Plain Heathen Mischief

by Martin Clark

  Joel was flustered. “Well, he was. And I don’t think it was his maid, just a girlfriend. When he was a young man.”

  Rachel took a step closer to Joel, causing him to recoil without meaning to. “So you’re not really a preacher? You got fired? Or quit?”

  “Something like that.” He got to his feet and laid a dollar and two quarters on the bar. “I’m not pastoring a church now.”

  “Well I think you’re one fine specimen, Mr. Preacher.” For an instant, Joel thought she’d said “spaceman,” and he was silent while he tried to decipher what she meant.

  “Oh, I . . . Well, thanks. Thank you. I think you’re an attractive person, too.”

  “You sure I shouldn’t go to your room with you? Or maybe somewhere else. We don’t have to stay with these guys. How ’bout the topless clubs—I think it’s a turn-on in a way, having another girl dance for us.”

  “No. Absolutely not. No thanks. I’m leaving.” Joel tried not to sound prim. “By myself.”

  “You’re positive? I really think you’re cool. It’s not a trick or anything. Let’s just hang out.”

  “Maybe some other evening. You’d better get back to the party and find your friends.”

  Rachel gave him a look that was absolutely wanton and unstrung. “Okay,” she said. “Can I at least hug you?”

  Joel extended his hand before she had a chance to move in any farther. “How about we simply shake and wish each other well?”

  “I guess I’m not going to be the temptation that gets you again.” She was dangling her beer by her hip.

  “I’ve learned my lesson there, I’m afraid.”

  “I hope you’ll say my prayer. Don’t forget.”

  “I promise,” Joel answered. He took her hand from a distance, then walked away, headed for the exit to hail a cab. He stopped before he left the casino and looked back at Rachel. Like Lot, he thought, drawn to cast an eye over corruption at its bejeweled best. She was still drinking at the bar, watching him leave the gambling floor. Her balance wasn’t what it should have been, and her lips, tongue and teeth were arranged in a wounded leer.

  “Tenderloin,” she called, wagging a besotted finger at him. “Just not mine.”

  seven

  Joel knew.

  He knew his prayers had been answered while he was away in Las Vegas plotting flimflam and eating high-dollar steak with Edmund Brooks. He knew as soon as he saw his mother’s blue Volvo in Sophie’s stone and dirt drive, parked between the rundown Taurus and the lawnmower shed. He knew he’d have a car, and most remarkably, he knew—even before the Missoula cabbie flipped the blinker and drifted off the main road—he’d have a job waiting on him, an offer for honest, Christian work. And he knew his sister had forgiven him, because she’d finally relented and retrieved the Volvo from outside their mother’s window at High Pines so he could go places without having to walk or bum a ride. Helen King adored the Volvo, loved staring at it through the glass in the transfixed manner of the senile elderly, and it couldn’t have been easy for Sophie to take the vehicle, her failing mother’s last tie to normalcy.

  He knew all this well before his sister talked to him and handed him the phone messages, considered his prospects as the driver crept down the driveway and gray gravel clattered in the wheel wells. More than anything, he realized the blessings to come were a test, a chance to separate himself from Edmund and Sa’ad and their slick plans. His requests—a car, a job, clean start—were about to be delivered in the most apparent, obvious fashion, the Lord stretching out His omnipotent hand, waiting for Joel to accept it. He shut his eyes, and the cab slowed until it stopped. The driver never got in a hurry, never touched the brakes, just let the speed play out of the taxi until there was nothing left.

  Sophie had finished supper and was doctoring her ragged ferns and wilted potted plants; she bounded off the concrete stoop while Joel was still settling with the driver, didn’t bother using the two uneven steps and cracked flagstones. She hurried to her brother and wrapped herself around him in an anxious hug, her head tucked and the limp fingers of her cloth gardening gloves jouncing from her rear pocket as she beelined across the yard. Baker appeared seconds later, tearing from the house in shorts and cowboy boots to grab Joel by the leg.

  “What’s all this?” he asked, the question equal parts relief and delight.

