Hey, Cowgirl, Need a Ride?

by Baxter Black

  “I can tell you’re worried. Is it something you can talk about? Maybe I could help.”

  “No, I don’t think so. It’s just not fair, though. I work so hard . . .”

  “I know you do, sugar. You work all the time,” she consoled.

  “I have this great plan with millions at stake and that no-good—” he stopped.

  “Go ahead, sweetie. You know you can tell me. Get it off your mind. You’ll feel better.”

  “I . . .”

  “Is it personal? Something about us?” she asked.

  “No. We’re fine. Matter of fact, you’re real fine. I don’t know why my wife couldn’t be as . . . as . . .”

  “Helpful? Loving? Attentive? Thoughtful? Caring?” she said.

  “Loyal,” he said.

  “You know I’m loyal. You could tell me anything—anything— and you know I’d never tell a soul. So come back here and lie down and tell Doctor Allura all about it. You’ll feel so much better.”

  F. Rank Pantaker, complainer and potentially heinous criminal, studied Allura Valura. She had dark hair, olive skin, and the angular curves and hard body of a dedicated weight lifter. She could bench-press F. Rank, if it ever came to that. But right now he had this child’s need to unburden himself. Release a little pressure before his ulcer exploded.

  Allura had no ulterior motives other than to keep him happy and herself well paid. She worked at the casino’s fitness center in the basement. Her specialty was massages, but she was delighted to be flexible to F. Rank’s needs.

  F. Rank lay back on the pillow and exhaled a big sigh. Allura started rubbing his forehead and the bridge of his nose.

  “A large quantity of money was stolen from me little over a week ago. Right from under my nose. They figured out the combination to my safe, took the money, and ran.”

  Allura repeated the combination of his safe to herself. It was written on a piece of paper taped to his bottom right-hand desk drawer. She’d found it the second day she’d made a professional call to his office.

  “Do you know the identity of the thief?”

  “I’d rather not say,” he answered. “But you know her.”

  “Humm,” she hummed. “Go on.”

  “They’re gonna have her back this evening if all goes well. But it doesn’t stop my acid stomach. Those ribs and jalapeños we had last night are still comin’ up.”

  “Well, if she’s been caught, why are you still worried?”

  “Fear of the unknown,” explained F. Rank. “Does she have the money hid? Will I have to force her to tell me? Will she fess up before I have to strap her to the front of a speeding train and run her through a flock of migrating geese? Will I have to throw her in a cage full of mouse-addled rattlesnakes armed only with a slingshot? Or leave her in a walk-in cooler wearing nothing but a baseball cap and eye shadow until she begs me for a sweater? Give her truth serum by slow IV drip? Or . . . simply turn her over to our collection people, who know methods of eliciting confessions far beyond my simple imagination?

  “And what am I going to do with the body, or her, after she tells me?” His eyes narrowed. “She just better give me the money,” he said, adopting a low, chilly voice, “or she’ll wind up as cat food. The chunky kind.”

  He turned to Allura and, for a two-second eternity, she saw the malevolence that lurked inside F. Rank’s mind. And she knew that beneath his spoiled, self-centered, sometimes charming surface lay a devious, amoral, bloodred, uncooked center.

  “So,” he said, “that’s why I’m chuggin’ Maalox and walkin’ the floor.”

  Allura pondered these things in her heart: baseball cap, plus addled rattler, speeding train, slingshot, and money equals Maalox. “I see” was all she said.

  Oh, what a tangled web we weave

  When the ill-equipped commence to thieve

  And find out she is un-naive

  And has her own tricks up her sleeve.

  APOLOGIES TO SIR WALTER

  27

  DECEMBER 4: SHERRILL’S HOUSE

  Stone Roanhorse directed Lick to the parking lot behind the small police station. A Native American wearing jeans and a black down coat with a chief’s badge came out the door to greet them.

