The Never-Open Desert Diner Read online

  A tanker honked as it passed us. Probably no one I knew. There isn’t a lot of crossover between the over-the-roaders and short-haulers.

  I asked her what the problem was as we walked to her car. She shrugged and paraded a pair of helpless blue eyes. “I’m a schoolteacher,” she said. “Elementary. Science. I know about dinosaurs and head lice. When it comes to cars, I know about gas, dinosaurs, and head lice.” She had a pretty little laugh. “I just filled up back at the Conoco. This is a rental. I just got in from Salt Lake City.”

  When she made the remark about dinosaurs, I knew what had brought her out to my part of Utah. Some of the most important finds in the last century had been made in this desert, which had once been a huge freshwater lake before it became a swamp that reached from the mesa to the Wasatch Range. There were fossils almost everywhere. Just down the road she could have excavated Walt.

  I got in and turned the key. All the lights and gauges jumped to attention. The tank was full. The engine didn’t turn over. Nothing but the irritating seat-belt buzzer.

  “I just pulled over for a few minutes to check my map,” she volunteered. “When I went to start the car—this.”

  I told her I didn’t know a lot about new cars. Or dinosaurs. Though I did know a good home remedy for head lice. Another trucker honked. She turned her head, and the rising sun lit her mesh top in a distracting way. I knew him a little, or rather I knew all I wanted to know.

  There are Christian truckers, Muslim truckers, lesbian truckers, married-couple truckers, opposite-sex and same-sex. I don’t know how it used to be. Now about every race and religion, age, and whatever else was represented on the roadways of America. As a group, they were probably more honest and morally upright than what you’d find in Congress or on Wall Street.

  Then there was Larry. Some called him 1K Larry. All I really knew was why he was called 1K Larry. He was proud of his nickname. Every thousand miles he had to get his pipes tuned and he didn’t care who or what tuned them: animal, vegetable, or mineral. I only saw him every couple of months, usually just in passing, at the truck stop I used outside Price. He hauled for a big OTR outfit that kept him between Salt Lake City and Chicago.

  Larry thought everyone wanted to hear about his latest tune-up. In fact, very few did. Hero T-shirts were fairly popular, each made with a different photo. One driver had a photo of a small boy with no hair. The kid was his son who had been fighting cancer for two years. Larry often wore a T-shirt with a picture of Bill Clinton and the caption “My Hero.” The last time I saw Larry I wondered if the former president had the same T-shirt with Larry’s photo.

  “You seem to have a lot of friends,” she said. “You must drive this highway a lot.”

  “Not really. Just this short stretch,” I said. “I drive State 117. Down the road at the next junction.”

  I first wiggled the automatic shifter to make certain it was in park and pressed my foot down hard on the brake. I turned the key again. The engine came to life. “Transmission in Park and Foot on Brake” was the automobile industry’s answer to unintended acceleration. My old Toyota pickup had a difficult time accelerating even when it was intentional.

  She was thrilled and so was I. “You did it!”

  I was thrilled to be able to get on my way.

  She thanked me twice as I extracted myself from her little rental.

  “Can I buy you breakfast?” she asked. “Maybe you can recommend some good mountain biking trails?” She extended her hand. The fingers were slender and delicate. Her fingernails were manicured—long and shaped, with a fresh coat of red polish. “I’m Carrie.”

  I didn’t know any mountain biking trails, good or otherwise, and my lack of knowledge wasn’t going to change, and neither was my schedule, or my mood. I told her the only place to have breakfast was either ninety miles ahead in Green River or ten miles behind her back in Price.

  She pointed up the road to the sign for The Well-Known Desert Diner. “How about there?” It was the south billboard, the one without the graffiti. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Did I say something funny?” she asked.

  “No,” I said. “It’s just that diner is really never open anymore.”

  “It was open last night.”

  This was surprising news, and it must have shown on my face.

  “Honest,” she said. “It was. The lights were all on and I could see a man and a woman behind the blinds. They were dancing.”

