Interlude Stories: Kip Hanson

RIDING THE UNION PACIFIC - KIP HANSON

“C’mon, Johnny, run. Get up here, douchebag.”

Johnny sprinted after the westbound Union Pacific, stumbling over the small rocks and blackened scree bordering the tracks. The engine was a distant rumble ahead, rising in pitch, and Johnny knew he would soon be left behind; worse, he would be prone to terrific ridicule from his twin brother later that night. He tripped and nearly fell, but with a final gasping effort reached out to catch his brother’s hand. Charlie swung him up to the rail, clapping him on the back once his grip was secure. Together, they climbed to the top of the car.

Despite the heat of the Arizona sun overhead, the air blowing past was chill, and the boys sprawled out upon the roof of the container, glad for its metallic warmth and enjoying the delicious feel of the air streaming over their bodies. On the horizon, a monstrous serpent crept across the desert landscape - Interstate 10, stretching from Jacksonville, Florida to nearby LA. And there in the middle loomed the tunnel, a black, yawning hole bored through and under the long spine of desert rock on which the freeway ran.

As they neared the tunnel’s maw, the boys sat up in anticipation of its dreadful thrill - the mysterious graffitied walls running past, the dark and sooty concrete of the ceiling flying scant inches above their heads. If they were lucky, the eastbound train would come while they were still inside, making the cars rock and the tunnel black; the whistle would blow and the air compress around them until breath and sight and hearing was lost. It was terrifying and marvelous, and was what the boys yearned for above all else on this sunny December day.

On the bridge overhead, a highway patrol car sat on the shoulder of the Interstate. A man in uniform stood at the rail, waving at the boys, and they could just make out the sound of his voice yelling down at them. “Hellooo, below there! You boys, what the hell are you think…” and then he was past, drowned out by the sudden strident blare of the train’s whistle. Charlie grinned at his brother as they were swept into the tunnel, ducking their heads a split second before the transom whipped past.

The engine passed through the tunnel and out into the desert. As the locomotive approached the junction ahead, they heard the deep rumble of the engine idling down as the train slowed to pass through town. Charlie swung over the edge. Hanging from the rail, he ran alongside the steel wheels, matching the speed of the train exactly before leaping to the dusty shoulder below. He landed perfectly, then turned to jeer at his brother as he landed wrong and narrowly avoided cartwheeling into a stand of Cholla cactus.

Suddenly, a deep voice came from behind. “Alright, boys. You two, get on over here, right now!”

He turned to see a highway patrol car parked at the shoulder. The officer from the freeway overpass stood alongside, his hands planted squarely on his hips, his broad black moustache bristling forbiddingly. Charlie walked slowly over to the car and stopped before the officer to accept judgment, his brother trailing slightly behind him nursing a bruised elbow.

“I’m Officer Cummins. I saw you from the Interstate. Just what in the Sam Hill do you idiots think you’re doing?”

Charlie considered a wisecrack, but for once in his young life was prudent and kept his mouth shut. He hung his head, appropriately contrite, and said nothing.

“What are your names and where do you live?” he demanded.

Charlie looked up at the officer. “I’m Charles Hoffman, sir, and this is my brother, John. We live at Saguaro View Terrace.”

“Okay then, boys. Let’s go. Into the back of the car with the both of you. We’ll have us a little chat with your parents.”

They drove through town and into the development where the boys lived, pulling up before a neat two-story with tan stucco sides and a red-tiled roof above. A long row of struggling Texas Sage guarded the sidewalk. An attractive woman in her late thirties came to the door, looking furious, and began hollering before the boys were even out of the car. “What have you two gotten into now?” she yelled.

The patrolman herded the boys to the porch and stuck out his hand. “Hello, ma’am. I’m Officer Cummins. Are you Mrs. Hoffman?”

“Yes, Officer. What have these two scats done now?”

He removed his hat, reluctant now that he saw the punishment these two boys were facing, somewhat chagrined at his part in it. “Well, ma’am, it seems your boys like to ride the UP into town is all. I caught 'em jumping off near 4th Street, over by the mall. Other than that, they’ve been quite well-behaved.”

She looked skeptical, but despite her anger was a bit charmed by this tall man with his dark eyes and handsome face. “I doubt that, Officer Cummins, but thank you for returning them to me. I’ll make sure their father deals with them accordingly. Get upstairs, young men, right now! And thank you again, Officer. Hopefully we won’t be seeing you again anytime soon. Have a good day, sir.” Before she could say another word, the boys fled through the foyer, into the living room, past the Christmas tree, and up the stairs to the relative safety of their bedroom, with Turk the black Lab barking at their heels.

