That Old Ace in the Hole

by Annie Proulx

  At the front of the cemetery tidy rows of graves faced east, each set in stone curbing and covered with white pea gravel. Farther back the grave rows straggled and many were scraped earth, decorated with plastic ferns and flowers, slabs of rock, a broken accordion, a flashlight.

  Near the path Bob noticed the grave of Mrs. Venus Hogg, whose headstone was carved with the image of a Princess telephone and the somewhat sinister inscription, “Jesus called….”

  They passed an open-sided tabernacle in bad repair, the benches along the sides splintery with weathered wood. In the near distance rain shafts shaped like the roots of wisdom teeth moved toward them. As the Law of Circumstance ruled, by the time they found Jim Skin’s father’s grave, drops pattered down and the Texas gloom fell on them. The grave was near the barbwire fence at the back. A cluster of the plants known as antelope horns for their odd leaves grew at the base of the stone.

  Jim Skin kicked the refrigerator bulbs away and rammed the floodlights into the wet earth and they sprinted for the Saturn. But again Bob’s eye had been caught by a name and he turned back to read the stone:

  Here lieth Fanny Walter Morris,

  a Young Cowboy

  Born Rockhard, Main, 1904.

  Died Woolybucket, TX Nov 17, 1920

  It seemed Muddy Fan had more graves than he needed. They drove away as the thunderstorm closed with bulging clouds like portly buttocks in white underwear.

  “Deddy had the Hunter’s Special for his coffin,” said Jim Skin. “Camouflage shell and the liner was camo too. And he wore his camo jacket and hat. It was a nice send-off except them little bitty bulbs.”

  23

  RICH ORLANDO

  It took several days for the creek to drop enough to allow crossing. Bob felt as though he were coming home after a long journey. He sat on the porch with his bottle of Pearl and read of Lieutenant Abert’s encounter with a remarkably similar storm, which coated the ground with an inch and a half of hail that, lodged against the bluestem, formed small dams until the prairie was ankle deep in water. The lieutenant made a sketch of the remarkable sight. But, he wrote huffily, “It would have been a laughable scene to a disinterested looker-on, if I may judge from the effect a rude sketch produced on an untutored Indian.”

  As the days passed the pressure to make a deal increased. Finally, Bob Dollar tossed and turned at night, unable to concentrate on Lieutenant Abert’s observations of rugged cliffs and prairie dogs, a sentence drumming in his head, “Get a property, get a property.” He wanted to nail down Tater Crouch because there already was hog stink in the air. The Beautyrooms ranch was too fine for a hog farm; it really would be an extraordinary site for upscale houses. He thought briefly of contacting a Denver developer but then he imagined himself explaining that the property was in the Texas panhandle and that the owner wanted nine million dollars for it. Still, if he went up to Denver the next weekend, he might talk to a real estate outfit about the Beautyrooms ranch. But for the hog farm, Tater Crouch was the real target. And after Tater, Jim Skin and his so-called uncle, Ace Crouch. How would old Ribeye like it when he brought in two properties at once?

  The pay phone in the Old Dog still hung on the wall and from it Bob telephoned Tater Crouch and asked if he could come out and talk to him the next morning.

  “Yes, you can come out but I don’t know as I can tell you much more about the freighters. We might have some of that mule harness in the top of the barn. You are welcome to look.”

  “I’d like to see it, but actually I want to talk to you about something else.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I’ll come out tomorrow and explain it all.”

  “I see.” The old man sounded suddenly crafty.

  Bob Dollar ate two bowls of Cy’s corn and chile soup, dunking slabs of buttered bread into it. He drove back to the Busted Star and stopped at the ranch house for water. LaVon was sitting at the kitchen table, gnawing on a plate of defrosted and reheated chicken wings.

  “I should have brought you some of Cy’s soup,” he said.

  “What kind was it—noodles out of a can with big hunks of celery whacked in?” she sneered.

  “No. He doesn’t make that kind of stuff. Corn and chile with onions and cilantro and cream and plenty of homemade bread. It was really good. He’s a great cook.”

