The Return Read online

  A white Blazer drove up twenty minutes later. He saw the dust before he saw the vehicle, a moving cloud that followed the path of the road until it reached the cattleguard. The real estate agent who emerged from the SUV was a woman carrying an overstuffed clipboard. Tall, thin, blond, she had big eyes behind small fashionable sunglasses. "You must be Glen!" She approached him with an outstretched arm and a wide pretty smile. He was reminded of Sandi, though he hadn't thought of her in years and hadn't seen her since they were both seniors in high school.

  "Yes." He shook her hand, conscious of his slick sweaty palm against her cool dry skin, and slightly embarrassed by it.

  "Hello," the woman said. "My name's Sandi."

  It couldn't be.

  He looked closely at her while trying not to be obvious. She was about the right age, and there were definite similarities in appearance . . . so it was possible. Even the voice was a maybe. But she hadn't said anything to indicate that she knew him, and she'd shown not a flicker of recognition when she laid eyes on him for the first time. The realtor he'd talked to at the office had obviously given her his name, and if it was his Sandi, she would have at least asked him if he used to live on Trask Avenue in Phoenix.

  He could ask her.

  But he didn't.

  He wasn't quite sure why. He was curious, but he supposed at bottom he didn't really want to know. It was true that he hadn't thought of Sandi for a long time. Now that he had, though, he wished a better life for her than second-string real estate agent in Kingman, Arizona.

  The woman sorted through the papers on her clipboard and started giving him a rundown on recent sales in this area and the desirability of those lots vis-a-vis his parents' property, but he only pretended to listen. Instead he thought about Sandi. He'd had a crush on her for nearly a decade, although he had told no one about it, least of all her. He even remembered the first time he'd started thinking of her in that way. They were at the Lions' Fair, a tacky, overpriced carnival put on by the meanest old men in town for the ostensible purpose of raising money to help crippled children. Their families went together each year, the kids and grown-ups pairing off once they reached the park where the fair was held. He and Sandi wandered around, bought some candy, played a few games. Then she announced that she had to go to the bathroom. They made their way over to the line of portable toilets set up on the periphery of the microscopic midway, and she told him to stand guard outside because the doors had no locks and she didn't want anyone busting in on her. From his guard post he could hear the sound of her rattling belt buckle, and he realized that behind that thin plastic door she had her pants down--and that he could open up the door and see her.

  He didn't, of course, but from that point on he was acutely aware of the fact that he was a boy and she was a girl. It changed his behavior enough that they drifted apart and eventually stopped being friends, but he never stopped having a crush on her. In high school he had a falling-out with his best buddy, Allan, because Allan had started dating Sandi and, though he wouldn't admit it, Glen was jealous.

  He looked at the realtor again as she rattled off the dimensions of the lot and what she thought he could get for it. No, he told himself. This wasn't his Sandi. His Sandi was living in Puget Sound working as a manager for a topflight software company. Or if she was still in Arizona, she was a successful businesswoman married to an equally successful businessman and they lived in a six-bedroom house with a four-car garage in Scottsdale.

  "Now," the agent said, "are you dead set on putting this property up for sale?"

  "Well . . . yeah," he told her.

  "The reason I ask is because you might want to hold on to it. I know people have a tendency to just clean house after a parent's death and liquidate all assets. And it's easier, sure. But sometimes parents' investments are worth maintaining. I think that's the case here. This area's growing, particularly with the expansion of communities along the Colorado River. And while there's no water, sewer, or electricity out here yet, it's only a matter of time. You're still young, and if you don't need the money, I'd suggest keeping the land. Your parents obviously saw the potential here, which was why they bought this lot in the first place. If you held on to the property until retirement, I'd be willing to bet that you could quadruple the amount that you'd get for it today." She smiled. "I know this probably sounds suspicious coming from a realtor, but remember, I'm cheating myself out of a perfectly good commission here. I'd be better off if you sold the place."

