by Jeff Soloway
I parked near 23 Camper Village. The air outside my car was dry and desert-chill, though the sun was already gathering strength. I mounted the single step to the door and tried the doorbell, which produced an electronic screech like the buzzer in my old game of Operation. No answer. I tried again.
I listened for footsteps, a shower, a television. Surely even breathing would be audible through these prefab walls. Still nothing. Should I knock on the neighbors’ doors? I looked around for a busybody peering out the window at me. All I saw was a cat prowling around a bright red fire hydrant by the dirt lane. At least the town, or the Grand Chalet, had provided for fire protection. I hoped the aquifer under the hydrants hadn’t dried up.
I returned to my car. As I drove back, I had to slow for a chunky child ambling right down the middle of the gravel. He was tossing a plastic-shelled Nerf football up in the air and catching it, albeit with lurching clumsiness.
I opened my window. I could hear him narrating an imaginary football game: “What a catch by Robbie, the big tight end! He rumbles to the end zone! T is for touchdown!”
He even had a catchphrase. It was easy to guess who he imagined as Robbie, the big tight end. I tried to share his vision of the roaring stadium, leaping cheerleaders, gratefully elated teammates. The kid wore an Arizona Cardinals sweatshirt. (Has there ever been a cardinal in Arizona?) He looked familiar. Then I remembered—he was the boy I’d seen with Freddie Bridgewater.
I pulled over and stepped out into a crisp breeze. It was spring, but in the Northeast, we would call this football weather. Robbie turned the corner.
I followed on foot.
Two boys were now standing over Robbie. One of them wore a logoless red baseball cap—red, the color of poison and danger. The other was shaking his fist like a dice thrower. He stepped up to Robbie and tossed a glitter bomb of dirt.
“Why won’t you come see?” said the glitter bomber. He stuck his chin out when he talked, like a boxer trying to bait his enemy into a lunge.
Robbie, his face now dirt-freckled, squinted through the dust cloud. “You said it’s too dark.” He was holding the football behind his back, probably afraid that they’d snatch it.
“You can see it good enough,” the red-capped boy said. “You can smell it.”
“You ran away,” said Robbie.
“We wanted to show you.”
“I’m not going.”
“Little baby throw up?” the glitter bomber said.
“It’s dangerous!” Robbie insisted.
“It’s not gonna get up and bite you, fatass.”
“Ever heard of germs?”
The glitter bomber picked up a small rock—or maybe a dirt clod—tossed it up to eye level, caught it with his other hand, and tossed it again. He looked like he was going to wait until Robbie was mesmerized and then hurl it at his face.
“Hey!” I called. They paid no attention.
“What are you afraid of?” the red-capped boy asked. “Your mommy gonna get you in trouble?”
“His mommy’s not around,” the glitter bomber said. “He cries when you talk about her. It’s easy to make him cry.” He flipped the rock toward Robbie’s face, not hard. Robbie ducked—too deeply—but didn’t run, didn’t protest, didn’t even glare. He seemed to hope the boys would get bored with him. They were a long way from bored.
I came closer. “I’m looking for someone.”
Only Robbie glanced my way. The glitter bomber stepped behind him, as if to retrieve the rock he’d thrown, but instead he got down on his hands and knees behind Robbie in the dirt. The other kid moved in closer.
I swooped forward just in time and hooked Robbie away before he could be shoved backward and toppled over the crouching boy. Such an old trick, as old as my own childhood and everybody else’s, but Robbie had missed it.
“Don’t touch him!” I screamed. The crouching kid started to rise and I stood over him, to make him scramble backward. “Get out of here!”
Robbie, smelling victory, rallied to me. “Yeah!” The kids bolted, saving their pride by laughing uncontrollably as they went.
No adult neighbor opened a trailer door or a window to check on my outburst. People in tourist towns work on the weekends. I picked up Robbie’s football. “You play?”
“Oh, yeah.”
I tossed it to him. Robbie caught it, dropped it, gathered it up from the road with both hands like it was a whole pile of footballs, and tossed it back to me.
