Welcome to Part II!

If you like to Save the Cat, this is the "Fun and Games" part. If you follow Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey story pattern, this is the part where the antagonist enters the enchanted forest and builds up the strength and skills to face an slay his "demons and dragons."

Colt's ranch is actually his happy place, but taking Wyatt along kicks him out of his comfort zone. There's no busy-ness to distract them from each other, and facing the realities of their very unusual relationship is a dragon they're not quite ready to face. But of course, in the Hero's Journey...the dragon chases you 'til you stop and stand your ground.

Right now, they're just entering that land of enchantment, literally and figuratively. So the battle is yet to come. And Aisha will show them how to face a "test dragon," first...

Ready? Let's do it!

NOTE: I skipped a chapter wanting to get you to Part II ASAP. I'll summarize, when the time is right so that you don't get lose. There was a little hint about Wyatt's rez world in the skipped part, but you don't need it yet...

I think you’re going to enjoy this part of the story.

In the movies it would be the sappy part where the couple finally has some good times and realizes it’s a “go.” You know what I mean, the part with all the montages like, the two of them sitting at a restaurant cracking each other up and walking in the park and stopping to walk around some fountain. And then one of ‘em might fall in, and the other one cracks up and then jumps in with them.

That part. Only no fountains, no montages. Because I hate that shit. And because we weren’t the cutesy romantic comedy chick and whoever the big hot hunk of the moment was at the time. I mean, Wyatt’s twice my age at least and I’m...well...me.

So those complications that are supposed to “ensue” in a story? Well there’s a big honking one for you. Always lurking beneath the surface or whatever we do. Even the cute stuff.

Even so, it all takes place in a world you wouldn’t get to visit otherwise. And it’s a world where I could be more myself. Where we could all be just us for a few days. You haven’t really met me yet—I know you figure you should know me pretty well after half a book, but you don’t.

Neither did Wyatt.

So it was time for a pit stop. That’s a great way to describe it. Like we pulled out of the fast lane for a while, to get stripped down and filled up and repaired for the next lap.

Big Man rolled up to the front door in our big ass shuttle bus—a real snazzy one all fixed up like a living room inside. It’s one of the ones we pick up people from the airport with sometimes, when there’s a whole bunch of them and a lot of “cargo” to haul, too. Like our movie crews and people like that.

We take it to the ranch because that’s one time we don’t want to fly. In fact, I always do the driving. I actually enjoy it, even after the long day we’ve had. It’s a four hour haul, but it eases us into the world we’re heading for. And I get a kick out of how the terrain and weather gradually change as we go.

So now it’s also time for a geology lesson. Yeah, I mean it. As you know, I have a jones for the land itself out here, so I’ve really studied it. That’s how I learn best—that’s how we all learn best. By accidentally absorbing all kinds of useful things while we’re checking out something we care about.

I care about Arizona. The actual state, the piece of the country that we named Arizona. The people, yeah, some. But the land itself...that’s my heart. And I know some stuff about it that would probably surprise you.

Like that it has this “dividing line” called the Mogollon (“Muggy-own”) Rim. It’s where the Colorado Plateau ends almost right smack in the middle of Arizona—a big cliff thing, that divides the high country from the big valley south of it.

Think of it sort of like Arizona was a big sheet cake and someone cut it clean in half and scraped away all the cake from the middle down and left that southern side all flat.

Above and in the little foothills below that rim, you get all four seasons. In fact, it gets damned cold in the winter. And it snows up a storm, too. But the farther south you go, the warmer things get, ‘til you hit the boiling point in Phoenix.

That’s because you’re dropping down into a sort of...basin, they call it. You see this stuff on weather reports all the time, how cities like Phoenix and Tucson sit in these big “bowls,” Valleys with mountains around them.

Phoenix is what they call an urban heat island, which is a big old city where the hot air generated by all the exhaust and sunlight reflecting off the asphalt and cement and whatnot rises up and then just sort of sits on top and makes it hotter.

