Western Swing (40 page)

Lana Sue said, “My cooking isn't slop.”

“Then after you'd robbed her of her child, you decided to cash in on the grief. You were writing a book that would sell her private hell to the reading public.”

“Did you write back?” I asked again.

He took a step toward me. “Fred was gone, you were as good as gone. All Annie had left was his memory and you stole that.”

The last pink in the west turned ruby as the sun flattened on both the bottom and top. His accusation about Buggie stuck. I drove him away. Making love had never been the same since. Just when I'm supposed to let go and live the moment, I always wonder who my dick is killing this time. But this idea that I caused Ann's suicide was one step too far. I wrote the book to purge grief and guilt, not steal her memories or make money.

“I deny it,” I said.

“Annie claimed that if you finished the book she would never hold her son again and she would die. She said she burned it once but you didn't care.”

Lana Sue asked, “What did you do when you got the letter?”

Walt exhaled deeply through his nose and turned sideways so he appeared to be talking to the elk. “Nothing.”

Lana Sue held her Dixie cup with both hands. “Your daughter was in trouble and you did nothing?”

Walt glanced at Lana Sue, then at the fire. I figured if he drew deeply enough into his own thoughts, I could pull a stick from the coals and throw it in his face. He spoke quietly. “When Lisa passed away, I almost went with her.”

“Lisa was Ann's mother?” Lana Sue's voice was kind.

He nodded. “Then Ann ran off with that greasy foreigner she called a guru. She got away and I had to stay and raise her brothers and sister.”

I lifted a stick from the fire. The hot end glowed a deeper red than the sunset. Walt kept talking more to himself than us. “Then Annie moved in with some hippie, then she gave birth to an illegitimate son—all without a word to me.”

“So you didn't answer when she needed you,” Lana Sue said.

Walt came back to alertness. “It's not my fault she died. He's the one. He was living with her. I couldn't know.”

I blew on the tip of my stick. The glow went neon, then darkened. “Who abandoned who out there on the coast?”

“You shut up.”

“Ann told me you blanked her out after your wife died.”

“I told you to shut up.”

“She left with the fat Maha-whatever because you wouldn't speak to her.”

He cocked the rifle. I turned to Lana Sue. “Walt here mails a bulletin out every Christmas with a list of where the kids are, who's married, who has kids. After Buggie was born, he dropped Ann's name from the lineup. She said he made her feel dead.”

“You bastard. I will kill you.”

“Buggie was the bastard. That's why you never acknowledged his existence.”

“I swear, I'll beat you to death with my bare hands.”

“You're too old.”

Lana Sue's turn to defuse. She moved quickly around the fire to stand between Walt and me. “Maybe you feel guilty,” she said to him.

“Don't play psychiatrist with me.”

“And you transferred your guilt to anger at Loren. You blame him so you won't blame yourself.”

“He abandoned my baby.”

“So did her mom, her dad, and her child.”

“Hand me the fucking bottle.”

“Everybody killed her, Walt. Not you alone and not Loren either.”

“I'm still going to shoot the asshole.”

• • •

We all observed a moment of liquid silence. Lana Sue carried the supper leftovers into the darkness and scraped the mess into a chiseler hole. Walt went hypnotic on the elk. Or maybe he was scotch-stunned. If I'd thought he was totally oblivious, I'd have plowed his scalp with a rock, but he blinked now and then and sighs escaped. The rifle stayed in the ready position.

I poked the reddest coals into a square pile, then tossed on my largest chunk of kindling. As I watched his sharp face in the near darkness and firelight, I imagined Walt's brain slithering with distorted remembrances—like one of those experiments where they dump two hundred mice in a cage built for twenty.

Some turn to insane hyperactivity, others go catatonic. Cannibalism and rape erupt. Birth defects by the dozen.

“It's okay,” I said.

“After I kill him, we can rest,” Walt said to the elk.

“I have to pee now.”

• • •

Someone should write an ode to blind-drunk urination. First, you have to stand up, which is an unnecessary challenge. Then, find a place, find your fly, miss your leg, get it back in. The most debasing moments in a man's life often come while he's pissing drunk.

