15

Light filled the room and I woke up alone—which, I admit, is something of a novelty. Loren claims I’ve never spent a night alone since my first marriage twenty-one years ago. He made a big deal out of it on our honeymoon. The charge isn’t true. I’ve slept alone plenty times. Plenty might be stretching it, but often enough not to be afraid to.

Knowing Loren, I know that he must suspect fear of sleeping by myself was why I left the day before his Vision Quest began. I call crock on the idea. If that was the problem, I would have stayed home and found a warm body to heat the bed. Why drive three hundred miles in search of a crotch?

Did I scamper off to bed with the nearest cowboy while Loren roamed the countryside, chatting with the ghosts of Scott Fitzgerald and Flannery O’Connor? Of course not. I can sleep alone if I choose to. I simply don’t normally choose to.

While we’re on the subject, let’s discuss these cross-country death and truth jaunts. For many women, the Fitzgerald trip to Maryland would have been just cause for a Crack. No one could have blamed me for walking away, but I didn’t. I hung in there, all the way to the Vision Quest.

We’d only been married three months and I was still flying around in ecstasy. I was nuts about the guy. Loren was the first man who thought I knew how to take care of myself. He trusted me to make decisions. If I was depressed he didn’t blame my period. We had our cabin in the aspen grove with the creek and my own room. We fucked and ate great meals and walked in the woods, alone or together. Loren and I had the three goals of every country song—money, time, and love.

Then one afternoon, he came crashing in the back door while I was domestically going through his jeans pockets before dumping them in the wash.

Loren said, “Scott Fitzgerald wants to tell me the end of The Last Tycoon.”

I’m not illiterate. I know who Scott Fitzgerald is and before we were married, Loren told me about the writers’ graves weirdness, but I was standing in the utility shed with my hands full of fuzzy candy and chewed-up straws. How was I supposed to make the connection that this guy Loren had to talk to was dead and buried in Maryland?

I threw him the keys. “Take the Toyota. It’s gassed up.”

“Thanks.”

He was gone nine days. When he came home, I was so mad I didn’t say a word about abandoning me in the wilderness.

“So how does The Last Tycoon end?”

“Scott wouldn’t tell me, he changed his mind.”

That was the first sign I’d married an idiot. And do you think I got credit for sleeping alone those nine nights? Hell, no. Loren pretends he trusts me, but I know in his mind I was up on the mountain humping backpackers the whole time he was gone.

• • •

Sometime in the night Thorne left the couch, so even though I didn’t go to sleep by myself, I woke up that way, which should count for at least half credit. More important than being alone, I woke up fully dressed in Janey Axel’s spacious shirt and green army pants. The woman must have been built like a lumberjack.

I stretched and blinked and worked on focusing on the log ceiling. Ten hours of sober sleep had done wonders for my stressed-out attitude. No nausea, no headache. After a cup of coffee and a good toothbrushing I might feel human again.

The room was large and airy and decked out like a hunting lodge lobby—dead animal heads on the walls, a glass-fronted gun rack by the bay window, chairs and couches with bent sapling arms and legs and red upholstery grouped around a bear rug and a stone fireplace.

Through the window, a Wyoming blue sky stretched off north above the Red Desert. Loren was up there, the other side of the horizon. I wondered what he would eat for breakfast. Would he fix it himself or had he found a new caretaker—probably little Marcie VanHorn from down the road. Loren has a thing for young girls. His books are full of thirty-year-old men fulfilling wet dreams with seventeen-year-old cheerleaders in tight sweaters and short skirts. I’d wring his neck if I caught him fulfilling anything with the little tramp.

Of course, if everything had moved according to plan, Loren was up in the mountains, fasting and waiting for some detached voice to tell him where Buggie ended up. Buggie. I shook my head to clear the early morning half-sleep mind associations. Now wasn’t the time to think about Buggie or Loren. Coffee came first.

• • •

Maria sat on the kitchen floor, polishing drawer handles. The handles were made from tips of deer antlers. I’ve never polished a drawer handle in my life, but then mine were always wooden knobs or metal swinging things and it didn’t seem important. Only on a Wyoming ranch, or maybe a Montana bar, would drawer handles be made from an animal part.

My voice was a croak. “Coffee.”

“On the counter.” Maria held antler polish in one hand and a chamois rag in the other. Chewing gum, she concentrated on the smooth tip of the bottom drawer.

A full Mr. Coffee sat next to a Litton microwave that sat next to an Ashley wood stove that sat next to a Westinghouse gas range. The lineup shot to hell forever any theories of judging real folks from imposters by what they cooked on. The Mr. Coffee was spotless, shiny as a showroom jewel. All the other ovens and stoves, even the walls were equally blot free. I began to think I’d been wrong in liking Maria.

I found a cup and poured coffee. “Any idea the time?”

She glanced at a digital clock on the microwave next to me. “Seven-thirty.”

“What an awful time to be awake.” I sipped coffee while considering whether to stand and be uncomfortable or sit and risk a smudge.

“There’s waffles in the oven and serviceberry syrup. I fried some bacon, but I got busy on the recipe files and it burnt up. I could make some more.” She started to rise.

“No, thanks anyway, Maria, but I’ll stick with coffee for now, maybe try some waffles later. Is something wrong with your mouth?”

When Maria looked right at me, her pupils appeared to have been hardened into tiny rat pucks and sizzled in a frying pan. This wasn’t the same serenity-personified woman I’d met yesterday. This woman was a wreck and I suddenly realized why.

“Do you hear a train?” Maria asked.

“Holy smoke, Maria, you’ve been dancing in the snowflakes.”

She looked down at her hands and gritted her teeth. “I found the Baggie in your jeans when I went to wash out the blood. I tried a little, then a little more. Forgive me, Mrs. Paul, I shouldn’t have, but E.T. used to give me lines sometimes and I felt itchy, I guess. Then the cabinets looked dirty and when I hauled ashes from the wood stove I saw all this grease.” She clutched her hands together. “It was fun at first.”

I’m sorry, but I laughed—laughed so hard I spilled coffee on the shining floor. Maria’d buzzed her brains out and cleaned and snorted all night. On the one hand, her predicament was hilarious. I’d been in the position before. On the other hand, I felt so sorry for her because I’d been in the position before. It happened a couple of times while I was with Mickey and the band. Mickey was an alcohol and pills fanatic who generally regarded coke as a nasal form of herpes. But every now and then some bar owner or a roadie for a bigger band would offer up a pile, in seduction hopes, I suppose, and I’d come zipping back to the motel room about five in the morning, wide awake and ready to bust balls. Only Mickey and the boys would all be passed out like the drunks they were. I’d wind up reading heavy truths into the stock reports on all-night TV or making lists of the presents Ron and I bought the twins for Christmas and birthdays from the time they were two till twelve. It was awful. Some people enjoy the stuff. Many people must love it from what I read, but personally, I’d rather snort barbwire.

The memory made my throat tighten and my eyes ache. “I better get rid of that stuff.”

Maria sniffed. “Please.”

“Where is it?”

“I didn’t know what to do so I hid the bag in the toaster oven.”

“Why would someone with a toaster and three ovens need a toaster oven?”

Maria shrugged. “Janey bought it.”

I set the Baggie on the kitchen table. We pulled up chairs and drank more coffee, discussing the situation. I explained how I came to own an ounce of cocaine, leaving out the part where Billy G called me a woman. Maria told me about when E.T. used to give her snorts. He was after her body, but she never gave in because she was afraid of Janey, and after a while E.T. stopped hitting on her. This led to a general rap on Janey’s character, which led to Maria’s father and her boyfriend, Petey, and the treatment of Spanish-Americans in the oil fields. I like to never got her to shut up.

“What can we do now?” I asked.

“Nothing, the oil fields are as bad as ever. Janey’s as bad as ever. If it wasn’t for Thorne I’d move to Nevada and work in a trailer.”

I couldn’t picture Maria as a tiny hooker. Her posture was too good. “No, Maria, the bag. What can we do now with the bag?”

“You give it to the cowboys out in the bunkhouse. They’re all a bunch of addicts anyway.”

“Do you want some more?”

Maria shuddered. “God, I hope not. Maybe you could sell it. Cocaine is worth a lot of money.”

“I don’t know anything about selling drugs. Beside, that’s kind of unethical, I think.”

“E.T. loves to sell drugs. I heard him in the game room an hour or so ago.”

“E.T.’s in the game room now?”

“He had the Grateful Dead turned up full volume.”

“Doesn’t anyone around here ever sleep?”

Maria spoke through clenched jaws. “You should have seen Darlene about four o’clock this morning. She was out by the barn doing something odd with a prairie dog.”

I drained off the bottom of my coffee cup. “Whole Axel family’s odd if you asked me.”

• • •

E.T.’s game room resembled any one of fifty basement bars I’ve seen in university towns. Obviously built for another purpose—wine cellar, fallout shelter, maybe a canned goods storeroom—these bars feature eight-foot ceilings, concrete walls, and pillars or dull-silver conduits rising from the dance floor. The fixtures hang about head level so direct light never quite reaches the corners, an effect which causes nose and cheekbone shadows straight from Frankenstein Mauls Dracula’s Daughter.

I suppose it’s a flaw in my age group that I thought “game room” meant a pool table that can be converted to Ping-Pong, a refrigerator perhaps, and a card table for Risk or a never-completed jigsaw puzzle. Instead, at the base of the steps I found two long rows of blinking video games leading to a back wall piled high with more stereo equipment than a Muscle Shoals recording studio. Between the rows of Donkey Kong, Indoor Soccer, Radiation Ray, and Centipede lay a forty-foot boardwalk stacked with albums, cassettes, reel-to-reel tapes, and trash. Lots of trash, the kind of wrappers, bottles, bongs, peels, and used prophyls that a country band leaves the maid after a month-long gig in one hotel. I’d stumbled into the den of a renaissance derelict.

“Listen to this,” a voice said.

