The Novel Chapter II

san pedro ©2008 photograph by
Michael Sykes and Robert Sommers






all rights reserved ©2008 Blue Heron Blast


At first glance, looking East you can almost imagine you are looking at one of the lost seven cities of Cibola. Across that stream they call the Colorado River is Needles twin whore sister, Golden Shores. It has all the charm of its neighbor to the South, Topock Arizona, which means it is in the devils triangle of lost glory and rusting double wides. In spite of it's tranquil name Golden Shores sucks just like Needles. It should be called Golden Showers.

Only now you are lost ten years in time from California, in the Arizona Territory where the laws ease up. Golden Shores is a depressing mixture of aging Medicare poverty stricken desert rats, waiting for St. Peter to scalp them a ticket to the big desert in the sky, PWTT (poor white trailer trash) a handful of ex-flower children, would-be bikers on welfare and toothless meth chemists, waiting for the Feds to break the down the front doors of their mobile homes.

Don's amigos anxiously waited for his return from Needles, unaware that Don had just committed a Federal crime of Interstate Transportation of Stolen Goods. He returned at dusk narrowly avoiding being bit by Corky's pitbull dogs and immediately spread his pawned treasure wealth of a newly acquired bottle of cough syrup, Marlboros, sunflower seeds, Popov and family sized KFC gut bucket on Corkys coffee table. It was a kings ransom for the court jesters of Golden Shores. Tomorrow it would be Rocky's turn to dazzle the Pawn Shop owner with a turquoise bracelet courtesy of a Ford Windstar's glove box in a dark parking lot of Blythe's Motel 6.


By Kerry Vernon Johnson