That Old Ace in the Hole (36 page)

O
n the return trip he spent Tuesday night in Grandma’s Comfy Motel in La Junta, and though bone tired, turned on the television set hoping for a good movie. The selection was peculiar:
Brother, The Good Brother, The Brother-in-Law, Uncle Vladya’s Brother.
He fell asleep watching two angry peasants shout at each other in Russian, too tired to read the subtitles.

He crossed the Texas line early Wednesday morning, moving past the square shapes of cows, heads down, always eating. The new book from Bromo lay on the seat beside him—
Broken Hand,
a biography of the mountain man Thomas Fitzpatrick, who had been with Abert on the trip across the panhandle. It was Broken Hand who had warned the lieutenant never to tie his mules to shrubbery.

The cropland lay spread out like viridian bolts of corduroy seamed with pale roads. Thinking of the Front Range that frilled Denver, such flatness struck him as an anomaly. His eye traveled over the fields. Houses looked as temporarily there as items on the grocery counter. He passed an abandoned farm familiar to him now from his travels. In back were a few old-fashioned pig huts, hemispheres of galvanized metal tipped and crushed in weedy corners, for no one raised backyard pigs now.

In Woolybucket again, he drove past the grain elevators, their roofs crowded with pigeons who, although they could not get at the rich abundance below, were irresistibly drawn to it. They could not get it, but it was there.

At noon he was back at the Busted Star. Nothing different, another terrifically hot day, the sun pounding the earth with its hammer, LaVon’s car was parked in a scrap of shade curled like old shoe leather. He knocked on the kitchen door, then opened it and put his head in.

“LaVon? You here?”

She came out of her office space, holding a rolled-up paper, large enough to be the map of Texas.

“Well, Bob, I guess you did not get fired. But you have missed all the excitement,” she said. “Anyway, welcome home.”

“What did I miss? I drove through Woolybucket and it looked the same.” He felt a stir at her use of the word “home,” for it seemed maybe he was home, a feeling that had not come when he walked into Uncle Tam’s place. He got a quick shot of Uncle Tam in the panhandle, but that image blacked out immediately.

“Hah. It’s
all
different. There’s so much goin on I can’t hardly say. Freda Beautyrooms had a stroke Saturday mornin. She died. Well, she needed a go on. Her son Waldo come up for a weekend visit and found her half under the bed. He thinks she was lookin for a slipper or a piece a jewelry. She had all that junk jewelry. I can’t abide that stuff clankin and danglin. A woman in Amarilla I heard about wore these big dangly earrings and she was peelin potatoes at her sink one day and one a the earrings went into the disposal and threw up a little chunk and it went in her eye and blinded her. But Freda is sure goin a be missed. She was in everthing. She was the official head a the Barbwire Festival Committee. Course, old as she was, she didn’t do much, just a position a honor, but they need somebody. On Sunday they called and asked me if I’d take over, seein the festival is so close. But it’s more than just showin up on the day and smilin around and sayin hello, which is all Freda ever done. It’s still a lot a work has to be done. Like put these posters up.”

She unrolled a large four-color poster showing a dancing couple togged out in western dress with strands of antique barbwire emanating from a spinning roll beneath their feet.

WOOLYBUCKET BARBWIRE FESTIVAL

DANCE •BARBECUE •QUILT

RAFFLE •RODEO

COLLECTORS MART
&
EXCHANGE

She let it roll up again with a snap. “Waldo Beautyrooms come over here lookin for you. He wants a talk with you. He’s back in Houston now—they had the funeral Monday—but he left a number for you to call him up. I didn’t think you was comin back so I probly lost it somewhere in the mess a papers.”

“That’s O.K. I think I have it anyhow. It sounds like a pretty upsetting weekend.”

“Oh, that’s not all. There’s more. Francis Scott Keister—he’s a rancher, you probly don’t know him—and some woman went to the Hi-Lo Motel in Liberal for hanky panky and Francis Scott’s wife, Thomasina—they call her Tazzy—followed them and shot through the window five times. Francis Scott was killed dead and the woman is in the hospital over in Amarilla. They say she might not make it. And Tazzy is in the county jail. Her mother is takin care a the kids.”

