Mammoth

by Douglas Perry

  Hicks picked up the police radio’s hand microphone, pressed the button. Still nothing. He thumped the transceiver down. NASA? Hicks began to wonder if Lundstrum had lost his marbles. Had everyone but he and Lloyd gone nuts? “Get in the back, all right, Frank? You’ll be safe with us.”

  Lundstrum, as thankful as a rescued puppy, pulled open the back door and climbed in.

  “And give me that gun,” Hicks said.

  “Chief . . .”

  “Come on, hand it over.”

  Lundstrum passed the gun forward. Hicks popped the shells out and tucked it between his legs, barrel down.

  Lloyd revved the engine like a nervous tic. “Chief,” he said. “Winnie’s at home.”

  Hicks let out a breath, nodded. “Yes, of course. Let’s go.”

  The vehicle jumped forward and Lloyd turned onto Custer Avenue. The needle on the speedometer swung to forty miles per hour. Forty-five. Two weeks ago, Winnie would have been downtown at this hour, but she left her bookkeeping job when she learned she was pregnant. Lloyd insisted on it, even though she wasn’t even showing yet. It hadn’t been very long since she’d quit, but Hicks knew Winnie just well enough to know she must be going stir-crazy at home.

  Hicks held onto the door handle as Lloyd threw the Bronco into another turn. Now that Lloyd had expressed concern for his pregnant wife, Hicks thought of Sarah. Who wasn’t waiting for him at home. She’d hated it here from the first day. The Great Nowhere, she called it. She didn’t care that he wanted to be the boss for once in his life. He was fifty years old when the offer came. It was only going to happen in a small pond. A very small pond. She should have understood how much he needed this—to be called chief, to make decisions and sign off on payroll—but she didn’t. She’d never had a job. She’d never taken orders from anyone but her father and her husband. He had figured she would come around, take up hiking and enjoy the views, maybe even try skiing, but she loved Fresno too much. She loved the city life, their friends, their place in the world. Not that he believed it was her fault. At this late date he could hardly blame her unhappiness on the town. He hadn’t even tried to convince her to stay.

  Lloyd slammed the vehicle to a stop, bounded out. “Honey! Honey!” he called.

  Hicks snapped out of his reverie, climbed down from the cab. “Stay here,” he told Lundstrum, who was leaning between the seats, trying to see into the house.

  Hicks stepped into the foyer behind Lloyd. Something didn’t feel right here, either. He put his hand on his holster, nervously drummed his fingers on the leather. He glanced to his left: the living room. A sagging couch, a loveseat, two leather chairs. The styles and wear suggested they were all hand-me-downs from dead relatives. He looked to his right: a small alcove—a mismatched desk and chair—leading to the dining room, then a hallway and the bedrooms. On the wall hung a framed poster from the 1974 Spokane Expo featuring the fair’s Mobius strip logo.

  “Winnie?” Lloyd said quietly, soothingly. “It’s Johnny.” A sound tinkled from the back, and he bolted for it.

  Hicks followed, carefully, peering into each room until he reached the kitchen. The afternoon breeze was banging the back door’s screen against the frame. Lloyd was on the porch gazing out at a fenced-in yard.

  The officer looked over his shoulder as Hicks joined him outside.

  “The house is empty,” the chief said.

  Lloyd nodded, which turned into a shake of the head. “She’s gone. Just like old Tom Singer. Maybe they ran off together.” The lieutenant regretted the joke as soon as he said it. It was inconsiderate. He pulled the visor of his hat low on his forehead and dropped his eyes to the railing. “Sorry, Chief,” he said.

  Chapter Eight

  Ten seconds, she thought. That’s how close she was. So close and yet so far away. Just like her mother.

