The Journal of Secrets

The Journal of Secrets
By Ian De Shils (Ernest Shields)

Chapter 2

The Disk

Teddy was late again and I'd been waiting and waiting. Then, I heard a key rattle in the lock so I hid behind the couch. When he yelled, "I'm home" I wanted to laugh, but then he'd know I was gonna' get his ass, so I just put my hand over my mouth and stayed quiet. I was gonna' get him, just like I used to when, . . . when, . . . well,--- I can't remember when it was, but I remember getting him. Only, . . . it seemed like he used to have a football or something, and maybe it was outside 'cause there was grass and trees,. . . but that didn't matter. I was gonna' get his ass, and I wrapped my arms around me to keep from laughing. This'll teach him to be so late! I had to eat dinner with Mrs. Burrows, then she went home, and I've been alone, waiting and waiting for Teddy, and now it's almost Shower Time!

"YOUR ASS IS MINE!" Jake roared.

A bug must feel the same surprise when a windshield bears down on it at sixty miles an hour. All his two hundred pounds landed squarely on my back knocking the wind out of me.

"Jesus Christ, Jake, are you trying to kill me?" I gaspeed.

Stunned, I lay for a moment unable to move. I hadn't hit the floor that hard since my days as a bouncer at the old Sidewinder Club. Totally unrepentant, Jake was too busy undressing me to even notice I had trouble breathing.

"It's Shower Time, it's Shower Time." he chortled as he stripped my clothes away.

As my kidneys crawled back to their original position it came to me that a few hours exercize the gym each week just wasn't enough. I'll have to take him to the mountains and let him climb rocks and chase deer, anything to burn off all his pent up energy. Camping seems to calm him down and for a few weeks afterwards I don't need to be on my guard every second. These last couple of years have been a lot like living with a wild bull. I never know when he's going to attack, or why. Today its 'Shower Time', last week, because he'd wanted spaghetti instead of chicken. Jake isn't out to harm me, he just doesn't know his own strength, and I'm getting too old to be suddenly smashed to the floor and sat on, or worse, tickled, until I agree to his whims.

When I took him out of the hospital I had hopes bringing him back to familiar surrounding might make him snap out of it and become his old self again. So far that hasn't happened. Yet, . . . sometimes I can almost sense my old friend and partner of twenty-five years, lurking just out of sight, staring at me past those childish eyes. Physically he's fine, even the brain damage was almost nil, but the trauma of the incident forced a regression back to childhood his doctors think is permanent. They worked on him for more than a year and then told me as kindly as they could, for the rest of his life Jake Sanders would probably be little more than he is right now. Oh, there are flashes of my old friend; 'You're ass is mine, Ted.' was the phrase he always used when we horsed around, but the real Jake is gone; lost that awful night three years ago when he stopped those bullets meant for someone else.

Jake only acts this way at home,--- in public he's so reserved you'd never guess. He seldom speaks and never calls attention to himself, but if someone corners him and begins asking questions he can't answer, he'll start to cry. That embarrasses everyone, Jake most of all. Luckily that doesn't happen often. When we attend parties or private gatherings, our friends will warn the other guests and usually he's left in peace.

What amazes Jake's doctors is his ability to read and write. They say that shouldn't be possible, considering his regressed age, but he does, and quite well. His writing is clear and simple, his reading comprehension well above his apparent mental age and for some reason he retains things better if he reads it than if it's told to him. It's been a hard trip for Jake. After spending nearly two months in a coma, he awoke calling out for his first wife, whom he hasn't seen in twenty-some years. Now he doesn't remember her at all.

Me, he recognized instantly and he even seemed to knowAnnie and the kids, but with no sure knowledge of their relationship. He still can't put that together. When the kids call him 'Papa' he thinks it's all a game. What he can't remember at all is what happened to him that night nor the things we've experienced together over the past twenty-four years. When I mention the old days, he wants me to write it all down. I promised him I would when I had the time, and that may be soon now. GSI is in the process of being sold and it looks like none of us will have to worry about money for the rest of our lives.

Nearly twenty years ago it put us deeply in hock to open one little office in LA. Now we have sixty-seven in major cities from coast to coast and our lawyer says GSI is worth millions. We worked hard and we were lucky, but Jake made us rich when he dragged us out of private eye work and into security services. We still do background checks and such, but GSI now exists primarily to guard people and property. That's where the money is, and strangely enough, it's pretty much the same work we did back when we first met. Soon now, Jake, I'll have the time to write down all the things we did, and I will, I promise you, old friend, I will.

