Finding Sagrado

By Roger E. Carrier

A Teenage Odyssey for Adults and Mature Teenage Readers:
Selected for the "Albuquerque Easy Reading Parade" (Peter Kelton, March 21, 2014):
Five stars from the "San Francisco Book Review Magazine" (for the August issue):
Five stars from "Midwest Reviews" (Diane Donovan, May 2014):

Roger E. Carrier tells an engaging story of youth, redemption, and sexual coming of age in New Mexico. In 1971, seventeen-year-old Shane Russell makes a well-planned escape from a Michigan winter and sets off on a 2,000-mile bus trip in search of a town that exists only between the covers of Richard Bradford's famous New Mexico novel Red Sky at Morning.

Driven to recreate the nude scenes and build the mini Mount Rushmore in Bradford's fictional town of Sagrado, Shane forever touches the lives of his widowed landlady, the detective hired to find him, and his new friends at a colorful high school deep in the Land of Enchantment.

Against the backdrop of his father's death in Vietnam and life with his stepmother's new boyfriend, Shane flees the painful realities of his life. In doing so, he finds a place where bats fly and love heals the wounds of the human spirit.

Shane's sexual coming-of-age with Sandra (his new girlfriend) is both as funny and profound as youth. Become a teenager again in this rare story about the triumph of the human spirit over grief, the great adversary we all must face. The message of the novel is summarized in two words — "Keep Trying."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781462861972

Roger E. Carrier

Raised in Utah, Roger Carrier has traveled through some fifty countries by bus and train, including a three-month bus trip from Salt Lake City to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Sleeping in bars and run-down hotels, he made a similar hard-class journey through Africa and India. Roger, a retired teacher and businessman, is the author of A Celebration of Humanism and Freethought (Prometheus Press, 1995, pseudonym David Allen Williams). He is also a mountain climber, a reader of the classics, and collector of early 19th century rare books. He lives in Utah with his family. Finding Sagrado is his first published novel.

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Copyright © 2014 by Roger E. Carrier.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The author wishes to express his thanks for Bobbi’s photo work at Bobbi Steele Photography, American Fork, Utah, running on borrowed equipment and a dream.

Cover design by Rebecca Renieri of Athens, Greece.

Books, recordings, and songs referenced in this book:

Red Sky at Morning, Richard Bradford (New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1968); Bad Moon Rising, Creedence Clearwater Revival (John Fogerty, 1969); The Comancheros (Claude King, 1961); Window Up Above (George Jones, 1960); Walk Away Renée (The Left Banke, 1966), Come a Little Bit Closer (Jay and the Americans, 1964); Thank God and Greyhound (Roy Clark, 1970); Promised Land (Chuck Berry, 1965); Galveston (Glen Campbell, 1969); Unchained Melody (The Righteous Brothers, 1965); Let’s Live for Today (Grass Roots, 1967); Stand by Me (Ben E. King, 1961); Light My Fire (The Doors, Jim Morrison, 1967); House of the Rising Sun (Bob Dylan, 1961; Eric Burdon with The Animals, 1964); Deep Purple (Peter DeRose, 1923); The Sea of Love (John Phillips Baptiste (aka Phil Phillips) and George Khoury, 1959); Over the Mountain (Johnnie and Joe, 1957, written by Rex Garvin); Lost Horizon, James Hilton (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1933); The Red Pony, John Steinbeck (New York: Viking Press, 1937); Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Dee Brown (New York, Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1970).

Rev. date: 12/17/2014

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CONTENTS

1

Lansing, Michigan

September 1970

2

3

4

5

6

Lansing, Michigan

New Year’s Eve

7

8

9

10

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68

For Darcy Matthews, my editor and friend, who overcame the harsh realities of her early life and graduated from the University of Utah in her fifties.

*     *     *

For Alberta Shelton Wilberger, my 93-year-old aunt and former trapeze artist, who has been there for me from diapers until today.

