2.26a Death Valley Days

Death Valley

The man tips his hat towards Ali and Kimura, and says: "Bob Zane’s the name, prospectin’s m’game but it’s been purty slow lately. Y’look like tourists, furriners, ah guess? Chinee?”

“No, I am Japanese.”

“Oh, Jap. Scuse fer thinkin’ yuh a Chink. Yer country’s jake. Help us agin Kaiser Bill in nineteen and seventeen.”

“Say,” chimes in Ali, “can you be our guide? We wanna camp out in Death Valley. We can pay twenty bucks plus all you can eat.”

“Twenny and vittles’ll do. Howsabout Flora?”

Kimura looks at Ali, who says “He means the donkey, Hon.” Ali starts toward the car, making follow-me motions around to its rear. “I think we can put Flora in the rumble seat. Opening it and turning to Zane she asks: “Is Flora well trained? You think she’ll mind being sat down in the back here?”

He takes the pack off Flora and leads her by bridle up to the open rumble seat. “Sure ma’m, Flora’s smarter ‘n any other donkey and most gals. Yuh got something fer her t’eat, sweets?”

“Yah, my licorice!” Ali goes through her valise coming up with bag of long strands of the jellied candy. She pulls one out, climbs into the rumble space and holds the red licorice stick in front of Flora’s snout. The obviously interested animal is easily maneuvered into the rumble space with lifting and pushing, and by her own effort to get the candy. Once she is in it, Zane makes her kneel and Ali rewards her with more licorice which the donkey munches happily.

“Flora’ll be right content,” says Zane as he ties his pack atop car.  Then he gets in back seat.

“And away we go! Shouts Ali. “May we call you ‘Bob?’ Call me Ali and this is Kimura san.”

“Call me anythin’ y’like ‘cept late fer dinner! Pardon me, ma’m; ain’t you an Ayrab?”

She laughs. "My name comes from Alison.”

They head down into the Valley. Its low point is five miles away.

 Camping

At lowest point, 282 feet (86 meters) below sea level, is a general store. Under Bob’s instruction they buy things for camping-out then get back in car and drive south along narrow dirt road. Bob, leaning forward from backseat between Ali & Kimura in driver seat, gives directions. “Best place t’camp is Valley south. They’s a crick so we’ll have water fer cookin’ and washin’, and Flora kin drink. And it’s got lotsa tamarisk, mesquite and cactus. Also sheep and burro t’keep Flora company, an’ rabbits an’ lizards an’ snakes.”

“Lizards and snakes I can do without” says Ali making a funny face.

“Where did the sheep and burro come from?”

“Oh, they’s mountain sheep, allus live in these parts. Gold miners left the burros an’ they fend fer ‘emselves. Now we got a whole pop’lation explosion of ‘em.”

Explanation is stopped by the road’s coming to a dead-end of shrubs high as a man’s chest and forming the edge of a 20-foot wide stream. The shrubs are green leaves interspersed with round bunches of small pink and white blossoms that give the plants a feathery appearance and fill the air with a minty smell.

“Them’s tamarisk! Some Lutha Buhbank scientist feller brought ‘em fum Chinee 20 year ago. Well, here we be.”

The car stops a few feet from the bank of a stream. Flora is liberated and ambles down to lap fresh water then goes to munch the mesquite and tamarisk while Bob Zane directs Ali & Kimura to gather dry sage and twigs of dead tamarisk for a campfire. Then he leads them on a camera-snapping tour into nearby hills where they spot horned white woolly sheep, wild hi-ear brown donkeys, rabbits and squirrels. They meet the stream again as it flows back down toward the campsite, deeper and faster than in the Valley. “Can I swim in it, Bob?” asks Ali

“Ah wouldn’t ma’m. But I cain’t. If yer a good swimmer, gae ‘head.”

