Knees decided to write a haunting love theme for a short story he had just written called Jicarilla Mud and it wasn't too difficult since he had the plot already worked out. It was recorded using ACID (multi-track recording program) and it came out pretty good.
JICARILLA MUD
(c)2004 by Fender Tucker
Sadies Hotel (c)2004 by Gavin L. O’Keefe
Farmington New Mexico
1955
Wild Bill Smith
Bill Smith spun out of the parking lot of the Macgobar office on West Main Street and headed east. His blue Packard sedan was too clean for Farmington and looked out of place. He and Geneva had driven in from Tulsa over the weekend and the Packard hadn’t had time to attract the fine gritty sand that coated everything in New Mexico in the spring.
He passed the El Vasito lounge on the right—some called it the Bucket of Blood—and continued west for several blocks past the Totah Theater and Sprouse-Reitz dime store. On the left was the Palace Market, a hotel, the Allen Theater, Gardenswartz Sporting Goods and Sweetbriar’s clothing store. He took a left on Allen and angle parked at Noel Hardware and exited the Packard. The sun was going down as he walked across the street, gazing up at the wall of Sweetbriar’s at the big semicircular crack in the plaster that showed where the openings for the old Trailways Bus Station had been. Bill had never seen it as the bus station, since it moved up the street a block a couple of years before he’d ever visited Farmington, but he’d heard the stories about the place.
He headed north on the west side of Allen and entered the first door he came to, the entrance of the Blue Spruce Restaurant.
It was dark inside the place and it took him a while to get used to it. A U-shaped counter faced away from the door with cushioned seats spaced around the near side of it. Behind it, in the U, were the swinging doors to the kitchen. There were booths around the sides of the room and Bill took the last one on the right, facing back towards the door. Sally, the waitress who’d been working at the Blue Spruce for ten years, ever since the war, brought him his usual, water and tea.
“How’s bidness, shug?” asked Sally.
Bill, who was 25 and often accused of looking like the movie actor Richard Egan, shrugged off the “shug” and answered, “The oil bidness is the same here as it is in Oklahoma. Too many Okies.”
Sally laughed and moved off to wait on the growing evening crowd at the Blue Spruce.
Don Tucker
Don Tucker put his hat on the seat next to him in the 1947 Lincoln as he pulled out of his driveway on Wall Street. He headed south, down the hill to where Wall doglegged at Apache Street and turned west. Traffic was always light in the evening on Apache and he didn’t see any other cars as he spotted the St. Thomas Catholic School on the left, which his boys attended. He took a left on Allen, just past the church, and drove down the hill past the ballpark. There was a game just starting and Tucker was tempted to park and watch a few innings in the twilight before they turned on the spotlights. If the Scribner’s café, just across the street, had been open, he probably would have. It was the best ballpark in town and its six rows of concrete bleachers made it the most comfortable place in town to watch baseball. And Scribner’s hamburgers with the thin patty of meat hanging over the bun on all sides, ai caramba!
Tucker took the little dogleg Allen Street made and continued south past the Huntzinger’s Apartments on one side and an abandoned government building that seemed doomed to linger as urine-depository for years to come on the other. Just past the Allen Hotel, a two-story wooden relic of the “Old Farmington” of the ’40s, Tucker angle parked and, grabbing his hat, got out next to the new Trailways bus station. He adjusted his hat using the reflection in the bus station window and crossed the little alley that led behind the Allen Theater block.
Just as he reached the door of the Blue Spruce Restaurant, the neon sign above him crackled into life. It was now dark enough for the garish red, green and blue sign, in the shape of an oil field derrick, to bathe him in its glow as he entered the restaurant.
His eyes had no trouble adjusting to the darkness of the place and when he heard his name shouted above the din of hungry oil workers off for the day, he headed back and sat across from Bill Smith.
“Cheerio,” said Bill.
“Gotdoggit, Bill, do you have to tell everyone I’m here?” the bald man said as he laid his hat on the booth seat next to him. “We’ll have every salesman in town after us.”
“Well, what do you think I do,” the genial Okie retorted. “I don’t just fix the rigs; I buy the tools too.”
“Yeah, but you’ve already bought Miley Mud all it needs for the year.”
Sally came over and took Tucker’s order for coffee and a hamburger, calling him “Shug” too. He gave her a big smile and watched her walk away, her hips reminding him of a pumping unit on a hysteresis cycle.
“Got any idea why Arky wanted to meet with us tonight?” Bill asked, dipping his water glass under the table and adding some bourbon from a flask to it, just enough to give it the color of his tea. Now he had two glasses of tea in front of him.
“No I don’t,” Tucker replied, “but he said it had something to do with the Jicarilla.”
Arky and Neta Miley
Arky Miley shouted to his wife, Neta, as she got in the driver’s seat of their 1945 Cadillac de Ville, “Are you sure all the doors are locked?” At a nod from her, Arky closed the front door of Miley Mud and Chemical Company on East Main and locked it. Then he walked to the Caddy and got in on the passenger’s side.
His thick, dark mustache gave a quiver as he settled in for the ride downtown to the Blue Spruce. “It sure would be a shame to have someone break in and trash the office—now that the Jicarilla situation is panning out.” Arky, who was often told he looked like that young TV funny guy, Ernie Kovacs, seemed to have a hard time containing his excitement about something. He kept up a constant patter to Neta, a statuesque brunette with big hair, big smile, and an air of competence that Arky thrived on, as they drove west on Main, passing the jagged cliff that had been cut away from the bluff so that Main Street could angle at the edge of town. On their left was the Apache Motel where new employees of Miley Mud and their families stayed until they had found a house. On the right was Farmington Lumber, the Harmony House music store, the Creamland Dairies milk company and the downtown city park. Neta listened to his enthusiastic plans, nodding her head from time to time, and took a right just past the Snooker 8 pool hall, Don’s News Stand, Pop’s Fountain and Noel Hardware on Allen. She spotted Bill Smith’s Packard and angle parked next to it.
