CREEPERS

by Bryan Dunn

  Undeterred by his wife’s rejection, Jack had refused to let the place go. For the next couple of years, he spent much of his free time—weekends, mostly—tending to the orchard and soaking up the stark beauty of Furnace Valley and the surrounding hills. He never tired of it.

  * * *

  Sam let the truck roll to a stop as he thought about the first time his dad had brought him to the ranch to “camp out.” He was only six years old, but he could still remember his first time running through the palms. The cool, filtered shade. The dry rattle of dusty fronds. And, most of all—the sublime relief from the midday sun.

  He lowered his head as tears brimmed in his eyes…

  He was never going to stop missing them.

  Chapter 5

  Curley watched from just inside the barn as Sam rumbled up in the tanker, made a U-turn, and positioned the truck beneath the large water tank.

  The truck door kicked open, and Sam let his six-foot-two frame slide out of the cab and drop to the ground. He scanned the compound, then faced the barn, cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Curley!”

  Not waiting for a response, Sam moved to the water tank and started up a ladder that was welded to the side.

  As he stepped onto a catwalk that ran along the top of the tank, he turned and yelled again. “Curley! Get your butt out here and help me fill the truck.”

  A moment later the barn door swung open, and Curley clumped out into the daylight. He was dressed in dust-covered work clothes and a tattered John Deere cap that rode on the back of his bald head. The nickname “Curley” was given to him by the locals on account of the bushy red beard that covered most of his face.

  Curley was a thirty-something Furnace Valley mystery. No one seemed to know where he’d come from—or, for that matter, how he’d gotten there. He’d just appeared one day in town, wandered out to Sam’s place, and never left.

  He and Sam struck a deal. In exchange for chores around the ranch, Sam let Curley move into the tack room attached to the rear of the barn. Delighted, Curley seized on the offer and now spent most of his free time upgrading his new digs. What exactly Curley meant by upgrading, Sam had yet to figure out.

  But it was clear Curley loved the place.

  And Sam knew why.

  All those palms.

  “Okay, okay… I’m coming,” Curly waved, moving completely out of the barn’s shadow. “Jeez, Sam, where’s the fire?”

  As Curley angled toward the truck, Sam did a double take when he noticed Curley’s boots. “What in the hell, Curley,” Sam said, pointing to the boots. “You been drinking?”

  Curley looked down, staring at his scuffed Justin work boots. They had been laced up backwards—right on left, left on right—so the toes pointed comically outward.

  After a moment he looked up and said, “Yeah, yeah, I know…” Then he stared down at the ground self-consciously and added, “You seen how I walk, Sam, all pigeon-toed like. Well, it come to me in a dream. A voice says, put them sonsabitches on backwards, Curley. Take a corrective action. Straighten things out.”

  “Unbelievable,” Sam said, shaking his head.

  “Yeah, pretty smart, huh?”

  “No. Unbelievably stupid.”

  “Oh, don’t say that… don’t say that, Sam.”

  And then, without warning, directly behind Curley, a fat Mojave green rattlesnake warped out from beneath the barn and slithered towards his feet.

  Chapter 6

  Sam couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw the snake zero in on Curley. It was moving directly toward him at a good clip.

  “Curley! Behind you! Rattlesnake!”

  “Yeah, right Sam.” Curley hooked his thumbs in his pockets, rolled his eyes. “You must really think I’m stupid.”

  Sam moved to the edge of the tank and in an urgent voice said, “Behind you, Curley. Move!”

  Still not buying, Curley said, “You just want to see me jump forward and fall flat on my face.”

  “Curley, look down. Look between your legs. Now!”

  Sam watched as a little fear crept into Curley’s eyes. And then he saw a look that swept across his face that said, Maybe Sam’s not joking.

  Curley swallowed, then slowly lowered his head until his eyes were staring at the toes of his boots. Then he carefully lifted his right foot—and there, only inches from the back of his legs, was a four-foot-long rattlesnake. Its tongue flicked in and out as it sized up one of Curley’s ankles.

