Western Swing

by Tim Sandlin

  Walt exhaled deeply through his nose and turned sideways so he appeared to be talking to the elk. “Nothing.”

  Lana Sue held her Dixie cup with both hands. “Your daughter was in trouble and you did nothing?”

  Walt glanced at Lana Sue, then at the fire. I figured if he drew deeply enough into his own thoughts, I could pull a stick from the coals and throw it in his face. He spoke quietly. “When Lisa passed away, I almost went with her.”

  “Lisa was Ann’s mother?” Lana Sue’s voice was kind.

  He nodded. “Then Ann ran off with that greasy foreigner she called a guru. She got away and I had to stay and raise her brothers and sister.”

  I lifted a stick from the fire. The hot end glowed a deeper red than the sunset. Walt kept talking more to himself than us. “Then Annie moved in with some hippie, then she gave birth to an illegitimate son—all without a word to me.”

  “So you didn’t answer when she needed you,” Lana Sue said.

  Walt came back to alertness. “It’s not my fault she died. He’s the one. He was living with her. I couldn’t know.”

  I blew on the tip of my stick. The glow went neon, then darkened. “Who abandoned who out there on the coast?”

  “You shut up.”

  “Ann told me you blanked her out after your wife died.”

  “I told you to shut up.”

  “She left with the fat Maha-whatever because you wouldn’t speak to her.”

  He cocked the rifle. I turned to Lana Sue. “Walt here mails a bulletin out every Christmas with a list of where the kids are, who’s married, who has kids. After Buggie was born, he dropped Ann’s name from the lineup. She said he made her feel dead.”

  “You bastard. I will kill you.”

  “Buggie was the bastard. That’s why you never acknowledged his existence.”

  “I swear, I’ll beat you to death with my bare hands.”

  “You’re too old.”

  Lana Sue’s turn to defuse. She moved quickly around the fire to stand between Walt and me. “Maybe you feel guilty,” she said to him.

  “Don’t play psychiatrist with me.”

  “And you transferred your guilt to anger at Loren. You blame him so you won’t blame yourself.”

  “He abandoned my baby.”

  “So did her mom, her dad, and her child.”

  “Hand me the fucking bottle.”

  “Everybody killed her, Walt. Not you alone and not Loren either.”

  “I’m still going to shoot the asshole.”

  • • •

  We all observed a moment of liquid silence. Lana Sue carried the supper leftovers into the darkness and scraped the mess into a chiseler hole. Walt went hypnotic on the elk. Or maybe he was scotch-stunned. If I’d thought he was totally oblivious, I’d have plowed his scalp with a rock, but he blinked now and then and sighs escaped. The rifle stayed in the ready position.

  I poked the reddest coals into a square pile, then tossed on my largest chunk of kindling. As I watched his sharp face in the near darkness and firelight, I imagined Walt’s brain slithering with distorted remembrances—like one of those experiments where they dump two hundred mice in a cage built for twenty.

  Some turn to insane hyperactivity, others go catatonic. Cannibalism and rape erupt. Birth defects by the dozen.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “After I kill him, we can rest,” Walt said to the elk.

  “I have to pee now.”

  • • •

  Someone should write an ode to blind-drunk urination. First, you have to stand up, which is an unnecessary challenge. Then, find a place, find your fly, miss your leg, get it back in. The most debasing moments in a man’s life often come while he’s pissing drunk.

  I thought these things as I leaned on a tree trunk and listened to the whiz. I thought about Ann’s barbiturates. At least, stoned on reds, you don’t have to excuse yourself every ten minutes. I’ve lost some crucial bar pickups because of you-don’t-buy-beer-you-only-rent-it.

  I also thought about obsession. Walt Smith was obsessed by the memory of his daughter. I was obsessed with finding Buggie. I’d always believed obsession was the only way to accomplish anything or really feel anything in life, but, using the two of us as examples, it seemed obsession causes an outlook twisted to the point of stupid. Lana Sue wasn’t obsessed by anything and she was the only sane one of the bunch.

