All Hat

by Brad Smith

  He turned and walked out of the barn, stepping carefully over the barn cats. Dean watched his back, looking for some sign, but there was nothing there that he could interpret one way or the other. He turned to Paulie, who was scratching a spot between the stallion’s eyes, the horse nodding in pleasure. Anybody else, the horse would take a chunk out of him.

  “What do you think about our boy Jim?” Dean asked.

  “Jim’s a good guy.”

  “I don’t give a shit about that. I need to know if he’s on board or not. Is he really fixing lunch, or is he up there dropping a dime on us?”

  “How are you gonna get the stuff from the horse, Dean?”

  “I’m still working on that.”

  When they went in, Jim had a pot of beans on the stove and was stirring the pot with a big wooden spoon. There was water set to boil in an electric kettle. The kitchen was messy and smelled faintly of garbage that hadn’t been carried out.

  They sat at the table and ate the beans with slices of unbuttered bread and drank instant coffee. The walls of the kitchen were covered with pinups from the Toronto Sun. There were a number of empty Five Star whiskey bottles by the back door.

  “We gotta do something with that horse trailer,” Dean said, watching Jim. “Even where it is behind the barn, you can see it from the side road.”

  Jim kept at his beans. There was sauce in his mustache.

  “I figure I should give you some money up front,” Dean continued. “You know—for good faith.”

  That got Jim’s attention. He wiped his plate clean with a piece of bread and then leaned back in his chair to drink his coffee, his eyes on Dean now. “Yeah?”

  “I was thinking five grand,” Dean said.

  Jim nodded carefully, like the figure was at least worthy of consideration. Paulie stopped eating long enough to give Dean a glance. He never would have guessed Dean to have that kind of money on hand.

  “Five grand to keep, whether things work out or not?” Jim asked. Real nonchalant, looking into his coffee cup and talking like he was thinking about something else.

  “Either way,” Dean said. “I have to go pick it up, though. I’ll need to use your truck. I can’t be driving that Stanton truck all over the countryside.”

  After a moment’s more consideration, Jim got up and carried his plate to the sink, already piled high with dirty dishes. “You can run the trailer back to the bush,” he said. “It’ll be out of sight there.”

  Dean and Paulie parked the horse trailer in a thicket of Scotch pines, deep in the bush lot. When they got back to the house Dean hid the Ford behind the barn.

  “Make sure that horse’s got water,” Dean said to Paulie.

  “Where you going?”

  “I have to go round up five thousand dollars for Jimbo.”

  “How you gonna do that?”

  “Well, Paulie. You know how sometimes I just make things up as I go along?”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is one of those times.”

  * * *

  The roofing crew worked until after dark in the cold evening air, trying to get the last house shingled before the rain, which was promised for the next few days. Steve pulled the truck around and parked the front wheels on some stacked pallets to gain elevation, and then he shone the headlights on the roof. He and Ray finished the ridge cap shortly after nine o’clock; then they packed up the tools and headed for home.

  “That’s it ’til they get the survey over in Bolton ready,” Steve said.

  “Well, let me know,” Ray told him, and they parted company.

  The long day’s labor and the cool weather had stiffened the muscles in Ray’s back. He needed a hot tub and a cold drink. Approaching the Slamdance, he decided to reverse the order and pulled into the parking lot.

  Tiny Montgomery was working the bar. Ray ordered a dark rum and coke and then told Tiny to make it a double. His lower back felt like someone had twisted a knife in it. Sipping the drink, he turned on the barstool and looked around the room. The usual suspects surrounded the stage; Ray was happy to see no one he knew. He didn’t much feel like conversation.

  Tiny walked over during a lull in the bar business, a cup of coffee in his beefy hand. “Ain’t that a corker about that horse of Stanton’s?”

  “Yeah. Tough break for Sonny.”

  “Right. That fucking Dean, he’s got more balls than I ever figured. More balls than brains, way I see it. Rumor has it they’re in Kentucky.”

  “I heard.”

  “What do you suppose they’re gonna do with the horse?”

