That Old Ace in the Hole

  LaVon Fronk sat in one of the booths, a plate of pork chop bones and bread crusts before her.

  “Well, Bob, just the one I was hopin a see. Come in on purpose, find out if you was around. Called Jaelene and she said you been out all day. I got a favor to ask.”

  “I didn’t ever expect to see you here,” he said. “I thought you swore never to eat here.”

  “Coolbroth wanted a eat here but he gobbled and run off to one a his meetins. I have to say, Cy’s a pretty good cook. What I wanted a ask you was if you would sit in the quilt raffle booth for a hour tomorrow at the Barbwar Festival. I got everthing covered except from two to three o’clock. Coolbroth won’t do it. It’s just sellin raffle tickets. The drawin is at five.”

  “Well, I guess I could. If it’s just an hour.”

  “It is. At three o’clock it’s”—and she consulted a list she pulled from her purse—“Mrs. Herwig. You remember Mrs. Herwig. Or somebody else. You know, Bob, there is some folks mighty mad at you for trying to git their land away for hog farms. Even Freda Beautyrooms’ son there, that Waldo, he took a half-page ad in The Bummer sayin nobody should sell to you, you misrepresented yourself.”

  “I never wanted Freda Beautyrooms’ place for a hog farm. He got it all wrong. I thought it would be a great location for the luxury houses.”

  “Oh yes, all surrounded by hog farms, stinkin to the north, south, east and west? He says you’re not connected with any real estate firm. This’s good pork,” she said, gnawing on a bone.

  “Probably from one of the terrible hog farms.”

  “No, Cy Frease gets his pork from Phil Bule. I asked him.”

  Bob heaved a sigh. “Anyway, nobody is selling to me. It’s finished. I’m going to call Global Pork Rind Monday morning and tell them I couldn’t make any sales.”

  “I don’t understand how come you care so much about that company. Do you have stock in it? Are you related to the Pork Rind people?”

  “No. It’s just I took on a job and I wanted to—I don’t care anything about Global Pork Rind, but I think it’s important to finish what you start.”

  “If you don’t care, then quit makin a fuss.”

  “LaVon, I have a responsibility. You know my folks abandoned me. I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to just walk out with the job unfinished.”

  “I don’t see there’s any kind a ‘finish’ to a job buyin hog farm sites. People change jobs all the time. It’s not anything like your folks runnin off. Find somethin else to do. There’s work out there for smart young men. That reminds me, Jaelene telephoned a tell you if I seen you that you had a bunch a calls today, urgent calls.”

  Bob continued to argue. “But what about those people who were going to sell their places? I mean, they are on the spot now. Sure, I can go off and find another job, but what about Tater Crouch? He’s got to smell that stink forever. And the Shattles. Even Jim Skin, who could use the money for that old worn-out land.”

  “Don’t lose sleep over it. Tell you something, all a them people is sellin their land, but not to you. There’s another buyer.”

  “What, Evelyn Chine? She’s hurt bad and not likely to be in her job again.”

  “No, not her. Ace. Ace Crouch is buyin it all. In fact, he bought the hog farm next a the Shattles and now he’s tearin down the hog houses, just smashin away. The hogs all got trucked off this afternoon.”

  “Ace? Ace Crouch? But he’s poor. He couldn’t buy a hog farm. Or all these ranches. I just talked with him this afternoon and he never said a word about buying the hog farm.”

  “He’s not talkative, like Tater is. Anyway, you ought a go ask Tater. Seems Ace had a few surprises up his sleeve for Tater and everbody else.”

  “By God, I will,” said Bob, who was puzzled and angry. He got up.

  “Bob, don’t you want supper?” called Cy from the stove. “You don’t want the pork chops, there’s spaghetti and meatballs.”

  “No time,” and he rushed out the door.

  He parked in Tater’s front yard, leapt up the porch steps and opened the door without knocking. The old man was sipping from a tumbler of whiskey and watching television, Sex in the City. He looked up, gestured at the overcostumed actors.

  “Don’t seem like we’re on the same planet.”

  “Tater,” Bob said. “Tater, what is going on? What are you all doing to me? Will somebody please let me in on the secret? Your brother Ace chewed my ear off all afternoon about pioneers and moral geography.”

