Colonel Rutherford's Colt

by Lucius Shepard

  “Only thing you need to know,” said Rita, “is take what you want.”

  “I mean . . .” Dee hesitated. “About sex.”

  “I know what you mean. Sex is what I’m talking about. You take from someone, they take from you. If what you take is what they wanna give and vice versa, it’s great. Sometimes it’s great even if you don’t fit that way.”

  Dee expressed confusion, and Rita said, “You telling me you don’t know nothing about taking? You took from me tonight. Remember I wanted you to go slow? But you went right on and took what you wanted.”

  “I guess I didn’t intend it that way.” Dejection ground an edge off her good looks. “I thought you liked it.”

  “Aw, honey! I did! I gave you what you wanted. Give and take.” She chucked Dee under the chin. “Next time I might want it hard and you give it slow. We’ll work it out. We’ll have us a night.”

  Another two-legged fly buzzed them, and this time Dee swatted it away.

  “Take what you want.” Rita lifted a second shot, peered at Dee through the tequila color. “It’s the one rule you need to follow in life . . . especially you wanna be an actress.”

  A screw tightened behind Dee’s gaze.

  “That sound cold, does it?” Rita asked her.

  “A little.”

  “That’s ’cause it is. But it don’t mean you have to ice up all through. You keep things separate. Cold’s for the world. Hot’s for your friends. Your true friends . . . and you ain’t gonna have more than one or two of them.”

  “Are you going to be one of mine?”

  Rita had a keen sense that the question was not altogether playful, that there was an undertone of hopefulness. She wasn’t with Jimmy, she thought, she’d be tempted to say Yes . . . even though Dee was trouble to the bone. “I can tell ya how it goes,” she said. “I can tell ya how it all goes. I can show you how to make the decisions you’ll need to if you’re gonna be a taker. How to separate your mind from what you think you know and act on who you are.” She did the shot, let the burn in her belly fade. “Years from now, that might make me a true friend. Your true friend. You might see it that way.”

  “But not now?”

  “Things were different . . . maybe. But I’m on a whole different road from you. You know that.”

  Dee pressed her lips together and, with a forefinger, traced the letters spelling the name of the bar on a cocktail napkin.

  Rita gave her a nudge. “Want me to tell ya how it goes?”

  Dee built a solid nod from what started as little more than a tremor. “If you kiss me first.”

  “I can handle that,” Rita said.

  The kiss inspired her to do another shot, then a fourth. She was feeling it now. Drunk and ready to gamble. Looking at this grace of a girl with a fractured diamond soul who thought that she, Rita, was some kind of weird star, and maybe even saw through the disguise to the exact kind of star she was, an actress for real . . . it sparked her to think seriously about leaving Jimmy, about letting herself fall in love and dragging Dee off on as long and wild a ride as they could survive, mad nun and novitiate, arcing through heaven and burning out in the sky over Albuquerque or Minot or Coeur D’Alene. Waking up to that perfume-ad face on blue-mountain mornings north of Taos, or with gray mist and seabirds on San Juan Island. It might be worth the crack-up. Rita allowed the idea to get comfortable, to own her. Imagined they were already in that life. They sat on their stools facing in different directions, as on a love seat. She caressed Dee’s waist, her thigh, kissing her, saying words that quickened her breath, and other words to teach her.

  “Bad shit happens in life,” she said. “Fucked-up love, rape, abuse . . . being poor. It’s happened to me. Sometimes you can see who done it to ya, sometimes not. I’ve had people walk all over me, wipe their feet, spit, then just go on about their business. I couldn’t even touch ’em.”

  “What did you do?” Dee whispered, and the whisper had a formal dimension, like the voice of a chorus issuing from beyond, a rapt prompting from the angels.

  “What was I gonna do? I coulda wasted years goin’ after ’em. There was times I did. But that just set me back. When somebody stops you from taking what you want, or takes something you don’t wanna give, you keep it in mind, but y’don’t let it control you. You just step to the side and go forward. It ain’t easy, but you get the hang. And once you do, once you learn to use your frustration, your pain, there ain’t a thing can stop you.”

  Dee said nothing, her breath fanning Rita’s cheek.