“Turn On Your Love Light” by the Grateful Dead boomed from the speaker bank, the sound bouncing from wall to wall like the Ping-Pong ball I’d been expecting.

“Turn it down,” I shouted.

The noise level dropped maybe twenty decibels. “What’s the matter, don’t like music?”

“The bass is killing the mix. Sounds like Lesh is on Dueling Cannons.”

E.T. appeared from an alcove I hadn’t noticed between Frogger and Real Sports Football. “You know the Dead?”

He wore horn-rimmed glasses, which I hadn’t expected. I don’t know what I did expect. Thorne was large and, judging by her clothes, so was Janey. Darlene was fat and ugly. I guess I expected a big, ugly drug fiend. Put Woody Allen’s head on Richard Benjamin’s body and you’ll have a rough picture of E.T. Axel. He wore cut-off Levi’s and a yellow, sleeveless I LOST MY VIRGINITY AT THE ’77 PROM T-shirt. He blinked at least four times between his question and my answer.

“Of course I know the Dead. Why don’t you go by Eddie or Ed? E.T. sounds silly.”

E.T.’s posture was everything opposite Maria’s. His forehead and hips led off with the shoulders hunched into a question mark position. “I had the name first. And, anyway, how’d you like to get stuck with a name like Ed? You’re Dad’s new woman, aren’t you?”

“I’m nobody’s woman, buster.”

E.T. turned to one of the video machines. “I didn’t mean to offend. Everyone says you’re here to replace Mother.”

“I guess I am, at least for a couple days.”

E.T. slid his glasses at me, then back at the screen. “You’re a hell of a lot nicer-looking than Janey. Mind if I call you Mama?”

“God, yes, I mind.” I walked up and watched as E.T. pushed a button with his left hand and worked a lever with the right. I realized where E.T. got his posture. His spine was molded to the shape of a video game.

A burning building was pictured on the left side of the screen. A fireman threw a baby out the fourth-floor window to two other firemen on ground level with a net. When the baby hit the net, it bounced three floors back up and a little ways out from the building. At E.T.’s direction, the firemen scooted right and bounced the baby again. Meanwhile, however, the guy on the burning fourth floor heaved another baby out the window.

“That’s gross,” I said.

“It’s fun. Not everyone can juggle babies.”

The first baby reached ground floor on the right side of the screen where two stretcher-bearers caught the last bounce and shoved her, or him—the babies were asexual—into a waiting ambulance.

“What happens if you lose one?” I asked.

“Watch.” E.T. moved the firemen out from under a falling baby. A high-pitched scream lasted a half-second, ending suddenly with a pop and a sound like a hammer going through a ripe cantaloupe. A moment later, a white cross and two blue flowers appeared down-screen from the firemen.

“My God, that’s sick.”

“The more you save, the faster they come at you. It’s a lesson about life.”

The word life used in the context of “Grand Scheme” made me think about Loren, which led to Buggie and babies again. I don’t usually wake up obsessive or morbid, but then I usually wake up at home.

“This game’s in bad taste.”

“That’s the idea, Mama. You got any Grateful Dead tapes?”

I ignored the question as irrelevant. “Do you sell dope?”

My question made him miss a baby. Aighgh Pop. “You asking as my new mom or as a naked chick Dad picked up in the bar?”

“Someone gave me an ounce of cocaine and I don’t know what to do with it.” Aighgh. Pop. Aighgh. Splat. The last baby landed on a fireman’s head, knocking them both into crosses and flowers and ending the game.

“Cocaine?”

I showed E.T. the bag. He blinked fast as a strobe light in a disco dive. “Could I see that, Mama?”

“The name’s Lana Sue.”

“Come in here.” By the wrist, E.T. pulled me into the alcove between Frogger and Real Sports Football. It was more a wall safe furnished with two stools and a table covered by drug paraphernalia than the usual idea of an alcove. Stacks of reel-to-reel tapes sat on shelves around the walls. Tapes on one wall were locked into place by wrought-iron bars.

I nodded at the walls. “What’re these?”

“Grateful Dead.”

I picked one reel off a stack—RED ROCKS AMPITHEATER, DENVER, COLORADO, AUGUST 10, 1978 in blue ink on white adhesive tape.

“These’re all concerts?”

E.T. pulled up a stool and hunched over an Ohaus triple beam scale. “Ten thousand hours. Largest collection of Grateful Dead music in the world, though there’s a doctor in Berkeley might disagree with that.”

“How did you get them?”

E.T. placed the bag on the scale. “Twenty-eight point one, it’s a little short.”

“I thought there were twenty-eight grams in an ounce.”

“Twenty-eight point three-four-nine-five, to be more or less exact. Baggie weighs a gram, though.”

I walked to the scale. He was right—28.1. “Maria was in it all night.”

E.T.’s laugh came out as a cackle. “Maria’s something else, claims she hates the stuff, but that girl can suck down a gram faster than coyotes on a rabbit.”

Which reminded me. “Your dad called someone coyote ugly last night. What’s coyote ugly?”

E.T. dipped a small silver spoon into the bag. He held it toward the light a minute, then bent over the spoon and made a noise like bad pipes in a cheap apartment. “Was he talking about Darlene?”

Since I didn’t know the extent of the insult, I lied. “No.”

E.T.’s spoon took another dip. “I’ll bet he was talking about Darlene. Dad treats her worse than he treats me.” The sight of cocaine outside the bag made my sinuses throb.

E.T. snorted up his other nostril, sniffed a couple of times, and looked pleased with himself. “Coyote ugly’s when a guy wakes up holding a woman who’s so repulsive he chews off his own arm rather than risk waking her. Want some?”

That seemed like an awful thing to say about your own daughter, but then my daughters are both beautiful and talented so I can’t picture what it would be like to create a slug. Maybe Thorne’s disappointment turned him bitter. I gestured at the barred shelf. “What are those tapes there?”

“Old ones from before Pigpen died. Dead haven’t been the same without him. I’ve got a tape of the first acid test back in sixty-three. You know, Kesey, Merry Pranksters, the old hippie nostalgia. You can barely hear the sound. Guy recorded it on an RCA ghetto blaster with one of those microphones big as your thumb. Probably worth a hundred thousand bucks.”

“You deal to make money for Grateful Dead tapes?”

“You got it. Here, pack your nose.”

I didn’t want to snort. Lord knows, I didn’t want to snort, but thirty seconds later my head hummed like an air conditioner leaking Freon down my throat. Beneath the Dead tape, the room took on a low thump—a heartbeat.

I said, “Oh, hell.”

“Good, huh?”

“The speakers are buzzing.”

“Now the other side.” He held another spoonful up to my face. The heartbeat doubled.

“Lana Sue what?” E.T. asked.

“Huh? My throat is closing.”

“You said your name is Lana Sue. What’s your last name?”

Pretend you’re swimming in Chloraseptic. “Paul. My husband is Loren Paul.” I sat down heavily. “He’s a writer. Maybe you read Yeast Infection.”

E.T. stared at me. His blinking was continuous, but it had gone half speed. Gave him eyes like a big turtle. “Did anyone ever notice you look a little like Lana Sue Potts? She was the singer for Thunder Road a few years back.”

I was never recognized by a fan before. It felt neat. “I am Lana Sue Potts. Or I was. I’ve had two other names since then, but I kept Potts as my stage name, last time I was onstage.”

“You’re Lana Sue Potts?” I nodded. He blinked. “You were great. I saw you in Gunnison, Colorado, four, maybe five years ago. Holy cow, mama, you’ve changed.”

E.T. leaped from his stool and ran out of the room. What’s he mean, I’ve changed? And where’s this Mama crap coming from? I stared at the Dead tapes on the wall, then back at the bag of cocaine crystals on the table. I missed Loren. He was up on the mountain searching for Truth and I was in a basement dungeon sticking foul shit up my nose. Made me wonder which one of us was really crazy.

The Dead tape stopped and after a blessed moment of silence, I came on—my album. I couldn’t believe someone bought it. There’s not enough tequila in Texas, for me to go home with you. I sounded pretty good.

E.T. rushed back into the vault. “Here.” He shoved the album jacket at me. I looked down at myself standing in front of a lavender Rolls-Royce, wearing a blue, fringed vest that didn’t connect between my breasts, ungodly tight white leather pants, and a blue cowboy hat. Ace chose the outfit himself. The album title ran across the top, cutting off part of my hat—They Call Me Lana Sue.

“I never did have any cleavage.”

E.T. stood right in front of me. “This stuff isn’t as good as what you did with Thunder Road. Why didn’t those guys back you up?”

“We had a falling-out.”

“Sounds like you’ve had your share of falling-outs.”

How the hell would he know? The second cut was “Thrift Store Love.” Ace had dubbed in all these violins and three black girls singing the last word of each line after me.

When she boots you out the door. Door.

Don’t come crawlin’ here no more. More.

Any of those three backup singers had a better voice than mine. Everyone knew I got the solo album because I slept with Ace. Hell, for all I know, they got the backup jobs the same way.

“I’ll give you a thousand dollars for the coke,” E.T. said.

“What?”

“The coke and a kiss.”

“My ears are whining.”

“A French kiss.”

“That’s the stupidest deal I ever heard.”

E.T. reached into a drawer I hadn’t seen under the table and pulled out a stack of hundred-dollar bills. He counted out ten, then stuffed the rest back under the table. “Darlene says you didn’t have a dime when Dad brought you home. I bet you could use a thousand bucks.”

“Who told Darlene?” “Thrift Store” ended and I kicked into a slick commercial version of “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry If I Want To.”

E.T. stood too close to me and blinked. “You got the coke free. You can give away the French kiss, Mama.”

“But why?”

“It’ll be fun to think I crammed my tongue in Dad’s new woman’s mouth.”

“You’re all sick around here.”

“Thousand bucks for the coke and a kiss.”

I thought about the consequences. “You’ll have to stop calling me Mama.” He nodded and leaned closer. I could smell cocaine fumes on his breath.

