Orinoco

by Dan Pollock

  “I knew it!” she said, clapping her hands once in delight.

  “You knew what?”

  “You’re smitten, Dad! Obviously something happened to you down there, okay? Some kind of epiphany. Only it wasn’t a buried artifact that did it to you, it was a girl! Dad, that’s fantastic!”

  “Teresa, I’m afraid you’re jumping to conclusions here—”

  “Okay, okay. I promise I won’t tease you, and I promise I won’t tell Mom. But please, I want you to tell me all about Jacqueline. Or do you call her Jacquie?”

  “Actually her nickname is Jake.”

  “Much better. So, did you kiss her?”

  “Good Lord, Teresa!”

  “I do believe you’re blushing!”

  He stonewalled her as best as he could, but there really was no escape from her avidity. So, after dinner, while they washed and dried and put away, Sam began the terribly difficult task of sharing with his daughter his nascent feelings for a girl two years younger than herself. Teresa had promised not to interrupt, at least not every other sentence. But when he began to explain that whatever had happened between them was now over, she cut in angrily:

  “How do you know that?”

  “Well, let’s just say it ended messy. Anyway, it should be over. Hell, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. It was damnfool behavior on my part.”

  “I’d say your being alone all these years is damnfool behavior. You need someone, Dad. Mom and I talk about it all the time.”

  “Thanks, I’ll take it under advisement. The question is, who the hell would want to put up with an ornery old critter like me—unless for the money?”

  “Now you’re starting to sound like me. Okay, you said it ended with Jake. But did she actually say it was over?”

  “Something like that.”

  Sam was spared further painful revelations by the bustling arrival of Wally Torres. He pumped hands and greeted Sam as “Mr. Warren” before settling into first names. Teresa had asked Sam to adopt the slightly altered surname around her friends, although she thought it extremely unlikely that any of them, Wally included, read the business periodicals that occasionally featured Sam’s name and face. It turned out Wally hadn’t eaten yet, so Teresa heated up the posole, pork and corn-husk stew, and they joined him around the kitchen table.

  Wally was a good-natured and swarthy young man with a booming laugh whom Teresa had once described as “your basic teddy bear.” Thanks to a narrative gift and an uncanny ear for ghetto jive, Wally kept them in stitches recounting the antics of his players, most of whom were black and all of whom he obviously regarded with great affection. In between anecdotes, the boyish assistant coach asked Sam about his cattle ranch—it having been established, at their two previous meetings, that Sam was in that business over in Oklahoma. Sam responded by complaining, candidly enough, about feed prices, the ongoing drought, and—with a wary eye at his daughter—increasing attacks by environmentalists on the whole damn livestock industry. Wally was sympathetic, and Teresa kept still.

  But it was obvious to Sam that his daughter was, in her phrase, very much “smitten” with her young man, and he with her. Sam observed them touching frequently and constantly in eye contact. And there seemed a fair reciprocity of interest. Teresa asked good questions about the Lobos’ upcoming game with BYU, concerning matchups and strategy, and Wally offered appreciative comments about her current ceramic project, then gave Sam an enthusiastic account of a visit they’d made to the San Ildefonso Pueblo north of Santa Fe, famous for its black matte pottery. This was one jock-type apparently willing to have his horizons widened beyond the sports page, Sam decided. At the same time, he seemed the sort of basic guy who wasn’t likely to lose his bearings if he found out that Teresa’s father’s ranch was a whole helluva lot bigger than he’d been led to believe. But that was Teresa’s call.

  After dessert and coffee and more talk, it was late enough that Sam figured he’d better go. And though nobody had said anything, it was obvious that Wally wasn’t going anywhere. So Sam levered to his feet and ambled to the door for handshakes and goodbyes and as wholehearted a daughterly embrace as he could remember getting in years and years.

  “‘Night, Dad,” she said as he stepped out into the surprising starlight of the high plateau. “Now you call me. I want more details.”

  Wally stood close beside her, an arm around her waist, the other waving. Even after all these years, Sam discovered it could feel strange to be the one leaving while another man exercised a claim of primacy over his little girl. Sam waved back, then started down the dark pathway toward a distant lamppost and his pickup.

