Truck Stop Jesus

by Storm, Buck

  An opening that might once have held an iron gate led to a worn, gravel path winding through a tight maze of low, mounded graves and above-ground mausoleums, eerie and pronounced in the soft moonlight. Doc switched on the flashlight.

  “Dis ain’t good, mon,” Easy repeated from the back.

  “Settle down, tiger. You’ll be fine,” Lan said.

  “It’s a full moon, mon! Don’ you watch the movies?”

  Doc felt Paradise’s hand grip his arm. Toward the back of the ancient graveyard, his flashlight beam came to rest on a small, very worn tombstone.

  Lan read aloud, translating the Spanish engraving, “Padre Fernando Salazar – Keeper of the Lost Day.”

  “Keeper of the Lost Day,” Doc said. “No dates, just that.”

  Lan lit the lantern and set it on the stone. “Shall we, boys?”

  Father Salazar’s grave lie capped with a large rectangle of stone, offering no markings other than a beveled edge. The three men started in, crowbars chinking against the hard surface.

  Doc’s mouth felt dry, and sweat ran down his sides. This was it! If only Jake and Paco could be here.

  “Dis is all tings unholy rolled into one,” Easy mumbled.

  “No souls here but ours. Just bones,” Lan said.

  “Jus’ bones, he say. Bones is bad enough, believe me.”

  Doc wiped a drop of sweat from his nose. “We need to be as careful as possible not to leave any marks. Try to work the bar into the lip.”

  Lan strained against his bar, biceps bulging. “So we can skip the gym today.”

  “Everything you’ve got, on three. Ready?” Doc said.

  Lan shifted his feet for better purchase. “Yeah, count it off.”

  Doc counted. All three men grunted with the effort. A scrape of stone against stone. The heavy lid moved an inch, then a few more.

  Lan stuck the end of his bar in and was rewarded with a dull chunk sound.

  Easy stepped back. “You hear dat, mon? Something under dere for sure. Ain’t no six feet down neither.”

  Doc pushed his own bar in and received the same sound.

  “Only about a foot under. Feels like more stone, maybe,” Doc said.

  Another few minutes of straining, and the three men were able to move the stone lid completely free of the grave. Paradise picked up Doc’s flashlight and shone it at the hole. Another flat, stone surface slightly larger than a coffin lid lay at their feet a foot beneath ground level. This one ornately carved.

  Easy’s eyes shone in the lantern light. “What is dat? Two lids? Dis can’t be good.”

  “A monument, maybe? Or some kind of sarcophagus?” Lan said.

  “It’s all in Spanish. What does it say?” Paradise stood beside Doc.

  “La Dia Perdido—The Lost Day.” Doc worked the words, lips moving. “And underneath, Holy God the Father, Author of All, or something close to that. Look at the carving. It’s a sun in the sky, and these two round things … I wonder if they’re supposed to be the coins?”

  Lan knelt and swept some earth from the lower part of the stone. “El Hermanos Montejo. Your brothers, Doc.”

  Doc remembered the breastplate and bones in the sandy wash behind the baseball field. It seemed like a year ago. All this history tied directly with his home. How many nights had he lain in the old Airstream while the armor wearer’s remains rested just a few hundred yards away, waiting to reveal long-kept secrets to the blue sky? Now here he was, very possibly a couple of feet away from the answer to a three-hundred-year-old riddle.

  Doc poked around the edge of the second stone with his shovel. “Look. There’s a lip. I think this thing is another lid.”

  “Oh, mon! Here come da bones,” Easy said. “Ain’t you never heard stories? Dis when da crazy guy come and kills you.”

  Doc strained, using the bar as a lever. “Get in here. Let’s see if we can move this thing.”

  Easy and Lan mirrored Doc’s effort.

  Scrape…

  “It moved. Keep going,” Lan said.

  The slab broke free with a loud creak and slid back, leaving a four-inch gaping crack on one edge.

  Doc grabbed a flashlight and shone it into the hole. “I can’t see anything.” He inserted his bar and lowered it a couple feet without touching anything. Setting down the light, he dropped to his knees and took hold of the lid, straining. Lan and Easy joined in. With effort, the three of them lifted the slab and set it aside.

