CASE NUMBER ELEVEN

The Case of Desert Country

CHAPTER ONE

I had just come over a sandy ridge when I spotted it. A grey cinder block building; beside it a windmill and what looked like a carport. No cars were under it though. I saw a mangy looking dog lying on the ground next to the front door. Other than that, nothing.

I was fairly certain I was no longer in Universation Nation. But was I finally in Normex Annex and perhaps ergo also near San Manse’? And most important of all, was Lance Straightpoint, fellow TPE, still alive?

As I got near the building, I heard a guitar playing, and then as I approached the door (the dog didn’t even notice me) I heard the following words being sung:

Changes were bound to be made

But some of us were afraid

Afraid we might lose our way

On the road

To San Manse’

I  walked into the cool darkness of the building. It was a bar and grill of some kind. The man I had heard playing the guitar and singing put down his guitar and walked behind the bar. I guessed he was the bartender as well as the entertainment.

“What can I do you?” he asked in what reminded me of Southern English (my own dialect).

I flashed my TPE ID slash credit card. “Anything that’s wet. I’m dry enough to start my own personal drought.”

He handed me a bottle of Old Mexican. We struck up a conversation.

“What brings you to these parts?”

“I’m looking for a fellow TPE.”

“What does he look like?”

I described Lance to him. He said he hadn’t seen anyone who matched that description. He then handed me a second OM and went back to performing.

I know the color of your heart

The senseless way you tear it apart

I know there’s a price to pay

On the road

To San Manse’

CHAPTER TWO

While he was singing, a menacing looking man of smallish stature sauntered into the saloon. Somewhat surprisingly, he walked right up to me and sat on the stool next to mine. The bartender spoke very respectfully to him.

“What can I do you… Sir?

“Do you have some Old Montezuma?”

“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

The man looked over at me. “Greetings, Senor Neercassel.”

“You have me at a disadvantage, sir. You know my name but I do not know yours.”

“I am D.E. Nerdez, retired sniper.”

“Permanently, I hope.” I smiled. A little tentatively, but a smile nonetheless.

“Absolutely, and to be honest with you, I was never much of a sniper. I could never bring myself to actually killing anyone. It was more like warning shots off the bow, if you know what I mean.”

I thought back to a couple of days before when I had been shot at and almost killed (see CASE NUMBERS NINE AND TEN). Coincidence? Yet, I instinctively knew somehow not to pursue the matter.

“What made you retire?”

“A trigger finger that was beginning to tremble at the wrong time and the conversion of my most recent employer from a so-so evil person to a decent human being.”

“Sounds inspiring.”

“It was. Bartender, bring us another round. This time a couple of Old Monterreys.”

“Thanks. That’s mighty kind of you. What do you plan to do now?”

“I plan to seek citizenship in the Universation Nation.” With that he finished off his  Old Monterrey and started to leave. At the door he turned around and said, “Adios, Senor. May you find success in your desert endeavor.”

CHAPTER THREE

The bartender and I were alone again. He spoke up first. “I’ll be a son of gun. Not in a million years did I ever think Nerdez would retire from sniping.”

“Universations can do that to you.” I replied cryptically. Before the bartender could respond, I asked him, “What’s your name and how did you end up here? You seem to be pretty talented with that guitar and you have a good singing voice. “

“I’m Malcolm Isaiah Tubebacher but most people just call me MIT. I‘m a graduate of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.”

“What’s your degree in, MIT?”

“Physics. I originally came down here to study the instability of Normex Annex. I was on a team of twenty physicists. We built this building to be our base. About a week after we got here, Normex Annex dematerialized. Six months later Normex Annex had not rematerialized. Then our funding dried up so everybody left to go back to their respective institutions and employers. Everybody except me. I had fallen in love with the place. I decided to make the building a saloon and pursue my life-long dream of being a country singer. That was three months ago.”

“Still no Normex Annex?”

“It actually reappeared about two weeks ago?”

“Have you investigated it?”

“No but I wrote a song about it.”

“Really? What’s the name of it?”

“All my Exes live in Annexes.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Sounded like a winner. I started to ask MIT to play it for me whenhe  said, “I’m glad you here. Do you have time to help me out?”

