Way Down on the High Lonely

Part Two
Outlaws
5

Neal picked up the heavy cast-iron skillet and poured the bacon grease into an old coffee can. He set the skillet back on top of the wood stove. As the thin layer of grease spattered and hissed, Neal broke two eggs on the edge of the skillet and opened them into the pan. He swirled the skillet gently until the eggs were set and put it back down on the cast-iron heater.

On the back burner, the bubbling of the old metal percolator slowed to a single blurp. Neal picked the coffee pot up with a hot pad and poured himself a mug. Prismatic residue floated on top, giving off that oily tang particular to old-fashioned perked coffee. Neal took a careful sip, scalding his lips only slightly as he stepped out onto the cabin porch.

The sun was rising behind him, starting to warm the cabin’s tin roof. Neal savored the sounds that he had first heard only as silence. Listening carefully, he now heard the western breeze ruffle the trees, the distinct crackle of the creek as it rushed over rock and sand. He heard that same old ornery crow scolding him from the same pine branch, the hammering noise of a downy woodpecker as it hunted for ants in a dead cedar, the rattling chirp of a ground squirrel.

And there were the smells. The dominant odor of pine needles, distinct from the muskier smell of pine pitch, the warm, acrid smell of the acidic dirt beneath the rabbit brush, the sagebrush itself, dry and sweet smelling in the crisp early morning. And now there was the aroma of the eggs frying in the bacon grease and the wonderful bread smell as it browned on the grill above the stove.

Neal walked back into the cabin and turned the eggs over, then pressed the spatula down until the yolks broke. He took the toast off the grill, buttered it, and placed it on the old, white, chipped plate with the little blue flowers around the edge. He watched the eggs until they turned solid, then flipped them onto the plate, poured himself more coffee, and sat down at the table, three wide pine boards hammered onto a frame of split logs. He pulled up his chair-another primitive pine job hacked out with a hatchet-and opened his Carson City Gazette to the sports page.

The newspaper was exactly one week behind. Neal hitched a ride to town with Steve once a week to buy his supplies and stocked up on his newspapers seven at a time. He had disciplined himself to read only one paper a day, and so his news was a week old, but it wasn’t long before that didn’t matter, and it wasn’t long after that that he took to only glancing at the hard news anyway, turning his attention to sports, book reviews, editorials, and the comics. He got very involved with the comic strips, actually feeling suspense at the fate of Gil Thorp’s baseball team and Steve Roper.

On this morning, as on every other morning, building a life was mostly a matter of maintenance. Joe Graham had taught him that a long time ago-that managing your life was about doing the small tasks well and doing them when they needed to be done. “People think that they’re ‘free,’” Joe Graham had lectured one time as he was browbeating Neal into cleaning his pigsty of an apartment, “when they don’t have any order in their lives. They’re not free. They’re prisoners of their own sloppiness. They spend a hell of a lot more time and energy cleaning up their messes than they do having fun, whatever they tell you. Now, if you just do the little boring things every day, in some kind of order, you leave yourself with more time to sit around, drink beer, and watch ball games on TV, which is, after all, what you want to be doing in the first place. Besides which, sloppy detectives tend to end up dead.”

It was true in detective work, it was true in scholarship, and it was true in living a reasonably comfortable life on an isolated mountain.

So he finished his breakfast, heated some water, and did the dishes right away, before he lost the ambition to do them. He poured himself a second cup of coffee and went out to sit on the porch. It was the time he allowed himself to enjoy the terrain, think about the upcoming day, and watch the coyote.

The coyote had started coming just a few days after Neal’s arrival at the cabin. Apparently it was just as much a creature of routine as Neal was. It would arrive just after breakfast and skitter fifty or sixty yards away from the cabin until Neal came out to start his hike to the Mills place. Then the coyote would fall in behind him, trailing him, always staying well behind and running off if Neal turned around too suddenly.

At first Neal thought he had some kind of Disney experience going for him, until Steve explained that the coyote was using Neal like a hunting dog, staying behind him to pounce on any grasshoppers, mice, or rabbits that Neal might stir up. Also, coyotes were scavengers, just smart enough to learn that human beings left a lot of garbage in their wake. Neal preferred the Disney scenario and came to look on the coyote as a friend.

