Magic begins with Ma; Pagan begins with Pa; you begins with Y?

To be is to do (Socrates); to do is to be (Sartre); do be do be do (Sinatra)

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.” Immanuel Kant.

As I passed Mama Ramos’ Cantina just before Greedy Gobblers & Guzzlers Tom Turkey Day, several locals were engaged in animated chatter, chuckling while dipping sweet, spicy churro’s into their bowl of coffee. I took that as a good sign, especially since the holiday ho ho ho spirit had been somewhat lacking in recent weeks. I ventured inside and had to laugh aloud when I found out a newspaper article was causing those smiles. Seems there’s a town in Canada called Dildo, which ain’t too awfully far from the towns of Spread Eagle, Placentia, and Conception Bay. An enterprising photographer had stopped to snap a pic of a small iceberg floating past Conception Bay—in the shape of a penis, a penis with icy testicles. You just can’t make this stuff up. These locals suggested I approach the mayor about at least renaming a few of our streets. Dead ended Franklin Road could be renamed Weiner Cutoff Road and Lakeview Avenue could become Seaman Avenue.

I just wanted all this insanity, this senseless slaughter to stop. Would our killer stop at twelve? Would the insanity continue if we somehow thwarted the killer next full moon? Tis the season to be jolly, not consumed with worrying about murderous follies. When I took this job our bawdy boy death toll stood at four. Now it’s 11. Who would be number 12? How was I gonna prevent the next killing from occurring?   

I sat down at the counter and exhaled. Too often I’m reminded that one of my many jobs is to serve as referee. Lucia, Mama Ramos fastest server, demanded I arrest the guy seated in the corner booth. She said he gave her three defaced dollar bills as a tip. Using a sharpie or similar marker, someone had added a B before the “ONE” and an R after the E on the back of three one dollar bills. She added he smiled and made a lip smacking motion as he handed the money to her.

While it’s generally not illegal to (inappropriately) flirt with your server, it is prohibited by law to cut, disfigure, mutilate, glue together, or perforate US currency. The problem is proving just who did the defacing. Lucia hadn’t actually seen him write on the bill, and a search of the cash register revealed five other dollar bills with the same ‘boner’ marking. All I could do was exchange the soiled bills for fresh bills I happened to have in my wallet and remind her that some people had an unfortunate brain problem: on their left side there’s nothing right, and on the right side there’s nothing left. She smiled and made me a large café con leche to go. She wouldn’t accept my money so I left her a greenback sporting old Alex Hamilton’s picture.

With heavy heart, I returned to my desk. You see, despite recommending voluntary curfews, posting men at entrances to all the clubs, restaurants and bars, our killer eluded us again, and claimed Freddie Davenport as the llth victim of the Tallywhacking Man Meat Mutilator—take your pick as to which version of the name the press called our killer. Maybe if the Mayor had let me mandate a real curfew and a few other measures, the killer would have had to look elsewhere. Freddie was my brothers’ age. After graduating, he developed a fondness for wacky tobaccy and electronics, and left Ryder in search of new thrills. Freddie returned home a few months ago to attend his father’s funeral and help his mom sell their business, an appliance store that specialized in hot tubs and state of the art flat screen TVs.

Never would have guessed a rover like Freddie kept diaries. His mom handed over to my deputy nearly a dozen books filled with longings and road weary travel musings. Said it made her smile, made her heart glad to know he’d been thinking about his family in Ryder as he made his way in every compass direction, bumming rides with big rig drivers or hopping freight trains that got him from gig to gig. He wrote his time on the road made him see the world with different eyes. I’d been putting off reading his entries, doubting it would provide any answers, although he’d made several new entries since his return.

One notebook was plastered throughout with beer and whisky labels he must of peeled off bottles and glued to interior pages. It was like finding a map of bad ass breweries and honky-tonks across America. There was Milwaukee’s finest and IPA’s from the Carolina’s, Tennessee, and Florida. He even wrote down his method for assessing a beer. It went something like this: pour into glass, check color and head of foam; give it a swirl and sniff; take a snort, then finish it off. He rated beers sampled on a 1-5 scale with most falling in the 3-4 category.

