I was so ready for the pretty, Christmas-card-y scene that Colorado Street always is after a fresh snow that I was startled to see just a light scattering of crusted gray corn snow on my flowerbeds, left over from an inch that had fallen earlier that week. The walks and street were clean and dry.
Then I realized with a start who this person who was not Ben was. “Travis Bismarck.”
“Right,” he said, imitating the way I say it. For some reason people have made fun of that, since I was quite young.
At that hour, every street in Gunnison is quiet. Not just “the occasional car passing” quiet. Really quiet. No moving cars, no people. You’re more likely, even in the middle of town, to see a deer than to meet a neighbor.
Travis stood in the hard-edged yellow downlight of my porch’s overhead flood, looking like a sentimentalized painting of himself. That’s what light in warm colors with sharp shadowing will do. (I would need to remember this to use as an example in teaching lighting class, when my sabbatical was over.)
Travis is just over six feet tall with no extra fat, long in the legs and arms, narrow all the way down, with muscles that are flat and hard more than bulging and thick. I’d sparred with him in a few different martial arts here and there, and though, if I got him cornered, I could pound his guard down and then manhandle him, first I had to catch him, which was unlikely. I was far too slow ever to foot-sweep him or beat him to a punch.
He has coarse, planar features, but smooth soft skin, as if the sculptor had said well, fuck the detail work, I’ll just go right to the sanding. His nose, like mine, is a little frog-button that barely keeps his eyes from scrambling in the middle. But he has a strong, square jaw, his hair is black without the aid of dye, his face doesn’t bag and wrinkle and run down the front of his skull the way mine does, and he has marvelous, clear, piercing blue eyes. He always looked handsome standing next to me, and now he looks fifteen years younger than I do. And he’s four years older, may God fling his filthy soul onto the hottest coals in hell.
For five years, our communications had been a few Christmas cards and a couple of late-night drunk dials.
“Well, come on in.” His boots were clean, so I motioned him to Kara’s huge old futon couch and said, “All right, what brings you to my door?”
“Well, a nice old boy driving a load of cows from Saguache on up to some ranch by Crested Butte brought me most of the way. I hitched a ride into Gunnison—still had your address in my electronic palm dingus, and was about to tell that trucker to dump me at the four corners and I’d look around for somewhere to get coffee and directions, when I saw the sign for Colorado Street, and had him let me out.
“So then I just walked on up here, saw you had a light on in the basement, thought maybe you were up early writing—or up
late—and rang your bell. I would’ve called ahead but I wasn’t even sure I’d be stopping in Gunnison; it kind of depended on where my ride turned off. And I didn’t want to wake you up. But when I saw that your light was on down there, and knowing two writers live here, I figured either you’d let me in or old Kara would.”
“And you were right,” I admitted. “I have no judgment where old friends are concerned, and she has an irrational desire to populate the house with vagrants. Anyway, try not to look around too much. The place is a fucking sty. Are you up late or up early?”
“Up late. Gonna be up longer, too.”
“Coffee, or Wild Turkey?”
“Let’s compromise and do both,” he said, which had always been our mutual favorite slogan. “Double up the Turkey. You’re up early to write, not late to finish, right?”
“Right.”
“So you got any of that Pure Black Evil you drink while you write?”
“I like to be able to taste coffee, not just warm brown water.” I went back to the kitchen, poured another big mug of nice fierce coffee for me, then poured one for Trav and added his two shots of Wild Turkey.
I settled back into a big papasan chair that Kara usually sat in, facing Travis, and took a glorious sip of coffee, realizing that I was not going to have to explain daisite, shovel snow, or swim, for several hours at least. The day was starting off great.
“So, John, is the little woman asleep?”
“Kara’s asleep,” I said, “and that might be the stupidest possible thing you could call her.”
“God knows why, John, but your lovely wife forgives me.”
“She says you amuse her. She says the same thing about the guy that eats live chickens in the sideshow, by the way.” Kara liked
Travis, which was a puzzlement to me. My first wife had hated him, and I certainly understood that. But no matter who liked him, or not, he has stayed in my life longer than both of them, and all the girlfriends between, all put together.
I got married just a couple years after graduating from college, and started my alternation between getting tired of good jobs and getting tired of grad school. By then Travis was just finishing his second stint in the Army and trying to start his business as a private detective. Trav and I stayed in touch but not as much; he had decided to set up in Billings, Montana, and we lived in St. Louis and then in New Orleans. Besides, my first wife thought he was a jerk, and definitely not the kind of friend her husband was supposed to have.
But then after a while we moved to Missoula, and even though that’s 350 miles from Billings, Westerners don’t think of that as much of a distance. (Hell, we used to drive to Spokane and back, about four hundred miles round-trip, for a decent Chinese dinner and a chance to see a movie the first weekend it was out.) So Travis and I saw more of each other—he’d drop by for the Missoula science fiction convention, or I’d be over there for some academic conference at Eastern Montana College, or he’d come out to see a Montana Repertory performance if I was road-teching, or we’d go to some ski area in between on a weekend. One way or another we were in touch.
