Stay Vertical (6 page)

I stepped up to Lytton and laid a calming hand on his upper arm. He looked down at me as though I was a piece of already-chewed gum. I was arrogant enough to think that maybe I could help, having mediated many a tense situation or argument in Africa. Those things usually involved a dead goat or a calabash, but some of those arguments got pretty heated, too. Africans had Uzis.

I said, “Lytton, why don’t we get to the bottom of this in a calm manner? Ford isn’t someone you want to piss off. Maddy here’s a nurse, but I don’t think she has her doctor bag with her.”

That
did
seem to calm Lytton down. At least, instead of whaling on me, his nostrils flared, and he asked, “And who the fuck are you?”

That was a start.

LYTTON

L
ytton had gone down to Fort Apache personally to confront Kino Driving Hawk, the guy he’d imagined was his father for the first twenty-five years of his life.

Kino was manning the cash register at the Apache Office of Tourism inside General Crook’s stupid-ass cabin. It had always irritated Lytton that even an upstanding member of the community like Kino had to hawk dream catchers for a living. There was really nothing else for anyone to do, besides work at the casino. It had never irritated him more than now, as he shoved aside some Birkenstock-wearing hippie to gain access to Kino behind the counter.

“Listen.” Lytton was on a slow boil now. He had ridden his Harley for almost four hours through Snowflake and Show Low, and never had the scenery seemed more monotonous. “We’re having a talk.
Now.
”

Polite and measured as always, Kino had gotten some ranger-type chick to man the counter for him, and they went into his back office. Lytton had had many long hours to plan what he was going to say to Kino. The words came out as though in an Oscar-winning movie when he stated flatly,

“Why didn’t you tell me Cropper Illuminati was my father?”

Lytton instantly saw in Kino’s face that it was true. His face fell like a soufflé and he couldn’t meet his stepson’s eyes. He diddled his thumbs that were laced together on top of his belt buckle—sterling silver encrusted with turquoise of course, the badge of the blanket-asses who derided yet made money off whites.

Now Lytton had to take a chair too, having seen Kino’s confirmation. “So it’s fucking true. Cropper fucking Illuminati fucked my mother. It was no fucking gangbang. Why the fuck did she make that up?” It was easier to ask Kino than it was to get a straight answer out of Sadie. She had been languishing in a rundown alcohol treatment center with degenerative dementia since Lytton had graduated from MIT.

Kino finally looked at him. “Language, son.”

Language! Language, my ass!
“Why did she lie, Kino? And why did you fucking cover up for her?”

Kino sighed deeply. Lytton could tell he was getting ready for a long, lecturing harangue. “Son, thirty years ago was a different time. Our tribe has come a long way since the days—”

Lytton slammed a fist against the metal desktop. “
Tell me, Kino!
Fucking
tell
me why my mother lied about some fucking rape that never happened!”

There was genuine fear in Kino’s face now. Lytton had always been a problem child, though not any worse than any other boy on the res. Yet he probably hadn’t struck any real fear into anyone’s heart until that day five years ago when he’d discovered Kino wasn’t his father. Lytton and Sadie had lived in Kino’s house, for fuck’s sake. Kino had bought him a bicycle, had helped him purchase his first motorcycle, had walked him through all the ins and outs of applying for scholarships. But there had never, ever been fear in Kino’s eyes until Lytton had gone off the rails five years ago.

And now. Kino rolled his chair closer to the desk, using it as a sort of breastwork in case Lytton should explode. He clutched the edge of the desk. “Son. It was a lot easier to claim it was an entire biker gang than it would be to admit she willingly slept with a hoodlum!”

Now Lytton was aghast.
Easier?
“Easier for fucking
who
, Kino? Easier for her fucking
image
, her fucking pristine reputation? Her fucking blackout, apple ass? She’s afraid anyone might know she gave some good loving to a North American?”

“
Not
to a North American!” Kino spat. Now fire was in his eyes, and he sat erect. “
Not
because she slept with a pilgrim! Because she slept with a
biker
!”

