Ghost Rider: Stories by Jonathan Lowe

by Jonathan Lowe

  As he dribbled into the toilet bowl, careful of his aim, he stared back at the other door, hoping something in there might lend cheer to these otherwise bleak living quarters. Obviously the old man spent most of his time elsewhere in the complex, or he would have put up wallpaper, added some silk flowers, anything. But maybe he just wanted to keep it looking like the military installation it once was, though. It was, after all, a time-consuming hobby. Or obsession. He tried to imagine having such a place himself. What would Mother Starke say about that? He chuckled at the thought of telling her. Hey, Edna, guess what? I bought me a missile bunker, and when the Big One hits you gonna be outside without a key. No grandson for you to poison against me, no ma'am. ‘Cause I got the power now. Damn if I don't.

  He zipped up and reached down to drop the toilet seat, but stopped and smiled instead. It wasn't right, of course, to be thinking such thoughts. Alison deserved a baby if she wanted one so bad. It was true the world was becoming an overcrowded hellhole, but maybe it wouldn't be so bad if they pulled together. Give Peace a Chance. Wasn't that the slogan back in ‘68? What was he afraid of? A second motorcycle wreck might decapitate him—was a baby really so horrible?

  Before flushing, he decided to take a peek in that other door ... the closet.

  Looking up the tunnel he could see old Kyle busy at his consoles, maybe switching between Jeopardy, Oprah, and the Home Shopping Network in hopes of a newscast predicting Russia's conquest of Israel within forty-eight hours.

  He slid the door open carefully, surprised by the size of what he thought was a closet. Beside the bent metal clothes rack was a sink, a table with a hot plate on it, and a larder stocked to the ceiling with canned goods. Cases of Hormel Chili (No Beans), Del Monte Fruit Cocktail, Campbell's Split Pea & Ham soup, and generic creamed corn. Next to the canned goods were cases of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese dinners, powdered milk, and a row of Hamburger Helper—the little helping hand with a smile across its palm as if to say Have a Nice Day. All in all, enough to feed a platoon for a month.

  Beyond was a smaller card table with a battered game of solitaire laid out, half played. Klondike, from the looks of it. Something was framed on the wall over the card table, but he couldn't see it clearly so he turned on the overhead light and went in.

  It was a newspaper clipping. Lawsuit Unsuccessful, the big print read, then: Dr. Kyle Sommers, an engineer for Davis/Monthan's Systems Compliance unit, failed in his attempt to sue the Veteran's Administration over its refusal to take his son Patrick's case. Patrick Sommers, Dr. Sommers’ only son, died of heart failure resulting from complications connected to Agent Orange disbursement during the Vietnam War, and it was thought at the time that

  The article continued, but he didn't. He ran back to the toilet, flushed it, and returned for only a moment longer.

  the time that the defoliant would not have future toxic effects, and the VA in Tucson has so far failed to accept such cases from area veterans.

  The article was dated August 11, 1973, The Arizona Daily Star.

  * * * *

  "Well, ya piss poor now?” Dr. Sommers asked, giving a laugh as he looked up from his flashing consoles.

  "Yeah, I guess so. Always have been, though. My bike, it's about the nicest thing I've ever owned."

  "That right?"

  He watched the old man flipping toggles and throwing levers, and then he wiped a thin sheen of sweat from his own forehead. “Yup, I never had a son to play with. Not like you had. Never had a place as nice as this to play in, either. What exactly are you doing?"

  "Oh, I'm just firing up that new air conditioner I installed. Give me a hand?"

  "Sure, what can I do?” A thin Buddhists smile. “Just go over to that console near the wall over there, see it?"

  "Yeah."

  "You, well, turn that red key that's—"

  "This one?"

  "That's the one, but wait a sec. At the count of three, okay?"

  "You gonna help me lift my bike afterward, right?"

  "Your bike? Oh sure. You think I can't? Think your old man's too old, do ya?"

  "I didn't say—"

  "Steady now. Cross your fingers. One..."

  He gripped the red key. The heat felt oppressive. Poor old geezer, he thought. Pretending his son's still alive too, locking himself up like this.

  "Two..."

  Plenty of bastards out there to hide from, but if people only pulled together, helped each other out, it'd be all right.

