Double Wide

by Leo W. Banks

  Opal cleared the table and washed the kitchen dishes, after which I insisted we try again. I cranked the lever and got the trailer up high enough for him to slip two fresh cinderblocks underneath.

  But the jack gave way again and crushed the last good block. I was surprised the whole trailer didn’t tip over.

  As it was, we heard Charlie’s wall hangings crashing around in there and a cat screeching. Charlie and his molecules were going to be with me awhile.

  I didn’t get out of Double Wide until late afternoon, and on the way I stopped at a midtown garage. Pete, the nervous ninety-pound body man, offered to put a new roof on the Bronco for $900. I said I’d call back to make an appointment, and right away dreaded having to wait three hours while he did the work.

  Waiting rooms bother me. They’re filthy, the coffee is foul, and I can’t read three-year-old magazines. They say I’m particular, but I don’t see it.

  FORTY-THREE

  At 6:30 p.m. I left Pete’s and drove west on Grant Road, braving Tucson’s new Wild West. It takes place on streets that are uncared for and unmanaged by any recognizable authority. Frantic drivers rush to the next red light so they can crawl into your trunk and look around.

  The potholes are so deep and numerous they’ve become tourist attractions. See our urban caves. See how many you can leap without snapping an axle.

  At the intersection of Grant and Oracle Roads, I waited in the boiling heat through three lights, experiencing the standard hallucinations of the non-air-conditioned. At the fourth turn to green, I abused the accelerator to get as far from that light as I could.

  The wind smoked through my hair. My phone rang. I listened to George Jones for a spell. The man broke my heart every time.

  “Hellooo.”

  “We got us a new resident, Mayor,” Cash said. “He made his way into the open trailer and went to sleep.”

  “Does he have a name?”

  “Won’t say. Some kid. Should I run him off?”

  “Let him be until I get back. I want to talk to him.”

  My goal was making the forty-mile drive to the Blue Lonesome before nightfall. Sunset was at 7:30 p.m. I didn’t want to be on mountain roads in a monsoon, and so far, the sky looked cooperative.

  I drove north on Oracle Road into the Catalina foothills and kept going above the clamor of the city until human habitation thinned to not much at all.

  At Oracle Junction, I turned right onto Highway 77 and rolled through empty desert for eleven miles into the town of Oracle. It consists of tin-roofed miners’ shacks, gray adobes, some trailers, and a few modern two-story stucco homes spread willy-nilly over the hills fronting the north face of the Catalina Mountains.

  Downtown isn’t much: a gas station, a market, a few store-fronts where artists go and don’t make money, and a boarded-up steak house and lounge where Dean and the Destroyers killed it on Thursday nights.

  Oracle definitely didn’t bustle. More like a wheeze.

  Three blinks after downtown, the road split. I took the right fork into the Coronado National Forest and the Blue Lonesome turnoff, three miles along.

  The dirt road snaked up the mountain at a steep climb. Every half mile or so, there were bullet-riddled No Trespassing signs. They should come out of the factory that way. It’d save the locals time and a bundle on ammunition. I passed oak trees and tall yucca plants that looked like warriors’ lances emerging from blossoming stands.

  The switchbacks kept switching until I reached a meadow overlooking a huge expanse of the San Manuel Valley. The hills were burned and brown where the meadow fell off, and they flowed steadily down to deep canyons that made the ground disappear and towering stone ridges that brought it back again.

  Far below, blackening clouds made a patchwork of shadows on the valley floor. A storm was building out there and blowing my way.

  Another turn after the meadow, I came to a stone ranch house, headquarters of the Blue Lonesome. The bottom was long and low in the traditional ranch style. The windows were partially below ground level and the overhanging log roof only a few feet above it. A dome-shaped addition on top had a glass front affording a view across the great valley.

  A massive Emory oak shaded the back of the house, and back of these was a corral.

  The entrance gate was a metal bar controlled by a punch pad. I ducked under the bar and walked toward the house.

  A female voice called out, “A locked gate means stay out! Declare yourself, sir!”

  I couldn’t see the speaker. I shaded my eyes and said, “Are you Elizabeth Bonheimer? I’m looking for the famous chemist. My name is Whip Stark.”