So he was looking for the animal when he went out on the porch to sip that wonderful second cup of coffee. All the more wonderful because the mornings were now quite cold. The higher slopes of the mountains had snow now, and it wouldn’t be long before the first big storm covered the whole valley in white. Neal had spent many hours of his spare time getting wood off the mountain and stacking it on the porch.

The way the job is going, Neal thought, I might need it.

He’d been there for two months and hadn’t seen another sign of Harley or Cody McCall.

Maybe they did move on, Neal admitted to himself. Maybe I should too. But I won’t be any closer to finding the boy in New York than I am here.

He’d had a tough time selling that concept to Levine and Graham. There had been that difficult conference call about three weeks after Neal had moved into the cabin.

“Get your ass back here,” Ed had demanded.

Neal insisted, “I’m staying.”

“What the hell for?” Graham asked. “They won’t even let you into the stupid compound!”

“I’m still in the probationary period,” Neal said, feeling more than a little foolish. It was true. Hansen had checked out his cover story, bought it, and invited Neal to attend the “self-defense” training sessions he held at the ranch. Outside the compound.

Ed broke in. “We’re working it from this end now, Neal. You’re off the case.”

“I’m off the case when I bring back Cody McCall, Ed.”

Neal could picture Ed filming, leaning over his desk, sucking on a cigarette.

Graham said, “Son, come back and go to school. You’ve done what you could do. We’ll try something else, that’s all.”

“I don’t care about school, Dad. I care about the boy. And until I know that he’s not here, I’m not leaving.”

Besides, I like it here.

Which was true. Neal Carey, denizen of Broadway, inveterate strap hanger, with sidewalk smarts and a three-newspaper-a-day habit, loved his life on The High Lonely. Neal, whose previous experience herding cattle was maneuvering a cheeseburger into his mouth, had come to enjoy bringing Mills’ cows down from their summer pastures in the mountains. Neal, who had once seen the Hudson and East rivers as the borders of the universe, now reveled in the panoramic dawns and dusks of the high desert. Neal, whose idea of a dead lift had been restricted to the weight of a large coffee to go, now thought nothing of flinging bales of hay into the loft, or stretching barbed wire, or digging post holes, or wrestling a calf that needed an injection. Neal, who once couldn’t wait to get back to New York after his years of confinement in China, now dreaded the idea of leaving his splendid isolation in the Reese River valley for the tight confines of the Big Apple.

So he wasn’t going to do it. This was going to be his last job. He’d find Cody McCall, as long as it took. But once that was over, he was staying right here in the valley. Take his back pay and buy himself a little place, maybe even this cabin. He’d have to give up graduate school, but he didn’t need graduate school to read books. In fact, he’d had a lot more time to read these past two months than he’d had for the past five years.

So as soon as I find Cody McCall, I’m quitting, Neal thought as the coyote peeked up from behind a clump of brush.

He shucked off his clothes, slipped on rubber thongs, and paddled over to the lister bag. He stepped up onto the wooden platform he had built, opened the nozzle, got himself wet, and closed the nozzle. He soaped up, washed his hair, and opened the nozzle again to rinse off. Then he lathered his face with soap, crouched a little to look into the mirror hanging from the stump of a branch, and shaved.

“Shaving,” Peggy Mills had warned him, “is what separates you from the goofball survivalists. As long as you shave, you’re a guy who just wants his privacy. When you stop shaving, you’ve gone a little too mountain man. So shave, Neal, and I won’t nag you or worry about you as much.”

It was a good bargain, so Neal dutifully scraped his face every day and felt better for it. One of the challenges of living a primitive life was keeping clean, and a beard would make it more difficult, a repository of sweat, dirt, and dead little bugs. Besides, this was his big day of the week, the day he went to town, and he always liked to show the locals that he had it together. It was a point of pride. He put on a reasonably clean denim shirt, jeans, and jacket, and then his brand-new black Stetson. It was Saturday, his big day in town.

He started his hike to the Mills’ house. He didn’t have to look back over his shoulder to know that the coyote was trotting a good distance behind him.

Far back in the mountains an old man lay in the brush watching a rabbit in the clearing a few feet in front of him. The old man was naked except for a breechcloth made of pounded sagebrush. His long hair was white, as were the few scraggly whiskers that hung from his chin. He was a small man, well under five feet, and his copper skin was stretched tautly over muscles that were still lean and tight. The old man lay perfectly still as the rabbit lifted its head, twitched its nose, and sniffed the air.