  “Boy, Stone, I’m glad you made it back. We had a horse get out down there by the Lake Road and Sam Will almost hit him with his pickup. It’s a good thing he missed or we’d have to go get him and I sure hate to see a good horse run over.” Translation: Stone, tribal law allows me to flay your back with a skinning knife and stake you over an ant bed until the ants climb out through your navel for stealing my horse substitute.It’s a good thing your sister is married to my mother’s brother or I would have done a deep coup on the top of your head.

  “I have brought visitors bearing gifts,” said Stone. “You remember our friend Al from Scotland. He’s brought his children.” This ancient diversion of including family, practiced by indigenous tribes-men since the time of Chief Disappearing Hanky, assured that a formal acknowledgment of this important relationship would be respected. And, it gave the old man some time to think.

  Al climbed out of the back and stretched his limbs. “How do,” he said to the officer. Then he reached into the bed of the pickup and handed out two unopened cases of beer. He set them on the gravel. Then he retrieved a box of powdered-sugar donuts from the backseat. “For Sherrill,” he said.

  The officer appraised the offering, then looked back at Stone, who added, “And all three of his family would like to donate a hundred dollars to the computer fund drive”—he let the offer settle a moment— “plus another fifty for the Police Chief’s Discretionary Fund.”

  “That would be very generous,” said the Chief. “There is no need.”

  “I insist,” said Stone.

  “So do I,” said the old man, who had fifteen cents in his pocket.

  “If you insist,” conceded the Chief, “but it’s not really necessary.” He picked up both cases of beer and walked over to load them in his personal vehicle.

  Lick leaned out of the pickup window and said quietly to Stone, “Al and I don’t have three hundred and fifty dollars. I’ve got maybe seventy, but Al doesn’t have a dime on him.”

  “That is technically correct,” added the old man.

  “No problem, my friends,” said Stone. “Please give me fifty and I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Inside the station Stone spoke in the Shoshone tongue to a handsome thirtyish brown-skinned woman with beautiful black hair who was standing behind a waist-high check-in counter. It was Sherrill. He then introduced her to Lick and Teddie, explaining they were the old man’s children.

  “I am pleased to meet you. You, uh, look very much alike. It’s nice to see white families staying with their parents past weaning. Al, you must be, uh, very proud to have them back home.”

  “Yes,” replied Al, paternally. “It makes a dad happy to see his two kids appreciating how much their ol’ pa has done to make their life a bed of roses. I’ve given them the best years of my life and they’ve made me proud. Junior here has gone to college to become a doctor and did missionary work in Africa, then worked on reestablishing the giant baboon population in Belgium.

  “Sis, she was a nurse among the native population in the wilds of the Amazon. Saved the lives of millions before she was struck with the Bamboo Plague, which caused her to become allergic to mercury and forced her to give up her medical career for lack of bein’ able to take a temperature. Now she does volunteer work among the homeless in Scottsdale, Arizona.”

  T.A. listened with amazement, Lick with resignation, and Stone even raised an eyebrow at the mention of the giant baboons.

  “Nice to meet you,” offered T.A. “We thank you for helping Stone give us a ride.”

  Stone was magnanimous. “Sherrill,” he said, “do you reckon we could find them a place to stay for a while?”

  A while? A while, be it cowboy time or Indian time, meant only “Not forever.” No one gave it a second
thought.

  “Al, your children can stay at my house if they want,” Sherrill said. “I have an extra bedroom. Your son can sleep on the couch.”

  “And you can stay with me,” Stone told the old man. “I’m living alone right now. Your dogs can keep us company.”

  Stone borrowed Sherrill’s car and took “the children” to her house. Lick lay down on the couch. The radio was playing quiet country music. He fell asleep with his boots on. Teddy Arizona disappeared into the back bedroom.

  28

  DECEMBER 5: SURPRISE

  At eight-thirty Friday morning Lick rose from his bed on the couch. He wandered into the kitchen and peered out the window. The sun was shining weakly in a clear sky, but the wind had picked up. It looked pretty from indoors.

  He drank a glass of water, ate a cold hot dog out of the fridge, and walked back to the bathroom, passing the closed doors of the bedrooms. She’s still sleeping, he thought.