Can selling a French kiss be considered prostitution? Daddy wouldn’t approve, but at thirty-eight, I couldn’t base decisions on what Daddy thought. Not after my life. But to French-kiss a blinker in thick glasses, a sleeveless T-shirt, and cutoffs—ish. This could be sinking to an all-new low, even for me.

A few moments later I’m standing there with my eyes wide open, E.T. clamped to my face, a thousand dollars and an ounce of cocaine on the table; my mind is pinging like a Kroger cash register; over this I’m singing, It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to, you would cry too if it happened to you—when Maria’s head comes through the door.

We stared open-eyed at each other a few seconds, then Maria said, “You better come upstairs, Mrs. Paul. There’s a problem.”

I broke free of the tongue probe. Made a sound like pulling a sneaker out of deep mud. “The problem is upstairs?”

“Please come.”

I pocketed my thousand and followed Maria back through the flashing video games.

• • •

Remarkably enough, the problem upstairs was even stranger than the one in the basement. Maybe the weirdness quotient grows exponentially according to how many Axels are in a room.

With Maria in the lead and E.T. blinking along behind, we trooped up the steps and into the front living room and this fully developed scene: Billy G sunk in one of the red leather chairs, his head down in his arms; Darlene backed against a guncase, doing a high-pitched monologue that I couldn’t follow except to tell I was the subject and the word slut came up every few seconds; Thorne, about halfway up the wide staircase, standing in a Napoleon pose with his arm swaddled in bandages, this perfectly appropriate Cary Grant smoking jacket, and blue-checkered boxer shorts. His hair stuck out sideways and pillow marks creased his cheek.

Darlene seemed to be threatening on behalf of Janey. “Mama’s gonna kick butt when she comes back to get me. Daddy’s butt, that naked prostitute’s butt, your butt,” meaning Billy G, I suppose. Her eyebrows rode low over her eyes and buckled as she shouted. Both hands fluttered like mating grouse. “Gonna kick every butt I tell her to kick. Then me’n Mama’ll go back to Paris and leave this…this.” Darlene lost words.

With his good arm, Thorne waved to me. “I just woke up.”

“So I see.”

“What’s going on here?”

“Damned if I know.” Maybe it was more sleeping pills than charm, but Thorne’s face was so lovably confused, aloof, and taking charge all at the same time, I had this tremendous urge to shoot through the chaos and hug him.

Thorne ran his hands through his hair. “Maria, will you bring some coffee?”

Darlene spotted me and the tirade focused a little. She pointed one stubby finger. “Bitch.”

I pointed back. “Gross slob.”

Billy G came out of the chair and across the floor. His eyes snapped with a rose color—more an alcohol-induced bloodshot than any heartbroken teary redness. He held his peacock feather hat with both hands. “I just want to know why.”

“Why what?”

“Why you’re doing this to me. Do you hate all men? Do you hate yourself or are you just a screwed-up cunt?”

Somehow I ignored the cunt crack. “You’re the one who said, ‘I get hung up on no one and no one gets hung upon me.’”

He turned to E.T. “We made love all night. I must have come seven times.” E.T. smiled and nodded.

I continued reminding him of his own line. “‘Fast, meaningless good time,’ you said. ‘A basic quickie.’”

When Darlene screamed slut once more I began to understand Thorne’s attitude toward his daughter.

Billy G advanced another step. “I pity you,” he said.

“And we didn’t make love. We rutted. You could have been replaced by a stiff dick nailed to a tree.”

He didn’t take that one well. When it came to vicious arguments, the kid was in over his head and he knew it. Billy G swung to Thorne.

“I respected you.”

Thorne came down a couple steps. His face had an interested yet not really concerned, look about the gray eyes.

Billy G beseeched, “How can you steal another man’s woman?”

“I’m nobody’s woman, cowboy.”

“Slut.”

Billy G held the knob thing at the bottom of the banister with one hand and his hat with the other. “Did you know that three nights ago she slept with her husband and two nights ago, me, and last night, you? Do you realize the kind of woman you’re stealing?”

Thorne sent me a fuzzy look and said, “Doesn’t sound like she’s your woman, then, does it?”

“I’m nobody’s woman.”

“Slut.”

I remembered where I’d seen that look of Thorne’s before. Years ago, when the twins were two, maybe three, years old, we used to leave them with Mom and Dad and go out country clubbing or lounge hopping with Ron’s pre-med buddies. About two in the morning we’d swing by my parents’ and wrap the sleeping girls in their blankets and carry them out to the car, and somewhere between Daddy’s house and the car or between the car and bed, Connie would come to just for a moment and mumble, “I’m not sleepy, let me down,” or something along those lines. I’d look into her beautiful eyes and love her. The expression in those eyes was the same as the one on Thorne’s face the morning after his botched suicide.

Darlene put her fist on her hip and sashayed over to me. “I’ve slept with every cowboy in the bunkhouse.”

I said, “You aren’t just weird like the others, are you, Darlene?”

Her puckered lower lip and the bags under both eyes hung the color of bruised bananas. “Roy Rogers here and I did it last night. I made him spurt eight times.”

Darlene’s speech brought Thorne down another step and Billy G’s hands up to his chest. “I never touched her.”

Darlene twirled on him. “You said I was better than Daddy’s whore.”

Billy G appealed to Thorne. “I swear to God, sir.”

“I know.”

Maria appeared and handed Thorne a mug of coffee. He blew over the steaming surface and sipped. Billy G fell back into his original chair. Darlene continued her promenade.

In the charged silence, E.T. slid his arms around my shoulder. “Just now, Lana Sue and I were French-kissing in the basement.”

Billy G groaned, Darlene slapped her forehead like an idiot. “Mama’s gonna die.” I gave E.T. a move-it-or-lose-it stare and the hand fell from my shoulder.

Billy G’s head came up for one last supplication to Thorne. “Please give her back. I tried not to like her. I really tried, but I can’t help it. You don’t have any use for her, give her back.”

Thorne looked amused. “Hell, I don’t own her. We ain’t even screwed yet. You want her so bad, take her.”

Billy’s face brightened with hope as he swung back to me, but I changed that real quick. “Lay one finger on me, sucker, and I’ll snap your spine.”

His jaw trembled and he twisted the hat around in his hands. I think, for about three seconds, Billy G was sizing up the odds of his spine surviving an all-out assault—the John Wayne approach of throwing me over his shoulder and marching me off to the bunkhouse. However, reason prevailed and his eyes dropped away. “You win, Lana Sue. I’m leaving. This state’s too small for the both of us.”

“I’ll stay out of your way if you’ll stay out of mine.”

“Nope. Because of you I have to leave the home I love and go on the road.” Out of pure spite, he added, “Maybe I’ll go back to Chicago.”

Before I thought up a catty-enough comeback, Darlene latched herself onto his arm. “Oh, darling, take me with you.”

Billy G panicked. Jumping about five feet back and to his left, he gave off a little moan.

Darlene followed after him. “I’ve got money. We could go to California. Or France, my mother’s in France. You won’t ever have to ride a horse again.”

The coward ran—out the door and across the lawn. My itch had caused another man to alter his life. Not that I felt remorse. I figure if these jokers can’t maintain themselves after me, it’s their own damn fault. This case was a bit more absurd than the others and took twenty-four hours instead of several years. Other than that, Billy G was nothing more than typical.

Darlene sat in his chair and glared at me. She muttered under her breath, “Slut.”

“Gross slob.”

E.T. trotted back down to the Dead. Thorne drank from his mug. He looked across at me and smiled. “Can’t have you chasing off all the help.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Wait’ll I get dressed and eat some biscuits, we’ll ride around the ranch, show you some land.”

“On horses?”

“Sure. Maria, how about some biscuits, and see if you can find something that’ll fit her better. Looks like she’s wearing a pup tent.”

“Yes, Mr. Axel.”

Thorne started up the staircase. He stopped and turned to me again. “Which Billy was that anyway?”

• • •

My horse encounter was put off until afternoon because, while Thorne was eating his biscuits, the phone rang. Then another phone rang, then when Thorne set down the first phone, it rang again. The head wrangler came in to talk about fetlocks. You can’t just abandon an ongoing dynasty for a three-day drunk and suicide attempt. Sooner or later, fetlock problems have a way of catching up.

Maria and I sat around the kitchen, grinding our molars, while Thorne took care of bankers, oil foremen, and guys from two different kinds of stock markets. Finally Thorne looked up from one of the phones and shrugged an apologetic smile. “This may take awhile.”

“No rush. Maria and I will be in her room, looking through clothes.”

Maria’s first-floor, back-of-the-house room was just what you’d expect. Small, neat as a curio shop, yellow enamel walls with a framed velvet painting of Jesus hanging over the bed. Photos of her father and boyfriend stood on the bureau. A neat stack of laundry sat at the base of the made-up bed. Next to a Silhouette Romance on the nightstand lay a small mirror reflecting a white powdery residue.

Maria lifted a pair of jeans off the laundry stack. “There wasn’t much blood on these. They’re still wearable anyway, if you don’t mind a few stains.”

“Does it look like I had an accident?”

She shook out the jeans and we inspected the few dark blotches. One Idaho-shaped smear could conceivably be misinterpreted as careless spotting, but only by the kind of person who looks for that sort of thing.

“They’ll do.” I was on the edge of the bed and slipped off my sandals and Janey’s green army pants. “I can’t stand this mountaineer uniform any longer. Does Janey still dress like this?”

“Not in thirty years. The shirt you used on Thorne’s arm is beyond hope.”

I slid into my comfortable old Lee Wranglers. “That shirt was an old thing I wear to do housework around the cabin.”

“You do housework?”

“Sure. Do I look like a trust fund baby?” E.T.’s roll of bills crammed in my front pocket gave the jeans a lumpy look.

“I think you’re accustomed to giving orders.”

“It’s a talent I pick up quickly.”

Maria shuffled through the bottom drawer of the bureau. She pulled out a blue and gold football jersey—ROCK SPRINGS across the back shoulders. Number 38. “This was Petey’s. He gave it to me when Janey ran him off the ranch.”

