Midnight Cactus

by Bella Pollen

  I clip Emmy and Jack behind stiff webbing seatbelts and after some unintelligible directions from Benjamín, we set off along the Temerosa road, a meandering dirt track of roiling dust and treacherous switchbacks. The truck is unwieldy to drive with a loss of control and marked rear-end sway every time it negotiates a corner, like a big-bottomed woman encountering a revolving door for the first time, but then Benjamín paid only $600 for it so anything over and above moving forwards and backwards has to be considered a bonus.

  ‘So is this our car?’ Jack says.

  ‘Yup. What do you think? Do you like it?’

  Jack sniffs the worn upholstery disdainfully. ‘It smells.’

  ‘It smells like poo,’ Emmy says and giggles wildly at her nerve.

  ‘Why can’t we have our old car?’ Jack demands.

  This would be the point when, under normal circumstances, a watertight defence re the matter of the car would have to be prepared, but the road is so terrifyingly narrow in places, it’s hard to work out how to keep all four wheels within its confines without either busting a tyre on the sharp rocky hillside or, worse, sliding across the pebbles that are scattered on the cliff edge like marbles and toppling into the abyss.

  ‘We can’t have our car, because Daddy’s got it.’

  ‘Why can’t Daddy bring it here?’

  ‘Because Daddy’s using it.’

  ‘Why can’t Daddy get another car and send our car here?’

  An effortless and exhausting litigator, no statement is too trifling for Jack to take issue with. He argues every point to its ultimate conclusion with the dogged tenacity of a prosecution lawyer, which has the knock-on effect of making me feel culpable of some oblique crime I was unaware had been committed.

  ‘Come on, Jack, I like this truck. It’s fun to have a truck. Maybe one night we’ll sleep in it.’

  ‘Tonight, Mummy,’ Emmy immediately says, ‘can we sleep in it tonight?’

  ‘Well no, probably not tonight.’

  ‘You said tonight.’ Jack waits, glare intact.

  What are my rights here? What constitutes the Miranda Escobar of parenting? There’s no question I can remain silent, but I’m equally aware that anything I say can and most definitely will be taken down and used against me. Jack is a startlingly beautiful child with pouting junior heart-throb looks. Unlike most eldest children who emerge from their mother’s womb, usually after a long and arduous labour, as hesitant, neurotic creatures, painfully reflecting their parents’ total capitulation to terror at their arrival, Jack, a controlling child even during pregnancy, announced his readiness to be born by breaking my waters on the dot of four a.m. (the shock of which sent Robert rolling from bed to floor amidst weary apologies, ‘Sorry, so sorry, was I snoring?’) and two hours later shot into the world as a supremely confident, fully functioning dictator.

  And still he waits, his streaky brown hair flopping over one self-righteous eye.

  ‘No, I didn’t say tonight, Jack – I said one night. One night soon,’ I add for Emmy’s benefit.

  ‘Okay, soon,’ Emmy agrees placidly. Emmy has a tenderer heart, it’s true, but before we get all judgemental here, one of her greatest joys in life is to beat her teddies to a pulp so that she can have the pleasure of comforting them afterwards. Jack grunts with disgust at the malleability of his sister and within seconds I hear the Klingon signature tune of his Game Boy pinging into life. I watch in the rear-view mirror as his fingers and thumbs fly across the key pad as if he were typing up a deposition for the impending trial of Jack Coleman versus his mother. Down goes his head and down it stays for the remainder of the journey, impervious to any and all feeble exhortations to admire the view.

  After about five miles of sandy track, I steer the truck over cattle grids marked with orange and black diagonal tin strips, which, like the facade of the cabins, have been shot through with bullet holes. The track becomes rockier as it cuts through the mountain. The verge on the hill side is sculpted into long crumbly sand stalagmites and above these, dotted between bushes and scrubby trees, cacti of every kind are growing. I don’t yet know any of their names but some look like giant porcupines, others like green afros which would make ferocious gangland weapons if used for headbutting purposes. The south side of the slope is degraded and bare, blistered by sun. ‘Quick, look!’ I tell the children. A roadrunner, comically identical to the cartoon version of itself is running below us, parallel to the car. The truck veers around another corner and it disappears out of sight.

  ‘Did you see that, Emmy? Jack?’

  ‘See what?’ Jack says.

