Dastardly

by Lorraine Ray

I haven’t seen Oliver for two whole weeks during which time I went to the writers’ dinner and vomited out my best writing idea for everybody’s perusal. After realizing what I’d done, I’m now focusing on the lost gold mine that Oliver knows about. Focusing like a laser. These days waiting for Oliver to show up at the museum when I’m working I sweat out like I never had before. I figure the guy has a lead to make some easy dough and all I have to do is get it out of him. It would take some fucking finesse, but that is something I have plenty of. Wait, maybe not. Fuck.

  The next time we’re together I vow I will find out what Oliver knows.

  About when I’ve given up on the old timer, Oliver shows up again, stinking the place up and wandering around the musty carriages and broken-down carts like he’s lost or drunk or both. Doesn’t even stop to ask me to pay the admission fee. I guess now he thinks he would always get in there for free and I was not gonna do a thing about it and he might have been right, because I am interested now in what Oliver knows.

  I grab up a rag as I had thought of doing before and buff displays energetically, innocently whistling a little tune, something merry and Mexican, I think, so I whistle La Cucaracha as fucking casual as can be, la de da, as I work my way over to where the glossy Maximillian coach is, reflecting the dark museum and warping it weirdly, and where Oliver is shuffling around in his old coot, shambling way. I figure coming over there will put me in Oliver’s general area with a reason to chat with the venerable old dip-shit again.

  “Howdy, old timer,” I say kinda casually to him like I don’t give a fart in the world whether Oliver answers back. I act out surprise, too, in my best pantomime when I see the old guy. Big shock, my goodness me, sort of thing. Wasn’t he supposed to pay admission and doesn’t he know I know he walked into the place? It is my job, after all, to collect admissions to the museum. “Well, hello again,” Oliver replies. Seems genuinely happy to see me again. Had Oliver come in to see me in the same way I had been waiting for him to show up? Maybe he wants something from me? He is pretty ancient and feeble and could use someone to do the leg work (ha ha) for him, since Oliver is always dragging his fake leg around stiffly, if there is something in his mind about a place that might yield a great deal of dough, but would involve some effort. Yeah, that’s it; that explains it, he needs an assistant in this enterprise he has in mind; what he has in mind is too hard for an old fart like him all alone. If he has this opportunity in mind, I figure, he might need a young man to help him fulfill it. Sure…Oliver is thinking the same thing I am, only he doesn’t want to let on yet. He needs my youth to help him; I need his info. I am going to get more dough fast; getting help from my landlord hasn’t made me relax. Instead I’ve gotten more intense about getting dough. Spilling my favorite story has made me feel more desperate too. It’s made me angry and vengeful. I have to get the info from this coot. But Oliver doesn’t trust me. Not yet.

  “I was thinking about what you said last time,” I say, pretty relaxed and nonchalant to the old man. I keep on buffing a rope in an earnest fashion. I don’t think I have ever cleaned anything in that whole damn place until today. The museum has a night custodian two days a week who comes in and cleans, so there is no need for me to do it. All I usually do is dump trash into the dumpster out back. And frankly, that’s about all the damn cleaning I’ve ever done, but Oliver doesn’t know that.

  “Oh. Is that so? What did I say?” says the old coot back. He’s playing it cagey all right. He didn’t want to let on that he and I were on the same wavelength. Well, two can play at that game; wait and see, bro.

  “I’m not sure I remember exactly…” I say vaguely. “I was talking about opportunities. Opportunities lost.” Back fast with the answer I come as big as you please. Ha! I know he is one smart clam. I can read the old limping chump like nobody else. “Sure. You know, that was it. You were talking about opportunities and how you missed out on something once. I listened to what you said and I was thinking a young person like me has to listen to every bit of information he gets. I know that. Opportunities only come around once. You aren’t gonna be begged to get rich.”

  “Well, well, that’s the right attitude,” Oliver says, beaming as happily as a clam thinking that I learned something from him.

  What a crock of shit; I’m angrily at myself. Goddamn it. Fucking damn it to hell! The old shit head knows something. But what? What’s his secret? “You were saying you had missed out on an opportunity and I wondered what that might have been? I don’t want to be nosey, though.” There I go. Straight to the point, but with a bit of humility. May as well risk it at this point because I have nothing left to lose.

  “Yeah, but I don’t think I want to discuss it,” says Oliver, shutting down.

  God damn fucking hell! What the fuck! Withdraw for a moment, I tell myself. Pull back strategically. Give him the same he gives you. So I reckon the best thing to do is to mirror his emotions back at him; they say that makes people do what you want them to. “Well, I don’t mean to pry,” I say innocently enough, pulling back from his quarry as he planned his final attack. But is he thinking the same about me? I suspect Oliver is as sly as I am, also.

  “Well, fact is I heard me a certain story a long time ago,” he says mysteriously.

  “Yeah?” Contain your excitement. Act uninterested. Listen, but don’t respond. Avert your eyes or they’ll give you away with a gleam of avarice in them that can’t be hidden.

  “Bout a gold cache no one has claimed,” says the old man.

