Western Swing

by Tim Sandlin

  As the tub filled, I wandered around, touching little empty jewelry boxes and poking into closets. A nice cedar chest sat at the end of the bed, but it was locked. I lifted one end for a weight check; the box was too light to hold much. I still wished I could find the key. On the left side of the dressing table mirror there was a Remington print of an Indian lying in the snow, spying on a covered wagon train. The frame was nice, teak or something.

  On the right side there was a photograph of the Axel family in front of a large boat. E.T. and Darlene stood in front, holding a giant fish between them. E.T. had its head, Darlene its tail. I figured it was an ocean fish because of the wide fin. Thorne was behind Darlene with a hand on her shoulder, and Janey—I suppose it was Janey—hovered over the fish.

  I lifted the photo off the wall. Judging from E.T. and Darlene, it looked like a scene from maybe ten years ago. E.T. was just as skinny as now, and had the same “What, me worry?” look in his eyes. His sweatshirt was aqua blue with a Miami Dolphins logo on it in white.

  Darlene was the one I stared at the most. In the picture, she looked two or three years younger than E.T., although she doesn’t anymore. She wasn’t smiling—that would be asking too much—but she didn’t seem terribly angry either. Like any twelve- or thirteen-year-old on vacation with her parents, Darlene appeared embarrassed and bored. Her facial color was pale, but nothing abnormal. It was considerably darker than the fish’s belly. You couldn’t say that nowadays.

  Thorne stood smiling and patient, possibly even proud, although whether it was pride in family or pride in being able to supply the fishing trip, I couldn’t tell. I wondered who took the picture. I imagined a guide.

  Janey was almost as tall as Thorne, only huskier. I wouldn’t call it fat—husky. Imagine Telly Savalas in a dark wig. That’s unkind. Janey just looked like a ranchwoman who’d been expected to do a man’s work all her life. Wyoming prides itself on being the first state of sexual equality. They have a saying: “Wyoming—where men are men and women are too.” Janey seemed to have gotten herself caught in the saying.

  Before my bath, I washed down three aspirins with a Dixie cupful of Grand Marnier. Afterwards, I turned off the light and lay down on Darlene’s old coverlet and fell asleep in Janey’s clothes and E.T.’s sneakers.

  • • •

  People might wonder why I came out of the bath and completely redressed down to the skull-and-crossbones sneakers before I slid onto the coverlet for some rest. The truth is, all this losing clothes stuff was making me paranoid. I know it had only happened twice, and the day before I hadn’t actually lost my clothes—I only destroyed an old shirt and stained a pair of Wranglers—but the whole thing had me spooked. It was not outside the realm of possibility that Darlene might smash through the door with a double-headed ax and come after me, and that’s not the kind of scene I care to handle nude.

  Several times in my life, I’ve had periods of not knowing the realm of possibility. I used to like it. With Mickey I never knew what the hell might happen. That first couple of weeks in Nashville I thought my potential for stardom had no limits. Fat chance.

  However, the last few years I have observed in the world that your general ratio is eight bad surprises for each good one. Eight people get run over by trucks for every one who finds true love from an unexpected source. Therefore, I’ve decided uncontrollable news is bad and should be avoided. And if you sense the unavoidable coming, meet it with your shoes on.

  This is a pretty lengthy justification for dressing after a bath, but one of Loren’s prime symptoms of a man fucking up is that he wakes up with his shoes on, and I wanted to explain that this wasn’t a case of fucking up. It was a case of being careful.

  Turns out I was right, too, because about the time I dropped off, someone scratched at the door.

  Another one of Loren’s sayings is: Beware of people who scratch your door. God knows where he comes up with this stuff, but he’s always right. A book of Loren’s pithy axioms could get a person through most situations in life.

  The scratch brought me wide awake. I lay there, wondering if it was someone at the door or rats in the walls. It came again, then the door cracked open an inch, E.T. slipped through, and the door shut again.

  “Hsst.”

  “Turn on the light, E.T.”

  By the time my eyes adjusted, he was sitting next to me on the side of the bed. “Hi, Mama. You like my sneakers?”

