I

A Ride on the Wild Side

One

The post-storm clouds were clearing over Club de Golf la Hacienda on a late Tuesday afternoon in the final week of August, 1974. The temperature was in the high seventies. The neighborhood streets were still puddled following a seasonal rainstorm. Fourteen-year-old Jack “Butcher” Bucher bebopped behind the wheel of his mother’s blue Ford Mustang II. “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting” by Elton John blasted from the radio at ear-pounding levels. The idling Mustang bubbled next to the curb just down from the second bridge on the main neighborhood through street. Jack waited for Brad Stephens, who would be in his mother’s Super Bee. He was anxious for another go at their new and exciting game they’d called “Cops and Robbers.”

            Don’t do this, Jack, Zeph warned. Just go to the bakery, get your tortillas and bolillos, and go home. Chasing each other around the neighborhood at high speeds is hardly the act of a responsible driver.

            Yeah, but it’s a helluva lot of fun, Jack thought. And aren’t you the one always preachin’ that I should live life to its fullest?

            Damn it! This isn’t the same thing, and you know it, Zeph said hotly. This stupid game is highly dangerous. You could get killed, or worse still, you could kill someone else. Remember your dream, Jack. This is exactly the sort of thing that could lead to you killing a policeman.

            Oh, c’mon, Zeph, Jack thought wearily. You mean to tell me you didn’t do stupid things when you were my age, just for kicks?

            I’d be lying if I said I didn’t, Zeph said. But I was stupid, and I didn’t have someone there to warn me when I was acting like an idiot. Think of how much you’ve accomplished—how much you’ve grown this summer. I beg you. Don’t throw it all away over a dangerous joyride.

            You worry too much, Zeph. I’m always . . .

            A car-horn blast interrupted Jack’s thoughts. He turned down the radio and glanced into his rearview mirror. The peeking sun reflected off the twin-scooped hood and windshield of a turquoise Dodge muscle car parked directly behind the Mustang. Brad climbed out of the driver’s seat and approached. The lanky Texan reminded Jack of many of the teens he’d seen on his recent vacation to Houston. He was dressed in scuffed, pointy-toed cowboy boots, faded straight-leg jeans, and a Levi’s work shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Brad’s pale, freckled face, reddish-brown hair, and intense brown-green eyes made him appear as foreign in the Mexican landscape as a palm tree on Mars.

            Brad dropped his head down to Jack’s open window and grinned before saying, “Hi’ya, Butcher. So ya ready to pit this puny two-barrel 302 against all two hundred and seventy a my big mighty steeds again?”

            Jack huffed, and said, “Ya might have two hundred and seventy of those hay-bellied plow horses, but they gotta haul around a few tons of scrap metal. That dumpy Dodge couldn’t maneuver its way outta a football stadium.”

            “Yeah? My mornin’ Post Toasties dump was better lookin’ and more intelligent than you,” Brad said with a laugh. “How much time ya got?”

            “At least a few hours,” Jack replied. “Alfonzo took Mary and my mother downtown to the Zona Rosa to shop for Mary’s school clothes. But Mary’s such a greedy bitch, they might not be back till next week. Still, we better stay off this main street. If my mom gets tired of Mary’s whining, they might come back early and take this way home. What’d ya tell your mom?”

            “That I’s goin’ over to yer house to listen to records,” Brad said. “So it’s a damn good thing yer ma ain’t home if she calls to check. But I gotta be home by six for dinner.”

            “So what’re the rules to this shindig?” Jack asked.

            “Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules,” Brad said in his best Mexican bandito imitation.

            “Then watch your toes,” Jack warned.

            “Watch my toes?” Brad stepped back and peered down at his cockroach-killing cowboy boots. In that moment, Jack dropped the Mustang’s console shift down to drive and punched the accelerator. The blue thoroughbred peeled rubber and fishtailed down the puddled pavement as Jack yelled through the open window, “Catch me if you can, sucker!”

            “Aw, sonofa . . .” Brad bellowed as he raced back to the Super Bee.

Two

            Jack’s blue eyes were riveted to the road as he eased up on the accelerator. His heart was doing the Funky Chicken, and his palms were already sweaty beneath his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

Up ahead, the main road veered slightly right after a massive and nearly impassable tope, a Mexican speed bump. Just off to his left was the first of the four bridges over the deep, stone-faced canal. His battle strategies were the complete opposite of Brad’s. The Super Bee was faster in the straightaways, but the Mustang was lighter, it had a stiffer suspension, and rack-and-pinion steering. Jack could easily lose the Super Bee in tight, multiple turns, while Brad preferred the straight, open roads.

            Jack dared a peek at the bridge. No one was on it. He dared another glance into his rearview mirror. The Super Bee was already barreling down on him. Jack threw the Mustang into a hard, screeching left and shot over the bridge before accelerating down a short straightaway. He glanced into his rearview mirror. The Super Bee couldn’t handle the sharp turn, and almost slammed into the stone containment wall of the bridge. Brad was forced to come to a halt and reverse before following.

Jack giggled evilly at his friend’s misfortune until he looked back to the road and realized his mistake.

            To his left, across the second green and third tee of the golf course, was the rear of Brad’s house. If anyone was in Brad’s living room, they could easily peer over the low, backyard wall and spy the racing Mustang and Super Bee. If that happened, both their gooses were cooked and ready for carving.

            “Oops,” Jack muttered. They’d have to define some rules of engagement after all and make this street off-limits.

