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Clark County prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Min Chang and Keon Park, indicted in January on one count each of murder with use of a deadly weapon, armed robbery, first-degree kidnapping with use of a deadly weapon and two counts of conspiracy in the death of Young Park. Keon Park is not related to the victim.

Young Park’s body was discovered by hikers December 23 near Kingman Wash, about a mile from the O’Callaghan-Tillman Memorial Bridge. Authorities say the two men strangled and beat her with a wrench and then burned her body on the Arizona side of the Hoover Dam.

Young Park ran an escort business and brothel out of a home near Rainbow Boulevard and Desert Inn Road in Las Vegas. She reportedly owed Chang about $6,000 and Keon Park around $3,000.

Chang and Keon Park have confessed to their roles in the slaying.

We were attending the high school graduation of one of my cousins when I saw a person I knew – but never expected to see again. The ceremony had jus’ concluded and people were milling about both inside and outside the gym.

My folks were standing on the grass in front of the building talking with my aunt and uncle. I was standing, looking into the building through the large window of the gym’s foyer, people watching.

Suddenly, a girl steps up to other side of the window and smiles at me. I recognized her immediately as Barbara Billy, somebody I had gone to Margaret Keating School with earlier in the year. She had suddenly moved and no one was certain where too.

I smiled back as I placed my right hand on the window in front of me.

Barbara placed her right hand directly where my hand was located. I said, “Hi,” even though I knew she couldn’t hear me and I saw her lips move saying “Hi,” back.

Then her mom appeared from the crowd of people, took her by the hand and pulled her back into the gym. She waved at me as she vanished from sight.

Barbara would return to Margaret Keating School when we were both in 7^th grade. And while we never spoke of seeing one another that evening, I never forgot how touching that moment felt to me.

Colonel Robert “Bud” Laux and Dad served in France together while in the U.S. Air Force. My parents liked and trusted Bud so much that they asked him to be one of my God-parents.

Bud, as I knew him, flew a number of bombing missions in Europe during World War II. He was shot down by the Luftwaffe and survived with the help of the French Résistance.

He also served with famed Air Force General, Curtis LeMay, who would eventually also be asked to act as god-father to me. This happen shortly after we returned from France in 1962.

As things went, I never had a relationship with General LeMay. And other than a couple of photographs of me sitting on his knee while living at Mather AFB, I didn’t have contact with the man as I grew into adulthood.

However I had a lot of contact with Bud. We wrote each other yearly, sent Christmas cards and he’d send me a birthday card each July.

One year I asked him to tell me about being shot down over occupied France. He wrote back, sending me an autographed 8 x 10 glossy black and white picture of the type of aircraft he was flying at the time.

After I joined the Air Force, Bud dropped in for a visit at Brooks AFB, where I was stationed for tech-school. He had jus’ flown in, helping piggy-back the space shuttle Columbia to Kelly AFB. Later he would surprise my commanding officer at Warren AFB, by asking for me and taking me to lunch at the Officers Club, a treat for most any enlisted man or woman.

Unfortunately, only one letter remains from the notes and cards he sent me over the years. But as fortune would have it – that’s the one letter I’ve managed to keep safe, that and the picture he sent.

Bud died in December 1980.

“You’d best take a look at the obituary,” my bride said as she held out the section of the Reno Gazette-Journal for me to read.

I looked up from sharpening my knife with a half smirk on my face and asked, “Why is my name in it?”

The look in my brides face told me she was serious. I reached up and took the extended newspaper in hand and quickly scanned each name on the page.

Suddenly my eyes stopped searching. I had discovered the recognizable name of my friend.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a ..,” my voice trailed off as I read the obituary.

“When’s the last time you spoke with Sam?” my bride asked.

I fumbled with the paper for a moment in an attempt to buy time to regain my composure.

“It’s been a couple of years,” I answered, adding, “Jus’ before he headed for Europe. I didn’t think he’d follow through with it though.”

*******

Again my voice trailed off as I re-read the obituary and faded into a memory of  KOZZ’s receptionist’s voice coming over the intercom to the always busy promotions office, “You have a call on-line seven.”

I pushed back from my computer dreading another interruption as the deadline for the proposal I was working on loomed closer and picked up the receiver and pushed the button next to the red flashing light.

“Hey, hey,” came a voice over the line.