The sun had gone down and the neon derrick sign across the street above the Blue Spruce flashed red, green, red and green, then blue in an old pattern that everybody in the oil business in town knew by heart. Arky took Neta’s arm and they crossed the street and entered the Blue Spruce.
Tom Bolack
Tom Bolack stuck his bullet head out of the GMC pickup and yelled at the carload of Navajos ahead of him that couldn’t seem to make up its mind about which bar to stop at. That’s how he saw any car- or truckload of Navajos, even though most of them were on their way back to their hogans after spending a hot day on Broadway Street selling their turquoise and silver jewelry to tourists. Tom had spent the day in the Jicarilla oil patch, 70 miles south of Bloomfield, and he was tired and dusty.
He was thinking about getting a new Chevy pickup—and maybe even a Lincoln town car—but he figured as long as the Jimmie held up on his daily trips to the oil fields, why bother with transportation that needed to be cleaned?
Tom was over six feet tall and a little overweight and his huge, balding head scared most Navajos, who thought he looked like a dona shona chindi, a no-good devil. He had driven in from the Bloomfield highway and needed to stop at Foutz’ trading post on Behrend and Main to pick up a squash blossom jewelry piece for his wife, Betty, but the damn navvies changed his mind. Instead he turned north on Allen and a block later pulled up alongside Noel Hardware.
He wished he had taken the time to change clothes because he had some news for his oil buddies at the Blue Spruce and it would have more impact if he were dressed in a suit or something more elegant than his oil field clothes.
The derrick sign crackled as he entered the restaurant. As his eyes adjusted he saw Bill Smith, Don Tucker and Arky and Neta Miley in a booth at the back. He walked to them and sat on a stool at the bar across from their booth.
“Hullo,” he intoned and the four Farmingtonians, who stopped their animated conversation, answered back noncommittally. “Glad I ran into you guys,” Tom said. “How’s bidness been?”
The four looked at each other and left it to Arky to comment wryly, “Wa–all, it’s doin’ pretty good, Tom. How ’bout you?”
“Can’t complain. Can’t complain. I’m thinking of takin’ a little huntin’ trip up t’ Alaska.”
“Alaska?” Bill said. “That’s a long ways to go for huntin’. What’re you goin’ for? Polar bear?” He gave a little laugh.
“That’s right. Polar bear. I hear they got some of them that’s almost a ton on the hoof. Betty just bought me a new 30-06 with a telescopic sight.”
Bill, who knew guns, smirked a little and said, “You’ll need a telescopic sight if you hope to get a shot at a polar bear. I hear they’re way up north where there’s nothin’ but ice and snow. How can you sneak up on a bear where there’s no trees or rocks?”
“Oh I’m not thinkin’ of shootin’ a bear on the ground. I’m plannin’ on shootin’ him from a Beechcraft I’m buyin’ from Oscar Thomas up at the airport.”
They all laughed at that, visualizing the huge Bolack sticking his upper torso out of the window of a twin-engined airplane to shoot at startled polar bears on the ice below.
“You must have hit a few wells,” said Tucker, “to be talking about buying an airplane.”
“More than a few, Tucker. More than a few. In fact, Omer Tucker over at the accounting company tells me my assets just passed the million dollar mark.”
The four could tell by the way Bolack rushed the sentence that this was what he had been wanting to tell them all along. He was Farmington’s first oil millionaire. And by way of celebration, a polar bear would have to give his all.
“Well, that’s great, Tom,” Neta said quietly. “When you get to be governor, why don’t you invite us out to your Xanadu ranch and show us your polar bear?”
All four of the men laughed at this, but Bolack ended his laugh before the others.
“Will do, little lady. Will do.”
An awkward silence followed, broken by Sally’s, “You want anything, big fella?”
Tom Bolack mumbled “No thanks,” and saying goodbye to the four in the booth stomped out of the restaurant.
“The sad thing is,” Arky Miley said, shaking his head, “he’ll probably get that bear—and maybe even become governor.”
Neta sniffed. “And maybe we’ll get that tour of his ranch.”
The four hunched closer around the table and continued their interrupted conversation.
The Mud
Arky looked at the other two men and said, “First of all, tell me how’s it goin’ down at the Jicarilla plant.”
Tucker and Bill looked at each other and Bill said, “Well, Arky, I haven’t spent all that much time down there but what I’ve seen is sort of confusing. Tucker’s doing tests all day on some new mud that I don’t find all that promising for well service. What we’re using now works plenty good enough on the wells I’ve checked lately.”
“So you haven’t noticed anything unusual around the plant?” Arky asked.
“No, not really. Joe Eaves has been actin’ goofier than usual but then it’d be unusual for him to not act goofier than usual.”
“You said it,” Tucker agreed. “There’s something down there that’s setting Joe off on one of his weirder toots, and I’m not sure it’s not affecting me too. Y’know, I’ve read everything there is about the tests you ordered but I can’t see why you keep ’em going when they show that Jicarilla mud you brought in is simply no good for drilling.”
“So you say something might be affecting you too? Do you spend as much time in the lab as Joe?”
