Red Rezes

As I told you last week, my son Grant and I are on a visit to our family in East Texas. I grew up in Southeast Oklahoma, Southwest Arkansas, and Northeast Texas with no more than 70 or 80 miles between the three points, so I should have remembered some things. For instance, I should have recalled that when you take a shower, you can never dry off… at least in August and September. You simply mop off the worst of the moisture and pull on your clothes.

This week, I’d like to give you an excerpt from my fellow Okie writer Mark Wildyr’s novella entitled Red Rezes. In it, you meet Curt Huntinghawk and Grover Whitedeer, two members of the Rezagados Colorados, a drug enforcement group. Hope you enjoy it.

*****

Courtesy of Pixabay

RED REZES

By Mark Wildyr

          Hip-sprung and sweat-stained, Curt Huntinghawk stood in the shade of a paloverde and gazed at the twisted, tortured panorama spread out before him. The Sonoran Desert, sliced and diced by an endless web of gullies, arroyos, hills, and boulders, was a forbidding territory with something always eager to bite, sting, rip, tear, or puncture a man. An unseen army of traficantes, coyotes, illegals, or just plain citizens bent on mischief might linger over the next ridge, secure from discovery unless rooted out by the arduous process of tracking by foot.

          Senior members of the Rezagados Colorados, an organization of Native Americans engaged by the Border Patrol to keep a drug watch along the Mexican border, Hawk and his partner, Grover Whitedeer, were on the hunt for drug mules. The hot, exhausting, dangerous work was the most satisfying and challenging either man had ever undertaken. The skill, strength, endurance, and downright stubbornness required of the job put them in spiritual contact with the warrior clans of their ancestors… even if they were toting water for the white man.

          Grove, two inches shorter and twenty pounds lighter than Hawk’s six-feet, hundred-sixty-pounds pointed with his chin. “Rooster tail over yonder. Coupla miles, I reckon.” He grinned, transforming him from merely handsome to devilishly good-looking. “We could just forget about it.”

          “Quit daydreaming and go get the Jeep.” Hawk turned and made his way up the rocks behind them to report the wisp of drifting dust in the distance on his hand-held radio. Receiving the go-ahead from headquarters, he joined Grove in the four-by-four. “Moving west by northwest. Probably making for Dragon’s Back.”

          Dragon’s back was a huge hogback of rugged rock that sheltered the only natural water source in the area. Dominating the horizon no more than five miles as the crow flies to the west, the big hump was more like twenty through the washes and arroyos.

          After locating tire tracks two arroyos over, the two Rezes followed at speed in order to outrun their dust tail. Clutching the door posts for support, they flew around the truck’s interior despite seat restraints. They drove with the windows down because it was too enervating to bail out of an air-conditioned vehicle to chase bad guys on foot in the blazing sun. Chances were the other vehicle was more interested in comfort, which might give them an edge.

          As they drew closer, Grove threw the Jeep into four-wheel drive and abandoned the sandy wash to crawl up a crumbling tufa mound. The way was shorter, but hell on the kidneys. As they climbed, Hawk glimpsed the other truck below them.

          “What the hell is that?” he exclaimed.

          The contraption raising a rooster tail in the arroyo below wasn’t quite a tank, but it was close—an army surplus four-wheel-drive deuce-and-a-half fortified with sheet metal sprouting gun barrels like porcupine quills.

           “Get in front of them. That sucker travels on rubber; it can be stopped!”

          His partner rode the brakes down the far side of the rise. More than once Hawk feared they had overcome their center of gravity, but Grove was a good driver and kept the vehicle more or less on four wheels. They nosed into the wash well ahead of the monster crawling up the arroyo toward them. Grove parked the Jeep in an easily accessible side wash, and they piled out to collect rifles from the gun rack.

          “We’ll flatten their tires, and then play it by ear,” Hawk said.

          Grove shook his head. “You’re betting my ass on your ear?”

          “Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of it. It belongs to me, you know.”

          Grove gave him a look. “You gonna stand out there and give them the old ‘halt in the name of the law’ routine?”

