Cactus Jack

by Brad Smith

  While Ryker talked, Luke sat staring out the windshield. Never had he wanted so badly to be on the highway and gone from a place. “I can’t even imagine what it’s like, being the way you are,” he said. “I don’t want nothing to do with you again, Ryker. Not now and not ever.”

  Reese shrugged. “That shouldn’t be a problem. You and I don’t really travel in the same circles. Do we?”

  “We ain’t even from the same planet,” Luke said and drove away.

  At the farm he opened a beer and called Steve on his cell. The quarter horses were in Minnesota now and would be there through the next weekend. Steve was traveling with his mare and Luke’s gelding, too. He was riding Luke’s horse while the mare’s tendon settled down. Luke said he needed to talk to the neighbor kid about looking after the farm before he could head out.

  “I’ll see you Monday,” he told Steve.

  “What happened with the thoroughbred?” Steve asked. “He didn’t make the grade?”

  “Wasn’t the horse,” Luke said and hung up.

  He was pounding the beers and was on his third when he heard voices from the yard and then a vehicle driving off. A minute later Becky was knocking on the door.

  “What’s up?” he asked when she came in.

  “I think I sold my paints.” She stayed just inside the door, leaning her hip against the jamb. Luke could smell the horse on her.

  “Congratulations.”

  “There’s one problem,” she said. “I need to get them to Owensboro and I don’t have a trailer. Or a truck neither for that matter.”

  Luke grimaced. That’s what she considered a problem? She didn’t know what problems were. “Get your hubby to do it.”

  “I’m not with him anymore.”

  “There’s a shock.”

  “Who shit in your cornflakes today?” she asked. “Or are you always like this?”

  “You want a beer?”

  “No,” she said. “Nick’s got that tandem trailer out there and you have a truck. These people will pay you to trailer the horses to Owensboro.”

  “How much?”

  “How much do you want?”

  Luke had been thinking he’d have to borrow money for gas to get to Minnesota. He did a calculation. It was roughly a hundred and twenty miles to Owensboro. “Two hundred dollars,” he decided.

  “That sounds okay.” She was pretty damn quick to agree.

  “A horse,” he added.

  “What?”

  “Two hundred a horse. That’s four hundred dollars total.”

  “I know what two and two is. That seems like a lot.”

  Luke shrugged. “You know how much gas that Ford takes?”

  “What about three hundred?”

  Luke drained his bottle and went to the fridge. “I’ll do it for three. Now you want a beer?”

  “No.” Opening the door to go, she stopped. “What is wrong with you anyway?”

  “I’m a poor excuse for a human being.”

  “And you’re just figuring that out now?”

  “Actually, I am,” Luke told her.

  Twenty-Three

  WHEN BILLIE ARRIVED BACK AT THE farm after her conversation with Tyrone, she expected to find Jodie there. She wasn’t, and it was obvious that she hadn’t been. The water trough for her animals was nearly empty and they hadn’t been fed. Billie took care of them, wondering why the girl hadn’t come around. She went to the house and made coffee and the phone rang. It was Kellyanne, her old schoolgirl buddy turned snarky loans manager.

  “What’s up?” Billie asked.

  “I think you know,” Kellyanne said. “You need to come and see me.”

  They sat again in the office that overlooked the street. Today Kellyanne wore a skirt so tight she appeared to have trouble walking in it, and clunky high heels with black stockings. Her eyes flicked over Billie’s jeans and T-shirt and she actually shook her head slightly. Billie didn’t know she was required to dress the part to talk to the bank.

  Kellyanne got right to the point. “I hear your horse is a dog,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I hear he got his lunch handed to him over at Chestnut Field on the weekend.”

  Billie looked around. “Do your bosses know the way you talk to people?”

  “I don’t talk to everybody like this,” Kellyanne said. “But you told me you’d pay your mortgages once your horse won the Kentucky Derby or something like that. How’s that plan coming along, Billie?”

  “You tell me. You seem to know all about it.”