Back in March, when Freddie was passing through Oregon and headed due south, there was a curious entry and part of an article torn out of what looked like a medical journal. The article said Chinese researchers had developed artificial material that mimics a specific type of connective tissue, the tunica albuginea, responsible for keeping the penis erect during sexual arousal. When placed into pig penises with tunica injuries, the artificial material restored erectile function. It might do the same for humans, and help repair other organs, like the heart and bladder. The tunica albuginea’s role is to keep blood in the penis, similar to what happens when you pinch the neck of a balloon. This unique connective tissue is incredibly strong…

Good to know, I suppose, but why would a healthy young man be interested in artificial connective tissue? I suppose he could have had one of those phallic related ailments, like Peyronies or Balanitis. Yepper, this year I added knowledge of all things phallic to my book learning. I knew more than I ever wanted to about old scourges like syphilis and newer blights like HIV/AIDS and strains of Herpes. Doc Grayson and I had many a chat at Ryder’s make-shift morgue when the bodies of our bawdy boys were brought in. He noted they all had been stung by a bee recently and most had traces of alcohol in their system. As far as doc could tell, none of our mutilated men had any sexually transmitted diseases, but I can’t say if doc asked their families or checked their medical records for problems due to nether region injuries or inherited disorders. Was that even a topic worth pursing?

Mama’s sweet-spicy café con leche went down cruel easy as I leafed through Freddie’s recent entries. My attention was momentarily captured by a recent page where Freddie’d sketched some phallic looking mushrooms called gold caps next to his notation: “She asked bout my fav magic shroom & I told her it was Stropharia cubensis. I explained these hardly ever made you puke.  This shroom grows throughout tropical regions; local cattle are fond of it. Seekers find it growing in cattle dung. The Aztecs worshipped em and so did I when the band played Nogales. She agreed, said they called it the horny goddess in her part of the world  cause everyone that takes it wants to copulate.”

One other entry, made two days before Freddie’s dreadful demise, revealed he met her again, this time at the Easy Ryder Saloon. She wanted to know where she could buy a significant quantity of magic shrooms. He provided no description of the woman, but did say she was an awesome smoke show, aka pretty & sexy. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was Cerrie he met, but Hal swore she hadn’t been seen in Easy Ryder Saloon in months. Did I know better? My head started spinning. Could this supernatural creature that I swore I saw morph into a giagantic owl be a shape shifter? Or could she hypnotize you into seeing what wasn’t there or not remembering her? I made a note to check the saloon’s security tapes tomorrow.

Freddie also admitted to her it had been years since he’d trekked several counties over into Sierra de la Espuma (literally Foam Mountain, old Spanish name for Superstition Mountains, due east of Phoenix) to score from Alfonso, a forever hippie drug purveyor that dispensed a range of pharms and illegal herbals. Great, on top of everything else, did I have to worry about scurrilous drugs being used or distributed in Ryder? We had a problem a few years ago—until Sheriff Rohrer investigated and arrested two young out of towners who’d been hanging around the junior college campus.

Local farmers, if memory serves, gave the often photographed Superstitious Mountains its current name. Local Pima and Apache indigenous tribes told farmers that deep inside the mountain, which was actually part of a large caldera, a collapsed volcano, there’s a spiraling hole that leads to the underworld. Hot winds pour from the hole, and sporadically sweeps down the mountainside and cause terrible dust devil storms and other suspicious activity.

A more famous story is the legend of the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine, named after gold obsessed German immigrant Jacob Waltz. There are as many versions of the gold mine story as I imagine there are drugs in Alfonso’s mountain pharmacy. My favorite story has Waltz, stumbling out of the mountains, months after he and a motley crew of adventurers went in. He was bloodied, dazed, coated in gold dust, confused, and dragging a lame mule. None of the rest of his party survived. For the next two decades he hovered between life and death, delirium and catatonia. In 1891, he died screaming about some real or imagined horror.

Since Waltz’ death, there have been dozens more gold seekers killed in and around Superstitious Mountains, but none that lost any important body parts. They died of knife, bullet, and arrow wounds, dehydration and exposure, and a few, it’s assumed, were attacked by wild critters. Anyway, Freddie was able to confirm, via a buddy one county over, that Alfonso was still dispensing drugs. He gave the woman at Easy Ryder info about Alfonso’s last known location. He told her she needed a password and was to wear a red neckerchief to avoid being shot. There was nothing else in Freddie’s notebooks of interest. What would this woman, or Cerrie possibly want with a large quantity of magic shrooms? Were the Gen Z folks planning a holiday rave party, held in a room with no doors, walls, or floors—in a mushroom…?

