Western Swing

by Tim Sandlin

  I knelt over the body. “Wonder what kind he is?”

  “What difference does it make?” Ann said.

  Buggie twisted in her arms. “Feed him. Make it fly.”

  I touched the wing feathers. “Afraid he’s a goner, Bug. Let me get the bird book, we’ll see what we’ve got here.”

  It was a barn owl, a young male as best as I could make out. I showed Ann and Buggie the markings. “See this cinnamon streak down here. The book says this makes him look ghostly at night.”

  Ann didn’t care. “Get rid of it.”

  “I’m not real sure how to go about that.”

  “Throw it in the Mini-Mart Dumpster.”

  Buggie gave her his hurt look. “Feed the bird. Now.”

  “You can’t throw a predatory bird in a Dumpster. This is a noble creature. I don’t think it’s even legal that he died in our backyard.”

  Ann picked Buggie up and carried him toward the back door. “Just get rid of it, Loren. Gives me the creeps.”

  “We could have him mounted.”

  “No.”

  Burial didn’t feel right. I considered hauling him into the mountains and leaving him on the ground for the mice and ants—a completion of the nutritional wheel of life sort of thing—but he was so beautiful, rotting would have been sad.

  So I cremated him.

  I sloshed a quarter inch of kerosene into the bowl of our outside barbecue grill. Then I gently picked the owl up and placed him in. He filled almost the entire bowl. Out of respect for Buggie, I left the cheese on his face. Standing way back, I threw lit matches at him. The first couple went out in midair, but finally he whooshed and burst into a fireball.

  The feathers gave off a burnt fingernail smell. His legs curled. Through the flames, I could see the cheese melt into his eyes. I mumbled a vague spirit-to-spirit prayer with no idea what it meant.

  What brought on this memory, besides the owl itself, was that vaporous waviness in the heat above the fire. At one point, I looked up from the burning owl, and through the heat waves, I saw Ann and Buggie pressed against the back window. Ann’s face filled the top left of the frame with her dark blond hair hanging down above Buggie’s eyes, forehead, and two chubby palms. The effect was as if they floated a few inches below the surface of a clear, gently rippling pool. They looked far away, detached, dead.

  I sprayed the owl good with lighter fluid and went inside.

  • • •

  High mountain light and the odor of smoke filled the clearing. I rolled over, coughed, then sat up and blinked at the blue, cloudless sky. Sometime in the night, someone had covered me with the sleeping bag. Gathering it around my shoulders like a shawl, I staggered to my feet shakily, looking at Lana Sue as she fussed around the campfire.

  Her hair was down and she was wearing a bone-colored sweater and blue jeans. I could smell the coffee boiling. She kept her face turned away, not looking at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  When Lana Sue swung my way, I saw the glisten of tears. “You better be.”

  “I am.”

  She was up and in my arms. “This is the last time, Loren, you hear me? I’m never going to save a man again—not even you.”

  I sunk my hand into the hair on the back of her neck. “My head feels cracked.”

  When Lana Sue pulled back to look in my eyes, a hint of smile crossed her face. She touched my blood-matted ear. “You were more drunk than hurt.”

  “Right now I feel more hurt.”

  “Should have seen the knot on Walt’s skull. I thought I’d killed the poor schlock.”

  “Poor schlock?”

  “I kept imagining what I’d tell the police when I got to town.”

  I pulled the sleeping bag over both her shoulders. We leaned together, touching foreheads. I asked the question. “Would you have done it?”

  “Fucked him?” Lana Sue’s body gave a little shudder in my arms. She looked up at me. “I guess I couldn’t let him kill you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Her eyes turned fierce. “But I guarantee you’d never have seen me again.”

  “That’s fair.”

  Lana Sue ducked under the sleeping bag and walked to the fire pit. “It’s been a hard five days, Loren. Splitting up isn’t as much fun as it used to be.”

  “Can I have some coffee?”

  She folded a bandanna several times, then drew the blackened pot from the fire. I walked over and stood behind her while she sprinkled in salt to settle the grounds. “When did he leave?”

  “Dawn. Couple of hours ago. I hope he makes it down all right.” She poured coffee into my Sierra cup.

  “Bad shape, huh?”

  “Old Walt is no longer a threat.” She motioned toward the elk skull. “His gun’s over there.” She’d done an amazing job of breaking up the rifle—must have been fifteen separate pieces in a pile. “I threw all his bullets in the creek.”

  We drank coffee in silence, looking first into the fire, then out at the beautiful day. Sunshine glittered off the cliffs in a way it never glitters below nine thousand feet. The flowers and pines gave off a fresh scrubbed odor that mixed perfectly with the coffee. Even the elk skull seemed to have formed a smile, or maybe a more balanced leer.

  Lana Sue caught me looking at the top of the Sleeping Indian. “So you still think God or some talking rock is up there waiting to tell you about Buggie?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you’re going up, I’m going with you.”

  The coffee was the best I ever tasted. “I’m not going up.”

  When Lana Sue took the cup, she held the back of my hand a moment. “Can you live with me in the present while the past is still unresolved?”

