When the Women Come out to Dance (2002) (24 page)

That sound like Brother?"

"Those're his dimensions. What'd he do?"

"Went down for third-degree battery on a list of assault indictments, but all he got was a year in the Lonoke County jail." Preston Raincrow laid his notes on the table. He said , "Ben, these people are into hijacking trucks."

"We know Hazen tried it," Ben said.

"I see it as their criminal enterprise. I bet they keep thos
e barns closed tight and locked."

"I never got close enough to tell," Ben said.

Preston took his time. He said, "Maybe I could look int
o it. Go out there, tell 'em I'm checking on Lyme disease for th e county."

Ben said, "Or mad cow."

It got Preston nodding his head. "Yeah, I like mad cow. Sa
y I need to check the feed and the cow shit."

"You think they'll believe you?"

"I wear my exterminator uniform and bring Eddie Chocot
e along with his sidearm. Tell 'em this mad cow business coul d be a terrorist plot, like anthrax. Eddie's cool, he'll go along.

We find stolen property, we tell the sheriff. We find a met
h lab working--speed's big around here--we call the DEA.

They'll go out there with marshals. But if we don't get t
o peek in the barns . . ." Preston shrugged. "You ever in a movi e had this kind of situation? Guys you think are bad won'
t come out of the house?"

"I was one of the guys," Ben said. "I made a run for it an
d got shot."

"You were good at dying."

"We played guns enough when we were kids. Get shot an
d go, 'Unhhh, I'm hit,' and fall in the river." Ben thought o f what he'd say next, hesitated and then said it. "I almost go t shot for real one time, taking a midnight dip in the countr y club pool."

"And they put you in jail--I remember that. You wer
e with some girl we went to school with."

"Denise Patterson," Ben said.

"That's right, she's Denise Allen now, married twice. Th
e first time to some country singer came through with a sho w and Denise ran after him. The second time to a guy in Tuls a with oil money left over from the '80s. They got divorced an d she come back home. Her folks moved to Hawai-ya and le t her have the big house on Seminole Avenue she grew up in.

That's where she's at now. Yeah, Denise Allen, in the real estate business, sells farms, sells lake property--"

"How do you know all that?"

"Ophelia does her cleaning. She says Ms. Allen isn't lik
e any other ladies she works for."

"I believe it," Ben said. "One time she wanted me to tak
e pictures of her bare naked, she's sixteen years old, and sen d 'em to Playboy."

"You keep any?" "I never took the pictures. I was hardshell Baptist at tha t time," Ben said, "account of Carl had found Jesus. I was reading scripture so I wouldn't go to Hell. I'd go skinny-dipping with Denise and leave my underwear on."

"I remember in school," Preston said, "some guys calle
d her Denise the piece. They said she'd let you screw her long a s you were Caucasian. You still Baptist?"

Ben said, "More Unitarian if anything," thinking of Kim.

Thinking of her for the first time in hours.

Preston said, "Yeah, Ophelia told her me and you write t
o each other and she's always asking what you're doing."

"Denise?"

"Who we talking about? I was you, man, I'd give he
r a call."

IV.

The way Denise met Hazen Grooms: one night i
n that dark, smoky bar at the Best Western, months ago, h e asked her to have a drink with him. He was scruffy, but ther e was something about his pose she liked, his cool, sleepy eyes , and shrugged, why not, and said she'd have a Margarita. H
e told her he was a cattleman. Denise said, "You mean yo u shovel cow shit?" Hazen said he speculated on cattle, oil an d land development--looking like he might have five bucks i n his jeans. He asked her with his sleepy Jack Nicholson look , "What's a hot number like you doing in Okmulgee?" Denis e kept a straight face and laid her OK Realty card on the bar. I f this cowboy was into land development he could put up o r shut up. Hazen said, "Hmmm," studying the card. He said h e had run into a relative of his operated a pecan farm and wa s talking to him about working shares. He asked Denise if sh e could put together a lease agreement. When he told her it wa s the Webster property out in the Deep Fork bottom Denise almost came off her bar stool.

Oh, really?

Since high school she had not stopped thinking of Be
n Webster. Not every day, but a lot; in fact more than ever whil e she was married to those two jerks. She was sure this lease dea l would put her in touch with him again. They'd talk about i t on the phone and she'd say, "By the way, I'm coming out t o the Coast soon." Ben could even come here to look over hi s tenants and she'd act grown-up for a change, try to be mor e subtle than she was dreaming up ways to seduce him. Like th e skinny-dipping. Like asking him to take nude pictures of her.

Like doing a Sharon Stone, sitting with her knees apart in
a miniskirt. Nothing worked. Finally she put the question t o him in a soft voice, "Ben, are you gay? It's okay if you are." I t wasn't, but that's what she said. He looked surprised and tol d her no, of course not. She said, "Then why don't you want t o do it?" He said, " 'Cause it's a sin." It was that fucking Carl'
s born-again influence. She wondered if it was still a sin no w that he lived in Hollywood and was in movies, an Indian, i n Dances with Wolves, but which one? She caught glimpses o f him in other pictures, once she learned which ones he was in.

He looked great, even getting shot.

She was dying to see him. He'd called and was coming t
o the house and she wasn't sure what to wear, if she should g o smart or hot.

First Hazen calling with "Guess who just came by." No, "Guess who jes come by here," and knew right awa y who he meant--without knowing why she knew it--and fel t a twitch in her stomach, or even lower. Hazen said he wa s calling because now he wanted to buy the property an d needed his offering drawn up before the movie star went bac k to Hollywood, California. He always called Ben the movi e star, getting it from Lydell, who hadn't seen a movie sinc e Gone with the Wind and assumed any picture Ben said he wa s in he must've been the star.

