Litter Control
by T. Jackson King
Illustration by William R. Warren, Jr.
His car map showed Reserve, New Mexico as a small black spot of a high mountain town stuck away in the Tu-larosa Mountains, halfway between the Zuni Reservation’s mesa land to the north and the deserts of Lords-burg well to the south. The road he drove offered only winding curves, tall ponderosa pines, red rock buttes, knife ridge mountains, and too much loneliness between exiled gas stations. But for a photojoumalist out to make a buck on sucker landscape views, the time saved in bypassing Albuquerque made up for the fact it wasn’t the Interstate.
No. Not by a long shot.
His last gas had been in Zuni. The pump station in Fence Lake had been closed, like the rest of that dying farm town. The two stations in still-alive Quemado both refused his plastic, insisting on scarce cash. The flyspeck single pump station in Apache Wells had been open, a grinning country boy type ready to pump. For cash. The man’s sun weathered face had even looked half-friendly as he pointed to an inside wooden desk lacking phone, fax or credit card imprint machine. Shit! He spit out the car’s open window, then tossed out a crumpled pop can for good measure. It clattered distantly against the cutbank arroyos of a dry creekbed running alongside State Highway 12. No echo came back from the high walls of the mountain canyon that funneled him towards Reserve. County seat of Catron County. Elevation 5,770 feet. Population—probably two goats, a few pinyon rats and some retired prostitutes.
Something pale green flashed at the highway’s shoulder, looming up like a saguaro cactus, arms stuck out imploringly. He read the sign.
Litter Control. Next 3 Million Miles. Uncle Jack’s Home for Retired Space Beings.
What!
He pumped the brakes, slowing to a gravel-skid stop on the road’s shoulder, unworried about other cars. This was late fall, long past tourist season. And…
He read it again through the windshield. Then he got out, stepped to the side of the shoulder, took a piss, zipped up, and turned suddenly, daring it to still be there. His eyes fixed on the standard green rectangle common to both urban and rural highways. The kind of Adopt-A-Highway sign put out by road crews that tout the good deeds of the local Kiwanis Club, the Rotary, the Primitive Baptist Church, or even some ranching family. He’d once seen individual families listed as litter pickup sponsors in an isolated part of eastern Oregon. But this… He read it again, callused fingers tracing out the raised letters as he read something that had to be a joke.
Litter Control. Next 3 Million Miles. Uncle Jack’s Home for Retired Space Beings.
“Bullshit.” But he said it less loudly than usual, uncaring whether the red-barked ponderosas agreed, disagreed, or just didn’t give a damn—like he’d been right after Elaine’s funeral, at age thirteen. He stepped back, afraid for some reason. Instinct prevailed.
“Snap. Rrrr. Snap. Rrrr.” His good old Pentax K1000 SE camera took pictures of the sign. Proof. Pictures were proof. Of something. He’d learned that overseas. The camera dropped, hanging from his neck by its cord. He turned and got back into the car, started the engine, and continued driving south to Reserve.
Maybe he could sell the National Enquirer one of those bullshit stories about Elvis having some alien’s baby, backed up by the photos. He grunted.
Just a few more bucks.
Downtown Reserve lay off the main route.
Main route? What a joke. A winding, black asphalt lane led off anemic Highway 12. The big prize? A motel, a gas station, a shuttered-up welding shop, and, about midways down the town’s main street, lying under the gnarled limbs and jade green leaves of a big, old cottonwood, stood a plank and timber cafe. Emma’s Cafe. More like an old quonset hut, with a big bay window staring at him cyclops-like. He stopped in front of the cafe. The car’s engine died on the sandy gravel lying at the edge of the road. He got out, vaguely bothered by how often things out here were a bit messy, not neat, trim and ordered. Roads faded into offroad parking areas which serpentined around buildings to a pile of trash out back, and the few people in town walked lazily down the middle of the scab-patched road like they had no fear of being run over. Or no worries? Whatever.
Reserve. A place of purple dust, bright sunlight, and cool winds. The few elderly rancher-types sitting in old sofas on storefront porches just nodded at him as he walked from car to cafe, accepting him. Accepting his presence like the rain, the wind, the Sun and the desolation of a place so far from LA that its mere existence seemed ghostlike.
The cafe’s plank door slammed open satisfyingly. But the inside was dark, too dark for grand entrances. He blinked, pupils adjusting. Old combat photography instincts came back from Gulf War times, making him step to the right, out of the late afternoon sunlight. So he wouldn’t be backlighted to whoever was inside. Visible, yes. But at least not backlighted for some sniper half a mile a way.
His vision cleared. Images formed.
There was a sit-down counter to the right. Wood tables and chairs in a middle row and to the left. A cigarette machine and an enclosed toilet filled one distant comer. A walled off kitchen area occupied the other corner, downwind from the lunch counter. A four point buck trophy was mounted on one side wall. Behind the counter hung the wall posters. Political campaign posters—some woman for County Clerk, another woman running for Catron County Treasurer. Then came the fun posters—a local rodeo featuring barrel-racing, a flashy poster advertising “Buffalo Ranch—Real Wild West!” and music… raw, mournful country-western tunes blared out from some invisible jukebox, reminding him of Linda before the divorce. Before she abandoned father and son. Before…
“Howdy. You want lunch, dinner or just coffee?” asked a woman who’d come out from the kitchen area, wiping long-fingered hands on a stained apron. The cook? No. Something moved at the far end of the counter. A seated woman who’d been reading the local paper glanced his way briefly, then kept on reading, returning to the statue-like pose that had fooled his eyes when he’d first looked around. The newspaper woman wore a cook’s white cotton outfit over plaid shirt, jeans, and worn cowboy boots. He answered the standing woman.
“You got apple pie?”
“Yep. A la mode?”
“Please.” He turned and headed for an empty table in the front comer, where he could sit in shadow and watch his car through the bay window. Urban habits die hard. The woman called after him.
“You want the pie heated up?”
Jeez. “Sure.”
Sitting down, he tuned out the country music, laid his camera in front of him, checked the F-stop settings, noted he still had twenty shots left on his thirty-six frame roll, and wondered if the line about being an internationally famous photojoumalist would still work. It had with Linda. Until he’d spent too much time away from home. Away from…
“Here’s your pie.” Silverware, paper napkin, and something that smelled like homemade ambrosia were laid on the scratched pinewood tabletop. His mouth watered. His body remembered the aches of the long drive down from Gallup. But business always comes first. He looked up.
“You Emma?”
“Yep.” She inspected him, eyeing his dusty clothes. He looked back. A tall, blond, Scandinavian-looking woman dressed in jeans and a black cling top watched him patiently. Then wry bemusement flashed in silvery-gray eyes. “My place. You lost?”
He sat back in the chair, wondering why he was the only customer in the cafe. “Nope. Photojoumalist. I take pictures and sell them for money. Sometimes I write up stories.” There, an implied line is better than a spoken line. In rural hamlets like this, hope always springs up, like desert flowers after the first spring rains.