  Our nearest town, Ague, turns out to be a pretty strange place. Population 1,000, it’s thankfully far too small to have had any of the McDonald’s, Wendy’s or Burger King franchises stuffed down the throat of its main drag, but the juxtaposition of old Victorian buildings – hotel, post office and saloon in its centre – and the more modern adobe slabs of a petrol station, Uzed car business and hardware store on its outskirts (Ague’s centre and outskirts, by the way, being no more than a couple of blocks from each other) leaves the town looking like a set for some post-modernist spaghetti western which ran out of money just before shooting started.

  Even after we turn into the main road, there’s little traffic. Now and again we overtake a pickup with a spindly looking cowboy behind the wheel, flatbed weighed down with long planks of wood, and a beady cross-bred dog balancing precariously on top. Behind us, an ancient maroon Buick creaks to a stop at the lights, and drawing into the parking space in front of us is a Cadillac whose bodywork is so beat up that the butter-scotch truck looks right at home as I edge it in alongside.

  Historically speaking, Ague’s pièce de resistance is Prestcott’s Hotel, built in 1882, and named after the prospector and founder of the town, Adam Prestcott. Originally, the place consisted of twenty-five cabins and seventy people and its very first property lot sold for the princely sum of $3.50. Ague sprang up on the luck of a group of miners to whom every wash in the area had brought new riches. Right now the town was struggling to claim its lawful place as a site of historical interest, which was tough considering it boasted only one famous gun battle – and that a dubious one – between two warring prospectors who had discovered a bonanza strike at more or less the same time but were both so geographically inept they failed ever to find it again. All this learned from the two girls behind Prestcott’s big oak bar reception, Candy and Sharleen, who wear white lace aprons over neat black skirts and who virtually weep with gratitude when I ask whether Emmy and Jack can use the loo – or restroom, as they politely inform us it’s called. The interior of the hotel is shabby Victoriana with a faded plum carpet, and the whole place has the faintest whiff of school cabbage dinners to it. Brass keys to the bedrooms hang on hooks in an old mail-sorting box but every single one of them appears to be present and accounted for.

  ‘Quietest little place you ever saw this time of year,’ the girls sigh, bringing out a plate of shortbread for the children to gnaw on. But according to Sharleen, in the spring when the desert bursts into bloom, and again in late fall after the sun has ceased pounding the earth with quite such ferocious intensity, people arrive from all over the United States, pop their parents into one of the innumerable retirement homes in Phoenix then celebrate their new-found freedom by touring the old mining towns or visiting Ague and taking part in one of the mock-up Doc Holliday,/ Tombstone-style gun battles staged there daily.

  ‘Oh yeah, it’s sure rip roarin’ those times,’ she says wistfully.

  We eat lunch in the Stage Stop Saloon, where a waitress with impossibly frizzy hair brings us glasses of mineral-tasting iced water and marvels at our accents. The place is decorated with a stuffed buffalo head, old guns and pictures of anaemic-looking miners nailed skew to the walls, and on first glance it might be taken for one of those themed Cowboy ‘n’ Injun restaurants in Leicester Square, were it not for the two actual real-life Indians slouched in a corner booth, dipping tortilla chips int
o a bowl of salsa. In between staring and pointing behind her hand at the Indians, Emmy orders a plate of ketchup and a chocolate milkshake. Jack gets a hamburger which is so overcooked it arrives as black and hard as a hockey puck and the mystery dish I settle for, Navajo bread, turns out to be the sort of thing the God of Impending Obesity might send down to earth as a light starter. It sits on the plate, an airy pillow of golden fried bread covered in chilli beans, chopped tomatoes, grated cheese, shards of iceberg lettuce and diced green chillies. I wimpishly order a child’s portion, which is nevertheless the size of a trampoline, and though it remains in my stomach for many weeks to come there’s no question it’s quite the best thing I’ve ever eaten. While I’m gasping for breath, the waitress comes over and says, ‘Are you still working on that, honey?’ as though it’s a set of accounts that I must diligently sign off on before our bill can be settled.

  By this time, we’ve all had more than enough. It’s late afternoon and the flu-like symptoms from a combination of sleep deprivation, constipation and an eight-hour time difference have crept up on all of us and we trundle back towards Temerosa, shopping bags flapping in the pickup, the children huddled together, eating Reese’s Pieces, dull-eyed and silent.

