I heard Agnes Grey before I ever laid eyes on her. Mrs. Renquist and I had climbed the wide curving stairs to the second floor. We proceeded down the upper hallway without saying much. The character of the grade school was still oddly evident, in spite of the fact that extensive remodeling had been done to accommodate current use. The former classrooms had been quite large, with wide, multipaned windows stretching almost ceiling to floor. Light streamed in through glass embedded with chicken wire. The woodwork had been left in its original state, varnished oak aged to a glossy russet shade. Up here, the worn wood floors had been covered with mottled white vinyl tiles and the once spacious rooms had been partitioned into cubicles, containing two beds each. The walls were painted in shades of pale green and blue. The place was clean, if impersonal, the air perfumed with intimate body functions gone sour. Old people were visible everywhere, in beds, in wheelchairs, on gurneys, huddled on hard wooden benches in the wide corridor; idle, insulated from their surroundings by senses that had shut down over the years. They seemed as motionless as plants, resigned to infrequent watering. Anyone would wither under such a regimen: no exercise, no air, no sunlight. They had outlived not only friends and family, but most illnesses, so that at eighty and ninety, they seemed untouchable, singled out to endure, without relief, a life that stretched into yawning eternity.
We passed a crafts room where six women sat around a table, making potholders out of nylon loops woven on red metal frames. Their efforts were as misshapen as mine had been when I was five. I never liked doing that shit the first time around and I didn’t look forward to having to do it again at the end of my days. Maybe I’d get lucky and be struck down by a beer truck before I was forced into such ignominy.
The recreation room was evidently just ahead, as I’d picked up the blast of a television set turned up loud enough for failing ears, a PBS documentary by the sound of it. The banging and shrieking suggested tribal rites somewhere in a culture not given to quietude. We turned left into a six-bed ward where a series of curtains were all that separated one patient from the next. At the far end of the room, like the origins of the Nile, I could see the source of the uproar. It wasn’t a television set at all. Without even asking, I knew this was Agnes. She was stark naked, dancing a dirty boogie on the bed while she accompanied herself by banging on a bedpan with a spoon. She was tall and thin, bald everyplace except her bony head, which was enveloped in an aureole of wispy white fuzz. Malnutrition had distended her belly, leaving her long limbs skeletal.
The lower portion of her face had collapsed on itself, jaw drawn up close to her nose in the absence of intervening teeth. She had no visible lips and the truncated shape of her skull gave her the look of some long-legged, gangly bird with a gaping beak. She was squawking like an ostrich, her bright, black eyes snapping from point to point. The minute she caught sight of us, she fired the bedpan in our direction like a heat-seeking missile. She seemed to be having the time of her life. A nurse’s aide, maybe twenty years old, stood by helplessly. Clearly, her training had never prepared her for the likes of this one.
Mrs. Renquist approached Agnes matter-of-factly, pausing only once to pat the hand of the woman in the next bed who seemed to be praying feverishly for Jesus to take her very soon. Meanwhile, Agnes, having asserted herself, was content to march around on the bedcovers saluting the other patients. To me, it looked like a wonderful form of indoor exercise. Her behavior seemed far healthier than the passivity of her ward-mates, some of whom simply lay in moaning misery. Agnes had probably been a hell-raiser all her life, and her style, in old age, hadn’t changed a whit.
“You have a visitor, Mrs. Grey.”
“What?”
“You have a visitor.”
Agnes paused, peering at me. Her tongue crept into view and then disappeared again. “Who’s this?” Her voice was hoarse from screeching. Mrs. Renquist held out a hand to her, helping Agnes down off the bed. The nurse’s aide took a clean gown from the nightstand. Mrs. Renquist shook it out and draped it around Agnes’s scrawny shoulders, pushing her arms into the sleeves. Agnes submitted with the complaisance of a baby, her rheumy-eyed attention still focused on me. Her skin was speckled with color: pale brown maculae, patches of rose and white, knotty blue veins, crusty places where healing cuts formed fiery lines of red. The epidermal tissue was so thin I halfexpected to see the pale gray shapes of internal organs, like those visible on a newly hatched bird. What is it about aging that takes us right back to birth? She smelled sooty and dense, a combination of dried urine and old gym socks. Right away, I started revising the notion of driving back to Santa Teresa in the same tiny car with her. The aide excused herself with a murmur and made a hasty getaway.
I held out a hand politely. “Hello, Agnes. I’m Kinsey Millhone.”
“Hah?”
Mrs. Renquist leaned close to Agnes and hollered my name so loud that two other old ladies on the ward woke up and began to make quacking sounds. “Kinsey Millhone. She’s a friend of your daughter’s.”
Agnes drew back, giving me a suspicious look. “Who?”
“Irene,” I yelled.
