Improbable Fortunes

by Jeffrey Price

  Jimmy laughed so hard she had to spit a glob of expectorate into the waste basket. “Do ah haveta tell ever’body how to do their fuckin’ job ’round here? Examine the damn crime scene, search my domo-cile!”

  She looked over at Sheriff Dudival and winked.

  “I’m not quite sure I understand your motivation in committing this crime.”

  “Ya don’t need no motivation when yor carryin’ out orders.”

  “And whose orders were those?”

  “The kinda orders a body don’t lightly agnore.”

  “By whose orders, exactly, did you kill Mr. Mallomar?”

  Even Sheriff Dudival was anxious to hear where she was going with this one. A sly smile crept across the old cowboy’s face as she slowly extended her cadaverous hand to the Holy Bible sitting on the table and tapped its cover with a nicotine-stained fingernail.

  “His’n,” she merely said, implementing Grampie’s playbook.

  Sheriff Dudival cocked his head slightly. How could she make this stick? Everyone knew her as the most profane, blaspheming person in the county. She was obviously having some fun on her way out.

  “God ordered you. How?”

  “He speaks to me.”

  “Is he speaking to you right now?”

  “No, ma’am. He only speaks to me in one place and one place only.”

  “And where is that?”

  “The Hail Mary.”

  Judge Englelander looked to Sheriff Dudival for the local information.

  “It’s an abandoned silver mine on Lame Horse Mesa.”

  Jimmy was remanded into Sheriff Dudival’s custody. In the cruiser on the way back to Vanadium, Jimmy was finally able to fire up a smoke.

  “Ah saw what you did up there…at the rezee-vor.”

  “Oh yeah? What did I do?”

  “Ah am-bell-ished it a might. Go up and see fer yersef.”

  “I just might do that.”

  “Didja see how everbody looked at ya in the courtroom?” She cough-laughed and shook her head. “They think yor the daddy.” Dudival smiled, liking that deceit. “Ah think it’d be better fer all concerned if’n ya jes let’m go on thinkin’ long them lines.”

  “All right.” It kind of cheered him to think of himself as Buster’s father. After all, he had taken a proprietary interest in the boy from the day he was born—a guardian angel yes, but not, in fact, Buster’s father.

  After Sheriff Morgan’s untimely death, Jimmy became the sole beneficiary of the Morgan’s insurance policy that provided double indemnity in the case of his dying in the line of duty—a sum of fifty thousand dollars. There was also the deed to the dried-up Hail Mary silver mine that Atomic Mines had given their bought dog “in trade” for making a certain state mining inspector disappear. There were some books, clothing, weapons and an oil painting of a local prostitute named Hog-Nosed Fanny that Morgan had evidently commissioned. Jimmy used her inheritance to buy a vacant piece of land on Lame Horse Mesa that came with a sheepherder’s wagon. Deputy Dudival, who won election as the new sheriff, was not in favor of her living up there alone and unprotected. He worried that there were too many people who hated her grandfather’s guts and might want to take it out on her. But Jimmy felt she could take care of herself and that was that.

  Just a few weeks later, she opened her eyes to find three men standing over her bed wearing potato sacks over their heads. It was around two-thirty in the morning. They were drunk, but not drunk enough for her to push them out the door. Jimmy’s first gambit was to cajole them into having another drink with her. She got out of bed and went to the shelf where she kept a bottle of Highland Fling—mainly for use as an antiseptic on horses. Behind the glasses was one of her grandfather’s loaded pistols. Jimmy made a lunge for her gun, but they grabbed her before she could get her hands on it. The three of them beat her up badly then raped her—Jimmy, all the while coolly taking note of the kinds of boots they were wearing, their clothes, identifying tattoos, jewelry, wristwatches, etc. When it was over, they left. Jimmy washed herself in the horse trough. She didn’t cry. She poured herself a drink and had a cigarette. She was about to get in her truck and drive to Sheriff Dudival’s house but decided against it, feeling ashamed.

  It was Jimmy, and not the poor Mormon girl, who struggled across that snowy mesa that New Year’s night with Buster dangling between her legs. A few months after being raped, she started to feel changes in her body that scared and confused her. When she actually started to look pregnant, she retreated in horror to her sheepherder’s wagon and stayed there. No one had laid eyes on her the whole time including Shep. When he drove out there to see her, she wouldn’t let him in. Shep convinced himself she was acting this way because he had not found her grandfather’s killers.

