The Orange Blossom Express

by Marlena Evangeline

  “What do they want?” she asked. She slunk down in the seat and tried to be invisible.

  She was really stoned and wanted to get out and ask what was going on but decided to wait. Another police car pulled up. Then people started tumbling out of the hotel, and the cops started to search everyone.

  Hank started the engine as soon as the cops went inside again and guided the rusty Volkswagen away from the trouble.

  They drove into town and stopped at one of the Cowboy Bars and went in for a drink. The cocktail waitress asked to see Maggie’s ID. It was fake, but the cocktail waitress served her a gin anyway.

  Hank said he’d just gotten out of the army; he’d barely missed serving in Nam and was glad of it. He said he’d had trouble in the army, trouble all his life, it seemed. In the army, he got busted for blowing up a latrine with a cherry bomb and then decking the MP trying to arrest him. If he’d been promoted as many times as he was busted back to private, he’d have been a major.

  “Well, I wasn’t.” He grinned.

  He barely got out with an honorable discharge, but unlike a lot of others, he’d gotten out.

  His stories amused her. He made her laugh. Even after this unusual night, he made her laugh. And Hank believed he would do something to get him to where he wanted to go, but that it wouldn’t be the normal way. He appealed to Maggie’s growing sense of impropriety.

  She told him about leaving Redlands. How her father had been sick for the longest time. And her excitement about arriving in Big Bear, Lewis, the trains, learning to ski the ice, the crud, the corn. How stunning it felt when the temperature fell, and the air froze like stardust, how she’d be first on the slope, plunging her skis deep into the powder, letting it wash over her, deep, deep, into the whiteness.

  Hank said he didn’t ski, but he’d like to learn if she would teach him. She laughed and thought that he wasn’t like any other guy she had ever met. But then, the Redlands crop was predictable; they’d end up in Victorian houses, conventionally placed like their ancestors, with no playful destinations in sight. Hank was of his time, but not for his time. He was different.

  Patrick Fairchild walked into the bar and looked around in the dark for a minute until he spotted them. He came over and sat down.

  “They searched everyone’s room and found four lids in your duffle bag, Hank. “They’re coming down on everybody real bad. Your name was on the duffle. They don’t want long-hairs in town. They’re making it bad.”

  “Shit,” Hank said nervously.

  “Personally, I’m gonna split,” said Patrick. “These guys weren’t kidding. They were threatening everyone. One of the cops said I’d better leave town if I knew what was good for me. I’m gone. I’m history on this iceberg. Boy, this night will go down as one of the shittiest in history. Have you seen Jackson?”

  “No. I wonder if they busted him,” Hank said. “He probably took a hike out the back door.”

  “If anyone would do it, it would be Jackson,” said Patrick.

  “Let’s all leave together,” said Hank. “Three against the world. The three musketeers, no use for us to stay here now. Let’s split and figure it out as we go.” He said it casually, as if it were the most natural solution to the problem.

  “We can start a commune. Our very own. Come on, you guys. It would be fun,” laughed Hank.

  “You are crazy” Maggie said. But it seemed like a suitable choice, as if there were no other choices, as if the world itself had fallen away and they were the only three in existence.

  It was an outrageous idea. Yet … it seemed possible … like not having to go home from the party, but taking it with you, creating a new reality and making it yours forever, as if they all could create a new person for the lives they were living by linking together. As if they could mold themselves into something more significant by virtue of the relationships themselves. The moment traced itself inside them, running over their individual pasts and speaking to a future much more interesting than the selves they seemed to be leaving. Maggie could have moved on by herself. But that’s not how it happened.

  “We’ll move down the hill, get out of here. This place has been one hassle after another lately. The locals are getting too heavy. We’ll end up in jail if we stay. I don’t need it. We can share the rent,” Patrick urged.

  “We can do it. What do you say, Maggie?” asked Hank.

  “What would we do?” she asked.

  “The time is ripe for profitable ventures,” Hank said.

  “So you’re an opportunist?” Maggie asked.

  “Perhaps,” Hank said. “But my financial opportunity doesn’t exist in the straight world. I don’t get along with those folks. It exists somewhere in the subculture; it’s a mecca for commerce.”

  “Sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it?” Maggie said.

