Improbable Fortunes

by Jeffrey Price

  That was typical, Mrs. Mallomar thought. From her dusty vantage point she fumed in silence as she watched him steer his horse around every rock and bush—as if the horse didn’t know where the hell it was going. Yes, and as if she didn’t know where she was going. She got along fine before she met him. She even made some decisions on her own. Controlling bastard. She chortled at how the fat of his hairy neck folded back on itself like a shar-pei. If she divorced him, she’d get half of everything since 1994. He’d fight it. Marvin knew how to fight dirty. He’d probably bring up how they met.

  At lunch by the lake, Buster watched nervously as Mr. Mallomar sullenly picked the grapes out of his salad. Mrs. Mallomar, in the meantime, was segregating the wheat croutons from hers.

  “Didn’t anyone tell you I was allergic to wheat?”

  “It’s just four fuckin’ croutons. Don’t make a Federal case out of it,” Mallomar said, slapping at caddisflies as if they were yellow jackets.

  “Uh, would you like me to take a picture of you two as a mo-min-toe?” Buster said, noticing Mr. Mallomar’s camera.

  Mrs. Mallomar shrugged listlessly.

  “Why not?” Mallomar put his food down and moved closer to his wife who stiffened. After several attempts to satisfy Mallomar’s specific sense of composition, Buster was finally told to snap the picture. Unfortunately, after he did, he fumbled the camera and it fell to the ground. It would have survived if Stinker hadn’t stepped on it.

  “Jiminy. Sorry,” said Buster.

  “What’d he do?”

  “His horse stepped on the camera.”

  “Just as well,” said Mrs. Mallomar.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Mallomar.

  “It means…maybe I don’t feel so compelled to capture every sad, banal moment of my fucking life. Copy that, Bunky?” Mallomar just stared at her. Buster shifted uncomfortably.

  “She’s kidding,” Mallomar said. “Where can I take a leak?”

  “Men’s, to the left. Ladies’, to the right.”

  Mallomar blinked, not getting the tried and true guide’s joke.

  “Anywhere you please,” Buster said, by way of clarification. Mallomar couldn’t believe that something like that wasn’t, in some way, regulated. So to get things rolling, Buster walked off a discrete distance from Mrs. Mallomar behind a juniper where Mr. Mallomar joined him. Both men unzipped and when it became clear that they were passing water through disparate-sized equipment, Mallomar—the possessor of the smaller—felt the urge to compensate.

  “I financed a search engine, drlivingstonipresume.com. Ever hear of it? The IPO opened at four and an eighth and shot to sixty-five by twelve-thirty the same day. Six hundred and fifty million.”

  Buster didn’t seem to fully grasp the extent of Mallomar’s Wall Street derring-do. He just smiled pleasantly, shook, and zipped up.

  “Six hundred and fifty million. Ain’t that the number a Chinamen they got over there?”

  Mallomar just looked at him dumbfounded. Was he kidding? On the ride back down, Mrs. Mallomar complained about Buster’s horse’s gas. Then she complained that Mallomar had been given the good saddle. Not wanting to hear her whine about this for the next five miles, Mallomar asked Buster if he’d mind stopping to switch them. Buster politely obliged. They remounted and continued down the trail. Mrs. Mallomar had a light-hearted moment commenting on Mallomar’s jiggling love handles and belly. Mallomar smiled good-naturedly, but Buster could see his jaw muscles tighten as if he they were receiving electric shocks.

  “They have the death penalty here in Colorado?” Mallomar said, looking at his wife.

  But Buster wasn’t paying attention. He was leaning over in his saddle, scrutinizing tracks in the trail.

  “What’re you looking at?”

  “A doe and her fawn were coming down here this morning prolly headed for the lake. Now look at this here. A big cat cut their track.”

  Mallomar was agog.

  “A cat?”

  “Mountain lion.”

  “What do you think’s going to happen?”

  “Somebody’s gonna get et,” Buster said casually.

