The Last Good Kiss

by James Crumley

  “What time is it?” I asked him. “Ten-thirty,” he said.

  “She should be here soon,” I said. “Let’s have a midmorning nip.”

  He looked startled, then reached under the seat for the bottle. As we shared the whiskey, I wondered how long men had been forgiving each other over strong drink for being fools.

  At eleven, when Melinda still hadn’t shown up, I hiked up the trail toward Selma’s place, Trahearne following at his own pace, ten steps and a halt for some heavy breathing.

  “I’ll go ahead,” I told him, “and warn them of your arrival so it won’t be so much of a surprise.”

  “It’ll be a hell of a surprise if I get there,” he joked as I went on ahead. Two switchbacks up the hill, I could still hear his tortured breaths.

  By the time I reached the clearing, my lungs were working overtime too. As I paused to rest a bit, I noticed a black splotch in the dust of the trail and splatters of dried blood on the rocks beside it, then I wondered where the dogs were. Across the clearing, the kennel gate stood open, as did the bank of small animal cages.

  I ran to the large cabin, but it was empty, so I ran outside and around it. A young boy was digging a large hole with a pick and a young girl knelt beside a pile of dead dogs and birds and small furry animals. Selma sat on the far side of the clearing, her back against a pine, a shotgun cradled on her knees.

  “What the hell happened?” I said to the boy.

  He started, then climbed out of the hole quickly, the pick raised like a club. An ugly mouse closed his left eye, and he spit blood between broken teeth.

  “You’ll have to kill me this time, you son of a bitch,” he said as he came at me with the pick.

  “Hey,” I said, holding up my arms and backing away. He didn’t stop. The girl beside the grave moaned and covered her face with her hands. “Hey, wait a minute,” I said, but he kept coming. “Calm down, son,” I said, still walking backward, “I didn’t do anything.”

  “You led them here!” Selma screamed as she stood up and pointed the double-barreled shotgun in my general direction.

  The boy with the pick glanced over my shoulder, and I heard the scuffle of feet on the rocky dirt. I didn’t wait to find out what the sudden inhalation of breath behind me meant; I ducked and rolled away, catching a glimpse of the other young girl as she swung the ax she carried. When it hit the ground where I had been standing, the blade glanced off a rock and the ax bounced out of her hands. She didn’t take her eyes off me, though, she just locked her fiercely calm gaze on my face as she picked up the ax again. There’s nothing like a woman with an ax to get you moving. I chunked a handful of dirt and stones at the boy with the pick, scrambled to my feet, and ran back to the trail, stepping high and moving out. The ax looped and whistled over my head, and I picked up the pace. Just as I hit the tree line, Selma touched off the first barrel, and shot dusted a small pine to my left. I dodged, and she got a piece of me with the second barrel. The edge of the pattern stung me high on the right side but it didn’t knock me down. It helped my progress, though. I abandoned the trail to leap straight downhill through the small trees.

  Combat at close range is the sort of thing you have to train for until you operate by reflex. Once the ball is rolling, there usually isn’t much time to think and just barely enough time to react. It had been nine years since I led a squad with the 1st Air Cav in the central highlands of Vietnam, and Trahearne’s Pacific war was twenty years beyond that. When I found him on the trail midway down the hill, we were two civilians scared out of our wits, as effective a combat unit as a couple of headless chickens.

  “Jesus Christ, what happened?” he asked me in a breathless whisper.

  “I don’t know,” I said, trying to think. “Go back down the hill,” I told him. “Take your car a mile up the highway and if I’m not back in an hour, go get the sheriff.”

  “I’ve got a shotgun in my trunk,” he said.

  “There’s already too many shotguns up here,” I said. “Just do what I say.”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked with a hurt look. When he remembered his war, he remembered being in command.

  “Going back up the hill,” I said, “and you get your ass down it.”

  “Lemme go with you,” he whined.

  “Move,” I said, then hit him on the shoulders with the heels of my hands.

