Sally glared and took a bite of middle-age iceberg lettuce and bottled dressing.
“Okay,” said Delice, taking a sip of the Wrangler’s translucent coffee and managing not to grimace. “What’s your angle?”
“I think I want to do a biography of Nina Cruz,” Sally said.
“Oh that,” said Delice. “Everybody knows about that.”
“What?” said Sally. “How the hell could you know? I’ve only told...”
“I heard it from Dwayne,” said Delice.
“Dwayne?” Sally sputtered, setting down the next rapidly cooling onion ring. “Your brother’s heard—”
“Of course. He said Nattie thinks that’s why you’re going to try to talk the Millionaires into doing the benefit with Stone Jackson. Nattie figures you’ve already got some kind of six-figure deal with a New York publishing house, and you’re just using the band for your own selfish purposes.”
“Nattie’s talking about my selfish purposes?” Sally said, incredulous. Nattie Langham, Dwayne’s wife and sister-in-law to Delice and Sheriff Dickie, was a realtor who’d virtually invented selfish purposes.
Delice drank another swig of coffee and reached for one of Sally’s rings. “Eat up, Sal. You don’t want to let these get cold. Five more minutes and you could use them to do a valve job on your Mustang.”
The onion rings had already reached a state that made them all but indigestible.
“As for the gig,” said Delice, “recall that Pammie Montgomery works at the Yippie I O, and she’s not a moron. She’s seen and heard all kinds of things out there in Albany, and restaurant kitchens are nothing more than rumor mills with hot pans and sharp knives. Nina Cruz was the biggest thing to hit Laramie since the railroad came through, and now add Stone Jackson to the mix and it’s pretty juicy stuff. Did he really come to see you in your office?”
“I’m a shitty best friend,” said Sally. “I should have called and told you as soon as he left.”
“I may never forgive you. So does he want the Millionaires for the benefit?”
“Yeah. It’s freaking unbelievable. He told me this morning he was going to ask ‘Bonnie and Emmylou and them’ if they’d be willing to help out.”
Delice fell back against her chair and put her hand on her heart. “Oh my God. Do you think Emmylou’d autograph my copy of ‘Pieces of the Sky’? I swear, I could die happy.”
Sally pushed the unfinished plate of room-temperature rings aside. “I ought to mention this to Dwayne and Sam. I know they were never big fans of Nina’s, and I’m sure they wouldn’t want anything to do with this Wild West outfit, but Bonnie and Emmylou might make them a little more willing to put principle aside and do the gig.”
Delice chuckled. “Fortunately, Sam Branch wouldn’t know a principle if it was hanging between his legs. And as for my brother, I believe he’d stand naked in the snow and sing all seventy-seven verses of ‘El Paso’ if it meant he’d get within a hundred yards of Bonnie. They’ll piss and moan, but in the end they’ll give in and act like you owe them big-time.”
“That’s what I figured. The problem,” Sally said, trying to decide whether to give the salad another shot, “will be Jimbo. The only celebrity he gives a damn about is Charlton Heston.”
“This time of year,” Delice said, “the only thing Jimbo Perrine cares about is bagging his limit. Or maybe more than his limit. He was in here yesterday morning, pounding down the Ranchman’s Big Breakfast.”
“Jesus. How often does he do that?” asked Sally. She’d seen the menu. The Ranchman’s Big Breakfast was equivalent to ingesting a pig and a cow, with a side of poultry protein and extra animal fat.
“Nobody ever died from eating a good breakfast,” Delice insisted, a Wyoming meat patriot to the end. “But this is what I’m trying to tell you. Jimbo was working on one of his pals to give him his deer tag. Admitted he’d already bagged three, but his point was that time was a-wastin’, and his pal wasn’t going to use his tag, so it shouldn’t go to waste.”
“You’d think he’d be more discreet about poaching,” Sally said, disgusted.
“He was being discreet,” Delice replied. “I just happened to accidentally overhear the conversation.”
Sally got a mental image of Delice “overhearing” that looked a lot like the 1974 Newsweek photograph of Nixon’s secretary, Rosemary Woods, spread-eagled across the entire Oval Office reception area, “accidentally” erasing the eighteen minutes of White House tape.
“Isn’t Jimbo worried about the game warden?” Sally asked.