I thought these things as I leaned on a tree trunk and listened to the whiz. I thought about Ann's barbiturates. At least, stoned on reds, you don't have to excuse yourself every ten minutes. I've lost some crucial bar pickups because of you-don't-buy-beer-you-only-rent-it.

I also thought about obsession. Walt Smith was obsessed by the memory of his daughter. I was obsessed with finding Buggie. I'd always believed obsession was the only way to accomplish anything or really feel anything in life, but, using the two of us as examples, it seemed obsession causes an outlook twisted to the point of stupid. Lana Sue wasn't obsessed by anything and she was the only sane one of the bunch.

“You going to stand there with your pecker out all night?” Walt asked.

“Maybe.”

“It's my turn.”

I tucked in. “This is a big forest, Mr. Smith. No need to take turns.”

He punched my ribs hard with the rifle barrel. “Your contempt is suicidal.”

“What contempt? I respect your position here. I just don't care to die.”

“You should have considered that five years ago when you abandoned my Annie.”

“I should have known this would happen?”

“Right, bucko.”

The bucko shit was getting old. Back at the fire, Lana Sue gave me the hug I'd been waiting for. “I'm glad I found you in one piece,” she said.

Her hair on my face smelled nice, like the rain. I wondered something. “Other than Marcie telling you I was on the mountain, how did you manage to find me?”

“She's statutory, Loren. And her daddy owns guns.”

“I mean, there's a lot of land up here.”

“Only one trail from the parking lot up the ridge, though, and there was this smoke at the top end of the meadow.”

“That was a snowmobile.”

“Can't tell by looking at it now.” She pulled out of the hug, but kept hold of my hands. “Then I saw your daypack up by the woods. After that, I just wandered uphill until I heard the first shot.”

“Pretty good timing.”

Lana Sue smiled. “You're my husband. I could track you anywhere.” Then she kissed me—a solid wife and lover kiss, none of this lovable fuck-up stuff. “I missed you a lot,” she said.

“I'm glad you came back.”

I felt her hands on my shoulder blades. “It's an odd world out there, Loren.”

“Odder than here?”

She glanced behind me at the drunk car salesman who planned to shoot us. “Be a toss-up right now.” I was standing close to the fire so the backs of my legs got too much heat, but I didn't want to let go of my hold on Lana Sue. It seemed a long time since I'd touched a human being.

“Here's the plan,” I said. “We drink him unconscious, then we walk out of here.”

“Nine miles across pitch-black wilderness drunk on our butts?”

“Okay. We drink him unconscious, then break the rifle in half. What's he doing over there?”

Lana Sue released the hug and moved so the fire wasn't between her and Walt Smith. I jumped away from the heat. “Still communing with nature, I think.”

“I hope I can commune that long when I'm his age.” I turned to look at Walt. That brought my front to the fire and cooled my calves.

“Drinking him under is our best bet, Loren, only I want you to pretend to pass out first.”

“Shouldn't be hard. Why?”

“He'll relax more when you're not a threat. Besides, he's not likely to shoot you while you're asleep.”

“Murder's all right, but only if the victim is awake?”

“It's the cowboy code. He's waiting for you to come at him or try an escape or something. He's on his way back now. Drink a lot and pass out. Only leave enough for us.”
Drink a lot and pass out.
I could handle that.

I sank onto the sleeping bag next to the Beam bottle. A sliver moon with Venus off the bottom tip rose through the trees behind the old elk skull. An owl swooped across the clearing and away, but I was the only one who saw it. I wondered what kind of owl it was and if that mattered and whether it would matter more if I was immortal. Dying tonight seemed somehow probable yet impossible at the same time—like death always seems, I suppose. I would miss Lana Sue singing country songs on the toilet early mornings while I sleepy-fussed around the kitchen making coffee. And the taste of cold water. And the opening theme music to
M*A*S*H
reruns. That song is comforting, it gives continuity to life, even though the title is “Suicide Is Painless.”

