1
Now, back up a few days.
Back to the Saturday night when the rest of them all took off in the Pimpmobile for the West Coast. Picture a big strapping guy of twenty, in the back of a pickup truck, with eyes that just popped open like he’d come back from the dead. He’d had a dream, and it involved a couple of things he didn’t like to think about, one of them being his friend Billy Dunne, and it freaked him out to think about it. Dave Olshaker snarfled awake, farting as he woke, and he was royally pissed. He’d been up ’til at least six or seven a.m., and after leaving Tammy in the frat house, he’d gotten in the pickup with his buddy Billy Dunne and gone to do 360s in the mud of the cow pasture out by McCrory’s lake. Sometime, in a haze of beer and piss, he passed out. Woke up, looking at the back of Billy’s head, too. What a shocker that had been.
It was like the dream! Just like the dream!
He didn’t like to think about what happened the night before. Even if he could remember, which he wasn’t so sure about, given the Mother of Hangovers that held him in its warm embrace. He had a taste of what he had come to think of as sour ass in his mouth, and a hammering in the head that so distracted him that he barely realized he’d woken up in the backseat of his Ford pickup truck.
He got on the road once he found out from one of Bronwyn Shapiro’s friends exactly what route they were taking. He told her Bronwyn’s dad had called, and he needed to call him back to let him know. “For safety.”
And that’s when a girl named Kathy Emmons stepped forward and told him how to track them down.
2
His head hurt so much, Olshaker ended up having to pull over at a place he liked to call Motel 69. Billy got the room, and Olshaker barely got his sorry ass to the bed before passing out again. Before he turned off the bedside light, he told Billy he had to sleep on the far side of the bed.
“Why?” Billy’s eyes were all bloodshot and his face was pockmarked from too many Milky Way bars and Mr. Pibbs and Pabst Blue Ribbon in between to wash it all down. He looked like an old man with a mop of bright yellow hair thrown on his scalp.
“ ’Cause you stink,” Olshaker said, but it wasn’t completely true. He was a little afraid that he’d start dreaming about Tammy and in the dream wrap his legs around her; only when he woke up, it might be Billy’s thighs rubbing against him.
Out of this general fear, Olshaker kept his clothes on that night.
They’d lost a day, but they got back on the road and ended up pretty much following the route that the Pimpmobile had taken.
And he was there in Arizona when the Pimpmobile took the wrong turn off the main highway.
He drove his truck up to a plateau and got out binoculars to watch what Tammy was up to with her friends.
And when they got the flat tire, he turned to Billy Dunne and said, “Holy shit. We got ’em, buddy. We got ’em.”
“What do we do now?”
Dave Olshaker thought a moment, cocking his head back to look up at the white blank sky. Then Dave reached down under his seat and drew out a warm can of Pabst, popped the top and took a chug down. “Kee-rist, I don’t know. But that jock-strapped pretty boy has my baby. And I mean to get her back any way I can. She belongs to me.”
3
“Son of a bitch!” Griff said. He had kicked the tire six or seven times as if he could bring it back to life.
“You really don’t have a spare?” Bronwyn whispered to Josh, pressing her lips so close that he could feel her heat on top of the heat of the day.
Josh looked out over the highway. It was not the route they were supposed to take. Nothing but scrub and dust and a long barbed-wire fence that made him think somebody actually owned this corner of hell. Sweat trickled down his back, and he felt a mushiness of sweat around his balls, and he wished he had a nice motel room with a long cool shower.
Ziggy was already toking out on a big rock above the highway. “Hey, I see somebody coming!”
“Yeah?” Tammy shouted back.
“A trucker! We’re gonna get a lift. I know we are!” He shot his arm out, pointing to the west. “There’s something way over there, man! It looks like a gas station. All we have to do is get the trucker to give us a ride, and we’re set.”
“Thank God,” Bronwyn said, lifting a cigarette in the air like she was flipping the bird. “This is my last smoke.”
4
The truck was a big-ass Kenmore, and the guy slowed down, pulling on his horn. Tammy was out in the middle of the highway, jumping up and down. It was her tits that did it—that’s what everyone felt without having to say a word about it. Someday, they’d build a memorial to her boobs. They were bouncing like basketballs, and no trucker in his right mind wouldn’t have come to a stop just to see whether it was a mirage or a real live woman of twenty with humongous breasts.
“Men never cease to live down to my expectations,” Bronwyn said, shaking her head. She dropped the last of her cigarette in the dust. She stubbed at it with her toe, then shivered a little as if she were cold.
“You okay?” Josh asked.
“Just that feeling. You know—the one where they say a goose walked over your grave. Like something’s wrong.” Then she laughed. “Maybe I just need another cigarette.”
5
Bronwyn had to scrunch up next to the trucker, but she didn’t mind. He was a rugged, rode-hard kind of guy with a face that must’ve been pretty at one time, but turned into baked granite from the sun, with crack lines along his smile and around his eyes.