  “Bob, nobody’s doin nothin to you. Ace laid it all out to me and he’s the oldest. He got me to see that while we last we must not give up the panhandle to you or nobody. This is our place, and we are goin a hang on to it. Nobody is sellin a ranch to a hog farm from here on out.”

  “But how? First of all people here are too independent. They won’t cooperate. Seems to me panhandle people would rather ruin themselves than work together. And Ace can’t buy all these places. It would take millions and millions. You told me yourself he doesn’t have a pot to piss in.”

  “I was wrong about that. He’s got solid gold pots with diamonds around the edge. That old Dutchman he used a be windmill partners with left him everthing. He didn’t say nothin because it’s took a year for the money to get untied. He thought the lawyers might get it all. But they didn’t, he got it. Hunderds and hunderds a millions. Ace is too rich to stand. He is a petrodollar billionaire. And see, him and Coolbroth Fronk and LaVon and the Shattles and Brother Mesquite and me and a bunch a other people is with him. He’s got it in mind a buy up all the farms and ranches and the hog places he can, and politicians, too, if that’s what it takes to git them on our side. We’re goin a take down fences and open her back up, run bison in the panhandle. Brother Mesquite’s goin a help with it. We got them Poppers comin down a talk at the church next Thursday. They’re already doin this kind a thing in the Dakotas. Why not the panhandle? There’s even a buffalo market now that Ted Turner’s openin up them bison burger stands. Things is goin a change.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Bob, turning on his heel and leaving. He left the door open as a sign of displeasure.

  The wind was wrong and the stink of hogs more powerful than ever as Bob drove up to the Shattles’ house. He supposed, if they really had moved out the hogs, that it was the festering lagoon—manure pit—that continued to waft its abominable odors over the prairie.

  “Hello, Bob,” called Jaelene Shattle. “Did you hear the news? Ace Crouch bought the hog farm and moved out all the hogs today. Next week they are goin a pump the lagoon into big septic trucks and take the stuff to Nevada. Should take it to Warshinton. Give the stink to the government.”

  “So you don’t have to sell your place.”

  “Oh, we are goin a sell it. Tater, too. Ace is behind a big consortium, the Panhandle Bison Range. Buffalo, prairie dogs, prairie chickens, native grass, antelopes, all that kind a thing, somethin like a nature preserve. And he figures people will want a have houses near the nature preserve, see the buffalo and all. Sort of what you was sayin back when you was lookin for luxury house sites. Waldo Beautyrooms is goin a sell the Axe-Head Ranch to them.”

  “This is just talk,” said Bob. “It can’t work.”

  “We know it’s goin a be hard work, takin back the panhandle from the corporations, but what else can we do? Give up and die? That reminds me, you had telephone calls today. Here, I wrote everthing down.”

  Bob looked at the sheet of paper: Abner Chine, urgent, with a Kansas area code number; Uncle Tam, urgent, with the shop number; Brother Mesquite, urgent, with the monastery number. He called Mr. Chine first.

  “Oh, Mr. Dollar, I’m glad you reached me. Mrs. Chine and I want to talk to you about Evelyn. Her doctor seems to think that you and Evelyn are—married? Would that be so? Evelyn said nothing to us about it and in light of her situation—the doctor thinks she will be spending many months, even years, in therapy and will need constant care, so if she is married we n
eed to know about it, as much for the insurance situation as anything else. Her employer says she did not incur the injury in the line of work so we are left holding the bag, so to speak.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Chine, that was a misunderstanding, entirely my fault. Evelyn and I are not married. I said that so I could get to see her. I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean to cause a problem. Actually, I think she was injured in the line of work. Evelyn had an unorthodox but effective approach to sales.”

  “That could help our case, Mr. Dollar. Would you be willing to talk with Mrs. Chine and I about that?”

  “Certainly,” said Bob. “I expect to be driving up to Denver on Monday. Will you still be in Amarillo? I could go that way.”

  “We’ll meet you there, Bob. How about two o’clock at the hospital? And you can see Evelyn. She’s conscious now but they say it will be a long haul for her. It would do her good to see you. Even if she don’t recognize you.”

  He called Uncle Tam at the apartment, for it was dinnertime and his uncle would be scraping carrots and chopping leeks.

