The Desert King: A Jack Trexlor Novel

by T. F. Torrey

  “Who the fuck are you?” he challenged.

  “I just dropped in to take the girl home,” I said.

  He stepped closer, into the doorway. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he demanded.

  I hadn’t realized how big this guy was when he was sitting down. He was something over six feet tall and a lot over two hundred pounds. Suddenly the people I hadn’t been able to see stepped in behind him, looking to see what all the conversation was about.

  The situation was, indeed, turning very ugly.

  The two new guys looked to be Mexican or of mixed descent. Judging from their builds and their tank tops, they spent a lot of time working out. They could have been professional tag-team wrestlers. Together they must have weighed over five hundred pounds. They were roughly the same height as me, six feet or a little under, and I guessed their ages to be early thirties. They looked enough alike to have been brothers, but their faces were shaped differently. One of them had a broad, wide face, the other’s was all squashed together, like he was on the verge of exploding into a fat guy. Wide-face and Squash. They weren’t twins, but they seemed to be relatives. Their standing in the doorway blotted out the pool of light outside the door, leaving me in darkness. I couldn’t see their expressions because their faces were silhouetted against the light, but I sensed their irritation.

  I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck, and I wasn’t scared. “I came to give the girl a ride home,” I said again.

  “Yeah?” the oaf in the door said. “Well she don’t wanna go home now.” He reached to the right of the door and snapped on the outside light.

  We studied each other for a second. His greasy hair, dumpy attire, and overall grimy appearance told me he was more likely to be working for minimum wage than attending college, though I doubted he was very impressed with me, either.

  “Why don’t you let her decide if she wants to go?” I asked, although I knew there was no chance.

  “Why don’t you leave now?” he asked. He paused for dramatic effect, then added, “Before you get hurt.”

  I felt my jaw set. “I’m not leaving without the girl,” I said. “She deserves better than you jerks.”

  When you choose to criticize, someone wise once said, you choose your enemies. I had made my choice. Good or bad, right or wrong, I had just chosen my enemies.

  Run? Like hell.

  Chapter 4

  It turned out that it took my old friend almost four hours to be back in a few minutes. He hadn’t changed a bit. I had first met Macy back when I was a young teenager and my parents had decided to start living singly again. My father was a surgeon, and apparently the nights and days he spent at the operating table gave him plenty of time to grow apart from my mother. After they split up, he moved to Grand Terrace, California, eventually starting his own cosmetic surgery practice. I stayed with my mother in Kingman, Arizona, until I was done with high school, but I spent the summers at my father’s house in southern California, and that’s where I met Macy Barnes.

  He lived in the house right next to my father’s, and in the three summers before I graduated, Macy and I became good friends. Both he and Sharon were a year younger than I. He was going out with her then, and they had plans. After they graduated, they were going to get married and Macy was going to work in some lofty position in Sharon’s father’s restaurant business. Though Macy’s own parents wanted him to go to college, I thought that Macy’s plans were ambitious enough, for him. I thought he would have a tough time in college.

  Sharon, however, was another story. She had beautiful, long, brunet hair, deep brown eyes, and a trim figure. When I had first met her, I’d had trouble keeping my eyes off her. After I got to know her, however, I’d found that her personality more than counterbalanced her looks. She was always pessimistic, usually abrasive, and frequently downright rude. More than that, she always struck me as a quitter. In that respect she was the exact opposite of Macy. While she always seemed to quit as soon as things got rough, Macy was the pinnacle of persistence.

  When they walked in together, I was both surprised and not surprised. Macy would never quit Sharon, and although she might sometimes want to quit him, deep down she was as scared as anyone, and she would never dare to brave the world on her own. That was okay. They both could have done a lot worse.

