Читать книгу Komatke Gold - Benjamin Vance - Страница 3

Of all the sentient thoughts we humans have over our short lives, I believe the most poignant and compelling are about those we’ve loved.

I sat quietly in my car on the same side of U. S. Highway 95 as I had those many years ago when my father was dying. I remembered within the depths of my soul the one time I’d been in love and how I’d lost her. I distinctly recalled the same rare insect sounds while urgently urinating on the centerline at five in the morning about halfway between Yuma and Parker, Arizona. That was my kind of heaven then, and now I guessed. There wasn’t a car light in sight either time, and the cool, rain-freshened breeze carrying the smell of Greasewood, Palo Verde and Mesquite had been missing from my life far too long. The Kofa Mountains were barely visible in the misty early morning; recognizable like the silhouette of familiar old friends. I pitied less fortunate mortals who hadn’t stood on the Arizona Desert and inhaled that perfume.

“My God, is there any doubt why Indians love this land?” I mumbled. Then my keys made the only human sound for miles as I reluctantly brought the Jeep engine to life again.

Unlike my late-model Jeep, my father’s old Datsun had been a phenomenal leaker back then. The oil pressure sending unit and most of the seals signaled that a tough hundred and seventy thousand miles on the odometer had taken a toll. It still ran like a top though. I could have changed the sending unit in just a few minutes, had I the time to spare or a good place to work after my arrival at the Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS), Yuma. God knows, I was always in a hurry back then. At times, I remembered wishing I’d kept the rental car I picked up in San Diego. It would’ve been a bit faster … but what the hell, rentals were expensive back then so I just carried a few more spare quarts of oil in the Datsun to help lube the roads of La Paz and Yuma Counties. In the glare of the present, it seemed like two lifetimes ago.

****

During a bleak and rainy Virginia November I received written notice from a La Paz County lawyer stating someone had found one of my old letters in my father’s belongings. The notice informed me my father was dying. My immediate emotions were upon me like a whirl-wind. I didn’t want to be notified! I didn’t care if he was sick. Well, maybe a little, down deep. I didn’t want to take care of his belongings and I didn’t want to be his executor! I never really knew my father anyway! What the hell! For all I knew he was already dead and why should I care? He never gave me a damned thing except his name.

Mostly, I had my mother’s prejudiced views about him, but never really stopped long enough to notice. Isn’t that always the case? I knew from my maternal grandfather that my father had been involved in the Communist movement during WW II, but then so had a lot of other anti-fascists. Altogether, I’d seen him possibly six times in my life and I was approaching thirty-five. He was alien to me. So torn between prejudices, what I missed as a child and my duties to him as my “father” at that point, I finally asked for, and received emergency leave. My mission, as I perceived it, was to fly to Arizona and take care of the problem, as quickly as possible.

That’s what we did in the Army back then, take care of things, solve the problem, and complete the mission. In my 23 years of military service I found there was, and hopefully still is one thing certain; most military people subscribe to “Duty, Honor, Country”. General MacArthur explained it; he didn’t invent it. During my career it was the people I met, and not the places I visited, who made it memorable for me. The U.S. Military is still full of all kinds of people trying to do their jobs in the best way, every day, but it’s the line military people who keep it moving.

The civilians go to work and go home and make the job a 30-year career. The political appointees come and go. The dedicated 24 hours a day, seven days a week military are the patriots that Americans can be proud of. No matter what I say about the U.S. Army, one must understand that I loved it, and still do today. I’m far from saying the Army is perfect though. Every organization has its quirky, “problem children” and Machiavellian “leaders” who strive to make it tough for everyone else.

We had the draft back then and I think the U.S. was better for it. However, it did bring in some strange personalities. In the Army, one learns to deal with these types by ignoring them, transferring them or yourself, or dealing with them more directly through “The Uniform Code of Military Justice”.

Thinking back, in a way it always seemed to me the Army somehow looked with disfavor upon emergency leave. I guess it appeared to be a contradiction. Even when I was a commander, I couldn’t figure out why the entire chain of command had to know about a soldier’s private grief. The death, the cause of death and the relationship of the survivor had to be verified by the Red Cross, as if the Red Cross was some sort of official branch of the Army.

Once your commander got the message, he was duty-bound to grant emergency leave to satisfy the chain of command. I guess it became a problem when emergencies occurred at an inopportune time. In an organization that plans its minutia to the minute, the unexpected loss of a soldier probably rocks the boat and insults the status quo. On the plus side, at least it gets you on some great free flights you wouldn’t normally get.