Then I moved to Pittsburgh, and I’d see Travis whenever missing persons cases took him that way, or whenever Kara and I took a trip up to Montana. (We did our honeymoon up there, and went through Billings on our way west; after all these years, Kara and I can still crack each other up by referring to our night in Billings, the second night of our marriage, which involved Travis, the Worst Country Band On The Planet, a pack of very obese coyotes, and
“okay, so let the blind guy drive.” But that’s an entirely different story.)
The last time I’d seen Travis in the flesh had been when he was tracking a deadbeat dad in the northern part of West Virginia, and had stopped in for an evening to visit Kara and me; it was during the ten days or so while we were packing to move out of Pittsburgh, off to my new job in Gunnison.
We’d stopped long enough to clean up and grab a meal with Travis at the Star of India, near the Carnegie, a great little restaurant which was kind of a magnet for events in my life. It was there that I’d started writing One For the Morning Glory, successfully hit on a Norwegian grad student in robotics by getting into a conversation about glue, planned a huge all-day-long outdoor theatre cycle with four friends (it was never produced, foundations having no vision and us having no money), told my parents I was going to marry Kara, and broken up with a stripper. Not all on the same night, by the way.
Looking back, that evening at the Star of India might have foreshadowed something, if anything had happened connected with that evening, instead of the utterly different things I’m reporting in this book.
Travis and I were now both five years older, and none of it showed on him; all ten of it showed on me, I’m afraid. Small college theatre professors work a lot of hours. I was glad to see him but he could have had the decency to be a bit less of a contrast to me. “Okay, Travis, why are you here? And don’t tell me it’s because your old man was too impatient to go to the drugstore.”
“Damn. Another corny joke shot to hell with overuse. Well, all right. You’ve always been willing to give me a ride when I needed one, and I don’t forget that.” He took a big swallow of his coffee-and-Turkey, about half the cup I would judge, which would have
made my eyes sting and my head ring—I keep my coffee at least as hot as McDonald’s keeps the stuff they use for giving old ladies third-degree burns in the crotch. Add that much good whiskey and it will open up your sinuses right through the top of your head.
“Travis,” I said, “of course you don’t forget that I give you rides when you need them. Sometimes you need another ride. And within reason, you’re welcome; I have to go to Denver tonight anyway.”
“Goddam. Perfect. And I knew I could count on you, John, I knew it.” He took another big gulp of that fierce stuff.
Travis is a very sentimental guy, but he hates to admit it, so he normally doesn’t say that kind of thing. I looked at him a little closer.
I knew that having him as a friend meant he’d show up irregularly and ask strange favors. I have several friends like that. It’s part of their charm, really, even if I do get grumpy and unhappy when I can’t do them the particular favor they ask for. It’s worth the frustration, though, because often I can, and anyway, having friends like that is kind of like being unexpectedly dumped into a scavenger hunt or improv comedy sketch (or both at once) a few times a year. Anyway, I don’t want that side of my life to change.
But drinking Turkey-and-Evil that fast … and something about his expression … this was more than Travis’s usual embarrassment at needing some odd favor. More than his usual pleasure at bringing me a weird story. He looked scared.
“Trav, are you in some kind of legal trouble? Or being followed by somebody violent?”
“Maybe both, John. I’m sorry. I know you got a house and a respectable job and you’re up for tenure and everything, and your wife’s just a little bitty thing, and all. I’m pretty sure I shook off anybody following me but you know that’s never certain. I wouldn’t be here if I had much choice.”
“So you’re being followed, or you might be?”
“I was being followed. As far as Alamosa. I changed IDs and rental cars in Santa Fe, but they stayed with me, so I ditched that car in Alamosa in long-term parking at the airport, took a cab out to a truck stop, hitched to Saguache, then found a ride with another semi this way. That Alamosa airport only has flights to Denver, and the other side must know I’m going to Denver eventually, so basically I faked for Denver and zagged here. Even if they tracked me to Saguache, where I changed rides, they’d be expecting me to be headed for Denver, either the Fairplay way or the Leadville way.”
“Who are they?” I was not pleased. Everything he’d said was true—I had plenty to lose by getting involved in the kind of thing that was Travis’s bread and butter. Plus, I’m no good at it. I write about adventures. Having them is something else. I had stiff joints and a big gut, and very likely was a coward too since nothing had tested my courage in a while and it probably atrophied like a muscle that isn’t used.
Travis sometimes had enemies who were not gun-averse and didn’t seem to think bystanders were innocent. I don’t keep a gun in the house because I wake up disoriented and do strange things till I’m fully awake. I once picked up my cat Anata, held him to my ear, and said “Hello?” when I was awakened by a friend knocking on the door. I’m always finding half-finished cooking projects in the kitchen, later in the day, that I can’t remember starting.