Later that evening, they heard the dreaded footsteps of their father ascending the stairs. Johnny looked over at his brother. “It was your idea, Charlie.”

“That’s bullshit, John-O, and you know it.”

“You’re a jerk.”

“And you’re an ass…” Just then the door opened. Their father came in, looking tired, and sat on the bed. “Alright, which of you two cares to explain?”

“Well, Pop, it’s like this. Charlie thought it would be fun to…”

“You shut up, Johnny. You’re not putting this one on me, you doof…”

Their father raised his hands, “Okay, both of you stop it, right now. I don’t want to hear it.” Sensing the man’s distress, Turk came over and nuzzled his palm. “You’re a good boy,” he said, and scratched the dog behind the ears. He looked at Charlie. “Now, no more of your nonsense. Just tell me what happened.”

Charlie explained to their father how, earlier that summer, they’d noticed how the trains slowed as they passed by the development, and that in school they’d read a book about hobos. On a dare, they’d decided to jump on. “It’s boring around here, Pop. Ever since you moved us out here ...”

He raised his hand. “We’re not starting that discussion again. I already told you, I had no other choice.”

“Sorry, Pop. It’s just…it’s fun to sit on top of the train cars, and to ride into town and walk around the mall and stuff. And Johnny, he has a girlfriend that works at the 7-11 there and he…”

“I do not!”

Their father grinned. “Okay, boys. Enough of this. What you did was stupid and dangerous. You could have been killed. I’m grounding you both to the house for one week.”

The boys were stunned. “But, Pop. It’s Christmas vacation! That’s not fair.”

“This is your own fault, boys. You knew better. Any more complaints and we’ll make it two.”
                     
They made it three days. On Wednesday morning after their twenty-second game of Halo, Charlie threw down his controller. “Let’s go see the Bleak-Man.”

“No, we can’t. You’re going to get us in trouble, stupid.”

“So what? C’mon, you girl, they’ll never know. Let’s go. Just for a little while, okay?”

*

“Hey, Gus. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. What are you guys up to? I thought your old man grounded you?”

Charlie slapped their friend Augustus Bleak on the back and said, “Yeah, well, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right, Gus?”

“Yeah, sure. So what do you guys want to do? I’m bored out of my skull.”

At that moment, they heard the distant wail of the Union Pacific. Charlie grinned. “I’ve got an idea. Go get your jacket, Gus.”

The train was already moving at a good clip by the time they reached the crossing at the edge of the development. Charlie was the first on board, and reached down for a handful of Gus’s baseball jacket while Johnny shoved from behind. It was Gus’s first time on the train. Johnny jumped on behind him and swung up to the rail just before the gravel shoulder gave way to desert scrub. “Good fun, eh’, Bleak?”

As they reached the top of the car, they sat down in a semi-circle near the back. Gus smiled nervously. Charlie pointed to the tunnel, still a mile or so distant. “Now, don’t freak out when we get there. It looks tight, and you have to keep your stupid head down, but I’m telling you there’s room, okay? We’ve done it a million times.”

Gus snugged his Diamondbacks cap down around his head. He looked doubtful, but nodded in agreement. “Sure, Chuck. No problem.”

As they approached the mouth of the tunnel, Gus was increasingly apprehensive.

“You sure there’s room, guys?”

“Yeah, it’s cool. Just chill out, Gus. It’s okay.”

Gus began to sidle towards the edge, glancing anxiously between the darkness of the tunnel ahead and the ground speeding past below. “Jesus, you guys, I don’t know if I can do this.”

At that moment, they saw the bright headlight of the eastbound train, coming their way. The dim light of the tunnel was eclipsed and Charlie hooted in anticipation. Suddenly, Gus turned white with terror and grabbed for the rail. Johnny screamed at him, “No, Gus, don’t!” and reached for his legs as Gus slid face-first off the trailing end of the car. His baseball cap sailed high into the air.

Johnny yelled out, “Help me, Charlie. I can’t hold him.” Charlie leaped up and ran to his brother, heaving at Gus’s pants leg. He snagged the hood of Johnny’s sweatshirt, and saw Gus hanging upside down between the cars, dangling over the coupling. “Hold on, Gus, we got you, ” he yelled, but started to lose his grip on his brother’s gray sweatshirt. He grabbed at Johnny’s shoulders, struggling to pull their friend to safety, but it was no good. He was going to lose them both. With a tremendous effort, he seized his brother under the armpits, heaving him up and backwards. Johnny stumbled, but managed to wrap his arms around Gus’s legs and had dragged him most of the way back onto the train when the sun-warmed eastern wall of the overpass struck Charlie from behind at thirty miles per hour.

