Bridgetown (Omnibus Edition)

By Giovanni Iacobucci

The mythic Old West saga of love in an age of time travel, psychedelic soothsayers, and nuclear war is finally complete. Collected for the first time in one volume, "Bridgetown: Arrival" and "Bridgetown: Cost of Business" are joined by the exciting climax of the Cole family saga, "Bridgetown: Fire!"

Bridgetown is a place filled with men and women whose ambitions drive them to infamy. Here, gunpowder, sweat, machine oil and greed serve as kindling to the fires of the mythic Old West. Rebellious Susanna Tanner is cast back into the time of her ancestors, along with the brothers who are in love with her, Jesse and Wayne Cole. As the Brothers Cole vie for Susanna's love and their own place in the pages of history, they remake the past in their own image. Wayne becomes a wealthy industrialist, equal parts Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. Jesse calls for a countercultural revolution against his robber-baron brother. And Susanna fights for her own glory in an age before women could even vote. But with their actions comes a grave threat from the mysterious Mister Black: Abandon your aspirations, or destroy the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Giovanni Iacobucci
• Release date: Oct 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463707845

Giovanni Iacobucci

GIOVANNI IACOBUCCI is an author and media producer in Los Angeles. He’s been building a sprawling saga for years, of which Bridgetown is only the first part. He is the founder of Modern Mythos Media, a digital media imprint for narrative artists interested in telling compelling stories. ModMyth’s daily habit is LA Revivalist (www.larevivalist.com), where the team shines light on what’s going on in the Los Angeles independent cinema scene.

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cover-image, Bridgetown (Omnibus Edition)

(CC) 2014-2018 by Giovanni Iacobucci / Modern Mythos Media

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First edition printing (October 2018)

Issue #1: Arrival.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Issue #2: Cost of Business.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

Issue #3: Fire!

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Epilogue.

Afterword.

Chronology of Events

About the Author.



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O m n i b u s E d i t i o n

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B RIDGETOWN

A Novel in Three Issues

Issue #1: Arrival .

By Giovanni Iacobucci

1.

Picture a vast expanse of dry earth. There is no exotic romance here, no ancient Arab empire buried under hot dunes. Rather, there is only the scrubby chaparral of the Los Angeles foothills, with soil so hard it resists the incision of a shovel. Imagine this place long before the arrival of concrete aqueducts and eight-lane asphalt highways, when the land beneath was still pregnant with undiscovered oil.

A man hobbles into our view now, listless. He’s bleeding out. His white tunic is torn open, soaked through with perspiration and stained red with his own blood. He clutches a dark canvas sack just as he clings to his fading soul. At last he collapses, taking in a mouthful of barren dust through cracked lips. His stolen prize is still in his hand.

He does not emit so much as a whimper as his organs begin to shut down. He only curses his god and the accomplices who abandoned him. He harbors no ill will towards the man who put the bullet into his belly. The rival had only been playing out his own part in the drama that unfolds on this unforgiving stage.

The earth continues its dance around the sun. In time, all that remains of the man is a skeleton in sun-bleached rags, its bones picked clean. The prize for which the man died is gone now, claimed by some more fortunate passer-by.

Sagebrush grows up, up through the hollow rib cage, until at last the vegetation is tall enough to cover his body fully. An El Niño year brings with it flash floods that fill this basin with mud, and in this way, the desert finally grants him a proper burial, its downpour standing in for tears. Now, he is truly forgotten by this world.

This scrubland comes to be called Pasadena, for its original Tongva name has become every bit as buried as the man. The oil is at last sucked from its reserves. A road is paved, and the man’s gravesite is marked by a sign that promises new housing and new possibilities for the families of GIs returning home from war. A house is erected. Where the bandit’s remains were once visible, a patch of crabgrass is planted in a grid. The lawn is, unintentionally, fit to the Golden Ratio.

A Chevrolet Nomad the color of Pepto-Bismol is parked in front of this single-story dwelling. A little girl in a blue dress plays in the front yard. Two yards beneath her, a human skull bears silent testament to the history of this place.

The girl becomes a young woman and begins to take an interest in boys and music. Her parents find their first gray hairs in the bathroom mirror, and their thoughts turn to how things used to be better. In the driveway, the Nomad’s future-forward tailfins are replaced with the pragmatic lines of a Cadillac Deville in Sudan Beige.



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It was August 15th, 1970, when eighteen-year-old Susanna Tanner planted her flag in an unknowable future.

I’m going, and you have no say in it. I’m an independent woman.

Her father leaned against a doorframe in their home’s front hall, wearing a look of sublime parental resignation.

Susanna had seen this face on him twice before:

The first was when, at the age of nine, she announced she was quitting Girl Scouts. This she had demonstrated with a dramatic stomp upon her green sash.

The second time had been at the start of summer, when she told her father she was skipping prom to hang out with Jesse Cole, a twenty-something musician on the local rock circuit with a following that was, in her words, cult.

Susanna’s father was beside himself at this latest incursion in her youth-rebellion blitzkrieg. He shrugged and said, You know what this means.

I know, she replied. Her tone was almost apologetic. Don’t worry, I already packed my things.

Her father pursed his lips and nodded. Then he turned and walked away. Susanna listened to the heels of the loafers he refused to take off—even indoors— clack-clack their way into nothingness.

She turned back into her bedroom. Its walls were pink, a color she’d never particularly cared for, even as a child. Her bed was too short by several inches for her to really stretch out, which was odd, since weren’t these things standardized? Standing there amid the relics of her childhood, she felt like she had been living in a dollhouse her whole life. These weren’t her things; these were things that had been prescribed to her, beginning at birth. What she needed to do was make her own destiny. So, she grabbed her round, glossy red suitcase off the bed. She had purchased it at Macy’s the year before, when she went to Hawaii for a week with Anjelica and Tricia.

Then she left the room, shutting the door behind her as she went.

