That Old Ace in the Hole

  “Why don’t you live there yourself, Mr. Beautyrooms?”

  “What! Live in the panhandle!?” For the first time the man lost his aplomb. It was as though Bob had suggested he move to the near east and become a camel drover. “No, Mr. Dollar, I think not.”

  “All right, I’ll look at it. It sounds like a beautiful place.”

  “It is. And this, I think, may be the break we’ve been waiting for. Otherwise we might have to sell the water rights to T. Boone Pickens and let the place go to desert.”

  “But he’d never pay you nine million dollars for water rights,” said Bob Dollar hoarsely.

  “Oh, wouldn’t he?” asked Waldo Beautyrooms, smiling, turning his silvery moon face toward the waitress and making scribbling motions for the check. “I’ve known T. Boone since he was a kid in Oklahoma and I think I know better than you what he might do. Just so you get the drift of it, in 1997 the Bass brothers sold forty-five thousand acres of water rights for two hundred and fifty million dollars to a southern California water utility. Up in the panhandle the only dependable Ogallala water left is what’s under Roberts County. And T. Boone has got control of the water under a hundred and fifty thousand acres of Roberts County. In quite a few panhandle areas they’ve had to give up irrigation and go back to dry farming. So the water’s an asset. A very big asset.”

  They said goodbye and shook hands before leaving. Bob headed back to the men’s room, his gut rumbling. When he came out of the cubicle the cadaverous man from the next table was washing his bony hands. He looked at Bob in the mirror.

  “You look like a decent kid,” he said. “What are you doing in the dirty subdivision game?”

  “Sir?” said Bob.

  “I was listening to you fumble the deal with those assholes. You got any idea what you’re doing to the country when you chop up one of those ranches? You’re bringing in powerlines, roads, increased water consumption for Kentucky bluegrass lawns, giant trophy homes. You’re bringing in people who don’t know and don’t care about the region, so long as they get theirs. All so some greedy little pipsqueak developer like you can make a buck.” He glared at Bob.

  “I’m not a developer,” said Bob.

  “I overheard you talking about the ‘luxury homes’ that are going on the property.”

  “Maybe,” said Bob, “if you didn’t eavesdrop you wouldn’t get wrong ideas.”

  The man stood there scowling at Bob, who walked briskly to the door, then turned and said loudly, “For your information, mister, I’m in HOG FARMS,” relishing the man’s incredulous and horrified expression. At the exit he realized he had come to the restaurant with Waldo Beautyrooms, and now had to call for a taxi to take him to the Texola parking lot on the other side of Houston, using his last cash to pay for it.

  There were several entrances to the Axe-Head Ranch, all but one behind electronic gates set between upright posts bridged by a hand-forged arch that carried the brand, an axe head in a triangle. He could see corrals inside each of these gates. The main gate was open and Bob drove down the graveled road and through a short tunnel of trees near the bridge. As he emerged from the trees the pale rock house appeared in the distance, long and low. It did not look particularly imposing or large but as he came nearer he could see wings and ells. In front of the house there was a hitching post and a horse trough, both obviously still in use judging by the piles of manure.

  A large black bell hung beside the door, a twisted piece of rawhide attached to the clapper. He jerked it sideways and the bell made a sonorous clang. No one came to the door and he rang again. Minutes passed. He opened the door a few inches and called, “Hello? Mrs. Beautyrooms? Anybody home? It’s Bob Dollar.”

  A young woman in an apron came suddenly into the hallway.

  “Come in, come in,” she said. “She’ll want you to wait in there,” pointing to an open archway on his right. Before he could say anything she was gone again.

  He entered the room and looked around. On the floor was a sand-colored carpet with deep indigo borders in oriental design. The furniture was old-fashioned, leather club chairs, a big square piano (beneath it a fossil mastodon leg bone), a high-backed sofa upholstered in tufted black leather. On a side table rested a brass tray holding a bottle of seltzer water and amber-colored tumblers. Paintings of western scenes crowded the wall. Velvet drapes the color of dried mushrooms hung at the windows. A clock ticked. In front of a window stood an ancient windup phonograph with a thick black record on the turntable. He went over to it to see what it might be: Wyclef Peeler singing “Ate Some Burnt Hoss Flesh.” In a corner was a curio cabinet filled with rocks and fossils. A small bookcase showed faded buckram spines with such titles as Bella Donna, Broncho Charlie, Tiger Smoke—the sort of books found in secondhand bookshops. There was a silver cigarette lighter in the shape of a howling coyote on a table and he flicked it to see if it worked, startled when flame leapt from the coyote’s open jaws. An entire glass-fronted cupboard was given over to objects carved from Oklahoma alabaster: many squirrels, and a bust of Sam Houston.

