"I had to live in the desert before I could understand the full value of grass in a green ditch." - Ella Maillart
Chapter 4
Socorro
Soon, the lights of an approaching town lit the sky in ominous orange, like the glow of nuclear fallout searing the horizon. The endless emptiness of sand and creosote gave way to occasional mobile homes, small housing clusters, and sudden greenery. It was nothing lush. It looked poor, pathetic, the forced growth of plants struggling to survive in a world where Humans held the whips of water and chains of fertilizer. Where Man wanted grass, he pointed and commanded "Grow," and the grass had no choice but to obey.
Sam began to fidget. This was not the most comfortable seat, and something else concerned him. "Al, I've got to pull over."
"Huh? What?" Al shook himself a little. Sam glanced over in concern. Was he falling asleep? "Whoa, no Sam, you can't! Those guys are right behind you."
"Yeah, but..." If he said he was already aching, it sounded wussy. Saying he suddenly felt like he hadn't eaten in two days—he now realized why Theodore Nyt had pulled to the side of the road: to get some food—was a horrible excuse to use in this dire situation. As he saw a sign for Road Runner Travel Center, he knew there was the one issue that bothered him the most, something that could be fatal in a desert like this. "I'm almost out of gas. Maybe if I pull off the road, I can lose these guys."
"Not likely," Al grumbled, but he knew the fickleness of motorcycles from his days of riding his '48 Harley Knucklehead. Sweetest cycle ever! If the tank was on fumes, sputtering out in the middle of nowhere did nothing for their escape, and it was a long way to the next town. Reluctantly, he checked the handlink. "All right, we're coming into Socorro. Take the California Street exit. That's the main thoroughfare. There's bound to be a few gas stations along there. Don't pick any with people driving Italian-made cars."
"If I see a Ferrari, I'll stay away," Sam smiled in agreement.
The town was familiar. Sam knew he had been here many times. The way the lights made the desert stars slowly wink out, the grains of sand blown across the streets, a flickering bulb on a motel sign...all so familiar.
One of the first things he saw as he pulled off the interstate and onto California Street was an Exxon Station, but Al made a negative grunt.
"One further down, further down," he insisted. "You don't want them to see you right as they exit."
Sam continued onward. As he drove slowly, paying attention to traffic lights despite Al nervously searching behind his shoulder, the town played out in his mind. He knew if he turned down Bullock Boulevard, it would take him to New Mexico Tech. He could almost picture Old San Miguel Mission, a beautiful pueblo-style building hundreds of years old. When Juan de Oñate explored Jornada del Muerto in 1598, he did not find legendary cities of gold, but white sand, miles upon miles of it. Finally, he and his men came upon Piro Indians, who gave them water and corn. They named that place Nuestra Senora de Perpetuo Socorro, Our Lady of Perpetual Help. Oñate continued on in search of treasure, but the two Franciscan friars with him stayed in the new village and set up what residents of Socorro proudly point out is the oldest Catholic church in the United States.
Father Alfonso Benavidez, known as "The Apostle of Socorro" for his success in converting the Piro Indians, began building a safer mission for the growing congregation, and by 1626, he completed construction. During the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, the mission was abandoned in haste, and the priests buried the Communion Rail and other valuables too heavy to take with them. Explorers still search the area from time to time, hoping to find the buried treasure. According to legend, Apaches raiding the city of Socorro in 1800 suddenly fled in terror at the appearance of a winged man with a shining sword. The story, given by a captured Apache, led to the mission receiving its name: San Miguel de Socorro, after the Archangel Michael.
Sam knew the whole history, as if reading it straight out of a book. He knew what the inside of that church looked like. He thought he knew the father in charge. The name slipped him, but he remembered a face.
He knew this town well!
He drove almost the whole length of the town before finding a Conoco. He puttered in with the needle of his gas gauge threatening to hit the big red E. The station seemed safe. Lights were on, an attendant sat in the small mart watching the news on a tiny television, and the only person also getting gas was a man in a dusty pickup with his lady sitting shotgun.
