Cactus Jack

by Brad Smith

  Reese ignored the artwork. “What happened to Paulina?” he asked.

  “Are you kidding?” Burt asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “We had to pay her off. What the hell, Reese.”

  “And then she quit?” Reese asked.

  “You think she’d stay after that?”

  “I never gave it any thought.”

  “Apparently not,” Burt said.

  “I liked Paulina,” Reese said.

  Burt let the matter slide. He held up the sheets with the various designs featuring the station’s call letters. “What do you think of these?”

  “They’re fine,” Reese said.

  Burt looked at the kid Jared, cocking his left eyebrow just slightly, as if to say he was used to such apathy. “But which do you prefer?” he persisted.

  “The red one,” Reese said. “Who’s the new girl?”

  “Her name’s Michelle,” Burt said. “She has a degree from Northwestern.”

  “I don’t think she’s going to work out.”

  “Why not?” Burt asked.

  Reese shrugged. “There’s something off about her.”

  And he left.

  Four

  ATHENA WORKED HER LAST SHIFT FRIDAY night, and she spent Saturday running around getting ready to leave. She was heading out for California Sunday morning, driving her white VW with 247,000 miles on the odometer. Before she left, she urged Billie to come with her.

  “What am I going to do in San Francisco?”

  “All else fails, same thing you’re doing here,” Athena had told her. “I hear they got restaurants out there.”

  It was Saturday night and they were sitting in Athena’s kitchen drinking beer. Billie was still sleeping on the couch. She’d only been home briefly since destroying Rory’s car, to pick up clean clothes and her mail. She hadn’t seen Rory around but she was operating under the assumption that he was still plotting his revenge, though he hadn’t come back to Freddie’s.

  “I don’t know,” Billie said now. “Where am I going to stay out there? You’ll be at your aunt’s.”

  “You are the most negative person I ever met,” Athena said. “Where’s that come from?”

  “The fact that I live in the real world?”

  “Fuck off with that.”

  Billie took a drink of beer. “How’s life in California going to be any different than life here?”

  “Let’s see,” Athena said. “Maybe in California you won’t have a psycho ex-boyfriend stalking your ass?”

  “We don’t know that he’s stalking me.” Billie laughed. “We just assume he is.”

  “See how hard you laugh when the prick catches up to you,” Athena said. “What about this journalism degree? You must have had something in mind when you got it. You wanted to work at a newspaper or what?”

  Billie nodded. “Yeah, I thought I’d pick out a dying industry and aim for that.”

  “You could be on television, reporter or the chick reading the news, something like that,” Athena said. “You got the looks for it, and you’re fairly intelligent when you’re not trying to prove otherwise.”

  “Who’s going to boost my self-esteem when you’re not around?” Billie asked.

  “That’s why you need to come with me,” Athena said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if my aunt knows somebody who knows somebody in television.”

  “Somewhere over the course of half a joint and two light beers, you have decided that I’m a bona fide TV anchor,” Billie said. “By midnight I’ll have won an Emmy.”

  “I won’t be awake at midnight. I’m going to be on that thruway by six o’clock. If you intend to come with me, you better pack up your three pairs of jeans and five T-shirts, tell Freddie you’re gone, and get in that fucking VW.”

  Billie went to the fridge for another beer. When she looked over, Athena shook her head in refusal. Billie popped the can and came back to the table.

  “You go scout things out and then we’ll talk,” she said.

  “Right.”

  “I’m serious,” Billie said. “I do listen to you. And I know it’s time for a change. But you have your own shit going on out there, and you need to focus on that. First we fix you and then we fix me later.”

  “I don’t need fixing.”

  “But I do?”

  “I’m like an umpire. I call ’em as I see ’em, baby. The bus leaves at six a.m.”

  Billie wasn’t on it. She got up when she heard Athena moving about and helped carry her worldly belongings down to the parking lot. Athena handed over the keys to the apartment; the rent was paid until the end of the month, so Billie could stay on until then if she wanted.

