Easy Pickins

Easy Pickin's

         The reverberation of gun shots still rings in the room when an unbidden thought enters his mind: Them freaking Mexicans thought I was easy pickin's.

         He shrugs their insult off. He has more important things to worry about, now that the Mexicans are dead. Immediate survival and a fast exit top the list.

          He drops to the floor near the window and looks out between the sill and the Venetian blind so there will be no tell-tale movement. The parking lot of the Trail's End Motel is dark and silent for the moment. He sweeps his eyes across the lot, using peripheral vision across the outlines of familiar motel objects-cars, trucks, coke machines, ice boxes-looking for an outline or movement that shouldn't be there. Nothing moves.

         He checks his side with one hand, knowing it will find a warm stickiness, but there is no arterial pulsing from the hole. Make that holes, he learns as his wandering fingers find that the bullet passed through and through. He decides that no vital organs are damaged. The wound burns but doesn't hurt...yet. His body is still numb with shock, but adrenal glands are pumping power and lucidity into the system. The pain will come in the future, if he still has a future. Time to move.

         He rises and enters the tiny bathroom. He ignores the body in the shower. Instead he stares at himself in the mirror, realizing there is something about the face that doesn't go with the expensive clothes and accessories of his 'California look." Not for the first time he recognizes the incongruity is not in his rather handsome face, but in the eyes--the flat blank eyes of a predator.

          He needs to check out his injury, and his height forces him to step back to see himself in full view. There is a bloody hole in his bone-colored Armani suit jacket just above his hip level. Opening the coat, he tugs up the tail of the fawn cashmere sweater underneath and sees blood welling out of a purplish hole.

         Liposcopy done cheap-don't try this at home, he thinks and grins to his reflection. He grabs a couple of threadbare hand towels and stuffs them under his sweater to stanch the blood. He needs something to hold them in place and looks over at the body in the shower stall. He has ignored the body, but now he needs something from it.

         It sits, slumped down, asprawl in the ugly position of death, against the back wall of the shower, with bits of tile and the silenced Tec-9 pistol on its chest where they fell as the Mexican was thrown backward by the neat three-tap of .40 caliber rounds.

          He quickly strips the belt off the corpse and uses it to strap the towel around his waist. He tightens the belt over the temporary bandage until he winces with the pain. It will have to do for now.

          The corpse moves slightly due to the buildup of acid in the blood vessels of the muscles and voids itself, spreading a foul odor. The Tec-9 falls to the shower floor, making a distinctive metallic sound.

          That was where it went wrong for the Mexicans, he thinks. They'd made a big thing out of showing him they weren't armed and showed the bag of 'crank'--but they hadn't expected him to want to check the bathroom. They'd started to protest that he didn't trust them when he'd heard the metallic snick of the receiver bolt. In an instant of precognition, he'd known exactly where the danger lay and what was about to happen.

         Along with the adrenalin rush, tachypsychia kicked in--and he'd welcomed it like an old and valuable friend. His perception of time and motion slowed, and during the next few seconds his movements resembled an underwater ballet.

         Instead of arguing, he'd simply whipped out the Glock and three-tapped the wall between the bedroom and the shower stall. The Mexican behind it was killed instantly and his dead hand sent a spray of nine millimeter rounds back through the wall. That's when he'd caught a stray round.

         By the time the other two {i) cholos{/i) were over their surprise and dived for their hidden weapons, he was targeting their backs. From such short range, it was hard to miss, easier than a shooting range. In his super-heightened awareness, the action seemed to take forever, but had taken only seconds.

         His mind still remains in overdrive, processing orders and asking questions.Why did those fools try to rip me off? We had a deal, a good deal. He focuses his mind and shakes off speculation for a better time.

         He limps back to the bedroom and over to the outside door. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches movement. One of the Mexicans isn't dead and tries to move off his stomach and turn over, but three .40 caliber wounds don't make for good push-ups, especially with his intestines are falling onto the floor.

         He debates using another round, but he's running low on ammo-nine out by his count-and he still doesn't know what may be waiting outside. He keeps an eye on the Mexican with his peripheral vision rather than waste time on a man who is dead but doesn't know it yet. Finally the Mexican gives up and tries to talk through the bloody drool coming out of this mouth.

