The Dark Horse (10 page)

I remembered that it had been one of my mother’s favorites. A fellow by the name of Tex Owens had written it while waiting to do a radio broadcast. It had begun snowing in Kansas City that night, slowly at first, but then it had blotted out his view of the buildings across the street.

Owens had grown up on a ranch, not unlike myself, and had done a lot of cattle feeding in the winter; knew what it was like for the animals out in the weather, the wet and cold. He’d felt sympathy for all those animals and just wished he could call them all in and break up a little corn for them to eat.

Thirty minutes later he had written the music and four verses. I could still see the little 45 turning on my mother’s suitcase of a record player on hot afternoons in August. I was in high school and thought the tune one of the corniest things I’d ever heard, referring to it as goat-yodeling music. My mother knew I hated the song, and so she played it constantly. She might have been the reason that I was considered by some as a bit of a wiseguy.

I found my lips moving along with the lyrics. I’m not a very good singer—as a matter of documentation, I’m horrible, but I can be loud. My father used to call it my field voice and forbade me to use it in the house. As I started singing, Dog turned and looked at me with an ear cocked. In the short time we’d known each other, he’d never heard me sing. Encouraged by his attention, I sang louder.

Then I sang even louder.

I’m pretty sure I was shaking the walls when Dog joined in. “Oooooooo, ooooooooo, doooooooo dee dee—ooooooooooo, doooooo, doooo doo-doo-doo-dee . . . For hours he’d ride on the range far and wide / When the night winds blow up a storm. / His heart is a feather in all kinds of weather, / when he sings his cattle call . . . Oooooooo, ooooooooo, doooooooo dee dee—Ooooooooooo, doooooo, doooo doo-doo-doo-dee...”

I gave out with one more chorus of yodeling, and Dog howled with me when I noticed that they had turned the radio off next door. There was a certain amount of conversation, and I could hear a number of expletives as somebody thrashed around the adjoining room. He was cursing and threatening as a woman laughed. Then she laughed again.

Five seconds later, the somebody was hammering my door. Dog barked, and I rested the Bible on the nightstand, got up, and slipped on my jeans and boots.

I ignored the .45 Colt in my duffel and opened the door.

“You some kind’a fuckin’ comedian?”

As I’d suspected, it was Cliff Cly. I guess he had decided to take his party to a room. He was still wearing the same droopy potato-chip straw hat, sunglasses, and the two-day beard but had stripped down to a sleeveless T-shirt that read PRO BULL RIDING TOUR. He was holding a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and leaning a shoulder on my doorjamb for support. Dog growled from behind me, and I turned my head to shush him, then turned back to the ranch hand. “Excuse me?”

He leaned in a little closer and, with the strength of the alcohol fumes, I was sure I didn’t have any hair left in my nose. “I said, you some kind’a comedian?”

I studied his face, the wobbling intent of his eyes, the elongated nose. “I don’t take myself all that seriously, if that’s what you mean.”

He cocked his head and tried to focus his eyes on mine, and I could see just how profoundly drunk he was. “You . . .” He belched. “You take me seriously?”

“Right now? Not so much.” He stood there for a moment more, then pushed off from the doorway. He staggered a second and started to raise the bottle, but the movement was so slow and clumsy, I didn’t even bother to raise a hand in defense. Instead, I watched as he lost his balance.

“Oh, shit—”

I reached out and tried to grab him, but I was too slow and he sprawled backward and landed on his back with a liquid thump, the bottle of whiskey skittering down the slight gravel incline toward my rental car.

I took a step forward and crouched down on the walkway as Dog trotted out and joined me in looking down at the semi-unconscious Cliff Cly. I glanced back at Dog. “I know this is twice in one night, but people don’t usually act like this.” Dog looked at me, unsure if I was telling the truth or just defending the species. I gathered Cliff, sitting him up and leaning him against my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

His hat fell off, his head leaned against me with sunglasses askew, and he belched again. “I’m kind of fucked up in general, so it’s hard to gauge.”

