The Big Bang (11 page)

“Must go with the name.”

Jake pointed to her backpack, leaning against the wall. “Where were you going?”

Before Molly could answer, Hank cut in, “Hell, I hope you aren't going anywhere. We could use a lady like you. I tell ya, another couple of minutes of you cussing the Caliban, that stadium would've exploded. You've got a talent for getting people riled up.”

Jake retorted, “Yeah, we would have had a bunch of dead Americans.”

“A bunch of dead 'ban, too,” Hank replied mildly.

Looking back, Molly would know that was the moment, even though she didn't realize it at the time. She could have told them she was going to Texas, maybe even got the kid to come along with her. But something Hank had said…it vibrated in her the way two guitar strings will pick up the same tone. The string that was quivering in her guts was a newly spun one. She realized that hate shivered through Hank, too. “What kind of use could you have for an old Texas coot like me?”

He winked at her. “I imagine we could find something crazy enough for you.”

Molly never saw Texas again.

Baldwin, 2008

When he had worked as a busboy at Studio 54, years and years ago, Alec was rarely out of the club before six or seven in the morning. He grew to hate the disorienting feeling of waking at two or three in the afternoon, bright sun leaking through the blinds in his tiny apartment and the warmed air making him hot and sweaty in a tangle of sheets. Oddly, for all the money he had made working in film, sometimes he found himself in the same position: after a night shoot, eyes gritty with fatigue, he'd fall into his expensive bed only to awaken in the late afternoon, vaguely nauseated, like he'd been out drinking all night long.

Addie was the cure for that biorhythm-blip-induced hangover. There was something about being awakened by an excited little girl bouncing happily on the edge of his bed that banished all the disorientation. She anchored him to reality, instantly and permanently. He'd started acting for what he could get out of it (“It's all about the chicks,” his brother Stephen had said when he started acting), but once Addie had come along, he did it for what he could get for
her
.

That punishing disorientation and nausea only worsened after the divorce. Nobody to bounce on the side of the bed, nobody to anchor him. These days, Addie lived in Los Angeles, with his wife. He kept making that mental slip, referring to Kim as “his wife.” He knew it was over, but he'd gotten so accustomed to thinking of them as a team. It was un-PC, but she seemed like a part of him for so long. He didn't say, “This is the hand that is at the end of my arm.” He said, “My hand.” Just as he'd said, “My wife.” Just as he'd said, “My daughter.”

This morning, he had opened his eyes in Idaho. Even thinking it made him chuckle ruefully. This Irish kid from New York, here, in Red State Potato-ville, with the white supremacists, militias, and Republicans. Well, it was still America, and he was still an American, so he could go anywhere he wanted, even if the politics of the area saddened and sickened him.

Besides, he
liked
Idaho. He liked his ranch. It was small by Hollywood standards, but Alec had never really bought into that scene, the idea of wearing or driving or living to advertise your success. His dad and mom, God love 'em, had been solid working-class people. His father was a social studies teacher and football coach, for Christ's sake. With six kids to raise, there hadn't been a lot of money for frills and flashy junk. Alec had developed an appreciation for stability and dependability. Thus, the ranch: a mere hundred acres or so for privacy and plenty of horseback riding room. The horses were for Addie, of course. There was a small lake about a mile from the house. The ranch house was built with thick log walls against the brutal winters, two fireplaces, four bedrooms, and a large kitchen. A fully equipped guest house that was almost as large stood out back.

It was a place for family vacations, for uncles and aunts and cousins and grandparents. A place for exploring and hiking, games of tag that ranged for acres, for marathon games of Go Fish beside the warmth of a log fire. A place for reading to Addie as she curled up beside him on the cracked leather couch, a horse blanket thrown over them both.

That was what he wanted when he bought the place. It had been that for maybe two years, before the marriage took its turn for the worst. Alec had even offered it to Kim in the settlement, as long as he could spend some time with Addie, but that plan had gone to hell, too.

Baldwin looked down at his coffee cup. He sat in the swing on the ranch house porch, barefoot, in faded jeans and fisherman's sweater, listening to the morning birds at dawn. He'd been spending too much time alone with his thoughts lately, sometimes going for days without speaking to anyone. He screened all his calls. Mostly, the voices from his answering machine speaker were his lawyers relating more dismal details of the court battle with Kim. Baldwin saw no reason to pick up those calls.

