by Chuck Kinder
Not exactly, Jim said. —But there are threats. Our wives are sitting in the manager’s office even as we speak. Alice Ann is raising hell. My blushing bride is seething. You might say our wives are being sort of held hostage.
How far has Alice Ann gone? Ralph said. He revved up the engine again, and then he began twisting the radio dial, until he settled upon a cool jazz station, where Chet Baker was singing “Let’s Get Lost.** —Has she struck anybody yet? She punched out a cop once. Down in Santa Barbara. What happened, anyway? Don’t leave anything out.
Right now Alice Ann is in her mid-to-late snarling stage, I’d say. No blood has been drawn yet. She almost tossed her drink in the manager’s face, but I caught her. The manager, who is this big, fat, oily fellow, by the way, saw you duck out, that’s what happened.
Well, maybe I was simply stepping out for a breath of fresh air. Did anybody stop to consider that? Maybe give me the benefit of the doubt?
The manager watched you get in the ragtop.
I was careful, Ralph said. —I covered my tracks. How did that manager spot me, anyway? Did somebody finger me? Did you finger me?
I would have, you asshole, in a heartbeat, Jim told Ralph. —If I had had the chance. I knew you were up to something no good. The manager just had his eye on you, that’s all.
From the start? You mean all night?
Who knows. Probably. They probably have profiles of people like you. like they have of terrorist types at airports.
You think so?
I would if I owned a restaurant, Jim said. He took a joint from his shirt pocket and fired it up.
Can I have a little hit on that dooby? Ralph said.
Do you really think you deserve one, Ralph?
Please.
Just don’t Bogart it as usual, Ralph, Jim said, and reluctantly passed that asshole the joint.
How did you escape? Ralph said, and then took one of his typical bug-eyed pulls on the joint.
I didn’t escape, Ralph. I told them this was all just a sorry mix-up. I told the manager you had misplaced your wallet somewhere, and you simply went out to search in the vehicle. I’m supposed to be helping you find it.
And he believed you?
Probably not. But, hey, they have our wives. Actually, everything was relatively all right until Alice Ann got pissed. The manager just informed us that you’d been observed leaving the premises. Then Alice Ann went a little nuts.
See, I told you she was going nuts. Didn’t I tell you that? She just has to do that, though, go really nuts, every once in a while. But that’s another story. I can’t talk about that.
My bride is properly mortified, of course. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Basically, all Alice Ann really wants is to get her hands on you. Which I’m all for. I vote for that. I don’t think those people even care about that big bill right now. I think they would almost be satisfied with getting Alice Ann off their hands.
Maybe that manager should call the police, after all, Ralph said. —That might be the best thing to do, you know, in the long run.
They made threats early on, but that was before Alice Ann really got hot and turned on them.
I can’t go back in that wretched place. That would be not unlike walking into an ambush. What man in his right mind would deliberately do something like that, knowingly walk into a trap? Let me ask you that.
Well, you have to do something, old Ralph. You can’t just sit here.
Okay, then. Well then, let’s not panic. Let’s consider everything. We’ll just look carefully at our options.
Why don’t you put the top down? Jim suggested. He dialed in a country-western station on the radio.
What?
The ragtop. Put it down, man. It’s stuffy in here and smoky. Put it down, Ralph, while we consider our options.
All right, Ralph said. —That sounds like a good idea.
Ralph pressed the ragtop button and the top cranked slowly back. Jim rested his head back on the seat and looked up at the stars. It was a balmy night, with a whiff of eucalyptus in the warm breeze. The sound of traffic from the Bay Shore Freeway was a low, almost comforting rumble. On the radio the old Silver Fox, Charlie Rich, was singing “Behind Closed Doors.”
Look up there, Jim said, and pointed to the sky with the joint. —There’s the Big Dipper. Over there is Taurus. See those stars? Taurus the bull. There’s Cancer. Were you ever interested in the stars when you were a kid, old Ralph?
No, Ralph said, wiggling his fingers at Jim for the joint. —Not much, anyway, I guess. They were just always up there, you know, blinking. I don’t remember much about my childhood.
I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up. I memorized the night sky.
Really? Ralph said. —That’s nice. Can I have another hit of that dooby before it’s history?
Those stars along the western horizon, they’re known as the Great Chinese Dragon constellation. I know my constellations by heart. I know the night sky like the back of my own hand. Over there, see? That cascade of stars that looks like, well, a leak. Like they’re dripping down the sky. That’s called the Moon Maid’s Menstruation. Right up there is the Great Celestial Salamander.
