The Snow Cactus

Excerpt from the novel
The Snow Cactus
by Hiram K. Myers.
LEAD INTO CHAPTER SEVEN:
Polly (Cricket) Tonawa, age ten, lives with her Aunt Millie and the aunt’s boyfriend, Jake. Cricket has raised a pup into a large cross between a Golden Retriever and an Irish Setter. The girl and dog are inseparable.
Jake has sold Cricket to a flesh trader who intends to enter her into Mexican prostitution.
THE SNOW CACTUS
CHAPTER
SEVEN

The weekend following Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s visit to Millie Tonawa’s, the rich man from Chicago showed up. Cricket, peeking around the corner of the shed, gave him a look and decided he wasn’t no rich man at all. Called himself Cap’n Peter Reu. A tall spindly fellow who wore a white cap with a black bill, and with big teeth as white as the porcelain toilet at school. She and Tango ran to the shed and hid.
It wasn’t long before Jake’s voice called, “Hey you, Cricket, get in here. There’s someone wants to meet you.”
The Cap’n did a little bow at the waist and tipped his hat when she came in. His eyes stared as she crossed the room.
She wanted to run, but Jake would kill her. He would anyway if it weren’t that he wanted to give her to this Cap’n Pete.
The man reached down and squeezed Cricket’s cheeks and lifted her head. “Open your eyes . Naw, damnit, open ’em wide so’s I can see what I’m getting.” He released her and joined Jake who was pouring tequila into tin cups. “Thought you said she was a Navajo.”
Jake took a snort, coughed, and blew his nose on the floor. “I told you she was quarter Indian, maybe Navajo, but she could be part Pueblo or Pima Bajo, who knows. What difference does it make?”
Cap’n Pete, cup in hand, said, “First squaw I’ve ever seen with green eyes. Might find someone interested.”
“Wha chu talk’n about?” Jake said. “Don’t try to kid me, Cap’n. Lots of spicks be interested in those eyes.”
“Complexion’s a little dark, but the light hair and eyes might make up for it.”
Cricket rubbed her cheeks. She didn’t want to go anywhere with this man. He stunk, smelled like underarms mixed with a sweet and sour something—’nough to make her puke. She felt uneasy about why her hair and eyes would be important.
Cap’n Pete rose from his chair and handed Jake a wad of money. “Okay,” he said, “it’s a done deal.”
“Excuse me, mister,” Cricket said, interrupting. “What work would I be doing?”
“Well now, aren’t you the nosey one? Just a little housework for a rich and important man.”
“What’s my skin got to do with that?”
Jake eased out of his chair. “Shut your mouth, girl, ’fore I slap it shut.”
“I can’t go nowhere. Got to feed and water Tango.”
Jake cackled. “How you gonna feed a dead dog?” He did a little dance around the table, all the while laughing, then without warning backhanded Cricket. The blow sent her reeling across the room. He followed, jerked her up, and said, “You finally gonna do something to earn your keep.”
Tango, lying outside the screen door, sprang to his feet snarling. Fangs bared, he lunged at Jake, but hit the screen, and fell back, only to rise and charge again. The second hit bloodied his nose, but the force rent a hole in the screen at which he snapped and tore as though he’d gone mad.
Jake, cowering against the far wall, yelled, “Been looking for an excuse to kill that goddamned mutt!” He ran from the room.
Cricket screamed, “Run, Tango, run!”
The dog hesitated.
“Go! Go now!” she screamed.
The dog turned and ran behind the shed, and then bounded into the bed of the dry gulch.
Jake came out levering a shell into his .30-30. He rushed to the door, laid the rifle against the frame and fired. The shot made Cricket’s ears ring, the shell clattered across the floor.
“Shit,” Jake said. “He was too far away. Well it doesn’t matter. He’s gone and if’n he shows up here again, I’ll kill him with poisoned bait.”
Millie came in the room. “Jake, I’m not sure I like the sound of this. What kinda work he got for her? She’s my sister’s kid. Let her stay and I’ll make her work harder.”
Jake gave Millie a shove. “Unless you want that other eye blacked best you stay out of this.”
Cap’n Pete pulled Cricket, kicking and screaming, toward his vehicle. She braced her feet against the running board of his old truck and flailed at her abductor.
Jake ran from the house with duct tape. They bound her hand and foot, and threw her into the passenger’s side.
She screamed, “Millie, help me. I don’t want to go nowhere.”
Jake tore another strip of tape off and slapped it across her mouth. “There,” he said. “That ought to keep that mouth of yours shut.”
