Sex and Sunsets: A Novel

by Tim Sandlin

  “You didn’t, though.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t kill John or kidnap Colette. Face it, Kelly. You’re sane.”

  “Thanks. I was beginning to wonder.”

  ***

  Luke turned out to be an intellectual murderer. When I returned to Cell Two, he was sitting in his chair in front of the TV, explaining situation ethics to a pacing Jimmy.

  “It’s like this.” Luke inhaled his Lark as if it was a joint. “Bishop Pike says that any single act is justified and right if the conditions deem it justified and right. There is no absolute right and wrong. No thou shalts or thou shalt nots.”

  Jimmy growled, “Shooting down oil company helicopters is absolutely right. Not shooting down oil company helicopters is absolutely wrong.”

  My one romantic preconception about jail—besides busting out in a hail of dynamite—was that I would be able to walk up and down nervously like a caged coyote. Jimmy made this impossible and I resented him for it.

  “Some people don’t think it’s right to shoot down helicopters or you wouldn’t be here,” I said.

  “Some people are fucked,” Jimmy answered, turning at the south wall.

  Luke leaned forward and tapped his Lark against the window bars. “Take killing in self-defense,” he said, “or stealing bread because your sister is starving. Or lying to protect a friend’s feelings.”

  “How about adultery?” I asked.

  Luke closed his eyes, thinking. “No, there’s no situation in which adultery isn’t a sin.”

  Jimmy stopped in front of Luke. “Why did you kill?”

  “Someone paid me to.”

  “Is killing for money ethical?” I asked.

  “Depends on how much money.”

  ***

  Jimmy showed me pictures of his wife and kids. The wife stood in front of a cabin, not smiling. She was kind of skinny—looked like a city hippie who’d tried acid and Jesus, then ended up living off the land with a treadle sewing machine, a nine-volume diary, and a tattered copy of The Compleat Midwife. The boys both had blond hair and short noses. Jimmy told me his wife wouldn’t let him see them.

  “I got this letter back yesterday,” he said, holding up a soiled envelope covered with stamps and cancellations. “Fourth time. She won’t open it.”

  “Your wife’s angry because you shot down the helicopter?”

  “She’s mad cause I’m in jail and not at work.”

  “That’s fair.”

  Jimmy stalked to the window and held the bars with both hands. “If she’d read my letter she’d understand why I had to do it. Some things matter more than a family.”

  I couldn’t think of anything that mattered more, but then I didn’t have a family and Jimmy did. What you don’t have always matters more than what you do have. I said, “Most women with kids, and a husband in jail don’t see it that way.”

  Jimmy punched one of the bars. “My woman should.”

  ***

  Had I met Danny Hart anywhere in America, I would have recognized him for what he was: a former high-school football captain who went to a good college, then returned home to a secure job with his father or father-in-law’s company.

  There’s a whole cult of them—at least two or three in every town. They are all nice enough fellows. Nice men leading nice lives with nice wives. Their only problem is that they face no challenges. They are born into a slot, a preplanned existence.

  They’re boring.

  Danny came to see me during visiting hours Tuesday. Like honest rivals, we faced each other through the glass partition, he in his chamois shirt, Haggar slacks, and Tony Lama boots, me in orange coveralls.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked.

  “Out.”

  Danny laughed. He thought I was kidding.

  “Why did you come?” I asked.

  Danny rested his hands on the counter in front of him. The fingernails gleamed, they were so clean. Each one was the same length and shape. “I don’t understand how any woman who likes me could like you,” he said, “or how any woman who likes you could like me.”

  I thought about this. “Did you ever notice that Colette is kind of peculiar?”

  Danny nodded his head. “Yeah.”

  “How is she doing?”

  “She’s worried about her father. We had to sell our bonds to pay off some debt he owed Dad.”

  “Those bonds were for you to have babies and land.”

  Danny kind of snorted. “Thanks to you, babies and land will have to wait a few years. We are moving, though. She and Dad can’t stand each other and she told me about turning the ranch into condominiums. I gave notice at the bank.”

  “Where?”

  “What?”

  “Where are you moving to?”

  Danny looked at me strangely. “You honestly think I would tell you, even if I knew?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Maybe we’ll leave town.”

  “You can’t take Colette out of Jackson Hole.”

  Danny’s face turned red, dark red. “I can do anything I damn well want. You’ve screwed up our lives enough.”

  “Let her go.”

  “I came here to look at you, to try and understand how Colette fell for your line of crap, but you aren’t human. How could she possibly feel anything for you?”

  “I understand your point of view, Danny. It hurts to lose a wife, but you must face the truth. Colette doesn’t love you. She loves me.”

  “Fuck you,” Danny shouted.

  ***

  Julie was waiting to see me next. She slid quickly into the chair just vacated by Danny. “You have a real knack for winning people,” she said, nodding at his back.

  I looked at her through the double pane of glass. Julie seemed a lot older than me. Her blond beauty was tamed, paid for. She still looked tough, but in New Orleans it was a fuck-with-me-and-I’ll-split-your-skull tough. Now it was fuck-with-me-and-I’ll-slap-you-with-a-lawsuit.

