Slants of moonlight spilled through the cheap, ugly motel curtains, throwing soft silver glows on discarded clothing. A broken lamp dangled from a table, cord taut, the shattered bulb still flickering. The orange sparks of light were locked in tune with the muffled rattling of an ice machine and the hum of cicadas going about their own song and dance of seduction.
They had some catching up to do there.
Hers was already finished.
She laid there, muscles sore and tender to the touch, the thin mattress offering little comfort. Even though the A/C was maxed out in an effort to combat the sweltering desert heat, her skin was still superheated, a thin film of sweat mingling with the cum that had long since turned cold.
Two fingers met at her lips and she mimed the motion of a dope addict. She’d given that up a while ago. Cold turkey.
Even so, the motion of smoking remained. It gave her an odd sense of peace.
She blew smoke rings, imagining them lifting into the air, expanding.
It was just fantasies fulfilled, stress relieved. Much like the entire night had been.
The sex had been wild, dirty, and tinged with brutality.
It’d had just the right amount of pain to make her feel alive again.
Powerful.
Then the feeling faded.
It always did.
Her heart skipped a beat when she heard him groan, shifting in his sleep. He grabbed subconsciously at her breasts and she squeaked in surprise at how sensitive her nipples still were.
She pulled away, gently disentangling their slick limbs. With the cicadas buzzing in time with her heartbeat, she danced through the shadows and around the silver light like a predator, going for the pants with the cold steel handcuffs.
She was light on her feet, and with a soft touch she slid the metal over his wrists, looping the chain through the bedpost.
She’d never admit it, but her heart fluttered as she stared at him, the light outlining the strong jaw, highlighting those salt and pepper locks.
He looked peaceful, after a fashion. Whether it was from the sex or a level of contentment in the lies she’d woven from, and into, half-truths, she honestly couldn’t say.
She hated herself for it. Then felt worse.
Feeling had never done much for her. It’d gotten people killed and landed her in Texas, in a place no sane person would choose.
So she left him there and padded into the bathroom, that same heavy scent of booze and Lysol hanging in the air.
She turned the shower to scalding, desperate to burn everything away. To wash it all down the drain.
/oOo\
March 2004
She’d come into that Honky Tonk one cold Texas night with an air of desperation that was only half faked. Like many things in life, the intentions were far different than the actual reality of it. In this case, the cold, simple, clichéd intentions of revenge. There was nothing new or meaningful about it. It was just important to her. Something to hang on the gravestone of the only man she’d ever called father.
They’d made a grand ole' show about giving a damn about her, especially that countrywoman with iron in her chestnut hair. Much later, she’d learn she was the woman who ran the Dixie Mafia outfit in Texas. The one whose hands were just as bloody as the men she’d had deprive her of something akin to a childhood.
She hadn’t believed their words in the beginning, that country twang sounding honest.
Heartfelt bullshit.
All that.
The rage was still boiling in her blood, even though the event itself was distant memory.
/oOo\
Then one day, she woke up in a pile of naked feminine flesh, a soft, delicate tongue making love to her ass, burrowing in deep. Then her own tongue, lapping away at a warm, wet pussy for the first time, high as a kite, loving every damn second of it. All while the woman with the iron in her chestnut hair watched from a chair, a hand in her jeans, rubbing furiously.
A fully-fledged member of that twisted Dixie family. The man she’d once called father probably died all over again in that grave of his.
/oOo\
She flirted. She smiled. She started using. Then she started selling their dope like a pro. Then she started selling herself--willingly of course. It was all about free will with them. They got off on it.
She was their dirty little bitch with the Navajo blood coursing through her veins.
She was one of a kind.
Fucked like an animal.
Clawed their backs.
A blowjob? $100.
Triple that for the pussy.
Give 70% to the white man, or rather, the white woman. It was the way of the world for people like her, all the way down at the bottom. In Texas, with the Dixies, they took until nothing more could be taken.
And she grew to love being taken.
/oOo\
She started battling for supremacy.
The dirty Navajo whore forgot who she was.
The other bartenders, the other prostitutes, they grew to hate her. She started sleeping with the woman with the iron streaks in her chestnut hair. She learned things about the female body that’d make even the most uptight, hillbilly bible thumper fall in love with sinning.
She felt wanted.
