“Don’t even know he’s wanted. Been for five years.”
“Hazen, you coming?”
“For what, kiss him goodbye?”
“They’s putting him in the car, pushing his head inside. You don’t get over here they gonna be gone.”
Hazen said, “I got no business with those people. Soon as they leave, come on meet me here at the bar. I found out where Mr. Webster’s staying.”
It quieted Brother. He said, “Yeah?” interested.
“They come with warrants, we don’t want to be anywhere near the place. But I don’t want to leave till you take care of Mr. Webster.”
“Why you saying me?”
“You’re the one has the score to settle. Look at your goddamn nose. Do what Daddy said, shoot him in the head.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“Don’t fuck up and I won’t have to do nothing.”
Preston was with Eddie Chocote, the Lighthorseman, the last one out, trailing the taillights of the sheriff’s cars but not all the way. Eddie killed his lights and turned from the farm road into the grove of pecan trees, creeping now in the dark, not too far. . . . “Right here,” Preston said. Next thing, turn the car around and watch for headlights: going out would be Brother, coming in, most likely Hazen. The plan: if Brother leaves, Eddie follows him to see where he goes. Preston would stay here and look in the barns. Maybe even the house.
Eddie said, “Looking for what?”
“I don’t know—whatever I find.”
Eddie said, “You have your sidearm?”
Preston, getting out of the car, said, “I don’t need it. I gave it to Ben.”
Driving back to the Shawnee Inn he didn’t think of the Grooms once. It was all Denise, her scent on him, her asking, “Do you really think about me?” And telling her almost every day.
But not saying it was with a longing, or even understanding why her face kept showing up in his mind, until he saw her again. He was in love with her was the reason. Had always been in love with her except . . . Carl was the problem back then, Carl and Jesus, Carl getting him bummed about going to Hell, while Denise’s idea was to “experience life” and she dared him to do things with her. Like buying weed in the black section of Okmulgee, Denise asking the young guys about their life and listening to stories about dope house busts and guys getting shot, Denise natural, standing there in her miniskirt, but not putting on any kind of airs, and they were nice to her. She talked him into leaving college to get his rodeo ticket, and by that time they weren’t even seeing much of each other.
She had been way ahead of him back then and now he’d caught up. When they were still on the floor, settling in, and for a while they were quiet, he said to her, “Denise . . . ‘You’re the reason God made Oklahoma.’ “
She looked at him and without changing her expression said, “’There’s a full moon over Tulsa, I hope it’s shining on you.’”
Ben said, “’In Cherokee County there’s a blue norther passin through.’”
Denise said, “Boy, have I missed you.”
“I’m surprised you know that one.”
“Wayne covered it with some girl, but their cut didn’t compare to David Frizzell and Shelly West.”
“That song’d come on,” Ben said, “and if I wasn’t thinking of you already I would then.”
In the library, on their second beer, she said, “Now that you’re a grown man, how many girls have you slept with in your life?”
He began thinking about it, looking for faces.
She said, “You’re counting?”
“You asked how many.”
“I meant in round numbers.”
“About ten.”
“In over twenty years?”
“Wait. Fourteen.”
“What’d you have, four at one time?”
“In one afternoon, at a whorehouse in San Francisco. With some rodeo buddies.”
“I bet that was a party. Four times isn’t bad.”
“Average for a bull rider.”
“How about some who weren’t hookers?”
“Yeah, about ten. I spent time with a girl when I first went out to the Coast and . . . a couple years with a girl one other time.”
“You were in love.”
“To some extent. The one, we talked about getting married ’cause she wanted to have a child—even though in Hollywood you don’t have to be married.” He wasn’t going to ask Denise how many men she’d slept with, but thought of something close to it and said, “You ever cheat on your husbands?”
She took her time, close to each other on the couch, and put her hand on his thigh. She said, “I gave you the wrong idea. Really, the only reason I asked—I’ve imagined rodeo bunnies and starlets coming at you in packs.”
“Packs?”
“Droves. I thought you’d say, modestly, ‘Oh, only a few hundred,’ and it could be true. I didn’t bring it up to compare notes with you. I was never Denise the piece and I don’t sleep around. You want to know if I ever cheated on those two jerks? I did once. When I was married to Arthur, bored out of my mind.”
“And a little horny.”
“Probably. I could’ve had a shot at the club tennis pro, but I didn’t.”
“Who was the guy?”
“The UPS man. Arthur goes, ‘You’re doing what seems to me an inordinate amount of ordering from catalogues lately.’ Swear to God. The UPS guy was funny and kinda cute, but it was recreational, no way it would come to anything.” She shrugged and looked at her hand on his leg.
Ben said, “You think you’ll marry again sometime?”
She looked up at him, her smart eyes holding his, looked away and nodded a couple of times like she was thinking about it and came back to him.
“Let’s say I’m madly in love.”
“Yeah . . . ?”
“And he’s the kind of guy isn’t afraid to ride a two-thousand-pound pissed-off animal with horns.”
Ben said, “I doubt he’d step up on one today.”
Denise said, “It wouldn’t matter.” She said, “Ben, I’ll marry you first thing in the morning if you’ll spend the night.”
