The Last Good Kiss (27 page)

Jackson lit a cigarette and glanced up at the motel

rooms. "After that she wouldn't have anything to do

with me."

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"Can't blame her, can you?"

"Guess not," he said.

"Where'd she go after that?"

"Up around Fort Collins, I heard," he said. "There's

some rich lady who lives up in Poudre Canyon, and she

does rehab work, you know, pulls girls out of the slam

and takes them home. A real do-gooder, you know,

and I heard that Betty Sue had stayed there for a while.

Then I didn't hear any more."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing at all," he said.

"How come you lied to me?" I asked.

"I thought you might be some of her family," he

said, "the accent and all, you know, come to get even

"

or something."

"Even for what?" I asked.

"You know," he said, "she was just a kid." As if that

explained everything.

"You shouldn't have lied," I said.

"I see that now," he said as he glanced at the .38 in

my hand. "What did you have in mind up in that motel

room, man?"

"Taking you apart," I said.

"That's what I figured," he said. "Hell, I thought you

were going to blow me away on the street, man. You

should've seen the look in your eyes. You were crazy,

man."

"I'm tired," I said.

"What the hell are you looking for Betty Sue for?"

"I don't even remember," I said, then Jackson drove

us back to his car. "No hard feelings," I said as he got

out.

"None at all," he said, then hitched his pants and

walked away.

As I drove back to the airport, it crossed my mind

that it had been too easy, and I thought about going

back, but I had enough trouble as it was. I parked the

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salesman's company car near the spot where I had

taken it, then picked up my own and headed north

toward Fort Collins up I-25. Halfway there, my hands

began to shake so badly that I had to pull into the

nearest exit and off the road. I didn't think it was

nerves, though. Mostly anger working its way to the

surface. Jackson had been right. When I shoved the

piece in his back on the street in front of the topless

place, I had wanted to pull the trigger as badly as I had

ever wanted anything, pull it and pull it until I had

blown him all over the sidewalk. I thought about what

Peggy Bain had said about me being willing to kill just

to stand in line for Betty Sue. I thought about it, but the

line just seemed too damned long. I crawled under the

topper and locked my .38 in the toolbox, then drove on

north, the mountains to the west, the vast empty

stretch of the Great Plains to the east.

One summer when I was a child, after my parents

separated, I had lived with my father out on the plains

east of Fort Collins, north and east of a little town

called Ault, during that summer, stayed with him and a

short widow woman and her three little kids. He was

trying to dry-farm her wheat land, and we all lived in a

basement out on the plains, a basement with no house

over it, where we lived in the ground like moles,

looking up through the skylight, waiting for the rain

that never came.

When I turned off the freeway at the Fort Collins

exit, I thought about driving east to try to find the

basement. I had found it once in the daylight when I

was living in Boulder but I knew I would never find' it in

the dark. 'so I checked into another motel, went into

another bar, had another goddamned drink.

The next day I had some luck. First, a little good luck

that turned bad, then a little bad luck that turned

worse.

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The second probation officer I called told me where

to find the right rich lady. The first one I talked to could

have told me but she just didn't want to.

Selma Hinds lived in a large octagonal cabin of log

and glass set on the spine of a ridge south of the Cache

Ia Poudre River. As I drove up the canyon, I could see

it sitting up there like a medieval fortress. I parked by

her- mailbox at the base of the ridge and changed into

hiking boots, throwing longing glances at the old mine

cable hoist at the side of the road, but it was for

groceries and firewood. I had to trudge up the steep,

winding trail for three quarters of a mile, wondering if

Selma Hinds had many casual visitors or door-to-door

salesmen. She didn't have a telephone, so I also

wondered if she was home. If she wasn't at home, I

would just have to wait, unless I wanted to walk the

trail twice in one day.

Finally, sweating and sucking for air, I broke out of

the scrub pine into a large clearing on the saddle of the

ridge just as half a dozen dogs discovered my presence.

