Low Life in the High Desert

by David Hirst

  ‘I heard you were trying to kill me,’ Alice hissed over the phone line.

  ‘So, what’s your point?’ Buzz replied.

  Death is never far away in the desert. The inherent dangers of an outdoor life are multiplied by the fact that we are all getting older fast, yet disregarding nature’s plea to slow down.

  Probably no one has seen more than Frances, a once dazzling beauty now touching eighty, yet holding on hard to her almost girlish good looks. Before she took over Pioneertown and created The Cantina, which would grow to become The Palace, she had lived more lives than most get to read about. She had been kidnapped down in Baja fifty years back by a Mexican smitten by her looks, but managed to escape by diving off the yacht she was being held captive on and swimming to shore.

  She lived and loved as she chose, and no one tamed her. She was quick with her fists, and as the old hierarchy of the Hells Angels doted on her, she could punch a lug off a barstool with impunity. If there was any fighting to do in The Cantina, she would do it, and if people cared to play with guns and knives, they did so outside. Petite all the while but with the eyes of a fox, she was the mother of Pioneertown and the queen of San Felipe.

  One warm summery day, I wandered into Chuck’s Wagon at the back of The Palace where Chuck Heis serves his delicacies — hot dogs and beers — to the DILLIGAF fraternity. A whole heap of the locals shook hands as though they hadn’t seen me the day before and the day before that, but Desmond took me aside. Wild as he is, Desmond is given to tears if the situation demands such, and Desmond was choked up. He had just heard that Frances’s fearless heart had burst. Frances had died and been revived, and few thought she had a chance. It had happened on a trip to Oregon to visit relatives.

  Boo and I had just spent a week with Frances and John in San Felipe, where being their friends meant being treated as deities even by the Federales, who man their absurd checkpoints all over a part of Mexico that the US didn’t even bother to grab in 1848.

  Now she was on full life-support, being attacked by paddles as her heart floundered, and it was as though the spirit of life itself was in jeopardy.

  My tears mingled with Desmond’s on his bare broad shoulders. Others, including Ed, soon joined us in a huddle. Fortunately, Harriet and Rodney were with Frances and John, but they were kept mostly away from the hospital as the doctors battled to rebuild the entire top of Frances’s great heart.

  But hope was a stranger to all.

  Mary, Frances’s other daughter, had, perhaps prematurely, begun funeral proceedings. The wake was to be held at The Palace, and then a procession of mourners led by the Hells Angels (as many as five hundred) was to lead us to San Felipe — scattering her ashes on the way.

  The Hells Angels, great lovers of ceremony, like all military and quasi-military organisations, were ready to ride, but Frances had not given up the ghost. All her organs had begun shutting down, and she had lost 80 per cent of her blood in one minute when the surgeon opened her up and the aneurysm ruptured. But she was not dead.

  She was, in fact, in a hospital just out of Portland, and the hospital happened to have the premier heart unit of the US — and therefore the world. The doctors, who had met Frances for half an hour as they prepared for the surgery, had warmed to this delightful battleaxe of a lass and were not sending her off easily. For days, then weeks, they fought death while the citizens of Pioneertown mulled over her chances. To me fell the task of making the almost daily calls north. Each time I visited The Palace, all would ask for news, and as the days passed, scepticism turned to hope, and after fourteen days a glimmering of confidence. That day, I learnt Frances would live. She would have to learn to talk again — at eighty-one — and to walk again, also at eighty-one. But she would live to hear her coyotes cry their plaintive tune of the desert.

  33

  Being able to see the stars wasn’t something that affected property values until people around America began noticing that the stars had gone out. They are actually still there, but only 10 per cent of US citizens can look to the firmament and see same. Pollution and reflected light from the cities now deprive most of our fellow citizens of a right that might have found its way into the Bill of Rights had anyone imagined that much of the population might one day be deprived of such a right. Children growing up in inner and not-so-inner cities may spend their lives as ignorant of the heavens as they are the waves of the sea. When we lived in Venice, Boo and I would often entertain kids from South Central LA, and I would take them to the beach.

