Cactus Jack

by Brad Smith

  “I have no reason to stick around.”

  “Well, you are wrong about that,” Clay told her.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because there are matters that require settling.” Clay paused, enjoying the moment. “I seem to recall you being a lot smarter than this, Billie.”

  She laughed. “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we? Apparently we don’t have enough brains between us to light a match. We ought to run for office.”

  “I have been asked, believe me,” Clay said. “I assume you wouldn’t possess a house key to your father’s place.”

  “I don’t remember there ever being one,” Billie replied. “He never locked the place.”

  “He did in recent years,” Clay said. “The changing landscape of our world, Billie. People who do drugs tend to steal things to pay for those drugs. If they were to apply those efforts and that ingenuity to hard work, I daresay we would be living in Valhalla.”

  “Valhalla,” Billie said. “You haven’t lost your flair for hyperbole, Mr. Clay. Didn’t your great-great-grandfather once wrestle Davy Crockett?”

  “Did I say that?” Clay asked. “Well then, I suppose it must have happened.” He dug into his pants pocket and produced a key. “For the house. You might as well stay there while you’re here.”

  Billie did not immediately reach for the key. “I’m not sure the old man would want me to.”

  “Well, you’re wrong about that, too,” Clay said.

  Seven

  SHE WAS SURPRISED AT HOW LITTLE the place had changed. Driving out to the farm along the county road south of the village of Westbrook, she hadn’t known what to expect. Given her father’s relationship with the woman who’d spoken at the funeral, she was prepared to find the house completely renovated—granite counters in the kitchen, en suite bathroom, couches and chairs from IKEA. Maybe an Impressionist print or two on the walls. In truth, though, she would have been surprised to see any of that. The old man wouldn’t have the money for those things or the desire for them if he did. He wasn’t much for change.

  She was right in that. Inside the house she found the same old GE fridge, the same stained plywood cupboards, and the same living room furniture. The place did look somewhat cleaner than when she’d been there last, at which time the old man had been living the bachelor life. But the house even smelled precisely as she remembered it, a combination of man and farm and horses, of sweat and leather and fried bacon and boiled coffee and dried manure and Barclay’s Liniment. The smells of Billie’s youth.

  There were a few touches that might have been attributed to the girlfriend—a fancy coffee maker in the kitchen, a blender (what would her father do with a blender?), and some items of clothing in the bedroom that Billie couldn’t see him wearing. There were things in the bathroom—soaps and lotions and an electric toothbrush—that weren’t Will Masterson’s, either. The only other addition was the deck built onto the rear of the house, overlooking the outbuildings down the slope. On it was a large wooden table surrounded by a half dozen chairs made of wicker, and one of solid wood. Billie knew which chair was the old man’s.

  She brought her clothes in from the car and changed back into the jeans and cotton shirt she’d left Ohio wearing. She folded the new black dress and put it in her bag, wondering when she might have occasion to wear it again.

  She found a half-full bottle of Woodford Reserve in a kitchen cupboard and carried it and a glass outside to sit in one of the wicker chairs. The rain had stopped. The downpour had flooded the farm and now the rainwater rushed across it from east to west, overflowing the swale that dissected the property, gushing through the culvert under the rear driveway before hurrying to the pond at the bottom of the west pasture.

  Pouring a couple of ounces into the glass, she looked absently toward the outbuildings and as she did three thoroughbreds came out of the pole barn—two bays and a dark gray—stepping tentatively into the muddy paddock. The gray was just a colt, Billie could see, and he spotted her immediately, lifting his head high in the air, as if he could pick up her scent. The other two horses were probably broodmares. They moved around the corral with their noses down, searching for graze. Billie wondered if they’d been fed today. She had to assume that somebody would be taking care of that. Maybe the girlfriend and if not her, then certainly David Mountain Clay.

  She lit a cigarette and drank the bourbon and tried, as she had the past few days, not to feel guilty about the fact that she’d gone eight years without seeing her father. And about the fact that now she would never see him. It hadn’t been a conscious decision on her part. Never had she said to herself, or to anyone else, that she would never see him again. She had been bitter after her mother’s suicide, and even more bitter about the fact that her father wouldn’t discuss it with her. It was as if he wanted to pretend that he had nothing to do with it, and how could he pretend that if he was to have an actual conversation with Billie about it?

  Still, she had always assumed that she would see him again. She hadn’t thought about it because she had chosen not to, like with a lot of other things. Which was why it seemed she was constantly having conversations with people—like coworkers or pool-shooting university students—about what she planned to do with her life. She didn’t know the answer because she chose not to think about that, either. She wasn’t a planner, she was a doer, she told herself— although she couldn’t offer up any evidence that she’d done much of anything of late.

  Besides that, it took two to tango. If the old man had at any time in the past years called and said he wanted to see her, she would have obliged him. Did he think she would just show up out of the blue? He probably did. Then again, maybe he didn’t think of her at all anymore. After all, he had his eloquent girlfriend to keep him company, to cook his meals and rub his sore back and whatever other services she provided, probably expertly. Billie didn’t want to think about that, either.

