Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel

by Butler, Nickolas

  Maybe, I thought, you should just sit down, stay in one spot. Call for help. So I laid down, and the snow was thick and soft enough that it sort of felt like a bed, and anyway, it was better than my old cowboy boots, better than fighting a damn Wisconsin blizzard. Just don’t fall asleep. Maybe rest your eyes a little bit, rest them legs, but don’t fall asleep. Just keep singing. Everyone will know that song. Just keep singing. It will keep you warm. Sing loud. Don’t ever be afraid to sing loud. Just keep singing, it’ll keep you awake.

  That’s all I remember. Just feeling very, very cold and wondering where the hell everyone was.

  B

  THE TELEPHONE ON MY BEDSIDE table rang in the middle of the night, and I grabbed it before the second ring, my heart suddenly pounding; no good news comes at that hour—never. I was terrified one of my parents might have passed away. But it was Lucy. I couldn’t understand a thing she was saying. She was sobbing into the telephone, screaming almost, and the odd thing about it is, the moment I heard her voice I sort of relaxed enough to almost fall back asleep; I know that must sound strange, even monstrous, but I was just so relieved that it wasn’t my mother or father calling, telling me to hurry to some hospital, that there wasn’t much time left. I handed Henry the phone, and he took it, and began trying to calm her down. He sat on the edge of his side of the bed and I touched his backbone, his spine. The drapes were open on one of our windows and outside, though it was night, the darkness was brighter for all the snow.

  “All right, I’ll be right there,” Henry said. “Just hang on.”

  He handed me the receiver to place back in the cradle. “What’s wrong?” I asked, sitting up. “Where’re you going?”

  “It’s Ronny. They can’t find him.”

  “What do you mean they can’t find him. We just saw him.”

  “Well they can’t fucking find him, Beth, all right? I’m going out. I’ve got my phone.”

  “Let me come with you.”

  Henry was pulling on two pair of socks, long underwear, his thickest pair of Carhartts, flannel shirts, and a wool sweater.

  “No, don’t. Listen, I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get out the driveway. You just stay with the kids. We’ll find him.”

  He was already almost out of our bedroom, and I had the feeling that I wouldn’t see him again, ever, that this must be what it was like to be married to a fireman, or a policeman, that this was what a soldier’s wife must feel. No time for good-byes or kisses, and everything left up in the air—life—just suspended, so that the person you love most in the world can go charging out into a fire, into a gunfight, into a blizzard, their mind utterly focused on helping other people, their comrades or friends.

  I stood up, followed him down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he swung on his jacket and seized his keys off the table. He turned toward the garage and I grabbed his arm.

  “I love you,” I said, and then I kissed him.

  “I love you, too.”

  “Wait.”

  “What,” he said, exasperated. “Christ, Beth, what?”

  “Here.” I handed him a wool cap and some gloves, a scarf and a granola bar. I reached into the refrigerator and handed him a Coke, a candy bar, and an apple. His hands were full.

  “I gotta go,” he said.

  “Just in case.”

  “All right.”

  “I love you.”

  He slammed the door, fired up the truck, and I watched as he pulled out into the blizzard, down our driveway and out onto the road, the red taillights of our truck disappearing. I sat down at the kitchen table. The clock on the microwave read 3:09. The kids wouldn’t be up for another four or five hours, but I was wide awake. I walked into the living room, slumped onto our couch, began leafing through some magazines Felicia had dropped off earlier in the week.

  She subscribed to some of the trashier magazines that I occasionally flipped through at the IGA, while waiting to pay for my groceries. All photographs, no articles or stories or poems. Just pictures of celebrities, and so many these days I don’t even recognize them all. Courtships and weddings and divorces. Planned or real—who even knew? Couples that you thought were perfect, breaking up after a month, a year, two years. Couples that you might see on television and say, “God they’re beautiful. And so happy. I bet she’s good for him.” Or vice versa.

