That evening, the Vanadium sky cooperated with Jimmy’s production of what Cecil B. DeMille might have called an Authentic Ten Commandment Experience. Alizarin-washed cumulus nimbus framed a deep cadmium yellow egg yolk descending in the west. The folding chairs faced the boarded-up Hail Mary Mine’s entrance at an oblique thirty-degree angle as Jimmy had specified. The jury, as well as the Stumplehorsts, Edita Dominguez, Mary Boyle, and almost everybody in town who owned a camp chair, sat with unbridled anticipation. Was Jimmy Bayles Morgan’s claim possible? Did God, as some already believed, favor their town? Did His spirit reside here in the aptly named Hail Mary Mine? Six-thirty passed with only the solitary lowing of a cow in the distance. Seven o’clock came with some fidgeting and praying. The judge whispered something to the bailiff and he nodded in agreement. Jimmy had the feeling that they were about to call her game on account of darkness. She got up from her chair and, using a cane, staggered before them.
“Iffin ah could jes have yer ’ttention fer a moment… See a lotta fermilyar faces in the crowd—which is unnerstandabull since ah know alls you. See Kyle Andersen there mutterin’ over that Bible a his…Hey there, Kyle. Remember ’bout ten years ago you was moaning to somebody in the café ’bout how yer neighbor wouldn’t sell you that hundred and twenty acres so you could grow alfalfa cause he was fixin’ to chop them up inta forty-acre ranchettes? You recall that? Didja pray that he’d change his mind? Cause lo and beholt, a week later, somebody forced him off the road into the canyon and he was kilt. Then what happened, Kyle?”
Kyle Andersen looked up numbly. “His widow sold it to me.”
“That’s right, she did, dint she?” Jimmy shaded her eyes from the setting sun and peered into the crowd. “And there’s Edita Dominguez. Once your daddy and yer uncle were laid to rest, there was no controllin’ yor husband, was there, darlin’? You thought he was molestin’ yor boys and you went and taddled on’m to Social Services. Ain’t that right? But they dint do nothin’ ’bout it, did they—cause, well…yor jes a Messican. Then one summer night, what happened? Somebody locked him in that kiln a his and blew his ass to kingdom come.”
Edita Dominguez put a handkerchief to her mouth. “¡Madre de Dios!”
“And Skylar…remember the time you were cryin’ to some drunk at the Odd Fellows ’bout how you wisht you had a son? Well, it took some doin’, but somebody cleared the brush fer it that ta happen. Somebody had ta kill that pink-assed land defiler Svendergard and then somebody had to send ol’ Bob Boyle on up to Rodeo Heaven. Then you got your son, Buster McCaffrey, one of the best all ’round cowboys we ever seen in this county. And what’d you do? You fired him jes b’cause he gave yer daughter a poke! Tell you what, Skylar…somebody dint ’prreciate that. Somebody was even thinkin’ of settin a stick a dynamite in that outhouse you jerk off in. But then…” Jimmy looked over to where Destiny Stumplehorst was standing. “…somebody had a change of heart—thinkin’ how unfair it’erd be to leave ol’ Buster without a future father-in-law ta balance out that crack-less pee-stachio of a wife a yors.” Jimmy looked at Calvina Stumplehorst, hocked up a goober, and spit. “Have you guessed who that somebody is, people? It ain’t God, neighbors and frens, who’s been answerin’ the prayers of this fersaken land for over sixty years. And lemme tell ya somethin’ else, ah don’t work in mizsteeryus ways like some. My work is direk. My work sticks.”
Here she paused for a dramatic sigh and looked out over her sheep.
“But alas, dear frens, my life is now comin’ to an end. No use kiddin’ mahself. And ah’m a powerful worried cause once ah’m a gone, who’s gonna take care a this place that ah’ve so dearly loved? Ah’m leavin’ a son, but he’s a turn-the-other-cheek sorta feller. So ah’m puttin’ y’all on notice. You try to take the easy money and sell this here town out and ah’ll be payin’ ya a visit—in one form or ’nother…and you ain’t gonna like it ah uh-shoor you!”
