by James Welch
“Just take it easy—” She held her hands a few inches off the bar and moved them up and down. “Just relax. He just left; he won’t be back for a while.” She crossed her legs toward me and the blue dress fell further back on her thighs. Although she was very slender, almost bony, her thighs were long and silky. They were the best part of her. So I sat down again, with my back to the bar.
“That’s a new dress,” I said.
Her green teeth danced in the light. “Do you like it?”
“It’s pretty nice. You fill it out pretty well. There isn’t much to it, though,” I said, looking at her naked back.
“Do you blame me? It’s hot.”
“Maybe if you settled down you wouldn’t be so hot.” She ignored my remark. “I don’t like violence,” she said.
“I’m not exactly in love with it.” I glanced around the room again, half expecting Dougie to sneak up on me, but the scene remained unchanged. Two men sat in a booth with their arms around each other. They seemed sad about something. One of the women at the jukebox was scolding them. She hawked a mouthful of spit at them which landed on the table. One of them raised a drunken arm in an attempt to ward off whatever she had in reserve. But she turned back to the jukebox, her hips bouncing to the music.
I whirled around and ordered a couple of crèmes de menthe. My hands were shaking. I couldn’t tell if it was fear or love or lust.
“Why don’t you settle down?” I said to my hands.
“Pay up,” said the bartender. He had thin yellow hair.
When he had left, I said, “If you settled down you’d be a lot better off; you’d be happier, believe me, Agnes.”
“You bore me,” she said.
“You should learn a trade, shorthand,” I said. “There’s a crying demand for secretaries.”
She looked at me as if she didn’t recognize me. “Shorthand?” she squealed.
“Yes, you’re young. I was talking to a woman; it’s a good living …”
“Shorthand,” she whispered to her drink.
“It’s essential.”
I wanted to feel good but something was holding me back. I wasn’t afraid anymore. Without announcement, a feeling of resignation had crept into my chest. I was calm, but I didn’t feel good. Maybe it was a kind of love. My hands had quit shaking. In the thick light, I couldn’t see any hairs on the backs of them. For some reason, this embarrassed me.
“What’s the matter with you?” She removed one of her white graduation shoes and shook a pebble out of it.
“I’m not happy, Agnes.”
“That’s a good one. Who is?”
I hid my hands. “Aren’t you?”
She looked puzzled. In her black eyes, I could see the reason I had brought her home that time before. They held the promise of warm things, of a spirit that went beyond her miserable life of drinking and screwing and men like me.
I touched her ribs. “Let’s leave here,” I said.
Her eyes shifted slightly and the depth went out of them.
“But I have a car,” I said. “We could go anywhere, Great Falls—”
Suddenly a hand grabbed my shoulder and whirled me around. In the split second that it happened, I could see frozen beyond the plane of knuckles the sad faces of the men in the booth.
27
The wind whistled above the cutbank as Mose and I ate the sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs that Teresa had prepared the night before.
“It’ll probably be blizzarding by tomorrow,” I said.
“Don’t worry. We’re over half already and I’ll bet the rest are down in that coulee by the west fence.”
“I don’t feel like moving now. I’m comfortable right where I am,” I said.
We both had our sheepherder’s coats buttoned to the neck.
“Well, I don’t know about you,” Mose said, standing and brushing off the seat of his pants, “but I want to get home before dark.”
“I’ll flip you to see who gets that last egg.”
“Go ahead—I’ve had two already.”
We gathered up the rest of them that afternoon. Only one cow was missing, and since it didn’t seem likely that she would be on the range by herself, we figured that she had gotten through the fence and was in a neighboring range. Like the bull, she would winter with somebody else’s herd.
“What did I tell you,” Mose said, as we drove the herd south down to the valley.
“Do you think First Raise will want us to find that other cow?”
“How can we? Unless we ride all the other ranges. That would take us the rest of our lives.”
“Do you think First Raise will go on his hunting trip this fall?”
“No.”
“I’m going to buy some more bullets tomorrow,” I said.
“I’m going after that big buck. Maybe I’ll stuff his head.”
“As if you know how.”
“I can do it,” Mose said. He swatted a bull with his rope. “Hi, get moving, you whiteface shittails!”
“You goddamn horse turds,” I yelled above the wind.
We had the cattle loping headlong down into the valley, the wild-eyed spinster leading the way.
28
“Are you all right?” she said.
I was sitting on the sidewalk, my back against a parking meter. I looked around. Everything came strange as though I were seeing things in slow motion, but nothing moved except my head. A woman knelt beside me. Two children leaning out a car window at the curb stared at me in silence.
“Your tooth is busted,” she said. “You come flying out of there like I don’t know what—only backwards.”
“Which one,” I said.
“That one there,” she said, pointing at Gable’s.
“No … I mean, which tooth?”
“That one there,” she said, pointing at my mouth. “You must have been feeling awfully good to go in there and raise hell.”
I felt the jagged edge of the tooth with my tongue. Blood was beginning to cake on my upper lip.