  And then, you’re reading about their divorce, and it’s always the same things:… irreconcilable differences, we grew apart, it was no one’s fault, I just wasn’t “in love” anymore … Sitting there on my couch, squinting at those glossy pages, I saw a picture of Chloe and Lee walking down a New York City street. They’re holding hands, but neither one is smiling, both of them hiding behind expensive sunglasses, both wearing a lot of black. Were it not for their trendy sneakers and skinny jeans, they might as well be going to a funeral. I turned the page, began working a crossword puzzle, anything to relax my mind.

  * * *

  After that night with Lee so many years ago, I spent a listless few months at my waitressing job and at the salon, and it’s fair to say that, inasmuch as my life’s ever come off the rails, it did during that period of time. I never slept with Lee again, but for weeks we called each other at night, almost breathlessly, lying on our backs in our separate beds, like lovestruck teenagers, except that neither of us would admit that we were in love, or not in love.

  And it’s true: in that mixed-up time of my life, I slept with three other men, though none of them were especially memorable. I don’t know what I was doing, or what boundaries I might have been trying to test within myself. Maybe I was hoping I could just forget about Henry once and for all, and move on. That if I had sex with enough people, that if I betrayed his longest friendship, I could push him away forever and just be free.

  But it took me a long time to stop thinking about him.

  It was about three months after I slept with Lee that I got a call from Ronny on a Friday morning. He called me at the salon.

  “Ronny, how in the hell did you find me here?” I asked.

  “Ronny Taylor’s got his contacts. How are you, girl? You have any plans for Saturday night or Sunday morning?”

  I don’t know why, but my first thought was that now Ronny wanted to get into my pants, that all of Henry’s friends had waited just this long until they came out of the woodwork to court me. I have to admit that for that moment, I was as flattered as I was offended.

  “Look, Ronny, I don’t know. I mean, Henry and I, we just broke up not that long ago. I mean…”

  My words trickled out into silence as I heard him laughing at the other end of the line. Real Ronny belly laughter. I could feel myself blushing, covered the earpiece of the receiver as I glanced around the salon to confirm that none of the girls had witnessed my humiliation.

  “What in the hell are you laughing at?” I asked. “Ronny! Cut it out! Ronny?”

  He caught his breath, finally said, “I’m in Minneapolis for a rodeo on Saturday night. I was wondering if you might like to come. I have tickets for you, if you want ’em, right down by the action.” The word prompted him to snicker. “That’s what I was laughing about, if you need to know.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  * * *

  I had seen Ronny compete in local and regional events, little rodeos and competitions around the Little Wing area, but that was years before, toward the end of high school and not long after Ronny swore off football, wrestling, and softball. We’d all drive out to see him ride these tired-looking horses and overfed bulls in ramshackle arenas where the grandstands were broken in places, paint chipping off the fences in big, ugly swaths.

  But this was different. There were thousands of people in attendance, maybe tens of thousands, and there was Ronny’s face up on the Jumbotron at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, waving goofily, and some girls, seated behind me pointing at him. They kept saying, “He’s so goddamn cute.” Ronny, my friend.

  That night in Minneapolis he rode one bull in
particular, Jax, and I remember holding a hand over my mouth as I watched Ronny in the corral, as I watched that great creature surge and rile beneath him, and then the chute was opened and off he flew out into that arena, swinging around like the bravest ragdoll I’d ever seen: one hand high in the air, his spurs two perfect silver stars in a perpetual blur, his jeans a deep navy blue, and above his upper lip, the faintest wisp of a mustache.

  He didn’t last long—3.2 seconds—but I cheered him as he ran out of the arena, jumped the fence, and waved his hat at the crowd. You could see that he had fans, people who knew his name. He rode one more time that day, but did not qualify for the finals. After his last ride and after the bull was safely sequestered again, he removed his black Stetson, bowed deeply for his admirers, and then dusted off his Wranglers and chaps.

  I met him outside the Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis, the huge unsightly building’s cloth ceiling aglow. He was smoking a cigarette with some other guys, and one of his friends whistled as I approached. Ronny jokingly knocked that man’s cigarette out of his mouth and then flipped his hat off and frisbeed it twenty yards behind him. Everyone laughed.