            The Super Bee filled Jack’s rearview mirror again, but Jack was forced to hit the brakes. He was approaching another mountainous tope just in front of Mimi “Munchkin” Marshall’s house. The thought of Mimi, Ada’s best friend, brought on a brief resurgence of pain over his old girlfriend’s betrayal. This pain was easily swept away like the faded memory of a deep wound long healed. More surprising was the sharp anguish he still harbored over the death of Beautiful Bird, his first love and mate in his prehistoric life. It seemed as if that was one wound he’d never recover from and to which no other loss would ever compare.

            Jack was punished for his brief mental lapse when the Mustang slammed into the tope going much too fast, and he was hurled into the car ceiling with neck-cracking force. He landed hard with his butt on the center console, his feet in the driver’s seat, and his hands off the wheel. As he scrambled back into his seat, he was horrified to find the Mustang careening toward the three-meter-high brick walls surrounding Mimi’s house. And wouldn’t Special Agent Marshall of the FBI be tickled pink to have Mrs. Bucher’s Mustang parked in his family room right next to his color RCA?

            Jack desperately wheeled hard right and floored it. The Mustang leaped forward like a proud stallion being goosed by a cattle prod before doing a screaming half donut. As Jack got the car under control, he found himself already halfway into a cul-de-sac across from the Marshall house. Brad and the Super Bee were just lifting over the tope fifty meters to his right.

            “Shit,” Jack muttered.

He’d known he’d be caught by going into the cul-de-sac, but he’d run out of options. He gunned the Mustang down the house-lined, dead-end street, hoping Brad was too brain dead to realize his mistake and followed him down the street. It was a dim hope at best. After he squealed around the cul-de-sac island, he found the turquoise Super Bee blocking the street exit. Still, he spotted a fatal flaw in Brad’s ensnarement tactic.

Jack grinned like the Cheshire Cat while accelerating toward the Super Bee as if he were going to deliver a broadside in a demolition derby. He was close enough to see Brad’s wide eyes when he executed his escape maneuver. He steered left, throwing his protesting left tires up the sloping curb. The right side of the Mustang skimmed by the rear end of the Super Bee by no more than the length of the whiskers on Jack’s adolescent chin. Jack laughed evilly as he raced by Mimi’s house, slowed over the tope, and accelerated back toward the bridge.

            Jack cranked the radio back up to earsplitting levels when Deep Purple came on playing “Smoke on the Water.” He slowed near the bridge and scanned his rearview mirror. The pursuing “cop” had turned around and was just cresting the tope, giving Jack a half-kilometer lead. He was over the bridge and screaming left onto the main through street again with barely a glance for oncoming traffic. Luckily, the street remained deserted.

            Immediately after the bridge, Jack encountered another pain-in-the-ass tope. The odd placement of these malicious road barriers seemed to have no rhyme or reason to Jack. They had no strategic value like American stop signs or lights. They simply existed as if the Mexican road crews had had too much concrete and decided to slap down another irritating obstacle to ruin car suspensions.

            Jack accelerated after the tope with the Super Bee still out of sight. Walled-in luxury homes and weedy vacant lots lined both sides of the wide, concrete street. The barren hill rising up behind the houses to his right gave Jack an idea. He rapidly crested the upward-sloping street and came to a fork in the road. If he veered left, he’d follow the road parallel to the thirteenth fairway and eventually pass the small grocery store mall, his ultimate destination. But if he veered right, he’d continue through the residential area until he reached an intersecting street that led back toward the hill and some new construction. Although he’d never been in the area, the thought of new streets lined with construction sites presented all sorts of intriguing opportunities. Jack veered right at the fork.

            He immediately encountered his first frustrating delay. A wheezing, old Mexican slowly pedaled an ancient bike down the middle of the road. The Mexican wore dirty work clothes, sandals, and appeared to be drunk. He weaved all over the freakin’ road. Jack’s first instinct was to race around him, but a line of cars had appeared from the opposite direction. A glance in the rearview mirror told him Brad was in hot pursuit. He didn’t have time for this. By now the Mustang’s front bumper was almost kissing the rickety rear bike tire. Still, the old man didn’t yield or even seem to notice the car’s presence. Jack lay on his horn, raging with impatient anger. The old man didn’t turn his weathered and graying head as he slowly raised his left hand and flipped off Jack. The approaching cars were only a couple hundred meters away, and the Super Bee filled his rearview mirror. Jack could almost hear Brad laughing over his infuriating holdup.

            Without contemplating his imminent danger, Jack slammed the pedal to the metal and shot into the left lane. He angrily lay into his horn as he sped past the old geezer. Out of his peripheral vision, he saw the shocked bicyclist wobble insanely before he suddenly disappeared. Jack didn’t have time to ponder the bastard’s possible demise. He had a bigger problem. He was wide-eyed staring into the rapidly approaching grille of a tank-like Dodge Monaco. As Jack glanced up the enormous black hood of his approaching death, he spied the shocked, screaming face of a dark-haired woman as she mimicked his own panicked fear. He threw the Mustang back into the right lane just as the Monaco’s grille dropped in a tire-screeching brake slide. Angry horns and screaming tires assaulted Jack’s ears as he flew by the remaining cars, which frantically sought to avoid a rear-end collision with the Monaco.

            Jack’s heart was beating like a John Bonham drum solo, and his breath was coming in short, excited gasps, when he finally dared a glimpse in his rearview mirror. A burst of laughter escaped his constricted chest. The halted rear of the Monaco jutted halfway into the clogged street. Its front end was over the curb and only meters from crashing through a house wall. Three cars were stopped behind it, almost bumper to bumper as the cantankerous old Mexican hauled himself off the pavement next to his spilled bicycle. And what Jack figured was a very angry and frustrated Brad Stephens was parked behind the whole mess with no avenue of pursuit. Jack was still smiling when he turned back to the road, but that had been close—too close.