BY MIDNIGHT SNOWPLOWS HAD STARTED piling long, white berms along the city’s main roads. Walker sat on the edge of the bed and checked the time, his arms and legs aching, as well as his lower back. Traveling screwed up his internal clock. Without Sir Galahad’s wake-up call, he slept late. To break up the drive, he’d stopped at rest areas for naps, a habit that kept him staring at the ceiling half the night. He hauled the suitcase out from way under the bed and took out a bundle of bills and inhaled. Nothin’ like the smell of money. A pizza might taste good right about now, but the promise of a hundred dollar tip couldn’t get one delivered on a night like this.
The way to the ice machine was carpeted and he let the door click behind him and walked down the hall in his socks. If number 107, 109 or 113 would open, some fun-loving mature person might poke his head out and invite him in for a drink. Hell, he’d supply the booze. 110 seemed to have some fun going on behind it, the TV and laughter seeping into the hall, but the door stayed shut. He returned to his room, put on his boots, filled his insulated coffee mug with scotch and ice and carried his drink to the lobby. A chubby brunette in a green Holiday Inn jacket smiled at him from behind the reception counter.
“Evenin’,” he said. “Quiet night.”
“I’m loving it.”
“I guess there might be some advantages. Tell me about them.”
She closed a window on her computer screen.
“Well, for one, I get to talk to you. Where you from? Where you going?”
“I’m from New Mexico. Going to the UP.”
“You’ll find it a heck of a lot colder and snowier up there.”
“I’m starting to worry about that,” he said.
“Worrying will kill you.”
“I got medicine.” He held up the mug. “I can get some for you.”
She giggled. “Maybe just one.”
He bounded back to the room and tore the wrapping off two plastic cups, fit one over the bottle and filled the other with ice.
She wouldn’t let him smoke and he launched into how you could do anything you damn well pleased where he lived. Everybody in Dax County made personal choice top priority. There was plenty of room for everybody’s individual idiosyncrasies because folks lived and let live. Sometimes, when idiosyncrasies crossed the line to infractions, people resorted to the use of firearms. Didn’t make much sense to call the sheriff. He’d just tell you to solve the dispute yourself.
“I wouldn’t like that,” she said. “I’d feel lost without boundaries and convention.”
“Sweetheart, we call it freedom. Supposedly what this country was founded upon.”
Two hours later they were silly. He dragged a chair behind the counter and drew a detailed picture of Mother’s ranch with the creek running through it, the mesa, the canyons and all the animals that lived there—the horses, Sir Galahad and his harem, Patch and Blue, Butch out with the cattle, Scott and Dee with mama pig and her piglets. He added his sister, carefully illustrating her widow’s peak, Mother in a wheel chair, and his brother-in-law with a frowny face.
“And where are you?” she said.
“Passed out on the couch. Ha ha!” He drew himself stretched out with one leg hanging over the edge, hat covering his face, bottle in hand, glass tipped over on the floor.
“No. No. Wait.” He erased the figure. “I’m gone.”
He stopped laughing. His house was a thousand miles away. A huge, black walnut tree played drums on the roof in the fall and a graceful weeping willow shaded it in summer. Existing in a cold, gray city seemed crazy when you could live where eyes needed sunglasses every day and black bears swiped juniper berries off trees right outside the back door, where double rainbows began and ended in between creases in the mountains, where the Milky Way streaked the sky, where sleep was interrupted by bugling elk instead of sirens.
“It’s been swell,” he said.
The security chain refused to slip through the lock. His head swirled. He stumbled to the bathroom and fumbled with his fly, his stream missing the toilet, and staggered sideways. The edge of the sink bonked his forehead. The tile floor was cold as a sheet of ice and he crawled on all fours to the bed, pulled himself up, and swung forward and back. The flowered bedspread blurred into rocks, hills, and mountains where he’d discovered the pottery sherds, arrowheads, metates, bone tools, and fetishes of the ancient ones who’d built stone houses and hollowed kivas out of the southern slopes of mesas. He flopped on the bed and tucked his arms under his head. On the ceiling, wispy clouds moved in circles around Solitaire Peak. From the very top, he scanned a hundred miles—the plains to the east, the lower mountain ranges to the north, the Rio Risa to the south, around and around and around.…
In the morning, the bathroom mirror reflected a pale face with a quarter-size purple bump on his forehead. Ooh. Tender. He adjusted his baseball cap carefully.
A young man had replaced last night’s receptionist.
“Tell the maids not to clean room 106.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What’s the latest weather report?”
“Should pass through by evening, sir.”
“Is this the army?”
“No, sir.”
“Just checking.”
He flipped through ESPN, CNN, Discovery Channel, Preachers, PBS, Turner Classic Movies. Right now, Mother might be staring at Bogie in The Caine Mutiny. Let’s see, she’d have been in her late twenties when that movie came out, wearing a denim skirt and plaid blouse, telling him to hold that chicken tight while she put a leg ring around its ankle. That was how they were going to tell the age of that hen after they got more and forgot all about this one. This one had shiny feathers and was about to lay her first egg, but like all God’s creatures her looks would fade and eventually they’d come to think of her as a workhorse, or workchicken. You could tell a chicken’s age by her feet, just like people; and like people, some aged quicker than others. Mother kept track of her chickens on a chart in the mudroom, where she also marked the first frost, first snowfall, and last freeze. The chart hung over a cabinet with forty long, narrow drawers full of seeds. On top, Mother’s gardening gloves, a trowel, and pruners were laid out beside an old Apache basket that overflowed with vegetables and fruit in the summer.
Bogart was ugly, stiff, and miserable looking, and spoke without moving his upper lip. Mr. Tough Guy. Walker put on his fleece-lined denim jacket and trudged down the block to the Chevron Station Redimart. Snow blew in his face. In order to survive these winters, he’d have to give in and buy one of those down-filled jackets that made a man look like a marshmallow.
He kicked the snow off his damned running shoes and whacked his sleeves. Hunger nagged at him and he scanned the aisles. Just the thought of food left a lingering, greasy film on the roof of his mouth. Come on man, try something. A package of cheese crackers stuffed with peanut butter. A loaf of bread and a can of tuna. He bought a bag of Fritos, a ham sandwich and two packs of Winstons.
His feet were soaked and Bogie was still slurring his S’s when he got back. He put his shoes and socks on the heater, ripped open the sandwich and took a couple of bites, checked his watch. Twenty-four hours until Jimmy showed up.