Part 11 (1/2)

G.o.d, I had to pee. I ran from store to store in the shopping center, begging for a bathroom. My bladder felt knitting needle pain, my thighs quivered, but at each stop the hollow-faced cas.h.i.+ers shook their heads and said, ”No restroom.” Liars. a.s.sholes. Somewhere, every store hid an employees-only closet with a commode, sink, pink powder soap in a dispenser, and a sign that said workers must wash their hands before returning to the job. I ran into the central plaza, searching for a place to go. People were all around. They flew kites; they threw Frisbees. They watched from the edges of their eyes. I stood in the courtyard and shook as ravens landed on the church roof in a ma.s.s of squawking black. Staring people circled me. They held their children back so I couldn't affect them. Shannon placed her hands over her mouth while next to her Pud Talbot pointed at my feet. The crowd broke into jeers and threw garbage at me-banana peels, used condoms, the centers of golf b.a.l.l.s. From beneath my bridal gown, a pool of pale yellow liquid spread across the concrete floor into an ever-expanding half-moon. Dothan stepped from the crowd to wrap my face in Saran Wrap, over and over. Through the layers I saw Shannon and Auburn turn to leave, then my lungs burned and I woke up.

G.o.d, I had to pee. I came awake in morning light in an empty ambulance. When I raised myself to look at the day a metal pressure stuck me above the bladder. Somebody'd fastened a seat belt on me. I wasn't used to seat belts.

The ambulance was parked beside a brick building with a red roof. My guess was church. The building was set down in a wide prairie of low juniper and big, round boulders that seemed sprinkled from the sky. In college we used to cross the pa.s.s to Fort Collins, Colorado, for basketball games and parties at Colorado State, although more often they came to us since the drinking age was nineteen in Wyoming and twenty-one in Colorado.

Anyhow, bushy junipers meant Colorado to me. Church. Colorado. Not bad reasoning for someone about to pee their pants. The part I didn't know was the whereabouts of my crew. The back end looked like a bomb had gone off, same as it did yesterday, but Shane's chair was missing. Lloyd should have left a note.

I took Scout with me, more for security and companions.h.i.+p than a drink. A lot more, actually, because he was empty and the ambulance floor smelled of Yukon Jack. I hate careless drinkers.

The church door opened into a hallway with two doors on the right and one on the left. Left proved to be the side door to a sanctuary, the door for the priest or reverend or whatever. The casket-looking altar was covered with a green rug but the cross didn't have anybody dead on it, which ruled out Catholic. My guess was Episcopal or Presbyterian. The lectern came with an attached pencil-thin reading light, and Fundamentalists don't go in for reading lights. Gets in the way of Bible thumping.

I can't say I was still drunk, but early morning equilibrium was a problem. Back in the hall, I lurched left, grazed the wall, then got up momentum and more or less fell sideways through the second door and into an AA meeting.

Even though I'd never been to one, I knew right away what it was. Drunks in bars had told me how well lit the room would be and how everyone would be smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee from Styrofoam. Eight or nine people stopped whatever interesting thing they'd been doing to go into those blank-faced stares that strangers do when you show up somewhere unexpected. Lloyd sat on the left in his overalls with no s.h.i.+rt. Shane was at the head of the table in his chair. He was leaning toward a pregnant woman who looked about seventy years old. Maybe I'd get pregnant at seventy to balance off having been pregnant at thirteen.

”Toilet.” My voice was a crack.

”Through there on the left,” said a man in a Century 21 gold blazer.

I pointed at a door by the coffee urn and he nodded.

What a leak! Sometimes the pain is almost worth the release. About twenty seconds into the deal I realized how it must sound in the meeting room, so I leaned forward to turn the cold-water tap in the sink. No lie, I went two full minutes of continuous stream. That's one of the dangers of drinking to unconsciousness.

Afterward, when I leaned over to splash water in my face, I glanced up at the mirror and flinched. We're talking gruesome. I tucked in the left side of my s.h.i.+rt where it'd come out, but that didn't help much. I still projected degeneracy.

On my return to the little extended family of formerly lost souls, none of the faces had changed-same who-is-this-deadbeat-with-the-Yukon-bottle stares. They looked infringed upon.