“You got to deal with those losers all the time?” I asked.
He shrugged and adopted the athletic “ready” stance—feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly bent, palms at chest level facing out. He just wanted to play ball. I didn’t mind. When I was his age, my friends and I exchanged most of our secrets while playing catch in a twilit yard. The gentle, rhythmic exertion seemed to activate our imagination and relax our inhibitions. I should play catch with all of my interview subjects.
“Remember me?” I asked.
“Yeah. From last night. Freddie said you’re a reporter. What are you going to write? Did you see what we did? I helped paint the sign. Come on, throw it.”
I threw the ball back to him, careful to make the ball wobble as much as he did, so as not to embarrass him. He missed the ball again, scampered to fetch it, and heaved it to me from long distance.
I was able to make a shoestring catch. I cried, “T is for touchdown!” My quickstepping end-zone celebration was more Riverdance than NFL, but Robbie shot his index finger at me, the veteran quarterback giving credit where it’s due.
“You got hands like Larry Fitzgerald,” he said as he readied himself again.
“Who?”
“My brother’s favorite baller. I mean Freddie, not Meat. Meat can’t even catch.”
“Is Meat home?”
“He’s in jail.”
He noticed my discomfort and added, “It’s no big deal.” He had a lonely child’s perception and readiness to please. “They’re about to let him out.” He threw back the ball extra carefully, with a kind of stiff-shouldered shot-put motion.
“Anyone home with you?”
“My mom’s home.”
“Can I—”
“Home in Santa Fe! That’s where she lives.” His laugh burst out like a sneeze, just once, and then he was back to normal. “She says our place probably stinks. You think her other kids don’t stink? She likes them better and they’re not even hers. So what. I like it better here.”
“Robbie—”
“My name’s Kevin! Robbie’s my football name.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s no big deal. I don’t need Meat. I can make a Celeste for lunch. He’ll be back soon, and so will…someone. We have a meeting.”
“Is Freddie coming?”
“Maybe.”
“Can I wait with you?”
“I’ve only got one Celeste.”
“I have snacks. Wait here.” I retrieved my bag from the car and showed him. We returned to his home and sat together on the front step, munching. Someone needed to teach this kid some fear. Then again, he probably learned all he needed to know about fear from the local kids.
“Want to play Pokémon?” he asked.
—
Some time later, I heard the whir of tires over gravel.
“Meat!” Kevin leaped up from the step. Once on a press trip to Amish country I had watched a cow lope, with laughable elegance, across a field; Kevin had the same kind of ungainly dignity as he cantered across the mangy yard. Meat rolled down the window and Kevin tossed as much of his upper body through it as would fit. He took several moments to slither out again. I assumed they were talking about me.
Meat was no longer smiling as he stepped out of the car. His sunglasses reflected the blue sky, the trailer behind me, and my face in front of it. One of those things didn’t belong.
“Look!” said Kevin. “We’re playing Pokémon.”
“Where’s Freddie?” Meat asked.
Ke
vin shrugged.
“You’re supposed to stay inside. What if the ho-hos are doing a sweep?” Meat scanned the surroundings up and down, like a sergeant checking for snipers, though the surrounding roofs were barely nine feet tall.
I handed Kevin my short stack of underpowered Pokémon cards. I wasn’t sure of the rules, but at least I had figured out how to lose. Kevin accepted them with a sigh. The game was over.
“Ho-hos?” I asked.
“Hotel police. Kevin says you’re a reporter. What did Freddie tell you?”
“Not much. We didn’t have time.”
“Probably a reason. What can you give us that the others can’t?”
“What others?”
“Other writers. Jewel. She proved herself.”
“How?”
“By listening. By believing. By hiking.”
“What about saving your ass last night? I kept that first guard from bashing in your skull.”
“And then you stepped back and let them arrest me. Hey, I get it. No big deal. You have to save yourself. I do the same when I can.” He snatched off his sunglasses to get a better look at me. Dark pouches bulged underneath his eyes. He hadn’t slept well in jail. “We’ve got to go national with this story. Who do you know at the networks?”
