Four Dead Horses

by KT Sparks

  Lina Sharpe

  Chief of Staff

  Cowboy Poetry Hour

  17

  The second time the heel on Martin’s Lucchese boot slipped on an oil patch on the concrete, he slowed down. The third time, he gave up his march to Helen and reentered the casino through the doors to the hotel reception area. He waved at the raisin-faced lady behind the desk with his key card. He needed to go back to his room and think.

  As he waited for the elevator, he imagined himself sitting on the puffed polyester king bedspread, listening to the electric buzz of the radio alarm, and sniffing the decades of exhaled tobacco leeching from the crushed red and orange shag carpet, so like the one in his family’s Pierre living room. It was the kind of hotel that didn’t stock the minibars. The elevator bell rang, and the metal doors opened onto an overlit interior and a framed ad for the Red Lion Casino Sports Bar. He let the doors close and looped back toward the bar.

  The border between the bar and the casino was a porous one. Waitresses dressed in black pants and button-down white shirts rushed plastic cups of complimentary booze from the bar to the blackjack tables, and big winners wandered in to buy the better stuff with puce chips. Martin took a seat on a red leather swivel chair, swung around to the bar, cracked his knees into its faux mahogany base, and yelped a curse at the designer who had bolted the seat to the floor. Around him, the slot machines bleeped and trilled and screeched and clanged. He had to repeat his order, Jack Daniels on the rocks, twice to the dusky-eyed waiter behind the bar.

  “Any luck?’ the bartender asked.

  “None whatsoever,” Martin answered and pulled his tumbler toward him.

  He couldn’t simply set Helen free, as he had visualized doing when he stormed out of Aspen’s. He had wanted to witness her charging off under an honest Western sky, the image of Hero memorialized on the Cowboy Poet’s bus. But the Red Lion sat, as did most of Elko, on a main street that paralleled Highway 80. The stars weren’t visible in the lemon glare of the streetlights and oncoming semi high beams. Set loose, she would probably get run over, killed, taking out a few innocent cars and trucks as she fell. That was hardly the point he was hoping to make. Not that he really knew what that point was. Something about reining in cowboy poetry before it rode him into yet another tree.

  As his rage began to dissolve in the smoky acid of his whiskey, he had to admit that Lattner and Julie’s plan for Helen wasn’t bad. In two days’ time, the mare would be repatriated to a cushy rescue ranch, perhaps a little groggy, but alive, safe, and having committed no greater crime than providing a little solace to the masses of Cowboy Poet fans. It was not a lie that hurt anyone. But it was a lie Martin could no longer sit easily. After so many lies, this was the lie that had finally thrown him, trotted off without him, and left him gasping on the dirt of the rodeo arena, dust in his ears, mentally inventorying his body for broken bones. He needed to stand up, tip his hat to the indifferent crowd, and exit Elko. He ordered another whiskey and took out his phone to search for flights out of Salt Lake City.

  “You a cowboy poet?” The bartender put Martin’s drink on a coaster advertising Red Man chewing tobacco.

  “No,” said Martin.

  “A cowboy?” The bartender’s nametag said his name was Andy, but Martin didn’t think so. The man held his sharp chin tight to his chest and his narrow head sandwiched between shoulders frozen in a half-executed shrug.

  “Not a cowboy either.”

  “Then you can run a tab.” He crumpled a piece of white receipt tape and tossed it on the floor. “You here for the mine?”

  Martin briefly considered answering in the affirmative. Yes, indeed, a traveling mine equipment salesman, here to hawk shafts and picks, an honest laborer who wants nothing more than that the riches of the Western sacred grounds be unearthed and pressed into commemorative medallions. But that would be a weak start to his new life of rigorous honesty.

  “I came for the confluence, but I’m leaving tonight.”

  The bartender retrieved Martin’s bill from the floor and smoothed it out on the bar. “We don’t take checks,” he said. Martin pulled his last fifty from his rear pocket.

  “Put mine on that too. I’ll have what he’s having.”