The jersey fit real well, maybe a little tight in the chest. Petey wasn’t a very big fullback. “Why did Janey run him off the ranch?”

Maria sat next to me on the bed. She picked up the Silhouette Romance and turned it over in her hands. “Janey thought we were in love.”

“What’s it to her?”

“My mother fell in love with a cowboy from the bunkhouse and I happened. Janey didn’t want a repeat.” I saw passion and exotic nineteenth-century New Zealand on the back cover of the book. Also something about daring privateers. “So you’ve lived on the ranch all your life?”

Maria stared at the nightstand. “Oh, no. Janey threw my father out as soon as I was old enough to travel. We lived in Cheyenne until Mama died and Janey offered me a job. My father still lives in Cheyenne. He lays tile.”

Maria licked her right index finger and rubbed it over the mirror. Then she touched her finger to her upper gum. “My father doesn’t want me working here, but I dropped out of high school and came over. Janey’s frightened to death I will get pregnant and she’ll have to make her own bed for a few weeks.”

Maria handed me the mirror so I could massage my gums also. “The more I hear about Janey the less I like her.” My mouth dropped into a dental memory. “I sure am glad I sold the coke. It’d be awful to do more.”

“Yes, I am thankful to you for taking it away.”

The mirror was wiped clean as Maria’s kitchen. Not even a speck of white dust remained. I said, “That E.T. is a character. He’s like a doped-up mole down there surrounded by Grateful Dead tapes. It’s creepy.”

“E.T. is not so bad. Everyone expects him to grow up like Thorne, which must be difficult. He told me he is afraid of cowboys.”

“Must be tough being the son of a legend.”

Maria nodded. She took the mirror, looked at herself a moment, then set it back on the nightstand, next to the book.

“I hope you didn’t think I was really kissing E.T. when you came down there,” I said.

“Of course you weren’t.”

“I mean, I was, but it was part of the deal. I had to.” I ran the tip of my tongue between my upper teeth and lips. “Don’t you just hate the way cocaine makes you feel?”

She looked at me. “Of course.”

Maria and I held about ten seconds of eye contact before I spoke. “Let’s find E.T.”

• • •

His tunnel was dark as a cave. I blind-groped along the wall down each side of the stairwell. “Where’s the light switch, Maria?”

“It’s hidden. E.T. is afraid of rip-offs and Thorne. He hides everything.”

I peered into the black. “Could he be in the little room full of Dead tapes?”

Maria was a step above, which made her the same height as me. Her voice came from next to my ear. “I do not know. Sometimes after a big score he holes up down here for several days. There’s a flashlight in the kitchen.”

I stood on the bottom step while Maria went back up in search of light. Because of my earlier snorts, the black hole of E.T.’s basement wasn’t totally black. A yellow transparent curtain rippled before my eyes, and red dandelion bursts appeared to bounce from top to bottom. The room buzzed like a neon bar sign. My saliva glands craved vitamin C.

A couple minutes of womb sensations later the light bobbed down the steps, shining on the walls and my jeans.

“I changed the batteries,” Maria said.

“Let me carry it.” We stumbled into the basement, following the beam over trash and video games. The alcove was locked tight, but the little bugger had left a note and a Baggie tacked on the door.

Mama—One frenchie wasn’t enough huh? Got to have more of E.T.’s electric tongue. I ran into Rock Springs, but if you slip a hundred dollars under the door, you can have this as a substitute. Or you can have it free for another kiss. One from you and one from Maria.

Your new son, E.T.

At my elbow Maria muttered what I took to be a Spanish curse.

“How much you figure is there?” I asked.

“Not a hundred dollars’ worth. Hardly enough for one of us.”

I tapped the Baggie with my index finger. The crystals sparkled in the flashlight light. “What should we do?”

“I wouldn’t pay a hundred dollars.”

“You’d rather kiss him?”

Maria repeated the Spanish curse.

“That’s what I thought.” I folded up a hundred-dollar bill and slid it under E.T.’s door. We found a flat-topped video game and snorted by flashlight. Maria was right, there wasn’t enough.

• • •

Any person who lives in Wyoming, especially in a cabin at the base of a mountain, is expected to be crazy about horses. It’s a responsibility. Anything less is interpreted as letting down the Western mystique. So this is something of a betrayal to admit, but I’m just not a horse lover. My first thought when Thorne said we’d tour the ranch on horseback was to ask if all the trucks were broken.

I’m not afraid of horses, exactly. It’s just that they’re awkward and sweaty and unpredictable. Like men. Except men are easier to handle.

Another way horses are like men is that the ones you see in the movies and magazines are sleek and beautiful, whereas in real life they’re generally shaped wrong and look funny around the nose. And they’re stupid—horses, not men, necessarily. A horse’s intelligence rates somewhere between the turkey and the armadillo. Which is actually a blessing, since most horses loathe humans and would kill if they only knew how. You don’t run into many My Friend Flicka mares in love with a master who climbs on her back and yanks at an iron peg stuck sideways in her mouth, all the while chanting, “Atta girl, go get ’em baby.”

Back in high school, Roxanne was always dragging me off my towel at the country club pool to follow her down to the stables so we could pet the horses and flirt with the help. She still loves the whole horsemanship game; spends thousands of dollars on outfits and saddles; speaks in pithy little Texasisms like, “That stallion’s hotter’n the tail pipe on a chopped-down Harley.” She’s the only female rider I know who wears spurs.

I think Roxanne’s deep interest in corrals and horses is based on the same thing as all her other deep interests. She just naturally gravitates to any hobby involving spread legs.

When Loren and I first moved into the cabin, our nearest neighbors, Lee VanHorn and his daughter, Marcie, took us on a three-day pack trip in the Teton Wilderness. My horse’s name was Alex Trebeck. He was a pink-white edging to jaundice color with blood-filled eyes. He hated me.

Marcie was fourteen back then. She rode with a set of Walkman plugs in her ears and her head down, reading Loren’s Yeast Infection. For all the nature Marcie absorbed those three days, she could have stayed in her room.

At night around the campfire, she asked Loren questions about his sensitivity and the creative process.

“A mind like yours must be an awful responsibility, Mr. Paul.”

Loren squinted his eyes to affect a pained poet look. “It’s the burden of my life.”

“I’d love to write novels someday. My mind is full of great ideas for plots, all I need is help getting them on paper.”

I hit the fire coals with my wienie stick, showering sparks into the night. Burden, my ass. Loren eats up that writer’s sensitivity myth. Keeping him from taking this tender esthete act seriously is a full-time job. That’s why, whenever he’s around, I say he’s “typing a book” rather than “writing a novel.” Otherwise Loren’ll start thinking he’s Eugene O’Neill and the regular rules of life don’t apply in his case. The last thing he needed back then was a fourteen-year-old disciple.

Marcie’s young face turned to me in the firelight. “You must feel so honored to live with such a gifted husband. I mean, to know that while you’re cooking dinner, he’s in the study creating works of literature.”

I waved the glowing end of my stick dangerously close to Loren’s smudged glasses. “Yes, Marcie, it gives my life meaning to know I’m washing the socks of a genius.”

Neither Marcie nor Loren caught the sarcasm.

About then, Marcie’s father came into camp and said Alex Trebeck had broken his hobble and run into the forest and I better go catch him. We chased that mangy animal up canyons and across creeks for two hours while Marcie and Loren sat on stumps, sipping cocoa and admiring each other.

Later, at home, Loren said, “That Marcie VanHorn sure is mature for her age. Her perceptions are right on target.”

“Lay one finger on her and I’ll sew your penis shut.”

• • •

The foreman led a semishort pinto from the barn. “Name’s Suzy Q,” he said. “Treat her firm or she’ll graze.” The foreman was real small and real old, I’d say early seventies. A handlebar mustache flowed off the sides of his mouth like twin ermine tails.

I stood with both hands in my pockets. “Is she gentle? I haven’t ridden a whole lot, you know. I mean, some, on bridle paths in Houston and a pack trip up by Jackson, but I haven’t ridden all that much. I think I need a gentle one.”

The foreman spit. “She’s broke.” His mustache tips were greased to antler points. I imagined you could turn his head by holding them like real handlebars. Of course I’d have to wear gloves to try it.

Working with his good arm, Thorne buckled and cinched leather things on a giant brown horse named Laredo. He kneed the hell out of the horse’s belly before pulling the final belt tight. He grinned at me. “You afraid of horses?”

“Of course not.”

“Get on, then.”

Thorne mounted and waited while I held Suzy Q by the horn, put my left foot into the stirrup, and stood there, bouncing up and down on my right leg.

“Thought you’d been on a pack trip,” Thorne said.

“I was. Three days. It was awful.”

“Didn’t you have to get on and off your horse that three days?”

Suzy Q’s legs moved away from me. I followed her around in a circle. “Someone always gave me a boost,” I said.

Thorne watched as I followed Suzy Q’s butt around another 360. “You allergic to horses?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You keep sniffing like you’ve got a runny nose.”

Finally Thorne nodded to the foreman, who stepped over and clasped his hands together under my right foot. Together we pushed me into the saddle. “Keep her head up,” he said.

The foreman’s name was Gritz or Grits. I think it was Gritz as in a legitimate last name, but he was old enough to have been the original cook on Rawhide and cowboys back in the early twentieth century had the same names as their horses—lots of Texas and Pecos Johns. Now they’re all Butch or Snuffy. I actually met a steer wrestler in a bar outside Meeteetse who’d said his name was Billy Joe Bobby Jack. “You call me BJBJ.”

I sat on Suzy Q, holding the reins with both hands, wishing Roxanne was here to tell me how to start her. I knew it took some kick action, but I didn’t want to kick too hard for fear of pissing Suzy Q off. “Gedup” had no effect.

Gritz went over by Laredo and squinted off south toward some gray ledges on the horizon. “Got time to look at something, boss?” he asked.