         "Freaking Gringo! You not suppose...to act like that..."

         He files that away for future consideration. Maybe a clue is there--to the "why" question that nags at him. There really is a death rattle. When it comes, he knows any answer to the Mexican is pointless.  Shifting the gun to his off hand, he opens the door with his right, keeping his body behind the illusory protection of the thin stucco walls. Nothing happens. He guts it up and steps into the doorway--remembering too late that the man in the shower came equipped with a silencer.  Another mistake. He can't afford any more.

         The smell of orange trees and lavender verbena wafts through the air and counters the smell of gunpowder and human waste from the room behind him. He senses that this will be his ultimate memory of California. Some foolish tourists wearing loud Hawaiian shirts are outside with their wives, rubbernecking around the enclosed two-story courtyard, looking for Death, not realizing He might make them His own.

          The night people---hookers and johns, down-and -outers drinking suicide on the installment plan, ex-cons resting up from their latest Stop and Rob--are more cautious. They watch the courtyard from under slightly raised blinds.

         He glances around with eyes that shine yellow-gold like an animal's when caught in the lights of the neon sign. Then he smiles a terrible lupine smile-Jack Palance on methamphetamines-that drives the tourists back into their rooms while the blinds of the night people snap closed. The motel sinks into silence.

         Turning back into the room, he wrests the bag of methamphetamine from the grip of the dead man on the bed. His money is on the table. He picks it up and stuffs it into his coat pocket. He thinks back and remembers that the only thing in the room he has touched, excluding the bodies of course, is the door knob. On his way out, he rubs it with the tail of his Armani jacket. His blood DNA evidence can't be helped, but the police will have to have him in custody for testing and they'll have other evidence if they are that close.

         Closing the door behind him, he limps over to the silver Porsche and drives away with the shrill whoops of approaching police sirens in his ears. About three minutes have passed since the first shots were fired.

         The neon sign above the entrance blinks "Trail's End, Trail's End, Trails End..." in an endless cycle over a darkened and hushed motel, full of witnesses who will not remember anything about him but the gleaming golden eyes and that terrible lupine smile...

* * * *

         A cold ocean breeze comes off the Pacific on his right as he leaves Port Huinimi on the fabled coast highway, heading south towards Ventura and L.A. The CD's sound system blares hard rock from Guns and Roses. As he drives, he tries to answer the question he has posed to himself.

         Why did the Mexicans try to highjack him? He'd come to the meet, prepared to deal. The Mexicans had taken over the manufacture of speed from the bikers since controls on the U.S. chemical industry made the precursors impossible to obtain.  They need solid, long-term markets to take their production. The attempted hijack makes no sense.

         But beyond that, he intuits that the Mexicans did not respect him-felt they could 'jack' him with impunity--that is at the bottom of his disbelief. He respects Mexicans as warriors-has known them and dealt with them all his life back home-which is why he was on guard.

         "Freakin' Gringo!...You not suppose...to act like that. "
          He looks down past his ruined Armani, sees blood on his matching bone-colored Bally loafers, and has an epiphany. They thought he was a Californian!  One of the lotus eaters of the Gold Coast.

         This simple answer to his question brings forth a loud laugh that pains his wounded side. His attempt to blend into the laid-back California culture has succeeded too well. They probably wouldn't have tried the hijacking had they not confused him with the lotus eaters. Without a doubt, the Mexicans would've handled the matter differently--with immediate and deadly ferocity--if they had known he was a Texan. Mistakes are fatal in this business and they made a fatal mistake. He dismisses the Mexicans from his mind.

****

         His thoughts turn to the practical. He must get a better bandage, but he can't go to a hospital. He needs to lose the Porsche for a while, just in case one of the tourists tried to do his civic duty and wrote down the license plate number before he drove off. He's not worried that the license plate will reveal his name. The Porsche registration lies buried in a defunct sham corporation whose three officers were winos off the street and a P.O. address. That will be a dead end.

         But any description of the car could bring problems, especially while he drives with bloody clothes and fifty thousand dollars worth of crank in the car. He will change cars. Besides, he feels again the need for an American muscle car with the full-bodied roar of a big American V-8.  He has felt this pull toward the cars of his youth for some time, annoyed at the perfect whine of the Porsche engine, and not realizing that the annoyance is a sign of homesickness.

