He looked at me.
“Never tell about this place. Rock hounds clean it out.”
He led us farther up the wash, now choked with boulders, creosote, bursage and a few struggling catclaw shrubs. Then, on the right bank, underneath the overhang from the edge of the lava flow, I saw something glinting. As we walked closer, I realized it was obsidian, shining like black glass in the sun
“What we’re here for. Set this in the cement in the hearth. Reflect firelight for the missy”
We spent the better part of two sweaty hours selecting pieces of obsidian and carrying them to the pickup. When Joe thought we had enough, he said, “One more thing.”
He led us back up the wash beyond the trove of obsidian. He stopped and looked around for a minute, then walked over to a large rock. Dropping to his knees, he dug into the sand and gravel with his hands and uncovered two objects the size of cannonballs. He handed one to me and set off toward the truck.
“How did you know those were there?”
“Put them there three, four years ago.”
“What are they?
“Geodes. Rock people say none here. Found these. Thought I might want them someday.”
“What are you going to do with them?” asked Kiko.
“Have Ade take them to the rock guy in Smoke Tree.”
A brief smile appeared on Joe’s face.
“One of the guys says none here.
Cut them in half.”
“Why?”
“Full of crystals. Pretty.”
It was late afternoon when we took the turnoff east of Amboy and headed for home. It was twilight by the time we reached the Box S. We were tired and hungry and thirsty. All three canteens were empty. So was the Desert Bag.
We could smell the smoke from John’s mesquite barbecue fire when we stopped the truck. He walked around the house to meet us.
“I have potatoes on the grill. There’s a big salad in the refrigerator. I’ll put the steaks on and toast the garlic bread while you wash up. You look hungry.”
“Could eat the hide steaks came in,” said Joe.
We put in another long day on Monday. I learned a lot more from Joe about construction. We started by mixing concrete and pouring the hearth for the fireplace. While the cement was still wet, Joe set in place the pieces of obsidian. He used the geodes to make four depressions where he would mortar the halves in place at an angle once they had been cut. He did it all without hesitation. It was clear to me he had already planned where each piece would go while we were gathering the rocks. While we waited for the concrete to set up, Joe laid out the stones for the outside wall of the fireplace and the exterior chimney on the ground north of the addition. Then he did the same with the cinder rock that would make the firebox and the stones that would face the inside of the finished room.
Kiko came outside as he was finishing up.
“Looks like a puzzle.”
“Sort of.”
“What are you going to do next?”
“Tear out the wall.”
We went inside the house and taped sheets of plastic over the section we were going to remove and then went back out and covered the damp cement of the hearth with more plastic. Once everything was in place, we began the process of removing the wall. It was messy, dirty work. As Joe had expected, the wall had been made with a double layer of adobe bricks. It was over three feet thick. No wonder the house stayed cool in the summer. It gave me an odd feeling to look at bricks someone had put into place all those years ago.
Partway through the job, we broke for lunch. We were so dirty we ate outside.
We went back to work. By late afternoon, we had finished removing the wall. I helped Joe nail up the plywood sheets and enclose the new room. We were pounding the last nails just before sundown when John drove up in the ranch jeep. Chaco and Phil climbed over the side and headed for the bunkhouse.
John came over and stood, examining our work.
“Looking like a room, Joe.”
Joe nodded.
“Insulation, drywall next. Got a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“Conduit in the walls for electricity someday?”
“No. I’ll not have some damned generator destroying the peace and quiet of the ranch.”
He shook his head.
“You know, Joe, man gets electricity and pretty soon there’s a radio blaring, and after that he’s climbing up to the top of Pinto Mountain to stick up a TV antenna to try and pick up a signal from Las Vegas. No way! If the world ends, I want to be the last one to know.”
Joe nodded.
“Good.”
I walked up to the soapstone sink outside the bunkhouse and washed the worst of the dirt off before starting home. When I came back, Joe, John and Kiko were talking about something. John and Kiko were both laughing. They heard me walking up, and all three turned toward me. Something about the scene made me feel good in a way I hadn’t in a while. I realized what it was. These people were my friends.
I thought maybe when old friends are lost, new ones appear.
I said goodbye to everyone and headed for my car. I was getting in when I realized John had come with me.
“Are you coming up next weekend?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t sure, since next Tuesday is the Fourth of July. I thought you might have other plans.”
“No, I’d like to help Joe some more.”
“Ade, you have been real hard at it. How about taking a day off on the Fourth and doing something for me?”
“Okay.”
“I’d like you to take Kiko to the river.”
“I’d like that. Do you she’ll want to go?”
“Might take some persuading. The only time she’s been out of this area was yesterday when you and Joe took her to hunt for obsidian.”
“She got real nervous when we got to 66. And then we were parked on the shoulder waiting to cross the highway south of Bagdad, and Stan Scarborough pulled in behind us in his Highway Patrol car. I thought Kiko was going to faint.”
