by Baxter Black
“But miss, I don’t know if I can make it to Mountain Home,” whined Busby.
“Oh, you’ll make it fine. Just a little tight is all,” she reassured him.
“No. It’s not that, it’s just that we’ve been tied up since early this morning and I’ve got to go.”
“I said I’d take you to Mountain Home,” she said.
“No,” he continued, “go, as in, to the bathroom.”
“Oh,” she said.
She looked into the agonized eyes of Busby, derailed helicopter pilot. There was no way she was going to let any of them get free. One could easily overpower her, release the others, steal her car, attack her, and leave her for the buzzards. However, the caregiver in her insisted that she help them any way she could.
“I refuse to untie you. But . . . I guess I could help facilitate the relief of your discomfort.”
Busby’s expression was one of pain, then concession. “If you please.”
Hollywood got out of the car and stood before them.
“Maybe you’d like to turn with your backs to the road? For modesty’s sake,” she suggested. They complied.
She stood behind Busby and placed the pistol in his back with her left hand. “Know what this is?” she asked.
“Yes,” Busby gasped. “I won’t do anything. I mean, I won’t try any tricks. Now, please.”
It wasn’t easy with one hand. Getting the zipper down went pretty well but then she hesitated. Busby cringed, waiting for her to start digging around, but when she unsnapped his fly he realized that she had a better idea. Hollywood grasped his waistband from the back and slid his pants and jockey briefs down below his knees. Busby made several umphs and grunts until he finally broke free with a giant “Ooooooh.”
“Anybody else?” asked Hollywood.
The blindfolded, earmuffed Pike spoke for the first time. “I’d appreciate it, ma’am. Although I wish it were under different circumstances.”
“Well,” she said, “a cowboy in the crowd. Let’s see what I can do.” She stood behind him and repeated the process. When Mr. Groundhog saw daylight, Hollywood said, “There you are, Studly.”
While Busby and Pike were watering the lillies, Hollywood walked around in front of Valter, whose eyes, ears, and mouth were all taped.
“Why,” she asked to anyone who was listening, “is this gentleman’s mouth taped? It seems an extreme thing to do, unless, of course, he has a terrible injury to his lip. Does anyone object to my cutting the tape off his mouth?”
No one said a word. Matter of fact, neither was paying her any attention. They were in sweet relief.
Hollywood stepped over to her car and removed a Leatherman pocketknife from her glove box. After twisting and turning it several times in the waning twilight, she extracted a pair of tiny scissors from its innards. Then, as carefully as she could, she cut and peeled the tape from Valter’s eyes and mouth. He blinked his eyes in the light.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
It was all Valter could do to remain civil. His intricate plan for Busby’s slow, tortured demise was all that kept him going on the Wickahoney Death March. That, and how he would deal with the old man who had humiliated him so. Not to mention that buffoon Boon and the cowboy.
Right now he would like to do exactly what Hollywood was afraid they would do, but he was losing time. The girl was getting away. Sweet talk and cooperation were the best course. Ingratiating himself for the cause, he said, “If you don’t mind, madam. If you are a nurse, then I hold your profession next to Godliness. I was in the military, wounded, and in the hands of your Sisters of Nightingale. You relieved my pain and suffering, and once again, you have come to my aid and I am grateful. In the name of the United States, the Army Nursing Corps, and the Marines, I place myself in your hands.”
“That was inspiring, General, very inspiring. Alas, I still cannot untie you, but I’ll do what I can to make you comfortable.”
They heard a car whiz by on the highway, a screech of brakes, and the whine of transmission going too fast in reverse. A small four-door sedan parked across the road from them. A young Japanese couple got out and began taking pictures.
The taped trio was still in full flush, standing at parade rest, their blinding white buttocks in a tidy line like six shrunken heads on a cannibal’s mantel. Hollywood stood to the side as an art instructor might when lecturing a class on the importance of asymmetry.
“What is it, honey?” asked the Japanese woman in her native language.
“It appears to be a folklore display by the natives,” her husband informed her, continuing to focus his telescopic lens and snap. “I read about them at the Cowboy’s Store in Elko.”