“Had she been alone with Kimura, Ali would have gone naked but in mixed company she only takes off her Levis and shirt, and steps into the water in her men’s underwear. Despite an afternoon air temperature over ninety degrees Fahrenheit the stream water having just tumbled down some four thousand feet is cool. She walks to midstream then swims upstream against the current. After some minutes she stops and walks parallel to the shore where it is two to three feet deep. Now she notices hundreds of elongated thin silvery fish one to six inches long with little barbs hanging from large mouths, and they seem unafraid of the gigantic land animal walking in their midst. They feed on the surface and some even touch her. “Yoo-hoo!” she shouts to attract attention.

Zane and Kimura walk to shore near her.

“What darling friendly fish, Bob?”

“They’s killifish, ma’m. Some scientist fella calls ‘em pupfish.  They`s the reason no meskitos here; they et all the eggs. And lemme tell you something else ‘bout these killies. They’s desert fish; ain’t never goin’ t’die out. They kin live in salt an’ fresh water, an’ even in temp’rary desert pools because when the water dries up, the mama fish leaves eggs buried in the bottom‘fore she dies. Then when a big rain fall an’ the pool come back, the eggs hatch an’ a new set a young killies go swimmin’ agin.”

Kimura, interested, interrupts. “Another example of evolution’s power for survival. Darwin would have enjoyed Death Valley.”

“He a friend a yours?”

“In a way.”

 The Law of the Drifting Sands

The sun’s rays slant deep purple shadows along Funeral Range foothills as Ali and Kimura sit on still warm sands while Bob Zane feeds fire with crumbly sagebrush, and flames crackle & smoke. A sooty coffee pot perks musically, its smell adding to the aroma from pieces of bacon, onion, potato and thin sliced carrot sizzling on skillet and pork & beans bubbling boiling over out of cut-open Campbell’s can.

Ali, after huge inhalation, says “Yummie!” Grabbing Kimura’s left hand with her right and taking hold of Bob’s shoulder she expostulates: “My dear, dear Pals may we never forget this fellow feeling. Ah luv it! And luv you two too and ah hope, ah hope, ah hope, ah hope you two too luv me!”

Even Bob Zane, an old, cold man who normally bristles at a touch is loosened up by Ali’s transmitting the warmth and joy of youth and woman. He feels it deeper than skin as she touches him and, uncharacteristically, he smiles and is silent while putting food on plates, filling cups with hot coffee and cutting into the apple pie. “OK, folks, come and get it!”

They savor every mouthful, trying to make moments last for near eternity as much as psychological time dilatation allows. When they get to the coffee, Ali says: “Bob, now tell us a tale.”

“Sure ma’m. I can tell ya good stuff, even if it ain’t in a perfesser’s English.”

The pot has enough for many cups and they sip slowly. The deep purple has now exchanged with rays thrown by the flames of the fire on the surrounding darkness. Moon – lovely Luna – replaces Sol and brisk breeze cools the campers. Bob Zane commences: “Fust, listen to Desert and y’ll hear wut ah mean. At night the wind springs up from Mountains and then Desert starts a talkin’.  Listen!  Y’hear?  Wind hissin’ sand along, and Sand givin’ forth whispers. Desert allus talk when Wind blow, and Sand starts driftin’ along with tumblin’ tumbleweed. Sometime it’s the sand rustlin’ agin dry leaves of sage or stalks a cactus. But out in the land a the driftin’ sand it starts a sound like a hissin’ whisper thet make words and sentences. And fer those as got patience to listen it teaches val’able things – science things. F’r instance, didjya ever hear a the Law a the Driftin’ Sand?  Naw, yuh citified folk never’d larn ‘bout that. Noises you hearin’ now when Wind blows; them’s the marchin’ sand hills.”

