The water in the newly completed Big Dog reservoir was cold enough to be used as anesthesia, but Buster waded in, nonetheless. Why he didn’t bathe in the house was anyone’s guess, but pride and not wanting Mrs. Mallomar to know her insults were getting to him, had something to do with it. Within seconds of entering the water, he had lost sensation in his feet and knees. He splashed a little water under his arms and lathered the antibacterial soap that Mallomar used Lady Macbeth-like several times a day to rid himself of filth accumulated under his fingernails. Armpits done, he looked down to his testicles quickly ascending, as if having the good sense of their own to retreat to the warmth and safety of his body cavity. This was the general area—if one were to take everything Mrs. Mallomar said to heart—that needed the most prioritizing. Buster got to work quickly, for although it was only six in the morning, Mrs. Mallomar was a wild card and could not be trusted to sleep late, or do anything for that matter, in a predictable way. Buster held his breath and lowered himself to his neck and scrubbed furiously.
Mrs. Mallomar did not sleep well during the night. Without her prescription sleeping aids, she felt as if she were lashed to a tossing and turning bed of self-loathing and regret. Why was she trying to kill herself? That’s exactly what Marvin probably wanted her to do. She needed to take a step back and think this through. Her attempt at a unilateral withdrawal from the battlefield only highlighted her real problem. Lack of self-esteem had “flamed out” her starboard engine and put her in this steep dive. To pull out, she needed a plan—something her husband had obviously implemented for himself. He had brought her out here in the middle of nowhere and cut her off from drugs and alcohol. This, he hoped, would cause her to wig out in a very public way. She had to vitiate his gambit. Unfortunately, she had already dug herself a pretty deep public relations hole by alienating the hired hand, attempting suicide, and exposing the inner workings of the House of Mallomar to a doctor that she had never before laid eyes upon. All of this could be used against her in divorce proceedings. Therefore, things needed, as they say at Langley, to be “cleaned up.” Tomorrow would be the first day of her charm offensive starting with the foreman.
Buster figured the two or three minutes he’d spent washing his testicles and cleaning his rectum was good enough. He found that if he kept moving slightly he could escape the filth and scum that was floating to the surface and wanting to buddy back up with him. A rubdown with crumbled sagebrush and he would be ready for the opera. Now as Buster began to wade out of the water, something caught his eye. It was the yardstick that he’d installed alongside the levee to measure the reservoir’s water level. To his surprise, it was down slightly. How could that be? It had rained a good inch and a half the night before. Could the reservoir be leaking? Suddenly he was struck with uncontrollable shivers and needed to do the rest of his thinking on dry land. He scrambled up the bank to where Stinker was waiting patiently and dried off with a kitchen towel. Just as he was removing his clean clothes from his saddlebag, he heard a splash behind him. Odd, the reservoir had not yet been stocked with fish. He scanned the shoreline for telltale splash rings. Nothing. The surface was smooth. Then, as he turned back to his horse, he heard another splash. Buster spun around just in time to see the tail of the culprit dive back under the water. It was a muskrat. Muskrats are diminutive versions of beavers and, while they are cute and playful to watch, they’re a reservoir’s worst enemy. They dig their homes in levees. They start above the water line and go down—creating a honeycomb of tunnels that eventually flood, causing the integrity of the structure to be jeopardized. Buster hurried around the other side of the horse to his rifle scabbard. A one-hundred-yard shot was not out of the question with his 30-40 Krag. Still naked, he tried to stop shivering while he slid back the bolt to chamber a round. Almost imperceptibly, a little black nose broke the surface. He put the bead slightly under the water line and led it a couple of inches as the critter swam on its back. Slowly, he squeezed the trigger.
“What the hell are you doing?”
The muskrat quickly dove back beneath the surface. Buster stood up, forgetting that he had no clothes on. It was Mrs. Mallomar, wearing jeans and one of her husband’s cowboy shirts.
“Ma’am, I…”
“Jesus Christ,” she said covering her mouth in shock. Having already learned that most people were not like the Svendergards, Buster quickly scrambled around to the other side of Stinker and quickly threw on his jeans.
