by Raisor, Gary
Mad dashes to the bathroom.
Later that night. Sitting at McDonald's. A Formica table decorated with fine china, candles in silver holders, roses, a white linen tablecloth, eating Big Macs and laughing like crazy people while the other customers stared at them.
There had been sad moments, too.
The time Leon told the story about how his face had been cut.
The night he had called and asked if she knew where Darlene had gone.
Part of the past. Gone. All gone now.
Leon's murder seemed incomprehensible to her.
At odd moments the image of Leon's broken body in a freezer kept peeking around the corner of her mind. It was a fleeting sight. Gone in an instant. Each time his specter appeared, he would hold out ajar of pig's feet to her. Then the bloody face would smile from the depths of the freezer, inviting her to reach inside.
The contents of the jar swirled unseen behind the frosty glass. Round and round.
Something inside was trying to get out, she could hear it scratching.
Against her will, Louise saw herself putting her hand into the jar, but Leon and his grisly offering kept disappearing before she could touch whatever was inside. Louise knew she was only prolonging the inevitable and that filled her with a sense of futility. Each time she thought about Leon and Dorinda, the contents of the jar became more real.
Soon she was going to face what was inside. She didn't know if she was up to the job.
Facing things wasn't exactly one of her strengths.
Shading her eyes, Louise gazed toward the mountains in the far distance. The sun was burning off the mist at their summit, drawing it upward in long finger-shaped spirals. The sight reminded her of a hand reaching out, a tired spirit trying to pull itself out of the clouds toward Heaven. But God wasn't in a helpful mood today. He brushed the fingers away before they could grasp hold.
The parade, led by covered wagons, moved past the Cates Motel and Coffee Shop. Old Charlie, in his white apron and the new white chefs hat he had broken out for the occasion, sat a plate in front of a tourist and waved at some kids on the street. His eyebrows still hadn't grown back after that little accident at the barbecue grill. Dressed all in white, his pale hairless head and pudgy stomach made him a dead ringer for the Pillsbury Doughboy. He pressed his stomach and laughed.
The kids thought Charlie was funny and waved back.
Boyce, Nash, and Kevin rode past in the stagecoach, followed by Manny, Ernesto, and Jesus on horseback. They all looked game, though a little tired, and Louise suspected they had been out late last night. She was exhausted herself. Amy had come home a little after three and they had spent the night talking about John's phone call. And the two drifters at Jake's.
At the moment Amy was with Jesse, and for once, Louise was glad of that.
Boyce yelled at Louise, "You seen Bobby today?"
"No," Louise yelled back. She started to say something else to them but one of the horses pulling their wagon raised its tail and deposited a steaming load in the street.
Waves of laughter rose from the sidelines. The crowd began chanting in unison, "Pooper scooper, Pooper scooper."
"Looks like they're playing your song," Nash said to Boyce, handing him the shovel and broom. "Try not to step in anything this time, will you?"
Boyce swept up the mess to thunderous applause while an elderly Japanese couple pointed a camcorder at him. He stopped to take a bow and had to run to catch up to the stagecoach.
"Oh, man"—Kevin indicated the contents of the shovel—"that's almost as green as your face after that last shot of tequila."
"No, I'd say it's closer to Bobby's after that hustler from Texas walked out with all his money. I wonder where that shithead is hiding?" Boyce sounded worried. "You think he's okay?"
Kevin pulled back on the reins, bringing the stagecoach to a halt. "Yeah, he's fine. He's just pissed we got on his case about Jesse. He'll be here for the rodeo."
"I don't know, man. Something's going on. Where the hell is Chester? I saw his car at the house last night."
"Ain't nobody seen Martin, neither," Nash added. "God, I hope the three of them ain't out getting tanked up somewhere. I don't think I can deal with that."
Up ahead, by Pierce's Merchandise, a couple of wild burros had walked out into the middle of the street, temporarily halting the procession.
Louise trotted over and chased them on across.
"Nice ass," an anonymous voice called out.
Some of the spectators cheered, a few booed. "Write 'em a ticket," someone else yelled.
