Four Dead Horses Read online

  Ginger nodded. “Could have been a cowboy poet. So you study theater or poetry?”

  “Political science,” Martin said and watched Ginger squint. He wished he had a better answer, like “welding” or “animal husbandry.”

  “Well, that’s a waste, a man who can recite like you.”

  Martin straightened his shoulders, sucked his belly in. He couldn’t remember anyone calling him a man before.

  “So I’ll come see you tonight.” Ginger patted dust off her boy-cut Levi’s. “And maybe after, we can take a walk.”

  Martin stopped breathing for long enough that black flecks cartwheeled in front of his eyes. She was talking about sex, right? Or at least the prelude thereto? Sex with him. Sex between him and Ginger. Ginger, who smelled like leather and horse and desert rose. Ginger, whose denim-draped thighs could hold onto a bucking mustang while she twirled a lasso over a charging bull’s horns. She was saying it in her old-timey Little-House-on-the-Prairie idiom, but she meant sex. Martin knew it as sure as he knew his lines for Jimso’s Jamboree and Talent Show.

  “It’d be an honor, ma’am,” Martin answered and cursed himself silently. This was not the time to channel Curly from Oklahoma. “I mean, sure, that would be neat,” but Ginger had already slipped out the door.

  Martin sagged against the saddle stand, anemia washing over him as his body’s store of blood rushed to his cock. It wasn’t that Martin was new to sex. True, in high school, his heft, his lack of athletic prowess, and his aptitude at the cerebral arts meant he didn’t get a chance to partake in the freely given gifts of the cheerleaders or the swimmer girls. He had, of course, self-pleasured to the exploits of the forever-fortunate correspondents in his dad’s Penthouses, hardly hidden under a two-year-old copy of Life Magazine in the drawer of a bedside table. And he and Camilla Lutz had spilt fluids in the backseat of his 1972 Dodge Dart in an apple schnapps-induced haze after the PPHS Senior Prom.

  At U of C, his was a more sexually active demographic. In his freshman year, he had enjoyed regular and robust encounters with a budding Austrian geneticist almost as big as he. And just last month, he had been dumped by a bony seminary student, who had declared a major in asceticism with a minor in abstinence. As she had often smelled of garlic and cabbage and would usually cry throughout their otherwise silent lovemaking, Martin supported her decision and the split was amicable.

  But sex with Ginger, that would be explosive. He would breathe hot into her sunset-hued tresses and, like a bull bucking at the brand, mount her strapping thighs, naked, he hoped to God, but for her supple leather chaps, and take her amidst the sage and sand of the Arizona desert floor. This would be sex between a man and a woman. A Western woman and the sort of man Martin had been reading about and riding with, at least in his mind, in the four days since Beaufort introduced him to cowboy poetry.

  Martin took a deep breath and tried to replace the image of Ginger’s dimpled smile with the visage of his ancient law professor, a puckered woman with coffee-stained teeth. His rigidity yielded enough for him to make his way up to the lodge for his pre-theater meal.

  After dinner, salmon aspic and a green salad, Martin hid out in the ranch library, not allowing himself to look around the main lodge to see if Ginger had been good to her word. He spent two hours thumbing through back issues of Western magazine before he was called to the stage by a slurring and sniggering Jimso through a mic screeching with reverb. Martin centered himself, his back to the massive stone fireplace, and looked out. The ambitious wattage provided by the lighting team—Beaufort and the hands armed with Black and Decker spot flashlights—rendered Martin as blind as an elk about to be flattened by a semi, so there was no hope of spotting Ginger. Probably a good thing. It would no doubt distract the audience from his paean to cowboys of the past if he intoned it while sporting a throbbing erection.

  He did not remember starting the poem, or whether he had tilted his head at the end of the second stanza, as he had practiced. He remembered nothing of the performance at all until he reached the final lines:

  Oh, here they come to Heaven,

  their campfire has gone out.