  Rita put some air between them so she could watch the girl, lost now in reflection. “You understand me. I know you do.”

  “I think . . .” Dee tilted her head, and her eyelids drooped. Then, animated, she said, “I think you want something from me.” As if this had never happened before and she was happy to have something somebody wanted. The reaction made Rita wary, made her wonder if she was sailing uncharted waters with this girl. And that gave her pause to wonder whether, really and for all, she could leave Jimmy. If this was something new, and something new didn’t come along that often.

  “Nothing you can’t give,” she said. “Nothing you don’t want to give.”

  Dee embraced her so tightly, Rita wobbled atop the stool. “I’m going to fall in love with you tonight,” Dee said, and Rita had an image of the words curving around her, like birds in flight carrying long streamers in their claws that they let fall about her shoulders, waist, and legs, settling light as crepe, encircling her, binding her beyond their apparent power. She felt the pressures of the girl’s body specifically. Breasts, hips, arms, heart going like sixty. They would be crazy together, they would break rules she wasn’t sure existed. She couldn’t quite tell if she was buying into something, or if something had strolled past and snatched her up.

  “Does that scare you?” Dee asked. “I’m scared.”

  “It ain’t no good unless it’s a little scary.”

  It seemed they were hanging, afloat on each other’s warmth, the clutterish shouts and gabble and rattled glassware sounds of the bar forming a sky around them.

  “Howdy,” said a man’s voice that Rita didn’t recognize, but should have. She whipped her head around, ready to step on his tongue, and saw Jimmy standing there grinning in his suede jacket and stained cowboy hat. A moment’s disaffection, wishing he was gone, seeing him dull and clumsy and unnecessary, and then she felt incredible relief, as if he was her hero and had hauled her back from the brink of a disaster. She pulled him in for a kiss and said, “Dee, this my friend Jimmy. The writer I told you about.”

  The two of them shook hands in a who-are-you-what’s-this-gonna-mean-to-me way, and Jimmy said, “I know a guy named Dee over to Auburn.”

  Dee looked to Rita for support.

  “Finish your story, Jimmy?” Rita asked.

  “I think . . . mostly.” He inserted himself between them and ordered a Coke from the barmaid, who was mixing a Tom Collins. “Probably do a little more on it come morning.”

  “Where’d you go tonight?”

  He tipped back the brim of his hat, eyes narrowing with thought. “I don’t know. I was just out driving. Trying to get things straight.”

  “This boy,” Rita said to Dee, “he completely loses track. He goes off somewhere and zones out. Then he comes back with these beautiful stories. It’s amazing!”

  Dee, nervous, forced a smile. “Have you sold anything?” she asked Jimmy.

  “Sold a few guns this weekend. Did all right by it. We gotta deliver a Colt up to Pullman in the morning.”

  “She means your stories, Jimmy,” Rita said, beginning to wish once again that he hadn’t showed up.

  “They just something I do . . . stories. It ain’t my business.” He pointed at the Golden Bear emblem on Dee’s T-shirt. “That’s one fat ol’ bear for him to be looking so fierce.”

  “Maybe we should leave,” Rita said. “They about closed, anyway.”

  Jimmy said stubbornly, “I didn’
t get my Coke.”

  “Wouldn’t be surprised you could get a Coke pretty much anywhere,” Rita said. “Hey, I got an idea. Jimmy, whyn’t you take my room at the motel? Then we can have time to talk over breakfast . . . or whenever we wake up. Me and Dee’ll get a room’s nice and fresh.” Then, to Dee: “The maid service is just awful! They didn’t clean me today or yesterday.”

  The lines of Jimmy’s face had gone mulish and unhappy. Rita beamed a thought at him: Do not fuck this up for me.

  “Yeah, okay.” He dug two singles from his side pocket and tossed them on the bar.

  As they headed for the exit, Jimmy in the lead, Dee took Rita aside. “Can we call a cab?” she asked, and Rita asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “I . . .” She nodded toward Jimmy, who had posted himself by the door and was waiting for them. “He seems so strange.”

  “I’m not strange?” Rita said. “You’re not strange?” She threw an arm about Dee’s shoulder. “He spaces when he’s working. That’s all it is.”