  Finally, on the night that Buster came into the world, Jimmy realized that she could keep him a secret no longer. She needed help, and the only person she trusted was Shep Dudival. The snow on her dirt road was too deep for her truck to drive. With brass and determination, she made it the sheriff’s office and gave birth to the baby on the floor of the men’s restroom. She finally admitted what had happened to her, and Shep swore to find the men responsible and make them pay. She told him, with an odd look on her face, that that would not be necessary. Clearly, she’d already taken care of them. What she asked for, instead, was his cooperation in a cover story about the baby. She didn’t want anyone to know that it was hers.

  Whatever her motives, Jimmy and Dudival entered into a pact that would haunt them for the rest of their lives—she regretting having given up the baby and he regretting that he looked the other way for three of her first murders. Little would he know, when taking his first step on that slippery slope, that he would become her unwitting accomplice. Jimmy slyly concocted a phony person, the McCaffrey girl. Dudival produced a phony death certificate. There were only a few people still around in Vanadium who would ever stop to wonder who was actually in that grave in the cemetery—if it wasn’t the poor Mormon girl. An exhumation would have revealed a pine box containing a ninety-five pound sack of rocks.

  b

  Sheriff Dudival had Mrs. Poult fix up a cell for Jimmy with a real mattress and other lady-like comforts, but Jimmy, taking one look at it, demanded a regular cell. As instructed by Judge Englelander, Dudival went through the motions of corroborating Jimmy’s story. Once again, he returned to the ruins of the Mallomar residence. Crews were still hoping to find the Mallomar at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box. Dudival hiked up the hill behind the house to what was left of the reservoir and found not only the Jimmy boot prints that he made there—but entirely new evidence in place; Kleenex which contained Jimmy’s bloody sputum, some of her cigarette butts and an empty bottle of Crazy Crow embossed with too many fingerprints to count. Jimmy had evidently been back to salt the “crime scene.” As he placed these items in an evidence bag, Dudival couldn’t help smiling to himself. That’s why he loved her.

  At Jimmy’s cabin back at the pony ranch, Dudival found pictures of Marvin Mallomar clipped out of the local newspaper taped to her work board. She had taken a pencil and drawn a noose around his neck in one, horns and fangs on another. Dudival also discovered a hastily written “diary”—in the drawer next to a carton of Phillip Morris Commanders and a rolled up tube of Preparation H. The diary spoke of God’s plan for Jimmy with Noah-like instructions as to how He wanted the reservoir blown and why it was necessary “to send Mr. Mallomar ass-under.” Dudival had never realized that Jimmy had such a creative flare. When he submitted his written findings to the court, Jimmy, despite her terminal illness, was formally booked on pre-meditated murder.

  The jury was reconvened and, once again, a public defender represented the indigent client. Jimmy threw herself upon the mercy of the court and asked for only one thing—that the jury be given the chance to hear the Word of God themselves. The public defender contacted Jimmy�
�s doctor in Grand Junction and discussed whether it was neurologically possible that her illness was responsible for the heavenly voices she was hearing. The doctor confirmed that the position of her brain tumors were likely to create auditory hallucinations. Armed with this information, he gently warned Jimmy against pushing for the jury to discover what he already knew—that the voice of God had, in her case, a scientific causality.

  Jimmy insisted, however, and gave specific instructions as to how and when the jury was to be taken to the Hail Mary mine. It had to be on a night with a streaky orange and purple sky, no earlier than six o’clock in the evening. Folding gallery chairs had to be placed in juxtaposition to the mine’s entrance according to a drawing that Jimmy had crudely sketched on the back of an In-N-Out Burger bag (Jimmy was not a fan of Mary’s catered food). And so, with everything carried out exactly as she had dictated, the jury was taken to the mine the next evening on a borrowed Vanadium school bus.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Rapture

  That evening, the Vanadium sky cooperated with Jimmy’s production of what Cecil B. DeMille might have called an Authentic Ten Commandment Experience. Alizarin-washed cumulus nimbus framed a deep cadmium yellow egg yolk descending in the west. The folding chairs faced the boarded-up Hail Mary Mine’s entrance at an oblique thirty-degree angle as Jimmy had specified. The jury, as well as the Stumplehorsts, Edita Dominguez, Mary Boyle, and almost everybody in town who owned a camp chair, sat with unbridled anticipation. Was Jimmy Bayles Morgan’s claim possible? Did God, as some already believed, favor their town? Did His spirit reside here in the aptly named Hail Mary Mine? Six-thirty passed with only the solitary lowing of a cow in the distance. Seven o’clock came with some fidgeting and praying. The judge whispered something to the bailiff and he nodded in agreement. Jimmy had the feeling that they were about to call her game on account of darkness. She got up from her chair and, using a cane, staggered before them.