“Not at all. I’ve got other things to do besides the lab work. But Joe works in there all the time.”
“Yeah, I know. So Joe is acting strange and you’re feeling something, too?”
“Well, I tell you. It’s not a concrete thing. It’s kind of subtle. I notice that after spending some time with that moldy mud in the lab I start to get a little lightheaded and everything seems to be—brighter.”
Bill broke in. “Hey, there was that one time when Joe showed me the mud in the lab and I—I remember that day I felt sort of rubbery and had a weird kind of double vision. I had been drinking schnapps the night before so I switched to scotch that night and everything was okay.”
“So what’s going on, Arky?” Tucker asked.
Neta smiled and said, “Yes, Arky, do tell us what’s going on.”
Tucker grinned at Neta and said, “So you’re not in on the secret either?”
“Actually I am, but I’m just getting tired of the buildup. Tell them already.”
“Okay, okay,” Arky said. “Let me give you some background before I tell you how that Jicarilla mud that’s no good for drilling is going to make us all millionaires who can buy Tom Bolack and cap his wells just for spite.
“Remember last year when I met that Al Hubbard guy in Houston at the Petroleum Club convention? Did you know that he was in the CIA? Well, he was and pretty high up. He was in charge of a program to get information out of prisoners and how to keep the Communists from gettin’ information out of our captured guys. Anyway, they’ve come up with some pretty interesting ideas. One of ’em is a drug that makes a guy go out of his mind temporarily and he’ll just about tell you anything you want. The ironic thing is—get this—it’s actually pleasurable to the poor sap who’s gettin’ questioned.
“The stuff was invented years back by a Swiss chemist. He made it from a kind of mold that grows on wheat and other grains. Al suggested to me that it might grow on crude oil or some other kind of organic substance. So I flew out to Virginia and got some of his mold and that’s what we’ve been growing down at the Jicarilla plant. Using some of that nutrient-rich mud from the Jicarilla River basin we’ve found that the mold has mutated slightly from the strain that the Swiss guy used, but it really seems to like growin’ on the Jicarilla mud.”
“Great!” Bill jumped in. “Miley Mud’ll have the finest and most successful interrogation department in the whole San Juan Basin.”
They all laughed and Tucker asked, “No, really, Arky. Where are we going with this? Are we going to sell this stuff to the CIA?”
“No–o–o. Not really. Y’see, our mold is different from their stuff. They purify the mold into a liquid. What we’ve got doesn’t need any purification. The fumes from the mold itself carry the important chemicals through the air. That’s what’s been happening to Joe lately. Sniffin’ the product.”
“Okay,” said Tucker. “But what is the scheme? Do many people need a truth serum? Is the stuff so pleasurable that people would pay to sniff it? How is it going to turn into money for us?”
“Well, now that you mention it, Tucker, it is pretty damn pleasurable,” Arky replied.
Neta said, almost dreamily. “Yes, pretty damn pleasurable,” and Tucker looked at her with squint-eyed interest.
Arky continued, “Look. The war’s been over for almost ten years now and everybody’s settlin’ in to the good life. They want thrills that don’t cost an arm and a leg and don’t make you drive all over hell to get to ’em. I’m telling’ you. This stuff is that good. The CIA will never let their stuff get out because it’s their nature to be hush-hush. It’s their drug. Al Hubbard doesn’t like the way they’re handling it so he tipped me off. So we’ll have a corner on the market of something that everyone will associate with pleasure. I tell you. It’s gonna be a big thing and it’s right around the corner.”
“How come no one else has thought of this?” Bill asked.
“They have! Haven’t you been watchin’ the commercials for Miltown? Everybody and his mother is takin’ Miltown and all it does is make you want to sleep during the day. This Jicarilla mud is different. You only got a small dose of it down at the plant because the best mold Joe keeps in the isolation chamber. And you have to get pretty close to the mold to really get the full effect.”
“Arky and I have a patch of the mud in a small planter right by the bed,” Neta said helpfully. “We just hold the planter and breath the air right above the mud. About two hits does the trick.”
Tucker looked startled and stuttered, “So—so h–how long does the ‘pleasure’ last?”
“About three hours.”
Arky looked a bit embarrassed and tried to bring the conversation back to his scheme. “The way I see it, we should phase out the drilling mud end of the business and switch over to Jicarilla mud exclusively. If people start spending more time at home with the mud instead of driving out to eat, to a drive-in, to a ball game or wherever the hell they drive to, the oil bidness is not going to do all that well anyway. It’ll be good to get out.”
Bill Smith looked thoughtful. “But if word gets out to guys like Bolack, there could be trouble. They don’t want people stayin’ at home. They want them ridin’ around them four-lane highways that Eisenhower been building around the country. We got to be cagey about how to get the word out.”
“Oh I got some ideas about that,” Arky smiled. “But let’s save that for our next meeting. Tucker, I want you and Bill to go down to the Jicarilla tomorrow and ask Joe to show you the isolation chamber. I’m hoping you guys will want to see what it’s all about.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Bill and Tucker nodded.
Arky picked up the check and the four left the restaurant, found their respective cars, and drove off. The neon derrick above the door of the Blue Spruce Restaurant switched from red and green to blue, then all-red—then did it over and over again.
The Plant
Bill picked up Tucker at 8 the next morning at Tucker’s house on Wall. Tucker waved goodbye to Maxine as he got in the Miley Mud & Chemical pickup and they sped down Wall to Apache and doglegged down across Main. They were settled in for the two-hour ride to the Jicarilla plant by the time they crossed the Animas River just south of downtown on the narrowest bridge in New Mexico. Only one direction at a time across the bridge and even then you had be careful.
