Western Swing (37 page)

However, this is all conjecture, because, lucky for me, Ace took care of the timing. When Lana Sue arrived home that afternoon, she found Ace in the Jacuzzi performing unnatural acts with the Sugarez Sisters, Carly and Monetta, a singing duo from Ox Point, Wisconsin.

Lana Sue made death threats. She towered over the Jacuzzi like the Statue of Liberty, threatening to bean Ace with a fully charged electric Dust Buster until Carly Sugarez lost stool control and fouled the water. I understand a mass of glassware was broken, phonograph albums fell like rain, counteraccusations were hurled, doors slammed, lawyers phoned—Lana Sue was back in my arms by midnight.

Up high, near where Miner Creek Ridge meets the Sleeping Indian's belly, there was a clearing maybe two miles long and a quarter mile wide. I wandered waist-deep through an amazing array of flowers—larkspur, paintbrush, cinquefoil, balsamroot, more color and variety than a Rose Bowl parade. If it hadn't been for the misty rain, the pollen would have killed me. The flowers were such a treat that, for a moment, I forgot all about Buggie and Lana Sue. I didn't think of myself for over an hour.

At the top of the clearing, the tree line came from both sides to form a point. Thirty yards or so downhill from the point, a snowmobile sat facing south, its treads astraddle on an old pockmarked aspen trunk. I approached with suspicion. One doesn't expect to come upon machines in the wilderness, at least not this far back. My first thought was of booby traps. I know that is a paranoid first thought, but after the flaming chokecherry bush and those shots the day before, I was in the mood to take incongruities personally.

My second thought ran to the possibility of a dead snowmobiler. My car was parked ten miles down the hill, but in winter no one plowed the road for another ten miles back toward town, which meant if this guy had been alone when he wrecked or broke down, he was probably rotting somewhere in the vicinity.

I touched the red leather seat. A piece of chrome on the blue metal-flake body read POLARIS TXL. The choke had been left clear out and the key was still in the ignition. I opened the gas cap and sniffed. The rider hadn't abandoned her from lack of fuel. Leaving my daypack in the flowers, I shrugged off my sleeping bag poncho and hopped on the snowmobile. There's a futuristic Woody Allen movie where he finds a two-hundred-year-old Volkswagen that starts right up. Woody says, “Those Nazis really knew how to build cars.” No such luck with the snowmobile. The ignition didn't even click. I pumped the gas a couple times, squeezed the brake bar, pushed in and out on the choke. Nothing much else to play with—definitely a dead toy.

I leaned forward with my hands on the handlebars,
vrooming
in the back of my throat. The scene needed a most-plausible-explanation story as to what happened at the time and why no one had returned to haul the snowmobile away to a garage. How would you move a snowmobile off a mountain in the summertime anyway? Even though the machine straddled a log, it looked more left behind than wrecked. My guess was a midwinter breakdown, abandonment, then as the snow melted, it gradually eased down onto the log.

The speedometer splintered. A moment later, I heard the shot. I looked left, down the hill, at a man standing in plain sight, aiming at me like I was a fear-frozen antelope. Dirt spit next to my leg. I rolled off the far side of the snowmobile. There was silence, then my daypack jumped a foot and another shot boomed up the hill.

Facedown in the wet dirt, I waited without a move. I'd starved and come into the mountains in hopes of a hallucination. Expectations swung from Thunder Gods to sermonizing hawks, but wishful thinking made me wonder if this might be the moment. Another shot into the log and I rejected that idea. Like Buggie's disappearance, this trouble was too real.

Sliding to the front of the snowmobile, I peeked out between the log and the front runner blade. Whoever it was wasn't about to content himself with one flurry and a fadeout like he had yesterday. Rifle held under his armpit, the man advanced slowly toward me, picking his way through the field of flowers.

“Asshole,” I whispered, “what did I ever do to you?”

The man still wore gray khakis and the red wool shirt. His limp seemed more pronounced than before. At one point, he held his left hand up as an umbrella for his eyes while he squinted at me through the rain. I repeated myself. “Asshole.”

Obviously, staying put was out of the question. That left a mad dash up the hill into the trees or a ground-hugging slither using the flowers for cover. The thirty yards between me and the edge of the forest was carpeted by knee-high goldenrod, but I couldn't tell if the cover was thick enough to hide in or not. Looking up through the flowers, I could see him easily. Could he see me looking down? The rifle didn't appear to have a telescopic sight, but the man was almost close enough for that not to matter. However, he'd missed so far, which meant he was either a poor shot or he was only trying to scare the living shit out of me after all.

