The Last Cowboy

by Lee Gowan

  The hospital, the biggest building in town, was across the street from a row of large, regal homes where the doctors lived, just to be close by. The police car led them into the concourse marked Emergency, and Luke stopped the car a yard behind the police car’s bumper, pushing the transmission into park and sighing heavily. The passenger officer—the older one with the beer and doughnut belly and the receding hair—ambled back towards them and opened Irene’s door, while the young tough went inside.

  “Why don’t you get in the front, dear, and we’ll help him out. Sam? It’s Officer Johnson, Sam. Are you okay?”

  “Irene,” the old cowboy moaned in response, and sat straight up.

  Irene was obeying the officer, moving from the back to the front.

  “Good. Good. Why don’t you get out of the car by yourself, Sam? Can you do that?”

  The cowboy lay back down, groaning his displeasure at the request.

  “You don’t think so, hey? It would be better. We don’t want to hurt you. How did you get lost out there in this cold anyway?”

  The young officer returned with a nurse and a wheelchair, and in the end they had to drag the cowboy out of the car and roll him inside in the wheelchair. He was still moaning “Irene.” Luke stared into the dash through all of it, never even glancing back to see what was happening behind him. Irene put her hand on his arm, and he glared at her as though her touch might be the only clue the cops would need to put them away forever.

  When the old man was gone, and both officers had disappeared, Luke put the car in gear. “I’ll back out and we’ll go,” he said.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “They won’t mind us going.”

  “Okay.”

  He put it back in park. “They’d catch us,” he said. “We might as well wait for our medals.”

  The old officer returned, and Luke rolled down his window.

  “You should go to that farm where we found him and have a look for the boy,” Irene told him.

  He leaned down and looked her in the eye. “What boy?”

  She looked away. He had dull, terrible eyes. “He said he was out there with a boy. There’s still a boy lost out there somewhere.”

  “You saw a boy out there?”

  “No. But he said there was a boy. It’s cold. He’ll be in trouble.”

  “Oh, I see. Don’t you worry about it, dear. I’m sure the boy’s fine. We’ll have to see how the old man does. Meanwhile, would you mind if I took a look at your licence and registration?”

  JUNE 29th, 2000: NORTH OF BROKEN HEAD

  THE TOYOTA coasted downhill towards the bridge that crossed the South Saskatchewan River, the second bridge to have been built here. Apparently, it was the same spot where General Middleton and his army had crossed the river in 1885, on their way to quell the Riel Rebellion. But in 1885 there were nothing but crude, flat-deck ferryboats that were no better than rafts. The original bridge was finished in 1951. The runoff in April of 1952 was so severe that the ice started backing up against the new bridge, and when they closed it down people drove out from Broken Head to stand looking down at the ice jam and feel all that metal and concrete shivering beneath their feet. The next day the pylons gave way under the pressure, and the bridge was swept away. By some miracle, no one was standing on it when it went. The black strip of highway crossing the river before them was built as a replacement.

  “What a beautiful valley,” Ai said.

  “The South Saskatchewan River.”

  “I’m gonna stop and get a few shots.”

  “Sure.”

  She pulled onto the shoulder and stepped out to snap her pictures. Sam considered getting a breath of fresh air, but he was suddenly nervous about standing on the side of the highway with her. What if a client drove by? He sat waiting, watching her work the camera. Judging by the way she was pointing it, she was not interested in the river, but in the brown-skinned draws of the valley hills as they rippled up towards the headlands of the Plains. They looked a little like those photographs of skin taken through a microscope.

  “Lovely,” she said, when she got back into the car, and then, “So stark.”

  There was something in her voice that reminded him of when she’d asked if Vern lived in a trailer—something in the tone of her enthusiasm that suggested they were in the middle of Antarctica and she was the first person ever to frame its image. He could tell her about the significant history of the place—General Middleton, the bridge, the metal straining and collapsing under the force of all that ice. He could point out that there was a park and a campground a few hundred yards away where kids might be building sandcastles at this moment. But he didn’t. It would only make the place sound exotic in a different way.