  “Only on the surface. This movement is going to make a lot of people rich, but rich doing better things.”

  They sat at the table talking about the possibilities, the things they might do, could do, would do. If one of them had crumbled then, things would have gone differently. The moment’s simplicity, necessity, and direction betrayed its potential, its undeterminable direction, its vast probabilities, so they stuck to the promise of adventure; it was a collective decision.

  The vibes were right.

  Hank stayed just long enough to make certain Maggie would instinctively follow his deep, soft kisses. She sensed that if she followed Hank, the curiosity she felt would bring her to a new Maggie, someone she might otherwise never know, and someone she wanted to meet.

  Hank called a week later from Devore where he’d rented the ranch and asked if she wanted to come. She’d thought about it the whole week, thought about changing her mind, but things were turning worse in Big Bear. The cops were hassling everyone. The decision seemed logical. She could go to college if she moved to Devore; a new State College in San Bernardino was close to there. Yes, she thought, it was time to think a new thought, to learn a think or two. She already knew her own words by heart. She’d read those pages a million times. Over and over and over again. That dance was gonna be a drag. What other words were there? Where might she find them? Did Hank know words she didn’t? She was curious about words. Where they might take her. Where did she think she was going? Wherever gone girls go. And yes, she was going there, before she knew where she was going, she’d go there first. It’s the only path there is no matter where you think you’re going. Isn’t it? What else might she do? She could read her own words again. No. Together sounded better. She liked going gone together. She thought she liked it. After all, she’d never really done it before. Not this. Come together now. Yeah. That was the answer. Wasn’t it? If that was the answer, what was the question? What was the question? Did she have the right answer? No, she didn’t know the answer. This much she knew. She knew she didn’t know it. Maybe she hadn’t asked the right question. But it didn’t matter then because she was going. Destination: Devore, California, Population 96.

  And there she was. Hank gestured towards the house like Christ or something.

  “Welcome to the Rough Rider’s Club,” he said.

  He did. He looked like Christ or something. That’s what Maggie thought that day. She was glad she’d come. He seemed better than she remembered.

  “A bunch of cowboys used to meet here. They used to bring their horses and take long rides, come back to the clubhouse and dance and have barbeques and stuff.” He pointed towards the high ridge behind the house. “There’s a horse trail that leads up to a spring. Then it moves up across those hills and over the other side to Antelope Valley. They used to do endurance rides. “How do you like it?”

  “It’s remote.” Maggie could barely talk. She was moving in with Christ himself. Sweet Jesus. Here I am, she thought. The sagebrush rustled in the breeze rattling around them like mariachis.

  “I want to see what the house looks like.” Maggie barely knew this guy and there she was moving in with him. Right the
n, at that moment, she would have trailed after him to any broken house, to any scab of earth, to any foreign place of squalor. Hank led her inside; the clubhouse was spacious and casual. The rooms were terse and aimless like the landscape, no frills or facades built into the basic structure.

  “This living room is where the Rough Riders used to have dances and meetings.”

  It was a spacious empty room, the kind of room that would need work to make comfortable, a space needing attention because of its possibility; she liked it. Her imagination scuttled into the empty corners feeling somehow independent, assuming that the furniture she needed would find its way: the odd oak desk that would clutter paper, the unusual hutch that would collect dishes, and the root-like coffee table that might harbor ashtrays and coasters, the things they would need to create the illusion of habitation, as if the hidden laws of matter had concealed this world so far.

  The flying winds chattered inside the rafters with a whistling sound. The flares of dust-drenched air made the house seem like part of the landscape, flushed with a careless melancholy, like the outside sage. Hank grabbed her and danced her slowly around the living room.

  “We’ll make it perfect,” he said. “Trust me.” He pulled her close, dancing her through the bedroom, twirling, round and round and round.

  “This will be our room. Just yours and mine,” he danced her to the back window. Desert flowers bloomed in the sage.

  “Look, wildflowers. Like us. Like you.”

