Lullaby Road, page 7
12
The sunlight ricocheted off the surface of the empty streets of Rockmuse—the town that wouldn’t die. Toby, the aging proprietor and sole employee of the Rockmuse Collision Center, had lost his wife to cancer fifteen years earlier and as far as I knew he kept active, though not busy, maintaining the two postal delivery vehicles and the Rockmuse school bus, which was so old it was the same bus that ferried some of the current students’ grandparents. There weren’t many collisions these days and the damages resulting from the few that did occur were left alone to rust and scar like all the other ordinary tragedies you saw on the faces of a small-town population. Nearing the corner building that housed the collision center I got an idea and turned off on a side street that led to the countess’s ranch a couple miles out of town to the north.
Phyllis Bradford wasn’t a real countess, and no one ever called her that to her face, but she was close enough, being that she was foreign, that is, from the east, and had a certain assured bearing, tall and slender with short blond hair, blue eyes, and high cheekbones. She had shown up driving a silver Rolls-Royce not long after the coal mine closed and the smart folks were leaving town as fast as they could and property was cheap and getting cheaper by the day. She was alone except for the two small children with her, a boy and a girl, who turned out to be her grandchildren, though she was only in her early forties at the time. No one at the time thought she was any kind of desperado, and she paid cash for a nice turn-of-the-century two-story ranch house and a hundred acres.
Rich people have no goddamned clue when it comes to hiding from the law. They go right on with their privilege and wealth in some backwater and nine times out of ten that’s how they got into trouble in the first place, though the countess was the exception. She must have thought she’d arrived safely on Mars and not a soul in Rockmuse would notice and she and her grandkids would never be found. It took less than three months. Considering who she was and where she’d come from, and what she’d done, you’d think the FBI had been asleep for the first ten weeks.
Her private road was graveled and long, a quarter mile or so, lined on both sides by white ranch fencing with horses in the meadow, which wasn’t a meadow unless you counted the tufts of prairie grass floating like tiny green islands in the brown sand and rock. I pulled up in the circular drive in front of the house. She kept it freshly painted white with turquoise blue trim. The barn was turquoise too. Turquoise must have been her favorite color because it was also the color she chose for the Rolls that had long since been transformed into the damnedest looking pickup anyone had ever seen. The conversion had been done by Toby at the Rockmuse Collision Center. Could have been that was what had made me think of her.
I sat in my truck and listened to it idle and waited, as is the custom in the desert country, to announce a visit. The low wraparound porch slanted forward from the years of foot traffic and foundation settling. It was an eastern-facing porch and as such looked straight into the maw of the mesa, so close and tight that standing on the porch you couldn’t see the top of its 2,000-foot plateau—a little claustrophobic for my taste. I’d been at her place a few times in the late afternoon when the sun was getting low in the west and the combination of heat and light reflecting off the red stone and mica radiated and pulsed pink until you were disoriented and floating and damn near blind.
Phyllis opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. During her first three-month residence she was a sight around Rockmuse with her high heels and fashionable dresses, never without pearls or diamonds. After prison, when she returned, without the diamonds and pearls, she slipped easily into the native garb of cowboy boots, jeans, or sometimes a long ranch dress and western checked blouse. Today it was jeans and boots and western blouse. On her, somehow, the ranch clothes still reminded me of the little black dress and pearls.
She raised her hand to shield her eyes. “Ben?”
I opened my door and confessed to my name.
“Am I getting so old I forgot I ordered something?”
I told her it was a social call, sort of, and asked if I might come in for a moment.
“I’ve never known Ben Jones to make social calls.” She waved me in the open door. “Not that I am complaining. It’s a pleasure, Ben.”
It was agreeably warm inside. I sat down on the sofa. She made herself comfortable in a wingback chair, body upright, shoulders straight, soles of her boots flat on the hardwood floor, her hands folded on her lap. The October sunlight filtered in through lace curtains behind me. There were streaks of gray in the blond these days and a few wrinkles here and there. Overall, she hadn’t given much away to age, still trim with the jawline of a young woman. She possessed a kind of calm, natural confidence that took over and in that way the countess was as close to class as you could get in Rockmuse.
