Tire Flipper Read, drink, & be merry with this free story. Keep the party going by grabbing a book, too. None of these free stories appear in the book. *** Flip, flip, flip, plop. An old tire spins through the air and thuds in the dirt. Red dust puffs. Wind blows through golden weeds. I rip another half-buried tire out of the pile and chuck it. I’m trading a favor for a favor. I need a place to store my truck while I fly back home. A local rancher said I could use his place. He wanted a favor in return. He needed the dirt flipped out of a pyramid of maybe three hundred tires. Dust has been blowing over this pile of rotting tires out in the middle of nowhere for decades. It’s half-buried now. In a small place where people know each other, you can trade favors for favors. You can open up the local diner before hours just because you know the owner. That kind of thing. In a big place where nobody knows each other, there is a lock & price on everything. I grip another tire and huck it heavenward. Dirt & dust trail out of the black rubber ring as it flies. This pile of tires seems infinite. Like a task Hades gave a dead guy back in ancient Greece. What is a pyramid of tires doing out in here in these empty acres? It was birthed by hippies as an Earth ship some decades back. It was supposed to be a home made of recycled material. Three walls made out of concrete loaded with beer cans stand nearby. You can see where they had a fireplace and a window that faced a mountain. Now the window is a hole in a muddy wall with wind blowing through it. The commune dissolved in a pool of bitter acid. “You’re just like all the other people after all.” “You’re killing the spirit of our place, man.” All that kind of stuff went down, I’m sure. They left, dragging their bastards behind them. The Earth ship became a pile of beer can concrete and rotting tires in the desert. The rancher I met at the bar wants the dirt flipped out of the tires so he can load them into a dump truck and bring them to the recycling station. “Your truck is safe here,” he says. “When we see trespassers on the camera, we ride out and greet them with a loaded shotgun.” I was so right not to sleep in my truck overnight my first night here. Gloved fingers grip another tire. What creepy crawly beasts live in this pile of garbage? Anything could scramble out of there. Rattle snakes. Tarantulas. Hippies. I flip the last tire clean of dirt well after nightfall. Dust myself off, hop in Rhodie, and drive out to the gate. Found a home for my truck and paid the rent. To be continued
Circles in the Desert Take delight in this free story & snag a wonderful book for stories you won’t find online. Here I am on the end of a string. Walking in circles. The circles are getting bigger. Why? Pal Dusty & I are trying to find the head of a pin. The pin marks the back-most boundary of our land. I step over a shrub. I walk through red chunks of broken boulder. No pin yet. Its head is a little bigger than a 25-cent quarter. It’s the exact same color as a quarter, too. We have secured latitude and longitude now. As well as a satellite GPS tool. But the coordinates are missing two decimal places. And for this estimate, we are two hundred feet away from our target. (At least, this is merely another estimate.) So Dusty feeds out a little more kite string. And I circle. Horizon: sharp mountain, no mountain, smooth mountains, trees. Back and forth across the red desert, searching for the head of this pin. More kite string out. Wider circle. Same, yet different shrubs, rocks, dead grass, sand underfoot. Exact same horizon circle of sharp mountain, no mountain, smooth mountains, trees. It’s easy work. But dull. Found it! Under thick shrubs and branches so dry they look like beach wood, though of course, it is not, I see that silver metal head of a pin. We build a brick-red cairn. Big rock base, medium rock middle, little rock top. Love cairns. Dumb thing to love, but there you go. That was the last pin we needed. Now we know exactly where we live. To be continued
