Improbable Fortunes

by Jeffrey Price

  Buster, on the other hand, was miserable. His great beacon of manners and morality, Miss Humphrey’s, would certainly have not approved of his actions. Rumors were starting to spread through town. Even worse, his heart belonged to Destiny Stumplehorst and this betrayal—even though she had abandoned him for Cord Travesty—was too much for him to bear. He wanted to cut things off with Mrs. Mallomar. He really did. He just didn’t do it.

  b

  Five days of testimony and Mallomar was finally finished with the SEC. He returned to his apartment and after lightening his spirits with a Ukrainian call girl, he decided to go online and gaze at his ranch through the miracle of the Big Dog Ranch webcam. The interior cameras were still on the fritz, but he was pleased to see the exterior cameras were working fine. The grass was coming in nicely. He switched to another monitor. There were cattle at the edge of the reservoir drinking contentedly. He was sorry he had missed the branding. The cattle looked healthy enough, but he was a little miffed that Buster had not followed up on his aesthetic notion of hosing off the caked-on shit from their hindquarters.

  Before turning in for the night, he remembered that he’d placed a lipstick camera surreptitiously in the ceiling of Buster’s trailer. He clicked on the TrailerCam. The image was almost infrared, the trailer being lit by moonlight as it was. There was Buster asleep. He dialed the phone number and was already starting to chuckle when he saw another figure in the lower right side of the frame. It was a woman. She was on top of Buster. Her back was to the camera. She was bouncing up and down on his lap in a very familiar way that he couldn’t quite place for a moment—until it dawned on him that that was the way he’d seen Dana ride her horse up to Hope Lake the fateful day they all met.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Lightning Strike

  It was completely by accident that Jimmy Bayles Morgan had run into Lily and Lolly Longfeather at St. Mary’s Hospital in Grand Junction. The girls had driven all the way in the thunderstorm from the res in Cortez to bring their grandfather his favorite meal—which was a “McRibwich,” along with taco-flavored Doritos, homemade fry bread smothered with refried beans, farmers’ cheese, habanero salsa, and Twizzlers. He had to eat it before 6:00 p.m. The anesthesiologist would not allow any food after that because the old Ute was scheduled to have both of his legs amputated the next morning—the reason, advanced diabetes. Jimmy was genuinely saddened to hear this news.

  Old Longfeather had done some tracking for her grandfather back in the day, and had sent three of his young braves to Vietnam. For Jimmy, that put him on the righteous side of the anti-communist ledger. Longfeather was also a shaman and was said to have great powers. Longfeather was very much against modern medicine, but was forced to rethink his position when his toes turned black and the poison traveled all the way up to his knees.

  “How’s the old coyote’s spirits?” Jimmy asked.

  “Oh, he’s fine,” said Lilly.

  “He ain’t broke up ’bout losin’ his wheels?”

  “He says good riddance,” Lolly chirped.

  “‘Good riddance,’ eh?” Jimmy said with a head scratch. “Mighty bold. Has he thought ’bout what he’s gonna do once they’s gone?”

  “He’s gonna grow new ones.”

  “Them Jew doctors tell’m that…that he’d grow new ones?” asked Jimmy.

  “No, no. It came to him in a vision…in sweat lodge.”

  The girls went on to tell Jimmy about the shaman’s dream that had come to him six months prior. “The Great Spirit is returning to Our Mother. There will be a Great Storm, and he will be Reborn in the form of the first Red Man. The Great Spirit will seek out grandfather because he will need a shaman to interpret the ancient language, which our people have forgotten how to speak. As his reward, the Great Spirit will give grandfather new legs—much better than the old ones.”

  “Sounds like a damn good deal to me,” was all Jimmy could cough up. This kind of talk about faith and spirituality made Jimmy’s skin crawl, but she didn’t want to rain dance on the old shaman’s parade. She steered the conversation over to gossip. White people, in general, treated the Indian girls as if they were deaf or couldn’t understand English. As a result, Lily and Lolly overheard all the town’s gossip. This was how Jimmy learned that Buster had won the no-talking bet with Mallomar and how Mrs. Mallomar at first tried to get rid of Buster, but was now was having sex with him while Mallomar was out of town.

