Western Swing

by Tim Sandlin

  “I changed the batteries,” Maria said.

  “Let me carry it.” We stumbled into the basement, following the beam over trash and video games. The alcove was locked tight, but the little bugger had left a note and a Baggie tacked on the door.

  Mama—One frenchie wasn’t enough huh? Got to have more of E.T.’s electric tongue. I ran into Rock Springs, but if you slip a hundred dollars under the door, you can have this as a substitute. Or you can have it free for another kiss. One from you and one from Maria.

  Your new son, E.T.

  At my elbow Maria muttered what I took to be a Spanish curse.

  “How much you figure is there?” I asked.

  “Not a hundred dollars’ worth. Hardly enough for one of us.”

  I tapped the Baggie with my index finger. The crystals sparkled in the flashlight light. “What should we do?”

  “I wouldn’t pay a hundred dollars.”

  “You’d rather kiss him?”

  Maria repeated the Spanish curse.

  “That’s what I thought.” I folded up a hundred-dollar bill and slid it under E.T.’s door. We found a flat-topped video game and snorted by flashlight. Maria was right, there wasn’t enough.

  • • •

  Any person who lives in Wyoming, especially in a cabin at the base of a mountain, is expected to be crazy about horses. It’s a responsibility. Anything less is interpreted as letting down the Western mystique. So this is something of a betrayal to admit, but I’m just not a horse lover. My first thought when Thorne said we’d tour the ranch on horseback was to ask if all the trucks were broken.

  I’m not afraid of horses, exactly. It’s just that they’re awkward and sweaty and unpredictable. Like men. Except men are easier to handle.

  Another way horses are like men is that the ones you see in the movies and magazines are sleek and beautiful, whereas in real life they’re generally shaped wrong and look funny around the nose. And they’re stupid—horses, not men, necessarily. A horse’s intelligence rates somewhere between the turkey and the armadillo. Which is actually a blessing, since most horses loathe humans and would kill if they only knew how. You don’t run into many My Friend Flicka mares in love with a master who climbs on her back and yanks at an iron peg stuck sideways in her mouth, all the while chanting, “Atta girl, go get ’em baby.”

  Back in high school, Roxanne was always dragging me off my towel at the country club pool to follow her down to the stables so we could pet the horses and flirt with the help. She still loves the whole horsemanship game; spends thousands of dollars on outfits and saddles; speaks in pithy little Texasisms like, “That stallion’s hotter’n the tail pipe on a chopped-down Harley.” She’s the only female rider I know who wears spurs.

  I think Roxanne’s deep interest in corrals and horses is based on the same thing as all her other deep interests. She just naturally gravitates to any hobby involving spread legs.

  When Loren and I first moved into the cabin, our nearest neighbors, Lee VanHorn and his daughter, Marcie, took us on a three-day pack trip in the Teton Wilderness. My horse’s name was Alex Trebeck. He was a pink-white edging to jaundice color with blood-filled eyes. He hated me.

  Marcie was fourteen back then. She rode with a set of Walkman plugs in her ears and her head down, reading Loren’s Yeast Infection. For all the nature Marcie absorbed those three days, she could have stayed in her room.

  At night around the campfire, she asked Loren questions about his sensitivity and the creative process.

  “A mind like yours must be an awful responsibility, Mr. Paul.”

  Loren squinted his eyes to affect a pained poet look. “It’s the burden of my life.”

  “I’d love to write novels someday. My mind is full of great ideas for plots, all I need is help getting them on paper.”

  I hit the fire coals with my wienie stick, showering sparks into the night. Burden, my ass. Loren eats up that writer’s sensitivity myth. Keeping him from taking this tender esthete act seriously is a full-time job. That’s why, whenever he’s around, I say he’s “typing a book” rather than “writing a novel.” Otherwise Loren’ll start thinking he’s Eugene O’Neill and the regular rules of life don’t apply in his case. The last thing he needed back then was a fourteen-year-old disciple.

  Marcie’s young face turned to me in the firelight. “You must feel so honored to live with such a gifted husband. I mean, to know that while you’re cooking dinner, he’s in the study creating works of literature.”

