That Old Ace in the Hole

by Annie Proulx

  Eight o’clock Bob galloped down the stairs, the first one down, and no wonder if they’d stayed up half the night talking about combs and bracelets. There was an empty scotch bottle in the trash. He started the coffee and went outside, ran down to the Continuum newsstand for the papers and, on the way back, stopped at the Sweet Mountain Bakery for the strawberry-pistachio Danish they all liked. Back in the kitchen he set the table, put out the milk and sugar, took three eggs from the refrigerator, looked for the nitrate-free bacon Uncle Tam insisted on buying, heard shuffling steps behind him. It was Uncle Tam in his ratty checkered bathrobe, looking bleary and hungover.

  “Oh boy, I need some of that coffee.”

  “How late did you guys stay up?”

  “Until it got light. I just went to bed two hours ago.” He looked at the table, at the three places set. He picked up one of the plates, the silverware, put them away.

  “Hey, what’d you do that for? Bromo likes breakfast too.”

  “Not this morning. He’s gone. Left at five A.M. He persuaded me to buy his share of the business out. From now on it’s you and me, kid.”

  “But where’d he go? Why? How could you buy him out if we don’t have any money?”

  “He went to Iowa City where his sister lives, and from there he is going to New York. He says he wants to learn period furniture like the Keno brothers. He doesn’t care about Art Plastic anymore. And you’re right, I don’t have any money, so I had to promise to pay him a certain amount in case I can ever unload this dump. And now, if you don’t mind, let’s drop the subject permanently. I’ve just about got brain fever from it all.”

  Bob had the sense to be quiet. And after a few weeks he got his first job—grocery packer at Sandman’s. In addition to his wage check he got meat and vegetables, eggs and fruit past their prime. So they lived on almost-spoiled produce and high meat, with frequent bouts of diarrhea.

  3

  ON THE ROAD AGAIN

  The morning after the celebratory steak dinner Bob was heading south down I-25 in a Global Pork Rind company car, a blue, late-model Saturn, watching out for escaped prisoners in white vans. He stopped for gas in Trinidad, got a dripping chile dog to eat while he drove, pulled over at a roadside spring below Raton Pass to clean his hands and wipe off the steering wheel.

  On the passenger seat were the packages his uncle had handed him outside the restaurant.

  He took twisting, climbing roads through northeast New Mexico, high dry ranchland empty of everything but cinder cones and cows and an occasional distant building surrounded by corrals. An elderly horseman herded forty cows down the middle of the road, not deigning to hurry them or turn them out of the right-of-way.

  He climbed a switchback road lined with tough-looking shinnery oak. He guessed he was about an hour’s drive from the Picket Wire canyonlands along the Purgatoire River, south of La Junta. When he was thirteen, he, Uncle Tam and Bromo Redpoll had rented a car and driven down to the Withers Canyon Gate, planning to hike in to the fabled dinosaur track bed.

  It was a hot day, over a hundred degrees by late morning. Bob and Uncle Tam each had a canteen of water. Bromo carried a daypack of cold beers, Bob and Uncle Tam clutched plastic bottles of water. Bromo and Bob wore hiking boots, Uncle Tam his old black and stinking sneakers. The road in to the gate where the trail began was a gauntlet of washouts and boulders. At the gate a posted sign said the round-trip hike was 10.6 miles.

  “Damn,” said Uncle Tam, “that’s almost an eleven-mile hike.”

  “Two hours in, two hours out,” said Bromo, draining the first of his beers and tossing the can behind a rock. “Leave it alone,” he said when Bob ran to pick it up. “We’ll get it on the way out. You’re too damn picky. Don’t be such an old lady.”

  They set off slowly, climbing the rocky trail. The sun beat against Bob’s face and within twenty minutes he knew he was burning. He’d forgotten his cap. He said, “Uncle Tam, did you bring any sunblock?” He thought they were in a terrible place, bristling with cholla, yucca and purple prickly pear. Scraggy junipers clung to frying rock. The canyon walls rose around them, shooting out heat as from ray guns.

  “Shit. No. Would have been a good idea. You got any, Bromo?”

  “Back in the car. Want to run back and get it, Bob? We’ll wait for you.”

