by Roberta Umor, Yuma Sun

8 June 2020—Yuma, AZ: Once upon a time in the west, Gunner MacGruder threw a perfect game. 27 up, 27 down. Oh so long ago it seems, back when the skies were bright with promise, the season new and fresh, Yuma filled with hope, its Dozers marching toward their dream, our dream, the dream shared by all Yuman Beings.

But then: Yuma rioted.

Police Chief John Lekan drank beer with the rioters. A man of the people who celebrated the Great Gunner’s No-No of Perfection.

The Police Chief was fired.

“It is with a heavy heart I come before you today,” said Yuma’s Mayor, “to report that my personal friend, defender of Yuma and all her citizens, the honorable and upstanding John Lekan, has been relieved of his position as Yuma’s Police Chief for reasons …” Blah blah blah.

No one believed the Mayor, no one even listened, everyone knew this was the beginning of the end, the first stumbled step down the long stairwell to another season of defeat.

Then Gunner pitched again. No decision.

“You see,” said Lauraine Palm, “winning is a bad habit, an addiction. It always lets you down. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better,” the waitress at Anna’s Mexican Food predicted.

The next day, Anna’s Mexican Food was bought out by the Taco Tico fast food chain.

And on May 27th, a day that will live in Yuman infamy, for the first time in 2020, after 8 consecutive wins, Gunner lost a game!

Former restaurant owner Anna philosophized. “I had to sell. Couldn’t pay no more bills. The crowds, they no longer come to Anna’s, see? Dozers win, everyone celebrates. But not at Anna’s. No no, too down-home for that. Too familiar. You win, you want something bigger, brighter, better. You eat at Papagallo or Chili Pepper, no? Dozers winning, that was cause of Anna having to sell, see?”

And then: Gunner lost a second game in a row!

Rioting broke out. The new Police Chief cracked down. The City Council voted a curfew.

Nobody moved. Nobody dared breathe. Yuma became the ghost town it had once been. Suicides were up. Murders up. The new Police Chief announced, “We’re gonna lock up anyone who even thinks about killing themselves! We’re gonna shut this thing down now. And as for murder, you can be damn sure no one’s getting away with anything like that. We will hunt them down and string them up like the good old days. It’s Cowboy Justice around here for a while, until people come to their senses in this town.”

No one was listening. No one cared. Tumbleweeds blew down Main Street. The restaurant formerly known as Anna’s, recently refurbished and rebranded as a Taco Tico franchise, had a Grand Opening. No one came.

“Drive downtown?” said Fred Poppycock. “Too dangerous.”

“Too lonely,” added Bo Belinsky. “This town has lost its desire, its folderol.”

The 3:10 to Yuma arrived, but no one got off the train. No one got on either. Nothing moved, as if the town were holding its breath, until the 3:10 whistled its way out of town.

For Sale signs sprouted up on brown lawns all across town.

Busses whizzed by on the interstate. Greyhound reduced its service to Yuma to one bus a day. Two local cab companies went out of business. The airport reduced its terminal hours. United Airlines cancelled its only flight to Yuma. US Airways Express reduced its schedule to just three flights a week. Terminal concessionaires locked up and went home.

A puzzled coyote crossed the runway one afternoon, pausing to look up and down the empty tarmac. Seeing nothing and smelling no Yuman Beings, it continued trotting off into the desert.

Far from Yuma, in Skokie, Illinois, deep in the bowels of the corporate headquarters of Rand McNally, cartographers putting the finishing touches on the 2021 highway atlas asked each other, “Is Yuma still on the map?”

No one was certain.

And then …

The unthinkable. The unimaginable. The unbelievable.

Palm Springs swept Yuma in a three game series. Gunner lost his third straight.

Downtown Yuma dried up and blew away.

In the empty, dusty streets, a lone figure followed his shadow down the length of the yellow stripe in the center of Main Street. No cars honked. No police hassled him. No one even noticed.

He carried a sign in one hand, a Bible in the other. In crude lettering, the sign read:

the End Is ‘night 

No one knew what it meant.