Summer Nights in the Desert

Summer smells of car exhaust and melted tires, and it looks like the wavering heat mirages of distant cars on the desert highway. That’s what I remember the most from those nights when I was eleven. Whenever the old AC unit got busted and we didn’t have the scratch to fix it – and there wasn’t a lot to spare, back then, even at the best of times – for hours after the sun went down the night would still be too sticky-hot to sleep. As well try to snooze in an oven as in our cardboard-walled double-wide with the crack down the middle where the two halves were slowly pulling the house apart.

That’s when Dad and I would go driving.

Car’s air conditioning didn’t work for spit, either, but that doesn’t matter when you’ve got gas in the tank and endless miles of highway as straight and level as God’s windowframes. “Four-eighty air conditioning,” Dad called it: all four windows down and eighty miles per.

Sunset takes a good while out there. Dad always talks about that, when he gets back from his hunting trips. Back then, with exhaustion and heat confusing my sense of time, it seemed like hours that we’d drive with the sky glowing pink and gold, twilight not so much a time of day as a process. I couldn’t ever say with certainty when the headlights came on. I remember the smells – gasoline, rubber, asphalt, erratic pockets of sweet perfume from desert flowers, the grease under Dad’s fingernails and his after-dinner beers seeping out in his sweat, the musty half-organic reek of decaying vinyl from the seats that stuck to my back, my thighs, my hands. I’d lean back against Dad’s silent bulk and hang my feet out the window, feel the air like someone had turned a hair dryer on my toes. Sometimes he’d play one of his old cassettes, the Stones or the Doors, but other times we’d just listen to the wind and the rumble-burr of road under our tires. It was the closest we ever got to feeling like a family, then or always.

About twenty-five miles out across the big nothing, there was a crossroads where a local man – Tyrone something, I think, tall, taciturn, and dark-skinned, with close-cropped hair – ran a little twenty-four-hour diner/ice cream shop/tchotcke jumble bin, something between a truck stop and a Dairy Queen, filled with novelty license plates, cheap made-in-China trinkets, maps and music, beef jerky, coffee and porn. It was called the Freezee King or Tastee Chill, something misspelled and questionably original. It’s long gone now, of course. I’ve checked, when I go back that way on my own hunting trips.

I remember the way the air hit you when you walked in, an arctic blast of eighty degrees Fahrenheit, scented with industrial soft-serve, stale communion-wafer cones, and the ghosts of a thousand chili dogs, redolent with the promise of gastrointestinal distress to come. An ancient sleighbell, rusted and oblong, hung over the door, but it had long since lost its jingle and just made a sort of half-hearted clonk instead. The seats at the half-dozen closely grouped tables were one-piece plastic benches with little divots in the shape of a hypothetical set of buttocks, such that one always slid back around to a front-facing position no matter how one might squirm. I used to wonder sometimes, given the sheer inhuman size of them, who had sat as the model for the original resin. When I wondered this out loud, Dad would either laugh or give me a smack, depending on whether it had been a two-beer or a six-beer day at work. Looking back, I really ought to have figured out sooner how to predict that. I’ve never been a fast learner, I guess.

Dad and Tyrone knew each other from their Army days – I was never clear on the exact relationship, but I remember the somber gravity with which they would lock gazes and nod in greeting, first one, then the other – and as a result, Tyrone let us soak up his air conditioning and tap water without fussing after us to order anything, and sometimes he even gave me an ice cream gratis. God only knows what kind of chemical sludge went into that magical machine, but even now I can taste that milky sweetness, more sugary than sugar, so sweet it tasted almost toxic. And how can a mass-extruded cake cone with absolutely no flavor of its own be so delicious? Being of an inquiring mind, I’ve done experiments in the years since; you can’t actually tell the difference, blindfolded, between one of those cake cones and the paper that comes pre-wrapped around them. Yet in my childish memories, they are manna and ambrosia. I would wonder which of us changed, but I know that they were always terrible. I’m just not sure whether it’s my current nostalgia or my past excitement about a rare treat that colors my remembered perceptions.

