Kickdown

by Rebecca Clarren

  He pats her knee and they both fall silent again for a minute while Ray pulls off Dry Hollow onto the ranch road where the concrete turns to gravel. The smell of dust and night fill the car; the cows are dark shadows in the lower fields.

  Suddenly, the sound of gunshot slices through them.

  “What was that?” Jackie sits up. “Stop the truck.”

  He rolls down the window, listening hard. “Sounds about thirty feet away to the northwest.”

  Again they hear the measured pop of a handgun. The sound sets his heart to flapping.

  “Wait.” Rays says, but Jackie is already out the door and heading up the field. Ray’s muscles clench and his jaw tightens. He starts to breathe too fast and he needs to get up there, to chase Jackie across the field and sort what’s happening but he can’t get his arms and legs to move. He sits in the truck, stuck, the gunshots echoing in his head.

  38

  SUSAN SETS HER FEET apart and steadies her body, just like Dad taught. Scattered around her on the dirt pad are old rusty nails from the Folgers can in the shed. Two squat brown tanks, with signs warning about the chemicals, sit off to the side. The wind blows a sharp smell off the sump. Silver pipes with wheels attached to them stick out of the ground with all manner of arms, Christmas trees, Kelly used to call them. They wheeze and hiss.

  You see something wrong, you do something about it. Dad said that.

  She holds the gun in her right hand and balances the butt of the weapon on the palm of her left hand, and she puts her finger in the trigger. She doesn’t lock her elbows. She finds her aim.

  Johnson’s house is hidden beyond the trees; the homes down below the mesa are far away. No one is watching. She fires. She aims. She fires. The gunshot in her ears is an anthem. She is a part of every sound, the hiss of the well, the highway traffic far below the mesa. She fires again.

  Compared to writing or asking the right question or knowing how to be a wife, it’s easy. Her body does the work for her. She is doing something. Maybe it was always true that she could do something.

  A bullet ricochets off the wellhead and lands in the dirt, a few feet away from her sock-covered boots. It happens again, closer this time. Her younger self finds her, the one who was brave and strong and didn’t care, who wasn’t attached, in the words of a shrink she had once seen, to any potential outcome. That she has always been a lousy shot is not the point. One of these bullets is bound to make some kind of point. She squares her hips again. She squints and takes aim.

  The sound of her own name startles her. She turns and sees her sister cutting a clean line from the gate that severs the Dunbar ranch from Johnson’s, to the pad where she stands.

  Susan turns her back and keeps shooting at the well.

  “Dammit, Susie. Stop.” Jackie’s voice stumbles on itself. “People all over Dry Hollow Road can hear you.”

  “Since when do you care what other people think.”

  “Susie, please stop. I have to talk to you.”

  The Ruger is heavy but she lifts it up, aiming into the inky darkness, and shoots again at the well. The bullets spark and kick at the metal wellhead but nothing happens. Not enough. They bounce off and skitter across the pad. She is breathing heavy; the air from her body flies and circles.

  Jackie grabs Susan’s shooting arm. “You were right. Our water is contaminated.”

  Susan lowers the gun. “Say that again?”

  “The state, the company, Tim, they hid data from us.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Susan, pulling her arm out of Jackie’s grasp.

  “There’s crazy levels of benzene in the creek.” She blinks too many times. She touches the sides of her eyes as if she were crying, which she never does in front of Susan.

  Time slows down. One beat. Two beats. A drumbeat of minutes marching her way. Susan replaces the safety on the gun and shoves it into her coat pocket. “I was right. I wasn’t crazy.”

  “Nope. Not at all.”

  “Holy shit. I was right.” Her body goes slack.

  “You’re smiling a little.” Jackie looks puzzled. “You’re happy?”

  “A little. I know that’s strange. I mean it’s awful news.”

  Jackie sighs. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. You were right.”

  “Say that again.”

  Jackie smiles through pursed lips. “You were right, OK?” Jackie takes a deep breath and stops smiling. “I’m going to stop fighting you on things. I can’t take it. If you want to sell the ranch, I want us to talk about it some more. But I could be convinced.”