“Jimbo’s been hunting around here his whole life, and the Game and Fish are pretty busy these days,” said Delice. “This whole chronic wasting epidemic thing is really scary. It’s all over the elk and deer herds in southern Wyoming and northern Colorado, and it’s basically the same thing as mad cow disease. The Game and Fish guys don’t like to talk about it, but the vets at the Ag station are doing a whole lot of research to try to determine whether it could jump species and infect the cattle herds.”
Mad cow disease in Wyoming? The state that had far more Herefords than humans? Bad enough that the elk and deer were infected. A bovine epidemic would be nothing short of catastrophic. “And what do they think?” Sally asked.
“From what I hear, there’s no evidence that it could jump to cows. But they haven’t got it near figured out yet. It’s fucking scary. If it gets out of hand, a whole lot of people around here will be in deep shit.”
No kidding. Everybody from ranchers to bankers who made loans to ranchers to businesspeople like Delice Lang-ham, who staked the better part of her monthly profit on Americans’ insatiable hunger for animal protein. “So are you doing anything about it?” Sally asked.
“Doing anything? Like what, start firing up tofu stir-fries and alfalfa-sprout souffles?” Delice scoffed. “I’ll let the geniuses at the Yippie I O deal with that stuff. As far as the Wrangler is concerned, I’ve decided not to worry about it until Jimbo Perrine and my brothers stop ordering the Double Roundup Burger at lunch.”
Chapter 9
The Taxidermist
“You’re shitting me,” said Jimbo Perrine, chewing the second gigantic bite of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese, mouth slightly open, crumbs of burger dropping unheeded into the great tangle of his wild brown beard.
“No. Amazing, isn’t it?” replied Sally, choosing to miss his drift. “I mean, we’re barely competent to play the Laramie Elks’ Steak Fry. Can you believe we’re actually being asked to open for Stone Jackson, and maybe even” she drew it out—“Bonnie and Emmylou?”
The Millionaires had gathered for practice in the usual place, Dwayne Langham’s airplane hangar of a living room, in Dwayne and Nattie’s outsize house on the east edge of town. No snow was expected, but the forecasters had rightly surmised that the weather would turn much colder and brutally windy. Not the still, bone-deep below-zero cold of midwinter, but the kind of blowing cold that made meteorologists think about measuring wind chill.
Jimbo finished his burger in three humongous bites, reached into the cardboard container, and crammed a handful of fries into his gaping mouth. Once more, he chewed, and once more spoke before swallowing. “Fuck Stone Jackson,” he said, masticating french fries to saliva-softened paste. “Fuck Bonnie and Emmylou. For all I fuckin’ care, they could have the fuckin’ Queen of England.”
He took a swig from a can of Keystone. Sally took a sip of Robert Mondavi Fumé Blanc. “The queen,” she said, “never sang with Gram Parsons. Come on, Jimbo.”
Much to her surprise, Dwayne chimed in. “I don’t have any of the queen’s CDs,” he said, “but I have all of Bonnie’s.”
“I have ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’ ” observed the drummer, toking up in the corner.
Sally, Dwayne, and Sam guffawed. Jimbo was unamused. He shot a hostile glance at Sally’s wineglass. “Gimme a break, Alder. These Left Coast faggots are exactly the kind of outside agitators who’re gonna wreck Wyoming. That Nina Cruz comes in here and bu
ys up a prime piece of deer and elk habitat, and then closes it off to locals whose great-granddaddies were hunting that aspen grove when her people were still swimmin’ the fuckin’ Rio Grande. The way some people around here think, the bitch got what she deserved.”
Jimbo looked around for support, but he’d gone too far. Dwayne stared down at his pedal steel. The drummer sat motionless at his traps. Sam turned toward the wall, making a big deal of tuning his low E.
She slammed down the rage, but pedant that she was, she at least had to correct Jimbo’s history. “Nina Cruz’s family was settled in New Mexico a hundred years before George Washington crossed the Delaware,” she said quietly, trying to keep the fury out of her voice.
“Wetback’s a wetback,” replied Jimbo, draining his Key-stone and reaching for another. “We oughta just put up electric fence all along the border, and fry every fuckin’ greaseball who tries to sneak in and steal our jobs and our property.”
