This Is What I Want

by Craig Lancaster

“Who’d do this?” Rexford said.

  Swarthbeck pushed past his friend and headed for the door. He figured the answer was clear enough to anybody who’d been paying attention. Adair had overstepped for sure this time.

  Joe LaMer came through it all right, all things considered. He had stiff legs and a sore ass, the products of nine hours handcuffed to the oven in Adair Underwood’s abandoned kitchen. He had a knot on his head from the butt end of her revolver, and when at last he could speak again, he complained of a hell of a headache as residue. And he had the indignity of waiting on John Swarthbeck to read the note on the kitchen table before the mayor fetched the key and freed LaMer and pulled the duct tape from the deputy’s mouth. The mayor hoped that hurt most of all.

  Swarthbeck pushed the note at the officer, who took his time climbing back to his feet.

  “This all true?”

  LaMer didn’t take the offered piece of paper. “Yeah.”

  Swarthbeck pulled it back and read again.

  John,

  I know about Alfonso, I know about the explosion, and I know some other things, too. LaMer here can tell you all about that.

  You make it right with Alfonso. I’ll be checking in with him, and if you don’t, I’ll bring the fight back to you in ways that will really hurt. You make it right with him, and you leave me be. Those are my terms.

  Your man gave it up without a fight. I threatened to make him a gelding, and he spilled it all. You might want to choose your henchmen a little more carefully.

  Adair

  Swarthbeck crumpled the note and stuffed it in his pocket. LaMer, rubbing his dented head, said, “John, I . . .”

  The mayor hunched over and took a powerful step forward, driving his fist into LaMer’s nuts, and the younger man fell again.

  OMAR

  Omar scanned the horizon, from the bald knobs on his right to the sloping valley on his left that met the Yellowstone off in the distance, running along the scoria stacks. He did it again, as if he weren’t aware of the bleakness—both in the landscape and in the situation. It was him and Clarissa and the grasses in the summer wind and the occasional big rig and a whole mess of trouble, as if there weren’t enough of that already.

  He’d told her—told her—that she should stop and have the car looked at when he saw the engine light, and Clarissa had said, “No, it’s fine, it’s just an electrical short,” and she’d kept her foot planted damn near to the floorboard on the drive between Grandview and Glendive. Not more than twenty minutes after they’d joined the interstate headed west toward Billings, the car had hocked up a god-awful noise and had lain down and died on the road’s shoulder.

  “What are we going to do?” Clarissa now asked him, that tremor again in her voice. He wanted to wheel around on her and tell her to stop crying about shit and just deal with it. This was her show, her decision—her decision from way back, when she’d tossed Omar to the side as if she could just deny what had been welling inside him.

  “We have to call someone.”

  “No,” she said.

  “We have to.”

  “We can’t.”

  He brought the fingers of his right hand to his nose and breathed in, same as he’d done intermittently since they left Grandview. He still couldn’t believe it, the way John Rexford’s car had erupted in flames. He’d shoved the gas-soaked kerchief into the tank and lit the end, same as he’d seen Javier Bardem do in that movie. The petroleum scent was a delicious reminder that maybe he wasn’t completely inept, a bit of assurance he needed just now.

  “Clarissa,” he said, his voice rising into the wind, “it’s over. This isn’t a flat tire. The car is dead.” He knew this not because he had a particular way with automobiles—he did not—but because even Omar could push his head under the front end and see the cracked pan and the flood of life-giving oil spreading across the asphalt.

  She sat in the open door frame, set her face into her hands, and sobbed, and he’d had enough of that, too. And yet he made his way around the car and stood beside her, gently clearing his throat to let her know that she should calm down and join him in the moment.

  “I can’t just go back,” she said at last, the sniffles muffling her words. “Can’t we just give it a little bit? Maybe we can catch a ride into Billings, right?”

  He crossed his arms and then turned to her.