  Then, he produced an elbow for me to hold on to, the perfect gentleman. We walked for a while, though it was windy and cold, an early April evening in Minnesota, and I was in heels, my feet freezing. I was constantly wiping hair out of my eyes, and he had to clutch on to his hat. We might have been a couple from a hundred years before, walking through the streets of that river town, though in truth, we were just friends.

  “Let’s get a cab,” Ronny said at last, pushing me into a yellow automobile and signaling the driver to head to his hotel. “Don’t worry. I won’t put the moves on you.”

  “I’m sorry. That was shitty of me. I don’t—I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately.” I felt like crying, covered my face, took a deep breath. “You were great out there, by the way.”

  “The hell I was. That was a terrible showing. Good thing you were the only one here to see it.”

  “Um, I wouldn’t say that. I noticed quite a few Ronny Taylor fans out there in the audience tonight. Pretty young for a guy like you, but they were definitely fans.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry,” Ronny said, “every now and then I’ll make a friend who’s a little more mature.” He grinned at me, some of his false teeth showing, and knocked his knuckles against the window just to make a noise. “Hey. You okay?” he said, when I didn’t respond. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. But I really hope your hotel has a bar.”

  * * *

  We both gulped two overpriced drinks in the first-level fern bar of the hotel, an oddly lighted room with too many mirrors and not nearly enough patrons. We sat in a booth and Ronny told me about his travels, about how he and a buddy had split gas money and drove all around America, hitting various county and state fairs, winning little purses here and there, and just barely eking out a living.

  In New Mexico their wallets had run dry, and his friend’s truck had needed a new radiator, so they slept on the floor of a girlfriend’s apartment and Ronny babysat her two-year-old son, while his friend, Clint, washed dishes at a country club until they could patch together enough money to move on. In Oklahoma, they beat up a bucktoothed oilman who had tried to molest a teenage girl in a public bathroom. They had stumbled on the scene just before a rodeo, and Ronny told the girl to go find her parents. Then Ronny and Clint carried the man out to a parking lot and beat his ribs into mush, stole his wallet, his hat, and his boots.

  “See,” Ronny said to me, pointing at his feet, “they don’t look as good as they did when I first got ’em, but still, nicest pair of boots I ever owned.”

  We touched glasses. Outside, it began to snow big, wet flakes the size of doilies. We ate a plate of chicken wings and a plate of onion rings, our fingers, lips, and chins greasy.

  “I’m happy to see you,” Ronny said, not looking at me, just working on a chicken bone.

  “Me, too.”

  We went up to his room, not quite drunk, but getting there. Those were the days when Ronny drank a lot, and when we entered the room, there were empty cans of beer everywhere, and a little table in the corner covered with cheap bottles of whiskey, vodka, and rum. A note attached to the outside of the door reading:

  Ronny,

  Don’t wait for me. Met a girl who looks like Shania Twain. See you in the morning.

  Clint

  We sat on separate beds, under the covers, drinking rum and Cokes, growing drunker and drunker, talking about Little Wing, Henry and Lee, Kip and Eddy.

  “None of my business,” said Ronny, “but you ought to get back with Hank. He loves you. You know that? He really, really loves you.”

  I nodded into my cup, took a big sip.

  “I mean, I don’t know what you’ve got going on right now, but I gotta tell you. Hank’s my friend, and he’s a good guy, and he’s fucking crazy for you. Always has been.” Ronny set his cup down. “I know we’re all supposed to be out there, sowing our wild oats and whatnot, but the thing is, I think all that stuff is a big crock of shit. Everybody’s just holding out for that one person anyway.” He held out one finger at me, to further his point, but he was drunk, and so the finger waved a bit, as if he were reprimanding me. “And trust me, I know. I get around. I’ve had my fair share.” He was shirtless, a little stand of chest hair sprouting over his breastbone, and a smaller line of hair linking his flat little belly button to his Wranglers. He tipped his Stetson over his eyes, sipped at his drink. “I’m telling you. You’ll regret it. Marry Hankie, Beth. He’s a good man.” He nodded. “A good man.”

