Western Swing (21 page)

I stopped to look at a couple of Indian paintbrush. One was a brilliant red, almost an unnatural color. A shell lay pressed into the dirt at its base. I walked a couple of steps before it sunk in that the shell was out of place. On my knees, I dug the shell up and turned it over. Mary.

I tore through the lupine until I found her other half just off the trail. When I picked it up, the shell broke and the part with Buggie's thumbprint shook off my hand and into the creek. I leaned over the water, feeling among the rocks and mud. For a moment, one finger touched the shell, breaking it free of the bottom, tumbling it along in the current. I lunged into the creek and crawled downstream after Mary, but my hands and knees roiled up the streambed and I couldn't follow where she went.

I called,
“Buggie.”

I staggered out of the creek and ran to the lake.
“Buggie.”

I ran back to the paintbrush and searched the ground again, this time hunting for a footprint or a button or something. Anything. I called again,
“Buggie.”

And again.

I'd rather not talk about this. Everyone kept saying, “logical explanation.” The other campers, then the park rangers and county deputy-sheriffs. I was ready to scream the next time I heard, “Just you wait, he'll come back and there'll be a logical explanation.” There was no logical explanation. Buggie went up in smoke. No amount of tragedy rehearsal even grazes the horror of a worst nightmare come true.

The police insinuated Buggie either ran away or was stolen by his grandparents. The reporters pushed us and demanded articulate answers. “Mrs. Paul, how does it feel when your son disappears?” Ann stared through them, not seeing or hearing. It was as if the rest of the world ceased to exist. While search parties pored over maps and divided up the area, Ann wandered randomly through the woods and along the shore, calling Buggie in a voice that was more prayer than beckoning.

We camped at Lizard Creek all summer until the snows came in November. I went over every inch of that area a hundred times. “He's not here,” I said to Ann.

“I know he's still alive somewhere. Maybe if we go home he'll come back there.”

Back in Denver we mailed posters to kindergartens, day-care centers, and grade schools. We handled leads and religious cranks and well-wishers. We cried. We hated ourselves. I stopped eating. Ann stopped sleeping. Every child on the street caused an emotional explosion.

Jesus, I'd rather not talk about this.

Ann and I both did what we had to do to survive each day. Remembering past insanities, I made an appointment at the county mental health center and found someone to talk to. Ann went back to Buggie's pediatrician for tranquilizers and sleeping pills. He was the only doctor she'd ever known. Ann told me once she used to take barbiturates, so I guess she was reverting to her past also.

Since I was supposed to be a writer, the therapist at county mental health suggested I try a form of grief therapy called implosion. It's when you dwell on the cause of your grief until you beat it to death. Then, according to the theory, you let it go. Implosion therapy is a little like cutting an arrowhead out of your chest with a sterilized Bowie knife. My Bowie knife was my typewriter. I started with the first time I saw Buggie and wrote down everything I could remember, every conversation, every look in his eyes, every morning wake-up and good-night kiss.

The book about Buggie became my obsession while Ann's obsession was Buggie himself. There's quite a bit of difference. While I re-created his speech patterns, Ann washed and ironed his shirts and baked brownies just in case he came back suddenly. Every day Ann expected Buggie to walk through the door, and every day he didn't, she withdrew a little further.

• • •

The second rainy October after Buggie disappeared I drove downtown to check out some photographs of a murdered boy at the police station. I didn't bother to tell Ann where I was going. We'd been through the emotional rip of identifying dead children so often by then—praying it's not Buggie because there's a chance he's still alive, knowing that if it is him the wait will be over, but a new grief just as bad will take its place. The rising gorge of guilt, hope, and fear as we slide the pictures from their manila envelopes, then relief and a sick drop in the stomach when it's not Buggie. The revulsion at our own emotions for being glad someone else's son is dead. Finally, nausea at the pictures of white, silent little boys that could have been Buggie. No wonder Ann needed more and more sleeping pills to close her eyes.

