This New Mountain

By Cate Macabe

Like most private investigators AJ Jackson has more than one foot in the fire to make ends meet – driving a tow truck and serving legal documents for local law firms. But not every PI is a mother of four, a grandmother of ten, an ex-gun dealer and former mental patient, or a descendant of a great Choctaw chief. This is a memoir of Vinnie Ann "AJ" Jackson, a country girl with a go-to-hell attitude who must face her fears in order to keep her sanity and make a future for herself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Casa de Snapdragon
• Release date: Jun 30, 2012
• ISBN: 9781937240837

Cate Macabe

Cate Macabe spent a great deal of her childhood escaping into other worlds. She began to think of herself as a writer after creating her first coherent story at the age of ten – a piece about a spider from the spider’s point of view. At that time, she didn’t consider making a living as a writer. She wrote because it took her away to places and times not her own, the same reason she read every book in her parent’s house. After serving six years in the military, raising four children, and studying computer programming and accounting, she realized writing was, indeed, what she should do with her life. While working as a legal secretary in an Albuquerque law firm, Cate spent most lunch hours writing and editing her novels in progress. Whenever AJ Jackson came in to do business, the ordinary, routine workings of the law office were pleasantly disrupted by the telling of the latest adventures of a repo-woman/process server/ private eye. Whether this petite, feisty redhead recounted the tale of a snarling dog intent on making her a mid-morning snack or the contortions she went through to find someone intent on not being found, her stories were made even more remarkable by the fact they were real-life experiences. It was a conversation about how AJ’s adventures would make a great book that led Cate and AJ on a twelve-year writing journey culminating in the publication of This New Mountain. Cate Macabe is a member of the board of directors of SouthWest Writers and is the editor of the organization’s newsletter, the SouthWest Sage. She lives with her husband near the foothills of the Sandia “Watermelon” Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico – and still enjoys reading every book in the house and escaping into other worlds.

Book preview

This New Mountain

A Memoir of AJ Jackson as Told To

Cate Macabe

Casa de Snapdragon LLC

Albuquerque, NM

Copyright

Copyright © 2012, 2015 Cate Macabe. All rights reserved.

Cover design by K.L. Wagoner

Smashwords Edition

Images used in cover:

tow truck in silhouette: © G. NICOLSON / Fotolia

climber: © Andrey Bandurenko / Fotolia

b. Shutterstock – Shiprock: ©Lauren Orr/Shutterstock

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of Cate Macabe, unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law. Address inquiries to Permissions, Casa de Snapdragon Publishing LLC, 12901 Bryce Avenue NE, Albuquerque, NM 87112.

This is a work of creative nonfiction. The events are portrayed to the best of AJ Jackson’s memory. While all the stories in this book are true, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jackson, A. J.

This new mountain : a memoir of AJ jackson / as told to Cate Macabe.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-937240-08-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Jackson, A. J. 2. Women private investigators--New Mexico--Biography. 3. Private investigators--New Mexico--Biography. 4. New Mexico--Biography. I. Macabe, Cate. II. Title.

HV8083.J34A3 2012

363.28'9092--dc23

[B]

2012012612

Published by

Casa de Snapdragon LLC

12901 Bryce Avenue, NE

Albuquerque, NM 87112

http://www.casadesnapdragon.com

20120601

Dedication

This book is dedicated to Ed Stoll.

In all the years I knew Ed, he was my greatest encourager, the dearest friend and the best mentor a person could ever have. Anything of importance concerning the collection and repo business I learned from him. I owe him more than I ever had the chance to repay. I was proud to call him my friend for over 40 years and I hold the memory of this gruff but compassionate man close to my heart.

~ Vinnie Ann AJ Jackson ~

Acknowledgements

~CM~

Thanks to:

God, most of all, who first loved me and gave me an awesome husband, four wonderful children and a precious granddaughter.

Tim for his patience and enduring love. He has always given me the space and time I need.

Teresa Cutler-Broyles at InkWell International LLC for the first round of professional editing that helped shape this work.

All those who read and critiqued the manuscript in all its many variations, especially Dianne and Christie whose love and friendship I cherish.

Jan and Art Brennan at Casa de Snapdragon LLC for their dedication to keeping a writer’s dream alive.

~AJ~

I would like to thank all my friends and relatives that helped me along the way to becoming the person I am today. Without their help, I could not have survived. Extra kudos to my daughter Kimbree, cousin Cathy, and my dear friends Maxine, Johnie and Cherise for conquering their fear to help me in the still of the night. We had tons of fun and some very scary moments. Ladies, we survived!