I forced myself to breathe slowly, stopping for a short break between each inhale and exhale. It wouldn't do to hyperventilate and pass out. I'd hate to get killed in my sleep.

Desperate plan time—I had to make the woods and then hide. Make the woods came first. A triple-blade Boy Scout knife lay in my daypack not fifteen feet to the right. If I could reach it, I'd have some chance at climbing another tree, then slitting the bastard's throat as he walked by.

Another check showed the man had stopped moving forward. His face was toward me, I suppose waiting for the break he knew had to come. If anything, the rain lightened a little, giving him a clearer view. Hugging dirt and praying like a Cheyenne—Oh, Mother Earth, I am a part of you. Oh, Mother Earth, I am a part of you. Don't let this asshole kill me, Mother Earth—the crawl seemed to go on forever. Mud slid up my nose. My eyes itched like hell. I figured even if he couldn't see me through the weeds, the blossoms above shook like dozens of little waving hands pointed straight down at my butt. I always did hate goldenrod.

Just as I reached the daypack, he put a bullet into the snowmobile's gas tank. Jesus, what an explosion. I fetal-positioned as, first, tremendous heat scorched past, then snowmobile parts rained a metal hailstorm. Then I was up and running.

• • •

I tore through the trees, whipped by wet willows, scratched and pulled by wild roses. Almost broke my ankles in a couple of clumsy falls, lost the daypack somewhere near the crest. Running like a maniac wasn't much use either. The soft ground yielded a set of tracks so visible that any idiot could read them—even a city-hired hit-man idiot. I might as well have put up road signs.

And I'll tell you what I was thinking as brambles tore my arms and rocks chopped at my feet. The pain in my lungs was remarkable, but even so, all I could think charging down the back side of that ridge was this:
Holy Christ, I'd like to get laid right now.
Brushes with death always bring out my horniness. By the time I hit the creek, I had such a hard-on I was running in a stoop.

However, I hadn't read seventy-five Max Brand novels for nothing. I jumped in the freezing creek—which took quick care of the hard-on—and floundered up the stream, away from my telltale footprints. “Let's see that sucker track the Jimmy Stewart of Jackson Hole,” I muttered between wet tumbles. Soon the creek narrowed into nothing more than a streamlet draining a series of pink summertime snowbanks. I found an outcropping of rocks to skip across, leaving not a single track. The outcropping led to a pile of broken slabs left by an ancient slide off the top of the Sleeping Indian. After poking around a few minutes, I discovered a huge cracked boulder over a one-man crawl space. The killer couldn't follow in there if he wanted to. I turned around, shrugged my body into the crack, and went back to imagining Lana Sue's body.

No matter what anyone thinks about Lana Sue, I've never heard a word of criticism about her body. The thing I like best about it is the color. It's a dark, rich color, kind of like a polished teak coffee table. Sometimes I turn off all the lights in the cabin except the television and lie next to her on our bed, just watching the colors of her body. It's a perfect body for being on top.

In the dark hole there, I got to comparing Lana Sue's body with Ann's. Ann was much lighter, freckles sprinkled her neck and arms. Her butt was bigger than Lana Sue's, but her breasts were about the same size, only they hung different. It was difficult to imagine Ann's body without imagining her dead.

At sixteen, Marcie VanHorn had bigger knockers than Lana Sue or Ann. I'd never seen her entire body, but Marcie didn't leave much to picture. Lately she'd taken to wearing a nylon tube around the top and cutoffs so tight she had to carry her car keys and change in a little pouch she hung around her neck. Marcie was into long dangly earrings and painted toenails. Lord knows what I saw in her other than willing adoration.

From Marcie, I went on to my usual fantasy women—movie starlets. I pretended Debra Winger was in the crack with me giving me head. Then I pretended I was licking clit on Mary Steenburgen. The girl who played Bailey on
WKRP in Cincinnati
climbed on even though I couldn't remember her real name. I combined all three fantasies into one doozy of an orgiastic daydream.

This'll show Lana Sue, I thought. I may not break marital vows technically like she does, but I can have a hell of a time pretending.