  A passing drunk jock with a teeny head atop massive shoulders and mesomorphic chest, his hair all sticking up and frosted yellow, said to Dee, “Golden Bears! Awright!” and she said, without turning, “Please die.”

  “How strange was that?” Rita said as he weaved off, knocking over a chair.

  “I get your point.” Dee slipped an arm around Rita’s waist.

  “Don’t you worry. Can’t nothing bad happen between you and me.”

  “You don’t believe that,” said Dee, like she knew.

  * * *

  Rita was already dressed when Jimmy came to pick her up the next afternoon. She answered his knock and slipped outside to talk with him, closing the door behind her. It looked as if he’d slept in his clothes. The day was gray and chilly, the lower sky graphed by electrical wires. Maybe a dozen crows were perched on a couple of the strands, like the notation of a boring melody. At the head of the alley that led to the rear of the motel, a man with a raggedy beard and carrying a half-full garbage bag, wearing a baseball cap and a down jacket patched with duct tape, was foraging in a dumpster. Rita felt stranded in the ordinary.

  Jimmy jerked his head at the door. “She still here?”

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “Well, let’s go.”

  A Greyhound bus wound out past the motel, interrupting them.

  “We going to Pullman or what?” he asked gruffly.

  “Yes, we’re going! I just need to say goodbye. Unless you wanna go ahead on by yourself?”

  “That what you want?”

  “Quit being a dick! Warm up the goddamn van!”

  She went back inside to warmth and the extraordinary, closed the door with a soft click. Dee was sleeping on her side; the sheet had slipped off her white shoulder. Rita sat beside her, stroked her hair until Dee made a lazy, contented sound, stretched, and fumbled for Rita’s hand. She kissed the hand, then slid it down beneath the sheets, pressing Rita’s fingers into the moist flesh between her legs. “See what you’ve done to me,” she said muzzily.

  “Time for me to go,” Rita told her.

  Dee scooted closer, laid her head in Rita’s lap. “I know.”

  Rita had expected emotion, tears. “I’m talking about right now. Jimmy’s out waiting in the van.”

  The girl rubbed her face languidly against Rita’s belly, then, with effort, sat up, bracing on one hand. She pulled Rita into a hug and whispered, “We’ll see one another again.”

  “You never can tell,” Rita said. “But Berkeley’s a long way from where I’m gonna be.”

  Dee shivered against her. “I can feel what’s going to happen! Can’t you feel it?”

  “I’m feeling a lot of things, baby. I can’t get ’em all straight just this minute.”

  Dee broke the embrace, gazed fiercely at her. “Why are you doing this?”

  “I told you I was leaving.”

  “I don’t mean that!” Dee flung off the covers, rolled out on the opposite side of the bed. She stalked to the door, kicked her T-shirt, which lay crumpled on the floor. She whirled about to face Rita, the cascade of her hair gracefully following a furious twist of her head. The pure lines of her body brought a thick feeling in Rita’s throat.

  “Why are you denying it!” Dee shouted. “How can you?”

  The girl’s anger seemed to flame out around Rita, as if she had stood too close when opening a furnace door. Its heat made her weak and uncertain. “I ain’t denying nothing,” she said.

  “Liar!” Dee grabbed up the T-shirt, figured out where the arms were, and struggled into it, saying, “Liar!” again as she butted her head through the neckhole.

  “You think I don’t love you?” Rita came to her feet. “That ain’t it. We wouldn’t be no good together, honey.”

  She started toward the girl, but Dee stuck out a hand like a crossing guard restraining traffic, and said, “Don’t touch me!”

  “We’d have us a time,” said Rita. “But we’d burn each other bad in the end. We both got a need to do that.”

  “You think you know everything,” Dee said, becoming tearful.

  “I may not . . .” Rita began, and Dee screamed, “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” and put her hands to her ears.

  Rita stood mute. The puzzle of the girl, the moment, Jimmy outside, it flared in her, overwhelmed her; but then the brightness of emotion faded and she saw how to solve it. “You don’t want me to touch you, you better give me room to pass,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll stand you aside.”