“Brian Blackpool.” Meat didn’t strike me as an Amazon Prime subscriber. Good thing.
“Is he on 60 Minutes?”
“No.”
“Then he’s not good enough. Neither are you.”
“Come on, Meat,” said Kevin. “Let’s show him the command center. Freddie says we got to take chances.”
“Freddie takes chances, I get arrested.”
“Freddie’d want to show him. So do I. That’s two out of three.”
Meat sighed and unlocked the door. “Majority rules,” he said to me. “That’s how we do things in this organization.”
Strange term to use for a family.
Chapter 17
Inside the trailer, sheets of paper covered the floor like palm leaves after a storm. The two windows were sheathed with blue vinyl rolling blinds, though enough sunlight leaked in around the edges to give the room a twilit glow. A futon mattress lay bent in the corner, half on the floor, half propped against the wall. I wondered if it was a sofa or a bed. On one end of it lay a pillow patterned with brownish stains, like a giraffe skin. Two metal folding chairs provided the only other seating options. The room’s centerpiece was a low plastic table, white with black streaks, a Walmart imitation of marble. To the left, the room morphed into a kitchen. The gray scrub-pad carpet gave way to a patch of linoleum, and along the wall stood a two-burner range, a half-size refrigerator, and a sink, from which a stack of dishes rose up like a volcano.
Meat reached past me to chain-lock the door. While trying to avoid him, I bumped my shins on the plastic table. Kevin knelt beside it and laid his Pokémon cards out on it.
I glanced down at the papers I was stepping on. One had the all-caps title FANCY-PANTS TOURISTS TRAMPLE GRAND CANYON.
“Fancy-pants?”
Meat twinkle-toed to a tiny island of empty space beside the futon. “You can’t read the leaflets! Nothing’s been approved yet. We have a process. We’re not the fucking Republican party.”
“Freddie says you shouldn’t swear in public.” Kevin appeared to be laying out a game of Pokémon solitaire on the table.
“Freddie’s not here,” said Meat. “What a surprise.”
“Don’t blame tourists,” I said. “It’s bad politics. All the workers here depend on tourists. Blame developers instead for pushing out established businesses.” Didn’t he know anything about propaganda?
“Join the Grand Canyon Defense League, you’ll get a vote every week.”
“How many members do you have?”
“We keep it lean.”
“Just us and Freddie,” Kevin said.
“But we have alliances with all local action groups,” Meat said, “except the ones run by assholes. Could you please sit down? You’re stepping on weeks of work.”
I managed to fit myself sidesaddle on a folding chair. I wasn’t touching that futon. Meat plopped onto it.
“You want to start with water plunder or ho-ho brutality? Get out your camera. My shin looks like a goat chewed on it.” He started to roll up his jeans, revealing accordioned white socks and some purplish skin. “Nothing compared to what they did to Freddie last time. Broke his arm in three places. They thought that would scare him off.”
“I want to start with Jewel. Maybe”—I glanced down at Kevin—“he should go to his room.”
“He doesn’t have a room. This isn’t Buckingham Palace. Kevin’s a member of the League too. I wish someone had given me that kind of respect when I was his age.”
“You had a PlayStation,” Kevin said.
Meat’s grin flickered and almost went out.
“But it’s no big deal,” Kevin added quickly. “I got my birthday coming. I can wait.”
“Winter and spring are rough,” Meat said. “I’m at the Canyon Plaza. I get more hours in summer. Kevin knows. He knows everything.”
“Was Freddie with Jewel the day she died?”
“Ask Freddie, not me.” Meat leaned over to roll his pants back down. “But I know how she was killed.”
“How?”
“First mistake, she was staying at the Grand Chalet. Couldn’t have made it easier. All they had to do was say ‘Room service!’ and stroll on inside, and—you know.”
“Put a pillow on her head,” Kevin suggested. “And sit on it. That’s what we think.”
“Her body was found five miles down a rocky trail,” I said. “You think they suffocated her and dragged her corpse for hours through the Grand Canyon?”
