The Great Jackalope Stampede

by Ann Charles

  “He’s right,” Gramps piped up, taking the can Chester held out. “She’s better with wood than you.”

  Chester snickered. “Mac might disagree with that.”

  She yanked her sweat-ringed Mighty Mouse cap off her head and threw it down at the two ornery geezers.

  Henry leaped up and barked at the hat, all two feet of killer guard dog that he was.

  “You both can kiss my—” Claire started.

  A shrill wolf whistle interrupted her. She knew the whistler all too well.

  “What did I miss?” Manny Carrera asked as he unfolded the lawn chair he’d brought with him. He shielded his eyes and grinned up at her. “Besides Claire swearing.” His gaze lowered. “And soaking through her T-shirt. Why don’t you shuck that shirt, querida, and just wear a bikini top?”

  “Stop ogling my granddaughter, Carrera,” Gramps growled and punched his other old Army cohort in the arm.

  Chuckling, Manny took a beer from Chester. “I can’t help it—she’s wearing her tool belt again. You know how I get around women who know how to handle a tool.”

  “And wood,” Chester threw in. “All you missed was Claire telling us to kiss her ass again. That’s the third time so far today, isn’t it, Ford?”

  Gramps took a swig of beer. “I think it’s the fourth.”

  “I’m game.” Manny dropped into the lawn chair. “But she’ll have to bare it first.”

  Gramps socked Manny again.

  “What?” Manny chuckled, saluting Claire as he rubbed his arm. “She knows I’m full of hot air.”

  The old dog was quite toothless—protective even. Over the last few months, Manny had been the leading defender of Claire’s lack of a career. Where her mother crinkled her upper lip and called her thirty-three-year-old middle child a misguided wanderer, Manny patted Claire on the head and praised her untethered spirit.

  “Besides,” Manny continued, “it’s your fault your granddaughters came out so pretty. You should have picked an uglier wife instead of stealing the love of my life after we got back to the States.”

  According to Gramps, back when the three boys had been fresh out of boot camp, Manny was really popular with the girls, wooing them with his Spanish tongue and smooth dance moves. He was still velvet and liqueur, although Father Time had aged him.

  The wood sheathing behind her creaked. “I see the third Amigo has arrived,” said Claire’s cousin, Natalie, sidling up to her. “I’m going to need some tequila to make it through this week with all three of them sitting down there.”

  “Shots are on me at The Shaft tonight,” Claire told her. “It’s the least I can do to pay you back for racing down here to my rescue.”

  After Gramps had received his diagnosis of a broken fibula, Claire had taken one look at the worry creasing Ruby’s face and picked up the phone. She’d called back home to South Dakota, explaining to Natalie what had happened and asking her if she and her tools felt like spending a little vacation time in the desert.

  Natalie had grown up working alongside Claire and Gramps, building homes, outbuildings, and more. Unlike Claire, Natalie had followed in Gramps’s shoes, making carpentry look easy. She still worked as a “handy woman extraordinaire” at one of the resorts just outside of Deadwood.

  Natalie hip-bumped Claire, grinning at her from under her old straw cowboy hat. “I owed you one, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah. That guy was such a dick.” A grimace wrinkled her cousin’s brow, making Claire do a double take. “Wait, you’re not seeing him again, are you?”

  “No!” Natalie’s laugh sounded harsh, still laced with anger. “Not after what he did with that tongue-pierced skank.” She waved off the past, seeming to avoid Claire’s gaze while she took her time pulling off her leather gloves finger by finger.

  Claire decided not to pick at what appeared to be a semi-fresh scab. “You should have come down and hung out when you broke your leg back in August.”

  “I was a little preoccupied back home.” Natalie stuck her gloves in her back pockets, her jaw tightening, lips pressed together as if she were fighting to keep from saying something else. Then she blew out a breath and her mouth relaxed into her usual grin. “When is that man of yours going to show up? I have a bone to pick with him about stealing you away from us back home.”

  “Tomorrow morning. He’s working late tonight.”

