Authors: Charlie Newton
"Triple A regained momentum in the early ’90s after hiring him a Utah preacher who’d gone pissy with the Mormons. This fellow brought a daughter, too, and Triple A put ’em both to work, sowing the Word. Got popular, the daughter did—that’s what the townies said—but was damn near a prisoner. Triple A promoted her like had been done with that child evangelist Marjoe Gortner. A damn shame, frightened child circus-talking for God. Horseshit, if you pardon my French."
Preacher with a daughter
. I flash on the cleaning woman at the Lazarus Temple describing little Gwen, "…pretending she was a preachin’. Child was a ray a light."
"Earning better now, Triple A brought out contractors from Yuma after Highway 8 was finished. They built him a house with indoor plumbing. How about that? Contractors stayed a year, doubled the generator’s capacity, and installed window A/C in two of the
cobertizos.
"
Bob pauses, thinking, trying for a thought he can’t quite find. "Then it began to get weird."
Tracy turns to Bob and looks down her nose. He’s squinting out past his side window like something out there in the dark is pacing us.
"The folks from Why began to talk—they will talk in the desert, God bless ’em. At first no one listened—these were complaints from citizens who
chose
to live in a furnace, so far from civilization that the U.S. government had trouble giving it to the Indians."
Bob turns back to Tracy and jolts when he sees her frowning at his progress.
"But the good residents of Why were persistent. They told anyone who’d listen: ’People went out there to that damn ranch and just never came back.
And
they weren’t out there hidin’ neither, ask the sheriff. And they married each other, brother and sister, father and daughter. And the preacher’s son—hell, he was proof, wasn’t he? Him full grown and too slow-minded to find his way home from an Idaho revival for two damn years.’"
I’m listening to Bob’s second impersonation in a half mile, feeling Roland coming to life in the words, seeing his face out there in the dark, hearing his breath on my shoulder. The more I hear, the more this bizarre place becomes his home.
Bob continues: "Triple A wasn’t stupid. He bought goods and paid on time and that gave him allies in Why and Ajo, albeit quiet ones. But not a Baptist widow who’d survived skin cancer and ’those godless doctor charlatans.’ She had a cousin who’d been a one-term state representative from Fort Thomas and she pressed her cousin until he got the state involved.
"The Staties went to the ranch—this was in 1994—found nothing stranger than what one would expect in such a place, but pressed Triple A anyway, and for more information than Triple A cared to provide. His response was to incorporate the ranch/church into a city and hire a private investigator to investigate his detractors. The PI was an Indian from the Tohono O’odham nation named Delmont Chukut."
Tracy looks over the seat at me for the first time and says to Bob, "The one you said the state police stopped on this highway with a minor named Gwyneth?"
"The same. She’s the little girl preacher I mentioned. Almost lost his license over it." Bob pauses for a sip that lofts his voice. "Then, miracle of miracles, the state investigation stopped." Bob pats the dash the way an old prospector might slap his thigh, "Two years pass. Triple A stays busy: God tells him broadcast TV is the answer. Direct from the ranch. Triple A contracts with a company in Tucson for a small satellite-station setup—a metal tower and satellite dish with its own generator. Then suddenly he sells out, does not offer a word of good-bye, and he’s gone. His boy stays—the one who’d been up in Idaho. The tower and dish were never completed."
Tracy glances over her shoulder again, then screws up her nose into a polite show of suspicion. Something akin to hearing a husband’s alibi when his wife goes missing.
"With the preacher gone, His Pentecostal City and Why elect to get along. Hearts and flowers lasts six years. ’Incidents—this time with children,’ according to the Baptist widow, are happening again and she files another complaint with the state police.
"Delmont Chukut returns to poke into the widow’s business, as well as that of her friends and family. Nothing comes of her complaint and she files it again in April of this year. And this time the state
is
interested, as is the media. Me in particular. So, my own self and a coworker buy a baptism for each other—a warm one, I might add, and done by a young woman in white who’d either been voodoo-tranced or she’d spoken to God one too many times. My coworker and I return to the
Phoenix Sun
and write a story that a rival at the
Tucson Star
said sounded ’strikingly similar to Waco and Ruby Ridge with cactus.’"
Bob laughs. I notice his cadence has lost the drunk singsong and hillbilly component.
