by Tim Sandlin
“Why would you do such a thing?”
“I saw your photo album.” She waited for him to recoil in shame, and when he didn’t, she added, “And the painting in the closet.”
Roger’s brow wrinkled. He was so young that it took a good deal of brow furrowing to bring about a decent wrinkle. Shannon used the time to compare their ages at various rites of passage—When I’m thirty-nine, he’ll be thirty-one. When I’m forty-nine, he’ll be forty-one. She ran clear through the sixties before Roger answered.
“Are you supposed to do that?”
“If you didn’t want me going into your cabin, you would have locked it. Not locking it was a subconscious slip. You wanted me to see your hidden objects.”
“You’ve never been anywhere near the cabin before. How was I subconsciously to know you’d drop by while I wasn’t home? My door doesn’t even have a lock that locks.”
“That means when you built it, you wanted me to discover your secret.”
Roger realized she was probably right. He ran a bluff, anyway. “I didn’t realize I had a secret.”
“A person looking at the photographs in the album and the painting in the closet would assume you have an obsessive interest in me.”
“What person would assume that?”
“Well, me.” Shannon wondered if maybe she had been wrong. What if the flight to Las Vegas has been based on bad information? She tried to recall the four photos and the oil painting. Would a normal, uninvolved person interpret them as obsessive interest? Eden Rae had, and Eden Rae was normal, sort of.
She asked, “Do you have an obsessive interest in me?”
Lydia could no longer stand it. “Jesus, Shannon, what part of No, duh, don’t you understand?”
Shannon said, “I’m having a private conversation back here, Lydia. I’d just as soon you butt out.”
“You want a private conversation, wait till you have privacy.”
“Turn on the radio.”
Oly leaned forward and turned on the radio. Lydia held her right arm out to save him from tossing forward into the floorboard. A talk show from Hesperia came on—a right-wing zealot raving against gun control who wouldn’t let the woman who’d called in talk.
“Find another station,” Shannon said.
Lydia twirled the radio tuner. “Not many choices out here in the wilderness.” On the far-left end of the dial, she found a Christian rock band singing about basking in the golden light of Jesus. It sounded as if they’d put new words to “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar,” by Helen Reddy.
“Turn it up,” Shannon said.
“I’d rather hear the gun nut. He was making an interesting point,” Lydia said.
“Turn it up.”
Oly leaned forward, again, and cranked the music up to the point of buzzing the speakers. Lydia stiff-armed him back into position, again.
Shannon touched Roger on the back of his wrist. She shouted over the religious rock, “So, are you in love with me, or what?”
Roger stared at her fingers on his wrist. He’d imagined her touch a thousand times, at least. He’d rehearsed the moment, dreamed about the moment, masturbated about the moment, and, now, it felt just like he’d imagined.
He shouted, “Yes. Do you mind?”
Shannon smiled at him. “That’s what I’m here to find out.”
***
In Baker, the giant two-hundred-foot thermometer between the town and the interstate read 101 degrees. One hundred and one in May hit Shannon like a slap in the face.
“Can’t you turn up the air conditioner?” she asked.
Lydia said, “In your dreams.”
In Victorville, they passed the exit to Roy Rogers Boulevard, and Oly went off on a Roy Rogers movie he’d acted in—Son of Paleface. “It was 1952,” he said. “They had me falling off horses all summer.”
“Do you think anyone anywhere believes that?” Lydia said.
Roger said, “I do.”
“Look at this husk of a man,” Lydia said. “If he fell off a horse, his bones would crumble into dust.”
“He was young in 1952,” said Roger.
“Oly was never young.”
As they came up on the Apple Valley exit, Oly started making odd, sheep-grunt noises and pushing the Chevron map of the Western United States toward Lydia, who pushed it back.
“Keep still,” she said. “I’m listening to this.” Christian rock on the radio had been replaced by a minister who sang his sermon like a Navajo storyteller. He ranted in iambic meter about the prostitutes of Los Angeles, although he substituted Gomorrah sometimes instead of saying Los Angeles. The singsong preacher claimed that millions of prostitutes walked the streets of Los Angeles, more prostitutes than the combined populations of Barstow, Bakersfield, and Victorville all put together.
