The Never-Open Desert Diner (14 page)

I
went about my deliveries knowing Josh was nearby, if not close enough to see. He did a respectably good job staying out of sight. The motorcycle was always in my way. Walt was right. Even in silence it was a heavy, cumbersome pain in the ass. Over the course of the morning I lost track of how often I had to unfasten it and move it out of the way and then tie it down and cover it again. I wasn't ready to fire up the Victor yet, assuming it would start. Josh's extreme desert adventure wouldn't begin until I was ready, which wasn't until late afternoon.

Oddly, I was looking forward to dinner with Walt. I needed to, though I didn't particularly want to, tell him about my impending retirement from suckling the losers on 117. He'd predicted as much for years. That he didn't consider himself a loser wasn't surprising.

For one thing, Walt owned a business, even though it was closed most of the time. For another, his place was the closest to Price
—
to his way of thinking, closest to civilization, though every few months he went into Rockmuse to pick up his mail. He even shopped there once in a while. Walt also seemed to have a pretty good income. The diner had done well for a long time. The company that handled Lee Marvin's investments had managed Walt's movie dollars. The number one reason, though, was raw-assed pride.

Walt Butterfield was
the
Walt Butterfield the same way his café was
the
Well-Known Desert Diner. To hear him tell it, he had never failed, though from time to time, he'd had to wait longer or work harder before he succeeded. The single biggest burden everyone else suffered from was that none of them was Walt Butterfield. Sometimes I had to agree, though only to myself. It also crossed my mind that Walt Butterfield's single greatest failing was that he was
the
Walt Butterfield. He was vital and strong, and when he got ready to die, he would tell God when, not the other way around.

Once in a while I even wondered, especially after Bernice died, why he hadn't put God on notice. Beyond his motorcycle collection, I couldn't guess what kept him going, except for a determination not to fail in, at, or because of life, even if most of that life was gone.

I made my deliveries. It was a fine morning and a fine afternoon. A peacefulness came over me once I accepted that a part of my life was about to end. From that peace came strength to finally just stare down the tracks as the train approached. Everywhere I made a delivery I gave out a free half gallon of butter brickle. I got a few thank-yous. Usually I got a nod, and the icy container went immediately against a sunburned cheek or to the back of a neck.

My fit of ice cream charity hardly put a dent in my supply. I couldn't bring myself to tell any of the folks that I wouldn't be seeing them much longer. Not to give them notice wasn't fair, but given who they were, and the lives they had chosen to lead,
fair
wasn't a word in the vocabulary of 117.

Josh and his red Jeep were on my mind as I headed west on 117. My trailer, thanks to several bags of feed, a brace of Schedule 40 galvanized pipe, and other odds and ends
—
including a portable cement mixer
—
was still a third full. Maybe I'd deliver on Sunday, or just hold off until Monday, when I could make it another full load.

At three o'clock sharp I pulled off on the shoulder and took a nap. Josh had to be parked somewhere behind me. I knew he was baking in his red metal Jeep with the high sun beating down on him and no air-conditioning. I thought of it as a kind of aging process, like what was done to gourmet steaks in fancy restaurants.

While he aged he'd drink the little water he had brought with him, if he'd thought to bring any at all. He'd sweat, and wait, and pray, and finally curse me to start moving again. His mouth would be so dry he couldn't produce a thimble full of spit. Maybe he would run his engine just to feel the fan stir up the hot, stagnant air in his face. Maybe he would use more gas than he should. Sometime after that, I would get on the move.

I checked my mirrors for any sign of the red Jeep. About four thirty I released the brake and crept along the shoulder for a mile. As I crested a small rise, I was pretty sure I saw the Jeep behind me, keeping a steady distance between us.

I remembered a side road. It was deceptive. It began like a smooth macadam and gradually changed and worsened as it wound its way north toward an abandoned ranch. By the time the rotting timbers over the ranch entrance appeared, the road had become deeply rutted with nasty horizontal slashes up to a foot or more deep caused by years of erosion from spring washouts. In five or six places the road forked into different directions. Two of them dead-ended in arroyos. At least one piddled out into the sands. Where and how the others ended was a mystery to me. From the entrance onward to the burned-out ranch house, the road was a wide trail.

Early on, when I was working for Utah Express Provisioners, I had made deliveries there. One day I showed up and the place had burned to the ground, its charred rock chimney leaning like a drunk against a lone cottonwood tree. Belongings lay scattered everywhere
—
a broken table, miscellaneous clothing. No sign of the old couple who had lived there.

I parked in the ranch turnaround and stood on the running board scanning the horizon back the way I had come. I didn't see the Jeep, but I saw a wisp of dust. When and if Josh got back onto the road it would be a dark and treacherous drive. My guess was that he would run out of gas long before that, even if he used the five-gallon emergency can all the rental Jeeps sported on their rear bumpers. Taking my time, I unloaded the Victor and buttoned up the truck in case some drunken coyotes decided to take it for a joy ride.

