by Don Winslow
He was doing all right until Steve, the dirty turncoat, stretched out his hand to his wife to fight their way out onto the dance floor.
Which is a lot worse than you leaving me in the back of a bouncing pickup with that calf, Neal thought.
Then he realized he hadn’t really talked with a woman for years, except for Peggy and Shelly Mills, which didn’t count.
“Where are you from?” Karen shouted.
Well, I’ve been living in a Buddhist monastery for the past three years, and on a Yorkshire moor the year before that … “New York,” he shouted back.
“City or state?”
“City!”
So far so good.
“Where are you from?” he asked, realizing that his voice sounded as high and narrow as one of Cat Lady’s strings. She thinks I’m an idiot.
“Here,” she said, “I’m from here.”
“Austin?” Great. Now she knows I’m an idiot.
“I think that’s where we are.”
Duhhh.
“What do you do for a living?”
I was sort of an unlicensed private investigator, a troubleshooter for a secret organization. But right now I think I’m unemployed.
“Nothing much lately. What do you do?”
“I’m a teacher.”
Oh?
That’s when the music stopped, the band took a break, and Peggy and Karen went off to the ladies’ room together, a ritual that is constant throughout the world.
“You’re glued to that chair like you’re paying rent on it,” Steve was saying.
“It’s a nice chair. I like it.”
“You’re scared shitless.”
Steve grinned at him. He almost looked like Joe Graham, who also had a habit of grinning at Neal when he was being nasty.
“Of what?” Neal asked.
Steve roared. Actually sat back in his chair and guffawed. “Of Karen! Nothing to be ashamed of—Karen has scared a lot of good men.”
“Good for Karen.”
“Ask her to dance, moron.”
“I can’t dance,” Neal said.
“War wound?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Nothing to it. You just get up and move,” said Steve.
“That’s what I don’t know how to do.”
“Get up, or move?”
“Both.”
Steve leaned over the table to give Neal one of those soulful cowboy looks. “It’s not like you’re Fred Astaire and she’s Ginger Rogers or anything. You’re not dancing for the artistry of the damn dance. You’re dancing to, you know … move around together. Get close.”
Yeah, right—get close. Getting close isn’t exactly my best thing, Steve. The last woman I got close to did a triple gainer off a big cliff.
Neal worked at finishing his beer. If he could do that fast enough, he’d have an excuse to escape to the bar to buy the next round.
“You ready for another one?” Neal asked as he got up.
“Coward.”
“Well, will you let a coward buy you a drink?”
“I’m not particular. You better hurry, though, I see the women coming back.”
Neal worked his way to the bar, got a pitcher of beer, and bumped right into Cal Strekker.
“Doing a little honky-tonkin’, New York?” Cal sneered.
“Leave your knife at home, Cal?”
“Nope.”
Great. “Where do you have it hidden?” Neal asked. “Up your ass?”
“In my boot.”
“Well, be careful dancing.”
“You want to dance with me, New York? Maybe finish what we started?”
“Gee, I’d love to, Cal, but my beer is getting warm.”
“You’re a chickenshit bastard.”
You’re half right, Cal. Okay, maybe all right.
“Jesus, Cal, I told you I’m busy tonight!” Neal shouted. “I’ll dance with you another time, all right?”
Cal turned a color that would have drawn a charge from a bull as a whole bunch of people turned around and looked. “I’ll be seeing you, New York,” he hissed.
“In your worst dreams, shithead.”
Neal set the pitcher on the table and sat down. Steve, Peggy, and Karen were staring at him.
“Cal Strekker giving you trouble?” Steve asked.
“How much trouble could he give?” Neal answered as he started to fill their empty glasses.
“A lot,” Peggy answered. “He did time in prison for killing a guy in a bar fight in Reno.”
It wasn’t Reno, Neal thought, it was Spokane. But the bottom line is the same.
