Silent Partner

She began writing. I got up, read over her shoulder:

Ransom, Shirlee. DOB: 1/1/22

Rural Route 4, Willow Glen, Ca. 92399.

“Okay, thank you, Monica.”

I said, “Ask her about a Jasper Ransom.”

She looked up at me quizzically, said: “Monica, don’t clear your screen yet. Type in ADD SRCH. Wait for the blinking prompt again… Got it? Okay, now Ransom, same name as before, comma Jasper… No. J… Right. Jasper. Good… It is? Okay, give me the birthdate.”

She wrote: DOB 12/25/20. Same address.

“Thank you again, Monica. Got a lot left to do?… Then take off early. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She hung up. “Two elderly Ransoms for the price of one, darling.”

She looked at the paper again and pointed to the birthdates. “New Year’s and Christmas. Cute. What’s the chance of that? Who are these people?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Willow Glen. Got a state map?”

“No need,” she said. “I’ve been there. It’s out in the boonies- San Bernardino County, near Yucaipa. When the kids were little I used to take them down there to pick apples.”

“Apples?”

“Apples, darling. Little red round things? Keep the doctor away? Why the surprise?”

“I didn’t know apples grew down there.”

“They used to. Then one year we went down there and there was nothing left- all the U-pick places closed down, the trees dead and dying. We’re talking boonies, Alex. Nothing’s out there. Except Miss New Year’s and Mr. Christmas.”

28

The San Bernardino Freeway propelled me, like a pea through a shooter, past an exurban blur of industrial parks, ticky tack housing developments and auto lots wider than some small towns. Just beyond Pomona and the County Fairgrounds, the scenery shifted to ranches, egg farms, warehouses, and freight yards. Ru

I drove through empty, sun-scorched hills, past smaller farms and ranches, sloping fields of alfalfa, horses grazing sluggishly in the heat. The Yucaipa exit narrowed to a single lane that ran alongside a tractor graveyard. I slowed and cruised past a string of aluminum-sided trailers billed as “The Big Mall,” an untended taco shack, and a boarded-up shop advertising “Very Rare Antiques.”

Willow Glen shared billing on a road sign with a Bible college twenty miles south and a state agricultural depot. The directional arrow aimed me over a covered bridge and onto a razor-straight road that cut through more farmland- citrus and avocado plantings, ramshackle stables, and untended fields. Broad slabs of blank brown space were broken by trailer parks, tin-roofed juke joints, and cinder-block churches, and surrounded by the granite drapery of the San Bernardino Mountains.

The mountains faded from rawhide to lavender-gray in the distance, the upper peaks merging with a pearly mist of sky. Heat percolated up from the lowlands, softening the contours of the pines that clung to the mountainsides, creating fringed silhouettes that recalled ink bleeding into blotting paper.

Willow Glen Road materialized as the left arm of a boulevard stop in the middle of nowhere, a sharp hook past a splintered sign advertising fresh produce and a “Jumbo Turkey Ranch,” long vacated. The blacktop twisted and climbed toward the mountains, then up into them. The air got cooler, cleaner.

Ten miles in, a few apple orchards appeared: freshly tilled small plots backed by frame houses and surrounded by barbed wire and windbreak willows, the trees cut low with wide crotches, for handpicking. Cherry-sized orbs peeked out from under sage canopies of leaf. Harvest looked to be a good two months away. Homemade signs on stakes driven into the road shoulder welcomed the U-pick crowd but there didn’t seem enough fruit to provide more than a day’s desultory picking. As the road climbed higher, neglected orchards began to dominate the landscape- larger, dusty stretches filled with dead trees, some felled, others whittled to limbless, gray-white spikes.

The asphalt ended at twin telephone-pole-sized posts banded with Chamber of Commerce and service club badges. A chain dangling from between the posts supported a sign that read WILLOW GLEN VILLAGE. POP. 432.

I stopped, looked past the sign. The village seemed to be nothing more than a tiny rustic shopping mall shaded by willows and pines and fronted by an empty parking lot. The trees parted at the far end of the lot, and the road continued as compressed dirt. I drove in, parked, and stepped out into clean, dry heat.

The first thing that caught my eye was a large black-and-white Ilama nibbling hay in a small corral. Behind the corral was a narrow frame house painted barn-red and trimmed in white. The sign over the doorway read WILLOW GLEN FUN CENTER AND PETTING ZOO. I searched for human habitation, saw none. Waved at the llama and got a ruminant stare in return.

A handful of other buildings, all small, all wooden, shingle-roofed and unpainted and co

The ground was cushioned by pine needles and willow leaves. I walked through it, still searching for company, spotted a flash of white and a jet of smoke rising from behind the woodcarver’s shop. Low-hanging branches blocked the view. I walked past them, saw a series of weathered wood booths bolted together under a single, brand-new red roof. As I got closer, the air got sweet- the heavy sweetness of honey mixed with the tang of apples. The trees receded and I was standing in a bright clearing.

One of the booths was labeled APPLE PRESS & CIDERY, another CLOVER HONEY. But the sweet smoke was coming from next door, a green-shuttered section designated GOLDEN DELICIOUS CAFé. DEEP DISH PIE. COBBLER. The café’s façade was whitewashed planks and stained-glass windows- windows decorated with black boughs, pink-white blossoms, green, red, and yellow apples. The door was open. I went in.

Inside everything was spotless and whitewashed- picnic tables and benches, a white ceiling fan recirculating hot, honeyed air, a Formica-topped counter and three white Naugahyde stools, hanging plants, an old brass cash register, and a mimeographed poster advertising a Yucaipa astrologer. A young woman sat behind the counter drinking coffee and reading a biology textbook. Behind her a pass-through window provided a view of a stainless-steel kitchen.

I sat down. She looked up. Nineteen or twenty, with a sharply upturned nose, clipped curly blond hair, and wide dark eyes. She wore a white shirt and black jeans, was slim but hippy. A green-apple badge on her shirt said WENDY.

She smiled. Maura Ba

“Hi. What can I get you?”

I pointed to her coffee cup. “How about some of that, for starts.”

“Sure. Cream and sugar?”

“Black.”

“Would you like a menu?”

“Thanks.”

She handed me a plasticized rectangle. The selection surprised me. I’d expected burgers and fries, but a dozen entrees were listed, some of them complex, with a nod toward nouvelle, each tagged with letters indicating the proper wine: C for Chardo

She brought the coffee. “Something to eat?”