Last Days in the Desert Read online

Last Days in the Desert

  Lorraine Ray

  Copyright 2012 Lorraine Ray

  Chapter One

  Chattering chaos sliced through hot desert air. With a thunderous clatter that shook the treetops and hammered the ground, a police helicopter ripped the darkening sky, banked right, spun about, climbed and tore away.

  “Andrew Victor Kevin,” said the pilot into his headset. “Negative on St. Mary’s. Twenty-five twenty.”

  The searchlight operator swept his light over the charred archaeological remains of pithouses on the banks of the Santa Cruz River, illuminating the new neon of the old downtown and lighting up the slashing scars of the railroad tracks, which led west to Los Angeles and east to El Paso.

  “Copy. Stadium and Highland,” said the pilot. “Twenty twenty-three.”

  A scalding wind whipped outside the closed cockpit. Like monstrous mantises in their smoky helmet visors and olive green jumpsuits, the pilots inside pursued an elusive trail of shattered glass and abandoned cars that led them to the western edge of the city. Behind them, the lights of the valley sparkled and the last glow from a rather splashy and splendid desert sunset transformed the largest mountain range into a gray wooly mammoth, buckled to its knees by the scorching daytime temperatures. In contrast to this crumpled beast, a smaller range of sharp volcanic peaks directly ahead of them stretched upward like lopsided taffy chimneys in silhouette against the setting sun. When the pilot had buzzed over these jagged mountains, he peeled the copter off sharply, zooming back toward town. The steady blink of the light at the copter's tail crossed the western half of the city like a traveling star.

  The copter bore down ferociously on a neighborhood south of the university where the searchlight operator zipped bright cones of light over one wide avenue a few blocks from the football stadium.

  On curbs outside the hundred year old adobe bungalows, ghostly piles of rubbish cooled in the blessed dark. Today marked the semester’s end and those undergrads who hadn’t flunked a course in their major were fleeing Arizona, jettisoning their bulkier objects in their eagerness to escape another triple-digit summer. The light zigged and revealed two rusty commingling bikes pitched into a creosote bush. It zagged and stage-lit an upturned couch, already an object of interest for voracious bombing beetles and fluttery chagrined moths. A chair with a broken leg froze in the act of running away from an offensive fire hydrant, and heaps of weather-damaged equipales, the leather chairs from Mexico, sprawled in abject misery like the smashed drums of a lunatic band.

  Without warning, the copter came upon something which was more interesting and more peculiar. Enormous red turrets and comically swollen blue castle walls sprouted from the gravel lawn of a small front yard. A crowd of bare legs, bare torsos, and the sweet uplifted faces of a hundred bright young things milled around a balloon-jumping castle, the kind you usually saw outside a kid's birthday party surrounded by anxious parents. This castle, however, was surrounded by young people slurping beer from transparent plastic cups and smoking funny-looking cigarettes. The crowd lifted their arms and screamed at the helicopter.

  BOOM! A bottle rocket shot upward and spiraled down. Seismic music shook the street.

  “Heyah,” said the searchlight operator, “Par-r-r-r-t-a-a-ay.” He held the light on the crowd as the copter swept around. The crazy shadow of the balloon castle swiped the parked cars, the walls of the tiny neighboring houses and the moving shapes of the drunken, raucous crowd.

  “I'll come back in for another look,” said the pilot.

  Pretending to leave the party, the pilot soared far to the north of the black bowl of the football stadium, above the huge stadium screen, then zinged back to where he had just been. Once the pilot had brought them back to a spot nearly above the party, the searchlight operator checked the perimeter of the castle.

  Gotterdammerung in every damn direction. The jumping castle heaved and bulged, swayed and rocked, and spewed out two young men wrestling each other and a squirrelly-looking gentleman shaking maracas who wore boxer shorts and an extremely long chartreuse poncho. A line of coeds doing the conga (some with only their bras on as tops and others with their tops and bras pulled up) was next to fly out the jumping castle. Bobbling merrily, the half-clothed girls snaked across the dusty parkway and onto the street.

  “It’s Crazy Town down there,” said the searchlight operator wistfully. “A wild night. They rented a great big jumping castle. Lots of kids,” he said, looking again. “They're spilling out all over the street. Woo-hee, we gots us some drunken people.”

  “Any sign of a squad car?” asked the pilot.

  “Negative. Not at the moment.”

  “There's gonna be vomit all over that castle,” the pilot said.

  “Oh yeah, I believe that's a forgone conclusion. They’ll be hosing that thing out thoroughly for hours tomorrow.”

  The pilot chuckled as the helicopter completed another circle above the castle.

  “Naked co-eds at ten o’clock,” said the searchlight operator happily into his headset.

  “Gottcha. I’m right on ‘em...that is, er, right on it,” replied the grinning pilot. This time the copter flew in a great ellipse and swooped closer.

  “A squad car will be around soon enough,” said the pilot.

  “Sweet mercy,” said the man at the searchlight.

  The copter swung in a tighter circle.

  “Oh glory,” he exclaimed.

  “Any underage?” asked the pilot, sounding hopeful, but before he could finish the question someone spoke to him in his headset. “Copy,” he said, grimly acknowledging his orders. “North Stone south of River. We’re outta here.”

  “Goodbye partygirls,” said the man at the searchlight, “have yourself some fun while you can. Some of us jerks can’t stick around and partay along with you, and that’s a real sad fact.”

  As the stunned crowd stood gazing upward at the copter like so many blind bunnies, a skinny man standing between two parked cars saw his chance and scurried out, across the sidewalk and around the bulging walls of the balloon castle. He was carrying two gray plastic pails, and he scooted up against the side of the house quickly. There he slipped unnoticed behind a wide golden cypress.

  The man with the maracas and the chartreuse poncho walked determinedly to the middle of the street and shook his maracas skyward at the copter as though he willed the police to leave them alone.

  “Depart you force of evil, you dark destroyer of fun and madness,” he shouted. “Depart in peace!”

  The throng flung up their naked arms and roared as the noisy copter complied and zoomed away.

  Chapter Two