developed an ability to detect the movement of humans and other animals, and to spring its barbs upon the unfortunate passer-by. This is how the ghastly things procreate. In the furious heat of mid- and late summer, the white spikes, which grow to half an inch, become so dry that clumps become electrified with tension. The clumps can detect the passing of a creature from its reverberations in the dirt, and, like a science-fiction monster, detect the exact position of the passer-by. With unnerving accuracy, the plant slings a portion at him.
Men have been known to ride (on horses and, more recently, motorcycles) into cholla country, and not come back, nor go on. A skittish horse sees a rattler, throws the rider, who lands in a cholla bush and stays there until he forms a skeleton. Even the buzzards will leave the flesh from fear of the cholla. Down the road a few miles from Boulder House in Yucca Valley is a stand of cholla so thick and tall that no contractor would agree to remove it, even though the cleared land would have had some value.
There are trails through the Cholla Park that were once popular with motorcycle riders. Then, a few years back, a biker, travelling at a good pace, lost it (the bike) on a bump, while racing though the forest of silent killers. The unfortunate man went sailing some six or seven metres into the middle of a cholla thicket. Some of the cactus stands ten feet tall, and the poor chap landed in the gentle caresses of a giant Jumping Cholla cactus.
In this case, the cholla had not jumped, and the plant could be excused for assuming it had been jumped at. The cholla took the assault poorly, and as the man struggled to get free, clutched him more tightly. Help, attracted by the unfortunate man’s screams, arrived, but it was no help at all. No one could penetrate the thicket to get to the man, who stopped screaming after five or so hours. That was when the helicopter failed to rescue him. Bulldozers were brought to the scene, and some argue they are what killed the hapless biker by pushing the cactus deeper into his person. If so, they did the man a favour. He might otherwise have remained crucified on the cactus and alive for days.
The poor chap died after about seven hours. The cholla has the embrace of someone only embraced every few centuries. It doesn’t like to let go. It is the most thoroughly obnoxious of all the plants and animals on earth, and I hope one day to rid the Boulder House property of the giants that grow by the gates.
More likely, I will get Tony to move one that has grown too heavy to support itself, and has collapsed down where the dark water line has broken, causing them to grown so thick and tall they fall over. We might move it to a gap in the fence that introduces one to Boulder House, and so plug it. Might. I also might continue to ignore the monsters. The dogs are learning to do just that. The one that fell continues to grow from its new angle, and thrusts its deadly spikes towards the sun, as dangerous as ever.
There are, of course, uses for even this most despicable example of God’s handiwork. They are said to have healing qualities. They certainly have the opposite. Our friend and builder, Crinkly Jim, if he loses a cat or a dog, or, for that matter, a friend, buries his acquaintance with cholla dispersed through the dirt. No animal, not even a goat, will battle through cholla to chew on the dead. Hunted Apache braves were known to tie a leather strip between two good-sized cholla plants so the pursuer, usually a white man on a horse, would drag the fearsome creations down upon him, or him and his horse, or both. Either way, the pursuit would cease.
13
The week after we moved the agave, I repaired to bed with a savage chest infection playing havoc with my asthma, or vice versa. The infection was, I reckoned, the result of tearing out insulation black with mildew where water had travelled through the roof and into the room next to the swimming pool, which we were attempting to convert into a guesthouse.
I had been warned about the quality of health care in the surrounds, and advised, when possible, to seek self-medication. This is a common approach to matters concerning wellbeing and I had, in the early stages of the illness, driven to a local feedlot and purchased some antibiotics, claiming Sailor, our new springer spaniel, had my infection. I must have looked ill, and the man in the feedlot summed up the situation briskly. If such a problem occurred with ‘his dog’, he confided, he would recommend Amoxicillin. The good man proceeded to count out one hundred 250-milligram tablets, emphasising that if it were ‘his dog’, he would provide two capsules in the morning and two at night.
I was somewhat concerned when reading the antibiotic instructions to discover that the cure at hand was for the treatment of infections to the gills of fish. I figured that as my infection was about where my gills would be — had my forebears not struggled from the primaeval ooze and cast their gills aside in favour of lungs — this stuff might do the trick. And I was happy in the knowledge that I had saved $70 on a trip to the doctor and a good $50 at the druggist (the one hundred antibiotics costing a mere $29). So I let the battle for control of my breathing apparatus take its course, which finally resulted in victory for the dog or the fish.
The upside of being sick nigh to death and sleeping fitfully, if at all, was being awake when the grey of dawn began pushing the blackness of night out to the Pacific.