I had to smile. “Well, let’s try and get you into your room.”

He was heavy, and I could tell that the majority of his weight was muscle, but I was able to put one of his arms around my neck and lift him to a partially standing posture by grabbing his belt, which was made out of some kind of chrome timing chain. The door to his room was still open, and the lights were on, so I moved us in that direction. Dog sniffed at him but then moved away. He definitely didn’t smell good.

When I got to the doorway, I recognized the Rubenesque tattooed woman from the bar. She was seated on the bed in a bra and panties, and she looked to be about four months pregnant, a fact that had been hidden by clothes earlier. Her mouth, which was outlined with very dark lipstick, made a perfect O.

“Can you help me with him?”

She looked past me with black penciled eyes. “Where’s the Jack?”

I carried Cly toward the bed and sprawled him there, face first at her feet. “I’m just guessing, but I think he’s had enough.”

She got off the bed and walked past me toward the door; there was a peacock on her back with feathers that exploded in greens and blues toward her neck. “Yeah, but I haven’t even got started.”

I rolled Cliff over and figured he could sleep it off where he lay when I heard a yip come from the young woman. I turned and saw that Dog, standing in the open doorway, had frozen her. I walked over, shooed Dog with my leg, and led her through the door. He looked hurt, and considered us like a disgruntled Grendel.

“Where’s the bottle?”

Before I could catch myself, I glanced toward the car and down the slight incline.

She looked up at me, her blond hair shifting to the left. I think the dark roots were a fashion statement. “You’re the guy from the bar.”

I reached for my hat but then remembered it was sitting on the table in my room. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do I know you from somewhere?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You look real familiar—”

I couldn’t place the face, and it was unlikely I’d forget the tattoos, so it was possible that I hadn’t ever arrested her. “Guess I’ve just got one of those faces.”

She smirked in an attempt at a smile. “It’s a good face.”

“Thanks, it’s a little tired right now, so I’m going to take it to bed.”

She walked down the incline, tiptoeing on the gravel with bare feet, stooped and picked up the bottle, and crow-hopped back to the wooden walkway; she held the whiskey and her stomach with her left hand. The other she stuck out—it had a locomotive amid floral designs and a jack-o-lantern, which trailed up her arm in blues, purples, yellows, and reds. “Name is Rose.”

By any other name. I stood there for a second, then extended my hand into hers. Her grip was strong.

“Did you hit him?”

“No, he passed out.”

“There wasn’t any fight part?”

“No, the passed-out part came before the fight part could get started.”

She shook her head. “That’s Cliff all over. These rodeo cowboys all think that eight seconds is a good ride.” She raised her other hand, which had a lacelike design inked on the fingers that became snakes that intertwined as they climbed. “Most people wouldn’t stand up to him like that.”

“Seems like you were rooting for a fight just a couple of hours ago.”

She smiled fully this time. “Boring night in the big town. I was just looking for a little excitement.” She glanced into the room she shared with Cliff and then looked back to me. “He’s only been around for a couple of weeks, but I can tell you, he’s crazy.”

I nodded. “I’ll remember that.”

“You strike me as one of those guys who doesn’t forget much.”

I watched as she brought the bottle up and noticed there was a good two inches left. I thought about a young woman I knew, an Indian princess, who had been born with fetal alcohol syndrome. “How ’bout you not do that?”

She paused. “What?”

“Just do me a favor and don’t drink.” For the next five months, I thought—but you’ve got to start somewhere.

“Why?”

“You’re pregnant.”

She looked down at her belly in mock surprise. “Wow, wonder how that happened?”

There’s a bone-weary quality to putting on your white suit in these kinds of situations, but you do it anyway. “What’s your baby’s name?”

Her hand dropped to support the girth as she grinned. “Wiggle.”

This was going to be harder than I thought.

