In Tents

  In Tents

  Andy Kaiser

  In Tents

  Copyright © 2019 Andy Kaiser

  www.andykaiser.com

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission from the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products, bands, and/or restaurants referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Cover art by: www.brosedesignz.com

  Table of Contents

  Front Matter

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  About the Author

  This book is dedicated to the weekly writers group: You know who you are, you know what you've done, and I appreciate it.

  Chapter 1

  “Is that a man? I can’t tell.”

  The kid’s voice echoed down the dark, curving hallway. He couldn’t see us yet, but we were backlit, so he could see our shadows expanding on the curve of the passageway in front of him. We had seconds left. I glanced to my side and nodded at Dottie.

  “You ready?”

  “Sure.” She shifted her stance to lean against me and put an arm around my waist. I tried to ignore the feel of her skin on mine and concentrated on tightening the bow and quiver of arrows on my back.

  “I hate this job,” I said.

  “Just think of your new phone.”

  “Right. Only a million more payments on it. Then I’m outta here.”

  I stood tall and stuck out my bare chest. I put an arm around Dottie’s shoulder and flexed, protecting my pretend wife from the pretend nighttime terrors in a pretend ancient Puebloan culture.

  Two kids wandered around the curve of the hallway. A boy barely in his teens and a girl in her mid-single digits, they looked like brother and sister. After seeing our shadows, they jumped when they saw us for real. They walked closer to examine us.

  “Oh! It’s a man,” the girl said.

  “That one’s a man.” The boy, clearly the smart one, pointed at me. He looked at Dottie. “She’s not.”

  “Her boobs are sticking out—”

  “Welcome to Weeko’s Cave!” I said. “We are a living display and your window to Native American culture. Living in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, some Navajo tribes lived in caves just like this one, made of rock carved from a sandstone cliffside. Over a thousand years ago, these people . . .”

  “Jason!” the little girl called. She had crouched down and was staring at a black spot on the ground. “I found a beetle! Do you think it’s poisonous?”

  Jason wasn’t paying attention. His stare was focused on Dottie’s chest. Given the ratio of Dottie’s breast size to the fit of her handmade Native American bra-free clothes, this stare was not uncommon. I was sure Weeko did it on purpose as a tease for a peep show that would never happen. Anything to keep the visitors interested.

  Dottie gave a deep, exasperated sigh, which caused Jason’s eyes to widen. Time to get this conversation back to the script. I nodded to her.

  “Look out!” she said, pointing back to where the kids had come from. In a well-practiced fluid motion, I unslung the bow strapped on my back, pulled an arrow from the quiver, and notched it on the bowstring. I drew back the arrow and sighted down the cave.

  “What is it?” I said, pitching my voice in slight panic. “A dangerous animal of the night? A mountain lion? A wolf or rattlesnake?”

  “I don’t like snakes,” the girl said. Still crouched on the ground, she looked scared now.

  My excited tone had also snared Jason’s attention. He looked down the carved rock hallway to where my arrow pointed. The only thing boys liked more than sex was the promise of violence. Sometimes.

  “It’s okay, Nizhóní,” I said to the girl. “It’s my job to protect you and everyone in our Nation.”

  “He’s a great shot with bow and arrow,” Dottie said. “He never misses.”

  “That’s not my name,” the girl said. “My name’s Amelia.”

  “Nizhóní is a word in my language,” I said. “It means beautiful and good, not only on the outside, but on the inside, too.”

  “Oh!” Amelia said, and she smiled at us.

  I turned to Jason. He’d realized there were no fanged monstrosities about to attack from back down the cave, and his gaze was starting to shift back to Dottie. I could see him looking at her cleavage while trying to stay covert about it.

  Hormones could be denied for only so long. I had seconds to act and keep his attention. Leering visitors or no, Weeko insisted we always finish our reenactment speeches.

  “Carved flint arrowhead,” I said to Jason, waving the drawn bow to catch his attention. “Ash wood with animal sinew reinforcement. Plant fiber bowstring. Sixty-pound pull. This is a rapid-fire weapon that can take down an elk—or anything else I want to kill.”

  I turned to the side, and almost without looking, I fired the bow. The arrow whistled through the air before embedding itself deep into a stuffed black bear standing upright in the corner of the room. As usual, I’d hit the target perfectly—a small patch of stuffing and carpet scraps in the mangy animal’s gut that got replaced every few weeks.

  Amelia’s eyes got big when she realized she was in a room with a bear. Jason’s eyes had officially left my coworker’s barely covered breasts and he met my gaze. “Dude, that was awesome.”

  It felt good to show off, especially in front of Dottie. Both kids were entertained and Dottie’s modesty wasn’t compromised, at least no more than it was already.

  “Amelia! What are you doing on the ground? Don’t play in the dirt!”