  “Well, it sounds good. I don’t know if I’d care to go in there, though. They say the sweat drops off his nose into whatever he’s cookin. That I can live without.” She threw the wizened chicken wing down on her plate. “Too sultry a night to eat. That reminds me, a fella come lookin for you. I told him you’d probly be back before dark. He said he’d come back, if not tonight then tomorrow. Drivin a fancy car. One a them Porches.”

  “Who was it?” He couldn’t think who would come looking for him aside from the sheriff, and certainly not in a Porsche, but surely LaVon knew Sheriff Dough.

  “He didn’t say his name.”

  “What did he look like?” Maybe it was Orlando. His sense of expectation flared.

  “Great big muscled-up fella covered with rings and tattoos. Yellow hair. Kind a main-lookin.”

  “Muscled-up” did not sound like Orlando. “Fat? Was he fat?”

  “Not a ounce a fat on him. Looked like Charles Atlas.”

  “Who’s Charles Atlas?”

  “Oh, forget it. This guy looked like a tee-vee wrestler and said he’d come back tonight or tomorrow mornin.”

  “That’s too bad. I’m going out tomorrow morning. Going over to see Mr. Crouch.”

  LaVon half rose from her chair. “Don’t tell me Tater’s goin a let go a the Bar Owl!”

  “We’re just talking. If that guy comes back, tell him to leave me a note.”

  The stranger did not come back that night and the next morning Bob Dollar headed out for Tater Crouch’s Bar Owl.

  A bronze Polaroid light tinted the pasture as though a massive lens were clenched in the sun’s eye socket. Bulky clouds flared red. It was stifling hot, not a breath of moving air. As he drove over the ranch bridge, the planks rattling, he caught the smell of the hog farm on Coppedge Road, a mile distant, but strong enough to bring tears to his eyes. In a way it made him feel better; the Bar Owl was already ruined; another fifty thousand hogs couldn’t hurt. Tater Crouch would be better off in town, close to the amenities of the livestock auction, the Dixie feed store, and, of course, the Old Dog, where he could visit with his cronies.

  So he knocked on the door with the pleasant feeling that not only did he have a done deal, but that he was doing a good deed; he would tell Tater that the stink of the neighboring hog operation left him no choice and follow up by pointing out the pleasures of Woolybucket, such as they were.

  The housekeeper answered the door, snatching it open with such force that Bob’s shirtfront was sucked inward. She glared at him with malevolence and he stepped back, catching his heel on a nail protruding from a board.

  “He’s in there,” she snarled, pointing with her elbow at the ugly living room. As soon as he stumbled through the door she slammed it and rushed off toward the kitchen.

  Tater Crouch turned his wheelchair slowly around and smiled at Bob. There was a dusty mass of leather lines and buckles spread over chairs and tables, across the floor and into the hall beyond. The aged leather was stiff and unwieldy and twined like Laocoön’s snake.

  “Well, Mr. Nickel, you’ll be pleased. I got Louise a go up in the barn loft and look for that ten-mule harness a my granddeddy’s. It wasn’t there but then I thought it might be in the crawl space over the tack room and sure enough, it was. So we been tryin a spread it out here the way it would a been used. You got a imagine there is a team a ten mules here.”

  No wonder, Bob thought, the housekeeper had glared if she had spent the hot morning on hands and knees in an oven of a crawl space, dragging out stiff and dirty hundred-year-old mule harness. He pretended interest in the rig but kept well back when a nimble spider emerged from under a buckle and ran across th
e brown carpet, disappearing under shelves that held figurines of horses. He tried in vain to change the subject from mule teams and mule harness to ranch properties, hog farms, and the pleasures of Woolybucket, but Tater Crouch was among the days of yesteryear and not to be deterred. The best Bob could do was herd him away from mules and toward horses and from horses toward Mr. Skieret, who hated barbwire.

  “A course that was way before my time,” said Tater Crouch, “but we all knew the stories. Plenty a them. Abner Skieret and Blowy Cluck. What a pair. You ever hear about Blowy’s horse and the train whistle?”

  “No,” said Bob in despair, wondering how to turn the direction of conversation.

