I promised some of you guts that I'd tell this story over a year ago. Here it is. Ahead of schedule.


Chloridiots

Inside The Cattle Guards

The Town of Chloride, Arizona is a real place. I lived there for a dozen of the most bizarre, mystical, horrible and wonderful years of my life. At that time the residents of Chloride referred to them selves as Chloridiots. Although I’ve made a few composite characters and played with chronology and geography a little for the sake of the story the people and events are real or in some cases surreal. The Tennessee Mine, Chloride Murals, Tennessee Saloon, Silver Hill, Mineral Park, Shep’s of Chloride, Mine Shaft General Store, The Black Mountains and the other places I might mention are real too.

To get to Chloride take U.S Highway 93 either South from Hoover Dam or North from Interstate 40. At the 53-mile marker you’ll see a collection of buildings on the West side of the highway. That’s Grasshopper Junction, site of brutal murders and very possibly the key to $300 million worth of lost gold bullion.

Directly across the highway is Chloride Road. Take Chloride Road East about four miles and you’ll be at the intersection of Tennessee Avenue and Second Street in the middle of town. It’s the only 4-way stop for about 30 miles in any direction.

About a half mile before town you’ll come to the cattle guard. It might be in order to pause here for a moment to decide if you really want to cross it. To the West is the normal world you’ve known all of your life. To the East is Chloride and even if you go somewhere else you never quite leave.

Chloride has three Cattle Guards, one on each of the roads leading to the town. Don’t let yourself confuse them with the other cattle guards that you’ll see all over the southwest. They might look pretty much the same but these are different. The average cattle guard keeps the range cattle on one side or the other while allowing traffic to pass. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Chloride’s Cattle Guards though, might appear similar to the mundane eye and actually do keep the cattle out of town when it suits them but they are in reality are a different animal entirely. First of all, they serve as musical watchdogs for the town. Each of the three produces a different tone when a car drives across it with a different note inbound and outbound traffic. Not only that. With a little practice it’s easy to tell one car from another. The average Chloridiot can tell in an instant whether Shorty Wilson is coming in from the South or Zipper Sweeny is heading West without loosing a beat in whatever he happens to be arguing about at the moment.

Sometimes, late at night, when the town is asleep, the cattle guards sing to eachother.

The Cattle Guards also serve another purpose. Long term Chloridiots all know it but no one talks about it much. Just as other cattle guards keep the cows out Chloride’s Cattle Guards keep the world out. Inside the Cattle Guards different rules and priorities apply.



The Skin Ranch and The Hand Grenade

It was late April 1994, about 9:00 AM and the morning sky was that crackling electric blue that you can only see in Arizona. I was in the town of Chloride, AZ, Population: 150 souls and about twice that many people.

For most Chloridiots the morning revolves around getting the mail from the post office at the corner of Second Street and Tennessee Avenue and then going for coffee at either the Tennessee Saloon or on the porch of the Mine Shaft General Store. On this particular morning I was sitting on the porch of the general store saying “Hi” to neighbors and swapping news and gossip. This is serious small town America stuff.

Stella Warneski was in town visiting her brother Stinky Pete. In Chloride visitors and tourists have a first name and a last name. Except in rare cases residents have a first name and an adjective. Stella weighs at least 350 pounds, has a voice that’ll fry the fat off your face if you get too close while she’s talking and has to drive a Ford F-350 pick up to haul her bulk around. Typically she wore stretch pants and Hawaiian print Muumuus. The stairs screamed in pain as Stella hauled her huge ass up to the porch. It looked like a dozen greased mutant dwarves were having violent group sex under her clothing. She ploped her gelatinous mass into a chair accompanied by the shriek of tortured hardware. Behind her enormous back most of us refered to her as Skin Ranch Stella. She ordered her brother, Stinky Pete, to get her a coffee with five sugars and “real cream! Not that half and half shit!”

Stinky Pete was as skinny and polite as Stella was fat and obnoxious. Pete’s primary claim to fame was that he saved a couple thousand gallons of water each month by foregoing showers and neglecting to wash his laundry. Water is expensive in Northwest OZ so most of us admired Pete for his determination while simultaneously deploring the result.

