Last Days in the Desert

“We’ll call 911,” said Tiffany, as soon as they rounded their block. “I’m going to report them for the way that baby was being treated. The police have got to go there and rescue that baby!”

  “Watch out, Mr. Biggs,” cried Stacie.

  “Oh my god, now that stupid cat again,” said Tiffany, scuffing forward hurriedly.

  “Puss, puss, come here stupid,” called Yadira. “Did we drop cat food out here somewhere?”

  “Just shoo him,” said Tiffany.

  The cat began butting his head against the girls as they tried to mount the front porch steps with their pails of toads.

  “Back off, will you?” said Stacie to the cat.

  “Shoo, shoo, do you want to get sick and die? Do you?” asked Yadira.

  “Mewy,” said Mr. Biggs desperately.

  “He doesn’t know what he wants,” said Tiffany with disgust.

  “When you call, report the guys fighting,” said Stacie. She had come in the living room ahead of Yadira and Tiffany and was holding the door. “Report that, too.”

  “I will. And the guys fighting. The gun. Everything. But I’m not giving my name or our location. We’ll have to stay out of it,” said Tiffany.

  “I hope the police get the toads back,” said Yadira, placing her pail on the living room floor.

  “Poor things. Imagine having to live with those people,” said Tiffany.

  “And that poor baby,” said Yadira.

  “It was so fucking horrible,” said Stacie.

  “What happened?” asked one of the stoned wall repair crew. “Why do you still have the toads?”

  “Oh, you have no idea. What happened to us was shit scary,” said Yadira.

  “These freaks,” began Stacie, “were down near the arroyo in a camp with a trailer and they tried to grab us. They had this little baby—he was so cute—and they were fighting with each other. Screaming and yelling and pushing. This horrible man and the woman from the trailer.”

  “That sounds scary,” said a girl who was painting the wall.

  “Meeeep,” said Mr. Biggs from the windowsill.

  “And then another dude who was with them tried to rob us of the toads when we started running back,” said Tiffany. She was dialing 911 and she walked away toward the back of the house.

  “You’re kidding?” asked Mona.

  “He had a gun,” said Yadira.

  “They got one of the pails from us,” added Stacie.

  “Poor toads,” Mona said.

  “So you lost more of the toads?” Itzel said in disbelief. “This is like that murder mystery ‘Ten Little Indians, and Then There Were None’ and all that shit.”

  In the main, their efforts on behalf of the toads so far had failed miserably. Three toads had disappeared under their shed and were, perhaps, safe underground, though, in all honesty they had no way to know that those that had escaped were not harmed already. One pail of toads had been taken by the mugger. Ostensibly, Yadira, Stacie and Tiffany ought to have been thoroughly discouraged by their frightening experience with Mr. Biggs coupled with their life-threatening encounters at the arroyo with the horrible family and the final robbery. And, on the face of it, they were lucky to have survived what happened to them without a scrape or bruise. They ought to have been discouraged, but they felt buoyed by it all and more determined than ever to see that these remaining toads were brought to safety. Mushrooming disasters aside, they congratulated themselves on what they had done on behalf of the defenseless toads. The whole adventure roused their spirits and made them feel alive, for they had the dangerous notion that they were doing a spectacular job. Living their own lives with disregard for impinging nonsense of other things would have meant not trying to help the toads, but like many females they had formed an irrational karmic bound with objects thrust upon them by unknown forces, forces that were not benevolent.

  They vowed to try again to return the toads to safety in the wild. Cheerfully, Yadira and Stacie lugged the large plastic pails out to Stacie’s Jeep and slid them onto the floorboards wherever they could.

  “If only one of us knew someone who was like a biology major and was totally cool or something,” said Yadira plaintively.

  They had to admit none of them had cultivated a friendship with any science majors.

  “Oh snap! I know someone. Guys. I think I know what we can do,” said Tiffany suddenly. She had joined them after making the 911 call and she’d heard Yadira’s comment.

  “What?” asked Stacie.

  “I knew this professor once,” Tiffany began.

  “And?” said Yadira.

  “He was really cool. He lives in Snob Hollow, near downtown.”

  “Yes?” said Stacie.

