The wild rumpus begins, 'way out in the wilds of northern AZ...

Fun as it was schmoozing with murderers and all, I was more than ready when I heard the rifle shot that meant ranch security had seen us turn down the little wheel rut road that eventually gets you to Tuff’s spread.

You take the wheel ruts to a paved road that winds its way up to the wrought iron gates with a big old howling wolf in the middle --the ranch brand I told you about. Those pages will open for you only if you’re expected.

But you’re not going to find those gates unless you know how. Tuff deliberately sought out land they hadn’t been able to sell because it’s way out there in the middle of nowhere and hard to get to. So he got it for a ridiculous price. And it gives up total privacy.

Once in a blue moon someone will blunder his way up to them. Usually a tourist from back east chasing an eagle or something else wild and beautiful they wanted a shot of to tweet or put on Facebook or Tumblr or whatever.

Since we took over, there’s a guard tower and booth and all kinds of motion detectors and things—it’s like trying to cross the goddamned border. And when those alarms go off up at the command post, there are butts behind wheels and boots on the ground—cowboy boots, mostly—in seconds.

But for us, that rifle shot is a big “Welcome home!” Or more like, “Here they come!”

Wyatt startled when she heard it, probably flashing back to the truck stop. And she looked at me to check and see what I was doing with it.

“Just means they see us,” I told her.

And Mike leaned in between us and said, “That’s how they do things up here. Buncha wild Indians.”

“Nice,” I said, giving her this little smirk.

“Well, that’s what they are.”

“Some of ‘em are Indians. Some of ‘em are Mexicans.”

“Mexicans are Indians. The brown ones.”

“Oh, really?”

“Those conquistadors had big fun. I mean, boys will be boys, right?”

“That’d be like saying all of the black people in America are white because those bastards got their freak on with the slaves every chance they got.”

“Well, o-kay Mr. Know It All,” she said, shoving me upside the head.

“Hey! I’m drivin’ here!”

She laughed and then sort of draped her arms over the backs of both our chairs, watching the road like a little kid who couldn’t wait to get to wherever she was going. And on that, I was totally with her.

Because you could already hear the music heading our way—they come at us dancing and singing, her “wild Indians.” Chicken Scratch, mostly. That’s a hybrid of all these really different types of music that the O’Odham people created.

It’s also called “Waila,” which is how the locals heard the word “bailar” the Spanish word for dance. And it can be some pretty corny shit when it’s too much like hard core polka music. That’s what it’s based on, I kid you not. Long story, related to that “race mixing” Mike was alluding to, but ‘way later than the conquistadors. Germans, Scandinavians...all kinds of Europeans wound up down that way at one time or another. And the locals mixed all their music together over time.

So it can sound really Lawrence Welk-y with the accordians and “oompah” sounding bass trying to sound like a tuba. But sometimes it’ll have a Latin beat that makes me want to shake my groove thang a little bit.

“What tribe are they?” Wyatt asked me.

“You know...aside from the ones who married into the families recently, I don’t think anybody actually knows.”

She frowned, and I laughed a little.

“They’ve been up here isolated from everything for a long time,” I told her. “So maybe they were O’Odham, maybe Yaqui—there’s all kindsa tribes they could be from. I mean, they still do a lot of things the old fashioned way, but if you ask somebody about it, they’ll shrug and say they’ve just always done it that way.”

“So...they have no idea where they’re from?”

“They just know it’s important to keep doing things that way,” I said. “Like, not to identify with anything, but just because doing it that way is so...deep, I guess.”

“Okay...”

“No, look—you know how they do that tea ceremony in Japan? That thing that takes, like...all damned day?”

“I’ve been to one, actually.”

“Me, too. All I felt was my legs falling asleep, though. Sitting on the floor watching her take her own sweet time.”

Wyatt laughed and said, “I think if we’re honest that’s what most of us feel. Outsiders.”

 “Yeah, but...I mean, the point of doing it is to really tune into the movements, right? It’s not about the tea, it’s the ritual, and where that takes you, spiritually.”

