by KT Sparks
“Thanks, man,” Mike said. “Really, I mean it. Thanks. A tribute, that’s what that was. A fucking tribute.” He patted Martin’s back. “You know how to send a soul into the fire, man. Makes my job easier.”
Martin sighed and turned to exit the tin building. Behind him, the IEB-100 doors clanged shut and the SmokeBuster burners whooshed on.
Martin headed from the crematorium to his office but stopped off at the doorway to the Family and Friends Comfort and Conference Room, where Lattner and Annie were planning for the cross-country trip. Lattner shouted orders into a Bluetooth headphone set, setting up some sort of press event on the following Thursday, when they planned to start the drive. The funeral was scheduled for the Saturday of the Thirty-Second Annual Elko Cowboy Poetry Confluence. That gave them two weeks to get to Elko, more than enough time to navigate any unforeseen—but in Martin’s case, always expected—detours. It also gave them time to meet Mac in Denver at the office of NPR’s KRCC, so the final details of the ceremony could be worked through. Or any details, Martin thought with a touch of contempt, though on the whole, he was pleased Mac and Lina seemed to be leaving it up to him. He mentally congratulated them for recognizing his rare amalgamation of cowboy poetry and large companion aftercare experience.
Annie looked up at Martin. “If you drove straight through, you’d be there in twenty-five hours.” A bowlegged, squirrel-brown shih tzu with black-tipped ears and glaucoma-shaded fruit bat eyes stumbled out from under the table, bumped into Martin’s right ankle, and started licking the top of his shoe.
“We are men of a certain age,” said Lattner, flipping through the state maps. “There will be stopping.”
“Down, Fancy Pants,” Annie said to the dog, who squinted at her, then bent to probe Martin’s sole with its tongue. She turned to Martin: “Bob needs an iPad. Can I use the card?”
Martin nodded yes. “Start an NPR account.” No one had spoken of paying for all this, and he had not felt he could ask. He was deft at working financing matters into discussions with grieving pet owners, but this was different. Hero wasn’t just a pet. He was Martin’s entry ticket to Elko on terms he had long thought unattainable. Anyway, this was public broadcasting, not Bernie Madoff. They’d pay the bills.
“Try to find a refurbished one,” he said to Annie.
Martin shook his foot. Fancy Pants flipped onto his back with a howl, and Martin continued to his office. The cost—and there would be cost—of Hero’s funeral didn’t concern Martin per se, but he wanted to leave Final Paws on sound financial footing. Because he was leaving, right? When he and Julie had talked about this year’s confluence, they had never said this would be the beginning of a new life out West for Martin, but it had been assumed. He had assumed it, then and now.
His preparations over the next week reflected that certainty. He arranged his files of proven eulogies and creative burial options so Annie could continue to minister to the lofty standard he had set. He emptied his refrigerator and freezer and donated the two cases of Diet Coke he had bought on sale to the YMCA. He labeled a box “Ship to Martin Oliphant or bequest to the Pierre Public Library” and filled it with cowboy poetry: tomes like: Steering With My Knees by Paul Zarzyski, New Cowboy Poetry: A Contemporary Gathering, One Hundred Poems by Waddie Mitchell, National Cowboy Poetry Gathering: The Anthology, Towards Horses: Poems by Shadd Piehl, Bitter Creek Junction by Linda Hasselstrom; recordings of Wally McRae and Glenn Ohrlin and Georgie Sicking and Red Shuttleworth and Sandy Seaton Sallee; back issues of the Dry Crik Review of Contemporary Cowboy Poetry and American Cowboy; the works of the masters of the golden age: Henry Herbert Knibbs, Arthur Chapman, E.A. Brininstool, Bruce Kiskaddon, Curley Fletcher; and the books of the early collectors, John Lomax and, of course, Jack Thorp.
Early morning on the day of their departure, Martin placed Songs of the Cowboys on the top of the pile and covered it with a few old photos: his mom and dad, pre-cancer and pre-stroke, in tennis whites, waving matching Wilson T2000s at the bubble’s gloom; Lattner and Mrs. Trinkle posing behind her typewriter, stiff bearings, open smiles; Martin and an infant Frank at a forgotten beach, Martin staring into the camera, Frank squalling on a striped blanket; young Julie, long hair gilded in a beam of winter sunlight, holding his mom’s hand. Martin closed the cardboard flaps, secured the top with a double measure of packing tape, and left the box in the middle of his mostly empty living room.
