We drove on, everyone wearing dark glasses against the glare of the sun. The heat rose off the road in shimmering waves. Where the highway met the horizon behind us, a constant mirage gleamed like a pool of quicksilver.
The sun was a blinding incandescence at the ridge of the distant mountains when we spotted the Sundowner Motor Camp a mile or so ahead. A little ways beyond it stood a butte shaped exactly like a woman’s breast with an erect nipple.
“You believe that?” Buck said. The likeness was so true we thought it might’ve been sculpted by some half-crazed artist who had devoted years or maybe his whole life to the project.
I parked in front of the camp’s small garage and the mechanic came out and looked things over and said he could easy enough solder the radiator but it would have to wait till first thing in the morning. That was fine with us. Better to rest up tonight and get to Stockton feeling fresh tomorrow. We asked about the butte and he said it was a natural formation locally known as Squaw Tit Peak.
“Only one who can lay claim to that work of art is the Lord Almighty,” he said, “and He didn’t use no tools but wind and sand.”
We took our bags out of the car and went over to the office to check in. The place was run by a married couple, the wife taking care of the desk, the husband doing the cooking in the café. The camp had a dozen cabins and ten of them were available. We took three—one for me and Buck, one for Russell and Charlie, one for Belle. We put the bags in the cabins and then went for supper in the café.
When the waitress saw Belle’s face she glowered at us like she was trying to figure which one had done it to her—and looked ready to bite whoever it was. Belle read her expression and said, “These fellas are real nice. They fixed the one who…” She gestured at her bruises.
“That so?” the waitress said. “Well, I hope you all fixed the sumbitch good.”
We had big bowls of chili beans that stung our mouths, huge hamburgers with all the trimmings, baskets of thick french fries slathered with ketchup. Tall glasses of lemonade with mint and lots of crushed ice. After nothing but a nibble of breakfast and a couple of bites of a cheese sandwich for lunch, Belle finally showed an appetite. Russell nudged me and nodded at her. She was bent over her plate and wolfing the burger, the juices running out of the bun and down her wrists. Charlie and Buck were watching her too. She stopped chewing and looked up at us.
“Welcome back among the living,” Russell said.
She blushed through her bulging smile, her cheeks full of burger. Charlie reached over with a napkin and wiped a smear of mustard off her lip.
For dessert we had slabs of peach pie thick with fresh peach chunks and rich grainy sugar. Then Buck went to have a chat with the manager. In a little while he came back with the irksome news that there was no hooch to be had at this place. But an oil camp about twelve miles north was said to have its own still, and the crew was said to sometimes be of a mind to sell a little something to a fella in need.
We finished our coffee and went outside and stopped short. The whole world was steeped in a dying daylight so deeply red and darkly yellow it seemed unreal.
The manager stood in the door behind us and said, “Does it every time. I come out here from Ohio near to twenty-five years ago and still can’t believe it. It’s like the light’s made of blood and gold.”
I smiled and said, “You’re a poet, mister.”
“Not me, son,” he said. “I’m just glad to see it with my own eyes and hope to do it again tomorrow.” He flicked away his cigarette and went inside.
Buck drove off in the Model A and the rest of us went to the cabins. After a long shower and a change of clothes I went outside into the gathered darkness. The air smelled of dust and cooling stone. At the foot of a nearby rise I found a low flat boulder that made a good bench. A narrow streak of violet still showed above the western mountains, but the rest of the sky had gone black and glimmered with early stars. The first fireflies were out and flashing softly. The moon was up in the east, nearly full, the color of a new penny.
Highway traffic was sparse. You could see the lights of an approaching vehicle from a long way off before it finally went whirring by. A series of high yowls rose somewhere to the distant south, and it took me a minute to realize they must be coyotes.
“I heard them before.” I started at the sound of her voice in the darkness slightly behind me—then made out her vague silhouette about ten feet away. “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to spook you.”
“How long you been there?” I said.
“Only a little bit.”
“I didn’t see you come out.”
“Huh?”
“Out of your room,” I said. “I didn’t see you come out.”
“Oh, you mean you didn’t see me from out here. Well, no, you couldn’t’ve seen me come out from out here. I already was.”
“What?”
“I already was out here.”
“You were already out here when I came out?”
“It’s what I just said. Is there something wrong with how I’m talking?”
“I know what you said. I mean, why didn’t you say something?”
“What do you mean? Jeepers, I did say something. I said I’d heard—”
“No, before.”
“Before when?”
“When I first came out here, goddammit. Why didn’t you say something right away instead of lurking in the dark? Jesus Christ, what a conversation.”
“You don’t have to swear at me,” she said. “And I wasn’t lurking. And I could say the same, you know—about this conversation.”
I blew a long breath, surprised at my own agitation. “Yeah,” I said. “I suppose you could.”
“All right, then,” she said.
There was a faraway keening of a train whistle. The highway lay dark in either direction.
“I didn’t say anything before,” she said, “because…well, you don’t talk as much as the others. I thought maybe you don’t care to. That answer your question?”
I nodded and said, “Utterly.”