There was a tall glass with brown liquid and ice on a table next to her. Without a word she got up and returned with a glass for me. “Long Island iced tea.”
I assumed Long Island tea meant that it was imported from Long Island. I swallowed a sip and it burned my mouth and then proceeded to light a fire all the way down my throat. I coughed and my eyes started to water.
Phyllis sprang up and began patting my back and apologizing. “It has a touch of gin in it.”
I didn’t say it, but I was thinking that what it had a touch of was tea. The other thing I was thinking was how her hand had stopped patting me on the back and was now just resting warm and soft on my neck. She must have noticed too, and returned to her chair.
She apologized again and punctuated her apology with a clear ripple of laughter. “I’m afraid to admit since turning sixty I have joined the ‘It Must Be Five o’Clock Somewhere’ club. You said this was a social call?”
“A favor,” I said, and quickly explained about the girl and the baby, and the dog and the accident. “I just need someone to watch them for a few hours until I get my trailer door repaired.”
“Of course,” she said. She didn’t stand, so neither did I. “Are you seeing anyone these days?”
The visit seemed to be turning a bit more social than I anticipated. I thought of Claire, of her above me laughing as we made love at the model house in Desert Home and then her dying next to me in my old Toyota pickup as we bumped across the desert. And of her secret grave next to her mother, Bernice, Walt’s wife.
“No,” I said. It was true but it felt like a lie.
Phyllis raised her eyebrows. “Let me share something with you, Ben. I was going to suggest an arrangement. To be candid, I’ve been thinking about you for a long time. Yes, there is an age difference. There are many differences. I’ve practiced this speech many times. I wanted it to sound vaguely salacious, hopefully witty and playful. Something like, ‘How about an older woman? Half the responsibility and all the fun.’ I realize that’s just not who I am.” She sipped from her tea. “Perhaps it’s been a game for me. Nothing more. Then out of the blue you show up on my doorstep today. And I realized something else. It’s not who you are, either.”
“You’re very pretty,” I said, and meant it.
“Yes,” she said, “I am.” There wasn’t a hint of brag in her voice, only the quiet truth. “And I miss the company of a man. Not just in the bedroom—in my life. What’s left of it.”
I started to speak and she placed her index finger over her lips. “Just listen, please. I’ll be happy to watch your charges. I don’t ever want us to speak of this subject again. Your word as a gentleman, please?”
“If that’s the way you want it. You have my word.”
“Good. I trust you. When I asked you if you were seeing anyone, you said no. If there is one thing a woman—a real woman, an honest, discerning woman with an open heart—knows, it is the shadow of another woman on the face of a man in whom she’s interested. Maybe it’s the gin. Or the years. This empty house. The desert. But I know this: whoever she was, she wasn’t just a woman, not to you. You love her. If I were still rich and beautiful and young, I still wouldn’t have a chance. And somehow, dearest Ben, that makes me feel better. Now, let’s go get those lovelies of yours.”
Phyllis greeted the girl with a hug and I couldn’t help notice that there was more than shyness in the way she stood, arms to her sides, inside herself. I explained I didn’t know her name. Phyllis got on one knee in front of the girl and asked her name in Spanish. Not my Spanish. Formal, lilting Spanish. She got the same response I did. I remarked on her Spanish. Phyllis replied that her Spanish was still good, but her Italian and French were far from what they once were.
Phyllis smiled at the girl and then at me. “You two look enough alike you could be related.”
Thinking Phyllis was finding a roundabout way to suggest the girl might be my daughter, I said, with a bit more sharpness than I intended, “Well, we’re not.”
“Relax, Ben,” she said. “I meant like a little sister or niece.”