  “I don’t know,” Ray said. “But if it was me, I’d set the horse free and run for the hills. If Jackson Jones gets hold of Dean, he’ll be the newest gelding in the barn.”

  A waitress came up with an order, and Tiny moved to serve her. Ray drank off the rum and left. Outside he got into his car and started the engine. Almost immediately there was a rap on the passenger window, and the door opened. Dean Caldwell looked in.

  “Ray, it’s just me. Got a minute?”

  Ray looked over in surprise as Dean closed the door. Dean shot a quick look over his shoulder, a clandestine move out of a spy movie. Ray was inclined to smile in spite of the pain in his back.

  “Well, if it ain’t the world-famous horse rustler,” he said.

  “Don’t be nervous,” Dean began.

  “Why would I be nervous?”

  “Well … I just want to talk a minute. I got a proposition for you.”

  Ray lit a cigarette and put the match in the ashtray. “I thought you were supposed to be in Kentucky.”

  Dean grinned like a kid who’d just tied his shoes for the first time. “That’s what you’re supposed to think. The cops too. If they figure I’m down in the States, they won’t be looking for me here. I’m not as dumb as you think.”

  “Be something if you were. What do you want with me?”

  “I got to raise some money. Quick. I got a business proposition for you and your buddy, Pete whatshisname.”

  “Culpepper, that’s his name.”

  “All right. He said he’s got a couple of broodmares, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, how would he like to breed those mares to the best four-year-old in the country?” Dean paused dramatically, then tossed in the kicker. “For twenty-five hundred apiece? What would the old boy say to that?”

  “He’d pass.”

  “Yeah, right.” But then Dean saw that Ray was serious. “What do you mean, he’d pass?”

  “It’s not your horse. Pete Culpepper wouldn’t go near it. And you couldn’t register it if you wanted to.”

  “Who cares about that? It’s the blood that matters. You can say you bred the mares to any horse you wanted. You can say you bred ’em to that nag you were running at the Fort.”

  “That gelding?”

  “Oh, he was a gelding?”

  Ray turned in his seat and had a look at Dean, in his leather jacket and his pleated pants, his spiked hair. Ray could say one thing: if you had to pick a horse rustler out of a crowd, it wouldn’t be Dean.

  “Why are you bothering me with this?” he asked.

  “I told you,” Dean said. “I had a proposition for your buddy.”

  “Then bother him with it.”

  Dean looked over his shoulder again. He’d been expecting a different reaction from Ray Dokes. In light of what he’d done, he’d been expecting a measure of respect. Instead he was getting a look that told him it was time to get out of the car.

  “I thought you might want in on this,” he said then.

  “Why?”

  “Well … because it’s Sonny’s horse. I know there’s bad blood between you and Sonny. I thought you might like to stick it up his ass.”

  “I’m on parole. I have to stay away from things like … grand theft thoroughbred. As for what went down between Sonny and me, that’s none of your fucking business. That’s been settled as good as it’s gonna be. And i
f it wasn’t, it’s highly unlikely I’d be enlisting your help anyway.”

  He dropped his cigarette out the window and then started the car. He looked at Dean again.

  Dean ran his hand over his chin nervously. “Now what? You gonna rat me out?”

  Ray hadn’t really given the matter any consideration. His mind, for the most part, was still on the pain in his lower back and the notion that he was at least temporarily out of work. He didn’t wish to disappoint Dean any further, but the fact was that the nickel-and-dime horse thief was pretty low on his priority list right now.

  “You gonna hurt the animal?” he decided to ask.

  “No way,” Dean said at once. “Christ, Paulie would kill me if I tried.”

  Ray nodded. “I’ll stay out of it. If you were as smart as you pretend to be, you’d hand the horse over to Jackson Jones, but that’s none of my business. You want to put a bee in Sonny’s bonnet, you go ahead and do it.”

  Dean nodded and opened the car door.

  Ray had a thought. “You’re not gonna try and set up a stud service, are you?” he asked. “How you gonna keep that quiet?”

