The Aztec Calendar

 

The house on the cul-de-sac was ill-starred: people didn’t dwell in the home for long and it was vacant for months at a time.  This malign reputation had nothing to do with the appearance of the place: viewed from outside, the home was large and well-kept, standing two stories under a steep, shingled roof, walls sided in fresh white vinyl overlooking a neatly trimmed lawn with shrubs underlining big picture windows that usually appeared slate-grey and empty, mirrors without reflections in them, visited only by an occasional bird flitting past or the shadow of someone walking a dog on the round pool of asphalt where the lane rounded into the dead-end.  Above a sleek, newly poured driveway, a three-car garage, recently renovated was turned at a right angle from the home’s front facade.  Although, it wasn’t visible from the cul-de-sac, somehow we knew that there was a redwood deck behind the home and the round socket of a hot tub in the cherry-colored planks, some benches, and down the hill a few steps, a swimming pool with pale blue bottom and sides.  (A creek glided past the back of the house, folded into a seam of willows and sedge and, perhaps, we had glimpsed the pool and deck while canoeing there.) A few years after the owners of the house vanished, an Aztec calendar like a great, ornate mill-stone was suspended on iron brackets on the back wall next to the sliding doors opening onto the deck.  We saw the calendar (apparently stone, although, perhaps, simulated in stucco) hanging like a great, somber sun over the hot tub and pool.  This was at the final party hosted by the Orthopedic Surgeon who, then, occupied the house.  

A decade earlier, a contractor had built the home, although with only a two-car garage.  Neighbors who had been in the house were impressed by the large kitchen with its marble-topped counter-island offset from a corner glistening with stainless steel appliances.  The rooms were roomy and enlarged by floor-to-ceiling mirrors and the bathrooms had walk-in showers with glittering fixtures and there were more marble counter-tops, a ceramic basin like a great pale lily blossoming under gilded faucets.  A towering field-rock chimney rose over a deep round hearth in the great room and there were balconies suspended overhead in upstairs stucco openings that had a vaguely Moorish appearance.  What this cost was unknown but no detail had been overlooked and there was, even, I think, a wine cellar in the basement.  Of course, it was unsustainable.  The building boom imploded and the contractor, with his compact and pneumatic trophy wife, was gone suddenly, the place abandoned in the middle of the night.

A family moved into the property, following the delivery of their furniture in an orange truck and, for a few months, small children bicycled around the cul-de-sac.  But, even, before the first snow-fall, the orange moving van returned once more and the people departed.  In this climate, it’s hard to sell a home in Winter and, so, the place stayed vacant until Spring, when another couple with small children appeared, this time without a big van, using a rented U-Haul to move their things.  They survived in the house for a year, but were gone by the next Summer.  Then, the owner of a trucking firm that hauled meat from the local packing plant bought the place, restored the pool and hot tub and, even, was sociable enough to invite some of us to gatherings in his home.  Commercial trucking is a tough business and the man was big with broad shoulders, square at the hips and built like a linebacker.  His wife had dried her skin to parchment, tanning at resorts in Mexico where she spent several months during the cold season, and she was shapely, still presentable in a bikini, with long black hair falling over her nut-brown shoulders.   Her husband flew to Mexico on the weekends to join his wife, but, apparently, didn’t spend his time at the beach because he remained pale and grey as the Winter weather from which he had come.  Back in town when the weather was warmer, dining at the country-club, the trucker’s wife made an exotic appearance – her small feet bare in sandals studded with semi-precious gems, wearing an embroidered campesina dress edged at the hips with bright fringe, strands of beaded turquoise arrayed like a chain-mail between her breasts and her fingers adorned with silver and turquoise rings.  She made quite an impression, was cultured and well-spoken, and most people imagined her as the brains of the trucking firm – her husband supplied the brawn, but she met the right people, and cultivated them, intimate with the wives of the mid-level managers at the slaughterhouse, friendships that kept her close to the logistics personnel upon which their business depended. 

All went well for a time, but labor relations in our town are volatile and there was first the threat of a strike and, then, an actual work stoppage.  Outsiders became involved, criminals and thugs – some aspects of this business are under mob influence.  People were beaten up and, at a blockade, a refrigeration truck full of carcasses was stopped and set afire.  The truck company hired its own goons but they were unsuccessful in defending their routes and drivers.  It was rumored that the owner of the company wanted to sue for peace, but his wife was adamant and unyielding.  Then, she was gone.  The trucker didn’t say anything about her absence and, naturally, it was assumed that he had sent her to Mexico, Cabo San Lucas, in fact, to be away from the danger.  The enterprise cracked under pressure.  Drivers quit.  Hauling into Chicago and New York and Los Angeles became impossible.  The secretary at the Country Club, a volunteer and, therefore, not to be trusted with confidential information, let it be known that the trucker and his wife were in arrears on their membership fees.  Then, the company filed for bankruptcy and the fleet of trucks were sold and, supposedly, the owner of the firm also fled to Mexico – it wasn’t certain where he had gone, but he was no longer seen around town.

