That Old Ace in the Hole

by Annie Proulx

  In the parking lot Bob, bemused by boilermakers and music, sloshed into one of the giant rain puddles. He got in the Saturn with soaking feet, turned on the heater to dry out. He opened the window to equalize the temperature disparities in the car and saw the moon bleached and small as a dime. He decided to go north and take the back roads.

  25

  TOP SALES

  He had a twinge of conscience about leaving Orlando behind as he drove across the dark panhandle, but told himself that if anyone could take care of himself it was Orlando and he would certainly be along the next day to pick up his Porsche and go on to his career in Austin. What played more vigorously on his mind was the discovery that Evelyn Chine, top saleswoman for Global Pork Rind, was in the territory and she was going after Tater Crouch, whom Bob thought of as his own find. And after Freda Beautyrooms, too—Bob was not fooled by the thesis ruse. But was it her territory? Hadn’t her big sales been up in Oklahoma, near Guymon? What was she doing in Bob’s area—poaching? Yes, decided Bob, she was poaching. She recognized Bob Dollar as a neophyte and saw a chance to muscle in and steal his sales. He would have to cinch Tater Crouch in the morning. He would have to get Tater to go for it. Unless Evelyn Chine, the driver of the green SUV in Tater’s drive yesterday morning, had already bamboozled the old man into signing on her dotted line. Bob didn’t doubt that she used feminine wiles on the old boys as well, giving a glimpse of flesh, making suggestive innuendos. As Freda Beautyrooms might say, the woman was a snake. And then there was Ace Crouch and Jim Skin. Jim would sell, he knew, but what about Ace?

  He found himself on Coppedge Road just outside Woolybucket. A single lighted sign and a small glass-windowed booth inside the gate broke the panhandle darkness. KING KAROLINA FARMS INC. He was past it before it registered. He stepped on the brake, backed up and stared. No mistake, it was a hog farm and the gate was open, the guard booth empty. His chance! He turned in and parked beside a silver pickup with a bumper sticker that read TEXAS FARMERS FEED THE WORLD.

  Bob walked as slowly and quietly as he could over the crushed gravel toward the door. There were no windows in the building. Suddenly, with a sound like a dynamo, the great ventilation fans at the back of the building started up, the rising pitch drowning his footsteps. He was only ten feet from the door when two brilliant spotlights activated by motion caught him. Inside he could hear an alarm bell. He turned and ran back to the Saturn, started it and backed out in time to see the automatic chain-link gate swing shut. Red lights atop it began to flash. He was trapped, for there was no other exit.

  No one came out of the building and after five minutes he blew the horn. Still no one appeared. He got out and went to the building’s door, tugged at the knob. The door was locked. He looked up and saw a surveillance camera. So they knew he was there. He knocked on the door and called. Nothing. He pounded. Nothing. At last he went back to the Saturn and sat waiting. They’d have to let him out when the day shift came on.

  But after fifteen minutes or so he saw, far down the road, twinkling cherry lights. He knew before the vehicle pulled up who it would be.

  As the sheriff’s car drew up to the gate the electronic lock relinquished its grip and the gate slid open. The sheriff was out of his cruiser and in Bob’s face in seconds.

  “Well, well, well, look who I got tryin a break into the hog house. What’s the idea, Dollar? You goin a steal a few pigs for yourself?”

  “Look, this is going to sound stupid, but all I wanted was to see what goes on inside.”

  “That’s what the Defenders a Wildlife say, that’s what PETA says when they try to break in. Who are you workin for, Dollar, and don’t give me that shit about Global Pork Rind. I got your number. You’re a front man for a animal activist group. Plus you been drinkin. Drunk drivin on top a everthing else.”

  “I’m NOT!” screamed Bob, snapping like a dry stick.

  The sheriff spoke into a cell phone. “Yeah, I know the guy. I’ll take him in.”

  He got Bob out of the Saturn, put handcuffs on him and made him sit in the backseat of the cruiser while he drove the Saturn to the side of the road and parked it. Then he drove Bob to the jail.

  “What is the thing about you and hogs, anyway?”

