Way Down on the High Lonely (17 page)

“You can screw him without falling in love with him.”

“He is cute.”

Peggy Mills took a brush to her hair. “He reads books,” she said.

Well, that is interesting, Karen thought. She had been teaching third grade in Austin for five years now and had heard more than one parent tell her that his son didn’t need to know how to read in order to rope a calf or dig gold. That was, of course, when she could even get a parent to come to one of the conferences. A lot of the parents were great, but there were also a lot she had never seen, not even once, not even for the Christmas pageant, when half of central Nevada came to town to see their kids dressed up as reindeer or the Virgin Mary or something. And while most of the kids in her school were happy, healthy, well-scrubbed kids, there were also a sad number who were dirty, malnourished, and just plain sad looking, and there were those kids who had bruises they didn’t get playing kickball at recess. And when one of her boys had shown up with actual burns on him, it was Karen Hawley who had driven up to their remote shack, woke his daddy up from his alcoholic stupor, stuck a shotgun into his crotch, and explained precisely what would happen if Junior didn’t stop “falling against the wood stove.” Word on The High Lonely was that you didn’t mess around with Karen or with anyone Karen put her arms around, and she definitely had her arms around the kids in that school.

“What kind of books?” Karen asked. “Remember Charlie? He read books. They were mostly about Swedish stewardesses.”

“Neal was working on his master’s degree in English.”

“Another hard-core unemployable.”

“You’re a hard woman, Hawley.”

“I’m a marshmallow.”

“Too true.”

“If he asks me, I’ll dance with him, okay?”

“You’re glued to that chair like you’re paying rent on it,” Steve Mills was saying to Neal Carey.

Neal was drinking beer straight out of the bottle, munching on peanuts, and feeling about as comfortable as a eunuch at an orgy.

Neal Carey had been in some bars in his life, early and often. He had been in Irish pubs in New York on Saturday nights when both the booze and the blood had flowed, when on- and off-duty cops laid their revolvers on the bar while they knocked back double shots, when the band had led the crowd in cheerful sing-alongs about martyred heroes and killing Englishmen. None of it had prepared him for Phil and Margie’s Country Cabaret.

First of all, there was the location. Austin, Nevada, could have been built by a Robert Altman set crew. Its broad main street was mostly mud, flanked by wide wooden sidewalks. Phil and Margie’s was a large, low, ramshackle building with a classic western facade, heavy screens over the small windows, and swinging doors, and if Gary Cooper had come through, Neal wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

They hadn’t arrived until after nine, and by that time the crowd had a good start on the drinking, smoking, and dancing, so the air in the place was a rich mixture of second-hand alcohol, smoke, and sweat with a heavy overlay of perfume, cologne, and failing deodorant. The delicate scent of grilled hamburgers and deep-fat french fries wafted from a grill in the back. The ceilings were low, the room was dark, and Neal knew that if any of his white-wine-sipping, vegetarian, rabidly antismoking Columbia friends could be condemned to a Saturday night in hell, this would be it.

The noise was literally earthshaking as about fifty pairs of cowboy boots, miner’s boots, and hiking boots pounded on the sagging floor to the beat of the Nevada two-step and the bar glasses rattled and the walls trembled. What conversation there was got shouted at full voice and close range and wasn’t really given to serious dialogue about deconstructionism in literary analysis or pithy interplay about what James Joyce may or may not have said to Ezra Pound.

They had elbowed their way to a table in the back, Steve exchanging back slaps and Peggy swapping hugs with just about every person in the place. Peggy insisted on making the first trip to the bar and returned with four beers and Karen Hawley.

Peggy made the introductions, Karen and Neal shook hands, she sat down in the chair next to him, smiled, and Neal found that he had a sudden fascination with the band.

