Rattlesnake & Son

by Jonathan Miller

  “Did Marley get along with him?”

  “That was the thing. I didn’t marry him for money. I married him for Marley. His adult son from a previous marriage played professional sports, I thought he’d be a good father figure.”

  She didn’t say she thought Sir Nathaniel would be a better father figure than I was. She didn’t have to. Luna was single again? I couldn’t help but be intrigued. And Marley? He had been un-adopted?

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I take it you’re not CEO of Dragon Moon anymore?”

  “Dragon Moon doesn’t really exist. It’s a subsidiary of Shiva Petrochemical, which is itself owned by the Wagatsuma conglomerate of Japan. Remember our technology patent on electronic thimbles that were supposed to replace cell phones? Well, they can cause leprosy or something, so we sold the technology to Google at a loss. Long story short, I got voted off the board, but they can’t fire me because I still own too much of the slowly diminishing stock. This is my last chance, to run the aerospace division at the spaceport, here in Truth or Consequences. What was that old joke you used to say?”

  “Truth I liked, consequences I didn’t care for.” I had stolen it from an old Jewish comedian. Jackie Mason, maybe.

  “That’s it. I never got that joke, ’til now,” she said. “I’m living in Consequences.”

  Time to change the subject. “What’s Marley’s legal name now?”

  “Technically it’s still Cruiser Arnold, as he was adopted by Sir Nathaniel Arnold, my ex-husband, and he put that name on the Indian documents, as it rhymed with the nickname of his other son, Bruiser. You’ve heard of the Johnny Cash song, "A Boy Named Sue". Well, thanks to my evil ex, I had a boy legally named Crew-ser, as a way to toughen him up.”

  “For reals?”

  “Another thing he didn’t tell me about until it was too late. Marley has since been un-adopted. It’s complicated, as international law applied. We can change his name if we file the right forms, but he registered for school under that damn Cruiser Arnold name and it was too complicated with all the ID requirements to change it this year.”

  After an uncomfortable silence, Denise opened a sliding glass door and we went out to the brick patio in the shade. Some more bricks were needed to finish the rest of the patio.

  Luna took a long sip, drained her prickly pear tea and stared at the unfinished patio. “I think we can start over again, as parents at least. Marley didn’t take our divorce very well. The remarriage to Sir Nathaniel was worse for him and re-divorce was worst of all. He blames himself. And, I don’t think he’s adjusting to life out here in the desert. Here, he has no structure. I never thought my son would spend a night in jail for shoplifting seventeen dollars’ worth of toys from Walmart.”

  “Are you adjusting to life back in the desert?”

  She laughed and gulped the last remnants of prickly pear tea. “As you know, I grew up in the small town of Crater, New Mexico and always felt like the grass was greener on the other side of the crater walls. This town is just one big crater. It just happens to have a reservoir in it. I’ll be fine. I’m worried about Marley.”

  “Doesn’t he go by ‘Cruiser?’”

  “He’ll always be Marley to me. You remember that we named him after Sam Marlow.”

  The late Sam Marlow was the father of Luna’s daughter, Dew. He had been my best friend, even if he had issues. He was a far better lawyer than I would ever be. He was shot and killed at our rattlesnake wedding reception, but that was a story for another time.

  “Marley’s ghost and all that,” I said. “He’ll always be Marley to me too.”

  Denise frowned when I said that and piped in for the first time. “He’s not a ghost. He’s still alive,” she said. It took me a moment to realize she was talking about our Marley, and not his namesake. “I just got a text. I have to pick him up.”

  I didn’t see any evidence of a phone on or near Denise. Luna smiled at me after Denise left through the garage door. “She’s like that.”

  “Is she a psychic?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is he psychic? Marley?”

  “No, he’s autistic,” she said. “Well, he’s on the spectrum. Aspergers.’”

  “I’m pretty sure he was reaching out to me with his mind. I felt like he was sending me a psychic SOS.”

  “Well, I’ve told him no telepathy until he takes the trash out and does all his homework.”

