Gonna get wild and crazy after this little "show down." Stay tuned...

“Where’d you git babies from?” JR asked. All the “juniors” up there wound up being called “JR,” so when you called one of them, a whole chorus of guys would go, “Yo!”

This one was a Goon. A big, good looking kid my age with a black haystack of hair and red eyes at half-mast from all that Christmas weed they’d been smoking all week.

I gave him a wink and said, “Babies R Us. They had a big sale on twins last year.”

A couple of half dead dendrites finally met up somewhere inside that thick skull of his, and he smiled, gave me a little snort and said, “You a crazy mother fucker, man.”

Wyatt finally bopped out of the house wearing skinny jeans and a robin’s egg blue sweater, both of which showed off that nice little body that had kept me so busy all night long. And the wind did that shampoo commercial thing to her hair at that moment, too.

The elements were sure working with her up there, I have to admit. It was almost a Disney princess entrance. You know, the way they seem to float on air and all the little cartoon animals rush to gaze upon her in awe.

JR went, “Damn...” and smiled wider than I thought Goons were allowed.

“Keep your eyes on the road, son,” I told him as she slid in next to me.

He went, “Si, Jefito,” in a sarcastic tone. The Goons always made fun of the other men. The men who kept them fed and put roofs over their heads and made the money they bought all those Metallica t-shirts and weed with.

He’d come over with one of the new Ranger UTVs they’d chosen for me to use while we were there. It looked like it could climb up the side of a mountain if I asked it to. We’d just bought a whole fleet to replace the junkers they’d been hanging onto and damned near getting killed by for years.

Ranch people have trucks from the Dust Bowl days, damned near. They’re like those Cubans still driving around in the Caddys they ripped off of the rich folks the day Fidel took over. You make do. You make it funky. And over here, you get one of those “historic vehicle” license plates to make it legit, too.

As soon as Wyatt’s butt hit the seat next to me, JR hit that road like a bat out of hell and glanced back to give me a snotty little smile. I don’t know why he thought he was scaring me, since I went out riding with them every year. But I just let him enjoy himself.

See, I’m the same age as those guys, most of them. And it’s really hard for them to get used to seeing me as this guy who owns the very ground they walk on—I get that. It’s like that even with all the businesses, when this young kid with tats and silver studs running up the back of his ear comes walking into the board room and takes that chair at the head of the table.

Most older guys eventually just let it go. I’m just another sign that the world is going to hell in a handcart and life’s not fair and all that other stuff people say behind my back to make sense of it all after I leave.

But it’s real personal with guys my own age. Especially guys like the Goons who have a reason to resent me and the entire world than most. They’re not really dumb, the Goons—I need to quit making fun of them. They’re angry. So angry they can’t think straight.

They hate the way the world has treated their people and they hate their people for being the people the world treats like shit. And therefore, they sort of hate themselves.

And I am “THE WORLD,” all caps. I come there to play with the horsies and rain money on all their problems, and then I leave for Vegas. Or Cannes or Seoul or Abu Dhabi—you get what I mean. Places they don’t even know about, and a life they can’t even imagine. There’s no way to level that playing field. They can’t fight me. Literally or otherwise.

So instead they do all kinds of stupid shit to see if I’ll flinch. Sometimes I do, so they can breathe easier for a few minutes. That time I didn’t, because Wyatt was there and if that thing turned over with her in it, I was going to beat the shit out of him. And I wanted him to know that.

He was taking us to the Big House, so I could get my babies and also to let the local ladies get after Wyatt for a while. She had made a big stack of fresh frybread as both a peace offering and to go on and to pick that fight that had to come sooner or later.

I couldn’t wait to see their faces when she set it down on the table. White girl fry bread on their table. Fur was gonna fly.

And as we turned onto the road that led right up to the house, Wyatt’s jaw dropped. She hadn’t gotten a very good look when we arrived a little before dawn, so the reality was a little hard to handle all at once.