The illusion of caring.
It was survival wrapped in a cloak of sexual desire and feigned acceptance.
It had a certain appeal as long as she didn’t admit certain things. After all, the best lies you can tell yourself are the ones built from truths.
/oOo\
She found the peyote at the bottom of a drawer one day. She remembered little about it. Her mother may have given it to her. She smoked it one night after a long day. Became a wolf, darting across the desert plains, feeling truly alive for the first time in a long time. Remembered the rage and the revenge when the drug-induced hallucinations ended.
She stopped using.
She started playing guitar again, a song writing itself in her head.
/oOo\
June 2005
Sweat slick bodies moved to the quickstep rhythm of a steel guitar, spinning wildly when the fiddle cut in, redirected the energy of the Honky Tonk. Catcalls echoed, bouncing off the wood paneled walls as a cute drunk blond straddled the bucking bronco machine, her plaid shirt half buttoned, flashing the black bra that hid her pale breasts.
Someone kicked the jukebox and Johnny Cash came rattling to life, and the voices dyed off in midsentence, the sound of beers clinking down onto hardwood signaling the change in mood. Only Cash and the mechanical rattling of the bronco filled her ears.
It was one of those nights.
Nice and calm before all hell broke loose. The hints were all there, but her mind was on a single track. Little would matter until a flash of salt and pepper.
And that happened later.
Right now, it was Cash’s “Beast in Me” in an east Texas Honky Tonk, owned by the Dixie Mafia, and full of men drinking their troubles away and pretty blond girls waiting to dance, and to maybe get fucked by a man with a dark streak, or at least a bit of money.
She leaned back against the bar, taking it all in. There were always these moments of relative peace when a Cash song came on. The iron haired owner, that weathered old bitch of a woman who ran the place, loved Cash. And she made sure everyone who came here damn well knew it.
The calls for more beer went up and those southern belles with their marble skin and white blond hair attached themselves to their men, unwilling to let them out of their sight, especially around her.
The dirty Navajo bitch.
She smiled, keeping the laughs deep inside her belly as their faces scrunched up, adopting that air of superiority that comes naturally to women with money and quality breeding. She took it all in stride. She was used to it and more.
“You got this all handled, B?”
Tiny little Marry-Anne was at her elbow; beer glasses the size of her slender, freckled forearms clinked together as she set them down on the bar.
“Just fine,” she answered, waving her away distractedly as she refilled beers and shots of whiskey. Marry-Anne huffed indignantly and moved along. Across the room, the other bartenders gave her dirty looks.
Some stuck up two fingers in the universal V, wriggling their tongues, showing what they thought of her preferential treatment.
She winked at them, and then at the blondes hanging desperately to their cowboys, muttering under their breaths.
Crazy slut.
Dirty Indian.
Of course, the women throwing the loudest insults were usually the ones who moaned loudest when she’d pull her fingers from their wet snatches and smear their juices across their pink lips.
Female hierarchy was a nasty thing. Not that she particularly cared.
She ruled in the dark shadows that nobody liked to talk about or admit existed. Out in the sun, she was just dirt to them. Trash to be swept under the rug and forgotten, until their dark fantasies needed fulfilling. Then she was dragged back out, a wolf of the night meant to slake their lusts under the moon.
A laugh escaped her, and a strawberry blonde glared hard at her, yanking her cute little cowboy away with a sharp tug. His eyes were on her though. She winked again.
The jukebox flipped, another song primed and ready.
/o0o\
The atmosphere changed, catcalls and whoops going up in the suffocating heat of the building.
Sexual arousal blanketed the room, mingling with the scent of booze and smoke. Sweaty bodies lit up the dance floor, writing together in some new, dirtier version of the Texas 2-Step.
Hips pressed a little tighter, a little longer, the nasal rasp of Hank Thompson urging them on.
The sounds and scents barely reached her. The song spun in her mind, kept repeating itself.
You tended to let the anger burn when the Dixie Mafia stole something from you, then turned you into one of them. She was tired of that slow burn. It needed release.
The words of the only father she’d ever really known, had ever really loved, if that’s what that feeling was, came to her in a slow crawl.
1. Pay Attention.
2. Expecting Anything.
3. Everyone wants something.
4. Trust in fear.
5. Use what the good lord gave you.
6. There’s always someone better.
Irony.