  It was a harrowing experience as the kids, as old as thirteen, had mostly never seen the sea, even though they lived a mere fifteen miles from it. Their knowledge of waves was limited to watching sporting events, and at first they were all terrified of the things, even though the waves at Venice are mostly just large laps. Had they been introduced to the ten-footers common at Sydney beaches I would have lost the lot. But soon, kid by kid, fear by fear, they would be frolicking in this wondrous new world as I stood in their midst counting, always counting. In numerous trips I never lost a child, and it is possible these excursions did some good.

  The stars are another matter. Throughout history, people have lived and died without seeing the sea or even a large lake, but the stars have been in evidence for all humanity for the best part of eternity. No longer.

  In the High Desert, the stars shine so brightly that after many months I still would stare in wonder at their brilliance. The Milky Way in the southern hemisphere, the canopy that Boo and I had grown up under, is a mite thin compared with that of the north, and as a kid I sort of resented being deprived of its glories. I guess kids like stars more than adults do, but it’s hard to tell if they can’t see them. One of the main causes of this deprivation is street lighting, which is supposed to give us a sense of security, and help us find our way about. But as John Edwards, who lives in Yucca Valley, where there is some street lighting, points out, he and his neighbours are never robbed, while the section that is lit constantly suffers from theft on such a scale that he fears members of the Bush cabinet may have moved in. So much for safety. As for guiding folk home, surely it has been the stars that have achieved that purpose since men and women had the sense to look up. An Indian and a coyote are never lost.

  Why there is no mass political movement to ‘bring back the stars’ is surprising, given that people will spend their lives fighting for the right to have a larger handgun or a more automatic rifle. Perhaps my fellow DILLIGAF members, who can spend an entire afternoon discussing the attributes of the most obscure of armaments, can be excused from not fighting for the right of kids to see the heavens. They can see all the stars they like if they remain sober until dark. In fact, we are in one of those special parts of the world where the stars can be seen more brightly than in those less special areas where they can’t. This is due partly to elevation; partly to the existence of the San Bernardino Mountain Range, which blocks all light from LA; and partly to air movements that sweep pollution off to less fortunate places.

  So much is this the case that photographers from the Los Angeles Times and even The New York Times trek out here for the regular meteorite showers that turn the night sky into something more like a racetrack. Boo was, inevitably, away for the first night of the Triffids, but Ed and Candace had come to stay, and though the night was as cold as a nun’s bosom, out we went, armed only with a bottle of Jack to brave the waves of falling stars.

  The land around is pockmarked by meteorites that made it to earth, so the act took some courage. But the greatest problem was in the watching. Candace would cry, ‘Look at that one,’ but by the time one swung one’s head around, it was fading or gone, and Ed was yelling, ‘Look, there goes two.’

  The trick, we soon learnt, was to identify that part of the sky where most of the shooting stars seemed to shoot, and ignore the distractions. The show went on for hours. We huddled together with blankets and more Jack until the early hours, wh
en the squeals of delight began to mix with yawns, and sleep called.

  We staggered into the house. Below us were the lights of half-a-dozen other homes dotting the flats far below.

  If they get water up here, the developers will come and put in street lighting and thousands of houses, and take out the stars. When, I wondered, is it appropriate to take up arms or dynamite against such a sea of troubles?

  An alert reader might recall that we made this momentous move away from the world of coffee houses and outlets for such exotica as The New York Times, in part, because we were threatened by a neighbour — The Man with No Brain.

  It was not until we had said goodbye to our little piece of Dodge City and settled at Boulder House that we discovered the prison system would soon disgorge one of its millions of minions almost onto our front doorstep — Danny, the man who had shot Adam, who, with his father, John, his uncle Jerry, his brother Brandon, and the countless wives, cousins, sons, and daughters made up the tribal alliance I came to call The Adams Family.

