by Tim Sandlin
Lydia dropped into silent moodiness while I played with my tiny spoon. I knew she’d get on with what she had to say soon. She didn’t need leading questions from me. What I wondered about was the weather. We generally suffer through thirty days of rain and snow, either in May or June, and so far May had been sparkling blue, which didn’t bode well for June. One thing I’d learned about weather—and therefore life itself—when the times are good, you’d best brace yourself. Soon, it will all go tits up.
Lydia sighed, a sound not unlike a door closing on Star Trek. “This is such an odious task. I cannot abide being nice just so people will give me what I want. It’s an awful position to be in.”
“I can’t help but wonder about the motivation here.”
Lydia went on, as if she hadn’t heard me, “I know what you are thinking. You think I’m nice naturally, so it shouldn’t irritate me to be nice for a purpose.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking.”
“I simply don’t like civility forced on me. It should be graciously given. Not dragged out against one’s will.”
I tapped the spoon on the edge of my cappuccino cup like a toastmaster asking for attention. “Here’s the part I’m not catching, Lydia. This road trip with Oly and Roger is high risk. You could lose your freedom, and I don’t see the point.”
“Must there always be a point?”
I considered this fairly. “If you’re taking a chance on going back to prison, I would say yes.”
Lydia reached into her purse, which today was a velvet bag that originally came on a bottle of Crown Royal, and pulled out a file. To me, Lydia filing her nails in the middle of a conversation was one of those tells, like poker players use on each other. We were about to enter the realm of faulty rationalization.
Lydia filed, right hand on left forefinger. “Roger needs me, poor boy.”
“I’m your son. I know how you feel about being needed.”
Lydia’s attention went to her middle finger. “I’m making an exception for Roger. He must find his past in order to complete his future. How would you feel if you didn’t know who your parents were?”
Unresolved issues crept into my mind. “I don’t. Not both of them, anyway.”
“We’re not talking about you. We’re talking about Roger and the horrendous events that brought him to Jackson Hole. He deserves the truth.”
I drained my cappuccino. “Speaking of telling Roger the truth, I dug out my Chevron USA map and discovered Santa Barbara is forty miles from the Lompoc Federal Correctional Facility.”
“That has nothing to do with me.”
I watched Lydia’s face. She appeared calm yet alert, like a deer that suspects the next clearing contains a blind. It occurred to me that my mom was more comfortable talking to people she’d just met than she was talking to those of us who knew her.
“When are you planning to tell Roger?” I asked.
“Tell Roger what?”
“That the reason for this trip has more to do with Hank Elkrunner than Loren Paul.”
Lydia blinked, the once, but other than that, the tight-skinned look didn’t change. I’d say her reaction was concentration on no reaction.
“This trip is for Roger’s benefit. Hank’s whereabouts are not material to Roger’s history.”
I wanted to touch her—her wrist or the back of her hand—to reassure her that I wasn’t condemning her for selfishness. But I didn’t. Lydia was not a person who encouraged spontaneous touch.
“Lydia,” I said. “While we’re helping each other learn our flaws, I’ve noticed you lie when you don’t need to. Lying for a reason is one thing, but you lie just because you can.”
She started to protest but dropped it in mid-righteousness. There wasn’t much use. Instead she gave up on her fingernails. She set the file beside her latte cup and looked me more or less in the eyes. I took this as a sign we were done dancing with the truth. Time for the crux.
“I must speak to Hank, face-to-face,” Lydia said. “My survival depends on it.”
“That’s a tad melodramatic.”
She bit the edge of her lower lip, pondering, deciding how much of herself she could expose. “My life is stuck. I cannot go on, and I cannot go back. I am unable to live in the present, under these circumstances. My position is intolerable, and I must see Hank before that can change.”
Lydia’s attention rotated inward. Even though her eyes still appeared to be on me, I knew better. I knew if I turned blue and gagged right now, Lydia would not notice.
