The crowd had thickened, the western wear shop was open for business, cattle chute and gate manufacturers were promoting their wares. At the hat store Ransome tried on a Resistol 5x hat but didn’t buy. He’d get another year out of his old hat. He leaned against a steel stanchion, just another cowboy in a colosseum full of cowboys.
Jack Dickerson arrived with an entourage, but there was no mistaking who was the Boss. Dickerson was the fellow with whipcords tucked into the new Tony Lamas, the fellow with the 15x El Patron Stetson with the ruby-studded hat band. Dickerson was the fellow doing all the talking and his two cowboys, foreman, and the little girl Ransome had met earlier scurried hither and yon at his bidding. The foreman brought out a big steer, and one of the cowboys took it to the washrack. Another cowboy plugged in the video machine so it could start its hymns of praise to Dickerson stock.
Ransome hung back until Dickerson was looking around for the next thing to do. Then he started his pitch, waving his pickup registration. “Mr. Dickerson, Ransome Barlow, here’s the papers on that truck.”
Up close Dickerson’s eyes were red veined and his cologne barely outstank the whiskey he’d drunk last night.
“What papers you talkin’ about, son?”
“For that pickup Marvin bought. Now if you’ll just sign a receipt, I can be on my way.”
“Whoa, hold up a minute. Don’t get your butt in an uproar, son. What pickup, what papers?”
“Marvin bought this truck out in Santa Fe, and he hired me to bring it to Denver, said I could deliver it to you and you’d sign for it. It’s a real cattle show, ain’t it? We got some shows in New Mexico, but I never seen nothin’ like these. These Chianinas, I tell you, they are real cows. We used to use them Chianina calves for roping, you know, but we quit. Too many times some cowboy came down his rope and the calf was coming back at him, ha, ha. Well it’s nice meeting you, truck’s out in aisle D, blue Dodge.”
This was all Jack Dickerson needed, a hangover and all this noise coming at him and some craziness about a pickup that wasn’t his, and he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He pushed the papers back at Ransome. “Marvin ain’t here.”
“Well,” Ransome backed away, “I wouldn’t know about that, would I? He said bring the pickup here and you’d take care of it. I already bought my bus ticket home.” He patted his pocket. “Maybe one of your hands give me a ride down to the Greyhound?”
Dickerson dropped the registration papers, but Ransome was at them, had them gathered up, was thrusting them at Dickerson again. “I ain’t gonna be responsible for another man’s pickup.”
The foreman stepped closer and said, “Mr. Dickerson, I think you should take a look at 477, something wrong with her jaw.”
“It’s Marvin’s pickup and I’m supposed to deliver it here and I done delivered it.”
“Marvin’s in Twin Bridges, he ain’t here.”
Very much later that day, ensconsed in a leather chair, sipping his second Jack Daniel’s in the colosseum’s Silver Spur Club, Jack Dickerson brought his mind back to that cowboy and his pickup. A rancher from Spanish Fork, Utah, squeezed his shoulder. “That was a hell of a yearling bull, Jack. Fine-looking animal.”
“Thanks Jim. That hard-headed judge, he finally saw it our way.” What had that cowboy been yammering about?
When the light dawned, a slow grin crossed Jack Dicker-son’s face. Wasn’t that often he was had. It crossed his mind to warn Marvin, but he got to talking cows with a couple fellows and what with one thing and another …
Enroute to Twin Bridges, Montana, Ransome stopped twice for gas, bought a ham and cheese sandwich from a machine and in the True Value hardware store in Moroni, Idaho, he bought an axe handle, two pounds, kiln dried hickory, twenty-eight inches long.
RANSOME PARKED in the Kiwanis International picnic ground, beside the Madison River. The mountains in the distance were clear and indifferent and purple. No telling how far away. The riverbank grass was taller than his knees, and a path wandered to a sandbar and Ransome supposed fishermen made it. Four neat picnic tables had been painted dark green over old initials. Somewhere out in the reeds a meadow lark gurgled. Ransome snatched a mosquito out of the air, but when he opened his palm it escaped.
Somewhere a dog barked but Bute didn’t hardly look up as he drank his fill from the clear stream. A car passed by on Highway 10. Ransome got another mosquito and rubbed him dead against his pant leg. He put Bute back in his crate.