Dad would smoke and sip his water, and he and Tyrone would periodically have muttered conversations about grown-up things that did not interest me in the slightest – I suspect it was largely commiseration on Dad’s at-the-time recent divorce – while I, when I tired of turning upside down in the slick plastic seats, dangling my feet from the headrest and reading my fortunes in the patterns of boogers and gum under the tabletop, would watch the attract-mode loop on Samurai Shodown and wish for a quarter. When that palled, I would idly stroll the merchandise section of the store, watching the girlie magazines out of the corner of my eye but keeping my distance in case they proved dangerous, shaking snow globes (Really? In a souvenir shop in the desert?) or plunking collectible spoons for the musical twang until Dad grunted and heaved himself up, signaling that his buzz was fading into a hangover and he’d remembered that he had to work in the morning.

That was the pattern of summer, to me, the master cylinder from which my mental record was stamped, and even though I live in the northeast now, nearly in Canada, and have long since stopped regarding snow as a mystic gift from on high, I still feel an itch when the days turn warm, a need to get out on the road and roll through the scented dark, to feel summer the way it always was, to recapture the pattern of those early nights.

Before the pattern was broken.

The night when everything changed began like any other. Dad stood and jangled his keys after only three beers, and I dropped my Social Studies homework (Quick, name three signers of the Declaration of Independence.) and scampered after him. Things were still raw and new between us; he had always been a distant and somewhat forbidding figure, a man of the old school who felt that his contributions to child-rearing began and ended with his paycheck. He had not fought especially hard for custody, and the state was not particularly inclined towards single fathers as primary caregivers except in situations of abuse or drug use. Which should tell you about all you really need to know about Mom. I try not to blame her too much, and with effort I generally accomplish that.

Some people just are not cut out for family life.

Tyrone was not in an ice-cream-distributing mood, so I retreated to the arcade game and was watching a black-haired man with a katana battling a blue-haired character of indeterminate gender who appeared to have trouble removing his/her sword from its scabbard when the front door clonk-clonked open and a man collapsed inside, screaming.

The moment was frozen, almost calm, like a painting. My father and Tyrone staring blankly, cigarettes dangling from limp fingers. The man, sides heaving like a she-dog giving birth, curled in a bloody half-circle barely ten feet away from me. I remember the feel of the joystick in my hand, cold and solid, precious for its mundanity. I remember noticing in an abstract way that the man was naked, that the sheeting red on his back and sides was not his shirt, but his blood. He stank of copper and shit. And he screamed. It was the loudest sound in the world.

“Jesus!” Tyrone rumbled. He rushed forward, tugging his shirt off – for bandages, I presume – while Dad, ever more practical, leaned over the counter to retrieve the tire iron Tyron kept there as a theft deterrent.

Tyrone was muttering, “Oh Jesus, oh Lord,” over and over, struggling to clean the man up enough to figure out where the blood was coming from. The man reacted to Tyrone’s touch as though the store owner were electrified, spasming into a stiff-backed arch that kicked his screaming up to a shriller pitch. Beside me, the video game bleeped and trilled, and I turned my head toward it, hypnotized. Better to watch the pixelated violence, where characters were knocked down with a flash of light and no blood at all. A samurai fears not death, the screen informed me through drifting cherry blossoms.

I couldn’t shut out the sounds, though. I heard grunts and wet slaps as the man’s hands and feet hit the linoleum, spattering red; Tyrone’s growled commands; my father shouting something as he leaned out the front door with the tire iron in his hands. The bloody man’s screams faded to a sort of hooting sob. I’ve heard babies make that noise, in the extremes of uncomprehending fear and anger, when they’re too exhausted to cry any more but unable to do anything else. I’ve never heard a grown man make that noise, before or since, and I would gladly trade a week’s salary not to ever hear it again. The deeper timber of a man’s voice turns it from something pitiful into a sound of creeping, spine-clawing horror.

I became aware that my father was shouting at me. Struggling to shake off the curious lassitude I was experiencing, I turned my head toward him as if forcing it through gelatin. His lips were working, his stubble standing out on his pallid cheeks like a swarm of insects. He gestured violently, his movements barely more coordinated than the man on the floor, on whose bucking legs he was sitting.

“A blanket!” he shouted, pointing toward the far end of the store. Automotive supplies, including floor mats, fire retardant blankets, and other sundries.