The Victor started right up. I idled it around the debris in the ranch yard and in and out of surviving outbuildings to get the feel of it, and it me. About the time I estimated Josh was no more than a half mile away, I gunned the Victor to announce my departure and headed cross-country to the northeast, where there was even less hospitable ground. Bless his lying little bulldog Hollywood ass, Josh followed, probably watching the dust I was none too careful about keeping down. And I watched his.

My plan was to take him out about ten miles from 117 as the crow flies, and then double back to my truck just before dark. He'd make it back to 117 eventually, even on foot, but it would take at least that night and part of the next day. If worse came to worst, maybe the Jeep's GPS homing beacon might work and the rental company would send someone out to find him. For all I knew, he might even get cell service, but only if he climbed to the top of one of the piles of rocks that sprouted up here and there like twenty-foot warts.

Dead reckoning was all I had to go on. Walt had put some fear into me about the Victor's reliability. My heart rate jacked up a few times when the engine sputtered. Its 441cc power plant and road gears took a lot of patience
—
sluggish on inclines, but a rocket on the flat stretches. It was easy for me to keep the sun to my back and always the red mesa far to my right.

To be certain, Josh stayed on his toes. I stopped a couple of times and took a few cuts north, once almost crossing his path as he wound his way up an arroyo full of granite boulders. For a moment or two I almost felt guilty. The mesa was beginning to catch the full rays of the setting sun. Too often I took the spectacle for granted. I lifted my eyes skyward. The layers of blue upon bluer faded into darkness. The blue reminded me of the photograph of Josh's wife in her blue sweater and the blue of their son's eyes. They probably weren't even his wife and kid.

That was the end of it for me. I made a long lazy turn south and eventually west into a fast-setting and blinding sun, in a hurry to get back to the burned-out ranch and my truck, and on to Walt's for dinner. Maybe I was struggling with an unexpected change of heart about what I was doing and wanted to put as many miles as I could between me and Josh. A couple of times I thought I was about to pull into the ranch, only to discover more dirt and rocks. It occurred to me that I might have overshot it, gone too far south, then maybe too far west. Without so much as a fart or a giggle of warning, the Victor lurched forward, stalled, caught again, and died. After five minutes of fooling with the prehistoric Amal carburetor and giving the fuel line the blow job of a lifetime, I knew it was no use and gave up. Pushing the Victor uphill for a hundred feet stole my breath and left me drenched in sweat. The shame of waiting for Josh to show up to give me a ride in the Jeep settled over me.

I leaned against the Victor at the crest of the hill and looked back over the terrain I'd covered. Dusk was settling between the low hills. The first shadows wound themselves through and around each other. In the far distance Josh's headlights came on. Up and down, the beams bumped the darkness and then disappeared as he zigzagged in my general direction. All I could do was wait. I turned west to glimpse the last long streaks of the sunset and saw the cottonwood tree and chimney of the ranch, perhaps no more than a hundred yards away. It was a piece of good luck that I had started back when I did.

I loaded and tied down the Victor and decided to climb on top of the trailer to get a final fix on Josh's progress. I saw no headlights. Either he had stopped for the night, or he was in a gulley, or he had run out of gas. It didn't matter. A forlorn wind was beginning to wail through the charred slats of the ranch house walls. There wouldn't be much of a moon. Josh Arrons, or whoever he was, could count on a long damn night. Claire would get her head start. That was all I had signed up for and all I cared about. What I'd done was nothing more than perform a mean duty on a young man who, if pressed, I might have to admit I liked.

It was closer to eight than seven when I parked my truck at the diner. Walt was probably pissed off at me and, for no particular reason, I was pissed off at him, which I knew was just a way of avoiding the truth that I was pissed off at myself for leaving Josh stranded in the desert.

The blinds were drawn on the diner's windows. A soft yellow glow spilled out into the drive. My footsteps were heavy as I made my way toward the diner. The “Closed” sign was hanging in the door as usual. I didn't feel hungry. If Walt was in a mood, I figured I'd skip dinner and backtrack to Desert Home to warn Claire. With my hand on the doorknob, I paused. Walt had the Wurlitzer jukebox cranked up playing some old tune from the 1940s or 1950s. He'd played it before. I was smiling as I opened the door. Walt was wearing a much bigger smile. He was dancing with Claire.

C
laire had her back to the door. Her long black hair was tied in a ponytail with a red ribbon. A frown crossed Walt's face. He shook his head slightly from side to side to tell me not even to think of cutting in, or interrupting in any fashion.

I wasn't thinking of cutting in. For one thing, I'm not much of a dancer. For another, I was using all my energy trying to remember how to breathe. I just stood there watching them dance.

