Once she discovered that Harry was headed to Grand Junction, Miss Dazzle came round to the doctor’s Mercury truck and pressed a blank personal check into his hand. Through the open window floated another piece of paper: a long list of liquor supplies including jars of maraschino cherries, which were not illegal in their town but were hard to come by and expensive. Seeing him linger mysteriously by the Mercury, scuffing his feet and refusing to come up to the pool, Miss Dazzle had no doubt appraised the situation straight off. She’d done more than her share of covering for the doctor and knew his ways. “What’s Randy got you doing this time?” she asked Harry. “As if I couldn’t guess.”
Harry started up the truck. Both of them turned to glance toward the rear of the truck, where Vernon Rutledge’s body lay iced. It was a funny movement perfectly timed and, just as perfectly timed, their heads shot back around. Harry hadn’t yet looked at the body and had no intention to. He had no desire to make himself sick. Miss Dazzle’s face tightened. Nothing back there she wished to see either. Harry knew the old ladies would have no such reluctance. He could return to their good graces by inviting them down to have a peek at a macabre sight.
Miss Dazzle ducked her head through the driver’s window and tapped the list. She said as far as gin went to get anything on sale—she’d pass the savings on to the three ladies. But for whiskey they liked a certain brand. She didn’t know why. With a whiskey sour all you tasted was sugar anyway. Harry could see her face start to relax as she forgot about the tornup wretchedness in the back and concentrated on liquor brands. Her forearms lay across the window frame as she gave instructions. They were a redhead’s forearms, freckled, no hair, the skin crepey, the white skin turned off-white by the sun. Harry thought it was wrong to be noticing a woman’s body part so closely. He told himself he was doing it so he wouldn’t be thinking of the gruesome errand ahead.
“I better get a move on,” he said.
“How’d you land this job?” Miss Dazzle asked.
“Bribe.”
Miss Dazzle shook her head.
“Only way I could get him to come and take a look at her.”
“He’s glad he came now,” Miss Dazzle said. “Doubt I can get him to leave. Lot of good he did, too.”
Harry had offered to take Vernon Rutledge’s body to the coroner in Grand Junction if the doctor would pay a house call to Jean. Randolph was balking because it meant he’d have to file a report since a shooting was involved, and of course he didn’t want to do that, he wanted to do whatever caused the least amount of work. Harry had been lingering by the Mercury for several minutes now, the ice melting, the body (probably) floating in a pool, all while he waited to see if the mother needed to be taken to the hospital in Grand Junction. His answer was on the chaise longue playing Hollywood star, poolside with his drinks and women.
“He’s happy as a clam,” Miss Dazzle said.
Harry said, “I should drop him off on my way out of town. I’m sure you don’t want him around. She’s got to rest.”
“Oh, he’ll let her rest. It’s that other one he’s after.”
Harry paused at the way she had referred to Jo, not by her name but as that other one. He wondered if Miss Dazzle had guessed his secret. She seemed to know everything. It would take her only another half step to read his mind, too.
“I’ll give him a couple more drinks and drive him home myself,” Miss Dazzle said. “I know how to handle him. Don’t worry about us, Harry. Have a safe trip. Don’t forget—” she picked up the list from his lap and folded it into his shirt pocket. She patted his arm.
“Freezing cold in here,” he told her. Miss Dazzle laughed but Harry hadn’t meant it as a joke.
As he started to pull out, Miss Dazzle threw up her arms in X’s. Harry stopped the truck and backed up. Miss Dazzle ran into her office and returned with a paper bag she tossed through the passenger window. “Now eat these sandwiches,” she said. “I made tons. I got a little carried away. But that’s me, isn’t it? And they’re your favorite.” Harry smiled, wondering what kind of sandwich his favorite might be. Then Miss Dazzle unhooked the bib of her overalls and tugged back the armhole of her sleeveless shirt to expose her bra. “Look at this, Harry. My bra’s turning blue.”
“Huh,” Harry said. He couldn’t help noticing that Miss Dazzle’s underarms were hairless in a way that suggested they had never grown hair. Though he hadn’t seen Rutledge’s body and had no intention of seeing Rutledge’s body, he had this picture of death set afloat in melting ice and at the same time this other picture of a blue crescent of breast and unstippled underarm, and neither one was something he had ever experienced up close, much less up close together.
“If you ever want one of your shirts dyed blue, give it to me and I’ll wash it with my jeans,” Miss Dazzle said. “And I’m only half joking when I say that. You ever thought about switching to a light-blue dress shirt? It would look good on you, Harry.” Harry wondered if this was the half that was joking now or the half that wasn’t, so he didn’t answer. He wouldn’t have known what to say anyway. He wasn’t good at joking and anybody who joked with him immediately got the upper hand.
Miss Dazzle didn’t seem to mind he wasn’t answering. Her face softened and the smile she gave him was tender and almost sad. Her hands hung straight down inside the truck door. Her nails clicked a song on the metal handle. The hands looked sort of fattish almost, with the wedding and engagement rings snug (on Jo’s thin finger, the rings were just loose enough for an elegant droop). Miss Dazzle must have noticed his glance; she quit clicking and started playing with the rings. Engagement, marriage, around and around. Everybody knew that guy of hers wasn’t coming back, especially Miss Dazzle, but she needed those rings on display to keep the fellows out here in line.
“Say, did you hear me telling the ladies up there?”
“What’s that?” Harry asked.
“Boys finally made it to California.”
“That so,” Harry said. “Well, good. Are they having a fine time, I bet?”
“Of course I don’t get to hear much thanks to Ma Bell.”
“Tell him I said hi.”
“Him, Harry, you said him.”
“I meant them.”
“You know already? Does the whole town know?”
“What are you talking about?” Harry asked.
