Western Swing

by Tim Sandlin

  “You’re Lana Sue Potts?” I nodded. He blinked. “You were great. I saw you in Gunnison, Colorado, four, maybe five years ago. Holy cow, mama, you’ve changed.”

  E.T. leaped from his stool and ran out of the room. What’s he mean, I’ve changed? And where’s this Mama crap coming from? I stared at the Dead tapes on the wall, then back at the bag of cocaine crystals on the table. I missed Loren. He was up on the mountain searching for Truth and I was in a basement dungeon sticking foul shit up my nose. Made me wonder which one of us was really crazy.

  The Dead tape stopped and after a blessed moment of silence, I came on—my album. I couldn’t believe someone bought it. There’s not enough tequila in Texas, for me to go home with you. I sounded pretty good.

  E.T. rushed back into the vault. “Here.” He shoved the album jacket at me. I looked down at myself standing in front of a lavender Rolls-Royce, wearing a blue, fringed vest that didn’t connect between my breasts, ungodly tight white leather pants, and a blue cowboy hat. Ace chose the outfit himself. The album title ran across the top, cutting off part of my hat—They Call Me Lana Sue.

  “I never did have any cleavage.”

  E.T. stood right in front of me. “This stuff isn’t as good as what you did with Thunder Road. Why didn’t those guys back you up?”

  “We had a falling-out.”

  “Sounds like you’ve had your share of falling-outs.”

  How the hell would he know? The second cut was “Thrift Store Love.” Ace had dubbed in all these violins and three black girls singing the last word of each line after me.

  When she boots you out the door. Door.

  Don’t come crawlin’ here no more. More.

  Any of those three backup singers had a better voice than mine. Everyone knew I got the solo album because I slept with Ace. Hell, for all I know, they got the backup jobs the same way.

  “I’ll give you a thousand dollars for the coke,” E.T. said.

  “What?”

  “The coke and a kiss.”

  “My ears are whining.”

  “A French kiss.”

  “That’s the stupidest deal I ever heard.”

  E.T. reached into a drawer I hadn’t seen under the table and pulled out a stack of hundred-dollar bills. He counted out ten, then stuffed the rest back under the table. “Darlene says you didn’t have a dime when Dad brought you home. I bet you could use a thousand bucks.”

  “Who told Darlene?” “Thrift Store” ended and I kicked into a slick commercial version of “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To.”

  E.T. stood too close to me and blinked. “You got the coke free. You can give away the French kiss, Mama.”

  “But why?”

  “It’ll be fun to think I crammed my tongue in Dad’s new woman’s mouth.”

  “You’re all sick around here.”

  “Thousand bucks for the coke and a kiss.”

  I thought about the consequences. “You’ll have to stop calling me Mama.” He nodded and leaned closer. I could smell cocaine fumes on his breath.

  Can selling a French kiss be considered prostitution? Daddy wouldn’t approve, but at thirty-eight, I couldn’t base decisions on what Daddy thought. Not after my life. But to French-kiss a blinker in thick glasses, a sleeveless T-shirt, and cutoffs—ish. This could be sinking to an all-new low, even for me.

  A few moments later I’m standing there with my eyes wide open, E.T. clamped to my face, a thousand dollars and an ounce of cocaine on the table; my mind is pinging like a Kroger cash register; over this I’m singing, It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to, you would cry too if it happened to you—when Maria’s head comes through the door.

  We stared open-eyed at each other a few seconds, then Maria said, “You better come upstairs, Mrs. Paul. There’s a problem.”

  I broke free of the tongue probe. Made a sound like pulling a sneaker out of deep mud. “The problem is upstairs?”

  “Please come.”

  I pocketed my thousand and followed Maria back through the flashing video games.

  • • •

  Remarkably enough, the problem upstairs was even stranger than the one in the basement. Maybe the weirdness quotient grows exponentially according to how many Axels are in a room.

