Illustration by John Claude Hundt

She was hanging around the parking lot at an AM/PM in Sacramento, a little Chicanita with tight jeans tucked into lizard-skin cowboy boots and a small suitcase held together with duct tape. Her sunglasses sparkled with rhinestones giving her a glitzy look that didn't fit in around here, among the trash and homeless pushing shopping carts. This was the rough part of Sacra, where desperate women turned tricks in cars under the shadow of the State Building. She wasn't really hitchhiking, me entiendes, but she didn't exactly need a sign that said here was a huiza ready to split Dodge.
      I'd nearly finished pumping the fifteen gallons of Supreme when she came up behind me and said, "Can I ride with you to the freeway?" Her voice had something about it that made my stomach tighten up a notch.
      I turned around real slow like and there she was in the shimmering heat of the parking lot, suitcase at her feet, hands on her hips, and jeans that looked like she'd taken a brush and painted them on, being careful to detail the seams and pockets. I didn't know if she carried good luck or bad, but I should've guessed. Lizard-skin cowboy boots. Rhinestone sunglasses. A wild bush of hair framing her oval face. I've always been a chump for women, so I said, "Orale, hop in."
      Without another word she threw her suitcase in the back seat and slid in front, against the window, away from me, a coil of plastic bracelets bunched up on her left wrist. I'd been a long time in the country without female company except for Sage Pumo, a Hoopa Indian, wide as a bear, so this little smoke of a woman had most if not all of my attention.
      I floored the Camaro and shot out of the parking lot. "So what's your name?" she asked. I told her mine and she told me hers—Adelita Guerra. "Nice to meet you," she said. "It's always good to make new friends." She offered her hand, and I shook it. It was a worker's hand, rough and stained from picking walnuts, maybe yesterday. She dug into her front pockets for a frayed pack of Juicy Fruit and offered me one. "Naw. Go ahead," I said. I didn't tell her I hate gum. She chewed, smacking her lips, happy as a kid on a school trip. I had Los Lobos playing on the tape deck, "La Pistola y El Corazon," music that makes you crave a nice cold one. It'd been years since I'd drunk a beer, but you never forget.
      When we came to the freeway on-ramp she sat up. "This doesn't look good. Can I ride to the next town?" I glanced at her from the corner of my eye and that tightness in my stomach just got tighter. I couldn't exactly kick her out in the middle of nowhere, so I hit the on-ramp with a thump and revved the Camaro out, angry at what I'd gotten myself into.
      I kept my mouth shut and my eyes on the road, not wanting to look at her. Still, I could sense her gauging me, like a good hustler on the prowl. On my way to Sacra I'd seen a head-on collision by Redding, two cars twisted into pretzels with no survivors, and that's what I was thinking about a few minutes later when she asked, "Pues, where we going?"
      I checked the rear-view mirror for Highway Patrol and ignored her question. Adelita shrugged as if she didn't care, and tapped her boots, grooving to the music. It took a few miles before I settled in to enjoy the big monster working under the hood of my cherry-red Camaro Z28 that made the white stripes of the road zip by in a blur. A string of red-and-black magic beads swayed from my rearview mirror, keeping time. Then she started drumming her fingers on the dashboard, like she was playing a piano or something, and I had to sit up and pay attention. She held her head up, like a prize filly, with arrogance and confidence. That's what first pulled me to her, made me question myself. I moved into the fastlane to get clear of an eighteen-wheeler that was hogging the road, but I had no real hurry to get anywhere. I tugged at my goatee and pondered her question. Where are we going? We? I hadn't thought about us as we. More like—her there, and me here. Que no? I lived happy outside of Weaverville, along a desolate stretch of gravel road at the edge of the Trinity Wilderness, a free man, just me and my music. My nearest neighbor, Sage Pumo, occupied a cabin several miles down Highway 299. At night, I had a clear view of the stars in the California sky. So I didn't need complications, and I had enough grief since my dog Reagan got squashed by a logging truck.
      I looked her in the eye. "I'm headed south."
      "Then I'll ride with you. I'm going to Vegas."
      I took a closer look at her. "Why's that?"
      "I'm a singer. I sing rancheras, huapangos, boleros. I also play the accordion. I'm going to be a star."
      "There's a lot of talent in Vegas. Lots."
      She frowned for just a second, like that thought had never crossed her mind.
      "But I'm good, I'm real good. When I sing I feel it all inside me. In here." And she jabbed a thumb at her heart.
