Western Swing

by Tim Sandlin

  What I did next was a cheap shot. I took all the pain and tragedy and realism of Ann and Buggie and turned it into a line. There’s no defense except to say that I really wanted to talk to someone that night.

  “My son disappeared and my wife killed herself.”

  Again her face changed. The lines beside her eyes softened, her forehead momentarily relaxed. “That’s awful. I’m so sorry, I must sound terrible complaining about my daughter.”

  I looked away. “I finished a book about them today. I don’t know what to do next.” She sat staring at me while I watched her daughter sing. I didn’t recognize the song. Lana Sue’s daughter looked young, seventeen or eighteen years old at the most. I started counting the years since high school. How old would Buggie be now—eight and a half, going on nine. How much younger than Lana Sue’s daughter?

  “Listen,” Lana Sue said, “you want to go somewhere quieter and have a drink?”

  • • •

  I have a confession to make about that tattoo. I thought a tattoo would make me look tough. At first I was going with a picture—a lightning bolt or a snake—but then I decided a woman’s name would give me a tragic past that girls in Bellaire High would lather up over. For a week, I was torn between Roberta for Roberta Nesslebaum, the girl who sat in front of me in civics, or Zelda for Zelda Fitzgerald. Still not knowing which one to choose, I made an appointment and waited a couple of days for inspiration to strike, which it did in the form of a stop sign on Bissonnet Road. The truth is, I was on my way down to the tattoo parlor when I met Lana Sue. It wasn’t love at first sight or precognition of the future. Lana Sue was a name more or less pulled out of a hat.

  Not that I hadn’t thought of her often over the years. In the shower, I’d soap down her name and wonder where she was and whether or not she remembered me. I used to make up stories about her. For years I had her as an exotic dancer in Las Vegas. Then I gave her a job studying chimpanzees in Zambia. Never in my wildest fantasies was Lana Sue ever a washed-up country singer or a mother.

  • • •

  Lana Sue took me on a jukebox tour of Denver. She said the wino pervert who stole her daughter was the foremost authority on jukeboxes in the Central and Rocky Mountain Time zones.

  “The man’s brain is a Wurlitzer filing cabinet,” she said. “It’s his one redeeming quality.”

  “He has good taste in women.”

  “Mickey runs on a take-what-he-can-get system. Cassie and I were dumb luck.”

  We zipped her Avis rental up Arapahoe to a tavern with the Fontella Bass version of “Rescue Me.” Then down Sheridan to an all-night cafe owned by a guy claiming to be Gene Pitney’s cousin. “Town Without Pity” played three times while we polished off fried chicken blue plates. Then back to the bars for more rusty nails and obscure 45s. A live recording of “Lovesick Blues” on Columbus. “Mack the Knife” at a gay bar on Speer. Lana Sue drove us way the hell up some canyon to a dirty dive that served nothing but Pabst Blue Ribbon and had a jukebox of trucker singles, all by men named Red. Check out this list: “Neon Playboy” by Red Steagal, “Nytro Express” by Red Simpson, “Truckin’ Trees for Christmas” by Red Sovine, “Pin Ball Boogie” by Red Foley, and the last one, my favorite, Red Rubrecht singing “Hold On, Ma’am, You’ve Got Yourself a Honker.”

  After the Red inundation, she brought us back all the way from the Speedway to the Coliseum on nothing but Patsy Cline. Lana Sue claimed a spiritual connection to Patsy—said they’d both suffered on their knees before the Nashville cocksuckers. I had trouble picturing the metaphor.

  About the fourth version of “I’ve Got the Memories But She’s Got You,” I realized we were both blasted out of our gourds and the situation was shaping up as a definite score. Lana Sue had been singing along with the jukeboxes for forty-five minutes. Between songs and bars, we held hands and she told me about her lousy husbands and darling daughters. She said if I’d find an all-night Eckerd’s she would buy a golf ball and a garden hose and show me a neat trick.

  We wound up driving way off down Santa Fe almost to Castle Rock, where she pulled into a nice little motor court featuring a coffeepot in every room and paper cutouts you were supposed to cover the toilet seat with before you sat down. Lana Sue jumped on with an enthusiasm I’d only dreamed of, but I took forever in coming. I guess I was too drunk.