  The room connected to a smaller room and from the arched opening to it issued Freda Beautyrooms’ voice. He could see her, her face turned toward the far corner out of his sight. She glanced at him and waved her hand but kept talking.

  “…lean but broad-pelvised from his mother’s side. All the women in that family had babies real easy. My two daughters inherited that. O.K.’s mother was old-timey. She believed all that folderol about babies—rub the baby’s knees with greasy dishwater and he’ll walk early. Read poetry and think kind thoughts and the baby will be a good person. He had big feet nothin could fit, couldn’t find store-bought so he had his boots made. Over in Amarilla, at Oliver Brothers. Expensive. He held up a long time. Big hands, big feet, big strong bones. You’d never know when he was born his head was the size of a teacup, or so his mother said.” She glanced at Bob Dollar again and called to him.

  “I let you come in, Mr. Dime, just a keep Waldo quiet. He thinks I’m goin like a lamb to the slaughter and you’re the man with the axe. So we’ll just have us a little visit. In a minute. You just set and wait.” She resumed her conversation with the corner of the room. “The reason they called him O.K. was on his first job, cowboyin, the other hands called him O.K. because a his way a sayin, ‘Everything’s O.K. so far,’ tryin a look on the bright side, you know. It stuck. His given name was Satrap, but I was the only one called him that, and I usually said ‘O.K.’ Unless I was mad at him. O.K. was what he answered to, and that’s what we put on his headstone. He had a trick a pretendin not to know much and that got him out a a lot of things, being hazed by the other men, work, responsibility. He didn’t like to be the one up front. When push came he could do anything but he never let you hear about it and he’d hang back until there wasn’t any other way, then step in and do it, whatever it was, just as cool and smooth and right. He got to be well-known for that.”

  She sighed and went on. “He did some dumb things too, had a taste for mean pranks, about as much manners as a goat, liked a drink a whiskey pretty well. But don’t write that down. Let the dead sleep comfortable. There was a long list a things he wouldn’t do, that got him insulted if you asked him, like cut lawn grass. He was your stiff-neck proud cowboy type. But he was a pretty good man, not special or outstandin except when it come to handlin horses and stock. There was very few animals didn’t act right under his hand and you knew where you was with him. Look on the table in there and you’ll see when he was twenty-two, that face gettin ready to smile at you, and see how strong and willin he was, walkin straight, he thought, into the happy days. Don’t seem like his faults earned him the whippin he got from his life. That’s Waldo he’s holdin, eight months old and just a-wigglin so he’s all blurred. He was our first baby, born September 4, 1939, our only boy. Named Waldo after a kind of bakin powder I liked. ‘Waldo’s Cream Powder.’ The other two was girls. I rather have boys to raise than girls. A girl will sass and flout you and lie until you
don’t know the day of the week.”

  A voice came from the room beyond. “That is probably enough for today, Mrs. Beautyrooms. I’ve got to make some phone calls before three so I’ll have to run. What about tomorrow? Maybe we can talk about your son, Waldo. He’s quite an important man in the oil business.”

  Freda Beautyrooms snorted. “That’s what he likes to think. But I guess it’s all right.” She paused and added, “My husband’s mother used a say he was too smart to live. If a child was too smart he’d die young. A course Waldo didn’t die so I guess he wasn’t all that smart.”

  A very short blond girl appeared in the archway. She held a small tape recorder and a sheaf of loose paper, each page filled with sloped writing.

  “Oh, hello,” she said to Bob. “I’m Evelyn Chine. I’m writing my M.A. sociology thesis on Woolybucket. Mrs. Beautyrooms is one of the oldest citizens and remembers the town before the streets were paved.” She seemed nervous, looked over his shoulder rather than directly at him, one of those who avoided direct eye contact.

  Bob shook her hand and mumbled. He was wild with envy. Why had he not thought to say he was a grad student working on a paper about, say, land values and usage? What a great cover, a million times better than the luxury home dodge.

