Lullaby Road, page 14
They exchanged looks and Michaela spoke. “You think we know everyone?” All three were solemn. “We’re just old women, Ben.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think you might know people who do know everyone. I have something very valuable he loaned to me. I need to return it to him.” I felt the need to be honest with them, but only to a point. “He might be in trouble,” I added.
This launched a burst of silent chatter between them. Josefina and Tiffany got up from their chairs and took seats on either side of me and Tiffany spoke in almost a whisper. “We don’t know him. We can’t get involved in any trouble, Ben. Especially immigration trouble. It’s immigration trouble?”
I nodded and began to rewrap the burrito in its foil wrapper to take it with me. I apologized for putting them on the spot. “I don’t know what else to do and I don’t want to make his trouble worse. He trusted me with something very special to him.”
Tiffany took my hand and held it in her lap. “Muy especial?”
“Sí,” I said. “Muy especial.”
All I could see were their dark eyes darting back and forth between them, punctuated by eyebrows and squints and twitches in the corners of their mouths. Two Hispanic men wearing cowboy hats and quilted jackets had arrived and were waiting at the window of the trailer maybe twenty or thirty feet away. None of the three women acknowledged the men, and the men glanced toward the ladies, and me. I nodded at the men and as I did one of the ladies, I wasn’t sure which one, said quietly, “Los niños del desierto?” When I turned back to them all three had their heads bowed, praying or in deep thought, I didn’t know. Maybe both. I started to repeat what I had just heard, not certain if I’d heard correctly.
Suddenly all three were laughing and they stood up at the same time. Tiffany shouted to the men in Spanish. The most I could make of it was that I had just told them their food was made in heaven. The men grinned and nodded as if the compliment was meant for them. Starting with Tiffany each hugged me and went to the trailer to serve the waiting men. Michaela was the last and she lingered a second longer while she kissed me on the cheek. As close to my ear as she could manage, she whispered, “We think you’re the one in trouble. Don’t come back here. We’ll find you.”
“Thank you!” I said, loud enough for everyone to hear, and waved the burrito above my head and started toward my truck. The ladies threw big theatrical kisses after me from inside the service window of the trailer.
Inside my cab I gripped the steering wheel for a few seconds before giving my air horn a blast. I thought I had an idea what had just happened, only an idea, though mostly I felt as if I had just been swimming under the surface of a dark Hispanic pool and hadn’t come up for air yet.
I didn’t really believe the ladies were telepathic. They had just been together for so long and knew one another so well they had developed a kind of shorthand. The ladies didn’t appear to be frightened. Maybe they were leaving that to me. I was the one they thought was in trouble. It might have been an easy guess that the loaned item was a child, except the word that they used meant children. Not male or female. Not one, but two or more. Niños. Not just niños, but desierto. Desert children.
They didn’t seem to know Pedro, though I doubted they would have come right out and let me know if they did. The moment I said what he loaned me was very special, something happened between them and the presence of the men at the window ended any further conversation. Michaela said they would find me and I was convinced they would—the sooner the better. When I’m told I’m in trouble I usually know why, or I can narrow down the list of reasons to a top ten. The fact that I didn’t know why worried me. I was glad I left the girl with Phyllis, though trouble has a way of spreading like a stain.
—
Johnson’s Truck Supply and Repair had mostly empty bays when I arrived. They’d run an all-night crew to handle as many trucks as they could for the drivers who figured they’d use the weather downtime to catch up on light maintenance. Most of them had already moved on, leaving the remaining trailer techs with nothing to do but my small job.
Rather than sit in the waiting room I walked the half mile to Ana’s bank and back. It was a brisk and slippery walk. By ten I was on my way to the local hospital to see about buying saline bags for John. If my morning continued the way it was going I would have time for a shower and, weather permitting, be in Rockmuse before dark.
My walk gave me a chance to get the blood pumping into my head again. By the time I returned to Johnson’s to retrieve my truck I was feeling better and less concerned about what had happened, or didn’t happen, at Los Ojos Negros. They were just old women with strange ways. Their community, the Hispanic community, was guarded and a little insulated, and the ladies were protective. Like a lot of immigrants, they had a tendency to think just about anything coming from the outside meant trouble for them—not that they were wrong. There just wasn’t any good reason why I would be in trouble over babysitting the little girl. As for the mention of children and the desert, who knew? No, the ladies weren’t scared; they were simply cautious old women whose powers extended only to creating magic with food.
25
The Southern Utah Regional Hospital was a compact cluster of buildings that sat on a small hill a couple miles from the center of town. It was relatively new and well staffed. If you were sick or injured on the southeast side of the Wasatch it was your only chance. I’d been treated in the emergency room a few times for the side effects of a bad temper, drunkenness, and poor judgment—stabbed, shot, and beaten—dealer’s choice.
There was a heliport behind the hospital, where the one Life Flight helicopter was dispatched. It covered the entire southern Utah desert from Soldier Summit to Moab, about a thousand square miles, which meant it was frequently landing and taking off, sometimes several times a day due to highway accidents, injured four-wheel drivers, ranch mishaps, and mountain biking and hiking tourists who were so busy enjoying the desert and rock formations they left their common sense in their travel trailers or hotel rooms.