They greeted me happily, though, especially a large

three-legged black lab who stabbed me in the groin

with her single front leg. The others, mostly mediumsized mutts, were content with a gale of barking.

The octagonal cabin sat on the highest point of the

saddle with a large garden in the swale between it and

five smaller cabins and a bank of wire cages set in the

edge of the trees on the other side of the clearing. Two

young girls and a boy were working in the garden

among the spring planting, which was protected by

sawdust and plastic sheeting, and the dry, rocky soil of

the ridge had been mixed with compost until it was as

black as river-bottom land. In the wire cages, small

animals and birds seemed to gaze at me with the dazed

eyes of hospital patients. The young people looked up

from the garden but then went about their work.

A tall, smooth-faced, motherly woman with brown

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hair streaked with gray stood in the doorway of the

large cabin holding a big yellow cat in her arms. Her

hair was tucked neatly into a bun, and she wore a long,

plain dress. Even from twenty yards away, her gray

eyes stared at me with a calm kindness, the sort you

might expect to see in the face of a pioneer woman

standing outside a soddy on the plains, a woman who

had seen all the cruelty the world had to offer, had seen

it and found forgiveness beyond reason or measure.

She was nothing like my mother, who was a short,

pert Southern woman, bouncy and mildly desperate,

somewhat giddy, slightly sad because rogue circumstance in the guise of my father had left her working below herself as an Avon lady in Moody County,

Texas, but as I walked toward Selma Hinds, I felt

light-headed and joyous, as if I were coming home after

a long and arduous war. She smiled, and I broke into a

childish grin, nearly ran to throw my arms around her,

but as I stopped in front of her, something in her gaze,

perhaps a slight lack of focus in her eyes, lessened the

impression.

We exchanged introductions, and she invited me into

her home. Inside, among the plain wooden furniture in

the open cabin, a number of cats lay sleeping or

walking about, switching their tails as they kept a

weather eye on the dogs standing with drooping

tongues and wistful faces just outside the door. As soon

as Selma Hinds sat down on the couch and waved me to

the opposite chair, the dogs sat too, their dark eyes

watching us calmly, their frantic barking stilled.

"You have the look of a man searching for something," she said quietly, "or someone. "

" A girl," I said. "Betty Sue Flowers. "

" I see," she said, "and as you can see, I take in

strays--the halt, the lame, the sore of foot." She

paused to smooth the fur of the calico that had replaced

the large yellow cat in her lap. "And the spiritually

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damaged too, I take them in, do what I can to restore

them-rebuild the body, replenish the spirit. Those

who have homes they want to return to, I provide for

their trip, and those who don't I help to find a place to

go, and sometimes, those who aren't able to leave, I

keep by my side. "

"Yes, ma'am," I said, thinking that she must b e mad

or way too good for this world.

"Mostly it works out that the human animals go on,

and the others stay . . . " She paused again, just long

enough for me to think that Betty Sue might still be

here. "These are trying times for the young, and I

provide a place away from the world, the violence and

the drugs, a haven with a sexual king' s-ex," she said.

"And Betty Sue came here?''

"Yes, for a time."

"Then she left?" I asked, confused now.

"She left her spirit among us, it walks among us even

now," she said, "and her ashes are mixed with the

garden soil."

"I beg your pardon?"

"She's dead, Mr. Sughrue," she said. When I didn't

say anything, she added, "You seem shocked. We all

must die many times."

"I don't know if I can explain that to her mother," I

said.

"Tell her then that while Betty Sue was among us,

she regained her innocence, restored her youth," she

said. "She was happy here, she grew young again. "

"I've heard it's possible," I said, still stunned, "but

I've never seen it happen. "

"That's a pity, sir, since it is one of life's delights to

watch the young grow young again."

"What happened?" I asked, wanting to know how

she died.

"She blossomed like a flower here," Selma said,

misunderstanding, "she came to value herself again. If

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