  Driving back to his motel he passed a flashing neon sign advertising topless dancers. On an erratic, lonely impulse, he went back and parked in a back lot beside a lot of souped-up metal. Inside, music thudded and men whooped and hollered while a big-breasted girl in floppy sombrero, G-string and boots pranced down a perimeter-lighted runway. Sam settled in a dark corner, had a longneck beer and looked around. There seemed to be a lot of raucous regulars, who shouted out the names of the dancers and bikini-clad barmaids. Except for a couple of sad-looking senior citizens ogling the vital young merchandise from ringside, Sam figured he was the oldest guy in the place.

  A chunky Latina waitress came by with a high-kilowatt smile and improved his mood slightly with a few flirtatious comebacks. Sam declined a second beer, but tipped her lavishly, then walked back out into the star-studded night, feeling old and foolish and just a little sorry for himself.

  Shortly after dawn he was booming east on the interstate, pointing the Dakota’s blue Plexiglas bug shield back toward Oklahoma and the ranch—and wondering what to do with the rest of his life.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sam reached the Lazy S turnoff just as the postal truck was pulling away. So he maneuvered the pickup alongside the big galvanized box and fished out his mail before turning into the long paved drive to the ranch house. He left the Dakota in front of the garages for Bert Hooper, the foreman’s stepson, to wash down, then headed up the flagstone walk, flipping through circulars, magazines, catalogues, solicitations, bills and more bills. Not a damn letter in the lot.

  Then a long envelope slid out of an Orvis catalogue. It bore a Miami postmark and the return address of an international remail outfit Enrico occasionally used for forwarding business correspondence, rather than rely on the vagaries of Venezuela’s Expreso Internacional. Offhand, Sam couldn’t think of any documents that might call for his immediate attention.

  Hearing the muted roar of the housekeeper’s vacuum cleaner behind the big hand-hewed doors, and realizing his boots and jeans were probably layered with the dust of three states, he bypassed the entranceway and took the outside stairway directly up to his second-story office. Inside, he sank into his leather swivel, propped his bootheels on the corner of his desk and glanced through his phone messages. There were several from Hardesty Eason, God only knew why. Sam tossed them aside, then sliced open the remail.

  Inside was an airweight envelope plastered with blue stamps bearing Bolívar’s familiar visage. Why would Enrico put stamps on a remail? Then Sam focused on the unfamiliar handwriting, backslanted with numerous tails and flourishes. The return address was “J. N. Lee, c/o Tosto, Hato La Promesa, Edo. Bolívar, Venezuela.”

  Jake.

  He sliced it open and unfolded four closely written pages in the same stylized hand, on salmon-colored stationery with the embossed letterhead of the Mt. Irvine Bay Hotel, Scarborough, Tobago, West Indies. It was dated three days before.

  My Dearest Sam,

  Excuse the fancy stolen stationery. As you see, I’ve succumbed to your generous offer to stay at Hato La Promesa, and so has Dr. Laya López, or Arqui has he now permits me to call him. I’ve also been up in your Cessna, videotaping government-sanctioned, corporate criminality—sights so totally unlike the flight into Shangri-La I took that wonderful morning with you (and a certain nameless Neanderthal).

>   By the way, Enrico is a perfect host and a real mensche—or should I say hombre? And already a dear friend. And of course our favorite topic of conversation is El Jefe, aka Señor Sam. So before I go any farther, I want you to know that you are very much with me here, and that I think about you constantly.

  And let me get something else off my heart, Sam. I’m truly sorry—for everything. Selfishly, more than anything, for what happened to us. But sorrier than I can say for what happened to you, and to Arqui. Of course, his academic colleagues have rallied wonderfully to his support, while the Proteus gang has apparently acted more à la Felix. I would never have believed that Daddy would turn on you as he did. But then, Arqui never thought Felix would stab him the back either. So much for loyalty. But more on that later.