  Curley’s head snapped up. His mouth fell open. And, saucer-eyed, he leapt forward, took a few steps, but with the toes of his boots going in opposite directions, all he managed to do was fall and land flat on his face.

  “Curley!” Sam yelled just as Blossom, a three-hundred-pound sow, came trotting around the side of the barn, shot over to the unsuspecting snake—and, with a couple of fancy moves, did a pig’s version of the Mexican hat dance, killing the snake and severing its head with her sharp hooves.

  Blossom gave a victorious snort. She grabbed the snake in her mouth, violently shaking it back and forth—and then, with a flick of her head, sent it sailing through the air, landing in a ruined heap next to one of the tanker truck’s tires. Blossom snorted with delight, trotted over to Curley, and began slurping his face up one side and down the other.

  “Blossom, no!” Curley protested, pushing up into a sitting position. “Blossom, now cut that out!”

  “That pig hates snakes,” Sam said, breaking into laughter.

  Curley shooed Blossom away, then climbed to his feet and dusted himself off. But it made little difference in his appearance. A cloud of dust just seemed to follow Curley around.

  “Jeez, Sam, I thought you was kidding,” Curley said as he made his way to the truck.

  “Yeah…” Sam answered flatly, then he lowered a pipe from the top of the water tank. “Now, if you think you can handle it, how about swinging that fill pipe over to the truck?”

  “I can handle it, Jeez…” Curley protested. He grabbed a rope that hung from the end of the pipe and swung it towards the truck, positioning it directly over an open hatch at the top of the tank.

  “Okay, let her rip.”

  Sam spun a valve and water rumbled through the pipe, a moment later flooding out the end with a loud whoosh.

  Curley, still clutching the rope, instinctively took a step back to avoid being splashed and tripped over his ill-fitting boots. As he fell to the ground, the fill pipe swung out from the truck and poured its contents directly across his face.

  Chapter 7

  A wedge of water kicked into the desert sky. There was a loud roar, and a speedboat towing a water skier shot down the center of the California Aqueduct, a four hundred and forty-four mile long, cement-lined river that runs north to south, supplying water to the thirsty metropolis of Los Angeles.

  The water skier screamed with delight as he illegally skied along the aqueduct, carving its glassy surface at over forty miles per hour.

  * * *

  A couple of miles away, just out of view, a Honda Civic drove through the nothingness of California’s interior desert.

  A hundred and five degrees on the asphalt.

  Not a cloud in the sky.

  The jumping off spot for flyover country, the elite’s name for anything other than the two coasts.

  Behind the wheel of the Honda was 33-year-old Dr. Laura Beecham. She was on unpaid leave from her job heading up the botany department of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles.

  Not her dream job.

  Not by a long shot.

  What she really wanted to be doing was field work. Tramping around a Venezuelan rainforest, maybe. Or exploring some exotic volcanic crater in East Africa.

  Before she went on leave, she had promised herself to redouble her efforts and start shopping her resume. She needed to find work in the private sector. That was where the juiciest overseas research opportunities existed—the chance for real achievement and advancement. She was going bonkers at the museu
m, and besides, there was nothing divine to her about living in the City of Angels.

  As the midday sun hammered down, Laura let her eyes drift up to the horizon. Wall-to-wall silica out there. And hot enough to make glass. Her mind leapt right past the common term, sand, and spit out the scientific classification, silica She laughed and thought to herself, What a nerd.

  But she sure didn’t look like one.

  Laura reached up, pulled back her hair, then released it. A waterfall of thick chestnut locks spilled down around model-perfect cheekbones. She was tall and fit and had a swimmer’s body.

  Only she didn’t swim.

  Women that looked like her were born that way, the recipients of a genetic windfall. A bitter reality for the envious.

  Other women of course.

  Just another thing to overcome, was how Laura thought about her looks.

