They crested the hill and started back down into the middle of the reservation. Rolly resisted the urge to drive faster. The Tioga didn’t belong here. It was too large, too obvious. He felt like an alien in a crippled spacecraft. As they approached the intersection to the main road he spotted a truck, parked on the other side of the road, shaded under a tree.
‘You see it?’ said Macy.
‘I see,’ Rolly replied.
‘That’s tribal police.’
‘I know. Be cool.’
‘Too late,’ said Macy. ‘I’m hyperventilating. I gotta lie down, in the back.’
Macy took off her seat belt, lowered her head, snuck back to the dining room and laid down in the booth. Rolly pulled up to the stop sign facing the patrol truck across the intersection. He made a full stop, checked for traffic and turned left onto the main road.
‘Was it her?’ Macy whispered. ‘Was it Kinnie?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see anyone.’
Macy crawled along the floor and into the bedroom. She climbed on the bed and looked out the rear window.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘It’s her. I know it. She’s pulling out.’
Rolly checked his rearview mirror. The tribal police truck came into sight, following them at a well-measured distance. He checked his speedometer, looked in the mirror again and took a deep breath. No one knew him here. He hadn’t broken any rules. No one could prove he’d been in Daddy Joe’s house.
‘I can’t see if it’s her,’ said Macy. ‘She’s staying too far back.’
‘Sit down and stop staring. Don’t act so suspicious.’
The police truck continued to follow them. Macy crawled back up to the front. She got up on her knees and pointed out the front window.
‘That’s the reservation border up ahead – that sign,’ she said. ‘If she’s going to stop us, she’ll have to do it soon.’
Rolly checked his mirror again. He relaxed his hands on the wheel. They passed the boundary sign.
‘She stopped, didn’t she?’ said Macy.
Rolly checked his mirror. The police truck had pulled off to the side of the road. ‘Yeah. How’d you know?’
‘She had to. That’s the rules.’
Rolly watched in the rearview mirror as the police truck turned around and headed back in the opposite direction.
‘Sovereign nations,’ said Macy. ‘Tribal police can’t arrest you once you’re outside the rez. The county sheriff can’t arrest you once you’re inside.’
‘Sound pretty complicated,’ said Rolly.
‘Oh, yeah,’ said Macy. ‘I took advantage of it a couple of times.’
THIRTEEN
The Mountain
‘Oh, God, I remember that smell,’ Macy said as they drove through the town of Calipatria, just south of the Salton Sea. It wasn’t much of a town, more like a gathering of buildings not quite as far apart as others they’d recently passed. There was farmland for miles around, long rows of tilled earth on either side of the road – desert farms irrigated by water diverted from the Colorado River. There was a notable scent of fertilizer in the air.
‘You see that weird castle thing over there?’ said Macy, pointing at a long purple wall adorned with yellow turrets. ‘We took some pictures there when I came out with No Pants. You ever been to Coachella?’
‘Big festivals aren’t my kind of thing. Not usually my kind of music, either.’
‘Yeah. I hear what you’re saying. It was hot as fuck during the day. I’d love to play for a big crowd like that, though, get some serious entrainment going.’
‘Entrainment?’
‘Yeah. You know what that means?’
‘I just learned it yesterday.’
‘That’s what being a DJ’s all about. Everybody moving to the music. Mass-altered states. In a good way.’
‘Have you ever heard of something called the Solfeggio frequencies?’
‘No,’ said Macy. ‘What’s that?’
Rolly explained what he’d read on the website the day before.
‘Sounds like it might be good for my downtempo stuff,’ said Macy. ‘Chillout or Lounge. Those are kinda like the New Age of dance beats.’
Rolly considered all the things he didn’t know in the world. There were a lot of them.
‘How long were you out here with Randy No Pants?’ he asked.
‘Less than a week. I dumped him. It was not a healthy relationship.’
‘You want to tell me about it?’
Macy stared at Rolly for a moment. ‘Sure, Doctor Phil,’ she said. ‘Let me tell you all about my dysfunctional relationships. How guys ask me to dress up in little girls’ clothes, call them daddy and suck on a lollipop.’