  “It must have had some sort of seal holding it in place.” Doc took the flashlight from Paradise and shone its beam into the hole.

  This can’t be real.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Lan said.

  In the hole at their feet, a set of stone stairs led down into the earth.

  “Very deluxe condo for a dead guy,” Doc said. “Even a priest.”

  “No way, mon. I ain’t walkin down no bone yard stairs.” Easy crossed himself.

  “Why’re you crossing yourself, Easy? You’re not even Catholic,” Lan said.

  “Dat’s stairs in a bone yard, mon! You can’t be too careful! I’ll be Catholic, Baptist, whatever I can tink of!”

  “We’ve got to go in,” Doc said.

  Easy shook his head, held up his hands, and took a few steps back. “Ain’t no we about it, mon! I’m staying up here with da living people! Least what’s left of dem.”

  “Why don’t we wait for daylight, Doc? It is creepy,” Paradise said.

  “We can’t. We’ve come this far. We need to have this thing covered back up by daylight. I’ll check it out. You all wait here.” Doc knelt and pointed the flashlight down the hole but saw only more stairs.

  Oh, well, one step at a time.

  The stairs descended at a steep angle, and by the fourth step he had to duck to keep from hitting his head on the edge of the grave—if it was a grave. To his surprise, the narrow stairway didn’t stop a few feet beneath the ground. He counted ten steps. Then twenty.

  “You all right, Doc?” Lan called.

  “Yeah. It’s deeper than I expected.”

  “What’s down there?”

  The Green Monster …“Still going!” Doc called back over his shoulder.

  At thirty-one steps, the descending corridor ended at a flat stone floor and opened into a cavern roughly the size of his Airstream’s interior.

  Not what he expected.

  A low, limestone table stood against the far wall—maybe an altar of sorts, with three stone arches carved into the wall above. The center arch contained a mosaic—Joshua’s Lost Day. Benches, polished smooth from use, were fashioned along the native stone into the sides of the room.

  What was this place?

  Doc approached the altar, painting it with the beam of his flashlight. A solid block of rock. He scanned up, examining the mosaic. Rusted iron framed the piece. Why? Why not just build it into the rock? Doc stepped in for a closer look. He ran his fingers up the frame’s right side and found a hollow spot in the rough metal. A quick exploration of the left side of the frame confirmed his suspicion.

  Hinged … The whole mosaic was a door. He slid his fingers into the hollow spot and tugged.

  The mosaic pulled easily, revealing inky blackness beyond.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Semantics

  Smoke.

  The stars shook. The night closed in. Strength fled, and Paradise felt sure she’d crumble to the packed earth beneath her—another body for the bone yard.

  Smoke. The unmistakable scent of the thin, Spanish cigarettes ingrained in her memory since childhood.

  The tiny orange glow hung suspended in midair just outside the reach of the lantern light. It brightened as he inhaled. Then dimmed again.

  Then they stepped out of the undergrowth and into the lantern light. Four of them. Burt, Hollister, Crystal, and a thin Mexican man.

  Burt exhaled a long stream of smoke, then smiled. “Nice moon tonight, isn’t it? Bright. Didn’t even need our flashlights. Long way from Malibu,
isn’t it, Paradise?”

  Paradise opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out.

  “You must be Burt,” Lan said.

  Burt stopped smiling. “Come here, girl. Time to end this nonsense.”

  Lan shifted, then froze when Burt produced a massive pistol.

  “Stay where you are, Willie Nelson,” Burt said.

  “What you want me to do, boss?” Easy spoke low.

  “Just stay back for now,” Lan replied.

  The thin Mexican man took a step forward. “Señor Simmons, please, I never meant …”

  “Shut up, Sammy. Did you think I was just talking? Wanted this gun for shooting cans?”

  Paradise forced her fear down. “Burt, please don’t hurt anybody! They didn’t do anything to you.”

  “Other than kidnapping my precious little girl, you mean? Hey, I’m not unreasonable. You know me, right? I’m your father! I just want my girl home, safe and sound.” Burt dipped the barrel of the pistol toward the opening in the ground. “Plus whatever gold is in that hole. Then you and I can go back to Malibu happy campers, and your pirate pals can go back to sailing the Seven Seas or whatever it is they do.”

