I was thinking back to my childhood memories and the Christmas that almost wasn’t. I was probably 9 and I remember we didn’t have much money. It was clear that there wasn’t going to be a train or a guitar or any large gifts under the tree. Mom had confided in me that this was a tough year. I told her to think of my sisters; one wanted a doll, another a doll house. My littlest sister was just learning to walk.

This Christmas stands out because it was a homemade Christmas. The gifts we gave each other were from the heart. We made colored rings of garland out of tissue paper and strings of popcorn. And on Christmas morning, we held each other close. It was the best Christmas ever.

With all the snow in the Sierra this year, and the sudden coldness in Las Vegas, I started thinking about all of the best Christmases we had as a family. And I thought about my own kids and those Christmases in Texas; our children gave me new memories. Children are what make Christmas special.

Here is this year’s Christmas story for you to listen to on Christmas Eve. Today, I’m driving back to Texas to spend time with my family. I wish all my family and friends a Merry Christmas and May God Bless.

A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas.

The key here is the quest for the ultimate fish taco.

The genesis of this story was a conversation I had a few years back with CBS 48-Hours Producer Chris O’Connell who told me about a mysterious town in Mexico made up of United States Expatriots all hiding from their past. He was planning on doing a story about the place; I immediately thought about a town missing out on American luxuries, in particular, Rubio’s Fish Tacos. It all was clear to me then and why I didn’t start writing right away is another mystery.

In any case, I planned on fudging a bit this year and rewriting The Favor, my unfinished novel about a kid who is tricked into stealing a truck and then driving it back across the Bonneville Salt Flats. But as I started to write last night on the first day of 2010′s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) competition, the saga of Tim Deboy and the ultimate fish taco demanded to be written.

I had fleshed out the characters pretty well and even knew how Deboy, his friend Chavez de Gualle and a New York City Traffic Agent named Dean Malone would end up on a road trip to Mexico, when I discovered Bolsón de Mapimí, Mexico’s Zone of Silence. For some reason, the whole tale took a left turn and currently we’re on the cusp of including a touch of the X-Files. This is going to be good.

Here is the start of the current novel:

Chapter 1: Bolsón de Mapimí, Chihuahuan Desert, Old Mexico

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. – Eden Phillpotts

The desert wind blew warm and dry across Teddy DuPont’s face layering grit on his chapped lips. He pulled the square bottle to his mouth and let the agave spill out and drip down his chin. He pulled his long robe tighter around him to keep out the cold.

“What’s that?” he shouted out as he spun into the wind. He stopped suddenly and cocked his head to the left listening for a voice. The bottle sloshed at his side.

“A visitor?” He laughed out loud and spun around with his arms outstretched as if to collect all the stars in the sky. The bottle swung up in the air and a stream of Mescal sprayed out into the wind raining down on Teddy. The drops fell slowly and bounced off his nose and forehead. Teddy looked up and watched a drop grow larger and land in his eye. He wiped his face and shook his hair. He shouted loudly up at the stars. “There are no visitors here. Nobody dares come into this hell-forsaken sand trap.” He laughed loudly and then suddenly stopped. Teddy listened again for a sound. There was nothing but the wind blowing past the field of creosote and ocotillo. The wind rubbed the plants together forming a low hum.

“You don’t say.” Teddy stumbled forward and fell to his knees. The bottle dug into the sand. To his right a coyote barked into the wind and Teddy dropped to his knees to join him. “Yip, Yip, Yip, Yip, Yip,” he shouted into the night, and then let out a howl, high pitched and mournful, as if to punctuate the sentence. He crawled through the sand dragging the robe through the campfire.

Teddy suddenly stood up as if a puppet; a tall, wiry man whose presence was diminished by his wide stance. He stumbled forward dropping the Mescal next to a crumpled creosote bush. The bush grew larger and became the shape of a fat man with short, stubby arms. Teddy stood at attention, then swung out his right arm in a grand arch and bowed.

