Remnants of a Memory

The Curious Life of a Stink Bug

Mrs. Parra was a kind nurse, nearing her retirement. She took care of me during the night shift until she transferred to another unit, but after her shift she would come to visit me before she went home. Her shift ended at 11:00 p.m. I was always awake, looking out the window thinking about my life and what was to come, while in traction. Mrs. Parra had become my second mother in the hospital, always encouraging and reminding me to take care of myself. She would gently touch my toes and say a few words of prayer. Her warmth and kind smile always brought me comfort, yet after she left my room, I thought about my dreams and memories of how my life used to be.

 • • •

In better times, when Robert, Tim, John and myself took to the desert on foot, bicycles, skateboards or motorcycles, we were unstoppable. We covered miles of desert and named every open space or section of our vast playground. There was the Blacktop, where we played basketball, the Quarter Mile where the last paved road met the dirt road and led into the Valley, and of course, there were the Tunnels. The Tunnels were big drainage pipes under the highway that we drove our motorcycles through. We rarely went to the tunnels they were on the south side of the elementary school where we had to make our way through neighborhoods and traffic. When we weren’t at the Blacktop playing basketball, we usually ventured to the Valley on foot, until we grew old enough to ride off-road motorcycles. In my case, my parents had given me a Honda 50 Mini-Trail dirt bike for Christmas. I may have been ten or eleven years old when I opened a Christmas present and was surprised to find a helmet painted with stars and stripes like the American flag. Not understanding why I was given a helmet, my parents led me to the garage to find a shiny brand-new blue and white mini trail. I was excited. I couldn’t believe it was real. I had never seen anything like it before and I never considered I could have something so new and powerful to myself. My parents had told my uncles Gabby and Roland about the mini-trail and they came over the same evening to see the bike. I was too scared to try it in the dark but my uncle Roland started it and immediately crashed into our fence. My dad and uncle Gabby teased him about it being that he rode a chopper. The next morning my dad taught me how to ride the mini-trail bike and it was exhilarating. In no time at all, I was making trails in the backyard, around the house, around the school and to my friend’s houses. It became second nature, an extension of my reach, it opened a new world for me.

Robert had the biggest and fastest motorcycle while Tim had a rebuilt motorcycle and my mini trail was the smallest but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything else. I had some of the best times of my life on the bike. I was fortunate, my parents had made such an effort to give me a happy childhood, as they had told me about their younger days. My dad told me stories of how his dad made him work around the house and kept him from playing sports or joining his friends after school. My dad had to help my grandfather with construction chores or car repairs my grandfather took from the neighbors for extra money. My mother had moved around so much while she was young that she was hardly at any school long enough to be a part of the community, and because of their experiences, I believe my parents made an effort to give me a different childhood. It began as soon as I was old enough to be enrolled in little league baseball, Pop Warner football and basketball camp. However, the greatest choice they gave me was the freedom to explore the limits of my interests and potential. They gave me room to discover the world through positive experiences and challenged me with lessons they hoped would shape me into a better person. When I wanted to quit playing football the first year I started playing because I didn’t like getting hit, my dad warned me about becoming a quitter, and to see things through no matter how hard it got. Though baseball he taught me to work hard and hustle on every play, to always give a hundred percent effort even if I struck out and to keep trying. Both my mom and dad taught me how to be tough and to stand up for myself while learning how to make new friends and get along with teammates, while remaining competitive. The lessons gave me confidence and assurance, as they also talked to me about responsibility. They made sure I had chores to do before I ran out the door to be with my friends or play a league game, but rarely did they ever stop me from discovering and expanding my awareness of what was around me.

The mini-trail was just one small part of my youth but it was my biggest responsibility, and the most important part of my life; the lessons enabled me to continue riding and respect the freedom I enjoyed from it. I knew my mom was nervous about the bike, as both my parents would always tell me to watch out for the cars, but being that I had so much fun riding in the desert I rarely rode on the street. If I had to get on the street there was three feet of flat dirt between the edge of the street and the desert that I rode on comfortably, while giving cars enough room to pass by. I took care of the bike and how I rode it, I relished the freedom. It enabled me to roam and venture beyond the Quarter Mile boundaries of my playground. 

The Quarter Mile was a stretch of road I could see from my house. It may have been longer than a quarter of a mile, but it got its name because people raced their cars on the stretch of road. The Quarter Mile was about three to five blocks up from my home. My friend Joe lived at the end of the strip, almost at the corner of where the pavement ended, and turned into a dirt utility road. There was a lot of soft sand and broken asphalt where the two roads met, I rode my mini trail to the corner many times. I knew I had to take the side path to cut around the tricky surface and mounds of soft sand where it nearly always made my bike stall out. At different times the Quarter Mile meant different things. When I used to walk to Joe’s house the stretch meant a long walk in the summer heat, it also meant the edge of my extended front yard I couldn’t go past if I had to get back home before the end of the day. When I began to run to train for the high school baseball, it meant I had to run as fast as I could for as long as I could to measure my progress. Mostly, the Quarter Mile was the marker and entry path to the Valley. Once I crossed the black pavement into the desert, it felt as if I had left civilization behind and entered into another world where I lost myself in imagination and free rein.