I turned to go, but was briefly impeded by a tug on my arm, which I eventually realized was because my hand was still gripping the joystick on the arcade game. With an effort of will, I uncurled my fingers and slipped away.

When I’d returned with a load of polishing cloths, Dad and Tyrone had the man sitting up, arms locked around his legs – his limbs were skeletal, his knees looking the size of bowling balls in comparison – and Tyrone was mopping away some of the worst of the blood from the man’s shoulders with his now utterly ruined T-shirt.

“Are you hurt?” Dad was asking. “What’s your name? Who did this to you?”

The man only shook his head and rocked, still heaving shuddering sighs.

“I don’t see any cuts,” Tyrone said.

“Maybe it’s not his.”

“Here.” I handed the cloths to Dad.

Dad snatched them from my hands. “Toby, you little idiot, what good are these? I said a blanket. Are you deaf?” A quick cuff to the side of my head. It connected harder than usual; I wasn’t up to my usual flinch and dodge. “Go get a mug of coffee. You can handle that, right?”

I nodded, watching a quick starburst of pain flash across my eyes from my throbbing temple. Dad scrubbed vaguely at the blood-covered man with the polishing cloths and growled back and forth with Tyrone. I could hear them as I dodged around the counter, skidding on the puddle of spilled water from my Dad’s cup.

“No cars.”

“What, he walked? Like this?”

“Or someone threw him out.”

“Jesus.”

“Drugs. Coyotes. Could be anything. Shit, maybe Mafia.”

“Jeee-sus.”

“What’s your name, fella? Spit it out, soldier.”

I tugged the massive coffee urn down and set it on the floor, where I could get a proper grip on it. The mug, too. I figured no one would mind a mug had been on the floor, under the circumstances. I had to kneel behind the counter to aim the spigot.

“What do we do with him?”

“Stabilize. Fluids. Try and figure this out.”

“Think we should call the cops?”

“They’re coming.” A new voice, unfamiliar, a froglike croaking, ragged as the knees on my jeans. The bloody man.

“Jesus, Lord.”

“Who’s coming? The cops? Damn it, you prick, answer me!”

“Who do you think, John? Whoever did this to him.”

“He’s in shock, Ty. He’s talking nonsense.”

“I’m calling the damned cops.”

I heard shuffling, thumping. In my excitement, I knocked over the mug I’d just poured so laboriously, my clumsy foot sending it clattering back into the mysterious, machine-haunted depths of the grill area. I muttered some of Dad’s choicer words and grabbed another mug.

“Coming. They’re coming.” That raspy voice again.

“Talk sense, man. We’re trying to help you. Toby! Where’s the coffee?”

“I’m coming, Dad,” I hollered. It was dark behind the counter. Things crunched under my tennis shoes, clung to the rubber with sucking, tearing sounds.

“Shouldn’t,” the bloody man said. “Run. Get away. Before.”

“Fucking phone is dead!” came Tyrone’s cry.

The fluorescent lights flickered, then went dark. The bloody man screamed. Everyone screamed, including me.

The power outage had struck the outdoor lights, as well, leaving only the half-moon and stars shining through the grimy plate glass of the main shop area. Where I was, behind the counter, it was pitch dark. I was frozen, seized by the atavistic fear of shadows and the unseen.

“Everyone shut up!” Dad shouted. Other than a subdued moaning from the bloody man, we complied.

“Toby? You okay?”

My voice squeaked somewhere in the ultrasonic range on my first effort. I tried again. “I’m okay, Dad.”

“Get out here. I’ve got our ‘friend’. It’s safe.”

I started to crawl out from behind the counter, my knees burning in puddles of spilled coffee. I could see the front door and the black silhouettes of my father and the stranger, crouched together, outlined against the speckled indigo sky.

“John?” said Tyrone from the far corner. “There’s something-“

He was cut off as a harsh blue-white glow flooded the room, striking us all with almost physical force. I shut my eyes against the pain of the sudden light.

“Floodlight?” Dad asked. “The cops?”

“No, it came from-“

At that point, the door exploded. Chunks of safety glass hurtled inward, as though a giant, invisible hand had cupped and slapped the front of the building. I heard my father cry out, saw him try to shield the helpless stranger from the flying debris.

Something stepped inside.

