CHAPTER

5

ONE EITHER LIKED the landscape of the basin or hated it. David gazed out over the relatively flat blanket of grass and thought that one could tire rather quickly of driving across it, but soon they were climbing and dipping through the Laramie Mountains. He and Howard arrived in Laramie shortly before dusk. May Rassmusen and her roommate lived in a double-wide house trailer just east of town. The living room wore a deep-pile, shit-brown carpet, fringed curtains, a maroon mass of sofa, and a series of overstuffed seats and ottomans pushed together.

“We didn’t furnish the place,” was the first thing May said to David.

“Pleased to meet you,” said David.

Another woman came from the kitchen, taller than five-foot May by seven inches, and thinner. Her face was plain and angular. May introduced Sarah Newman.

“Pleased to meet you,” said David.

“May told you that the place was furnished when we moved in?” A question to which David responded with a nod.

They went to a bar called the Green Frog Café and sat in a booth. Faded board floor, slow-spinning ceiling fans. They ordered drinks.

“What do you do?” Sarah asked David.

“I just moved to Wyoming. I work in a rest area.”

“Yeah? How do you like that?”

“David’s just out of the army,” said Howard.

This bit of news was received oddly by Sarah. May smiled and nodded, but Sarah stopped in mid sip of her gin and tonic and held her glass halfway between her mouth and the table.

“How did you like the army?” asked May.

David looked at Howard, then laughed softly. May was confused. “I’m not laughing at you,” David said. “No one likes the army. Some people make it a career, sure, but no one likes it.”

“Were you drafted?” asked Sarah.

“No, I joined.”

Sarah was not pleased to hear this. “You joined. And did you go fight in that dreadful war?”

David looked at her. “Where are you from?”

“Dayton, Ohio. Why?”

“Yes, I fought in that dreadful war. What do you do here?”

“I’m a counselor for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.”

“Are you an Indian?”

“No.”

David looked at Howard. “I thought you had to be an Indian to work for them.”

“Why did you join the army?” asked Sarah.

“It seemed like the thing to do.”

“Some macho thing?”

David stopped the waitress and ordered another round. He looked again at Sarah. “No macho thing.”

“What then? A desire to shoot babies?”

“You’re obnoxious.”

“Let’s talk about something else,” May said.

They sat quietly. Someone dropped a quarter in the jukebox and Merle Haggard came on.

David leaned toward Sarah. “You must love this place.” He’d decided to become angry with this woman. “Tell me, why do you stay here?”

“I like the simple life.”

“The simple life. A double-wide trailer with a conversation pit and a color television. A do-gooder come to help the poor injuns. Can you imagine how they laugh behind your back?”

“I don’t know what the source of your insecurity is, but…”

David interrupted her, “My insecurity? My insecurity? Where do you come from with that shit?”

“Enough,” said Howard.

“Yes,” said May, “enough. You two don’t even know each other.” She looked at Howard. “How’s work been?”

“Okay. I had to put Dixson’s mare to sleep.”

“The one you were telling me about?” asked May.

“Yeah, she got worse.”

They sat quietly again.

There was a commotion at the bar. A man had come in and found his wife at the bar surrounded by miners. They started arguing, their voices shifting from whispers to shouts and back; finally they were only shouting.

“Come on, we’re getting out of here,” said the man.

“Leave me alone.” The woman was drunk. “I’m having fun. You know what fun is, don’t you? I’m having fun.” She leaned into the man on her other side. “Ain’t that right, sugar?”

“Listen to them,” said May.

“Disgraceful,” said Sarah.

“Dreadful,” said David.

The man at the bar knocked a stool over. “I said we’re leaving, bitch.” He grabbed her arm.

The woman snatched away from his grasp and stumbled from the bar. “Kiss my ass!”

The man looked around the room at the staring faces. He began to shake. “What are you looking at?! What are you assholes looking at?!” He pointed a finger at the woman. “Look at what you’ve done, you bitch!” He pushed his hand through his hair and turned to the bar.

“I’m not leaving with you. I’m leaving here with a man with a cock.”

The man turned, reaching into his pocket and pulled out a pistol. He fired and hit the woman in the shoulder. She screamed, twisted around, and ran wildly through the tables. The man cried out and kept pulling the trigger. He fired five shots before anyone reacted.

Several miners covered and subdued him. They broke his hand and took the pistol. They kicked him in his face and ribs and punched in the back of his head. David and Howard were up and standing in front of the women in the booth.

“Jesus,” muttered Howard.

David rushed forward to stop the men from killing the man who had opened fire. When they had stopped pounding on him, David turned and looked at the damage. The woman had been struck by a second bullet, in the stomach. Another woman had been hit in the thigh; she was screaming in short, panting bursts. The first woman was rolled onto her back. She was conscious, staring at the ceiling, silent.

Howard knelt to help the woman with the belly wound. “I need some towels here!” he shouted. He pointed at a waitress. “Get me some towels!”

David looked over at May and Sarah, who were now standing. “You okay?”

They were all right.

David joined Howard on the floor.

