Bum Steer

by Nancy Pickard

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she drawled to him. “But that was a dumb thing you tried to do. Now get up, honey, and say a polite hello to Miss Rose, who has driven all this way to see us get burned out.” Judy, for this is who I assumed this pistol-packin’ mama was, peered into the car, first looking me over, then Lilly. To her son, who was struggling, red-faced, to his feet, she said, “And look here, Laddy, she’s brought company, too.” Judy looked toward the burning house and sighed. “Ain’t goin’ to be any tea served in my house today, ladies, but come on out here. You can sit a spell with us.

  “At least the ground ain’t burnin’.”

  33

  You just goin’ to let it burn down, Judy?”

  Miss Rose’s polite inquiry was tinged faintly with reproof. We had arranged ourselves in a semicircle in the dirt, facing the burning house, with me on the far left next to Lilly Ann, who sat next to Miss Rose, who sat next to Judy Benet, with Ladd Benet beside her. Neither my name or Lilly Ann’s had elicited any reaction from either of them, and Miss Rose hadn’t mentioned our connections to them. It was almost as if she were waiting for Judy and “Laddy” to catch on to it themselves. Miss Rose usually had good reasons for doing things her way, so I played along, and Lilly seemed shy about announcing her kinship. But if Judy Benet and her son had ever heard of us, you couldn’t have told it.

  “Laddy” was a handsome, blocky, sandy-haired boy, a little older than Lilly. He was the boy in the photographs, all right. At the moment, he looked pale from the blow his mother had struck him, and he kept touching his ribs, then wincing and looking martyred.

  “I think you broke one of my ribs, Mother.”

  She ignored him in order to answer Miss Rose. “Can’t hardly do anything else about it, Miss Rose. The fire burned out the wires, so naturally the pump don’t work. Got no telephone left to call a fireman, got no vehicles in workin’ order, got no horse I’d want to run that far and that fast. No need to worry about it spreadin’, either, because there isn’t anything between it and anything else except this here dirt. If I could get the marshmallows out of my kitchen, we could roast ’em, and that’s about all we could do. Lord knows, Laddy and I are hungry enough we’d be happy for a wiener to roast right about now.”

  Miss Rose, who sat on the ground with her legs drawn up beside her instead of cross-legged like the rest of us, gazed at the burning structure.

  “Too late for us to go for help for you,” she observed.

  “Yep,” Judy agreed. “Been too late for hours now.”

  “When did it start in to burning, Judy?”

  She looked at her son, who grunted.

  “Early this mornin’,” she said.

  Miss Rose’s eyebrows arched at that.

  “Lot of hardwood in that old house,” Judy said. “Mama must of built the only oak house in the county. It’ll take a good long time to burn down. You know all that old walnut furniture Mama and Daddy left me?”

  Miss Rose nodded.

  “Imagine how long that’s going to take to burn.”

  “Shame,” Miss Rose intoned.

  “Well, it is,” Judy agreed.

  I ventured to ask, “What happened to your phone and your vehicles?”

  She looked past Miss Rose to me. “Well, the phone’s in the house, you see, which doesn’t do us a whole hell of a lot of good sitting out here. I should have put an extension in the barn, but I never did do it. Now I suppose I’m sorry. And the vehicles, well, I don’t know what happened to them. All I can tell you is they won’t any of them start. Laddy?” She turned to her still-whimpering son. “Tell Miss Rose here what happened to my Bronco and your old Ford pickup.”

  “What happened is the battery ran down in the Bronco because you left the lights on, Mother.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did, Mother! I ran out to start it and the battery was dead and you had the light switch pulled all the way out.”

  “Dirty lie,” his mother said.

  “And my truck had a flat tire.”

  “You couldn’t fix it, Laddy?” Miss Rose asked him.

  “Couldn’t find the jack,” he told her.

  “Why didn’t you charge the Bronco off the truck?” Miss Rose asked him.

  “Because.” He grunted again and placed his right hand over his rib cage. “The truck had a dead battery, too.”

  “Hah,” his mother said.

  “I didn’t leave my lights on, Mother.”

  “Says you.”

  “I didn’t, Mother!”

