Yellowcake by Ann Cummins

Author:Ann Cummins [Cummins, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

23

FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH of September, 5:32 A.M. Delmar steps out of his little adobe cottage into the smell of sage, the mesa in front of him, shadowy in the blue predawn. Stars are out but dimming. He carries a hot cup of Folgers instant to the flatbed truck parked next to the electric cart. On Fridays he drives the flatbed around the estates, collecting garbage. He prefers the electric cart, which is as silent as a sailboat on water.

Years ago, during his warrior days, Delmar used to spend weekend nights on Whitaker Mesa, which was just a mesa then, full of tumbleweeds. Now it's a forest in the desert: pinon, sage, prickly pear, yucca, all grown someplace else and brought in special. An orange adobe wall encloses the estates, with a guard in a glass booth at the gate. Little orange roads branch throughout the land. The street signs are metal animals on poles: lizard, quail, snake.

In the warrior days, the only roads on the mesa were the ones made by four-wheelers. Delmar knew several guys who died up here, slain in battle. On party nights white guys from town would come up here looking for rez rats, and the rez rats would come looking for whites. They played tag in their trucks and cars, sitting in the dark, engines idling, headlights off. If you turned your lights on and were spotted, or even if you lit a cigarette or a joint, a horde of vehicles would zoom in like ants going for food, and then you had to gun it, and if you got on the wrong road, too close to the edge, the hordes could force you over it. You were a goner if you didn't bail out in time. You were a goner, too, if you got trapped on the mesa outside your car. Then the ants swarmed and pulverized you with baseball bats.

The night was especially good if a town boy's tricked-out truck went over the edge and became booty during daylight hours. But the good days came to an end when the city started collecting the booty and forced him into banditry. The mesa changed, too. Everything changes, Delmar thinks. Except the ghosts. He sees them often when driving his little electric cart through the grounds, gray haze in the dawn and twilight, skulking along the quiet lanes, looking like coyotes. He wonders how the rich people up here would feel if they knew their houses were built on a graveyard.

Now, he gets into the truck, wedges the coffee cup between his legs, and turns the key. The flatbed is a noisy thing. Last week a guy complained to management about Delmar's early Friday morning drives, but he has to fill the dumpsters outside the estate gates by nine A.M., when the city collectors come to empty them. He figures the people up here can have either noise or garbage. Their choice.

He heads south down Quail Lane toward the complainer's house. On his rounds he wears headphones and listens to happy morning music, this morning Nirvana.

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