  “What did he say?” Mrs. Mallomar said, not wanting to miss out on anything.

  “We just found some mountain lion tracks,” Mallomar said, appropriating. “A lion. He cut the track of a couple of deer. Probably gonna eat them.”

  “Oh my god…does he know we’re here?” Mallomar looked to Buster. Buster nodded.

  “Oh, yeah,” Mallomar said. He enjoyed stoking her fear. It got her mind off of him for a while. “Have you ever shot anything with that thing?” Mallomar asked, gesturing to the Krag .30-40 in Buster’s scabbard.

  “Yessir.”

  “Mountain lion?”

  “No, sir.”

  “What exactly?”

  “Ev’r year ah get tags to shoot a couple elk and a mule deer. Keep some of the meat for m’sef and swap out the res’ for other things ah need—flour, saddle equipment…what not. Don’t need much.”

  Buster was telling the truth. It was Jimmy who wouldn’t stoop to eat game and preferred hunting with her truck.

  “You don’t use cash?”

  “Well, of course. Ever’body got to have cash!” Buster guffawed. Mallomar guffawed, too—looking at his wife to make sure she got the joke.

  “How much, if you don’t mind me asking?”

  “Beggin’ your pardon?”

  “What’s your nut? How much do you need to get by on?”

  Buster recalled from Mrs. Humphrey’s Manners for Men something about never talking about another fellow’s money. But he also didn’t want to make Jimmy’s client think he was uppity.

  “Well, my goal’s twelve hunnert.”

  “A week?”

  Buster leaned back in his saddle and hee-hawed.

  “No, sir, a year!”

  Mallomar just looked at him in disbelief.

  “Very interesting,” was all he could muster saying, “Very interesting.” It was as if Mallomar had been struck by lightning. How simple life could be, if one’s wants were simple. “What else can you point out to me?”

  Buster continued to point out the tracks of at least a half-dozen other animals—from chipmunks to black bears. He taught Mallomar how to tell the difference between a crow and a raven. He told him why ranchers didn’t mind having coyotes around, but happily shoot porcupines. Now showing off, Buster identified skunkgrass, pigweed, beargrass, and kinnikinnick. He lowered his voice with reverence when they rode through remnants of an old growth forest. And always the gentleman, he stopped to pick a posy of columbines, bluebells, and paintbrush for the missus.

  Mallomar found it peculiar that he did not take exception to Buster’s attention to his wife the way he did with other men. He found it even more unusual that he found himself—though older, smarter, and richer—actually looking up to Buster for some reason—even admiring him. As the corral came into sight, his heart sank. The ride was over. He didn’t want it to be. He looked over at Buster. He had his hat tilted back on his head, right leg hooked over his pommel rolling a cigarette. Mallomar chuckled to himself and shook his head. Only hours earlier, he had considered Buster an unalloyed idiot. Now, he was surprised to find himself wondering what Buster thought of him.

  When they arrived at the stable, Mallomar gave Buster a $200 tip that he’d folded into a packet the size of a stick of Wrigley gum. He’d seen a wiseguy tip the maitre d’ at Sparks Steakhouse that way and decided to make it his own. To Mallomar’s chagrin, Buster put it in his pocket without checking to see how much it was.“Much obliged,” he said casually.

  “That was a great ride,” Mallomar said.

  “Glad ya lahked it,” Buster said as he slid off Stinker’s saddle.

  “You, uh, never stared at my wife’s ass when it was slapping
up and down in the saddle. I appreciated that.”

  “No problemo.”

  True, Buster had not stared. The thought did occur to him, however, as to what it might be like to have sex with Mrs. Mallomar. But his mind entertained the sinful notion no longer than it took a grouse to flush and vanish into the darkened ponderosa. He wanted Destiny and a ranch. It was best to keep his aim steady on that.

  “Look at her over there,” Mallomar said discouragingly and pointed in the direction of Mrs. Mallomar. She dumped her bouquet in the horse trough then moved to the side mirror of the Land Rover to freshen her makeup.

