Western Swing (38 page)

She looked across at me and grinned. “Why, Mr. Paul.”

Marcie was the only girl I'd ever flirted with, at least consciously. I wasn't sure if
Why Mr. Paul
was humorous indignation or well-intentioned acceptance. I set the bundt pan on the floor and continued.

“Before—you know, that pack trip summer before last, you asked me to help with your virginity—”

“Believe me, I solved the problem.”

“I figured as much. Anyway, you were only fourteen then and Lana Sue and I were newly married; Lana Sue can be quite a forceful personality, you know.”

“You were afraid she'd break your legs.”

“Anyway, I turned you down at the time, but now, what with this fast and all, I've reconsidered.”

Marcie swung both legs to the floor. “Reconsidered?”

“Yes, I'd be willing to make love to you now. If you still want to.”

Marcie crossed the room and sat on the arm of the cane chair and leaned over and kissed me lightly, maybe like a daughter, maybe like a playful coquette, I wasn't sure. Tentatively, I lifted one hand to touch her back.

“Loren, you're so sweet,” she said. “When I grow up, I'd be honored to go to bed with you.” She love-tapped my nose with hers. “You know you're my favorite novelist in the whole world, but I'm just a kid now.”

“What?”

“I can't fuck grown-ups. It would confuse my identity.”

I pressed on her back. “You were a kid at fourteen.”

She stood up and moved over by the television. “I was too young to know I was young then. Your artistic temperament in
Yeast Infection
blew me so away, I'd of done anything for you back then.”

“How about doing something now?”

“I respect you so much for not taking advantage of my vulnerability.”

What kind of woman says gnarly one minute and vulnerability the next? Bruce Springsteen broke into a sweat on the television screen.

I saw my morning-comfort screw slipping away in the wind. “I think of you as a grown-up, Marcie.”

“You don't even think of yourself as grown up.”

“Then we're even. You can pretend I'm in high school.”

Marcie turned and pushed a button, blacking out Bruce Springsteen's face. “There is one thing I'd like from you, honey-bunny.”

Honey-bunny? Debauchment botched, it was back to the flirty old mentor act. “Sure, sugar, how can I please you?”

“I'd like to see your penis.”

I picked the bundt pan back up and set it on my knees. There's a difference between seducing a teenager and flashing one. Flashing seemed tawdry, especially three days before I was scheduled to meet God.

Marcie turned on the enticing charm. She ruffled my hair and tweaked both ears. “Come on, Loren, do it for art.”

“That's my line.”

“I just want a little peek. Please.”

I never refuse a woman who says please. I'd have probably made it with her back on the pack trip had she only begged. Ten seconds later, Marcie was ogling my lap.

Her mouth twitched. I couldn't tell if she was appreciative or suppressing a giggle. “Perfect,” Marcie said.

“That's what I've always thought.”

“Come here.” Marcie grabbed my hand and dragged me from the living room into the kitchen, I held up my pants with my other hand.

“Are we going to make it now?”

“Not today. Today we make art.” The kitchen table was covered with black velvet. Next to the refrigerator, a Nikon sat atop a tripod.

I tucked back in—fast. “Oh no, Marcie, honey. I'm no pervert.”

“Loren.” She faced me with both hands on her hips. “Where's your youth? Nobody'll know it's you.” She lifted the black velvet to show a silver-dollar-sized hole. “You stand behind there and hold the cloth as a backdrop. Nothing shows but the dick.”

“Marcie, this is kinky.”

“Seducing me wasn't kinky?”

Nothing left to say—I dropped my pants. Before Marcie snapped the photo, she pulled a Rock Cornish game hen out of the refrigerator and set it next to my penis.

“What's that for?”

“Makes the shot artsy. A prick by itself is just another dirty picture.”

“But why that?”

“It'll develop to look like a chicken. The perspective'll make your thing seem huge.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Right now it won't, though.” Marcie reached down and squeezed once. “That's better.”

“Try again. It'll grow more.”

“We don't want it sticking up like a carrot. It's supposed to hover next to the hen—like a phallic UFO.”

“One more squeeze. I'll make it hover.”

