Welcome to Rattlesnake Ridge

You couldn’t find Rattlesnake Ridge, especially if you went looking.

Looked like Delilah had missed the memo—because here she was, driving down the cracked road, curling through the Mojave like a serpent on a lookout for prey.

Rattlesnake Ridge was missing from most maps, struck out on the rest. A place people only whispered about in passing, if that. The trailer park grew out of lawless wilderness, guarded by the lonely howl of a coyote and the incessant heat of a never-ending desert. If you weren’t careful, you became one with it real quick.

Her fingers slid down the hot leather of the steering wheel, palm sticking to the cracked vinyl.

Delilah couldn’t get used to the heat of the Mojave. How dry everything here was. How wrong the heat felt. Just a couple of weeks ago, she’d left a state where the heat had been wet enough to ladle up with a spoon. That had been Alabama. The moment she’d crossed the state line of Nevada, all moisture had disappeared, sucked into the ether by an invisible power. Her knuckles were cracked and bloody, her lips dry, and water never seemed to be enough.

She pushed the gas a little harder, stretching out her leg; she’d been driving for hours—her back was stiff, her skin sunburnt, and she was fairly sure she’d done some permanent damage to her tailbone.

She scanned the surroundings. Nothing was here. Just hours and hours of sand and drought, and sun.

So when she finally saw a sign of life, even if it was just a lonely, dust-overblown lawn chair at the side of the road, she was relieved.

Delilah had just turned twenty-one, had fixed the ‘67 wonder on wheels just enough for it to pull through a thousand miles, and she was just about done coming up with a plan right as she crossed the Nevada lines. Truth be told, she never expected to get this far. Maybe to Mississippi before the car decided to kick it, but certainly not to the dry planes of the Mojave.

She could tell she was closing in on Rattlesnake Ridge by the rusted-out gas station. It had perched itself in the shade of a hill. The price board still advertised fuel like it was 1997, numbers half-faded under the scorch of the sun. Shit, maybe it was ‘97. Maybe Mojave was just the kind of place where ghosts roamed the roadsides and time moved backward. Wouldn’t have been all that surprised to learn she’d stumbled on Route 66 and had landed herself straight in Hell.

Fittingly, Delilah had a cassette of AC/DC playing a soundtrack to the backdrop. Highway To Hell would’ve been too on-the-nose—T.N.T., however, was just right.

“...’Cause I’m T.N.T.—I’m dynamite—T.N.T. and I’ll win this fight—”

Delilah leaned back, letting the electric guitar pour some life back into her.

After that rusted-out gas station came the diner. If you could call it that. Desert Diner—no frills, only two words slapped on a sun-bleached board. The kind of place where the coffee tasted like motor oil, the booths had cigarette burns, and nobody asked questions. She bet it had the best pecan pie in five counties, though. They always did.

And then—

The trailers.

They weren’t lined up neatly, like in the nicer parks—these were an OSHA violation in the making. They were scattered, some tilting, some propped up on cinder blocks. Old Winnebagos, rust-bitten Airstreams, single-wides with sagging porches. Fences made out of whatever was lying around—chicken wire, scrap wood, the hood of an old Chevy—you name it.

There were signs of life: faded lawn chairs on makeshift porches, stray dogs trotting between the trailers, a man in a torn wife-beater leaning against a car hood, cigarette dangling from his lips as he watched her roll in.

She stopped the Impala on a patch of dirt that might’ve once been a driveway and sat there, for a second, thinking. Rattlesnake Ridge didn’t look like home—it wasn’t familiar. Home was bogs and bayous and gators dragging off your chicken. Here, the chicken thieves were old men with rusty shotguns. She saw a couple of them, old-timers—life sentence written all over their foreheads.

She drummed her fingers against her thigh, thinking about leaving.

But where the fuck would she go? Her cam belt was holding on by a thread, she knew—she’d checked when she’d pulled to fill her tank up in the last station. No way she would get out of this desert with the belt intact.

Delilah sat in the car for a long time, sweat dripping down her neck, unrelenting. The windows were still open, but there was no moving air anymore—nothing to cool her down. She lifted her leg, so her boot was resting on the leather seat, and waited.

The place was watching her. Every eye in Rattlesnake Ridge was on her. There was a guy, leaning against a truck—more rust than body—smoking a cigarette. He tilted his head at her. A little further in the back, a woman was doing her laundry in an iron tub, squinting at her in between rubs and rinses. And finally, a dog. It trotted up to her, sniffed the hand that was hanging out the car window, licked her finger, and went to piss on her tire.

Fucking mutt.

“Get outta here,” she shooed him away.

“You lost, girl?” The voice cut through the heat. Delilah raised her eyes and saw an old guy on a porch, leaning on a shaky railing. He had sharp eyes—like everyone in Rattlesnake Ridge, but the way he was looking at her was different. With curiosity, not suspicion.

Delilah shook her head. “I’m in the right place,” she called back, words tilting around her Alabama accent.

The man kept watching her.