I respond as I had hundreds of times before, “Hey.”

It was my friend Sam.

“How’re you doing?” I asked Sam.

“I’m fine,” he answered, “I’m going to go to Europe to bum around.”

“Say what?” I asked with surprise.

“Yeah,” he said, “I’m going to Europe,”

There was momentary pause.

“Are you still there?” Sam asked.

“Yeah,” I responded, “I’m jus’ surprised is all.”

Then I thought to ask, “How are you going to get there?”

Sam laughed, answering “I’m going fly.”

I knew that I had asked a dumb question or had at the very least phrased it incorrectly.

“No,” I shot back, “I mean how are you going to pay for it?”

I knew Sam always had money difficulties.

Sam answered, “I’ve got my income tax check and I’ll buy myself a one way ticket.”

“A one way ticket?” I asked.

“Yeah, I don’t plan on coming back,” Sam continued.

I thought this over for a few seconds before asking “How’ll you live?”

Sam had a smile in his voice as he replied, “I’ll be a day laborer.”

There was a long pause between the two of us.

Then Sam added; “Besides I still have a problem with junk,” he paused, “I can’t quit fixing.”

I just sat there and listened as Sam laid out his plans for his two-year European vacation as he was calling it.

“And finally,” Sam concluded, “when I’ve seen and done it all — I’ll pull a Jim Morrison.”

I recalled how Jim Morrison had died.

He was the lead singer of the group, “The Doors.” He had money and plenty of women, yet he died from a heroin overdose.

I sighed heavily as I said, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Sam won’t go through with it,” I remembered thinking. After a few more minutes of conversation we said good-bye to each other and I hung up the telephone and returned to the proposal waiting for me on my computer.

*******

“That was two years ago,” I said as I continued to reflect.

“What was?” my bride asked.

“It was two years ago that he said he was going to pull a Jim Morrison,” I answered.

She frowned, “So?”

“The obituary says Sam died in his sleep while on vacation in Paris, France,” I replied as I picked up the paper again.

She shook her head, “I still don’t get it.”

“That’s how Jim Morrison of the Doors died — in Paris — in his sleep,” I said.

“I didn’t know that, “she replied.

As I got up from the table as I picked up my coffee mug and stepped outside through the sliding glass door. I looked southward towards the remnants of Wedekind City and felt the hot tears start to flow.

There’s nothing worse than having a good message, but garbling it up due to poor wording and bad facts. Case in point: the ongoing federal budget battle and the war of words between Senator Harry Reid and conservative commentators.

It started with Reid, who bragged, “The National Endowment for the Humanities is the reason we in Northern Nevada have, every January, the cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year, would not exist.”

Huh? They must have evaporated into thin air according to Harry.

Of course, that isn’t really what Reid meant when he was defending the Democrat’s funding of NEH. He was attempting to say — he made Elko’s National Cowboy Festival possible by getting organizers the needed money.

Reid failed to take into consideration those tens of thousands of people would have attended the festival, regardless of federal funding. Cowboy poetry is a very big deal to Nevadans, and I’ve had the pleasure of rubbing elbows with Nevada cowboy poet’s and the people who attend gatherings from all over the state.

The situation would probably gone unnoticed in Nevada — as much of what Harry says goes unnoticed — had it not been for the bombastic voicing of ridicule Mark Levin laid on the subject. His comments during his nightly radio rantings ticked a good many Northern Nevadan’s off and quickly.

“Is there a Broke Mountain up there?” Levin asked. “What kind of mountain range do they have up there, Mr. Producer? Brokeback Mountain — is that the name of the mountain in Northern Nevada there, where they have the cowboy poetry festival?”

Brokeback Mountain? Mark was referring to the 2005 movie and assuming everyone in Northern Nevada who enjoys the tradition of cowboy poetry is homosexual.

Not really — Levin was trying to make the point that the federal government shouldn’t be paying for the Elko festival. He later did manage to say exactly that, but the damage was already done.

From my point of view, they both screwed up. And while I’m used to the Senator’s mouthful of goofy words, I cannot condone Mr. Levin’s generalization of cowboy poets and the life-style that is springs from.

Besides it’s worth noting — the movie, “Brokeback Mountain,” is set in Wyoming — not Nevada.