  “It’s a job. It’s just my job. I thought I could do better if I saw the inside of one of the hog farms, but my boss, the one you talked to, says it’s company policy not to let site scouts into them. I thought I’d just try to do it anyhow.”

  “Must be, if he really is your boss and you’re not a reporter or a bloodthirsty activist, must be he got a reason to keep you out, don’t you think?”

  In the morning Bob was groggy and his head ached. It took nearly until noon before he was released after the sheriff had had a long talk with Ribeye Cluke. The sheriff drove him back to the Saturn and handed him the keys.

  “Your boss is kind a upset at you.”

  “Yeah,” said Bob.

  “I told you once before you ought a git another job. You ain’t cut out for this one. Now stay out a trouble.”

  It had rained in the night and everything was wet, the low clouds like a grey lid overhead, the silvery drops giving the landscape a lustral glow. Bob went straight to the bunkhouse and made coffee. It was hot and good and gradually his head cleared and he felt better. He thought about the sheriff. He thought about the oldsters’ nightclub in Amarillo. He thought about his imminent meeting with Tater Crouch and what he would say.

  He got into a clean shirt, combed his hair and sallied forth, bringing Lieutenant Abert with him, as after the meeting he planned to eat a sandwich under a shady tree along the Canadian where Abert himself might have stopped a century and a half before. On the way he noticed waxy yellow blooms on the cactus and the yucca stalks just unfolding their creamy towers of blossom.

  “What, you again?” The old man was not pleased to see him.

  “Well, I have something to discuss,” said Bob. He took a breath and went straight at it. “A business proposition. I want to buy your property. For a hog farm. I represent Global Pork Rind.”

  “That’s pretty blunt,” said Tater Crouch. “What makes you think I would sell it for such a vile purpose?”

  “Because, sir, the hog farm smell is already here and it isn’t going away. It annoys you. You can’t sell the property to anyone but a hog farm because of the stink. And just think, if you lived in town you could stop by the Old Dog every day, eat Cy’s special and see your friends. You could do research at the library.” The Woolybucket Library was a wonderful place and Bob imagined that anyone writing a ranch history would enjoy happy hours in it. From the expression on Tater Crouch’s face he could see that for once he had said the right thing.

  The library was in the old Frontier Bank building, high-ceilinged, sunny, paneled and fitted with walnut shelves shipped up into the panhandle after they were taken from a Galveston mansion wrecked by the great hurricane that brought the city to its knees in 1900. Over the years the library board had somehow resisted selling off the good books and replacing them with romances, westerns and mystery fodder. There were hundreds of scarce Texas books on its shelves, but the treasure, Bob thought, was in the storage room, boxes and boxes of papers and account books from regional ranches, rolls of maps, scrapbooks of photographs, huge bound volumes of old newspapers from Texas and Oklahoma panhandles and from Kansas and New Mexico, including the Crookly’s Border Star, The Weekly Western Argus, the Woolybucket Expositor, Roughbug Bee, Council Grove Process and the like.

  “You could really work on your ranch history then,” said Bob, and he mentioned his own affection for Lieutenant Abert and said that if their situations were reversed he would hightail it to Woolybucket and work on a book about Lieutenant Abert.

  Tater gazed at him, his expression warming. “You know, a couple years after that Lieutenant Abert come through the panhandle, the Topographical Corps sent out another fella, Lieutenant James H. Simpson. He was supposed a find a good southerly route to the California gold f
ields. In 1848. He’s the one I like. He was a smart one. He thought the panhandle population was too scarce for any railroad a come through then but said there should be forts and military roads first, and then they ought a make a start on towns and wagon roads—which is what happened. It was freight wagons and stages opened up the panhandle region, not the hide hunters and not the cattlemen and sure not the railroad. The wagon routes established a line of supply—goods, mail, communication. The railroads didn’t come until the late 1880s. The Fort Worth and Denver City come first in 1887 and then the Rock Island across Kansas a little later and the rest a them. Anyway, where would I live was I to move to Woolybucket?”

  “I suppose,” said Bob, thinking on his feet, “that you could have this house moved onto a town lot if you didn’t like any of the houses in town.” This was easy, thought Bob.

