Gnome On The Range

by Jennifer Zane

  The next thirty seconds were like watching a car crash. You couldn’t look away from the carnage. The stud mounted the phantom mare and Robert, the AV holder, quickly placed the AV over the super-sized equine penis. The horse didn’t really thrust as much as stand there, his hind legs adjusting to the position of his upper body across the phantom mare. The noise of horse pain—or possibly lust—filled the room. I winced as I watched. Moments later, Robert pulled the AV off, the horse dismounted and was led out of the building.

  I felt like I needed a cigarette.

  “Wow.” I didn’t know what to say. ‘That was great,’ or ‘That really turned me on,’ definitely didn’t work.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” Amazing wasn’t the first word that came to mind. I nodded my head weakly. “The AV has a sterile tip that collects the sperm. Then it’s put into a vial, like the one you said you have, and frozen. It’s stored until needed and sent around the world.”

  “Is there a big market for it?”

  “Absolutely. My studs are famous for their speed, their exemplary genetic qualities and are much sought after. So much so that the stud you just saw, his sperm brings in over $10,000 a vial.”

  “Holy crap.” No wonder Morty wanted the vial. It would be quite the side business for him.

  Dex laughed. “You find this interesting.” He still held my arm but now he moved in close, close enough to invade my personal space. “I knew you would.” He brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. A chill ran down my spine at his creepy touch.

  I stepped back. “Yup, it’s been interesting.” I looked at my watch. I didn’t care what time it was, I just wanted out of there. I’d had enough for one day. Maybe a lifetime. “Boy, look at the time. I’ve got to run.”

  ***

  Norris Road

  was known for crappy cell service so I had to wait until I got closer to town to call Kelly.

  “Remember when I told you my dream cowboy was Bobby Ewing?” I asked when I was finally in range. When I was eight I’d fantasized about marrying Bobby Ewing from the TV show Dallas. I wanted to be Pamela, his wife, with her beautiful hair and clothes. Bobby wore cowboy hats, lived on a ranch and drove that fancy red Mercedes convertible. He was the bomb. Ever since then I dreamt about marrying a cowboy. Maybe deep down that was a reason I’d moved to Montana. But Bobby Ewing lived in Texas. Obviously I’d picked the wrong state since I’d ended up marrying Nate the Jerk instead.

  “Yeah. Please tell me Drake Dexter was super hot like Bobby.” She sighed. “You get all the cute ones.”

  “Tom’s a super stud and you know it.” I countered.

  “Yeah, but he’s my husband. Not the same thing at all.”

  “This guy looks nothing like Bobby Ewing. Definitely MarlboroMan.”

  Kelly sighed again.

  “But he’s a total perv.”

  “Oh.” Kelly sounded deflated. As if her dream man turned out to be gay. You only dreamt about guys who would have sex with you.

  The gas warning light on the dash came on accompanied by a ding. “Crap. I’ve got to get gas.” I hung up and drove to the nearest station on Huffine by the mall.

  I fed the pump my credit card, then my car some gas. I was dying of thirst so I went inside to get a drink. I meandered through the fridge wall of the convenience store checking out all of the beverages. It smelled like hot dogs and buttered popcorn and the A/C felt good on my dusty skin. I opened the fridge and picked out a tea with ginseng and lemon when I heard, “Give me all your money!”

  Holy crap.

  I turned around and saw a man in a bright yellow wife beater holding a knife up to the cashier. Angled off to the side, I could see his crazy black hair standing every which way about his head. His eyes had a crazed, glassy look. Drugs. Definitely drugs. He looked like death warmed over, his skin color a funky gray, an open sore on his lip. If he was stupid enough to rob a convenience store in the middle of the day, his brain cells must be occupied with trying to score more drugs. Stupid, but dangerous.

  Three other customers were in the store, two with the utility company with their day-glo orange T-shirts. They were further down the fridge wall that lined the back of the store. Another man, in his fifties, stood about five feet away from me. I was closest to the robber.