“Should we pay them?” she asked.
Hollywood yelled at them to “git your scrawny little butts back in your scrawny little car and git the dadgum heckfire outta there before I duct-tape you to the hood of my car and run it through the Robowash!”
Although “scrawny,” “duct-tape,” and “heckfire” weren’t in their vocabulary, “git” was. Kyoto and Saki hit the road.
Following the Olympic Synchronized Micturation, Hollywood did her best to pull the men’s pants back up, but it wasn’t smooth sailing. Not able or willing to negotiate the protrusions, she refused to get any more intimately involved and just left them at half mast.
“But you’re a nurse,” whined Busby, whose depth finder was chilly.
“No,” she said. “I just do the accounting at the rez medical clinic. Do you want a ride or not?”
Hollywood helped them load in the back of her car. They sat humbly like three large angler fish on the bottom of the ocean. She covered each of their laps with a plastic grocery bag she found on the floorboard.
An hour or so later they were driving into the streetlights of Mountain Home, Idaho. Hollywood pulled into the parking lot of the Mountain Home police station and shut off the car.
Valter spoke. “Ma’am, it would be just fine if you took us back to a car lot. Let us out, maybe cut our bonds. We’d be glad to pay you for your trouble.”
Hollywood looked over into the backseat at her companions. “I could, but in the interest of the Ten Most Wanted victims’ rights groups everywhere, I think it best that I leave you in the hands of a professional.”
32
DECEMBER 5: LICK AND SHERRILL GET BETTER ACQUAINTED
In the dark of the night, Lick felt a finger on his lips. He’d been sleeping soundly on the couch and Teddie Arizona had been starring in his dream. In spite of the cold shower he’d taken after supper, their afternoon tryst was now replaying on the big screen behind his eyes.
They were in a meadow on a mattress. “Come into my arms, bonnie Jean” was playing softly. She lay before him, but the parts of her he ached to see had been airbrushed out, even in the shower scene, which cut in and out of the meadow, flickering fuzzily by in slow motion.
Lick began rising like a boogie board in the surf. Teddie Arizona’s hair was floating. She was in a halo of bubbles. They were belly to belly and surfacing into a bright blue sky. He was about to explode out of his dream when suddenly he woke, confused.
The finger on his lips reached up and brushed across his eyelids, reclosing them. Then the hand slid down to his naked chest and started exploring. He lay still, as still as he could, as the light-footed fingers tracked across his body, peeling back the comforter.
CONTACT!
A welder’s shower of sparks flew off the back of his eyes! The nearly full moon lit the room. Before him was a black-haired mermaid wrapped in an incandescent sarong, her tresses reflected in the watery moonlight.
She knelt and leaned forward till her skin was pressing against him. With her free left hand she began rubbing his right ear, the lobe, the helix, the conch. She ran her fingers under his neck and caressed his taut muscles. She tipped his head toward her and pressed the underside of her neck softly on his lips.
Lick involuntarily kissed her skin. She moved her neck and c
hest and chin and cheek and face and mouth over his quivering lips and smooth moustache. She purred like a mountain lion, rubbing and stretching and pushing against him. She tasted like ginger and fudge. She felt like velvet and smelled like liquid smoke.
Just about the time Lick thought he could no longer stand the intensity, Sherrill licked his ear and whispered, “Follow me.”
33
DECEMBER 6: THE MORNING AFTER
The sun rose the next morning to see what was going to happen at Sherrill’s house. Sherrill had to be at work by nine. She woke without the alarm at six-thirty sharp. Lick’s leg was touching hers. He was breathing shallowly. His hair smelled like sagebrush. It was a familiar aroma on the high desert.
She slid from contact with him and stood by the bed. Men, she thought. Will I ever find a good one? She pulled a robe on over her naked body and silently walked into the bathroom.
In the shower she soaked in the hot stream and relived the night. He was good, she remembered. The second time was even better. She scrubbed, shampooed her long hair, rinsed off, and stepped out onto the throw rug. Her body was steaming in the cool room.
