Nothing much had changed from the years I’d actually been in the military. Going out at night, ‘taking a walk’ beyond the safety of the perimeter, the corpsman handed out pills meant to keep everyone alert.

Now, like then, I never found the need for them.

The smallest noise not recognized would amp me up more than I could almost bear. And then I’d find myself hoping that I wasn’t the only one who had noticed it.

And should a couple of rounds be fired off in the distant dark, that same darkness would be there, kneeling on my chest. I had completely forgotten what my fear tasted like: bitter, metallic, guilty.

Back then, I carried a rifle. On this tour, I had only some pens, two notebooks, my elderly Canon AE-1 and 35 canisters of Kodak film.

There would be no killing for me on this tour. However, I knew I was a prime target and that didn’t leave me feeling any more comfortable.

This part of the world was familiar to me as I’d been here before. But it was also more deadly now then it had been, when I first touched boot to it.

Before my military escorts picked up me along with their four other guests, I found myself asleep in a smallish, dilapidated motel room that cost me ten-bucks American. That first night I was so exhausted that I simply dropped out.

The next morning following a cup of kahwah, some crisp pakora and a bowl of spicy lubya, I wandered around a three or four block area. It was a welcomed relief to see US forces populating the street corners, adding some sense of safety to my well-being.

That second night, amid sporadic small arms fire, I found I couldn’t sleep. So with my room window open and moonlight shining in, I studied the old map that hung above my narrow bed.

‘Old’ because while it was of the same country I’d once been a secret guest of, and again found myself in, it was in Cyrillic script . Though I couldn’t read the script, I knew it from my previous experience.

The universe has a way of rendering some persons safe, I’ve learned. That’s why this narrative is so short.

It is easy to catalog of bits and piece of overheard ‘before and after’ conversations:

“I can’t wait to get me some.”

“Shit, you’ll be too scared to even lift your weapon.”

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

Silence.

“I was so scared I shit myself.”

“Yeah, and if that’s the worst thing either of us do, we can count ourselves luck.”

“You mean you were scared too?”

“No, I mean I shit myself too.”

Laughter.

But the hard  thing is the memorializing life when the chips come down.

The four other and I rode in a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected light tactical vehicle or MRAP. And like so often is the case, military vehicle’s are subject to SNAFU’s and this one simply stopped running and we were forced to wait for another ride.

“Contact!” a Marine shouted as we were off-loading our gear.

Scrambling, I found the far side of the road and a thin strip of land strewn with small boulders. Where everyone else raced off to, I had no idea.

The flash was enormous, the sound deafening. So loud was the blast that it left my ears ringing for the next three days.

One killed, two injured, including one of the journalists. While I was sure I had a concussion, the reporter lost his thumb and the first three fingers to his right hand, leaving only his pinky intact.

As the Corpsman worked on the Marine, I tended my civilian counterpart. Once all hostilities had been squelched, I learned everything I’d brought with me had gone up in the ensuing blaze of the MRAP.

Within the hour, we were enroute to the FOB that we had left earlier in the evening and while the two more seriously injured were flighted to a larger, better equipped facility, I was taken to an uncomfortable gurney, given a medical once over, followed up by a full head-to-toe physical, two days later and shipped out of country.

What a bust. No story, no concussion, and only ringing of the ears, which had already subsided.

My days as an embedded reporter were finished and I found myself homeward bound. As I sat in the window seat of a commercial airline, crossing the blue-green expanse of Pacific ocean, I found myself daydreaming and wishing that I had ‘procured’ that old Soviet map, squirreling it away in my duffel bag as a memento of my failed adventure.

cloth mask on my face
protects me from Covid death
my feet are cold

Thousands of employees in Nevada lost their jobs when businesses shut down mid-March. While most other industries have been able to resume some level of operations, Gov. Steve Sisolak has indicated that the state’s brothels are “not on his radar” to reopen.

Services allowing physical contact around the state have been allowed to resume service, with tattoo shops, estheticians, and massage parlor open since May. However those in Nevada’s legal sex industry say they feel they’re being ignored.