  A man and a woman strode into the room. The woman, plump and sunburned on her shoulders and forehead, looked frazzled and sweaty and was hauling an oversized purse over one shoulder. The man was sunburned, too, with a beet-red scalp showing through wisps of thinning blond hair, and he was busy fiddling with a big camera hanging from a strap around his neck. The parents looked miserable, which wasn’t particularly surprising given the impact Arizona’s sun had on the unprepared. Weeko’s Cave wasn’t just a family-friendly tourist attraction. It was a brilliant trap: by the time you started to explore the place, you’d realize there was no air conditioning. You’d already paid the entrance fee and Weeko would act like he literally didn’t understand the word “refund.”

  This family with their news reporter accents and inexperience with sunlight was definitely from the Midwest, a place where sunshine was a rumor and winters actually had snow. Though “Weeko’s Cave” was literally a cave, it was probably eighty-something degrees in here, and these Yankees were sweltering. Luckily, Weeko had thought of that, too, since the gift shop here was always well-stocked with bottled water for roughly five times the cost you’d pay for it at Disney World.

  The woman g
rabbed Amelia’s arm and hauled her to her feet. Amelia squealed.

  “Ow! Mom, that hurts! I was watching the man kill the bear!”

  “What?” The mom’s head swung like a turret scanning for a target. She locked on to me. Her lips pressed tightly together, she examined me up and down. I knew what she saw.

  Dressed in my supposed traditional Native American regalia, I wore crude leather breeches, and on top was an open vest from which tassels swung with my every movement. My head was adorned with an elaborate headdress of bird feathers. Kids looked at me and—up to a certain age—they thought I looked really cool and intimidating, like a real Navajo epitomizing a thousand years of majesty and tragedy.

  Amelia’s mom probably guessed that I was a broke twenty-something who couldn’t get a real job, and instead I worked here, wearing a costume made from trash stolen from a thrift store. And she was right, except for the rows of uneven feathers glued into my headdress. Weeko had scavenged those from the bushes and scrublands surrounding our little town of Lago Springs.

  Dottie’s regalia was a dark leather that contrasted wonderfully with her milky white skin. The one-piece tunic was cut too high on her legs and the top was cut too low. Her outfit gave her no chance at comfort, support, or modesty. A small turquoise medallion dangled at the center of her neck. A black wig clamped over her blonde hair, and two long, thick braids hung down, one over each shoulder. If my clothes looked cheap, then Dottie’s straddled a line somewhere between slutty and racist. Usually it was the moms who would complain the most about Dottie. The dads and sons would nod in agreement, but their eyes said other things. Little girls like Amelia usually thought Dottie looked “like a princess.”

  “Come on,” the mom said with a withering glance at Dottie. “It’s so hot. I can’t breathe in here. At least the car has air.”

  “Just a sec,” the dad said, still fiddling with the camera. He lifted it up and examined the display. “I want to get a picture first. This is a really impressive scene. Indians and everything.”

  The woman rolled her eyes. Still gripping Amelia’s arm tight, she began to walk and said, “No, Richard, we’re leaving. Let’s go.”

  “No!” Amelia tried to pull away. Then she screamed as her mom tightened the grip on her arm.

  “Whoa,” I said. “It’s okay. You can stay. No rush!”

  “Oh, honey,” Dottie said, bending over Amelia. “Are you okay?”

  “You shut up!” the mom said to me. As Amelia began to wail, she shouted at Dottie. “And you! God, put some clothes on!” She swung her purse at Dottie.

  The swing caught Dottie unprepared, and she barely had time to raise her hands in deflection before taking the brunt of the massive purse across her face and chest. She stumbled to the side and I lunged to stop her from toppling over.

  I righted her back to vertical. “Jesus. You okay?”

  The dad’s camera began to click. He was busy snapping pictures of me and Dottie. Jason was staring at Dottie in amazement. I followed his eyeline. Dottie’s cheap costume had been yanked and torn along its cheaply made seams. Her entire breast was exposed, all white creamy skin and a perky nipple, even more traditional than Weeko had intended.

  Dottie quickly brought her hands up to cover herself while pulling the costume back to a semblance of modesty. But the dad was still snapping away, and I could tell from the way Jason was staring that this was his first real breast outside of the Internet.

  My vision tunneled and my eyes went hard.

  I stepped between Dottie and the dad still dicking around with his expensive camera. I swung at it. He was old and not paying attention and I was young and focused. I knocked the fancy camera out of his hands and it impacted the rock wall of the cave with an explosion of plastic, metal, and glass.

  “What the hell?!” he said.

  I shoved both hands into his chest and he stumbled back several feet. His wife screamed. The dark side of me reveled in this testosterone-filled bravado. The normal part of me cringed at the stupidity. Jason was looking at me with wide-open eyes and mouth, and Amelia was really crying now.

  “Dario!” Dottie screamed. “Stop!” She grabbed at me from behind and I shook her off to stalk toward the dad.

  He was recovering from my shove, looking down in shock at the remains of his camera, then realized I was in front of him. He saw my heavy breathing and the look on my face and he threw up both hands to defend himself from the right hook I was clearly winding up to throw.

  “Stop this!” A deep voice bellowed through the room, echoing through the cave with its intensity.

