More Laughlin Than Lansky

‘There was news about another prophet, fresh from the desert who had predicted the doom of the city, a prediction for which I was morbidly grateful.’

-Carey McWilliams

More Laughlin Than Lansky

After the bouncers escorted me from the slot machines to the parking lot, I drove to the mountainside property my grandpa owned. I knew Lansky would be willing to clear my debts if I traded him the photos of powerful men breaking several of the Ten Commandments my grandpa hounded during his stint as Queen of the Strip.

The photos were buried in the drawers of an armoire pushed against the wall of my trailer. I was searching through the drawers when I heard the explosion. It sent shockwaves into my chest and vibrated through my body and nerves. Debris burst from the blast and soared through my window, shattering the glass on the side of my cinder block perched trailer. Jagged little shards covered the laminate wood floors, looking downward.

Wind picked up the sparks. Lit kernels went flying towards the shrub and cactus studded mountainside. The brush caught fire and rapidly began to spread. I rushed into the yard, watching as the roof of the main trailer shot into the purple sky and disintegrated. It was beautiful. The gusseted truss and supports broke apart, turning to fluttering pieces of spark and dying ash while flashes of white and blue streaked the purple night sky.

I watched, mesmerized, until I heard screaming from Sister Anne. The high pitched wail jolted me back to the world, to their world.

‘The children’s trailer is on fire! Somebody help them!’

I ran toward the flames, stopping once I saw the children calmly walking through the burning door. They held hands and hummed strange melodies, unbothered by the flames crawling up the tin doorway. Brother Wayne followed behind them. He carried two small boys in his arms. He released them, crouched and whispered into their little ears. They went running toward a hand-dug water well. A chain formed and filled water buckets were passed down a line of children workers.

‘Brother Wayne, are you alright?’ Sister Rosita wore white robes. She touched his smoke blackened face.

He nodded, dropped to his knees and coughed.

She wiped the ash from his cheek. ‘Are the children safe?’

‘Yes, Sister Rosita.’ He rose like nails had been removed from his feet and hands. ‘I could see through the thick smoke filling the dormitory. That was all of them.’

‘And what about Brother Jobriath? I haven’t seen him. He was in his living quarters when we first heard the explosion. I had just left him.’

He looked at the main trailer. The flames whipped and chewed at the support beams and remnants of the wall. ‘He is no more. He perished in the fire.’

Sister Rosita cried. ‘He told us he would soon die. He said he would be cremated! He knew, he knew! Oh Brother Jorbiath could see what we could not. Who would do this to us?’

SIster Anne ran toward us, waving and wagging her arms, yelling, ‘The children are saved, but it’s starting! WWIII. It’s starting! He said there would be a war between the communists and the capitalists. He said that we would be safe in the desert.’

‘You need not worry, Sister Anne. That is why he brought us here,’ Brother Wayne said calmly. ‘You are right. He knew there would be war. He wanted us to be ready and now that he is gone, it is time for me to take his mantle and lead us while we wait for the war to end.’

‘Well, the communists sure are going to be confused by the color of our fire trucks,’ I joked, but when I looked around, no one was laughing. They were serious like early followers of Christ finishing the fish symbol in sand.

‘We will be okay,’ Brother Jobriath said. ‘Now, let us celebrate.’ They linked hands, singing and rejoicing while dancing elliptically around the trailer. Flames overtook the night as the children continued to toss water on the burning trailers.

I watched and listened, my mouth gaping, and I decided to split from the weird scene. I didn’t have much time before Lansky’s boys broke my legs and exiled me to the penny slot machines with other immobile geriatrics in the casinos of Laughlin.

When I got back to my trailer, I slammed the door and locked the deadbolt. The living room was decorated with casino paraphernalia my grandpa snagged from condemned hotels, street corners and unlocked dumpsters. Playboy Bunny curtains, Circus Circus porcelain clowns with sad joyless eyes, MGM Grand glassware, postcards of daylight hotel marquees pinned to the wall, programs for long forgotten one-act magicians.

I filled an MGM glass with Skol Vodka and slammed it on the counter. Debris, wood, glass and deformed pieces of metal covered the floor. I staggered from the kitchen and slipped on a piece of wood. It slid across the laminate floors leaving a dark wet streak. I bent down and studied the mark. I squinted, picked up the piece of wood and brought it closer to the window.

Using the sunlight, I noticed the wood had skin and the skin was charred and black. There were fingers and the fingernails were clean and manicured. My eyes lit up as I realized.

It wasn’t a piece of wood. Wood doesn’t have a wrist. I was holding the lower part of an arm. I shook the hand in my hands, trying to lob the thing out the window, but I couldn’t shake it. It held onto me. I swung around my living room, holding this grotesque appendage while bumping into the table and the couch stolen from The Fremont lobby. I threw the hand and missed the broken window. The wrist and hand combo hit a wall and landed in a Golden Nugget ashtray.

I felt sick. The room swirled, swung and twirled, shifting into overwhelming blackness as I collapsed on the floor and passed out.

