by Weston Ochse
"Gotcha!" Veronica laughed.
Derrick and Natasha both jumped, caught in their own imaginations. They smiled self-consciously, feeling like rubes.
"You guys are too easy." Veronica snorted.
Natasha laughed, but was irritated at the girl. She kept a smile on her face, though. Instead, she turned it back on her. "Did you just say 'hearken'? Gandalf called, he wants his word back."
Veronica glared for a moment, clearly not used to the challenge, then let herself laugh again easily. "If you know Gandalf then you're a closet gamer, aren't you?" She said it as fact, rather than as a question.
"My dad made me read the books before he'd let us see the movies," Natasha said. "I thought some of them were too long. Derrick here is the gamer. I don't really care for them."
"What do you play?" Veronica asked Derrick.
"Death Fantasy."
"Which one?"
"All of them. I'm on III right now."
"Have you reached the Demon Lich yet?"
He shook his head.
"Wait until you do. It's awesome. If you get stuck, I know some ways to help."
Derrick smiled, then stepped back and pointed at one of the windows.
"Did you see that?"
Natasha looked but didn't see anything.
"The curtain moved. I swear it did."
Veronica laughed again. "It's not like it's haunted. People live there. They're just weird people."
"Who hearken the coming of savagery," Natasha added.
"An age of savagery."
Natasha rolled her eyes, but relaxed. At least the younger girl would make the summer livable, if not enjoyable.
They continued down the street, passing three empty houses for every occupied one. Some were burned-out hulks. Natasha wasn't certain if it was because of fire run amok or because burning down empty trailers had been someone's strategy to alleviate the boredom. No pets roamed, although she could hear an occasional dog bark. No children played. They only glimpsed people now and then, through windows or in their back yards, never long outside, intent on getting back inside. They'd passed a community center with a basketball court, but the rims were bent, falling and rusted to uselessness. A jungle gym made of tires was home to an Africanized beehive which Veronica said they should leave alone if they knew what was good for them. Still, Natasha had never seen killer bees and knew only what she saw on television.
The tiny town on the edge of the inland sea was a postage stamp, built in a square grid and surrounded on three sides by a twenty foot high seawall of sand and dirt, reinforced with a mesh of iron bars. Veronica explained that the seawall was to keep the sea from flooding the town. When the rainy season hit the Empire Valley, the irrigation ran off the fields and into the Salton Sea. The sea level could rise quickly, sometimes with dire consequences, so most trailers had been set on concrete pylons. It also accounted for the wooden-framed roof decks that had been built atop nearly every trailer, allowing the residents to sit high and dry in their lawn chairs and watch the sea over the seawall that surrounded the town.
Strange machines chugged in the ground at the four corners of Bombay Beach. At each one, a pipe ran from a huge propane tank down into a manmade well covered with wire mesh. Gurgling emanated from the depths, echoing in the concrete tube like a monster's growl. Derrick dropped to his knees in front of one and gripped the mesh as he tried to plumb the shadowy depths with his gaze. The smell coming through the grate was a putrid distillation of everything horrible about the sea, but it couldn't quash the boy's curiosity.
"That's a sump," Veronica said. "This is actually Sump Pump Number Two, if you want to be specific."
Suddenly the machine growled.
Derrick jerked back at the sound, then laughed self-consciously. "Sounds like a dragon down there."
"Whatever it is, the Army Corps of Engineers put it here to suck out the ground water. They say that without it, we'd be nothing more than a salty swamp." She stomped on the cracked clay underfoot. "Instead we have the luxury of this."
Derrick growled into the sump, matching his tone with that of the mechanism. His voice filled the concrete void above the machinery.
"Follow me," Veronica said, snapping her fingers. "I want you to see this."
Across the road from the sump was a set of stairs, broken and sun bleached like the bones of a whale. When they reached the top, the sea in all its inglorious decay spread out before them. But that wasn't why Veronica had summoned them up there. She pointed to what looked like a power plant less than a quarter mile across the quay.