I could maybe see it. Same dark eyes and thick, coarse black hair. That was about it. There was something else about the girl, the way she kept herself inside, and I recalled how she had set me to thinking back to my own childhood before I was adopted.
The girl took tentative steps across the porch, her head swiveling, taking the place in, overcome with awe, like Dorothy entering the gates of Oz. She suddenly stopped and turned and stared at me. The dog, who had dutifully followed her, turned and stared at me as well.
Phyllis said, “Tell her you’ll be back soon.”
“I don’t think she’ll understand me.”
“Say it, Ben. She’ll understand just fine.”
I said the words and the girl stood on the porch and watched me get in the truck. An idea came to me as I released the brake. I beckoned Phyllis to come over.
“What’s ‘little sister’ in Spanish?”
“Formally, you’d say la hermana menor.”
I didn’t care for it. Back to the drawing board.
I thanked Phyllis and she began to walk back to the porch. She turned and said, “There’s another word. Casual. Affectionate, though. Manita. I might be wrong, but I think it also is used for the Mexican hand-flower.”
I liked it and tried the word on my tongue a few times. I looked at the girl standing on the porch and liked it even better. “Is it a pretty flower?”
“Very.”
“Think she’d mind if I called her Manita?”
“I think she’d like it just fine, Ben.”
I drove away with an eye on the girl and Phyllis. The dog watched too, though with an amused indifference to whether I was going to ever return or going permanently to hell. Halfway down the drive I checked my review mirror and she was still standing on the porch, not waving. Manita. Though I doubted she could see me, I waved.
13
Toby was good enough to take his feet off the desk and come out and take a look at my trailer. He’d gained a fair amount of weight. In his stained foul-weather overalls he bore a strong resemblance to a Carhartt summer sausage. I told him I hoped he could get to it soon and he said he was booked solid through December. And winked.
“Give me an hour,” he said. “Maybe two.” He backed up and held his thumb in front of him like a painter getting perspective. He seemed to be analyzing the angle of impact. “Jesus Christ, Ben. You are one lucky son of a bitch.”
I agreed with him.
It was nearing noon and the lunch I’d packed was riding in the belly of the girl. The Rockmuse Mercantile was four blocks away and it had a deli with decent fresh food that didn’t require an expiration date. My other option was to sit in Toby’s waiting room and read ancient copies of magazines about once-famous people who were long dead and forgotten, or soon would be, or should be.
The Rockmuse Mercantile sounds like it would be larger than it is, and it once was. The shrinking town meant everything in it shrunk as well, including most of the aging residents, with the possible exception of Toby. The upstairs was empty. Some of the tall windows had been broken and boards had been nailed over them. Sometimes the wind howled through the plywood and across its floors so loudly people had to shout to be heard in the grocery below. It was a small store now, with the deli and one aisle of clothes, mostly jeans and underwear, and a few aisles of canned goods and sundries. A little bit of everything. A very little bit.
As soon as I walked in, the idea of going hungry while reading back issues of Mechanics Illustrated and People magazines seemed like the smarter choice. A few picnic tables lined a far wall near the deli counter and a combined meeting of the Rockmuse Chamber of Commerce and Town Council was in full session. The two groups were composed of the same people and did not officially exist, meaning it was a revolving attendance of six or seven people, mostly men, who had nothing better to do than talk. I’d witnessed this once or twice a week as I made deliveries to the store and always pleaded being short of time when I was invited to pull up a bench. With no delivery rig and therefore no excuse, I felt defenseless to fend off their good-natured offer. I ordered an egg-salad sandwich and coffee from Peggy, half of the older couple who owned the Mercantile, and sat down.
“We need to be the gateway to something.”
There were nods all around.
“Gateway to what? To the end of the road?”
“It doesn’t matter. Something to draw in tourists, like Moab does. Those fuckers think they’re the only damn gateway in Utah.”
Peggy didn’t allow swearing, and a sharp rebuke rang out from behind the deli counter. “Byron! You know the rules.”
Another man spoke up. “Moab has prettier rocks. And they’re bigger.”