“Ma’am, lemme ’splain to you about these here muskrats…”
“You don’t have to explain anything. There will be no killing on this ranch!”
“But with all due respect, ma’am…” Buster was hopping on one leg trying to get his boot on a wet, numb foot.
“Did you hear what I fucking said? I don’t want you fucking shooting anything around here!”
“Yes, ma’am.” This, of course, was not how Mrs. Mallomar had wanted things to go today. She softened her tone.
“I don’t mean to be a…it’s just that…” Now her eyes welled with tears. “Isn’t there enough fucking cruelty in this world without you going off and shooting little animals for the hell of it?”
“Ah wern’t doin’ it for the hell of it, ma’am, ah…”
“Look, I don’t care to talk about it anymore. If you need to shoot something, shoot a tin can or that moldy piece of cheese in the refrigerator.”
“Tin cans don’t tunnel under…” She glowered at him again. “Yes, ma’am, whatever you say.”
“You weren’t bathing in there were you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A horrible thought occurred to her.
“Is that the water we drink at the house?”
“No ma’am. Is jes fer irrgayshun.” That relaxed her a little.
“Why didn’t you use the shower in the maid’s quarters?”
“Ah cain’t fit inside it, ma’am.”
“You can use the guest room facilities if you like.” It killed her to say that, but she was struggling to come up with something that would slightly humanize her.
“Much obliged, ma’am, but ah’d druther not make a mess.”
“It’s a ranch,” she said with a winning smile. “Aren’t we supposed to make a mess?” She wanted to add “…you dumbfuck,” but didn’t. “Let me ask you something, Clem. When my husband’s at the ranch, what does he actually do here?” Buster wasn’t quite sure what she was referring to, hopefully not Mr. Mallomar’s assignations with Mary Boyle.
“Lil’ of this…lil’ a that,” he said noncommittally.
“Well, I want to do a lil’ of everything he does.”
“Sure yor up to it, ma’am?”
“Just give me something to do. I’ll let you be the judge of whether I’m up to it, or not,” she said with a defiance that was almost laughable considering her pitiful physical condition.
The first job Buster gave Mrs. Mallomar was to clean out the stalls in the barn. From seven until nine o’clock, she shoveled manure and pitchforked fresh shavings. The cleaning of the Augean stables it was not, but Mrs. Mallomar did get a little wobbly at the end. Buster brought her a glass of ice tea and made her sit down, but she insisted on another job. Buster had her get the horses out in pasture and lead them back to the barn. After that, she spent the rest of the morning mucking the irrigation ditches. Clump pulling would have been back breaking for the strongest of men, but “downward dog” held her in good stead—her only complaint being that she could taste lemon furniture cleaner in her mouth every once in a while when she bent over.
Buster cast a suspicious eye on Mrs. Mallomar’s relish for field labor. Even the women who grew up in Vanadium didn’t go for clearing irrigation ditches. Buster figured this new wrinkle probably had something to do with her chronic mental troubles that Mallomar so ungallantly revealed to him. After all, there was no other way to explain her compulsion to fraternize with the hung-over field hands, tell dirty jokes or her insistance on riding the tractor cutting alfalfa in the hot sun.
By six o’clock that evening, Mrs. Mallomar was sunburned and filthy, but sober.
“Hey, could we go for a drive in your truck?” Buster made the mistake of letting her get behind the wheel. She was a much better driver than her husband. She drove for two hours due west toward Utah—fast—as if she were trying to escape Mountain Standard Cocktail Time. As they drove through Redvale, a truck with halogen headlights and an LED light bar on the roof came up behind them and followed on their bumper. There was no place to pass on this winding road and Buster, finally unnerved by it, had Mrs. Mallomar pull over to the shoulder and let it pass. There was not one blacked-out Suburban, but four. They accelerated in unison and headed off into the night toward Egnar.
“What the hell was that?” Mrs. Mallomar asked.