  I couldn’t help myself and forgot my manners. “No shit?” Maybe I didn’t know Walt Butterfield quite as well as I thought. Strange cargo from New York. A trip out of town. The lights on at night. A woman. Dancing. “Are you sure?”

  “Oh, yes.” There was an earnest schoolteacher clip to her answer. “I even drove my car into the lot. The man pointed to the ‘Closed’ sign. I didn’t get out of my car. It was pretty late. His wife or girlfriend must have switched off the lights. The place went dark. I could still hear the music playing. It must be open now. So, what do you say? Breakfast?”

  At that moment I was so shocked I couldn’t have said anything. I stared at the sign. It was a mystery I knew I would have a problem leaving alone. I smiled, thinking of Walt and the mystery woman dancing in the diner that had been in lockdown for so long.

  She took the smile for a yes. “I’ll just follow you,” she said.

  Before I could say anything, another truck slowed but did not blow its horn. Some trucks were equipped with a microphone and an external speaker, for safety reasons I guessed. I didn’t have one. Even if I hadn’t seen the turban and beard, I would have known the driver by his voice and greeting. The truck crept by. The loudspeaker screeched, the Indian accent unmistakable. “Truth is timeless being. Greetings to you, my brother, Ben. Tell me. Here are you in discomfort?”

  “Truth is timeless being,” I shouted back to him. “No discomfort. Just helping this lady.”

  “Very good. Very good.” Manjit’s tractor-trailer gradually picked up speed and merged back onto the highway.

  If I ever decided to have a hero T-shirt made, I might use his photograph, with his turban and dense white beard. I’d been behind him on 191 several years back as a whole line of trucks were tiptoeing over an icy downgrade through blowing snow. The driver in front of Manjit lost control of his tractor-trailer and began a slow-motion jackknife.

  Maybe one driver in a hundred could have avoided the skidding truck and kept us all from piling up. Manjit managed it with skill and lightning reflexes. He remained calm and threaded his double trailer around the jackknife without allowing himself to be forced into oncoming traffic. I didn’t know much about the Sikh religion or what they believed. I didn’t really care. If Manjit was an example, I had a good idea of how they lived—clean, tolerant, hardworking—which tells you a hell of a lot more about a man than knowing his religion.

  “Who was that?”

  “Manjit,” I said. “He’s a Sikh.”

  “A what?”

  “An Indian,” I answered, hoping to cut the discussion short.

  “You mean Native American, don’t you?”

  I picked up a trace of condescension.

  “Sure,” I said. “Native American.”

  She got into her rental. “Well, we’re off. I’m right behind you.”

  “I have to get going,” I said.

  “Just coffee, then?”

  “No. Sorry.”

  She was persistent. “Maybe later, then?”

  I knelt down by her open window. “Ma’am, I’ve already had coffee, with my wife. And tonight I’ll have dinner with her and our three children.”

  More than anything she seemed startled. It wasn’t the rejection. She appeared totally unprepared for the news of a wife and children. “Oh?” She glanced at my left hand. “Sorry. No ring.”

  “There’s a ring, all right,” I said. “She’s having it engraved for our twentieth wedding anniversary.”

  With not much of a good-bye, and another quick tha
nk-you, she sped back onto the highway. I sat in my cab a few minutes while my little lie worked on me. It had nothing to do with her. Saying I had a wife and kids at home almost made them a reality, and I missed them. I could imagine kids getting ready for school and running out the door of a place that was a lot like the model house. The happy voices disappeared into the empty, sand-covered streets of Desert Home.

  Afternoon had slipped into early evening when I pulled into the turnout of Desert Home to deliver Claire’s ice cream. I grabbed a half gallon of butter brickle out of the fridge unit and trudged up to the arch and stood there for a moment.

