Low Life in the High Desert

by David Hirst

  Danny’s parole officer, I soon learnt, was a Mr Smith, reputedly a hard man. He seemed to visit Danny sporadically for the spot checks and whatever else parole officers do as they make their rounds. And being in the desert, Mr Smith’s rounds were extensive. I was working in the yard adjacent to Danny’s cabin with Art, a local who professes some knowledge of trees and gardening. I like to work with Art, because if I don’t, things can go wrong fast. Art is not given to contemplating the consequences of his actions — a fact that had brought him to the attention of the same Mr Smith.

  According to Art, the cause of his incarceration had been a misunderstanding over the dumping of peculiarly noxious poisons, and Art had been grievously wronged and jailed. This had rather impressed me, as I had never heard of an American being jailed for dumping toxins. Had Art been skippering a supertanker while drunk, and lost a few million barrels of crude, he would have walked free. But the amount was small, and Art did sixteen months.

  When Mr Smith bounced up Coyote Road, we were applying Henry’s — a tar supposed to seal roofs — to the garage. Art, who is probably the least criminal of all Mr Smith’s parolees, was delighted to see his officer in charge, and hollered loudly — no doubt to draw Mr Smith’s attention to the fact that though he was disposing of a noxious tar, he was doing it atop my garage. That is, not only was he working, but working legally.

  Mr Smith waved back and disappeared into Danny’s cabin as Art beamed at me. At their next meeting, the coming Tuesday (Art, not being a drug offender, was not subject to random tests), he would be able to tell his parole officer of his new position as foreman at Boulder House. A reputable position indeed, if it existed.

  About this time, Danny’s girlfriend, Cathy, brought home a small pup, a pit bull that had been mixed, it seemed from its growth, with an elephant. The creature had been left in one of Ernie and Carole’s motel rooms, and was dubbed LD — short for Little Dog. It grew, and within months was twice the size of Sailor — and still a pup.

  Sailor, convinced he was top dog, decided to bring this usurper down to his own size. But his efforts were forlorn at best. LD was friendly to all, as pups invariably are, but Sailor took a dim view of this challenge to his mastery of the hill, and soon tempers flared. We repeatedly appealed to our neighbours to have LD’s private parts removed, knowing that one day it would finish the issue of who was top dog, and Sailor would inevitably lose badly, suffering an inevitable mauling and possibly death. We even offered to pay for the surgery.

  But Danny seemed to consider any attempt to reduce the conflict an assault on the few rights he possessed as a parolee. Bitter words were exchanged, with me informing Danny that he was a ‘fucking imbecile’.

  People, noting that Danny’s disposition had grown increasingly aggressive since his release, suggested he was — like a goodly proportion of the denizens of the desert — on speed. But I argued that this was unlikely, given the random urine tests. Speed hangs around in the system for days, and Danny was in reality still in jail, parole being jail without the bars. Any such infringement would put him back in complete confinement, and the job of the penal system was to get as many back as possible. Institutions exist to perpetuate their existence, and the prison system was coming close to perfecting its purpose. If Danny was on speed, he’d likely be behind bars already, I argued.

  But I began to find Danny’s soft, sing-song tone sinister. As I stood more than a foot above him, I doubted he would attack me with his fists. But as his record was for the use of that great equaliser — the handgun — this was small comfort.

  We found ourselves in the midst of hostilities far more deadly in potential than the one that had us flee to the mountains in the first place.

  Danny, being on parole for the shooting of Adam, was, under law, prevented from being in Adam’s company. The conception of such ideas — that warring parties be separated — was admirable enough, but it became apparent far too quickly that in such a tiny rustic world only UN peacekeepers could ensure that the demarcation lines would be respected.

  Trouble began at the home of Vietnam Bob, a man not averse to gunfire after enduring a long and unpleasant sojourn in the rice fields and jungles of Vietnam. Bob may not be the best-armed man in the High Desert, but he has definitely made every effort to protect himself and his loved ones. He is not trigger unhappy, and has a personality that can range from mild-mannered to seriously ferocious.