Of course, she had no way of knowing that the black ops caravan had been ordered by her husband—a DEA team on their way to Cookie Dominguez’s compound. And they weren’t the only ones who had taken note. Across the road in the darkness, a Harley was kicked started. A Busy Bee scout made a call from his cell phone and then tailed the intruders. Unfortunately for Buster, it appeared to the lookout that Buster had led the DEA men there.
It was past nine o’clock when Buster and Mrs. Mallomar returned to Vanadium.
“Is there any place to grab a bite around here?” Mrs. Mallomar asked.
“There’s a coupla places in town still open, ah guess. There’s the Bo-ho Coffee Shop and the, uh, High Grade.”
“The High Grade. Isn’t that the place my husband goes?”
“Yes, ma’am. He’s partial to it, but ah really don’t think yood like it ver much.”
“Why’s that?”
“Don’t mean to be rude, ma’am, but they serve alcohol in there.” Mrs. Mallomar flashed indignant, but seemed to realize she had relinquished the moral high ground when she drank furniture polish.
“All right, I’ve been fair warned. Where is it?”
Mrs. Mallomar gunned the engine and tore the two blocks down Main Street then made a hard right on two wheels into the High Grade’s parking lot. With balls as big as any man’s on Lame Horse Mesa, she parked in the handicap spot five feet from the front door—immediately drawing fire from the locals’ faces sitting in the window booth.
The High Grade, under the constabulary of Sheriff Dudival, was the only restaurant in Colorado where cigarette smoking had not followed the statewide ban. Buster led Mrs. Mallomar through a blue mist atomized with Marlboro red smoke and French fry grease to a vacant booth. Buster felt the eyes of every patron on him. So did Mrs. Mallomar, who had already affixed a phony smile to her face. Buster stopped to say hello to Sheriff Dudival and Jimmy Bayles Morgan, who sneered, as if Buster had just waved Limburger cheese under her nose. She seemed like she’d lost weight, but maybe it was because Buster had spent so much time with Marvin Mallomar that everyone looked thin by comparison. The sheriff asked how the truck was running and if he’d seen a Mexican camped up in the tree line that had stabbed a chiropractor in Telluride. Buster said that he hadn’t and quickly caught up with Mrs. Mallomar to make sure she didn’t order a double Grey Goose with pickled onions before he got there. This was the first time that anyone in town, besides Doc Solitcz, had laid eyes on Mrs. Mallomar. They’d heard rumors about her, of course, but no one was quite ready for the way she looked—which was as disheveled as Howard Hughes at the Desert Inn.
Two tables away, Destiny Stumplehorst and her sisters were having dinner with their mother and father. Mrs. Mallomar caught Buster sneaking looks at them.
“Who’s that?”
“The Stumplehorsts. They were my folks for a while.”
“You were an orphan?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Lucky fuckin’ you. What about Heidi over there—with the ponytail braids?”
“She was sorta my girlfriend.”
“What happened?”
“Her folks thought she could do better’n me.”
“My, I find that very hard to believe!” Then, when she saw the way Buster’s face fell quickly said, “I’m kid-ding.” She caught Destiny scoping her and Buster again, immediately identifying the dynamic. “So, where’s the can?”
Buster gestured to the narrow corridor in the back. Mrs. Mallomar sauntered to the back, along the way pausing to study everyone’s food.
Mrs. Mallomar was only gone in the bathroom for ten minutes. In the meantime, Buster, knowing that everybody was looking at him, scrutinized his knife and fork and performed some preemptive cleaning of Mrs. M’s silverware so she wouldn’t complain and draw further attention. In the corner of his eye, he was watching to see if Destiny Stumplehorst was watching him. She wasn’t. She was watching the woman who had just emerged from the bathroom.