  “You going to stand there with your pecker out all night?” Walt asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s my turn.”

  I tucked in. “This is a big forest, Mr. Smith. No need to take turns.”

  He punched my ribs hard with the rifle barrel. “Your contempt is suicidal.”

  “What contempt? I respect your position here. I just don’t care to die.”

  “You should have considered that five years ago when you abandoned my Annie.”

  “I should have known this would happen?”

  “Right, bucko.”

  The bucko shit was getting old. Back at the fire, Lana Sue gave me the hug I’d been waiting for. “I’m glad I found you in one piece,” she said.

  Her hair on my face smelled nice, like the rain. I wondered something. “Other than Marcie telling you I was on the mountain, how did you manage to find me?”

  “She’s statutory, Loren. And her daddy owns guns.”

  “I mean, there’s a lot of land up here.”

  “Only one trail from the parking lot up the ridge, though, and there was this smoke at the top end of the meadow.”

  “That was a snowmobile.”

  “Can’t tell by looking at it now.” She pulled out of the hug, but kept hold of my hands. “Then I saw your daypack up by the woods. After that, I just wandered uphill until I heard the first shot.”

  “Pretty good timing.”

  Lana Sue smiled. “You’re my husband. I could track you anywhere.” Then she kissed me—a solid wife and lover kiss, none of this lovable fuck-up stuff. “I missed you a lot,” she said.

  “I’m glad you came back.”

  I felt her hands on my shoulder blades. “It’s an odd world out there, Loren.”

  “Odder than here?”

  She glanced behind me at the drunk car salesman who planned to shoot us. “Be a toss-up right now.” I was standing close to the fire so the backs of my legs got too much heat, but I didn’t want to let go of my hold on Lana Sue. It seemed a long time since I’d touched a human being.

  “Here’s the plan,” I said. “We drink him unconscious, then we walk out of here.”

  “Nine miles across pitch-black wilderness drunk on our butts?”

  “Okay. We drink him unconscious, then break the rifle in half. What’s he doing over there?”

  Lana Sue released the hug and moved so the fire wasn’t between her and Walt Smith. I jumped away from the heat. “Still communing with nature, I think.”

  “I hope I can commune that long when I’m his age.” I turned to look at Walt. That brought my front to the fire and cooled my calves.

  “Drinking him under is our best bet, Loren, only I want you to pretend to pass out first.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard. Why?”

  “He’ll relax more when you’re not a threat. Besides, he’s not likely to shoot you while you’re asleep.”

  “Murder’s all right, but only if the victim is awake?”

  “It’s the cowboy code. He’s waiting for you to come at him or try an escape or something. He’s on his way back now. Drink a lot and pass out. Only leave enough for us.” Drink a lot and pass out. I could handle that.

  I sank onto the sleeping bag next to the Beam bottle. A sliver moon with Venus off the bottom tip rose through the trees behind the old elk skull. An owl swooped across the clearing and away, but I was the only
one who saw it. I wondered what kind of owl it was and if that mattered and whether it would matter more if I was immortal. Dying tonight seemed somehow probable yet impossible at the same time—like death always seems, I suppose. I would miss Lana Sue singing country songs on the toilet early mornings while I sleepy-fussed around the kitchen making coffee. And the taste of cold water. And the opening theme music to M*A*S*H reruns. That song is comforting, it gives continuity to life, even though the title is “Suicide Is Painless.”

  Walt approached, tucking the wool shirt in with one hand. His two-day beard gave him a cleaned-up-wino look—nothing like a car salesman. I asked myself the old Nixon question. “Would you buy a used car from this man?” Depended on the deal.

  Right now he was staring at Lana Sue. “How come a good looker like yourself ended up with trash for a husband?” He swung the barrel my way.

  “Lucky, I guess.”

  Walt leaned off to one side and drank from the bottle. “Look at him over there, nodding like a heroin addict. He’s a simpleton.”

  Lana Sue studied me a moment, considering the observation. I smiled at her. “Loren’s my honey,” she said. “My sticking point.”

