Lullaby Road, page 4
Dan was waiting for me in his open doorway wearing a dirty bathrobe with no drawstring, no shirt, and nothing but a pair of tighty-whiteys, that weren’t all that tight and far from white—and worn cowboy boots that had seen better days twenty years ago. I’m not exactly a fashion icon myself, but underwear, bare legs, and cowboy boots was never a look I much cared for, though I’d seen it a few times, and not just on men, I’m sorry to say. As a manner of dress, even in the desert, it seemed to make a quiet statement about life that made you afraid to get too close for fear of attitude contamination, and your own good hygiene. It wasn’t a look I’d seen on Dan before, and while I guessed his age in his late forties, his attire made him timeless in the worst way.
With perhaps a bit more conviction and an earnest please I told the girl and the dog to stay inside. Dan had been expecting me and stood his ground in the doorway as I walked up to him. “It’s a little cold for sunbathing, isn’t it?”
He ignored me. “I wasn’t sure you’d make it,” he said. “I could use that drum of water.”
I bit my tongue. He did need to use some water, preferably hot and soapy. “I usually make it.”
Dan offered to give me a hand and together we strolled across the frozen ground to the rear of the trailer, his robe flapping in the breeze. The power lift gate worked fine. Fifty-gallon plastic drums of water were damn heavy, right at five hundred pounds, and I kept a manual forklift jack in the trailer for such loads. Maneuvering the drums onto the lift was a chore and his help was welcome. I stood on the raised lift gate and yanked at the sliding door strap and damn near tore my arm off. It didn’t budge. My first thought was ice on the interior door tracks. I kicked around the edges to loosen it up and pulled again. Same result.
At that moment I knew what the problem was. Before I could say anything Dan pointed to the offending shrapnel left by the semi and announced he saw the problem and went off to get a ladder. I took the opportunity to look in on my road crew and satisfied they were doing okay I went back and waited for Dan. As he hiked toward me I couldn’t help thinking that I wished the ladder covered up more of him.
He slapped the ladder against my trailer and scampered up. “What in the hell is this?”
“Just what it looks like,” I said.
He gave it a bit of thought and suggested he could knock it loose with a sledgehammer and drive it through to the inside. How the mirror got embedded in the side of my trailer was a matter of indifference to Dan. Indifference was a currency almost all my customers traded in, and so did I, though I chose to think of it as minding my own business which, in the Utah desert, greatly contributes to continued survival.
I gave Dan’s suggestion a minute of consideration. While I stood there with my hand on the ladder I looked up at his beefy legs and a breeze blew the robe aside and exposed his soiled, threadbare underwear. When I said, “Hell no,” I was commenting as much on the view as I was about his solution. “I’m not going to tear up my trailer.”
“I need my water. What’s your plan?”
The day was already headed for shot and I had two very valuable pieces of cargo. The jury was still out on the dog. If I couldn’t deliver to Dan it meant I couldn’t make any of my other deliveries either. My only choice was to drive straight to Rockmuse and see if I could get Toby, the elderly widower who owned the Rockmuse Collision Center, to pry the offending mirror out and get my sliding door working again, preferably with as little damage as possible and quickly. Toby had to have a more delicate approach and better tools than Dan and a sledgehammer. I wasn’t certain of this, but I was hopeful. Like most rigs, including trailer, mine was leased and a gaping hole in the side did not fall under the description of “normal wear,” meaning it would cost me plenty when my lease was up.
I offered Dan the two five-gallon water containers I kept behind the driver’s seat and told him my plan. “That should hold you until I get back this way later today.”
“Well, it won’t.”
I rarely had sharp discussions with my customers. I rarely had discussions at all. Silence joined with indifference to keep conversations to nods and shrugs. Sometimes it almost compensated for how long it took some of them to pay me. If Dan and I had words it wouldn’t be the first time. A couple years back when it was all I could do to eat and pay for diesel, Dan owed me several hundred dollars, which he kept promising to pay. Then one day I saw him driving a brand-new Chevrolet pickup with all the bells and whistles. When I confronted him he pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills and begrudgingly paid his bill. He’d stayed current since.