  "Three!"

  After all, didn't one good turn deserve another?

  GHOST RIDER

  (originally published in Tucson Guide magazine)

  Cutting through the motionless heat, a breeze. The temperature drops five degrees, breath by breath, to a hundred. Cactus spines whistle, slicing the silence. I wait now, trying to decide. Not yet the how or even the where, but the why.

  Gold. It was enough of a reason for grandfather. Enough for him and his kind, chasing that promised gleam of the metal deep into Apache land. Enough for thousands of young men to “go west” into this desert to stake claims on the imagined life that might be theirs. Enough even to trade the only life they had for one which might or might not be.

  Years later now, I ride through the heat of traffic out past the city lights, grandfather's map etched on my soul. As the smog thins the gleaming chrome bumpers no longer chase each other, racing from stoplight to stoplight. Cars and trucks and busses give way now to jeeps and the occasional Winneabago like a lost buffalo in search of its herd. I've come to take up the quest ... but why? Is it because I too half believe the dream? Or because of the mystery and the map—a clue to another metal?

  Silver. Grandmother had never mentioned anything of it. Although she must have read the letter, she never told father before she died what was there, or mentioned the vanished town referenced by those cryptic words I found in an attic trunk. Grandmother, in fact, had long forgotten grandad. Perhaps it was the life he led, leaving her for months on end in Tucson, alone. The document, wrapped in wax paper, was only partly legible, and soiled by a Century of mildew and neglect. But the date survived: 1889. And also part of a paragraph which told of a lost claim—a potential motherlode of high grade ore grandad was staking just before the Indians took him.

  I'm telling myself it's only to end this mystery that I chronicle my thoughts and actions in this diary. And the question which haunts me now is: With only clues to the terrain, which ghost town might be the one whose name is only a smudge of ink on this withered and oily paper? There's only one way to find out, to make sure. And although there might be nothing left of what was, I must ride to see.

  This, my best transport across the wastes: a BMW GS Enduro. Euduro ... endure. Will I? Time will tell. And I have plenty of time. The towns I ride to see have waited a Century already. Will there be anything left of them? And what about inhabitants? Perhaps only rattlesnakes, scorpions, tarantulas, Gila monsters. If my map cannot locate the remains of the towns, I may be forced to ask directions of a passing coyote.

  Now that'll be a howl.

  Like a silent sentinel, a solitary saguaro cactus is witness to my departure. Perhaps the same saguaro as witnessed granddad descend toward his fate, his hat slanted against the summer sun, a trusty water bag slung over his burrow. ‘They live 200 years, some of them,’ I remember the curator at the Arizona Historical Society say.

  Among these survivors, I ride, looking for clues to the past among what's all but vanished...

  * * * *

  Sept. 17, 1 P.M.

  First stop, Tombstone. Still the most famous mining town in the West. 1881. Back then there were as many as 15,000 people frequenting the taverns, the schools, the churches. An iron foundry. Two banks. A bottling works. And a paper: the Epitaph. A city that survived two fires only to get bigger. And all because a Calvary man named Ed Schieffelin, while exploring the San Pedro valley, discovered high grade silver ore and staked the Lucky Cuss and Toughnut deposits after being warned he would only unco
ver his tombstone in the Apaches’ domain. The history is rich here. I can feel it, despite the tourists milling about the old Birdcage Theater and the Crystal Palace saloon with their camcorders.

  October 26, 1881. Marshal Virgil Earp, Wyatt, and Morgan, and Doc Holliday attempt to disarm Billy and Ike Clanton and the McLowery brothers. A gunfight, at the OK Corral, leaves Tom and Frank McLowery dead—and Billy Clanton soon dead of wounds.

  March 1884. A robbery in Bisbee which left four dead spurs a posse to ride out and capture the outlaws and jail them in Tombstone. But one of the posse members, John Heath, tries to lead the posse away from the obvious trail, and is jailed also. When Heath is sentenced to life imprisonment, the townspeople riot and break into the jail. They lynch Heath, hanging him from a telegraph pole. The other outlaws are hanged soon after, with one enterprising citizen building a scaffold in an attempt to sell seats for the public viewing.