And it really is a big city--by area alone, it’s bigger than LA, New York and Chicago. It’s spreading out in that LA way, now, too. All the towns are. Pretty soon there’ll be no empty space between any of them—no more of the wide open spaces everyone moved her for.

For the record, though, Tucson is half the size of Phoenix in area and population both and doesn’t have many big buildings at all. It’s actually kind of humorous when you’re on the expressway and you see the two or three sort of tall buildings downtown sticking up in the middle of everything. If you’re ever lost, those buildings can help you get your bearings.

It’s greener and has more open space, too, Tucson, so it’s usually a good ten degrees cooler all the time. But ten degrees cooler than 115, well...it’s still damned hot in the summer.

Tuff’s “Howling Wolf Ranch” sits just below the Rim, in one of the prettiest parts of the state, actually. There are aspens and oaks and all kinds of pines and I don’t know what all kinds of trees. And in the fall, they get crazy colorful: red, gold, orange and this cinnamon brown I like, too.

And the weather is perfect then, too. Warm, with just the slightest nip in the breeze. Just before it starts snowing like mad and you can get marooned for months. Winter is no joke there. In fact, people run from winter up there the way people run from summer down South. You can get stuck out there, once it starts to snow real hard. People have died like that. From getting sick or hurt and not being able to get any help, or by trying to walk their way out or just not having enough supplies on hand, basically, too.

But the road was clear at first. Wyatt sat up front next to me just staring at the scenery—you could actually see pretty well. We had a big old spotlight moon and it was crisp and clear.

And then, all of a sudden, we hit snow. Huge, fluffy clumps of flakes that piled up fast. It was a little scary to drive after a while, because there hadn’t been much traffic through there yet so there were no ruts to follow.

But I’m not as weird about that as a lot of native Zonies. They freak out if it rains too hard, so snow just sends them right into their lizard brains. There’s all kinds of accidents in Tucson during the monsoons for that reason. People lose their fucking minds just because there’s water on the ground.

They also try to drive through flooded roads and get stuck or swept away and drowned. That’s why we have “stupid driver laws” now. Seriously, we had to slap fines on people for driving into big gushing torrents of water like they thought God would part them like the Red Sea or something. Or driving under flooded overpasses despite the fact that the big ruler thing on big columns in front of them clearly showed that the water level was taller than their cars.

I didn’t tell Wyatt about the time I’d had to drive with the door partly open so I could lean down and find that line in the middle line on the road. That scared the bejabbers out of me. The sky and the ground were identical—a total white out. I had no sense of direction at all.

But because it was so cold, the snow was blowing just enough to let me see the white line now and then if eased along real slow. If I hadn’t been able to see that line now and then, I could’ve wound up driving off a damned cliff or into a little arroyo or something and never been seen again.

Once I got to where there were trees and such, we were cool. Or, I could at least tell where the side of the road was, if not the middle. But there was a long stretch where I didn’t know where the hell I was half the time. I tried to drive toward this mountain ahead of us that I knew was north, at least, but I have to admit, I was scared shitless that we were going to just drop out of the world any minute.

That night, though, I was enjoying the hell out of being behind the wheel. There was this sweet stillness, even with the girls and Joie back there goofing on Big Man, that made me feel all peaceful and happy.

My babies were asleep—Bonnie and Kelli were sleeping, too, which was probably a good idea. First of all, I was going to need to crash out for a good long time to get myself back on “circadian” time. So I was grateful they were with us to help me with that.

But also, I could tell I was going to have to let Bonnie have a lot more time with them even though technically they were all mine for a while. It’s healing just to hold them against your body. They’re all new and fresh—they feel like hope, you know? Which we all needed at that moment, actually. But Bonnie more than maybe everyone else.

So I just kept one hand on the wheel and one holding Wyatt’s as we hauled ass down the highway like we were all relieved to be out of the public eye for a change.

But when we were in the public eye, well...the public didn’t know what the hell to think. Wyatt got a kick out of just watching people watch us.

