The Voodoo of Wanting

The story is about a Hollywood jet set couple of actors – Harry and Buffy - tormented by a young man who lives off the desert . The nuclear wasteland setting is a metaphor for the way in which the white man stole and poisoned the land originally belonging to Native Americans.

Harry and Buffy travel to the desert on a second honeymoon in an attempt to save their marriage. Their Bentley breaks down in the middle of nowhere and they find refuge in the shack of an angry young outcast, Boy (¼ Hopi Indian), who lives on his own with his dog, far away from civilization. His young Indian wife died of leukemia following the nuclear tests in the desert .

Living alone and isolated, Boy polishes his impossible dreams and really believes them. He has built an underground shelter where he collects what the world should keep – the written masterpieces, vitamins, fresh air, Kachina dolls for protection - after a nuclear blast.
Buffy is attracted to Boy's intensity, his honesty, his vulnerability. She has a magnetic attraction to his being on the edge of madness. She feels compassion for the "fallen angel".
Harry clings to "civilization" like a crutch. We know immediately that he and Boy won't get along – they are polar opposites.
Harry is a walking incarnation of everything Boy despises about white culture.
Boy : "If you want something enough, you must will it. If you're obsessed enough, you will get the object of desire." Boy will admit no failure.
He wants the woman.
Buffy has reached a time in life when the glitter of the Industry no longer excites, merely induces a sense of mild depression.
She has the fatalism of the old races ; a belief in the inevitability of things. A respect for fate.
Finally Buffy makes love to Boy to buy her and Harry's freedom.
But a quarrel occurs between Boy and Harry and both men start fighting. Harry kills Boy accidentally. Harry survives but can't feel good about it. Perhaps he even loses Buffy . She is after all, also "Dark Blood".