by Lucy Taylor
I feel a hitch in my chest, thinking about what happened to Jimmy, wondering for the millionth time if things would’ve been different if I hadn’t been scared off by the Captain’s creepy bullshit.
A few paces farther, I glance back and can’t believe what I see. The kid’s holding a green Bic lighter and he’s flicking it idly, a tiny flame sprouting up each time he flexes his thumb.
I turn back and start toward him with care, the way I’d approach one of the feral cats Charmaine feeds in the yard out back of our house.
“Hey, little man, what’re you doing with that?” I’m trying to sound casual and avuncular, like I do with my students at school, but my voice comes out reedy and timid—kid probably thinks I’m a jerk. Still I persist. “You got a tent full of fireworks right over there. You want to blow us all up?”
He smirks like the idea has its appeal. Gives an insolent shrug. Click, click.
I bend down and he holds up the lighter, daring me to try and snatch it. I can make out the logo of a Mexican restaurant I’ve seen advertised on a billboard—grinning cartoon Mexican under a floppy sombrero, Maria’s Cantina and Take-Out on the side.
“What’s your name?”
Click.
“Where your folks at?”
A shrug.
“I’ll bet your parents wouldn’t like you playing with that.”
Click, click, click. Click.
I look around, wishing someone would show up to claim him, so I could unload on them about what I think of their parenting skills, a kid alone after midnight in a goddamned parking lot, literally playing with fire outside a tent full of explosives.
“Listen, this isn’t a good place to hang out. It’s not safe. You need a ride, you want me to call somebody to come pick you up?”
He sneers and pulls out an iPhone that’s higher tech than my own.
Click, and fuck you.
Then he gives me the finger, bolts over the fence, and runs like a brat-out-of-hell toward a row of tract houses that back up to the field.
Sheesh. So much for trying to be a good guy.
A few minutes later, I climb into the Ram, the rear wheels flinging up gravel as I roar off.
««—»»
I decide to bed down for the night and come back the next morning, see if I can talk to the boyfriend.
In the meantime, as I cruise up the frontage road looking for a motel without a No Vacancy sign this late at night, my mind keeps coming back to the boy with the lighter, wishing I could’ve helped him somehow, wondering if I should go back and try to find him.
I do nothing, of course, but the rumination uncoils a frightening thirst. Craving usurps everything else. I remember seeing a bar a few exists down, so I peel back onto the highway and backtrack. A couple of motels flash by with Vacancy sighs, but I ignore them—I’m on a new mission now. Before long—bingo—there’s my oasis, the grungy and aptly-named Wayward Inn. It’s bleak and windowless, an institutional grey, the kind of place I can imagine cops performing advanced interrogation techniques on suspected child molesters, but the handful of men hunched over the bar look too downtrodden to be menacing, as pitted and weather-beaten as the building itself.
Closing-time’s less than an hour away, so I order a double Jack straight up, gulp it like soda, and glance at my watch. Two days, twenty-two hours, and six minutes until the evening of the Fourth of July.
Prime time for the Captain to kidnap and kill.
That’s the last thing I remember.
««—»»
It’s funny how often I misplace things: sunglasses and cell phones. Key fobs and wristwatches.
Days.
Waking up with a black hole where memory should be in some place I don’t recognize, in the bed of a woman I’ve never seen before who offers to cook me breakfast, shivering on the shore of a lake in a downpour, bare-chested and tick-bitten on a park bench. Once I came to and found myself driving the Ram over a hundred miles an hour along a two-lane road bordered by fields and farmlands. I thought I was outside Baton Rouge. Later I found out I was in eastern Mississippi and I’d lost almost forty-eight hours.
This time, the last thing I remember is the bartender at the Wayward Inn asking me if I wanted a cab, me telling him I was fine. Then there’s a gap and next thing I recall, I’m lurching out of a different bar, even seedier than the last, a man’s voice yelling after me not to come back. Pushed from behind, I stumble out into bright sunlight, trying to figure out where I’m supposed to be headed and where I can get my next drink.
