Eleanor (6 page)

David rolled his eyes. His mother didn't see it, but Eleanor did. She spun noodles on her fork.

“I'm glad you're back,” she said.

Eleanor caught a slight smile cross Mrs. Venn's lips before she hid it in a piece of garlic bread. “Yeah, well, it's not all bad,” she said.

“You're going to win a trophy tomorrow,” Wendy said.

“We'll see,” said David.

“We'll all be there and I'll send photos to your dad,” Karen said.

“Great, Mom. No pressure.”

“You'll do great,” she said and then, glancing at her watch, stood up. “I've got to go. Eleanor, do you need a ride home?”

“No, ma'am.”

“I said call me Karen.”

“Oh, sorry. I don't need a ride, Karen.”

“Okay. Don't forget your homework,” she said, collecting her coat and purse.

“Thanks for dinner,” Eleanor said.

“Any time,” she said and blew kisses at her kids before disappearing through the door.

“Let's play games!” said Wendy. “Do you like Hungry Hungry Hippos?”

“I should go,” said Eleanor. “My mom's expecting me.”

“You should have had Mom drive you,” said David. “It's dark now.”

“I see well in the dark,” she said. “I'll be fine.”

“I'll walk you home,” he said. “Grab your coat, Wendy. We're going for a walk.”

“No,” said Eleanor. “I'll be fine.”

David argued with her for five minutes, but she would not be moved. Wendy found a cartoon on TV and finally yelled, “Quit it! Can't you see I'm watching TV?”

“I'll see you tomorrow,” Eleanor said. “I'll be rooting for you.”

Before he could argue again, Eleanor slipped out the door and disappeared into the night.

In the darkness, she circled the trailer park three times before she was convinced that Russell and his friends weren't lurking about.

CHAPTER TEN

T
his year, schools from all over the county and the Wild River Reservation sent their riders to Jamesford. Jamesford had many rodeos. They couldn't compete with Cody, but Jamesford kept the Wyoming sport as alive and active as anywhere in the state.

Since the event expanded from being just a rodeo to a western skills competition with shooting and authentic pioneer cooking, the event took the entire day and was viewed as a country fair. The less popular events, the ones without horses, were done during the morning while the livestock was delivered. In the evening, when parents could more likely attend, the four-hour event would take place in the warmed, covered arena.

The students arrived early, having been bused before daybreak to arrive in time for a hearty meal of buffalo bacon, prairie hen eggs, and yes, burned bread. The shooters were driven to the range at nine o'clock in a Jamesford school bus. Many onlookers and those who didn't need the extra time to practice throwing a rope followed in another bus. Naturally, Eleanor was there.

The competition was pistol and rifle at different ranges. Simple target practice, no quick draw, ear and eye protection.

The range wasn't equipped for spectators, so the crowd huddled behind the fence and peeked around the shooters from a good distance away. When Mr. Blake set up a video screen in a gazebo and trained a camera with a telephoto lens on the targets, most gathered there to watch.

At first Eleanor stayed by the fence. Unlike the others, she could see the targets down range. What she hadn't expected was the tremendous sound of the little guns and the instinctive terror that overcame her when she heard it.

When the first pistol fired into the paper target, she screamed.

A range master in an orange vest, raced up to her. The shooting stopped.

“Are you alright?” he asked and fell to one knee. He looked Eleanor over for bullet holes.

“It just startled me,” she said. “I'm okay. It's so loud.”

“You should hear it close up,” he said. “Here take these. They might help.” He offered her a pair of sponge earplugs and showed her how to put them in. She thanked him, and he waved for the competition to resume.

She'd disrupted the competition and felt the pathetic stares from her classmates. She cringed at the attention. She stole a look at the gazebo and saw Robby Guide holding his stare on her for a long time after the others went back to the screen, and the shots began again. His stare made her uneasy as only his could. He was half Shoshone, he said, but he looked pureblood. Eleanor knew he had family on the reservation and wondered if they knew of her. She couldn't look at the dark features of the boy and not think of her own family and its destruction. Finally, Robby turned to watch the screen, and Eleanor withdrew behind a pillar.