“Good Lord,” said Bob. “By any chance was the woman with Francis Scott Keister named Evelyn Chine?”

“That’s the name. She don’t come from around here. I saved the copy of
The Bummer
. They put out a special edition. Here it is. Look at that. They got a picture a that darn snake-face sheriff on the front page draggin poor Tazzy to the county car. She didn’t want a go. You can see she got her heels braced. They almost had a carry her, I heard. They say the woman was workin for one a them big hog farm corporations. That’s why Tazzy Keister shot her—she’d got Francis Scott ready to throw up to the hog companies and sell out. A lot a people think Tazzy ought a have a medal. And that’s not all. Some lady over in Roberts County got attacked in her own home by a escaped convict. She’d left the door unlocked for her husband. She wasn’t killed but she was—you know
what
.”

While Bob read the shooting story LaVon reheated the coffee.

“Thing that worries me is that’s two deaths. And they come in threes. So we don’t know who is goin a be next. We don’t know what more is goin a happen. Somethin else, Bob. See, I didn’t know if you was comin back—you said you didn’t think so and I didn’t hear different. So Coolbroth has moved into the bunkhouse. He used a stay there before he went off to school, and he wanted to get back into the place and do his skolpin. He’s got ambitions now. This whole thing with Tazzy has got him on fire. He’s fightin the hog companies and got a bunch a people in on it, meetins ever night. ‘Artists Against Hogs’ they call themselves. But in case you
did
come back, I asked around and there’s a lady over on the Coppedge Road will accommodate you. Mrs. Jaelene Shattle. They’ve got a nice house with a little apartment at the back—telphone, electric, telvision and—here’s the best part—there’s a whirlpool bath. Her mother used a stay there before she died. She had terrible artharitis and the whirlpool helped her. Jaelene only wants fifty a month, same as here, even with all those amenities. I can call her up right now and tell her you are on your way, if you want?”

“Thanks, LaVon. I appreciate your trouble. It sounds great. But I’ll sure miss the bunkhouse. Just where is Coppedge Road, anyway?” It sounded vaguely familiar, but in his wandering drives he couldn’t recall that he had ever hit on it.

“It’s over by Tater Crouch’s ranch. About a mile west. You go over toward Tater’s but bear left where his road forks off, keep on about two mile as the road winds around, and after you cross the bridge it’s the white house on the right. You can’t miss it.”

It was not until he turned onto Coppedge Road that the location hit him. The big King Karolina hog farm that so affected Tater Crouch was on Coppedge Road. In fact, he realized with sinking heart, Jaelene Shattle’s house was the place west of Tater Crouch and must be right beside the hog farm. No wonder the woman was only asking fifty a month. Then his spirits revived. Maybe she would sell out too. But in a few minutes his spirits sagged again. Maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe he would never get a hog site sale clinched. Depression, like a smell of skunk, filled the car. He felt he wasn’t going to fall into anything fortunate, not a hog farm sale, not a dimpled, curly-headed girl. He did not want to lie but seemed unable to stop doing so. Yet he could not just quit and go back to Denver and look for another lightbulb job. He had taken up a responsibility—to find sites for hog farms and persuade elderly farmers and ranchers to sell out their decades of labor to the silent rows of Hog World—and he would not put it aside. That would be too much like his parents dumping him and haring off to Alaska. The words “Hog World” floated past again and he imagined a hog theme park where the entrance gate was an enormous hog replica and cars drove between the massive pink legs, a Disneyland of pork where the rides would be replicas of giant boars or intelligent piglets, a petting sty where children could feed carrots and apples to real swine, a place where the food kiosks would offer barbecued ribs and Black Forest hams, smokehouse bacon, sausages dangling from a dark and smoky
wursthaus
ceiling.

Jaelene Shattle was fat and careworn, her forehead lined with strain, her fingers nervously plucking at lint on her sweater. He wondered how she could wear a sweater on such a hot day. As he stood on the front step waiting for her to ask him in he could see, out of the corner of his eye, the low, neat white buildings of the hog farm a quarter of a mile to the west. The smell was not noticeable, perhaps because the wind was out of the east.