  A storm was moving in. The sweet smell of rain came to me in a soft breeze. It might be a light rain or a hard rain that was coming, though in the desert the rain usually came down hard and all at once on parched earth that couldn’t absorb so much rain so quickly. Arroyos filled with fast, churning water and mud following any gentle slope, gaining speed and volume until it was a raging torrent sweeping everything in its path to nowhere. That was how people got into trouble. Maybe they heard lightning and thunder a long way away and figured, well, it’s raining over there, but not here. They didn’t know they were in trouble until it was too late. I thought about the schoolteacher, Carrie, somewhere out in the desert on her mountain bike. I hoped she had sense enough to pedal like hell for higher ground.

  Claire stepped out onto the porch, again with her hands behind her back. She seemed to be able to sense when I was nearby. I held the half-gallon carton above my head. She waved me forward with her left hand. She was wearing a man’s checkered short-sleeved shirt and a long old-fashioned dress made from blue denim.

  The air was still warm, but it was cooling fast. This was a delivery I wanted to make quickly, a courtesy, and get back on the road before the sky opened up.

  Spring through fall, stretches of 117 became flooded and impassable for several hours at a time. For no good reason, I was eager to get to my weekend accounting, which had been filling most of my thoughts throughout the day, interspersed with visions of Walt dancing in his diner. I knew the numbers were bad. Now I was filled with a morbid curiosity to know just how bad they were, to the penny.

  Again, about twenty feet from the porch, I stopped and held out the carton of ice cream. “Ma’am,” I said. “Your order.”

  Her right hand swung out from behind her back and the sunlight glinted off metal. I stumbled backward, instinctively closing my eyes. Somewhere inside a part of me welcomed a bullet from the crazy bitch.

  When I heard her laughter I dared to open my eyes. She was holding a tablespoon. “Ben, Ben.” She repeated my name several times before adding, “I’m so sorry!”

  I wasn’t laughing. That didn’t stop her, though I could tell she was working on controlling herself. I thought I might laugh later, in a year or so. Her laughter. It was the answer to the age-old question, what attracts you most to someone? It was a question I hadn’t considered much. I enjoyed Claire’s laugh, even at my expense. I doubted there was ever just one thing about someone. For me her smile and her laughter highlighted everything else about her, set everything else on fire—her dark, slightly slanted eyes, the curve of her throat, the way she held her shoulders back with a gentle pride that made her breasts confident and understated at the same time.

  Aware of the way I was looking at her, I dropped my gaze to her feet, still bare. They definitely weren’t elegant. They were wide, strong feet, with short toes—sturdy, beautiful feet built for balance.

  “I’ve been waiting all day for this ice cream,” she said.

  I handed her the carton and backed up a few steps. She held the carton in one hand and the spoon in the other. “How much do I owe you?”

  Without hesitation, I said, “Twenty thousand dollars.” More or less it was the figure that had been bouncing around in my head all day. Probably more. It was what I needed to come even, and the sound of such an amount coming from my mouth almost hurt. It had the weight of “good-bye” behind it.

  “Yikes!” she said. “That seems a little high, even for delivery in the desert.”

  “It’s butter brickle. Plain vanilla is only ten thousand.”

  She sat down on the top step. “I guess I’ll have a couple hundred worth. I only have one spoon to my name. If you don’t have any trucker diseases, you can join me.”

  I told her I had all the usual trucker diseases. None of them was contagious. “Thanks, but no thanks,” I said. “I have a rule against eating ice cream with married women. Especially married women whose jealous husbands are probably looking for them.”

  “You have a lot of rules, do you?” she asked.

  “Not that many,” I answered. “Just enough to remind me how complicated life can get when you don’t have any.”

  She dug the spoon into the open carton. “Oh-o-o,” she said, her mouth full. “Twenty thousand suddenly seems like a fair price. I could get used to this stuff.”

  “That would be good news,” I said, “since I happen to have several cases of it.”

  “Please,” she said, nodding to the space next to her on the step. “I can’t keep this frozen and I can’t eat it all by myself.” She took another bite. “Well, not in one sitting.”

  I declined again and took some pleasure watching her shovel the ice cream into her mouth. For a few seconds it was so enjoyable I forgot about my troubles. “A rule is a rule,” I said.

  “It’s just ice cream,” she said.

