The Other Oregon

by Steve Anderson

  Karen Callum strode in. She had long, wavy brown hair and a Barbie figure, but she also wore little makeup and a simple outfit of dark slacks with a button-down shirt.

  “Morning,” Greg said. “You must be Karen.”

  “Right you are, sir. Pleasure.” Her firm voice matched her firm handshake.

  Greg kept a smile on. “Your name’s all over this area. I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah, and so is cheatgrass, mister.” Karen stood over the table like a mom wondering just what two boys were up to. “Charlie here told me you were friends as teens?”

  “God, that was years ago. But, yes, it’s true,” Greg said. “Thanks for putting me up.”

  “You’re quite welcome. Anyways, I gotta be off.”

  “Nice meeting you,” Greg said.

  “Bye, honey,” Donny said and rose to give her a kiss. As he did, Karen kept one eye on Greg. He didn’t look away. She didn’t blink. The soft contours of her face would stun with a little make-up, he realized, surprised to find himself thinking so old-fashioned. Maybe she was sick of guys after her all the time. He knew that Emily purposely dialed it back when she didn’t want to be bothered.

  Karen marched out. Only when the front door shut behind her did Greg and Donny share that wide-eyed, almost-busted look they used to share years ago when telling a lie together.

  Donny’s smile dropped away. “That there’s about as close as we get half the time,” he muttered.

  When had Karen come home? Greg wondered. The middle of the night? Or had she been here all the time? Greg never heard anyone come upstairs to the bedrooms. He was about to ask but held back. Donny had always been touchy about girls. He had never wanted to hear Greg’s stories about sex with Leeann Holt, most of which were embellished, of course, and the recollection made Greg want to sigh. He looked out the window. He couldn’t get over how green it was here. In the distance, he saw white oval puffs moving along the green. Sheep.

  “Pretty, huh?” Donny said. “Now, how about I show you the rest of my ranch?”

  “Your ranch?”

  “Sure. It’s just an expression, ain’t it?”

  Less than an hour later, Greg and Donny stood at the top of a hill overlooking the sweeping expanses of Callum Ranch. The march up was nothing like riding a bicycle. Greg had to catch his breath, sweat trickling under his shirt. They had taken shade under a cluster of trees.

  “This out here? It’s all Karen’s, technically,” Donny said. “And a lot more.”

  “How much more?”

  Donny smiled. “Back in the old days, even the biggest rancher was still a rancher. He was out mending fences, putting down a calf if need be. Karen’s late father Loren Callum was that rancher. Karen, she’s the new breed. She doesn’t do any ranching. It’s all hired out. That’s why the property around the house is so spic and span. The trucks and trailers, machines, and whatnot get parked elsewhere. She’s the inheritor. She just oversees. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. Not t’all. She’s looking to do great things, building for the future that’s coming here.”

  The expanses of ranch looked to Greg more like farmland, with vast crop plots irrigated by a network of wheeled line sprinklers spraying, each spout its own mighty fountain. Other stretches had large cows and those puffy sheep. Ranching sheep was rare anymore, Donny had told him on the way up, a dying art that had given way to cattle many decades ago; but the Callums had stayed diversified. Widening his view, Greg saw a vast, elevated valley contained in a massive bowl. Hills and buttes ringed the horizon, and a narrow but sparkling irrigation waterway ran through the landscape, too evenly shaped to be a natural river. Donny pointed to a gap between two buttes. “Over yonder, between there? That’s your Pineburg Dam I told you about. Listen: Don’t you worry about Karen. She won’t ask questions.”

  Greg barely heard. His cooling sweat had heated back up, a slow burn rising up in him. Something about his silly, doily-smothered bedroom and now this grind of a hike had made him remember Wayne Carver and just how Donny knew that Greg was in town. “She’s not who I’m worried about,” he said.

  Donny smiled. “I have to be careful. I told you, feller.”

  “So this Wayne Carver guy is your friend?”

  “I wouldn’t call him that. Ole Wayne, he’s not anyone’s friend. We’ve worked together. Man, you gotta calm down.”

  “I’m all right,” Greg said.

  “What’s eating you?” Donny said.