The old man was not concerned. He had taken great care to stay downwind of his prey and he had watched the rabbit for many days, learning its habits. Meat was hard to come by, the rabbit was a wary prey, and his own reflexes were not as fast as they had been in his younger years. The old man recognized that the days when he could survive on speed and strength were long gone; now he must make do with experience and craft.

The rabbit put its nose to the ground and hopped slowly toward the bush. The old man released the string of his bow and the tiny arrow went through the rabbit’s neck. The rabbit twitched and kicked in its death spasms and then lay still. The old man got up, took the rabbit by its feet, and headed back to the cave to begin the long process of skinning it with a sharpened piece of flint.

Getting food was a full-time effort and would only get harder. The old man was sorry that summer-that time when the Creator stayed close to the earth and warmed an old man’s bones-was coming to an end. It was so much easier getting food in summer, when it was easy to dig roots, gather pine nuts, and pull up big clumps of desert grass. Then there were mesquite beans and the reeds that grew along the creek banks, and it was good for an old man to sit on a rock in the sun and grind the beans and nuts into a paste, or sit by the creek and make soup from the reeds and grass.

And there were lizards and rats and birds to catch. And rabbits.

But his favorites were the grasshoppers. The old man remembered the time before he was the last of his people, when he and his brothers and sisters would take their sharpened sticks and dig deep pits in the earth. Then they would form a big circle and pound on the earth with their sticks, driving the grasshoppers into the pit, where they could be easily caught. There were many ways to eat grasshoppers: crush them into a paste, boil them in a soup with sweet grass, roast them on a rock in the fire, or set them out to dry in the sun. Or if they were very hungry and their father was not looking, they would simply pop a live one into their mouths and chew.

But those were memories, and now there were no brothers or sisters to help and it was harder to catch the grasshoppers. And soon the snows would come and he would have to stay in the mountains away from the white men and it would be very cold. He had to kill many rabbits for their warm fur as well as their meat. And perhaps soon he would take his bow and his sharpened stick and try to kill a mountain sheep, because he no longer dared to sneak down into the valley and take one of the white man’s calves. Not when he could be easily tracked in the snow.

Shoshoko, “Digger”-that was his name, although he had not heard it spoken in many years-picked up his sharpened stick and headed back toward the cave.

Neal thought that shopping was a wonderful thing. He hadn’t thought this when he lived in New York City, three blocks from a grocery store, or even in Yorkshire, where the grocer and butcher were a pleasant twenty-minute stroll away, but he sure as hell thought it now, after two months of having to procure, preserve, and store food. Now he thought the cans of Dinty Moore beef stew stood among humankind’s highest achievements, right up there beside the pyramids, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and Hormel chili. He had also developed a high opinion of the Jolly Green Giant’s cans of green beans, peas, and those peach slices floating in the sweet, sticky juice-especially the peaches, after a day or so in a canvas bag in cold, rushing water.

And what genius, Neal wondered, had come up with peanut butter? Could it really have been some dork named Skippy? Never mind, it was a major cultural advance. Let the food critics, the health food nuts, and the yuppies whine and scoff at canned food. To Neal canned food meant freedom, the ability to live at arm’s reach from civilization and still survive. Canned food let him live in his cabin and have plenty of time to read great books, fish, and take naps instead of spending all his time scratching in the dirt, or hunting, or guarding his crops from vermin.

Steve Mills thought so too.

“I’m happy to see,” Steve had said when he saw how Neal had stocked his larder, “that you’re not one of these purists we get up here who arrive with their Whole Earth catalogues and plans for a geodesic dome. They figure they’re going to grow their bean sprouts and their organic vegetables and live in harmony with nature. Only thing is, nature never read Diet for a Small Planet, so the deer and the rabbits and the bugs eat the whole crop instead of restricting themselves to their socially responsible share. Then one of these ‘alternative life-stylers’ kids named Sunshine or Raven gets an ear infection that herbal tea can’t cure, and so I find myself hauling them to the doctor in my air-polluting, gas-guzzling truck so he can write them a prescription for some nonorganic chemicals they can’t pay for anyway, so half the time I end up writing a check from the capitalist profits I make from selling my murderous, unhealthy red meat. And about the only thing that grows naturally up here that the animals don’t like is dope, so these purists are stoned half the time anyway, unless they have the sense to sell it instead of smoking it. So they end up either starving, dirty, malnourished drug casualties or wealthy capitalists running bales of marijuana into Reno in custom vans that cost more than my whole house. So I’m glad to see that you like Dirity Moore stew.”

