Western Swing

by Tim Sandlin

  Which, of course, was ridiculous. By his fifth birthday, Buggie had stopped laughing. Stopped crying also. He didn’t do anything emotional—never acted frustrated or craved hugs. He accepted what we gave him and asked for nothing else. I asked Ann if Buggie was abnormal.

  “What do you mean, ‘abnormal’?”

  “You’re around kids all day. Are they all as isolated as Buggie?”

  “Fred is not isolated, he’s shy.”

  “Shy is when you’re afraid of people. Buggie ignores people. He ignores us.”

  Ann didn’t like that. “Bull, Loren. He doesn’t ignore me. Buggie’s just better than the other kids. He’s special.”

  “Then he’s not normal.”

  “He’s special.”

  We made weekend camping trips into the mountains above Boulder every summer. Winter nights we popped Jiffy Pop and played Candyland and Scrabble. The second year we installed cable TV. There was even talk of a microwave oven. What I’m trying to prove here is that I was once a regular guy. I didn’t set out to wander crazed through the Wilderness, attempting to contact God. I once kept up with garbage pickup day and wrote down the mileage whenever I changed the oil in the car. For three years I behaved as I was expected to behave.

  • • •

  Then, one June morning when it was too pretty outside for me to clean bricks, the postman brought news that my second Western had sold. I kissed the mailbox. I ran around the yard, yee-hawing in my bathrobe until the neighbor’s dog howled. The contract with its enclosed thousand-dollar check called for a significant gesture of celebration—a cake. Fireworks. Loud music and alcohol. It called for an entire day with nothing constructive attempted.

  I spent most of the afternoon gathering materials, even missed my Andy Griffith rerun, but by 4:30 Ann’s surprise was all set. I’d made a little flagpole out of three straws and taped the check to the top. This was stuck in a Safeway angel food cake and surrounded by sparklers. I peeled the outer seal on a bottle of cold duck and loosened the plastic top so one good thumb-push would pop it. Laura Nyro’s “Dancin’ in the Streets” circled round and round on the turntable, awaiting only my release of the tone arm to blast my secondhand speakers into pieces of crackling junk. The anticipation was so thick I had to drink a beer not to be overwhelmed.

  Finally, Ann and Buggie bumped through the door and I hit it with the sparklers and Laura Nyro. The champagne bottle put up a struggle before it banged and foamed over onto the kitchen table, but the overall effect was one of good fortune. Ann acted properly impressed. She hugged me and admired the check and said the regular things about champagne bubbling up her nose. Only a writer’s wife has to act happy when her husband earns a thousand dollars for three years’ work. Buggie sat on the floor, pretending the plastic champagne top was a raft and the rug was an ocean. He swayed back and forth and made castaways-on-the-sea sounds.

  “Let’s spend the money quickly,” I said.

  “We could put a down payment on a car.”

  “I don’t want a new car. I want to blow the thousand on extravagance. You and Buggie deserve some foolish fun for a change.”

  Ann sipped champagne from a tumbler with Dukes of Hazzard characters painted on the side. “We haven’t had a real vacation since our honeymoon when you got in the argument with that dead writer.”

  “Faulkner.”

  “Yeah, Faulkner. We could take a vacation. God knows I need one.”

  “Okay, vacation time, where would you like to go?”

  “Me? It’s your book, Loren, you choose the place.”

  “Nope, I’m giving you a dream vacation…for a thousand dollars. Name the spot.”

  “I couldn’t, Loren. You decide.”

  Selling the Western made me feel magnanimous. Ann hardly ever got to make a decision, this seemed like the time. Besides, I was pretty sure she’d choose Zion and that’s where I wanted to go, only I wanted her to say it. I’d recently read an article about an environmental writer named Everet Reuss who walked into the desert in 1934 and didn’t come back—yet. Someone claimed to have seen him around 1950, but it didn’t seem possible he could have lived this long. The article said Everet was the subject of much speculation and mythmaking among desert lovers. If he was dead, I figured maybe I could find him from his emanations the way a horse smells out water. I might become well-known as a Western writer and mystery solver.