“Who asked you?” Agnes shot back, peevishly. She began to work her lips mechanically, as if tasting something she’d eaten fifty years before.
Mrs. Renquist repeated the information, enunciating with care. I could see Agnes withdraw. A veil of simplicity seemed to cover her bright gaze and she launched abruptly into a dialogue with herself that made no sense whatever. “Keep hush. Do not say a word. Well, I can if I want. No, you can’t. Danger, danger, ooo hush, plenty, plenty. Don’t even give a hint . . .” She began a warbling rendition of “Good Night, Irene.”
Mrs. Renquist rolled her eyes and a short, impatient sigh escaped. “She pulls this when she doesn’t feel like doing what you want,” she said. “She’ll snap out of it.”
We waited for a moment. Agnes had added gestures and her tone was argumentative. She’d adopted the quarrelsome air of someone in a supermarket express line when the customer at the register tries to cash a paycheck. Whatever universe she’d been transported to, it did not include us.
I drew Mrs. Renquist aside and lowered my voice. “Why don’t we leave her alone for the time being,” I said. “I’m going to have to put a call through to Mrs. Gersh anyway and ask her what she wants done. There’s no point in upsetting her mother any more than we have to.”
“Well, it’s whatever you want,” Mrs. Renquist said. “She’s just being ornery. Do you want to use the office phone?”
“I’ll call from the motel.”
“Be sure we know how to get in touch with you,” she said, with a faint note of uneasiness. I could see a hint of panic in her eyes at the notion that I might leave town without making arrangements for Agnes’s removal.
“I’ll leave the motel number with Mrs. Haynes.”
I drove back to the Vagabond, where I put in a call first to Sergeant Pokrass at the sheriff’s department, advising her that Agnes Grey had indeed turned up.
Then I placed the call to Irene Gersh and filled her in on her mother’s circumstances. My report was greeted with dead silence. I waited, listening to her breathe in my ear.
“I suppose I better talk to Clyde,” she said finally. She did not sound happy at having to do this and I could only imagine what Clyde’s reaction would be.
“What do you want me to do in the meantime?” I asked.
“Just stay there, if you would. I’ll give Clyde a call at the office and get back to you as soon as possible, but it probably won’t be till around suppertime. I’d appreciate it if you’d drive back out to the Slabs and put a padlock on Mother’s door.”
“What good is that going to do?” I said. “The minute I’m gone, the little turds will break in. The louvres in one window are already gone. Frustrate these kids and they’ll tear the place apart.”
“It sounds like they’ve already done that.”
“Well, true, but there’s no point making life any more difficult.”
“I don’t care. I hate the idea of trespassers and I won’t abandon the place. She may still have personal belongings on the premises. Besides, she might want to go back when she’s feeling like herself again. Did you talk to the sheriff? Surely there’s some way to patrol the area.”
“I don’t see how. You know the situation better than I do. You’d have to have an armed guard to keep squatters out and what’s the point? That trailer’s already been trashed.”
“I want it locked,” she said with an unmistakable edge.
“I’ll do what I can,” I said, making no attempt to disguise my skepticism.
“Thank you.”
I gave her the telephone number at the Vagabond and she said she’d get in touch with me later on. I changed back into jeans and tennis shoes, hopped in the car, and headed over to a hardware store where I bought an oversize padlock of cartoon proportions that weighed about three pounds. The clerk assured me it would take a blasting cap to pop it off the hasp. What hasp? I thought. While I was at it, I bought the whole mechanism—hinged metal fastening and the corresponding staple—along with the tools to install the damn thing. Nothing was going to keep those kids out. I’d seen at least two holes punched into the trailer shell. All they’d have to do was enlarge one and they could crawl in and out like rats. On the other hand, I was getting paid to do this, so what did I care? I picked up some nails and a couple of pieces of scrap lumber and returned to my car.
I drove north on 111, doing the eighteen-mile return trip to the Slabs. Offhand, I couldn’t recall the name of the road I was looking for so I kept my speed down and spent a lot of time peering off to my right. I passed a grove of date palms on my left. Beyond, in the far distance, I could see the vivid green of fields under cultivation. Somehow the countryside looked different, but it wasn’t until I spotted the sign reading SALTON SEA RECREATION AREA that I realized how far I’d overshot the mark. The road to the Slabs had to be ten miles back. I spotted a gravel side road ahead on the left and I figured it was as good a place as any to make the turnaround. An old high-sided truck was approaching, kicking up a trail of dust in spite of the fact it was only moving ten miles an hour.
I slowed for the turn, checking my rearview mirror. A red pickup truck was barreling down on me, but the driver must have noted my change in speed. He veered right, cutting around me as I gunned the engine, scooting out of his path. I heard the faint pop of a rock being crushed under my wheel, but it wasn’t until I’d done the U-turn and was back on 111, that I felt the sudden roughness in the ride. The flap-flap-flapping sound warned me that one of my back tires was flat.
