Touching Cottonwood

by Randall Simpson

  Ned stood up and took the envelope from the sheriff. He opened the unsealed flap and looked inside. It was loaded with $100 bills.

  “This is mine to keep, tax-free, even if my insurance covers this damage?”

  “It all yours, my friend,” said the sheriff. “And how you do your taxes is your business, but I can tell you that we won’t be reporting it to the tax man. It’s yours, free and clear.”

  Ned thumbed through the bills and then looked closely at the envelope. There was nothing written on it, but as he held it, he did feel some raised perforations on the envelope that felt to him as though it had gotten stuck in something. If this was drug money, as the sheriff suspected, Ned imagined that maybe it had been hidden in some very cramped space near something pointed, which could have caused the perforations.

  “I’m still angry about this, but I appreciate your efforts, Sheriff,” said Ned, looking up from the envelope. “I just hope the unlucky bastard who lost this and stole my car is eventually caught. At the very least, I hope he has to answer to some higher-up big boss who’s really angry at the loss of his drug money.”

  “That’s what I figure, too,” said the sheriff. “It was lucky for you that he dropped that envelope on your seat but probably real unlucky for him.”

  Ned tucked the money back into the envelope and knelt back down for a closer inspection of the damage. He rubbed his fingers along the deep crease. “I gotta say, though,” began Ned, while still massaging the crease as though he could almost remove it with the power of his fingertips alone, “it definitely looks like whoever was driving my car was either high on drugs, drunk, or just plain stupid. I see little streaks of yellow paint here like he sideswiped one of those yellow concrete posts you see going into a parking lot or something, I mean, how stupid is that? How do people like that even get a driver’s license? Hell, maybe it was some punk kid just learning how to drive.”

  “Except, what would he be doin’ carrying around a wad of cash like that?” asked the sheriff. “I think your notion about them being drunk or high is more likely.”

  Ned stood up. “Anyway, I appreciate getting my car back, but I hope you understand if I refuse to let you borrow anything from me in the future.”

  “Let’s just hope there isn’t a next time, Ned,” said the sheriff. He then looked at the car. “Now, I do hate to ask, but do you think you could give me a ride back to the office?”

  Ned drove Sheriff O’Neil back to his office, and later, while he was driving back to his home, he couldn’t help but touch the envelope loaded with his newly acquired tax-free gift. As he rubbed his fingers across the paper, he once more could quite distinctly feel its odd perforations. He thought, for just the briefest of moments, there was something more to them, almost as though they meant something; however, that fragile thought quickly melted away as the coarser and more blunt meaning of the stack of money inside quickly filled his conscious mind. Once more, it was the smallest thing unseen, the subtle meaning not grasped, the hidden door unopened, which could have proven the most interesting.

  Seventy-Six

  The Center of the Dead Zone

  Akash stood like an eager schoolboy next to the expanding and deepening hole on Main Street, watching intently as the street crew dug into the epicenter of the Cottonwood Dead Zone. From time to time, a curious citizen or visitor to town would pass by the work site, staring at both the hole and Akash. Frequently, the obvious question was thrown to him as to what all the digging was for. Akash would simply and obscurely answer “research” and then turn back toward the work at hand.

  Bethany Crawford was the first person refusing to accept Akash’s curt answer. “This was a brand new sidewalk last year—a perfectly good sidewalk, too. What sort of research?” she asked.

  Akash glanced back from the hole to the small gray-haired woman. He could see in her expression that she wasn’t about to leave without something more from him. “I’m researching the cause of your Dead Zone.”

  Bethany’s eyes widened. “Indeed! And who’s paying for this research—and, more importantly, are they going to pay to have our new sidewalk restored to its prior condition?”

  “It’s being funded by the State of Colorado,” he answered, then looking away from her, back to the hole.

  Bethany looked over toward the hole and then back to him, shaking her head. “So my tax dollars are at work here. I should have known it! And what cause of the Dead Zone do you expect to find under our new sidewalk?”