“It will damn well have to,” I said. “I’ll stop on my way back to Price.”
Dan tried to stare me down for a few seconds and gave up and stomped into his house and slammed the door so hard a chunk of sod broke loose and fell to the ground. I took out one of the five-gallon containers and put it near his door. I thought for a minute and then went back and got the second one and put it next to the other. I’m usually not an asshole if I take a minute to think it over. Sometimes I need more than a minute.
I pulled out of Dan’s place in low gear. As my rig crawled up the hill I began thinking how he was no different from most of my customers when it came to an income, which, if they had one, was as lowly and fragile as their desert existence. As far as I knew, which wasn’t far, some ran a few cattle, or horses, or scraped by one way or another with small gardens or crafts or, in a few cases, a few dollars in savings from another, nearly forgotten, life or relative. I was completely in the dark when it came to Dan. His means were a mystery and, to hear them tell it, a mystery to the three wives I had met.
Once, on a long ago April 15, I commented to Cal, the Rockmuse postmaster, that he should probably be getting a lot of traffic during business hours as folks pushed the deadline to file. We both had a good laugh. Then he brought out a big box of envelopes, all with various government return addresses, including the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration.
Cal told me it was one box of almost sixty going back since before he became postmaster. “If you make a ton of money you pay no taxes. If you make no money you don’t even bother to file. Hell, an IRS agent comes by here at least once a year. They always send a different new young guy all buttoned down full of himself.” He pointed out toward the desert just beyond the low buildings of Main Street. “I tell every one of them the answer to their question is out there, which is pretty much what rich people and corporations tell the government, though I’m sure they have accountants and lawyers do the talking.
“Sure, sometimes someone’s boat comes in.” He tapped one of the model airplanes swinging from a wire above his head and watched as it gently swung back and forth. “It’s usually about the same size as this.”
We both watched the little P-38 model and Cal said, “You remember Karl and Wilhelmina…hell, I can’t recall their last name.” When I said I remembered them, they had both passed a few years earlier, Cal said: “They had that little sand and rock patch out off 117 where they raised a few ponies.
“An IRS agent came in one day and asked me if I knew where to find them. I did my point and shrug show for him and he left. But I ran into Karl a couple days later and told him an agent from the IRS was looking for him. ‘Is that so?’ he said. ‘I gave a kidney and three fingers in WWII. I gave my son to Vietnam. You see that fellow again, you tell him I’m paid in full.’ Karl and Wilhelmina both died not long after that. They’d been dead a month out there until someone found them—next to each other in bed, or so I heard.”
I remembered. I had been the one who found them. Either Karl or Wilhelmina had put a note on the door: “Ben—come in. We’re waiting on you.” They’d ordered a new wood-burning stove and asked me to deliver it when it arrived. Six weeks later it had and I did. I thought the note was a little strange, since they had no idea when I would deliver the stove, though if I stopped to consider every strange thing that happened during an average day I wouldn’t ever get through my route on schedule. Cal heard right. That’s how I’d found them.
Cal had said, “You know the difference between you and the US Postal Service?” I waited for him to answer his own question. “You only deliver what people ask for.”
I guessed that was true enough, which was why most people on 117 chose to forgo addresses and mailboxes so almost all US mail on 117 was sent General Delivery, Rockmuse, Utah—which they usually ignored and refused to pick up, sometimes for years. They’d rather sacrifice and pay me to deliver even little stuff the US Postal Service would have delivered at little charge or for free. When I showed up they knew exactly what they were getting and nothing else. I didn’t entirely understand it, but I was thankful for the mystery.