I gave the marked up bills to one of my deputies to turn into the bank. He mentioned similarly defaced bills were floating all over town. In fact, there was a rumor a clerk at the General Store was responsible for papering Ryder with these boner bills. The General Store had recently restocked its inventory. They offered all sorts of barely disguised phallic toys. There was a green and purple stuffed toy dinosaur with a tag round its neck that said Reptile Dysfunction, please stroke me. There were five inch gummy treats in the shape of you know what and oversized pens with My PEN IS  huge, Ryder County AZ written lengthwise.

Damnation. Folks were continuing to milk our tragedy and make a buck. Just yesterday, the annual outdoor holiday fair flyer landed on my desk. With chagrin, I’d noted there was to be a love potion booth, featuring oysters delivered from British Colombia, camel’s milk with honey (an alleged aphrodisiac), and sturgeon lake caviar from Tennessee and the Florida panhandle. The booth that usually sold thinly sliced roast beef au jus sandwiches with a spicy chipotle dressing had opted this year for a foot long frankfurter stand served Chicago style with something called sports pickles. Henderson’s bakery was going all out announcing they’d be serving English favorite Spotted Dick; mini Italian sponge cakes that resembled a woman’s breast, with a cherry on top; as well as one of my favorites, Tiramisu, which legend says was invented in a northern Italian brothel. It was topped with curls of chocolate and traditionally cut into triangular wedges meant to resemble a woman’s nether region.

Even Mama Ramos’ cantina was taking advantage of our misfortunes. For the fair, Mama was offering a ½ price special on cocktails with sexy names like Naked Lady, Sex on the Beach, Blow Job, and Dirty Bananas. Ryder’s reputation was at risk and no one seemed to care. In the cold light of day, I also examined the dark stone amulet Lela gave me. It had a red gem at its center, streaked with orange and silvery veins. Could it be a Jacinth zircon, the same stone I’d read was the Dan Stone in the Jewish high priest’s breastplate? Twelve gems were arranged in four rows of three and inscribed with the names of the tribes of Jeshurun. I made a note to take down ma’s scrapbook albums and peruse the earlier pages I had to admit I hadn’t ever really paid attention to.

A sizeable chunk of my afternoon was spent at the courthouse. First I testified about the circumstances around a possible DUI/speeding violation. The accused was one of the Deborah’s and the entire hive turned out for her appearance in court, bedecked in yellow and black sweaters and hoodies. The woman stated emphatically she was an excellent driver and do gooder. She always adhered to the posted speed limit, but if she did exceed the limit, it was due to an emergency. She was late for a ‘bee-in’ ceremony. My non-bee antenna went straight up. There was a famous human be-in held in ol San Fran back in the late 60s. It was all about personal empowerment and a protest of the banning of psychedelic drugs, particularly LSD (though the Government continued to experiment).

She added she’d only had one glass of wine, a sweet moscato. Was there a link between Freddie’s diary entries and the Deborah’s? Somewhere in one of the research books I’d acquired was a write up about a certain ‘mad’ honey elixir, made from a particular rhododendron plant found in the Himalayan Mountains. Another prized honey comes from areas where opium poppy is grown.

The prosecutor was able to ascertain this was an insect, not a human bee-in she was going to when pulled over by yours truly. I suspected the Deborah’s were bored. This year’s honey had been harvested. The bees were thriving and protected by the ever vigilant Deborah’s. Their line of bee related products, from propolis gel caps and face cream to beeswax candles and druid fluid (mead), was doing well. This bee-in was some sort of initiation ceremony, though when pressed, details were sparse. From what I could gather, this special Deborah initiation was only for those members who claimed, or evidenced ability of bee whispering, a du-bee-ious claim if ever I heard one.