Byron hunched low over his coffee as if dodging an incoming punch. “Maybe we can talk some Indian tribe into building a casino here. What do you think, Ben?”
All eyes were on me, the Indian, when it suited them. “Yeah, sure,” I said. “I’ll have my Indian people call their Indian people. It might take a while with the smoke signals and all.”
There was a round of quiet laughter and a minute filled with collective thinking and gusts of wind spitting against the building.
There had been some rumors of such a thing for a long time. I envisioned acres and acres of RVs, buses, and travel trailers, a fountain and valet parking, and a goddamn golf course rolling endlessly green into the horizon. Water. Lots and lots of water. But like it or not, Utah was run by Mormons and to my knowledge there wasn’t a gambling casino anywhere in the state and as long as the angel Moroni and the ghost of Joseph Smith were running things there wouldn’t be, and that suited me just fine.
A number of new ideas started to pop from the group. Peggy brought my sandwich and coffee and I began to eat my lunch. Quickly. Next up was a weeklong biker rally, along the lines of Sturgis. Then came something called Mesa Days, which, as near as I could figure, involved nothing more than getting a whole lot of people to come and just stare at the mesa. I kind of liked that one.
One of the guys had a Eureka moment with “Desert Gay Days.” There would be a celebration of homosexual contributions to the Old West and a gay rodeo finale. The lone woman at the table wondered if there could be a part of the wingding devoted just to lesbians. Oddly, this seemed to put a damper on the general idea for a few seconds. A voice at the end of the table said, “Well, I like it. Those people have money and they love parties.”
Peggy and Joe, her husband, had a nephew who had come to help them a couple years earlier. He was a nice kid in his twenties, hard worker, who had graduated from BYU. He had been stocking a shelf on the other side of an aisle near the picnic tables and listening to the conversation. The most recent comment compelled him to surreptitiously raise his head just above the aisle until he made eye contact with me. He wiggled his brows at me and I smiled. He mouthed the words “those people.” We shared a secret.
A year earlier, during a rare trip into Salt Lake City, I had run into him and his boyfriend holding hands in a coffee shop near the university. When he saw me the blood drained from his face. His parents didn’t know and neither did his aunt and uncle. There was nothing I could say to settle him down. I took hold of his right hand and maneuvered the fingers into the well-known hand gesture. “Screw ’em, Lenny,” I said. “Your business is your business. Who you love is none of mine.” I meant it, not just for him, but for everyone. Since then he always nodded when he saw me and flashed me a smile and low middle-finger salute.
The next ideas to be floated involved a hybrid of sorts, a gay biker parade and swap meet, a quilting extravaganza, and my personal favorite, “The Mesa Marathon.” Runners would be sent out into the July desert with no water until they finished the race, which ended in Rockmuse where water would be sold at an outrageous price. This, in fact, was not an original idea. It seemed to me that corporations around the world had already put this sick plan into operation, perfecting this idea as they went by buying up public water and making millions if not billions off of thirsty poor folks.
I’d had enough. “Not to change the subject,” I said, hoping to do exactly that, “most of you know Andy Smith, don’t you? The Utah state trooper?” There were nods around the table. “Andy is looking for a truck that might have found its way down 117. It’s an old White Freightliner painted candy-apple red.”
“What’s he done?”
“Speeding. Dodging scales,” I said. “Maybe more. Any of you seen a truck like that around here?”
A minute of welcome and thoughtful quiet ensued before everyone agreed, all with some obvious regret, they hadn’t seen it.
Roy Cuthbert was sitting at the other end of the table. I knew him a little better than the rest. He leaned back and took out a .45 caliber revolver from his holster and put it on the table. “Speeding. Evading a trooper. Dodging scales. Sounds like there’s a lot more to ‘maybe more.’ Like trouble.”
I suddenly wished I hadn’t changed the subject. “It’s Andy’s trouble,” I said. “Let him handle it. That’s his job.”
