Twisted Tree

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Twisted Tree Page 9

by Kent Meyers


  It turned out he didn’t know a damn thing about a baby. How he managed not to kill Abbie in that half-hour was a goddamn mystery. He couldn’t do anything right. If he bathed the baby and brought her from her plastic tub all warm and wrapped in a towel, Lorena would find some small, uncleaned spot on her skin. If he brushed her fine, thin hair, Lorena would find a curl still in disarray. Even when he sat with Abbie, Lorena would say, Lowell, her neck. You should have more support there. And, Don’t drop her, if he carried her down the steps. Be sure to use baby powder, if he changed her diaper. Those colors are all wrong, if he dressed her. It got so his relationship with Abbie was all correction.

  So when those buffalo appeared in his lane on the highway outside of Twisted Tree, South Dakota, and his hands touched that massive rig in utmost gentleness and brought it back from the edge of disaster, he wanted Lorena to know. But it was just a story to her, and she was listening behind it to her own reasons for his telling it.

  He looked at the phone he’d just hung up, and he looked at the ugly brown mouth burned into the carpet, lewd lips puckered as if inviting him to bend down and kiss them, moldy breath to suck his breath away, and he remembered the trailer after he let off the brakes gliding smooth as a sailboat behind the cab, the only sound the sound of wind. The buffalo were trotting across the road from right to left. He waited a moment more, an eternity, for the trailer to settle, feeling it in his hands, in his butt and back and neck, and the moment he felt all the wheels aligned, he pulled the steering wheel, and the cab careened toward the left shoulder, his headlights spraying into the hills, dying in the distance of them.

  The lead buffalo was almost in the left lane, the other just behind it. He could see a hard, black sphere of eye, and strands of hair gleaming in the peripheral light like phosphorescent ocean parasites. The left wheels crashed onto the gravel shoulder. Lowell let them go until he knew he had half a tire hanging over the borrow pit. He saw the lead buffalo jerk back its head, its full face coming around toward him, its horns shining curves. It looked right at him as if it knew he was behind the wall of light. Eyes like stone. The center of the earth. He thought it was going to charge. Then, before he had time to offer prayers or curses or let his life flash before his eyes in all its petty and ridiculous sorrow, the animal swung its head around and veered away, its tail high, and he fleetingly saw the others follow, and then he was roaring past them, safe.

  Until his headlights plucked another mountain out of the night. Right in front of him.

  Eddie lifts his head again. Stares at the approaching double moons. Or suns. And that racketing. Machine guns. Or—Hotchkiss cannon. He should escape. But he can’t think. He’d been trying to go somewhere. He’d tripped on something and fallen. Puked. That was. That was. What he smelled. He’d been thinking about marbles. Bill Lipking. Way back. And a rainbow. A rainbow? And then—there’d been that time, after he couldn’t bareback no more. That IHS doctor said bareback could kill him. His spleen. And Eddie said, What do I do if I can’t bareback? And the doctor said, That’s up to you.

  Eddie laughs. He should’ve asked, How about drinking?

  He’d tried breakaway. An old-guy event. And got kinda good at it. Won a few small buckles. That little white girl. She was just a little thing, but there she was, beating girls way older. But she was too far back in the saddle. Her horse’s ears flicked at her on the turns. Telling her: Get it right. Eddie could see. Her weight. It was fighting the horse. She came off a race, and he was on the fence. She was leading her horse past, and he said: Hey, nice ride. And she said, Thanks. And he said, Tell you, though, you lean forward. Get more over the withers, hey? Make them turns easier on your horse.

  He held up his hand, palm stiff, bent at the wrist, imitating the angle her body ought to be. She looked hard at his hand. Then she understood. Like it’d been bugging her, but she didn’t know it. Of course, she said. That’s it. She put her thumb up, and he put his thumb up. He watched her race after that. She got it right. Like she was water now. Flowing. But completely still. They won the barrels, her and her horse. Her eyes found him. She thumbs-upped him again.

  Then later, when he won the breakaway, they had her give him the buckle. He liked that. She held it out and said, Congratulations.

  Thank you, he said. You, too.

  She grinned. Thank you, she said.