  “I suppose you weren’t smokin’, either, when you went to sleep on the couch watchin’ Johnny Carson last night?”

  “I wasn’t, Mother! Have I had a cigarette all morning? No, I have not. I don’t smoke anymore, Mother. I haven’t smoked for forty-eight hours, at least. You’re the one who probably left a butt burning in your ashtray last night.”

  “I never do that.” Judy turned toward Miss Rose and shook her head. “Really, I never do that.” She sighed. “Lord, I would kill for a cigarette though. Any of you ladies got a smoke on you?”

  Miss Rose opened her purse and took out a pack of Winstons and handed it to Judy. She sighed with pleasure and immediately lit two of them, one for herself and the second for Miss Rose.

  “I’ll take one,” Laddy said.

  “Thought you stopped smokin’, boy.”

  “The stress of livin’ with you is makin’ me start up again.”

  She flipped him the pack.

  “Where did the fire start?” I inquired.

  Mother and son looked at each other.

  “Your room?” he asked.

  She shook her head, although it might have been to deny a truth. “Kitchen, I think.”

  “What woke you up?” I asked.

  “Laddy woke me up,” Judy said in a tone of complaint.

  “Well, what was I supposed to do, let you burn to a pork rind?” he asked her. “All the thanks I get. I woke up because I heard a truck driving off.”

  Lilly, Miss Rose, and I all stared at him, but his mother didn’t seem to pay that startling statement any mind at all.

  “You were dreamin’,” she said dismissively.

  “I was not, Mother.”

  The house was by now burned almost completely away, with only a few flames shooting up now and then as a board split open to reveal its heart of fire. We were sitting to the north, upwind, so the ashes flew away from us like dead leaves in a hot breeze.

  “Shit,” Judy suddenly exclaimed. “I just remembered I had a brand-new pair of blue jeans in there.” She started to laugh, and soon she was laughing so hard she was crying. “Hot pants. They’re hot pants now. What the hell—Cat always accused me of havin’ hot pants. Too bad he can’t see how right he was!”

  Judy Benet lay on her back, kicked her legs in the air, and whooped with laughter.

  34

  For the rest of that afternoon, we lolled on the rock-hard ground staring at that dying fire as if we were all gathered in their den watching logs burn in a fireplace. The wind changed once, so we had to scurry to the west to escape the bitter smoke and biting sparks. Then it shifted again, and we resumed our original positions, though we had to sweep some ashes away with our hands before we sat down again. Once Laddy strolled off behind a far tree to relieve himself, and once I had to hide behind the car. The other women seemed to have bladders of sponge.

  Along about twilight, when the smoke turned the sky red, Laddy got up, moved closer to the house, and started throwing rocks into the ashes. Sparks shot up into the air with a red crackle every time he hit something of any consequence.

  “Bathroom!” his mother cried when the third rock hit inside the fire. And then with the next one, “Livin’ room! Aim for the kitchen next time, Laddy, see if you can hit the refrigerator. Got ’er! Go for the hall closet, Sweetpea. Bingo!”

  Beside me, Lilly began picking up rocks and tossing them from hand to hand, then setting them down again. She was fidgeting
to join him. The fact that she didn’t was probably a credit to her upbringing. I guessed it was not the done thing in Kansas City to throw stones at somebody’s burning house. Actually, it wasn’t in “Poor Fred,” either. But it did look like fun.

  “You do any more of that,” his mother said after an especially colorful and noisy hit, “and there ain’t goin’ to be anything to save. I was hopin’ maybe to wade in there tomorrow and salvage one or two things. A pot. A pan.”

  “A toilet lid,” Laddy called back, and threw another rock.

  Crack. Hiss. Whoosh.

  His mother laughed. “I suppose that’s right. Nothin’ worth savin’ anymore. Well, ladies, I’m hungry as a cow on a long march to Montana, and I’m tired and I got to pee. I’m afraid I can’t offer y’all any supper, except maybe extremely well baked beans. If you’ll drive us into town, Miss Rose, we’ll report this little campfire and I’ll buy y’all supper.”

  “No, you won’t,” Laddy called over his shoulder between throws. “You didn’t think to grab your purse before you ran out of the house, remember?”