  “Seriously?

  “No, he’s no more psychic than you or I. Don’t you know when I’m kidding?”

  “Not yet.”

  “When does he start school?”

  “Orientation is Sunday, day after tomorrow. They start on Friday, one week from today.”

  One week to get to know my son. The clock was ticking.

  Chapter 3

  Cratercross

  A few minutes later, Denise returned with Marley. She must have sped to pick him up from court, and then busted down the doors to get him out of custody so quickly. He now wore an oversized t-shirt that said cratercross round one and showed a medieval wooden crossbow firing laser beams at purple dragons with unicorn horns. Cratercross must be one of those games popular with the younger set that I had never played. I had outgrown my inner nerd.

  Marley didn’t say anything, just hugged me tightly, as if we’d been apart for a summer vacation, as opposed to a decade.

  “Dad!” he said when he released his grasp. “I missed you so much.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that Marley had a New York accent, as he had spent his formative years in Scarsdale, an upscale New York City suburb.

  “Son!” I replied. It was good to be a dad again. Well, it felt like I was a dad for the first time. I didn’t know how to begin. “What do you want me to call you, Marley or Cruiser?”

  “Marley,” he said. “Cruiser was my slave name.”

  “Umm . . . Do you like it here in Truth or Consequences?”

  “Not even,” he said. “Is that the way they say it out here?”

  “Not even,” Luna said, doing an exaggerated New Mexico lilt from her days as a Crater County home girl. She hugged him. “Please stay out of jail son. I can’t bail you out forever.”

  “I can bail you out the next time,” I said. “I can put up my house as collateral.”

  “You’d do that for me?” Marley was so excited, that he accidentally bumped the counter and one of Luna’s artifacts—an urn—fell off. Denise grabbed it before it shattered on the ground. Marley had a bad understanding of spatial relationships.

  Luna was about to say something, but I figured I’d better change the course of the conversation. I looked at the urn, which blended the styles of various tribes.

  “Is that a Navajo or a Pueblo urn?” I asked, referring to the two types of pottery around here. I wanted to impress Luna, the Native American art connoisseur, that I even knew that there was a difference between the styles. This one featured several hawks flying around the neck as if poised to strike.

  “What’s a Navajo urn?” Marley asked.

  “Pretty good wage with benefits if he gets a job with the tribal government or Bureau of Indian Affairs,” I said.

  Luna laughed.

  “Old joke we used to tell each other,” she said. “There was a poem called ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats. We were at one of Dew’s poetry recitals at Albuquerque Academy and your father turned to me and whispered, ‘What’s a Grecian earn?’ I told him I didn’t know, and he replied, ‘About five drachmas a week.’”

  “Plus benefits,” I added.

  She touched the urn. “Those were the days.”

  The bottom of the urn utilized the black pottery of the Navajo while the top utilized the light colors with complicated geometric designs of the Acoma. The urn also had a stylized image of a rattlesnake on one side to form an Asian y
in-yang symbol, also in black and white. The rattle was pointing right at me. Did it just make a noise? No, it was just the wind hitting the windows outside, right?

  “It’s an incredible design. Where did you get it?” I asked.

  “It was a gift from Heidietta Hawk,” she said. “It was originally made by her sister Heidi before Heidi died.”

  I had represented Heidi Hawk when I was a rookie public defender. Luna had represented her little sister, Heidietta, in a later one. The last time I had seen Heidietta was at a jewelry store in Gallup, the day I proposed to Luna. Heidietta was the one who sold us Luna’s wedding band, which had been made by her sister.

  I looked at Luna’s bare ring finger. She fiddled with an imaginary ring. Where did the ring I’d given her end up? I didn’t want to ask about that now.

  “Heidi made an urn?” I asked. “Who or what was it for?”

  “Heidi had known she was going to die young, I guess,” Luna said. “She could feel it, so she probably made the urn for herself, figuring she would be cremated. She was buried at Acoma Pueblo in the ancient cemetery there. It was a great honor. And Heidietta didn’t want to keep an urn that was supposed to be for her sister.”