Nevada is the only state to allow legal prostitution, but state laws requires such activities to take place in a licensed establishment in a county with a population of less than 700,000. Clark County is the only Nevada county to exceed that population count, while six other counties, Carson City, Douglas, Eureka, Lincoln, Pershing, and Washoe, have outlawed legalized prostitution. Among the 10 counties where brothels can legally operate, none operate in Churchill, Esmeralda or Humboldt.

The Mustang Ranch Brothel was closed in 1999, but owner Lance Gilman reopened it in 2005 and currently employ 49 people. Those full-time employees include security, kitchen staff and chefs, bartenders, housekeeping staff, cashiers and “parlor hostesses” who manage in-house operations.

However, in addition to the 49 staff members, there are several hundred legal sex workers who work at the brothel on a rotating basis. Legal sex workers are independent contractors and not employees, and this status has made it more difficult for those workers to receive supplemental benefits while out of work.

Unemployment benefits have not been immediately available to independent contractors during the first months lock-down, and although the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) was eventually extended to workers with this classification in May, but not all legal sex-workers have been eligible this assistance though. Furthermore, the brothels, themselves were not eligible for the Small Business Administration loans that many businesses took advantage of earlier this year.

Gilman, however did manage to secure Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans for the Wild Horse Saloon, the restaurant attached to Mustang Ranch. Additionally, Gilman’s business was eligible for federal small business grants distributed by Storey County.

Storey County, where Gilman is also a county commissioner, is the only county that participated in the grant program.

Yet even after receiving the PPP loans Mustang Ranch employees had to be furloughed and contractors were denied the supplemental income from these loans. And without unemployment benefits, many women in the industry are turning to creative options to make up for lost income, including phone sex lines and cam work.

Sisolak has said that he doesn’t know how people would social distance in a brothel, stating instead that it is up to brothel owners “coming up with a plan,” however every submitted plan has been met with silence from the state.

Gilman first submitted reopening plans in May to the COVID-19 Task Force and the Local Empowerment Advisory Panel which is supposed to help develop reopening guidelines for Nevada businesses. He also submitted a letter, with the plan attached, to the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. However, Michael Brown, the office’s executive director, responded only by saying the reopening request, might “be considered at a future phase in the State’s re-opening plan.”

Gilman’s reopening plans includes procedures for screening employees, customers and contractors, limiting the number of customers and contractors in the building, sanitizing procedures and mask use requirements, and procedures for containment in the case of a positive test or failed screening. His proposal would also allow the brothel to operate without physical contact, essentially allowing the non-sexual escort services currently allowed by the county to take place within the brothel facility.

And while the bar would also remain closed to customers, the kitchen would be able to prepare food for guests, which would then be packaged and delivered to rented rooms. The letter also indicated that the brothel had been implementing safety protocols prior to its official shutdown.

“We took temperatures at the door with trained personnel, we took temperatures of every employee and every working lady prior to starting their workday every day,” Gilman said in the letter. “We use gloves, alcohol wipes and all forms of sanitary protocols. These are everyday standard procedures.”

Meanwhile, hundred’s of jobs and million’s of dollar remain lost to Storey County and others as the state struggles over what needs to be done regarding COVID-19 and legal brothels.

“Who would be calling at two in the morning?” his wife hissed as she reached for the phone.

Awake now, he listened.

“What?!” she exclaimed. “How should I know – we live 400 miles away from the ocean!”

She slammed down the phone.

“Who was that?” her husband asked.

“Some woman,” she answered.

“Well, what did she want?” he asked.

“To know if the coast was clear,” she answered.

Really awake now, he simply laid there.

The Blonde started crying after the doctor told her she was going to have twins.

He tried to console her asking, “Are you not happy about having twins?”

“It’s not that,” she answered. “It’s that I don’t know who the second father is.”

They bravely approached the rickety old card table like they owned the place. As mice, I am supposing that they really did own it, as no one, I am told, had visited their dark, dungeon-like world in three or four years and that’s generations to a common field or church mouse.

At first I didn’t see or heard them as they joined me at the table. Nor did I realize they were even there till one was bold enough to move to my right to see what it was that I was scribbling in my note book.

“Nothing of interest,” I imagined him saying as he rejoined his small posse.

Now that I knew that they were there, I couldn’t help but eye-ball them from time to time, to see what they might be up to or interested in. Fortunately for me I didn’t have any food, or I might have found myself swarmed like the rats did to the various humans in the movie, ‘Willard.’

