That Old Ace in the Hole (38 page)

Back in Betty Doak’s SUV Bob put his head in his hands. There was no point in going on to the Shattles’. He was not suited for the hog farm game. He thought about hitchhiking across the country, finding himself a new place. He thought about going to Alaska but he no longer cared to find his parents. He had made his way without them. He had grown up. He wondered if it was too late to become a cowboy and felt it was, at least a hundred years too late. He needed a job, but not this one. He needed an apprenticeship to something—gunsmithing, surveying, photography. A feeling of discomfort rose in him as though he had swallowed grapes with carpet tacks at their centers.

“Hm,” said Betty Doak. “What are you goin a do now?”

“I don’t know. I suppose a last-ditch effort. Go see Ace Crouch and ask him what the hell he is doing saying no to everything. He seems to be at the bottom of every land deal that’s fallen through. I don’t understand why he’s doing it. It would be good for Tater to get into town. The Shattles need to be rescued too. And Jim Skin is hard up and got this lousy land good for nothing else.”

“Is that how you see it? You’re rescuin folks?”

“Well, in a way.”

“I imagine there’s others see it different. Tell you what. You go talk with Ace Crouch, give me a call if you need me to come back down. You can call me directly, just skip the Denver office. Save time. Here’s my number.”

They drove in silence back to the Old Dog where Bob said goodbye, got out and went to the Saturn, sat for a few minutes composing his mind. He got out again, went into the Old Dog.

“Cy,” he said. “You know where Ace Crouch lives? I got to go talk to him.”

“You got to be careful, is what you got to do,” said Cy. “Tazzy Keister’s on the war path and you’re her target. She’s escaped and she’s got her old hog leg back and she is after your blood. I was you, I’d get out a town. Sheriff’s office says she stole the sheriff’s car and that she’s considered armed and dangerous.”

Bob did not take this news seriously. He couldn’t believe that any woman, even a Texas woman, would stalk him with a gun and hunt him down. “Yeah, thanks, but where does Ace Crouch live?”

“Bob, you got guts, I’ll say that. Ace lives in Cowboy Rose, Kokernut Drive, little white house at the end with a ten-foot windmill on the lawn. Sign sayin Ace Windmills. His shop’s out back. You can’t miss it. Watch your step.”

C
owboy Rose looked different now to Bob, more worn and shabbier, set in its own narrow-minded ways. Kokernut Drive was a short street of small houses near the railroad spur. Heat waves ran across the road like water. Ace Crouch’s house was fronted by a scabby lawn crowded with broken windmill parts and stacks of sucker rod. The shed at the back was jammed with more metal, aged trucks parked alongside the building. He took a breath and walked to the door, knocked, waited for several minutes and knocked again. He heard hurried footsteps inside.

The door opened and a faded, elderly woman with a handsome face looked at him.

“Mrs. Crouch?” He could smell burned food, hear tinny television laughter.

“Yes.”

“Is Mr. Crouch home? My name is Bob Dollar and I need to talk to him.”

“Home? He’s never home. And when he is he’s asleep. He’s out fixin a mill on Head’s place, the old Cow Bones Ranch. You can find him out there. You know how to get there?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Let me think a minute.” She looked up at the ceiling. “Well, you drive west on the Screwbean Draw Road, know where that is? Good. Then you go until you come to the junction with 943, then I’m pretty sure you turn right, that’s north, and go about three or four or five miles until you hit Peeler Flats Road. Let’s see. You turn right on Peeler Flats and go another ten or twelve miles until you see a big ranch gate with five or six cow skulls nailed on it. That’s the main entrance. But you don’t want a go in there. You want the other entrance, the north entrance, so go past the main gate and bear right at Jimmy Rim Springs Road where Powper Lane cuts in. About three miles up Jimmy Rim there’s the back turnoff onto the ranch, big green metal gate, and that’s what you want. Ace is out in what they call the Black Draw pasture. You should be able a see his truck out there and a course you
will
see the mill. You want me to write that down for you?” she asked at his confused expression.

“Please, if you don’t mind.”

She scribbled sentences, crossed one out, wrote again and handed him the paper. “It might be you’ll turn left at Peeler Flats.”

When he read the directions in the car they did not seem to tally with what she had said.

An hour later he was lost in a tangle of pale dusty roads punctuated with an occasional yucca, clumps of little walnut and paper mulberry, roads with such names as Big Dry Lake and Tidyout. Mrs. Crouch’s directions and his map were of no use, for nothing matched. The flatland had given way to a series of dips and hollows cut by a twisted stream. Formidable plum thickets guarded the water. At last he pulled over and sat, let the dust settle. In the distance he could hear the irregular beat of pump jacks.

