Here is a novel prompt I wrote in the passenger seat of our big dirty pearlWhite Cadillac, the Foxwife doing 10 Under, in a snowstorm headed North to Salt Lake City and to home on I-15. It was this afternoon, and now I've varnished red that violin I've wrestled for a month.
Ray and Elroy are acting out stories I heard this Thanksgiving weekend from Foxwife's grandfather, and a few from her dad.
The time period is what's so intriguing for the setting. Southern Utah and Nevada are strange enough now. This is unedited. Just a prompt. A prompt.
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The kid gets picked up by Ray in the desert on his way to pick up Elroy . They’ve arrested him for firing an automatic off in the parking lot behind some bar. Somebody came out and breaks his head with the butt of a pool cue and the Sherriff comes and picks him up.
The kid is with Ray when the ATF agents come and Elroy is let out.
‘Anything you want outta that truck?’ they ask Ray.
‘Why?’
“Because it’s now the property of the US Government.’
The kid is looking for a character that has stolen something from his family, or is responsible for him losing something very valuable to his family-- the lien on their farm, or their car got impounded, and it’s our kid’s fault, but nominally because of the character he is pursuing.
The character is native american, allowing an exploration of the prejudices/ the illegality of Indians drinking in this time frame. This is the late 50’s in Nevada and Southern Utah.
The kid is following tales and rumors of the Indian so he CAN KILL HIM if he doesn’t make recompense for the problem, which really should have been stopped by the kid, if he had been on top of his business, but he wasn’t, and being a kid, he wants revenge rather than looking at himself as the villain.
So they have to get Elroy a ride, because the ATF took his truck. Ray offers him his Jeep, but they have to go get it, and it starts to rain. Flash flood starts up, and when they get to the Jeep, it’s up to it’s wheel hubs in churning, muddy water. They start it, and try to whip it around and up a mineral dune, but the sand collapses, and they mire further in. Elroy says to leave it, that they can’t handle it, that the flood gets to keep the Jeep, after Ray has dried the ignition off- middle of the flood- carefully with a flare.
He cranks the key, it roars to life, and then splutters… dies.
‘Damned… let’s get outta here,’ says Elroy, nursing the caved in bandaged side of his head against the rain.
‘The fan. It pulls the water in same as it would air,’ says the kid.
‘Gimme your belt.’
Ray ties the fan blade to the frame so it can’t spin, starts the Jeep, and drives it across the churn, like a boat, deep brown wake, and Elroy jumps on as it passes, they’re all hooting into the night and waving their arms.
They get back to Ray’s truck, and the kid is soaked, shivering. . Ray gives the kid a racing jacket from the cab with a W on the chest, and the number 12.
THE STORMIN MORMON, says the back, in stitching.
The kid peels his workshirt off, like a sodden bird, and the great butt of a pistol is revealed, sticking out in the middle of his back. Ray darts in and snatches it, cooing at the discovery. The kid yanks his arm into the dry jacket and yelps. He starts toward Ray with crazy eyes, slitted against the sluice.
Elroy grabs him in a nelson.
‘Gonna shoot us, kid, take what we got?’
‘It ain’t for you,’ yells the kid.
‘This is an old gun, kid,’ . Ray says, ‘like as blow your hand off as shoot one of us.’
The kid protests and won’t tell what’s up. ‘Just give it back. It’s my property.’
Elroy grins.
But Ray reaches back into the cab and brings out a fairly new pistol, a .45, and shows the kid there’s no bullet in the chamber, but that the clip is full, and slips the into the kid’s waistband. He tosses the old Peacemaker into the cab of his truck, and starts around to the driver’s side.
‘You handle your business, son, you come see me, and I’ll trade you back if you want. But I won’t let you kill yourself with this old thing. That iron’ll serve you.’
Elroy lets him go.
Elroy agrees to give him a ride to the next town. He goes to gather some money owed to him in St. George, and takes the kid with him, and makes him use his pistol when he goes to collect the money.
Before they leave, the kid stops and looks at the frightened woman and her frightened little brother. 'You seen an Indian name of Peter Two Ghost? Tall, with a birthmark on his neck, up to here?'
The woman shakes her head. The kid gestures at the little brother with Ray's gun.
'The races,' says the little brother. 'Sherriff's deputy ran a Scalp off from the races had a raspberry up his neck. Caught him drinking in a car fulla white women.'
'Where'd he head to from the races?' asks the kid.
'Dunno. Sherriff's deputy busts him a few, runs him off. Next town is Cedar City, North.' He produces an excruciating smile.
Elroy needs the money to buy a backhoe so he can do some work on the land of a woman he is sleeping with who isn’t his wife. He has offered to buy the backhoe twice, and the guy keeps refusing.
Kid goes with him to offer a third time, and the guy refuses, and so they go back that night and hotwire the damn thing and take off into the desert.
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