Borderland (5 page)

CHAPTER 3

It
appeared Nolan had been suckered after all, Vic thought, but not by him.
Sometime between last night and this morning Christa had managed to wrap the
grumbling bastard around her little finger. Nolan actually offered to pay for a
trip to Boot Hill and the other attractions before heading west. That had been
Vic's first clue, but the real evidence of Nolan's suckered state revealed
itself when he acted out a noisy shoot-em-up with the girls in front of the
Long Branch Saloon. When he offered to buy the girls cowboy hats, Vic had to
put his foot down. He owed his ex-partner too much as it was. The favors had to
stop somewhere.

While
watching Nolan's comic gun slinging antics it occurred to Vic that beneath the
hard-muscled chest of the ex-college athlete beat the heart of a prankish,
fun-loving kid no older than Andy. It was difficult to reconcile that image of
Nolan with the stone-faced, brick-fisted cop Vic had worked with on the force.
Now, as he eyed the relaxed profile and the bandaged hands on the wheel of the
Buick, he wondered if it was the kid in Nolan—the one who played dead so
convincingly after Andy shot him at crotch level—that resisted commitment and
responsibility and enjoyed being an all around screw-up.

Nolan
had a lot of fun, and there were times when Vic envied him his life, but more
often than not he couldn't understand it. Nolan seemed to enjoy being a lone
Wulf. He loved women, but he also loved to punish them. He was a prince until
they were in love with him then he either dumped them or screwed someone else
until they found out about it and dumped him. Vic had seen it happen a dozen
times. The only thing he wasn't sure of was whether Nolan's behavior was
conscious or unconscious. After Nolan shat on two of Connie's friends, she
refused to let Vic introduce him to any more of her buddies. Vic hadn't blamed
her.

Still,
all idiotic tendencies aside, Nolan Wulf was the man to call when you needed a
friend. And Vic needed one. There had been low points in his life before, but
for the last two years he'd been buffing floors with his ass in hell's
basement. He had broken the habit of telling himself things couldn't get much
worse. His life was living proof that they could.

And
okay, he had made some stupid mistakes—the coke, especially—but in the account
books of karmic debt he thought he should be nearing the black any time now. He
hoped he was, anyway. There had been a few rays of light to give him such hope.
His father for instance. He and his dad had hardly been what anyone would call
close, but the old man had left the farm to him in his will. And the attorney's
call came the same day the bank announced foreclosure proceedings would begin
on his and Connie's house. If that wasn't the hand of fate, Vic didn't know
what was. The attorney mentioned that his father wanted him to sell the place and
take the money, was in fact adamant about it, but Vic couldn't see it. He
couldn't see anything but a way to escape.

After
calling Nolan he quit his job as chief of security in a central shopping mall and
told the girls' babysitter he wouldn't need her anymore. Leaving the house
wasn't a problem; there were too many memories there to drag him down and fill
up his chest every time he woke up in bed alone or opened the wrong side of the
closet. Leaving the city was even less of a problem. He couldn't survive on
what the mall paid him, and unlike Nolan, his dismissal from the force carried
a stigma that told all prospective employers: Don't trust this guy.

It was
terrible being branded, but it was his fault. Now his father had unwittingly
given him the means to start with a new slate. Nobody in Denke knew him. The
house was paid for, was his. The attorney even mentioned something about a car.
But most important, be wouldn't see Connie's face in every corner of every
room, he wouldn't hear her voice, smell her smell, or remember how thin and
pitiful she was in the last months of her life. Everything but a few personal
items he was saving for the girls had been sold to cover debts.

Vic
wanted to remember only the good things about his life with Connie. Somehow,
far away from familiar streets and familiar faces, he knew there would be no
more bad dreams. No more falling apart in the middle of a sentence or during a
favorite song. No more aching, wondering, and worrying if he was doing right by
his girls and being an acceptable if not necessarily good father. He wanted to
be good. He wanted to make this farm thing work and rebuild their lives again.
He wanted—

"Fuck,"
Nolan spat. "I think we're lost."

Vic
frowned at him and inclined his head toward the back seat. "Watch the
language, pal."

"Sorry,"
was the muttered reply. "Get the mother freakin’ map out and tell me where
the hell I am. I think I missed our turn back there."

He did,
and they were forced to backtrack twelve miles until they found the right
county road. There weren't many of them to choose from; the isolation was in
fact overwhelming, but Vic assured him it was an honest mistake. Nolan blamed
it on Andy's gibberish about the big fat cloud in the sky that looked like an
old man walking a dog. He'd been looking for the dog, he explained.

Vic
glanced at the sky and found it filled with white-topped, pewter-bellied
thunderheads. There was a lot of sky to see out here with no mountains, no
hills, and very few trees to obstruct the view. The prairie, he thought, and
for a moment he imagined a plodding band of horses and wagons trekking across
the flat expanse. Men, women, and children with dirty faces rocked against the
rumbling crawl of the wagons and flared their nostrils at the smell of sweating
horses and their own heated bodies. A small boy hung out of the back on one
wagon and stared with dark, dreaming eyes at the sky above.

He
blinked away the vision and looked at the land with new interest. The colors were
surprising. Bright yellow sunflowers bordered the road, and the buffalo grass,
dying in the drought, seemed to turn a dark cinnamon color when a cloud
obscured the sun. Even the sky seemed bluer here, the kind of blue the
word-makers had in mind when they'd come up with the word azure. It was clean
and clear and infinite.

"Pretty,
isn't it?" he said aloud. "This is where the buffalo used to roam,
girls."

Nolan
smiled and sang a few bars of "Home on the Range."

"Go
on," Christa said when he stopped. "What's the rest of the
song?"

"You
mean you don't know it?" Nolan asked. He scowled and looked at Vic.
"What the hell are they teaching 'em to sing now?"

