Wonder Valley

by Ivy Pochoda

  On the bus back to Echo Park, he helped himself to a couple of the Valiums. Back in his camper, he closed his eyes, waiting for the pills to erase the hours between then and evening when he’d search out a party up the hill to unload his haul.

  As his mind floated a few inches above his skull, Blake tried telling himself one of Sam’s stories, but he forgot the good part. The big man always had something to say—some yarn about a man who found himself alone on top of a mountain with only a crow for company. A tale about an old woman with a soup pot and a magic husk of corn that kept her fed for weeks. A story about a boy and a girl alone in a forest, hunted by a great panther. Sometimes he recounted his own adventures, his violent romances, his scrapes with death, his drunken, drug-fueled craziness that got wilder with each telling.

  Sam also had stories about his family: his grandfather who’d killed a bunch of Germans, his uncle taken prisoner in Vietnam, his grandmother who worked in a brothel in a border town. Sometimes these stories merged and mutated, the grandmother escaping the brothel and finding herself on top of the mountain with the crow, the uncle surviving with only a magic grain of rice for months. But Blake didn’t mind. He’d never been much concerned with the truth.

  But the story didn’t materialize. Instead his mind dragged him back to that godforsaken ranch—Sam’s last-ditch idea to save himself and a bad one. It took him back to the campfire, to the kids and their crappy weed and cheap booze. And if Blake was honest with himself, he had to admit he’d been longing for an out from Sam’s sickbed, something to distract him from the fact that his friend was probably dying, no matter what the hippie doctor was telling them.

  And for what it had been worth, he’d been enjoying himself, never mind the interns and their spiritual gobbledygook, because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d enjoyed a drink and smoke with someone who wasn’t Sam. For a stupid split second, he’d liked this freedom.

  The rest of the scene he had to imagine because he’d been too wrapped up in watching one of the farmhands spin in circles, her skirts skimming the flames. For whatever reason, Britt had gone to Sam’s cabin, maybe trying to bring a little of the party to the big man’s bedside. Blake hadn’t seen her go. He’d been lost in the fog of weed and wood smoke and burning sage and the fungal odor of communal sweat. But he could almost visualize it—Sam grabbing her, pulling her close, taking things too far and too fast. He probably had his knife stored somewhere under the mattress. Blake could nearly see it as the big man pulled his blade to get Britt in line. And it wouldn’t have been too hard for her to pivot that blade around, forcing Sam to fall on his own sword.

  THE VALIUM HE’D TAKEN ON THE BUS FOGGED HIS BRAIN, AND THE STORY he was trying to recall just wouldn’t come. But it wasn’t just the pills—certain memories were softening, losing their edge. Sometimes Blake had to ball his fists into his eyes and press hard to conjure the sooty crags of Sam’s face. He was losing the big man all over again.

  He kicked the wall, cracking the brittle fiberglass. The dreamcatcher above his bed lurched and swayed from side to side. He flung off his sleeping bag and stared at that tangle of beads and feathers until he slept.

  Someone was knocking on the camper’s door. Blake opened his eyes and pulled back the ratty curtain. It was evening but barely.

  Santiago was standing on the street, hopping from foot to foot. “She sick, Señor Blake. Very sick.”

  “Get a doctor,” Blake said. “Take her to the clinic.”

  “No clinic. The cat brought the devil’s poison.”

  “Come on, little man. Just take her down to the clinic and leave me alone.” The fog of the Valium hung heavy and thick. Blake had to will his eyes open.

  “She needs prayer. No doctor.”

  “You’ve come to the wrong guy.” Blake blinked and shook his head side to side. He’d have to dip into his supply, swallow a few Ritalins to bring everything back into focus.

  “You come look.” Santiago grabbed Blake’s shirt. The camper shook as Blake resisted. He heard his chess game clatter to the ground. “You come now.”

  He staggered onto the street. The asphalt was cool on his bare feet as he followed Santiago to his camper.

  “Very, very sick,” Santiago said.

  “You want me to catch it?”

  “This sickness comes from the devil. It’s not contagious.”

  “In that case, there’s nothing to worry about. I’ve already got that.”