For a couple years, the house in the cul de sac was mostly empty, sometimes rented out for weekend parties through AirBnB.  It was around this time that the Aztec calendar appeared, perhaps as a homage to the trucker and his wife who were thought to be living large in Mexico.  Parties at the house were raucous and, sometimes, involved underage drinking and the neighbors disapproved of the festivities.  When a teenage girl almost drowned in the pool, a neighborhood group appeared before the City Council to insist that the zoning ordinances in their part of town be strictly enforced.  Some litigation ensued and, then, the house stood empty again, closed down for several seasons.  Then, a pilot who ferried packing plant executives around the country in the company’s private jet moved into the home.  He had just been divorced and, apparently, had no furniture, just a mattress and some lawn chairs, but he owned a half-dozen motorcycles and, so, had the old garage torn down and a new structure with three bays installed.  After a year or two, he re-married and moved to different part of town.  Another pilot, a fellow who owned a crop-dusting service, moved into the house.  This man also had a showy wife who was gone for half of the year – they maintained another home in Las Vegas.  The cropduster hauled several big boulders onto his front lawn and set them up facing the cul-de-sac.  The boulders were granite, speckled with mica crystals, and they were set upright, grey and pink monoliths leaning against concrete blocks.  This landscaping seemed to fortify the home, to protect it behind a rampart of boulders.  

The rock barricade was unavailing:  police raided the place pre-dawn.  The snow edging the sidewalks was bathed in the bloody radiance of the cop car lights.  Apparently, the cropduster operated a drug-smuggling business on the side and several pounds of cocaine were seized at the house.  After some more legal proceedings, the home was forfeited to the Feds and, then, put up for rent.  By this time, the place had an evil reputation.  Families renting the home from the Federal Marshal’s office said that they heard panicked splashing in the swimming pool during the dark of night.  Someone was drowning.  But, when the night lights were turned on, the pool was empty and the water still and silent.  Voices whispered from the Aztec calendar.  Muttering sounds seemed to come from the figure at the center of the calendar, the sun god with great ear-whorls and a flint-blade extruded between his teeth like a tongue. 

No one stayed in the house for more than a season and, then, at last, it wasn’t rented at all and the place stood vacant.  An Orthopedic Surgeon at the clinic bought the property at auction.  With his family, he moved into the place and brightened it up.  His gardeners tore out some of the shabby-looking shrubs under the picture windows and put in flower beds.  The hot tub was replaced with a newer model and, inside the home, a back room was renovated into a sauna.  The Orthopedic Surgeon was as handsome as a movie star and sociable.  Once again, people were invited to the home for gatherings.  

On New Year’s Eve, the Surgeon hosted a large party.  A string quartet from the college attended by the Surgeon’s beautiful twin daughters was hired to play in the great room.  The great wheel of the seasons groaned a little as it was slowly turned toward Winter.  But it was unseasonably warm that night, at the last party, a moist wind moaning through the willows lining the stream and the hot tub was steaming like a cauldron and a few nurses from the hospital were cavorting there, in bathing suits notwithstanding the snow dusting the ornamental evergreens in the backyard.  A half hour before midnight, some guests arrived by canoe on the river, carrying lit Tiki torches, and people cradling their drinks came out onto the deck to applaud the grand arrival of the Urologist and his wife.  Steam swirled up off the hot tub and the mascara worn by the nurses streaked their white faces as if with black tears and, then, the Orthopedic Surgeon went down to the edge of his pool where he had set rocket-launchers to blast fireworks into the air.  

The warm wind swept over the fields of snow, picking up the mint scent in the drifts.  Then, the Surgeon set off the rockets and they burst overhead, showering the creek and snowy meadows with bright sparks.  The string quartet, now moved onto the redwood  deck, played Auld Lang Syne and people danced.  The flare of colored fire in the night sky sent red and green shadows skittering over the Aztec Sun Stone and the spiky rings of strange beasts and glyphs seemed to shudder in the glare.  A drunk woman lost her footing and stumbled against the bracket supporting the Aztec Calendar.  The round stone shield that looked so immensely heavy was, in fact, apparently fashioned from some kind of plaster-of-paris or, even, paper-mache – the calendar tore free from its supports, crashed onto the redwood deck, and, then, rolled like a juggernaut toward the pool.  People dived out of its way and another woman slipped and fell into the swimming pool where she floundered in the cold water.  The Calendar rolled onto its side and broke apart like a pinata, spilling its contents on the tile at the pool’s edge.  It was full of all sorts of foulness – mummified rats and hairy spiders like diadems, human bones, ribs decked with turquoise and petrified fingers also adorned with silver and turquoise rings, shattered skulls, and bony knees like yellow skull caps, dead bats and living ones as well, every kind of filth you could imagine, all of this skeletal stuff and nightmare rubbish flickering in the fireworks screaming across the black sky overhead.

There was an investigation but it was inconclusive.  The Orthopedic Surgeon was sued for malpractice, lost the case, and left town.  A few months later, someone set the house on fire.  A firetruck arrived in time to put out the blaze, but slid on the ice in the cul-de-sac, tires gouging into the front lawn and the vehicle’s axle was caught on the boulders defending the place so that the hoses couldn’t be properly deployed.  The firefighters darted about their pinioned truck trying in vain to jack it off the boulder on which the undercarriage was trapped.  Flames flared and the polished chrome on the pumper truck ran red with flickering fire light and, then, the shingles fell inward and the walls slumped and, at last, the whole house dropped into its cellar burnt to ash and smoke.