      Man, some people are real naive. I didn't want to discourage her with tales of good girls gone bad selling themselves for a dime of meth, so I flipped the tape to the other side.
      We were crossing the heart of the San Joaquin Valley, miles of tomatoes and strawberries separated by irrigation ditches, and crop dusters flying low, spraying a fine pesticide mist over the perfectly laid out furrows. Two thin vapor trails, almost faded, crossed in the eggshell blue of the sky. The sun was slanting down behind us, setting the mountains on fire. Adelita removed her sunglasses and laid them on the dashboard. She squinted at the mean farm fields, and the corner of her eyes crinkled up where the first crow's-feet were beginning to take a grip. She crossed one knee over the other, drummed her fingers some more on the armrest, and hummed a tune I couldn't make out. I didn't want to stare at her, but she was kinda pretty in a country sort of way. In her late twenties I guessed. Don't get me wrong, Adelita seemed game, like she'd been around the block a couple of dozen times. Her mouth had that hard edge women get after 25 when they figure out life's not going to treat them right.
      But I wanted some details. "So where you from?"
      She tossed her head back over one shoulder. "From there."
      "Sacramento?"
      "Colusa."
      Colusa, land of dust and walnuts. I could see why she'd want to leave. "How'd you get to Sacra?"
      She answered with a throaty, wicked laugh that stood the hairs on my arm at attention.
      I took a wild guess. "You running away?"
      "You could say that."
      "A bad relationship?"
      "Sort of."
      "What? Husband?"
      "Are you loco? No husband."
      "You have family? Kids?"
      "You sure ask a lot of questions."
      "Maybe you should go back."
      "Never."
      "The kids'll be worried about you. I can always turn around."
      "Try it and I'll jump out right here. I'll never let a man tell me what to do. Ever. I'm through with that."
      I could tell she was serious. And it really wasn't my business. We passed Santa Nella and I had the Camaro doing eighty, and I was thinking that driving alone ain't so bad. I checked the fuel gauge and figured out when I would need to make another pit stop. Up ahead, a black, ominous cloud funneled out of the middle divider; something was burning. I eased off a notch on the gas.
      I noticed she was staring at my tats.
      I had the Virgen of Guadalupe emblazoned in India ink on my right forearm. Two chubby angels beneath her feet unfurled a banner that said "Perdoname Virgencita." On each knuckle of my right hand was tattooed a letter. My other forearm had a blue heart, and inside the heart "Norma/Por Vida." I was sixteen when I did that one. I even had a little Native American glyph on my shoulder for Sage.
      Adelita was eyeballing the Virgen, so I said, "You want to touch? Go ahead."
      She scooted closer to me and touched the Virgen de Guadalupe. Her fingernails were like needles puncturing my skin. She left her hand on my arm a second longer than necessary, as if feeling my strength.
      "Ever seen tats like these?" I said.
      "Not really. Where'd you get them?"
      I shrugged. "Tough tattoos. Long, sad stories."
      "You don't want to tell me, do you? What's the matter, don't you trust me?"
      "It's not a question of trust."
      "What is it then? You afraid I'll tell the National Enquirer?"
      Crazy woman. I don't know why I said, "You'd look real fine with one."
      She shot a look at me that burned right through my skull.
      "Where'd you put it?"
      That surprised me. Where would I put it? Where would I tattoo her for life? I pressed my thumbnail just under her blouse into her shoulder leaving a red mark like a half moon. The air around that part of the valley must have been highly charged with electric particles, because touching her hit me like a live wire. A pure jolt of energy. I would not lie, carnal. At the same time, I saw the object on the middle divider was a semi rig that had jackknifed, the steel cab all mangled, charred, and smoking like a plane wreck. A fire crew had hosed the wreckage with streams of water, but it was too late. No man could have survived that accident. We passed by it in a flash.
      Adelita scooted back to her seat and I mentally rehearsed the business I had in El Ley. Under a false compartment in the trunk were forty Ziploc bags of red-haired sinsemilla. This stash belonged to Sage, her whole harvest. Her first husband had left her seven hundred acres of prime mountain real estate complete with underground springs; her second husband had left her a tractor. I was just her neighbor and a hired hand, but already felt like husband number three. I helped plant the seedlings during the spring and watered them in summer, running a PVC pipe from the underground source to the budding plants. Sage held the main percentage, and I usually made enough to keep in buds during the winter months and, if I was lucky, to survive till the next harvest. This year, though, I had offered to unload the crop with my main man in Pico Rivera. Tyrannus Mex was a boxcar of meanness, the main connect in East Los, and he paid cash on the line. So I was making the rounds with ten pounds of the highest grade herb in the world. Real triple-A stuff. Sage and I were looking at maybe fifty grand in pure profits, just like the big boys running paper scams. My percentage would be enough to live in style for a whole year.