Cause it is a big house—a humungous, rambling thing the size of some of those lodges they have all over the place up there. A major upgrade from the old cabin, but you could fit four or five of those cabins inside this one. It still matches the trees and things around it, though.

We had built it about three years before, thinking we would have friends up during the summer to get away from the heat down in Tucson. And also so we could see the fall colors and make the winter holidays feel more like winter holidays.

But for the locals, it was like this sort of community center when we weren’t around. They had all their big events there, because it had a full restaurant kitchen and enough space for the women to do all the cooking together in the one place. 

And Christmas is ridiculous. They’re like the Keebler elves on crystal or something, the men and women, both. Outside, the men roast all kinds of critters over coals in the ground, and on those oil drum barbecue contraptions a lot of people make by hand.

Theirs are old and battered and somebody got the idea of welding a bunch of them together to make one big monster of a smoker, too, not long ago. I call it the Flintstones grill.

A little ways away from all that, the old women roast all these different types of chiles in a sort of cage thing you can turn with a handle. The hot coals blister and char the outsides of the chiles, so that they can peel the skins off quicker. And they need a lot of chiles. You eat them with and in everything up there.

And right by them, there’s a constant stream of women making fry bread in big vats of fat  or slapping pizza sized tortillas down on the tops of even more oil drums. Those drums have a big hole cut in one side, so that they work like stoves.

The top is the griddle and the hole lets them start and keep stoking a fire that keeps the griddle hot all day. Sometimes they’re rigged so you can put an old oven rack up above the coals to bake with, but you have to be real careful doing that. Only the “master chefs” can bake anything in there. The rookies turn everything to charcoal, mostly.

Inside the house, there’s some kinda of old rickety looking foldaway table in damned near all of the rooms closest to the kitchen where long lines of women slapped masa and fillings into corn husks as fast as their little fat fingers could go. They make enough tamales to feed a small country, I swear, at Christmastime.

I try to eat as many as I can stand, too. Store bought sucks once you’ve had real ones—that’s true for everything they make. I’m so spoiled it’s sad. You take me to even a good barrio restaurant and I can still find something to criticize.

When we got there that day, my little crew—Big Man included--was at the big formal dining table which would be the center of the universe ‘til after New Year’s Day. One of Aisha’s playlists was bumping the house sound system—we’d had enough Christmas music by then. So her, Joie and the other girls were all rapping along with “If That’s Your Boyfriend,” that Meshell Ndegeocello song about how she was “boot slamming” some other woman’s man every night.

I mean, that part where she says:

“Ooo ooo baby baby

Good to the last chip, bottom of the bag

Ooo baby baby

Make you wanna do things that you never have

Ooo baby baby

Mad sex and when we're through

I really have no problem actin like I don't know you”

They all slapped each other five after that last line, and all the young server girls standing by like little waitresses were sniggering and diggin’ it. I mean, their mothers would have slapped them into next week if they ever said something like that.

And as soon as I said, “Oh, we’re feelin’ real sassy this mornin’,” all the servers ran for their “battle stations” to grab up plates and silverware and the first round of bowls and platters and pitches and whatnot.

The dining room is the only room they don’t cook in because it was where all the guests are served as soon as they sit down. And they do that all the time, not just during feasts and whatnot, because up there, you feed anyone who walks into your house.

They’ve known real famines down the centuries, those people. That’s how they came to be there, in fact. Running from ancient villages where the soil had gotten all used up and people were starving to death. So not feeding a guest was like wishing them dead. Even people they probably didn’t like, people who meant to do them harm got at least a cup of coffee or a cold drink. That’s the trouble with Native people. They feed the hand that bites them, so to speak.

It’s the little girls, mostly, who serve you. But there are a few older ones there to show them how things work. And I could definitely tell those older few weren’t too happy waiting on Wyatt.

First of all, a couple of really hot ones my age started giving me the eye big time despite the fact that my woman was right there, watching. Wyatt didn’t pay it any mind. Or rather, she acted like they weren’t even there. Her way of showing them she had a lock on it. Which only made them snarkier. And blush even redder when I caught someone rolling their eyes or something.