  We stayed in the motor court for four days. On Sunday, I suggested we transfer over to my duplex, but Lana Sue said that pain fucks don’t work in a private residence.

  “Too much history in a home,” she said.

  “But I’ve got a refrigerator.”

  Several things Lana Sue said—like “pain fucks”—let me know she was using me as a form of grief therapy, that it wasn’t my wisdom she was after. I don’t mind being used if it’ll get me fucked the way Lana Sue fucks. Jesus, she was an experience.

  Monday we drove back to the bar to pick up my Chevelle and see if her daughter was around. The car was okay, but the band had moved on down the road. Lana Sue didn’t seem too distressed. Other than that trip and a couple of lunch breaks at Arby’s, we stayed in the room, mostly in the bed. It was my first shot at marathon sex. I loved it.

  • • •

  I also didn’t think the sex was quite as impersonal as what Lana Sue had in mind. Sometime Tuesday afternoon I mentioned this fact.

  “I think you’re starting to like me.”

  Lana Sue gave me a light nip to the ear. “Honey, to me you’re just another dick in the night.”

  “That wasn’t my dick you were talking to at six-thirty this morning.”

  We were lying naked, side by side, with our heads at the foot end of the bed. A Domino’s Delivers pizza box was on the floor and Wheel of Fortune played on the silent TV screen.

  Lana Sue fed me the tip bite off a slice of Italian sausage pizza. “You figure out the puzzle yet?”

  “Admit it, Lana Sue. I’m having a good effect on you.” The puzzle was T _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ T _ _ _ _ T _ _ .

  “Of course you’re having a good effect on me. We’re setting a Colorado record for orgasms per entry.”

  I took another bite of her slice. “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”

  “What?”

  “Tippecanoe and Tyler too. That’s the saying.”

  “What’s it mean?”

  “Something to do with politics.”

  On the show, a contestant got the C. He looked like the old janitor we had back in junior high.

  “You were smoking three packs of Larks a day before you met me.”

  “So what. Look at this sauce on the sheets. The maid will think we’re perverts.”

  “Today you smoked less than one.”

  “We’ve either been asleep or screwing all day. When would I have had time to smoke?”

  “A true addict would have found the time.”

  “Bullshit, Loren. Are you certain it’s Tippecanoe?”

  The N came up. “And we’re drinking Dr Peppers right now.” I pointed to the evidence on the floor. “Three days ago it would have been scotch.”

  Lana Sue dropped a fat chunk of crust back in the box and rolled onto her side to face me. “What’s the point here, Loren?”

  I retrieved the crust. “You talked about your past and your problems for hours last night. You listened when I talked back.” I rubbed her third eye with my thumb. “Your forehead is starting to relax for the first time in days. You should have seen your eyebrows that night in the Powder Keg.”

  “Sex relaxes me. It has nothing to do with you.”

  “I think it does. Fondness is hard to hide.”

  “Watch me.”

  “I caught you smiling when I came out of the shower this morning. You were glowing.”

  “I don’t glow.”

  “Admit it, Lana Sue. You’re beginning to fall in love.”


  Lana Sue rolled on over to face the ceiling. Her breasts rose once and fell. I’ve always liked Lana Sue’s breasts. They aren’t very large, but they don’t sag a bit. They look energetic.

  “Do you realize the implications of what you’re saying?” Lana Sue asked. “If what you claim is true—it’s not, but if it was—I’d have to get dressed and leave right now.”

  The stupid janitor got both P’s but still couldn’t solve the puzzle. “Why?” I asked.

  “Why? I’m a married woman. I don’t have affairs.”

  “You’ve never done this before?”

  “I’ve done this plenty times. This is a crotch form of morphine. What you’re proposing is heightened sensitivity, which is the last thing I want.”

  “I can make your life better.”

  “Don’t confuse me, Loren. When I get confused I go home.”

  • • •

  One thing I admire about Lana Sue, she doesn’t use the door as a power play device. She has never once threatened to leave me that she didn’t actually wind up leaving. Sometime that night, Lana Sue must have finally realized a growing fondness for me. Nothing was admitted aloud, but I know she felt something strong because the next day she had me tail her to the airport where we put ourselves through an emotion-packed good-bye scene and Lana Sue flew off to Nashville. I moped around the loading lounge awhile, worked out a reasonable that’s-that attitude, then drove home to my duplex and Buggie’s manuscript.