  “He is all like nature loving and stuff. He would totally take the toads and contact someone about them. He would make sure they were put back in the wild, if that’s the right thing to do and everything. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before!”

  “You think he’d take them?” asked Stacie.

  “I know so. He was so cool,” said Tiffany. “And if something goes wrong, he’s living close to the Santa Cruz River so we can leave them in the dry river bed.”

  “Okay, where does he live?” asked Stacie.

  “I don't really know the address, but I remember it had a tower and it was in Snob Hollow,” Tiffany explained.

  Professor Xavier Fernandez was a jovial university professor who liked the music of the Grateful Dead, and as Tiffany explained it, wouldn’t it seem likely that he would be willing to take the toads off their hands at this short notice if she explained how she had acquired them and the predicament the toads were in? Wouldn’t he, especially after he heard how they had tried to get rid of them and how some had been lost and another stolen, be willing to see them safely to an appropriate location? Or would he know an expert at the university who he could call in the morning?

  She remembered this professor’s large white adobe house with a cellar and some windows, which were quite narrow and maybe a silly stout tower beside the door. And she thought she remembered that the front door of his house had been painted a bright and peculiar greenish color and surely in all of Snob Hollow, which was a rather small area after all, there could not be many enormous white adobe homes with a tower beside the front door. All they had to do was find it, because his name and phone number she could not remember, but she had some vague notion of how to get there because he had a party one year and she had gone to it and only been half-stoned most of the time.

  They admired the wall and told the wall crew that they were doing a great job.

  “If they didn’t wet the adobe, it’s all going to fall out,” warned Itzel as Stacie, Yadira and Tiffany left. “Third time’s a charm,” she added, referring to the two prior attempts to rid themselves of the toads.

  Vague indeed was the notion Tiffany’s addled brain held of where Professor Fernandez lived. She managed to lead them to Snob Hollow, the area of 19th century mansions and lawyer’s offices (named as a joke on San Francisco’s Nob Hill), but try as she would, she could not locate the white mansion she’d been in. Around and around they drove, aimlessly stopping and staring at the other large mansions which had once belonged to prominent lawyers and mining engineers. They studied each house looking for the one with a tower that Tiffany remembered.

  As the minutes wore on, an increasingly frantic Tiffany ordered Stacie to tear up and down the dark streets examining the homes, looking for the one she’d been at.

  Stacie was no help finding the house as her head was filled with jumbled thoughts of dear Walter who she was certain was waiting patiently for her at his apartment. Walter’s flight to New York had in fact long since departed.

  Grinding gears and stabbing the shift into angles where gears never were installed, Stacie tried to find a safe place to leave the remaining toads. All three of them were secretly reconsidering the idea of letting one of their irresponsible friends take care of the toads when an unusually magnificent m
ansion surrounded by a veritable jungle of cacti caught their eye. In the midst of the cacti a tiny trimmed lawn was well lit by ornate Victorian streetlights, immaculately restored.

  “Stop! That’s it,” cried Tiffany excitedly.

  “Which one?” asked Yadira.

  “The big one over there. That’s the house,” Tiffany said.

  “Are you sure?” asked Stacie.

  “Absolutely. It’s got the tower, everything,” Tiffany said. “This is Professor Fernandez’s place!”

  “Okay then.” Stacie looked for a parking spot.

  “He’s a great guy. I know he’s gonna help us.”

  Stacie pulled the Jeep to the curb and sent Tiffany and Yadira hopping out of the Jeep to ring the doorbell. The two girls stepped across the lawn to the porch and Tiffany rang the bell eagerly.

  “It’s awesome. We found the house. I know he’ll take them. He’s a great guy.”

  “The house looks awfully dark,” said Yadira, peering in at a crack in the curtain of a front window.

  They waited in front of the door. There wasn’t a sound from inside. Tiffany pressed the bell again.

  “I don’t think I hear anyone in there,” said Yadira. She leaned her face against a stained glass window in the front door. They stood awhile longer.

  “It’s kinda dark,” she whispered to Tiffany.

  “I guess they aren’t home,” said Tiffany in resignation. “I can't believe this. We’re having such bad luck. He really would have helped us.”