  “Hi, Uncle Tam. It’s me.”

  “Bob, thank God. I was worried. There was a piece in the Post today. Front page. There was a shooting at Global Pork Rind yesterday afternoon. Wait a minute, I’ve got it right here. ‘An unnamed woman, thought to be a disgruntled employee, entered a meeting room at Global Pork Rind and opened fire on four executives, killing one and severely wounding another. Mr. Quantum Goliath of Tokyo, the president of GPR, was at the meeting. The three survivors were taken to Denver General Hospital. The names of the deceased and injured were not given pending notification of next of kin. The woman is in custody.’ I was going to listen to the eleven o’clock news and see what they’d found out.”

  “My God,” said Bob. “They don’t say who got killed?”

  “Nope. ‘Pending notification.’”

  “I think I can guess who the woman is. There’s a very angry wife from down here whose husband was planning to sell out their ranch to Global Pork Rind and he was having an affair with a GPR saleswoman too. Tazzy Keister. She shot her husband and the saleswoman and then escaped from the local jail. She was on the warpath, declared war on hog farm companies.”

  “Bob, you are in dangerous work.”

  “I was, Uncle Tam. But I’m out of it. I’m a failure. I couldn’t even make one sale. I’ve abdicated my responsibility. I guess I’m like my dad.”

  “Whew. I am so damn glad you are safe. So you failed to buy up people’s farms and ranches for hog facilities. Is that such a terrible thing? Come on home and we’ll spread the whole thing on the table and take a look at it.”

  “I will come back next week. I promised to help at the big Barbwire Festival tomorrow. And all Sunday there will be cleaning up to do. I want to say goodbye to a few people here. They have a plan to get around the hog farm thing. So next week I’ll turn in the car and talk with Mr. Cluke, tell him I quit.”

  “He might be one of the ones that was shot up at that meeting.”

  “He might. If you hear anything, let me know.” He thought his twenty-five years of life were like a slag heap of mine tailings that had yielded only a few specks of gold. But when he said this to Uncle Tam, instead of sympathy or some unclelike bit of advice his relative howled with laughter.

  “How small are those specks of gold, Bob? About the size of pepper specks? Or fly specks? Bigger than a grain of salt?”

  “See if I tell you anything again,” said Bob and hung up.

  The last phone call, to the monastery, got him a recorded message. “Good evening, You have reached the Triple Cross Monastery. We are unable to take your call now as we are at compline. Please leave a message after the tone or call again in the morning after lauds.”

  34

  BARBWIRE

  The telephone rang at sunup and Bob staggered out of bed, stepped on something extremely sharp and painful, hopped to the phone and picked up to hear Jaelene Shattle saying sleepily, “Who? Oh, Bob, he’s still asleep. Can I take—”

  “I’m here, Jaelene,” he broke in.

  A hearty male Texas voice boomed back. “Well, Bob, good mornin! It’s a beauty. Look out your window and rejoice.”

  “Brother Mesquite?” He examined the sole of his foot, removed a goathead that had struck deep. How had it got into the house?

  “Right. A beautiful day. Cool now, but she’ll warm up. Sorry I missed you last night. Wonderin if you were takin in the Barbwire Festival today?”

  “Yes. I promised LaVon I would sell raffle tickets in the quilt booth for an hour this afternoon.”

  “Good. I’ll just look for you. What time will you be holdin down the raffle fort?”

  “Two to three. But I’ll probably go over there this morning and look around. I’ve never been to a Barbwire Festival before.”

  “It’s quite the big affair. Woolybucket’s day in the sun. Don’t miss the rodeo. Yours truly is ropin. With Brother Hesychast.”

  “I would not want to miss that,” said Bob. “When does it start?”

  “Rodeo starts at noon. Look forward to seein you, Bob. I need a talk to you about something. Connected with Ace Crouch’s project. You heard about that, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Bob, letting a little bitterness creep into his voice, looking out the window at the brilliant sky streaked with crimson and gold.