Susanna was fine with her father’s ultimatum—she really was serious about moving out of her parents’ house. But she didn’t even bother to say goodbye to her mom. She’d patch things up with her parents once she was done couch surfing; once she had a roommate, and her own normal-sized bed, and a bookshelf full of Ginsberg and Updike and authors she actually cared about. Then things would be better between them than they had been in a long time. Frictionless. She’d be back in their good graces by Thanksgiving, and she’d finally be happy with her station in life. This was a calculated, surgical operation on Susanna’s part, like cutting a deep-situated tumor from a cancer patient’s abdomen. It was medically necessary.

She passed her father’s study on her way out the back door—the better to avoid her mother. For a moment, she felt a strange twinge of disappointment that he didn’t come running after her.

Mostly, though, she felt relief.

When she reached the backyard, her eyes took a moment to adjust to the overwhelming brilliance of the midsummer noontime sun. Already, she could hear the knocking idle of Jesse Cole’s 4x4.

She unlatched the side gate of their entirely predictable white picket fence, holding her breath as she hurried past trashcans that were ripe with the detritus of domestic living. Then she made her way to the front of the house.

There he was, waiting for her:

Jesse’s ride was a World War II-era Jeep, painted up in Day-Glo hues. Atop its hood, a psychedelic cartoon eagle spewed safety-orange flames, surrounded by Lewis Carroll mushrooms.

As for Jesse the man, he was all long hair and wiry features. He looked every bit a contemporary of the Bob Dylans and John Lennons of the world—though her father might’ve gone with Charlie Manson.

He smiled at her from the driver’s seat as she approached, revealing one chipped front tooth. She adored his broken smile. It gave him a real-world charm. And she liked that the sight of the two of them together was a bit offbeat. As a child, she’d always been the girl that teachers and strangers described as nice, smart, or standup. Jesse was a twenty-six-year-old rock-and-roller with a rap sheet just long enough to make him interesting, without threatening her idyll of danger-at-a-distance intrigue.

In one Olympian hurdle, Susanna sent her traveler case flying up into the rear of the old Willys Jeep. She hoisted herself up onto its utilitarian passenger seat. The roofless car’s metal interior was scorching in the summer heat, and the canvas burned beneath her white clamdiggers. No matter—it might have been hot, but at least she was cool .

Immediately, she threw her arms around Jesse and kissed him, deeply, possessively. Jesse pushed against her, embracing her body within a kind of bear hug. Susanna gave in to his control, imagining the scowling eyes watching them both now from behind the peeled curtains of her father’s study.

Just as quickly as they’d started up, Jesse pulled away, as he always did, a few short words away from completing their unspoken sentence. She knew why he did it. She knew he enjoyed the power. And she was more than happy to play the part, knowing full well who really held the power.

Jesse put the Jeep into first gear and pushed the pedal to the floor. The Jeep did its best to obey. In a haze of fumes, they roared off to...wherever it was they were going. Susanna hadn’t really been listening to Jesse’s words when he asked her to come along with him. It didn’t matter.

The Jeep was in third gear before she made note of their silent companion in the back seat. He was diligently holding Susanna’s red carryall, smiling at her through the rear-view mirror. Susanna had always thought the man who was now sitting in the back of the Jeep looked a bit like a bespectacled piggy bank. She felt a little guilty about this and embarrassed now for her earlier make-out show, she flashed a cheery smile at Jesse’s bigger, older brother—Wayne.

Susanna and her two traveling companions escaped Pasadena in good time. As the hour passed, concrete jungle gave way to the dry, shrubby hills of California’s true face: a scrubby, brown expanse. Susanna felt a serene highway hypnosis begin to dull her senses.

Simon and Garfunkle’s mellow vocals played out through crackling radio speakers, riding on an FM signal that was receding ever farther behind them. Susanna leaned back and felt the sun’s rays pierce her skin. She imagined each cell’s excess oils drying up. Daily sun exposure was a nigh-religious purification ritual for her—the teenage menace of pimples was a not-so-distant memory.

Desert scenery played on a loop around the Jeep like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. She saw the same black-and-white CA-10 sign over and over again, all the hills looked the same, and the yellow line demarcating the two-lane blacktop seemed to ebb and weave beside them like a pulsating, analog sine wave.

That sun, the one over her head right now, the same one she could feel radiating through her body, had been feeding this world without pause for a span of time greater than any she could conceive.

All that she knew was borne of it and would eventually be consumed by it.

She wondered what had made her think of that. But she didn’t wonder for very long. She nestled her head between her shoulder and the thinly padded back of the seat in an unsuccessful attempt to find a good place to rest her head. It bobbed loosely as the Jeep rocked along the road.

She let her thoughts drift to a place of abstraction, where words were no longer adequate to contain their meaning.

When she awoke, it was to the sound of a car backfiring. She lifted her head and willed her eyes to give her the scene:

They were at a gas station. The pumps were the old-fashioned, gravity-fed kind. Most of the paint on them had long since curled up and flaked off. In fact, the entire complex seemed a rust-red relic of a civilization long since abandoned.

Jesse’s not in the driver’s seat , she thought. He must’ve gone inside the shop.

Good afternoon, came a voice from the back seat.

Hey, Wayne, Susanna said. She turned around, still blinking the sleep from her eyes. Her head was floating in a post-nap high of groggy numbness.

Wayne turned his eyes away from hers, quick. Susanna could count on one hand the number of times Wayne had been able to maintain eye contact with her through a conversation. She wondered if he was that way with all women, or just her.

I’m surprised you agreed to go along, he said. But I’m glad.

Oh. Yeah. Well, I’ve just sort of been needing to get away from my folks.

Wayne nodded, pretending to be examining the old gas pumps from the back seat. Jesse told me things have been tough in your house. I didn’t realize it was so serious.

It’s not, she was quick to reply. It’s just—it’s just that they still think of me as a kid, you know? I needed to show them I could get out on my own, that I was capable of making decisions for myself.

Wayne’s gaze shifted to the floor. Well, listen, Susanna. Jesse can be a little overbearing at times. At last, he looked up at her directly, if only to drive his next point home. I mean, I’m his older brother—and sometimes he intimidates even me!

Susanna laughed. It was a tiny, harmless laugh, calculated to be that way. I don’t believe that.