      But working up close in the mountains has a way of stripping you down to bare emotions. After toiling in the herb garden, I would relax with Sage in the sweat lodge where I had a chance to consider her ample, hairless body and her sizable breasts under braided black hair. One of her nipples pointed up and the other pointed down, and that just increased my curiosity. During those late summer months a female bear had taken to showing up every morning around my cabin, and when the bear started looking good I feared for my sanity. So instead I squeezed my skinny hips between Sage's broad thighs, and she rubbed us both to warmth and human comfort.
      The night before my trip, Sage and I were snuggled under her Pendleton blanket. Suddenly she sat up. "Maybe you'd better not make this trip. I had a dream last night about you, and your luck's about to run out." "Naw," I said to Sage, "I don't believe in dreams." Then we humped like bears in the woods, with lots of growls and thrusts and groans and moans, but not much passion. Sleeping with Sage Pumo wasn't exactly love, but it was convenient.
      I did have other business in El Ley, and the thought of it kept me quiet for miles. El Ley had stopped being my town a long time ago. I was going back to bury my only brother, a half brother really. Even though he was the product of my father's affairs, and we never lived in the same house, we spent a lot of time together as teenagers. We have a saying in the barrio that fit the two of us—Blood is thicker than mud. But he'd been on the streets a while, and I'd lost touch with him. Ten years maybe without hearing from him, the yellow envelope from the V.A. office with the cold notice. He'd either been robbed or beaten, or both, with nothing in his pockets but thirty-four cents when they found him drowned in the El Ley River. The El Ley River that's about three inches deep. I wondered if they would bury him with the box full of medals he'd brought back from Vietnam. He'd been an honor student in high school—who would have guessed this would be his end? But it was. And the anger of it kept me burning, kept me awake many nights. I was going back because it was the right thing, but I wanted to leave quick and clean before the jaws of El Ley clamped down on me again.
      Adelita pressed her knees together and withdrew into her own world. I scraped all thoughts about her out of my mind and drove on. We were by Kettleman City, the road like an arrow aimed at nothing, the sky big as a canvas, with two small puff clouds blowing across the blueness like tumbleweeds. The only signs of the road warned—PATROLLED BY AIRCRAFT. This empty land could make anyone a desperado.
      "I'm taking this exit." I said. "You decide what you want to do."
      She sat up, looking at me as if I'd insulted her, then she turned away and looked out the window, like there was something to see, the Grand Canyon perhaps.
      After parking, I went to the head and took a long leak, taking my time to shake my thing dry, hoping that maybe Adelita would be gone by the time I got back. But when I stepped out there, she was still scrunched down in the car. So I bought a pack of sunflower seeds in the Quick Stop and kept my eyes on her just in case she'd step out to stretch her legs or use the head. But she wasn't taking any chances. I felt sorry for her and brought her a soda when I came back.
      "I guess that means you want to ride," I said.
      "That's right," she said.
      If women are a puzzle, this one had a thousand mismatched pieces. I pulled back onto the freeway and tried the radio for a while but picked up nothing but static and a country preacher begging donations and spewing hate and prejudice. Just what this country needs. So I snapped it off. Adelita was chewing on a hangnail, not looking at the road.
      Finally I said, "So what songs you know?"
      She looked at me like a puppy that wants to please. "You want me to sing?"
      "No. I want you to tap dance backwards."
      She put one hand over her mouth to hide her smile. Then she sang, bajito at first, a little unsure of herself, one of those classic boleros from long ago, "Perfidia," a song of passion, heartache, and betrayal. Linda Ronstadt had nothing to worry about. Not yet anyway. Adelita went off-key on the high notes, and she forgot every other line and just kinda scatted her way through the lyrics. But her voice and phrasing simmered with a raw emotion that moved even a cold-hearted vato like me. With a few lessons, who knows how far she'd go?

"A Toda Maquina" is reprinted with permission from Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers; Writers on Tattoos, edited by Kim Addonizio and Cheryl Dumesnil, Warner Books, 2002. The story first appeared in This War Called Love: Nine Stories, by Alejandro Murguía, City Lights Books, 2002.