She ignored him, lumbered on. “Well, what we do is every week we get a printout of homes on the market in your price range from the multiple listing service of the Wyoming state real estate board. Now I know you’re looking for something in the tree district near the university, but I want to start out by showing you some of the real bargains just a wee bit farther out, where you get so much more square footage for the money!” She was heading east on Grand, out of the trees and into the tracts.
Hawk forced himself to speak. “Mrs. Czerny, I don’t really need a big house, living by myself.”
“Well, just wait until you see a few places, and then you can decide,” she told him firmly. “I’ve selected a nice range of homes to give you some choices. Don’t hesitate to ask if you have any questions about financing, or inspections or any of that stuff. After all, that’s what you’re paying me the big bucks for, ho ho!”
Hawk said nothing.
The first place was one of those plywood and plastic houses erupting like boils every year in the outer reaches of every western city. It had four bedrooms the size of packing crates. The window frames were vinyl-coated aluminum. The mauve carpet smelled like every dog and cat in Laramie had peed on it, and then some idiot had come in and sprayed it with a firehose. “Now don’t think of this place as it is now, picture it with your own things in it,” advised Sheila Czerny. Five minutes and they were gone.
The second place, way the hell out in West Laramie next to a gas station, was dark as a tomb and freezing cold even in August. Every room was painted a different muddy color. “Visualize!” she exclaimed. Hawk visualized that the hot water heater was in the garage. He’d lived in a similar house one winter long ago, and woken up one morning with his undershirt frozen to a glacier that had crept down the wall overnight. Five more minutes.
Hawk was openly unimpressed with the bargains she’d presented him. Now she’d give him what he wanted, but at a slightly higher price. He could almost hear the noise in Sheila Czerny’s head, the sound of the cash register: chching. “Well, I do have one place here,” she said, peering at the printout from the M.L.S., “that’s only about four blocks from the U, right on Eighth Street. It’s small, though, and pretty pricey for the square footage.”
Who used words like “footage” besides Realtors? But it was time Hawk bought a house, took advantage of the tax laws and put some of his savings into a place to live. He’d be out in the field a lot anyway. “Okay,” Hawk said, gritting his teeth and hoping wildly that he wouldn’t be stuck in a Jeep Cherokee with a Realtor for the rest of his life. It had been less than an hour, hellish.
He knew from the moment he saw it. It was a small white frame house with a big window in front.
Sheila Czerny unlocked the lockbox, opened the door, sniffed. “The owners did some remodeling recently,” she said, “so they want more than they should, given the square footage.”
It smelled like varnish and fresh paint. The floors, recently and brightly refinished, were blond oak, the walls were white. The living room was washed in morning sun, with floor to ceiling built-in bookshelves. The bedroom had windows on two sides, with a view of the Snowy Range to the west. The sun streamed in large, new, wood frame, double-paned windows. The bathroom had real tile in it. He could throw down a sleeping bag anywhere in this clean, well-insulated house. Hell, he could get a bed. He might even buy a chair and a TV.
“I’ll take it,” said Hawk, standing in the bathroom, looking at a big tub with whirlpool jets. “Offer them the asking price.”
“Oh, I just knew this cute little place would be perfect, Dr. Green,” Sheila gushed, dollar signs lighting in her eyes, tabulating her commission for forty-five minutes’ work. Just then, the front door opened, and the next thing Hawk knew, he was face to face over a toilet with an already chattering Natalie Charlay Langham.
“Why, Sheila honey, I knew you had an appointment to show this house, but nobody told me you were showing it to my dear old friend Hawk Green,” she squealed, throwing her arms around Hawk, who found himself grateful for the toilet between them. He’d known Nattie twenty years back, but “dear old friend” was a stretch. “You’re lucking out here, Hawk. I’ve only had this adorable place listed a week, and I’m expecting two offers to come in by Friday.”
She handed him a business card that claimed she was a “board-certified Realtor” working, Jesus, for Branch Homes on the Range. He really hated to think of that son of a bitch Sam Branch getting any of his money.