  Sharon looked pretty much the same as I remembered. At about five feet, six inches tall, she stood about three inches shorter than Macy. Her wavy, dark brown hair fell about her shoulders in a medium length cut. Her piercing dark brown eyes still held the indifference I remembered. The only real change was in how old she looked. She was the same age as Macy, but when I had last seen her, she had possessed the fresh face of a teenager. Now she had lost that youthful glow, and her face had taken on the edges of a woman. All in all, though, she was still beautiful.

  As they walked up to the bar, I stepped around the end of it to the stool side. Sharon had always been a hugger, and I figured she’d want to give me a huge hug like she’d done when we met and parted those summers in California.

  Macy beamed at me. “See, Sharon, I told you,” he said.

  I held my arms open in preparation for the hug.

  Sharon walked coolly past me and sat down on the bar stool. “Hello, Jack,” she said with her back to me.

  Somewhat taken aback, I looked questioningly at Macy. He stopped beaming, shrugged, and took the stool next to her. Resuming my position behind the bar, I said, “Hello, Sharon. You look fantastic.”

  She met my eyes briefly, then looked away.

  “Thanks,” she said. Her voice said she was uncomfortable about me. I hoped I didn’t know why. She plopped her purse on the bar in front of her.

  “Uh, yeah,” I said.

  “Uh, yeah!” Macy said, trying to lift the mood. “Couple of beers, Jack?”

  “Sure, Macy,” I said. “Draft okay?”

  “Sure,” he said, smiling. I filled two glasses quickly and put them in front of Sharon and Macy. Macy was smiling and beaming.

  Sharon wasn’t. “Oh, Macy!” she said. “Why did you do that? You’re so stupid. You know I can’t drink that!”

  Macy had picked up his glass for a drink and her verbal onslaught almost made him drop it. He mumbled something vaguely apologetic and slid her beer over in front of himself.

  “Sure, drink both,” Sharon said.

  “Wait a second!” I almost shouted. This wasn’t quite the Macy and Sharon I remembered. “Sharon,” I said, “why can’t you drink a beer?”

  She looked at me like I was stupid. “Because I’m pregnant!”

  I was surprised. I looked at Macy. He grinned sheepishly and took a long drink of beer. “Well, congratulations,” I said. “Excuse me a second.”

  I walked down the length of the bar to see if any of the regulars needed a refill and to think. This wasn’t the Macy and Sharon I remembered. I wondered if they had just grown sick of each other, or if Sharon had just grown sick of Macy, or if it was something else. Maybe pregnancy had done this to her. When I returned to their end of the bar, Macy was still saying apologetic things to Sharon.

  “Congratulations,” I interrupted. Sharon met my eyes briefly then looked away at the back bar.

  “Thanks,” she said flatly, not exactly a proud mom-to-be.

  I thought I saw a way out of this uncomfortable situation. I poured a peace offering of sorts and placed it on the bar in front of Sharon, saying, “In honor of your maternity, the management would like to buy you this Coke.”

  There began a long pause. At first she acted like she hadn’t heard me. I looked at Macy, who raised his eyebrows back at me. Sharon looked at the walls, her hands, her purse. Then finally she slid the glass closer to herself and looked at me. “Thank you,” she said politely, perhaps even with a note of friendliness. I noticed Macy breathing a little sigh of relief.

  Then she added, “Nice to see somebody can do something nice for me for a change.”

  Macy ignored her as best he
could.

  “So,” I said to Sharon, “when’s the big day?”

  Sharon shrugged, looking into her Coke. “Don’t know yet.”

  “She goes to the doctor next week,” Macy explained.

  “Oh,” I said.

  There followed another uncomfortable silence. I was afraid to choose a topic because it seemed like everything would set Sharon off. From the way Macy shifted on his stool, he was also trying to find a topic she would approve of. Sharon coolly sipped her Coke, managing to exude an air of personal distaste for everything in general in the process.

  Macy’s face lit up. “Hey, honey,” he began, “why don’t you tell Jack about that carp you caught last weekend out in the desert?”