It wasn't Buggie this time either. I sat at a wide desk with a gray top, shuffling through photos of a little boy about four years old. Blond hair. He'd been found in the well of a farm outside Roanoke, Virginia. I could see the trachial membrane inside a gash that showed from one side of the jaw to the other. He couldn't have been in the well for long. The Winnie-the-Pooh Collection label was still readable on his T-shirt. He wore OshKosh shorts. His left hand had been cut off.

“No, this isn't Buggie,” I said.

The lieutenant didn't look up from the papers he was reading, “Well, thanks for coming down. We'll just have to keep looking.”

“Sure.”

Later, I sat in the car and shook. A song called “Wasted Away Again in Margaritaville” played on the radio. I looked at the rain on the station steps and imagined Buggie's face on the body in the photograph, Buggie's neck slashed, Buggie's hand cut off. I imagined Buggie as dead and rotting. I screamed. Something had to change. I had to dump some pain even if it meant giving up hope. Even if it meant forgetting Buggie.

Driving home on the Interstate, I said, “He's not coming back,” several times to see how it sounded. Could I believe it? “Buggie is dead.” The words came out all scrambled, like I was speaking backwards or something. They didn't relate to anything I knew about.

Two teenage girls from down the street stood on the wet sidewalk in front of our duplex, watching my garage. I waved as I pulled into the driveway, but they didn't wave back.

Smoke seeped from the crack under the garage door. I ran through the side entrance and found Ann pressed against the wall, her eyes gone animal. The smoke came from a great wad of white paper stuffed under the pile of baby beds, cradles, and bassinets. She had gone after the beds with my ax before setting the fire.

“Come on,” I said, pulling Ann toward the door.

“I don't have to.”

The open side door provided enough oxygen to burst the pile of beds into flames.

I pulled harder, yelling, “It's okay, let's go in the house and talk.”

“Buggie knows every move you make.”

I leaned down and picked up one of the papers she'd used to start the fire. It was page 148 of my
Disappearance
manuscript.

“Please come outside, Ann.”

“Why?”

I forced her out into the air and shut the door. Together, we stumbled across the yard through the rain, stopping next to the Chevelle.

“Why?” I asked.

Ann looked at me. “I miss Fred.”

We turned to watch the flames through the garage door windows. The fire was pretty, all oranges and pink, little lines creeping like cancer up the dry wall and under the rafters of the roof. The two teenage girls came over and stood near us.

One said, “Look at her go.”

The other said, “Should we try to put it out?”

Through the window I saw the pile of broken beds and cradles collapse, sinking into the flames. Ann held her hand up at shoulder level, whispering, “Bye-bye.”

• • •

Someone called the fire department and soon a group of men in yellow slickers and fire hats stood around watching the garage glow. They pulled out a hose to cool the side of the duplex next to the fire, but the rain did all the real work. After a while the firemen turned the hose off and loitered around the front yard with our neighbors and their children.

Ann sat on the street curb, her back to the garage. Her dirty blond hair reflected the fire. Once every revolution the blue firetruck light flashed on her face, showing her straight mouth and sunken eyes. I knelt at Ann's side and touched her shoulder. Her head turned and in the next flash I saw Buggie staring at me, accusing me, never forgiving me. Then the dark came, and when the light circled back, Buggie had been replaced by a mask.

• • •

Three months later while I was typing at the kitchen table, Ann sat on the edge of Buggie's bed and swallowed a large number of pills. She washed the pills down with apple juice. I was working on a scene in which he learned to ice skate and I needed to know what color to make his sweater. I went into the bedroom to search his drawers and found Ann dead on top of the blankets.

Phone ringing. God, I hate phone ringing. Consciousness fought sleep for ten or twelve jolts, almost lost, then floated to the surface. I moaned and knocked the phone off the nightstand onto the floor. The ringing died; a tiny voice came from under the bed.

“Billy. Billy G. goddammit. I know you're in there. It's important, Billy. Answer the damn phone.”