Like at this one truck stop with the little restaurant and convenience store we stopped at so Bonnie could go to the bathroom. Wyatt didn’t have that bladder issue some older women get, yet. But she and all the ladies decided to go while they had the chance, because there’s not a lot of places you can squat on those roads. 

Guys can pee anywhere, of course. But women have to have at least a couple of good sized saguaros or something. And there wasn’t anything out there at the time.

And once they got in there, they all wanted to go look at all the little tchotchkes those places are full of. Actually, along with the souvenir shot glasses and whatnot, they’ve got everything from little purses and bandanas and things to tire repair kits and camping gear.

It’s all set out in these aisles you have to walk through to get to the little Subway and off brand pizza counters in back and I get all caught up in that stuff like a tourist, too. I know I don’t need any of it, but I get all amazed at the gizmos and gadgets and pretty soon I have this armload of stuff that winds up buried in the glove compartment or rolling around in the trunk for years.

I mean, once I bought these containers that let you cook food in your car engine, right? You can do that with cans or some heavy duty foil, but they claimed no toxic shit would get into the food for sure with these things. And the minute they saw them, the girls gave me these looks like even if it worked there was no way they were going to ever touch anything I made in them.

But I made these amazing chili dogs one time, and they wolfed them down pretty quick when we stopped at one of those roadside tables they sit out in the middle of nowhere out this way.

Can cooking in an engine is an old trick though. Only, you have to be careful when you open the thing or it’ll explode all over you. The tough part is getting the dogs and the buns and all warmed up without burning them to charcoal—30 minutes, max, for that. And they were gone in about 15--yes, I actually did this. It’s the baby Einstein in me, maybe. That’s what Wyatt would say.

This time, I resisted all the gadgets pretty well except for a couple of toys for the babies. But Joie and the girls bought some of those black biker bitch t-shirts with the wolves and eagles on them. And some of those big sticks of mystery meat you only ever eat on car trips and big cans of that Arizona tea to wash the taste away with.

Up at the counter where you pay, this old man dressed like he just got down off a tractor smiled at Joie and said, “You one o’ them lady boys.” Only he said it sort of nice, not to insult her. He just didn’t know the right word to use. But his eyes were kind.

And when Joie winked and said, “Born’n’ bred,” he smiled a little more and told her, “Well, that ain’t fair!” and that she was “a damn site prettier than most of the women ‘round this way.”

I wasn’t surprised. People think all Arizonans are racist, homophobic fuck heads but a lot of them are so far away from the rat race—and the media--that they can look a thing over pretty objectively and make some truly interesting decisions. He liked Joie’s looks. Pure and simple.

So they struck up a nice little conversation. And from then on, the rest of us would sing that “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” song whenever we wanted to tease her. The “E-I-E-I-O” part was all we had to do to crack her and everybody else up.

But we weren’t done after the Old MacDonald affair. Because then Aisha wanted a malt—a real malt like the ones they hardly make anywhere anymore except places like that. So Wyatt, the girls and me headed on into the restaurant while Bonnie and everybody else went back to the van to sleep some more, since it looked like we were going to be hanging out there for a good little while.

Big Man took care of the gas pump thing we’d just left in the tank and got into a conversation with another old dude driving a truck that was probably built before Big Man was born. I could hear him laughing out there—I swear, I think if God has a voice it’s like Big Man’s voice. Especially his laugh.

Walking into that little truck stop restaurant was like going back to the year that truck was built. It was also the most depressing place I’d been in a while.

There were all these tired truckers and other sad sacks hunched over coffee cups and plates—all men. And even the way they chewed looked sad. Like they were eating cardboard or something. Or just eating to have something to do and not really tasting the food.

The spray painted snow and holly and whatnot on the big windows was kind of cool, but the little beat up looking little trees they set out as centerpieces on all the tables looked as sad as the guys sitting there chewing like hypnotized cows. And it was quiet. No music. Hardly even any of the usual restaurant noises waitresses and bus boys make. Just dead air.

The waitresses sort of perked up and then got a little wary at the same time from looking first at me and then the girls and Wyatt.

