Western Swing

by Tim Sandlin

  We’d only been married three months and I was still flying around in ecstasy. I was nuts about the guy. Loren was the first man who thought I knew how to take care of myself. He trusted me to make decisions. If I was depressed he didn’t blame my period. We had our cabin in the aspen grove with the creek and my own room. We fucked and ate great meals and walked in the woods, alone or together. Loren and I had the three goals of every country song—money, time, and love.

  Then one afternoon, he came crashing in the back door while I was domestically going through his jeans pockets before dumping them in the wash.

  Loren said, “Scott Fitzgerald wants to tell me the end of The Last Tycoon.”

  I’m not illiterate. I know who Scott Fitzgerald is and before we were married, Loren told me about the writers’ graves weirdness, but I was standing in the utility shed with my hands full of fuzzy candy and chewed-up straws. How was I supposed to make the connection that this guy Loren had to talk to was dead and buried in Maryland?

  I threw him the keys. “Take the Toyota. It’s gassed up.”

  “Thanks.”

  He was gone nine days. When he came home, I was so mad I didn’t say a word about abandoning me in the wilderness.

  “So how does The Last Tycoon end?”

  “Scott wouldn’t tell me, he changed his mind.”

  That was the first sign I’d married an idiot. And do you think I got credit for sleeping alone those nine nights? Hell, no. Loren pretends he trusts me, but I know in his mind I was up on the mountain humping backpackers the whole time he was gone.

  • • •

  Sometime in the night Thorne left the couch, so even though I didn’t go to sleep by myself, I woke up that way, which should count for at least half credit. More important than being alone, I woke up fully dressed in Janey Axel’s spacious shirt and green army pants. The woman must have been built like a lumberjack.

  I stretched and blinked and worked on focusing on the log ceiling. Ten hours of sober sleep had done wonders for my stressed-out attitude. No nausea, no headache. After a cup of coffee and a good toothbrushing I might feel human again.

  The room was large and airy and decked out like a hunting lodge lobby—dead animal heads on the walls, a glass-fronted gun rack by the bay window, chairs and couches with bent sapling arms and legs and red upholstery grouped around a bear rug and a stone fireplace.

  Through the window, a Wyoming blue sky stretched off north above the Red Desert. Loren was up there, the other side of the horizon. I wondered what he would eat for breakfast. Would he fix it himself or had he found a new caretaker—probably little Marcie VanHorn from down the road. Loren has a thing for young girls. His books are full of thirty-year-old men fulfilling wet dreams with seventeen-year-old cheerleaders in tight sweaters and short skirts. I’d wring his neck if I caught him fulfilling anything with the little tramp.

  Of course, if everything had moved according to plan, Loren was up in the mountains, fasting and waiting for some detached voice to tell him where Buggie ended up. Buggie. I shook my head to clear the early morning half-sleep mind associations. Now wasn’t the time to think about Buggie or Loren. Coffee came first.

  • • •

  Maria sat on the kitchen floor, polishing drawer handles. The handles were made from tips of deer antlers. I’ve never polished a drawer handle in my life, but then mine were always wooden knobs or metal swinging things and it didn’t seem important. Only on a Wyoming ranch, or maybe a Montana bar, would drawer handles be made from an animal part.

  My voice was a croak. “Coffee.”

  “On the counter.” Maria held antler polish in one hand and a chamois rag in the other. Chewing gum, she concentrated on the smooth tip of the bottom drawer.

  A full Mr. Coffee sat next to a Litton microwave that sat next to an Ashley wood stove that sat next to a Westinghouse gas range. The lineup shot to hell forever any theories of judging real folks from imposters by what they cooked on. The Mr. Coffee was spotless, shiny as a showroom jewel. All the other ovens and stoves, even the walls were equally blot free. I began to think I’d been wrong in liking Maria.

  I found a cup and poured coffee. “Any idea the time?”

  She glanced at a digital clock on the microwave next to me. “Seven-thirty.”

  “What an awful time to be awake.” I sipped coffee while considering whether to stand and be uncomfortable or sit and risk a smudge.

  “There’s waffles in the oven and serviceberry syrup. I fried some bacon, but I got busy on the recipe files and it burnt up. I could make some more.” She started to rise.