Billy? Some nuisances are easier dealt with than ignored. I slid half off the bed so my head hung down near the voice. Blood swept into my ears and the headache of a lifetime roared into the backs of my eyes.

“Huh?”

“Put Billy G Tanker on the phone. It's an emergency.”

“No Billy here. I'm sleep.” I moved to hang up.

“He must be in there. We all saw him go in.”

“No Billy.”

“Listen, lady, this isn't funny.”

Twisting my head, I saw yellow translucent shapes swimming around an unfamiliar room. No Billy in sight. My tongue tasted like old tinfoil. My skin stunk. When I raised myself back to bed level, the yellow spots turned black.

Bedroom was wrong. Walls puke green instead of logs. No cats. Loren should be making coffee. Jesus, my crotch hurt.

A body next to me rolled over with its mouth open.

Self-revulsion tidal-waved through my chest. The broken vacuum, Loren's face when I hit him, the asphalt highway to Rock Springs, a marching storm, Mickey and Cassie on the phone, scotch, quarts of scotch—the bad dream was true.

I closed my eyes in hopes it would go away. “Jesus, what did I do this time?”

The voice on the phone begged, “Please, this is an emergency. Put Billy G on.”

The body was still there when my eyes opened. It chewed and mumbled in its sleep. Must be Billy G. I wondered where I got him. Or why. He was kind of cute, in a cleft-chin sort of way, but what a baby face. He couldn't be young as he looked, my crotch hurt too much for that, but this Billy G was definitely a young one. Reminded me of a boyfriend Cassie or Connie had in the eighth grade. Son of a pawing psychoanalyst.

I shook the hairy arm draped over his forehead. “Are you Billy G?”

Both eyes popped open, staring at the ceiling. Green eyes, dazed green eyes.

“Phone's for you,” I said.

“Phone?”

“Telephone.”

Naked, I slid from the bed into the bathroom. There's no place like a bathroom for staring in the mirror and hating yourself in the morning. Weight on the palms of my hands, I leaned over the sink and looked at the slimy woman I'd turned into. Bruise-colored bags wilted under my eyes. Lines cracked from the edge of my mouth to saggy jawbones. My hair looked exhausted.

Yesterday, I lived in a cabin in the mountains, a cabin with a room all my own and a husband who knew what that meant. Today, I'm a hussy.

What would Loren think? What would Daddy think? I knew what Daddy would think. He'd tell Mama I finally reached my potential.

Not that this was the first time I'd ever woken up in the wicked woman position—motel room, dead bottle on the floor, hairy stranger in bed, awful odors. But it was the first time since that night in south Denver with Loren.

“You swore off meaningless one-nighters,” I said to the mirror. “You left Loren yesterday,” the mirror said back.

Hanging my head, I looked down at the dark drain, my hair draping onto the white porcelain of the sink.

Obviously, the situation called for one of two choices: I could wallow in self-hatred for days punishing myself with sugar suicide, or I could sit on the can, take my morning leak, and get on with life. Neither choice changed the past, so after-the-fact regrets seemed pretty much pointless. My eyes lifted back to stare at themselves in the mirror.

“Piss and get on with it.”

I left the bathroom to a full moon shot of Billy G's backside. His voice came from under the bed. “Can't find my boot.”

My jeans and shirt lay crumpled beneath a chair. Panties were nowhere in sight. “Your boot's on the TV.”

Billy G pulled his pants on by hopping up and down on his right foot. “Thorne's gone crazy in the bar. He's screaming and shooting out windows.”

“Who's shooting windows?”

“Thorne Axel. My boss, remember, I told you about him at dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“He owns the Flying Fist. I've got to help him.”

Vaguely, I recalled something about a hippie son and a cow-killer daughter. “He's the one who's been drunk for two days?”

“Three. Hurry it up, Lana Sue, we've got to save him.”

We? I sat in the angular motel chair and shrugged on my shirt. A wild man shooting windows sounded like just the sort of thing I should avoid, another version of Daddy and Loren, but I've always been intrigued by men going off the deep end. It couldn't hurt to go down and add more male dramatics to my memory banks. At the very least, it put off for a while any decisions about returning to Loren or heading for Houston.