  Her eyes shifted. He turned. Shane Valen was watching between the rails of the fence. His great-grandfather had been the one. The one his grandmother said. The shots. It wasn’t soldiers. They realized it later—where they were, whose land they were riding over. Shane never bothered Eddie, though.

  He’s always here, the white girl said.

  People had stopped clapping, so they were supposed to leave now. It made Eddie nervous, but he said: That OK with you?

  She shrugged. He’s our neighbor, she said. Kinda creepy, though.

  Then she turned and walked away. Time to go. Eddie walked the other way. He got between Shane’s eyes and her. Shane moved his head back and forth, but Eddie moved with him. It was like barebacking. Knowing what the horse was going to do. Staying on the line between the girl and the eyes. But pretending he was just walking. It was better than the buckle.

  That was the last thing he ever won, though. Breakaway wasn’t barebacking. Maybe if he’d never ridden Later On, those cowboys wouldn’t have. That cowboy wouldn’t have.

  They’d turned him inside-out. Because he’d made a mistake. Oh, man! Eddie laughs. That time! They’d beat the shit out of him. He ended up on the pavement just like this. He rolls his head, remembering. Laughing. Stars roll in the sky like marbles. Craa-zee.

  He hears the Hotchkiss racketing. So loud. His grandmother said it was so loud. He knows now: it is.

  Lowell’s hands jerked the wheel back to the right. He’d never handled a semi so roughly—not even that time, right after he started driving, when that woman was in the wrong lane, and he’d started over to avoid her and then she’d come back and he’d barely missed her. But this time, with these buffalo, if the steering wheel had been Abbie, he would’ve wrenched her apart. Yet somehow—this was the wonder, this was what he wanted Lorena to know—he controlled it. That wrenching of the wheel was the most violent thing he’d ever done in his life. And the best.

  The third buffalo was fifty yards behind the first two and invisible in their shadows, and it snapped into existence when the other two retreated, right there in the center of the road. Right there, and heading toward the left shoulder where in another moment he would be. He didn’t think. He just moved. He jerked the whole damn rig out of the near-oblivion of the ditch and back to the right. He felt the trailer loop behind him. He felt it heave and yaw, still moving toward the downslope where, if it went over, it would roll like a thing not meant to roll and take him with it, tumbling over and over, shooting him into eternity.

  But somehow it stayed upright. He felt the cab’s wheels under his feet skip and judder, barely holding the surface of the road as the inertia of the trailer pushed against the direction he’d forced it into. But the tires held, exploding in the cracks of the asphalt, and the whole rig headed back toward the center of the road, shaking and sliding. Kids playing whiplash. The end of the chain flying off. Then the centerline was under him. He felt the trailer rocking. Back and forth. Rocking, rocking, rockabye. Rockabye, Abbie. It was almost that slow and peaceful and bough-breaking. Like he could sing the whole lullaby, and then just fall down. But not really. He couldn’t wait. The highway wasn’t wide enough. Couldn’t wait for the trailer to settle, for its wheels to flatten into the road. He pulled the steering wheel left, completing the S, veering away from the right-hand ditch. He saw the third buffalo’s thin, flickering tail with its brush of hair lift and fall like a bearded snake, and then the animal was gone into the darkness beside him, gone from his mirrors, gone. But he’d magnified the rocking when he turned, and, horrified, he felt the trailer’s right wheels find air and lift right off the pavement.

>   Bareback was like marbles. Like he could see. Ahead. He could see ahead. To where the horse was going. So by the time the horse got there, he was already there. Waiting. And the next jump, too. And the next. Just waiting. That’s what bareback was. Like he was always just waiting. Everything going on, twisting and moving and chaotic. And he in the middle of it, peaceful. Waiting. It was weird, man. Horse had to about turn itself inside-out to buck him off.

  And Later On sure tried. When the eight seconds was up and he was pulled off, Later On stopped bucking and looked at him. He could about hear the horse saying, You are one cocklebur cowboy, man, you are one Velcro Indian.

  But it mighta been better if it hadna happened. Because that cowboy come up afterwards and shook his hand and said, Helluva ride. You always ride like that? Looks at Eddie like that and asks a question like that. Ride like that? What’s Eddie supposed to think, the way he says it? But Eddie just says, Sometimes. Grins and says, Sometimes. And that cowboy says, Whyn’t you come down to the Horseshoe tonight, me’n some a the others’re having a few beers. Guy rides like you’d sure be welcome.

