Part 49

Dead Mouse Water

“You are Family.” -David of Grants

Mesa shadows oozed across the scrubland. Twisting spires reached toward the reddening sky—the fingers of stone giants poking through the surface of the earth. Buzzards rode a steady wind from the west and far, far away—the highway hummed with the sound of cars that crawled across the landscape like fleas. I lit a birthday candle, then another and melted the butt-end and stuck it to a rock at the edge of the mesa where the four of us sat. Toolman, Frito, Ice Cream and me, all in our puffys and fleeces and some of us wrapped in our quilts against the desert chill. We looked out silently while the candle grew brighter and more golden in the fading light.

A desert hare skittered through a patch of cacti. “Aww, bunny,” Ice Cream said.

“The bunny the bunny. Oh, I love the bunny,” Frito sang.

Ice Cream finished. “I don’t want my bread or my soup. Just the bunny.”

Toolman and I looked at each other. Toolman said, “What was that?”

“The Bunny Song,” Ice Cream said.

Frito said, “Come on Toolman! You grew up Christian. You didn’t watch VeggieTales?”

He shook his head. “We couldn’t watch that kind of stuff. We had to listen to Paul Harvey.”

“Oh my god!” Ice Cream pulled the strings of her hood tighter, holding the cords out. “My parents used to listen to Paul Harvey on the way to church.”

“So uncultured,” Frito said. He got out his phone. We had service up on the mesa. He opened YouTube and played the Bunny Song. He and Ice Cream sang along ridiculously.

The song ended, but we talked until the candle burned itself out and when the stars were bright we went to bed under the low juniper.

***

More desert. Frito would stop and pick up a rock and examine it closely from time to time, after which he’d either pocket it or drop it. Ice Cream and I made a game of trying to find good ones, crystals or colorful stones, and leave them where he’d find them. He never seemed to bite, like he had a sixth sense for if we’d touched them, but he still found enough. His pack was heavy with the things, quartz and whatever else caught his eye.

I saw a half clear, half white chunk of crystal. Sure he’d like this one, I offered it. He took it politely and turned it in his fingers. “Yeah, nice one.” He offered it back without any enthusiasm.

“You want it?”

He shook his head. “Finding them is a big part of the fun. I like finding treasures.”

***

Water. A roadside well covered with a rusted steel cap. Toolman and I lifted it. The water was clear, mostly. There was a dead mouse floating in it, not long dead by the look of it. I reached down and pinched its tail and flung the mouse into the trees without ceremony.

“How’s the water look?” Ice Cream asked as she approached.

“Top tier. Had a dead mouse in it so we’ll filter but otherwise it’s as good as it gets.”

Frito said, “You know it’s fucked up when the good water source is the one with the dead mouse floating in it.”

***

Dusk at six, dark by five. Every night was a night hike whether we wanted it or not. Mostly we walked by the green light of my headlamp unless someone needed more light. I said, “If y’all were one of those toys with the pull strings, what would you say when the string was pulled?”

After a few moments Ice Cream said, “I love cows.” Then looked at me. “You’d say, ‘I’m gonna take a nap.'”

“Tracks,” I said. “What about you, Toolman?”

“Hrm. That depends.”

Frito laughed. “That’s exactly what you’d say. Either that or something about being at bootcamp.”

“Six men all pissing at once in a port-a-potty,” I said in Toolman’s accent.

“Hrm,” Toolman grunted. “Frito would say something about communism.”

“Yeah,” I said, “except every fifth pull would be a Domino’s Pizza commercial.”

Frito laughed and put on his commercial voice. “We interrupt our socialist messages to bring you the finest deals! Order now and get not one, but TWO pizzas for only $10.99!”

***

Toolman and Frito were ahead and so was the city of Grants. Ice Cream and I came to the edge of a mesa and looked down not on empty desert but on a valley of lights. Nearby an old metal bell hung from a post but it was silent, ringing only ghosts of another time. We cowboy camped looking out over the city and fell asleep to a howling wind. In the morning we came down to the trailhead to find Frito and Toolman’s tents pitched at the edge. Toolman’s door was open and he was getting his shoes on.

“Morning!” Ice Cream called to them.

“Mornin’!” Toolman returned.

Frito’s head popped out of his zipper. “Did you guys see the sodas?”

Ice Cream turned to look back. “Sodas! Where?”

“In the grass, right over there by the post.”

We went back a few steps and found them. We’d mistaken them for empty cans. “Thanks!” Ice Cream said. “We’re going to head in. You’ll probably catch us.”

“Yep!” Frito said.

The Western New Mexico Correctional Facility is to the left of the road that the redline takes into Grants. Plenty of Don’t pick up the hitchhikers signs ensured that we’d be walking all the way in, but we were fresh and the morning was pleasant for a stroll into town.

Grants started as a railroad camp in the 1880s, named for the three Grant brothers contracted to build that stretch of the Atlantic and Pacific line. It cycled through booms — logging, then briefly the self-proclaimed “Carrot Capital of the World” — before uranium ore discovered nearby in 1950 turned it into the “Uranium Capital of the World” for three decades. Route 66 runs straight through downtown. Today it’s the Cibola County seat, pop. around 9,000, marketing itself as the “Gateway to Lavaland” for the lava fields at El Malpais just south of town — which means, at least economically, it’s now the Capital of nothing but rocks.