What the fuck?
For the tenth time in an hour, Lytton was completely thrown for a loop. So it wasn’t even shame at having fucked a “non” that made Sadie concoct this elaborate lie—it was the fact that he rode a
motorcycle
? “What the fuck, Kino? So just to get out of telling me she willingly fucked some motorcycle club guy, she
lies
that she doesn’t know who my real dad is? This is some seriously fucked-up shit. I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe this.”

Lurching to his feet, Lytton paced the small office. He was beyond incredulous. He had just discovered that his birth father was much more like him than Kino ever was. Lytton rode a Harley. Lytton acted out. Lytton liked to be top dog. Lytton got into a lot of fights.

“Son, you have to understand. The times were different. We didn’t want you to start idolizing Cropper Illuminati, to think that his lifestyle was glamorous, to start following that way of life like his other children did. We wanted you to focus on your Apache roots.”

“Fuck
my Apache roots!” There were a hundred times Lytton would live to regret these words, but now he loathed his Apache roots more than anything. Those fucking roots had brought him nothing but poverty, self-hatred, and now shame he hadn’t even known he had. “I’m only a fucking Tomahonky anyway, a fucking half-breed, and you want me to focus on my Apache roots? You know what? You and Sadie can just go fuck off and die.”

And Lytton had stormed proudly out, knocking aside a dummy wearing a US cavalry uniform. Without thinking, he snatched a bugle off a display stand and angrily blew on it as he stomped to his ride.

It actually helped him to work off some steam, and he wound up blasting a sort of lopsided, ironic, and supremely pissed-off reveille as he straddled his saddle. All sorts of nons wearing shorts and Ray-Bans and carrying Whole Foods canvas bags gaped at him as though he were performing some battle reenactment. The ones that wore the tribal design sweaters had figured out they were one-sixty-fourth Apache. They eagerly tried to highlight that by playing lacrosse and talking about “using every part of the animal.”

Well, fuck that. Lytton thrashed it down the state highway, chucking the bugle with all his might. It clanged with a satisfying crash against a boulder, leaving all the tourists to wonder when General Crook would lead the charge.

Lytton had ample time to work up a new head of steam as he rode north toward Pure and Easy. He had seen Cropper Illuminati a few times around town while buying groceries and shit like that. He had a tendency to look favorably upon the guy. Once Lytton had established the Leaves of Grass on Kino’s property, he had had nothing but hassles with The Cutlasses. But not once had any member of The Bare Bones tried to trespass on his farm or in any way harass him like The Cutlasses had.

And of course he’d seen the Illuminati Trucking equipment around town, working on highway jobs, shoring up cave-ins from flash floods, fixing overpasses. He had even paused in front of The Bum Steer Bar and Grill to admire Ford Illuminati’s ’98 Harley Softail. He had respected their tough, supreme, and arrogant lifestyle. The Bare Bones always had much better sweetbutts than The Cutlasses did. The Cutlass sweetbutts all looked strung-out, with scabby faces and pencil-thin eyebrows. The Bare Bones club whores at least looked somewhat fresh, as though they had all of their real teeth. It was as if they’d all banded together and decided to stick with the studs of The Bare Bones because they were treated better over there.

Or that’s what Lytton had assumed. It had even crossed his mind to patch in to a club like The Bare Bones, but you couldn’t just buy your patch in an outlaw club like that. You had to earn it, which meant “prospecting” for a year at least, doing the grunt work every fully patched member threw at you.
No thanks
. Lytton considered himself instead a nomad. He wore a leather jacket when it was cold, but of course no cut or rocker. He didn’t even wear boots, preferring the Nikes because he could feel the vibrations of the bike through the soles.

It had even occurred to Lytton that it might be a secure, brotherly feeling being a member of a club like The Bare Bones. Despite Kino’s best efforts at bringing him into the tribal fold, Lytton had grown up not feeling a part of something greater than himself. Lytton had an atheistic, every-man for-himself outlook on life that he pretended to enjoy. But often, when he got bitterly honest with himself after a bondage scene or other, he had to admit that it would be good to feel a sense of
belonging
, a sense of place.
No wonder I never felt I belonged. The whole time I had no idea I was a half-breed.

