Budge still had his will. Perhaps it wasn’t a dream. “No,” he said firmly.
The Mayor opened his leathery palm and held it towards his guest. “But you do.”
“No.”
Budge put the drink down on the table. The bottle, which had started full, was now half drained. What the hell had happened? Had he blacked out? The old man leaned forward, the hollows of his face deepened by the lantern’s indirect illumination, transforming him into a desert warlock. The Mayor’s open, extended hand began to tremble; what was merely the muscular weakness of age appeared seismic, threatening.
Budge stood, but wooziness almost knocked him down again.
“No,” he said once more before tilting, careening through the front door. He bolted out of the little house and into the night. He could feel the tendrils of music at his back as he struggled to find the burro path again.
The Mayor stood in his doorway to watch as Budge made his way.
“Mr. Budge,” said the Mayor. “You are not being pursued.”
Budge stilled.
“However, you are too close to the bluff’s edge; it’s nearly invisible at night, and if you go over you will break your back on the rocks below. What is the old ribald joke? You know, the one about what’s in your pocket?”
How could the Mayor know? And then Budge realized that he was referring to the flashlight, as in is that a flashlight in your pocket or… When he flicked it on he saw that the old man was terrifyingly correct. He was only a step away from the edge. He let the beam play over the jagged, wrecked slope of boulders, slag, wire, and glass. There was always glass.
And then the white wooden cross of Lily Joy’s grave. From this vantage point she seemed so close. The trinkets shined back their unnatural colors. Budge turned his beam away, embarrassed as if he’d stumbled across a woman changing her clothes.
“Thank you,” he said to his host.
“You’ll return,” said the Mayor. “And with any luck, we won’t meet again.”
THE COUNTY MAN
Chapter 12
November, 1958: Del Ray, CA
Vacations, however brief, alter the spirit. Audrey couldn’t help but notice how peaceful Florian was after their little ghost town adventure, and in contrast, how dark and private Budge had become. She had no intention of asking her nephew what was troubling him, but she knew Budge was low on money and considered the possibility that he might live with her and Florian in their little apartment in Del Rey. Maybe just for a little while, and only if Florian remained docile.
From the moment they packed up to leave Centenary, Budge had not made a single wisecrack. He was gentle and solicitous of Florian, making sure his artificial sibling was comfortable and entertained on the long ride back. However, Budge was downright solemn with Audrey.
She tried not to think too deeply about it, preferring to enjoy Florian rather than fret about Budge. Her nephew was a grown man with all his faculties. He’d come out of his mood soon enough.
The Monday after they returned, Audrey took Florian with her to the grocery store. They went in the early morning when only the retirees in their neighborhood would be doing their shopping and there was a low chance of Florian being accosted by some twisted fan. While Audrey moved slowly through the aisles, checking off her list and filling the cart, Florian moved ahead. He had been to McCaughey’s store often enough, and he knew by heart how the goods were stocked and organized, but he behaved as if every aisle held some kind of surprise, and the thrill of turning corners was too powerful to stave off. During a typical trip, Florian might make three or four complete circuits through the store to Audrey’s one.
She heard a commotion several aisles ahead, so she left her cart stranded in front of a canned fruit cocktail display. It could only be Florian, making a nuisance of himself. She found him in the aisle of sweets, breakfast foods, and cheap toys. He seemed to be clinging to the top shelf, trying to keep himself upright. His face was white.
Two of Audrey’s matronly neighbors stood by, holding their handbags over their stomachs. Otherwise, there was no one else.
Audrey yelled, “Florian!”
He slumped towards the shelf, his shoes slipping backward across the waxed linoleum floor. “Hurt,” he said.
Florian let go, and for a moment it seemed as if he might regain his balance. Before Audrey could reach him his legs gave way and he fell to the floor slowly, like a bear doing a plié.
He made sure that not a single item from the shelves fell to the floor with him. He was careful, considerate in death.
