The Highway Kind(70)

“That’s good,” he said. “Right?”

She touched Jeff’s head and held it in both hands. “But you will accept my gift,” she said. “Won’t you?”

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

Faith opened her right hand and showed him the Bronco keys in her palm. “You should run. The truck is parked by the great teepee. As it falls, my brother will be with it. Go.”

“And when does it fall?”

“Not long after the medicine man shows his painted hand to the rising star.”

“And when exactly is that?”

“I think about nine o’clock.”

Jeff couldn’t sleep. After a few hours of lying in the dark hotel room, he pulled on his blue jeans and V-neck T-shirt by American Apparel, gathered his things, and walked to the big fire a half mile away from the casino. He sat on a fallen tree and watched the women, young and old, painted and barefaced, dance around the giant bonfire. Faby Apache was there but no longer dressed as a warrior. Now she had on a plain blue dress, cowboy boots, and a glittery ball cap.

Sparks kicked up into the starry night. The dance was more of a shuffle with closed eyes, a movement with little direction or aim other than to keep moving, keep chanting. No one stopped. The energy was ceaseless.

Men played drums and chanted at the women: Keep moving. Keep going. Some of them wore ceremonial dress, others black cowboy hats with colorful beads. One skinny guy wore a Captain America T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. The medicine man made big pronouncements in Apache that Jeff didn’t understand. More sparks flew up into the purplish sky.

When two jacked-up trucks drove off from the ceremony, Jeff spotted the parked Bronco and sighed. A white coat of dust had spread over the dented hood. The windshield wipers had cleared off a sliver from the glass, enough to see a little road. Faith continued to dance around the teepee. She did not see him or look anywhere but at the path before her. Move, move, more. Keep dancing. Keep breathing. The fire cast a wide slice of light and kicked up white smoke. The women kept up a hobbling kind of dance, moving from side to side with the rhythm of the chanting men. On the page, Jeff hoped it might actually go like this:


EXT. WHITE MOUNTAIN RANGE PUBERTY CEREMONY MORNING

A giant morning sun rising over the impoverishment of the rez. THE MAN hands FAITH SPOTTED EAGLE the keys to the vintage truck. With the keys, she could escape the rez, the poverty and drug abuse (assuming there was drug abuse), and ride away with a greater understanding of the world. The world was wide open; the future was fun. The girl was hot. The desert was hotter.


JEFF

I want you to have it. Keep the Bronco. You are now a woman.

Faith Spotted Eagle hugs the Man hard as she wipes the clay from her face and dirt from her eyes. She can see!


FAITH

It’s all clear now. I won’t forget you.

The Man kisses Faith on the cheek. A brotherly kiss. She looks at him, holds his hands tight, and looks as if she wants to say more. We see the Man toss his travel bag over his shoulder and walk to the rising sun over the mountains.

In real time, Lorenzo slid off the dented hood of the Bronco, took a swig of mescal, and offered Jeff his middle finger. He looked tall and wavy through the haze of the bonfire, the smoke making him seem hard and important. The women kept on dancing, circling around and around. The morning light had gone from black to gray, a yellow swath of sunlight coming up over the mountains.

Several Apache men gathered, including Lorenzo, and walked toward the teepee. Lorenzo carried a metal gas can. The girls stopped dancing, and a large old woman handed Faith a red hand towel. A basket was set away from the teepee and the girls began to run for it as the men doused the teepee with gas. The fire was lit as the girls rushed toward the basket, running round and round, four times, nearly tripping, one falling to her knees with exhaustion.

Faith ran toward a group of old women with fat arms spread wide, wiping the white clay and cornmeal from her face and dust from her eyes. She nodded toward Jeff, and Jeff ran for the Bronco.

He jumped into the seat, slipped the keys into the ignition, and tried to crank the engine. It sputtered and failed and sputtered and failed.

Lorenzo looked up from the flames and falling beams. He spit in the dirt and yelled something to his boys and they turned for the Bronco. Jeff tried the engine again. Lorenzo pointed and yelled, running hard. Arms pumping. In the narrow slice of windshield, Jeff lost sight of the man until he was ten yards away.

Jeff slammed his fist on the wheel as Faby Apache let out a Mexican war cry and tackled Lorenzo to the ground. She pressed his face into the dirt and held the man’s head between her thighs. Her muscled chest and arms shone with sweat. She looked across the way to Jeff, mouthed the word Go!

Jeff tried the ignition again and the twin pipes growled and joined up with the chanting mountain spirits. All of the girls had found the old women; they were embracing. He smelled the burning wood and corn on the hot morning wind. The sun rose high in the east over a ribbon of blacktop leading away from the rez.

Faith walked down the highway, moving the opposite direction, coated in the white buckskin, her arms disappearing into the buckskin shirt, her face washed clean of the clay. The logs of the teepee fell into a big heap behind them.

She continued to walk, eyes not leaving her path, but this time smiling. A little.

A necklace of mescal seeds dangled from his rearview mirror. Jeff stopped only twice on the way to St. Louis.