Unfortunately, from my tres amigos, I had liquid reproof in an all-purpose metal flask tucked in the side pocket of my bib over all’s. And while I had intended it for medicinal purposes only, I saw no harm in sharing a small amount with my new friends.

The first dribble from the flask into the metal lid went down fast with all three. Now they grew excited and raced across the table, over my hands, over the newspapers and my notebooks.

I offered a second dribble, filling the lid as full as possible.

Again it was met with a certain greedy haste. And again, all three three mice sprinted from here to there and back again.

I couldn’t help but laugh a their carnival show-like antics jumping, flipping. spinning, and bouncing to-and-fro.

Then the smallest one of the three, sat up on his haunches and shook his head so vigorously that he toppled over the edge of the card table to the rocky floor below. While I jumped up to see if the poor thing was okay or if the fall had broken its neck, I swear I heard the other two, as they looked over the precipice from where their mate had gone, laughing and guffawing.

By the time I got to where the mouse had fallen, it was gone, and by the time I returned to my seat, the other two had vanished as well. The furry little miscreants, while in their throes of hilarity and cuteness had also robbed me of the lid to my flask.

A quick walk around the table and I found it where they had dropped it in their panicked flight to avoid the foot steps of the invading human.

“Jus’ for that,” I chided them with full gusto, “No more for you!” and I turned the flask end up, downing the content.

I never saw my old chums again, concluding that blind drunk, they were sleeping off the effects of my gift, which serves them right.

There are all sorts of ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs, but not one that reads ‘Already Disturbed.’

“Down the hall and to the left, that door,” she pointed as she escorted me to the ‘stack,’ her term for where all the old newspapers and magazines lay unmolested.

Anywhere else, am certain, it would be called the ‘morgue,’ the place where old, dead newspapers are left, numerically cataloged to die in pieces, and in peace, withered away by time, ravaged by mice and pack rats or simply forgotten and sealed off from the rest of the known universe. In this event, whatever one might call it, it was an old, but well framed mine shaft, hidden some 15-feet beneath the floor of the towns public library.

I am marveled at what I’m seeing!

The shaft is not very deep, much more a hollow then anything else, less than 50-foot by 30-foot and around 8-foot in height. It is then that I realize that dug-out is purpose made and it makes me smile.

“A secretive piece of heaven, hardly visited,” I whispered unknowingly.

A metal folding chair, a seat filled with a light layer of dust held parliament mid-room, waiting for my company. It beckoned me to drag the rickety and tattered card table, a long-time companion, sitting still folded and dirty covered over, to keep us all company.

It feel like home, the one we ate at as children while the older folk sat at the big table, enjoying Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey. I shared the memory aloud and I believe it felt grateful for the long forgotten jog it felt of days such as that.

Above me swayed a single light bulb. It too, along with the green enamel pan-shade, were touched by the ever present dust of age and forgotteness. I spent a few minutes cleaning both and eventually having to feel my way to the stair case, up and out, because the bulb could no longer live with out its outer garment of filth.

Unceremoniously, the librarian tossed the now dead bulb in the trash and handed me a new one. She felt no concern for the aged bulb and I had to turn away before I said anything, knowing it was her family and not mine, for I’m but a visitor to her bookish Queendom.

New bulb in place, I moved quietly through the four aisles of papers, each cased in a heavy wooden frame and guarded by a chicken-wire window. Each top paper is coated in a fine grit, thicker than the grit that has found its way between the hundreds of pages beneath it.

I sneeze as the finer silt becomes airborne and I know I am right where I must be and in love.

Eighteen-fifty, the oldest broadsheet I will find and I am joyful as I sit down, my friends surrounding me and we enjoying one another and our contemplative company. My mustered-colored Carhartt coat still on, a flask of brace from the chill tucked in my bib-over all pocket and I feel like I have all the time in the world, as I read and take notes.

From time to time, the light above me sways causing my casted shadow to quiver, dance and dodge among the stacks of magazines and century-old penny-dreadful reading material. It too, my shadow that is, is enjoying the freedom we have found underground.