The enlisted ranks; those folks in the Navy and Air Force who actually do the flight scheduling, on the whole seemed to better understand how the death of a loved one can affect one’s life. Once I got the emergency leave authorization and finally made it to the Navy Air Terminal at Cherry Point, the enlisted personnel made passage as efficient and hassle free as possible. In my case, many of them actually offered their condolences. I guess if you loved the person who was, or is, the reason for your emergency leave, then it makes all sorts of sense to hurry to the bedside or funeral. I didn’t love my father. Hell, I hardly knew him! I enjoyed the flight to San Diego via China Lake though. I had a lot of time to think. Many things had to be settled and I made copious notes.

Admittedly, my most serious concern at that time was my father’s solvency. I’d reason to believe he had no assets worth mentioning. He’d always seemed to be a bit of a flimflam man and I was afraid all I would face in Arizona were his bill collectors. I was facing enough of those in Virginia, thanks to my wife at the time. So, after arriving in San Diego, I found my way to MCAS, Yuma and finally to Parker where I eventually “traded” my nice rental for my father’s old Datsun.

Before inheriting his old car, a concrete-walled room at MCAS, a daily 200-mile round-trip to Parker, a father dying of melanoma in Yuma Regional and one hell of a physical, and fiscal, mess in Parker to clean up, I remembered thinking, “What a hell of a way to use up leave time.” I had no clue!

When I drove into La Paz County for the first time, I was impressed with the green farms, orderly ranches and progressive look of construction. I was especially surprised when I found Parker was so small. La Paz had been formed from about half of what was previously Yuma County and was one of the newest counties in the nation. I guess they wisely counted on the growth of towns north of Parker like Lake Havasu City to bring in future tax revenue. Things were a little screwed up at the new County Seat, but they were getting by like people usually do.

In retrospect, the confusion of developing a new county worked in my favor. The court-appointed attorney made it absolutely necessary to meet with him to start the fiduciary ball rolling. I found his office, via a sheet of paper taped to his door indicating he was the one and only La Paz “County Attorney”. He was a genuinely nice guy if not an experienced lawyer, and the same person who’d sent the notification of my father’s impending death. He apologized for the office switching which seems to continuously bedevil government offices, and gave me the keys to my father’s shack and to the old Datsun. Of course, I had to sign some papers and listen to his rendition of how my father was found crawling around in his shack, subsequently ordered a ward of the County and moved to the hospital in Yuma.

When I finally, with much trepidation, opened up my fathers’ padlocked front door, I was overwhelmed with the stench of rotting flesh. I quickly closed the door, went to the nearest hardware store and purchased face masks. I used several while taking a cursory inventory and developing a list of what I would need to clean up the place. Nothing could keep the smell out, but at least I didn’t have to worry about pathogens. Much later into the cleanup I realized the smell had apparently kept everyone else out as well, including the Sheriff, the human leeches (which included my father’s ex-prostitute ex-wife and her new family), and even the county attorney. The contents seemed to be untouched. They’d apparently just tossed my father on a stretcher, whisked him out of the stench, slapped a big lock on the front door, walked away and waited for the dumb-ass Army guy to come and clean it up. Although I’d smelled much worse, I couldn’t fault them much.

The stench of rotting flesh is not one many Americans have to encounter, thankfully. Also, everyone in Parker had more to think about than some sick old desert rat. Since Parker was the new county seat, it was still building infrastructure to a degree, and didn’t have time to waste.

They sent my father to Yuma for cancer care, so I was glad I could save a bit by billeting with the Marines. Parker was entirely inside the Colorado Indian Reservation, so development of the county government had proceeded with caution and patience, especially in light of Native American ownership. All the good citizens in the northern part of Yuma County thought they were being neglected by the County Seat in Yuma, so they wanted out of Yuma County. I’m not sure they could foresee the hurdles, but everything seemed to be going fairly well when I arrived.

For several years, my father had lived on 10 acres in the desert outside Quartzsite, close to the California border. He’d moved back into Parker when his cancer began consuming his face and neck. He prepared income tax returns for people for over forty years and also dabbled in real estate and tax consulting, although I doubt he had a license to do the latter. Still, he must have been good at it. He made a good living, had lots of friends and helped quite a few reservation folks who lived around Parker; had a “falling out” with some Parker “City Fathers” and moved to Quartzsite purely out of spite. When people asked about the crusty black spot on the left side of his face, he told them it was a birthmark. When it began to make a small cocktail onion out of his left eye, I guess he knew he couldn’t fool people any longer, and probably guessed he couldn’t beat the melanoma either.