He'd just finished another film, this one in Chicago. It was David Mamet; he thought he'd done well, for a film. It was quick, compared to a play, and the money was good, but he needed to be in Los Angeles, to be close to his daughter.

He was due for a week with Addie, to make up for the days he'd missed with her while filming in ChiTown, and the thriller that followed in which he would play the villain. The financing on that had fallen through, leaving him unexpectedly free. But his daughter had been in Georgia, visiting Kim's parents. So Alec had stopped over at the ranch for a few days. Not just for the solitude, he wanted to do some work. Get his hands dirty. Chop wood, clear some brush, curry the horses. Acting…well, it challenged one part of him, and when you nailed that line so perfectly even the crew laughed or applauded, that was gratifying. But somehow, it didn't have the same kind of in-your-bones satisfaction as spending a day with tools in your gloved hands, repairing a sagging corral.

He thought, looking down, he was getting heavier than he liked. It annoyed him to see his athlete's body getting soft with middle age. On one hand, he tried to avoid the frantic vanity he'd seen in so many actors, but dammit, he was too young to have this kind of gut. A few days on the ranch would remind his body of what it could do, and he could begin to get back in shape. He wanted to be in shape for Addie; a ten-year-old girl had a lot of energy, and he wanted to be able to keep up with her. He wanted her to have memories of her dad beside her as they snorkeled or skated or bicycled. He didn't want her primary memory of him to be a distant figure, watching from a shaded beach chair. And, he knew he'd sleep better if he spent the day swinging a sledge or an axe.

He drained the coffee and walked back inside to the kitchen. He scrambled some eggs, tossed in a few fresh chives from an herb garden that Kim and Addie had planted, and topped it off with some grated cheese from the refrigerator. He'd have to make a run into town later, pick up a few fresh groceries. Tofu wouldn't keep in the fridge between his visits, and it was terrible frozen. As a vegetarian, his choices were limited here in Idaho (
all the potatoes you could eat
, he thought), but he could suck it up for a week or so.

At 7 am, just as Alec finished washing the breakfast dishes, John Hanner, the ranch foreman, drove up in his pickup nicknamed “Old Blue.” It was maybe the third or fourth Old Blue he'd had, along with his third German Shepherd, Queenie III.

Queenie hopped out of the cab of the truck when Hanner got out, made a quick circuit of the exterior of the house and then settled in a corner of the porch. The old foreman climbed the steps and knocked on the door. He always did that when the family was here—never barged in, always mindful of the privacy of his employer. He was a short, thin man with iron-gray hair and mustache, a lined face and steel-rimmed glasses.

“Come on in, I just started a new pot of coffee,” Alec called. Hanner stomped his boots on the front mat, swept the battered Resistol from his head and walked to the kitchen. He had his own mug hanging from a wooden peg over the sink. Alec passed it to him. Hanner grunted his thanks and filled the mug.

“Didn't think I'd see you 'til July,” the older man said after his first sip.

Alec shrugged. “That other movie fell through. I've got a little time before I see Addie.”

Hanner nodded. “You going to be able to bring her up this time?” He had a soft spot for the little girl. Alec had never learned much about Hanner beyond his three marriages and some military service in the past. He never volunteered much about himself, but he worked constantly, if his behavior around the ranch was any indication. The man was nearly sixty, but tougher and with more endurance than most people Alec had ever met. Still, he doted on Addie, as solicitous as if she were one of his own kids. Alec's bullshit meter had never once blipped about leaving Addie alone with Hanner. He had a sense that Hanner would die before letting anything happen to that little girl.

“Don't think so,” Alec answered. “It's a day getting here, with the wait at the airports and the drive, and a day getting back. I've only got a week this time, and I haven't seen her in over a month.”

“Makes sense.” They stood side by side, looking out the window at the fields and forest, finishing their coffee. Using the tiniest dribble of water, Hanner rinsed his mug in the sink and hung it on the peg. “Queenie says it's time to ride the fence. Better get to it.”