She said, “Hank is the only person I’ve ever chosen to love.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
Her eyelids flickered irritation. “Don’t make everything about you, Sam. You are my closest relative. You and Shannon. I am obliged to love the two of you, but I chose Hank when I didn’t have to.”
“What about Grandpa?”
“Who?”
“Did you love your father because you were obliged to?”
Lydia hesitated a moment too long. “That’s complicated and none of your business.”
I didn’t know what to say. She was revealing inner feelings, which Lydia only did once every twenty years, so she deserved encouragement, and yet she was hiding the inner feelings I thought mattered. It wouldn’t do to press her on my interests, once she’d started on her own.
After reviewing all my choices for an answer, I chose to say, “Oh.”
Lydia tapped her newly filed index finger on the glass tabletop. “Part of the reason Hank is in prison in the first place is because of me.”
“All the reason Hank is in prison is because of you. You committed the crime. The only thing Hank did wrong was to protect his wife,” I said and then added for emphasis, “You.”
“Me.” Her fingers went into a rolling drumbeat. “And now I’m free and Hank isn’t.” She slapped her hand, palm down, on the table. “I cannot accept the guilt behind that fact.”
“You never would accept guilt.”
“I refuse guilt.” Her eyes flashed, and the Lydia fire from my youth shone through. “Hank must hear the truth—I refuse guilt.”
“Hank knows you better than anyone. He knows you aren’t feeling remorse over him being in and you being out.”
Lydia’s hands flew to her face, over her eyes, but with gaps between the fingers. Her voice was a muffled moan. “But I am.”
I said, “Holy Christ.”
“It’s worse than guilt. It’s shame.” When she moved her hands off her face, she looked ten years older than she’d ever looked before. The tanning-booth tan was long gone, replaced by a jaundice tint. “I am ashamed every day and every night, and I can’t stand it. I could bear prison. I can’t bear this.” Her eyes bore down on me. “I must tell him.”
“He’ll be out in three years or so,” I said. “You can tell him then.”
Lydia wailed, “No!” Her voice broke like a child’s. “In three years, I’ll be sixty. I will have lost every single snippet of what makes me unique.”
Her face was mottled rose and pink. Her lips arched, showing gold fillings in her teeth. She didn’t care, and I was amazed.
Here’s the thing: when I was a teenager, Lydia said she could never respect any girl who went out with me, because no girl who had a moral compass would go out with a boy like me. Ever since that day, I’ve hoped to see Lydia showing genuine regret over hurting someone. Anyone. I’d rehearsed it over and over in my daydreams, how she would cry and I would stand over her and crow, “Now you know how it feels.”
But now, it wasn’t that satisfying to see Mom miserable. It was like someone had hit an innocent dog, even though Lydia was far from innocent. I didn’t like the feeling. For maybe the hundredth time in my life, I realized satisfaction hardly ever makes you happy.
***
I have lived in or near small towns much
of my life, and studied small towns both as a hobby I take seriously and research for novels I don’t. Here is what I discovered that runs contrary to the prevailing cliché. Five hundred people may be in on a secret, and it still remains a secret from the ones who might be affected.
For instance, when Maurey’s cousin Delores drove off the pass, practically everyone in town knew she’d been drunk as a sorority sister at homecoming, and a few of us even knew she did it on purpose, and yet to this day, fifteen years later, her parents don’t know. No one ever told them their daughter killed herself dead drunk, and no one ever will tell. That is how small towns in America work.
By the Monday night before Memorial Day weekend, all of GroVont and most of Jackson knew Lydia was planning to spring Oly Pedersen from assisted living and run off to California, but I wasn’t worried about Brandy Epstein or anyone in charge out at Haven House finding out. Locals might gossip maliciously to just about anyone about misdemeanors such as driving without a license, but they’d keep their mouths shut for felonies. Certain people, such as local parole officers, live in a Ziploc sandwich bag, so far as communication is concerned.
