No, it mustn’t be that, either, not in light of what Raleigh has come here today to say. Perhaps, instead, it’s a conversation under a streetlamp in the blackest pitch of night, a kiss on the hand, and a long wave good-bye—reminiscent of Raleigh’s own recent experience, minus the wrestling match against the garage. Or maybe it’s a letter sent from a safe distance, with no return address and no signature, yet she would surely know whose hand wrote it. Maybe he’d let that seep in awhile and then open his door one day and she’d be there, unable to beat back the currents of a life she no longer wanted.
Closer. He was drawing closer. Something open-ended yet inevitable—now that would do the trick nicely. It would take the right words, arranged in the right way, vivid and yet deathless, the kind of words Raleigh Ridgeley would have in his quiver.
Damn, but he wished he could go to the laptop now and get this down, before the purity of it all blew away.
He fumbled a smile, and the ladies sat forward in their seats, ready to hear him.
“So,” he said, “who’s read Squalid Love?”
In unanimity, hands shot skyward.
He spent an hour and a half with them, the first sixty minutes of it pleasurable as he deconstructed the mythical West and cast its compromised parts aside. He fairly shook the roof of the bandstand as he inveighed against the robber barons of regional literature, those simple fools who’d plundered the legends for their own gain, repeatedly giving us laconic sheriffs and drunken Indians and tripe for dialogue that amounted to no more than a fat splash of tobacco juice.
“The West is what you’re making of it, what I’m making of it,” he intoned. “We have the same problems and the same desires and motivations as anyone else, and I’m sick and tired of cartoon characters made of granite who speak either with their fists or a gun. It’s hackneyed, and we—you and I as readers—deserve better.”
He expected some pushback on that, and he got it. Marge Fleener said her husband enjoyed a good horse opera, and she didn’t see the problem with that, as Elbert wouldn’t read anything else but the St. Louis Cardinals box score if he didn’t have those old dime paperbacks.
“My dear Marge,” Raleigh said, taking her hand, because he knew she’d like that, “the problem isn’t those old books. The problem is that they’ve been repackaged again and again, under the banners of new writers with new titles who say the same old thing, over and over. I ask you, how many borderline-personality small-town sheriffs with a fleeting acquaintance with ethics do we need in our books? Whatever the number, we’ve doubled or tripled it. Meanwhile, we have damn few Western books in which anyone orders takeout. I wonder why. Too realistic?”
Raleigh played all the notes, pure and tonal and beautiful. He told of book critics in Europe and writers’ workshops in Peru, of seeing his own face on a poster in Signoria Square and wishing he had Groucho Marx glasses so he could hide behind them. He told of standing off set in Hollywood, watching the hot new actor with the killer abs make an absolute mockery of Shakespeare, because if there’s anything they like to give hot new actors to establish their bona fides, it’s the works of the Bard. He brought them to tears as he replayed the feeling he gets, every time, when his flight banks hard left and comes in over Billings and he sees the sandstone bluffs and knows he’s coming home again. “Don’t believe what you read,” he told them of the breathless accounts of his life on other shores with his most recent girlfriend. “This, the very ground I stand upon today, is home.” They swooned when he said that.
The harder slog came in the final half hour, as the members of the book club slung their questions at him and pined for answers that Raleigh would have rather left to the spaces between the words or their own imaginations.
Nancy Drucker wanted to know why, in the book, Marisol would leave Jefferson for that nothing of an extra on her film. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said, to which Raleigh replied, “Does anything ever when it comes to the heart?”
The question-neutralized-by-a-question ploy seemed to work with the others, too. Barbara Perrigrine was mystified by Jefferson’s burning of the 365 drawings he made of Marisol. “All that money,” she said. Raleigh waited a dramatic beat and said, “What value would you be willing to accept in exchange for everything you ever wanted?”
On and on he batted back their queries with oblique answers and rote lines, and he became exasperated only once, when Tana Myers asked him if Jefferson and Marisol would be getting back together, maybe in another book. Her question, delivered earnestly enough, irritated him, for he and Tana had enjoyed a more intimate time a few years back, and he had talked about these things with her, and he thought she had listened.
“I can’t imagine so, no,” he said.
“They seemed so in love,” she said.
“That’s not enough, is it? Does anyone here think that’s enough?”
Nobody said anything. His voice had gone shrill.
Later, after signing the books and posing for the pictures and after the Grandview women had floated back to their homes and husbands, Raleigh helped Mayor Swarthbeck stack the chairs and took their solitude as an opportunity to unload what was weighing on him.
“I don’t think I can keep doing this for free,” he said as he hefted two more chairs onto the tower they were building.
Swarthbeck didn’t break his pace. “You think anybody gets paid for this?”
“I think you do, in a manner of speaking.” Raleigh bit off the last word; it was an overstep, a bad one, and he shouldn’t have gone there. It’s just that the damn words sometimes came faster than he could corral them.