“If it’s that mare’s fetlocks, no.”

“It’s something else. Out behind the barn.”

Thorne shifted in the saddle toward me. “Ever see a barn like this?”

I went with the safe answer. “Nope.”

“Janey and I built her before we built the house. She’ll hold forty thousand tons of hay. You could fly a plane through the front and back loading doors without touching a thing. I did it once.”

I thought of Loren. He’d like anyone who called a barn she. “I hear it’s got two flush toilets.”

Thorne squinted at me as if I was being sarcastic. “Those’re Janey’s.”

Gritz still stared at the horizon. “Wish you’d come have a look.”

“Better be important.” Thorne swung his horse and started off. Without me making a move, Suzy Q followed.

• • •

Behind the barn we found four or five cowboys standing in an arc around a crucified prairie dog. Its front legs were held on to the crossbar by thick rubber bands. Its back legs dangled free in front of the tail.

I said, “That’s sick.”

Thorne stared for thirty seconds or so. Then he sighed real deep. “Darlene?”

Gritz shrugged.

“How’d she kill it?” Thorne asked.

“Nobody’s gone close enough to tell.”

Thorne glanced at the cowboys. “You afraid to get near it?” Cowboys don’t like being called afraid. One of them stepped forward and knelt in front of the cross. “Head looks bashed in.”

Thorne sat looking at the dead prairie dog for another thirty seconds. His eyes were worn out like they’d been yesterday at the hospital. He blinked a couple of times. “Throw it out,” he said. Then he wheeled Laredo and trotted south. Suzy Q followed.

• • •

We rode up an old washed-out Jeep track. I wanted to ride alongside Thorne and discuss the situation, but Suzy Q was born to follow. She stuck her nose about eight inches behind Laredo’s rump and stayed there. I kicked and tugged and pulled, finally got her over into the other rut, but the stupid horse wouldn’t pass Laredo’s tail.

I ended up talking to Thorne’s back. “You think something’s wrong with Darlene?” I shouted.

He glanced back at me, but didn’t answer. We swung down into a gully and I had to lurch way back to keep from falling off. Then I fell forward and hung on to her neck as we climbed the other side. Roxanne would have been tickled.

Up on the flats again, I kept on as if Thorne had asked for my opinion. “I mean, a lot of kids don’t like their parents. My daughter can’t stand me. My husband is embarrassed by his mom. Lord knows what I think of mine. But that’s all normal resentment. Darlene’s not normal.”

Thorne’s back moved up and down above the saddle. He had good posture for a cowboy—or maybe the prairie dog and my prattling made him tense.

“Even E.T.’s normal, more or less,” I said, “in a sick kind of way, but I think Darlene’s sick like a disease, like cancer or something, where E.T. and my daughter are sick more like mumps.”

Thorne twisted in the saddle. “You been talking to E.T.?”

“I saw him this morning.” Thorne seemed to have forgotten E.T.’s crack about French-kissing in the basement.

He slowed Laredo to a walk. I urged Suzy Q up the rut, but she still would have none of it.

“Those two and their mother are all I did this for,” Thorne said. He paused to take in “this,” which was desert as far as we could see, spotted here and there by a few cows and a fence line. A windmill turned over by the eastern horizon. “And not one of them gives a shit.”

He reined Laredo to a halt. Suzy Q stopped behind them. “I almost killed myself yesterday, but I didn’t. I’m glad I didn’t.” He thought that one over a moment. “So, today, problems don’t matter. Today I ride my horse on my land and spend time with you. Today is mine.”

Thorne glanced back at me to see how I was taking the speech. I smiled, so he continued. “I haven’t done anything for me in years. Today I do.”

“What’re you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

A couple of miles later, Thorne led off through some willows down a gully and out into a low flat area with a pond and an old collapsed homesteader cabin. We tied the horses to a rotten trough and peeked through broken glass windows at a couple of moth-eaten mattresses and an ancient barrel stove. An empty Delaware Punch bottle sat on a shelf beside some black tins.

“How long ago’d these people leave?” I asked.

“Thirties, I figure.” Thorne pointed out a pile of Colt .45 cans in one corner. “My hands use it ever’ now and then during a blizzard. Janey and I almost stayed here one night when my truck threw a rod. A rattler came under the door and she made us leave.”

“I wouldn’t sleep with a snake.”

Thorne grunted. “Was raining like hell outside. Spent the night in the cab of the truck.”

At the pond, Suzy Q finally consented to stand beside Laredo. After the horses drank, Thorne hobbled their legs so they could shuffle around the clearing searching for grass. Thorne pulled a shower-curtain-looking blanket out of his saddlebag and spread it in the shade of three six-foot sagebrush.

“Let’s see what Maria sent for lunch,” he said.

“This is a picnic?”

Thorne smiled. “Can’t ride a horse without workin’ or eatin’, and I ain’t workin’today.”

He pulled out a pair of small rib eyes and a half-dozen eggs, a homemade loaf of bread, two potatoes, a grocery store basket of strawberries, a can of Crisco, and a skillet. And a pint of Ten High.

“That Maria’s wonderful,” Thorne said.

“You should throw Janey out and marry her.”

He took a slug of Ten High and eyed me over the bottle. “I got you.”

I’d been on these picnic-down-at-the-tank deals before in Texas and on the road with the Mick, so I knew that however innocent the afternoon begins, there’ll always come a “Gee, it’s hot, let’s skinny-dip” suggestion, and once a man has your clothes off, he starts taking things for granted. Sooner or later it leads to a shoreline free-for-all. About the best you can hope for is the guy lets you get back to the blanket.

I thought about the situation as we gathered dead sagebrush for the fire. This time wouldn’t be just morphine-in-a-dick like I’d wanted from Billy G. Making it with Thorne would matter in some way. Everyone at the ranch took it for granted I was there as a romance and sex object. Thorne acted as if the issue had already been decided. So did I.

But Loren was only three days back. I was married to Loren. Even though pain fucks weren’t really cheating, this would be. I hadn’t committed adultery on Loren before, wasn’t real sure I wanted to.

“How do you like your steak?” Thorne asked.

“Medium rare.”

“Eggs?”

“Over easy.”

I expected the next question to be “sex?” and was all set to say, “Let’s wait awhile.” However, Thorne seemed more interested in his meat.

I watched his fingers as he worked around the fire. He used mostly his right hand as the crook of his left arm was still bandaged. Even one-handed, though, each movement showed control. I’d never been around a man who knew exactly what he was doing before. It was unnerving. If I did say, “wait awhile,” I wasn’t going to mean a real long while.

We ate the steaks, drank some more Ten High, watched a small herd of antelope come down the ravine. Thorne rolled over on his back and propped his bad hand on my knee. “Sure is peaceful,” he said. “Can’t remember last time I felt peaceful.”

I looked at the water, which was still as glass. “My daughter Cassie’d like it here. She loves horses and real ranch stuff. I’ve been around cowboys in bars for years, but I’ve never seen them much at their work. It’s interesting.”

Thorne snored.

So much for skinny-dipping after lunch. I sat on the blanket next to him, tossing pebbles into the pond and watching the ripples. The countryside was so quiet, not even a grasshopper to break the drone of Thorne’s breathing and my pebbles as they plopped into the pond. I traced his face with my index finger while he slept. The corners of his eyes had deep lines. I made up little stories about how he got the scar, imagining something dangerous and fun, a grizzly maybe or a border-town whore.

An old cow came across the rise and drank from the other side of the pond. You’d never see one cow out by itself in Texas. When I was little, before Dessie turned gay or I discovered sugar sadness, back when Mom laughed, Daddy used to take us on drives outside Houston in our watermelon-green Dodge wagon. We’d see cattle standing in the shade of oil pumps, and black people sitting on crates in front of section road gas stations. Wyoming doesn’t have section roads or black people, at least not up in Jackson Hole. There’s more one-eyed bears in Teton County than there are black people.

Every drive we’d find a wind-beaten cafe and stop for apple pie heated with cheddar cheese on top. I must have been five or six then, because by the time I was eight Daddy’d traded the Dodge for an Oldsmobile. Then he bought a new house and took up golf and raising saffron. Funny how you date times by the car that goes with them.

Thorne’s eyelids flew open. He lay still a moment, searching the sky. Then he sat up. “What happened?”

“You took a nap.”

He looked from the pond to the ravine to Laredo and Suzy Q grazing on weeds. “A nap.”

“You were so peaceful I didn’t have the heart to wake you up.”

Thorne blinked a couple times. He ran his hand through his hair. “I never slept in the daytime before.”

I handed him the pint of Ten High.

Thorne held the bottle to his mouth, but didn’t drink. “My dad didn’t believe in naps. He said when the sun’s up, you work, when it’s down, you sleep.”

“When did you eat?”

“On the edges.” He drank from the bottle. “And noon. Straightup twelve, Mama had dinner on the table. They called lunch dinner when I was a boy.”

“I know that. I’m not as young as you think.”

Thorne seemed to be adjusting to his recent nap. He leaned back on his right arm and took another swig. His eyes traveled over my body. “You sure look good, Lana Sue.”

I’ve never been smooth at taking straight-on compliments. I prefer slightly smartass repartee where I can get in a few flirty licks amidst the wordplay. Simple sincerity is kind of embarrassing. What I did this time was mumble something along the lines of “thanks” and reach for the bottle.

Thorne didn’t notice my embarrassment. He was still amazed at his own decadence. “Sleeping in the afternoon,” he went on, “how about that?”

“How about it?”

“I thought I’d come to an age where I’d never do anything I hadn’t already done over and over.”

I took a good swig. The Ten High cleaned up the rough edges left by E.T.’s coke, relaxed my tight forehead. “Hell, we’re on a roll. What else have you never done before that you always wanted to do?”

“Let me think.”

“I could shampoo your hair, or give you a pedicure. Have you ever been fed grapes while lying on your back? I can sing. When was the last time someone sang you a lullaby?”

“Sixty years ago, at least.”