  “I know enough,” Kellyanne said. “I have to answer to people. Like I said before, we can’t carry you indefinitely. Now you had a plan and it wasn’t much of a plan, but we went along temporarily. But now what—do you have another money-making scheme? Did your father have another slow horse stashed away someplace?”

  “Do I have a plan?” Billie repeated. “Other than I’m seriously considering knocking you out of that fucking chair—no.”

  “Did you just threaten me?”

  “I might have,” Billie said. “Why not call your manager in here and we’ll let him decide.”

  Kellyanne sat back in her chair. “You haven’t changed, you know that? You were always just a little bit better than everybody else.”

  “Not everybody. You maybe.”

  “Even now, when I’m this close to taking your farm away from you, you’re sitting there with that smug look on your face, talking shit. You still think you can lord it over me. Well, look where I’m sitting and look where you are.”

  “You’ve got me all wrong, Kellyanne,” Billie said. “All these years, I never thought about you once. You’re mad at me because you think I fucked Ernie Moscovitz fifteen years ago? Do you know how pathetic that is?”

  “That’s a ridiculous thing to say. I’m doing my job.”

  “Then do it,” Billie said. “You called me and told me to come in. So far you’ve insulted my father and my horse and me. How is that your job?”

  Billie could see the old Kellyanne now, beneath the spiky bleached hair and the Spanx. She was never going to run away from who she was. Neither was anybody else in this world, but the difference was that most everybody else knew it.

  “My job,” Kellyanne said slowly, “is to tell you that you have until the end of the month to pay your mortgages. If you default, this bank can seize your property and sell it to whomever we please. That includes the house and barns and livestock. Do you understand that or should I go over it again a little slower?”

  Billie stood up. “I think I got it. Next time why not just tell me over the phone? That way, I won’t have to sit here and listen to you rattle off all the things you wanted to say to me back in high school.”

  “Go to hell,” Kellyanne said.

  Billie laughed and left. Her truck was parked along the street a half block away, and when she walked out the front door of the stone building, she couldn’t help but notice the very large lawyer leaning against the front fender, eating an ice cream cone.

  “That truck is dirty,” she said approaching. “You’ll ruin your seersucker.”

  “You want an ice cream, Billie?” Clay asked. “My treat.”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day,” Billie said. “Although there really wasn’t much competition.”

  They walked to a kiosk in the town square that sold ice cream and pretzels and sodas. Clay bought Billie a Neapolitan with two scoops and they sat on a bench beneath the shade of black locust trees to eat.

  “So why were you lurking outside the bank?” Billie asked.

  “Because I could see you inside,” Clay said. “Talking to that poor Kellyanne.”

  “Poor Kellyanne?”

  “The girl has problems. Did you know she’s a dipsomaniac?”

  “No, but I suspected the last part.” Billie ran her tongue around the melting ice cream where it met the cone.

  “How’s that?”

  “The maniac.”

 
“Oh yes, very funny.” Some of the ice cream from his cone was running down Clay’s wrist and he turned his hand over to lick it. “She was in Mom’s earlier today and the talk there was of your colt and its inauspicious debut at Chestnut Field.”

  “Of course,” Billie said. “What else would people have to talk about? Kellyanne heard the story and then hustled over to her office to call me in for a meeting. Where she proceeded to tell me that the bank is about to take my farm and my house and my horses.”

  Clay scoffed. “They can’t take your horses. They don’t hold a mortgage on your horses.”

  “That would be reassuring if the animals were worth anything.”

  “It’s unfortunate that the mortgage is with a branch of First Kentucky,” Clay said. His ice cream was nearly gone now and he took a bite out of the cone and chewed it noisily.

  “Why is that?”

  “Because Reese Ryker has influence with them. He has a large portion of his money—well, I should say his mother’s money because the boy has never earned any on his own—in First Kentucky. A substantial enough sum that those in the ivory tower might listen to him if he was to complain about an overdue mortgage out here in the backwoods.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Billie said. “What a world.”

  “Indeed,” Clay said. “What happened at Chestnut on Saturday?”