  “No, thanks anyway, Maria, but I’ll stick with coffee for now, maybe try some waffles later. Is something wrong with your mouth?”

  When Maria looked right at me, her pupils appeared to have been hardened into tiny rat pucks and sizzled in a frying pan. This wasn’t the same serenity-personified woman I’d met yesterday. This woman was a wreck and I suddenly realized why.

  “Do you hear a train?” Maria asked.

  “Holy smoke, Maria, you’ve been dancing in the snowflakes.”

  She looked down at her hands and gritted her teeth. “I found the Baggie in your jeans when I went to wash out the blood. I tried a little, then a little more. Forgive me, Mrs. Paul, I shouldn’t have, but E.T. used to give me lines sometimes and I felt itchy, I guess. Then the cabinets looked dirty and when I hauled ashes from the wood stove I saw all this grease.” She clutched her hands together. “It was fun at first.”

  I’m sorry, but I laughed—laughed so hard I spilled coffee on the shining floor. Maria’d buzzed her brains out and cleaned and snorted all night. On the one hand, her predicament was hilarious. I’d been in the position before. On the other hand, I felt so sorry for her because I’d been in the position before. It happened a couple of times while I was with Mickey and the band. Mickey was an alcohol and pills fanatic who generally regarded coke as a nasal form of herpes. But every now and then some bar owner or a roadie for a bigger band would offer up a pile, in seduction hopes, I suppose, and I’d come zipping back to the motel room about five in the morning, wide awake and ready to bust balls. Only Mickey and the boys would all be passed out like the drunks they were. I’d wind up reading heavy truths into the stock reports on all-night TV or making lists of the presents Ron and I bought the twins for Christmas and birthdays from the time they were two till twelve. It was awful. Some people enjoy the stuff. Many people must love it from what I read, but personally, I’d rather snort barbwire.

  The memory made my throat tighten and my eyes ache. “I better get rid of that stuff.”

  Maria sniffed. “Please.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I didn’t know what to do so I hid the bag in the toaster oven.”

  “Why would someone with a toaster and three ovens need a toaster oven?”

  Maria shrugged. “Janey bought it.”

  I set the Baggie on the kitchen table. We pulled up chairs and drank more coffee, discussing the situation. I explained how I came to own an ounce of cocaine, leaving out the part where Billy G called me a woman. Maria told me about when E.T. used to give her snorts. He was after her body, but she never gave in because she was afraid of Janey, and after a while E.T. stopped hitting on her. This led to a general rap on Janey’s character, which led to Maria’s father and her boyfriend, Petey, and the treatment of Spanish-Americans in the oil fields. I like to never got her to shut up.

  “What can we do now?” I asked.

  “Nothing, the oil fields are as bad as ever. Janey’s as bad as ever. If it wasn’t for Thorne I’d move to Nevada and work in a trailer.”

  I couldn’t picture Maria as a tiny hooker. Her posture was too good. “No, Maria, the bag. What can we do now with the bag?”

  “You give it to the cowboys out in the bunkhouse. They’re all a bunch of addicts anyway.”

&
nbsp; “Do you want some more?”

  Maria shuddered. “God, I hope not. Maybe you could sell it. Cocaine is worth a lot of money.”

  “I don’t know anything about selling drugs. Beside, that’s kind of unethical, I think.”

  “E.T. loves to sell drugs. I heard him in the game room an hour or so ago.”

  “E.T.’s in the game room now?”

  “He had the Grateful Dead turned up full volume.”

  “Doesn’t anyone around here ever sleep?”

  Maria spoke through clenched jaws. “You should have seen Darlene about four o’clock this morning. She was out by the barn doing something odd with a prairie dog.”

  I drained off the bottom of my coffee cup. “Whole Axel family’s odd if you asked me.”

  • • •

  E.T.’s game room resembled any one of fifty basement bars I’ve seen in university towns. Obviously built for another purpose—wine cellar, fallout shelter, maybe a canned goods storeroom—these bars feature eight-foot ceilings, concrete walls, and pillars or dull-silver conduits rising from the dance floor. The fixtures hang about head level so direct light never quite reaches the corners, an effect which causes nose and cheekbone shadows straight from Frankenstein Mauls Dracula’s Daughter.