  She had a long swallow of whiskey and wondered why she was being so hard on the woman. Would she have preferred the old man spend his last years with some shrieking harpy who demanded that he buy her clothes and take her to dinner every night? Then again, maybe that’s exactly who this Marian Dunlop was. Maybe today was all an elaborate act and she had everybody fooled, rural Kentucky’s answer to Meryl Streep.

  Movement from the back driveway caught her eye and she looked around to see a little girl on a bicycle heading for the barn. Dodging the puddles in the lane, she never looked toward the house until she stopped to lean the bike against the machine shed. When she saw Billie, she turned away so quickly that Billie thought she was up to no good. She was wearing a blue baseball cap and she removed it, revealing a mass of dark curls that Billie recognized. She’d been one of the kids huddled under the tent at the graveyard. She didn’t look toward the house again but went directly into the barn. Moments later, the side door opened and the girl proceeded to lead a succession of animals into the far corral, beyond where the three horses stood in the mud. There was a donkey, a brown-and-white paint pony, and finally a nanny goat. The girl, who had been wearing sneakers when she arrived, now wore black rubber boots. Billie, transfixed by the scene, waited to see what might emerge next. She wondered if the old man had invested in a traveling circus. Maybe there were elephants and jugglers and a trapeze artist living in the barn.

  Instead of more livestock, though, the girl next dragged a bale of hay outside, where she removed the strings and distributed a couple of flakes each to the animals before going back for another bale, which she spread out for the horses in the near paddock. She did not once look up again to the deck where Billie sat watching. It seemed she was making a conscious effort not to do so.

  Which suited Billie just fine. She didn’t need any interaction with the kid, whoever she happened to be. It was obvious that somebody—probably David Clay—had hired her to tend to the stock until things were sold off. Billie wouldn’t interfere with whatever arrangements had been made. Interfering might lead to someone sugges
ting that Billie do it, and she had no interest in that. She did wonder why they hired somebody so young. The kid looked about ten years old. Was help that hard to find in this part of the country?

  When she had scattered the hay for the horses, the girl turned and went back into the barn again. Billie knew from experience that cleaning stalls would be next on the list. It was a good job for a ten-year-old kid: it would build character, which would allow her, when she was thirty-two, to sit on the deck and sip bourbon.

  Billie heard a vehicle then, coming up the front driveway on the far side of the house, stopping there, the engine shutting down. The car door opened and closed and then Billie heard the creaking of the screen door out front. Moments later, the woman who would be Streep walked out of the house and onto the deck. She was still wearing the black dress but she had changed her shoes, ditching the pumps for a pair of flats.

  “Hello,” she said. Her tone was neither friendly nor unfriendly.

  Glass in hand, Billie half turned in her chair and nodded. Marian Dunlop hesitated, as if she might walk over to Billie and perhaps even offer her hand again. She seemed to think better of it and moved to the edge of the deck, where she leaned her elbows on the railing and looked for a long while at the rain-soaked farm. Billie watched her in silence, wondering why she had shown up so soon after the funeral. Maybe the place was now hers and she was there to run Billie off. But David Clay wouldn’t have insisted that Billie stay here if that were the case.

  Unless, of course, he and the woman were in cahoots.

  For Christ’s sakes, Billie thought, get a grip on yourself. Since when did you ever worry about things you couldn’t control and—more to the point—couldn’t care less about? She smiled and drained her glass, then reached for the bottle. The bourbon might be all she would get from the old man, and if that were the case, she was absolutely fine with it. Woodford made a good whiskey.

  The woman shifted her gaze to the west pasture now, where the pond continued to rise, and she spoke without turning. “He’d have given his eyeteeth for a quarter inch of rain these past weeks. And here it’s done nothing but, since the day he died.”

  Billie didn’t say anything. She poured from the bottle and then capped it. As she drank, Marian turned to look at her. Her eyes were hazel and at this moment seemed to suggest they were amused by something.

  “Are you going to offer me a drink?”

  Billie indicated the bottle. “Help yourself.”

  “No thanks.”

  Now Billie smiled. “You’re not in the temperance league, are you?”

  “Not quite.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “Not in the mood, I guess,” Marian said.

  “Well, I hope it’s not something I said.”

  “I think we can safely assume that it’s nothing you said,” Marian replied. “Because you really haven’t said a fucking thing so far. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were mired in a good old-fashioned pout.”

  “But you don’t know better,” Billie said.

  “How’s that?”

  “You don’t know better. You don’t know anything about me.”

  “That’s not true,” Marian said. “I know all kinds of things about you. He never mentioned that you were a pouter, though.”

  “I’m not fucking pouting.”

  Marian finally smiled. “Did you ever know a pouter who didn’t say that?”

  Billie was getting hammered and she knew it. She had another sip of whiskey and turned her attention to the activity down the hill, where the animals were eating the forage, moving it with their noses through the mud. She made an effort to maintain a neutral expression, to offset the recent accusations of pouting. She had no idea how she looked. For an absurd moment she considered whistling a tune to display her nonchalance. She was saved from such foolishness by the little girl, who emerged from the barn at that moment, pushing a wheelbarrow full of manure, leaning into it, her little muscles straining with the effort against the new mud. Billie grabbed at the lifeline.