How stoned are you already? Ralph said. —Would it really kill you to share some of that dooby?
And right up there is the Giant Chimera.
You sound as flaky as Alice Ann sometimes, Ralph said. He pressed the ragtop’s button and the top began noisily cranking back up.
Shit, wait a minute, Jim said. He took another joint from his shirt pocket and handed the thing to Ralph. —Here, asshole. Now keep the top down, dickhead.
Wonder what our wives are doing right now? Ralph said.
Cooling their heels while we search for your wallet, I guess, Jim said. —Ralph, would you explain to me why you were running the windshield wipers when I first came out.
I was just checking everything out. To see if everything was in working order. Sort of like a countdown, I guess. Like a pilot before takeoff.
So you really were thinking about doing it? Jim said. —Taking off. And leaving your best buddy in the dust.
It wasn’t you I was leaving. But I was leaving, all right. I came within a heartbeat. And I might have done it. If you hadn’t come charging out the door yelling your head off.
I’ve kicked guy’s asses for less than what you tried to pull tonight, Ralph, Jim said. —And the night’s young, buddy. Pass the dope, dicknose.
I’m not responsible for what I’m doing these days, Ralph said.
Are you pleading insanity? Diminished capacity?
Well, I’ll tell you this, I’d get off in a court of law.
Where were you thinking about going, anyway? When you were thinking about dumping your best buddy.
Anywhere. Somewhere. I don’t know. Well, I do know. Missoula, Montana, that’s where.
That’s where the woman I really love lives. I really was thinking about doing it, too.
Does that woman love you?
You bet she does. I can prove it, too. I’ve got it in black and white.
It’s not too late, you know.
What do you mean?
Let’s go. Let’s do it. You’ve got your paw on the pedal. Put the pedal to the metal. Let’s run away from home.
You mean take off? Ralph said. Ralph looked over at Jim and started to laugh. —You know, Ralph said, they call Missoula the garden city of the Northwest.
We’ll make a clean getaway. We’ll be cowboys in Montana. If I didn’t turn out to be an astronomer, the next thing I wanted to become when I was a kid was a cowboy.
Just take off, Ralph said, chuckling. —Put the pedal to the metal. Ranch by day and sing songs around the campfire by night.
Break wild horses for our pay.
Write Western stories full of vast distances under amazing sunsets.
And full of compound nouns and proper names, Jim said. —I’ve done it before, old Ralph. Run away from home. And I’m ready teddy to do it a
gain. We’re not waiting on me, buddy. Think of the story it would make. We’ll be the talk of the town.
You want to take off? Just like that. You mean it?
You bet, Jim said. —I’ve been on leave this whole term and not written a fiicken decent sentence. I need a change of scene. I need a change of life. Besides, my blushing bride is fucking some clown.
What? Ralph said. —What? You’re kidding.
Nope. She’s fucking some guy from work. Some sport who wears a white belt and white shoes with tassels. Too much, I say.
I don’t believe you. Judy is? How do you know? Did you catch her red-handed? I don’t believe it. Judy’s not the type.
She told me. Judy’s like that. She just thought I should know. Judy’s all right. She just wants a normal, happy life.
She told you? That’s crazy. You mean she just up and confessed? Why in the world would somebody do something like that?
Judy’s not like us, Jim said. —She’s basically a decent person. It’s just something somebody like Judy would do. She feels guilty about fucking this guy, which I know is something difficult for somebody like you—or me, for that matter—to comprehend.
Gosh. Judy always put me in mind of, you know, Mary Tyler Moore. Holy moly. Did she tell you any, well, juicy details?
I pumped her for details.
I’ll be damned, Ralph said. —I’ll be damned. Did she tell you if she has engaged in any, you know, oral sex?
Hey, Jim said. —Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!
Gosh, old Jim, I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry. I’m just amazed is all. I just didn’t have any idea, that’s all.
Anyway, buddy, I, for one, am going on the lam, which is a way of life I can understand. I am going to practice some withdrawal of my own, I guess you could say, some serious withdrawal from ordinary life as I have come to know and loathe it.
You really are going to go, aren’t you?
Hi-yo, Silver, away. Aren’t you going to go with me, buddy?
I can’t, Ralph said. —Not just yet, I mean. Not right now, exactly.
Oh come on, old Ralph. We’ll live off the land. We don’t even need maps. We’ll use celestial navigation to guide our herd north.
I just can’t, Ralph said. —Not right now, anyway. I’ve got too many loose ends to tie up. I’ll come up later, though. I will.
