by Tim Sandlin
Another tip: A waitress in bed is one of God’s special creations. No woman is as giving, no woman will ever make a man feel as wanted, as downright good, as a food waitress. Cocktail waitresses aren’t even in the same sack.
Lord knows, I wasn’t always a dishwasher. I started out to become a sociologist. At least I got a degree in it. Never quite landed a job. Along about 1973, after five years of struggle and drugs, I received a B.A. from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. I folded up my sheepskin, which wasn’t sheepskin, and shipped it off to my parents in Lancaster. That’s all the good a degree ever did me. The collegiate experience was a waste of time. I was too busy saving the world and seeing how high my brains could soar to bother with class attendance. “Good Education Means Good Jobs” didn’t come to dog poop set against Vietnam and mescaline.
What I’d really like to be is a writer—a novelist like Larry McMurtry or John Steinbeck. Over the years with Julie, I wrote four books, three of them westerns. My mother used to be a writer. She wrote real-life romances for True Confessions magazine. Country girl fakes pregnancy to test boyfriend who joins the Marines only to meet his death in a freak accident at boot camp; career woman has an affair with college boy and discovers the true meaning of family grit; that sort of thing. I was never allowed to read her stories, but my college roommate picked one up in a laundromat and he said it was “hot stuff.” Lately, Mom has switched her interests to the viola.
So—five years of college, six years of marriage, countless hours shoveling refuse into a garbage disposal and stacking plates. Two years of therapy. Where had the whole experience of being alive gotten me?
Nowhere. That move in the Americana Inn Gold Room was the first original act of my life.
2
“He doesn’t have a father, you know,” the woman smiled.
This boy, maybe five years old, stood at my feet, staring at me as if he’d never seen a human being before.
“His father ran away when he was only two. I guess he couldn’t stand the thought of raising a retarded child.” The woman sat on a park bench ten feet away, gazing at the boy.
I was lying in the grass in the town square, enjoying the warm sun on my face and waiting patiently for Colette to return from St. Lucia. I didn’t really feel much like admiring a retard for his mother, but she seemed lonely, so I gave it a try.
“How old are you, kid?” I asked.
“Six,” the woman answered. “Nothing’s ever gone right for him. He’s a triple Taurus.”
The boy had that look which is considered so cute these days on TV—a grown-up head on a child’s body. I liked him because his thick, horn-rimmed glasses were dirty.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Emerson,” the woman answered. “His father worshiped Ralph Waldo Emerson. He lives in Taos now, with a Mexican girl.” The woman was dressed like a subscriber to Mother Earth News who baked cracked-wheat bread in a woodburning stove. I liked her.
“And what’s your name?” I asked.
“I was born Lydia, but now I call myself Rebecca.” That sounded reasonable.
“Can you talk, kid?”
Nobody answered.
“Come over here and tell me about yourself.” I said, reaching out to take the boy’s arm.
The woman screamed, “Get your filthy fucking hands off my baby.”
***
Colette was due to return from St. Lucia on May 1. I knew because I called the airport to confirm the return reservations of Mr. and Mrs. Danny Hart.
In fact, I learned quite a bit about the Harts while they honeymooned the month away. I learned they lived on his daddy’s ranch, the Broken Hart, a couple of miles north of Teton Village. Danny had been working on the old two-story bunkhouse all winter, turning it into a cozy home only a hundred yards from the main house and his parents.
His father, John Hart, was president and principal owner of the Teton National Bank in Jackson. He’d come to the valley in the early thirties, bought the ranch from Depression-busted dirt farmers, and opened himself up a bank—been making money ever since.
From what I heard at the bars, John Hart was a pompous, power-crazed royal A-hole.
No one had a bad word to say about Danny though. Danny was a local boy. Quarterbacked a mediocre high-school football team in 1970. I figured their mutual interest in football was the basis of Danny and Colette’s marriage. After four years of Business Education at the University of Wyoming, Danny came back to Jackson and took his rightful place as loan officer at the bank. Hobbies included golf and skeet shooting.
That much information cost me a couple of afternoons and twenty dollars’ worth of free drinks for the barfly know-it-alls at the Cowboy. I ended up drunk in the process.
I learned almost nothing about Colette. Pam the bartender thought Colette used to work for one of the lodge companies in the parks, Jackson Lake Lodge or someplace. She’d heard Danny met her at the golf course club where Colette waitressed, but Pam wasn’t sure. Someone had told her that Colette was “nice.”
I decided not to meet the plane. There would be a lot of people around, and I didn’t want a replay of the Americana. Instead, I gave them a couple of hours to unpack. Then I drove my VW bug out to the Broken Hart.
The brand for the Broken Hart is a heart with a jagged crack in it, like those necklaces guys used to give girls in junior high. The guy wore one half of the heart around his neck and the girl wore the other half and the only heart on earth that would fit right with his was hers—theoretically anyway.
To get into the ranch, you drive through an arched knob-bled pine gate with the brand hanging in the middle. The driveway up to the house is real impressive, a long sweeping curve across a manicured lawn.