Later afternoon, March 4, I was there when they called it off, stood on the lip of that old mine shaft, peering down into the darkness where a man still breathed but couldn’t be saved. The wind came in low, whispering through the sage, and the sun had that dull afternoon glare, turning everything the color of old bones.

The call came from an abandoned shaft from the Murphy’s Mine Complex, forgotten but still waiting. It had been there since 1895, a wound cut deep into the rock, left to fester under the desert sky.

That day, it took another. His name was Devin Westenskow.

A driller by trade. A young man with his whole life ahead of him.

He’d been out there with a couple of friends, looking for adventure, maybe just killing time. One step too far, the ground gave way beneath him, a straight drop—one hundred and ninety feet.

We sent a camera down first. The image flickered, grainy and unsteady, but it showed us enough.

He was alive. Barely.

Pinned under something, his breath slow, his body broken. He moved a hand once, like a man reaching out from a dream, but that was all.

The first team went down slowly and carefully. The walls crumbled around them like old bread, and it didn’t take much for the whole thing to begin collapsing.

One of our guys took a rock to the helmet, splitting it clean. Another few inches, and we’d have been pulling him up dead instead of just rattled.

We tried again.

But the mountain had decided, and there was no arguing with it. Every attempt brought more rock crashing down.

The risk was too high. One more try, and we wouldn’t just be leaving one man down there.

I was there when they made the call, heard it over the radio, and felt it settle in my gut.

We weren’t getting him out. Not alive.

A priest came. Said the words while we stood above, helpless.

Down there, in the dark, his breathing slowed. Then it stopped.

At 12:30 p.m., the coroner called it. That was it.

His family was there. They took it hard but took it well. The one saving grace in all of it was Devin’s family.

His grandmother said, “The family feels that if Jesus Christ was buried in a tomb, it’s good enough for Devin.”

I don’t know if that was faith talking or just a family trying to find some peace in the worst of it. That kind of grace is rare and deserves consideration.

We sealed the shaft not long after. Poured concrete over it like a gravestone no one would ever visit.

But there are others out there—hundreds, maybe more. Waiting.

I think about that day, the dust settling after we left, the silence that stretched long into the afternoon. About the man we couldn’t save.

The land is old out here, older than the bones buried beneath it. And sometimes it keeps the dead.

That was rough land and unforgiving, and men who wandered too far off the beaten path sometimes paid the price for it. The high desert of Nevada had seen its share of lost souls, men who strayed too deep into the hills or had the bad luck to take a wrong step where the old-timers had long quit walking.

That was how it went for Devin Westenskow. Out in the backcountry with friends, looking over the bones of the past, he stepped into the wrong place—a vent shaft to an abandoned mine—and fell nearly two hundred feet. He survived the fall but took a hard knock to the head. He lingered a while, then died before the sun had set.

What happened next was a damn shame, not because men didn’t try to help, but because no one seemed too keen on telling the truth about it.
Don’t fault the rescuers.

They went down the shaft and took a chance, but rock and debris started falling, making it impossible to reach him. Hard men, willing men, but no fool ever lived long in the desert, and they knew when to call it quits.

That’s not where the blame falls. The real trouble started when the powers that be—Pershing County and the Bureau of Land Management—failed to say as much.

Instead, what made the news was a nightmare: a man left to die while others stood by. That wasn’t true, but once a story like that gets rolling, it’s like a rockslide—you’re not stopping it.

The world heard only the worst of it, and before long, Nevada had the reputation of a place where men weren’t worth saving. That wasn’t the case.

If only the authorities had spoken up sooner. If they had made it clear that rescue tried and Devin had passed before the first story hit the newswire, the tale might have been different. Instead, they let the silence stretch too long, and the world filled in the gaps on its own.

Maybe the men in charge will learn something from this. Perhaps they won’t.

But out in the Nevada backcountry, where the land is old, mines run deep, and the truth has a way of getting buried, too.

As I recall, I was playing in the large field across the street from our home. That’s when I saw the dark blue sedan with the yellow print on its doors pull in to the drive way.

At first I simply stood still, watching the car back out of the drive and alongside the curb. I knew in an instant why the car was there.

Without hesitation, I took off running as fast as I could towards the house. I hit the sidewalk still sprinting, but somehow managed to lose my footing.

I slammed into the asphalt on my knees and elbows, rolling head-over-heel and back up onto my feet to continue running.

