Skorpio (10 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

"Salina"

Beadles put the house on the market and sold the Bullitt. He bought a Jeep Cherokee with 85,000 miles on it. His combined legal fees came to $38,000. He owed 25. Betty agreed not to press for child support in exchange for primary custody. Beadles didn't contest her. It wasn't that he didn't love Lars. He had learned to love him.

When Lars was born Beadles' initial reaction was a certain relief that it was a boy and anxiety on the coming struggle to raise a child. Presented with the newborn in the delivery room, Beadles held the bundle in his arm and felt nothing. Certainly not love. He wondered how he got in this mess. He'd never wanted to be a parent.

Betty had always said she had no interest in children until she became pregnant. Like strapping a turbo to her self-absorption.

It took him a year to warm up to the idea.

Now he felt only relief. The last thing he needed was parental responsibility. He wondered if he had sociopathic tendencies.

The Whitfields' wrongful death suit was a constant drain on his resources.

No one would hire him and he'd become notorious. The university claimed he'd falsified his job application and credentials. The Cherokee Nation disavowed any knowledge of his membership.

He made a few calls. His old grad school prof had died last year from a stroke. Beadles hadn't even sent the family a letter of condolence. He called a few other academic pals but each had multiple excuses. Times were tough. They were thinking of cutting the anthro department. They were laying people off. Too many qualified candidates who hadn't been accused of larceny and manslaughter.

Last year Lucasfilm flew him out for an interview. They wanted his take on a sci fi fantasy.
Avatar
meets
Alien
. The lawyers soaked up his fee like the Gobi Desert.

Finally there was only one thing left to do.

Find Anatole.

Beadles planned his trip as carefully as a space launch. He filled the old Jeep with camping gear, research materials, batteries. He would drive through Permission on the way. The night before he left he had that dream again, with the glare. Only this time the everywhere-glare disappeared, as if a curtain had been drawn, leaving the after-image of a rock butte burning red on his retina. As a child he had suffered night terrors in which he found himself trapped in some ancient cliff dwelling--walls the look and texture of reptiles that oozed the oil of age, death, dust, destruction. The idea that something so old existed was in itself terrifying. It continued to haunt him until well into his teens.

It was partly as an attempt to come to grips with his terror that he became an anthropologist. The way so many messed up people go into psychotherapy.

He left Creighton on a Sunday morning, hit the I-70 and got all the way to Salina before checking into a Best Western. He'd thought about camping at KOA to save money but that was already thinking like a loser.

All he had to do was prove the Azuma were real, find the center of their universe and he could write his own ticket. The book deals, the movie deals. Now that he'd had a taste of pop success he wanted more. There was nothing like it. Certainly not the staid and constricted academic world.

Beadles thought of himself as a serious scholar with a pop flair and a sense of humor. He'd begun making notes in a journal on the book he planned to write. He canceled all his credit cards but one on which he put his internet service.

Anasazi referred to ancient Indians who lived in the "four corners" region, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. The Anasazi were eventually displaced by the Pueblo, Hopi, Navajo and Zuni. Scarce resources, especially water, led to war and some tribes relocated to remote areas to avoid all conflict. In the nineties, a dig outside Dolores, Colorado produced twenty-four skeletons which bore the unmistakeable mark of cannibalism.

The Anasazi were not the only Native American tribes thought to practice cannibalism. Far to the north and one thousand years ago the Aztalan Indians settled in Southern Wisconsin, built pyramids and ate their neighbors. In all fairness there was evidence of cannibalism among the Jamestown settlers too.

Beadles used his laptop to stay in touch with people and organizations he thought could help him in his search. Unfortunately, Permission, CO was now an official Ghost Town. No one ran the Historical Society. The county had the town listed on Craig's List as a potential tourist attraction and casino. No takers so far.

Beadles was cagey about his internet persona and took pains to disguise himself, often working through aliases. Anthropology was a little like international treasure hunting. It was difficult to keep a big hunt under wraps and if you weren't careful you'd find a dozen parties nipping at your heels either trying to beat you to it or suing you. Although well known in anthro circles, Beadles had already begun downsizing his social media presence hoping to travel under the radar.

The Azuma had virtually no internet presence - a few news items about the collection.

Beadles flipped through the TV channels. Even here in East Bumfuck there were three dozen channels. He'd fallen out of the news. He watched
Judge Judy
. Why were so many of the guests morbidly obese?