  “Yes,” he said. “Austere.”

  They drove on, crossing the bridge and climbing the hills she’d just captured on her camera.

  “You know what it means: Irene?” he asked her, avoiding her eyes when she glanced nervously at him.

  “Pardon?”

  “The name, Irene. Do you know what it means?”

  “I … I don’t remember. Peace?”

  “That’s right. Peace. It’s Greek.”

  “I never liked it,” she said. “The name.”

  The automatic transmission geared down, and the engine revved to pace them up the steep incline. Peace must mean something too. Michael had once asked him what it meant, and the only way he could think to define it was in the context of war. Peace was an absence of war. And Michael had asked, “Peace is when there are no more bad guys?”

  “Are we getting close?” Ai asked him, when they had crested the valley and the prairie stretched out before them.

  “Yeah. We are.”

  They drove in silence, and he began a careful study of each successive grid, dismissing them as they passed, wondering what exactly it was that she was seeing. It was obvious she thought Vern was some kind of hillbilly redneck, and if she thought that of his brother she probably thought Sam was some quaintly ambitious stubble-jumping buffoon. On the other hand, she’d said she liked his suit.

  Her name was Irene.

  She lit another cigarette. He craned his neck around, noticing, again, the video camera lying in the back seat. “Do you make your own movies too?”

  “No,” she said. “James Aspen told me to buy it. He said he wanted me to get some video of the cliff.”

  A few hours before, she had been talking to James Aspen, and now she was talking to him. She took a deep drag.

  “Do you like Toronto?” he asked.

  She gave him another nervous glance. “Yeah. It’s my hometown. I’ve lived there all my life. I guess it’s not that popular out here.”

  “No. Gwen doesn’t like Toronto. Vern doesn’t either. He’s never been there, but he doesn’t like it.” She didn’t respond. “I like Toronto.”

  “It’s an interesting city.”

  “Yeah. Maybe I should go to Toronto.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Should I fight for them in court? Chances are I’d lose anyway. I mean, maybe I could win, but not without dragging them through hell. And they love their mother. They’d hate me for trying to take them away from their mother.”

  He watched some cows chewing their cuds as they watched the Toyota drift by.

  “Maybe you can still work it out with your wife.”

  He glanced at her. She gripped the wheel, not looking at him. There was a tiny scar on the back of her right hand.

  “They’re so close to her, and with my job I’m always too busy. They’ll probably hate me no matter what I do. They’ll probably blame me for the divorce and … I could try to get a place in Broken Head and split custody, I guess. But … that would be like living in hell. I don’t … Oh, I think this is it.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The grid coming up is Aspen’s trail. Make a left.”

  She slowed and turned, stopping on the approach to study the trail. The parallel paths ran between a barbed
wire fence and a green field of wheat. It looked a bit rough.

  “You sure?”

  “I think so. I won’t guarantee it.”

  And it was lucky he didn’t, though all he’d have forfeited was her faith in his navigating skills, and when—after three miles of hard going, during which she smacked the bottom of the Toyota against two large rocks—they came to a stop in front of a slough and he said to her, “No. This isn’t it,” her expression didn’t suggest she had much invested. She sighed and looked off across the slough.

  “So. Where do we go from here? Do you think it’s farther south?”

  Sam made an awkward attempt at a kiss, which landed on her right ear when she turned her head to block him. Before he knew it, she’d opened the door and stepped out of the car.

  He stepped out and faced her, the car between them. “I’m sorry …”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m really sorry. I guess I’m a bit confused.”

  “I guess you are.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Was this your plan? Get me out here and …?”

  “No, no, no, please. I’m sorry. It just happened. I won’t do it again. I promise.”

