Desert Gothic

Mineral and Steel

59 Mineral and Steel “Tommy stole the goddamn Ford,” my stepfather said when I finally answered. I’d been asleep, dreaming. Dallas’s booming voice tore across my watery mind. He loved to harass my cell. “A pallet of titanium round bar, from the shop’s dock, went poof along with the truck,” he went on. A hard exhale hit his phone, my ear. Refineries produced less smoke than Dallas. Twelve-point Helvetica had blurred my vision. I blinked twice, but nothing in my trailer had enough edge on which to hang a thought. I’d been up late, pounding out four thousand words— chapter 18. 6 0 M i n e r a l a n d S t e e l I said to Dallas, “Hold on. Who’s Tommy?” “One hell of an arc welder,” he said. “He’s been AWOL for days. So I need you in town like yesterday. Help me root out the truck. And the steel.” He coughed up what sounded like a mouthful of phlegm. “I’ll toss you some bills for helping,” he added, which registered with me. “This guy isn’t coming back?” I said. “Crystal meth’s got him,” Dallas said. “The shit’s got Tommy by the hair hanging off his nut sack.” Dallas managed a twenty-man shop down in Washoe Valley. His business specialized in making door handles. He lathed, milled, polished, and shipped door handles all over the world. It had never been lost on me, sure. Dallas made an everyday object . A necessary object. But an object overlooked by everyone every day. Since the small memorial service, we’d gotten together over a few awkward dinners, nothing special. As Mom’s birthday approached, though, Dallas had begun phoning more frequently. I said, “If I drive down, can we talk maybe?” “You’re breaking up,” Dallas said. “I’m hearing electrostatic. Hello?” Our connection hummed. But I knew he was avoiding, as usual. God forbid he ever discussed his feelings. His arterial bypass might rupture. We were numb, sure. Numb was honest. But I hated tiptoeing the line, wandering around the confusing, emotional demarcation zone that separated men of his generation from all that was demanded from men of mine. A thin, shiny layer of condensation glistened on my sleeping bag. “Leslie?” Dallas said. I buried my hand in the wet. I said, “I’ll be at the shop at noon.” “That-a-boy,” Dallas said. I imagined a spurt of blood staining his lung. If my mother hadn’t married Dallas, I would never have spoken to the man. It wasn’t complicated. In fact, it was simple: we would never have crossed paths. He and I were just opposite, frayed ends of a long, a very long, rope. M i n e r a l a n d S t e e l 6 1 For months I’d been living up on the mountain, in Virginia City, Nevada, sleeping in a nine-by-five travel trailer. I’d bought the crappy trailer from a prehistoric woman in Reno, a woman whose smile was straight from a horror flick. Four jagged teeth poked from her lower jaw, and that was it. With this scary quartet, she chewed on her upper lip like a camel. When I stepped inside for a peek, the woman followed me, clipping my heels with slippers encrusted with kitty litter. The trailer was tiny, filthy. I was now aware that even ninety-year-olds could rip you off. I’d paid nine hundred dollars, and a week later the door had become permanently jammed. I was reduced to shimmying in, and then back out, through a small side window. Anyway, when I wasn’t behind my laptop, I wasted plenty of time at the Bucket of Blood, a saloon popular for its heyday, Old West, shit-kicker vibe. Cracks wove through ancient floorboards, bronze foot rails lined the bar, and the spittoons were still used by customers with faded chaw-tin rings in their back pockets. Autumn was sharpening into winter, which meant a slowdown in tourist foot-traffic. The Bucket’s bartender, a bearded grizzly named Grant, was a rabid Oakland Raiders fan. Once a week he lit the place up with his twenty-eight-inch TV. Townies patronized the bar in the off-season. And game nights were great for people watching. (Wherever I went, I brought my moleskin notebook.) That bright, excruciating look of anticipation during...