The 15-minute drive to Bloomfield was quiet but both men could tell that there was anticipation in the air. As they passed a green cottonwooded area close to the river about five miles out of Farmington, Bill asked, “Do you think Tom Bolack will really go up to Alaska and shoot a polar bear?”
Tucker chuckled. “What made you ask that?”
“Well, that’s Bolack’s land over there on the right. Joe Salmon was tellin’ me that he bought it when those three wells a’ his out on the Bisti came in. Tom says he’s gonna build a huge ranch on that land.”
“Bolack’s always been the most ruthless driller in northern New Mexico—I guess we shouldn’t be surprised if he’s ruthless off the job.” Tucker leaned back in the pickup seat and, placing his hat over his eyes, said, “Wake me up when we get there.”
“Dammit, Tucker, you can’t sleep. You’re gettin’ way more than roustabout’s wages!”
Tucker laughed with his eyes still shut. They both knew that the roustabouts—oilfield hands hired each morning to go out with the crews to do odd jobs—liked to go to the Jicarilla because it started off with a two-hour sleep. At a buck an hour.
Bill played the radio as he drove through Bloomfield, passing the two gas stations and one bar, listening to Harold Nakai and his Navajo Show on KVBC, 1280 on the dial as they turned right onto Highway 44, El Camino del Muerte. They played mostly Navajo songs, which had a steady bass drum and five or six male voices weaving oddly oriental-sounding melodies, all involving the syllables “aaaayyy” and “yaaah”. But every few songs Bippity Bob Barnett or Bob Berry would interrupt and throw in a Hank Williams or a Jimmie Rodgers.
Forty-five minutes later Tucker was awake and checking out the map as they passed the Chaco Trading Post and Huerfano, a large mesa that stood alone on the expanse of the desert. “There’s a road we can take about ten miles ahead that will take us to the plant the back way. Want to take it?”
“Why not? It’s a Miley truck.”
They took the turnoff on a dirt road and headed east. They curved south about five miles later, driving through hills of tumble weeds and cacti. Fifteen minutes later the truck pulled into the dirt parking lot on the north side of a compound of three tan stucco buildings, bleached by the sun. One was bigger than the others and they went in that one, perspiring from the long drive.
There were three men in the front room, all at desks with charts and papers covering them. All three looked up as Bill and Tucker entered and one stood up to greet them. “Hey, good to see you ol’ boys. I hear you want to see some Jicarilla mud.” The other two men snickered at this.
“Hi, Joe,” Tucker said, “Yeah, we want to see it. Up to now the results have been so bad on paper I haven’t really cared to, but Arky says it’s, uh, got some unusual properties.”
The two men at the desks snickered and Joe Eaves, Tucker and Bill looked at each other. Joe said, “Let’s go to the isolation chamber and check it out. These two bozos have been sniffing the mud all morning long.”
The three went through a door on the east wall and entered a laboratory full of equipment, obviously designed to test chemicals. The mud used in oil well drilling had to have the perfect specific gravity for the terrain and underground structure of the well site. The weight of the mud, forced down into the oil deposit through the shaft, provided the pressure that pushed the crude oil from hundreds of feet below the surface into the large cylindrical storage tanks that littered the oil patch like big white pimples.
Tucker was an expert on mud and knew that any mud that was so organic that mold would grow on it had to be too light for oil field use. Which had made him wonder why Arky was spending so much money and time on the special mud that Joe was working on.
Joe had a smirk on his face that he couldn’t conceal and he led them into a glass-walled room in one corner of the large laboratory. In the center of the room was a table with a flat inch-thick “cake” of brownish-black mud covering it, about three-foot by four-foot. On top of the cake was a coating of greenish mold that had a shimmering effect when one’s eye caught it at the right angle. There was a dank, musty smell in the air, not unpleasant, but strong.
“That’s the smell I been smellin’ out in the office every once in a while,” Bill exclaimed. “I always thought it was you, Joe.”
“It was me. That smell sticks to you like roadrunner manure. Sue says she gets silly just sniffin’ my dirty clo—”
“So you’re saying,” Tucker interrupted, “that there’s some kind of pleasure we’re gonna get out of sniffin’ this, uh, mud, and it’s so good that people will pay for it?”
“I’ll tell you how good it is. I fired those two guys out there three weeks ago because with you two dropping in every few days there ain’t no need for ’em, but they’re still showing up every day—even though they ain’t getting’ paid.”
“Hmm. That is impressive,” Tucker said. “Well, I’ve noticed a couple of times how lightheaded I felt driving home from here. I’m feelin’ pretty light right now. Is this the big pleasure?”
“No, no,” Joe laughed. “This stuff gives off spores that get you a little giggly if you’re in the same room with it, but that’s about as high as you get. No, you gotta rub the mold and get close and really take a big snort right above it as it kinda ruffles in your fingers. It smells like a cross between cinnamon and glycerine. A’ course that’s partly the mud.”
“I’m game,” said Bill, and leaned over and rubbed his fingers over a patch of the mold. He took a deep breath through his nose and closed his eyes. “Jicarilla mud, be good to me,” he said as he straightened up. “One snort does it?”
“I generally take three on slow days and four on fast ones,” Joe answered, “but only one or two at a time. This is some damn good mud. That stuff we had at first was pure shit. You could sniff all day and only get a headache. I was tellin’ Tom Bolack about it last night an’—”
“You told Tom Bolack about it?” Tucker snapped.