  “It’s just a rule,” I said. “In my experience it could be coffee or a banana daiquiri. Husbands tend to get violent. Ice cream really tends to put a match to their fuses.”

  “Dennis doesn’t have a violent bone in his body.”

  I assumed Dennis was the husband.

  “He’s a musician. An artist. As far as jealousy goes, I don’t think so.”

  “You might be surprised how quickly such bones can grow,” I said. “Some of the most violent fights I’ve ever seen were between men who would have told you they weren’t violent just before they bashed someone’s skull in. It’s in all of us, men and women alike.”

  “You, too?”

  “Except me,” I said, and tried to smile.

  “You’re right, I guess,” she said. “Thanks for the ice cream.”

  I told her she was welcome and turned to leave.

  “How much, really?”

  “This one is on the house,” I said. “I’m like a heroin dealer. The first butter brickle fix is free. Once you get hooked, the sky’s the limit.”

  “I’m hooked,” she said. “When can I get another fix?”

  “Monday,” I answered. “I usually don’t work weekends.”

  The rain started before I got back to my truck, just a few huge, round drops that cratered the sand and dirt with loud plops. As is often the case in the desert, the sky directly over my head was blue and clear. The heavy clouds, what there were of them, hugged the rim line of some distant hills. No thunder or lightning. These drops were the scouts, dispersed by wind, announcing the deluge that would arrive shortly. It took less time than I anticipated. A few minutes later the rain pelting my truck sounded like firecrackers. My wipers couldn’t move the water off my windshield fast enough to allow me to drive more than thirty miles an hour.

  This was the desert, everything all at once, whether it was needed or not. What survived had learned to save, live carefully, and keep a low profile, even appear to be dead for long periods. Perseverance and patience.

  The rain subsided. I was picking up speed as I passed the diner. Walt’s place looked as it always looked: perfect and closed, with no sign that anything out of the ordinary was going on. That was exactly what passers-by said in June 1972 when they learned that Bernice, Walt’s wife, was being beaten and raped by three men inside the diner.

  Though Walt’s wife was Korean, she’d chosen to go by Bernice. The word that was used then was savaged. Bernice had been savaged by three men, though no one knew for sure if all three were involved, or if
there might have been four. If only one had been involved and the others just watched from the sidelines, she was still savaged by all of them.

  I’d first heard the story when I was a teenager. By then it had been handed down by at least one generation and embroidered. Now, forty years later, it was both transformed and forgotten in the way terrible events often are.

  The last time I’d heard it mentioned the event had supposedly taken place in the 1950s, a hundred miles away at a small trading post at the summit of Soldier Pass. In that incarnation both the proprietor and his wife had been killed, and the murderers, escaped convicts with long prison records, recaptured and brought to justice. Maybe that was true, too. History has a way of chasing gravity just like water, feeding into other parts of itself to become something else, something larger and grander, until the one pure thing it was no longer exists.

  The only eyewitness account of Bernice’s rape, or at least part of it, came from a high school kid Walt had hired to clean up and wash dishes. What the kid saw came out in disjointed parts, like a jigsaw puzzle missing a lot of important pieces. There was a beginning of sorts, and an end, and just enough pieces of the middle to allow a good guess at what the middle had looked like.

  Walt had driven into Price that afternoon to run some errands, leaving the high school kid and Bernice alone at the diner. She was cooking and waitressing, and the kid filled in where he could. There had been a dinnertime rush. Near sunset the place had cleared out. Dirty plates and utensils and half-empty cups and glasses were left on the tables and on the counter.

  A fairly new Chevrolet Biscayne sedan pulled up to the pumps, and the kid went out to pump gas and clean the windshield. He later swore there were four men in the car. While he filled up the tank they went inside the diner, where Bernice was cleaning up.

  How long did it take to pump fifteen or twenty gallons from one of those old glass pumps? Five minutes? Ten? It wasn’t until he was finished with the gas and cleaning the windshield that he went inside. Only then did he hear Bernice’s screams.