  News that Danny would soon be getting out began to spread until it became, after the preparations for the DILLIGAF Christmas party, the most talked-about coming event on the social calendar. Being the closest neighbour, in fact the only neighbour, I was constantly asked whether he had been sighted — and what plans I had in mind. Except to play things by ear, I had no plans.

  But a would-be killer coming home was a matter that could not be ignored, and it played on my mind more than I would admit.

  The Blade Runner took Boo aside, and told her what to expect from Danny.

  ‘I am warning you,’ he said. ‘I am serious.’

  The Blade Runner was nothing if not serious.

  ‘He is dangerous, and I am not joking. Be very careful, and don’t ever be alone with him.’

  These and many other threats fell upon our ears.

  The DILLIGAF consortium suggested we collectively write to the authorities informing them that Danny was not welcome in the community. It was widely believed that such a letter would have him released but banned from San Bernardino County, and prevent him from returning to our tiny part of that immense domain. Naturally, given the nature of an organisation that concentrates its activities on preparations for the Christmas party, the discussion of the attributes of firearms, and the need for greater enforcement of the death penalty (I once suggested it be retrospective), nothing was done.

  One sunny morning, I noticed Ed Edge, a fine fellow who had given me some help with the well, working on some pipes at Danny’s little cabin. I went over for a chat and maybe an update on what was on everybody’s mind — Danny’s homecoming. There had been considerable activity around the cabin, and Danny’s father had replaced the chimney the previous week.

  There was then the unmistakable sound of a motor car and the equally unmistakable evidence of a small white truck moving up the almost sheer incline to what had been, until this moment, our secluded world.

  I recognised immediately old man Salazar, and knew that the figure beside him was Danny. Adam’s would-be killer.

  It was a tricky moment. Danny jumped from the truck and was formally — by local standards — introduced by his father.

  We shook hands in a pregnant pause. Danny stood a full foot below me and had an innocent, almost childlike, look. I grasped his hand and welcomed him home. Another pregnant pause.

  ‘I believe you are a poor shot,’ I suggested, hoping to cut the ice about Adam from the very start.

  He grinned nervously, and seemed to agree, being in a friendly mood. I did my best to be friendly, but I wasn’t over the moon, and saying I had work to get on with, left. Danny, who represented something of a potential date with destiny for the occupants of Boulder House, moved into his cabin.

  At first, the small Mexican-Indian was on his best behaviour, and we were convinced that the warring parties would no longer seek to do battle. I even arranged a peace conference where Danny and John Edwards agreed to a formula that, in retrospect, might have been drawn up by Neville Chamberlain.

  The tiny hamlets of Pioneertown, Pipes Canyon, and Rimrock responded to the return of a man who had, for no apparent reason, shot a well-known member of the community, as one would hope they might. With detached consideration.

  Boo met Danny, a few days after his return, while walking the dogs. He approached her warily, no doubt knowing that a strategic alliance would be helpful to his cause, which seemed to be, in principle, not returning to prison.

  ‘I guess you have heard some bad things about me,’ he remarked.

  ‘Well, I heard you shot Adam,’ she replied.

  Danny admitted he had.

  He told Boo he was sorry for what he had done, that he had done his time, and done it hard.

  ‘I did it like a man,’ he added.

  Soledad has earned its reputation as being one of California’s hardest prisons, and Danny was treated in the spirit of redemption by what passes as a community. As usual, Ernie and Carole led the way, putting him to work at the motel, and were delighted with the results. Cathy, his former girlfriend, and the regular cleaner at the motel, moved into his cabin, and Danny, when not doing the yard work at the motel, began improvements on his own yard, and began lining the cabin with cedar.

  Soon he had saved enough to buy a nice motorcycle, a road bike, but one suited to the desert. We had him over for a few beers, and in return he helped me with the pool.

  I soon discovered there was something childlike about Danny, and had to remind myself that the thirty-three-year-old was definitely no child.