"A number of state agencies get involved, each trying to avoid involvement while pretending to do their job. That’s how it’s done here. The Tucson TV tabloid shows jump in and that forces two of the agencies to get serious." Bob hesitates, looking over both shoulders for effect. "And then ten days ago the entire place emptied. Poof, like they were never there."
On the plane Tracy repeated that last line almost verbatim, said we could only get the rest of the details when we landed, then tucked a small pillow against the oval window and either went to sleep or pretended to. I thought about an exodus only ten days old and visualized rats scattering from a crewless sailing ship when it drifted into harbor. Exhaustion and the sleeping pill finally closed my eyes but didn’t block the nightmares of Roland’s vampire castle in the desert. Right now I don’t see, hear, or smell anything resembling a castle and realize I can’t smell Bob’s Wild Turkey either.
Bob Cullet slows to drop down into a steep turn that crosses a wide ditch they call a wash instead of what it is, a dry river. He looks both ways like he’s expecting something, and tells his windshield, "So, last week they found a cemetery here, the Pima County M.E. did; he guessed forty years old from the body they exhumed, but not much else. Had four investigators sifting through the papers in the main house while we all had cameras clicking from the fence line. But the sifting and the digging quit when the media did. If there’s a ’smoking gun,’ no one found it, much to my everlasting chagrin."
Bob has a drink on that.
"But, shit, we got more mobile homes than books in Arizona. No telling what a smart man would find."
I tap Bob on the shoulder. "Pass me some of that Wild Turkey."
Bob balks at the request. Tracy whiplashes the seat with red hair. I grab the pint before she can, spilling bourbon on her hand and a camera she was adjusting. Definitely bourbon; I can smell it now and hand it back. Bob is confused and looks at Tracy drying her camera and then over his shoulder at me. "Or a smart woman, of course…Crazy son of a bitches, though. That’s for damn sure, the reverend
and
the flock. Dead
or
alive."
Clouds cover the moon and the Caddy goes dark other than the dashboard. We climb higher, skirting a deep rupture in the desert—the cliff I’ve been worried about for an hour. Bob slams the brakes and jolts me two-handed into his seat back. Dust trail envelops the car and blows into our headlights. Blocking the road is a black metal arch, padlocked and threatening in the scrub. Ribbons of Sheriff’s Department tape flutter from the frame. The breeze is cold. "HIS Pentecostal City" is arched across the iron gate. I shiver, inhale deep, and touch my Smith. Tracy leans over the seat and says something.
She says it again, "Can you pick a lock?"
"No."
Bob Cullet throws his column shifter into Park. This feels wrong; I draw the Smith—Bob steps out and walks uneven into the headlights. At the gate he looks up and down the ravine, then does magic I can’t see, and the heavy chain rattles to the ground.
I tighten on the Smith; Bob does not look to be the "magic" type.
Back in the car, he drops the shifter into Drive and doesn’t explain as we pass through the gate. The desert rises slightly, obstructing our near-vision. Nobody talks and we bounce to the top of the rise and over—three buildings silhouette against the lowest stars. To the structures’ right is the unfinished broadcast tower, rusting and out of place. I shiver again and press back into a colder spot on the seat. The few horror movies I’ve seen play across our car’s windows. I reach for the door handle, the confinement is—
QUIT IT
. If he’s here, or has people here, don’t give them fear to beat you. You’re the new girl not the old one. He can’t do shit this time but kill you. I squeeze the Smith. The car bumps forward and up, blocking our vision again. I hear a rush past my open window that’s too fast and shadowy to see. Bob’s head jerks to the sound, dislodging his hat.
Tracy points at the windshield, "Something’s moving, right there."
Bob slows and cranes over the wheel. "Where?"
"Right there, damn it."
Tracy jabs with her camera, then fires the flash. I lurch back, night blind. The car bounces left, veers higher, and stops broadside twenty feet from the nearest structure. Tracy flashes again. I bolt out blind into the scrub. We’re in a night gunfight without the noise. Car doors pop. My vision recovers to half. Tracy faces the building and machine-guns her flash. Bob winces sideways. I aim left at headlight shadows; then right at another building fifty feet away; then behind me at the desert running downhill into black.
Tracy says, "What was it?"
I pivot to her voice, the Smith braced.
"You saw it."
The ground’s dry and squishy at the same time.
"I did?" Tracy clears her throat. "Yeah, I did."