“Newcomer trash,” Karen said. Then she quickly added, “No offense meant.”
“None taken,” Neal said. “I’m here for the long haul.”
Karen gave him a long look and said, “Then you’d better learn to dance.”
She grabbed his hand and pulled him out of his chair just as the band struck up a snappy little number about eighteen wheels rolling down two-lane blacktops.
Karen held Neal by two outstretched hands and did a little hopping step that he did his best to imitate. He could feel his hands getting sweaty in her amazingly cool, soft palms, and he felt as awkward as he knew he looked. Especially in contrast to the beauteous Karen Hawley, with her long legs and wide mouth and big blue eyes.
“Relax!” she shouted to him. Her smile turned his knees to Jell-O, so it looked like he was more relaxed, anyway. He started to let go a little, actually moved his feet more than two inches at a time, and let her swing his arms around in time with Blackie’s drum strokes. He was doing all right when that treacherous cretin New Red switched to a slow song.
Neal and Karen looked at each other for an awkward moment. Jesus, Neal thought, I’m blushing.
He looked at her, laughed a little bit, shrugged, and held his arms out. Scary, tough Karen Hawley settled into his arms as soft and gentle as a cloud, and much, much warmer. She didn’t bother with any of that hand-held-out-like-a-guitar business, just put both hands on the small of his back, and settled her head into his shoulder. He laid his hands just under her shoulder blades, realized that his hands were quivering, then left them there anyway.
What is it, Neal thought, about the smell of a woman’s hair? How it spins around your brain, then rushes straight to your … no, don’t think about it … and the feel of her breasts just grazing your chest … or her thighs just brushing against yours … don’t think about any of that.
The whole thing was an erotic charge, and then she nestled right up against his erotic charge and tightened her hands on his back and let him see the corner of her mouth curl into a little smile and Neal thought he was going to die on the spot. Or get arrested for indecent exposure once the dance was over and they parted hips, even though he was completely dressed.
He looked over her shoulder and saw Steve and Peggy slow dancing, both of them grinning at him. Karen must have seen them too, because the edge of her lips against his neck widened into a chuckle.
“Peggy’s subtle,” she murmured.
“Like a sledgehammer,” Neal agreed.
“I don’t mind. Do you?”
“Yeah, I’m real pissed off.”
She pressed her hips forward a little. “I don’t think you are,” she said.
“Sorry about that.”
“No, no, no, no. And you do know how to dance.”
“Yeah?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Her head sank a little deeper into the crook of his neck, filling his nostrils and his brain with her scent. Something made him kiss her hair where it fell over her ear.
“Damn hair,” she whispered, “always in the way.”
He started to brush it off her ear, but she lifted her head to look at him and said, “Later.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. I want you to do that later.”
She must have seen the doubt in his eyes, because she leaned forward and gave him a quick, soft
kiss on the mouth, her tongue lashing between his lips before her head dropped back on his shoulder and her hips made the subtlest possible circle against his groin.
A big hand grabbed bis shoulder and spun him around. Suddenly Neal was looking up into the red, drunken face of one big, angry cowboy.
“What are you doing with my woman?” he yelled.
The dancers around them stopped dancing and backed away. The band kept playing, although they watched the developing altercation with great interest.
“Charlie, get out of here!” Karen yelled.
Neal felt the circle widen around them. Here we go, Neal thought, they’re giving us room for a fight. He saw Cal lean against the bar, smiling his feral smile at the thought of Neal getting pounded into hamburger by this animal. Except that under the red face, the drunkenness, and the fury, Charlie didn’t look like an animal. He looked like kind of a nice guy.
“Or is she your woman now?” the nice guy demanded.
“I think she’s probably her own woman,” Neal said, trying to keep his voice low and calm, because maybe if he kept it low enough, no one would hear it shaking. He saw Steve Mills work his way toward the front of the crowd and place himself between Cal Strekker and the impromptu boxing ring. The band had come to the end of the slow song and didn’t bother to start a new one. New Red was probably searching his memory for a country-western dirge.