  From this side, the peak didn’t look like a sleeping Indian at all. It looked like a mountain. Maybe all I had to do was scramble up the ridge for an hour to find out if Buggie was alive or dead, and, either way, where he had gone. But it didn’t matter so much. The thing I’d really wanted to ask was whether death brings on another stage or total eternal blankness, and whichever way the answer came down would have no effect on how I planned to live. I’d still get up in the morning and pull on my pants and drink a cup of coffee with cream. I would go on loving Lana Sue and writing dumb little books in hopes of making someone else’s life more pleasant. I would watch the sun and the weather, the cycle of plants and animals. I would do all I could to enjoy the everyday. Oncoming death couldn’t change squat about ongoing life.

  “This catharsis crap is a bitch.”

  “Like shitting bricks. You having one now?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You’re realizing being happy is nicer, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  Lana Sue kissed me. I could taste coffee in her mouth. “I think you’re ready for country music, Loren.”

  “Let’s go hear some.”

  • • •

  We walked back through the long meadow with the blown-up snowmobile. In the sunshine, the flowers were even more beautiful than the day before, although the rain had freed a hurricane of pollen. Lana Sue told me about her daughter.

  “The band’s playing in Cody week after next, Loren. It’s only a hundred fifty miles and the drive through Yellowstone would be pretty.”

  “So let’s go.”

  “I think you’ll like Mickey Thunder. You two are a lot alike in strange ways.”

  I walked on the trail behind Lana Sue, admiring her ass among the flowers. Curiosity overcame tact and I took a chance on spoiling the mood. “You make it with many men while you were gone?”

  Lana Sue stopped a second, then kept on. “One or two, depends on how you count.”

  “How do you count?”

  “One didn’t matter and the other wasn’t any good.”

&n
bsp; “Was the one that didn’t matter as good as me?”

  “Course not. You’re technically good and emotional at the same time. That’s a rare combination.” Lana Sue picked a columbine and tucked it behind her ear. “Loren, when I drove to the VanHorns’ to find out where you were, Lee sent me in to talk to Marcie in her darkroom.”

  “Marcie told me she’s into photography.”

  Lana Sue glanced back at me. “I saw some pictures coming out of the dryer.”

  “What about this one who wasn’t any good? Does that mean he mattered?”

  “There was a dick that looked just like yours, only it was enormous, big as a chicken.”

  I tripped over a stone in the trail—almost fell into Lana Sue’s back. “Couldn’t have been mine. I’m just barely above average.”

  She swung around and eyed me. “I could spot your tool anywhere.”

  It was one of those scenes that demand eye contact. Otherwise the woman knows you’re lying in your teeth. “I’m not enormous, remember?”

  Lana Sue smiled. “When I figure out how you two did it, I’ll murder you both.”

  “What about this guy who wasn’t good, but mattered. I’m not certain I like that.”

  Lana Sue laughed aloud and I loved her for it. “You know what I’ve decided, Loren. You and I deserve each other.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. Let’s go home.”

  Epilogue

  “Testing, testing. Is this thing on? Loren, the dial’s not moving. I can’t tell if the machine’s recording.”

  “It’s on.”

  “How the hell do you get this to come on?”

  “It’s on already.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t think so.”

  “Look at the red light.”

  “That means it’s on?”

  “That means it’s on.”

  “I’m going to play it back and see. I don’t think it’s on.”

  • • •

  “You satisfied now?”

  “The sun is about to set, Loren. Shouldn’t you be out on the fence?”

  “I thought I might miss it once. Just stick around and see how you wrap things up.”

  “Outside, Loren. I need privacy.”

  “You gonna tell about humping more cowboys?”

  “Out.”

  • • •

  Since Loren got three chapters to my two, he’s letting me do the epilogue—prologue—whichever comes at the end. Only, one more day in front of a typewriter and I’ll scream, so I made him buy me this Japanese machine with the first advance from his publisher. Nice of them to pay him before we finish the book.

  Anyhow, I’m much more comfortable with a microphone in my hand. We’ll hire some high-school girl from Future Business Leaders of America to transcribe the thing. I imagine Loren will make a pass at her and I’ll catch him and, in all likelihood, we’ll be off on another book.

  Loose ends: I got Loren off the Sleeping Indian without any more gunfire. We spent the next day and a half in bed, asleep mostly, but occasionally rousing ourselves for simultaneous food and sex. At first Loren hauled his rifle along whenever he went outside. And he made dozens of long-distance phone calls to his mother, both brothers, practically everyone he knew in high school. Told them all he truly loved them and he was through with cosmic assholehood.

  Along the same lines, I wrote letters of reconciliation—make that apology—to Ron, my dad, and Connie. It seems such a waste to be disliked by someone you love. Dad wrote back, through Mom, that there was nothing to reconcile, that everything was model between us and always had been. Ron didn’t answer. Connie sent me a chain letter for women only. The letter said to mail a dollar to the top name, put my name on the bottom, and spread it on to ten friends I trust.

  The one I didn’t write was Cassie because there seemed to be no reason to reconcile or apologize. Wrong again.