The nameless stream, black and deep, ran under a concrete bridge and in the water floated a wood duck and her train of ducklings aligned as though tied to her by a string. He looked down the road, unsure even if he could find his way back to Woolybucket. After a few minutes he could see a plume of dust from an approaching vehicle. He got out, ready to flag it down and ask directions.

A pickup truck came rattling over the hill and plunged toward him. It slowed as it approached and stopped abreast of Bob. The driver was young with a big round face, heavy-jowled, clean-shaven, dark eyes fringed with ink-black lashes, a snub nose, red lips, so red Bob thought the man might have been eating beets. His dark hair stood up in a crest like that of a jay and was already receding at the temples, but that defect lent him an elusive charm. He was, thought Bob, one of those rare males whom the word “cute” fitted.

“Hidy,” said the driver. “You O.K.? Or broke down?”

“Yeah, the car’s O.K., but I’m kind of lost. I’m looking for the north entrance to the Cow Bones Ranch. Not the main gate.”

“O.K. You are about seven miles off. What you do is go ahead the way you are pointin and after two miles or so you’ll come to the old schoolhouse on the right—that’s where me and my friend live. Keep goin another mile and watch for the sign for Powper Lane? Go left on Powper Lane and keep goin straight until you hit Jimmy Rim Springs. Turn right. It’s a couple a miles up the road there, a metal gate. There’s a sign on the gate, but I don’t know what it says. Never got that near. We’re not exactly pals a Dick Head and his hands.”

“What about Peeler Flats? I was told to take a turn at Peeler Flats.”

“Peeler Flats? Never heard of it. Not around here.”

“Thanks,” said Bob, wondering. There was something a little odd about the encounter. But he started the Saturn and pulled out, watching the fellow’s pickup disappear in its own dust.

He found Powper Lane and Jimmy Rim Springs Road and, finally, a metal gate with a sign on it. The sign, though the letters were small, read
NO TRESPASSING THIS MEANS YOU
and the gate was locked. His choices were three. He could drive back to the main gate and go to the ranch house and say he was looking for Ace Crouch and could they please let him in, or he could park the Saturn, climb over the gate and walk in, or he could give up and go back to the Shattle place, call Ribeye Cluke and tell him the bad news.

Without really thinking about it he found himself climbing over the gate, his Global Pork Rind folders in one hand, walking down the caliche ranch road with floating blooms of white prickly poppy lighting the way. How far could it be to the windmill? A mile? He walked on. And on. After an hour and twenty minutes he was streaming with sweat, his pores clogged with dust. There was no shade, just the brutal sun and its killing rays. He was more thirsty than he had ever been in his life and he had forgotten his sunglasses so the white dust before him danced with red and green spots. He tried to make a hat with the pages from his brochures but the sheets were too small and slick, and they fell apart within minutes. There were some weak vines at the edge of the road and he was about to gather them and twine them into a leafy hat when he remembered the old lady’s quilting bee story about the dancing girls and the poison oak. He was not sure what poison oak looked like but undoubtedly, the way his luck had been running, this must be it. He scrutinized the roadside for safer hat materials, stopped and gathered a mass of bluestem grass, which he tried to weave into something that would shade his burning face and head, but he didn’t have the knack and the stems fell apart like the jackstraws they were. At last he took his shirt off and draped it over his head, feeling the vicious heat sting and burn his arms and bare torso. Now he knew why men wore undershirts—they could save themselves from sunstroke. Inspiration struck. He might not wear an undershirt but there were his shorts. He would take them off, work a few twigs into them for a frame, and voilà!—a hat.

He had gotten as far as taking off his pants and shorts when he became aware of hammering hooves and turned to see a horseman galloping toward him on the road. There was no time to dress completely again, but he had pulled his underdrawers more or less on when the horseman pulled up. A very old man whose skull showed boldly through his meager flesh glared down at him.

“What are you doin on my ranch? Can’t you read? Big sign says no trespassers?”

“Yes sir. Are you Mr. Richard Head?” He could not bring himself to say Dick Head.

“I am. And who the hell are you? And why are you paradin your bare ass on my road? You with them fairies in the old schoolhouse?”

“No sir. My name is Bob Dollar, sir. I am looking for Ace Crouch. His wife said he was working out here today. The gate was locked so I thought I’d walk in. And I got so hot I thought I’d try to make a hat out of my underwear.”

“Well, of all the damn fool things. Why didn’t you come up to the house and ask instead a wanderin around like a crazy man? You keep on long enough you’ll find him if he don’t find you first on his way home.”

“How much farther is it—sir?”

“About eleven more mile. You keep rattlin your hocks you might make it by supper time. If you don’t suffer heatstroke,” he added, looking at Bob’s fiery face. “What kind a hat did you think you could make out a underwear, somethin like Lawrence of Arabia?”

