That Old Ace in the Hole (26 page)

“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.”

I
t 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.

Quickly he started the car and left the shelter of the black willow, back into the full force of the hail and wind. The wind, gusting and veering, pushed the Saturn toward a deep ditch that ran alongside the road filled now with rising water nearly up to the asphalt. Slewing and skidding he fought his way through the wet detritus on the road. The lightning flashed, the brassy light revealing carbuncled underclouds. A dozen cows, pelted by the hail, ran in front of him, their hooves splashing, the young calves blatting in fear and pain. A piece of metal roofing hurled past and tumbled end over end across the prairie. The hailstones were bigger now, and it seemed a dozen roofers with nail guns were attacking the Saturn. All at once the windshield cracked and crazed in a dozen places. He could not see through it and had to put down the window and drive peering out the side. A large dark hump in the road turned into a dead cow and somehow he steered around it. No wonder, he thought, that panhandle people were a godly lot, for they lived in a sudden, violent atmospheres. Weather kept them humble.

By the time he reached the Busted Star gate, the hail was slacking off. He knew the Saturn was ruined, pocked with ice pellet dings. It was not possible to drive across the stream to the bunkhouse and he took refuge in LaVon’s kitchen, his rain-wet mail stuffed under his jacket. He was sorry not to get across the creek, for Lieutenant Abert’s
Expedition
was there, facedown on his pillow.

“Oh Bob,” said LaVon, “there’s a tornado in Hutchinson County, just about twenty miles away. I was worried about you.” The kitchen radio was on, emitting a blatting horn sound, the signal to take shelter. The television was flashing red warning signals. A hollow voice finished the tornado announcement and said “…Service has issued a severe thunderstorm warning for Woolybucket County until three-thirty
P.M
. This line of thunderstorms can produce golf ball/baseball–size hail, torrential rains with flooding and high winds. Take shelter in a sturdy place.”

“My God,” said Bob, “are you sure the tornado isn’t right here? It’s terrible.”

“This is just the edge of it,” said LaVon. “If it was right into the tornado, why, you’d be whirlin around the sky. It’s on the telvision. You’n see it, that red patch there? Good thing not many people lives in Hutchinson County. Anyway, you better stay here tonight because you can’t get across to the bunkhouse until that water goes down and that probly won’t be until tomorrow. There could be more storms. They’re sayin there could be a bunch a them touch down. I’ll make up the couch for you.” Outside the lightning trembled and shivered.

Bob plotted to steer LaVon toward the story of her grandfather’s scarred back. To soften her up he helped her rearrange her kitchen pots and pans. Through the window she pointed out the storm cellar door in the backyard.

“If a real one
was
to come, that’s the place to be. If I’m not here you just get in there and stay put, anytime, day or night. It’s fixed up pretty good down there. There’s a old tee-vee and some canned goods and candles and such. Couple cots and a chair or two.”

“How often do you have to use it?”

“Never have used it but once,” said LaVon. “Tornadoes don’t hit here very often. We get the fringes. They’ll follow the rayroad tracks, though. Why I wouldn’t want a house next to the tracks. I believe it’s lettin up now.” And, in fact, the lightning had shifted to the northeast and the southwest showed clear.

Bob sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee, remembered his mail and took up the Global Pork Rind newsletter. Much of the content was devoted to pie charts and financial prognostications, but the two back pages were intended for the location crews who were, Bob saw, scattered all over the globe. He learned for the first time, for Ribeye Cluke had not told him, of the Global prize-winning system.

At the bottom of the same page, in a pink box bordered by magenta, was a list of the previous month’s outstanding site scouts, the ones who had secured the most acreage for Global.

LaVon was not in a storytelling mood, balancing her checkbook and muttering. In the afternoon, restless in the French provincial kitchen, Bob decided to drive into town and arrange to get the windshield replaced, see what kind of damage the storm had done to Woolybucket. Outside he saw that the Saturn was not too bad, maybe a dozen dents. The worst was the windshield.

He was surprised to find the sun shining and the roads dry and pale as powdered milk just a few miles from the Busted Star. In Woolybucket he parked at the Old Dog, went in and helped Cy load the serving platters, pineapple-glazed ham steaks, twice-baked potatoes with sour cream, asparagus with butter and lemon juice, raisin pie.

“It didn’t even rain here, did it?”

“Nope. We could see the storm, though, and the wind kicked up some. It’s that way sometimes, bad weather a town over and nothin here or vice versa. And it was real muggy earlier, hot enough to cook a bear. Anyway, you get used a rapid weather change. It’s part a the character a the place. Stick around, you’ll hear some weather stories.”