  Susan touches the gun in her pocket and takes pleasure in the unexpected shift in her own personal narrative. Life never makes any sense going through it. It’s only by telling a story backward that it takes shape, meaning becomes clear from chaos.

  Susan looks at the spent bullet shells, at the nails she’s scattered around the well site. They are messengers. She’ll leave them there.

  “I’m not leaving. That’s how they get away with it. It’s just what they want.”

  “But Susie.” Jackie looks apologetic. “I don’t want to stay here. I don’t want this to be my life.”

  She doesn’t say, you’d be alone, but Susan hears it and waits to feel something awful. Instead she feels surprise. The question of how to run a ranch alone, how to make the land pay, is an easier question than why she should or what to do. How has never scared her. How requires only a good plan, only some doing. She pats her sister’s arm. “I’ll figure it out. There’s so much to do.”

  They leave the well behind and head back down the hill toward Ray who is walking to meet them. He might have a list of reasons to be here and not one of them could have to do with her. Susan sets her mouth into a flat line. She has no questions for him.

  “You both OK?” Ray lumbers toward them.

  “Ask Annie Oakley over here.” Jackie nods at Susan.

  “What are you up to, girl?” Ray asks, looking at the old wool socks pulled over her boots. He sees the criminal intent; he should know enough not to ask.

  “Go on home to your wife, Ray.” She folds her arms across her chest. “We’re fine.”

  “I hoped we might talk.”

  “There’s nothing to say. I get it. Finally, I get it.”

  “Me and Camila are taking some space.” There is no wind and no sound, and everything is still except for the wet of Ray’s eyes in the dark.

  Susan holds herself very straight. “Why would you do that.” It isn’t a question.

  “A lot of reasons. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that you’re part of it.”

  Susan tilts her head. She smiles a small smile.

  “I’m such a mess though, Sue.” Ray rubs his hand across his cheek. “Not sure I’m worth much to you right now.”

  She shrugs and glances at Jackie, something unspoken passes between them, before turning back to Ray. “Go ahead and camp out by the old pond if you like. Get yourself some time to get sorted.”

  His smile is a flash. “You’re a rare find, Sue.”

  Jackie sighs. “Let’s get out of here before someone finds us here having a tea party.”

  They load up into the truck, Susan beside Ray on the bench seat like she used to all those years ago. The cattle, round in a herd nearby, call to them as they pass, a low curious call. In the dark, the land is reduced to blurry shapes, the outline of things, but they find their way up to the house without trouble.

  39

  SUSAN AND RAY DRIVE the trailer over to Pete’s to collect the first bull, a Danish Red with a semen test of 85 percent. He loads in easy; bulls are always optimistic about their futures. When they get to the upper field, which they’ve fenced off from the creek, and let him out the back, he runs over to the cows, and sniffs butts and bellows until he finds someone in heat and nails her. It takes all of three minutes.

  “He’ll do fine,” says Ray.

  “A real dreamboat.”

  The picnic lunch was his idea. Across the old
cotton blanket, Susan spreads strawberries from down-valley, potato salad, apples, cheese, and white crackers. Ray pours lemonade from a thermos. They sit in the shade made by the trailer and watch the bull get it on. Susan studies the little hairs that cluster near Ray’s ear. Serious questions, lots of them, flap their arms inside her belly, in need of answers she can’t know.

  For the past two days, Ray and she have worked together while Jackie works on her research proposal. Not once has he tried to kiss her. She has never felt more respected. She has no slim clue what’s happening between them.

  “Tell me a story, Sue.” His long lashes kiss the skin of his lower eyelid.

  “What sort of story?”

  “Something that happened to you sometime.” He smiles and settles in, making himself comfortable in the grass. “Just make sure it’s got a good ending.”

  The sky is an endless pale blue and the light shines through the aspen leaves and the whole world is hers with this man lying beside her, wanting to listen to no one else. Her scalp buzzes.