“Your nose is kind of puffy too—other than that you don’t look so bad.” She glanced up at the car behind me. “Well, what the hell are you kids looking at?”
The boy, about five or six, stuck a finger in his nose and continued to stare. His sister began to cry.
“What’s your name?” I asked my nurse.
“Marlene.” She smiled for the first time.
“My head feels wet … are you sure I’m not bleeding?”
“It must be draining down inside your brain.” She stood and stepped back. “You need a drink?”
She wore a man’s short-sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled over her upper arms. The shirt strained against her breasts and belly, but she had a pleasant, almost pretty face. She smiled again, showing teeth blackened around the edges.
“Not in there,” I said.
“No, hell no.” She giggled. “I’ll get us something.”
I felt the back of my head. “Are you buying?”
“If you give me some money.” She laughed again, a girlish twitter that didn’t seem possible for her bulk.
I ran my tongue over the busted tooth—it was one of the big front ones—then handed her a five-dollar bill. “Listen, Marlene, you be sure and come back,” I said.
29
I waited for fifteen or twenty minutes.
For fifteen or twenty minutes the boy in the car stared at me. The girl had lost interest and was trying to turn the steering wheel. She made bubbling noises with her mouth. She pulled the wheel one way, then the other, in an effort to make the tires turn. Either out of frustration or boredom she began to cry again, a controlled sobbing without sound or tears which made her small body tremble. The boy remained unmoved when she snuggled close to him, resting her head against his shoulder. Presently she
slept.
The boy did not smile when I held out the quarter. He simply opened his hand.
I walked up the street to where I had tossed the keys. They were still there. I picked them up and walked on.
The man who had torn up his airplane ticket was gone by the time I reached the Palace Bar. There was not a clue that he had been there. I walked into the bathroom and washed up. There was no towel or mirror. I dried my face with toilet paper, gingerly feeling the puffiness on either side of the bridge of my nose. I couldn’t tell if my eyes were black.
I ordered a shot of bar whiskey and downed it in a single motion. I almost threw it back up, but it helped to dim the memory of a blow I hadn’t seen coming. I ordered another. “You look like you’ve seen some taller grass, partner,” the bartender said. He jerked his thumb at me and winked at another customer. Randolph Scott.
“Hey, Warren,” a man called from the doorway, “something seems to be going on out here.”
The bartender ambled down to the window. He was wiping a glass. “Ah, hell, probably picking up one of them transvestites …”
The customer giggled.
“Nope, I don’t think so, Warren. There was a man with a shiny suit who went in with them.”
“Another one of them morphodykes from the college …”
“Oh, that Warren,” a woman exclaimed next to me.
“Nope, I think they mean business this time, Warren.”
I stood up on the rungs of my barstool. A red light was flashing across the street.
Customers began to move toward the door.
“Probably one of them pisswillies from up the hill …”
“That Warren!” She seemed pleased.
I joined the people at the door. Then I slipped through and stood on the sidewalk. There was a crowd of people in the big square of light in front of the hotel. I broke into a trot until I reached the perimeter of the crowd.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Nobody answered. They were pressing forward, trying to see into the windows of the hotel.
“What are they doing?” I said.
All the faces were yellow from the light above them.
I skirted the crowd, first to the left, then to the right, trying to get closer. I came back to the police car in the street. Two men were leaning against the trunk. One had a camera.
“Who are they arresting?” I said.
“Search me,” said the one without the camera.
“How should we know?” said the other.
“I just arrived,” said the first one. “I’m with the newspaper.”
“But you must have heard something …”
“They just sent me out here.”
“We’re not mind readers,” said the second. He was fooling with his camera.
I pressed into the crowd again, but it was hopeless. I returned to the newspapermen.
“Here he comes again.”
“Don’t look at us.”
Their insistence irritated me.
“I might know who it is …” I began.
“Go on, how could you?”
“The devil with you!”
Another police car arrived. It was the highway patrol. As the officer passed us, one of the newspapermen touched him on the shoulder. “What’s going on, officer? We’re from the paper …” The officer looked at the hand on his shoulder. He began to wade through the crowd. “Look out there, step back, all of you, clear the area!”
The first newspaperman looked at me suspiciously. “Who do you think it is?”
“Yeah,” jeered the second.
It was after I opened my mouth that I realized I had never learned his name. “Well, he’s big—”
Suddenly the crowd grew silent and parted before us. The airplane man, handcuffed, walked between a policeman and the man in the shiny suit. The policeman waved the hunting knife that we had bought that day. The shiny suit carried a small plaid suitcase. Behind them, the highway patrolman carried the purple teddy bear. He muttered, “Step back.”
I began to back up, out of the perimeter of light, when the airplane man spotted me. A quick chill ran through my scalp. He said something. I moved forward a couple of steps.
“What happened to your nose?” he said.
Then he was in the backseat of the police car and it was moving. I realized that I was standing beside the Falcon. The three boxes of chocolate-covered cherries lay on the backseat.