Charlie woke to see the kind face of Officer Cummins, kneeling over him. “It’s okay, boy. I’ve got you. You just hang on now. Help is coming.”

“Where’s Johnny?”

A momentary shadow passed over Officer Cummins’s dark eyes. “Don’t you worry about it, Charlie. Everything will be alright. You rest now.” Charlie closed his eyes.

Charlie climbed into the backseat of the family car, his mother in the passenger seat, his father behind the wheel. They drove through town, avoiding the Interstate, and arrived fifteen minutes later at the church. His father held his mother by the arm and led her inside. Her eyes were dry and glassy-looking. The caskets stood at the front of the church on gleaming metal platforms, and were covered in a soft, lavender-colored fabric. They had a vague floral pattern and looked soft and pleasant to the touch – Charlie wanted to rub his hand across it, to see how it felt.

His mother gave out a small gasp behind him, almost a hiccupping sound, and he turned to see his father lifting her from behind by the elbows, sort of carting her down the aisle on her heels and into the pew to the right of the lavender caskets. The church was filled with whispering. Charlie looked about at his friends and neighbors and then across the aisle to Gus’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bleak, weeping quietly beside the casket of their only son.

From the pew behind, there was Mrs. Berlanzer, offering his parents a brave smile; her husband reached across and clasped Charlie’s father on the shoulder. The Jensen family from two doors down was there across the aisle. Officer Cummins sat in his dress uniform three pews back. And in the back of the church, off to the right, two boys sat near the door, staring at Charlie. The one closest to him was dressed in a gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head; the other wore a baseball jacket and cap, snugged down low. His eyes glittered in the dim candlelight.

Charlie turned away, glancing again at the caskets only a few feet distant, and wondered what the boys looked like in there, and whether they’d been mangled by their passage beneath the train. It was rumored that Gus had been cut in half by the wheels. He considered for a moment that maybe, just maybe, Gus and Johnny were not really inside at all, that this was a joke, some kind of terrible mistake. But no – he turned again to look at the boys sitting in back, and knew the truth.

The minister entered the church and passed to the altar. After a moment of silence, he began. “Dear friends, we gather today to mourn the passing of two fine young men. We gather so that we may remember them, and praise them, and commend them into the loving arms of…” At that moment, Charlie’s mother shrieked and fell to the aisle, reaching out to the altar, sobbing uncontrollably. His father picked her up and carried her outside. Charlie followed. As they passed, his friends and neighbors watched in silence, grim-faced and sympathetic. Officer Cummins stood with tears in his eyes.

Charlie pushed through the double-doors and passed into the warm sunlight outside. He held the door for a moment, to take a final look at the people he left behind, at the caskets on their gleaming stands, at Officer Cummins standing grief-struck. And as he let the door swing shut, he realized that the boys who’d been sitting in the last pew were gone.

That night, he sat in the living room, alone with his parents. The TV sat flickering, unwatched and silent. Every few minutes his mother would weep quietly, helplessly. His Pop stared out the window, the drink at his elbow untouched. After a while, Charlie could stand no more; he said goodnight and went up to his room. As he reached the top of the stairs, he turned and called for Turk, but the dog sat whining at the bottom and refused to come. After a few tries, Charlie gave up and walked the short hallway to his room. As he opened the door, he groaned quietly in terror.

Johnny sat on the bed, his gray sweatshirt pulled over his head. The lower half of his face was stove in, his left arm swung loosely from a flattened shoulder. Gus sat opposite him on Johnny’s old bed, his baseball jacket split neatly across the chest from shoulder to hip, the two halves of his body leaning awkwardly against one another. He reached up to adjust his baseball cap, and smiled at Charlie standing in the doorway. As Charlie watched, Johnny stood on wrecked knees and shuffled across the room to embrace his brother.

“What…no. Johnny? What are you doing here? What…oh, no. Johnny!” He fell to his knees, sobbing. Johnny reached down to comfort his brother, lifted him up and carried him over to the bed and set him on the covers. A small noise came from the doorway, and Johnny turned to see his father standing there, Turk huddling at his side. The dog barked once, then tucked his tail between his legs and bolted down the hall. Their father stared after him for a moment, then reached in, turned off the light and closed the door to the bedroom. “Goodnight,” he said.

That night, Charlie dreamed of the boys. Johnny and Gus were running down the gleaming metal length of the tracks, small stones and gravel flying from their shoes as they fled. They were beautifully untouched, had not yet been crushed by the Union Pacific, had strength and breath and life left before them. And they were terrified. Behind them came the shrill whistle of the locomotive, bearing down on them, and they ran and they ran but still they weren’t fast enough. As they neared the tunnel, a toothless black mouth in the side of the Interstate, Gus tripped and fell and was instantly swallowed up by the churning steel wheels, his body dissolving into nothing more than a pink mist, floating on the desert air.

