The Second Chronicle of Luna City: Chronicles of Luna City, #2

By Celia Hayes and Jeanne Hayden

Welcome to Luna City, Karnes County, Texas … Population 2,454.  Joe Vaughn, the stalwart chief of the Luna City Police Department, wants to keep that figure at that – if he has anything to say …

But fugitive former celebrity chef, Richard Astor-Hall (formerly Rich Hall, the Bad Boy Chef) now contentedly managing the Luna Café and Coffee – has had a significant person from his past catch up to him.

The seven-year-old son of Richard’s assistant chef and head waitress at the Café found a priceless gold coin in the chicken enclosure at Mills Farm during their widely-publicized yearly Easter Egg Hunt. Is this fabulous coin proof of the existence of the fabled Charley Mills Treasure?  No matter; either way, the amateur and professional treasure-hunters are out in force, their attention bent upon Mills Farm, the high-end resort property just down the road from Luna City…

Then there is the major Hollywood movie production company doing location shoots – but what is the movie really about? When producer and director claim that it is a sweeping and historically-accurate account of an epochal event in Texas history, are they being entirely truthful?

Luna City, where eccentricity is just a part of every-day life. Drop in for a visit – you might never want to leave.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Celia Hayes
• Release date: Jul 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536514629

Celia Hayes

Celia Hayes works as a restorer and lives in Naples. Between one restoration and another, she loves to write. Don't Marry Thomas Clark reached #1 in the Amazon Italian Ebook chart.

Book preview

The Second Chronicle

of Luna City

The Continuing Comic Diversion

By

Celia Hayes

&

Jeanne Hayden

GA Logo - Long version

San Antonio, 2016

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Copyright © 2015 Celia D. Hayes & Jeanne Hayden

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Geron & Associates

A Division of Watercress Press. 2016

Cover design by Alex of 3iii’s Graphic Studios

Chapter heading illustrations are derived from photographs taken by the authors in various locations. The 1956 Ford pick-up which is featured on the cover is the property of Cletus J. Wertz, of San Antonio, who very kindly allowed us to take pictures of it specifically for this volume.

Dedication

Thank you to the readers who liked the first book and demanded the second one. To my family, friends and the memory of those who have gone before. Semper Fidelis!

Jeanne Hayden

This second set of scribbles set in Luna City is dedicated to those residents of small to medium-sized towns which have not only welcomed us over the past half-dozen years, but have also served as an inspiration: Fredericksburg, Boerne, Bulverde, Beeville, Goliad, Gonzalez, Comfort, Richmond, Junction, San Saba and Harper, to Giddings, Llano and Lockhart, New Braunfels and Kerrville. It is also dedicated to those readers who – although they may never have set foot in Texas – have their own appreciation for small-town America.

Celia Hayes,

San Antonio, 2016

Contents

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Dramatis Personae

Chamber of Commerce Spring Newsletter

That’s Show-biz

Lights, Camera, Action for Luna City – Talk of the Town

Karnes Company Rangers Living History Association

The Unexpected Egg

A Lucky Find

Upstairs in Mills Farm Security Central

Higher Ed

Miss Letty Disposes

In the Telecommunications Center

The Age of Aquarius Lives Yet

Chamber of Commerce Summer Newsletter

It’s a Go for the Road to San Jacinto

Memorial Day in Luna City

Things that Go Bump in the night

Fruit of the Vine

Of Mustang Grape Wine and Memory

Your Mission, Should You Accept It

Directive to Local Hires and Extras

With Catlike Tread

A Dish Best Eaten Cold

Berto’s Star

4th of July – Love and Rockets

The Perils of Jess

Errands and Diversions

Electra Pee in Blue

The Charge of the Karnes County Rangers

Comeback Launch Fail

Chamber of Commerce Fall Newsletter

VJ-71

Wherefore Art Thou Romeo

Dramatis Personae

Herewith a short alphabetical listing of residents of Luna City and Mills Farm, who feature in these pages, or are mentioned in passing. An asterisk (*) marks those characters who, although deceased, still have a strong presence, one way or another.

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Chamber of Commerce Spring Newsletter

That’s Show-biz

In the early morning, before the sun was more than a brief bright apricot rumor along the eastern horizon, Richard Astor-Hall pedaled grimly along the back road from the aged Airstream caravan at the Age of Aquarius Campground and Goat Farm towards the site of his daily labors. At least now the Airstream was beautifully and comfortably-maintained, since he appeared to have been informally adopted by the sprawling and omnipresent Gonzales-Gonzalez clan, on top of paying rent to Sefton and Judy Grant from his income from the Café. This was managed through Jess Abernathy, whose firm hands channeled the financial streams of a myriad of Luna City enterprises, including that of the Café and of the Age of Aquarius Campground and Goat Farm.

