Right now it’s illegal to live in non-permanent structures within the city. Even if we got a camping permit of some kind, under the ordinance we’d still have to move periodically. So we need a change that allows a tent city to stay put. Then there’s zoning, health regulations, liability. I’m kind of sorry I even turned over that rock. Zack, you want to take it?”
Zack said, “I researched how other tent cities do the self-management. Most of them have a non-profit sponsor—the city, a church, a veterans’ organization that assumes liability and fiscal administration. The residents raise the money and run the place.”
Zack had to know it wasn’t that simple. This was all about the politics and organizing community support. Maybe that’s why he was involved.
“You know she’s going to ask you to help,” Zack said after the meeting adjourned.
Meg looked over her shoulder for Sister Rose. “Oh, don’t encourage her.”
“See anyone else here who could do it?”
“It’s not a winner, Zack.”
“It’s better than what’s happening now. People are going to die this winter.”
“Wesley’s ideas might make sense in these meetings, but not to the rest of the community. You think Jennifer Barnes is going to say, oh goodie, a tent city?”
“Oh, man, I feel bad about beating up on her. She should be able to take her kids to the park. I probably know the woman she was afraid of. I should’ve given Jennifer my number and told her I’d come down there next time to help work out any misunderstanding.”
Zack held open the front door and Meg stepped through. “You seem like an agitator and then suddenly you don’t,” she said.
“I can’t yell all the time. People get tired of the world’s on fire! shit. But it is. Maybe not their house, but it is somewhere, and they only notice the fire when I’m obnoxious. I tried toning it down with the City Council and being factual and respectful. You know, to show I was a serious person. Then they’d thank me and go on with their same-old, same-old. Facts and reason don’t produce action. They barely produce new thoughts. Discomfort is the only thing that moves authority. So I provoke.”
“Right. You and Jennifer Barnes.”
“But she aims it at the powerless. Her interest is her own comfort and to hell with everybody else.”
Meg couldn’t let Zack get away with it. “Her interest is her kids. She’s a mother, not a hater. The coalition needs the support of people like her.”
“My interest is the downtrodden, not the coalition members and their business dealings.” He looked in the direction of Hawthorne Park, two blocks away, then turned back to Meg. “You chased down Jennifer Barnes like you couldn’t wait for a shot at selling her house.”
That was so wrong and unfair! A burning rose from her gut into her chest, then shot down the veins to her wrists and flushed her face. Jennifer must have thought the same thing. Mortification at the unjust impression loomed over the rest of her day, but she knew it was half true. Everything Meg Mogrin touched was perfumed with an artful trace of promotion.
Do you have enough money to meet all of your expenses?
—Vulnerability Index Prescreen for Single Adults
A mallard green BMW with two passengers backed out of a garage. The double door rolled down and kissed the concrete with a sigh. Isaac lowered his head and pedaled slowly until the throaty V8 faded away. He found a place to drop his bicycle out of sight from the road and circled back. He dodged up the driveway of the BMW house and located a spigot in back. If he did take over The Mansion he’d need a reliable water supply close to the canyon trail. Six gallons, enough for four summer days, weighed fifty pounds, and there was no way Rudy Hefner had packed that much in when he lived there. He wished now he had sought out the insufferable Hefner for some pointers.
The wash cut through the uplift that formed the Colorado National Monument. Unscalable cliffs on the left, a less severe hill rose to the west. He followed the dry stream bed for half a mile until a twenty-foot granite wall stopped him. He backtracked, alert for Hefner’s departure point. This time he found the faint trail, which had been screened by a pair of juniper when approached from below. He leaned into the steep slope and imagined his pack full of provisions. After climbing five hundred feet, he paused on a sandstone slab and took measure of his solitude. From this vantage, the houses could not be seen. The valley visible in the distance seemed greener than the one he’d left. His water was warm already. Civilization settled downstream for a reason.
The trail topped out and then dropped down to the main canyon, which sat atop the bedrock blockade. The canyon floor widened. Piñon and broom crawled to the base of sheer sandstone walls. Monumental wedges had sheared from the west face. They slumped against the cliff or had shattered into boulders, boulders into rocks, rocks to pebbles, pebbles to sand—a continuous scatter of broken time. From what he had heard, The Mansion had to be concealed somewhere amid that rock fall.
Isaac homed toward the wall, eventually stumbling across the trail where Hefner had stopped scrubbing out his tracks. He would have to adopt that trick if he stayed. It made no sense to conceal a camp and then beat a path to it. The tracks made a high approach above the rocks and circled back past a split boulder. A sandy flat the width of a single bed lay between the halves—a fist aimed at an opposing palm—forming a stone cocoon. The rock would absorb sun’s warmth, release it into the night and then provide a cool respite for part of the day. A nice spot to sleep, but a disappointment if this were all of The Mansion. Moving on, he saw how two slabs the size of tennis courts had jackknifed over a third chunk of sandstone forming a giant A divided into two rooms. The larger room was tall enough to stand upright in and tapered to a window-like opening at the back. The other, the size and shape of a deep understairs closet with room for one hardy human to sleep.
He unwound from his pack and made a slow turn in the entrance. A tan tarp rolled onto a pole could be unfurled like an awning or pulled over the opening when the weather turned bad. In the corner where a smoke-blackened crevice opened to the sky, a kettle sat atop a rocket stove cut from a Coors Light mini-keg. Nearby, a bean pot and a sand-scoured iron skillet. A quartet of plastic milk cases served as a larder and bookshelf. Provisions and paperbacks commingled. Canned peaches. McMurtry. Wieners and beans. Flynn. A mouse-raided cracker box. Sandford. A quarter jar of peanut butter. Hillerman. Two packets of Taster’s Choice. Burke. A seven-dollar canvas camp chair lay on its back in the middle of the room, its beverage pocket in shreds. An army surplus duffle packed with crumpled clothes. Flattened cans in a plastic bag. A trenching tool and a hatchet. A coil of sisal rope. In the berth-like second room, a sleeping bag and a Bugler tobacco can half filled with sand. The leavings reflected no generosity on Hefner’s part. He had packed in The Mansion’s furnishings a few items at a time and would have had to take them out the same laborious way.
Isaac found a plastic trash barrel buried downhill of the shelter, fed by a flagstone-lined channel to collect runoff, its cover weighted by a cracked bowling ball with Steve engraved above the finger holes. The empty inside was mineral-encrusted but otherwise clean. Until now, The Mansion’s mocking name had seemed fitting for a blusterer like Hefner. But in this orderly canyon abode, Isaac heard the contented roar of a free man.
Sheltered from the wind, he did not sense the rain’s approach until too late. Dark clouds rolled overhead. The narrow view of the sky between the canyon rims allowed no way to gauge the storm’s extent. Desert storms often promised moisture they couldn’t deliver, sending patchy clouds to drop fly swarms of virga that evaporated before reaching the ground. The air throbbed with an ominous overtone and a train wreck of thunder burst over him. Foolish to make a break now. If a monsoon followed, runoff from the acres of bare sandstone above the rim would funnel to the vee at the top of the canyon and spew a sudden, chest-high torrent down the granite slot. Not many drowned in the desert but when they did, it happened fast in places like this. The sky turned even blacker. He unrolled the tarp curtain, tucked himself in the camp chair and waited. A rapid-fire buzz whipped