Prior to his being moved from his shack to the hospital, the cancer attacked his cervical spine and he’d been unable to walk properly. He’d been crawling around on the shack floor for weeks, we guessed. He was “prepared” though. Everything necessary for survival was at floor level. There was several hundred pair of clean underwear, over a hundred bars of soap, hotplates for cooking, water via a hose for washing and for cooking, piles of canned and dried foods, a mattress on the floor and a loaded 30:30 rifle close at hand. I guess his genes are where some of my tenaciousness comes from.

All the windows had been covered with green film that let in a certain amount of light, but no curious stares. When I entered the building for the first time it hadn’t been occupied for over four weeks and all the food in the refrigerator and elsewhere had rotted. Of course, thankfully, that’s where the smell came from. You haven’t lived until you’ve cleaned up an Arizona refrigerator that’s sat in ninety degree heat and hasn’t operated for over a month. Yes, ninety-degree heat in November!

With one of the face masks firmly in place, I began the task of sifting through his life. A labor of love, it wasn’t. However, since La Paz County named me fiduciary, I felt a military duty to properly account for everything of value. The trouble was he had thoroughly hidden most everything he considered valuable.

I found turquoise nuggets and other semi-precious things crudely buried under a rickety, tin-covered shed attached to the rear of the house. I was moving some boards away from a rear door to get some strategic cross ventilation and noticed the shiny crescent of an old peanut can barely sticking out of the dirt.

As I dug out and dusted the clinging dirt from one can, another would be exposed. They were hastily buried and contained many small treasures from a frugal life. Obviously, these were things he wanted to hide, but couldn’t leave the premises. So, there they were, six cans full of Mexican and American coins, turquoise, lapis lazuli, silver and gold trinkets and a miserable collection of old buttons. It took several “baths” to get the caliche powder off everything.

There was plenty of stuff in that little shack, which I thought had little or no intrinsic value. I made a list and called my cousin (of dubious reputation) in Phoenix. In the interest of fairness, to say that my first cousin Ron V. James is a “tough” guy is to encompass several meanings of the word. He has many scars over his body; all caused by something very painful, but alleviated somewhat by a tendency to imbibe various kinds of alcoholic beverages and a nefarious plant that grows wild on the “reservation”. All this is for strictly “medicinal pain relief” however. He’s a grandfather now, and was always a loving father and husband, plus a great journeyman carpenter. However, if someone were to make the mistake of thinking that his beer belly might slow him down, well ... it could be a strategic, and perhaps fatal, error.

He feels little pain, except from the improper placement of a mechanical knee. He can still bench-press over 200 pounds, is ruggedly handsome with a fairly full head of sun-bleached hair, and has wrecked more cars and motorcycles than Evel Knievel. He still drives like a damn maniac though.

He’s made many friends of every color and persuasion by giving everyone a fair deal and a friendly shake. I thought he might know someone who could use the majority of my father’s stuff. If he took possession, I knew there would be no waste, and I sure couldn’t take it back to Virginia with me. No way were the creeps I ran across in Parker about to get something my cousin or some needy reservation kid could use. Blood is always thicker than water, even in Arizona.

After shooting the breeze with Ron a bit, it was going to be off to Phoenix, fully intending to renew some other old acquaintances, see a special old friend and get my cousin to help me transport anything of value back to Phoenix in his big truck. However, as luck goes, one of my father’s old friends came sniffing around just before I left. I’d filled my father’s old rusty trailer with a lot of paper trash and clutter, including many worn and torn issues of National Geographic.

My fathers’ old friend said he simply wanted to inform me that at one time my father kept one hundred dollar bills hidden in the pages of his treasured National Geographic magazines. I thanked him profusely for his information, and offered to take him inside for a drink. He wisely and quickly declined. After he slithered away I thought it smart to drive to Phoenix, and get back to Parker as quickly as I could without seeing any of my old friends. Ron and I made it back to Parker around 5:30 p.m. the next evening. I was right on.

We went directly to my father’s shack to load the best of his belongings before it got too late. As soon as we pulled onto the dirt road my fathers’ shack was situated on, we saw someone run behind some Tamarack trees in the back alley. Reflexively Ron gunned the metallic green Chevy 428, took a hard right through another alley and damn near ran over a teenage kid in a real hurry. He looked like a scarecrow in the dim glow of the headlights, with pimples glistening, eyes wide, and kicking up dust with every misplaced stride. I managed to keep Ron from running over him and instead we gave him a good scare. At the time, I had no reason to recognize him.