         When he gets to his condo at Marina Del Mar, he parks and walks away from the Porsche without regret. His girl-friend, warned by a call on his cell-phone, meets him at the door-- whining about what his bout with the Mexicans might cost her.  He hates her whining. He senses that a true mate would have met him at the door without words or recriminations. He needs assistance, acceptance and unquestioned loyalty, not bitching. Their bargain-her youth and beauty for sex, drugs and lifestyle-is over, though she does not realize it. She has failed him in ways she does not know, can never conceptualize. She follows him around the condo, driving verbal nails into the coffin of their life together.

         He sheds his ruined clothes like a cicada emerging from a seventeen year cocoon. The shower runs red with his blood. Finally he forces his gagging girl friend to run a stainless steel gun cleaning rod through the wound. Bits of clothing come out of his back, and he grimaces a ghastly smile through his agony. He knows they would've been the seat of massive infection in the days to come. Finally, she pours hydrogen peroxide through the hole until pink foam runs out his back.

          He blacks out temporarily from the pain. He comes to, and finds she has also fainted, so he slaps her awake. They share some Darvons and long scorpion-like lines of the speed he's taken from the Mexicans at the motel. An hour later he is bandaged and in a cab heading for a car dealership on Sunset Boulevard.

****

         The salesman looks up from his Playboy and sees a typical country boy, wearing worn jeans and boots with a Western-style, long-sleeved shirt. With a sigh, knowing it is a waste of an 'up', he agrees to show the cowboy the Pontiac Trans Am Formula on the back lot, a black on black leather with T-Tops and all the goodies. He is shocked when a quick credit check authorizes the purchase. Fifteen minutes later the hick leaves with his new car. The salesman watches him leave and wonders what the cowboy has in the bag that he keeps close to him at all times. The salesman has been smart enough to size the man up after one look into his eyes and hasn't asked.

         He pulls out of the dealer's lot and gets on the freeway, starting back to Marina del Mar when a billboard advertising Southwest Airlines flights to San Antonio, Dallas and Houston catches his eye. An interchange comes up with signs for IH-10 East. Without thinking or even slowing down, he hits the eastbound lane and guns the big 5-Liter engine up as fast as the traffic will allow. A short call to the girl friend tells her he will be gone for a while--and no, she can't come with him. He grins to himself when he envisions her away from lotus land. He tells her he'll send some money when he gets where he's going, but she should get out of the condo and stay away for a while. He rings off and sets his course over the mountains and across the desert to the arid limestone hills of Home.

****

         Fifteen miles out of Barstow, the Formula fishtails slightly as he passes a semi at 120 miles per hour. He immediately pulls over to check the tires as the truck thunders past with claxon horn blaring. The right rear tire is low. He curses the salesman who provided him with a full tank of gas for his new car but forgot to check the tire pressure. He finds the virtually useless "fifty-mile spare" is totally worthless because the inflation bottle is not in trunk. Again, he curses the smart-ass salesman as he kicks at the offending tire. After the roar of the truck subsides, he is left alone in the desert night. The air is filled with the familiar aromas of creosote, sagebrush, sotol, manzanita and mesquite. The keening wind tells him stories of those who didn't make it across the waterless desert plain that stretches out before him under the vault of stars.

          He's stopped on the top of a north-and-south-running ridge which gives him a long view both east and west. The night dark is almost eliminated by the stark illumination of a huge full moon rising in the east. In the clean desert air, free of California's coastal smog, he can see for miles. The stars in their courses are so clearly visible that it seems he can pick out their spiral gyres as they wheel above him in the heavens. He sits on the front fender of the cooling, creaking Formula, enjoying the night, waiting for a Samaritan to come and help a stranded Traveler.

         Peripheral vision warns him of movement in the thorny brush off the highway. Training defeats instinct, and he freezes, cutting only his eyes to the right, waiting for the wandering animal to take shape. A lobo, ghostly pale and silver in the moonlight, trots out of the brush and begins to make its way down the ridge on the cleared shoulder of the road, a gleaming highway toward the rising moon.