* * * * * * *

We're going on vacation tomorrow! Teddy likes to tease. He said we were going to Korea and China and places like that, but when I said we should go to the mountains, he laughed and showed me the map he was hiding behind his back. Teddy's so much fun! We looked at the map and I showed him what roads to go on. He always lets me do that. I thought of a place that's awful nice, so I marked it on the map, and then he said we'd best get packed, 'cause we're leaving early in the morning, and I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!

* * * * * * *

Bascomb and Mead finished the transfer in record time. I'm pleased and at the same time saddened to leave our life's work behind, but without Jake involved it's just no fun anymore. Besides, Stan Mead is right. Offers like this come along only once in a lifetime.

Fall was winding down toward winter and in southern California that meant rain. We saw it come down hard and steady on the day we left for Colorado. Jake loves Colorado. Before he was hurt he more or less directed everything we did there. If we so much as wrote a contract for security services anywhere in that state, Jake would insist he personally had to inspect and approve the site. Even a simple background check was all the excuse he needed to pack up and take off for a few days. I once told him I thought he had a lover squirreled away in Colorado, and he said he did, and then made me take some time off so he could introduce us.

His new romance turned out to be the Rocky Mountains. It is gorgeous there, but I still prefer summer hiking to mushing up some mountain side through four feet of snow. I enjoy skiing as much as Jake, but I also liked the lodges with their roaring fires, the hot rum toddies and the great food that goes along with it. Jake wanted to explore out of the way places where tourists never went. We used to add an extra week to our ski trips just to satisfy his curiosity about where some road led, or maybe to make an impromptu visit to a corner of the state we had never seen before.

Not all of Colorado is as beautiful as the Rockies, but Jake had an eye for detail that made those trips interesting. Somehow he dug up little snippets of history about every place we went and regaled me with them as we traveled. Back then I thought he might be gathering material for a book, but he never wrote anything down I know of. Jake always picked our routes when we vacationed together, and this time was no different. We drove the last piece of GSI we owned, a four wheel drive Bronco Jake bought ten years ago and lovingly maintained. It still had the logo on the doors, Jake's cameras still nestled in their custom built bins. I hadn't changed a thing since he last drove it.

We crossed miles of cool and sullen desert laid bare beneath an overcast. This day no blinding sun or shimmering heat to help disguise the cruel disfigurements of man. I once fell in love with the Mojave's untrammeled beauty, but that was twenty-five years ago when the abuse was far less evident. The desert has suffered since, but the road is better, broken only by the occasional oasis that offered hearty trucker's meals and overpriced gasoline. We stopped for lunch, after which Jake promptly got his fill of Joshua trees and fell asleep. Little did I know he was saving all his energy for Las Vegas.

When we reached Glitter Gulch, Jake began displaying the genius of his condition. He has the wide eyed appreciation for life only a child can show and it's wedded to a body with strength and endurance of a rhino. We did the town. Our overnight stay extended to nearly a week as we visited every casino on the strip. We stayed in a different hotel each night because Jake wanted to sleep inside a castle or a pyramid or some other such wonderful delight, yet the truth is we hardly slept at all. We played the slots. I, cautiously, he with wild abandon, stuffing dollar after dollar into them after he discovered they ate more than one coin at a time. We dined, we strolled, we saw shows and Jake was dazzled. Finally, we rode the rides at Circus Circus until sick and tired of them. I was sick, Jake was only tired, but at last completely sated, we made our escape heading north again.

In Utah the land changed rapidly from high plains to higher rugged rock as we made our way to the top of the San Rafael Reef. A brief halt at the summit for a pit stop, a hurried glance at the vista and the icy wind drove us down toward Green River for a night of quiet restfulness. Thankfully, nothing glitters in Green River except the running lights of semi's. We found a restaurant advertising home cooked meals and Jake, now wound down to normal speed, ate heartily. It has become our mode for him to leave the tip, which he did, a most generous one gleaned from his Vegas winnings. He actually did quite well in Vegas, coming away with slightly more than he poked into those machines. His pockets bulged, he jingled from a mother lode of tip money, happy in the fact that a stack of silver dollars is much more substantial looking than the paper kind.

At the register he saw a canister set up to make donations for a local child's medical expense and carefully read the plea. The cashier blinking in amazement as Jake unloaded, filling the can to overflowing, then asked if I had some to give. It was so typically Jake, so expressive of his unselfish nature, it floored me for a moment. All else may have changed, but in this, he was still his old self!