  The bathroom was a converted utility room with a washer and dryer. Lick stood over the commode and raised bubbles in the murky water. He was in the process of making a circle around the bowl when he heard a short exclamation. He looked back over his shoulder, one hand on the towel rack and the other holding his light saber.

  Teddie Arizona stood, one foot out of the shower, pulling a towel from the rack on the wall. He saw it all, like a radar gun zaps a passing car. A moment frozen eternally in time, a full-color centerfold memory to be recalled over and over as the ages pass until it’s airbrushed into a fuzzy feeling.

  Lick quickly looked back to the wall, stood straight, and tried to clamp it off and put it back, all the while getting at least one good doctor’s-office beakerful on everything, including his pants.

  “Uh, gosh, T.A., I thought you were still in the sack. The door was closed, I, uh . . . oh, shoot.” He looked down at his zipper. “I’ll get . . . I’ll get out of here.”

  He walked to the door, assiduously avoiding looking at her. He grasped the door handle and pulled. It was locked. He punched the little lock button and tried again. No luck. He jerked a couple times and he felt the doorknob bend. He banged his shoulder against the door. It sounded solid.

  T.A. watched from behind the shower curtain.

  “Maybe I can take the handle off and . . . or, I could crawl out the window. I think I could get through it.” Lick looked back over his shoulder to see what she was thinking. She’d wrapped the towel around her but still clung to the shower curtain.

  “Why don’t you just sit down over there and stare at the wall and let me find a robe or something,” T.A. said. She had come into the bathroom earlier wearing an oversized tee shirt she’d found in Sherrill’s closet. Her suitcases and backpack with all her clothing, makeup, pills, and personal totems were history. The only thing she’d managed to salvage during her escape was a small fanny pack—and the ten thousand dollars, which she’d divided into four envelopes and stuffed into her knee-high socks just before heading out into the sagebrush the day before. She rummaged around inside the dryer and came up empty. She also made a serious attempt to open the bathroom door.

  Lick sat on the toilet lid and stared at the opaque bathroom window, which faced south. His mind kept flashing back and forth between the white of the window and the vision of Teddie Arizona, one foot out of the shower, like Venus stepping out of the seashell, like Lady Godiva with one foot in the stirrup, like all of womanhood displaying her plumage for the randy ruffed grouses, leering lechers, gasping gropers, and captivated caught-unaware cowboys to see.

  It is, in fact, what it’s all about, Alfie.

  It can start wars. It can end wars. It can make you forget about wars. It can start fires, family feuds, fast-food chains, empires, pilgrimages,hives, indigestion, heartbreak, heartache, ventricular fibrillation,and the collapse of kingdoms.

  Lick had seen Victoria’s secret.

  Lick was suddenly a teenager again. Yearning, longing, lusting for . . . he didn’t know what to call it back when he was seventeen, but it swarmed his whole consciousness like a black west Texas dust storm. He was in the middle of a long fall, he couldn’t see down, he couldn’t see up. He felt like he had a washtub in his chest, the white noise was loud in his ears. The vision of her was flashing in front of his eyes like a film on fast-forward. He was close to the edge.

  She touched him on the shoulder. He jumped!

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Whoa,” he breathed.

  “You, uh, you didn’t answer me. I asked if you had any ideas. About getting the door open, I mean. Twice. You were kind of in a trance. Are you all right?”

  He sat there a moment, then spoke. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just . . . You, uh, caught me off guard.”

  “I caught you off guard!”

  “Well,” he began, “this may be the perfect time to—”

  “You’re right,” she breathed. She stepped in front of him still wrapped in the towel, took his face in her hands, and kissed him deeply.

  What he’d intended to say was, “. . . the perfect time to discuss the next step.” Would they drive down to Las Vegas? If so, would they want to leave Al here? Did she have any contacts at the casino? Did she have any money with her? But those thoughts were quickly obliterated.

  For a fraction of a second, he was startled. Then he softened his lips to be more yielding. He raised his arms and put a hand on either side of her waist. He could feel the pliant skin beneath the damp towel, and the hip bones, his thumbs lightly pressing against her ribs.