Rent. I manage all of Sefton and Judy’s financials as well as those of the Café, Jess informed him, some months ago when he asked

for an explanation for a certain deduction marked every month in his stipend from the Café paid into a bank account at a bank in Karnesville.

Why? Richard had asked. Can’t they manage for themselves?

Jess frowned. They are communists, she explained, in a patient kind of voice which absolutely rubbed him the wrong way.

I thought you Yanks disapproved of communists in the most strenuous fashion, Richard replied, to which Jess snapped, In the old sense, Richard; the lower case-c sense. Judy and Sefton are the last of an idealistic colony of true believers in a system which is only practical when it involves volunteers who work hard to benefit the collective and when it comes to finance, they don’t have the sense that God gave a goose. But they do good work and a lot of it, she fixed Richard with a commanding glare. So – I see to handing the takings from the goats and the campground and their Saturday market. I make certain that their taxes, utilities, health insurance and license fees are all paid ... so the Grants can go on with tending their goats and worrying about whether it is ethical to weave with machine-made yarns. Never mind Judy twittering on about all that New Agey crap; she and Sefton show up when anyone needs help, and Judy hasn’t yet met a suffering animal that she doesn’t want to rescue. Who do you think fosters all those cats and dogs dumped out here in the country by idiot former owners? From each according to their abilities, Jess added with a particularly cutting turn of sarcasm, And to each, according to their needs. Or as we call it around here, supply and demand. I demand regular supplies of their honey, eggs, and goat-milk rosemary soap in return for economic services rendered and Judy supplies them: a win-win, all the way around.

I regret even asking, Richard said and Jess snorted. On further consideration, though, he had to admit to himself that he rather favored Jess’s system of intelligent budgeting and rigid cost-to-benefit analysis. (‘Can we afford this for the Café?’ ‘No, not until ....’ Or sometimes, ‘Yes, but only up to this amount.’)

In his past life, he had been spectacularly careless with money. I had millions of pounds in income once and blew most on loose women and abuse-worthy substances. The rest I wasted. That recollection led to a dire contemplation of the other recently-arrived element of that old life.

Now he pedaled the bicycle along the verge of one of the unpaved back roads which eventually led into the heart of Main Square, Luna City, still pondering on the unfairness of it all. The bike was a mountain model, which had come to him through the largess of the Gonzales/Gonzalez clan, through one or another the the seniors bashfully admitting that it was a great bike, but the son – or possibly the grandson – had outgrown it or moved on to other and less environmentally-sustainable means of getting around. Hey, Ricardo, it’s a good way to get to work! You want it? Twenty-five dollars; I’ll tell Jess and it’s paid for.

As he came up on Route 123, he saw the lights of an automobile at a distance – ah, one of those grossly over-chromed SUVs. Knowing that drivers were apt to speed, in spite of the efforts of Chief Vaughn’s patrol cars and the much more substantial hazard posed by deer insouciantly wandering into the traffic lanes, Richard braked the bicycle, went onto the narrow gravel-and-weed shoulder of the road and waited for the SUV to pass. Which it did – about fifty yards farther along Route 123, where a number of unaccustomed lumps lay, slightly off the tarmac.

It looked, from where Richard stood, as if a deer had gone mano-a- deero against a mechanized vehicle, with predictable results. Hundred- pound deer, five-thousand-pound motor vehicle – which was going to win that contest? To his mild curiosity, the SUV slowed abruptly and went off into the shoulder. The blinking hazard lights flicked on, and someone emerged from the vehicle ... a masculine outline, a male someone followed by a faintly overheard burst of indignant Korean in a familiar and feminine steam-whistle shriek. Ah; Clovis and Sook Walcott. Richard wondered why on earth Clovis should be interested in roadkill – but not for very long. To the tune of a final machine-gun burst of Korean, the shadowy figure of Clovis got back into the driver’s side, the blinking red hazard lights resumed their steady beam and with a roar the SUV pulled back onto the road and vanished around the next bend. Now that the road was empty, Richard remounted the bike and carried on – he had another fifteen minutes before he was due at the Café.