Night Landing AZ Desert. Night. Enjoy this free story & grab my book here. The book has stuff that is not online. It’s getting dark and cold fast here in Arizona. The temperature plummets in desert nights. From a day in the seventies to a night at twenty-nine. I must find my unmarked piece of land and pitch camp there. I’m parked outside a now-closed auto shop after getting a tire replaced. The sooner I start the better at this point. No, I don’t have satellite coordinates. I saw the route to the parcel once about four months ago. Flew into the state, saw the land once in the daytime, flew out, called friend, & we bought the land. A lot has changed in between now and then. Point being, I’m not completely sure how to get there. That’s just how it is. Back four months ago, we drove alongside cliffs and past farms that all looked the same. Red desert, junipers, and distant mountains. Chunky red rocks. Beep, beep, beep, goes my truck with its one new tire a little bigger than the other three. I’ve got one map with a disclaimer about its own inaccuracy. The map shows an entrance one exit back down the highway. I turn on the audio book about the moon landings I’ve been listening to and start driving. Weighing options as I drive. The astronauts are on the launchpad in my audiobook. Should I sleep in the truck and try to find my land by sunrise? Around here, that’s how you wake up with a shotgun in your face. They’re nice people, the locals. They just don’t like trespassers. Drive 45 minutes back to a motel? I’m already over budget. And I’m this close to my land. With rising hills of smooth desert and the thistly shadows of juniper trees under the moonlight on either side of me, I truck farther. In the darkness ahead of me, a white ranch sign looms. Through that gate, somewhere on 40 thousand acres, is my 40-acre piece. It is even darker on the other side of the gate. Far past the reach of any streetlight or porch light’s glow. The paved road has ended. I grab the lever to engage the four wheel drive. Truck through the gate. The whole truck vibrates, shakes, and rattles like a machine gun. Everything jumps off the seats. Slides off the dash. The mirrors shake. Is the four wheel drive failing? I open the door to look at the truck. The shaking is not mechanical. The dirt road itself has washboard paving. Rock-hard ribs that seem like they could rattle the truck to pieces. No way out but through. Rattling & rumbling down the road. Let all my supplies tumble to the floor. I’ll get them later. Headlights from another vehicle. It’s cruising at about 40. White Toyota truck. I flash him down. Ask him to confirm my location on the map. He says the exit entrance I just found isn’t the one marked on the map. He shows me our location, miles upon miles away from where I had guessed. At the pace the roads allow, it should take over an hour. I follow the other trucker for a few minutes. My windshield is completely blocked by clouds of dust filled with yellow headlight glow. Blackness beyond that. We come to a fork in the road. Guide must go left while I go right. We honk goodbyes and set off our separate ways. My fork in the road dives downhill into a narrow, single-vehicle-sized path. Thickets and weeds crowd the edges of the path. Chunky red rocks under the tire. Red rocks shaped like gigantic molars and eyeteeth – possibly ready to chew my tires to pieces and leave me here somewhere in the middle of 40,000 acres of nothing. There’s a sign on a ranch fence, that’s good. TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN. Nevermind, it’s not a good sign. Onward. The moon landing audiobook talks about an incident in which, mid-flight, the Apollo vessel started firing its Abort Mission beeper alarm. A solder ball floating in zero G completed the abort mission circuit. And my own truck, not long after that paragraph in the book, starts beeping again. Nothing I can do about that. Working my way over piles of red rock. Rock-rocking and bump-bumping along in the cab. High beams shine on dust and darkness. Vast, blackness in the desert night. There are mountain cats out there. Coyotes. Beep beep beep. Houston, disregard that abort mission signal. We’re landing tonight. Beep beep beep. Shut up you stupid truck! Just get me there. Just kidding, Rhodie. Love you. You know I’ll get you anything you need. Beep beep beep. Rocking and rolling over chunks of boulders. Big empty, darkness out of all windows. Am I still on the right track? I must be. But look – there are no signposts marking anybody’s land out of the windows, and the acres I’m driving past must have been divided and sold. I mean, they weren’t even going to stick a SOLD sign on my spot? No satellite coordinates, no sign, and of course, no address? Which scrap of this desert is mine? Beep beep beep. Be quiet, you’re fine. Just sign the title deed, and then cool, you’re on your own? Over more chunks of boulder. The road turns back into washboard ribs. I truck onward, weighing options. Rattle & rumble. Beep beep. Maybe I could camp anywhere and search by daylight. Beep beep. Maybe I should turn back. No, come too far. Beep beep. SHUT UP, TRUCK! LET ME THINK! Off in the distance, two green signs. Like street signs. Wait a minute. If that’s an intersection, it will tell me exactly where I am on the map. Please be what I need you to be. I get closer to the two reflective green rectangles