  “Now wait a minute. Don’t be passin’ that around. Buster McCaffrey ain’t havin’ sex with that damn scarecrow!”

  “Yes, he is. It’s true.”

  “Did you see it with your own eyes?”

  “No, we didn’t see it with our own eyes, but we know.”

  “How’s that?”

  The girls looked at each other.

  “Hey, we’re from a family of trackers,” Lilly giggled. “We do the laundry.” The rain poured off Jimmy’s hat extinguishing her cigarette. She may have blinked, but she didn’t give anything away.

  “Well, whaddaya think of that?” she said.

  Jimmy again wished their grandfather good luck and sloshed back in the rain to her truck. Her blood was pounding in her ears so loudly she couldn’t hear her own yelling and cursing. Leaving the parking lot, Jimmy tossed her nasal canula aside and floored it—proceeding to sideswipe four cars—three of them on purpose—the fourth while attempting to light a cigarette.

  That Jimmy had just learned that her lung cancer had advanced to her brain and that she had two weeks, maybe three, to live was inconsequential. She had kept her mouth shut when Mallomar bought the ranch. She held her fire when he bought all of the buildings in her town and transformed them for his own convenience—because it provided jobs for people who didn’t have one, but now this. Buster McCaffrey had been Mallomarized. This, she could not abide.

  b

  It took the better part of the day and thirteen loads with a twenty-four-foot trailer to bring Mallomar’s newly purchased Belted Galloways to the Big Dog Ranch. Thinking they might be stressed from the ride, Buster and Stinker led them up to the reservoir to water. They were beautiful cattle all right. Buster watched as one particular steer drank the water, ate grass, shit. He had been on a ranch in Utah this morning and now he was here. Did he just accept that some unknown force drove his life? Did he have any idea that he would end up on a plate by the fall of next year? Had he ever betrayed a friendship? Buster didn’t want to go back to the house, but he knew that he had to. He mounted up.

  As Buster rode back to the barn, one of the Blue Heelers sprinted to him, banjo-eyed, whining from fear. Buster dismounted and slid his carbine out of the scabbard. Mountain lion? He chambered a round and approached softly on the balls of his feet. As he rounded the corner to the corrals, he saw the source of the poor dog’s panic.

  Jimmy Bayles Morgan was in the corral swinging one of the Blue Heelers by his back legs. Buster raised his rifle in the air and discharged a round. Jimmy let go of the dog and he went flying.

  “What the hell’re ya doin’ shootin’ that fuckin’ thing?”

  “What the hell’re ya doin’ with my dog?”

  “Ah was jes tryin’ to git him to shut the fuck up and he fuckin’ bit me.”

  Jimmy held up her hand for Buster to see. She was bleeding from a couple of punctures on the drumstick of her left thumb. Buster looked to his dog, cowering away from her.

  “Best you go.”

  “Now hold on there, Cisco. Ah come up here fer a powwow.”

  “You and me got nothin’ to say to each other.”

  “Still aggrieved ’bout them damn letters, are ya?”

  “That’s raht.”

  “What’f ah said ah were sorry? Would that make it better fer ya?”

  “Well ah ’ccept, then.”

  “Ah didn’t say ah ’pologized. Ah jes said, what if. But, since
yor bein’ big about it, ah’ll tender my ’pology in full and ’ccept yor forgiveness.”

  “Why, if you ain’t somethin’…”

  “Ah’ll have a cold beer if yor offerin’.”

  Buster led Jimmy away from the house into the barn—more luxurious than her own house. She kept nodding her head with approval in a way that seemed mocking to Buster. He sat her down on a hay bale in his tack room where Mallomar had installed a refrigerator. He sat opposite.

  “It’s got that new barn smell, don’t it?” she said as she popped the top of a Colorado Fat Tire.

  “Why’d you come up here?”

  “Well, ah heard somethin’ ’bout you today… kinda tickled me.”

  “Oh yeah? What?”

