Castles (2 page)

Maybe everything would be okay after all.

Grandma never told me these things. She'd tell me instead she heard the voices in the wind, and they spoke to her of great wonders, of castles in the sky and that the world would end soon and people needed to die. Doom was always in the wind. It was okay, though: the castles in the sky were built for little girls. We could go together if we wanted, or we could just wait and be together when I was ready. She told me there was a rocking chair and afghan waiting for me in my castle in the sky.

I remember asking her one evening if I really had a castle.

"Of course, you do. Maggie, the castles are built for little girls just like you. On the day you're born, the first brick is laid out."

"How big will it be?"

"As big as you want it to be, or at least as big as you
let
it." Grandma smiled and rocked back in her chair. "The storms come and the wind speaks. Do you ever hear the wind talk to you?"

"No." It took years for me to actually hear the wind. Hiding under a cupboard, the only sound I ever heard when I was little was glass breaking or dishes rattling in the cupboards. The rush of the wind across the trailer's roof was more like the scream of something I'd expect under my bed. I certainly didn't want to listen to what it had to say.

"Listen sometime, Maggie. The wind will tell you things you should know."

"Good things?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes the words we hear, though, may sound bad at first. Listen closer. The wind can't tell us something bad."

"Why not? If the wind can talk, why can't it talk of bad things?"

Grandma's smile widened. "Because there
is
nothing bad, just stuff that needs to be looked at differently."

I didn't understand that until I was much older. There are moments in my life that stick to my memory. I suppose it's the same for everyone—snippets of life pasted in a scrapbook for you to look over every once in a while. You look back sometimes and relive an event, a smell or a sight. You catalog these things in your head and never really look at the whole. I think you miss something grand when you don't step back and examine everything together.

You might wonder why I remember so much of my early years. I've had a lot of time to think since I was little, and a lot of time to myself. I've grown as a woman. Maybe not exactly how Grandma wanted me to, but close. I dreamed about monumental moments, as I suppose every person does at some point. Even if those dreams come at the edge of death, the life we see is the life that created who we've become at that very moment.

Grandma was touched, but she was touched by God and given a gift I've only recently come to understand.

The wind talks if you listen.

Past the fence of the trailer park, just in view from my patio porch, sat a 1967 Volkswagen Bus with thirteen of its twenty-one windows still intact. It grew of out the desert like a rusted cactus, as much a part of the environment as the ocotillo or the saguaro. Its yellow paint was nothing more than a faded memory of that showroom shine it must have once possessed. Why it took so long for someone to remove the beast from its final resting place, I'll never know.

During moments of reflection, Grandma would tell me of her adventures on the road with her friends. It may not have been in a road warrior like the one that rotted in the desert, but she would always make it sound like that. It was years before I realized she was too old to have spent her teenage years inside a Bus.

I'd hear tales of crossing the great Kansas wilderness, driving up to the cold beaches of Oregon or climbing the Rockies just to head back down the other side. Her life was rich with adventure, and I couldn't wait until I had grown up enough to experience some of the same.

Maybe one day, I used to tell myself.

I don't think that way anymore. My life is here in the desert, living with the storms that blow in to clean up messes.

The land beyond the fence was and is a place of mystery. Our park was the last stop on a dead-end gravel road, visited by a handful of people. I suppose the city was happy to let us live in our seclusion at the end of the world. The desert stretched for miles toward the horizon. A few mountains stab their defiant rocky fists toward the sky. There was never doubt in anyone's mind that the land beyond the fence would be ours forever. The city folk who moved to the outskirts of town to escape the traffic and noise were probably a little too unsure of themselves to experience life as we knew it—life isolated from normalcy, yet normal to us.

When I was nine, I ventured off with a few of the local kids—all boys—to see what the Bus was all about. We'd traveled the park so many times, crawling through pipes, breaking into abandoned sheds and exploring our environment as much as we could. The Bus was nothing more than another step, one that led beyond the confines of our trailer park and into the Great Wide Open. The distance into the desert—about a mile—made it the less appealing of adventuresome spots, especially during the heat of summer. We were smart on that first trip, however. We packed water in little G.I. Joe canteens.