The Valley wasn’t much of a valley, it was more of a large dip in the terrain, with the sides of the desert walls high enough to block any sight of houses or roads; the bushes and Joshua trees were the thickest and the dirt was the softest in the dip, the rainwater drained into and created a surrounding of imagination that I lost myself in. It was where the Jackrabbits, horny toads and stink bugs roamed freely in the serene setting and where I felt most alive. I had been through every corner and curve in the valley; I knew where the utility roads cut across and bordered the valley, and where the small trails weaved in and around the tall bushes, through the soft sand and over the bumpy mounds of hard dirt that I popped willies over. Tim and I went to the Valley together on foot and on our motorcycles many times, but I relished going alone the most.

At times I parked on a spot overlooking the Valley, with the setting sun on my face, and turned off the engine to listen and feel the calm in the air. I purposely took time to listen to the soft breeze filter through the brown bushes and hear the chirping birds flap into the thick branches of the bushes. It was perplexing to watch the birds twist and dart, like a synchronized dancers, as they dove in and through one bush into another. When it was quiet, I could hear lizards scamper across the sand with its tail swishing over the loose gravel. They were quick to move, quick to stop, and quick to hide. It wasn’t always the big thrills I loved about the desert, it was the small thrills too. Many times, as I sat on the seat of my bike, I watched the small and curious black stink bugs scuttle its large bulbous body over twigs, stickers and rocks, to go and go, until it carried itself away from me. We called them stinkbugs because if they were touched, they would stop and point their butt up into the air. We could never smell any odors, but we called them stinkbugs nevertheless. I left them alone, somehow their black mechanical looking legs gave me the creeps and when they were flipped over their spiny, black legs stretched, twirled and poked into the air. Watching nature function and move with its own will was fascinating, and be a part of, somehow just observing it unfold was always an experience of being self-aware.

At times, a jackrabbit would hop out from behind a bush and bring me back to the present moment and end my daydreaming.

Other times, I watched rabbits chew on grass as I would very slowly turn my ignition key on and put my foot on the kickstarter pedal. Within seconds the jackrabbit and myself were playing a game of chase. Once I kicked down on the engine lever, the sound of my engine scared the rabbit into action and I would have to quickly shift the bike into gear before the rabbit sprinted out of my sight. I played the game of chase many times, on some days there were dozens of jackrabbits that popped in front of me when I tried to follow them, as they zipped, zigzagged around bushes and Joshua trees. I never caught up to the rabbits they were too quick, and cut the corners too sharp, to track. Although, I only had to go a few feet further and another Jackrabbit would jump out and the game continued until I was deep in the Valley.  It was fun to find myself nearly lost, surrounded in a field of tall bushes, fallen Joshua trees and tumbleweeds. It was home and where I ventured deeper into the desert.

I rode my bike through the desert until I found my bearings or come across something I hadn’t seen before on my adventures. After a few summers of exploring, the jackrabbits led me to hidden monuments or landmarks that became mysteries. Always well masked, I would come across a small patch of clearing and find remains of walls and foundations that had become crumbled bricks and slabs of cement with scars of destruction and discolored markings from bon fires. Abandoned and left to rot, any hint of what the structure used to be were long lost and nearly broken back into the dirt; only busted bottles and rusted cans riddled with bullet holes gave any hint of a story, fragments of senselessness. The bullet casings and red plastic shotgun shells littered were the obvious details, I wanted to know the story about the small chunks of wall buried in the dirt. I left the small ruins alone, curious as to who and why buildings were constructed and hidden in my valley in the first place. I returned to the landmarks many times, having become revered grounds, always looking for new hints of an answer to the mysteries strewn about, but I only found the walls chipped further down along with new cans or bottles with bullet holes shattered across the sites. I found it somewhat disappointing to find how people treated my desert and that my secret spots were callously desecrated.

The fallen structures were like ancient shrines, a mystery but the trash left behind was always distinct. Many times, I came across plastic bags full with unremarkable garbage. I always inspected the dumping grounds, anything and almost everything was dumped in the Valley. The most permanent were the remains of cars left to rot, they were my landmarks too. One car was stripped to its metal frame and covered with red rust. The second car had more metal parts to it but anything of value had been picked away like meat from the dry bones of a carcass. I circled the finds and looked for clues among the partially buried trash, hunting for treasures. Often, I found children’s clothes, books, magazines, broken pieces of plastic but inevitability, there was more generic trash among the rubble. The most interesting pieces were letters or pieces of mail gathered in plastic bags and littered about, with a trail of waning words on bleached papers caught in the tumbleweeds. Sometimes I plucked a paper from a bush to find some hint of a story. At best, a sentence or two were left on the pages and not nearly enough to piece together an answer to the mystery on how or why a person would leave pieces of themselves deep in the Valley. At the end of the day, I know the stories were not as complicated as I imagined, it was only trash after all. Although, I couldn’t help but think that they were remnants of someone’s life and memories left behind. The thought occurred to me that maybe we all leave pieces of ourselves in secret places for others to discover.

My memories I wondered, had they had seeped into the desert soil or blew away with the dust where no one would find them. I belonged in the desert where I could tell my story, not in a hospital bed.

(Passage was edited out from early drafts of the book “Gutless”)