  “What about your car?” He didn’t see any way around it now. When the car got dealt with, so would they, and so would the lies about where they’d gone today.

  “I don’t care,” she said. “We can call someone after.”

  Omar considered that and found the answer worked for him, too. For all he knew, Gabe was gallivanting around Grandview now, blowing Omar’s already-thin cover. And then, of course, there was John Rexford and his car, both problems for another time. Maybe by now Gabe would know about it, too, and maybe he’d even consider that Omar had done what he could to set things right.

  He moved against Clarissa, forcing her over, and he shoved in next to her and waited. For something.

  The sun made its push toward the high point in the sky and beat down on them, and Omar crawled into the backseat and lay on his back, his knees bent into acute triangles and very nearly brushing the headliner, and he dreamt of basketball and all the opportunities that were on an inexorable march toward him.

  His body twitched. The basketball dreams were pure dopamine, a place where the ball was always small, the basket always vast, and his moves always correct. He chanced to dream of final-second shots and championships and victory parades on teammates’ shoulders.

  And then Omar’s eyes fluttered open. The car seat smell and the sweaty stench from his lying in the sun flooded his senses. Perspiration leached into the shirt on his back.

  “Clarissa.” He turned onto his side and saw her in the driver’s seat, her head dangled off to the side.

  “Clarissa.”

  She lurched forward. “Huh?”

  “Somebody’s here,” he said. He sniffed his fingers again.

  Tires rolled along the rumble strip behind them, the crunch of gravel accompanying, and then came to a stop.

  “Who is it?” she said.

  Omar tried to pull his knees in while simultaneously shoving his torso upward so he could get a look out the back window. The confines of the car left him precious little room to move.

  Outside, the sound of a door opening and then slamming shut. Footsteps on the pavement. Long strides from the sound of it.

  “Oh,” she said, “it’s that guy.”

  “What guy?”

  “You know, that author guy. From Jamboree.”

  The sound of the steps fell off. A shadow loomed in Clarissa’s open window, and then a face peeked in.

  “You guys need some help?”

  SAMUEL

  He found his father in the old tack room, a pencil in Sam’s chewed fingers taking inventory of what had been left behind. There hadn’t been a horse on the spread since before Big Herschel spun off into the cosmos, and there hadn’t been anyone keen to deal with the detritus until now.

  The door to the shack had lain open, and Samuel found his way in without rousing the old man. He figured he’d just stand there a spell and wait for recognition to register. Might even be able to throw a scare into his dad, and that would be a nice reversal from the many years when Sam had lurked around darkened corners after a scary movie, ready to separate his son from his sense of security all in the name of a good laugh.

  On and on it went, Sam counting riggings and horseshoes and time-beaten boxes of nails and the rest of it, quick jots in his notebook. Samuel held still and silent, and then he whinnied, deep and throaty and loud, like an old draft horse, and Sam’s notebook went flying as he whirled around to fend off an intruder.

  When he saw his boy, his face moved through surprise, confusion
, anger, and then relief in about the space of a breath.

  He listed about, Fred Sanford-style, and said, “The ol’ ticker hasn’t got many of those left in it,” and then he smiled, and Samuel knew he’d hit the mark.

  He brought his forefingers to a point and thrust them forward at his father. “Gotcha,” he said.

  At the house, Samuel poured two glasses of Coke and carried them into the living room. Sam sat stretched across the sofa, Blanche’s window unit blowing frigid kisses his way.

  “You got it all accounted for?” Samuel asked. He handed his father one of the sweaty glasses.

  “Just about. Some good stuff. Lots to keep, but some things to get rid of, too. Make for a nice weekend sale this fall.”

  Samuel took the seat across from him and savored a sip.

  “And the rest?” he asked.

  His father sat up straight, snapping his fingers. “Forgot about that. Talked to the guy today.” He leaned forward and fished in his back pocket for his notes. “So we’re thinking conservation easement, all right? The two farms adjoining this one don’t want the rigs here, either, and they’ve got their mineral rights. In fact, they came to me, because they were nervous I’d cash the place out.”

