“People came from out of nowhere for these races,” Slim said with a sweeping gesture. “Line these makeshift quarter-mile outlaw dirt road racetracks with flatbed Mexicali, melon farmer–style trucks. They had these beat-up metal speakers on the tops blaring mariachi music like something out of a Speedy Gonzales cartoon. Everybody walkin’ around eating churros and making bets and side bets on the next race. And then, somebody’d shoot a pistol and two horses would tear down the road with everybody hollerin’ and whistlin’ and jumpin’ up and down for the next thirty seconds. And then it started all over again. I swear, it was the most fun I can remember in a single day.”
As they loped along through the desert, Roy listened with a fond smile and a slow nod, as if he’d been to those very races and was just making sure Slim got his facts straight.
As for Howdy, he could see so clearly the picture Slim was painting that he stopped thinking about how he’d never heard Slim talk so much except when he was onstage or trying to worm his way into a woman’s loving embrace, or at least her panties.
Slim aimed his hand out in front of them and said, “There was a tall cornfield at the end of the track, barely past the finish line. And these horses with these crazy ‘weekend jockeys’ hanging on for dear life would make a mad dash down that quarter-mile track and disappear off into the cornstalks at a dead run.” Slim laughed a little thinking about it.
“So,” Slim said, “this one time, Dad and Spooner bought this broke-down old bay named Pitchfork.” He paused as if he felt the characterization wasn’t fair to the horse. “I guess he wasn’t really that broke-down,” Slim said, on second thought. “But you definitely weren’t going to see him in the Preakness, you know? Anyway, they must’ve been drunk or something, convinced they were going to get rich racing old Pitchfork at Zaragoza Downs, as they called it. So Dad’s job was to train him, which he didn’t have a clue about, but, anyway, come the big day, we all went down to Zaragoza to run Pitchfork. They agreed that Dad should be the jockey since he’d been the trainer, right?
“So, while Dad was getting ready for the race, Spooner was running up one side of that dirt track and down the other making bets. Back at the starting line Dad had a couple of shots of this hundred-and-fifty-proof liquor they make out of sugarcane, then he got in the saddle, and bang! Somebody fired the pistol and Pitchfork took off like he thought somebody was shooting at him. Dad’s eyes got wide as a belt buckle and I’ve never laughed so hard in my entire life watching him try to keep one leg on each side of that horse.” Slim did an imitation of his dad heading down the track, all loosey-goosey like a rag doll on a wild animal.
Howdy was laughing, too, but he managed to ask, “Did he win?”
“Oh hell no,” Slim replied. “About three-fourths down the track, Pitchfork just slowed to a natural trot, didn’t matter how much leg or spur he got. Dad dog-cussed that horse all the way across the finish line, going so slow they didn’t even make it to the cornfield. I think if Dad had a gun, he’da shot Pitchfork right there,” Slim said. “He was kind of competitive. So afterwards, me and Dad were loading Pitchfork back into the trailer and Spooner showed up with the look of a man who’d lost an awful lot of money. Dad asked him how much he had bet, and Spooner said, ‘Five hundred dollars.’ Like it was the end of the world.
“Dad looked at the sky like he wanted the Lord to take him right then and there and the horse too as long as he was at it. Then he looked at Spooner and said, ‘I told you not to bet that kind of money on this nag.’
“Spooner jerked his head back in surprise and said, ‘Are you nuts? I was betting against you.’ Then he pulled out a wad of dollars and pesos and shook it at us, and we laughed about it the whole way back to Del Rio.”
Roy, glancing over his shoulder but not at Slim, said, “What happened to old Pitchfork?”
Slim nodded, like he was getting to that part of the story. “Dad and Spooner joked about putting him out to stud,” Slim said. “But they decided the fact he was a gelding was too much of a hurdle to overcome, so they gave him to me. And I kept him ’til we moved to New Mexico.”
Howdy thought of the air force base up in Albuquerque. “Your dad get transferred up to Kirtland?”
Slim’s smile sort of slipped away at the question, and after a moment, he said, “No. It was something else.”
