1.
In the endless miles of desert surrounding Paradise Valley, Nevada, there is silence now. The rustling of the sagebrush, the distant howling of the coyotes on the long, lonely evenings, the tan and green colors and the distant peaks. I had been here a week now, at my grandmother's old house, just me and Mom. We are working on tidying the place up. Perhaps we can sell it, I don't know. Not many people want to move to Paradise Valley. It is too remote from anywhere to really be called a "paradise," and the empty desert surrounding the town might not seem like paradise to very many people. Come to think of it, there aren't really very many people here now, as it is. In the old section of town, the ancient wood and clay-brick buildings are all empty now, and slowly fading into the desert.
Occasionally I would feel like taking a walk, just walking outside the back door and out into the desert. You can do that here; because once you pass the outer edge of the property line, it's just an endless expanse of empty unfenced land. There isn't really much else to do here, really, but for now, that's okay. When I would take my daily wanderings, I would pick up strange things from time to time- chunks of strange black glass, interesting and colorful banded rhyolite, clear agate nodules, and pieces of wood that have calcified all the way through into stone mockeries of organic matter.
One day I got home from one of these short walks, and was in the old spare bedroom- which I had picked as my guest bedroom while staying out here, just examining my finds. I had found a strange yellowish glassy rounded rock; that was different from the usual jet- black volcanic glass chunks you typically find out here in the desert. But when I examined it closely, I realized it was a man-made object. Deep inside the glass was a white square label, with a bar code and some numbers that looked as if they were printed with an ancient dot-matrix printer. It somehow gave me a chill. I began to wonder what sinister secret it had.
"Did you see, there were bunch of government jeeps, and all of these unmarked vehicles on Main Street today when I went to pick up food for supper" Mom was saying from the other room, as she was loading the washing machine. "I wonder what is going on?"
"Probably just a BLM fire crew or something," I replied, thinking nothing of it. "Maybe a range fire somewhere, or a wild horse roundup, I dunno."
I walked out to the back door and stared out across the brush covered back acreage. Glancing eastward, I saw that the sky had turned pitch black. A storm was moving in. A brief white branch of lightning flashed over the distant mesa.
Under the mesa, the screams of the tortured prisoners in their sterile tombs can never be heard.
2.
Later that afternoon, I had just finished repairing a section of roofing. Mom had done more of the supervising than the actual grunt work, as was the usual deal, however I was fine with that. I had taken a break and had gone for another short walk. As I wandered down the street, I was thinking to myself about school, Mom, Erin, and the work on the house. There weren't many streets in this town and you didn't usually have to walk very far to get where you were going. There also weren't many people in this town, but yet there was one in particular who I had already met. At a whim, I decided to stop by and see him.
College had been fun, but after graduating just a month ago with my bachelor's degree, I began to experience an existential crisis of "Now What." I had no career real plans, other than a certain dread of being stuck at my dead-end job changing oil at the Quick-E-Loob I worked at. So after grandma passed away and Mom came out here, I figured, why not come out with her, spend some time, reconnect with the family past and re-charge my mind. Maybe I'll get inspired about a new career idea or something. At least Erin didn't have to worry about that kind of thing yet. She still had two more years of fun and parties left. Being a senior wasn't all it was cracked up to be, I'd tell her sometimes. Plus, I was still reeling from the loss of my father. As hard as that had been, it had brought me and my mom closer, which may have been part of the reason I had decided to come out here with her.
The house was a three bedroom single story ranch house. Although Grandma had lived in it alone, she had kept it relatively well maintained, which thankfully had made our job easier. Because it was a single story with few stairs her advanced age had allowed her to stay in it nearly to the end. And the extra rooms were nice for visitors. In the two times I had visited here previously with Mom and Dad, it had been nice to have room for our whole family to stay under one roof. The yard had gone to seed long ago, but that actually didn't seem to matter; "Native Landscaping" they called it. It somehow didn't even look that unsightly, rather it was merely part of the greater landscape. The cheatgrass, rabbitbrush and sage had gradually taken over, but the raised rock beds were still in place.
3.
"This may be radioactive" Pete Threebears was saying, holding the strange dark yellow glass globe in his hand. "I know they sometimes would encase their radioactive waste in glass, down at Yucca Mountain."
"Well, how would it just be lying out in the desert like that? How did it get here?"
"Did you find it around here, nearby?" he asked.