  I waved the glowing end of my stick dangerously close to Loren’s smudged glasses. “Yes, Marcie, it gives my life meaning to know I’m washing the socks of a genius.”

  Neither Marcie nor Loren caught the sarcasm.

  About then, Marcie’s father came into camp and said Alex Trebeck had broken his hobble and run into the forest and I better go catch him. We chased that mangy animal up canyons and across creeks for two hours while Marcie and Loren sat on stumps, sipping cocoa and admiring each other.

  Later, at home, Loren said, “That Marcie VanHorn sure is mature for her age. Her perceptions are right on target.”

  “Lay one finger on her and I’ll sew your penis shut.”

  • • •

  The foreman led a semishort pinto from the barn. “Name’s Suzy Q,” he said. “Treat her firm or she’ll graze.” The foreman was real small and real old, I’d say early seventies. A handlebar mustache flowed off the sides of his mouth like twin ermine tails.

  I stood with both hands in my pockets. “Is she gentle? I haven’t ridden a whole lot, you know. I mean, some, on bridle paths in Houston and a pack trip up by Jackson, but I haven’t ridden all that much. I think I need a gentle one.”

  The foreman spit. “She’s broke.” His mustache tips were greased to antler points. I imagined you could turn his head by holding them like real handlebars. Of course I’d have to wear gloves to try it.

  Working with his good arm, Thorne buckled and cinched leather things on a giant brown horse named Laredo. He kneed the hell out of the horse’s belly before pulling the final belt tight. He grinned at me. “You afraid of horses?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Get on, then.”

  Thorne mounted and waited while I held Suzy Q by the horn, put my left foot into the stirrup, and stood there, bouncing up and down on my right leg.

  “Thought you’d been on a pack trip,” Thorne said.

  “I was. Three days. It was awful.”

  “Didn’t you have to get on and off your horse that three days?”

  Suzy Q’s legs moved away from me. I followed her around in a circle. “Someone always gave me a boost,” I said.

  Thorne watched as I followed Suzy Q’s butt around another 360. “You allergic to horses?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You keep sniffing like you’ve got a runny nose.”

  Finally Thorne nodded to the foreman, who stepped over and clasped his hands together under my right foot. Together we pushed me into the saddle. “Keep her head up,” he said.

  The foreman’s name was Gritz or Grits. I think it was Gritz as in a legitimate last name, but he was old enough to have been the original cook on Rawhide and cowboys back in the early twentieth century had the same names as their horses—lots of Texas and Pecos Johns. Now they’re all Butch or Snuffy. I actually met a steer wrestler in a bar outside Meeteetse who’d said his name was Billy Joe Bobby Jack. “You call me BJBJ.”

  I sat on Suzy Q, holding the reins with both hands, wishing Roxanne was here to tell me how to start her. I knew it took some kick action, but I didn’t want to kick too hard for fear of pissing Suzy Q off. “Gedup” had no effect.

  Gritz went over by Laredo and squinted off south toward some gray ledges on the horizon. “Got time to look at something, boss?” he asked.

  “If it’s that ma
re’s fetlocks, no.”

  “It’s something else. Out behind the barn.”

  Thorne shifted in the saddle toward me. “Ever see a barn like this?”

  I went with the safe answer. “Nope.”

  “Janey and I built her before we built the house. She’ll hold forty thousand tons of hay. You could fly a plane through the front and back loading doors without touching a thing. I did it once.”

  I thought of Loren. He’d like anyone who called a barn she. “I hear it’s got two flush toilets.”

  Thorne squinted at me as if I was being sarcastic. “Those’re Janey’s.”

  Gritz still stared at the horizon. “Wish you’d come have a look.”

  “Better be important.” Thorne swung his horse and started off. Without me making a move, Suzy Q followed.

  • • •

  Behind the barn we found four or five cowboys standing in an arc around a crucified prairie dog. Its front legs were held on to the crossbar by thick rubber bands. Its back legs dangled free in front of the tail.

  I said, “That’s sick.”

  Thorne stared for thirty seconds or so. Then he sighed real deep. “Darlene?”