Cap’n Pete cranked the engine.
Jake stuck his head in the driver’s side. “I forgot to tell you, Cap’n, I don’t accept returned merchandise.” He bent over, slapped his knee and laughed.
Cap’n Pete drove the dilapidated hulk at snail’s speed. The fenders and bed, rusted to paper thin, flapped and banged with every rut and minor breeze. They rattled across the potholes in the streets of Sasabo, and then turned east away from the official border crossing. A half mile outside the village, where strands of wire on the fence separating the US from Mexico had been cut, the truck turned south.
“Welcome to Mexico,” Cap’n Pete said as the wreck crept along a narrow trail cut into the desert by the feet of Mexicans headed for the Organ Pipe. “You’re one lucky little piece of sugar.” He reached across and patted Cricket high on her thigh. “Yes, sir. Few urchins get the opportunity I’m about to present you. It’s me nature to do good deeds. You’re riding with the great grandson of Winston Pellington, the Third. Never heard of him, eh? One doesn’t wonder considering the odiferous pest hole from which I rescued you. The price I shall receive for finding you employment will enable me to obtain a vehicle suitable for a man of my station. But first, we must stop at Santiago’s Cantina to partake of refreshment—a bit of elixir of the cactus.”
Cricket, her eyes above the bottom of the splintered window on the passenger’s side, watched a flash of red as Tango passed between rocks, among a growth of saguaros, and in and out of a dry wash, keeping pace with the clunker, but she lost sight of him when dusk hid all but the brightest evening stars.
Night settled on the desert, and the dim lights afforded by the old truck forced the Cap’n to lean over the wheel to navigate through the minefield of ruts and ravines. The truck rolled to a clattering stop. “Ah, at last, we have arrived,” he said. “Hard labor is not the life for which I was born. I should have taken the position offered to me in my father’s Philadelphia bank.” He stretched and flexed his shoulders as though he and his bound passenger had traveled across a state instead of a small village.
He started to open the driver’s door, hesitated, then unbuttoned and jerked Cricket’s jeans down to her knees. “Hmmmm. Yes. Soon you will have gainful employment, and I will have a great sum of money. Now, get down on the floorboard and stay there. If you behave yourself, I’ll bring you something to drink. If you cause me a minute’s worth of trouble, I shall gleefully cut off your ears.”
She slid onto the floorboard, as he opened the door.
The snarl was hideous. Tango had the man by the throat before he could call for help. Cap’n Pete’s hand went to his belt and came up with a long bladed knife, He slashed at his attacker. With a violent jerk of his head, the dog ripped out Cap’n Pete’s throat. The man fell to the ground choking on his own blood.
Cricket wiggled out of the truck. She took the knife from the dead man’s hand and cut herself free of the tape, then pulled her jeans up and jerked the tape from her mouth. “Come, Tango, we’ve got to hide. Oh, my God, you’ve been cut. But I can’t fix it now. We’re going to the San Cristo canyon where I got you, they’ll never find us there.”
Cricket knew that when she faced the rising moon, north was always to the left. She and Tango ran that way, but within minutes a late winter storm crawled onto the horizon, blotted out the moon and even the brightest stars. Wind blew sand and grit into her face and eyes. A downpour covered her and the dog with wet mud. They ran while lightning and thunder crashed upon the desert and sent burning fiber shooting from the organ pipes.
A hellish bolt shot fingers of fire across the sky illuminating the desert floor. The flash exposed where she had crossed her own tracks, and it reflected off the blood on Tango’s leg. She gasped from fear and exhaustion. The sky lit again, and in the distance she saw the dead Cap’n lying face up by his pickup. They had gone nowhere!
Cold rain slashed across the desert. Cricket’s teeth chattered as she and Tango staggered against the tumult in an attempt to put distance between her and the Cap’n’s body. They found a dry-gulch to escape the chilling wind, but had no sooner entered when it became a swirling deluge. The onrush of water threw her and Tango against a ledge which she grasped and clung to with the last of her strength.
She thought she heard someone screaming, and Tango howling like a banshee.

