10

“Hello? Anyone here?” Greg said, just below a shout. He stood in the middle of the bar, sensing the chilled stillness of the dim and empty watering hole. The sign outside read Tam’s Tavern in blue letters hand-painted over bumps that were once mounts for grander neon letters. The walls had real wood paneling and ghost-town decor with wagon wheels and settlers’ tintype photos. The bar had chromium trim and cracking leather stools.

“Hello? Anyone here?” Greg repeated, but no one came out the swinging door to the right of the bar. He had a wicked thought like the kind he always used to have. No one seemed to be here. He could go behind the bar, make himself a drink, pocket a bottle or two, even open up the register. Who would know? He would go in back first and make sure no one was in the kitchen. It was only too bad some greenhorn like the young Donny wasn’t here so he could talk him into it. That was even better. That was the way he used to operate. Many people entertained such thoughts, but they denied them. They used to rule Greg’s life, not entertain it. He hadn’t felt them so strong for years. Why now? He wondered if it was nerves. The shock to that order he had so carefully created? Maybe it went along with his rejecting Torres’ authority. Seeing that open-carry guy just now hadn’t helped matters; what was more terrorizing than a stranger strutting around in public bearing a rifle? He shut his eyes a moment, fighting it, took a deep breath.

“Be right there!” someone shouted from beyond the swinging door.

The door flung open and the woman from the street came out behind the bar. Greg grinned, and she showed him a grin to match. “Hi again. Want a menu?” she said.

She introduced herself. She was the Tam on the sign. She was Native American, just as Greg had guessed. To him, it was in the way she spoke as much as her looks. It reminded him of Hawaiians, the words rising and falling in subtly different ways. Tam made him a good ham sandwich with a great house-made pickle. She disappeared in back, leaving him alone to eat. At precisely ten o’clock she came out, placed four bottles of beer and two wrapped sandwiches in a sack, and set them on the counter. Then she went in back again. Soon two guys came in, looking like ex-hippies to Greg, grabbed the bag and shouted, “Thanks!” Tam shouted from the back, “Welcome, boys—eat the sandwiches or I’m cutting you off,” and the two giggled and tumbled out the door like teens busted for leaving the toilet seat up. Greg wanted to follow them and buy them more beers, maybe smoke a joint even. Get them talking.

Now Tam was back out behind the bar, on her haunches, wiping something down. Greg hadn’t noticed the door swing open. He really needed to be more aware, he told himself.

“So, just where are you from?” Tam asked him.

“Portland,” he said. “I’m a native.” It was an awkward way of putting it, at best. His face had heated up, all red. “I just meant, I’m from there.”

Tam stared at him, waiting for more.

“That guy outside on the street? You can’t open carry like that in Portland,” Greg blurted instead.

“That so? Well, you sure can here.”

“At least, I don’t think you can,” he added. He told himself to look it up. He checked his phone and saw no bars.

“No coverage?” Tam said.

“No, but, it’s okay. I could use the isolation.”

“Sometimes you do get coverage. It depends.” She took his plate.

“Great sandwich, thanks,” Greg said, looking around the empty room. “Though I sort of feel like I’m The Prisoner,” he added, trying a joke.

Tam didn’t smile. “I wouldn’t call it the state pen, though it can be like that for some.”

“No, I just meant—dumb joke. TV reference.”

“I get it. Patrick McGoohan—he was the lead guy in The Prisoner, right?” She showed him the smile he’d wanted, her teeth healthy squares.

“Good one. I was going to look it up.”

“If you had coverage.”

“Totally.”

Tam went back to wiping down. He emptied his beer. He waited a good half-minute, practically counting off the seconds.

“I have a question,” he said. “You ever hear of the name Donny Wilkie?”

“I sure haven’t.” She reached the end of the bar and stood. Her face was a little flushed, which brought out the gray in her hair. “I take it you’re not on vacation.”

“I’m a writer, researching a book,” he said. He told her that the book, if the research panned out, would be about the urban-rural split in Oregon and focus on people’s stories over the history, the wonkish policies, the politics. This Donny Wilkie person fit one example. Donny Wilkie had come from rural Oregon and ended up in the city as a teen. Greg had known him, so he figured he should start with what he knew. The last Greg had heard, Donny had become a criminal. What had caused that? Did the city help, or was it already ingrained in this Donny?