  Sophie didn’t say anything. Baker scuttled sideways and pointed two finger-pistols at him, shouted, “Pow pow pow,” then ran behind the Volvo and hid.

  “Sophie?”

  She made some space between herself and her brother. “I’m glad you’re here again, and I’m sorry I acted like I did. There’s a lot on me, Joel, but that’s no excuse. Besides Baker and a few friends, you’re about everything I have in this world. You’re welcome to stay as long as you need a roof above your head.”

  Joel folded her back into him. “Thanks,” he said over her shoulder. “Thank you so much.” Looking up at the sky, he saw a pair of colorful birds dip and bank and fly toward town. “A lot of what you said needed saying, you know?”

  “Let’s just put it behind us, forget it.”

  “I agree. You found the letter I left for you?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “I meant what I wrote. I’m going to be a better person.”

  “You’re already a good person, Joel. You just made some poor choices.”

  Joel leaned away so he could see her face. “It’s a shame you don’t get a mulligan on your first colossal mistake.” He let her go, but she kept her hands fastened behind him. “I see you finally got Mom’s car,” he said. “I realize that had to be tough.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t get too excited. I’ll be driving the Volvo. You’ll be riding the white bull.”

  “Fair enough.” He glanced at the Volvo, saw Baker peeking out from behind the bumper, the boy squealing and disappearing when his uncle paid the tiniest bit of attention to him.

  “I’ve got great news,” Sophie mentioned as they were ambling to the house, her arm hooked inside his. “Calls from two businesses that seem really promising. I wrote down the info for you.”

  “That is great news,” he said softly. He scanned the sky for the birds, but they were gone, and the daylight was beginning to weaken. He heard Tut crow, spotted him near the corner of the shed. The rooster flapped his wings, raised his hackles and drilled Joel with a single cock’s eye.

  Joel discovered he had two work opportunities, and he could easily juggle both jobs. He’d been offered a kitchen position at a restaurant and bar called the Station—from four to midnight, every weekday—and one of Sophie’s leads had phoned with weekend hours at a fly-fishing service, rowing people down the Clark Fork and untangling their errant casts. He contacted the restaurant and made plans to report the following afternoon, then got in touch with Dixon Kreager at Royal Coachman Outfitters and arranged a Friday meeting. Before unpacking his duffel bag, he gave his sister five hundreds in Vegas money and said “Don’t worry about it” when she asked about the cash.

  “It’s legal, isn’t it?” she wanted to know.

  “Of course it’s legal. It’s only five hundred dollars, Sophie. I have a few meager resources left. What—you think I robbed a miniature bank or something? I’m just trying to help, okay?”

  “You’re sure you don’t need it?”

  “Buy some groceries or put it toward Baker’s camp.”

  “Thanks.” Sophie wasn’t interested in quizzing him on the issue. Five hundred bucks was five hundred bucks. “But I don’t think I’ll ask where you’ve been.”

  “Nowhere important, not really,” he hedged. “Like the letter explained, just clearing my mind.”

  He poured himself a glass of cold Hawaiian Punch, plucked two Oreos from their shredded package, disappeared into the basement and lay on his bed without taking off his clothes or shoes. He smelled the scents of the laundry, detergent and bleach and the fragrance the softener sheets left around the dryer. Th
ere wasn’t the first sound in the basement, and the floor above him was quiet, everything in the house calm and orderly.

  The kitchen at the Station was hot and frenetic, four walls trapping clangs and shouts and the hisses of raw meat on the grill. Joel was happy to be in the activity, grateful for the work and content each time an hour passed, knowing he’d earned another six dollars. He washed dishes, scraped food off plates, swept up a broken bowl and jogged to the chef’s car to fetch a box of spices. Though it was his first night, most of the waiters and waitresses made it a point to say hello or welcome him, and Frankie, who worked with him at the poor man’s end of the food chain, was friendly and showed him where the scouring pads and cleaning products were located.