  Samuel wrinkled up his nose, confused. “So no sale?”

  “I’m giving it away,” Sam said. “Satisfies what your grandma wanted, and it keeps those things”—he waved in the direction of the east wall and the rigs that rose in the distance beyond it—“at bay for a while.”

  Samuel watched his father as he talked. He couldn’t tease out whether it was an idea driven by inspiration or anger. He supposed it didn’t matter, at that.

  “Sounds like you’re solid,” he said.

  Sam nodded. “I am. I really am.” He smiled, and then it crumbled. “How’s your mother?”

  “You should ask her yourself.”

  “Come on.”

  “You should.”

  Sam sat up farther and drained his glass, then he pushed himself erect and grabbed his cap from the hook beside the door.

  “You have some time before you go?” he asked.

  “Yeah, a little.”

  Sam reached for the door. “Well, come on, then.”

  RALEIGH

  Raleigh kept checking the rearview mirror and the human cargo in the back. Funny kid, this Omar Smothers. Raleigh hadn’t even realized he was there, in the car now far in the distance, until he heard the rustle and tumble of thrown weight as the kid got himself upright. When he’d offered them a ride, the Smothers kid—Raleigh knew him on sight; this kid was a big star, or soon would be one—had told his friend to take shotgun, that he wanted to go back to sleep. And sure enough, he’d dropped off into slumber inside of fifteen miles.

  Raleigh looked again and marveled anew at the size of him. Not many men towered over Raleigh, but this kid qualified, and one look at those hands suggested he wasn’t near done with the growth. Raleigh might have had trouble even taking him for a kid if not for the baby face—life’ll beat that out of you soon enough, he thought—and the wispy mustache that he was trying too hard to grow.

  He shifted his gaze now to the girl, and he smiled at her, and she looked at her lap. She’d been stealing glances at him since he picked them up. He could feel the surreptitious stares. She had questions, and she was just trying to decide how to get them out. He got that a lot.

  “You sure you don’t want to call your folks?” he said.

  “No, it’s fine. I’ll call later.”

  “You can use my phone if you want.”

  “No, thank you. It’s OK.”

  She glanced at him again and then looked away. Nervous. Raleigh wasn’t so far removed from his own adolescence that he didn’t know what this was about. They were getting away and didn’t want anybody to know, for whatever reason. He rolled his left shoulder against his cheek to scratch an itch. None of his business. If Billings is where they wanted to go, he figured that’s where he’d take them.

  Now he looked at her again, and this time she struggled to meet his gaze. “What’s it like to be famous?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Yes, you would,” she said.

  “Well, I’m not movie-star famous.”

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  Smart girl. A little more on the ball upstairs than he’d been inclined to give her credit for initially.

  “It’s a drag,” he said. “Or, in your nomenclature, it’s totes lame.”

  He gave her another smile, and she parted ways with a courtesy laugh.

  “What’s nomenclature?” she said.

  In Forsyth, a hundred miles to go, Raleigh left the highway and tooled into the main drag to the Town Pump. He had to piss, and the girl—Clarissa, he kept reminding himself—said she wanted something to drink.

  “You want anything?” he said to Omar, still prone in the backseat.

  “Beef jerky.”

  “You got any money?”

  “No.”

  “No worries,” Raleigh said. “I’ll get it.” He slammed the door shut. Little fucker. Giant fucker. Whatever. It was hard to see what that girl saw in this kid.

  Inside the store, he grabbed some jerky for Omar and a cup of Colombian for himself. At the register, he pulled a copy of the Billings Herald-Gleaner from the stack and set that on the counter, too. When Clarissa queued in behind him with a fountain drink, he waved her up and paid for everything.

  “Thank you, Mr. Ridgeley.”