  The voice again: “Whatever news you bring today, Mr. Whip Stark, you best deliver it from behind my gate.”

  Scanning the house and the area around it, I couldn’t locate her in the glow of sunset. I said, “I assume you’re not going to shoot me.”

  “You assume too much, Mr. Whip Stark.”

  My eyes followed the sound of the corral gate squealing open, and there was Bonheimer.

  She had snow-white hair cut in a nun’s bowl. She wore a rust-colored buckskin shirt straight out of a Wild West show. It had long sleeves, buttons up the front, white stitching over both pockets in eagle-wing design, and black horsehair tassels hanging from those designs. The horsehair was woven with turquoise beading.

  She was way too thin for it, and it certainly wasn’t a summer shirt. But if you had no blood in your veins, I suppose you could wear it comfortably in the heat.

  Bonheimer stepped toward me and snarled. “I don’t talk to men with the manners of a goddamned goat.”

  Close up, she had the finely lined face you see a lot in Arizona’s backcountry. The sun is youth’s second-story man, its silent thief. But her voice had depth and hung on to the end notes longer than necessary. It sounded vaguely like yodeling.

  “Are you the one they call Aunt Izzy?” I tried to sound friendly and came across like the guy who goes door to door offering to fix leaking roofs after causing them.

  Unmoved, she wiped her mouth with her hand and stared. The veins on the back of it were cornflower blue.

  Thinking quickly, I threw out another name, hoping it might earn me some credit. “Annie Patterson sent me.”

  Bonheimer wasn’t impressed with that either. She tucked two fingers behind her teeth and whistled like a traffic cop. Three German shepherds darted around the house at attack speed.

  Without turning, Bonheimer held up a hand to stop them, and they obeyed, pulling up in the dirt right beside her. They stood stiffly, poised on low-slung hips, teeth showing. They had unusually thick fur around their necks and hungry eyes.

  I said, “I would’ve called first, but Annie didn’t have your number.”

  Bonheimer stared without speaking. I was getting nowhere. Thunder shook the valley. The storm I feared was coming.

  Saying nothing, I held up both hands and backpedaled toward the gate. Moving as deliberately as I could, I ducked under the gate, nearly brushing the dirt with my lips. I straightened up and took a few extra steps back, putting me within scampering distance of the Bronco if she decided to release the hounds.

  “Talk,” said Bonheimer.

  “I’m looking for Arthur Melody. It’s urgent.”

  “Arthur?” Bonheimer’s face softened. “I don’t know where he is or where he might’ve gone.”

  Not exactly a firm denial of having seen him.

  More thunder boomed and the storm winds swirled. The twilight was uncertain. It made patches of darkness on the plateau and patches of radiant noon, as the last of the sunlight streamed through the clouds in shower-like formation.

  Three vehicles were parked at the edge of the plateau facing the valley, a white pickup truck, a red jeep, and a white Lincoln Continental, maybe twenty-five years old.

  I thought of the night of Melody’s frantic escape from the alley behind his house, his white car shooting out of the garage. I didn’t catch the make. But it was huge and old, s
o different from sleek modern models.

  It could’ve been a Lincoln, the same one parked thirty feet in front of me. Then again, the Lincoln worked as well for Bonheimer as it did for Melody. It was the perfect old-lady car.

  “It’s urgent,” I said. “It could be a matter of life and death.”

  “Yeah, whose?” She wasn’t buying it.

  “The doctor’s on the run, and his life’s in danger.”

  Bonheimer cocked her head. “On the run from what?”

  “Drug smugglers.”

  “Arthur Melody involved with drugs?” She cackled from the mountaintop.

  “I have some of his research papers in my car. He was into something pretty deep. If you could just take a look at them.”

  “I recommend you leave while I still have my patience and you still have your scalp.”

  I pointed to the Lincoln. “That’s a nice ride you have there. How’d you get a car like that up this mountain?”

  “Drove it on the road, Mr. Whip Stark. The road you came in on and the same one that’s going to haul your disagreeable self out.”