  “No.” The idea of running anywhere was repulsive.

  They walked on, Bromo in the lead as if he were heading up a safari. Every step raised a puff of yellow dust from the trail and their boots and Uncle Tam’s sneakers, their stocking tops and lower legs were soon coated with the stuff, setting off an itchy sensation like hay chaff. At first Bob tried to make the water in his twelve-ounce bottle last but he was parched and his throat clicked painfully when he swallowed. It felt as though his throat were bleeding inside. Bromo finished his fourth beer, carefully standing the can beside the trail.

  “Get it when we come out,” he said as he had every time he finished one. He straightened up and a thin, arid rustle shivered the heat. Bob thought it was a cicada or a grasshopper and walked up, intending to pass Bromo, but Uncle Tam thrust out his arm with hard suddenness, hitting Bob in the face.

  “Ow. What’d you do that for?”

  “Shut up. That’s a rattlesnake.” The landscape lurched.

  They couldn’t see it. They stood very still. The buzzing surged until it seemed the loudest sound Bob had ever heard. Still they couldn’t see it until Bromo shifted position.

  “There it is,” said Bromo. “Right next to the beer can. Christ, I was two inches from it.”

  “I want to get out of here,” Bob whispered.

  They backed up slowly and when they were fifteen feet away Bromo picked up a rock and threw it at the rattler. He missed.

  “Well, what do you want to do, Tam, try and find a way past? The damn snake’s right on the trail.”

  “Hell, let’s go back. I got blisters, Bob’s sunburned and who knows how many snakes we’ll run into? Could be hundreds in here. Not all of them rattle. People have killed so many of the ones who rattle that it’s the silent guys who reproduce. One of these days they’ll all be nonrattlers. Plus it’s too hot. This is the kind of place you tackle in November, not June.”

  They left and did not come back in November or ever. But Bob had thought many times that someday he was going to make it in to the dinosaur tracks, maybe on a mountain bike, and certainly in cold weather when the rattlesnakes were hibernating. Now, remembering the aborted trip, he thought maybe he would try again on one of his trips between Denver and the panhandle. On a cool day.

  North of Clayton he found a yellow-dirt road that carried him around hairpin bends, over humpback bridges and through mud ruts deep enough to scrape the bottom of the car. It was midafternoon when he came out at Teemu, not far from Black Mesa, in the Oklahoma panhandle, piñon-juniper-mesa country with cholla, hackberry, scrub oak all through the rocks. He stopped at a general store for a bottle of water and a ham sandwich, got pinned by the garrulous proprietor, a baggy man whiskered with white bristles recently arrived from California, who explained his ambitious retirement plan to make the place into another Santa Fe.

  “See, my grandparents left here in the thirties. Dust bowl days. I thought I’d come back and see what they left behind. It’s a beautiful place. Great potential. Got electricity too, more than you can say for California. We got craft people here, carvers and painters, we got Indians, we got people with sheds full a antiques, we got a small tourist trade that just needs working up. It’s mostly a Christian tourist trade, there’s the Cowboy Bible Camp that packs them in all summer. Over in Kenton they got the Easter Pageant, brings in the thousands. We even got a vineyard now, Butch Podzemny’s ranch out east has went over to vines. With a little luck Oklahoma panhandle could put Napa Valley in the dumpster. Pretty good climate for vines, high, dry, plenty sun, clean air, light stony soil. The new county agent thinks we got a chance to make a real nice regional varietal. The old agent couldn’t see past c
ows.”

  Bob thought the man was trying to puff the place up to himself, to smother his regret at leaving California for the bull’s-eye of the dust bowl.

  “I figure if we can interest Oklahoma Today, get them to come out and do an article on us, we’d improve business about fifty percent. But we’re kind of forgotten out here. Right now I try to keep everything loose, keep a little of everything on hand so I can see what people want. I got calendars, a few groceries, lunch counter. I got the gas pump, only gas pump for thirty miles either direction. Next year is the big year. I got a friend talked into remodeling the old hotel, open a nice restaurant. Butch’ll have the first wine ready to sell then. If he makes a go of it there would be a hundred others love to get out of the damn cow business and into something nice like vines. The boom is coming. Teemu will be the next Santa Fe.”