‘Really?’ said Rolly.
Macy rolled her eyes. ‘I’m being sarcastic, Waters. Don’t be my shrink. Just be you. You’re cool the way you are, almost like an adult.’
‘To tell you the truth,’ Rolly said, ‘I thought you liked girls.’
‘Because I got all hot and bothered about that butch girlfriend of yours? Bonnie the Copper?’
‘Well, I did consider it a possibility.’
‘She’s gay, right?’
Rolly nodded. Bonnie didn’t advertise, but she didn’t hide either.
‘Yeah, Waters, you’ve been trying to figure me out since we met. I saw the way you checked me out at the cantina. You been calculating the odds, trying to figure out if I’m doable, wondering if an old guy like you could get lucky.’
‘I don’t sleep with my clients.’
‘Doesn’t stop you from thinking about it though, does it?’
‘Well,’ said Rolly, ‘some things are hard not to think about.’
‘Your friend Bonnie is kinda hot. I’d let her strip-search me anytime.’
‘So …’
‘DNA, Waters. Don’t try to label me. If I get a vibe, I go with it. You got a problem with that?’
‘No. No problem,’ said Rolly. He smiled.
‘There you go,’ Macy said. ‘With that look. Just like Vera warned me. It makes you seem so … decent.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You ever seen the place that crazy Christian guy built? Salvation Mountain?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘We should stop there. You should see it.’
‘I’m not exactly religious.’
‘Neither am I. Not really. Not any organized shit, anyway. I just think it’s cool when someone goes crazy like that, dedicates their whole life to something non-remunerative.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘There it is,’ said Macy. ‘Pull off at the sign.’
Rolly pulled off the road in front of a large sky-blue sign: God Never Fails – Salvation Mountain. He parked the Tioga. Salvation Mountain was an exuberant monument made of paint and plaster. A modest hill rising above the desert floor, it was covered in bright washes of green, blue, purple and yellow, adorned with the words ‘Love’ and ‘Repent’ spelled out in large letters. Biblical quotations had been lettered into the mountain’s nooks and crannies. Primitive illustrations of flowers, trees and rivers flowed down the sides. A camper truck had been parked out in front with similar embellishments.
Macy opened the door and jumped out. Rolly followed her. The hot desert air hit his face like the belch of an underworld demon. He regretted letting Macy talk him into this adventure. He hoped the Tioga’s air conditioning would hold up.
‘Let’s walk to the top,’ said Macy, pointing at the cross on top of the mountain.
‘It’s OK to do that?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Macy said. ‘I’ve been up there before.’ She pointed to a large yellow step at the base of the mountain. ‘Follow the yellow brick road,’ she said.
Rolly cleared his throat, wondering how long it would take heat stroke to set in. Macy could afford to be enthusiastic in this heat. She was young and skinny.
‘C’mon, you infidel,’ Macy said. ‘Let’s go find God, see if he wants to talk to us.’
Rolly followed Macy up the bright yellow stairway that curved around the mountain. They reached the peak, stood at the base of the cross and looked out at the desert panorama. You could see for miles in every direction.
‘You OK?’ said Macy.
‘I’m fine.’
‘You look a little flushed.’
‘It’s hot out here.’
‘Hotter than fuck,’ said Macy. She put her hand over her mouth. ‘I really need to watch my language.’
‘Don’t be sacrilegious.’
‘At least I wasn’t taking the Lord’s name in vain. I should watch my mouth, though. Out of respect for Leonard.’
‘Who’s Leonard?’
‘The guy who built this place. The crazy guy.’
They walked around the cross, taking in the scenery and bright decorations on the sides of the mountain below them. Streams of blue and white flowed down the mountain, painted to look like waterfalls. Pink and orange paint blossoms bloomed against fields of green. A benevolent deity ruled over Salvation Mountain.
‘So, Waters,’ said Macy, ‘you ready to repent? You have anything you need to confess?’