  Walt made an ugly snort sound. “Makes me want to puke.”

  “So don’t look at him.”

  His stare returned to Lana Sue, only this time it was more a leer. “Maybe we could work out a deal.”

  “No.”

  “You don’t even know the terms.”

  “I know the terms.”

  “You’d rather I shoot the asshole?” Sounded like a reasonable question to me.

  The firelight gave Lana Sue’s cheekbones a shadowy, Cheyenne mystery woman look. “Four days ago a man said he’d commit suicide if I didn’t sleep with him. Then three days ago a kid offered to sell me his shoes for sex. I said no to them and I’m saying no to you.”

  “So you’d rather see your husband die than be nice to me?”

  “My cunt doesn’t prevent murder or suicide. Or bare feet.”

  I raised my head off my hands. “Did the guy kill himself?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you sleep with him anyway?”

  “I told you what I said, Loren.”

  “I know what you said—what did you do?”

  This got me a particularly nasty stare—so nasty in fact that I didn’t buy the bit. She’d been up to something. Lana Sue took the bottle back from Walt. “You have a stroke recently?” she asked him. The smoke made them shift around the fire, away from where I slouched.

  “Three years ago in February. Does it show?” The heat over the fire gave them an unsubstantial, watery look. Kind of artsy.

  “You limp like my uncle Bart. He fainted into a sand trap a few years back. Couldn’t speak for a month, but they physical-therapied him so well you can hardly tell now—except he can’t whistle anymore and he carries his left leg some when he’s tired. Like you.”

  Walt passed from the watery far side of the fire to the more solid left. The rifle still pointed between my eyes. “It was mild, nothing really. I was back on the lot by summer.”

  I twisted the top off my Beam bottle and took a good slug.

  Lana Sue smiled and lip-synced pass out at me. Then she continued, “So, Walt, was it around the stroke that you developed these avenging angel urges toward Ann?”

  “Hand me the scotch.” Walt eyed Lana Sue as he drank. With the bottle almost empty, we were headed toward a vomit à trois.

  “I resent the insinuation,” he said.

  “What insinuation?”

  “You imply that my mental capacities were lessened by my sickness, that my defense of Ann is a disease-caused blip on my personality.”

  “I wouldn’t have said blip.”

  “You better not. I should have killed him at the funeral itself.”

  I raised my head. “You should have come to the funeral itself.”

  “I was there.”

  “Horseshit, you didn’t even know she was dead.”

  “Don’t curse at me, bucko.”

  “One more bucko and you eat that rifle.” This was the Jimmy Stewart side of me rising to the occasion. Walt’s mouth twitched a couple times and made a chewing motion. For a moment, he appeared on the edge of calling my bluff. What would Jimmy Stewart do then?

  Walt stared into the fire. “Her doctor phoned the day it happened. He said you were too much a mess to think of me.”

  “Ann and her family were enemies. I saw no call to notify anyone.”

  Walt turned to Lana Sue. “I was at the cemetery. It snowed and some of the women who worked with Annie had been Christmas shopping before the service.”

  Lana Sue touched his shoulder. “It must have been very hard.”

  “After the prayers, he sat in the car and took notes. Can you believe the monstrosity? My baby is dead and he’s recording impressions.”

  “I’d of gone insane that week if I stopped work on the Buggie book.”

  He raised the rifle butt to his shoulder and took aim at my chest. “Your wife was dead. She deserved a little insanity.”

  Lana Sue tried to step between Walt and me, but he moved away from the fire, keeping me in range.

  “Don’t kill him,” Lana Sue said.

  “Look at him, he’s taking notes right now.”

  She glanced back at me. “I wouldn’t doubt it, Walt. But he’s all I’ve got. Don’t kill him.”

  I wasn’t taking notes. I was wishing I could be sober enough to think about the things Lana Sue was saying. I’d never understood what she saw in me—always figured I needed her more than she needed me. But now it seemed pretty strong both ways.

