Kristie was out on the desert selling Mexican pottery at Four Corners. She loved this job. It was like camping in any situation where you meet interesting people that you never see again. Four Corners near Boron, CA where two roads intersected in the middle of nowhere.
It was windy and dusty. There was nothing beautiful about it. Trash littered both sides of the highways and sometimes swirled in mini trash tornadoes thirty feet high. There were two gas stations, a truck stop with showers, a coffee shop, a cheap motel and a couple of fast food places. The stand was a favorite stop for tourists and truckers alike who sought gifts for their wives and girl friends.
Down in Tijuana, Speck was busy negotiating his purchases. “That guy up the street will give me those frogs for four dollars a piece. Can you match that?” The frogs were beautifully painted and molded out of plaster of Paris. Speck sold them as “Garden Frogs” for $25 each.
Watching Speck bargain with the Mexican merchants was amusing. He strolled up and down the alleyway among the few merchants he liked to do business with looking for the best deals.
” I want fifty of them green frogs,” he proclaimed as he moved the butt of a cheroot to the other corner of his mouth, “and twenty of them conqeestadories…” He enunciated every syllable with his Oklahoma twang. “…and a hundred of them painted pots.” He went on like this until he had calculated in his mind the wad of cash he had in his money clip versus the geometry of the space available in the pick up and the bull trailer he was pulling.
The baked clay flower pots they sold were made from terracotta and perfectly suitable for outside use. They offered both painted and unpainted pots. But the full-sized conquistadors, which sold for $75 each or $125 per set, and the painted frogs, if placed outside and exposed to any water at all, would most probably melt into a mound of goosh.
Speck never told his customers about this last fact, and instructed his employees to omit this information as well. Kristie always felt bad about these little lies of neglect as she sold “garden frogs’ that should really only be kept in the desert.
She was assigned the early morning shift and was given the job of sleeping in the van next to the display of leather goods that was usually locked up at night. The leather was displayed on the side on a third van that opened up to reveal cowboy hats, belts, quirts, a few good pairs of boots, and moccasins.
The crew out on the desert consisted of :
Lenna – Speck’s beautiful hard body wife, with a history of hardship, a former abusive husband, struggling to raise two boys on her own, now in lock step marriage to Speck who adored her. She rarely left the trailer, but sat at the dining table looking out the window keeping an eye on everything, and handing out directions.
Charlie – the Indian, as they called him. Lenna’s sometime lover, a Vietnam vet who was a sniper and told tales of having to shoot anyone who crossed a certain bridge – man, woman, or child. He did what he was told and came back with mental war wounds that could only be assuaged by Lenna’s loving arms. He slept with Lenna when Speck wasn’t there. He emptied her chamber pot, did all the heavy work – loading and unloading, and he kept a male presence guarding the whole operation.
Kristie was there as a fill-in during the busy summer months when people were on the road touring. She took the early morning shift and was given the job of sleeping out in the van next to the display of leather goods. She also enjoyed making pottery repairs. If a pot broke, they would glue it back together and paint it over to cover the crack. She loved painting vibrant flowers on the brightly colored pots.
Most of the time Speck wasn’t on the desert. He had two other businesses to run in town, and his other “wives” to take care of. This was a running joke. Everyone called his secretary and his house keeper his wives.
It was true that he had an affair with his secretary which produced a boy child who looked just like him. Everyone knew (even her husband) but no one said anything about it. They all just played along as if it never happened. But it was rather odd that after all those years of marriage the only way she got pregnant was when she hooked up with Speck.
Speck would never have given a thought to the possibility of sleeping with his house keeper who was an extremely large Mexican woman with no complementary attributes except that she kept a clean house, the laundry done, and always had a smile and a fresh pot of coffee for Speck. Connie (Consuelo) also watched “Little Speck” in the daytime while his mother worked.
Speck and Lenna had a signal. If he came to bed and she wasn’t wearing any panties, it was OK to proceed. She wasn’t. He did. And Charlie went ballistic. He stormed off the property stirring up a whirl wind of dust that would mean extra work tomorrow cleaning everything on display.
Charlie headed to the strip joint in Boron to tie one on and see what trouble he could get into. Speck and Lenna had their connubial reunion alone in the trailer. Kristie went to sleep in the van. Charlie’s expert assassin’s skills of watching and listening were missed that night. The thieves took what they wanted.
“Goddamnit!!” Speck yelled the next morning when he took inventory of what was missing. He had just filled out the leather display with his last trip down to TJ. “Didn’t you hear anything?”
It wouldn’t be the first time someone got over on Kristie. There were all types coming through Four Corners. You had to be careful out here on the desert. Thieves, peeping Tom’s, scam artists, short change experts, hippies, and hitchhiking prostitutes… the best job she ever had.
(First published 3/5/12)