“Best I can do is dump you two up ahead. There’s a place about two miles up.”
“That’d be great,” Josh said.
“It was nice of you to stop,” Bronwyn said, then leaned a bit against his shoulder. He smelled like axle grease, but there was something comforting about it.
“I drive this highway eight times a week, back and forth. There ain’t much here.” He introduced himself: Ely. He told them about his life, which was mainly the road and a little shack out in a town called Naga, not too far away. You knew you had reached his place because a paved road ended where a dirt road shot off to the west, and you could see a silvery glimmer—from all the hubcaps hanging on the front fence and you could hear the music he blasted from his workshop out back. “Mainly ZZ Top. Mainly. Sometimes I get into the mood for Boston. But mainly ZZ.”
“That’s quite a life,” Josh said.
“Ha,” Ely spat back. “I bet you kids are rich and are on spring break and just tooling around because you got nothin’ else to do.”
“I think that pretty much sums it up, except we really don’t have money,” Bronwyn said. Glancing sidelong at Josh, cigarette hanging from her lips, “Don’t you think?”
“Abso,” he said.
“Abso?” Ely laughed when he heard the word.
“That’s frat-boy talk for absolutely.”
“Ha. Well, you get out here, kiddies, and life smacks you like you’re the bug and it’s the windshield. Ass first, and you got about two seconds to dodge.”
“So what’s this town like? Nada?”
“Naga. It’s a little town. You’d hate it, rich boy,” Ely said. “Jesus H, why even talk to you about it? You’ll never go there. Look,” Ely said, pointing toward a rise to the left—a long flat corrugated metal roof canopied gas pumps that looked like they were out of the 1920s. Behind it, a long rectangular building with a curved metal roof and three big signs with various versions of: SEE THE ATTRACTION! DON’T GO HOME WITHOUT SEEING THE ATTRACTION! THE UNSPEAKABLE UNKNOWABLE MYSTERY! IT’S THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE WORLD AND THE SECOND WONDER OF THE NEW WORLD! 75 CENTS ADMISSION! BUY INDIAN BLANKETS! GET COFFEE! GAS IS CHEAP! COFFEE’S CHEAPER!
“Wow. It’s where I wanted to go,” Bronwyn said. “It’s the Unspeakable Mystery place.”
“They sound a little desperate,” Josh said.
“I usually never stop here,” Ely said.
“Why’s that?” Josh asked.
“That thing they got. That attraction. Gives me the creeps.”
Ely slowed the truck, and it groaned and rattled a bit. He turned the wheel to the left, crossing the empty highway, then turned the wheel to the right, taking the truck onto the gravel service road.
6
When he dropped them off near the pumps, Ely said, “Now, if you ever get lost out here, find your way over to Naga, and look for end of the paved road and the silvery light from the hubcaps in the sun and ZZ Top blasting from the back. You’re welcome to see my place and check out Naga. It’s a cool town, but probably not as sophisticated as you two. You kids be careful on the road. Lots of nuts out there.”
7
The Brakedown Palace and Sundries was the biggest thing for miles—mainly because there was nothing around it. Bronwyn went in to buy some more cigarettes, and Josh went around by the garage bays to look for the boss.
A big man, the size of a bear and with a growl not far from one, rose out of a grease pit in the back. He had sun-baked copper skin that had begun to go from tan to alligator hide. “Whatja want?”
“Our car’s got a flat. Just back a little ways. Down the road.”
The man’s eyes were almost like fish-eyes, nearly perfectly round. A nose like a hammer and big lips that held an unlit cigarette between them. He wore a black bandanna tied around his head, and an enormous white T-shirt clung tight to his barrel-chest and potbelly. His hips were wide, and his stained jeans looked like they were homemade. On his feet, boots with steel tips at the toes. He was exactly what Bronwyn would call “a real character.”
“Hell, kid, I’m busy. You need a tow? It’ll be twenty minutes at best.”
“Okay,” Josh said.
“Fifty bucks.”
“Fifty? It’s just a couple miles away. Fifty bucks?”
“Take it or leave it.”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know. Fifty? Doesn’t that seem a little absurd?”
The man shrugged, and then wiped some grease-sweat off his brow. “There’s another gas station, twenty-five miles up. You want to go there, I ain’t stoppin’ you.”
8
After a discussion with Bronwyn, the fee was paid, the tow truck went out, and soon enough, Tammy, Griff, and Ziggy showed up, looking as if they had been drained of all energy, with the car hooked like a mackerel to the back of the truck.
The big guy was named Charlie Goodrow, and after introducing himself around, he told them that they could each have a Coke on him.
“Fifty bucks worth of Coke,” Josh said.
