Zuni Stew: A Novel by Kent Jacobs Read Free Book Online Page B

sure the soon-to-deliver Flapper was okay, Bill deftly diced an onion, a tomato, a small jalapeño. A dash of vinegar, water, salt, fresh cilantro. Loading a scoop of the salsa on a tostada, he offered it to Jack. “If you’ve never had this before, brother, prepare to become addicted.”
    “I had some Hatch green chile in Grants,” Jack said between crunches. “Whew—this is dyn-o-mite.”
    “You ain’t just a woofin’.” Bill turned to molding the ground beef into patties. “On the ranch where I grew up they had a cook, Barbara was her name, that took care of all us cowboys during the gatherings. Man, could she ride. She told me the secret to a great hamburger is not to smash the meat together. And don’t poke at it ever. On her day off, she rode topless—no kidding.”
    “Get real.”
    “Honest. She was wicked.”
    The cast-iron skillet was hot. He shoveled the meat, two inches-thick, one-half pound each, into the pan. “Medium rare?” Jack nodded, scooped up more salsa, chasing it with beer. “I’ve learned to ignore the cooking process, keep busy doing something else.” He sliced an avocado in half, popped the seed out with a knife, scored the lime green flesh, and scooped the avocado out, dividing it between two buns. In a flash, the meat was turned, on the buns and smothered with salsa. They sat at the kitchen table, white Formica with stainless steel trim. Like everything in the tract house, an heirloom of the fifties.
    “Awesome. Best hamburger I’ve ever had,” said Jack with his mouth full.
    “You’re just hungry.”
    “No, I mean it. My Dad has a restaurant.”
    Bill fished two beers out of the frig. “Let’s move to the living room, put on some records.”
    A LP dropped from the stack on to the turntable. Bill held up the album cover.
    “Perfect, I’m into all the folk stuff, back to Guthrie, Seeger.”
    Bill kicked off his tennis shoes, dropped to the floor, propped up against the wall. Jack took the only chair. A rickety folding chair with sagging plastic strips.
    Bill talked about himself. He wanted to be a country GP. That was the rub. His girlfriend wanted him to be a surgeon.
    “I met her freshman year. She was a cheerleader at UT. Wore white boots—the whole Jane Fonda look. Well, before Jane went to North Vietnam last summer. At first she wanted to live in a city like Dallas or Houston, have a big social life, join the Junior League, travel the world. I just wanted to jump her bones. Then came ’67. The Summer of Love in the Haight. She talked me into taking a Greyhound bus up there.
    “I’ll go with love and liberation, but you can’t build a society on drugs. My babe was—she thought—a purist. I realized she was just snooty. Her left-wing politics and esoteric aesthetics. All a farce. Seemed to me that everyone was interested in two things—overthrow the government and screwing.”
    Jack laughed. “Relevant. And tempting.”
    “Tell me about it. She fell for it, all of it. She left me. You know, she was so beautiful—could have modeled for I. Magnin. I ended up volunteering at a free clinic. Treated kids suffering from bad acid trips or VD.”
    “The Haight was an egalitarian bubble,” said Jack.
    “That’s heavy. So cynical already?”
    “I went to a Jesuit school. My best friend was in Vietnam—101 st Airborne paratrooper. We tripped together, got into The Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia. But in the end, I wasn’t impressed. Like you just said, it was all about drugs and sex. Hey man, what’s worse? Rebelling against the robots of the fifties or the cheating businessman knocking back martinis in the sixties?”
    “Don’t ask me. I’m Episcopalian.”
    “Turn up the music,” Jack said.
    “You got it. And it’s time for some bourbon.” Bill took a bottle and glasses from a kitchen cabinet and poured a generous measure, then set the bottle between them on the floor.
    Bill settled in. Record albums and protective sheets covered the carpet.
    “Back to