  Lina swung into the chair next to Martin. She smelled of cigar smoke and beer. She bared her teeth, which might have been an attempt at a smile, but it was hard to tell as the sides of her mouth did not turn up one whit. Martin stared at a brown flake centered on her incisor.

  “Were you at the show?” Martin gestured at the clumps of what had to be cowboy poets streaming into the bar. Some still clutched the playbill from that night’s main stage performance at the convention center. Martin had had a ticket but had forgotten about it in the swirl of anger and betrayal and memory that had overtaken his evening.

  “Shit no,” said Lina. “I was at Stockman’s having a drink or ten with a guy who used to be a sound engineer for the Cowboy Poetry Hour. You know, at the beginning, before it got big, we had fun. I loved my job.”

  “You don’t now.” Martin didn’t phrase it as a question, and Lina didn’t answer.

  “I ran into Lattner. He told me you were getting cold feet about the funeral.” She hiccupped. “That’s kinda funny. Cold feet for a funeral. Don’t you think so, Andy?”

  The bartender put down Lina’s whiskey. “My name is Elbek. I’m a Chechen. It means ‘lord.’”

  “Anyway, I just want you to know, it’s okay if you want to quit.” She waved Elbek away. “There’s only about two thousand Cowboy Poet wannabes wandering around here who would give their left nut to recite on the same stage as Wyatt Wendt. So, whatever.” She put her nose in her drink and slurped.

  Martin blinked. He was certain he wanted nothing to do with the funeral or performing in Elko. But it hadn’t occurred to him that the show would go on without him. He, too, hid his nose in his drink.

  “Like Jess over there,” Lina said. She took off her ivory Stetson and waved it at a man in a buff Carhartt duck coat on the far end of the bar. “Jess, want to perform Saturday with Wyatt and Vess? It’ll be televised.” The man gave her a thumbs-up and a wide smile.

  “What am I reading?” he yelled back.

  “Vess and Jess,” said Martin. “That could make a mockery of the funeral commentary. I think it’s an unfortunate choice. And aren’t the programs printed already?”

  Lina turned to Martin. “What were you going to read?”

  “Recite,” said Martin. “I was going to recite ‘The Campfire Has Gone Out.’”

  “The campfire one,” shouted Lina across the bar.

  “I know it,” Jess replied and stood up on the rungs of his barstool like he was standing in the stirrups of his saddle. He began:

  The railroads are coming in,

  And all the work is gone.

  His voice was high and reedy. Lina nodded at Martin, who leapt to his feet and bellowed, “No! That’s not how it goes.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jess pushed back from his end of the bar and moved toward Martin and Lina. He staggered a bit as he pushed through other similarly dressed drinkers, most sporting the confluence commemorative pin. He shook a beer bottle at Martin. “Oh, yeah?”

  Lina hopped off her chair and put a hand on Jess’s arm. “You’re drunk. Just leave it.”

  “I know the fucking words,” he said and put down the beer bottle, opened his coat, and pulled out a Glock 21.

  Martin stood up too. “It’s about a lot more than just knowing the words,” he said in a bass so deep he felt it had its roots in the ground beneath his feet. He pushed Lina gently back with one hand and with the other took the pistol from the cowboy and set it on the bar. Elbek scooped it up and slid it under the counter.

  “Next round’s on me,” Elbek said in a whisper.

  Martin took another step toward Jess, looked past the top of his head, an
d roared:

  Through progress of the railroads,

  Our occupation’s gone;

  We’ll get our ideas into words,

  Our words into a song.

  “Okay, dude,” squeaked Jess and backed up as if gut punched. He turned to Elbek, who had poured himself a whiskey and was gulping it as if it were lifesaving antibiotics. “Can I get my gun back?”

  “Nyet,” he said and drained the glass.

  Martin continued in a softer tone, now addressing Lina, who steadied herself on her chair.

  First comes the cowboy—

  he’s the spirit of the West;

  of all the pioneers I claim

  the cowboys are the best.

  Martin took a breath, raised his hand, and cupped Lina’s chin. She looked into his eyes, placed a hot hand on the fly of his jeans, and said, “Keep going.”

