Desolation Flats

by Andrew Hunt

  “Gentlemen, I am told I am due at Desert Lightning, so I’m afraid I’m going to have to cut this short,” he said at the top of his lungs. That triggered disappointed “ahhs,” and he grinned and tilted his head. “I am sure our paths will cross again soon. Good day!”

  Underhill’s younger doppelgänger came toward us, eyeing me suspiciously. “Who’s he?” he asked Roscoe.

  “This is my friend Art Oveson.” Roscoe gestured to the man. “Art, this is Nigel Underhill.”

  “Good to know you, Mr. Underhill.”

  I held out my hand. He glared at it and refused to shake it. I pulled back, doing my best to muster a sheepish smile. He sneered at Roscoe. “What is he doing here?”

  “I can vouch for him,” said Roscoe. “He’s a police detective.”

  “You know the rules,” said Nigel. “This is a restricted area. Guests require advance clearance.”

  I said, “Look, I’ve got to go anyway. It was a pleasure meeting…”

  “No, Art,” said Roscoe, holding out his arm like a tollgate. “Stay. I don’t work for this prick. I work for his brother.”

  Nigel moved in close to Roscoe. “You know, Lund, I don’t care for your attitude. The only reason I’m letting you to stay is that my brother, for some inexplicable reason, seems to feel better when you’re present. But I advise you to stay out of my way. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Crystal,” said Roscoe, in a sullen way, placing a fresh wooden matchstick between his teeth.

  Before Nigel Underhill departed, he grimaced at me for good measure. He stormed off into the sun, in the direction of Desert Lightning, where his brother was putting on a helmet and goggles and consulting with his team.

  “I’d better go,” I said to Roscoe.

  “Fuck him,” said Roscoe. “Stay put. You’re my guest.”

  “I don’t feel too welcome here,” I said. “Let’s get together some other time, huh?”

  “Don’t let that little prick get to you, Art,” said Roscoe. “He’s a brittle sissy, that’s all. Stick around. We’ve got the best seats in the house. Underhill’s test run begins in five minutes.”

  I held out my hand. “Good seeing you again, Roscoe. Don’t be such a stranger.”

  His expression turned forlorn as he gripped hands. “Aw hell, I was gonna introduce you to Underhill,” he said. “He’s a hell of a lot nicer than that bimbo brother of his.”

  “I appreciate it, but I don’t want my cousins to think I’ve fallen off the face of the earth,” I said. “See you soon, huh?”

  “Take it easy, Art.”

  I started off in the direction of Cousin Hank’s base along a route that took me past tents, blasting engines, crews in colored coveralls, refreshment stands, and the blaring loudspeaker. I took one backward glance at Clive Underhill’s sprawling Union Jack encampment.

  On my way back to base, I spotted a Utah Highway Patrol car parked alongside the long, wooden protective barrier near the main track. I knew the two patrolmen in uniform, Howie Bennion and Lowell Calder, from some past raids I’d conducted during my days with the Morals Squad. I wiped sweat off my palm and walked up to shake hands. “Hey fellas! You boys keeping things safe out here?” I asked with a chuckle.

  “You know how it goes,” said Howie. “Another day in paradise.”

  “We always get stuck on these lousy beats,” said Lowell. “Got us workin’ on a Saturday. Can you beat that? Saturday! So much for my fishin’ plans.”

  “I hear the Englishman is gonna make history today,” said Howie.

  “It’s a test run,” I said. “He’s saving the real show for next week.”

  Words echoed from the loudspeaker: “… Underhill is now at the starting line, waiting for the official flag to be raised, and he will commence in five … four … three … two … one … And he’s off!”

  “Don’t go anywhere, Art,” said Howie. “You’ll miss out.”

  “Yeah, there’s a rumor that he’s gonna top four hundred next week,” said Lowell. “Ain’t that something? Four hundred!”

  I strolled up to the barrier near the black-and-white UHP sedan to watch Underhill speed across the massive salt track rimmed by stubby hills.