And he said—
He turned off the interstate to pull up in front of the Shawnee Inn.
He didn’t know what to say and she told him not to say anything if he didn’t want to. She said, “I’m not putting you on the spot, I’m telling you how I feel.”
That was when he said, “But it’s like we just met,” and she started shaking her head, smiling at him.
Ben went up the stairway and along the hall toward his room. He saw the guy at the end of the hall by the Coke machine, a big guy looking this way, about to put money in the machine, but now was coming toward Ben in a hurry—Brother in his cowboy hat—running, pulling a gun, a revolver, from under his jacket. Ben got to 220, shoved the card in the lock slot and a goddamn red light came on, shoved the card in again and now the green light showed and the door opened as Brother reached him. All Ben had time to do was step and jab a left hand hard into the nose with adhesive tape on it, stopping Brother long enough for Ben to get in the room and this time hit Brother in the face with the door as he tried to swing it closed and heard Brother yell out as he stumbled back, Ben already crossing to the balcony, sliding open the glass and now was looking down at the pool about twenty feet from the building, no lights showing, Ben not knowing how deep the water was. He heard the door to the hall bang open and pressed himself against the stonework framing the balcony, felt handholds between the stones, and hoisted himself to the tarred gravel roof, rolling onto it as Brother reached the balcony.
Ben looked around. There was no door to a stairs going down, only metal shapes housing the air-conditioning, no place to hide. He could stay up here if Brother was afraid to climb the stonework. But if Hazen was around—he couldn’t be too far.
Ben got down flat on the roof, put his eyes over the edge and there was Brother with his gun raised, pointing straight up
at Ben and firing in the night as Ben rolled away from the edge and crawled back a few yards before getting to his feet. He’d have to run and dive for the pool—the way he dove off the roof of a motel when they were filming at Angola, the Louisiana State Prison, did it on a bet and caught hell from the stunt coordinator. “You want to lose your SAG card, asshole?” Hell no, it was worth $636 a day whether he worked a stunt or not. He remembered now the trouble he had at Denise’s trying to get his new boots off in a hurry. He’d have to leave them on—goddamn cowboy boots when he ought to be wearing high-top sneakers.
Brother surprised him.
Ben started for the edge—four strides and dive out as far as he could—and Brother’s cowboy hat and shoulders appeared above the roof edge, arms clinging tight to the tarred gravel, Brother trying to raise the gun and hold on at the same time. The gun fired in the moment Ben reached Brother to kick him in the face: Brother going back, falling, Ben pressing to keep his balance and then lunging out at the dark, Brother missing the balcony but not the concrete floor of the patio, as Ben landed flat in the water in his wool shirt and his windbreaker and began swimming to the side of the pool, till he found out he could walk.
Denise opened the door. Ben gave her time to look at him wringing wet and say whatever she wanted.
She said, “You change your mind?”
VI.
The first thing Ben did, dripping on the kitchen floor, was call Preston. Ophelia said, “Hey, Ben, love your movies,” and they talked a while. Preston wasn’t home but she’d have him phone.
Denise helped him take his clothes off and put them in the dryer—shirt, jacket, socks, everything but his boots—poured a couple of vodkas, and they stood in the kitchen, Ben in a terry-cloth robe stretched tight on him, while he told Denise about Brother.
She said, “You sure you’re not making it up? It sounds like a movie. I can hear the score, ‘You’re the Reason God Made Oklahoma.’”
Standing there in the kitchen looking at each other, Ben said, half singing it, “’I work ten hours on a John Deere tractor just thinking of you all day.’”
Denise did the same with “’I’ve got a calico cat and a two-room flat on a street in West L.A.’” and stopped there. She said, “But the song has it turned around. I’m here and you’re the one in L.A.” She said, “You’re going back, aren’t you? Once you get Preston or someone to work your place?”
Ben hesitated. That was the idea and he could say yeah. He could say yeah, why don’t you come with me? It was in his mind.
The phone rang before he could say anything.
Preston telling how Avery Grooms had been picked up on the detainer and what he found in the barns. “Ben, was a big Peterbilt tractor in one and all kind of truck parts in there. Big Cummins diesel engine, crankshafts, axles. What they do, Ben, hijack a truck, bring it there and go over it like ants taking apart a magnolia leaf. See, then they sell to wholesalers in that criminal enterprise. The diesel engine they can get six, eight thousand for.”
“A lot of work,” Ben the eight-second man said, “for what they make off it.”
“Yeah, well, these are working-type people, they don’t know no better.”
Ben told about Brother and Preston said, “I gave you my Smith, whyn’t you shoot him?”
“It was in my bag, I didn’t have time to get it out.”
“If you had, would you’ve shot him?”
“If I couldn’t club him with it. I’ve done it.”
“You mean in a movie.” Preston said he’d find out about Brother and call back.
Once Ben’s clothes were dry he peeled off the robe and got dressed, Denise watching, looking right at him as he stepped into his shorts and jeans and pulled them up—the way he remembered when they were little kids and she always wanted to see his thing and he’d tell her to close her eyes or turn around. Not now. He felt natural, the way he liked to think of himself with Denise. More natural than with any woman he could think of. Even Kim.