Not following his own rules had gotten him killed, relocated six feet under.
She gazed out from behind the bar in-between calls for more beer, more Jack, more escapes. The dancing became sloppy, mere gyrations of flesh against flesh, covered cock to covered ass.
The temperature in the bar increased another level, the country music pounding more loudly in her ears, the sweet smell of smoke and alcohol filling her nostrils.
The jukebox flipped again, another song ripping through the loud cheers and stamping feet and clapping hands.
Yes. It was one of those nights all right. That’s why she chose tonight. It was why that script kept running through her mind. It was why her blood was running hot.
The jukebox flipped again.
/o0o\
The music finally crested, sliding back down the mountain of calm quiet. The dancing and the loud cheers slowed to a dull roar, the tight bodies of the women slick with sweat and pheromones, purring in heat, the eyes of the men shining and wild.
“You’ve got fifteen, B,” Jay murmured to her from the left.
She glanced over at him, all six feet, five inches, miscast, much like her, in a bar full of white southerners. His suit was top of the line, falling perfectly over the corded muscles of a former linebacker.
Black shades.
Clear earpiece.
His deep onyx skin glowed a soft purple under the lights.
Definitely out of place, especially when he was married to the little blond daughter of the bitch who owned the place. It was a pity and a waste of a halfway decent man.
“You okay there, B?” he asked.
“Just dandy, partner,” she said, predicting the smile that always came with that nickname, white teeth flashing behind dark lips.
“Looking forward to the show,” he grinned, winking as he moved on.
She should have known. The wink. The smile.
She really should have known.
One-track mind. That’s how it always is with things you should know in the future.
Worries get pushed to the side.
/o0o\
The jukebox flipped one more time, the final song before she took the stage.
Rolling Stones: ‘Honky Tonk Women’.
It figured.
She made her way around the dance floor, back to the dimly lit hallway to the room that held her guitar.
The only possession she owned that had ever really mattered.
/o0o\
She took the stage and the script howled inside her like a wolf to the moon.
The hook.
Both leads were already cast, scuttling around in the crowd. Jay, with those black shades, surveying every nook and cranny, his face locked on hers, or her ass. It didn’t matter.
There was the second lead, a cute young man with horn-rimmed glasses doing his best dress like a cowboy and failing hard.
He was the Dixies’ little numbers boy. A top-notch accountant that just so happened to be the son of the bastard who’d killed her father.
Her ticket out of this rat infested town.
/o0o\
The smoke inside the club billowed, hanging like a fog, real sweet to the senses when combined with the hard spice of whiskey on her breath.
The crowd was quieting now, being respectful, or what passed for it anyway.
When she took the mic and the lights dropped, they all shut up, drowning in their alcohol and hazy fantasies, her delicate fingers shredding out an improvised jazz tune.
Fantasy.
She was their tiny little Navajo whore with hair like night.
Jazz was what she played and despite everything, this was Texas.
There was a reason she wore tight little Daisey Dukes, red cowgirl boots, and one of their hats.
They didn’t come for the music. Didn’t care about it. They came for her body. They came wishing it were one of those nights instead. The nasty little secret the Honky Tonk did its best to cover up, to keep from the more “civilized” members of society.
Everyone would be surprised. That good ole’ southern cowboy charm was a sham.
She took a moment, stared them all in the eyes, and knew each and every one of them. She saw where their gazes were directed. Saw the marble skinned blondes squirm in their seats.
They’d settle for the alcohol fueled visions of bending her over the stage, over the amp, and taking her right there, shorts around her ankles, bucking wildly.
Their little Navajo whore. The kidnapped daughter of the tribal chieftain, begging to be fucked harder, screaming in a native tongue they didn’t understand.
She popped a couple buttons on her blouse, fueling their fantasies, smiling at the seething rage behind the eyes of good southern girls, many of whom she’d fucked in this very establishment.
If this were to be her last night, she’d certainly make the most of it.
/o0o\
The last thought she had before the crowd disappeared was Jay’s nod of appreciation. He was the one of the few who understood the music. Trouble was, half of that was a lie she still let herself believe.
/o0o\
The crowd faded away. The music took over, the script running in a continuous loop.