We found Mean Gene’s Pizza and ate then went to the nearby Leisure Lodge Motel. It looked like a shithole. Looks can be deceiving. Our packs still on, we crammed ourselves into the little office and were greeted by a short, plain looking Chinese man in a ball cap. He was in workmen’s clothes that were streaked with splotches of white paint. “Welcome! Welcome! You are hikers! You want to stay a night?” He spoke clearly, like he’d been practicing for years, and we could understand him through his thick, tonal accent.

“Three nights.”

“Great! Two nights. Ok. How many rooms?”

“Three,” I said. And then, after noticing, I added, “Just so you know, your fly is down.”

His brow wrinkled. “My fly?”

“Zipper.” I pointed at his crotch.

“Oh! Oh my.” He zipped it. “Very embarrassing.”

Frito said, “Happens to the best of us.”

“Three rooms,” I brought it back. We did all the usual hotel check-in stuff and paid.

“Right! Listen. My name is David.” He offered his hand and I shook it, then he said, “Special deal for hikers. I give you discount. If you need anything, you let me know. You need to go anywhere, you let me know. Resupply, food. I can take you. You are my family.” He wrote his number on a sheet of paper and handed it to me. I passed it to Ice Cream. “Thank you David. Very kind of you. We’re not going anywhere tonight, but we’d like to go to the Chinese buffet tomorrow evening. Would that be ok?”

“Yes! It’s very good. You let me know when. I’ll take you. Just tell me a little before.”

We said we would and thanked him again and went to find our respective rooms. Frito said, “That guy is amazing.”

“For real,” Toolman agreed.

The rooms were amazing, too. Not in an uppity way, but they were so far beyond my expectations for what the place looked like from the outside that it’s a certain kind of ten out of ten. The TVs were smart TVs so we could link our phones and watch whatever we wanted rather than the usual hotel slop. The showers were hot, the beds comfortable and, crucially, without any signs of bedbugs that I could find, and I looked.

Ice Cream and I settled into our room and prepared to hibernate for a few days.

***

As one should, we got high before going to the Chinese buffet. The waiter seated us and took our drink orders and we attacked the food. Frito was telling a story and as I listened from across the table a little girl, maybe four or five years old, appeared at his side, between him and Toolman. She wore a white and yellow dress, her hair was native black and her face was smeared in what was probably chocolate. In each hand she held one of her shoes, and she held them up to us. Ice Cream saw her when I did; Frito and Toolman followed my eyes down to her. We all stared at her. She extended her arms, presenting her shoes and said, “SHOES!”

It was too much. I laughed. “Yes, shoes. Very lovely. Thank you.”

She went back to her family’s table, content.

Then, across the room, a pair of young women, teenagers probably, were moving from table to table with a rack of necklaces, shamelessly soliciting. Currently they were at a table occupied by two women, probably traveling businesswomen by their clothes, who were looking both confused and uncomfortable. One of them bought a necklace but didn’t look happy about it. The girls came to our table next. I put on my best NYC street face and did the quick headshake that usually works on panhandlers. The girls turned as if thrown back by a forcefield and immediately went to the next table.

“Only because I’m high,” Ice Cream said.

“What?” Toolman asked.

“This is only happening because I’m high. If I was sober, nothing like any of this would happen.”

***

Hotel hibernation, mostly uneventful. Ice Cream and Toolman went to hang out in Frito’s room; I stayed back for alone time. Ice Cream came back laughing and telling me about how Toolman farted in Frito’s bed and Frito had chastised him about ruining the “Glorious Order” he’d set up there, and about how Frito had seen the light regarding solo hotel rooms. He’d spent three hours in the shower, high, in the dark, and listening to music and described it as transcendent.

Finally we left. David took Toolman and Frito to the post office while Ice Cream and I walked to Wal-Mart. On the way there David pulled over on the shoulder next to us. “What did you do with Toolman and Frito?” I asked.

“I took them to Pie Town!” he said rambunctiously. “They say they will wait there.”

“Ha! You taking us, too!”

“Get in!”

“Can’t!” Ice Cream said. “I want to walk there.”

“They told me to tell you they are coming to Wal-Mart after post office. You don’t need to go anywhere? You are walking. I can take you.”

“Almost there.” I pointed to Wal-Mart. “But thank you as always. We really appreciate you.”

“Tell your friends. Leave me a good review! And come back for Thanksgiving. We can go to Pie Town!” he pulled back onto the road and zoomed away with a friendly honk. Beep beep.

***

Town gave way to lonely desert, the highway a narrow streak of civilization through lands that had been mostly unchanged since the end of the last ice age. An old military duffel bag lay on the side of the road. I picked it up thinking I might scavenge it. It was covered in dried and crusted blood. “That’s a bit ominous,” I said.

“Yeah…” Ice Cream said. “You don’t think it’s human blood, do you?”

“Probably not, but it’s certainly weird that I can’t say for sure.”

I left the bloody bag where I found it, and found two more as we hiked into the dark. A full moon rose bright in the evening above the mesas and we could see in silver monochrome as we nested down for the night. Toolman and Frito were a few miles ahead and Ice Cream and I had the full moon to ourselves.

Unless given express permission for their use, all names and trail names in my articles have been changed. Any resemblance to real people is coincidental. If you enjoy my writing, please feel free to subscribe or buy me a coffee using the Tip the Author button below.