The mayor, on horseback, stopped in front of her. "Any luck finding my radials, Louise?"
"Not yet, Your Honor." Perspiration caused Louise's police uniform to stick to her and she kept plucking at it, trying to keep the heavy material away from her skin. The ten pounds that she had gained in the last year weren't helping matters any. She felt as if everyone were watching her, that they saw she wasn't a real cop.
Once a year Stuart Johnson deputized her and made her help out with the parade. The whole thing was like dress-up when she was a little girl: "Look at me, Mommy, I'm a police woman." Even the pistol on her hip didn't seem real. She hefted the holster, smoothing down the mark where the Sam Browne belt had been let out a notch.
Something sailed out of the crowd. Landed in the middle of the street.
Louise watched the object hit, bounce once, and lie still. Smoke poured out, and she darted forward. She heard a hissing come from the smoke. Too late, she recognized the sound.
A string of firecrackers.
The first one went off, a tiny pop. A second followed. Popcorn was the word that ran through Louise's mind. Sounded just like popcorn. She knew what was going to happen. She turned, headed for the mayor's horse.
A third firecracker went off. Faster this time.
The mayor's horse rolled his eyes, showing white.
Then the rest of the firecrackers went off, whipping their tail of sparks back and forth like a stepped-on scorpion.
The mayor's horse squealed, reared, almost unseating its rider. But Louise was there. She grabbed the reins and held on until everything was under control.
The mayor glared at the crowd, searching for the culprit. Smiling, bland faces stared back. One, freckled and topped with a mop of red hair, was smiling a little more than the rest. The face belonged to Elliot Cates.
"Thanks, Louise, that was quick thinking," the mayor said. "For a woman." His dignity looked a little worse for wear.
"No problem, Your Honor. Cooking dinner, fighting off PMS, stopping a runaway horse, it's all part of a woman's job." She massaged her shoulder. Her arm felt as though it had been jerked out of the socket.
The mayor gave her a puzzled look before riding off.
When Louise turned back to the crowd, Elliot was gone.
The parade continued on, bright splashes of color moving past Louise: a buckboard pulled by white horses, more covered wagons, women dressed as settlers walked by with their Adidas and Nikes peeking out from beneath long print dresses, Navajos in their ceremonial garb—one had forgotten to remove his watch—hawkers selling sparklers, cotton candy, and silver balloons.
Lots of strangers. The crowd made Louise uneasy.
Crowder Flats was 157 people eleven months and three weeks out of the year, and that was the way Louise liked it. Soon the festivities would be over, all the strangers gone. By tomorrow night Crowder Flats would be a ghost town again.
There were only a couple of events left: awarding first prize for the largest snake in the rattlesnake roundup—old Jebediah had been a snake handler—next was a reenactment of a stagecoach holdup. Nash, Boyce, and Kevin would be doing the driving. Ernesto, Jesus, and Manny would be the outlaws holding them up. That would be followed by a staged hanging of the culprits.
Then came the rodeo tonight. Bobby and Jesse would be competing in the bull riding. Everyone was talking about the event and the whole town would turn out to watch th
e two local boys go at it.
That is, if Bobby showed up. Louise had seen Jesse earlier, but where was Bobby?
A pockmarked man with an earring caught Louise's eye and she watched while he put his arms around a girl in black leather and a Harley T-shirt, running his hands under the material, cupping her breasts. Bikers. Hundreds of them. They called themselves the Legion of Death and they were camped at the outskirts of town. At night Louise could hear the roar of their bikes as they rode around their huge bonfire.
There was nothing anyone could do about them. All kinds of people showed up for the Frontier Days celebration.
Louise stared the biker girl's T-shirt, taking in the two smiling skeletons screwing on a black background. Right beneath a winking skull and crossbones were the words:
WARNING! SEX CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.
The two bikers saw Louise watching them. The man pulled his hands from beneath the girl's T-shirt, put them on the hood of a car and spread his legs as though he had been busted. The girl blew Louise a kiss. The rest of the bikers hooted. They weren't fooled by Louise's uniform—they knew she was no cop. Their laughter followed her when she walked away.
