That Old Ace in the Hole

by Annie Proulx

  “O.K. When you want to do it?”

  “Sattaday? I could—Wagh!—do it then.”

  “Well, I guess I could too. What time you want to meet?”

  “Say nine A.M. right here.”

  They shook on it.

  “Wagh!”

  “By the way,” said Bob casually, “when’s the cockfight?”

  “Tonight, ain’t it?” said Jim Skin. “At Flores’s barn in Wasp, just over the Oklahoma line. It’s behind the old Esso gas station. Why, you goin?”

  “I might.”

  He drove slowly through the back streets of Woolybucket, many of them unpaved, the traffic kicking up enough dust to keep vacuum cleaners humming. There were many vacant lots in town, some of them places to store old machinery and vehicles, others garden plots where residents worked on their tomatoes and string beans in the cool of the evenings. A few people still kept horses and it was not unusual to see them riding slowly around town, to the post office (where the old hitching rail was still handy) or the feed store. A bald man everyone called Red was the local expert on animal diseases and the complaints of large stock, and many of the riders stopped by his front yard for advice.

  The asparagus days were upon them. LaVon had been busy pickling slender stalks and freezing the stouter ones. Everyone had special asparagus recipes—stir-fried beef with asparagus, cream of asparagus soup, asparagus strudel, asparagus and noodles. LaVon had insisted he try her Salade de Saint-Jacques, a knot of defrosted scallops heaped in the center of a plate and radiating from this hub fourteen asparagus spears, atop each a thread-thin raw enoki mushroom. The sauce, composed of equal parts of horseradish, gin, tomato paste and whipped cream, took his breath away.

  “It’s unique, LaVon,” he said, and she nodded, pleased.

  After the dishes were in the washer Bob drove over on the floury back roads to Cowboy Rose. There was a tiny bakery there and on Wednesday—cookie day—they had vanilla-pecan wafers, for which Bob had developed a strong affection. The bakery was strategically located across the street from the elementary school and if he didn’t get there before three o’clock there would be no cookies left.

  Cowboy Rose looked as though a certain amount of wind had swept through it, for trash was scattered and there were twigs and branches in the road near the highway picnic pull-off. The sky was shaved clean except for a stubble of pale clouds on the horizon.

  He came out of the bakery with his warm sack of cookies and drove to the tiny park with its shade trees, where he planned to enjoy the first half dozen. He found an empty bench near the playground, swept the fallen leaves and twigs from it and, while he ate cookies, watched two or three preschoolers play, their mothers sitting on the concrete curbing around the sandpit. An older girl, certainly old enough to be in school, perhaps the fifth grade, was twirling around a maypole affair, clutching a leather strap attached to a nylon cord. Each time she swung herself off the ground for a spin she cried, “Wheee!” in a high, put-on voice. He was instantly, with the speed of a slammed door, transported to some swing in his childhood, a tire swing tied to the branch of a shady tree and himself swinging and saying “Wheee!” in exactly the same way, saying it, not out of glee, but because it was what you said when you swung around, and remembered himself alone and marked for solitude, beneath his feet the oval of hard dirt where the grass was worn away, feeling sick from the motion of the swing but still saying “Wheee!” as though he were having fun, although there was no one to see nor hear him. He could smell the tree and the tire with its little slosh of water from the last time it had rained, and a very bad feeling of desolation, of aching loneliness, flooded through him and into the taste of the cookies, which he knew he would never like again.

  Instead of going back to the Busted Star he went along to Wasp, looking for the cockfight. On the way he found a barbecued-rib counter at the back of a grocery store and brought the smoky red meat with him to Wasp, a hamlet so small there was nothing there but the ancient Esso station in a state of collapse. In a muddy field half a mile beyond stood a galvanized metal building surrounded by broken machinery and parked pickup trucks. Some of the trucks he had often seen parked near the Old Dog.

