Book Excerpt

a lily in the desert 1959

Excerpt from

“Six Days to Haight-Ashbury”

By Lille Diane

Where have all the flowers gone

Long time passin’

Where have all the flowers gone

A long, long time ago

Where have all the flowers gone

Young girls picked them every one

When will they ever learn

When will they ever learn

Johnny Rivers

1959 Farmington, New Mexico… If life could change overnight mine did one Thanksgiving weekend when we moved into our brand new house–a pink trimmed, brick house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a large yard to play in. It was a far cry from the cramped, postage stamp sized duplex we’d left on Pinon Street in Aztec, New Mexico. And if life were a donut, mine went from a plain donut to an apple fritter coated in a sweet, bubbly glaze. With a donut like that you can have dessert twice if you lick your fingers instead of washing them. And I wanted to savor every, single crumb that suddenly landed on my plate.

Our new street had nine houses on it, and a truck load of kids to play with. My best friend lived across the street, and I’d never had a best friend before just like I’d never had a brand new house before. Her name was Georgia Terry but no one called her Georgia, or Terry—you said both names together. Georgia Terry. I loved saying her name. We were both seven years old, and in no time we eased into each other like a pair of Raggedy Ann dolls. We shared the same freckled faces with the same sewn on smiles.

It seemed to me she was the odd man out in life, just like me, so it didn’t surprise me to see welts on her legs from a belt or bruises shaped like finger prints on the back of her arms. In an strange, comforting way, I felt better seeing the sadness in her eyes. Those dull eyes of hers glowed like a porch light to me, and welcomed me home–a home only another battered spirit could recognize as a familiar place without a formal introduction.

Georgia Terry’s family was large. Most of the time her mother shooed the kids out of the house, and rarely allowed any neighborhood kids to come in. Even though we were living in a new house filled with new furniture, and new smells, I knew we weren’t rich. And I knew that Georgia Terry’s family was eating pinto beans for breakfast, lunch, and dinner five days a week–if not more. At least we had corn bread, and butter, to go with our beans which was a sure sign we were better off than these folks.

Georgia Terry’s face was always dirty. Her clothes had holes in them, and were dull from so many washings. Even I knew they should have been turned into cleaning rags three kids ago. It didn’t take me long to figure out she told lies. Big lies, one after another. One story she told me over, and over, was creepy. I felt dirty just listening to her tell it. I’d ask her to stop saying such filthy things but once she started talking, it was like emptying out a piggy bank. She’d shake out every gruesome detail like it was the last lonely penny stuck inside the belly of a dime store plaster pig.

Here’s the story she’d tell me. There was a man in a car that followed her. She said he’d always find her when she was playing on the paved streets in our neighborhood, or on the old dirt road we walked to school on. When he found her, he would slow his car down, and try to get her to get in his car. She said several times he showed her his wiener. I wasn’t sure what a wiener was but it sounded nasty the way she whispered that word. Wiener.

I curled my lips up in disgust when she told me this. I’d always frown at her, and say, “Stop lying to me, Georgia Terry!” Or, “That’s a filthy lie!” And, “You’ll go to hell for lying, Georgia Terry!”

“I promise I’m not lying to you! It’s true!” she’d tell me. “I’m NOT lying!”

I spent countless hours as a child playing in the desert hills with Georgia Terry, my sisters or the other neighborhood kids. We searched for arrowheads, explored washed out gullies, and rolled stink bugs over on their backs just to watch them play dead. We hunted down gigantic, winged grasshoppers that flew in herds and attached themselves to our skin like aliens with six creepy claws. We’d be careful not to get any of the tobacco juice they spit out on our fingers after we caught them, and then we’d pull their large hind legs off. If you squeezed the scaly thighs of a grasshopper’s detached leg, it kicks as though it were still alive. And even then, it didn’t stop the hum of thousands more waiting in the wings to attack us. But it was delicious fun for a bunch of kids who made up their fun as they went along.

In northern New Mexico the landscape is dotted with tumble weeds, and desert flowers like Indian paintbrush, and wild purple asters. Scrubby-looking Pinon trees break up the enormous azure skyline, and if you look carefully you’ll find a horny toad basking in the warm sunlight, or a blue-collared lizard dart across the honey colored sand saying, “Catch me if you can.”

On windy days dust devils kicked up the sand and turned them into miniature tornadoes. Getting caught in a dust devil was painful, and I wondered at times if the spinning demon would pull me up into the sky like Dorothy, and Toto in The Wizard of Oz. We often hunkered down, pulling our skirts down over our knees when the winds blew wild, and shot through our tender skin like bullets of glass. From heaven, our tiny bodies must have looked like bowling pins when a 3-4 foot tumbleweed headed straight for us at 20-40 MPH.

On other days I ran through the desert hopping over tumbleweeds like they were hurdles; pretending I could fly as I soared over the prickly, dried star bursts with the wind at my back. The high desert is a haven full of nature’s glory, and to a seven year old tomboy, like me, it was an ideal playground created just for me.

One day, Georgia Terry and I were walking home together from a Brownie meeting on the old dirt road we took everyday to and from school. The path was barely visible except for some patchwork ruts made by tires many years before. This road was about a mile long, and dipped sharply in the middle creating a small valley that hid us from the school and our houses. As we approached the hill that topped the small valley, I heard a car, and turned to see someone driving down the rugged terrain. There was a half a mile of dust kicking up behind the vehicle. It looked like a giant funnel cloud snaking its way toward us. I’d never seen anyone drive down this road before. Never.