But that damn new Chevy pickup of Dan’s set my teeth against each other. Whatever Dan’s ship, it had been a sight bigger than a model airplane. By the time I’d pulled onto 117 I realized I hadn’t seen his pickup out in front of his place where it was usually parked. In fact, I hadn’t seen it in a long while, nor the soon-to-be new Mrs. Dan Brew. Maybe that’s why Dan was in such a state, though whether it was the loss of the pickup or the loss of his bride, or both, was no concern of mine. Dan’s ship had gone out to sea again, maybe with his truck and probably his fiancée, and for all I knew his pants as well.
7
I followed 117 southeast toward Rockmuse, which was a good sixty-plus miles, figuring if I got my door repaired in a decent amount of time I could get through all my deliveries, including the water to Dan, and back to Price before dark. The sun-brightened miles slipped by as the towering granite mesa loomed larger on the horizon and the girl and the dog dozed off and on lulled by the low, steady hum of the engine and high whine of the tires.
For the first time since leaving the Stop ‘n’ Gone I felt as I usually did heading out on 117, like I was going home, or as close to a home as I had ever known. Maybe home was too strong a word. Once I was on 117 the asphalt wound out ahead of me and I always felt a little better. The desert was a familiar unknown and I was properly respectful, filled with purpose and just damn glad to see what I had been seeing for twenty years, and seeing it new every day, always the same but different.
The sun glared up off a patch of ice as I came over a small rise and when it cleared I saw the cross bobbing along the shoulder maybe a mile ahead. With all the excitement of the morning I’d forgotten about John and the life-size crucifixion cross he hauled up and down 117 from late spring to winter. Given that winter came on so quickly and early it made sense the weather caught him out on the road.
John, or Preach, as everyone else called him, was a dependable mystery. No one knew his last name or exactly when he had arrived, though sometime after the coal mine had closed almost twenty years earlier. His church, if you wanted to call it that, was the First Church of the Desert Cross, denomination unknown and unimportant. Located in what was once a True Value Hardware store in downtown Rockmuse, it consisted of a handful of deck chairs on a scarred wooden plank floor and not much else. When John was in town he preached up a storm to the congregation of empty deck chairs. He slept on a surplus army cot behind a makeshift pulpit, which was really only a couple of plastic milk crates that had been duct-taped together.
Infrequently one or a few people would show up, I assumed on purpose, which wasn’t how I’d met him. I had been unaware that the hardware store had closed, and I was in search of a half-inch socket drive to repair my truck. Once inside the door I was too embarrassed to leave, so I sat through most of an entire fire-and-brimstone sermon. When he finished, well over two hours later, my heathen ass had gone to sleep. Even though I was the only one there, he stood at the door as if there were a long line behind me and shook my hand and thanked me for coming.
It wasn’t until some time later, out on 117, that I explained why I had been at his church. He took the news with measured joy, noting that in God’s plan there were no accidents. “Jesus sent you to his house,” he said. “The socket drive was just the burning bush.”
Over the years I’d often pull over and converse with John, if I had time and he was on schedule and we were both so inclined. He managed to travel about ten miles a day. In the evening he would camp at one of his unofficial Stations of the Cross campsites along 117. He had attached a bracket and a rubber tire from a wheelbarrow to the road-end and strapped a pack with some camping supplies to the cross. Other than that, his was a pure stocker of a cross, right down to the hand-hewn hardwood and dimensions, and damn heavy.
I passed John and pulled over a couple hundred feet in front of him. It was still cold out, though there was very little snow along the shoulder. He didn’t drink coffee, or anything but water, which I usually carried. I set the brakes and requested everyone stay put. The baby was asleep. It seemed best to keep them both where it was warm and where the girl and the dog would be safe from traffic, if there was any. Though it was only John, I figured keeping the girl’s presence a secret was probably a smart move. My roadside visits with John never lasted very long.
I hopped out and waited for him with a thermos of water. He’d been at it for a while, probably since before dawn, and his tattered old down parka hung over the tip of the cross like a khaki surrender flag. I could see the sheen of sweat on his face as he approached.