  Applause shook the pine-paneled room. Martin lifted a crooked right index finger to his temple in salute, as he had seen Beaufort do. Martin could hear Beaufort whistling now, a sharp and painful shriek, as if he were garroting a prairie dog rather than blowing nicotine-scented air through gnarled fingers. He had to set down his flashlight in order to whistle effectively. The respite from the glare allowed Martin to see out into the crowd.

  There weren’t as many guests sitting in the semicircles of wooden chairs spooning the stage area as there had been when the show started. Most of the Fuzzy Balls, Martin’s parents included, had slipped into the bar in back of the big hall. A few of the others appeared to have snuck out or joined the Fuzzy Balls. Here and there, ranch employees filled in for the defectors: a couple of the busboys; most all of the groundskeepers; the youngish waitress whom Martin’s dad had taken to patting on the ass; the shaggy-headed tennis pro who sold Frank pot.

  Julie Newport, now in her first year at the University of Michigan, was also there, in the front row, clapping with great, broad bangs of her mannish hands. In the three years since they had witnessed Buster’s death on the beach at Twin Bluffs, she had grown, both as a swimmer and as a physical presence. She had set records at PPHS in every girls’ event except the 100-yard backstroke, and U of M put her on the varsity squad as a freshman. Tonight, she had the fierce look that Martin imagined she must wear while blazing down the lane during the butterfly. Her massive shoulders swiveled in and out as she applauded, and her head bobbed with each strike. Next to her, leaning away from Julie’s pumping appendages and also clapping, but with lither movement, was Ginger.

  The barn staff joined Martin up front to acknowledge the ovation. For the bow, wranglers on either side of him grabbed his soft hands in their calloused ones, like Dunkin Donuts Boston cremes wrapped in sandpaper. He hoped they didn’t notice. After the third curtain call, Martin hustled to where Ginger stood, smiling and applauding.

  “Really nice, cowboy,” she said and placed a hand on his chest.

  “Martin, who knew?” Julie pushed Ginger’s arm out of the way and pressed her ample breasts to Martin’s ample stomach. He was a head taller. He could smell whiskey on her breath, and bubble gum. She cupped his groin with both hands.

  “I’m happy to see you too,” Julie continued. “I’ve got some hash back in my room. Want to go see if we can take care of this?” She gave Martin’s swelling balls a squeeze through his jeans.

  Martin looked over Julie’s chlorine-green-tinged blonde shag to Ginger’s retreating back. He moved to go after her, forgetting for a moment Julie was there, bumping into her. She responded with another clutch at his balls.

  Martin realized right then that the genes driving blood to his cock, like cowmen behind a stampeding herd, were half contributed by Dottie Oliphant. Those genes could not help but lust after a Newport, no matter how improbable or crass Julie’s advance might be, no matter how enticing or life-changing his alternate adventure with Ginger might have been.

  “Let’s go,” he choked to Julie and looked down her gaping checkered shirt to her freckled and unencumbered breasts.

  They didn’t make it back to her room. They ducked into the darkened billiards den. Martin leaned back on the table, hands clutching at the green felt. Julie unzipped his jeans and ran a scratchy tongue up his rigid shaft—as impressive as any on the cover of the bull semen catalogues Martin had seen on Beaufort’s desk. Martin’s hormone-addled brain only lit for a second on the question of why Julie, who had said more words to him tonight than in the previous decade of their acquaintance, was ministering so expertly to his manhood. Only much later did he recognize that Ginger’s interest must have fueled the ever-competitive Julie’s desires. Only much later did he learn that, prior to coming to the r
anch, Julie had been cut from her college swim team and from her sister’s bridal party because of weight gain, the freshman forty slowing her in the water and straining the seams of her Neiman Marcus custom-tailored full-length bridesmaid’s gown with bustle. Only much later did he hear that, since arriving at the ranch, Julie had offered blowjobs to, and been refused by, Frank, the tennis pro, three wranglers, the pastry chef, and Jimso.

