by Layla Wolfe
That presented a problem for me, because I found that my proclivity for staying pleasantly tipsy had followed me from Cornucopia. Although I was pretty sure Orson wouldn’t pop out from behind a paper target and grab me, I still liked to drink all the time. It settled the jittery nerves I’d possessed since my parents sent me away to Cornucopia—or even before. I found a solution that wasn’t a hundred percent easy for me, but I so longed to help Arkie. I’d awaken on Sally’s couch and immediately go to The Hip Quiver to open up. It was fairly easy to refrain from drink while I taught kids archery, repaired bows, or shot alongside the likes of Baron Funkhauser, one of the Boners who had saved my ass in Flagstaff. I was accustomed to these extreme types at the fundamentalist compound, so they didn’t scare me.
All kinds came into the archery range. I met Maddy, the old lady of the Prez, a registered nurse. I even talked a bit with Slushy, Roman’s father-in-law and the club lawyer who maintained an office in the back of the range’s shop. It was shadowy where Slushy had taken his law degree—the University of Puerto Rico, Sock Monkey said, laughing—but he seemed to have an active and normal lifestyle, complete with buying kale at the farmer’s market, reading the Sunday New York Times, and eating Asian fusion food, whatever that was.
I talked with Slushy, casually mentioning my old dream of becoming a lawyer.
“Well,” he said, hanging his bow on the bow rack. “You’re the cute one of this group, when I look around at Sock Monkey and this baboon Roman.”
“Hey!” shouted Roman, letting loose another arrow at the wall.
Slushy continued, “I’d say you can make it. What sort of lawyer? Tax? Property? Inheritance?”
“Well, lately I was thinking of corporate.”
Slushy splayed his hands against his chest. “Corporate? Like me? I don’t need an assistant, little girl. I’m their Tom Hagen.”
“I was thinking more like the construction end of things, the Illuminati Trucking enterprise. Up in Cornucopia I used to hear talk about mining accidents all the time. I’d like to protect workers.”
For some reason this made Slushy pause. He looked impish in his fluorescent green button-down shirt, a bad combover tickling his forehead. “For real? Because I can tell you where to ‘study’ just so you can charge five hundred an hour to cause a mistrial.”
I laughed but wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. I’d have to make sure to search his walls next time I was in his office, see if he had a framed degree up there. “Yes, for real. And I don’t mean University of Phoenix.”
Slushy screwed up his face and stroked his chin. “Hm. I’ve heard good things about the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law, but that’s in Tempe. That would be the top one if you wanted to make an impression. But working for Illuminati Trucking? Remember. Perfection is the enemy of perfectly adequate.”
I nodded. “You’re saying just go to community college and Ford will hire me?”
“Nailed it! Or online. Everything’s online nowadays. And it’d be Tuzigoot. That O.G. runs the Citadel now, all the construction ops. Maddy made Ford make a choice. Her or the construction company. He’s still allowed to do club business.”
“Oh,” I said, taken aback. All this time, and I could’ve just done a correspondence course to become a lawyer?
“Why don’t we get together after you get off here, have a hibiscus iced tea.”
But it was my quitting time, too, so I begged off.
Slushy’s last words were, “Hey, what do you get when you cross the Godfather with a lawyer? An offer you can’t understand!”
I liked to go fill up my flask with brandy and take Sock Monkey’s cage out to a mesa where there were alleged vortices. I knew the Bare Bones scoffed at such things, but I found a certain comfort in it, especially around sunset. True, hippies dotted the sandstone monoliths, and someone was always asking me for a cig, but I’d found a couple of nice rust-red formations I could hide behind, drink, and think about life.
I thought a lot about Town, to be honest. After hours of deep reflection, I decided there was no way his kindness could be fake. I would notice! For example, I believed Brighten to be basically a moral, sweet-hearted person, although I’d seen her slap one of her kids, and she tore all of us a new orifice after someone broke her Lenox turkey platter and no one would say who. (It was me.) Brighten rarely failed to stand up to my image of her as a fundamentally decent person.
