Savages (16 page)

On the shooting range you create a neat, tiny hole in a piece of paper—the crisp entry but not the sloppy exit wound—and it’s deeply satisfying. Anyway, Chon likes firearms, they are the

tools

of his trade.

(The distinction, anthropologically speaking, between a “tool” and a “weapon” is that the former is used on inanimate objects and the latter on animate objects, if you can get with the concept of animate “objects.”)

Not so much Ben, who has been taught to loathe guns

And gun owners.

Who were, in his liberal home, the object of derision. Atavistic redneck goobers and right-wing crazies. His parents would shake their heads and chuckle sadly at the old bumper sticker
You’ll take my gun when you pry it out of my cold dead hands.
How sad, how sad, how backward.
Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
(Guns do kill people, Chon says—that’s what they’re fucking for.) Yes, people with guns, Ben’s father would opine.

Anyway, Ben is nonviolent by nature.

“Impossible,” Chon argued with him one time. “We’re violent by nature, nonviolent by training.”

“Other way around,” Ben countered. “We’re socially conditioned to be violent.”

“Look at chimps.”

“What about them?”

“We share ninety-seven percent of our DNA with chimps,” Chon said, “and they’re violent little fuckers who kill each other. You can’t tell me they’re socially conditioned to do that.”

“Are you saying we’re chimps?”

“Are you saying we’re
not
?”

Of course we’re chimps.

We’re chimpanzees with guns.

Chon recalls some old saw about if you leave enough chimps in a room with enough typewriters eventually they’ll bang out
Romeo and Juliet
and wonders if the same theory holds true for guns. If you left enough chimps in a room with enough MAC-10s, would they eventually all shoot each other?

All you’d really need is that one forward-looking chimp. That one sociopathic Cheetah with enough curiosity, brains, and inner rage to point the gun and pull the trigger and then it’s
on
, man. Monkey see, monkey do—lead and pieces of Bonzo would be bouncing off those walls until the last chimp left standing (as it were) was mortally wounded.

Chon wonders if God (assuming a fact not in evidence) ever wondered, Hmmmm, if you leave enough humans on a planet with the atom, would they … Of course we fucking would, Chon knows, of course we fucking
will
, we fly airplanes into buildings intentionally, in the name of God. (Well, not in the name of “God,” exactly, but …)

Anyway anyway, be that as it may.

Chon takes Ben to the firing range.

Which is filled today as usual with police types, military types, and women, a few of whom are police or military types.

OC women love shooting those guns, man. Maybe Freud was right, whatever, but they’re in there with their earrings (off for the headsets) and jewelry and makeup and perfume blasting away at potential burglars, home invaders, rapists, and actual (okay, not actual) husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, lovers, fathers, stepfathers, male bosses, male employees who give them shit …

It’s a truth-worn joke that women at firing ranges aim not for the head but the groin, that they’re shooting not for the bull’s eye but for the snake’s eye until the instructors just give up and teach them to aim at the knees because that pistol is going to throw high so they’ll catch boyfriend/hubby/daddy/ex-boyfriend/ex-hubby square in the junk.

Take O, for instance.

Chon took her to the range one day for giggles and shits.

The girl could shoot.

A natural.

(We mentioned that O likes power tools, right?)

She squeezed off six shots—two at a time, like Chon told her—and smacked each of them into fatal spots on the target. Lowered the pistol and said, “I think I came a little.”

Now Chon hands Ben a pistol.

“Just point and shoot,” Chon tells him. “Don’t overthink it.”

Because Ben overanalyzes everything. Chon is surprised the boy can piss without succumbing to mental paralysis. (Would it be better to take my dick out with my right hand or my left hand? Would the choice of left hand have a subconscious connection to concepts of “sinister,” as opposed to my right hand feeling “dexterous,” and why is urine running down my leg?)