* * *
The doctors said he’d suffered an intracranial aneurysm. And suffer was the word for it. The pain in those last moments must have been excruciating. When Audrey told Budge, she used hard terms: “He just dropped dead.”
Audrey turned mean. Budge tried to comfort her, but he could tell she could hardly stand to be near him. Too many lights had gone out. There was no way she would invite him to live with her now; her house was big enough for three, but not for two. Not for her and Budge, anyway.
The service was private and small. Attending were Budge, Audrey, and Mr. Fitzgerald, the telegenic District Attorney who had helped Florian with his testimony at Officer Taylor’s trial. There was no viewing. Florian would be cremated. After the minister said his piece, Audrey and Fitzgerald chatted together in a quiet corner, and Budge excused himself, claiming he had a meeting with his agent.
He knew they were talking about The Juliet. No doubt she was soliciting advice for how she should “manage” her secret inheritance.
While they consulted, Budge rushed back to Audrey’s house. He imagined that when she returned, she’d drown her grief in a dram or three of Kirschwasser and then get on with her life, perhaps selling The Juliet through one of Fitzgerald’s contacts.
Only she no longer had The Juliet. Those stupid owl jars were full of bath beads and nothing else.
Budge realized how unfair that was.
He dragged a chair into the bathroom and stood on it to be eye to eye with those hideous owls. He opened one and jammed the smaller half of The Juliet inside. “For you, Aunt Aud.”
He then took the other jar down, gripping it like a baseball, with two fingers curled over the lid. He intended to smash it on the floor, so there’d be no confusion. Budge loved Audrey, and he was grateful that she’d raised him, but he was also very angry that she’d kept The Juliet a secret. He shifted the remaining owl to the center of the shelf, so she’d see it right away. He wanted to leave a clear message: so long and keep quiet. It could have been worse.
As he stepped down from the chair, his heart slowed and his mind cleared. For the first time in his life Budge felt as if he had a future. He was no longer restless. Was this what being a grown-up felt like? He hefted the owl jar, tossing it lightly in his hand. He would never see Aunt Audrey again. For some reason, the novelty jar of green bath beads looked less awful, perhaps because it was no longer looking down on him.
He took the damned thing with him.
* * *
Budge bought a gasping, sputtering Harley Hummer for fifty dollars from an addict friend who was honest about the bike’s condition: it had been in several spills and needed constant maintenance to keep running. Budge didn’t care. He jammed some clothes and The Juliet inside two road-beat, fringed saddlebags and was both depressed and relieved to see that his worldly effects added up to so little. He owed rent on his one room apartment, but the best he could do was leave behind twenty bucks, his record collection, and an autograph book full of B-list signatures. That would have to do. He dropped the key in his landlady’s mailbox and hit the road.
It had only been two weeks since he’d left Centenary. It seemed like a lifetime ago: poor Florian had died, and Budge was returning to the desert a new man, driven by new dreams. As an actor, he had ambitions that could be measured by the common standards of earnings and fame, but now his goals were more soulful, and he felt like he had a
bigger role to play in the world.
He headed back to the ghost town, making a pass by the camp to get his bearings, but he didn’t stop there. He wanted to find the odd little house where the Mayor lived, set back on bluff overlooking the trash end of the basin. He wanted to tell the old man that he was right, that he had come back, and that Lily was right, too. Budge did indeed have something of hers.
He had no intention of returning The Juliet to the Mayor. What he wanted was for the old man to explain it to him. Everything. What the damned stone meant, and how Budge was supposed to reap her magic.
Just thinking about it made him feel light. This was probably how people felt when they found religion.
He drove instinctively, but nothing in the daylight matched up with his memory of that late-night hike. The bike rattled without mercy. He detoured down a couple of likely routes only to turn back each time. Finally, he started down a path that was only barely a road. He knew it wouldn’t take him where he wanted to go, but it was flat and long, and he needed to think. The end of it was in sight, but its nearness was an illusion. The road kept going and going, the same thing, forever. It was wonderful.