  I pulled myself up and sat with my back against the headboard. “They’re fine. Thanks for the loan.”

  “I heard you had another adventure.” He was dressed the same as that morning, only with a sleeveless, very faded jeans jacket over his T-shirt. When he leaned forward, I could see an embroidered Grateful Dead album cover on his back. Behind his horn-rims, his blinking had taken on a gentle up-and-down sagging motion, like waves washing onto a Gulf Coast beach.

  “Have you seen Darlene? I need to talk to her about nine hundred dollars.”

  “Darlene has your money?”

  “I want it back.”

  “Then you can’t pay for any more toot with money?”

  “I came down, E.T. I don’t want more toot.”

  He pulled the coke from his jacket pocket and snorted right in front of me. The bag was considerably lighter than it had been at seven-thirty that morning, which meant E.T. either sold a lot or did a lot or both. He plugged one nostril with an index finger and sniffed. A speck of white powder perched on the end of his nose.

  “Once Darlene gets hold of money, it’s gone. I never have figured out what she does with it since she never leaves the house. Until today. I think it’s a good sign that she went outside in the daylight, don’t you?”

  “She went outside to break my neck.”

  “She’s got to start somewhere.” He held out a heaping coke spoon of the powder. “Want some fun?”

  “What’s it cost?”

  He grinned, showing teeth. “We’ll work something out.”

  The only reason I even wavered is because it’s hard to turn down something that a lot people are desperate to have. I didn’t want the crap. Effects from this morning’s buzz were all gone except a vague pain in my spine, and that was nothing compared to the real pain in my hip. Had E.T. been offering some kind of prescription painkiller, I might have gone with temptation, but the sight of cocaine crystals just made me nauseous.

  “I can turn your brain to happy gas.” E.T. said.

  “I don’t want gas for a brain. What I’d really like is to rest awhile.”

  E.T. was shocked. “No toot?”

  “Sleep.”

  He grinned. “How about my shoes?”

  I looked down at the yellow sneakers. “They’re awfully wide. You must be quite a swimmer.”

  “You want to buy my Dead tennies?”

  “No, I don’t want to buy your Dead tennies.”

  He reached for my feet. “Then give them back.”

  I swatted his hands away. “When you get my sandals from Darlene, I’ll return your tennis shoes.”

  “I want them now.”

  “You can’t have them now.”

  E.T. sat back and did another snort. At this rate he was sure to have a heart attack by midnight and it would be my fault. I could just see Thorne’s face when I told him I killed his kid.

  E.T. seemed to be hyperventilating. He wheezed, “You’re stealing my sneakers.”

  “How can I buy them? You know Darlene took my money. You don’t accept Visa, do you? There’s a Visa card in the Toyota.”

  E.T. pouted. “That’s my only pair of yellow sneakers.”

  “I’d like to help, but you’re not touching these shoes.”

  I knew damn well what was coming. The boy was unrealistic. He gave me that dumb grin again. “Maybe we could work something out.”

  “You want to trade dirty old te
nnis shoes for sexual favors?”

  He shrugged. “They aren’t so dirty.”

  “Leave or I break your glasses.”

  “Mama—”

  “I’ll dump your coke out the window.”

  “That’s going too far.”

  I stared into his dull, blinking eyes. “You know I can do it, E.T. I am no longer putting up with colorful behavior.”

  “We could do a toot and laugh about the day. I’ll give you a free snort.”

  “Out.”

  After he left, I got up to turn off the light and look at the Red Desert stretching away in the moonlight. Shadows moved behind the curtains in the bunkhouse windows. A couple of horses trotted around the perimeter of a corral. A soundless jet crossed the sky like an east-moving star. I’ve never had the temperament for standing in dark rooms, staring moodily out at the view, but this time it was kind of nice.

  I remembered when I was nine or ten years old and Daddy made us turn off Jack Benny to go stand in the backyard and look at the first Sputnik. We craned our necks while he pointed and pointed and Mom kept saying, “They all look the same to me,” until I finally figured out which star was moving through the others. There must have been thousands of satellites cross the night sky since then, but I haven’t seen any except the first.

