“Correction,” Jeff said, “forty-two.”
“Jesus,” his sister said. “There’s more to life than all this shit. I don’t know how you do it. You’re better than this place.”
The traffic hadn’t moved ten yards in thirty minutes. The old truck seemed to be on the verge of redlining it, blowing a radiator hose and stranding them until well into the night. Jeff played with the radio, searching for some music that would never be found in the city anymore. He was in the mood for Gram Parsons, The Flying Burrito Brothers, something like that.
“I love you,” his sister said. “Go. Go, run free.”
Jeff began to hum the John Barry theme from Born Free.
“Nothing changes,” she said.
“Hey,” Jeff said. “Holy crap. I’m doing my best.”
“I know,” his little sister said. “I know. But maybe this isn’t the town to sell literature? You’ve told two show runners they were illiterate, soulless morons.”
Jeff shrugged. “One of them called my modern take on Anna Karenina ‘Baywatch with Guns.’”
The red Hummer in front of him started to move, and the Bronco rolled. It seemed like the start of a really slow and sad parade. Jeff pointed with his right index finger, steering with his left hand. Ten miles per hour.
“I think I have an idea,” she said.
When she finished talking, Jeff turned to her and said, “That’s not an idea. That’s an errand.”
Five days later, Jeff drove the 1970 Bronco out of LA and long into the Arizona desert on Interstate 10.
He took off the truck’s bikini top, tied a blue bandanna on his head, and cranked up the Eagles. He wasn’t really into the Eagles but enjoyed them ironically with all the cactus and sagebrush whizzing past.
At Phoenix, he took Arizona State Route 87 north to Payson, where he turned east onto the 260, but sometime after midnight, right around Show Low, he took a wrong turn and ended up not knowing what was up or down, north or south. A billboard promised big winners and comfortable beds.
It was late. What the hell? He followed the pointy arrows.
Nine hours later, Jeff lay by the pool of the Hon-Dah Resort and Casino reading an old paperback, Louis L’Amour’s Hondo. The cover showed a white man knocked on his back throwing over an Indian brave wielding a spear.
“Kill the Indian,” a young girl said. “Save the man.”
She’d snuck up him. “Excuse me?” Jeff asked.
“That’s what they told us after they rounded us up,” she said. “Forced into boarding schools in the East. Don’t believe what the white men have to say, the brave cavalry and cowboys. The American genocide of the Indian was much admired by Adolf Hitler.”
“It’s just a book.”
“A racist book,” she said. “Don’t let anyone else see you reading it here.”
The girl was very pretty and very Native American. She had dark skin, black eyes, and high cheekbones. Her hair was past her shoulders, slick, black, and shiny. A beaded choker wrapped her throat while she wore a resort uniform of a navy golf shirt and tiny khaki shorts. “Would you like to order something or just keep drinking cheap beer?”
“A club sandwich would be nice,” Jeff said. “On wheat if you have it. But no bacon.”
She wrote it down and looked back to him. “How’d you get here?” she said. “Or did you get lost?”
“Just passing through,” Jeff said, trying to sound like a cowboy.
“Really?”
“Okay,” he said. “I took a wrong turn.”
Jeff wore his aviator sunglasses on top of his head. He had three tattoos on his forearm: the words Carpe Diem, the Chinese characters for strength, and the head of a grinning Cuckoo’s Nest–era Jack Nicholson.
“Lost in the White Mountains,” she said. “Just where are you trying to get?”
“St. Louis,” Jeff said, pointing to the other side of the purplish mountains. “I started off in LA.”
“The rez is a long way from where you’re headed.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Maybe I’m supposed to be here.”
“It’s because of the movie,” she said. “Fort Apache? Subconsciously, you want to be John Wayne, like all white people.”
“Or play blackjack,” Jeff said. “Or hit that world-famous buffet. You have nice signs. Very colorful. Did you grow up here?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m White Mountain Apache. On the rez my whole life.”
“How old are you?”
“Tomorrow is the final day of my coming-of-age ceremony,” she said, not really answering. “That’s when I will become a woman.”
“Why aren’t you there now?” Jeff said.
“I’m covering my sister’s shift,” she said. “She has a hangover. Too hot by the pool.”
Jeff nodded, squinting into the sun.
“At dawn I will be blessed and dusted with pollen. It represents my emergence from the womb. Would you like fries or fruit with that?”