Oh, absolutely! Wayne wore an earnest grin on his face now. Look, the point I’m trying to make is, don’t be afraid to tell him what you think, if you don’t agree with him about something. He’s a good guy. Just, a little overbearing is all.

Wayne paused, and looked back at the convenience store. Susanna looked, too—no sign of Jesse yet. He turned back to Susanna. And I want you to know that you can talk to me about anything. Anytime, I mean it.

Susanna found this all a bit odd, which was fair. It was odd. What are you getting at, Wayne?

Wayne grimaced, and wiped the beads of sweat off his brow with a pocket square. Well, I just mean, with where we’re going—

Where are we going, again?

A bemused grin crept across Wayne’s face. You mean you don’t know? Seriously? It was clear this tickled him, and he delighted in the opportunity to tease her a bit. Do you always just get into cars and go on long trips? To destinations unknown?

I dunno, I was just happy to get out of my house. I mean, Jesse told me to pack enough things for a few days when I was talking to him on the phone last night, so I did. Who knows? I like to go on adventures sometimes.

Well, Wayne started in, with his hands pointed out like he was ready to start a business pitch, "since you’re positively bereft of information on the matter, we’re headed to a place called Devil’s Peak. To the land Jesse bought with his part of the trust. We’re starting construction on the compound ."

He said this last term with a hint of derision, then went on. "And all of Jesse’s— followers , or groupies, or whatever you call them—they’re all going to be there, too. At least, according to Jesse. We’ll see if they show up. He snorted. They’re not exactly the most reliable bunch."

So, it’s really happening, Susanna said. I always just thought the compound was a pipe dream.

Tell me about it, Wayne said, with another snort.

I mean, not that I don’t believe Jesse is capable of making it happen, she interjected. I do. I just—I’ve been hearing about it for as long as I’ve known him. I sort of figured it was fantasy.

Susanna, I really mean what I said, Wayne said. Don’t feel pressured in any way to stay at the compound longer than you care to. The only reason I’m coming along in the first place is because I love my brother, and I want to make sure that if he’s going to spend his share of our inheritance on some utopian playground, that there’s someone responsible overseeing the project.

Susanna tensed a bit, though she barely realized it, as Wayne leaned in closer to her now. He continued: This isn’t my ‘scene,’ and I don’t think it’s yours, either. If I’m being honest.

Susanna wondered for a moment where the shy, soft-spoken Wayne she’d known him to be had gone. But then his cheeks began to turn an apple red. She smiled at him, hoping it would comfort him. Coming from anyone else, she would have been annoyed to have someone tell her how she ought to spend her time. But coming from Wayne, she knew he must have really been speaking from the heart.

Besides, he was harmless. You don’t think I can get my hands dirty? Susanna hoped the playful lilt in her delivery would make clear she wasn’t offended by his being forthright.

Wayne retreated to his seat in the back, and again averted his eyes. These are tough people he hangs around. Desperate people, living on the fringe of society. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.

Well, I appreciate your concern. Really. But I’m pretty sure I can take care of myself.

A bell rang, and they both glanced at the door to the convenience mart attached to the gas station. Jesse emerged, carrying a carton of cigarettes and a 24-pack of beer. He eyed Wayne and Susanna, acknowledged them with a single nod of his head, and threw the beer in the back seat next to his brother. He climbed up the driver’s side entrance, lit a cigarette, and wordlessly started up the car before pulling back out onto the highway.

Susanna wanted to say something to break the silence, but she wasn’t sure what was the matter, if anything. She was a little disappointed, she had to admit, to see him drinking and smoking. She had nothing against either one, per se. But when Jesse was feeling optimistic, he stuck to a Your body is a temple mantra—not that this precluded pot or all manner of hallucinogens, of course. If Jesse was buying pedestrian booze and cigarettes, it could mean he was feeling anxious about the big build this weekend. Or it could mean nothing at all. He was hard to read.

What’sa matter, babe? Susanna cooed. She retched a bit at her own choice of words, only after they’d already left her mouth. Having Wayne in the back seat made her more self-conscious of her own forced affectations of maturity; having an audience made her feel like a fraud. She was still just that little kid who didn’t want to be in the Girl Scouts anymore.

Nothing’s the matter, Jesse said. I’m fine. To prove his point, he turned to face her, locked eyes with her, and smiled with pursed lips.

I’m fine. The words reverberated in her head. Maybe he really was fine. Maybe he was just nervous about the work that would await them, once they arrived at the barren patch of land that Jesse hoped to turn into the last bastion of West Coast countercultural optimism.

What if they got there, and none of Jesse’s flaky groupies were there to meet them?

What if the promise of free drinks, drugs, and sex wasn’t enough to get them to commit to a long-haul drive and weeks of manual labor under the hot desert sun? Susanna didn’t want to think about the depths of foulness Jesse’s mood might plunge into, nor how uncomfortable that ride back home would be.

Maybe Jesse just didn’t like the idea of his engineer brother watching over his affairs, reminding him of the empirical, mechanized, capitalized outside world at a time when he was supposed to be building a place where he could be king.

Susanna closed her eyes, and again nestled her head in that ill-fitting crevice that could’ve really used a pillow. All the sounds around her blurred into signal noise. Once more, she felt herself falling into the abyss.

Excerpt from the Hollywood Music Journal , May 1970:

For months, L.A. rocker/guerilla artist Jesse Cole has been talking about building a commune in the Los Angeles high desert to anyone who will listen. He’s even taken to having a collections plate—passed around by a roadie in a priest costume—at his shows. Listening to him speak on the issue, one can sense a mounting tension in his demeanor. The Sixties are now officially over, he seems to be saying. Everyone who has latched onto the promise can feel the waves of history shifting once more.

It’s the media that’s done it, he says, punctuating his point with a long drag from his fourth or fifth cigarette of the interview. The clothes, the lingo, it all meant something more real just a few years ago. Now it’s like Halloween or something.

At this point, I still can’t tell if he’s wearing his own tasseled leather jacket and bandana as an ironic statement on this pageantry, or if he’s as much caught up in it all as everyone else.

Altamont, Manson—it’s all turned a lot of people off to the promise, especially in L.A. Only he says it like ‘the Promise’ with a capital ‘P’. The straights have fired back, and it sounds an awful lot like the bullets at Kent State.