Joe Graham had a different take on the purity issue. “You heard that saying about not taking the easy way out?” he’d asked Neal. “Sometimes the easy way is the best way. A lot of smart people have put in a lot of time making things easier. People who tell you not to take the easy way out are the same people who’ll then get on a plane to the West Coast instead of taking a covered wagon, which would be a lot harder.”

Neal didn’t care much about the philosophy of the whole thing. He just wanted to live in the cabin, not see people unless he wanted to, and read books. So he stocked up on his favorite canned food, bought a six-pack of bottled beer, and picked up his week’s supply of newspapers.

Steve Mills pulled his truck up alongside the sidewalk. He’d been down at the gas station, stocking up on surreptitious cigs.

“You ready to head back?”

“Why not?”

Neal slung his pack into the bed of the pickup and hopped into the passenger seat.

“Thought I’d work on my fluid intake at Brogan’s for a minute,” Steve said.

“Sounds good to me.”

Brogan was asleep in his chair. Brezhnev was asleep at his feet. The flies on the window screen were awake, though.

Brogan cracked an eye open as the door shut. “Help yourselves, leave the money on the bar, and remember that Brezhnev can count,” he said, then shut his eyes again.

Brezhnev raised his heavy head at least a centimeter and looked at Steve and Neal with a proprietary interest. Neal hopped over the bar, poured two bourbons into greasy glasses, and left a five-dollar bill on the bar.

Steve tasted his drink, decided he liked it, and tossed it down. “There goes another year of my life. I think I’ll give ‘em my ninety-ninth, what do you think? So what are you planning on doing up there in January when the pump freezes and there’s two feet of snow on the ground?”

Neal sipped at his drink, savoring it. He’d decided against buying any hard booze for the cabin precisely because he thought he’d use it. Like every hight. But the one or two he had at Brogan’s, or the odd drink at the Mills’ house sure went down well.

“I’ll let January worry about January,” he said. It sounded just as stupid out loud as it had in his head.

“Well, you know I ain’t much for worrying, but now is the time to start getting your firewood together and figuring out a dry place to store it. You’re going to need a hell of a lot of it. And then there’s cabin fever.”

“I won’t get cabin fever.”

“Tell me after you’ve spent a winter by yourself out there. That is, if you’re not still talking to little men who live in the walls.”

“Oh.”

“Everybody around here gets it to one extent or another. It’s the cold, the wind, the darkness, the monotony of snow, snow, and snow. Hell, I get it, Peggy gets it, Shelly would get it if she wasn’t teenage crazy already. But I’ve seen some of these survivalists and Vietnam vets and hippies who’ve tried to winter it alone around here. By the time spring springs, they’re already sprung, you know what I mean? Do you suppose Brogan has any more bourbon, or did we drink it up already?”

Steve took Neal’s glass with him and came back with two more drinks. He sat down, lit up a cigarette, and tilted his chair back against the wall.

“Why don’t you come down and stay with us for the winter? I could use the help, Peggy would like to hear a new set of lies for a change, and Shelly thinks you hung the moon anyway.”

“What help do you need in the winter?” Neal asked doubtfully.

“Well, I can’t drink all the bourbon myself.”

“I’ll be okay, Steve. I’m used to being alone. I like it.” Besides, he thought, I need my privacy.

“Suit yourself. But I can tell you right now, Peggy’s not going to let you sit up there during the holidays. She’ll come after you with a gun, tie you on the back of a horse.”

They finished their drinks and got back in the truck. Thirteen bumpy, dusty miles later they pulled into the Mills’ driveway. Shelly and Jory were in the front corral. Shelly was throwing a saddle on Dash. The horse was doing his distinctive little shuffle dance like a prize fighter in his corner before the first-round bell. Jory was cinching up the docile mare with the appropriately soothing name of Cocoa.

“Hey, Neal!” Shelly hollered. “Want to ride?”

It was a joke between them. Shelly had been trying to get Neal on a horse since his first morning in Nevada. Sometimes she would ride Dash up to his cabin, trailing Cocoa or the equally tame Dolly, and try to get him to go for a trail ride. Neal thought that riding on the spine of a horse along the spine of a ridge was a double jeopardy he wasn’t eager to pursue in the name of recreation.