“Don’t be confused, Sally. He means the Colorado border,” Sam observed.
“All the borders,” Jimbo asserted, crumpling the empty fast-food cartons, shoving them in the paper bag, and hauling himself to his feet. “I gotta take a whiz.”
The thing was, Jimbo was a mighty tight bass player. He’d gigged with different Laramie bands for years, but joined the Millionaires six months before, when Jimbo’s predecessor had moved to Denver. Sally had played music with enough disgusting but gifted people to understand that artistic talent and excellence of character were not necessarily connected. Or as Sam Branch, no Boy Scout himself, had once said after a particularly hot set, “That Jimbo plays real good. Too bad he’s a total asshole.”
Well, Sally reminded herself, struggling to emulate Stone Jacksonesque goodwill toward humanity, everybody was at least a partial asshole. Jimbo happened to be more fully realized in that department than most people.
When Jimbo returned from the bathroom, they’d just about finished tuning up. Time to do a few songs, drink a couple more beers, get loose. Then maybe they’d warm up to the idea of doing the benefit.
But Jimbo wasn’t leaving the matter alone. “Boys,” he said, deliberately addressing everyone but her, “no way can we do this fuckin’ gig. It ain’t just that my taxidermy business would be up shit creek if the animal rights nuts have their way. You’re all hunters. They’d take your guns and your God-given rights and pretty soon we’d all be chantin’ the fuckin’ Hare Krishna and livin’ on soybean squeezin’s.” He turned to Sam. “Plus that Nina Cruz was some kind of commie, you know? Fuckers don’t even believe in property rights.”
“Commies like her do,” said Sam. “You don’t catch ’em inviting the homeless for a swim at their beach houses in Malibu—and those beaches are public property. Nina Cruz did damn near everything she could to protect her property rights out in Albany, Jimbo, including her right to post her land off-limits to hunting. That’s what’s got your knickers in a knot. You and your buddies have taken a lot of deer and elk out of that aspen grove over the years. It pisses you off to be told you can’t do it now. Though from what I hear, having the Cruz place posted off-limits hasn’t slowed you down much this season.”
Jimbo feigned wide-eyed innocence. “Wouldn’t want to shoot anything out there anyhow. That herd’s so full of the wasting disease, the meat wouldn’t be worth a bullet.”
“It’ll be interesting to see what happens to her place now that she’s gone,” Dwayne said. “Ought to be a prime piece of property for subdivision. Wonder if her heirs want to sell.”
Sally looked at Sam. If there was any rumor of a sale, he’d know about it, and probably be trying to get a piece of the action. She grinned at him. “Gosh, Sam,” she said, “might be a friendly gesture on your part to do this benefit after all.”
He gave her a cynical smile. “Hey, I’m all for saving Wyoming’s birds and bees.”
“Even if it means paying tribute to the woman who once kissed a Vietcong commando?” she asked.
“We might all have reasons to do the gig. Especially if it means shakin’ hands with Emmylou,” Sam said.
The drummer, happily stoned, beamed. “I’d like to shake more than that with Emmylou.”
“Son, you’re so ugly, the only thing you could shake is her good manners when she has to look at you,” Sam observed.
And so they moved on to good-natured insult, and then into a relatively placid practice. Jimbo had a few more Key-stones and moved from glowering into laying down his usual reliable chops. At the end of two hours, they’d done a reasonable evening’s work, leaving them all feeling pretty good. “I’ve got to go to a meeting with the Wild West people day after tomorrow, to talk about the benefit. You guys are in, right?” Sally asked, as they packed up their instruments.
They all nodded, except Jimbo. He looked at the floor and made harrumphing sounds.
“We can do it without you, bro’,” Sam said. “Dwayne can play bass. But it would be a hell of a lot better to have you along. You could even wear your MOUNTS BY PERRINE hat if it’d make you feel better.”
Jimbo sulked. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll give it some thought. Might be good for business.”
“Slow this year?” Dwayne inquired.
Jimbo shook his shaggy head. “Worst I ever saw. Drought’s cut the total population down over the past few years, and the wasting disease isn’t helping. Too many sick animals, not enough trophies. Half the guys I know aren’t even using their tags.”
Sally had heard who might be making use of those tags, but she kept her mouth shut.