          “No, but I’ll cover you while you do it.”

          “You’re dreaming, Cowboy.”

          “Well, if armor-plate and gun ports aren’t enough probable cause to bring them down, then tough shit.”

          The two Rezes took up positions and waited for the big vehicle to crawl clumsily around the bend. When it was within fifty yards, Hawk gave the signal.

          They popped both front tires, but the behemoth came plowing on. Half a dozen copper-jacketed shells shredded the self-sealing chambers, and the big truck ground to a halt, the front end dropping like a gargantuan creature brought to its knees. Return gunfire was sporadic and confused.

          The Indians methodically worked on the double rear tires until they gave up the ghost, as well. The truck was now immobilized. Most of the traficantes’ weapons were at the sides or rear of the vehicle. Head-on, the outlaws were only able to bring to bear a couple of side arms. Shifting his attention to the windshield, partially protected by a steel grate, Hawk starred the shatter-proof glass and sent two figures ducking. Grove worked on the radiator until he punctured its shield. The overheated engine spewed scalding steam up the arroyo. Hawk gave a grunt of satisfaction when he burst the canvas water bag hung over the bumper to allow for evaporative cooling, spilling its precious contents spilled into the thirsty sand.

          Three angry men piled out of the rear of the vehicle, spraying the countryside indiscriminately with automatic weapons fire.

          Satisfied the smugglers weren’t going anywhere until the Border Patrol came to scoop them up, he and Grove scrambled for the Jeep. They were halfway up the side of the rocky hill before the bad guys knew they were leaving.

*****

As I understand it, Mark hasn’t published this story as yet. Let him know what you think of it at dontravis21@gmail.com.

The following information provides contact information and the DSP Publications links:

Don Travis Email: dontravis21@gmail.com

Blog: dontravis.com

Facebook: Don Travis

Twitter: @dontravis3

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/City-Rocks-Vinson-Mystery-Book-ebook/dp/B071Z9V7DT

DSPP: https://www.dsppublications.com/books/the-city-of-rocks-by-don-travis-393-b

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-city-of-rocks-don-travis/1126419974

Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-city-of-rocks/id1217068245

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-city-of-rocks

As always, thank for being a reader.

Don

New blogs are posted at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.

Why I like Prologues (Part 1)

I am sometimes asked why my books have Prologues. Many authors consider them old fashioned. I prefer to think of them as extensions of the book blurb, which serves as a teaser to readers. If the blurb piques my interest, I like another short piece of prose—a Prologue—to see whether or not the tale will continue to hold my attention.

The purpose of my Prologue is to set the tone for the reader. The subject matter contained in it may predate, be contemporary with, or only remotely participate in the tale, Nonetheless, each performs a certain task, such as introducing characters, revealing situations, or grounding the reader in the times.

As for being out-of-date, remember: What goes around, comes around.

Let’s take a look at two prologues by another local writer with Oklahoma roots.

*****

 Autumn 1831 along the Allegheny River

But for improvident fate, angry, boiling clouds would have unleashed nature’s cold fury upon this Yankee river valley the day he buried his ma and pa. Perversely, a rose-hued dawn washed the tall forests and granite bluffs in a warm autumn glow.

Prosperous Tory farmers, his forebears had rallied to Benedict Arnold’s American Legion during the Great Rebellion, participating in raids on Ft. Griswold and New London. Their lands confiscated, their very lives at risk, the family joined the migration of a hundred thousand Loyalists to Canada and the Mother Country upon the Crown’s surrender to the victorious Continental rebels.

At the turn of the century, his pa brought the little family south from Toronto to unsuccessfully petition for the restoration of their prosperity, but old hatreds die lingering deaths, and Tories were subjected anew to high prejudices with the burning of the President’s House in the War of 1812. The Marquis de Lafayette’s return to these shores in August 1824, and the old revolutionary’s warm reception by James Monroe, the last American President to fight in the Rebellion, put the barm on the brew, sentencing the family to hard labor merely to meet the cain on farmland that once had been their own.

