salt in the wound 2

        Strolling across the immaculate campus at BYU on any given day Leah could spot four score or more fair-skinned golden-haired young women, like herself. Men folk included a few darker hued individuals with course crow-black hair, possibly Utes on scholarship. Once she joked about the inclusion of Lamanites, following the Civil Rights Movement. Word got back to the bishop of her ward and she was roundly scolded. Never make light of scripture, he fumed.
         Pooh! 


        Leah skipped going to the Aces And Eights this day. She dropped by the Pigs Flying bike shop where Artie spent his nine-to-five. Dirty Bob paid him fifteen dollars a day to straighten out the attic parts storage. No tax forms, No going to OSHA for anything. Just money from fist to fist. The beer-bellied treetrunk-chested old Renegade had a soft spot for bikers down on their luck. He sold parts to Artie wholesale and allowed Artie use of the machine shop.
        "Hi," Leah greeted Dirty Bob, sitting at a greasy desk next to the Pepsi vendor.
        "Well hello, Sunshine."
        "Where's my Man?"
        "Upstairs sweating his balls off."
        "Oh, my."



                                                                                         *


        The Indian gleamed, it rumbled like a jungle cat.
        "When are you going to take me for a ride."
        Artie grinned with pride. "How about tomorrow?"
        They were drinking Pepsis.
        "How are you doing here?" Leah asked.
        "Great.  I'm fixed pretty good. A bunk, hot-plate. Crapper. Dirty Bob is a swell dude."
        "It's so hot up there."
        "Not at night. Got me a lttle fan."
        Leah gushed into tears and hugged him. Artie squeezed her hand and said, "You best be shoving off. I'll come by your place tonight."
        "I love you, Artie."
        "Oh gosh--"


        The sky above Monument Valley was a sheer dome of ice crystals the color of turnpike bluebonnets. High on a windy mesa, Leah smoked her first joint. Medicinal, of course. There was a little pain. She used Uncle Nathan's Vietnam Zippo. He watched her inhale. She made a comical cross-eyed face and he erupted with his cleanest laughter in years. Like Chinese rockets and gongs.
       "You are such a sport." He grinned supremely.
       "Not a Bozo?"
       "Not a Bozo."
        This costly goldbud, air-freighted from Durango, took her jumbled thoughts and, like God's rolling-pin, it flattened them into a crazy quilt cookie dough.
        "Oh, Uncle Nathan. What am I going to do?"