The motel lay back in darkness, a shadow tossed from the speed of life. Worn and unpainted tan, once a stopover for families discovering America, it had been bypassed, too far up and too far down on a road nobody traveled unless they weren't in a hurry. Wasn't everybody in a hurry? The highway swooped out of the Sandia Mountains, forked left past scruffy one story adobe houses and duplexes set north and south. Brand new flat-faced condos had begun to swipe the afternoon sun. An Air Force Base, stark as Sunday, stretched South about a mile back from the road. Cotton dresses, jockey shorts, work blues and dark socks hung from noncom clotheslines. Unknown pilots streaked the endless sky with needle-perfect radar day and night. Close to the Fairgrounds? Balloon Races? Ah yes. Well, Route 40 is faster, much faster. Zuni Motel? Not in the New Directory. Good Tex Mex down the block. Boola Pizza? Johnny Video? TV Repair? You bet! "Come back now." Benjamin Bean stared at the cold, cold stars.
Zuni Motel for sale. Jobs up in the air. Weekly tenants in limbo. Jack Fry sold hot dogs like he was going to be there forever. J.D., the day man, stuck his face in his newspaper. The maid dusted and swept. She changed the thin sheets. Billy Sweeney kept building his motodrome. Sweeney hammered. Sweeney banged. His SKIL Saw
tore slices out of hours.
Benjamin looked down the highway to his left. Empty. The eastern sky began to pale. Jack Fry's hot dog stand, a white fifteen foot 1955 Kenskill trailer with a faded red stripe across the side took shape by the roadside just to the right of the office. Two wooden blocks jammed under the back end for balance. A spare tire, belonging to no vehicle lay off to the side by the motel mailbox. A car went by without lights.
Benjamin heard two large dogs barking back in the housing on the other side of the road. They seemed to have found a common victim. They chased it briefly. Barks skewed off in separate echoes and stopped. Benjamin harbored an eerie feeling. Somewhere out there, the dogs stood in the dark, eyes blinking, teeth shining. Silent. Waiting. Trouble! No getting away from trouble. God knows, he'd tried.
Trouble! Always in trouble. Even in Dallas. How in hell could he go to jail for having a good time? Ended up in a cell with four maniacs, yellow-chipped paint on the walls, and one toilet. Cold metal bunks murdered sleep; a half blanket kept him crazy. The noise never stopped. Somebody in another cell, somewhere, Benjamin never knew where, whistled day and night, off key, no discernable tune, just whistled. Got bored and plugged the toilet. Flooded the cell.
Got Solitary. Naked in the dark. One hole in the floor. Another inmate alone in the next cell. Benjamin could see him through an itty bitty crack writing on the walls in his own shit and singing EBB TIDE, all verses. Next thing he knew, he was out in the streets in Dallas with no idea how long he'd been in and no idea where he was going with no money and no job.
Benjamin Bean no more than had his pants zipped up and his shoes retied, when he began trying to figure out how to get a gun and what he might be willing to do to get it and what he might do with it when he did get it, stepping out under the empty streetlights of Dallas, where everything went right on by like it didn't care. "America
has eaten all the ice cream," Benjamin said, just as loud as he could without screaming.
In this eccentric tale set in a small town in northern India, Pawan Mishra masterfully weaves ingenuity and sarcasm in a manner that’s simultaneously hilarious and tragic.
Determined to confront the hazy memories of his troubled youth, Oliver Matthews, a retired detective and confirmed bachelor, returns to the picturesque town of Henley-on-Thames for the first time in years.