In the morning, I woke up coughing and congested. The smoke was heavy in my nose. I spit soot spotted mucus into my hand. My head had been resting in the grooves of the warped laminate floor. My cheek was covered in drool.

Squinting through blurred vision, the room took form. Beams of sunlight came in from a broken window, golden bars spotlighting half an arm sitting in an ashtray.p

I pulled myself up and went into the kitchen. There was still some vodka left in the glass. I drank it and squirmed. The fumes burnt my throat and cleared the mucus. I wrapped the hand in a towel and buried it.

Outside the ground was charred, pitted and smoking. Men in colored robes and apostle-like beards were rebuilding Brother Jobriath’s temple. Brother Wayne watched and oversaw the construction. His hands were behind his back. His eyes were hard and determined as vultures made shadows on the dirt ground.

I remembered the photos. I recalled the pressures. I shut the curtains and rummaged through the drawers again. All important documents were in a legal binder hidden beneath folded shirts. The hiding space wasn’t ideal. I didn’t have many options.

The property deed was in the legal binder, too.

Grandpa had won the deed in a backroom poker game. The property was security for the family’s future. It was his gift to us before he died, a form of redemption, an act of atonement for his strange, unconventional lifestyle.

Everything changed.

Grandpa was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Doctors gave him 6 months. He was told to go home and enjoy the rest of his life. Instead, he went straight to the casinos, pulling the slot machine lever and betting on black one last time before renouncing his former life.

Mortality will scare a man. Motivated by a fear of death, the possibility of a righteous afterlife, grandpa changed his lifestyle. He stopped gambling. He quit drinking. He made a self-commitment to live virtuously. He wanted eternity to be poolside at The Tropicana.

Then, as if fate deemed it, he met Brother Jobriath. Brother Jobriath was just another religious regular preaching his own sermon on the strip. Grandpa, seeking higher validation, listened. He was lured by the offer of redemption. He sought the promise of peace.

In exchange, Grandpa allowed Brother Jobriath to stay on the land to practice weird religious rituals without prejudice or interference from local law.

Grandpa strolled into the afterlight in flowing white robes.

Grandpa turned holy.

I dug through shirts and Vegas mementos. There was a Wayne Newton live at The Fremont shirt, show guides for the Amazing Jonathan, failed blueprint plans for a bar off West Sahara called The Glass Slipper, poker chips, a deck of playing cards with photos of Showgirls in exotic flamboyant costumes made to look like a mixture of a peacock and a flamingo, keychains, casino matchbooks, etc…

The folder was gone.

My temples throbbed. It may have been smoke inhalation, a hangover, the pressure. I searched again. Nothing.

I pulled back the Playboy Bunny curtains. Brother Wayne and his barefoot men continued to build.

‘Brother Wayne,’ I yelled. He didn’t answer.

I yelled again.

‘What is it, Meyer?’ He didn’t possess those inviting magnetic qualities cult leaders tend to have. No charm, no warmth, no spiritual appeal. Without those skills, a man might as well learn how to navigate skid row and operate carnival rides.

‘Being here reminds me of my grandpa. I wanted to talk to you about him.’

‘It must wait. We are busy constructing our new temple.’

‘Well, that was my concern. I never understood his relationship with The Fountain of the Holy Well Water.’

I knew. I wanted to hear it from him.

‘The Holy Fountain,’ he said, correcting me.

I went outside.

‘So you’re building a temple?’

‘Yes. The destruction caused by last night’s fire was akin to a rebirth.’

‘Why here?’

He tugged at his singed beard. The hair snapped like pieces of pollen trailing the back end of a bee.

‘Why not?’

‘Good point.’

‘You are probing me for information, I will tell you what you wish to know. Then you must let me finish my work without interruption. Your grandpa was a man caught in societal sin. Brother Jobriath saved him and for that, your grandpa let us live freely. Your grandpa was attracted to the teachings of the Ten Tenants. The work allowed him to make a change in his life that he was unable to do for himself. Brother Jobriath led him toward salvation. Don’t you think that is a fair trade?’

‘So my grandpa was inspired by Brother Jobriath’s moral example?’

‘I believe so.’

‘I’d heard they shared a love for poker and cigars.’

‘The information you’ve received is misguided.’

‘Do you think they were lovers?’

Brother Wayne ignored my perversities.

‘Is that all?’

‘For now.’ I picked up a smooth rock and threw it at the sun. It went sailing across the property and landed with a thump. ‘Since it is my property.’

‘We are here to coexist peacefully.’

‘An explosion that nearly kills a trailer full of children isn’t peaceful.’

‘None of them were killed.’

‘Your leader was.’

A man in green robes past us. He was struggling as he climbed the hill. A piece of metal was strapped to his back. He collapsed, red faced with squirming red veins, sweat forming on his sunburnt forehead.

‘Water.’ His dried tongue dabbed at his dried lips.

‘Water, please.’ His voice was hoarse.

A muscular man in black robes looked at Brother Wayne. He nodded.