  My peaceful time-out lasted maybe eight seconds before the doorknob rattled and the hinges squeaked. I blew up. “No toot, no sex for sneakers. No nothing. Now leave me alone.”

  “Sneakers for sex?” It was Thorne’s voice.

  “I thought you were someone else.”

  “If it’s one of my children, I don’t want to hear about it.”

  That was fine by me because I didn’t want to talk about it. We stood in the soft darkness for a few moments, watching each other. I wondered what the repercussions of saying, “I love you,” would be. Would he run away or latch on? Or neither. Maybe he wouldn’t expect anything or be afraid of anything. That was doubtful—men who can accept love are rarer than hare-lipped cover girls.

  “I thought you might be hungry,” Thorne said. He held out a white pizza box.

  “What time is it?”

  “Nine, maybe nine-thirty. Why?”

  “Don’t turn on the light. I’ve had all the glare I can handle for one day.”

  His dark form moved across the room and set the box on the bed. “I was driving around and got hungry. Thought you might like some pizza.”

  I crossed to the bathroom and reached in to flip on the light-switch. With the door open a few inches, it gave the bedroom a relaxed, easy glow.

  “You bought a pizza?”

  “Hamburger and onion.”

  “How’d you find a pizza parlor in the desert?”

  Thorne kind of chuckled. “There’s a Shakey’s in town—Rock Springs. After I left you I drove around all afternoon and ended up there.”

  “That’s forty miles.”

  “More like two hundred the way I went.” He took a bite. “It’s still warm. I came the direct way back.”

  Pizza smelled good. It wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold yet either. “You’ve taken off your bandages,” I said.

  “Got in the way of driving.”

  “Let me see.” The cut ran sideways, drawn together by long, black stitches. “Does it hurt anymore?”

  “Some.”

  We ate the pizza in silence, both of us staring at the closed window. Afterwards, Thorne set the box with some crusts on the floor and we held hands awhile. I started to talk about Jackson Hole and my cabin, but that kind of petered out when it led to Loren.

  Thorne told me about a pet pig he’d raised as a boy. He’d named it Teddy after Teddy Roosevelt. It was one of those “only thing I ever really loved” stories, the kind that ends with the pet winning a blue ribbon at the county fair and finding itself auctioned off to the slaughterhouse. The moral being: You only kill the ones you love. It was a sad story to hear coming from a sixty-something-year-old man. Thorne still grieved.

  Afterwards, he leaned forward and almost kissed me, but didn’t. “So, you want to get married?” Thorne asked.

  “No.”

  He seemed to accept my answer. He didn’t push it anyway. Much later he leaned me back on the bed and we made love. I don’t think Thorne had been with many women other than Janey.

  There’s something touching about being with a man who’s somewhat clumsy in bed. It’s as if he’s going on desire and emotion rather than technical experience. Makes me feel more appreciated, less like a judge at a gymnastics meet. It’s not something I’d want to do every day, of course, but the lack of fire is made up for by how good I feel about myself afterwards. It’s like the glow I used to feel on Christmas morning with Connie and Cassie. Or that dizziness after I donate to a Red Cross blood drive.

  Later, Thorne slept with his head between my breasts. I lay there awhile, staring at the ceiling, thinking, and wishing for a cigarette.

  • • •

  I awoke to confusion—shouts outside, doors slamming, orange light on the window, feet running in the hall. Gritz’s mustache appeared above the bed.

  “Barn’s on fire, boss.” He didn’t say it with any more urgency than “Time for breakfast” or “Rain coming.” By the time I realized what he meant, Gritz was gone and Thorne was pulling on his jeans. I ran to the window. Flames licked from the hayloft. Slivers of fire crept up the eaves. Men ran in and out the loading doors, saving machinery, tools, and tack. A guy pulled on Laredo’s reins as the horse fought to go back in.

  “Holy Christ,” I said, but Thorne was already out the door.