Johnny dared to look back, and over his shoulder saw Charlie at the controls of the locomotive, Gus standing alongside, a victorious grin stretched across his skeletal face. With one final blast of the whistle, Johnny fell beneath the wheels and was gone.

Charlie woke to the lonely sound of the train somewhere in the distance, and passed again into a fitful sleep.

The next morning, Charlie came down for breakfast. He walked into the kitchen to see his mother at the table, a bowl of cereal untouched before her, the carton of milk sitting warm at her elbow. “Mom, you need to eat,” he said, but before she could reply, Turk jumped from beneath the table and began to howl, a fearful baying which echoed off the walls and ceiling. Charlie’s mother started to shriek incoherently at the dog, “Stop it, oh please stop, you bastard!” His father rushed in, grabbed her by the arms and shook her gently until she fell to the chair crying. As his Pop opened the door to shoo the dog outside, Charlie saw Gus standing on the patio, peering in through the window. His baseball cap was perched jauntily on his head, and a silly grin sat on his ruined face. Through the open door, he saw his brother in the yard, waving for him to come outside. Charlie moaned in terror.

Later that day, his mother slept upstairs in her room. His father had left for work hours before. Charlie lay in his bed, but was finally unable to bear any longer the room he had once shared with his brother and came downstairs. As he passed through the living room, he saw the Christmas tree there, the gifts lying unopened, the tree weeping needles like brown tears. His brother huddled on the floor to one side of the tree, a small package in his hands. He looked up at Charlie with a look of terrible grief in his eyes, and motioned for him to come to him.

“Oh, Johnny, don’t do this to me. Why are you here? Why do you stay?” Charlie advanced on his brother, angry now. “Johnny, you’re dead!” he shouted. “You have to leave.” Johnny grimaced, but again motioned for Charlie to come over. And so Charlie came, and sat cross-legged on the floor opposite his dead brother. With trembling hands, he took the gift and opened it.

Within he found a small replica train whistle, on its side an image of a steam locomotive, engraved in beautiful detail. His breath caught, and a single tear fell on the train. As Charlie looked to his brother for answers, Johnny nodded mutely that he should try it. He raised the whistle to his lips and blew, sounding a terrific blast. Upstairs, his mother screamed in her sleep. But in the distance, Charlie heard the answering whistle of the Union Pacific, and suddenly knew what he must do.

Charlie walked along the tracks, listening for the train. He knew it wouldn’t be long now. The day was sunny and warm - he thought about his parents, and poor lost Johnny, the way Gus pulled his hat down low. As he approached the tunnel where his brother had died, he saw Office Cummins there, kneeling at the foot of a small wooden cross erected along the shoulder of the tracks. It was painted a glossy white with black lettering. Officer Cummins was weeping, “Oh, you boys. I’m so sorry. If only I could have stopped you. Good Lord, why? Why did you have to take these poor, dear boys?”

Charlie stopped behind the officer, reached out to touch his shoulder. “It’s okay, Officer Cummins. I’m sorry. You did the best you could. It was my fault. Everything is my fault.”

As Charlie’s hand fell upon the officer’s shoulder, a shudder ran through him and he spun around, a terrific look of fear on his face.  He jumped to his feet. “Oh, Charlie. You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing here, son?”

“I needed to come, Officer Cummins. There’s something I have to do here.”

The patrolman, cautious now, looked down at Charlie. “What do you mean, boy? Are you okay?”

“Oh yes. Yes. I’ll be fine, sir.” He held up the whistle. “I just need to put this here, to…to remember Johnny and Gus.”

Officer Cummins glanced at the whistle in his hands. “Do you need a ride home, son?”

“No, sir, I can walk.” He hesitated. “And, sir? Thanks for taking care of me, after the accident.”

“You’re welcome, Charlie.”

Charlie watched as Officer Cummins climbed up the hill and back to his car waiting on the shoulder of the Interstate. As the car pulled away, Charlie turned to see Johnny and Gus standing next to him. “Okay, guys. I get it,” he said, and placed the whistle at the base of the cross. With the lonely sound of the Union Pacific coming down the tracks, he took the hands of his brother and friend, and sat on the tracks to wait.

BIO: Kip lives in Tucson, where he wastes time blogging about unimportant things at http://misterass.com. He writes to keep the flying monkeys away.