In a cafe on Main Street, he was too late for the dinner special: country steak with home fries and green beans, so he had a couple ham sandwiches, mayo on white, and tore a bag of potato chips off the rack. The waitress was telling the cook about her boyfriend, who’d gone to be a miner in Butte. The cook was a bony fellow, no hips: his belt wrapped around twice. Ransome left two quarters for a tip and at the cash register, asked, “Where’s a man go if he’s looking for a good time?” He drank maybe one beer a year, usually when somebody handed it to him. He had no use for drunks. If he wanted an animal he’d take Bute. At least Bute kept himself clean. “Honky-tonk,” he added.
“They got beer at Marsha’s Hideaway, outside of town, Highway 10,” the cook said slowly.
“Or?”
“The Bar None. On the flats behind the stockyards. It can get rough.”
Ransome rolled a toothpick out of the plastic machine and nodded his thanks and the waitress locked the door behind him.
In his camper, Ransome unrolled his foam mattress and sleeping bag. He had planned to sleep for an hour but didn’t wake until midnight. The moon was full as he hunkered down beside the river to splash water on his face.
Excited cars howled by, followed by a shout, tires complained and a motor wound through the gears: any western town on Saturday night.
On Main Street a handful of Indians leaned against a pickup. They didn’t wave.
Bar O
BEER & SPIRITS
A dirt road dipped behind the stockyards. Whatever animals were inside were asleep and the moon painted the board fences dirty white.
Ransome rattled across a one-lane bridge into the parking lot. Somebody wearing a Texas hat came outdoors, disappeared behind a pickup and took a long noisy whizz. The flare of a match lit his cigarette as Ransome stepped out of the darkness. “Marvin inside?”
“Where the hell else would he be?” The cowboy flipped his match and sucked his smoke to a glow.
An oversized moon outshone the stars. A nighthawk swooped over the stream harvesting mosquitoes.
The Bar None was one long room with a bandstand (unoccupied and dark) at the one end, signs: POINTER, SETTER over doors at the other. The jukebox played Charley Pride pretty loud and flashed its neon glitter. Elk heads and four scruffy mule deer ornamented the back bar above an electric waterfall: OLYMPIA, IT’S THE WATER. The bartender was a blond-haired fellow with a headache pinch in his forehead.
“Draft,” Ransome announced and idly surveying the room he added, “bring a drink to Marvin.”
The bartender gave him a look but flagged a waitress in a shabby cowgirl outfit, poured a double whiskey, which she carried to a back table walled with beer cans. Three cowboys: brown hat, white hat, straw hat. Brown hat looked up surprised, raised his arm in thanks.
Ransome sipped his beer; beer hadn’t changed since last he drank it.
“Do I know you?” Voice at his elbow, sweat, whiskey, after-shave.
Ransome stuck out his paw, “Mack Sorenson’s my name, Waco, Texas. Friend of Jack Dickerson.”
“Old Jack—muy hombre, that one. Christ, if I had that man’s balls. Who’d you say your name was?”
“Sorenson. Know anybody up here lookin’ for a stockman? Cows, sheep, okay with me. No hogs though. I hate their damn stink.”
“Waco, Texas—Christ, I wish I was back in Texas. Montana ain’t been nothin’ but trouble to me. Come on over, meet the boys.”
Two men sat backs to the wall, determined not to repeat Wild Bill Hickok’s mistake
. The younger man was taller, darker complected, but even a stranger could see the family resemblance.
“P.T. McVey here’s just about the best calf roper there is,” Marvin made introductions, “and this here’s his boy, Bobby. Bobby’s a stick-in-the-mud.” Though he paused, he got no response from the younger man. “Chrissakes. Can’t you take a joke?”
Ransome dragged over a chair and straddled it.
“Hell,” Marvin said, for no particular reason. “Hell.” Then he added, “Mack’s from Waco, Texas.”
“Jack Dickerson said to give you his best. He was working the Fort Worth show with you last January.”
“Was we in Texas in January?” Marvin’s face tried to work out the answer. “Christ my memory’s shot.” He laughed, “You see here a good man wrecked by whiskey and drugs. Bobby, why don’t you be a good fellow and go up to the bar and get us a round? I don’t think they’re gonna serve me no more.”
Bobby McVey was probably eighteen. His hair was slicked back, his shirt fresh pressed, his blue jeans pressed. Wordlessly, he paused at Ransome’s elbow, “Somethin’ for you?”