Colette answered the door. She looked at me and said, “Oh, shit.”
From inside I heard Danny’s voice. “Who is it, hon?”
“Who do you think?” she called back. Colette wore new blue jeans and a white western shirt. She was barefoot.
“Can I come in?” I asked.
“Listen,” Colette said. “Thanks for the flowers, they were sweet, but you cannot do this, you understand.”
“Do what?”
“This. This. You’ve got to go away and stay away.”
“I was hoping we could talk.”
Colette put her hand on the door frame and looked at me with what might have been compassion. “Being reasonable isn’t important to you, is it?”
“What’s the use?”
I think she would have said something kind, but Danny came up behind her. He didn’t have a shirt on. “I don’t know what your problem is, buddy, but don’t lay it on us. I’ve been nice so far because I understand you’ve had some sort of mental problems, but don’t bother my wife, you got it?”
“What sort of mental problems?” I asked.
“My dad had you checked out while we were gone, and he says you’re a certified nut. I don’t care whether you’re crazy or not, just so long as you stay the hell away from Colette. I mean it.”
I looked at Colette. “Do you want to talk to me?”
She stared straight back into my eyes. “No.”
Danny put his hand on her back. “You heard it from her, pardner. Now, if I see you on this property again, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”
Just before the door shut, I saw him put his arm around Colette’s shoulders.
I started the bug and drove back around the sweeping driveway and past the big ranch house. John Hart walked out onto the porch and watched me. I waved, but he didn’t wave back.
I moved down the drive, under the broken-heart gate, and turned right onto the country road. A half-mile later, I pulled over and sat looking at my hands on the steering wheel.
Locking the passenger door, I got out, locked my door, and hopped over the buck-and-rail fe
nce on the right side of the road.
I had been fair, given him a chance to be there when Colette and I discussed her moving out. Now I’d have to sneak around and talk to her when Danny or his father or his mother or anyone else wasn’t around.
The underbrush was quite thick between the road and the ridge that overlooked the back of the ranch. I got stuck in a chokecherry patch and had to go around. Then I fell off a little drop and scraped my hand.
A nice creek ran along the base of the hill. Because of the thick willows along the banks, I decided to walk into the creek and wade downstream toward the ranch. The water was cold. It sang “Amazing Grace,” but it only knew the first verse, the part about that saved a wretch like me. The creek sang that line over and over.
I slipped on a rock and twisted my ankle and got wet. At first the water was so cold that my feet hurt badly. Then they turned numb and I couldn’t feel anything at all, so I climbed out of the creek and pushed through the willows. My shoe caught in a hole and I walked right out of it. The shoe was stuck so tight I had to sit down and use both hands to pull it out. I untied the shoelaces, which were wet, and put the shoe on my foot and tied them again.
The twisted ankle wasn’t too twisted. I could walk on it anyway, though it made me limp. My normal walk looks like a limp to some people, but this would have looked like a limp to anyone.
It was almost dark before I reached the yard behind the bunkhouse. I didn’t really have a plan. I know, you should always have a plan, but I didn’t have one. Originally I had intended to sneak into the house, find Colette, and talk to her alone—without Danny. However, from the bushes behind the ranch, that seemed kind of unrealistic.
I circled around to the side and crouched behind a large cottonwood tree where I could see both the front and back yards of the bunkhouse and the back door of the big house. I have never been comfortable in a crouch and doubt if I could have held this one for long, but after a while, Danny and Mr. Hart came out of Danny’s house and walked up the slight rise toward the other place. They talked, but I couldn’t hear the words.
This looked like what I’d been waiting for, so I stood up and started across the clearing—would have made it, too, if a German shepherd hadn’t come howling around the house and attacked. He jumped and knocked me backward. On my back, I kicked him in the nose, stunning him long enough for me to roll over and run for the cottonwood tree. The German shepherd leaped on my shoulders, slid down, and bit me on the back of my leg. I shook loose and clawed bark up the cottonwood.
The German shepherd jumped high and snapped his jaws, but he couldn’t quite reach me. Breaking off a branch, I jabbed him in the face. He bit the end and ripped it out of my hands.
After a few minutes of jumping and barking, the dog sat down and growled. I looked around, wondering why no one had heard the attack and come to investigate.
Colette stood framed in a second-story window with the light behind her. She was a distance away, but I could see her face. It had no expression at all, nothing. Colette didn’t move from the window for a long time. The German shepherd looked at me, I looked at Colette, and Colette looked at the dog and me. Finally, way after dark, Danny came down the slope and went into the house.
Colette turned and disappeared. The light went out. A couple of hours later she came back to the back door and called, “Thor, come here, boy. It’s time for dinner. Come on, Thor.”
The dog turned and trotted into the house.
I descended the cottonwood tree, walked past the house, and followed the driveway back to my car.
***
Every now and then, as a test, I pay attention to advice from the water. A drinking fountain in the library told me to buy a certain handkerchief for my grandmother for Christmas, and I did, and she seemed pleased with it. Another time, a perking coffeepot told me not to go to work that day. I didn’t and I had an excellent time hiking in the woods instead.