Though I was suffering from road rash now, I didn’t let my pain stop me. I wasn’t going to allow a few little scratches keep me from meeting that car.

In my excitement I leaped up and wrapped my gangly legs around Dad’s waist, who was finally returning home from another tour in Vietnam. Seconds later, Adam, Deirdre and Marcy raced from the house, followed by Mom.

“Okay,” Mom said loudly, “Let your dad go and let him get in the door before you hug and kiss him to death,” as she pried us kid’s off our father and led him towards the front door.

A bill requiring garages to check the tire pressures on vehicles that come into the shop for repair has cleared the Nevada Senate. SB144 was approved along mostly party lines, with Republican Senator Joe Hardy of Boulder City voting with Democrats for passage.

Under the bill, repair shops would need to fill tires according to manufacturer guidelines. Failure to comply would be a misdemeanor. The bill now goes to the Assembly.

And I thought Nevada lawmakers vowed to create more jobs — instead they find ways to add more fees to small businesses.

The passing of my old man fairly well wrecked me for half-a-year. At the time I felt as if I were the only one in my immediate family that cared about his death.

And worse still, I had not yet learned how to talk about what it was I was feeling. Many nights and early mornings I found myself awake thinking about Dad.

Writing was my only outlet.

Jolted awake, I laid there in the stillness of the moon glow soaked room and listened to my bride breath. As I listened and she breathed, I reflected on the dream that caused me wake up.

It left me bewildered at the very least. Why had Dad had returned to me?

 I could see his shadow and then the outline of his body as he stood partly hidden from sight.

“Damn it,” I had said in my dream.

The storage shed was a mess and it had caused me anger. And I knew I would have to clean it up.

Then I looked up from the mess.

At first I didn’t notice the old man standing some twenty feet from me. I was too busy reacting in disgust to the precarious and disorderly stacking of filing boxes that seemed haphazardly strewn about the floor and along the wall.

At first he was just a silhouette, looming in back of the shed, saying nothing — doing nothing.  Dad jus’ stood there and I couldn’t speak; the surprise was so over whelming.

Mary rolled over onto her right side facing away from me. And continued to I lay there — quietly listening to her breathing as it grew ever increasingly rhythmic.

I reflected back on the dream and how it’s reality work me from a sound sleep, all the while wondering, “What does it mean?”

Laying there, a tear silently traced a salty line from the corner of my eye to the pillow that cradled my head. I realized Dad was still dead and it was only a dream.

I closed my eyes and slowly drifted back into sleep all the while thinking, “I sure do miss you, Dad.”

“That song ‘Crazy Out There’ really reminds me about myself,” I said to my bride. Then I added, “I thought I had really lost it there for a while.”

She looked at me and smiled, “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.

I nodded, “Yeah, but I’m not al too sure where to start.”

After pausing to think for a minute, “What I remember right off-hand,” I started, “was working, drinking after work, not eating, working out excessively, weighing less than 150 pounds, religion and sex.”

That started the memories flowing. I recalled my bride and I had been separated about eight months and I had already developed a relationship with another woman. That relationship – I can only describe as one based on sex, mistrust and alcohol.

In April, the girlfriend had stolen my cell phone, truck keys, a journal and left me alone with her two sleeping children. She went to a bar, but I decided to go find her and get my things back.

I discovered however after an hours walk the bar had been closed for nearly three hours and she was nowhere to be found.

Once I was able to get a hold of her and she came to get him the argument that ensued turned into a near fist fight. Then she tried to jump out of a moving vehicle.

“From that point on,” I continued, “I knew that situation was doomed.”

“She kept showing up at my job too,” I added, “and I’d get in trouble for her going into places that only employees are supposed to go.”

I recounted how one time the girlfriend marched into the employee cafeteria and accused me and a female employee, who was innocently sitting next to me, of having an affair.

“This woman and I were sitting across from each other talking and eating,” I sighed, “It was so damned embarrassing and I felt bad for her, ‘cause she didn’t do anything to deserve the rough treatment she got. But I really slipped a gear when I got the call from you that Mom was dying,” I stated to my bride.

I looked out the window trying to show the tears as they welled up in my eyes.

“Yeah,” she replied, “she seemed real pissy every time I called there for you no matter how important.”

“You know she demanded to come along,” I said flatly, “but I put my foot down and said no.”