“I still got this one,” Ransome said, sliding it around on the tabletop.
“Bobby don’t approve of the company his Daddy keeps,” Marvin giggled. “Hell, I don’t approve of the company his Daddy keeps.” He tilted his glass to his mouth and tried to find something in it.
“Thanks, good buddy,” P.T. muttered. His chin slipped off his hand but he caught it just in time. “First day we met, Ol’ Marvin was pushin’ steers around the old Cheyenne stock-market. They closed that down didn’t they? The old west is goin’, son. I’ll be glad to be dead before it goes.”
“Last of the short loop boys.” The young man set a tray on the table: beers for P.T. and Marvin, a Dr Pepper for himself. “That’ll be four dollars,” he said and waited as Marvin pulled four faded singles out of his wallet. Bobby popped the tab on his can of soda. “What brings you here, Waco, Texas? Things too hot down by the Rio Grande?”
Ransome sipped his beer, rolled it around in his mouth. How could people drink this stuff? “Might be,” he drawled.
Marvin barked a laugh. “You asked him, boy. You asked!”
Some cowboy shoved two bits into the jukebox and Tanya Tucker wailed into action and the bartender put down the glass he’d been polishing and dipped his hand below the bar and the jukebox fell to a whisper.
Bobby turned to Ransome. “I’m the baby-sitter. They’re in so much trouble if they get in any more, they’re purely gonna drown.”
P.T. protested, “I told that fool lawyer he should put me on the stand. Wasn’t nobody owned those calves, wasn’t no brand on a one of them. They was from that old Bohunk’s herd, down by the Big Hole, and he pulled up stakes three years ago, just up and left them. They was mavericks, and we had as much right to those calves as any man. I would have testified, but Mr. Smart Lawyer, no, oh no.”
“If them steers hadn’t been locked up in the Ferris Brothers’ corral and if you hadn’t shot the padlock off and if you’d took ’em in the daylight, maybe you could have been on the stand.”
Marvin wrinkled his mouth. “God, I hate a smartmouth kid.”
P.T. laughed. “I would have like to see those Ferris Brothers that morning when they show up with their crew, do a little brandin’ and no calves anywhere. ‘Here Calvey, Calvey? Here, Calf? Now, where are those blame things?’”
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “Everybody’s laughing and you’re going to Deer Lodge Prison.”
Marvin said, “Got to be better’n Huntsville. I’ll take Deer Lodge if it comes to it and just hope it satisfies Texas.”
Bobby yawned. “You ’bout drunk enough?”
“Oh Christ, I dunno,” P.T. said. “You drunk enough, Marvin? Seems to me I could get more drunk if I had a mind to.”
“Boy wants to go home,” Marvin said. “Might be he has homework to do.”
Ransome leaned forward. “Jack Dickerson said you two were Real People. Said you’d do to ride the river with. You crappin’ out on me?”
“Thanks a lot, Mister,” Bobby said.
Marvin grinned. “Hell, why don’t we get a bottle and drive out to the Bitterroot. Morning, we’ll catch some cutthroat trout, make a fire, eat ’em on the spot. Don’t that sound fine.”
“We could go into Butte. Find the boy a whore, get him blooded.”
The boy’s ear got red.
“I don’t know if I got enough left for a bottle.” Marvin looked pointedly at Ransome.
“Any special brand?” Ransome stood.
“Nothin’ wrong with Four Roses.”
When Ransome paid, the bartender leaned over his bar. “Mister, if I was you, I’d be careful around those two.”
“They don’t look dangerous to me.”
“There’s fellas love to see them step over the line right now. And them fellas drive cars with light bars on the roof.”
When he stepped into the darkness outside the Bar None, Ransome’s pupils contracted so quickly they hurt.
“Christ, I got to pee.” Marvin stumbled off, unzipping himself.
“What do you want?” the boy asked Ransome.
Ransome shrugged. “Job, woman, little fun. What does any man want?”
“Here. Now.”
Ransome pasted a false smile on his face. “Son, it’s Saturday night and I just got paid.”
The boy’s pickup was a ten-year-old red Ford, with a homemade paint job that continued over the hood emblem. “We could take my truck,” Ransome said.
