CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
"Into the Gap"
Beadles left Springfield alone. Ninja had offered him a gun but he declined. Beadles had always thought himself civilized and scoffed when friends told him they kept guns for personal protection. Not once in his life had Beadles ever felt he needed a gun and he guessed the same about most of the people he knew.
The news was full of lurid tales designed to convince people that guns only caused trouble, lingering on every school or workplace shooting. The media pumped this shit all the time. No wonder foreigners regarded the United States as an untamed frontier wilderness where anybody could gun down anybody at a moment's notice.
The drive back through Colorado seemed shorter as drive backs always did. This time Beadles stopped in Colorado Springs after driving fourteen hours. He started out fresh in the morning for the drive through the mountains. He was through the San Juans by noon. Snow still gleamed from the fourteeners like a diamond necklace around the earth's neck.
Lunch in Durango and then through the mountains again, cutting across the SE corner of Utah and into Arizona by mid-afternoon. The land spoke to him. Even as a child growing up in Illinois, he'd been fascinated by the desert and tales of the southwest, devouring Westerns, books and magazines. He'd subscribed to
Old West
and
Treasure Hunter
, the back pages filled with ads for metal detectors and back country excursions. He'd dreamed of prospecting for gold himself, finding the Lost Dutchman Mine or traces of a previously unknown civilization.
Beadles devoured Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle filling his head with dreams of adventure and exploration. He became fixated with Henry Morton Stanley and Sir Richard Burton, the explorer, and read all there was to find on the subjects. Even as a kid Beadles lamented the closing of the frontier, the spread of civilization and the loss of wilderness. He contributed to the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy and longed to explore his own wilderness before it was too late. Before the comsats mapped and charted every square centimeter on earth. But wilderness persisted in Alaska, Canada, the terrible frozen places, parts of the Amazon, and even in the American southwest.
There were places no one went because there was nothing there. The mountains and deserts took their toll. Death by dehydration, falls from cliffs, even the occasional mountain lion mauling. Beadles had been on a couple of digs so he knew what to expect. He'd outfitted the old Jeep with four five-gallon water jugs, the kind with spouts near the bottom. An old five gallon jerry can filled with regular was attached to the rear gate. The air conditoning either froze him or produced nothing. He turned it off, cracking all four windows, feeling the dry heat suck the moisture from his body.
It was eight-thirty when he entered Kayenta looking for a place to eat and catch his bearings. The Garmin GPS velcroed to the dash indicated he was within seventy miles of the epicenter of the Azuma civilization.
A county mounty talked to a short bald man outside the Copper Kettle, his car at the curb strobing blue and red. Beadles drove two blocks west to the John Ford, an adobe-style bar and grill, parking lot near to capacity with old pick-ups, choppers and badly aging cars. The type of spot where you could pick up scuttlebutt if you were clever.
Beadles prided himself on ignoring class barriers. He'd always been able to relate to blue collar guys. He'd worked construction all four summers while going through college. He spoke their language and wasn't afraid of hard. Beadles found a place at the curb and left it there without locking the doors. He went into the bar where the air conditioning immediately sent a chill through his sweat-stained shirt.
He wore faded blue jeans, a blue work shirt and had three days' stubble on his face. He found an empty stool near the end of the bar next to three Navajo bikers in blue jean vests sporting the Kemosabes patch. Beadles guessed they were being ironic. He ordered a shot and a beer. The TV screen in a corner above the bar broadcast a basketball game. The bar was dark and smoky, although no one was smoking. Old burnished wood and twinkly lights.
He did the shot and beer and turned to the grizzled homunculus on his right wearing a Vietnam Veteran ball cap. "Can I buy you a shot? For your service to our country."
The old guy, who looked like Mr. Heartburn in old antacid commercials, grinned displaying a gold tooth. "Mighty kindly of ya. I'm drinking Buffalo Trace."
Beadles caught the bartender's attention and signaled for two more. The old guy stuck out a shovel-shaped hand. "Norm Hester."
"Vaughan Beadles. You from around here?"
"Born and bred in Flagstaff. You?"
"Illinois. I'm an anthropologist. Mostly southwest Indians, some Central American."
"You here to see the ruins?"
"In a way. I'm looking for some evidence of an ancient Anasazi culture. Is there anything northwest of here? Between here and the canyon"
"Keet Seel and Betatakin," the vet said tossing his shot. "They're pretty well known."
"No," Beadles said. "I mean are there any settlements? Is there anything out there?"
Norm shrugged. "Gap, population 118. The Last Chance Bar and Grill," he added wistfully. "Used to be a bauxite mine but that closed when I was a boy. I guess it's a jumping off place for people looking for a desert exerience. I don't know why they want a desert experience. I sure as hell don't. Our boys fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? They don't want a desert experience either but they got no choice."
Beadles pulled out a map of Arizona and worked it so it showed Kayenta. "Where's Gap?"
Norm put his finger on a blank spot.
"Why isn't it on the map?"
Norm shrugged. "Beats me. Never was incorporated. Wouldn't even be there if fool hippies didn't go out there to trip in the desert. You head west and take Keet Seel Road, and when you get to Keet Seel just keep on goin'. You can't miss it."