I was put in charge of getting Lydia’s BMW ready for the road. Even though the car was twenty years old, it only had one hundred and ten thousand miles on it, because Lydia had been out of town much of its existence. I bought her new tires and had the clutch repaired. Without telling her, I had the brake lights fixed. The cigarette-lighter fuse had to be replaced so she could plug in her microphone for on-the-road recording of the oral history. Years ago, Lydia had made Hank pull both it and the turn-signal fuse. She said it wasn’t anybody’s business whether she was going to turn or in what direction.
Meanwhile, she and the minimum-security unit in Lompoc exchanged a flurry of forms and phone calls, getting her cleared for a visit. I wasn’t let in on the details. Normally, that wouldn’t stop me from creating them in my imagination, for the sake of our story, but it doesn’t seem to matter so much, so I won’t. I do know the Lompoc authorities were unaware of Lydia’s paroled-felon status. She and Hank had been married on the Ahtahkakoop First Nation Reserve in Saskatchewan, and the Cree aren’t big on sharing information with American prison officials.
Roger did something on his old school computer and came up with five movies written by Loren Paul, but we only found one at Video Maniacs—a Showtime adaptation of Yeast Infection. We watched it together Thursday night, while he did his laundry. It was interesting, but I couldn’t understand why the Georgia peanut farmer had an Australian accent. Far as I could tell, the budget must have come in right at twelve dollars.
Leroy was beginning to regret letting Zelda attach herself to his mission. He hadn’t been with a girl he didn’t pay for in years, and at the moment of decision, the rewards seemed worth the bother. And she did offer to steal her brother Gordo’s Chevrolet Monza 2+2.
But then the bitch opened her yap. She didn’t shut it the entire length of Colorado. Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Denver, Fort Collins—Zelda twisted the nail in her cheek and blinked more than Leroy thought was usual, even in high-strung women, as she compared Depeche Mode to the Bangles. The Bangles came up short. In her opinion, Ace of Base was rad, but 10,000 Maniacs sucked big-time. Leroy hadn’t caught on that she was talking about musical groups until north of Colorado Springs, up by the Air Force Academy, when she went off on the Grateful Dead.
Leroy said, “The Dead haven’t been worth shit since Pigpen died.”
Zelda said, “Who?”
After that, he concentrated on driving the interstate, while she babbled and twitched. Leroy hadn’t driven a busy highway like this in a long time, and it was entertaining to think about gunning down the other drivers.
Near midnight, just past Virginia Dale on the Wyoming–Colorado border, the Monza ran out of gas.
“I told you we should fill up back there in Denver when we stopped to shoplift dinner,” Zelda said. “You’re one of those guys who can’t even hear when a chick talks.”
“Grab any stuff you might want later and get out.”
“You want to smoke a doobie first? I’ve found doobies make the dark clouds lighter.”
“Get your tail out of the car.”
Zelda pulled her pink suitcase and matching vanity bag out of the backseat and stood off on the shoulder, smoking pot.
“What are you planning to do, Charley?” she asked. As a test, Leroy had told Zelda his name was Charles Manson. She’d never heard of the original, which meant she had flunked. To Leroy, this meant the girl was so stupid she deserved whatever he did to or with her. Leroy rationalized many of his actions by that standard—stupid people have it coming.
“We’re going on,” Leroy said. He flipped open Gordo’s elk-gutting knife and stabbed the passenger seat. He cut a long gash in the seat cover, then he pulled out the stuffing.
Zelda said, “You think anyone will come by? I need to whiz, and I don’t want headlights catching my bum.”
Leroy swore to himself as he dug around the backseat floor for the bag of goods he’s stolen from the Zippy Mart. No amount of chi-chi was worth putting up with this much stupidity. If they ever got around to screwing, he’d have to duct tape her mouth shut.
She called, “Yell if you see any lights.”
Leroy flicked the cigarette lighter till he had a steady flame; then he used the aerosol deodorant as a blowtorch. Soon, the passenger seat was ablaze.
