Message in a Bottle

My grandparents’ house was on the crest of the Sandia Mountains, and from their house, as a kid, I would venture out with my Batman utility belt to solve that episode’s conflict, which was never anything more than poking termite hills, examining alien footprints with my magnifying glass, and confronting my nemeses—the cactus, the cholla, the prickly pear—with my lightsaber as I collected desert artifacts for lab analysis.

“Murdock to base, over,” I reported into my handheld.

“Base. Go ahead, Murdock “

“Found something that definitely should not be here, over.”

“Proceed with caution, Murdock. Collect the specimen, and return stat.”

“That’s a 10-4, over.” I scanned the dusty, cracked floor for tripwire as I tiptoed towards the glass soda bottle. I wet my finger and put it in the air; there appeared to be a light breeze coming from the east. I turned in that direction, and sniffed. Though I detected no foreign odors, the desert was…too quiet. And though I detected no discernible tracks, something had been here recently.

“Something has been here recently,” I reported. The handheld crackled. Losing connection, a sign of some foreign disturbance. “Base, do you copy? Over.”

Crackle. Static. “Proceed w—(snap) —tion. Procure the (crackle, snap) and —bleeeeeeep.” I looked at my plastic Batphone. All circuits dead. Well, shit on a shingle, I muttered, imitating my father’s curse when things didn’t go his way. I affixed the phone to the utility belt. Not taking my eyes off that bottle, I blindly checked the Batarang, napalm gel, sonic bat beacon, and grappling hook. Everything was in its place. I switched my artifacts bag to the other shoulder, carrying my lightsaber now in my dominant hand, and knelt down to examine the bottle.

“Pepsi.” I tilted my head and spoke sideways into the voice recorder affixed to my shoulder. “Appears to be some paper inside. Curious. This could be a trap.” I stepped back ten feet, held my breath, and lassoed a Batman bola to stir the object, lest it be a mine. The bottle swiveled; no detonation. “No detonation,” I exhaled to the recorder.

“Object appears benign.”

The only way to access the paper was to break the bottle, which I did on a nearby rock. It was a small scroll of construction paper, the kind we used in art class to make placemats; I slowly unrolled it, careful not to let it break —for it was weathered, and had turned brittle— and I read out loud the cryptic crayoned message: BƎWARƎ TAKƎ NOTHING FROM THE DƎSSƎRT.

I smiled, and breathed heavily. “A child. No intelligent life. Securing the artifact and heading home,” I concluded into the recorder. I put the bottle shards (Leave No Trace being the Boyscout motto) and the note into the artifacts bag, amidst the dried hollow cactus wood and the Kryptonite rocks with strange imprints, presumably messages from Zod, and proceeded back to base, where Mom was making mac ‘n cheese.

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 “What did you find out there, Detective Murdock?”

“Top secret stuff. And it’s sergeant.”

“Sergeant. Check. Go wash your hands, sergeant. You’re late.”

“Protecting the planet, Dad. You should express some gratitude.” I ran into my grandparents’ bathroom, dropped my artifacts sack, and lathered up, having left the job in the desert and looking forward now to creamy noodles in front of The A-Team…

…which was interrupted by Grandma’s announcement from the kitchen, after I’d assumed my prone position on the floor in front of the tv, face hovering over my food bowl, that she’d made a special dessert that we all must try. Grandpa was sitting on the couch behind me. “Oh Christ, not again,” I heard him mumble.

Shut up, fool, you ain’t no fish, B.A. had just said to Howling Mad Murdock. I was laughing as I angled around to face him, my chin still planted in my palms, my elbows still easeled on the floor. “You don’t like Grandma’s desserts, Grandpa?”

“Jess you wait, boy. You be the judge.” He kicked back in his recliner, flicked off the standing reading lamp, and folded his hands on his belly, Grandpa’s sign that he’d checked out for the night, no dessert for him. 

“Got it from the Fannie Farmer cookbook,” Grandma proudly announced as Dad, Mom, and I circled the kitchen table. A white pie sat in the middle. Looked like a marshmallow pie. I loved marshmallows.

“Wow, Mom, it looks fantastic.” So weird to hear my mom say 'mom.'

“I’m so thrilled it turned out,” Grandma said, setting out the plates, “and I can’t wait to try it. Sit. Sit.” We all sat. Hannibal had just said that he “loves it when a plan comes together.”

“I love it when a plan comes together,” I mimicked, laughing, picking up my knife and fork.

“Honey, go turn off the television.”

“I love it when Mom tells me to turn off the television.” I was an obedient child.

“I think the secret,” Grandma continued as she cut triangles into the pie, “was cooking the prunes myself, instead of getting them canned.

“Hold up, Cordelia,” my father said. “Prunes?”

“Prunes. Yes. It’s Prune Whip Pie, Roger. Mary loved it as a child.”

“Mary did not love it as a child, Mom,” my mother laughed. “Mary never had ‘Prune Whip Pie.’” My mother finger quoted. This was funny, Mom calling herself Mary.

“Prunes,” continued my father. “It’s nine o’clock, Cordelia. We’ll be on the shitter all night.”

“Roger, mouth,” my mother scolded. “Mom, it looks delicious.”

“Can I just scrape off the marshmallows, Grandma?” I asked.

“Oh, darling, I’m sorry. You’re not a marshmallow fan.”

I looked at Mom; she smiled, put a finger over her shushed lips, and mouthed, be nice.

I innocently mused to myself, Grandpa was right, to pass out on the recliner and take nothing from the dessert. “Holy shit.” I jumped out of my chair and ran back to the bathroom.

“Trevor,” my mother called. “He gets that language from you, Roger. You know that, right?”

I dumped the contents of the artifacts bag —the dried hollow cactus wood, the Kryptonite rocks, the glass shards— onto the bathroom floor, grabbed that construction-paper scroll, and ran back into the kitchen. “Dad, check this out. Found it in the desert, in a bottle. A message in a bottle. Can you even believe it?” I was so excited.

Dad unfolded the parched paper, and read it aloud: BƎWARƎ TAKƎ NOTHING FROM THE DƎSSƎRT. “You have got to be shi---kidding me.” He glanced at Mom; she gave him two enthusiastic thumbs up. “You found this?”

“I sure did.” Mission accomplished; I felt like a hero, saving Dad from the prunes. Yet another dilemma solved; Sergeant Murdock, our bowels thank you.

Later that night, as we were all settling into bed, there was an unsettling cry, then a loud crash, from my grandparents’ bathroom.

“Mom?” my mother yelled.

“Grandma?”

“Probably the prunes,” my father mumbled, shifting in his sleep.

Mom leapt out of bed and ran down the hall, with me at her heels. My grandmother was lying on the floor, her face as white as the marshmallow on her pie. The stinger of the dangling scorpion was still lodged into her swelling foot; several more scorpions, no longer than a pointer finger, were arched on the bathmat, claws out and tails erect, and one clicked into the messy closet.

My roving eyes landed on my pile of artifacts that I had taken from the desert, now kicked into a corner. A piece of dried cactus wood was shifting back and forth.

It most certainly was not hollow.