Jimmy looked over the crowd and made fierce eye contact with as many as she could, conjured up a mighty goober, then spit. As the sun slipped below the horizon and cool air exchanged with warm from the canyon below, she raised her arms akimbo as an unmistakable moan emanated from the mine behind her. It started low and suffering-like then rose to an unsettling howl. Jimmy kept a straight face and just nodded her head as if she and she alone understood the tongue with which it spoke. This had the desired effect on the ad hoc congregation who, if they weren’t fundamentally religious, were at least susceptible to seeing the face of Jesus in a burnt piece of Wonderbread toast.
Some of them dropped to their knees and started to cry. Others prayed. Others ran to their cars to get the hell out of there. The judge had had enough and instructed the bailiff to handcuff Jimmy and take back her into custody.
“You heard me! Ah’ll be payin ya’ll a visit!!!”
b
The corrections officer came to collect Buster from his cell the next morning. He was taken downstairs to sign some papers and collect his personal possessions. His jeans seemed big on him now, and his White’s Packers seemed stiff like they belonged to someone else. The clerk handed Buster his money and his wallet. He was asked to check and make sure that everything was there. He didn’t care about the money—actually three dollars was missing to help pay for a pizza a couple weeks ago. There was only one thing that he cared about, and it was still preserved between the folds of an unpaid parking ticket.
Some men go out and get drunk the first thing out of jail. Some go and settle old scores. Some men go and have themselves two porterhouse steaks, mashed potatoes, and a gallon of pecan ice cream. Some go to a whorehouse and have the equivalent. Buster paid twenty-five cents for a shower and then rode out to Lame Horse Mesa where he gave Destiny Stumplehorst his buttercup and asked for her hand in marriage. She didn’t bother with her parents’ permission this time.
The two were married on horseback just as it was in Buster’s dream. The bride wore a white rodeo queen outfit caped with a long white-fringed leather jacket. And just as in his dream, all of Buster’s past mothers were there to tearfully see him off into Holy Matrimony—all paying deference of course to Jimmy Bayles Morgan, his biological mother. She was brought in on a tame old milk horse, the reins of which were held by Sheriff Dudival, Buster’s best man. Jimmy, bald and weighing no more than a ventriloquist’s dummy, was defiantly dressed as a man.
Jimmy let the newlyweds move onto her property. She gave them the old sheepherder’s wagon that had been Buster’s refuge as an exile. Sheriff Dudival moved out of his trailer and into his one true love’s cabin. Since sex was no longer an issue with either of them, they slept comfortably in the same bed with each other. Doc Solitcz came regularly to make sure Jimmy was comfortable until she died a month later. Buster was at her side when she passed and held his murdering mother’s hand.
“Son…ah did the best ah could.”
“Ah know, ah know. Calm yorsef.”
“And ah said a lot a terr-bull thangs ’bout people…ah dint mean half of ’em.”
“Ah never figgered you did…Mommy.”
Jimmy reached under her pillow and handed Buster an envelope.
“A li’l present fer yor birthday. Guess ah’m gonna be missin’ it.” Buster opened it. Inside was the $300 she had Martin Flowers cough up before he, too, joined the league of those Jimmy Bayles Morgan could not abide.
Sheriff Dudival, looking on, was pleased that Jimmy had been given this one moment of peace. Around these parts, love had been the true taproot of crime.
Buster, the sheriff, Doc, Ned Gigglehorn, and Destiny Stumplehorst made a little service for Jimmy and buried her next to Ranger. She had requested, despite her newly acquired reputation as a modern-day Savonarola, that no mention of the Creator be made over her remains. What little she had in her estate went to Buster. She left him her land, some horses, tack, her guns, and the Hail Mary mine.