  The Horseshoe wasn’t an Indian bar. Eddie wouldna never gone there without he was invited. But it went OK, just a bunch of cowboys, didn’t matter if one was Indian. Until he got a few too many in him. And made a wrong remark to that cowboy. Just a hint. Right away he grinned. Right away tried to make it like he’d been joking, man. It shoulda been OK.

  Except.

  Eddie laughs again. Rolls his head and laughs, and the stars go craa-zee. He hadna been wrong. That was why that cowboy wouldn’t let it go. Why Eddie couldn’t grin his way out of it. The others started kidding that cowboy, saying, You two got something going? Little private rodeo? Ain’t had enough barebacking for one day, that it?

  No reason it couldna been just joking and drinking and let it go.

  Except that cowboy hadda prove to his friends he wasn’t who he was. But he was! Which was why he hadda prove he wasn’t!

  Oh, man! Bad timing. Shoulda waited and let that cowboy bring it up. Eddie’d got the shit beat out of him for bad timing. Too-oooo funny. Got turned inside-out for bad timing. And never did join the Marines. And hadda take up breakaway. Never did carry a flag in a powwow for his grandmother so she could see it.

  Bad timing! Eddie laughs and laughs. Those suns. It sure was getting light out.

  The trailer was up on its left wheels, like some movie stunt except it wasn’t a goddamn movie, the whole rig was shaking and jangling like Lowell was inside a trap set and the goddamn drummer was on drugs. And then the sonofabitch comes down wham! on the other wheels, hard as a goddamn maul against an anvil, he chipped two front teeth, and pops up the other way and whams back down again and why the fuck it didn’t flip over he didn’t ever know. Except somehow he got inside the pendulum of it and pushed it at just the right time, the littlest pushes on the wheel at the perfect times, and not braking too hard but just enough, and the thing stayed on the road and didn’t roll. And he wanted to say, Lorena, I’ve been saved. I don’t know why, but it’s got something to do with you and Abbie, and I swear—he didn’t know what he’d swear, but it was something more’n he’d put in a new Maytag dishwasher next time he was home.

  My hands, Lorena. He wanted to lift them up to her face. Look at these hands. They kept that sonofabitching rig on the road. Goddamn, Lorena, these hands saved me tonight. Saved them buffalo. Saved us all.

  But he never got it said. Because it was the phone, and he couldn’t show her his hands. He could hear her thinking it: Lowell, don’t tell me no more stories.

  Suns? And those Hotchkiss cannon. So loud. He should get away from them.

  And then, another night, the same highway, his speed back up after going through Twisted Tree. He thought it was a re-tread someone’d blown. But lights tell lies. He’d been pushing his log limits again, and thinking maybe he should just build a whole new house, maybe if they got out of the old one and moved into a new one that he’d built himself, things’d change. He was seeing it almost, floating down the road in front of him, and then the retread rose up out of the haze and the tiredness. The lights were bouncing up and down, and it was behind a little rise in the road, it doesn’t take much to hide something in the bounce of headlights. Maybe it was just shadow. Or snakes’d sometimes lie on the road. That was more daytime, though. You just go right over them. And jackrabbits, he used to try to avoid them sonsabitches, but that was sure a waste of concentration, the way they’d buck away from their own shadows until they sucked themselves right under the rig. Deer, now, were big enough to do some damage. He was cautious with deer. And a few times he’d seen cattle on the highway. But never nothing like them buffalo.

  Wasn’t a snake. Big as it was, hadda be a re-tread.

  There were lights all over now, but all they did was show Lowell what he didn’t want to see. It’d taken him a hundred yards to get the rig stopped, and he was dialing for help even before he had it stopped, but he knew it didn’t matter. Not the dialing or the stopping. Then he was running and yelling into the phone, fiercely out of shape. The moment he knew they had his location he heaved the cell phone—goddammit—into the darkness. He’d bought it a couple of months earlier, telling Lorena he’d be able to call her whenever. Yeah, she’d said. That’s great, Lowell. Now you can call whenever.