  “Iffin ah could jes have yer ’ttention fer a moment… See a lotta fermilyar faces in the crowd—which is unnerstandabull since ah know alls you. See Kyle Andersen there mutterin’ over that Bible a his…Hey there, Kyle. Remember ’bout ten years ago you was moaning to somebody in the café ’bout how yer neighbor wouldn’t sell you that hundred and twenty acres so you could grow alfalfa cause he was fixin’ to chop them up inta forty-acre ranchettes? You recall that? Didja pray that he’d change his mind? Cause lo and beholt, a week later, somebody forced him off the road into the canyon and he was kilt. Then what happened, Kyle?”

  Kyle Andersen looked up numbly. “His widow sold it to me.”

  “That’s right, she did, dint she?” Jimmy shaded her eyes from the setting sun and peered into the crowd. “And there’s Edita Dominguez. Once your daddy and yer uncle were laid to rest, there was no controllin’ yor husband, was there, darlin’? You thought he was molestin’ yor boys and you went and taddled on’m to Social Services. Ain’t that right? But they dint do nothin’ ’bout it, did they—cause, well…yor jes a Messican. Then one summer night, what happened? Somebody locked him in that kiln a his and blew his ass to kingdom come.”

  Edita Dominguez put a handkerchief to her mouth. “¡Madre de Dios!”

  “And Skylar…remember the time you were cryin’ to some drunk at the Odd Fellows ’bout how you wisht you had a son? Well, it took some doin’, but somebody cleared the brush fer it that ta happen. Somebody had ta kill that pink-assed land defiler Svendergard and then somebody had to send ol’ Bob Boyle on up to Rodeo Heaven. Then you got your son, Buster McCaffrey, one of the best all ’round cowboys we ever seen in this county. And what’d you do? You fired him jes b’cause he gave yer daughter a poke! Tell you what, Skylar…somebody dint ’prreciate that. Somebody was even thinkin’ of settin a stick a dynamite in that outhouse you jerk off in. But then…” Jimmy looked over to where Destiny Stumplehorst was standing. “…somebody had a change of heart—thinkin’ how unfair it’erd be to leave ol’ Buster without a future father-in-law ta balance out that crack-less pee-stachio of a wife a yors.” Jimmy looked at Calvina Stumplehorst, hocked up a goober, and spit. “Have you guessed who that somebody is, people? It ain’t God, neighbors and frens, who’s been answerin’ the prayers of this fersaken land for over sixty years. And lemme tell ya somethin’ else, ah don’t work in mizsteeryus ways like some. My work is direk. My work sticks.”

  Here she paused for a dramatic sigh and looked out over her sheep.

  “But alas, dear frens, my life is now comin’ to an end. No use kiddin’ mahself. And ah’m a powerful worried cause once ah’m a gone, who’s gonna take care a this place that ah’ve so dearly loved? Ah’m leavin’ a son, but he’s a turn-the-other-cheek sorta feller. So ah’m puttin’ y’all on notice. You try to take the easy money and sell this here town out and ah’ll be payin’ ya a visit—in one form or ’nother…and you ain’t gonna like it ah uh-shoor you!”

  Jimmy looked over the crowd and made fierce eye contact with as many as she could, conjured up a mighty goober, then spit. As the sun slipped below the horizon and cool air exchanged with warm from the canyon below, she raised her arms akimbo as an unmistakable moan emanated from the mine behind her. It started low and suffering-like then rose to an unsettling howl. Jimmy kept a straight face and just nodded her head as if she and she alone understood the tongue with which it spoke. This had the desired effect on the ad hoc congregation who, if they weren’t fundamentally religious, were at least susceptible to seeing the face of Jesus in a burnt piece of Wonderbread toast.