To all the attorneys I worked for (many who became my friends), thank you for helping me understand the laws regarding service of process. My education was one of hard knocks. But I learned so much from all of you.

Norma, you were very patient with me. You taught me so much and I thank you for all your help.

I should also thank my dad. Because of him, I have always strived to do my best. My upbringing made a strong woman out of me.

Thanks to anyone I may have forgotten.

Chapter 1

Straw Dancing

---

Courage is being scared to death

and saddling up anyway.

~ John Wayne

---

I certainly wasn’t thinking about the meaning of life as I wriggled my fifty-six-year-old body through the driver’s side window of my tow truck and tried to make it onto the banged-up hood of my next meal ticket. At that moment, I worried more about slipping into the tight space between my truck and the pickup I'd come to repossess. Or rolling off the hood and into the jaws of a crazed Rottweiler. It was times like this I wished I still carried my Colt .38, but I learned the hard way you don’t put a weapon of any kind in the hands of a redhead who can’t trust her own temper.

The Rottweiler jumped and lunged. It foamed at the mouth and sliced deep grooves along the edge of the fender before sliding backward to the ground. It jumped again and slid again.

I stood up on the repo’s hood and tried to catch my breath, and watched the dog foam. A dust devil, tall and narrow, spun across the mesa to the south. It threw chunks of the New Mexico desert into an unbroken sky too blue to comprehend. Ghosts of slate mountains edged the horizon. This was the kind of day to spend sitting in the shade of my back deck, feet kicked up on the railing, listening to cicada song. Iced tea, homemade salsa, chips. Yeah, that would’ve been perfect, so would winning a million dollar lottery. Neither would happen any time soon.

In the cab of my tow truck, Maxine, helper of the day, yelled to high heaven. Her voice carried over the dog’s growl and the idle of the tow truck’s diesel engine. The only thing I understood clearly was a lot of Annie! this, and Annie! that. I couldn’t tell if she was mad at the dog for coming after me or mad at me for being so slow. Probably both.

The owner of the old Silverado was out of sight. Maybe he cowered in the dilapidated mobile home just twenty feet away. He was probably still laughing at my contortions while he peeked through the shabby curtains that hung lopsided from his living room window.

One of Mama’s famous sayings came to me at that moment as they often do throughout my days, Gotta make hay while the sun is shinin’. I listened to that country lesson whispering in my mind, then pulled the Authorization for Repossession from my back pocket. I squatted down and squinted through the cracked windshield at the VIN. I normally hook a vehicle before verifying it’s the one I want. Saves a lot of time and trouble. Possession is nine-tenths of the law after all – once I’ve got the repo hooked up, it belongs to me whether or not it’s still on private property. But the Silverado didn’t have tires, or much of anything else still attached to it. Barrel-sized weeds, almost dry enough to be tumbleweeds, grew around its base. The truck hadn’t run for months. Before I made the effort to find a pair of spares for the back, I needed to call my client and ask if he still wanted the piece of junk.

Maxine stopped yelling when I climbed onto the cab of the repo. I held my cell phone over my head, making like a human antenna. The trailer city of Meadow Lake was one of the last places on earth a cell signal reached on a regular basis. The nearest neighbors lived miles in any direction, and if they happened to see my predicament, they’d most probably cheer for the other side. No pessimism here, just simple fact. In this little back roads part of the world, xeriscape meant desert grasses growing wild around abandoned cars and mounds of trash. It’s the kind of place where parents don’t let their children go outside alone unless they want to give the gang members who reign here a new toy to play with.

While I stood there on top of the cab, in circumstances no normal person would ever find herself, the same thing came to mind that always grabs hold of me when I find myself so occupied: This is absolutely the last time. When I get out of this, never again. Too many things battled for time and attention in my life, health and finances among them. I just didn’t need another day like today.

This last straw was not the proverbial one on the poor camel’s back. That beast was real, without a doubt, and weighed down its entire life. But that single piece of straw was balanced on one of the old girl’s humps, easily shooed off by the swish of a tail or blown away on a light, desert breeze. No, my last straw was the kind I’d read about years ago in an old Ripley’s Believe-It-Or-Not Sunday morning comic strip. The one discovered sticking out from opposite sides of a telephone pole after a tornado slammed it into – and through – its hardened, weathered wood. Now that was a piece of straw, the kind that would break anyone’s back.