“Not sure about your whole city-versus-country deal,” Tam said. “People are just people. A guy like that, he might have been simply wired that way to explode at some point. Then again, as a teen you’re hardly fully formed. Any bad influence could bring out what might not explode otherwise.”

“I suppose you’re right. All I know is, I got a lot of digging to do,” Greg said and paused. He’d probably told this Tam too much, but he couldn’t just hang around and hope for a clue. “In any case,” he added, “there’s an issue in all this I’m trying to nail—what does this idea of two Oregons do to Oregon as a whole?”

“Good luck with that, professor.”

Greg didn’t know if that was a joke. He smiled anyway.

Tam smiled back. “You know I took you for one of those movie location scouts at first?—once I figured out you weren’t a Euro looking for turquoise. Scouts come through sometimes, but never choose us. Shows how much I know. Anyway, you find anything out?”

What could that mean? Was she talking about the XXs? What if she was pushing him? “Like what?” he said.

“You know, anything. Maybe just being here gives you ideas.”

“No, not yet.”

“You’ll figure it out, I’m sure.” Tam grabbed her rag and started wiping the taps.

“Let me ask you something,” Greg said. “Were you protecting me from that guy back there? Helping me, I mean.”

“I told you. Don’t let open-carry guy worry you.”

“He’s not. He isn’t. It’s just that, how do you even know if it’s loaded, or on safety even?”

“Who’s the good guy?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“You don’t know. And that’s just one part of the problem.”

Greg wanted to joke about gun fanatics, but for all he knew she was packing a Glock under that skirt. “Man,” he tried anyway, “I guess I know what it’s like to be under an occupation.”

Tam stopped wiping. She stared at him, stone-faced. “Mister, you got no goddamn idea.”

“Oh!” Greg waved hands at her. “No, I didn’t mean … No, you’re right, I don’t at all.” His face flushed again.

Tam laughed. She started wiping again, faster. “Just riding ya, take it easy. But, yes, I was helping out a stranger if that’s what you mean. You looked hungry.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“What makes you think he was here?” Tam said. “Your friend, I mean.”

“Someone told me. Plus, Donny had lived in Pineburg as a kid and when I knew him he used to talk about going back one day.”

“Uh, and that’s it?”

“Also, legal records have this as his last destination in the US.”

“His last?”

“About ten years ago. He’d fled to Mexico. But I had this wild idea that maybe he came back.” Greg stopped there, let Tam finish her wiping. He didn’t have much cover story left. He didn’t need to lie any more than this. And yet something about the possibility of making up more, of completely recreating himself, appealed to him in one warm, pulsating moment deep inside him. Why not say he was a movie scout? Why not the director even? He could probably get Tam and others to do all kinds of things that way. And then the moment was gone, leaving him feeling refreshed, breathing clearly. He guessed that was what heroin or maybe a women’s orgasm felt like. He got what the con man felt. He could go there in a place like this, where no one knew him. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He had striven to be a better person, but if he had taken it in the other direction and simply become someone else entirely, maybe he would have ended up with no demons.

Tam was staring at him with a curious half smile like someone watching a cat clean itself in weird places. He shifted in his chair. “Those pickles of yours?” he said. “You could sell those from a cart in Portland and rake it in.” Going with the first thing he could think of.

“Nah. I’d have to dress them up. Deep fry them in batter, wrap them in pork belly or whatever. I been to Portland, seen your food carts that are all the rage. Why bother? It’s just a pickle.”

“Yeah. I guess so.”

She stared at him again, then at her bleach rag, and back at him as if she was thinking of wiping him down with it. “Ten years, that’s a long time. People come and go,” she said.

“I know. I was thinking, though, maybe there are still people here that knew him, or who are still getting into trouble doing what he was doing.”

He hadn’t mentioned a militia, and yet Tam was nodding her head.

“Oh, there are still the same people, all right,” she said. “Only they think they’re all grown up now, and in a way that’s never any good. Thinking everyone else owes them. Like they deserve it.”

“Like their time is ripe,” Greg added. He shook his head. He did understand that. He had felt that way once. The entitlement of the non-entitled could be a scary fucking thing. Infectious.

Tam sighed and set down her rag. “Let me give you a tip, writer guy. If you’re looking for someone, especially for the story of someone like that, there’s a whole ‘nother part of town you probably haven’t tried.”