“You want to take this outside, or settle it right here?” Charlie demanded.
“Uhh … what’s behind door number three?”
There was a titter of laughter from the crowd, but no one stepped forward to stop the upcoming fight.
I don’t believe this, Neal thought. Stuff like this just doesn’t happen. This is so goddamn stupid.
“I’m going to beat the shit out of you,” said Charlie.
Why does everybody want to beat the shit out of me tonight? “Too late,” Neal said. “You already scared the shit out of me.”
Another chuckle from the onlookers. Charlie wasn’t laughing, though, he just looked puzzled.
“Are you afraid to fight me?” he asked. It was the ultimate challenge.
“Of course I’m afraid to fight you. I’m a lousy fighter and fighting hurts, even when you win. I never fight unless I absolutely have to.”
“You’re chicken, yellowbelly!”
“You’re not really getting it, are you, Charlie? And by the way, that was a mixed metaphor.”
Neal felt that awful sensation of having every eye in the place on him, including Karen’s.
“Hold on a second, Charlie,” he said, giving him the time-out signal before turning back to Karen. “Do you want me to fight him? Something about your honor or my honor or something?”
“Of course not. Would you fight him just because I wanted you to?”
“Of course not. Do you want to just get out of here?”
Charlie put his hands up and started forward.
“Just a second, Charlie,” Neal said. “Can’t you see I’m having a conversation here? Jesus.”
Charlie stopped cold, his hands still up in the fighting position.
“Yes,” Karen said, “I would like to get out of here.”
“Let’s go,” Neal said, taking her arm. As they walked past Charlie, he said, “See? You lost.”
As they went through the swinging doors into the street, Neal could hear the roar of laughter from the bar and the music starting up again. Well, he thought, John Wayne might not have approved, but Cary Grant would have loved it.
Karen pushed him up against a pickup parked along the sidewalk.
“That,” she said, “was great.”
She grabbed his face with both her hands and kissed him long and hard.
“You’re not going back to that stupid cabin tonight,” she said.
“I’m not?”
“No, you’re not.”
“Tell me,” she said as she nestled in his arm under the sheets of her old iron frame bed, “if it isn’t too personal a question, how long has it been since you … uh …”
“Since I was with somebody?”
“Okay.”
“Almost four years.”
She thought about that for a couple of seconds.
“Well, that explains it,” she said, and then she started to laugh. She laughed until her body shook and he started laughing, and they laughed until she reached for him and observed, “Well, there are some good things about this four-year gap, too. Lucky me.”
So much for my monklike existence, Neal thought. Good riddance.
Joe Graham meandered out of his cheap room into downtown Hollywood, which looked like a lot of downtowns on a late Saturday night. The winners had already gone home, the losers sulked in anticipation of the dreaded “last call.” The cops pulled out of the doughnut shops to collect their quotas of Dill’s along the strips, the emergency room crews took a breather in the last quiet minutes before closing time brought the rush hour of stitches and cold compresses. On the sidewalks, the working girls circled like vultures, waiting to feed on the defeated men who were skulking away from the singles bars still single. In the back rooms of the biker clubs the boys made low-ball dope deals, while heavy metal teenagers in sleeveless T-shirts scuffled to pick up nickel bags of grass. In gravel parking lots old rivalries burst into new fights, and in the AA club the old-timers and the newcomers drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and thanked their higher powers that for this twenty-four hours, anyway, they were out of it, out of the old cycle of fresh hopes and stale disappointments that was Saturday night in America.
Back on The High Lonely, Neal Carey slept in Karen Hawley’s warm arms and warm bed, while out on the sagebrush flats the coyotes sniffed, pawed, and whined in an excitement that turned into a howling frenzy.
6
Neal found Harley McCall the next afternoon.