Sure enough, Swarthbeck stopped his work and stood there, his gaze penetrating any armor Raleigh might have. He knew the mayor had silently chafed at his fictional depiction in The Biggest Space, the way Raleigh had borrowed wholesale Swarthbeck’s arrival in town as a twenty-one-year-old out of the Marines, one who set about worming his way into civic matters first as a bar owner and then as a consolidator of indeterminate breadth, with his interests silent and overt dangling into nearly every aspect of town life. It had been anything but a flattering portrayal, but then the book took off, and people actually made pilgrimages to town to drink with the real-life Mayor Engmar Bentsen, and Swarthbeck began to see the upside of his ancillary fame.
“In a manner of speaking,” Swarthbeck said, “you do, too. Look, Raleigh, if you don’t want to do this anymore, just say the word. We’ll retire it. Next time around, I’d be just as happy to get rid of the Sunday stuff altogether. But don’t come here and try to extort—”
“Extort?”
“Yeah, extort.” Swarthbeck moved in on him, and Raleigh backed up. The mayor stopped and smiled.
“We all know you’re speaking tonight at Dawson Community College and how much they’re paying you, Raleigh. That’s half a year’s wages for some sorry asshole here, so don’t insult me by poor-mouthing. Every year you come here, you don’t buy a single meal or a single drink, and you get all the pussy you want.” A wicked grin accompanied the last bit, and Raleigh’s stomach turned on him. He just wanted to go, to leave it be, but Swarthbeck had revved his engines now.
“Nothing wrong with a little pussy, of course, although I prefer to accumulate—how should I put it—more concrete assets. My point being that you get exactly what you want from this weekend, so let’s not sully this thing with craven talk of money, OK?”
Raleigh tried to find his bearings. He set a hand on the bandstand and waited for the scene to clear.
“We done?” he asked.
The mayor stacked the last of the chairs. “I think so. Just one more thing.”
“OK.”
“My daddy told me this once. Took me a long time to figure out what he meant.”
“OK,” Raleigh said again.
“Don’t shit where you eat. You know what I’m saying?”
“Vaguely.”
Swarthbeck chuckled. “I have a feeling Sam Kelvig wouldn’t mind clarifying it for you. I’m letting you know that as your friend. Have a safe trip home, Raleigh. And let me know about next year, OK?”
PATRICIA
Sam sat across from her in the living room, same house, different worlds. Just for the sake of comfort, Patricia might have preferred that he not stare at her with such ugliness in his heart, but she could not blame him for wanting to keep her pinned down in the house, under his watch. Had it been Sam with the faltering heart and the wandering eye—and she had never suspected such a thing—she would have played it exactly the same.
The part that got to her, the part he’d never understand no matter if she spent her remaining days trying to explain it, was that she had no interest in being where Raleigh was. As she turned it over in her mind, she almost wanted to laugh. Almost. If anybody needed a way of tracing just how much things had changed, there it was: Three days ago, she’d fantasized about Raleigh. Two days ago, she’d felt his tongue against hers. Today, now, this very minute, she wanted a reset. How was that for seismic shifts?
Denise and Randy and their brood were gone, a frozen storm heading out the door. Denise had kissed her father and snubbed Patricia, and they’d backed out of the driveway without even a wave. Patricia did get to kiss the children; she’d caressed their little heads and told them how much she loved them, while Denise stood with rigid arms outstretched to receive her babies, her body pitched at an acutely angry angle.
Samuel was gone, off to spend more time with the Riley girl. Patricia’s mouth turned upward as she thought of this, and of the answer he had given early that morning in the hospital when she’d asked about Megan just to have something else to talk about, and perhaps with a lilt too hopeful that there might be more afoot with her son’s old girlfriend.
“It’s just really good to have a friend, Mom,” he’d said. And then came the bit she’d have to get used to, somehow. “I’m still sexually attracted to men. Real talk, as the kids say.”
“What’s so funny?” Sam slung the words into the space between them.
“Nothing.”
“My ass, nothing.”
She clammed up. Nothing good could come of a defense on these grounds. Sam had walked the house like a caged bear all morning, all stress and menace and searching for a fight. Patricia didn’t see a way to deal with that—wasn’t sure, in fact, that there was one—but she had wits about her enough to know that escalation would end badly.
“You’ve ruined everything,” he said.
“I’m sorry. Sorry you feel that way.”
“I don’t feel any way. It’s just the way it is.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
Again, she stifled the urge to engage. She clasped her hands and squeezed them.
“I should’ve been at the park,” he said.
“Samuel and the mayor had it covered.”
“Not the same.”
How many times had Sam lamented Samuel’s ongoing absence from the place that once cradled him? How often had he talked about the legacy—honestly, a bit of a stretch in the case of Jamboree, a Big Herschel invention of recent-enough vintage that Patricia well remembered the first one—and the shame of their son not being there to continue it?
Damn, the fool’s gold of yearning. Were they not here, staring at each other across a widening gulf, Patricia and her husband might be talking about how dreams they never dared give breath were now within taunting reach. Samuel had come home, and had even reclaimed his name in his tossed-off way. Blanche had made it to her Jamboree parade coronation, and despite the difficult circumstances of her final hours, the doctors had assured them that her fall was not a complicating factor in her death. She had, simply, come to her end, one she’d been praying for and one they could accept. Henrik? Henrik was a different matter, a true tragedy, but it would be a lie to say they’d never considered the possibility he’d remove himself from the picture. At any rate, Sam’s attentions were clearly elsewhere.