Along with snatches of memory linger remnants of dreams, images that veer between horrific and luminous, beguiling and mad. Nearby, a child’s sobbing and I want to respond, but that part of me, the Marcus Bujeau who longs to soothe and console, to nurture and love, is trapped in a dark, airless pit, where insects like tiny black semaphores hiss past in the dark, opening bloody cuts where they strike. When I struggle to pull myself out, the earth avalanches, dumping more dirt on top of me, as the screams of the boy in the distance merge with my own.
I wake up with my face mashed into the carpet of a derelict motel room, hurting in a dozen different places. A broken water glass lies a few feet away; whether I broke it by accident or hurled it into the wall, I don’t know, but slivers of glass have imbedded themselves in my forearms and neck, leaving stipples of blood in the rug fibers. I have no memory of how I got here, don’t know how long I’ve been blacked out, but an empty fifth of Jack sits on the coffee table, and a bottle of Smirnoff with only an inch or two left keeps my boots company by the bed. When I drag myself up and pull back the shades at the window, I see it’s still dark, but whether it’s closer to evening or dawn, I don’t have a clue.
It comes back to me then, that before I got sidetracked by more pressing needs, I’d planned to go back to talk to the guy who runs PyroGalaxy.
Dizzy and nauseated, I flick on the channel selector on the TV and recoil with self-loathing when I see the date. I’ve been ‘lost’ for two days. It’s now early evening on the Fourth of July.
At the front desk, I ask the way back to the freeway, the Asian clerk looking at me like I’m addled, since it’s all of a quarter mile away. I’m too embarrassed to ask if I’m still in Mississippi, but then I spot the motel’s address on the bill that he hands me, and it confirms that I’m still in Brookham.
Which means the PyroGalaxy tent is only a few miles away.
I’m going so fast I almost miss the exit, the Ram’s tires digging for traction on the sharp curve, at the apex of which, just for an instant, I catch the red flash of the opening salvo of some distant display.
It’s obvious that the vender is pulling up stakes—the only vehicle in the lot is the PyroGalaxy van, its doors open, boxes stacked up inside. A rangy dude in a ball cap, camo pants and a t-shirt that reads “Party Like It’s 1776!” turns around as I enter.
“Closing up here,” he says, lifting an armload of boxes down off a shelf.
“I’m not here to buy anything. Just want to ask a couple of questions.”
His face twists like I’ve said something dirty. “If you’re a reporter, I got nothing to say.”
“I’m not a reporter.” I don’t really know what we’re talking about, but I press on. “Look—Larry,” I say, reading the tag on his shirt pocket, “guy up the road told me you sell t-shirts with KablAM on the front.”
“Guy up the road ought’a mind his own business.” He strides outside again, heaving the boxes into the back of the van and turns, furrows rippling his forehead. He’s got crew-cut hair the same white-blond as Body Tech’s and a narrow, tanned face that just misses being good-looking by a stingy mouth and a slightly off-center nose. A rat-tat of explosions erupts in the distance and we both turn toward the sound, where the horizon is lit up with brilliant peonies and strobes dripping silver and gold. Larry gestures with a thumb. “You gonna be late for the show at the Fairgrounds.”
“That’s not what I’m interested in.”
; “Why you askin’ about those t-shirts anyway?”
“You have some?”
“Nooo,” he says, drawing the word out like I’m simple. “I might’a had one or two last year that I came across going through inventory, but I sold ’em and never restocked. And you didn’t answer my question. Why you want one?”
“I used to know a guy called himself Captain KablAM. Never knew his real name. I’ve been trying to look him up. Old time’s sake, y’know.”
“Hmmm.” The guy scratches his head like he’s probing for lice, revealing a tattoo of a rattlesnake with criss-crossing diamond-shaped scales on its coils. “Yeah, I can tell you…”
In the distance, there’s a rapid-fire series of reports as splashy multi-colored fountains illuminate the night sky. As one, Larry and I both turn toward it, and although my mouth opens to ask the next question, I find myself strangely mute. I cannot not look. “Where he is?” I finally say.
He gives me a slow smile. “What’d he do, scam you out of some money?”
“We were friends back in Metairie’s all. He’d want to see me.”