  “That’s not what I got in mind,” Dean said. “This is a onetime offer, ’cause I need some cash.”

  “Then what do you figure to do with the animal?”

  “I’m gonna give him back. But first I’m gonna pull enough semen out of him to make me a rich man. Ever hear of artificial semination?”

  Ray managed not to laugh out loud. He put the car into gear, and Dean got out.

  “You’re a crazy sonofabitch, I’ll give you that,” Ray said, and he drove away. When he looked in the rearview, Dean was standing in the parking lot, looking like he didn’t quite know which way to turn.

  * * *

  When Ray got up the next morning Pete was already gone. There was a pot of coffee simmering on the stove, and Ray could smell bacon. There were dirty dishes in the sink. The newspaper was on the kitchen table, unopened. Ray poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down to read the news.

  On the back page of the front section there was an update on the status of the missing thoroughbred Jumping Jack Flash. Apparently, the police in Kentucky were pursuing some very promising leads. The FBI was now involved, as were the RCMP, and it occurred to Ray that it was only a matter of time before Scotland Yard and Interpol were called in.

  Ray put the paper aside and sat back to drink his coffee, thinking about the trees that would be saved if you took all the bullshit out of the paper and just printed things that were known to be true.

  He was frying eggs when he heard the truck pull up outside. A minute later Pete walked in, carrying the mail. He poured himself some coffee and sat down to open some letters. Ray slid the eggs from the pan, buttered a couple slices of toast, and came over to the table to eat.

  “You using the truck this morning?” he asked Pete.

  “Nope.”

  “I was thinking about taking some pine boards over to Etta’s and closing the end of that barn in, before the snow flies.”

  “Where you gonna get the pine?”

  “Down to the co-op, I guess.”

  “I got a dozen or so boards in the old machine shed, sixteen footers. She’s welcome to that.”

  “You’ll need ’em around here.”

  “No, I won’t.” Pete tossed the mail aside and got up. “And I don’t intend to haul ’em to West Texas.”

  Ray gave him a look.

  “I got the vet bill for the gelding’s leg, my tax bill, and my check for the corn all at once,” Pete said. “The money from the corn don’t cover the vet and the taxes. I’ve about made up my mind, Ray. I’m selling out and headin’ south.”

  Ray dipped the corner of his toast into the yolk of the fried egg, looked at it for a moment.

  “I can help you out with some money, Pete.”

  “It’s not the money. Besides, you ain’t even working now. No, it’s time I pushed on. I’d like to spend my last years in a place where I knew I never had to shovel snow.”

  He grabbed his jacket and his Stetson and walked out the door. Through the window over the sink Ray could see him head for the corral and stop there and drape his arms on the top rail. Ray finished his breakfast and then washed the dishes in the sink and put them away. He took some paper towels and wiped out the old cast-iron frying pan and hung it on a hook above the gas range. When he finished cleaning up, Pete was still standing there, leaning on the fence.

  Ray got the keys and backed the pickup around to the machine shed, and Pete helped him load the lumber in the back. Ray packed his tools in the cab and then drove over to the Parr farm. There was no traffic on the side road, and he drove slowly, taking note of the season and its hold on the countryside. The leaves from the hardwoods were mostly on the ground, roadside markets offered little other than pumpkins and squash and onions, fresh-cut firewood was stacked neatly along garages and sheds, and the cattle—Holsteins and Herefords and Angus and Charolais—were down to the last of the summer graze. People were raking leaves and putting up storm windows and fixing leaky roofs.

  Aside from the odd satellite dish and the newer vehicles, a man could drive down this road and not even guess what decade it was, let alone the year. It seemed to Ray that it was right to be that way.

  At Etta’s the tractor was still parked on the front lawn, the For Sale sign propped against the tire. It was a cool morning, and he could see smoke rising from the chimney of the house as he drove up the lane.

  He parked by the barn and got out and set up to work. He’d forgotten to bring along sawhorses; luckily he found a pair in the old smokehouse by the orchard. They were worn and a little wobbly legged, but they would serve their purpose.

