As if drawing a curtain closed, Sister Rose lifted her hands and pressed them together. “Some of you have met Wesley Chambers. He has proposed establishing an official, sanctioned tent city as an alternative to the current situation. He’s here to give a progress report.”
Wesley Chambers stood and tucked in the tail of his blue cotton check dress shirt. He had likely found it in the free store and didn’t know that it originally cost at least a hundred dollars. The two men in town who had shared that shirt had no awareness of each other, Meg thought, and I might know both of them.
Stepping before the room’s chalkboard, Wesley crossed his thick arms and adopted the glower of a football coach about to conduct a health class for indifferent teens.
“This town thinks it has a problem with transients. I wish that lady had stuck around so I could say this: Please don’t call me a transient. Everything is transient. Everyone is. Some of us know it sooner than others.”
Meg noted Wesley’s lace-up boots, not so different from the pair she had seen on the island. Amy Hostetter had said Wesley was on the river for a reason but not what had happened to him. Maybe she didn’t know. At some point the reasons for things didn’t matter any more.
“You all know what a weed is. A weed is a plant that pops up where it’s not wanted, like a camper is a person, like a person becomes this transient.” He enunciated the word with an arched brow. “Now, if the City considers me a weed, they’re going to chop me down and mulch my butt. Naturally, that tends to make me less enthusiastic about participating in your community affairs. But I do care about where I live. I have friends here. I enjoy the natural surroundings. How I live is not who I am. Living in a tent doesn’t make me a scumbag.”
And living in a big house didn’t make someone a model citizen. Meg knew that but she had never heard the other side put so plainly.
“Sorry. You know that stuff. The town’s solution to its camping problem is to get rid of the so-called transients. My solution is a lot simpler—allow it. Treat camping as a form of self-reliance instead of a crime. Don’t make it illegal to consume less.”
He took a half step back and thrust his hands into his pockets.
“A tent city won’t solve the law’s problems with troublemakers, but it will stop making troublemakers out of people who don’t cause problems. The camp I’m calling Thistletown will offer some security and dignity to folks who need a break, who don’t have money and don’t like walls, who want to set their own rules and act like adults. So where do we start?”
He scanned the chalkboard tray. “Looks like somebody stole your chalk.”
Wesley clapped an eraser on the green surface, creating a dusting of yellow. With his finger, he traced three words. Land. Location. Legal.
“Land’s the obvious requirement. An acre is about minimum. Some communities like this are on five acres or more, but if you get too big it starts to be a crowd. I don’t think you want to go more than about twenty tents or thirty people per camp, so everybody knows each other. The ideal would be a place with utilities, sewer and water access where you were allowed to put a finished ten-by-ten structure on the tent platform. Do we own, lease or occupy with owner permission? That’s a whole topic in itself.
“Location matters, too. For the most part, our work and services are in town, where residents and merchants don’t want us. Locating out in the country makes it harder for us to get around without transportation. That’s why the river worked so good—out of sight and close by. It doesn’t have to be parkland. We could do okay in a semi-industrial area.
“Legal. Right now it’s illegal to live in non-permanent structures within the city. Even if we got a camping permit of some kind, under the ordinance we’d still have to move periodically. So we need a change that allows a tent city to stay put. Then there’s zoning, health regulations, liability. I’m kind of sorry I even turned over that rock. Zack, you want to take it?”
Zack said, “I researched how other tent cities do the self-management. Most of them have a non-profit sponsor—the city, a church, a veterans’ organization that assumes liability and fiscal administration. The residents raise the money and run the place.”
Zack had to know it wasn’t that simple. This was all about the politics and organizing community support. Maybe that’s why he was involved.
“You know she’s going to ask you to help,” Zack said after the meeting adjourned.
Meg looked over her shoulder for Sister Rose. “Oh, don’t encourage her.”
“See anyone else here who could do it?”
“It’s not a winner, Zack.”
“It’s better than what’s happening now. People are going to die this winter.”