A Twist Of Noir 415 - Kip Hanson

LITTLE FLOWER - KIP HANSON

It was the fat girl who started it, the blonde girl two doors down. She was nothing more than a dumb guera, yet the girl’s parents had lovingly named her Holly twenty-two years before. Flor woke to hear the guera stupidly pounding on the walls, kicking at the door, until after fifteen minutes or so vigilant Cal took notice. He came, lurching down the stairs and up the hallway and the guera screamed at him. Cal took her up the stairs, slammed the door, and moments later came the muffled sound of a gunshot. Cal was short like that sometimes.

There’d been seven of them. At night they called out to each other, when the lights went out and they lay in the dark, the only illumination that of a small nightlight. Jimmy had come up with this brainstorm after one of the girls had screamed and thrashed about so much in the dark that she’d hurt herself, and Cal had been forced to take care of her. Jimmy had also come up with the great idea to pump in music - love songs mostly, sappy stuff like Jim Croce and Neil Diamond. It played all day long until the girls went crazy from hearing it, until finally the fluorescents overhead went dim and the nightlights came on and then all was quiet again for another worried night.

Most of them were Mexican, except for the dead guera named Holly and a big horse-faced girl named Martha. Once or twice each week, Cal and his son Jimmy would shoot them up with the horse tranquilizer Cal used in his veterinary practice and would take turns on them. Sometimes they forced two or more of the girls together so they could watch. When this happened, Flor would close her eyes, and then she and the other girl would be alone, far away from this place. She would never have to see Jimmy Meechum or his hateful father again.

Jimmy had captured her cutting across the border into Arizona. She and her friend Beatriz and another girl Flor didn’t know but who called herself Inez had stole across one night from San Vicente, looking for work in the hotels and restaurants of Patagonia and Green Valley. Jimmy had quietly walked up behind them in a wash and told them to stop, but Beatriz tried to run away and Jimmy shot her in the back with a pistol he’d taken from an illegal six months before. He left her there for the coyotes.

He’d forced Flor and the girl called Inez into the back of a white and green Suburban with Border Patrol markings, had tied them up and gagged them and put pillowcases over their heads. Finally, he’d injected each of them in the leg with 150 milligrams of Ketamine. She’d woken in this room some time later. She never saw Inez again.

She knew they'd kept her for just less than two years. One day not long after coming here, she’d risked her life by hiding a plastic knife from Cal while he cleaned up the dinner dishes. With it, she’d begun scraping a little stripe of paint from the bottom railing of her bed every night when the lights went out. She counted ninety-three sets of seven stripes each – six hundred fifty-one days of captivity, down one metal rail and up the next. The plastic had become keen as a razor.

Flor had seen five girls come and go. Her turn was coming. She knew that Cal would one day lose his temper as he had with the guera and take her outside. She had to get away, but it was not possible - there was no way out except through Cal and Jimmy. She wept at her helplessness, and her fear.

When she was a little girl, her grandfather had held her on his knee and told her stories of the Mexican Revolution, about how he’d fought as a boy not much older than she was then. He’d held her close and called her his Flor Peque, his little flower, and told her stories about La Insurreccion, about how the people had risen up and fought against the hated Porfiriatos, how they’d ousted first Diaz and then Huerta, had killed that awful bastard Zapata. Years later, he’d fought again in the Cristero War, fought for the church and the rights of the clergy. In return, the federal army slew his mother and father.

As a teenager, she’d heard stories from her father, her tall handsome Papito, that he’d been a student demonstrator in Mexico City during the Tlatelolco massacre in 1968. He’d lost the use of his left arm when a soldier of the Olympic Battalion had struck him in the neck with the butt of a shotgun. His brother, her uncle whom she’d never known, had tried to pull them to safety in the garden of a nearby house, but had been shot from a nearby helicopter. The soldiers came back later and took her uncle’s body away, tossing him into the back of an army truck atop a heap of students and teachers and innocent bystanders. Some of those in the pile of bodies were still moving.

And now, Flor heard again the words of her Papito and her long-dead grandfather, and knew that she must fight as well. But she didn’t know how. Underneath her bed, there was a small gap where the painted plywood walls met the concrete. At night, she crawled under her bed and rested her face on the cool ground, whispered to Esmerelda in the cell next to hers.

She told her friend about her grandfather and the death of her uncle and how her Papito had fought the government oppression. Be ready, Esmerelda, one day our chance will come. We will fight. She asked the girl to pray with her, told her how the Virgin Mary and her blessed son Jesus came to her in her dreams. They told her to be ready. Esmerelda turned away, and said she knew nothing of faith. They were all dead.

