Empire Of Salt (7 page)

W
ith the breakfast rush finally over, Patrick, Auntie Lin, Maude and Gertie sat at the table ruminating over cooling cups of coffee. The only other customers in the restaurant were Frank at the bar and an old retired school teacher named Abigail Ogletree, who always came in late with her little toy poodle and read her latest bodice ripper while eating oatmeal and drinking coffee. The dog sat on the seat beside her, its attention focused on her plate of food.

The four of them absorbed the silence for ten minutes, knowing the importance of what was about to be said.

Patrick had bounced the possibility of running the restaurant with Auntie Lin half a dozen times. One moment he was certain he could do it, the next he was convinced he'd be a sheer and utter failure. What he knew about running a restaurant he could write on the head of a pin. Eventually, somewhere in the middle of Nebraska, they'd agreed that he'd come in, look things over, sell the restaurant, and start a new life with the proceeds, maybe find a good school for Derrick, and somewhere for Natasha to embark on adulthood. But now, after looking at the town of Bombay Beach and talking with his father's two ex-girlfriends, the prospects for a sale seemed astronomically doubtful. Who would want to buy anything out here? Wasn't that the problem?

Patrick was beginning to come to terms with why his father had never returned. Maybe it was because he couldn't sell the business. Maybe he'd wanted to come home but couldn't. But the moment Patrick thought those things, he knew he was reaching, trying like always to find a reason why his father had left and never come back. Anything other than what he thought in the darkest hours of the night, when the trees scratched at the window and the house was quiet except for the creaking, that made the emptiness grow in his stomach until he felt like he could swallow the universe... the idea that it was him that made his father leave.

Patrick desperately wanted a drink. He'd snuck several in the bathroom but his flask was empty. He couldn't help but glance to the door. He remembered the store around the corner. He bet that they sold liquor. He itched to go out and get some.

Auntie Lin never said anything, but she didn't have to. Every time she looked, it was through his dead wife's eyes that she saw him - like judgment from the grave.

"So what's it gonna be?" Gertie asked.

"You selling or staying?" Maude asked.

Patrick snapped back to the situation at hand. He'd already had a confab with Auntie Lin, whose opinion he found himself counting on more and more. There was really nothing else to do. His job on the assembly line had dried up. There were no prospects other than to fight teenagers for cashier positions in supermarkets or as fry cooks at fast food franchises. With two kids as a single parent, no prospects and an opportunity to work and live in a new town standing before him, he'd be foolish to pass it up. In fact, as soon as they executed the will, the restaurant was theirs. Bottom line was that they had no place to live or work, and the restaurant and Bombay Beach offered both.

He stared into the eyes of the two older woman, knowing now just what to say.

"We're staying," he said.

Gertie broke into a huge smile.

"And us?" Maude asked. "You gonna ask us to stay on, too?"

This was something that they hadn't agreed on. Patrick wanted them gone, more because his father had chosen them over him than any other reason. Auntie Lin had argued that they shouldn't be punished for his father's choices and she was right, as usual.

Although they had a brightness about them, his father's ex-girlfriends were on the downhill side of everything good in their lives. Although they smiled hopefully at him, he couldn't help but notice their leathery-tanned skin, wrinkles yanking hard at the corners of their eyes, and gray hair eating away at the color. They were alone now. All each had was herself. In a strange way Patrick was also alone. He'd always had his father's ghost to haunt him before. Now that his father was dead, his ghost had passed on as well. The only way he had to learn about his father was from these two women sitting across the table, and he could either kick them to the curb or invite them to stay.

"Why are you looking at me funny?" Gertie asked. "You getting sick or something?"

"No. Not sick. Just tired is all." He sighed, wishing once again for a drink. "I guess I'd like you to stay on, if you can. We don't know anything about running a restaurant and would appreciate if you taught us what you know."

"A reprieve." Maude leaned back and whistled. "I owe you twenty, Gert."

Maude took a rolled twenty out of her cleavage and handed it to Gertie, who immediately placed it in her own cleavage. Patrick allowed himself a smile. Amidst all the melancholy, he actually felt good.

"We'll definitely stay. So what's next?" Gertie asked.

"I need to find a judge to execute the will. Make everything legal, you know."

"We don't have one of those." Gertie shook her head. "They shut down the courthouse."

"What is this, the Wild West?" Patrick asked. "What town doesn't have a judge anymore?"

"This one, apparently," Auntie Lin noted.

"Where's the nearest one?" he asked.

"Down in El Centro," came Frank's voice from the counter.

Patrick turned in his chair to look at the disheveled head and rheumy eyes of the town drunk. Frank had already been served a beer, which he was drinking through a crazy straw. He looked almost childlike as he sucked the alcohol through several loops. As strange as it looked, Patrick would give a pinky and a thumb to join the man if given the opportunity.

"Where's that?" Patrick asked, licking his dry lips.

"About forty miles as the crow flies."

"What about by road?"

"About three hours."

"Why so long?"

"Construction and farming equipment. Lots of farms around the Salton Sea."

"You serious?"

Maude snapped her fingers. "What about Will Todrunner?" she asked Gertie.

"What about him?"

"Isn't he a Justice of the Peace too?"