‘Get back to work.’ The Brother shouted. He kicked the green robed brother in the back, leaving the outline of a dusty footprint on his ass. The man tumbled forward then scrambled upwards, swaying from the extra weight on his back.

Brother Wayne shook his head in disapproval.

‘One of the Sisters said a war was coming,’ I continued.

‘A war is coming.’

‘What’s so peaceful about that?’

‘I am not responsible for the actions of man. I can only do what is best to protect my own. It is why we left the outside world and came to the mountain. This desert is our sanctuary.’ He waved his hands, sketching the isolated beauty of the cactus, the shrubs, the Gila Monsters hiding under shade of rocks, lizards squirting blood from the corners of their eyes. ‘And I won’t let anyone violate that.’

‘I was violated,’ I said, ‘when important documents were taken from my room.’

‘You need not accuse us. We abandoned earthly possessions. We have no use for them.’

‘Not even the deed to the property?’

Brother Wayne didn’t flinch. His face was straight stonel. In the hot silence, Sister Rosita strolled by us. Her white robes flowed and danced above her bare brown ankles. Her hair was thick and black. She had it parted in the center and it tumbled to her shoulders. A red desert rose sitting on her ear.

‘Sister Rosita,’ Brother Wayne commanded. ‘Would you come here?’

‘Of course, Dear Brother Wayne. What is it?’ A warm smile took over the lower half of her face like a joyful nut with a robe full of Lorazepam.

He cupped his hand and whispered into her ear. The words blew into her head, flew around and stuck to the other teachings crammed between slime and muscle. He lowered his hand, removed the flower from ear and crushed it beneath his heel. ‘That’s not allowed.’

“I forgot Brother Wayne. I will not disappoint again.’

She came towards me and gently placed the back of her hand on my forehead.

‘You look pale. Your temperature is high and your nose sounds congested. I can take care of that.’

‘I know what you’re doing.’ The cheap vodka throbbed, pounded and hammered at my temples. Despite the order from Brother Wayne, she seemed concerned.

‘Now leave me be,’ Brother Wayne said, sticking two fingers into his mouth and whistling. It screeched like a prehistoric bird across the mountainside.

Sister Rosita grabbed my hand and led me to my trailer.

I went into the cupboard, placed two Caesars Palace shot glasses on the counter and filled them with Popov. Sister Rosita washed the Golden Nugget ashtray in the sink. She took a handful of herbs from her robes and began to crush them. I watched her, sipping the shot before offering her a drink.

‘Oh no,’ Sister Rosita stammered. ‘Brother Jobriath doesn’t allow us to drink.’

‘Brother Jobriath isn’t doing much of anything these days.’

She accepted his death stoically. ‘Brother Wayne is continuing his work.’

‘How noble of him. I’ll toast to that.’ I raised the shot glass and swallowed. A cheap warmth spread from my smoke choked throat down to my gut. After the initial burn faded, I felt logical. Even my headache began to reveal insight. So I took the second shot.

The Playboy Bunny curtains bloated from the warm desert wind. A man in yellow robes was crouched on his knees. He was kissing the feet of Brother Wayne. He clasped his palms together, knelt forward, then kissed his feet again.

‘Some leader,’ I said. ‘What is it The Water Fountain believes?’

‘We are the members of the Holy Fountain.’ She smiled weakly. ‘Have you read the Ten Tenants of Jobriath?’

It was the second time I’d heard of the Ten Tenants.

‘I haven’t,’ I said.

‘The first tenant says that we are to give up the material world and forget ourselves.’

I poured another shot, stirred the glass and took in the fumes.

’Here.’ She swept the herbs from the ashtray into her hand. ‘Put these in your drink. It’ll help’ She wiped her palms as the herbs fell into my glass.

Green flakes floated on the surface of the vodka. Visions of the serve red hand hit me. I stumbled backward. The shot spilt onto my shirt. I wiped it off before she could see.

‘How does one forget themselves?’ I asked.

I was curious. It was an interesting idea that may have benefitted a high percentage of the population. We lived in a society where food, drinks, money, jobs and murder were convenient and accessible if you knew how to connect to the right people. The trouble was most people had superficial wants and desires and their assets and gains were vacuous, leaving them unfulfilled and secular. When you have the money to buy two houses, an island, multiple marriages and a private jet, another addition to the mansion and marble counters for the bathroom just doesn’t have the same appeal it once did.

‘By unifying ourselves with one another. It is a spiritual, mental and physical unification.’

I wiped the herbs then refilled both shot glasses. I rolled the vodka in my mouth, letting it hang and sulk on the back of my tongue. I wasn’t sure of what was going on though ideas swarmed my mind.

The pressure was overwhelming. I needed to find those photos, but here I was, stuck listening to Sister Rosita explain spirituality and the liberation of forgetting oneself.