And while I can see them, I know tiny eyes are watching me, curious as to what the human beast is doing and might do should one of the small rodents grow brave enough to investigate the activity that its generation, and the one before, has never seen. Courage in a mouse doesn’t take much time to muster as I find three visitors seated at the edge of the card table watching me and each without fear.

They are my company in this chilled room, a secret garden that I’ve been given privilege to behold. Soon, I am jolted from my lettered revery of a kind female voice reminding me that the library closes in 15-minutes.

Folding up the table, I also fold the chair, whereby I place them against the far and bare wall. I imagine that they will chat among themselves, along with the mice and now-handled newspapers and magazines of the day a visitor came and stayed all day.

I draw one final breathe from the antiquated air, pull the door closed and leave a fantasy world behind me.

The hum of the steel-belted radials on the gray gravel ribbon of highway and vibrations from my trucks engine are still with me as I easy myself back onto my bed. Two-hundred-ninety miles two ways, two overnights and it is good to be back home again.

It’s amazing the length that I have to go to in order to find an open library with a catalog of old newspapers and magazines. Because of COVID fears, Nevada is again heading towards full-closure and I had to race time and distance to complete my desired task.

The first night, I arrived a little late, so after checking into my tiny motel room I set out to the local McDonalds for dinner. I went left out of the parking lot on foot since I’d seen the restaurant about four blocks back as I was coming into town.

My dog, Buddy was a happy companion that evening. He did not have to eat the dry dog food I had waiting for him in the truck.

A quiet night followed as I watched a station out of Salt Lake City and learned no more about the world than I would had I left the idiot box off.  We slept well and come the next morning, I took Buddy for a walk and prepared his food.

He’s a good traveler and comfortable being by himself.

Entering the old library building, I had to wear a mask, having to keep it on until alone with nearly 170-years worth of old newspapers and magazines. Dust from decades of storage and disuse filled the air, the odor of aged paper and ink waft about the small cellar room as a single bare light bulb in a pan-shade, hanging from above, swung slightly as someone walked along the floor, my ceiling.

Like Casablanca, romance and a touch of melodrama.

On and on, piece by forgotten tidbit: Gus Richards escapes vigilante justice but does 10-years in the Nevada State Prison; Three miners fend off a rabid coyote with a slab of bacon; and the first time a palm prints was used as evidence in a court trial. And though I’m no closer to knowing if Wyatt Earp really did bartend in Goldfield or if the Hole-in-the-Wall gang pulled their final bank job in Winnemucca, I did fill a notebook and a half.

I also found the information I was hoping to locate. Yay, me!

By the time I left the library, it was already dark and the wind was blowing bitter and I found myself shivering before I could get my truck door open. Once back at my room, coat on, I took Buddy for a walk out back of the motel, then fetched him more dog food and fresh water, before going to get myself something to eat.

This time I walked to the right as I left the motel and towards a Burger King which was only a couple of blocks away. I would not make it that far.

Past the narrow alleyway that separates the motel from its neighbor, came a bzzt…bzzt…bzzt, the unmistakable sound of a neon sign trying to fail. And I couldn’t fail to see it, bolted fast to the wall above a door, its red and white glow beckoning me to enter the tavern within.

Darkness to darkness greeted me as I slip through the doorway and moved to the bar. The dark was soon replaced by a few low hanging lamps above four deserted tables, a lengthy glow along the bar displaying the distilled drinkables and the pallid and  ever radiating glare of a television tuned to FOX News.

I had entered ‘conservative territory’ and suddenly felt at ease, but not quite at home.

And my fortune showed good as I heard ‘buy the house a round,’ while taking a stool. The voice was lost at the end of the bar where two men sat, huddled in conversation, drinking and smoking.

Quick, so as not to miss out, I said quietly, “Whiskey, neat.” And as fast as that, my night begun its sideway spin.

Several shots in and listening to the hot-air gas-bags talk about proof here and proof there, I found myself getting pissed. Talk, more talk, all talk, nothing but talk and not a shred of physical proof.

“Effing blowhards!,” I complained loudly at the TV. “Show me some goddamned proof or jus’ shut the fuck up.”

Quietude, so quiet that I am certain even the TV went silent following my outburst.