  Yes, it was nice to be attractive—but in her line of work, women that looked like her were usually married.

  To the CEO.

  They weren’t whip-smart botanists who dreamed of unlocking nature’s secrets, or maybe finding a cure for lymphoma in an undiscovered plant hidden in some remote rift valley.

  Her unpaid leave was about taking some personal time. About tying up loose ends. About mending fences. About forgiveness—making some family peace—or at least trying to.

  Family peace.

  What a concept.

  Chapter 8

  The strange noise that issued from deep inside the Honda’s dashboard sounded like a death rattle. A moment later, an uneven thrashing sound filled the car. Metal on metal. Laura reached forward and thumped the top of the dash, trying to stop the mechanical arrhythmia.

  This had happened before.

  She thumped the dash again. The car’s cabin fell silent. The damn AC had just flatlined.

  In the middle of the desert!

  “Shit.”

  She rocked forward and pushed a button, clicking it in and out. Then she worked a lever, toggling it back and forth, trying to coax the thing back to life. It was useless. Shot. Alert the next of kin. The thing had gone legs up.

  “Great. Just great.” Why hadn’t just she spent the money and rented a car for the trip? Laura rolled her window down and was immediately blasted by the desert heat. It looked like she was going to have to revert to the old 2-70 air conditioning for the rest of the trip. Both windows down at seventy miles per hour.

  With air blasting in, she reached up and pulled her hair back, twisting it in a loose ponytail as the Civic dropped down a gentle rise and she found herself skirting along a straight section of road that paralleled the aqueduct.

  Laura slowed the car and took a deep breath. She could smell the water and thought she could detect the slightest hint of a cool breeze blowing off the aqueduct’s surface.

  As she leaned out for another breath, she was suddenly pasted across the face by a sheet of water that appeared out of nowhere. It crashed across the car’s hood and sent water racing up the windshield and over the roof.

  Shocked and momentarily unable to see, she groped the steering column, found the wipers, flicked them on—and, just as the road came back into view, she heard a man’s voice.

  “Hey, beautiful.”

  She whipped her head around—and there, not fifty feet away, a sunburned man on a water ski was smiling and waving at her!

  “Want to go skinny-dipping?”

  Laura laughed and smiled, then waved back. The water evaporating off the front of her top made her feel like the air conditioning was suddenly back on.

  “You don’t know how good that sounds,” she said, yelling out to him.

  The skier dropped a hand, pretending to unfasten his trunks.

  Laura laughed. Naughty boy. She shook her head—stepped on the gas—and sped away, leaving the boat and the skier behind. And then she thought, Besides, waterskiing naked sounds kind of dangerous.

  Chapter 9

  Sam was surprised when he saw the gate closed. He let off on the gas and braked, letting the water tanker roll to a stop. Then he saw the sign, bright orange and nailed to the center of the gate. It read:

  PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESSPASSING

  Trespassers Will be Prosecuted to the Fullest Extent of the Law

  (That means you, Frank Desouza!)

  Sam read the sign and laughed. Good for you, Doc.This Frank Desouza was also known as Frankie “Nickels” Desouza—a two-bit thug out of Vegas who favored gaudy Hawaiian shirts and had made his bones squeezing old ladies for nickels and dimes from a string of shabby bingo parlors.

  Strictly small time.

  But Frankie had a new idea. A big, bright, shiny plan that was going to change everything.

  The brass-fucking-ring, was how he thought about it.

  Frankie had just cut a deal with a local Indian tribe to build a two hundred thousand square foot casino and resort smack in the middle of the Furnace Valley Indian Reservation.

  It was the perfect set-up. The ultimate scam. And the whole thing entirely legal. Frankie wasn’t reinventing the wheel here, he was just the latest shark to exploit a government policy allowing gaming on the nation’s Indian reservations.