Taggart Creek told me to bet on the Dodgers in the ’78 World Series, and I did. They got clobbered. I never trusted Taggart Creek again.
***
The dog bite was only a surface wound, barely even ripped the flesh, and my twisted ankle was almost good as new within two days. Cora Ann painted my scratches with Mercurochrome and told me what a fool I was.
“You’re an idiot, Kelly.”
“I’m only sincere.”
“That dog might have ripped your lungs out.”
“Colette would have saved me.”
“Sure.”
I hung around the bank some to figure out Danny’s hours before I tried the telephone approach. She answered the first time I called.
“Hi, Colette,” I said when she answered the phone. “This is Kelly.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Kelly Palamino. You remember me.”
“You’re a squirrel,” Colette said. “You’re a wimp, a nut, an asshole. There’s no chance of me ever leaving Danny for you. I can’t even conceive of ever being friends with a creep like you. Stay away, shithead, or I’ll have you arrested. And beat up.”
“You sound hostile,” I said.
“You jerk, I am hostile. You make me want to kill. I hate you. Can’t you understand hatred? Do you have any idea how much I dislike you?”
“Hate is only a step from love,” I said. “As long as you feel something, we’re making progress.”
She hung up.
***
“You drink too much,” Cora Ann said.
Nodding, I cut the triangular tip off the end of my cherry pie. “I know.”
“And you let women walk all over you.”
“You’re right.” A microwave oven can make a cherry remarkably hot. Tongue scalded, I choked something like “Aighgh,” and grabbed for the glass of ice water.
Cora Ann curled both hands around her coffee cup and raised it to her face. She looked at me through the steam. “Every time some woman is the least bit nice to you, Kelly, you start planning a wedding and a family.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is so. You come on like a freight train. Some women don’t like being run down by freight trains.”
We sat in the Wort Hotel, drinking our afternoon coffee and eating my afternoon pie. It was a ritual with Cora Ann and me. She told me my shortcomings while I looked out the window at passing trucks. I didn’t mind her telling me my faults. She was always right. Besides, around two the next morning, drunk, I would tell Cora Ann hers.
She blew across the coffee and sipped. “You follow women around like a lost puppy dog,” she continued. “You beg for a pat on the head so you can wag your tail in gratitude.”
The street was busy that day—early tourists and locals out for one last look at the center of town before the summer crush. Most of the people I could see through the window seemed to be going somewhere, not just wandering aimlessly the way they do in June. “‘Shortcomings’ is an unusual word,” I said. “Do you suppose it originally had a sexual meaning?”
Cora Ann set down her cup. “That’s another thing. Whenever I’m serious, you start talking dirty. Get your mind off your balls for a minute and listen to me.”
Cora Ann is full of sayings like “Get your mind off your balls.” I enjoy the way she tosses her declarations out, like a cheerleader at a high school basketball game.
“Where’s the waitress?” I asked.
“What do you want?”
“My coffee’s cold. These waitresses disappear all the time. They go home without telling anyone.”
“Take this new fantasy love of yours,” Cora Ann went on, picking up in the middle of a thought I had already lost. “You don’t even know her, but you’re already living the tragic spurned-lover role.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
I stared out the window at a parked delivery truck. She wa
s right, of course. I’m not happy unless I’m torn apart over some woman or another, but Colette was different. She made existence meaningful. The others only made it bearable. I decided not to tell this to Cora Ann.
“Aren’t you going to defend yourself?” she demanded.
Colette walked by the window. She was so close I could have smashed out the pane and touched her shoulder.
I rapped on the glass with my knuckles. “There she is,” I said. Colette moved down the sidewalk, out of view.
“Who?”
I stood up and reached into my pocket. “Colette. I’ve got to go. There’s something I need to talk to her about.” Throwing a dollar on the table, I pushed back my chair and headed for the door.
Cora Ann called after me, “You’re making a jackass out of yourself.”
Blinking in the bright sunlight, I looked up the street in the direction Colette had been walking. The sidewalk was crowded, but she wasn’t there. I ran to the corner. One direction was almost empty, only a couple of high-school kids standing on the curb, so I ran the other way.
Through the crowd, I saw the bounce of her dark hair. She was a half-block away, walking past the Cowboy Bar. I started running after her, but about twenty feet away I stopped. What was I going to say? It wouldn’t do to grab her from behind and demand she talk to me. I’d get the same old squirrel, asshole, and wimp line.
Colette walked fast, as if she was going somewhere. I decided to follow and see where. I had never seen Colette from behind—except once in a wedding dress. It was interesting. She wore a dark green shirt, jeans, and wooden sandals. Her arms swung free, not touching her legs. The legs had good rhythm and just a little spring, as if she walked to music. Latin music. The bossa nova, maybe, or early reggae. Colette’s butt was perfect. I couldn’t have dreamed a better butt.
At the next corner she turned right, and I could see her eyes and the little indentation of her temple. I wondered what was going on in that beautiful brain. Was she thinking of me? Was she realizing the marriage was all wrong and that only I could bring meaning and happiness to her life? Maybe she was looking for me.