The first streams of sunlight hit the very top of the mountains thirty kilometres to the west. The gold light quickly drives the dark into the valley, and the band of light, high and wide, turns the world into a great golden band above the absolute blackness that awaits the sun’s cheer. For a few moments, when the snow is fresh and heavy up high, the early morning light touches the pure white and mingles it with golden rays, creating a jewelled effect that lasts ten minutes.
When the sun finds enough height to peer down on the pines, and the mountains turn a bluish green, the white of the snow recedes, and the valley begins to feel the rays and starts to shine. During the day the sun falls evenly, and the definition of the ranges is washed out until it is well into its descent. Then the ranges and peaks are outlined from behind and seem to stretch forever, range after range, higher and higher, sharp even in the light haze that appears most evenings. It reminds me of an old record cover, the album being, I think, Pipers at the Gates of Dawn, though in this case it should be dusk — which doesn’t sound nearly as good.
The granite dominates the day. When the sun is high, and even when the moon is at its fullest, the pink stone with its many mossy mottles is master of its world, and dominates the perspective. That and the vegetation which, except where the dirt roads form their lines, seems to cover the eart
h like a green fur.
Closer up, and especially in the higher land by Boulder House, the appearance of uniformity gives way to a never-ending display of difference.
The trees, except for the yucca, which is a member of the lily family, are sparse. Pinyon pine, scrub oak, mesquite, and the silvery-green mountain mahogany grow where there is water close to the earth’s surface. Few grow high. We have oak and pine that stand above twenty metres, but only because cliffs provide them with run-off and protection from the harsher winds and the hottest sun. The ancient, twisted, and gnarly junipers with their grey berries — eat one a day for good health, say the locals — are reputed to be older than Christ. At least older than Christ would be if he was still with us.
The washes are poor relatives of the High Desert. Few stop to admire them, and as they will carry the flooding rains, they are also feared. Dreary, full of sand, and treacherous.
But during the last hour of the sun, the washes tear off their homely apparel and become as pretty as the girl next door. When the sun stops staring down on the white sand and bends its devotion elsewhere, the washes come alive with life and colour.
Because the topography is so diverse, the range of shades and colours is constantly changing with the movement of the sun, which, for at least three hundred days a year, shines above. Mostly the only cloud cover comes from the vapours of the F18s, F16s, and F14 Hornets from the nearby (by desert standards) US marine and air force bases. The yuccas, the creosote, and the gamma grass are far enough below us to take the appearance of an immense meadow, depending on the direction of the sun. In the afternoons, the mountain ranges appear misty in the sun’s refracted light, while in the mornings they are distinct and bright. Yet the light never totally washes out, no matter how hot and direct the sun, because the range of colours — black and brown on the buttes, green below, white in the washes, and pink where the granite imposes itself — provides such stark differences.
14
Not long after my recovery, I began to see — if that’s the word — a gentleman, Ed Gibson, who lives about a mile from Boulder House as the crow flies, and not much more by road and rut. Soon, when I entered the club or the bowling alley, I would head straight for Ed if he was in evidence at the bar.
In a world where cowboys, hippies, and ’necks fuse, Ed is king of the kids. Almost the father to a valley desperately in need of fathers. There is absolutely nothing phoney about the man. His cowboy hat sits upon grey locks that hang almost to his waist, as though it was placed there at birth. His white walrus moustache is as full as any man’s, in a world where such facial accompaniments border on the compulsory. Sitting next to him, one could be sitting next to Buffalo Bill. Or John Wesley Hardin. He looks like a gentleman rancher who started as a cowboy and made his way to the top. Which, in a modern sense, he did. He looks good in suspenders, but being a cautious man wears a belt as well. At nearly seventy, he is good-looking, and his style attracts the glances of women thirty years his younger. He probably gets more stares from tourists than all the other wild-looking types, and is so much like the person you expect to see in the Wild West that you have to look again.
Ed worked for many a long year in the energy business before our utilities became criminal conspiracies. He had travelled America as a linesman, and had come, before his retirement, to understand how the giant power plants work — an achievement apparently yet to be matched by Governor Davis, or, to my reading, the Los Angeles Times. Or, for that matter, me. In the course of his work he had strained the muscles in his right hand to the point where two of his fingers were permanently frozen, as it were, to the palm of his hand. Frozen they may be, but at least they are still attached to his hand, unlike so many residents of the High Desert. Many handshakes involve grasping one finger, or perhaps two, and the remaining stumps.