“Not about the good stuff. Not about this stuff. I told him about the stuff we used to have that got you a little, uh, warped but not about this good—”
“I don’t think Bolack is the man to be talking about this to. You know he’d do anything to keep this oil boom going. He’s gettin’ rich and powerful and anything that upsets the status quo is not goin’ to be in his best interests. I hope you—”
“Holy cheerio!” Bill spouted. “This is fantastic! My head is spinnin’ at 500 rpms. An’ in Technicolor! Whoa! I gotta sit down.” He took one of the chairs at the side of the table and settled in it. “Tucker, you gotta give this mud a sniff!”
“I’d like to, but I’m kinda worried about this Bolack factor. Joe, what exactly did you tell Bolack about all this?”
“I didn’t tell him nothin’. I just said we had some special mud that was gonna make us all rich and give everyone somethin’ to do besides drive around all the time.”
“I’m getting’ flashes, guys. There’s all kinds of wavy things flyin’ around and I swear my legs just turned to synthetic rubber.”
Tucker said to Joe, “I gotta tell Arky about this. Is the phone workin’?”
“Naw. Pete outside is supposed to be an electrician, but it’d be pretty impossible to get him to do anything constructive, an’ besides—”
“Hey, guys, I just melted outa my chair. An’ can anybody stop those sparrahs from—”
“Bill, let’s go! Take another snort if you want, but let’s hit the road. We gotta get back to town and tell Arky that Bolack is in on the action. Joe, you stay here and keep the place locked. Don’t let the mud out of your sight, and for gotdoggit’s sake, keep those two goobers outside quiet. There’s no tellin’ what they said to Bolack.”
Bill Smith leaned over and took another big inhale as he ruffled the mold almost wantonly. “There ain’t no mud like Jicarilla mu-u-u-u-ud,” he sang in his slow Oklahoma drawl as he and Tucker walked through the outer office where the two former Miley Mud & Chemical employees began beating on their desks and joining in, “Ain’t no mud—Jicarilla mud—ain’t no mud—Jicarilla mud.”
They left the building and got in the Miley pickup, Tucker driving. Bill rolled down his window and shouted, “Che-e-e-r-io,” back at the building as they drove away.
El Camino del Muerte
Tucker peeled out on the dusty road that led back north from the Jicarilla plant. He kept the speedometer above 60 as the truck careered around corners on the back road and fifteen minutes later he pulled onto Highway 44, heading back to Bloomfield. There was no other traffic, other than the occasional horse-drawn wagon with a family of Navajos in the back. They stayed off the side of the road so Tucker was able to speed along at 80 on the poor blacktop highway, known across the state as the most dangerous road on earth. Bill had finally stopped singing his new song and was taking swigs out of a small flask he had in a back pocket.
Both windows were open and the hot desert air whipped past their faces as they sped north.
“Damn this is a wonderful drive!” Bill yelled. He leaned his head out the window and marveled at the way the wind caressed his cheeks. “Take your time, Tucker! I’ve got all day.”
“You just keep havin’ fun, Bill. I’ve seen you when you’ve had too many shots and I’m thinking that this may be better.” He got quiet for a while and then said, “Y’know, Arky may finally be onto something. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy—and Neta.”
“Oh, he’s onto somethin’ all right. This stuff is big, real big. I never felt like this before. I just wish that fly would stop buzzin’ so I could—”
“What fly?” Tucker asked, looking around the cab. Then he heard something and started, but glancing out the window saw nothing.
“I’m talking about the fly that’s headin’ right at us!” Bill shouted and pointed out of his window to his right. “The fly with the green eyeballs!”
Tucker leaned over and tried to see what Bill was pointing at but whatever it was was at an angle he couldn’t see.
Bill leaned farther out the window and stared up at something. “That thing is getting’ closer, Tucker! An’ it’s flashin’ at us—” Bill jerked when a couple of loud metallic thuds sounded on his side of the truck. There was a slight bounce to the truck with the sounds, as if it had been hit on the right side by a couple of large rocks.
“Why, Tucker, I do believe that that goddam fly is shooting bullets at us! Orange ones!”
“What?” Tucker exploded, and hit the gas even harder. The pickup hit 90 as they passed the Chaco Trading Post. Bill was now looking backward.
“It’s behind us now but turnin’ around. If only the sky wasn’t so pink and runny, I could see that green-eyed bastard better. Uh oh. I think it’s shootin’ at us again.”
Tucker felt three jolts to the truck and heard three loud smacks as he saw an airplane zoom over from behind. As the plane flew ahead he saw a large, bullet-headed man with a huge rifle leaning out of the window of the small plane, looking back at them.
The plane circled around as Bill animatedly pulled out a pistol from the glove compartment and started waving it out the window. “See if you can get closer to that thing, okay? I got a feelin’ this is my lucky day. Gonna bag me a giant fly.”
“I’m not slowing down,” Tucker shouted above the roar of the truck and the increasing drone of the plane as it started flying at them from the front. “But I’m also not going to give that bastard a good shot at us.”
He started weaving from side to side on the narrow paved road as the plane came in low, dead ahead. Tucker saw orange flashes on the side of the fuselage and yelped when a loud thud shook the truck once again. A small hole cracked in the middle of the windshield, starring out in an explosion of shiny tendrils. A hole appeared in the back of the seat between them, spitting out a little plume of dust and upholstery.
Bill’s gun popped four times as the airplane approached them. “Got him!” Bill yelled as the plane flew over, so close that Tucker could see the crooked grin on Tom Bolack’s face as he pulled back into the plane, pulling the rifle in with him.