"What's that?" Derrick asked.
"If you believe the Mad Scientist, it's a top secret government facility where they build things and hide them from prying eyes."
Derrick's eyes glowed at the idea of a secret government compound.
Natasha rolled her eyes.
The low gray building had three immense smokestacks. White fists of smoke punched out from two of them, first expanding, then withering under the heat of the all-powerful sun. A row of heavily-tinted square windows ran along the front of the building. Two white Suburban SUVs were parked in the side lot. An access road ran around behind the building. A twelve-foot-high chain link fence protected the entire setup from intrusion from the outside. An access gate could open to the quay, but was now closed and locked with a chain.
"What do they build there?" Derrick asked.
"Don't be a sucker, Derrick. She's pulling your leg."
Veronica put on a Who, me? expression.
"Puh-lease," was Natasha's response.
"Seriously. I did not make that up about what the Mad Scientist said and I'm not pulling your leg." Veronica added as she noticed the doubt in the other two faces, "It's really not me. It's the Mad Scientist who's pulling your leg."
"Is there really a Mad Scientist?" Derrick asked.
"Derrick." Natasha shook her head and sighed. "I have got to get you out more."
Veronica laughed. "He's just another one of the crazy people left in Bombay Beach. He used to be some sort of real scientist for the government. His name is Andy Gudgel. I'll show you where he lives. It's kind of cool." She gave Natasha a twinkling look. "Think hobbits."
Natasha mouthed the word then shook her head and gave voice to the question that had been boiling inside of her. "Why are there so many crazy people here?"
Veronica scoffed at Natasha's question. "Look around you. We're kids so we have no choice, but if you were grown up, would you stay? I mean, come on, would you want to live here?"
"Not for a second."
"There you go. Those who could leave, left. They didn't even sell their homes. They just left. Those who couldn't leave, for whatever reason, stayed. And so you're left with the desperate or insane."
"Which one are you?" Natasha asked.
"I think I'm desperate, but I might be insane. They say you never know when you're insane." Veronica poked Natasha in the arm. "And which one are you?"
"Oh, we're not staying here, at least I'm not."
Veronica nodded and grinned. "Sure you're not."
Natasha ignored her and descended the stairs back into the town. She kept a forearm over her nose to help keep out the stink. She wondered if her clothes smelled of the place already. And what about her hair? She glanced back at the others, wishing they'd come down so she could find someplace with air conditioning.
"What is it, really?" Derrick asked, standing at the top of the seawall, gazing intently at the mysterious facility.
"Do you really want to know?" Veronica joined him in staring at the long, gray building perched on the edge of the sea, smoke billowing from two of its three smokestacks.
Derrick nodded.
"It's a desalination plant. Uses osmosis to remove the salt from the water so we can drink it."
"Osmosis," whispered Derrick. "Sounds like the name of a wizard."
Natasha shook her head as she watched the others descend the stairs and join her. Who's to say they all were
n't crazy?
They continued trudging through town, eventually arriving at an immaculately-painted, robin's-egg-blue trailer bordered by a chain link fence. The ground was covered in empty beer cans several feet high. A man with poufy black hair and thick black sideburns sat in a bench swing attached to an awning that ran the length of the trailer. He had a beer in a camouflage foam sleeve, and sipped from it like a man of leisure.
As they approached, a car with bumper stickers from Magic Mountain and Disneyland eased past. The man in the swing leaped from his spot, sending cans into a crashing cacophony. He wore a white tank top and hot pink bellbottom pants with rhinestone studs down the sides. He spun, dropped his pants, mooned the passing motorists, and shook his ass in the hot desert air for all it was worth. He shouted something that sounded like Love me tender, then hitched up his pants, and with a thunderous clatter of cans beneath his feet, sat back down in his swing. It didn't appear as if he had spilled even a drop of beer.