  “She doesn’t get any of this.”

  Buster didn’t feel he should comment.

  “Tell me, what would you do with a woman like that?”

  Buster looked away. “Ah really coont say, sir. Alls ah know about’s horses.”

  “Okay then, what would you do with a pain-in-the-ass horse like that?”

  Buster pushed his hat up exposing a fine line of dirt across his forehead. It looked like the line drawn by a coroner with a black magic marker just before sawing the skull in half for an autopsy. And that was what Buster wished would have happened before he opened his big mouth.

  “Well sir… Ah’d bite down hard on her ear. They don’t like that.”

  Buster realized his faux pas as soon as the words launched off his dust-covered tongue. Normally, he spoke no more than a dozen words a week, but somehow being around Mallomar, discussing the Internet and showing off about his tracking skills, made Buster feel smarter than he was—like he had been given membership in a whole new level of society. In anticipation of Mallomar’s reaction, Buster reached into his pocket to give his tip back. But Mallomar just looked at him with no more expression on his face than a man wearing a brown paper bag with the eyes cut out.

  “You’d think a man with as much going for him as me…could find someone who loved him.”

  And with that, he turned and walked back to his car.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Restrained

  The Mallomars’ exhaust had hardly cleared from the air before Jimmy descended on Buster as he saw to the horses in the loafing shed.

  “How’d it go with them folks?”

  “Perty good.”

  “Oh yeah? What’d you make of the mister…dago or Hebe?”

  “Ah don’t know.”

  “Ah figgered him fer a Hebe at first, but ah changed my mind to dago. Both a those races’r bluebearded.”

  “Don’t talk lahk that, okay?”

  “Whatsamatter? He stiff you?”

  “He do what?”

  “Dint he tip ya, for Christ fuckin’ sake?”

  Buster tossed Mallomar’s saddle onto the rail and started to brush his horse.

  “Yeah, he tipped me,” he said laconically, patting his shirt pocket.

  “Well, cough it up. All fer one, all fer all, amigo.”

  Buster sighed and reached into his pocket extracting the two Benjamins. Jimmy snatched them, her yellow eyes popping.

  “Well yor a cool customer! Sonofabitch give us two hundred dollars!”

  “That a lot for somethin’ like this here?”

  “Ah’ll say! Ah reckon the sonofabitch’s queer for ya!” Jimmy laughed and laughed until she ran out of oxygen and had to quickly stick the cannula back in her nose. “Tell you what ah’m gonna do. Ah’m jes gonna take jes oner these hunnerts and you can keep th’ other if you take me out to supper with yor share.”

  “Ah already tole ya. Ah ain’t goin ta town.”

  “Did any of them say anythin’ ’bout yor face?”

  “No.”

  “Course not. That’s what ah’ve been tryin’ to tell ya. It’s all in yor head. Yor mug’s fine. So let’s go and have ourselves an openin’ day celer-bray-shun!”

  “Ah don’t feel like it.”

  “Okay, don’t wanna drag ya,” she said. “Ah’ll jes take the Ford and go get us a couple of steaks…”

  “Never mind,” he said quickly, knowing what that meant. “Ah’ll go.”

  Jimmy arranged dinner with Sheriff Dudival at the High Grade. In the hopes that he would run into Destiny, Buster spent hours bathing, shaving, combing his hair, and finding cowboy clothes appropriate for a night out.

  “Let’s head out!” She barked. “You’d think you were a damn girl the way you fuss ov’r yor ’ppearance so!”

  The High Grade Bar was the only place in Vanadium that had both a liquor license and a kitchen that cooked non-microwaved food. To this point the locals, out of respect, took great care to not tear up the place if they could possibly avoid it. If they had to fight, they did it in the gravel parking lot. Other than the obligatory initials, hearts swearing devotion, or the occasional swastika carved into the Formica tabletops here and there, the place was exactly the way it had been fifty years ago—unlike its two original waitresses who had not held up as well.