This is Cole’s impetus, then, for making a utopia on a plot of worthless land fifty miles outside civilization. A place free from the press, free from the encroaching fascism of police and government, free from the ideological influence of the military-industrial complex. A place for sense, sexuality, radical thought, and life-through-art, he calls it.

This is to be Cole’s Xanadu, and he will bring his flock with him to begin to build.

Susanna watched the desert play out around her and considered how quiet they were all being. Jesse still had barely said a word; for her own part, she didn’t feel like saying much now. When she wanted to make idle chatter, she posited whatever thought was on her mind to Wayne, eager as he was to lap up any attention she’d send his way. Despite being the better part of thirty, Susanna suspected he hadn’t gone all the way with a woman—and probably hadn’t gone very far at all. It wasn’t that Wayne was unforgivably unattractive, nor that his personality was so repellent. He had, at times, a nebbish, earnest charm. But he seemed deathly afraid of others and of life itself. It made her feel powerful that she, a girl nearly half his age, intimidated him.

There it is, she heard Wayne say from the back seat.

"There what is?" Susanna asked.

Wayne leaned in toward the front seat and pointed his outstretched arm towards something on the horizon.

That’s when she first saw Devil’s Peak.

It was a mesa, a natural geological formation. A flat-top mountain. Its peak, like all mesas, had been dulled by eons of gradual elemental erosion. This mesa jutted out of the flat earth landscape like something from an Italian woodcutter’s fever-dream vision of Hell.

Why do they call it Devil’s Peak? Susanna asked. I mean, it’s a mesa, it’s got no peak.

Exactly, Wayne said with a smirk. The story goes that the Devil himself took the peak back to Hell with him and made his throne out of it.

Lovely.

Susanna watched Jesse toss his cigarette out of the side of the car. For a moment, she imagined it starting a blazing inferno.

Jesse spoke at last. We’re here.

He pulled the Jeep off the highway, and they bounced along the dry, brittle off-road desert floor. They went on like that for a few minutes, and when at last they came to rest, they were just a few miles from Devil’s Peak.

Susanna jumped down from the Jeep and began to explore:

Earthen clay lay caked over in chipped adobe, sand-colored stone formations jutting out. These irregular shapes were laid out in a rough grid of ninety-degree angles. It was obviously the work of people, not of nature. But it didn’t make any sense—who would have started the foundations of dozens of structures and left them unfinished like this?

Or maybe they weren’t unfinished at all.

Maybe they were ruins.

Bridgetown, Jesse said from behind Susanna. He put his arms around her waist and kissed her neck. She could smell the cigarette tar on his breath. She didn’t mind it. It gave her a small thrill.

Bridgetown?

Yep.

Care to elaborate?

Jesse took a breath and pointed to the building base nearest her. The bottoms of three walls still stood, sort of. I think that was a store, he said. You know, like an old-timey general store.

So this was a ghost town?

" Is a ghost town. It was a town."

You know what I meant.

Jesse smiled, and took her head in his hands, planting another kiss on her. She could tell he was proud of his find.

It was called Bridgetown, he continued. There were mines out here.

Maybe that building next to them had once been a post office. Or the police department, or a genuine Old West saloon. At any rate, it was now just the wind-weathered suggestion of material ephemera.

Susanna noticed, in the distance, oil derricks slowly bobbing their hammerheads in rhythm, dotting the horizon.

And oil, eventually, Jesse went on. But by then, this place was long dead. He let out a dry little laugh. Too bad no one told ‘em about it before the mines tapped out.

Where’s the wood? Wayne shouted out to Jesse from the other side of the Jeep. Susanna released Jesse, who walked over to Wayne. She watched the two brothers in their first direct interaction for what seemed like the first time in hours.

Jesse pointed to a tarp that was billowing in the high-altitude winds. Jesse and Wayne began to untie the corners of the tarp and peeled it back to reveal a large stockpile of pinewood two-by-fours.

Susanna looked down at her watch.

1:45 P.M.

They were the first ones here.

No one’s here.

Two hours had passed, and it seemed they would be the only ones coming.

Jesse was quiet again. Susanna could tell he was fuming.

Was it his flock, whose absence—probably the product of an ongoing drug haze—was tantamount to mutiny?

Or was it Wayne, whose told-you-so demeanor in the couple of hours since their arrival had only gotten worse?

Wayne sat next to Susanna on a pile of the wood.

Sorry you’re wasting your Saturday, Wayne said, just within earshot of his pacing brother. Susanna glanced at Jesse to gauge his reaction, but Jesse continued his silent routine unabated by his brother’s needling.

She watched Jesse dig his right Chuck Taylor’s toe in the sand for a moment. He went back to work hauling lumber himself, dropping more two-by-fours with a mad clatter into piles outside the tent. He no longer appeared to be counting out how much wood went where. He was just stewing.

I feel really bad, she said after him. No reply.

She’d never seen him so evidently vulnerable. Embarrassment didn’t suit him; he was supposed to be the paragon of cool. Conversely, she could tell that Wayne was relishing the moment with a petty joy. The sting he’d known from long-smarting locker room punches and verbal fire bombs was going the other way in the wind, for a change.

Susanna looked out to the highway. It receded towards the vanishing point of the desert horizon but was obscured by heat waves dancing on the surface before it could ever quite reach it.

Something smudgy arose from the heat waves.

The smudge grew larger, its colors more pronounced.

A red-and-blue Volkswagen Type II bus.

Susanna recognized it from the parking lots of Jesse’s shows in the dive bars of Hollywood. It was always there, every time he played. A mark of loyalty.

Jesse, she said. Look.

All three of them turned to the bus.

Jesse began walking towards it, then sprinted into a run.

He waved it down, laughing.

The bus came to a halt, kicking up a cloud of dust. Its doors swung open, its side hatch slid back, and a dozen of the shepherd’s most faithful sheep emerged from within the Teutonic tin can of a vehicle.

Jesse’s shoulders were confident, his chest out, a swing in his step. He greeted his followers with laughs and sincere, full embraces. These people—well, maybe friends wasn’t exactly the right word for them, but they made him feel whole.