  With Maria in the lead and E.T. blinking along behind, we trooped up the steps and into the front living room and this fully developed scene: Billy G sunk in one of the red leather chairs, his head down in his arms; Darlene backed against a guncase, doing a high-pitched monologue that I couldn’t follow except to tell I was the subject and the word slut came up every few seconds; Thorne, about halfway up the wide staircase, standing in a Napoleon pose with his arm swaddled in bandages, this perfectly appropriate Cary Grant smoking jacket, and blue-checkered boxer shorts. His hair stuck out sideways and pillow marks creased his cheek.

  Darlene seemed to be threatening on behalf of Janey. “Mama’s gonna kick butt when she comes back to get me. Daddy’s butt, that naked prostitute’s butt, your butt,” meaning Billy G, I suppose. Her eyebrows rode low over her eyes and buckled as she shouted. Both hands fluttered like mating grouse. “Gonna kick every butt I tell her to kick. Then me’n Mama’ll go back to Paris and leave this…this.” Darlene lost words.

  With his good arm, Thorne waved to me. “I just woke up.”

  “So I see.”

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Damned if I know.” Maybe it was more sleeping pills than charm, but Thorne’s face was so lovably confused, aloof, and taking charge all at the same time, I had this tremendous urge to shoot through the chaos and hug him.

  Thorne ran his hands through his hair. “Maria, will you bring some coffee?”

  Darlene spotted me and the tirade focused a little. She pointed one stubby finger. “Bitch.”

  I pointed back. “Gross slob.”

  Billy G came out of the chair and across the floor. His eyes snapped with a rose color—more an alcohol-induced bloodshot than any heartbroken teary redness. He held his peacock feather hat with both hands. “I just want to know why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why you’re doing this to me. Do you hate all men? Do you hate yourself or are you just a screwed-up cunt?”

  Somehow I ignored the cunt crack. “You’re the one who said, ‘I get hung up on no one and no one gets hung upon me.’”

  He turned to E.T. “We made love all night. I must have come seven times.” E.T. smiled and nodded.

  I continued reminding him of his own line. “‘Fast, meaningless good time,’ you said. ‘A basic quickie.’”

  When Darlene screamed slut once more I began to understand Thorne’s attitude toward his daughter.

  Billy G advanced another step. “I pity you,” he said.

  “And we didn’t make love. We rutted. You could have been replaced by a stiff dick nailed to a tree.”

  He didn’t take that one well. When it came to vicious arguments, the kid was in over his head and he knew it. Billy G swung to Thorne.

  “I respected you.”

  Thorne came down a couple steps. His face had an interested yet not really concerned, look about the gray eyes.

  Billy G beseeched, “How can you steal another man’s woman?”

  “I’m nobody’s woman, cowboy.”

  “Slut.”

  Billy G held the knob thing at the bottom of the banister with one hand and his hat with the other. “Did you know that three nights ago she slept with her husband and two nights ago, me, and last night, you? Do you realize the kind of woman you’re stealing?”

  Thorne sent me a fuzzy look and said, “Doesn’t sound like she’s your woman, then, does it?”

  “I’m nobody’s woman.”

  “Slut.”

  I remembered where I�
�d seen that look of Thorne’s before. Years ago, when the twins were two, maybe three, years old, we used to leave them with Mom and Dad and go out country clubbing or lounge hopping with Ron’s pre-med buddies. About two in the morning we’d swing by my parents’ and wrap the sleeping girls in their blankets and carry them out to the car, and somewhere between Daddy’s house and the car or between the car and bed, Connie would come to just for a moment and mumble, “I’m not sleepy, let me down,” or something along those lines. I’d look into her beautiful eyes and love her. The expression in those eyes was the same as the one on Thorne’s face the morning after his botched suicide.

  Darlene put her fist on her hip and sashayed over to me. “I’ve slept with every cowboy in the bunkhouse.”

  I said, “You aren’t just weird like the others, are you, Darlene?”

  Her puckered lower lip and the bags under both eyes hung the color of bruised bananas. “Roy Rogers here and I did it last night. I made him spurt eight times.”

  Darlene’s speech brought Thorne down another step and Billy G’s hands up to his chest. “I never touched her.”

  Darlene twirled on him. “You said I was better than Daddy’s whore.”