53
THE DESERT WAS COLD THAT NIGHT. HOWDY GOT A FIRE going with the dried grass and kindling he gathered while clearing their campsite. He poked at it until it was burning to his satisfaction.
A minute later Slim came walking out of the dusk with an armload of firewood, dropped it nearby, said, “That oughta get us through the night.”
“You see Roy out there?” Howdy asked as he grabbed a piece of wood from the pile.
Slim brushed off his sleeves and aimed his goatee to the north. “Yeah, he’s out that way, circling the camp like he thinks we’re fixin’ to get attacked by Indians or something.” Slim pulled Roy’s saddle and sleeping bag a little closer to the fire, then did the same with his own. He sat down and warmed his hands, letting the flames hypnotize his eyes for a moment.
Howdy did the same.
Every now and then they heard the fwoop of a pallid bat dodging in for one of the big moths or whatever insect had been drawn to the light of the fire. They’d look up just in time to see the odd blonde fur and black face winging back into the darkness.
“Hope Jodie’s keepin’ warm,” Slim said. “Wherever she is.”
“Yeah, gets cold out here all right.” Howdy flipped up the collar on his duster, pulled it tighter around his neck.
Fwoop! They looked up again. Slim reached back and grabbed his saddle blanket, pulled it over his shoulders. They sat there thinking about Jodie, but not speaking. A few quiet minutes passed before Slim said, “So your dad was a pipeline engineer, huh?”
Howdy looked up from poking the fire, surprised that Slim had asked a personal question. “What? Oh. Yeah, he was.”
Slim gave a nod. “Still at it?”
“No,” Howdy said. “Lost him to cancer a couple of years ago.”
“Oh.” The way you do when you hear that sort of thing. “I’m sorry.” Slim bowed his head slightly, eyes closed. A moment of respect before he said, “What was he like?”
Howdy stared at the fire and repeated the question while he tried to think of the best way to respond. The short answer was “hard-drinking, cigar-smoking engineer,” but that didn’t really capture him. Didn’t do him justice. After a moment he looked up at Slim, squinting slightly. “He was smart,” Howdy said. “Had an absolutely brilliant mind. And I’ll tell you what else. He was the most principled, decent man I’ve ever known.” Howdy turned his eyes back to the fire, a melancholy smile pushing at his bristly black mustache as he thought about the times he’d hunted and camped with his dad, sitting around fires just like this, talking, telling good stories and bad jokes. Something he missed.
Howdy tossed another hunk of wood on the fire and said, “When I was about sixteen, we were living in Shreveport. Dad got me this sixty-four Fairlane and spent a couple of weeks showing me how to take out the stock six and drop in a 390 with a big Holley on it.”
“I bet the puppy could fly,” Slim said.
“Oh yeah.” Howdy nodded for a second or two. “First Friday night after we tightened the last bolt, I’m downtown, cruising. There was this one stretch of Congress Street, starting at Third, where all the lights turned green one after the other about two seconds apart. Just bink, bink, bink, bink, bink, bink, like approach lights for a runway or something. Just beggin’ gearheads to come test their cars.
“So I pulled up to the light at Third Street and this guy, I guessed he was a few years older than me, pulled up in this red Cutlass, started revving his engine. I looked over and he gave me that look and I revved my engine a couple of times before the light turned green, and tore outta there like Big Daddy Don Garlits. Smoked him off the start line,” Howdy said with a clap of the ha
nds. “Left him flat in the dust.” He flashed a smile at Slim. “And I felt about ten feet tall . . . until I looked in my rearview mirror and saw him behind me, coming up pretty fast. In my lane, with a blue light up on his dash.”
“Oh, that ain’t right,” Slim said.
“Pulled my ass over for drag racing.”
“In fact, that’s just plain wrong.”
“That’s what I thought,” Howdy said. “But the cop disagreed and took me down to the station, made me call my dad, which I damn sure didn’t want to do since I’d told him I was going to show the car to a friend of mine in Bossier City, which is pretty much in the opposite direction of downtown Shreveport. So I figured I was in deep shit not only because I’d lied but because I got arrested on top of that. But I called, told him where I was, and asked could he come and get me. There was a long pause before he said, yeah, he’d be down.