  No, that night, as Martin sprayed and convulsed like the Colorado River charging through the Grand Canyon itself, he credited it all to cowboy poetry. Every spasm of pleasure offered up by Julie’s virtuoso lapping, every frisson of titillation excited by her roaming hands, every pang of sweet regret brought on by his missed coupling with Ginger, every swell of his breast puffed up by the remembered evening’s ovations, every moment blessedly free of thoughts of his family, and college, and cancer. All of it was cowboy poetry. And even much later, when he had accepted the less lyrical facts of that fine night, he still attached the feel of it—the sounds, the smells, the sex—to cowboy poetry, and only that.

  The Campfire has Gone Out

  Traditional

  Through progress of the railroads,

  our occupation’s gone;

  we’ll get our ideas into words,

  our words into a song,

  first comes the cowboy—

  he’s the spirit of the West;

  of all the pioneers I claim

  the cowboys are the best.

  We’ll miss him in the round-up,

  it’s gone, his merry shout,

  the cowboy has left the country,

  his campfire has gone out.

  You freighters, our companions,

  you’ve got to leave this land;

  can’t drag your loads for nothing

  through the gumbo and the sand;

  the railroads are bound to beat you—

  so do your level best,

  give it up to the granger

  and strike out farther west.

  Bid them all adieu

  and give the merry shout,

  “The cowboy has left the country

  and his campfire has gone out.”

  When I think of those good old days

  my eyes with tears will fill;

  when I think of the tin can by the fire

  and the coyote on the hill.

  I’ll tell you, boys, in those days

  Old-timers stood a show,

  our pockets full of money,

  not a sorrow did we know;

  But, how times have changed since then,

  we’re poorly clothed and fed,

  our wagons are all broken down

  and horses most all dead.

  Soon we’ll leave this country,

  then you’ll hear the angels shout:

  “Oh, here they come to Heaven,

  their campfire has gone out.”

  3

  Frank arrived in Dottie’s brown-fake-wood-on-lighter-brown-exterior station wagon at noon on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend 1985 to take Martin and his worldly possessions back to Pierre. Martin had transferred his lease to his roommate’s girlfriend, figuring he could always come back to campus before the next trimester and find another place. Legions of pre-meds would spend their summers retaking organic chemistry, and most would fail. That would leave plenty of overpriced and underfumigated dwelling spaces from which to choose.

  Frank exited the car, and Martin trundled down the path from the apartment foyer, extending the hand not clutching a black trash bag full of dirty laundry. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Not my choice,” said Frank. “You know, today is opening day of the beach season.”

  “Pierre’s beaches are public,” said Martin. “They’re open all the time. And not my choice either. I’m not the one going to California tomorrow, Mr. McEnroe.”

  “Well, I’m not the one who got cancer. And we’re not supposed to say ‘cancer’ at home, by the way. Mom and Dad don’t like it.” Frank looked at Martin’s still-outstretched hand and grasped it.

  Frank’s grip was firm, no surprise there, and Martin firmed his own in response. They bobbed hands a moment, then Martin stepped back, looking toward the street, the side elms, the traffic, the berm’s patchy grass. Anywhere but Frank.

  “These all going?” asked Frank, kicking at a pile of ten or so cardboard boxes piled at the curb.

  Martin nodded. He didn’t speak, worried that the words might come out cracked and loving, and that would make for a long ride home.

  “Goddamn, this is heavy,” said Frank, hoisting the top box. “What’s in here, beer?”

  “Books,” said Martin.

  “Pffft,” hissed Frank. “To each his own. How much more of this shit is there?”

  Martin thought of the fifteen boxes stacked in his room, each labeled in green magic marker: “common core physical science texts, deutsche Sprache, Grammatik Bücher, Wörterbuch, Kafka, Brecht, Western and Non-Western Civ.” Then there was his Brother Cassette Correct-O-Riter I in its hard shell case; his posters (Wham!, National Geographic World Map, 1979 Tutankhamen Artifacts Tour) secured in a tube; a mesh-bagged collection of half-melted, scented votive candles, and two bottles of Prell Shampoo left by his ex-girlfriend; his own toiletries—toothbrush, Crest, plastic combs, nail clippers, Vaseline Angel Skin lotion, one unwrapped bar of Life Buoy, Head and Shoulders, Gold Bond Medicated Powder—all fit neatly in a Converse shoe box. It was a point of pride for Martin that, despite his body’s great size, he could care for it with minimal amendments.