“Well, if you didn’t, it looks like you may have one more shot at him before he hits us in the gas tank. He’s coming back again!”
The plane was indeed making a big circle and heading back after them from behind.
The pickup leapt over a rise and on the top of the next hill a mile off Tucker could see a wagon on the right edge of the road. He kept veering from right to left as he waited for the man in the airplane catching up with them to fire again. He was just passing the wagon of Navajos when he heard the cracking of a rifle above the roar of the twin-engine airplane. He felt a slam in the back of the truck and in the rearview mirror he saw the wagon burst into flames, with screaming people running from it like lemmings. The plane flew ahead.
“Hold on!” Tucker yelled and spun the wheel of the truck as soon as they passed over the next rise in the road. The truck screeched on two wheels as it veered to the right onto a dirt road that led down into a deep rocky canyon. “It’ll take a better pilot than Tom Bolack to catch us in Kutz Canyon!”
Tucker bounced the truck at 50 miles per hour over the dirt road that wound down into the miniature Grand Canyon just south of Bloomfield. There were oil field roads all over the floor of the canyon, many of them right up against the canyon walls. Tucker found one that led to a spot directly under an overhanging cliff and pulled to a stop, the dust billowing around the bullet-riddled truck.
The plane flew over but the pilot was in the cockpit and not hanging out the window. It flew over three more times then headed northwest out of sight.
Bill got out of the truck and fired off two shots at a roadrunner that scooted across the canyon, a hundred yards off. “Beep beep,” he intoned quietly as the bird continued his scooting. “I’m savin’ my aim for that green-eyed fly. Cheerio.”
“Let’s go,” Tucker called from the truck, “He’s going to beat us to town by a half hour. We gotta warn Arky.”
The two men drove back to Highway 44 and sped on through Bloomfield back towards Farmington.
The Rendezvous
Tucker didn’t see the airplane anywhere in the sky even though Bill kept shouting, “There it is! Here comes the green-eye fly o’ destruction!” He figured Bolack had gone back to the airport on a mesa just northwest of Farmington.
“We have to tell Arky about this. We may be up against the whole oil bidness now that the word about Jicarilla Mud has leaked. I wonder where’s the nearest pay phone?”
Bill, who was waving his gun out the window with his right hand and drinking from his flask with his left, said, “Hey, there’s the turnoff to the Mesa Drive-In. Lloyd the pr’jectionist oughta be out there settin’ up for tonight’s show. I bet he has a phone.”
“Good idea,” Tucker said as he veered right onto the two-grooved dirt road that led to the drive-in about a mile up the road. The marquee, perched out among the tumbleweeds blared:
ROMAN HOLIDAY
&
THE THING
“Hey, you seen those shows? Geneva and I saw ’em a couple nights ago. Audrey Hepburn is this princess, y’see, and there’s this creature made out of rosebush an’ carrot—”
“Yeah I saw ’em,” Tucker interrupted with a grim face. “Maybe you better stay in the truck while I go in and call.” They screeched to a stop in front of the snack bar and Tucker ran to the door leading to the projection room, just to the west of the concession stand.
“Lloyd! Can I use your phone?” Tucker shouted.
Lloyd Freeman, a tall, angular man of about 50 looked up from the film he was splicing at a workbench. “Oh, hey, Tucker. Sure. It’s in the snack bar. Hey, you gonna see the show? It’s purty good—Gregory Peck’s this reporter who’s followin’ this princess all over Rome an’ this big monster made outa…”
Tucker was already in the snack bar and didn’t hear any of the review that the projectionist, who had seen the films a dozen times in the past four days, was providing. He spun the dial of the telephone five times and waited, tapping his fingers nervously on the glass countertop. There was no one else in the snack bar.
After four rings, Arky answered, “Hullo?”
“Arky, Tucker. Listen, we have problems. Tom Bolack found out about the Jicarilla Mud and tried to kill us on the way back into town. We’re at the Mesa Drive-In right now.”
“Tom Bolack! Of all the people to—how’d he find out? No, never mind. We need to get together and talk this over. You, Bill an’ me.”
“Okeedoke, where do you want to meet?”
“We can’t meet at the company. That’s where Tom would expect us to go. Is there anyone else who knows?”
“I don’t know. He might have had time to land and tell somebody. Who do you think that might be?”
“Who knows? There’s all sorts of people, ’specially in this neck of the woods, who wouldn’t want something like Jicarilla Mud to catch on. I tell you what. Meet me at Sadie’s.”
“Sadie’s?” Tucker was flabbergasted. Sadie’s was a notorious bordello down by the tracks. He had never gone inside; he’d only driven by it on his way to Allen Construction down by the Animas River. “I thought Sadie’s was a whorehouse?”
“Well, it is, but they rent rooms by the day too and sometimes, ever since we started hitting the mud, Neta and I like to go down there and spend a day in their Kachina Suite. It’s pretty atmospheric and when the mud comes on—what the hell are we babblin’ about? You say Tom Bolack—of all people—tried to kill you?”
Tucker was still a little tongue-tied, thinking about Arky and Neta sniffing Jicarilla Mud at—Sadie’s? “Well, okay, if you say so. Where will we meet? The, uh, Kachina Suite?”
“No,” Arky laughed. “There’s sort of a bar in the back on the ground floor. They don’t have a liquor license but they serve booze anyway. Just go in the front door and keep walking past the desk to the back. I’ll be there probably before you get there. You say you’re at the Mesa?”