Nattie caught the grimace of surprise and distaste he shot at the card. “Oh, you must not have noticed our sign in front—Sam’s very big in Laramie real estate these days—residential, commercial, why he’s even started getting into new developments! Remember that place everyone used to go up to to watch sunsets on Ninth Street Canyon? Well, Sam’s just about closed a deal for a gated community of over fifty mid-priced homes!” Hawk looked faintly sick.
Sheila Czerny seemed confused. She said, “So you all know each other? How sweet! Did you used to live in Laramie, Dr. Green?”
“Well, actually, I’ve lived mostly on the road,” Hawk began, but Nattie interrupted.
“Oh now, Hawk, you did too hang out here, on and off, for years. Sheila, he was part of the Gallery Bar gang, in the wild old days before everyone settled down and got serious about making money. Hawk, you should see the house me and Dwayne built, up in Alta Vista? We had it designed by the same guy that did the Gem City Bone and Joint Clinic, you know, all primitive granite and roughhewn pine, very natural. Five thousand square feet. ’Course, I don’t suppose college professors ever actually get rich, do they, Hawk?”
No, they didn’t. Hawk didn’t answer.
“Unless of course,” Nattie said slyly, “they cut some kind of inside deal for one of those endowed chairs, huh, Hawk? Who do you think old Sally had to pork to get that gig?”
Hawk simply stared, imagining her head exploding. Perhaps sensing the tension, Sheila Czerny discreetly went into the kitchen, mentioning something about seeing whether the hot and cold water faucets in the sink worked.
Nattie herself looked considerably richer than she had back in the days when she’d sex-baited and guilt-tripped customers into leaving folding money on the bar at the Gallery. She wore about six gold chains with ugly charms dangling off them, diamond earrings the size of green peas, a shockingly noticeable gold watch, and enough orange lipstick to spray-paint a baseball bat. Hawk remembered her saying that she liked to put henna on her hair because it made it, ooh, so shiny. Today she looked to Hawk as if she’d been soaking her head in a bucket of mercurochrome.
He remembered the night he’d first met Nattie. He’d been prospecting for uranium, working a crew out of Saratoga that summer. They had come over to Laramie one Saturday, as one guy delicately put it, “to eat some meat and get laid, or at least meet some women.” They had a good steak dinner at the Cavalryman, and walked around downtown until they heard music coming out of the packed Gallery. They’d waded through the crowd to the bar, ordered beers and shots of Beam while looking straight down the low-cut shred of a tank top on the bartender, Nattie Charlay. Inside of five minutes, one of Hawk’s friends was asking her for her phone number, and she was telling the guy that if he stuck around long enough that night, she’d show him the whole phone.
The band was the Sister Brothers. Hawk said he thought they were good, and Nattie had said, “Yeah, if you like lesbos.” Hawk watched Sally Alder and hoped to hell Nattie was a liar as well as a gossip.
During the break, Hawk told Nattie to buy the band a round. Sally came up to the bar to get another tequila and grapefruit , talking to seven people at once. He hadn’t had the nerve to do then what he felt like doing, which was putting both of his hands on both of Sally Alder’s hips to see if they felt as good as they looked.
They hung on through three sets to close the bar down. Sally and Penny sang and played, Hawk drank, shot a little pool. Biding his time, he went back to the Cowboy Motel, assurin
g himself that there would be plenty of time later to see about this Sally Alder. In that, at least, he’d been right.
Her hips did feel as good as they looked. So did various other parts of her.
He shook off the memory and regretted the present, vise grip over-toilet hug. The year before he’d left Laramie, Nattie Charlay had gotten her hooks into Dwayne Langham. Their marriage had, miraculously, lasted. Hawk looked at her enormous wedding ring, did a little calculation based on what he knew from his own experience with diamonds, and thought of what his father would say about it. Crawford Green, who was in many ways a worthless piece of work but who assuredly knew diamonds, would have judged Nattie’s big ugly stones as proof that “not all the rich were smart.” Crawford was proof that not all the poor were dumb. Poor Crawford. But at least he had Maria. Poor Dwayne.