Marcie laughed. “Oh, Loren, you're such a card.”

She dashed from the room, leaving me standing alone with the false chicken. I looked down the front side of the velvet at my lonesome dick. I've felt detached from myself often in life, but this time the feeling was eerie. I had a terrible premonition of Lee walking in to get a beer. What would I say? “Hi, Lee, how was church?”

“Got it,” Marcie said, coming back in the kitchen.

“Got what?”

She shook baby powder on my penis and the Rock Cornish game hen. She rubbed it into the hen, but not me.

“Don't want any shine,” she said.

“That makes sense.”

Marcie moved some lamps around. Then she stood behind the tripod and focused. “Out-a-sight,” she said. “This'll be gnarly.”

I said, “Gnarly.”

• • •

I let Debra Winger, Mary Steenburgen, and Bailey from WKRP have their way with me for a good while. Jessica Lange stood outside the crack, watching with desire, but I cut the fantasy off on her. I was wet and hungry and someone was trying to kill me. This was no time to break in a fourth woman.

In fact, I had some trouble relaxing with the other three. Sooner than I really wanted to, I crawled from the crack to survey the situation. I stood, relieving myself in the direction of the Sleeping Indian's nose. Because of the killer, I could no longer daydream my way across the mountains—which is how a Vision Quest is supposed to work. No one can see spirits when every rock might camouflage a sniper. The temptation was to call off the meet and go home.

However, I'd gone to a lot of trouble so far and Buggie's whereabouts was still unresolved. If I gave up now, I'd still be the same old partial husband to Lana Sue, still giving myself shit instead of letting go and accepting life. I squinted at the lightest spot in the clouds. By rough estimate, I figured the time as five o'clock with at least four hours before sunset, another hour after that until total darkness. The run to the top of the mountain would take two hours tops. That gave me three hours to find out what happens to a person after he dies and clear out. I could drop down a ravine on the other side of the mountain, shiver in safety all night, then walk into Jackson in the morning. Marcie or Lee would pick me up and drive me home, where I'd load my Ruger Magnum and come back after the Chevelle and anyone else who happened to be in the vicinity.

Of course, none of it came true. Fifty yards into the forest, I found the magic setting I'd been searching for. Low-lying cloverlike carpet with no underbrush; ancient, flat stones matted by green and orange lichen; the bark on the trees dripped with life—not plant life or even animal life. The bark hummed like running water. No birds, no squirrels. Other than the low hum of the trees, all was silent as if the air itself muffled and absorbed any sound that might dare enter. A place for Gypsies to chant in lost languages and Druids to sacrifice ripe virgins with long, long hair.

Across the clearing, an elk skull grew from the fork of a limber pine. At first I thought he was a bizarrely twisted branch. I approached at an angle, walking twenty degrees or so to his left. The horns had eight points on each side. He had three groups of teeth in his upper jaw, two back toward the cheeks, and one set of six that stuck out the front in an intense overbite. A long, thin cavity showed where his nose had once been. His forehead was flat as an egg pan.

The skull would have been intriguing yet dead had I not looked into the eye sockets. This is impossible to describe without sounding like Greta the Cosmic Cow—which is a wimpy way to sound—but the scene reeked of metaphysical boogiehood and to describe it, I must offend some otherwise nice people. Like Lana Sue. Lana Sue would gag at this, but the damn eye sockets were empty holes and something else at the same time. Call it alcohol withdrawal, Impossible Shit, or God Himself, I don't know. All I know is some
thing
was aware that I stood there looking at it.

I decided to go for broke, believe what I wished to be true, and asked the question.

“What happens after we die?” I asked. The elk had no bottom jaw, but if a dead object can communicate, I don't see why it would need a working mouth.

“Where is my son Buggie?” I asked. The trees hummed. Far above, an eagle shrieked the exact sound, only thirty times louder, made by the lungs of a gasping asthmatic.

“One more chance, elk, where's Buggie?”

A voice boomed, “You killed him, bucko.”

My heart twisted. I swung around to face the black hole barrel of a rifle.

The man came a step closer. “What is this place?”