When he got to the place where the Walcotts had pulled off the road he saw that yes – indeed a deer; relatively undamaged from the impact but quite plainly dead; neck at a grotesquely unnatural angle. Nearby lay another roadkill; this one a hulking black bird of the kind he was given to know was called a ‘turkey-buzzard,’ also sprawled on the edge of the pavement with one wing upraised like a small black sail. The turkey- buzzard stank like a charnel-house. Why this unlovely spectacle of vehicular/wildlife mayhem had drawn Clovis Walcott’s intense interest was a mystery indeed. In the seven months or so that Richard had lived in Luna City and bicycled back and forth between the Café and the Age, he had seen it often enough himself ... and even more often, the live deer creatures, wandering dainty and long-legged in the open spaces between thickets, or the turkey-vultures soaring on motionless dark wings in the faultless azure midday sky. But – he said to himself, in a grumpy acknowledgement he had made a thousand times in the last six months and would doubtless make a hundred thousand times more – this was Luna City, Texas.

He continued pedaling through the pre-dawn dimness, relishing the welcome chill of it all after the ungodly summer heat, a chill which had left a slight crunch of frost on certain grassy spaces. The sky was the color of mother-of-pearl, an elusive shimmering shade flushed with pink and apricot-orange, evanescent. He passed the bright orange Luna City Independent School District bus, pausing briefly at an intersection on the outskirts of town to collect a gaggle of small children, swathed in their winter coats and burdened with small rucksacks. These children were also burdened with the attention of watchful mothers and the occasional father who went scattering to their own daily devices once the school bus bore their offspring away.

He waved to Patrick Gonzalez, rumpled in his oil-stained coveralls, and sleepy-eyed from a night of driving a tanker truck; it seemed to be his morning to see Angelika and Mateo off to school, while Araceli turned on the lights and the coffee-machines at the Café.

Still ruminating alternately over why Clovis Walcott was  so interested in fresh roadkill and his own predicament with regard to the recent inconvenient visitor to Luna City, Richard turned down the narrow street which ran along the back of that block of buildings. Most of them housed garaging or at least a place to park a car, and in the case of the Café, the rubbish bin, a small weed-grown space and a small loading dock. The Steins, in the next building over, had a garage and a small shed at the very back, with a walled little garden between it and the rear windows of the main shop. As Richard wheeled into the back of the Café, he saw Georg’s bare-bones sedan backing out of their garage. He wondered vaguely what brought out Georg so early; on most mornings, he and Annise were over in the Café at that large table in front of the front window – what Georg jokingly called the ‘stammtisch’ – where the  regular patrons gathered.

He let himself in through the back door into the kitchen, which smelt divinely of fresh coffee and baking cinnamon rolls. Araceli was empting out the dishwasher, stacking plates and mugs with nervous efficiently and a great deal more force than strictly necessary. She glared at Richard, as he shrugged off his winter coat; this was a vintage military field jacket from Marisol Gonzalez’ second-hand shop in Karnesville. Chris Mayall at the Gas & Grocery had already been humorous  about it, but the jacket  was well-made and warm.

That friend of yours is here, She said, sounding if she were speaking around a clenched jaw. The English one.

Not a friend, Richard sighed. More like an associate ... and I regret like hell that it was ever that close.

Oh, Rich, drawled the visitor in tones of tragic disappointment. Alas, Richard’s visitor was leaning picturesquely in the door way to the main room of the Café. I am cut to the quick. I thought we were best chums, always.

Nope. Richard was inordinately proud of the way that he thought  he had adopted something of the classic western bent towards the taciturn. Besides it was past time to fire up the griddle and start the bacon, then those slivered ham slices that everyone called Canadian bacon, and finally a nice vat of scrambled eggs.

You’re a brute, Rich; a cold, cold unfeeling brute.

All a part of my happy, inconsequent charm, Richard answered, sternly unmoved.

I come all the way to this out-of-the way hole, his visitor protested; tragically wounded as to expression, languid as to posture in the doorway, I endeavor to make myself pleasant to your friends, rekindle our old relationship, relish the charms of this quaint little village, and this is my reward?

We were never friends, Richard replied, his attention bent upon the griddle, and preparations for the morning rush of breakfast customers. It was a mutually-advantageous association; friendship had bloody-all to do with it. Are you going to stand in the door all morning, with Araceli and the girls constantly stepping around you? You’ll be trampled underfoot in the morning rush for cinnamon rolls – consider yourself warned.

If you truly feel that way, Rich, there came the deep and wounded sigh. I’ve tried to reach out to you so many times! You never replied.

Life is full of these little tragedies, Richard brought out a bowl of eggs from the refrigerator and began cracking them with deft and systematic skill into another. After some moments, he looked up from this task.  ’Ere – you still there?

I am, replied the visitor. Araceli took up a tray upon hearing the front door open and close with a musical chime, and interjected, Well better find another wall to hold up. Your special order is ready. Best eat it before it gets cold, then.

"You take such good care