"Yeah, off in the brush over by that dry creek bed, about half a mile west of Main Street."
"Well, I don't know; but I do know there have been some strange things going on around here lately. I heard some rumor that they have been doing a bunch of excavating out east of town somewhere, but I'm not sure where. Some kind of government project. Maybe they are transporting some nuclear waste up there; I don't know. I never trust what the government is up to out here. It's Nevada. So much empty wide open space, they figure they can probably do anything they want out here and nobody will notice."
Peter Threebears lived at the last house at the end of the road. It was a small, one bedroom place, little more than a cottage, but it was well kept and tidy. I had met Pete that first evening when I went out for a walk, and just started chatting with him. He had a friendly easy going manner and I had liked him immediately. He had lived in the area almost his whole life and had knowledge of pretty much everything that went on in that part of Nevada. Except, that is, for the secret things the government did, behind the "No Trespassing!" signs and the mysterious compounds. He figured it was best not to know about those things.
So I had stopped on over there that evening, after the storm had blown through, to show him some of the odds and ends I had found in the desert. I had even offered him a beer, but Pete told me he didn't drink- and that was fine with me. The smell of the desert sagebrush was always stronger, almost overpowering in a good way, right after a storm, he told me. I could tell he was right. It permeated the air, and was a good smell.
"So you think they are transporting waste out there? You would think that would be in the news, there would be some controversy."
"Yeah but it's pretty quiet around here. Everyone here knows everyone else, but very few outsiders care what goes on around here. It wouldn't even register on their radar," he replied. "There are so few people in this part of the state that if they were up to something shady like that, they probably figure nobody would notice."
I thought about that for a minute- just the remoteness of this quaint oasis surrounded by rugged mountain ranges and endless desert scrublands for at least sixty miles in all directions.
"Do you ever get, I dunno, bored living out way here like this? I mean, it is pretty peaceful, quiet, but I would think I would miss the bigger towns, and all."
Pete replied, "Sometimes quiet is good. Good for the spirit. I mean, it's simple and uncluttered. Here, people look after each other, there is none of the urban crap, East side-west side gangsta bullshit. I mean, sure some people around here are into the booze and into the drugs or whatever, but even if they are, they leave other people alone, and people stay out of their way. Like me, heck I don't even drink no more."
He went on, "Look, I just try to live simply. I have traveled all over the world and seen some incredible and beautiful things you cannot imagine. But I choose to stay here because I believe that even if we cannot fix all the evil in the world, we can each work to make our own place, our own community the best it can possibly be. And this is my place, my community."
"Well, I admit, it is a nice spot. Paradise valley. I guess it's what you make of it." I replied. "I mean, my grandma lived out here for 35 years. She stuck around even after grampa died 15 years ago. She always liked it. Hopefully we can fix up her house and sell it- I don't know who will want it, but I hope someone does."
"I knew your grandma. Wonderful lady. I could tell right away you were her grandson. Just the way you have, I can see a little of her in you. She went to mass every Sunday; I saw here there even when she started to get sick, always helped out with the church picnics and activities, and would help anyone out who asked it of her. And your grampa, Roger, he would give you the shirt off his back if you asked it of him; he did all the upkeep on the buildings down on the old Main street, a lot of 'em have been empty for decades, but he was always trying to keep everything fixed up and looking good. He'd do that for his neighbors too. Heck, one time he came down and fixed my old Dodge over there (waving an arm at his truck) and even went into Winnemucca and got the parts, didn't even charge me for him or nothing."
"That's how we look after each other here. I try to do the same."
I asked, "So, you've been all over the area here. Do you know of any cool spots, I mean, to check out?"
Pete grew thoughtful. "Well, there are the old ghost towns of Rhyolite and Pioche- about an hour drive, those are pretty neat spots. If you like picking up rocks, you can find some cool old copper ore, bright green rocks, at the old Delmar mine over to the east."
"Yeah, well I like hunting for interesting rocks. I found a few just outside town, that banded rhyolite, stuff like that. That should cool. Plus, I kind of dig old ghost towns. It can be kind of interesting, the history. Feeling like, what was it like living in those places?" I said, intrigued at the thought of wandering through these old historic spots.
"Well, a lot of them could be pretty violent, back in the old days. Different factions, and what not, and white settlers- your ancestors- fighting with my ancestors; hey that was a long time ago, I mean, no hard feelings you understand- but that was some of the violent history."