  But the dyed hair, nail polish, and Calvin Kleins didn’t change the way I felt. As disappointing as Julie turned out, she was still the person I’d woken up with for six years. We had adventures together. We’d eaten breakfast and played with our cats and done the laundry together. Julie may deny it, but I’d married her and that alone was cause for some loyalty. Maybe even a few kind urges.

  “It sure is nice of you to come to see me,” I said.

  Her eyes flashed with scorn. “I didn’t come to be nice.”

  “I’m glad you’re here anyway.”

  Julie reached into her leather daypack and fished out a pair of Vuarnet sunglasses. It was as if two layers of dirty glass weren’t enough. She could only stand looking at me through dark glasses.

  “I came to tell you something,” she said.

  I looked at two fuzzy versions of me. Even in the reflection of her Vuarnets, I could see that my glasses were smudged.

  “What did you come to tell me?”

  She crossed her hands. “I’m going to take the stand Friday, and I’m going to testify as your wife, but I don’t want you getting any ideas that we were ever married. I’m just doing this to make sure you’re locked away for good.”

  “Why are you so angry with me?”

  One of her hands closed into a fist. “You use people, Kelly. You lie about them, manipulate them, make them feel guilty for doing things they should have done years ago. You waste lives everywhere you go. I don’t like you. You cling to the past and the past is dead.”

  I took off my glasses and tried to clean them on the front of my coveralls. “You remember that afternoon the lightning storm caught us up on the divide between Paintbrush Canyon and Lake Solitude?” I put on my glasses and looked through the window at Julie. Her face appeared to be set in wax. “Remember a
fter the storm, we started over the ridge and saw a perfect double rainbow across the gorge north of the trail? Three coyote pups played on the rocks. The rainwater flowed through a pool and over that little waterfall, you remember?”

  “Sounds like a Disney movie to me.”

  “You and I are probably the only people on earth who have seen those things all at once, Julie. We thought we were going to die, and when we didn’t, God or nature or somebody showed us wonderful things we’ll never see again.”

  I looked into her sunglasses and saw myself. “Julie, you have control over my freedom. John Hart can’t hold me here, at least not for long. Doesn’t six years of seeing and doing things together count for anything? Was I that awful to you?”

  Julie didn’t move for a long time. Her tongue pushed a bump into her lower lip. The index finger of her right hand moved up, then down. I wish I could have seen her eyes. I’d like to know if she was affected.

  “I can’t,” Julie said.

  “I wish you could.”

  “You’re too dangerous to me, Kelly. I can’t afford your freedom.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Julie stood up. “It means I’ll do whatever it takes to get you put where you can never spread vicious lies about me again.”

  “Even admit the lies are true?”

  “You got it.”

  ***

  The day Julie moved out, she was very kind to me. It was a Wednesday in late March, a cloudy, windy day. Julie told me she wanted to leave, but if I was going to fall apart and die without her, she would stay. She said she was horribly lonely living with me.

  I told her I wouldn’t die. I said I wished her only happiness and good fortune. We swore a pact of eternal friendship, then she left and I was alone.

  13

  Wednesday morning they threw me back in the little room with a psychiatrist. Not Lizbeth, but a male psychiatrist—a court-appointed, John Hart-owned psychiatrist.

  He was an older man, at least fifty, with shiny silver hair, a white turtleneck sweater, and a red blazer. He looked like a host at a golf tournament.

  “Call me Gene,” he said, indicating I should sit in the chair opposite his.

  “Morning, Gene.” He sat too close. I hate it when anyone, especially a man, gets too close to my body. He leaned forward when he spoke, and blinked quickly, like a small animal.

  “Let’s talk.” Gene smiled. “Try and get to know each other.”

  “So talk.” He smelled like Brut and Listerine. I felt reasonably negative about the whole thing.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Kelly Palamino.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “Jail.”

  “What day is this?”

  “Wednesday.”

  He asked me all the stock questions, testing me for orientation and awareness. Name the first five presidents of the United States. What’s six times thirteen? Giving me an awareness test is like giving an eye test to a man who has the chart memorized. My awareness has been under question for so long, and I’ve taken the test so often, I could name the first five Presidents if I was comatose. Couldn’t name the sixth for a million bucks.

  After Gene established that I knew what was going on, he touched me on the knee with his fingertips. The man had perfect teeth. “Do you know what you did to get here?” he asked.

  “I crossed John Hart.”

  “Are you sorry you tried to kidnap the girl?”

  “No.” I pulled my knee away from his fingers. “I didn’t try to kidnap her.”

  “What were you doing in the house?”

  “She invited me in. We were going to run away together.”

  “You know better than that, Kelly.” He looked at my knee for a moment. “Tell me about your parents and early life.”

  “Oh, horseshit. You know I’m not insane.”

  “I don’t know any such thing. Do you like your parents?”

  “Are you going to tell the truth or suck ass to John Hart and obey orders?”