I’d heard the same rhetoric before from a failed movement in the 60s. It seemed like she was attempting to distract herself from her own inner horrors. When I looked up, Sister Rosita had removed her robes. They slid down her hairy legs and lay crumpled on her ankles. Her body was brown, tan, powerful. There was a tattoo on her breast of a name written in cursive. Above the tattoo were scars, burn marks, like someone had tried to remove it. The scarring was fresh and flesh colored. I dropped the shot glass, mouth agape, my eyes as wide as full moons orbiting small planets.

‘This is how we unify,’ she said, moving toward me.

I stood there, speechless, unable to form words in my big mouth. I was frozen, unresponsive, scared.

‘Do you not want me?’

She touched my chin. It sent reminiscences of the shockwave I felt last night through my chest. She put her arm on my shoulders and wrapped them around my neck. She smelt like earth, the purity of soil after a monsoon, ground herbs in an ashtray.

Emotions were stirred. Fires that I had given up and lost were set and inflamed.

Her soft brown eyes looked into mine.

‘This is how we absorb love toward all things by giving the last of our physical selves to the spiritual.’

‘Sex without love is nothing and love is a gamble,’ I finally croaked. My voice shot up a pitch and cracked. I hid my embarrassment by pulling away and walking toward the window. She saw me looking outside.

‘Is it one of the Brothers you want?’

Two more of the yellow robed men were sitting on their knees in the dirt. They kissed the feet of Brother Wayne as he stood, overseeing his creation.

‘No. I’m not here to make love nor war,’ I said, recalling the failed slogans of preceding generations, and I cowered back to the wall, closing my eyes and breathing heavily.

I didn’t know what else to say. A woman as pure and sad as Sister Rosita was standing naked in front of me and all I could think of was how afraid of what could be. There was more to her than the intoxicating cult teachings.

‘Then why are you here?’

I did all I could and squeaked.

‘To get out of here,’ I pushed her out the front door and bolted it into the hot desert until the sun felt as powerful as the final crescendo of a Wagnerian opera.

At noon, Water Fountain members sat at picnic tables behind the cafeteria trailers eating lunch. They drank from a giant bowl passed around to one another. They ate slices of cactus and brown roots using their fingers. It looked like the stuff a bird would regurgitate into a baby’s beak.

While they were busy digesting vegetables, I went snooping.

I used the mindset I’d picked up from gamblers. If I wanted to win, I must either know what the other person was thinking or if they were bluffing. I took a glance at Brother Wayne, attempting to peer into his guarded mind to see if there was a spiritual network I could link to.

I held my fingers to my head and hummed.

Nothing.

The muscular black-robed Brother was feeding Brother Wayne. He stabbed the food with a fork and floated it into Brother Wayne’s mouth. The cuffs of the robes were too small for his bulging muscles. Another man in his late 40s wiped Brother Wayne’s beard. His bald spot was pale and white, somehow free of sunburn. He had the appearance of a computer programmer who was unsure of himself and remedied his loneliness by joining a cult.

I crept towards the scattered boulders and metal being used to reconstruct the trailers. The workers were on break. I snuck over to Brother Jobriaht’s former trailer. The door was locked. I stuck my hands through a hole made by the fire. I let myself in.

The living room was destroyed. The force from the place overturned sofas, broke dishes, burned a leather swing bolted to the ceiling. Black geometric lines blemished the walls, furniture, walls and what remained of the roof.

I searched through armoire drawers, tore apart shelves, checked beneath the bed. Nothing more than folded colored robes. I took a pair and placed them in my bag.

I hung there, thinking for a while. The trailer was like the riot parading through my skull, thumping around my heart.

I went into the master bedroom and continued to prowl. I stood looking out the window.

The view overlooked the crest of the hill tumbling down the slope of the mountain into a red and purple ravine of cactus. Giant Saguaros stood above creosote plants. The San Pedro and Barrel cactuses were vibrant, the colors caught in the crosshairs of the sun. It was humbling and I almost felt like giving up just as my grandpa had by spending the rest of my life taking in the raw and isolated beauty of the desert.

But the thought quickly popped, interrupted by the voices of children outside. They were sitting in the dust, listening to a woman in purple robes teaching them how to hum the strange melody I’d heard the night before. There was a sudden flash and a vision of Brother Wayne in the children’s dormitory at night. The powerful image sent a jolt through my body.

What was he doing in their room late at night?

I continued to prowl. I found a locked door. I smashed the handle. On the floor were dirty blankets, yellow ring stained pillows stuffed with hay and patches of blood.

The room stench was overpowering. I was reminded of the holding cells I’d been locked in before. It was too much. I closed the door, wanting to set fire to the room.

In the kitchen, I opened the cabinets and tore through cupboards beneath the sink. A rusted, moldy u-shaped pipe was leaking muddy water. I double checked the trailer again. I couldn’t find my legal binder.

The sight made me nauseous. I thought of the poor children, dreamlessly sleeping while the paranoid teachings of Brother Jobriath formed and took root in their innocence.

I went into the bathroom to piss, to forget about the sickening horror of this trailer. I’d heard stories about cults and children. It didn’t seem real. Media fascination. Satanic fixation. Overblown paranoia. But I knew.