“All right then. Never mind.” Miss Dazzle withdrew her head. Harry put the truck in gear again, and then she was back. Her head ducked in and she readied herself to speak but didn’t. Harry felt his neck flushing. He began staring at the horn on his steering wheel, round like the moon with faces in it if you stared too long. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?” Miss Dazzle said.
“No, heavens no, you don’t have to say anything,” Harry answered, with no idea what she was talking about.
“They’re with their cousin.”
“I know,” Harry said, now fearing the worst, a girl who’d been knocked up. The reason for this mysterious overly long trip by two boys still technically teenagers was starting to come clear.
“But he’s there, too. Did you know that, Harry?”
“Who?”
“Him. He’s there. Him, Harry. That’s who. Supposedly moved out there permanently. Well, that’s what he said when he married me, supposedly permanently.”
“You mean your ex-husband?”
“Still officially husband, Harry.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I had no idea. I’m really sorry.”
“You’re lucky you’re not married, Harry. And you a Mormon, good Lord, the most eligible guy in town. You got any supposedly permanent girls on a string, Harry?”
Now Harry was taken aback, wondering if Miss Dazzle had orchestrated this whole conversation just to bring it around to Jo. He couldn’t believe she thought that man was ever coming back.
“Is that why the boys went out there, to visit their dad?” Harry asked.
“They think they’re bringing him back. Oh, the course of true love.” Miss Dazzle laughed bitterly.
“Does he have a mind to?”
“If Ma Bell had a mind to let me speak through the hundred other people on my line, I might find out.”
“I wish you good luck,” Harry said.
“Oh Harry,” she said. “You’re quite a guy, aren’t you.” She jutted her chin toward the back. “Poor fellow, huh,” she said, tapping his roof goodbye. “I guess some people have it worse.” Then she seemed satisfied to let him leave.
A few miles beyond town Harry spotted a white Cadillac heading in the opposite direction and it suddenly occurred to him that this might be the partner Leonard Dawson had been bragging about. Harry knew the man. It was Vincent Flaherty. Despite the Cadillac, the money Flaherty had made on penny stocks had dried up. There had been rumors about his latest mines being salted.
Flaherty gave a toot of his horn as they passed each other. Harry watched him for as long as he could out of his rearview mirror. The road was long and straight and, except for their two cars, deserted. The emptiness made the heat visible. The tarred road flicked up a black vapor, and the Cadillac appeared to Harry’s squinting eyes to be riding on a current of soot. Harry kept blinking to bring the car back into proper focus. He stopped the truck and leaned forward and gripped the mirror. The Cadillac, now a jumping white ember, flared across the road—heading, had to be, toward the Stagecoach Oasis.
Outside, the sun burned the road, but inside the truck it was cold, refrigerator cold, and Harry shivered. He again felt that urge that had daily, no, hourly, begun stabbing at him: protect Jo, protect Jo. He wanted to turn around and head back. Jo would need his help. She didn’t know how to deal with Flaherty’s type. He checked the rearview mirror but it gave up nothing. He had no choice, he had to get the body delivered. So much time already wasted. The ice was likely melted, the poor body probably floating back there. He stepped on the gas.
He pictured both men after Jo, the doctor and now this other one, Flaherty, each of them crooning so easily the words that in his own throat remained stuck. Each time Harry tried to shove an ingratiating phrase out into the world, each time he tried to visualize the sentence forced into place by these words—just easy simple syllables that combined into easy simple words, just take them one at a time and throw them out there, the sentence will come to life and do the rest of the work for you—the selfcoaching never worked, and embarrassing nonsensical sounds replaced his voice. There was something wrong with him, there truly was. Here he was charged with the most grave of missions and was he paying proper respect to a man who had died in his line of work or was he thinking about syllables and a blue crescent that extended into the unseen fullness of a breast and nipple? Unseen until now, that is. He couldn’t believe himself. Was he really imagining this? Don’t tell him that his polygamous blood was now leading him to include Miss Dazzle as well.
He started to relive the trip back from Jimmy Splendid’s camp. He was awash with that afternoon, Jo by his side at the oasis, helping him load up his cached equipment, getting dirty, getting scraped, how they had worked side by side, how over the scrub brush had bobbed the heads of the mother and Charlie, leaving him alone with Jo, who was so much stronger than she looked. Being side by side with Jo was all that had mattered. It was everything. They had stood there together and he had leaned toward her. She had leaned, too, he could see that now.
Harry looked down at the speedometer and saw that he was doing over eighty. He slowed, then pulled the truck over and steadied himself. The road’s unswerving black arrow shot far into the horizon. He gripped the steering wheel and leaned his head upon it.
In two days Harry’s life had been turned inside out and he had discovered two main lessons in life: love makes you horribly wretchedly happy and love makes you electrically wonderfully miserable. And the thing was, he supposed there were more lessons like these for him to learn, perhaps each more upsetting than the previous one, he should quickly turn his back on this chain reaction the way his religion would insist upon. He didn’t want to learn them, he was compelled to learn them. He hated being in love, he loved it. But he was living, you see (by now he was talking out loud as well), really living, living head on and square in the face. He was living without checking in with God every step of the way. Though admittedly this spree had gone on for only two days, he was doing what his religion was most scared of—which was why it gave everyone two wives or maybe three, to trick them into thinking we’re really living now! Harry was seeing for the first time what living truly involved and it wasn’t what necessarily made you content, but it gave you one or two moments of dangerous transcendence. Was it enough to sell your soul for? He could walk away and still be a contented man. A good man, the good man he had never until now doubted he was, a good man who was yet content. It wasn’t too late. He could come to his senses and forget about Jo and go back to his regular life and rediscover the contentment there. Which was what he should do.
Which was what he couldn’t do.