  I threw on Janey’s clothes and E.T.’s sneakers. As I ran down the hall, I have to admit my first thought was how glad I was that the fire wasn’t in the house. I flashed a vivid picture of myself running naked from the burning building into E.T.’s waiting arms. Even the mental picture was horrifying.

  The front yard wasn’t nearly as chaotic as I’d expected. There was a lot of noise and rushing, but everyone seemed to be doing his job. Five or six cowboys were hauling out the last of what could be saved. Another five or six worked with hoses down by the windmill. The hoses were obviously worthless. The barn’s entire roof was burning. The fire made a sound like rushing air. I could hear the loft breaking up, falling into the main floor.

  Thorne and Gritz stood about halfway between the house and the barn. I don’t think either one was aware of my presence.

  “Get those men out of there,” Thorne shouted. “Anything inside now is gone.”

  Gritz shielded his face with a raised arm. “Laredo was the only horse in the stalls and we saved him. This’ll cook the chickens.”

  “How much hay?”

  “Not much—fifteen, twenty ton. I sure hate to lose that saddle.”

  “I hate to lose that barn.”

  I don’t know which one screamed. I heard a sound and turned to see E.T. dragging Darlene through the loading-bay doors. He had her around the middle, half dragging, half carrying, while she thrashed her arms and legs, a child in a temper tantrum. They were almost out when she bent over and bit one of his hands. He jerked. She broke free. She ran a couple of steps back into the fire, fell, and he caught her again. By then, Thorne and another cowboy were there to help.

  They dragged her away from the fire, Darlene screaming and crying the whole way. Her face was black from the smoke or soot. Her shirt tore off, leaving her in a bra white as the exposed skin.

  All the cocaine added to the adrenaline fear-rush must have blown E.T.’s circuits because he floated along behind the scene looking practically calm. Serene maybe, like a shock therapy patient. He drifted over and said, “Hey,” seemingly oblivious to the fire at his back and Darlene’s hysterics.

  “You okay?” I asked him.

  “My Dead tapes are safe.”

  Darlene cal
med down enough to blame Thorne for the fire. “This is your fault, you started this.”

  Thorne held both her wrists. He looked into Darlene’s fierce eyes. “Your mother and I built that barn before you were born. Why would I burn it?”

  “Because you hate yourself.”

  An explosion blew a wall of hot air out the front of the barn, knocking two cowboys off their feet. I saw Billy G get up still clutching the hose. I hadn’t destroyed his life after all.

  “What was that?” Thorne shouted over the roar.

  “Fifteen gallons of gasoline,” E.T. said. We all turned on him. “She bought thirty gallons, but left fifteen in a tank by the back door.”

  “Where’d she get the money to buy that much gas?” Thorne asked.

  Darlene jumped at me and shrieked. Then she whirled back at Thorne. “Got you, got you,” she laughed, “I bet you don’t bring whores home while Mama’s away now, Daddy dear.”

  Thorne slapped her. She fell into the dirt and stared up at him, her black face reflecting the firelight. E.T. screamed, “You son of a bitch,” and jumped on Thorne’s back. Thorne spun around, clawing at E.T. until he worked him up on one shoulder. Then he lifted E.T. and threw him across the yard and onto Darlene. Out of breath, Thorne pointed at them. “You two are off the ranch. You’re out of my life. It’s suicide or throwing you out and I’m throwing you out.”

  Darlene pulled the hair out of her eyes. Tears ran clear, scar-like streaks through the black of her face. She pulled herself up on her hands and knees and hissed, “Mama knows everything you do.”

  Back in the crowd of onlookers, I thought of my daughters and Buggie, my parents, Loren’s mother. You can’t stop loving someone just because they’re a disappointment. Loren needed me. I needed him.

  I said, “Crack.”

  No one heard except Gritz. His mustache turned until he was looking at me from one eye. He said, “Good riddance.”

  “Didn’t know you cared, Gritz.”

  He spit and moved away to help Billy G and the others with the hoses. In the flickering, flashing light of the burning barn, I turned and walked to the Toyota. E.T. never would recover his sneakers.