“Are you not happy they turned Sodom into the sex act instead of Gomorrah,” Lydia said. “I’d hate to know I’d been Gomorrahcized.”
Oly thrust the map at her again.
Roger and Shannon held hands. If you were in a truck passing the BMW, you wouldn’t think the two people in the backseat knew each other. They both stared out their respective windows in stony silence. Only by zooming in on the eighteen inches between them could you see his left hand was intertwined with her right hand, and a tremendous amount of communication was passing back and forth through that touch. An entire courtship was flowing between their hands. A year of approach-and-flee dating had been experienced and put behind. Birthdays, Christmases, Valentine’s Days, their first break-up and make-up—Roger and Shannon were shooting through their relationship like the Starship Enterprise blasting into warp speed.
While on the exterior, nothing moved.
Oly said, “Turn.”
Lydia said, “Give me a reason.”
Oly thrust the map before Lydia’s eyes, blocking her view of the interstate. She one-hand tore the map free in time to swerve left to miss an orange barrel set there to divide the highway from the exit. A semi-truck passing her swerved left, and the driver hit his triple-tone air horn—sounded like a train coming through a crossing.
“Don’t do that,” Lydia said.
Oly said, “Turn.”
Lydia pulled onto the shoulder and stopped. “Hand over the map.”
She studied the map while more trucks whooshed by, shaking the BMW from side to side. She said, “Okay,” and backed a couple hundred yards to the exit onto State Highway 18. She said, “We’ll go this way.”
***
California State Highway 18 is an asphalt strip no wider than a bicycle path. It feels like a straight shot into the void. Lydia had spent much of her adult life in Wyoming, with time set aside for being a fugitive on various reservations, so even though she’d been in prison up by Oakland, she still pictured California the way an outsider would. She saw the state as one continuous overdevelopment stretching from San Diego to San Francisco, with patches of forest going on up to the Oregon border. Or Washington. She never could remember which of those two was on top and which on bottom.
It was Lydia’s preconception that a person in California was never out of sight of a Starbucks, so it came as a mild shock to see miles and miles of nothing much. She’d taken inordinate pride in the miles of nothing much in Wyoming. It was weird to find a similar yet vastly different nothing in California. And the sky was an unsettling hue of blue, closer to Carolina blue than mountain blue, but the total lack of humidity made it feel farther up there, like the blue started halfway to the moon. The ridges off in the distance looked the way they would as seen through binoculars.
This prejudgment of California caused Lydia to make a mistake she would never have made in the Rocky Mountain Time Zone. She drove past the last gas station. She had assumed stations came along every ten miles or so, and she was wrong. Our gang pulled into Pearblossom running on fumes and
prayer.
All of which is a roundabout way of explaining why they stopped at the scary gas station. The collapsing establishment had no sign—just two old-fashioned pumps with fish bowl tops perched out by the highway. The store hadn’t been painted since the Dust Bowl. There were mattresses and blown-out lawn furniture out front and what appeared to be a graveyard for vehicles that died in the desert out back. A torn-apart motorcycle on the front porch was being worked on by a Mexican who didn’t look up when they pulled in, even though a pack of dogs materialized out of air and raised a true cacophony of noise.
“You think they’re more likely to sell gas or rape us?” Lydia said.
“I don’t care, so long as they have food,” Shannon said.
Lydia said, “Go inside and if no one murders you, buy us lunch. And pick up some Evian in case we break down out on the third ring of hell.”
Roger opened his door and showed the dogs how nonthreatening he was by letting them sniff his fingernails. “This looks like a place where they take pride in not selling Evian.”
Oly said, “Make mine jerky. Buffalo jerky if you can, but I’ll eat beef. Heavy on the nitrates.” His mouth made chewing motions. “I do enjoy my nitrates.”