  The store clerk looked panicked. He had to be eighteen and just graduated from high school. Pimple faced and a patchy attempt at a beard coated his cheeks like mange. He may have peed his pants with fear. I couldn’t blame the kid if he had. He didn’t make enough money to be held up by a deranged lunatic.

  “Now! Open the register and give me the fucking money!” The robber shouted, his knife waving wildly about. It was a bowie knife used to gut animals during hunting season. Hopefully none of us were next.

  I slowly stepped back, moving further and further from the register trying to breathe through my fear. I had that instantaneous hot flash that came with panic, kind of like just avoiding a near collision while driving. The utility workers charged past me. One pulled a gun from the back waistband of his pants. The other one held a knife that had been in a sheath attached to his leather belt. Obviously working with the utility company required being armed at all times. No telling what type of customers they dealt with every day.

  They approached Robber at the same time as a man threw open the door to the store armed with a rifle. At first I thought he might be another bad guy, but then he yelled, “Put it down, Fucker!”

  It was like living in a demilitarized zone with all the weaponry around. Montanans and their guns. Never get between them. All three Good Samaritans ganged up on Robber.

  “Don’t even think about it, asshole!”

  A click-click of a rifle being loaded. “Drop the knife!”

  The weapon fell out of Robber’s hand onto the ground as one of the utility workers clocked him on the back of the head. He was then forced—at gunpoint—to the ground. I could practically see little birdies circle around his head. The fifty-something man had his cell out and talked with the police.

  I stood there gawking and quickly closed my mouth which had fallen open. I grabbed a roll of duct tape off the shelves in front of me and handed it to one of the utility workers. He gave me a brief smile. Big and burly, he looked like he hauled a lot of cable. "Good idea." He started rolling the man’s wrists and ankles in the gray tape and had him trussed up like a Christmas goose in seconds. Must’ve done calf roping on the rodeo circuit.

  “Lucky you had your gun,” I commented once he’d finished.

  “New wire’s going to the new subdivision out on Huffine. Prairie dogs are all over the place. Thought we’d get a little target practice in over lunch.”

  Prairie dogs were everywhere in the West. They tore up open fields by burrowing entire towns underground and shot for fun on private land. Barbaric, but natural selection at work.

  The rifle stayed right on Robber until the cops arrived. The fifty-something guy on the cell must have updated the police to the various weaponry in the store and how they had Robber contained. Thankfully they didn’t shoot all of us and ask questions later.

  Two minutes after the police swarmed in and took Robber into custody, the fire department rolled up, sirens blaring.

  I was being questioned by an officer named Dempsey out in front of the building. Forty-ish and kind, he took his time getting my statement. Ty walked up in his fire uniform, navy T-shirt and bunker pants and boots. Red suspenders. God, the red suspenders made my heart skip a beat. “Can you give us a minute?” he asked the officer.

  Boy, I was glad to see him. My adrenaline had worn off and left me weary and shaky. It felt really great to see a familiar face. Comforting in all the insanity.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked through clenched teeth. Obviously, he was trying not to shout as the veins on his neck stuck out like he was about ready to stroke out.

  “Getting gas.”

  “That’s it?”

  I twisted my hand back and forth. �
�You know, the usual stuff that happens to anyone at a convenience store. I watched some lunatic hold up the store five feet in front of me with a bowie knife before three well armed citizens cold cocked him and held him at gunpoint.”

  “Do you have a gun?” he asked as he looked me over, as if I had a holster like the Old West slung around my hips.

  “Um, no. My part in the whole thing involved staying out of the way, then handing them a roll of duct tape I found in the household section to tie him up.”

  Ty closed his eyes and I could swear I saw him counting to ten in his head. “Are you okay?” He looked me over again.

  “Fine. But I forgot my tea.”

  He lifted a brow and shook his head. “Jesus,” he muttered.

  We both watched Robber carried out by two officers, held up by his armpits. They hadn’t traded the duct tape for handcuffs. Must’ve done a good trussing job. He shouted and ranted about needing money but was ignored. An EMT approached and the officers placed him face down on a gurney to be taken to the hospital.

