The Best American Short Stories 2015 (41 page)

As he passed the equipment shed, he made out first the silhouette of Weldon Case's Stetson and then, very close, the face of Weldon himself, who gazed at him before speaking in a low voice. “You been in the graves, ain't you?”

“Yes, to look for beads.”

“You ought not to have done that, feller.”

“Oh? But Morsel said—”

“Look up there at the stars.”

“I don't understand.”

Weldon reached high over his head. “That's the crow riding the water snake,” he said, and turned back into the dark.

David was frightened. He went to the house and got into bed as quickly as he could, anxious for the alcohol to fade. He pulled the blanket up under his chin, despite the warmth of the night, and watched a moth batting against an image of the moon in the window. When he was nearly asleep, he saw Morsel's headlights wheel across the ceiling, then turn off. He listened for the car doors, but it was nearly ten minutes before they opened and closed. He rolled close to the wall and pretended to be asleep, while the front door opened quietly. Once the reverberation of the screen-door spring had died down, there was whispering that came into the bedroom. He felt a shadow cross his face as someone peered down at him. Soon the sound of muffled copulation filled the room, stopped for the time it took to raise a window, then resumed. David listened more and more intently, until Ray said, in a clear voice, “Dave, you want some of this?”

David stuck to his feigned sleep until Morsel laughed, got up, and walked out with her clothes under her arm. “Night, Ray. Sweet dreams.”

The door shut and, after a moment, Ray spoke. “What could I do, Dave? She was after my weenie like a chicken after a June bug.” Snorts, and, soon after, snoring.

Morsel stood in the doorway of the house, taking in the early sun and smoking a cigarette. She wore an old flannel shirt over what looked like a body stocking that revealed a lazily winking camel toe. Her eyes followed her father as he crossed the yard very slowly. “Look,” she said, as David stepped up. “He's wetting his pants. When he ain't wetting his pants, he walks pretty fast. It's just something he enjoys.”

Weldon came up and looked at David, trying to remember him. He said, “This ain't much of a place to live. My folks moved us out here. We had a nice little ranch at Coal Bank Landing, on the Missouri, but one day it fell in the river. Morsel, I'm uncomfortable.”

“Go inside, Daddy. I'll get you a change of clothes.”

Once the door had shut behind him, David said, “Why in the world do you let him fly that airplane?”

“It's all he knows. He flew in the war and dusted crops. He'll probably kill himself in the damn thing.”

“What's he do up there?”

“Looks for his cows.”

“I didn't know he had cows.”

“He don't. They all got sold years ago. But he'll look for them long as he's got fuel.”

Morsel turned back to David on her way inside. “I can't make heads or tails of your friend Ray,” she said. “He was coming on to me the whole time at the cage fights, then he takes out a picture of his wife and tells me she's the greatest piece of ass he ever had.”

“Huh. What'd you say to that?”

“I said, ‘Ray, she must've had a snappin' pussy because she's got a face that would stop a clock.' He didn't like that too much. So I punched him in the shoulder and told him he hadn't seen nothing yet. What'd you say your name was?”

“I'm David.”

“Well, Dave, Ray says you mean to throw in with us. Is that a fact?”

“I'm sure giving it some thought.”

David was being less than candid. He would have slipped away the day before if he hadn't felt opportunity headed his way on silver wings.

“You look like a team player to me. I guess that bitch he's married to will help out on that end. Long as I never have to see her.”

David had an unhappy conversation with his mother, but at least it was on the phone, so she couldn't throw stuff.

“The phone is ringing off the hook! Your ranchers are calling constantly, wanting to know when you'll get there.”

“Ma, I know, but I got tied up. Tell them not to get their panties in a wad. I'll be there.”

“David!” she screeched. “This is not an answering service!”

“Ma, listen to me. Ma, I got tied up. I'm sparing you the details but relax.”

“How can I relax with the phone going off every ten seconds?”

“Ma, I'm under pressure. Pull the fucking thing out of the wall.”