“Yeah, he prob’ly would,” Larry says, loping back toward the tent.
As I trot after him, I can feel the Glock digging into my spine and sweat streams down the side of my neck. When I try to flick it away, my fingers come away crimson—a cut from the glass in the motel room carpet has started bleeding again. I grope for a crumpled fast-food napkin in my pocket, and my hand brushes something that has no business being there, that stops me cold.
But before I can consider the implications of this, a ring tone starts up—Johnny Cash’s gritty bass walking the line. “Dammit,” says Larry, looking around for the phone, “I need to get that!”
He runs toward the same counter where Body Tech shook her magazine at me two nights ago, but just as he grabs for it, Cash falls mute. “Shit!”
He starts pushing buttons on the phone, but he’s flustered now and whatever he’s trying to make happen doesn’t look like it’s working too well. “Fuckin’ phones,” he says, then looks at me, vaguely apologetic. “Sorry, my nerves are shot to hell. I thought that might be the cops.”
Which causes the nightmare to come slamming back with sickening clarity, the slime and stench of the hole I was trapped in, the icepick-keen screams of the unseen boy.
My stomach clenches and I wonder what the Captain’s done now.
“Look, I really need to find him.”
Larry scowls. “Try Roselawn Cemetery in Baton Rouge. That’s been his address for the last seven years.”
I literally sway on my feet, like a man in a cartoon who’s been bashed with a plank.
“Surprised he didn’t go sooner, tell you the truth, the way he sucked down them cancer sticks.”
He mistakes the floored look on my face for grief and adds, “Hey, sorry to drop it on you like that, man. I miss him, too.”
“You knew him pretty well?”
“Hell, yeah, he basically raised me.”
My eyes flick back to his face, and this time I look beyond the surliness and the stress lines, past the frown of a hard-working young guy pissed off because he missed a phone call. I take in the cornflower blue eyes, the gaze too old for its years, my mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
And I wonder why it took me so long and how I could have failed to realize how much people change and how little.
He takes my silence for interest and explains, “I had some troubles as a kid—a drunk mom, a father who liked to use me for a punching bag. One Fourth of July, I begged the Captain to take me with him when he left town. I knew my parents wouldn’t look for me too hard, and I was right. The Captain took me in, taught me the fireworks trade, which was all I ever really wanted to do anyway.” He gives a small, lopsided smile. “My girlfriend says I’ll never get anywhere in life, but what the hell? Where’s there to get to but here?”
I open my mouth again and this time words come, “Jimmy? Jimmy Limbo?”
He stiffens and for a second, a frown line deep enough to lose a fish hook in twitches over one eye. Then he just shakes his head and laughs to himself and it’s Jimmy’s laugh from all those years ago, soft and fuck-you indifferent. “Naw, you got the wrong guy, man.” Taps his name tag. “I’m Larry.”
Cash’s voice starts its gritty rumble and he grabs the phone, face going grave as he reassures the person on the other end that he’s on the way home.
When he ends the call, I catch him by the arm— “Wait, Jimmy—” but he shakes me off, angry now, “Like I said, you got me confused with somebody else, Mister. And this ain’t a night I feel inclined to make small talk. You understand?”
Without even bothering to close up the tent, he strides back outside with me on his heels, drenched in sweat like I’ve just run a marathon.
“Why the hurry? What’s going on?”
“You don’t watch the news?” He shakes his head, staring off toward the fairgrounds where the sky fractures with glittery brocades and whistling stars. “A boy walking up the road got attacked last night. A guy who’d been hiding in the field grabbed him. Broke his arm, banged him up bad. Kid said he was about to pass out, when somebody started setting off fireworks. Lit the whole sky up for a few seconds, and the scumbag took off. My girlfriend’s tore up. She knows the boy, used to babysit for him. Cops’ll find the fucker, though.” He drives a fist into his palm. “But hope to Christ I find him first.”
««—»»
It’s funny how I misplace things, all right. Car keys and cell phones and sunglasses.
Not so funny when I find something I didn’t know I had to begin with, something that shouldn’t be there at all.
I walk through the tent, flicking the lighter from Juanita’s Cantina and Take-Out in one hand, a High and Mighty I’ve just lit the fuse to clutched in the other.
