Western Swing (41 page)

“Look at him, he's taking notes right now.”

She glanced back at me. “I wouldn't doubt it, Walt. But he's all I've got. Don't kill him.”

I wasn't taking notes. I was wishing I could be sober enough to think about the things Lana Sue was saying. I'd never understood what she saw in me—always figured I needed her more than she needed me. But now it seemed pretty strong both ways.

Walt stepped past Lana Sue and stood five feet away with the rifle on me. “You're incapable of love. Ann told me about your mother and brothers. That bastard was the only thing you ever cared about, and when he was gone, you killed my baby.”

“I care about Lana Sue.”

“Annie was your wife.”

“I cared about her too—at the time. Hell, I married her.”

Walt lowered the rifle and stared at me. He blinked twice, then swallowed. “What color were Annie's eyes?”

“What?”

“For reasons I'll never understand, this woman loves your worthless hide.” He nodded his head toward Lana Sue. “For her, if you cared about Annie enough to recall the color of her eyes, I'll only shoot out your kneecaps. I will not take your miserable life.”

“Be tough to survive blown kneecaps this far from the road.”

“The two of you will manage.”

I thought about Ann the first day we were together when we took the picnic basket to the cemetery and Buggie climbed the grave markers even before he could walk. Her hair had been so clean that day. The sky had been so blue—it seemed to match her eyes. “Blue. They were a light blue.”

Walt grew very calm. “Annie's eyes were hazel. The Ann in your book had blue eyes.”

“Are you sure?”

“You lose, bucko.”

Lana Sue hit the rifle as he fired. With the second shot, a hole appeared in the sleeping bag next to my hand. Another shot and the Jim Beam bottle exploded.

Lana Sue screamed, “I'll do it!”

Walt stopped. “Do what?”

“I'll fuck you for his life.”

Walt and Lana Sue stared in each other's eyes for a few intense seconds. He took a step toward her. “Right now. In the dirt. With him watching.”

Lana Sue nodded.

“Why?”

“I don't want Loren dead.”

He turned to me. “And you'll let her, won't you?”

I looked at Lana Sue. Her hair blocked out most of her face, but I could see her right eye, staring at the ground, waiting. I thought about Buggie and the day he disappeared. He'd caught a trout that morning. Ann and I made love for the last time. With effort, I pulled my legs under my drunk body and made it to my feet. I faced Walt across the fire.

“No.”

He pretended not to understand. “What's that?”

“You'll have to shoot me first.”

“Your choice.” The rifle came up, dead center on my chest. He squeezed the trigger and we all heard the empty click. I drunk-rushed.

Walt two-hand-swung the barrel into my left ear and I went down onto his feet. Grabbing both legs, I lifted him clear off the ground. He cracked me again and we both fell. On my back now, I kicked his face, but he made it to his knees and drew the rifle back, this time holding the barrel, swinging the stock. On his left, I saw Lana Sue move in with a rock held over her head in both hands. Then Walt's club came toward me, the night strobed once and darkened.

• • •

Nineteen seventy-eight or -nine, must have been -eight because Buggie wasn't quite four, I sat at the kitchen table working on a scene near the end of the second Western. Ann gave Buggie a big chunk of Colby cheese and a slice of whole wheat bread and sent him into the backyard to play. She stood at the sink window in blue sweats, her Bronco jersey, and no shoes, humming as she Woolited Buggie's no-longer-needed snowsuit.

The scene was an important one. Someone—a woman—had locked my sheriff in his own jail and he had to break free in time to save another woman from violent death. I was torn between picking the lock and dynamiting the back wall. Dynamite seemed more dramatic, but there were logistical problems.

Suddenly Ann squealed,
“Holy shit,”
and ran out the back door. When I reached the patio, she was dragging Buggie away from the body of an owl.

Buggie said, “Bird sick.”

More than sick, the owl was dead. It lay on its side on the concrete, its head and shoulders spotted by yellow bite-size pieces of cheese, the bread slice balanced across the exposed wing.

Ann tried to turn Buggie's face from the sight, but he would have none of it. “I feeded him. Make him better.”