  Evelyn Chine left, a wire trailing from her recorder.

  “Get on inside,” said Freda Beautyrooms, pointing at the inner room. “That was my husband, O.K., I was talkin about to her. I just got a the point where I was goin a tell about how O.K. come to die when she jumped up and run off. It was because a Waldo. Waldo was crazy about swimmin and he got into these school meets where they race each other in swimmin pools? I thought it was a lot of foolishness myself but O.K. got pretty excited when Waldo won a ribbon or a trophy of a half-nekkid feller. When Waldo was fifteen there was this big swimmin contest with other panhandle schools and Oklahoma, too. Maybe New Mexico. A long time ago. It was held up at the college in Goodwell. Waldo won the first part. Poor O.K. got so excited and jumpin around and screamin ‘Waldo! Waldo!’ that he lost his footin on a wet place and fell into the deep end. He didn’t know how to swim a stroke and went straight to the bottom like a stone. He was drowned before they could get him. And it was Waldo who had to pull him out, too. He didn’t race the second part so he never knew if he could a won or not. I don’t believe he went in swimmin again in his life.”

  “That must have been quite a burden of guilt for Waldo to carry through life,” said Bob.

  “‘Burden a guilt’? I don’t think so. I don’t think Waldo ever felt a twinge a guilt about a thing. Now he sends you along to twist my arm about buyin the ranch, and I’ll play along with you for a while, but I just want you to know that you are not goin a buy it. Not even if you was to offer a million dollars.”

  “Waldo is asking almost ten times that amount of money for the property,” said Bob.

  “What! Why, that little snake. I suppose Eileen and Marilyn’s in on it?”

  “They were both there when I met with your son.”

  “Them snakes! I just got a mind a do it and keep all the money myself. Did he tell you to look around or what?”

  “He said somebody named Steve would show me the place.”

  “Oh, Steve? Estefan Escarbada, you mean. Haven’t seen him for years. I thought he moved a San Antonio. You better go look around on your own.” She seemed anxious to get him out the door. Her hands were shaking and the lined face was beaded with sweat. Suddenly Bob was afraid she might be having a stroke.

  “May I help you to a chair?” he asked.

  “Bed,” she gasped, waving at a green portiere on the far side of the oak table. He helped her toward it, pushed aside the curtain and revealed an immense bedroom carpeted in pale pink. A king-size poster bed, as ornate as a wedding cake, stood unmade in the middle of the room. He noticed the film of dust on everything and wondered if she did not have a maid or cleaning lady. He guided her to the bed and almost as soon as she touched down on it her eyes closed. As he left the room he looked around a little furtively, noticing the big windows with the view of the lake, the leather-topped table strewn with rings and necklaces, a basket of papers and unopened mail and magazines. The plastic brooch he remembered lay in a drift of powder. Once past the green curtain he kept on going, got in the Saturn and decided to drive around the ranch by himself.

  Outside he could see a track that circled the lake and headed west toward a motte of trees. Because it had turned into such a rare scented day, cool and blue, millions of wildflowers coloring the fields as pastures of heaven, he lowered the car windows and, with the delicious air streaming in, mashed the accelerator and headed for the lake track.

  He was a quarter of the way around the lake, the track gaining altitude as it rose and ran along a white bluff a hundred feet above the lake, when a yellowjacket flew into the car and could not seem to fly out. It flew angrily around his head, weaving figure eights. He could feel the air stirring under its wings. He flapped his left hand trying to drive it out, but it suddenly came at him and stung him just below his right eye. Instinctively he put his right hand up to his burning eye, which felt as though washed with acid and the car swerved off the track. He tramped the brake but the front half of the car was already projecting over the bluff, the rear tires still on land, the entire vehicle teetering when he moved. His eye had swelled nearly shut. The yellowjacket was still with him but there was no question now of shooing it away. Even if it stung him a hundred times he was afraid to move. His heart pounded in his throat. He would sit quietly. It was only a matter of time before someone saw him. Freda Beautyrooms. But how long would she sleep? Would she look out of the window at the lake? Surely he must be in sight of those big windows in her bedroom. He wanted something to wave to catch her eye. He gingerly picked up his grain elevator cap and slowly moved it up and down before the windshield. The yellowjacket came at his hand and stung him on the thumb. The car gave a sickening shudder. The edge of the bluff was gradually breaking off and pulling the car forward toward the lake.

