John didn’t wait for me this morning to ring his door bell. He strode right up to my car.

“Did you hear the helicopter? It flew over these fields this morning for almost two hours. They started at Pete’s house and covered he same territory we did. I thought you had something to do with it.”

“Didn’t hear a thing. I ate breakfast at 6 and went back to bed.”

“We won’t find out till next week why they were here. I don’t know if you know but our paper comes out only twice a week. I saw the pilot and two guys swooping back and forth above the telephone lines, right where we walked. They had to be looking for someone.”

“I wish they’d done that yesterday. I’m still pulling thorns out of my socks and clearing my throat of dust. So now what do we do? I was going to suggest we follow up on yesterday and walk the fields again.”

“If there was someone down there they would have seen him.”

And that’s how, heat and clockwork be damned, we ended up back at the water tower. I called Ken to check again on Pete’s last journal entry and it hadn’t changed. “He wrote he’s gonna test himself by walking to the water tower.” This time I parked not at the tower but below it and spied a distinct cairn trail. We followed the cairns back towards the mountains alternately talking ourselves in and out of believing they were Pete’s.

And, to repeat myself, that’s why this hunt is so aggravating. There are no declarative clues. Not a one. There is no right direction to go. Only theories, only sentences with question marks. Not to be too graphic but four months later we’re limited to nothing but guess work. No black spiral of birds, and nothing to smell. We have sight and that is it. I can’t even, in good faith, raise money to send Goose and his friend, John, down here. What would I tell them? Don’t look where I’ve looked even though he could have been five feet to my left or right. Go to the water tower because of a journal entry but disregard Sam’s advice about the scorching heat that week. Look for cairns in the desert because Pete has them in his yard, but ignore those in the nearby trailer park? Go north to the Test Site because a psychic told me to?

I didn’t expect to find Ken’s father when I decided to come here, but I’m very disappointed. As I said to Sam, “Other than happiness, I’ve never looked so hard for anything.”

The water tower from Pete’s neighborhood.

James and I walked for five hours yesterday. We prowled the neighborhood’s open fields, following paths Pete would walk, veering from those paths to scour drainage ditches many of which are now full of tumbleweeds. Today, we’ll do more of the same though my legs may protest and drive themselves to the airport.

James, with his wife and three daughters, moved from Germany to Nevada to retire. Married twenty-seven years his wife promptly ran off with another woman. James ended up living out of his car before moving into the house across the street from Pete. James’ father built houses in Germany which is why James acquired a union job excavating. Not limited to heavy machines, James is an all-trades guy who knows when to use who and whom. While building a motorcycle from junk yard parts he whistled Pete over one day and shared his bottled water. Fast but respectfully distant friends.

James is an outside neighbor and he knows Pete’s routine which is, as he says, clock setting. Out of the house every morning at 5 and back by 7:30.

“That field over there. I’d see Pete’s headed bobbing above the sage brush. Over there too, but he’d walk anywhere, always off the road. He’d come back with fossils, scraps of wood, all kinds of things. You saw that big rock in his yard? Has fossils in it. It must weigh eighty pounds, he brought that back from the water tower. Two, three miles away. I said how, he said he stopped often. Sometimes I’d see him walking home, sometimes he’d return through my back yard. And the dogs? He’d bark at some and feed others. The neighbor over there had a pig. Pete fed the pig.”

James knows Pete’s habits and that’s why he always wanted the search concentrated in the fields near his home. The heat and the clockwork.

“That week was hot. 110 degrees. He never would have walked to the tower. Look how far away it is. He always came back before the heat. He tripped and fell or had a heart attack or was bitten by a snake. Something. He’s not far away. Some people said he hitched rides. I never saw it. He turned them down from me. I’d be driving back from Smith’s and I’d offer but he’d say no.”

Our conversation while scuffling through the sage brush was peppered with speculation. Every sentence ended in a question mark. Pete could be anywhere and by the end of the day even James’ optimism was covered in desert dust. The fields which look dense at street level are not so from horseback, and many are scarred by ATV tire tracks.