As Shannon and Roger crossed the porch past the guy working on the motorcycle, the screen door slapped open, and another Mexican came out. This one was tall, and the sleeves had been cut off his flannel shirt to reveal a dark blue buzzard tattoo on his left shoulder. He waited for Shannon and Roger to pass by; then he went out to the pumps, where Lydia was unscrewing her gas cap.
His voice was a bit of a mumble. “Fill ’er up?”
Lydia blinked at him without comprehension. “I am sorry, but you have me at a disadvantage. I do not speak nor understand Spanish.”
He frowned. “Would you like your automobile filled with gasoline?”
Lydia glanced in the open car window at Oly to see if he was catching the pathos of the conversation. He stared straight ahead, waiting for jerky.
Lydia said, “Isn’t that charming? I haven’t seen a station that serviced the customer since”—she pretended to think long and hard—“since I don’t know when.”
“Do you or not?” the tall Mexican said.
“What?”
“Want me to fill the tank?”
“Why, yes. That would be gentlemanly. My friend Roger should have done it, but he’s enamored by my”—she hesitated, glancing again at Oly—“daughter. They went into your store. She needs a toothbrush.”
Without a word, the man pulled a socket wrench from his pocket, twisted a knob on the pump, and flipped a lever, making the flap dials reset to zero. Lydia noticed L-O-V-E in blue ink on the knuckles of his left hand and H-A-T-E on the knuckles of his right. He had a series of blue-black teardrops etched on the inside of his left arm, below the buzzard.
“I see you’ve been inside too,” Lydia said.
He stared at her with flat eyes. “Too?”
You have to understand, Lydia was dressed like a Malibu real estate agent out to cocktails. She hadn’t been certain of the timing for her visit to Hank, so she dressed as if there would be no chance to change—Donna Karan skirt and shirt, Cole Haan shoes. She’d slept in the outfit, in the car, but still, she didn’t look the part of an ex-con on the run.
“I was in Dublin Women’s. Federal. Outside of Oakland. Where were you, if I may be so bold as to ask?”
He grunted. “Solano.”
Lydia nodded knowingly. “I’ve heard state pens are sewage on a plate compared to federal.” She gave him her most charming smile. “Do you find that true?”
The man looked off across the desert and snorted his contempt. Most people would have picked up on the anger behind the snort, but Lydia was so intent on winning him over that she missed it. To her, being in prison gave them a past in common.
“Dublin was horrid, but I’ll tell you one thing.” Lydia flipped her hair as if she were seventeen. “It’s the only pen in America where inmates have keys to their own cells. What do you think of that?”
The screen door banged, and Shannon appeared. “They’re not set up for credit cards, Grandma,” she said. “The girl told me you can’t take a credit card if you don’t have a phone. Did you know that?”
Lydia said, “Yes, I knew that.”
“Can I borrow twenty dollars? I didn’t think I’d be needing cash when I drove to Dad’s this morning.”
Lydia opened her purse and turned away from the Mexican while she dug for her billfold. After Shannon said, “Thanks a bunch,” and went back inside, Lydia continued where she’d left off.
“The screws have keys, of course. Can’t lock out the law, but we could lock our cells when we left or while we slept. Isn’t that convenient?”
Oly opened his door and spoke. “Ingnore a la mujer loca.”
The Mexican said, “¿Ella está demente o es una cabrona?”
Oly said, “Ella es una cabrona demente. En la noche, ella me quema con cigarrillos. Ella es una mujer violenta.”
The Mexican clucked sympathetically and then turned to glare at Lydia.
Lydia said, “Since when do you know Spanish?”
“Since 1939,” Oly said. “You’ll hear the story before we’re through on the tape machine.”
“Well, what did you say? What did he say? Is your buddy here a friend or foe?”
“I told him you are a powerful woman and he must treat you with respect or the Highway Patrol will come and cause him no end of pain.”
Lydia considered this from several angles. “I suppose that is true, when you think about it.”