  “That guy’s out of his mind,” Ty commented as they slid the gurney into the back of the bus and shut the door. Quiet returned.

  “He has to be on some kind of drugs.”

  “Meth. Word out is there’s a new shipment around town. Churchill fire had a mobile home burn to the ground the other night. Meth lab. Something big is happening in the area but we don’t know what yet.”

  Churchill is a tiny town fifteen minutes west of Bozeman. More Bozemanites were moving that way for cheaper home prices and a longer commute into work.

  “Great. I’d hoped my kids would grow up in a safe, drug-free place.”

  “Meth’s everywhere, even Bozeman. This lunatic goes into the store waving a knife around and three men jump him with guns?”

  “One of the utility workers had a knife, the other a gun. Another guy was getting gas, saw the man through the door and took his hunting rifle out of the window rack of his truck. Good thing people here believe in the Second Amendment.”

  “Shit,” Ty said. He stepped back and walked around in circles swearing. He returned to face me and ran his hands over his face. “I can’t do this. You’re like a magnet for disaster.”

  “Me?” I asked. My voice rose as much as his.

  He poked a finger into my shoulder. “You! Who else would have a man steal something off their doorstep, practically get blown up and then get involved in a holdup?”

  “It wasn’t my fault the guy robbed the store. I was just getting a tea!”

  “Exactly. You weren’t even trying. I can only imagine what kind of disasters you can create when you actually try!”

  I was stunned and angry. Hurt. Now Ty was turning into a lunatic.

  He grabbed my shoulders and pulled me into a kiss, one with a really good amount of tongue. I heard some catcalls in the background, probably from his fellow firefighters. And a few policemen. Some bystanders, too.

  He pulled back but held onto me. Good thing too, as I wasn’t steady on my feet after a kiss like that. “I can’t keep my hands off of you. Fuck. But I can’t do this anymore. I can’t watch someone else I care about get hurt. Or killed.”

  Ty walked off and climbed into the back of the fire truck. I watched it pull away, frozen where he’d left me.

  Chapter Eight

  “What?” Goldie practically shouted when I shared the news about the robbery. We stood on her front porch. She and Paul had bought a small bungalow when Nate and I married. It was one story, over a hundred years old, and just three blocks from the store.

  “Everything turned out fine,” I replied, downplaying the entire incident.

  “But it might have turned out far worse.” She had a hand to her neck and some color drained from her face underneath her bronzer.

  I gave her a quick hug when the boys stampeded out onto the front porch. I figured the conversation was over…for now.

  “Mom, guess what?” Bobby asked.

  “What?”

  “We got to go in the hot tub in our underwear!”

  Goldie and Paul had a hot tub in their backyard. They used it all year round, but it was fabulous for the winter. It held eight people and had special colored lights under the water. Zach and Bobby considered it their own mini swimming pool. And they didn’t have to wear swim trunks.

  “GG got us tickets to the demolission dervy!”

  I eyed Goldie, also known as GG. It stood for Grandma Goldie. Goldie, of course, refused to be called Grandma so we compromised on GG. “Tomorrow night at the county fair. We’ll go early and do the rides,” she said.

  The ‘we’ in that statement didn’t include me. I was never psyched about spending time in the hot sun at the county fairgrounds waiting in line for deathtrap rides that were ludicrously overpriced. Top that with overheated, cranky kids and it made for a day in Hell. Obviously I had very negative feelings about the county fair. I didn’t mind walking around and seeing the animals and watching the auctions, but the rides, ugh.

  “Demolition derby? I love a good demolition derby!” I told Bobby. I really was excited about a demolition derby. Who could deny an interest in cars smashing and ramming each other? And the mud! Now I just had to get out of the fair part.

  “We’ll talk more about the other stuff later,” Goldie said as she gave Bobby a squeeze.

  “You can just watch it on the news.”