  “Don’t forget to text,” Billie said, and Athena was gone, chugging away onto Pine Street, heading toward the thruway, the back-seat of the VW piled high with pillows and knapsacks and cooler bags full of snacks.

  That night Billie, restless and bored, drove out to a bar called Shaker’s on the highway south of Circleville. She was operating on the assumption that it was out of Rory’s orbit. He had been born in Chillicothe, and, except for odd drywalling job out in the boonies somewhere, he rarely strayed very far out of town.

  Shaker’s was a typical shit-kicker bar, bad country music, lots of big-screen TVs, coin-operated pool tables in the back. The smell of stale beer permeated everything—the walls, the carpet, the patrons. A month of steam cleaning couldn’t get rid of it.

  Billie was surprised to see Goose Grayson working the bar. She knew him from Chillicothe; he used to play softball in the league and had slung beer at the old Templeton Hotel before it had burned down under not-so-mysterious circumstances, an insurance scam gone bad. Billie hadn’t seen Goose since he’d quit playing ball a couple of years ago. She’d heard that his wife left him and that he’d taken the breakup badly. But badly enough to quit softball? That seemed a little extreme.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked as he drew her a beer.

  “Just out for a drive,” Billie told him. He put the draft in front of her and waved away payment. She looked past him, to the other side of the L-shaped bar. A man, skinny as a snake, was sitting there watching Billie openly. He was sixty years old, maybe seventy, and wore a battered tan cowboy hat and snap-button white shirt with a frayed collar. When she stared him down, he didn’t look away.

  “I didn’t know you were working here,” she said, turning back to Goose.

  “I moved up here last year. My girlfriend works at the GM dealership out on the highway.”

  A new girlfriend, Billie thought. Broken hearts mend.

  “Still at Freddie’s?” he asked.

  “Still there,” Billie said. “Crab cakes are my life.”

  “How’s the team?”

  “We’re second-to-last place,” Billie said. “But leading the league in hangovers.”

  A waitress came to the station with an order. As Goose moved off to serve her, Billie had a drink of draft and then turned on the barstool to have a look at the room. There was a lot of camo in evidence, on the men in particular, everything from pants to T-shirts to ball caps. Billie wondered if the socks and underwear were camo, too. She didn’t want to find out. There were three girls at a table in the center of the room: college kids, no doubt, out slumming with the redneck crowd. They’d have stories to tell when they got back to school in the fall. They were drinking beer with shots and all appeared drunk. Two wore tight shorts and T-shirts, the third a short skirt. That one was showing a lot of cleavage too, and she had plenty to display. They likely weren’t looking for romance in Shaker’s, but they were sure putting the merchandise out there. Foolish kids.

  When Billie turned back to the bar, the thin man was watching her again. Or still. His face was weather-beaten, his eyes wet behind heavy-framed glasses. Goose, idle once more, came over.

  “Who’s the bone rack in the cowboy hat?” Billie asked. “He’s been eyeballing me since I sat down.”

  Goose had a look. “Never
seen him before. You do realize that guys in bars look at pretty girls.”

  “Dude’s old enough to be my grandpa,” Billie said.

  “That usually doesn’t stop them,” Goose said. “Hey, I heard about Rory’s Vette.”

  Billie was still returning the skinny man’s stare. “Yeah, that was a shame.”

  “Are you crazy?” Goose said. “He loves that car more than he loves his mother.”

  Now Billie turned to him. “So I keep hearing. But then, that’s not hard to do. I’ve met his mother.”

  “Seriously,” Goose said. “What were you thinking?”

  “There wasn’t a lot of thinking went into it,” Billie assured him.

  The waitress returned. Apparently the bourbon she’d ordered was to be straight up and Goose had poured it on the rocks. He gave her another shot and put the first one in front of Billie.