So if Travis had brought trouble with him, I was in for a good stomping, followed by god-knew-what happening to Kara. That’s the kind of thing that can make you angry, even at an old friend that you normally forgive for everything.
And that awareness just rubbed in how jealous I was about his youth and energy, compared to the way I was wearing out. We’d gone down such different roads. In my college days I’d almost kept
up with him. He’d dropped out of Wash U after sophomore year—a little matter of not having attended classes. By then he was working part-time for a detective agency in Brentwood. He went back into the Army again to be an MP.
They stationed him at Fort Leonard Wood, so he came back to St. Louis pretty often. He’d let me know he was coming, and if I didn’t have a judo tournament or a tech rehearsal on a Saturday, he’d call me late Friday night from some truck stop out on the edge of town, and I’d drive out to wherever the semi had dropped him. Then we’d spend the weekend wandering around the Delmar Loop or the Central West End, eating, drinking, and annoying women who were way out of our league.
A few times, when he could give me more notice, I managed to find a great big fat girl with long hair for Travis, and someone short and tiny for me, and the four of us drove out to some little river town down towards Cape Girardeau for what Trav called a Redneck Heaven Weekend—even though he was a fake redneck and I wasn’t one at all. We’d stay in a cheap hotel, go to someplace where the girls could sunbathe and we could drink during the day, then dance and drink at some roadhouse Saturday night, then back to the room for drunken sex.
When I divorced the first time, and moved to Pittsburgh, Travis came along on the trip to keep me more or less sane. Depending, of course, on what you call sane.
One night in Sheridan, Wyoming, my truck had been broken down for two days, with a day yet to go before it was fixed. It was the height of tourist season, so there was nowhere to stay through the whole time; we had to move on a night-to-night basis. That night all we could find to stay in was a bridal suite with two huge heart-shaped beds and a six-person lipstick-red hot tub. I kept speculating about how many guests the average couple brings for
the wedding night these days, but Travis told me that this was the cynicism of the newly divorced.
For old times’ sake we went out and located two cases of Pearl beer, which is terrible stuff but Travis likes it, plus one big heavy prostitute and one tiny little blonde one. I guess that was when I started to notice who was aging faster. I had a nice time but I was all done well inside my hour; the girl just hung around because she was waiting for her next call, and besides she and I were watching, in a spirit of complete awe, what was happening on the other side of the room.
After all those years, Travis still had all the single-minded endurance of a priapic sheltie. He also still made those weird noises. The small blonde woman nestled under my arm would periodically whisper, urgently, “Are they okay over there? She’s kind of my friend …”
I suppose I should have rejoiced that something, at least, was stable in my universe, and just the way it was when I was twenty-one, but mostly it just made me feel old.
And looking at him, right now, on my sofa, clear-eyed and vigorous and looking like he was more up for a brawl than ever, apparently after being awake for many hours and having just breakfasted on bourbon—all right, Travis still looked like he could handle anything. But the contrast only made things more acute for me. I felt even older—and in danger—danger I couldn’t hope to cope with.
“Relax, John, your shoulders are up to your ears and you look like you’re going to need your blood pressure medicine. I don’t think you or Kara is in any danger. I shook my tail hard and doubled back and shook it again. If trouble does show up, I’m here and it’s me they’re after. As soon as I go, you’ll be out of this again, and don’t you dare even think about lying or not talking if someone
turns up asking questions. Just tell them whatever they ask, so they leave you and Kara alone, and you let me worry about whatever happens, ’kay?”
I took a bigger swallow of the coffee than I intended, enough to make my eyes tear a little, swallowed hard, counted ten, and remembered that without Travis, and certain other friends like him, my life would be entirely vegetative, and I would be even more depressed, even fatter, and feeling even more old. “All right,” I said, “suppose you tell me what we’re at no risk of. I doubt I’m getting any more words today, anyway.”
He finished his cup in another gulp that would have melted my head. “’Spose I can get a refill? Just one Turkey this time. I want to try to fool you into thinking I’m coherent.”
“I don’t know if that’s possible at this point, Trav.” I went out to the kitchen, topped up my own cup, gave him another shot of Wild Turkey, and topped up his.
When he’d had a sip—he didn’t seem to be gulping this one—he curled one leg under the other in a peculiar way he has that looks like a teenage dance student. He rubbed the back of his neck, and began. “Now you’re John again. Now you’re my favorite old bewildered small-town Midwestern boy.”
“The man with the word ‘chump’ glowing on his forehead.”
“The man who always listens when it gets weird. Because it has been getting weird. I need to talk it over with somebody who’s used to thinking about weird stuff, because it’s been wall-to-wall weird for the last few weeks.”
“I gather it’s been weird.”
“You never did do irony well,” Travis said. “You smirk too much.” Then he leaned way back and appeared to be reading the story to me from a screen that only he could see, on one of the thick log
beams of the ceiling. After a few minutes I slipped into Kara’s office for a second and borrowed a notepad from her pile of them—we both did that all the time—and began to take notes. Travis didn’t stop, or even seem to notice.