by Ed Gorman
Valerie had ceased touching his arm, his cheek. Valerie had ceased asking in a concerned voice Is anything wrong, darling?
This faint excitement, edginess. He’d been in high altitude terrain before. Beautiful Aspen, where they’d gone skiing just once. Also Santa Fé. Denver was a mile above sea level and Leonard’s breath was coming quickly and shallowly in the wake of Yardman’s vehicle. His pulse was fast, elated. He knew that after a day, the sensation of excitement would shift to a dull throbbing pain behind his eyes. But he hoped by then to be gone from Colorado by then.
Mineral Springs. This part of the area certainly didn’t look prosperous. Obviously there were wealthy Denver suburbs and outlying towns but this wasn’t one of them. The land continued flat and monotonous and its predominant hue was the hue of dried manure. At least, Leonard had expected mountains. In the other direction, Yardman had said with a smirk-but where? The jagged skyline of Denver, behind Leonard, to his right, was lost in a soupy brown haze.
The Suburban turned off onto a potholed road. United Church of Christ in a weathered woodframe building, a mobile home park, snail asphalt-sided houses set back in scrubby lots in sudden and unexpected proximity to Quail Ridge Acres, a “custom — built” — ”luxury home” — housing development sprawling out of sight. There began to be more open land, “ranches” with grazing cattle, horses close beside the road lifting their long heads as Leonard passed by. The sudden beauty of a horse can take your breath away, Leonard had forgotten. He felt a pang of loss, he had no son. No one to move west with him, raise horses in Colorado.
Yardman was turning the Suburban onto a long bumpy lane. Here was the Flying S Ranch. A pair of badly worn steer horns hung crooked on the opened front gate, in greeting. Leonard pulled up behind Yardman and parked. A sensation of acute loneliness and yearning swept over him. If we could live here! Begin over again! Except he needed to be younger, and Valerie needed to be a different woman. Here was a possible home: a long flat — roofed wood-and-stucco ranch house with a slapdash charm, needing repair, repainting, new shutters, probably a new roof. You could see a woman’s touches: stone urns in the shape of swans flanking the front door, the remains of a rock garden in the front yard. Beyond the house were several outbuildings, a silo. In a shed, a left-behind tractor. Mounds of rotted hay, dried manure. Fences in varying stages of dereliction. Yet, there was a striking view of a sweeping, sloping plain and a hilly terrain, a mesa? — in the distance. Pierced with sunshine the sky was beautiful, a hard glassy-blue behind clouds like gigantic sculpted figures. Leonard saw that, from the rear of the ranch house, you’d have a view of the hills, marred only by what looked like the start of a housing development far to the right. Almost, if you stared straight ahead, you might not notice the intrusion.
As Leonard approached the Suburban, he saw that Yardman was leaning against the side of the vehicle, speaking tersely into a cell phone. His face was a knot of flesh. Kaspar the purebred Airedale was loose, trotting excitedly about, sniffing at the rock garden and lifting his leg. When he sighted Leonard he rushed at him barking frantically and baring his teeth. Yardman shouted, “Back off, Kaspar! Damn dog obey!” When Leonard shrank back, shielding himself with his arms, Yardman scolded him, too: “Kaspar is all damn bark and no bite, din’t I tell you? Eh? C’mon, boy. Fuckin sit. Now.” With a show of reluctance Kaspar obeyed his red-faced master. Leonard hadn’t known that Airedales were so large. This one had a wiry, coarse tan-and-black coat, a grizzled snout of a muzzle and moist dark vehement eyes like his master. Yardman shut up the cell phone and tried to arrange his face into a pleasant smile. As he unlocked the front door and led Leonard into the house he said, in his salesman’s genial-blustery voice, “… churches, eh? You seen ‘em? On the way out here? This is strong Christian soil. Earliest settlers. Prots’ant stock. There’s a Mormon population, too. Those folks are serious.” Yardman sucked his fleshy mouth, considering the Mormons. There was something to be acknowledged about those folks, maybe money.
The ranch house looked as if it hadn’t been occupied in some time. Leonard, looking about with a vague, polite smile, as a perspective buyer might, halfway wondered if something, a small creature perhaps, had crawled beneath the house and died. Yardman forestalled any question from his client by telling a joke: “… punishment for bigamy? Eh? ‘Two wives.’” His laughter was loud and meant to be infectious.
