Mambo 69

Note the highway.

Noted.

Is it?

I see it.

Don’t see it.  Close your eye. Feel it.  Hear it.  Smell it.

Smell it?

Ground yourself.  Go on.

Leo kneeled, keeping the toes of his work boots where asphalt collided with dirt.  Jeaned knees covered the old white stripe, weathered, salted. Bent over, Leo lightly tipped asphalt with his fingers.

Feel it.  Not touch it.  Feel Mamba.

Snake?

Desert racer, essing across hills into valleys over mountains begging for drink.  It’s why I like it here.  Everything holds value.  Nothing is taken for granted.

Nothing ever should be.

photo by Daniel Agee. All rights reserved.

Martina magically produced a Salem.  Guarding flame from flitting wind, she got her stick lit.  Martina sucked deeply on the cigarette, blowing a personal cloud to her right.

Shouldn’t do that.

Too much at once?

Too much…

At all?

Leo’s boots, worn to where he now referred to them as cow boots, heel tamped down so much there was no boy left in them, caught a small slug of sandstone, sending the unfinished rock into three different places.

Martina suggested the tour on this day, a day set aside for rest and relaxation but marred by unspeakable intensity.  Time to exit oven, air trapped so thickness sickened, speaking death.

What’s on your agenda?

Cardinals.

While you…

Leo looked over Martina.  Defiant as always, she stood with arms crossed over her pirate chest.  He wouldn’t call her a shrew or a bitch.  But often her attitude… ran the same course as all women, most likely.  Leo stared at her, smiling just enough to acknowledge he heard her.  She waited a couple seconds for his response before continuing with
Generally you don’t watch a lot of football without doing something else simultaneously.

Martina’s voice trailed behind her as she crossed the threshold into the kitchen of her two-bedroom Mojave red brick ranch.
This season seems to be different.  They must be good?

Leo heard her.  Beyond affection, comment didn’t affect him.  He knew more about the Cardinals now than ever, professing to Martina it was good for office water cooler chitchat so he could get along with fellow minions.
Your agenda, M?

Desert.

Original. Where?  North?

Partway.  Let’s go.

Umm… Cardinals?

Are going to win or lose sans watching.  Listen in the Grenade.

Pigskin on radio isn’t exactly…

You have a solid imagination… and two ears.

Physical joke. Ha Ha. I’m to use theatre of the mind?

Call it what you want.  Call it compromising.

“third and 11.  Cardinals trail by six… two-and-a-half minutes to go. Warner drops back sofhtrosnfhggr…”

Static, the unblocked all-pro linebacker, began to run roughshod over the Phoenix AM blowtorch.

Should be pretty easy to get the wave out here.  Relatively flat.

There’re two ranges waves need to cross.

Oh. Right.

“…caught at the Seahawk 39 by Boldin!  Time called by cdnaldldnofhtrosnfhggr…”

Who called time out?

Is it vitally important?

Leo sucked in his lips as he fisted, relaxed and re-fisted his left hand.  Rapidly blinking, his eyelid moved an upper lash to the lower level.  Right orb rolled to the right, left slowly, mechanically, followed.
It is.

No. No.

You’re rapidly blinking and making a fist.  I’ll go to the top of the ridge.

Don’t bother.

Give me another excuse for a solid stomach drop.

Definitely don’t bother.  I still have lunch’s chemical-enhanced strawberry shake riding my Adam’s Apple like a wild mustang from the last drop.

She took it as her duty to keep Leo’s blood from coagulating like her open tube of brilliant red gouache.  He potatoed more than a retired lineman after 20 years squatting for overpaid prima donna pigskin haulers.  Martina spent hours alone walking trails, adding up to more time than she spent primping, loving and loathing with ferocious equality.

Her snake sidewinded through the Sonora.  She sped up, keeping Leo’s blood blasting through ventricles as the Grenade flew up, over and around steadily rising desert.  Stomach dropping crest after crest, her speed allowed each brief glimpses of road rolling around cinnamon cliffs as a pastry chef would streak chocolate decorating fried ice cream.  Sweet smell of silence enveloped Martina’s senses until she decided it was time to take a ball-peen to its coconut.
Some have been good ones.  Some real dandies.

Good what, while this has lasted?

The drops, Leo.

Right, if you’re into rollercoasters with cars missing rails and rollbars.

How easily I forget.  Adventure to you is hitting the grocery store midday to dodge seniors with wobbly carts as they rush in one-quarter time before heading for half-price early buffet dinner.

Martina glanced to her right.  Leo stared ahead. He wasn’t focusing on anything his eyes shuttered to the forefront.  She could see gears going in opposing directions, tossing teeth.  Wherever he was, it wasn’t here.  Jaw tightened, dimples fell.

Antelope.
A sad string of seven loped along, buoyed by radiant mirages, displayed as they fronted Saguaro and Yucca.

