Carcass Trade

by Noreen Ayres

  I walked over to Monty. The lead guitarist’s fingers were slipping over the strings like liquid mercury. His floppy hat lifted with the breeze and his sun-tipped hair blew off his shoulders. When he leaned into the mike to sing, Monty said, “Fuckin’ great, inn’t he?” I agreed and swigged from my bottle, noticing Monty’s glance kept turning toward where new arrivals would likely be seen through the fence slats pulling into the parking lot, as though he were expecting someone. We sat through a couple of songs, while I counted and recounted eight quarter-size craters in the dust by a bench leg where ant lions had winnowed out their landslide traps. I kept wondering what Jolene was doing inside.

  “Where’s Switchie today?” I asked.

  “You interested in that flake?”

  “Please. It’s just Jolene’s here.”

  “Why don’t you go get me a new beer?”

  “Why don’t you go jump in a lake?”

  “Ain’t none around,” he said, looking for one.

  I reached over and pulled his shirt straight so I could read the red letters: Don’t Trust Anything That Bleeds for Five Hours and Don’t Die. He said, “I took it off Switchie one time he was snorin’ so bad the fleas were jumpin’ off so they could get some sleep.”

  “You want a beer, I’ll get you a beer,” I said.

  “Don’t put poison in it.”

  I took his cool empty and pressed it to his cheek like I cared.

  Inside, Jolene was seated at the bar opposite a lanky Japanese man. Her legs gleamed at the end of her cutoffs while her boots were parked on the footrest of his barstool. He had his arm propped on the bar and he was slightly smiling with one finger laid across his mouth the way shy people do, only I got a feeling that was not his problem. His impressive array of dermal doodling flowed up under shoulder-length hair and down his arms: tattoos of dragons and women in metal bras, spike bracelets, and blue-flame hair.

  As I was about to speak, I saw out of the corner of my eye, exiting from the rest room pocket near the game room, a tall, slender woman in a black ribbed-knit top and pale blue jeans. She had a wide and beautiful face with high cheekbones and wore her auburn hair in a thick braid, tied off with a puffy black hair twist with gold threads in it.

  Miranda Robertson!

  I held my breath as she looked my way. Then she turned. It was fairly dark in there, I still had on my shades, and she might not have recognized me anyway, because in the years she was with Nathan we’d talked on the phone several times but she’d only seen me twice.

  She stopped at the jukebox. One arm up on the neon, she read the selections, then dropped two coins in, still reading when Aaron Tippin’s voice filled the room with his banjo twang, singing about his Bloo-woo, Oo-woo-woo, Ain-gel. She went outside.

  Jolene had her finger poised at the Asian man’s belly where there was a puckered hole a few inches above the hipbone, hollowed like a second navel. She held there a moment, then drilled into it. As she ran her finger over the cavity’s edges, the man laughed and looked proud of his bullet hole. Then his gaze caught mine and turned to a calm, surveying one.

  Jolene said, “This is Brandy. We work together.”

  “You dry? Let me get you another,” he said, in a surprisingly deep voice.

  I showed him my still-full Stroh’s as the bartender came over, and then ordered Monty’s drink.

  The bullet-hole guy excused himself and told us not to go away. He headed for the men’s room.

  “Don’t worry, we won’t,” Jolene said. Then, to me: “Switchie’s coming. We can do somethin’, I don’t know, together. You up for it?”

  “What about your new friend?”

  “What new friend?”

  “Him,” I said, nodding toward the men’s.

  “Tish!” she said.

  On our way to the door, a man with white hair and a pinched cowboy hat with four toothpicks in the hatband raised his drink to us.

  I figured Miranda had gone outside to be with Monty. How should I act? I wanted her to recognize me, yet didn’t. If she did, anything could be explained, and this was broad daylight; nobody’d try anything funny here.

  And then I thought of Bernie Williams. He died in broad daylight, with a crowd of revelers around.