When the visiting shooters had had their six shots each, the home team, Jamesford, was called up. David and Russell were the two pistol marksmen for the school. Russell went first. He shot a silver revolver that boomed and bucked in his hand like a captured weasel. He shot well, though, and Eleanor saw a four-inch grouping around the center.

David was next and had a black pistol. He fired off his six with sharp, sure plinks. David shot better. His holes were smaller but the grouping was tighter and more central. They put targets out at a further distance and repeated the exercise. Then again. And finally, they put the targets out at the farthest distance the pistol range had, seventy-five yards.

With a charge of elation, Eleanor saw that at each range, David's shots were the best. Even out at seventy-five yards when some of the boys failed to hit the target altogether, David had put the majority in the colored sections.

With each round, Russell grew more and more vexed. Eleanor heard him complain first to Mr. Blake and then to the judges that David was using an illegal gun.

“The handgun tournament is for large calibers,” he complained. “It's not even an American gun.”

Finally, to stop his grumbling the tournament officials examined David's pistol.

“See? It's just a little .22.”

The judge examined a bullet. It was long and pointed and reminded Eleanor of an arrow where the others made her think of rocks and clubs.

“It's made in Kentucky,” said David. “It's a 5.7 x 28 mm. NATO.” David offered a box of shells, and the judge read the statistics and whistled. He glanced at a rulebook and then shrugged.

“This was written before these existed,” he said. “Based on the box, though, there's no way in the world this could be confused with a little .22 unless it was a hot load shot out of a rifle. I'll allow it. Good shooting.”

“That's bullshit!” said Russell. “He's cheating!”

“Way to support your team,” said the judge.

Robby and several other kids had come up to the fence to see what was going on. They hissed and booed at Russell's tantrum, and he flipped them the bird.

“Gotta count you down, Mr. Blake. Bad sportsmanship,” said the judge.

Mr. Blake glared at Russell, who finally stormed away.

Even with Russell's penalty, Jamesford won the handgun competition going away, thanks to David's shooting. The judges and instructors stood in line to take shots with his gun when it was over.

David didn't compete in the rifle competition, but went to cheer on the team anyway. Bryce Sudman was the man to beat from Jamesford and only the Dubois shooters did. He placed third, well enough to give Jamesford the overall shooting championship with their showing in the pistols, and of course David won best personal score of the match.

Eleanor was pleased, but stayed away from David as he was mobbed and congratulated by sophomores and upper classmen. Mr. Blake pointed out David had scored the single highest score in the shooting competition's history. He neglected to add it had only been going on for three years. Still, everyone was pleased and “Sharpshooter David Venn” was the man of the day, at least until the riding events that afternoon.

Several times, Eleanor caught David looking around, and she flattered herself into thinking that he was looking for her. Later, during the men's roping contest, she finally worked up enough courage to go to him.

From across the arena, she saw him sitting in a knot of kids. Barbara Pennon was at his side, giggling. She reached over, took a soda cup from David's hand, and helped herself to a big drink from it. Giggling, she pressed it to David's lips.

Barbara's jeans were so tight, Eleanor wondered how she'd gotten into them. Her shirt, a western affair with beads and sequins, nearly burst its buttons it was so stretched. Eleanor thought she looked like a prostitute in those tight clothes. Did she not know what size she was? Then, David glanced at Barbara's chest, and Eleanor froze. Barbara noticed the look, too. She smiled and giggled, then took another long sip from David's drink and arched her back just a bit more. Alexi and Crystal were doing the same, falling over each other to be witty and interesting for the new boy in school. At one point, Crystal turned halfway around as if looking for someone behind her. When she turned back to David, another button on her shirt had been opened.

