Sometimes, when you have been on the road too long, you get a little paranoid.
I was coming off an exhausting week in Vail working with and for the Vail Symposium. I needed a night or two of rest, a little reading, a few naps, a stroll, a simple dinner in the rig, and lots of sleep. My scout Frank found a place on the Cache la Poudre River just northeast of Rocky Mountain National Park and about 40 miles from Fort Collins. I had started the day parked behind a strip mall in Vail, and it was a long drive.
As I drove along the upper reaches of the Cache la Poudre on Colorado State Highway 14 into more and more remote territory, I heard the theme song from Deliverance on the radio. Hearing that tune quite possibly shaped the adventure that followed.
I arrived at the modest RV camp, Last Resting Place, about 4 p.m. and climbed up to the office. Before I got 10 feet from my pickup, a woman of unmistakable potency came out and asked, in the manner of a marine boot camp sergeant, “Can I help you?” I felt like George and Jerry as they approach the Soup Nazi in Seinfeld. Instantly, I realized she was a no-nonsense proprietor in her mid-50s, fit, formidable, fierce, and quite funny. I checked in as meekly as possible, providing only monosyllabic answers to her detailed 12-point interrogation. I expected her to hand me an orange jumpsuit. Eventually she led me to my site. It was a narrow back-in slip, and I’m not particularly adept (in short, I suck) at backing up the Airstream. So I asked her to please not watch. She stared at me for a few seconds with contempt but then respected my need for an unwitnessed parking adventure and returned to her office up the hill. Her dog — the kind that eats 135 pounds of food per week — sounded like the Hound of the Baskervilles. Fortunately it was on a chain that could lift a boat anchor. Later, “June” told me that if I had accidentally backed into the tree at the corner of my site she would have gutted me like a deer. Good to know. But that was not mentioned on the website.
Don’t get me wrong. I like strong women. But this one appeared to have spent some time at Rikers Island, I think on the law and order team.
The first night I went to bed very early and caught up a little on my sleep. On the second day, about 1 p.m. I was sitting out at my designated picnic table (Rule 224: “Stay in Your Own Slot!”) reading and writing, and suddenly, I saw the woman I’ll call June, my camp host/owner, and another woman I’ll call Robyn, approach my site. They said they had been weeding. I greeted them abjectly, fully expecting that I had broken one of the place’s three or four hundred hidden rules, for each infraction of which you are charged $25 more. (Read the fine print!!!)
They were all smiles. They said they were going over a hill and valley to another town called Red Feather or Red Father Lakes or Red Blood later that day. There’s a tavern in Red Bluff where you can get some food, but, more to the point, there’s a full bar, and tonight, a good string band from somewhere else was set to rock the American West. Would I like to go along? Truth be told, I was not that eager to go hear a string band in some neighborhood holler where their music is unlikely to be the principal noise of the place. Who doesn’t love a dense pack of mountain-buzzed people on a Saturday night? But as someone who keeps flapping on about Listening to America, listening to the sounds and voices of the heartland, when your camp hosts invite you to a hootenanny on the other side of Walton mountain, you had better go, or you are nothing but humbug.
So I said yes. They seemed innocent enough. At six they appeared outside my rig, both gussied up some. Robyn (the one I am calling Robyn) drove. She doesn’t drink. June said that was good because she intended to get “tanked.” Robyn would be the designated driver. I sat in the back. We drove about 45 minutes over a fabulous gravel U.S. Forest Service road that winds up one little range and descends to another, with the most magnificent yellow pines hugging the roadway as in a fairy tale. My hosts rattled on about their lives and their many grievances against humanity, gov’ment, big biz, big pharma, the Colorado Department of Transportation, American tax policy, and a few other culprits. I threw in an insult now and then just to be relevant.
Let me describe my dates. Robyn is a relatively quiet, quite serious woman, a devout Christian, who moves around the country every few months, sometimes in her large RV and sometimes house-sitting for friends. She has a dog and a cat. She reads at night, mostly nonfiction. If I use understatement, June (the owner) is a somewhat intimidating force. She pridefully declared that she doesn’t read books (what a flirt!). She has opinions about everything, from Gaza and twerking to the new color of paint on the center lines of the state highway. She brings several of her five senses into her many pronouncements: she speaks with vehemence and then does a wild mime with her hands, with a prosecutorial finger pointing, sometimes chest jabbing, enhanced by various lethal-looking expressions. I liked her a great deal immediately. She reminded me of one of my dearest friends, the late Patti Perry of Marmarth, North Dakota. Women who take no prisoners. Women who eat guys like me for breakfast. Women who can strip an engine.
The good news is that the two of them talked so much (by which I mean June 84%, Robyn 14%, Clay 2%) that I could chill out in the back seat. At one point I made the mistake of asking why we weren’t seeing any wildlife. I was told — with considerable contempt — that only an urban, pointy-headed pudknocker would ask such a stupid question, that the wild creatures stay away from the road except when necessary, how many gravel roads have you ever been on, anyway, you’re not from around here are you, hun?
Robyn drove skillfully.
We arrived at the celebrated tavern by the lake and immediately found a couch medley on the deck where we could sit comfortably, have a drink or two, and listen to the band. Maybe get some food.