“Yeah. Okay, we’re heading there right now. Keep an eye out for Bolack.”
“Say, did you guys get a chance to check out the mud?”
“Bill did, but I didn’t. Hell, somebody had to drive.”
“Good thinking. So how’s Bill doing?”
“Shootin’ at anything that flies.”
“Well you keep an eye on him and meet me at the bar at Sadie’s as soon as you can.”
“Will do, Arky. Bye.” Tucker hung up and, ignoring Lloyd who was still reviewing the movies, walked swiftly out to the truck. Bill was lying on the hood of the truck, making humming noises.
“Gotdoggit, Bill, let’s go. We gotta meet Arky and you’ll never guess where.”
“Uh, Sadie’s? That’s where I run into Arky a lot.”
“What the hell, you too? What do you know about Sadie’s?”
“Well, me and Geneva go there every once in a while to kinda blow off a little steam. They got this Kachin—”
“Yeah, I know. Let’s go.”
The two men hopped in the truck and a minute later it was bouncing along the dirt road past the ticket booth and back onto the Bloomfield Highway. Tucker gunned it up to about 80 and five minutes later they reached the bridge over the Animas River. There was a car on the north side that was closer to the bridge than they were but Tucker honked his horn and barreled on across the narrow bridge. The driver of the car, seeing the truck speeding towards him, wisely pulled off the road into a ditch as the Miley truck lurched past.
Tucker stayed left onto Pinon and drove alongside the railroad tracks till he got to Behrend Street and turned left. There, in the part of town that every Farmington mother warned their children about, was Sadie’s, a three-story wooden hotel, painted a faded brown and baking in the hot New Mexican sun. The words “SADIE’S HOTEL” were painted on the front of the building across the second story. A few Navajos and Mexicans were lounging around the entrance. It was one in the afternoon.
Incident at Sadie’s
The Miley truck screeched to a stop and Tucker and Bill hopped out, running into the dark building. The people standing outside stopped speaking and stared at them, then laughed and continued their low conversations.
The lobby was very dark, with only a few 10-watt bulbs scattered around, and a bored-looking Mexican behind the front desk eyeing them warily as he looked up from a well-thumbed copy of Argosy. “The girls don’t get here till three, my frien’s. ’Cept for Sadie, of course.”
“We’re headed to th’ bar,” Tucker spat as the two men strode through the lobby and entered an even darker room to the back.
“Gotdoggit,” Tucker cursed, “I can’t see a thing.”
“The good tables are to the right,” Bill offered, and as if he had night vision goggles, stomped to one of them and sat down heavily. Tucker followed suit, although much slower and hesitatingly.
“Arky said he’d be here before us,” Tucker said. “I hope he didn’t have any problem.”
“Cervesa con limon!” Bill shouted, and within seconds a short, gray-haired Mexican woman brought them two beers in dark brown bottles without labels.
Just then Arky Miley strode into the room and, seeing them as his eyes adjusted, joined them at the table.
“Listen, we can’t stay here. Bolack saw me driving downtown and I had to drive all over hell tryin’ to lose him. I don’t think he followed me here but you never know. He’s got one of them police-band radios in his truck. C’mon, let’s go.”
The three men jumped up and headed back into the lobby. As they were about to exit through the front door they heard the sound of a truck pulling to a stop outside and a door slam.
“That’s Bolack!” Bill whispered as he glanced through the door.
“Quick,” Arky said, “up th’ stairs! There’s a fire escape outa the Kachina Suite. We’ll circle around back to our cars.”
They ran to the stairway and up two flights to the third floor. The stairways were, if possible, darker than the lobby or the bar. They could hear Tom Bolack shouting down below but couldn’t understand what he was saying.
At the end of the third floor corridor was a big green door painted with Navajo symbols—zia signs, kachina doll faces, even a sand painting. They ran to it and threw it wide and entered the room, which was lit by the sunlight streaming in from an open window to the south.
A bundle on a sumptuous king-sized bed sat up in shock and a man’s voice thundered, “What the hell?” The bundle turned into a brown-haired, clean-cut man of about 40 and a dumpy Mexican woman of about 50. Both nude and sweating.
“Beel! Arky! What the fock are you doeeng? An’ who the hell are you, Baldy?” The woman looked indignant, as if she owned the place—which she did.
“Sadie, you gotta help us,” Arky quickly blurted, then, noticing the man for the first time, “Scott? Boyd Scott?” Arky seemed stunned.
The man looked uncomfortable but quickly mustered his dignity and said, “Arky, I hope you have a damn good reason for—”
The stomping of big cowboy boots in the corridor through the open door drowned out anything he said and a second later the bullet head of Tom Bolack stuck through the door. Followed soon after by his massive body—holding a cocked .45.
“Howdy,” the big man said, then slowly as he faced each of the other people in the room, “Arky, Bill, Tucker, Sadie, Mayor. Looks like the gang’s all here.”
Sadie hopped off the bed, and without a gram of embarrassment, walked to the door in complete nudity. “You boys have your leetle fun. Joos’ remember—you pay by the person, not the room.” She left, closing the door behind her.
Boyd Scott, as the only nude man in the room, huddled under the covers and seemed to be cursing to himself.
“What’s this all about, Tom?” Arky asked calmly. Bill was sitting in a chair looking amused and Tucker seemed to be distracted by the huge bed and its silky splendor. Bolack waved the gun and the three Miley men backed away from him.