I got a signal and dialed my client. Cujo attacked the front grill.

Mama also used to say, You gotta take the good with the bad. I’ve found this little bit of optimistic pessimism to have held true my entire life. Surely the good waits just down the road a bit, somewhere past all those bumps and curves. Take childbirth. It comes with an abundance of joy and pain, with the possibility of some great chocolate cake at the end of it all, if the hospital is any good.

Without the bad in my life, the need to become a licensed private investigator would never have come about. Neither would working for the legal system, serving process on all kinds of people from ordinary citizens to a porno queen to the mayor of Albuquerque. I certainly wouldn’t have thought of owning my own tow truck and repossessing vehicles from sunup to sunup. Without the bad, raising four children would have been an unfulfilled dream. The joy of loving ten grandchildren, only a wish. Discovering my own potential in a mental ward, just a ridiculous notion. Without confronting the fear that grew out of decades of the bad, I wouldn’t be alive today.

No, I don’t ponder the truths of life when I’m in the thick of it all. Any inkling of deep thinking or philosophizing of any kind is swept clean out of my brain in favor of survival.

When I was younger, my red hair and I turned a few heads and bought me a few favors. It was easier then to dust myself off and go on, easier to recognize the good in the bad. With the passage of time, I’ve had to rely more and more on persistence and a go-to-hell attitude to get me through the day.

My client got on the phone. And just as I thought, he didn’t want the dang pickup.

I sat down on the cab, slid along the windshield and got to my hands and knees on the Silverado’s rusty hood. Cujo became even more crazed as I stretched out for the tow truck’s open window. My foot slipped – stupid to wear sandals on the job, I know – but I grabbed the edge of the window and braced up against the repo with my other foot. Just a few more contortions, pulling myself through while kicking my legs, and I was back in the driver’s seat of my F250.

As the tow truck bumped and swayed down the long road home, Maxine and I checked the side-view mirrors every few seconds. The repo’s owner could have had a working vehicle somewhere else on his property. Just because we hadn’t seen the man, didn’t mean he wasn’t watching and wouldn’t give chase out of spite. It wouldn’t be the first time. But only miles of a snaking dust trail followed us across the nearly flat, empty mesa. By the time we pulled onto the asphalt of the interstate, there was still no sign of pursuit.

My hands shook on the wheel. Adrenaline pumped through my veins. It would slack off over the next few hours but wouldn’t completely go away. What gives most people that burst of fight-or-flight energy is a normal, everyday, all-day thing for me. It’s a condition my doctor says has worn away at my body for years, but it’s an addiction that’s impossible to quit.

Laughter filled the cab for the first few minutes. The conversation between Maxine and me led naturally to an agreement of what a crazy business this is and ended with I’m sure glad this day is over. Silence followed immediately, but not because there was nothing else to say.

My vow to make this the last repo taunted me. Too many guard dogs, car chases, frayed nerves, guns held to my head. Years of last-straw bundles stacked in rows across a half-plowed field seemed to stretch to the horizon of my life. A lifetime’s worth of never-again insistence.

No one really knew me or what went into making Vinnie Ann AJ Jackson. My children were all grown up now with worries of their own. They seemed to think Mom was made of granite. After all, I’d never let them see me on my knees, even when life was at its worst. Only my youngest daughter, Kimbree, knew what my days were about, but even she didn’t know the whole truth.

Kimbree would be waiting for me in The Office, a small spare room right off my kitchen. Odds had it she still worked away on the computer, updating accounts, doing research and skip tracing, taking calls and scheduling jobs that kept us both afloat. It would be late by the time I walked in the door. Kimbree, worried but uncomplaining, would ask, How did your day go, Mom? Then I, eternally honest, would have to answer, I almost got bit in the butt again. How was your day?

My grandchildren knew their Mia’s softest side. She watched them several times a week, kept the fridge stocked with their favorite food, let them stay up late to watch movies or play games. They also knew Mia stole cars for a living. God forbid they followed in my footsteps.

For the thousandth time I resolved to quit. Then Daddy’s own wisdom came to mind. Always finish what you start. Quitting is the same as failing.

And the logical side of my brain, the darn ugly side, threw its two cents in. There was my retirement I’d never been able to save for, and the hopes and dreams I had for my future. Bills waited to be paid, a house needed fixing, people depended on me. For ten years I’d built this business. I was too old to start over. Again.