  Sam, on the other hand, thought of Indian casinos as the new firewater that threatened another generation of Native Americans, dollar bills being substituted for whiskey. Nothing wrong with money. Very handy stuff when you got right down to it. But there was just one small problem—you can’t buy a life, or have one given to you, for that matter.

  Not one that’s meaningful, anyway.

  Chapter 10

  There was only one thing standing between Frankie Desouza and his dream of the Furnace Valley Casino.

  Fletcher. Dr. Henry Fletcher.

  Fletcher’s land offered the only economically feasible access to the reservation. Frankie desperately needed the Fletcher place, and he was determined to get it.

  Furnace Valley was surrounded by mountains on three sides and a hundred miles of sand dunes to the south. To call it geographically isolated was like referring to Mt. Everest as tall.

  Freeway access was crucial to the proposed casino’s success—and that meant cutting a four-lane road dead through the heart of Fletcher’s land.

  Never gonna happen.

  That’s what Frankie found out after spending most of last year trying to get Fletcher to sell his land. Frankie even lowered his sights—instead of trying to buy the entire parcel, he started jockeying for an easement of a hundred acres, just enough for a road and a gas station.

  Fletcher refused, asking Frankie: “What part of no don’t you understand?” And calling him scum for trying to corrupt the local Indian tribe. The gate went up after Desouza’s last visit. Doc had had enough. He told Frankie to stay the hell off his land or there would be trouble.

  Frankie had just laughed in his face, telling Fletcher, “See you around.”

  * * *

  Sam opened the gate, pushing it as far as it would go, then suddenly froze. Something had happened.

  The truck! The engine had just quit.

  Crap!

  He propped open the gate, climbed back into the truck, and tried to start the engine.

  Nothing, not even a click.

  He tried it again. This time a weak clicking sound echoed from the starter. Sam had known the starter was on the way out. At least, he hoped it was still on the way out. He sure didn’t want to have to hike all the way back to his place. Not in this heat.

  Cell phone service in Furnace Valley was nonexistent. If you got stuck and didn’t have a CB radio, you were flat out of luck. Sam reached for the CB, then stopped, thinking he should try and fix it himself before bothering someone in town.

  He pulled a hammer from under the seat, dropped out of the tuck, slipped beneath the engine—and, applying just the right amount of English—gave the starter two sharp taps.

  He climbed back behind the wheel, looked skyward, crossed his fingers, then mashed down the starter button. The engine b
egan to crank—and a moment later, it roared to life.

  “Stuck, my ass.”

  But he knew he was pushing it. Starters like this one, with worn brushes, could only reliably be tapped back to life a handful of times. It didn’t take long before that method stopped working—and then you were really stuck.

  Sam had a new starter on order, but his supplier was having trouble finding the right one. Which was understandable—the truck was over thirty years old.

  Hang in there baby, he thought as he dropped it into first, chugged through the gate, and bumped across a gravel wash.

  Chapter 11

  Laura stepped out of the roadside diner’s bathroom wearing a black cotton tank top and khaki shorts that flattered her long, tan legs. More accurately—it was her legs that flattered the shorts.

  She had entered the bathroom dressed in jeans and a cotton blouse. As she stepped out of the restroom and walked past the counter filled with lunchtime patrons, every head turned to follow her out the door.

  A long cool woman in a black top.

  Just as she stepped outside, a potb ellied rancher wearing a GMC cap and drinking a Coors whistled after her.

  In his dreams.

  Laura started the Honda, cut across the road, and pulled into an ancient-looking gas station. The pumps were those old-fashioned rounded kind that looked like toy spaceships from the 1950s. Mounted on a pole to the right of the pumps was the original sign with the flying horse.

  A hatchet-faced man stepped out from the service bay and walked up to Laura’s car. He was dressed in mechanic blues and wore glasses with Coke-bottle lenses that were held together by a band of clouded scotch tape.

  “Good afternoon,” Laura said with a welcoming smile.

  The mechanic bent over, resting his spiny fingers on his crooked knees, and stared in through the open window.