         Something, perhaps a slight wind shift, stops the animal, and it looks over its shoulder at the silent, still figure, sitting on the black machine.  It jumps, startled to see a human figure so close. Then its mouth opens, tongue lolling out in lupine humor as if it recognizes one of its own. The man moves now, sure that the animal will not panic, and murmurs, "Bro', we're both a long way from home."
         The animal gives a short, dog-like bark in answer and continues on its way in the moonlight. Suddenly, the lobo jumps into the brush and disappears. In the east, perhaps ten miles away, too far away yet for the man to detect sound, a single headlight can be seen, rapidly closing the distance between it and the waiting man.

         The sound finally arrives up the ridge, delivering a message that a Harley-Davidson, the quintessential American symbol of rebellion and outlawry, is approaching. He gets off the Formula and prepares to see if this is his Samaritan--or a Philistine. The Hog thunders throatily past, two figures in tandem on the seat. He thinks they have left him ignored, and begins to resume his place on the Formula, when the sound changes, and the light turns around. He shifts his gun to a more favorable position in the holster in his back waistband and waits.

         The Biker runs the Harley up to within several feet of the standing man and stops. On the jacket of his greasy riding leathers, the rider wears the familiar "colors" of the Banditos, the largest biker gang in Texas. He is a massive bear of a man in his late thirties or early forties, with a dirty red bandana that binds long locks of grizzled hair, tousled by the wind because he disdains the safety of a helmet.  His arms are covered with "sleeves" of blue tattoos that signify he's spent a lot of time in the joint. In the moonlight, streaks of road grime covering his face give the appearance of the blue woad markings of his tribal forebears. His Old Lady, similarly attired, has long stringy blond hair that coils over her arms, partially covering her own tattoos.

         The travelers stare at one another for a long moment; the Bandito expects from long experience that most people will be intimidated, and this will give him an edge.  He is startled when the man grins at him without speaking. He takes a longer look at the well-worn jeans outfit and boots, notes the bearing, the unconcerned stance, and his eyes travel up to the lean blade of a face, finally coming to the flat golden eyes. He instantly recognizes those eyes, the flat eyes of a predator, similar to his own.

         "Waiting for the sun to shine, so's you'll getcha self a tan, homeboy?" the Biker says and returns the grin. It is a silent acknowledgment of place and tribe-neither on home territory--and an implicit offer of truce.

         "No. Had a little tire trouble. They didn't put the air bottle in the trunk."

         The simple words signify the truce is accepted, and the Bandido and his Old Lady dismount. He wipes his face with the bandana while the woman makes ineffectual motions with her hands to rub off some of the road grime from her leathers and face. From the stiff way they move, the man knows they have come a long way West in one long, hard-pushing ride without much rest.

         "Think the tire is ruined?"  The Biker says and moves to the back of the Formula and squats down to look at the tire.

         The man joins him at the rear of the car, but does not squat down. Without seeming to, he makes sure he is at a little distance from the Bandido and able to watch the woman at the bike at the same time. He bends over and his short Levi jacket rides up in back. There is a black stain on the back of his shirt.

         "I don't think so. I caught it pretty early. Started getting squirrely on me."

         "Uh huh," grunts the biker.

         "Leon?" the Old Lady says in warning. The woman has seen the stain and knows its provenance. Blood shows itself as black in moonlight, and she has seen a lot of blood at night.  "He's been shot. And he's got a gun in a back holster." Her voice is calm. She is not unduly alarmed; she is merely reporting necessary and crucial information to her partner.

         The biker stands up, stretches, looks down the ridge both ways at the empty road and makes a quick reappraisal of the man and the situation. The man waits without seeming to be aware of what the biker is doing. But the biker is another old hand, too experienced to fall into a trap. He moves very slowly to remove his headband again and wipe his face. The desert has not yet cooled and both men are sweating.

         "Seems like you got more trouble than a flat tire in the desert, homeboy," he says with deliberation.

          The man shrugs without speaking.

         The biker makes a decision and asks, "Need some help?" The moment of danger passes and another truce is declared, this time with the acknowledged aid of an ally.

         "You got a pump?" He knows Hogs are hard on tires. No one would be fool enough to travel from Texas to California through the desert without a tire repair kit.

         "Sure. Think that'll handle it?"

         "I didn't hit anything. Could've picked up a nail, but I think the idiots at the car lot just didn't check the pressure and the tire wasn't seated right on the rim."