  I tried a couple more approaches and nothing worked. When the dogs picked up Bonheimer’s hostility and showed more teeth, I got the message and retreated down the road. A blustery wind shoved the Bronco around, but the storm failed to deliver any rain, and I made it out of there, dry and alive.

  FORTY-FOUR

  On the drive home, I kept thinking about the look on Bonheimer’s face when I mentioned Melody’s name. It sparked something—a memory, anxiety, possibly guilt.

  I wished I’d gotten a closer look at the back bumper of that big white car. If it was Melody’s, he might’ve peeled off the identifying saguaro sticker, leaving a glue outline that would still show. It was impossible to tell from the gate.

  Charlie was talking in his sleep when I stepped inside the Airstream. Best I could tell, he was eating carrots while being chased by a panther. I listened some more. No, it wasn’t a panther but the Seventh Cavalry led by George Armstrong Custer.

  Back in my bedroom, I grabbed a blanket and made a door of it, held up by books stacked on the shelving on either side of the entrance. Not much of a sound barrier against Charlie’s battle cries, but it provided at least some privacy.

  I couldn’t get over Bonheimer’s shirt. You expect to see that attire on actors and models smiling for the camera in glossy western magazines. They see the West mainly through the tinted windows of SUVs trolling the paved roads around Santa Fe.

  If by some misadventure said SUV happened to depart said pavement, encountering actual western dirt, their first reaction is to call the police.

  Dear Aunt Izzy, a real specimen. But she didn’t bother me. I had a weakness for outliers, and her hostility wasn’t a surprise. Mountain people are different. They’ve chosen to shun the world. Mountain people typically don’t greet you with a welcoming smile and a steaming bowl of raccoon soup.

  Next morning, I made scrambled eggs sprinkled with cut-up steak. I sliced a cantaloupe into squares and put them on a plate alongside a bowl of grapes. It started out being just Charlie and me, but Cash came in after a while.

  We ate together, and afterward I got out a sheet of paper and made a list of groceries and supplies we needed in town. We usually made one run a week and split up the chore. It was Cash’s turn.

  But Charlie volunteered to make the drive for him, saying he was low on propane. When Charlie said propane, he meant gin.

  He grabbed the keys to Cash’s Dodge Dart and threw up smoke signals all the way over the mountain. Roxy came to Double Wide about noon, and when Charlie returned, we divvied up the supplies and put everything away, Roxy helping out with my end of it.

  Cash hauled out the jack, which he swore was finally fixed, and rousted our surprise visitor out of the open trailer. I’d forgotten about him. His name was Angel.

  He wore a filthy black Oakland Raiders T-shirt, untucked and way oversized. He had on Levis that were just as dirty and also oversized. It looked like he’d found them, and he probably had. The desert is an outdoor JCPenney of clothes discarded by illegal crossers.

  The toes of his sneakers pointed up, like clown shoes. He had a long knotted black hair down to his shoulders. I put him at fourteen.

  Charlie said, “You want to go to work, Angel? We could use some young muscle.”

  “I can do lots of work for you.” The kid took a deep breath and held it, ballooning his cheeks and curling his arms over his head to show muscles he didn’t have. Everybody laughed.

  Charlie said, “Okay, okay. Take it easy or you’ll hurt yourself. I’d be much obliged.”

  Just as before, I placed the jack underneath the corner of Charlie’s trailer and cranked the lift to the ready position. Charlie and Cash each placed one of the wood beams under the trailer on either side of the jack, splayed their legs, and gripped the beams above their shoulders.

  I cranked the lever, and the trailer went up. I kept cranking. Every four or five tries, I stopped and waited to hear the fast clicking and didn’t. The jack held every time. When I got it all the way up, I set the lock and stepped back and waited for the crash.

  Just in case, Angel grabbed the bottom of the trailer and lifted with everything he had, his face turning crimson in the effort. Roxy grabbed a fresh cinderblock and slipped it into the space, and then another. I cranked the trailer down onto the top block as gently as I could and it held.

  The job was finally done.

  We shook hands all around, after which Roxy turned to Angel, eyeing him with keen interest. She took him by the shoulders, and leaning down to take a close look, inspected the back of his T-shirt.

