The Weight of Gravity (5 page)

Is this the face of a melancholy angel, Daddy?
Erika turned her shoulders ever so slightly and raised her chin -- her eyes locked on the mirror.
Have I fallen from your grace?  I’m sorry.  I’ll do better, I promise.  You’ll see.
  She looked away. 
Oh, Max.  What are you doing here?

Max spent the night at the ranch and was up early.  He slept in the room with the cheap quartermaster furniture that was his parents’ bedroom set when he was a child.  The thought that he might have been conceived in this bed, on this very thin mattress, disgusted him enough to briefly consider sleeping on the couch. 

Doris had breakfast waiting when Max walked into the kitchen.  They didn’t speak until both were nearly finished eating.

“What’s the plan, Max?”

“Don’t know for sure.  Just know I need to talk to Erika.”

“Whatcha hoping to find, Max?  She’s married.”
              “You said that already.”  Max sat back in his chair.  He’d eaten three eggs, two pancakes, ham and sausage, and was feeling bloated.  “Doris, I’m lost.  I’m empty, angry and don’t know why.  I don’t have any answers.  I’m going on instincts and unsure of anything right now.”

“Well, tha
t kinda sums it up, doesn’t it?  She poured him a third cup of coffee. 

He took a moment to add cream, took a sip, then cupped his hands over the rim and felt the steam fill his palms.  It was a trick his father taught him,
to keep the coffee hot.  It was also a great way to warm your hangs before going out in the snow to muck the chicken coop, or lay in a new leech line.  Pop always had new jobs for him to do every weekend morning.  That was until he took a job changing tires at the Arco station along the highway north of Cottonwood.  After that, Pop rarely troubled him again to help around the ranch.

“This, I know,” he said.
  “Erika was a moment in my life when things made sense, when reality and fantasy were one, when life was not just sweet, but perfect.  I haven’t come close to being that happy since.”

“Well, then it makes sense you’d come home, Max Rosen.  Just hope you’re not chasing the impossible dream?”

“Any ideas where I should start?”

“Clay Baker.”

“I thought he moved to Hobbs, or Artesia.”  Max knew better, but didn’t want to admit it.

Doris began to stack
their dishes.  “He had enough of the oil fields about eight years ago and moved back.  His daddy got ill, so when he came for the funeral, he stayed on to take care of his mother.”

“Is he still married to Twyla?”

“Nah, he’s married to the Miller daughter, the young one, Cindy.  He’s got two grown boys by the first.  They live with him and Cindy out on the Villa Candelaria access road.  Go see him.”  She stood and carried the plates to the sink.  “Maybe he can give you some perspective on all of this.  Like you, Clay came back to Cottonwood.  Go see him, Max.”

             
Even though he knew he didn’t have to, Max asked Doris for permission to leave his personal things at the house.  All she said was, “Give me a frickin’ break,” and smiled.

             
He cruised past the trailer park where his mother died of cirrhosis of the liver at fifty-five, indigent of means after the divorce.  He passed the Baptist church where his young friends begged him to come sing in the choir and not understanding when Max told them he was still waiting for his messiah.  On the access road just south of the massive Quintis family homestead he came to a housing development with two hundred acres of clear-cut land and maybe a dozen homes built of adobe.  The architecture was modern, but the construction materials were as old as the dirt used to make the mud bricks.  It was an experimental community, where a nuevo-generation was attempting to blend ancient practice with contemporary design.  From the few homes scattered across the stark landscape, it appeared that the concept was a hard sell.

             
He drove slowly through the neighborhood.  At the far end of a cul-du-sac Max saw a man’s torso protruding from under the hood of a primer-painted 1956 Ford pickup.  He pulled to the curb, waited until the dust settled around the Jag and lowered the window.  Max had almost forgotten how extreme temperatures could vary between night and day in the desert.  A blistering noonday sun often gave way to chilly nights where a dusting of frost, like powdered sugar, would sometimes form along the rim of irrigation ditches. A lingering coolness from the night before was, even now, fighting a losing battle against a rising sun.  It was already hot, and the temperature promised to climb even higher throughout the day

             
“Excuse me!” Max shouted.  The man turned toward the Jaguar, wiping his hands with a pair of tattered cotton panties.  “I’m looking for Clay Baker … he lives somewhere in here.”

             
The man approached, leaned against the Jag with his greasy hands, and peered into the window.  “Who?”

             
“Baker.  Clay Baker?”

             
“Are you sure you’d recognize him if you saw him, asshole?”

             
A beat skipped between them.  “Yeah, I would if he hasn’t grown the most God-awful beard, and if he isn’t stupid enough to put his greasy hands on my hundred thousand dollar car.”

             
“Git your skinny, fuck-brained ass out of that hundred thousand dollar piece of cow manure before I drag it out, you hoity-toidy piss ant.”

             
“I don’t let anyone talk to me that way,” Max growled, getting out of the car and walking around to the bearded man.  “Unless of course, he’s a bigger shit-brain than I am.”  He smiled and they embraced.

             
“What the hell kind of piece of crap is this you’re working on?”  Max asked, walking over to the Ford.  The seats were nothing more than springs with tatters of foam, fabric and rotted leather.  The dashboard was completely dismantled, and the exterior was a patch-quilt of dull gray and black spots.

             
“Hey, be nice.  This was my daddy’s truck,” he said, rubbing the fender with the cotton panties.  “Just trying to keep it going, that’s all.  Beer?  Or is it too early for an intellectual like you.”