  Tori never knew Rebecca Holland Lane. Her mom died of cancer when Tori was four years old. Tori knew only photographs of her, not the real thing. She knew only that her mother would have been a movie star if she’d survived, that she was on the verge of stardom when she became sick. Tori always wondered about that. She wondered why she hadn’t been in any movies at all, not even small parts. Something about the story sounded bogus. Her mother didn’t really look like a movie star. TV, maybe. A sitcom actress. Tori sometimes thought the snapshots on the walls could be anyone. Like maybe Dad found them at a garage sale and decided the toothy blonde looked like the kind of girl he would fall for. The living room featured a big, framed image of Mom at twenty, Dad’s favorite photo. Tori understood why he liked it: the lively round face, the sun-bleached hair as straight as a two-by-four. She’s looking right at the camera, beaming a smile of absolute confidence. Tori couldn’t see herself in that woman at all.

  Her father wasn’t nearly so perfect. He was a handsome man—all her friends said so, with his bent nose and even more bent smile, his thick black hair and intricately defined arms. But that wasn’t the only way he was different from the other dads. He did some kind of shady business, something to do with gambling. She was only guessing about the gambling, but she thought it was a good guess. He watched the Indianapolis 500 on TV every year even though he had no interest in motor sports. He cared about football, but he didn’t actually get to watch much of the Super Bowl. People called him on the phone throughout the game, and the conversations sometimes became heated.

  Tori looked up, distracted by a sparkle of light. She’d been staring at her shoes clapping along the asphalt, and so now the sudden rush of stimuli—the greenery and water and sun dazzle—made her head pound. She stopped, shielded her eyes with a hand. There was a pond pushed up against the road. It stretched out to the forest, level and still. It seemed like a strange place for a pond. Growing up in a city, she was accustomed to clear delineations between the urban and natural landscapes. There should be a fence or something, she thought. She stared at her reflection etched along the surface of the water: a skinny, shapeless girl with bad hair—Olive Oyl in a T-shirt and running shorts. She couldn’t really see her face in the water but that didn’t matter: she’d memorized it long ago. Bland, gray eyes; thin, pointy nose. The cheekbones were okay, but then the lower half of her face couldn’t finish the job; it kind of collapsed in on itself, narrowing sharply down to a baby’s chin. She wondered all the time how she could fail to get either of her parents’ looks. She wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t cute. She was just . . . there.

  Dad loved her anyway. She believed that. He didn’t say the words, and he could be mean, telling her to shut up for no reason or to stay in her room for the night. But he trusted her to get his gun when someone rang the bell. He took her shopping for clothes sometimes, without her asking, and let her pick out whatever she wanted. He didn’t punish her the time she ditched study hall. She started counting again. One Mississippi, two Mississippi. By the time she reached ten, a car was going to come around the side of the mountain, see her, and pull over. This time.

  She was her father’s daughter, that was for sure. She was a Lane. But was she a Holland? Her mother’s parents had wanted her after their daughter’s death, but it hadn’t worked out. They then disappeared completely from Tori and her dad’s lives. If she had any aunts or uncles or cousins on her mother’s side, she wasn’t aware of them. She had the sense that they were better people. Maybe they thought her mother was slumming with her father. This was just a guess, but it felt right.

  Tori put her head down and marched on. She shivered. The sweat-suit top over her Spritle’s Racers T-shirt wasn’t enough, despite the 70-degree day. A mink coat might not have been enough. Fear, or something like it, bubbled in her stomach, sending spikes of ice through her veins. She felt abandoned, even though it was her own fault they all left without her. She didn’t think she was in danger, though. Not really. Whatever was happening in the world, whatever that news report was about, had nothing to do with her or Mammoth Mountain. She’d get to tow
n, find a phone, and her dad would come and get her. By nightfall, they’d be back in Bakersfield, where they’d be safe. The Russians wouldn’t bother invading Bakersfield. It was too boring there.

  She looked down the road. Ten more seconds, she thought. Ten more seconds and everything will be all right. On Monday she’d clocked nine minutes and fifty-seven seconds over three thousand meters, the first time she’d broken the ten-minute barrier. If she could lop ten more seconds off this new personal best she’d break the state high school girls’ record for the distance. She’d get the attention of college coaches for sure if she did that. Ten seconds is a lot, Coach P. had reminded her when he saw the smile on her face. It’s a hundred yards—if you’re fresh and going flat-out. You’re still a whole football field away from your goal, he’d said. A football field. But Tori refused to think like that. Ten seconds wasn’t a football field. Ten seconds was nothing.