  “Name the spot,” I said. “This vacation is a present to you.”

  Ann smiled. “Wyoming.”

  “Wyoming? I thought you wanted to tour Zion and ride a mule down the Grand Canyon.”

  “Deserts are too hot in the summer. I saw a picture of the Tetons in Cosmo last month. It was in an article called ‘Vacation-lands of the Stars.’ John Travolta skied there last winter.”

  “Well, we better see the place John Travolta skied.”

  “You don’t like Wyoming?”

  “Sure, I like Wyoming. I just thought you wanted Zion.”

  “Would you rather see Zion, I really don’t care. We could go to Zion if you’d rather.”

  “You chose Wyoming, we’ll go to Wyoming.”

  “Are you sure you really want to?”

  “I really want to. Buggie’ll like Yellowstone. He’s never seen a bear.”

  Ann smiled at Buggie on the floor. “Have you ever seen a bear?”

  “Me? No, I haven’t seen a bear either.”

  Buggie turned the champagne top on its side and made gurgling, sinking noises in his throat. He looked up at us and said, “Everbody drownded.”

  • • •

  “All right, flip her there where the creek runs into the lake. The current will take it out a ways.”

  Buggie’s face scrunched into a mask of concentration. He cast with all his might, hurtling the nymph into the dirt at his feet.

  “Almost,” I said. “Don’t swing so hard this time and let go of the button a little sooner.”

  Wordlessly, Buggie reeled in. He planted both feet and swung the rod as hard as he could. The lure shot out a couple of feet and slapped down on the water like a flattened palm.

  “Let the line out, let it out. Now, watch the bobber.” Okay. I admit Buggie was fishing with a little weight and a bobber, which is bait fishing without bait. Maybe in those last three years I’d begun to compromise my strict moral standards, but, hell, Buggie was only five years old. He was too short to cast a fly line. And anyhow, the nymph was hand-tied from artificial materials. It was so tiny whoever tied it must have used a magnifying glass. Any pro will testify there’s no shame in fishing with a nymph the size of a thumbnail.

  “Gonna catcht a fish,” Buggie said. His alert eyes never left the red bobber as it bobbed out into Jackson Lake. I settled onto the ground and leaned back into the warm bank, fairly bursting with pride. Here I was alive and saying the ancient words—“A man’s calling is to provide sustenance for women, my son. Observe, learn the skills my father passed to me as his father passed them to him, the skills you shall pass on to your son.” Lying there, watching the sun glitter on the Tetons, I felt like a bead in the necklace of history. A frame in the film of life. Hot damn for tradition.

  Not that Don ever took me fishing.

  “Keep the line tight,” I said, “so you can set the hook if you get a bite.” Buggie scowled, ignoring my advice.

  I yawned and stretched, smug as a Siamese cat. An osprey floated low over the perfect blue water. The mountains sprang from the far side of the lake as if they’d been washed clean last night and hung up to sparkle for my enjoyment. So far the vacation had been a tremendous success. More than I could have hoped for. The Chevelle was running like a champ. The weather couldn’t have been improved by God Himself. We were camped in a place called Lizard Creek Campground, a spot so perfect you’d think Disney studios hired an exterior decorator to place the stones and tre
es. Best of all, with the responsibility of guiding kids to normalcy off Ann’s shoulders, she was relaxed and happy. I loved to see Ann happy.

  That morning, for the first time ever, she stayed in bed after I got up. She lay on her back with her arms thrown over her head, almost exposing her breasts, but not quite. It was the pose of a seductress. I leaned down and kissed her awake.

  “You two fish,” she murmured. “I feel like more sleep.” Ann was my best friend and partner, but it had been a long time since I thought of her as a seductress. Maybe I never had. Instead of fishing with Buggie, I had a strong wish to crawl back into the sleeping bags and hold Ann and tell her she was beautiful.

  “Have fun, take care of Buggie,” she said in her near sleep.