  She tells him about the time she went backpacking, the first spring she lived in Wyoming. They’d gotten a late start, and hadn’t realized that the trailhead was on the opposite side of a creek swollen with snowmelt. They were young, sure that their love was protection against all threat, so they hadn’t worried, just set off across. She doesn’t mention Kelly’s name as she describes following her friend into the cold water.

  “It didn’t look very wide from the shore, but as we were going across, suddenly water was up to my chest and if I kept going forward I knew it would keep getting deeper and all I could do to keep from getting pulled under was to lock my knees. I just kept telling myself that I was strong and that it would be OK.”

  Susan pauses. Ray has been to Iraq. His dad was an outfitter. “This is kind of a dumb story.”

  “No, I’m loving this. Keep going.”

  They had been lucky. A fisherman watching from the bank took off his pants and ran into the water, carrying a long stick with which to steady himself, which of course she should’ve known to use but had forgotten, it being spring and her being so out of practice, and he had ferried her to shore. It wasn’t until several hours later, when they had hiked up and over the saddle, that they realized the tent poles must have come loose in the water. It was cold that night, and they squeezed themselves into one sleeping bag to stay warm. They had joked that it wasn’t spooning but forking.

  “I don’t know why I told you that story.”

  “I like the idea of you in the river, keeping yourself together. I’ll keep that with me.”

  Beyond the fence, far across the field, the bull is working another of the cows.

  “You hear the one about the old bull and the young bull?” Ray says, snickering. He’s sitting half up to rest his head on his hand like an underwear model, his muscled forearms flecked with scars.

  “This is a joke?”

  “Yes ma’am, a good one. They’re up on a hill and they look down and see a bunch of cows. The young bull says, ‘Let’s run on down and screw a cow.’ The old bull says, ‘Let’s walk on down and screw ‘em all.’”

  Camila would find the joke hilarious. She would laugh her Santa Claus laugh and then tell a dirtier joke.

  Smile. Eat some potato salad and smile.

  “What are we doing, Ray? What is this?”

  “This is an afternoon without skeeters or black flies or rain.” He puts a hat over his head and lays his hand on the top of her thigh. “I’d say we’re enjoying ourselves. At last.”

  His hand is there, on her body, a real living thing, proof of something. She sits still for several minutes and watches the bull, which isn’t afraid of anything. “Are you making a move on me, Ray?”

  He throws off his hat and laughs. “I guess I’m out of practice at this.” He sits up and kisses her lips, slowly. “You’ve always shone for me, Susan Dunbar.” The air against her skin is neither cold nor hot but just an extension of her blood and bones and sinew. After a while, she climbs on top of him, her hips clicking, proof that she is out of practice, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care. Afterward, they lie tangled together. Ray doesn’t say: this isn’t about loneliness, this isn’t a rebound. But for once, Susan doesn’t feel like asking questions. There’s no wind, and sweat pools between her breasts, and she longs for water but it’s not worth moving away for; there’s no telling how long this will last. This could be the beginning of a story, or it might be the middle or even the end. In the future, whenever that is, this day and week might not even be a story worth retelling.

  Ray snores beside her. Curled up against him, lying on the blanket that smells of dogs and dust and sex, she tries to sleep but can’t. The deer Ray had freed from the fence that day, the one who had been hung on the wire—did it find its family? Did it drink benzene from the creek and die a horrible death? It occurs to her that possibly they set that animal loose for a worse fate.

  The sound of an idling car rouses them from their rest. Susan stands up in time to see a patrol car making its way up the long gravel drive. “Ray. Look.”

  There were hidden cameras at the well site. Someone found her fingerprints on the nails. Jackie’s shoe prints were found. Susan had wanted to send a message. She hadn’t thought through the eventualities.

  They throw on their clothes quickly and load up into the truck. Ray will resent her for this. He doesn’t like to handle things. He wouldn’t have to handle this for Camila. As he opens the door for her, the band on his ring finger glares in the sun.

  “You think this is going to be bad.” She tries to sound calm.