  “That yor carryin’ on with this here Mal-lee-mar woman.” Buster’s face fell. “Ah knew it was horseshit. Cause yor stupid, but ah know you ain’t that stupid.” Buster didn’t say anything. His eyes filled with tears. Jimmy had bushwhacked him. “Why you fuckin’ idiot. Ah oughta smash this bottle over yor head!”

  “Do ya think…Destiny knows ’bout this?”

  “Oh, who the fuck cares what she thinks? She’d suck hairy balls for a sniff a cocaine.”

  “Ah toldja, ah don’t like it when you talk ’bout her like that.”

  “Now lissen ta me and lissen good. Ah may be the only real fren you got and what ah’m sayin’ is you gotta quit this job and git outta here, right now! A coupla fuckin’ vampires is what these people is!”

  “Ah don’t work for you no more. You ain’t my dang boss.”

  Jimmy leaned in.

  “Don’t crowd me, mister. Ah got a mind to kick yor ass.” Buster put his face in his hands and started to blubber.

  “Ah made a mess a ever’thing.”

  “Well…ah ain’t above tellin’ ya ah tole you so.” Jimmy took off her nasal canula and lit a cigarette. “Lookie here, ah come with a li’l propa-zishun.”

  “What?”

  “How much Mallomar pay you still got?”

  “Almost all a it. Thirty-two thousand four hundred and twenty-three cents.”

  “All right. Tell ya what ah’m gonna do. Ah’m gonna let you buy inta my ranch fifty-fifty and pay the rest off ov’r tahm.”

  “What? Why in tarnation you doin’ that?”

  Jimmy took a beat before answering.

  “Cause ah seen what you did up here for Mal-lee-mar, and ah figger if’n you do the same for me, we’ll both make out like bandits.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Jimmy was shot that her largesse was so quickly dismissed.

  “Why you mo-ron! Why the hell not?”

  “Ah’m too ‘shamed to live here no more. Ah’m gittin’ out.”

  “The hell you say.”

  “Ah mean it. Ah’m packin’ up t’night.”

  “Ah’ll be damned! Ah allus thought you was a man.”

  “Yeah, well ah could say the same ’bout you!”

  Before he could get his hands up, Jimmy slammed a right cross into Buster’s jaw knocking him off his hay bale, unconscious. She casually finished her beer, slung her oxygen over her shoulder and left, but first stopping to examine a new bridle she saw hanging on the wall. After fingering its quality, Jimmy decided to help herself to it. When she got into her truck, she considered going back inside the barn to see if Buster was all right, but then shrugged it off.

  “Fuck it.”

  She threw her truck into reverse and immediately smacked into something hard behind her.

  “What the hell now!”

  She turned to see that she had backed into Shep Dudival’s police cruiser. He was walking up to her window.

  “What’re you doin’ lurkin back there for?”

  “That’s not what you say when you back into someone…” Dudival said. “Especially if it’s the sheriff.”

  “Looks like ah’m gonna be spendin’ the rest of my fuckin’ life apologizin’!”

  “You and Buster have a meeting of the minds?”

  “Inna manner a speakin’.”

  “Good. Glad to hear it. Is he in there?”

  “He is, but he’s unconshuns.”

  “Oh, for Christsake…”

  “Sonofabitch smart…mouthed…me.” Jimmy barely got the words out before she started coughing so violently that she keeled over. Dudival opened the door and pulled her upright.

  “What can I get you?”

  “My tank’s behind the seat,” she gasped.

  Dudival rummaged behind the seat, clipped the canula onto her nose and opened the oxygen valve. Jimmy took a couple of deep snorts then pushed him away.

  “What’d you want to say to him that was so damn emportant?”

  “I got one of Cookie Dominguez’s guys in jail on a eighteen-three-four-o-two. He tried to plea out with some information. Did you know that Mr. Mallomar asked for the DEA to come in here without my authority?”

  “He can’t do that.”

  “Well, he did it. They tried to bust Cookie.”

  “They git’m?”

  “No. They didn’t. And Cookie thinks Buster informed on him.”

