The Bargain - One man stands between a destitute town and total destruction.

by Aaron D. Gansky

  In the sixties, the Mojave dried up and retreated underground. Construction completed the I-21, routing traffic away from the bustling town. Like the Mojave, the hope of the town also evaporated and retreated underground.

  When you spend time here, you learn the spirit of the original prospectors is alive and well. While poverty presses in and stoops the shoulders of Sue’s patrons, one has only to talk to the denizens to realize Hailey is a town of reluctant, humble heroes. They are the goodness in an otherwise spiritually arid town. But, like the river, their hope and potential run strong beneath the surface. And when opposition rains, optimism surfaces to awe-inspiring results.

  “Eve’s Horn and Newland,” Mason says of the cities bookending Hailey, “argue over who’s responsible for [the citizens of Hailey]. We’re like the awkward kid in PE, the one no one wants on their team. He’s not even the last one picked. No one picks him at all. They argue over who has to have him on their team. It’s the old ‘No, you take him’ kind of attitude. Neither wants to claim us, so neither provides for us. Police rarely come out here for anything less than murder.”

  Reverend Harper, a scarred war veteran, agrees. “I’ve called them a few times, to report threats made against me and my family, my wife and daughter. Essentially, the sentiment I get from them is, ‘Call us when you’re dead.’”

  But who is threatening him and why? “Most of the people here are guarded. They’re scared. They’re stuck in this town and can’t get out. Most of them drop out of school to help support their families. Without an education, they can’t get past the cement plant for employment. It’s a never ending cycle. They’re tired of getting their hopes up and tired of thinking they can have a better way of life, and they lash out against anyone offering them any sort of hope.”

  Even among the jaded and the recluses, among the violent criminals who’ve learned they can take what they want, among those who feel hopeless, there are shining examples of those who rise, Phoenix-like, from the dust of the desert and stretch out large, benevolent wings. They don’t like to talk about it much, but, if the situation is right, they will. And when they speak, we get a more accurate picture of Hailey—one in which the hope of the people bubbles to the surface, trickles into a stream, and, with the right conditions, will run above ground again.

  Veronica, the one-legged waitress at Sue’s Diner, stands in the door of the chapel and holds the hand of Carl the cook. They smile as they watch Mason and Aida, and one wonders if they’ve a similar idea in mind.

  “Marriage?” She guffaws. “I’d like to finish high school first. Maybe then we can talk.”

  Carl, the cook built like an offensive lineman, grins.

  “Besides,” she says, “I’m just a kid. Marriage takes a lot of responsibility. What do I know about responsibility?”

  She’s being kind. At seventeen she already knows more about responsibility than most adults. Between balancing a job and her senior studies at Newland Valley High School, she also helps her mother raise Emily, Veronica’s best friend Tiffany’s infant daughter.

  Tiffany, then a junior at Newland Valley High School, came into Sue’s diner one afternoon complaining about Emily’s eyes. Veronica knew immediately something was terribly wrong. “She kept talking about her eyes. Like they weren’t her eyes, or that she didn’t have eyes. I can’t remember exactly, but she just kept rambling. So I asked her where Emily was. ‘On the tracks,’ she said.”

  It took less than a second for Veronica to leap over the counter of Sue’s and speed to the tracks. She ran over uneven ground, raced a charging train rumbling down the tracks toward Emily. The shrill whistle of the train and the squeal of its brakes drowned out the cries of the infant. Veronica lunged for the child and caught her up in her arms just before the train crushed her leg and severed it just under the knee.

  She held Emily, barely conscious. Once the train cleared, Carl scooped her and Emily up. He drove them to the hospital at breakneck speed. Because the train had cleanly severed the limb, and because Carl got her to the ER fast, they were able to stem the flow of blood and sew her up. A few surgeries and a plastic leg later, Veronica put her apron on and hobbled back to work.

  When asked if she’s a hero, she shakes her head. “I just love Emily,” she says.

  Veronica’s not the only one to save someone from a train. Nick Ulin leans against the weathered wall of the chapel with his arms folded. A cigarette dangles from the precipice of his lips and the corners of his mouth turn up at a lazy forty-five degree angle. Twenty-three years ago, Nick jumped into a derailed passenger train. He pulled nearly a dozen people out of the flaming cars. He worked until he collapsed and woke up in a hospital.

  “I ain’t a hero,” he says. “Just done what anybody woulda done.”

  But, when I mention the similarities between him and, oh, say Spider-Man, his boyish grin turns to a full-fledged smile. “Ain’t nothing like him,” he says.

  Not all of Hailey’s heroes could make it to Mason and Aida’s wedding. Last month, Bernard Wellington passed away after a battle with AIDS, a disease he contracted from his wife. Though dead, his legacy of heroic work lives on. I agreed to write this article at Bernard’s behest. He wanted the public to see goodness is in this town despite its apparent hopelessness. As a thank-you, his money paid for my wife’s medical bills.

  She stands next to me now, in the sunshine, and looks stronger than she has in months. As doctors looked unsuccessfully for signs of the cancer that ravaged her only months ago, and as they found nothing, they whispered a word heard more often around Hailey these days: “Miracle.”

  The miracle began with Bernard’s belief in the town. It began with his willingness to put his checkbook on the line for a people two cities had already written off. His money paid for the doctors to provide care for my wife, to help her on her road to recovery. And while they didn’t cure the cancer, they prevented its spread and helped Nadine remain relatively comfortable as God worked His miracle within her.

  His miracles didn’t end with my wife’s supernatural healing. He worked a miracle in my life and awakened a faith I’d not realized I had.

  “Bernard wouldn’t have been surprised,” Mason says. “Faith and miracles. That’s what the man was about.”

  Faith and miracles, yes. What else?

  “Vision.”

  Vision is right. If this were a movie, the camera would pan back from the wedding scene until, just behind the ramshackle chapel, the audience would see the foundation for a new building—the new church, roughly twice the size of the original chapel. Further back, they’d see the skeleton of a drug rehab center, a paramount need in the community. Still further and they’d see the expansion of the free clinic formerly run by Doctor Slate, now under the careful guidance and control of Doctor Romero and Aida (who has gone back to school to get her medical license).

  Even Nick got his wish. In a few more months, he’ll be the manager of Hailey’s first and only Comic and Card shop, appropriately named Hailey’s Heroes.

  It may be Bernard’s money making this happen, but the new construction speaks of a commitment to Hailey. It speaks of hope, a hope that springs from the hearts of Hailey’s heroes.