“Wesley’s ideas might make sense in these meetings, but not to the rest of the community. You think Jennifer Barnes is going to say, oh goodie, a tent city?”
“Oh, man, I feel bad about beating up on her. She should be able to take her kids to the park. I probably know the woman she was afraid of. I should’ve given Jennifer my number and told her I’d come down there next time to help work out any misunderstanding.”
Zack held open the front door and Meg stepped through. “You seem like an agitator and then suddenly you don’t,” she said.
“I can’t yell all the time. People get tired of the world’s on fire! shit. But it is. Maybe not their house, but it is somewhere, and they only notice the fire when I’m obnoxious. I tried toning it down with the City Council and being factual and respectful. You know, to show I was a serious person. Then they’d thank me and go on with their same-old, same-old. Facts and reason don’t produce action. They barely produce new thoughts. Discomfort is the only thing that moves authority. So I provoke.”
“Right. You and Jennifer Barnes.”
“But she aims it at the powerless. Her interest is her own comfort and to hell with everybody else.”
Meg couldn’t let Zack get away with it. “Her interest is her kids. She’s a mother, not a hater. The coalition needs the support of people like her.”
“My interest is the downtrodden, not the coalition members and their business dealings.” He looked in the direction of Hawthorne Park, two blocks away, then turned back to Meg. “You chased down Jennifer Barnes like you couldn’t wait for a shot at selling her house.”
That was so wrong and unfair! A burning rose from her gut into her chest, then shot down the veins to her wrists and flushed her face. Jennifer must have thought the same thing. Mortification at the unjust impression loomed over the rest of her day, but she knew it was half true. Everything Meg Mogrin touched was perfumed with an artful trace of promotion.
Do you have enough money to meet all of your expenses?
—Vulnerability Index Prescreen for Single Adults
A mallard green BMW with two passengers backed out of a garage. The double door rolled down and kissed the concrete with a sigh. Isaac lowered his head and pedaled slowly until the throaty V8 faded away. He found a place to drop his bicycle out of sight from the road and circled back. He dodged up the driveway of the BMW house and located a spigot in back. If he did take over The Mansion he’d need a reliable water supply close to the canyon trail. Six gallons, enough for four summer days, weighed fifty pounds, and there was no way Rudy Hefner had packed that much in when he lived there. He wished now he had sought out the insufferable Hefner for some pointers.
The wash cut through the uplift that formed the Colorado National Monument. Unscalable cliffs on the left, a less severe hill rose to the west. He followed the dry stream bed for half a mile until a twenty-foot granite wall stopped him. He backtracked, alert for Hefner’s departure point. This time he found the faint trail, which had been screened by a pair of juniper when approached from below. He leaned into the steep slope and imagined his pack full of provisions. After climbing five hundred feet, he paused on a sandstone slab and took measure of his solitude. From this vantage, the houses could not be seen. The valley visible in the distance seemed greener t
han the one he’d left. His water was warm already. Civilization settled downstream for a reason.
The trail topped out and then dropped down to the main canyon, which sat atop the bedrock blockade. The canyon floor widened. Piñon and broom crawled to the base of sheer sandstone walls. Monumental wedges had sheared from the west face. They slumped against the cliff or had shattered into boulders, boulders into rocks, rocks to pebbles, pebbles to sand—a continuous scatter of broken time. From what he had heard, The Mansion had to be concealed somewhere amid that rock fall.
Isaac homed toward the wall, eventually stumbling across the trail where Hefner had stopped scrubbing out his tracks. He would have to adopt that trick if he stayed. It made no sense to conceal a camp and then beat a path to it. The tracks made a high approach above the rocks and circled back past a split boulder. A sandy flat the width of a single bed lay between the halves—a fist aimed at an opposing palm—forming a stone cocoon. The rock would absorb sun’s warmth, release it into the night and then provide a cool respite for part of the day. A nice spot to sleep, but a disappointment if this were all of The Mansion. Moving on, he saw how two slabs the size of tennis courts had jackknifed over a third chunk of sandstone forming a giant A divided into two rooms. The larger room was tall enough to stand upright in and tapered to a window-like opening at the back. The other, the size and shape of a deep understairs closet with room for one hardy human to sleep.