  “You sound paranoid. Do you think John Hart is out to get you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think he controls everyone around you?”

  “Yes.”

  The psychiatrist and I stared at each other. My nose itched badly, but I didn’t scratch. He blinked quickly, constantly. “Have you ever been in a mental institution?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “It’s much worse than jail. Everyone treats you as if you’re crazy, even though you know it’s a mistake that you’re there. And all the other patients tell you that they were committed by mistake, only one look at them and you know they’re all total macadamias.”

  “Macadamias?”

  “Pretty soon you don’t know if it’s a mistake or not. You start thinking maybe you are crazy. Then, after a while, you are.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, it’s much worse than jail. Mental institutions are nightmares.”

  Gene let me ponder this a moment. I pondered while he blinked. He asked, “Do you believe I have the power to send you to a mental institution or save you from one?”

  “I’d rather not think along those lines.”

  “I control your life right now, Kelly.” Gene stared deep in my eyes. I thought he was trying to hypnotize me.

  “John Hart wants you put away.” He blinked. “But I have the power. You might persuade me to use that power to save you.”

  “How?”

  Gene shifted his weight forward, grasping me around the wrist. “By cooperating with me.”

  “I’ve always been cooperative.”

  He squeezed my wrist. “You know what I mean by being cooperative, don’t you, Kelly?”

  “I suppose so.”

  He smiled, flashing his perfect teeth like pearls. “I knew I could count on you.” Gene let go of my wrist, unzipped his pants, and pulled out his stiff tool.

  I stared. It was shaped like an old-fashioned, six-ounce 7-Up bottle. “God,” I gasped.

  Gene smiled. “Suck this and you’re free.”

  Suddenly I realized what he wanted. “I’m no fucking queer.”

  His face flushed red as his blazer. “You suck this or spend thirty years in a straitjacket.”

  “Ish. Jesus. Put that thing away.”

  “Suck it,” he ordered.

  “Suck it yourself.” I jumped up and started banging on the door. “Help, rape! Rape! Get me out of here.”

  I screamed and yelled until a deputy came to unlock the door. By then the psychiatrist was tucked back in.

  “What’s the problem?” the deputy asked.

  “He tried to make me bite his dick. It was awful. Awful.”

  “The patient became hysterical,” Gene said. “He’s hypohallucinative. Latent homosexuality and mother guilts.”

  “Oh,” the deputy grunted. “Come on, Kelly.”

  “He exposed himself to me. Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Tell the judge. Time for you to go back in your cage.”

  ***

  I’ve never understood the homosexual inclination. I know it’s legitimate. Be happy anyway you can without bothering anyone, I always say. But to kiss a man on the lips? That’s beyond my scope.

  My freshman year at the University of Arkansas, I lived in the dorms next to two gay guys named Marc and Reed. They had been going steady or whatever the word is since they played together on an eighth-grade basketball team.

  Marc and Reed were noisy. Every night around eleven, Marc started moaning and Reed started grunting. For several hours my roommate, Carl, and I sat on our beds, pretending to ignore the thrashing sounds from next door. Sometimes it went on all night.

  Reed was a sadist. Marc was a screamer. He’d moan, “Reed, Reed, don’t
don’t,” or “Do, do.” He cried a lot. I lay with my head under my pillow, trying to imagine exactly what was going on over there. It was sickening, yet kind of interesting. What positions were they in? How did this fit in that?

  After a while, Carl lost patience. He banged on the wall with his fist. “Quiet, perverts! No fucking in the dorms!” Carl was a big, not-so-very-smart boy from West Memphis. I think he had less experience with gaiety than I did. It scared him. Carl and I were very careful never to stand or sit close to each other.

  Once Reed stopped me in the hall and asked, “Have you ever had a homosexual experience?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Would you care to?”

  “Not now.”

  “You shouldn’t condemn things you haven’t tried. It might be fun. I’ve got some cocaine.”

  “None for me, thanks.”

  “I’ve got pictures of things I bet you’ve never seen.”

  “I’d like to see them sometime, Reed, but I’m late to class.”

  Reed shrugged. “Give me a chance, I’ll turn your life around.”

  “I don’t want to be turned around.”

  Reed had white-blond hair and a pale face. I don’t know what Marc saw in him.

  Carl and I would have flunked out from lack of sleep, but right before Thanksgiving, Reed found an upperclassman who was even more sadistic than he was. We heard Marc’s crying sessions for a week, the accusations, lamentations, pleas for one more chance—the routine of heartbreak is the same, no matter how deviant the love.

  Marc dropped out of school and joined the army. Reed later said he was shipped to Vietnam.

  ***

  Thank God Jimmy dozed off or I would have knocked him out with the toilet lid. The time had come to think, and no one—no one in jail, anyway—thinks well sitting down.

  First I took a hot shower. Then I paced. The open part of the cell made a dogleg north around a pair of bunks, so I got eight steps west to east, then left for five steps, about face, clockwise, and back again. My hands alternated from stuffed in the coverall pockets to clasped behind my back.