Jimmy Meechum had been with the Border Patrol for over fifteen years. His government credentials had helped him to abduct thirty-four girls since the start of his career. On average, the girls were given six months – the longest went nearly three years, one girl but a few hours. When Jimmy came home on the day that Cal killed the fat blonde girl, he was furious - he had really liked that one, with her creamy white skin and long blonde hair. He’d not yet been done with her.

He had screamed at the old man, raged at his stupid sagging face, with his liver spots and baggy blue coveralls and dirty John Deere cap snugged down over the wispy white hair of his ridiculous balding head. But, as usual, Cal's quiet reticence defeated him. He sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee until Jimmy, his rage finally spent, quietly helped his father load the girl’s body into the big blue incinerator at the back of the pole barn where Cal disposed of the dogs and cats and livestock consumed by his small veterinary practice in Nogales. Later, Cal would spread the girl’s ashes over his small garden. It helped to keep the bugs down.

As Jimmy helped to heave the guera’s leaking body into the machine, he considered it likely that the old man would himself end up in the incinerator if he kept on with his damn temper. While Cal swung the door shut, Jimmy stepped around the back of the machine to open the gas valve and press the igniter, and stepped in a small pool of blood left behind from the guera, spattering his work boots.

The next morning in the break-room at the Border Patrol office in Nogales, Jimmy’s supervisor, Dave Henning, scowled down at the brown scatter of dried blood on the Jimmy’s shoes. “Meechum,” he said. “What’s that shit on your boots?” Jimmy looked down and said finally, “Helped Pop slaughter a pig last night. Guess I got some on me.” He stood up, tossed his Styrofoam coffee cup in the trash, and headed out to his patrol truck.

Dave sat drinking his bitter break-room coffee and stared after Jimmy. One night several years before, Dave and his dad Frank had had a few beers after work at The Cactus Bar in downtown Nogales. Frank had been with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department since graduating from the University of Arizona in 1975.

Normally, Frank was not one to gossip, but on that night he’d told his son some terrible things about the Meechum family. He told him how Cal’s wife Victoria had committed suicide back in 1992, after their oldest son Ted had fallen to friendly fire in the Gulf War. Frank, a deputy at that time, said that he wondered sometimes about old Cal, wondered if maybe the sheriff had gone a little bit easy on what was surely a bullshit explanation – that Victoria, distraught over their Ted’s passing, had broken into his veterinary supplies one night after he’d gone to bed and taken her life.

Cal had told the sheriff that suicide was a sin against god, that surely his wife had gone to hell and all he could do now was pray for her spirit, damned though it was. The Sheriff, a deacon at the church where Victoria worshiped, had kneeled with Cal and prayed with him for Victoria and his lost son. No charges were ever sought.

In truth, Victoria had caught her husband out behind the pole barn one afternoon fucking a yearling sheep, and that night when she’d begged him to go see Father Leonel in Nogales to confess his failings, he’d slipped a mongo dose of Nembutal into her Sloe Gin Fizz. Fifteen minutes later, she’d stood from her Lazy Boy rocker, turned to him with a funny look on her face, and dropped like a rock.

Frank had also told Dave that, back in the early 60’s, he’d done temp work for a concrete firm out of Tucson, and that they’d been contracted by old man Tennyson to build the biggest damn bomb shelter you’d ever seen. Tennyson had been scared shitless of those bastard Russkis, and was for damn sure not going to let that boat-nigger Castro launch none of those nukes at him unprepared.

And when Marvin Tennyson’s crackers had finally slipped off his plate back in 1973, the Meechums, new blood from somewhere in the midwest, had bought the place from Tennyson’s wife for a song, fifty acres and all sitting right out the ass end of Harshaw Road. They’d torn down the old house, hauled in a brand new doublewide to put in its place, and erected a big old pole barn right over the top of that bomb shelter and nothing more was ever said about it.

That night, Frank Henning tossed down the last of his beer, looked over at his only son, and told him, “You stay clear of those Meechums, boy.” And now, years later, Dave got up from the break-room table and walked over to check the job schedule posted on the break-room wall. A few hours later, he was driving through the desert sun south of Patagonia out to the end of Harshaw Road.

He pulled up before the doublewide, motor idling, and surveyed the Meechum property. Four brutish dogs circled a rusty wire pen strung loosely between the house and a sun-bleached wooden shed - two Rottweilers, a huge Pit-Bull, and a speckled brown and black Great Dane. Scattered corrals sat the yard - sheep, pigs, chickens, and a lone goat within their metal confinements.