The mine, which had not produced a dime in thirty years, turned out to yield a mother lode much richer than gold or silver. Word of Jimmy’s performance at the mine had gotten out. At first, people said that this was the place where the devil speaks. A few months after that, the religious folks appropriated the miracle and soon pilgrims started showing up to hear the Word of God for themselves.
It wasn’t exactly Buster’s métier to market the Hail Mary mine. That was left to Destiny who knew how to do these things from her stint in the properties game. She secured a loan from the bank for an asphalt road and small turnabout for tour coaches. What came later was a gift shop/museum, bookstore, and T-shirt and coffee mug shop with the official literature about The Miracle. The first year, the mine took in seven million dollars from the merchandising and a movie deal financed by a Christian group called “Families at the Crossroads.” Buster used some of that money to purchase five hundred acres from the Stumplehorsts—which the missus considered her Christian obligation to sell at ten thousand per. Most of the Hail Mary windfall went to rebuild the school, construct a new library, and endow the Jimmy Bayles Morgan Home for Unwed Mothers. The Vanadium High School Baseball team changed its name from the Vanadium Atomics to “The Rangers.”
Sheriff Dudival, even knowing Jimmy all these years, had never been taken to the mine—let alone, heard the Miracle of the Spirit. One night, when the last of the holy pilgrims’ buses had left, he drove out there to take a look around. He pried off the creosote slats that barred entry and went inside with a torch and climbing rope. The wind had come up with the sunset, and the “whispering” that people interpreted as the Word of God began. From inside the mine, Dudival could feel the wind at his neck as he followed the sound. With his flashlight, he illuminated the vent tunnel above him that traveled upwards one hundred yards to an opening at the top of the mesa. There was just enough room for a man to climb. Slowly, he made his way up until something blocked his path. He made sure he had a secure footing before shining his light on the obstruction. In front of him were the bullet-ventilated skulls of three men. Dudival could only assume that they were the rapists whom Jimmy had dispatched some twenty-five years ago. When the wind came into the mine at sunset, it traveled up the air shaft and through these skulls—stacked one on top of another like dried peas in a child’s whistle—sending out the “Word.” Sheriff Dudival clambered back down and, in honor of Jimmy’s memory, took her last secret to the grave beside her, two days later.
Lame Horse Mesa’s much-publicized rondo of violence had a deleterious effect on the real estate market. Vanadium found itself characterized as the most likely place to die of a homicide on a short list after Chicago and Mogadishu. As a result of this disaffection, the Svendergard golf course project was put on hold, and its attendant condominium and townhouse development evaporated. The Stumplehorsts and the other ranchers, who had prematurely set their sights for early retirement on Kiowa Island, had to reconcile with the fact that they would probably be spending the rest of their lives getting up at four in the morning to shovel shit out of cow stalls. Many of them, witnessing Buster’s success on the Big Dog Ranch, grumpily followed his lead and returned native grasses to their land.
Buster continued to care for the Mallomar herd even though it was never asked of him. He figured it was the least he could do to honor Mr. Mallomar’s memory. If Mrs. Mallomar ever got out of the hospital, she would have a nice little business and a healthy place to raise their child. Buster had already explained the situation to Destiny Stumplehorst. She was, of course, jealous. Having a child with another woman, however, failed to stack up against her losing her Buttercup to the gas chamber, and eventually she let it go. If she had learned one thing from the Thessalonians Home Study Course of Oxford, Mississippi, it was that the most enduring lessons from the Bible were always the ones attached to the most violent or lustful stories. And that was probably why the people who lived in Vanadium would not soon forget what had happened here. Did that mean they would go back to the way things were before Mr. M appeared on the scene? There was probably no going back—even if some of the old ranchers felt a smug moment of victory over progress with a question mark. Someone would surely be arriving any day, emboldened by undervalued land prices, to risk his neck for development. Would they allow the newcomer to once again tilt the delicate balance of the Vanadian ecology—that had been so carefully tended to by Jimmy Bayles Morgan and Shep Dudival? Who would be the one to do what needed to be done? That, of course, remained to be seen.