  He was allowed a ten-minute break at eight o’clock, and he stepped out the rear door, found three other workers smoking and complaining about how expensive Missoula land had become, how river parcels were selling for millions. They were cordial and made an effort to include him in their conversation. When their break was over, they tossed their unfinished cigarettes onto the ground and went inside, left Joel standing alone in the warm evening. Despite a good stamping, one of the butts was still burning, sending up a white ribbon that disappeared before it rose as high as Joel’s waist.

  At the end of his shift, a woman walked into the kitchen. Joel was rolling white cloth napkins around silverware, listening to Frankie’s story about the night Phil Jackson, the basketball coach, had come to eat at the Station. The woman was pretty, pretty in the face and pretty in the way she moved, but there was no vitality in her, no luster anywhere. The deep-fried air had marred her complexion, and the skin beneath her eyes drooped into yellowish sags. Joel guessed she’d caught a bad break somewhere along the line, had been the straight-A beauty who got pregnant on prom night, or the skittish girl who’d lived too long with a rheumatic mama and a daddy quick to use his belt. Lodged within her, Joel sensed, was something injured and permanent.

  “Who’s she?” he asked Frankie.

  “Who?”

  “The woman who just came in. I saw her two or three times earlier.”

  “Sarah, Sarah Aaron. Well, I guess to be accurate, I should say Sarah Daniels. She basically runs the place, although dumbass Ralph is technically the manager.”

  “Ralph hired me. Ralph Gardner. In fact, he gave me my assignments this afternoon. I thought he was the owner.”

  Frankie shrugged. He had a goatee, a nose ring and long, curly brown hair. “He lets on like he is. The Station belongs to his uncle, fellow by the name of David Wayne. Ralph has bombed out on every other job he’s had, so we get the pleasure of his company here.”

  “Oh.” Joel dropped a bundle of silverware into a plastic tub and glanced over to where the woman was propped against a stainless steel counter, speaking to the chef.

  Frankie was wearing yellow rubber gloves and wiping a sink. “Sarah’s good as gold, but she won’t talk much till you’ve been here a month. That’s her rule. Lot of turnover in this business, and she doesn’t like to waste her time on the sort who aren’t goin’ to be dedicated.”

  “What’s her story?” Joel asked.

  “Local girl, always been gorgeous. Smart, too. Stayed in college about a year, then got married to a guy by the name of William Daniels. We refer to him as Jack. As in the liquor. His daddy did real well for himself, making the metal parts for typewriters. By the time ol’ eighty-six-proof Jack inherits the business, computers have taken over and there’s not much call for typewriters, so the boy’s got a dab of money and scads of time. Business eventually goes bust, but he’s too lazy to do anything else workwise, and there’s your story. He comes and goes, stays drunk most of the time, cheats on Sarah whenever he has the chance and treats her like crap. Brought some woman in here ’bout a month ago, if you can believe that. He’s a handsome fellow and a big talker but doesn’t have a pot to piss in now. There was two guys from the finance company here recently, drove from Helena to repo his Explorer—Sarah stalled them and paid them cash out of her purse to get ’em gone.”

  Joel was watching Sarah the whole time Frankie spoke. She’d taken the weight off one foot, was listing farther into the counter and supporting herself with a hip and elbow. “You can tell she’s had it rough.” Joel paused. “They got kids? That must be why she sticks with him.”

  Frankie shook his head. “No kids, and there’s no explaining it. I treated my girlfriend that way, she’d punch an ice pick in my temple.”

  “How long you been working here, Frankie?” Joel asked.

  “Going on six years.” He had an appealing disposition, appeared to be in his early thirties.

  “You must like it.”

  “Weird as it sounds, I do. It’s simple work, always the same, no surprises, no stress.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sarah had finished with the chef and was checking her watch. She glanced up and noticed Joel staring at her. He looked away and returned to his knives and forks and spoons, but she refused to let him go, kept her gaze right where it had been when she’d discovered him. She didn’t move until he sneaked another glimpse and forced a guilty, fretful smile.

  “Were you staring at me?” she demanded from across the room.