  “My mistake is your free Jim Beam.” He paused a moment. “You know, I was surprised when I heard the story. You never struck me as a jealous type, Billie. I always took you for the I-don’t-give-a-shit type.”

  Billie took a slug of bourbon and chased it with the draft. “And what story would you be talking about, Goose?”

  “What went down that night,” Goose said. “You showed up at Rory’s and found him in the sack with some woman. You lost it and went demolition derby on the man’s Corvette.”

  Billie was quiet a moment. “And where did you hear this?”

  “Buddy of mine over in Chillicothe.”

  “Where did he hear it?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Billie reached for the bourbon. Of course Rory would come up with a story that made him look good. He couldn’t very well tell the truth. “There’s at least two sides to every story, Goose. Rory’s either a ladies’ man, doing two girls at a time, or a drunken asshole who likes to hit women. Take your pick.”

  “That how it was?”

  “That’s how it was.”

  “Then good for you, Billie.”

  Duty called again and Goose moved off to make margaritas for the college girls. Billie finished the bourbon and pushed the empty glass away before looking at the man in the hat again.

  “Do I have spinach in my teeth?” she asked. “’Cause you’ve been staring at me since I walked in here.”

  “I know you,” the man said. His voice was as cracked and worn as his complexion.

  “I don’t think so, Wyatt Earp. That line usually work for you, does it?”

  “You’re from Marshall, Kentucky.”

  At that Billie hesitated, reaching for the glass of beer as she attempted to place the man, trying to imagine what he might have looked like ten years earlier, or twenty.

  “I used to live there,” the man said. “You’re Will Masterson’s daughter. I knew your father.”

  “We’re birds of a feather,” Billie said. “I used to know him, too.”

  “I worked at all them little tracks around that neck of the woods,” the man said. “Hot walker. I used to see your old man regular. I bought a Dodge pickup from him one time. A red Dodge, you remember that truck?”

  Billie, finishing the draft, shook her head. “No.”

  “How’s he doing these days?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  Billie glanced to the rear of the bar and saw that one of the pool tables was now open. “Another beer here, Goose. And give me some change for pool, will you?”

  “If you’re talking to him,” the man in the hat said, “tell him Jimmy Muirhead says hello.”

  Billie retrieved the beer and the coins from the bar, left Goose a five, and started for the table. “I don’t expect I’ll be talking to him.”

  She dropped the quarters in the slot and racked the balls and played a game of eight-ball against herself, shooting stripes until she missed, then spots. While racking for a second game, she glanced over to the bar. The man in the cowboy hat was no longer there, his empty glass all that was left. Billie looked around the place but the man was gone.

  The truck had been a 1976 Dodge Ram, a red three-quarter ton her father had used to haul horses from track to track. Sometimes Billie would ride along, sitting in the passenger seat, punching up the AM stations on the radio. She had called the vehicle Big Red, the nickname of Secretariat, the greatest thoroughbred in history. She remembered the day he’d sold it, how sad she was to see it go. Funny she remembered the truck but not the man who bought it.

  Playing again, she became aware of a guy leaning against the back wall, gripping a Miller longneck between his thumb and forefinger. He hadn’t been standing there a few minutes ago but she’d seen him earlier with the camo-clad bunch in front of the TV, watching the Cleveland Indians. She’d noticed him because he was the one bucking the fashion, wearing jeans and a faded Joe Cocker T-shirt. He was a few years younger than Billie, she guessed, and not bad-looking. His hair was artfully messed up, held there with some product or another, but aside from that he was a good-looking man.

  “You putting your quarters up?” she asked when she pocketed the eight ball.

  “You might be too good for me,” the man said.

  “Spoken like a true hustler,” Billie replied.

  The man paid for the rack and they agreed on a dollar a game. “We have to play for something,” Billie reasoned. “You got a name?”

  “I’m Chris.”

  “Billie.”

  Chris wasn’t much of a pool player. In fact, he made so many bad shots that Billie thought for a while that he was hustling her. It took her a while to realize he was merely inept.