Marvin opened his mouth but the boy was shaking his head, “No. I got plenty of gas.”
“Damn, I miss my F250, 348 cubic inches, interceptor tires, come down the road in that truck, they knew I was comin’.”
“You was lucky you had it to sell,” the boy said, dryly. “That truck bought you a second-rate lawyer.”
“Tell me again, son. Why is it you won’t let me borrow this Ford?”
“Because I’ll call the sheriff if you do. Because this truck is about all I got to show. And you know I’ll do it.”
P.T. turned to Ransome. “This here boy, Mr. Sorenson, is what my life has come to. He’s my eldest. Blood of my blood. Ain’t it a cryin’ shame?”
“Wait a sec,” Ransome walked to his truck and got the axe handle and dropped it in the pickup bed.
“What’s that for?” Marvin asked.
“I thought we were gonna catch a trout and eat it. We’ll need a fire.”
“Yeah, but that axe ain’t no use. Got no head on it.”
“Well then, hell. It’ll make firewood.”
Marvin laughed and smacked him on the back and said, “You’re a real thinker, ain’t you, Mack!”
The same Indians attended the same pickup on Twin Bridges’s main street and P.T. rapped the horn. The Indians looked up but didn’t wave or anything.
“Set the bottle on the floor!” Marvin hissed. “Smokies!”
“I ain’t uncorked it,” Ransome drawled. “No sweat.”
When Bobby stopped at Twin Bridges’s single traffic light, the sheriff’s deputy pulled up alongside and leaned to see who was driving. Bobby’s hands clamped white on the wheel and he stared straight ahead. “Bastards,” he muttered.
Didn’t keep his father from sticking a hand out the window and giving the deputy a floppy wristed wave.
“They won’t pull Bobby over,” P.T. explained. “They know he don’t drink. He’s a teetotaler.”
The deputy passed the red truck and disappeared.
Bobby turned into a convenience store on the outskirts of town. “Anybody want a soda? I thought not.”
Ransome stretched and came around to the driver’s side and got in. Bobby was standing at the counter jawing with a woman clerk, who wasn’t much older than he was.
Ransome started the truck and backed away—the boy’s astonished face as the headlights swept the store’s plate glass.
“Oh Christ,” Marvin said. “Tha
t’s torn it.”
“Kid’s a little old lady,” Ransome said, taking the road straight out of town.
“What if we’re stopped?”
“No sweat. I’m sober.” Ransome passed the bottle. “You get started on this. Tonight, we are going to have ourselves a Big Time.”
“Oh man,” P.T. said. “Bobby ain’t gonna like this one little bit.”
“What’s he going to do about it?”
“He said he’d call the cops.”
“Drop the dime on his own daddy? Sure he will. Will you look at that moon?”
The road wound along and over the hills, like a black ribbon under the western sky. Big moon, the mountains like sawteeth. They dipped and rose onto a mesa where all the world lay open to them.
Ransome pulled off into a highway department gravel pit and cut the lights. “Screw Bobby,” he said.
“Oh, man,” P.T. said. “When that boy was born I was so proud, I thought I’d just bust. His mama was a Calhoun girl, only child that mossback ever had, and I figured I was set for life. Young wife and new son and granddad owned four thousand deeded acres and an eighteen-thousand acre BLM allotment. Where’s that bottle, Marvin?”
“First, our host,” Marvin said, with tipsy elegance.
When Ransome lifted the bottle, he plugged the opening with his tongue and drank nothing at all. “Good stuff,” he pronounced.
“I had it made in the shade, partner. Made in the shade. So what’d I do? Start looking around and what do I find but this girl cheerleader. She’s got braces and she ain’t got no tits to speak of and she don’t know more about making love than a knothole in a fence, but I got to have her. Braces, I swear to Christ. I start dragging the wife and the kid and granddaddy to all the high school football games. Granddad knows I played ball myself, but he didn’t have any idea what I’m coming to see: Connie, Connie Malloy. Here’s to you, Connie. You’d think Connie would have been satisfied. I was good lookin’, had money, my own 4 x 4, but that two-timing tramp was making it with half the damn backfield, and me so love struck, sooner or later I was bound to get caught. I thought my wife would understand, would give me a chance to explain. All I wanted”—P.T. laughed—“was a chance to tell a few good lies. That’s all any man wants. Gimme that Four Roses.”