”Thank you,” I said.

”Would you care to join us?” the man in the gold blazer said. He seemed to be group leader. ”Have some coffee.”

”No, thank you. I can't drink out of Styrofoam.”

”You're welcome here.”

”I just had to use the restroom.” I turned to Lloyd. ”We'll be waiting in the truck.” He blinked.

Outside the church, the day was pretty and fresh smelling, like real spring. Real spring doesn't come to Jackson Hole until June, and then it only lasts like two days. Our falls and winters are glorious, and summer is a short paradise, but spring is mostly mud.

I breathed deeply a couple of times, then dropped the dead Scout in a trash can, crawled into Moby d.i.c.k, and went back to sleep.

I dreamed I was an alligator.

Interstate Stuckey's. The more lanes on a road, the lower the standards in curbside cafes. Once through the Safe-Tee gla.s.s double doors you could turn left and throw money away on ”The Traveler's Prayer” decoupage plaque, five-pound boxes of pion nut brittle, b.u.mper stickers to announce where you've been and how your profession does it, or coffee mugs for the World's Greatest Mom. I didn't qualify.

Or you could turn right for food that would start a riot if they served it in prison. How do you make hash browns out of fiber-board, anyway?

The waitress with fire-colored hair and a name tag that read Howdy on top of a peanut and Dorothea on the bottom said we were in Raton, New Mexico, gateway to Capulin Mountain National Monument. Right off she accused Shane of being a hypochondriac.

”I bet you can walk fine.”

”Bless you, my good lady, I only wish it were so.”

”Let me see the bottoms of your shoes.”

Shane pulled an ankle up over one knee, and Dorothea examined his sole. She didn't comment on what she saw.

”My cousin Glenna is a hypochondriac in a wheelchair. When Mr. Delvins got killed by a c.o.ke truck, the moment Glenna found out she collapsed on the floor and hasn't walked a step since.”

”Maybe she has a psychosomatic disorder,” Shane said.

”Not likely, Glenna's from Dallas. We took her to four kinds of specialists and Oral Roberts's 'Hour of Faith,' and nothing helps. Reverend Roberts got her to stand and fling away the chair, but then she fell on her face right on camera.”

Dorothea sucked the tip of her pencil as she examined Shane for signs of health. ”Glenna broke her nose on TV. Goes to show there's times you should let well enough alone.”

Lloyd ordered coffee, I had a chocolate shake, and Shane pigged on a cheeseburger and French fries so greasy they dripped. When he bit down on his burger the side facing me spit juice.

”Trouble with Wyoming,” Shane said, ”is no one there can cook meat properly. This excellent morsel reminds me of a cheeseburger I ate one August afternoon in San Bernardino, California. An Italian woman named Lucy cooked it on the sidewalk to show how hot the concrete was. She asked me to father her child, but I was in a religious order at the time that forbade impregnation. Needless to say, the pressure was too great and I eventually fell from grace.”

Lloyd blew across the surface of his coffee. ”We need a water pump. One we got won't last two more days.”

The radio finished a Goodyear tractor tire commercial and went into the noon farm-to-market report-hogs down, sheep up. A woman from the next booth dragged a little boy towards the ladies' room while the kid yelled, ”I'm a big boy, I don't have to go in yours.” The father or whatever he was chewed three toothpicks and stared out the window at a Peterbilt with the engine running.

I signaled Dorothea over to our table. ”Do any radio stations around here carry Paul Harvey News and Commentary?” I asked.

She chewed her lead a moment, then said, ”My husband, Donnie, used to listen to him, but he can't find it anymore.”

She'd have gotten away with that if not for a Spanish-looking busboy who was hovering nearby. He said, ”KRMC.”

”Pardon me?”

”KRMC has him just before 'Lobo Sports Shorts.'”

I turned back to Dorothea. Notice how polite I came on with the pardons and pleases. ”Please, would you mind changing the station for a few minutes? I'd like to hear Paul Harvey.”

”Yes, I mind.”

”You're interested in alfalfa futures?”

”I'm not interested in changing the station.”