Stella came to Chloride a couple times a year to visit Pete. This visit was different. This time Stella had come to stay. She had recently retired after thirty years working for the Idaho Department of Motor Vehicles. I don'’ know what she did there but I’ve always assumed it had something to do with increasing the general level of misery and frustration among the department’s customers. After she retired she felt a need to take care of her only brother. From the look on Pete’s face I could tell that his opinion didn’t matter much.

Another local resident on the porch that morning was Bible Bill, the local used God salesman. The leader of the Heaven’s Gate Cult had been Bill’s first cousin and the two had a lot in common. Except charisma. Bill didn’t have any. What Bill did have was a bible quote specifically selected to point out every ones shortcomings except his own.

Dirty Mary got up to get herself some more coffee. A shudder ran through me when her left tit smacked me in the back of the head. On her way to the coffee pot and back she managed to rub her boobs on every male present. Bible Bill got pissed but it was the high point of Stinky Pete’s morning, maybe his whole month.

Nine Finger Frank, the owner of the Mine Shaft, brought out a fresh pot of coffee and put it on the hot plate. About two blocks to the east the sound of a Honda 90 starting up would have intruded on the morning quiet if Stella hadn’t been bitching about something or other.

The Honda 90 coming down Tennessee Avenue belonged to one R. Neil Whitney, Pee Aitch Dee, retired mathematician. Retired nuclear physicist. During World War II Neil was a member of a special commando unit. He was the only survivor. He could probably make a bomb from a dirty T-shirt, some bacon grease, some spare change and a handful of dirt. After the war he designed and built hydrogen bombs for the government.

Neil was a cadaverous scarecrow of a man. At about 6 feet 3 inches tall and 100 pounds he made Ichabod Crane look like a weight lifter on steroids. He always wore a particularly ugly black leather cowboy hat and a black leather vest that looked like he found it in a ditch. He called himself “The Legendary Gunfighter” and always had an old pistol loaded with blanks on his hip. Most days Neil rode his moped. He only rode the Honda when he was looking for trouble

Dirty Mary, Stinky Pete, Nine-Finger Frank and I looked at eachother. We all knew something was up and that it might be ugly. Curiosity overcame common sense and we said nothing. Bible Bill, Stella and a handful of tourists were all oblivious to the sound of doom coming down the street.

Bible Bill and “The Legendary Gunfighter” hated eachother with a holy passion. Bill read his bible every day and never missed a chance to browbeat other people to read theirs. He didn’t really have a clue what the bible said and never missed an opportunity to misquote to his advantage. Neil read the bible once and memorized it. He never missed a chance to correct Bill in public and got an enormous kick out of exposing Bill for the fanatic idiot he was.

A week or so earlier Bill had decided that the people of Chloride needed to be warned about Neil. In the dark of night he painted the words “Idolater”, “Atheist”, “Homosexual” and “Satanist” all over Neil’s house. Then he covered the door and windows with religious tracts.
Bill had figured that he had won a major victory because Neil had been leaving him alone. Those of us that knew Neil knew that Bill had been living in a fool’s paradise. Neil had cleaned up his house and stayed at home for a week while Bill puffed himself up. Bill was ripe and his doom was coming down Tennessee Avenue on a beat up blue Honda.

The Honda stopped in the middle of the street right in front of the porch. “The Legendary Gunfighter” studied the porch with narrowed eyes from under the brim of his ugly hat. Then he pushed back his hat and grinned. It was the kind of grin you can see on a skull. He pulled something from his pocket and fumbled with it for a second then he hauled off and tossed it at the porch. I heard “The Sound.” “The Sound” is that peculiar noise made when the spoon pops off of a hand grenade. You only have to hear it once. It’s not the kind of thing you forget.

A yellow and black bumble bee of an object sailed over the porch rail and hit Bible Bill in the shoulder hard enough to spin him around. It rolled between Skin Ranch Stella’s feet and came to rest under her chair. I knew what it was before it hit the floor and was over the rail and around the corner in half a heart beat. Behind me I heard Dirty Mary yell “Grenade!” and all hell breaking loose.

“The Legendary Gunfighter “ originally owned two boxes of hand grenades. He had about a dozen live grenades painted in the traditional OD green and about a dozen dummy grenades painted bright blue. He had tossed a few of the blue grenades around but they never had the desired result. No one is afraid of a dummy grenade so he painted one batch of grenades black with yellow in the grooves and the other yellow with black in the grooves. I could never remember which was which. Neither, he claimed, could he.