  “Who’s the kid?”

  Marian turned. “Her name’s Jodie. She lives the next road over.”

  “Kinda young for a hired hand, isn’t she?”

  Marian watched as the girl maneuvered the load through the muck to a manure pile outside the paddock. When she tipped it up, the wheelbarrow went sideways and the girl went with it, falling to one knee before getting up and righting it.

  “Your father first made her acquaintance at an auction over by Victortown. I don’t know all the details except that the donkey there was lame and on the block. Sold for seven dollars and the girl was the buyer. Will arrived home with both child and donkey. The nanny showed up next. It belonged to one of her school friends and was headed for the smoker. The pony was being mistreated by some idiots who operated a riding stable in Greenville. You could count the animal’s ribs when it got here.”

  “The old man was never one for taking in strays,” Billie said.

  “You talking about the animals or the kid?”

  “Both.”

  “I think her home life is pretty shitty,” Marian said. “Her father was in jail and when he got out, he took a powder. Apparently her mother’s had her problems, alcohol and drugs, doesn’t work much to speak of.”

  “What’s the mother’s name?” Billie asked, wondering if she knew her.

  “Shelly Rickman.”

  Billie knew the family. “Who’s her father?”

  “I never heard a name but I know he’s gone,” Marian said. “The mother’s with Troy Everson now.”

  Billie knew that name, too. “I would have assumed that Troy Everson would be in jail by now.”

  “He just got out.”

  The kid pushed the wheelbarrow back into the barn. Watching, Billie realized she’d just had what could pass as a conversation with her father’s girlfriend. Not a conversation that was really about anything, just a needy kid that Billie would in all likelihood never see again. She had a sip and relaxed a little, no longer on defense.

  “So the old man adopted her,” she said. “And I noticed a woman’s clothes in the master bedroom. Some pajamas even. Seems as if he had lots of female company of late.”

  “Not as much as he would have liked.”

  Billie started to respond but then stopped. She wouldn’t take the bait. It was too late for all that now anyway. She knew it and she assumed that the woman at the railing, watching her, knew it, too.

  “I expect you stopped in for a reason,” Billie said. “And you don’t want a drink so I’m thinking it must be business. So now what?”

  Marian came over then to sit at the table. “Now nothing, Billie,” she said calmly. “I was in love with your father and I think he was in love with me. My heart is broken.” Her voice cracked and Billie thought for a moment she would break down. But she wouldn’t, not here and not in front of Billie. “My heart is broken. I came here because I knew you were here and I thought it might help if I could talk to the other woman he loved. Obviously I was wrong about that, and that’s okay. I’ve been wrong a good many times in my life. But you are just as wrong if you think I want anything. The only thing I wanted was buried today in that church graveyard.”

  As she spoke, Billie sat looking at the tabletop, the glass of bourbon propped on her knee. When Marian stopped talking, she looked at her.

  “All right.”

  Marian nodded. “As far as my clothes and whatever else I have here, I’ll have them out of here tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” Billie said. “Christ, the place might be yours. You were obviously a bigger part of his life than I was.”

  “I don’t want it,” Marian said. “I have my own house in town. When he was alive, this was my favorite place in the world to be. We sat at this table a thousand times, Billie. But we won’t again. If he’s not here, then neither am I.” She paused, still watching. “I hope we’re clear on that. Do you have any questions?”
/>   Billie drained her glass and placed it on the table. At the moment she couldn’t think of a single one.

  Marian turned to go but then stopped. “Listen, I know things were not great between your father and you.”

  “I doubt you know the whole story,” Billie said. “I doubt he told you about my mother.”

  “I’m sure he was sorry about what happened,” Marian said.

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “No. I told you, we didn’t talk about it. I knew about your mother . . . what she did. But we never talked about it. I didn’t feel it was up to me to bring it up.”

  “Then you don’t know that he was sorry.”

  Instead of going to the TV station, Reese drove out to Chestnut Field the next morning, where he had coffee with Caldwell. He’d called the manager the day before, while driving home from Will Masterson’s funeral. They’d met a few times, both at Chestnut and Lexington Downs, and Reese had always got the sense that Caldwell was looking to move up, away from the B track, and the B track characters who came with it.

  The two men sat on the patio by the stretch. The field was dark that day, and a number of trainers were working horses on the rain-soaked track. Reese paid them little mind. What did he care about claimers and five-year-old maidens? He was aware, however, that Caldwell was curious and maybe even excited about Reese asking to meet. It had never happened before.

  “How’s your year been so far?” Reese asked when they had their coffee.

  “So-so,” Caldwell replied. “Up a bit from last year.”

  “The place looks really good,” Reese said. He indicated the infield, which had been replanted that spring with roses and geraniums.

  “My idea and my design, too,” Caldwell said. “It took some convincing. Just between you and me, ownership here is somewhat lacking in imagination.”

  “Well, it looks like Churchill Downs,” Reese said, lying. “The reason I’m here—are your sheds all full?”