  Bob and Adam are friends and neighbours of many years’ standing, and Adam would frequently drop by for a visit. On one such day, ensconced in the living room and enjoying a cold beer with them sat Danny. Adam offered his hand in friendship some five times, and each time it was slapped away. Hugs were not exchanged, and Danny told Adam he had been thinking of him — for five years — every day.

  Adam took this as something of a declaration of intent. Presumably, Danny had not lain awake in Soledad prison wishing him well. In fact, Danny was of the opinion that Adam had let down the side by going to the police over the matter of the bullet that had bounced around his head and found its way into his spine. Adam found it difficult to explain to his old adversary that once one is admitted to a hospital in California, even with such a minor infliction as a bullet to the head, the arrival of the police is a formality. The hospitals are required by law to inform their servants of such matters.

  Danny was of the opinion that Adam had betrayed him, and was further incensed by the fact that the police, on arrival at his cottage next to Boulder House, had also uncovered what they believed, and the courts agreed, was the basis of a methamphetamine laboratory — something common to these parts.

  Rumour had it that Danny’s time in jail was rendered less pleasant because the expensive ingredients of the speed lab were confiscated by the authorities, causing chagrin to the criminal fraternity that had invested in the materials.

  That Danny’s time in Soledad and other such places had been difficult was attested to by the absence of his top and bottom front teeth. Locals recalled that those teeth had been firmly attached to his gums before his incarceration.

  Teeth are not regarded as a necessity in the High Desert. Buzz is of the opinion that teeth are best replaced, and a standing joke in these parts runs along the lines of ‘What have you got when you line up thirty-two Pioneertown women?’

  ‘A full set of teeth.’

  Such a joke might be lost on Danny.

  His response to Adam’s outstretched hand was the sort of diplomatic gesture one might expect from a refugee from the prison system, or, for that matter, from the current incumbents of the White House. A unilateral act from a man with an increasingly small power base.

  Then, late one Saturday night, Adam rang.

  ‘Have you seen a white Chevy low rider at Danny’s?’ he asked, alarm in his voice. We hadn’t.

  ‘Cholos, three of them, drove around my house this afternoon, in a white low rider. They are connected to Danny. They were real threatening. I could tell they were packing.’

  Boo did recall hearing a vehicle, but in the middle of the night she could only see the lights.

  I thought that Adam, sometimes Pioneertown’s prima donna assoluta, might be using a product other than his faithful companion, Budweiser, and promised to drop around the next day. Cholos were from the gangster world of East LA, and though Yucca might have a few would-be gangsters of the Chicano variety, it was hard to imagine them driving all the way out here, and hardly believable they would threaten an Edwards.

  But when I arrived at Adam’s tiny cottage on Sunday morning, the clans had gathered. The living room was full of automatic rifles and beards, and it seemed there was cause for alarm. From a babble of excited rushes of conversation, I pieced together the events that had led to this drama.

  A criminal who had been released from jail at the same time as Danny, and who had since managed to get himself 86’d from the bars of Yucca — no easy task — had
arrived at Adam’s in the aforementioned white Chevy Suburban and driven around his house five times. Then the criminal had entered, and as Adam knew him vaguely, he had welcomed him. But the ex-con was not polite, and instead told Adam he had brought some friends from East LA to ‘party with hillbillies’. He added that he expected Adam to be wearing overalls, an item not in Adam’s wardrobe. As there were two women in the house and the gangsters had clearly ‘scoped’ the place, Adam could not find recourse to his guns. As soon as they left he called his dad, John, who had by now arrived with Uncle Jerry.

  Jerry and John are both mountain men, and fools might think them hillbillies. Jerry had spent some time with the LAPD, and both were competent trackers.