The odds were about even that this would turn out to be a dummy grenade but that wasn’t nearly good enough so I hid behind the corner and counted to ten. Nothing happened. I waited a few more seconds and went back up on the porch to survey the wreckage.

Some of the tourists were pretty rattled. Flatlanders have little appreciation for country humor. There were a couple of broken chairs, a few bruises and a missing section of porch railing. Bible Bill and Skin Ranch Stella were missing too.

I walked over to the broken railing and my eyes followed the path of destruction that led from Stella’s chair, through the railing, through the cactus garden, across the parking lot and under Stella’s truck. At the word grenade she had launched herself off the porch with the idea of hiding under her truck. This process was about the same as flinging an elephant with a big fucking catapult.

It was Bill’s misfortune to be between Stella and her objective. His back had protected Stella from the cactus spines as they blasted through the cactus garden. I could see their feet sticking out from under the truck. If it had been almost any other couple I would have given them some privacy.

Bill started whining and Stella started bitching so I knelt down to take a look. Bill was lying on his cactus spine covered back with his head firmly jammed between Stella’s massive hooters. Stella was on top of Bill and they were both firmly jammed under her F-350. “The Legendary Gunfighter” sat astride his Honda and surveyed his handiwork. He nodded to himself and smiled. Life was indeed good.

The only thing known for certain to exceed the speed of light is gossip in a small town. A crowd was already gathering. The giggling had started. As if by magic cameras appeared. I tried to comfort Bill and Stella but gave it up for a bad job when I couldn’t maintain a straight face. Someone had called the rescue squad, which had called the fire department, which had galled the county sheriff. We never did find out who called the newspaper

The experts quickly gave up on the idea of just pulling them out and decided that jacking the truck up would be too dangerous so they decided to bring the small crane down from the gravel pit. It took fifteen minutes to get the crane down from the pit. In that time more than half the town had gathered to watch the festivities. Stinky Pete was trying very hard to not laugh at his sister’s situation and was failing badly.

Nine-finger Frank had picked up the grenade as soon as the sheriff’s car arrived. He quietly passed it off to Dirty Mary who took it home and eventually put it on the sill of her front window, which was directly across the street from Bible Bill’s house. She wanted him to be able to see it every day. By the time the deputy got around to asking questions no one was quite sure what had happened or had any idea how Stella and Bill had wound up under the truck. I told him that I thought she had gotten stung by a bee or something. Every one in town, including people who weren’t anywhere around, had his own version of what had happened. All were totally false and some were very exotic. Psycho Tom told the reporter an involved story that he actually believed about CIA death rays, UFO’s and demons in the Tennessee mine.

The crane lifted the front of the pick-up high enough for the rescue squad crew to get underneath and go to work. It took six men to roll Stella off Bill and strap her down on a back board. It took eight men to lift the board and get it into the ambulance, which developed a noticeable lean to the right. It only took three men to roll Bill over and strap him face down onto another board and get him loaded. The crowd cheered as the ambulance doors closed and it headed toward the highway and the hospital in Kingman.

It seemed that nearly every one in Chloride was a bit pleased with the humiliation of Bible Bill and Skin Ranch Stella. Some laughed out loud and some sniggered. If Stinky Pete’s smile had gotten any bigger the top half of his head would have fallen in the dirt. Stella would never move to Chloride now because by nightfall every one in town would have heard the story and would be laughing about it for years to come. Such is the price of fame.

Bible Bill didn’t leave town. He’d had over a hundred and fifty cactus spines removed from his back and butt. It was several weeks before he could sit properly and almost winter before he came to morning coffee again. As near as I can tell he never said another word to or about “The Legendary Gunfighter” again. Instead he turned his attention to helping Reverend Brett, the new, young, handsome minister at the Chloride Baptist Church.

Neil didn’t gloat. He didn’t need to. He’d just added another chapter to his legend and he knew it. Sometime during the confusion he had gone up on the porch, sat down in on of the unbroken chairs and put his feet up on the rail. He was the very picture of cadaverous satisfaction.

I pulled up a chair next to him and congratulated him on his success. Without looking at me he asked If I might have time to run over to Dolan Springs on Saturday. I told him sure I could and he announced that a friend of his had a truckload of mannequin parts to get rid of. I didn’t bother to ask what he wanted them for. I knew he’d think of something.