‘Do you?’
‘I asked first.’
Rolly thought for a moment. ‘Yeah. Sure. OK,’ he said. ‘The guy in your photo – the one with Aunt Betty, the baseball player. I talked to him.’
‘You found the guy?’
‘Yeah. Well, this is the confession part. I knew who it was when you showed it to me. I thought I did, anyway. I was right.’
‘So who is he?’
‘Eric Ozzie. The Sneaker.’
‘Wait. Is that the guy on TV? With those ads?’
Rolly nodded.
‘What’d he say?’
‘He said the photo’s from his minor league days. In Hawaii. He doesn’t remember your Aunt Betty.’
‘That’s all you found out?’
‘Afraid so.’
‘You think he was telling the truth?’
‘He said he’d be willing to talk to you, that he’d take responsibility.’
‘In case he’s my daddy?’
‘Yeah. I think that’s what he was saying.’
‘Yeah, well, like I said earlier, if he and Aunt Betty hooked up and I’m the result, there were a lot of recessive genes getting together. It’d be a million to one, ten million to one that I’d look like I do.’
‘You really understand all that heredity stuff?’
‘I’ve done some reading on it. DNA.’
‘Why can’t I ask?’
‘No, sorry. I meant the genetic thing. That DNA.’
‘I have another confession,’ said Rolly. ‘Something the man said to me, the guy at Desert View Tower, the one with the taser.’
‘What’d he say?’
‘He said Daddy Joe was a dead man.’
Macy wrinkled her nose. She sniffled. ‘This dry air makes me crazy,’ she said.
‘Why did you take me to Daddy Joe’s house?’ said Rolly.
‘You ever feel like you’re going crazy?’ said Macy.
‘I used to. Not so much now.’
‘The Gold Drinkers. That’s what Daddy Joe called the UVTs. He said they drank gold, like the medicine man made him do once, when Daddy Joe was sick. He told me the UVTs drank gold every day.’
‘That doesn’t sound very healthy.’
‘Actually, gold’s inert. It won’t hurt you. You ever seen that five-thousand-dollar chocolate sundae the guy makes in Vegas? They put gold flakes all over the thing. People eat it right down. It wasn’t drinking the gold that killed them. They’d just be trace amounts anyway. The UVTs would boil this big nugget in water, then everyone drank the water. Gold soup. That’s how they died.’
‘You just told me it was safe,’ Rolly said.
‘They got something else in their soup one day. This other chemical. Some kind of cyanide. Daddy Joe told me that miners use it to separate the gold from the rocks. He arrested the guy.’
‘I thought they committed suicide,’ said Rolly.
‘Sodium cyanide. That’s what it’s called. That’s how they died. Fucks up your system so you can’t breathe. I snuck into Daddy Joe’s desk once, looked through some papers he had. There were some photographs, too. Of the dead people. And some other stuff. I wanted to check.’
‘Check what?’
‘One of those diddley bow things. I remember seeing it in one of the photographs.’ Macy walked away from him. She pointed into the distance. ‘That’s Slab City, over there,’ she said.
Rolly turned to look in the direction she pointed. He didn’t see much: a collection of trailers and broken-down buildings.
‘Something’s going to happen,’ said Macy. ‘Something that changes things.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You’d tell me, wouldn’t you, if you thought I was crazy?’
‘You’re not crazy.’
‘I got my own confession to make, Waters, about that word. I know what it means.’
‘Teotwayki?’
‘It’s not an Indian word. It’s an acronym.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘The end of the world as you know it.’
A chill ran up Rolly’s spine. His sweat evaporated in the dry desert heat. He rubbed the stubble on his chin, stared at the ground. TEOTWAYKI. Daddy Joe was obsessed with the word. The man in the rocks at Desert View Tower had chirped the word like a bird call. The end of the world.
Two years ago a preacher had purchased billboard space along the San Diego freeways, advertising his predicted apocalypse date to disgruntled commuters, providing them with a number to call for more information. You could make a good living on Doomsday predictions. Apocalypse preparers even had their own TV shows now. Geeks freaked out over the Y2K bug and that collider thing the scientists had built in Switzerland. The end was coming. It always had been. It always would be.
