Steven Havill: Scavengers

“Maybe it’s a comfort in some ways,” Estelle said. “I think that’s why she wants to see the village again. It brings back memories for her.”

“I suppose it would.” He glanced across at her. “How about you?” She looked quizzical. “Do you miss it ever?”

“Mexico, you mean?”

“Sure.”

“Tres Santos will always be a special place for me.” She looked off through the passenger window as they approached Bustos Avenue, the truck grumbling along as if they had the whole day to waste. A jogger could have lapped them, but Estelle had long ago become accustomed to Gastner’s sense of pace. On rare occasions, she had ridden with him when the patrol vehicle screamed at over a hundred miles an hour. But far more often, she had seen the value of his idling , as she called it-drifting along with the windows down, listening to his county.

She turned and looked at him. “There are times when I miss it, of course. When things get hectic around here, sometimes the yearning to head south of the border is pretty strong.” She smiled, but didn’t elaborate. Bill Gastner was well aware of her past-orphaned at age two and taken in by Teresa Reyes, then forty-six years old, a childless widow.

The little black-haired, black-eyed child, her native blood echoed in the angular planes of her face, could as easily have become a ward of the church, destined for one of their orphanages. But something about the sober, quiet child had touched Teresa Reyes’ heart.

She sighed. “I’d like the boys to have more time down there. With Mamá , if possible. They love talking with her. Especially Carlos. There’s something between the two of them that’s very private. A world all their own that’s a mystery to the rest of us.”

Gastner laughed. “He’s a chip off his mother’s block. And I’ve known your mother for what…twenty years? She sure as hell is a mystery to me, too.” They moseyed out into the intersection of Twelfth and Bustos, with Gastner hesitant to turn east on the main drag. Directly across the intersection, a large, flat-roofed restaurant dominated the corner. Estelle knew exactly what was on her old friend’s mind. “Have you eaten something?” he asked.

“Sure. Irma held me hostage until I did. She’s worse than a mother hen. But if you need to stop, go ahead.”

“You need to listen to Irma once in a while. And no, I’m all set. I ate a couple of hours ago.” He waited for an eastbound vehicle to pass and lifted a hand in salute as the other driver waved at him.

As he turned the truck onto Bustos, Estelle saw the quick, perhaps wistful glance that he shot toward the Don Juan de Oñate restaurant. The place was his favorite haunt. She knew that to pass up a second smothered burrito grande before tending to business was something of a feat for him. After another ten blocks, they turned south on Grande Boulevard, heading toward the interstate exchange at a pace that, had there been a rush hour in Posadas, would have earned impatient gestures and glares. “Anything new on Mr. Doe, by the way?”

“Not a thing. At least not that I’ve heard,” Estelle said. “Linda and Jackie were going out there first thing this morning.”

“Theories?”

Estelle grinned. “It’s probably a shorter list to assume what didn’t happen.”

“That’s generally the way it is, more often than not.”

“And by the way, what is it that we’re doing this morning?” she asked.

Gastner frowned and shook his head. “We’re going to stop by Cameron Florek’s first. He’s got a problem with Eleanor Pope’s goats, among other things.”

Estelle laughed. “With her goats?”

“This is serious stuff, sweetheart,” Gastner said with mock severity. “The goats are just the tip of the iceberg, though. Have you ever actually been in Florek’s?”

“Ah…no.”

“Cameron Florek has eight acres of automotive history behind that fence of his. And that fence is part of the problem. He has the misfortune of sharing a property line with Eleanor Pope.” He glanced at Estelle. “But you know that already. Cameron’s complaint started when he found several of Eleanor’s goats inside his wrecking yard.”

“I remember a tall board fence that circles the place. The goats are getting through that somehow?”

“Apparently it’s more complicated than that. Mrs. Pope is aiding and abetting.”

Estelle’s left eyebrow drifted up and Gastner laughed. “Florek maintains that he drove the goats out a couple of times, and blocked all the likely places where he figured the critters were getting in. But despite his best efforts, they continued to trespass, and so he went back and looked more carefully. Someone-he says Eleanor or her son-had pried the nails out of one of the fence boards so that it worked like a kitty door.” He swung his hand back and forth. “The goats were free to come and go as they pleased.”

“And they were eating all his valuable license plates and fenders?”

Gastner shot a quick glance across at Estelle. “I can see you’re not taking this case with the seriousness it deserves,” he chuckled. “These are weighty matters.”

“Sorry, sir.” Estelle replied. “So you want a photograph of a goat chewing on a wrecked 1955 Oldsmobile? Is that it?”

“There you go again,” he said, and held up an admonishing finger. “What’s sort of interesting in all of this is that the goats are not why you and I are visiting Florek’s Wrecking Yard.”

“I was beginning to think that maybe you had too much free time, Padrino . ”

“I wish. No, see, Cameron Florek doesn’t really care about trespassing goats…they probably help to keep the weeds down, anyway. If that were the extent of it, he never would have called me in the first place.”

They drove under the interstate, and in another quarter mile Estelle saw the tall board fence around the acres of wrecking yard. What passed for zoning in the village required the fence to shield the public’s tender eyes from the eight-acre sea of decaying metal, plastic, and rubber…a fence that for most of its vast length was uglier than the scenery it obscured.

Near the entrance, an array of several thousand hubcaps had been tacked to the fence in wonderful patterns-so many hubcaps that village teens had long since given up trying to steal them all. It would have been a life’s work to pry the entire collection loose.

On the opposite side of the entrance gate was Cameron’s collection of license plates-rows and rows, decades and decades, every state and several foreign countries represented.

Parked in front of the fence was a vehicle welded together out of a vast conglomeration of mismatched parts. Looking like something out of a sci-fi film about Earth after the great atomic war, it sported a cow-catcher on the front, what appeared to be a large caliber howitzer on the roof, and rear fins made from what could have been parts from a retired corn harvester. Giant chrome exhaust stacks sprouted aggressively from the hood, in counterpoint to the four tires that had been flat for so long that the rims dug into the sand. The road warrior was evidence that even the busy Cameron Florek had spare time to devote to the pursuit of fine art.

Gastner pulled the truck through the front gate. Cameron Florek emerged from the battered Airstream trailer that served as his office. His coveralls had once been a natty, uniform Carhart brown. Over the seasons, they’d faded and been stained and patched to a perfect camouflage pattern for a wrecking yard. His giant beard splayed outward from a round face, combed meticulously into a great bib that hung off the bottom of his chin. Estelle grinned. Cameron Florek would look good motoring down the highway on a chopper, the wind lifting and caressing his beard.