Not that the band wasn’t fascinating. To Neal, country music had meant anything sung or strummed in New Jersey or Connecticut. So he wasn’t ready for New Red and the Mountain Men. New Red was the lead singer and rhythm guitar player. He was a young guy with sandy hair and a beard. He wore a Caterpillar gimme cap, plaid shirt, black logger pants, and tennis shoes. He had a face as friendly as an old pair of socks. The drummer was a woman with waist-length blond hair, a black cowboy hat, black western shirt with red roses on the chest, tight black jeans, and black cowboy boots. Neal sensed a sartorial theme and wasn’t surprised to find out from Steve that her name was Sharon Black, aka “Blackie.” She was a good drummer, anyway. The bass player was a big guy with curly brown hair falling to his shoulders and a bushy beard, bib overalls over a denim shirt, and cowboy boots he probably hadn’t seen for a while. The violinist (“That’s a fiddle player, Neal”) was a woman in her indistinct forties who looked like the kind who had about twenty cats at home and wind chimes. She wore a flower print blouse, painter’s pants, and sandals, and her hair was a wild quarrel between the colors gold and gray.

Whatever they looked like, they could play. Over the din of the pounding crowd Neal heard music as sharp and clear as the creek that rippled down by his cabin, each note distinct but blended into one stream. And just about as effortless. Neal watched the guitarists’ fingers sliding over the strings, pressing down strong and precise chords, or flying over the frets to pluck individual notes. He watched Blackie’s hands flash patterns with the sticks on the drumheads, her hips bobbing as she stepped on the bass pedal. He watched Cat Lady nestle the … fiddle … into her cheek as if it were a baby, but stroke the strings as fast and hard as if she were trying to start a fire. He watched it all the harder as he felt Peggy watching him and Karen trying not to.

He was doing all right until Steve, the dirty turncoat, stretched out his hand to his wife to fight their way out onto the dance floor.

Which is a lot worse than you leaving me in the back of a bouncing pickup with that calf, Neal thought.

Then he realized he hadn’t really talked with a woman for years, except for Peggy and Shelly Mills, which didn’t count.

“Where are you from?” Karen shouted.

Well, I’ve been living in a Buddhist monastery for the past three years, and on a Yorkshire moor the year before that … “New York,” he shouted back.

“City or state?”

“City!”

So far so good.

“Where are you from?” he asked, realizing that his voice sounded as high and narrow as one of Cat Lady’s strings. She thinks I’m an idiot.

“Here,” she said, “I’m from here.”

“Austin?” Great. Now she knows I’m an idiot.

“I think that’s where we are.”

Duhhh.

“What do you do for a living?”

I was sort of an unlicensed private investigator, a troubleshooter for a secret organization. But right now I think I’m unemployed.

“Nothing much lately. What do you do?”

“I’m a teacher.”

Oh?

That’s when the music stopped, the band took a break, and Peggy and Karen went off to the ladies’ room together, a ritual that is constant throughout the world.

“You’re glued to that chair like you’re paying rent on it,” Steve was saying.

“It’s a nice chair. I like it.”

“You’re scared shitless.”

Steve grinned at him. He almost looked like Joe Graham, who also had a habit of grinning at Neal when he was being nasty.

“Of what?” Neal asked.

Steve roared. Actually sat back in his chair and guffawed. “Of Karen! Nothing to be ashamed of—Karen has scared a lot of good men.”

“Good for Karen.”

“Ask her to dance, moron.”

“I can’t dance,” Neal said.

“War wound?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Nothing to it. You just get up and move,” said Steve.

“That’s what I don’t know how to do.”

“Get up, or move?”

“Both.”

Steve leaned over the table to give Neal one of those soulful cowboy looks. “It’s not like you’re Fred Astaire and she’s Ginger Rogers or anything. You’re not dancing for the artistry of the damn dance. You’re dancing to, you know … move around together. Get close.”

Yeah, right—get close. Getting close isn’t exactly my best thing, Steve. The last woman I got close to did a triple gainer off a big cliff.

Neal worked at finishing his beer. If he could do that fast enough, he’d have an excuse to escape to the bar to buy the next round.

“You ready for another one?” Neal asked as he got up.

“Coward.”

“Well, will you let a coward buy you a drink?”

“I’m not particular. You better hurry, though, I see the women coming back.”

Neal worked his way to the bar, got a pitcher of beer, and bumped right into Cal Strekker.

“Doing a little honky-tonkin’, New York?” Cal sneered.

“Leave your knife at home, Cal?”

“Nope.”

Great. “Where do you have it hidden?” Neal asked. “Up your ass?”

“In my boot.”

“Well, be careful dancing.”

“You want to dance with me, New York? Maybe finish what we started?”

“Gee, I’d love to, Cal, but my beer is getting warm.”

“You’re a chickenshit bastard.”