  Mac had been putting in a lot of overtime lately on the job site. While Claire understood some of what his role as a geotechnician entailed, she had a feeling he was spending more time at work than necessary to avoid spending evenings at home with Ronnie always in the background.

  “Dios mio!” Manny grinned up at them. “Double the pleasure, double the fun.” Manny blew a kiss their way. “Natalie, mi amor, I didn’t know you were coming down to play build-a-bathroom with Claire. How long will you be in town?”

  “Just long enough to make you fall in love with me, Romeo.”

  “I never fell out of love, bonita. Where are you sleeping?”

  “With Claire in the Skunkmobile.”

  Henry had chased a skunk into Gramps’s ancient Winnebago Chieftain while Claire had been inside grabbing a change of clothes. It had taken several days and a lot of vinegar and tomato juice, not to mention several Silkwood style showers, for the smell to wear off her and the rotten mutt. Even after a full detailed cleaning, the R.V. still had a hint of parfum de Pepe le Pew, especially after baking during the day in the warm sun.

  “I have a big bed if you need more room,” Manny said with an exaggerated wink, and then he jerked as Gramps poked him in the ribs.

  “I don’t think it’s big enough,” Natalie said.

  Chester laughed. “That’s what his last girlfriend told him.”

  “I thought Ronnie was staying in the R.V. with you,” Gramps said to Claire.

  “No, she’s bunking in your spare room up at the house.” Needing some breathing space from her older sister, Claire had insisted that Ronnie stay there.

  “Where’s Katie staying then?” Chester asked.

  “At Butch’s place.” Claire’s younger sister had been spending most nights at her boyfriend’s house since she had rammed his pickup for the second time and knocked his world on its side. She also worked for him at The Shaft.

  “So, if Ronnie is in the house with us, and Natalie is in the R.V. with you, where is Mac going to sleep when he gets here?”

  Claire crossed her arms over her chest. “Where do you think?”

  “You know what that means, don’t you, Ford?” Chester asked. “They are going to be having more of that wild and woolly sex in your old bed.”

  “We are not going to have sex.” Not with Natalie on the other side of the paper-thin walls.

  “Why not?” Manny asked.

  “I refuse to discuss my love life with you three.”

  “If Mac is having trouble getting his soldier to stand at attention, I have some leftover Viagra he could take,” Chester offered.

  Claire’s neck warmed. “Mac is doing just fine in that department. No Viagra needed thank you very much.”

  “Oh, mi amor, so it is you who’s not feeling romantic anymore. What’s wrong? Isn’t he taking care of your needs first?”

  “I can’t believe you opened this door,” Natalie said, chuckling.

  “I tried to bar it shut, but they kicked it in.” Claire shook her head. “Mac’s and my sex life is fine and dandy, okay everyone?”

  “Ewww, gross!” Ruby’s daughter, Jess, joined the three clowns below. Her face matched her words while her jaw worked on a piece of gum. “Can we not talk about you and my cousin getting naked for once? I swear; that’s all you guys talk about—Claire and sex.”

  “I try not to talk about sex at all, especially when it concerns me.”

  “Not you, Claire,” Jess squatted and scratched Henry behind the ears. “I mean these old dudes.”

  “When were you guys discussing my sex life?”

  “More importantly
,” Natalie said. “Why?”

  “We weren’t,” Gramps said. “I’d rather spend a week under fire in a foxhole with your mother than think about that topic.”

  Deborah and Gramps had a love-hate relationship—he loved Claire’s mother living thousands of miles away because she hated his new wife.

  “I was,” Manny confessed. “But only because Chester thought you were being so pissy last night because you hadn’t gotten any in a while.”

  “Which Ronnie confirmed after you left,” Chester said in his own defense.

  “What?” Claire scratched her head. True or not, why would Ronnie say that?

  “I told Chester you weren’t pissy,” Manny said. “Just missing Mac. When’s he rolling in again?”

  “Tomorrow,” Jess answered for Claire. “After he picks up my stepsister from the airport.”

  The Earth stopped on its axis.

  Gramps’s head spun toward the teenager. “What did you say, girl?”