Budge finally stopped when he saw a plain green utility truck parked on the side. The door displayed a county decal. Not far from the truck, a man in khaki and a government cap picked his way through the short brush. The man had a shovel, a rake, and a bucket. He did not seem to be doing anything other than moving dirt from one spot to another. Earning a paycheck.
When Budge stepped off the bike and removed his helmet, the county man stood straight and grinned. Waved in slow motion.
Theo. The shadow man. Under the full sun, Theo was tan and trim with hands that glowed from the blood of work. He looked almost normal, save for the predatory smile. Theo’s grin was sharp and flawless. Budge reflexively put his hand near his own mouth, hiding his stained teeth.
Theo said, “You’re back. Come to pay your respects?”
“I think I’m lost.”
“You’re not lost. This is the Apollo-Centenary cemetery.”
“Then I’m definitely lost.” Budge now noticed flat stones and iron plates sunk in the ground, some of them with barely discernable letters and numbers. A few of the plots were marked around the edges with stones and pottery shards. The more Budge looked, the more evident the plots became. The big giveaway was the shells. Someone had brought conch shells from the sea to mark where the dead rested in the desert.
When his perception shifted, the scatter of boulders and brush became less random, revealing a grid that surrounded him. He said, “Good lord. How many graves are out here?”
Theo was pleased. “We have forty citizens underfoot. A pretty good haul when you consider that the Apollo mines were in operation for just a few years.”
Budge took the “underfoot” comment seriously. He felt uneasy with the idea he might be treading on a forgotten grave. “And the shells?”
“Smart system. They’ve been here since the thirties when The Ladies Auxiliary took it upon themselves to recover the site. The shells came all the way from Florida and can stand up to whatever the desert dishes out.” Theo dragged his rake over a patch that posed an invisible challenge. “I keep the place tidy.”
“What about that grave in Centenary? You take care of that one too?”
The rake slowed. Theo spoke to the ground. “That’s not a grave. It’s just a story. A legend. There’s no one buried there.”
Budge supposed that was possible. “That old gentleman thinks there is. Calls himself the Mayor? He lives in a little house on the other edge of Centenary, back up on the eastern bluff.”
Theo switched his rake for a shovel, but he didn’t do much more than lean on it. “I know it. That’s Hogg’s House. It’s made of old whiskey bottles covered in plaster.”
“Right. I’m trying to find it. I got turned around I guess.”
Theo found the notion amusing, or at least his eyes did. “You know this fellow, do you?”
“I talked to him the last night we were in camp. He said Lily Joy was his wife, buried down in that grave.”
Theo ran his tongue over his teeth and said, “No one’s lived in Hogg’s for years. County claimed it for taxes, so it’s part of the park, unofficially. Folks camp there sometimes. I wouldn’t though. It’s not easy to get to, what with the canyon road in the condition it is.”
Budge shook his head. “He wasn’t a camper.”
“Then maybe he was a ghost. Or a joker. The Mayor was a man named Skinner. His wife was a fortuneteller. It’s a popular story around here.” Theo stepped forward, as if he had secret gossip not suitable for the lizards and the dead to hear. “Back in the ‘30s, they were going to open a casino in the Opera House, but I guess the missus saw something pretty bad in her crystal ball. I think they had some gambling trouble. She shot herself and took the maid to hell with her. I’m pretty sure the old man’s been dead for years.”
“I met the Mayor,” Budge said.
“You met someone. Maybe. As I recall, you like a drink now and then.”
Budge ignored the jab. The distance between the men was about a shovel’s length. “You’re the expert. I’d still like to see for myself. Can you help me find the house?”
“Good luck getting there on that,” Theo grumbled, nodding at the beat up motorcycle. He began to scrape lines in the dirt with the tip of his shovel. “Goud’s Trail will rock you to pieces and take most of the day to do it.” Theo stepped back. He had drawn a map in the dirt, providing Budge with a direct but arduous route, no doubt designed to teach humility and respect for the desert.