Now her purse was ringing. Nattie rooted in the depths of her gold-trimmed white leather bag and extracted a cellphone. (Why the hell would anyone in Laramie need a cellphone? You could be face-to-face with anybody in town in under ten minutes.) She flipped it open, tapped a button with a long orange fingernail, and spoke. “Oh hi, Sam,” she cooed, listening for a moment. “Why, you’ll never guess who wants to buy that little bitty bungalow on Eighth Street.... C’mon, guess.... C’mon . . . all right, Sam . . . remember, it’s money in the bank . . . okay, okay, the guy who’s writing the check is old Hawk Green!” She listened a moment, then turned to Hawk and smirked at him . “Sam says he didn’t know you were the bungalow type. And he hopes your check is good.”
Sheila Czerny took Hawk back to her office on Grand Avenue, made him fill out about sixty pieces of paper, and dropped him back off at the Holiday. She said she’d phone Nattie with a formal offer that afternoon and start in hounding Dwayne Langham for a closing date. He’d already prequalified for the loan and this was Laramie, so it wouldn’t take as long as it would in, well, cities. Hawk kept trying to impress upon her that he wanted to move in as soon as possible, and that, since the place was empty, he would be willing to rent until the sale was final. He’d lived in plenty of Holiday Inns and worse, but he’d just as soon get settled as close to the beginning of the school term as possible. His father, Crawford, and stepmother, Maria, were storing several dozen boxes of books, papers, rocks, and tools in a Tuff Shed behind their trailer outside Tucson, and he wanted his stuff shipped up early in the fall semester. Hawk imagined unpacking about five hundred black widow spiders amid his notebooks.
By the time he got back to the Holiday, it was only eleven-thirty in the morning. He ran up to his room, took off his jeans and shirt and boots, put on sweat shorts and a Tucson Toros T-shirt and a pair of high-top Chuck Taylors. He pulled the coated elastic band out of his hair, regathered and tied his ponytail tighter, stuck his room key in the pocket of his shorts. He stuffed his wallet, some clean clothes, and a bar of soap in a Ziploc bag into a daypack and ran out the door. Fifteen minutes later he was at the university gym, looking for a noontime pick-up basketball game.
As long as he’d hung around Laramie, there had been men of various ages milling around on the basketball courts, dribbling, shooting, lackadaisically checking each other out. Acting as if they weren’t paying any attention, they formed into teams, half-court today, three-on-three. Hawk played on a team with a short, blocky, musclebound black guy who looked like he might once have been a leg-pumping running back, and a gangly, sweetfaced, green-eyed white guy whose specialty shot, could you believe it, was a Kareem sky hook! They played against three tanned, toned white boys whose combined height was about twenty feet and combined age probably didn’t top sixty-five. Hawk was six-one and admitted to being forty-five years old, but he was sneaky. Twice he had dropped his special move on the opposition: Pick your spot, three slow dribbles, a head fake right, a quick crossover dribble left faking out the defender, elevate, sink the jumper. They even fell for it the second time. He shoots. He scores. They win! High fives.
“Haven’t seen you around here before,” the green-eyed guy said, showing Hawk where to pick up a towel on the way into the locker room.
“It’s been a while,” said Hawk, wiping off his glasses and stopping at a drinking fountain.
“Tom Youngblood,” said the guy, sticking out his hand.
“Joe Green,” said Hawk, shaking it. He’d been introducing himself that way forever. He hated “Josiah” and his father and Maria had called him Jody (so had one other person, intermittently, at particularly intimate moments). Only his friends from way back knew him by the nickname the preppies at college had given him: Hawk.
“Nice crossover dribble to the jumper,” said Tom.
“Nice Kareem,” said Hawk. Gosh, guys knew how to communicate.
They got cleaned up and ended up going to the student union to get plastic-wrapped ham sandwiches and sodas. They took their lunches out onto the broad green rectangle of Prexy’s Pasture. Hawk learned that Tom taught American literature, a subject Hawk had studied in some detail, long ago when he had been an English major at Yale. Tom learned that Joe had just been hired as a professor of earth sciences, specializing in economic geology. But really he ’d been hired because they were trying to cash in on his experience as an exploration geologist. They evidently thought he could go out prospecting and dig up jobs for their graduates.
“And can you?” Tom asked, washing a desiccated bite of sandwich down with Minute Maid orange soda.
“If they’re willing to move around, live in weird places, and get laid off a lot,” said Hawk.
“What kind of weird places?” Tom inquired.
