by Clyde Witt
“Sorry,” she said, and tightened her grip on her fork. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Well, we saw your DCUs and thought maybe you’d been deployed. Afghanistan, maybe.”
She turned in her seat to face the officer. “Okay, pal. I’m not real sure what we’re talking about, here.”
The second patrolman approached. “Desert camo pants and boots. Thought you might be a vet,” he offered.
“Oh, yeah, I get it, now. Nope. I bought this fancy clothing to blend in out there,” she said with a nod of her head toward the mountains. She felt her face warm. “Actually, I’m a bird watcher. We like to blend in with the bushes and rocks, too.”
The patrolmen smiled, again. “Right. Where you going to watch the birds?” asked the braver of the pair.
The second man tapped his buddy on the shoulder. “Fred, I’m heading home. See ya in the morning—early.”
Aston watched as Fred’s partner headed through the lobby of the hotel. When the man was out of sight, Fred asked, “Mind if I sit?”
“Ah, no, not at all. Name’s Aston and I guess you’re Fred,” Aston said and wiped her lips with her napkin, but did not offer her hand.
“Right. So where are you going birding?” he asked and signaled the waitress for a cup of coffee. “We patrol this whole area all the time. It’s our home turf. Maybe I can help.”
“Know where I can find the Five-striped Sparrow?”
“Hmm. Where was he last seen and how many stripes was he wearing?”
Aston laughed. She rubbed the back of her neck and bit into her lower lip. “You have potential, Fred. I’m currently from Cleveland, Ohio. I possess a valid U.S. passport, no guns, drugs, or any of that other shit, so you can’t arrest me.”
“Not harboring any fugitives, are you?”
“Nope. Don’t even know any. Well, not too sure about my friend, Gabby.”
“What did she do?”
“Not a she, a he. He was a DEA agent out here back in the day, as he calls it. Long before you guys came along when the worst thing they had to deal with was Mexicans swimming the river with their clothes bundled on the top of their heads.”
The last bit of daylight dropped behind the mountains and came through the window to create long shadows in the restaurant.
“Yeah, better days, for sure. Bad guys only carried sticks, not AR15s. So, about birding?”
Aston pressed her lips together and swallowed hard. She looked over at a waitress clearing tables then said, “Well, my, ah, plan for tomorrow is to head up Ruby Road. A friend says the sparrow used to nest up here, near an old ghost town.”
“Yeah, Ruby. The old mining town’s still there. The mine’s still there, too. It’s all private land. Nothing much more than holes in the ground, old shafts all over the place and a lot of nasty hombres. I can’t say that’s the safest place for a bird watcher, especially one traveling alone.”
Aston cleared her throat and leaned forward. “Well, you could be my armed escort, if you’re not doing anything.”
“Can’t think of anything I’d enjoy better,” he said as he started to rise. “Except Jackson and me have a shit load of work to do tomorrow since the President is honoring us with a visit at the end of the week. Want me to ask around to see if one of the female officers might have the day off?”
“Ah, no thanks, Fred,” she said as he pushed out of the booth. “I’ll chance it. Gabby gave me a good knife for killing rattlers, if need be.”
Aston drank her first coffee of the day while driving west on Route 289. She came to Ruby Road and turned south on Forest Road 39 to the spot where the Blue Buntings played in the puddle the day before. Giant saguaro cactus arms cast long shadows across the road. She checked the bird action at the puddle, much smaller now, in the middle of the road before splashing through. The ham sandwich on the seat next to her smelled good. She looked at the dashboard clock. Only eight, a bit too early for lunch. She checked the odometer as she drove, afraid to miss the spot where the old mine should be located. At the top of a hill, precisely at the odometer’s twenty-five mile mark from where Ruby Road started, on the left, was a wide gravel turn-off that must have once been the road to the town or mine.