“I knew a feller once – a Ayrab call hisself Achmed like ya clear yer nose. Brought up in the desert back in Ayrabya, that’s why he knew to listen to the shiftin’ sands. Come out here with the railroad as surveyor near twenty year ago. They sent him out to stay till he found how to conquer them thar driftin’ sands. He hired me as guide. Lived out here ‘mong the sand hills and got the greatest gift the desert can give a man – patience. Lived with Sand, kep’ his ears open at night, listenin’ ta Sand, talkin’, teachin’. An’ work out a law – the Law a the Driftin’ Sand!  Found thet the hills was whisked about by Wind, thet they drifted half a mile a year till they pile up to a certain height. An’ after thet, them thar big hills didn’t drift anymo. Instead they begun to et up the small driftin’ sand hills that were pushin’ up agin ‘em. The big uns, they git bigger; it’s the li’lle uns who drift that git et up by the big uns. Achmed never told that to anyone but me, never writ it down or up. Only I knowed it and now you.

Ali looks unusually serious. “Thanks Bob.”

“That is interesting my good man, but how is it useful?”

Bob Zane finishes his cup and pours more, replenishing their empties too. “Thanks fer callin’ me good.” He sits silent a few minutes sipping coffee like it is sand and looking up at Luna shining down fiercely out of the black desert night.

“Now that law may be said fer driftin’ sands but it also go fer people. Anyone who hear it oughta set down and take stock a hisself. Thet’s somepin few a us do in life. We drift, makin’motions cuz ever’one round us is makin’ the same motions but when ya git out in the desert and ya find they ain’t a lot a people around makin’ the motions, at first ya git scairt and if yer weak, like a li’lle sand hill yer liable to get et up by a big sand hill or blown away. But if yer insides is solid and strong like a sand hill above a certain size, ya stick and grow. Thet’s the Law.”

“So you are saying a person can test his mettle out here in the desert?”

Ali jumps up. “I got it!” Her mind is reverberating like a struck gong. “The desert stimulates you to examine your life, you know like Socrates said about the unexamined life’s being not worth living. And maybe to start to formulate a goal instead of just drifting meaninglessly thru life and then being snuffed out like a small sand hill.”

Bob Zane taps her head with his right hand and Kimura realizes it is a Zen tap, which, of course, Zane would not have the slightest knowledge of. “Thet’s it Miss.”

 The Story of Cowgal

Bob Zane starts. “ 'Twas the year nineteen and twenty, not long after the big scrap where we fire Kaiser Bill. I wuz workin' ‘cross the state line there in Nevady, the town a Beatty, as troubleshooter at a gamblin’ joint run by the Combine from Las Vegas to ketch the Valley tourist trade. I wuz lookin’ out fer perfessionals – smart guys with a system t’beat the roulette. It was fixed: the wheel run honestly most times but when they spot a sucker – a amateur with big money who cain’t control hisself – the dealer’d control the wheel so the sucker’d win at start: then as happens allus with suckers they go crazy and end bettin’ all their savin’s on one last big un they think’ll make ‘em a millonair. Well, the sucker’d bet it all on a number and color, and the phony wheel’d stop on another and the sucker’d lose ever’thin’. All they need is one sucker a night and the joint make its bundle. And most suckers they warn’t no Rockyfellas or Morgans. They was usin’ life savin’s or money not even theys but been trusted to ‘em by mom or dad or pal. It wuz the law a driftin’ sands: the suckers were the small sand hills and the Combine the big un.

“One night I spot Cowgal. She wuz what they called Gloreefyed American Gal, had a cowboy hat an’ ridin’ boots, an’ buckskin skirt with a purty – an’ I mean, purty – trim edge at her calves. And they sure wuz some calves! An’ a big black leather belt ‘roun’ her waist with shiny silver heart-shape buckle in front. 

“And them thar eyes – smoky, dark and cold!