  “I guess so,” said Yadira. “But we could still leave them here if we wrote a note.”

  “That’s true,” said Tiffany, brightening.

  “We might put the toads over the fence so that they wouldn’t be right on the porch.”

  “Let’s make sure there’s no dogs,” said Tiffany.

  The two girls walked to the fence and rattled it. They waited to see if a dog would come.

  “Looks okay. Let’s go get the toads and we’ll be done,” said Yadira in relief.

  Just then Yadira and Stacie became aware of movement at the property next door. A man and woman were dressed for an evening at the symphony and the couple were watching them suspiciously. The woman held a phone to her ear and was looking nervous.

  “They think we’re robbing the place!” exclaimed Yadira.

  They didn’t want to have to explain to the police why they rattled the gate and they didn't want to be caught with the toads, as it would be difficult to explain how they had ended up with so many protected species. There was no choice; they had to get out of there.

  They scurried down the driveway, feeling exposed by the Victorian street lights.

  “Start the car,” yelled Tiffany when they opened the Jeep door.

  “Why? What happened?” Stacie asked.

  “Just start the car,” yelled Yadira. “Get us out of here!”

  Stacie started the Jeep and they roared up the street.

  “So what happened?” asked Stacie when they had turned the corner.

  “Those people standing outside the house next door are probably calling the police. They saw us rattling the side gate and probably thought we wanted to break in. We were looking to see if he had any dogs. We were going to leave a note and put the toads safely over the gate.”

  “Please, please, couldn’t we just leave the toads in the river?” begged Stacie.

  “Yeah, okay,” said Yadira a little sadly.

  They got several blocks from the river itself when Stacie pulled to the side of the road at a dead end. She was looking for clues for where she was in the various, unreadable street signs.

  “Oh, I should have turned left back there,” she claimed.

  Stacie gunned the Jeep and took the next corner at too fast a speed.

  One of the toad pails toppled over as the Jeep rounded the corner.

  Yadira looked on in horror as a large toad spilled out, struggled on its back for a moment, and then managed to flop forward enough to wedge itself under Stacie’s seat.

  “Stacie,” Yadira yelled, “don’t drive so fast. A pail fell over and a toad just got out and went under your seat.”

  “What the fuck?” exclaimed Stacie.

  She yanked the wheel and sent the Jeep careening toward the sidewalk. When the Jeep stopped, Stacie shut off the engine so they could concentrate on the hidden toad.

  “I’ll get it,” said Tiffany helpfully. They had brought gloves with them to handle the toads and Tiffany grabbed a pair from the dashboard.

  Once the gloves were on, Tiffany reached carefully under Stacie seat. In a few seconds she had hold of the toad, but it wanted its freedom desperately. The toad had powerful hind legs and Tiffany struggled to hold it. As bad luck would have it, the toad Tiffany fought chose that moment to give the greatest lunge of its life. It slipped out of her hands. Stacie put on gloves, wriggled her hands down and reached after it. She rooted around frantically finding pennies and ball point pens and tampons, but no Colorado River Toad. Finally Tiffany’s gloved hand touched something toad-like. She yanked and pulled and brought out a pop-eyed toad and with it her hand had caught a red wire that was now dangling.

  She had pulled out the wire that powered the onboard computer which was located under Stacie’s seat. Without that wire, her Jeep wouldn’t start.

  “I hope this…”

  “I hope that wire didn’t do anything,” said Yadira from the backseat.

  Stacie turned the key as Tiffany leaned over the back and plopped the toad in its pail. Silence.

  The key clicked in the ignition again, but nothing happened. Stacie continued in her futile efforts to start the Jeep. “Now we’ve really done it.”

  “Oh no,” moaned Yadira.

  The three of them sat quietly in the Jeep for a moment to contemplate the magnitude of their idiocy.

  “Come on. Each of us just get two pails. We can’t be far from the river,” said Tiffany.

  “If we just manage to get the poor things somewhere, we can call for a ride,” said Yadira.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Stacie, sighing at her bad luck. “I’ll have to get the car towed into a shop tomorrow.”

  They walked quickly, each holding two pails this time, looking for a street that would lead to the dry Santa Cruz River.

  Chapter Eleven