  “We don’t know anything yet.”

  She sees Ray watching her and has no idea what he’s thinking. She feels sick. The air is too hot.

  At the barn, they’re met by the sheriff, idling in his car. Once sixty pounds lighter, with the kind of looks girls used to call pretty, he now has a puffy face fueled by cases of beer and french fries. Walnuts sit under his eyes. He rolls down his window a crack and raises two fingers, the nonchalant greeting given between men in rural areas.

  “I heard you were up here, Ray.” His nod is clipped, unsmiling. “Hello, Ms. Dunbar. This sun sure does plague the soul.”

  “What can we do you for, Sheriff?” Ray lets his arms hang loose at his sides, tilts his hat back off his brow. He’s all smiles. He’s not himself.

  “Did you all hear anything coming from Johnson’s the other night?”

  “What happened?” Her voice is too high. Her body feels too big for her skin. Faking it and lying have never been the same thing. “Did anyone get hurt?”

  “I heard you got some bad news about your creek. I heard those benzene levels were real high.”

  “Want me to poke around Johnson’s for you?” Ray says, leaning into the car. “What are you looking for?”

  The sheriff gives him a long look. He glances at Susan, at the inches between Susan and Ray. Before dinner the entire town will know that Ray is staying up here, that he is smiling too much and anyone can guess what that means.

  “Come on by the office next week, son. We should talk.”

  Only when the patrol car has passed the lower field, when Chicken has quit barking, when she can’t hear the engine, does she exhale, her hands trembling. “He knows.”

  “Hard to say, but I doubt it.”

  “Why does he want you to come by, then? Your probation isn’t up for another month.”

  “Not sure. But it’s not likely to have anything to do with this business.”

  “You don’t know that. You don’t know any more than I do, which isn’t anything. I mean, what must Camila be thinking? Everyone knows you’re living up here, and people are going to assume all sorts of things. And what about your kids, Ray? I just lost my dad, and now I’m going to be responsible for taking you away from your girls? How am I going to clean up the creek? What are we breathing from those flares?”

  “You’re freaking out?”

 
“I guess.” She wraps her arms across her chest. He’s going to take offense. He’s going to make it about him and tell her how to be and it’s going to be over. She has been through this before.

  Ray picks up her hand and strokes her skin. “When I get nervous, I try to focus on the little things nearby, things I can see, like the notch in that tree or that rock over there by the lavender. And I try to breathe.”

  “That’s it? That helps you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  A sliver of moon rises against the pale sky. The poplars that Granny planted shake their green leaves in a frenzy of lust. Chicken lounges in the middle of the dirt road, his tail making clouds of dust. There’s an aliveness on her skin, a wanting that is clear and sharp and a great relief. The irrigation spigots shoot water into cheerleader arms; they whisper today, today, today.

  40

  RAY PULLS UP IN back of the department and parks beside four brand new Toyota Tacomas, black ones, the paint jobs shiny enough for him to catch his reflection. He’s shaved and tried to get the dirt stains from his neck and hands. But his shirt is wrinkled, and he needs a haircut. Everything that doesn’t matter at the ranch is important here. He licks his fingers and smoothes his hair.

  “Stark, you’re browner than the Mexicans pruning peaches over at my Pop’s.” Ty steps out of one of the trucks and comes over, his boots heavy against the concrete.

  “Good to see you, man.” Ray smiles and holds out his hand to his old friend. “Santa come early?” Ray nods at the new trucks.

  “Something like that. Gas company made a big donation. These things are wicked. Even got Sirius radio in them.”

  They talk for a few minutes, catching up on each other’s kids and the ball game, on the latest perps. Ty tells a long story about bringing in a guy who had a hundred pounds on him, who wasn’t wearing any shoes, who was a biter.

  Ray could stand here all afternoon. “I miss this.”

  “Good. We need you back here.”

  “Speaking of, I better get in to see the chief. Can you open the back door for me?”

  “Shit, Stark. Can’t do it. You know the rules. Probation gets public entry.”