  Dee’s anger sank to embers. She locked stares with Rita, then gave it up and took herself with quick steps to the far corner. She clasped her hands at her belly and watched Rita through the strands of hair barring her face with the intensity of an imprisoned saint.

  Rita turned the doorknob, but didn’t open the door. A hurt was brewing in her chest. “This how you want it?” she asked. “It ain’t how I want it.”

  “Give and take,” Dee said with steely precision. “Isn’t that what this is?”

  “If you say so, that’s what it is.”

  Dee went on as if she hadn’t heard. “All that shit you told me . . . that absolute shit!” She waved her hands in front of her face, a little mad girl frightened by a bee, and shrilled, “It was a line! Just like those fucks who hit on us at Gainer’s! Wasn’t it?”

  “It was and it wasn’t,” Rita said.

  “Oh, don’t go there! Don’t you go there! Don’t . . . don’t . . .” Dee gulped in air or she might have hyperventilated. Gasping, she tried to speak, wheezed laughter instead. When she finally managed to say something, it was a scratchy whisper: “Is is not. Everything is everything else. You’re turning into Tony Roberts. Deepak Chopra. One of those assholes . . .”

  “Try to calm down,” said Rita, and opened the door a crack. “The things I told you, baby, they’ll make sense down the road.”

  “I’m calm,” said Dee, dragging hooked fingers through the tangles of her hair; then the rhythms of her speech grew rushed and histrionic. “I’m extremely fucking calm. You know why . . . you know why I’m so calm? Because I’ve figured it out. Actually that’s not quite true. I’ve been trying to figure it out, but there wasn’t anything to figure out, was there? You came right out and told us!” She parodied Rita’s posture and voice. “ ‘I’m an actress. I play the wise Indian woman who knows the secrets of the forest.’ ” She pointed an accusatory finger at Rita and her voice lowered in pitch. “You were acting.”

  “You might wanna think about what acting really is,” Rita said. “But yeah . . . you’re halfway there.”

  “It was all a stupid fucking act!” Dee screamed, the effort taking her into a wild-haired crouch. “Wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?”

  Rita nodded, less acknowledgement than a signing off. “I had a good night, baby. Best I had in years.”

  Dee ran forward as Rita passed through the door. “We’ll see each other again,” she said with resolution; and then, hurrying close as the door swept
shut, her face the last thing Rita saw, she said despairingly, as if the message conveyed was a sad truth she had come to, “You don’t know everything.”

  * * *

  The van, ugly and brown, quivered like an old bear as Rita climbed in. Inside, it had a mean burnt smell from the faulty heater, and she could smell, too, meanness smoking off of Jimmy. He didn’t turn to her. Wedged beside his seat was the cedarwood box in which he’d packed the Colt. Rita had to slam her door twice to shut it.

  They drove out onto the expressway without speaking. Jimmy took the van into the fast lane and made an angry game of driving, passing cars for no reason, then slowing down. He wanted to tell Rita something, but the thing he wanted to tell her was coiled up in his brain and wouldn’t uncoil into a coherent sentence. He glanced over at her. She was resting her head against the window, watching the low hills stream past. “You look fucked out,” he said.

  Rita, who had been indulging in memories both sweet and bitter, rolled an eye toward him. “You always say just the right thing. Yes, I’m fucked out. Y’happy?”

  Steamed, Jimmy whacked the steering wheel with his palm. “Yeah, I’m fucking delirious!”

  The window glass shuddered against Rita’s head. She felt heavy and feeble. The dead gray light ached in her eyes. “I told you when we started,” she said wearily, “I was gonna fall in love every once in a while . . . and that’s what happened. You got no cause to be all pissy.”

  “ ‘Pissy,’ ” he said, trying out the word for its fit. “I ain’t ‘pissy.’ What I am is fed up.”

  “It’s a constant source of pain to ya, is it?”

  He shot her another glance, fuming mad.

  Rita closed her eyes, saw hot pinlights behind the lids. “When’s the last time this happened, Jimmy?”

  “A year . . .” he started, and then he thought about it and couldn’t remember. “Don’t matter when. I’m still sick of it.”

  “Almost two years ago. Tacoma.”

  “All right,” he said. “So?”