Three hooded mares stood munching hay under the shade of a plastic tarpaulin flapping loosely between two wooden posts and the branches of a rangy looking mesquite. Off to the side, a small garden, filled mostly with string beans, canteloupe, and a few weeds, contended with the Arizona sun. A largish apple orchard bordered one edge of the yard; the eastern edge of the Sonoran desert the other.

And there across from the house stood the big red pole barn sitting atop Tennyson’s forgotten bomb shelter.

Dave circled around and eased his green and white Border Patrol cruiser into the scrub alongside the pole barn. He shut down the motor. He’d checked Jimmy’s schedule on his way out of the office, knew that he was on patrol, skulking somewhere out in the desert. He knew also that Cal was working in town today, as he’d passed the old man’s pickup truck at the veterinary office in Nogales on the way out of the city.

What Dave didn’t know was that the old man’s truck had thrown a rod the week before, had in fact been parked in front of Meechum Veterinary ever since and that Cal had called his receptionist from home earlier that morning, saying he’d be late to work and to cancel his appointments until after lunch.

Twenty miles away, Jimmy was scouting a likely trail along the Mexico border where he would park his truck later that night. He was thinking about the blonde girl when his cell phone rang. Cal was on the line.

Dave walked back to the trunk of his cruiser. He lifted the spare tire enough to slide the crowbar out from underneath. There was a wooden door on this side of the pole-barn and Dave leaned his shoulder against the pine, wedging the tire iron between the jamb and the door handle. With a loud splintering sound, the door gave way.

The room within was uneventful. Cabinets lined the walls, workbenches and supplies sat scattered about – bags of dog food and fertilizer, stacks of boxes marked with KVS Veterinary Supply Co., leather saddles and sheep shears and garden tools. A Willys jeep crowded the middle of the concrete floor.

Dave looked about the room, considered what his father would say and decided all this was just a bad idea. As he turned to leave, he heard the music, very faint.

Flor was sleeping. In her dream, Mary and Jesus came to her. They were clad all in blue, and the light surrounding them was a brilliant azure, so beautiful, Mother and her Holy Son. Their robes concealed a vast and secret power. Mary rose up, rose high above her, arms held wide and called to her, “Flor Peque, my Little Flower, get ready. You must save them. You must save them all.” Flor wept then, for the face of the Blessed Virgin looking down at her was that of her friend Beatriz, shot in the back with a stolen gun by Jimmy Meechum and left to rot in the desert. She cried out to her, to Beatriz her lost friend, and fell to her knees...

She woke to hear someone coming down the stairs. Her body told her this was not the right time of day for Cal or Jimmy to be home. She heard a strange man’s voice exclaim “What the fuck…” and moments later, her door came open with a loud crack. There before her stood a man with a black tire iron in his hand. He was dressed in a uniform like Jimmy’s but it was not Jimmy - there was a name badge on his shirt with HENNING stenciled across the front and the man was tall and handsome. She thought of her Papito, and in her nakedness reached out to him, but at that moment a shadow loomed behind the man who appeared as her father. She screamed.

Cal rose up and shoved a phillips-head screwdriver into the man’s right ear. The man fell, straight down, and there was a metallic clatter as the tire iron fell from his hands and struck the floor. Cal stood there panting, and she dove for the metal, reaching it just before Cal did. She rolled, holding the sharp end away from her as Cal tripped over the man and fell toward her with a thick grunt. The iron plunged into the base of Cal’s round belly, emerging out the back to make a small bloody tent-shape in the seat of his coveralls.

He retched upwards and staggered away down the hallway. She rushed back to her room, dove under the bed, and scrambled for the plastic knife hiding there. She turned to see a pair of dusty boots and her bed was lifted up, launched through the air, and Cal fell between her legs like a familiar lover. His hands were around her throat, choking her; his blood was warm on her belly.

She swung her arm with a captive’s last strength and the plastic knife, razor sharp after six-hundred-fifty-one days, sliced across his cheek and down to the bone. She swung again and his nose parted across the middle. Cal screamed, and as he pulled back to strike her, she reached up and thrust the plastic into his eye. He shuddered once and fell, covering her body with his mad warmth, and finally lay still.

She pushed him away, climbed to her feet and ran to the hallway, yelling to Esmerelda and the others, “Muerto, muerto, the old one is dead.” She pulled at first one door and then the others but they were locked. Cal still had the keys.

She went to him, knelt to the floor and reached slowly into his pocket. As she touched the key ring, his half-open mouth, frozen in pain, emitted a long gaseous belch. She screamed and fell backwards to the concrete. In the shocked silence, she heard Barry Manilow playing Mandy from the speakers overhead.