  I entirely fail to notice the police car on my tail until it snaps on headlights and flashes me. It’s a big white Ford Explorer with a green strip down one side and the whirring red lights of looming trouble. I pull the truck over. I have no idea what the speed limit is round here. The road has been deserted for the last ten miles except for a single rabbit breaking cover and some hairy little things, which I took to be chipmunks, zigzagging under the wheels as though engaging me in a highly amusing game of Russian Roulette.

  The Explorer pulls over behind us. A man in uniform climbs out and adjusts first his hat, then his sunglasses and finally the leather gun holster slung around the hips of his dark beige trousers. Only when he ambles up to the window do I see he’s not the redneck sheriff I assumed, but an Indian boy, a young one, early twenties maybe, with a round, almost Asian-looking face, black hair and skin the colour of a coffee latte.

  ‘Afternoon, ma’am,’ he says politely, tipping the wide brim of his hat.

  ‘Hello,’ I say, examining him tentatively. He’s heavy-boned and muscular, but it’s the kind of muscle that with enough BBQ chips and beer might easily turn to fat.

  He peers through the passenger window at the children who stare back at him with reciprocal curiosity.

  ‘May I see your driving licence, please?’

  I confess to not having it on me.

  ‘It’s an offence not to carry your driving licence, ma’am.’ His English is strongly accented and he speaks in a hesitant, truncated way as though the words are being jerked out of his mouth one by one by a fishing rod and line.

  ‘An offence? Really?’ I fix him with a winsome Joyce Grenfell smile. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, it’s a requirement of the law.’

  I look suitably grave but explain that in England you’re supposed to keep important documents like birth certificates and driving licences all safely locked up in a drawer at home, then nod vigorously as though endorsement of such common sense will confirm me as the very acme of responsibility.

  ‘Uh-uh,’ he says non-committally. ‘May I see some ID, please?’

  I try to remember what’s in my wallet. A switch card, a library card, some dollars ...

  ‘You know, I’m actually not carrying any ID either. See, the thing is, we don’t really have ID in England. In fact even our driving licences are just scrappy old bits of paper without actual photographs on them!’

  The cop’s trousers strain across his thighs as he shifts weight from one leg to the other. ‘Name please, ma’am.’ He hauls a pad out of his back pocket.

  ‘Of course, it’s Coleman. That’s C-o-l-e-m-a-n.’

  ‘Is this your vehicle, Mrs Coleman?’

  ‘Yes, yes it is.’

  ‘May I see the registration documents, please?’

  Any ground gained from my naive-foreigner routine recedes. So overexcited to drive the truck, I never thought to check the whereabouts of any documents, let alone make enquiries as to their existence. For all I know, the truck could have fallen off the back of a lorry – so to speak.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have the registration documents.’

  ‘Are you an Indian?’ Emmy squawks from the back.

  ‘Emmy!’ I turn and glower at her.

  ‘Ma’am, is this your truck or isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it is my truck, it’s just that it’s new – well new to me, anyway, and somebody else bought it on my behalf and ...’

  ‘Ma’am, it’s a requirement of Arizonan law that registration and insurance documents be kept in the vehicle.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say vaguely, keeping a nervous ear tuned to the whispering coming from the back seat. ‘Well ... maybe they are in the vehicle! I mean, where might they be?’

  The cop leans through the window and flips open the glove compartment. Inside is a plastic bag of official-looking papers and I send up a silent prayer of thanks to Benjamín.

  ‘Are you going to scalpel us?’ Emmy now bellows.

  ‘Emmy! Be quiet!’ I turn round. ‘Jack, will you stop it!’

  ‘Stop what?’ he queries.

  The boy unsheathes the papers from their bag and painstakingly begins writing on his pad.

  ‘Did you know you were speeding, Mrs Coleman?’

  Heigh-ho.

  ‘The speed limit on this road is fifty mph. You were making sixty.’

  ‘Gosh,’ I say weakly, ‘who would have thought this old thing could go that fast.’

  ‘Do you have a gun?’ Jack says.

  The boy/cop stops writing. ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘What about a knife?’

  ‘Yuh.’ He slides a penknife out of a hard-leather pouch attached to his belt. ‘You want to see it?’

  ‘Does it have leftover brains on it?’

  ‘Nuh-uh.’ He puts it away again. ‘I just cleaned it.’