  An enormously fat woman in a magenta pantsuit sat in a director’s chair at the door. She took ten dollars from him and stamped his hand with a purple circle that enclosed the word “member.” The light was dim inside. The underside of the galvanized roof had been sprayed with some lumpy plastic insulation and thousands of feathers stuck to it. The seats were tiered bleachers and there were only about fifty people in them, many of them very large men in overalls but also twenty or so short, slender Mexican and Vietnamese men in T-shirts and jeans. They had wide jaws and soft throats, round eyes like black spots and small mustaches barely larger than the wings of a moth. Everyone was smoking. The smell of smoke, feathers, hot birds and sweating humans was palpable. The atmosphere was hot and odorous. He sat next to a four-hundred-pound farmer in a plaid shirt limp from many washings.

  Below lay a rectangular pit with two smaller fenced areas at each end. A sign on the wall announced that this was a PRIVATE CLUB. Another sign read NO GAMBLING, but Bob saw fistfuls of money changing hands.

  “Where do all these folks come from?” asked Bob, looking around, for Wasp lay in a singularly unpopulated region.

  “Hell,” said the fat man beside him, “from all over. And I mean all over! Dodge City, Garden City, Amarilla, Texhoma, they even come from Denver and Lubbock, from Wichita and Oklahoma City.” As they spoke more people came in and Bob could hear roosters crowing. The fat man introduced himself as Byrd Surby, said he was an insurance agent from Fort Supply and had just started raising fighting cocks himself. “It’s poplar all over the country, not just Oklahoma where it’s legal, but places where it ain’t legal. California is a tough state for cockfightin. Will Rogers introduced the sport to Hollywood. But things got tough when William Randolph Hearst, who tried somethin funny, was barred from competition. And out a spite he went to the legislators and pushed through the toughest laws in the country.

  “That’s Stick Flores,” he continued, pointing out a tall man with close-cropped hair and a long, creased beeswax face, his lips the color of genitals, broad yellow hands with curved nails, climbing into the announcer’s cage. A teenage boy entered the pit and began marking opposing lines in the dirt with a plastic ketchup bottle of flour.

  The action began. A referee and two handlers, each holding an extraordinarily beautiful bird with a short knife bound to one leg, entered the pit. One handler was young, slouchy and fat, a farmer’s cap on backward à la mode; the other severely wrinkled, his face a stretch of gravity-ruined muscles and slipped wattles, in extreme contrast with the brilliant blueface he held. This rooster was an oriental carpet of a bird with a hard red head, tail of iridescent green, a golden cape and a back draped in chestnut red like a fringed piano shawl. The fat young man’s rooster was a brown hennie, which Bob thought less attractive than the blueface. The men shook hands and then, still holding their birds, allowed the birds to peck at each other.

  “That’s to git their blood up,” said Bob’s neighbor. “See, they’re usin spurs, not knives. They match up by weight.”

  Then the bird owners separated, stepped behind the flour lines, bent and released their birds on the mark. The roosters rushed at each other. Everything went too quickly for Bob to follow. The brown hennie bird leaped on the blueface, stabbing. The blueface struck the hennie’s leg with its wing and Bob heard a dull pop. The brown hennie, listing to one side, sprang forward, the spur on its good leg a jet of light. A shout went up from the audience. Someone screamed, “Kill im, Pee-Wee!” and Bob felt he was surrounded by ruffians. The beautiful blueface sagged, its beak touching the dirt. It coughed and Bob could see dark spots on the dirt. The handlers rushed forward, picked up their birds and blew into their mouths, then set them on the line again. The hennie rolled back and tried for a shot with his good leg, but was stunned by another wing blo
w and lay twitching. The blueface struggled up and stretched, then a gout of blood came from its beak and it fell. It was a dead winner. The old man picked up his bird by one foot and threw it toward the dark recesses of the back of the barn. Immediately another pair of men, one of them Rope Butt, stepped up with their birds, the teenage boy drew fresh flour lines and a new contest began.

  Bob stayed for nearly two hours watching match after match until he began sneezing from the chickeny dust and feather effluvium mixed with smoke. There was something mesmerizing and terrible about the birds, the rank and sweaty crowd. Gradually he had understood that the cocks represented their owners, that the grossest lout, the skinniest Asian, mingled his psychological identification with that of the sleek, beautiful and dangerous birds. He said goodbye to the fat man and eased out. In the parking lot a heavy farmer was pissing on a tire. He glanced up at Bob.

  “Lost me nine hunderd bucks in there,” he said.

  “Sorry to hear it.”