My parents, now that I looked back on it, had been angling to get rid of me for a long time. We never went anywhere as a family, and they bought far more things for Arkie than me. I was on my own in the world, attempting to figure things out since I was ten. My mother would lock the doors on me, so I would sleep in people’s cars. I never had money for schoolbooks. I was lucky my best friend would lie to her mother she’d lost hers, and her mother would buy her new ones so I could take the old ones.
My mother called me a whore when I was merely dating a few guys who were polite with me, barely ever kissing me unless I gave overt signs I wanted it—which was hardly ever. Sure, I made a mistake with the one guy who knocked me up. He turned out to be a dirtbag of the highest order when I told him I was pregnant. But my parents didn’t make it any better by sending me to that charlatan to be cleansed, taking all my womanly innards with it.
There are visions that only come to you when you’re reflecting on things, and I had many of them on those mountains.
That day, however, some strange, tall guy with a blond Mohawk strode into the archery range.
He made a bunch of fast, slapping motions at Roman’s hand. “How’s it going, buddy? Hey, I’m looking for Townshend Spiro. Know him?” Without waiting for an answer, he flitted over to Maddy’s brother Speed, making the same hand motions, although Speed seemed prepared for it, and he slapped back. “Townshend Spiro. Know him?”
“I do,” admitted Speed. “But I don’t know you.” The arrow release on his hand looked like brass knuckles, and he brandished them like that.
I went forward. “I know him. But who are you?”
He didn’t try to slap me. “I’m Slappy Lomax. Buddy in arms to Captain Spiro. First Armored Cav.”
Slappy Lomax, Slappy Lomax . . . The name did ring a bell, maybe that night at Bee and Sax’s when I drank a lot of beer, Town had maybe mentioned this guy.
Slappy continued in his scratchy comedian’s voice. “He told me a few days ago he saved a girl from some bikers and came down here to be with some other bikers. He’s not answering his phone. Is he maybe hanging with Crybaby?”
Roman and Speed shared looks. “Yeah,” said Roman cautiously. “There’s a Crybaby.”
I said, “And I’m that girl.”
Arkie had just come in and was playing around in the cash register. “Crybaby’s up at Leaves of Grass.”
“Yeah,” said August, the ganjier. “They’re getting some training sesh with a shroom guy.”
“Don’t call it shrooms,” snapped Roman.
August said, “I can call it shrooms when I want. I’m a weed guy.”
“Ah, magic mushrooms,” said Slappy. “He told me he wanted to grow some.”
I figured why would Town tell that to an enemy? So I said, “I know where Leaves of Grass is. I don’t have a cage, though.”
I supposed we’d all vetted this guy, because August came forward and said, “You can follow me in my cage. I need to go up there anyway to get more product for the store.”
And that’s how I wound up seeing Town again. Town means freedom.
“I just retired from the army,” said Slappy as he started up his truck. We waited for August to drive by in his Smart car so we could follow. “I moved my wife back to New York City, so I decided to take a little R and R and find my buddy.”
“He’s a good buddy to have,” I said, sucking from my flask. I didn’t care what Slappy thought. If anyone was to be a good friend of mine, they would have to know my bad habits. Yet I was surprised when he held out his hand. I thought he was telling me t
o put it away, as we were pulling behind August now.
“Hit me.”
I giggled as I handed over the flask. But privately I worried there wouldn’t be enough for me if this broke dick kept drinking mine. I’d heard Town call losers that before, or rather men who were messed up, and I liked it. Yet the more Slappy talked, the less I could think of him as a broke dick. He was a genuinely warm-hearted guy—a little imbalanced to be sure, but he had a good head on his shoulders. I realized this was a nice opportunity to grill Slappy about Town.
“Where’d you meet Cap’n Spiro?”
“Operation Inherent Resolve in Syria. The Raqqa Offensive, to you civilians. Crybaby was there, too. I was First Lieutenant under Cap’n Spiro. We were in the same unit that raided a detention center in Raqqa, releasing Syrian prisoners. I gotta say, Spiro is a cool man under fire. He never lost it. Cheese never slid off his cracker. He gave us real talk and we gave him respect. We even respected after he got wounded and refused to leave the country.”