Leonard smiled at the thought of Valerie stepping into such a house. Not very likely! The woman’s sensitive soul would be bruised in proximity to what Yardman described as the “remodeled” kitchen with the “fantastic view of the hills” and, in the living room, an unexpected spectacle of left-behind furniture: a long, L — shaped sofa in a nubby butterscotch fabric, a large showy glass — topped coffee table with a spiderweb crack in the glass, deep — piled wall — to — wall stained beige carpeting. Two steps down into a family room with a large fireplace and another “fantastic view of the hills” and stamped — cardboard rock walls. Seeing the startled expression on Leonard’s face Yardman said with a grim smile, “Hey sure, a new homeowner might wish to remodel here, some. ‘Renovate.’ They got their taste, you got yours. Like Einstein said, ‘There’s no free lunch in the universe.’”
Yardman was standing close to Leonard, as if daring him to object. Leonard said in a voice meant to be quizzical, “‘No free lunch in the universe’? — I don’t understand, Mr. Yardman.”
“Means you get what you pay for, see. What you don’t pay for, you don’t get. Phil’sphy of life, eh?” Yardman must have been drinking in the Suburban, his breath smelled of whiskey and his words were slightly slurred.
As if to placate the realtor, Leonard said of course he understood, any new property he bought, he’d likely have to put some money into. “All our married lives it’s been my wife’s and my dream to purchase some land and this is our opportunity. My wife has just inherited a little money, not much but a little,” Dwayne Ducharme’s voice quavered, in fear this might sound inadvertently boastful, “and we would use this.” Such naive enthusiasm drew from Yardman a wary predator smile. Leonard could almost hear the realtor thinking Here is a fool, too good to be true. Yardman murmured, “Wise, Dwayne Ducharme. Very wise.”
Yardman led Leonard into the “master” bedroom where a grotesque pink-toned mirror covered one of the walls and in this mirror, garishly reflected, the men loomed over-large as if magnified. Yardman laughed as if taken by surprise and Leonard looked quickly away shocked that he’d shaved so carelessly that morning, graying stubble showed on the left side of his face and there was a moist red nick in the cleft of his chin. His eyes were set in hollows like ill-fitting sockets in a skull and his clothes, a tweed sport coat, a candy-striped shirt, looked rumpled and damp as if he’d been sleeping in them as perhaps he had been, intermittently, on the long flight from New York to Chicago to Denver.
Luckily, the master bedroom had a plate-glass sliding door that Yardman managed to open, and the men stepped quickly out into fresh air. Almost immediately there came rushing at Leonard the frantically barking Airedale who would certainly have bitten him except Yardman intervened. This time he not only shouted at the dog but struck him on the snout, on the head, dragged him away from Leonard by his collar, cursed and kicked him until the dog cowered whimpering at his feet, its stubby tail wagging. “Damn asshole, you blew it. Fuckin busted now. Every one of ‘em in the fuckin’ family, ain’t it the same fuckin’ story.” Flush-faced, deeply shamed by the dog’s behavior, Yardman dragged the whimpering Airdale around the house to the driveway where the Suburban was parked. Leonard pressed his hands over his ears not wanting to hear Yardman’s furious cursing and the dog’s broken-hearted whimpering as Yardman must have forced him back inside the vehicle, to lock him in. He thought That dog is his only friend. He might kill that dog.
Leonard walked quickly away from the house, as if eager to look at the silo, which was partly collapsed in a sprawl of what looked like fossilized corncobs and mortar, and
a barn the size of a three-car garage with a slumping roof and a strong odor of manure and rotted hay, pleasurable in his nostrils. In a manure pile a pitch fork was stuck upright as if someone had abruptly decided that he’d had enough of ranch life and had departed. Leonard felt a thrill of excitement, unless it was a thrill of dread. He had no clear idea why he was here, being shown the derelict Flying S Ranch in Mineral Springs, Colorado. Why he’d sought out “Mitch” Yardman. The first husband Oliver Yardman. If his middle — aged wife cherished erotic memories of this man as he’d been twenty years before, what was that to Leonard? He was staring at his hands, lifted before him, palms up in a gesture of honest bewilderment. He wore gloves, that seemed to steady his hands. He’d been noticing lately, these past several months, his hands sometimes shook.