  “Of course I would like a house in town. Decent runnin water, not have to worry about the well goin dry ever summer or the electric blinkin on and off. I could get that satellite tee-vee, too. My sister lives in town, Ivy Nomore, and I’d like to see her once in a while. Closer to Ace’s place, too. Not gettin any younger. I know I’m supposed a get all upset and miserable about leavin the ranch, but I been plannin a do it anyway for a long time. Only thing is, Ace. I’d do it, you see, but I got a talk to my brother. Ace owns half a this place. I can’t do a thing unless he agrees.”

  “I hear he owns half of Jim Skin’s place too, up over the Oklahoma line.”

  “Ace does? First I heard of it. Ace don’t have a pot to piss in. He’s a good man but he wasted his life fixin windmills. That’s how come I put him down as half owner on this place. Our deddy should a split it fair and square and left it to us both but he didn’t. I fixed it up after my wife died so’s half of the ranch belongs to Ace and if I die first, it all goes to him.”

  “Do you want me to talk to him or would you rather do it yourself?”

  “Oh, I’ll do it, I’ll do it. Ace is contrary, you know. I git along good with him but not everbody does. Never asked a soul for help in any way. He fell off one a them damn windmills once, caught a strut and there he hung until somebody come along a hour later. Helped him down and he never said a word a thanks. He takes care a hisself and hates a be beholdin. I’ll talk to him. See, Ace is the older one but I can talk to him. What kind a price are you offerin?”

  There it was. They were down to dollars and cents and he had no idea.

  “I don’t actually make the offer,” said Bob. “Someone comes down from the Denver office.”

  “So, you’re not lookin for luxury estate property at all.”

  “No sir, that was the lie I told.”

  The old man slapped his knee. “I knew it, I knew it was a lie. You had that look on your face of a liar. That little bitty girl that come around here yesterday, she was a liar, too.”

  “What girl?” said Bob, knowing it was Evelyn Chine.

  “Comes up to your elbow. Said she was workin on a thesis about panhandle folks. Looked me right in the eye. How I knew she was lyin. That’s the sign, when they look you right in the eye. Then she starts with questions—I been asked before—that all lead to disposin a the ranch property. Wouldn’t I like to see Dallas, was I thinkin about the old folks’ home someday, oh not now, a course, did I have any chirdren, was I married, all a that. I knew she was movin toward the property but I couldn’t make out why or what for or how much. Finally I tells her, ‘You just run along, miss, I’m not goin a sell my property to you.’ Got red as a tomata but she went.”

  Bob was embarrassed by Evelyn Chine. Her approach did not sound subtle. How had she managed to rope in that six-thousand-acre property up in Oklahoma and win the attractive overnight bag, the Global Explorer Portable Receiver and the Megapixel Digital Camera?

  “You know,” said Tater, looking out the window at the ranch horizon, “this whole region was held together in ever way by those old north-south roads. That’s how the panhandle was set up. That’s how it was here. But the railroads had east and west in mind. That’s how they thought. People believed they’d do the sensible thing and lay the tracks beside the old freight trails but they didn’t. The old important towns—Mobeetie, Appleton, Tascosa, Wilburn—was killed. The new towns was Miami, Woolybucket, Canadian, Panhandle City, all on the railroad line. Once the whole place was linked with Dodge but that come to a end. That’s when the people stopped knowin each other over the big sweep a land. That’s when the people started to talk about the ‘good old days.’”

  Tater Crouch promised to call Bob by the end of the week, after he had talked with Ace.

  “Now don’t you go rufflin him up about that business with Jim Skin. That don’t amount to nothin anyway, for Ace don’t own it no matter what Jim Skin says. You don’t believe me, go look it up in the county courthouse. Teach you not a believe everthing you hear. And you get me an offerin price. I’ll talk to Ace.”

  Bob Dollar took Tater’s advice and discovered that the only name on the deed for the Oklahoma property was James Robert Alamo William Skin, no mention of Ace Crouch nor anyone else. He went first to the post office where another letter from Ribeye Cluke lay smoldering in the box, then on to the Old Dog looking for Jim Skin but Cy, basting a rib roast, said Jim had been in, ate two pineapple brownies and skedaddled out the back door when he saw Bob coming.