I couldn't blame Buggie for wanting to see the owl. Even though the cheese made it a little bizarre, he was still huge and beautiful. His face was a white heart curved back like an inside-out bivalve set around two black pits for eyes. Nothing back in my Texas pet cemetery came close to this owl.

I knelt over the body. “Wonder what kind he is?”

“What difference does it make?” Ann said.

Buggie twisted in her arms. “Feed him. Make it fly.”

I touched the wing feathers. “Afraid he's a goner, Bug. Let me get the bird book, we'll see what we've got here.”

It was a barn owl, a young male as best as I could make out. I showed Ann and Buggie the markings. “See this cinnamon streak down here. The book says this makes him look ghostly at night.”

Ann didn't care. “Get rid of it.”

“I'm not real sure how to go about that.”

“Throw it in the Mini-Mart Dumpster.”

Buggie gave her his hurt look. “Feed the bird. Now.”

“You can't throw a predatory bird in a Dumpster. This is a noble creature. I don't think it's even legal that he died in our backyard.”

Ann picked Buggie up and carried him toward the back door. “Just get rid of it, Loren. Gives me the creeps.”

“We could have him mounted.”

“No.”

Burial didn't feel right. I considered hauling him into the mountains and leaving him on the ground for the mice and ants—a completion of the nutritional wheel of life sort of thing—but he was so beautiful, rotting would have been sad.

So I cremated him.

I sloshed a quarter inch of kerosene into the bowl of our outside barbecue grill. Then I gently picked the owl up and placed him in. He filled almost the entire bowl. Out of respect for Buggie, I left the cheese on his face. Standing way back, I threw lit matches at him. The first couple went out in midair, but finally he
whooshed
and burst into a fireball.

The feathers gave off a burnt fingernail smell. His legs curled. Through the flames, I could see the cheese melt into his eyes. I mumbled a vague spirit-to-spirit prayer with no idea what it meant.

What brought on this memory, besides the owl itself, was that vaporous waviness in the heat above the fire. At one point, I looked up from the burning owl, and through the heat waves, I saw Ann and Buggie pressed against the back window. Ann's face filled the top left of the frame with her dark blond hair hanging down above Buggie's eyes, forehead, and two chubby palms. The effect was as if they floated a few inches below the surface of a clear, gently rippling pool. They looked far away, detached, dead.

I sprayed the owl good with lighter fluid and went inside.

• • •

High mountain light and the odor of smoke filled the clearing. I rolled over, coughed, then sat up and blinked at the blue, cloudless sky. Sometime in the night, someone had covered me with the sleeping bag. Gathering it around my shoulders like a shawl, I staggered to my feet shakily, looking at Lana Sue as she fussed around the campfire.

Her hair was down and she was wearing a bone-colored sweater and blue jeans. I could smell the coffee boiling. She kept her face turned away, not looking at me.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

When Lana Sue swung my way, I saw the glisten of tears. “You better be.”

“I am.”

She was up and in my arms. “This is the last time, Loren, you hear me? I'm never going to save a man again—not even you.”

I sunk my hand into the hair on the back of her neck. “My head feels cracked.”

When Lana Sue pulled back to look in my eyes, a hint of smile crossed her face. She touched my blood-matted ear. “You were more drunk than hurt.”

“Right now I feel more hurt.”

“Should have seen the knot on Walt's skull. I thought I'd killed the poor schlock.”

“Poor schlock?”

“I kept imagining what I'd tell the police when I got to town.”

I pulled the sleeping bag over both her shoulders. We leaned together, touching foreheads. I asked the question. “Would you have done it?”

“Fucked him?” Lana Sue's body gave a little shudder in my arms. She looked up at me. “I guess I couldn't let him kill you.”

“Thanks.”

Her eyes turned fierce. “But I guarantee you'd never have seen me again.”

“That's fair.”

Lana Sue ducked under the sleeping bag and walked to the fire pit. “It's been a hard five days, Loren. Splitting up isn't as much fun as it used to be.”

“Can I have some coffee?”