  The boys in the low rider might not have figured that driving on dirt roads left tyre tracks. The roads of East LA might be bad but are not dirt, and they hadn’t reckoned that unique low rider tyres would stand out, especially after five passes. But Jerry and John had already tracked the tyres, and had done so to Coyote Road.

  If anything was guaranteed to bring fury to the clan, not to mention the general community, the arrival of outside gangsters was it. Word was spreading, and people who had long dreamt of defending their town were arriving. More could be summoned, but as I went out to inspect the still-fresh tyre prints, I imagined we had enough facilities to handle a few city gangsters driving a vehicle not exactly designed for the ruts that pass for roads in these parts. I detected three submachine guns in the back of one of the trucks, and my confidence grew. The Cholos might have similar weaponry, but they were self-taught, and usually ended up killing the wrong target. These rednecks had mostly been trained by the US army. Some had used guns, year in and out, against the people of Vietnam. Adam himself had been put in charge of twenty-eight men when he was a young ranger.

  In these enlightened days, killing is done by either depraved individuals or the state. But community killing, vigilante killing, is something that has passed into history. In California and the West, death without trial at the hands of a mob or a posse has a rich history. A few generations ago, men were hanged from the nearest tree — if there was a nearest tree — partly on the grounds that the jails were so poorly constructed that a stick of dynamite could free a comrade who might have stolen a horse. Better to hang him on the spot. Mob murder was first introduced in San Francisco, and reputedly its first victims were Australians. These were the Sydney Ducks: a gang of ex-cons who found their way to the town with plunder rather than work in the goldfields on their minds. Such were the crimes of these men that, given the absence of law, the vigilante killings were understandable, even though it irks me to say so of fellow countrymen.

  Perhaps you could say I was privileged to be in a room where the fevered excitement that comes with the lust for blood was evident. But evident it was. Even Boo, who had seen her fair share of human folly since we’d met twenty years before, was worried. I found myself reminded of Pat Buchanan, who, in the 1996 presidential campaign, cried, ‘When you hear the sound of the guns, ride, boys, ride.’

  Had Danny or someone in a white low rider appeared that Sunday morning, they could have expected a hail of bullets. Fortunately for Danny, they did not. By the time we left, it was agreed no action be taken. The passion for killing had, for the moment, passed. Instead, as we lived opposite, it was agreed we would keep an eye on things.

  I saw Danny, and he asked me if his life was in danger.

  We were in The Palace, and a few hours had passed. He seemed a mite nervous, as befitted a man who had a lot of gunmen keen on finding him in their sights. He himself, on the other hand, would return to prison for a long time if found in possession of a single gun.

  The question was rather a ‘curate’s egg’ one, in that, while telling the truth was unpleasant and might make matters even more dangerous, lying was also unacceptable. I told him I was doing my best, and tried to put a decent spin on the fact that I had just left some of the hardest men in the hardest country in a hard nation, and they were all oiled up and looking for bear.

  Danny didn’t thank me for my efforts, and I moved to other, friendlier drinkers, reflecting that, while he had a lot on his mind, he was doing a poor job of saving his own neck by not even appreciating that I was constantly trying to construct a peace.

  A rough barricade was erected next door. A heavy chain was slung across the driveway. Windows were boarded up.

  In this cauldron, the problems with the Man with No Brain seemed like days of innocence and hope. Whereas in that other life I had brushed aside the .45 that my Venice neighbour John had offered, I now embraced a pump-action shotgun and some other deadly items. Whereas once I had told the cops it was their job to kill the Man with No Brain, I now found myself and my loved ones in a world where the cops scarcely existed.

  Today, we endured tense times at Coyote Road. Sure, Danny had lived here before us and had every right to return home. But the things that might threaten our safety had been, up until now, the rare mountain lion and the not-so-rare rattlesnake. A human with a violent record was a great invasion, and Danny’s presence was an ever-present cloud over our sunny home. If not paradise lost, it was definitely paradise flawed.