Michael and Justin, two boys from the neighborhood, led the way. Behind me, six-year-old Cade stuck to my side like jelly on bread. We were destined for discovery, something any child should take part in. The Bus was our pirate ship, the desert an ancient sea run dry a hundred years ago. We were sure there was buried treasure, or maybe a Jolly Roger flag we could bring home and plant in our front yards.

"Where are we going?" Cade asked. He was dangerously close to my side. I could feel the dirt kicked up by his shoes.

"To the Bus over there. Why?"

"I don't want to go too far without a snack."

I smiled. Little kids that age must be drawn to events that allow snacks or candy. I may have been three years older, but I considered myself more mature. "We won't be gone long. You can get a Twinkie when we get back home."

The Bus loomed closer. Michael and Justin were steps ahead, weaving through the desert brush like snakes. They bounced, much like Cade and I, in anticipation of the unexpected treasure we were sure to find.

"Wait up!" I called out. They didn't need to be that far ahead of us. We were supposed to be a team—the same team that explored the Drainage Pipe of King Crud or the Mountain of the Tire God. We were supposed to stick together.

As I look back on our zeal, it becomes painfully obvious to me that we, as children, let our imaginations guide what we believed to be true and so often put ourselves in harm's way. We didn't abide by our parents' warnings or their desires to make sure we never ventured beyond the fence. Didn't they know what was out there? Didn't they explore the nether regions of their environment as a child? Didn't they climb Mount Doom?

That parental chain might have held other kids back. Mama, on the other hand, probably didn't care if I went out of my bounds. I remember telling her a number of times where I was headed, whether it was to the Bus in the desert or the movies with friends. She was either too drunk to care or just not home at all.

Grandma, however, didn't want me to go to the Bus. She was more fearful, I think, of the expanse of desert between my desired destination and the safety of the fenced trailer park. Maybe she thought I'd run into a snake or cut myself on a cactus needle. Maybe she thought I'd go too far and not be able to come back, drained of water and cursed with blurred vision. Maybe she wanted to hide the treasure, to keep it for herself.

I didn't tell Grandma where I was headed that day. She'd fallen asleep on the couch while Mama was out. I crept out of the trailer—as good as anyone could with a squeaky screen door—grabbed the boys from around the corner, filled their canteens and headed off to adventure.

Cade pulled on my shirt. "Are they going inside that thing?"

"That's the plan." I'd wondered if he really understood what we were doing or if he was just tagging along looking to be one of us. "It's an abandoned van. Don't you wonder what's inside?"

Cade looked nervous, a trait I'd come to recognize all too well. "No. I think I'll go back."

"Cade." My whine was enough. He let go of my shirt and followed me the final steps to the Bus.

The other two boys were already there. They walked around the great rusted beast and slapped the side of it with sticks they must have picked up along the way. Neither one seemed anxious to climb inside even though the passenger door was gone. They just walked around and around, like kids on a carousel.

I opened the floor for debate. "Aren't you going inside?"

"No." Michael swatted the side of the Bus again, reveling in the steel clang. "We're waiting for you to show us the way."

I balked. Show them the way? They way was obvious: into the Bus through the missing door, look around and find the treasure. Fine, I reasoned. If they didn't want to be true explorers, I'd take the part. "Treasure's mine!"

"You share!" Justin walked around the front of the Bus. "We came out here together, we go home with the booty together."

Cade looked scared, but he still carried his wits about him. "Booty?"

"Treasure, you little punk. Who brought you along anyway?"

Whatever instinct I had that gave me the gall to stand up to bullies crept out from its hiding place. I stepped up to Justin and stood my ground. "I did. And the treasure I find belongs to Cade and me." I turned back to Cade. "You coming?"

Cade looked frightened, like he stood at the mouth of a great cave and feared the bear oblivious to the adventure that surely lay ahead. He slowly shook his head. "No."