“That’s incredible,” Dwayne said. “Can’t imagine not getting out there and trying my luck. If people don’t get around to it right quick, the season will close and that’ll be that.”
“Yeah,” Jimbo agreed. “I hate to see a good deer tag go to waste.”
Those words could have been his epitaph. The next afternoon, Sally got a call from Delice. “Did you hear?” she said. “There’s been an accident. Jimbo Perrine went out hunting this morning and well...” She swallowed. “He’s been shot. Hit in the lung—guess he somehow got between a hunter and his game. They’ve got him down in Ivinson Memorial. Been doing surgery on him for a couple of hours, but things look terrible. They don’t expect him to pull through.”
“Oh my God,” said Sally, thinking instantly of Nina. “How could this happen twice in two weeks?”
“It’s weird. Your friend Nina Cruz was one thing—from what I heard, she wasn’t wearing orange, and whoever shot her was already trespassing. But Jimbo knows what he’s doing. What’s even more bizarre,” Delice said, “is that he was out by Albany. I know he likes to hunt out there, but I’d have thought, with all the recent stuff at Shady Grove, he’d have avoided that place like the plague.”
“And last night at practice he said he wasn’t interested in hunting out there. Too much wasting disease in the herd,” Sally told Delice. “So who was he with?”
“That’s another strange thing. He went alone. People don’t generally go after deer alone. Maybe he does, though. Especially considering that he seems to be in the habit of using other people’s extra tags, huh?” Delice said.
“So how did they find him?” Sally asked.
“Evidently, somebody driving by on the road happened to look into the woods and see him lying there. They called nine-one-one from a cell phone, and then stayed with Jimbo until the ambulance came. Lucky for him, the person who found him was a doctor, so the guy did what he could. That’s how Jimbo made it this far.”
“How’d you hear about it?” Sally asked.
“My cousin’s an ER nurse at Ivinson. She was there when they brought him in,” Delice said.
It occurred to Sally that the person who’d found Jimbo was as likely to have shot him as anyone. “What about the doctor guy? Did he come in, too?”
“Yeah,” said Delice. “He insisted on riding in the ambulance. My cousin said he was a dead ringer for Willie Nelson.”
Chapter 10<
br />
Hello, Darkness
Throughout Sally’s afternoon class, and on through her office-hour appointments, she debated going to the hospital. Jimbo Perrine, while hardly a close personal friend, was nonetheless a Millionaire. On the other hand, if he wasn’t still in surgery, he’d be in the intensive care unit, where they only let family visit, and the waiting room tended to be overcrowded with very worried friends and kin of terribly sick people.
By five o’clock, she decided she just had to do it. She didn’t know Jimbo’s wife, Arvida, very well, but she knew that they had two little kids and assumed that things would be very tough if he didn’t make it. Sometimes it helped just to have somebody else there, worrying. If she wasn’t welcome, if she was even the least bit superfluous, she’d quietly disappear.
Outside Hoyt Hall, you’d never know there’d already been a blizzard. It was fall, to be sure, crisp and clear. Marigolds and zinnias planted in beds the shape of a U and a W were frosted to cinders, but heads of purple and green ornamental kale remained bright. The cottonwoods had turned brilliant yellow a week before, but the leaves had only just begun to fall. The wind whispered through the leafy canopy as she walked home in the twilight, picked up the Mustang, and drove to the hospital.
The ICU waiting room was packed, as she’d expected. Arvida Perrine was huddled there, sharing a “sleeping chair” (hospital oxymoron) with the two kids and her mother, a remarkable achievement given that Arvida probably tipped the scales at about 180, and Arvida’s mother made Arvida look like Gwyneth Paltrow. Jimbo, they said, was still in surgery. They all looked absolutely miserable.
Sally offered to go down to the hospital cafeteria and get them some dinner. Arvida wasn’t hungry, but said she was sure the kids could use something to eat. Maybe they could even go to the cafeteria with Sally. The kids shook their heads vigorously, much to Sally’s relief. “They ain’t real comfortable with strangers,” Arvida said, “but you could get ’em a sandwich or some chicken nuggets or somethin’.” Arvida admitted she’d take a cup of coffee. Arvida’s mother allowed as how she could use a hot meal and a piece of pie, and she was partial to Salisbury steak.
Bye, Bye, Love Page 9