“It’s the least I can do.” I replied.

“I’ve got a couple of musicians stopping by this afternoon to rehearse for a gig here this weekend. You can be a judge.”

Just then, a tall man with black hair combed straight back appeared at the door. He walked over to the stage and adjusted the microphone. My TPE trained mind told me he must be one of the musicians. Then he started singing:

Hey
Hello baby, Conway here
Let me lay this in your ear
Get ready to go
We gonna roll about sundown
I got some boogie-woogie music
On the old 8 track
Yeah, I got the top laid back
We'll go cruisin'
We'll go foolin' around
Well here I am baby, ready to play
Slide it on in, we'll slip away
We gotta get it, we ain't got a moment to waste
I got a six-pack of longnecks
In the trunk on ice
Ohhh but you sure look nice
makes me want to hold you
and kiss you all over your face

It's a red-neckin' love-makin' night
You ain't had much til you been touched in the moonlight
You feel it most when you get real close and you hold on tight
It's a red-neckin' love-makin' night
It's a red-neckin' love-makin' night

Stars in your eyes, wind in your hair
Oh, what a down home love affair
When we go out walkin'
We know what we're talkin' about
Listen to the wipporwills
How they sing
Just like us, they're doin' their thing
We know what we got
When the nights get hot down south

It's a red-neckin' love-makin' night
You ain't had much til you been touched in the moonlight
You feel it most when you get real close and you hold on tight
It's a red-neckin' love-makin' night
It's a red-neckin' love-makin' night

It was a Conway Twitty impersonator and not a bad one at that. And he had sung a classic Conway song.

MIT asked me, “What do you think, Mr. Neercassel?”

“Call me Nick. I liked him. Makes me feel kinda sad though. Reminds me of what the world of country music lost when it lost Conway.”

CHAPTER FIVE

About an hour passed before the next applicant performed and in the interim MIT brought me some tamales. Very tasty and nutritious; I hadn’t eaten much in the last few days so the food was very much appreciated.

The second and final applicant sang without benefit of accompanying music. His song went a little bit like this:

Been out on the road so long

Don’t know where I come from

Don’t know where I belong

So I keep on going on

Oh, I’ve been to Phoenix

And I’ve been to San Antone

But no matter where I go

I’m always alone

You call my number

Nobody there

That’s why they call me

Miles from Nowhere

Second rate has been my fate

So much I never learned

Signals crossed and I got lost

Don’t know where to turn

You call my number

Nobody there

That’s why they call me

Miles from Nowhere

Haunting lyrics and the guy made it work without the accompanying music. I asked him, “Why no guitar or piano or such?”

“I sing acapulco.”

“Don’t you mean a cappella?”

“Acapulco is Mexican for a cappella.”

You learn something new every day.

MIT thanked Acapulco (he went by the name of what he did) for his performance and scheduled him for the 10 pm slot on Friday night.

It was starting to get dark and I asked MIT about what time did most of his customers start drifting in; Mitt looked surprise at the question.

“What do you mean customers?”

“You know. Patrons; people; men and women who come in and buy drinks and food and listen to the music.”

MIT scratched his head.

“But where would they come from? Nobody lives around here.”

CHAPTER SIX

“You mean you don’t have customers? How does your enterprise survive?”

“By word of mouth, mostly.”

Now I was scratching my head.

“Please explain that remark.”

“Well, all the former members of the Normex Annex Discovery Agency (NADA) who are back in the states are telling their friends, family, and work associates about this place. I’m sure any day now people will start flocking in.”

“How can you be sure of that?”

“I’ve got a degree in Quantum Physics. I’m never sure of anything.”

“Good point.”

I decided to change the subject. I didn’t want to send MIT into a state of depression.

“Have you ever heard of the Cult of the Raspberry Tart?”

“Cassy Castenada’s group?”

“That’s it. I think they may have something to do with the disappearance of Lance, my fellow TPE.”

“Why?”

“They suspected Lance was anti-peyote as well as anti-instability.”

“Is he?”

“Yes on the former; no on the latter. Too much stability is not good for a TPE. We lose our edge.”

MIT thought for a moment. “I don’t see Tarters as murderers. Displacers yes. I could see them sending Lance to another dimension.”