"Hello-o-o nurse!" Al grinned, already ogling the darkly tanned blonde with blinking earrings and a shiny short jacket against the desert winter night, smacking gum as her boyfriend worked the gas pump. "Sam, check out those gazongas! No way can they be real. Do you think they're real? They're not quite as round as the fake ones but...damn, they know how to grow them in New Mexico!"
Sam rolled his eyes and decidedly did
not check out the woman who, to him at least, looked too old to be sporting silicone breasts. He went inside to pay. Even the attendant looked familiar in a vague sort of way.
"Evenin'," the man said, not looking up from the television news. Sam was just another stranger passing through in the night. "Can you believe this? Newt Gingrich isn't running for president! I mean, maybe Bob Dole can pull it off, but, you know,
everyone knows Gingrich, for good or bad. Man, someone had better oust Clinton. That man is on a bull charge to a second term. Can't even break this damn baseball strike. Who knows what'll happen if he gets a second term!"
Sam briefly listened to the news broadcast. He had not really paid attention to what went on in the world during the months building and testing Project Quantum Leap. Baseball strike? Election? That was still a ways off, but he supposed the politicians loved getting an early start. But who was Clinton? Was he the President? His memory irked him more than ever, struggling with memories, some clear as a polished diamond, others as scattered as the grains of sand that tracked their way into the gas mart.
"Oh for Christ's sake!" the attendant bellowed. "Not more on the O.J. Simpson trial! I swear, they're turning this into a circus. If this ends up in another Rodney King riot, I'm gonna toss this dang TV out the window."
Sam bought a can of nuts, a bag of cookies, a bottle of Mountain Dew, and a box of anti-inflammatories—his butt was killing him. He thought of other times he had come to this gas station. He recalled a night when Al burst into the lab shouting about how crazy the news was getting about someone named O.J. Simpson. Sam had been too preoccupied programming Ziggy to listen attentively, but the memory was there, vague, hazy, another life.
This was almost like returning home, almost to his own time...but not quite.
He stepped out of the mart and saw Al wandering around the motorcycle, glancing toward the main street, diligently on guard. Now that he could look at Al without turning his head around his shoulder, Sam realized he still wore the same clothes as his last Leap, a red dress shirt with a black triangle pattern, a bolo tie that blinked in turquoise flashes, a red fedora, red shoes tipped with silver, a braided leather belt with a huge blue star for a buckle, and black slacks with white polka dots starting as pinpoints at the thighs and growing to golf balls by the calves until the bottom cuffs were all white. Garish as always!
"I used to use this station to fill up before heading out to Stallion's Gate," Sam shouted out to him with a grin as he came back out to the motorcycle. He felt particularly proud of regaining a few unnecessary memories.
"Is'zat so?" the man with the pickup next to him asked. "Been out there to Trinity Site before, eh?"
"Uh, yeah," Sam answered, stunned once more that no one could see Al. He began putting the groceries in the saddlebags, making sure not to open the one with the duffel of cash. "Piece of history, for good or bad," he added to be friendly. His hand brushed across the box of ammunition and made him involuntarily shiver. He ripped open the box of Motrin, twisted open the bottle of Mountain Dew, and swallowed some down. Then he grabbed a handful of nuts, thinking they were the greatest food he had eaten in weeks.
"Sure is!" the pickup man nodded. "I take the kids there every April when they open the place up. My father fought in World War II, y'know, fighting the Japs, and my uncle worked in Los Alamos. Real proud of those two!"
"That's great," Sam smiled nervously. He hitched the gas nozzle up and opened the Harley's gas cap. Al looked anxious. Not even the balloon-boobed milf in the pickup could distract his intense gaze up California Street. Sam suddenly began to wonder how quickly those mafia men would find him.