Standing in front of the mirror, she could see herself from the waist up. “You’re good, too,” she said aloud, and smiled. “I could fall in love with me!”
The old man gave a quick knock on the front door and walked right in. It was eight-fifteen in the morning. There was a pale blue sky and a skiff of snow on the fields. Wind had plastered the white stuff to the west side of the fence posts.
The old man’s racket stomping snow off his boots woke Lick from his boar’s nest on the sofa, where he had retreated shortly after Sherrill had arisen.
“Good morning, Al,” said Sherrill, stepping out of the kitchen to greet him. “Would you like some oatmeal? I put venison in it.”
“Very authentic, my little Cherokee maiden,” Al answered expansively. “Don’t mind if I do!”
T.A. heard him arrive and came out of her bedroom looking freshly scrubbed and ready for a new day.
“Good morning, children!” announced the old man, pleased with his invention of their new family arrangement.
“Hello, Daddy,” T.A. said. “Did you sleep well?”
“Just fine, honey. And how about you, my faithful son?” the old man said, looking over at Lick. “And how did rodeo’s answer to Minnie Pearl and Boxcar Willie spend the night? In sweet repose, I hope.”
Lick lay under the wadded up blanket. He glanced at T.A. Did she know that he’d spent the night with Sherrill? Did he look guilty? Did he have any reason to feel guilty? Was there really anything between him and T.A.? After all, he justified, she’d spurned his advances last night.
T.A. waited for Lick to say something. He lay dumb as a post, with his hair stickin’ up sideways and a bare foot pokin’ out from under the blanket. He was looking at her with a strange expression, kinda hangdog . . . like a puppy that has pooped on the carpet.
Strange, she thought, looking at him. I don’t get it. Maybe he’s embarrassed because he tried to follow his carnal instincts last night and I stopped him. It irritated her slightly.
She glanced at Sherrill, who was radiant and was looking at Lick with a gleam in her eye. A fuzzy picture filtered into T.A.’s mind. She looked again at Lick, who was smiling lamely back at Sherrill.
No. It can’t be, thought T.A. What’s wrong with me? I don’t have time to think about this. I need to focus! I need a serious plan to save my life and, for sure, it would be a lot less complicated if Lick wasn’t tuggin’ on my . . . Her mind started to say “heart,” but her nerves said “elastic.” T.A. turned quickly away from Lick. “Looks like Brother’s not quite ready to rise and shine.”
Sherrill held her counsel. She knew all wasn’t as it seemed, but as long as the platonic ruse was kept up, she would be the willing beneficiary.
Teddie Arizona was running on adrenaline. Complicating the fight-or-flight electrical charges sparking across her synapses was a smokestackful of emotions about a man she hardly knew. The high whistle of sex could be heard above the rumble of the steam engine. It was distracting.
Lick, college-educated animal-science major, divorced ex-never-world-champion bullrider, no longer prone to grand ambition, thirty-three-year-old has-been, living a day at a time, had been spurned by a lady who actually pried open his heart a millimeter or two in the last week, but who now can’t wait to unload him, and simultaneously smiled on by a Shoshone hula girl that he can’t take his eyes off of. Mostly, he can’t absorb it all right now, he just needs to go to the bathroom.
34
DECEMBER 6: T.A. REFLECTS ON HER LIFE
As soon as Sherrill left for work, T.A. called Al and Lick to the kitchen table.
“Would you, both of you, let me talk to you a minute?” she asked. She poured Lick a cup of coffee. “First, I want you both to know how grateful I am that you rescued me. I don’t know what would have happened if I’d crashed across the canyon or in the river. I’m lucky to be alive, to have survived the wreck, and then to have wound up close enough to be found. Then, that you kept me and, well, cared for me until I could function.”
“Wuddn’t nuthin’ else we—” interrupted the old man.