She reached for her cigarettes on the dashboard and left the car with a loud squeak and a hard thud. The cigarette found its way to her mouth effortlessly.

“You ain’t from here,” the geezer called, puffing a pipe. He had a blue trucker’s hat low over his forehead.

She lit the cigarette and took some steps toward the man. “What gave me away?”

He didn’t answer. He just stood there, puffed his pipe, and watched her, until curiosity won the age-old battle with caution. “You out on a death wish or sumthin’?” He straightened, resting his forearm against a pillar. Faded blue ink threw rings around his arm—tattoos too blurry to make out from this far away.

She shook her head again, starting her slow walk over. “I’m lookin’ for a place to stay.”

“This ain’t no bed-and-breakfast.”

“Not that kinda place.”

“You want a trailer?” he finally asked.

Delilah swallowed, took a drag, blew out a cloud, and nodded. Didn’t know if it was smart, but she needed a place to stay. Hell, not even a bed. Just a place that had a shade and didn’t heat up like the Impala.

His eyes slipped to the black car behind her and the boxes in the back seat. “Where you from?”

“A place that no longer wants me,” she told him.

“What makes ya’ think this will?”

Delilah smirked. “‘Cause I won’t give it no option to refuse.”

That did it.

Five minutes later she was standing outside a trailer. A single-wide, likely as old as her car. Good thing she was into older folk. The rectangular box—because she couldn’t call it any other way—looked like a prop from some old 70s thriller. The body was painted blue… or at least that had once been the intention. Half of it was faded yellow, some parts copper. But that could have been rust. It sat propped up on cinder blocks, half sunk in the sand, with a porch set up completely from scrap metal—different types as well. Delilah spotted a dent in the side, like some bastard had rammed his truck inside it, just to be funny. And for cinematic effect, as they were walking up to it, the front step decided to cave in on itself.

Well. This certainly hadn’t been the plan. A trailer in the middle of the desert that was falling apart at the seams?

Delilah scratched her head, not really sure if she wasn’t reconsidering.

“What you runnin’ from?” the geezer asked.

“Questions,” Delilah said and turned toward him. “I assume rent’s cash?”

“Fifty a week. You short me or don’t pay, I shoot ye’.”

“I’ll pay,” she said, seriously. Not because she didn’t want to get shot—which, to be fair, didn’t sound that appealing—but because she intended to stay.

“Good. Here’s the key,” he slapped a rusty set in her hand. “G’luck.”

As the man turned to leave, Delilah asked: “What do I call you?”

He didn’t look back. “Whatever the fuck you want, kid.”

As she shifted through the sand toward the single-wide, she noticed one small, itsy-bitsy, teensy bit of setback. The key the old geezer had slapped in her hand like a deal done and dusted—didn’t fucking fit.

Not part of the fucking plan 2.0.

She stared at the massive chain holding the door from falling off the hinges—yeah, it wasn’t there to keep anyone out, it was there to keep the door in place—and realized the miniature key would never unlock the padlock. To make matters worse, as she was climbing over that first, broken step, she could’ve sworn she heard a rattle from underneath.

Delilah did a little lean and squinted at the hole. It was hard to tell what she saw there—too dark, too much debris, too much trash. Empty beer cans, microwave dinner boxes… a condom. And in between all that—something moving.

Please, let it be a rat.

And then it slithered out of the hole, right over the broken wood, scaly and brown, and not looking like a fucking rat at all.

“Oh, hey, Bob’s awake,” a small voice called out from behind her.

She turned around and saw a small, fair-haired girl standing at the foot of the porch, mere feet from the snake, clutching a threadbare teddy.

“Hey—careful, there’s a rattle—”

“That’s Bob,” she said, swaying from side to side, feet bare, sinking in the hot sand. Her eyes were locked on the rattlesnake. It slid around her, completely unbothered. “He eats all the rats. We like Bob.”

“You ain’t afraid it's gonna bite you?” Delilah asked, pushing her black hair back. She didn’t know what to do with her shaking hands—but she knew she couldn’t show fear before a child.

“Nope,” the girl said, popping the ‘p’. “You don’t step on ‘em, you don’t yank ‘em on the tail, and they don’t touch ye’.”

“That’s some profound wisdom you got there, baby,” Delilah mused, her heart still thudding in her chest. But her gaze was back on the padlock.

“Sooo… Whatcha doin’ with Elsie’s trailer?”

“Elsie’s trailer?” Delilah turned to look at it like she was seeing it for the first time. Still the same piece of junk, but now it was a piece of junk with a little more history.

The girl nodded. “She left a while back. But she’ll be back. She always is.”

Delilah didn’t know how that thought made her feel. Probably like the rest of this place. Unsettled.

“Do you know if, perchance, Elsie left a key behind?”

“Why?” The girl asked, still hugging the threadbare teddy, the brown fabric barely holding together.

“Just tryna get inside, baby.”

“What you need to get inside for?”

“So I can put my stuff there.”

“Why you gotta put your stuff there?”

“‘Cause I’ll be stayin’ here for a while.”