Life doubly rocked the slender young man with hair the color of sandy soil and hazel irises shot with brown and green and gold when the tragic deaths of his parents in a farmhouse fire followed hard on the heels of a doomed affair with the daughter of a family of Patriots who had no use for Tories—real or reformed. The discovery of a hundred carefully hoarded gold English Pounds in the ashes of the family cabin confirmed his determination to abandon this hateful land and retrace the footsteps of his boyhood idol, Jedidiah Strong Smith, the legendary trapper and explorer of the Far West.

The passage above is the Prologue from Mark Wildyr’s CUT HAND. What does it tell us? Most certainly we have met and been provided a casual description of the book’s protagonist at a time when profound change rocks his life. We know that his viewpoint of the American Revolution is different from that of most who will be reading this book, a clue that the rest of the story will be seen through strange eyes, as well. We understand that our hero is being propelled through life by the sweep of history, and we can anticipate that this is what we will see throughout the remainder of this erotic historical novel. And we can anticipate that much of the novel will be told in colonial American and early American English. So we know or intuit a great deal from this Prologue

                                                                       *****

Let’s take a look at Wildyr’s MEDICINE HAIR, the fourth book in his Cut Hand Series. Likewise an erotic novel with a historical background, this book’s Prologue performs a different chore.

Monday, September 10, 1883, Turtle Crick Farm, Dakota Territory

Puzzled by the rosy hue of the crick water, he shifted his gaze to a western skyline pulsing with spectacular crimsons and shimmering corals. The horizon appeared ablaze, yet a cool breeze lapped his face. No hint of heat. No taste of smoke. His horses grazed placidly. This was no wildfire. It was another of those remarkable prairie sunsets.

The bizarre events had started a fortnight ago. He’d sensed movement beneath his feet. A few days later, air currents in a normally calm season. Hazy, filtered light. Sun dogs, usually rare and most often observed in cold months, now frequent. Moons the color of moldy cheese one night and as blue as a jay’s wing the next.

Despite his education, he heard the singing of his tribal blood and thought of witchcraft. Powerful medicine was at work.

We can discern the viewer (likely our protagonist) is a farmer puzzled by unusual natural phenomena. We also understand that wildfires are a hazard on the Dakota plains. Although likely a Native American, the man is educated yet not totally free of tribal mysticism. We tend to believe that what is happening here will be immediately important to the story. In fact, we are seeing mixed-blood John Strobaw as he is launched on the road to becoming Medicine Hair, a noted and respected shaman among the Sioux.

You will note that the first example, that from Cut Hand, is told from an omniscient point of view. The narrator knows facts the young man who is the point of the Prologue would likely not know. But the one from Medicine Hair is told from the third person limited point of view. Interestingly, both book are thereafter told from the first person point of view.

Glad to see I’m not the only writer who likes Prologues. The next time you run across one in a book you haven’t read as yet, study it a little to figure out what it’s designed to tell you.

Next week, we’ll take a look at another Okie’s approach to Prologues, which is a little different. In the meantime, keep on reading.

Feel free to contact me at dontravis21@gmail.com.

New Posts at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday

A Guest Post. Thanks Guy for Getting Me Off the Hook

Another Albuquerque author and I started discussing blogs at a meeting of SouthWest Writers last Saturday and ended up deciding to do guest posts. He offered to do mine this week provided I’d do one for him at some time in the future. How could I refuse a deal like that?

 

Mark Wildyr writes both contemporary and historical gay erotic fiction. What follows is the opening to one of his published short stories entitled “Killer.” It appeared in the STARbooks Press anthology, SAINTS AND SINNERS sometime back. Enjoy. (Don’t tell Mark, but I have no idea what I’ll write for his blog at markwildyr.com.)

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KILLER

By Mark Wildyr

 

The killer looked down at the boy at his feet and fought a rising irritation. How come the kid still looked so good? Death hadn’t done a damned thing diminish the little queer’s looks. Wasn’t right. When you’re dead, you oughta look the part.

The boy hadn’t sensed danger until it was too late. A nano-second later, the bullet splintered his sternum and punctured his heart. The man gave a disgusted sigh and stowed the small handgun in his waistband. Then he calmly walked down the dark alley and vanished into the night.

