With the push westward, the link to the civilizing European force grew weaker, and it wasn’t long before Las Vegas and her inhabitants developed a serious self-esteem problem. Nevada governors, businessmen, and newspapermen were all in search of a truth and an ancient mythology that would validate them, make them the cultural equal of the eastern United States, prove that this land and its recent arrivals weren’t so raw, that there was an antiquity here to rival Europe.
And soon, submerged and subterranean cultures began to play a flirtatious hide-and-seek with the fevered men who so desperately wanted these myths to be true. Before Lake Mead flooded towns and even cities in the 1930s, drowning out the Mormons still lingering on the fringes of Mammon, ancient civilizations were found that would be lost again to the waters of that blue fractal — but not before they fueled the lunacy of the Cascadian theory of human evolution.
Captain Alan LeBaron, amateur archaeologist, who explored much of Nevada and Utah from 1912 to 1930, claimed that the human race began here. The evidence piled up. In 1912, LeBaron claimed to have found Egyptian hieroglyphs on a rock in Nevada that dated back to before the Egyptian civilization. In 1924, LeBaron discovered the hill of a thousand tombs, each tomb exactly two square feet and concealed under stones fitted without the use of mortar. Then Babylonian and Mesoamerican heliographs, ideographs, and glyphs were discovered. Then caves covered in Chinese script and the skull of a man believed to be seven feet tall and whose cheekbones clearly identified him as Chinese but whose hair proved he was of Caucasian origin.
And on and on it went, one discovery after the next; proof that human life and culture, of all races in fact, began here in Cascadia and then spread to the rest of the globe. LeBaron contended that the colonization of America by whites was simply a result of the biological imperative to return to the land of their origins and reclaim it.
Sunil jerked back from his ruminations when Salazar pulled off the road into a gas station.
Are you all right? You looked lost there for a while, Salazar said, killing the engine.
I’m fine, Sunil said, yawning and stretching.
Salazar got out and headed for the convenience store. He returned with a new bag of junk food.
What have we got here, Sunil asked, opening the bag of food. There were more Cheetos, some Snickers, a bottle of water, a browning banana, a small Coke, and a fistful of Twinkies.
Wasn’t sure what you wanted, so I got a bunch of stuff, Salazar said, backing out of the gas station and merging back onto the main road at seventy without a glance at his mirrors.
You drive like an Egyptian taxi driver, Sunil said.
I’m the police, Salazar said.
What’s with all the junk food anyway, Sunil asked.
Great American road-trip tradition, Salazar said. You have to eat enough junk to gain a pound a mile.
But Twinkies?
What are you talking about? That’s bona fide American grade-A cuisine. Guaranteed to survive a nuclear holocaust. Shit, have you even had one?
Yes, I have, and I must say it was one of the most disappointing moments of my grown life.
What the fuck? Come on, you’re joking, right?
When I was a kid in Soweto, every comic book I read, from Batman to the Silver Surfer, all had amazing ads for Twinkies. It was sold literally as the food of superheroes. I could almost taste the creamy vanilla sinfulness of one of them. Oh my God, how I wanted one. I don’t think I’ve ever wanted something as bad as that, except perhaps sea monkeys. I waited thirty years, until I got here. First thing I bought when I got off the plane was a Hostess Twinkie. I couldn’t believe how awful they tasted! Like sugary petroleum jelly. I was so mad, so fucking mad.
Salazar laughed. If it’s any consolation, they took us all in, he said.
Agh, man, you have no idea how disappointing it is to want something since you were a child so much you begin to develop a nostalgia for it, even when you’ve never had it. And then to finally eat it, and it’s like a mouthful of rancid grease.
Easy there, Doctor. It’s just a cake.
But it wasn’t just a cake. Not to me.
What about the sea monkeys? Fare any better there?
Fuck no! Magical families of smiling creatures with nice faces and crowns that would perform underwater stunts for you and keep you entertained? A child’s best friend, instant pets, all that shit. I sent off for them but all I got was a tank of dead brine shrimp.
Salazar was laughing so hard his eyes were watering.
Well, at least mine were alive, he said. But I can see how disappointing it might have been if you were expecting literal miniature underwater monkeys. You know what, Doctor? I’m going to buy you real live sea monkeys when we get back to town. Hand me a Twinkie, will you?
Thirty-two
Still daydreaming, Salazar asked Sunil.
They’d been driving for at least an hour in silence, punctuated only by the radio, which was on an easy rock station. It seemed to Sunil that he’d heard Boy George perform “Karma Chameleon” at least five times before Salazar shut the radio off to talk.
A little bit, Sunil said, sipping on some water.
We’ll be coming up to another town soon, Methuselah, I think. We can stop there for lunch and gas up again for the return trip. Apparently this town is farther out than you thought. Ghost towns, Salazar said, his tone dismissive. Can’t imagine why anyone would want to visit one, much less live out here in one.
It’s the desert, I think, Sunil said. You have to admit there’s something supernatural about it. For some people it’s like falling down the rabbit hole. Besides, ghost towns are perfect places to be invisible in America, drop off the grid, so to speak. You can squat in a ghost town for a very long time if it’s set back far enough from the road. You would have easy access to water, electricity, and good shade from the sun, and disguise from any overhead searches by plane or helicopter. I mean, there are roads, so you wouldn’t have to build any new infrastructure. Hell, there are even enough farms within a day’s hike to poach from.
A billboard flashed by announcing JESUS IS COMING. It wasn’t that there was a billboard in the middle of the desert announcing Jesus’s return that caught Sunil’s attention as much as the fact that someone had spray painted LOOK BUSY under it.
Strange name for a town, Salazar said, pointing to a sign by an exit.
Sunil read it: KING OF PRUSSIA. Again, it wasn’t the unusual name that surprised him as much as the fact that the exit looked blocked off with a sign that said NOT AN EXIT, and yet from where they were, it looked like a normal town spread out in desert-style adobe and wood-framed buildings. There was even an airstrip to one side of them.
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live out here in a town like that, Salazar said.
This town, and many more like it, is part of something called the Nevada Test Site, Sunil said.
Where they exploded nuclear bombs back in the day?
Yes, but not just back in the day.
I’m forty and I have never seen the mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion, so I would say yes, back in the day.
Of the fifteen hundred or so nuclear test explosions in Nevada, only three hundred were aboveground, so just because you’ve never seen one doesn’t mean there haven’t been any.
That’s some Mulder and Scully shit you got going on. I never pegged you for a conspiracy nut.
I won’t even dignify that with an answer.
In a couple of minutes the sign for Methuselah flashed by.
Well, here we are, Salazar said.
I for one would love to have a burger. Best thing about America is burgers and ketchup-soaked French fries and a cold drink, Sunil said.