“Maybe they used a mule,” Kevin said.
“We don’t know the specifics,” Meat said. “What we do know is who rules this town.”
“I want specifics, not politics. I found an email your brother sent to Jewel. He was planning to meet her at Hermit Trail last Sunday morning. The day she died.”
“Bullshit.”
“You want to see it?”
“You’re not listening! The politics is the story. You think conspiracy theories are for cranks. But this is America. Two hundred years ago plantation owners wrote slavery into our Constitution. Today oil companies write pollution regs. It’s the same in Tusayan. Our mayor runs the town’s biggest business. That’s normal for America! It’s bad enough that rich people in this country escape prosecution and taxes. We can’t let them escape the truth too. We have to keep telling it. We know what the Grand Chalet is doing. So did Jewel. That’s why they killed her.”
Why had Jewel trusted these two? Perhaps they really had something.
“What’s the Grand Chalet doing?”
“Jewel knew. She knew everything. She studied. When we told her the Kanab ambersnail was almost gone, she didn’t make stupid jokes about its name. She’d already read up! She’d heard about the missing yellow-billed cuckoos that are freaking out the birders. She’d hiked all the trails. She knew that Santa Maria Spring is just a dribble out of its pipe. Dripping Springs is a mud puddle. Miners Spring, down in Horseshoe Mesa, is totally dry. She and Freddie planned to visit all the other springs. That was their mission. They were on to the Grand Chalet’s water rape and the NPS’s corruption. They were gathering evidence. You want to know what kind?”
“She and Freddie hiked trails together?”
“Sure. She was part of our team.”
“Did anyone else go with them?”
Meat looked down at his all-black New Balance sneakers, barely suitable for work as a caterer. “I get blisters on hikes. But I know all the maps. Ask me where the springs are! Or where they used to be. I know them all.”
“Except Silver Bell Spring,” Kevin said.
“That’s it, Kev. The mystery spring. The one Freddie said was the key. Supposed to be near Dripping Springs, but somehow nobody can ever find it.”
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“Why is it the key?”
“The NPS posted the list of springs they and the Grand Chalet hooked meters up to. The water-flow data on the website show that water levels throughout the springs have remained constant. Everybody knows that’s bullshit, but how do you prove it? We figure they rigged the meters. Freddie’s hiked to every spring on the list. He took pictures of the meters, wrote down the numbers on their readouts. The idea was to see if the numbers on the devices matched the numbers posted on the website. And they do. But there’s one spring he couldn’t find—Silver Bell, supposedly somewhere on the Boucher off the Dripping Springs Trail. According to the website data, Silver Bell Spring has the heaviest flow of all. When they average out the numbers, it makes up for the shortfalls of the other springs. Their scientists have some bullshit explanation regarding seasonal fluctuation. We say they put the ‘high’ back in hydrology! Get it?”
“I think so.”
“That’s the meter they rigged! But we can’t prove it because we can’t find it. The NPS won’t tell us where it is. They say Silver Bell Spring is off the trail and they don’t want people trampling over native flora. Believe that?”
“No. I think Freddie and Jewel found Silver Bell Spring.”
“Really?”
I took Jewel’s map of the Hermit Trail from my pocket and unfolded it. Since the plastic table was covered with Pokémon monsters, I had to lay it out on the futon mattress. I pointed at the “FM at SBS” notation. “Is that Freddie’s writing?”
“Maybe. We don’t write letters. He barely answers texts.” Meat dropped slowly to both knees, like an elephant, to read the map. “FM at SBS. Flow meter at Silver Bell Spring. Could be. That X is on the Boucher Trail down from the Dripping Springs. It’s in the right place. See this, Kev?”
Kevin crowded closer. “Is that the spring?”
“I think so.” Meat knocked a Pokémon card off the table and bent, groaning a little, to pick it up. “Christ.”
“Freddie didn’t tell you about this?”
“That he found Silver Bell? No. He should have. We have logistics meetings all the time. I’m his brother.”