The sun was moving westward too fast, and someone finally asked Goodrow how long it might take for the tire change. Charlie Goodrow laughed and said, “Go wander the shop. I’ll have it down in twenty minutes. Or less. I’ll check your brakes, too. Free of charge.”
“Fifty bucks worth of checking brakes,” Josh said, only barely under his breath.
“I want to go see the Great Unspeakable Mystery,” Bronwyn said. “It’s less than a buck and you enter in the back of the store.”
9
All of them went into the Sundries Shop for the free Cokes. Tammy wanted to look at the cheap jewelry they had near the Indian blankets. Bronwyn grabbed Griff by the elbow, and tugged him toward the back of the shop. There was a narrow door there, and it had a sign that read, For the CHEAP ADMISSION PRICE of just 75 CENTS! See the Eighth Wonder of the World! The Mystery of the Southwest! The Aztec Demon Known as Xipe Totec! Found many miles south of here, smuggled up by an outlaw who believed it contained treasures! SEE THE UNSPEAKABLE SAVAGE MYSTERY OF THE ANCIENT PRE-COLUMBIAN WORLD!
“Come on,” Bronwyn said, pulling on his arm. Griff pulled away.
“I’m waiting for Tammy.”
“Josh?” Bron let go of Griff, and stomped over to where Josh stood near the glass refrigerator, sipping his Coke.
“Okay, but we’re not paying,” Josh said. “We’ve already blown tonight’s motel room budget on the car. I don’t intend to make Charlie Goodrow a little richer.”
10
Griff and Tammy followed them, and Ziggy showed up soon after, slurping his Coke through a straw. There was a little box for the quarters, but none of them put any in, and since it was honor system, they snuck through the entry feeling like delinquents. Josh didn’t, though. He felt damn good when he went in there and said, “Fifty bucks worth of the Unspeakable Mystery of the Universe.”
The corridor was dark, but with fine spears of light that came through at the roof’s edge. They’d left the rectangular building of the Brakedown Palace and Sundries, and had entered on a concrete floor, down a walkway with corrugated metal walls and what seemed to be a curved roof.
“It’s a Quonset hut,” Josh said. “They had them on the sub base when I was a kid.”
“Navy brat,” Tammy said, in a way that was so sexy it nearly turned Josh on to hear her voice. She purred like a kitten sometimes.
The spears of light became brighter. Bulbs had been strung along the roof, hanging down like clunky Christmas ornaments. The wiring above their heads was exposed as the lights brightened.
“Jeez,” Ziggy said. “This is like some freak show.”
He pointed to the metal walls. Small dried animals hung by strings—lizards, rats, rabbits, quail.
“That’s sick.”
“It’s just trash you find on the desert,” Griff said. “Dried-up crap and dead animals.”
As they ventured forward, they entered a well-lit space that had a poorly made wood and stone sculpture. “The ancient Aztecs were a fierce, bloodthirsty people,” Bronwyn read from the sign above the sculpture. “Jesus, some moron wrote this up. Ignorant desert scum.” She glanced at the diorama. “Oh my God, look,” she said with a voice that seemed filled with childish wonder yet still held the possibility of being disgusted. “They’re little Aztecs, sacrificing someone. How adorable. And repulsive.”
Josh crouched down and glanced over the divider that kept the diorama and sculpture protected from tourists. “That’s funky.” It was a replica of a Mexican pyramid, about knee high, and at the flat top, a little stone-carved man was cutting open another little stone-carved man. On the wall, beyond this, a cheap plastic replica of a Mayan calendar. “Someone’s obsessed with Aztecs and Mayans here.”
“Some redneck who doesn’t know his history well enough,” Bronwyn said.
“It’s like a dollhouse of death,” Tammy said, a sweet edge to her voice.
“You’re my doll,” Griff said, pulling her tightly into him, and somehow managing to unbutton the top two buttons of her blouse at the same time.
They moved on, down the long corridor that went alternately dark and then light again as various kinds of bulbs and lamps lit sections, highlighting pictures that had obviously been torn from a book on the Aztecs. There was a scene of blood running from a warrior’s chest, a look of horror on his face, as several priests stood around him, with one raising his still-beating heart high. Other large pictures included a poorly done painting of what appeared to be a tomb with stone jaguars and scorpions and what Josh guessed was the Aztec god, Quetzalcoatl. A crystal skull hung suspended above their heads. They all giggled and snorted or just laughed out loud as they passed through a spotlighted area with a tall wooden sculpture of a naked woman. The sign behind the sculpture read, This work of art was found behind the arroyo and is believed to have been carved by the Ancients.
Finally, a new doorway, and over it, the sign, It’s not too late to turn back! You don’t want to see the Unspeakable Mystery! The Ancient Savage Flayer of Men! The Flesh-Scraper of the Pyramids of Teotihuacán!
Josh was the first one through the door, and what he saw there made him cry out.