  Claire cocked her head to the side. “Your stepsister?” Please, God, let her be talking about some child from her father’s extended family and not …

  “I said Mac will be here after he picks up my stepsister—you know, Claire, your mom.” Jess blew a bubble and popped it as if she hadn’t just announced the angel of death was flying in tomorrow.

  Claire stumbled back a step, feeling like she’d caught a two-by-four smack dab in the gut. She reached in her back pocket for her cigarette lighter but came up empty, then remembered that she’d given up smoking again before coming back to help Gramps.

  “She called a little bit ago and asked Mom to pick her up, so Mom called Mac to come to the rescue.”

  Mac was Ruby’s nephew and had been her knight in shining armor before Gramps came into the picture.

  Claire groaned for Mac’s sake. First a month of Ronnie, now a two-hour drive with her mother—he was going to need a whole lot of coaxing not to drop Deborah off, then race back home and change the locks.

  “Well, shit,” Natalie murmured. “If I’d known Aunt Deborah was coming, I would have stayed back in South Dakota.”

  “Why is the Evil Witch of the North flying south?” Chester asked.

  “The Witch of the North was a good one, idiota.” Manny cracked another beer and handed it to Gramps, whose face looked like it had been slathered with beet juice. Claire checked his ears for steam as he chugged the beer.

  “She was sexy in that fancy pink dress,” Manny added. “How old is Deborah? She always looks good in pink.”

  Henry barked at the sound of Claire’s mom’s name—a trick Chester had taught him since the last time Deborah had come down and had nearly screwed up Gramps and Ruby exchanging vows.

  “Don’t even think about going near my daughter, Carrera.” Gramps crushed his empty beer can on the arm of his chair. “Claire, you’re gonna need to fix this.”

  What? “Why me? She’s your daughter.”

  “Because I can’t. I’m laid up, remember?”

  Funny, his mouth seemed to be running without a hitch. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Keep your mom from pissing off my wife again.”

  * * *

  Veronica Morgan had a cash flow problem. Her ex-husband, Lyle, who had been stashing away their money in a high yield savings account for years, had lied about one small detail—there was no account.

  Actually, he’d lied about several things, such as the whole business about owning their five thousand square foot home free and clear, which she found out was mortgaged to the hilt. Better yet was the little fib about being a partner in a prestigious accounting firm. Lyle was a partner all right; only his partnership was in multiple illegal drug activities where he acted as the chief money handler and cash launderer.

  But his best whopper of all was the day he had said “I do” to her. It turned out he should have said “I already did,” since he was still married to some woman in Wyoming, whom he’d left without even saying goodbye. Veronica had found out that doozy thanks to the Feds, who had dragged her in for a fun-filled interrogation right after hauling Lyle, her not-husband, off to jail for his handiwork in the drug trade. There was nothing like trying to keep a calm face while being told everything she’d thought was real was pure fiction, including her shitty marriage.

  With all of the deception, outright lies, and continual adultery she’d found out about since that fateful day several months ago, the words spewing from the pawn shop owner’s lips this afternoon shouldn’t have surprised her at all. But they did, and after she’d caught her breath, she leaned closer to the guy’s greasy, stubble-covered face, ignoring the ripe odor of onions that clung to him.

  “What do you mean none of it’s real?” she asked.

  “I don’t know how to make it any clearer, babe.” He dug in his ear with his pinkie and then pulled it out to admire his waxy find. “This jewelry is all fake.”

  Ronnie tried to inhale and exhale, but her lungs felt like they were being squeezed to death by a huge anaconda.

  The pawn guy pushed her collection of rings, necklaces, and bracelets back toward her. “I even had my pop double-check it—the old man’s been pawning gold and gems for half a century. He said it’s high-quality fake stuff, if that makes you feel any better, but nothin’ more than a bunch of pretty colored stones.”

  “So, there’s nothing here you’d be willing to give me cash for?” she managed to choke out, blinking away the flying black dots that were swarming her vision.