  She shook her head, her hands on her hips, her feet slightly spread in a way that made her slight body look wonderfully powerful, looking away from him as though she were weighing his promise in relation to something in the sky.

  She got back into the car, and he got back in on the passenger side. “You promise you won’t do anything like that again?”

  “Yeah. I promise.”

  She pushed in the lighter, and took out a cigarette.

  “I don’t usually …” Sam said. “I guess it was just … I feel so disconnected, and talking to you I felt I was making some sort of connection.”

  “Forget it,” she said.

  “You can just let me off in Broken Head. I can make arrangements from there.”

  “No. We need to find that cliff.”

  He nodded. “All right. It’s farther south. I think I’ll know the grid when I see it.”

  He stared between his feet. In all of the immaculate perfection of the car, he now noticed a quarter lying on the floor. Still shiny. Not much silver there. He picked it up and checked the date. 2000. A boy and a girl stood on a maple leaf, holding upstretched hands, while a huge sun rose in the background. The lighter popped, and she lit her cigarette. The two children on the quarter were posed like figure skaters, but they did not seem to be wearing skates. She took a drag so deep and luxurious that Sam began to feel a craving for one. The longing had been there all the time, but it was so unfamiliar he hadn’t quite identified it. He wanted a cigarette. He wanted to put it between his lips and suck. He wanted to share a smoke with her, if nothing else. He hadn’t had one since university.

  He sighed, flipped the quarter in the air and let it fall to the floor where he’d found it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve had a bad day.”

  “Forget it,” she said, and she turned the car around and headed back the way they’d come. When they reached the highway, she flicked the left signal and touched the accelerator.

  Her briefcase began ringing. Not the first bars of Beethoven’s Fifth, or “The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy” or “Goodnight, Irene,” just a plain electronic ring. With her right hand, she opened the briefcase and then opened the phone, keeping one eye on the road. She glanced at the number, frowned and answered. “Philip. How are you?”

  She listened and frowned again. “Is he worse?”

  She glanced at Sam, and he turned to the window, trying to look uninterested. Wheat.

  “Are you sure? What does the doctor say?”

  They passed a grid cutting a boundary between a field of hard wheat and a field of barley. That could be the one.

  “No, you don’t understand. It is very important to me. Well, he understands. Why don’t you talk to him about it?”

  That might be the trail she was looking for.

  “Well, I’m sorry, Philip. No, but I’ll get there as fast as I can. No, I don’t think there’s any way I can be there before tomorrow afternoon.” She glanced at Sam, and he heard the angry buzz of a voice from Toronto. “Listen, there’s someone here right now. Can I call you back in a few minutes? All right. Talk to you soon.”

  She snapped the phone closed and threw it back in the briefcase.

  “They’re dangerous,” Sam said.

  “What?”

  “Cellphones.”

  She laughed a bitter laugh. “Out here, you could read the newspaper while you drive.”

  “That’s what the fellow who found our cliff thought.”

  This observation brought a moment’s silence.

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “Who’s Philip?”

  She paused, glanced at him with a look that said it was none of his business, and answered anyway. “My brother.”

  “Brothers,” Sam said. “What were you arguing about?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “I just wondered. You seem upset.”

  “My father’s dying,” she said. “My brother called to tell me that my father is dying and I have to fly home.” She began to slow down, as though she were realizing only as she spoke to him what needed to be done. “I need to call the airlines and find out what’s the next flight I can catch.”

  Sam massaged his forehead, trying to unknot the ache that was beginning to form. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Was it … sudden?”

  “No. Cancer. He’s been battling it for years.” The car stopped rolling and she stared out at something just beyond the horizon. “But Philip insists he might die this afternoon.”