  “As if you don’t know.”

  “I heard the colt got trounced,” Clay said. “I heard thirty lengths or maybe forty. I also heard that your jockey brought him out of the starting gate like Lucifer himself was chasing the animal. Why would he do that?”

  Billie kept forgetting she was in Kentucky, where every living soul was an expert on horse racing. “Because my trainer told him to do that.”

  “And why would he tell him that?”

  “That is the million-dollar question, Mr. Clay. I think Ryker got to him.”

  “He paid him off?”

  “Kinda looks that way.”

  Clay finished the cone with one last crunch and carefully wiped his fingers with his napkin before tucking it into his shirt pocket. “What did your trainer say when you asked him about it?”

  “I never got a chance. He slinked away with his tail between his legs.”

  “Which is what he would do, had he sold you out.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And now what?” Clay asked.

  “I trailered the colt home this morning,” Billie said. “I’m thinking the smart move would be to see what I can get for him. I’ve already had one wealthy buyer approach me.”

  Clay took a moment. “That would be the aforementioned Reese Ryker.”

  Billie nodded.

  “And that’s not an option.”

  “That is not an option, Mr. Clay,” Billie agreed. “So I’ll advertise the horse and see what happens. The more people try to take that property from me, the more I want to keep it. I can’t make a living off it but I can live on it. I’ll find a job around here somewhere. I’m pretty enough to be on TV, I’ve been told. Maybe I’m pretty enough for other jobs, too.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Billie shook her head. “Never mind.”

  Clay adjusted his bulk on the bench. “I can lend you some money, Billie.”

  “But how does that improve my situation?” Billie said. “The only difference between owing you and owing the bank is that I don’t have any qualms about being in default with the bank, even more so now that I know they might be doing Reese Ryker’s bidding. With you, cantankerous old fart that you are, I would be remorseful.”

  “And to think I bought you ice cream.”

  Billie stood. “Like I said, it was the high point of my day. But I won’t take your money, Mr. Clay.” Pausing, she smiled again. “Unless—you’re not in the market for a two-year-old gray colt by Saguaro, are you? Lightly raced, I might add.”

  Clay leaned back and crossed his legs. Apparently he was settled in for the afternoon. Billie could imagine him there, offering encouragement or advice or disparagement to passersby, content in his eccentricities, calculated or not.

  “I had a colt once,” he told her.

  “Serendipity,” Billie said.

  “Right,” he said, realizing. “I already mentioned that, didn’t I? Mrs. Clay tells me that I have a habit of repeating myself.”

  “There are worse habits.”

  “Oh, I know. Mrs. Clay, for instance, tells me I have a habit of repeating myself.”

  Billie was laughing as she walked across the square, heading for her truck.

  Twenty-Four

  MONDAY MORNING LUKE GOT UP EARLY. After drinking two cups of black coffee to clear his head, he backed his truck around to the tandem horse trailer behind the barn. He’d gotten drunk Saturday night and had continued on through Sunday. At some point he had remembered to call Steve to tell him that he had a job to do, trailering some horses, and wouldn’t be catching up with him until Tuesday or Wednesday.

  The trailer obviously hadn’t been moved in some months. Luke suspected that Nick had last used it to bring the horses to the farm, back when he and Becky had been basking in the light of first love, as the songwriters might put it. The recent rain had left the trailer tires sunk in the mud. One was completely flat. Luke had to drag the compressor from the machine shed across the yard to inflate the tire.

  At first the trailer wouldn’t budge. Luke put the truck in four-wheel drive and rocked it back and forth until the tires finally broke free. As they did, Luke hammered the truck into low gear and gunned the engine—and blew the clutch to pieces. He let off the gas at once and pushed in the pedal. He could hear the springs inside the bell housing, clanking around like loose change in a pocket.

  Luke shut the engine down and sat there behind the wheel for a time. He was aware that things weren’t going his way lately, and as much as he wanted to feel sorry for himself, he couldn’t. He didn’t believe that God was watching him and tossing a monkey wrench into his plans whenever Luke acted the fool. He didn’t know if God even existed but if He did, Luke had to believe that He had better things to do than fuck with Luke’s head.