He unwound from his pack and made a slow turn in the entrance. A tan tarp rolled onto a pole could be unfurled like an awning or pulled over the opening when the weather turned bad. In the corner where a smoke-blackened crevice opened to the sky, a kettle sat atop a rocket stove cut from a Coors Light mini-keg. Nearby, a bean pot and a sand-scoured iron skillet. A quartet of plastic milk cases served as a larder and bookshelf. Provisions and paperbacks commingled. Canned peaches. McMurtry. Wieners and beans. Flynn. A mouse-raided cracker box. Sandford. A quarter jar of peanut butter. Hillerman. Two packets of Taster’s Choice. Burke. A seven-dollar canvas camp chair lay on its back in the middle of the room, its beverage pocket in shreds. An army surplus duffle packed with crumpled clothes. Flattened cans in a plastic bag. A trenching tool and a hatchet. A coil of sisal rope. In the berth-like second room, a sleeping bag and a Bugler tobacco can half filled with sand. The leavings reflected no generosity on Hefner’s part. He had packed in The Mansion’s furnishings a few items at a time and would have had to take them out the same laborious way.
Isaac found a plastic trash barrel buried downhill of the shelter, fed by a flagstone-lined channel to collect runoff, its cover weighted by a cracked bowling ball with Steve engraved above the finger holes. The empty inside was mineral-encrusted but otherwise clean. Until now, The Mansion’s mocking name had seemed fitting for a blusterer like Hefner. But in this orderly canyon abode, Isaac heard the contented roar of a free man.
Sheltered from the wind, he did not sense the rain’s approach until too late. Dark clouds rolled overhead. The narrow view of the sky between the canyon rims allowed no way to gauge the storm’s extent. Desert storms often promised moisture they couldn’t deliver, sending patchy clouds to drop fly swarms of virga that evaporated before reaching the ground. The air throbbed with an ominous overtone and a train wreck of thunder burst over him. Foolish to make a break now. If a monsoon followed, runoff from the acres of bare sandstone above the rim would funnel to the vee at the top of the canyon and spew a sudden, chest-high torrent down the granite slot. Not many drowned in the desert but when they did, it happened fast in places like this. The sky turned even blacker. He unrolled the tarp curtain, tucked himself in the camp chair and waited. A rapid-fire buzz whipped over the tarp and then paused as if the wind needed to regain its breath. A sundering blast threatened to unzip the heavens, then the downpour. The dirt outside boiled into rust-colored slurry. Runlets babbled past, gathering momentum over the slickrock. Down the wash, he heard the clack of stampeding stones. The air seemed carbonated. He stripped off his clothes, let the mist kiss his skin with breaking bubbles.
Isaac woke to the flush embrace of parched earth and rain. A solitary bird called chu-wee, chu-wee, ruhruhruh, and then answered itself. He stepped past the curtain. A thin cascade spouted at the canyon’s head and dropped to a grey-green welcome at the bottom. The cistern barrel was full now, the water settled and clear. He could not see the wash, but he heard its flow, cheerful after last night’s roil. This minute, Isaac liked living here. He liked it very much.
A wind-chime tinkle of faraway voices. He fixed the source, two ant-people daring each other on the canyon’s opposite rim. Something flew apart from them and settled into a long glide. Not a drone—a yellow Frisbee heading his way. He swallowed his shout of protest. Sound had located them; they might spy him. His solitude was an illusion, his effort wasted. He had come this far only to find another place where he did not belong.
The approach he’d taken over the hill would be treacherously slick and his mud-clogged boots would leave an indelible trail. He could wait a day or two for the ground to dry, or try the shorter course down the wash now that the flow had subsided. He explored as far as the first drop. Twelve feet or so with an uneven landing. Rugged but doable. But suppose he encountered completely impassible stretches further down. Could he climb back out or would he be stranded? Not a risk he was prepared to take. He turned uphill, resigned to wait for the mud to dry, and spied the crafty boatman’s solution. Snagged in a piñon, a length of line secured to the trunk, a casting weight on its free end. With the aid of the rope, Hefner could go straight up and down the shortcut.