Claire was short, perhaps just over five feet, even in what looked like new turquoise cowboy boots. Walt was as graceful and light on his feet as a feather on a wire. I found my breath and lost it just as quickly. They were beautiful together, like they'd been dancing together their entire lives. Not quite intending to, I began to back up through the open door. If I could have, I might have run out into the desert night filled with envy.

The ending of the song was slow, its final notes drawn out into the loud rhythmic scratches of the phonograph needle. I was almost through the door when Claire noticed me. She lowered her hands from Walt's shoulders and rested her head against his chest for a moment without ever taking her dark eyes from mine. There was a tenderness in her gesture that any man would have given his life to feel, if only once, for a few precious seconds.

Claire saw the shocked expression on my face. She put her hands on her hips and began to laugh. I just stood where I was. Walt turned to face me and joined her. “Look, honey,” he said, “our dinner guest has finally arrived.”

Claire rushed to me as if we were old friends, or perhaps more. She hugged me briefly, wrapped her right arm under my left, and led me toward Walt. One of the booths had been set up for dinner, three place settings, one across from two. There was a small flower in a vase. I remembered the name of the song: “Blue Moon.” The flower was a nice touch, fragile and exotic, though that wasn't what caught my attention.

The flower took the place of something else. I was thinking of what that something might be when Walt, in an odd act of formality, took my right hand and shook it as if we were old friends who hadn't seen each other in years, or as if he were meeting me for the first time. Maybe both were true. It was Bernice's table. The red “Reserved” placard was gone.

Walt clapped his hands, and I supposed that meant it was time to get dinner going. Claire kept her arm folded in mine. We watched him go into the kitchen and listened to the clatter of pans. She sat in the booth and asked me to sit across from her.

“It won't take him long. We've been waiting for a while. Everything is ready. He thought you might be late for some reason.”

“Did he tell you why I might be late?”

“No,” she said, “just that you might be.”

“Nice boots,” I said. The bright turquoise blue boots were obviously hand tooled and made for impossibly small feet. Expensive. “They look new.”

“They were a gift from Walt. But they're not new. They're old. Just not worn much.”

My guess was that they had belonged to Bernice. It wasn't like Walt to keep something like that. It was even more unlike him to give them away as a present to someone he hardly knew.

I didn't feel like sitting. I didn't feel like standing either. I hesitated next to the booth. “I guess everything is ready,” I said, “except me.” I looked past her at the flower, which was as good a way as any to avoid meeting her eyes.

“Please, Ben,” she whispered, “sit down.”

“I think I should go.”

“I think you should stay.” It was her turn to look at the flower. “It's an orchid,” she said. “My mother used to raise them. Isn't it lovely?” When I didn't say anything, she said, “Walt knew my mother. I'm half Korean.”

“It's beautiful,” I said, thinking of my own mother, who didn't raise me, even as a hobby. “I have something in my truck I need to return to Walt. It'll only take a few minutes.”

She guessed I was considering not returning for dinner. “You can go, if that's what you want.” She took my hand in hers. “I wish you would stay. If you don't, you might regret it. It's up to you.”

I excused myself and went outside to unload the motorcycle. After I leaned the Victor against the side of the Quonset hut, I looked up at the stars and remembered Josh. He was in for a cold night. As for regrets, I couldn't make up my mind what I would regret more, leaving or staying. I still had to tell her about Josh and his employer, the husband I assumed, though a husband seemed like the farthest thing from her mind, and Walt's.

Still undecided, I walked along the back of the diner and past a small, high kitchen window. Inside, Walt was performing like a short-order cook
—
no wasted movement, everything in its place, or on its way to being in its place. He was totally involved in what had once been his life's work. He was whistling.

Skillfully, he took a large knife from a rack and sliced three pieces of meat, wiped the blade against his white apron in one swift motion, and tossed the knife end over end, where it caught on a magnet mounted on the wall. The knife, the kitchen, and Walt brought to mind Bernice, and that tragic evening forty years ago.

I went back into the diner and told Claire I needed to clean up
—
an understatement. It would take more than a few minutes in the men's room to get off the caked dirt and sweat. Arranging Josh's adventure had been dirty work. I did the best I could, then returned to Claire and took my seat at the single place setting. Walt was still busy in the kitchen.

“You're Walt's daughter,” I said, as casually as I could manage. I didn't know how or why, but I knew it was true as deeply as I had ever known anything. I was kind of proud of myself. It didn't last.

She grimaced, more with her eyes than her mouth. Unlike her smile, the grimace didn't travel; it was simply there. “Not exactly.”

Walt arrived with the plates positioned expertly down his left arm. One by one he set them down, first Claire, then himself, and then me. While he did this she slipped farther along the bench seat to make room for Walt. She shook her head a little to let me know the discussion we had just been having was, at least for the time being, over.