My sister, Earlene Carrier Mitchell (d. 2003 of Huntington’s). Earlene was a leader in the fight for civil and gay rights in Utah at a time when these subjects were shamefully ignored by the powers that be.

My family and my brother, Duane. And of course, for my parents, Alma and Earl Carrier, who inspired us with their idealism and gave us the priceless gift of a large extended family.

*     *     *

For my good friend Matt Stout, who carries his wheelchair strapped to the back of the sidecar of his motorcycle. Go for it, Matt. You’re an inspiration!

*     *     *

For my stand-by-me friends of long ago: Arnie Brown, Dean Gilbert, Dale Petersen, and Lynn Thomas. As coincidence would have it, they made a movie that reflects our youth. Big Al, a nice guy, was our bad-ass Ace Merrill, and oddly, I wrote stories as did Gordie, the boy in the movie Stand by Me.*♥

____________

♥ Stand by Me, Columbia Pictures (1986). I sat through the movie with my mouth open, seeing my youth pass before my eyes. In a manner of speaking, I knew all the characters in the movie that was based on The Body, a short story by Stephen King. We also walked down the tracks singing Paladin. We really did. The piano version of Stand by Me is on soft replay as I write these words.

"O youth!

The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it!"

Joseph Conrad

1

Lansing, Michigan

September 1970

V IRGO INTACTA, Shane said on the drive to school. Alone in the car, he savored last night’s visit with Marcia. They were in his bedroom when she used the Latin phrase for an in tact virgin, and her teasing made it sound as if she had a disease in need of a cure. Shane smiled at the thought of volunteering to be her doctor. It would be a nice jo ke if she could hear him, and better still if he could tell her th at he loved her. But it would never happen. She inhabited the pages of a novel.

Shane wondered if he was going crazy. Maybe he was getting so lost in Red Sky at Morning that not even his tour guide, author Richard Bradford, could show him the way out. On the other hand, the only thing reality offered was his father dying in Vietnam forty days ago.

Oh well. Oh damn well.

Drifting again, he remembered the romance brewing between Marcia and Josh, and how Marcia enjoyed embarrassing Josh, who had been taught refined Southern manners. For a virgin, she often quipped, she had the worst reputation in Sagrado. It could not have been worse if she had slept with every boy on the school’s basketball team. To complicate things, her father was the rector of the St. Thomas Episcopal Church.

Lost in these reveries set in New Mexico, Shane wished he lived in Sagrado. Its name had a magic to it. To say it was to cast a spell, although his English teacher, who spoke four languages, probably did not have spells in mind when she had the class repeat the correct pronunciation. She was unaware that her lesson had struck a not-so-hidden chord with a student who was often not listening. This explained why the town’s name rolled off his tongue in Spanish as polished as a conquistador’s sword.

Sagra—

Shane slammed the brake pedal to the floor and screeched to within inches of a police car’s rear bumper. His mouth open and heart thumping, he watched the cop jump out and bolt to his open window.

Sorry. I was—

You shut up and listen. The cop jabbed his finger at Shane’s face. If you had hit me, I would’ve hauled your ass off to jail, you understand me? Now let me see your driver’s license and registration.

Shane handed over his license and reached into the glove compartment. He found the registration in a leather folder and passed it to the cop. He swallowed before speaking.

It’s my dad’s car. He died last month, and I guess I haven’t been thinking straight.

The cop raised an eyebrow.

That true? You can get a ticket for giving false information to a police officer.

Shane reached into the glove compartment again. He rummaged through the papers until he found a folded sheet of blue parchment.

Here’s the funeral program, he said, handing it out the window.

Damn, the cop said, looking at it before returning everything. I’m really sorry. But remember, driving a Cadillac doesn’t make you invincible. I’m sick and tired of scraping dead teenagers off the road.

Shane nodded.

I know. I’ve been driving for nine months without any tickets or accidents. I’ll be more careful. I promise.

Okay, but watch the road. I’m sure your mother wants you to make it to your seventeenth birthday. The cop reached in and gave him a pat on the shoulder. I’m sorry for your loss.