They were like those stereotypical ones you see in movies about the 50s with the big hair and the uniforms with the aprons. One of them had to be in her 60s or 70s, but her hair and face were all done up.

In fact, her hair reminded me of one of those “croque-en-bouche” things—the little trees made out of cream puffs stuck together with little sugar threads they’re always making on those cooking shows. All these big fat curls piled up on top of her head and sprayed stiff.

She had pinned a handkerchief under her name tag thing: “Wanda,” it said. Perfect name. And she drew a bead on me and said, “Well, Santa didn’t forget me after all--c’mon over here, cutie pie! Good God Almighty!”

I headed over to the counter and sat down right in front of her. And the girls came and took seats, too, but she didn’t even look at them.

And when Wyatt sat down on the other side of me, she said, “Is this your boy here?”

And Wyatt looked over at me and said, “Yep! That’s my boy!”

So Wanda gave her a big old smile for bringing me into the world, I suppose—I decided not to mess with her mind and just went along with it.

And she said, “Good looks run in the fam’ly, huh? What can I do for all you pretty people?”

“Y’all make malts?” Aisha asked—she never lets anything stop her, that one. They were going to have to wait on her whether they liked it or not.

But one of the others said, “Any kind you can think of, we sure do.”

She was Mexican—Carmen--and sort of cute and chubby. I got the feeling she wasn’t “one of the girls.”  There was a really wiry black one—Juanita--too, who was sort of on her own. She had these two French braids running around the side of her head and pinned together in back like Aisha used to do when she was a little girl.

Her and Carmen weren’t bunched up with the other three. But you could tell they were all from the little town nearby. Country women. Probably hadn’t gone any farther up the road than the truck stop their whole lives. But the world comes to you at a truck stop. Ask the waitress or the checkout people about the celebrities they meet and the stories they hear. Wanda probably was up there with Perez Hilton, you know? After all those years.

“I want a big ol’ chocolate one,” Aisha told her.

And I said, “Okay, that sounds amazing--me, too.”

“You got it—and you, hot stuff?” Wanda asked Mike, who was next in line on Aisha’s side.

Mike gave little menu a quick look and said, “Maybe...a root beer float. Yeah, that’s it.”

“Me for that—good choice!” Cat said.

And another white waitress went, “I don’t even know if I want to wait on you—and those are real, too, right? Girl.”

Lettie, was her name. And she was a big old doughy looking farm girl for sure. Moonlighting to make ends meet. Not a career waitress like Wanda, I figured. Just somebody’s mom. A lot of “somebodies,” probably, which was why she was working on Christmas.

Wanda smiled at Wyatt and said, “And Mama yours is on the house for makin’ him and my day—what’ll you have?”

“Wanna share?” I asked Wyatt.

“Make me that offer,” Wanda teased. “But I bet that girl back home would track me down and beat me black and blue--lemme go on away from here’n’ quit embarrassin’ myself!”

They all left to hit those blender things, and I smiled at Wyatt and said, “Smooth.”

“Well, why spoil it for her?”

“You know, sooner or later you’re going to have to get over it.”

“I like keeping you to myself.”

That made me smile. And I didn’t feel like getting all psychological so I let it go.

Besides which, Aisha was up fiddling around with a little jukebox on the counter. All the booths had them. And there was one about placed every two or three seats along the counter, too.

So I said, “Uh, oh,” and she laughed and started fishing down in her purse looking for change, which got us all digging for whatever we could find until she had a little pile of change to work with.

So she fed it a bunch of quarters and when Dancin’ in the Streets came on, she and the other two got up and did The Jerk and all these other 60s moves to it. That perked up all the zombies in the booths, all that tail waggin’ in their faces.

But Wyatt noticed something else. And she touched my leg and went real still.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Gun—don’t look.”

“Okay, what now?”

She squeezed that leg a little bit and said, “It’s just...on the table. I don’t think...well...I don’t know--”

“Hey! What’n’ the hell do you think you’re doin’ over there, mister?” Wanda called out to the guy Wyatt had just noticed, too.

So I turned, just before the “BOOM” and the little explosion of plaster from the ceiling above the guy who’d shot at it.