Walt approached, tucking the wool shirt in with one hand. His two-day beard gave him a cleaned-up-wino look—nothing like a car salesman. I asked myself the old Nixon question. “Would you buy a used car from this man?” Depended on the deal.

Right now he was staring at Lana Sue. “How come a good looker like yourself ended up with trash for a husband?” He swung the barrel my way.

“Lucky, I guess.”

Walt leaned off to one side and drank from the bottle. “Look at him over there, nodding like a heroin addict. He's a simpleton.”

Lana Sue studied me a moment, considering the observation. I smiled at her. “Loren's my honey,” she said. “My sticking point.”

Walt made an ugly snort sound. “Makes me want to puke.”

“So don't look at him.”

His stare returned to Lana Sue, only this time it was more a leer. “Maybe we could work out a deal.”

“No.”

“You don't even know the terms.”

“I know the terms.”

“You'd rather I shoot the asshole?” Sounded like a reasonable question to me.

The firelight gave Lana Sue's cheekbones a shadowy, Cheyenne mystery woman look. “Four days ago a man said he'd commit suicide if I didn't sleep with him. Then three days ago a kid offered to sell me his shoes for sex. I said no to them and I'm saying no to you.”

“So you'd rather see your husband die than be nice to me?”

“My cunt doesn't prevent murder or suicide. Or bare feet.”

I raised my head off my hands. “Did the guy kill himself?”

“Nope.”

“Did you sleep with him anyway?”

“I told you what I said, Loren.”

“I know what you said—what did you do?”

This got me a particularly nasty stare—so nasty in fact that I didn't buy the bit. She'd been up to something. Lana Sue took the bottle back from Walt. “You have a stroke recently?” she asked him. The smoke made them shift around the fire, away from where I slouched.

“Three years ago in February. Does it show?” The heat over the fire gave them an unsubstantial, watery look. Kind of artsy.

“You limp like my uncle Bart. He fainted into a sand trap a few years back. Couldn't speak for a month, but they physical-therapied him so well you can hardly tell now—except he can't whistle anymore and he carries his left leg some when he's tired. Like you.”

Walt passed from the watery far side of the fire to the more solid left. The rifle still pointed between my eyes. “It was mild, nothing really. I was back on the lot by summer.”

I twisted the top off my Beam bottle and took a good slug.

Lana Sue smiled and lip-synced
pass out
at me. Then she continued, “So, Walt, was it around the stroke that you developed these avenging angel urges toward Ann?”

“Hand me the scotch.” Walt eyed Lana Sue as he drank. With the bottle almost empty, we were headed toward a
vomit à trois.

“I resent the insinuation,” he said.

“What insinuation?”

“You imply that my mental capacities were lessened by my sickness, that my defense of Ann is a disease-caused blip on my personality.”

“I wouldn't have said blip.”

“You better not. I should have killed him at the funeral itself.”

I raised my head. “You should have come to the funeral itself.”

“I was there.”

“Horseshit, you didn't even know she was dead.”

“Don't curse at me, bucko.”

“One more bucko and you eat that rifle.” This was the Jimmy Stewart side of me rising to the occasion. Walt's mouth twitched a couple times and made a chewing motion. For a moment, he appeared on the edge of calling my bluff. What would Jimmy Stewart do then?

Walt stared into the fire. “Her doctor phoned the day it happened. He said you were too much a mess to think of me.”

“Ann and her family were enemies. I saw no call to notify anyone.”

Walt turned to Lana Sue. “I was at the cemetery. It snowed and some of the women who worked with Annie had been Christmas shopping before the service.”

Lana Sue touched his shoulder. “It must have been very hard.”

“After the prayers, he sat in the car and took notes. Can you believe the monstrosity? My baby is dead and he's recording impressions.”

“I'd of gone insane that week if I stopped work on the Buggie book.”

He raised the rifle butt to his shoulder and took aim at my chest. “Your wife was dead. She deserved a little insanity.”

Lana Sue tried to step between Walt and me, but he moved away from the fire, keeping me in range.

“Don't kill him,” Lana Sue said.