  Billy G appealed to Thorne. “I swear to God, sir.”

  “I know.”

  Maria appeared and handed Thorne a mug of coffee. He blew over the steaming surface and sipped. Billy G fell back into his original chair. Darlene continued her promenade.

  In the charged silence, E.T. slid his arms around my shoulder. “Just now, Lana Sue and I were French-kissing in the basement.”

  Billy G groaned, Darlene slapped her forehead like an idiot. “Mama’s gonna die.” I gave E.T. a move-it-or-lose-it stare and the hand fell from my shoulder.

  Billy G’s head came up for one last supplication to Thorne. “Please give her back. I tried not to like her. I really tried, but I can’t help it. You don’t have any use for her, give her back.”

  Thorne looked amused. “Hell, I don’t own her. We ain’t even screwed yet. You want her so bad, take her.”

  Billy’s face brightened with hope as he swung back to me, but I changed that real quick. “Lay one finger on me, sucker, and I’ll snap your spine.”

  His jaw trembled and he twisted the hat around in his hands. I think, for about three seconds, Billy G was sizing up the odds of his spine surviving an all-out assault—the John Wayne approach of throwing me over his shoulder and marching me off to the bunkhouse. However, reason prevailed and his eyes dropped away. “You win, Lana Sue. I’m leaving. This state’s too small for the both of us.”

  “I’ll stay out of your way if you’ll stay out of mine.”

  “Nope. Because of you I have to leave the home I love and go on the road.” Out of pure spite, he added, “Maybe I’ll go back to Chicago.”

  Before I thought up a catty-enough comeback, Darlene latched herself onto his arm. “Oh, darling, take me with you.”

  Billy G panicked. Jumping about five feet back and to his left, he gave off a little moan.

  Darlene followed after him. “I’ve got money. We could go to California. Or France, my mother’s in France. You won’t ever have to ride a horse again.”

  The coward ran—out the door and across the lawn. My itch had caused another man to alter his life. Not that I felt remorse. I figure if these jokers can’t maintain themselves after me, it’s their own damn fault. This case was a bit more absurd than the others and took twenty-four hours instead of several years. Other than that, Billy G was nothing more than typical.

  Darlene sat in his chair and glared at me. She muttered under her breath, “Slut.”

  “Gross slob.”

  E.T. trotted back down to the Dead. Thorne drank from his mug. He looked across at me and smiled. “Can’t have you chasing off all the help.”

  “Sorry.”

  “That’s okay. Wait’ll I get dressed and eat some biscuits, we’ll ride around the ranch, show you some land.”

  “On horses?”

  “Sure. Maria, how about some biscuits, and see if you can find something that’ll fit her better. Looks like she’s wearing a pup tent.”

  “Yes, Mr. Axel.”

  Thorne started up the staircase. He stopped and turned to me again. “Which Billy was that anyway?”

  • • •

  My horse encounter was put off until afternoon because, while Thorne was eating his biscuits, the phone rang. Then another phone rang, then when Thorne set down the first phone, it rang again. The head wrangler came in to talk about fetlocks. You can’t just abandon an ongoing dynasty for a three-day drunk and suicide attempt. Sooner or later, fetlock problems have a way of catching up.

  Maria and I sat around the kitchen, grinding our molars, while Thorne took care of bankers, oil foremen, and guys from two different kinds of stock markets. Finally Thorne looked up from one of the phones and shrugged an apologetic smile. “This may take awhile.”

  “No rush. Maria and I will be in her room, looking through clothes.”

  Maria’s first-floor, back-of-the-house room was just what you’d expect. Small, neat as a curio shop, yellow enamel walls with a framed velvet painting of Jesus hanging over the bed. Photos of her father and boyfriend stood on the bureau. A neat stack of laundry sat at the base of the made-up bed. Next to a Silhouette Romance on the nightstand lay a small mirror reflecting a white powdery residue.

  Maria lifted a pair of jeans off the laundry stack. “There wasn’t much blood on these. They’re still wearable anyway, if you don’t mind a few stains.”

  “Does it look like I had an accident?”

