“Who is this old friend?”
“Hakeem Kaspar.”
“Yes,” said Ching, “he is a lineman for the county.”
“That’s him!”
Ching said, “He rides the main road.”
“Vernon will be so happy.”
“Like most days, he’s been searchin’ in the sun for another overload,” Ching said.
“Do you have an address for him?”
“His place is on the old Apache Trail. It’s a dirt road with no signs. I’ll draw you a little map. You’ll be there in ten minutes at this time of day. At night, in May, with the spring insects at their peak, spattering your windshield, and the bats swarming, you’d need twenty minutes, maybe more. Go while it’s light.”
He went behind the checkout counter and took a small tablet from a drawer. He wrote directions on the front of a page and then drew a map on the back of it.
When he handed the paper to me, I said, “Swarming bats?”
“From mid-May through mid-June, when the flying insects are most plentiful, the bats come to feed on them in flight. Thousands of bats, clouds of wings that hide the moon.”
“Wow. That must be quite a sight.”
“Yes,” Ching said, “but not one that a sane man should want to see.”
“We’ll scoot right out there. I hope he’s not on the job.”
“Well, the lineman is still on the line. He starts before dawn,” Ching said, “but he finishes with that stretch down south about now. You’ll probably catch him just as he’s getting home.”
|?20?|
John Kennedy Ching had not only written directions and drawn a map, but he also had sketched a perfect image of the mobile home in which Hakeem Kaspar lived. It was a handsome fifty-footer raised on concrete blocks. At one end was a covered patio where you could sit during an afternoon and watch the desert vegetation wither in the heat as small animals and lizards dragged themselves across scorching sands. At the other end was a carport in which stood a Ford F-150 pickup with oversized tires. An array of three satellite dishes on the roof evidently provided him with TV and internet access, though I couldn’t imagine why anyone would seek refuge from the madding crowd in this wasteland and then subject himself to Twitter.
Hakeem’s front yard was dirt and gravel stone and a few sprigs of gray grass. I didn’t feel that it was rude to park on it.
When we got out of the Explorer, we heard a generator most likely fueled by propane. Hakeem was beyond the reach of the public power supply, so he had to provide his own electricity in order to enjoy the amenities of civilization, as well as to pump water from his well. He evidently had added a muffler to the generator, because it labored softly, like a family of bears snoring in hibernation.
I powered the windows of the SUV down an inch and left the engine running to ensure that Winston continued to have fresh and cooled air.
Bridget gave him the lamb squeaky toy for company. Maybe it was the first toy he’d ever had. He just stared at it as it lay there on the back seat, until she picked it up and encouraged him to take it in his mouth. With what seemed to be a bewildered expression, the lambkin hanging from his jaws by one leg, he watched us walk toward the trailer.
Considering that Hakeem Kaspar’s residence was the only one in sight and that, past his place, the dirt road seemed to lead into either a prehuman past or a posthuman future, it was no surprise that he heard us arrive and opened the door as we approached and carried a pistol in a holster on his right hip.
He appeared to be in his late forties, with decades of sunshine stored in his deeply tanned face. Judging by his name, I assumed his ancestors came from the Middle East, though he looked like a twin to the Cuban bandleader who was married to Lucille Ball in that old TV series I Love Lucy. His large eyes were open wide, as if something about us alarmed him.
Instead of asking us who we were, he said, “Stop right there and come forward one at a time to be scanned. I don’t know you. I can’t trust anyone I don’t know, and I don’t trust half those I do know.”
In his left hand, Hakeem held an object the size of a slim hardcover book, something rather like a Kindle, to which was wired an instrument resembling an infrared digital thermometer that he gripped in his right hand.
Assuming the thing wasn’t a weapon, I stepped forward. He needed perhaps half a minute to scan me, consulting a screen on the book-sized device. Bridget complied next, and then Sparky.
Hakeem said, “Okay, all right, you seem to be what you appear to be, if that means anything. Now who are you? ID please.”