  It took Bob twelve seconds to drive through the bedraggled boomtown of the future, past three storefront churches, seven collapsed or empty buildings, the old school boarded up and wreathed in two-strand Wave Spread wire, past a decayed rock building with no roof and a dangling sign that read KELLY’S HOTEL—which he guessed was the home of the future “nice restaurant.” Bemused by curious rock formations that resembled dinosaur excreta standing on end, he thought of the storekeeper’s apparent ignorance that it had taken Santa Fe centuries to build up from its start as a trading town for Mexican hides and Indian silverwork. Several times he had gone with Uncle Tam and Bromo Redpoll to Santa Fe for the Art Plastic Society’s annual convention, and while the two men slavered over cracked polymer, he’d wandered around the town with one of the free guidebooks supplied by the hotel. So, thinking of the Santa Fe Trail from Independence, Missouri, to Council Grove in Kansas, to Pawnee Rock where the route split in two, the “wet trail” going south along the Cimarron River, the safer “dry trail” from Bent’s Fort westward to Raton Pass through the Sangre de Cristo range and on to Santa Fe, and thinking how he would soon be crossing that ghostly track, he took a wrong turn.

  He did not notice at first, for a road runner dashed in front of him. The road was paved, but soon it narrowed, and after fifteen miles plunged down a short hill to a bridgeless water crossing, then up and around a tight corner and onto level ground where it split away into three rutted dirt trails without signs. The mesas were out of sight, the rock formations had disappeared. He fumbled for his map but the one he had, a gas station cheapo stamped Central and Western States, did not show Teemu on it. He guessed that by turning right, which he took to be east, he would parallel the state line and, after a while, find a good road cutting south again.

  And so he maneuvered onto a set of dusty ruts dotted with manure, a primitive road wandering through uninhabited grazing land. There were no towns, no gas stations, no houses, no corrals, no traffic. He was the only person on an endless track without turnoff nor intersection. The fine dust got into the car and choked him and he wished he had bought gallons of water from the talkative store man. It was sultry for a day in March, even in Oklahoma, and gross clouds crowded the sky. After an hour of dry swallowing he came on a weather-beaten sign, the first he had seen. It read COMANCHE NATIONAL GRASSLAND. He looked at his map. There was a green square on the map bearing the same name. He was somehow back in Colorado and heading north.

  He could not bear to retrace his path to the fetal boomtown, so he drove doggedly on, believing that sooner or later there would be intersecting roads east and then south that would take him down to Oklahoma and Texas. Eight miles later he hit a right-hand turnoff without a sign but it surely headed east and gave him a view to the south of a massive wall of blue-black cloud slashed by lightning.

  With an abrupt twitch the dusty road butted onto blacktop and in the distance he could see semis racing along a busy highway. He had found the road but lost the day. A northwest slot in the clouds let a narrow ray of sunlight through. There was a heaviness to it as though its rich color truly bore the weight of gold.

  In another hour he was back in Oklahoma, a few miles outside Boise City, looking for a place to sleep. He found a bed-and-breakfast, the Badger Hole, where, on the front lawn, an enormous fiberglass badger stood with Christmas lights around its neck. In the tiny parking lot there was an unwashed white van with Arizona plates. A finger had written in the dust on the back door ON THE MOTHER-FUCKING ROAD AGAIN. It didn’t sound like the sentiment of an escaped convict, so he took the room.

  He was shown up the stairs by a heavy woman, young but fleshy, with yellow crimped hair and a beautiful face. When she spoke her mouth went up on one side as though she talked around a cigar. The room was hot and airless, the walls painted forget-me-not blue. The single bed was dainty and white, the bathroom obviously made over from a narrow closet. There was no air conditioner, but an electric fan took up most of the top of the painted chest. He pried a window open and with the cool evening air came a loose knot of mosquitoes. He turned on the fan, which roared hugely, the stream of air twitching the curtains, stirring the pages of a magazine on the bedside table—Decorating Your Mobile Home.