“Wait, Al,” she contra-interrupted. “Please let me finish. And finally, what I am most grateful of all for, that you trusted me, fought for me, and have gotten me out of the clutches of my husband’s—not really my husband—but his henchmen. For reasons of my own, I plan to return to Vegas to stop this crazy hunt he’s got planned. Best I can figure, it’s going to happen next week. Sherrill’s going to help me get a ride to Elko, where I can rent a car and drive down to Vegas.” She paused. “I plan to go alone.”
There. She’d said it.
The old man started to protest. She held up her hand.
“Please, Al, I’ve made up my mind. I thought about it all night. It’ll work and I won’t be in any danger. And having three of us would just complicate it.”
“How are you gonna get to Elko?” asked Lick.
“Sherrill has a friend who lives there, Olivia is her name. She’s going to call and invite her to come over tonight. I can ride back with her.”
The old man and Lick sat silent.
“It’ll work, boys. You won’t need to worry.”
“We will, though,” said Lick. “What about those guys we left out on the road?”
“They don’t know where we are or they would have showed up already, right?” she said.
“Prob’ly,” answered Lick with more conviction than he felt. “But I’d . . . we’d rest easier if we knew we could contact you to make sure, since, best I can tell, me and Al are the only ones on Earth who know the mess you’re in. And if you disappeared, we wouldn’t know where to start lookin’.”
“If I disappeared, it wouldn’t make any difference, I—”
“Hog balls!” said the old man. “Just who do you think yer talkin’ to? Young lady, you got a short memory. Lick here, insensitive, wishy-washy burnout that he is, asked you a legitimate request. Just give us some way of knowin’, ’cause if you disappeared it would make a big difference . . . to us.”
T.A. blanched.
Lick was staring at the old man. He was surprised by his articulate ferocity and impressed by his argument, except for the “insensitive, wishy-washy burnout” part.
“What about Sherrill?” asked Lick.
“What about her?” said T.A., a little too quickly.
“We could use her as a contact. We’d check in with her every day or so for a couple weeks. You could leave a message if you needed help,” said Lick.
“Let me think about it,” mulled T.A.
“Fair enough,” said the old man.
“I’m gonna take a shower,” said Lick, and rose to leave.
“If you want me to wash your clothes,” offered T.A., “leave ’em on the floor in front of the washer. There’s a big towel on the shelf above it. You can wear that till your clothes dry.”
>
The old man and T.A. remained at the table.
“You sure you wanna do this?” he asked.
“You mean, stop the hunt?”
“Yup,” said the old man. “There’s nothin’ more dangerous than stepping between a dishonest man and his money.”
“It’s bigger than me, Al.” She struggled for the words. “These last few days with you and Lick I’ve had time to look at myself and I don’t like what I see. For a year and a half, more than that, I’ve been living with this jerk—in our arrangement, he calls it—for money. For money, Al. I’m ashamed. I’m not sure if I’d have stayed much longer anyway, but when I discovered his plan to invite all these, these rich guys in to hunt the endangered animals that Ponce has at his wildlife park—illegally, I’m sure—something snapped! I have to stop them from killing those animals, but more important, I need to stop them to get my self-respect back. Hell, Al, I used to sing in the choir.
“F. Rank never even gave a thought that I would care. He discussed it over the phone with Ponce right in front of me. Like I was furniture. Which I was. Just the piece he took to bed and displayed when his folks came to visit. He’d already bought my soul. It was cheap. People like him and Ponce, they’re so powerful they think they can buy anybody, that they’re above the law. But they finally misjudged the depth of my self-esteem.”
For the first time since the old man had found her, he saw beneath the surface. “Won’t ya let us help ya, girl?” he asked.
“No. I’ve got a plan and I’m going to do it my way.”
“All right. I see you’ve made up yer mind. However, you can’t just sneak off durin’ the night in true cowboy fashion without us biddin’ you a fond farewell. Even the Lone Ranger had time to wave and leave a silver bullet. Stone said there’s a big dance tonight at the Miner’s Club down there in Mountain City. The Tindall Brothers are playin’ and the booze is furnished by Misters Beam and Daniel. Seems the least we can do to thank Sherrill. Show her a good time, buy her a drink, spin her around the dance floor. How ’bout we make it a foursome?”