  Mea culpa continued: I guess you figured out (if you cared) that I thought you’d dumped me for Señorita Blonde Bombshell after I left you at Daddy’s party. I hope you don’t remember the horrid things I said—once I discovered you had survived your terrible fall! I got a measure of comeuppance several days later when Marina Estevez (her name, in case you forgot) ran in to me outside Cerro Calvario and told me what really happened that night—how she was only trying to help you off the ship. And at least for her, the disaster turned out to be a stroke of luck. As a result of her “exposure” (sorry about that!), Marina got promoted to an anchorette slot in Caracas.

  But levity aside, I realize now I was at least partly responsible for what happened to you. Obviously, the last thing you needed when you were trying to clear your head was a giddy girl with a bottle of bubbly. Sam, I am so sorry. And I feel even more guilt when I think of what happened later with the Proteus Board—knowing they must have used what happened on the Kallisto against you. I still can’t believe those people could join my father in his sordid little putsch against you, after all you’ve done to build that company. In my eyes, and I’m sure in yours, my Dad is now very much an assassin. Et tu, D.W.? I’ve never been so ashamed.

  Sam, is there anything I can do to make you forgive me? If there is, I swear I’ll do it. It occurred to me that you might even think I was somehow in league with Daddy and deliberately set you up for some kind of shipboard fiasco by getting you drunk. Oh God, I hope you don’t think that! Believe me, Sam, I will never forgive Daddy for what he did—and I have told him so.

  Of course, he thinks it will all blow over. I’ve played the prodigal daughter so many times, always coming back in a state of impecunious contrition—for the paternal handout, or whatever. But I have a little money of my own. Enough to buy Handycam cassettes and other necessities—though Enrico refuses to accept a single bolívar from me. Meanwhile, Daddy keeps ordering me to end my little mutiny and return to the ship. He wants to sail away and let Ray and Owen handle the atrocity from here on. I hung up on him.

  So basically I guess I am doing what I wanted to do with my life, using my fledgling cinematic talents to document what is going on here, trying to further a cause I believe in—a cause that, in some sense, unites me with you. And while I ply my craft, part of me thinks about you, and about us. And about what Enrico told me.

  He’s worried about you, Sam. He says when you left, and when he talked to you on the phone later, you looked and sounded defeated for the first time he can remember. He says he’s seen you knocked down, but that you always got up fighting. He doesn’t see that now. He’s afraid you’ve gone back to your ranch to grow old.

  If he’s right, Sam, then make him wrong. You mustn’t let that happen, my darling. Yes, I do still think of you that way, and I dare to say it, after all these paragraphs of building my nerve. I feel like hysterical Scarlett, begging her Rhett not to go off to Charleston and sit on a rocker, sipping whisky the rest of his days, begging him to still give a damn!

  Sam, there is a part of me that wants so much to fly north and rent a car and put on a picture hat and drive down this long dusty road to your ranch, like the one in Giant. That’s how I kind of visualize the Lazy S, only not with that horrid Charles Addams house. I can just imagine those snowy eyebrows of yours lifting in surprise—and maybe in other miscellaneous emotions.

  But I’m not coming yet. I’ve hardly ever finished a project, so I’ve decided to darn well finish what I’ve started here, Lost Cause though it may be. Then I thought of phoning you, but there was too much to say, and I got cold feet, or cold fingers. So finally, like a Jane Austen heroine, I turned to the post to convey my fugitive emotions. I hope this gets to you quickly, Sam. I’m putting all kinds of stamps on it, but when Enrico comes back from wherever he’s gone, I’m going to ask if there’s some faster way of getting it to you—like Fed Ex or something. (Yes, I’ll admit corporate America does have its uses.)

  I see I’ve got room to squeeze in a final paragraph, and my vagrant thoughts turn naturally toward naughtiness. Sam, though I apologized for hyping your blood-alcohol level that night on the sun deck and said I feel guilty, the truth is, when I think about what went on between us, what I really feel is excitement. I mean, I start horripilating and everything. (Look it up, my darling!) And then I start thinking of other things we could do together. Like... and like... Sorry! This was supposed to be a contrite letter, a letter of resignation and ineffable sadness, like Bogey saying good-bye to Bergman in the fog. Instead, it’s becoming incendiary. At least for me, and I hope a wee bit for you too. And you know, the more I think about it, Big Sam, the more I’m convinced we really do belong together. In all ways. And believe me, that’s...