“What did happen to your nose?” said the first newspaperman. He had a pad and pencil at the ready.
30
I sat in front of the hotel. On the one hand, I wanted to start up the Falcon and drive home; on the other, I wanted to see the barmaid from Malta. I didn’t know why, but I was sure she was still in the hotel hiding out until the coast was clear. I had no idea which room she was in and the desk clerk wouldn’t help even if I knew her name. Again I felt that helplessness of being in a world of stalking white men. But those Indians down at Gable’s were no bargain either. I was a stranger to both and both had beaten me.
I should go home, I thought, turn the key and drive home. It wasn’t the ideal place, that was sure, but it was the best choice. Maybe I had run out of choices.
So I sat and waited. An hour went by, then two, but still no barmaid from Malta. I got out of the car and walked up to the big window of the hotel. The desk clerk was bent over a magazine. The lobby was yellow and empty.
I found Marlene wandering around with two six-packs of beer. She said she had been looking for me, but she looked surprised to see me. She held the sack in both arms as though she were carrying groceries home from Safeway.
“You should see yourself,” she said.
We took a room in a gray hotel down by the railroad station. The elevator man was as gray as the green walls. He said the elevator was out of order.
“Why do you exist then?” I said.
“To take people up and down, whichever way they want to go,” said the gray man.
Marlene and I sat on the edge of the bed and drank a couple of beers. Every time she looked at me, her eyes watered. She said it was because of my own swollen eyes. Finally I laid her back on the bed and unzipped her pants.
I never left the softness of her body. The first light of dawn caught me draped over her belly, my chin in the hollow of her shoulder, my eyes staring at a coarse black hair on the white pillow. A rectangle of sun began to spread across the bed, framing our bodies for no one to see. Marlene stirred. I pinched her nostrils together and a great rasp began in her throat. Then her small black eyes were open.
“Kiss my pussy,” she said gently.
I touched her lips with my finger. “Kiss your ass, my great brown hump.”
She smiled and wrapped her arms around me. Her breath was warm and pleasant like a child’s. Once again I rooted in the heat of her.
When I awoke the second time, the sun was around midmorning. The room smelled of beer and sweat, familiar, and Marlene. I disentangled myself and sat up. A vacuum cleaner hummed from somewhere far away. I found a full can of beer among the empties on the nightstand and opened it. A quick sip and the smell made me put it down.
Marlene lay on her back, mouth open and legs closed tight. Her hips were narrow for her bulk; her breasts lay small and soft on her chest, but her belly rose taut and shiny. I placed my palm against it and pushed; when I drew my hand back it sprang out like an inner tube. Her shirt lay over a chairback next to the bed. Several cigarettes had spilled from the pack in her pocket and lay on the seat. I lit one up and coughed out a cloud of smoke. A rush of dizziness filled my head. When I closed my eyes a swarm of tiger tails appeared, and blue dots, millions of them, flickered. I fell back against her thigh.
From somewhere came the muffled sound of a guitar, a quiet strum that had no tune. It seemed an unlikely pl
ace, an unlikely time, but there was no mistaking the monotony that kept a man company. He began to sing. “If you loved me …” Then he stopped altogether. After a long pause, he started over. “If you loved me half as much as I love you …” There was another pause, then: “You wouldn’t stay … you wouldn’t stay … you wouldn’t stay away half as much …” The guitar thrummed violently, followed by a brittle clatter like a chair being knocked over.
Marlene sighed and tried to roll over, but the pressure of my head held her in place. She drew another breath, held it, then let it out at once, a quick gasp, and the regular up-and-down rhythm of her belly resumed.
I sat up and looked at her. A kind of pity rose within me. Her naked body seemed so vulnerable, so innocent, that I wanted to cover her with my own. I touched her knee and she spread her legs. The sound of traffic in the street below became a roar. I closed my eyes and saw the barmaid from Malta, the button between her breasts popping, Malvina, the bubble-bath globes scattered among the perfumes, the girl who had stolen my gun, her short blue dress, standing defiantly, helplessly, on the sidewalk …
I dropped the cigarette into the ashtray and covered Marlene, burrowing down into her, trying to disappear into her flesh—it was not enough, not good. I wanted her to be alive. I straddled her, resting my butt against her belly. I kissed her on the neck, on the ear, on the nose. I shook her, tickled her, kneaded her breasts.
“Kiss my pussy,” she murmured, and I slapped her hard across the cheek.
Her head jerked from the pillow almost as quickly as I had slapped her. Her eyes were flat and round. “What did you do that for?” she cried. “Jesus Christ!” The muscles in her neck stood out as she strained to keep her head up. Her arms were pinned beneath my knees. “What kind of sonofabitch are you, anyway?”
I sat back. I could feel the belly muscles working beneath me as she flailed her legs. Beyond that she couldn’t move. In one tremendous effort she tried to roll me off, but I sat, grave as a stone, on her belly. “If only I could get loose, you dirty bastard, if only …”—her voice strained and muffled against her teeth.