  Cheers erupted in the distance as Underhill’s car came rocketing out of the spot where the white crystal and azure sky touched. It shot past us, a giant bullet streaking from one end of the desert valley to the other. Nearing the finish mark a ways to the south, the vehicle left the earth for a few seconds, circled boomerang style, flipped upside down and skidded to gravelly halt. Light smoke turned black very quickly, and I spotted a flash of orange near the smashed tailfin.

  “Good heavens,” I whispered. Panicked cries came from distant bleachers as I turned to the two patrolmen. “Can you drive me over there, pronto?”

  “Sure thing,” said Lowell. “Let’s go!”

  I jumped the barrier, opened the back door, and my foot wasn’t even entirely inside when the car took off in a mad rush across the flats. I pulled the door closed and leaned forward, resting my elbows on the seat top between the heads of the two patrolmen.

  We arrived first at the accident scene, and by that time, the small flames had grown bigger and hotter. Because the car was upside down and full of fuel, I wondered how we were going to get Clive Underhill out before it exploded. I found an opening near the cockpit dome where Underhill’s arm was waving around, desperately searching for help. The wail of sirens came closer, but I knew I could not wait for the emergency vehicles to arrive. I belly-flopped on salt and inch-wormed my way under the overturned car. I realized that the only hope Underhill had for getting out of the burning car was for someone to pull him out. My hand squeezed Underhill’s hand, and that’s when I smelled what I feared worst: gasoline fumes.

  “Move away from it, Art!” shouted Howie.

  Clive Underhill’s upside-down face appeared between broken glass. “Don’t let me go,” he said, surprisingly calmly. “I don’t want to die.”

  “Today’s not your day,” I said. “Are your restraining belts released?”

  “Yes!”

  “OK,” I said, taking a deep breath. “On the count of three. One, two, three.…”

  One often hears that before you think you’re about to die, you see your whole life flash before your eyes. It’s not true. You only see a handful of snapshots—maybe half a dozen images total—because you simply don’t have enough time to walk through your entire life again. With flames devouring car wreckage, gasoline fumes stabbing my nostrils, and a hand reaching out of twisted metal beckoning for help, I had no time for a stroll down memory lane. Still, scenes from my life—etched in the deepest recesses of my mind—took shape with crystal clarity: the morning when I was seven that my father took me fishing on the lake; the time I found out he’d been shot and killed; my first awkward dance with fifteen-year-old Clara Snow, whom I later married; the day I awoke from a coma-like state after battling the Spanish influenza of 1918; the births of my three children, Sarah Jane, Hyrum, and Emily.…

  “Wait! I think my ankle’s caught!”

  “Your ankle? Well, can you get it … can you free it?”

  “I’m trying, but it feels like there’s something pinning…”

  His words faded as he bent his upper torso to get a better look. I noticed an ominous puddle of gasoline expanding outward from the crunched tailfin, well on its way toward crackling orange flames. I never take the Lord’s name in vain, but right then I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Oh god.”

  I jerked my head up. “Pull your ankle out!”

  “I’m trying! The metal is digging in.…”

  “Yank it as hard as you can! Do whatever you’ve got to do! We’re both dead if we don’t get out now!”

  “Okay, okay.…”

  A pained expression came over his face, his teeth clenched together, his skin color turned purple, and the veins on his neck bulged. His eyes opened wide and he let out a pained shout at the top of his lungs as his h
and squeezed mine even tighter.

  “It’s free!”

  I pulled with all of my might, groaning as I threw all of my strength into my right arm. To reinforce it, I instinctively lunged my left arm outward and grabbed his wrist. I redoubled my efforts and his body began to move toward me, like a tooth being extracted by a pair of pliers. We both yelled in a mix of agony and pumping adrenaline, and I tugged him out of that burning mash-up of steel and glass, rubber and gasoline and oil. The smoke had darkened, the flames crackled hotter, and that gas puddle at the rear of the car kept flowing outward. I placed Clive Underhill’s arm around my neck and struggled to my feet, bringing him up with me. He wailed as he put his weight on his badly mangled ankle, but I managed to keep him upright by wrapping my arms around his chest and back. I charged forward as fast as I could, baking under a hot sun that seemed only fifty feet away, and Underhill limped and stumbled and jogged and generally fought to keep up with me. The force of the blast behind us struck our backs with a hot shock wave, swatting us to the ground. Slamming chest down into the solid salt surface, I felt the wind knocked out of me. That instant, with my nose pressed into the dry desert earth, I knew we’d narrowly survived a blast that would’ve incinerated both of us had we remained stuck back at the car.