Susanna couldn’t help but smile. She snuck a peek at Wayne, sitting beside her. He was quiet. So much for his little victory. Now the elder brother was stuck out here, babysitting a bunch of perpetually late, drugged-out hippies, for God knows how long. Susanna started to laugh.

What’s so funny? Wayne asked, pointed.

Nothing, nothing. Just the look on your face.

A couple of the girls from the bus gazed upon Jesse with doe eyes, stuck in coquettish postures. Susanna wanted it not to bother her, but she was human, after all. It was the one facet of his popularity amongst this crowd that put her on edge. But it wasn’t his fault. He had his values and he was upfront about them. And Susanna believed him when he said she was his girl.

Come on, Susanna told Wayne, giving him a little punch on the shoulder. Let’s introduce ourselves. No point in sitting on a pile of wood the whole weekend.

She got up and began walking towards the crowd. Wayne followed, a reluctant pause preceding any action on his part.

The fifteen people now at the campsite got to work. They dug foundations, hammered A-frames together, and helped one another prop them up to assemble self-standing structures. But they weren’t alone. As the afternoon wore on, more and more cars and trucks showed up. The gang formed a crescent-shaped parking lot around the nascent collection of building frames. All told, there were fifty-five people at the site by the time the shadows grew long, and the desert heat of the day cooled into the desert chill of the night.

By eight o’clock, work was over, and play was about to begin.

The summer sun had dropped beneath the horizon, and the hiss-crack of beer cans popping open broke out over the fuzz of bong rips and AM radio. It was a choir of nightmare music for the church ladies back home.

Susanna was busying herself making small chat with some of the guests, trying hard to recall some of their names—to no avail—when Jesse took her by the hand and led her away from the main group of revelers.

Where are we going? she asked.

Let me surprise you.

He led her down a winding path in the brush. Keep an eye out for snakes.

Great.

I carved out this path a week before. I wanted to show you something spectacular.

Well, you’ve got my attention.

They were hiking towards Devil’s Peak.

It was too dark for the mesa to be visible by anything other than the cutout of its familiar silhouette in the night sky. A mesa-shaped void of no-star where elsewhere there was star .

Jesse stopped in front of her, and she nearly tripped over him.

What is it?

I think—this way, he said. Yeah, this way.

He turned to his right, grabbing her by the arm, excited. He was moving faster now.

They went down into a ditch, having to balance against one another as they progressed into the crevasse.

Jesse flicked on his Zippo lighter, casting just enough light to illuminate a decaying old wooden board against the mouth of an opening in the earth.

Is this a mineshaft? Susanna asked.

Jesse handed the Zippo to Susanna. Hold this. Keep it burning.

She did so, as Jesse loosened the board of rotting wood from its moorings and set it aside.

Okay, let’s go.

She followed him into the shaft, without question. She was too curious to turn back.

The passageway was only barely big enough for them to make their way through. It was narrow and short.

Some mine this was, she said. You can’t even get a cart out through this opening.

I think it’s a service entry. Or an emergency exit.

Susanna kept her hands along the walls to guide her and keep her balance. The texture was chipped, sharp, and glassy. It didn’t feel like rock.

They proceeded along a steady downward gradient. She was putting her weight on the balls of her feet, and while she wasn’t exactly in danger of tumbling forward, she wouldn’t trust her stability if she had to go running full bore ahead.

Look straight ahead, Jesse said.

I can’t see anything. It’s pitch black.

Wait a sec, let me move out of the way.

Jesse squatted and pressed up against the wall. With him out of the way, Susanna got her first inkling of why he’d brought her down here. She gasped:

Dots danced on her retinas as she began to see that the corridor was not, in fact, pitch-black. An otherworldly violet light shimmered at the end of the hall, before it curved out of sight.

What…what is that? Where is that coming from?

Come on, let’s keep moving.

Jesse led her on further. With each step, she could make out more and more. At last, the end of the tunnel was in sight. Susanna could see now that the narrow shaft opened up into a much larger chamber.

Jesse looked back at her, a loving grin spread wide across his features. He was bathed in the purple light. He took a step out beyond the tunnel, into the cavern beyond, and beckoned Susanna forth once more.

Holy shit, she muttered.

They were standing in a mammoth cavern of glimmering stalactites, like rock candy formed over a millennia of natural precision engineering.

It was, without hyperbole, the single largest space Susanna had ever been in.

An ethereal glow filled the farthest recesses of the chamber. A waterfall was audible somewhere in the distance, though Susanna couldn’t imagine where all that water could be coming from. She looked around herself and saw they were standing on a patch of moist earth at the bottom of the cavern, which was easily several hundred feet tall. Around this little atoll upon which they stood, a pool of water cast shimmering light on the walls.

The purple light and bouncing reflections were caught in a misty, foggy atmosphere that made the ceiling difficult to make out. Susanna could see that hundreds of feet above them, a spindly bridge crossed the abyss.

Everything seemed blacklit, neon in its psychedelic hyper-presence.

This is impossible, Susanna said. "How can a mountain be hollow ?"

I don’t know how, Jesse said. But feel that in the air, Jesse said. That electric charge?

Susanna looked down at her arms. Sure enough, the little light-colored hairs on her arms stood up on their ends.

There was a low hum to this place, too, one which made her recall being a little girl on the Disneyland steam ship and feeling the engines pulse beneath her feet.

This place is special, Jesse said. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know why it is. But what we’re building here—in the ruins of the old town, in the mountain’s shadow…

Yes?

It’s a calling. I know it. I’m making something great. He swallowed, then corrected himself: " We’re making something great. He took her hands in his, brought himself in close to her. You’re as much a part of this experience as I am."

I haven’t done anything, she protested. I’m just tagging along.

Oh no, Jesse said. That’s not true at all. You have a very special role here. He put one arm around her waist, hugged her body as tight as he could, and began swaying from side to side in a little mock dance.

Oh yeah? What’s that?

You’re my muse.

She laughed. Your muse?

Yes. He put his hand around her head, his thumb gently grazing her ear, and ran his fingers through her hair. If I can breathe life back into this land, I want it to be with you by my side.