"And?"
The wood siding on the nearest building might be red. Wind adds a faint whistle and smells like a dried-out cedar chest.
"I don’t know." Tracy’s still trying to see something she can’t. "
Something
ran past."
"Mountain lion."
We both turn to Cowboy Bob Cullet, standing unsteady.
"What?"
"Cub probably, or a javelina rootin’ garbage these folks didn’t burn."
I don’t know shit from mountain lions or "javelinas." As far as I know javelinas are lizards. Lizards that’d have to be the size of dragons if Tracy could see them run in the dark. Tracy and I shy in different directions. She asks Bob Cullet how big javelina get in the Sonora.
"Sixty, eighty pounds."
Both of us quick-check near our feet. I wanna ask what else is guarding Roland’s castle. Bob explains that javelinas are wild pigs. With tusks that will hurt you if you make ’em. I step back and miss a furry cactus by inches. Bob says I want to avoid that too.
"Jumping cactus, cholla, very nasty." He nods at my pistol. "Nobody’s here. At least no one we care about."
"And you know that how?"
Bob frowns and pats for his pint. "Border’s hot down at Sonoita. Imm’grants that make it through stay on 85 till they hit Phoenix. Folks from Ajo and Why don’t come out here at night, at least they didn’t when we were all here before."
I don’t lower my pistol. "And why is that?"
"Shit, Missy, we’re two six-packs from God
or
his adversary."
Tracy notices her proximity to the nearest building and retreats toward Bob, "Hand me your flashlight."
Bob has a large one in his non-whiskey hand. He declines Tracy’s request and says, "We’ll look up at the house first" but doesn’t move.
Nor do I. Roland has been in there. I do not want to smell Roland again. My stomach agrees and I force it down. Or touch things he touched. Or be where he’s been. The desert breeze chills my neck again and I fast-glance behind me. Bob and Tracy stare uphill at what has to be the house. Deep shadows cover a discernible porch with a low roof.
Bob points left and says, "Cemetery."
My eyes stay on the porch, but I move toward the cemetery and its shadows. Like in Chicago, dark cemeteries don’t scare me; their ghosts are my homeys. Bob follows me to the cemetery instead of approaching the house. Tracy notices she’s alone and hurries to catch up. I can’t tell how rattled she is, just that she’s battling between panic and the insatiable reporter mode. It’s how addicts feel—we can’t get enough of the shit that will kill us. Until it does.
The cemetery has a knee-high fence of scrap metal painted white. Sharp-edged, purple rocks are piled along the base where a landscaper would plant flowers. The rest of the plot is sand. Eleven crosses stand cockeyed and in no particular order. Beyond them, facing us, a parched acacia tree rustles. Under its branches is a six-foot crucifix rising out of pocked concrete. Christ’s feet are missing; the ankles are faded red.
Two of the graves have been opened. I remember being told only one, not two, and notice tracks, wide channels in the soil.
Bob says, "Backhoe," swallows Wild Turkey, then points beyond the two open graves toward a group of three crosses. "Those over there were the oldest, their worldly remains buried without boxes. After the first body came up in pieces, the M.E. had ’em dig the other’n by hand. Mexicans. The good people of Why weren’t up to it."
I long-glance Roland’s house to our right, then point Bob and his flashlight past a fresh pile of earth to the first hole. It’s four feet deep and the edges have caved in. "Who were these two?"
Bob says, "Who knows?" and shines the crosses instead of the hole. "Folks, all adults, though, according to the inscriptions. We ran state birth records but got nothing. Sheriffs in Ajo ran missing persons and got a match." Bob shifts his light to the farthest of the two holes. "Joseph V. Smith. But how many of Joe Smiths are there worldwide?"
"From?"
"The Mr. Smith in
this hole
—who knows? The J. V. Smith that matched was from Blythe out by California, a Marine Corps deserter in the ’70s."
The wind whistles shrill; Tracy and I snap to face Roland’s house. Bob doesn’t notice because he’s already pointing his light at the house. Instead of splashing it back and forth, he keeps it on the door, too long to be anything but expectation.
The wind quits with a low moan, and it gets colder. Tracy’s voice fakes confidence. "We’re playing BASH in twelve hours, let’s finish with this," and she heads uphill for the house. Bob follows her. My feet don’t move. The cemetery wants to keep me. People came out of these holes in pieces…