  “Ronny, you ever coming back to Little Wing or what?”

  “I hope not,” he said. “I like Wyoming. You know? I really like it out there.”

  “I’d miss you if you never came back.”

  “So come on out and visit me. We could ride horses. Climb mountains. Look at the stars.”

  He was falling asleep, small snores gurgling in his throat and nose. I drained my cup.

  “Little Wing really where you’re gonna end up?” he asked drowsily.

  “Probably.”

  “There are worse places, for sure.”

  “Ronny?”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t fall asleep.”

  He tipped his hat up, peered over at me. “And I thought you didn’t want any funny business.” He winked, slowly.

  “I don’t. Maybe we can just watch some television. Here”—I held up my cup—“give us a refill.”

  “Well, all right. Now we’re talking. You think they got any nudie channels?”

  * * *

  A week after I saw Ronny, I called Henry. Within a year we were married. Within four years we had our first child, Eleanore. There are people in your life who are angels. Who pick up the telephone at the right time and call, because they’re worried about you, because they want to hear your voice. People who tell you it is all right to cry, or that it’s time to stop crying and get up, move on. People who tell you that you’re beautiful, that you’re enough, that they love you. It sounds strange maybe, but when people ask me about Ronny Taylor, I tell them he’s an angel.

  * * *

  Outside our living-room window, the snow was still falling, and I could no longer see the tire marks where Henry’s truck pulled out of the driveway, not so long before.

  L

  IN THE DREAM I am a golden retriever, and the sun is shining the kind of white, overexposed color you only see in photographs and movies from the 1970s. I’m running through the tall grass of my fields and someone is throwing me an old baseball. I can feel it between my teeth. I don’t know who it is, but I suppose it’s my master. We go for a walk. I feel so happy. I am thrilled to have so much hair, such thick, beautiful hair. My tongue feels like a hot, undercooked piece of bacon. We are walking up my driveway and the gravel is cool beneath my paws. I lick from puddles, I chase a pheasant from his hiding spot. My master stops at the ma
ilbox, but it is empty, only a newspaper, which he throws back down the driveway like a toy. I chase it. I become aware, suddenly, that I am dreaming, that my bedsheets are wildly tangled and that I feel exasperated, as if running a marathon in my sleep.

  The telephone was ringing beside my bed, the alarm clock-radio to its left reading 3:01. Chloe wants to try again, I thought for a moment. It’s got to be Chloe. But it wasn’t. It was Lucy, and I could tell immediately that something was wrong.

  “It’s Ronny. I keep calling and calling, he doesn’t answer. I’ve tried a hundred times and it just keeps ringing. I called Eddy and he went down to Ronny’s apartment and banged on the door and Ronny didn’t answer so Eddy broke the door down, and he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there! What the fuck, Lee? Where’s my baby? Where’s Ronny?”

  “Call the police,” I said as calmly as I could. “Call the highway patrol. Call everyone you know. Get ’em down to the mill. I’ll be right there.”

  The snow was nearly up to the running boards of my truck, but I dropped it into four-wheel low and just kept in the center of the road. I’d stowed about a cord of wood in the bed of my truck for traction, and that helped, though I did fishtail a half-dozen times before I finally saw the faint glow of other headlights and then the looming towers of Kip’s mill. Already, about ten cars and trucks were gathered in the parking lot of the mill, with a few snowmobiles pulling up, too.

  Kip was there, and he took charge, partnering people together and handing them lengths of new rope, new flashlights already equipped with new batteries, signal flares—items he must have just commandeered from the inventory of his general store inside.

  I headed out into the night on foot with Eddy, a length of rope uniting us, tied to our belt loops. We called out Ronny’s name, kicked at the snow, prodded at snowbanks with ski poles and walking sticks. The northern wind was like the teeth of a rusty old saw and still the snow kept falling as we moved farther and farther away from the mill and what little light that building and the vehicles around it could offer. I thought about Ronny, about losing my friend, and it seemed suddenly very real, very possible. We trudged on, shouting his name.