Part 9 (2/2)
Shane and I let that statement lie between us on the floor. I think it was such an obvious opening that he suspected a trap. Or maybe Lydia was too easy for an all-star lech to bother with. Instead I blindly jumped into the good-bye thing. I'm not big on good-bye things. Every vacation when the time comes for Sam and Shannon to head back south, I make an excuse and bag out a few minutes before they leave. I never even said good-bye to Dad, and he's dead.
Lydia hugged me and told me not to commit suicide or buy flowers from hippies on city street corners because the money went straight to the Moonies. I can tell I'm not latently gay or anything because I don't initiate hugs with women. Men either, come to think of it.
”You heading straight out from here?” she asked.
”After we pick up the tent and drop by the post office. Might as well take Sam his tent.”
”You tell that overgrown horse's t.u.r.d to send me money. It's a disgrace how he treats his mother.”
”I thought the story was written by a youngster. Surely you are not old enough to have an adult child?” Shane asked.
Lydia's forehead wrinkled in spite of all that Swedish paste she glops on it. ”Of course I don't have an adult child. Will you see Annabel before you leave the valley?”
I wanted a drink right now. ”Doesn't seem to be much point.”
”Maurey, there's not much point in anything you do.”
Dear Dad, I told Hank to shoot Frostbite and sell his hooves to Purina. We'll use the guts for bearbait and give the hide and meat to the religious fanatics up in Buffalo Valley. I'm leaving on a tour of southern cities tonight. You can reach me through Lydia Callahan.
Write, wire, or call, Maurey ***
Loaded, oiled, and ga.s.sed, our trio in the belly of Moby d.i.c.k headed across Togwotee Pa.s.s and into what people in Jackson Hole call Out There. Shane babbled nonstop from his perch in back, Lloyd held the steering wheel with both hands, his head c.o.c.ked, listening closely to M.D.'s engine as it strained against the trailer and Coors. My Jack bottle that I'd named Scout after Tonto's horse snuggled in his position between my thighs on the pa.s.senger seat.
On the long curves, I looked back at a killer spring sunset between the Grand and Mount Moran. The peaks were majestic, the valley floor a warm, dark green. Auburn did not know I was no longer a cry away. This was stupid. I almost told Lloyd to pull it over and let me go. Only a true idiot would walk away from paradise. Only a total idiot would leave her child to smuggle bad beer and go into hiding from somebody. Who was I hiding from? Dothan, my son, my hometown, myself?
Shane rambled about a snuff queen in Denver he violated with a .44-40 caliber Colt Peacemaker. Her method of finding fulfillment was to have herself nailed by a loaded handgun. Those were Shane's words-”violate” and ”fulfillment.”
”She made me flip off the safety,” he said. ”Is it not peculiar the lengths some people will go to for s.e.xual stimulation?”
I drew on Scout. ”Did the Colt have a sight?”
Shane blew the first seven notes of ”Tumbling Tumbleweeds” on his harmonica, then he stopped. ”Of course the Colt had a sight. What woman would screw a pistol without a sight?”
What woman indeed? I fingered Charley's barrel in my wind-breaker pocket. No sight, but he didn't need one. I'm not that kind of girl.
Lloyd leaned toward the stick s.h.i.+ft and said, ”Spark plug wires are arcing. Hear that?” All I heard was the sun going down on my home.
12.
Lloyd drove, I drank, Shane talked. While all three musketeers were practiced professionals at our chosen tasks, Shane was beyond practiced. Shane was a Renaissance talker. An eighth-degree black belt of the mouth.
In the Wind River Canyon he lectured on Manuel Lisa and early explorations of Yellowstone, including the Hayden Expedition of 1872, then he went on to reasons why the South could have won the Civil War and proper procedures for cooking a peac.o.c.k-boil it forty minutes, then hang it by the neck outside for three days. Otherwise treat it like a turkey.
Between p.r.o.nouncements he blew six or seven notes of ”Tumbling Tumbleweeds” on the harmonica, sometimes eight notes. Lloyd's face never changed, and he never gave comment. I think he was listening to the engine, which he found more interesting.