Shannon and Roger emerged for the store. Roger had a six-pack of Guava Jarritos and a tube of Pringles. Shannon carried a brown paper sack. She said, “Have you tried Lucky Star toothpaste? It looks like Spanish Crest.”
20
Shad’s boots came into view, and I looked up to see him standing against the sun, a carbine tucked in the crook of his arm. I couldn’t swear to this, but I believe he was wearing the same civilian clothes as last I saw him in Le Havre. Looked like a lumberjack in a cowboy hat.
He said, “That’s a nice motorcycle.” He pronounced it to rhyme with fickle.
I craned around, searching for the Harley-Davidson, but being pinned beneath the grizzly bear, I couldn’t locate my machine. “Does it look damaged?”
Shad spit tobacco juice. “Nope.”
“We had her under control till you butted in.” That was Bill coming over after picking himself out of the dirt. “Ever since you were too little to get a boner, you’ve been forcing your way into situations that are none of your affair. Seems like you’d be embarrassed by your behavior, eventually.”
Bill’s hair was to his shoulders, and he wore calfskin—shirt and breeches—and a necklace strung with elk ivories. Wormy mustache. He looked like General Custer in his seedier days.
“What happened to the cub?” I asked.
“He took off.” Shad nudged the mama with the toe of his boot, I suppose confirming her mortality. “He’s big enough. He might survive.”
“Not if he comes up against me,” Bill said.
My left shoulder was feeling the sting, and breath came as a struggle. I said, “You fellas mind lifting his mother? She’s too heavy for me to push.”
***
They tied me to Shad’s appaloosa in case I passed out, which I wasn’t about to do in front of Bill—it’s a proven fact hate will keep you awake longer than love—and Shad rode my motorcycle into the hospital in old Fort Yellowstone at the park headquarters. It was a nice four-bed hospital with all the accoutrements needed for medical service, except most of the time we had no doctor. The afternoon Shad and Bill hauled me there, the person in charge was the park’s horse veterinarian. It didn’t matter since all I needed was a sew job. Sewing men and sewing horses isn’t all
that different.
He gave me an injection of something that made me woozy, then another injection that numbed my shoulder and upper back. They let me hold a hand mirror in front and look into a wall mirror in back so I could watch him wiggle the needle back and forth through my skin—not painful, but raspy, like fingernails on a blackboard. The needle was big enough to sew canvas, and the thread looked like fishing line. I imagine it was.
The sleepy shot made me talkative. That’s my excuse. If I’d had my head, I would not have released information in front of Bill.
I said, “Evangeline’s not going to be happy if I’m a couple hours late to supper.”
“More like a couple days,” said the horse doctor. “We’ll need to watch for infection. Only the good Lord knows what foulness a grizzly has in its claws.”
I said, “Tarnation.” That’s how people under the influence of medication spoke in the West. We didn’t have the potty talk you hear these days.
“Tell me where you live, and I’ll ride your cycle over and tell her you’re alive. If she wants, I could bring her back to see you,” Shad said.
I glanced over toward Bill, who was sitting on a bench reading a Police Gazette magazine. One foot was propped on the other knee to expose his boot that was stitched and made from an exotic animal. I don’t know what, but it wasn’t cow.
“She won’t want that,” I said. “Just tell my wife I’m fine and I’ll be along soon as I can get there.”
Bill looked up from the magazine. He blew the word out as an exhalation. “Wife?” He broke into a grin. “You fast-moving old panty sniffer, I knew you weren’t broke to pieces over my sister. Wait till I tell her.”
I knew right then I’d made an error in judgment. I just didn’t know the repercussions.
***
I lay prone in a meadow with my hip jammed tight into a sagebrush and a bouquet of lupine fluttering at my ear. The bear sat on its haunches, six feet or so to the side, snuffling at the dirt. A raven flapped down and landed on my boot. Behind him, a pair of coyotes paced in hopes the bear would wander off somewhere so they could have at me. It felt as if a line of red ants was crawling across my neck, under my armpit and back of my shoulder, where they commenced to bite.