  Inside the camper the air was thick with the smell of prayer candles. “You’re going to melt the walls,” Blake said.

  Santiago was making the sign of the cross and muttering a prayer under his breath.

  Soledad looked sick all right. Not as sick as Sam had, but pretty bad.

  Blake stood in the door. “There’s a clinic down on Alvarado. But for now.” He reached into his pocket where he’d stashed some of the pills. He shook them in his palm until a long, pink capsule rose to the top. Percs might not take the fever down, but at least they’d help Soledad forget her illness for a bit. He held it out.

  “No medicina,” Soledad said.

  “We don’t believe in medicine,” Santiago said. “Only prayer. All the help we need come from el Señor.”

  “Well, you better get praying then.”

  “Yes, yes.” Santiago yanked Blake’s hand and fell to his knees. “Yes. You pray with us. The more voices, the better he hear us.” He jerked his chin to the camper’s roof and pulled on Blake’s hand again.

  Blake fell to his knees, half in, half out of the door. The lingering Valium made him wobble and nearly tip over. He steadied himself by gripping the door frame. “I don’t know if God’s gonna listen to me.”

  With one hand Santiago held on to Blake. He took Soledad’s hand with his other. He pulled Blake closer to the bed so he could complete the circle. Soledad’s palm was cool and clammy. He closed his eyes, as if that might help him block the smell of the candles.

  Santiago began to pray. Blake couldn’t follow, but whenever the little man jerked his hand, he bellowed an amen in unison with them. The man had fervor to spare. That much was clear. Blake had seen him doing his sermons on the street corner near the 101 freeway ramp, praying a mile a minute without pausing for breath.

  Blake’s knees began to ache. His palms were steaming. He cracked an eye to keep from drifting off. Santiago was praying with his head thrown back, his gaze upward if he could see right through the roof of the camper into God’s house. Beads of sweat were dropping down his forehead. He took a deep breath and squeezed Blake’s hand. He shouted a final amen so loud that the camper rocked. Then he got to his feet and went to sit by Soledad.

  “That’s it?” Blake said.

  “He heard,” Soledad said. “You pray. He hears.”

  Blake staggered out of the camper. The sun was disappearing over the hills of Silver Lake. Hopefully tomorrow would be clear. He didn’t need any more of this earthquake weather.

  He made it to his pad and swallowed a few Ritalin. A few minutes later he heard Santiago’s flip-flops slapping down the street. Blake put a pillow over his head.

  “Señor Blake?” The doorknob rattled. “Señor Blake. I know you’re in there.”

  Blake held his breath as if that could transport him elsewhere.

  “Okay, Mr. Blake, I’ll leave it out here.”

  There was the sound of a dish being placed on the camper’s aluminum step, then slap, slap, slap as Santiago padded away.

  Blake cracked the door and darted the bowl of rice and beans inside. Just like prison, he thought. Too much like prison. He watched the dreamcatcher spin. It hadn’t done its job. His dreams were still evil.

  All the pills he’d swallowed had made him sweat. He changed into a cleaner T-shirt and pulled out the sneakers that had made everything go wrong for Sam. He owned better, sturdier shoes. But he liked to wear the sneakers sort of as a fuck you to the big man (may he rest in peace), to prove to him that he’d been wrong about that spirit sh
it back in the desert. Because Blake was still up and running, wasn’t he?

  An hour after dark, music started coming down the hill, the screech and reverb of equipment being set up. How the fuck the neighbors dealt with this noise Blake didn’t want to know. But the music meant cash to him and he knew where the sound was coming from—a dirty white stucco house perched above three garages carved into the hillside with a backyard filled with battered lawn chairs balanced around a fire pit.

  Whoever decided it was a good idea to dig a fire pit in an L.A. backyard hadn’t watched the flames consume the San Gabriels a few years back. They hadn’t watched the daytime sky turn an apocalyptic black. They hadn’t noticed the smoke that crept east across the city for days. They didn’t see the hillsides crackle like they were running with lava. Blake was surprised the kids on the hill hadn’t burned the place down, lit fire to the neighborhood, and sparked a citywide emergency.