“Pressure? You've never been under pressure in your life!”

He hung up on her. He couldn't live with her anymore. She needed to take her pacemaker and get a room.

That week, Morsel was able to get a custodial order in Miles City, based on the danger to the community presented by Weldon and his airplane. Ray had so much trouble muscling Weldon into Morsel's sedan for the ride to assisted living that big strong David had to pitch in and help Ray tie him up. Weldon tossed off some frightful curses before collapsing in defeat and crying. But the God he called down on them didn't hold much water anymore, and they made short work of the old fellow. At dinner that night, Morsel was a little blue. The trio's somewhat obscure toasts were to the future. David looked on with a smile; he felt happy and accepted and believed he was going somewhere. His inquiring looks were met by giddy winks from Morsel and Ray. They told him that he was now a “courier,” and Ray unwound one of his bundles of cash. He was going to California.

“Drive the speed limit,” Ray said. “I'm going to get to know the airplane. Take it down to the oil fields. It's important to know your customers.”

“Do you know how to fly it?” This was an insincere question, since David had learned from the so-called widow about Ray's repossessed plane.

“How's thirteen thousand hours sound to you?”

“I'll keep the home fires burning,” Morsel said, without taking the cigarette out of her mouth.

David had a perfectly good idea of what he was going to California for, but he didn't ask. He knew the value of preserving his ignorance. If he could keep his status as a simple courier, he was no guiltier than the United States Postal Service. “Your Honor, I had no idea what was in the trunk, and I am prepared to say that under oath or take a lie-detector test, at your discretion,” he rehearsed.

He drove straight through, or nearly so. He stopped briefly in Idaho, Utah, and Nevada to walk among cows. His manner with cattle was so familiar that they didn't run from him but gathered around in benign expectation. David sighed and jumped back in the car. He declined to pursue this feeling of regret.

It was late when he got into Modesto, and he was tired. He checked into a Super 8 and woke up when the hot light of a California morning shone through the window onto his face. He ate in the lobby and checked out. The directions Ray had given him proved exact: within ten minutes, he was pulling around the house into the side drive and backing into the open garage.

A woman came out of the house in a bathrobe and walked past his window without a word. He popped the trunk and sat quietly as she loaded it, then closed it. She stopped at his window, pulling the bathrobe up close around her throat. She wasn't hard to look at, but David could see you wouldn't want to argue with her. “Tell Ray I said be careful. I've heard from two IRS guys already.” David said nothing at all.

He was so cautious that the trip back took longer. He stayed overnight at the Garfield again, so as to arrive in daylight, and got up twice during the night to check on the car. In the morning, he skipped eating at the café for fear he might encounter some of his rancher clients. Plus, he knew that Morsel would take care of his empty stomach. He was so close now that he worried about everything, from misreading the gas gauge to flat tires. He even imagined the trunk flying open for no reason. Now he drove past fields of cattle with hardly a glance.

He had imagined a hearty greeting, an enthusiastic homecoming, but the place was silent. A hawk sat on the wire that ran from the house to the bunkhouse, as though it had the place to itself. It flew off reluctantly when David got out of the car. Inside, there were soiled plates on the dining-room table. Light from the television flickered without sound from the living room. David walked in and saw the television first—it was on the shopping network, a close-up of a hand dangling a gold bracelet. Then he saw Morsel on the floor with the channel changer in her hand. She'd been shot.

David felt an icy calm. Ray must have done this. He checked the car keys in his pocket and walked out of the house, stopping on the porch to survey everything in front of him. Then he went around to the equipment shed. Where the airplane had been parked in its two shallow ruts lay Ray, also shot, a pool of blood extending from his mouth like a speech balloon without words. He'd lost a shoe. The plane was gone.

David felt as if he were trapped between the two bodies, with no safe way back to the car. When he got to it, a man was waiting for him. “I must have overslept. How long have you been here?” He was David's age, thin and precise in clean khakis and a Shale Services ball cap. He touched his teeth with his thumbnail as he spoke.