Cat waved us down to her end of the table so I could take my place at the head as always. When I was there, I sat at the head of every table, even in the homes of the other people up there. The husband would sit at one end, and I sat at the other.

I grabbed Ty and Taylor on the way and sat there with both of them on my lap watching the others eating and drinking and laughing while the server girls ran around taking half empty bowls and platters off the table and replacing them with heaps of fresh food.

I don’t need the Renaissance Fair. I’ve got the ranch.

And Joie must’ve noticed me gloating because she shot me this look and said, “I’d bow, but there’d be buttons flying like bullets up in here, honey. I have stuffed myself like a damned pig!”

“That’s the idea,” I said.

“Yeah, well, we gon’ have to do some serious workin’ out before we go to Vegas, though,” Aisha said. “We don’t want no seams splittin’ out there onstage.”

 “We could work that into the show,” Mike said with this little twinkle in her eye. “If they pop, you just start peelin’ ‘em off all chill, right? Like, ‘Oh, we meant to do that.’”

“Who gon’ pay to see big ol’ love handles bouncin’ around?” Aisha asked her.

“Honey, men like nekked no matter what,” Joie informed us. “Of course, it takes a lot more than that to impress King Henry the Oversexed here...”

“Whaddaya mean? I’m no different than anybody else,” I said.

And boy, my crew and all those server girls started laughing their asses off.  So I guess they didn’t agree with me on that. I just shrugged it off and reached for one of the platters, though. Which is why I was the first one to notice that some of the server women had drawn a bead on the “foreign” fry bread.

“Who made this?” one of them asked, like she was asking us who farted.

 They know their own stuff. Everyone makes everything pretty much the same up there, taught over hundreds of years by the older women. Wyatt’s bread didn’t look that different, but they knew it wasn’t theirs anyway.

And seconds after one of the servers slipped into the kitchen to sound the alarm, a group of older women came in with more food to put on the sideboards against the walls. But it was just an excuse to come to check out the brazen hussy who’d had the nerve to put her fry bread up against theirs.

Tia Imelda—we’re going to call her just “Tia” from here on--toddled in with a big bowl of freshly made chorizo and eggs and set it down right next to that fry bread as if to say, “Okay, it’s on.”

And she looked me dead in the eyes said, “She cooks for you.”

I smiled and said, “Yup.” To let the games begin.

And I know it’s kind of screwed up that it’s all about cooking and baby raising and pleasing the men and all that up there. But I do love a good cat fight. And this was going to be epic.

Tia smiled and said, “I’m surprised she got up early enough to do all that.”

“How come?” I said. It was a set up. But I walked into it grinning.

So she said, “Well, you could not have gotten any sleep. There was this little coyote yipping all night long over that way.”

BOOM. Gauntlet thrown. In my face.

And all the young girls started huddling and tittering, especially the two hot ones.

Until Wyatt said, “Must’ve been that big one that got after her,” right on time and shut them the fuck up.

Honest to God, they looked like she’d bitch slapped the lot of them Three Stooges style.

So Tia gave this deep chested laugh and said, “You keep that up every night, you’ll be fat like the rest of us pretty soon.”

Wyatt shot me a look but didn’t say anything. If they knew she couldn’t have babies, that would be no joke. I didn’t think they’d shun her, but it’d get kind of weird, though.

And then one of the younger girls said, “White women don’t even eat when they’re like that.” Sort of cautious, because younger women don’t get to jump in as a rule.

“What do you mean, they don’t eat? You have to eat,” one older one said.

“Not like we do,” the girl said. “Just salads and stuff. So they don’t get all big.”

“Maybe you should eat like them, then,” Tia said—another slam, right? The girl was a little on the plump side—or, okay, she probably rocked a triple XL, actually. Speaking of rolls bouncing around.

So she blushed and left for the kitchen immediately. And you should know that it wasn’t really about her waist size, that comment. It was Tia teaching her where the line was, you know? That one you don’t cross with me.