“So he showed up, talked to the cops. They gave me my ticket and we got the car outta impound. Then I followed Dad home, dreading every mile. I tell you, that was the longest drive of my life.”
“Your dad pretty good with a belt?”
“Worse,” Howdy said. “He’d talk to you until you felt so bad about letting him down and how disappointed Mom would have been if she was still alive, and that kind of thing until you would’ve gladly taken a beating instead of all the guilt and shame.”
Slim chuckled his understanding.
“We got back home,” Howdy said. “He sat me down at the kitchen table, poured himself a drink, and sat there with me. And for the longest time he didn’t say a word. Just let me sit there, makin’ me imagine what he was going to say and how he was going to punish me. I figured for sure he’d take the car away. Finally, he said, ‘That officer told me you were doing sixty-five in a thirty.’
“I said, ‘Yes, sir, I’m real sorry. I know I was supposed to—’”
“‘In what, six blocks?’ Dad shook his head, looking all disappointed and said, ‘You should’ve been doing at least eighty.’ He rapped his knuckles on the table, then stood up and said, ‘Get your timing light, son, something ain’t right.’”
Howdy had a big smile now. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I jumped up, headin’ for the garage when he stopped me and said, ‘In the future, be more careful about who and where you race. But, son, more importantly, don’t lie to me. Because where we gonna be if I can’t trust you?’ Dad just shook his head and we were done with it. Headed out to the garage and got to work.”
Slim thought about saying something along the lines of “He sounds like a helluva guy,” but instead he said, “Did y’all ever get the timing right?” He looked at Howdy and winked, and then they both smiled.
“Sure did,” Howdy said. He could still hear the burble of the idling engine and smell his dad’s cigar and his drink as it mingled with the gas fumes, grease, and exhaust. After a second, Howdy tossed another hunk of wood on the fire and realized he’d been talking about himself the whole time. So he said, “How about your dad? He stay in the air force?”
“No,” Slim replied. “They let him . . . He got discharged.”
It was clear enough Slim didn’t want to talk about it and Howdy wasn’t going to push him. But then, out of nowhere, Slim said, “My dad got in a fight, at a bar, over some girl. Unfortunately the guy he punched was an air force captain. So they tossed Dad in the brig for the night. He broke out with a couple other guys, roughed up some MPs who got between them and the door. Next day they all got caught trying to hop a freight train. And for that, my dad got seven years in Leavenworth,” Slim said. “Seven years.”
Howdy, in disbelief, said, “Are you serious?”
Slim gave a disconsolate nod. “I was about ten, I guess, when all that happened. Mom didn’t tell me any of it. Said the air force had sent Dad on a secret mission and he wouldn’t be back for a long time.”
“Seven years?” Howdy shook his head. “Man, that’s tough.”
Slim stared at the fire as he said, “We moved around a lot after that. Lived with Mom’s sister down in Corpus for a while, then moved up to Oklahoma City, then out to an oil lease on a reservation near Blanco, New Mexico.”
“All that time your mom stuck to her story?”
“Yeah, in fact every now and then she’d tell me the air force had given her a report on the progress of the mission and it was going good,” Slim said. “But the older I got the more I figured he’d either died on this mission or they’d gotten a divorce and she didn’t want to tell me. It wasn’t until I was in college that she told me the truth. She said Dad didn’t want me to see him in prison.” He shook his head like he still found it hard to believe. “By the time she told me all this, he’d gotten out.”
“What happened?”
“He disappeared,” Slim said. “Don’t know if he just felt too disconnected from us or if he was too proud to come back as an ex-con or if he just came out a different man than he went in. But I’ve never seen him again.” Slim looked over at Howdy and something passed between them. A shared loss that connected the two men. Howdy wasn’t sure what to say. So he just tossed another hunk of wood on the fire.
Fwoop. They both looked up. Then Slim said, “You know, I’m not the superstitious type, but I’m starting to think there’s something wrong with Del Rio.”