• • •

Shattered glass sparkled in the soft darkness of the bar, but it wasn't from shot-out windows because the bar didn't have windows. As Billy G and I stood in the entrance, a crack came from the far end of the room and a row of Cutty Sark bottles exploded over the bartender's head.

A voice boomed from the dark. “Out, slime. All you parasites stay the hell away from me.”

A remarkably thin cowboy knelt behind the first table to our left. Another one had himself snaked in between the barstools and the bar. His hat had fallen off and rolled into the aisle.

“He cut himself, Billy, says he's gonna die and he'll shoot anyone tries to stop him.” I recognized the skinny cowboy as the voice on the phone.

“We could rush him when he reloads,” the hatless one said without conviction.

As my eyes grew accustomed to the dark I made out Thorne at the back table by the one-person bandstand. He was smoking a fat cigar that alternately lit bright and dimmed. For every one beat of the cigar, blood spurted twice in a high arc a couple feet over his outstretched left arm. The right hand moved from some kind of pistol to a bottle and back.

I turned to Billy G. “He's not too close to death. Look at that blood pressure.”

Billy G had gone a cooked-lasagna-noodle color. “What happened?”

The hatless cowboy crammed against the bar wore silver spurs on filthy roach-killer boots and spoke in a natural whine common to men I generally can't stand. “We drank shots all night, then Thorne went crazy and run off with that forty-five of his'n. We come back he was bleedin' and wouldn't let no one near him.”

I swung around to the bartender. He had three-inch sideburns and fuzzy hair that glimmered from his glass shower. “That bleedings got to be stopped or he'll hurt himself. You got any bar towels?”

The bartender blinked once like an owl.

I shouted at him. “Bar towels, you know, rags to wipe up the mess.”

He looked down at the glass carpet. “You'll never clean up this mess.”

“Jesus.” I looked at Billy G, but he was just a boy. Probably never even seen any real blood. Neither had I—not cut artery type blood—but somebody had to move or the old man would drain and keel over dead.

I peeled off my shirt and walked into the bar.

Billy G came to life. “Lana Sue, you're naked.”

I wasn't naked, but I was topless and that fact seemed to confuse Thorne. He pointed the pistol at my belly, then set the gun down long enough for a quick suck on the bottle, then pointed the pistol at my belly again.

“One more step and I'll blow your tits off.”

“Bullshit.” The key in a showdown is self-confidence. Make the other guy think you aren't scared silly. I walked right up, sat in the center of the blood spray, and pressed my shirt into the slash. He'd gone deep and made a mess out of the crook of his arm. On the table next to a half fifth of Ten High lay what looked like a set of brass knuckles with a razor blade on the back and a hook blade coming out the little finger side.

Thorne waved his gun at something behind me and growled, “Get back.” Whoever had followed me got back. Thorne looked at my hands on his arm. “You're screwing up my death.”

When I shifted, a pump of blood spray got me right up the chest and into my face and mouth. I spit blood on the bandstand.

“Come on, Thorne, you aren't committing suicide. This is a baby play for attention.”

Thorne put the pistol barrel in his mouth.

“Oh God,” I said, “please don't.”

He took the pistol out again. “This isn't what I expected.”

“Me either.”

“Just my luck. I'm killing myself and a beautiful woman with her tits hanging out walks in and saves me. We'll have to get married now.”

“I'm already married.”

“So am I.”

My shirt was pretty much blood soaked by then. I rewadded it, pulling both sleeves over the flow. “I think you should go to the hospital.”

“No. That's my crew back there. They'll think I don't know how to kill myself.”

I looked up at his face. The eyes were dark with heavy gray flecks, same as his hair and mustache. The skin showed rough brown and lined as if he'd spent his life outdoors. “Get through this as easily as possible,” I said. “In a week you'll look back and be nothing but embarrassed.”