Of course. I’ll always be by your side. She wasn’t sure what had come over him.

That’s not what I mean. Jesse took a step back from her, breaking their embrace. He reached into his shirt pocket, got down on one knee, and opened the box. The ring-set jewel within glimmered in the light of the cavern.

She felt her head start to spin, and a twinge of anxiety. This was so unlike Jesse, so unexpected. But suddenly, his earlier nerves now made sense. He might have seemed so mature, so wise, so larger-than-life when his flock surrounded him, but the poor thing was still only human. He was nervous.

Oh, Jesse—I don’t know what to say. I—I love you so much.

His smile was anticipatory.

It’s just— She searched for the words. I don’t know if I’m ready for that.

He held onto his smile, but the light in his eyes dimmed. Now it was more of a rictus grin. She found it unsettling.

I understand, he said with a nod. You’ve still got to know yourself as your own person.

Yeah, yeah, she was quick to say. Exactly—

You’re young. He popped up back on his feet. The ring was gone, like a sleight-of-hand trick. Had it ever been there?

I can wait, he said.

You sure?

Yeah. A long beat.

Suddenly, the juxtaposition of their otherworldly environment with the profoundly terrestrial awkwardness of this situation made Susanna want to laugh. She resisted the urge.

But you’re gonna stick around, Jesse began, once I get this town fixed up, right?

Of course, Susanna said. She took Jesse’s head in her hands this time and planted a kiss on his lips. I’ll be your Queen of Bridgetown. And this place will be our little secret.

She backed away, put a finger to his lips. Now, let’s get back to the others before they start to wonder if the coyotes got us.

Then they left the strange and delightful cavern of light and mist and began their trek back up the narrow shaft of darkness.

Meanwhile, back at camp, Wayne spilled his beer.

He felt a burning anxiety. His eyes darted around. No one saw. Thank God.

He began to blot the stain out, but it didn’t do much. He looked around again. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead. He was hot under the collar.

Everyone else was laughing. Not at him, but amongst each other. Which was, in its own way, worse. They all got the joke, whatever the joke was, and he didn’t. Why did he always feel so alone at these things?

How was it that he—a UCLA mechanical engineering grad student, for Christ’s sake!—found the simple act of standing around, drinking a beer, so goddamn stressful?

He looked down at what he was wearing—a button-up cotton shirt and slacks. In the desert.

He cursed his own sense of propriety. Why couldn’t he just throw on a tee shirt like a normal person?

Everyone else was dressed like they just came in from Haight-Ashbury. Blue jeans. Loose-fitting batik tops. Scruffy faces.

Yet, in this moment, he felt inferior to all of them. Why should he? Maybe it was because there were so many of them here, now. Maybe anyone in his position would feel so out of place.

No, it wasn’t just that. There was something more.

He spotted a couple of waifish girls, flowers in their hair, sitting on an old torn sofa someone had loaded up in the back of an old Chevy and brought along with them. One of the girls was making the other laugh to the point of tears.

They looked adorable.

Graceful.

Carefree.

Totally and utterly beyond his reach. They were happy. They all were, everyone here. Everyone but him. But why?

He was satisfied with his life.

Wasn’t he?

Successful. Proud, in many respects, and with a secure future. But he couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed like those girls were laughing.

Looks like you’re losing your beer there, man.

Wayne turned to see a sweaty, chubby guy who could have been eighteen, or could have been forty. This man, who for some reason was wearing a Hawaiian lei, extended a hand out to Wayne. But it wasn’t to shake. He was offering him a joint.

Wayne was about to issue an automatic No thanks, but took another glance at the scene around him. He couldn’t last another hour here sober. Just couldn’t.

Thanks, he said, and took the joint from the man with a curt nod.

He held it up to his lips, and took a long, deep drag. He held his breath for several moments, until the urge to cough issued forth a series of convulsing hacks. He handed the joint back to the man, tears in his eyes.

Like a champ, the portly boy-man said. He was clearly getting quite a kick out of this. You know, we weren’t too sure about you when we first saw you here. Kinda thought like, ‘Hey, maybe this guy’s just here to babysit us.’ But you’re alright.

Wayne, still coughing, could only offer him a thumbs up and another nod.

Finally, Wayne started to settle down, though now he began to feel the horizon shifting.

He looked back at the two girls on the couch, their faces even more perfect in the flickering campfire light than they had been moments earlier.

The anxiety was melting away. Not in a figurative sense—it felt physical, like a waxen patina of shame was simply dripping off him, and his skin was touching fresh air for the first time in eons.

Wayne was content to just absorb the scene for a moment.

He noticed the girls were glancing back at him while they conversed. He looked away, back to his new buddy with the lei.

Thanks, man, Wayne said. His voice sounded funny. It was like the words had come out before he’d had a chance to form them. He said something else to the guy after that, some kum-bi-ya platitude he’d once heard Jesse say. But whatever it was, he wasn’t paying any attention to it.

Wayne got up and headed over to the communal bucket of beers. He pulled the top off a can of Schlitz. Dusting off what little frat-house experience he had, he downed the can in a few gulps.

He let the buzz kick in, and ambled over to the girls’ couch, weightless, with a previously undiscovered swagger in his step. The girls saw him coming—Blondie to his left, and Ginger to his right.

Jesse’s brother, right? Blondie said.

Yep, yep, yep, that’s me. Wayne. He held out a hand for them to shake. Suddenly, he felt like talking more than he ever had. He was confident that whatever was about to spew forth would be positively wrought in a golden wit that would just bowl these girls right over.

Normally, I’d be really self-conscious about talking to you girls, he began. You know, ‘sweaty palms,’ AACK! He guffawed, and the girls looked at each other and riotously laughed. But, you know, it’s like, we’re all out here under the stars, it’s gorgeous, you people are all so cool and hip, and it makes me want to be like—

The girls leaned in, waiting for him to finish his thought.

"It’s like, fuck! , you know?"

The girls both slow-nodded in unison. Yeah, Ginger said. I dig it.