  “You’re crazed,” she said. “But I think I might love this.” There was a timelessness in the “this” she spoke of and she could only determine that it had no direction, no goal to assess it, no moment to fulfill—it was the “this” surrounding them—the “this” pulling them deep into each other. The fine layer of silt dusting the inside of the house made it feel as if the inside too, belonged to the nostalgia of the landscape. The bedrooms had been recently added, cutting up the old dance floor into small spaces for the bedrooms and the living room, yet something about the place would always make it a club, a place where people gathered, as if something inherent in the house’s character defied a home’s more singular definition.

  It wasn’t just the two bathrooms, His and Hers, side by side leading out to the patio, or the galley-like kitchen with the larger-than-life red formica bar opening to the living area, as if the Rough Riders themselves were all bigger than life, Paul Bunyan-sized men and women able to tame the stature of the rambling club. As if the club were an extension of the deep landscape, the wild desert, and no amount of civilizing would or could subdue the restlessness lingering there.

  She rattled around in the kitchen, poking into the cupboards, searching the empty spaces with ideas of filling them overfull. The cupboards and sink spanned one entire wall, adjoining an old Wedgwood stove, a length of five feet. She found canned meatless chili in a crumpled brown grocery bag along with some stale Ohio Crackers as if the Rough Riders themselves had left dinner.

  There was cheese in the refrigerator, barely edible, along with beer. They ate outside on some rusty metal chairs.

  A haze filtered the pink evening, and a scattering of low-going, gray clouds deepened to china blue. The yip of a coyote trailed up the canyon, and the occasional whir of a truck passing below on the freeway drifted up, breaking the long stirring silence.

  “I love the desert,” said Hank. “People always think nothing can grow here, but that’s wrong thinking. You just have to know how to treat this land. We can do alright here. It doesn’t have the beauty of the mountains, but it has got a distinct personality.” He put his dinner plate down, balanced between two rocks, and got up to light a cigarette in the shadowy darkness. “I’ve met some of the neighbors. They’re live-and-let-live types. I don’t think they care what we do.”

  “Just what’re we gonna to do?”

  “Whatever our hearts desire,” he said. “I’ve got orders for a few cords of firewood. Both Patrick and me have our saws from Big Bear. I’ve been talking to the gal who owns the grocery store. Says no one is cutting wood here and there’s some gnarly eucalyptus in back of her house that’s dying, shedding bark all over the place. Anyway, we can cut that. This other guy I know has a grove coming down for a big housing development. Tract houses. Anyway. He said we could cut all the wood. He’ll even pay us if we dig up the stumps and haul them off. And we have the wood on top of that. Actually, it’s not gonna happen for a few months. I’ll have time to find some help, get another person.” Patrick Fairchild, Hank’s roommate, now would be hers.

  Patrick had been a football player at Annapolis, and then a Naval Officer with top clearance on a top secret submarine project. His adjustment to civilian life, like Hank’s, was instant. He’d hated the confinement of the Navy.

  “I’ll look for a job,” Maggie said.

  “You don’t have to,” said Hank. “You don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to.”

  “I like working.”

  “I mean if you just want to hang around, it’s okay. The house needs a lot of work. Somebody has got to do the cooking.”

  “I’d hate keeping house, I’d be bored to death. Maybe I’ll take a class. The new university is just down the road. I’ll check that out.”

  “Great,” Hank said.

  “But I do like to shop. We’re gonna need plenty of furniture to fill up this ole barn.”

  “But it’s our home-sweet-home, barn.” Hank laughed. “Our stable.”

  Another coyote joined the desert lament now, lit by the smooth clean moon lingering in the blue-black sky.

  “Maybe we could buy this place, Maggie,” Hank said. He took another hit off his cigarette and looked over the ranch. Crisp evening stars sparkled above the dark line of the horizon.

  “Buy it. That would be something, wouldn’t it?” The idea of ownership hadn’t occurred to her before that moment. Not that kind of ownership. The idea of Hank had barely occurred to her. But there he was standing there. As if they had grown from a common root, something that plunged below these shallow desert soils. Everything else melted from her view of herself, like she’d found a new language, something exotic and foreign and exciting because of the newness. She hadn’t the vaguest idea of who she might be if it all changed. She’d have to change her entire language. But she wanted to. She wanted another language. A new dialect. What if she couldn’t learn it? What if she’s too far gone? Gone where? Wherever gone girls go. She was starting from scratch. Baking a cake with no recipe. Taking off her arms and legs and putting them on the sofa or something and then trying to walk around and do stuff. A whole new language! Like speaking and writing. The difference between life and death. Or death and life. Like her very bones were doing the death rattle inside her very living breathing body and they were trembling out of control: shake, rattle, and rolling into possibilities and all. A translation. From thee to me to we.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes,” she repeated it. “Yes. That would be something, Hank.” And she did think it would be something, but that something was too far away for her to see.