  “Not half so sorry as I am. I believe my waf will kill me.”

  Bob drove back to the Busted Star feeling he had been present at some dark blood sacrifice older than civilization, a combat with sexual overtones rooted in the deepest trench of the panhandle psyche.

  22

  RIBEYE WRITES

  Bob had been in the panhandle for nearly three months. He had written six letters to Mr. Cluke describing the ladies’ sewing circle, the interesting talk at the grain elevator and the Old Dog, had written a long explanation of how the unsettled weather had kept him from pressing the owners of land to sell. He had discussed the possibilities of the properties he had in mind—Tater Crouch’s place, Freda Beautyrooms’ ranch and several others he thought might fall into his hands. He wrote nothing about luxury house sites. In return he had the GPR newsletter. But on the hot, cloudy Saturday morning he was to go to Oklahoma with Jim Skin to place high-watted lightbulbs on his father’s grave he found two letters from Mr. Cluke in his mailbox, both short, sarcastic and biting in tone.

  Dear Bob Dollar.

  Don’t try to line up any properties. Just put in your time letting people see what a swell guy you are. You never can tell—they might just decide to sell all on their own. Of course, if they do, it’ll probably be to Texas Farms who have a very smart operator in the field. Sure, send the office a list of names you think might go for it. Boy, we really sit up and take notice when we see how many prospects you have lined up. Global Pork Rind is glad to have a popular fellow like you, Bob Dollar, to represent them! Be sure to tell the office if a miracle happens and one of these people decides to sell. Just keep on telling us how hard you’re working, how bad the weather is out your way. Comment on everything you can think of, and tell us what you intend to do next week. Hot dog, you’ll really give us fits of joy then!

  The second letter was shorter.

  Bob Dollar.

  More business and less letter-writing. I thought we got rid of the writing bug with the last fellow. Magazines will pay you for writing. GPR is paying you to find sites for hog farms. How about you pin those wrestlers to the mat and let us know when we can send the Money Offer Person down?

  After these blasts Bob thought he had better not go to see Jim Skin’s father’s grave, but that decision called for a cup of coffee and a doughnut and the only place to get them was the Old Dog, where he found Jim Skin at a table with a box of floodlights in front of him. He couldn’t back out, so bought a sack of raised doughnuts and two take-out coffees.

  “Let’s us take your car,” said Jim Skin. “My old truck is runnin with the help a Jesus the tires is so bad. And it’s got that gas ping real bad. Wagh!”

  They drove north, Jim Skin regaling Bob with the story of his life and his father’s adventures—“…one time he used a umbrella cover for a condom. Bob, you know why I like you?”

  “No.” He couldn’t imagine why anyone would like him.

  “Because you’re—you’re—I like you because you’re laid-back. You just drift with whatever. At first I figured, that boy’s on drugs.”

  “No,” said Bob, wondering if Jim Skin was on something himself. He seemed hyper and a little crazy.

  “The old man was pretty good with a lasso, too, let me tell you. There was one time back in the fifties when these three guys held up the bank. My deddy still rode his horse into town, hadn’t never owned a vehicle up to that point—car or truck like. So he’s comin down the street, not a thought in his head, when these guys run out a the bank with sacks a money in their arms. My deddy—didn’t even think about it—started after them, got his old rope a-whirlin and cotch two a them in one loop. The other one got away. Before the sheriff come—not the sheriff we got now, but his main old deddy used a cook at Huntsville for the death row—my deddy heped hisself to one of them bags, hid it under his shirt and told the sheriff the other robber done run off with it. First thing he done was get hisself a nice automobile, big white Studebaker. A course it was a car like no cowboy would never have the dough saved up to buy and the sheriff figured that one out pretty quick. My deddy had that car about two weeks and then the sheriff convocated it. He just taken it with a big small on his face, caused a star to be painted on the side and deddy went back to his horse. He used the rest a the money to buy his ranch. It was in Oklahoma and he settled there and that damn main old sheriff couldn’t touch him. Got me a red dirt dog, too. Old Woody. Named him after Woody Guthrie. He’s dead now. Got killed by a bicycle feller carryin a gun. Shot him.”

  As they drove north Bob said that it was remarkable how different the contiguous panhandles seemed.