My bride smiled, “But still she ragged you 10 or 15 times every day about it while you were there.”

I recounted how, after I had laid Mom to rest and had returned back home, my relationship with the girlfriend grew more and more twisted.

She kept stealing my journal to read what I had written, then she took my cell phone so she could see who had been calling me and when he confronted her, I ended up pushing her to the ground in order to get my property back. She called the police and I spent a couple of weeks camping — out of touch with everyone.

“The best thing you did,” my bride commented, “was take the month of July off from work,” then she pointed out, “It would have been better had you stayed with me, but oh well.”

I chuckled, “Yeah, it would have been for certain.”

“I know you did a lot of camping in July but what’s a mystery to me,” she began, “is the time around your birthday. You up and vanished.”

She paused then finally asked, “What happened?”

I looked down at my feet and then leaned back in the chair in which I was sitting, letting my memory slide back into what I felt was a brutal time.

“I think I went crazy,” I finally answered, “But you have to understand that I don’t recall very much of what happened to me during that time, only bits and pieces. I have images. I have little elements of what happened.”

I paused, “I also didn’t do a lot of writing because I couldn’t – the girlfriend wouldn’t let me and I didn’t want her to read what I wrote even if I did write something.”

*******

I went on to say how I recalled I had decided to run away from the girlfriend again because she was so destructive.

She had tossed my cell phone across the street and broke it and ripped pages from my journal. I had decided to head back over to Fortuna and spend sometime at my sister’s home.

I reflected back to how my bride and I had spent the night at a hotel along I-80 before I left.

My bride still had most of my clothes, so I had to call her. That’s when she offered to get me a room because she knew I was exhausted and needed to get cleaned up.

The following day after breakfast we hugged each other. She headed off to her job and I put my truck in gear and headed for the climes of Northern California.

In less than eight hours I surprised my sister at her front door and she welcomed me in with open arms. It was only a few minutes after arriving that she took me by the arm and walked me half a block down the side-walk and across the street, into their family church. It was a bible study night and I felt welcomed after such a long drive.

After the study I lagged behind with his sister to pray. Next thing I realized I was laying face down in the center aisle praying and my sister was practicing the laying of hands on me, to cure me of my emotional problems.

That night I had difficulty sleeping.

The following day I put myself to work white washing my sister’s barn. It was covered with cob webs and old flaking paint that needed to be cleaned away and I concluded that I would work myself into fatigue.

I spent the entire day working on the barn and by the time supper was on the table it was completely prepared for its first coat of paint.

Once I excused myself from the table I want up stairs to the loft. I checked my cell phone discovering five messages, all from the girlfriend, and all berating me for not coming home and eleven more missed call all from her number.

Finally I turned my phone off, lay down and fell asleep. It was about quarter to ten at night.

At around three the following morning I was awaken by someone talking. It stopped when I sat up and looked around the darkened room.

Curling up, I fell back to sleep until it was time to get up. The family was all assembled for breakfast when I came down the stairs. I sat down and bowed my head as grace was said and the flat jacks were passed around.

The telephone rang. It was for me, “Hello,” I said very wary.

“Hello?” It was my bride on the other end. She suddenly started crying hysterically, “I’ve been in a head on accident and the car has been totaled.”

“Are you okay?” I asked as calmly as I could.

An awful lump swelled in the pit of my stomach and threatened to force its way up my throat.

“I broke my glasses and can’t see and my nose is bleeding,” she answered.

“Do you want me to come get you?” I asked with more urgency.

She continued to cry more softly now then answered, “No, I’m fine.” She paused, “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

We talked for a couple more minutes until she said she was okay and that she had to go. She promised to call later.

I set the telephone down, my hand trembling wildly.

For the remainder of the day I felt angry. I was angry at myself for all of the problems I had caused my bride, angry at the girlfriend because she would not leave me alone and angry at God for nearly taking my bride.

That evening I didn’t eat, instead I called my bride to see how she was doing. She said she was sore but otherwise okay.

I lay down afterwards and fell asleep.

Again I was awaken by the sound of voices talking in my room and I called out, “Whose there?”

No one answered. I concluded that they were inside my head and it gripped me with terror.

I listened to the loudest voice,” You’re a piece of trash,” it repeated over and over, while another shouted, “You’re like your old man.”