In the morning we headed north to the little town of Wellington. From there, Jake marked a line up through Nine Mile Canyon which led to US 40 east of Duchesne. We were up that canyon once before, years ago, and marveled at the petroglyphs etched on the sandstone cliffs along the winding road. Nothing much changed. Nine Mile Canyon was still one of the best kept secrets in Utah, a state more widely known for its secrets of another kind.

We stayed on US 40 into Colorado until almost reaching Craig, then, still following Jake's map, we turned south on state road 13 for a few miles. From there, Jake insisted we take a side road that looked like it went nowhere, but sported a little sign and an arrow pointing to someplace called Soledad. A gray, overcast sky had been spitting snowflakes for the last hour, but I humored him. What the hell, the rental at Vail was paid in advance, we had no particular schedule to meet and all the time in the world to get there. Besides, Jake did seem to know where we were going. Perhaps some bit of old memory was at work here and the town of Soledad might just crystallize it.

We put several long winding miles of rough country road behind before coming to an even narrower trail angling away up the mountain and again Jake indicated we take that path. The two track went on for miles, over a low pass, down into a pretty valley and then rose again past a long line of corrals that marched up the mountainside. I turned passed a few out buildings and suddenly I found the road blocked by a house. It finally came to me that this was no mountain town. We had driven up to someone's door yard!

Before I could say anything, Jake was out of the truck looking around in confusion. He turned to stare at the corrals, then spun around again and I saw his face clear.

"New house!" he said, and while that fairly obvious observation might hold some meaning for him, it left me completely in the dark. Was this where he meant to go or had he merely gotten us lost? He quite often shifts to play acting if he makes a blunder. Two men stood on the porch watching us and as walked over to apologize for the intrusion, the older man began to laugh,

"Say, I'm positive I sent you guys a check. What happened, did it bounce?"

Then I recognized him. We had met several years before at our La Brea office, his name was Hammond or Harris, or something that started with an 'H' and suddenly things fell into place. Some months before the shooting, Jake had gone to Colorado to do a background check on the man who owned Rancho Soledad. He had been here before! I remembered how impressed Jake had been with the little ramshackle ranch house at Soledad filled with thousands of dollars worth of antiques and collectibles. Jake found no one home, but the house was open; the door totally devoid of locks. He spent an entire afternoon waiting in vain for someone to show up and was so fascinated with the place he talked about it for weeks afterwards.

It look to me as though the owners had come into some money because this new two story structure was nothing at all like the shack Jake described. The younger man, who turned out to be Harris' son, talked to Jake for a few minutes, then ask us in. I can't describe the feeling the house gave me. It was warmly comfortable, eminently livable, a home in every sense of the word, and somehow it brought back memories of long ago and of a little house on the California desert that for me once held the same aura.

Jake began wandering about looking at small treasures that sat on shelves along the walls. Picking up an object, he would hold it tightly in his hands as though gaining some intimate knowledge of the thing by merely clutching it, then with great care, set it down again. I was nervous he might break something, but the Harris' seemed unperturbed. The younger man just smiled at Jake's avid curiosity and told me those things were meant to be handled.

We spent the most pleasant afternoon I could recall with Jake exploring, and the Harris' telling me the history of the ranch. As the day faded, our hosts invited us to supper, then later, to spend the night. It was probably for the best. I doubt Jake would have left without an argument. He was completely mesmerized by all he saw. Lonnie helped carry our luggage to a big upstairs room that held a huge double bed.

"This is what dad calls the Antique Suite," he said, explaining that everything in the room was original to the ranch and some of it more than two hundred years old. Then with a little grin he added, "Everything but the mattress, that is. Luckily, it's somewhat newer. I'm sure you'll be comfortable. Oh, by the way, at this time of the year, there is no formal breakfast hour. Sleep as late as you want, then just rustle up something for yourselves. Dad is usually up fairly early, but I sometimes lay around 'til ten."

The next morning Jake was up with the sun. I found him in the kitchen having coffee with Dan Harris. As soon as I walked in, Jake jumped up all excited,

"Teddy, Dan said there's a cave here. Can we go see it?" He begged.

"I guess, if it's okay with Dan and if it's not too far away."

Smiling, Dan repied,

"Well, it's pretty darn close, in fact it's right here."

Dan opened a door off the kitchen. He lit a lantern and led the way into the neatest, cleanest cave I've ever seen. The floor was level cut stone for about twenty feet, then steps led upward to a higher terrace with another terrace beyond that. Dan lit several more lanterns so we could get a better look at the cave, and then directed us up the steps. By the time we climbed to the last terrace, we were higher than the house itself and there Dan showed us the spring that provided water for the ranch. It sparkled!