  They consummated the first stanza in the elevator, Lina’s mousy ponytail slapping the plastic over the framed ad for the sports bar. The second and third were completed on Martin’s king-sized bed amidst sweat-scented sheets and crumpled denim. He even managed a brief reprise of the last chorus, though by that time Lina seemed exhausted, and Martin was just showing off. The lovemaking was more mature and sustained than his time with Julie at Jimmy Sneedle’s and all the times with women who were not Ginger, or even Julie, after that. But it was no less intense or lyrical.

  Martin watched a shirtless Lina fumble in her jeans pockets, pull out a crushed cigarette, and attempt to light it. He did not feel compelled to point out that it was a no smoking room, and that recklessness began to rekindle his lust. He propped himself next to Lina on the bed and reached for one of her creased breasts. She batted his hand away.

  “You really do love this cowboy poetry stuff, don’t you?” she said.

  He inhaled her exhaled smoke and thought he could taste the bright pink lipstick, traces smeared on her thin lips.

  “And you don’t?”

  She sighed, stubbed the cigarette fragment out on the bedside table, and reached for her shirt. “I knew you did when Lattner told me about that crazy plan with the drugged horse.”

  Martin sat up and choked. He had forgotten about that and about his revulsion at the deception. The reciting, the sex, the power had all taken him back to the first days of his lust for cowboy poetry.

  “I was going to tell you,” he said.

  “I think it’s fantastic.” Lina snapped the small pearl buttons on her red and white checkered blouse. “Genius, really. The lengths you’re willing to go to make the last Cowboy Poetry Hour really mean something. God, you care more than Vess. You should have been the Cowboy Poet.” She retrieved her boots from under the bed and pulled them on. “You would have been great.”

  He would have been great, thought Martin. He could still be great.

  “So what are you going to do?” he asked.

  Lina stood up. “That depends on what you’re going to do. Will you go through with it? Will you read?” She walked to the door of the room.

  “Of course,” he whispered, then repeated louder: “Of course, I will read at Elko.”

  “Great,” said Lina, opening the door. “I’ll email you the schedule.” She walked out, leaving Martin alone with the salty smell of sex, trembling inner thighs, and an overwhelming joy that his campfire had not yet gone out.

  Martin arrived at the convention center early Friday morning, hoping to see Beaufort again or catch the symposium on leather braiding before he had to meet Lina for lunch at the whiskey-tasting table. They were to drive together over to the dress rehearsal. Martin was ready to play his part and play it well. Less than an hour after she had left his room the night before, she had emailed him a draft of the final program for Hero’s funeral. During the processional, which kicked off right at noon, Martin would ride shotgun in the caisson pulling drugged Helen’s trailer, Vess walking behind. After the two of them had their Princess Anne moment for the cameras, Martin would open the proceedings with “Of Horses and Men,” then turn it over to Wyatt Wendt, who would recite “Make Me No Grave.” Some group called the YeeHaw Yellars would sing a few jazzed-up hymns, Marilou Perkins would twirl her baton for no more than three minutes, leaving Vess twenty minutes to eulogize. Martin would finish with “The Campfires Have Gone Out,” and the YeeHaw Yellars would pluck them off with “Amazing Grace.” Forty-two minutes, give or take a couple, and since it was PBS, that was fine. They could always cut Marilou after the fact.

  He was punching up a text when he caught sight of her across the main hall.

  Ginger.

  He froze, took her in. He would have known her anywhere. She was still slender though seemed to have grown taller. Perhaps it was the square heels on her black boots, lace-up not cowboy, well-polished and probably pricey. Her jeans were black too, as was her simple turtleneck. She didn’t wear a hat, and her hair still shone, though it had darkened to the ochre of a tarnished penny and gone white in streaks, like the potash crystals in the Elko Mining Museum display over by the coffee sales table.

  She turned to a paper she was tacking up next to the conference room, and Martin took one step forward. She seemed to be alone, but he wondered whether the man in the blue blazer talking on a cell phone and leaning on the wall nearby was the Ohio banker. Martin hoped so. The guy had the sort of Kewpie-doll male patterned baldness that left a tiny tombolo of hair right above the forehead.