And, by the end of the day it’s impossible not to think about a foul ending. Both Sam and I began the day knowing Pete fell in a field, but by the end of the day we were far less certain. All born of rumor, newspaper clippings, John’s comments about abusive tenants and our real frustration at the sad futility of it all.

Do you want to walk a step or two in Ken’s shoes? Meet him, read his books,  and then meet Pete’s friend, John. Buy John coffee and chat with him as long as it takes for him to smile. Listen to his stories about living in Las Vegas before the corporations moved in, his part in the movie “Casino,” his classmate Danny Liston, his love for his dogs and his love for his missing friend. “They’re two guys in town who look like Pete. Same desert colored clothing. I swear I catch a glimpse and I think it’s Pete.” Listen to him talk about waiting four hours for the police to come to Pete’s house after his plaintive call. “He could have been hurt and alive in there. They didn’t know.”   Walk in the desert where Pete walked and then have Mike usher you into Pete’s home.  You’ll walk past a row of dusty boots waiting on the tiled floor near the front door, all unlaced, just as Pete wore them. Slip in, slip out.

I’ve become quite fond of the water tower area. I know the terrain, I know approximately where I’ve looked, I know where the cairns are, and I know it’s safe. I could stray for miles but because the land rises the water tower and the town below are always in view.Today, John (above)introduced me to Pete’s neighbor, James, and I’m going to follow James’ advice and look closer to home. He watched Pete walk through surrounding vacant lots every morning carrying a cane to ward off the aggressive dogs and treats for those behind fences.  These  fields are denser than what’s above the water tower, and though the area is not as vast, it’s just as daunting. Maybe more so because the sight lines are so limited. Tomorrow morning I’ll meet James and he and I will walk together. Company’s good. The man’s got stories and he likes to tell them.

Click

What we think we know.

Peter wasn’t feeling well and his journal entry indicated a hope to walk to the water tower.

John, who managed Pete’s rental properties,  saw him shortly before his last walk and said he looked fine. Pete was his boss but also his friend, not his best friend, that’d be Smoky his dog.  John lives nearby and describes their neighborhood as dangerous – lots of crime fueled by heroin and meth addictions. Sam,  Pete’s neighbor,  saw my mysterious white rental car  and called Mike  instead of the police. No John to call and the cops would’ve been barking at me to come off Pete’s roof where I’d perched for a view of the ‘hood.

“Come down right now.”

“I’m Ken’s friend.”

“Down now.”

“Okay, you don’t have to yell.”

“Now.”

“Look, as you can see there is no ladder. I cobbled together parts of Pete’s life, an exercise machine, a piece of plywood, a short homemade ladder,  to climb up here. Unless you want me to jump it’ll be a while.”

John’s depressing view of Pahrumpians resonates. I’ll include people passing through.

I eat breakfast with folks who look just like you and me except for their jet black holstered sidearms. I tried to engage a guy, who looked like a mix of Wally Cox and my seventh grade science teacher, in a conversation about guns. “You’re here for firearms training? Tell me about that.” However, my smiley inquisitiveness, which serves me so well at Sweet Bites, put him in the en garde position. “What fascist militia do you represent,” I did not ask. I changed the subject, tried to find a common thread to alter his posture, but it wasn’t to be. I, of all people, nervously left the table. “Time to watch the sunrise,” or some such alibi or is it alilie?. I add this because I find myself curiously derisive  about what people are afraid of so when John called me I was still in my,  “Don’t be silly mood.”  That cheese pizza will kill you before the black, red, yellow, government – you pick ’em – hordes descend upon you.

Every time John tried to tell me how things really were in this city, I’d laugh, forcing him to find more crackheads, more beak ins, a kidnapping even, to get me to pay proper attention. Okay, Toto I’m not in Acton.  I went to sleep last night having lost my usual “mankind is all good” self. I awoke feeling the same until I met Lou, the retired juvenile probation officer from Connecticut, at Anytime Fitness. I walked in the door hunting for an employee while looking away from the sweaty bodies, and heard him say to the built-like-a-linebacker instructor, “The Patriots suck.”