Personally, I think they must of watched that mid 80’s movie about the girl that could talk to insects and revealed a killer. What was the name—Phenomena—or something similar. This Deborah’s blood alcohol was just under the legal limit so all the prosecutor could do was fine her or speeding 17 miles over the limit. As I walked out of the courtroom and headed for my next meeting in the mayor’s office, I mused over how wondrous it would be if one of the Deborah’s could get the bees to buzz us about who and where our killer’s hive was.

The mayor’s meeting was a major buzz kill. With the outdoor fair being held in a few days time, not to mention the usual seasonal festivities, the mayor and his henchmen once again vetoed a curfew, even after I remind them December would deliver a double whammy in the form of two full moons. Typically the second moon is called a blue moon. The first full moon was in three days. The blue moon would fall right before New Year’s Eve. I drove home thinking the entire damn town had a death wish.

After five or so hours of uneasy sleep, the waxing moon woke me. I made a pot of strong coffee and parked myself at my desk next to a stack of albums ma had created to document our family’s history. I needed a distraction. Was there a jewish connection within these pages? Both ma and pa’s side of the family had ancestors from the Ulster/Donegal part of Ireland. Ma’s mom was of Zuni heritage. A google search alleged the original Dan Tribe split into three parts. One part went northeast to Scythia and other Slavic countries; one went, theoretically to Denmark and became the Danes and Vikings; and the third part went west and ended up in the British Isles and perhaps the Americas. In Wales they were called children of Don; in Ireland the tribe of Dana.  

Ma didn’t have much info on her people. They passed on info orally, but she had pasted a fragment written on a yellowed piece of parchment in spidery handwriting: Our Apache Dene Dine ancestors were called by the Zuni Apachu, meaning enemy, including your Zuni father, until I entered his life. Your grandfather also had enemies and crossed the great Atlantic, leaving behind forever Ulster’s green shores and blood soaked land. In the Army raid of (words missing)…Together we escaped the missionary school and terrible Jesuit priests and made our way to Navaho territory by following the great Colorado. Most of our stories have been lost, but I have shared with you the ways of other ancestors who came here in the dawn times and made America their home. The cruel Jesuits confirmed what our elders had told us, what must remain secret.

This was perhaps something written by my grandmother, who had died before I was born. So she was Apache and her father was Irish. She married a Zuni, my grandad, who died when I was still a young scamp. This was information my ma never shared. I chuckled, were the Apache some version of the lost Dan tribe as well? How fashionable to be part of a group of people that may only exist in one’s imagination. Tucked under a picture of man and pa standing in the shadow of our mountain was a crude map of our ranch before the main house and some of the auxiliary buildings were erected. Across the top, in Spanish, was written Lugar de los Jueces (place of the judges) and directly below was a series of symbols. A few were not unlike those carved on our bawdy boys chests. Next to the words was a weighing scale. My book on ancient symbols told me these were Phoenician letters, which I assumed spelled out place of judges. The Dan Tribe was described as judges.

There was a picture of Pa as a kid. He musta been around ten years old. He was gazing up at a man who held a sign much like the one Pa made for our ranch not too long before he passed on. La Fonda del Sol was arched across the top of both signs in black letters on a mustard yellow background. At the bottom of the sign was the top of a rising sun, painted red, with black spikes shooting out. The mountain range I stared at nearly every day of my life was etched into the middle of the sign and painted in brown and gold hues. A narrow piece of sky showed an eagle flying across the mountains. And at the mountain’s base, on the left side a black stallion reared. On the right side a red snake was slithering upwards. The page I’d googled on Tribe of Dan showed the snake, stallion, and eagle as its primary emblems.

Well, I’ll be double-dip damned…Seems there is a association, or at least an assortment of symbols tying the Dan family to the Lost Tribe of Dan. Why hadn’t my parents ever mentioned this connection to me? I was fairly sure Travis wasn’t told either. How in blue blazes did Cerrie know? Did our name have anything to do with why Travis was killed? It was more imperative than ever to find her.

As if on cue, my cell phone lit up. Receiving an incoming call when it was barely 5 am was never good. But in this case, it was what I needed.

“Hello Peter Dan. We are overdue for a talk, are we not? We should not wait until your Ryder Fair to meet by happenstance. There is much to discuss before another sunrise passes. Do you now understand why?”

Next up, Chapter 11, Bee-ing and Nothingness