“Oh, just a few minutes.”

“Keys.”

“Yes, I have them here.” David patted his pocket.

“Get the trunk for me, please.” David tried to hand him the keys. “No, you.”

“Not a problem.”

David bent to insert the key but his hand was shaking and at first he missed the slot. The lid rose to reveal the contents of the trunk. David didn't feel a thing.

MAILE MELOY

FROM
The New Yorker

M
ANY YEARS AGO
, after I retired from the bank, James brought a small terrier to our apartment in Paris. I told him I did not want it. I knew he was trying to keep me occupied, and it is a ridiculous thing, to have a dog. Maybe one day you rise from bed and say, “I would like to pick up five thousand pieces of shit.” Well, then, I have just the thing for you. And for a man to have a small dog—it makes you a fool.

“Please,” James said. “Let's just see how it goes.”

I considered the dog, a blond female no bigger than a cat. She had long hair like whiskers over her eyes, so she seemed always to be raising her eyebrows. She sat down, as if she knew that would help her case. James is English and wanted to call her Cordelia, not for
Lear
but for an English novel. It was not the name I would have chosen, but it was not worth the argument. He did a ringmaster act with some toys—a knot of cloth, a ball, a round bed—to show me how good this would be. I had long associated terriers with the barking arts, but this one did not bark. She sniffed at the toys and the bed, waiting for my decision.

The next day James was gone to Brazil or Argentina, leaving me with the dog. He had an import business and was often away. I think Cordelia had already guessed that he was not a sure thing, and she looked at me for our next move.

I took her outside to do her business. She was not allowed to go in the impasse, where the cars park and the concierge is always watching, so we went out through the gate to the street. We walked around Paris. We went to the Bois de Boulogne, and there a hawk circled, eyeing Cordelia like a snack.

“Don't even think of it,” I told this hawk.

People spoke to me who would not have before, and they wanted to pet Cordelia, who let them. When we arrived home, Desi was there to make lunch, and she cried out and dropped to her knees to rub the ears of the dog. Desi is from Indonesia, very proper, and she had worked for me for many years, but I had never seen such a display. Cordelia licked her face in greeting, and Desi laughed. Then I sat to read the paper, and Cordelia curled herself into my lap.

At first I believed that the appearance of love from a dog is only a strategy, to win protection. Cordelia chose me because I was the one to feed her and to chase away the hawks and the wolves. But after a time we crossed over a line, Cordelia and I. We went out each day to chase the pigeons and smell the piss of other dogs on the trees, and we came home to read the paper. The look with the eyebrows was sometimes skeptical about my actions, and sometimes a question that I understood. There were no arguments except silent ones—
I do not want to go there on the leash
—and these could be easily solved. Her hair needed to be cut, so I found a woman to do it, who tied pink ribbons over Cordelia's ears. She hated these ribbons. You could see she was ashamed. I told the groomer no more—she is too dignified for this. And, if she feels shame, then why not other emotions? A creature's eyes are on you all the time, or the warm body is next to you. There is an understanding. And I think this becomes something like love.

I am older now than I thought possible. I did not believe I would ever be this ancient person. The doctor says I should have no wine at lunch, for my heart. But if you cannot have a little wine with your lunch, there is no life. If you are as old as I am, you believed a German would shoot you in the head before you were old enough to have sex with another human being. Everything beyond that becomes extra. The things people do to live long—drinking so much water, running up and down to ruin the knees—this is what the doctor should warn about.

James is young, far younger than I. When you are the older man, you can be equal, for a time. He has youth and beauty, but you have money and experience. You know many people, and you can take him to Portofino, to Biarritz, to Capri. It is an old story.

But the years go by, and your doctor is concerned for your heart. Your joints are not so good. You don't want to look in the mirror when you go to take a bath. And the man you love is still strong and young, more or less. He travels a great deal. He is away more often. The dog knew the first time she saw him: he was not the one to rely on.