  In the mirror I see Jack’s mouth form a silent Oh.

  ‘Mrs Coleman.’ The cop tears off the ticket. ‘The fine for speeding is a hundred dollars.’

  ‘A hundred!’

  ‘Yes, a hundred dollars. You can pay me now.’

  ‘Or?’

  ‘Excuse me, ma’am?’

  ‘Well what if I can’t pay you now?’

  ‘Mrs Coleman, if you don’t pay me you have to follow me back to town and we have to go see the judge.’

  ‘At this time of day?’ I say craftily. ‘Won’t the judge have gone home?’

  He shrugs. ‘Then you can stay in town till morning.’

  ‘In prison?’ Jack says. ‘That would be so cool.’

  ‘Come on, Mummy, in jail! Can we?’ Emmy is drunk with excitement.

  Throwing myself on the cop’s mercy, I swear I will never speed again and explain that today is literally my first day in America.

  ‘Certainly is not,’ Jack says. ‘Liar.’

  ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire,’ Emmy croons.

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am.’

  Defeated, I reach for my bag. The boy relieves me of five twenties and hands back the registration documents.

  ‘Well, don’t be in too big a hurry, Mrs Coleman.’ He slaps the side of the window cheerfully. ‘I spend a lot of time pulling freeway drivers like yourself off that Temerosa road.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’ I eye him sourly, quite sure he’s going to pocket the money for himself.

  ‘Are you a cop?’ Jack says.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Emmy asks.

  ‘Because you don’t look like a cop,’ Jack adds.

  The Indian peers again at the children through the window. Unexpectedly, a dimple opens up in his cheek. ‘Winfred,’ he says. ‘Winfred Tennyson. I’m with the Border Patrol.’ He touches his finger to the brim of his hat. ‘Glad to have been of service, ma’am.’

&n
bsp; ‘A delight all round,’ I mutter at his departing back-side. God knows, there used to be a time when you could charm your way out of a simple speeding fine. ‘Hey, wait!’

  I stick my head out of the window. How on earth did he know we were heading to the Temerosa road? ‘Wait!’ I shout. But it’s too late. Winfred Tennyson adjusts his hat and under the darkening edge of afternoon eases his bulk behind the wheel of his patrol truck and pulls out quickly into the road.

  4

  ‘Have you ever been to England, Benjamín?’ I ask casually.

  ‘Noh, Alice.’ He puts down the London Museum Guide and hastily straightens up.

  ‘I mean that’s not one of them, but there are some good books here.’ I wipe the spine of the Roget’s Thesaurus with a damp cloth, ‘Borrow anything you want, okay?’

  Benjamín’s eyes flick towards me by way of polite acknowledgement. He takes the knife from his back pocket and slices through the masking tape on the next crate.

  ‘What about this, have you ever seen this?’ I hand him a Folger’s Guide to Mexico.

  ‘Noh, Alice, no.’ He scrunches up the used masking tape and yanks open the flaps.

  I like the way Benjamín drops my name into every sentence as if it were a dot of punctuation. You’d feel compelled to shoot an American who did the same, but the cadence of Benjamín’s English is sing-song. When he says ‘no’, for instance, he lands on the ‘n’ as if falling from a great height, but as the ‘o’ is approached his voice swoops up again before coming to rest quaveringly on top, turning what would serve for anyone else as a curt negative into a multi-syllable word capable of expressing a whole range of other nuances – in this particular case, surprise.

  Now whether this is surprise at a silly question, ‘Of course I haven’t seen this, what do you take me for – a goddamn tourist?’ or surprise that such a thing exists, ‘No! Wow, I’ve never seen such a fascinating and informed guide to my own country. Fancy!’ it’s hard to say. On balance I think it unlikely that Benjamín wants to borrow my Folger’s guide book to Mexico just as it’s a long shot he’s going to want to sign out my copy of Anne Tyler’s A Patchwork Planet, also fresh from the crate, but you know – I want him to know he can. Benjamín purses his lips and glances towards the window. Outside the children are pottering around beyond the deck. This afternoon they’re on clean-up duty. Unaware, as yet, that they’re being screwed on the exchange rate, they’re picking tin cans and bits of plastic off the ground and putting them into rubbish bags for the agreed sum of one dollar a bag. The sky above them is deep blue. The sun strong. Idly, I wonder whether I should top up Emmy’s Total Block.