My heart leapt and hammered at my chest.

I had to do something. I was tired of being a slot junkie, using blackmail to repair my faults. The photos no longer mattered.

There were children tethered to a life they didn’t ask for. On the shower rod hung a tiny robe. I touched the cloth, pulled the little legs, rubbed the arms. Outside, children were singing.

I let go of the children’s robe and pulled back the shower curtain. In the tub was a garden of marijuana and multi-stemmed columnar cactus growing beneath a halogen lamp. I dug my fingers in the soil, feeling and finding nothing.

I went back into the kitchen and turned on the sink. The faucet shook and rumbled. A drop of mud bubbled and spit into the sink. I opened the cabinet drawers again and studied the u-pipe. Mud was spilling from the grooves. I tapped the side. The piece was loose so I reached in and unscrewed it. Inside was a Ziplock bag.

I pulled it out, using spare robes to wipe the bag. Crouching on my knees, I opened the bag and removed the contents.

There they were. All of them - the types of photos that destroyed political campaigns, marriages and kept private detectives employed.

There were other documents, too. Speeding tickets, receipts for Cuban cigars, unpaid child support notices dating back to twenty years before, an invoice with a total amount circled and owed on Lansky stationary. The documents were made out to Joseph Brian Theodore. The words stood out to me. I squinted and used a pen to work out the problem.

I circled the first few letters of the names. JO-BRIA-TH.

Thumbing through the papers, I couldn’t find the deed.

The information, otherwise, was powerful for reasons I yet didn’t know. I looked at each slit of paper, ticket and legal form, folding them and putting them in my pocket. I unlocked the bathroom door, went into the main room of the trailer and hugged the wall as I snuck out.

I didn’t see Brother Wayne so I headed back to my room to grab my car keys and split. It was easy. I would bring the photos to Lansky, repay the debts and mention the horrors that went on at that mountain. He would have his goons scare the creeps from the property even if they did possess the deed.

Lansky had a soft spot for children.

I put the papers into a box and set it down on the Siegfried & Roy tablecloth and poured a shot. I held it for a while.

‘That stuff will kill you.’ It was Brother Wayne. ‘But right now, that should be the least of your concerns.’

He was waiting for me. His followers standing behind him like guards at the floral gates of Eden. Muscles blocked the door. Brother Wayne ordered Computer Programmer to take the box. The man was emotionless as he picked it up. I scanned his face. It was like staring into an empty well after throwing a penny into the black.

‘It is a shame you aren’t like your grandfather,’ Brother Wayne’s cold commanding voice said. ‘‘He knew how to play his cards right.’

I didn’t know if it was an allusion to the old man’s gambling addictions.

‘You manipulated a vulnerable old man. He was a drunk.’

Brother Wayne sniffed. ‘He liked vodka, too. He also understood we were going to make a heaven on Earth. Like all man, he too wanted his place in heaven.’

‘Maybe he did, but you coerced the property from a dying man.’’

‘Every man eventually turns over their possessions to the Holy Fountain. Brother Stiv, Brother Dakota.’

Two men seized me by the arms. I didn’t squirm or try to fight back. I’d gambled enough to know when you’ve lost to the house.

A blindfold was tied around my head. Brother Stiv and Brother Dakota took me by the arm and as we trampled through the desert, the buzzing sun felt like a free night in the Bellagio presidential suite. I knew it could be the last time I felt that beautiful, beautiful sun and I took it in, letting those golden rays soak my Semitic skin.

Blackness swallowed the vague traces of light that made it through the cloth. My bandana was removed. The air felt damp. In front of me were train tracks. They’d brought me to an abandoned mineshaft. There was a derailed coal car, dynamite and poker chips scattered on the ground. It was cool and dark. The smell of gunpowder drifted through the air.

I was led further into the darkening tunnel until the entrance contracted into a pin sized peephole. With each step, the ground was overwhelmed with bugs - cockroaches, scorpions and spiders - running and speeding across the small pathway and over the bare feet of the men.

The path stopped and forked.

On the left was a gaping hole that ended at an elevator shaft built into the rock walls.

On the right were broken slot machines and red vinyl stools. Seated in the stools were two robed men. The figure closest to us was hunched over and leaning forward, his bare feet dangling off the footrest, his forehead resting against the cracked black screen. His wrists and hands emerged from the sleeves of green robes and were fried, skin twisted, scalded and still fresh. His boiled fingers clutched the lever of the slot machine.

The sight was awful and morbid like displaying victims of napalm bombings in a wax museum next to statues of rock n’ roll icons.

The other man was slouching. His back was bent, his head resting on his shoulder as his shoulder touched the shadowed wall. A hood hung from the top of his skull, hiding the upper half of his face. Below the cusp of the hood was his white teeth showing through missing lips. He wasn’t playing the slots. He couldn’t. His lower arm was missing.

A velvet painting of Elvis sat on the floor next to plastic pink flamingos and broken snow globes. A silver tear slid down Elvis’ beautiful cheek. He was crooning through closed eyes, through a pain much different than our own.

