Blue Lonesome

by Bill Pronzini

  “No more of what?”

  Dacy lit another cigarette. “Howard’s a good old cowboy. You know what that means?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Two things he likes to do best is drink and fight. Work his ass off all week, ten-, twelve-hour days, and come the weekend—off to the nearest bar to get shitfaced with his buddies and raise some hell. At least once a month I’d get a call from the sheriffs office to come bail him out of the drunk tank.”

  “And you got tired of it.”

  “I got real tired of it after nine years. Tired of bailing him out, tired of nursing his hangovers and his cuts and bruises. Tired of being left alone with Lonnie. Tired of sleeping with a man who had nothing much to say to me except, ‘Well, how about a little tonight, woman?’”

  Messenger said, “That’s a pretty sad story.”

  “Living it was a lot sadder than telling it.”

  “Was he always like that? Even in the beginning?”

  “Not so bad at first. Just kept getting worse until it killed all the love either of us ever had.”

  “What did he say when you asked him for a divorce?”

  “Didn’t ask him, I told him.”

  “And?”

  “Hardly a word. Drove off to town and got drunk and got in a fight that busted three of his ribs and ended up in jail. I bailed him out for the last time. Next day he loaded all his belongings into his pickup and left without saying good-bye to me or Lonnie. He stopped in town long enough to clean out our bank account—eight hundred dollars. I never saw or heard from him again.”

  “He didn’t contest the divorce?”

  “Didn’t contest it, didn’t hire a lawyer—nothing. I guess he figured the eight hundred was enough of a buyout. Judge gave Lonnie and me the ranch free and clear.”

  “When did all of that happen?”

  “Seven years ago.”

  “There must’ve been someone else for you since then.”

  Dacy made a sound that might have been a chuckle. “You trying to find out if I’ve been celibate for seven years, Jim?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way—”

  “Oh, hell, I know you didn’t.” She drew deeply on her cigarette; in the glow of the burning tobacco, her face had a masklike allure. The unruly topknot that always seemed to spring up when her hair was tousled made her even more attractive. “I’ve had relationships. One was with a doctor in Tonopah—the one who told me about catathymic crisis—that lasted a year and could’ve been permanent. He offered me a ring; I turned him down. That ended it between us.”

  “Why did you turn him down?”

  “He wanted me to sell this place and move to Tonopah and live in his house in town. Be a mother to his two kids. I wouldn’t have lasted six months in that kind of arrangement. I like running my own life, not three other people’s. And I like living right here where I am.”

  “Alone.”

  “I’m not alone. I’ve got Lonnie.”

  “You know what I mean, Dacy. What happens when Lonnie gets older, moves out on his own?”

  “Cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  “Do you miss being married? Want that kind of relationship again some day?”

  “Sometimes. Most days, no.”

  “Because you’re afraid of another failure? Or just of being hurt again?”

  No response for five or six beats. Then, “Back off, Jim.”

  “If I touched a nerve, I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe you missed your calling,” she said sardonically. “Kind of questions you ask, you’d’ve made a good head doctor.”

  He laughed, even though what she’d said wasn’t funny. “Head doctor, heal thyself.”

  “Uh-huh. So what about you? You ever been married?”

  “Once. A long time ago, in college.”

  “Divorced?”

  “Yes.”

  “What busted yours up?”

  He told her. All about Doris and their time together, Doris and the prelaw track star. He even found himself telling her an edited version of the incident at Candlestick Park, of what Doris had said to him on the ride home and how he’d only recently come to realize how right she’d been.

  Dacy said, “That’s a sad story, too. Almost as sad as mine.”

  “I know it.”

  “Well, we’re a pair, aren’t we? Birds of a feather.”

  “Ostriches. But I don’t want to be that way anymore,” Messenger said. “That’s part of the reason I came here to Beulah, why I’m still here.”

  “Trying to find yourself?”

  “No, a new self. The old one … well, Popeye applies there, too. You can stands so much, you can’t stands no more.”

  “What’s this new self gonna do when you get home?”