Okay, I get the picture, old Ralph, Jim said. —Well, running away from home is a real perilous passage. It takes a cowboy with balls like a bull to run away from home. Okay, then, this will be my Western movie and mine alone, I reckon, pardner.
I can’t believe this, Ralph said. —You’re really going to do it. Will you do me a favor, old Jim?
I don’t know. Maybe. What?
Will you take something to somebody for me? Sort of deliver a package to somebody for me?
Maybe. If it’s not too big. And not out of my way. And if there are no strings attached.
Ralph turned off the engine, then got out and hurried around to the ragtop’s trunk. Jim slid out of his side and followed Ralph back.
There’s somebody watching us from the bar door, Ralph said.
It’s the oily manager, Jim told him.
Wonder what he’s thinking about all this business? Ralph said. He opened the trunk. —Wonder what our wives are doing now?
Jesus, Ralph, Jim said, who knows what the oily fuck thinks. Who cares. As for our wives, they probably have dates with the cooks by now.
Ralph rummaged about beneath piles of papers and books until he found an old battered yellow suitcase. It was covered with faded tourist stickers, see silver springs was one.
Nice suitcase, Jim said.
It’s Alice Ann’s. She’s had this awful thing since childhood. The lock on mine was broken. I couldn’t very well set off into a new life using a suitcase with a rope tied around it.
Ralph fumbled with the locks on the old beat-up suitcase, then flung it open. It looked as though it had been packed in maybe six seconds, by furious fistfuls. It was stuffed with wrinkled shirts and pants and wadded gray underwear, all tangled among assorted, mostly uncapped toiletries. It also contained several cans of Campbell’s soup, a couple of rolls of toilet paper, and what looked like a plastic bag of sandwich fixings.
So you really were thinking about taking off? Jim said, genuinely surprised and, yes, impressed.
I told you so, Ralph said. —I told you so, didn’t I? I wasn’t fooling. I packed this baby right after Alice Ann nailed me at breakfast. I was ready to hit the open road in a heartbeat if she turned on me again.
Jim saw the manager waving from behind the glass door of the bar. He was motioning for Jim and Ralph. Jim gave him the finger.
Here, Ralph said. —He took a large folder from the suitcase. —This is it. These are the letters I was telling you about. Lindsay’s letters. And some of mine, too, actually. She sent them back to me. But she was angry. She’ll get over it. Take them to her for me. Please, old Jim. Alice Ann threatened to burn these babies in the back yard. And she’d do it, too. Forget any concern for, well, you know, the interests of posterity. Tell Lindsay for safekeeping. Will you do that, old Jim? And can I trust you? I mean, these are private letters, old Jim. Meant for our eyes, Lindsay’s and mine, only. You understand.
You know you can trust me, old Ralph. With anything.
Tell Lindsay I’m sorry. Tell her I’m coming as soon as I can tie up all the loose ends of my old, wretched life down here.
I’ll tell her, old Ralph. You can count on me, pardner.
Hey, you fellas! they heard somebody call out, and they looked up to see the manager standing outside shaking his fist.
Old Missoula, Montana, Jim said to Ralph. —The old garden city of the Northwest, Jim said.
You fellas! Hey! they heard, and watched the fat, oily manager waddling hurriedly across the parking lot toward them.
Well, here comes old Zorba, Jim said. —Zorba the goat.
What? Ralph said. —Who? Who did you say?
Oh, you know, Jim said. —Old Melvin’s buddy.
Yes! Jim thought. Fucken yes. Missoula, Montana. Why not? The garden city of the Northwest. A place on earth where he somehow knew he could come to belong. A cowboy-and-Indian town on the verge of things. Maybe even the uncanny edge of romance.
People of the Wolf
1
When Lindsay was thirty she divorced her first husband, this jerk who fancied himself an emerging great American poet and dangerous outlaw-biker to boot, after three pitiful years of marriage. For a time after her divorce and before her remarriage, Lindsay had lived as though she welcomed grief and ruin. In moments of sustaining illusion, she told herself that she, the Lindsay, was living legendary. In moments of less illusion, Lindsay saw her life as lost. A dead-end job selling real estate was a far cry from that glimpsed golden ideal of her future she had had as a scholarship girl going East to Vassar College. Although men now told Lindsay she was beautiful, she could only see herself as she had been in high school, a fat girl with pimples who played tuba in the marching band, was editor of the yearbook, and was brilliant in Latin. She had to admit, however, that after she had supposedly blossomed into a beauty in college her life had been full of romantic events, if not love. But where had they led her?