Thanks.

After the cop pulled through the intersection, Shane slapped his hands onto the steering wheel.

Wake up and drive, damn it.

He bit his lip. Those were his father’s words from a year ago. The memory brought a smile but also the pain of not being able to remember the sound of his father’s voice. Memories were so unfair. They preserved words and images but turned voices into whispers captured in the pine grove by the front gate. On breezy nights, he often stood by his open window listening for a word or phrase to escape.

*     *     *

Shane rolled into the school parking lot, his daydreams having vanished with the screech of his tires. What occupied his mind now was a worry concerning Ron, his best friend. Last week, Ron and Jackie broke up, and Ron had pressured him to ask her out.

You’ve gotta do it. I need to show her how much I don’t care that she’s always flirting with other guys. As far as I’m concerned, the more you get the better.

Shane chose not to argue and took Jackie to a movie on Saturday night. Afterward, they parked on a side street and made out for ten minutes, long enough for Jackie to encourage him to feel her breasts through her blouse. The experience made him think he was ready to say goodbye to Marcia.

At her door, however, Jackie only gave him a peck on the cheek.

I don’t care if you tell Ron about this.

He drove home angry at how he had been used in a stupid game—used by Ron to test Jackie’s loyalty and used by Jackie to get back at Ron. This flare of emotion took all of fifteen minutes to burn away. Jackie’s breasts had felt good enough to more than compensate for the negative part.

I’ll have to talk to you tomorrow, Ron said when he called on Sunday to tell him what a jerk he had been. We’re on our way out the door to visit my aunt.

The undertones of the phone call were stirring in his mind when he entered the school on Monday and headed for Ron’s locker, their meeting place. Smiling, he approached his friend as he was leaning against the wall.

Hey, how’s it goin’? he asked, slapping Ron on the arm.

Ron’s face turned ugly, and he grabbed him by the collar.

It ain’t, he said, pulling him close to his face. Stay the hell away from her.

Shane pushed back hard, but Ron hit him in the jaw, rammed into him, and knocked him to the floor. He jumped to his feet and charged, throwing a punch that bloodied Ron’s upper lip.

At that instant, the energy of the fight evaporated. Shane backed off and watched his friend wipe his mouth and look at his hand. His glare as he raised his head revealed more than broken skin—a friendship had died.

In the midst of clapping and calls to resume the fight, one of the boys grabbed Shane by the arm.

Beat it. Here comes Durrant.

By the time the vice principal plowed his way through the crowded hall, the fighters had disappeared.

The hours rolled along as Shane ignored the voices of his teachers. He spent his time with Marcia, whose loving face faded away whenever the fight intruded into his daydreams. What the hell was Ron thinking? It didn’t matter. Rubbing his sore jaw, he decided he was glad the fight had ended in a draw. Ron’s bloody lip was a lesson in respect. He wouldn’t try that shit again.

But now, in English, the last period of the day, he had to pay attention. Miss Juliette, a former nun who spoke with a French accent, demanded full participation from every student, no matter how many fights you’d been in and no matter if your whole damn family had been murdered the night before.

Standing by her desk, Miss Juliette gave the class her dreaded tight-lipped smile.

I have an important announcement, she said. I was under the impression that students in advanced English were mature enough to do their own reports. Regrettably, I was wrong. So, from now on, all reports will have to be handwritten.

The groans arising from the class did not change Miss Juliette’s superior expression. She straightened her posture.

You honest students wouldn’t want someone else doing your work on a typewriter, would you?

I would, came a tuba voice from the back of the room.

Shane laughed with his classmates. Mizz Juliette, as the kids buzzed it out, talked through her nose and extolled the virtues of the good old days when teachers were encouraged to slap the palms of inattentive and disrespectful students with a ruler.

