Luis Alberto Urrea - The Water Museum

Hubbard sauntered to the Volvo and tried to control the weapon. It wobbled and drifted. He braced the rifle against his shoulder and popped off a round. A headlight exploded. The car barely rocked. He turned to Horses and grinned. Gave a big thumbs-up.

Crack!

Hole in the windshield.

Horses tooted the horn.

Crack!

* * *

A rusted-out Datsun pickup with wire bundles and tools piled in the bed rolled up and sat there as Hubbard bushwhacked the Volvo.

The driver got out and tapped on Don’s window.

“Yep?”

“Sir? What’s the deal with this here?”

“Guy’s killin’ his wife’s car.”

“Dang.”

“Yep.”

“What she do, step out?”

“Ran, sounds like.”

The driver called back to his bud, “Butch! Guy’s killin’ his wife’s car.”

“Sweet!” hollered Butch.

Crack!

The kid spit some chaw and said, “There goes the mirror.”

“Yep.”

Butch joined the party.

“How you figure in this?” he asked.

“I am an observer of life’s many pleasures,” Horses said.

“Shee-it.”

“Sir?” the first waddy said. “You think I could get in a shot?”

Butch laughed.

“Sure,” said Horses. “Why not.” He fished out a few more rounds from his box. “Knock yourself out.” The kid went over to Hubbard and shook his hand. Horses and Butch watched the rifle change hands. Hubbard slapped the kid on the shoulder.

“This’ll be good,” said Butch.

“Some days,” Horses said, “it pays to get up.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

The kid worked the lever like the Rifleman and blasted the crap out of the car, shredding its tires and puncturing its flanks. Hubbard clapped and hopped around.

“Doin’ the bunny hop,” noted Butch.

The kid came back to Horses and handed him the rifle.

“Thank you, sir. ’Preciate it.”

“Hey,” said Horses. “You boys want to give this guy a ride?”

“Hell no,” they said and hopped back in the Datsun and banged away.

When Horses looked back at Hubbard, he was passed out on the road, smiling at the sky.

* * *

Horses hung his rifle back on the rack. He slipped a Redbone CD into the player. He didn’t like all that Carlos Nakai stuff — all them twiddly flutes. He liked guitars. He found Zep II and slotted it in next to Redbone. Going to be some Page and Plant kicking in before he hit the state line. Hubbard was flat on his back in the road like a fried egg. Horses rolled on down the lonesome highway.

He pulled over and said “Shit” and got out. He collected Hubbard, hefted him in a fireman’s carry. His back hurt like hell. He piled Hubbard into the backseat. Dug a screwdriver out of his toolbox. Went back to the assassinated Volvo and unscrewed the license plates. He pulled the paperwork out of the glove compartment. Tossed it all in with Hubbard, who was snoring softly.

He drove on.

Had hours to go. He’d get there late, thanks to this little adventure. But wait till the Oyate guys found Hubbard passed out in the truck! Aw, hell. They’d think of all kinds of crazy shit to do to him.

It was a good day. Ten miles ahead, on the port side of the highway, there was a buffalo herd Horses liked to look at. And beyond that, to the starboard, a llama ranch amused him when he passed it. And ostriches. It was like a free zoo all of a sudden. And he knew the Rockies would appear out of the blue haze to his right. Bright and vivid on the horizon, looming as he veered nearer. Growing taller.

Horses remembered when he and the Brewer brothers had duct-taped Yellowhorse to the ceiling at his birthday party. Over to Porcupine. He’d shouted, “Get me down, you bastards!” Little skinny guy up there like he was floating. Horses couldn’t stop laughing.

He looked at Hubbard in the rearview.

Yeah. Tape. Those Oyate boys, a hundred years ago they might have staked him out. Naked on an anthill. But tape. That was funny. Hubbard would wake up over their heads. Looking down at crazy Indians in nerd clothes dancing to B-52 records. Whooping. Smoke. Noise. Hubbard, unable to come down. Eyes like plates. Hubbard, caught up in the sky. Hubbard, learning to pray.

Here’s the thing — I never took drugs in my life. Yeah, okay, I was the champion of my share of keggers. Me and The Pope. We were like, “Bring on the Corona and the Jäger!” Who wasn’t? But I never even smoked the chronic, much less used the hard stuff. Until I met Pope’s little sister. And when I met her, she was the drug, and I took her and I took her, and when I took her, I didn’t care about anything. All the blood and all the bullets in the world could not penetrate that high.

The irony of Amapola and me was that I never would have gotten close to her if her family hadn’t believed I was gay. It was easy for them to think a gringo kid with emo hair and eyeliner was “un joto.” By the time they found out the truth, it was too late to do much about it. All they could do was put me to the test to see if I was a stand-up boy. It was either that or kill me.

You think I’m kidding.

* * *

At first, I didn’t even know she existed. I was friends with Popo. We met in my senior year at “Camelback”—Cortez High. Alice Cooper’s old school back in prehistory, our big claim to fame, though most of us had no idea who Alice Cooper was. VH1 was for grandmothers.

Still, you’d think the freak factor would remain high, right? But it was just another hot space full of Arizona Republicans and future CEOs and hopeless football jocks not yet aware they were going to be fat and bald, living in a duplex on the far side, drinking too much and paying alimony to the cheerleaders they never thought could weigh 298 pounds and smoke like a coal plant.

Not Popo. The Pope. For one thing, he had more money than God. Well, his dad and his aunt Cuca had all the money, but it drizzled upon him like the first rains of Christmas. He was always buying the beer, paying for gas and movie tickets and midnight runs to Taco Bell. “Good American food,” he called it.

He’d transferred in during my senior year. He called it his exile. I spied him for the first time in English. We were struggling to stay awake during the endless literary conversations about A Separate Peace. He didn’t say much about it. Just sat over there making sly eyes at the girls and laughing at the teacher’s jokes. I’d never seen a Beaner kid with such long hair. He looked like some kind of Apache warrior, to tell you the truth. He had double loops in his left ear. He got Droogy sometimes and wore eyeliner under one eye. Those li’l born again chicks went crazy for him when he was in devil-boy mode.

And the day we connected, he was wearing a Cradle of Filth T-shirt. He was staring at me. We locked eyes for a second and he nodded once and we both started to laugh. I was wearing a Fields of the Nephilim shirt. We were the Pentagram Brothers that day, for sure. Everybody else must have been thinking we were goth school shooters. I guess it was a good thing Phoenix was too friggin’ hot for black trench coats.

Later, I was sitting outside the vice principal’s office. Ray Hulsebus, the nickelback on the football team, had called me a faggot and we’d duked it out in the lunch court. Popo was sitting on the wooden bench in the hall.

“Good fight,” he said, nodding once.

I sat beside him.

“Wha’d you get busted for?” I asked.

He gestured at his shirt. It was originally black, but it had been laundered so often it was gray. In a circle were the purple letters VU. Above them, in stark white, one word: HEROIN.

“Cool,” I said. “Velvet Underground.”