IT WAS JUST PAST MIDDAY WHEN WE PULLED INTO FORT Sumner, passing a big antique shop that functioned as a kind of homemade Billy the Kid museum. We stopped at a little café on the main street and ate lunch. Cindy consumed her third steak in less than twelve hours.
“That’s your third steak in twelve hours,” I pointed out.
“So what?” she said. “Did you expect me to ask them for veal niçoise?” She was slightly belligerent, in her insecurity.
The waitress at the café was named Myrtle. I knew her slightly, from past visits. She was a big rawboned woman who took life lightly. This last was an uncommon trait in eastern New Mexico, at least in my experience.
“Seen Uncle Ike today?” I asked, when Myrtle brought up two orders of peach cobbler and a little pitcher of cream to pour on them.
“Yeah, he come in and gummed on a doughnut awhile,” she said. “I don’t see what keeps the pore old sucker from starvin’ to death. He hasn’t had a tooth in his head since 1956 and he won’t wear his dentures ’less he’s on the TV.”
“What sort of mood’s he in?” I asked.
“Bad,” Myrtle said. “Hoot’s been beating him at dominoes, day after day. Uncle Ike ain’t won in two weeks. Losing always makes him feisty. He peed in the street three times last week—I don’t know what we’re gonna do with the old sucker.”
As we were about to cross the street to the little domino parlor where Uncle Ike spent his days we heard my car phone ring.
“Answer it,” Cindy said. “It might be my service.”
I didn’t think it was her service, and I was right. It was Coffee.
“Where are you?” she said. “You never call me anymore.”
“I’m in New Mexico,” I said. “I’m very busy but I’ll call you a little later.”
Cindy was standing two inches away, listening to every word.
“I’m very disappointed in you, Jack,” Coffee said. “You used to call.”
“Well, I’m very busy,” I said.
“Oh, you always are, now,” Coffee said, with a heartbreaking little crack in her voice. “You used to treat me with kind respect, but now you treat me awful.”
I wanted to deny that I treated her awful, I wanted to tell her I’d come and see her, I wanted to ask her why she sounded so unhappy, but I didn’t want to do any of those things with Cindy two inches away, waiting with palpable annoyance for me to get off the phone.
“I’m just trying to make a big buy,” I said. “I’ll call you when I can.”
Coffee sighed. She put her whole strange little heart into the sigh.
“I thought I could count on you,” she said. “I thought you’d be the one who was always nice.”
I was beginning to think it was time to get rid of the car phone. It was bringing me nothing but awkwardness.
“Coffee, will you just wait,” I said. “I’ll call you when I can. It’s not the end of the world.”
“How would you know?” she said. “It might be.”
Then she hung up.
“Why do you let her call you if you’re divorced?” Cindy asked immediately. As we crossed the street she put her sunglasses back on, a signal that she was very annoyed. Two cowboys in a pickup stared at her as they went by, and then made a U-turn in order to come back by and stare at her again.
“The fact that you’ve divorced somebody doesn’t mean you stop knowing them,” I pointed out.
“It would if I did it,” Cindy said with finality.
After the windy brightness of the street the little domino parlor was cool, dim, and dark. Only three people were in it: Uncle Ike, a man named Hoot who looked older than Uncle Ike but was thirty-five years younger, and a man they called Junior, who might have been in his late sixties. They were concentrating hard on their play and we did nothing to disturb them until Hoot started to shuffle the dominoes.
“You’re a goddamn cheater,” Uncle Ike said, addressing Hoot. “That’s how come you’re winning.”
“I’m smart is how come I’m winnin’,” Hoot said.
“Well, I’ve known a lot of smart men that was domino cheats,” Uncle Ike said. Of the three he looked much the most alert, and was also the most spiffily dressed. He had taken long ago to wearing a clean white shirt every day, and to polishing his boots once a week, just in case a TV crew from Clovis or Albuquerque happened to wander in hoping to get a few shots of him on his home ground. His shirt was starched to such a crispness that it crackled when he moved his dominoes. In contrast, both Hoot and Junior were dressed in dirty khakis. They both wore oily dozer caps, whereas Uncle Ike had on a neat, small-brimmed Stetson.
Uncle Ike had originally been of a fair complexion, but 110 years in the wind and sun of New Mexico had gradually freckled him to an unusual degree. He consisted of layer upon layer of freckles, overlapped and interwoven into a mosaic so thick that he seemed actually to be brown, rather than fair. What was left of his hair was snow white. When we came in his teeth were out, resting beside his elbow on the domino table.
“It’s Jack,” Hoot said, recognizing me. “I guess he finally got marrit.”