  Sharon rolled her eyes. “God, Macy, that’s all you ever talk about. The desert. And John Lupo. John Lupo and the desert.” She sipped furiously at her Coke. “Where’s the bathroom, Jack?”

  I tipped my head toward the far end of the bar. “Down there.”

  She slid off her stool and walked away, saying she’d be back in a few minutes. As she disappeared through the door, Macy washed down the last of his beer and looked at me, shaking his head.

  “It’s going to be a long nine months,” I said.

  “More like seven, now, but sheesh,” he said, nodding resignedly.

  Conversation flowed easily between Macy and me, but I paused long enough to clear away his first empty glass before continuing. “You took her out into the desert, even though she’s pregnant?”

  “Of course,” he said.

  I frowned at him. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “Naw,” he said, “It’s not that bad.”

  “The desert? Isn’t that bad?”

  Macy shook his head impatiently. “Dude, man, I’ll tell you. John delivered his youngest son out there. Right up north of Horseshoe Lake.”

  “No,” I said.

  “It’s true,” he said. “Right up there underneath Sheep Bridge.”

  I was incredulous. “I’ve lived in Phoenix for several years and I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “Man, I swear it. She went into labor early and that’s where they were so he just did it. Cut the umbilical cord with his boot knife.”

  “What about snakes and … and scorpions and stuff?”

  He shook his head again disdainfully. “Hardly ever see ’em.” He took a sip of his second beer, the one I’d set up for Sharon. “Besides, John’d take care of ’em. John Lupo’s deadlier than anything in the desert, man.” His eyes were glowing with this talk. “First time he took me out in the desert,” he said, “John was standing in the river spear fishing, and this deer came out of the trees behind us.” He was shaking his head in his own disbelief. “He heard that deer and turned around and heaved his spear right through its heart before I even knew what was going on. Dropped him right there.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yup,” he said. “Took that bastard out with a fishing spear twenty yards away.” He was shaking his head and nodding at the same time—a neat trick if you can pull it off.

  “Who’s John … uh … what’s his last name?”

  “Lupo,” he said. “John Lupo. He’s my boss.”

  “But I thought that you …”

  “Yeah,” he said, the glow disappearing from his eyes. “That kind of fell through.” He took another slug off his beer.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Sharon’s dad go bankrupt or something?”

  “Worse. He died.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Yeah, Sharon’s mother didn’t know nothing about running the business, so she put Sharon’s dickhead brother in charge of everything, and that jerk didn’t know nothing either, so I quit.”

  “Oh,” I said, sure that there was more to the story. “Still, Grand Terrace is a long way from Phoenix. How’d you end up here?”

  He sighed a little. “Things got pretty ugly there in California. I—we—just wanted to get as far away as possible, to start over on our own.”

  “And this is as far as you could get? There’s lots of places farther than this. St. Louis, Oklahoma City, New York ….”

  “Not that far,” he said. “They won’t bug us here. That’s what I care about.”

  “Well,” I said. “I’m sorry to hear that that didn’t work out for you. It was pretty promising.”

  He made a sour face. “Well, I’m not sorry. Dude, until I went to the desert, I didn’t know what living was.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You know,” he continued, “all while I was growing up in California, that wasn’t really living. That was more like just—pushing buttons. Just do this for this and that for that and go here and go there and go home. You know?”

  I didn’t.

  He attempted to explain. “Out there in the desert, man, you feel so small. I mean, you got miles and miles of mountains and cactus plants and all the time the sun’s beating down on you and you can’t just sit back and relax, you have to survive if you want to live. And when you do, it’s like the desert gives you some kind of respect.”

  I still didn’t get it. “I see,” I lied.

  “No, man.” He shook his head and tried again. “In the desert, if you don’t actively survive, you’ll die. The snakes and scorpions and cactuses will get you. Or worse—the sun. Just to exist out there, you’re conquering the elements. You deserve to live because you're still alive!”

