Road To Nowhere

Abstract

The markers ran due east from an unused dirt road named Maverick straight towards the mountains, their fluorescent orange ribbons bright as pop pies against the pale browns of the desert. It was mostly mesquite bushes and grama grass on this side, the occasional yucca and dried-up ocotillo. Clarence's new bulldozer plowed through it all like a hot spoon through margarine. It had been nearly a year coming. First the county had cut his budget, leav ing him barely enough money to maintain his existing equipment, let alone buy anything new. So he'd applied for a project completion grant from the state. The only problem was that there hadn't been any projects in need of completion. Clarence had remedied that by creating View Road SE. He knew there to be a tract of county land seven miles southeast of town, out near the base of the Floridas, already platted for development. Sooner or later it would need an access road. He'd gotten the records from the county clerk, had his usual guy do the survey, drafted the bid himself—he requested $100,000 knowing he'd be lucky to get half that—and got his old high school drinking buddy Tom Reed, now the county commissioner, to backdate the proposal by a year. Next he'd phoned Ike Crawford, who in his autumn years as state senator was trying to seal his legacy as the champion of Luna County roads. Crawford said he'd see what he could do when the legislature reconvened in January. Road projects being low on the list of priorities for the state in a recession, he wasn't able to get a slot in the capital outlay calendar until late February. At the urging of a personal memo from the governor, who owed Crawford a favor for his help in the last election, the chair of the finance committee made sure that the merits of financing the completion of a rural road in one of the least populous counties in the state, a road that probably wouldn't have a tire anywhere near it for decades to come, were not seriously debated. In the end, Enchanted View Road Completion was apportioned $50,000. Clarence called in his order the very next day, only to be told that there was a backlog on the track loaders—The Israeli army cleaned us out—and he'd have to wait six to eight weeks. Four months later the bulldozer finally arrived.