  Akash thought for a moment, not quite sure how to tell someone, especially a senior citizen likely on a fixed income, that you’re gambling with her tax money. “I’m not exactly sure,” was all he could manage. He didn’t look at her but could feel her eyes studying him. After a long moment, he turned and saw her heading down the street in the direction of the town hall.

  A huge pile of dirt was now amassing next to the hole, and it grew larger by the hour, as the street crew had no operational dump trunk with which to haul it away. With each shovel of dirt, Akash’s anticipation grew in equal measure to his desperation. He was spending tax money—yet he had no idea what he was looking for.

  Less than an hour after Bethany had stopped by, Akash noted the tops of the street crew’s heads were no longer visible, meaning they had dug past six feet. About that time, Cottonwood’s manager of public works, Wes Stein, and a town engineer came out to the hole and stood next to each other near its edge. They were studying a set of large drawings and pointing up and down the sidewalk and then peering down into the deepening hole.

  After a few minutes, Wes Stein walked over to Akash. “You’re in luck, Mr. Mudali. Look here,” he said as he pointed to an area on one of the drawings. “Here’s where we’re digging right now. We move just a few feet in any direction, and we hit all sorts of sewer, water, and utility lines. But right here where we’re digging, according to the maps I have, we can dig all the way to China and not hit anything at all.”

  Akash studied the drawings long enough to quickly see that Wes Stein was correct. “I guess that is fortunate,” he replied.

  “But I’ve got to be honest with you,” Wes continued. “Since we don’t have any heavy equipment at our disposal right now, we’re getting to the point that unless we widen out this hole a bunch, we’re going to need to stop anyway.”

  Akash glanced over at the workers, who were now using buckets and a ladder to haul dirt up and out of the hole. “I’m an engineer. It would seem the current technique is working adequately,” he said. “Is there another problem?”

  Wes paused for a moment and took a deep breath. “Look, the mayor isn’t real happy about this. He wants to cooperate with your investigation and all, but you’ve got to understand, he’s got other people to answer to besides the State of Colorado. I mean, we’re getting pretty deep here already. How deep do you plan to have the crew dig, and what are you looking for anyway?”

  “I have no idea,” said Akash almost mechanically, no longer looking at Wes but rather absently toward the growing mound of dirt. “And I understand about the other people the mayor must answer to,” he added, thinking of Bethany Crawford’s determined steel-gray eyes and hair.

  Wes Stein looked over at the hole and then back to Akash. “Good. Well, I’d say we’ll give it another hour, at the most. I’ll let the mayor know they’ll be done soon.”

  “Thanks,” replied Akash, showing a pained half smile.

  Wes rolled up the drawings and walked over to the edge of the hole, followed by the town engineer. “Quit by five, Manny, okay?” Wes yelled down into the hole before the two men left the site, heading back toward the town hall.

  Akash rubbed his forehead. His sweat was gritty and muddy from standing near the site all day. He watched the crew dig for close to another hour before they finally crawled back out of the hole and told him they were done for the day.

  “You mind if I crawl down in there to have a look and take a few readings?” asked Akash, noticing the ladder extending
down into the hole remained in place.

  “Be my guest,” replied the crew leader as he took off his gloves and swung his shovel up over his shoulder. “We’ll leave it just like this until you tell us to fill it up—or the mayor orders us to.”

  The street crew left with their picks and shovels, and Akash descended the ladder into the hole, which he estimated was close to ten feet deep. As he stood at the bottom, which was dark, cool, and in shadow, he looked up to the open blue sky above, dotted with a few puffy white clouds. He realized for the first time that the hole was dug in a slightly rectangular shape. For a moment, he had the eerie and passing sensation of standing in the bottom of a freshly dug grave, though the hole was longer and wider than he imagined a grave would be. As he looked down preparing to remove his equipment from his backpack, a small bit of dirt fell from somewhere above him, trickling down the side of the hole and making a tapping sound as it bounced off his shoe. Instinctually, he looked up, at first not noticing anything, but then he spotted the dark silhouette of a bird perched on the very top wrung of the ladder above him.