  “You from here?” Billie asked.

  He shook his head. “Columbus. What about you?”

  “Chillicothe,” Billie said.

  Chris dropped an easy shot in the side pocket but put too much on the cue ball, scratching in the corner. “Goddamn.”

  “They got pool tables in Columbus?” Billie asked.

  He smiled at her. “Fuck you.”

  “Oh, my,” she said, and then ran the table.

  He paid her the dollar and while he racked for another game, she went to the bar and bought beers for them both.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked when she came back and handed him the Miller.

  “Working on a paving crew. We’re doing the county road from here down to Henderson.” He nodded toward the bunch at the front of the bar, still watching the ball game. “That’s the gang.”

  Billie picked up the chalk from the side rail. “What do you do?”

  “Rake and shovel mostly,” he said. “Summer job, I’m a senior in college.”

  “What are you majoring in?”

  “Sports psychology.”

  She broke the balls and made nothing. He walked around the table, inspecting what she’d left him.

  “What does a sports psychologist do?”

  Leaning over the table, he considered a bank of the four in the corner. “Convinces athletes that they don’t suck, even if they do.” He straightened, giving up on the bank shot. “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “What do you do?”

  “Waitress.”

  “Really?” he asked, looking over. “Where?”

  He seemed surprised to learn that Billie waited tables for a living and she didn’t quite know what to make of that. Apparently even strangers thought she should be doing something else with her life.

  “Seafood place in Chillicothe.”

  “Good food?”

  “Not bad,” Billie admitted. “The owner’s the cook and he knows what he’s doing.”

  Chris sank the two in the corner but hooked himself in the process. After he missed the next shot, Billie took over and he stepped back to watch. She was aware that he would position himself so that he could look at her ass while she played but she wasn’t overly concerned about it. She was doing the same while he shot. She beat him again easily, and he paid her and racked for a third game. This time he bought the beers.

&nb
sp; Billie made two stripes on the break and then two more before missing.

  “Looks like I’m the one being hustled here,” Chris said.

  “Yeah, I’m up two bucks,” Billie said. “This is big time.”

  “Maybe we should up the ante.”

  “What—you want to play for five?” Billie laughed. “Sounds like your schooling has gone to your head. Psychologist, heal thyself.”

  He managed to sink the seven in the side. It was hanging over the edge of the pocket; he could have blown on it and it would have dropped. “I was thinking maybe . . . I don’t know . . . maybe we play for a back rub.”

  “Ah,” Billie said. “There’s hustlers and then there’s hustlers. I think maybe we’ll stick with the dollar.”

  He missed his next shot, then smiled at her. “I’m better at back rubs than I am at pool.”

  Billie laughed. “God, I would hope so.”

  She went back to work, dropping the fifteen in the side and the ten in the corner. She had just the nine and then the eight to go. Chalking her cue as she walked around the table, she looked over and saw Rory standing by the bar. Her heart jumped and she looked away immediately. Sonofabitch. How would he know where to find her?

  Would Goose have made a phone call? No, he wouldn’t do that. But maybe somebody else had. The place was nearly full and there could have been somebody there who knew who she was. Obviously the story of Rory’s car was out there on the wire, and more than one version of it at that.

  Not that it mattered how he got there. He was there and he was looking straight at her now. Billie wasn’t sure why he hadn’t approached yet. Maybe he was taking measure of the college kid, Chris, wondering if he was a threat if things got rough. Because things, Billie was certain, could get rough.

  Which meant that she needed to get out of there. Her pulse rate still climbing, she lined up the nine, then turned and hammered the eight in the far corner.

  “What the hell?” Chris asked. “You just lost the game.”

  “I guess I did,” Billie said, tossing her cue on the table. “What do you say you and I go for a drive?”

  Chris was clearly puzzled but he liked the idea. Billie nodded toward the back door and led the way. Outside in the parking lot, she remembered that her car was on the street out front.