  “So now what?” Marley asked. “It’s good that we can be a family again.”

  But could we? Luna looked at me, and then at Marley. Once a judge, always a judge.

  “I had bought you a birthday present before your little incident,” she said to Marley. “It’s in the garage. I don’t know if I should give it to you.”

  Marley smiled. “Mom, please, I’ll be good.”

  “We’ll see,” Luna said. My mother used to say, “we’ll see.” I never knew what it meant.

  Luna took us to the garage. I hadn’t seen Denise exit the conversation and enter the garage, but she had already opened the coffin-like crate to reveal a brand-new jet ski brand personal watercraft. The shiny turquoise watercraft looked like a missile.

  “You bought me a jet ski?” Marley asked. “Awesome!”

  “I bought it when we moved out here,” she said. “Well, Denise picked it out. I was hoping that this could be something for you to do with your father. In fact, your father is going to take you jet-skiing tomorrow, on Saturday.”

  It took me a moment to realize that Luna was talking about me. It’s not like I had anything else to do for the weekend back up in Albuquerque. “I’m taking him jet skiing?”

  Marley looked at me with deep set brown eyes, my eyes. “I’d like that,” he said.

  “Sounds like a plan then,” I said. “Why aren’t you coming, Luna?”

  “We’re prepping for the big launch at the spaceport this month. It’s like prepping for a trial, except when things blow up they really blow up.”

  “I don’t see you as a rocket scientist.”

  “I don’t either, but then rocket science isn’t really rocket science, or even brain surgery. I don’t do any actual rocketing, I just hire and fire, approve budgets and pretend to listen to reports.”

  “Where will I stay? Do you guys have guest house?”

  Luna looked at me, still in judge mode. She hadn’t ruled in my favor yet, but she hadn’t thrown me out of the courtroom on my ass. Yet. “I’ll put you up in a local hotel. We have a corporate account. We can pay for your room, but dinner is on your own. Let’s just say it’s over a hundred degrees here, but our corporate account is on thin ice.”

  Chapter 4

  Elephant Butt

  I had the “New Mexico Lo Mein” at a place in downtown T or C called Latitude 33. The chef had combined a classic Chinese dish with local green chile, and it somehow became chicken a la feng shui.

  I spent Friday night at the Blackstone Inn near downtown. It was an old motel from the thirties gone upscale. The rooms were named after old TV shows from the original T or C era, and tonight I was in The Twilight Zone room. Luna and I had spent a passionate night there many years ago, in the I Love Lucy room (I think). Maybe someday there would be a show called I Love Luna. Alone in the giant tub that was overfilled with the resort’s steaming mineral water I looked up Sir Nathaniel Arnold. As Luna said, he probably should have been knighted Sir Nathaniel Asshole. While I had thought that he was South Asian, he was a pure-blooded Englishman. Musclebound, he had a shaved head and looked like Mr. Clean of the famed cleaning commercials.

  I heard his voice on a BBC news clip as he stood at the grand opening of a Mumbai skyscraper. He sounded like he had climbed out of the London underground to the House of Lords by taking the back stairs. He indeed had a son named Bruiser, a stunningly handsome lad who stood at his side in a uniform for a sport I didn't follow. Ultimate Cricket?

  If Luna wanted to go for the opposite of me, and the opposite of herself, she certainly found him. If she wanted the opposite of our son, it was Bruiser. Perhaps she thought he could turn Cruiser into an athlete like Bruiser. Sir Nathaniel Asshole was a charming rake who became a control freak once he got what he wanted. He had wanted Luna, charmed her and charmed her son. He wanted Dragon Moon, took it over, and then pushed out Luna. They both had signed a pre-nup, so Luna gained nothing of his fortune. Apparently, with the decline of stock after the merger and un-merger, Luna was heading back into a crater. Consequences indeed.