  “I don’t know yet. Cross that bridge when I come to it.”

  “You’re a funny one, Jim. You really are.”

  “Sure. Loco la cabeza.”

  “Not hardly. Just a guy having himself a midlife crisis. You think?”

  “I think,” he said, “I don’t want to think anymore right now.”

  Again she was silent. A breeze had begun to blow, warmish at first, now suddenly cool. Carried by it, the pungent creosote odor of grease-wood overpowered the night’s subtler scents.

  Dacy moved beside him. She said, “Chill coming on. We’d better get to bed.”

  “All right.”

  They stood up together, and when she turned toward him she was still close—close enough for him to feel the full warmth of her body and the softness of her breath against his chin. The loin stir began again, more urgent than before. His mouth was dry.

  “Dacy …”

  “I know,” she said.

  “If you don’t leave right now …”

  “Who said anything about leaving? I didn’t mean we should go to bed separately.” She took his hand. “It’s that kind of night, too,” she said.

  SHE MADE LOVE with more intensity than any woman he’d been with, Doris included. She held him fiercely with arms and legs and body, straining, pulling, clutching, as if she sought a fusion greater and more complete than the sexual. And she talked nonstop the whole time, urgings and entreaties, the words and her breath hot in his ear, now and then making little moaning sounds deep in her throat—all in a kind of desperate frenzy. It was over for both of them too quickly, even though he struggled to make it last. When her climax came it was in a series of shuddering spasms, as if she were being electrically shocked; and she pressed her mouth tight against his throat to muffle sounds that were almost like cries of pain.

  It took a minute or so for her body to grow still afterward, her hands on him to relax. Panting, she whispered, “Oh Lord! Been so long I’d about forgotten how good it can feel.”

  “Best, the best …”

  “Now don’t pat yourself on the back, Jim.”

  “I wasn’t. Other way around.”

  “Look at us, half off this damn bed. Wonder we didn’t end up on the floor.”

  “Wouldn’t have noticed if we had.”

  They disentangled and lay close, letting their breathing settle. Then Dacy laughed softly and said, “Funny.”

  “What is?”

  “A week ago I didn’t even know you existed. Then here you come out of nowhere and half turn my life upside down. Next thing I know I’ve got you working and living here. And now I’ve let you screw me. Maybe I’m the crazy one. You think?”

  “Is that all it was for you?”

  “All what was?”

  “Just screwing.”

  “What was it for you?”

  “Making love.”

  “Come on, Jim, you don’t love me.”

  “How do you know I don’t?”

  “I don’t love you.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “Two lonely people with itches to scratch, that’s all.”

  “I don’t think that’s all. I don’t think you do, either.”

  “Well
, you’re wrong. Isn’t this enough for you? Being together like this?”

  “For now.”

  “Now’s all there is,” Dacy said. “Now’s all there ever is.”

  Outside the wind rattled something. A coyote yipped querulously in the far distance and then was still. Messenger shifted position, half turning so he could take one of her breasts in his hand.

  Dacy said, “You like that saggy old tit?”

  “It’s not saggy. Not old, either.”

  “Maybe not quite. Pretty soon though.”

  “How old are you, Dacy?”

  “Not supposed to ask a woman that question.”

  “I don’t really care. I’m just curious.”

  “Well, it’s no secret. Thirty-four, next birthday.”

  “Thirty-four’s young.”

  “Not when you live in this desert, it isn’t.”

  “Young,” he insisted. “Young and beautiful.”

  “Shit.”

  “Don’t say that word when you’re in bed with me.”

  “Why not? It’s just a word.”

  “I want to keep things clean between us.”

  “Clean,” she said. “Whoo. No man’s ever said that to me before.”

  “I’m serious, Dacy.”

  “All right.” She yawned, stretched. “You should’ve seen them when I was eighteen. My boobs. So firm they hardly even bounced when I walked around naked. Skin so soft it was like satin.”

  “Still like satin.”

  She heard or sensed the change in his voice, the faint catch in the breath he took. “All this talk making you horny again?”