  Weeko stood in the hallway, his large frame taking up the entire passage, his arms extended to rest on each side of the cave wall. With his long jet-black hair, his dark bronzed skin with whipcord muscles, his presence grabbed our attention by the throat.

  The mom spun to face him. The dad’s expression changed from fear to confusion. Jason stared, and Amelia went silent in a moment of shock.

  Weeko didn’t waste any time. He strode into the room in two long steps and crouched in front of Amelia. He reached into a belt pouch and pulled out a feather, similar to those glued into my headdress, which was now lying forgotten on the floor. “This feather represents happiness and love. You take this present, little Nizhóní.”

  Amelia took the feather and stared at it reverently. She looked up at Weeko and smiled.

  “Now wait just a—” the mom started to say.

  “My camera!” The dad jabbed a finger in my direction. “He’s paying for that! How does someone like this even work here? What kind of place are you—”

  Both quieted as Weeko spread his two long arms in what seemed like an invitation to hug.

  “We are human. The spirit knows what is right. The heart makes mistakes. I fix this with you.” He looked at me and Dottie with what seemed like a casual glance, but his eyes were darker than I’d ever seen them. “Young Dario. Young Dottie. Take a break.”

  Dottie and I practically ran out of the room.

  ***

  Weeko took care of the sunburned family of four. At the mouth of the cave, I waited nervously next to our hand-painted sign:

  WEEKO’S CAVE

  Real Native American Artifacts and Reenactments!

  Clouds of red-brown dust blew from the spinning rear wheels of the family’s rental car, in which I assumed the air conditioning was cranking full blast. Weeko stayed motionless at the roadside, an impressive statue with one hand raised in a heartfelt farewell. I had no idea how he’d mollified them, but he had. After they were gone, he turned and strode back to the cave entrance. He stopped in front of me, and I swallowed.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  He didn’t answer but continued to appraise me for a moment. Then he pointed back to his office, a small walled-off section inside his cave where he had a desk and a few chairs. I felt his eyes burn into my back as we walked in together and sat. Weeko’s stare made me feel like I was in front of a firing squad and guns were now being raised.

  “Sorry,” I repeated. “I was mad that—”

  “Damn, dude!” Weeko said. “The hell was that about!? You trying to shut me down? You think they won’t be back, maybe with cops? I got a business here and you just destroyed that guy’s fancy-ass camera! I don’t know if the insurance will cover it. And if it doesn’t, then what do I do for that guy? Should I destroy your fancy-ass phone?”

  In his anger, he’d completely lost his pretend Navajo affectation. Actual Native Americans with any sense of awareness could see Weeko for what he was: just a really tanned white dude who scammed tourists. I put a hand protectively over my vest’s inside pocket, where my new phone rested. As of last week, it was the most expensive thing I’d bought in my life.

  “Both of them want me to fire you and I think they make a good point! I think that’s a damn fine idea.”

  I slunk low in the uncomfortable wooden chair. If I lost this job, I’d be in massive trouble. No one was hiring in Lago Springs.

/>   “I really want to fire you. I know I should. Adios to a big headache.”

  He stopped and considered me. He sighed.

  “Dude, I know you’re a good guy, but I don’t know what’s wrong with you sometimes. Really, what the hell?”

  “I just got out of control. It won’t happen again.” The dark, angry part of me listened to my words and laughed at the lie.

  The look Weeko shot back made it look like he knew it was a lie, too, but his next words were surprising. “It better not.”

  “Are you firing me?” I was scared to ask, but I had to know.

  “No.”

  “Man, thank you! I really appreciate this—”

  “Shut the hell up. This isn’t me being nice. It’s my business, kid. We got tourist season starting and I got nobody else to hire in this shitty town. Dottie can hardly talk to people, but you can. Tourist season keeps me out of debt.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m stuck with you. Until the next time you screw up. If this happens again—”

  “It won’t. And I’ll make it up to you.”

  I could tell he didn’t believe me. There had to be some way for me to apologize and have him know I meant it.

  “Dario, my man, if you even fart in the wrong direction, that’s it. I will throw your ass out of my cave and I’ll be doing your fucking job myself before your head hits the pavement outside. You get me?”

  “Got it.”

  Chapter 2

  The setting sun had dropped low, changing the weather from brutal and hot to beautiful and hot. Wispy clouds gathered up the darkening reds and oranges, and they were an eerie backdrop to the wrought-iron sign hanging ahead of me. The black metal—all ornate lettering and elaborate flourishes—had been shaped an unguessable number of years ago by heat and hammer. Observing me from above, the sign was attached to the top of a wooden scaffold that straddled the entrance.

  The sign read Mad Moon’s Shining Circus.

  The circus was here, and I was very curious as to why.

  I had left Weeko’s Cave for the day. The angry and abusive family of four was long gone, and with them went our last visitors for the afternoon. With no other potential money in sight, Weeko had decided to quit early and head to the bar. While he didn’t care where Dottie or I went, he was very specific that, wherever we were, it would not be with him.