  “Does Buster know this?”

  “That’s why I came up here. Cookie put a contract out on him. Twenty-five thousand.”

  “What ’xactly you gonna do ’bout it?”

  “I’m going to have a talk with him.”

  “He wants to kill that boy and yor gonna have a talk with him?”

  “I can’t arrest him on hearsay.”

  “Partner, you are a dizgrace ta the badge my Grampie wore.”

  “Sorry you feel that way.”

  “Yeah, now move that fuckin’ vee-hackle!”

  “Hold on! You’re in no condition to drive. You should be in the hospital.”

  “Git outta my way, damn coward!”

  Jimmy put her truck back into reverse and hit the gas, pushing Dudival’s squad car about twenty feet. She then wheeled around, spraying gravel on him as she tore away. This was not the first time time that Shep Dudival had disappointed the Morgans.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The Past Has a Half-Life

  Twenty-five years ago, after his aborted attempt to seduce Jimmy at the County Fair, the young Dudival returned to the sheriff’s office to change out of his wet clothes. He ran into Sheriff Morgan who was dragging a drunken cowboy through booking. He had already beaten the crap out of him and was taking the subject’s limp hand, pressing the fingers on the inkpad for fingerprinting.

  “I heard you and Jimmy had a bit of a romp down at the river.”

  “We just went for a walk.”

  “That’s not the way Jimmy tells it.”

  “Then why ask if you already know?”

  Sheriff Morgan was not used to his deputy talking to him that way and reacted as if he had just been brushed back by a high inside pitch.

  “She was confused by you,” he said as he put his boot in the small of the cowboy’s back and pushed him into a cell. “I told you that was going to happen.”

  “That’s not the way I behave around women,” Shep Dudival said and turned his back on him and walked out.

  “No, it evidently is not,” Sheriff Morgan said.

  From that moment on, the sheriff wondered whether his trust in the new deputy had been misplaced. His suspicions were confirmed later that week. There was a union rally scheduled at the International Order of Odd Fellows Hall. Snitches had told Morgan that Ned Gigglehorn was going to introduce two visiting officials from the AFL in Michigan. Outside agitators were going to try to convince the uranium miners to go out on a wildcat strike—and stay out until the company agreed to guarantee a health and pension fund. Sheriff Morgan could not abide that and set into motion a plan to intercept Gigglehorn and the union offic
ials before they ever got to the hall.

  Word had gotten back to Sheriff Morgan that Gigglehorn had taken the union men the Suit Yourself Bar. They had chosen the back table in case they needed to make a quick exit if the goon squad arrived through the front. The two union boys were big, fleshy-nosed brawlers who demonstrated a great capacity for boilermakers. These men were used to traveling in hostile environments like Vanadium and were heeled.

  At this point in time, there was no bathroom in the Suit Yourself bar. One had to go outside to the four-seater that was built over a lime pit. That’s where the sheriff, Deputy Dudival, and Deputy Grizzard waited in the dark for the beer to do its work. The first man to relieve himself was O’Neill. As soon he unzipped, they jumped him and yanked his suit coat over his head, binding his arms so he couldn’t grab for his revolver. He put up a pretty good fight—his urine spraying hither and yon on each officer. Finally, they hit him on the head with the toilet seat and he crumpled. He was quickly cuffed and dragged into the bushes where Deputy Grizzard gave him one last kick in the ribs for despoiling his clean uniform.

  Inside, Gigglehorn and Polaski started to wonder what had happened to their colleague. Cautiously, they stepped outside in the dark.

  “O’Neill?”

  There was no answer. Polaski stepped up to the shithouse door. “You all right, Timmy?” Still no answer. Polaski pulled a little .32 Colt automatic from his waistband and opened the door. He was immediately rendered unconscious by Sheriff Morgan—who was waiting for him with a Vanadium Bank deposit bag filled with steel washers. With two down, the goons descended upon Ned Gigglehorn with their batons. Gigglehorn fell to the ground, his eyes rolling back in their sockets. Sheriff Morgan stood over him.