  • • •

  I don’t know if Lana Sue would have returned to Denver on her own impetus or not. She had this falling-in-love-and-splitting-up-is-all-timing theory that I don’t, as a rule, buy. My opinion is she would have created the timing and come back anyway. Hell, we were in love. Love is great compared to lonely nights and scotch.

  However, this is all conjecture, because, lucky for me, Ace took care of the timing. When Lana Sue arrived home that afternoon, she found Ace in the Jacuzzi performing unnatural acts with the Sugarez Sisters, Carly and Monetta, a singing duo from Ox Point, Wisconsin.

  Lana Sue made death threats. She towered over the Jacuzzi like the Statue of Liberty, threatening to bean Ace with a fully charged electric Dust Buster until Carly Sugarez lost stool control and fouled the water. I understand a mass of glassware was broken, phonograph albums fell like rain, counteraccusations were hurled, doors slammed, lawyers phoned—Lana Sue was back in my arms by midnight.

  17

  Up high, near where Miner Creek Ridge meets the Sleeping Indian’s belly, there was a clearing maybe two miles long and a quarter mile wide. I wandered waist-deep through an amazing array of flowers—larkspur, paintbrush, cinquefoil, balsamroot, more color and variety than a Rose Bowl parade. If it hadn’t been for the misty rain, the pollen would have killed me. The flowers were such a treat that, for a moment, I forgot all about Buggie and Lana Sue. I didn’t think of myself for over an hour.

  At the top of the clearing, the tree line came from both sides to form a point. Thirty yards or so downhill from the point, a snowmobile sat facing south, its treads astraddle on an old pockmarked aspen trunk. I approached with suspicion. One doesn’t expect to come upon machines in the wilderness, at least not this far back. My first thought was of booby traps. I know that is a paranoid first thought, but after the flaming chokecherry bush and those shots the day before, I was in the mood to take incongruities personally.

  My second thought ran to the possibility of a dead snowmobiler. My car was parked ten miles down the hill, but in winter no one plowed the road for another ten miles back toward town, which meant if this guy had been alone when he wrecked or broke down, he was probably rotting somewhere in the vicinity.

  I touched the red leather seat. A piece of chrome on the blue metal-flake body read POLARIS TXL. The choke had been left clear out and the key was still in the ignition. I opened the gas cap and sniffed. The rider hadn’t abandoned her from lack of fuel. Leaving my daypack in the flowers, I shrugged off my sleeping bag poncho and hopped on the snowmobile. There’s a futuristic Woody Allen movie where he finds a two-hundred-year-old Volkswagen that starts right up. Woody says, “Those Nazis really knew how to build cars.” No such luck with the snowmobile. The ignition didn’t even click. I pumped the gas a couple times, squeezed the brake bar, pushed in and out on the choke. Nothing much else to play with—definitely a dead toy.

  I leaned forward with my hands on the handlebars, vrooming in the back of my throat. The scene needed a most-plausible-explanation story as to what happened at the time and why no one had returned to haul the snowmobile away to a garage. How would you move a snowmobile off a mountain in the summertime anyway? Even though the machine straddled a log, it looked more left behind than wrecked. My guess was a midwinter breakdown, abandonment, then as the snow melted, it gradually eased down onto the log.

  The speedometer splintered. A moment later, I heard the shot. I looked left, down the hill, at a man standing in plain sight, aiming at me like I was a fear-frozen antelope. Dirt spit next to my leg. I rolled off the far side of the snowmobile. There was silence, then my daypack jumped a foot and another shot boomed up the hill.

  Facedown in the wet dirt, I waited without a move. I’d starved and come into the mountains in hopes of a hallucination. Expectations swung from Thunder Gods to sermonizing hawks, but wishful thinking made me wonder if this might be the moment. Another shot into the log and I rejected that idea. Like Buggie’s disappearance, this trouble was too real.

  Sliding to the front of the snowmobile, I peeked out between the log and the front runner blade. Whoever it was wasn’t about to content himself with one flurry and a fadeout like he had yesterday. Rifle held under his armpit, the man advanced slowly toward me, picking his way through the field of flowers.