  Ginger turned her back on her notice and swept the hall with eyes in which Martin thought he could detect youthful spark and earned melancholy and eternal kindness. But he wasn’t sure, because he avoided those eyes, dropped his head, feigned interest in Lina’s message. All those years of dreaming of this moment, and he wasn’t ready.

  Fucking Fuck-Up, Lina’s text read. Martin forced himself to read every word before he looked up again. If he did that, then Ginger would be gone, and he would be able to breathe. BB busy Vess drunk. No time for lunch, putting out fires. Rehearsal off.

  K, he typed back and still could not lift his head.

  “Martin?”

  Oh God.

  “Martin? Right? You haven’t changed a bit.” Ginger laughed, the same laugh. She touched his sleeve. He inhaled three times, held his breath, looked up.

  “Ginger, isn’t it? Ginger Giles?”

  “Yes, yes.” Her face was lined now but soft and creased like an old blanket. “Jimmy Sneedle’s. You read at the talent show. You were good. I think about that all the time. Do you remember?”

  Ginger had thought about him. She had thought about him all the time. Cogitat ergo sum.

  “Yup, I believe I do.” Martin worked at screwing up his face to feign great effort at recalling the event. Ginger kept her hand on Martin’s arm, but her smile began to fade.

  “I don’t want to bother you,” she said. “I remember it so well, maybe because it was our last Christmas there, before we went to Wyoming. But you were good, I do remember that. I’m not at all surprised you’re part of the confluence.”

  “I’m not,” he said, too quickly. “I’m not. I mean, I am. Part of the confluence. Or at it. I mean, it’s my first time.”

  “Really?” She smiled again. “Well, then, have you seen Dad? You have to. You should sign up.” She gestured back toward the paper she had pinned up. “You should read. He’s MC-ing the open mic tomorrow at 12:30. He would love that. I would love that. You did ‘Campfires,’ right? You could do that.”

  “Actually, I’m reciting tomorrow at noon,” said Martin. “At Hero’s funeral.” Ginger tilted her head. “You know, Wyatt Wendt?” he pressed on. “Vess Guffry, the Cowboy Poetry Hour?”

  Ginger removed her hand from his arm. “Oh, that. I heard about that. Vess Guffry. I’ve never met him. I’ve listened to the show once or twice. It’s okay, for what it is.”

  For what it is? She had eviscerated him without a blink or a pa
use. “I kinda like it,” he said, hesitated. “For what it is.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t talk,” Ginger said. She was looking over Martin’s head now toward an industrial chandelier above the hall. “I moved away from it a while ago. But it just seems to me, cowboy poetry is for cowboys, by and for cowboys. There isn’t much left that’s as simple as that anymore. And when you put it out over the radio and say it’s for everybody? Well, it isn’t.”

  She scratched at her cheek, then looked at Martin and nodded. “I tell you what. I’m going to put you down to read on the sheet. If you make it, fine. I’d be pleased to hear you. And if not, well then, you take care of yourself, Martin.”

  Martin nodded back, could not speak, watched her walk away. Willed himself to say something. Had no idea what that might be. Turned and headed toward the center’s front doors.

  Helen

  Saturday, 11:16 a.m.

  Martin stared into the grave, and it yawned back at him like the toothless nightmare it was. A small house could fit in that craw. An unsuspecting small house full of small children and their small puppies, singing “Jesus Loves Me” and rolling around belly laughing like that Coke commercial from an eon ago. A small house with small children and small puppies—or a regular-sized trailer with a regular-sized, drugged mustang.

  He looked around for Lina, Vess, Mac, anyone. Didn’t see them. He thought everyone was supposed to be here by eleven, but he only spotted a few cemetery workers and the PBS camera and light crews. Martin trotted to the other side of the hole and looked around again, looked into it again. A misunderstanding, that’s what this was. Lina would have said something, in her memos, or after sex, when they had talked about Helen. She had to have known about such a substantial change in the obsequies. That was one big hole. They had probably been digging it for days.