-from Part III of Defiled with Blood, a Robert Paxton novel due out in early 2021
By the time that the bus reached San Martin, Ken had been
drunk for a long time. Prior experience had taught him that you could get away
with just about anything on an intercity bus, so long as you were discreet. Considering
some of the depravity in which others engaged while traveling aboard these
shuttles, he figured he would not be disturbed in his quiet drinking.
He was careful, though, to put on his best face before
stepping down from the bus at the San Martin station. He assumed that he might
be greeted by a library representative and he didn’t want to do anything that
might put the free food and the return ticket at risk. Coming up out of Phoenix,
he’d made a slightly unsteady trip to the bus restroom, where he’d combed his
hair and splashed cold water on his face.
He descended the steps beside the bus driver and stepped
onto the ground of San Martin for the first time at exactly 9:04 AM. The bus
had arrived at 9AM as promised. Oh-nine-hundred, Ken had mumbled to himself,
recalling the sound of his drill sergeant’s voice in basic training back in ’43.
Now in his thirties, and quite inebriated, the memories of his drill sergeant
did not inspire Ken with fear or even admiration, as it once had. It made him
giggle.
The giggles stopped when he was enveloped by the hot air
outside the bus. Waves of warmth seemed to rise from the ground below, billowing
him with infernal caresses. Even through his shoes, he could feel the extreme
heat of the tarred surface below. Jesus, he thought, lifting his feet gingerly
as if expecting to bring up a clinging glob of melted blacktop with the shoes.
He’d gotten a taste of the heat in Phoenix when he changed
buses but it had not phased him there. Everyone knew Phoenix was hot. Somehow
he’d imagined that San Martin would be considerably cooler. It had been
described to him as being in the mountains and, to a Midwesterner like Ken,
that provoked images of snow-capped peaks, skiing, and starry-eyed college
girls in tight sweaters.
Now, standing on the scorching pavement, Ken looked around
and saw what he might have noticed outside the windows of the bus if he hadn’t
been so focused on alcohol. The low surrounding mountains were home to cactus, squat
creosote bushes, mesquite trees and broomweed. And a lot of dry ground, sand
really, between these struggling life forms. At the very peaks of the most
distant mountains, did he see stands of pine? He wasn’t sure, and gazing up and
away like that was making him dizzy, and dizzy he might puke.
Bringing his attention back down to Earth, he saw that he
had an admirer. A middle-aged woman, dark-complexioned, possibly American Indian.
She wore coke-bottle bottom glasses and her greatly magnified eyes stared out
at him, framed by an abundance of long, straight, black hair. She was not his
usual type but, since falling down as low in life in the last few years, Ken
had learned to broaden his tastes.
“Hello.” He smiled rakishly and stepped towards her. “Looking
for me?”
She smiled widely and nodded in dumb fascination. Ken
marveled at how things so often worked out like this. Even here and now, drunk
and penniless, he could still pull one in.
Her name was Loretta Halstead. She had led the effort for
the San Martin library to bring Ken into town for a reading.
“We are so excited to have you here!” She said, literally
trembling. This is going to be easy, Ken thought happily. Having
forgotten, he wondered how long he had before the reading. Not that I need
that long, he thought as he chuckled and said nothing.
As it turned out, it was even easier than he had imagined.
The reading was not until evening and he was going to stay in a spare room at
Loretta’s house. She took him to her small home and he noted right away that
there was no spare room.