“I will treat him like a royal guest,” Teddy addressed the wind. He swooped down and completed his formal salute to the bushman, then stumbled forward, nearly tripping over a large brown rock. The shape of the fat man dipped back down to the desert floor and became creosote again. Teddy steadied himself; his arms hung low and nearly touched ground as he swung backward towards the bottle lying next to the bush. He grabbed it by the neck and touched mouth to mouth drinking deep from the bottle until there was nothing left.

He paused, furrowed his brow into a pained grimace and stared out across the desert. Straggly hair hung in long clumps of stringy curls on his head. The creosote waved in the wind like rolling green surf and buffeted his face. He closed his eyes and let the wind blow into him leaning forward with his long arms outstretched, as if he was flying. He smiled as the wind stalled. He fell forward a bit before steadying himself upright again. Teddy opened his eyes and looked up at the star field blanketing the far mountains. The stars merged into a wide arrow pointing at the end of the range. He considered it for a moment and then laughed at a private joke.

He tossed the empty bottle of Mescal up and caught it by the base. He juggled the bottle in the air and caught it again before tossing it off into the desert where it landed with a crash. A coyote dashed from the spot, then stopped to look back at Teddy. Its bright eyes flashed in the night and expanded into large bowls of yellow light brighter than the noonday sun. Teddy dropped to his knees shielding his eyes from the blinding light. He took a deep breath and without any hesitation fell flat on his face, smacking his head on a rock, his hands grabbing at the dirt. He let out a snort, blowing sand out of his nose, and then Teddy DuPont promptly passed out asleep.

On the far side of the valley a sentry looked out over the desert peering down on the landscape with an infrared spotting scope. He was a short man dressed in a paramilitary uniform; not well-kept but not sloppy. He held the small glass to his eye and surveyed the desert below. He spied the sparkling lights of a campfire and the headlights of a truck. A dark flash of a night hawk drew his attention away from the man. He followed its flight across the valley floor as it surveyed the ground below. The hawk seemed to sit in the air until it performed a dive downward; a silent dance as it swooped down on an unsuspecting pocket mouse that proved too brave.

The sentry turned his observation back to Teddy lying in the dirt. A bark from behind the direction of the truck attracted his eye. A coyote scrambled up a well-worn path and turned to look back. He saw the flash of its eyes and it seemed to peer into his soul.

The valley was wide and empty except at the base of the mountains. Far to the north he could see the sparkling lights of the Mormon community and an equal distance to the south he saw the town of no-names who had only recently moved to the area. The valley stretched for hundreds of miles and was so desolate even the army, the drug cartels and the tourists avoid its dry, parched waste. Nobody wanted to die in Bolsón de Mapimí, Mexico’s Zone of Silence. The valley was so silent, the wind barely registered a sound and if you were lost there no one would hear your cries; no radio, no cell phones, no communication.

Across from him the Mexican army maintained a post. He pointed his light across the valley in a rhythmic message of Morse code. He wondered if they had sentries looking back at him tonight with their own set of eyes. No message came back from the other side. He was standing guard directly across from them roughly 30 kilometers; the secrets he guarded were more important than anything the army might protect. He was tucked into the hills of iron and magnetic rock and the place buzzed with power from a massive generator buried in the mountain. The smell of kerosene and exhaust nearly wafted over him until the breeze shifted and took it away. He turned to look back at the complex; nothing moved behind him. He returned looking out over the valley for any movement.

Occasionally, a Jeep or Humvee like his friend sleeping in the valley would spread out into the desert. Drug smugglers and desperate people now seemed to make this more their home. They encroached on the secrets of Bolsón de Mapimí. He didn’t like it; it meant more time spying from this cliff. The routine was becoming more frequent. When anything approached his hidden post, he would follow its path until it came too close and then they would flash a signal of light out into the empty wasteland toward the north. Soon a helicopter would swoop down and trap the vehicle. A swirl of dust would envelope the occupants in a cloud of sand. Loud voices over loudspeakers would bounce back on the rocks behind the sentry perch and then the offenders would emerge from the cloud heading back to where they had come from.