  She wondered what Polly Jean Colson was doing right now. PJ had graduated in June. Her best time was also nine-fifty-seven—Tori had been there to see it. PJ had encouraged Tori after that race, told her if she—PJ—could get under ten minutes, then so could Tori with her super long legs and her high tolerance for pain. She asked Tori to stay with her after practice broke up, to run one more set of splits. “That’s the only way to get what you want,” she said. “You have to want it more than everyone else. You have to go for it.” She smiled when she said things like this; she had one of those big, the-world-is-wonderful smiles that radiated outward like a force field. It was the smile of a girl in a travel poster: Visit Switzerland! Tori’s mood darkened at the memory of it. She remembered walking to algebra class with Jenny Brown in April and mentioning that PJ had invited her over to watch Saturday Night Live and spend the night.

  “You can’t do that,” Jenny said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s a lesbian. Everybody knows that.”

  “She is not,” Tori said, feeling her face get hot.

  “Come on, Tor, she’s a total jock.”

  “I’m on the cross-country team.”

  Jenny waved that away. “She does all the sports. Be ready, Tor. She’s totally going to molest you.”

  Tori didn’t believe her—but she knew she couldn’t be sure. She had wondered why a senior wanted to be her friend. She came up with an excuse to stay home that Saturday. She would never go over to PJ’s house. She stopped staying after practice with her, stopped making eye contact and smiling when passing her in the hall. Thinking about it now, Tori wanted to cry. She spat into the pond, causing her reflection to explode into a series of ripples. She’d run a nine-fifty-seven, but so what? She’d never get her time ten seconds lower. PJ couldn’t do it, and she was a total jock.

  Chapter Nine

  Their third date changed everything. They saw Splendor in the Grass at the Village Theatre in Westwood. It was Becky’s idea. Billy had suggested Wild in the Country, at the Landmark up on Hollywood Boulevard, but inevitably he’d given in to her wishes. A mistake. Warren Beatty’s smug face, all sleepy eyes and girly lips, had really pissed him off. He’d refused to hold Becky’s hand as they walked up the aisle to the lobby.

  Becks grabbed onto Billy’s arm and hugged it. A group of sorority girls ahead of them pranced toward the doors, their voices popping and cackling. One girl had a purple bow on the top of her head like she should be in an Archie comic. She bounced on the balls of her feet and suddenly did a twirl, as neat as could be. It made Becky grin. She wanted to do the same thing. She wanted to be that girl—a college student without a care in the world. She snagged Billy’s hand, forced his fingers to fold over hers. She clearly didn’t realize he was in a mood. She felt as happy as the dancing girl in front of them. Probably happier. Billy couldn’t believe how oblivious she was to his signals. But that was Becky. Always happy, all the time, Warren Beatty or no Warren Beatty. Sporting half a grin, she exaggerated the sway of her hips as she moved through the lobby with her boyfriend, proud to show herself off to all these college kids she didn’t know. She and Billy stepped out of the theater and turned south, toward the parking lot. She held his arm again, this time with both hands, like a fireman going down a pole.

  They crossed the street, their hips bumping, neither of them speaking. That was one of the things Billy liked about being with her; neither of them felt the need to talk all the time. They were comfortable with one another. Becky flung her feet out in front of her like a racehorse begging for the whip. She wanted to skip. She wanted to do-si-do. It was that kind of night: warm and lively, with a breeze just strong enough to slip playfully under her skirt without making her worry that it could send the thing shooting skyward à la Marilyn Monroe. They walked past the two men in dungarees standing at Weyburn and Gayley. Becky smiled blandly to be polite.