  The big man went ass over teakettle, and I dodged into the trees, circling right over the lower end of the ridge and into the next drainage, then I dropped down the far side of the ridge about a hundred yards, and worked my way back up toward the clearing. If I had been in better shape, I would have gone the other way, uphill, and dropped down on the clearing. If I had had any sense, I would have gone home.

  Fifteen minutes later, I bellied up to the clearing behind the large cabin. Three of them were on the far side, peering into the trees beside the trail—Selma with the shotgun, the boy with his pick, and the crazy girl with her ax—but the other young girl sat on the edge of the unfinished grave, still weeping into her hands.

  Sweat poured off me so furiously that I couldn’t tell if my back was still bleeding, and I was too tired to crawl on my belly anymore. I stood and walked up behind the girl as quietly as I could, with all the cunning and grace and animal stealth of an old milk cow, but she didn’t hear me until I sat down beside her.

  “Don’t be afraid,” I said to her. “I won’t hurt you.”

  She fainted right into my arms. I lifted her in front of me like a shield, then shouted at the others. They turned and walked back toward me.

  “One more step and I break her neck!” I shouted melodramatically. She was so limp her neck might as well have been broken. The three of them stopped, then took a hesitant step. “Throw all that crap away!” The boy flung his pick to the ground in disgust and Selma sat the shotgun at her feet but the girl with the ax kept it on her shoulder. “You gotta throw it away, honey,” I said.

  “Don’t honey me, motherfucker,” she answered calmly, clutching the ax handle tightly.

  “Please, young lady,” Trahearne growled from the trail as he lumbered into view, “please put it down.” His face was fiery red and his shirt completely soaked with sweat, but he walked straight up, carrying the ugliest shotgun I had ever seen-^a riot gun, a 12-gauge Remington pump with an 8-shot magazine, a 20-inch barrel, a pistol grip, and a metal stock that folded over the receiver and barrel. I knew what it was because I had one just like it. “Please,” he said again.

  She let the ax head fall to the ground beside her tennis shoe but she kept her hand on the handle. I was willing to settle for that. Without their weapons, Selma and the boy lost their angry spirit, and their shoulders sagged like empty sacks, but the girl stood defiant and erect. She even managed to spit on the ground toward me. I couldn’t have spit if my life depended on it. I lifted the unconscious girl and walked toward the cabin.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” I asked Trahearne.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but wherever it was, it was a hell of a walk.” A grin brightened his tired face.

  “Let’s go in the house and sit down,” I told everybody as I carried the girl toward the doorway. They all followed like ducks in a row.

  “They came just at dusk,” Selma said as she lifted her hand to touch her swollen cheek, “came up the hill with silenced revolvers and began shooting the dogs. They shot the dogs and some of the animals and birds in the cages, then they took Melinda away.” She moved her hand from her cheek, down to caress the forehead of the girl sleeping in her lap. Her voice sounded so distant and hollow that the interior of the cabin seemed to darken as she spoke. “Benjamin tried to stop them but they beat him senseless, then one of them hit me when I tried to help him.”

  “I should’ve been here,” the other girl said bitterly, then banged the head of her ax against the floor.

  “You’d have just been hurt too,” Selma said quietly. “I’m glad you were gone.” Then she stared at me.
“Melinda kept screaming that she would go with them, go with them gladly, but they kept laughing and kicking poor Benjamin and shooting at the dogs.”

  “They shot the bulldog?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Gut-shot him,” the girl with the ax answered, “but he and the three-legged bitch were still alive this morning when I left the vet hospital down at CSU.”

  “They’re gonna be damned sorry for that,” I said.

  “What about kidnapping my wife, for god’s sake,” Trahearne said.

  “That, too,” I said. “For all of it.” Then I straightened up. “How many of them were there?”

  “Four,” Selma answered.

  “Was one of them a big dude, a Mexican with a pug’s face?” I asked.

  “They all seemed like giants,” Selma said blankly, “and they wore ski masks.”