“I think our friend has called it a night,” he remarked to himself. He looked at his watch and then he wrote down the time and location in a small leather notebook. He focused on Teddy lying in the sand. He could see him stir and reposition himself on the ground. He saw a small cut on his forehead where blood was beginning to cake.

“That’s going to leave a scar,” he said out loud before turning back to scanning the desert floor.

-end-

By the way, don’t be stealing this for your own mysterious, science fiction fantasy novel. The whole thing is under copyright.

I met my goal for the second night and we currently stand at 3,354 words. More to come.

Tommy woke slowly from an afternoon nap. He rubbed his eyes, stretched up his arms and placed his fingers together crunching his knuckles. A ghost bounced around the cracking fingers before disappearing. Tommy smiled at the thought.

This time he would do it. Weighing 98 pounds, more or less, his mother had told him he was too small to play football. But he wanted to grind his toe in the grass and scuff up his shoes until they were green. Slip the shoulder pads on and bury his head in the helmet. Race down the field and catch the winning pass. This was going to be his year. He would not be too short, too skinny, too uncoordinated. He was playing football no matter what.

Across the street from the house a team was gathering on the field. Tommy grabbed the helmet and shoulder pads and rushed across the street. He slowed as he reached the grass and thought better of the idea.

Tommy didn’t have a chance to retreat. He was pulled out on the field by a hulk known as Smasher. On the line, Smasher slapped Tommy on his shoulders and pushed the helmet down hard. He crouched down opposite the new kid. Tommy slipped to the side to avoid the mass facing off from him. Smasher moved sideways and crouched into a stance. Tommy trembled at the thought of 258 pounds of grizzled terror bearing down on his small frame. He stepped backward and started to pull up but missed his chance to flee. The coach whistled a short blast and the line moved forward. Tommy froze. Smasher lunged forward and picked up Tommy’s 98-pound frame and held it up over the top of his head. Both players screamed as Smasher tossed Tommy into the air. He hung above the field and could see the entire team below him plowing into a massive heap. In mid-air Tommy turned his head to look back at the house and thought he saw an entire stand of cheering fans. He blinked and they were gone.

“What you don’t seem to remember Mr. Tommy Sheridan,” said the nurse placing ice on his knee, “is that you’re 70-years-old and too small to be playing football.” Tommy repositioned the ice bag and smiled up at her.

“And you, Mr. David “Smasher” Lemboski.” She removed his hand from her thigh. “Should be ashamed of yourself.” She smacked the back of his head and walked away to the nurse’s station.

The two men turned to the game between them. Smasher picked up a pawn putting his queen in jeopardy. Tommy considered a sudden thought. Mom was right. I should stick to chess.

The ghosts floated through the pieces on the game board as Tommy and Smasher laughed and continued their game. They drifted over to join a group of faded personages gathered across the room. Both shined a little brighter than the rest. Tommy looked across at the two happy personages and winked. He knew. Nothing was ever the same again after that.

If you look carefully, the cloud is reflecting light down upon the peak and illuminating the fresh coat of snow on the top of the peak.  The Owens Valley stretches out from the mountains and reaches out to the White Mountains on the eastern side.  This is a deep valley with 14,000 foot peaks on either side.  When I was a boy we would picnic at the foot of this peak; sneaking into a horse corral at the base near Rovana. I shot this on Ectachrome with my Pentax 6×7.

In Germany, they came first for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists but I didn’t speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t s…peak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time nobody was left to speak up.”
Martin Niemoeller, Dachau, 1944

You can call them crazy and proclaim them as disloyal or lunatics, but that often ends up with you rushing to the escape boats with your tails between your legs (see King George vs. Tea Party 1781).