A Very Suspicious Phenomenon

Six years ago we down-sized from a fairly large house to one of moderate size. My wife spent lots of time getting it ready for us to occupy. She was especially particular about my study. This was a larger room than the one I’d been occupying. I’d have more bookshelves, a fireplace, two windows looking out onto the front yard, a huge desk and a place for my favorite divan. Really, what more could a second career author ask?

My study is now filled with all my favorite things. I especially love my bulletin board where I have posted the sweet notes, crayon creations, paintings, photos and a world of other memorabilia from grandchildren, greats and nieces. Nancy was looking over my shoulder as I reviewed my photo collection on my main computer. Turn back!, she said. What in the world is THAT? It’s a photo I took of my stuffed scorpion and frog, I said. Why would you photograph those ugly things? she wanted to know. Cause I like them a lot, I said.

She made a similar remark about the photo of my desk, which contains more of my favorit things. There’s a container of gumballs, a wood carving of baby turtles, a Saint Patrick’s Day hat on top of an enlisted sailor’s hat, a broken wrist watch, a can of bag balm, a stack of old birthday and Father’s Day cards, a Chicago Book of Style, a brass statuary of dolphins jumping out of the water  and many other things found on every man’s desk. She also saw photos I had taken of a watercolor I’d done, an oil painting I’d won forty-five years ago in a lottery sponsored by the First State Bank of Dotson, Texas, and painted by the wife of the bank’s president.  Why in the world , Nancy demanded, do you take pictures of all those things? I thought about that for about one-tenth of a second. Because they are part of who I am, I said.

Leave it to me to get off the intended subject, which is the strange way this house keeps growing. When we moved in there were only fourteen steps to the second level. There are at least 20 now and a new step is added each year. And when we moved in the distance from the den to my study was insignificant, but it gets longer every day. Sometimes I’m temped to sit and rest between rooms.

I’ve heard of houses shrinking as families expanded, and getting larger when children leave, but for more than two decades it has  been just the two of us. I’m going to start counting the steps from here to the den. Something very weird is going on.

Despite this mysterious growing house, I have been able to complete the first draft of The Snow Cactus, my new action/adventure novel. I’ll post some quotes from it next time I blog.

Stay well, read and write everyday and stay in touch.

Chapter from The Snow Cactus

 

It’s snowing on the Barrios Plateau. A storm, unique in its timing and intensity, has swept down from the southern Sierras and has reached the Sonora Desert, an event that occurs once every fifteen years. A three-inch blanket of wet flakes has transformed the sienna landscape
into an icy fairyland of surreal images. Here is where the saguaro, organ pipe
and cholla cacti live.

Many of the saguaro on this range are several hundred years old. Each of their arms—and there are often eight—account for thirty to forty years of life. The newest sprout appears like a babe in the mature arms. It is spring, and fragrant white blossoms have burst through the snow transforming the landscape into a deceptive paradise.

Today purple clouds have dressed the saguaro’s headless necks with sparkling crowns and clothed their slumped shoulders in capes of white. Canyon wrens, nesting in the crevices and the abandoned holes of the Gila Woodpecker, peek out of their desert homes and quizzically flutter about.Nor have the scorpions dealt with frozen water. They shake themselves free of snow and are drawn to one of the giant saguaros exhibiting another phenomenon. Clothed in flowers, and winter finery,it is dripping blood onto the white desert floor.

An Author’s Worst Nightmare

On July 1st we had a houseful of company. Somehow 260 pages of my new novel The Snow Cactus disappeared from cyberworld. Son, Dennis, is a computer expert and he couldn’t find it. It was gone! Fortunately I had backed all my books up on a flashdrive June 18, but I was still missing twelve days of work. Second blessing: most of those pages were in hardcopy form with my workshop leader, Carolyn Wall. Bottom line: I got it all back except about three pages which was nothing more than a piece of luck.

So the novel is now 90% complete. Trouble is I’m having a tough time cloing it out. The storyline is how the war on drugs raging on the Arizona/Mexican border impacted a ten year old girl, known as Cricket, and her dog Tango. They are taken under the wing of a half-breed Indian living on the Tonoho O’odom Reservation. They have survived many travails, but the child is in the hospital critically ill. Dunk, her benefactor, sends for her dog, which he hopes will give her the will to live.