"Since you and him are old school buddies," Hazen said, "I
b et he'd want you to be in on it and get a nice commission , huh?"

It sounded fishy. Where would he get the money for th
e down payment, sell his repainted Cadillac?

Hazen said, "I'll find out where he's staying and let yo
u know. See, then you can invite him over, say you got an offe r for his property you want to talk to him about." Hazen said , "I can come by your house tonight with the figures. Yo u gonna be home?"

"Tomorrow at the office," Denise said, and wouldn't le
t him talk her out of it.

She had never allowed him in the house. Several times the
y had drinks and dinner together because she had nothing to d o and was curious about him and would listen to Hazen tel l how he'd once rustled cattle with a semi-trailer and had don e some prison time in his wild youth, but never associated wit h the perverts or hogs inside and had kept himself clean, Haze n eating his dinner with his cowboy hat on. Hazen wanted he r to know he'd had an outlaw streak in him but now was a straight-shooter looking for the girl of his dreams. If she eve r told anybody she'd add, "You have to hear him say it."

Finally, the last time they went out together and he too
k her home, he started putting the moves on her in his car, th e backseat full of engine parts and trash, Hazen kissing an d feeling, the straight-shooter smelling of cigarettes, tequil a and Aqua Velva, breathing hard through his nose till Denis e shut him down with a quiet tone of voice.

She said, "Hazen, please don't," and thought of telling hi
m she was a lesbian, but couldn't bring herself to say the word.

So she said, "I'm not used to a man like you. Twice I wa
s talked into getting married, not giving myself time to realiz e what I was doing, and both times I made an awful mistake.

You'll just have to be patient with me."

She didn't have to tell him to get his hand off her tit. H
e grumbled something and withdrew it. So she didn't have t o pull the SIG Sauer .380 she kept in her handbag and shove i t under his nose.

It was time to dress for Ben.

The way it turned out it didn't matter wha
t she was wearing.

Denise opened the door. Ben came in. They looked at eac
h other, neither one saying a word. They went into each other'
s arms for a hug after all these years, kissing each other on th e cheek, on the mouth, on the mouth hard, and ended up on th e oriental that covered the living-room floor, scrambling to ge t enough of their clothes off, Ben's windbreaker, his boots-GCo g oddamn it, a pair of the newer ones, hard to pull off--hi s jeans, Denise her cotton sweater, no bra but the panties beneath the skirt, and love was made in a fever that lasted only a few minutes after twenty years of it never having happened. On the floor side by side looking at each other, both a t peace, smiling a little, she said, "Well . . . how've you been?"

He said, "You look better than ever."

She said, "I like your hair like that."

He said, "You're not married, are you?"

"Would it matter?"

"Not now."

She touched his hair. "Where's your cowboy hat?"

"I'm not a cowboy anymore."

"I still have a picture of you I cut out of the paper, riding
a bull."

He said, "You want to know something?"

"What?"

He hesitated, but had to say it because it was the reason h
e was here.

"I think about you all the time."

She said, "Aw, Ben," in a soft way, touching his face, kissing him. Soon they were kissing each other without making a sound as they settled in.

They got cans of beer from the kitchen an
d took them into the library where they used to kiss and foo l around sometimes, but without ever getting too close to doing it. She said, "I guess it's not a sin anymore."

"You remember that?"

"I'd say, 'Why don't we see what it's like.' "

"You already knew."

"Yeah, but not with you and I had to find out. But I wasn'
t jumping in the sack with everybody. You know how man y guys I did it with? Two." She paused. "Actually three whil e we were in school and I'm Denise the piece? You must'v e wanted to."

"Sure I did."

She said, "I was absolutely insane over you," and stoppe
d for a moment, looking at him next to her on the cracke d leather sofa, her dark hair and part of her face in lamplight.

"You're not married, are you?"

He said, "Almost, once," and saw Kim on the beach a
t Point Dume, what seemed now years ago.

"Why didn't you?"

"I thought I wanted to--"

"But you weren't sure. I wasn't sure, either," Denise said
, "when I married Wayne Hostetter, the second-biggest mistake of my life, but it was a chance to get out of town."

Saving Ben from having to talk about Kim, what happene
d to her, and what he felt now about ever getting married o r even serious with a woman, because they didn't have to b e married to have something awful happen to whoever sh e might be. He wasn't convinced that it would, no, but here i t was on his mind while Denise was telling him about th e country artist, Wayne Hostetter and the Wranglers in thei r cowboy hats. "I called them Wayne and his Wanglers.

He's the only guy I ever heard of puts lifts in his cowbo
y boots."

"He was your second-biggest mistake," Ben said. "What was your first?"

She said marrying Arthur Allen, an investment banker, th
e most boring man she'd ever met. "He played golf every afternoon and talked about it all night. It's what golfers do."

"Why didn't you play?"

"It's boring. I saw every movie you were in."

"Space Sluts in the Slammer Two?"

"I missed that one."

"I was killed by a space slut. How'd you know about th
e movies?"

"My cleaning lady."

"Right, Ophelia. Preston told me." He said, "You were interested, huh?"

Denise stared at him. She said, "You big lug, don't yo
u know it's been you all the time? What's that from?"

"A lot of old movies, not any I was in."

She kept staring, not just looking, studying him. She said
, "You're a stuntman. That's pretty cool. Do you want to act?"

"I don't think so."