  She wasn't cheating herself out of anything. What she was telling him in her veiled circuitous way was that it would be next to impossible to find suckers like his parents and that she doubted she'd be able to unload this land on anybody--and even if she could, it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

  He hadn't thought he'd make a fortune off the property, but he had been counting on a little extra income from the sale. It didn't really make any difference, though. He didn't need the money. At least not yet. And if he was going to change his life, he ought to change it, and not count on residuals from the past.

  "I don't like to gamble on investments," he said. "And since I don't have any sentimental attachment to this place . . ."

  She was suddenly all business, her friendly, helpful manner replaced by a flat, no-nonsense terseness.

  No, he told himself again. This wasn't his Sandi.

  He told the woman to put the property up for sale. And started driving.

  3

  Springerville was a small town near the New Mexico border that was situated at the tail end of the Mogollon Rim, where the mighty plateau degenerated into a series of increasingly desertlike foothills. Coming down off the Rim, Glen could see a smattering of trees and a huge tan dome that looked ridiculously out of place among the flat homes and fast-food restaurant signs below.

  It was lunchtime, and he was hungry. He'd spent last night in the town of Randall at a courtyard motel that promised a continental breakfast, but they served only one measly muffin and a miniature carton of watered-down orange juice.

  He hadn't intended to stop in Randall at all, hadn't even known there was such a place. He'd driven aimlessly after leaving Kingman: eating lunch at Flagstaff, where he shopped at a huge used bookstore. Then he traveled the Lake Mary Road to Strawberry, Pine, and Payson because he liked the way it looked. At dusk, he'd found himself in Randall, so that was where he stopped for the evening.

  And there was something cool about that, something gratifying about not making plans and simply holing up for the night at wherever he happened to be.

  The motel hadn't been half bad--it had cable at least--and this morning, after grabbing his microscopic muffin and pathetic little orange juice, he'd looked through the rack of postcards in the lobby. Most featured corny retouched photographs. There was one of a half-jackrabbit, half-antelope creature called a "jack-alope," another of a fisherman hauling a whale-size trout out of a lake with a boat trailer. Two of them featured different doctored photographs of the same subject: a Bigfoot-like creature dubbed the "Mogollon Monster" that was supposed to roam the wooded plateau above town. He thought about getting one of the postcards to send to Gillian, Quong, and Bill back at the office, but then decided it might be better to make a clean break and just disappear. He'd changed his mind after checking out and bought a Mogollon Monster postcard, but it was still sitting on the seat next to him because he had no idea of what to say or how to say it.

  Glen drove slowly down the two-lane highway that doubled as Springerville's main street. The dome turned out to be part of the high school, although he had no idea what the out-of-proportion structure could possibly be. Past the spate of gas stations and generic fast-food outlets was the downtown area, which consisted of a vintage single-screen movie theater showing a surprisingly recent film and a series of small shops housed in a block-long stretch of connected Western-style buildings. The town's lone mural, on the side of an old motel, depicted John Wayne as he appeared in True Grit, patch-eyed and grimacing.

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sp; There was something charming about Springerville. The sidewalks were empty, and the only other vehicles on the road were two dusty pickups and a battered Jeep, which somehow added to the rustic allure.

  Sunday, he thought. Everything was closed up because it was Sunday and everyone was at church.

  That seemed quaintly appealing, too. A town where people actually went to church, and Sunday was still different than other days in the week.

  He stopped at Los Dos Molinos, a gaudily painted Mexican restaurant just outside of town that turned out to have the hottest food he'd ever eaten in his life. The place was crowded--he'd chosen it precisely because there were a lot of cars in the parking lot, figuring locals knew the best places to eat--and he sat down at a wobbly unoccupied table in the center of the room. The waitress handed him a menu before putting down a basket of tortilla chips, a tiny bowl of salsa, and a huge pitcher of water. Absently, he picked up a chip and scooped up some salsa, biting into it.