Andy
promptly launched into a tuneless version of her favorite pop song, until Nolan
promised her a candy bar to shut up.

"I
hate that shit," he said. "I—" Nolan paused when he saw Vic
glaring at him. "Sorry. I keep forgetting."

Andy
made a face. "Does that mean we shouldn't like songs on the radio?"

"No,"
Vic said, still looking at Nolan. "Like what you want, Andy. Don't let
other people influence you. Make up your own mind."

"I
like what Uncle Nolan likes," Andy responded and Nolan grinned at Vic.

Vic
shook his head and turned his gaze back to the road. He immediately started and
gave a yell as Nolan nearly drove past the weather beaten sign and the turn off
for Denke.

"Relax,"
Nolan said after an axle-grinding turn. "I'm on top of it."

Christa
sat up. "Can we take the car top down? I want to ride through town with
the top down. Can we?"

Vic
shrugged at Nolan's look. "It's up to you. It's your car."

"Okay,"
Nolan said. "I need to get rid of some Pepsi anyway."

"What?"
Andy said as the Buick slowed and rolled onto the side of the road.

"He
has to pee," Christa translated.

"Oh."
Andy was disappointed. "I thought he was going to throw away some Pepsi.
I'm thirsty."

"Maybe
we can stop somewhere in town," Vic said. "I could use something cold
myself." He was hoping against hope that there was still some canned food
in his dad's house. He had exactly five hundred dollars to get them started out
here. He thought he might sell one of the studs for seed money and go from
there, just playing everything by ear until he knew what he was doing. If worse
came to worse, he could always try to hire on somewhere in town or on someone's
farm until he was on his feet again. He was still under forty and in relatively
good shape. Not as good shape as Nolan, perhaps, but he could hold his own.

"Daddy,
Andy's looking!" Christa said.

"I
was not!"

"You
were too! I saw you turn your head when he started peeing."

"Hey,
cut it out," Vic said. "Both of you."

The
sulks were forgotten a few moments later as they rode toward Denke with the
wind in their faces and the sun on their limbs. Nolan eased up on the accelerator
as they reached the outskirts of town, and Vic could feel the attention in the
car shift to their immediate surroundings.

"No
paved roads?" Nolan said in dismay. "Is this the right place? I
didn't see a sign or anything."

"No
stoplights either," Christa observed. She nudged Andy. "Look. This is
where we're going to live."

"Not
exactly," Vic said. "According to the lawyer, Dad's place is about
ten miles from town."

Nolan
glanced at him. "I thought you'd been here before?"

"I
never said that. I was born here, that's all. Dad always met me in
Wichita
."

"At
Aunt Chula's," Christa said. "I was real little, but I remember the
time I saw him. Andy was just born."

"Vic,"
Nolan said. "Does this place smack of Mayberry or what? Look at it."

Vic was
looking. Denke was small, white, and so clean as to be almost picturesque.
Flowers bloomed in front of every house, and every lawn was short and evenly
cut. Only the shutters and trim of individual houses varied from the sparkling
white. Vic guessed it was some kind of town covenant with cleanliness, which
was okay by him. What was not okay were the stares of the people sitting on
random porches. After a few minutes the girls stopped waving as they cruised
down the street. No one was waving back.

"There's
a stranger in town," Nolan drawled under his breath. "Hand me my
six-shooter, Maw."

Vic
grunted and stared back at the vacant faces until they reached what passed for
the business district. There was a grocery store, a shoebox-sized hardware
store, a doctor's office, a beauty parlor, a barber shop, a gas station and
garage, and finally a glass-paned place with a sign that called it Jinx's
Diner.

"Let's
stop here," Vic said.

Nolan
glanced over his shoulder and winked at the girls. "I think we should hold
out for a McDonald's... in the next state."

The
girls giggled as he turned off the main street and pulled up in front of the
diner.

"But
maybe they'll have some sarsaparilla here," Nolan hammed as he turned off
the ignition. "You girls ever had any sarsaparilla?"

"What
is it?" Andy asked.

"Lizard
spit," Nolan said. "See, they keep these lizards in—“

"No
it isn't," Vic broke in. "It's a soft drink made from the roots of a
tropical plant. They won't have any here, Andy. Nolan's just teasing you."

"I
knew that," she said.

Nolan
removed his cell phone and mouthed a silent curse.  “I thought there was
service everywhere.  Seriously, the commercial for this thing said so.”

“Missing
those calls from Carrie?” Vic said, and Nolan smiled suddenly.

“Best
excuse ever. No service.  Let’s go see about getting served.”

The
interior of Jinx's Diner was red, white, and hot. A single fan in the center of
the ceiling circulated the grease-laden air and provided only a hint of a
breeze. The long Formica-topped counter seated twelve, and in front of the
glass windows sat four tables with mismatched chairs. The place was empty. The
only movement was that of the fan and a few flies buzzing over the tops of the
ketchup bottles placed every few feet along the counter.

The four
shuffled in and approached the counter. Andy immediately tested one of the red
stools to see if it spun. It did. Before she could give it a second spin Vic
lifted her up and sat her down. "Don't spin, Christa, sit down."

"Anybody
home?" Nolan called as he sat on the stool beside Andy.

A head
immediately appeared in a doorway at the left end of the counter. "You
folks lost?"

"Just
thirsty," Vic answered. "Are you open for business?"

A long,
thin body followed the head out the door. He was sixties, with a bald, freckled
head, an eggplant-purple nose, and the skinniest arms Vic had ever seen. He
looked like one of Andy's crayoned stick men…with glasses.

He took
his spectacles off and used the front of his white apron to wipe some of the
grease off the lenses. Then he replaced his glasses and leaned over the counter
to tweak Andy's nose. "What can I get for you?"