  There was nothing else for it, he had to get out somehow. He had to get in the back of the car. There was a space between the two bucket seats and very slowly, very carefully he raised his buttocks and shifted over into the gap, sliding gently backward as he went. The car hardly trembled. Cautiously he moved toward the backseat, but as he pulled his legs up, more of the cliff broke away and the car nose tilted downward a terrible inch. He pissed his pants, hardly noticing. But now he was in the backseat, his hand reaching for the door handle, opening it as slowly as possible, and then rolling out onto the blessed ground. He crawled away from the edge, hearing the patter of clay falling into the water below. But from the outside the car looked more awkward than perilous, canted over the bluff as though peering at the water before a dive and refreshing swim. In fact, he thought, if he could get a tow truck out here there was a good chance they could pull it back to the track. He headed for the road and only then realized his pants were sopping wet and, as he walked, chafing his thighs. His right eye was swollen shut. He guessed it was eight miles to town. In this wind his pants would dry long before he got there, or someone might come along and give him a ride. Not if his pants were still wet. He had a choice, of course. He could go back to Freda Beautyrooms’ house and ask to use the phone, call a tow truck. What could he say when she remarked on his wet pants? Or he could walk to town. He wondered briefly if the yellowjacket was still in the Saturn and decided to walk to town.

  Out on the main road he walked along, turning around and walking backward, thumbing a ride, every time he heard or saw a vehicle in the heat-quivering distance. A rattletrap truck packed with three cowboys passed him, then two Mexicans in a well-maintenance truck. The third vehicle stopped and Sheriff Hugh Dough opened the passenger door, glancing at Bob’s wet pants, and said, “Car break down?” then, seeing his swollen eye, “Have a accident?”

  “‘Down’ is part of the problem,” said Bob. “I was driving around the lake to lo
ok at the ranch when a bee got in and stung me and I lost control. The car is kind of at the edge. I almost went into the lake. So now I got to call a tow truck.”

  “Happen I got tow straps,” said the sheriff, glancing again at Bob’s damp crotch. “Get in.”

  When they got to the Saturn the cliff had given way several more inches and the car had the posture of a diver leaning forward before the plunge.

  “I don’t know,” said the sheriff, “that weak old yeller dirt could come down any minute. I’d say you need a tow truck.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You need a tow truck and a prayer. So tell me, Mrs. Beautyrooms ain’t thinkin a sellin you the Axe-Head, is she?”

  “Not exactly. It’s complicated. Real complicated.”

  “You can spin me your yarn while we wait for Albert.” And he called the dispatcher and told her to get Albert Dent out to the Beautyrooms’ place.

  “We got a car half off the bluff over the lake. He needs a get some speed on it.”

  21

  TRIPLE CROSS

  It was another grey morning, the low-hanging clouds bulging with hundreds of grey udders that threatened hail and worse.

  He spent the morning writing to Uncle Tam and Mr. Ribeye Cluke, drove into Woolybucket on a road the color of grapefruit pith and mailed the letters. The weather was closing in, sticky, damp and dark. In his mailbox was a plain brown envelope postmarked Denver. He tore it open. It was the Global Pork Rind newsletter, Ribs.

  A sudden burst of wind threw hailstones against the post office window. Lightning flickered as he ran for his car. On the way back to the bunkhouse the wind shoved and hustled the Saturn. Hail and rain mixed, the hail increasing in size, smacking the car, the road, and rebounding with dull purple flashes. The lightning shot around him in blinding streamers. He pulled off near Saddle Blanket bridge and parked under a black willow for some shelter. The wind was terrific and frightening. The sky flickered, its sickening strobe light revealing torn clouds, leaves flashing white. Rain and hail and twigs and plastic bags scraped over the windshield. He could just make out hailstones the size of walnuts lashing the stream into froth. It was less frightening to watch the brown ripped water than to look at the jittery horizon. A brown wave swept down the Saddle Blanket, no longer pencil-size, but a snarling river. He watched in horrified amazement as the water swelled out of its banks and began spreading over the road behind him, then, with thin, watery fingers, crept over the bridge roadway. He saw he could be cut off and swept away in the flood.