Sixty? I hadn’t realized Thorne was quite that old. A sixty-year-old man might be a first even for me.

A shine came into Thorne’s right eye. He licked his bottom lip. “I thought of something.”

“Uh-oh. I can tell what you thought by the gleam in your eyes.”

“You thought of it too?”

“Naked swimming foreplay, am I right? Then man-on-top-gets-a-sunburn?”

Thorne laughed. “Hell, no. I’ve played that game plenty of times.” He took the bottle back. “I want you and me to make love on a galloping horse.”

“Horse.” My voice squeaked. “I don’t like horses. They can’t stand me. Whatever makes you want to get laid on a horse?”

“I saw it in a movie once. Looked exciting.”

“Wars are exciting, but I’d rather not be in one.”

Thorne’s look was defensive and slightly hurt. “We don’t have to. You just asked what I always wanted to do and I told you.”

“Wait a minute, let me think.” I reached for the bottle, but he hadn’t had his turn yet, so I waited while Thorne drank, then handed it to me.

I took a big burning slug of Ten High. Thorne’s proposition shouldn’t have come as such a surprise. Every cowboy wants to bring his horse in on a three-way hump. They’re like bikers with Harleys and golf pros on the eighteenth green. Just a couple weeks ago Loren had suggested we borrow a horse from the VanHorns and make it on the run. And Loren’s not even a cowboy. He’s just a regular pervert.

It was a matter of self-worth and pride. Both as a singer and a wife-girlfriend, I’ve always considered my calling to be fulfiller of fantasies. I mean, I’m desirable, dammit. Men dream of someday meeting a woman like me and I find a lot of pleasure in making dreams come true. I’d never said no to a kinky position yet, and with Mickey Thunder as my first teacher, that’s a pretty dramatic claim. But on a horse—a running-over-the-prairie horse? Jesus. I hate horses.

By then, Laredo and Suzy Q had hopped almost around the pond to where the lonesome cow stood, chewing and blinking. Thorne would want to commit this act on Laredo, of course. Suzy Q lacked the pizzaz. Laredo was tall and brown with mean eyes. I wondered if the woman in Thorne’s movie faced forward or back. Either way would be insecure and I can’t stand insecurity, especially when I’m fucking.

Thorne straightened his legs on the blanket, then crossed his right ankle over the left boot heel. He didn’t say a word or even glance my way, but his eyes had that tired, vulnerable look again. By not trying to push me into guilt sex, he was making me feel guiltier than ever. My whole idea had been to hang around for a few days, giving him a pleasure jolt he could look back on in his old age. I couldn’t very well deny his first wish.

I threw down more Ten High. “Bareback or in the saddle?”

Thorne grinned. “Bareback.”

• • •

When she was eleven or twelve, Connie used to buy Seventeen magazine every month. I remember a column in it called “My Most Embarrassing Moment,” in which girls would confess true-life social blunders like thinking a big date was on Saturday when it was really on Friday, or taking the school bus two hundred miles to a band concert and finding nothing but a salami sandwich in your piccolo case. Most of the I-coulda-died situations didn’t strike me as all that awful. Nothing comparable to a heavy flow on white slacks or telling Mama you’re getting another divorce. Loren says the most embarrassing thing that can happen to a man is for his wife to commit suicide.

Horrible thought. Anyway, if Seventeen ever asks my opinion, I’ll claim mounting a horse naked as my most embarrassing moment. People who give human characteristics to animals are total idiots in my book, but, I swear, Laredo laughed his ass off.

Thorne mounted first. He sat way up there, brown as old Tony Lamas on his face and wrists, a kind of blank newsprint color everywhere else. His belly sagged some and there was extra flesh on his lower back. He held his right hand across to the left side. “Hop up.”

Without stirrups, “hop” wasn’t the proper word. Finally—after a scene from a bad Polish joke—I sat astride Laredo’s upper spine, facing Thorne and hanging on for dear life.

“Don’t squeeze so tight,” he said.

“I can’t help it.”

“That’s not a saddle horn.”

He nudged Laredo and stared off at a slow walk. “Put your hands on my hips,” Thorne said.

“I can’t let go.”

“You’ve got to let go or you’ll never get it in.”

“Let’s just ride a minute, try some foreplay. I think I’m pretty dry down there.”

Thorne kicked Laredo into a trot which caused a sensation like riding a giant bowling ball down steps. Bang, bang. Bang.

“This won’t be smooth unless we go faster,” he said.

“Stop.”

Thorne pulled Laredo to a halt. He tried to pry my fingers loose, without much luck.

“Your hair looks pretty in the wind,” Thorne said.

“Is it over? Did you get off?”

Laredo stood on top of a little knoll thing with me facing east and Thorne west. I know that horse was amused.

Thorne gave up on my fingers. “Tell you what, let’s stick it in at a dead stop, then go from there.”

“Stick what in?”

“Put both hands on my legs and raise yourself up. Then lower yourself on to me.”

“Like this?”

“You’ve got to let go first.”

I heard a thunk and Laredo reared up on his hind legs, slamming me into Thorne. We hung there for what seemed hours as Laredo kicked in the Heigh-ho, Silver position. When he came down, I banged back on his neck, then I flew—over the ears and past his evil eyes. I felt a momentary altitude gain before my hip and lower back smashed into a rock and my head came down hard. Laredo’s back hooves flashed by inches before my eyes.

A rock whizzed through the air over my head and I turned to see Darlene at the base of the knoll.

“I’m pregnant,” she screamed and let fly another rock. This one caught Laredo in the neck, causing another six seconds of bucking bronco. Thorne stayed with him, though I don’t know how. I’m not sure if he’d seen Darlene yet.

“Can’t you hear me?” she yelled. “I’m going to have a baby.”

I said, “No, you’re not.”

She heaved a rock at me, missed by eight feet. Then she whirled and ran.

• • •

Thorne leaned forward, soothing Laredo, whose nostrils flared and blew. The horse stood stiff-legged, shivering. I think he was braced for another rock.

“You okay?” Thorne asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Any bones broke?”

I lay back on the dirt to check my body parts. My toes moved so I figured my spine wasn’t snapped. My hip hurt like hell. With my fingers, I touched the beginnings of a goose egg on the back of my head. “No, I don’t think anything’s permanently broken.”

“You’re all right, then.” Thorne guided Laredo over to where I lay. He held his right hand out. “Hop up.”

I didn’t move. “Thorne, you’ve got to talk to Darlene.”

“I know it.”

“She’s sick. All these bizarre claims are cries for attention. You can’t ignore her anymore.”

Thorne took his hand back and sat up. “You a child psychologist?”

“No, but I raised two girls.”

“One hates you and the other lives with your old boyfriend.”

I was surprised he remembered that. “Yeah, but they’re happy—enough anyway. They don’t do bizarre things like Darlene.”

“Either one ever catch you fucking on a horse?”

“Good point.”

“Hop up.”

“I’d rather die.”

• • •

A hundred yards away we found tire tracks leading back to the pond and Suzy Q and nothing else. No blanket and picnic leavings, no saddles, no clothes, worst of all, no shoes.

Thorne said, “Damn her.”

I shuffled past Laredo and into the pond. About knee deep, I turned around and sat down, spreading my feet straight. The cool mud soothed my aching butt—some. My feet stung. I wanted to cry, but my head hurt too much.

Thorne was off Laredo, checking his lower legs. “Think all the bucking bruised a hoof,” he said. “We’ll have to ride double on Suzy Q going back.”

I leaned back until my head lump was in the water. “You’ll ride Suzy Q. I’m going to stay here and die.”

Thorne walked to the water’s edge. “No use being dramatic, Lana Sue. Come on.” He held out his right hand again.

I sat up. The water trailed off my hair and down my back. “Thorne, I’m serious. You’ll never get me on a horse again.”

“Walk, then.” He turned away.

“My feet are shreds already. I can’t walk.”

Thorne came back to the water. His penis had shrunk to the size of a broiled Vienna sausage. “Lana Sue, you’re not being tough. The first rule of getting bucked off is you gotta climb right back on.”

“You want tough, bring Janey back.”

“I don’t want Janey. I want you.”

“And speaking of tough, who tried to hack his arm off yesterday? Was that tough?”

I hurt him on that one. Thorne’s whole face sank. He gave up and turned old.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just real upset and in a lot of pain. I had no right to say that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Thorne went around the pond to untie Suzy Q’s hobble. I leaned back with my bump in the water, studying the sky, then sat up and watched him get the horses ready for the ride to the ranch house. Thorne wouldn’t look at me. In fact, he looked everywhere else but at me. After checking bits and belts, he stood between the horses with both sets of reins in his good hand, then he mounted Suzy Q. He held her reins in his left hand and led Laredo with his right. The three of them came over to where I sat in the pond.

Thorne’s eyes focused up on the horizon behind me and to my right. “I’ll send someone in a truck with some clothes.”

I said the only thing I knew that would save the old guy. At the moment, I felt so low, maybe I even meant it. Hell, I never know when I mean it. I said, “I love you, Thorne.”

He didn’t move for a long time. I guess he was considering saying, “I love you too,” but the cowboy finally got the best of him and he just blinked a couple of times and led off toward the ravine. As the horses reached the edge of the clearing, I called out, “Thorne.”

He stopped with his back to me.

“When you send someone with the clothes, don’t send E.T. He thinks I’m naked most of the time anyway.”

Thorne looked back and smiled.

• • •

Thorne was right, of course. Men are almost always right when they tell me things about myself—not that it does either of us any good. It’s just that “tough” had never been one of my goals. Roxanne is tough. My sister, Dessie, is tough. They’d both have bounced up off the rocks and jumped back on Laredo. Roxanne would be flying across the prairie, right now, head back, laughing, soaring into the orgasm of a lifetime. Dessie would have gone after Darlene and either seduced her or beat the living crap out of her. I was the only one who would squat on her ass in the mud at the edge of a stagnant tank in the middle of the goddamn desert and feel sorry for herself.