  He frowned down at the pile of metal and jewels that she’d figured would carry her through the next few months. Now how was she going to afford that plane ticket to Costa Rica where she’d planned to rebuild her life without having to watch over her shoulder day and night?

  “I don’t know. We have plenty of costume jewelry already.” He plucked her wedding ring set from the pile. “Hmmm. Mindy Lou will probably put out for this. I’ll give you fifty for it.”

  Ronnie had “put out” for that damned ring, too—for five long fucking years she’d put out.

  “Sold.” She held out her hand for the cash.

  The cash register dinged when he opened the drawer, showing slots full of twenties and tens. For a split second, she considered pretending she had a gun and robbing the place, driving Ruby’s pickup straight to the Tucson airport, and catching the first flight out of the country, but the vapors of pride she had left kept her in check.

  She stuffed the bills into her wallet and scraped the jewelry into her purse.

  “If you have any guns to pawn, we’re always on the lookout for more.” He pointed at the wall of guns behind him. “Trust me, you can’t have enough firearms in this part of the state.”

  Great. There was nothing like waiting for the hit man Lyle had warned her about in a land filled with gun-toting paranoids.

  She left the grease ball at the counter polishing her wedding ring set. She hoped Mindy Lou gave him the Clap.

  Opening Ruby’s pickup door, Ronnie threw her purse inside. It bounced off the bench seat and landed upside down on the dirty floor mat, spilling her worthless jewelry.

  “Damn it!” She climbed in and glared down at her purse. “Screw you,” she muttered to the worthless jewelry, jamming the key in the ignition. The pickup squealed out onto Yuccaville’s Main Street while Johnny Cash sang on the AM radio about everywhere he’d been.

  As the city limits sign shrank in her rearview mirror, Ronnie considered moving to Winnemucca or maybe Oskaloosa, wherever that was. Somewhere she could fade into the background and live off the land. It would need to be warm enough to grow a garden but not too warm. She couldn’t afford air conditioning.

  The sound of a siren interrupted her Farmer Ronnie plans. A glance in the rearview mirror made her heart upend and sink to her toes.

  “Oh, come on!” she yelled at the big, black and white pickup riding on her ass. Lights flashed behind its angry-looking grill guard.

  Easing onto the sandy shoulder, she shifted into park
and shut off the Ford. The engine ticked as she watched the officer taking his sweet-ass time shoving open his door and stepping to the ground. She cranked down the window and waited for the question and answer game to begin.

  The crunch of his boots on the asphalt announced his arrival. His khaki shirt filled the window, a brass Cholla County Sheriff star front and center in her face. Criminy, they grew them tall out here in the sticks. Hadn’t they heard of water rationing in the desert?

  He leaned down and peered at her from under his tan cowboy hat. She stared back at her reflection in his aviator sunglasses, picking up the scent of cloves and cinnamon mixed with something else coming from him. What was that? Some bay rum concoction?

  After a good ten seconds of seeing who could stare the longest, she cleared her throat. “Aren’t you going to ask me the usual question, officer?”

  “What’s the usual question?” His voice was all gravel and bass.

  “Do I know how fast I was going?”

  “Do you?”

  She tried to make light of this whole mess. “Not fast enough apparently, because you caught me.”

  Her smile hit the brick wall that was his face.

  Thanks to the angle of the sun, Ronnie could see his narrowed eyes through his dark lenses. She bristled at his glare. After being reminded by the pawn shop guy that she’d been totally duped for half a decade, she didn’t need Officer Hardass staring down his nose at her. She gripped the steering wheel to keep from reaching out and flicking him in the chin.

  “License and registration, please, ma’am.” He looked over his shoulder at a passing Mustang, waving at the driver.

  Recent memories filled with guys in suits and uniforms asking painfully embarrassing and personal questions flooded her thoughts, shoving everything else aside. Something cracked and splintered in the wake of the wave.

  She was done dancing to the tune of those enforcing the law. “No.”

  His cop sunglasses whipped back to her. “Come again?”

  Oh, yeah, where were her manners? “No, thank you.”

  He lowered his sunglasses, drilling her with whiskey-colored eyes. “Have you been drinking?”