  “Check this out,” she said, pulling on the shirt. “Is this blood? How’d you get blood all over yourself, kid?”

  The back of the T-shirt was a darker shade of black than the front. The bloodstain went all the way down to the top of his Levis. As Roxy looked, she caught my eye and pointed to the name etched in the leather along the back of Angel’s belt.

  Carlos Alvarez.

  FORTY-FIVE

  We brought Angel into the Airstream and sat him down. He smelled like a carful of wet dogs, only not as good. Roxy pulled off his T-shirt. The kid might’ve weighed ninety pounds. He had buggy-whip arms, and his torso was nothing but sharp bones jabbing at mocha skin.

  I tossed his T-shirt into the trash and got out one of my own and threw it over a chair. I soaked a washcloth and gave it to Roxy to wipe the blood off his back.

  “Wait a minute. He’s been shot,” she said. “Get a load of this. It looks like a bullet grazed him. What happened here?”

  I looked as Roxy washed off the blood. The kid had a gash to the right of his spine. From under the sink, I got out my first aid kit. Roxy took out the small alcohol bottle and cotton swabs, wet one of the swabs, and dabbed at the wound.

  Roxy said, “We’ve got a lucky boy here. Another inch or so left and he’s a goner. Who shot you, Angel?”

  “Roscoe Rincon.”

  “Roscoe Rincon,” Roxy repeated. “Who’s that?”

  “He jefes the chivastas out here,” Angel said, using slang for the heroin smugglers. “He guards the smuggler trail from Mexico all the way up here.”

  Roxy looked at me, eyebrows raised. I knew what she was thinking. Machete. I asked Angel to describe him.

  “Sinaloan dude, big, ugly. They call him Rojo.” Rojo is Spanish for “red.” “He’ll kill anybody.” Angel snapped his fingers. “Like that. He likes his machete. Chop, chop, chop. Don’t matter to Rojo.”

  That confirmed it. Roscoe Rincon was the man who threatened to murder me on Paradise Mountain.

  Roxy said, “He sounds like a sicario, an assassin. They keep everybody in line on the routes they own. Anybody steps off, Rincon handles it.”

  As Roxy dabbed at his back, Angel’s eyes moved around the Airstream, taking it all in. His left eye was black, deep set, alert, and suspicious. Something was wrong with the right one. It look
ed like he was rolling his eyes, and it got stuck in the up position. It was mostly white with a quarter moon of black showing under the lid.

  It made me think of The Tempest. By the time I was nine, Sam made sure I knew the play by heart. The character Caliban was called a mooncalf, someone born with a deformity, which in those times was thought to be caused by the machinations of the moon.

  Roxy asked why Rincon had shot him, and again the kid didn’t answer.

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  I poured a glass of milk. He sucked it down in a swallow and wiped the residue off his mouth with his forearm. Getting the hint, I broke four eggs into a frying pan, got out a second pan, filled it with sausages, pulled out a roll of biscuits, and put them into the microwave.

  Roxy said, “Tell me, Angel. How do you know Roscoe Rincon?”

  “I work for him in Phoenix, Tucson, all over. I met him in the Sierra Madre. That’s where I was born.”

  The drug cartels control the Sierra Madre mountain range in northwest Mexico. It’s an impenetrable stronghold where they can do their business unbothered by any law but their own.

  The microwave beeped. I put the steaming biscuits on a plate and carried them to the table with butter. Angel grabbed a knife, sliced off a two-inch wedge of butter, and popped it into his mouth. He stuffed a biscuit into his mouth, cut another butter wedge, and ate that too.

  All I had was duct tape. Roxy bit off a portion and pressed it against a bandage on the kid’s back. As she smoothed it, she said, “Tell me about Roscoe Rincon.”

  “I was loyal to him. I did what he wanted. I worked for him a long time.”

  Roxy said, “On Paradise Mountain?”

  Angel nodded. I was standing at the oven working the scrambled eggs with a spatula. “Did you live in one of the buildings up there?”

  Angel turned toward the kitchen. His good eye found me. The black moon eye journeyed around in its socket, taking a while to settle on its target.

  “I live with the animals,” he said. “All the animals on the mountain know me.”