  I suppose it’s a flaw in my age group that I thought “game room” meant a pool table that can be converted to Ping-Pong, a refrigerator perhaps, and a card table for Risk or a never-completed jigsaw puzzle. Instead, at the base of the steps I found two long rows of blinking video games leading to a back wall piled high with more stereo equipment than a Muscle Shoals recording studio. Between the rows of Donkey Kong, Indoor Soccer, Radiation Ray, and Centipede lay a forty-foot boardwalk stacked with albums, cassettes, reel-to-reel tapes, and trash. Lots of trash, the kind of wrappers, bottles, bongs, peels, and used prophyls that a country band leaves the maid after a month-long gig in one hotel. I’d stumbled into the den of a renaissance derelict.

  “Listen to this,” a voice said.

  “Turn On Your Love Light” by the Grateful Dead boomed from the speaker bank, the sound bouncing from wall to wall like the Ping-Pong ball I’d been expecting.

  “Turn it down,” I shouted.

  The noise level dropped maybe twenty decibels. “What’s the matter, don’t like music?”

  “The bass is killing the mix. Sounds like Lesh is on Dueling Cannons.”

  E.T. appeared from an alcove I hadn’t noticed between Frogger and Real Sports Football. “You know the Dead?”

  He wore horn-rimmed glasses, which I hadn’t expected. I don’t know what I did expect. Thorne was large and, judging by her clothes, so was Janey. Darlene was fat and ugly. I guess I expected a big, ugly drug fiend. Put Woody Allen’s head on Richard Benjamin’s body and you’ll have a rough picture of E.T. Axel. He wore cut-off Levi’s and a yellow, sleeveless I LOST MY VIRGINITY AT THE ’77 PROM T-shirt. He blinked at least four times between his question and my answer.

  “Of course I know the Dead. Why don’t you go by Eddie or Ed? E.T. sounds silly.”

  E.T.’s posture was everything opposite Maria’s. His forehead and hips led off with the shoulders hunched into a question mark position. “I had the name first. And, anyway, how’d you like to get stuck with a name like Ed? You’re Dad’s new woman, aren’t you?”

  “I’m nobody’s woman, buster.”

  E.T. turned to one of the video machines. “I didn’t mean to offend. Everyone says you’re here to replace Mother.”

  “I guess I am, at least for a couple days.”

  E.T. slid his glasses at me, then back at the screen. “You’re a hell of a lot nicer-looking than Janey. Mind if I call you Mama?”

  “God, yes, I mind.” I walked up and watched as E.T. pushed a button with his left hand and worked a lever with the right. I realized where E.T. got his posture. His spine was molded to the shape of a video game.

  A burning building was pictured on the left side of the screen. A fireman threw a baby out the fourth-floor window to two other firemen on ground level with a net. When the baby hit the net, it bounced three floors back up and a little ways out from the building. At E.T.’s direction, the firemen scooted right and bounced the baby again. Meanwhile, however, the guy on the burning fourth floor heaved another baby out the window.

  “That’s gross,” I said.

  “It’s fun. Not everyone can juggle babies.”

  The first baby reached ground floor on the right side of the screen where two stretcher-bearers caught the last bounce and shoved her, or him—the babies were asexual—into a waiting ambulance.

  “What happens if you lose one?” I asked.

  “Watch.” E.T. moved the firemen out from under a falling baby. A high-pitched scream lasted a half-second, ending suddenly with a pop and a sound like a hammer going through a ripe cantaloupe. A moment later, a white cross and two blue flowers appeared down-screen from the firemen.

  “My God, that’s sick.”

  “The more you save, the faster they come at you. It’s a lesson about life.”

  The word life used in the context of “Grand Scheme” made me think about Loren, which led to Buggie and babies again. I don’t usually wake up obsessive or morbid, but then I usually wake up at home.

  “This game’s in bad taste.”

  “That’s the idea, Mama. You got any Grateful Dead tapes?”

  I ignored the question as irrelevant. “Do you sell dope?”

  My question made him miss a baby. Aighgh Pop. “You asking as my new mom or as a naked chick Dad picked up in the bar?”