‘Who are they?’ I asked.

‘Men who had their own ideas about life.’

‘Brother Jobriath?’

Brother Wayne nodded.

‘But why?’

‘It was better for us if he was eliminated. He did not follow the ideas he put forth.’

‘I don’t understand.’

Brother Wayne’s expression shifted. He looked depraved. ‘I’m sure you’ve uncovered who Joseph Brian Theodore was and why he wasn’t needed. Though you thought you were being elusive, you were being followed.’

I recalled the gambling debts, the back payments for child support and Cuban cigars. The revelation was strange when considering the Brother’s expression of peace. Values were often twisted and stretched to fit a narrative.

Committing murder to eliminate opposition was okay if it meant heaven on Earth.

‘Did you kill him?’

‘He did it to himself.’

I looked into their flesh peeled faces.

’Who is the other man?’

No one answered.

‘Why are you showing me this? What about peaceful living?” I asked. ‘What happened, Brother Wayne?’

He snapped his fingers. Brother Stiv reached into his crotch and removed a piece of paper.

‘I will do whatever it takes to protect my people. Brother Jobriath was too absorbed by his own narcissism, a need for self pleasure through temporary luxuries. His concerns were exclusive. They were for him and him alone. To assure parallel mistakes aren’t made again, I am taking proper recourse.’ Brother Stiv handed him the paper. ‘You are going to sign this over to us.’

It was the deed to the property. A curly pube, not unlike his beard, was sitting on the corner of the paper.

‘What if I refuse to sign?’

‘Trifles light as air,’ he laughed.

Brother Stiv and Brother Dakota grabbed my arms and tightened their grip. I tried pulling free, but they were too strong. Brother Wanye produced a needle. He took my finger and plucked the tip. A bubble of blood formed.

‘Now sign.’ It was too appropriate. A cult leader forcing a man into a mineshaft to sign a contract using their own blood.

‘I have my own pen,’ I said, gambling on freedom and life. The Brothers loosened their grip. I bent down, grabbed the tail of a scorpion and threw it into Brother Wayne’s face. The scorpion’s tail clung to his beard.

I tossed dirt into Brother Stiv and Brother Dakota’s eyes, stomped their bare feet and ran. I ran through the dark tunnel until I reached the light. At the exit, I nearly slipped on a stick of dynamite, scrambling, I picked the dynamite up.

The Brothers weren’t far behind. They chased me far into the desert. I continued to run until I saw a cactus patch stretching towards the horizon.The Brothers stopped, unable to pass through the thorns, the pieces of Cholla waiting for flesh to grab onto. Standing at the edge of the cactus patch, they eyeballed me stoically.

I slowed down, caught my breath and began to walk. The Brothers faded from vision.

The land stopped and was overtaken by a cliff. I sat down on the edge, picking the Cholla from my pants, staring at the sun perched like a painted bird in the sky, thinking of how good the golden rays felt.

Brother Wayne would find me. I was outnumbered. And as the sun tumbled beneath the lower rim of the sky, smears of red, purple and pink exploding and merging into a paintball like sunset, I looked at the mountain, the cactuses scattered on the crest like soldiers, their arms lifted and bent as if they were singing, and I knew there was a force greater than mine.

A Sonoran Desert Toad leapt by. He stopped at my feet and looked up at me. His throat was pulsating, the glands on his neck bloating with each breath. His back was curved, spotted and ridged. I took him in my hands, stroked his head and placed the toad in my pocket.

Once the sunlight had turned to night, I crept back towards the main area and hid behind a trailer, watching, waiting, preparing.

The Brothers and Sisters were now eating dinner. The ceremonial bowl sat on a table.

Brother Wayne delivered a sermon as his followers sat listening.

I removed my clothes and dressed in the robes I’d earlier stolen. I could feel the toad vibrating against my bladder. I rubbed his chin and whispered words of flattery to him.

I lit a piece of dynamite and threw it over the trailers.

There was a blast, followed by flames shooting upward. The ground shook. A Brother fell off the table. Brother Wayne continued to stand, unaffected by the quake. I saw my opportunity.

I snuck around the trailers, moving toward the back tables. I crawled hand and knee under the trailers, breathing in dust and smoke.

‘We’ve been breached,’ Brother Wayne said calmly. ‘Find the aggressor. He is but one man.’

A group of robed men rushed past where I sat crouched. I rose up, blending in.

At the ceremonial bowl, I pulled the toad from my pocket.

I milked his parotid glands, squeezing the venom into the bowl until his reserve was depleted. Before I extracted the poison, I whispered into the toad’s ear:

‘They are going to kill you and your friends. They will taxidermy your bodies to look like a Dixieland Jazz band.’

The words I spat were intentionally negative. It’d spread bad feelings and bum their trip. I released the toad. He leapt into the night.

‘Everyone stop.’ Brother Wayne lifted his arms to silence his people. ‘This chaos won’t do us good. I know the enemy is amongst us. I want him found alive and brought to me. No one is to harm him.’