As I forced myself to glare at the tube, I could feel eyes burning their way through me. I dared not move my head to look at any of the men, including the bartender, who also stared at this interloper who dared to spout a misaligned opinion.

Finally, “What’s your name, Bub?”

Here it comes I think, as I answered, “Tom. Yours?”

“Gary,” came the voice in the dark.

The silence was long and loud as I sipped my drink.

“You gotta problem with Trump?” the voice identified as Gary asked.

“Not him,” I answered, “But all his fucking talking-heads. They talk a good game but have nothing to show for it.”

“Well, let me tell you something Commie Tommy…” came Gary.

I interrupted, “What’s that Gary the Fairy?”

Downing my drink in a single gulp, I stared into that dark portion of bar, where no one moved, no one spoke.

Finally, the bartender commanded, “Come on — you need to leave.”

I did and there was no tip for him.

Outside, the wind was now a gale and bitingly cold, even with the jacket I had on. The outside lights to BK were off and looking towards Micky D’s, I concluded it was too far to walk and risk getting picked up for ‘public intoxication,’ though I was no where near drunk.

My thought process is such that I wouldn’t put it passed the bartender to ‘drop a dime’ saying, “I kicked a belligerent drunk guy out of the place and he’s walking south on Idaho Street.”

Instead, I headed to my room where Buddy was happily waiting. He was really biting at the bit and needed to get outside, so we rushed out back of the motel once again.

As he took care of his business, small flakes of snow began pelting us.

Done and back inside, I stripped and crawled between the sheets wanting to warm up and fall asleep. The wind though insisted on visiting and it grew noisier by the minute.

It had found a small space in the window frame to whistle and whine. Then it buffeted my motel door, which I was fast to learn, hung loose in its frame.

“Womp, womp, womp,” it banged in and out at each new gust.

By this time Buddy was on alert, all hackles, growling and half-barking at every sound. I couldn’t get him to quiet down and began to worry that someone might complain.

Finally, I grabbed one of the two chairs that accompanied a small table, and slipped the back of it under the door handle and hefted it into place. The door stopped rattling and a certain peace came to the room.

Finally — time for sleep — or so I thought.

After an hour, I found my self still awake. So I grabbed my cellphone and though not my intention at first, I proceeded to burn up all my available data, picking online arguments, trying to get others to understand how stupid it is to listen to a bunch of gas-bags on TV, radio and newspaper and never see a piece of physical evidence.

Meanwhile Buddy maintained his low, vicious sounding growl all night and into the early hours of morning. Needless to say, I was half-exhausted by the time we left the room.

We stopped and got breakfast at Taco Bell and before crossing that long, lonely, wide-open space of land, the great Nevada basin, where the only broadcaster I could pick up was an all talk-radio station. Not even the Christian radio station, the one I can always count on, was clear of hissing static.

And guess what the talk-radio gas-bags were yammering about? All the evidence the Trump team has on hand, proving that the election was rigged.

Aargh! Off went the radio and I continued my lengthy journey homeward brooding in silence.

Back in town, I had one more stop to make: the veterinarian hospital to pick up the cremains of Yeager. I backed in to a parking spot, and since they are allowed only so many people, if any, inside the clinic, I called to let them know I was there.

While waiting an old, white-faced black lab came out with one of the technicians, who handed the dog’s leash to it human. Buddy saw the elderly pup and went crazy, whining, crying and jumping from the back of the cab to the passenger seat and back again.

“Oh, Buddy, I’m sorry,” I said, knowing he’d never understand, “But that ain’t our Yaeger.”

It didn’t help. He continued his fit, which caused my heart to ache.

Gladly, I was called to the door to pick up the box I’d arrived for. As for Buddy, he eventually settled down.

An now that I am home and resting, laid back and relaxed on my bed, I find myself thinking about a kid I knew and how he came to our home for dinner once. I can still see him sitting in a chair we had in the corner of our living room.

I also recall the dogs dancing about him, excitedly trying to entice him to pet them.

However, he refused, clearly uncomfortable with their presence. Thinking back, I knew that something was off about him, especially now, since he’s in prison for the rest of his life.

Drowsily, I scratch Buddy behind his ears as he lays next to me.

Me: “Lord, why do I keep seeing stupid people?”

The Lord: “Because you keep staring in the mirror.”