by T. F. Torrey
“Macy,” John said, “I think that tonight Jack and I had a bit more fun than you did.”
Macy caught sight of the blood on the side of my head as I unlocked the door. “Wow! Jack, what happened to your head?”
“Let’s talk about it over a beer,” I said. Inside, I got us a round of beers and went to clean the wound on my head as they settled onto the couch and chair. There wasn’t much blood, but in washing the cut I noticed something really weird. The Mexican thug had been wearing a ring; that’s what had cut my temple. The ring had left a backward imprint welt on my head. In the mirror I could read what it said: Deer Valley. A class ring. By morning it would be swelled up and probably illegible, but now the narrow little Gothic letters were plain in the welt.
I joined Macy and John in the living area, and John and I briefly recounted our adventures to Macy, who listened mouth-open with rapt attention. When we told him about the backyard four-thug fight scene he made us repeat every detail twice.
“Damn!” he said when we finished. “I wish I’d been there with you guys. I didn’t see anybody the whole way back. Not one police car.” We sipped our beers thoughtfully. “Maybe if I’d been there you wouldn’t have been punched in the head.”
“Yeah!” I said. “Check this out.” I showed them the Deer Valley welt. “The dude was wearing a class ring.”
“That’s pretty cool, man,” John said, laughing.
“Deer Valley’s up by Cave Creek,” Macy said.
“I know,” I said. “Those guys seemed a bit old to be wearing class rings.”
“Maybe they weren’t all wearing class rings,” John suggested. “Only one of them punched you in the head.”
“At least they were all beat up when you left, right?” Macy asked.
“At least,” John said. Another moment of reflective silence followed in which we drank more of our beers.
“Well,” Macy said finally, “did you like it?”
I didn’t know exactly how to answer. “Sure,” I said, “it was fun. Except when I was being chased by the police or joggers or being attacked by dogs or oafs it was fun, yeah.”
John was laughing.
“Well,” Macy said, “you have to admit it did get your adrenaline flowing.”
“Which is why we do it,” John said.
“It wouldn’t have been flowing so well if I had known that those were only blanks. I really figured that it was raining lead on some poor fool in central Phoenix.”
“Was it fun enough to do again sometime?” John asked.
I wondered, but I didn’t think so.
While I was trying to decide what to say, Macy asked me, “What days do you have off this weekend?”
I hoped I would give the wrong answer. “Sunday and Monday?”
“Great!” Macy said. “You can come fishing with us in the desert!”
I’d been afraid of that. “Gee, I don’t know,” I said. “I was kind of hoping to do a painting this weekend.”
“No problem,” he said. “You can do one out there. I have to tell you, man, there’s unbelievable beauty out there.”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t exactly take a canvas and an easel and a bunch of acrylics out there. Not to mention the brushes.” Georgia O’Keeffe, of course, had done just that, but I didn’t figure Macy knew of her.
“True,” Macy said.
“No problem, dude,” John said. “You can just take a sketchbook and some pencils and draw the picture out there and paint it when we get back. I’ve seen lots of people out there sketching.”
I thought about it. I had seen many impressive paintings of the desert in the Phoenix Art Museum. And I did rather enjoy the company. “Okay,” I said.
“Great!” Macy said. To John he asked, “Just us guys?”
“Sounds good to me,” John said. “It’ll be a little less … hectic that way. We’ll fish all day and all night and come back Monday morning.”
“Okay,” I said. I still wasn’t sure I believed me.
“Great!” Macy said. “We’ll pick you up at eight.”
Part 2
Chapter 7
I woke up Sunday morning in a melancholy mood. Just before waking, I’d been dreaming something depressing. After I woke up I couldn’t remember anything of the dream. It had all evaporated away, except for the gloom.
The crowd at Gridlock the night before had been unusually light. I’d gotten home fairly early, and when I awoke at seven that morning I felt refreshed and alive, but sad for no good reason.