         "Well, we'll give 'er a try." The Biker pauses with exquisite discretion and gestures to the bloody shirt, "What about your...er....back problem? While I'm fixin' the tire, she could..." He lets it hang, and the man shakes his head. "Good enough," the biker says and begins to remove his colors so he can work.

         In a few minutes the Bandido has inflated the tire to specs. Not a car or truck has passed through their moment of time on the moonlit ridge. The biker waves, "That oughta get 'ya somewhere to check on it."

         "Thanks." Neither man offers to shake hands; neither wants to get too close.

         The Biker prepares to mount up and leave when the man halts him with a gesture. He opens the door of the car and reaches into the bag on the passenger side. In a swift motion he breaks off a rock of pure speed weighing an ounce or more. Absently, he picks up a small white rock that has fallen to the black leather seat and swallows it. He goes over to the biker who has the Hog thundering, revving the engine to warm it up. Without a word he passes the golfball-sized rock over. The Bandido's eyes widen and his Old Lady, pillion on the back, smiles a knowing smile and licks her lips.

         "Hey, Dude! Thanks. My name's Leon, but most people back home in Texas calls me Bear. Ask around, anyone can put you in touch. Maybe we can do some biz."

         "Could be. 'Preciate what you done."

         "No problem. See ya." The bike roars, and he turns it back toward the West and California. A high-pitched scream floats back as the bike rockets away.  "EEEE...HAH!"

An outsider might mistake it for another farewell, but the man recognizes it as the tribal shout that routed blue lines in front of Hood's Texans at the Devil's Den and Chancellorsville and rang out from Rangers charging Comanche ponies across a sea of grass.  For whatever arcane reason, the biker is going to war in California. The distinctive rumbling of the Harley dopplers away to the west, overtaking the tribal yell and challenge.

         He gets into the black machine. Some hundred yards down the slope he senses something, peers into the creosote and cacti and catches the gleam of yellow-gold eyes. He guns the car forward and waves at the lobo as he passes. "Gone to Texas, Amigo."

****

         He passes the night popping Darvons for the pain and downing rocks of speed to keep him going. The Pontiac thunders through the desert valley and then over sere mountains in the moonlit night at speeds over a hundred miles an hour to the tunes of a western station out of Barstow. Many of his kind make up the sparse population of the desert towns. They have stopped in this almost uninhabitable region for some unfathomable reason on their way West or have washed back in an ebbing wave from the wall of the sea. When the radio blanks out because of distance, he reaches into the bag full of dope and money and retrieves some heavy metal CDs. The music of Whitesnake and AC-DC-"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"-adds to the adrenalin rush of the speed.

         Shortly before dawn, he guns the car over the final pass and drops down into the Valley of the Sun with the lights of Phoenix twinkling in the distance before him. By the time he gains the elevated Black Mesa freeway and swings around the southern part of downtown Phoenix, going east, the sky in front is lightening into rose madder while the western sky behind him maintains the deep blue of night. By some trick of the conjoining of night and day, the huge full moon that has been his nighttime companion hangs suspended over the tall modern towers of the city while at the same time the Sun has already risen in the east. He has never seen anything like it before-and takes it as a sign--of something.

         He pulls to a stop on the narrow shoulder of the elevated roadway and gets out. He wishes he had a camera. The luminous moon, craters and mares plainly visible, seems to almost touch the tops of the skyscrapers soaring up like the Sarcen Rings of tribal dreams. But the brutal light of the Sun, rising in the east, causes the moon to disappear, fading into the blue nothingness of the morning desert sky. He stands awed for a moment, wondering if he has been hallucinating.

         A patrol car approaches in the west-bound lane across the boundary gulf of the median barrier. It slows, and the officers stare at him. He waves to indicate that he is moving on, gets into the car and speeds away into the harsh glare of the Sun. It wouldn't do to have a curious cop look him over too closely---wild-eyed from speed, bloody shirttail hanging over his gun and a bag full of dope and money on the seat. He shakes his head and laughs out loud. He doubts they will try to double back and catch him. It is too near their shift change. Time for their doughnut.