“Gamblin’ joints keeps a card on perfessionals who run a system – ever’thin’ about ‘em on a three by five. Well, I’d mem’rized Cowgal’s. Her name was Dixie Carson, the daughter a King Carson who once owned a thousand acre’ an’ a hunnerd thousand head a cattle. But her dad was what they call ‘compulsive gambler’ – what I been callin’ sucker. An’ one night he lost it all at a crooked roulette table in a Combine joint and blew his brain out. Cowgal was 12-year-old then but never fergot ‘cause she and her ma had to leave the rich ranch house fer a small shack across the alley, and later her ma pine away in loneliness and kill huhself. Cowgal grow up smart with a haid fer numbers, a mathymatical genieyus. At Collitch got huhself a Pee, Haitch and Dee for what she call the Law of the Roulette, and she named her system if I say it exackly, ‘ The Calculus of Chance.’ She could watch the colors and numbers come up in six or seven spins and then perdick when the wheel wuz spinnin’ a crooked fix.

In my job as troubleshooter, soon as I reckanize Cowgal I shoulda signal the dealer she is a perfessional. Well, two things ketch my mind the moment I see Cowgal goin’ to the roulette: I’m cowboy stock m’self an’ I feel what Cowgal is feelin’ wantin’ to revenge on the Combine fer ruinin’ her family an’ suicidin’ her mom an’ doin’ near the same to hundreds of other Joes and Janes. But thet wouldna been enuf to make me do whut I did – I ain’t no hero. It’s jest thet Cowgal as she is sittin’ down at the roulette turns her byoodiful head and looks them smokey eyes a hers deep into my eyes. They bore into mebbee my soul if I has one. Right then I knew she knew ever’thin’ ‘bout who I am and what I am there to do. An’ I couldn’t do it! Instead I give the dealer signal thet Cowgal is a big bucks sucker. He reply by a nod. From then, he control whether the roulette ends on black or red, or miss a number, and he plan to make sure Cowgal’l win till she had a pile worth several thou. Then when he thought he’d hooked her as compulsives git hooked by the rush a winnin’ and the thrillin’ overpowerin’ desire to keep winnin’ bigger, he would change the settin’ so thet fer nex’ thirty minutes the odds strongly favor the house. What oughta happen then is thet Cowgal would lose ever’thin’. But he didn’ know cuz I didn’ tell ‘im thet Cowgal was a system perfessional. She’d been watchin’ the colors and numbers where the wheel stopped, afore she started her bettin’, and once she start winnin’ she knew right off the system was stacked to make her win at start an’ she figure out the whole con.

When she is seven thou ahead, the dealer shoot me a look an’ I knew he had changed the settin’ expeckin Cowgal to lose her shirt – in her case oughta say ‘skirt’. Well, she let huhself lose on small bets meanwhile all a time makin' mental note a the new sequence of colors and numbers, an’ runnin’ it thru her Calculus a Chance system. An’ after six or seven bets she figure out the system cold and she start to bet big and win big. An’ suddenly the other betters see she has her own system an’ they all start bettin’ with her and winnin’. An’ the dealer he panic ‘cause the settin’ he’d made was no longer under his manual control – it run by electric clock you cain’t stop without taken a hammer to it. In thirty minutes the house lose two million bucks: they was bust and the manager come out to stop the action. Then the guests get mad and all hell break loose and Cowgal get outa there like greased lightnin’ me behind ‘er. She had a fast flivver in the parkin’ lot an’ I ketch up just as she is getting’ in and she turn on me with a small revolver.

“I wanna do yer biddin’, gal, forever,” sez I.

“Nuts!” sez she.

“Please gal, I’ll do anythin’, I’ll be yer slave. I love yuh, gal!”

“No dice cowboy. I got my own agenda and you are not on it. So get on your horse and ride away into the sunset.” And she gets in her flivver an’ I just stand there. She rev up the motor, roll down her side window and those smoky eyes look through me like I am nuthin’ but a piece a dust. “See you never, cowboy!” An’ she leave me cold and lonely in a desert parkin’ lot off a empty highway.” Bob Zane goes silent. He turns away, gets up and walks out of the firelight into the black night.

Kimura speaks in an unnaturally subdued voice. “I guess that is how a cowgirl says goodbye.” Ali leans forward and kisses him gently. “Don’t worry, Kim. I won’t, ever!”
To read the next chapter, click  2.(27-28) The Eddie Cantor Show.