Wonder Valley

by Ivy Pochoda

BLAKE KNEW THAT NOT EVEN THE ROUGHEST LONG-HAUL TRUCKER WOULD stop for him and Sam. You’d have to be either a goddamn fool or stone blind to pick up someone like the big man. So Blake needed a car and quick.

  It didn’t sit right jacking a vehicle after he’d sworn off violence at the start of their trip west. Because as Blake saw it, there was no sense in making promises if you broke them the second things got tight. If he wanted the big man to tread a less aggressive path, Blake had to lead by example. But in this particular jam, he couldn’t think of another way to transport Sam to safety.

  Blake worked the highway, swearing up and down that when they got to their cabin he’d stick to his guns, turn over a new leaf—all that shit. Tread as straight and narrow as their circumstances would allow. He didn’t need more faces coming calling at night reminding him of the casual, brutal things he and Sam had done in the last eleven years. There were less violent grifts out there that would keep them in the game and off the grid.

  Midmorning a shirtless man driving a pickup slowed. Blake guessed the guy must have been half in the bag to pull over for him or Sam, which made it easy to force him out of his vehicle and relieve him of his wallet. Blake felt bad leaving the driver forty miles from nowhere with a buzz that would harden into a hangover. But he felt worse for Sam.

  After driving a couple of hours in the same damn landscape they’d been walking through for days, Sam pounded the dash. “Home sweet home.”

  Blake followed Sam’s gaze north to where a smattering of stripped-down cabins dotted the desert—the first change to the panorama since they hit the Twentynine Palms Highway.

  “This it?” Blake said.

  “Wonder Valley. All for the taking.” The Samoan gestured at the landscape as if he’d built the place himself. A crown of sweat had bloomed on his forehead, and his lip was bleeding from where he’d tried to bite away the pain.

  “It’s not exactly a wonder, is it?”

  “What were you expecting, a gated subdivision? No, this is it. This is fucking it. Turn.” Sam waved his hand up one of the sandy roads that led away from the highway. Blake cut the wheel and they pulled off, bumping onto the uneven sand. The car hit a rocky depression. The men bounced upward then against the side windows. “Watch the fuck where you’re driving,” Sam said. “I don’t need my back broke as well.”

  “You think I’ve driven this road before?” Blake steadied the wheel. “You think I know where the fuck I am?”

  “But ain’t it glorious?”

  “I’ve seen better.”

  “The fuck you have,” the Samoan said. “This is magic country.”

  THEY DROVE NORTH. THE ROAD ROSE AND FELL. THE LITTLE CABINS WERE spread out at almost regular intervals just out of sight of one another. Some had been duded up, fenced in and expanded, turned into compounds with jury-rigged satellites and dirt yards filled with old pickups and rusted trailers. But many sat empty, their windows boarded up or missing.

  “Would you look at that?” Sam said as they passed a cinder-block cabin, its doors and windows gaping holes.

  “Yeah,” Blake said, “I’m looking.”

  There was nothing special about the jackrabbit homestead the Samoan settled on except that it was unremarkable—a pale cinder-block structure with plywood for windows and a rusted chain-link fence. The interior was a single room with a battered mattress and a good-for-nothing bed frame. A black-and-white TV lay on its side, the screen spidered, the rabbit ears bent in on themselves.

  The air was close and stale, and trash had collected in the corners. Blake figured that sleeping outside would have been preferable, but he didn’t argue with the big man who’d grown angry and irritated as they bumped up and down the rough sand roads. Blake guessed the pain in his ankle was making him jones for a Vicodin or one of the Oxys that usually set him straight.

  Blake installed Sam on the mattress and used the big man’s knife to cut a narrow strip out of the plywood to let in a little air. Then he ran out to the Circle K on the highway and stocked up on grub and basic medical supplies. He got Sam loaded on three 40 ounces of malt liquor and a handful of Advil and went to work on his ankle. He made a splint out of a scrap of wood to straighten the leg and keep the bone more or less in place. He cleaned the cut with a fifth of vodka and then sewed it tight. He wouldn’t win any home-ec awards, but at least he didn’t have to look deep into the Samoan’s leg anymore.

  Blake waited until Sam passed out, then drove the pickup deep into the desert where he shoved a rag into its gas tank and lit it. He jogged a safe distance off and waited for the explosion.