  1886. Fire destroys a pumping works, and all the mines are flooded, ending the prosperity and turning nearby processing towns to ghost towns. But in the Boot Hill Cemetery still remains a tombstone with the poem:

  Here lies Lester Moore,

  2 slugs of a 44.

  No Les, No More.

  From my photocopy of what's left of granddad's letter I read:

  and on the promontory there's this big rock, like an anvil, and below that three smaller boulders. Under the center of the smaller three there's the ledge where I found some rich ore. Dug a hole there, an’ guess what? There's more down there. Lotsa silver, I smell it! Maybe a vein. Maybe a mountain of it, all under this here hill! Soon as I stake it, I'm filing my claim in town, and then I'll come for you in Tucson quicker than a rattler can strike. So don't you worry none, now. We be rich soon, sugar pie. You'll see!

  I look out across a hilly desert pockmarked by more recent mine tailings. No hill with a rock like that in sight. But it could be out there somewhere, near the towns that supported the mines. The towns are gone now, but maybe...

  It's time to move on. Vanished towns out here which were never rebuilt have mostly succumbed to time and the elements. But I must be sure. I must mark off all possibilities.

  * * * *

  3 PM

  Nine miles southwest of Tombstone now, at the site of Charleston, a city which for most of the 1880s served the Tombstone mines by milling their ore. Once there were livery stables here, and restaurants, hotels, a church and school. Once, over four hundred residents. Could one of them have been grandfather? Through my binoculars I scan the barren hills nearby, hoping to spot three distinctive boulders.

  There was a rumor of Apache raids once, but what killed the remains was probably WWII, when soldiers from Fort Huachuca used the place as a battleground for war games.

  I'd liked to have seen that church where that bandit Curley Bill Brocius and his drunken gang broke up a service and then demanded a sermon from the preacher, who got the biggest collection ever when they passed the hat among the ruffians.

  I lower my binoculars in disappointment. I'd also liked to have seen the saloon where a man named Durkee threw a party for the miners when his profits from freighting ore exceeded his wildest dreams. Seems Durkee ordered all kinds of liquor, an orchestra, and female entertainment. But when everyone got drunk, a fight broke out. Like in the movies. Plate glass shattered, tables and chairs overturned, bloodied noses. It turned into a riot. Luckily, all guns had been collected prior to the party, or it would have been worse. Still, Durkee vowed never to throw another party.

  I pick up a shard of adobe brick. All that's left besides the foundation remains of the old mill up on the hill. There's a cemetery here somewhere too, supposedly. Should I have looked for grandfather's grave? Studying the slowly flowing San Pedro river, I realize it was time to move on. The grave wasn't at Boot Hill, and it won't be here, either.

  * * * *

  4:30

  Again, no. Fairbank's hills are low, barren. But at least it's no ghost town. It's the site of the San Pedro Reparian Conservancy, and I'm in need of a cold one.

  I stop into the office, and talk to a visiting rancher named George. As I follow George's lead and we sip our RCs, he tells me about the Stiles/Alvord gang attempting to rob the Wells Fargo box from the Southern Pacific Railroad here in 1900.

  "Oh yeah, they tried, all right,” George says. “Stiles, the Owen brothers, and Three-Fingered Jack Dunlap. But they didn't expect a lawman to be waitin’ inside the express car! So when Jeff Milton refused to open up, a gunfight broke out, leavin’ both Dunlap and Milton injured. And when more shots were a-fired Milton opens the far door of the car to throw out the payroll box key, but then some townsfolk come to the rescue. Oh yeah! The Stiles gang carts off ole’ Three Fingered Jack and makes their getaway empty handed. Later abandon him to a posse nine mile from here. And Milton? He's taken to a hospital in San Francisco and told his arm needs ta be amputated. Ol’ Jeff, he says whoever does it dies."

  "And?"

  "And so they don't amputate. And he recovers. End of that story.” Undaunted, George shares others, and then tells me to take a hike.

  * * * *

  Evening

  Roadless, I hike north along the muddy San Pedro for five miles until I come to the adobe ruins of a building, the foundations of a mill, and a tiny cemetery.

  I lift my hand against the setting sun, doubtfully.