“I’m sure that has something to do with who or what she was running from the night I brought her home from Baker. But I’d like her to get a little break from this place. I’m going to be in Barstow this week. I’ll get her a bathing suit, and when I come back, I’ll start getting her used to the idea she’s going to the river.
Do you know a place where you wouldn’t be likely to run into a lot of other people?”
“I know a few beaches below Bullhead you can only reach on dirt roads.”
“Good. When you come up next week, get ready for a day off.”
Chapter 15
Smoke Tree, California
and the mountains
of the Eastern Mojave Desert
Last week of June
and the
Fourth of July, 1961
The last week of June, the door to the Mojave blast furnace opened and stayed open in Smoke Tree. A hundred and fifteen on Tuesday, a hundred and seventeen on Wednesday and a hundred and eighteen on Thursday and Friday. After sundown, reddish-orange heat lightning flickered on the horizons like the darting tongue of some demented beast licking at the ridgelines. Because the almost unbearable heat continued day after day without relief, there was no way our overworked swamp cooler could cope. Temperatures in our house were still in the nineties when I went to bed at night. It was harder and harder to get to sleep. Even if I managed to nod off, I usually woke up drenched in sweat an hour or so later.
I was young and healthy, but the long days in the sun and the restless nights were taking a toll. At the end of each work day, I hung longer and longer from the rope at the end of the dock at Sunset Beach, twisting and turning in the cold current of the Colorado as I tried to leach the accumulated heat out of my body. The hot days killed my appetite. I began to lose weight. Weight I would need when freshman football started.
In the evenings, I had to force myself out the door for my workout. Running through the quiet stre
ets of town before I went to the high school track for my speed work gave me lots of time to think. But I rarely thought good thoughts.
I thought about the events at the House of Three Murders the previous fall, turning them over and over in my mind. My pointless, obsessive analysis an endless parade of “what ifs.” I thought about going away to college to a place I had never even seen. I worried about whether I would fit in there. My ex-girlfriend had described Cambria as the snootiest college on the west coast. That didn’t sound good.
One night after I got home from my run, I was sitting in my room reading “Fear and Trembling” by Soren Kierkegaard. It was one of the books the admissions office at Cambria had sent. I was supposed to read the books and be prepared to discuss them at freshman orientation.
Sweat poured down my face in the stifling room as I tried to make sense of Kierkegaard’s discussion of the difference between Abraham and Agamemnon. I couldn’t see much. Abraham didn’t want to kill his son and couldn’t understand why killing him would please God. Agamemnon wanted to kill his daughter because he was sure it would please the State. So what? No matter what these two men thought about their situations, their kids were going to wind up dead. Old Soren didn’t seem concerned about that. Seemed like a big deal to me.
As I tried to think of a coherent way to explain my concerns in some future group discussion, the phone rang. I heard my mom answer it and walk down the hall.
“Ade, it’s Mrs. Braithwaite for you.”
Mrs. Braithwaite was the reason I was going to college. I had never seriously considered it before she asked me to think about it. The only woman on the Tribal Council of the Fort Mohave Band of Mojave Indians, she was a very determined person. She had wrangled a scholarship for her son Billy to Cambria College because the school was seeking “diversification.”
Billy was a classmate of mine confined to a wheelchair years before by polio. Once Mrs. Braithwaite had his scholarship in hand, her next concern was for Billy going off to college alone. She wanted me to go with him to be his roommate and help ward off the homesickness he would feel for the Colorado River, the ancestral home of the Mojave Indian Tribe. She was confident she could get me a scholarship because of my grades and athletic achievements.
After I thought if over for a few days and discussed it with my parents, I told her I was interested. She turned her efforts toward getting a scholarship for me. The poor people at Cambria College had probably never had a chance once she started pounding on their door. It wasn’t long before I was filling out applications.
“Good evening, Mrs. Braithwaite.”
“Good evening, Aeden. We need to get together and talk about transportation arrangements to get you and Billy to the college. I’ve talked to the people at housing and arranged for Billy to come to school with you early when you report for football practice.”
“We’ll drive up in my car. It’s old and ugly, but it runs good.”
“I see you haven’t read all the way through your orientation packet.”
“No, ma’am. I’ve been reading the books.”
“I’ve read through everything. Freshmen at Cambria are not allowed to bring cars.”
“Oh.”
“We’re going to have to make other arrangements.”
I digested that bit of news.
“Mrs. Braithwaite, Dad’s in Barstow, but he’ll be back tomorrow evening. I’ll ask him about getting us up there on the train.”
“That would be good.”
There was a long pause. Then Mrs. Braithwaite cleared her throat.
“Aeden, I’m not quite sure how to say this.”
“Say what?”
There was another silence.
“Let me put it this way. Money is an issue for Billy and me. As in, we have very little of it.”
I could sense her embarrassment and felt like an idiot for not realizing how difficult finances would be for her and Billy, even with a full scholarship.
“Let me talk to my dad. I’m sure he can come up with an idea.”
“Thank you, Aeden.
Now, I think the three of us should sit down and talk. Could you come to our house this Friday evening?”