  “Yes.”

  “No surprise. Men are easy.”

  “We don’t have to make love again’ …”

  “Did I say I didn’t want to?” She turned on her side, felt for him, and took hold of him gently. “So damn easy,” she said.

  SOMEONE WAS SHAKING him, roughly and urgently. Saying his name and telling him to wake up. “Wake up, Jim! Wake up!”

  He struggled through sticky layers of sleep. The tugging hands lifted him; he sat up groggily. His eyelids felt glued together from sleep-grit. He couldn’t seem to blink them open, had to use his fingers to get them unstuck.

  The bedside lamp was on. He squinted against its glare.

  Dacy.

  She was fully dressed, her hair a wild tangle, her face dark with controlled fury. One clear look at her and he was completely awake.

  “What is it?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Anna’s ranch,” she said. “It’s burning. Some son of a bitch set the whole damn place on fire.”

  20

  DACY DROVE THE Jeep at better than sixty over the washboard road, its front end bobbing, hurling darts of yellow-white through the darkness with each bone rattling bump. Messenger sprawled next to her, his feet braced, holding on to both seat support and dash. In the rear, Lonnie sat hunched and jut-necked like a pointing hound. The boy hadn’t said a word before they left the ranch, had barely acknowledged Messenger’s presence. He wondered again now, as he had when they piled into the Jeep, if Lonnie knew or suspected his mother had spent part of the night in the trailer with the new hired hand. And if he did know or suspect, what he thought about it.

  Ahead and to the north, the sky above the low hills radiated a smoky orange glow. The smoke rose in thickening billows; he could smell it, harsh and wood-flavored, on the fitful night breeze. The whole damn place, Dacy had said, and that was how it looked from down here. No way a blaze of that size could have kindled and spread naturally on a clear night like this. (It had been after 1:00 A.M. when she woke him; he’d checked the time as he pulled on his clothing.) Deliberately set … but who would torch a ghost ranch in the middle of the night? For what reason?

  They were nearing the intersection with the rutted track that led to Anna’s property. Above both the track and the valley road ahead, clear in the light from moon and stars, was a hanging residue of fine, talcum-pale dust. One or more cars had come down the track not long ago, going fast enough to raise dust clouds as high and thick as the ones in the Jeep’s wake, and then headed off toward town. Or to John T.’s ranch? Across the desert flats he could see the Roebuck property’s night-lights—half a dozen spread out on tall poles. But just those lights, no others. Everybody there must still be asleep and unaware of the fire. Or pretending to be unaware of it.

  Dacy braked to make the turn in front of the storage shed. The Jeep skidded, yawed, and for a sickening instant Messenger thought they would slide over into a roll. But she knew what she was doing; she spun the wheel to control the skid, and the tires caught, churning, and the Jeep’s nose wobbled and then straightened out. The engine whined as she geared down for the climb to higher ground. The track’s stone-studded and cratered surface forced her to hold their speed down; even so, she drove fast enough for juts of rock to scrape the undercarriage, dislodged fragments to explode against metal with pops like gunshots. Fast enough, too, to lift him up off the seat and whiplash his neck, even braced as he was, when a front tire slammed through a deep pothole.

  The fireglow and the roiling smoke grew and spread in front of them. The wind carried the faint crackle of flames to his ears; and when the Jeep surged bouncing through the shallow canyon, started up the curving rise beyond, the wind laid the fire’s heat across his skin. They were sixty or seventy yards from the closed gate before the high-licking flames appeared. In their reflection he saw the vehicle drawn off onto the hard-pan to one side.

  Station wagon. Newish and light-colored.

  John T.’s wagon?

  Dacy brought them to a slewing stop. Messenger stumbled getting out; Lonnie caught his arm, kept him from falling, but the look the boy threw his way was unreadable. He leaned both hands against the gate, staring down into the hollow below.