He might have found him in the morning, except that he stayed late in Karen Hawley’s bed. He woke to the sound of wind chimes and water. The chimes jangled in Karen’s small backyard; the water came from Karen vigorously brushing her teeth in the bathroom two giant steps from the bed.
Karen’s house occupied a little knoll on the north edge of town. It was a small, white one-story clapboard affair, a little ramshackle on the outside but clean and well furnished. Her small kitchen had all of the modern appliances, the living room had a sofa that looked new, an expensive stereo system, and well-framed Gorman prints on the wall. The bedroom was just large enough for the bed and a chest of drawers.
“Can I give you a lift back out to the Mills’?” she asked as she came back into the bedroom. Then she added, “I have lesson plans to do.”
“If you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. After all, I practically kidnapped you.”
She gave him a breakfast of blueberry muffins and coffee, then gave him the ride back out to the Mills’ place.
“You don’t mind if I don’t come in,” she said as she pulled into their drive. “I don’t think I could stand to see Peggy’s smug smile.”
“Your honor is safe with me.”
“Better not be.” She kissed him lightly. “So I think one of us is supposed to say ‘When will I see you again?’”
“When will I see you again?”
“When do you want to?” Karen asked.
“I usually get into town on Saturdays.”
“You should get a car.”
“I should.”
Somehow they had started kissing again, and somewhere in there they agreed to see each other on Saturday, unless Karen had a chance to pop out to the ranch before that. And somewhere in there—maybe it was while looking at her smiling eyes—Neal felt a tug he hadn’t felt in a long time. Maybe he had never felt it before.
Neal got out of the car, Karen put the Jeep into a swift and skillful K-turn, and Peggy Mills made a precisely timed appearance on the porch under the guise of shaking out a rug.
“Next time you see Karen,” she said as Neal tried to s
neak past the house, “you tell her I said she’s a coward. You are seeing her again, aren’t you?”
“Saturday.”
“You’d better work that smile down before your face breaks in half,” Peggy said. “You be good to her.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Peggy rolled her eyes, smiled at him, and disappeared back into the house. Neal figured that she wouldn’t let Steve come out and make any smart remarks.
Neal hiked back toward the cabin. He was almost there when the coyote appeared.
“Sorry I’m late,” Neal said.
The animal ignored him. It was acting strangely, prancing around the brush, tossing its head and celebrating like a dog with a bone. Neal looked closer and saw that it did have something in its mouth. The coyote tossed its head again, almost as if it were trying to show off its acquisition.
Neal trotted into the cabin and got his binoculars. It took a moment for him to find the coyote again and another moment to focus the glasses, and then he saw what the coyote had in its mouth.
A human arm. Half a human arm, anyway, from the elbow joint down.
Neal struggled to hold the focus as his own hands shook and the coyote jumped and danced in triumph. He twisted the focusing dial again and then could make out the distinct shape of human fingers against the coyote’s white teeth.
Neal ducked back inside the cabin, grabbed the Marlin, jumped off the porch, and ran toward the coyote. The animal dropped down on its forelegs like a dog getting ready to play a good game of keep-away. He waited until Neal got within twenty yards and then sprang sideways, let Neal get within ten, and then juked the other way.
But the forearm was a heavier load than the coyote was used to managing, and it fell out of his mouth. He picked it back up as the man kept charging, then decided it was time to get out of there. He started straight away at a trot, dragging the arm, the elbow joint bouncing in the dirt.
Neal raised the rifle and fired.
The coyote jumped at the noise, gave Neal a look of betrayal, and scampered off at full speed.
Neal took a deep breath and walked over to where the arm lay in the sagebrush.
It was badly decomposed, a putrid gray-green. Neal could tell that the coyote had dug it up from the dirt that still clung to the rotting flesh. Neal forced himself to get down on his knees to examine the arm more closely, and that’s where he saw the stain of color showing up through the putrefaction. It was a tattoo: “Don’t tread on me.”