  Immediately, his throat clenched up. He sucked in air, an instinctive reaction that resulted in an embarrassingly loud wheezing sound but offered absolutely no relief from the burning. He frantically searched for his glass through tearing eyes. He quickly gulped down both water and crushed ice before pouring himself another glass from the pitcher and downing that as well.

  He had never tasted anything so hot, and it took several minutes of sucking on ice to dissipate the fire in his mouth.

  He glanced around the restaurant. He seemed to be surrounded by families. At the table next to his was a mother with two young sons. One of the boys, having obviously burned his tongue on the salsa, was frantically breathing and fanning his mouth between gulps of water, while his brother laughed uproariously. Behind him, a man and woman about his age had a stroller parked next to their table, a little bonneted baby sleeping peacefully if awkwardly on the seat. In the rear of the restaurant, a man in a sheriff's uniform was talking earnestly to a bored teenage girl who could only be his daughter.

  He supposed this abundance of families should have made him feel lonely, self-conscious about his own solitary state, but for some reason it did not. Instead, he felt hopeful and optimistic. The life before him was wide open, and suddenly anything seemed possible.

  He remembered, as a child, watching a television program called Then Came Bronson. He had no idea how many seasons the show lasted, or whether it was a popular or critical success. All he knew was that it had had a major impact on him. It featured a young man on a motorcycle who roamed America, getting involved in people's lives before inevitably moving on, and it had seemed like the coolest thing possible.

  That's who he felt like now: Bronson. He could go anywhere he wanted, stay as long as he chose, meet . . . whomever. And for the first time, he thought that his life was pretty damn good. He had no idea what the future would hold, but right now he was happy.

  Midlife crisis.

  There was that phrase again, and he supposed that was a possibility--which was why he had given no thought to selling off his condo and his possessions, why they were still waiting for him back in California--but for the moment he was content to move forward, to start anew, to behave as though he had left that old life permanently behind and was never going back.

  The waitress returned with his meal. He was prepared for the spiciness this time and kept both his water and iced tea handy as he took a small exploratory bite. Either his taste buds had been numbed, or the dish wasn't as hot as the salsa, because he found that he was able to eat the food without gasping for breath.

  Behind him, the couple with the baby were talking about some local Indian ruins that they'd recently toured. "What I liked was that they let you go down into the kiva," the man said. "At Montezuma Castle and most of these ruins, you can only look at them from the outside and walk around them. It was neat to go inside there."

  "I thought it was creepy," the woman told him.

  "When Brianna grows up, I'm going to teach her to be more adventurous, more like me."

  "Over my dead body."

  He didn't really want to listen in on their conversation, but with no companion of his own, he could not help hearing what was going on around him.

  His ears tuned in to the low lecture the cop was giving his daughter, though he could only make out occasional words and phrases.

  ". . . expect . . . take responsibility . . . actions . . . that girl Janet . . . lucky I was the one . . ."

  At another table, close to the kitchen, three guys who looked like cowboys were discussing the relative merits of Dodge, Ford, and Chevy pickups.

  By the cash register, two old men who had just walked in were debating whether dogs behaved differently when the moon was full.

  Glen finished off his enchilada, and took a bite of rice. He'd been planning to drive aimlessly across country, taking roads that looked interesting to him and seeing where they led. But he thought now that he might remain in Springerville. At least for a few days. He liked the town from what he'd seen of it, and eavesdropping on the conversations around him only made him more inclined to hang around a while.

  He could see himself living in a place like this, getting some menial job, renting a rundown ranch house that he could fix up on the weekends. Maybe he'd meet a pretty local widow or a young single mom, and they'd get to know each other and eventually start dating.

  He'd seen too many movies.