  Deep inside Paradise, anger began to edge out fear. “Are you crazy? You tried to rape me! Then blamed me for it! You had your hands on me my whole life. And not the way a father should. In fact, you ruined my life! You should be in jail!”

  Burt shrugged, lowering the pistol to half-mast. “Semantics. What’s your boyfriend doing down there anyway? Why’s he taking so long?”

  “You could go down and find out,” Lan said.

  “Ha! No, thanks. Why do you think we waited till now to join the party? I don’t do heavy lifting. And I don’t crawl around in graves in the middle of the night. Wouldn’t want to get my suit dirty, right? What do you think, Hollister? You want to go down and get the gold?”

  Hollister spoke, his voice low gravel. “I want my other forty grand. That’s about it.”

  “What do you mean, your forty grand? I told you I’d pay you when you brought my daughter back.”

  “There she is.”

  “Tell you what. I’m feeling generous. Go grab her, and it’s yours.”

  “Nope.”

  “Nope? I thought you wanted the money.”

  “You said you’d pay me when I found her. There she is—found.”

  “Let me get this straight. You won’t walk twenty feet to get her, but you want me to pay you?”

  “Pretty smart for a wine guy. Bring … find … semantics, right? I’ll go you one further. You hurt her, or even touch her again, and I’ll break your back over my knee.”

  Simmons shifted the gun toward Hollister. “You’re an idiot, you know that?”

  Hollister didn’t flinch. “And you’re a perverted scumbag.”

  “Scumbag.” Crystal burped the word loud into the night.

  “What’s wrong with you two?” Burt said.

  Crystal took Hollister’s hand and grinned. “We’re gonna have a baby.”

  “Are you crazy?” Burt said.

  A thunk sounded from the grave hole.

  “Careful, Doc. We have visitors out here,” Lan said.

  Doc’s head emerged from the hole. “So I hear. I wondered if they might show up.”

  Burt leveled the pistol at Doc’s head. “Okay, Romeo, you come on up now.”

  Doc came up four steps and stepped out of the grave carrying a metal box.

  “That’s it? The gold?” Burt said.

  “Nobody ever said it was gold the brothers had. Maybe they had something else on their mind, other than getting rich,” Doc said.

  “Ha! And I’m Pancho Villa.” Burt lowered the heavy pistol again. “Don’t get ideas—it’s here if I need it. Geez, Sammy, you people couldn’t have fought your revolution with lighter artillery? Now you walk the box over here, Romeo.”

  “Or?” Doc said.

  “I’ve never killed anybody before. I’ll admit I’m more than a little curious. Either way, shoot you or not, I still get the box.”

  “It’s not worth your life, Doc,” Lan said.

  “I won’t argue with you there.” Doc took several steps toward Burt.

  “That’s far enough. Set it down.”

  Doc knelt and set the box on the ground.

  Burt waved the gun barrel. “Now get back over there.”

  Doc returned, eyes searching Paradise’s face. “Are you all right?”

  She blinked hard, but tears still threatened. “No.”

  “I won’t let him hurt you. I promised, and I meant it.”

  “He promised?” Burt said. “Really, Romeo, you’ve forgotten who has the gun. But, I’ll make your promise good for you. I won’t hurt her. Even though the little tramp hit me, totaled my car, cost me forty thousand dollars to chase her halfway around the world—”

  “Eighty,” Hollister said.

  “Shut up, Hollister. Please! I swear I’m camping with knuckleheads here! Even after all that, Paradise, you little freak of nature, I’ll make my word good to your boyfriend. I won’t hurt you.” Burt glanced back at Crystal. “Crystal? Go ahead and slap her around. And don’t take it easy.”

  Crystal picked a fingernail. “Nah.”

  Burt’s eyes narrowed. “Excuse me? Did you say no?”

  Crystal didn’t bother to look up. “Nah. Negative. No. Not gonna happen. Never. No. Nope.” She punctuated her sentence by burping the word “scumbag” again.

  “Leave it, Simmons. Open the box, and let’s see what’s inside,” Hollister said. “Don’t look like there’s a lock.”