“Oh great,” I said. Clearly, I’d run over something more treacherous than a rock. I pulled over to the side of the road and got out. I circled my car. The rim of my right rear wheel was resting on the pavement, the tire forming a flabby rubber puddle underneath. It must have been five or six years since I’d changed a tire, but the principles probably hadn’t changed. Take the jack out of the trunk, crank the sucker till the weight is lifted off the wheel, remove the hubcap, struggle with the lug nuts, pull the bad wheel off and set it aside while you heft the good one into place. Then replace all the lug nuts and tighten them before you jack the car down again.
I opened my trunk and checked my spare, which was looking a bit soggy in itself. I wrestled it out and bounced it on the pavement. Not wonderful, but I decided it would get me as far as the nearest service station, which I remembered seeing a few miles down the road. This is why I jog and bust my hump lifting weights, so I can cope with life’s little inconveniences. At least I wasn’t wearing heels and panty hose and I didn’t have glossy fingernails to wreck in the process.
Meanwhile, the flatbed had turned out onto the highway and had come to a stop a hundred yards behind me. A dozen male farmworkers hopped off the back of the truck and rearranged themselves. They seemed amused at my predicament and called out suggestions in an alien tongue. I couldn’t really translate, but I got the gist. I didn’t think they were giving any actual pointers on how to change a flat. They seemed like a good-natured bunch, too weary from the short hoe to do me any harm. I rolled my eyes and waved at them dismissively. This netted me a wolf whistle from a guy grabbing his crotch.
I tuned them out and set to work, cussing like a stevedore as the flatbed pulled away. At times like this, I tend to talk to myself, coaching myself through. It was midafternoon and the sun was beating down on me. The air was dry, the quiet unbroken. I don’t know the desert well. To my untutored eye, the landscape seemed unpopulated. At ground level, where I sat wielding my crescent wrench, all I could see was a dead mesquite tree a few feet away. I’ve been told that if you listen closely, you can hear the clicks of the wood-boring beetles that tunnel through the dead wood to lay their eggs.
I settled down to work, letting the isolation envelop me. Little by little, I became accustomed to the stillness in the same manner that eyes become accustomed to dark. I picked up the drone of an occasional insect and noticed then the foraging warblers catching bugs on the fly. The true citizens of the Mojave emerge from their lairs by night: rattlesnakes and lizards, jackrabbits, quail, the owl and the Harris hawk, the desert fox and the ground squirrel, all searching for prey, angling to eat each other in a relentless predatory sequence that begins with the termites and ends with the coyote. This is not a place I’d want to unroll my sleeping bag and lay my little head down. The sun spiders alone will scare you out of ten years’ growth.
By 3:20, I’d successfully completed the task. I rolled the flat tire around to the front of the car so I could hoist it into my trunk. I could hear a foreign body rattle around inside, a rock or a nail by the sound of it. I checked for the puncture, running my fingers around the circumference of the tire. The hole was in the sidewall—a ragged perforation not quite the size of my little fingertip. I blinked at it, feeling chilled, not wanting to believe my eyes. It looked like a bullet hole. An involuntary sound escaped as I was overtaken by one of those rolling shudders you experienced as a kid on leaving a dark room. I lifted my head. I surveyed the countryside. No one. Nothing. Not another car in sight. I wanted out of there.
I hoisted the tire and shoved it into my trunk. Swiftly, I gathered the jack and my crescent wrench, moved around to the driver’s side and got in. I started the engine and rammed into gear, pulling back onto the highway. I drove faster than I should have, given the condition of my spare, but I didn’t like the idea of being out there by myself. It had to have been the guy in the pickup truck. He’d passed me just as the blowout occurred. Of course, a rock might have caused the damage, but I couldn’t think how it could have penetrated the sidewall, leaving such a nice neat hole in its wake.
The first service station I passed was out of business. The gas pumps were still standing, but the windows were broken, and graffiti, in a garland, had been sprayed along the foundation. Local advertisers were using the supporting columns for their poster art and a real estate company announced in bold print that the property could be leased. Fat chance.
On the outskirts of Niland, at the intersection of Main Street and the Salton Highway, I found a small station selling one of those peculiar brands of gasoline that makes your car engine burp. I put some air in the spare tire and dropped off the flat.
“I’ve got some business to take care of at the Slabs,” I said. “Any way you can do this in the next hour and a half?”
He studied the tire. The look he gave me suggested that he’d come to the same conclusion I had, but he made no comment. He said he’d pull the tire off the rim and have it patched by the time I returned. I was guessing I’d be back by five o’clock. I didn’t want to imagine myself out in the desert once the sun went down. I gave him a ten for his trouble and told him I’d pay for the repair when I got back. I hopped in my car and then leaned my head out in his direction. “Where’s the road to the Slabs?”