  He bent down to kiss her. “It’s possible,” he whispered. “I can do it. We can do it.”

  She was no longer connected to anything except this moment, as if her flesh had found another skin.

  Hank took her by the hand, pulling her to the bedroom, dancing her over to the window, pulling her into him with soft sweet man kisses, not powdery mommy kisses, but whiskery breathy man kisses, slipping over her lips her cheeks her neck, her shoulders kisses and shoulders, blouse scrunching, buttons twisting, zippers and buttons more buttons, skin and skin and skin, sockies, sockies and toes, toes toes on toes, bodies and skin and skin and skin, sinking bodies, skin on covers, tangled in blankets, and damp rumpling sheets, and Hank, slipping around and over her and in her and in her. Communicators. Collaborators. Cohabitators. Skin of thought what thought no thought yes thoughts thinking skin thoughts thinking skin things reading lips on lips her breath his breath their breath breathi
ng in and out again and again and again breath on ears on other ears listening to lips on lips and ears and throats hearing heart things in skin things and lip things on breasts and lips on nipples oh nipples oh yes nipples and ribs and lips tickling ribs lips on hips on hips oh lips on hips and lips and this was incredible and nice and very nice and Maggie liked this driftiness stirring between her thighs and this place so she might stay here in simmering juices learning juicy things in this spot teaching and preaching new life this life not old life but this language living in this skin speaking this thing this inside language that knew how to talk itself as she learned it now flooding from this wet spot now growing and dividing and multiplying.

  Zihuatanejo

  A gypsy wind scattered the dust as they pulled into the dirt drive. Felipe parked the car and got out. He waited impatiently as she fumbled for her red Italian purse whose strap had gotten tangled under the seat. She got out and they walked towards the blue cantina. The orange in her vest pocket bumped against her thigh. Felipe was quiet and serious. She coughed and Felipe looked around and frowned. Inside the cantina, several Formica tables were scattered randomly on the cement floor. A thin woman wiped a table and looked up. Felipe nodded towards a table like Maggie was supposed to sit. She walked to the back door and looked over the desert. He stepped behind the bar and got two beers from a red Coca-Cola freezer and opened them. He handed her a Dos XX without a glass and said something to the woman. The woman looked at Maggie and shrugged. Maggie could only pick out a few words. Her Spanish was terrible. The man and woman were arguing. Maggie sipped the cold beer. Felipe asked if she had the money. Yes. Yes I have it. But not here, she said. He said he needed another thousand for his uncle. Eleven. Eleven thousand. It’s too much, she said. We agreed on the money already. Five thousand. No, No, ten, he said, and one more. Eleven thousand. He frowned and looked away. Why would I bring more money, when you agreed to five, she asked. He shrugged and swigged some beer. The woman spoke to Felipe and then looked at Maggie. She drank some beer. The woman grabbed Maggie’s hand. Maggie thought about the weeks after the abortion: the hemorrhage, the infection, the doctor’s sullen anger, her mother’s shame. The woman turned on Felipe and scolded like a mother. Felipe was annoyed. He acted like a child. Seven, he said. Seven and one more for his uncle. Eight. Eight altogether. It’s too much, Maggie said. She sipped the beer. The woman scolded again. She thought of Hank. Right after the abortion, Maggie moved to Big Bear. That’s where she met him. She was ready for Hank in a way no one could imagine. She moved in with him right away. Well, she moved in with both Hank and Patrick. She moved in with them both. The woman went to Felipe and whacked him on the arm. He flinched. He glared at Maggie. Seven, he says. Six, and one more for his uncle. Yes. It’s okay, Maggie said. Seven is good. I have only seven. He knew she was lying about the money. He knew she had more. Maggie knew he was lying about his uncle. The extra money was for him. They both knew the lie and agreed to it. The woman smiled.