“I didn't kill Buggie.”

“You come here to perform religious ceremonies?”

“I just found it today, but, yeah, I guess so.”

“You guess so.”

“I didn't kill Buggie.”

We dropped into some form of defiant eye contact. His were silver-gray like his rain-matted hair. He had a politician look-square jaw and slightly bloated nose. I wondered why he hadn't worn the golf hat indicated by the tan line.

I said, “Tell me what's going on,”

“I shall shoot you until my bullet supply is exhausted, then I shall abandon your body to the carrion eaters.”

I glanced at the rifle. It was a Winchester—a Magnum of some kind. “What kind of bullets?” I asked.

“What?”

“What kind of bullets will you exhaust on me?”

“One sixty-five twenty grains—what's it to you?”

“I just wondered.” I glanced to the elk for help, but if this was God, he didn't appear to be a God who gets involved. In fact, it was beginning to look more skull and less deity by the minute.

I thought of something. “Is Buggie dead?”

“How should I know? Ask your friend there.” The man swung the barrel to the elk, then back at me.

“You said I killed Buggie. You wouldn't think that if you didn't know he was dead.”

“Stand aside, over there. Keep your hands visible.” He limped to the elk and grabbed one horn. I winced. The man tried to shake the elk. “Tree's grown around it,” he said. “Must have been embedded for years.”

“Is Buggie dead?”

The man bent to inspect the fuse point where elk and tree had grown together. “He must be. Annie would never have allowed you to drive her to suicide if the boy was still alive.”

“You knew Ann?”

He scowled and jerked the rifle back at my chest. He almost pulled the trigger right then—the struggle for control was visible.

“Ann didn't know whether or not Buggie was alive,” I said.

“You believe that?”

“She'd have told me if she did.”

“Death was her way of telling. You wouldn't listen to any other way.”

“Ann killed herself to get my attention?”

“You got it, bucko.”

I stood with my hands visible, watching the man inspect my elk head. He ran his hand down the right antler to the button at the skull. Then he brushed some pine needles from the nasal cavity. I took him for a maniac, which meant I was safe for the moment, he would be in no hurry to kill me. Maniacs always explain themselves before they blow your brains out. They want you to agree that killing you is the proper course of action.

However, the timing confused me. The guy's appearance was awfully convenient to the theme of the Vision Quest. It'd been six years since Buggie left and almost four since Ann's death. Why did this character show up on the one day I'd planned for explanations?

“Why today?” I asked.

He paused to eye me again. “I've observed you for the last four weeks. My vacation ends tomorrow.”

“You're killing me today so you can get back to work?”

The man nodded.

Even my assassins are tacky. “What kind of job do you have to get back to?”

“I own a Dodge dealership.”

“I'm being stalked by a vengeance-crazed car salesman?”

“You have no idea who I am?”

“Not exactly.”

“I was Annie's family, the only person who loved her. And she loved me. And you don't even know my name. She was a stranger to you, wasn't she?”

“She never mentioned talking to an old guy.”

One-handed, he dug out his wallet and handed me a card.

I was embarrassed for him. “Listen, mister, killers don't pass out business cards.”

“Just read the damn thing.”

WALT SMITH DODGE/OLDSMOBILE in twenty-four-point type above the logos of both companies. Then underneath, it read HIGHWAY 101 AND GLENWOOD, COOS BAY, OREGON. I couldn't recall a Walt Smith from Oregon. Ann was so long ago and in a completely different life and frame of mind, but I'd remember anyone as close as this guy claimed. The name Smith was familiar.

“Holy shit, you really are family.”

He smiled, showing capped teeth. “Ann is my daughter.”

I couldn't believe it. “She told me about you. You're nuts.”

He swung the rifle in my direction, but I was too blown to take the threat seriously. “Didn't you once shoot at some guy on the freeway?”

“I'm going to shoot at you now.”

For the first time, I spotted the resemblance to Ann and Buggie, especially Buggie. It was in the brow and forehead area, and the stubborn look of his eyes. “Why the grudge, Mr. Smith? We both loved her and she's gone. You and I should be empathetic companions.”