And truly, Ben is looking at the target silhouette and wondering if there are African-American shooting ranges where the target is a white figure on a field of black, a menacing KKKer coming out of the Mississippi night. Probably not. Not in the OC (which zealously guards its Second Amendment rights), anyway, where they should just put a sombrero on the targets and get it over with.

Take that, Pancho. And that, and that.

Ben hates this, how totally out of place he feels in this very weird, neofascist sandbox, looking at the black, albeit deracialized, silhouette figure staring menacingly at him as Chon is saying something about—

“Point and shoot twice.”

“Twice.”

Chon nods. “Your hand-eye coordination automatically corrects for the second shot.”

“What should I aim at?” he asks Chon.

“Just hit the damn thing,” Chon answers. At the range they’re probably thinking about, it won’t matter, and anyway, hydrostatic shock is going to do the job. The bullet hits, creating a wall of blood that hits the heart like a tsunami wave—side out.

Ben points and shoots.

Twice.

Bam bam.

Misses the whole silhouette.

Twice.

So much for self-correction.

“You’re going to have to get better at this,” Chon says.

Recalling what his SEAL instructors said:

The more sweat on the training ground …

. . . the less blood on the battleground.

Well, O thinks

I got my own reality show, anyway

She looks up at the mounted video camera, high on the wall, that monitors her twenty-four seven.

The episode descriptions on the MTV website:

O gets DPed

O gets kidnapped

O is threatened with decapitation (or maybe O meets Jason)

O in captivity

Hostage O

Pretty much the first season.

Then set up the season-ending cliffhanger—

Will O survive or will O

Be eliminated?

Esteban is intrigued by the girl.

Of course he is, are you kidding?

Anglo chick,
guera, guapa
, and those tattoos running down her arm? A mermaid and shit? And those blue eyes?

She’s a
bruja
, a witch, an enchantress.

No, don’t get it wrong, Esteban isn’t in love with her. Would his dick like to get up that? Sure—dicks have minds of their own. But he’s in love with Lourdes, faithful to her and her swollen belly.

But he can’t see her.

He can call her, but now Lado has him down here, taking care of the
guera
hostage. Bringing her meals, guarding her, making sure she don’t get away. Lado, he was going to
cut this girl’s head off;
Esteban is sure glad
that
didn’t happen.

Doesn’t know how he’d deal with that, he’s still trying to get that other thing out of his head, the thing with that lawyer, squirming on the floor, begging, crying. Esteban can still see his own hand pulling the trigger, that lawyer’s brains and hair blowing out the backside—he still wants to cry every time he thinks about that, which is a lot.

So he sure hopes Lado don’t want him to do something to this girl.

She seems nice.

Loca
, but nice.

Elena is somewhat intrigued by O herself.

Sometimes she sits at the computer and tunes in to the camera and watches her.

The girl has such a distinct, if odd, sense of style. Very personal, much too brave, the tattoo is bizarre but you have to admire the courage, the independence.

Elena truly hopes that she won’t have to kill her.

Option one is Play and Obey, so—

Ben’s first meeting with his new employers takes place in a room at the Surf & Sand, pricey but still cheaper than the Montage.

Alex and Jaime arrive accompanied by napalm.

That is, the smell of victory.

Smug, cloying, sickly, and obnoxious.

They come with something else: a middle-age Mexican they don’t introduce by name but instead as the Man, the BC’s CEO in the OC.

Ben is sorry Chon isn’t there because he would fucking love that.

The BCCEOOC doesn’t say anything, just looks at Ben as A&J explain that everything they are about to tell him comes directly from the BCCEOOC, who has a pair of the coldest eyes that Ben has ever seen outside a hostage video.

Specifically the one starring O.

And this guy, whom Ben recognizes as Mr. Chain Saw.

It is explained to Ben that:

He will give them the locations of his grow houses and

Inform them, through Alex, of when a crop is ready, at which time

The BC will send a crew to pick it up, with

The agreed-upon payment and in the meantime

Ben should start contacting his customers to acquaint them with the changes and make sure that they comply with the new order of things and

If Ben has any problems he should contact

Alex or Jaime, but it is sincerely hoped that Ben will
not
have any problems nor hopefully will the

BC have any problems with Ben, but if they do he will be contacted by Jaime or Alex and the problem will be quickly resolved or

He will see Mr. Chain Saw again, who
will
resolve the problem, by killing O.