She folded a bandanna several times, then drew the blackened pot from the fire. I walked over and stood behind her while she sprinkled in salt to settle the grounds. “When did he leave?”

“Dawn. Couple of hours ago. I hope he makes it down all right.” She poured coffee into my Sierra cup.

“Bad shape, huh?”

“Old Walt is no longer a threat.” She motioned toward the elk skull. “His gun's over there.” She'd done an amazing job of breaking up the rifle—must have been fifteen separate pieces in a pile. “I threw all his bullets in the creek.”

We drank coffee in silence, looking first into the fire, then out at the beautiful day. Sunshine glittered off the cliffs in a way it never glitters below nine thousand feet. The flowers and pines gave off a fresh scrubbed odor that mixed perfectly with the coffee. Even the elk skull seemed to have formed a smile, or maybe a more balanced leer.

Lana Sue caught me looking at the top of the Sleeping Indian. “So you still think God or some talking rock is up there waiting to tell you about Buggie?”

“I don't know.”

“If you're going up, I'm going with you.”

The coffee was the best I ever tasted. “I'm not going up.”

When Lana Sue took the cup, she held the back of my hand a moment. “Can you live with me in the present while the past is still unresolved?”

From this side, the peak didn't look like a sleeping Indian at all. It looked like a mountain. Maybe all I had to do was scramble up the ridge for an hour to find out if Buggie was alive or dead, and, either way, where he had gone. But it didn't matter so much. The thing I'd really wanted to ask was whether death brings on another stage or total eternal blankness, and whichever way the answer came down would have no effect on how I planned to live. I'd still get up in the morning and pull on my pants and drink a cup of coffee with cream. I would go on loving Lana Sue and writing dumb little books in hopes of making someone else's life more pleasant. I would watch the sun and the weather, the cycle of plants and animals. I would do all I could to enjoy the everyday. Oncoming death couldn't change squat about ongoing life.

“This catharsis crap is a bitch.”

“Like shitting bricks. You having one now?”

“I suppose so.”

“You're realizing being happy is nicer, right?”

“Something like that.”

Lana Sue kissed me. I could taste coffee in her mouth. “I think you're ready for country music, Loren.”

“Let's go hear some.”

• • •

We walked back through the long meadow with the blown-up snowmobile. In the sunshine, the flowers were even more beautiful than the day before, although the rain had freed a hurricane of pollen. Lana Sue told me about her daughter.

“The band's playing in Cody week after next, Loren. It's only a hundred fifty miles and the drive through Yellowstone would be pretty.”

“So let's go.”

“I think you'll like Mickey Thunder. You two are a lot alike in strange ways.”

I walked on the trail behind Lana Sue, admiring her ass among the flowers. Curiosity overcame tact and I took a chance on spoiling the mood. “You make it with many men while you were gone?”

Lana Sue stopped a second, then kept on. “One or two, depends on how you count.”

“How do you count?”

“One didn't matter and the other wasn't any good.”

“Was the one that didn't matter as good as me?”

“Course not. You're technically good and emotional at the same time. That's a rare combination.” Lana Sue picked a columbine and tucked it behind her ear. “Loren, when I drove to the VanHorns' to find out where you were, Lee sent me in to talk to Marcie in her darkroom.”

“Marcie told me she's into photography.”

Lana Sue glanced back at me. “I saw some pictures coming out of the dryer.”

“What about this one who wasn't any good? Does that mean he mattered?”

“There was a dick that looked just like yours, only it was enormous, big as a chicken.”

I tripped over a stone in the trail—almost fell into Lana Sue's back. “Couldn't have been mine. I'm just barely above average.”

She swung around and eyed me. “I could spot your tool anywhere.”

It was one of those scenes that demand eye contact. Otherwise the woman knows you're lying in your teeth. “I'm not enormous, remember?”

Lana Sue smiled. “When I figure out how you two did it, I'll murder you both.”

“What about this guy who wasn't good, but mattered. I'm not certain I like that.”

Lana Sue laughed aloud and I loved her for it. “You know what I've decided, Loren. You and I deserve each other.”

“I'll take that as a compliment. Let's go home.”