"That's Kristov," Veronica indicated. "My uncle says he's an ex-Romanian freedom fighter from the days of the Soviet Union."
"What's with the Elvis getup?" Natasha asked.
"He's a little touched in the head. He just sits there, drinks beer all day, mooning the tourists, pretending to be Elvis."
"Is he dangerous?"
"No."
"What happened to him?" Derrick asked.
"He told some of the other kids he'd been in a gulag and had been experimented on."
Derrick asked, "What's a gulag?"
"A prison, I think," Natasha said.
"So he was a criminal?" Derrick asked.
"Who knows?" Veronica pointed to the moat of empty beer cans surrounding the house. "See those cans? The reason he has them all around his trailer is to warn him if someone comes near."
"Veronica, come and drink beer with me. I will teach everything I know to you." His accent was a little slurred, but held a note of playfulness.
"No thanks, Kristov. Gotta show the new folks around."
"These are new peoples? I love new peoples. Come to Kristov and drink beer."
"There's more to life than beer, Kristov," Veronica said.
"Says you." He turned to Natasha. "Hurry and leave while you still can," he shouted. "Look!" He leaped up, spun around and treated them with the view of his ass usually only reserved for tourists.
Natasha and Derrick both recoiled at the hairy protrusion.
"Oh my god," Natasha said.
The ex-Romanian freedom fighter in the Elvis clothes sat back on his swing and began rocking himself back and forth. "You should go now, before it's too late and the monsters get you."
They left him there and continued on their tour of the town. Natasha tried not to think about the warning, especially coming from someone as clearly crazy as Kristov was, but she couldn't get it out of her head.
With the breakfast rush finally over, Patrick, Auntie Lin, Maude and Gertie sat at the table ruminating over cooling cups of coffee. The only other customers in the restaurant were Frank at the bar and an old retired school teacher named Abigail Ogletree, who always came in late with her little toy poodle and read her latest bodice ripper while eating oatmeal and drinking coffee. The dog sat on the seat beside her, its attention focused on her plate of food.
The four of them absorbed the silence for ten minutes, knowing the importance of what was about to be said.
Patrick had bounced the possibility of running the restaurant with Auntie Lin half a dozen times. One moment he was certain he could do it, the next he was convinced he'd be a sheer and utter failure. What he knew about running a restaurant he could write on the head of a pin. Eventually, somewhere in the middle of Nebraska, they'd agreed that he'd come in, look things over, sell the restaurant, and start a new life with the proceeds, maybe find a good school for Derrick, and somewhere for Natasha to embark on adulthood. But now, after looking at the town of Bombay Beach and talking with his father's two ex-girlfriends, the prospects for a sale seemed astronomically doubtful. Who would want to buy anything out here? Wasn't that the problem?
Patrick was beginning to come to terms with why his father had never returned. Maybe it was because he couldn't sell the business. Maybe he'd wanted to come home but couldn't. But the moment Patrick thought those things, he knew he was reaching, trying like always to find a reason why his father had left and never come back. Anything other than what he thought in the darkest hours of the night, when the trees scratched at the window and the house was quiet except for the creaking, that made the emptiness grow in his stomach until he felt like he could swallow the universe... the idea that it was him that made his father leave.
Patrick desperately wanted a drink. He'd snuck several in the bathroom but his flask was empty. He couldn't help but glance to the door. He remembered the store around the corner. He bet that they sold liquor. He itched to go out and get some.
Auntie Lin never said anything, but she didn't have to. Every time she looked, it was through his dead wife's eyes that she saw him - like judgment from the grave.
"So what's it gonna be?" Gertie asked.
"You selling or staying?" Maude asked.
Patrick snapped back to the situation at hand. He'd already had a confab with Auntie Lin, whose opinion he found himself counting on more and more. There was really nothing else to do. His job on the assembly line had dried up. There were no prospects other than to fight teenagers for cashier positions in supermarkets or as fry cooks at fast food franchises. With two kids as a single parent, no prospects and an opportunity to work and live in a new town standing before him, he'd be foolish to pass it up. In fact, as soon as they executed the will, the restaurant was theirs. Bottom line was that they had no place to live or work, and the restaurant and Bombay Beach offered both.