A huge irregular array of beams and pipes arched over the road, indicating an entrance to something at some time in the past. On the right stood three old buildings leaning in the same direction as if pushed by a wind storm. Leftovers from an old cowboy movie, she thought. The buildings were surrounded by huge piles of rocks, probably mine tailings. She lowered the window and scanned for the location of a mine entrance with her binoculars. Nothing. Plenty of birds around and a ground squirrel or two. She scanned the other side of the road, then back to the trash piled up deeper in, on the other side of the padlocked gate.
The bleating sound of a car horn made her scream and pitch forward. She hit her head on the steering wheel and slammed her right hand on the dashboard.
“What the fuck!” She turned and stared into the black windshield of huge white SUV adorned with green stripes and lettering boldly declaring, US Border Patrol.
Leaning out the driver’s side window, grinning from ear to ear was Fred. He stepped from the vehicle after looking at his hair in the side mirror, and adjusted his gun belt as he walked toward her car. She could make out the silhouette of another officer in the passenger seat. Aston pushed her door open, rested her feet on the gravel road, took a deep breath, and rubbed her forehead with a balled fist.
“Hope I didn’t scare you,” he said.
“No, not at all. You think this wet spot in my pants is where I spilled my coffee, you jerk? I thought you had a lot of paperwork to do this morning.”
“I do, or did. One of our spotters called it in. Said there was some suspicious activity up here, so I volunteered to come up and take a look.”
“Do I look suspicious?” she said, standing and gasping for breath, binoculars held in her left hand. “Jesus H. Christ you scared me.”
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry. Find your bird, yet?”
“No, and I probably won’t with you tooting your horn all over the place. Why not use the lights and siren, too?”
Fred turned to go back to his car. “Okay. I get it. I’m outta here.”
Aston walked back to the SUV. The vehicle was so large it was easy for her to rest her left arm on the open window frame, inches from where Fred sat. The air coming through the open window felt cool in the heat of the morning. She assessed his partner. The guy had to be her age in a uniform too clean and well pressed. The body armor he wore appeared oversized on his thin body, which added to his stress. His wide-eye expression told her he didn’t have a clue about what might be going on.
“Sorry you had to witness this little lover’s spat,” Aston said to the young man. She smiled as the pink color rose from beneath the man’s collar into his face.
“Aston, I should bust you for insulting an officer of the law—Shultz over there, and parking your vehicle in the middle of the road with the engine running,” Fred said.
Aston did not look at him but at his partner. “Is that a real law, or does he say that to all the girls?”
The young officer cleared his throat and alternated his eyes between Aston and Fred. “Well, I, ah—”
“Shultz, I advise you to say nothing, or I’ll write you up as an accomplice, and in-subordinating a superior officer.”
Aston leaned in and gave Fred a quick kiss on his clean-shaven cheek. “Thanks for looking after me, pal. I think I got it from here.”
Fred rubbed the spot where she kissed him, cleared his throat and said, “Oh, well now Miss, if you’ll move your vehicle so we can get on with our duties of protecting democracy from enemies, foreign and domestic.”
Aston sat and waited, eyes focused on the side-view mirror, watching the tan cloud of dust rising from Fred’s vehicle
drift to the north and settle. She shrugged, hoisted on her backpack and walked toward the locked gate. The two water bottles she packed sloshed in time with her steps as she approached the rusted chain holding the two sections of the gate together. She studied the situation as quiet returned, along with the cacophony of insects and birds. The fence east of the locked gate disappeared in a jumble of greenery; cactus mixed with plants she could not name. As she searched for an opening, movement in the grass to her left caught her attention. She pulled Gabby’s knife from its sheath. When the stalks of grass parted, a large, dark, hairy, spider crawled toward her.
“Holy shit. You are the biggest spider in the world,” she said to the tarantula and stepped back. The spider paid no attention and kept moving across the path. Aston stepped aside and returned the knife to its sheath. She licked sweat from her upper lip and flapped her arms trying to dry her armpits.