  “It’s a well-known story. Blowy had hisself a horse, Old Razorback, didn’t like trains in any shape or measure. He got fractious and nervy when he had to be around em. In fact he hated em. Well, horses back then did not have an affection for trains, but the most did not lose their minds and bust in half when one heaved up over the horizon. Old Razorback did. So one time Blowy was out on the prairie ridin, a long, long way out yonder. He was all by his lonesome and you know, Mr. Nickel, how far Texas stretches here, so there ain’t nothin but yonder. Well, Blowy, he was kind a tired a bein out there, nothin but grass and sky and his horse’s ears, so he thinks he’ll pert things up a little. He goes ahead and makes a sound like a locomotive whistle far away, whoooo-ooooooo! That old horse stiffens up. Probly would a been O.K. if that was all, but no, Blowy has to do it again, a little louder, like the train is comin closer at forty miles a hour. Well, sir, that did the trick. Old Razorback jumped fifteen feet into the sky and turned hisself inside out, dumpin the locomotive on the ground and he don’t stick around neither to see how much steam it’s got up. Horse come into the ranch all lathered up and they thought sure Blowy was out there dead or worse. Bunch of em rode out to find the corpus and there was the locomotive puffin along on two blistered wheels and swearin swears never heard before in Texas.

  “Hell, I didn’t mean to get sidetracked like that,” he said. “About them freight wagons. I knew you was interested so I called up my old pal, Almond Yuta, works over to the Panhandle Plains Museum in Canyon. He knows a lot about wagons. He collects the damn things. Funny, he told me there’s not a single entire freight wagon from the old days been preserved anywhere. I told him there was a big old Studebaker freight wagon up in Guymon, but he snaps back that it’s just pieces and some a the runnin gear and a wheel or two throwed together, but the entire, original wagons are gone. Not a one saved and they used a be in the thousands, just thousands crossed over this country. Them wagons made the United States. The big outfitters was Russell, Majors and Waddell—sixteen thousand yoke a ox, fifteen hunderd employees—bull whackers and mule skinners, and they had terminals in St. Louis, Nebraska City and I don’t know where-all. That was big business then. Then they started the Pony Express, a good idea but the end for them. It busted them flat. Only lasted a year and a half and then the telegraph got operatin and nobody needed a send a letter by rider at five dollars a stamp. Yes, them freight wagons made this country side to side.”

  “Before the railroads came in,” said Bob, thinking of LaVon’s lecture.

  “Yes. Before the railroads. Different museums got a Conestoga or two, they got buggies and Dearborns and Rockaways and Jersey wagons, but no freight wagons like we seen in that picture you showed me. Maybe one up in Utah, but in real bad condition. Mostly it’s just pieces and parts is all that’s left.

  “He says them extra wagons hitched on the back end was trailers. That’s what they called them, trailers. Like we’d say ‘trailer truck.’ He said that if one turned up somewhere in some farmer’s barn or ranch house let him know. But it was the railroads killed them. Railroad in, mule team and freight wagon out. Folks just left them out on the prairie to weather away. Started fires with them. Not a single person looked out the window at the old freight wagon and said, ‘By God, that’ll fetch a good price to my great-grandchirdren,’ and put it up safe. So Almond said if ever you come across one—I told him you was interested in mule teams and wagons—call him up because it would bring a very sweet price. Unless the owner wanted a donate it as a part a Texas’s past history.”

  And now Bob saw himself slipping away from the hog business and the luxury house business and becoming a freight wagon searcher, a finder of rural vehicles and implements. Who knew what would be valuable half a century on, a hundred years later? Was this how his uncle and Bromo operated, making silent bets on future values? Who could guess? The drivers of mule teams and homely but utilitarian freight wagons would have guffawed.

  “Well, at least we’ve got photographs,” said Bob.

  “Not so many. Who in their right mind would take pictures a freight wagons?”

  “The driver, proud of his mule team?”

  “Right. Them drivers had all the money in the world a take pictures a their mules. Probly carried it next a their heart.”

  “How much could those wagons carry, anyway?” said Bob diverting the old man from sarcasm, hoping to get him talked out of the wagon subject and onto the idea of selling out.

  “From what he said, your Santa Fe wagon could carry around sixty-five hunderd pound. You could get a secondhand wagon and a six-mule team for around eight hunderd dollars. Imagine what that would cost today. They called them Santa Fe wagons because they was always puttin out from Kansas City and Westport bound for Santa Fe. There was grand trade there. Almond tells me the most a them wagons was made in Philadelphia. Back in the east they had the hardwood they needed for them—locust and elum and oak, ash and poplar and I don’t know what else. And all the special machinery. Lathes and planers.”