Then I remembered that Macy and John were picking me up at eight, and I was going on a fishing trip to the desert, and I didn’t really like fishing in the first place, so I didn’t really know what I was going to do there “all day and all night”, as John had said. I couldn’t draw that much.
I fired up a pot of coffee and took a quick shower while it brewed. Afterward, dressed in a robe, I sat down to savor my first cup at the table in the kitchen area.
I wondered what had made me decide to go to the desert with Macy and John. Maybe it was because Macy had turned up and it felt good to have an old friend back in my life. After I’d left Kingman, even my oldest friends hadn’t been very friendly. I couldn’t blame them too much, but that didn’t help my social life any. In the months I’d been bartending in Phoenix, I’d become friendly with the regulars, but that wasn’t the same. All in all, I was glad that Macy had turned up again.
And Macy was going fishing in the desert. It wasn’t my preferred hobby, but I supposed that it would at least be relaxing. I might enjoy myself. I might draw something worthwhile. And maybe, just maybe, I might learn something.
I frowned at my closet at the back of the room, wondering what to wear to the desert. I needed short clothes and long clothes. It was going to be too hot for long pants and long sleeves, but if I wore shorts all day the sun would burn me like a fast food French fry. I decided to wear shorts and a T-shirt and pack jeans and a flannel shirt in my duffel bag. Then I threw in swimming trunks and a towel and an extra T-shirt and socks. I didn’t know what footgear was best for the desert, but my running shoes were all I had that would hold up out there.
I brushed my teeth, then immediately stained them again with another cup of coffee. I wasn’t going to take my toothbrush, then I decided to, just in case. In case what? In case there was a sink out in the desert? The toothbrush and toothpaste went into the duffel bag. Any water, from a canteen or the river or anyplace, was better than moldy teeth. Well, water from almost anyplace.
Then it was just before eight. Macy and John would be stopping in any minute. I poured my last cup of coffee and thought. Did I have everything?
The parking lot for my apartment building was outside my window, and from my chair at the table I could watch my neighbors come and go. Now there were just two little kids playing in a sprinkler puddle. Sharon and Macy would be having a kid soon. I wondered when. I wondered if he or she would wash his or her hair in a puddle like these kids. I wondered where their mother was and how long it would take her to notice her kids washing their hair in the puddle.
Then my mug was empty. I wondered if we would have coffee in the desert. Probably not. Maybe I could get some instant. No, we wouldn’t have any hot water. Strange that a place as hot as the desert would have cold rivers instead of hot. Real men didn’t need coffee in the desert, and they don’t drink instant coffee, anyway. Any minute Macy and John were going to drive through that puddle.
I wondered where real men slept in the desert. I wondered if real men slept in the desert. No. Wait, they must. I wondered if I should take a blanket. No. Real men slept on the ground, under the stars. Besides, it wouldn’t be too cold at night.
Then I snapped my fingers, remembering my initial reason for going to the desert and feeling a little stupid. I dug out my sketchbook and some charcoal pencils and packed them into my duffel bag. Without them, I would have been really bored.
It was ten after eight when I sat down again and drank my la
st cup of coffee. I wondered what was taking Macy so long. I thought about calling him to find out. No. The kids outside had stopped washing their hair. Now they were drinking the puddle water from a doll’s cup. I decided to walk down to Macy’s place to see what was keeping him.
I scribbled a quick note to Macy saying that I was walking to his place and taped it to my door, hoping it wouldn’t attract burglars. As I locked the deadbolt I noticed that I was finally in a good mood. Maybe it was all the coffee. Maybe it was the prospect of a sunny day in the desert. Maybe it was the chance to spend some time with some old friends, or maybe it was seeing the neighbor kids washing their hair in the puddle.
No, it was the coffee.
Even at only a quarter after eight, it was hot on the streets of Phoenix. The temperature was already into the nineties, and with the approaching monsoon, the air was balmy. But the sun was still low enough in the sky for the trees to provide adequate shade, and the bustle and activity of the city’s Sunday morning kept me in good spirits during my walk.