****

         The morning passes quickly into afternoon, heading along IH-10 through Tucson, across New Mexico and into El Paso. He isn't hungry because of the meth, but knows he should eat to keep his strength up. He has a sudden urge to eat some Tex-Mex. What passes for Mexican food in California-enchiladas, tacos, burritos, whatever--is always served with a big dollop of sour-cream on top.

          He spots a teen-age Mexican girl hitch-hiking along the highway. She wears a white dress--like a confirmation dress-- and red tennis shoes. Her legs are covered with finely powdered white sand up to the calves. He pulls off the interstate and stops, waiting for her to run up to the car.  He offers her a Ten and a lift if she will take him to her favorite taqueria and go inside to get them some breakfast tacos.

         Surprisingly, she agrees and seats herself gingerly in the passenger seat while he turns and moves the all-important athletic bag into the back seat. He hears her sudden intake of breath and realizes she has seen his bloody shirt or possibly his gun. He expects her to scream or jump out of the car. She does neither, but stares straight ahead through the windshield. He offers a half-hearted explanation.

         "Um...I got hurt. That's why I don't want to go inside, okay?"

         "Ju must be very strong-- mas fuerte que nadie-if ju not go to a  hospital."

         "I'm in a hurry."

         "Where you go in such a hurry you don't need a doctor?"

         "My home." He drops into the Tex-Mex argot of his youth-- Spanglicized English and Anglicized Spanish--that betokens the habitantes of the border who have disputed ownership of the region with fire, rope, gun, and writ for generations.  "Una estancita en las montanas near San Antonio.  Mi familia estan alli."

         "Ah, si. Que no!" She thinks for a minute and preens herself like a cat on the rich leather seat. "I could ayudarle. give you some help. After I get the tacos." She gestures to his bandage. "Ju need a new vendaje."  She looks around the car. "And I can drive el carro for ju. After." And gives him a subtle secret smile that would give the Mona Lisa lessons.

         After. After what? He believes he has not misunderstood her unstated message and looks at her with new eyes. She has a winsome beauty whose innocence is belied by the knowing glance from under her lashes. The white dress is form-fitted to her torso with a scoop neck that displays the interesting beginnings of full breasts, while below the flounced skirt slender shapely legs end in the childish red tennis shoes.

         "How old are you?" he asks and grins. She smiles and pulls her legs up under her while turning sideways to face him. It is the gesture of a woman-not a child-who knows she has a conquest within reach.

         "Eighteen!" Her chin lifts and she challenges him to say her nay. He doubts she can be more than sixteen but in West Texas and Mexico girls ripen and fade early like the delicate blooms of the desert.

         "What about your folks? Su familia?"

         "Pooh!"

         She waves her hand and her parents disappear into a church where they light candles for their missing daughter and pray that she will come to no harm. She considers the matter settled. She directs him to a pharmacia, a taqueria, and a motel in that order. Some hours pass while each delights and surprises the other. It is late afternoon before the big engine roars again as they head east toward the Hill Country of central Texas. She has insisted that he put the T-tops down and the rushing noise of the wind doesn't bother her as she sleeps in the right seat, curled up like a satisfied animal in the sun.

****

         It is five hundred miles across the Texas desert on IH10 to the state highway that leads to his family redoubt. The sun is long gone, and the cooling shadows of night soften the harsh contours of the limestone hills. Despite the Darvons, which he has been taking in increasing quantity, and the new bandage fashioned by the cool, and strangely expert, fingers of Luz, he is flagging fast. Even the increasing dosages of speed have minimum effect since he has gone for over two days and nights without rest. He reaches Comanche Pass and remembers that the legendary Ranger, Big Foot Wallace, wounded in a Comanche ambush, crawled the ninety miles from here  to San Antonio. Gaining inspiration from the oft-told tale, he decides he can make it, although Luz, awake and frisky has offered to drive.

         Finally, near midnight, the dust-glazed Formula turns across a cattle guard and onto a narrow caliche road that winds up into the hills. At last he pulls through a final cattle guard and into a graveled stableyard. The crunch of the wide tires on gravel ceases, and the night is still.