  Bob Dollar opened the smallest of the packages his uncle had handed him and inside found the tie his mother had painted showing the Titanic going down. There was an immense gash in the ship’s side and out of it tumbled people and beds and china; tiny figures struggled in the water. An iceberg shaped like a bundle of chef’s knives threatened to stab the ship again. Tears came to Bob’s pale eyes. He had heard his uncle say many times that the tie was his dearest possession. The other package felt like a book. Bromo always had given him books, great books, for he had an uncanny sense of what Bob would like. Inside was a slender paperback, Expedition to the Southwest, An 1845 Reconnaissance of Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma by Lieutenant James William Abert. There was a note from Bromo:

  Dear Bob.

  I thought the adventures of Lt. Abert might interest you as he was the first to systematically explore the region you are now in and at approximately your age. I hope you will take as much interest in what you see as he did. The broadly engaged mind is the source of a happy life. Good luck.

  P.S. Keep away from Oklahoma.

  He went down the street for supper, ate two scorched corn dogs and aged coleslaw at the Bandwagon diner and then called home collect from a pay phone.

  “Hi, Uncle Tam, it’s me.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Haven’t heard from you in twenty-four hours. How do you like it down there?”

  “I’m not there yet. I got mixed up on some back roads. I’m in Oklahoma. It got too late to keep going. Anyway, I want to look over the country in daylight. Thought I’d call up and tell you I’m really happy about the tie. I know it meant a lot to you.”

  “Well, seemed right you should have something from your mother. I was going to give it to you when you graduated from Horace Greeley, but something told me to wait. What did Wayne send you?”

  “A book by some guy named Abert. A lieutenant. I think he went through this country a hundred years ago. Looks pretty interesting. Bromo wrote I should stay out of Oklahoma but that’s where I am. What’s new with you?”

  “Not much the time you been gone. I cut my thumb opening mail—a paper cut. Hurt like hell. And my feet are pretty bad today. I’m thinking of going to the doctor. And I entered the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes contest. First prize is two million dollars.”

  “How’s the vegetarian program going?”

  “Good. I got me some tofu and vegetables and fruit, about a ton of dried beans. Mrs. Mendoza down the block showed me how to cook them Mexican-style. Gave me some dried epazote. She told me where to get good chorizo but I left that out—not a vegetable. I feel a little better already—except my feet. And your old friend stopped by.”

  “What old friend?”

  “The big jailbird. Orlando.”

  “Orlando’s out?”

  “Well, he must be if he came by. I don’t know if he escaped or got released and I didn’t care to ask. Didn’t recognize him at firs
t. You can tell he’s been working out. Wanted to know how to get hold of you. Said I didn’t know.”

  “I’ll send you an address soon as I find a place to stay and get a mailbox. If Orlando comes by again get a phone number or something. I’ll call you again in a couple of days.”

  “I hope you’re not going to take up with him again. He’s an ex-con now. Or worse, a prison escapee.”

  There was no television set in the room and he read a few pages from Lieutenant James William Abert’s Expedition, learning, before sleep descended, that the lieutenant was the son of Colonel John James Abert, who headed the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers, the agency charged with exploring and mapping the west. At West Point the son collected an astonishing number of demerits and stood near the bottom of his class in all but drawing, where he ranked first. His fellow West Pointers included Ulysses S. Grant, James Longstreet, William Tecumseh Sherman, Henry W. Halleck and others who became Civil War luminaries. Bob Dollar’s heart went out to Lieutenant Abert, surrounded by military bullies, sissy drawing his only skill. The lieutenant was Bob Dollar’s age when he and his friend and second-in-command, the mathematically inclined Lieutenant William Guy Peck, and a small company were ordered by the idiosyncratic and haughty John Charles Frémont to separate from the larger expedition and form the “South Expedition” to explore the territory of the Comanche, and chart the course of the Canadian River while Frémont himself pushed on to sunny California. Bob found the journal interesting, for Abert had an inquiring eye, a good nature, and he was early in the country.

  The bed was heaped with puffy quilts and featherbeds, so infernally hot that he ended by kicking them all on the floor and directing the fan’s stream of air at the bed. When he woke at dawn the sheets were twisted into frightful points and kinked spirals like aging telephone cords. He showered, pulled on his jeans and T-shirt. He couldn’t get away from the place fast enough. The white van was gone.