  “Damn, that’s right, I can’t buy you supper.” Judy raised her voice. “Since I now remember that Laddy didn’t think to grab his wallet before he ran out of the house!”

  Lilly, being the youngest and most agile, was the first to clamber to her feet. Judy, whom she resembled slightly, gazed up at her and smiled.

  “You remind me of myself when I was younger, child,” she said. “Except you got your grandpa’s blue eyes. Pretty bright blue eyes, just like my brother, Cat.”

  In the heartbeat of silence that followed that remark, Laddy turned around and stared from his mother to Lilly.

  “She’s related to us?” he asked his mother. The question had an oddly aggressive sound. “She’s on Uncle Cat’s side?”

  “That’s right?” his mother asked Lilly.

  The girl nodded shyly.

  “Think you’re too good for us, don’t you?” Laddy snarled. He transferred all but one of the rocks he held into his left hand.

  “What?” Lilly said.

  “So you’re Alice’s daughter.” Judy’s smile turned mean. “My own little great niece. And little Miss Alice and little Miss Margaret are my nieces, who never have called me, or ever written to me, or so much as sent their aunt Judy or their cousin Laddy a Christmas card. Who never even so much as said thank you for the cards and gifts I used to send them, until I said the hell with Cat’s people all together. That’s who you’re from, isn’t it?”

  This time Lilly shrugged and nodded at the same time, clearly not sure what was safe to say. I got quickly to my feet, then turned around to help Miss Rose when I realized she wanted to stand up, too.

  “I never heard of you before,” Lilly ventured.

  “Liar!” Laddy cocked back his arm and threw the rock, a big, pointed one. It whizzed past Lilly’s head, landing with a thud several yards behind her.

  “Hey!” I yelled.

  The second rock grazed Lilly’s left arm.

  “You son of a bitch!” Lilly bent down quickly, picked up the rock, and threw it back at him, smack into his rib cage. Laddy collapsed with a curse.

  “What’s this all about?” I shouted.

  “Judy!” Miss Rose drew herself up to her full five feet. Her voice rumbled in the barrel of her chest. “That will be enough of that. Get ahold of yourself, both of you. I’ll drive. We’re going to supper, all of us.”

  “Yes’m,” Judy Benet said. She walked over to her son and kicked him lightly with the toe of her boot. “Get up, Laddy. And you be nice, now.” Her voice was meek, but the expression in her eyes and in her son’s face was anything but meek.

  So I couldn’t have been more surprised when we moved toward the Lincoln and I glanced over at Judy and saw that tears were flowing from her blue eyes.

  “I’m just tired, that’s all,” she claimed as we climbed into the car, but she began to cry harder. “It’s just all got to me, that’s all. Losin’ my house and everything in it, and y’all showin’ up and Cat gettin’ himself killed, it’s just all finally got to me.”

  Lilly sat up front, rigid as a fence post, and stared straight ahead without speaking. Miss Rose hurtled us back down the private dirt road and then back onto the highway like a ball out of a cannon. I sat in the middle of the backseat between mother and son.

  Judy Benet wept all the way to supper.

  “I can’t believe he’s dead,” she sobbed. “The goddamned son of a bitch. Wouldn’t speak to me when he was living, cut me off without a kiss or a hug or a single word, and now he’s up and died on me, without makin’ any peace between us.”

  “Aw, Mom,” Laddy muttered. He was holding on to his rib cage again. Whenever he shifted in his seat, he managed to give the back of Lilly’s seat a vicious kick, strong enough to make her head bounce, though she never turned around, never acknowledged it.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I hissed at him.

  He just glared at the back of Lilly’s head.

  “What’s the matter with him,” Judy cried, “is that I divorced his father, and he’s hardly ever seen his daddy since, and my brother cut us off from the whole rest of the family when I did it. It’ll turn a boy to sour, being shunned like that, that’s what it’ll do. And now there’s that goddamned will, barrin’ us from his daddy’s place for the rest of his life, as if Laddy was some pariah, not some innocent boy who didn’t cause it all. Cat’s the one caused it all, him and his self-righteous … shit”

  “Your daddy’s place?” I said. “Who’s your father, Laddy?”

  “Carl is,” Judy sobbed. “Carl’s his daddy.”