So all the young girls got back to work, including the two who’d been hawking me like mad. And that’s when Tia finally reached for a piece of Wyatt’s fry bread, folded up some eggs in it and took a huge bite while the rest of us tried to keep eating as if it didn’t mean anything.

Wyatt got herself a big spoonful of the eggs and some roasted poblanos, cool as a cuke. I was impressed how well she handled her business around them. Even if you’d been through all this before, it could make you sort of nervous. But she didn’t even blink.

And my other little mothers exchanged looks with each other and then me, like they were prouder of her than I was. Aisha gave me a little wink, and then gave Wyatt a little nod like she was bowing to her or something.

That was the only time Wyatt sort of skipped a beat, possibly still a little worried about Aisha being alone up there. But she made a smooth recovery. I was the only one who even noticed the little hiccup, in fact.

And then Tia told her, “When you get done there you better come cook with us,” all casual, like it was no thang at all. But she also looked at all the younger and older women as if to say, “The Queen has spoken.”

So I jumped in right quick, with “I wanna show her around a bit first.” Though they didn’t really expect her to cook with them. It was just Tia letting the others know there would be no more jousting today. Or any day, actually. Wyatt had won.

To tease me, though, Tia said, “What hasn’t she seen already?”

And then she gave Wyatt a firm pat on the shoulder and headed on back to the kitchen with all the other ladies right behind her. A few dawdled to get a good look at this interloper—the two flirts among them.

But they didn’t stay long. And their eyes looked more hurt than angry by then. No fun with Jefito this year. But I knew they’d find their Christmas cheer elsewhere, though. There are all kinds of young guys up there during the holidays. And they start doing the deed pretty young up there, too.

Once they’d left us to our food again, Mike said, “Well, that was intense,” which gave us a chance to laugh out loud, finally.

“You knew they was gon’ act a fool,” Aisha said. “Girl, you sho’ spoilt they Chris’mas this year.”

Wyatt didn’t ask, “Yours, too?” but I could see her thinking it. So I gave her a look and she gave me one right back, as if to ask me if I really thought she was stupid enough to say something like that.

“It would take a lot more than me to spoil all this,” Wyatt said.

“I’m always surprised how nice they are to people, given what we did to them,” Joie said.

“Out here it wasn’t even like that,” Mike said. “They didn’t even see any white people, a lot of these tribes. I mean, there were those Conquistadors and whatnot, but once they went runnin’ up into the desert nobody was gonna chase after ‘em anymore.”

“Yeah, they did, too,” Aisha said. “That black one got kilt up there, that Esteban, he come up here. Said them Hopis kilt a whole buncha them Spaniards, too. That’s how come didn’t nobody come back up this way no more.”

“Wow. American History 101,” Big Man said. First time he’d looked up from all that food to say anything.

And Aisha went, “Only part o’ hist’ry I cared about in school. Hearin’ some brown folks kilt some white folks for a change.”

“Hey! There’s white folks at this table,” Bonnie said. Joking, though.

“Oh, y’all don’t count. You fam’ly,” Aisha told her.

“Gracious of you,” I said.

And she went, “Missy Thing got you feelin’ sassy, too,” and gave me one of her winks.

But I just flicked a chile stem her way and looked over at Bonnie. Who was looking well rested even though she’d had the kids with her all night. Which made my heart happy.

 “How do you like it so far, Granny B?” I asked.

“How the other half lives, huh?” she said.

And Kelli said, “They brought us this hot chocolate this morning! I mean, oh my God!”

“Did the babies have some, too?” I asked. Worried about the sugar in it, of course.

“Lil Daddy, you’re gonna have to let that go,” Big Man said. “Maybe not right this minute, but you can’t police everything goes into their mouths. ‘Specially up here.”

“I can make them some things with fruit instead of sugar,” Wyatt said.

“You bet not get them womens mad at you,” Aisha told her.

“At the little house, then,” Wyatt said.