  It was just a goddamn good thing he forgot to grab a flashlight, because he’d’ve turned it on, and even without a moon he thought he was going to puke his stomach out.

  He could’ve taken the other lane. Way back when he first saw something. But there was that rise, and he couldn’t tell for sure. And you never expect. Jesus! Then he’s over that hump, and right there. Right there.

  The local sheriff was looking at him, the perspiration on his face blue and yellow and red.

  Tell you right now, the sheriff said. Won’t be no charges brought. It ain’t too hard to see what happened.

  But his hands hadn’t moved. They’d moved all by themselves that time with the buffalo. By themselves. And this time—

  If the guy’d just lain there, the rig mighta passed right over. Lowell was never gonna forget it. The way that head suddenly rose off the pavement and stared right at him. Another two seconds and the rig woulda been over. Two goddamn seconds. And right then the dumbfucker decides to wake up and look around. Head bounces off the pavement like a goddamn basketball. And Lowell could swear he was grinning.

  The sheriff was the one found the head. Fifty yards away. Intact. He’d heard of tornadoes putting straws through fence posts, but—Christ! The bumper musta. Fifty yards, not a scratch. That’s what he’d overheard the emergency guys saying.

  Kinda thing was bound to happen, the sheriff said. I knew this guy. Do a blood test, no telling what we find. Hadna been you, it’da been someone. Passed out on the damn highway.

  He smoothed his thin mustache, looked at the road, the semi, the emergency flares behind it, the rectangular frame outlined in orange lights against the sky.

  Helluva bareback rider of a time, he said. Started drinking, and it was all she wrote. Nothing but a bunch a stories then, and none a them likely. Wasn’t your fault.

  Lowell just wanted to go home. Fall like a baby onto Lorena’s breast. Clutch Abbie to him and weep. But he wasn’t sure he could start weeping. Maybe if Lorena believed. But believed what? The way he’d been thinking about her and Abbie and that new house where they’d be together? Was that what he wanted her to believe?

  His hand had just sat there on the wheel and let the rig go down the lane. But if the dumbshit hadn’t—

  The sheriff reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  Tell you something. Guy had nobody. Even his parents. He was raised by his grandmother, and she died a few years back. Never even had a girlfriend. So—I mean, it ain’t like—ah, hell. Nothing you coulda done. No one’s fault but his own.

  He gripped Lowell’s shoulder harder, then dropped his hand to his side. Then he held up his other ha
nd, thumb and forefinger apart, between them a marble with a piece chipped from it, a cat’s-eye dizzy with tiny fractures.

  Found this in his pocket, the sheriff said. Only thing he had. What I mean, see? Guy finds a goddamn broken marble and keeps it. Not a damn thing you can make a that.

  Salt

  BY THE TIME RICHARD Mattingly mentioned the salt cedar bush to Stanley Zimmerman, its roots were already deep. Only later would Richard wonder whether his memory contained the plant’s germination, its first shoots and growing. When had he first seen it?—a shade of green or shape of leaf along Red Medicine Creek so minutely different that he hadn’t marked or noted it. When he mentioned the bush to Stanley, he didn’t think it meant anything. It was a joke, a way to laugh at a neighbor who, in his relentless refusal to be a neighbor, had become for those around him a source of entertainment.

  Looks like Shane Valen’s getting into shrubbery, Richard said.

  He was borrowing a horse trailer, and Stanley was cranking the trailer jack to lift it over the pickup’s ball hitch. Richard’s son, Clay, was standing near Stanley’s house talking to Hayjay Zimmerman. The girl had her hair clasped in her fist, her head tilted, her other hand to her forehead, shading the sun. Clay’s head was bent as if talking to the ground. Then he lifted it and met Hayjay’s eyes. She nodded, and her hair slipped from her fist. The wind spread it forward, hiding her face, and all four of their hands reached into its tangled wave to control it, and then her face reappeared, and she was receiving her hair from Clay, he smiling but she so sober that his smile faded, and he stuck his hands in his pockets.

  Yeah? Stanley asked, still cranking. Richard returned to the conversation.

  Yeah, he said. Got this purple-flowered bush growing along the creek. Next thing Shane’ll be shingling his house. Raise real estate prices. We’ll have Californians moving in.

 

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