“Wrong . . . how?”
“Doesn’t seem like I can be there without something—or someone—disappearing on me. Started with Dad.” He gave a slight shrug. “Next time I lived there it was my guitar, and then Caroline. And now it’s Jodie,” Slim said. “I’m starting to think Del Rio is Spanish for ‘the place where things go missing.’”
The words seemed to strike Howdy as an interesting notion. He said, “The place where things go missing. Kinda mysterious. I like it.” Howdy frisked himself for his songwriting pad, which he’d failed to bring. He pointed at Slim. “Remind me of that later, because that might be a good song.”
Slim smiled and said, “Sure, no problem.”
“Okay,” Howdy said. “I can see your point about Del Rio. But look at it this way.” He started counting on his fingers. “First, we got your guitar back. Second, you seem to be doing okay in the girl department without Caroline. And third, we figure to get Jodie back tomorrow. After that maybe we can track down your dad, take him back to Zaragoza, see if they’re still running those races.”
Slim smiled at the thought of it. He said, “Wouldn’t that be something?”
There was a rustling in the creosote bush behind them. Their hands went to their guns as they both turned around. They relaxed when they saw it was Roy, cigarette dangling from his lips, returning with more firewood. “Boys,” he said, “I think we’re being followed.” He dropped the wood on the pile.
Slim and Howdy stood up, looked around. “You think it’s the kidnappers?”
“Could be,” Roy said, scratching his neck. “Also could be bandits. Or could be I’m just a crazy old coot.”
Slim and Howdy didn’t see anything, but they got the sense Roy knew what he was talking about. “What do we do?”
“Just stay ready,” Roy said.
“For what?”
“Anything.”
54
JODIE WOKE UP GROGGY AND SORE. IT WAS BARELY LIGHT. She was lying on a cot. Still dressed for work. Wondering where she was and how she got there. Why her shoulder hurt so bad. Her hands were tied in front of her but not so tight she couldn’t wiggle free. She sat up, rubbing her wrists, trying to remember anything that would explain her circumstance. It had been a long time since she’d woken up, bound, in a strange bed. In fact, the last time it had happened, she had participated and there had been a handsome man nearby with an eager look on his face. But not this time. This time she was alone in a small room, a shack of some sort.
Her mind was foggy, but not from a hangover. It was like someone had erased part of her hard drive. Had somebody slipped her a ruffie? She’d heard those things make you forget the last twelve hour
s but, no, if someone had slipped her the date-rape drug, they’d forgotten about the rape part as far as she could tell.
Small favors.
She took a deep breath and thought back. Last thing she remembered was leaving work. She had a headache and designs on a hot bath. Stopped at the night deposit, then drove home. Called Howdy on the way about locking the office. She was walking to the front door of her house, and then . . . then she woke up here. Not much help.
Jodie noticed the quiet and stillness of wherever she was. And the smell. A nice smell, but not the smell of Del Rio, that was for sure. More like way out in the country. The desert. Wisps of sage, flowering cactus, creosote.
Sitting on the edge of the cot, waiting for her head to clear, Jodie moved her arms and legs, twisted her torso this way and that. She tried to stretch the sore out of her shoulder. She felt okay otherwise. So that was good. She hadn’t been raped or beaten. Just kidnapped. Lucky me, she thought, in that weird way people think about luck. It wasn’t winning-the-lottery lucky, but given a choice of picking one thing from the list of three, she’d take kidnapping over beaten and raped.
Yeah, Jodie thought, this was her lucky day, all right.
After a minute, her eyes adjusted to the dim light. She stood and felt her way around the room. No furniture other than the cot and a small table on which she found a few bottles of water, and a bucket she took to be her privy. There was even a roll of toilet paper. And good toilet paper at that. Quilted even. Which struck her as very weird.
She wondered why someone rude enough to kidnap her would be considerate enough to provide quality toilet paper? Or toilet paper at all for that matter? Sure it was a gift horse but, after being abducted, Jodie figured its mouth was worth looking into. Still, she didn’t see anything useful when she did.
The Adventures of Slim & Howdy Page 21