“I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone,” Neal answered.

Shelly laughed and flashed him a brilliant smile. Then she stuck her foot into the stirrup and swung up onto the horse.

“What’s the matter? Afraid to ride?”

Neal was tempted to tell her that he had ridden the IRT number two train, otherwise known as the Beast, thank you very much. He was also tempted to make some smart crack about teenage girls and horses. But he thought better of both remarks. Shelly was a great kid who just wanted to share the fun.

Yeah, right.

“Hi, Neal,” said Jory.

That was a long-winded anecdote for Jory.

“How’s it going?” Neal asked.

“just going riding,” Jory answered as he got into the saddle.

Shelly gave Dash a sharp kick in the flanks and the horse tore out of the corral like it was a dog food factory. Jory snapped his reins and Cocoa trotted after them.

Steve watched them ride off. “Now at Berkeley that’s what we’d have called life imitating art. I’m afraid that boy’s going to be eating her dust for as long as he stays on her trail.”

“Is she leaving him behind?”

“Oh, I think so. I think they might make it through their senior year, but when she gets to college and sees what all is out there… and lately Jory doesn’t see much beyond his dad’s ranch. I tell you, I hope Shelly calls us from college one summer to try to convince us we should let her spend the summer riding a bike around Europe, or looking at naked statues in Italy or something. We’ll put up a little struggle just to make it more fun for her, but I do hope that’s what happens.”

“She loves it here, Steve,” Neal said.

“She can always come back. You want to stay to dinner? I’m just going to throw some steaks on the grill.”

“I better not. I have stuff to get done.”

“Lot of work, being a mountain man. Well, come in and have a cup of coffee with Peggy, or you’ll get me in trouble.”

Peggy didn’t have any coffee on. She had a pitcher of sun tea, a bottle of vodka, a stack of magazines, and a firm intent to sit out on the porch with her feet on the railing while reading nothing more complicated than a photo caption.

“I figure it might be the last afternoon warm enough to do this. You can join me,” she said to Neal, “if you promise to speak in short sentences.”

“Thanks.”

“Good start,” Peggy said. She poured three glasses of tea over ice, topped two of them off with a shot of Smirnoff, and handed her husband the unloaded one.

“You’re a terrible woman,” he said.

“Hmm. Is our one and only off leading Jory Hansen on a merry chase?”

“Merry for her, anyway. Why, did you have something for her to do?”

“Well, she could toss a hand grenade into her room by way of cleaning it… but no, not really. Come on, boys, the porch awaits.”

She picked up her magazines and pushed the screen door open with her elbow.

“You two alcoholics go ahead,” Steve said. He drained his iced tea in one long gulp. “I want to check on the cattle for a minute. Are those magazines the ones that are mostly advertisements, with little perfume samples and articles about orgasms?”

“Yep,” answered Peggy.

“Well, save one for me,” Steve said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Neal followed Peggy out onto the porch. True to her word, she pulled up a deck chair, plopped the stack of magazines by her feet, and stuck her feet up on the railing.

“Tough day?” Neal asked.

“Not really. It’s just nice to have a chance to sit down and relax, this part of the afternoon. It’s my favorite time of the day.

She picked up a magazine, licked her finger, and started to flip through the pages.

“Cosmo,” she said. “Well, let’s see… how do high-powered young women executives get satisfaction? Nope, no pictures. Next story.”

Neal sat down, drank his tea, and watched the afternoon sunlight start to soften.

“So, Neal Carey,” Peggy said as she flipped through the magazine, “what’s happening at Hansen’s place?”

“I dunno.”

“Hmm.”

Neal hated her hmms. She could hmm him to death. Her hmms were her way of expressing skepticism. If Peggy Mills were a New York City police detective, every criminal in the city would break down and beg for the old rubber hose before enduring another one of those hmms.

“What does Jory say?” Neal asked.

“Jory says less than Jory usually says. Jory talks like one of those Indians in those old Jeff Chandler movies. Lotsa ughs and uhs.”

“Hmm.”

“Very funny. Well, something is going on at Hansen’s, and I figured because they’re just over the spur from you…”

“I thought you didn’t want a lot of conversation.”

Peggy looked up from her magazine and stared out at the trees across their lawn.