You’re half right, Cal. Okay, maybe all right.

“Jesus, Cal, I told you I’m busy tonight!” Neal shouted. “I’ll dance with you another time, all right?”

Cal turned a color that would have drawn a charge from a bull as a whole bunch of people turned around and looked. “I’ll be seeing you, New York,” he hissed.

“In your worst dreams, shithead.”

Neal set the pitcher on the table and sat down. Steve, Peggy, and Karen were staring at him.

“Cal Strekker giving you trouble?” Steve asked.

“How much trouble could he give?” Neal answered as he started to fill their empty glasses.

“A lot,” Peggy answered. “He did time in prison for killing a guy in a bar fight in Reno.”

It wasn’t Reno, Neal thought, it was Spokane. But the bottom line is the same.

“Newcomer trash,” Karen said. Then she quickly added, “No offense meant.”

“None taken,” Neal said. “I’m here for the long haul.”

Karen gave him a long look and said, “Then you’d better learn to dance.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him out of his chair just as the band struck up a snappy little number about eighteen wheels rolling down two-lane blacktops.

Karen held Neal by two outstretched hands and did a little hopping step that he did his best to imitate. He could feel his hands getting sweaty in her amazingly cool, soft palms, and he felt as awkward as he knew he looked. Especially in contrast to the beauteous Karen Hawley, with her long legs and wide mouth and big blue eyes.

“Relax!” she shouted to him. Her smile turned his knees to Jell-O, so it looked like he was more relaxed, anyway. He started to let go a little, actually moved his feet more than two inches at a time, and let her swing his arms around in time with Blackie’s drum strokes. He was doing all right when that treacherous cretin New Red switched to a slow song.

Neal and Karen looked at each other for an awkward moment. Jesus, Neal thought, I’m blushing.

He looked at her, laughed a little bit, shrugged, and held his arms out. Scary, tough Karen Hawley settled into his arms as soft and gentle as a cloud, and much, much warmer. She didn’t bother with any of that hand-held-out-like-a-guitar business, just put both hands on the small of his back, and settled her head into his shoulder. He laid his hands just under her shoulder blades, realized that his hands were quivering, then left them there anyway.

What is it, Neal thought, about the smell of a woman’s hair? How it spins around your brain, then rushes straight to your … no, don’t think about it … and the feel of her breasts just grazing your chest … or her thighs just brushing against yours … don’t think about any of that.

The whole thing was an erotic charge, and then she nestled right up against his erotic charge and tightened her hands on his back and let him see the corner of her mouth curl into a little smile and Neal thought he was going to die on the spot. Or get arrested for indecent exposure once the dance was over and they parted hips, even though he was completely dressed.

He looked over her shoulder and saw Steve and Peggy slow dancing, both of them grinning at him. Karen must have seen them too, because the edge of her lips against his neck widened into a chuckle.

“Peggy’s subtle,” she murmured.

“Like a sledgehammer,” Neal agreed.

“I don’t mind. Do you?”

“Yeah, I’m real pissed off.”

She pressed her hips forward a little. “I don’t think you are,” she said.

“Sorry about that.”

“No, no, no, no. And you
do
know how to dance.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Her head sank a little deeper into the crook of his neck, filling his nostrils and his brain with her scent. Something made him kiss her hair where it fell over her ear.

“Damn hair,” she whispered, “always in the way.”

He started to brush it off her ear, but she lifted her head to look at him and said, “Later.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I want you to do that later.”

She must have seen the doubt in his eyes, because she leaned forward and gave him a quick, soft kiss on the mouth, her tongue lashing between his lips before her head dropped back on his shoulder and her hips made the subtlest possible circle against his groin.

A big hand grabbed bis shoulder and spun him around. Suddenly Neal was looking up into the red, drunken face of one big, angry cowboy.

“What are you doing with my woman?” he yelled.

The dancers around them stopped dancing and backed away. The band kept playing, although they watched the developing altercation with great interest.

“Charlie, get out of here!” Karen yelled.

Neal felt the circle widen around them. Here we go, Neal thought, they’re giving us room for a fight. He saw Cal lean against the bar, smiling his feral smile at the thought of Neal getting pounded into hamburger by this animal. Except that under the red face, the drunkenness, and the fury, Charlie didn’t look like an animal. He looked like kind of a nice guy.