Bad At Love: A Lyndy Martinez Story, Part-22

Lyndy Life Observation: A roadside billboard for a rural farm stand boasts: “100 Different Varieties of Beef Jerky to Choose From!” And that’s objectively too many kinds. No one needs that many choices for jerky. What are they? Classic, salt-n-pepper, spicy hot, teriyaki, mustard, barbecue, buffalo and … what?”

She’d forgotten how completely still and silent it could be here. There’s a certain low rumble of modern life: perpetual trains, distant freeways, air handlers, which human ears have grown accustomed to filtering. Yet even those backgrounds were imperceptible. It was unnerving now, to hear the sound of one’s own pulse.

Tilting her chin back, she saw the arc of the milky way, spanning horizon to horizon. Nothing like coming home—especially when one believed they never would.

They had no spare minutes to reminisce, nor did she want to. Dawn would be arriving in four short hours, and with it, unwanted attention. She planned to have a hole dug by then. First, she retrieved the large police Maglite from her trunk, switching it on. This thing had the appearance of a lightsaber, with floating dust particles defining the edges of the cone. To save battery, she shut off the ignition on the Ford.

Next she trekked in an ellipse, trying to ferret out the precise spot she’d buried the milk canister. Inside this metal container was the item McNair’s men were looking for all along. She kept one eye out for venomous snakes and scorpions as well; no doubt this was their territory.

It was harder than she’d hoped to locate. The only marking had been three white calcite stones in a triad, which at the time seemed an easy win—like one of those passwords you can’t possibly forget. But you do. “Just find those three white stones,” she’d told herself, and directly underneath, twenty inches deep would be the canister.

Unfortunately, like on the access road, the land had evolved. Water flowed across in irregular patterns. Small pebbles and rocks shifted downhill. Vegetation had pushed apart the surface crust—and maybe the occasional clawing rodent. Windstorms had no doubt blown sand in the crevices. Plus, since the cactus garden was no more, she had trouble getting her exact bearings. She could visualize roughly where the concrete supports had been for the airstream and from here, she reasoned the treasure ought to be about thirty yards west.

Dale stood by patiently, clutching a pickaxe, waiting for orders.

At last, she was forced to hazard a guess, as she only ever found one white stone sitting next to a small creosote. And one white stone was better than zero stones, so she asked Dale to come and start helping her dig. They would need to work together, if they hoped to have this thing unearthed prior to dawn.

---

Hours later …

As the sun began to ascend, kissing the ridge, rays of golden-yellow scattered across the valley. Their treasure hole also widened. Luckily, they did strike solid metal. It was the lid. Kneeling down, she brushed away sand and pebbles, then tested the top with a whack of her knuckle. It made a hollow sound, which was perfect. Mud hadn’t infiltrated. She glanced over to Dale, a coy grin on her lips. Then she tried turning it. Stuck. Maybe if they both gripped? Dale quickly knelt beside, put his hands at ten and two, and she positioned hers in between. Combined, they were able to break it free of the rusty seal and squeak clockwise; she twisted it the remainder and set the lid aside.

Reaching her arm into the dark cavity, she felt two bricks of cash, then the avocado shapes of three grenades—she placed these gently upon the sand like bird’s eggs. The money she pushed to the sides. Reaching in deeper, at last her fingers touched upon the cold steel of the Beretta.

She lifted it upward into the dawn light, wondering how poor a condition it would be. She feared it might be too rusted up to fire.

Colonel Rickman would hate for her to do what she wanted, but she undid the clip for the magazine and let it plunge into her empty hand. From her pocket she pulled five fresh 9-mm rounds.

She turned to look at Dale, who’d been continuing to kneel. He locked eyes with her. The early light now illuminated the western mountains, bathing them in a rosy glow. It was easier to see all around, including the white car.

She sighted through the barrel.

She wanted to practice shooting, knowing it had been a very long time.

But Dale grunted, pointing southward to the end of her road, where they’d cut the lock to the driveway. A dust cloud had formed, and seeing this, now she heard a buzzing motor. Someone was coming in one of those newfangled side-by-sides. Great.