The walk from his apartment to Final Paws was a short one, and he pushed into the front doors an hour before the mortuary opened, planning on going over his files and his final instructions to Annie one last time before anyone showed up. At his desk, he found Lattner, head in his hands, staring into a tumbler. A half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels sat atop the files Martin had come to review.
“Mac called me last night,” Lattner said. “Some contract snafu with the Cowboy Poet. He said we had to cancel the press event. I got through to the churro booth guy and told the PPHS band director to deploy the phone chain. So we’ll have a nice, quiet exit.”
“What about the funeral?” said Martin, his heart bungee jumping to groin-level, twanging back to his throat.
“Still on as far as I know,” said Lattner, pouring himself half a glass of whiskey. “Mac didn’t say not to come.”
“Right,” said Martin, though it didn’t feel right. This had always been his greatest fear. He would arrive at Elko without portfolio. He wouldn’t find Beaufort or Ginger or any of their like, just strangers, who would look at him with laughing eyes and ask: “Who are you again?”
“So what do we do if the funeral’s off?” Martin said.
“Have a few beers with the cowboys and listen to some poetry, I guess,” said Lattner. “Isn’t that what this whole thing’s about?”
The girl in the blue uniform with the maize braid leaned over the hood of the Mustang and puffed at her piccolo like a glue sniffer huffing at a paper bag. Martin shut the car window against the atonal cheeping and the accompanying and lackadaisical tapping from the snare drummer next to her. The PPHS Marching Band phone chain had not stretched to these two, and they had shown up determined to peep and pound through their musical tribute to Hero, undaunted by the absence of the rest of their corps.
Martin had twice slammed the car door and thrice opened it, the third time just now. The choice was to endure the musical piece to its ear-scraping end or suffocate. The space in which air could circulate through the car’s black leather-clad interior was limited, and what oxygen molecules there were had to squeeze between the strawberry-fig mist emitting from the Febreze car vent inserts and the fog of blue cheese seeping from Lattner’s oversized hard-shell Samsonite.
The latter was wedged behind the passenger seat and pushed at its back. Martin doubted he could bear the vertical posture this arrangement imposed for another ten minutes, forget the twenty-five road hours it would take to get to Denver then Elko. Next to the Samsonite was a plastic tub holding the earthly remains of Hero, and on top of both, was Martin’s bag, a red LL Bean duffle with “Julie Oliphant” embroidered in script on its side.
The piccolo piped unabated, and Martin wished he had volunteered to drive the first shift. He would have started up the car, just to let them know it was time to trill off into the sunset. He wouldn’t have hit them, maybe just nudged the bumper up to the creases in their band uniform pants.
The piper and drummer paused. Martin feared they were looking for more sheet music.
“Start the car, goddamn it,” he barked at Lattner.
Lattner scrabbled with the keys and switched on the ignition. The Mustang rumbled then roared, black smoke puffed from the tail pipe, and the PPHS band members scurried. Lattner shifted into first gear and let the beast inch forward on the gravel drive. Annie and Mike waved from the steps of Final Paws.
As they pulled out onto Niles Avenue, Martin heard a final drum roll from the snare and Mike’s fading salute: “Easy
on the clutch, man.”
Lattner weaved into the turn lane on Niles Avenue, and a grey dump truck honked, swerved, and sprayed gravel onto the road behind.
“Watch it,” said Martin. “Can you handle this thing?”
“I got it here, didn’t I?” said Lattner. “It’s just this.” He pointed to a long wisp of white hair that had deserted his comb-over and was buzzing in front of his eyes as if pulled by a tethered bee.
“Shut the window then,” said Martin.
“The car smells of horse remains,” said Lattner.
“If there is an odor to the cremains, it is the odor of the earth and pastures from which our beloved friends have come and will return,” said Martin, quoting an International Association of Pet Cemeteries and Crematories educational brochure entitled Grief Doesn’t Have to Stink.