They talked of none of those things. They only looked at each other. She only grew sadder at the wasted time. He only grew angrier—at the fact that he couldn’t make himself feel better by making her feel worse, she suspected. The whole sorry circumstance hung in their house like stale air.
He looked at his watch. She looked at the wall clock above his head. It would be over now, the book club meeting in the park. She let out a breath as if she’d been holding it the entire morning.
Sam found his feet and jangled the keys in his pocket.
“Where are you going?” she said, standing up herself, compelled to do so by some foreboding sensibility that had crept into the room.
“You know where. You could draw me a map.” He strode for the kitchen, for his boots, for the wallet he kept on the kitchen counter because it was apt to go missing anywhere else.
She fell into step, on his heels. “Don’t do that.”
He wiggled feet into boots she bought him in Billings a year ago, on his birthday. Why would she notice that? She shook her head, clearing the tangent.
“Sam, don’t.”
He lunged at her, and she backed herself up to the refrigerator. He stood there, in perfect symmetry with her, inches away, and he pointed a long finger at her nose.
“No,” he said. “You don’t get a say in this. Not now.” His words came direct and straight and quiet, so soft that despite their content they wouldn’t have been menacing in the least if delivered without the accompanying visual.
A leak sprung in her resolve. Her chin dimpled and quivered.
“Please,” she said, her voice shaken.
He left her there, curled into herself in the kitchen, and she heard the door close and the quick steps on the concrete and the truck engine gun to life, the low, angry yell of it fading into nothingness as he drove away from her and toward Raleigh.
SAM
The timing was exquisite. When Sam’s truck came to a rolling stop where Ellison met Main, Raleigh’s Lexus dissected the intersection and headed south, toward Sidney. Sam let another pickup, Elbert Fleener’s, slip past before he fell in. He’d watch this play out from an actionable distance.
A mile out of town, Elbert, hauling potable water, took the right turn Sam knew was coming, and then it was just him and Raleigh in the visible portion of the southbound lane. Sam didn’t move up to close the distance. He turned the radio off and settled into the white noise of the truck’s tires against asphalt.
Back in town, Raleigh had passed him without even a glance, and Sam couldn’t be sure whether he’d know the truck, anyway. No matter. He would hang back, a silent stalker, and he would go where Raleigh led. And there . . .
Well, that was a good question, wasn’t it? Sam hadn’t exactly given that much thought. Patricia sure had the fear in her eyes, though, and he had been all too willing to let her think he was going forth with the worst of intentions. She’d tried to sit there, serene, while the ceaseless waves of anger and hurt had pounded on him, and he’d turned that around right quick by getting up and leaving. She was slumped and broken when he left, and that served her right for what she’d done.
He wouldn’t mind throwing a little fear into Raleigh, too. Sam shifted in his bucket seat and fastened a harder grip on the wheel. Nobody respects a commitment anymore. That’s what it comes down to, Sam figured. If Patricia had been inclined to wander, then she was weak. If Raleigh proposed to be there to scoop her up, then he was opportunistic. Neither quality was worth bragging about. Maybe, Sam thought, I can keep this guy away from some other poor bastard’s marriage if I can scare him a little.
Piece by piece, then, the course of action came to Sam, the workability of it just as evident. He tightened up again, anticipating, committed. He flipped the radio back on and the voice of the old crooner Jim Reeves floated int
o his ears, delivering an apt tune for the occasion:
He’ll have to go . . .
When Raleigh turned into the Lazy Z parking lot, Sam registered a sliver of surprise. It’s not that Sidney could boast four-star accommodations, but the Z couldn’t even dream about such plaudits. At its best, it was an overnight stay for travelers seeking wider horizons. At worst, it was a flophouse. Whatever the case, Raleigh and his snooty attitude and his new Lexus fit the scene bizarrely.
Sam idled into the parking lot and backed into a space across the lot from where Raleigh stood at his trunk, retrieving his notes and his laptop case. Sam watched from the cab, sizing him up, for he’d never before looked at this man, someone he’d known since he was a kid, and tried to ferret out the best way to kick his ass. Sam’s mouth went to cotton as he looked Raleigh up and down. For the first time, Sam noticed that he was actually a bear of a guy—maybe six four, probably 210, 220. Big hands. Broad shoulders. Sam had always dismissed Raleigh as a sissy, someone lost in pretty word swirls that didn’t amount to anything worth talking about. Now, here, he looked a hell of a lot more formidable than that.
“Nerves,” Sam told himself. “It’s the nerves, damnit.”
He forced himself to stick to his tossed-together plan, and now he reached under the passenger-side seat, his blind hand coming across the thick forged steel he’d been certain he’d find there. He found his grip and drew it out, eighteen inches of monkey wrench, the vise jaws gone to casual rust since their last use. It would do. Small enough to handle easily, big enough to threaten damage—or inflict it, if necessary.
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