Biker (20 page)

And then he tripped and fell down the well.

CHAPTER 36

Pratt slept like shit. Every time sleep tossed him back up, he fixated on the kid out there in the hills peering fearfully as strange men ripped apart the only home he'd ever known. He finally rose at seven, carefully put on his clothes, tossed down a couple of ibuprofens and headed out. There was no point picking up his impounded Road King if he couldn't ride it. May as well wait for Cass.

Pratt went back across the highway and into Frody's. Brianna was on duty.

“Don't you ever sleep?” he asked as she handed him a menu.

“I went home at eleven, caught six hours. Coffee?”

“Yes please.”

Pratt perused the menu while Brianna got a pot. He decided to pass on the Rocky Mountain Oysters.

“Those fools ever give you any trouble?” he asked when the waitress returned.

“I can handle those boys,” Brianna said, pouring coffee into a mug. “They've been nothing but trouble ever since I've known them. They know they pull any shit in here, sheriff's gonna land on them like a load of bricks.”

Pratt ordered the Denver omelet. It was perfectly cooked and easily chewed. Pratt felt better after eating and several cups of coffee. He felt he could talk to Ginger and explain what had happened, but he'd left his cell phone at Vern's and Vern didn't open until eleven. He glanced at Duane's cheap digital watch, which had survived flood and famine. Three hours to kill.

He would have loved to go back out to the ranch and search for the boy himself, but he didn't know what he was doing and there was a good chance the sheriff still had deputies out there, understaffed as they were. Finding a dead fed would bring the feds in on it. Pratt had a nightmare vision of scores of law enforcement officers tramping up and down the little valley rendering it forever uninhabitable for Eric.

The image of the boy's furred figure broken at the bottom of a ravine would not desert him. Broken like the boy's heart.

And yet there was something deep in Pratt's soul, a candle flame of hope, that refused to accept that.

Eric was alive! Look at what he'd already survived. Boy like that, he doesn't quit easy.

Stop it, man. You're freaking yourself out
.

After breakfast Pratt borrowed a Cabela's cap from Frody's lost and found and walked into Hog Tail. The sun beat down. Pratt's shadow jigged before him razor sharp. He sat on a bench outside Small's Drug until the proprietor, an older woman in a severe bun with pince-nez dangling from her neck on a pink beaded chain, unlocked the doors at nine.

Pratt went inside and took a basket. He bought a razor and a traveler's tube of Barbasol, floss, a toothbrush, Axe body spray, earplugs, more ibuprofen, a cell phone charger and the latest issue of
The Horse
. The saleslady rang them up without looking at him.

As she handed him his receipt she finally looked up with a twinkle in her eye. “So what's it like to fight a mountain lion?”

“Does everybody know?”

“You bet. This is a small town and my sister-in-law works for the sheriff.”

“Well I guess it's like riding in a clothes dryer with a thousand razor blades. Where can I buy clothes?”

“Sid's Men's Wear, a half block down toward the courthouse.”

Sid's had a dusty window display that looked as if it hadn't been changed since the eighties. Inside the store was redolent with hardwood floors. There was a rack of leisure suits in one corner on sale seventy five per cent off. Sid himself was a natty septuagenarian in a seersucker suit, tufts of white hair crouching above the ears.

Sid didn't bat an eye at Pratt's appearance. “Good morning! How can I help you today?”

Pratt bought Levi's, his first new pair in years, underwear, and a gaudy Hawaiian shirt with crimson blossoms on a sky blue background. Throughout the transaction Sid never commented on Pratt's injuries or rough appearance. By the time he was finished it was ten.

Pratt killed an hour in Babe's Diner across the street from Vern's. He read the local paper. It was twelve pages and consisted mostly of livestock prices and high school sports. Bikers blatted through town. Even here, three hundred and fifty miles from the rally, there was spillover. At five of eleven, Vern unlocked the front door of his bar and opened it from inside.

Main Street had two traffic lights. Pratt waited patiently at one of them even though there was no traffic and walked across the street. He pushed into the dim coolness. Vern looked up from behind the bar, shielding his eyes with his hand.