  I frowned thoughtfully. Some aspect of the desert had clearly struck a chord inside Macy. I still didn’t understand, but it felt mystic and primeval.

  “Out there, man,” he said, looking straight into my eyes, trying to project some depth or emotion. “Raw power and beauty.” He waved his hand in the air between us as if wiping a slate clean of all of humanity. “Absolutely raw.”

  Things were entirely heavier than I was used to. “Excuse me,” I said, and went to serve some refills to the other customers. By this time, there were only a couple of regulars left in the bar. Sharon came back while I refilled them, and as I was walking back down the bar to Macy and Sharon’s stools, Macy headed off to the rest room. I topped off Sharon’s Coke while she settled onto her stool.

  “Sorry to hear about your dad,” I said.

  “No biggie,” she lied. Her eyes told another story. “It’s sad though that he won’t get to see his grandchild.”

  “It also stinks that Macy quit at the restaurant,” I said.

  She flashed me a he-told-you-that? look. “My brother fired him,” she said. “Macy acted like my brother didn’t know anything about running the business and that just wasn’t so. My brother went to four years of college—for that—and then Macy wanted to tell him how to run everything.”

  “I thought your brother went to college for dancing or something,” I said.

  “Performing arts,” she corrected. “But he also took courses in business.”

  I said nothing. It seemed disagreement enough by itself.

  “So after a while my brother just got tired of Macy working against him and so he fired him.”

  I couldn’t think of a way to agree, so I said nothing.

  Then she surprised me. “You didn’t tell him, did you?”

  “Tell him what?” I was afraid I already knew, but I had no idea how she had found out.

  “Jack!” she said, starting to fume. “How you—you tortured that guy!”

  “Keep your voice down,” I said. “Nobody here knows anything about that, and no one’s going to. It’s part of the past, and I want to keep it that way.”

  “You’re an asshole,” she said.

  “Why? Because I made a few mistakes and I don’t want everybody to know about them?”

  “Macy’s your friend,” she said. “Don’t you think he deserves to know the truth about his so-called ’friends’?”

  “Jesus, Sharon, I haven’t seen Macy in years. I’m not going to start right out telling him how I tortured some g
uy a long time ago. How did you find out, anyway?”

  She sighed and pouted and sipped her Coke. “I called your mom to invite you to the wedding. She told me what you did and said you were at that mental hospital.”

  “Great!” I said disgustedly. “You never told Macy?”

  “No,” she said. “It would have broken his heart. You know how he looked up to you.”

  “So he still doesn’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” I sighed deeply. “I’ll tell him. Later. In my own way.”

  She shook her head.

  “Look,” I said. “I already lost about every friend I ever had because of this. I’ll tell him, but not just yet. Later.”

  “Maybe I should just tell him,” she said.

  “No!”

  Macy was coming back from the bathroom now.

  “Please?” I asked.

  She shrugged.

  “Hey, hey!” Macy said, slipping back onto his stool.

  Sharon looked straight into my eyes for a moment, apparently deciding whether to tell Macy or to let me tell him. Then she lowered her eyes and forcefully stifled a yawn. “Macy,” she said, “I’m tired. We should go home after you finish your beer.”

  Macy nodded a little.

  I didn’t know what that meant. Maybe she was going to tell him and maybe she wasn’t.

  “Hey, Jack,” Macy said, “where are you living now?”

  “South of here, down by Indian School,” I said.

  “That’s not too far,” he said. “We don’t live far from here, either. Just up by Bethany Home and 7th Avenue.”

  Sharon, of course, looked bored and tired, but Macy and I were both momentarily surprised and impressed. Our apartments, from which we’d had all of the Valley of the Sun to choose, were located within two miles of each other. Whether it was by coincidence, fate, or just weird luck I often wondered later. We exchanged exact addresses and phone numbers.

  “I’ll give you a call, man,” Macy said. “You can drop in for one of Sharon’s famous Italian dinners.”