Mrs. Mallomar had, to Buster’s astonishment, given herself a complete makeover—using what little that was available to her in the grimy bathroom. She had dusted herself off. She had washed her face with the pink liquid soap from the gummed-up dispenser. She had fixed her hair with a twenty-five cent comb she bought from the machine—next to the one that advertised a fifty-cent product called Hard Charger—tied it back with her blue bandana and used a lipstick for her lips as well as impromptu rouge. She had also removed her brassiere and unbuttoned her blouse to a V-neck. There was not a man in the place whose jaw was not unhinged at the sight of what was easily the most beautiful woman they had ever seen. She kept her eyes fixed on Buster as she walked slowly, hips swaying, back to the table. Buster fiddled with his cigarette makings and shot a quick nervous glance at Destiny Stumplehorst. Destiny was looking gaga at the two of them, her strawberry blush above her collarbone, once again, giving her position away.
Mrs. Mallomar slid daintily into the booth and took the cigarette Buster was rolling out of his hands and stuck it in her mouth. When Buster reached across the table with a shaky hand to light it, she gave him a little, naughty wink that was downstage to Destiny. After an eight-count, Destiny excused herself from her parents’ table and hurried outside, her sisters following. Mrs. Mallomar snorted softly, took a deep drag on her cigarette and turned her attention to the sticky laminated menu—front and back—then tossed it down.
“What does my husband have here?” She was staring at him in such a way that it shook Buster’s confidence to deliver the obvious answer.
“Uh…” She cocked her head at him.
“You said he eats here…”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So, what does he have? Is that such a difficult question?”
“Chicken-fried steak,” Buster said with a thick tongue.
Up her arm went—with a light snapping of the fingers—to flag down the waitress. To Buster’s chagrin, their waitress was Mary Boyle. Mary, as well as Buster, looked as if she was about to walk a plank.
“Hey there, Buster.”
“Hey there, Mary. Mary, this here’s Mrs. Mallomar.”
The two women assessed each other.
“Hello,” they both said.
“Uh, Mrs. Mallomar, Mary here was my adopted mother fer a piece.”
“I thought you said Old Sourpuss over there was your mother.”
“Mary was my mother b’fore Mrs. Stumplehorst was my mother.”
“Buster’s had four mothers. Didn’t he tell you that?” said Mary.
Mrs. Mallomar studied Mary for a moment.
“Do you know how to make an Arnold Palmer?” said Mrs. Mallomar.
“Sure,” Mary said, in a poisonous tone. “What would you like for your entrée?” Entrée. That was a good one in a place like this, but Mrs. Mallomar let it go.
“Chicken-fried steak. My husband can’t say enough about it.”
“Yes, he likes his chicken-fried steak.”
“I bet he does.”
Mary held steady. She had dropped “flinching” from her personal menu the moment Bob had his sweetbreads shish-kabobbed on Highway 145. Mary turned to Buster.
“What’ll you have, hon?”
Buster was staring off at the Coors beer sign—which featured a snow-capped peak and a clear mountain stream tumbling over boulders in the foreground. Buster wished he were there right now.
“Buster?” Mary asked again.
“Oh, uh…double burger, fries.”
“Drink?”
He wanted a beer but checked his swing, remembering Mrs. Mallomar’s condition. “Root beer.”
“Okay, it’ll be right up.” Mary turned to go. Buster almost exhaled with relief.
“Oh, Mary…”
Mary stopped and turned around.
“Yes, Mrs. Mallomar?”
“I was just admiring your necklace. May I see it?”
Mary blinked. Slowly she came back to the table and with a shaky hand opened the top of her blouse to reveal a thin gold strand of tiny ivy leaves dotted with small diamonds.
“Is that a Cheryl Rydmark?”
“I…I really couldn’t say.”
“It’s very pretty.”
“Thank you.”
They smiled at each other and Mary left again.
“Hey, Clem, I don’t know if I can eat right now. Mind if you get something to eat back at the house?”
“No, ma’am.”
They got up and walked out. Buster took care of the bill at the register. When he got out to the parking lot, Mrs. Mallomar was already in the passenger seat.
“Doncha wanna drive, ma’am?” Buster said timidly.
“Is she the reason why you wanted me to eat at the coffee house?”
“Ah don’t know what yor talkin’ about, ma’am.”
“I think you do.” Mrs. Mallomar took Buster’s hand and placed something in it. Under the sodium parking light he could see it was a gold necklace, the same one Mary was wearing.