"Pretty neat isn't it? This little spring was stoned up over two hundred years ago. That pipe there, feeds the house, the overflow goes to the corrals."

I couldn't get over how the water sparkled. It practically fizzed.

"What causes the bubbles?" I asked.

"Just oxygen in the water reacting with some harmless gasses. Actually it's extremely pure. It's the finest drinking water I've ever tasted."

Off the terraces were several side chambers which Dan said were all dead ends. He took us down one such side tunnel to show us an area filled with wonderful cave paintings and all of them perfectly preserved. I commented on their condition and he nodded.

"Yes, it's remarkable considering how many people have live in this cave over the years. Back when this ranch was a Spanish land grant there was a large hacienda not far from where the corrals stand now. It burned in the 1850's and so the owner moved into the cave and lived here for years, in fact, I understand the cave was actually winter quarters for all who spent that season here. Lot's of history in these stones. Isn't it nice that even the earliest settlers respected what they found?" He patting the wall affectionately. Down below the door opened and Lonny Harris called out,

"Breakfast anyone?"

Later, Lonnie gave us a tour of the corrals, the shearing sheds, loading docks and storage buildings. The ranch was far more extensive than I thought, yet there were no animals in evidence, not even a dog.

"It's a lot different in the summer," Lonnie explained, "The sheep are all down on the winter range now. We run them here only from May through September."

"No horses?" Jake asked.

"Nope, not in the winter. We keep close to a dozen here in the summer, but they're over near Craig right now. The snow gets so deep up here that horses would have to be barned all winter."

Jake was a little disappointed at the lack of animals until Lonnie pointed down the mountain side toward a meadow at the bottom of the slope. A herd of majestic elk grazed near a creek, their breath fogging the cold mountain air.

"Lot's of wildlife, 'course grazers move down when the snow gets deep, but even in the dead of winter there's always animals working the stream. Beaver and Otters. It's real pretty here in the wintertime."

Lost in thought he stood looking down toward the little valley. It was easy to see this spot held many memories for Lonny, perhaps some bittersweet ones as well. He stood there for the longest while, then finally smiled at Jake and said,

"We do have one year around pet. His name is Oscar." He led us a barn where a huge owl dozed in the rafters. "Well, he's sort of a pet; only, don't try to touch him. You might say he rules the roost in here." Lonnie whistled and the owl blinked sleepily in our direction.

"That's about as friendly as he gets," Lonnie chuckled, "He's a good mouser though, better than any cat."

Jake fell in love with the ranch. At first he kept going from building to building, just looking at everything, but soon he was helping Lonnie with the fall chores. He especially liked soaping the saddles and then buffing them to a high luster. He also enjoyed helping Dan with the carpentry work he was doing to tighten up the buildings against the coming winter. It was the kind of things Jake could do without frustration and both Dan and Lonnie were lavish with their praise. Dan ask me what had happened to Jake. I told him of the shooting and Jake's near brush with death.

"I knew it must have been something pretty bad. I talked to him when your outfit did that work for me a few years ago. I thought then he was one of the sharpest guys I ever met. It's a real shame."

Dan never mentioned Jake's condition again nor did he ever treat him like a child. I took a warm liking for the man and his sensitivities. I'm not sure how it happened. As I think back I can't recall even talking about a swap, but a few days later, the Harris's were leaving in Jake's Bronco with a letter of introduction to our building manager, and we were staying for the winter! Lonnie said Jake needed the peace and quiet Soledad provided, then they bid us 'goodbye' and drove away. It all seemed perfectly normal.

If we decide not to stay, there are some trucks parked in the sheds. They left a jeep, two pickups and what looks like an old army transport, all canvassed over for the winter and all in good running order. We can leave anytime before the snow sets in, but somehow I don't think we will. Jake loves this place. Each morning at dawn he's out hiking the hills, coming back for breakfast chilled to the bone and happier than I've seen him at anytime these last two years.

The house is fantastic. One entire room is devoted to a library with more variety than I could have imagined. Among the histories, geography's, novels, biography's, travel folders, magazines, 'how to' books and volumes of poetry, are sets of journals written by former owners and residents of Soledad. There is an entire shelf of these journals, some written in longhand, others carefully printed out in block letters.

The paper was anything that came to hand from ruled notebook to fine vellum, but each one is bound in a heavy cover that protects it during handling. Some of the earliest ones were written in Spanish and I believe at least half the entire collection are copies of long disintegrated originals. On the inside cover of those folders that contain copies is stamped THE RS TRUST and the paper used is new and acid free.