Walt stood back and admired the food. “A feast for my two favorite people. Enjoy.”

He might have meant Claire and me, but I think he meant himself and Claire. He was smiling at her when he said it. If I had been him, looking at her, I might have meant the same thing. In this set of three, I was the crowd. True, I had been invited. I just wasn't sure why. I didn't have much to say or do during dinner. I moved the food around on my plate instead of eating it.

What Walt had prepared for us didn't matter. It wasn't the usual roadside diner fare. There was soup, red meat with a sauce, a vegetable, and a few other dishes I didn't touch. The main course was watching and listening to the two of them consume each other. Claire spoke of her mother with a strange reverence. Walt told one story after another about Bernice as if she were still alive and might soon be the fourth to my third. A few times he paused in midsentence as if he had forgotten what he was saying.

Claire waited patiently for him to continue. She rested her head on his shoulder. I realized it wasn't a struggle for him to remember some small incident or habit of Bernice's; it was a struggle for him to forget. Eventually the food became cold. The pauses in the conversation grew longer.

Walt looked directly at me for the first time since the meal had begun. I was the leftover. I didn't mind. Being the witness was easy work. It gave me a chance to see someone I cared for happy, and someone I was trying hard not to care for just as happy.

Walt reached down with his big right hand and gripped the edge of the table. “Bernice was Claire's mother.” He was talking to me, though he seemed to be talking to himself, saying something important that he needed to say out loud. It certainly wasn't news to me.

She spoke quickly to fill the silence. “What's for dessert?”

Walt gave her a disheartened shrug. “I'm sorry.” His shoulders fell. Anyone might have thought he had been found guilty of a terrible crime. “I'm not much of a dessert man. I should have been thinking about you.”

It was my cue. “It just so happens I brought dessert.”

Claire smacked her lips and leaned across the table. “Whatever can it be?”

Walt didn't care what it was, as long as it didn't come from me. “Venison jerky is not a dessert.” To Claire, he said, “You don't want anything that's been rolling around in the back of that pigsty.”

Claire ignored him with a small laugh. I just plain ignored him and politely excused myself. A couple of minutes later I returned with a half gallon of butter brickle ice cream. Walt examined it briefly. “Is Maureen McCauley pregnant again?”

“Nope,” I answered. “You interested?”

Walt definitely was not interested. Claire definitely was, and announced her interest with zest. Walt sulked on his way to the kitchen to get bowls and spoons.

He came back carrying one bowl and one spoon and set it in front of Claire. “I have to clean up. You two will have to find something to talk about.”

That something had become clear midway through dinner. Claire's “not exactly” in answer to my guess that she was Walt's daughter meant she had to be Bernice's daughter, but not Walt's. All the possible explanations had gone through my head while they talked. Most were quickly dismissed. Claire was Bernice's daughter from before she met Walt? Wrong age. Bernice and Walt had a daughter they had given up for some reason? Not possible. Bernice had had an affair while married to Walt and Claire was the result? Absolutely possible, but knowing Walt Butterfield, if that were the case, we wouldn't be sitting around having dinner together. Walt wasn't the forgiving type, even if Claire had no choice in the matter.

Only one explanation remained and it was an ugly reach, though on some level it meant maybe Walt was the forgiving type after all, but only after a few years had passed
—
almost forty of them. It certainly wasn't the kind of thing I was about to bring up during dessert. If ever there was a mystery I was prepared to leave alone, this was it. Claire and I sat in silence.

Claire shouted for Walt to bring another bowl and spoon for me.

Walt shouted back, “Ben knows where the crockery is kept.”

True, I did know where the dishes and silverware were kept. I told Claire I didn't want any.

She made a big deal of rolling her eyes. “What was the quaint word you used to describe him?”

“Cranky,” I volunteered.

“No,” she said, watching him make more noise than necessary in the kitchen. “I believe the word was ‘asshole.' ” She smiled at me as if my description of Walt was a secret we shared. She took a few bites of ice cream and pushed the bowl away. “We thought you should know we're acquainted.”

“Acquainted?” I repeated.

“He likes you, Ben. You know he does. And you like him. You told me so. You might be his only friend.”

I admitted I could nearly guarantee that. “Though accidentally running across you in the desert seems to be putting a strain on my
—
what did you call him
—
friend? I don't know why he bothered to invite me for dinner.”

“My idea,” she said. “A few days ago after our walk around Desert Home.”

“Okay,” I said. “Makes sense, sort of.” I paused while I figured out how to word what I wanted to say without actually saying it. “You could have just told me who Walt is to you and left it at that. I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

She thought about what I had said. “That's what I was going to do. Except…”

“Except what?”

“I don't know how to explain it. I guess I just thought someone needed to see us together. Someone else needed to know. Maybe having someone see us and listen to us made it more real. Make any sense?”