“Now, Arky,” Bolack drawled, “you know we can’t let you get away with that crazy mud scheme. The oil bidness is gonna make billions in the next few years and we don’t want anything to upset the cart. Ever’thing’s just gotta stay the way it is. No bumps in the road.”
“Yeah, but what if the road needs a little bumping?” Tucker asked.
“I jes’ love them bumps,” Bill Smith grinned.
“You fellas are what’s wrong with this country. Always lookin’ for new thrills. Well, a thrill ain’t worth nothin’ to me unless you gotta burn some gas to do it.”
Arky looked at Bolack with a dark look on his face. “So you’re gonna kill us to keep the mud a secret.” He didn’t say it as a question.
“Naw, I ain’t gonna kill you boys. Long’s you keep your mouths shut about what you been doin’ down at the Jicarilla plant. Which, by the way, I unnerstand caught fire about an hour ago and burned to the ground. Too bad.”
The three jumped at this news. “Is Joe okay?” Arky looked grim.
“Yeah, Joe an’ a couple of other guys got out in time. They wasn’t able to save anything in the lab though.” Bolack walked over to a chair and sat down, keeping the gun on the three. “Naw, nobody needs to get hurt. Ain’t that right, Mayor?”
The huddling mass under the covers mumbled, “That’s right, Tom. I don’t know what you guys are talking about but Tom Bolack is right. Nobody gets hurt. Everybody keeps their mouth shut. About everything.”
Arky, who was fidgeting more each minute, said, “You can’t keep it quiet forever. Sooner or later people are going to find out just how good Jicarilla mud is and—”
Arky grimaced and grabbed his right shoulder. He gasped, “It’s just too good—”
“You okay, Arky?” Tucker asked, looking worried. He approached Arky as Bolack waved his gun at him.
“No, I don’t think so,” Arky groaned, and sat down heavily on the edge of the huge bed. “Can’t catch my breath—”
“Now hold on—” Bolack sat up as Tucker reached Arky’s side.
“Put the damn gun away, Bolack,” Bill Smith said. “Can’t you see there’s somethin’ wrong with him?”
Arky doubled over and gasped, holding his right arm awkwardly, and then laid back on the bed, obviously in pain.
“Call the doctor quick,” Tucker shouted, then when he noticed that Bolack was hesitating, the gun still trained on them, “we’re not going anywhere you dumb ass. He’s having a heart attack!”
Bolack looked confused, then ran out of the room.
Tucker tried to make Arky more comfortable then leaned to put his head near Arky’s as the stricken man began whispering.
“Neta—tell her—send the package.” His voice was getting weaker and the glimmer was going out of his eyes.
“The package—the package—”
He closed his eyes, took a small breath, then seemed to relax.
Tucker looked at his old friend and shouted, “Arky, come back, come back.”
Arky’s eyes opened and he looked at Tucker and whispered, “Tucker, take care of Neta for me, okay?”
“I will, I will,” Tucker cried, and Arky slumped one more time and lay still.
A stomping came up the stairs and Bolack’s gravelly voice echoed, “The ambulance is on the way!”
The Wait
Neta Miley brushed a tear back as she huddled in a big chair in the living room of her home.
“The package?” she asked, trying to keep from bursting into tears.
Tucker, sitting on the armrest of the chair, placed a hand on her heaving shoulder and said, “Just before Arky died he said to have you send the package. Do you know what package he was talking about?”
“Yes. I’ll get it.” She got up and walked to a roll-top desk on the other side of the room.
Tucker’s eyes followed her. “Bill and I talked it over and think we should just forget about the mud. Bolack’s got everybody in his pocket and he’s dead set against it.”
“I don’t give a damn about Tom Bolack. I know what Arky would want and one day…” Her voice trailed off, then continued haltingly, “But you’re right, we need to forget about the mud—for now.”
Tucker smiled at her and mused, “It’s too bad—I never had a chance to really try the stuff. In all the excitement—”
Neta walked up to Tucker and handed him the book-sized package. “Oh there’s some left. In there.”
Tucker wasn’t sure if she was talking about the package—or the bedroom. His hand shook slightly as he looked at the address.
Dr. Timothy Leary
c/o Psychology Dept.
Harvard University
Cambridge Mass.
Epilogue
Twelve Years Later
“This is Weird Wally at 1280 on your dial. Hey don’t go away because we’ve got a new song by some guy named Knees Calhoon and it’s a hoot. It doesn’t make a lick a’ sense and it’s kinda hard t’ tell if it’s a country & western song or a psychedelic song but it’s a little different from what those straight stations been feedin’ ya. Wally says check it out.”
Wild Bill Smith was a man who loved his whiskey
He was greeted with a smile at every bar in town
He knew his guns and how to have his fun
But when the Jicarilla called him—The deal went down.
Don Tucker was a man with a mission
Livin’ every day as lovers do
He knew his mud and he knew his blood
But when the Jicarilla called him—His aim was true.
Bill Smith was in it for the whiskey and the guns
Tucker was in love with love
Tom Bolack did it for the money and the fame
But only Arky Miley knew—about Jicarilla Mud.
Tom Bolack had a head like a bullet
And he wanted everyone to know his name
He was the man who owned all the land
But when the Jicarilla called him—He played the game.
Arky Miley was the man with the secrets
And heavy was the price he had to pay
He did it with a smile, laughin all the while
And when the Jicarilla called him—He led the way.
Only known pictures of the Mileys
Neta Miley, Brian Donlevy, Arky Miley, Don Tucker, Maxine Tucker
Arky Miley, Neta Miley, Hermione Gingold, Don Tucker, Maxine Tucker