Beadles walked across the swooshing highway to a Cracker Barrel and had dinner. It was a relief to be out of academia, among normal people who worried about the rent and what was on TV that night. His meatloaf and mashed potatoes were delivered by a fresh-faced girl with a smile and a Midwestern twang. Sated, he darted back across the highway and collapsed in his room, lulled by the sound of passing traffic.

He dreamed of the desert.

***

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

"Hava"

Summer drove straight through to Hava, stopping only for potty breaks and to renew her supply of Monster energy drinks, Weasel Peters, Cheetos and bananas. She pulled into the barren lot in front of the doublewide Holmes Elegance house trailer in which she'd grown up with four siblings. The stoop was made of cinderblocks covered with plywood. An old propane tank peeked from one end. Six other trailers clustered around the sand common which held a half dozen discarded tires and a rusting jungle gym. The ground was hard-packed earth. There were no signs warning parents that the jungle gym was potentially hazardous and they were not responsible for injuries.

Rusting pick-ups sat in front of some of the trailers. A dun-colored '68 Camaro with the side windows smashed out rested on cinderblocks in front of her own ancestral home. It had been her father's pride and joy. Summer had given no warning because the trailer had no phone.

It was seven-thirty and still light as she got out in the baking heat, lugged her overnighter up the creaking stoop and tried the door. Locked. She knocked on the thin aluminum door. Footsteps caused the old trailer to list and squeal. The door opened revealing the blotto face of her younger brother Ethan, who'd been in jail the last time she checked for stealing copper wire. He was tall and skinny with a Beatle mop and a furze of black hairs clinging to his upper lip.

"Look what the cat dragged in," he said returning to the sprung sofa in front of the flat screen TV. He plopped down and picked up his gaming yoke. A half empty bottle of malt liquor sat on the thrift store coffee table next to a bong. The TV emitted muted gunfire, roars and screams. The room smelled of beer and reefer. It was cooler inside the trailer, filled with the whine of a window-mounted AC.

Ethan's thumbs worked the yoke. Onscreen, a First Person Shooter mowed down Al Qaeda types with a machine gun. Ethan reached for the bong, lit it with a Bic and inhaled, exhaling a plume of gray smoke.

"Want a hit?" he said without taking his eyes off the screen.

"No thanks. Where's Ma and Pa?"

"Ma's in the bedroom. She ain't been feeling right. Pa's dead. Didn't you hear? Drifted across the centerline last week and hit a semi head-on. Didn't anyone tell you? I thought Mary was gonna phone."

Mild shock, relief, and a deep burning shame all ignited within Summer's heart. Her father had been an abusive drunk and her mother never said boo about it. You were supposed to feel something when your father died but all Summer felt was a faint sense of relief. He was a rotten failure for whom his children never measured up.

"Did they already have the funeral?"

"What funeral? We let the county take him."

"Jesus that's cold," Summer said.

"What the fuck do you care? Mary didn't get hold of you, huh?"

"I change phones a lot."

For the first time since she'd entered the trailer Ethan looked at her. "Jesus, sis! What happened to you? You look like you've been in a fight."

"Vince beat me up. I left him."

"Who's Vince?"

Summer plopped down on the sofa next to her brother. "Some loser I was dating."

'Yeah, well I hope you cut his balls off."

Summer smiled grimly. "Not quite. But he's going to be pissed when he wakes up. I took his car."

"Wondered where you got that bitchin' Camaro. Maybe you'll let me take it for a spin? I got some shit to pick up in town."

"You got a license?"

Ethan made a motion and resumed shooting. Screams and explosions.

She'd told Vince about growing up in Hava. He might track her down. She'd have to move on but she figured she had a grace period--at least twenty-four hours for Vince to wake up and get his shit together.

She knew a truck stop down the Interstate where she could sell the Camaro. It would be dangerous but she did not intend to go there unprepared. That was one of the reasons she'd returned to Hava.

"Pa still had his guns?"

"I ain't sold 'em yet if that's what you mean."

"Good. 'Cause I'm taking one."

Ethan set the yoke down and looked at her. "The fuck you are. I need that money!"

"For what? Drugs? I'm just as entitled to his shit as you are. All I want's one pistol.. You can keep the rest."

"I'm gonna crash here tonight. I'll take the sofa."

Ethan shrugged. "Whatever."

Summer got up, went down the hall and softly opened the door to her parents' bedroom. Her mother lay on her side like a manatee snoring. Summer shut the door and went outside. She opened the Camaro's trunk. That new car smell smacked her. Inside the trunk was a cardboard liquor box. She picked it up. It was heavy. Paper heavy, not metal heavy. She set it down and peeled back the flaps releasing the smell of a mummy's tomb. Inside were stacks of telegraph messages bound together with faded ribbon. She picked them up and looked at the top message.