  The old man looked at the clock and nodded. “It’s time I hit the hay for my mornin nap. Thank you for comin over, Mr. Nickel, and I hope I answered your questions about mule teams. I’ll be goin a lay down now.” And he shuffled out into the hall briskly, leaving Bob sitting on the white plastic chair.

  The housekeeper came in, stood wordlessly, waiting for him to follow her to the door. There was nothing to do but leave.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the housekeeper. “I’m sorry you had to—” but she slammed the door and he was alone in the odorous morning.

  As he neared the highway he had to move far to the right to accommodate a big green SUV pulling into the Bar Owl gate. It whipped past him, spattering the Saturn with dust and gravel. He had only a glimpse of the driver, a scowling blond woman wearing large dark glasses, so short she could barely peer over the steering wheel, her lips moving with what he took to be invective. He thought her scowl uncalled for, looked in the rearview mirror and saw a sign he could not read in reverse. He braked, put the window down and craned his head out the window at it: ENTRANCE ONLY. Now he remembered that he and LaVon had come out a different way.

  Nearing the Busted Star Bob saw a silver Porsche with Colorado plates parked in front of LaVon’s. As soon as she heard the Saturn she was out the door and onto the porch, gesturing to Bob to put down his window.

  “That man come again. He’s down at the bunkhouse.” Bob waved and drove on.

  He could see a hulking form on the bunkhouse porch, a huge man with shoulders too wide to fit through the door except sideways. Bob parked, got out and looked at the colossus on the porch. There was something familiar.

  “Bob!” The basso voice came up through the plinth of neck. The creature held out a monstrous hand. He bulged with muscle. He wore a black rayon short-sleeved shirt handpainted to show a barroom interior with a pneumatic blond on a green bar stool drinking a martini. The shirtsleeves could hardly contain the great biceps.

  “Orlando? Orlando! I would never have recognized you—” They were slapping each other on the shoulder and laughing.

  “Lifted weights. Prison’s ideal for working out, exercising, bulking up, carb loading. Goddamn place looks like Mr. America–land. And since I got out I got into steroids. Hey, I’m on my way down to Austin. Got a partner there, b
ut I wanted a see you. Got your address from your uncle. He looks pretty old.”

  “That Porsche—that’s yours?”

  “You bet, Bob. I got another one just like it only red. You are looking at one wealthy son of a bitch.”

  “But how? When did you get out? I mean—am I missing something here?”

  “In the clink I played the stock market through my dad. Tech stocks and we sold when everything was high dollar, just before the crash. Lucky. Then, in there, a bunch of us used to do silly things and we made this weird CD that we sold through my dad on the Internet. It’s done good. Every fraternity has to have one of these.”

  “What, singing fraternity songs?”

  The colossus brayed. “No. It’s called Live Fart Rock Hits from Prison and that’s what it is. In prison you discover some surprising things about your body, and some of us noticed a variance in fart pitch. And we had one guy was a real star. Nothing he couldn’t do—basso profundo to coloratura, whistles and quavers, tremolo. The Louis Armstrong of the asshole. It was simple after that. I just recorded samples—I had this little Casio digital sampler that looks like a wristwatch—and when I got out I spliced them together. People love it. We got ‘Jailhouse Rock’ and ‘Freebird’ on there, but ‘Stairway to Heaven’ plays for eight minutes and it is dynamite. A lot of studio work, but worth it. It wasn’t like we all got together in the Tabernacle Fart Choir—technology made it happen. And I had a couple hits after that, not farting, but in the same mode.”

  Bob did not want to know the nature of the subsequent successes. He could imagine a series of grunts and slobbers and wet smackings rendered as tunes and the delight such renditions would cause in fraternal circles.

  “What about the computer scene? I thought that was what you wanted to do.”

  “Ah hell, I don’t got the savvy for it. All the good times was back in the seventies with Cap’n Crunch and the Phone Phreaks. It’s all different now. It’s no good since the crash. Now I’m focused on CDs.”