Budge examined the gouged lines at his feet. “When I was here before I took a trail from Centenary that intersected with the road. That road was Goud’s Trail?”
Theo wasn’t going to answer any more questions. He nodded to the dirt. “This is the way to Hogg’s House.”
“I see. Thank you.”
“Good luck.” Theo was suddenly bored with Budge. “Need to tend my souls.”
My souls. What a load of horse shit. Theo wasn’t so impressive when he was on the clock. He was just a civil servant who fancied himself as some spiritual officer.
Budge climbed back onto the Hummer and put on his helmet. He drove a slow circle around Theo and headed north again, back the way he came, ignoring the county man’s advice.
Theo met Budge’s disrespect with a coyote grin.
* * *
Budge returned to the camp in Centenary and parked the bike on the cusp of High Street. From here he retraced his wanderings on foot. Nothing was familiar once he entered the basin, nothing except the tilt and pull of gravity.
The deeper he went, the longer the shadows became. It was early afternoon. When he reached the jailhouse ruins, he saw the scar of the burro trail winding up the hill behind it; had he really climbed that narrow path at night? He proceeded over the gullies. Scat piles marked the way to the trailhead.
Budge paused when he came upon Lily Joy’s grave. The memorial’s bright colors screeched against the dun monotony, and that meant he was close. He couldn’t quite make out the edge of the bluff as it bled into a sunny blue sky.
Budge found a gouged scar in the hillside and started up, putting his trust in whatever animal had made it. As soon he was breathing hard and sweating enough to remove his jacket, he crested onto a plateau seemingly blocked by enormous boulders, but as he picked a path around them he saw that he had made it.
Hogg’s House. The odd shack was nestled against a backdrop of high canyon walls. It looked ancient and eroded, almost grown into the sloping rock slabs behind it. Somehow Budge had discovered a more direct route than the one he’d taken ten days ago, never intersecting Goud’s Trail, after all.
Goud was a sucker, Budge decided.
Even before he approached the house, Budge knew the place was empty, lifeless, and still. The windows didn’t even reflect his own shape.
“Mr. Mayor!” he called out. He turned a slow, full circle to enjoy the echo. The view over Centenary was indeed spectacular. From this vantage point, he could see the whole town, and no one in the town could ever see him.
He wondered how far his voice carried, and if Theo was laughing at him now.
Budge tried the door. It was unlocked and creaked open, releasing a stale odor from within.
“Mr. Mayor?”
When he stepped inside, he felt as if he’d traveled through time. What had been lit by the rosy warm glow of a lantern was now cold and barren. There were books on the shelves, but no phonograph and no brandy on the sideboard. The house was both spotless and lifeless, fully furnished, but in the way that a pharaoh’s tomb is furnished, with everything waiting on hand for use in the afterlife.
Budge moved through the rooms, looking for signs that the Mayor had been there, but he found nothing to suggest recent habitation. It felt like a camp, temporary, just as Theo’d said. A shelter, but not a home. There were a few basic tools for living in the drawers, a couple of cans of food in the cupboards. Taped to the side of the cupboard was a faded note with instructions for priming the pump.
The entire house smelled like Ajax and rocks. Budge felt his soul shrink a little. What the hell was he doing here?
In the bedroom in the rear there was a single bed with a thin mattress over which a nubby, worn spread had been laid out perfectly. Not a wrinkle. On it lay a square, rose-colored pillow, barely big enough for a child’s head, with the picture of a bouquet of flowers printed on it. Budge was suddenly overcome with exhaustion. He sat on the bed’s edge and listened to the squeal of the springs before stretching out on it. The wee pillow fit under his neck, and though it was hard, for some reason that felt good, like an anchor to reality as he floated away on a dream-bothered sea.
* * *
When Budge woke it was dark and he was hungry. In the kitchen he found a can of beans and potted meat. Not the worst supper he’d ever had. He lit the old lantern, which filled the room with shadows, and he ate his dinner cold off a knife, sitting at the tiny dining table under the window.
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