  Outside, I saw Miranda reaching into a man’s potato chip sack, withdrawing a clawful, then munching. I lost my nerve, set the beers down, and went through the gate to the parking lot.

  When I reached my car, Monty was behind me.

  He said, “What’s your hurry?” Wearing tennis shoes instead of boots, he was nearly eye level to me. “I thought you dug the music.”

  “I do. But I have a lot to do.”

  “You only been here twenty minutes.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “You’re mad about somethin’. Is it the girl?”

  “What girl?”

  “Your competition.”

  “I don’t have any competition,” I said, taking off my shades and giving him a squint. And then I said again, “What girl?” trying to draw him out.

  Monty’s head turned toward the front door. Around his ponytail was a red terry cloth band. “That one,” he said, as Miranda walked out of the gig yard, passing into the bar again.

  “I never noticed her.”

  “The hell. I saw you notice her. Come on back a minute. She’s somebody I want you to meet.”

  As if Monty wore a mike and Miranda was picking up the transmission, she sauntered out of the building toward us on cue.

  “This is Angel,” Monty said. “She’s been stayin’ with me while she gets her shit together.” He was telling me it was her clothes I’d seen on his bed. “Then she’s goin’ home to her rich husband. He run her off ’cause she fell in love with me.” He winked. “What she don’t know is, once a piece of scooter trash, always a piece of scooter trash. You got no choice now, sweetheart. This here’s Brandy,” he said. “Works for me now, what? a week?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  Miranda said I looked familiar and kept narrowing her eyes in memory. If anything, she was prettier than she was when I’d last seen her, a little living in her face by now, though her eyes showed a redness as if she were stricken with allergy.

  A man leaned out from inside and called, “You can’t drink out there.”

  Monty looked at the bottle in his hand, put a goofy grin on his face, and said, “It’s these girls’ fault,” and swept us along with him.

  An engine slowed, and gravel crunched. I glanced back and saw a faded red pickup pulling in. “It’s Simon,” Monty said. He handed me his beer and went to meet the truck, Miranda tagging along.

  Miranda’s crotch rocket was merged with the mess of bikes. Bluish-white flames on the tank and fenders were evidence of Monty’s handiwork. Gradually it came to me that the snapshot of a half face and shoulder on Monty’s refrigerator was of her, and I realized that even then something about it had nagged at me. I wanted desperately to call Nathan and tell him that here was Miranda in the flesh. But Monty had persuaded Simon to follow him and Miranda out to the farm to check on Paulie’s manure pit progress, and I sure wasn’t going to let her out of my sight. As she strapped on a blue helmet, she stared at me again, and I didn’t know if she was wondering what relationship Monty and I really had, or if she had at last recognized me behind the sunglasses, under the tinted hair, and after five or so years.

  As we headed out, Miranda followed Monty and I trailed her. Most of the time I couldn’t catch up to them, but I’d see their dim spots down the highway heading to the flatland. Behind me was Simon in his pickup, without his snake this time. He told Monty he’d left three turkey hens in one of Monty’s empty pigsties, that they got scared off their brooding by neighbor dogs and weren’t good for nothing else till next season, so might as well cook ’em up, is what he said. He also said he had a couple of jakes, year-old males, if Monty wanted to try for spur fighting. Monty had said, “No, man, I’m not into that,” and when he did, he patted me o
n the shoulder as if to say, Some company I keep, huh?

  31

  How I wanted to phone Nathan from the car, tell him his Miranda was in my view, how she was flying along the highway atop a jazzed-up softail, her dark braid trailing out from under a blue lid. But I didn’t.

  What I did was call the lab. I could talk hands-free because of the way the phone mike was set up inside the car. Simon behind me wouldn’t see me yakking on a handset, and Miranda was too far down the road to make anything out if she looked in her side mirror. Joe actually picked up on the second ring. I told him what had developed, and he yammered at me for being seduced back to the farm without some kind of backup. I said I hadn’t seen any of Exner’s backup since I’d been in this case. He said, “I know, baby. Exner’s an asshole.”

  “Like I said.”