  “Asshole,” I whispered, “what did I ever do to you?”

  The man still wore gray khakis and the red wool shirt. His limp seemed more pronounced than before. At one point, he held his left hand up as an umbrella for his eyes while he squinted at me through the rain. I repeated myself. “Asshole.”

  Obviously, staying put was out of the question. That left a mad dash up the hill into the trees or a ground-hugging slither using the flowers for cover. The thirty yards between me and the edge of the forest was carpeted by knee-high goldenrod, but I couldn’t tell if the cover was thick enough to hide in or not. Looking up through the flowers, I could see him easily. Could he see me looking down? The rifle didn’t appear to have a telescopic sight, but the man was almost close enough for that not to matter. However, he’d missed so far, which meant he was either a poor shot or he was only trying to scare the living shit out of me after all.

  I forced myself to breathe slowly, stopping for a short break between each inhale and exhale. It wouldn’t do to hyperventilate and pass out. I’d hate to get killed in my sleep.

  Desperate plan time—I had to make the woods and then hide. Make the woods came first. A triple-blade Boy Scout knife lay in my daypack not fifteen feet to the right. If I could reach it, I’d have some chance at climbing another tree, then slitting the bastard’s throat as he walked by.

  Another check showed the man had stopped moving forward. His face was toward me, I suppose waiting for the break he knew had to come. If anything, the rain lightened a little, giving him a clearer view. Hugging dirt and praying like a Cheyenne—Oh, Mother Earth, I am a part of you. Oh, Mother Earth, I am a part of you. Don’t let this asshole kill me, Mother Earth—the crawl seemed to go on forever. Mud slid up my nose. My eyes itched like hell. I figured even if he couldn’t see me through the weeds, the blossoms above shook like dozens of little waving hands pointed straight down at my butt. I always did hate goldenrod.

  Just as I reached the daypack, he put a bullet into the snowmobile’s gas tank. Jesus, what an explosion. I fetal-positioned as, first, tremendous heat scorched past, then snowmobile parts rained a metal hailstorm. Then I was up and ru
nning.

  • • •

  I tore through the trees, whipped by wet willows, scratched and pulled by wild roses. Almost broke my ankles in a couple of clumsy falls, lost the daypack somewhere near the crest. Running like a maniac wasn’t much use either. The soft ground yielded a set of tracks so visible that any idiot could read them—even a city-hired hit-man idiot. I might as well have put up road signs.

  And I’ll tell you what I was thinking as brambles tore my arms and rocks chopped at my feet. The pain in my lungs was remarkable, but even so, all I could think charging down the back side of that ridge was this: Holy Christ, I’d like to get laid right now. Brushes with death always bring out my horniness. By the time I hit the creek, I had such a hard-on I was running in a stoop.

  However, I hadn’t read seventy-five Max Brand novels for nothing. I jumped in the freezing creek—which took quick care of the hard-on—and floundered up the stream, away from my telltale footprints. “Let’s see that sucker track the Jimmy Stewart of Jackson Hole,” I muttered between wet tumbles. Soon the creek narrowed into nothing more than a streamlet draining a series of pink summertime snowbanks. I found an outcropping of rocks to skip across, leaving not a single track. The outcropping led to a pile of broken slabs left by an ancient slide off the top of the Sleeping Indian. After poking around a few minutes, I discovered a huge cracked boulder over a one-man crawl space. The killer couldn’t follow in there if he wanted to. I turned around, shrugged my body into the crack, and went back to imagining Lana Sue’s body.

  No matter what anyone thinks about Lana Sue, I’ve never heard a word of criticism about her body. The thing I like best about it is the color. It’s a dark, rich color, kind of like a polished teak coffee table. Sometimes I turn off all the lights in the cabin except the television and lie next to her on our bed, just watching the colors of her body. It’s a perfect body for being on top.

  In the dark hole there, I got to comparing Lana Sue’s body with Ann’s. Ann was much lighter, freckles sprinkled her neck and arms. Her butt was bigger than Lana Sue’s, but her breasts were about the same size, only they hung different. It was difficult to imagine Ann’s body without imagining her dead.