"Fine. Treasure's all mine then." I swallowed whatever fear I had left and walked to the gaping hole in the side of the Bus. What did they know? Weren't boys supposed to be full of courage and all that stuff we learned in school and watched on television? Weren't they supposed to lead the dance?

I looked at Michael and Justin, then back at Cade. Fear was painted across their face in way I know I'll never forget. Hell, it was just a Bus, abandoned years ago for whatever reason. We'd grown up looking at it from behind the fence, wondering what was inside. Finally, we get a chance to see for ourselves what wonders fill the Great Wide Open and these three idiots are chicken. Sometimes it's tough to be the sensible one.

I looked inside. The sun cast shadows across the seat, shadows that looked like the scratches of a giant coyote. The vinyl of the seat was torn, the floorboard rusted through. The desert appeared to have grown inside. I couldn't be sure—and I'm still not to this day—but I thought I saw a dead bird stuffed under the console, like it was placed there by a thrifty coyote who wanted to save a meal for later.

I carefully put my knee on the passenger seat and climbed inside, aware of the rusted floorboard. A cut from something so sinister would surely send Grandma into a tantrum and Mama over the edge.

I hadn't expected the smell—rank, almost humid if such a smell could exist in the dry desert. Aside from that, safety glass littered the driver's seat and torn vinyl hung from the ceiling. A gentle breeze blew in from the shattered windows, and in the shade of the Bus, I felt that much cooler. I pitied the boys outside, standing in the sun, their canteens nearly drained.

There was nothing unexpected in the front of the Bus—a few old cans faded from years, dust and sand that covered the instrument panel, some fuzzy dice that must have once hung from the rearview mirror.

The back of the Bus I couldn't explain. It was empty save the body of a man sprawled out on the floor.

I jumped back, nearly slipped from the passenger seat and fell on the floorboard. A squeal of some sort must have escaped my lips; Michael and Justin were suddenly at the door yelling at me.

"What's wrong?"

"What do you see?"

"Are you okay?"

I let my heart settle down before I said anything. My thoughts needed a chance to coalesce into something that made sense. There was a body in the Bus, his clothes torn to shreds. Bruises and cuts lined his legs like he'd been dragged through a cactus and rock garden. From where I was, though, I couldn't see his face.

"Well, Maggie?" Michael sounded impatient. "You going to tell us what you see?"

I pulled my eyes away. "It's a dead man."

Cade ran through the desert as fast as his little legs would take him. Right behind, I screamed for him to stop. Thankfully, he tripped and I finally caught up to him. I didn't know how much more I could have run.

He'd been crying, dirt and sand now pasted to his wet cheeks. "I . . . I . . ."

"Relax, Cade." I tried my best to calm the boy. I knew he was scared—hell, I was petrified—but we had to talk about what we were going to tell our parents. First, six-year-old boys aren't supposed to be out of the park. Second, none of us were officially "allowed" to go to the Bus. Third, and most importantly, if Grandma or Mama ever got word of where I'd been, I was sure to see the wooden spoon—or worse—in action again.

I couldn't have that.

"You promised, Cade." I knelt down beside him and pulled his chin up. "You promised you wouldn't tell anyone."

"There's . . . a dead man, Maggie." He struggled to get his words out. "There's a dead man and we have to tell someone."

"No we don't," Justin called out from a few feet away. They'd been slower to follow Cade through the desert, but I'm sure they understood the gravity of what we'd seen as much as I had. "We don't have to tell anyone."

Cade looked at Justin, then Michael and finally back at me. I think he sought some reassurance from my eyes that being honest was the right thing to do. My eyes said something else.

"What do I say?" Cade asked.

"You tell them nothing." When I thought it over later that afternoon, what was Cade going to say anyway? That'd we'd stumbled across a dead body in the desert? I think they'd be angrier that we were outside our bounds.

Cade slowly nodded his head. At that point, I sought reassurance that our secret was safe. If the body was to be found, it wasn't going to be by kids who weren't doing as they were told.