“Why don’t you give this to your girlfriend?”
“Ma’am, I…”
Mrs. Mallomar almost laughed at his befuddlement, but what Buster saw, for just a moment, was a fighter who had taken a punch, but still didn’t know yet that she was going down for the count.
“Don’t say anything, okay? It’ll only come out stupid.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Buster put the truck in gear and drove down Main Street to the Lame Horse Mesa road and took a right. Mrs. Mallomar had her face turned to her window, but he could tell she was crying. He had an impulse to put a comforting hand on her shoulder, but stopped himself.
Meanwhile, twenty miles away in Egnar, neighboring ranchers thought they heard the pop pop pop of fireworks from Cookie Dominguez’s compound—after all, they did sell fireworks. But it was automatic gunfire they were hearing. The DEA had rammed the chain link fence and taken the place with shock and awe—unfortunately unaware that they were already too late. Cookie’s scout had called to say that they had company. Cookie had shrewdly placed the mobile home meth lab directly over the septic tank. There was a hatch in the floor that allowed them to dump incriminating evidence directly into a place that not even law enforcement would dare to tread. Cookie endured some grief about the equipment on hand, but the Feds had nothing substantial on which to hang a righteous indictment and left with egg on their faces. Cookie lost close to a hundred thousand dollars in product—his adopted brother, Buster, fingered as the rat.
Oblivious to the new trouble that soon awaited him, Buster headed his truck up the driveway to the house. He wanted the evening to end as soon as possible, but the uphill slog through the crushed gravel driveway to the front door slowed down Mrs. Mallomar excruciatingly as if she was trapped on a runaway truck ramp. He waited for her at the front door.
“G’night, ma’am.”
“Aren’t you going to have something to eat?”
“Ah ain’t really hungry, ma’am.”
“That’s not fair. I didn’t let you have your dinner.”
“That’s all right, ma’am. You must be pretty tuckered out. Why don’t we all jes turn in?”
“You’re probably right.” Mrs. Mallomar walked up the stairs and stopped at the balcony, looking down at Buster laying out his bed roll on the living room floor.
“Was she a good mother to you?”
“Beg pardon, ma’am?”
“Was…Mary…good to you?”
Buster tried to think of the right answer under the circumstances, but couldn’t, so he went with the truth.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Mallomar immediately put her face in her hands and ran into her room. Buster sat downstairs and listened to her cry for almost three and half hours—staccato whimpers, followed by outright baby-bawling. When it had finally stopped, he tiptoed up to her room and put his ear to the door. He could hear her snoring softly. Relieved, he went to the refrigerator, got himself a glass of milk, and went to sleep next to the Citizen Kane–sized fireplace.
Buster dreamed that Destiny was hopping mad with jealousy and demanded to know what was going on between him and Mrs. Mallomar. Buster started to explain that nothing was going on—but his experiences with the Mallomars told him to hold his cards close to the vest. “Why don’t we start with you and that thar real ’state agint?”
“There’s nothing goin’ on. I don’t know why people are always jawin’ about that!” Buster McCaffrey, having seen it with his own eyes, knew that to be false. Then, as if in dreamlike punishment for her gall, a grease fire broke out in the kitchen. Mary ran out of the kitchen and stood in front of him, arms akimbo, ablaze. In the center of her chest, Buster could see her tortured, beating heart. Buster leaped from the booth and threw his body on top of hers, hugging her tightly and smothering the flames. When it was extinguished, Mary looked demurely to the side. Buster took this as a signal that laying on top of her was not right—she having been his mother for six weeks. No sooner did this thought transmit than Buster heard Destiny Stumplehorst scream with alarm behind him. She had burst into flames as well. Buster quickly got off Mary Boyle—who was smoldering, but safely extinguished, and leaped on top of his one true love. He hugged her, smothered her, so hard he could hear the air wheeze from her lungs.
“Buster,” she said. “You always save me. Am I worth it?”