  The backyard was crowded by the time he turned up. Strands of Christmas lights dangled from the balcony and wrapped around a tree. A bunch of kids were sitting in a circle around the amps that had been dragged outside. A splintering table was piled high with booze—six-packs and half-empty bottles of harder stuff. There were no mixers, no ice, and the beer was getting warm. This didn’t bother Blake. He helped himself to a can of Bud, then found a folding chair off in a corner.

  Soon the kids started coming up to him. They used their cell phones to light the stash he held out. He walked them through his wares—warning them what they shouldn’t mix, what they shouldn’t take more than two of. Whether or not they listened wasn’t his problem.

  The band took a break. Other musicians took over, fiddling with the dials on the amps, getting their sound right. It was all one big noise to Blake. He wandered to the table of booze for another beer to chase whichever pill rose to the top of the pile. He didn’t have to take his own advice about mixing and matching.

  He settled back into his chair waiting to see what developed in his bloodstream. He could usually guess what he’d popped in a blind taste test by whether his fingers itched, if his stomach felt like a washing machine on spin cycle, or his blood flowed slow.

  Soon the first opiate rush hit his bloodstream. His vision flickered and resettled. He felt as if his veins were melting. He glanced around the garden. If he wasn’t careful, the Perc would trick him into liking these people.

  Someone got a fire going. A group gathered around the flames, feeding them scraps of paper, cigarette butts, dried twigs. Ash blew into the garden. Sparks shot into the trees.

  Burn the whole place down, Blake thought. Let the motherfucker burn.

  A few of the kids near the fire looked his way.

  So maybe he was speaking aloud instead of in his head. Anyway, fuck it, he was rolling now.

  The fire was pretty tame. It wasn’t a burning meth shack or an exploding car. It didn’t give Blake the release brought on by combusting metal and steel that made him feel as if he was standing outside himself. No, this was just a campfire and these were just kids who think it’s enough to slide through life ass backward.

  Someone was plugging into the amps. The sound of reverb shot through the garden. A few musicians started warming up, playing competing songs on different instruments.

  A couple of girls came looking for Valium. He was almost sold out. He had a nice little roll in his pocket and a couple of pills to send him off to sleep should it come to that.

  The new band started grinding away, pissing off the neighbors and making the partygoers look stupid with their down-with-it-ness. There were three of them playing some sort of repetitive, tinny crap, while a singer delivered panting vocals. One of the guitarists had arms completely covered in tattoos—flowers and birds on one, strange antique machinery on the other. The concoction in Blake’s bloodstream made the birds on the guy’s arm look like they were flying. He let himself get lost in the hallucination, watching the birds flutter as the guy ran his hand up and down the guitar’s neck.

  “The fuck is this?” He’d said that aloud too.

  A group of girls swaying or staggering next to him stopped moving and stared. Then they shuffled away, giving him room.

  “What?” Blake said. He must have been talking loud, louder than he meant to. But fuck it. And fuck them. They all had one another and their crappy music. He had no one. Him and his goddamn empty camper.

  Another girl stepped out of the shadows to join the little posse. Blake had to squint to make her out—red hair, pale skin made even paler by black jeans and a black tank top.

  “Fuck me,” he said.

  Everyone turned. The band stopped playing for a beat.

  Someone took Blake by the arm and tried to pull him away from the musicians. The thing is, even wasted, Blake was stronger than these pussies who probably broke a sweat just lifting their guitars or paintbrushes. It only took him a second to twist free.

  “Take it easy, buddy,” the guy said.

  “I know her,” Blake said, pointing at the redhead. “I know her.”

  “Sure you do.”

  There were two of them now, corralling him like a couple of sheepdogs, herding him away from the fire.

  What had he promised Sam? That this time there would be no second-guessing, this time no mistakes. And now the woman who had killed his friend, who had knifed him, was standing a few feet away surrounded by people, nothing better to do than enjoy the night high on Blake’s fucking pills.

  There she was. There she fucking was.