And there she was, bringing along the other women.
He wasn’t going to tell Denise about them, but now he wanted to—even knowing pretty much what she’d say.
Preston phoned.
“City police and the sheriff both got the call, shots fired at the Shawnee Inn. They got over there to find Jarrett Lloyd Grooms, laying by the swimming pool unconscious, and took him to Memorial. Brother’s busted up cheekbones to toes, messed up his mouth, has knees that bend the wrong way. They wrote him for having the gun and attempting to break and enter.”
“They think he’s a burglar? What about the shots fired?”
“Gun went off when he fell. They want to close it.”
“They have Hazen?”
“No sign of him. He must’ve took off.”
Ben hung up, gave Denise the report, and she said, “You’re staying tonight, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but I want to tell you something.”
They were in the kitchen now, Denise pouring vodka.
“You know my mother left right after I was born.”
“Your dad was dead and that part of her life, along with you, was over.”
“She died of drugs and alcohol.”
“Yeah . . . ?”
“You remember Carl?”
“Honey, Carl leaves his imprint on you.”
“His wife, my grandmother Kitty, walked out on him after a year.”
“Girls named Kitty don’t think much of becoming grandmothers.”
“Virgil’s wife, my great-grandmother, died having Carl.”
“I won’t comment on that.”
“And the girl I was living with, Kim, a stuntwoman, fell off a ladder at home and fractured her skull.”
Denise said, “You’re kidding.”
“No, she did.”
“I mean about what you’re thinking, that I could be next in line. Tell me you’re kidding.”
“Carl’s the one pointed it out. He said we don’t seem to have any luck with women.”
Denise said, “Carl?” She said, “Carl told you that? Carl told stories, things he did as a marshal? My dad said most of it wasn’t true.”
“Your dad represented guys Carl arrested.”
“He predicted things, crops, the weather—where to find game—my dad told me about that, too. He said Carl was always wrong. You lived half your life with him and you didn’t know that?”
“His stories were great,” Ben said. “His predictions, I never paid any attention to them. It’s just, every once in a while I think about what he said.”
Denise shook her head. “Ben, your granddad didn’t know shit. Remember that and you’ll quit thinking of yourself as a lady killer.”
“I thought you might fall on the floor laughing.”
“That’s too obvious.” She finished her drink and looked at Ben in fluorescent kitchen light and said, “You’re perfect for me and I’ve known it since I was a little girl. But you’re too glum.” She took the drink from his hand and placed it on the counter.
“Let’s go to bed so I can wake you up.”
Brother never showed. By the time Hazen realized it and quit talking to the waitress he’d had five Margaritas following a few beers earlier. He called the farm and let it ring. What was he supposed to do now, call the police? Y’all holding my little brother? Call the hospital, see if he got hurt fucking up somehow? He probably sassed the troopers and they put him in detention. Next they’d be out to the farm with warrants. Shit, it was time to move on. Tomorrow, after he’d settled accounts.
Hazen went out to the desk and took a room for the night. Tomorrow he’d go to Denise’s house first thing, before she left for the real estate office, and have her call the famous movie star nobody ever heard of and tell him to get his ass over there.
They were still in Denise’s double bed under the covers, putting off getting up. She said, “I imagined you’d snore, but you don’t.”
“You do, a little.”
“Really? N
o one’s ever told me.”
“I gave you a kick and you stopped.”
“I suppose you want breakfast—eggs, the whole thing?”
“I like just a sandwich, if you have any leftovers.”
“Leftover what, you think I cook dinner for myself?”
“You know how?”
“Is it important to you?”
He said, “I haven’t thought of Hazen once.”
She said, “Then why bring him up.”
“Later on I have to see a lawyer.”
She said, “Let’s brush our teeth and go for another, okay?”
“After you.” He watched her get out of bed naked and go in the bathroom. He waited for the full frontal shot when she came out, and heard the doorbell. He got out of bed and went over to the bathroom to tell Denise through the door someone was here.
She came out wrapping herself in a pink kimono. “It’s the paperboy. He comes to collect once a month.” She said, “Don’t get dressed. Put the robe on and we’ll have a cup of coffee first, okay?”
She picked up her handbag from the vanity and went downstairs barefoot.
She was seriously thinking of selling the house, but would hold on for a while, see what happens. It was way too big for one person, dark, sort of Victorian, frosted-glass panels in the double doors of the entrance. She could see a figure waiting on the porch, a dark shape more than an actual person, opened the door and said to Hazen Grooms, “You’re not the paperboy.”
“What I am,” Hazen said, “is hungover. You get horny when you’re like that? Man, I sure do.” He stepped inside and took the lapel of her kimono between his fingers, feeling it, saying, “Honey, you’re a sight for horny eyes. I bet you got nothing on under there, have you?” He looked past her saying, “What I need more’n anything right now is a cold beer. Get the spiders outta my head.” He started across the foyer saying, “I bet they’s some in the fridge,” and went on through the hall that passed beneath the staircase landing to the big kitchen in the back of the house.