Scarecrow Gods (6 page)

“You can carry it. Here, rub some oil into my back.”

“I don’t know why you couldn’t help me.”

“I got everything ready here, didn’t I?” she replied.

The boys, their vision blocked by the towel, could only imagine. Doug caught his friend’s attention, pointed dramatically at the dock above them, and with a pubescent leer made a circle with one hand and shoved his index finger back and forth through it.

Tony and Eddie smiled and nodded at his wise assumption. Bergen rolled his eyes. Clyde and Danny ignored him. From above, they heard the radio click on to a classic rock station, KZ106. The heavy bass and insane guitar sounds of Def Leppard accosted the silence of the cove as the lead singer screamed out his ballad.

The boys wished they could hear what was going on. The association between boy and girl and anything even coming close to sex was as mysterious as the Bermuda Triangle. The towel was becoming mussed as whatever was happening above them was dislodging it, making it dance. All eyes were waiting for even a glimpse of bronzed skin, anything that would validate what they had seen in Clyde’s collection of
Playboy
magazines which Danny and Tony still believed were full of fake women.

Then, it was as if God had passed by and heard their tiny voyeuristic prayers. The towel shifted and as one, the boys mouths sagged as they saw flesh through the slats, and like a strange minute acorn, a reddish-brown nipple poked through. A collective sigh was released and the boys held the moment, hoping it would never end. But Bergen, in his own intellectual way, broke it like no one had ever broken a moment before. And until he died, he’d never live down the word, “Momma.”

The boys momentarily turned and stared at each other. When they returned to their nipple vigil, they saw that their Eldorado had been replaced by a green eye that, at first contracted and then widened. All hopes were shattered as the girl’s scream drowned out the drum solo on the radio, sending a large crow flapping into the air.

“Scatter!” yelled Clyde, realizing too late that he was the only one who hadn’t.

The boys shot in five directions, the first half of their journey was underwater, fueled by fear and summers of Marco Polo. When they finally came up for air, they turned to see the teenage boy staring around, confused at which one of them to grab. By the time he decided, it was too late.

They were gone.

They met back at the Rocks, the closest thing to a clubhouse they had. Three huge boulders, their tops poking through the loamy soil of the forest floor. The longest and widest curved for fifteen feet, covering one whole side of the area, four feet at its widest and three feet tall. The other two were roughly the same size, each about five feet long and two feet high. The Rocks were almost dead center of a small patch of forest that was in the middle of several housing sub-divisions.

The Rocks had been used for everything from wargames to campouts to a cache for items that couldn’t be kept in their homes. Eddie was lounging atop the largest of the Rocks, flipping through a December 1989 issue of
Playboy
magazine.

“What is it with long walks on the beaches?” he asked as Danny and Bergen picked their way through the trees and into the cleared center of The Rocks. “I mean, we have twenty-seven of these damn things and more than half of these women want to walk on the beach for a long time.”

Danny grabbed one for himself and leaned against one of the smaller rocks and shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said turning his magazine sideways, flipping out the centerfold.

Eddie glanced at Bergen who had squatted Indian style in the center and seemed about to say something, then evidently decided not to and went back to reading.

They heard the sound of moving brush and all turned to watch Clyde, Doug and Tony enter, each sucking on a Popsicle. Tony passed three orange ones to the other boys and sat across from Bergen, the laugh begging to escape. Clyde and Doug also grabbed a magazine and pretended to read it.

The boys waited for Bergen to explode, his embarrassment sending him into one of his famous temper-tantrums. The only sound was the sucking on the popsicles and the occasional clearing of throats. The fake coughing got louder and more frequent as the boys watched its effects on Bergen, who was staring at the ground and glowering. When the coughs became one long fit, each of the boys hacking and doubling over as if they were about to die, Bergen exploded.

“Shut up!” He twisted around and glared at all the boys who seemed to be innocently reading their magazines.

“Look at this,” said Clyde holding out a page for Tony to admire. “Now, these are some serious hooters. Says here she works as an aerobics instructor and is the mother of two.”

“Damn,” said Tony. “She don’t look like a momma.”

Bergen spun upon the two and grabbed the magazine. He stood still as he read it to make sure they weren’t making fun of him then tossed it back.

“My brother told me about this new website they got called Boobscan.com. It has like a whole bunch of tits that were scanned in. He showed it to me and it was pretty gross. I mean, all them women had to flatten them out. I thought they looked like pancakes with cherries, myself,” said Tony.

“Boobscan. What’ll they think of next,” said Danny. “Speaking of, how’s your Momma doing, Tony?”

“Oh, she’s fine. Went to the hospital last week to get her boobs checked for cancer. And thank you for your care and concern over my Momma’s boobs and I’m happy to say they are cancer free.”

“You’re welcome, Tony. After all, what are friends for?” he replied with a smile and a solicitous bow.

“All right. All right. Enough about Boobland and Boobscan.com and any other boob thing you guys want to talk about. I don’t know why I said it, it was stupid and it’s over. Enough.”

The boys broke down, unable to contain themselves over Bergen’s outburst. Eddie fell off his rock and Danny and Clyde joined him on the ground, their laughter ringing in the trees. Tony and Doug were doubled over, tears coming out of their eyes, their guffaws rebounding off the rocks. Bergen stood amidst the storm of hilarity, hands on his hips.

When the laughter died down, it was Eddie who spoke first.

“Oh no. It ain’t over. It ain’t ever gonna be over. As long as there are no leeches in Tennessee, it will never be over.”

“But there are no leeches in Tennessee,” said Bergen with an impossibly straight face.