The class ended with twenty minutes of silent study, and Shane slipped his copy of Red Sky at Morning into the pages of Lost Horizon, the novel everyone was now supposed to be reading. Sarah, his stepmom, loved to get lost in a good book, but neither she nor anyone else knew how lost he was in this particular one. What began as a fascination a few weeks ago had become an obsession, an intimate part of his life, something that intruded constantly into his thoughts. The timeless virtues of Sagrado during World War II were a soothing contrast to the confusion simmering throughout America over the slaughter taking place in Southeast Asia.

After school, Shane drove home without seeing Ron in the halls or the parking lot.

Fine by me, he said, turning the radio full blast to hear Creedence warning people about the approaching storms of destruction.

Despite this morning’s near accident, he was going too fast, singing and bouncing in his seat as he tapped out the beat on the steering wheel.

With the windows down, the whole world could hear Bad Moon Rising.

*     *     *

Sarah, who prided herself on being a good cook, warmed up yesterday’s mushroom chicken and hurried to her room, taking the left branch of the two curved staircases. That left Shane and his seven-year-old half-brother to fend for themselves.

Brooding over the fight, Shane had kept his mouth shut.

Where’s she going? he asked as they watched TV.

Bobby shrugged.

Five minutes later, the doorbell rang, prompting the boy to tongue a raspberry. Shane tossed an M&M at him.

Hey, you little creep, he said, rising from a comfortable chair. How about you answer the door once in a while?

Bobby raspberried him again, but he ignored the taunt and put his eye to the peephole.

What’s he doing here? he said to himself, irritated by who he saw standing in the alcove.

But what could he do? He opened the door to face Boyd Talbot, the manager of the family’s sand and gravel business. Boyd, a man a few years younger than Sarah, smiled at him.

Is your mom home?

Shane glanced at the yellow roses Boyd was attempting to hide behind his back.

Uh, yeah. I’ll let her know you’re here. Come in and take a seat on the couch.

He climbed the stairs with his jaw set tight over Sarah’s failure to mention her date. Making it worse was the reason why. She hadn’t been trying to learn the business. Boyd Talbot was the real reason she had been spending so much time at the office, a shack at the edge of a gravel pit.

The stilted building sported a potbelly stove, a blue coffeepot, and a collection of beer bottles lined up on every windowsill. The smell of coffee never failed to evoke one of Shane’s earliest memories. He was standing on a chair by a window as his father and mother sipped coffee. They were watching gravel cascade from front-end loaders into the beds of ten-wheel trucks.

The woman in that vision died in a car crash when he was nine. If Sarah knew how she had violated the sacred memory brought on by the smell of coffee, she might have understood his anger. But he wasn’t in the mood to tell her or to ask for an apology.

No father, no real mom, no best friend. And now, the crusher: a virtual stranger stepping unannounced into his life. He wished he could conjure up his father’s ghost and jam his finger into his face, the same as the cop had done to him, and say, You should have told me that I was going to be left all alone.

He paused at Sarah’s door to allow the poison of such thoughts—and he knew it was poison—to recede.

Mr. Talbot is here, he called through the door.

Locking himself in his room, he stared into his dresser mirror. A teenager with brown hair covering his ears stared back at him.

You’re a handsome young man, his father had said. Any parent would say the same thing, but his next comment still bothered him. Good straight nose, strong jaw, thoughtful eyes.

Thoughtful eyes? What the hell did that mean?

Some things about his father didn’t make any sense. Not many gravel-pit owners prided themselves on having read such classics as the Republic, Don Quixote, and Jefferson’s letter thanking Connecticut’s Danbury Baptists for their resolute support of the separation of church and state. Shane remembered snickering because he heard it as the Damn-buried Baptists.

Listen, his father had scolded, you need to know this. Our freedom depends on it.

His father, an intellectual who fell into a gravel pit—to use his own words for how he entered the sand and gravel business—spoke with precision. If he had meant intelligent eyes, he wouldn’t have said thoughtful. But now it was too late to question him. He could ask Sarah, but she would just say something to please him.