“Give me a second to put on my boots.” Baldwin had a pair of shit-kickers back in the closet. They were one of the first things he'd bought after purchasing the ranch…a stuntman he trusted had recommended them in specific and profane detail. “Good pair of boots will treat you better 'n a woman,” the stuntman had said through his chipped teeth. In too good a mood to render a judgment on the truth of that statement, Alec hurried back to the master bedroom. Thick pair of socks, flannel shirt, an old Levi's jacket and that pair of well-broken-in Frye cowboy boots, and he was ready.

While Hanner saddled the horses, Alec took a baseball cap and leather gloves from a shelf inside the barn and beat them against his thigh to free them of accumulated dust and cobwebs. Then he reached over to hold the reins so Hanner could adjust the cinches.

Hanner's horse, an older, deceptively placid mare pinto called Nan, stood quietly. Hanner eyed her for a moment, and then kneed her in the abdomen. When she sucked in her stomach, he tightened the cinch. The mare gave him a look that promised much unpleasantness if she ever caught Hanner between her back feet and a wall.

Alec's horse, a three-year-old gelding he called Sport, was all prancing adolescent eagerness, glad for the opportunity to get out for a while. He paused his restless movement long enough for Hanner to check the saddle, then twitched his tail with impatience. Hanner dropped some saddlebags loaded with tools over the horse's withers.

As Hanner threw a leg over his own mount, he called out to Alec, “Mind Sport this morning. He'll run you to Canada if you let him.” Alec nodded his acknowledgement as he climbed up into the saddle. He wasn't a natural horseman, by any means. He didn't have a good “seat,” as the saying went. But he had enough years of athletics that he could handle himself fairly well. Nothing fancy, but he was rider enough to get the job done, as long as the job consisted of simply getting from point A to point B. Addie, now she could ride. She'd wanted horses ever since she was just a toddler. She could ride circles around her dad, and he was pretty sure that she'd done her share of racing hell for leather down the dirt roads when Alec wasn't around. You could only keep a kid so safe…after that, your children were in God's hands.

Baldwin flicked the reins and Sport obediently trotted out of the barn, turned left, gave a couple of head tosses of pure youthful eagerness, and high-stepped across the pasture. Alec settled into the rhythm of the horse and let Sport hurry across to the trail that followed the fence line.

Hanner didn't talk much as they rode, but to Alec, that was a given. It was peaceful, nourishing, to be rocking along with the horse, feeling the rising sun on his face, and smelling…my God, smelling the world. The sweat from the horse, the flat, strange tingling scent from the dust, the blooming trees and their multitude of soft fragrances, even the grass that grew along the trail. As much time as he spent in artificial environments, either on stage with the sweetish odor of pancake makeup mingling with the rank sweat of costumes too long unwashed, or on a soundstage with the air conditioning laboring to overcome the heat from the Klieg lights…he grew too accustomed to not smelling anything natural at all. The barrage of sensation from the world around him was almost dizzying.

Ahead of him, Hanner reined to a halt, peered down. He didn't say anything. Alec rode up beside him.
Ah, a teaching moment
. Hanner was as egalitarian a man as you might ever meet. His voice never had that trace of subservience that was the Hollywood regional accent. He'd never once asked Alec for gossip about “the business,” didn't seem to care who was sleeping with whom, who was gay, who was an addict. He didn't seem to much care that Alec was his boss either. He seemed to look on them all, Alec, Kim, and Addie, as his responsibility when they were at the ranch. Hanner and Kim seemed to understand each other right away. It made sense. Kim was really a country girl from Bees Knees, Georgia, and she and Hanner shared some cultural shorthand that escaped Baldwin. And Addie, well, Addie was just a force of nature. Alec sometimes thought that Hanner regarded him, not unkindly, as the least capable and least intelligent of the family. Maybe Hanner took pity on Alec because he was a city boy. Whatever the cause, Hanner was doing his best to teach Alec…maybe to make him worthy of the ranch, if nothing else.

Alec was humbled by the older man's gift of knowledge and training, and he worked hard to absorb the lessons so freely given. He guided Sport up beside Nan, and focused his attention on the fence post. While the two men pondered the five-foot log, Sport nuzzled Nan, who snapped at him grumpily.