She tossed a shoulder and then leaned it against the T-111 siding of the motel’s exterior wall, closed her arms around herself, and shivered. “It’s what it does.” I stood there looking at her and said nothing—I had probably said too much already. I reached a hand out for the bottle, but she pulled it behind her, and a look of anticipated defiance streaked its way across her face. “Hey, no way—”

I took a deep breath and marveled at my ability to find a place even more tired than the place I’d been. “Okay.” I turned and started into my own room.

“Whatta ya mean, okay?”

I looked back at her and then gestured to the front of The AR. “If I take that away from you, what’s to say that you won’t just go back over to The AR and get a full one?”

She studied me for a while, an even more puzzled look on her face. “The what?”

I shook my head just to clear it a little and make sure I was the only one in there. “The BAR.”

Her head cocked to one side, and the blond pageboy swayed just a little as her eyes stayed steady with mine. I stood there for a moment as she turned and began closing the door behind her with her foot. The bottle was still in one hand, and her belly was supported with the other—where worlds collide. “Mr. Good Samaritan, you’re in the wrong town.”

The door shut softly.

Boy howdy.

I stood there thinking about Wiggle, about what kind of chance he or she had, and wondered, in a place like Absalom, what kind of chance any of us had.

 

 

 

I was about to go back to my room when I noticed that the truck parked in front of The AR was a new, red Dodge duellie with no plates. I motioned for Dog to go in and then plucked my shirt off the chair. “Stay, and this time I mean it.” He looked after me as I closed the door.

I circled the backside of the empty truck and couldn’t see any temporary tags taped to the inside of the back window that I might’ve missed. It was probably some young rancher having made his first, second, or third pile of money from coal-bed methane, or one of the local boys coming back to show off a little to the hometown crowd of forty. There were a million reasons for the truck to have been there, another million for it not to have plates. I wasn’t sure why I was fixating on the Dodge, other than the oldest trick in the lawman’s repertoire—the hunch.

I walked the rest of the way around the truck and paused at the passenger door. It was locked, but on close inspection through the tinted windows, I could see a Winchester lever-action .30-30 propped up against the dash.

I looked back at the bar—the lights were out in the main room, but it looked like there were still a few on in the kitchen in back. I thought I could hear voices and decided to circle and see who might be inside. I walked to the right and went around the final unit and up a small rise to the roadway behind the motel. There were no streetlights in Absalom, and along with a smear of clouds, it was a moonless night that made it hard to pick through the high grass, garbage cans, and automobile parts without making a racket. I finally found a path that led to the back of the establishment’s kitchen.

There was one light on in the short hallway connecting the bar with the kitchen, and it looked like there were two men talking. I edged a little closer and could make out Pat’s profile beside a pay phone on the wall—he was leaning back with his arms folded as a taller man in the shadows gesticulated passionately. They were keeping their voices low, but it was a heated conversation and I could just make out the gist of the thing.

The owner of the bar lifted his head and looked at the other man defiantly. Neither of them said anything for a few moments, and then the taller man began speaking again, in an even lower tone, with his index finger in Pat’s face.

There was a mudroom leading into the kitchen, and I carefully opened the screen door and slipped inside, or slipped as gracefully as I could. The floorboards bleated and complained under my weight.

I stood there without moving, but the conversation stopped.

I waited for a moment and then leaned forward to get a better look, but the light was off now and both men were gone. I pulled back into the corner and stayed where I was, waiting for the next sound, which was the pump-action of the shotgun I had seen on the shelf under the bar.

I could run, but I don’t do that very well. I could waltz through as if I were just looking for a little midnight snack and get a serving of a few ounces of lead for my trouble, or I could just stand there quietly like a buffalo in a stand of year-old aspens pretending that if I can’t see them, they can’t see me.

I heard footsteps in the bar. Whoever it was, either Pat or the tall man, they weren’t playing fair. The first thing we always tell people who have to deal with burglary is to make your presence known by flipping on all the lights, scream at your wife to call 911, and turn loose the dogs while you get the .38 from the closet. Never, but never, go sneaking around in your own house at odds with some stranger.