That’s where I’m at in the book, but can’t figure out how to close it. I keep thinking I’ll have some kind of an Ah-ha moment, an epithany or a dream, but so far–nothing!

In the meanwhile, I have had two four-star reviews of my memoir In Pursuit of the Speckled Gumball by Amazon readers. Stay tuned for further updates, and thanks for logging on.

 

Easy Company

It’s Memorial Day weekend, an appropriate time to watch the epic film, A Band of Brothers, honoring one of World War II’s most heroic fighting units.

Easy Company of the 101st Airborne parachuted into France on D Day, fought through France and Holland, withstood the Nazi onslaught at Bastogne, Belgium (The Battle of the Bulge), and went on into Germany to capture Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.

Hanks and Spielberg, the producers, emphasized the bravery of Easy Company while graphically depicting the horror of war. They also used the film to dispel two myths, the first being that General George Patton’s Tank Division had to “rescue” the 101st Airborne, the Bastards of Bastogne. Not a single member of that famed battalion have ever said they needed “rescuing” as the glory seeking Patton had represented to the new media.

One scene in the film shows the members of the 101st gathered during  a rare rest period in a mess hall watching a movie. The men are dirty, tired, hungry, and many have been wounded multiple times (one was awarded four Purple Heart medals) but are still fighting. There, on the screen, is John Wayne. The comparison could not have been more stark. Wayne, dressed in the white, summer dress-uniform of a Naval Officer, is in a swanky club with a beautiful woman. The bitter irony is that Wayne was classified 4-A, the highest prospect for the draft. Three times his number was called, and three times he appealed to the studio big-shots to get him deferments so that the war would not interfere with his career. He successfully dodged the draft, and sat out the war in Hollywood pretending he was a brave fighting man. The mythical ”Duke” was, in reality, a chicken-hawk.

This weekend we are remembering the loved ones who have gone before, and in particular the fighting men and women of our armed forces. Watching A Band of Brothers reminded us of their sacrifice.

Life Altering Decsions

A Life Altering Decision

When I finished college at Central Michigan, I didn’t think I needed any more schooling. It took me two years to figure out how wrong I was, so I called Dean Allan King in Tulsa and told him I had changed my mind about the scholarship he had offered me earlier. The Dean agreed to do these things for me: He would admit me to night law school,  grant me a partial scholarship, and help me find employment, so that I could support my family while going to law school. Eighty hours of class work was required to obtain the coveted J.D degree. That meant carrying ten hours of classes for eight semesters. I had used up my G.I. Bill so it was the only way I could obtain an advanced degree. (Harvard and the University of Michigan had agreed to accept me, but offered no assistance)

I ended up as a gofer at the First National Bank of Tulsa. That made sense due to my having worked at B. of A. in California for two years. My new routine was a killer. I worked from nine until five and attended class from six til nine each evening. I was always in the hole financially due to the cost of attending a private University, the cost of books, and the starvation salary paid by the bank. Each year I had to borrow more and more just to stay in school and support my family. I became so impoverished that I took on another job managing a small bar from nine p.m until closing seven days a week. I always had a book open at the end of the bar. The patrons called me the book-worm.

It took five years to complete what a full-time law student accomplishes  in three. But I survived and graduated eighth in a class of forty-four. By this time I owed the bank ten thousand dollars, a fortune in 1964.  Now along comes Mr. White, the personnel manager. I had received one miserly wage increase in four years, a fact that did not escape my attention when Mr. White told me that now that I had become a lawyer, the bank had a wonderful opportunity for me. I would head up the tax department and my wages would be doubled. White painted a  rosy picture of my future.

It took me all of thirty seconds to tell Mr. Personnel Director what he could do with his new position. A few phone call had provided me with the information I needed. Harmon County in the far southwest corner of the state had fewer lawyers per capital than any county in Oklahoma. I would hang my shingle in Hollis, the county seat, and let fate take its course.

Two significant events occurred. It took a little over two years to pay off the entire debt to the bank. Three years after that the First National Bank of Tulsa was declared insolvent and closed its doors. What a disaster it would have been had I accepted their offer.

By that time my career had jump-started. I had so many clients I couldn’t keep up and many nights worked until midnight. My life would have been radically different had I accepted the banks offer.