It isn’t often I get a view from the opposite direction. The hospital parking lot looked out over Price and to the southeast across the desert all the way to the mesa that loomed above Highway 117 and Rockmuse. My view didn’t go that far. Somewhere out on 117 a dark haze blocked the horizon. It was either snowing, or maybe raining, or simply socked in with fog. Or all three at once, plus the incessant wind. Whatever the weather was out there, it didn’t bode well for Life Flight taking off to get John, or my return trip.
The waiting area of the emergency room was almost empty. The place brought back memories I couldn’t remember, since I had been drunk or otherwise semiconscious when I was admitted for most of them. A young woman with two small boys fighting and holding back tears sat near the reception desk. The boys had streaks of blood on their faces and patches of blood-matted hair on their scalps. Their mother gave me a weary smile as I passed them.
“Some things never change,” I said. “Let me guess, rock fight?”
She nodded and the boys began to cry anew. I pointed to my head. “Threw a few myself. I’ve got the scars to prove it.”
The receptionist watched me speak to the mother and was poised to ask me the nature of my injury. A female doctor was sitting at a small desk in an open cubicle behind her. Without getting up, and without actually looking at me, she said, “Mr. Jones, what a nice surprise to see you.” There was nothing in her voice that would give anyone the impression that it was either a surprise or nice.
She was the head doctor of the emergency ward. Her name was Wanda Stafford and she had treated me on a few occasions. On at least one of them, I had asked her out for a drink, though she was pushing fifty and her blond hair was pulled back so tight it made her face look as if she were a pale sun-dried tomato caught in a wind tunnel. I still recalled her reply: “Not on your life.” I asked her why and she said there wasn’t enough time to give me all the reasons. I could guess a couple dozen of them right off the bat—starting with drunk and in police custody.
I said hello to Dr. Stafford and, thinking she had warmed to me, I said, “I’m glad it’s a nice surprise.”
As it turned out, I was mistaken about the warmth. “What I should have said is, it is a nice surprise to see you without a police escort and handcuffs.”
The young mother suddenly decided she needed to keep her boys closer.
There was no use denying our past encounters, so I didn’t. “I found Jesus, Dr. Wanda,” I said. “I’m a changed man.”
She swiveled around to face me but she wasn’t about to get out of her chair for the likes of me. “My condolences to Jesus,” she said. “As much as I’d like to believe that, I highly doubt it.” I did my best to appear changed, though since I didn’t know what that would actually look like, I shrugged my acceptance.
I told her I wanted to buy some saline bags for an injured man in Rockmuse.
This got her out of the chair. “You mean the victim of the hit-and-run?”
I nodded. “Life Flight couldn’t get there yesterday and maybe not today either, from what I can see of the weather out that way. I drove all night to get here. I’m going back soon as I get the saline.”
Dr. Stafford and the receptionist, who might have been all of eighteen, exchanged glances. “Was the victim a friend of yours?”
I answered yes before it hit me how the question was phrased. “He’s the whack job who hauls the cross up and down….‘Was’?”
“He didn’t survive.” There was just a hint of kindness in Dr. Stafford’s voice and that threw me as much as anything else. “I’m sorry,” she added. “When did you leave him?”
“Late yesterday afternoon.”
“The call came in last night. The main switchboard took it. I only know because I review all the Life Flight calls first thing in the morning when I come in.”
Whether it was the expression on my face or the fatigue in my shoulders, Dr. Stafford told the receptionist she’d be in Exam Room 1 and invited me to follow her. She poured two Styrofoam cups of coffee on the way and handed me one as we sat down in the small room.
“I really am sorry. This happens more than I’d care to admit, but it comes with the territory. Small budget. Big demand. We can’t be everywhere at once, or anywhere when this weather hits.”
I sipped the coffee and discovered my lips were quivering too much to take in any coffee. I was embarrassed. “Dumb son of a bitch,” I said. “Twenty years he’s been out there spring to fall. He used up all his miracles. You can see that damn cross bobbing on the shoulder for miles. People just don’t pay much attention. They get lulled by the road. The scenery is monotonous. They go too fast. It had to happen.” I made another attempt to sip the coffee and succeeded. “It had to happen,” I repeated, and saying it again made it real.
“The driver left the scene?”
“Yep,” I replied. “An old desert rat found him and brought him to town on the hood of his WWII Jeep.”
“Was the victim—”
I interrupted her. “His name was John.”
“Was John conscious when he was found? Ambulatory?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Was the driver alone?”
“Why?”
“Then the old desert rat who found him must have been in great shape. I didn’t know—John,” she said. “Unless he was a small man, and I doubt that if he carried a cross, lifting or moving dead—” She caught herself and began again. “Lifting an unconscious person of substantial size and weight is hard work.” She thought for a moment. “It’s possible. People in extreme situations sometimes manage to do what might be considered impossible. It doesn’t matter, really. I don’t imagine the Highway Patrol has been out there to investigate yet.”
I told her that Trooper Smith hadn’t made it out and might not for a while. “When the weather gets bad he’s busy. He tried though. Chances are whoever hit John will be just another mystery. It will have a lot of company in the desert. We did our best to save him, and that’s all that matters now.”