The cause of my bonding with Ed was initially the cause of International Labor. His union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, had been good to Ed, and he retired at a level of comfort few working men enjoy. But Ed was as comfortable with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers as he was with the International Brotherhood of Love, the organisation established in the mid-sixties to promote, amongst other things, the evangelical movement to distribute LSD. His travels had taken him to many of the right places at the right times, and he had been fortunate enough to happen to be working up around Big Sur when the hippie movement was in its salad days. Ed became a crossover redneck. Naturally intelligent, he embraced flower power and, more literally, women, while keeping the state’s electrical power running. Ed straddled the two worlds, and their women.
The first few times I ran into him at The Palace he was gruff. People who handle enough electricity to power cities, who hang from poles high above the earth, and have seen friends turned into cinders, have a right to a certain gruffness. I doubt anyone would describe me as gruff — at least no one has to date — and in style we were most dissimilar.
But our shared history of organised labour united us, and soon Ed was bringing his monthly union journal to The Palace and slipping it, somewhat surreptitiously, I thought, to me.
There is something comforting about the papers that unions publish. At one stage in my life I would arrive at a desk in the Labor Council building in Sydney, and scour them, looking for something that could be turned into a story for the national press. The union tabloids no longer arrive at my desk, but when Ed slips me his copy I feel a link to a world I will never be part of again. It’s a world, for all its warts, I have loved. A world where men with sticks stand side by side before the guns of the cops and the dogs, and sometimes the armed forces. A lost world.
I was honoured to be invited to Ed’s home, which is situated at, or about, the convergence of Roadrunner Rut — itself more a river during rain, and definitely little but a dusty rut in the long summer — and Coyote Road. Here Ed lives amongst his guns and knives, his collectables, and his memories. He likes to sit at his bar, pouring Gentleman Jack, one of the better bourbons, and reflecting on labour history, the international order, national politics, and the economy, and the crooks who have taken over the country.
We sat amongst the guns and knives and whips (ones suitable for driving cattle), sipping the proud bourbon and discussing the market. Once, in an extravagant mood, I told Ed I thought there was a great big bear out there. An ugly, stinking bear worse than any that prowled the mountains above us three hundred years ago. I predicted that the Great Bear would soon be upon us. Ed nodded, sipped. Enough said. Ed is not the sort of man to invite a neighbour over to discuss his financial future, and the conversation moved to the familiar themes of the past. Of memories Ed did not want taken, unheard and unknown, to the grave. Most people in the High Desert think of bears as real, live animals, creatures that can be and are seen. Ed knows of the other bears, the bears of Wall Street’s imagination.
A superb listener and a determined talker, Ed has found that happy convergence where one respects the rights of another to hold the fort of conversation if they will yield equal time. This is not the norm in Southern California.
Of late, he is inclined to intimations of mortality, and this depresses me greatly.
‘Seventy ain’t old, Ed,’ I say when his thoughts turn to Old Man Time. Ed looks a bit like Old Man Time.
‘Ninety is old,’ I add.
Ed lets the matter rest. But something in his eyes reminds me that almost seventy years for a working man who has pushed his body hard at work and play is a long time. It scares me, this thought. Without Ed, I would have no deep male soulmate in the High Desert — just a lot of mates.
The conversation turns to the heartier topic of the expected arrival of Danny, the little Indian, and Adam’s shooter, who is soon to return from jail to the cottage closest to Boulder House.
‘You still don’t have a gun, do you?’ Ed inquires on one visit.
‘Nope,’ I reply in half-hearted defi
ance. I have long worn the absence of a gun in the house as a badge of honour. To my knowledge, ours is the only household bereft of guns within twenty kilometres. But a violent criminal would soon be very near our property. The prospect was vexing.
‘Would you like one?’ Ed inquired whimsically.
‘Well,’ I started, then stop, remembering the nights when I lay awake and pondered our vulnerability, convincing myself that my concern was for Boo or Sailor, that I was not getting armed because a half-crazed criminal with marked recidivist tendencies and an apparent collection of like-minded men and women who made their trade in the manufacture and sale of ‘ice’ were about to descend upon our happy haven.
‘I suppose I would, I guess.’
Ed rose slowly.
A few minutes later, he returned carrying a very large and powerful shotgun: a long-barrelled 12-gauge Remington Magnum 87. I almost blanched as I took control of a weapon more than half my size. I had shot the same model at Adam’s a few months before, and almost lost my shoulder. I remember Adam saying a slug from this creature could pass through the block of an old Chevy truck. I also remembered the bruises to the shoulder. Adam’s shoulder was black, and he was more than familiar with such weaponry. But Adam had bruises on his bruises.
‘Got any ammo?’ I wondered out loud.
‘Not for you. You will have to get that yourself.’
I lugged the thing out to the car and drove it home.