Yep.

Going melancholy on me?

No.  You’re right.  No use.

You are melancholy.

Not important.

Is anything?

Grub.  Perhaps something in my gut will sate my attitude.

The bottom of three hills later was anchored by a roadside stand, Hopi Indian.  Red cotton spread across stakes, patch-worked with solid teal and multi-colored horizontal-striped, holding wind and sand from entering the open front building.  Building was an overstatement, Martina thought as they got out of the Grenade.  It was like an open-faced taco set on its side, contents spilling out of it: sandstone art objects; Kachina dolls; sterling silver jewelry nesting polished Rhodonite and Turquoise stones; bottled water; churros; maize flatbreads and prickly pear.

Prickly pear, por favor.  Leo?

Water.

No churro?
No.

A dozen churros?

No.  Dammit, Martina.

Martina handed crumpled dollars to the dark-skinned woman holding court over her territory with a light brown wrap over a sleeveless white cotton blouse. Skin color betrayed idea of blouse covering breasts.  Completely unintentional, Martina felt compelled to tell her, but didn’t.  With someone as blind as Leo had become, any unplanned advantage was failing anyway. Leo’s ire drew his eyes to watching blankets flap.  He spoke directly to the Bronco orange one slightly waving toward him like a facetious prom queen glorified in a homecoming parade.

If I saw some food…

Ever the adventurer. Dos agua.

Martina sat in the back of the car.  Back passenger door propped open with her right knee provided a shade and the smallest of cross-breezes.  Reaching under her T-shirt, she unclasped her bra and slid it out.  No emotion, no comment.

Dark blue pocketknife sliced into blushing yellow green fruit.  Martina cut a prickly pear wedge, sliding it into her mouth. Juice rolled down her chin.  Slurping, she looked at Leo
Want some?

No.

I’ll cut you off a chunk.  That way you won’t be risking your life with a possible prick… you know, unlike me of course.

Martina threw a quick grin to Leo.  Whether caught or not, she couldn’t tell.  Another wedge slipped off the prickly pear.  After a good rubbing of cool fruit against hot front gums, she settled the slice onto her tongue, mashing the slice after sucking out the rest of its juice.

Leo eyed a Saguaro as if it was planning for the right time to ambush him.  Once as dense as a new growth Aspen grove, the giant two-armed cacti had fallen in numbers due to poachers. This never made sense to Leo.
What is it with the Saguaro?

Meaning?

Why is it so popular?

It’s a large cactus.  God don’t make them any bigger.  Back in the car, por favor.

Wheezing came up through Grenade’s air vents.  Clearly, the old girl was not pleased having been placed in a position far away from her carport with sun bearing down on her like a professional wrestler could an accountant.  After a couple minutes back on the snake, engine commenced purring.  Air conditioning vastly improved once wheels were moving.

You can’t transplant it.

The Grenade zipped by a roadside Saguaro, one arm Butterball turkey yellow, hacked off at its elbow.

Not at that size, no.

Or that age.

No.  Nothing that old transplants easily.

Unless they’re moving to Scottsdale.

Ha ha. Still not easy. Old habits die hard… or never at all.

Another knick-knack native American chotschky stand.  One more.  One more still.  September was the tail end of the tourist season.  While Hopi would prefer the tourist season to not occur at all in the middle of the summer, it was not theirs to choose.  Blankets, more Kachina dolls, ojo de dios by the hundreds, coasters, and driftwood art drifted by their sight.

About 25 miles later, Martina slowed the Grenade.  Her best running days long gone by, the pine green Ford had gamely continued past 150K.  Perhaps it was the desert air, dry as a roasted peanut, keeping her alive.  Somehow sand had not felled her.  Engine hummed as well as an elderly blue whale’s breathing heading back north during spring migration.

Body was not sound.  Old people and teenagers had knocked her about a bit.  Back end bore scars of a teen sliding a Ram out of control on a freshly storm-spritzed avenue.  Front-end fibers popped out like an old man’s whiskers courtesy of a mad Russian senior who claimed to be a former Cosmonaut.  Angry about being denied social security payments, the Bolshevik bastard took a Wilson aluminum bat and vented his frustration about the entire democratic system on the Ford’s front end.

Martina had caught yelling Yeltsin mid-swing.  But, he had caught her.  Jaw wired for seven weeks, sustenance sucked through painfully pursed lips as she healed.  Couldn’t afford to fix both, so fibered Grenade stayed.  Leo liked to joke those seven weeks of her pain were the most peaceful 49 days of his life.   Three years later, the joke rolled on but now not followed by his annoying chortle or his ancient “wood eye” joke.

Why are we stopping?  The view?

Partially. Out.

You’re not going to rub me out are you?

Leo, if I were planning on planting you six feet under Saguaro, I wouldn’t have wasted the gas money.