  “You said Charlie Adler is reclusive. Said you don’t want to be known.”

  “You’re right, I did. Some folks aren’t even sure where I live. I didn’t say I was crazy. I have to know people, and some of those people look out for me.”

  “Because other people might be after you.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Okay, so why don’t the ones after you just arrest you or whatever they’re going to do?”

  Donny glared at Greg but in a forced way as if he was trying to bite down on something tough. He went for a walk around the tree, with his hands on his hips, and ended up looking out toward the gap in the hills where the dam was. Greg followed him over. Donny, staring out, said: “You see, they want more. That’s what they do. Always take more, these people. It’s especially like that with your successful men, self-made men like me. They suck our good blood. Oh, they’ll come for me when they’re good and ready and be sneaky about it, too, just like goddamn rustlers. Which means I gotta be sneakier.” He turned to Greg. “Just like you taught me.”

  “Me?”

  “You heard me” Donny’s head had cocked sideways. “Hey, you okay?”

  “I told you, I’m good.”

  “Okay, feller.”

  “Don’t call me feller,” Greg snapped. He didn’t mean to. It just came out. Donny had pulled back. Greg grinned to pretend he was joking. “I’m fine, it’s fine.”

  Greg’s bike was hanging differently on his car, all crooked, the rear wheel up high. His lock was on differently too. It had been unlocked, put back on. But not stolen? Seeing it like that made his stomach shift and twinge as if he’d swallowed vitamins without eating something. He eyed Callum Street. It looked as empty as usual. He checked that his tires were full, and he pulled his bike straight and re-locked his lock. He went to unlock his car doors. They were already open; they had been opened. A pang of paranoia hit him now. One of the rear seats had been pulled down, to reveal access to the trunk. He climbed in and went through his things, but all seemed to be where they had been. His little baggie of pot was even there.

  After their hike to see Callum country, Donny had driven Greg into town and dropped him off in a side street near his car, Donny saying he had “some things to see about.” Greg could go tool around a while. He had patted Greg on the shoulder. “You’re not leaving, are you? Just because of little ole me?”

  “No, man. I just got here.”

  “Good. We’ll see ya later then at the house.”

  As they had pulled up, Donny had chuckled about something. But Greg had only seen things were not right after Donny drove away. Had Donny been snickering about his locked bike, his locked rental car being fucked with?

  He would show Donny tooling around. He would find out things on his own. He drove outside of town, out beyond Callum Ranch, down twisting roads along a high canyon that took him to the base of a rock-rimmed ridge. He found the little turnoff that served as a viewpoint for Pineburg Dam. He stood against the car’s warm front fender and looked out at the concrete barrier filling the gap between the two buttes. He spread a county map out on the hood and followed the line of the Redpine River running through town. The river ended way up here at the dam. He had expected the dam to be bigger, like the ones in panoramic IMAX movies. Bonneville. Grand Coulee. This one was no wider than a small-town bridge, shaped more like a funnel than some great high mass of wall. The two buttes dwarfed it. A compact lake—Pineburg Reservoir on the map—pressed up to the dam, and a couple small boats floated on the dark, deep wat
er. Guys fishing. A water skier. Still, it was impressive. This sole, narrow, stopped-up bottleneck probably controlled the flow for a whole county if not more.

  He drove past the green and vast Callum lands, heading downward, then skirted town on a side road that followed the river where the land was brown again. The Redpine had once been far broader, even he could see that—the depression of the almost dry riverbed wider than his road at points. He drove on to the opposite, far side of town, with central Pineburg at his back and those two buttes just bumps on the horizon behind him. Here the road left its riverbed companion, sending Greg into barren land that looked like the set of an apocalyptic western, the earth tan and pale, laden with rocks and faded drier shrubs or gnarled trees that were barely trees. The dry grasses wishing they were cacti. Greg expected to see tumbleweed or a steer’s skull bleached by the sun. Some barns still stood, their siding wood kept alive with dark oils and tars rubbed into them, but every half-mile or so he’d see another abandoned shack or a barn leaning, ready to fall, showing more light running through it than gray siding on its withering frame bones.