“Is that possible?”

“Oh, yea. I actually visited some while getting my PhD at Vanderbilt. I remember one in particular where Ivory soap was 99 and 45/100ths pure.”

“How easy is it to travel between dimensions?”

“Easy enough…. if you have the key.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

I was getting ready to leave when a young lady came into the establishment. MIT asked her the usual “What can I do you?”

“An Old Montevideo and a chance to sing my song.”

“You’ve got it, pretty lady.” She drank the OM in a few strong gulps and then sat down at the piano. She played a few opening notes, then said:

“I WAS BORN A PIG FARMER'S DAUGHTER by Miss Loretta”

And then she started singing:

I was borned a pig farmer's daughter.
In a pen near a sty near a holler.
Thangs would stink and thangs would squeal,
Thangs was bad, but thangs was real,
And no one could ever hear me in the holler.

I took up sangin', and I worked such a happy crowd,
The pigs didn't seem to care if I sang real loud.
I could hit them notes all wrong,
And forget the words to my song,
But the pigs was always nice to the pig farmer's daughter.

In the wintertime, the slop would up and freeze,
And my piggies would line up beggin' on their bended knees.
Sometimes I stole some cookies and cream,
To let 'em starve, I'd never dream,
I stood by the pigs like the a good pig farmer's daughter.

When I was 30, folks told me I didn't have shoes to wear,
It was news to me, and wandered just why I'd care.
When I put 'em on, it hurt,
So I went back straight to the dirt,
And in Nashville it helped to be a barefooted pig farmer's daughter.

MIT and I both clapped big time. “How about another one?” we said in unison.

“Alright. Here’s DON'T COME HOME STILL EATIN', WITH SQUEALIN' ON YOU MIND.”

There you are outside the pigpen,
Holdin' flowers to your chest.
You've eaten half the petals,
And you're workin' on the rest.

What started out romantic,
Has vanished in a fog,
And now you're in the slop again,
Just actin' like a hog.

So, don't come home still eatin',
With squealin' on your mind,
Just stay outside with the donuts,
And have a pig-out of a time.

If you want a snackin' kind of love,
Well, you don't want none of mine.
And don't come home still eatin',
With squealin' on your mind.

This girl was fantastic. I hadn’t heard great pig inspired lyrics since THE CASE OF THE ODD PIG OUT when I visited a barbecue joint in Holly Hill, South Carolina.

“You need to hire her on the spot, MIT!”

The girl said, “I can’t stay. I’m on my way to another place and time. Just wanted  a chance to sing my sing and you fellas gave me that.”

“We thank you.” MIT handed her an OM for the road. “You’re welcome back anytime.”

I asked MIT, “Do you often have people pass through on their way to another place and time?”

“It happens all the time. I even wrote a song about it.”

“Let's hear it.”

Just passin’ thru, my new acquaintances

I was attracted by the females here

And their fragrances

I won’t stay long

The smells are too strong

Do you have an Old Milwaukee beer?

MIT asked me. “Well, what do you think?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was then I looked around and standing in the doorway was Walter Brennan or someone who looked just like him. MIT spoke:

“Come on in Jedediah. We were just getting ready to talk about the meaning of life.”

We were? And for a place with little or no population, this joint was literally swarming with people.

We introduced ourselves. Jedediah turned out to be a prospector and had lived alone in the desert for the past twenty years where he obviously had lots of time to think. We talked for about four hours and I’ve boiled down his thoughts and observations into the following format:

It remains to be seen if life has meaning; meaning in the sense of lasting truth. Some would argue that only insufferable fools or blatant egotists would seemingly care about either truth or meaning. Life is purely existential they would say. Truth and meaning change as life changes. But does life ever really change? The answer to that is that something definitely does change. But is the change substantial or insubstantial? Is there a spiritual component that overlays our physical, observable world? And if there is, is it the source of immutable truth and meaning in our relative world?

I (Jedediah) would argue, in a practical sense, that as goals, truth is somewhat unattainable, and meaning is maddingly elusive. Humanity is too diverse for any one man or group of men to come up with some homogeneous ideological or theological way of doing things that would satisfy everybody. Man is forever getting bogged down in symbols and other notions of unreality to ever get too close to the truth.