  “You didn’t call the sheriff, did you?” I asked.

  “They said they would kill Melinda if we did,” she answered, “then come back and kill all of us. I believed them, You should have seen them shooting the dogs, the crows and hawks and the bobcat in their cages. I believed them, so I didn’t call the sheriff.” She raised her hand to touch her face, palpating the bruise as if the wound went deep within her. “What could we do?” she pleaded. “What can we do?”

  “I can damn sure do something,” Trahearne threatened, lifting the shotgun as if it were a holy ikon, the rallying banner for his private jihad.

  “Try to relax,” I told him. He gave me a foul look, then stood up and walked about the cabin, glaring down his puffy nose at the sleeping ranks of cats. Then I asked Selma, “Why did you jump me?”

  “We thought you must have brought them,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “You’re the only one who knew who she was—where she was,” she answered. “Why did you come back?”

  “She wanted to talk to me,” I said, “to tell me what to tell her … her natural mother.”

  “And what are you going to tell her?” Selma asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’ll tell her that I have climbed the mountain and seen the prophet, but all I know is that I’m getting too old for this sort of foolishness.” I tried a wry grin, and it seemed perfectly at home on my face.

  “You’re hurt too,” Selma said with a brief smile. “I suppose I did that.”

  “It’s nothing,” I scoffed like John Wayne.

  “Stacy,” Selma said to the girl with the ax, “why don’t you see to Mr. Sughrue’s wound.” She leaned her ax against the low couch where she sat, then walked across the room with a sheepish grin. “Stacy has attended a year of vet school,” Selma said.

  “I guess that’s good enough for me,” I said. “I was delivered by a vet.”

  Trahearne laughed. “Goddammit, Sughrue, if you were any more country, your feet wouldn’t fit shoes,” he said, then laughed again.

  Stacy peeled the dried bloody shirt off my back with hydrogen peroxide and professional fingers, then she cleaned off the wounds. The pattern of shot was larger than I had suspected, circling from the back of my neck to the middle of my upper arm.

  “I’m glad you weren’t any closer,” I said to Selma.

  “You haven’t spit up any blood, have you?” Stacy asked.

  “Not lately,” I answered.

  “Don’t try so hard to be funny,” she said. It sounded like medical advice.

  “How many pellets?” I asked.

  “Eleven,” she answered as soon as she finished counting them.

  “What size shot?” I asked.

  “Seven and a half,” Benjamin answered.

  “Steel or lead?”

  He had to go over and open a drawer to check the shell box to answer that. “Steel,” he said.

  “If you’ve got some sort of antibiotic salve,” I said to Stacy, “we can leave them in for a few days.”

  “I’ve got probes and some local anesthetic that I use on the animals,” she said. “I could freeze ‘em and pop ‘em right out, then suture up the wounds.”

  I looked over my shoulder at her. She had high cheekbones, dusky skin, and dark brown eyes. If I hadn’t seen her in action with the ax, I would have thought her a delicate type.

  “What the hell,” I said, and she went after her bag.

  As she worked on me, Traheame persuaded Benjamin to go down the hill for the bottle of whiskey. For himself, though, not for me. When the boy brought it back, I had a drink anyway. As soon as Trahearne took a second hit off it, I made him give me the bottle. I held it until Stacy finished working on my back. She put the last circle of tape over the sutures so they wouldn’t catch in the weave of my shirt, then she patted me on the shoulder lightly.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “We go get the lady back,” I said.

  “You know where she is?” Trahearne asked anxiously.

  “I know how to find out,” I said.

  “You need some help?” Benjamin asked.

  “Right,” Stacy said.

  “We’ll all go,” Selma said, and the girl sleeping in her lap stirred.

  It was a great romantic notion, a band of righteous misfits rescuing the princess, and I even thought about it for a second, but we already had enough troubles.

  “You been in the service?” I asked Benjamin.

  “No, sir,” he answered, then hung his head.

  “You stay with Selma, then,” I said. “Help her take care of things here.”