  The boom was a release. The moment the windows blew out and the flames rose, he felt that he ceased to exist, that he was annihilated along with the truck’s cigarette-pocked upholstery and jerky transmission, that he was blown to smithereens, subsumed into the ether, that he no longer was. In that brilliant moment of heat and light there was no shitty childhood in Phoenix, no cycling in and out of jail, no drugs and their comedowns, no holdups, stickups, beatdowns. There were no mangled faces that hovered over his bed that stole his sleep and reminded him of the blackness his mother had spotted in his soul. There was nothing.

  The smell brought him back to himself, returning him to the desert made even hotter by the burning car. He put on his hat and found his way back to Sam.

  BLAKE FIGURED THEIR FOOD WOULD LAST TEN DAYS, THEIR BOOZE FIVE, IF that. But Sam’s foot was getting worse. An ugly purple bruise now inched up his calf and his ankle was swelling, busting open Blake’s stitches.

  “It’s your damn shoes that cursed me,” Sam said as Blake washed and restitched the wound. “There’s a bad spirit inside of me,” the Samoan said. “I can feel it.”

  “What else is new?”

  Sam spat on the floor. “Remember the story I told you about the old man and a panther?”

  “No,” Blake said. But he remembered. He loved all of Sam’s stories about shape-shifting animals and wild holy men. He loved lying on the floor in their trailer back in Phoenix, listening to the big man ramble late into the night, early into the morning, spinning a convoluted web of truth, lies, and spiritual fantasy.

  “If I’m not careful, the spirit will steal my soul. Just like the panther. And it’s your fault. You and your ugly white sneakers.”

  “So now your soul’s bothering you. After all this time.” Blake smudged Sam’s spittle into the floor with his shoe. “What you need is a hospital. Or a doctor. When you can travel, we’ll head down to Mexico, get your leg reset.”

  “I’m not going to Mexico,” Sam said.

  But that’s what Blake was planning on. Once Sam’s leg was healed, they’d find their way across the border where no one was looking, get lost among people who didn’t care about them.

  SAM’S PAIN MADE THE DAYS PASS SLOWLY. BUT BLAKE DIDN’T MIND. ANYTHING was better than the anxiety summoned by the Samoan’s bent for random violence.

  In the evenings, when Sam’s fever broke and the heat of the day dropped, the men lay out under the stars scattered across the sky like buckshot, listening to the desert scratch away in the darkness. Blake kicked up a fire from the scrub brush and heated dinner while they watched the satellites blink overhead. If not for Sam’s intermittent moaning, Blake would argue this was as close to peace as the two of them had ever gotten.

  When the pain got bad, the only thing that took Sam’s mind off the hurt was chess. He taught Blake to play using bits of metal and coins for the missing chessmen. But Blake couldn’t get the pieces straight, always confusing the bishop with the knight. Eventually the big man would slam the board, scattering the pieces, forcing Blake to crawl on his hands and knees to collect them all.

  “You’re a good man,” Sam said, “but I’ve seen a mosquito can concentrate better.”

  THEY WERE THREE DAYS IN THE HOUSE AND THE WALLS WERE CREEPING in. They were down to their last case of Keystone, which didn’t bother Blake too much. The warm piss-water didn’t do much for him besides pickle his insides.
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br />   Sam drained his can of sweet spaghetti. “We’re gonna need a plan soon. I’m not figuring to fester in this desert.”

  “This desert was your idea.”

  “Well, maybe I’m saying it’s time to move on.”

  Wisdom told Blake to let the Samoan rant. He liked having the big man down for the count instead of having to worry that he was fixing to rough up the next person who crossed their path and add to the roll call of faces that kept Blake up at night.

  Back in Phoenix, Blake had tried to hide his bad dreams from Sam. When he cried out in his sleep or woke in cold sweat, he either blamed too much booze or too little. One day Sam had returned to their trailer in Phoenix with a dreamcatcher that he hung over Blake’s bed.

  Eagle feathers, the big man had said, pointing at the dreamcatcher. Nothing fucks with eagle. Now only the good dreams will get through.