  “You must a done somethin a get on his wrong side. Jim Skin would talk the hind leg off a statue. He’s almost as bad as LaVon. I thought you was gettin along good.”

  “So did I,” said Bob. “But I guess I frightened him off asking about that property he’s got up in Oklahoma.”

  “Oh, the old Skin place? I hear a gas company is talkin to him about that property too. They’re supposed a make some kind a offer. Even if it’s five dollars an acre he ought a take it. You can’t be wantin it for no high-class development. That place is like Mars.”

  “Yeah,” said Bob, as it slowly dawned on him that Jim Skin had invented an authoritative role for “Uncle” Ace while negotiating with the gas company. “It is. I thought it would work pretty good for a hog farm.”

  Cy looked at him but said nothing.

  When he drove up to the Busted Star in the late afternoon, tired, sweaty, looking forward to a cold beer on the porch with Lieutenant Abert, Orlando’s Porsche was still parked in front of the hitching post. LaVon came out onto her porch waving a dishtowel.

  “Bob. Bob, I wonder if you would do me a favor?”

  “Sure. What is it?”

  “It’s Coolbroth. He’s got some kind of problem with the sheriff. The sheriff’s got him down there at the—” She couldn’t say it.

  “Jail?” prompted Bob. The sheriff, he thought, was a busy man.

  LaVon nodded her head. “He’s an impulsive kid,” she said, “and sometimes he does things that are not quite ordinary. I’d appreciate it, Bob, if you picked him up and brought him home. He needs a ride because the sheriff has confiscated his bicycle, or at least that’s how it sounds to me. Coolbroth was so upset on the telephone he could hardly make himself clear. The sheriff is anything but obliging. In fact, he’s a miserable, main-hearted, lyin no-good. His people was no good and he’s no good.”

  “Just let me change my shirt, LaVon, and I’ll go.”

  But as he started the Saturn, thinking he would bring back a pizza from Woolybucket and enjoy it in solitude after he dropped off Coolbroth, an oversize Silverado pickup with double wheels, roll bar and more lights than an ocean liner pulled up behind him and Orlando got out, making kiss faces at the driver. Behind the wheel was not the potbellied blond of last night, but a tall brunette wearing a red cowboy hat and red blouse.

  “See you later, honey,” called Orlando and the woman gave him a dazzling grin and revved her engine. Orlando called to Bob. “Hey, wait up. Give me a ride over the creek to your place. I need to get my stuff at your cabin.” He jumped in beside Bob.

  “What stuff?” said Bob.

  “I left my bag there. On you
r porch. I’m goin a shave and clean up and meet that little honey back in Amarillo.”

  “What did you do with the blond?”

  “The blond? Oh, her. Della. She went off with that greasy guy—‘Bob’—after I got talkin with Veronique—that’s the honey in the truck that brang me here. She just burns my house down.”

  “At that old folks’ bar?”

  “Nah, we went down the road to another place that the greasy guy knew. It was O.K. You ought a get out and explore Amarillo some time. Lot a baaaad action if you know where to look.”

  At the bunkhouse Bob glanced longingly at the cooler where he kept his beer.

  “Damn!” said Orlando. “You got no shower? And no place I can plug in my shaver?”

  “No electricity,” said Bob. “That’s why. Want me to heat you some water? I got a regular razor you can borrow.”

  “Why, Bob, you sure are up-to-date. Is it one a them old straight razors and a great big leather strop? No thanks, I’ll get a motel room in Amarillo and clean up. Probably goin a head down to Austin tomorrow or the next day anyway. Slacker City. Plenty a cute college girls and rich dumb Texas kids. And Smoko is there. Get our business cookin. Hey, you think about that sales manager position. You could make some real money with me. Are you goin out again?” he asked, seeing Bob change his shirt and comb his hair.

  “Yeah. I got to go get LaVon’s son from the sheriff. Some kind of problem.”

  “Well, give me a ride back over your damn creek so I don’t have to wade,” said Orlando. “It’s been good seein you, Bob, and I want you to think the job offer over. You could do good with us.”

  “Thanks, Orlando. I’ll think about it. But I might go back to school. Or something. But we’ll stay in touch, right?”

  “That’s a good thing too. Get some more smarts. Damn right we’ll stay in touch.”