Did girls like boys with thoughtful eyes? Thoughtful was awfully close to boring. He should have left it at blue eyes. At least a color was something you could understand.

To hell with it, he said at last and reached for his marked-up copy of Red Sky at Morning.

Marcia was waiting for him on page thirty-five, where she was bragging about her pretty butt.

2

H EY, SHANE, B oyd said a month later at dinner, if you don’t get a haircut soon, you’ll have to join a hippie co mmune.

Shane gave him a polite smile and used both hands to brush his hair away from his ears.

Good idea, he said. San Francisco, here I come.

The words had no sooner left his mouth than he was shaken by a simple idea. A minute passed as the solution to all his problems danced, tumbled, and leaped across his mind. He was going to run away and live in Sagrado, New Mexico. His conviction also carried a necessary lie. He would have to plant a seed indicating another direction.

Shane’s a hippie, Bobby teased. Shane’s a hippie.

In response, he leaped to his feet and plucked an artificial daisy from a nearby vase. He stuck it in his hair.

Yeah, I’m a hippie. And I’m going to San Francisco.

Everybody laughed.

Later, upstairs in his room, he realized how God or fate had been bringing the plan together. His fascination with Red Sky at Morning spoke of some hidden design, rather than the mindless unrolling of the universe.

He had cheered last summer at not making the cut for advanced English.

There’s too much reading, too many reports, and I’ve heard that the teacher’s got a board up her butt.

Watch your mouth, his father had said, irritated at Shane’s attitude. You wait. I’m going to fix this.

Funny how a rich parent could influence a school’s hard-and-fast rules. His father had forced the class change a week before he flew off to Vietnam. That’s how he came to be lost in Bradford’s novel. The general classes were reading something else. As Shane considered the mystery, his eyes opened wide at this turn of fate, this law of unintended consequences, this invisible hand of providence, or whatever the hell it was called.

Serendipity?

His father taught him many such things, and he had paid enough attention to see what other kids his age wouldn’t have spotted: the fallout from the class change. If his father hadn’t gone to the school to force the change, all kinds of events might have rolled in another direction, including the plane crash, which might not have happened at all.

Another fact teased at his imagination, tempting him to see invisible forces at work. Two days after the fatal news, he slipped away to his father’s basement stash. He took thirty-two hundred dollars in fifties and hid them inside the heating duct in his room.

Despite his idealism, his father was not perfect. He didn’t report all of his cash income. A safe-deposit box contained most of the money. His father had shared this secret with the family, but not even Sarah knew about the basement stash. She had never mentioned the money and a thousand dollars was still there. Shane knew of it from playing outside the window when he was twelve.

Taking the money, he realized later, had been an attempt to keep his father’s memory alive. The stash was a secret known only by the two of them. He sensed that such secrets, especially those unshared, held more value than any treasured gift. Gifts gathered dust on a shelf. They were reminders of the dead. But secrets had the power to give life to a person’s memory. In particular, this secret gave him the freedom to make decisions without consulting Sarah.

Money is power was another of his father’s sayings. But, he would add, if you want to be happy, you have to use that power to help make a better world.

Secrets bred secrets, and now he had his own—the novel. From this day on, he would keep the book hidden in his room to avoid any hint of an interest in New Mexico. If the subject of travel came up, he would enthusiastically mention California.

What a turn his life had taken. Running away had never crossed his mind until Boyd Talbot started hanging around and taking Sarah out on dates. Even then, he hadn’t considered it until Boyd joked about him becoming a hippie. The only thing he and Boyd had in common was brown hair. The kidding around did not reflect a change in Boyd’s opinions. His eyes spoke of disapproval of anything but a crew cut on a man, whatever his age. He had the brain of a drill sergeant, and Shane didn’t want to be in his army.

*     *     *

The next evening, Sarah called him to the phone.

Hi, Ron said, coughing. Sorry I got mad. Jackie and me broke up. She’s dating Greg Olson now. Wanna go for a ride? I’ve got my dad’s new car.