  The waitress brought the check. He paid, left a tip, then walked outside. The air was hot and still, with a bracing absence of humidity that he remembered well from his childhood in Phoenix. His car was near the front of the small parking lot, but he didn't feel like driving right now and decided he'd rather walk off a few of the calories he'd just put on.

  He started back toward the downtown, following a narrow footpath through the weedy lots that abutted the road. As he'd noticed on the way in, most of the shops were closed, this being Sunday, but he was able to look through the front windows into the businesses. There was a small consignment store that carried only baby clothes, an attorney's office, a used bookstore, a plumbing supply shop.

  One unmarked storefront had an open door, and he peered in the window and saw photographs and a scale model of what looked like an Indian ruin. He remembered what the couple in the restaurant had said and, out of curiosity, walked inside.

  A rattling swamp cooler attached to a blocked window at the back of the building attempted to alleviate the oppressive heat, but only succeeded in making the place more humid. Glen nodded to the bearded, short-haired young man standing behind a counter, then picked up a pamphlet from a table next to the door. Huntington Mesa Ruins. On the cover was a color photo, an aerial view of what had once been a sprawling pueblo community, but was now little more than a series of interconnected adobe walls and a handful of partially extant structures. Inside, next to a descriptive paragraph, were individual black-and-white pictures of the more impressive facets of the ruins. All the photos had also been blown up to poster size and mounted on the wall of the place.

  Glen looked at the scale model, with its little loinclothed figures, depicting what the Indian community had probably looked like in its prime. Then he walked over to a glass case housing arrowheads and pieces of pottery and artifacts that had been discovered in the ruins. He looked up at the man behind the counter. "Are there tours of the ruins?"

  "Sure are. Five dollars for adults, three dollars for children. It's a fifteen-minute ride out to the site, and the guided tour takes about forty-five minutes. So figure an hour and fifteen, an hour and twenty all told. We provide the transportation, but you have to bring your own drinking water--and we seriously suggest that you do so. It's hot, it's summer, and there is very little shade at the site. It's easy to get dehydrated. A hat or bandanna wouldn't be a bad idea either. And sun block."

  "I'm in," Glen said. "Where do I sign up?"

  "Here. At the museum. But we only give two tours a day. At ten and two." The man looked up at a wall clock. "It's nearly one now. If you wa
nt to come back in an hour, we'll be ready for the afternoon excursion."

  Glen nodded. "I'll do that. Thanks."

  He walked back to the restaurant and his car, drove over to a Circle K, where he gassed up and bought a forty-four-ounce Coke, then cruised around the outlying area for a good half hour, taking an interesting dirt road that began next to a Mobil station and ended up at a chicken ranch in a box canyon.

  By the time he returned to downtown Springerville, it was nearly two. He quickly pulled next to the curb in front of the museum, hoping he wasn't too late. He locked the car door and hurried inside. But when he passed through the doorway into the humid air of the building, he saw only the bearded young man behind the counter.

  "Am I too late?" he asked.

  "Not at all."

  "Then where's the tour group?"

  The young man smiled wryly. "I guess you're it. Do you still want to go? It's okay if you don't, but this is the most complete ruin of its type discovered in Arizona in the past twenty years. It's something to see. And it's not every day that you have the chance for a one-on-one personal tour." He nodded. "By the way, my name's Vince."

  Glen wasn't sure how long he'd be in town or whether he'd never pass this way again, so he said that he would indeed like to take the tour. He paid his five bucks, and Vince locked up the museum, then drove him in a Jeep out to the top of a low mesa in the desert north of town.

  The ruins were indeed impressive. They walked through the first floor of a largely extant freestanding adobe structure that was believed to have been some sort of primitive apartment house. Then they passed from one low crumbling wall to another as Vince described the series of half-wood, half-adobe dwellings that had once stood on this spot. The guide was throwing all sorts of facts and figures at him, and though Glen nodded politely, he wasn't really that interested. He liked seeing the ruins, liked walking through the partially excavated archeological site, but historical minutae held no allure for him.