---

Later that day …

“The Spitfire Lives! Hallelujah. See, I don’t hear one single peep from ya’ll in twenty plus years—not even a holiday card. I assume you went to the great dude ranch in the sky. Then today I spot your janky ass Mustang through my telescope and think, Debbie Kowalski lost her damn mind. Debbie can see ghosts—the ghost of Melinda Martinez out haunting Amboy by night.” Debbie laughed aloud.

“The dude ranch in the sky. Something tells me that isn’t where I’m headed.” Lyndy was studying a large hairy caterpillar, slinking along Miss Kowalski’s hacked together plywood kitchen counters. God only knew where it came from—the fifth dimension? It was nearly the warmest part of the day in one of the driest valleys in the state. And the only measure of cooling was a home-made swamp chiller, functioning on a 500 square foot cabin.

“My polish grandma used to say, if you’re gonna be stupid, you better be tough,” croaked Debbie, while she eyed a turkey thermometer resting against the wall of a cast iron pan. The 16-inch pan contained a lake of scalding-hot canola oil. In her fist, tongs and a battered chicken breast—the first of eight to fry for their brunch feast.

Debbie’s teeth needed work; this was evident whenever she laughed.

“Amen to that,” added Lyndy with an exhale. Her eyelids were drooping. She rested them a moment, slouching in a kitchen chair salvaged from a curb on garbage day. Atop the round spool table rested the cursed Beretta. She’d been afraid to let it out of her sight. Next to her, Dale was nodding off with his head jammed in a wall corner. A trickle of drool had accumulated on his shirt.

The closest thing Lyndy could compare Miss Kowalski to, was a cross between a one-eyed pirate and a Mad Max film extra. Her Wonder Valley ranch was walled in shipping containers, tin-sided lean-tos and green plastic tanks for water. Debbie’s intellect shined through in every imaginative contraption that surrounded her. The homestead personified the lady.

Yet her eccentric inner nature—long concealed under layers of decorum, youth and cheerful positivity—now had taken root. She spoke like a cynical recluse who’d completely exited society to live, not just off the grid, but on their own special planet. She claimed to have cured her own case of stomach cancer. And she looked like she’d spent way too many afternoons in the sun. Admittedly, some might offer the same opinions on Lyndy.

You didn’t just go out and adopt this lifestyle after seeing a blog post on the internet. One had to be born with the pioneer spirit in their soul, or they wouldn’t last a month. You had to be your own doctor, as well as psychologist, plumber, electrician, home decorator, snake wrangler and anything else.

In addition to the above, Debbie seemed to have developed a new passion for cowboy cooking. Thirty years ago, it wasn’t the case.

When the thermometer needle had reached the correct temp, Debbie dunked the first chicken breast into the oil causing it to sizzle. She had cornbread muffins in the oven. These were on a timer—that wind-up kind from the seventies.

“Makes no sense, ya know,” commented Debbie, as she wiped excess flour off her hands onto her shirt. “With our two lifestyles, how is it you look fifty-percent attractive? Dare I say … cute. You got an anti-aging secret I should know about?”

“Definitely not. You’re asking the wrong lady,” answered Lyndy, pushing aside a dusty survival magazine, making room on the table to lay her sketch pad flat. She set the Beretta down out of the way on the magazine, barrel facing the door.

From her shirt pocket Lyndy fished a charcoal pencil. She began to mark the outline of a human head and shoulders.

It was a weight off her mind being around another blast from the Mojave past. Good fortune their unannounced visitor had been someone she knew, an old friend, not a weirdo who might’ve disrupted their plans. Plus, she really needed a pal with handyperson skills.

 “Trust me, Deb. I didn’t look in a mirror for about eight years in my forties and I gained a ton of weight.” Lyndy reached over with a wadded-up napkin and dabbed at Dale’s chin, wiping him off while he continued sleeping. “My appearance was the last thing on my mind.”