Isaac appraised The Mansion a final time. He might be the last visitor to know who had lived here. A hundred years from now bits of Hefner’s stash could turn up like arrow points or shards of grey ware. He checked the date on the canned peaches, popped the ring, peeled back the lid and sniffed. Still good. He raised the can to Hefner before drinking off the sweet syrup.
Down the wash he encountered sections scrubbed clean, brown sugar sand and pebbles packed into former potholes, crevices jammed with gravel, mud and twists of grass. Cottonwood saplings bent sideways, latticed with sticks and branches and clots of roots dangling like Druid ornaments. One chute required butt scooting in the stream to fit through a slot. He dragged his pack behind. Where the wash met solid granite, the declivities sharpened and became less forgiving. Twice more, Isaac used lines Hefner had anchored in the bedrock.
A shining quarter moon glinted in the sandy bottom. He kicked away enough overburden to identify a chrome headlight ring. Maybe an entire car lay buried there. He moved downstream, alert to other newly exposed prizes. A flash of milky quartz winked from a packed bed of fine gravel. Its thumb-shaped contour seemed too polished to have been tumbled in the stream. Perhaps a broken dish or chunk of kitchen sink. He dug away the binding crust and pried under its concave back. The palette-shaped fragment flipped free, revealing a grey-green circle with an obsidian center. He bent to make certain.
He’d always pictured glass eyes as marbles.
Isaac cupped the eye in his palm and stroked the smooth curvature. Fine red vessels threaded the white. The iris feathered into grey and yellow vanes that plunged into the pupil’s dark crater. He met its blind stare with a gaze of wonder. What use was another eye? He saw too much already.
Fun has always been part of our hardworking western heritage.
—“Home” with Meg Mogrin, Grand Junction Style
Years had passed since Meg last attended the Barclay’s annual barbeque at the Crown B. A party that once celebrated the end of spring branding, it had been nudged into July for warmer evenings and in recognition that most of the partiers no longer came from the branding crew. Their ranch skills inclined more toward drinking, dancing and shooting fireworks. Since the winding drive back to town challenged even the sober, all were welcome to stay overnight in one of the houses, the barn or the meadow, thus averting one danger with another.
Meg had come early und
er the pretext of helping Terri Barclay prepare the feast, which also gave her the option of departing before things got too wild. There was not much to do since the food was catered by a chuckwagon outfit run by a Barclay neighbor. Donnie asked the caterer if he would be serving Donnie’s own beef, since a few head were missing last fall. Meg sensed some tension behind the joke since neither party treated it as very funny. The alleged rustling could have happened fifty years ago. Change came slowly in Glade Park, and its history was sometimes indistinguishable from its grudges.
Terri herself looked out of time but at home under a broad-brimmed hat, her long Emmylou Harris hair pulled back in horsewoman’s tresses. She bore her grey not as an erasure but as an underscore. Women in Terri’s family, which had been around as long as the Barclays, had never been expected to rein themselves in and even when she met Donnie at seventeen, it was too late for him to try. Her name was on half the Barclay property, fifty-one percent in the case of Barclay Enterprises because it gave the company woman-owned status for bidding on government contracts. Donnie was pragmatic. While he didn’t want a woman or the Feds telling him how to run his business, he was willing to listen—especially when the government suggested easier ways to take its money.
Terri eyed Meg’s black pegged jeans and embroidered corral boots. “You want to go for a ride before it gets too crazy?” she said. “I haven’t got Roamer out all day.” Donnie had named Terri’s gelding Roamer after a former Democratic governor. He had not intended it as a compliment.
Meg enjoyed Terri’s company but the boots were for show and she did not consider a rocking saddle five feet off the ground to be a relief. “Thanks. It’s enough just to get back up in this clean air.”
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