“Yes,” she said, “we
are
next to the hog farm, and to tell you the truth, I don’t know what in the world we are goin a do. It’s not so bad now but when the wind changes and they turn on the fans it is very bad. My husband suffers from it a good deal. In the house we have nine special air conditioners and six air purifiers runnin all the time, so it’s not too awful, but outside, when the wind is right, your eyes just flame up and your throat hurts. That’s why I only ask fifty dollars a month for the apartment. Otherwise it would be two hunderd. So if you can stand the hog farm it’s a good deal. Do you have a tendency to asthma?”

“No,” said Bob, thinking he would give the place a try. If he couldn’t stand it, why, he’d move. “I’ll give it a try,” he said.

“About the phone, you just use it like it was your own and I’ll go over the bill with you when it comes in. It’s easier that way and saves you from havin to call GTE, maybe the mainest telephone company in Texas. You’ll sit for an hour, maybe two, listenin a fool messages and ugly music before they give you a live person. It’s easier this way.”

The apartment was sunny, spotless and pleasant; there was a large carpeted bedroom with cream-colored walls, its frilly-curtained window looking out on the hog farm, a large comfortable living room with a television set, an antique rolltop desk, a red sofa with blue pillows and a private bathroom with the fabled whirlpool. The windows were fitted with hail screens. With the air purifier humming he could not smell the hog farm and began to think of it as a minor inconvenience whose deleterious character was much exaggerated. If Tater bought some air purifiers and air conditioners he might not be troubled. He put aside Lieutenant Abert, spent a pleasant evening watching television, and, after a luxurious session in the whirlpool, climbed into the pink-sheeted bed and slept.

In the morning he telephoned Ribeye Cluke, enjoying the convenience of not driving to the Old Dog to use the pay phone.

“Sir, I’m in new living quarters. I have a telephone now.” And he gave the number. “I thought you would want to know that Evelyn Chine is bad hurt and in the hospital.”

“Hurt by what?”

“By a bullet. Bullets. She was caught in a motel bed with a married man. The man’s wife shot them both. The paper says she is in the medical center in Amarillo.”

“I see.” There was a long silence, then Mr. Cluke’s voice swelled to command-giving mode. “Bob, I want you to go see Evelyn Chine and talk with her doctor, get a full report on her condition. Call me later with that information. She was close to finalizing a big deal with a rancher down there. Fellow named Keister. You may have to take that deal over if she is not up to working for a while.”

“Mr. Cluke, you want
me
to go see her?”

“Certainly. And get flowers.”

“Flowers? That could take some time. There’s no flower shop here. It’s a café now.”

“The hospital, Bob. They have flower shops in hospitals.”

“O.K., I’ll do it. But I think you ought to know that Mr. Keister is dead. He’s the one she was in bed with.”

“I see. That’s certainly too bad. Perhaps the widow would be amenable to persuasion. You see if you can suss out the lay of the land. Bob, one other thing. Do you still want us to send down the Money Offer Person on Mr. Crouch’s property?”

“Yes sir, I do, but he’d better call me first to let me know when he’s coming. And not tomorrow because it’s quite a drive to and back from Amarillo.”

“It won’t be a ‘he,’ Bob. All our Money Offer Persons are women. It soothes the rancher to have a woman offer him money and makes him inclined to take a little less. Mrs. Betty Doak will come down later this week. She’ll call you.”

It was going to be a busy day if he had to drive to Amarillo, buy flowers, visit and assess the condition of Evelyn Chine, stop at Tater Crouch’s place and let him know the Money Offer Person was coming down, get in touch with Waldo Beautyrooms. He didn’t think he had to scout out how Tazzy Keister felt about selling the ranch to a hog outfit. She had made her opinion clear with her fusillade. And Jim Skin was probably a lost cause, though he would try to catch him later in the week. He called Waldo first.

“Hello, Mr. Beautyrooms. I was sorry to hear about your mother. I was in Denver over the weekend and just got back. Yes. Well, I spoke to my superiors and while they have doubts about the panhandle as a locus for luxury homes—Then why did they send me down here? Actually they sent me to scout for hog farm sites—” He held the receiver away from his ear as Waldo Beautyrooms’ outraged screeches punctuated the miles between Houston and Woolybucket. He tried to explain the situation.