  “Loren.” I must have dozed off in the sun because Buggie was kicking my foot and saying, “Loren, Loren.” He clutched the rod tight, holding it straight over his head. His face held a cross between excitement and fear that could only mean he had a fish. A couple of feet from the bank, the bobber moved down, then up, then back down again. With a jerk of the rod, it sank.

  “You got one. Hell’s bells, Buggie, set the hook. Reel him in slow, don’t loosen the line, slow, nice and easy.”

  Buggie didn’t reel at all. He turned and ran up the bank with the rod, dragging a little four-inch trout across the sand and rocks, then over a sagebrush, finally bouncing him into a willow bush.

  “You got him, Bug. You caught a fish. Gee, it’s a beauty.”

  Buggie dropped his rod and crept down the bank, staring open-mouthed at his trout. The fish lay on its side, sucking air, the hook clear through its tongue. “It’s a cutthroat,” I said. “A nice one.”

  “Is it alive?”

  “Won’t be for long after that ride over the rocks.”

  “Should I name him?”

  “God, no, Buggie. Never name anything you’re going to eat.”

  Buggie’s eyes grew big. I saw him swallow. “We’re gonna eat him?”

  The trout fit in my hand lengthwise, its eye turned up with an expression eerily like Buggie’s betrayed look. “Of course we’re going to eat it. That’s why people fish. We don’t kill animals just for fun.”

  “I don’t want to kill it. Could we put it back?”

  As if to answer his question, the trout’s gills quivered and bled. It died. “Too late,” I said. “Wave bye-bye to the trout spirit.”

  After waving bye-bye, Buggie stood next to me with a hand on my shoulder while I cleaned the fish. I slit the belly and ran my little finger through the cavity, flipping the heart, intestines, liver, and fluorescent pink floater bag into the lake. The fish was almost too small to slide onto the stringer.

  “He in heaven?”

  “Yep, the spirit rises through the sky to fish heaven. It’s a place like this only with no people. Pretty soon he’ll find a new mama and come back again.”

  “Will he still be a fish?”

  “Probably, but if he was a good fish, he might come back as something better, a frog or a horny toad or something.”

  “Is he alive in heaven?”

  “No, he’s dead. He has to die so we can eat. But he’ll be back again soon.” I felt funny, laying reincarnation on the boy. To me, reincarnation shows more imagination than heaven or the Elysian fields, but it’s still basic wishful thinking. At the time, I didn’t believe in wishful thinking. However, the alternative was to have Buggie feel like a murderer. I had hoped to protect him from guilt until he was at least six or seven.

  “I could have had oatmeal,” Buggie said.

  • • •

  Buggie carried the trout as we walked up the trail through patches of lupine and Indian paintbrush. I could see he was mumbling something over and over to himself—or maybe to Mary in his pocket. From the anguished look on his face, I think Buggie was in conflict over whether to feel pride or shame in what he had done. All I heard in the general mutter was “dead fish” a couple of times.

  When we reached the campground, three little boys from the pickup camper parked next to us ran up, demanding to see the trout, fingering him, poking at his gills. They were obviously so impressed at Buggie’s catch that he decided to be proud. I mean, if people admire what you’ve done, you must have done good. Right?

  “I catcht him all by myself,” Buggie said. “Gonna eat him up.”

  Ann busied around the Coleman stove, making coffee and eggs and home fried potatoes. She looked sparkly clean and awake in her jeans and Denver University sweatshirt, her hair back in a pony tail. I winked at her, knowing she felt wicked for staying in bed after I got up.

  “Buggie caught a whale.”

  “All by myself.”

  Ann set down her spatula and held the trout up to the light. “All by yourself? Buggie, I’m so proud of you.” Same tone as when I sold the Western and lit sparklers all over the angel food cake.

  “I catcht him and Loren cut out his guts.”

  “Caught,” I said. “Do you believe a kid who’s heard The Great Gatsby start to finish and still says catcht?”

  Ann kissed me under the ear. “If Buggie wants to say catcht, he can say catcht.”