Fifty feet farther along the fence line, behind the bushes, she found a spot where the barrier fence had collapsed. The break offered easy access into the mining compound. A narrow trail drew her in and provided passage through scrubby trees, high grass and bushes. She picked up a stick and beat at both sides of the path to scare off any critters. Beyond the trees, not visible from the road, lay all sorts of metal parts and pieces of things she was unable to name, but guessed it was old mining paraphernalia. She checked the battery level of her cell phone and started to take pictures of the trash. Scattered about, lying on their sides, were what looked like old mine cars. Metal boxes of all shapes and sizes were stacked near rusty train rails that ran in a curved direction deeper into the compound. She paused for a drink of water. “Man, there’s so much junk laying around here it would be easy to hide anything, even an elephant,” she said to another passing tarantula.
The rail tracks abruptly disappeared on the other side of the first clearing. There, a path started and the trail continued through tall brush. A smaller clearing, with more junk and litter, opened when she broke through a barrier of trees. Toward the center of this field stood an old refrigerator, its door missing. On either side of it stood a clothes washer and dryer. She paused, listened to bird chatter, and decided identifying birds by sound would be impossible for her out here.
She walked toward the relics and used the stick to tap the appliances in hopes of scaring spiders. “What are you guys doing here in the middle of a spot that went bust before you were even born?” she asked the dusty appliances. Aston drew in a breath and continued along the path. For the next hour, she whistled, sang and beat the high grass with the stick as she followed sections of the rusted rails toward an irregular dark spot in the white face of rocks. It looked like a place where there might have once been an opening to a mine shaft. On closer inspection, she could see that the ten-foot-high hole was sealed with iron bars and a giant plug of concrete. No way could anybody get anything into or out of that shaft if it was sealed in the 1940s, she thought. “Looks like Gabby got it wrong. This is definitely the end of the trail, not the rainbow,” she said to her stick.
To avoid spiders, she attempted to return in the same bent grass tracks she made on the way in. When the old appliances came into sight, she paused. From a distance, she thought, the things looked like Stonehenge. “Smile! Photo op,” she yelled to the refrigerator. She decided it might be fun to dump the hulking fridge on its side. She looked around and said, “You’ve been standing up too long. Your legs must be tired.” The fridge, entwined with vegetation, resisted her efforts to be toppled. When she got it tipped back about six inches, three snakes flashed from underneath. She jumped and cracked her back on the washing machine.
“Damn!” Swinging the stick like a baseball bat, she felt tempted to beat on the washer and dryer. “Don’t tell me I’ve come a long way for nothing, you beasts,” she shouted and rested the stick at her side. “I’ve been attacked by snakes and giant spiders, to say nothing of the near miss by a US Border Patrol officer.”
With her frustration spent, she wiped sweat from her forehead on her arm, took a long drink from her water bottle and checked the time. “Lunch time. Damn, I can’t believe this is a bust,” she said as she surveyed the abandoned mine area looking for a shady place to sit. “Okay, I apologize for what I called you guys,” she said to the washing machine and clothes dryer. “All’s forgiven.”
She boosted herself atop the dryer, and dug into the day pack for her sandwich and apple she’d picked up at the hotel. The constant movement of birds in the trees and brush vied with her lunch for attention and slowed the eating process. She didn’t care. “I have no place to go and I’m right on time,” she said to another tarantula moving through the grass. “Glad I’m up here and you’re down there, pal.”
She checked the ground for spiders and jumped off. When she did, she felt the dryer shift. She looked beneath the cabinet. The adjustable feet were missing, but the machine seemed to be suspended an inch or two from the ground. She opened the door where clothes are tossed in, surprised to see most of the drum had been cut away. Inside she could see the side, or top, of a wooden box, or crate.
“Holy shit. What have we got here?” She shook the dryer. It moved on top of the box, but the cut away section of the drum allowed only slight movement. No motor. The cabinet was being used as a cover or shell to hide the box.