  Jimmy walked to the rear of the restaurant and slid into the back booth. It was her grandfather that insisted on sitting with his back to the wall for good reason. And Jimmy was never one to break with tradition. She signaled for the waitress to come and wipe off the table.

  “Be a good girl now and bring us a coupla longnecks.”

  She waited for Sheriff Dudival before ordering, Buster keeping his eyes glued to the front door for a flash of braided blonde hair. Quietly, the back door opened and Sheriff Dudival appeared, stood perfectly still, scoped every last person in the place then slid alongside her in the booth.

  “He allus does that. Learnt that from Grampie,” Jimmy said, with a wink to Buster.

  Dudival extended his hand to Buster.

  “Welcome back. I see Jimmy’s been taking good care of you.”

  “Yes, sir,” Buster said, not knowing what else to say. Dudival put on his reading glasses and perused the menu he already knew by heart.

  “Everybody know what they want? Tonight is my treat.”

  “You don’t have to do that, Shep. Buster’s payin’.”

  “I won’t hear of it,” he said calmly.

  “He got hisseff a big tip t’day. Let’m git it.”

  “I said…I’d…get…it.” He didn’t quite shout, but he pronounced his intention adamantly enough to set Jimmy back on her opposing scrawny ass cheek and look at him oddly. Buster had never been around the sheriff when he was in her company. Strangely, for all the talk about them being such good friends, he wasn’t really relaxed around her—or she with him. However, that was not always so.

  When Dudival was a green deputy and Jimmy a teenager, they couldn’t get enough of each other. Often, she would sit with him on stakeouts or join him with sandwiches at the speedtrap behind the John Birch Society billboard exhorting the US to get out of the United Nations. They giddily found themselves agreeing with each other on just about everything. Mayonnaise, good. Miracle Whip, bad. Segregation, good. Civil rights, bad. They both agreed that it was preferable to be shot, rather than stabbed. Property rights, good. Immigration, bad. The .45 auto, good. The 9 mm, bad. The death penalty, good. Gun control, bad. Personal responsibility, good. Welfare, bad. They talked about their dreams: his, wanting to get married and start a family. Hers, wanting to start a bounty hunter business. Never once did her dreams mention a man to share her life or the desire to have children—not counting her opinion of corporal punishment in public grade schools. Good.

  One night after the completion of their Sunday dinner, Sheriff Morgan took Deputy Dudival up to the roof for a brandy and cigarette.

  “You shared any form of sexual intimacy with my granddaughter?”

  “Beg your pardon, sir?”

  “For godsake, man, have you two done the business?”

  “Uh…no.”

  Sheriff Morgan took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette. “There ha
ven’t been very many women in the life we’ve led. As a result, she’s somewhat tabula rasa in regards to sexual role-playing.”

  “What are you saying, sir?”

  “You may have to force yourself on her until she warms to the idea. You have my permission to do so. That’s what I’m saying.”

  This kind of behavior, of course, ran counter to everything set forth in Manners for Men, but Dudival trusted the sheriff’s opinion and decided to take a stronger leadership role in making intimacy happen between him and Jimmy.

  The opportunity provided itself at the town’s Fourth of July picnic. Jimmy was particularly buoyant that day having won the Olathe corn-eating contest. Deputy Dudival put his arm around her shoulder like a congratulatory pal and led her away from the crowds down a path toward a stretch of willow-lined river. Jimmy, for reasons even unknown to herself, was getting nervous. Maybe it was the sudden lack of confidence in Dudival’s face. He was up to something, and she couldn’t figure out what. She took a step ahead of him—sliding out from under his heavy arm. He went to grab her around the hips, but she giggled and pulled away. The game was now on. Dudival dove for her legs, but she slipped out of his grasp and ran into the river. He followed after her, sliding on the slick stream rocks and catching a mouthful of water that gave him fits of diarrhea for the next three weeks. Now, on his hands and knees, he pulled himself onto the bank. Jimmy was on the other side of the river, her hands on her hips, smiling.