When we checked, it didn’t appear the shack had been burglarized, but the old trailer I’d piled with trash was gone. I smiled as I visualized the leeches rummaging through all that trash looking for money that had already been removed, by yours truly. The loss of the old trailer was a blessing, but I still intended to report its’ theft. Even though it was totally dark by the time we caught our breath, we started loading the stuff I’d set aside.

At about 11:00 p.m. a city patrol car drove by slowly with an Anglo deputy inside. I waved him down to report the trailer theft, explained who I was, and he actually offered to help. I got the distinct feeling he knew who I was. Anyway, we left Parker about 12:05 a.m. and didn’t stop until we hit a Wickenburg cafe for coffee. Word about the move reached the county lawyer, but I told him I was throwing away some junk and he never asked another question on that subject. I also informed him about the trailer theft, gave him the suspects, and that was enough for that.

After we moved the things to Phoenix to be distributed to the Gila Reservation Mission, I returned to Parker in the old Datsun. Then I began a tireless search around Parker for my father’s assets. At the time, I was pleased to find he was actually not a pauper, and even began to expect a little inheritance. It was something like a treasure hunt where you depend on clues from someone losing his mind. I called banks and checked for safety deposit boxes, bank accounts and certificates of deposit. I got nowhere on the safety deposit box, even though he told me there was a safety deposit box in a certain Parker Bank. I’m sure now he didn’t have all his senses during his last days. At the time though, I thought perhaps he enjoyed sending me on wild goose chases, or perhaps he thought he’d get well soon and didn’t want me rummaging through his entire life.

Nevertheless, I found a single old, greened brass safety deposit key under some tarnished silver jewelry hanging from a single nail pounded into one of the four-by-fours holding up the “living room” roof. I tracked down the number to his local bank that had denied he had a box, but then the story was, “Oh yeah-we do have that box listed in your fathers’ name.”

In that small box was probably the best part of my fathers’ life; a part he wanted to preserve, or perhaps to protect. I shouldn’t go into a complete list of things I found in there. That’s history. The bank was only required to account for the cash, which was a mere $6,500. That made a total of $10,000, with the National Geographic contributions. I thought it was probably getaway money, or Mexico “honey money” if you get my drift. Among all the photos and mementos, Mexican pesos and few pieces of old jewelry, there was one other incongruous thing in that unused box. It was a strange piece of rolled-up leather that looked like old parchment. It was crudely covered in plastic film and old crusty yellowed clear tape and looked like just another bit of junk. The bank ladies weren’t the least bit interested so I unceremoniously threw it into a cardboard box with the rest; put the $6,500 cash into an executors’ account and headed back to Yuma.

When I was finally able to look at the contents of the box in the privacy of my MCAS room, I found the dry, brittle leather was sparsely covered with dim representations of mountain ranges and streams. I thought I recognized some of them. The blurred and stained writing seemed to be a form of Old Spanish and even though I couldn’t understand most of it, I saw that it referenced mountains which looked like the Kofas! The old friends looked very familiar on the map, and with a different name of course.

****

If one hasn’t been raised in the hot, dry state of Arizona, but wants to visit or live there, one really should learn a bit about the geography, folklore and hazards. Visitors die every year because they don’t understand the desert. When I off handedly stated the Kofa Mountains seemed like old friends, that’s precisely what I meant. Out west, and especially in Arizona, mountains are “individuals” really. They are something or “someone” that you use for bearings and familiarity. If you live long enough, they’ve sheltered you in a storm, provided cooling breezes in the summer and continue to wring a few precious drops of rain out of clouds during summer monsoons.

Unlike Eastern hills which aspire to be mountains, most are recognizable as individuals or Native American surnamed ranges of peaks that were distant landmarks and even holy places before time existed. As an example, the volcanic remnants that form Humphrey’s Peak at Flagstaff are sacred to some Native Americans and the Hopi believe Yaapontsa, the wind spirit, lives in a cave close to Humphrey’s Peak and Sunset Crater.

During conversations, the mountains are given a certain respectful status by native Arizonans and by Native Americans. By native Arizonans, I mean anyone who’s ever done serious climbing, suffered from exposure or dehydration, been lost and climbed to a pinnacle of one of these mountains to get bearings … and survived.

Now, I wouldn’t want people to think I’m too crazy, but I “talked” to some of those mountains in my younger years and they whispered back! I know an old Army officer is not supposed to talk about bizarre stuff like spirits and such, but believe me, unless you’ve been where I’ve been, don’t knock it. I’ve witnessed things on the Arizona desert that would make your spine tingle and the hair on the back of your neck want to hide in your crotch. I’ve been places where there was no sound at all, nothing, except the sound of my own breathing.