He had even gone inside The Bum Steer once under the guise of wanting a burger. To be brutally honest, he was curious how those bikers interacted. The bartender was like Tom Cruise on meth, flipping bottles underneath his legs until he smashed a fifth of rum on the tiles. But he was having a good time doing it. It was a rowdy, loud place, as could be expected, carpeted with discarded peanut shells, resonating with shouts, camaraderie, and the Allman Brothers.

Lytton liked the Allman Brothers. Now he came to find out he actually
had
been a part of this brotherhood the entire fucking time.

The Bare Bones lifestyle seemed so flamboyant, colorful, and dangerous. Lytton knew they also owned the Triple Exposure, the live sex streaming soundstage in the industrial part of P & E, as well as at least two brothels. Then, most interestingly, when Proposition 203 had made it legal to get baked, The Bare Bones had opened up their own dispensary, A Joint Effort, probably as a front for money laundering. Lytton had stopped on in a few times out of professional curiosity, talking to a soft-spoken guy about his growth cycles and color coding. Still, The Bare Bones farms weren’t as organic as the Leaves of Grass.

But by the time Lytton arrived on Mescal Mesa, he was steaming again. Cropper, long may he live, and his motherfucking golden boy son Ford had cut him out of all this glory and splendor. Ford’s mother was another Apache woman, also of the White Mountain tribe—apparently Cropper liked the squaws. How did that equate to Ford being handed the keys to the limo while Lytton grew up thinking that fortified wine meant it was infused with vitamins? Thunderbird bum wine had been on so many tables in Whiteriver, Lytton had thought it was a locally-sourced drink.

No, once Ford Illuminati admitted that he knew Lytton was his brother, Lytton was going to demand an active share in some of the family business. He didn’t know much about construction, so he’d demand to run the weed dispensary. That made sense. He didn’t need the income—it was more about demanding his rightful place in the family hierarchy.

But now Ford the Golden Boy, hiding behind two stunningly model-like sweetbutts, was refusing to even acknowledge Lytton’s existence.

One of the chicks tried to calm him down. “And who the fuck are you?” Lytton railed. True, her presence, her touch on his arm, had something of an angelic influence on him. It
did
calm him to look down on this seemingly innocent sweetbutt with the giant button eyes, like those paintings of those mournful, large-eyed kids. Bangs framed her brows as though someone had put a bowl over her head, giving her an even more innocent, childish look. Something in her reached out to Lytton, and he didn’t tear her head off. Plus, she had amazing, bouncy knockers.

Instead, he just yelled, “Who the fuck are you?”

She splayed her hands on her chest and said earnestly, “I’m June Shellmound, Ford’s sister-in-law.”

Aha
. It was making more sense now. The other sweetbutt, Maddy, must be Ford’s old lady. Lytton’s sharp eye caught that both were wearing wedding rings. Asshole had actually manned up and at least attempted to make someone an honest woman. He saw June was
not
wearing a ring, and for some reason, this comforted him. He focused his anger back onto Ford, pointing at him.

“None of this changes the fucking fact that all these years you let me rot on the res while you reaped the benefits of being an Illuminati. Well, the buck stops here, motherfucker. You might be a fucking Navy SEAL and one of the ‘Filthy Few,’ but Cropper is my father just as much as he’s your father and I want a piece of the action.”

Ford held up his hands. “Wait just one second, motherfucker.” The menacing thugs who had tried to keep him out of the hallway now loomed over his shoulder. He could
feel
their menace as they practically breathed down his neck. The giant craggy beaner, Tuzigoot, looked like he could pop your eyeballs with one squeeze of his fist around your neck. Another guy with a high-and-tight haircut seemed to have every inch of his body inked with the most bloody, tragic scenes from the Bible. “How do I even know you’re Cropper’s son? What suddenly made you come jamming over here thirty years after your first birthday, sobbing that you want a piece of some pie?”