         Behind a flimsy wire fence covered with honeysuckle vine, sits a weathered clapboard house whose white paint has long since peeled off in the harsh glare of the sun. The house looks ghostly in the same moonlight that had been his companion the night before. It resembles a gaping skull--the two darkened upstairs windows for eyes and a dark screened porch, whose Victorian scroll work has snaggled in places, becoming a grin macabre.  He lets down the car window and breathes in the night air. There is a special fragrance in the air made up of cedar, liveoak and mesquite, barnyard smells and the honeysuckle. It is a signature smell that can never be forgotten--but is not recalled until he returns. It is the smell of Home.

         Luz wakes and stirs uneasily, but he pets her, calms her as he would a fractious mare.  "Hush. Hush," he says while stoking her satin thigh up to the soft tender hollow near the conjoining of her legs. She sighs and looks around.

         "Why we no get out?"  

         A light comes on in the back of the house, but the front rooms and the porch remain cloaked in darkness.

         "It's late. She didn't know I was coming. She'll want to get dressed and take a look. It's our way."

         Satisfied, she leans over and places a kiss on his neck.
         A mercury light on a high pole comes on, illuminating the stableyard and the Formula in a blue-white glare. But there is still no light in the front room near the door nor does the porch light come on. Almost unseen in the gloom, a wraith moves through the door and onto the porch behind the opaque blackness of the screen. The light glints once along a piece of metal that can only be the twin barrels of a large caliber shotgun.

         "Who's there?" The voice is female, but harsh and demanding, although there is no mistaking that it is an ancient voice.

         "Nonnie, it's me."

         "Sonny?" The voice quavers and breaks. "Is it really you?"

         He laughs and opens the door. The interior light reveals Luz with her skirt hiked up and her arms flung upward toward the sky as she stretches and looks around her new home. The woman rushes out the screen door to the car, still carrying the shotgun at port arms. There are never any hostile surprises for this wise and tough old bird, he remembers.

         "Who's that with you?" Suspicion and mother's love fight for dominance in her voice.

         "A friend. Luz." He has brought home a mate, a prize from the wars.

          Luz alights from the car and looks around the place, much like a cat sizing up new terrain. She places a proprietary arm around his waist.

         "Mucho gusto. Nice to meet ju."

         The old woman takes the girl in her bony arms, seems to take in her essence with one inhalation, then holds her at arms length for inspection with her raptor's eyes. Luz bristles, draws herself up to her full height, and waits for a sign. . The old woman smiles, recognizing and acknowledging a new alpha female. This one will bring fire to the bloodline.  Inspection over, Luz is accepted into their life as if by birthright.

          "Aren't you the pretty thing," Nonnie says. She turns to the man and says, "Lands sake, Sonny, why didn't you call. Oughta be ashamed, bringing that poor girl into a mess. The place looks like a tornado hit it." She turns back toward the house and bustles away. "Come on in and put your stuff in your room while I get some coffee on and pick up the place."

          Together he and Luz move to enter the old homestead, but he stops before entering the porch. He gazes at the center of the scroll work above the porch where, etched in the wood, a stylized Sun flames and beckons, undisturbed by more than a century of weather and strife. He laughs for the pure joy of being home.

****

         Later that night, Luz has gone to bed on top of a plumped-up ancient featherbed, some of whose down was gathered by a goose girl in the gloaming of a highland glen a hundred and more years before. The fierce priestess-warrior of the clan, and her only grandson and heir, sit in the darkness and await the Sun.

         They do not realize the totemic reason for their vigil. It is a ritual of thanksgiving for the return of the warrior. But it is so lost in the mists of time that they merely call it "visiting." They have talked themselves out. She has re-bandaged his wound while he has given her a brief account of its origin. She has granted dispensation for both its necessity and his foolish ineptness--and praised him for his skill in battle and return home loaded down with loot and a mate.

          From time to time, they turn their heads in habitual watchfulness, and the rays of the mercury-vapor light hit their eyes, gleaming yellow-gold in the shadows. They sit in the porch darkness, much as they did in his youth, each comfortably alone with their own thoughts and yet somehow in communication.

         "This California..." she says in her ancient dialect, "It seems a quare place on the TV." She has never been further than eighty miles from this porch in her life. "What sort of folk and land mought that be?"

         He pauses to think before he replies-and remembers the smell of orange trees and lavender, gunpowder and human waste. At last, he gives his terrible lupine smile and says, "It is a land where there be easy pickin's."