She only half succeeded in suppressing a snicker. “I don’t guess this chat’s going to do a whole lot to change your attitude about not talking much.”
It was the first time I’d heard her try to be even a little bit funny, and coming when it did it struck me as so funny I busted out laughing—and she did too, laughing hard, from deep in the belly, like she hadn’t done it in a hell of a while.
I moved over on the boulder and patted it for her to have a seat beside me. She accepted an Old Gold from the pack I offered. She smelled freshly clean, and when I struck a match to light the cigarettes, I saw that her hair hung damp and straight. She took a small puff and coughed. She was no practiced smoker.
“You never even smoked a cigarette before?”
“In secret a couple of times with this girl back home e didn’t have all that much chance to get good at it.”
“What about that boyfriend you had? You didn’t smoke with him?”
“He didn’t smoke, he chewed. I wasn’t about to try that.”
“I guess love has its limits, huh?”
“Maybe,” she said. “It anyway wasn’t love, I don’t believe, not really. I think I was only…I don’t know.”
In the ensuing silence I sensed she was embarrassed at having told too much, so I said in a tough-guy rasp, “Well, stick with me, kid, and you can practice at smoking all you want. I’ll show you all the fastest ways to hell.”
“Look who’s calling anybody kid,” she said. “How old are you—eighteen, nineteen?”
“Right the second time,” I said.
The high cries of the coyotes rose again and seemed keener in the greater darkness. She said she used to hear them all the time at her grandparents’ farm in Comanche County when she was a child.
“They sound different ways if you listen really careful,” she said. “Sometimes it’s like they’re having a high old time, and sometimes like they’re
trying to tell you something you’ll never in the world understand.” There came a long solitary howl and then another right behind it from another coyote and of different timbre. “And sometimes it’s like that—like the loneliest talk there is.”
We sat and smoked in the dark, our cigarette tips glowing red among the pale green sparks of the fireflies, our smoky exhalations mingling in the light of the rising moon. We stayed like that for a long time without speaking. Russell and Charlie had remained in their room and I figured he was making up for what he’d missed the night before. The thought of them going at it made me keenly conscious of Belle’s nearness. I thought I could feel her body heat on my bare arm. I lit another cigarette and she asked if she could have one too.
I struck a match and she touched my hand as she leaned forward to accept the light. She looked up at me from under her lashes, her good eye wide and bright and a little scared. Then blew out the flame and took away her hand.
And then here came headlights down the road, brightening as they approached—and sweeping over us when the car turned into the parking lot. The Model A halted in front of the cabins and the engine shut off and the door opened and then banged shut. Buck called out, “You all come on down here and see what I got us.”
When we got to the room, he had already set out drinks for us in a pair of tumblers. He’d sweet-talked the oil crew into selling him three bottles. He’d tapped into one of them on the drive back and it showed in the high shine of his eyes. The bottle was already down by a third. He tossed off his drink and smacked his lips, smiled at us and served himself another. I took a sip of mine and had to admit it seemed like pretty good hooch.
Belle hadn’t picked up her glass. Buck gestured at it and said, “It’s aged plenty enough, honey. Down the hatch.”
“I don’t guess I want any,” she said, rising from her chair. “I’m really awful tired. Think I’ll go on to bed.” She said goodnight to Buck and waggled her fingers at me and left.
He got up and went to the window and pushed the curtain aside to watch her go to her cabin.
“She’s probably still hungover from the mickey,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “If it was a mickey.”
“What do you mean if it was?”
He turned and arched his brow at me. “Just because she says she was Shanghaied into it don’t make it so. Most of them who do those movies do it because it pays good and because they like it.”
“What are you saying? She was doped, man. You smelled it on her breath, you said—like on that girl in New Orleans.”
“Yeah—and what I didn’t say was I’d smelled it even before that. In a Chink dope den in New York. Me and another doughboy went in to see what it was like and got looped just breathing the air in there. You can mix that stuff all kinds of ways. Makes a swell mickey in a drink, but they mostly smoke it in pipes with a little hose. They do it for the dreams, but a right dose’ll let you stay awake and keep you smiling at nothing all night. The stag movie guys like to have the girls take a puff to loosen them up, put a dreamy look on their face for the camera, but some like it too much—sucking the devil’s dick, they call it. Get too dopey to do anything but lay there like the dead.”
I watched him pour another, then light a cigarette and blow three perfect smoke rings. “You think her story’s bullshit?” I said.
“Who knows?” he said. “Maybe not. Or maybe everything she’s said is bullshit—all that stuff about her momma and daddy, everything. Maybe she was willing enough to fuck in front of a camera for the right price or a little encouragement from the pipe, or both. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for her to admit it, though. Only thing we know for sure is she got somebody damn mad at her.”
“Russell believes her,” I said.
“Hell he does. He’s like me—he just doesn’t give a shit if she’s lying. What difference does it make if she’s a good girl on the stray or some bullshitting little tramp? Who cares? Those tits are as nice either way, and those tits are why she’s here, right? You’ve had plenty of schoolgirl tail, Sonny, but this one’s a different breed, so don’t be a sap and think that she’s—”
There came a hard rapping on the door and then it swung open and Russell and Charlie came charging in with wide smiles, their faces flushed with their recent sporting.