Sure, Shane said, surprised at the out-of-the-blue call.

When Ron pulled to a stop in the driveway, he climbed into the yellow Lincoln Continental. The fight might never have happened the way his friend talked about his brother’s motorcycle and the new car. They drove to Ron’s house and charged into the basement.

My dad won’t notice if this one’s missing, Ron said, pulling a bottle of beer from a cooler. He had his card buddies over last night. Here, you first.

Shane took a swig from the bottle and handed it back. They traded swigs and burped and laughed. Things felt normal again.

They ran upstairs to have some cake.

The Quagmire of Vietnam, Shane read to himself as he picked up a pamphlet on the kitchen table. During World War II, there was moral clarity . . . 

By the time he finished, he was frowning.

What’s this shit? Are you a communist sympathizer?

Hell no, Ron said, waving it off. My brother sent it to me from college.

It doesn’t matter. You’re forgetting my dad. He might not have been a soldier, but he died to keep South Vietnam free.

I’m not forgetting. Ron raised his hands to avoid another fight. Listen, the war is a lost cause, and it’s stupid to stay in it another day.

Shane stared at him.

Put your hands down, he said at last. You’re the one who started that fight.

Ron gave him a sheepish grin and swatted him on the arm. Shane swatted him back. They were even. The debate was over.

He arrived home more depressed than usual, asking once again why his father had to die, and once again the question hung in the air waiting for some answer other than it was God’s will. He hated the answers offered by religion and philosophy. Those answers did not, could not, and would not bring his father and mother back to life. How could it be God’s will for him to lose everything that mattered?

There was but one escape from those kinds of questions. He opened Bradford’s book and returned to the warmth of New Mexico.

Toward the end of the story, Josh and Marcia were talking, and Marcia said that Sagrado was a place to hide. It was a place to hide from wars, from cities with dreary rows of little houses, and from people who tossed their money around with the bluster of an amateur baseball pitcher throwing practice balls.

Knowing it was the thought that counted, Shane didn’t feel guilty for living in a big house with a double front door set inside an alcove. Besides, his family was careful with their money.

Winter baseball, he thought, shivering at the prospect of winter. Yes, snow fell in Sagrado, but the inhabitants of New Mexico (Zee Land of Enchantment, as Miss Juliette had emphasized) basked in the sun most of the year. A mild Michigan winter could pitch a no-hitter to the coldest town in New Mexico.

In the story, Joshua Arnold had explored New Mexico on a road trip with his parents. His father owned a shipyard in Alabama and had originally journeyed west in search of a dry climate as therapy for his son’s skin problems. If the boy broke out in any more sores, Mr. Arnold told his wife, he would have to be committed to the state leprosarium.

The family’s travels in New Mexico led them to the quiet town of Sagrado, where Mr. Arnold built a hacienda on nine acres. As the owner of a shipyard, he was exempted from military service but chose to volunteer for the Navy.

That left Josh, his mother, and Cousin Jimbob—a penniless non-relative and insufferable houseguest with dubious claims to Southern aristocracy—to live together while Mr. Arnold fought the Germans. And died.

Same as my dad in Vietnam, Shane thought, seeing him as a soldier rather than a military contractor who died in an accident.

Boyd Talbot reminded him of Jimbob Buel, and it was easy to dismiss the differences between the two men. Boyd didn’t play bridge with his mother or drink sherry as Jimbob did, and he wasn’t a houseguest—yet.

It was the same old story of an outsider worming his way into the life of a family while the man of the house was off fighting a war or dying in a foreign land.

The suitors of the wife of Odysseus did the same thing. Last year in tenth grade, Shane read the Odyssey and was reminded of it again in Bradford’s novel. Like Odysseus, Josh Arnold’s father joked that after the war he would walk inland with an oar over his shoulder, and when he came to a town where people didn’t know what an oar was, he would settle there.

Sagrado.

3

S HANE DECIDED TO WAIT until the beginning of the