His followers listened obediently. ‘Before we begin the hunt, let us drink from the ceremonial bowl. The act will bring us closer by clearing our minds and replenishing our souls.’

I watched from beneath a trailer as the bowl was passed to each member. Juice slopped over the rim, staining their mouths, splashing in their purple soaked bellies.

I began to crawl. As I emerged, a heavy hand fell on my shoulders.

It was Muscles.

With shadows and night concealing my face, I hid my beardless chin below my hood.

‘What are you doing Brother? You should be drinking with the others.’ His high pitched voice squeaked. It didn’t fit his build.

‘Bathroom,’ I said.

‘Over there.’ He pointed at a trough. A Sister was squatting. Her bare feet pushed into the dust while her face contorted.

‘Thank you Brother,’ I said.

‘Wait.’ He grabbed my arm, pulled me into the light, lifted my head, touched my skin and examined the stubble on my face.

‘I thought so. I found him,’ he yelled. ‘I have him Brother Wayne.’

‘Bring him to me.’

Standing before him, two men on either side of me, Brother Wayne smiled.

‘You had a chance to escape, but you decided to come back. Why? Because this is our land and the land provides. Tie him up.’

Muscles tied me to a splintered hitching post. The night was warm and full of mosquitos. Blood was sucked from my hands before the bugs flew off with a buzz.

‘This is what happens’, Brother Wayne’s voice was deep, booming, controlled. ‘When the outside world interferes with our ordained mission. This is why we should not fear war, Brothers and Sisters. Brother Jobriath foresaw violence. He brought us to the desert as he knew we would be protected by the will of the land. We were kept separate from the outside world for they wanted to harm us, they wanted to impede on the way we have chosen to live. Now, standing before you, is one of the outsiders who has threatened our community, our way of life. With Brother Jobriath’s departure last night, I have adopted his mantle to finish the plans he had for all of us Brothers and Sisters.’ Brother Wayne dug into his robes and pulled the deed from his crotch even though his robes had pockets. ‘We are going to have him sign this deed over to us, making this land rightfully ours so we will have no more interference from the outside world.’

It was quiet. The silence was ominous. Muscles, Brother Stiv and Brother Dakota untied my hands. I was brought before the crowd. My arms secured and held down. A pen was planted in my hand. My head shoved down. I tried free myself by shifting backwards, but the grip of the men was too strong.

The pen hovered above the paper. Black ink nearly staining the blank line when I heard wild laughter. Then, like a choir, there was more. The laughter was maniacal, loose, ravaged from the belly.

Muscle’s grip softened. He began to stare at his hand, moving it back and forth, joyfully smiling at the trailing waves. Brother Stiv and Brother Dakota stripped down, removing their robes and tossing them into the air. They grabbed one another and hugged. The others were swaying, moving their arms and shoulders in primitive dances. The night was filling up with strange bestial laughter.

Brother Wayne began to speak. His words were slurred, vague, abstract.

‘And then we will descend into a hole in the desert where we will wait out the war that is transpiring right now between the reds and the banker boys in their protection of capitalist functions. It’ll be a long war, one where men will grow three legs and four eyes and gaze into the chomping jaws of hell and unlike the abyss that looks back, it will instead wave, wink and wag its weenie.’ He laughed to himself. ‘With the help of the blue elves in the Aztec shaped hallways of our homes, we will self-transform into the new beings, champions of this pale blue dot floating in the vast galaxy as minute as a speck of dust while we make our own tunnels and doorways. Your shape is composed of edges, my friends. Edges.’

The toad venom spread from the circulatory system to the brain. Expanding black pupils swallowed the irises of eyes. There was laughter, weeping, emphatic cries from somewhere in the repressed soul. Brother Wayne gave into the abstract seizure of the frontal lobes. His sentences were jagged and incoherent, grouped together by lines clawing their way up from the depths of his value-warped subconscious. His speech became demented interpretations of The Bible.

Brother Wayne started to cry. Thick tears and globs of snot dripped from his nose and into his beard and the palms.

‘And that is why I murdered Brother Jobriath,’ he sobbed. ‘His seed came here looking for his father and I convinced the boy to threaten his father with the blackmail I had on him. I lied to the boy, twisting his mind, turning him onto violence against his estranged father. I offered the boy a stick of dynamite, knowing he’d be angry enough to use against his father. Father and prodigal son stood in a trailer, arms extended, ready to make amends. I couldn’t allow it. They would have formed an all too powerful alliance. I needed hostility, I needed tragedy, I needed death so I could assume power. I peeked my head through spying window and threw a flame at the two embracing men. Brother Jobriath grabbed the dynamite from his son, paternally trying to protect his begot, but the fuse was short and exploded in his hand severing his arm at the forearm!’

His followers were too high to digest the confession. I scribbled as fast as I could on the empty space on the back of the deed.

A dance formed through unifying psychedelics.

‘I KILLED THE FATHER. I AM ABRAHAM. I AM CAIN. I AM ABEL.’ Brother Wayne raised his fists to the sky.