But I had excuses. People are supposed to be upset three days after their marriage breaks up. I missed my cabin and my creek and my cats. Darlene and E.T. weren’t my problems. I admire versatility, but making it on horseback just isn’t me. Maybe I wasn’t as exciting and open as I’d hoped. Maybe I was getting too old to strike out into the unknown whenever the known turned dull.

I missed Loren. In fact I missed everyone I’d ever loved—Cassie, Connie, Mickey, Ron, even stupid old Ace. Buggie, whom I loved secondhand and had never even met. Mama. Daddy. How could I have gotten so entangled with so many lives and wound up naked and alone? What a screw. Belly deep in mud, aching all over, the tears finally came.

• • •

Maria found me there a couple of hours later. She was so short, I could barely see the top of her head as the truck bounced over the wagon track from the homesteader cabin. I was real glad to see her. Two hours is about my mope limit, and, as the sun began its slide toward Utah, my depression was rapidly changing to cold boredom.

She parked by our picnic sagebrush. Where the day before Maria had been calmly efficient about providing me a wardrobe, today she was mostly amused.

“Fate will have you wear Janey’s pants,” Maria laughed—more of a smirk than a laugh. Her smile showed gleaming teeth and part of her top gum.

I tried to stand, but my hip stiffened into a spot weld. “You bring towels?”

“Of course.” Maria walked down to the water’s edge. “Do you always lose your clothes?”‘

I pulled my feet under me and raised myself out of the muddy water. My hip creaked. It was bruised the same dead banana color as Darlene’s lips. We finally had something in common.

“I never lost more than a sock in a dryer until I met your boss.”

“My father says if you lose your shirt more than once, you’ll get a reputation.”

“I’ve got a reputation, thank you.”

Maria wrapped me in a couple of towels. Then she slid under my arm and helped me stagger toward the truck. I was more stiff than in any pain, except for my feet.

“Did you bring shoes?” I asked.

She reached into the truck bed for a pair of bright yellow hightop sneakers with skull-and-crossbone patches on the sides.

“These’re E.T.’s,” I said.

“No one else has close to your size foot.”

“Then he knows about the latest escapade.”

“Everyone knows. Darlene went out in the daytime and Thorne rode into the barn naked. It caused talk.”

Maria lowered the gate so I could sit down to dry off and pull on Janey’s lumberjack suit. My feet were a mess.

“I’m sorry I lost your boyfriend’s jersey.”

“I’ll get it back from Darlene.”

“Could you get back my nine hundred dollars?”

“E. T.’s money was in your pocket?”

“All except the hundred you and I snorted.”

“I doubt if you will see it again. Darlene’s not too good with money.”

“Couldn’t be worse than me.”

• • •

Nine or ten cowboys lounged around the front of the barn when Maria and I pulled up to the house. They pretended not to look at me while I pretended not to look at them. I don’t know what they were hoping to see—tits or blood, I suppose. Nothing they hadn’t seen before. Cowboys used to be one of the last groups of American males with breast obsessions, but now that every ranch in the West has a satellite dish, I imagine the era of going apeshit over an exposed nipple has vanished into history.

Maria led me, limping, up the stairs and into a guest room. The room was cheerful. A vase of lupines and Indian paintbrush sat on a nightstand next to a queen-size bed.

“You will be wanting another bath?” Maria asked.

“Maria, you’re a godsend.”

“This one has no temperature control or whirlpool. Would you prefer using the tub in the master bedroom?”

“I prefer to hide here.”

Maria disappeared into the bathroom, so I sat on the edge of the bed and waited. The coverlet was an off-white fiberfill comforter with a ruffled thing around the sides. I couldn’t help wonder who had chosen it. No one in the family was into ruffled sides. My mom would have loved it.

The sound of running water came from the bathroom. Maria reappeared in the doorway. “There’s aspirin in the medicine cabinet and Grand Marnier under the sink. Do you think you’ll be needing anything else?”

“Who decorated this room, Maria?”

She looked around at the pictures and paintings on the walls. “Darlene threw almost everything she owned out of her room three years ago. I saved the dresser, that chest, some of the pictures. Janey sticks old stuff in here sometimes. I guess no one decorated it.”

“Whose coverlet was this?”

Maria studied the bedspread. “Darlene’s when she was young, I think.”

I felt the ruffles with my hand. “Was Darlene ever normal?”

“Not the five years since I’ve been here.”

As the tub filled, I wandered around, touching little empty jewelry boxes and poking into closets. A nice cedar chest sat at the end of the bed, but it was locked. I lifted one end for a weight check; the box was too light to hold much. I still wished I could find the key. On the left side of the dressing table mirror there was a Remington print of an Indian lying in the snow, spying on a covered wagon train. The frame was nice, teak or something.

On the right side there was a photograph of the Axel family in front of a large boat. E.T. and Darlene stood in front, holding a giant fish between them. E.T. had its head, Darlene its tail. I figured it was an ocean fish because of the wide fin. Thorne was behind Darlene with a hand on her shoulder, and Janey—I suppose it was Janey—hovered over the fish.

I lifted the photo off the wall. Judging from E.T. and Darlene, it looked like a scene from maybe ten years ago. E.T. was just as skinny as now, and had the same “What, me worry?” look in his eyes. His sweatshirt was aqua blue with a Miami Dolphins logo on it in white.

Darlene was the one I stared at the most. In the picture, she looked two or three years younger than E.T., although she doesn’t anymore. She wasn’t smiling—that would be asking too much—but she didn’t seem terribly angry either. Like any twelve- or thirteen-year-old on vacation with her parents, Darlene appeared embarrassed and bored. Her facial color was pale, but nothing abnormal. It was considerably darker than the fish’s belly. You couldn’t say that nowadays.

Thorne stood smiling and patient, possibly even proud, although whether it was pride in family or pride in being able to supply the fishing trip, I couldn’t tell. I wondered who took the picture. I imagined a guide.

Janey was almost as tall as Thorne, only huskier. I wouldn’t call it fat—husky. Imagine Telly Savalas in a dark wig. That’s unkind. Janey just looked like a ranchwoman who’d been expected to do a man’s work all her life. Wyoming prides itself on being the first state of sexual equality. They have a saying: “Wyoming—where men are men and women are too.” Janey seemed to have gotten herself caught in the saying.

Before my bath, I washed down three aspirins with a Dixie cupful of Grand Marnier. Afterwards, I turned off the light and lay down on Darlene’s old coverlet and fell asleep in Janey’s clothes and E.T.’s sneakers.

• • •

People might wonder why I came out of the bath and completely redressed down to the skull-and-crossbones sneakers before I slid onto the coverlet for some rest. The truth is, all this losing clothes stuff was making me paranoid. I know it had only happened twice, and the day before I hadn’t actually lost my clothes—I only destroyed an old shirt and stained a pair of Wranglers—but the whole thing had me spooked. It was not outside the realm of possibility that Darlene might smash through the door with a double-headed ax and come after me, and that’s not the kind of scene I care to handle nude.

Several times in my life, I’ve had periods of not knowing the realm of possibility. I used to like it. With Mickey I never knew what the hell might happen. That first couple of weeks in Nashville I thought my potential for stardom had no limits. Fat chance.

However, the last few years I have observed in the world that your general ratio is eight bad surprises for each good one. Eight people get run over by trucks for every one who finds true love from an unexpected source. Therefore, I’ve decided uncontrollable news is bad and should be avoided. And if you sense the unavoidable coming, meet it with your shoes on.

This is a pretty lengthy justification for dressing after a bath, but one of Loren’s prime symptoms of a man fucking up is that he wakes up with his shoes on, and I wanted to explain that this wasn’t a case of fucking up. It was a case of being careful.

Turns out I was right, too, because about the time I dropped off, someone scratched at the door.

Another one of Loren’s sayings is: Beware of people who scratch your door. God knows where he comes up with this stuff, but he’s always right. A book of Loren’s pithy axioms could get a person through most situations in life.

The scratch brought me wide awake. I lay there, wondering if it was someone at the door or rats in the walls. It came again, then the door cracked open an inch, E.T. slipped through, and the door shut again.

“Hsst.”

“Turn on the light, E.T.”

By the time my eyes adjusted, he was sitting next to me on the side of the bed. “Hi, Mama. You like my sneakers?”

I pulled myself up and sat with my back against the headboard. “They’re fine. Thanks for the loan.”

“I heard you had another adventure.” He was dressed the same as that morning, only with a sleeveless, very faded jeans jacket over his T-shirt. When he leaned forward, I could see an embroidered Grateful Dead album cover on his back. Behind his horn-rims, his blinking had taken on a gentle up-and-down sagging motion, like waves washing onto a Gulf Coast beach.

“Have you seen Darlene? I need to talk to her about nine hundred dollars.”

“Darlene has your money?”

“I want it back.”

“Then you can’t pay for any more toot with money?”

“I came down, E.T. I don’t want more toot.”

He pulled the coke from his jacket pocket and snorted right in front of me. The bag was considerably lighter than it had been at seven-thirty that morning, which meant E.T. either sold a lot or did a lot or both. He plugged one nostril with an index finger and sniffed. A speck of white powder perched on the end of his nose.

“Once Darlene gets hold of money, it’s gone. I never have figured out what she does with it since she never leaves the house. Until today. I think it’s a good sign that she went outside in the daylight, don’t you?”

“She went outside to break my neck.”

“She’s got to start somewhere.” He held out a heaping coke spoon of the powder. “Want some fun?”

“What’s it cost?”

He grinned, showing teeth. “We’ll work something out.”

The only reason I even wavered is because it’s hard to turn down something that a lot people are desperate to have. I didn’t want the crap. Effects from this morning’s buzz were all gone except a vague pain in my spine, and that was nothing compared to the real pain in my hip. Had E.T. been offering some kind of prescription painkiller, I might have gone with temptation, but the sight of cocaine crystals just made me nauseous.

“I can turn your brain to happy gas.” E.T. said.

