Michael Palmer - Extreme Measures

The sign, painted in uneven black letters on a two-foot length of weathered side, read: CHARITY, UTAH. POP. 381. It was pocked by bullet holes and wedged upside down between two dense juniper bushes.

Marilyn Colson would have missed the sign if she hadn't tripped over a root and fallen heavily onto the hard, dusty desert ground. The discovery distracted her from the newest in a growing array of bruises and scrapes, and kept her-at least momentarily-from another outburst at her husband.

Their four-year marriage was on the ropes even before they blew their vacation on this latest monument to Richard's self-centeredness.

Now, as far as she was concerned, it was down for the count. The Jeep he had insisted an renting for their "four-wheel journey to nowhere and everywhere," the Jeep that Richard said he could repair with his eyes closed, had broken down God-only-knew how many miles from nowhere. And of course, the part that had gone was the only one Richard hadn't counted on. Some psychologist! The man could never see any point of view but his own.

Marilyn picked several burrs from her T-shirt.

When-if, for Christ's sake-they ever made it back to L.A she was going to call Mort Gruber and tell him to go ahead with the divorce.

And that, she decided as she pushed herself angrily to her feet, was that. She pulled the sign free, blew some of the dust off it, and held it up for her husband to see.

"I give you'!-she swung the barnside around in a grand gesture to the barren, roiling, shrub-covered landscape-"Charity, Utah. Home of the largest, most complete Jeep-repair center this side of-" "Marilyn, can't you lay off just this once? I said I was sorry."

"No, you didn't."

"I did, dammit. That's all I ever do with you. Here, let me see that sign."

He studied it for a moment, then tossed it aside and pulled a frayed, sweat-stained map from his knapsack.

"It's not here," he said.

"Richard, in case you hadn't noticed, it's not here either.

"God, you are snide."

"No, Richard. What I am is lost. I'm lost and filthy and hurting and hungry and angry and… and cold."

She glanced toward the hazy sun sinking into the horizon.

"Dammit," she snapped suddenly, "I don't care what it takes. I'm getting the hell out of here. I work hard-as hard as you do. Harder.

It's my vacation, too, and I want to eat in a French restaurant and I want to sleep between clean sheets, and take a fucking bath in a tub with a JacuzzL" She turned and stalked up the stony slope of one of a chain of modest hills that seemed to stretch to the horizon on either side.

"Marilyn, will you get back down here. I tell you, we're not lost. Give or take a mile, I know exactly where we are. We can camp here tonight, and then keep heading east first thing tomorrow. By noon we'll be on Highway Fifty. You'll see… Marilyn?"

The woman stood motionless at the crest of the hill. Then, slowly, she turned back to him.

"Richard," she called out, "maybe you'd better hike on up here. I think I may have just found Charity, Utah.

The town, half a mile or so to the south, was nestled in a valley ringed on all sides by hills. It appeared to consist-of an unpaved main street, starting and ending at the desert and crossed by two or three smaller streets. To the east and north, fields of some sort stretched into the desert. The buildings lining the streets glowed eerijy in the fading daylight, looking more like a Hollywood set than a functional village.

"Do you suppose it's a ghost town?" Richard asked as they dropped down the slope and into a dry arroyo, out of sight of the low brick and clapboard buildings.

"Could be, but there are people there right now. I swear I saw lights in two of the windows. God, am I going to be pissed if they don't have a place with hot water."

"You are really a princess, Marilyn. Do you know that?"

"And you are… well, let's forget what you are.

Look, couldn't we call some kind of a truce, at least until we get out of this?"

"Sure, but you're the one who-"

"Richard, please…"

They followed the and streambed for a while and then trudged up a gentle rise that ended, suddenly, in a small, well-planted field of corn-perfect rows of stalks as high as their heads, surrounded by closely strung barbed wire.

"Curiouser and curiouser," Richard mused.

Marilyn had already reached the far end of the field.

"Richard, come on," she called back.

"Where in the hell do they get the water?"

"If you'd hurry up, you could ask them," Marilyn said, gesturing toward the road where, twenty or thirty yards ahead, two men were walking casually away from them. Save for the men, the neatly swept street was deserted. No cars, no bicycles, no other people.

"Excuse me," she called out. "Hey, you two up there, excuse me…

The two men glanced back at her and then continued walking.

"Richard, for crying out loud, win you help me out?"

Without waiting for a response, Marilyn started after them. At that moment a bell began chiming through a series of speakers mounted on poles along the street. Almost instantly people began emerging from several of the buildings to plod after the two men.

Marilyn stopped short. To her right, a woman stepped onto an open porch from beneath a sign marked simply STORE. She looked to be in her late forties, although her stoop-shouldered posture and unkempt jet hair made that only the roughest guess: She wore a short-sleved print housedress over a pair of khaki fatigue pants. A patch with the name MARY embroidered in gold was sewn over one breast.

"Excuse me," Marilyn said.

The woman looked at her impassively.

My name's Marilyn Colson. That's my husband, Richard. We're from Los Angeles, and we were on a camping trip, and. Marilyn, studying the blank expression on the woman's face, stopped in mid-sentence. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I… understand… you," the woman said.

"And can you help us out? Direct us to a hotel?"

"Hotel…?"

"Yes. A place to stay."

Marilyn waited several seconds for a response, then turned to her husband.

"Dammit, Richard, will you come over here and help me out? There's something wrong with this woman."

"She's an addict," Richard said simply.

"What?"

"Look at the needle tracks on her arms-She's Probably stoned to the gills-either that or — totally burnt out."

"What should we do?"

"Well, for starters I think we should be a little less aggressive."

"Go to hell."

"And next, I think we should find someone else to talk to."

"You can star by talking to me," a voice behind them said.

The Colsons whirled. Marilyn gasped. standing not ten feet from them was a man, tall and lean, wearing jeans, a plaid hunter's jacket, and a baseball cap Strapped to his waistband was a two-way radio.

The double-barreled shotgun cradled on his right arm was aimed at a spot just in front of them.

"You go on in to dinner now, Mary," the man said.

"Else you'll get nothin' to eat tonight." Without even a gesture of acknowledgment, the woman shuffled off.

"My my name's Marilyn CoLRon," Marilyn said, clearing the fear from her throat "This is my husband, Richard. We… we're lost." She smiled inwardly at her husband's likely confusion with the direction "Our Jeep has broken down about half a day's walk in that direction. We were hoping someone in your town might be able to help us get it towed in and fixed."

"How'd you get here?"

"I just told you, we walked from where our-"

"No, no. I mean here." The man gestured to the spot where they were standing.

"We came from the north," Richard said, stepping forward. "Over those hills, then down along an arroyo, and up into your cornfield.