“Bullshit,” said Lattner but rolled up his window anyway.
Several minutes of silent and straight driving ensued, and Martin closed his eyes and let the essences of Febreze, Roquefort, and—Lattner was right—wet cremains battle for dominance of his nostrils. Maybe they should move the computer equipment to the back and put Lattner’s case in the trunk. Hero presented more of a problem. The tub was temporary storage for the twenty-plus pounds of ash and bone until Annie could FedEx Martin the western-styled box that would be Hero’s final resting stall. The tub wouldn’t fit in the trunk; they had tried.
Lattner began to hack, a guttural clanging, like the frying pans on a runaway chuckwagon. When he took his hands off the wheel to pound on his rattling chest, Martin said, “Why don’t we pull off and repack? Your bag can go in the trunk and Hero on the rack. The Febreze is with us for the duration, I’m afraid.”
“The lesser evil,” said Lattner and turned left into The Apple Place, a fresh fruit and vegetable stand which, in mid-May in Pierre, had at least another month before there were any frost-blacked greens or stunted strawberries to offer. The plank shelves in the open wooden shed stood empty and a hand-printed sign announcing PUMPKINS lay on the dirt drive.
Lattner continued around the abandoned sales area on a rugged dirt path to the back of the shed. The Mustang pitched, the lid of the tub popped free on one end, and Martin whacked his knee on the gear shift.
“What are you doing?” he said.
“Just in case we were followed by press,” said Lattner, jerking to a stop in front of a canting wooden apple hold. “I don’t want it getting out that we’ve run into technical difficulties this soon.”
Martin got out of the car, avoided a gopher hole and a small pile of dog shit, and unloaded the trunk: two laptops, Lattner’s scribble-infested legal pads, Martin’s Luccheses, jumper cables, and a plastic crate containing a roll of paper towels, a water-damaged copy of A Confederacy of Dunces, several torn pages from the tic disorder section of the DSM-IV schedule, a bag of organic mangos, a child’s wooden hammer, and a set of bungee cords.
Martin held up the cords. “Excellent, these will work for the tub.”
“‘Be prepared,’ that’s my motto,” said Lattner, picking up a DSM-IV page, smoothing it, and placing it back in the crate.
The two men sorted and secured their baggage and re-situated themselves in the front of the Mustang. Martin had offered to drive, but Lattner insisted he would do it.
“I enjoy actively taking leave of Pierre,” he said. He turned the key but no rumble, no roar, just a whirr and a single click.
“Problem?” said Martin.
“Needs to warm up,” said Lattner.
Martin settled back and stared out the window at the apple trees tentatively offering up tight blossoms to the frost gods. He was learning to live with the stench of strawberry-fig.
“Why did you go?” said Martin. “Besides the lawsuits.”
“That was a part of it,” said Lattner, eyes fixed front, “but mostly it was for you. And Irene.”
“She was a wreck,” said Martin, remembering Mrs. Trinkle cleaning out her desk, tears blotching her pale cheeks, hair askew, white cardigan buttoned wrong and stained with coffee. “She threw out her typewriter. And yours.”
“Yeah, and she moved to Cabo with Paul, like she’d wanted to do for twenty years,” said Lattner.
“But she died,” said Martin.
“She died happy,” said Lattner.
“What about me?” said Martin.
“You?” said Lattner. “I thought you’d go west.”
Martin had suspected that. “I’m going now. It had to be right.”
Lattner reached over and patted Martin’s thigh. “You patch it up with Julie?”
“She won’t take my calls,” said Martin.
“Give it a few more days,” said Lattner. He tried the ignition again. This time it took, and the Mustang sprang forward. “Then tell her you’re sorry.”
As they bumped back out The Apple Place’s driveway, Martin considered whether he should listen to the old man on the subject of Julie, or women in general, or anything to do with the human race at all. Still, Martin knew he would have to apologize. He’d been selfish and cowardly. Julie got hurt because she believed in him, the him he wanted to be, the him that he could be if he could just get Hero to Elko.
They turned onto Niles Avenue, and Lattner stepped hard on the Mustang’s accelerator. “Good, good,” he mumbled, his eyes on the steadily climbing speed gauge.