But Bob was thinking about LaVon’s tale of rancher Skieret and his foreman, Blowy Cluck.

“Cy, did you ever hear about an old-time rancher named Skieret?”

“Hell yes, everbody knows the stories about him. He was supposed to blowed up some Finn farmer. Back when they was havin war over fencin the range. They found the Finn a mile from Skieret’s ranch blowed up by dynamite. The cowboy found him said it looked like somebody had rammed a stick of dynamite up the Finn’s popcorn popper and lit the fuse—the head and neck and shoulders was intact and unmarked, as was the legs from the knee down, but everything between the knees and the clavichords had nourished the prairie in shreds smaller than a toothpick. Skieret was one of them hard-ass old boys who did what he wanted and devil take the leavins.”

Bob said, “LaVon told me about the barbwire contest he lost.”

“There’s a hunderd stories about that outfit. They was real colorful. Skieret’s still got kin here, still on the old ranch. Janice Sue Palace, champion golfer, is his great-granddaughter, still runs Skieret’s place. She’s a good rancher, too, could she quit draggin home husbands. And you mentioned Blowy Cluck? He’s got descendants here all over. I’m a little bit kin a him myself.”

An unusual truck pulled up across the street. Bob craned his neck to get a better look at it. It had so many dents he could not tell if any of them were fresh. The magnetic sign on the driver’s door read
ACE WINDMILL
. Ace, looking more than ever as though he had spent his formative years in a trouser press, got out, pulled his wallet from his back pocket and examined the contents. Bob thought he might be checking to see if he could afford the Old Dog’s lunch. Apparently he could, for he headed to the door.

Inside, Ace looked around slowly, nodded to Bob and several men but chose a table near the window, away from the rest of the room. He came up to the food tables but only poured a cup of coffee.

“Waitin for Brother Mesquite,” he said to Cy, who nodded and kept turning ham steaks in the giant frypan. “Bad weather in Hutchinson County. They had them a little tornado.”

“So I hear,” said Cy.

The place filled up quickly and Bob was busy hauling foil-wrapped potatoes out of the oven, but not too busy to notice the whispered excitement in the room. Something was going on. He caught the name “Flores” several times and guessed there was a cockfight on the calendar, but could learn nothing more. When the crowd thinned out he noticed that Ace was still nursing his cup of coffee and looking at the food tables with a hungry face. Once he got up, went to the door, opened it and looked up and down the street. He got another cup of coffee and resumed his wait.

“Looks like he’s tied up somewheres, Ace,” said Cy. “Or else he got caught in the storm. You might as well get your dinner while there’s still some left.”

“I’ll wait a little longer,” Ace said, then added, “anyway, here he is now.”

A second truck had pulled up behind the windmill truck. The driver, something of an apparition, thought Bob, ran across the street through the glittering sunlight and opened the Old Dog’s door. Here was a sight; a bearded monk in a grubby cassock hitched up at the waist high enough to show a pair of jeans from the knees down, cowboy boots, a battered Resistol on his head.

“Ace! Real sorry I’m late. Storm caused a truck to roll over and they had them a chemical spill on the highway. Had the traffic blocked off. I turned around and come the long way on the farm roads and it was some mess, high water, trash all over. Man, I’m starved. Let’s get somethin a eat. Sure smells good, Cy.”

The two men filled their plates and went back to the table. The monk-cowboy bowed his head and mumbled, Ace said “Amen,” and their knives fell on the ham steaks. From what Bob overheard Ace was talking about replacing a windmill head on the Triple Cross range. The monk-cowboy listened attentively, asking a few questions. When his plate was clean he got up and went back to the food tables, took more salad and a spoonful of grits.

“Pretty good, Cy. Especially the salad dressin. Don’t suppose you’d part with the recipe? Or come over and spend a day in our kitchen teachin us a few things?”

Cy, who received few face-to-face compliments on his food, blushed and said he’d write down the salad dressing ingredients, “Nothin to it, just fresh-made mayonnaise. I only put in a hair a garlic. The boys’d shoot me they known they was eatin garlic.”

“I’m serious about a teachin day.”

“Well, you know, between runnin this place and the ranch work, I hardly got time to take a—to relieve myself. I don’t know when I could do something like that.”

“Maybe we could send down a apprentice. He’d help out and sort of watch how you did things.”

“Well, sure, that might work out. Bob here’s been helpin me when he can, but it would be fine to have an extra set of hands. I do most of my prep work real early, four or five in the
A.M
. That’s the crazy time I need somebody.”