“I don’t want gas for a brain. What I’d really like is to rest awhile.”

E.T. was shocked. “No toot?”

“Sleep.”

He grinned. “How about my shoes?”

I looked down at the yellow sneakers. “They’re awfully wide. You must be quite a swimmer.”

“You want to buy my Dead tennies?”

“No, I don’t want to buy your Dead tennies.”

He reached for my feet. “Then give them back.”

I swatted his hands away. “When you get my sandals from Darlene, I’ll return your tennis shoes.”

“I want them now.”

“You can’t have them now.”

E.T. sat back and did another snort. At this rate he was sure to have a heart attack by midnight and it would be my fault. I could just see Thorne’s face when I told him I killed his kid.

E.T. seemed to be hyperventilating. He wheezed, “You’re stealing my sneakers.”

“How can I buy them? You know Darlene took my money. You don’t accept Visa, do you? There’s a Visa card in the Toyota.”

E.T. pouted. “That’s my only pair of yellow sneakers.”

“I’d like to help, but you’re not touching these shoes.”

I knew damn well what was coming. The boy was unrealistic. He gave me that dumb grin again. “Maybe we could work something out.”

“You want to trade dirty old tennis shoes for sexual favors?”

He shrugged. “They aren’t so dirty.”

“Leave or I break your glasses.”

“Mama—”

“I’ll dump your coke out the window.”

“That’s going too far.”

I stared into his dull, blinking eyes. “You know I can do it, E.T. I am no longer putting up with colorful behavior.”

“We could do a toot and laugh about the day. I’ll give you a free snort.”

“Out.”

After he left, I got up to turn off the light and look at the Red Desert stretching away in the moonlight. Shadows moved behind the curtains in the bunkhouse windows. A couple of horses trotted around the perimeter of a corral. A soundless jet crossed the sky like an east-moving star. I’ve never had the temperament for standing in dark rooms, staring moodily out at the view, but this time it was kind of nice.

I remembered when I was nine or ten years old and Daddy made us turn off Jack Benny to go stand in the backyard and look at the first Sputnik. We craned our necks while he pointed and pointed and Mom kept saying, “They all look the same to me,” until I finally figured out which star was moving through the others. There must have been thousands of satellites cross the night sky since then, but I haven’t seen any except the first.

My peaceful time-out lasted maybe eight seconds before the doorknob rattled and the hinges squeaked. I blew up. “No toot, no sex for sneakers. No nothing. Now leave me alone.”

“Sneakers for sex?” It was Thorne’s voice.

“I thought you were someone else.”

“If it’s one of my children, I don’t want to hear about it.”

That was fine by me because I didn’t want to talk about it. We stood in the soft darkness for a few moments, watching each other. I wondered what the repercussions of saying, “I love you,” would be. Would he run away or latch on? Or neither. Maybe he wouldn’t expect anything or be afraid of anything. That was doubtful—men who can accept love are rarer than hare-lipped cover girls.

“I thought you might be hungry,” Thorne said. He held out a white pizza box.

“What time is it?”

“Nine, maybe nine-thirty. Why?”

“Don’t turn on the light. I’ve had all the glare I can handle for one day.”

His dark form moved across the room and set the box on the bed. “I was driving around and got hungry. Thought you might like some pizza.”

I crossed to the bathroom and reached in to flip on the light-switch. With the door open a few inches, it gave the bedroom a relaxed, easy glow.

“You bought a pizza?”

“Hamburger and onion.”

“How’d you find a pizza parlor in the desert?”

Thorne kind of chuckled. “There’s a Shakey’s in town—Rock Springs. After I left you I drove around all afternoon and ended up there.”

“That’s forty miles.”

“More like two hundred the way I went.” He took a bite. “It’s still warm. I came the direct way back.”

Pizza smelled good. It wasn’t hot, but it wasn’t cold yet either. “You’ve taken off your bandages,” I said.

“Got in the way of driving.”

“Let me see.” The cut ran sideways, drawn together by long, black stitches. “Does it hurt anymore?”

“Some.”

We ate the pizza in silence, both of us staring at the closed window. Afterwards, Thorne set the box with some crusts on the floor and we held hands awhile. I started to talk about Jackson Hole and my cabin, but that kind of petered out when it led to Loren.

Thorne told me about a pet pig he’d raised as a boy. He’d named it Teddy after Teddy Roosevelt. It was one of those “only thing I ever really loved” stories, the kind that ends with the pet winning a blue ribbon at the county fair and finding itself auctioned off to the slaughterhouse. The moral being: You only kill the ones you love. It was a sad story to hear coming from a sixty-something-year-old man. Thorne still grieved.

Afterwards, he leaned forward and almost kissed me, but didn’t. “So, you want to get married?” Thorne asked.

“No.”

He seemed to accept my answer. He didn’t push it anyway. Much later he leaned me back on the bed and we made love. I don’t think Thorne had been with many women other than Janey.

There’s something touching about being with a man who’s somewhat clumsy in bed. It’s as if he’s going on desire and emotion rather than technical experience. Makes me feel more appreciated, less like a judge at a gymnastics meet. It’s not something I’d want to do every day, of course, but the lack of fire is made up for by how good I feel about myself afterwards. It’s like the glow I used to feel on Christmas morning with Connie and Cassie. Or that dizziness after I donate to a Red Cross blood drive.

Later, Thorne slept with his head between my breasts. I lay there awhile, staring at the ceiling, thinking, and wishing for a cigarette.

• • •

I awoke to confusion—shouts outside, doors slamming, orange light on the window, feet running in the hall. Gritz’s mustache appeared above the bed.

“Barn’s on fire, boss.” He didn’t say it with any more urgency than “Time for breakfast” or “Rain coming.” By the time I realized what he meant, Gritz was gone and Thorne was pulling on his jeans. I ran to the window. Flames licked from the hayloft. Slivers of fire crept up the eaves. Men ran in and out the loading doors, saving machinery, tools, and tack. A guy pulled on Laredo’s reins as the horse fought to go back in.

“Holy Christ,” I said, but Thorne was already out the door.

I threw on Janey’s clothes and E.T.’s sneakers. As I ran down the hall, I have to admit my first thought was how glad I was that the fire wasn’t in the house. I flashed a vivid picture of myself running naked from the burning building into E.T.’s waiting arms. Even the mental picture was horrifying.

The front yard wasn’t nearly as chaotic as I’d expected. There was a lot of noise and rushing, but everyone seemed to be doing his job. Five or six cowboys were hauling out the last of what could be saved. Another five or six worked with hoses down by the windmill. The hoses were obviously worthless. The barn’s entire roof was burning. The fire made a sound like rushing air. I could hear the loft breaking up, falling into the main floor.

Thorne and Gritz stood about halfway between the house and the barn. I don’t think either one was aware of my presence.

“Get those men out of there,” Thorne shouted. “Anything inside now is gone.”

Gritz shielded his face with a raised arm. “Laredo was the only horse in the stalls and we saved him. This’ll cook the chickens.”

“How much hay?”

“Not much—fifteen, twenty ton. I sure hate to lose that saddle.”

“I hate to lose that barn.”

I don’t know which one screamed. I heard a sound and turned to see E.T. dragging Darlene through the loading-bay doors. He had her around the middle, half dragging, half carrying, while she thrashed her arms and legs, a child in a temper tantrum. They were almost out when she bent over and bit one of his hands. He jerked. She broke free. She ran a couple of steps back into the fire, fell, and he caught her again. By then, Thorne and another cowboy were there to help.

They dragged her away from the fire, Darlene screaming and crying the whole way. Her face was black from the smoke or soot. Her shirt tore off, leaving her in a bra white as the exposed skin.

All the cocaine added to the adrenaline fear-rush must have blown E.T.’s circuits because he floated along behind the scene looking practically calm. Serene maybe, like a shock therapy patient. He drifted over and said, “Hey,” seemingly oblivious to the fire at his back and Darlene’s hysterics.

“You okay?” I asked him.

“My Dead tapes are safe.”

Darlene calmed down enough to blame Thorne for the fire. “This is your fault, you started this.”

Thorne held both her wrists. He looked into Darlene’s fierce eyes. “Your mother and I built that barn before you were born. Why would I burn it?”

“Because you hate yourself.”

An explosion blew a wall of hot air out the front of the barn, knocking two cowboys off their feet. I saw Billy G get up still clutching the hose. I hadn’t destroyed his life after all.

“What was that?” Thorne shouted over the roar.

“Fifteen gallons of gasoline,” E.T. said. We all turned on him. “She bought thirty gallons, but left fifteen in a tank by the back door.”

“Where’d she get the money to buy that much gas?” Thorne asked.

Darlene jumped at me and shrieked. Then she whirled back at Thorne. “Got you, got you,” she laughed, “I bet you don’t bring whores home while Mama’s away now, Daddy dear.”

Thorne slapped her. She fell into the dirt and stared up at him, her black face reflecting the firelight. E.T. screamed, “You son of a bitch,” and jumped on Thorne’s back. Thorne spun around, clawing at E.T. until he worked him up on one shoulder. Then he lifted E.T. and threw him across the yard and onto Darlene. Out of breath, Thorne pointed at them. “You two are off the ranch. You’re out of my life. It’s suicide or throwing you out and I’m throwing you out.”

Darlene pulled the hair out of her eyes. Tears ran clear, scar-like streaks through the black of her face. She pulled herself up on her hands and knees and hissed, “Mama knows everything you do.”

Back in the crowd of onlookers, I thought of my daughters and Buggie, my parents, Loren’s mother. You can’t stop loving someone just because they’re a disappointment. Loren needed me. I needed him.

I said, “Crack.”

No one heard except Gritz. His mustache turned until he was looking at me from one eye. He said, “Good riddance.”

“Didn’t know you cared, Gritz.”

He spit and moved away to help Billy G and the others with the hoses. In the flickering, flashing light of the burning barn, I turned and walked to the Toyota. E.T. never would recover his sneakers.