Just outside the barn, Yardman had paused to make another call on his cell phone. He was leaving a message, his voice low — pitched, threatening and yet seductive. “Hey babe. ‘Sme. Where the fuck are ya, babe? Call me. I’m here.” He broke the connection, cursing under his breath.
At the rear of the barn, looking out at the hills, Yardman caught up with Leonard. The late-afternoon sky was still vivid with light, massive clouds in oddly vertical sculpted columnar shapes. Leonard was staring at these shapes, flexing his fingers in his leather gloves. Yardman swatted at his shoulder as if they were new friends linked in a common enterprise; his breath smelled of fresh whiskey. “Quite a place, eh? Makes a man dream, eh? ‘Big sky country.’ That’s the west, see. I lived a while in the east, fuckin’ hemmed-in. No place for a man. Always wanted a neat li’l ranch like this. Decent life for a man, raise horses, not damn rat — race ‘real estate’ … Any questions for me, Dwayne? Like, is the list price ‘negotiable’ Or — ”
“Did you always live in Makeville, Mr. Yardman — ’Mitch’?” Dwayne Ducharme had a way of speaking bluntly yet politely. “Just curious!”
Yardman said, tilting his leathery cowboy hat to look his client frankly in the face, “Hell, no. The Yardmans is all over at Littleton. Makeville is just me. And that’s tem’pry.”
“‘Yardman Realty & Insurance’ is a family business, is it?”
“Well, sure. Used to be. Now, just me mostly.”
Yardman spoke with an air of vaguely shamed regret. Burnt — out, Leonard was thinking. Yardman’s sulky mouth seemed about to admit more, then pursed shut.
“You said you lived in the east, Mitch …”
“Not long.”
“Ever travel to, well — Florida? Key West?”
Yardman squinted at Leonard, as if trying to decide whether to be bemused or annoyed by him. “Yah, I guess. Long time ago. Why’re you askin, friend?”
“It’s just, you look familiar. Like someone I saw, might have seen, once, I think it was Key West …” Leonard was smiling, a roaring came up in his ears. As, in court, he had sometimes to pause, to get his bearings. “Do you have a family? — I mean, wife, children …”
“Man, I know what you mean,” Yardman laughed sourly. “Some of us got just as much ‘family’ as we need, eh? See what I’m saying?”
“I’m afraid that I — ”
“Means my ‘private life’ is off limits, friend.”
Yardman laughed. His face crinkled. He swatted Leonard on the shoulder. “Hey, man: just joking. A wife’s a wife, eh? Kid’s a kid? Been there, done that. Three fuckin’ times, Dwayne Ducharme. ‘Three strikes you’re out.’”
It was risky for Dwayne Ducharme to say, with a provocative smile, “‘No love like your first.’ They say.”
“‘No fuck like your first.’ But that’s debatable.”
Now Yardman meant to turn the conversation back to real estate. He had another appointment back at the agency that afternoon, he’d have to speed things up here. In his hand was a swath of fact sheets, did Dwayne Ducharme have any questions about this property? Or some others, they could visit right now? “‘Specially about mortgages, int’rest rates. There’s where Mitch Yardman can help you.”
Leonard said, pointing, “Those hills over there? Is that area being developed? I noticed some new houses, ‘Quail Ridge Acres,’ on our way here.”
Yardman said, shading his eyes, “Seems like there’s something going on there, you’re right about that. But the rest of the valley through there, and your own sweet little creek running through it, see? — that’s in pristine shape.”
“But maybe that will be developed too? Is that possible, Mr. — Mitch?”
Yardman sucked his teeth as if this were a serious question to be pondered. He said, “Frankly, Dwayne, I doubt it. What I’ve heard, it’s just that property there. For sure I’d know if there was more development planned. See, there’s just six acres in your property here, of how any hundreds the previous owner sold off, land around here in prox’mity to Denver is rising in value, with your six acres you’re plenty protected, and the tax situation ain’t so stressful. These six acres is a buffer for you and your family, also an investment sure to grow in value, in time. Eh?”
Yardman swatted Leonard’s shoulder companionably as he turned to re-enter the barn, to lead his client through the barn and back to the driveway. His patience with Dwayne Ducharme was wearing thin. He’d uttered his last words in a cheery rush like memorized words he had to get through on his way to somewhere better.