  When he’d stacked the pine boards on the horses and ran an extension cord from the barn, he heard his name and turned to see Etta walking over the frosted grass of the yard. She was wearing jeans and a man’s canvas jacket, her hands thrust in its pockets. He could see her breath in the air.

  “Good morning, Mr. Dokes,” she was saying.

  “Morning.”

  Huddled in the coat, she walked to the lumber pile, looked at it and at the tools on the tailgate of the pickup truck and at Ray, who was sharpening a lead pencil with his pocketknife.

  “And what selfless deeds would you be turning today?” she asked.

  “Sounds like you got a bit of an attitude,” he said in reply.

  “Does it?”

  “Yeah, it does. I got some time on my hands. Figured I’d replace those broken boards on the end of the barn.”

  “That what you figured?”

  “Yup.”

  She sat down on the lumber, and for the briefest of moments Ray thought that she was going to cry.

  “You’re gonna have to find some other damsel to rescue,” she told him. “The place is going on the market first of the week.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my sainted father got drunk at the golf course two nights ago and lost twenty-five thousand dollars to Sonny Stanton in a card game.”

  Ray put his knife away and tucked the pencil behind his ear. He sat down on the edge of the tailgate. “You better explain how something like that could happen.”

  “Before I could explain it, I’d have to understand it myself,” she said. “But apparently there were plenty of witnesses—Sonny’s gang, no doubt—and everything was on the up-and-up.”

  “Homer’s not competent—how could it be on the up-and-up?”

  “In the eyes of the law, Homer is competent. Because I never went after power of attorney. I should have, but I kept putting it off, I guess because I knew when I did I would be admitting that he is…” She let the sentence trail off.

  “Okay. But you better get a lawyer now. This thing’s got an awful smell about it.”

  “You figure I’ve got enough money to fight Sonny in court?”

  Ray lit a cigarette, glanced at Etta, and then handed it over to her and lit another for himself. He
looked up at the broken and rotten boards in the north end of the barn. One was hanging by a single nail, and in the slight morning breeze it swung, hingelike, back and forth, banging softly against the barn wall.

  “What’s this about the market?” he asked.

  “If I’m gonna sell, I’d rather sell the place to a stranger than to Sonny. Then I can pay him off. There’s something else: my father has two other mortgages on the place that I never knew about. The total is about forty thousand.”

  “You put the place on the market, and Sonny’ll buy it. Get one of his buddies to put in the offer. How you gonna know?”

  “Aw shit, I never thought of that.” She looked at him. “Do you have to be so damn smart?”

  “First time you’ve ever accused me of that.”

  She drew on the cigarette, squinting against the smoke. He saw now that her hair was slightly damp, as if she’d just stepped out of the shower. Her eyes flickered on him a moment and then looked away.

  “Got any rich relatives about to kick off?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Nah, but there’s a dirt-poor one up at the house that I thought about killing. What was he thinking? Hell, he couldn’t play cards when he was lucid.”

  She let the smile go and stood up and took one last drag on her smoke before she dropped it to the ground. She pulled her collar up. “Maybe it’s just time to leave. Maybe we have no control over these things. It’s just the way it’s meant to be.”

  “I don’t know if anything’s the way it’s meant to be.”

  She smiled at Ray. “Whatever the case, you’d be advised to find another barn to fix. Or better yet, a warm place to sit inside.”

  “Well, this is the only barn I know of that needs fixing. You haven’t lost it yet, Etta.”

  “You gonna fix it for Sonny Stanton?”

  “No, but I’ll fix it for you.”

  She went back to the house then, and Ray got down to work. After a few minutes Etta came back out, wearing coveralls and carrying an old leather carpenter’s apron. She was wearing a red ball cap, and it took Ray, on the ladder, a moment to realize it was his old cap, from when he played for London. He’d forgotten he’d given it to her.

  “You want to cut or nail?”

  “I’ll cut,” she said. “I’m not much on heights.”