“Speaking of folks losing their marbles. I can’t believe that old dude is Deputy Keynes,” remarked Debbie, as she sunk another of the golden battered chicken breasts. “I literally wouldn’t have recognized him unless you told me.”

“He’s been this way for a decade or more. Miranda and the twins stopped visiting him five years ago, and when that happened, I started to. If not me, no one else would come.”

Lyndy began to sketch an oval, connecting curved lines where the face would come together. “Mainly, it’s the speech part of his brain which is mis-firing, but the rest of him still works.”

Debbie spun around a moment, oil dripping from the tongs onto bare wood slats, and raised an eyebrow. “All of him?”

Lyndy met eyes with Debbie. She chuckled. “I wouldn’t know.”

“Sorry. He’s your ex,” said Debbie, turning back to the propane stove. “All of me works, but only half as well as it used to. That’s what scares me.”

“Same here. Well, technically my eyes are like twenty-five percent.”

Outside the salvaged kitchen window, in the sun, the white fastback sat idle. They were safe, because Debbie’s property was three miles from the nearest two-lane road, and no one here liked visitors—truly the equivalent of Timbuktu. As long as they rested here, McNair couldn’t find them.

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Lyndy Life Observation: Miss Rita Lovelace was the only person I ever knew who said they attended a wedding and someone actually objected. It was such a large gathering and with no microphone in the audience, the objection was difficult to hear. They protested on the grounds that the groom had once been married to his sister and treated her unkind. Didn’t matter. The ill-fated wedding thundered on like a runaway train. Few people understood the man fully, not even the priest, just knew someone had voiced an opinion.

Post lunch, Dale amused himself by pressing the keys on an old Casio keyboard, which was missing every black key.

With her stomach digesting one of the tastiest and most high caloric meals she’d had in months, Lyndy lounged in a lawn chair while Debbie, somehow highly alert, worked on getting her MIG welder up and running. Her goal was to help Lyndy mend the cracked fender, and Lyndy was extremely grateful. The Spitfire had already parked the right front wheel on a ramp, and they stacked several bricks under the frame to keep it high. This angle would save Debbie’s knees and give her an optimal angle for the work. With part of an old barbeque brush, she’d roughed up the surface and removed excess dirt.

Debbie then took a seat on an upside-down plastic crate, while she tacked several key spots along the span of the fender.

Yards away, Lyndy propped her ankles on top of an oil barrel, half buried in sand. She continued finalizing her sketch, a charcoal pencil in one hand and a gummy eraser in the other. The light was good here, but the flies were bothersome.

After completing a series of inch-long segments, each on different portions to avoid warping the thin metal, Debbie seemed satisfied with progress. She took a break. She stood up, stretched her back, then paced to where Lyndy was sitting.

She raised her dark goggles, leaning in to inspect Lyndy’s work.

“I didn’t know you were such an artist?” She pronounced the word R-Teest.

“Only out of necessity,” replied Lyndy.

“Why are you sketching a bearded middle-eastern man?”

Lyndy chuckled, pointing with the coal pencil. “Thank you! I was just about to ask what this looked like. Now I have my answer.” Lyndy sat up, gazing out to a savannah-like expanse of sage which bordered the property on two sides. Dogs were barking and someone very distant had a radio or boombox—but the music was indistinct.

“You ever get together with your neighbors out here?”

“Oh yeah. Of course. Some are nice. Some are plain nuts.”

“What do you do for fun?”

“Tetherball. Archery. Stuff like that,” answered Debbie. “Talk about weird overnight AM conspiracy radio. Comic books. The kleptocracy. Scorpions. Our failed marriages.”

Lyndy nodded while she blew some excess eraser dust from the corners of her pad.

“Deb. I figure you’re the perfect person to ask. What would you do if you wanted to fake your own death? Would you go to Mexico? South America?” Lyndy raised an eyebrow. “Or, would you do it Anne Frank style? Disappear in plain sight.”

Debbie looked out at her dystopian future settlement of survivalist camper vans and lean-tos. She fanned her face with a square of sheet metal, part of an old sign.