  My attempts to befriend Danny were at first moderately successful. He came over again to help me with the pool. Having more knowledge of plumbing than Gordon Liddy, he was of some use. As we did battle with the filtration system, he told me he had spent his childhood on the Hopi Indian reservation in northern Arizona, not far from the Grand Canyon and even closer to Monument Valley. Perhaps they are the most filmed and photographed places on earth. But the film crews rarely make it to the dusty Hopi reservation.

  As we struggled in the sun, I tried to remember our brief visit to the tiny reservation ten years before, hoping to better place the man by knowing the world of his childhood. I remembered its barrenness. The red hues of Monument Valley were evident in the clay-like earth and, at least when Boo, I, and Harry the dog made our brief inspection, red earth and ramshackle housing were about all there was. A few stalls sold hand-crafted goods — jewellery, turquoise inlaid in silver, rugs, and pottery — some of the best that will ever be made. A few hungry dogs wandered the baked streets of a settlement not unlike those found in Australia’s ‘red centre’. The reservation, which is about sixty-five kilometres square, does not have rivers but washes. Nevertheless, it is home to one of North America’s oldest cultures, and the pueblos atop the mesas date to the ninth century — making them the oldest continuous human communities in North America.

  Danny had lived there twenty years before our visit, when the reservation was even more isolated and primitive.

  The Hopi Indians call themselves Hopitu, meaning ‘peaceful’ or ‘the peaceful little ones’. But while Danny is indeed little, one had to question his peaceful nature.

  Danny informed me he was eight years of age when his parents went to LA. Danny’s father hailed from Yuma, a forlorn town a few hundred miles south of the Hopi lands.

  Again, I tried to reconstruct Yuma from a brief visit years before. The town existed mostly because it was the site of the West’s first federal prison. The federal authorities built a jail with walls so thick (three metres) that Saddam himself might have felt safe in one. Yuma Prison was also the first in the West to employ steel reinforcing.

  I recalled that only one man ever escaped from Yuma, and he was thought to have drowned in the Colorado River, which in those days flowed wide and strong past the prison and into Mexico.

 
Prisons are a recurring theme in Danny’s life, I thought, as we finally got the pool’s water level right.

  He had stripped off his top, revealing the mandatory prison tattoos. Some mystified me, but he explained, in his high sing-song voice, that inside he had joined a Native American gang. Imprisoned African-Americans have usually been members of gangs before graduating to prisons, as have most Latinos. Whites often join the Aryan Nation soon after incarceration, even though they might have no affinity with its racist creed.

  Danny told me of the sweat lodges that he and his Indian brothers enjoyed in Soledad. It seemed incongruous, yet uplifting, that such a freedom could still exist.

  Moving to the metropolis of Los Angeles from an isolated reservation, with his father, from a town that only existed because it provided the last chance to steal Mexico’s water and was a suitable place for a prison, might have unsettled Danny. It led, he said, to his desire to return to the desert, and somehow to the end of Coyote Road.

  The pool had iced over. The swamp cooler had been shut down. Wood had been delivered in great quantities, and the fire blazed constantly. Tony, the word was going around, would be heading back any day now — as soon as the ground back in Wisconsin froze.

  Christmas would soon be upon us. People were making each other gifts. Lil Debbie was busily creating her little ‘desert Christmas trees’, made from the tops of dead yuccas and decorated with exquisite tiny ornaments.

  Pioneertown was aglow with lights. Cactus and wagon wheels sparkled with what we grew up calling fairy lights. Even Danny’s cabin was lit up, and twinkled in the dark, cold night.

  As the days and weeks passed peacefully, I saw more of Danny. His skin, where not covered in tattoos, had turned a coppery colour. He had taken to blackening the area around his eyes, and invariably wore a headscarf. The effect was handsome. But Danny had used the gun and the knife before, and as the weeks passed it seemed increasingly apparent that an unwillingness to bury the hatchet — as it could not more appropriately be described — existed in his heart. Of the one hundred and twenty thousand persons paroled in California each year, seventy thousand return to prison, and it was reasonable to expect that Danny would find his way home if relations with Adam went south.