  ***

  When I got home I stood under the shower until the water ran cold, the boys parked in front of the TV watching the original Star Wars. I used the bath salts Goldie had given me for Christmas last year but never opened, hoping it would scrub off the layer of sleaze that had built up at Dex’s ranch. I let my hair air dry while I carried a laundry basket around the house picking up dirty clothes that had been scattered on the boy’s floors and their bathroom.

  I had to admit my feelings were a little hurt. I felt a funny pang of regret, a loss of something that hadn’t quite started. Ty didn’t want anything to do with me because I was a threat to myself. Ha! Nothing, I mean nothing, exciting happened to me. Until less than a week ago when I’d purchased two gnomes at a garage sale. Getting myself hurt was a silly idea because I did nothing crazy. Nothing over the top. Ever. No rock climbing, no sky diving, no crazy adventures of any kind.

  Sure, there was a definite spark and connection on a sexual level with Ty. Make that raging inferno, but Ty didn’t really know me. Just as he didn’t know much about me, I didn’t know anything about him. I knew he had parents and grew up in Pony. I knew he’d been in the service. I didn’t know what he’d done in the service. I didn’t know how his deployments had affected him. He must have had friends and fellow soldiers who’d been hurt or even killed. And it had impacted him to such a level that he’d rather push me away before he could care about me, just in case something happened.

  Was it up to me to change his mind? Or was that too much for one man to handle? Was it even fair to try? Did I even want to? I’d already had one lying cheating husband die on me. Did I want to go through that again? Ty wasn’t the only one with scars.

  But then I smiled to myself as I poured laundry detergent into the machine. I realized he cared about me enough to push me away, and that had to be a lot. And that warmed a place in my heart I thought long frozen over like a Montana winter.

  ***

  Kelly called once the laundry was in the dryer.

  “I saw the robbery on the news. Are you all right?” she asked, her voice laced with worry.

  The local TV station was small-time. As in teensy tiny. Not that they weren’t good. They, thankfully, didn’t have a lot of news to cover. Not much bad stuff happened in Bozeman, one of the reasons I liked living here. It hit on the current news around town, which, most of the time involved crop rotation, deep freezes and triplet calves. The excitement of the day had been a toss up between the Best in Class awards for poultry at the county fair and the convenience store robbery.

  “I’m fine. Scary.” I was in
the kitchen getting a snack. Cheese and crackers. I had the phone tucked between my ear and my shoulder while I sliced some Monterey Jack and laid it out on a plate with a bunch of Ritz.

  “It said the man was on meth.”

  “Looked like it to me,” I replied. “He was completely wigged out.”

  “My next door neighbor’s son was arrested on Monday for possession of meth.”

  “Really? Mrs. Tanner’s son?” Mrs. Tanner taught at the university. English professor, if I remembered correctly. Her son had to be in his twenties and obviously up to no good. God, I hoped my kids wouldn’t turn to drugs and blow all the hard work I’d been doing.

  “He worked at one of hot springs, I can’t remember which one, and someone discovered him selling in the men’s locker room.”

  “A hot springs?” That was surprising. Natural hot springs are all over Montana, several within an hour’s drive of Bozeman. One was just down the road from Kelly’s house so she went often with the kids. So did lots of other families. Most have four or five pools, each with a different temperature ranging from average pool water to just-before-scalding. They always smelled faintly of rotten eggs.

  “It’s weird there were two meth incidents within a few days. It’s getting a little too close to home for me,” Kelly said.

  With seven kids, I couldn’t blame her.

  “Oh, I forgot. When Ty came to get Bobby’s arm out of the patio umbrella stand, he said they went on a few meth calls. He told me today a meth lab burned down in Churchill. And, there’s something big going on but they don’t know what it is yet.” I poured apple juice into plastic cups and called for the boys to come in from the backyard to get their snack.

  “In about ten years we’re going to be dodging all kinds of teenage crap without having to deal with drugs, too.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be able to handle drugs, but teenage s…e…x, no problem,” I spelled out as I handed Bobby his cup.

  “Yeah, we’ll just make them sit down with Goldie for ‘The Talk’. I guarantee she’ll embarrass them into staying virgins until they’re thirty.”