  “Why not? Different people, different laws. Oklahoma is more southern in a way, and Texas is more your western state. Texas got the smart ones, smart guys watchin for the chance. It’s been said Oklahomans is main-spirited and can’t take no criticism, but you ask me your average Oklahoma person is pretty straightforward except he feels like Oklahoma always gets the shitty end a the stick. Wagh! When that McVeigh blowed up the federal buildin in Oklahoma City we just nodded and said, ‘That’s right, that’s how it goes. Pore old Oklahoma.’ And a course people didn’t like that musical neither, until they made a movie out a it. Oklahoma. Then they liked it.”

  “What do you do for a living, Jim?”

  “This and that but mostly I’m a musician. I play the guitar, write songs. If country music was to be tooken away tomorrow I’d kill myself. Specialize in Oklahoma material. We got us a group, the Okie Dokies. Play here and there. Down in Amarilla quite a bit. Guymon, Boise City, Beaver. You hear a lot a bad stuff about Oklahoma and I’m tryin a set it right.”

  After several hours of driving, Bob listening, they entered a particularly desolate stretch of wind-scoured sand and sparse grass. Jim Skin jerked his thumb to the right.

  “That there is my deddy’s ranch,” he said. “Wagh!”

  Bob slowed and looked at it. It was perhaps the poorest land he’d ever seen, eroded, dry and sorely used. The wind had blown Kentucky Fried Chicken boxes into the bluestem. A lifeless windmill leaned east, apparently ready to fall. But with great effort he could imagine it grassed, buffalo moving across it.

  “He worked it some years. In the early days it wasn’t too bad. They run cattle. That there pasture is where he calved for years and I mean thousands and thousands a years. Then come the big droughts and the wheels fell off the wagon.”

  “Who owns it now?” said Bob, expecting to hear it was part of the National Grassland system, that government effort to rescue the worst of the eroded dust bowl lands from their improvident owners.

  “Well, I do,” said Jim Skin. “I’d sell it, but there’s nobody wants a buy. It’s pretty poor and I guess I’m stuck with it. No good for farmin or ranchin. No sir, there ain’t no corn on that cob. But it was a ranch once, long ago. Part a the drift fence they run across the Oklahoma panhandle a keep cows from strayin down into Texas was here. But that was open range days. Don’t know who owned it then. Probly the 101.”

 
; A thought came to Bob’s mind. “It would be O.K. for a hog farm,” he said, keeping his tone neutral.

  “Well, it would, but you know, not one a them guys ever come near me. I’d do it—it’s a burden to me. But hell, for all you hear about them, them hog farm people are shy, they don’t eat their dinner in Woolybucket and I wouldn’t know where or how to find a one a them.”

  Bob opened his mouth, then closed it again, reopened it.

  “You own it free and clear?”

  Jim Skin shot him a sharp glance and paused a minute. “Well, half shares with Ace down in Cowboy Rose. He’s the one fixes windmills. He’s sort a my uncle. I got kin on both sides a the line. But Ace, he’s pretty much got the say about this old ranch. Seein he pays the taxes.” He waved his hand at the land again.

  Jim Skin went on. “He ain’t blood kin. He married one a my deddy’s sister’s friends—Vollie Eckenstein. He’s brother to Tater Crouch, owns the Bar Owl. By rights Ace should a owned half the Bar Owl, but his old man left it all to Tater. I think it was part comprehension for that miscarriage a justice that my deddy left half a his place to Ace. They was always pretty good friends.”

  Bob felt the world getting smaller. While they had talked he watched a slowly twisting groin of cloud, a muscular mass that seemed to draw all other clouds into its huge torso. It reminded him of Timmy Potelle, the school exhibitionist, striking poses in the shower after gym, showing off his well-shaped body while several weedy hangdogs watched out of the corners of their eyes.

  “This’s her,” said Jim Skin, jerking his thumb to the left. They drove under a wooden arch with the words STRUGGLE CEMETERY worked in twigs, and up a slight hill toward a plot fenced with barbwire.

  “Here we are,” said Jim Skin, “the cemetery. His grave’s up in that corner, I think. We better get out and hoof it.” As he walked, he coughed.

  “The ghosts come up out a this place ever night like a flock a bats,” he said.