  “I’ve never been in the service either,” Stacy said with heavy irony, “but I’m meaner than any Marine in the world, by god, pound for pound.”

  “I can use you for bait,” I said, “but you’li have to be nice to a creep.”

  “That should be easy,” she said, smiling, “I’ve spent my life doing that.”

  “Are you afraid?” I asked.

  “Damn right,” she said, “but I’m too mad to give a shit about being afraid.”

  “It won’t be very pretty,” I said.

  “I can tell you things about ugly that would make your ears curl up in self-defense, mister,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, “you’re on.”

  “Take care of her,” Selma said in a quiet voice.

  “I’ll be fine,” Stacy said firmly, letting me know that she damn well meant to take care of herself.

  “You all take care,” Selma said.

  “This is what I’m supposed to do for a living,” I said, which made me laugh. I don’t think I sounded full of joy with the laughter. When I glanced around the room, nobody would meet my eyes. Except Traheame, and he looked infinitely sad.

  As Stacy, Traheame, and I walked down the trail, he paused to rest, leaning against a stone outcropping.

  “What are we going to do?” he asked, and slapped me on the shoulder.

  “First of all, we’re going to stop slapping me on the shoulder,” I said, meaning it as a joke, but he took it seriously.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Goddamn it, I haven’t done anything right since the war.”

  “You came back up the hill with that shotgun,” I said.

  “It was all over by the time I got there,” he said, looking up at me. “You’re going to need me, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “Particularly your plastic money.”

  “And what am I supposed toprovide?” Stacy asked. “Your nubile body,” I said.

  “Well, you ain’t gettin’ no cherry,” she said jauntily, then led off down the trail.

  After a wildly hectic afternoon down in Denver— renting two cars, buying Stacy a new dress and me a wig and fake mustache, and finding a ground-floor motel room with a private entrance near the airport—we put it all together in time for a freshly scrubbed Stacy, looking sixteen in spite of the twenty-four on her driver’s license, to be sitting in Tricky Dickie’s topless bar on Colfax when Jackson came in after a day at the office. He was all polyester and.smiles as he arrived for his vodka martini
and his visual fix of female flesh. Just as I feared, though, he had a hired tough with him.

  Stacy had been great—street-wise and tough. The bartender didn’t want to believe her ID at first, and when she bullied him into giving her a drink, he wasn’t sure he wanted a strange hooker in his place. She set him straight, then fended off the stag line until he believed her. When Jackson made his play, she held him off a bit.

  “Listen, man, I’m looking for work,” she told him, “not a party. No citizens, no johns, and no traveling salesmen, okay?”

  “What sort of work were you looking for, honey?” Jackson asked.

  “The same sort of work I was doing back East,” she answered, “until the weather got to me.”

  “The weather?”

  “The heat, man,” she said.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said as if he had understood all the time, “right, the heat. What a … what sort of work was that?”

  “I’m in the fucking movies, man,” she said. “What did you think? Hanging paper, maybe? Boosting groceries? Get off my case and outa my face, okay?”

  “Listen, babe,” he said as he sidled closer while pretending to wave his empty glass at the bartender, “I’ve got some friends, some business associates actually, who sometimes make movies. Just for fun, you know.”

  Stacy sneered. “Fun and profit.” “You got it, kid.”

  “And I guess you’d like to check my moves before you put me in touch with these friends of yours, right?” “Why not?”

  “Right.” She snorted. “Hit the road, man. You want a free sample, call the Avon lady.”

  “I, ah, don’t mind paying,” Jackson said cautiously.

  “A hundred for a half and half,” Stacy said quickly. “You look like the kind of john who’ll need it.”

  “A hundred!” he said so loudly that the bartender and most of the patrons looked around.

  “If you can’t afford the merchandise, man, get out of the store,” she said, then became very interested in her drink. I don’t know how Stacy knew to play him tough instead of giving him the hooker’s usual honey and promises, but it worked like a charm.