  WHAT HAD SHE SAID WHEN HE’D BURST INTO THE CABIN AND SEEN HER and the boy from the ranch smeared in Sam’s blood? “He attacked me. He tried to—” She didn’t need to say the word. Everyone pushing in behind him at the door could fill in that particular blank.

  And for a moment Blake had believed it—that Sam had taken advantage of a little alone time with a pretty girl to get her to do what he wanted and she didn’t. Because that was Sam’s way—the big man wasn’t big on no. It had seemed plausible in the bloody frenzy of that room that Sam had provoked this mess. That in some state of delirium, Sam had found the strength to grab the girl, force her on top of him. It was only later when Blake could hear his own thoughts over the blood roar in his ears, the explosion of his heartbeats, that he realized how unlikely this was. Sam could barely make it through a chess game without falling asleep.

  She’d killed him and then she had blamed him. And she’d lied to Blake.

  “WHERE THE FUCK DID YOU BURY HIM?” BLAKE SHOUTED. HE POINTED AT the woman. It took her a moment to notice that he’d singled her out. “Yeah, you,” he said. “Why the fuck did you kill him? Don’t lie to me this time.”

  She gave him a look that showed him how fucked up he was.

  Squint and he could see her still covered in Sam’s blood. Close his eyes all the way, tune out the band’s whining, and he could hear her excuses for the killing.

  He took a step toward the woman and she ducked behind her friends. He reached for the knife in his pocket. Then stopped. Because what was he going to do in front of all these people? He needed to get her alone.

  Three scrawny dudes were standing in front of him, marching him out, like riot cops advancing on a crowd. Blake held up his hand. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  He backed up, falling twice. He didn’t want to take his eyes off the woman, didn’t want to lose her again. He tumbled through the garden gate, then made a big show of heading away from the party, letting the guys know they were rid of him.

  But they were suckers, back at the party in no time, holding cans of cheap beer. Blake only waited a few moments before he was back too, watching, lurking, ready for the moment the woman separated herself from the group.

  His plan was ill formed, especially now that so many people had seen him, especially people who knew more or less where he lived and what he did. But still—he’d promised.

  AFTER HE’D BEEN IN LOS ANGELES FOR THREE YEARS, BLAKE HAD returned to the ranch to correct t
he balance tipped by Sam’s death. He’d boosted a car and driven east. He stashed the car just off the Twentynine Palms Highway and walked the last mile or so to the farm. The place was in bad shape. The chickens were gone, the coop collapsed in on itself. The windows of several of the cabins were cracked or gone.

  He’d camped out in one of the cabins, smoking, not giving a fuck if the boy or his dad noticed his cherry lighting up in the dark. But no one was home. Finally, the boy turned up, driving his dad’s old truck up from the highway. He was tan and scrawny, with small ropy muscles that poked through his skin. He looked like any other desert stoner. The dad and the redhead were nowhere in sight.

  Blake had brought a fifth of Evan Williams that he cracked as he watched the boy smoking a joint out his bedroom window. What the fuck had they done with Sam’s body? Had they burned or buried him? Had they left a marker, anything to indicate Sam had passed through this world at all? Or had they simply dumped him so that the desert creatures could have their way?

  He’d finished the bottle and swore that he’d wait until he was sure the kid was sleeping, then take him by surprise and demand to know where Sam was buried and where the redhead had gone. He’d tie him up, hold him hostage, until he had the answers he needed. But he’d passed out before he got around to his plan.

  He’d woken to a lurid sunrise. His back ached and sand had crawled into his clothes. The first thing he noticed was that the pickup was gone. Blake had barreled into the house and flung open the door to the boy’s room. It was empty. His bed was made. Drawers hung open. A few items of clothing were strewn on the floor.

  He’d taken a bottle of cola and a couple of beers from the fridge. Then he’d turned on the gas on the stove. He’d held his lighter to the cheap curtains in the master bedroom. He’d sparked the bedclothes. Then he’d stepped outside. The coop was easy, like it was waiting to ignite. He’d tried a few of the cabins. Some burned easy, some resisted.

  The main house was going great guns—crackling and releasing a noxious chemical smell when Blake hightailed it to the highway hoping for the satisfying release of an explosion that didn’t come.