  “Like you said. Just be cool. Stay awake out there. Leave before dark.”

  “Button up my overcoat.”

  “That too,” he said.

  Pulling into Monty’s driveway, I made for parking out of the way of his and Miranda’s bikes.

  A gray bird with a bandit’s mask flicked over the fence line to my right as I was shutting my car door. That was twice now I’d seen a butcher-bird near human settlement, and this is not his style.

  Simon pulled in, music blasting from the cab. He cut the engine but left the music on and sat listening to Patty Lovelace berate a guy who had a dead-beatin’, double-dealin’ heart.

  While Monty was getting a knapsack off his bike, Miranda went into the house, opening the door with her own key. I heard the whine of machinery and looked up toward the large animal shed and didn’t see anything.

  Simon got out and walked toward me, his pink shirt with large blue snail shells in the design fluttering around his thin torso and above gray raggedy shorts. We followed Monty into the house, Simon saying, “Pretty day, isn’t it?” Once inside, he went directly to the refrigerator, opened it, and stood there staring into the depths.

  Monty opened the leather knapsack he’d laid on the table, extracting from it a packet of green bills. He said to Simon, “Here you go. Buy yourself a CD player for that cage o’ yours, buddy.” The money, though I couldn’t see the denominations, seemed enough to do that and buy a new truck as well. Changing places with Simon just before the refrigerator door closed, Monty pulled out a cardboard caddy of Millers and a four-pocket cache of wine coolers.

  Simon picked up the money and said, “Dude,” in a reverential way.

  “A problem?”

  Sitting down on a worse-for-wear love seat, Simon spread out the bills on a coffee table before him. He said, “There’s enough money here to burn a wet mule.”

  Monty’s eyes smiled. “You want some of this here panther piss or not?” handing him a bottle by its neck. He offered me a watery red bottle and said, “Or would you rather have beer?”

  “I’ll take the cooler.”

  “Her too,” he said, and handed Miranda one when she came out of the bathroom, “won’tcha, Angel?” She drifted up close to him and gave two tugs on his ponytail as if ringing for servants.

  Simon said, “Man, it wasn’t that big a deal,” fingering the money, then seeming to check himself, swinging a glance my way, then back to Monty.

  Monty said, “I’m goin’ to look in on Paulie. Why don’t you come along?” He took the black pouch and put it on a top shelf in a kitchen cabinet. “You two girls get acquainted. We’ll be back in a minute.”

  Miranda asked, “You got any roll papers?” She was in a brown recliner, her legs tucked up under and her wine cooler a third gone. Only now did I remember she was supposed to be pregnant. I wondered how the baby felt, getting high.

  “In the back,” he said, nodding toward the bedroom as he and Simon went out.

  Miranda seemed to be gauging my face. “You party?” she asked.

  “Not anymore.”

  She rose and started toward the bedroom.

  Walking through the kitchen to a side door, I opened it and looked around. Bandit territory here. Within a rake’s reach of the house was the butcher-bird’s conspicuous cache of skewered prey. His open-air mortuary included half a mouse, a pale grasshopper, and a hunk of unidentifiable fur. Some birders say the loggerhead shrike displays his wares to attract and impress females, like little Gatsbys. Others say they’re simple hoarders. Whatever, it seemed easily appropriate to find the bird breaking his own law and flaunting his habits here.

  I got myself a glass and filled it with water.

  Miranda was back in the recliner, a doobie in her hand. The sweet scent of marijuana hovered. She had turned on the TV that sat in the corner, and a news team was standing beside a freeway while cars whizzed behind. But the audio wasn’t up, and so when Miranda said to me what she said, her words set me slowly down in the brown upholstered chair opposite her like a gentle but sure hand on my chest. She let out a toke of air and said, “You’re Samantha Montiel, aren’t you?”