  They rode the elevator to the second floor. The door opened, and Martin held its rubber edge.

  “You want to keep it here, and I’ll get the rest of the stuff?” he said.

  “Nah,” said Frank. “I want to see your place.”

  But what Martin wanted was for Frank not to see his place. Frank couldn’t help but find it, at best, grim. No decoration, save the books stacked on and around two-by-four board-and-cinderblock shelves. Windows without curtains painted shut and smeared with black grease of unknown origin. That smell endemic to Hyde Park student apartments: leaking gas, rotting food, unwashed sheets. Martin was already finding it uncomfortably easy to abandon his Chicago home. Frank’s disapprobation would only fuel the disquiet that threatened to develop into a full-fledged existential crisis.

  But once in the apartment, Frank’s only comment was about the lack of alcohol in the kitchen’s battered and moldy refrigerator. They got the car loaded in just under two hours, and Martin made one last trip up the elevator to leave his keys. There was no one to say good-bye to, there or anywhere outside the building. Saturday before exam week, and everyone was at the Reg.

  Martin offered to drive the three hours around the bottom of Lake Michigan back to Pierre, and Frank accepted, explaining he wanted to nap. The Cubs were in Philly, and Martin switched the radio on low to listen to Vince and Lou narrate the inevitable defeat. Martin didn’t follow sports as a rule, but he made an exception for the Cubs. That a team so hapless could remain so beloved always filled him with the sort of hope he felt he needed to stockpile if he was going to make it in this wide world. He preferred listening to losses, which this one was shaping up to be by the time he pulled off Stony Island and onto I-94E and the Chicago Skyway.

  From the late 1950s through the 1980s, to get to points east and south of the University of Chicago by car, you had to scale the Skyway then descend toward the Indiana border. The road swooped away from Hyde Park, with its promises of cerebral employment, stimulating conversation, and clean nails to skim over the circle of hell that was the flats of Gary, Indiana—sidewalks empty of people, streets empty of cars, tree boxes empty of trees; soot-stained bungalows sharing side walls, and concrete yards fenced with chain link; bent TV antennas sending thick black wires to the
tops of tar black poles and then into a messy grid of overhead electrical lines. All this sat against the backdrop of the steel mills and their smokestacks, eternally flaming and spewing the gray smog that turned every Gary day to constant dusk. Go to a good college and finish well or pick up your lunch bucket, report to the line, and hope you don’t die of emphysema before your union-negotiated pension kicks in.

  Frank didn’t wake up until Martin had taken the Indiana Toll Road ticket from the graying and probably diabetic attendant, who might well have been born in that booth.

  “Jesus. Gary,” said Frank and put his hand over his nose and mouth. The odor was sharp and unique and almost as strong with the windows up as with the windows down. It was as if someone had decided to boil urine down to a thick paste and had burnt a good deal of it onto the bottom of the metal pot.

  “Do you have a beer in one of those boxes?” Frank said and sat up.

  “Just books,” said Martin.

  “Ron and I went to the bonfire last night. Fuck, we got wasted. Do you think mom has aspirin in here?” Frank popped open the glove compartment. In it was the owner’s manual, still sealed in its plastic wrap, and the faux leather-covered book that Lou Cheely, Pierre’s Oldsmobile franchise owner, provided gratis to all customers to record their service visits.

  “Just books,” said Martin.

  Frank slammed the compartment door. “I saw your girlfriend Julie Newport last night.”

  “Not my girlfriend,” said Martin and shifted in his seat to ease the electric tingle that moved into his groin with the mention of Julie’s name.

  “That’s not what I hear. I hear you fucked her at Jimmy Sneedle’s.”

  “I did not.” Martin was fairly certain that that was technically true, though sex act taxonomy had not been a topic covered in the PPHS health class syllabus. For the males, that curriculum had consisted entirely of a short film about how teen fatherhood could really screw up a promising high school long-jump career.