  “It’s Raleigh. And you’re welcome.”

  By Custer, fifty miles to go, they were fast friends. Clarissa had extracted from him a promise to do a video chat with her English class, and Raleigh had painted anecdotes for her that amplified and exaggerated his travels. From time to time, he’d watch the boy in the back, who’d cracked open his bag of jerky, taken a couple of small bites—and let that god-awful stench of animal flesh into the car—and then gone back to snoozing.

  “Are you a cheerleader?” he asked her.

  “No, I hate those bitches.” She caught herself. “Sorry.”

  “It’s OK. When I was in school, being a cheerleader was just about the most important thing in the world to a girl.”

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Guess.”

  She passed a discerning eye over him. Raleigh sat up straight and tried to suck in his gut.

  “I don’t know. Forty, maybe?”

  Raleigh laughed.

  “What?” she said.

  He waved his right hand in a tight circle. “Nothing,” he said. Forty? Sweet Jesus. She must think anything north of that is dead. “I like your answer. We’ll go with that.”

  They drove on a few miles. Raleigh just smiled. Forty. Unbelievable.

  “You know,” she said, “it doesn’t matter. You’re cool.”

  “Thank you,” he said. He looked at her, and she smiled. “So are you.”

  In the final few miles, Raleigh did what he’d been thinking of for a while, and he made his insurrection. They were talking about something—he’d lost the thread—and he slipped his hand across the console and set it on her thigh, just below the line of her shorts. She didn’t look, didn’t acknowledge his touch, but he felt the tightness in the muscle and the rigidity of the skin. He pulled back and she looked at him, and he tried to strike a look that offered conciliation. He put both hands on the wheel, and Omar thumped in the backseat as he adjusted his position.

  Billings now slipped into view, the east-end industrial area dappled in the sun.

  “Where do you want me to drop you?” he said. “Or do you need something to eat or—”

  “Just the mall,” she said. He listened closely for clipped words, for iciness, but it was hard to tell. The move had been unwelcome, in any case. Regret was thoroughly his, and his
stomach roiled.

  He left the interstate at King Avenue and drove into the West End. A few turns and it would be done. He’d planned to ask if he could help them out somehow in getting back to their car, but he wasn’t going to do that. Get them out and get gone.

  In the backseat, Omar now rose to a seated position. Raleigh watched him through the mirror as he blinked away sleep.

  “Hey, sleepyhead,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  They crested Twenty-Fourth Street, and the mall loomed into view.

  “Where?” Raleigh said.

  “Anywhere.” Clarissa didn’t look at him.

  He pulled into the Dillard’s lot, the first one available, and he came to a stop. “This good?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  While the kids clambered out, Raleigh pressed the button with shaky fingers to release the trunk lid so Clarissa could retrieve her stuff. Come on, come on, come on. He drummed fingers on the steering wheel. Next, finally, came the slam of the trunk, hard, and Raleigh engaged the window button and said, “No need for that.”

  Omar’s shadow crossed his face, and Raleigh looked up to see the man-child looming over him.

  “Forget something?”

  The punch came like a stroke of lightning. The force of it broke the bridge of Raleigh’s nose, and before he could get his finger back on the window switch, Omar’s massive hands had hold of his shirt and were pulling him through to the ground below. The force of the fall knocked the air from his lungs.

  The next shot, to Raleigh’s right eye, broke the orbital bone, and he heard the girl screaming, “Omar, no!”

  Dazed, and with one good eye to see it, Raleigh watched the boy’s bloody fist rear back again, giving him just enough time to ponder the possibility that if somebody got this kid off him in time, before too many more shots, this all might make a good story one day.

  DOREEN

  The sadness began for Doreen Smothers when she saw Gabe Bowman walking up the sidewalk in front of the Farm and Feed. She gave Elbert Fleener his fifty and his sack of rabbit feed, and she moved along the big front windows, shadowing the boy, until she reached the door and opened it.