  Two days ago, I was repotting an impatiens when Loren showed up from town with the groceries and mail. I’d just reread the last of my book pages that morning, so I was thinking about Thorne Axel. He’d had enough knowledge to figure out an address or phone number, but—so far, anyway—I haven’t heard a word about how that deal came down. Been tempted a time or two to call Maria, just to see if everyone on the ranch is still alive, but I guess I won’t. I made my choice and the direction I didn’t take is none of my damn business.

  Loren came banging through the back door and plopped two brown bags on the table next to my dirt-covered newspaper. “What’s wrong with the bush?”

  “Root bound.” I touched the lip on one sack. “You bought dog food again, didn’t you.”

  Loren looked across my hand. “I forgot.”

  “I forgot” didn’t mean he forgot to buy dog food. It meant he forgot both our dogs died last month. Within three days, Rocky’s liver, then Josie’s heart gave out.

  “I was thinking about something else.” Loren stared out the window a moment, adjusting. He always forgets the dogs are dead and, when I remind him, it’s like the grief starts over at the beginning. I went back to my impatiens.

  “There’s a letter from Cassie,” he said. “She’s getting married.”

  Cassie writing a letter was more a shock than Cassie getting married. I always figured she’d marry someday, but a letter…“Who to?”

  Loren pulled himself from the window, adjustments made, the dead dead, the living live. “Who do you think?”

  Dirt hit the floor. “Not Mickey?”

  “We’re invited to the wedding.” Loren flipped the letter across the table. Then he opened the refrigerator and peered in.

  I said, “I’ll kill the prick.”

  Loren spoke to the vegetable bin. “I thought you and Mickey are best pals.”

  “I won’t have that washed-up drunkard married to my baby.”

  “He’ll be your son-in-law.” Loren pulled a limp squash from the refrigerator. “Did we ever eat one of these?”

  “That bum will poke anything with a hole. How could Cassie marry a man like that?”

  Loren threw the squash into the trash bucket. “She’s expecting.”

  I lunged for the sugar, but Loren beat me to it. He turned quickly, opened the liquor cabinet door, and traded the sugar bowl for the scotch bottle. “The letter’s not so bad. I think she’ll be happy.”

  “Happy?”

  It was addressed to both of us—

  Dear Mom and Loren

  The band is playing West Las Vegas during the tractor pull next month so while we’re there Mick and I are going to wed. Ya’ll should come. We could sing duets like up at Cody the end of last summer. They were pretty tart harmonies I thought. Roxanne’s coming and maybe Connie but I don’t know. I’m knockered. It’s cool fun except when I get sick. Mick says you’ll make a hunky-dory Grandma.

  Love ya Mama

  Cassie

  I put the letter facedown in potting soil and closed my eyes.

  “Do you think tart is youth jargon or something country western?” Loren asked.

  “I never heard it before.”

  “I’ll ask Marcie next time I see her.”

  “She told Roxanne before she told me.”

  “And Connie.” Loren poured scotch into a coffee cup and handed it to me. “I was comfortable,” I said.

  Loren nodded.

  “I figured I did it myself, so I couldn’t very well give her crap for sleeping with him.”

  “That’s true.”

  The scotch burned some going down. “But to marry the bum.”

  Loren measured himself a shot of Beam. I went on, talking to myself. “Mickey used to claim he was Peter Pan. He lured young girls to Never-Never land and played with them until they decided to grow up. Then they left.”

  “Was the fiddle player Captain
Hook or Tinker Bell?”

  I gave Loren my nastiest stare, but he missed it. “Now that bad-breathed child molester wants to marry my daughter. They won’t last six months.”

  “You can’t stop it.”

  “I can sure as hell try.”

  “Keep your mouth shut. If it doesn’t last six months, you’ll be here for her. Nobody runs to a mama who can say ‘I told you so,’ or she’ll stay with him long after she should leave just to prove you wrong.”

  “Maybe.” I looked across at Loren. He looked cute with his curly hair and smudged glasses. “You sure are smart for a man who doesn’t even know if he’s wearing underwear.”

  His hand traveled down to belt level, checking. “Did he really relate to that Peter Pan thing?”

  “Pete was the role model.”

  “Ever notice that in the end, Mary Martin comes back twenty years later and kidnaps Wendy’s daughter?”

  I couldn’t decide between nicotine, alcohol, sugar, or a sex marathon. Finally settled for all four, pretty much in that order.

  • • •

  “You missed a great sunset. The moon came up full just as the sun fell behind Rendezvous Mountain. It was a winner.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “What’s with the sniffles, Lannie?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. I’ve been way too emotional lately. You know I started crying during a damn phone company commercial yesterday. It was stupid—some guy called his fat mama to say he loved her and I fell for it.”

  “Jeez, you’re getting like me.”

  “Suppose I could do worse.”

  “So why are you crying now?”

  “Loren, I’ll be forty years old in only sixteen months.”

  “Fourteen.”

  “And you know what I want to do?”

  “Grow younger.”

  “I want to borrow a horse from the VanHorns and make love at a full gallop.”

  “Tonight?”

  “The moon’s full.”

  “Can we borrow two sets of spurs?”

  “So, where’s the off on this machine?”

  “Is the book finished?”