“I don’t know. I was just getting ready to start. Making them. It.”

“Well. Here’s what I’ll do. You set down and cool off. Give me your keys and I’ll ride back to the gate and git your car, tie up my horse and drive in this far. Then you can drive me back down a my horse at the gate and make the choice a gettin the hell out a here and seein Ace at home this evenin, or you can go ahead and drive out to the well and catch him there. He’s got his own key to the gate. He can let you out again.”

“Thank you, Mr. Head. I appreciate your kindness.”

“I don’t relish a corpse on my ranch road.” And the old man turned his horse and rode off smartly, sitting as straight as a pipe.

An hour later Bob, in the Saturn with the air-conditioning cranked full on, saw the windmill in the distance and the big square truck parked beside it. The sun, now low in the sky, glinted on the mill’s turning wheel. As he drew closer he made out the figure of a man on the top platform. The man was watching him, that much he could tell.

“Mr. Crouch?” Bob squinted up at the figure on the windmill. The sun was behind him, throwing him into black silhouette.

“Call me Ace.” The voice was unexpectedly deep and the tone was one of amusement. “Well, here you are, Bob Dollar, doin your thing for Global Pork Rind.”

“Yes sir.”

“Climb on up, Bob. I got some ice tea up here and you look like you could use it.”

Bob began to climb the skinny metal ladder. He was a third of the way up when Ace spoke again. “Better hold the side rails, not clutch on the rungs. Rungs been known a let go but the rails is strong as a wet dog.”

Bob climbed on, not looking at the ground below, gripping the rough, hot metal. As he climbed higher he felt a sweet breeze. He could hear the wheel above him sighing, hear the clank of the sucker rod rising and dropping, the rhythmic spurt of water into the tank. At the top he crawled onto the platform and, not daring to stand up, crept across to where Ace Crouch sat comfortably beside a bucket, a rope for lowering and raising it tied to the handle, a jar of tea nestled in the half-melted ice. He passed the jar to Bob as soon as he eased into a sitting position on the edge of the platform.

“My God,” said Bob, taking in the view across miles and miles of prairie, white grain elevators rising in the distance. Despite the heat haze and the quivering mirage that made the main road look as if it were underwater, he could see thirty miles. For several minutes neither said anything, Bob enjoying the delicious air, the coldness of the tea, Ace thinking his own thoughts.

Finally the old man spoke.

“Why’d you come out here, Bob?” he said, a hard edge to his voice.

“O.K.,” said Bob. “I’m here because I don’t understand why you keep telling people not to sell to me. That land of Jim Skin’s is worthless.” He sounded querulous and whiny to himself. “And how about your brother’s place? The smell is already so bad he can’t enjoy life and he says he would like to move into Woolybucket. He says he would
like
to sell. Then there’s the Shattles. They want to sell too, but because
you
said no,
Tater
said no and
they
said no. It’s like you have a hold over all these people and they can’t think or speak for themselves.”

The old man pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it. The wind carried the acrid smell of the match and then the smoke to Bob. Ace Crouch did not speak.

“So,” said Bob. “What was I supposed to do, come to you first? Like on bended knee asking some warlord for permission to cross the country?”

Ace Crouch laughed a little but said nothing.

“Don’t you think your brother would be happier in town?”

The old man stubbed out the barely smoked cigarette, tore the butt open with his thumbnail, scattered the tobacco to the wind and rolled the paper into a tiny pellet, which he flicked away.

“What do you see out there, Bob?” His arm swept the horizon where a few small clouds cooked like dumplings in the simmering sky. “Tell me what you see.”

Bob saw he was being set up. “Barbwire fences, the road with some trucks on it and a gate. The railroad and two sets of grain elevators, suppose one is in Woolybucket. Pump jacks.”

There was a long silence that stretched out and continued. Ace Crouch pulled out and lit another cigarette.

“I see more. I see home,” he said. And when Bob craned his neck and peered in the direction of Cowboy Rose, the old man said, “Not
that
home. My home country, the place my people has lived in for a hunderd twenty-odd years from the canyonlands to the hills. You know, the Jones and Plummer Trail went right through here, right under the goddamn windmill we’re settin on. You can see its trace.”

“Mr. Crouch, I think of those times too. I think about Lieutenant Abert coming into this country in 1845 and exploring the Canadian River for the first time, and all that he saw.” As he said this he half sensed that what he wanted was to
be
Lieutenant Abert traveling through the unmarred plains, not a callow salesman exhorting old people to give up their properties.

“This is a unique part a North America. A lot a good men and women struggled a make their homes in this hard old panhandle.” Ace’s face was as creased as dried mud, the old eyes slitted, peering into the haze.