“You heard Auntie. You gon’ be cookin’ at the Big House from here on.”

“She’s not cooking anywhere. She’s on vacation,” I said. And then I totally contradicted the “vacation” thing by asking, “Anybody check messages yet?”

“And that’s the end of our vacation,” Cat teased. “Grab a coupla plates, folks. We’re heading for that big office upstairs.”

“Good girl,” I said. And I looked at Wyatt and said, “You can finish eating while we handle our bidness. It won’t be long, okay?”

Aisha flicked that chile stem back my way and said, “Let the child come on up there—y’all grab some o’ this’n’ carry it up. Granny Bonnie, you’n’ that girl come on up there wit us, too.”

Everybody tried to balance as many plates and bowls and whatnot as their arms could hold on the way up to the top floor that really was a big “office” space at the very top of the house.

The WiFi was a little wonky sometimes, but we could make do. I got on the big PC in one corner and went to my site to check messages. I wouldn’t be making any calls if I could help it, but not knowing what was going on wasn’t too wise. Until I made that final retreat. Which I was really looking forward to now.

It wasn’t just about Wyatt. Being at the ranch reminded me there was a whole world that didn’t give a shit about any of the things that kept me so damned busy all the time. It was going to be dope to only have to check in, like, once a week. If that. I couldn’t turn my back on it all entirely, but I’d ‘way in the back seat, watching the driver. And that was fine with me.

But we weren’t there yet. So I pulled up a whole bunch of lists and schedules and whatnot that Che had prioritized to get me ready for Vegas. Big Man’s arrival had made us have to regroup some. But it looked like she had it all figured out.

Just so you know how this works, my personal Web site is like an electronic filing cabinet, with a page for each important part of my life. The home page does that thing you see in news rooms mostly. Under that day’s picture of me, there’s a big text box of scrolling alerts that show up red, yellow, green and white.

You can tell from the color how urgent they are, and when you click on one, you get a summary and a list of contacts and all that. The “colorful” ones stick at the top ‘til someone gets to them. The others just keep coming around ‘til I either file or delete them.

I can glance at that 24/7 on all my devices, but Che usually does that, and makes all my devices “buzz” if a red one needs me right away. She’s gotten so good that I only get buzzed about twice a day if that. And because she’s so good, she’s one of the very few people I’m taking with me when I bow out of the daily grind—she pitched me, in fact, for the job.

She loves her work. She loves the drama and the glamor and she just couldn’t see going back to work for some straight suit after being with us. And I couldn’t do what I wanted to do without someone like her minding the gates, still. So the pitch wasn’t even necessary. She was always part of the plan.

 Joie came over with this big bowl of something or other and said, “Any news about that damned cop?”

“This is the only time I see you eat,” I said, pulling up my “legal eagles” page for her.

“And after we leave here Miss DeVivre will be on the lettuce and water diet for the rest of the year, honey,” she said. “These are the devil’s children up here, I swear! Pan dulces and hot chocolate they brought us this morning! On trays! With fresh fruit and fresh flowers and big smiles--who says ‘No’ to that?”

“How come we didn’t get any?” I asked.

“Cause they knew y’all had other things to nibble on,” Aisha said.

And I said, “Wow,” pretending to be “shocked.” By now there’s actually almost nothing you can say that would embarrass me. But Wyatt was new. And turning as red as a pepper.

But Aisha just winked at me and stuffed a big old “fuck you” spoonful of beans in her mouth. What she said was partly true. No one never disturbed me until Tia got an “all clear” call from me and let the staff know I was up and around.

So I went back to the site to answer Joie’s question about Friendly. And there was some interesting news.

“He made it out of Mexico apparently,” I said. “But nobody knows where he wound up.”

“What the hell was that about anyway?” Cat asked, heading my way so she could read over my shoulder. And to get away from all that food for a minute, too, I think.

“Chase says it was some local sheriff or something who got after him,” I said. “But he’s not sure if it was a local issue or the judge messing with his mind or what yet. I know they get nervous about Yankee cops down—oh, wow. This is good news. The judge backed down. I wonder why?”

