The Boys from Santa Cruz

4

By the time the Buzzard-mobile showed up, I’d been standing by the side of that dark country road for what felt like hours. I hadn’t seen but three cars, all of which passed me by like I wasn’t even there. I was tired, hungry, and sick at heart. I missed my bus, my music, my whole life before that one phone call from my dad busted it into a million little pieces. I also couldn’t stop thinking about Dusty, and wondering if maybe I wasn’t some kind of jinx. Seemed like everybody I’d ever loved died on me, starting with my mother.

So what’s the use of all this struggling? I asked myself, and the answer was: ain’t none, dude. I’d just about made up my mind to turn myself in (if I didn’t starve first, that is) when I saw my shadow stretching out ahead of me and realized there were headlights coming up behind me. I turned around and started walking backward with my thumb out as a big old flatbed truck materialized out of the darkness. Its engine was coughing and farting, and its chassis and railed wooden bed were rattling and squeaking like the whole thing was about to shake itself apart, but at least it stopped for me.

The smell hit me as I was climbing in. Even though I knew it was bad manners, I couldn’t help covering my nose and mouth with my cupped hands.

“Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it,” said the driver, with a goony laugh. There weren’t any dashboard lights, just the dim glow of the headlights reflecting off the windshield, but when he lit a cigarette, in the blue-white flare of the match I caught a glimpse of him from the neck up. He had one of those narrow, ax-shaped heads, with close-set eyes, a blade-thin nose, and no chin to speak of. His black hair was pulled straight back by a greasy-looking leather headband that matched his greasy-looking leather jacket.

“Here, this’ll help.” He handed me the lit cigarette, straight from his lips. The yuck factor was so high it was practically off the charts, but I took it anyway, and puffed at it until I had surrounded myself with a cloud of smoke that almost, but not quite, overpowered the stink.

“What is that smell?” I asked him, now that I knew he was aware of it, too. He jerked his thumb behind him, toward the flatbed. I turned and pressed my nose against the slider window in the back of the cab. At first I saw only a dark shape, then another car passed us in the opposite direction, and in the fast-moving sweep of the headlights, I saw a pair of huge, filmy brown eyes staring back at me. I was eyeball to eyeball with a dead horse.

“Christ on a crutch!” I jerked my head away so suddenly I got a crick in my neck.

“Welcome to the Buzzard-mobile,” the driver said with a dim-watted grin. “Buzzard John, at your service.”

“Luke Sweet, at yours.” As I shook his hand, I noticed he was staring at the long white feathers I’d taken from Brent and stuck through the knot of the bandanna for luck.

“You know what kind of feathers those are you got there?” he asked me.

“No sir, I don’t.” I could tell he dug it when I called him sir.

“Them’s eagle feathers. Bald eagle. Possession’s a federal crime, unless you’re a member of a recognized tribe. Like me.”

“Then you take ’em.” I untied the feathers and handed them over. “Last thing I need is a federal beef.”

He chuckled as he reached into his pocket and handed me a neat little clasp knife with a cartoonish-looking buzzard’s head carved into the wooden handle. “And you take this.”

“What for?”

“I can’t accept eagle feathers as a gift. It would put me too deep in your debt, spiritually. A trade is different.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“Fair enough,” Buzzard John agreed, arranging the feathers into his leather headband. “So where ya headed, Luke Sweet?”

That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? By now I’d had plenty of time to think about it. The only person I knew in this part of the country was a guy named Rudy, a Hatchapec Indian pot grower my dad used to do business with. And while I couldn’t be sure of an open-arms welcome from a pot rancher, Rudy had always acted friendly toward me. And one other thing I knew for sure. Welcoming or unwelcoming, there was no way he’d be calling the cops on me. “You know where the Hatchapec reservation is?” I asked him.

“I ought to,” he said. “I am one.”

Buzzard John was right. After a while, I kind of forgot about the smell in the truck. Especially after he fired up this humongous bomber of a joint. It was goofy fun at first, being stoned again after not smoking anything for over a week. We laughed and toked and made up jokey slogans for his business. “You Can’t Beat Our Dead Horses,” and “From Moo to Glue” were my two favorites.

A half hour or so later, the Buzzard-mobile dropped me off at the bottom of a long dirt driveway. “Those folks you’re visiting, it’s not such a good idea to drive up there unless they’re expecting you. This late in the growing season, some folks bobby-trap their driveways. So if I was you, young Luke, I’d stick to walking in the ditches.”

Right around then was when being stoned started to lose its attraction for me. And a few minutes after I started up the hill, it turned into a distinct liability. I was keeping to the gully like Buzzard John said, when I heard a truck coming up behind me. I turned around and was immediately blinded by the glare of a spotlight.

“Hands on your head!” Car doors slammed; footsteps pounded. Two guys jumped out. They slammed me against the side of a truck, then one guy held me while the other patted me down. I was expecting to be handcuffed and read my rights, but instead they lowered a sack over my head and shoved me into the back of their pickup. One of them must have climbed in with me, because when I started to reach for the hood, I felt a gun barrel prodding my chest. “Leave it on,” was all he said.

The truck roared on up the hill. Jouncing around in back, I grabbed the side of the bed and held on for dear life, praying that the guy with the rifle had the safety on. The truck stopped, they hustled me out, took off the hood. I found myself standing at the edge of a cliff with the men flanking me, one at each elbow. The ravine below looked bottomless in the dark.

“Who are you spying for?” asked the guy at my right elbow. I saw he was wearing a straw cowboy hat, but I still hadn’t seen either of their faces.

“Nobody. I swear on my mother’s life, I’m not spying for anybody.”

They leaned me out over the abyss. “I’m going to ask you one more time,” said the man. “So unless you can fly, you’d better give me an answer. Who sent you?”

“Nobody sent me,” I said again, wearily. “My name is Luke Sweet, Jr. I’m looking for a guy named Rudy. I don’t know his last name. He’s a Hatchapec, he’s got kind of a hooked nose, you know, like…” I half-turned, drew a sharp angle in the air with my forefinger. The guy to my left kind of chuckled. The other guy, the one with the hat, yanked me back from the ledge and spun me around.

“Yeah, I thought I recognized you,” he said. It was Rudy, of course, crooked schnoz and all. Either he’s gonna kill me here and now for making fun of his nose, or everything’s finally gonna be okay, I thought, sticking out my hand. Rudy ignored it. “Take him down to the house,” he told the other man. “Keep an eye on him until I get there.”