The Best American Short Stories 2015

by T. C. Boyle

  “Yes, very good, thanks.”

  “Put it away in an awful hurry. Out to Larsen’s?”

  “No, I was there yesterday. Bred heifers. They held everything back.”

  “They’re big on next year. I wonder if it’ll do them any good.”

  “They’re still here, ain’t they? I’m headed for Jorgensen’s. Big day.”

  Two of the ranchers had finished eating and, Stetsons on the back of their heads, chairs tilted, they picked their teeth with the corners of their menus. As David put his wallet in his pocket and headed for the door, he realized he was being followed. He didn’t turn until he was halfway across the parking lot. When he did, the gun was in his stomach and his new friend was smiling at him. “Name’s Ray. Where’s your outfit?”

  Ray had a long, narrow face and tightly marcelled dirty-blond hair that fell low on his forehead.

  “Are you robbing me?”

  “I need a ride.”

  Ray got in the front seat of David’s car, tucked the gun in his pants, and pulled his shirt over the top of it, a blue terry-cloth shirt with a large breast pocket that contained a pocket liner and a number of ballpoint pens. The flap of the pocket liner said “Powell Savings, Modesto, CA.”

  “Nice car. What’re all the files in back for?”

  “Breeding records—cattle-breeding records.”

  “Mind?” He picked up David’s cell phone and, without waiting for an answer, tapped in a number. In a moment, his voice changed to an intimate murmur. “I’m there, or almost there—” Covering the mouthpiece, he pointed to the intersection. “Take that one right there.” David turned east. “I got it wrote down someplace, East 200, North 13, but give it to me again, my angel. Or I can call you as we get closer. OK, a friend’s giving me a lift.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Your name?”

  “David.”

  “David from?”

  “Reed Point.”

  “Yeah, great guy I knew back in Reed Place.”

  “Reed Point.”

  “I mean, Reed Point. Left the Beamer for an oil change, and Dave said he was headed this way. Wouldn’t even let me split the gas. So, OK, just leaving Jordan. How much longer, Morsel? Two hours! Are you fucking kidding? OK, OK, two hours. I’m just anxious to see you, baby, not being short with you at all.”

  Lifting his eyes to the empty miles of sagebrush, Ray snapped the cell phone shut and said, sighing, “Two fucking hours.” If it weren’t for the gun in his pants, he could have been any other aging lovebird. He turned the radio on briefly. Swap Shop was on the air: “Broken refrigerator suitable for a smoker.” Babies bawling in the background. He turned it off. David was trying to guess who Ray might really be—that is, if he was a fugitive from the law, someone he could bring to justice, in exchange for fame or some kind of reward, something good for business. He had tried everything he could to enhance his cattle-insemination business, even refrigerator magnets with his face on them that said “Don’t go bust shipping dries.”

  He asked, “Ray, do you feel like telling me what this is all about?”

  “Sure, Dave. It’s all about you doing as you’re told.”

  “I see. And I’m taking you somewhere, am I?”

  “Uh-huh, and staying as needed. Jesus Christ, if this isn’t the ugliest country I ever seen.”

  “How did you pick me?”

  “I picked your car. You were a throw-in. I hadn’t took you along you’d’ve reported your car stolen. This way you still got it. It’s a win-win. The lucky thing for you is you’re my partner now. And you wanna pick up the tempo here? You’re driving like my grandma.”

  “This isn’t a great road. Deer jump out on it all the time. My cousin had one come through the windshield on him.”

  “Fuckin’ pin it or I’ll drive it like I did steal it.”

  David sped up slightly. This seemed to placate Ray and he slumped by the window and stared at the landscape going by. They passed an old pickup truck, traveling in the opposite direction, a dead animal in the back with one upright leg trailing an American flag.

  After they’d driven for nearly two hours, mostly in silence, a light tail-dragger aircraft with red-and-white-banded wings flew just overhead and landed on the road in front of them. The pilot climbed out and shuffled toward the car. David rolled down his window, and a lean, weathered face under a sweat-stained cowboy hat looked in. “You missed your turn,” the man said. “Mile back, turn north on the two-track.” Ray seemed to be trying to send a greeting that showed all his teeth but he was ignored by the pilot. “Nice little Piper J-3 Cub,” Ray said.