“There it is!” Russell said, making a beeline for the booze. “Can we count on this man to come through or can we count on him to come through?” He poured drinks for him and Charlie.
Charlie was sorry to hear Belle had called it a night but said she didn’t blame her, all she’d been through the last couple of days. Russell toasted our arrival in this strange new world. He said he loved the dryness of the heat, so different from New Orleans, where you could drown in the humidity. Charlie said she felt smaller out here. “It’s that big old sky and hardly any trees,” she said. “I can’t get used to hardly any trees.”
We finished the bottle and started on another. Russell told a joke he’d heard from a filling station guy. Fella goes to the doctor for a checkup and the doctor tells him it’s bad news, he doesn’t have long to live. Fella says, “Oh my God, that’s terrible! How long do I have?” Doctor says, “Ten.” Fella says, “Ten what? Months? Weeks?” Doctor says, “Nine…eight…seven…”
Buck told one he’d heard from the oil rig guys. The queen of England was riding in her carriage with her guest the king of Belgium when one of the carriage horses lets go with a tremendous fart. The queen turns all red and says to the king, “Oh dear, I must apologize for that.” The king says, “Quite all right, your highness—actually, I had thought it was the horse.”
The bottle was down to its last couple of inches and Russell took it with him when he and Charlie said goodnight—a little hair of the dog for the morning, he said. Buck and I stood at the door and watched them go. Belle’s cabin window was dark.
We went back inside and Buck uncorked the last bottle and filled a tumbler to the brim. “That ought to hold you,” he said. Then gave me a wink. “Don’t bother to wait up.” He took the rest of the bottle and went out and shut the door behind him.
I sat on the bed and took off my shoes and stared at the floor for a time. I couldn’t clarify what I was feeling. I picked up the tumbler and took a swallow. And then another. Then got up and went to the curtain and pushed it aside. Her window curtain was dimly yellow. I stared at it till my eyes burned. Then the window went dark.
Of course she wouldn’t admit it if she’d done it willingly. So what? He was right. Who gave a rat’s ass if she lied or even what she lied about? What difference did it make to any of us? Those tits were terrific either way and that’s why we’d brought her along. Goddam right.
Then I pictured myself standing there and felt like a damned fool. I dropped the curtain and took another big gulp from the tumbler, striped to my underwear, turned off the light and got into bed. And the booze carried me right off.
It was still dark when I woke with a parched tongue and a throbbing head. I felt my way along the wall to the bathroom and switched on the light. With my mouth to the spigot I drank till my belly was bloated. I was about to snap off the light when I saw somebody on the floor by the door and for a moment thought Buck had come back and passed out before he could make it to his bed. And then I saw it was her.
She was sitting up and watching me, hugging her knees to her breasts, the skirt of her dress tucked between her legs. The way the shadows fell across her face her bad eye looked like a black patch.
“The light woke me,” she said. “For a minute I didn’t remember where I was and I couldn’t see it was you in there and I thought I was having a bad dream.”
“When’d you come in?”
“I don’t know. A while ago.”
“Buck?”
“The other cabin.” She sniffed and wiped at her nose. “I didn’t mean to come in without asking, but I didn’t want to wake you. I tried to sleep in the car but it’s got so cold out and I didn’t have a bla
nket or anything and…I’m sorry.”
“Why you on the floor? Why didn’t you get in the other bed?”
“I didn’t want to be using his bed if he came over here.”
I helped her up and sat her on the edge of my bed. I lit two cigarettes and handed her one. “So what happened?” I said.
She’d been awakened by his knocking on the door. He said to open up, it was cold out there. She thought we were getting ready to leave right away for some reason. She turned on the light and quickly got dressed, then unlocked the door. He came in and locked it again. When she saw his eyes she knew he was very drunk and knew what it was he wanted. She’d seen a lot of drunk men back in Corsicana and had learned to fear them all. She asked him please to go, but he said there wasn’t any need to play the innocent, not with him.
She was afraid to do anything but stand there while he ran his hands over her and up under her dress. He told her to take her clothes off and get on the bed. Then he switched off the light and took off his shoes and pants and got in bed with her. At first she thought he had his hand down there and was pushing on her with the tip of his thumb—and then was astonished to realize that what was rubbing on her was his “thing.” What there was of it. He rubbed and rubbed himself on her and then it was over and he rolled off her and turned his face to the wall. She thought he might’ve been crying. She hadn’t known she’d been crying too until she got up and went into the bathroom to clean herself and saw her face in the mirror.
When she came out he had the cover pulled over him and was snoring. She had no idea how long she stood there before finally putting on her dress and shoes and going out to the car and lying down on the seat. But she couldn’t sleep for the cold and she kept listening for her cabin door to open. Finally she came to my door and tried it and found it unlocked and came in real quiet and curled up next to the wall. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep but she must’ve because next thing she knew she saw the light in the bathroom.
A World of Thieves Page 16