Then I heard the word, “Prophet.” It was what my sister’s minister said I was when he had joined her in the laying on of the hands as they worked to heal what they believed was my broken spirit.

“I’m losing my mind,” I thought above the other voices.

Lying in bed, I tossed and turned, trying to quiet the voices or at least ignore them. It did not work and I hardly slept that night.

Come the following morning, I spent the day laboring on white washing the barn. I wanted to keep busy so that the voices that seemed to follow me continually now would remain silenced for a while.

I also went over to Mom’s old home and recovered a few things that I wanted.

Walking through her home-made me sad and I longed for the days when I was growing up and it seemed like life would last forever. I found myself standing in her bedroom crying, missing her when I was interrupted by a fast chanting sound, “She never loved you.”

I rushed from the house in a foul-mouth rage, quickly returned to my sisters home, to find her in the kitchen.

She smiled and asked,” So what do you want for your birthday tomorrow?”

I looked at her puzzled – I had forgotten it was my birthday.

I answered, “Nothing, I don’t even want a cake, okay?”

Hurrying past her and up the stairs to the loft, I failed to come down for dinner that evening. I laid on the bed or paced the floor wrestling with the five voices that were creating chaos within my mind.

I was arguing with my tormentors and quickly becoming psychotic.

Finally, I dozed off in the early hours of morning. However when the light of day broke through the jagged ruffles of lace curtains, I was exhausted.

Down stairs I could hear the family moving about. I could smell the brewing coffee and the bacon on the grill.

It took all the nerve I could muster to steel myself to walk down the stairs. When I did I was met with a loud, “Surprise,” by his sister and her family, who were intent on celebrating my birthday anyway.

I did my best to act as if I was enjoying the moment, knowing that soon it would be all over.

“We’re going up town to watch the parade,” my sister announced as it was also rodeo weekend, “See you later,” she called out as they closed the door.

“They don’t ever listen to you,” I heard a voice say.

They were back. I realized he had to do something.

I needed to leave before my sister and her family found out I had gone insane.

It took me less than 15 minutes to pack my truck and start south on Highway 101. I drove through Richardson Grove and into Garberville where I stopped to pen a note to both my bride and the girlfriend.

In each I outlined how I thought I was going crazy and how I would soon abandon my truck and set off on foot. I mailed them and headed farther south.

I stopped again in Marin County, where I argued with myself about what I should do.

Each voice seemed to have a different idea about my fate. I decided to stop and watch the rush hour traffic going by.

“I wonder if anyone realizes I’m gone, yet.” I asked myself as I sat in the parking lot watching the people who had other people to go flying by.

I suddenly felt terribly alone.

Once the traffic subsided I continued to travel southward. However I had developed a plan: would head for the Indian Territories as my old man used to call them; better known as Oklahoma.

I had a sudden and desperate urge to go visit Dad’s graveside.

So I cut across onto Interstate 80, somehow making it to US 99 south. I drove head long into the setting sun on this straight stretch of road, all the while continuing to hear the voices in my head.

I talked and argued with them, tried to become their friend by making jokes, “At last they’re keeping me awake.”

Just after midnight I decided to stop for a couple of hours of sleep. I pulled into a rest stop, parked and leaned my seat back, closed his eyes and listened to the voices. They seemed to have a hypnotic affect on me and I allowed them to lull me into an hour or two of rest.

I was awakened by the sound of thunder as it roared by his truck.

The thunder turned out to be a diesel train speeding along the tracks. I decided I would use the restrooms before hitting the road once more.

As I was coming out of the restrooms I was stopped by a woman who wanted to know the time. I told her it was 2:13 in the morning, and then realized that she was a he.

I hurried to my truck and continued my drive south.

Continuing to drive as the sun rose up behind me, I knew I was just a few minute from crossing the border into Arizona. I also noticed that the voices also seemed fatigued now as well.

The temperature continued to climb as the sun climb into the sky. I rolled the windows down on the truck, cranked the radio up as loud as it would go and raced along route 66 and I found myself on the main highway, State Route 40.

I drove fast through the Arizona desert towards Flagstaff.

Each time I stopped to gas up, I got another cup of coffee. I also found myself wrestling with the five voices in my head.

By late afternoon my stomach was grumbling and I realized that it had been nearly forty-eight hours since I last had anything to eat. So I pulled off in a little town called Winslow and found the only market around.