  The pilot strode back to the plane, taxied down the road, got airborne, and banked sharply over a five-strand barbed wire, startling seven cows and their calves, which ran off into the sage, scattering meadowlarks and clouds of pollen. David turned the car around.

  Ray said, “Old fellow back at the hotel said there’s supposed to be dinosaurs around here.” He gazed at the pale light of a gas well on a far ridge.

  “That’s what they say.”

  “What d’you suppose one of them is worth? Like a whole Tyrannosaurus rex?”

  David just looked at Ray. Here was the turn, a two-track that was barely manageable in an ordinary sedan and David couldn’t imagine how it was negotiated in winter or spring, when the notorious local gumbo turned to mud. He’d delivered a Charolais bull near here one fall, and it was bad enough then. Plus, the bull had torn up his trailer and he’d lost money on the deal.

  “So, Dave, we’re about to arrive and I should tell you what the gun is for. I’m here to meet a girl, but I don’t know how it’s gonna turn out. I may need to bail and you’re my lift. The story is, my car is in for repair. You stay until we see how this goes and carry me out of here, if necessary. My friend here says you’re onboard.”

  “I guess I understand, but what does this all depend on?”

  “It depends on whether I like the girl or not, whether we’re compatible and want to start a family business. I have a lot I’d like to pass on to the next generation.”

  The next bend revealed the house, a two-story ranch building with little of its paint left. Ray gazed at the Piper Cub, which was now parked in a field by the house, and at the Montana state flag popping on the iron flagpole. “Oro y plata,” he said, chuckling. “Perfect. Now, Davey, I need you to bone up on the situation here. This is the Weldon Case cattle ranch, and it runs from here right up to the Bakken oil field, forty miles away, which is where all the oro y plata is at the moment. I’m guessing that was Weldon in the airplane. I met Weldon’s daughter, Morsel, through a dating service. Well, we haven’t actually met in real time, but we’re about to. Morsel thinks she loves me, and we’re just gonna have to see about that. All you have to know is that Morsel thinks I’m an Audi dealer from Simi Valley, California. She’s going on one photograph of me standing in front of an Audi flagship that did not belong to me. You decide you want to help, and you may see more walkin’-around money than you’re used to. If you don’t, well, you’ve seen how I put my wishes into effect.” He patted the bulge under his shirt. “I just whistle a happy tune and start shooting.”

  David pulled up under the gaze of Weldon Case, who had emerged from the plane. When he rolled down the window to greet the old man again, Case just stared, then turned to call out to the house. “It’s the cowboy way,” Ray muttered through an insincere smile. “Or else he’s retarded. Dave, ask him if he remembers falling out of his high chair.”

  As they got out of the car, Morsel appeared on the front step and inquired, in a penetrating contralto, “Which one is it?” Ray raised his hands and tilted his head to one side, as though modestly questioning himself. David noted that the gun was inadequately concealed and turned quickly to shake Weldon Case’s hand. It was like seizing a plank.

  “You’re looking at him,” Ray called out to Morsel.

  “Oh, Christ,” she yelled. “Is this what I get?” It was hard to say whether this was a positive response or
not. Morsel was a scale model of her father, wind-weathered and, if anything, less feminine. Her view of the situation was quickly clarified as she raced forward to embrace Ray, whose look of suave detachment was briefly interrupted by fear. A tooth was missing, as well as a small piece of her ear. “Oh, Ray!”

  Weldon looked at David with a sour expression, then spoke, in a lusterless tone: “Morsel has made some peach cobbler. It was her ma’s recipe. Her ma is dead.” Ray put on a ghastly look of sympathy, which seemed to fool Morsel, who squeezed his arm and said, “Started in her liver and just took off.”

  A small trash pile next to the porch featured a couple of played-out Odor-Eaters. David wondered where the walkin’-around money Ray had alluded to was supposed to come from. “Place is kind of a mess,” Morsel warned. “We don’t collect but we never get rid of.”