  While Sam stared out the window, she made her call and booked her flight. He considered getting out of the car and walking away. It was only fifteen miles to Broken Head. He could cut across the fields, skip town and walk straight to the farm. It was probably only twenty-five miles as the crow flies. He could be home before midnight, and the walk might do him good. Gwen would not be glad to see him, but Ai would be thankful to be rid of him. At least he could make one woman happy. She could head back to Saskatoon and jump on a flight and be back in Toronto by midnight. Her father was dying, and she needed to be there to watch.

  She hung up her phone, put her hands on the wheel and sighed. “I’ve got a flight tomorrow morning. Listen, I’m starving, so I need to get something to eat, and then I really need to find this cliff as quickly as possible. Are you sure you know where it is?”

  “I’ll take you to my brother,” Sam said. “He can show you.”

  She turned to him, her eyes full of worried hope. Her nose was too big.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I love my brother,” Sam said. “My brother’s my best friend in the entire world.”

  She studied him. “That’s nice,” she said. “My family’s not particularly close.”

  “Oh, we are. We’re too close. Farms are like that. It’s like growing up on an island.”

  She started the car and pulled back out onto the road. “Okay. Let’s get something to eat and go and see your brother.”

  “You’ll probably like my brother. Women usually seem to like him. See, that’s what I don’t understand about women. You complain about what assholes men are, but nine times out of ten you’d pick an asshole out of a roomful of saints. Why is that?”

  Holding the wheel with her right hand, she scratched her right arm nervously, looking down at what she was doing as though she might not be able to accomplish it if she couldn’t see the itch. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

  “Oh, sure it is. Don’t worry about it. I should probably talk to him myself at any rate.” She didn’t respond. “I’m sorry about your father.”

  She nodded without looking at him. “It’s not your fault.”

  When they reached Broken Head, she stopped at the mall to call her brother, and Sam said he’d stay in the car. She took a camera wi
th her. He watched her cross the parking lot, and eye the motion detector with suspicion when the door opened for her.

  He had to duck down below the dash when Mrs. Tarkington, the alderman’s wife, wandered by with a new rake in her hand. He had recently helped the Tarkingtons prepare for their retirement. The Tarkingtons were well prepared. With the new rake, the Tarkingtons would be prepared for the fall. It was June. Perhaps they needed it for grass clippings.

  “How’s the restaurant in here?” Ai asked when she came back.

  “Compared to what?”

  “I haven’t had anything since breakfast.”

  “Do we really have to? What about the drive-through at McDonald’s?”

  “I was thinking of something … else,” she said.

  One thing was certain; he was not walking into the mall with her. It wasn’t just her. He didn’t want to be seen by anyone. Not right now. But he couldn’t suggest that they get something at home. Gwen was unlikely to be in the mood for cooking, and there wouldn’t be any food in Vern’s trailer, and he was not taking her home to Mother.

  “Do you like Chinese?”

  She gave him a long, suspicious look.

  “Food. Do you like Chinese food?”

  “Sure. Chinese would be fine.”

  They started across town, Ai following Sam’s directions, but three times she insisted on stopping to photograph something—a row of identical bungalows on a residential street, a dog tied to a stop sign outside a video store and a pickup truck with silhouettes of naked women on the mud flaps. After they’d crossed the overpass and were closing in on the edge of town, he directed her to park in front of the Peking Palace.

  “Why here?” she asked.

  Sam scratched his head. “He’s a client. From the bank. He needs the business.”

  “Oh, I see. You own the restaurant.”

  “No. I don’t want to own the restaurant.”

  Bill Chan. Vietnamese boat person. Thirty-seven thousand dollars principal still remaining. Late with his last three payments after word went around that someone got food poisoning from the deep-fried chicken balls and those rumours ballooned into other rumours that the chicken balls were not really chicken. Just over a block away, Susan Evans, Michael’s former grade two teacher and a client at the bank, was walking her dog in their direction. There was still time to get across the street and into the restaurant before she was within nodding distance. Sam jumped out of the car and rushed around to close Ai’s door for her. She had already stepped out, looking shocked by his sudden enthusiasm.