This was my introduction to Lou. When he walked away from the only other guy in the room with bigger muscles, I said, “What do you mean the Patriots suck?” I know, for those of you who heard my Chillicothe “The Steelers suck” story,  you’re thinking I’m dining on my just desserts. But Lou was not malevolent he was just … cheerfully vacant. Good thing, huh? His mood helped momentarily reset my own.

Back to what we know.

I talked to Tom,  the detective assigned to the case, this morning. He started out all official,  but after a while I made him  chuckle. I understood his no nonsense attitude birthed from respect for Pete’s family and the need to appear he’s done absolutely all he could. I also know he’s suspicious of me and my judgments.

“Any air search?” I asked

“No money, no airfield, but we used horses and ATV’s. He may be out in the desert but we’ve not found a trace.”

“No fabric, no hat, no clothes blowing around.”

“No, and In this climate that stuff stays for awhile.”

“Interesting that you say that. I walked for six hours yesterday hoping to see something kept from its travels by prickly sage brush. I found one TV, a broken bottle or two, and mylar party balloons, the ones that say don’t release. There seems to be such respect for the environment. People on ATV’s  don’t toss their garbage.”

“Not there they don’t but go to the south side of town and you’ll see what looks like a homeless encampment. People drive their cars and boats into the desert and then set them afire.”

There is it again. I try to say something nice and I get something bad back. Even from the local cops who’d rather vent than keep up the Chamber of Commerce move-to-my-lovely-town facade. My mood was set early on when I got ripped off by a car-rental-cutie in Las Vegas who showed me her vitamin B-12 drops while she inflated my rental fee. Now the angry faces that won’t return my wave, the emphsyematous store clerks struggling to breathe and smile, the weathered tattoos on sagging bodies, the glaring neon signs for sex and slots,  John’s stories, Tom’s stories, the chain link electrified fences, the cars in front of me without plates, and the omnipresence of one family name pinned on motels, restaurants, and construction equipment, makes this one city I’ll be happy to leave.

Click to enlarge. Red pin is Pete’s house and blue one is the water tower.

To speak to John B’s observation (he lived in Pahrump) the only sound, besides my squeaky joints, is the wind funneling past the phone’s receiver.

I’m 2 1/2 miles from the water tower and l’ve gained 1500 feet. I can see sagebrush sand and rocks, green and pink hued mountains. The sun is warm, not hot and though I drink a lot I’m not thirsty.

Silence? Not as much as you think as sounds reverberate from the city below. Although since there’s no one here to talk to I have to generate my own noise. I feel like an old refrigerator.There’s this whirring noise and then long periods of silence.

As I look out over the desert I don’t see Peter nearby. I know, I sound like Irene the psychic, but I just think he’s closer to home. Wishful thinking? Maybe, but that’s the only way Peter’s going to be found. There are neither hunters nor hikers or mountain bikers to stumble upon the man.

I have a heavy heart for Ken. Hard enough to be present with your parents when they die, but you have to face the hurt to process your own changes, to grow as a person. What would you do if your father just disappeared?

I love the sound of your voice, Hilary, you’ve always been one of the blogs biggest cheerleaders.

I found a Mylar balloon caught in a cactus, a plastic bag or two and some horse crap, but otherwise not much evidence of other humans. I guess that’s a good thing.

Views down to the water tower and up to the mountains.

This seems like a nice place for all of us to work together. I’m posting photos of cairns because John Barnnard suggested that I look for them.That’s because outside of Peter’s house, on the perimeter, are cairns. Right now I’m about a half a mile above the water tower walking up a stream bed.

By the way I am posting from my phone using an application that works with WordPress so go easy on me. You know punctuation,literacy, all that stuff