  She shook out the jeans and we inspected the few dark blotches. One Idaho-shaped smear could conceivably be misinterpreted as careless spotting, but only by the kind of person who looks for that sort of thing.

  “They’ll do.” I was on the edge of the bed and slipped off my sandals and Janey’s green army pants. “I can’t stand this mountaineer uniform any longer. Does Janey still dress like this?”

  “Not in thirty years. The shirt you used on Thorne’s arm is beyond hope.”

  I slid into my comfortable old Lee Wranglers. “That shirt was an old thing I wear to do housework around the cabin.”

  “You do housework?”

  “Sure. Do I look like a trust fund baby?” E.T.’s roll of bills crammed in my front pocket gave the jeans a lumpy look.

  “I think you’re accustomed to giving orders.”

  “It’s a talent I pick up quickly.”

  Maria shuffled through the bottom drawer of the bureau. She pulled out a blue and gold football jersey—ROCK SPRINGS across the back shoulders. Number 38. “This was Petey’s. He gave it to me when Janey ran him off the ranch.”

  The jersey fit real well, maybe a little tight in the chest. Petey wasn’t a very big fullback. “Why did Janey run him off the ranch?”

  Maria sat next to me on the bed. She picked up the Silhouette Romance and turned it over in her hands. “Janey thought we were in love.”

  “What’s it to her?”

  “My mother fell in love with a cowboy from the bunkhouse and I happened. Janey didn’t want a repeat.” I saw passion and exotic nineteenth-century New Zealand on the back cover of the book. Also something about daring privateers. “So you’ve lived on the ranch all your life?”

  Maria stared at the nightstand. “Oh, no. Janey threw my father out as soon as I was old enough to travel. We lived in Cheyenne until Mama died and Janey offered me a job. My father still lives in Cheyenne. He lays tile.”

  Maria licked her right index finger and rubbed it over the mirror. Then she touched her finger to her upper gum. “My father doesn’t want me working here, but I dropped out of high school and came over. Janey’s frightened to death I will get pregnant and she’ll have to make her own bed for a few weeks.”

  Maria ha
nded me the mirror so I could massage my gums also. “The more I hear about Janey the less I like her.” My mouth dropped into a dental memory. “I sure am glad I sold the coke. It’d be awful to do more.”

  “Yes, I am thankful to you for taking it away.”

  The mirror was wiped clean as Maria’s kitchen. Not even a speck of white dust remained. I said, “That E.T. is a character. He’s like a doped-up mole down there surrounded by Grateful Dead tapes. It’s creepy.”

  “E.T. is not so bad. Everyone expects him to grow up like Thorne, which must be difficult. He told me he is afraid of cowboys.”

  “Must be tough being the son of a legend.”

  Maria nodded. She took the mirror, looked at herself a moment, then set it back on the nightstand, next to the book.

  “I hope you didn’t think I was really kissing E.T. when you came down there,” I said.

  “Of course you weren’t.”

  “I mean, I was, but it was part of the deal. I had to.” I ran the tip of my tongue between my upper teeth and lips. “Don’t you just hate the way cocaine makes you feel?”

  She looked at me. “Of course.”

  Maria and I held about ten seconds of eye contact before I spoke. “Let’s find E.T.”

  • • •

  His tunnel was dark as a cave. I blind-groped along the wall down each side of the stairwell. “Where’s the light switch, Maria?”

  “It’s hidden. E.T. is afraid of rip-offs and Thorne. He hides everything.”

  I peered into the black. “Could he be in the little room full of Dead tapes?”

  Maria was a step above, which made her the same height as me. Her voice came from next to my ear. “I do not know. Sometimes after a big score he holes up down here for several days. There’s a flashlight in the kitchen.”

  I stood on the bottom step while Maria went back up in search of light. Because of my earlier snorts, the black hole of E.T.’s basement wasn’t totally black. A yellow transparent curtain rippled before my eyes, and red dandelion bursts appeared to bounce from top to bottom. The room buzzed like a neon bar sign. My saliva glands craved vitamin C.

  A couple minutes of womb sensations later the light bobbed down the steps, shining on the walls and my jeans.