  However, he did believe in karma. And so he had to believe that the hand of karma had been involved in the disintegration of his clutch plate just now. That and the fact that the Ford had nearly 300,000 hard miles on it.

  Now he had no idea how he was going to get to Minnesota, just as he had no idea how he was going to deliver the horses to Owensboro. The couple had been back at the farm Sunday afternoon and paid Luke for the job. After a time, he pulled his cell from his pocket and dialed Steve.

  “So I’m fucked,” he said after telling his story.

  “All right,” Steve said, giving it some thought. “Call Al’s Garage on Bryant Street in Lexington. He bought my old Ram off me for parts and never paid me, always said he’d make it up in repairs. He can fix your truck and then you can owe me.”

  There was a Jubilee Ford tractor in the machine shed. The battery was dead and the gas tank empty. Luke replaced the battery with the one from his truck and siphoned gas from his tank. The tractor fired up after a minute or so. It ran rough for a time and then smoothed out.

  Luke went next door. He knew there was a teenager living there; he’d seen him in the yard a few times and the kid always waved. Turned out his name was Travis and for twenty bucks he agreed to tow Luke’s truck behind the tractor to the garage in Lexington.

  “Are you sure this is legal?” he asked before they started out.

  “Everything’s legal as long as you don’t get caught,” Luke told him.

  It was past noon when they pulled into the garage lot. Luke paid the kid and sent him home on the tractor. The garage owner, Al, was walking around the truck as the kid chugged away.

  “This is the truck?” he asked.

  “This is it.” Luke was in the mood for just one stupid question. “What about parts?”

  “Place in town has a clutch in stock.” Al looked doubtfully a
t the truck a moment longer. “I’m not making anything on this, you know.”

  “Thought you owed Steve money.”

  “I do,” Al admitted.

  “There you go,” Luke said. “How long you figure to fix it?”

  “Three or four hours.”

  “I’ll give you my cell number. You can call me when it’s done.”

  “Where you going?”

  “Gotta be a bar around here somewhere.”

  In fact there were a couple of bars, at an intersection a half mile away. One had an Italian name and was some sort of pasta place. The parking lot was full, the lunch crowd. The second place was a strip club called Honey Bunnies. Luke went in and found a corner table. He took off his hat and ordered a beer.

  He passed most of the afternoon there, nursing draft beer and watching the girls. There were two stages and nonstop entertainment, as the blinking sign outside promised.

  For all his checkered history with the opposite sex, Luke had never been a big fan of strip clubs. He knew guys who were practically addicted to the places, who would spend their paychecks sticking ten-dollar bills in G-strings and taking whichever of the dancers did a little business on the side out back to their trailers or upstairs to a room. To Luke, there had always been something unsexy about the whole arrangement. Watching a woman get naked in front of a couple dozen men seemed antiseptic and bloodless to him. Sex was a contact sport to Luke, and one-onone up close and personal was the only way to play it. It occurred to him that every woman he had ever fucked he had been in love with, at least a little bit and for a little while.

  After a couple of beers, he realized he hadn’t eaten much for the last couple days and ordered a hamburger and fries. The waitress was friendly, with nice eyes and a great body. She was in her forties, Luke guessed, and he wondered if she might have been a dancer at one time. With her body and smile, she could still be a dancer. The afternoon crowd was light and they got to talking. He ended up telling her about his troubles—how the clutch was out of his truck and he had horses to haul across the state. He told her he was heading out after that to race the flat tracks. He nearly told her about what had happened at Chestnut Field on Saturday but he couldn’t do it. They were getting along fine and even though he would likely never see her again after today he couldn’t bear to tell her about his despicable behavior. She kept coming over to talk to him when she wasn’t busy. He over-tipped her and she bought him a beer and told him about her Honda that was always overheating. She was funny and smart and Luke found her sexy in a way that he did not find the naked girls on the stage to be.