Georgia Terry suddenly ran as fast as she could to the top of the hill screaming like a cat that just had its tail stepped on. “It’s him! It’s the bad man!” She was frantic, and her high pitched scream startled me. But my curiosity, and genuine concern that someone was lost, stopped me from running up the hill with her.

The late afternoon sun bounced off the car’s hood and into my grit filled eyes. I could barely see the face of the driver but it looked like the man driving was smiling. “Are you lost?” I asked, squinting to keep the dust and sun out of my eyes.

“Yes, I am. Could you help me? I’m not from around here.” he asked. His two toned, brown car was slowly inching toward me–close enough now for me to see his eyes, sky lit blue and wooing me with a hypnotic stare. He seemed embarrassed by Georgia Terry accusing him of being anything but lost, and began talking a little louder to be heard over her cries begging me to run. He looked like a nice man, and since she told so many lies that I never knew when she was telling the truth or not, so I blew her off with a scowl as if to say stop being so dramatic.

I approached the car much to Georgia Terry’s horror so she let out another frenzied screech that pierced the peaceful desert calm. I hesitated for a brief moment then tuned her out. It was like I was standing in a vacuum.  All I could hear was his silky voice and the engine of his car softly idling. I moved a step closer.

“C’mon, I just need a little help. You’re a nice little girl, aren’t you?” I nodded, shaking my head up and down, acknowledging my niceness. Like sugar and spice, and everything nice, I wanted to be called nice by someone. I rarely heard anything nice about me at home or school, so it felt nice being thought of as a nice girl. I saddled up to the flattery, and saw the approval in his eyes.

“What street are you looking for? Up there’s 20^th Street, and back there’s Northeast Street,” I told him, pointing in both directions.

“Oh, I musta took a wrong turn, honey. Which way is 20^th Street? C’mere, and show me.” He was still smiling but watching Georgia Terry closely as he talked to me. He wiggled his fingers for me to step closer. “You want to help me, don’t cha?”

I sensed I shouldn’t move any closer to the car but I didn’t want to be rude. I was a nice little girl. He’d just told me I was. I stepped willingly into the noose. He reached out with one arm, and scooped me up toward the car window before I could answer. I smiled awkwardly, and pulled back like a snared rabbit with a rope around my foot. I tugged against a dark force so fierce I felt the light rush out of my eyes.

“Ahhh, don’t listen to her. I’m a nice man, huh?” His voice syrupy, and hissing, and hungry for ripe obedience.

“Yes,” I said, not sure if I should tell him no because I was taught to talk respectfully to adults. His arm coiled around my tiny frame like a snake. He was strong, and I felt like a saltine cracker about to be snapped in half, and crumpled into a hot bowl of chili.

“Have you ever seen one of these?” he asked me.

“Seen what?” I asked. I couldn’t breathe after that question. It led to an answer I already knew because Georgia Terry had told me this story before.

He said, “This.” and forced my trembling body up higher to the car window so I could see his other hand was gripping a fully erect penis. I’d never seen such a sight before. I’d never smelled such a wicked stench before. He belched, and a cloud of evil spewed from his liquored up smile. Then he grinned, unashamed, as if he’d struck gold. My mortified expression caused him to laugh in a hideous way I had never heard any one laugh like before. The more I tried to wiggle away from his strong hold, the more he forced me to look upon his sickness. My whimpering just made him howl louder, and the more I squirmed–the more he laughed. I don’t know what gave me the courage that day maybe it was Georgia Terry cheering me on with her screams. Somehow I managed to tuck my chin down, and bite his wrist as hard as I could. He reluctantly let me go, and I ran to the top of the hill where Georgia Terry stood crying.

I now know if it hadn’t been for Georgia Terry standing on the hill as a witness to an unspeakable crime, I may never have survived the clutches of a monster; the boogie man who roamed the earth looking for bad children to devour. We heard him laugh as though he’d gone mad, and watched numbly as the car disappeared into a thick cloud of dust.

“I told you I wasn’t lying! I told you so!!!” She stood shoulders limp, and crying.

I told her I was sorry for not believing her. I wanted to scrape my eyeballs until they bled but nothing could wash away the graphic images–nothing. I wished my skin would bleed so the world could see the wounds his filthy hands left on my body when he held me against my will. I wanted to cry, too, but the tears never came. That’s the day I buried my little girl heart in the desert–without so much as a tear. I remember that day like it happened yesterday, and can still hear his ghost laughing as though he were standing right next to me. I could even tell you what he was wearing if you wanted me to.

Georgia Terry and I never discussed what happened again after that day. A few weeks later, she and her family suddenly moved away. It was years before I told my mother what happened. I went to bed every night praying he would never come looking for me again. I trembled in the darkness, and in the daylight, recalling the boogie man I narrowly escaped from in the desert valley that day. I never walked that road again without watching for tell-tale clouds of dust from a car coming over the ridge to find me.

Maybe this is why the blue-collared lizards, and the horny toads, run so fast through the desert. They know a dust devil can catch you, and will devour you if you stand still for even a moment in its evil path.

This is me, on the left after the incident, and my sister is on the right. A picture says a 1000 words.