Macy and Sharon’s place, like most of the apartment buildings in Phoenix, was part of a complex. Some developers built pockets of three-story apartment buildings, mostly forming rectangles around courtyards and swimming pools and parking lots. The sign in front of Macy and Sharon’s complex announced that this was Saguaro Terrace. The sign stood on an island of turf between the in-driveway and the out-driveway and the first parking lot. Behind the sign on the island rose not a towering saguaro cactus but a massive palm tree.
The stack and shuffle of cinder block cubicle apartments, with all those immediate neighbors, suggested to me why Macy might be obsessed with the desert: he was probably claustrophobic from living here.
I passed Macy’s truck in the parking lot, and it didn’t take me long to find his apartment, even though I took the long way past the swimming pool to get there. Next to his door was a window with the curtain drawn closed. It looked dark and quiet. Wondering what was or wasn’t going on, I pushed the doorbell button beside the door.
Almost at once, the door opened a crack and Sharon peeked out. Seeing me, she made a disgusted face and opened the door wide for me to enter. I did. It was much cooler inside.
“Macy!” she called toward the back of the apartment. “Your friend is here.”
“Hello, Sharon,” I said.
“Hi,” she returned coldly. The door opened into, and I now stood in, the dining room. To my right was a small kitchen to which Sharon now stomped. Ahead, the dining room became the living room, and on the right of that, behind where the kitchen was, a hallway led to parts unseen and unknown. I presumed Macy was somewhere back there.
Sharon whipped open a cupboard, yanked out a coffee cup, threw the cupboard door closed, and slammed the coffee cup on the counter. She grabbed the pot and dumped some coffee into the cup. After pitching the pot back onto the warmer plate, she stalked back past me to the dining room table. “At least you could close the door, Jack.”
I did.
Macy poked his head out of the hallway. His face was red and his hair rumpled and wet. “Hi, Jack,” he said. “You ready to go out to the desert?”
I nodded. Sharon gave Macy an evil look. He ignored her.
“I just got out of the shower,” he said. “I, uh, overslept. I’ll be ready to go in a few minutes.” He disappeared back into the hallway, then he stuck his head out again. “Go ahead, have a seat.” Then he was gone again.
The dining room table was to my left, and I cautiously pulled out the closest chair and sat down. As I did, Sharon put down her coffee cup and went to the hallway and leaned against the wall.
“I don’t see why I can’t go,” she said to Macy.
I couldn’t hear what he said to her.
“So why does it have to be just you guys?”
Again I couldn’t hear Macy.
“So? You could still do that if I was there.”
Another pause.
“I like fishing, too. And besides, I could lay out and get a tan.”
Macy walked out into the living room wearing shorts and carrying his shirt and socks. “Sharon, I told you. We already decided it would be just us guys. If I say you can go, John’ll be mad ’cause he told Erica she couldn’t go.”
“So, just tell him she can go, too,” she said.
“I can’t,” Macy said, pulling on his T-shirt and sitting on the couch to put on his socks. “We’re not coming back till tomorrow afternoon, and she has to work Mondays. Besides, even if she had the day off, by the time he got her ready it’d be too late. We should already be gone. The day’s flying by.”
The phone rang. Sharon went to the kitchen and answered it. “Hello,” she said. Macy stood up and looked at her. She moved out of his sight, took the phone away from her ear and put it down on the counter. She smiled at Macy as she walked past him into the hallway.
“Well,” he said, “who was it?”
“It’s John,” she called back.
Macy sprinted to the phone. I couldn’t hear most of what he said, but I did catch, “What’s she going to do about work, man, if we’re not coming back till tomorrow night?” I started getting bad vibes about the whole deal. After about a minute of quiet conversation he hung up and gave me a look of great impatience.
“Sharon!” he yelled.
“What?” she yelled back from what I guessed was the bedroom.
“John said Erica wants to go too, so we decided that we would take you girls.”