  Tweeta…tweet…tweet…tweetatweet sang the Sturnella neglecta.

  Akash froze, not knowing exactly what to think and not realizing it wasn’t a time for thought at all—not yet understanding that some meanings rest, necessarily, forever beyond thoughts. There was a long moment of silence. The bird cocked its head to one side and looked down into the hole at Akash. The feeling of his standing in a grave suddenly pressed upon him even stronger than before, and…

  Tweeta…tweet…tweet…tweetatweet sang the meadowlark.

  For a fleeting moment, the smallest possible division of time and experience the human heart can hold, Akash was wrapped inside the bird’s song and caught a glimpse of some meaning—not thought it or felt it—but saw it fully and knew it, with a certainty beyond any mathematical proof. It was something vast, alive, non-rational, but completely whole and wondrous. It frightened him.

  “Shoo!” Akash said, kicking the ladder.

  The bird flew away, passing across the opening in the hole between Akash and the infinite blue sky above.

  Akash looked back down to his backpack and realized his heart was pounding hard in his chest. He took a deep breath, untied the pack, and pulled out his equipment. He turned on the GPS unit to confirm once more that he was still at the epicenter of the Dead Zone. He hadn’t given up the idea that the center might be dynamic and could move day to day, even if only by just a few feet. To his amazement, the unit indicated an error had occurred, and a loss of signal message flashed on the screen. He then realized that because he was down in the hole, it was possible that the satellite GPS signal was being partially blocked by the ground surrounding him. He took a few steps up the ladder, and before he even reached the top, the unit started functioning again and confirmed that he remained at the exact center of the Dead Zone.

  Akash climbed back down into the hole, put his GPS unit away, and retrieved his electromagnetic-field meter. He still wasn’t sure what it might tell him, but he turned it on and took some readings. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. All that registered on the meter were normal background signals. He returned the device to his backpack, pulled out a flashlight, and began closely inspecting the dirt on the sides of the hole. He studied it closely for a few moments, and there appeared to be nothing remarkable about the dirt. Agent Westmore had been right. After digging all day, they’d found plain, old, ordinary, add water and get mud, dirt.

  Of course, in a different context and under different circumstances, if he had really thought about it, Akash was enough of a scientist to know there was, in truth, nothing at all ordinary about dirt. Soil the world over was teaming with living organisms of a startling variety. It also contained the essential minerals and elements that eventually end up being transferred to the food that is grown, eaten, and finally transferred to the body. Every atom of the human body—or in any living creature—was, at one time, part of the soil. Human civilization itself had grown out of the soil. Ordinary dirt allowed humans to transition from hunter-gathers to an agriculturally based society and, thereby, from living in small clans to living in villages, and then on to larger towns and cities. Dirt could easily be thought of as a miracle in itself, though a miracle not seen by simply looking at it—it must be examined more closely with a different kind of eye and vision. The miracle was hidden and only revealed to those who knew the language and meaning of dirt. Humanity owed both its body and its society to plain, old, ordinary, add water and get civilization, dirt.

  A fully dejected Akash put his flashlight away and climbed the ladder back to street level. Once there, he was at least relieved to be back out into the late-afternoon warmth and sunshine. He headed down Main Street toward Ernie’s Diner. He needed something cool to drink and time to think.