Howard pointed at the people helping the other woman. “Get a towel and just push down on it!”

“I’ll get it,” said David. “Here, let me see.” He pressed firmly against her wound. “Relax,” he told her. “It’s not bad.” The woman pumped her leg and tried to raise up. “Somebody hold her still.”

The paramedics arrived. The police arrived. People from the bar next door arrived. David and Howard gave statements to the police. May and Sarah were not asked to give statements, an oversight that caused Sarah, in the car on the way home, to accuse the police of being sexists.

When they were back in the trailer, Howard said, “We’re going to bed.” And with that, he and May were gone, leaving David in the conversation pit with Sarah.

“Well, here we are,” said David.

“Here we are.” Sarah stood. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Do you have any scotch?”

She nodded and got the scotch. She poured herself a glass of white wine. They sat silently, sipping their drinks. “Would you like to fuck me?” Sarah asked.

David looked at her. “Yes.”

“I realize we don’t seem to get along.”

“But?”

Sarah looked at him.

“But it gets lonely here,” said David.

“You know it.”

“Could you put on some music.” David had only been with one woman since returning from Nam, a prostitute in Savannah, in a motel room furnished not so differently from this trailer. Sarah struck a match to light a candle. “Don’t light any candles,” he said, “please.”

David did not sleep well. He kept waking up and recalling that, as he and Howard were starting into the mountains near Laramie, he had felt something awful would happen. He kept thinking that he had felt better, more satisfied, after his bout with the whore in Georgia. There may not have been passion in that bed, either, but at least he had been after his money’s worth, at least he had come. He remembered how he had enjoyed holding a woman with some flesh on her bones, so unlike the skeletal whores he had been with in Nam.

Morning came and so did Sarah, into the bedroom, with a tray. David opened his eyes and saw her standing next to him. “Breakfast?”

“Good morning,” said Sarah. She put the tray down on the table beside the bed. “May and Howard are still asleep.”

“You shouldn’t have brought me breakfast.”

“I was up and I thought…”

“You shouldn’t have brought me breakfast.” He reached for the cup of coffee and took a sip.

“Try the eggs. I have a special way of fixing them.”

He looked at the plate of scrambled eggs, fluffy and yellow, steam rising from them. He swung his feet around and down to the floor and held his face in his hands, his elbows on his knees. “I don’t think I can eat your eggs.”

Sarah just stared at him.

David looked at her, then at the eggs. He took the fork and put some in his mouth. “Delicious.”

“I beat the whites separately.”

David chewed and nodded.

“We didn’t exactly hit it off last night, did we?” She sat beside him on the bed.

David looked at his naked body and at her in her robe. They hadn’t done so badly, he thought. “I don’t really feel like eating,” he said.

“What do you feel like?”

He wanted to say, “I don’t feel like having sex,” but he didn’t. Instead, he only stared at her.

Sarah smiled and pulled her hair back behind her ear. She reached toward the tray and dipped her fingers into the raspberry jelly. She rubbed it onto David’s cock and balls, letting his limp organ slide through her grip.

“Sarah.”

“Shhhhhhh.”

David said no more. He watched as she lowered her head into his lap and began to lick at the jelly. He was not filling with blood. If anything, he was shriveling up with each stroke of her tongue, shrinking away from her. He frowned as he watched her.

She stopped her attack and looked up at David’s frown. She stood, raspberry jelly around her mouth, and screamed, her hands balled into fists at her sides. She became silent, looking at David, panting. “Get out,” she said. “Just get out!” She threw his trousers at him. “Pick up your clothes and get the hell out.” Her voice was shrill and painful to hear.

David pulled on his pants, grabbed the rest of his clothes in his arms, and dashed out the front door, away from the high-pitched screaming. He waited in the Jeep wagon for Howard.

“Sorry I caused you to have to leave early,” David said for about the seventh time, as they pulled onto the freeway from Highway 34.

“Did she really rub jelly on you?” Howard laughed and shook his head.

David pulled at his pants around his crotch. “I didn’t get to wipe it off.”

“At least you got a little action.”

“I didn’t feel anything.”

“That happens.”

“I’m going to tell you something, but you’ve got to keep it to yourself.”

Howard nodded.

David didn’t know how to get into it, so he said, simply, “I saw Patrick fucking a sheep.”

Howard couldn’t contain his laughter.

“He was wearing hip-waders.”

Howard laughed harder. “Don’t shit me.”

“No shit, Howard. And you want to know something else?”

“What?”

“It wasn’t disgusting.”

Howard looked over at David.

“I know that sounds strange.”

“Take my word, it’s disgusting.”

“You didn’t see him. There was passion there. He was feeling something.” David looked ahead at the road. “It wasn’t disgusting. What I did last night to Sarah, that was disgusting.”

They traveled in silence for a few minutes, then Howard asked, “Where is this rest area you’re suppose to be working at?”

“Oh, it’s up on Interstate 90, just outside Moorcroft, the welcome center.”

“That’s about an hour’s drive.”

“They pay for gas.”