But then, as Pilate said to Jesus two thousand years ago: What is Truth?

No man knows for sure.

Perhaps it is humanity’s particular fate to have minds that contemplate all sorts of abstract questions that cannot be answered. Perhaps there is a God, who within himself, has all the answers, and truth to him is like our hands are to us, not only salient parts of our bodies, but also extensions of our personalities.

So if truth is beyond our reach, is meaning within our grasp?

I (Jedediah) think so.

This is where the abstract workings of our minds come into play. We can not only enjoy, in a physical and emotional sense, the taste of something sweet, we can also, decide intellectually, whether or not it is good for us. This we do by our power of reason, our ability to compare and contrast, our historical perspective, and by our sense of uniqueness as self-conscious individual beings in a larger universe.

So the idea of meaning is tied in with the idea of the good life.

And the good life is not a return to the Garden of Eden. In fact it is a renunciation of such a thing. For the good life is not the glorification of innocence, but neither is it the worshiping of perdition.

The good life is one of maintenance; maintaining a precarious balance between opposing forces in the world; living near the edge but never falling off.

The good life is simply a life of balance.

Thus meaning is for today. Truth is for tomorrow.

CHAPTER NINE

Jedediah had left about an hour earlier pulling his donkey, Maybelline, by the tether. Maybelline was loaded down with picks and shovels as well as grub and writing utensils. Jedediah had done a lot of thinking. Maybe it was now time to put some of that thinking down on paper.

I asked MIT if there were any more verses to the song I had heard him singing when I had first walked into his establishment.

“One more but it’s more of a prophetic verse in the sense that it hasn’t happen yet but it might.”

“Sing it for me.”

For all those of fear the rain

Who’ll never see the sun again

It’s a long way to that day

Along the road

To San Manse’

I’d been in the desert for a good many days and I hadn’t seen a drop of rain.

“Isn’t there more, MIT? Aren’t you leaving the chorus out?”

“Yes, but how did you know?”

“Trade secret. Just sing it.”

Lost in the hurricane

Nobody knows my name

I’ll never find my way

To San Manse’

I was right. The Judgment was coming.

CHAPTER TEN

I departed at ten pm, leaving MIT on the edge of his own reality. Before I left, he sung one last song, written surprisingly by Jedediah.

I’ve been in the desert

Searchin’ for gold

The desert hasn’t been

A good place to grow old

So I mended my ways

And stopped using the bottle

Slowed down my hurrying

Discovered the throttle

And laid on my back

Neath a million stars

And wondered why Tiger

Quit making birdies and pars

MIT didn’t stop there but by the end of the first song I was just about out of hearing range and by the time he started singing the second one I was.

EPILOG

Readers may wonder why TPEC had not sent out a rescue squad when they discovered my celestial cell phone had become missing. Well, it has a lot to do with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his essay on Self-Reliance and also the simple fact that there’s a heck of a lot of evil in this old world and universe and the numbers aren’t always in favor of the good guys. TPEs are trained to deal with the reality of the situation they find themselves in even when that reality is shifting like the sand beneath their feet.

My biggest question remained: was Lance still alive?; and my second biggest question: was he in Normex Annex?; and my third biggest question: was Normex Annex in the vicinity or had it destabilized to another location on Earth? Was it even on Earth?

MIT had told me that in the six months NADA (Normex Annex Discovery Agency) had functioned, several maps of the area had been produced but the maps had been lost when an unexpected wind named Mariah had suddenly arisen and blown the maps into the distant horizon. NADA had made a valiant effort to come up with the maps but had found nothing. Finding the maps had gone to the top of my to-do list, and unlike NADA, I would not be satisfied with nothing.

After all, nothing as a metaphysical concept, did not exist and even nothing had to be something. Something, on the other hand, was too abstract while nothing in the phenomenal world had a more concrete basis. If I had an apple and ate it, did the apple become nothing or did it become something different from what it was before? I chose to believe that the chaos that surrounded me was not the product of nothing but of something and by finding this something I would be defeating the nothingness that screamed at me in the small corners of the night.

It seemed like a good time to pray, which I did, and upon completing the prayer, I opened my eyes and put one foot in the front of the other.

THE END