John lowered the cross from his back, stretched his fingertips to prod the sky, and took the thermos from me and gulped down the water, careful as always not to waste even a drop into his white beard. He handed me the thermos. “Praise the Lord.”
“Got caught with your skivvies down out here, didn’t you?”
“Depends,” he said.
“On what?” I asked, both curious and a little afraid to hear his answer.
“On what you mean by ‘out here.’ The Lord has a plan,” he said, “and when you give yourself to it, you’re always ready. To my way of thinking, there is no ‘out here’ only here. God’s plan unfolds everywhere.”
“Is that so?” I said, pointing above us to the mirror embedded in my trailer. “Tell me that was God’s plan. And I thought I was ready.”
John was quick on the uptake and guessed what was lodged in the side of my trailer and exactly how it got there. He nodded solemnly keeping his eyes on the damaged trailer. “The Lord was watching out for you, Ben. His plan shall be revealed.”
“This little break of good weather will change, John.” I almost always called him by his first name, though many in the desert either didn’t know it or didn’t care. To them his name was Wacko or Wingnut or, at best, Preach. “Don’t you think God’s plan might be for you to use the brains he gave you to get the hell off this road and come in from the cold?”
John seldom smiled, and when he did his long white beard seemed to dance. “Maybe,” he said. “But God gave me this road and the glory of the day. Seems a little ungrateful to leave it because of bad weather.” He stared up at the blue sky and bent his tall body over and touched his toes. “That felt good,” he said. “I got a new pouch of tobacco.”
This was my cue. “I’ve got some fire.”
Both of us had quit smoking years before but somehow we had set upon a ritual of pretending to have a smoke during our roadside meetings. John pulled imaginary papers and pouch from the lapel of his denim work shirt and went about rolling a cigarette, never taking a shortcut, every motion and detail exact.
John put the cigarette between his lips and leaned forward. I struck a Diamond match against my beard, which was as nonexistent as the match itself. Part of God’s plan was for me to not have much of a beard, owing maybe to my mixed heritage. The match head popped to life and we could smell the acrid sulfur in the air between us. John inhaled and let the smoke ease out into the desert breeze.
John handed me the cigarette. “I know it’s a sin, but I do enjoy a good smoke. The Lord has forgiven me so much.” He winked at me. “I like to think he’ll forgive me for allowing this poison into his temple.”
John had his back to approaching traffic and didn’t see the Utah Highway Patrol cruiser crest the hill behind him. “We’ve got company.”
8
John turned and we both watched as the vehicle slowed and pulled over behind my truck. We both knew the trooper, Andy Smith, who seemed to be the only real law that ever made it down Highway 117, and only rarely at that. He’d been on the Utah Highway Patrol for about ten years, all of it out in the southeastern desert region. Most of his time was spent on US 191 between Price and Green River. Andy wasn’t exactly a friend, but he was more than an acquaintance. I liked him and our meetings; most of them had not been official.
I waited to see if Andy would put on his hat. If it was official, troopers always put on their hats. No hat this time. He waved as he walked toward us. The wind caught some strands of his fine blond hair and stood them at attention like a Mormon Mohawk. “Morning, gentlemen.”
John and I both said our good mornings. John was acquainted with Andy, though never officially, as far as I knew. I knew for a fact Andy from time to time would cruise a part of 117 just to check on John. There was no question that John was a bona fide crazy, but the general consensus was that he was our crazy and as such some of us allowed for a certain acceptance and communal guardianship. Also, out in the desert, John had some serious competition in the crazy sweepstakes that sometimes almost made him and his cross seem pleasantly ordinary.
Andy’s stop might have been just courtesy and yet he seemed to have something on his mind. I passed the cigarette back to John and Andy, knowing of this ritual, watched the cigarette go from John’s hand to his lips.
“Can I get a hit of that?”
“Can you get a ‘hit’?”
Even John seemed startled and more than a little amused. He started to hand over our imaginary cigarette. “Hold up there a second,” I said. “I don’t think John and I want to be involved in contributing to the delinquency of a Mormon.”
