The Boys from Santa Cruz

2

A big old rambling wooden house built out over a river you could spit into from the back porch. Indians coming and going all evening, watching TV, playing cards, teenagers playing Nintendo, kids in pajamas just hanging out past their bedtimes, trying not to be noticed. In the kitchen an old Indian woman was making tortillas in a cast-iron press and cooking rice and beans over a huge black cast-iron stove.

I was sitting at the round, scar-topped kitchen table eating Indian pizza (flatbread crust, bean topping) with a couple of Rudy’s cousins when Rudy returned. Black hair pulled back in a braid, black hooded eyes, right-angled nose, skin the color of black-raspberry fruit rolls. His faded denim jacket and jeans fit him like they’d been tailored. He shooed his cousins away, sat down, tilted his chair back on two legs, tipped his straw cowboy hat down over his eyebrows, and folded his arms. “Now suppose you tell me why you shouldn’t be lyin’ dead at the bottom of the canyon,” he said.

The thought of making stuff up or holding stuff back never even occurred to me. I gave Rudy the whole story, from the phone call in the trailer to the ride in the Buzzard-mobile. He listened impassively with his chair tipped back and his arms folded. No comments, no questions, nothing in his expression to reveal how he felt or what he was thinking. Every so often, somebody would come into the kitchen and whisper something to him, like in The Godfather. He’d hold up his hand for me to stop talking, whisper something back or nod or shake his head, then gesture for me to go on.

When I finished, Rudy told me to wait there, that he’d be right back, and left the kitchen. I knew without being told that my life was in his hands, like he was some old Roman emperor. I also knew I ought to be working on some kind of an escape plan in the event of a thumbs-down, even if it was only making a break for the back door or saying I had to use the bathroom and climbing out the window.

But I stayed put, even with nobody watching, for the simple reason that I had nowhere to escape to.