  Blake had no time for Native American nonsense, and to him spiritual doodads were about as legitimate as the Tooth Fairy. But he let the dreamcatcher stay where Sam had put it. At night, buzzing from speed or dizzy with booze, he’d reach up and flick one of the feathers, making the thing spin until he fell asleep.

  Sam tossed his empty can into the desert. Blake tried to pinpoint where it landed, figuring he’d be the one to retrieve it later. “How the fuck are we going to get anything done around here without wheels?”

  “Wheels are easy. There’s a hotel up the way. The man at the grocery said it’s filled with foreigners. No one spends too much time searching for a stolen rental.”

  “Well, take your time. Take your fucking time.” Sam hauled himself to his feet and began dragging his busted leg away from the fire and into the desert.

  Blake watched him staggering like a drunk, lurching between the low cacti and the scrub brush. Every once in a while he’d bend down and pick something off the desert floor. Finally, he returned to the fire with a splintering plank of wood about a foot long. He sat down and found a long stick and began prodding the coals until the tip caught. He let it burn for a minute, then pulled it from the fire and waved it in the air so flames died out and the point turned to ash. Using the stick like a paintbrush the big man began to draw on the wood.

  “What’s that?” Blake said.

  Sweat trickled down Sam’s brow. He jerked his head, flinging his long braid over his shoulder. When he was finished, he tossed the stick back into the flames. Then he turned the plank around and held it out to Blake. Sam had drawn a crude leg—strong and unbroken.

  “That some sort of wishing picture?” Blake asked.

  “It’s a milagro,” Sam said. “If you aren’t going to get rid of those shoes, I’m going to have to start healing myself.”

  Blake kicked the coals and kept quiet.

  THAT NIGHT HE WATCHED SAM AS HE SLEPT ON THE MATTRESS, ARMS splayed wide, his good leg bent, the bad one propped up. He’d leaned the milagro against the wall next to the head of the bed. It didn’t seem to be bringing him any relief. Sweat soaked the mattress below him, creating a sprawling shadow self. He groaned in his sleep, cursing in the language that he could only speak when verging on blackout drunkenness.

  Sam thrashed, slamming one of his hands onto the floor, jolting himself from sleep. He was panting. He looked at Blake as if he were a stranger. Then he closed his eyes and crashed back on the pillow.

  Blake tiptoed over to where his pack was leaning against the wall, pulled out the dreamcatcher, and hung it on a nail near a boarded-up window.

  VICODIN. VIKES. BENNIES. DEMMIES. CAPTAIN CODY. PERCS. THAT’S WHAT Sam needed. The big man spent two more delirious nights and two brutal days sweating in the dark cabin. He told Blake he couldn’t breathe. But when Blake helped him outside, he shouted that the sun was killing him.

  On the third day of Sam’s decline, Blake kicked out one of the plywood windows, letting in light and air. He opened up two cans of beans and put a six-pack of Keystone next to the mattress. He set up the chessboard and put the puzzle book within reach. He took a last look at Sam’s milagro and hoped it would keep him safe for the next few hours.

  BLAKE HAD BEEN STEALING AND RESELLING SCRIPS AND MEDS FOR YEARS. HE worked the retirement homes in Scottsdale, cleaning out entire floors while the residents were off at bingo or their early-bird dinners. He was an expert in name-brand pills and their generic counterparts. He knew which meds had desirable side effects and which did jack shit but get you well. Once his haul was complete, he’d make house calls at trailers between Phoenix and the first Hopi reservation. Although he was a newcomer in Wonder Valley, he got the kind of living that went on out there—the desert isolation that created cravings for pills, booze, and speed. He saw the busted pickups careening down the sandy roads late at night, their drivers definitely lit on something. He heard the random pop of someone firing a gun into the dark to blow off steam. He’d seen the glassy eyes of the greasy-haired teenagers coming down the road on foot. He knew.

  Blake put two beers in his pack, along with his knife, and the .45 he’d busted out of a pawnshop outside Phoenix. It was early evening, but the heat hadn’t let up. About a half mile from his cabin he found a rusty bike in an empty driveway and figured it was worth the risk.

  He rode to Amboy Road and crossed into the northern section of Wonder Valley figuring it was wise to hit houses as far from his hideout as possible. He passed larger compounds, their driveways filled with cars and trucks in various stages of decline.