The pitchfork was in Leonard’s hands. The leather gloves gripped tight. He’d managed to lift the heavy pronged thing out of the manure pile and without a word of warning as Yardman was about to step outside, Leonard came up swiftly behind him and shoved the prongs against his upper back, knocking him forward, off-balance, and as Yardman turned in astonishment, trying to grab hold of the prongs, Leonard shoved the pitchfork a second time, at the man’s unprotected throat.
What happened next, Leonard would not clearly recall.
There was Yardman suddenly on his knees, Yardman fallen and flailing on the filthy floor of the barn, straw and dirt floating in swirls of dark blood. Yardman was fighting to live, bleeding badly, trying to scream, whimpering in terror as Leonard stood grim-faced above him positioning the pitch fork to strike again. With the force and weight of his shoulders he drove the prongs, dulled with rust, yet sharp enough still to pierce a man’s skin, into Yardman’s already lacerated neck, Yardman’s jaws, Yardman’s uplifted and still astonished face. A few feet away the leathery cowboy hat lay, thrown clear.
Leonard stood over him furious, panting. His words were choked and incoherent: “Now you know. Know what it’s like. Murderer! You.”
Emerging then from the barn, staggering. For he was very tired now. He’d last slept — Couldn’t remember. Except jolting and unsatisfying sleep on the plane. And if he called home, the phone would ring in the empty house in Salthill Landing and if he called Valerie’s cell phone there would be no answer, not even a ring.
In the driveway, he stopped dead. There was the Suburban parked where Yardman had left it, the Airedale at the rear window barking hysterically. The heavy pitchfork was still in his hands, he’d known there was more to be done. His hands ached, throbbed as if the bones had cracked and very likely some of the bones in his hands had cracked, but he had no choice, there was more to be done for Yardman’s dog was a witness, Yardman’s dog would identify him. Cautiously he approached the Suburban. The Airedale was furious, frantic. Leonard managed to open one of the rear doors, called to the dog in Yardman’s way, commanding, cajoling, but the vehicle was built so high off the ground it was difficult to lean inside, almost impossible to maneuver the clumsy pitch fork, to stab at the dog. Leonard glanced down at himself, saw in horror that his trouser legs were splattered with blood. His shoes, his socks! The maddened dog was smelling blood. His master’s blood. He knows. Something was sounding violently inside Leonard’s ribcage. Had to think clearly: had to overcome the faintness gathering in his brain. Calling “Kaspar! Come here!” but the wily dog scrambled into the front seat. Awkwardly Leonard climbed into the rear of the vehicle, tried to po
sition the pitchfork to strike at the dog, thrusting the implement but catching only the back of the leather seat in the prongs as the furious barking seemed to grow even louder. Leaning over the front seat trying to lunge at the dog, cursing the dog as Yardman had cursed the dog half-sobbing in frustration, rage, despair as somehow, in an instant, the dog managed to sink his teeth into Leonard’s wrist and Leonard cried out in surprise and pain and hurriedly climbed out of the Suburban dragging the pitchfork with him. In the driveway that seemed to be tilting beneath him he stared confounded at his torn and bleeding flesh, that throbbed with pain — a dog bite? Had someone’s dog attacked him?
Glanced up to see a pickup approaching on the bumpy lane. A man wearing a cowboy hat in the driver’s seat, a woman beside him. Their quizzical smiles had turned into stares, as they took in the pitchfork in Leonard’s hands. A man’s voice called, “Mister? You in need of help?”
JOYCE CAROL OATES’S most recent works include the novel My Sister, My Love and co — editing The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor in Humanities at Princeton University.
Between the Dark and the Daylight
BY TOM PICCIRILLI
His face was so anguished it was writhing. That was Frank Bradley the first time I saw him, about sixty feet off the ground.
His feet twined above me while we both dangled from the safety-line ropes. His forlorn moans echoed across the front-range hills, and he’d bitten through his bottom lip. Blood misted on the wind and flew down against my forehead.
The balloon smacked broadside into a pine tree and shook the other two guys on the ropes loose. Neither of them screamed on their way down. One landed on his back, and the impact drove him three feet underground. The other smacked a boulder that shattered his pelvis, severed his spinal column, and saved his life. He pinwheeled off the rock and came to rest on his face along the dog walk, in front of an elderly woman clutching a Pomeranian. I held on, just like Frank Bradley, who shrieked at me, “Don’t let go! My son, my boy! Johnny!”