  Frankie and the chef and one of the waiters stopped what they were doing. Joel squared himself to Sarah, folded his arms over his chest and crammed his hands into his armpits. “Yes ma’am, I was.” His cheeks and neck were embarrassed, but he spoke in a clear, firm voice. “I didn’t mean to be impolite,” he added.

  Sarah studied him for a moment. He looked down and noticed the grout outlining the floor tiles, hoped he wouldn’t be fired on the spot.

  “Ah,” she said. “So what have we here, people? An honest man? A man who doesn’t lie for sport? Call the guys with the nets and tranquilizer darts—we’ve got the rarest of the species right here in the kitchen. Hell, we’ll all be rich.”

  Dixon Kreager was a tall, rangy redhead close to fifty years old. He’d earned a chemistry degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill but had migrated west after a single year working in the research department for DuPont, where he tried to engineer better nylon products and did mad-scientist, beaker-exploding experiments with his lunatic supervisor. He’d guided the Clark Fork, Bitterroot and Blackfoot for almost three decades, could cast sixty-foot flies that hit the water like dandelion down and knew every riffle and eddy and swirl in the big rivers. He’d learned the ropes from Greer Watkins, the best there was, and he’d bought Greer’s boat and hovel of a shop when the old man quit the business in 1984. For years, Dixon merely got by in the fishing trade, killed an elk for his freezer in October and substitute-taught a little school to make ends meet during the winter. His girlfriend helped cook at Blackbird’s resort from early fall till the fishermen returned in May, and this was the way he lived, frugally and hand-to-mouth.

  Then came A River Runs Through It, and thanks to Brad Pitt—who to Dixon looked more like a lion tamer with a nine-foot whip than a competent fly fisherman—everybody and his wealthy brother wanted to be on the Montana water, connected to the mystery in the streams and surrounded by inscrutable mountains while they sipped chardonnay from a portable table at lunch. Dixon’s skill became much in demand and stayed that way, especially after Esquire magazine published a story on him and ESPN paired him with an oafish football player and filmed them catching over fifty fat trout in a single day. Soon his reservation book was full years in advance, and he was making shitloads of money and spending less and less time holding the heavy boat in the current so his clients could get a foolproof casting angle. He married his girlfriend, expanded the shop, published a newsletter, and hired a bunch of help to mollycoddle the would-be fishermen so he, his bride and his black lab could do what they damn well pleased.

  The lady who managed his fly shop knew Sophie’s boss, and word reached Dixon that there was a tainted preacher with a college degree looking for a job. Joel
met Dixon at Royal Coachman Outfitters, found the lanky man sitting in a comfortable office drinking coffee and reading Money magazine.

  Dixon stood and introduced himself, and he and Joel shook hands. “Coffee?” Dixon asked.

  Joel considered the offer. “You know, that would be great. Thanks.”

  Dixon poured from a pot behind his desk, filling a cup with a picture of a Royal Coachman fly embossed on the front. “Here you go.”

  Joel inspected the cup, rubbed the fly image with his index finger. “I like the mug.”

  “Hell, it’s a damn theme park ’round here. I make more on the trinkets and T-shirts than I do sellin’ rods.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Joel said as they both sat down.

  “So you’re looking for work as a guide?”

  “I’ll be glad to do anything,” Joel said. “Whatever.”

  “Huh,” Dixon grunted. “And I hear through the grapevine you’ve had a brush with the law, correct?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s correct.” Joel gave Dixon a candid look and struggled to keep his poise. “But I’ve already been hired at the Station.” He hesitated, unhappy with his response. “Please don’t take that wrong—what I mean is I want this job, and I don’t think you need to worry since someplace else already looked into it and put me to work.”

  “What is it you did?” Dixon swallowed some coffee. His mug was green and had a brook trout encircling it.

  Joel pondered his answer, thought about not telling the truth. “Well, I got fouled up with a seventeen-year-old girl at my church. I was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

  “Sex, huh?” Dixon said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Any other trouble?” he wanted to know.

  “No, sir. None at all.”

  “What kind of preacher were you? What denomination?”