Chapter Forty-One: Idlewild

Reno's Idlewild Park is a large park, with more than a mile of jogging and bicycling paths, an extensive exercise course, various ponds and interconnecting lakes complete with ducks, geese, and swans, fountains, a rose garden with 2400 rose plants representing 560 different varieties, multiple children's playgrounds, a skate park, memorial statues and monuments, picnic and barbeque facilities, baseball diamonds and softball fields, football and soccer fields, broad lawns, horseshoe pits, volleyball pit, a swimming pool facility, kiddie carnival rides, a real train ride circling a portion of the park - the works. Thousands of area residents and visitors frequent what is arguably Reno's best park daily: dog walkers, joggers, kids, photographers, swimmers, rose aficionados, skaters... and geocachers.

Tony didn't seem to believe what this guy was to him saying about this "G. O. Cashing", it sounded too lame to be a real pastime. It sounds to him like a front for drug dealing or blackmarket trading. If it was, like he suspected, it just might lead him back to T-Bone.

The guy was only mildly aware of the fact that he had literally been kidnapped by these two out-of-towners, but he tried to convince himself that he was actually just introducing them to the 'game' of geocaching, and that they would drop him back off near his car after a couple of more caches.

The guy led them first just a block West, along the river, across from the Greyhound bus depot. Tony and Will sat on a green park bench staring down the transients encamped in the vicinity, while the guy searched futily around the metal "art" sculpture a few feet away for this so-called cache he kept telling them about. After about 15 minutes of nothing, the guy left the sculpture alone and started looking in the trees, the railing, under stones, at sign posts, at the bench itself, and finally at the lamppost next to them. He crouched down and looked underneath the post at ground level, and smiled. "Found it!" he proclamed, with a look of satisfaction on his face. "Lemme see that," said Tony, ripping the small magnetic keybox out of his hands. Tony opened it and was disappointed to find nothing but a small folded slip of paper inside with a bunch of fake names scribbled on it. "What's this, then - some sort of secret code or directions or something?" Tony asked. "No," replied the guy, "that's just where you sign the log sheet... to prove you actually were here and found it. Then you go online to 'Geocaching.com' and log your finds and then the site updates your stats automatically for competition purposes."

Tony and Will seemed unimpressed, and as they got back in the car, the guy said, "The next one is a multicache, and according to the Mapquest map, it starts in Idlewild Park, which is just down the street." He pointed, and off they drove.

*****
David got a ride from one of his buddies (who felt a little guilty at being indirectly the cause of David's recent misfortune), and hopped aboard the Amtrak downtown, bound for Reno. He didn't sleep that night, but not because of the uncomfortable seats - his body simply didn't need the rest. For the first time in his life, he felt like he had erased his 'sleep debt', as it were: he simply wasn't tired. As the train slowly made it's way northward, stopping at each little town along the way it seemed, David's mind raced with possible scenarios and plans of action for what he might find awaiting him in Reno. He had only been to Reno once in his life before, and that was when he was a little child of maybe five or six, so he really didn't remember anything useful that might help him this time.

In the wee early hours, the train pulled into the Amtrak station off of Commercial Row in the downtown area. He found it odd that the first thing he saw when leaving the station and walking out on the friendless streets of a strange town was a so-called "gentlemen's club", obviously some lame attempt to dress up what would be known in any other town as a strip club. In his mind, Reno (and Nevada, in general) already had a bad reputation as somewhere that allowed prostitution, gambling, and any number of other legal or illegal vices. David's family had never seen any reason to visit Nevada, especially Las Vegas or Reno, having already dismissed them as "dens of sin". David had never really questioned his parents' decision on this matter, but David was questioning a lot of things since his coma. As far as he was aware, neither his parents nor his buddies had visited him in the hospital, and he was feeling a little, okay - a lot, of resentment at the present time. His parents told him all the time that they loved him, but why hadn't they visited him in the hospital? They obviously had noticed he was gone, or else the maid wouldn't have given him the third degree when he got home, but hadn't they even tried to find him? Hadn't they called all the local hospitals and even tried to find him?

David walked, wandering around the streets and the crowds of people for about an hour, not knowing why he was even here, but he felt as if something were calling him here - summoning him here. Now that he was here, however, he didn't know what came next. He walked into many of the tourist shops and marvelled at all the worthless junk that one could purchase with the phrase "The Biggest Little City in the World" stamped across it. After awhile, however, the shops lost their novelty and it seemed that he was seeing all the same stuff over and over again. On a lark, he walked outside and just kept walking. It was getting to be late morning now, and David was beginning to feel that he already had a pretty good grasp of the downtown area after just walking around for a few hours. In fact, he mused, he probably had a better understanding of the idiocyncrasies of the layout than many Reno residents. This, in fact, was probably true, seeing as how most residents of cities with downtown areas actually never 'go downtown' for anything. That was certainly true of his hometown. The dare, in fact, was one of the few times that David had actually graced his city's tourist hub with his presence, and his friends knew it - hence the bet in the first place. What he hadn't known, however, was how dangerous a place can be after dark. During the daytime, the throngs of tourists make a place seem rather innocuous - tame, even - but after dark, that all changes. He suspected that the same was probably true for Reno, as well, and he immediately decided that he better formulate a plan for himself, get a room at least, before nightfall. He wasn't too worried about it, however, as he still had time, and he was sure there were probably several places in this place that would give him a room, even without any form of identification. Maybe not one of the big hotel casinos, but any number of the side street motel lodges would probably take a cash payment without raising an eyebrow. David was proud of his street smarts, although he wasn't really sure where or how he'd acquired them. One brief encounter - disaster really - doesn't make someone king of the streets, he told himself, but he felt a lot more illuminated as to the realities of the real world, like his eyes had been suddenly opened to a whole other world.

As he was so reflecting, a thought popped into his head - straight out of the blue, not even a word he'd ever heard before in his admittedly short life: "Idlewild."