  Not the last you’ll hear from

  Jake—the Jungle Girl

  *

  Sam put it aside halfway through the third read and stared out the window, which commanded a view of the long drive. He visualized her arriving like she said, in a convertible, black hair whipping in the wind under a big sun hat. What else could he visualize, after she got her? Jacqueline in the big bedroom next door, padding around or stretched out sleek and splendid. Hell, yes. Jacqueline long-striding out to the stables in tailored riding habit, then cantering out to the four corners. No problem.

  Jacqueline living here, as mistress of the ranch? Jacqueline, an Oklahoma matron, Eurasian pillar of the charity league and the garden club? Not really. She’d eventually go crazy cooped up here. Oftener and oftener, she’d be wanting to fly off to somewhere smart and sophisticated—New York, London, Geneva, Paris—anywhere but Tulsa or OK City. And why not? Jacqueline Lee was an exotic jewel that belonged in those settings. Sam would traipse along, becoming over the years an increasingly decrepit companion, squinting at the bills. It would be a hell of a revenge on D.W. though. He had to grin at that.

  But she still wanted him, desired him. What an unlikely revelation—and every bit as incendiary as she hoped. Of course, Jacqueline was obviously affected by his apparent idealism, just as Teresa had been. What would happen when Jacqueline realized his anti-mining posture was more of an aberration than a conversion? Without having seen that prehistoric flute, to be honest, Sam would still be solidly with D.W. Because, dammit, Venezuela did need the jobs, and Proteus did need the ore.

  He sighed. Recrossed his ankles. Held a one-man board meeting. Well, there was no future in it, him and Jake, that was clear. But it couldn’t hurt to imagine the two of them, try it on for size, think about it. And remember the way it had been between them—on the ride, and under the stars that night. In the bookshelf behind him was a dictionary. Sam spun the chair, tipped it out and thumbed through. Pretty much like he figured, horripilate meant to get goose bumps, though the causes enumerated ran to fear, disease and cold, not erotic excitement.

  He reached for the letter again, reread a few favorite parts, looked at the envelope, speculated about the N in J. N. Lee. Natalie? Nancy? Or something Korean? Of course, he could dial La Promesa and ask her direct. Hell, he could go down there. And do what? Help her film? Carry her camera bag? New job description: chairman emeritus slash gofer. But who cared, if it would work out? But how long before her cinematically inspired em
otions evaporated, and she discovered he wasn’t Gable or Bogart? How many Félixes would start circling then, and how would Sam deal with that? Christ, who was he kidding?

  He swung his boots off the desk, decided to shower and change, grab a sandwich and go out check the herd. He was, after all, just Sam “Warren” now, small-time cattleman and big-time coupon-clipper. Was that being whipped, like Enrico said? Maybe so. One good tilt with a windmill could do that to a man. But there’d been a nice long string of victories before he’d been summarily unhorsed. And now, well, there just didn’t seem any more reason to go out jousting.

  *

  He was out on the north end with Chick Hooper in the Wrangler. They’d spotted a pair of buzzards exiting a ravine, so they’d parked to check it out. Found a cow carcass down on the rocks, picked clean. Probably a stray, ran over the edge trying to escape being rounded up. As they climbed back into the Jeep, the cellular phone rang.

  Chick answered, handed it to Sam.

  It was Hardesty Eason.

  “The damnedest thing, Sam. Somebody’s blowing up our equipment down there.”

  “Aw, shit, Hardy. What happened?”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you since dawn. Didn’t you get the messages? Somebody burned out three dozers last night, plus a gas truck and a water truck and one of our motor graders. Plus they blew up a huge section of track, most of it stored right on your ranch property. We think they used our own dynamite, stole it from a construction shed on the mountain. We figure it’s that archaeologist’s Commie uncle, and maybe the archaeologist hisself.”

  “Dr. Laya’s plenty pissed off, but he’s no bomb-thrower, believe me.”

  “Whoever did it, Sam, dropped a bunch of revolutionary fliers, demanding Proteus get the hell out of Venezuela. The usual Marxist crap.”

  “Was anybody injured?”

  “Not so far. But I gather D.W.’s daughter is still down in the area—”