  A fleet of automobiles sped toward us from the south, accompanied by an ambulance and a big red hook-and-ladder with its bell clanging. (What good is it going to do out here with no hydrants? I wondered.) Brakes squealed, car doors flew open, and people swarmed around us, ungluing Underhill from me, leading him to the ambulance. A crowd enveloped Underhill, and I could no longer see him, which was fine by me. After my brush with death, I wanted nothing more than to get in my car, drive back to Salt Lake City, and spend the rest of the day with my family, where I belonged. I’d helped my cousin Hank, keeping a promise to him that I’d made some time back, and then I rescued a man from a flaming vehicle that seemed to be a cross between an automobile and a Flash Gordon spaceship. In short, I had done my good deed, and experienced more than my fair dose of the human race for one day.

  I walked past tents, awnings, racing crews, cutting across a clearing to an area where rows of automobiles were parked, a sea of running boards, rear spare tires, shiny headlamps gleaming in the sun. I blew a sigh of relief as I neared my car, a blue ’36 Dodge that I purchased brand-new a few years back. I reached for the handle to open the door when I heard a distant “Hello! Hello! You there!” I turned around, facing a plump man in a sweat-drenched yellow shirt with a striped tie, his trousers held up by suspenders, and a white Panama on his head.

  “I say! You there! Hold up a moment, will you!”

  When he reached me, he was panting, and his face was covered in a layer of perspiration. “So sorry, I’m not used to this bloody heat,” he said, in a heavy British accent. He held out his hand and I shook it. “Hi there, I’m Albert Shaw, Mr. Underhill’s manager.”

  “Good to know you, Shaw,” I said. “My name is Art Oveson.”

  We released hands and Shaw jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “Somebody back there said you’re a constable.”

  “Constable?” I chuckled at the title. “Well, I am a police detective.”

  He smiled. “That was a brave thing you did back there, Mr. Oveson.”

  “Anybody would’ve done the same thing.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “Only someone with tremendous fortitude would have done it.”

  “That’s kind of you to say,” I said, reaching out to open the car door.

  “Mr. Underhill would very much like you to join him for dinner tonight at the Coconut Grove,” said Shaw. “It’s his way of thanking you for what you did out there.”

  “With all due respect,” I said, looking Shaw up and down. “I don’t think he’s in any shape to paint the town red tonight.”

  “Oh, he’ll be up to it,” said Shaw. “Even if it takes crutches to pull it off.”

  “Really, there’s no need for him to thank me. It’s not a big deal, Mr. Shaw.…”

  “Albert.”

  “Albert. Please tell him I said thanks, but he doesn’t have to…”

  “So he can expect you around half past six for cocktails, seven for dinner?”

  “Well, if you must know…”

  “Bring your wife, too! By all means, bring her!”

  I shot him a quizzical glance. “How’d you know I’m married?”

  “You’re a policeman, and most American policemen are married,” he said. “And I noticed the wedding ring on your finger, Mr. Oveson.”

  “Art.”

  “Art.”

  I thought it over. The Coconut Grove was a swanky downtown ballroom where big bands played. On certain nights, when some musical big shot was in town, radio station KDYL would broadcast live from there. I’d never set foot in the place. I was pretty sure Clara hadn’t, either. For simple married Mormons like us, who dedicated our nights to parenting, the Coconut Grove seemed like a foreign country, an exotic place out of a Fred Astaire–Ginger Rogers picture.

  There was something else—another matter I did not want to discuss with someone I didn’t know. Ever since giving birth to our third daughter back in 1934, Clara had been suffering from what the psychiatrists called “mental disease.” She’d been hit by a full-blown bout of post-natal melancholy. She experienced the same thing after she gave birth to Sarah Jane in 1923, and the doctors treated her with something called “hydrotherapy,” which essentially consisted of lots of hot baths at the state mental hospital.