Louise fervently wished Frontier Days were over and she could get back to her normal job, dispatching.
Sheriff Stuart Johnson walked over and put his arm around her. "You doing okay, kiddo?"
"Can't we do something about the bikers?" Louise asked.
"Well, that wouldn't be very neighborly since this Frontier Days thing is all about freedom," the sheriff said. "Wouldn't be right to turn somebody away because personal hygiene isn't first on their list of priorities, now would it?" He winked.
Louise smiled, hugged him back. "I guess not, not when you put it that way."
"They just want to get to you, so don't let 'em."
"Thanks, I'm trying not to.," Louise looked into the baggy face of the old man, at the twinkling eyes buried in their pouches of fat, and tried to smile. "Sorry, Stuart, I'm not very good around people. I guess they can tell I'm nervous."
"You got to learn to smile, Louise. You have been the most serious girl I have ever known. Even when you were little." He hitched up his pants where they were sliding away from his ample girth. "You remember the first time you came into my office; you couldn't have been more than nine or ten?"
Louise shook her head no, began edging away.
"You were all out of breath, said you spotted one of the guys on the wanted posters in the post office. You wanted me to arrest him for armed robbery." Stuart began laughing. "I went with you and it turned out to be my nephew, Cotter."
"What are you saying, Stuart?" Louise felt her face turning red. Stuart had that tone in his voice that meant he was about to deliver one of his lectures. She braced herself.
"I'm saying I did some checking on your story about Leon Wilson. You know what I found?"
"Let me guess," Louise said, fighting back the sudden urge to cry, "the cops went to Leon's house and they didn't find anything."
"Not a damned thing."
"You think I'm mistaken about all this?" Her lower lip trembled and she bit down on it. Savagely.
Stuart was still smiling but the smile was slipping. "I don't know, Louise. If it had been you who seen Leon, I might put a lot more stock in the story."
"But since it was John, you don't believe it?"
"I'm not exactly saying I don't believe it." He gave her a little squeeze. "We both know they had to send John away for a while when he was a kid. He kept having all those crazy dreams about Billy Two Hats, kept saying Billy was a killer. That Billy was cutting up women with a knife. He damn near had me believing him for a while."
"That was a long time ago," Louise said.
"I know it was, but I never could put no faith in anything John said. Come to find out, he was a thief, stole Billy's pocket knife, and then made up that cock-and-bull story to cover his own ass. And I haven't forgotten about the time he held up that liquor store in Tucson." Stuart smiled and waved at someone in the parade. "I don't figure he's changed all that much since then."
"He was only nineteen and he didn't do the holdup. Rudy No Horses did. John didn't know what Rudy was going to do; he was only driving the car." Louise shrugged loose from Stuart's arm. "So you're not going to do anything."
"I didn't say that, did I?"
Louise searched his face, looking for some sign of belief.
"Look, Louise, I didn't get to be sixty-three in this job by being stupid." The smile vanished and the twinkling eyes were dead serious now. "I asked the state boys for help, but without some kind of proof, there's not much they can do." He held up his hand to ward off Louise's next question. "I went on ahead and deputized three extra men just in case. If anybody shows up looking like the men John described, we'll get 'em."
A weight lifted from Louise's shoulders. "You know, Stuart, when you cock your hat a certain way," she said with a smile, "you look just like John Wayne."
"Go on now with you now. I'll take over here." The twinkle was back in Stuart's eyes and Louise knew he was pleased despite all his protesting. "Get on over to Charlie Cates' place, would you? There's some trouble at the snake pit. I think it's Charlie's boy, Elliot."
A look of distaste crossed Louise's face at the mention of the fifteen-year-old's name.
"I guess you're remembering that little stunt he pulled last July fourth," Stuart said.
"I don't call lighting the barbecue grill with a flamethrower a little stunt. His dad could have been killed. Where on earth did Elliot get something like that?"
"His grandfather brought it back from Korea after the war. Had it buried in an old trunk out in his garage." Stuart motioned to a couple of elderly Japanese with camcorders. They paused to get a shot of Stuart, who sucked in his paunch for the occasion. "You got to admit the boy showed some mechanical ability, getting that thing working after all these years." The old sheriff seemed more amused than concerned by the incident.