  Some of them dropped to their knees and started to cry. Others prayed. Others ran to their cars to get the hell out of there. The judge had had enough and instructed the bailiff to handcuff Jimmy and take back her into custody.

  “You heard me! Ah’ll be payin ya’ll a visit!!!”

  b

  The corrections officer came to collect Buster from his cell the next morning. He was taken downstairs to sign some papers and collect his personal possessions. His jeans seemed big on him now, and his White’s Packers seemed stiff like they belonged to someone else. The clerk handed Buster his money and his wallet. He was asked to check and make sure that everything was there. He didn’t care about the money—actually three dollars was missing to help pay for a pizza a couple weeks ago. There was only one thing that he cared about, and it was still preserved between the folds of an unpaid parking ticket.

  Some men go out and get drunk the first thing out of jail. Some go and settle old scores. Some men go and have themselves two porterhouse steaks, mashed potatoes, and a gallon of pecan ice cream. Some go to a whorehouse and have the equivalent. Buster paid twenty-five cents for a shower and then rode out to Lame Horse Mesa where he gave Destiny Stumplehorst his buttercup and asked for her hand in marriage. She didn’t bother with her parents’ permission this time.

  The two were married on horseback just as it was in Buster’s dream. The bride wore a white rodeo queen outfit caped with a long white-fringed leather jacket. And just as in his dream, all of Buster’s past mothers were there to tearfully see him off into Holy Matrimony—all paying deference of course to Jimmy Bayles Morgan, his biological mother. She was brought in on a tame old milk horse, the reins of which were held by Sheriff Dudival, Buster’s best man. Jimmy, bald and weighing no more than a ventriloquist’s dummy, was defiantly dressed as a man.

  Jimmy let the newlyweds move onto her property. She gave them the old sheepherder’s wagon that had been Buster’s refuge as an exile. Sheriff Dudival moved out of his trailer and into his one true love’s cabin. Since sex was no longer an issue with either of them, they slept comfortably in the same bed with each other. Doc Solitcz came regularly to make sure Jimmy was comfortable until she died a month later. Buster was at her side when she passed and held his murdering mother’s hand.

  “Son…ah did the best ah could.”

  “Ah know, ah know. Calm yorsef.”

  �
�And ah said a lot a terr-bull thangs ’bout people…ah dint mean half of ’em.”

  “Ah never figgered you did…Mommy.”

  Jimmy reached under her pillow and handed Buster an envelope.

  “A li’l present fer yor birthday. Guess ah’m gonna be missin’ it.” Buster opened it. Inside was the $300 she had Martin Flowers cough up before he, too, joined the league of those Jimmy Bayles Morgan could not abide.

  Sheriff Dudival, looking on, was pleased that Jimmy had been given this one moment of peace. Around these parts, love had been the true taproot of crime.

  Buster, the sheriff, Doc, Ned Gigglehorn, and Destiny Stumplehorst made a little service for Jimmy and buried her next to Ranger. She had requested, despite her newly acquired reputation as a modern-day Savonarola, that no mention of the Creator be made over her remains. What little she had in her estate went to Buster. She left him her land, some horses, tack, her guns, and the Hail Mary mine.

  The mine, which had not produced a dime in thirty years, turned out to yield a mother lode much richer than gold or silver. Word of Jimmy’s performance at the mine had gotten out. At first, people said that this was the place where the devil speaks. A few months after that, the religious folks appropriated the miracle and soon pilgrims started showing up to hear the Word of God for themselves.

  It wasn’t exactly Buster’s métier to market the Hail Mary mine. That was left to Destiny who knew how to do these things from her stint in the properties game. She secured a loan from the bank for an asphalt road and small turnabout for tour coaches. What came later was a gift shop/museum, bookstore, and T-shirt and coffee mug shop with the official literature about The Miracle. The first year, the mine took in seven million dollars from the merchandising and a movie deal financed by a Christian group called “Families at the Crossroads.” Buster used some of that money to purchase five hundred acres from the Stumplehorsts—which the missus considered her Christian obligation to sell at ten thousand per. Most of the Hail Mary windfall went to rebuild the school, construct a new library, and endow the Jimmy Bayles Morgan Home for Unwed Mothers. The Vanadium High School Baseball team changed its name from the Vanadium Atomics to “The Rangers.”