This was her city, these were her people, in all their raunchy glory, who bled Mojave sand, bathed in the lustful winds, who were durable as cactus against the changing climate of their lives. Jackie was her people, the coolest, most giving person Blythe knew. Didn’t she and Logan need a person like that by their side for the long haul? Fuck yes we do. Fuck if the three of them weren’t a happy family whose love for one another ran pure as the waters beneath them. So fuck LA anyhow.
I’m a hard core of the low desert, like my father, my sister, and now, my son.
The WTF chant faded and everyone sat back down. Looking over at her boy, Blythe grew teary-eyed, his tender profile bracing her decision.
When she looked toward the cage again, Sandro met her eyes. He nodded as Inglorious rushed in and delivered an uppercut into Sandro’s chin. Backed against the mesh of the cage, face a smear of blood, Sandro seemed doomed as Inglorious kept on swinging, Sandro’s head getting banged side to side. After what seemed like eons to Blythe, Sandro broke away, so quickly that for a moment Inglorious punched at nothing but mesh, until he looked left: Sandro’s fist blazed in striking Inglorious’s jaw, hard enough to send his mouthpiece flying.
Inglorious crumpled to the canvas.
A roar swelled from the crowd.
With seconds left in round one, the ref stopped the fight.
Inglorious lay brain-rattled. Sandro wasn’t much better off. He stood swaying, fingers grasping the mesh to hold himself up as he gazed toward Blythe. Franco got in his face, screaming angrily. The trainer didn’t understand what had gone down.
But Blythe did now.
Sandro had taken a horrendous beating, nearly ruined his perfect record, and possibly his whole career, for her. That meant something, didn’t it, his willingness to risk his UFC dream? What other man would do that? Since growing up wild on the mean streets of Mexico City, Sandro had known no other way than the fist. Violence was his currency, his language, and now, his apology to her.
The emcee announced Sandro the winner by knockout to fresh boos and cheers. Entourages of both fighters swelled into the octagon until Blythe could no longer see Sandro.
“Can we go now?” Logan said.
In the concession area behind the bleachers, Blythe bought a draft of PBR then leaned against the sidewall. Logan beside her, they watched yabbering men line up to order schooners before the next fight.
“You said we were going, Mom.”
As if not hearing the boy, Blythe popped half a Vicodin, chased it down with gulps of beer. By the time she drained the plastic cup, she knew she had to see him. To finish things, one way or another.
A familiar security person walked past and said hello. Blythe smiled, asked if he could do her a tiny favor.
When the Staff Only door clicked shut behind them, Blythe lingered in the long bright tunnel. The left tunnel branch, she remembered, led to the men’s locker room. To the right, the arena.
Propping Logan against the wall, she lowered her face down to his. “I want you to wait for me right here.”
“No! You said we were going!”
“Stop it, right now. Give me one minute. And while I’m gone you do not move from this spot, understand?”
Logan’s eyes went wide over her shoulder, toward the sound of shuffling footsteps. Blythe turned, and there was Sandro, head hung down, limping along with one arm slung across Franco’s shoulders.
Sandro’s head lifted. His dusky eyes gleamed at the sight of her. He spoke Spanish to Franco, who then retreated down the tunnel.
Then it was just the three of them again, like the family they’d almost become. Blythe saw it up close now, the damage of Sandro’s self-punishment, his face like a cubist portrait, nostrils stuffed with cotton. A butterfly bandage sealed a cut over his right eye.
He limped to within a few feet of Blythe and dropped to his knees.
Bawling, he sputtered, “Lo siento mucho... so sorry I hurt you... and Logan...”
Blythe’s own tears came, and she went to him. Sandro threw his arms around her legs and buried his face in her stomach.
“Shhhh, it’s okay.” Blythe stroked his sweaty hair. “It’s okay, baby.”
From her right side, Logan’s hand swung down sharply and rapped Sandro on the head. The fighter grunted. His face turned to find Logan standing with the butt end of the .38 raised to strike again. The hatred in the boy’s eyes was far beyond his years.
“Logan, no!” Blythe said. Before she could reach for the gun, Sandro’s left hand lashed out and knocked it away. The gun skittered along the tunnel floor. Snatching the boy by the throat, Sandro rose from his knees, fresh blood dripping from his hairline. He pushed Logan backward until the boy was pinned against the opposite wall, then began to lift him until his toes left the ground. Logan, choking, clutched at the fighter’s hands, unable to budge them.
Sandro’s growl rose, more lupine than human.
A contained explosion flashed in the tunnel, Sandro thrown sideways to the ground. Released, gasping for breath, Logan ran down-tunnel to his mother, who stood with the Diamondback hanging at her side. She hugged him tight. Fifteen feet from them, Sandro pushed himself off the floor. A hole in his left shoulder spewed blood down his arm.
Blythe moved in front of the boy and pointed the .38 at the wounded mess lurching toward them. She cocked the hammer, and exhaled.
The Loop Trail
by Ken Layne
Joshua Tree
The Mojave Desert eats a couple of tourists every summer. It’s the nature of the place. More people die around Joshua Tree from car crashes and pill overdoses and trying to run across Highway 62 in the dark than will ever die from a day hike, even in the oppressive heat of monsoon season, but it’s the amateur hikers who make the headlines.
A couple of years ago, Joshua Tree became a destination. Not just as a weird desert wilderness a couple of hours from LA, but a weird desert wilderness that had become very popular on Instagram. You see it in music videos, in fashion shoots, the twisted arms of our signature yucca trees turned into backdrops for various celebrities and social media influencers. If everybody is coming out here, it must be all right.
A place with decent cell service and well-stocked grocery stores and stylish Airbnb cabins on every sandy road seems pretty safe to the modern visitor. And if you’re used to the easy green paradise of Yosemite, you probably think national parks are all like that: woodsy campgrounds and friendly rangers in Smokey Bear hats.
But the campgrounds in Joshua Tree National Park are just sand, hard-packed sand surrounded by boulders and cactus and scrub brush. There are rattlesnakes coiled on the trails and cholla lying in wait for bare ankles and suburban dog snouts. Most of the campsites close for summer because it’s just too hot, but people come anyway and feel lucky to be there at all.
Three seasons of the year, you can walk around in relative comfort. Summer is not one of those seasons. Summer is hard in the desert, even the high desert, where it’s fifteen degrees cooler than Palm Springs — and that’s still a hundred-plus in July and August.
Besides, it’s a haunted land. Desert wilderness is like that.
When the young couple vanished on the Loop Trail at the end of July, it was the Airbnb owner who reported it. They hadn’t checked out; their luggage was still in the vacation rental, beer in the fridge, toothbrushes on the sink. And their car was gone.
It was easy to assume they’d been dumb about things. Got lost, got confused, wandered the wrong way, hit one of those canyons without a phone signal, and that was that. The annual human sacrifice to the Mojave. Take them, oh desert gods, so that the rest of us might be spared.