“Good morning, Vern,” Pratt said, taking a stool.

Vern brought up two glasses and filled them with orange juice from a carton. Pratt washed down a couple more ibuprofens.

“You don't look too bad, considerin'.”

“Thank you.”

“Well I talked to Lester and he says pick him up here tomorrow at nine.”

“You gonna be open?”

“Special for you.”

Pratt thanked Vern, got up and went into the back, where his phone was fully charged. Sitting in the creaky old captain's chair, Pratt phoned Cass. She answered on the third ring. Pratt could tell from the highway sound she was on the road.

“I just went through Brookings. I should be in Hog Tail by five.”

“How's Ginger holding up?”

“The same. She's always been kinda fatalistic.”

“Security?”

“Those Flintstone boys mean business. She's well protected. I miss you, baby.”

“I miss you too,” he said automatically, feeling his penis stiffen. Pavlovian. Every time he made love to her he was more banged up than before.

“Love you,” Cass said with a plaintive tone Pratt instinctively resented.

“Love you too,” he said, feeling a heavy weight on his shoulder. Sighing, he closed the phone and put it in his pocket. He went back out front and shot the shit with Vern. The drought was bad for everyone. If they didn't get some rain soon the ranchers and farmers were going to have a shit year and so was Vern.

A few customers staggered in from the heat. While Vern served them Pratt got up and left. Cap pulled low, he walked back out to the Best Western as bikers and trucks rumbled by raising dust.

Alone in his room Pratt stretched. He could do push-ups but sit-ups still threatened to tear out the stitches across his gut. He slept. He watched
Judge Judy
.

Pratt pumped a fist as Judge Judy read the riot act to a feckless young man. “You
go
, girl!”

At five-thirty his cell phone rang.

“I'm in the lobby, baby. What room you in?”

He told her, excited as a little boy on Christmas morning. Oh boy, he was going to get laid. He went into the bathroom and doused himself with Axe. He hurriedly straightened up the room. He cursed himself for not getting a bottle of tequila or something—not that he craved a drink but he knew she would.

A minute later she knocked on the door. Pratt opened it, Cass dropped her overnighter and folded herself in his arms. They didn't speak. She kicked her bag inside and shut the door behind her. They raced each other to the bed. This time Pratt got on top.

“I'm famished,” she said fifteen minutes later. “Let me take a shower and then you're taking me out to dinner.”

“Cass, are you on some kind of birth control?”

She shot him a funny look. Little late for you to be asking, don'tcha think?”

Pratt flushed. “I know.”

“I have an IUD.”

Thank God
, Pratt thought, and flushed again.

Cass went to shower.

CHAPTER 37

Cass' truck was in the parking lot. They held hands and dashed across the highway to Frody's, Cass pulling Pratt like a trailer. It was just after six and the joint was half full. A waitress named Sandy took them to a booth opposite the bar. Willie Nelson sang softly over the sound system.

“I could eat a horse,” Cass said, looking at the menu.

“Well you're in luck,” Pratt said.

“Would you folks like something to drink?” Sandy said. She looked like she was in her teens and would have been pretty were it not for a chin the size of a cowcatcher.

Cass ordered a vodka and tonic. Pratt ordered a Hamm's. As Sandy returned to the bar the front door swung inward and the three mesomorphs in Tapout hoodies entered.

They noisily sidled up to the bar, turned and leaned against it backwards, insolently surveying the field and fixating on Cass. One of them said something and grabbed his crotch and they cackled like jackals.

Sandy returned with their drinks and they both ordered buffalo burgers. Cass said, “I'll take another,” and finished her drink before Sandy could get back to the bar. The three hoodies turned their attention to the TV over the bar, which was showing some kind of mixed martial arts competition.

Pratt washed down a couple of ibuprofens with a beer. Sandy returned with their order.

Cass polished off her burger and had a third vodka and tonic, folded her hands and looked intently at Pratt. “I figured it out, Pratt. I'll tell him I'm his mother. He's not so crazy he doesn't want to meet his mother.”

“You can't do that, Cass. It's a lie. Kid's had enough lies.”