Wayne leaned against the side of the Chevy truck. So, tell me about yourselves. What’s your names? He brought his fist to his mouth, thinking he was discretely covering a beer burp.

Laura, Ginger said.

Gwen, Blondie said.

It’s nice to meet you—Laura, Gwen. A moment’s pause. Am I being really loud right now? I can’t tell, I think I’m being really loud!

You’re fine, Ginger—ah, no, it was Laura—dismissed his concern with a wave.

Do you have any pot? Blondie—what was her name again?—asked.

Only in my lungs! Wayne slapped his knee. He really felt he’d landed that one.

The girls laughed again, and glanced at one another, as they had before. They kept going on like that, like they had to check on each other’s story to make sure all the pieces lined up.

We’re students, Blondie said. We go to SLO.

Wayne gave an impressed face that was a little too Kabuki in its exaggeration. But he was feeling good, so, fuck it. San Luis Obispo? What are you two doing all the way down here, then?

We’re here for the month, Laura said. We’re both big fans of your brother’s music. We wanted to come check out his scene and he told us we could hang out. We love it here.

Well, you know, Wayne began, I’m basically Jesse’s manager. Well, I mean— he searched for his words, making a sloppy grasping gesture with his hands. I’m not like a manager per se, but more of a mentor. I’m his big brother, so you know, he really trusts me. And I just want what’s best for him. What’s best for all you guys.

Wow, Blondie said. That is so righteous.

I was the one who told him, ‘Jesse, Mom and Dad would’ve wanted you to use your half of the money to invest in something important to you.’ Six months later, here we are.

So, you’re like, his record producer, or something? Laura asked.

Yeah. Yeah, I suppose you could say that. I mean, totally.

That was about the time a man with an afro stepped into the picture and interrupted Wayne’s flow. The interloper started chatting up the girls. Wayne tuned out of life for a minute, and fixated on his own cozy buzz, bobbing his head from side to side to the music.

This is great. I don’t know what I was worried about. I’m having a great time.

When Wayne came back down to Earth, the couch was empty. The girls were gone.

Damn. I’m gonna go find some more weed.

A few hours later, Wayne was really enjoying himself. More than he could remember having enjoyed himself in years, as a matter of fact.

He was the life of the party! He never knew how funny he could be.

He had entire groups of people transfixed, as he regaled them with barely-lucid tales of frat boy hazing, off-the-cuff quasi-metaphysical observations he’d gleaned from years of study, and everything in between.

He’s so funny and smart , he could swear he heard one of the girls say.

Sometime deep into the night—he saw little reason to check his watch at this point—he found himself in a heartfelt sidebar with the Hawaii boy-man.

One or five beers too far into a haze of bad judgment, Wayne decided this would be the place and time to unload on his buddy how he really felt about his brother, and his brother’s relationship with Susanna.

She’s like, a goddess, man. I know how to take care of a girl like that, better than Jesse can. He doesn’t care about anyone else, you know? But girls always go for the wrong guys, you know? I don’t know what that’s about.

It’s like, what—huh?

I’m not being too loud.

Am I?

I mean, we’re outside. I don’t need to use inside voice.

Jesse? He can’t hear me. I haven’t even seen him for, like, the last three hours.

He’s probably bending her over the back of a truck or something. He’s disgusting.

He’s behind me? Jesse is?

Suddenly, Wayne realized a circle had formed around him and his new friend. He scanned the crowd, looking for Susanna. To his relief, she wasn’t present.

He turned around.

There was Jesse, fuming.

The sound of his brother’s fist impacting with his jaw didn’t sound like a punch in any movie. It was more real, a sound from Wayne’s adolescence that he’d never been able to forget, but one that he’d hoped was behind him.

At the moment of impact, every locker room beat-down he’d experienced flash-fired across his neurons.

That’s okay. For once, I deserved it.

The ensuing contest was more or less one-sided. Wayne’s occasional punches, spurred on by only a molecular sense of survival and not any real desire or expectation to beat his brother, were just enough kindling to keep Jesse punching.

Just enough to make the pain worse for Wayne.

Susanna didn’t hear the fight playing out. She was peeing behind one of those dry California bushes, the kind that must be where tumbleweeds come from, a safe distance from the campgrounds. And in the open plains of the high desert, sounds die quick deaths. They dissipate in churning winds that blanket the dusty earth.

One thing she did notice, though, was that the weather was changing. It was cloudy now, and humid, when it had been dry and arid all day long. The winds were kicking up in all directions.

And there was a strange smell, like ozone. It was the same unnatural scent she’d noticed when her little brother would play with slot cars when they were kids, or at the auto shop where Jesse picked up some work hours during the daytime.

Her hair was beginning to defy gravity, like she’d rubbed it against a balloon. Just like the hairs on her arms had stood up in the cavern an hour earlier.

As she finished and pulled her underwear back up, she thought of the hike back to camp with Jesse just now. It had been awkward; the unspoken awkwardness where you’re not sure if it’s the other party behaving oddly, or if you’re projecting your own discomfort onto them.

He seemed to have understood her reasons for rejecting his proposal. But as the minutes had gone by, he’d become quiet again, like he had been in the car that morning.

She’d give him some space for the night, that’s what she’d do. He could enjoy the party and enjoy the adulation he always got from this crowd. Then, in the morning, she’d have a heart-to-heart with him before the day’s work. She’d smooth things over then.

She took one more glance at the sky, its strange milky clouds ebbing and swirling around Devil’s Peak. Then she began walking back to the campgrounds.

Something was off. No one was talking; they were standing around in a big circle. She could only barely make out two people in the center of the ring, tussling on the ground.

She cut through the outer ring of partiers, bumping past the two girls from SLO. She didn’t recognize them, but they were close to the action, so she asked anyway:

What’s going on? What happened?

Laura looked at Susanna with an expression of contrived sympathy. The pained look that usually accompanies the phrase, I hate to have to bring this up, but…

They’re fighting over you, the red-headed girl blurted.

Susanna did a double-take, her eyes finally putting the pieces together in the low light. Jesse and Wayne.

She understood now. And it made her smile, a little deviously, to know she held that degree of influence over them.

The ozone scent was getting stronger. Do you guys smell that? she asked the SLO girls.

