On the way home from the Big Dog Ranch, Jimmy stopped to see the only person who knew how handle a situation that had gotten out of control. Driving right into the walkway of Lone Pine Cemetery, she parked her truck and then staggered from headstone to headstone—at one point, resting at Buster’s mother’s grave before moving on to her own kin. Sheriff Morgan had a simple headstone with an engraved sheriff’s star and the word Order. Jimmy thought the engravers had made a mistake by not having it read Law and Order, but Deputy Dudival, the one who bought the headstone, felt the bastard didn’t deserve to be memorialized with the word Law.
Jimmy eased herself down onto the grass and filed her report. Then she listened for a good forty-five minutes. When her instructions had been completely issued, she arose painfully to her feet and placed a .455 Colt cartridge casing on Morgan’s headstone next to the many others. She felt better already. There was much to do. Fixing Buster’s love life had not been a high priority, but woe onto Cord Travesty who just happened to pull up to Jimmy at the town’s only stoplight and catch her jaundiced eye.
b
Destiny Stumplehorst was asleep that night in Cord Travesty’s bed when the phone rang. Since Cord was never sure if another girl was calling, he answered it.
“Hello?” There was silence. “Who is this?” Click. He angrily slammed down the phone and crawled back into bed. “It was a hang up,” he said.
About fifteen seconds later the phone rang again.
“Fuck,” Travesty said rolling over and opening his eyes. “This is getting old.”
“You want me to answer it?” asked Destiny.
“No, that’s okay.” Travesty picked up the phone. “Hello?” Again, silence. “You assholes!” He slammed the phone down again. “Godammit. I’m gonna have to take an Ambien to get back to sleep. You want one?”
“Sure,” said Destiny, at this point in her life loathe to turning down anything in the drug department. They each took a sleeping pill and then tried to get back to sleep. About two minutes later the phone rang once again.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to get it?”
“Get it,” said Travesty at wit’s end.
“Hello?” said Destiny. But then she heard something on the phone that made her eyes widen. She put the phone down. “I think I heard Maple.”
“Who the fuck is Maple?”
“Maple’s my horse.”
“Your horse called you?”
“I could hear her in the background.”
Travesty sat up in bed.
“Hey, look, I’ve been meaning to say something to you. You’re doing too much coke. It’s supposed to be for recreation and you’ve been making it your fucking life’s work.”
“I know what my own horse sounds like. I heard my horse.”
“Okay, never mind. Let’s just go to sleep and hope she’s used up her calling card minutes.” Travesty rolled over once again and put the pillow over his head. As irrational as this was, the phone call worried her. She turned toward the window and was trying to get back to sleep when she heard a horse whinny in the field beside the house. Destiny pulled back the curtains and saw a horse, about fifty yards away, standing in the rain.
“Maple!” she yelled out the window. Travesty sat upright again.
“You have got to be fucking kidding me! What the hell is going on here?”
“I don’t know, but that’s Maple! She must’ve gotten out of the barn.”
“And what…she called to tell you she was coming over?”
Destiny was already putting her clothes on. Travesty looked nervously out the window.
“Something’s really fucked up about this.”
“Hey, Cord, I’ve been meaning to say something to you. You’re doing too much coke. It’s supposed to be for recreation.”
“What are doing?”
“I’m gonna go out there and ride her home.”
“Don’t. Don’t go out there,” he suddenly said, paranoid.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll call you in the morning.”
Destiny went downstairs, not seeing Jimmy sitting on the sofa in the dark, a bundle of dynamite on the glass cocktail table covered in the faint contrails of a white powder next to a gold-plated razor blade. As soon as Destiny went outside, Jimmy turned on the gas in the oven. She closed the windows in the kitchen and sealed it up by placing a couple of wet towels along the bottom of the door. Jimmy slipped on her oxygen mask and waited for the gas to accumulate. When she figured she had reached a threshold amount for a good blow, she laid some fuse out the back door, lit it, and got back on her horse.
A mile away Destiny heard the explosion. She thought it was thunder. Days later, people were still finding dozens of For Sale—Contact Cord Travesty signs that Travesty had stored in the attic, scattered around town.
Jimmy rode back to her ranch and laid down for a little rest. When the Big Ben wind-up alarm clock went off an hour later, she tried to sit up but first leaned over to hawk up a glob of sputum into a paper bag she kept by the side of the bed. Her vision was going downhill and she had a headache to beat the band. Laboriously, she slung her legs over the side of the bed and forced down a 400ml Dilaudid with the backwash from a can of beer. It took her the next fifteen minutes just to pull on her boots. Once on her feet, she steadied herself against the workbench and pulled down an old canvas rucksack. She monkey-barred her way over to the Kelvinator and opened the freezer door to remove a three-pound tri-tip that she’d carved off a steer that she alien-mutilated a couple of months ago. She perused her old dynamite collection and selected four sticks that seemed to sweat the least nitroglycerine.