That last straw drifted out the open window and slid right into the center of the nearest haystack. The truth was still the truth. Even though I knew better than anyone else I couldn’t work the repo business forever, at that moment it seemed I had no choice and no truly compelling reason to quit.

There would be no last time, not unless the next lunging dog managed to reach my throat. Or the next person who pulled a gun on me actually decided to use it. And there would be plenty of never-agains to come.

The unspoken truth that hung in the air between Maxine and me filled the silence. Tomorrow was another day, just like all the others. It could bring an easy hook-n-book or another repo from hell.

Chapter 2

Let’s Go Down To The River

---

You can bathe a pig and call it a dog,

but that don’t make it a dog.

~ Old Country Saying

---

From the time I was six years old I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. That was the first year I rode the rails from Albuquerque to Clovis and back again. A one-way trip was more than 200 miles, south and east through the desert plains of New Mexico, and a long way for such a young child, but I had family with me from the time Mama kissed me goodbye at the old Alvarado Station.

Uncle Joe collected me in his navy blue conductor’s uniform and boosted me up onto the metal steps that led into a coach car. He held me up to wave goodbye to Mama. Then I took his hand and helped him collect tickets from the new passengers. I ate chocolate bars in the dining car as I watched sand and sage stream by outside the windows and held on to the railing at the back of the caboose while the wind sent my hair flying in every direction.

Once in Belen, Aunt Velma, Uncle Joe’s wife, met the train and took me home with her. After a few weeks of exploring the dry arroyos and rocky mesas with my cousins, I caught the eastbound train to Fort Sumner with Uncle Joe again, and his brother-in-law, Uncle Weldon. I never tired of the Fort Sumner branch of the family – Uncle Ted’s hugs, Aunt Meryl’s fried chicken, and Grandma Edward’s stories of the good ole days in Tennessee. I never spent enough time there to get bored. Before long, I was off on the next leg of my adventure.

The train didn’t make a regular stop in Fort Sumner, so when it came time to head east again, this time to Clovis, I stood beside Uncle Ted in the gravel next to the railroad tracks, waiting and watching. When we saw the flicker of a headlamp way off in the desert, the station conductor started flagging down the train, waving an old Coleman lantern across the tracks. He didn’t stop until we heard the answer of a train whistle. Such a sorrowful sound, that whistle. I spent the last few weeks with Aunt Loretta. Together we ate chocolate cake, pored over that summer’s Sears catalog with the newest in women’s fashions, and made the rounds from one neighbor’s house to another. When Aunt Loretta was done with me, she set me on the train back home to Albuquerque.

I made that 400-mile run summer after summer, until Uncle Weldon died in an awful train wreck. But long before that tragedy struck my heart, I gazed out the coach windows at the passing serenity with its dry grasses and stark blue sky, listened to the clickety-click of metal on metal, and developed a plan for my life. I’d get married and have tons of kids – eight to be exact. At the time, I didn’t think to question why I wanted that kind of life. But looking back, I realize I loved my growing-up years so much I didn’t want them to end. With kids of my own, maybe I could recreate everything I loved about that time and have a kind of eternal childhood.

In the 1950s, Albuquerque’s South Valley was a flat landscape of dirt roads and a smattering of small, dry adobe homes. Stands of tall cottonwood trees lined both sides of the Rio Grande. In the springtime, the air was filled with their white, cottony seeds like a host of tiny fairies floating slow-motion on a calm, invisible sea. The forest floor was alive with long-eared jackrabbits and grey ground squirrels, horned toads and blue-tailed lizards. Raccoon trails wound among the cottonwoods and through a stunted forest of dry cattails and sucker roots, to and from the shallow, muddy banks of the river. It was a place of hide-and-go-seek and buried treasure, horseback rides and treehouses. My younger brother Seidel and I spun countless adventures under that huge living canopy.

Beyond the stands of cottonwoods, on the west side of the river, ran a long irrigation ditch that fed green fields of alfalfa and wheat in the spring and summer, a patchwork of yellow squash and pumpkin in the late summer and fall. Not far from that ditch stretched a more narrow channel full of clear water. Minnows, tadpoles, and crawdads swam among the wild watercress growing in the gentle current. In that miniature river, Seidel and I played shipmates in a small boat Daddy made for us. We paddled as far as we could go, then got out and dragged the HMS Jackson upstream to the point near our house where we started. All the while our