“Who’s ‘we’? You must have had someone with medical experience if you knew you needed to keep him hydrated.”
I didn’t want to say too much. Conway made it clear he wanted to protect his privacy and I understood. “There was a retired doctor visiting in town. He did what he could.”
“Who?”
“You probably wouldn’t know him,” I said. “Maybe he could have done more if we’d had some medical supplies on hand. A long time ago there was a small clinic. It closed a few years after the coal mine closed. Nothing since.”
“Wait here,” she said.
A few minutes later Dr. Stafford returned. “We usually have a few prepackaged emergency medical supply chests. Not much. The basics. When Life Flight can’t land or extract the victims due to terrain or weather, the kits are dropped into the accident scene and used to stabilize the patient. I thought we had a few extra kits ready to go.”
I told her I appreciated the gesture. She took a moment and studied me as if she was making her mind up about something. “Are you really a born-again Christian?”
“Nope,” I answered. “I wasn’t a Christian the first time either.” I raised my Styrofoam cup in her direction. “But I’ve been sober for a few years now.”
“I’m happy to hear that.” She sounded genuine enough. “I’m not a Christian myself, born-again or otherwise. It was Rupert Conway, wasn’t it?”
Her question startled me, coming as it did out of nowhere. When she said his name my face answered her question. Maybe she planned it that way.
“You know him?”
“No, I know of him. I’m surprised he’s still alive.”
“Don’t cause any trouble for him. Please,” I said, “he’s got enough.”
“Trouble?” She actually smiled. “No, Ben. I promise. He grew up right here in Price, you know. I wasn’t surprised when I heard a rumor that he’d returned. That was a few months ago. I guess he came home to die.”
“What happened to him?”
“Humanity, Ben. Humanity happened to him. Worked overtime on him. From what I know, it’s a miracle that anyone could convince him to practice medicine in any capacity, and candidly, I don’t blame him. If any part of what I heard is true, it’s also a miracle he was able to be of any assistance. Modern medicine can heal and prolong life but every physician has seen patients die when they should have lived. In Dr. Conway’s case, there wasn’t any medical reason why he shouldn’t have died from his injuries.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. If you want to know what happened to him you should ask him yourself. I treat a lot of ranchers and desert folks, outdoor adventure types, all tough men and women like you. Or think they are. If you have the guts to ask him, and he decides to tell you, all I can say is, I hope you’ve got a strong stomach. I don’t know all the details. I’ve been an ER physician for almost thirty years and I’ve seen physical and emotional trauma that would make a corpse turn away. If just a small part of what I heard was done to him is true, then even I don’t have the stomach to hear about it.”
“I doubt I’ll get around to asking him,” I said. “No reason. I probably won’t ever see him again. If it hadn’t been an emergency for a friend, I wouldn’t have asked in the first place. He greeted me with a shotgun. The man would have used it too. I was lucky.”
She didn’t seem surprised. After a deep sigh, she said, “Can you come back in a couple hours? I’ll get one of those emergency medical kits made up for you to take back to Rockmuse. It might come in handy next time. Trust me, there will always be a next time.”
I asked her how much and explained I didn’t have much cash, though I did have a credit card.
“No charge, Mr. Jones. I’ll add a few more items that might come in handy.” She actually winked at me. “But let’s keep this between us.”
I thanked her and we parted ways. There was no longer a big rush to return to Rockmuse and I felt like a long, hot shower, followed by a lingering memorial imaginary cigarette to say my goodbye to John. Highway 117 wouldn’t be the same without its resident religious wing nut. Neither would I. Maybe I would wait and have that cigarette out in the desert halfway between nowhere and nothing and pretend he was there with me.
26
My duplex is in east Price, on a narrow street with a few anemic trees and a broken sidewalk and older, small houses with dirt yards. The neighbors didn’t like it when I parked my big rig on the street. I understood, though a lot of them parked their vehicles in their front yards, which also served as open-air storage units for used appliances, yard furniture, gas barbeques, and swing sets. The fact that I kept my weedy, mostly dirt yard free of cars and junk made me the uppity one in the neighborhood.
I knew my neighbors’ vehicles, running or not, and there was a late-model Cadillac Escalade pickup with Nevada plates parked in front of my duplex. Seeing those useless pieces of machinery always made me laugh, because their beds were too small to carry anything of real importance and their gear ratio didn’t allow for a decent towing capacity. They were a joke to any real workingman, which is why I often heard them referred to as cowboy limos, and the disdain extended to those who drove them. Of course, if I had the money to afford one I probably would have been less critical. Maybe not. Either way, that particular vehicle was out of place on my street. People on my street worked, or were trying to find work, and their vehicles had a job to do, even if that job was serving as a semi-mobile storage unit.
I passed by the Cadillac pickup and parked on the next block. Ginny was sitting on the steps of our shared front porch wrapped in a quilt. My attention was on the vehicle or I would have seen her when I drove by. She watched me as I walked up the sidewalk. Even from a distance I could tell she had been crying. Ginny was not prone to crying. I’d only seen her cry once before.