“You’re on it,” he said.
I took Main to the point where it becomes Beal Road, approaching Slab City this time with a sense of familiarity. I felt safer out here. There seemed to be more people about at this hour: an RV pulling into a site, kids being dropped off in a snub-nosed yellow school bus. Now the dogs were out, leaping joyously at the sight of all the children home from school. When I reached Rusted-Out Chevy Road, I turned right and soon Agnes Grey’s blue trailer appeared just ahead. I parked short of the place and pulled my tools out of the back seat. Thoroughly paranoid by now, I took out my little Davis semiautomatic and tucked it into the waistband of my blue jeans at the small of my back. I grabbed an old cotton shirt and pulled it on over my T-shirt, gathered up the lumber, the padlock, and the latch, and approached the trailer on foot.
The gremlins were in residence. I could hear the murmur of their voices. I reached the front door, unable to avoid the gravel crunching underfoot. The voices were silenced instantly. I leaned against the frame, peering in at an angle. For all I knew, I’d get whacked with a two-by-four. Instead, I found myself face-to-face with the dreadlocked creature I’d spied earlier that day. A second scummy face appeared beside the first. I’d been informed by the neighbors that one was the boychick and one was the girl. I was guessing this one to be male, but I truly couldn’t discern any sex-based differences. Neither had facial hair. Both were young, with the unformed features of cherubs, tatty mops on top, ragged clothes below. Neither smelled any better than Agnes had.
The boy and I eyed each other and swelled up in the manner of apes. So ludicrous. We were both the same size—five six, neither one of us over a hundred and twenty pounds. Little banty-weight toughs. One possible difference was that I was willing to kick the shit out of him and I didn’t think he was prepared to do likewise. With a glance at his companion, he rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets as if he had all day. He said, “Hey, Poopsie. What the fuck are you doin’ here?”
I felt my temper flash. My nerves were already on edge and I didn’t need any aggravation from a little punk like him. “I own this place, ass eyes,” I said snappishly.
“Oh really? Let’s see you prove it.”
“No problem, Poopsie. I’ve got the deed of trust.” I pulled the gun out of my waistband and held it with the barrel up. It wasn’t loaded, but it looked good. If I’d had my old Colt, I could have cocked it for effect. I freely confess—while I can intimidate little boys, I’m not that good with the grown ones. “Get lost,” I said.
The two of them fell all over each other trying to scramble out the back. The trailer shook with their trampling feet and then they were gone. I ambled down the passageway and peered into the bathroom. As I suspected, they were using a hole in the wall as an emergency exit.
The first thing I did was board up their escape route, pounding nail after nail into the flimsy bathroom wall. Then I used a handheld drill to set the screw holes for the hasp I was mounting. I can’t say I worked with any astonishing skill, but I got the job done and the physical labor improved my mood. It felt good to smash things. It felt good to sweat. It felt good to be in control of one small corner of the universe. As long as I was here, I did a quick search, looking to see if there was anything of Old Mama’s left. I couldn’t find a thing. The cupboards were bare, closets stripped, the various nooks and crannies emptied of her possessions. Most of them had probably been sold at the flea market on the road coming in.
I went out to the VW and snagged the 35-millimeter camera I keep in the rear well. I had part of a roll of film left and I snapped off as many photos of the place as I could. I didn’t think Irene Gersh was going to “get it” otherwise. She had talked as if her mother might retire here in her golden years.
Before I popped the padlock into place, I bundled up the gremlins’ sleeping bags and miscellaneous belongings and left them by the front step. Then I went across the road and told Marcus what I’d done. As I returned to the trailer, I spotted a slice of crawl space underneath, makeshift storage, where a few items had been crammed. I got down on my hands and knees, reaching back among the bugs and spiders, and pulled out a couple of dilapidated cardboard boxes. One was open and contained a motley collection of rusted garden tools: trowels, a spade, a short hoe. The second box had the top flaps closed, sections interlocked to secure the contents without anything actually being sealed shut. I pulled the flaps back and checked inside. The box contained numerous pieces of china wrapped in newspaper, a child’s tea set. It didn’t even look like a full set to me, but I thought Irene or her mother might like to take a look. Certainly, I wasn’t eager to leave the dishes for the gremlins to raid. I closed the box up again. I snapped the padlock shut on the trailer door. I had no hope whatever of keeping the little buggers at bay, but I’d tagged the necessary bases. I toted the box to my car and shoved it in the back seat. It was still light when I left the Slabs, but by the time I picked up my tire and headed back into Brawley, it was fully dark.
In my pocket was the .38 slug the mechanic had removed from the tire. I really wasn’t sure what it signified, but as I’m keenly aware of the obvious, I had a fair idea.