  Unfortunately, after Emily’s birth four years ago, her “blues” (as she called it) never subsided, and they could come on strong without any warning. Her condition, in fact, had actually resulted in a nervous breakdown two years ago, and she was forced to take time off teaching. Thus, I hated leaving her alone with the children at night, not because I doubted her abilities as a mother, but more out of my own personal concern for her well being. Her present condition made me reluctant to even leave the house today to come out to the Salt Flats to help my cousins. I did it anyway, out of a sense of loyalty. Now I was itching to get home, staring at a pudgy Englishman waiting for an answer and showing off his crooked bridgework in a hopeful smile.

  “Seven, huh?”

  He nodded. “If you don’t wish to wet your whistle with a pre-dinner cocktail.”

  “I’m not much of a whistler wetter,” I said. “A glass of lemonade is as wild as I get.”

  “So be it.”

  He held out his hand. I shook it. We went our separate ways.

  Three

  I swerved into the driveway of our bungalow on Sherman Avenue, a quiet residential street we’d relocated to last year. I parked next to our other car, an aging Oldsmobile. We treated it as Clara’s car, and she used it to run errands, go to lunch with friends, and drive our kids places. She and I had three children: Sarah Jane, age 15; Hyrum, age nine; and Emily, now four. Clara and I were born the same year, 1901, and both turned 37 in 1938. The two of us made a conscious decision to stop at three kids. Three seemed a reasonable number. Not too many. Not too few. It allowed us to give each child plenty of individual attention.

  I shut off the engine, pocketed keys, and walked up to my house, reaching in the mailbox and pulling out a few envelopes I somehow missed yesterday. Bill, bill, bill, envelope containing brochure from the Ward Line ocean cruises that I’d requested a month ago.… Parcel pickup slip. Looks like I’d have to run Sarah Jane over to the post office to pick up her latest record. She belonged to one of those clubs where you get half a dozen phonograph albums for a nickel and then you have to buy four more in the next two years. She loved classical music, and would save her allowances to buy the albums. The little pickup slip identified the newest arrival as BEETHOVEN: SYMPH #6 & BRAHMS: TRAGIC OVERTURE.

  “Hmm, ‘Tragic Overture,’” I said out loud. “Sounds peppy.”

  I entered the house and gave the front door a good, hard shove closed so everybody’d
know I was home. I set the mail down on the little hallway table. A second later, my daughter Emily came bounding up and leapt into my arms, and I lifted her up and gave her a big hug.

  “Daddy!”

  “Eskimo,” I said. We rubbed noses. “Butterfly.” We rubbed eyelashes together. “And one old-fashioned…” I kissed her on the forehead.

  “I miss you, Daddy!”

  “Me too, sugar plum.”

  My son, Hi, peeked around the corner, cowboy hat planted firmly on his head, and fired one of his silvery cap guns. Two loud cracks sounded, and I lowered Emily to the floor and put my hand over my heart. Emily ran off to the living room, clearing out of the way for the frontier drama unfolding.

  “You shot me, you dang varmint! Wait till I get my hands on you!”

  “Meet me outside and I’ll send you out in a blaze of glory, you desperado!”

  “Not if I send you to Boot Hill first!” I looked around. “Where’s Mom?”

  “In the bedroom, resting,” he said, lowering his gun. “Says she’s not feeling good. Again.”

  “Why don’t you go out in the backyard and I’ll be along soon,” I said, giving the brim of his cowboy hat an affectionate downward tug.

  “You’d better be there, or I’ll hunt you down at the O.K. Corral,” he said.

  “Oh, I’ll be there, all right,” I said. “Now get a move on, pardner!”

  “All right, Dad! See you soon, baboon!”

  “Not if I see you first, hombre.”

  Hi took off running, cutting through the kitchen, and I could hear the back door slam. Emily was sitting in the living room, listening to an afternoon children’s show on the radio. “Send three box tops from any brand of Kellogg’s cereal to me, Miss Jane, Box P, Chicago 77, Illinois. That’s all. Send no money. We’ll enclose your very own membership card, certificate, and magic ring. Miss Jane’s Happy Saturday Kiddie Club is free to every boy and girl.…”