This Deserves a Letter, Let's Call It [P]

To cool things off, George quietly walked out of the lobby of the We-Ko-Pa casino into the arid Arizona air around hour 1700. If Nance couldn't tear herself away from the roulette table to go for a stroll in the desert, so be it. If she wasn't interested in what the guidebook said about flora-fauna like 'organpipes' and 'Couch's spadefoot toads' and 'ocotillos', then there was little chance she would become so, when she might have been down off the highway on Fort McDowell Road, so George struck out on his own, solo, trotting over the divided highway (the 'Beeline', pronounced 'Bline'), past the gas station on the left--and then he was surrounded by quiet, on the grey concrete cracked, and the only sound was the unseen insects crying desperately for insect love and affection.

In the bright airless buoyancy of the slow friendly wind, a gravel road running up a slope obliquely brought to George's mind better days, namely, his younger days, when he, in similar situations, would go up just such a gravel road simply to see what was at the end of it, in search of the treasures that naturally lay at the end of any road or likewise at the source of any creek. End of road, source or creek, was there any more likely source of jewels and gold? He remembered digging through mud with a friend (since deceased), certain the little glisters were golden; experience had corrected that impression, and the only gold that really mattered always seemed to line the purses of others.

For five minutes he walked south. No matter how he strained, he could no longer hear the Bline's traffic. He felt like the only person for miles and miles. It was him and the cacti and the insects, and the poisonous snakes who must've been around, hiding behind sage and scrub. The ground either side of the road was sand and dry. He came over a rise and looked into a shallow valley. Off to the right, some hundred yards away, sat a trailer, colourfully painted with words on it too distant though to read. A picnic table sat there under a blue tarpaulin. George walked towards it, along the road, wondering if it was a trailer that housed a seriously inbred family of cannibal murderers. Nance would have turned around; but George walked on.

The words on the side of the trailer became legible. CARTER-CASH COUNTRY ESTATE it read. George smiled, thinking it had to be a put-on of some sort or another. Some music was coming from it. It was country music, though not much more could be demonstrated or extrapolated from this aural fact. George stopped at the point in the road closest to the trailer and pondered his next move. Should he pass it by to see more of the road's sights, should he turn around and head back to the casino, or should he find out about the real Arizona? He shrugged then, and walked to the trailer. He didn't know the song they were playing, but it sounded like his namesake George Jones. You can recognize that tone control anywhere.

George walked past the picnic table, noting that upon it sat a haphazard stack of messed paper plates and some plastic forks and knives. A barbecue was open, but empty. The trailer hitch had a chain hanging from it. Three windows with rounded corners on the other side had torn curtains blocking the view. He went around the rear with its wide curved window and a harsh voice called: "Who's out there?"

George quickly moved to near the picnic table under the tarp, having circled the trailer one whole orbit. The trailer door rattled, and opened. A man's head, white whiskers and salted hair, appeared, to look at George. "What are you doing here?"

Innocently: "I was out for a walk. Staying at the casino up the road. It was the words on the side that brought me over."

The man opened the door wider and hopped down. He was rail-thin and almost the image of the ancient and emaciated prospector. "It's not true," he barked. "We just want some peace and quiet without all this fuss."

"So, this trailer's got nothing at all to do with the Carter family?"

A woman's zonky voice from in the trailer: "Is that another relic-hunter, Bush?"

Bush (for so the prospector appeared to be dubbed) called: "Naw, it's just some passer-by." Bush returned to George. "The sign's a bit of humour that came from its last occupant. I mean, what would the Carter family, Johnny Cash included, ever have to do with Arizona? Maybelle was born in Nickelsville in 1909, Sara was born in Copper Creek in 1898, and A.P. was born in 1891 in Maces Spring. Virginia, Virginia, Virginia. No Arizona there."

It was starting to get cold. George pulled on the jacket he'd had tied around his waist. "So. What's the joke?"

"Who knows? Look at this thing. Obviously, it's from the '60s."

George gave the trailer another look. He was skeptical. It looked older than that. "You sure it's from the '60s? It's pretty plain, and all that aluminum. It looks like world war two fighter plane."

"Nope! It's not! It couldn't have belonged to the Carters even though it would have come in handy to them when they were doing Mexican border radio roundabouts 1939. It's not what you think it is. It's totally different."

Just then the woman came out of the trailer with a beer in her hand. She cried to George: "You can't have any of it! We got so little left! Thieves everywhere!"

Bush gestured at her like he was calming a big dog, with hands sweeping down, down, in gentle arcs. "Now Mabe, I'm sure you got some supper close to burning up in there. So go! I got everything in hand."

Mabe snarled and slipped back into the trailer. Pots and pans rattled like scaredy cats in there.

Bush turned back to George. "So you see, whatever it was you came for, just go on back the way you came. There's nothing here for you."

George shook his head and unified his eyebrows to say: "Look, if you've got some stuff that belonged to the Carter family, or even Johnny Cash.... It doesn't even make sense, I don't see he can have anything to do with it.... Well, it's your business. I'm just walking around!"

Bush reacted to this display of belligerence, and how. "Goddammit," as he reached into the trailer to come out with a shotgun. "You get off my land!"

George put out his hands and backed up. "Jesus Christ almighty! I'll go, I'll go! What's your problem?"

"Move those feet faster, sonny. Get on back to your nickels and dimes."

George backed away, back toward the road, turning his head to see he didn't stumble, till he was on the road and stopped. "Have a nice day!" he yelled.

"Not everything's for sale!" was the response.

George's heart was racing, his head and hands were shaking, his thoughts were full of the things that may have happened, and he couldn't help but see himself, as if he was in a dream, getting his head blown off. At some points during his walk back to the casino, he laughed out loud. What a weird world! Bush and Mabe had their history, and they valued it above anything in the world, a priceless history. Would anyone ever know what it was they had? Should I have been threated like that?

He couldn't bother the innocent people in the casino parking lot with his tale to stoppeth, so when he came upon the casino porter he simply had to unload. "I went out for a walk, and I almost got shot!"

The well-trained porter unflappably said: "Did this happen on the grounds?"

"No, down that road over there. Fort McDowell Road."

The porter dared to contradict. "You could'nt've gone down there."

"I went down there, and a guy, like, guarding some country and western treasures, chased me away!"

Still daringly, the porter said, "You could not have gone down there. It's a military base below the Bline. There's a gate and guards. You must have ... gotten disoriented." Charitably.

"I went there, though. Off the highway. A trailer and an old couple."

The porter said: "If you give me your client number, we'll look into it." Condescendingly.

George told the porter his room number, and went onto the casino floor. Nance wasn't at the roulette table. He went into the bar and there she was, drinking something orange with a straw. He sat down beside her and said: "Hi. Weirdest thing. Are you okay? I went for a walk and I got to this trailer that had something to do with the Carter family, and they almost shot me. Then the porter guy said it was all impossible." Nance smiling sipped a little and nodded. "Oh, okay," she said. George sighed and calmed. "We have to do some exploring tomorrow. There's really only one road...." He sighed sleepily and asked: "So--how did you do?"

Nance looked him in the eye and said: "I won $250,000, more or less."