I’ve heard sounds like water rushing where there’s no water, the grunting and clicking of desert tortoises fighting, a screaming that scares the coyotes and starts their anxious yipping during the day; I’ve heard sounds that coyotes cannot. I’ve stood high in the Kofas, the Estrellas and the Mazatsals and heard dust devils whispering to heaven. I’ve re-buried Indian bones and heard the chanting sounds of Indian Nations among the wind and shards. I believe a lot of old desert rats and even some archaeologists from Arizona universities could verify should they dare risk their reputations.

An old Hopi once told me “Those Mountains don’t like crowds!” I believe one only hears these things when alone, and no I don’t smoke … anything!

Desert “leeches” love to smoke though. They smoke and drink even when they’re broke. How do they do that; welfare? They love hospitals too, especially the leeches who come crawling around when the smell of death and money are in the air.

I was in my father’s room for the second time on the second day and hadn’t been there 20 minutes when I was confronted by a squatty Mexican woman, one pimply older teenage boy, one shy and pretty teenage girl, and a smelly, unshaven Anglo-trailer-trash bum, all wanting to be my long-lost loving “relatives”. My father’s ex-prostitute ex-wife, her “husband” and her lovely kids had all driven from Parker to Yuma just to meet me. My, what a treat they were.

Ruddy faces, unwashed elbows, and cigarette after-smell chronicled the arrival of my “step sister and brother,” and my “step mother” and her insignificant other. What they didn’t realize was I recognized the pimply teenage boy from the alley incident. He didn’t recognize me, but I know he suspected. Not long after that, I started meeting other “leeches.” Several of my father’s old friends started coming around and it was during those various visits I learned they thought of the bastard kids as my sister and brother as well. Someone had been doing a lot of psychological warfare. In my naiveté I wondered if they were there because they thought they could get part of his estate. Hell, of course they did; had an excellent plan to get it, and had already hired an attorney.

My father never adopted his ex-wife’s bastard kids and left no signed will, but the presiding La Paz County Judge decreed that because my father stated in the divorce proceedings he intended to adopt them in the future, they were entitled to two-thirds of his estate. Neither of the kids were my father’s biological children as far as I knew, but they and their mother actually got what my mother deserved for raising me on her own. The things I went through over the following months, thanks to those four, could drive one to drink. Things usually work out for the best though, especially when you work hard at it, and you believe in forcefully applied Karma.

Those creeps managed their deception because I was naive in the ways of theft, bribery, and deceit. They don’t teach you those things in the Army. Despite my initial disgust, I was willing to treat them as equals if my father desired. However, I found out pretty soon he didn’t. Once we were alone for the first time and once it finally sank into his drugged brain who I was, we had a long and enlightening conversation. He emphatically insisted that I have a last will and testament drawn up leaving the “leeches” (his words) completely out of the estate. I complied with his wishes, but he never signed the will, or if he did no one knew it. It simply disappeared from the hospital during a brief period of my absence.

Also, a lot of other small things disappeared after I finished at the shack. Most of it disappeared at night as if someone were systematically searching for something. I’d return in the morning to find someone had been there. I left it unlocked after I removed everything I thought was useable or of some value to charity. Everything left in the shack seemed worthless to almost anybody. I always figured the culprit was one of my father’s “friends” who having stolen and gone through the trailer’s contents, thought there may be cash hidden somewhere else around the shack, or in the walls. Yeah … I could have been a little more perceptive!

Nonetheless, I tried to concentrate then, as now, on the good things that happened during my visit. I was fortunate enough to visit with my father at length for the first time in my life, and I was lucky to be able to meet some genuinely good people my father had known. I learned the importance of a “death blanket” to some people, and I got to place him in his beloved Arizona dirt in a dignified manner. I also learned my father had more friends and acquaintances than I believed possible, considering how he was living when La Paz County took charge. Most of his real friends turned out to be Native Americans. Until then I thought Native Americans paid no taxes. I was wrong again.

During the funeral, several folks commented about what a good tax man my father was. One round, brown, gray-headed lady with beautiful copper-flaked tear-streaming eyes, introduced herself as Lucy Page. Her family name was very familiar, but I asked no questions. She told me she would have found my father an Eagle feather, had she known he wanted one. I mourned with her for a while, after she squeezed the air out of me in a big hug. I couldn’t imagine what she was talking about, but I was polite. As a matter of fact, I wondered a lot about what was going on in Yuma and Parker with regard to the native rumor mill. It seemed almost everyone knew as much about my situation as I did. Lucy mentioned a little bird told her about my father’s request, but it came a little too late. I later learned who the little bird was, but never dreamed she would share those intimate things with her grandmother.