Another Excerpt From “Marlene”
This is inspired by a true crime story.
The drive to Bishop, California took us through the Mojave Desert in the heat of summer. Milton started out early, before six AM. He took Angeles Crest Highway to Palmdale and Highway 14 to the city of Mojave where it joined Highway 395 leading all the way to Bishop, a small city at the top of the Owens Valley between the Eastern Sierras and the White Mountains.
Past the tiny town of Olancha we saw a large salt flat to the right of the Highway. “That’s Owens Lake,” Milton said. “It used to be so big they needed a river boat to travel across it. Then William Mulholland bought up the water rights to the Owens Valley and built an aqueduct to move the water to LA.”
“He knew how fast LA would grow into a big city, I guess. One million people by 1930. A lack of water would stifle growth.”
“Fast like cancer. Instant dry lake. Bye-bye agriculture. He cut the heart out of this area, but everything he did was legal.”
We stopped in Lone Pine for lunch. Melvin pointed across the highway to a rounded rock formation. “The Alabama Hills is where old Western movies were shot, Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy, and John Wayne, among others. They made two reelers, technically the term for silent comedies, but any short B movie including talkies is a two reeler these days.”
“On Saturday mornings at Marlene’s house in Baldwin Park I watched Randy Rides Again with John Wayne and serials like Flash Gordon. Her dad usually woke up on the couch and watched with us. A nice man for a hopeless drunk. I was sure the outdoor cattle ranch scenes were shot up in Calabasas and Santa Suzanna.”
“In your father’s words, this is all useless mind candy. He has always been a killjoy when it came to having fun for its own sake.”
“I think Mike Lindvall and I could write the scripts for those B-movies. The good guy runs into a beautiful young woman and confronts cattle rustlers that threaten her ranch. The bad guys are Hank and Blackie. They get into a shootout, even though the hero is known to be the fastest gun in the West and the best shot in the world. Blam! Blam! No more bad guys. Boy returns to beautiful young woman. Fade to black.”
Both uncles laughed. Milton said, “I did not know that you and your friend write short stories. What do you write?”
“Science fiction. I hate Westerns.”
“I’d like to see your work.”
“We’re too busy with Mrs. Vaughn’s murder to spend much time on writing.”
On the way out of town we pulled into the remnants of Manzanar. It was not much, a stone guard shack and posts made of piled up rocks. It looked dreary and must have been cold in the winter with wind blowing down from the Eastern Sierras. I could imagine whole families with kids stuck there for the duration of the war. No one would be fooled into thinking it was not a prison camp.
I had read that in response to the unfair treatment of Japanese Americans, the young men (nisei) enlisted in the army and served in a special unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat team, which became the most decorated unit in the war. They figured that their example would reverse the popular prejudices. It made me sad to know how unfairly we treated our fellow Americans. Their children died to prove their parents were loyal Americans.
We continued north on Highway 395, passing through Independence and Big Pine. Milton pointed to the east and said that Death Valley lay beyond the White Mountains. It was the most desolate place in the USA, and the hottest. The lowest point, Badwater Basin was 282 feet below sea level. When we arrived in Bishop Uncle Melvin hurried into Schat’s Bakery and brought out two loaves of sheepherder’s bread.
“You’ll really love this, and it keeps forever,”
We drove up a hill outside of town and stopped at a small rock quarry, where their friend Ransom Hicks sawed chunks of red sandstone out of the hilltop. Milton had developed a stone-cutting saw mounted on a guide track that made precise cuts into the exposed rock ledge. Lately it bound up and only cut two or three blocks at a time. Hicks had a contract to provide the façade for the new city hall and was falling far behind.
He lived on the site in a trailer that only had sleeping quarters for one person. We brought sleeping bags and slept on the ground around a campfire. Uncle Milton told me to leave a small object by my bed roll. I put my old rabbit’s foot on the ground near my head. It was tattered, and I had forgotten to throw it away. In the morning, I found a cat’s eye marble in its place.
“Hey, look at this! How did you know this would happen?”
“The trade rats have been getting into Ransom’s provisions. The presence of human habitation makes this an ideal place for their nests.”
“Dang, they actually swap the stuff you leave out.”
“They’re not rats, just as pesky a species of rodents. What they take is to build their nests. Of course, they are happy to steal food.”
“How can they live in the desert with no water?”
Melvin answered. “I learned this in biology at PCC. They digest their food in a way that liberates free water from the chemicals. If there is an H2O somewhere in the molecular formula, they chip it out. It’s called metabolic water.”
“Do they pee?”
“You’re a curious kid,” Melvin said. “I bet you solve Trudy Vaughn’s murder somehow. Anyhow, the rats excrete urine that is so concentrated it is almost a crystal. The larger lesson is that life is highly adaptable.”
“Then there must be life on other planets, other solar systems. We presume it when we draft our short stories.”
“We’ve had radio telescopes since the thirties,” Milton said. “And we have discovered no evidence of life anywhere else in the universe.”
“Oh yes, you went to Cal Tech. How sad to think that we are the only intelligent life forms in a great, big universe.”
“What’s your evidence of intelligence?”
We all laughed.
“George Bernard Shaw and Einstein said the proof of life in the universe is that aliens use planet earth for an insane asylum.”
“I have seen no evidence to the contrary,” Milton said.