  Oh, fucking hell. One of those lost pots of gold nuts? This is hopeless! “Hmmm,” I say, not letting him know I am immediately discouraged by the lost pot of gold crap, not that I don’t want to believe a pot of gold is sitting around waiting to be discovered, but I’m dubious enough to doubt I’ll ever be so lucky as to find it.

  “A pot of gold in the mountains near Mexico. Now there might be something there. Let me tell you about how I heard about it. Do you drink?” asks Oliver.

  “Yes. More than I should.”

  “You and I are kindred spirits! Buy me a drink after you get off of work and I’ll tell you the whole story. But I can’t talk if there’s any chance of us being overheard.”

  “I’m off in less than thirty minutes. I know a real quiet bar where nobody goes on week nights,” I say, trying to entice him quickly and hoping his trap is as apt to open with drink as mine was, witness the damn dinner with the writers and the devil cowboys. I’d given away my treasure. It was only fair that I got another one. If this strange dude had anything valuable to tell.

  “Sounds about right. Nobody should hear this but you and me. Understand?”

  Old fucking drunk. I have to buy him a drink on my measly salary at the rodeo museum and Marsha’s money? Fucking hell, this better pay off. And I have to sit with his stink for hours, maybe. Humoring his old poopy pants and smiling at his dumb-shit jokes and old fashioned witty adages. Well, it’s the price I’ll have to pay to get what I want from him. No way out of it that I can see if I want to help myself out of the damn poverty I’m stuck in.

  So I finish my shift and at the end of the day, with the old fart at my elbow, jabbering away, I leave the museum as I do five fucking days a week, and Chet locks up. The old fart sticks around and leaves with me. I walk him to this nearby dive called The Busy Beehive. We walk in and I see right away it’s the perfect place to take this nervous dip-shit. Isn’t a soul in the deserted beehive place except for the sleepy bartender, and he’s busy texting his wife or his lover or someone and he barely notices us until I walk up and give him our order. We take a booth that is way outta the way of the bartender and the door. We both think we’ll see anyone come in. Turns out the old guy is satisfied with a beer or two so I don’t have to lay out a lot of dough for fancy drinks. When the beers arrive, the lock on the old guy’s trap suddenly drops off.

  “Well, I never thought the gentleman who told me this was worth listening to,” says Oliver, “He was an old timer who used to do some mining on
his own in the mountains south of the Playa. He told me which mountains and even pointed out certain canyons and ridges for me. He said he’d gone exploring there several times when he was younger. When he was forty, right after he found this pot of gold he got injured bad in a car wreck.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, and it took him months to get well enough to even to talk and walk again! I met him in the hospital when my leg were cut off. No one would take him seriously about what he knew and his whole family wouldn’t listen to him about lost gold. He thought there was no hope of ever getting there and finding the pot of gold he had heard about all those years ago. He tried to talk a son-in-law into going with him, but he wouldn’t listen and only laughed at the old fellow. Well, he missed out on something good. You see what’s happened was concerning the character Cochise. Have ya heard a him?”

  “Sure.”

  Oliver takes a big swig of beer and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well, this Cochise character was a big honcho in the ‘Pache Indian tribe. And they were robbing and stealing all over Southern Arizona. As you know from working in the museum, I suppose. But one thing was he was loyal to his tribe and also thinking about their future. Have you heard of him?”

  He’s repeating himself. Don’t get aggravated. “Well yeah. I mean, yes, I have.” I claim this, although it probably isn’t true I know much of anything about Cochise, if you were to quiz me.

  “Well, Cochise was a wise man and a great chief of his tribe and he realized their earnings in the stealing realm were not guaranteed forever so in case they were to get destitute he filled an entire pot, an old Dutch oven in fact, with golden coins and gold dust. Filled it to the brim. Or somebody from the tribe did. The lid was put on and the one who put the gold in hid it. Well, the one who hid it up and died and Cochise nor his son did not know, or forgot, where that gold was hid. But this friend of mine had heard the legend from someone in the tribe who he befriended. He searched this mountains every weekend for ten years looking for the spot he’d heard of where the Dutch oven was hid. Did Cochise steal that oven from a miner? Probably so. Nobody knows, but the Dutch oven is up there jammed between two rocks. This guy saw it before he had a heart attack. He barely got down alive and he crashed his car, almost fatally. Too much excitement, I guess. He also said there might be an old mine door and the false tunnel up there, too. He told how it had all been laid out by the people who left it to fool anyone who stumbled upon it. Damn. And there was gold for the digging. Real flakes. Didn’t have to extract it at all because it ran in a vein right behind that door. It wasn’t wider than your little finger and flakes, but it would make you rich fast.”

  “Now, hold on. Are you saying there’s a mine door or aren’t you? And what’s this about a heart attack?”

  “Well, I think he said there was. No, wait, there wasn’t. The black vein of ore was only a legend, but his friend caught sight of the Dutch oven.”

  “How reliable was this guy?”

  “I would trust him with my life.”

  “Can I meet him?”

  “Nope, he’s dead now.”

  “What was his name?”

  “Humberto Vega.”

  “Why didn’t you do something about this information earlier?”

  “I’ve never been able to convince anyone of the truth of it, but I swear it happened as I told you. I told you what I know.”