“Yes,” Buster said and kissed her. And then for the first time since he began dreaming about her, she didn’t prevent him from making love to her. Mary had retreated discreetly to the kitchen to continue dredging chicken legs and breasts in her patented chicken-fried steak flour. Buster and Destiny shed their clothes and made love on the gritty linoleum floor with much pent-up energy that reached its denouement with Destiny on top—riding Buster like a horse. They cantered, loped, then galloped to a climax.
Buster woke up from his dream covered in perspiration to find Mrs. Mallomar on top of him. She was sitting upright, her eyes closed tightly in ecstasy.
“Mrs. Mallomar!”
She opened her eyes wide.
“Jesus, you’ve got a big dick!”
“Jiminy Christmas, what’ve ah done did?”
“You’ve done good, Clem. You’ve done good.”
She dismounted him and walked a little wobbly to the chair where he had thrown his clothes.
“Mind if I roll myself a cigarette?”
“Mrs. Mallomar, jes what were you thinkin’?”
“Payback,” she said calmly as she licked two Zig-Zags together. “Isn’t that the name of your favorite candy bar?”
“Payday.”
“Payday, Payback…”
Buster put his head in his hands.
“Mr. Mallomar’s my friend…”
“He’s nobody’s friend. It’s about time someone broke that to you.”
Buster and Mrs. Mallomar tried to pretend that nothing had happened. Nobody was fooling anybody, but that’s the way they played it. Around ten every night, Mrs. Mallomar would tiptoe downstairs where Buster slept on his bedroll by the fireplace. She would arouse him, but he would pretend not to be awakened. She would then mount him, grind away to a climax then hurry back to her room before the first nocturnal snap of the mousetrap could be heard under the three-thousand-dollar stainless steel sink. Buster never betrayed their conceit by laying a hand on her. Only later would Buster experiment with dreamlike verisimilitude—mumbling as if talking in his sleep, or sometimes giving a little snore—as if this could somehow absolve him of guilt. In the morning, they would return to business as usual—Mrs. Mallomar, thorny and sarcastic with regard to Buster’s misuse of the English language and his lack of worldly experience; Buster going about his chores on the ranch. If there was any good news to be extracted from their liaison, it was that Mrs. Mallomar no longer spent her days craving alcohol or narcotics. The bad news was that she had transferred her addiction to the innocent Buster. Mrs. Mallomar only thought of one thing while performing her arduous chores during the day—it was not as much Buster, but Buster’s johnson. Her appetite for food came back with a vengeance. She gained twelve pounds—her bosoms and rear end refilled to their former head-turning capacities. And she found herself, for the first time in years, happy.
Buster, on the other hand, was miserable. His great beacon of manners and morality, Miss Humphrey’s, would certainly have not approved of his actions. Rumors were starting to spread through town. Even worse, his heart belonged to Destiny Stumplehorst and this betrayal—even though she had abandoned him for Cord Travesty—was too much for him to bear. He wanted to cut things off with Mrs. Mallomar. He really did. He just didn’t do it.
b
Five days of testimony and Mallomar was finally finished with the SEC. He returned to his apartment and after lightening his spirits with a Ukrainian call girl, he decided to go online and gaze at his ranch through the miracle of the Big Dog Ranch webcam. The interior cameras were still on the fritz, but he was pleased to see the exterior cameras were working fine. The grass was coming in nicely. He switched to another monitor. There were cattle at the edge of the reservoir drinking contentedly. He was sorry he had missed the branding. The cattle looked healthy enough, but he was a little miffed that Buster had not followed up on his aesthetic notion of hosing off the caked-on shit from their hindquarters.
Before turning in for the night, he remembered that he’d placed a lipstick camera surreptitiously in the ceiling of Buster’s trailer. He clicked on the TrailerCam. The image was almost infrared, the trailer being lit by moonlight as it was. There was Buster asleep. He dialed the phone number and was already starting to chuckle when he saw another figure in the lower right side of the frame. It was a woman. She was on top of Buster. Her back was to the camera. She was bouncing up and down on his lap in a very familiar way that he couldn’t quite place for a moment—until it dawned on him that that was the way he’d seen Dana ride her horse up to Hope Lake the fateful day they all met.