  She was an insistent kisser. An aggressive, pervasive, controlling kisser. Her lips and tongue were like a hearty handshake, a leg pressed between yours on a slow dance, a persistent breast in a crowded elevator, like riding a horse bareback. Physical, athletic, moist, and devouring.

  At last T.A. broke the kiss and drew back.

  With his hands still resting on her waist, Lick looked up at her, somewhat dazed. He made a couple of glottal catches. “Oh, my,” he said.

  “Gosh, Lick. I . . . it’s just that . . . I didn’t mean to do that,” she said. Droplets of water clung to the strands of her hair. She had an odd look on her face. She shook her head, smiling. Sunlight through the semitransparent window lent a luminous halo to her countenance. He thought she looked like a painting.

  She stepped back, still holding his face in her hands. He raised his palms to her upper arms and tried to pull her to him. She kissed him quickly and firmly, then drew back. Her expression had changed.

  “I would like to get dressed now,” she said, not unkindly, “if that’s all right with you.”

  He looked at her quizzically. All right with me? he thought. I’m locked and loaded. I’ve cocked the hammer. I’ve armed the torpedoes. The coordinates are fixed, my basal ganglia have called for an air strike, the boulder is teetering on the edge of the cliff, the countdown has begun: Three, two, one . . .

  “Sorry,” she said, “I shouldn’t have . . . I, I just don’t want to start anything. My mind is mixed up.”

  Wasn’t it just last night—no, two nights ago—they were snuggling like octopi on the high desert floor? Wasn’t there actually a laying on of hands? Lick couldn’t remember exactly, but his fingertips did. They remembered the precise contours of the terrain the way a foot remembers a shoe.

  Start anything? his mind asked. Fast as you can pull the trigger! screamed the army of testosterone coursing through his arteries, lighting his body up like a Christmas tree. It took him a second to gain some semblance of control.

  “No, I guess not,” he said, deflating.

  She stood up in front of him and tightened the towel that formed a delightful decolletage, pink from the hot shower. She gave him a weak smile and turned to the sink and mirror.

  Lick set about escaping through the bathroom window, which didn’t take as long as he would have thought. There was no screen and three cinder blocks were stacked outside below the window. He was not the first one to get locked in Sherrill’s bathroom.

&
nbsp; He went around and opened the bathroom door. Just a little, so as not to intrude on T.A.’s privacy.

  29

  DECEMBER 5: ANOTHER ROMANTIC MOMENT

  By the time T.A. joined him in the kitchen fifteen minutes later, Lick had recovered. She’d put on the clothes she was wearing at the time of their escape twenty-four hours before: jeans, the socks containing her cash, and the black knit tank top under a long-sleeved light blue denim shirt.

  They both sat at the table with coffee and sandwiches.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  Lick didn’t respond.

  T.A. studied her stocking feet. How could she explain that in another life she would have jumped his bones like a frenzied goat! That beyond the physical attraction, she was beginning to admire his character? But something else was boiling inside her, making her skin crawl and the back of her throat constrict. It had to do with the confusing mix of her amorality, upbringing, and uncertainty about the future, a growing awakening that she might care for this cowboy—and fear of Ponce. Ponce de Crayon, the man she’d once considered a genuine hero, a shining light of integrity, an inspiration for her to rise above selfishness and serve the common good.

  Ponce de Crayon, whose pedestal had crumbled like a machine-made taco shell when she’d learned of the scheme he’d cooked up with F. Rank.

  T.A.’s first and only personal introduction to Ponce de Crayon had been through a fund-raiser at Ponce Park three months after she had moved to Las Vegas and in with F. Rank.

  Ponce’s personal cause célèbre was the preservation of endangered species. That night he hosted two hundred and fifty people, the froth on the Las Vegas latte, at his large wildlife park and refuge.

  It was there he maintained and propagated spotted owls, black rhinos, Sumatran rhinos, snow leopards, pandas, Malaysian tigers, grizzly bears, black panthers, albino koalas, pinto polar bears, and a covey of bald eagles, just out of patriotism, or so Ponce said. (You never knew when a modern medicine man or tribal chief would need some authentic accessories for his breechclout or headdress.)