Vasquez Rocks: A smiley gets you one back

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

Plucky Melba Trousdale lost her boyfriend during an engagement picnic at Vasquez Rocks. He was snatched by a giant tentacle near the set of one of the science fiction action flicks frequently filmed at that location. The tentacle snapped her boyfriend, Aaron Slingfact, into a pool of greenish-blue light. Seeking help from her ex-brother-in-law, a 6-foot-6, 258-pound bail recovery agent named Gort, Melba rode into the Big Rock Inn. At the inn, west of Palmdale, but east of Krakatoa, Melba and Gort encountered Don Diego Rivera O'Riley, a reputed ufologist and sometime shaman. Just when the trio was ready to develop a theory on the missing boyfriend, the Antelope Valley's most feared outlaw motorcycle club - the Vegans - showed up. The meatless bikers pursued Melba's friends from Elizabeth Lakes to Littlerock, leaving a trail of laser blasts and flame. Does Melba's band call a cop? The Marines? No, they call a reporter. Reporters may not have answers, but they do have questions. Jack Slingfact was forming them all the way to Vasquez Rocks.

Chapter 9: Did you get a look at the one-armed man?

Valley Press reporter Jack Slingfact exited the news room, heading out to a photo opportunity for the mayor pardoning a pit bull as a birthday show of mercy. But as Jack considered the events of the last 18 hours he was unable to turn away from deep thoughts about his trip up into the hills west of Valyermo, with the band on the run from the Vegans outlaw motorcycle club.

To say the journey was unusual would be understatement even in the plain, flat prose of a police reporter. On his raffled Harley Sportster, the veteran journalist rode "Tail End Charlie" following a 1943 vintage White's armored scout car, accompanied by a heavily armed Dorothy and crew, with the Vegan bikers in pursuit like so many flying monkeys.

Astride their choppers, the Vegans pursued Melba and her friends relentlessly, propelled by a lethal mix of bourbon and carrot juice, lasers from the jungle and bad attitude. Until O'Riley popped smoke.

The white smoke that his friend Diego O'Riley fired from the scout car's grenade launcher scattered the Vegans across Highway 138, giving Jack the reporter, Gort the bounty hunter and Diego the medicine man the time they needed to flee into the foothills west of Valyermo but east of Java.

At the fortress hacienda built by O'Riley, Jack had listened to the strange tale of his cousin, Aaron, plucked from the loving arms of Melba Trousdale by a giant tentacle.

He had never spent a night at the hacienda of Big Foot O'Riley, his favorite ufologist and medicine man. But then, he had never been chased from a Littlerock roadside diner full of vengeful outlaw bikers armed with directed laser weapons.

So, the next day, after checking his e-mail, Jack abandoned his deadline assignment and hit the road to rejoin the little band that coalesced around teaching aide Melba Trousdale, former SAW gunner with the 1498th Transportation Co. in Iraq, and more recently engaged to Jack's vanished cousin, Aaron Slingfact.

The events of the night and day before suddenly rendered the mayor pardoning the pit bull photo op less compelling than the idea of catching up with the little band of nomads who recruited him to help find his missing cousin, the potentially betrothed of Melba.

As the reporter on a motorcycle accelerated onto the Antelope Valley Freeway from the Avenue S onramp, he felt a surge of commitment to something more than 18.5 inches for page A3. Like Travis McGee on two wheels, he gave the bike some throttle, morphing from ink wretch into a knight on quest in service of a damsel in distress, however heavily armed.

This abduction thing involving his nearly forgotten cousin was under his skin like a deadline.

He rode south on the Antelope Valley Freeway, in pursuit of Melba and answers to questions. While he shifted gears to 14 Freeway cruising speed he pondered them:

- Why when he searched his desktop databases was there no reference to the movie shoot at Vasquez Rocks that Melba had spoken of? That same movie shoot where his feckless cousin was abducted by a giant tentacle.

- How did biker outlaws like the Vegans access directed laser weapons that should really be restricted to ranges at Edwards Air Force Base and locations in Nevada too secret to talk about?

- And why had cousin Aaron so many years ago never offered to pay for the Fender guitar he shattered in one of his few acts of spontaneity, a walk-on at a local battle of garage bands held at a restaurant where people liked to meet?

The cousin simply vanished like a cold case into the Y2K pre-millenial haze. And now he had vanished again, leaving a lady waiting with an unused engagement ring and a story too implausible for page A1.

But he couldn't discount the story he had been told entirely. For one thing, it involved a relative. For another thing, the story came by way of a friend who had led him to pay dirt before.