  He showered (still a luxury after the sponge baths of the Busted Star bunkhouse days) and dressed first in shorts and sleeveless shirt, for he thought it would be hot, but when he looked in the mirror it struck him as an un-Texas costume. And there was the rodeo and the blazing sun—no doubt people would dress western. He put on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, tugged on the never-yet-worn cowboy boots Mr. Cluke had told him were vital to success in the panhandle. Maybe that had been his problem, the wrong footgear. He looked in the mirror and was not displeased until he thought about Uncle Tam’s account of the Global Pork Rind shooting. He would call LaVon and let her know. For once he would have the news. But when he tried her line it was busy.

  Downstairs Jaelene, prodding a pot of grits, told him to sit down and have breakfast. She poured a mug of coffee, cracked two eggs into a buttered pan and shook pepper over them.

  “You want orange juice, Bob?”

  “I’d like a little. Can I help?” For some reason he held back from telling Jaelene about the shooting.

  “Sure enough. You can butter the toast when it pops up. Most people don’t have grits and toast, but Mr. Shattle insisted when we got married and it’s kind of a habit now. There’s jam in the refrigerator. Butter’s right here.”

  There was jam and more jam. The Shattles had sweet teeth for sure, he thought as he plucked out jellies, jams, fruit curds and something called Blueberry Tiger.

  Jaelene Shattle refilled their coffee cups, slid the eggs, flanked with sideburns of buttered grits, onto plates and sat down opposite him. He must be in Mr. Shattle’s chair, he thought, spreading the Blueberry Tiger on his toast. He was surprised by the odd combination of chile, bourbon and blueberry.

  “How is Mr. Shattle doing this week?” He wondered who at Global Pork Rind had died.

  “Good. You know, I told him about Ace’s plan and that they moved the hogs out and was goin a drain the lagoon and fill it up with dirt next week and that poor man, he just broke down and wept. It’s been awful hard on him. He said, ‘You tell Ace I’ll buy all the buffalo I can afford.’ I doubt he knows how much they cost. Not like cows! He’ll be home soon as they pump that old lagoon out and it starts a sweeten up.”

  The air outside was lukewarm, the sky as unmarked with weather trouble as a sheet of blue paper. As he drove toward Woolybucket over a road the color of crushed almonds he realized he felt extremely well, free of the press of hog farm site finagling, ready for a day of pleasure. The temperature heated up as he drove. By the time he got to Woolybucket the bank thermometer read 94 degrees. In Woolybucket it seemed everyone felt as he did, for people were jovial and
laughing, nearly everyone dressed in jeans, long-sleeved shirts and cowboy boots except for a few tourists in shorts, their legs already red. He did not have a hat and set out to find one in the dozens of kiosks and booths standing along Main Street. The town was transformed. Crews must have worked all night to get the stands and platforms and booths ready. The stage, with a sign wreathed in barbwire nailed across the front, was at the end of the street:

  STREET DANCE 8 PM

  PANHANDLE PINTOS

  with

  FRANKIE McWHORTER

  Already crowds were moving along the street, clustering around the booths, breathing in the delicious smell of roasting meat and mesquite smoke. The thermometer climbed to 104 degrees, a heat almost as pleasurable in its intensity as a mouthful of cognac.

  The barbwire kiosks drew heavy crowds, rashy and sweat-spangled, fanning themselves with rodeo programs and souvenir fans that read WOOLYBUCKET BARBWIRE FESTIVAL. The town was packed with collectors of barbwire, crowding the dealer kiosks that offered eighteen-inch strands of antique Crandel’s Twist Link, Miles’ Open Diamond Point and the like. A slight breeze from the northeast came up and someone said, “She’s drawin moisture,” pointing to the west, where Bob saw a dryline of thunderheads. The lawn around the courthouse seemed intensely tan.

  Beyond the barbwire booths stood the sign booth, which featured designs and trinkets made of rusted wire. Bob, sweating heavily, bought a windmill for himself, and for Uncle Tam a barbwire owl as a curiosity. Behind the counter a rough-skinned man with narrow and slanting blue eyes under bushy brows, in jeans and a leather vest, armpit hair shooting out in pale bunches, told Bob he could make any name or design he wanted, even obscenities and rudeness, and send it in two weeks. Bob ordered a sign for LaVon’s kitchen that would spell out VIVE LA FRANCE! He ordered another for the Shattles: WE CLEAN AIR.