He lowered his head, still sobbing, and looked into my eyes with silver stained crests.

‘You,’ he cried. ‘Forgive me son.’ And he fell into my arms.

‘I am only a man. A flawed man, but still, a man. Brother Jobriath was a gambler, a hypocrite, a cigar smoker. But he didn’t deserve to die, did he? Please, release me. Please tell me what I can not know.’

Men howled, shrieked, chanted. Women danced naked in the yellow moonlight.

Brother Stiv and Brother Dakota saw Brother Wayne limp, crying, in my arms. I threw him onto the ground as he stared up at the sky. Seized by panic, the men tried to prevent me from leaving. They circled me, blocking my path. I tried juking past them. The scene drew attention. More members joined, gradually boxing me in. Half naked bodies and sagging appendages surrounded me.

I was in trouble. I thought of my grandpa, of the unintended consequences the land brought. The old man was a gambler and from him, I learned the greatest trick a gambler could use.

I decided not to bet. Instead, I turned and ran.

Looking behind me, nude bodies clashed, coming together in a flesh-colored union. The anxiety gave me speed. I ran, jerking my head and tripping over the trough.

I lie on the ground, waiting to be overtaken. The men stopped. Their arms twisted and contorted as they regressed into a primitive nature Their backs slouched. Their knuckles dragged in the sand. They communicated in grunts. They formed a front.

Without much time to act, I tipped the trough onto its side. An ark-styled flood rushed along the dirt. Turds floated by. Warm piss water slid between their toes. Fascinated, they stomped on the water.

Reaching my trailer, I yanked the door open and searched for my keys. I tore through the drawers, throwing the Elvis blanket from my cot, tossing the Vegas paraphernalia onto the floor. I collapsed onto my knees, begging whoever dictated spiritual balance to give me a break, a sort of deus ex machina resolution when I heard the door slam shut.

Sister Rosita stood before me.

‘We need to go. Please, help me leave this place.’

I looked up at her wondering if I’d swallowed some of the ceremonial juice.

‘Brother Jobriath’s son, the one Wayne killed, was my husband.’

‘The tattoo on your chest.’ I pointed.

She nodded solemnly.

‘Please, we need to go.’

‘I can’t find my keys,’ I said.

‘Brother Wayne has them in his trailer.’

We hurried, with her leading me by the hand, fearfully tumbling through the mountainous night. On a nail hammered into the wall were my keys attached to a neon keychain.

Brother Wayne’s trailer matched some of the Vegas motels I’d stayed in. There was a circular bed with a zebra print comforter, tiger pillowcases, heart shaped pillows and stuffed animals.

Everything felt too easy and as I tried to leave, on the floor near the bed was a child’s robe. The little clothes stabbed my heart, constricted the arteries, chilled the blood.

‘We need to leave. Please, they will find us and they will kill us,’ Sister Rosita pleaded.

‘Not yet. Take my keys. Hide inside the truck. Keep the doors locked until I come back.’

She nodded, breathing heavily. I caught fire to the zebra blanket and the tiger pillowcases. As the flames took Brother Wayne’s trailer, I ran to the children’s dormitory.

Brothers and Sisters rushed toward the fire. I waited until they were gone and slipped into the unit. I woke the children sleeping in their own filth. ‘Go,’ I yelled. ‘Get out.’ They wiped the sleep from their eyes and mindlessly stared at me. ‘Go! This place is going to burn!’ But none of them moved. From the fire blown window, Brother Wayne and his followers circled his burning trailer and danced.

Then, I recalled the strange melody I’d heard them humming the night before and began to illuminate the sounds from my throat. The children joined in. I took two small ones by the hands and led them out. The others followed.

Once the trailer was clear, I stood in their bedroom, taking one final look at the blankets, the dirty pillows, the scene of violation and horror.

I reached for the matchbook in my pocket. Instead, I found the redeeming photos I planned on giving to Lansky.

I didn’t even look at them. I just threw them on top of the blankets, along with the deed to the property and the papers on Joseph Brian Theodore. I wrapped a stick of dynamite in the children’s robes and lit the leg using the full book of matches and let it go. The flame grew quickly, spreading through the dirty soiled blankets.

I then ran to my truck. Firework-like explosions lit up the star filled sky.

I knocked on the windows. Sister Rosetta sat up and struggled to unlock the door. ‘Pull the lock,’ I yelled, tapping on the window, pointing downwards. Behind me the screams were growing more erratic, more hostile, more violent.

She searched for the lock, slapping the door handle, touching the dashboard and pushing on the window.

‘Right there.’ I pointed at the lock again.

‘Oh, thank God,’ she said, pulling up the lock.

The door opened and I jumped into the driver’s seat. I choked the engine. It gave a few belches before the machine roared into the face of the dark mountain.

We didn’t say anything as we sped down the curved dirt road. The mountain grew smaller in the rearview mirror. Flames from the children’s trailer rose further into the black sky as the sirens from screeching red fire trucks swept up the mountainside and prepared for war.