Mohave New Years

Thousands of tattered dollar bills decorate the walls of the Oatman Hotel where nostalgia reigns supreme. Married in Kingman in 1939, Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their wedding night in this old hotel. They visited often before Lombard died in a plane crash outside Vegas when her TWA flight slammed into Table Mountain. Some say the hotel is still haunted by their spirits in the form of laughter and whispers, or by Oatie, an Irish miner who once lived here in the middle of the Mohave. There are telltale signs. A toilet flushes in an empty bathroom. Mysterious imprints are left on freshly cleaned bed sheets. I want to believe.

From the bar lofts the gentle sound of a young woman singing a rendition of Jewel’s “Who Will Save Your Soul”. She is good. Nearby her husband strums a guitar as their young daughter sits in an aging red vinyl booth and colors herself busy. It’s New Years weekend, and small clumps of visitors begin to huddle into the warm room for some slow food. A handful of waiters joke with the bartender and serve buffalo burgers on red plastic plates to tables with legs propped up by matchbooks.

The screen door opens and Willy the outlaw enters the hotel in full regalia – black pants, shiny boot spurs, skinny suspenders, cowboy hat. He pats me on the shoulder, asks if we’ll come out into the cold and watch the shootout.

You really should see this, he says.

Of course we will.

We step outside into the bright Arizona sun. Willy and his wife have been staging Oatman gun fights for more than 15 years. Without prompting his wife kindly hands me a signed photograph of the motley outlaw group. Their soldier son was killed in Iraq and I imagine a giant fishing reel in the middle of the desert spinning time in reverse. Even the desert weeps, once a year, when the monsoon winds push into the Southwest.

Willy suggests a photograph as crowds begin to gather. His colleague, an angular, gregarious man named Yosemite, instructs me to get into the cowboy sandwich, and suddenly, Casey and I - two 21st century bundles of fleece and denim - are surrounded in a warm embrace of dust and leather and history.

The shootout ensues and the small crowd watches with slow smiles and grip fisted video cameras. Wild burros roam the rutted streets in search of a carrot handout, immune to the sound of fake gunshots. I buy an obligatory chocolate chip cookie the size of my hand, anxious to start 2010 off with a sugary bang.

Later, we tumble into the truck and drive home, passing Route 66, the road that helped keep Oatman alive after the mines failed and the money dried up like an arroyo in summer. In the back seat I watch Casey’s hair Mohawk itself upward into the breeze.

On the road we pass creosote bushes decorated with lazy tinsel and dented beer cans and random articles of clothing, part of a local holiday contest. A yellow balloon animal cinches my wrist, a gift from an elderly turquoise jewelry salesman back in town. Come over here, young lady, he commanded from across the street, gifting a giraffe crafted out of natural latex rubber to adorn my hand.

I shoot a lopsided smile at Casey and thank my lucky stars for our extended adolescence. And I dream of a future of chance encounters in small towns and enough energy to dip deep into the cell membrane and embed ourselves in the cytoplasm of life. Casey is there. He sits at the Nucleus bar talking smack with the Ribosomes, downing some local concoction while the geographer asks for directions.

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