Jimmy’s green and white Suburban stopped at the entrance to the Meechum property. Jimmy saw the Border Patrol cruiser parked alongside the pole barn; saw the splintered frame and the door swinging free. He pulled up behind the cruiser, blocking its exit. Throwing the Suburban into park, he jumped out and ran across the yard to loose the dogs.

Inside the forgotten bomb shelter, Flor shoved to her feet and ran to Esmerelda’s door. The girl was yelling at her, hurry, hurry, and Flor jammed the key into the lock, twisted the knob and freed her friend from captivity. She turned and ran down the hallway to release the others. Esmerelda followed, but stopped before Flor’s room, saw the carnage there - the bloody specter of Cal’s ruined face, the rigid bar protruding from his side. She saw the plastic screwdriver jutting from Dave Henning’s ear, and fell to her knees, sobbing.

At the final door, Flor fumbled with the key. It fell to the ground. In the distance, she heard a door slam. She turned to Esmerelda, kneeling by Dave’s crumpled body, and their eyes met. There was fear in the girl’s eyes, for over the music they could hear the dim sound of dogs barking, and the echo of running boots on the concrete above.

Flor released the last girl. Esmerelda attempted to gain her feet, to join the others in their fate, but stumbled and fell against Dave. She put out her hands to stop herself, and stupidly, reflexively, tried to apologize to the dead man. But as she rose, she noticed the black handle of Dave’s service pistol pinned beneath his right hip. The door at the top of the stairs slammed open just as she rolled Dave over and pulled his 9MM from the nylon holster.

There was a scrabbling sound and the dogs rushed down the stairs, their nails clattering against the concrete steps. They hit the landing and hurled themselves at the six girls huddled together in the middle of the room. The horse-face girl fell first, and the Dane was at her throat when Esmerelda flipped the safety catch off the Smith and Wesson and fired twice. A red blossom appeared in the brown and black chest and the dog fell away, his legs kicking wildly at the air.

Terror was loose in the room - the women screamed, the dogs snarled and whined in their lust, Dave’s gun roared and echoed and the bullets ricocheted off the block walls. The Rottweilers were pulling at the legs of a screaming girl, and Esmerelda fired but missed, and fired again, and then a third time and a fourth. The girl cried out in pain – she’d been shot in the hip, but the Rotties were finally, mercifully dead, and now only the Pit Bull ran loose, mad with rage and the smell of blood.

One of the girls – Flor thought her name was Claudia - turned and fled back to her room, the only safety she had known for nearly a year, but the dog chased her down. Her cries of terror were cut short as the big Pit Bull tore out the back of her neck. Flor rushed to the door and slammed it shut, locking Claudia and the dog within.

The room was quiet now but for the whining of the Great Dane and the moans of the girl shot in the hip. The air was thick with the smells of gunpowder, urine, and puke. Together, Flor and Esmerelda gathered the remaining girls around them and started up the stairs.

Flor half-carried the injured girl, dragging her up the stairs. They reached the doorway at the top and started across the floor of the pole barn. Esmerelda followed, the pistol held before her, the two others close behind. As she reached the threshold, there was movement to her right and Jimmy barreled into her, knocking her to the ground. They struggled for the pistol, back and forth, and Jimmy elbowed her in the face. The gun discharged, striking Flor below the left shoulder. She spun to the concrete.

Jimmy and Esmerelda rolled on the floor, fighting for the weapon, but he was too strong. She yelled at the shocked girls standing in the doorway, commanding them to fight, damn it, fight, and one of them pulled a shovel down from the wall and struck Jimmy, clubbed him across the back, and the handle broke in two. Jimmy bellowed in pain. She threw the handle aside and waded in, clawed at his eyes, pulled his hair, but he punched her in the jaw, staggering her to the ground. He turned back to Esmerelda, lifting his hands for a double-fisted blow, and she held her hands out before her, screamed no, and suddenly the four rusty metal tines of a pitchfork burst forth from Jimmy’s chest. He looked down, opened his mouth to speak, and fell to the side dead.

Flor lay on the concrete, hearing the struggle around her. All went suddenly quiet, and she distantly heard Esmerelda’s primal roar of victory. She knew they had won. A delicate bubble of blood formed at her lips. She thought about her father, of his revolution, and wondered if he would be proud of her for what she had done this day, proud that she’d fought, that she and her friends had stood against the oppressors and won their freedom. She thought yes, he would be proud, and smiled. She saw her grandfather there before her. He was holding out his hands, his old, brown hands wrinkled like leather. He beckoned, telling her to come little flower, come with me. Flor closed her eyes and followed.

BIO: Kip lives in Tucson. He writes to keep the flying monkeys from carrying him away.