“I mean, I’d probably do just exactly what I’m doing now, only alter my name. Something like Debbie Dootson. Has a certain ring to it and I’ve never met another Dootson. Tell the banks the old Debbie died of a stroke.” Debbie cackled. “Anyone trying to find me would have a hell of a time out here.” She sniffed her stuffy nose, still gazing to the distance. “Not like anyone cared much about Deborah Kowalski. Sure as heck wouldn’t care about anyone named Deb Dootson. Doesn’t sound like a winner.”

Lyndy nodded. “Wise.” She checked on Dale to see what he was up to. He was on his feet, smiling, admiring Debbie’s collection of garden gnomes, greenhouses and tomato plants. “Is he who you mean? This fella you’re drawing, he did that?” Debbie questioned.

“No. Actually, in the case of Mr. Aloyan, I’m about certain. He didn’t even do a very good job and he’s not fooling anyone. I don’t know why it took so long to convince myself of it. But I imagine the way his wife was behaving made me doubt my instincts.”

“Then who are you referring to?”

“Rita,” said Lyndy.

Debbie didn’t reply immediately, but clearly she recognized the name, inhaling deeply. “That impetuous woman always treated me like I was beneath her.”

“I know. But I think Rita Lovelace pretended to die in a plane crash.”

“Highly ambitious plan,” said Debbie. “But knowing her, it sounds like a scheme she’d be capable of.” Snapping on her goggles, she went back to her welding.

---

Back in the 70s …

It was as though she blacked out. In more ways than one.

Her last distinctly formed memory, was hearing Miss Lovelace insult Dr. Tarner, and then her heels on those stairs. She must have ended up with Graham and Tarner, else how could she have gotten down the stairs on her own?

But Lyndy awoke to the sensation of tumbling—literally somersaulting—and her body being bruised by hard asphalt. Then cars and trucks swerving, honking and angry shouting. A man was yelling: “Get out of the street!” She was terrified, feeling her way and crawling on hot, filthy pavement. Gravel stuck to her hands and abrasions.

And she knew she was in the middle of a busy avenue.

Lyndy felt like a wounded animal and profoundly alone in that moment, unable to see, not knowing where to go. Being blind and not yet adapted was the most helpless experience in the world. When she heard the revving on an engine, she believed she would die.

But then a screech of breaks. She held up her hand instinctively, in the path of the oncoming car as if that simple act or resistance could have any affect.

The car halted. Angry people started shouting at the driver to move. The door opened and she heard a voice. “Stand up Lyn!” commanded Rita, breathlessly.

“I can’t,” Lyndy pleaded.

Rita’s feet were bare and they slapped on the hot pavement.

She felt Rita’s noodly supermodel arms wrap around her waist, and the sensation of her body being dragged to the car. Other impatient drivers honked, and Rita threatened them to back off.

“I’ve been racing around searching for you for forty-five minutes,” Miss Lovelace complained. She kicked open the passenger door. Then like a sack of rice, Rita shoved Lyndy onto the seat, turning her over and stuffing in her legs so the door could shut.

“We gotta leave town right now!” Rita stomped on the gas.

“Aren’t we going to a hospital?” questioned Lyndy, who was contorted upside down in her seat. They swerved into a complete one-eighty at the next intersection, rolling her against the window.

“Heck no,” said Rita. “We aren’t stopping till after we hit stateline. Cali or bust.”

Lyndy couldn’t see the color, yet judging by the jerky motions of the car and honking horns, she knew they were blowing through red lights.

“Wait why?” demanded Lyndy, as she righted herself with a hand on the a-pillar and another braced on the seat cushion. “Doesn’t Tarner have what he wants?”

Rita took a breath. She could hear the roar of the straining engine as they accelerated onto the interstate. “I still have the flute,” she answered calmly. Rita patted her dress, at belly-button level.

“Then what is it you put back into the display case?”

“Remember all those pine-tree sticks in the backyard at the Shirley Temple house?”