The girl’s fingers twitched against the teddy’s worn-out fur, her big brown eyes darting between Delilah and the trailer. Then, she turned her head slightly and shouted—“MA!”

Delilah startled, nearly tripping into the hole where Bob must’ve had a whole-ass wife and kids lying in wait.

A woman’s voice, hoarse from years of smoking, hollered back from somewhere deeper in the trailer park. “What?!”

“There’s a new lady in Elsie’s trailer!”

The woman’s reply came fast. “Elsie’s back?!”

“Nope!”

Silence.

Then footsteps.

Delilah turned her head just as a woman emerged from between two trailers. She was tall and broad-shouldered, wrapped in a faded red robe, hair piled in a messy knot on top of her head. A cigarette burned between her fingers.

She gave Delilah a once-over, lips pursed. “You Elsie’s cousin or somethin’?”

“Yeah, twice removed on my daddy’s side,” she said—a lie as obvious as the sand under their feet.

The woman eyed her again, taking in the car parked a little ways off, the bruises that hadn’t fully faded from Delilah’s arms—fingerprints and something else.“You from the south?” the woman asked her.

“Now, what would ever make you say that?”

“Elsie got no kin with the rednecks,” the stranger said, taking a slow, long drag from the cigarette.

“Not from the redneck territory, baby,” Delilah mused, trying the chain—perhaps she could go about without a locksmith. Or a shotgun. That was the hope. But the chain held.

She sighed and turned to the woman. “You got a key for this lock?”

“I ain’t givin’ you key to Elsie’s trailer.”

Delilah inspected the bolts that the chain was holding onto. They were new, sturdy, but the wall that held them was anything but. If she tried real good, she could probably rip them out of the rotten wall.

“S’ppose you leave me no choice then,” Delilah muttered and wrapped her hands around the thick chain, and yanked. Once, twice—the wall started to give.

“Shit, fine!” The woman exclaimed, dropping her cigarette. “You break Elsie’s trailer and she’ll come for my fucking head,” she mumbled to herself. “Wait here. I’ll get the key.”

The woman stomped off, muttering under her breath, her robe flaring behind her like a cape of some desert lordess marching into battle. Delilah let go of the chain, watching her go.

The little girl was still there, shifting from foot to foot.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” Delilah asked, lighting another cigarette, trying to ignore the ‘s’ trail Bob had left in the sand when slithering past the girl.

The girl’s eyes followed her mom, and she sighed. Like giving Delilah a name was the hardest thing she’d ever done. “Billy.”

Delilah exhaled smoke through her nose, nodding. “Well, Billy, it’s a pleasure,” she said. “You both been here long?” She nodded in the general direction of her mother. “You and your mama?”

Billy shrugged. “Ain’t been anywhere but here.”

That made sense. Billy looked like the kind of kid who was raised by the desert. A few minutes later, the woman returned, jingling a set of keys in one hand and holding a fresh cigarette in the other.

“Alright, princess,” she said, tossing the keys onto the porch. “Don’t say I never did nothin’ for you.”

Delilah bent down, picked up the keys, and tried them one by one before landing on the key that fit and turned. The padlock popped open with a metallic snap, the chain slithering down onto the porch like a dead snake. The door followed. Delilah barely managed to step out of the way as it came crashing down, taking a part of the scrap railing with it.

“Elsie’s not gonna like that,” Billy mused.

“I ain’t likin’ it either, baby,” Delilah muttered, realizing there’s only a half-broken screen door keeping anyone from just sauntering inside the trailer now.

The woman huffed. “You ain’t got nothin’ worth stealin’, right?”

Delilah blew out a heavy breath, her fingers in her hair, holding onto her roots. That was a loaded question. Did she have anything worth stealing? That depended on what people around here considered of value. A pack of cigarettes with one smoke left inside? A set of wrenches she stole off her daddy before leaving?

“I suppose we’ll see,” Delilah said and pushed open the screen door, stepping into the stale, dust-heavy air of Elsie’s trailer.

A quick glance around told her everything she needed to know—Elsie had left in a hurry. Clothes still in the closet. A half-empty bottle of Jack on the counter. Cigarette butts crushed into an overflowing ashtray… And the sink.

Delilah stepped further in, toeing an empty beer can out of the way.

“This Elsie—” Delilah called over her shoulder. “Is she in some kind of trouble?”

“This is Rattlesnake Ridge,” the woman called back. “What d’ya think?”

Fair.

Delilah turned back, squinting against the sunlight. “Thanks,” she started, her voice softer now. “For this.” She gestured to the trailer.

The woman nodded.

“You have a name, Billy’s mama?” she asked.

The woman looked down at her daughter, eyebrow arched. “Yeah. Bobby.”

“Like the snake?”

“Like the snake,” Bobby confirmed.

Well, I’ll be.

Billy, Bob, and Bobby—a merry little family in the middle of nowhere. A kid, a desert lordess, and a snake.

Delilah supposed stranger things had happened. But not by much.

In the distance, by the old geezer’s trailer, her Impala let out one final silent breath, and the cam-belt snapped under the hood.

So not part of the plan.