I tried to act suave next to the hard-talking guy with the blond Mohawk. “Yes, this injury . . . Is it better? I’ve never seen him use his cane.”
“I wouldn’t say better. It’s never going to get better, thanks to how long he stayed in-country without getting it diagnosed, getting any meds. But this Linus dog seems to have really helped him. Helped him get off the booze, which I think is the best thing ever, though I am guilty of such indulgence from time to time.” He held out his hand for more, and I gave him the flask.
“Get off the booze?” I repeated. “He was . . . on the booze?”
“Oh hell yeah. We all were. But him especially. His place was known as a giant party house. You would not go there unless you planned on getting blind, passed-out drunk. Gazeboed. Salad barred.”
“Hasselhoffed,” I contributed, remembering a word Brighten had used.
“Slurring your text. He was quite expert at that. The night wasn’t a success unless we’d all passed out in painful places scattered around his condo.”
“Oh. He only had a condo? I mean, he never married?”
“Oh hell no. Cap’n Spiro was married to the army. And he’s not light in the loafers if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I smiled. “I wasn’t thinking that. So he went cold turkey on alcohol?”
“Yep. Cold turkey!” He pronounced it like it was the name of a space mission, complete with echo. “The hard way! He got the DTs at first, but I was there to help him through. He told me to throw out or drink all the booze in the house, so I drank it. I kept it in the kitchen and Town was in his bedroom so he didn’t have to see it, but after awhile I passed out. Good thing the other fellows were there to help, because I was just schwavoed on top of some tribal bow and arrow.”
“But he must be in pain. Did booze not help that?”
“Hell yeah, mental as well as physical pain. Is that what you use it for?”
Luckily, Slappy didn’t wait on an answer to his question. He ploughed on. “We were incredibly irate and impotent in the positions the army put us in. No support structures whatsoever. And you know what, Heaven? It was like therapy for me, yanking shrapnel out of men and field dressing them. But I had to do it to Cap’n Spiro after he was nearly assassinated. And PTSD isn’t something that time heals. You don’t return to being the pre-army guy. It’s like being in a snowstorm, assaulted from all angles.”
I was grateful for Slappy’s intel, but I had to say, “Pull over here.”
“Smoky Mountain Bud and Breakfast?”
“That’s it. That’s where I’m staying. I’ll refill this flask and grab a couple other bottles.”
“The more the merrier!” proclaimed Slappy.
That was how I met up again with the headstrong and tough Captain Spiro. I was a bit insulted that he hadn’t called me—I’d given him my cell number before we parted ways in P and E—and now here I was forcing myself upon him again. I had to see if there was still that spark between us.
And, at first, I was afraid there wasn’t. Town just sort of stood there, hands at sides, jaw slung low. Looking at me. He even looked at me when Slappy lifted him off the ground in a hug. But Slappy was sucking up all Town’s aura, and he had no choice but to interact with his best friend.
Slappy yelled, “What’s the deal with these shrooms, man? Lay ‘em on me!” I thought I heard him say, “I’m already microdosing,” but I didn’t know what it meant.
At last Slappy let Town go—just in time, as another guy was already moving on me. His big hooked nose overshadowed his face, and his leather cut patches, while telling me he was a hard-assed member of the Bare Bones MC, also proclaimed “I’m The Person Your Mother Warned You About!” I highly doubted it, after my dealings with whacked Cornucopia men, but I was still massively relieved when Town came forward and took my hand.
“You want to . . . farm with me?”
My smile was so wide it threatened to break my mouth. “Why not? I’m just helping Sock Monkey with his archery range. Which can be fun for a short while, but—”
Now the patch holder did butt in. “You’re gonna help Captain Spiro here? So I’m off the hook? Seriously? Town, you don’t need me, do you? I’ll show you where the compost heap is and give you a basic tutorial—”
Town barely glanced at him. “Sure, Wolf. I don’t need you.”
“Wahoo!” yelped Wolf, fists in the air. “Colombia here I come! Hola! ¿Cómo estás? ¿Qué pasa, compadres?”