Beadles thanked the man, looked at his watch and stood. "They got a motel?"
"'S what I hear. And they always got a vacancy."
"Thanks, Norm."
The desert was bright beneath a globus moon. Beadles almost missed the turn off because some kids had knocked over the sign. He stopped, turned around, went back, pulled onto the dirt road, got out and turned the sign over.
GAP--25 MILES.
Forty five minutes later he pulled up to the Last Chance hitching post and parked next to an old Ford 150.
***
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
"The Drawing"
It was a little after ten. An old guy sat at the end of the bar staring into a shot glass. The bartender was an old Apache woman, gray hair gathered in a ponytail, wearing a seersucker shirt with Muriel stitched on the breast. Beadles sat at the bar and looked the room over through the mirror behind the bottles. Four booths. At one end two middle-aged guys sat playing checkers. At the other all Beadles could see was a woman's ankles in sandals, her back to the rest of the room.
"What'll it be, honey?" Muriel said in a whiskey-soaked contralto.
Beadles felt nothing from the two shots earlier. "Shot of tequila and a beer. How's that motel down the street?"
"The linens are clean. They got vacancies. There's the owner sitting down at the bar." She gave him a funny look. What was he doing there at ten-thirty on a weekday?
She returned a minute later with the drinks. "You here for the eclipse? You know not to look at the sun, right?" she said. "Last time we had an eclipse…"
"I'm an anthropologist. I'm searching for evidence of a previously unknown Anasazi tribe. I think there might be something out there." He gestured vaguely toward the desert.
"Only thing out there are snakes and scorpions and a whole lotta sand," Muriel said. "Back in the seventies, we got a lotta college kids thought it would be a good idea to go trip in the desert. Some of 'em never came back. That desert's been so picked over and prospected ain't nothin' left to discover."
"That ain't exactly true, Muriel" said the old guy at the end of the bar. "That wind picks up you never know what it'll uncover."
Muriel looked at the old man. "That's true enough, Vern." She turned back to Beadles. "Vern Weatherill. Owns the gas station/general store and the motel."
Beadles picked up his beer and sat next to Weatherill. "Vaughan Beadles."
They shook.
"You ever been out there, Vern?"
The old guy turned toward him. He had a ruddy, lined rancher's face, straight white hair and a mustache. "We used to ride dirt bikes out there when I was a kid. Hit a rock once broke my leg. Lord I thought I was gonna die of thirst before my friends come back with a truck to pick me up."
"Ever see any ruins or petroglyphs, anything like that?"
"Yeah, seen a few on them rock nobs across the canyon back when they had a bridge. County declared the bridge unsafe in '89. One night some kids got out there and burned what was left down. Now there ain't no way to get across the canyons. That wind starts up, it'll move half the landscape."
"What's this canyon?"
"Don't got a name. Runs northeast bout twenty mile from here. Whart're you lookin' for?"
Beadles repeated his spiel.
"I heard that before," Vern said. "Used to get some prospectors. There's an old story that there's a mess of gold out there somewhere that the Spaniards put together from the indigenous peoples they slaughtered. We used to look for it when I was a kid. Back before they burned the bridge."
"Why was there a bridge across the canyon in the first place?" Beadles said. "What's over there?"
"Good question. Prob'ly built by prospectors. Ain't nothin' there. We would have heard about it by now. The oil companies don't prospect on the ground any more. They use satellites to look for likely reserves. Nobody out here bidding for mineral rights and things are gettin' scarce."
"What other rumors have you heard about that place?" Beadles nodded toward the void beyond the walls.
"Oh there's the one about the blood-thirsty Indian warrior seeking revenge on the Spanish who killed him. Old Indian legend."
"Anything to it?"
Vern regarded him with wry humor. "Enough liquor in ya you'll start to believe it. Well listen. I got to get back and spell May who's been mindin' both the store and the motel. Nice meetin' you, Vaughan. Stop on over you need a place to stay."
The old man left. Vaughan faced the mirror, eyes straying to the stuffed coyote and coiled rattlesnake mounted on a shelf above the bar. Brown liquor gleamed seductively in the soft yellow light. Behind it someone had taped photos and news articles to the big mirror forming a patchy frame. Cartoons. Post cards.
Beadles' eyes stopped on a drawing. It showed the outline of a butte on an eight and a half by eleven inch sheet of white bristol board. Whoever had drawn it had made the rock come alive so that there was no question that it was a real place, if only in the artist's imagination.
"Say Muriel," Beadles said pointing at the drawing. "What is that? Can I see it?"
Muriel followed his finger. "That old drawing? Funny you should mention that. A college kid gave that to me back in 1985. Said he kept seeing it in his dreams. He and his buddy went out to look for it and neither was seen again. It was a terrible tragedy. I remember his father coming down here, staying for a week tramping through the wilderness when everybody knew his boy was a goner."
"They never found the body?"
Muriel shook her head. "That night we had a big blow-up. Sand just gets up and walks all over us, burying some places ten feet deep, digging up other places. Never did find their bodies."