Shane gave a blow-by-blow account of flax farming in Nicaragua-figures he was part farmer-and why women went nuts over Steve McQueen. He proved the first five lines of the Lord's Prayer is actually a limerick by reciting them in singsong: Our Father who art in heaven Hallowed be thy name Thy kingdom come Thy will be done On Earth as it is in Heaven ”Second line doesn't rhyme right,” I said.
”Does in Hebrew.”
I turned to Lloyd. ”Does he always talk this much?”
”Only when he likes someone.”
”But I don't like him.”
”Shane doesn't take that into account when he decides who to like.”
Shane spoke in essay form as he compared the Grateful Dead, Allman Brothers, and Willie Nelson. ”The most influential bands of the last five years, and each has two lead guitars, a keyboard player, and double drums. Can you name another band with that configuration?” He convinced me Lou Gehrig was better than Babe Ruth, male birds are more beautiful than female, and the s.p.a.ce program failed to ignite the public's imagination because none of the astronauts was named Buck.
”Buzz wasn't close enough?” I asked.
”Do not insult my intelligence, la.s.sie.”
Shane said Ringo Starr was the greatest Beatle, then named the mothers of Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe on the Bonanza TV show-Elizabeth, Ingrid, and Maria-and the last picture show to play in The Last Picture Show-The Kid from Texas, starring Audie Murphy and Gale Storm.
”Have you ever noticed Australian women are made particularly ardent by a.n.a.l entry?” Shane said. He blew the second phrase of ”Tumbling Tumbleweeds.” ”The French have seven words for a man going down on a woman. We have b.l.o.w. .j.o.b for a woman on a man or, G.o.d forbid, a man on a man, and sixty-nine for everybody on everybody, but the English language does not recognize the male giving pleasure to the female.”
The radio was broken, of course. I should have known. I tried drinking faster, but Shane's voice was a fog cutter. Lloyd tuned him out to the point where he might as well have been driving alone. Lloyd had practice, I think. The familiarity level was hard to pin down. They might have formed the team two days before I met them, or twenty years.
If Shane ever came up for air, I meant to ask him why he thought Ringo Starr was the greatest Beatle. I thought so, too, and I'd never met anyone who agreed with me. The idea that Shane and I might have something in common was fairly disturbing. Sam Callahan said George Harrison was greatest for spiritual reasons, and Park wanted to be John Lennon because he aspired to darkness. Dothan hated them all.
The spring of our freshman year, John Lennon went on the radio in England and said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Sugar's sister, Charlotte, organized a record-burning party on the basketball court behind the Foursquare Gospel Church in Jackson. Dothan and I had our first major fight over the Beatles and religion. I owned all the Beatles alb.u.ms and most of their forty-fives, and he didn't own any, and he wanted to burn mine.
”People will think we're Catholics if we don't,” he said.
”I'm fifteen and have a daughter nearly two years old, what do I care what people think?”
Sam and I steamed the labels off my Beatle alb.u.ms and glued them on Sonny and Cher alb.u.ms, then we slipped Sonny and Cher into the Beatle covers. On the forty-fives we switched Beatles for Sopwith Camel, the Detergents, and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs.
While I was at cheerleading practice my mother let Dothan steal everything I owned by the Beatles. That night Sam and I stood back from the glowing crowd and cheered as ”I Got You, Babe” went up in smelly, melted plastic. I kept those Beatle records right up to the day Dothan moved me and all my stuff he didn't covet out of the house.
”Have you seen her?” Without looking at me, Lloyd handed over a three-by-five color photo, the kind with the ragged border developers were into back in the sixties. ”Sharon might be going by Carbonneau, or Gunderson. That's her maiden name. Gunderson.”
A girl, maybe eighteen, stood next to a sign that read Casino Salvage in front of a brightly lit stucco building. She had straight chestnut hair with these thick bangs that hid her eyebrows. Her face was happy as she vamped the camera by pulling her brown skirt up over one knee, revealing a bony leg and a tooled cowboy boot. She was thin, but not anorexic, only her shoulders slumped. Could have been somewhat pretty if she concentrated on posture.
”Is this your wife?”
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