  • • •

  That night I had a strange dream. I pictured Marley in his bedroom wearing pajamas with a costume hero on them. Superman, I think. He was making a tiny rattlesnake out of metal using a soldering iron. The rattlesnake looked like it had slithered off an ancient “Don’t tread on me flag.” Marley then put something into the rattlesnake’s mouth, but I couldn’t see what it was.

  He stared at the rattlesnake, and with the sheer force of his mind the snake’s tail started to rattle. The famed Israeli psychic Uri Geller could bend spoons. I suppose Marley used the same power, telekinesis, to make the snake’s tail rattle. How many powers did this boy have?

  I didn’t remember my dreams after that.

  • • •

  I woke up early Saturday morning, slightly disoriented. Ah. I quickly remembered the truth, remembered the consequences. I further oriented myself by running through the desert using my gym clothes that were in the trunk. This wasn’t deserty-desert, there was brown dirt instead of sand, but other than the cottonwood trees along the Rio, nothing was green here. Yet, in the sunrise, I appreciated the quiet beauty of the southwest. It had taken me a long time to appreciate it when I moved here as a teen, but now it felt like the Rio’s dirty waters were flowing through my veins.

  Luna called me just as I returned to the motel room, panting from a final sprint. “Are you still coming over?” she asked.

  “You’re still offering?”

  “Of course. You need to get a bathing suit for jet skiing.”

  “Is there like a beachwear store?”

  “The biggest beach wear store in the entire world is right here in T or C. It’s called Walmart. Don’t tell them Marley’s your son, he’s banned for life.”

  On the way to the Luna Landing, I bought a bathing suit at the town’s Walmart. I chose a baggy blue “Dad” suit for my dad bod—the type my own dad would have worn. I bought some other clothes for the day. A pair of shorts and an Elephant Butte t-shirt. How long was I staying here?

  I saw the bailiff again at the front door. He apparently moonlighted as a greeter at Walmart and wore the same blue blazer from court. He radioed ahead to the security officer in the front who checked my receipt, and then checked my bag to make sure I hadn’t slipped in some unpaid items. In this town, everyone was a suspect.

  After I arrived at Luna’s home on the ridge, Luna met me at the door and ignored the workers.

  “Where’s the jet ski?”

  “Denise has already taken the jet ski to the dock.”

  “She was on the board of Dragon Moon corporation and now she’s your errand girl?” />
  “She was kicked off the board along with me during Sir Nathaniel’s hostile takeover. She’s my executive assistant-slash-nanny. She understands rocket science a little more than I do, but she’s really here because she’s the only one who can handle Marley. He’s a handful and I only have two hands.”

  We went into the living room. The urn seemed to be a little too close to the edge of the counter, especially with the vibrations caused by the yard work outside. I tip-toed over to the urn and slid it back safely against the wall.

  Marley came out a moment later. It was a hot day and he was dressed in long swim trunks and a t-shirt that was a few sizes too big. The shirt had laser geisha blue on the front but the word “blue” had been crossed out. Instead, the shirt proclaimed that the anime woman on the shirt was laser geisha turquoise.

  I had seen the shirt before. Luna had worn it on one of our last nights together. Were things that bad in the Cruz household that the son had to wear his mom’s hand-me-downs?

  Luna put a firm hand on his shoulder. “Your shoelaces are untied. You can’t go out with untied shoelaces.”

  The poor boy rubbed his eyes, on the edge of tears. He put his foot up on a stylish plush chair. Luna didn’t have to say anything. She just glared at him to take his foot off the furniture. He then bent over and tied his shoes with his feet flat on the floor.

  He might as well be performing brain surgery blindfolded as he put the laces over each other. I remembered that same look of terror in my eyes when my own dad asked me to tie my shoes.

  Marley took three attempts with his stubby fingers. He finally got the laces tied correctly. The boy had no hand-eye coordination.

  Luna inspected him. “Your shirt. In or out, pick one and go for it.”

  After two attempts at “in,” Marley finally went with “out.”

  He looked at me. I didn’t want to interfere with Luna’s parenting, but I wanted to save the boy further embarrassment. “Can I see your room before we go?” I asked.