  Burt took a few steps forward and pushed at the object of curiosity with his toe. “Yes, the mystery box. The one thing we all have in common here tonight, isn’t it? We all want to know what’s in the box. Why not? Everybody wins—unless you’re getting shot—which some of you are. What a night, eh? We get to see behind curtain number one. I have my lovely tramp of a daughter back. Hollister and Crystal are looking forward to the birth of their three-eyed bundle-of-joy. And then there’s the happy, happy fact that I’m holding the only pistola in Dia Perdido … Yes! I’m feeling righteously magnanimous.” He glanced at Hollister. “That means generous to you beer people. Open the box, Hollister. I’d do it, but my hands are tied up with Sammy’s grandpa’s bazooka.”

  Hollister shrugged, bent, and worked the lid of the small chest. Getting a grip, he grunted and pulled, biceps bulging through the arms of his T-shirt. It released with a popping sound and Hollister stumbled back, catching himself with an arm. The thin Mexican stepped forward, shining a light into the open cavity.

  “What the …?” Hollister said.

  Burt emitted a grunt. “That’s not gold, is it?”

  “No, it ain’t, genius. It’s some kind of old book. And it looks trashed. Moldy. Probably got wet sitting down there in the hole for a million and one years.” Hollister reached in and lifted the relic out, holding it up in the light.

  “It’s a Bible. That’s what the brothers were hiding. It makes sense,” Doc said.

  Burt shook his head. “A Bible? Are you kidding me? Why would they go to all that trouble to hide a Bible? Makes sense how?”

  “They were spiritual men. It must have had value to them. Historical relevance. The Catholic Church went to all kinds of lengths to protect relics they thought were important. This must have been one of them.” Doc took a step forward.

  “No, Romeo! No!” Burt raised the pistol. “You stay right where you are! Are you saying this thing might be valuable?”

  “I doubt it. Not water-damaged and covered with mold. I think we have to be content with finding the answer to a three-hundred-year-old puzzle. Something worth dying for, to the Montejo brothers.”

  Burt shifted his arm an inch and fixed the pistol on Paradise. “Then they were idiots, just like all you people. Paradise, come on. Time to go. We have a date. I’m going to get something out of this trip.”

  Paradise squeezed her eyes shut
. Please make this stop…

  “Paradise …” The voice both foreign and familiar.

  “You’re not here. You’re back on the boat. You’re in my head.”

  “Forget the doll, daughter. I’m always here. Do you trust me?”

  “I don’t know if I can. I’m scared.”

  “I know. What do you want?”

  Burt’s nasal whine shoved in. “Earth to Paradise. Stop being a freak for five seconds! Move! Now!”

  “What do you want, Paradise? Answer me now. No more waiting.” The voice came from everywhere. The stars, the moon, the night air moving through the jungle trees, the grass below. It rose from the earth and echoed out of the empty hole at her feet. So much comfort and longing.

  “I want to be safe!”

  “Done.”

  “I want to be loved …”

  “Done.”

  “I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want you to leave me.”

  A gentle laugh on the breeze … “I never have. I never will. I’m your home—where you’ve always belonged. Do you trust me?”

  Ice broke. Rivers ran. Old, old water that had forgotten the touch of the warm sun on its surface.

  Paradise Jones. Graveyard. Yucatan Peninsula. Balanced on a wire between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Planet Earth. Universe …

  Paradise Jones … Loved.

  Paradise Jones … Home.

  Paradise Jones … His.

  “Paradise,” Burt said. “I’ll shoot you between the eyes, so help me. You’ve got nowhere to go and nothing without me. Look, come home and live with me in Malibu. Make your movies. I’m the only one that can make the charges against you in California go away. I’m it! I’m the lifeline. Without me—no movies, no money, no anything, do you understand?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” Doc said. “You’re married to her mother. Leave her alone.”

  “You call Eve and I married? She’s in some rehab somewhere. I don’t even know where. And she didn’t even have the courtesy to tell me about it herself. Had the lawyer do it.”

  “She’s not going,” Doc said.

  “Fine, she stays. But she stays dead.” Burt squinted an eye as he aimed.