  “Carl Everett?”

  Lilly burst into bitter speech from the front seat. “I don’t know what any of you are talking about! I’ve never even heard of either of you before!”

  “You see?” Judy wailed. “It’s like we’re lepers!”

  Laddy gave Lilly’s seat another kick.

  “Stop that!” I told him.

  “I can’t,” his mother sobbed.

  “Not you, him.”

  “Come on, Mom, stop cryin’ now.”

  “I told you, I’m tired, that’s all.”

  “Aw, Mom.”

  “Aw, shut up,” I said.

  And they did for the rest of the ride.

  We ate supper at a picnic table behind a filling station miles from anywhere. There was a single tree—juniper, I think—to keep us company in the dark, and a yellow bug light hanging above the back door of the station.

  Judy had gradually gotten herself back under control on the long ride out, but then she’d retreated into herself, saying as little as possible to anybody. Laddy maintained a sulky silence that reminded me of his cousin Lilly, and he stuck close to his mother’s side.

  But the food was wonderful, thick pork ribs barbecued over mesquite in a halved oil barrel inside the garage. That was all there was to eat, just the ribs and colas from a machine, but it was probably the best meal I ever had in my life.

  We heard cars and trucks pull up to the gas pumps every now and then. Once in a while we heard heavy footsteps on gravel as drivers or their passengers walked around to the side to use the toilets. And all the while, the owner of the Pit Stop Gas & Barbecue Station laid more slabs on the fire, selling the ribs along with the gas and oil. The blended aroma of gasoline, barbecue sauce, mesquite, and motor oil was heavenly to this starving easterner. I ate the meat off seven fat ribs without stopping to use a napkin. Let ’er drip, I thought.

  Lilly, Miss Rose, and I sat across from Judy and Laddy, and for a while all you could hear from us was the sound of chewing and tearing in the dark. It was primitive, barbaric, a rending of flesh, five carnivores working out their aggressions on a dead pig instead of on one another. That would come later, I supposed. In the meantime, this sublimation was probably a good thing from everybody’s point of view but the pig’s. So there was only the gnawing of teeth, the sucking of bottles, the lickin
g of lips, the discreet burp, the sated sigh.

  Judy belched once, politely, behind her hand, and made an attempt to be civil. “Did you ever know about this place, Miss Rose?”

  “Heard about it, is all,” was the reply from the short, squat figure beside me. I could barely see her, and she wasn’t any more than three feet away. “Never been here before, though. It’s mighty fine, Judy.”

  “Yes, indeedy,” I murmured.

  On the other side of me, in the dark, Lilly giggled.

  Laddy belched loud and long and impolitely.

  And somebody shot the bug light out.

  The second shot killed Judy Benet, but not immediately, not before she had a chance to say to her weeping son, “Tell Slight I said for him to tell you the truth.”

  PART IV

  Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie

  35

  The Albuquerque, New Mexico, airport was a warm and brilliantly sunny place in the late afternoon of the late October day on which I landed there. The wings of the Boeing 727 wobbled as we came down, and the plane bounced rather than slid to a stop. I struggled through what seemed to be endless construction of the earth-toned, tiled airport and caught the shuttle north to Santa Fe. During the hour-long trip past arid, rolling Indian land, I had some time to think.

  It was Thursday, the day after Judy Benet was murdered, almost a week following her brother’s death, and the first time in twenty-four hours that I’d been alone and awake at the same time.

  First, there had been the desperate battle to pump oxygen and life back into Judy Benet as she lay bleeding into the Texas dirt. Then there was the wild fight to keep Laddy from driving Miss Rose’s Lincoln off into the night to track down and kill the phantom who murdered his mother. It was far more likely that Laddy would be killed, the rest of us felt, and so even the gas station owner helped us to restrain the boy until the local police showed up.

  Then there were the questions and the fifteen-mile trip to the sheriff’s office, and the papers to sign. Did we think it was an accident? Or did we think somebody killed her on purpose? How was this shooting related to her brother’s murder? We didn’t know. To her house’s burning? We didn’t know. Why hadn’t she reported the fire before this? Laddy explained that part, emphasizing the truck he said he’d heard, making it sound like arson.