  A store-bought sign stood close to the road. It read Farm for Sale. Greg pulled over. The land had some fencing, but there were gaps and the posts leaned in every direction. He wondered if this no-man’s land could have once been ranchland like the Callums’; and when a few scrawny and dusty cows appeared and wobbled in his direction, he realized it was probably true. He had seen more of these dead and dying ranches than barely working ones out here. He got out and stood by his hood. The air had the grit of dust and had an acrid smell—like dried-out insect carcasses, he thought. A usually clichéd comparison to a moonscape would actually do this place justice.

  The cows lumbered closer. One dropped down as if from exhaustion, letting a hoof get lodged underneath itself. He heard a thumping at his back from the other direction across the road. A cow stumbled its way through a gap in the fence and came right for him, and he jumped out of the way as it crossed the road. Slobbering, swaying, the cow clip-clopped and pushed through a hole in the fence opposite. It dropped down in the barren field there and lay on its side. Greg walked over and stood at the fence. The cow let out a nervous moo as if to say, I’m still alive, so there, but please don’t fuck with me anymore than I’m already being fucked with.

  “You thirsty, buddy?” Greg muttered.

  The cow lifted its chin high, held it there, and released a resounding blare of a snort.

  14

  Donny Wilkie didn’t do much hating, but he really hated this goddamn room of Wayne Carver’s. Wayne called it his den. Donny usually liked dens, a man cave some called them, but not one like this all done up in the style of Wayne Carver. Wayne always kept his shades drawn and his drapes to boot, so that it always seemed like they were huddling in some dark underground bunker after the Armageddon. The guy didn’t even have a reason like Donny did. What had Wayne done except fake a half-ass job at his daddy’s farm store and prance around with his open carry and his militia shit in his head all the time like some war reenactor going berserk? The man was not right in the head. Plus it smelled damp stale in here, like a fridge going warm. Donny really did not know how long he could put up with this charade, his acting like he gave a shit just so he could go on being called Charlie Adler. There was one plus to the darkness though. It made it harder to make out all of Wayne’s weird and antique guns on racks, all the animal heads, the loads of military collectibles—medals and plates and spiked helmets—from who knew where, probably some other creepy dog’s creepy-ass den. Donny had expected more Nazi crap from Wayne, but those were probably in an actual underground bunker Wayne had locked up tight somewhere along with the real high-speed advanced weaponry. Donny didn’t want to know about it. He just wanted to do this meeting and be done with it, get back to living and getting by, and staying free.

  “Why you so riled up?” Wayne said, his voice giving off that little squeak it got—and a smell like mothballs.

  “I’m not,” Donny said. He was. Of course he was. He sat across from Wayne, just the two of them with a small desk between them. Wayne had slid him a bourbon but it was the shitty stuff and gave Donny more burn in his chest than buzz in his brain. He needed a way better high for whatever they were sure to talk about.

  It had to be about Greg Simmons. So, good ole Greggy shows up after so many years, and he’s poking around. Of course Wayne would have his suspicions. The man didn’t even trust a tired old cow crossing his path.

  The desk lamp light was bright on their hands and faces, and Donny had to pull his eyes back out of the light or he was going to need his sunglasses in here. He had mastered a way of keeping a mask on no matter what, but a freak like Wayne could still tell. Wayne smirked at him, his bourbon shot almost hidden inside his fat fist, his face weighed down with so much shadow it looked like someone had dumped a bucket of clay on his head and patted it onto his forehead, cheeks, big jaw, and chin—a freaky mask of himself. Hell, Wayne looked like some psycho carny gone apeshit in a midway food truck and couldn’t stop eating. Donny knew a skunk like that once, in prison. Skunk didn’t last long. That wasn’t Donny’s fault then either, no sir. He had tried to warn that guy, too.

  Donny sat up straighter. “I just want to know why you got me here,” he added.

  Wayne, smirking again, slid a business card across the desk with one thick finger and left the card in the middle of the desk lamp light between them. Donny leaned forward.

  FBI, it read, and had a picture of a black-haired dude looking like a cross between Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez. The name was Torres. It had an address out of Bend, which gave Donny a little prick in his chest. FBI had a field office there. This Torres was no short-timer.