"Yeah, he's a real genius. I don't think his dad's eyebrows are ever going to grow back."
"Well, that was unfortunate. Charlie had on one of those floppy chef's hats and it just sort of vaporized. Don't be too hard on the boy," Stuart said. "At that age Elliot's just a little rambunctious."
"He's just a little juvenile delinquent," Louise answered.
The five-year-old dangled headfirst over the open snake pit. His name was Timmy Cates and he was screaming bloody murder.
Inside the pit, there were nearly two hundred rattlesnakes crawling around. They made a constant crackling, like dry leaves underfoot, whenever their skins touched. As the small boy descended closer, a rattling sound began, a warning not to come any closer. It grew in volume. Several of the snakes lunged at the boy's face and his screams became even more shrill.
"Put him down, Elliot," Louise said.
"That's what I'm doing, putting him down." Elliot Cates laughed. "In the snake pit." The smirk stayed on the teenager's face as he lifted up his five-year-old brother by the ankle. He sat the boy back on the ground.
The boy ran over and grabbed Louise's leg in a death grip. She could feel his heart thudding against her leg. "It's all right, Timmy," Louise said. She stroked the top of the sobbing child's head. "Everything's going to be fine. You go find your mom."
Timmy turned, gave Elliot the finger before bolting.
"I wasn't really going to throw him in, Louise," Elliot said. "He asked what they ate, so I told him little boys. I was only having some fun."
"Is that a fact?" Louise asked, moving closer. She looked around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't.
"Yeah, that's a fact," Elliot said. "The little turd said my snake wasn't going to win." He saw something in Louise's face and took a step back. Unfortunately the snake pit was right behind him. He couldn't move any farther. "I didn't hurt the little crybaby any."
"You scared him pretty good. And he could have fallen, maybe broke his neck. It's a good fifteen feet to the bottom of
that pit." Louise took another step forward. "He'll probably have bad dreams for a month because of what you did, Elliot." She punched the redhead teenager with a stiffened finger. "You ever have bad dreams, Elliot?" Her face was only inches away from Elliot's now. She grabbed him by his T-shirt and forced him back another step.
His feet found the edge of the pit and sand spilled down, causing the rattling to resume. A couple of the snakes began blindly lashing out. Elliot looked over his shoulder; he wasn't smiling anymore. He teetered, trying to regain his balance. "I'm sorry, Louise, honest. Relax. Jesus, it won't ever happen again. Okay?"
"Why don't I believe you, Elliot?" She took another step forward, bending the teenager back over the pit. "You ever see anyone after they've been bitten by one of those big rattlers? They get real sick. Sometimes they even… die."
"You're just trying to scare me, so quit kidding around. You're not going to knock me in the pit."
Louise let go of his T-shirt and he tipped backward, arms flailing wildly. He managed to grab hold of her arm. It was the only thing stopping him from pitching into the pit, and his grip wasn't secure. Louise's skin was sweaty.
His fingers began sliding.
"You think I'm still kidding around, Elliot?"
Elliot's grip was down to Louise's hand now. "I'm going to tell my old man what you did."
Louise's hand gripped his.
Elliot smiled.
"Maybe you won't get the chance." Louise's hand opened.
Elliot fell backward into the pit. He looked faintly surprised.
A third hand, dark, sunburned, reached out and grabbed hold of Elliot's shirt, held him suspended in space for a second. The shirt began tearing. The hand grabbed more material, and this time it held long enough for Elliot to be deposited on the ground at the edge of the pit. The shaken teenager looked down at his torn shirt, started to say something, but his throat didn't seem to want to work. He climbed to his feet and stumbled a couple of steps, fell. His legs had turned to rubber on him. He didn't look back.
Louise turned and saw Stuart. The elderly sheriff stood there, breathing heavily, with a piece of Elliot's shirt in his hand. The expression on his face was one of shock. "Louise, what in God's name are you doing?" The voice jarred her, brought her back from the dark place.