  As they went into the house, Weldon asked David if he enjoyed shooting coyotes. He replied, “I just drive Ray around”—Ray turned to listen—“and whatever Ray wants I guess is what we do . . . whatever he’s into.” David kept to himself that he enjoyed popping coyotes out his car window with the .25–06 with a Redfield rangefinder scope and a tripod that he’d got from Hill Country Customs. David lived with his mother and had a habit of telling her about the great shots he’d made—like the five-hundred-yarder on Tin Can Hill with only the hood for a rest, no sandbags, no tripod. David’s Uncle Maury had told him a long time ago, “It don’t shoot flat, throw the fuckin’ thing away.”

  David, who enjoyed brutally fattening food, thought Morsel was a good cook, but Ray ate only the salad, discreetly lifting each leaf until the dressing ran off. Weldon watched Ray and hardly said a word, as Morsel grew more manic, jiggling with laughter and enthusiasm at each lighthearted remark. In fact, it was necessary to lower the temperature of the subjects—to heart attacks, highway wrecks, cancer—in order to get her to stop guffawing. Weldon planted his hands flat on the table, rose partway, and announced that he’d use the tractor to pull the plane around back. David was preoccupied with the mountain of tuna casserole between him and the peach cobbler and hardly heard him. Ray, small and disoriented next to Morsel, shot his eyes around the table, looking for something he could eat.

  “Daddy don’t say much,” Morsel said.

  “I can’t say much,” Ray said, “with him here. Dave, could you cut us a little slack?”

  “Sure, Ray, of course.” David got up, still chewing.

  “See you in the room,” Ray said sharply, twisting his chin toward the door.

  Weldon had shown them their room by walking past it and flicking the door open without a word. It contained two iron bedsteads and a dresser, atop which were David’s and Ray’s belongings, the latter’s consisting of a JanSport backpack with the straps cut off. David was better organized, with an actual overnight bag and a Dopp kit. He had left the cattle receipts and breeding documents in the car. He flopped on the bed, hands behind his head, then got up abruptly and went to the door. He looked out and listened for a long moment, eased it closed, and shot to the dresser, where he began rooting through Ray’s belongings: rolls of money in rubber bands, generic Viagra from India, California lottery tickets, a passport identifying Raymond Coelho, a woman’s aqua-colored wallet, with a debit card in the name of Eleanor Coelho from Food Processors Credit Union of Modesto, Turlock grocery receipts, a bag of trail mix, and the gun. David lifted the gun carefully with the tips of his fingers. He was startled by its lightness. Turning it over in his hand, he was compelled to acknowledge that there was no hole in the barrel. It was a toy. He returned it to the pack, fluffed the sides, and sped to his bed to begin feigning sleep.

  It wasn’t long before Ray came in, singing “Now Is the Hour” in a flat and aggressive tone that hardly suited the lyrics: “Sunset glow fades in the west, night o’er the valley is creeping! Birds cuddle down in their nest, soon all the world will be sleeping. But not you, Dave. You’re awake, I can tell. I hope you enjoyed the song. It’s Hugo Winterhalter. Morsel sang it to me. She’s very nice, and she needs a man.”

  “Looks like you got the job.”

  “Do what? Hey, here’s what’s going on with me: I’m starving.”

  “I’m sure you are, Ray. You ate like a bird.”

  “I had no choice. That kind of food gathers around the chambers of the heart like an octopus. But right behind the house they got a vegetable garden, and my plan for you is to slip out and bring me some vegetables. I’ve been told to stay out of the garden. Don’t touch the tomatoes—they’re not ripe.”

  “What else is there?”

  “Greens and root vegetables.”

  “I’m not going out there.”

  “Oh, yes, you are.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  Ray went to his pack and got out the gun.

  “This makes me think so. This will really stick to your ribs, get it?”

  “I’m not picking vegetables for you, or, technically speaking, stealing them for you. Forget it.”

  “Wow. Is this a mood swing?”

  “Call it what you want. Otherwise, it’s shoot or shut up.”

  “OK, but not for the reason you think. I prefer not to wake up the whole house.”

  “And the body’d be a problem for you, as a houseguest and new fiancé.”

  “Very well, very well. This time.” Ray put the gun back in his pack. “You don’t know how close you came.”

  “Whatever.”

  David rolled over to sleep, but he couldn’t stop his thoughts. He should have spent the day at Jorgensen’s with his arm up a cow’s ass. He had a living to make and, if it hadn’t been for his inappropriate curiosity about Ray and Morsel, he’d already be back in Jordan, looking to grab a room for the night. But the roll of money in Ray’s pack and the hints of more to come had made him wonder how anxious he was to get back to work. There was opportunity in the air and he wanted to see how it would all play out.