In all his years of fraternizing with Don Diego Rivera O'Riley he had never doubted the truthfulness of the ufologist and medicine man. He had followed him out to the periphery of that Nevada wasteland known to the Weekly World News tabloid and Aviation Week as "Area 51."

Slingfact the reporter and O'Riley the ufologist had disagreed on interpretation of things they had seen together under the stars, but never did Jack doubt that the medicine man believed everything he described. He told the truth as he saw it, with the edges sometimes softened by a few too many infusions of Sierra Nevada pale ale.

Rumbling down the 14 toward the turnoff to Vasquez Rocks, Jack remembered the several expeditions conducted with Big Foot O'Riley as guide, helping him to get a "story of attraction" for a Sunday front-page series. Together, they had notched a couple of good ones. On that jaunt in an old Jeep Laredo, they rolled all the way from Palmdale to the Tikaboo Valley outside Rachel, Nev. and the fabled Area 51.

Jack was looking for a "black projects" aircraft sighting of a thing called "Bird of Prey." O'Riley signed on as guide, so they could share expenses, a dome tent, and some particularly rare agave tequila.

It became clear to Jack that by the time the sun set out past the black mail box that if Jack was waiting for a sighting of a stealthy Air Force project, that O'Riley was waiting for the last bus from Roswell.

O'Riley had always been straight with Jack. When he said "the cammo dudes" that secured the Area 51 perimeter were just around the next rock and were going to take Slingfact and O'Riley into a constitutionally dubious custody, he was accurate. The dudes seized their cameras and some of their dignity. Jack hated losing that camera.

What Jack loved about hanging out with an eccentric but earnest news source like Don Diego Rivera O'Riley was that it re-ignited the thing that got him in the business in the first place, an intense curiosity, blended with an occasional sense of wonder.

Last question: Why would a giant tentacle want to abduct his forgettable cousin? What do tentacles do on their days off?

Slingfact zoomed down the 14 toward the hamlet of Agua Dulce with the ease of a surfer finding curl, but his eyeballs felt scratchy, and he realized he had slept on a horse blanket. He needed a can of taurine, guarana and caffeine wrapped around ginseng and bubbles. He pulled off at the crossroads where the gas pumps were married to 24-hour food marts.

He dismounted, walked into the 24-hour mart and acquired a can of "Big Dog" energy drink and punched in Barclay on his cell. If he was blowing off an assignment, he would have to come clean with Barclay. Managing editors didn't come better.

"How's the pit bull and the mayor?" Barclay asked.

"I have no idea," Slingfact said. "I'm taking a personal day."

"Jack, you have no personal life," Barclay said. "Why would you need a personal day?"

"It's personal."

"How much vacation do you have logged?"

"No idea."

"You have about four-thousand hours. Take the day."

"Just like that? What about the mayor and his pit bull?"

"We'll get the intern to do it."

"Nice to know I'm irreplaceable."

"Good story if you stick to it," Barclay said. "So, take the day."

All those years of never missing a deadline, pursued by editors wanting more, and once in a while they returned serve. "You're a good man, Barks," Slingfact said. "I'm glad you're my editor."

"Go on. You'll make me cry, and as you know, I am no sentimentalist," Barclay said.

Slingfact knew quite the opposite. "See you tomorrow, boss."

Slingfact finished off the 20-ounce can with the grinning terrier mix on it and felt his cell phone buzz. It was a kind of a pleasant tingling sensation. Turned out it was a text message from Melba. Or, somebody using Melba's cell.

"O'Riley: don't enter V-Rocks from park entry. Use RR tunnel neath FWY. Advise."

In an age where people were condensing language quicker than a fast forward past the Viagra ads on TiVo, this was almost eloquent. Stay away from the main park entrance at Vasquez Rocks. Slingfact sent back a smiley-face emoticon. A goofy but affirmative message, the smiley 21st century equivalent of "Roger, wilco." And Melba returned her own smiley. Cute.

The reporter rumbled down an access road from a gravel pit and passed the armored car disguised with a tarp that made it look like an armored car under a tarp. He pushed his Sportster into a stand of brush. He rummaged in the saddle bag and found a flashlight and a lock-blade knife. Thus prepared he entered the tunnel and found it dark. He rounded a corner and saw daylight ahead, the 50 yards tunneled under the freeway. He blinked to adjust his eyesight. He looked again and saw a really big guy, but it wasn't Big Foot O'Riley or Gort the bounty hunter. The guy was huge, and he had one arm. Jack stepped forward to get a better look and fell down a very dark hole. And kept falling.

To be continued next Sunday.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Previous chapters of Vasquez Rocks can be read at avpress.com behind the extraterrestrial icon.