  The first few houses he tried yielded nothing more than drugstore-brand painkillers and meds for conditions neither Blake nor Sam had—hypertension, high cholesterol, and indigestion. Finally he came to a neat white ranch with an empty carport. There was a saggy inflatable pool and a trampoline in the yard. Two satellite dishes on the roof pointed in opposite directions.

  He got in through the bathroom window. The interior was dim. A swamp cooler chugged away not accomplishing much. Blake turned on the tap and drenched his hair, then took several sloppy gulps.

  In the bathroom cabinet he only found over-the-counter meds, ibuprofen and aspirin. He pocketed these. But in the bedroom he scored. Next to the fat, trashy books on the nightstand was a full bottle of Oxy. On the opposite side of the bed he found Klonopin and Xanax. In the kitchen he helped himself to a two-liter bottle of supermarket-brand cola, a jug of wine, two boxes of cereal, and some cans of soup.

  The sun had disappeared and the desert was rusted shadow. He popped the top on the Klonopin and washed a few down with the soda, then got on the bike. He rode slowly, letting the pills take hold as he watched the sky turn from purple to black. Soon his mind softened and Wonder Valley became a maze. In the dark, the sand roads were indistinguishable. One homestead turned into another. He’d ridden by his and Sam’s place twice before he recognized it. The cabin should have been dark, but there was light bouncing around inside.

  Blake stashed the bike and approached on foot. His legs wobbled and his head felt like it was floating. He could hear voices, Sam’s, yes, but someone else’s too. He pulled his knife.

  He pushed open the makeshift plywood door and stood swaying in the threshold. The knife’s hilt slipped in his sweaty grip. The Samoan was reclining on his mattress in front of the chessboard. Across from him a teenage boy sat Indian style.

  Blake rubbed his eyes.

  The boy looked over his shoulder, then returned to the game. His eyes were curtained by floppy blond hair.

  “He’s spending the night,” Sam said.

  Blake tossed the big man an amber pill bottle. “Does he have a name?”

  “Owen,” the boy said.

  “Does he have anyone looking for him? We don’t need kidnapping on top of all else.”

  “What all else?” Sam asked, uncapping the bottle and reaching for his last beer.

  Blake leaned on the cabin’s wall for support as he watched them play. The kid knew chess. That much was clear. Blake could see him considering each move, staring at the board like it was a puzzle worth figuring out.


  He nudged the kid with the tip of his sneaker. “And where’d you say you came from?”

  “Let the boy alone,” Sam said. “He can’t concentrate.”

  “Not far.” Owen picked up one of the castle-shaped pieces.

  “How not far exactly?” Blake said.

  The kid pointed south, toward the national park.

  “The far side? Palm Springs? Indio?”

  “Just over the Twentynine Palms Highway and up a couple of miles.”

  “Shit,” Blake said. “You’re local. They’ll be coming for you for sure.”

  “I’ve been gone a week and no one’s come looking,” the kid said.

  “Quit yammering,” Sam said. “We’re playing.”

  “How can I be sure when you get tired of playing hide-and-seek you won’t go running back to your family, telling them all about the two men you came across over in Wonder Valley?” Blake asked.

  “’Cause we won’t let him,” Sam said. “We’re going to be one happy family.”

  “Christ,” Blake said, standing up from the fire. “You hate family.”

  9

  JAMES, TWENTYNINE PALMS, 2006

  One week after Owen ran away, several of the interns clustered around James on the porch. “What does it feel like?” Cassidy asked. “Was it like having a limb cut off or dying halfway?” She sat at his feet and looked up at him all dopey the way she looked at Patrick.

  “Close your eyes,” the intern with the stupid Indian name said. “Now try to look here.” She pressed her finger into the middle of James’s forehead. “Let your third eye guide you.” She drilled her finger into his skull. “What do you see?”

  James closed his eyes, mostly so he wouldn’t have to see her face inches from his own.

  “What do you see?” She smelled like sweaty herbs.

  “Nothing,” James said.

  “Look harder,” she said. “Look for Owen.”

  “Leave him alone.”

  The intern removed her finger. James opened his eyes and saw his mother approaching from the garage where she’d been digging through the refuse of their old life, looking for some clue that might tell her where Owen had gone.