My classmates in high school called me Lucky. The nickname has been right on more than one occasion. Some of the situations where luck played a huge part in my survival are discussed in my 2010 release, Corkscrewed.

I’m a believer.

A Dog’s Tale

If you’ve read my books you may be acquainted with my dog, Sadie Pearl. She appears on the back cover of Malachi’s Child and The Baptism of Vincent Scarlotti.  Half husky and half Labrador Retriever, she is one of the finest cross-breeds I’ve encountered. My Huskador was born the third week of January, 2000. On that day, I was on my way home and saw a hand-painted sign: “Puppies for Sale — a $25.00.”

I’d been trying to talk Nancy into bringing a dog into our lives, and she finally agreed, but stipulated that the animal be small and short haired.  I pulled into the driveway where the sign was posted and was greeted by a gentle and friendly yellow lab that had obviously been nursing a litter. The kennel was behind the house. There were three solid black Lab puppies, and a fourth that was a gold, black, brown and white female with the combined features of Husky and Lab. She ran to the fence, jumped up and down and begged me to take her. We bonded then and there.

It’s been eleven and a half years since she selected me to be her owner. I wonder what I would have done without her. She was big and had long hair that shedded by the fists full in hot weather, but Nancy fell for her just like I did.

She has taught me much over the years. Not one to complain, the only time we hear from her is when a stranger comes near our home. Her bark is deep throated like a wolf.

Recently, the OSU Veterinarian Hospital diagnosed her with Cushing’s Desease (common in ten-year-old femake Labs), diabetes, a side effect of Cushings, and a Urninary Tract Infection.

Some mornings, I get up grunting and groaning and complaining about this and that. But not Sadie Pearl. She never complains, never whines or crys, even when I give her two nasty pills and two shots of insulin daily. She just takes it and goes on with her life.

Sadie and I are getting old together, but she takes it a lot better than I. Every once in a while she’ll give me one of her “stop complaining” looks.  She’s trying hard to teach me to grow old with grace. I’m afraid her standards are too high for me, but I keep trying.

Sticking It To Our Service Men & Women

Oklahoma is a service state. By that I mean we have an abundance of military posts. There’s Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Altus Air Force Base in Altus, the huge Army Artillery Base at Ft. Sill in Lawton, and Tinker Air Force Base in Midwest City. Our economy would collapse if it not for the multi-millions of Federal dollars that pour monthly into those bases and into the pockets of the military personnel who serve there.

Memorial Day is fast approaching. Today, Nancy and I went to a rehabilitation center in Dell City to see a retired Army veteran recuperating from a fractured hip. Within a mile of Tinker Air Force Base there was a gas station, whose price for regular gasoline was thirty cents a galleon higher than the prevailing cost in the outlying suburbs. An abundance of gasoline and lower taxes on petroleum products keeps Oklahoma’s gasoline prices below the national average. There is no excuse, other than avarice, to explain why this business and others like it charge exorbitant prices. Low ranking enlisted personnel are paid at a rate close to the poverty level. They live on or close to the base. Charging them more for necessities than is paid by the average citizen is greed at its worse. 

There’s nothing more despicable than a flag waver who has his hand in our military’s pocket. The base commander should compile a list of the predator business facilities and post them so that base personnel will know who to avoid when spending their paychecks.

Have a great Memorial Day and remember to pay tribute to those who serve.   

Hiram K. Myers

Start the Clean Up

Clarence Thomas, a United States Supreme Court Justice, one of the most prestigious and revered positions in the Constitutional scheme of things, is a tax evader, a liar, and an uncharged felon.  He’s a lawyer, an educated man who was required (like the rest of us) to file an income tax return each year. On the return it asks if his wife (tea-party advocate) had any income, to which the learned justice marked in the “no” box, when in fact she had thousands of dollars in unreported income.  The man purposely lied, and he did it over a number of years compounding the felony.  We can start to clean-up our government by impeaching Justice Thomas and then trying him for the crimes for which ordinary citizens go to prison.Get him off the court before he does anymore harm. To allow such conduct to go unpunished is to make a mockery of the mottos “Not a nation of men, but of laws,” and “All Men Are Equal Under the Law.”

Call the Attorney General of the United States and insist that charges be brought against this blantant criminal.