Bryce Sudman, Eric Collins, and Brian Weaver sat with David and basked in the girls' overflowing attentions. Eleanor couldn't help but notice Alexi's silver-banded blue cowboy hat and matching vest, and tried to imagine how much it cost. She'd caught the scent of a floral perfume she'd only encountered at Macy's when she'd visited Riverton. Over the cheers and whoops of the crowd, Eleanor caught snippets of giggles and laughter from the group and gritted her teeth. Eleanor stomped her foot and kicked a pebble into the fence. She marched outside.

In the parking lot, a bench under a broken lamppost offered her a place to sit unnoticed. She fumed. Again she stomped her foot. Then again. And then she started to cry. This was becoming a bad habit, she thought. She hadn't cried in years, and lately she was acting like a colicky infant. She was too old for this. Among the sagebrush and juniper, buffalo grass and thistle, she had not felt self-pity or jealousy. Had she learned nothing from that time? If not that, what?

It infuriated her that she felt this now. She grew angrier by the second. Her head swam in a spinning vortex of self-
loathing
that made her want to cast off her secondhand clothes, her hair, and her skin, and run into the woods where life and death were the only variables, and expensive perfumes could only get you killed. She could be a scavenger again, an honest creature, a righteous thief, a survivalist who took what she needed, and didn't covet nice clothes or need the attention of a boy who'd once been kind to her.

She leaned her head back to howl, felt her vocal chords shift and tighten, but stopped herself. She was being foolish. She
was a human being. It was her classmates who were beasts, rutting
around David like a new stud. She couldn't allow herself that kind of luxury. Eleanor, had to survive, and David, and all her feelings for him, mixed up and disarming as they were, were more dangerous to her than anything she'd ever faced.

She calmed herself. Her shallow breaths froze into puffs of icy clouds and were carried away in the cold Wyoming night. She watched them go like leaves down a stream. She listened to the darkness, heard mice in the grass and bats in the sky. From within the arena, she heard the shouts of the crowd and the announcer's calls. From the other side, she heard a car door open, a shuffle of boots on gravel, and a distant TV tuned to a popular game-show that Tabitha liked. The constant sound of large trailer trucks passing through town was a familiar and soothing background. She smelled fried food and clandestine beers. She saw stars and clouds and picked out several unhurried satellites arcing across the horizon. She breathed it all in and calmed herself. She was not in danger now. That was all that mattered. The rest was imaginary.

In the gloom, Eleanor made out Greg Finlay's blue stretch-bed Dodge. Greg Finlay had graduated the year before from Jamesford High. Just barely. He was to his class what Russell Liddle was to the sophomores, only worse. He'd spent months in juvenile detention and was one of Stephanie Pearce's monthly visits on behalf of the court and Family Services. Eleanor wasn't surprised to see him. The school rodeo had brought out the entire town. What bothered her was that he had hooked up with Russell and his gang shortly after the riding began and hadn't been seen since.

Leaving her bench and creeping softly on her toes, she slid between the cars to the far end of the lot where she could see the boys standing around the truck.

She could make out Greg and Russell and Tanner and two boys who went in and out of Russell's little gang with regular frequency.

“So Halloween?” said Tanner.

“Easy,” said Greg, drinking whisky from a paper sack. Eleanor could smell it. “Even if he rats us out, we can claim Halloween trick-or-treat.”

“But we're going to hurt him?” said one of the boys.

“Oh, hell yeah, he'll be hurt,” said Russell.

“He'll rat us out for sure.”

“His word against ours. And we'll have masks on,” said Russell.

“Halloween, remember?” said Greg to the others. “I'll drive, but I can't do nuthin', you know. Gotta keep clean for a while.”

“Not a problem,” said Russell. “Pass the bottle.”

The boys passed the bottle around until it ran out and Greg smashed it on the street. Then he offered them beers from the cab of his truck. While he passed them out, Russell flicked his knife open and closed with the regularity of a dying heartbeat.