  “Ray, you awake?”

  “I can be. What d’you want, asshole?”

  “I just have something I want to get off my chest.”

  “Make it quick. I need my Z’s.”

  “Sure, Ray, try this one on for size: the gun’s a toy.”

  “The gun’s a what?”

  “A toy.”

  “You think a gun’s a toy?”

  “No, Ray, I think your gun’s a toy. It’s a fake. And looks like you are too.”

  “Where’s the fuckin’ light switch? I’m not taking this shit.”

  “Stub your toe jumping off the bed like that.”

  “Might be time to clip your wings, sonny.”

  “Ray, I’m here for you. Just take a moment to look at the barrel of your so-called gun, and then let’s talk.”

  Ray found the lamp and paced the squeaking floorboards. “Taking a leak off the porch. Be right back,” he said. Through the open bedroom door, David could see him silhouetted in the moonlight, a silver arc splashing onto the dirt, his head thrown back in what David took to be a plausible posture of despair.

  By the time Ray walked back in he was already talking: “. . . an appraiser in Modesto, California, where I grew up. I did some community theater there, played Prince Oh So True in a children’s production and thought I was going places, then Twelve Angry Men—I was one of them, which is where the pistol came from. I was the hangman in Motherlode. Got married, had a baby girl, lost my job, got another one, went to Hawaii as a steward on a yacht belonging to a movie star, who was working at a snow-cone stand a year before the yacht, the coke, the babes, and the wine. I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement, but then I got into a fight with the movie star and got kicked off the boat at Diamond Head. They just rowed me to shore in a dinghy and dumped me off. I hiked all the way to the crater and used the restroom to clean up, then took the tour bus into Honolulu. I tried to sell the celebrity drug-use story to a local paper, but it went nowhere because of the confidentiality agreement. Everything I sign costs me money. About this tim
e, my wife’s uncle’s walnut farm was failing. He took a loan out on the real estate, and I sold my car, which was a mint, rust-free ’78 Trans Am, handling package, W-72 performance motor, Solar Gold with a Martinique Blue interior. We bought a bunch of FEMA trailers from the Katrina deal and hauled them to California. We lost our asses. The uncle gases himself in his garage, and my wife throws me out. I moved into a hotel for migrant workers and started using the computers at the Stanislaus County Library and sleeping at the McHenry Mansion. One of the tour guides was someone I used to fuck in high school and she slipped me into one of the rooms for naps. I met Morsel online. I told her I was on hard times. She told me she was coining it, selling bootleg Oxycontin in the Bakken oil field, but she was lonely. It was a long shot. Montana. Fresh start. New me. Bus to Billings and hit the road. I made it to Jordan, and I had nothing left. The clerk at that fleabag barely let me have a room. I told him I was there for the comets. I don’t know where I come up with that. Breakfast at the café was my last dime and no tip. I had to make a move. So what happens now? You bust me with Morsel? You turn me in? Or you join us?”

  “You pretty sure on the business end of this thing?” David asked, with a coldness that surprised him.

  “A hundred percent, but Morsel’s got issues with other folks already in it. There’s some risk, but when isn’t there, with stakes like this? Think about it, Dave. If you’re at all interested in getting rich, you tell me.”

  Ray was soon snoring. David was intrigued that all these revelations failed to disturb his sleep. He himself was wide awake, brooding over how colorless his own life was in comparison with Ray’s. Ray was a con man and a failure, but what had he ever done? Finish high school? High school had been anguish, persecution, and suffering, but even in that he was unexceptional. He’d never had sex with a mansion tour guide. He’d had sex with a fat girl he disliked. Then the National Guard. Fort Harrison in the winter. Cleaning billets. Inventorying ammunition. Unskilled maintenance on UH-60 Blackhawks. Praying for deployment against worldwide towel heads. A commanding officer who told the recruits that the president of the United States was “a pencil-wristed twat.” Girlfriend fatter every time he went home. He still lived with his mother. Was still buying his dope from the same guy at the body shop he’d got it from in the eighth grade.