Beadles held out his hand. "May I see it?"
Muriel shrugged. She carefully unpeeled the drawing from the mirror and handed it to the professor, using a fresh towel to make sure there was no moisture on the bar before she set it down. The drawing drew him like gravity. You could practically reach out and touch it. It had been rendered in colored pencil and black ball-point. You could feel the texture of the stone and the Spanish bayonet and saguaro around the base. A chimney ran to the top disappearing occasionally behind rock outcroppings. The drawing had an almost hallucinatory quality, the way the artist had edged it in yellow and orange, bathed in a divine light.
"Could I have this?" he said. "I'll pay."
Muriel snorted. "Take it. I need to clear some of this junk out anyway."
Beadles held the drawing in his hands trembling. He had seen the butte before! It was not a case of deja vu. He'd seen it in his dreams. He was certain.
He felt a light touch on his arm and the scent of sandalwood. A lovely Indian girl slipped onto the stool next to him, regarding him with vast brown eyes, a purple bruise coloring one cheek.
"Are you going out there? Are you searching for that butte?"
***
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
"Beadles Meets Summer"
"I'm looking for that place too. That's why I'm here."
Beadles looked around for a guy. A woman like this wouldn't be without a guy. He didn't see anyone. No ring. That bruise on her cheek. Her teeth were preternaturally bright.
"I'm an anthropologist," he said. "I'm trying to locate the epicenter of a previously unknown tribe whom I call the Azuma."
Summer stared into his soul. "I am searching for Shipapu. It is the spiritual fountainhead of our culture and possibly a gate to other dimensions."
It figures
, he thought.
No girl this beautiful would be out here trying to pick me up unless she was stone crazy
.
Crazier than a bag of scorpions
.
His pulse accelerated and little Vaughan raised his head. It had been that way since he was twelve. He stuck out his hand. "Vaughan Beadles."
She took it. "Summer Funderburk."
"You Navajo?" Beadles said.
Summer nodded. "I'm kinda on a spiritual quest. My mother's ill and the medicine man told me that if I found Shipapu and prayed for her, she would get better."
"Well I certainly hope she gets better," Vaughan said. "What's wrong with her?"
"She's an alcoholic." Summer looked him straight in the eye waiting for a reaction.
"That's too bad. Have you tried to get her into treatment?"
"We can't afford treatment. She's scraping by on social security. I mean what the hell. I might as well try it. It's non-traditional medicine, right?"
Beadles had his doubts. He was a non-believer despite the weekly church trips to which his parents dragged him. He kept his non-belief private. He didn't consider himself an atheist either--just someone who believed in what he could verify with his own five senses. Betty had been the same way. Agnostic if you will.
"Prayer is non-traditional medicine?"
Summer smiled radiantly. "What the hell, right?"
Beadles shrugged. "Couldn't hurt." He realized his behavior now was all geared toward getting her into bed.
"Where you from, Summer?"
"Little town called Hava, bout a hundred miles from here."
He tilted the drawing her way. "Recognize this?"
Frowning Summer took the drawing and held it in front of her face. "I know this is going to sound funny but I've seen this in my dreams. Must have a little Azuma blood in me, huh?"
"Know anything about a ghost who only appears in the day?"
A ripple of anxiety crossed Summer's face. "You heard that too, huh? I doubt it. I mean that show Ghost Hunters? It's been on the air what, five, six years? They haven't found a single ghost."
"Maybe if they looked in the daytime," Beadles said.
Summer punched him in the arm sending an electric jolt through him.
She had to be crazy. And he was crazy for even entertaining the idea. Instead he found himself saying, "Can I buy you a drink?"
Summer turned to the bartender. "An Absolut martini straight up with an olive."
Muriel raised her eyebrows. "I think I still know how to make one," she said. Beadles had a glass of water.
"What happened to your eye?" Beadles said.
Summer didn't blink. "Boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend."
"Did you go the police?"
Summer's laugh sounded like silver coins falling into his hand. "The cops really aren't good at that sort of thing."
"You running from something, Summer?"
"You got it. I'm running away from my life. What about you?" She regarded him with unblinking intensity and he felt something inside give a little. A tidal wave of regret began to build in his gut and he stifled a sob, acutely aware that she was watching him like an eagle.
"Yeah," he choked. And the whole sorry story tumbled out. Summer listened, occasionally touching his arm in sympathy.
"Wow," she said when he had finished. "Just wow. That really sucks, Vaughan. I''m so sorry about your marriage."
Beadles shrugged. "Don't be. The thing I'm sorry about is what it will do to Lars. I intend to be there for him. But I'm not going to have my son growing up thinking his father is a thief!"
He fingered the medallion in his pocket. It felt hot through the fabric of his pants.
"So that's why I'm here. Prove my thesis, write a best-selling book, become someone of whom my son can be proud, and regain my rightful place in society."
Summer laughed. "You sound so professorial!"
Beadles grinned. "That's how I think."
"So," Summer said.
"So what?"
"So can I come with you?"
The door to the Last Chance creaked open admitting two aliens in oversize hoodies. Ninja and Gregorio.
***