Sharon stepped out of the hallway. “Sure, just do whatever John tells you to,” she said, and disappeared before Macy could reply.
Macy looked at me and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Women,” he said quietly, so she couldn’t hear.
Sharon packed clothes for them while Macy and I loaded other gear into his truck. In several trips we loaded an empty cooler, a cooler stocked with rolls and meat from the refrigerator, lawn chairs, fishing rods, a bait bucket and my duffel bag. When Sharon had packed their bag of clothes, we loaded that, too.
Then John showed up, saying that Erica would be along in a few minutes, and Macy and John moved John’s fishing gear into Macy’s truck.
And Erica still wasn’t there.
“Come on,” Macy said. “Let’s go have a cup of coffee while we wait.”
Inside, Macy and John and I sat at the dining room table with our coffee while Sharon stood by the living room window, watching for Erica and making sure no one started unloading Macy’s truck.
“You know,” John said in a low voice, “Sharon won’t be able to see Erica if she parks out back.”
“Shhh!” Macy said, his voice just above a whisper, glancing over his shoulder at Sharon. “Just let her be. She seems to be in a good mood right now.”
John smiled understandingly. “So,” he said, his voice normal now, “you want to go up by Horseshoe Lake where we did last time?”
Macy thought a bit. A long bit. John and I sipped our coffee. “No,” Macy said finally, “why don’t we go over to Bartlett Lake?”
John made a face. “I don’t like Bartlett Lake,” he said. “Too many people.”
Macy thought again and we all sipped our coffee. “How about a bit farther up above Horseshoe, then?” he suggested.
John’s eyes kind of lit up and he smiled. “The area of Sheep Bridge,” he said. “Excellent.” Macy smiled too, proud of the suggestion. I was curious.
“What’s so nice about that area?” I asked.
“There’s a lot less people up there,” John explained. “And there’s a lot thicker undergrowth, so there’s a lot more deer.”
“It’s not deer season, though, is it?” I asked.
“It always is,” John said, smiling, “as long as you don’t get caught.”
Macy chuckled.
The doorbell chimed. John got up and answered it. “Hi, Erica,” he said, smiling broadly. “You must have parked around back. Come on in. We were just finishing our coffee.”
He stepped bac
k and she stepped forward into the doorway. “Jack,” John said, “this is Erica Bailey, my girlfriend. Erica, Jack Trexlor, an old friend of Macy’s.”
I saw her, and my breath escaped me.
She wore a neat, trim, pale yellow jumpsuit with short sleeves. The legs were tucked into black boots on her feet, and a thin black belt laced around her waist. Over her shoulder was the strap of her duffel bag. On her head was a wide straw hat. Long, straight, blond hair. Beautiful deep blue eyes.
I couldn’t believe it. Not the fact that she was absolutely gorgeous and she was coming along.
But the fact that I already knew Erica Bailey.
Chapter 8
She looked at me when John introduced us. She looked for only a couple of seconds, and if she recognized me it didn’t show in her face.
“Great!” Macy said, leaping out of his seat. “Let’s get on the road!”
John followed Erica out the door. Sharon immediately came over, complaining about “people growing up in barns”, and cleared away the coffee cups to the kitchen. Erica and John had already walked around the corner when Macy and Sharon and I headed out. As we walked to Macy’s truck in the parking lot, I tried to think of some way to back out. But even with my mind running in high gear, I could think of nothing—except Erica Bailey.
Reluctantly, I followed Macy and Sharon to the truck. Macy’s truck was an older model Chevy, with a simple, squarish body style and a short bed. The truck’s myriad of small dents and its scratched and faded yellow paint showed that it had seen some harsh conditions. I couldn’t tell if it was a four-wheel-drive model, but its thick, knobby tires looked like they could handle a trail.
Seating was a problem. Macy was driving, because it was his truck. John started to climb into the passenger side.
“Excuse me,” Sharon said. “You’re in my seat.”
“No,” John said, “your seat’s in the back.”