“Slow down,” said Martin. “You’re going to miss the turn.”
Lattner passed the sign for I-94 West. “Do you smell smoke?” he asked. “Because I see smoke.” He adjusted the rearview mirror and slowed.
Martin looked back. A plume of gray fanned out behind them.
“Is the Mustang on fire?” said Lattner.
“I don’t think it’s the Mustang,” said Martin, watching the blue plastic lid of the cremains tub cartwheel down the shoulder. “I think it’s Hero.”
NPR Cancels Cowboy Poetry Hour Final Tour after Horse Death
Jayden M. Jones, USA TODAY 7:21 a.m. EDT May 13, 2016
NPR has cancelled the last two weeks of cowboy poet radio personality Vess Guffry’s Cowboy Poetry Hour Farewell Tour after Guffry’s horse Hero died on stage during a performance in Pierre, Michigan. According to NPR special projects spokesman, Mac Cooper, Guffry and his program will broadcast the final Cowboy Poetry Hour on Saturday, May 28 from the 32nd Annual Elko Cowboy Poetry Confluence in Elko, Nevada, as previously scheduled, and the show will be expanded to carry live the funeral for the mustang Hero.
Cooper refused to comment further on rumors that the tour cancellation and refocus on Hero’s funeral was the result of contract disputes between Guffry and NPR on the terms of the Cowboy Poet’s departure from the long-running program. For the last several years, the once popular Cowboy Poetry Hour has suffered from declining ratings and stories of dissention among what one source has called a “bloated” staff. Another anonymous source from the NPR fundraising department told USA TODAY that the program brought in far less in pledge dollars than it spent on Guffry’s salary, the expenses of the travelling show, out-of-court settlements with several past employees, and compensation for guest performers “who have less to do with the West or poetry and more to do with who Guffry’s screwing or owes money to.”
Bob Lattner, press spokesman for Final Paws Pet Mortuary ‘n Cemetery of Pierre, Michigan, the business handling the funeral arrangements for Hero, denied strongly the suggestion that the horse’s funeral was a ploy to distract attention from the Cowboy Poetry Hour’s financial and personnel problems. “Vess Guffry is one of the most decent, talented, and honorable cowboys I have had the honor to meet. That he would want, and that NPR would grant, a public and fitting send-off for his longtime trail companion, Hero, speaks volumes about the character of both the man and the institution. A stallion of a funeral for a stallion of a horse is in the finest tradition of the American West an
d the patriotic spirit of our beautiful America.”
14
Martin fell asleep that night to the sounds of rain and visions of Hero’s cremains, a muddy swirl flowing into the storm drains off Niles Avenue. All night, the specters clung to him like Pomeranian hair on black gabardine—Hero charging across a dusty plain then bursting into flames; Annie and Lattner dancing with sputtering torches around his mother’s cancer-clawed corpse; Ginger turned succubus, raven hair on fire, plunging her head into his lap while Julie applauded.
The clock radio alarm he had not set snapped on to wavering static at six a.m., and he batted at it for ten full minutes before he could get it to shut off. Through the thin walls of the Lime City, Iowa Super 8, he could hear Lattner snoring and considered waking him and making an early start of it, though of what he wasn’t sure. A funeral procession sans remains. Hero’s final ride, sans Hero. Hard to justify rushing.
He pulled his laptop from the nightside table, opened it, and loaded Skype. Julie had blocked his cell number several days before, but he hoped she hadn’t gotten around to purging him from all her contact lists. He’d send a message. Something along the lines of: Help, what am I supposed to do now? And an apology. Maybe the apology first.
The program blooped on, and Martin saw that, not only had Julie kept his account open, but also that she was online right then. Forgetting the elegant missive of regret he had planned to compose, he hit the video call icon and tapped on the desk edge to the beat of the sing-song ring. After two choruses, a click, and a dark silhouette filled most of the frame. Whatever light she had on in the room was directly behind her head. He was relieved not to have to look in her eyes.
“Hey,” he said. “What’s going on?” This was not the tone he had meant to set, but it was the best he could do in his current state of unbalance.
