Edgewater

by Gary Campanella

One dusty afternoon, burnt from walking, I came to a sandy road with a worn out wooden sign that read Edgewater Inn. Other than the aqueduct I was walking along, there was no water in sight, no water in the air, no water anywhere. It was the Mojave Desert in July.

I followed the road for a mile and came to a two-story farmhouse, desert shabby, with a front porch and a few outbuildings. The inn was open and run by a couple named Randy and Betty. Randy was a retired air traffic controller. He wore jeans, cowboy boots and a threadbare flannel shirt, the uniform of the desert rat. Betty looked like a grandmother who loved making apple pie, but with hard lines on her face and a harder stare at the horizon. There were no sounds at the inn but the persistent, blast furnace wind. The desert is like that.

Randy and Betty ran a makeshift restaurant in the big front room, and they served me a dinner of homemade burgers for a few dollars. I couldn't afford to pay for lodging, but they let me camp in their yard, behind the house.

I camped without a tent, under stars and the wind blowing over. My desert solitaire was shattered late when Randy and Betty started fighting. Betty screeched and called Randy a fucking loser. Randy screamed that Betty was a fucking maniac. I heard stuff being thrown around, and glass breaking. The fight subsided after a while, and I began to relax, but then it started again. Death threats hurled out the windows. There were more things being thrown. It went like that for hours. I stayed alert until dawn, waiting for a gunshot or a backyard spillover, or any event that would spring me into some kind of action.

In the morning a rooster crowed near me, and I woke up in the sun. I tiptoed into the inn for a bathroom and found a smiling Betty preparing breakfast. She was the Betty of yesterday, like nothing had happened. I studied her face for a clue, like bruises, or tiredness in her eyes, but her voice crackled only warmth and concern for my sleep. She served the meal free of charge. Randy was not around. Truckers arrived, regulars, and Betty introduced me as a wandering traveler on a great adventure, like she discovered me.

After the truckers rumbled off and the silence of the desert afternoon remained, I got ready to leave. I went back to the kitchen to thank Randy and Betty, but found Betty alone, crying. She told me that her sister had died the night before. I gave her the best words of comfort I had, knowing they were of little use. Betty returned to cooking, soldiering on. I stayed put.

Betty worked all morning and through the lunch "rush" of about a half dozen regulars. Randy had still not appeared. The regulars lingered, drinking soda pop and telling jokes. Later Betty took me for a ride through the desert, showing me narrow box canyons and fields of California poppies.

Back by mid-afternoon, I had plenty of time to get back on the trail, but lingered again. I was tired. Randy came back from wherever, parking his truck by the front door, facing out. I reached into the bottom of my pack, produced a ten-dollar bill, and gave it to him for another night of food and beer. We drank together on folding patio chairs he set up in front of the Inn, while Betty cooked, and the sun set. He told me yesterday was his birthday.

Near dark, the unmistakable silhouette of a long-distance backpacker appeared on the horizon to the south. His name was Pete Fountain. He was a kid like me, trying to backpack the length of California. Like me, he got bogged down by late spring snow in the southern mountains, and was troubled by the Sierra ahead. We decided to hike together, did for a while.

That evening we toasted our new partnership with more of Betty's burgers. We drank beer and played pool with Randy, who told us stories about airline near misses. Betty also drank beer, and with no TV or radio, we partied like nothing existed beyond the darkness outside the walls of the Edgewater Inn.

We had the kind of evening that wandering travelers have been having forever.  We were strangers transformed by happenstance, seizing the odd opportunity. There was an uncomfortable moment when I thought Randy was trying to find out how much money I carried. I deflected the inquiry, but Pete did not, and he carried substantially more than me. I caught a quick glance between Betty and Randy during the exchange. I couldn't interpret it, and it made me uneasy, but nothing else happened or changed. They did not mention Betty's sister or Randy's birthday, but we talked of everything else. The overnight in the backyard, Pete a few feet away, stayed starry and silent.

Pete and I got up at dawn. Randy was nowhere around, but we said goodbye to Betty. She wished us well but seemed distant. After a few minutes of walking away, I turned around for a last look at the Edgewater, but we must have turned a corner or crossed over a small bluff, for when I spun around, it wasn't there anymore. I stopped Pete. We both stood for several minutes, scratching our heads, wondering where it went. Time and distance are deceiving in the desert. It's all the open space. Something that looks a mile away can be ten. Somehow, in a few minutes, or in a few more minutes than we thought, the desert had swallowed the Edgewater Inn.

A long time later, still wondering what did or didn’t happen, I returned to the Mojave and tried to retrace my steps. I drove miles of road looking for the Inn. I never found it.

Gary Campanella writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. His work has appeared in print and online publications. He holds a BA in English from Ripon College and completed MA work at the University of Massachusetts and Emerson College.  He has attended Bread Loaf and Napa Valley Writer’s Workshops.  He lives and works in Los Angeles.