The laughter increased until everyone was left rolling, each holding their sore stomachs.

“Momma,” said Clyde in his best Bergen voice.

* * *

Paradise Valley, Arizona

Agent Emilio Ortega pulled his white Ford Explorer into the gravel drive and scanned the area carefully. The large black letters on his door said
BORDER PATROL
and had a tendency to send people scampering, especially this close to the border.

He’d received a few leads, more like rumors saying that there were some illegals in the compound, so he’d decided to check it out on the way home from his shift at the I-90 roadblock. The day had been rather productive. It was amazing, really. They’d set the roadblock where they always set it up—five miles south of Benson. Part of the reason for the roadblock was a presence, showing the wetbacks that you meant business. Yet with all the advanced warning, and with their fifth day in a row in the same spot, they’d still captured two busloads—eighty illegals who were now unhappily on their way back to Mexico via Nogales.

Then, of course, there was the aerostat—or the blimp as most of the locals called it—which was the DEA’s secret weapon. The aerostat was an immense balloon tethered to the ground by a thousand-foot long metal cable. Inside the aerostat was an extremely sophisticated ground surveillance radar that scanned the entire length of the US-Mexican border for sixty miles. At one time, more than eighty percent of the drugs that entered the United States from Mexico came through Cochise County. Now it was down to a manageable five percent and to keep the radar operators honest, they deigned to cooperate with the Border Patrol alerting the local shop of border-crossers.

Ortega knew the real reason, however. Those fat-assed DEA boys with their long hair and hippie clothes didn’t want to miss any MTV. They let the Border Patrol do the scut work, tracking down all the illegals, but if a single one had as much as a peace pipe on him he was supposed to call it in. After all, drugs and their associative laws were too sophisticated for a mere Border Patrol agent.

Emilio parked in the circular turn-around that fronted the church. From beneath hooded eyelids he searched his field of vision for the guilty. He was disappointed that no one bolted. He lived to flip on the siren and four-wheel across lawns, scaring the
bejezus
out of people. Sometimes when he caught them he’d use the stun gun he’d picked up at the Tucson International Gun Show last year. When the greasers were too tired to run anymore, he’d pull up, saunter over to them like he was gonna wish them a
Bien Venidos
and then
zap
—they’d fall to the ground doing the
kickin’ chickin
. Sadly, it seemed he’d have to wait until later, since none of these folks felt like running.

Poor Suckers.

He reached into the ashtray and pulled out a piece of Juicy Fruit Gum. Placing it in his mouth, he eyed the people a bit more closely. He’d seen several likely targets, dark-skinned Mexicans, the true poor of the world. What Mexicans were to country club America, these people were to the Mexicans, their Indian ancestry their primary offense. None of them, however, showed panic, which probably meant they were legal. Probably.

Emilio stepped out of the truck, hitched up his jeans where the gunbelt had pulled them down and placed his black baseball cap on his head. A woman exited the cafeteria and headed straight for him. As she strode down the sidewalk, he found himself admiring her slender legs. Then he noticed she was a redhead. He’d once had a girlfriend who was a redhead. God, what a fucking fiasco. The loud-mouthed bitch had never stopped talking. Whether she was squatting on the pot, taking a bath or riding his pony, she’d speak incessantly on topics ranging from plant watering to stock options. Her attitude had been enough to make Maureen O’Hara look like the Quiet Man. No, this one might have a pair of incredible legs, but her red hair turned him off as surely as woman with a beard. Still, he smiled as the woman approached, letting her think he was a sucker.

“Excuse me, Sir. Can I help you?”

“Probably not,” he said with a small smile, hooking his thumbs into his gunbelt.

“Excuse me?”

“No, you can’t help me.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Just taking a look around is all. Nothing to worry your pretty little head about.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave, Officer.”

“You’re afraid?”

“I mean if you don’t have a warrant, then you have no right to be here.”

“Listen, Lady. I’ve every right to be here and I don’t need a warrant if I don’t want one. There’ve been some complaints. People have seen some illegals hereabouts and that’s enough for me to walk the property. After all, it is open to the public, right?”

“Well…” she said shifting uncomfortably. “John might not like it.”

“Who might that be, Ma’am?”

“John? He’s our spiritual leader. He runs the Church of the Resurrection here.”

“I’m just looking for some trespassers is all.”

“Well, I can guarantee you that if they’re here on the Church property, they belong here and certainly aren’t trespassing. We welcome anyone and turn nobody away.”

“Why, that’s mighty white of you, Ma’am. And I must say that I admire your open door policy, but you see, this here church is in what we locals like to call the United States of America and in the United States of America we have laws, one of which is that you can’t live in this country unless you’re American.”

She’d blanched at his use of
white
, but then that’s the reaction he wanted to put her on the defensive and see if she might just unravel.

“Sanctuary, Agent Ortega,” she began, reading his nametag, “is a time-honored tradition and few courts will allow police to break it short of a mass-murderer or a psycho, and in addition—”

Ortega held up his hand and gave her his broad
you win
grin. He admired her tenacity. What he really needed was a way to get around a warrant. She was right, he did need one and there was little to no chance of a judge providing him one without strong evidence. An invitation to meet the man in charge would be perfect.

“No need to get into a spat about this. We can be civilized, right? Let me just look around here for a while.”

“Why don’t you come inside and talk to John first?”

And there it was.

“All right. If you insist,” he said, gesturing with his hand. “Lead the way.”

She jerked, as if she’d expected him to turn her down and leave. Shaking her head slightly, she spun on her heel and marched toward the cafeteria. Ortega followed at a more leisurely pace.