She saw color as she played: purples and blues exploding into silhouetted images. Reds and oranges sparked in waves, bringing in smells and tastes.
The song took on a life of its own as the jazz notes floated, filling the Honky Tonk with sounds it’d never heard before, lyrics the patrons would never hear.
There was Jay, in the restroom, as she whispered promises of all the dirty things he could do to her ass.
The accountant with the conservative, bookworm girlfriend who probably didn’t know what a French kiss was.
It would be child’s play, the easiest of cons, followed by two cocks throbbing inside her, singing their hearts out under the power of the oldest, and most effective of truth serums: a warm, wet pussy, and a hot, tight ass.
And then she’d have access to the only thing that mattered to the Dixies--drugs, money, and guns.
/o0o\
Her fingers danced along the strings now, introducing bits of bluegrass, stoking the flames of lust, the audience’s fantasy of playing cowboys and dirty Indian.
Sweat beaded along her brow, her skin hot, and her pussy humming. It turned her on sometimes when she played, the colors coalescing into corporeal fantasies.
The song fluttered at the top and she started bring her in for a landing.
Colors mixed again, then faded to white as she struck the last chord.
Complete silence.
Revenge. Horniness. Release. Anger. Anticipation.
Whatever it was, it helped her shred that song. She fucked it right to orgasm. They’d never know it. That was the problem with these people. Just didn’t get the music.
And then her eyes snapped open, salt and pepper at the very fringes of her vision. She ignored it, focused on the crowd.
The looks she was being given weren’t the usual. Oh, the lust was still there, but something else was too.
Disappointed regret. Saw it in Jay’s shoulders.
She packed up her guitar and hopped off stage, heading for the exit.
/o0o\
She didn’t make it far, a few steps down that dark hallway. She heard him before she saw him. Former linebackers don’t have soft footfalls. You always heard them bearing down on you.
She turned, shoulders slumping, hoping for something.
“So that’s how it is?”
“That’s how it is, B,” Jay said.
The how of it didn’t matter so much.
Never did.
Sloppiness. Arrogance. Just like her father. Her eyes darted, looking for something, anything. Saw nothing.
“Just like them after all,” she accused. “Back to being the little errand boy for the white man.”
His eyes hardened and even though she was surely going to die, the insult left her feeling guilty. She may be staring death in the eyes right now, but she was better than that.
“We could’ve had fun, Jay. You. Me. That nerdy little accountant,” she said.
His eyes widened a moment before zipping back into a sad glare.
“Married. Happily,” he said.
“That wouldn’t have stopped you now, would it? Girls know when men look, J. Survival mechanism.”
She grinned in the near darkness.
“Both holes,” she added, before that flash salt and pepper, a pistol to the back of Jay’s head.
“Evening, Marshall,” she said, as she stepped over the unconscious body.
“Thanks for the assist, but I think I’ll be on my way. Busy girl after all.”
That grating chuckle and sound of cold metal against her wrists said otherwise.
“You’ll be busy all right,” was the husked response.
Her eyes rolled hard.
His face flashed in a spill of light when a door opened. He was virtually unchanged, all rugged and handsome. That salt and pepper mix of hair all styled up.
“Gonna be a little hard to square dance like this, Marshall,” she muttered.
“Hey, the fuck you do to Jay,” some redneck hillbilly shouted.
“Dancing is the least of your worries. You traded up in the world, girl. Assault to ripping off the Dixie Mafia,” he said as he pushed her along toward the exit.
Not fast enough. Jay’s wife, Suzanne, chose that moment to join them in the hallway, surprise etched on her face at seeing her still alive. Looked down, saw Jay, and screamed her pretty little head off.
There it was.
Hell finally breaking loose.
The jukebox and the dancing, the clapping, the stomping all cut out at once.
Shouts went up. She heard the click of guns. Working in a Honky Tonk run by the Dixies, you learned that sound by heart.
“I suggest we move along before the both of us get riddled with bullets.”
The Marshall grabbed her arm and hustled her out of the door and into the starlit night.
She stumbled. Cut up her knees on the gravel. She was yanked back up hard, and the next thing she knew, she was being thrown into the back of a cruiser.
“Asshole,” she spat as he got in.
“Save it for later. You’ve got a bar full of pissed off rednecks looking to tear you apart.”