“What time?”
By the time Friday evening arrived, Dad had solved the problem. Trains were an expensive way to travel, but the sons and daughters of railroad employees could ride certain trains for free. Not the fancy ones like The Chief or The Super Chief, but slower trains like the Grand Canyon. Those trains were basically a few ancient passenger coaches and a mail car. The Grand Canyon could get us to Union Station in Los Angeles, and since my dad knew all the conductors, we could slip Billy on for free.
Getting up the coast, would be more challenging. The San Francisco Chief was another expensive train the children of employees couldn’t ride for free. But Dad knew the conductors who worked that train too. Once we were sure what day we were leaving, Dad would talk to the conductor about letting us sit in the observation car without paying a fare. Of course, this meant we wouldn’t have an assigned seat in one of the coaches because we wouldn’t officially even be on the train. But that would get us to the central coast. Since the closest stop to Cambria on the Santa Fe was San Luis Obispo, Mrs. Braithwaite said she would research the cost of a bus ride from there to Cambria and the coordination of the bus and train schedules.
Billy was a gifted and determined student. He had already finished all the books and was starting through them again. We talked about what we had read and tried to figure out what would come up in the orientation discussions. Mrs. Braithwaite joined in. She had read them too.
It was even hotter at the Braithwaite’s than at home. Their tiny house lacked even a swamp cooler. Also, some of the screens were ripped, and since Mrs. Braithwaite was saving every penny for Billy’s expenses at college, she couldn’t afford to replace them. Mosquitoes from the river bottom buzzed around the room as we talked. We laughed about the irony of three people in a desert town sweating and swatting mosquitoes while discussing a book written by a man from a rich family in frigid Copenhagen.
When I drove out of the Mojave Village that night, I tried to get used to the idea I would be leaving Smoke Tree. I had committed, and whatever I felt about it, I was going.
I arrived at the Box S on Sunday morning to discover Joe had finished the insulation and the drywall and fitted the knotty pine planks to the walls and ceiling. They gave the room a soft, comfortable glow.
On Sunday and most of Monday, we built the fireplace.
Let me clarify that. I carried rocks to Joe and mixed small batches of mortar while he built the fireplace. When he finished the part inside the new room, the volcanic rock contrasted beautifully with the varnished pine. It was going to be a wonderful room. I could imagine Kiko sitting in there on a cold, winter evening, reading a book.
By Monday afternoon, the fireplace was complete, inside and out.
I asked Joe what was next. He pointed at the subfloor of the new room.
“Make tiles for the floor. Molds for roof tiles.”
We went to the mountainside behind the house and dug out an oven-shaped enclosure where Joe would fire the floor and roof tiles once they were made. When we finished, we drove over to Government Holes and gathered a good collection of downed cottonwood branches for the fire.
That evening, we had another wonderful dinner. A dish Kiko created from shrimp that John had brought home from Barstow. I didn’t know there was anything you could do with shrimp besides deep fry them the way they did at the Jade.
After dinner we sat on the veranda, surrounded by the wonderful, velvet stillness of the desert night and talked and laughed while John and Joe and I alternated turning the crank on the ice cream maker. We had apricot ice cream with our coffee.
On the Fourth of July, I slept in for the first time in a long while. It was wonderful to sleep in a place cool enough that I could stay in bed late. And even though I had slept much later than usual, the sun still had not hit the
slot canyon by the time I was ready to leave.
It was hotter out in Carruthers Canyon, but nothing like the heat down on the low desert. There was a soft breeze coming out of the south. It carried the scent of pinyon and sage into the car.
When I pulled into the driveway at the Box S, the adobe was in the full sun, the light splashing off the white plaster and bleeding into the red tile roof. The horses ran to the corral fence and watched me go by. There was nobody outside working. Looked like even the tireless Joe Medrano had taken the day off.
Kiko came out of the house wearing cut-off Levi’s, a T-shirt, tennis shoes and her Dodger’s cap. She was carrying a picnic basket and two towels.
I got out and opened the door for her.
“Good morning, Ade. John commanded me to go to the river with you today.”
“I’m glad. I hope you like it.”
We headed down the switchbacks.
“He also bought me a bikini. I told him there was no way in the world I was wearing that.”
She laughed.
“Maybe a fourteen-year-old girl could wear the one he brought home, but not me.”
When we turned east on Cedar Canyon Road, rattling down the heavily washboarded dirt road with the windows rolled down made conversation difficult. Very little was said until we reached the short, paved section of Lanfair Road just before we turned onto Old 66 and drove through Goffs.
As we drove the highway, Kiko asked a lot of questions about the desert around us. In the upper reaches of Sacramento Wash, she pointed at the pale trees.
“What are those?”
“Smoke Trees. This is the northernmost stand.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“They look like ghosts under a full moon.”
The temperature rose as we drove down the hill. When we reached Arrowhead Junction and stopped at the stop sign before turning north on 95, I pointed over at Mr. Stanton’s station.
Mojave Desert Sanctuary Page 20