“It's guaranteed to bring him in. That's what we want, isn't it? I mean you can't help him if he doesn't come in. He'll be happy enough when he meets his real ma.”

Could something positive come from a lie? Of course. It happened all the time. The kid had to know the difference. He was human, wasn't he? If the full depth of Eric's betrayal at his father's hands became clear to him, he might never trust another human being again. It came down to trust. Pratt worried that Eric was incapable of the concept.

The hoodies stood with their backs to the bar examining Cass' every move, commenting to each other and chuckling salaciously. They couldn't see Pratt, whose back was to them, although they'd seen him when they entered. Psychologists said sex was a great tension reliever. So was beating the shit out of someone. Pratt was frustrated with the Eric situation, apprehensive about his upcoming meeting with Calloway and the feds, and didn't know whether to shit or go blind in regard to Cass. Sewn together as he was he had to restrain himself from getting in the hoodies' faces. With every comment they lowered his flash point.

Red dead redemption rose from his toes.

Cass glanced at the bar.

“Are those men bothering you?” Pratt said.

“No more than usual.”

“'Cause we could switch places.”

“I've been dealing with that kind of trash my whole life, Pratt. They remind me of my brothers.”

“Yeah well do me a favor. If they start something step back, pull out your phone and film it.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Your phone takes video, doesn't it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well all right then.”

Her bare foot snaked up inside his pants and Pratt was instantly hard. Like Pavlov's dogs. He'd learned about Pavlov from Chaplain Dorgan. He signaled their waitress.

“How 'bout some of our world-famous pecan pie, honey,” Sandy said to Pratt with an ease belying her youth.

“Just the check, thanks.”

Sandy pulled her pad from her apron and totaled it up. “You can pay me when you're ready, honey. You take care now.”

Pratt left cash on the table. Cass started to get up, fell back and tried again. As they walked toward the door the biggest hoodie detached himself from the bar and drifted between them and the exit. He had a weightlifter's build, a mullet, luxurious pointed sideburns and no neck. He smelled of road sweat and cheap aftershave.

“Hey hey hey little lady,” he said, “why don't you dump the ragman here and get with a real man.”

Pratt glanced at the bar where his buddies stood grinning, empty shot glasses lined up like soldiers.

“I'd sure like a piece of that pie, Unca Donnie,” one of the hoodies said, to the delight of his pal.

Pratt put his hand on Cass' shoulder. “Start filming.”

“The fuck you say?” the neckless hoodie said.

Pratt stepped up. He and the hoodie were eye to eye. “Do I look like some kind of faggot to you?” Pratt said softly, standing perfectly still but relaxed, crouching atop a thermonuclear trigger twitching to explode, seeing in his imagination as he head-butted this fool on the bridge of the nose, grabbed him by his mullet and kneed him in the balls. Radiating menace from every pore, his hand hovered disconcertingly near Unca Donnie's crotch.

The hoodie met him with angry brown eyes, little balls of hate at the bottom of sand washes. His hands twitched. For five long seconds electricity hummed. The neckless hoodie blinked and stepped back.

“Just havin' a little fun, folks.”

The waitress sighed with relief and put the phone down.

The mojo is with me
.

As Pratt led Cass out by the hand she wagged her finger at the hoodies. “You don't know how lucky you are.”

She took his hand and practically danced across the interstate.

When they got into the motel room Cass removed four or five silk scarves from her overnighter. “Now I want you to tie me up and gag me, and I want you to gag me real tight 'cause I plan to scream like a cat in heat.”

CHAPTER 38

Cass was rarin' to go in the morning too but Pratt had too much on his mind. He was eager to get back out to the ranch and try to find the boy. They drove into town in Cass' truck and ate breakfast at Babe's Diner. At a quarter of ten an ancient Ford pick-up parked at an angle to the curb in front of Vern's. Pratt could see a figure behind the wheel smoking a cigarette.

Cass read a travel mag she'd picked up at a rest stop. “I want to stop at this Lakota Casino on the way back.”

“That ain't in the cards, baby. As soon as I check out the ranch we're out of here.”