• • •

Lana Sue and I have been together for two and a half years and I still haven't managed to cop a stance on this adultery thing of hers. I suppose that's because she has yet to cross the line, that I know of. There were unconfirmed suspicions after the Scott Fitzgerald trip to Maryland, but nothing was ever disclosed.

However, sooner or later, Lana Sue's desire for side action will have to be faced. She's told me too often about fooling around on past husbands and, although I'm an idealist, even I'm not dope enough to think a spouse will change habits simply because she happens to marry me.

Lana Sue draws a moral distinction between adultery and what she committed while living with Ron and Ace. She claims her extramarital humping is medication, no more ethically objectionable than terpin hydrate and codeine cough syrup. She expects me to understand that if I cause her pain, or confusion, or even boredom, she'll go out and score a couple of orgasms off a stranger, then come home to me, and everything will once again be dandy. She forgets I'm the prime example of painkiller gone romance, which, for me, blows her rationalization right out the window.

And do you think Band-Aid sex is a two-way street, that I can scratch itches for the purpose of giving our marriage strength? In country-western terms—fat fucking chance. One screw-around would give Lana Sue excuse enough to become the female Hitler of my life. I'd have to shoot her to get her off my face.

Which I knew might happen when or if Lana Sue ever returned from her present huff. I'd made a mistake just before coming up the mountain, what turned out to be a mistake in vain, and if the limper with the golf tan didn't kill me, Lana Sue would.

• • •

Early the first morning of my Quest, I was upset about Lana Sue being gone and probably with someone else, so, after shopping at Safeway, I packed my mountain provisions and drove down to Marcie VanHorn's. Since she's only sixteen and lives with her father, I took along an old bundt pan we'd borrowed last February when Lana Sue baked me an angel food cake with white icing for John Steinbeck's eighty-third birthday.

Marcie answered my knock wearing a white gauzy cotton top and Levi's cutoffs cut off right at the crotch. She had a Diet Dr Pepper in her right hand. I could hear MTV blaring in the living room behind her.

She kissed me on the cheek. “Say, hey, good-lookin', haven't seen you in a couple weeks. Want some Cheetos?”

“I'm on a fast.”

“A what? Come on in. Dad's gone to church.”

Lee VanHorn is Catholic and owns Russian steam bath franchises strung all over the West. I've always taken for granted he's in organized crime because my only experience with steam rooms is from TV and movies. No one but gangsters ever takes a steam bath on television.

Lee is one reason I never followed up on Marcie's invitation to sleep together. I always imagined I'd go to sleep with her and wake up with a horse head. The other reason is that Lana Sue threatened to sew my dick shut if she ever caught us.

Marcie led me into the living room. On the television, a guy with long curly hair and no sleeves in his shirt was killing his father and mother. The action was accompanied by a song extolling bitterness and anger.

I said, “Music videos are the root of all evil.”

Marcie plopped down in an easy chair and reached for the Cheetos. “This one's gnarly. Wait till you see the end.”

“Gnarly,” I said. I stood in the center of the room, holding the bundt pan with both hands.

“Why are you on a fast?”

“Do you realize kids of the fifties coped with the A-bomb? Then the sixties brought easy sex and mind-warping drugs. But it wasn't until that stuff started”—I pointed at the guy with the curly hair who was in the process of destroying his parents' house—“that the rate of teenage suicide doubled.”

Marcie glanced from me to the screen. Some other sleeveless guys milled around the wrecked house, dragging chains. “Doesn't make me want to commit suicide. Makes me want to eat.”

We watched until the song ended and another bleak outlook on life began. “Mind if I turn it down?” I asked.

Marcie nodded with a flip of blond hair. “This bunch sucks eggs anyway.”

In the quiet, I said, “I brought your pan back.”

“You didn't have to. Dad's always in church on Sunday morning. Have a seat. How's the great Wyoming novel coming along?”

“I'm having trouble with inspiration.”

“I can relate, buddy. I have this photography project going, been working at it all summer, but I just can't seem to get inspired.” Marcie leaned her head back and dropped a Cheeto into her mouth. Her bare feet hung over the side of the easy chair. She looked ready for the taking.

I sank into a cane chair with some kind of leather strips for a seat—probably elk gut.

“I had an inspiration last night.”

Marcie reached down for her Diet Dr Pepper. “Why go on a fast, you're too skinny now?”

No time for spiritual apologies, I dived into the purpose of the visit. “I was wondering if you'd enjoy having sex with me this morning.”