Does Ben understand?

Ben does: Ben is to be the object of prison love, repeatedly, for three years or twenty million dollars. He gives them the location of a grow house with a harvest due date two days away.

This should give him time to plan.

A three-year sentence

O contemplates

Unless her boys come up with the Monet.

(O flunked Art History twice, partially because of her inability to distinguish Monet from Manet, partially because of her inability to get to class.) She does know money from Monet, though, enough to know that twenty mil is a lot of either, and while the boys wouldn’t hesitate to fork it over if they have it, she doesn’t think they have it.

Yet.

So she’s going to do some time.

For a brief but interesting period in her young life, O had a thing for Women’s Prison Movies. She and Ash used to sit up and watch old videos.
Chained Heat, Canned Heat, Chained Canned Heat.
Anyway, there was always some young chick who got thrown in with a bunch of hard-core dykes, a rapacious male or female warden, and a kinder, older mother-figure prisoner and O and Ash got off on the soft-core lesbian porn. Their favorite thing to do was turn the sound off and make up the dialogue themselves.

So she thinks she knows a little about doing time.

At least they took the blindfold off. Put her in a room with a bed, a chair, an attached bathroom with a toilet, sink, and shower. There’s a window, but they taped over it so she can’t look outside and take a guess as to where the fuck she is.

And, of course, the one door is locked from the outside.

Three times a day this sweet, shy Mexican kid comes in with a meal on a tray. O has asked, but the kid won’t tell her his name.

Breakfast is always a roll with butter and strawberry jam.

Lunch is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Dinner is a microwave whatever.

This isn’t going to work.

Not for three freaking years if it comes to that.

For one thing, the video replay is driving her nuts.

Two, when that isn’t playing she’s bored out of her skull.

So …

She starts taking her head out for little walks.

Later that night

Ben and Chon sit in the office on Brooks Street watching Jeff and Craig do-do the computer voodoo.

Jeff, clad in board trunks and a T-shirt, leans back in his chair with the lappie on his, uhhh, lap, and his bare feet up on the desk. He sucks on a joint and looks at the screen, while Craig, on the headset, talks Dennis through it.

Craig is dressed formally for the occasion—jeans, tennis shoes, a shirt with sleeves. He puts his hand over the mike, smiles, and says, “Your boy is nervous.”

“Can you break through the DEA firewall?” Ben asks.

Craig rolls his eyes. Jeff smiles and says, “We know the guys who wrote the software. Nice dudes, but …”

“Got him,” Craig says.

He spins his chair so Ben can see the screen.

“Easy squeezy now,” Craig says into the mike. “I’m looking at what you’re looking at.”

He starts speaking geek—combos of numbers and letters, “alt” this, “enter” that. Every once in a while he breaks into an Indian accent because he thinks it’s funny. (“Just trying to dial down the vibe.”) It isn’t. About twenty minutes later Craig says into the phone, “Okay, hit the button and you give me the joystick.”

Dennis does.

“It’s Amazon now,” Jeff says to Ben. “Happy shopping.”

O creates a new persona for herself.

Tragic heroine.

As opposed to tragically hip heroin girlfriend, a previous fantasy involving Chon’s nonexistent addiction.

It’s nice to move to center stage, though, or center scaffold, as long as it doesn’t actually happen, instead of being the supportive woman you’ve seen in a few thousand movies and TV shows.

So she models herself on Famous Women Who Have Been Beheaded, or more accurately, Women Who Are Famous for Being Beheaded because, like, none of these babies would have gotten a mention except for their spectacular exit scenes.

O consults history for this.

Which is a task because she’s never really read any. All O’s background study for this role comes from movies and TV, of which she’s seen a lot a lot.