Aren’t you going to stop them? Laura asked.

Susanna considered it. Yeah, I guess I’d better.

She walked into the ring, towards the two men. Hey.

Both brothers looked up at her at the same time. The sight of her stopped them both dead cold. No doubt each man realized how foolish he looked, caked in dirt and blood and wrestling on the floor like this.

Jesse made the first move. He got up on his feet, smoothed back his hair—it didn’t really help—and dusted off his hands with a clap, as if he’d just finished assembling a table. He staggered over to Susanna. His legs were bowed with liquor. He must’ve hit the bottle pretty hard in the short span of time since they got back to camp.

He leaned in close to her, putting his lips to her ear so only she could hear. Is it true?

Is what true?

"My brother here says you told him this was all just a, ah, a ‘ pipe dream .’ Says you two shared a good laugh about me. My delusions of grandeur, he says. He seems to think he can provide better for you than I can. Well, what do you think, Susanna? Can he?"

Jesse, Susanna said. You’re drunk. And Wayne must be, too. Why don’t you just have a seat—

Maybe if I can’t provide enough for you, he slurred, "you can suck his dick instead."

Susanna pulled back and glared at him. His eyes were glazed over, a lazy, crooked grin of malice etched onto his face.

She slapped him. It was the only time she’d ever slapped anyone like that and meant it.

There was a collective gasp from the audience.

I don’t need anyone to provide for me, she said. I can take care of myself just fine. And I get to choose who I spend my time with, not you or Wayne. You fucking understand that?

Wayne got up from the dirt, wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve, and spun Jesse around by the shoulder, revving up to deliver a knockout blow. It was as if all the vigor missing from Wayne a few moments ago, while Jesse had been slaughtering him, had been saved up for this moment.

Susanna tried to interject: "Wayne, wait! —"

The resulting blow was a good one, better than she had thought Wayne capable of. It sent Jesse ass-first onto the ground.

She was surprised to find herself proud of Wayne.

With Jesse still reeling, Wayne grabbed Susanna by the arm and began to lead her through the crowd.

Wayne, what are you doing? she demanded.

I have his keys, Wayne said. I don’t want him driving tonight.

You’re just as drunk as he is.

From behind them, still within the circle of people, Susanna heard Jesse let out an animal howl.

Where do you think you’re taking me?

Anywhere but here, Wayne replied. Civilization.

A crackle of static electricity shocked Susanna at the point of contact where Wayne held her by the arm. Ow!

A rumble of thunder registered from somewhere off in the distance.

The winds, too, were even louder now.

Wayne pulled the keys out of his pocket and hopped into the driver’s seat of the old Jeep. Susanna took one more look behind her, at the dispersing crowd. She didn’t particularly care to go anywhere with Wayne, but at the same time, she didn’t want to have to deal with Jesse or his followers right now. Best to let him sober up. Sort it all out in the morning.

She sighed. Alright, I’ll come with you to find a motel or something. But let me drive, at least.

Wayne stared at her blankly for a moment over the idle of the Jeep. After a moment, he conceded, and scooted over the gear shift into the passenger seat.

Susanna walked around to the driver’s side and put the car into first, pulling away from the crescent of parked vehicles and in the general direction of the distant highway. The dim headlight bulbs cast a flickering, incomplete image of the path ahead, and the dusty windshield made it even harder to see. She could just imagine shredding a tire on one of the bits of old adobe building still jutting out of the ground. That would be just the thing to make this night complete.

More thunder.

A flash of lightning.

And that strange ozone smell again.

Wayne?

Yes?

Can the lightning hurt us?

I’m sure we’re safe, he said, his hands clasped in a kind of pennant gesture. I’m sorry for all of this, Susanna.

In the rear-view mirror, a flash of lightning illuminated the sky behind Devil’s Peak, and for a moment it once again seemed like the monstrous giant it had appeared to be when Susanna first laid eyes on it.

She couldn’t look away—more and more electricity danced in the sky behind and above the mesa.

It was an otherworldly light show. She had the distinct impression the lightning was coming from the mountain.

She wondered what was going on inside the mesa at that moment—inside that massive, hollow cavern of light and water that was so impossible, and so wondrous.

The Jeep hit a rock and bounced violently.

Shit! Susanna let out. She brought her eyes back to the road.

Wayne, I gotta keep my eyes on the road, she said. But take a look at the mountain back there and tell me there isn’t something very strange going on with it.

Strange? What do you mean?

Just look at it.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wayne peering to their rear. A light, like a flashlight, illuminated his worried gaze.

Jesus, Wayne said. He’s following us.

Susanna glanced back up at her rear-view mirror and saw the double-globe of the Volkswagen Bus’s headlamps.

Oooookay, Susanna said. This has gone on long enough.

She braked hard, bringing the Jeep to a dusty stop. She stepped out and flagged Jesse down.

Susanna, what are you doing? He could be murderous.

Quit being so dramatic. He’s not ‘murderous,’ he’s your brother.

She turned back to the bus, which was also slowing.

But her attention was pulled away by the sight of Devil’s Peak. Columns of lightning still danced over its head.

And the mesa was…

… glowing.

That was the only way to describe what she saw. Red-hot, exactly like iron in a crucible, not yet cooled—the whole mountain. Its molten glow pulsed, rhythmic.

The wind whipping up, the skies full of charcoal clouds, the mountain and thunder—it all struck her as positively Biblical, like one of those 70-millimeter Technicolor epics that were popular when she was a little kid.

The door to the VW swung open, and Jesse stepped out. Even though it was the middle of the night, his shape was perfectly cut out against the sky, which, shimmering as it was with rippling light, was more of a dull grey than black. Jesse must’ve seen the slack-jawed expression on both Susanna and Wayne’s faces, because he turned around, still absentmindedly stumbling backwards towards them, and looked up at the light show.

Susanna felt a chill in her bones. She had the distinct impression this is what it felt like in the last few moments before a bomb went off.

Devil’s Peak was absorbed in a brilliant white light. She couldn’t look away.

A ribbon of energy shot out from Devil’s Peak, coming across the desert plain. It was heading for them like