  Here? Must be. And I remembered what George said:

  "Contention City. Place reduced ore for the Tombstone mines, had over a hundred folks, served by two stage lines. John McDermott's saloon was here. The Western Hotel. An’ a diary, a blacksmith's shop, a meat market, and a Chinese laundry."

  "Really?"

  "Really. But the city lived and died in one decade."

  "And which decade was that?” I'd asked.

  "The 1880's."

  I scan the low hills now, looking out across the San Pedro to the distant Whetstone mountains. Right time, but wrong place. That was my contention, anyway.

  In the morning I'll leave these Century-old ghosts behind to bake yet another Century.

  * * * *

  Sept. 18

  I'm riding back out into the surrounding territory east of Tombstone, now, down a long dirt road.

  Idling on a hill, I consult my map, looking out across a shallow valley. This town used to be called Turquoise when the Indians mined the mineral, and even after the white man moved in and found silver, copper, and lead in the area. George Hearst, a millionaire from San Francisco, visited the mines that were here in 1882.

  Then a man named John Gleason came from Ireland and discovered the Leonard, sometimes called the Copper Belle, and they renamed the town after him. Biggest find in the area, and overlooked by anyone in Turquoise. Still some people here. Turquoise is gone, but Gleason hangs on—barely. World War One and the demand for copper then may have helped keep it incorporated until 1940. It would have still be called Turquoise if my grandfather was here, though. A rugged mining camp with your typical rough types and saloons. Still, there's no sight of any anvil-shaped rocks, and it doesn't feel right, either.

  * * * *

  11 A.M.

  Nineteen miles east, crossing off the still-inhabited town of Gleeson, I arrive at a site which was, and isn't. I recheck my map and yes, this is it. A booming copper town of 2000 souls now reduced to the foundations of one building and the overgrown hulk of a jail.

  Dubiously, I scan the wastes and the hills.

  "Courtland,” I announce aloud, as if grandfather were somehow listening. “Once there was a telegraph service here. An ice cream parlor. A way station for the Southern Pacific railroad. And four mining companies—the Copper Queen, Calumet & Arizona, Leadville, the Great Western. Even a horse race and a baseball game on the Fourth of July. Families came here from as far away as Georgia."

  As if on cue a pair of jackrabbits darted out of a thicket, leaping high over a barrel cactus, their zigzags haphazard but purposeful.

  I check the date in my boo
k, shake my head. Established March 13, 1909. But it's okay. As I restart the engine, I smile into the distance. I just wanted to see.

  * * * *

  High Noon

  Interesting discovery at lunchtime, talking to some locals. In 1894 Jimmy Pearce got off his horse near his ranch in Sulphur Springs Valley south of present day Willcox. He picked up a rock, tapped it with a hammer, and discovered gold. Quickly staking out his claims, he named his find the Commonwealth—five claims for five members of his family. The Pearces worked the claims until an outsider from New Mexico offered to buy Jimmy out for a quarter million dollars if he could take that much out of the mine in 90 days. It took only 60. The mine was sold. But Mrs. Pearce finagled rights to operate the only boarding house in the area. Later the town grew to 1500. Then in the 30's the mine closed, and people drifted away. There's a museum left, and a country store and school.

  Beautiful area. No anvil-shaped rock, though.

  * * * *

  Late Afternoon

  Endlessly riding, my trusty iron horse heads fourteen miles southeast of Willcox into Dos Cabasas, once home to the Casey brothers mines. In the 1880s there were three stamp mills here to process ore the old way—by pulverizing. A brewery, school, hotel, brickyard, barber shop, grocery store, and over three hundred souls.

  As I twisted the throttle, my enduro climbs up to the ridge above what's left of the town now—only adobe ruins.

  Nope, not these rocks either. I've got an image in my mind now of what I'm looking for. I just hope it's the right image.

  Impatiently, I circle, semi-knobby tires kicking up dust. And I think about the Casey brothers, two prospectors who staked their claims here and then turned down $40,000 from a Tombstone lawyer because they'd made a home here.

  Home ... a mere dugout in the side of a slanting hill of dirt and rock.

  Home ... with a smelter to melt and separate the ore adding heat to heat, and all of it attended by mules, with sweat, dust, and stench as ever-present companions.