“So they say, yes.”

“The cynic here. Wow.”

She chuckled and shrugged.

“I tend to be a bit skeptical, yes.”

“I thought it’d be right up your alley, all this.”

“I stayed a bit too long. As I’ve said.”

“Apparently.”

“I respect tradition. And other cultures.”

“Very big of you.”

She gave me a swat. And I laughed and pulled over to the side of the road.

And to end the conversation, I said, “Well, anyway, from what I’ve seen up here, even if they don’t know where it all began, they know that when they do it the old way, it takes them somewhere. Teaches them things you can’t get to any other way. You get what I’m saying?”

“I’m enjoying the fact that you get what you’re saying.”

“Well, I admire it, you know? I mean, in our world, people think all you have to do is go to church to get in touch with that stuff. But to my way of thinking, it has to be part of your life, part of everything you do. That’s when it really seeps into your consciousness, you know? When you really walk your talk. Or, like, when you would do it even if you didn’t talk about it.”

“I bet that’s those Felix brothers,” Aisha said—she’d finally heard them coming.

“Yeah, they rock, those guys,” Mike said. “I don’t like it when it’s all Polish.”

“You’re in fine form tonight,” I said. “Gimme a blond joke next. Just to even things out.”

“I didn’t say—“

“Quit while you’re ahead, love,” Cat teased, running a bare foot up Mike’s back.

“You guys know exactly what I mean!”

“Y’all quit pickin’ on the girl,” Aisha scolded. “Don’t none of us know what we sayin’ after the day we had.”

“Oh my goodness—look!” Wyatt cried, as the band and all the families finally came bopping around the bend.

This was a new tradition, greeting us sort of New Orleans-style, you know? That second line thing, with the band in front and then all these people strutting their asses off behind it.

And as soon as they got up to the van, Joie hopped out and went, “Haaaaay!” Always up for a party, that one.

You could tell the locals had been partying for a long time. Most of the guys were seriously drunk. They make this scary strong booze for special occasions, speaking of traditions.

There’s tiswin, a wine the O’Odham made from fermented cactus fruit juice and tesguino, this Tarahumara beer made from fermented corn mush. I think a lot of the tribes have their own versions of both. But they’ll all knock you on your ass, boy. I was surprised they could still walk at all, those guys.

It was mostly the Gutierrez “clan” out front, because they’ve been there the longest and have the biggest group of families. The older men get to walk with their women in a big bunch right behind the band, and then the younger folks and people from the other families could pretty much do whatever they wanted behind them.

Usually, the young girls around my age will push up as close to the front as they can—the unmarried girls, that is. They marry young up there. So they start fighting to get up there where I can see them—there’s no fraternizing, though. We just flirt a little. Okay, a lot.

But I mean speaking of those bastards who got their freak on in the slave quarters—I’m not comparing them to slaves, okay? Don’t get it twisted. But I do own the land they live on. And the ranch they work on. “Jefito,” they call me. “Little Boss.”

So how many kinds of messed up would it be for me to be fooling around with the women? I know there are some men who wouldn’t think twice given how pretty they are, but I’m not one of them. Let’s just get that out there from jump.

So anyway, I got out of the van next, with Cat, Big Man and Aisha, who started dancing the second her feet hit the ground. And then somebody handed me and Big Man a couple of big Mason jars because that’s the manly man test up there. You only have to take one big gulp to make them happy, though.

So I took this big swig and realized, as it hit my esophagus like I a shot of Drano or something, that this was neither of the two things I just told you about.

Big Man went, “JEEEE-zus,” and looked at me all wide eyed.

I didn’t say anything. I felt like my vocal cords had been incinerated.

“Lemme see that,” Mike said, but I pulled the Mason jar back out of her reach.

But she went, “C’mon! Lemme try it!”

I wagged and finger and found my voice somehow.

“Seriously,” was all I could rasp out at first.