  She offered me the joint. I considered a moment, and took it. In the present scheme of things, it didn’t seem like a deed that mattered. I wasn’t a sworn officer and grass had never put me over the top. But I’d definitely lost my virginity again. I drew the smoke in. A cupful of tacks made its way down my throat.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, unfolding one leg onto the worn beige carpet. The shoes were designed to look like full cowboy boots but were cut low just above the ankle. Along the sides were wavy insets of red leather snakes. I was glad I wasn’t wearing the boots Monty had loaned me, because I had the feeling they were hers.

  “Hanging out, same as you,” I said.

  “Bullshit.” Her voice was unemotional with a hint of rawness like Monty’s. “Nathan sent you.”

  When I handed back the joint, Miranda leaned forward so the Leatherette snicked, and the weight of her breasts stretched the knit top she wore. I thought of the surgery she’d had. Again I felt a wave of sympathy, and thought that at least the plastic was still planted and not the concern of some unenviable furnace farrier with scraper and wire brush. She inhaled again, the roach poised between two delicate fingers with unlacquered nails, and examined the stub as if wondering how it arrived in her hand. “Zacatecan purple,” she said. “The best, from Central America. Monty says it’s turbocharged. I fucked a guy for it.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that.”

  “You’re an uptight asshole like your brother. Two peas in a pod.” She reached for an ashtray on the lamp table next to her, handed it to me with the joint. On the bottom of the clear glass was a painted spread of cards distributed in a royal flush.

  Just a little suck and I handed it back. We sat saying nothing for a long time. In the back of my mind I was thinking about Monty, wondering how he’d react when he found out Miranda and I knew each other and what I should do when he did. Miranda toked again, and I said, “I hear you’re pregnant.”

  “And you’re wondering whose.”

  “I’m wondering how weird the baby’s going to be.”

  “Don’t sweat it. It’s gone.”

  “Mm,” I muttered.

  “Screw you.”

  “Did I say—?”

  “Fuck you anyway.”

  She carried the joint with her when she went to the front door, opened it, and looked out. The air was welcome. “I’m sorry,” she said, then closed the door and stood massaging one elbow.

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  Memory seemed to turn in her. She asked, kindly, “How are you?”

  “I’m okay. Losing plumbing isn’t all that bad. I forget what a Kotex is.”

  “Well, that part would be nice,” she said with a laugh. She returned to the recliner and doused what was left of the joint, and rocked in slow, tight jags.

  I said, “You helped me when I was going through the tearful part.”

  “I did?” she asked softly.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Maybe a little,” she said. “Wha
t did I say?”

  I made something up. “You said I’d be a lousy mother anyway.”

  The merest smile formed on her lips.

  “No,” I said, “what it was was I blabbered, you listened.”

  She thought about that awhile. “You’re still married?”

  “He died.”

  “Oh,” she said, with a frown and a whisper. “I remember now.” Then she sat forward and said in a rush, “I’d get in my car and leave if I were you. You don’t belong here.”

  “Why, Miranda?”

  “Because.”

  “Because why, Miranda?”

  “You were a cop. Your husband was a cop.”

  “So? I’m not now. Not for ten years. If I was a cop, what would I be doing doffing clothes at Monty’s and smoking a joint with you?”

  She jumped up and began pacing. “Just leave. I mean it.” When she stopped to gesture, her hands shook. “I’m telling you . . .” she said, then sat down again, a look of helplessness on her face.

  “What, Miranda?” She just shook her head. I went to the kitchen window, looked around, giving her some space. Then I came back and sat in the chair opposite her again, leaning forward. It was time.

  I said, “Who was the woman in the car, Miranda? Who had to die to take your place?”

  Her eyes grew wide and she gripped the armrests. The bones in her neck showed sharply. “You’re crazy.”

  “A woman turned to charcoal in a car registered to you,” I said. “Tell me how she deserved that.”

  “You are a cop.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Oh Jesus,” she heaved. “You don’t understand.”

  “What’s to understand? You put her there or you didn’t.”

  “Of course I didn’t put her there,” she whispered. “What do you think I am?” She pushed on the back of the recliner until it descended a little, and rested her head and shut her eyes, remaining very still.