  He sat at a booth in the diner, making notes and looking up occasionally—hoping that Ernie had gone home for the day, taking his distracting, absurd suggestions with him. Akash studied the GPS display and the map of the Dead Zone. His thinking went something like this: since digging a hole at the center of the Dead Zone had apparently proven a dead end, it was important to focus back on the primary quality of the anomaly itself—perfect circles don’t occur naturally—at least not on the scale and to the degree of perfection of the Dead Zone. His analysis and closer inspection of the data showed that out of a nearly five-mile radius, the Dead Zone was a perfect circle—an extraordinarily perfect circle—down to the finest precision and tolerance his equipment could measure—within a foot or less. He knew the Dead Zone must have been created by some kind of intelligence, and since he wasn’t a strong believer in intelligent extraterrestrial life visiting Earth—he must ascribe that intelligence to some human agency. Akash also knew, for reasons currently unclear, the Dead Zone was centered at the hole now dug very near the corner of Second Street and Main Street. The location of that center could be a coincidence, or it could be related to or directed by whatever intelligence was behind the phenomenon. Akash became increasingly convinced that someone, somewhere, knew what had caused the Dead Zone—and whoever it was must have caused it through some technical means which remained a mystery. The creator of the Dead Zone might have randomly chosen Cottonwood to be the center—like dropping a grain of sand on a sidewalk and not caring exactly where it finally landed—or, conversely, the corner near Second Street and Main Street could be significant and meaningful. Either way, Akash decided his next goal should be to begin to consider and search for the likely source of the intelligence behind the phenomenon.

  As a man of technology and science, Akash was most comfortable with analyzing data and weighing, measuring, and looking at hard facts, but his equipment and measurements had now taken him as far as they apparently could. In shifting his focus to tracking down a person or persons behind the Dead Zone, he would be stepping out of his comfort zone. It would be most logical, he concluded, to seek the advice of someone more experienced at this sort of thing—someone who looked for people as part of his normal, professional, daily routine. Coincidentally, at least in Akash’s mind, he happened to know someone in Cottonwood who was just such an expert—someone he’d only recently met. Searching for people was this person’s specialty. Akash was confident that Agent Westmore could prove useful in identifying the possible suspects behind the creation of the Dead Zone. Akash was getting closer to the truth than he imagined, but was he ready to accept it?

  The phone had rung more than eight times, but Akash decided to let it ring a few more. He was just about ready to hang up when he heard someone pick up.

  “Yeah,” said a slightly slurred voice.

  “Is this Agent Westmore?” asked Akash, uncertain if he’d reached the correct room.

  “And who the hell wants to know?” asked the agent, again with obviously slurred speech.

  “This is Akash Mudali. I’d like to speak with you, if you have a moment.”

  There was only silence on the other end.


  “Hello? Agent Westmore? Are you still there?” asked Akash.

  “Yeah…still here,” he replied after a pause.

  “Do you think we could meet—briefly? I need to ask your advice on something.”

  “I’m…off duty right now,” said the agent. “I’ve…had a few drinks…How ‘bout tomorrow?”

  Whether a sign of strength or a downfall, once Akash had a puzzle or mystery on his hands, he wouldn’t let it go; he became as a man possessed. He immersed himself in the puzzle completely, until by the power of his will and keen intellect, he would find the solution.

  “I was hoping we could meet right now. I promise I’ll keep it short.”

  Once more, there was silence. Akash hoped that meant Agent Westmore was considering the request and hadn’t dozed off or possibly passed out.

  Finally, the agent said, “I’m not…comin’ out of my room right now. You’ll have to come here…but I’m tellin’ you…it ain’t pretty.”

  It was Akash’s turn to be silent for a moment. He considered waiting until morning, but after another moment of thought, he decided he needed to keep moving forward. He was energized by his newfound direction and wanted to move on it immediately.

  “That’s fine with me if you’ve had a few drinks,” said Akash. “I just have some short, simple questions for you. I won’t be long.”

  “You a drinkin’ man?” asked the agent.

  “No…at least not since my college years. I think I drank enough then for a lifetime.”

  “Too bad,” said the agent. “I always hate drinkin’ alone. C’mon up, I guess.”

  The hotel room smelled like alcohol and stale air. Though the sun was low but not yet set, the drapes were drawn. The cable television was blaring. A half-full bottle of whisky sat on the imitation-wood-grain laminated table. The lid was missing and nowhere to be seen. There was an ice bucket next to the bottle, with a few melting ice cubes forming a puddle around it. Some clothes were tossed across one of the chairs, and over the back of the same chair, in a black leather holster, hung the agent’s Glock 21. Agent Westmore was dressed only in his T-shirt, underwear, and dark socks. He sipped a glass of whiskey as he returned to his bed and leaned back against two pillows propped against the headboard.