Evidently, the R S Trust whatever it is, cares a great deal about the lives and times of the inhabitants of this house. The copies are beautifully done. In some of the later folders only a few pages had been replaced, yet every attempt was made to duplicate the look of the original sheets right down to the exact color and size. It gave me pause that anyone would take such care with the writings of ordinary folks and suddenly I had an itch to begin a journal of my own. This winter will be the perfect time to set down all the things Jake wants to know.

I selected two folders; one written by Lonnie Harris, the other by his father, Dan, and set them aside for later reading. I then found an unused tablet and started making notes of my own, trying hard to remember the chronology of events of the last twenty-four years. I was just getting into it, when Jake came bursting through the door.

"It's snowing out, it's really snowing hard! Come see, come see!" He cried, jumping up and down with delight. He yanked me away from the desk and it was several snowball fights later before I got back to it again.

The house has no real electricity. For light we use oil lamps and an LP gas fixture in the kitchen, but there is a small wind generator capable of keeping several twelve volt car batteries charged. This set up is likely a ranch necessity since Soledad is miles from the nearest phone or service garage; however, the Harris' took full advantage of this tiny power source by cleverly installing a high quality FM car radio and CD player in a snazzy looking component enclosure. In the spot normally taken up by a television set is a shelved area that holds board games, cards and puzzles and thus this cabinet becomes more truly an entertainment center than the one we left behind in Brentwood.

Upstairs is a large and beautifully appointed bathroom, modern in every way and with a seemingly endless supply of hot water. The kitchen looked small and rustic until I found how convenient it is. Supplies of canned and dried foodstuffs, enough to feed an army, is stored in a pantry larger than the kitchen itself and connected to it by a sliding door. There is also a root cellar in a cave behind the house that holds a variety of fresh vegetables. We definitely won't starve.

There seems to be plenty of fuel. There are two huge LP gas tanks in the yard. We cook with gas, cook our food with it, too, and it supplies the instant water heater that never lets us down, but while we've searched everywhere, we've never found the furnace. It obviously works okay, the house is always comfortably warm, I just can't locate it. We do our laundry more or less by hand in an old wringer washer powered by a gasoline engine and the clothes are hung outside to freeze dry. It really isn't all that much trouble for just the two of us. Jake and I make a game of it. He always want's to help with whatever I'm doing and hanging clothes gives him a feeling of accomplishment.

Now that the snow is deep, we stay indoors much of the time, even our laundry is hung in the cave to dry. Dan Harris said there is absolutely no danger there, so I let Jake go exploring while I get psyched up to start writing. Unlike the other journals, mine will be typed, luckily. No one, including myself can read my handwritten scribble. It was only habit that caused me to bring along my little portable office, which is really nothing more than a small laptop computer and a portable printer stuffed into a briefcase, yet with these singularly important items, Jake and I have at times, conducted the entire business affairs of GSI.

Now they will be put to a more mundane use; reconstructing for Jake the happenings of the last two decades. It was a simple matter to tap into the ranch's twelve volt system to recharge the spare battery packs, but paper was something else again until I found that anything that fits the platen works just fine in those little ink jets. So far I haven't written a thing to tweak Jake's interest, all I've done is make a diary of current events and that is not what he wants. The truth is I'm nervous about starting. Jake is so happy here, he hasn't had a single nightmare since we arrived. What if reading about his former life brings them back again? On the other hand he keeps asking and I can't put him off forever.

As another form of procrastination, I've decided to look at what the Harris' wrote before buckling down to it myself. Perhaps reading of other peoples trials and tribulations will give me the incentive to start; although, as ranchers, it's doubtful those two quiet men ever experienced the kind problems Jake has seen.

* * * * * * *

Five days after I wrote that thoughtless statement, I once again sit before the keyboard, completely stunned by my own shallowness. What bigotry of mind led me to assume that Jake was the only resident of this quiet house ever to have met disaster? I cannot shed the images of suffering described in those accounts, nor the feeling that despite the differences in time and space, we have crossed paths with the Harris' many times before. Jake must read this, he must! It may prove to be the best starting place for his own life story. I'll type excerpts from both journals, blending them into a line of reference points he can follow. Chapters might work best for him or perhaps a sequence of short stories, but whatever I decide, I'm convinced this must be rendered before dealing with our own history. If Jake can see the interconnections as I do, then perhaps this will help open the past for him.

The place to start has to be with Dan's journal and the best beginning of all comes near the end of it. God, I hope I'm approaching this in the right way. If all it does is upset Jake's current happy mood, I'll not soon forgive myself.

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