Thorne didn't answer. Behind us I heard more and more people pushing through the door with
What happened? Who's that? Why's she half naked?
Without setting down the pistol, Thorne picked up the Ten High and swallowed.

“Mind if I have a poke at that bottle? My nerves are a little ragged this morning and you aren't helping any.”

He glanced at me. “Suit yourself.”

“I don't usually drink Ten High. There's less calories in scotch.” I grabbed the bottle with my right hand and took a swig. My hand shook so the effect wasn't quite what I'd intended.

My intention was to come on decisive and tough. Not that I felt that way, I felt on the verge of vomit, but suicides are anything but decisive. They waver—
I want to die, I want to live, I'm confused
—so they'll generally follow any order they're given. I figured between my tough act and boobs, I'd shock the old man into cooperation.

Thorne kept his tired eyes and the pistol aimed at the crowd behind me. “My wife left,” he said.

“I'm sorry.”

“My kids are both spineless, useless brats.”

“I have two daughters myself.”

“Do they hate you?”

“One does. The other sleeps with my old boyfriend.”

“Both my kids hate me. And my wife.”

We each took another drink. I thought the blood might be clotting. Or he might be empty, the red stain had stopped spreading in my shirt. Way off, I heard a siren.

“You ever leave your husband?” Thorne asked.

“Yesterday.”

“Janey and I were married twenty-six years. I worked my tail off to give her what she wanted. I'm rich, did you know that? I'm richer'n shit.”

“Billy told me.”

“Who's Billy?”

“Billy G, he works for you.”

“Seven or eight Billys work for me.”

The siren stopped out front. Thorne seemed to sag from exhaustion and lack of blood. “I wasted my life,” he said.

“It's time to go to the hospital now.”

He smiled. It was a tired smile, weak with the lips pressed together, the smile of an unhappy person who still maintained a sense of the silliness of desperation. “Tell you what. I won't kill myself if you'll sleep with me tonight.”

“Nope.”

“No?”

“No, I won't do it.”

“You'd rather see me dead?:

“I'd rather see you alive, but I won't sleep with you. I don't save men.”

He thought a minute. “What's your name?”

“Lana Sue Paul.”

“Will you come to the hospital and talk to me? All I wanted was someone to talk to.”

Why not? “Okay.”

Thorne threw the gun over the bar, breaking some bottles and a mirror. Spectators moved in for the aftermath.

• • •

I won't be blackmailed into sex ever again.

Ron said I owed it to him because he married me when I was pregnant and the pressures of his career made him nervous.

Mickey said if I didn't screw him whenever he wanted, he'd just find someone who would.

Worst of all were those fake epileptic fits of Ace's. I'm still not completely sure they were fake. He claimed frustration triggered a chemical reaction in his medulla oblongata. Hell, I don't know.

Only Loren never demanded anything from me. He never threatened me with adultery. Never acted little boy hurt or put upon when I wasn't in the mood. Loren seemed to realize my personal happiness was not solely dependent on him. Factors other than a mate can cause depression or distraction. Why can't anyone else see that?

Maybe Loren wasn't so wise, maybe he was thinking about God or something and didn't notice me enough to get hurt. I don't like to think so.

One thing for certain. I don't sleep with anyone who holds suicide over my head as the if-you-don't. Give in to that one and you're fair game for every pitiful man on earth.

• • •

First I drove to McDonald's for Chicken McNuggets and coffee. The girl at the drive-up window played it straight, as if serving bloody ax murderers was part of the training.

When she smiled, silver braces glittered in the sunlight. “Here's your change, ma'am, have a nice day.”

I held out a gory hand. “Thanks.”

Billy G met me in the emergency waiting room at the hospital. The only other person in sight was a long-haired kid handcuffed to a pastel chair.

“Where'd you get that shirt?” Billy G asked.

“Bartender gave it to me. They sew up Thorne yet?”

“Your tits still show.”

“Blood makes the cotton sticky. You like it?” I held my arms out and turned.