  Gritz shrugged.

  “How’d she kill it?” Thorne asked.

  “Nobody’s gone close enough to tell.”

  Thorne glanced at the cowboys. “You afraid to get near it?” Cowboys don’t like being called afraid. One of them stepped forward and knelt in front of the cross. “Head looks bashed in.”

  Thorne sat looking at the dead prairie dog for another thirty seconds. His eyes were worn out like they’d been yesterday at the hospital. He blinked a couple of times. “Throw it out,” he said. Then he wheeled Laredo and trotted south. Suzy Q followed.

  • • •

  We rode up an old washed-out Jeep track. I wanted to ride alongside Thorne and discuss the situation, but Suzy Q was born to follow. She stuck her nose about eight inches behind Laredo’s rump and stayed there. I kicked and tugged and pulled, finally got her over into the other rut, but the stupid horse wouldn’t pass Laredo’s tail.

  I ended up talking to Thorne’s back. “You think something’s wrong with Darlene?” I shouted.

  He glanced back at me, but didn’t answer. We swung down into a gully and I had to lurch way back to keep from falling off. Then I fell forward and hung on to her neck as we climbed the other side. Roxanne would have been tickled.

  Up on the flats again, I kept on as if Thorne had asked for my opinion. “I mean, a lot of kids don’t like their parents. My daughter can’t stand me. My husband is embarrassed by his mom. Lord knows what I think of mine. But that’s all normal resentment. Darlene’s not normal.”

  Thorne’s back moved up and down above the saddle. He had good posture for a cowboy—or maybe the prairie dog and my prattling made him tense.

  “Even E.T.’s normal, more or less,” I said, “in a sick kind of way, but I think Darlene’s sick like a disease, like cancer or something, where E.T. and my daughter are sick more like mumps.”

  Thorne twisted in the saddle. “You been talking to E.T.?”

  “I saw him this morning.” Thorne seemed to have forgotten E.T.’s crack about French-kissing in the basement.

  He slowed Laredo to a walk. I urged Suzy Q up the rut, but she still would have none of it.

  “Those two and their mother are all I did this for,” Thorne said. He paused to take in “this,” which was desert as far as we could see, spotted here and there by a few cows and a fence line. A windmill turned over by the eastern horizon. “And not one of them gives a shit.”

  He reined Laredo to a halt. Suzy Q stopped behind them. “I almost killed myself yesterday, but I didn’t. I’m glad I didn’t.” He thought that one over a moment. “So, today, problems don’t matter. Today I ride my horse on my land and spend time with you. Today is mine.”

  Thorne glanced back at me to see how I was taking the speech. I smiled, so he continued. “I haven’t done anything for me in years. Today I do.”

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

  A couple of miles later, Thorne led off through some willows down a gully and out into a low flat area with a pond and an old collapsed homesteader cabin. We tied the horses to a rotten trough and peeked through broken glass windows at a couple of moth-eaten mattresses and an ancient barrel stove. An empty Delaware Punch bottle sat on a shelf beside some black tins.

  “How long ago’d these people leave?” I asked.

  “Thirties, I figure.” Thorne pointed out a pile of Colt .45 cans in one corner. “My hands use it ever’ now and then during a blizzard. Janey and I almost stayed here one night when my truck threw a rod. A rattler came under the door and she made us leave.”

  “I wouldn’t sleep with a snake.”

  Thorne grunted. “Was raining like hell outside. Spent the night in the cab of the truck.”

  At the pond, Suzy Q finally consented to stand beside Laredo. After the horses drank, Thorne hobbled their legs so they could shuffle around the clearing searching for grass. Thorne pulled a shower-curtain-looking blanket out of his saddlebag and spread it in the shade of three six-foot sagebrush.

  “Let’s see what Maria sent for lunch,” he said.

  “This is a picnic?”

  Thorne smiled. “Can’t ride a horse without workin’ or eatin’, and I ain’t workin’today.”

  He pulled out a pair of small rib eyes and a half-dozen eggs, a homemade loaf of bread, two potatoes, a grocery store basket of strawberries, a can of Crisco, and a skillet. And a pint of Ten High.