/o0o\
The car peeled away, spitting gravel in an earthy roar the same moment the double doors of the Honky Tonk swung out.
A cacophony of noise and a hail of gunfire rang out. The windshield shattered.
Then it was over in a cloud of dust and rocks, the accelerator purring and the engine working overtime.
It wasn’t until mile marker 88 that her heart plummeted, mouth turning to cotton.
She saw her guitar, in a darkened hallway, abandoned inside a bar full of shit heads and the bitch that controlled it all.
/o0o\
She woke to gummy eyes and soft music. For a second, the fear was palpable, thinking herself back in that Honky Tonk, with the sweat, the lust, and the promise of death. Facing down the inevitable, just like he probably had.
Then she felt the cold leather of the cruiser.
The jazz.
Jazz?
That wasn’t right.
Then the scent, a spiced wood musk mixed with clean sweat.
Figured.
It’d been one of those nights.
She reached for the guitar that wasn’t there.
Felt naked without it.
She thought about begging to him to go back. Thought better of it.
Her life or the guitar her mother had sold hers to buy.
The answer was simple enough, right?
“Finally awake?” he asked.
“Course. Slept just like a princess, asshole.”
He turned the dial, the music powering in.
Duke Ellington.
Smartass.
“Finally did some detective work, huh, Marshall?”
She saw the smile in the mirror, almost feral.
“I’ve a mind to it sometimes.”
“Tired of the office jokes I bet. Little Indian girl from the rez keeps eluding the Deputy. Must be tough.“
“It can be,” he said.
“How?” she asked. She already knew. Wanted to hear it, anything to keep her mind off that guitar.
“The Blues. Jazz. Heard it on the radio one day. Familiar names. All mismatched.”
She smiled.
“Took awhile to track everything. Nothing hit. Then some hillbilly calls in about a woman involved in a bank robbery. He had a distinguishing mark to go by. Little wolf tattoo inside a dream catcher.”
/o0o\
“I have to pee.”
“Hold it.”
“Want urine in the car?”
“Federal car. They’ll take care of it. Perks of the United States Government.”
“I doubt you have a maid handy.”
“Power windows. Nifty feature.”
“Fuck you.”
The car slowed, pulling over to the gravel shoulder. Her door popped open and he grabbed her roughly by the handcuffs.
“Two minutes.”
She dangled her wrists, metal clinking and flashing in the night.
He sighed, rubbing his temples. No patience.
“You’re not leaving my sight.”
She shrugged, found a nice bush with a decent amount of privacy, and popped a squat.
/o0o\
When she turned to go, she felt it, a subtle jolt that traveled from the tiny hairs on her neck, deep into her very bones. She squatted again, reached out, took a handful of dark red clay and gravel, coating her palm with a thin layer of dust.
Deep inside her chest, she could feel the hum. Every mile closer to the rez it’d get stronger. Her grandmother told her this as a small child. It was who she was. What she was. The Navajo blood pumping like fire in her veins. She’d know the second she reentered her ancestral lands.
She hated the feeling. Hated her people. They lived in fear. They built their faux community, putting everyone before themselves, to the detriment of themselves. Community mattered only so far as you weren’t accused of witchcraft, of being a skinwalker. Then you were cast out. Or worse.
She hated him as well, that U.S. Marshall with the smug look of satisfaction. What he’d done. What he hadn’t.
The guitar. Abandoned in a dark hallway in a Honky Tonky full of Dixies.
Despite that though, despite all of it, she couldn’t bring herself to hate his presence.
It was funny how that worked.
It a twisted way, he was the only one who cared. Even though the reason was an abusive ex with a whip fetish currently sucking wind through a straw. A trail of adulteress husbands robbed blind in the night.
Felon.
She mouthed the word, tasting it and all that it meant.
Her rap sheet probably had its own rap sheet. And that didn’t include what she’d done the last year.
She felt dirty suddenly. Scraped raw, the shine gone and impossible to get back.
Felon.
A designation that meant one person cared enough to follow, even if that one person was just a single lawman, caring out the government’s due diligence.
That, by its very nature, was all kinds of fucked up. They probably had a name for it. Similar to that state kidnap victims get when they fall for their captors.
“Time’s up, princess.”
She shrugged, limped back to the cruiser.