He stared into the eyes of the two older woman, knowing now just what to say.
"We're staying," he said.
Gertie broke into a huge smile.
"And us?" Maude asked. "You gonna ask us to stay on, too?"
This was something that they hadn't agreed on. Patrick wanted them gone, more because his father had chosen them over him than any other reason. Auntie Lin had argued that they shouldn't be punished for his father's choices and she was right, as usual.
Although they had a brightness about them, his father's ex-girlfriends were on the downhill side of everything good in their lives. Although they smiled hopefully at him, he couldn't help but notice their leathery-tanned skin, wrinkles yanking hard at the corners of their eyes, and gray hair eating away at the color. They were alone now. All each had was herself. In a strange way Patrick was also alone. He'd always had his father's ghost to haunt him before. Now that his father was dead, his ghost had passed on as well. The only way he had to learn about his father was from these two women sitting across the table, and he could either kick them to the curb or invite them to stay.
"Why are you looking at me funny?" Gertie asked. "You getting sick or something?"
"No. Not sick. Just tired is all." He sighed, wishing once again for a drink. "I guess I'd like you to stay on, if you can. We don't know anything about running a restaurant and would appreciate if you taught us what you know."
"A reprieve." Maude leaned back and whistled. "I owe you twenty, Gert."
Maude took a rolled twenty out of her cleavage and handed it to Gertie, who immediately placed it in her own cleavage. Patrick allowed himself a smile. Amidst all the melancholy, he actually felt good.
"We'll definitely stay. So what's next?" Gertie asked.
"I need to find a judge to execute the will. Make everything legal, you know."
"We don't have one of those." Gertie shook her head. "They shut down the courthouse."
"What is this, the Wild West?" Patrick asked. "What town doesn't have a judge anymore?"
"This one, apparently," Auntie Lin noted.
"Where's the nearest one?" he asked.
"Down in El Centro," came Frank's voice from the co
unter.
Patrick turned in his chair to look at the disheveled head and rheumy eyes of the town drunk. Frank had already been served a beer, which he was drinking through a crazy straw. He looked almost childlike as he sucked the alcohol through several loops. As strange as it looked, Patrick would give a pinky and a thumb to join the man if given the opportunity.
"Where's that?" Patrick asked, licking his dry lips.
"About forty miles as the crow flies."
"What about by road?"
"About three hours."
"Why so long?"
"Construction and farming equipment. Lots of farms around the Salton Sea."
"You serious?"
Maude snapped her fingers. "What about Will Todrunner?" she asked Gertie.
"What about him?"
"Isn't he a Justice of the Peace too?"
"He sure is." Gertie said. "Listen, let me give him a call and I'll get him over here. He's going to want to meet you anyway, seeing as how you're going to be living here now. That reminds me. Are you going to be wanting to move in to your father's place?"
"I think so. We really don't have a place to stay and can't afford a hotel. We've driven an awfully long way." He glanced quickly at his hands, then shoved them into his pants to stop them from shaking. "But if it's going to be a problem we can make some -"
Gertie shook her head. "It's no problem. We don't really live there anymore. But Me and Maude had some stuff we might want to get out first. The will gave you everything and we don't want to do anything that Laz didn't want."
Patrick felt like he needed to say something but he didn't know what it was. He'd wondered why his father had made him the sole heir, especially when he had had these two women who clearly adored him. There'd been no mention in the will about Maude or Gertie. He'd have thought there would have been some direction if his father had shared the sentiment. After all, he'd spent more years with them than he'd spent with Patrick. He'd been thirteen when his father left, and other than a card with a twenty dollar bill every now and then, he hadn't heard from the man in more than thirty years.