Everybody froze. A few people ran out of the restaurant real fast, too, but we didn’t because he was pointing the gun at us after that first shot. Or rather, he was pointing it at the girls, which meant I wasn’t going anywhere.

So I eased up nice and slow, and headed over to stand in front of them—Aisha grabbed my arm, but I stayed put. I could tell he didn’t want to shoot anyone. I don’t know how I could tell, I just could.

But he just stared at me—didn’t say anything. He just stared. Not angry, not...anything in particular. Just a blank stare, like he didn’t really know what he wanted to do next. I mean, he’d gotten our attention, for sure, but he didn’t seem to know what to do with us after that.

He was a sort of older guy in a camo jacket—not Army, but...like a hunter would wear. Local guy—rancher, maybe. Not some psycho, you know? Just a guy. Angry about something. Only he didn’t look angry, like I said.

He didn’t look any way at all—it was sort of confusing. Like I didn’t know whether to be afraid or what. Okay, he had a gun, but...there wasn’t anything scary about him other than that.

I saw he had a bottle of something, a pint of liquor, on the table, though. So he’d probably been sipping on that for a while. In fact, I felt like he might be  seeing double or something. Hanging there, trying to figure out which one of me was the one to shoot at, maybe.

So I said, “Sorry if we disturbed you or somethin’,” just to see if he’d give us a clue.

But he kept on staring. And then after a few more seconds, he brought the gun up to his temple and Aisha went, “Daddy, don’t do that,” and sort of stepped forward out of the bunch of us where he could see her better.

Something about her voice made him lower the gun. I think it was the “Daddy” part. Like maybe the familiarity of it, the affectionate sound of it caught him up short. Wyatt was mesmerized, too—I didn’t even know she was behind me ‘til she got hold of my arm, watching in disbelief. And admiration, too, I think.

“We cain’t lose you tonight, Papa. That just ain’t gon’ work,” Aisha told him. And he looked like he was just fascinated by her in general. I’m not sure he heard anything she said, really, he just was sort of stunned by her presence.

So he put the gun down on the table. Sort of like he was in a trance or something from her voice. And that crazy little woman went over there to his booth and said, “Can I set with you, Papa?”

He sort of smiled a little bit and she sat down. And then she said, “You ain’t gon’ shoot me, right?”

And he slid the gun over to her. Just like that. You could feel the whole room relax. People started going back to their booths. Or rushing up to pay and get the hell out of there.

Aisha took the gun and said, “I would take out the bullets but I bet you got more.”

“I got more,” he said. “I got more guns, too.”

“How come?”

“Huntin’ guns.”

“You a hunter?”

“I hunt some.”

She gave him this flirty little smile and said, “What’d you get las’ time?”

“Four point buck. Big old boy.”

And she said “Did?” like she was all proud of him or something. That killed me. And he smiled like he really liked it, too.

“What’s your name, Papa?” she asked him.

And he said, “Walter.” That was as perfect as Wanda in my estimation.

“I’m Aisha. I bet I’m the first Aisha you ever set with, huh?”

“I knew one once.”

“What?!”

He thought that was really funny—he gave her a little snort laugh and said, “She was in the Army with me. Wun as good lookin’ as you...”

“Army man! Damn, you all are some brave people.”

“It ain’t brave. It’s the job you signed on for.”

“Well, most people wouldn’ have the guts, now, would they?”

“I guess.”

“I’m here to tell you. Was you over there in Iraq?”

“Yep.”

“Well, that was every kinda messed up a thing could be, wunnit?”

“It was that. For sure,” he said. With feeling, this time.

And then he smiled at her again. But just as he did that, these two highway patrol dudes came rushing in then and Aisha turned and said, “What’cha’ll want? He ain’t hurt nobody.”

Walter gave the cops this really scary smile and said, “They want me. Been chasin’ me since before midnight.”

“Why they been chasin’ you?”

One cop yelled, “Shot at us, that’s why—put those hands where I can see ‘em!”