“What are you doing to Gordo’s car?” Zelda asked from the bar ditch, where she squatted, Levi’s at her ankles, joint clenched between her teeth.
Leroy didn’t answer. He gathered his few belongings, got out, and walked over to Zelda.
She stood up and buttoned. “Gordo’s car is afire.”
He took the joint from her mouth. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Yes, you had.” Zelda took a couple of steps toward the car, as if she had an impulse to put the fire out. Then she came back to Leroy. She held her hand out for the joint. “You set Gordo’s car on fire.”
Leroy ignored her hand while he smoked the joint and watched the fire. Leroy enjoyed fires.
“You think we should move back?” Zelda said. “In movies, burning cars explode.”
“No gas in that piece of junk,” Leroy said. “She won’t explode.”
Flames filled the interior of the Monza. A window shattered from the heat, and the fire popped up in intensity at the sudden rush of oxygen.
Zelda said, “Gordo worked all summer to buy that car. He paid six hundred dollars.”
“Gordo got hosed.”
“But why should we burn it?”
Leroy flipped the roach into the darkness. “Look at us, you filthy slit. You think somebody driving by is going to stop for you and me if we stick out our thumb?”
Zelda took a good look at herself and Leroy, whose name she thought was Charley, and she had to admit, very few people would feel comfortable confronting them at midnight on a deserted mountain pass. She came across as okay in her acid-washed jeans, T-shirt, and 4-H jacket, but even with an unbuttoned Zippy Mart shirt covering his scarred back, Charley’s appearance instilled fear. He looked like a killer of random strangers. That was what had drawn her to him when they first met. Life in Trinidad was so boring, even the risk of death felt like an improvement, and she relished the look on her father’s face when he found them together. Charley was almost bound to catch her daddy’s attention.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that word,” she said. “It’s not gentlemanly.”
“What word?” Leroy said.
A pair of headlights flickered in and out down the mountain, winding up from Colorado. “There they are,” Leroy said. “When they pull up, don’t you talk.”
The pickup truck coming over the pass contained Barnett Cutt and Rowdy Talbot, heading home from a rodeo in Boise City, Oklahoma, where they’d both lost. Barnett was
a calf roper in his mid-twenties, Rowdy, a bull rider fresh out of high school. Of course, Leroy didn’t know their names. I do, because I spoke to Rowdy the next winter at a snowmobile hill climb in Jackson.
When I talked to him about that night, Rowdy was drinking a beer—Blue Ribbon in a bottle. He had his wrist in a cast, on account of being stepped on by a bull. He said, “That was the single most peculiar event of my life, thus far.”
“I would imagine so,” I said. “What are you, eighteen?”
“Nineteen.”
“I would hope running into Leroy is a once in a lifetime event.”
“We came over a little rise, and there was this car, in flames, dead center of our lane. I could see right off it was a Monza. They have an aluminum block I’ve been told will melt in a fire, so I was all for stopping to see if it’s true, but Barnett was hesitant. He doesn’t like unforeseen experience. Besides, he was in a rush to make Laramie to water his horse.
“I said, ‘A person might be in that car. We ought to check it out,’ and Barnett said, ‘Anyone in there’s dead. I’m not up to finding no dead bodies tonight. My ass is whipped already.’
“But then we saw the girl off on the shoulder there and Barnett hit the brakes. It’s a known fact calf ropers are weak brained when it comes to women in a mess.
“Barnett pulled up behind the burning car and we got out and the girl started in.” Rowdy switched to a high, what he thought of as girlish, voice. “‘Are you for-real cowboys? I never met an honest-to-God cowboy, just the drugstore kind and some truck drivers in boots. I’ll give you some dynamite boo for a ride into town.’
“I drifted over to the Monza, while Barnett drifted to the girl, which is the difference between calf ropers and bull riders. The fire was mainly smoke by then, but there was a holy load of smoke. A tire blew, which made me jump. I couldn’t see the block to tell if it was melted or not.