How comforting.

Out.

Front passenger door, as it had done since her move from Southern Missouri in search of sand and sanity, creaked like a seldom-used rocker.  Leo slid out, his 501s creating static against tan pilled cloth seats.  He leaned back in as Martina looked into her driver’s side mirror.

You’re driving me crazy.

Black jeans sweated her yellow U of M Tigers T to her lower back, hiding the Tiger tat sprawling across her lower back hip-to-hip.  Driver’s side door merely popped, a single pop like her dad’s back when he got untwisted by the strong German female attendant/amateur masseuse at Camelback Corners, his assisted living facility in Mesa.

Thought I was merely driving you to the desert.  Guess that’s a bonus.

Inspecting Saguaro?

Little fixated on the big fellas, aren’t you?

Well… they are impressive.

Yes.  No, the road.  Note it.

He did it for her, to appease her.  Getting on the ground to feel the road was not something he surmised he would ever learn anything by doing. Smelled it, felt it out of misplaced loyalty.

The sandstone, all three pieces, hit earth, turning to dust.
Happy now?

Question isn’t if I am happy, it’s you.  I’m happiest being out here.

Fucking crazy.

Is it?  Searching for happiness is fucking crazy.  Being happy in the moment?  I think not, Leo.

You’re a nut.

Loose cannon?  Perhaps.  Acceptable.  Nut?  By your standards?  Probably.

Another rock found the toe of his right boot.  He sailed it about twenty feet.
Nice launch.

Thanks.

Did you happen to notice the tilt?

Leo, head askew, took a look at Martina as if he was the black bear he saw once at a zoo in Kansas City whose long-term residence had clearly turned his grey matter to a sponge.  Her eyes registered the motion, but not the humor.

Of the rock?  Or Sputnik as it twisted into the atmosphere?

The tilt of the road riding against wishes of centrifugal force, riding with it at times, but doing so at its own whimsy.

I wasn’t driving.

No, you weren’t.  But one doesn’t have to be behind the wheel to feel the tilt. No tilt. Not for you anyhow.  But do you see that?

Prescott?

Nearly geographically accurate.  If you mean the glare coming off rectangles, that’s Prescott Valley.  But I am impressed.  Here all along I thought you had no clue where we were.  Nice, but no. Closer.

Hills?

No…

Picked up a whir, wind sounds of Europe’s finest coffee grinder, insulated, blades hair-splitting sharp, from a distance.  Brilliant whoosh, quick and smart, vibrated Saguaros.  Sagebrush, ducking at ground level, bent branches as a teenage girl flips back her short brown with brass-tipped half-spiked hair.

Closer.

What is it?

What do you think?

If I knew I’d… what is it?  Looks like…

Like?

Sand.

Sand.  Just sand?

A short storm, afternoon normal in the high desert, whipped around cinnamon-colored sand, crying at full speed.  Faster it went until vision moray-patterned a Ponderosa making some wind-aided pornographic gesture scarring children.  Leo daydreamt of whipped cream, translucent atop hot pumpkin pie, trapping flecks of cinnamon.  Nothing escaped.

No.  It’s more.  But…

Sandstorm.  Twister.  Dust devil.

Spinning?

No.  No?  No. The desert.

Oasis?

No.  The desert breathing, spouting like a whale.

But it’s…

Coming closer?

American High Desert, great as it could be, begged silently.  No noise still meant progress.  Winds dying forward, dust devil delayed.  Leo and Martina, lips tight together, eyes squinting, allowed no grain entry, nothing out.  Martina popped her lips.

Guess it isn’t.  Right?

No, it isn’t.  Spout.  Containing all Sonora has to offer.  Everything and nothing. It’s what everything is all about.  Accept it.  The good.  The bad.  The beginning.  The end.

The ugly?

As you see it. Get back in. Going back.

The Grenade granted access.  Leo went right, Martina left.  She settled behind the wheel.  Grenade’s sparkling explosion coughed out her tailpipe, startling Leo.  Hands, bouncing off his lap, froze on dash.

Nothing new.

Abrupt death of stillness was new, I guess.

Martina touched the wheel with her left’s fingertips.  She rolled whirls around clockwise until gravitating to the six o’clock position.  Gray tires, white metal threads peeking out from places balder than Mr. Clean and nowhere near as sparkly, slipped onto asphalt as a spatula slipped under a Teflon-fried egg.  Yolk remained whole as white salt choked a Saguaro’s trunk.

Back home. For you.

You?

Back. Home? Home lies here.

Tags: antelope, black mamba, churros, cosmonaut, football, Ford, grenade, Hopi, Kachina, Mojave, oasis, Phoenix, Phoenix Cardinals, Prescott, Prescott Valley, prickly pear, rollercoaster, Saguaro, Salem, sandstone, Sonora, stomach drop, Yeltsin
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