  The men pushed themselves away from the building and fell in behind the couple. Billy, still stewing over the movie, didn’t notice them. The commercial district disappeared to the east as Billy, Becks, and their pursuers crossed an empty lot. Up ahead, Los Angeles National Cemetery rose into view. Becky realized what was happening first. Looking back on it, Billy would count this as a mark against her. She always paid attention to men on the street, how they looked at her—or didn’t. She tugged at Billy’s shirt, whispered. He reacted immediately, but it was too late. Becky screamed as she saw Billy’s face shudder and go slack. He fell forward, cracking his head on the pavement. Becky dropped to the ground right after him, needing only a shove to lose her legs. When Billy turned over, he was surrounded. Becky sat next to him, sobbing into her hands. Her knees were raw; blood bubbled down her right leg. A dozen or so of their fellow moviegoers were crowded around, unsure what to do. “Was it jigaboos?” one of them asked. Billy didn’t know, but that sounded right. A policeman pushed through the crowd a couple of minutes later, but by then it hardly mattered. The men were long gone with Billy’s wallet and Becky’s purse.

  Humiliation swept over Billy as he answered the officer’s questions. It was right there on the cop’s face: disgust that Billy had let this happen, that he hadn’t been able to protect his own girl. Becky’s concern about the lump on his head only made matters worse. Lying on the bed in his apartment an hour later, an ice pack on his head, he told her he’d get her money back, with interest. He even told her how he was going to do it; he wanted her to know he was no coward. Becky could tell he was serious, more serious than he’d ever been about anything. “I’m going with you,” she told him.

  Billy still thought about that moment all the time. He looked in the rearview mirror at the station wagon behind them, all those unformed teenage faces, their mouths grim and unmoving. He could see a bit of the blond girl’s shoulder and arm in the mirror. She was sitting in the backseat of the wagon, against the door. She had taken a liking to Billy the moment she saw him standing there next to the Skyhawk. She walked right over with her backpack as the camp counselors organized who went where. She asked him who he was and what he was doing there. She told him her name twice, even though he hadn’t asked. She was his daughter’s age—she might be Tori’s friend—but he’d flirted in return anyway. An old habit. Mary, eh? A good Irish name. Maybe we’re distant cousins from back in the old country. Not that long ago he might have done more than that. He might have told her to come along in their car. Given her the ride of her life.

  Did it all go back to Westwood? Billy wondered. It had taken him a long time to get over the shame of that night. That shame had caused him to take all kinds of risks in the years since. Was it responsible for the turn his life took? Had it led him down through the years to this dingy green car, driving on this barely-on-the-map road with two black men and a sack of stolen money in the trunk? Would he be a respectable member of society if he just hadn’t been jealous of Warren Beatty?

  He let the thought peter out. I am who I am, and there’s nothing wrong with that, he told himself. Americans love criminals—at lea
st the crooks who have style, whose actions have something to say about the world. The Wild Bunch, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger. They were as famous as any movie star or rock singer. The Lovely Lanes could have joined the rolls of the country’s famous outlaws. That was the name Becky came up with after their first job. The newspapers would never use a nickname like that, Billy told her, laughing. It was too girly. Becky didn’t care. The Lovely Lanes it was.

  Except Becks was long gone, wasn’t she? No one had ever heard of the Lanes, lovely or otherwise. And now Billy had crossed a line, one his wife never would have crossed. He’d killed a man. Shot him in cold blood. Billy had gotten caught up in his own past, in what might have been, and he’d lost his way. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Becky came up with that, too, after their first robbery. Moses wrote it in the Bible. A warning, Becky said, down through the ages. God was watching.

  Tori, Becky’s daughter—with Becky’s eyes and her smile and her little knobby chin—rose up in Billy’s mind, and he wiped her away. He’d failed to spot her at the camp, but he told himself there was a reason for that. He’d tried to stay in the background, to not draw attention to himself. And all those teenage girls looked the same, with their long pink legs and big frog eyes. Tori was in one of those cars back there, safe and sound. He imagined them singing camp songs as the coaches drove. Michael, row the boat ashore. Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall. All the classics. She was with friends. Probably thought this was all a reaction to the earthquake, an overreaction for safety’s sake. Most important, she didn’t know any of it had anything to do with her old man.

  Jackson issued an expletive under his breath. Billy shook himself and glanced at the road ahead. They’d come up on a logging truck with a full load. The thing was massive: at least sixty tons, with a towering winch bouncing over the cab, and dozens of logs stacked in offset rows. The vibration from the road gave the impression that the logs were rotating, like wheels upon wheels. A rolling factory.