  I held her close a moment. “Did anyone ever tell you that you smell just like a patch of Colorado columbines growing next to a bubbling mountain brook?”

  Ann laughed, which was the purpose of the compliment. “Why, yes, a man at the gas station mentioned that just yesterday.”

  I nuzzled her neck, following a tendon down into her collarbone. “What say you and me discuss this privately?”

  Ann pulled back in mock horror. “Didn’t you get enough discussion last night?”

  “I’ll never get enough discussion.”

  “What about little ears?”

  “We’ll send him out to play in the forest.”

  “Can you cook him?” Buggie asked.

  Ann broke off the hug. “Only if you men cut off the head. I don’t do heads.”

  It’s nice to be with someone you can nuzzle and say stupid nonsense to before breakfast. I’ve had long periods in my life when I couldn’t. Or didn’t. Sometime, even when I was married and doing fine, I’d start stewing about God or Truth or how to write meaningful shit—that’s a lie, I can’t blame higher purposes; it takes almost nothing to sidetrack me. I can get lost cleaning bricks. One day I’m blown away by the difference between happiness and misery, I’m appreciative as all hell, then a week later I read the newspaper at breakfast, watch M*A*S*H reruns during supper, and answer interested questions with a pig grunt. I wander around in this daze until a last vacation or a spray of gravel in the chest from a woman making her exit wakes me up enough to figure out the obvious. But by then it can be too late.

  • • •

  Buggie’s trout fried down to one midsized bite apiece. The grapefruit-pink meat would have been good if I’d deboned him properly. The bones were so tiny, though, they couldn’t stick sideways in the throat or splinter through the stomach lining or anything else awful. We just chewed a little longer than usual. Buggie cut his bite into fourths. Bending over his plate, he picked at each section, extricating hairlike bones and wiping them off on his pants’ leg. When he was satisfied with one quarter, he popped the meat into his mouth and moved on to the next piece.

  Ann ate and hummed at the same time. The song she hummed was called “Sunshine Superman” and had been recorded by a boy named Donovan back in our younger days. “Sunshine Superman” was a sure sign of a good mood. A little footsie under the table gained me a playful kick in the knee.

  “Stop that.” Ann laughed.

  “Stop what? Wasn’t me, must have been a squirrel running up your leg.”

  “Let’s go on a hike today, Loren. How about you, Bugger? Want to see a waterfall?”

  Buggie looked up from his last tiny piece of fish. “How does the trout find a new
mama if it’s dead?”

  “What have you been telling him?”

  “He felt bad about killing the trout so I explained heaven and coming back.”

  “His spirit is in trout heaven, looking for a new mama. I wanted to name him, but Loren wouldn’t let me.”

  Ann poked her eggs with a fork. Because of our flirting around, they’d fried up hard as silicone breast implants. “Loren did something right for a change. All Mary doesn’t need is a fish sidekick.”

  “But how does the trout find a new mama?”

  Ann looked at me. “You started this, you tell him.”

  “God assigns moms. It’s like when you pick teams for a game.”

  “Oh.” Buggie thought a minute. “Can I keep the head?”

  “No,” Ann said. “I don’t think Buggie should hear strange religious theories. He’s too young.”

  I dumped my cold coffee on the ground and went to the Coleman stove for a fresh cup. “Better now than when he’s old and impressionable. I never met a religious fanatic or a cultie yet who was exposed to it as a child.”

  “How many culties besides me have you met?”

  Buggie jumped from the picnic bench. “Can Mary and I go play with those kids? They have a dump truck.”

  “You want to play with other kids?”

  “A wheel turns round and the back goes high and the dirt falls out. We’re makin’ a road.”

  “Okay, but if their mom says to go home you come straight back, hear?”

  I waited until Ann started the dishes to make my move. Then I stole up behind her, circling my arms around her waist and pushing my belt buckle into the base of her spine. I kissed her earlobe. “You smell good this morning,” I said. “God knows I tried, but I can’t keep my hands off your body.” With a practiced touch, I ran my fingers from her waist to the flesh beneath her breasts.