  “That Maria’s wonderful,” Thorne said.

  “You should throw Janey out and marry her.”

  He took a slug of Ten High and eyed me over the bottle. “I got you.”

  I’d been on these picnic-down-at-the-tank deals before in Texas and on the road with the Mick, so I knew that however innocent the afternoon begins, there’ll always come a “Gee, it’s hot, let’s skinny-dip” suggestion, and once a man has your clothes off, he starts taking things for granted. Sooner or later it leads to a shoreline free-for-all. About the best you can hope for is the guy lets you get back to the blanket.

  I thought about the situation as we gathered dead sagebrush for the fire. This time wouldn’t be just morphine-in-a-dick like I’d wanted from Billy G. Making it with Thorne would matter in some way. Everyone at the ranch took it for granted I was there as a romance and sex object. Thorne acted as if the issue had already been decided. So did I.

  But Loren was only three days back. I was married to Loren. Even though pain fucks weren’t really cheating, this would be. I hadn’t committed adultery on Loren before, wasn’t real sure I wanted to.

  “How do you like your steak?” Thorne asked.

  “Medium rare.”

  “Eggs?”

  “Over easy.”

  I expected the next question to be “sex?” and was all set to say, “Let’s wait awhile.” However, Thorne seemed more interested in his meat.

  I watched his fingers as he worked around the fire. He used mostly his right hand as the crook of his left arm was still bandaged. Even one-handed, though, each movement showed control. I’d never been around a man who knew exactly what he was doing before. It was unnerving. If I did say, “wait awhile,” I wasn’t going to mean a real long while.

  We ate the steaks, drank some more Ten High, watched a small herd of antelope come down the ravine. Thorne rolled over on his back and propped his bad hand on my knee. “Sure is peaceful,” he said. “Can’t remember last time I felt peaceful.”

  I looked at the water, which was still as glass. “My daughter Cassie’d like it here. She loves horses and real ranch stuff. I’ve been around cowboys in bars for years, but I’ve never seen them much at their work. It’s inte
resting.”

  Thorne snored.

  So much for skinny-dipping after lunch. I sat on the blanket next to him, tossing pebbles into the pond and watching the ripples. The countryside was so quiet, not even a grasshopper to break the drone of Thorne’s breathing and my pebbles as they plopped into the pond. I traced his face with my index finger while he slept. The corners of his eyes had deep lines. I made up little stories about how he got the scar, imagining something dangerous and fun, a grizzly maybe or a border-town whore.

  An old cow came across the rise and drank from the other side of the pond. You’d never see one cow out by itself in Texas. When I was little, before Dessie turned gay or I discovered sugar sadness, back when Mom laughed, Daddy used to take us on drives outside Houston in our watermelon-green Dodge wagon. We’d see cattle standing in the shade of oil pumps, and black people sitting on crates in front of section road gas stations. Wyoming doesn’t have section roads or black people, at least not up in Jackson Hole. There’s more one-eyed bears in Teton County than there are black people.

  Every drive we’d find a wind-beaten cafe and stop for apple pie heated with cheddar cheese on top. I must have been five or six then, because by the time I was eight Daddy’d traded the Dodge for an Oldsmobile. Then he bought a new house and took up golf and raising saffron. Funny how you date times by the car that goes with them.

  Thorne’s eyelids flew open. He lay still a moment, searching the sky. Then he sat up. “What happened?”

  “You took a nap.”

  He looked from the pond to the ravine to Laredo and Suzy Q grazing on weeds. “A nap.”

  “You were so peaceful I didn’t have the heart to wake you up.”

  Thorne blinked a couple times. He ran his hand through his hair. “I never slept in the daytime before.”

  I handed him the pint of Ten High.

  Thorne held the bottle to his mouth, but didn’t drink. “My dad didn’t believe in naps. He said when the sun’s up, you work, when it’s down, you sleep.”

  “When did you eat?”

  “On the edges.” He drank from the bottle. “And noon. Straightup twelve, Mama had dinner on the table. They called lunch dinner when I was a boy.”