It shouldn’t have been frightening. It should have been ridiculous. Humanoid, the size of a child, it walked with a light, mincing step, ducking through the empty frame of the door and pausing to examine the scene. It was nude, slick gray skin like something at the bottom of the ocean. Its eyes were so dark, so dark. Its eyes had all of the night. I remember thinking that was why it was so bright outside, because all the darkness in the universe had gone into those eyes.

The bloody man had gone silent, stiff, a mouse in a boa constrictor’s cage. A chunk of glass rested on his left cheek, clinging in the blood, quivering with his suppressed motion.

In the actinic glare, the thing stared at each of us. I looked away, fearing to meet those dark, dark eyes. If I looked into those eyes, I knew, I would fall into a trap, a pit that I could never climb out of, not whole. I felt as though a net made of cobweb studded with ground glass had been tossed gently over my head. Prickle, prickle, and behind that the threat of a sudden... tightening.

The thing... touched us. There were no words. The creature was either beyond words, or below them. It told us things, so much so fast. I still don’t understand most of what I saw, or felt, or heard. I don’t want to. But we all understood one thing.

The stranger belonged to it. We would suffer if we interfered.

Tyrone roared, a wordless challenge to the wordless creature that had intruded upon us. The shop was his home, his territory. He clenched his fists and charged.

The thing watched him come.

Tyrone stumbled. Stopped. Coughed. A dark trickle appeared at his right nostril. Another at his left ear. He dropped to his knees.

His eyes filled with blood and he died.

Dad moved then, surged upright, the tire iron back in his hands. He stood between the thing and the man it wanted.

I think I made a sound, then. I wasn’t trying to. I wasn’t thinking, was nothing but a bundle of reactions and instincts held in shuddering tension by a thread of burning cold fear.

Dad turned, saw me. The thing watched us both. It thought we were funny. I felt it doing something like laughter in my head.

That was, I believe, the moment when Dad first realized, first truly understood what had happened in that courtroom all those months ago. I was his, under the law. He was responsible for me. I was... his son.

My father turned back to the creature that had invaded his world, shattered his night, killed his best friend. He met that bottomless gaze, fell into the trap. His hand loosened around the tire iron. I don’t remember hearing it hit the floor. Dad stepped back. Stepped aside. The man at his feet was still silent, tears and snot flowing down his face, his eyes full of awful knowledge.

The thing gestured, and the man stood. Not by himself, but as if pulled by a string in his chest. I heard his ribs crack. All he did was whimper.

The light outside flashed, and the two figures, the small, delicate one and the tall, hunched one, disappeared. The ticklish touch on my mind, the sensation of a spider with feet made of knives, receded.

With a hum, the machinery in the back started up. The fluorescents came back, pinging and clicking their annoyance.

Tyrone didn’t move. He was facedown in a spreading puddle.

Dad reached out a hand. I half-stood and ran to him.

Outside, the moon went behind a cloud, but you couldn’t tell in the parking lot lights.

###

I’m not sure what Dad told the police when they finally arrived, but since Tyrone clearly wasn’t dead from anything Dad could have done, they called it a freak electrical storm and chalked it up as “one of those things.”

I can’t say everything was perfect between Dad and me after that, but he tried his best. I didn’t get too many smacks I didn’t earn, and he mostly stopped drinking. He worked hard at his job and helped me with my homework, and if I had to redo his math afterward, well, I needed the practice anyway.

We each dealt with it in our own way. I buckled down to my studies, because the Air Force doesn’t take “C” students, and I wanted to be flying above a payload of high explosives the next time I saw unexplained lights in the sky. Dad... well, as time has gone on, and especially since he retired, he’s taken longer and longer on his “hunting trips” out into the desert. He’s been doing his own homework, and I hear a lot about Faraday cages and missing time on our monthly phone calls. Last time, I asked him if he’d had any luck in the hunt. “I think I know where to look next,” he said. “I’m on the trail. I’m close.” I didn’t say what I thought he was hunting, and neither did he. I didn’t say a lot of things. He wouldn’t have listened, anyway.

One day, I expect he’ll miss a phone call, and if I leave a message, I won’t hear back from him. I don’t believe, when that happens, that they’ll ever find more than his empty car, still smelling of gasoline and old vinyl.

Still smelling of summer.