Dancing with Baptists

Chapter 7 - End

New Mexico Desert

April 3, 1968

Cars zoomed by as Greg walked the desert highway. One or two even stopped to see if he needed a ride. Greg just thanked them. He was too embarrassed to say he was in the desert looking for his pants.

Then one older man stopped. Greg kept walking. The old man took his foot off the break and his car's idling pace rolled alongside Greg as he walked. The tires crunched shell and rock slowly as they turned.

"You lost, young feller?" The old man was wearing a new khaki Dickie work shirt and pants. His turquoise belt buckle was missing at least four stones. His straw hat had been doffed or waved or blown off so many times it was curled like a two week-old piece of bologna in Greg's old refrigerator. The old man's whiskers were sun-bleached and the knuckles on his right hand were still recovering from an accident or a fight.

"No, sir," Greg finally answered the question about being lost.

"Don't see many people out here who know where they are going," the old man offered. His words crawled out of his mouth like frozen honey. Greg figured to himself he could find his pants and be in the next town before this slow motion version of What's My Line was over.

"Well, I don't really know where I'm going," Greg continued walking.

"You know where you are?" The old man punched his accelerator and got a few feet ahead of Greg.

a few more seconds after the ignition was turned off. The door creaked open and a dusty Tony Lama left boot planted in the sand.

"You don't know where you're going and you don't know where you are, but you aren't lost?"

"I'm not lost... my pants are."

The Good Septuagenarian drove nothing like he talked. Once Greg and his gym bag were aboard, the old man's Mercury took off like a bat out of Carlsbad Caverns. The old man reached across Greg's lap, popped his glove compartment door, and pulled out what appeared to be a brown liquid in a labeless bottle. In the glove compartment, Greg saw a Luger and a bunch of odd shaped fishing weights. The man grabbed the cork between his right molars and twisted until the bottle popped free. When he spit out the cork at Greg's feet, his upper dentures went with it. Greg started to reach down for them on the Mercury's sandy floorboard, but stopped.

"Want a snort?" the old man asked.

"No thanks. A little hot and early."

"Man in uniform turning down a drink? No wonder we're..."

"No wonder we're what?"

"No wonder we're getting our butts kicked."

"Stop the car," Greg ordered.

"You spot your pants?"

"No. Just stop the car."

"What is this, a date?"

"Look, you old drunk. Stop the car and let me out or..."

"Or what? You gonna get your hippie friends to love me to death? I thought I was helping out a soldier. I'm gonna take you out here and beat the quitter out of you."

The denture less old man steered the car roughly off the road again and slid to a stop between several tall cacti. Greg got out as the old man came around the front of the car with a Louisville Slugger. The swoosh of the bat came close enough to Greg's head for him to hear the air. The suddenly deranged old fart started a backhanded swing; Greg blocked it and knocked the old man down with a strong left hook.