Jeff looked at him.
“Protect your nuts,” he said. “Faby usually heads straight for them.”
EXT. WHITE MOUNTAIN RANGE APACHE RITUAL NIGHT
A handsome young man is led into the ring by the chief of the tribe. He’s introduced as LT. THURSDAY while Apaches boo and throw bottles at him. A muscled woman warrior follows, hands held high, to the shouts and cheers of fans. She walks to each corner of the ring and pumps her fist to the crowd. Jagged purplish mountains surround them on each side. Somewhere in the distance, a drum begins to beat.
CHIEF
The cavalry has returned once again to burn our village, rape our women, and scatter us to the wind. Their leader is a man twisted with lust and hate. Lieutenant Thursday.
THURSDAY
Come on, man. Jesus Christ.
More beer bottles flow onto the stage, break apart, and scatter across the canvas. A young Native man hops up and knocks off the bottles with a push broom. He gives a thumbs-up to the chief. A beer bottle narrowly misses Thursday’s head.
CHIEF
There is but one hope for your people. A girl, now a woman, who has the strength of many warriors. She is Faby Apache.
The crowd goes crazy. Little girls hold up hand-painted signs. Old women begin to cry. Young men watch the gorgeous warrior as she paces the ring, side to side, like a caged tiger.
THURSDAY
(Leaning in to whisper to the chief)
This is all an act, right? Just part of the show?
CHIEF
Sure. If you say so.
Jeff met many Apaches that night; one even handed him an ice pack for his head. They offered him Mexican beer from coolers in the backs of their pickup trucks and warm shots of mescal. He accepted, although he felt bad about drinking with Native Americans. He’d read countless stories in the New York Times about drug and alcohol abuse among indigenous peoples. But his head hurt a lot. It wasn’t from the beer bottle that had hit him between the eyes; it was from Faby Apache using one of her signature moves (although Jeff didn’t know it was famous until after he’d come to), the Hurricanrana, in which the wrestler wrapped her legs around her opponent’s neck and drove him headfirst into the mat.
Faby Apache was beautiful, muscular, and very strong. But it hadn’t been pleasant to be caught between her thighs and hammered to the ground. He accepted the mescal as a reward.
“I hear you have an old Bronco,” said a young man introduced as Lorenzo. He looked to be very drunk and dangerous. He had long black hair and lots of ragged tattoos and kept on telling Jeff that the feds wanted to send him back to jail. His T-shirt shilled for a band called Eyes Set to Kill.
“Thank you for the drink.”
“Can you give me a ride?” he said. “It’s a very pretty truck. Faith told me about it.”
“Who’s she?”
“The girl who brought you the cheap beer at the pool,” Lorenzo said. “And the club sandwich on wheat toast. No bacon.”
“She’s very pretty.”
“Yeah?” Lorenzo said. “She’s fourteen, dipshit.”
“Oh.”
“And my little sister.”
Lorenzo wanted to take the Bronco through the piney hills at night. Jeff worried the car would get muddy, that something might break, that he might bust a tire or, God forbid, twist the frame. “What the hell do you have a four-wheel drive for if you don’t use it? Are you some kind of pussy?” Lorenzo asked.
“I’m no pussy,” Jeff said and agreed to let him drive the Bronco. He’d drunk half a bottle of mescal. He told Lorenzo he wanted to eat the worm but Lorenzo told him there was no worm in that bottle. Lorenzo drove with two other men in the backseat and made Jeff run shoeless behind them, trailing the Bronco like a dog. They told him this was a rite of passage for all Apaches: if he followed the Road of Trials, he would be their blood brother. Jeff thought maybe he might sell the story, a first-person account, to Outside or maybe Men’s Journal. “How Mescal Turned to Apache Blood.”
Jeff was a runner, knew the Hollywood Hills as well as a coyote, but after a couple miles or maybe a hundred, he stopped, bent at the waist, and tried to catch his breath. The moon above them was huge, painting the pine trees silver. Damn, he wished he had a pen. He’d write down that description and use it in a novel sometime. Shining silvery pines. “No más,” Jeff said.
One of the Apaches, a laughing, grinning teen, tossed a Dos Equis bottle at him. It missed by a mile and shattered against a rock.
“What’s next?” Jeff said.
“You look at my sister?” Lorenzo asked.
“No.”
“I like your Bronco,” he said. “How much?”
“It’s not mine.”
“Everything is for sale.”
“My brother-in-law bought it in Malibu,” Jeff said. “And he’d never sell it. He loves this truck more than my sister. Okay? So what’s next?”