“Oh, about everywhere from Pioche, Nevada to places in Peru that nobody’s ever heard of,” Hawk said, flattening his Coke can.
“Try me,” said Tom. “I’ve been to Peru. Great climbing.”
They talked about the Andes. Tom had done technical climbing all over the world. Hawk offered the opinion that when you walked off-trail up and down mountains to make a living, you were less inclined to spend your weekends trying to die hanging off a precipice. But he didn’t mind walking some to get a good view. Tom moved on to ask a number of personal questions. Hawk gave short answers. He’d been born in Connecticut. Gone to high school in Arizona. Gone east to college. Gone west to grad school. Worked exploration in South America and Europe and all over the West, including Wyoming.
Tom returned to familiar turf: basketball. He was a member of a perennially victorious city league team, which was made up of wily aging jocks who called the team “Old, But Slow.” He asked Hawk if he was interested in joining, and Hawk said he’d think about it.
Then Tom tried the personal angle one more time. “You married?”
“Nope.”
“Significant other?”
“No.”
“You free Saturday night?”
Hawk considered. “I could be.”
“My wife,” said Tom, “is the best cook in southern Wyoming, possibly the whole state. We’re having some people over for dinner. You want to come?”
Hawk smiled a little. “Do I look like some kind of lonesome bachelor who’d do anything for a home-cooked meal?”
Tom put up his hands. “Hey, for all I know, you could be a psycho-killer, and I’ve just made a really stupid, indeed fatal mistake.”
“No,” said Hawk, “I’m a man of peace. And I’d do anything for a home-cooked meal.”
Chapter 8
A Wyoming Girlhood
Sally had returned from El Conquistador to Margaret Dunwoodie’s house full, nervous, and curious. When a mood like this came on, all she could do was read and write. She went to the office, sat down at the beautiful desk, put on her funky LA-hip reading glasses and opened the folder labeled dunwoodie foundation official bio. Candor and contrivance leapt out at her this time: Meg had written this brief account of her own long life in the third person. Sally read it, then opened the folder Edna had given her and read through the transcript of the interview. Then, checking against the transcript for discrepancies,
backing the tape up to repeat things she couldn’t quite make out, she listened to Margaret’s surprisingly steady old-lady voice on tape, answering Edna’s warm but pointed questions with an appearance of forthrightness that left much out. Sally paid close attention to the speed of Dunwoodie’s words, the hesitations, the places where she laughed and where the phrases sounded canned.
Then she booted up her laptop, with the folders open in front of her on the desk. Sally opened a file she titled “Meg1” and began to construct her own first narrative of Margaret Dunwoodie’s life story.
Margaret Parker Dunwoodie was born in Odessa, Texas, in 1904. Her father, McGregor “Mac” Dunwoodie, had been a wild West Texas cowboy who rode the range and the rails into Wyoming as the twentieth century bashed into life. Mac Dunwoodie found himself working cattle in the Saratoga and Centennial Valleys, and on his rare days off rode high into the Sierra Madres and Medicine Bows of southern Wyoming. He liked the wide sage basins, the switchback trails, the solitude, the feeling of thin, cold air and the look of frozen gray peaks. But he also liked the company he found in noisy barrooms, the prospect of greater comfort than a bedroll on the ground next to a fire that died long before dawn. He mended Wyoming fences, branded Hereford cattle, and resolved to find a way to make a fortune.
So he took the stake he’d squirrelled away and went to the town of Laramie, to the infant state university. He’d decided to take a bachelor’s degree in science. He figured he’d learn enough about geology to go back to Texas and find himself a big old oil field. He could come back to Wyoming a rich man, have his pick of beautiful valleys, and spend the best years of his life as a gentleman rancher.
Sally made herself a note: This was Mac’s Young Man Dream. As a rich old man, they said, he’d gone bitter and paranoid. How did he change along the way, if he did? When? What changed him?
Gertrude Parker fit right into Mac Dunwoodie’s plan. She was a ranch girl with eyes as wide and blue as the Wyoming sky. Her folks had a place out south of Albany. Mac had seen her at the college, but never much talked to her until a box lunch picnic the first week of his last year at the University. She was finishing up, too, taking courses in history and political economy, tall and straight and smart and blond and fired with the cause of woman suffrage.
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