It took her four exhausting attempts to throw a saddle over Nicker. By the time she was done, she had to walk him over to a fence to use it to mount up—like she had taught a thousand undersized children. She pulled a rain slicker over her oxygen tank and took off on a lope toward Egnar, home to the Busy Bees.
Cookie Dominguez’s headquarters was an old farmhouse attached to a dilapidated 1950s Desert Breeze trailer. Fifty years ago, a farmer had lived there with the dream of getting rich growing Echinacea for homeopathic drugstores. Today, the staunch traditions of western free enterprise and entrepreneurship continued with Cookie’s production of ten pounds of crank a week.
Cookie’s gang all lived in the farmhouse. The trailer was filled with their equipment and the toxic chemicals for producing methamphetamine. Since the attempted bust by the DEA, Cookie had acquired two scarred-up Rottweilers from the dog pound. As soon as the dogs smelled Jimmy, they bolted out the pet door into the dark like torpedoes from an aluminum submarine in a redneck navy. Jimmy could have just shot them, but she had nothing against a couple of dogs that didn’t know any better. She calmly reached into her rucksack and cut the tri-tip in half with her grandfather’s sheepfoot folding knife and tossed a piece to each dog. They immediately stopped their snarling and ran off coveting their meat.
With the rain and thunder making so much noise, she also didn’t feel it necessary to dismount and sneak up on the place Injun-style. She simply rode up to the house and walked in as if she’d been invited for Sunday dinner. There was a flickering blue light coming from the living room. Ironically, Benito Sandoval, one of the gang members, had decided to stay in this night to see who was going to be eliminated on American Idol. It must have taken Benito a ten count to realize he wasn’t alone. He slowly turned and was startled to find Jimmy—wrapped in a green army slicker head to foot, an oxygen mask over her mouth, dripping water all over the floor. He kind of laughed at the absurdity of her.
“Who…the…fuck…are…you?”
Jimmy, who never liked it when people didn’t recognize her, promptly shot him in the head. Then she took a moment to have a look around. She had to chortle at the condition of the place. This was definitely the interior decorating style of a gang on methamphetamines. Tweakers always have to be doing something with their hands. The microwave had been taken apart, as had the washer and drier. The stereo had been disassembled. Pieces of the dishwasher were arranged across the faded linoleum floor like a Rauschenberg. The parts of a vacuum cleaner were laid out the way cats take a chipmunk apart. There were posters of Hiram Graythwaite, the avuncular-looking leader of the Aryan Leaders of Tomorrow—a group quartered in Idaho—a Millet bullet press, at least ten thousand rounds of .223 ammunition, boxes of institutional peanut butter, and hundreds of cans of Spaghetti-Os. Cookie was obviously readying himself for his own apocalypse. The gang also seemed to have a predilection for 500–piece jigsaw puzzles. Jimmy looked at her pocket watch. It was 1:30, closing time at the High Grade. She thought she better finish up.
b
Soon, Cookie Dominguez arrived home with his posse in the pouring rain. He didn’t go inside right away. He was just as cautious about entering his own home as Sheriff Dudival was. He stood in the rain and called his dogs. They barked: “all clear.” Cookie entered his house followed by the others, but pulled up short when he saw Benito in his BarcaLounger—the dogs sitting obediently by each armrest.
“Hey, fucker. Whadaya think you’re doin’ sittin’ in my chair?”
The other gang members clucked at Benito’s insubordination. He must really be drunk, they thought. Cookie slapped him on the side of his head, and his hand came away covered with blood.
“What the fuck,” Cookie whispered and tiptoed to his bookcase pulling out a loaded Walther 9mm pistol from behind his first editions of Hiram Graythwaite’s neo-Nazi literature. Silently, he signaled to the others to get behind him while he ventured into the lab. Very carefully, he stepped through the hole that had been chainsawed in the wall that led to the trailer. Cookie strained to hear a sign of the intruder, but was frustrated by the volume of the television. A new contestant on American Idol was gratingly singing—in the ersatz operatic style currently popular—about how this was the moment that she would not mess up this time. Cookie turned and hissed to his colleagues.
“Hey, one of you assholes turn that fuckin’ thing off!”
One of gang hurried back to the living room and yanked the clicker out of the dead man’s hand. He pushed the button and—in that split second—realized that it wasn’t a TV clicker at all, but a garage door opener. When pushed, it sent an electronic signal to the garage door receiver. The receiver light turned red, and sent an electric current to the blasting caps Jimmy had wired to dynamite all around the lab. The blast ignited the multiple tanks of anhydrous ammonia used to convert the ephedrine from pounds of generic Sam’s Club Sudafeds into snortable methamphetamine. Jimmy didn’t bother to look back as the buildings, motorcycles, nails, bone, flesh, glass, and thousands of .223 rounds combined and shrieked through the night air. One more stop and she could go back to bed.
b
Mallomar’s Gulfstream landed in the Montrose airport seconds before the full force of the storm hit. In the attaché case he carried were divorce papers—still warm and chemically fragrant from his lawyers’ Xerox machine. Jaw-clenched, he climbed into his Mercedes AMG and shot off on the seventy-five-mile drive to the ranch, blowing through through every single traffic light.