  Everything made of wood was sheeted with fire—ranch house, barn, chicken coop, pump shed, remains of corral and windmill. Burning tumbleweeds rolled crazily across the yard, as if the wind were playing some kind of fiery game of bowls. Clumps of sage and greasewood burned here and there on the flats, ignited by sparks and cinders. The heat beat against Messenger’s face in pulsing waves.

  He said to Darcy, “Nothing we can do.”

  “Didn’t figure there would be.”

  “Okay by me,” Lonnie said. It was the first he’d spoken and his voice held an odd, flat inflection. “Let it all burn to the ground.”

  “Why?” Messenger asked him. “It won’t make the past any easier to forget.”

  “Might. What my uncle did—”

  “Your uncle? What did he do?”

  Lonnie shook his head.

  Dacy said, “Never mind that,” and Messenger saw that her gaze had shifted to the station wagon. “By God, if he’s the firebug he’ll pay for it one way or another.”

  “John T.?”

  “That’s his wagon.”

  “Why would he want to do this? And in the middle of the night?”

  “Who the hell knows? He doesn’t need a good reason for half of what he does.”

  She stalked angrily to the station wagon, Messenger and Lonnie following. She yanked the driver’s door open, bent to look inside—and then jerked as if she’d been struck and froze in place. In the firelight the sudden play of emotions across her face was plainly visible. The one that alarmed him was a wincing revulsion.

  “Sweet Jesus,” she said softly. Then, louder, “Lonnie, you stay where you are. Stay there—I mean it!”

  Tensely Messenger moved up beside her. One clear look into the wagon and his stomach kicked, his gorge rose; he gagged, locked throat and jaw muscles as he backed away. His eyes were on Dacy, but the image of the wagon’s interior remained in sharper focus, as if it had been burned against the backs of his retinas.

  Dead man lying in a twisted sprawl across the front seat. Black blood glistening where his face had been. Spatters of blood and brain matter and bone fragments gleaming on cushions, dashboard,
window glass …

  “What’s the matter?” Lonnie’s voice, raised above the roar of the fire. But he’d obeyed Dacy; he was poised ten paces shy of the station wagon. “He in there?”

  “Dead. Shot.”

  “Shot? Somebody shot John T.?”

  Blew his face away, the same as his brother. I wanted to make something happen but not this. Christ, not this!

  “Get the flashlight out of the Jeep. Hurry.”

  Again Lonnie did as he was told. When he came back she went to meet him, and said something Messenger couldn’t make out, then returned to the wagon and shone the light inside. Not long, just a few seconds. Then she switched it off and retreated to where Messenger stood and said in a thin, strained voice, “Well, he didn’t shoot himself. No sign of the gun.”

  “Shotgun?”

  “No. Large-caliber handgun, close range. One round, I think, but I couldn’t tell for sure.”

  “Whoever did it was up here in another car. We didn’t miss it by more than a few minutes.”

  “I know, I saw the dust, too.”

  Lonnie said sharply, “Somebody’s coming.”

  Messenger hadn’t heard anything, and still didn’t for another few seconds. Then he picked up the faint race-and-whine of a car or truck engine laboring along the track.

  Dacy was already moving at a half-run to the Jeep. By the time he joined her she had her rifle—a .25 bold-action Weatherby magnum, he’d been told—free of the clamps that held it behind the front seats. She jacked a cartridge into the chamber and stood with the weapon at port arms, watching downhill. None of them said anything as they waited. The silence had a charged quality made more acute by the thrumming crackle of the fire at their backs.

  It was three or four minutes before headlights flicked erratically over the bare canyon walls below. The beams steadied; the vehicle took shape behind them. Pickup. It rattled uphill, and when it slid to a stop behind the Jeep, Messenger recognized it: Tom Spears’s dirty green Ford. Spears was driving, and Joe Hanratty was with him.

  The two men came out running, but they pulled up short when Dacy lifted the Weatherby. Their attention swung confusedly from her to the burning ranch buildings to John T.’s station wagon. Both had the look of men dragged out of sleep: uncombed hair, pouched eyes, wearing nightshirts tucked haphazardly into their jeans.