“Hold on,” he said, gently grabbing her, turning her around to face him. He squatted, a flashlight in his hands. She looked down as well, noticed the streaks of blood, half dried, running down her leg.
He sighed.
“Hold on.”
He rummaged in the trunk, brought out a first aid kit. Patched her up.
Used whiskey to disinfect. White gauze. Good as new, the knee that is. Everything else would never be good as new.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem. It’s my ass if you show up in less than stellar condition. Some tool in an Armani suit will scream brutality. Make the case murky.”
“No, thank you,” she emphasized. It was by pure reflex the way she responded to his small act of kindness. A gentle touch to the front of his jeans, cupping his balls, her fingers going for the zipper.
He slapped her hand away, hard, jerking back quickly as if he’d been burned. Probably afraid of the dirty little Navajo girl and all the nasty things she’d done. Things no decent woman would do.
She felt the burn of embarrassment as he stood there, looking her over, that calculated stare that only ever meant one thing: judgment.
Her life for the past year and change had known little more than the drunk power that came from being desired. The girl every man wanted to fuck, even when they didn’t know why.
Sure, there’d been more attractive women working for the Dixies. There always were. Bigger breasts. Bigger butts. Fuller lips. Blue eyes. Golden hair.
Didn’t matter though. Not when they had the chance to sample her bronzed skin and midnight locks. Dress her in buckskin and live out their cowboy fantasies of the Wild West. Take her from behind until she screamed in ecstasy as they pumped her full of cum. Not knowing who was really in control.
Their little Navajo slut that did things their girlfriends wouldn’t.
She had no idea how to respond to rejection, the hard rebuff. So she sat there on the trunk of the cruiser, body numb, her mouth turned to cotton.
“You ever do something stupid, Marshall? Gone too deep you don’t recognize the person on the other side?”
She didn’t look at him. Couldn’t look at him. She gazed straight ahead, at the giant disk of white silver hanging in the Texas night.
There was a crunch of gravel. He leaned against the cruiser, eyes closed.
“First marriage,” was all he said, before spinning around and opening the door.
“In you go, princess. We’ve got a long ways to go.”
Princess? The word sounded strange to her. The list of words to describe her had always been very small.
None of them had ever been particularly flattering when you got down to it.
She shrugged, and slid back into the car, thankful for the cold leather of the seats.
/o0o\
“I’m not going back to the rez,” she murmured, the words barely perceptible above the smooth guitar riffs of Earl Hooker and the clunking bumps of wheels over uneven road.
“You won’t,” he answered, that smooth baritone that had just enough edge to make a normal girl swoon.
“I’d rather die.”
“I believe you.”
“Just so we’re clear on that.”
“It’s up to the federal government, but I’ll do what I can. I promise.”
“Promise?”
Her laugh was barbed wire, sharp and frayed at the edges.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. The sound was disconcerting.
“Promises of the white man,” she continued. “I’ve heard all that before.”
“Listen, I-“
“Are a man of your word, right?” She laughed again. It was a phrase men liked to flaunt as if it still meant something.
“It must be a shame to live like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“A felon on the run. Believing in no one. Must be lonely.”
“And running around the country chasing criminals isn’t?”
“Didn’t say it wasn’t. There’s a difference though. If I wind up dead in a ditch, bullet to the head, body rotting in the desert heat like yesterday’s garbage… I at least have someone in this world that cares enough to bury what’s left. Do you?”
There was sadness in his words, a sympathetic pity she wasn’t expecting.
He was right.
Which was why it hurt all the more, shattering her confidence like a bullet through a cheap pane of glass.
She’d be just another dead prostitute, much like her mother, a disposable toy, a spent pussy that gets tossed aside when it loses its luster. People like her? They were easy to replace. Like sand in the desert.
She stared out the windshield, pupils dilating to the high beams, watching the cruiser eat up the pavement, and drawing closer to the end of… well, whatever the end was for people like her.
“Well, someone cares, Marshall,” she whispered, the words tumbling out before she could staunch the flow. “Otherwise, I’d be back at that Honky Tonk right now.”
“I reckon so,” he said.
She thought she saw him smile at that.
/o0o\
“Want to hear a story, Marshall?”
He turned down the stereo.
“I guess we have nothing but time.”
“A white man comes to the rez one day, a government official.