  Walt stepped past Lana Sue and stood five feet away with the rifle on me. “You’re incapable of love. Ann told me about your mother and brothers. That bastard was the only thing you ever cared about, and when he was gone, you killed my baby.”

  “I care about Lana Sue.”

  “Annie was your wife.”

  “I cared about her too—at the time. Hell, I married her.”

  Walt lowered the rifle and stared at me. He blinked twice, then swallowed. “What color were Annie’s eyes?”

  “What?”

  “For reasons I’ll never understand, this woman loves your worthless hide.” He nodded his head toward Lana Sue. “For her, if you cared about Annie enough to recall the color of her eyes, I’ll only shoot out your kneecaps. I will not take your miserable life.”

  “Be tough to survive blown kneecaps this far from the road.”

  “The two of you will manage.”

  I thought about Ann the first day we were together when we took the picnic basket to the cemetery and Buggie climbed the grave markers even before he could walk. Her hair had been so clean that day. The sky had been so blue—it seemed to match her eyes. “Blue. They were a light blue.”

  Walt grew very calm. “Annie’s eyes were hazel. The Ann in your book had blue eyes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You lose, bucko.”

  Lana Sue hit the rifle as he fired. With the second shot, a hole appeared in the sleeping bag next to my hand. Another shot and the Jim Beam bottle exploded.

  Lana Sue screamed, “I’ll do it!”

  Walt stopped. “Do what?”

  “I’ll fuck you for his life.”

  Walt and Lana Sue stared in each other’s eyes for a few intense seconds. He took a step toward her. “Right now. In the dirt. With him watching.”

  Lana Sue nodded.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want Loren dead.”

  He turned to me. “And you’ll let her, won’t you?”

  I looked at Lana Sue. Her hair blocked out most of her face, but I could see her right eye, staring at the ground, waiting. I thought about Buggie and the
day he disappeared. He’d caught a trout that morning. Ann and I made love for the last time. With effort, I pulled my legs under my drunk body and made it to my feet. I faced Walt across the fire.

  “No.”

  He pretended not to understand. “What’s that?”

  “You’ll have to shoot me first.”

  “Your choice.” The rifle came up, dead center on my chest. He squeezed the trigger and we all heard the empty click. I drunk-rushed.

  Walt two-hand-swung the barrel into my left ear and I went down onto his feet. Grabbing both legs, I lifted him clear off the ground. He cracked me again and we both fell. On my back now, I kicked his face, but he made it to his knees and drew the rifle back, this time holding the barrel, swinging the stock. On his left, I saw Lana Sue move in with a rock held over her head in both hands. Then Walt’s club came toward me, the night strobed once and darkened.

  • • •

  Nineteen seventy-eight or -nine, must have been -eight because Buggie wasn’t quite four, I sat at the kitchen table working on a scene near the end of the second Western. Ann gave Buggie a big chunk of Colby cheese and a slice of whole wheat bread and sent him into the backyard to play. She stood at the sink window in blue sweats, her Bronco jersey, and no shoes, humming as she Woolited Buggie’s no-longer-needed snowsuit.

  The scene was an important one. Someone—a woman—had locked my sheriff in his own jail and he had to break free in time to save another woman from violent death. I was torn between picking the lock and dynamiting the back wall. Dynamite seemed more dramatic, but there were logistical problems.

  Suddenly Ann squealed, “Holy shit,” and ran out the back door. When I reached the patio, she was dragging Buggie away from the body of an owl.

  Buggie said, “Bird sick.”

  More than sick, the owl was dead. It lay on its side on the concrete, its head and shoulders spotted by yellow bite-size pieces of cheese, the bread slice balanced across the exposed wing.

  Ann tried to turn Buggie’s face from the sight, but he would have none of it. “I feeded him. Make him better.”

  I couldn’t blame Buggie for wanting to see the owl. Even though the cheese made it a little bizarre, he was still huge and beautiful. His face was a white heart curved back like an inside-out bivalve set around two black pits for eyes. Nothing back in my Texas pet cemetery came close to this owl.