  But there are other equally pressing matters at hand. Soon I must off to the Friday meeting of DILLIGAF, and with another Christmas only six months away, some other vital decisions must be made. Who, for instance, will play Santa? Last year’s Santa was hired in, and didn’t quite fit the bill. Some are suggesting Mike Bristow — the hardest of all the hard men — the man who for seven years kept a mountain lion as a pet. Not exactly a reindeer, but it’s a mite hot for reindeers in these parts.

  AFTERWORD

  by Valerie Morton

  We didn’t see Danny for a long time. He stopped sleeping in his house, and began camping out in the vast network of caves that crisscrossed our backyard wilderness. Hiking through the rocks, David and I would come across rough camps and the remains of a warming fire and a recent dinner. It was winter, so snow, a gleaming decoration on the surrounding mountains, was always threatening to fall. Despite deteriorating relations, we felt bad for our neighbour. Sometimes at dawn we would hear his motorbike hitting the dirt back roads where no one was likely to be waiting for him, and would see his small frame bent over some task in Pioneertown, fulfilling his parole work requirements.

  Walking the dogs alone along Coyote Road one day, I bent down to collect the ball and smashed my head against a metal-hard desert oak tree. Blood flowed down my face, and as I stood there with the world spinning around me, an old car pulled up alongside, and Danny got out. He asked if anyone was at home to help me, and reluctantly I admitted there was not. He insisted I come up to his house for some first aid. The Blade Runner’s warnings to never be alone with this dangerous felon rattled around my now aching head, but only briefly.

  Minutes later, I found myself inside the murderer’s house. Through the blood and the wooziness, I could see that a lot of care had gone into Danny’s cabin. Hannibal Lecter’s lair, it was not. My host made me a cup of tea and sat me down to examine my head. He gently washed it and assured me it was only a superficial wound. Would I like him to put in some stitches? Calmly for someone being treated by a notorious ‘killer’ in a remote cabin at the end of a remote road, I asked him what he would use. He produced a packet of dental floss, and I declined, settling instead for a butterfly clip, which was tenderly applied.

  I commented on some fine Native American art on the walls, and Danny told me it was his own work. Some of it had been done in the penitentiary, and I asked him what it had been like in there. It was okay, he said. Being Native American, he had been allowed to join a sweat lodge, the right to religious congregation guaranteed under the Constitution, and had had the protection of his brethren. He had made jewellery inside, too, and brought out a box with beautiful beaded earrings. I admired a pair with an eagle depicted in the design, and Danny insisted I have them. The
eagle was his totem. They reside with me, today, along with other mementoes from Danny: letters written from prison when he was sent back, inevitably, for breaking the conditions of his parole. Once the system has you, you are had. We remained pen pals for a long time, and I regret losing touch.

  By then, David, too, had departed Coyote Road, his departure even more dramatic, for this is a land of high drama, and the West is merciless. Late one summer night, after a card game at a local property, he had, as he put it, ‘parked the car upside down’. Over the coming weeks, the Palm Springs Memorial Hospital experienced some unusual visitors in Intensive Care. On one occasion, three large men in their best Western outfits and outsized Stetsons, looking like they’d stepped out of the 1860s, blocked the doorway, tears in their eyes. Community support for ‘Aussie Dave’ was overwhelming, but the US medical system’s limitations eventually meant we had to return to Australia. There, David’s injuries ultimately claimed his life.

  Neither of us was sorry to leave the High Desert. The area was beginning to change fast, and the Old West that we had come out to live amidst was vanishing. Money was moving in. This little enclave of the Eastern Mojave was being discovered by Los Angeles, and a mini land boom would soon explode. Speculators rolled in. Ramshackle homes were snapped up and renovated with Western themes. The old crowd was dying or moving away, leaving Pioneertown and the surrounding desert in the hands of a new wave of immigrants — weekend refugees from city life. Today, they are flooding in even faster, the artists and entrepreneurs from further afield, Silicon Valley and New York City. The Hollywood producers and agents have arrived in their cowboy boots.