He wondered if the UVTs knew they were going to die when they drank the poisoned soup. Had they believed that the aliens would really take them away? There was nothing anyone could do for them now. There were only the living, people with problems, with troubles and crazy thoughts, people who hadn’t left Earth yet. His father and Daddy Joe. Macy Starr. He hoped he could help Macy find what she wanted without any apocalypse.
‘Onward,’ he said.
They walked back down the mountain and climbed up into the Tioga. Rolly started the engine and cranked up the air conditioner. He’d never done well in hot weather. Getting older and fatter hadn’t made it any easier. He hoped the desert air would cool down tonight.
They left Salvation Mountain in the rearview mirror and continued down the road. Macy pointed to an abandoned concrete guardhouse on their right. Someone had painted the guardhouse like the sky, a blue background with dusty white stencils of bird and tree shapes. Words had been stenciled along the upper molding as well. Welcome to Slab City.
FOURTEEN
The Garden
Rolly and Macy stood under a rusty rebar archway. Old propane tanks were encased inside the rebar, and a spinning bicycle wheel was stuck to the top of the arch. Car doors reinforced the base, one on each side. It was the entryway to a well-tended garden of sculptural junk. A perimeter line of old tires encircled the garden, embedded halfway into the ground.
‘East Jesus,’ said Macy. ‘The discarded afterbirth of the Industrial Age, repurposed for aesthetic enhancement.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That’s how Bob described it to me. He gets kinda philosophical. All the art in here is built out of trash and junk people collected. It’s their ethos. Making art from our modern refuse.’
‘Is it OK for us to go in?’ asked Rolly.
‘Sure. In the daytime. You need to make a reservation if you want to come by at night.’
‘How do you get a reservation?’
‘I don’t really know. Cool Bob just told me to get here before dark. He said people start shooting at
night.’
Rolly swallowed. They walked through the arch, into East Jesus.
‘Hey, this is new,’ said Macy, inspecting a spiral installation of jagged metal triangles.
‘Uh huh,’ said Rolly, keeping an eye out for any gunmen who might be setting up for the evening. He pulled out his cell phone and checked the time.
‘It’s ten after six now. You sure Bob said to meet him here?’
‘Relax, Waters,’ said Macy, walking towards a tall pile of black rubber. ‘Cool Bob will show up. Time is fluid around here. Check this out.’
Rolly put his phone back in his pocket and walked over to Macy.
‘Looks like some kind of elephant,’ he said.
‘A mammoth,’ said Macy. ‘It’s called Definition of a Grievance.’
‘What’s that mean?’
‘I don’t know, but it’s pretty cool, huh?’
‘Yeah. Pretty cool.’
The Mammoth, or Grievance, loomed over them, raised up on its hind legs. It had been built out of reclaimed strips of automobile tires fastened together with wire and string. The Grievance had two headlights for eyes, car fenders for tusks and a corrugated rubber tube for a trunk.
‘Looks like he’s wearing a gas mask,’ said Rolly, but Macy had already moved on. He followed her. They stopped at a low wall of reclaimed television sets, various models and sizes stacked on top of each other. Each of the TV screens had been painted white, and words were painted in red letters on the white screens. Bad News. Some Things Never Change. Dear God No. Some of the screens had only one word on them.
‘Blah,’ Macy said, reading the screens. ‘Blah, blah, blah.’
‘Everyone’s a critic,’ said Rolly.
‘I don’t see the dolls,’ Macy said. ‘There used to be these gold dolls.’
Moving on, they saw the top half of a house, set askew, sunk halfway into the ground as if caught in a flood. They passed a group of beer keg animals that had bottles for legs and a short piece of watering hose for tails. The heads on the beer kegs were bleached animal skulls.
Macy stopped beside a circle of rusted tin cans, different sizes of cans set in the ground at varying heights.
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