  Yet Wayne was holding on to that stupid smirk he got when something was not good, not too good at all.

  And then it hit Donny. It hit him as if Wayne himself had plunged his fat fingers right down his throat and squeezed his heart tight, tighter.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” Donny blurted. “This Fed was there too? At the gas station?”

  Wayne nodded, once. “We didn’t know. He was wearing a khaki suit, like some preppy. FBI wear dark suits.”

  “Sure, on TV they do. Fuck.”

  “Any case, we’d already up and started by the time we saw one of them cards.”

  “Aw, fuck,” Donny muttered, shaking his head. The shit was already weighing him down and this, this right there, was loads more of it dumped all over him. He pushed himself up from the table. “So they’re coming for us, then. That’s what this means.”

  “They haven’t yet. I don’t think they know exactly who did it. We had masks on. Besides, that brand couldn’t have hurt too much anyways.”

  “Stop. Please.”

  “We couldn’t get them hot enough,” Wayne continued, “on account of the propane.”

  Donny threw back the bourbon and wished he had a hit of kind bud and a snort to round it out, but Wayne was no good for those. “You branded them,” he muttered. “Degrees don’t matter.”

  “Oh, no? Ask a calf?”

  “No. Look: Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  Wayne’s smirk had wilted, and Donny thought he saw a rare glint of anxiety in Wayne’s eyes. “I guess I didn’t want to concern you,” he said.

  Concern him? Jesus Christ, this guy was messed up. Misplaced emotion, a smart guy like Greg would probably call it. All of them should be on edge if not holing up, Wayne especially, but Wayne was just going along acting like business as usual? Wayne was so damn cold about it. The man was either a sociopath or a psychopath, Donny didn’t know which. He said nothing.

  “If we go acting all strange, then they’re going to know it was us,” Wayne added as if he could read Donny’s mind. Which only reminded Donny: Whatever Wayne was becoming, Donny had to keep an even keel in front of him.

  “All right, that’s true. Well, I can’t say you didn’t concern me a little,” Donny said, sighing, calming hims
elf, getting back into his best Charlie Adler mode. “Pulling a cruel stunt like you did, it’s just not right.”

  “You can’t call it a stunt,” Wayne said. “You’re the one who gave us the idea.”

  If Wayne wanted to talk like a ten-year old, Donny would speak to him like one: “No-oh, oh no, what I suggested was, ‘you go and play a little trick on them, show them you’re not goddamn idiots.’ That’s what I said.”

  Wayne’s face seemed to gain even more of that heavy clay. “You shouldn’t make fun of us,” he said. “The regular guys, they look up to you.”

  Donny was in a tough spot here. Wayne needed to see that Donny was a leader, but he also needed a little caressing. Donny sat back down. He showed Wayne a softer face and would have even held his hand if he were a woman. “And you? What about you? Do you still look up to me?”

  Wayne leaned toward Donny, blocking the light. “That depends. You have to earn it. That means, you got to be loyal as leather.”

  Jamie, Rory and April sold Donny the usual baggie. Sitting in his new king cab, Donny watched the three disappear back inside the riverside woods. After meeting with Wayne, he had driven across town and, making sure he was on his own, steered into his secret spot tucked away on the back side of the old diner along the Redpine River. He fingered the baggie between his legs, soft, warming, waiting. Making sure those three were long gone. He had to shake his head. And to think that he used to like going to Wayne’s place, to the rest of the house at least. Wayne had a newer ranch house on the nicer side of town. The house belonged to his daddy, the mayor. The mayor who no one saw. The mayor who people voted in just because there wasn’t anyone else. Donny always figured that situation would work to his favor, and it had—the mayor doing less now than hardly lifting a finger. By throwing his hat in with Charlie Adler and the Callum name backing him, Wayne had more power than his daddy ever would. The freak used to be fun when he could have a beer, relax, throw a dip in. But Wayne had stopped chewing and never did drink much. He was nothing like the guys Donny hung out with before Mexico. They were all dead or running or in jail, a couple of them over in Iraq or Afghanistan; and he could just imagine what kind of rackets they were running over there using their shiny-ass uniforms.