She wrapped on it with her knuckles. “Porcelain, won’t rust. From the air it would look like somebody just dumped some trashy appliances. Holy shit, you’re too small to be mistaken for an elephant, but not a treasure chest if a person knew what to look for.”
Aston swallowed hard and went searching along the tree line until she found a long, heavy stick. Using this stick as a lever, she was able to pry the dryer a couple inches off the ground. She could not raise the dryer high enough to remove the box hiding inside. She twisted her head to read the faded, but still legible words, ‘Custer Mining’ stenciled on the bottom edge of the box. With one hand straining to hold the dryer off the ground, she took some photos of the box with her cell phone. After she lowered the dryer she blinked her eyes in an attempt to relieve the sting of sweat and clear her vision. She selected the best photo and tapped on the messaging app to send it to Eric.
“Shit, no cell phone signal.” She stroked the side of the clothes dryer. “How do you guys live out here? No cell service, or free WiFi, I bet.” She tapped the washing machine with her stick and said, “Time for me to get outta here. We’re gonna make you guys famous. You keep on keepin’ on.”
Aston worked her way back through the vegetation along the trail used when she came in. As she neared the top of the hill and could see the road, a chill ran down her spine. She stopped. Parked behind her car was the white SUV emblazoned with the words, US Border Patrol. Leaning against her rental car, arms across his chest, was Fred. He was alone.
“Anything interesting down there in that area clearly posted ‘Private Property’?” he asked.
She could see her face reflected in his mirrored sunglasses and it registered guilt. She tried to hold back a smile. “Well, officer, I saw the bird and chased it back in there for a better look and then decided to look around and have lunch. Am I busted?”
“In a situation like this, ma’am, I am not only the arresting officer, I am the judge and jury. You have been found guilty of a long list of violations. I am sentencing you to dinner, with me, tonight. Same place as last night—since it’s the only restaurant in town.”
Aston released her breath. “Will I be allowed to wear one of those fashionable GPS ankle bracelet thingies so you can keep track of me?”
“Nope. Camo shorts and a clean T-shirt will have to do. See ya around seven,” he said and got back into his car.
Her eyes followed his car as it wound down the hillside. “He just drives off in a cloud of dust,” she said to the brilliant blue sky. She dropped into the seat of her car and turned on the air conditioning full blast while she finished a bottle of water. She
was halfway through a second when her cell phone rang. One little dot in the upper right corner. Eric’s number flashed on the screen.
“Hello?”
“Aston, it’s Eric. How’s it going?”
He said something else she could not understand through the crackling noises. “Can’t hear you. I’ll call back in an hour.”
“What?”
Aston hung up and finished the second bottle of water, then reached behind the passenger seat for a third. Through the sideview mirror she looked back toward the gap in the fence and thought about what she’d found. With a proper lever, she could easily lift that dryer and take the box. If it was the palladium crap she’d be set for life. Easy enough to just keep going. This was Arizona and California was not that far away. “Let’s think this through,” she said to the water bottle.
Starke watched the exchange between the border patrolman and the young woman from behind what had once been a general store. Earlier, he was surprised to see a car parked in the middle of the road when he drove up, and decided to hang around to see who the car belonged to. He just barely got behind the building before the border patrol drove up.
From his position he watched her come from the other side of the fence. This must be the girl Phyllis told him was working with Gabby, he thought. Did she find the stash? Other than a water bottle her hands were empty. The backpack looked empty.
Starke wiped his hands on the back of his head and took the cigarette from behind his ear. “Christ! Will you hurry up and get outta here so I can light up,” he whispered. “How the hell am I going to get back in there to check?”
After Aston turned her vehicle around, Starke sat on a pile of old barn siding and lit his cigarette. He waited until the dust cloud from her car had drifted to the south before he got back into his own car. “Well, this is going to take a bit of brain work. I wonder if that saloon is still in business down in Nogales? Always a good spot to find fellas willing to earn a few bucks and keep their mouth shut.”