The pickup man kept chatting. "Yup, some people got no respect for history. Like you said, for good or bad, Trinity Site's there in the history books. And people come. They keep coming, even now, half a century since it happened. They only open it two days a year, but they'll flock here like cats to a can opener. They come wanting to see that little bit of our nation's history. Why, my Aunt Betty still remembers the day, how a plate hanging on her mother's wall was knocked right off, and they saw the flash of light to the south. No one knew what it was, o' course..."
"Uh, Sam," Al warned, his eyes riveted up the street.
"An' they come here for the mission, of course. Crazy how those Spaniards built that in the middle of nowhere. I love this place, but I was in the Air Force, saw the world, was at the tail end of Vietnam. I know what the jungle is like, all that greenery. Then I come back here, all sand, dry enough to dehydrate a camel. Yet we keep struggling it out. Been thinkin' of moving on, maybe move to Albuquerque, once thought of moving to Dallas, big city life, y'know. But I'd miss this place. It's a good home."
"It's a historical city you've got here, mister," Sam said quickly, hanging the gas nozzle up so fast that a few drops fell out with a strong whiff of petrol. A car had pulled up that looked uncomfortably familiar. Something about the headlights. "Happy Valentine's Day," he added quickly. He pulled his helmet back on just as Al was shouting at him.
"Sam! Watch out!"
Sam wasted no time. He started the motorcycle with a roar that crashed into the arid desert evening like a dropped cymbal in the middle of an aria. He heard shouts and a single gunshot just moments before pulling the Harley away with a squeal. He peeled out of the gas station and raced back toward the interstate.
Al reappeared on the motorcycle's rump. "Sam, I forbid you from stopping and chatting about historic landmarks again, you hear me!"
They heard two more gunshots. Sam crunched down low and sped through a red light. It was late, a holiday, no traffic out.
"Is that them?"
"Is that them!" Al shouted in outrage. "No, that's how strangers greet each other in the middle of the desert, with a shot aimed, not at you, but at the gas pump. Or did you not notice?"
"It's a good thing he missed. That guy had a nice truck." Sam smiled, then chuckled to himself. Memories were returning. Slowly, but they were returning!
"Are you...laughing? Sam, why in the world are you laughing? These guys are shooting at you and you're laughing!"
Sam still grinned huge. "I'm getting my memories back, Al. I remember this town, the Conoco, the attendant. I'm remembering!" He laughed loudly until a bug flew into his mouth. He gagged and coughed hard, pounding his chest. The motorcycle swerved into the oncoming lane for a brief moment before Sam got control, still coughing and rubbing his tongue on the roof of his mouth in disgust.
"I swear, Sam!" Al sighed.
Instead of feeling happy that his friend was benefiting from being so close to home, Al looked deeply worried. He pulled out his handlink and secretively checked something with Ziggy.
If Sam got his memory back...
The odds were not good for his survival. In fact, Ziggy estimated that if Doctor Beckett got all of his memories back, there was an 87% chance that he would try to break into Stallion's Gate and end up dead. As it stood, taking into consideration all memories Doctor Beckett had stated he had (which, granted, was likely only half of what he might actually know) the odds hovered at 35% that he would defy the U.S. Marines defending the missile base and try to break into the Quantum Leap lab on a quest to fix Ziggy and make sure he Leaped back home.
If he attempted this, Ziggy's estimates stood at 84.9% that Sam would end up shot, 15% that he would merely be arrested, and less than 0.1% that he would make it inside, find his current self, convince this day's Doctor Beckett that he was his future-self and now a Leaper, and maybe, doubtfully, fix whatever it was that originally went wrong.
Even Ziggy lamented that, while being fully functional was something the hybrid computer dearly wanted, the odds of failure were too overwhelming. Theodore Nyt's best chance at surviving was to make it to Mexico within twenty-four hours.
Ziggy's suggestion: at all cost, Sam was
not to regain more memories.
End of Chapter 4
A/N: Missions and cathedrals fascinate me. Old San Miguel Mission of Socorro is the oldest Catholic church in the USA. Lots of history. When the TV series said Sam got left at the altar by Donna Eleese at the Old Mission Chapel, I bet they meant here.