“That bastard bet’ not start no shit durin’ the holidays,” Aisha declared.

I reread the note from Chase, trying to see if there were any clues in it. But there weren’t. And it made me nervous. But I let that go and went back to the Home page.

And said, “Bad news about your house, Mami.”

Wyatt came over as I searched the feed for more info right quick. There was a longer message, so I opened it to let her read it with me.

“Not up to code?” she said.

I looked up at her and said, “Yep. The contractors found all kinds of violations. So I guess you’ll be staying with us a little longer.”

She gave me a “look.” But then she put her arms around my neck like she was just fine with that.

And Mike said, “Oh, please. She was never going back to that stupid house.”

“Yeah, but all her stuff’s still in there,” I said, typing a message for Che to handle the removal at once.

And as soon as Mike said, “Watch this,” to Wyatt, I said, “Boom! Problem solved.”

“What have you done now?” Wyatt asked. I reached back with one hand and she took it.

“We’ll put it in storage over at the warehouse. Don’t sweat it.”

“I’d like to sweat something for a change, thank you very much.”

“You didn’t sweat enough last night, coyote woman?” Joie said—got a big laugh, of course.

And then Bonnie looked up from her shucking her latest tamale and said, “I didn’t hear anything.”

“What are you, disappointed?” I asked her.

“Well, I mean, that’s about as close as I’m gonna get at this age!”

“Oh, honey, there’s all kinds of good lookin’ older men up here,” Joie told her. “No chicken hawks up here. They like some junk in the trunk and some snow on the roof.”

 “They chase after your skinny ass, though,” Mike said.

 “Cause they think her people got good juju,” Aisha told her.

And Joie went, “Sho’ you right,” and gave us a circle of snaps.

But I’d moved on to another page that kept me from laughing along with the others.

“Vegas is gonna suck,” I said. Not to kill the buzz but because it was true.

I’d just accessed all these lists of interviews I would have to give and people I would be interviewing for jobs and projects. And meetings about the club I’d have to sit in on--nonstop business from the minute we landed.

“Aw, Papi, you know you happy for us,” Aisha said.

“I’m very happy for you. It’s not all club stuff, though. Everybody wants to hit me up because it’s Vegas.”

“Wait’ll you see Sundance,” Big Man said, as if Vegas was just a warm up.

“Yeah, I know,” I said. Already dreading it. Though it was going to be really amazing to be making movies. Legit ones. I wasn’t practicing my Oscar speech yet, but I was definitely more into that than anything else on the horizon.

“Well, think about the days when nobody gave a shit,” Mike reminded me.

“I was happy,” Aisha shot back.

“I didn’t say we weren’t happy. I’m just saying—“

“Perdón, Jefito!” one of the young girls called from the stairs. They never entered a room without letting us know they were coming.

So I went, “Mande?” And a little one about 7 or 8 appeared in the doorway looking all nervous. It was that “do not disturb the boss” thing. Even the older people acted that way.

But she found the nerve to say, “Tia says that the men are up now. At the stables.”

That was “says” with a long “a.” English being their second language. Their third one still influences the way they talk, too, even if they’ve forgotten it.

I said, “Thank you, sweetie,” and her cheeks got red, but she was grinning as she ran off.

“I wanna see Butch’n’ them, too,” Aisha informed me.

“And I wanna check out some cowboy bootys,” Joie said. “They work them jeans up here, honey. Yassss!”

“I wanna check out some cowboy bootys,” Joie said. “They work them jeans up here, honey. Yassss!”

 “Sounds like a plan,” I told him. “We’ll meet up for the pow wow later on, then.”

He saluted me with a tamale, and then bit it in half and gave me a wink that said just how glad he was to leave the logistics—and ladies--to me for a change. I smiled back, trying not to give away something I knew that he didn’t.

And you’ll have to wait a little longer to know what that was. I keep teasing you, I know. But trust me a little while longer. It’s worth the wait.