  “Someone gave me an ounce of cocaine and I don’t know what to do with it.” Aighgh. Pop. Aighgh. Splat. The last baby landed on a fireman’s head, knocking them both into crosses and flowers and ending the game.

  “Cocaine?”

  I showed E.T. the bag. He blinked fast as a strobe light in a disco dive. “Could I see that, Mama?”

  “The name’s Lana Sue.”

  “Come in here.” By the wrist, E.T. pulled me into the alcove between Frogger and Real Sports Football. It was more a wall safe furnished with two stools and a table covered by drug paraphernalia than the usual idea of an alcove. Stacks of reel-to-reel tapes sat on shelves around the walls. Tapes on one wall were locked into place by wrought-iron bars.

  I nodded at the walls. “What’re these?”

  “Grateful Dead.”

  I picked one reel off a stack—RED ROCKS AMPITHEATER, DENVER, COLORADO, AUGUST 10, 1978 in blue ink on white adhesive tape.

  “These’re all concerts?”

  E.T. pulled up a stool and hunched over an Ohaus triple beam scale. “Ten thousand hours. Largest collection of Grateful Dead music in the world, though there’s a doctor in Berkeley might disagree with that.”

  “How did you get them?”

  E.T. placed the bag on the scale. “Twenty-eight point one, it’s a little short.”

  “I thought there were twenty-eight grams in an ounce.”

  “Twenty-eight point three-four-nine-five, to be more or less exact. Baggie weighs a gram, though.”

  I walked to the scale. He was right—28.1. “Maria was in it all night.”

  E.T.’s laugh came out as a cackle. “Maria’s something else, claims she hates the stuff, but that girl can suck down a gram faster than coyotes on a rabbit.”

  Which reminded me. “Your dad called someone coyote ugly last night. What’s coyote ugly?”

  E.T. dipped a small silver spoon into the bag. He held it toward the light a minute, then bent over the spoon and made a noise like bad pipes in a cheap apartment. “Was he talking about Darlene?”

  Since I didn’t know the extent of the insult, I lied. “No.”

  E.T.’s spoon took another dip. “I’ll bet he was talking about Darlene. Dad treats her worse than he treats me.” The sight o
f cocaine outside the bag made my sinuses throb.

  E.T. snorted up his other nostril, sniffed a couple of times, and looked pleased with himself. “Coyote ugly’s when a guy wakes up holding a woman who’s so repulsive he chews off his own arm rather than risk waking her. Want some?”

  That seemed like an awful thing to say about your own daughter, but then my daughters are both beautiful and talented so I can’t picture what it would be like to create a slug. Maybe Thorne’s disappointment turned him bitter. I gestured at the barred shelf. “What are those tapes there?”

  “Old ones from before Pigpen died. Dead haven’t been the same without him. I’ve got a tape of the first acid test back in sixty-three. You know, Kesey, Merry Pranksters, the old hippie nostalgia. You can barely hear the sound. Guy recorded it on an RCA ghetto blaster with one of those microphones big as your thumb. Probably worth a hundred thousand bucks.”

  “You deal to make money for Grateful Dead tapes?”

  “You got it. Here, pack your nose.”

  I didn’t want to snort. Lord knows, I didn’t want to snort, but thirty seconds later my head hummed like an air conditioner leaking Freon down my throat. Beneath the Dead tape, the room took on a low thump—a heartbeat.

  I said, “Oh, hell.”

  “Good, huh?”

  “The speakers are buzzing.”

  “Now the other side.” He held another spoonful up to my face. The heartbeat doubled.

  “Lana Sue what?” E.T. asked.

  “Huh? My throat is closing.”

  “You said your name is Lana Sue. What’s your last name?”

  Pretend you’re swimming in Chloraseptic. “Paul. My husband is Loren Paul.” I sat down heavily. “He’s a writer. Maybe you read Yeast Infection.”

  E.T. stared at me. His blinking was continuous, but it had gone half speed. Gave him eyes like a big turtle. “Did anyone ever notice you look a little like Lana Sue Potts? She was the singer for Thunder Road a few years back.”

  I was never recognized by a fan before. It felt neat. “I am Lana Sue Potts. Or I was. I’ve had two other names since then, but I kept Potts as my stage name, last time I was onstage.”