And then Aisha got hold of the jar from behind me, took a teeny little sip, spat it out and went, “Lord have mercy! Y’all drinkin’ paint thinner up here now?”

The guys all cracked up laughing—especially the metal heads who’d brought up the rear on the big ATVs we use to get around up there. I call them the Goon Squad because they’re just...I don’t know, a bunch of lug nuts with their thick Indian hair chopped into 80s hair band dos and not a whole lot goin’ on in the brain department because of all the drugs they do at their little rag tag rave ups out in the woods.

They came to see the girls—Mike especially, because she used to be in a band and that won her much respect. That’s about all they care about where we’re concerned. And once they’d beeped and revved their engines to make her look over and wave at them, they bombed on back to wherever they were raising hell that night and left the others to it.

Some of the old women hissed at them and asked God, in Spanish, to bring down all kinds of plagues upon them more or less. Nobody liked them, because they seem like a threat to everything they believe in.

But I don’t know, I mean there were older ones who’d fallen right into the mainstream and became more serious about the old ways than a lot of the elders, actually. Angry pride, they had. Really fierce and defensive, sometimes, too.

But it was Wyatt who caused the big sensation. When I helped her out of the car, she grabbed onto my arm to steady herself on her feet after the long drive. And just that one little thing told them she was “something” to me—that was how they’d say it, when they were gossiping about us later on.

The young girls froze like somebody had thrown ice water over them because they couldn’t just run up and mess with me the way they usually did. And also she was a woman, not a girl their age. I could see the older women sort of working that through along with the young ones, too. Trying to decide what to think about all this.

Until Tia Imelda—“Aunt” Imelda--one of the oldest women on the place walked up and snatched my hand away from Wyatt’s and said, “Mine,” in Spanish and cracked everyone up.

That’s real Indian, too. They’ll “fight” you for their male relatives, some of those women. It’s just teasing, though. They would never get rough with anyone. In fact, it’s actually a way of saying your woman is a real threat, someone they’re going to have to get to know better.

If they don’t mess with her like that, it means they don’t want her in the family. They’ll be polite enough, but it gets a little chilly whenever she’s around. And after a while, the unwanted woman sort of drifts away, usually. Takes the white ones a while to figure out what’s going on, but the local ones get the idea pretty quick.

Now, because Wyatt had lived on reservations, she gave Imelda this sassy little smile and said, “Okay, we can share him this one time.”

You should’ve seen their faces. They didn’t know what the hell to make of this woman, at first. And then Tia Imelda put her hands on her hips and said, “Well now,” with this little laugh in her voice. Which was the signal for everyone else that the “games” were about to begin.

And they began the instant Bonnie and Kelli got out with the babies. Tia Imelda stole Taylor from them and said they were “pretty like their Daddy,” which I was hoping Bonnie would ignore.

And then she gave Wyatt this little smirk and said, “That’s why you’re so skinny! Somebody gave him babies already.”

Wyatt laughed and said, “Nice little arrangement, isn’t it?”

“Until he wants some more,” one of the young girls said. She was sort of half joking and half serious, but her mother pinched her real hard, though. They’re not allowed to diss me or anyone connected with me outright like that. She’d have that blue bruise to remind her to hold her tongue from then on.

But Wyatt didn’t even blink. In fact, she pretended she hadn’t heard it. So I put my hand in the small of her back and we joined the procession heading back toward what we call “the village.” And as we caught up with my other girls, she reached out and grabbed Aisha’s hand. And Aisha fell back and gave her a little peck on the cheek.

“You better put on your dancin’ shoes, Lil’ Mama,” she told Wyatt. “Cause tha’s all they do up here for Chris’mas, honey. Eat, drink and dance.”

“Sound better than sleeping?” I asked Wyatt.

“I see why you never sleep,” she said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Well, who needs dreams when they have this?” she said. Just as a bunch of little kids started running around all the grownups with sparklers in their hands. Because it wasn’t surreal enough, I guess.

And I said, “I think you’re on to something there...”

And caught the reflection of those sparklers in her big eyes.