At the last moment, I throw it at the ceiling where it explodes and ignites a chain reaction like the end of the world.
Flames gobble the roof of the tent and zip down the sides, setting off furious detonations, supernovas of color and great clouds of scorching blue smoke.
Seconds after I stumble outside, the tent’s blown to smithereens, and the night sky jigsaws into an electric pandemonium fit to dwarf any fireworks finale on earth, enough to scare all the demons between here and China straight back to hell.
Except for the ones that are living in me, and there’s only one cure for that.
When the last of the explosions sputter and die, I put the gun in my mouth.
Wingless Beasts
The first thing I tell people headed out here is just this: Go someplace else.
I mean, Death Valley got that name for a reason, right? And the Mojave, of which Death Valley’s a part, is especially dangerous in ways most people don’t even suspect. I know, because I’ve seen the results of somebody’s wrong turn or ill-considered adventure. And even though I live out here and own a tow truck—which comes in handy at times—I don’t patrol the off road areas on a regular basis, just when I’m edgy or restless or when I’ve got reason to believe someone may be in need of assistance.
Then I lock up my double wide and head out to the back country, checking salt pans and arroyos and lake beds where those afflicted with hubris or just old-fashioned stupidity are most apt to meet with disaster.
Tragic deaths and mysterious disappearances don’t deter people, though. They keep turning up, charging off into blast furnace heat, not taking along enough food or water or gas, and sometimes, inevitably, a few meet with misfortune.
Case in point: the gimp with the cane at the Bun Boy Diner this morning. Only a little after six a.m. and I’m just pulling into Baker, California, a pit stop for tourists traveling on I15 between Barstow and Vegas. The town’s claim to fame is having the world’s biggest thermometer (like you need that to tell you it’s hotter than the devil’s butthole here) which rises 134 feet over a main drag lined with two-star motels, gas stations, and shuttered convenience stores. I par
k my truck and amble into the Bun Boy for my usual breakfast of egg, hash browns, and grits before I head out to Barstow to visit my girl.
Right off the bat, though, the creep at the counter gets under my skin.
Soon as I see him, a squat, toadish little man, with a shiny bald dome looks like it’s been polished with Pledge and hear him yakking to Margo the waitress about his plans to go off-roading in the Mojave, I peg him for the kind of know-it-all who’ll be in deep shit by sundown.
I know his type: the obnoxious braying voice of a small man trying to sound imposing, the sardonic roll of his dishwater eyes when Margo suggests that the desert is best left to the young and the able-bodied, the puffed-up way he tries to pretend the cane’s not really necessary, that he only carries it “in case I encounter a rattlesnake.”
“Well, no rattlers in here,” I tell him and ask which of the vehicles out in the lot belongs to him.
I figure him for the owner of the Subaru Outback or the Ram1500 or even the goofy-looking Baja Beetle I saw coming in, but he slurps his coffee and says, “Mine’s the red Camry. Oh, I know, go ahead and laugh, but it’s got me where I need to go plenty of times.”
Which amuses me, because the kind of serious off-roading he’s talking about demands a lot of a vehicle—at minimum, you need a flexible suspension, high clearance and big tires with deep open treads.
“That’s the wrong ride for your purposes,” I say, taking a stool next to him. “You want a vacation, forget the Mojave. Just stay on 15 north. Three hours from now you can be laying bets at a crap table in the Bellagio or getting a lap dance at Spearmint Rhino Cabaret.”
He grunts, but whether it’s in response to my unsought advice or to some other pain in his pancake-flat ass, I can’t tell. He upends the sugar bowl into his coffee and says with disdain, “Vegas is where Satan vacations when he gets bored with hell. Myself, I prefer the purity of the desert.”
Now that takes me aback, because he sure doesn’t seem like a man who’d know much about purity or aspire to it or respect it, for that matter. But then, I suppose, neither do I, yet it was the austerity of the desert, the vast silence and uncompromising indifference to all human fears that lured me out here almost ten years ago, and I’ve never been tempted to go back to my old bad-ass life on the streets of L.A. Not once.