Will arrive Flagstaff noon the 24th stop hope you have contracted for mules and equipment stop I remain your obedient servant Wilbur H. Addison stop

It was dated May 8, 1897. The rest were similar. Vince must have picked them up on one of his free-lance picks. There was also a leather portfolio containing black and white photographs of Indians. Maybe they were worth something. She set them aside and kept digging. An old miner's hat, bills of sale from a dry goods shop and at the very bottom, a leather portfolio so ancient only a brown patina remained. It was held shut by an ancient black ribbon. She unwound the ribbon and carefully opened the portfolio on top of the box.

Inside was a desiccated sheet of deerksin that had been folded innumerable times. She began to unfold it and saw that it was a map. A hand-drawn map made with a quill pen. The cartographer was gifted not only in his elegant penmanship but in his drawings of landmarks. In the fading evening light the paper was the color of goat's milk. The writing was in Spanish.

The ancient map felt like felt. A wind blew up and threatened to tear it out of her hands. Summer carefully folded the map, returned it to the portfolio and took it into the house.

***

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

"Jackpot"

Beadles pulled into Aurora, Colorado at five p.m. Tuesday evening and checked into a Motel 8 next to Fergie's Bar and Grill, a sports bar with a dozen TV screens surrounding the vast open room divided by an island counter next to the horseshoe bar. Beadles took a table in the rear. The waitress gave him a funny look when he ordered an Absolut martini. She was young, stacked, brunette, and reminded him that he hadn't been laid in a week.

She also looked like she was barely twenty-one. Beadles took his drink to the bar. Three stools down hunkered a clutch of thirty-something women cracking each other up. Beadles had often observed how women tended to gather in homogenous groups. These women were all attractive, well made-up, with expensive but not flashy clothes. Realtors, shop owners, sales persons.

He watched them in the mirror behind the bar, making eye contact with a pert redhead with slightly crazy eyes. He knew about women with crazy eyes. Easy to get, hard to shed. That was all right. Once she found out what a loser he was she would rabbit for the tall timber.

He ordered a hamburger at the bar and another martini. Basketball bounced from the walls, sound turned off to accomodate four feeds. Beadles looked around. It was a young, upwardly mobile crowd, guys and gals unwinding after work, laughing and gossiping. Some solitary souls buried their snouts in their Razrs and Droids, texting, tweeting, and Facebooking. Beadles had held onto his internet account. It was the only way he could stay in touch.

He took out his Razr and checked his messages. The realtor indicated they might have a buyer. Creighton was a hot market because of the university. Cialis spam. He used to compulsively check his investments but there was no point to it now that he was broke. He'd had to sell everything to pay the lawyers and he still owed them money.

By his third martini two of the women were gone and the redhead was on the adjacent barstool. Hester sold Venetian blinds for I Heart Windows and was a passionate Broncos fan. Beadles, who took zero interest in sports, agreed with her that telling Manning to take a knee with thirty-one seconds in the 4th quarter had been a bonehead move.

"I mean, what was Fox thinking?" Hester demanded. "Peyton Manning! He could have got them into field goal range on the next play."

Beadles shook his head in dismay. "You can't fix stupid."

"So what do you do, Vaughan?"

"I'm a professor of anthropology at Creighton College." A venal sin.

"Anthropology…"

"The study of humanity. I specialize in Anasazi Indians--the people who originally settled this country--Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona."

"My folks took me to Mesa Verde National Park when I was little. Place gave me the creeps. I still get nightmares."

Beadles looked at her with bemusement. "What's scary about Mesa Verde?"

"Those ruins? Carved out of the rock? I had a terrible fear that if I stepped inside I would never get out. The walls would close in on me and I'd die of thirst or suffocate. They were just so old. I don't know why but it frightened me. I remember crying and my parents taking me back to the car."

By ten they were back in his room where he showed her the gold medallion. By ten-thirty they had done the dirty deed and she lay snoring in his bed. Her purse sat open on the dresser next to the big screen TV. He stared at it. He stared at her. He was down to his last hundred bucks minus the five thou in the trunk and the Visa was maxed out.

Quietly he rose, went to her purse, and fished through it for her wallet. Hester was flush. She had over six hundred dollars in her wallet. She wouldn't miss a hundred. He stealthily transferred the twenties to his own wallet, went to the bathroom and returned to bed.

***