A handsome, skinny guy stuck his head over Town’s shoulder. “Yeah, boss, I’d be better at rustling up the business, doing field ops. I know these affiliates of the club—you don’t.”
“That’s true, Crybaby,” said Town, without looking at the guy. He added, “But you want to keep your room here, right?”
“Oh, for sure!” sputtered Crybaby.
Town led me over to a large plexiglass greenhouse the size of a rail car, panes rimmed with mold. “I’m glad you came by, even though I’m tripping.”
“Tripping? Is that what it’s called?”
Town shrugged. “As far as I know. I guess I have to figure these things out.”
Inside the greenhouse there was a redheaded guy holding the mushrooms. He portioned some out for me, and I chewed them like a cow. I was a bit ashamed when I pulled out my flask, but it was to help wash them down. The guy thankfully left us alone inside the steamy house. So far, the only things in there were some leftover, yellowing tomatoes, withered stumps of what had been eggplants and lemon cucumbers.
From Town’s talk, he was already far into his trip. “These mountains surrounding the lake. I feel like they’re staring at me. They’re doing their chilly best to let me know this used to be a good neighborhood and now they have to tolerate us gig workers. Here we are with our ugly little greenhouse, but they’re not going to pal around with us. They’d sacrifice half their logs to move to Alaska and send an avalanche down onto us.”
Giggling, I sat down on a piece of plywood meant to keep plants off the cold ground. “You’re such a witty, intelligent man.” As an afterthought I added, “Unlike any I’ve ever known. I’ll be very glad to work with you. We can fill this entire greenhouse with spores.”
Was it my imagination, or did Town seem a little nervous? Maybe it was the psilocybin. “I don’t want you to feel strange about the selling aspect of this. It’s true lots of people just take them for recreation.”
I shrugged, sticking out my lower lip. “Marijuana was allowed at Cornucopia. I never did it. Maybe it was the THC, but it didn’t help relax me.” To forestall a caustic remark from him, I freely sipped from my flask and asked boldly, “What does Stormy Loves on your tattoo mean?” He wore a tight, plain white T-shirt. It wasn’t like I was ogling. How could anyone fail to notice the ink?
“Ah,” he said, looking to one side. “I had a fiancée. She died.”
Good God in an evil world. What sort of painful Pandora’s box had I opened? I stood and took two long strides to face him. “Lord
have mercy, Town! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think of anything hurtful.”
I had thought he might look stoic, set his jaw that was already damned square, and write it off. Instead, he lifted his hand to my chin, stroking it with the backs of his fingers. “You do remind me a bit of her. In all the good ways.” His eyes sparkled, so maybe he was over the pain.
I didn’t cringe from him. “I hope I wouldn’t be a stormy love. I’m pretty even-keeled when some man isn’t beating on me.” I had no idea I was going to mention that, yet I still didn’t pull back from him. In fact, I sort of leaned into him, our crotches meeting.
He looked from one of my eyes to the other. “I didn’t think you’d be stormy. But you look like her, the long caramel hair, the tone of your voice, your . . . shape.”
Oh, dear. I did know what that meant. I finally looked down in shame. “My rack is rather large for my size.”
His fingers turned my chin so I faced him again. “Why do you call it a rack? Is that some Cornucopia thing? That’s derogatory.”
I had to think. “Yes . . . my husband.”
“Then stop. Call them breasts.” A smile flitted across his mouth. What deep layers of experience were contained in those eyes. “Or boobs, if you’re some halfwit in the army.”
We both grinned like morons at each other. With the fronts of my thighs plastered against his, his packed crotch perfectly molded against my pubic mound. My inner channel bloomed with pleasure, like it used to before Orson had angrily tossed my vibrator.
I think Town might have even kissed me, but some shouting that was completely out of sync with our spirits interrupted us.
“Cap’n!” yelled the moron. “Permission to enter?”
Without taking his eyes from mine, Town barked from the corner of his mouth. “Permission denied.” How . . . sexy he was when he acted authoritative! I had never appreciated a commanding tone before. In fact, I had shied away from it, understandably.