"He sure is." Gertie said. "Listen, let me give him a call and I'll get him over here. He's going to want to meet you anyway, seeing as how you're going to be living here now. That reminds me. Are you going to be wanting to move in to your father's place?"

"I think so. We really don't have a place to stay and can't afford a hotel. We've driven an awfully long way." He glanced quickly at his hands, then shoved them into his pants to stop them from shaking. "But if it's going to be a problem we can make some -"

Gertie shook her head. "It's no problem. We don't really live there anymore. But Me and Maude had some stuff we might want to get out first. The will gave you everything and we don't want to do anything that Laz didn't want."

Patrick felt like he needed to say something but he didn't know what it was. He'd wondered why his father had made him the sole heir, especially when he had had these two women who clearly adored him. There'd been no mention in the will about Maude or Gertie. He'd have thought there would have been some direction if his father had shared the sentiment. After all, he'd spent more years with them than he'd spent with Patrick. He'd been thirteen when his father left, and other than a card with a twenty dollar bill every now and then, he hadn't heard from the man in more than thirty years.

"He talked about you all the time," Maude said, as if she was reading his mind.

Patrick shook his head. "He didn't know me."

"Oh, yes he did. He used to travel to Philadelphia twice a year. He watched you play in your school band. He went to your high school graduation. He even went to your daughter's Christmas pageant last year."

As she spoke, Patrick's eyes widened, and his jaw dropped. Suddenly, his mouth felt dry. Why had his father been there and never said anything? He was about to ask that question when a man in a wide-brimmed hat, white shirt and black dungarees burst into the restaurant. All eyes went to him as the door slammed open, then closed.

"My boy is missing. I think something happened to my boy," he said. He was out of breath. His eyes were wild.

"Abel, take it easy." Gertie stood and rushed to his side. She tried to grab his elbow but he jerked away. "We'll find him. Which one has gone missing?"

"Obediah. He was getting driftwood and now no one's seen him."

"It's the green," Frank said. "The green got him."

"You hush your mouth, Frank," Gertie hissed. Back to Abel she said, "Do you know where he was collecting the wood?"

Abel shook his head.

Patrick stepped forward. "What about foot prints?"

They all looked at him.

"You're Amish, right?"

Abel nodded.

"If he's wearing boots like yours, which I bet he is, then all we need to do is look in the sand for the hobnailed prints."

Abel's eyes brightened. "That's a great idea, Mister..."

"Oliver," Maude said. "He's Lazlo's son, come to take over the place."

Abel removed his straw hat and held it to his chest. "Sorry for your loss, Mister Oliver. Your father was a good man." His words came out in a rush. "He took care of our family and treated us well... always set a nice table." His gaze darted towards the door.

Patrick felt an odd sensation of pride for the man who he'd never really known, but he didn't allow the thought to linger. He wanted nothing more than a couple of shots of something hard and wicked, but he found himself offering to help. "Listen, let me go with you and see if I can help."

"Good idea," Maude said. "You go too, Gertie, and I'll call Will. With any luck, by the time he gets here Obediah will be at home drinking milk and eating some of his mother's bread. He's probably just goofing off."

Abel shoved his hat back on his head. "Thank you," he said. Then he turned and bolted out the door.

Gertie and Patrick followed. As they got to the door, Frank spoke one more time. "Green means no," he said. "If you see it. Don't go."

The sea began right across from the restaurant between a break in the seawall. The break hadn't always been there. According to Gertie, Laz had bulldozed the seawall out of the way as soon as the Army Corps of Engineers had left. He wanted an ocean view from his restaurant even if the ocean was rotting.

Will Toddrunner, who happened to be the Deputy Sheriff and the Justice of the Peace for the towns of Niland and Bombay Beach, arrived an hour into the search. After brief introductions between Patrick, Auntie Lin and Will, they set off down the beach, looking for tell-tale Amish boot prints.

The sheriff ran down some of the vital statistics as they walked. The town had 345 people according to the last census, but he doubted that half of them were still living here. The unemployment rate was 25%. On a scale of one to ten with the average U.S. city at a three, the crime in Bombay Beach was at five. This was mostly the result of the unemployment rate and the air of hopelessness. Besides the unfortunate disaster of the Salton Sea, Bombay Beach - which was located squarely along the San Andreas Fault - was also blessed with earthquake swarms. Just last week three 4.7 earthquakes had struck the area. The only damage that had been done was to knock down the skeletal remains of a few of the teetering deserted homes. The only death had been Lazlo Oliver, which couldn't be and hadn't been connected to the geological events. Truth be told, earthquakes were a part of life around the Salton Sea. The residents enjoyed the frivolous violence of the quakes. Each one broke the monotony of another otherwise dreary day. Another interesting fact was that the nearest gas station was twenty miles away in Niland so the average Bombay Beach citizen got around on golf carts, or using the "often-preferred California flip_flop-powered locomotion."

The deputy was pure Californian. As it turned out, Will's father had been a deep sea fishing master out of San Diego and his mother had been an artichoke picker from Brawley. When it came to a choice on what to do with his life, Will had done four years in the Marine Corps then joined the Imperial County Sheriff's Department. Now going on ten years, he'd kept his father's
laissez-faire
outlook on life, while maintaining his mother's concentration and attention to detail. Although both traits seemed to be necessary to be a successful warden of the people, often times the latter helped more, for it was Will who spotted the first boot print.