Buster had spent the entire night driving, thinking about what he was going to do with Mrs. Mallomar. He dreaded facing Mrs. Mallomar but knew he had to do it. Almost out of gas, he pulled the ’61 Apache up to the Big Dog corral. Rain was blowing sideways, lightning and thunder were letting loose on El Diente, making the horses froggy. Always cognizant of his duties, Buster put the animals in the barn then trudged into the house.
All the lights in the house were off—a flickering candelabra on the dining table the only source of illumination. The French doors leading to the patio were open, and the wind blew the drapes like ghosts in a silent movie. The table had been laid with a black tablecloth, two little red plates, and enameled chopsticks.
“Where’ve you been, Clem?”
Buster startled, as she appeared seemingly from nowhere, wearing her little black NVA pajama bottoms with her gauzy blouse.
Buster quickly averted his eyes from Mrs. Mallomar’s chest, so as not to distract from what he had come to say. He, instead, looked to the coffee table where he found a curious white lump residing in the middle of it.
“Ain’t that one of our salt licks?”
“Interesting look, isn’t it?”
“Think it should be on that table, ma’am? Cows been lickin’ at it.”
Buster had, in fact, placed a dozen salt licks around the pasture. The cows could not resist them, and the salt made them want to drink water. The extra water weight translated to higher unit price at slaughter time.
“I think it’s beautiful. Have you ever seen Henry Moore’s, Seated Woman: Thin Neck?” she said, turning its tongue-sanded modern aspects in the candlelight.
“Don’t know as ah’ve had. Jes think Mr. Mallomar may not like that bein’ here.”
“And…what would he think about you being here?” She laughed when Buster’s face dropped. There was something unsettlingly buoyant about Mrs. Mallomar tonight. What was it? “Appetizer?” She held up a lacquered plate containing four spring rolls that she had hand-rolled with translucent rice paper to a suggestive length of eight inches. “It’s Japanese night, in case you didn’t catch that.” Uncharacteristically, Buster did not take the food.
“That’s a first.”
“There’s somethin’ preyin’ on me, ma’am ah gotta talk to you ’bout.”
“Oh, please. Can we not have a conversation like that, tonight?”
Suddenly a gust of wind came up and pushed in the big Great Room’s windows, then sucked them out with such force that the roof groaned like a dying man.
“Wow! Where in God’s name did that come from?”
“Ma’am, you and me caint be havin’ ree-lay-shuns no more.”
A clap of thunder rolled out across the mesa.
“If this will ease your mind, we’re not having relations. We’re just screwing.”
“Well, ah don’t think we should be doin’ that there neither.”
“Why not?”
“It ain’t raht.”
“It’s been right by me. Surprisingly so.”
Buster turned and walked out the French doors. “Now where’re you going?”
Buster had said what he had to say. In the barn, he once again began to pack his tack. His plan was to wait there until Mr. Mallomar returned. He was even hoping Mr. Mallomar would punch him in the nose. Buster backed his truck through the paddock doors and started to load up. Already, he was starting to feel loose in his joints again, the promise of returning to an uncomplicated life.
“Don’t leave.”
Mrs. Mallomar was standing in the doorway, wringing wet.
“Ah’m sorry, ma’am. Ah have to.”
“My husband will want to know why you left. What am I going to tell him?”
“Don’t you worry ’bout that, ma’am. Ah’ll be tellin’ him.”
The thought of that did little to calm her.
“What do you mean? What are you going to tell him?”
“The truth.”
“Okay. I understand how you’re feeling right now. But could you come inside for a moment? There’s something I need to tell you before you ride off on your fucking high horse.” Reluctantly, Buster let her take his hand and lead him back to the house.
Mallomar was hoping to catch them in the act when he got home. He fumbled around in the glove compartment until he found what he was looking for—the instructions for his phone. Specifically, what he wanted to know was how its eight-megapixel camera worked. He’d get a nice snapshot of them to staple to the divorce papers. But when he walked in the front door, he got the shock of his life.
“What in hell’s going on here?”
The living room was filled, wall-to-wall, with cattle. They had followed the scent of the salt lick from the pasture and had come through the French doors. Once out of the rain, they decided to stay. There was a great deal of bellowing and jostling going on. One steer was pushing his brisket against one of the hollow wooden pillars that hid the steel weight-bearing supports holding up the second floor. The resultant noise from the cracking wood cast doubt on whether or not the brackets that attached to it were made to take a lateral six hundred pound body slam. Mallomar pushed his way through the stubborn animals to the stairway, trying not to look at what they had done to his one-hundred-thousand-dollar Persian rug.
Inside the house, Mallomar climbed to his wife’s room and dramatically flung the door open. Finding no one there, he stepped back on the balcony and looked down just in time to see Buster and his wife come through the French doors, hand in hand. The smartphone that he was holding suddenly didn’t seem enough. He went to find the gun that he had purchased at his own hardware store.