Uncle Ike swiveled around at once to inspect my wife, and took a good long look at Cindy. His blue eyes had not lost any of their keenness. He looked mostly at her nipples, which were puckered from our walk across the cold street. He snapped his gums a few times, reflectively.
“Air you his wife?” he asked Cindy.
“Un-uh,” Cindy said, not very impressed with the domino parlor or the three men in it.
“I guess you’re from Hollywood then,” Uncle Ike said. “Wanta make a motion picture about me? It wouldn’t be the first chanct I’ve had to be in a motion picture.”
“Howdy, Uncle Ike,” I said. “You’re looking feisty.”
“He peed in the street three times last week,” Hoot remarked. “They’re gonna put him away if he keeps that up.”
“Who’s gonna do the puttin’?” Uncle Ike asked belligerently. “I doubt they’ll send in the National Guard just because I took a piss.”
“If that fat deputy ever gets the cuffs on you they won’t need no National Guard,” Junior remarked.
The threat of arrest did not seriously interest Uncle Ike. He had not yet taken his little blue eyes off Cindy’s nipples.
“How much is she gonna pay me to be in the motion picture?” he asked, addressing me. “If it’s just a talk show I ain’t interested. Get enough talk show business right around here.”
“She’s not from Hollywood,” I said.
Uncle Ike worked his gums several times.
“Air you a libber?” Uncle Ike said. Cindy had definitely caught his interest.
Cindy didn’t reply. She was waiting for me to begin negotiations for the boots, that and nothing more.
“You’ll be right at home around here, if you’re a libber,” Uncle Ike said.
“Yeah, Myrtle’s a libber,” Hoot said.
“She’s always been sassy,” Uncle Ike said. “That woman’s sassed me about enough.”
“She may sass you some more, before she’s through,” Junior said.
“Somebody ought to take and break a bed slat over that woman’s noggin,” Uncle Ike remarked.
“I wish you’d hurry up,” Cindy said, to me.
“This lady’s got an art gallery,” I said. “It’s in Washington, D.C. She’s gonna put on a big exhibition of cowboy boots in about a month. We thought maybe you’d loan us the Kid’s boots for a week or two, if we made it worth your while.”
“Okay,” Uncle Ike said, without a moment’s hesitation, surprising us all.
“I guess he’s finally gone round the bend, Junior,” Hoot said.
Though surprised, I was not immediately euphoric. From the way Uncle Ike was staring at Cindy I knew he had something up his sleeve.
“Well, great,” I said. “It’s just like we’ll be renting them for about a month. How much do you want?”
“I always did want to go to Washington, D.C.,” Uncle Ike said. “Hell, ol’ Geronimo got to go. All them old mangy Indian chiefs got to go.”
“A hunnert and ten and all he wants to do is travel,” Hoot said.
“Whose else boots was you gonna get for your show?” Uncle Ike inquired.
“Well, maybe Pancho Villa’s,” I said.
“I never cared for Mexican boots,” Uncle Ike said.
He snapped his gums a few times.
“You can rent them boots for five hunnert a month,” he said. “But where they go I go. You gotta rent me with ’em. I’ll cost you another five hunnert plus expenses. And the hotel room better have color TV.”
“He’s hopin’ for one of them dirty movie channels,” Hoot said. “They got ’em in Albuquerque now.”
It was an unexpected turn of events. Uncle Ike wanted to go to Washington.
“Why should a goddamn mangy Indian get to go someplace I ain’t been?” he asked. Evidently he had been brooding about the matter for seventy-five or eighty years.
“I guess we could manage that,” I said. Cindy was inscrutable, behind her dark glasses.
“If you see the President tell him to cut out this socialism,” Hoot said.
“Well, I might not get asked to the White House,” Uncle Ike said. “I ain’t no Indian chief.”
“Aren’t we even gonna see the boots?” Cindy asked.
There was silence for a moment.
“She’s got a mind of her own, ain’t she?” Uncle Ike said. “You best take a bed slat to her before she takes one to you.”
I knew the boots were in a bank vault in Clovis.
“We do have to go right back through Clovis,” I said. “Maybe we could just stop and look at the boots.”
“I’ll take the five hunnert for the boots in advance,” Uncle Ike said. “And I ain’t gonna do but one talk show a day. Too many talk shows fog up my system.”
His system looked clear as crystal to me. He had scarcely taken his eyes off Cindy the whole time. I tried to get him to discuss a few details but he was mainly interested in staring at Cindy’s nipples.
“I guess you’re one of them bra-burnin’ libbers,” he remarked. Then he put his teeth in, called his banker, and arranged for us to look at the boots. We agreed to send him a plane ticket Albuquerque–to–Washington once the exhibition date was set.
“Don’t forget about the color TV,” he said, as we turned to walk back to the car.