             
Clay led the way around the side yard to some rusted metal furniture on the back porch.  Max had never seen a more desolate, burned-off view in his entire life, stretching out ten or more acres in all directions.  In the backyard was a large in-ground pool with a submerged blue lawn chair and a dusting of dirt coating the bottom, and deflated floating toys crowding the surface.  He wiped the chipped paint off the seat with a handkerchief before he sat.  His pants alone, he thought, cost more than the entire set of lawn furniture -- new.

             
"What's that all about?" Max asked, gesturing at the expanse of clear-cut desert land.

             
"That's gold, my friend."

             
"You mean the color of the sand?"

             
"No.  Progress!  That land represents more riches than I ever saw working in the oil fields, particularly these days with the A-rabs and Kuwaitis gluttin the market with their Saudi crude.  Developin’ new communities for the aging generations is the new boom that's come to this God-forsaken country.  They're comin‘ in droves, too."

             
"You mean property developers?"

             
"Them and the folks to buy what the property corps are selling," Clay told him.  "Hell, I work for a firm that helped to build the new medical clinic.  Not because they're in the health business, but because they want to entice the snow-birds to leave their homes in the Midwest and relocate down here.  Then there's the Hollywood crowd."

             
"Hollywood?"  Max unhooked the top button of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves.  He’d need to go shopping for some cooler clothes if he extended his stay in Cottonwood, he thought.

             
"That's what we call em.  Hordes of thirty-somethings who made their millions in the movie business, or in the early days of the silicon, dot-com explosion.  Those folks are coming here too, to get away from the glut on the West Coast."

             
"Seems a shame, somehow."

             
"What?  That they finally found some use for this shit-hole?"  Clay laughed.  "You're just jealous you didn't stay around long enough to get in on the action."  He slapped Max's shoulder.  "Enough business.  Cin!” Clay shouted over his shoulder as he gestured for Max to take a seat.  “Beer, Woman!”

             
A petite woman with a spunky ponytail high on the side of her head and wearing a thin summer dress crashed through the screen door with four Lone Star beers.  She placed them on the metal table, two in front of each man, and smiled at Max.

             
“Cin, this here is ....” Clay began.

             
“Oh-my-God!  Oh-my-God!  You’re Max Rosen, the writer!  I’ve read abso-darn-lutely everything you have ever written.”  She clutched her hands to her chest and began to bounce up and down.

             
“Thanks.”

             
“No, you don’t understand.”  She stopped bouncing, reached out and grabbed Max’s are so tightly that he nearly spilled his beer.  “I cried when Marjorie De Leone left her husband and children behind to run off with Cliff.  I roared when Simon Mooney got stiffed in the ass by the corporation.  All of it!  Wonderful!”  She released him then and bounced behind him to stand on the other side of the table.  “Hell, you’re my favorite writer of all time!’

             
“Thanks for the beer,” Max said.

             
“Enough, already, Woman.  Let the man be.”

             
“I knew you and Clay were friends in high school, but I never thought you’d come here to visit us,” she said, ironing her dress with her palms while still bouncing lightly on her toes. 

             
“Didn’t I tell you, Woman, that I was the inspiration for all his books?”  He turned to Max.  “Remember in Miss Tuttle’s class when I told you that you should be a writer?  Remember that?”

             
“Yes, I do, Clay.”

             
“See, Woman, I told ya.”  Clay took a long draw on his bottle, then propped his dusty boots on the table and put his hands behind his head.

             
“Damn, are you gonna get something special tonight, honey!”  Cindy ran a finger along Clay’s shoulders and through his hair before she danced back into the house.

             
Max sipped his beer.  “She’s cute.”

             
“Yeah, robbed the cradle with that one, but hell.  Swe-e-e-e-t.  Too, she shops for unmentionables at the Vicky Secret in El Paso.  Huh?  What do you think of that?  That’s all I can say about it.  Except, she’s good with the boys, you know?”  He emptied his bottle, took aim at a rusty trashcan near the back door, and sent it sailing home.  The crashing sound it made when it disappeared into the can told Max that many more bottles met their fate in the same way.  “So, what do we owe the honor, Mister Max Rosen?  I haven’t seen nor heard from you since you bee-lined out of here after school.”

             
“Oh, I kept up on people, Clay.  I admired what I heard about you?”

             
“Really?  What’d I do?”

             
“You got out of this place not long after I did.”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“But you came back,” Max said.  “I never understood why you did that.”

             
Clay’s chin dropped and he pursed his lips, deep in thought.  When he looked up, Max saw him reach out to trace the neck of his second bottle with his fingertip.  “Had to.”  Clay upended the bottle of beer and nearly drained it.  He smacked his lips.  “But it was more than family obligation, Max.”  Clay then took a pack of Camels out from under his shirtsleeve and lit one.  He pulled the smoke deep into his lungs, but Max never saw him exhale.  “Cottonwood gets under your skin, into your blood.  Something about it makes it hard to stay away.  Once you got your fix, you crave it for the rest of your life.” He took another hefty drag.  “You and I both started here, so you probably know what I mean.  Hell, you’re back, aren’t you?

             
“Yeah, but I don’t know why.”

             
“Yes, you do.  You just won’t admit it to yourself.  That’s a hollow world out there, Max.  I tasted it.  Not like you, but I tasted it fine.  It’s bitter, and it don’t get any better the longer you stay away.  Here?  Now, here is where the questions are easy to answer and the nights can be sweet with the taste of a woman like Cin.  Life is rich here, if you let it happen, Max.”  He inhaled slowly, then blew three perfect smoke rings.  “Have you seen Erika yet?”

             
The question caught Max by surprise.  Admittedly, Erika was a major reason he’d returned, but he hadn’t anticipated that people would still think of the two of them together.  Has she lived all these years with that curse, he wondered?