#

Albuquerque Police Department Detective Calvin Grajek muttered a curse as the telephone interrupted a set of curls. Early morning calls at home were never good, and this one was no exception. Body. Alley. Yeah, he’d go straight there. He hung up and headed for the shower.

Cal knew from the address what he’d find. The site was on the fringe of a Rabbit Run around East Central Avenue, once historic Route 66. If his hunch was right there had now been five gay murders over the past two years, and since his old partner was prematurely retired by a heart attack, Cal was the detective in charge. Together, they’d gotten nowhere. On his own, he hadn’t achieved much more than to gain some introspection into the city’s deviant culture. Until this started, Cal figured a queer was a queer was a queer. Now he understood the gay underground was at least as complex as mainstream society. Come to think of it, it wasn’t so underground anymore.

Cal parked his unmarked Ford four door behind a black-and-white at what was known by locals as Indian Alley. For a couple of miles, the broad, mostly paved alleyway half a block south of East Central paralleled the thoroughfare through a commercial neighborhood of 1930’s-style one-story shop buildings. A few had been restored; most simply struggled against decay. A well-traveled route used by the homeless, drunks, Native Americans, and a host of others avoiding curious eyes, the alley was an unlikely place for murder, although it had seen more than its share of mayhem over the years. Most of the area’s habitués would deny seeing anything. It truth, they probably hadn’t, either from alcoholic haze or a lifetime of keeping their eyes glued to the ground.

Several people were already on hand, including Cal’s new partner, Brin Haskell. Who the hell named a kid Brin? The guy’s personnel file showed it was short for Brindle, but that begged the question. Who’d name a kid Brindle? This was the twenty-eight-year-old’s virgin assignment as a detective, and Cal suspected the guy’s drive was fueled as much by the fact that he was the nephew of a deputy chief as by natural enthusiasm.

The new detective stepped away from the small group of uniforms to greet him. Crap, the guy didn’t look much older than most of the victims. Hispanic with a gringo name. Tall, athletic, good-looking, recently divorced. Cal wondered if Brin’s obvious dislike of gays was cultural or a defensive measure, although there was nothing soft about the guy.

Brin shook his head. “Another one.”

“You can tell by just looking?”

“A kid. Teens. One to the heart like the others. And yeah, I can tell. If I get the willies, it’s one of them.”

“I like that,” Cal said dryly. “The scientific approach.”

Brin flushed. “Give you ten-to-one odds.”

“No thanks. Given the location, you’re probably right.”

As they reached the body, Cal studied the blond youngster sprawled on his back, face pallid in death, his grotesque Kiss T-shirt made even more so by a glob of crusted blood. There was already a distasteful odor. The sound of nearby traffic signaled that life went on. While uniforms put up the crime scene tape to keep the curious at bay, the detectives slapped on latex gloves and made a quick examination of the corpse before the crime scene boys arrived and chased them off.

Cal read from the ID in the kid’s wallet. “Kevin Kenally, Sixteen years old. What a waste.”

“Been a waste for a couple of years already,” Brin muttered.

Cal rounded on him. “What’s with you, Haskell? He’s like any other kid. What’s he done to earn your scorn? Maybe you oughta go work another case.”

“Look, I don’t like queers, okay? But that doesn’t mean I’m not a good detective. Doesn’t mean I won’t do my job.”

Cal brought his voiced under control. “You’re right. And you might as well get started. There’s gay bookstore with a private teenage hangout called Brothers and Sisters next door just a couple of blocks down the street. Go see if you can learn anything useful.” Cal removed a snapshot of the kid standing with an older youth from the victim’s billfold. “Maybe Kenally was there last night. See if you can find out who he left with. Use this snapshot until I can get a better picture. And see if you can find out who the other guy in the photo is.”
 

 

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Does he have your attention? Mark tells me he's going to post the entire story on his blog just as soon as he figures out how to do it. He's about as good with the computer as I am.

 

Next week: Once again, I won’t know until the last minute!

New posts are published at 6:00 a.m. each Thursday.