You know exactly what that mountain emporium was like. A rustic wood building with log walls, a long wooden bar, wooden floors, and an overused bathroom right in everyone’s sight lines. An overworked bar and kitchen crew on a big night, with lots of savvy and sophisticated patrons from Fort Collins and even Boulder in the mix, and the band jamming at the end of a small room. There was a shoulder-hunching density to the gathering. People angling for the beleaguered bartender’s attention. Some dancing in place and grooving to the bass guitar, like a tepid Dean Moriarty in Kerouac’s On the Road. The vibe was truly lovely. The lake was pink and golden as the sun set. What’s not to love? An excellent small band playing live music in a colorful mountain town in the wilds of Colorado on a late-summer weekend — it’s almost mythical, and it was truly enjoyable.
The good news is that in the din, I could only hear about one in 20 of June’s ex-cathedra declarations. She drank a couple of glasses of wine as if they were whisky shots, and then three or four adult drinks. As I recall, there was a very long monologue about dogs — good dogs, bad dogs, bad dog owners, the pointlessness of leash laws in America, and a long list of infractions dog owners commit at her RV camp, one warning, and you’re out! I shudder to think of what would have happened to Steinbeck had he let Charlie out of his rig at June’s camp. It would not have surprised me if June had recently graduated from the Kristi Noem School of Canine Management. We had a long conversation about the preachings of Joel Osteen, whose work they both admire and why didn’t I.
It was at that point in the evening that I began to get worried. Here’s what I had thought — up until that moment. These two lovely women had seen a pathetic geezer at his picnic table wasting his time by reading, and out of the goodness of their hearts they took him along for a sweet evening at a nearby mountain roadhouse.
O, grasshopper!
I had brushed my teeth. I had put on a clean shirt. I was ready to listen to America. Of course one can expect deep conversations about the future of America in an overcrowded bar on a Saturday night, with an overamplified string band attempting some Grateful Dead.
Then it dawned on me. I sat there studying them — one thoughtful and reflective, the other an amazing opinionated machine — sporting an outlook I admire for its insistence on personal responsibility, protecting our tax dollars from “dumb shits” (I quote here), and otherwise live and let live, date anyone you want in any identity you need or want. Just don’t make me pay for your treatments or your therapy.
That was when I figured it out.
I realized they were sisters, evil psychopathic killer sisters pretending to be the innocent staff of an RV park. They did this all the time. They lured some weary loser away from camp on the “Saturday night tavern journey,” and then, after plying him with several glasses of box red, they drive partway back to the Poudre River on that suddenly dark and terrifying forest service road, stop the car to “check a headlight,” and then stab and dismember the trusting moron in the back seat. They check his pockets for ready cash, tie huge rocks to his feet and hands, and “dump him in the crick.” After a month or two they sell the Airstream at the black market RV auction in Hemet, California. And then they wait. Sometimes, it is months. But usually, some loser comes along every few weeks or so.
They had softened me up with the whole Thelma and Louise, good cop, bad cop routine. The hard-bitten libertarian with the smoker’s cough and the mild designated driver. Classic. Robyn causes the victim to relax with her gentle disposition and thoughtful comments. June breaks his spirit with a violent running commentary on every subject that happens to pop up. In these serial killer situations, there’s always the jaded alpha ringleader, always the earnest protégé learning the ropes of wilderness homicide. Someday, Robyn will operate her own campground.
It all began to make sense. On the ride, June had asked me if I had ever taken a self-defense class. She asked if I had any family or heirs and if I had written and filed my last will. She asked me if anyone in the universe knew where I was this Saturday night and how long it would take before someone wondered why I had gone radio silent. She asked if I had ever heard of Charles Manson. I must have been exhausted because, at the time, these seemed like innocent, although somewhat unusual, questions.
I realized now that they were actually wealthy, these two mountain babes, pretending to be eking out a living in a small RV park but making frequent unexplained, unreported runs to the Hemet black market RV auction 1,071 miles away. And now I was going to be their latest victim. They may regret it later when they discover that the only valuable objects in my RV are books, which, though they will be useful as kindling over the long winter in the Rockies, are not what the two of them expected.
All the way back “home,” I cowered in the corner of the back seat, whimpering, trying to decide whether to throw open the door and roll out into the darkness. My cell phone had no signal. All I had to defend myself was my car keys. They looked back at me with conspiratorial smiles from time to time. June explained the problems of the universe.
This much I can tell you. It is only my vigilance that kept me alive out there. A moment’s loss of concentration and I would be yet another victim of “the Airstream serial killers,” as they are known in urban legend. As we approached the dark campground, June asked if I wanted a “last drink.” I had no choice but to take that suggestion literally. I declined, saying I had a 12:30 a.m. Zoom meeting with my brother, the sheriff, and former Navy Seal, but I don’t think they entirely believed me. I double-locked my door when they dropped me off and threw some file boxes in the entrance so that at least I would hear when the attack came. I slept fitfully, like Shane in cattle rustler country. At first light, I eased out of bed, tripped over the file boxes, jumped around for a while on one bare foot, cursing the day I was born, then slipped out and buttoned up my rig, and eased it down the hill in neutral to get away and save my life. I felt like Odysseus when he got away from the Cyclops Polyphemus.
Several days have passed.
I now wonder if I overreacted or was just being paranoid back on the upper Poudre. Perhaps they were just two entertaining and fun-loving women who reached out to a stranger at a picnic table (reading a book) and gave him a spirited evening over there in Red Feather, where, they boasted, there are both a post office and a premium golf course.
Whatever it was, it was a great and unexpected evening. “June” and “Robyn” were a joy to hang out with, interesting, even fascinating, in their backgrounds and current projects, and delightful in a take-no-prisoners sort of way. I did a lot of listening and came away with great respect for how they see the world. And if they are, in fact, recreational vehicle serial killers, I’m just glad I slipped the noose.
I give Last Resting Place five stars, but keep your dog on a leash.