I felt rather like a frightened mouse when, instead of taking Interstate 10 south out of Phoenix, as was my intention, I suddenly began switching from street to street. I whigged along on a zigzag course that seemed to have no purpose other than to elude a tail, though my mirrors didn’t reveal any vehicle whipping this way and that in my erratic wake. That inexplicable compulsion had overtaken me again, a kind of psychic magnetism drawing me toward I knew not what. This time it was alarmingly more powerful than it had been previously. I felt almost as though the car was driving itself, the steering wheel pulling my hands where the possessed Toyota wanted to go. I ran two yellow lights, treating the speed limit as if it were a mere helpful suggestion.
If a policeman pulled me over and ran the tags on the car, he would not be so slow-witted as to think that Porsche had designed a down-market version to break into the destitute-motorist market. The ISA might even have distributed a photograph of me to the computer in every patrol car in Phoenix. I would be extracted from the Toyota and encouraged to kiss the pavement. Some serious backup would be on the way faster than I could say I can explain, which would be a foolish thing to say because I had no idea what the hell was going on with me.
Then I was on federal highway 60, headed northwest toward an outlying suburb aptly named Surprise. Glittering Phoenix dwindled in the rearview mirror, a megaplex of high-rise buildings that looked as improbable as the Emerald City of Oz in the great flatness of the desert.
The compulsion that gripped me grew rapidly less intense. I felt that I could pull to the shoulder of the road, take slow deep breaths, and settle my nerves. However, I didn’t want to stop. A strange magnetism still drew me northwest, but I was also motivated by curiosity, by a need to know where I was going, why I was going there, and what all this craziness meant.
As it turned out, my journey’s end wasn’t the town of Surprise. I blew by that whistle-stop and somehow knew that my destination was in the vicinity of Wickenburg, a little more than an hour from Phoenix.
If you prefer your weather dry and hot, if you favor landscapes with a minimum of annoying shade trees, if you find pea gravel no less attractive than grass, if tall buildings oppress you and beige stucco soothes, Wickenburg is the place for you, a pleasant town of wide streets, little traffic, cheap land, and friendly people.
In the general vicinity are world-famous three-and four-star dude ranches, where you can learn to fall off a horse, develop the useful skill of roping a faux calf, take line-dancing lessons, play golf, or dress up like a cowboy and drink yourself into a stupor every evening.
I didn’t know it yet, but as it turned out, I was headed for one of those dude ranches beyond the town limits of Wickenburg. The operation—Sweetwater Flying F Ranch—would prove to be a desolate and desperate place. Eventually, I would learn that it had declared bankruptcy twelve years earlier and been reimagined by the owners as a secret marijuana farm, its barns and stables filled with thriving hemp plants. In those days, everyone thought that marijuana was a narcotic instead of just a lifestyle. When the Drug Enforcement Agency raided the place, the owners proved obstreperous. Guns were produced, shots were fired, blood was drawn, and everyone at the ranch ended up in prison for a long time, with the exception of those who were dead. The IRS seized the property to satisfy a tax lien.
As a young man who had been raised by nuns and who preferred city life to the rigors of suburbia, a place as far out there as Sweetwater Flying F Ranch would never have been on my just-have-to-see-it list if I had been in control of myself.
Considering the events of the day, I expected trouble when I reached wherever I was going, and that expectation was fulfilled. What I didn’t foresee was that my destiny would be found in that place. An adventure-filled life bathed in as much darkness as light, a life shaken by frequent terror but pierced by greater joy, a life of mysteries and revelations waited for me there, and also a recipe for cinnamon-pecan rolls that was to die for.
|?5?|
The federal highway led to a state route, and the state route led to a county lane that brought me to the long approach road to Sweetwater Flying F Ranch. Two stone columns supported a beam that overhung the entrance. To the beam was fixed a sun-faded sign featuring the name of the ranch and a silhouette of a cowboy riding a bucking bronco. In the distance, the drab gray buildings appeared to have swaybacked roofs and canted walls. The blacktop driveway was fissured, crumbling at the edges. Beside one of the entrance columns lay two long-dead coyotes, now nothing but skeletons and dust-matted fur; maybe they had been shot by some idiot or succumbed to disease, or maybe they had died of boredom.