“Oh, he ain’t even armed—here!” Aisha said, holding the gun up butt first.

The cops looked at the gun and then at her.

And one of them said, “Ma’am, we’re gonna need you to step away now.”

“Not if ya’ll gon’ shoot ‘im.”

“Step away now,” the other one said all mean.

So I said, “She disarmed the guy. Don’t talk to her like that.”

And he turned on me then, looking all pissed.

“Who the hell do you think you’re talkin’ to, sonny boy?”

“Pete,” the other cop said to him. And Pete got all red in the face.

“We’ve been chasin’ him all over the county,” the nicer cop said to me. “He’s havin’ a bad night tonight.”

“A lot of people are, pro’bly,” I said. “But she got the gun from ‘im.”

The nicer cop smiled at Aisha and said, “I’d give up mine, too. Damn, dude, you sure lucked out, huh?”

Walter smiled again, too—even more diabolical this time, though. And he said, “One back home didn’t, though.”

“Yeah, well...we’ll....have to talk about that.”

“She dead?”

“Looks like.”

That hit us all like a bomb.

And Aisha went, “Aw, Daddy, how come you done that?”

She sounded so sorrowful that Walter actually started to tear up a little. But the cops didn’t let him answer her. They went over and hauled him up out of the booth and dragged him away—he just went limp and let them.

And Big Man and Bonnie came running in, then, looking like they’d seen a ghost or something.

“What the hell?!” Big Man cried.

“That boy done kilt somebody,” Aisha said. Like he was an old friend who’d gone crazy all of a sudden and she couldn’t believe it.

I went over and grabbed her up in my arms and said, “Coulda killed you, too--what’n’ the hell were you thinking, crazy woman?”

“Somebody hurt that man.”

I kissed her forehead and said, “You’re a trip, you know that? Go drink your malt’n’ let’s get the hell outta here.”

“I don’t want nothin’ now. You think they’ll kill ‘im? I mean, for killin’ her?”

“Let it go, baby girl,” Mike said, rubbing her shoulder. “There’s a woman dead somewhere on account of Walter.”

“I wonder what she done to him, though?” Aisha asked. “He’s not the kind would kill somebody...”

I could tell nothing we said was going to convince her otherwise. She went over to the big window to watch them shove him into the squad car and didn’t move ‘til the car pulled away--waved at him, of course, as they were leaving.

And he looked back at her like she was the whole world and he knew he was going to be leaving it soon. Which made her cry.

So I went over and got hold of her hand and she looked at me and said, “It ain’t Chris’mas for everybody.”

I wished Walter could’ve heard her say it. Probably no one had ever cared about him as much as that little crazy woman did after only a couple of words in some truck stop booth.

I said, “Yeah, well, I bet he felt like it was for a hot minute there, Santa.”

And she smiled and gave me a little peck on the lips and let me take her back over to her malt. The waitresses were all awed like she was the Virgin Mary walking over to sit at that counter.

“Bring that bottle o’ his over here!” Wanda said. “I’ll put a shot o’ that in there for you.”

And when Aisha said, “He lef’ it?” Wyatt went and got it for her.

And Aisha smiled at her and said, “I’ma put this by my cross,” and pressed it to her chest while she sipped at that malt through a straw. It had melted just enough to let her suck it through pretty easily. So she sat there sipping like she hadn’t just made some murderer’s last minutes of freedom the most memorable of his life.

I kissed her cheek again. Because she had outdone all that preaching and caroling just by saying “Daddy” real sweet that to a guy who may not have deserved to be loved, but...Aisha loves those ones most of all. It’s not her religion, by the way—her religion came later, when she found out Jesus had the same ideas about things that she had.

I don’t know where all that love comes from, given where she came from. But she gives it to the damndest people sometimes. In big old chunks, with both hands. And there’s no use warning her not to, because she’s never going to change.

Wyatt put her hand on my leg like she was thanking me for thanking her.

And I looked at her and said, “Yeah. So that happened.”

She gave me this little stare. And then smiled. And sort of looked past me, watching Aisha. With something else on her mind.