It was owned by a Korean couple who hardly spoke a word of English, but gladly sold me a loaf of bread a jar of peanut butter for three dollars. And as I was making a couple of sandwiches I realized I was standing in the town in which a popular rock band had sung about.

I chuckled aloud.

Soon it was back on the road. I pushed the accelerator down and faced the truck eastward hoping to reach Albuquerque before nightfall.

I listened to the radio as I drove — God radio I called it.

It was radio where one preacher after another spoke on the message of salvation. It seemed to drown out the voices as I listened so I kept the radio tuned to the message of God.

As I passed through the time zones, the landscape seemed to change as did my mood. My veil of depression slowly lifted and I started looking at the scenery.

It appeared to be both beautiful and mysterious. I found myself transported into another world – as I could see Hogan’s and other ruins along the highway.

I knew Albuquerque laid jus’ ahead.

And as I made the outskirts of the city, a large thunderhead had started to form. I didn’t pay much attention to it other than to take note that it was there.

I was listening to a preacher talking about Jesus, inviting listeners to accept the Savior into their hearts and I shouted, “Yes!”

As I did this, a lighting bolt crashed into the roadway not more than a few feet from my truck. It caused the radio to become fuzzy and it temporarily blinded me, forcing me to pull off the road.

I sat there dazed, wondering if the bolt was a sign from God or Satan.

When I could see again I put the truck in gear and continued out of the city. Jus’ outside of town I decided to stop for the night and rest.

I pulled off the side of the road and parked.

Pulling my tent and sleeping bag out of my truck, I walked down the hillside to the base of some ruins. There I pitched my tent. I could also see my truck and the highway as I laid down and fell asleep.

It was dark when the rain first started. That didn’t worry me as my tent was water proof, however I did not expect the flash flood.

Barely escaping the tent and sleeping bag as it rushed down the v-shaped canyon wash, I trotted up the hill and into the ruin. After sitting in the doorway of the old adobe building I decided to make a dash for my truck.

After making it across the muddy wash, I looked back at the ruins. I felt a chill fall over me as I witnessed a shadow standing in the doorway I had jus’ been occupying.

When I awoke the next morning, the ground appeared to be dry, yet I could see foot prints in the ruins that were not made by my boots. I felt as if eyes that I could not see were watching him.

Quickly I found my sleeping bag and rolled the soggy mess up as best I could. I looked down the arroyo and saw my bright red tent hung up on a snag, retrieved it, broke it down and put it into the back of my truck.

Once on the road again, I continued to listen to God radio and to think about the lighting bolt and the figure I thought he saw and all the voices.

“I must be crazy!” I screamed out loud.

Driving all day, I stopped only long enough to get gas in the truck, to use the restroom and to buy a cup of coffee and eat a peanut butter sandwich. I thought about how his sister had just blown off his request about not having a birthday cake or anything.

Suddenly I felt enraged at her for not listening and jus’ as sudden the voices were back.

Rolling into Amarillo at around five the next morning, I had to laugh as the words to “Amarillo by Morning,” popped into my head. It seemed appropriate that I would find at least one radio station playing the song.

Three hours later I crossed over into Oklahoma. Soon I would have a chance to sit next to Dad’s smooth white marble headstone and talk to the old man about my going insane.

I knew at least Dad would be listening without trying to reason me out of it.

Once I crossed over the Arkansas River I knew Muskogee and Fort Gibson were jus’ a few miles ahead. I realized then that even though I was going insane I had made it out to see my father.

After an hour and a half talk with Dad at his headstone I directed my attention on visiting with my step mother. I drove over to the hospital and discovered she was not in, however my half-sister was at work in the pharmacy and she gave me a key to her mother’s house.

I went inside and lay down on the floor where I fell dead asleep until I was gently awakened by my step mom.

She smiled and said, “There’s someone on the phone for you.”

She handed me the receiver and I said, “Hello.”

I listened, and then hung up the phone after saying, “Okay I will — love you too. Bye.”

I handed the telephone back to my step mother.

She sat down beside me and wrapped her arms around me as I softly cried. She said nothing, jus’ letting me cry as I knew I had gone crazy out there.

*******

My bride looked at me and smiled “I’m so glad you came home to me after all that time.”

“Me, too,” I smiled back.