visible through the cloud of red desert dust. Yes, here in the dirt roads, desert, and mountains, one intersection is marked. I find the intersection on the laminated paper map. The map shows eight quarter-mile by quarter-mile squares lying next to the road in between my current location and my parcel. I could backtrack. Spitball two miles of distance without markers. Get close enough for a camping spot. I turn the truck around. Rumble nice and slow, trying to do distance arithmetic in my head. To cover two miles at fifteen miles an hour, I’d need to drive how many minutes – ? Wait. A second sign. It’s black characters written on a triangular chunk of red rock. But it’s got a number on it. The number of the parcel next to mine. A quarter mile farther. There’s a little branch on the ground. Invisible when driving from the opposite direction. But there’s a wooden board with the numbers of my parcel burnt into it. I leap out of the truck. It’s still running. I kiss the wooden sign. Dust on my lips. Arms up to the clean, clear night sky. “Rhodie, we’re home!” Beep, beep, beep. Pull onto the parcel. Kill the engine. Deep quiet. Ancient quiet. Quiet like they had two hundred years ago. Four hundred years ago. Farther back than that, too. Alone in the ancient quiet under the Arizona sky. The temperature dropped like a rock in a pond. Cold, stiff fingers grab lantern & tent. Lantern on. Big wash of light on the grey-green thistles and red rocks. Kicking rocks away for a little soft ground under my tent. Watching for rattlesnakes & scorpions. Miles from help alone in the ancient quiet. Where is the wind? Not even wind is here to make the place feel alive. Snort. Rustle. Whip around and glance back. Animal eye glint across the road. Chest height. Something big. Panther? Coyote? Maglite on. It’s a cow. Just a cow. Back to the tent. Poking poles into their polyester sleeves and metal rings. Clipping plastic hooks. Rainfly over. Chuck my sleeping bag & pad into the assembled tent. Pull on sweats, hoodie, hat, gloves, sleeping bag liner, sleeping bag. I am now a big nylon caterpillar slip-sliding inside a polyester tent. Cozy enough. The temperature will be below freezing in four hours. Headlamp off. Goodnight. To be continued
No Service AZ Sunset Enjoy this free story & grab my book here. None of these free stories are in the book. I pull my truck into the little town of off-gridders & cowboys in Arizona. Lasso-lined wooden signs. Wooden board buildings. Red desert with pine-green gin junipers for the landscape. Mountain peaks make purple shapes against the red sky. I own land with my friend out there in that distance. This town consists of one diner, one restaurant, and three auto shops. That’s it. That big sunset means it will be dark soon. My tire’s rubber intestine is completely distended. I roll into the first of the three auto body shops. “That is the biggest bubble in a tire I have ever seen,” says a mechanic there. He’s in a trucker cap, long beard, flannel hoodie, & jeans. Sipping a Coke on his break. I tell him I’ll buy a replacement for cash right now if he’s got it. He says he doesn’t have it. Time to drive to auto shop number two. I pull up to a fenced-in auto shop number two with a closed gate. Big flapping flags advertising their services. The guys who work there are pounding beers inside the shop. “Closed on Sunday,” one calls. I call back that I’ll pay a little extra if they sell me a replacement tire today. One brings his beer can over. Looks at the tire. I tell him the size. He doesn’t have it. Auto shop three, save me. Gingerly, slowly, I pull the truck to auto shop three. Same story. They say no. Back at the town’s one restaurant, I call the guy who helped me fix up the truck. He recommends asking for a tire that’s a little bigger but with the same rim size. Auto shops one and two say they don’t have that size either. It’s 45 minutes to the nearest Walmart. I won’t make it on this bubble. It’s taken me as far as it will go. I pull back up to auto shop three and ask for the new size. They can do it. The one restaurant in town closes soon. The truck is being jacked up. I pull my bike out of the truck bed and ride maybe ten minutes back to the restaurant. Order a bacon blue cheeseburger & beer. After dinner, the new tire is ready. I bike back to auto shop three in the dark. Pay cash. Bike in bed. Grab my map out to the land. New tire in place, it’s time to truck out to the land. Fire up the engine. But the truck starts beeping like crazy. No matter. I’ve ignored it all cross-country journey. Shame the beep is back right now, though. Now in the last of last legs. Time to drive out to my land. Out where there is no service. To be continued