“Never mind me. Maybe it’s just that it’s late in the afternoon… and I’m late in the afternoon… and winter’s coming and my baby’s all grown up… and my husband has a big, weak heart…” She reached her hand out, took his, and gave it a squeeze. He squeezed it back.

“You’re just hitting your prime,” Neal said.

She squeezed his hand again and then let it go. “You’re a good guy, Neal. I know a few single women around here who’d die to meet you. You want to go with us to Phil and Margie’s tonight? Big Saturday night out? I’ll introduce you to some mountain women with shiny hair and long legs.”

“I don’t know how to dance.”

“I’m sure they’d love to teach you, honey.”

“I don’t know.” I don’t know, Peggy. The last woman who taught me ended up dead.

“Well, just come down around eight if you want to go.”

“Okay.”

Neal finished off his tea and got up. “Thanks for the drink. Tell Steve I needed to go, huh? Maybe I’ll see you tonight.”

He picked his pack up out of the truck, strapped it on, and headed back up to his cabin. He did have things to do.

If he was thinking of spending the winter here there was something he had to get resolved first.

Neal heard the bullet smack into the tree behind him as he dropped to the ground. He didn’t feel any pain, wondered if that’s what instant death was like, then checked himself to try to find the gaping hole in his body.

“You’re a dead kike,” Cal Strekker said as he came out from behind a boulder. He lowered his rifle and grinned.

“That was too goddamn close, Cal,” Neal croaked. “Live ammo.”

“You oughta be more alert,” Strekker said.

“I didn’t know the training session had even started,” Neal answered.

“We’re always in training, Carey.”

Well, you are anyway, Neal thought as he looked at Strekker. He was decked out in a tiger camouflage suit, replete with parachute pants, webbed belt, and combat boots. His face was striped with cammy paint and he wore a combat fatigue cap.

Even from my position groveling at your feet, you look stupid, Neal thought. He didn’t say that, though. Instead he said, “Well, you owe me new underwear, Cal.”

That seemed to mollify him, judging by the lupine grin that parted his mustache and beard. Then he got all man-to-man earnest. “You’ll thank me for this when it saves your life one day during the End Time.”

The End Time-the period foretold in Revelations that would see the final battle between good and evil, the last struggle between the chosen people and the hordes of Jews, niggers, and race traitors.

“Boy, for a second there I thought it was the End Time,” Neal said.

Neal got to his feet and offered his hand to shake. Strekker took it. Neal clamped his left hand over Cal’s wrist, lifted his arm up, spun underneath it, and pivoted, which locked Cal’s elbow up around his ear and going in the wrong direction. Neal took two long steps forward and pushed on Cal’s wrist, which took the bigger man off his feet and slammed him hard down on his back. Neal threw a punch that stopped a millimeter from Cal’s nose.

“We’re always in training, Cal, huh?”

He let go of Cal’s wrist and backed away. “You taught me that throw, Cal.”

Yeah, you taught me all right, Cal, Neal remembered. You threw me to the ground about five hundred times, always a lot harder than you had to, always giving my wrist that extra little twist. You always picked me as the “kike” in your hand-to-hand demonstrations. The choke holds, the elbow locks, the hip throws. You’ve been a good teacher. But I know seventy-year-old, five-feet-three, one hundred-pound Chinese monks who would dust your ass without looking up from their rice bowls.

“I’m going to take you to school, boy,” Cal growled. He got to his feet, drew his knife, and went into his combat stance.

Neal picked up his rifle and cocked a round into the chamber. “We’re all in our places, with bright shiny faces,” he said.

Cal started to circle him, passing the knife from hand to hand, making feinting jabs.

Neal braced the rifle stock against his cheek and focused on placing the bead right on Strekker’s alleged heart.

He almost did shit his pants when the sound of the gun exploded in his ears. He whirled around to see Bob Hansen standing there, his smoking rifle held at high port, a group of about ten men forming behind him.

“That’ll be enough, you two,” Hansen said sternly.

“Yes, sir!” Cal shouted.

“Yes, sir,” Neal croaked, his head still rushing from the thought that he had accidentally killed Cal Strekker.

Then Hansen’s face broke into a delighted smile.

“Do we have us some tigers here?” he asked the group. “They’re just spoiling to fight. I almost pity the ZOG race traitor who has to fight one of these fine men! Well, almost.”

The men behind him began to chuckle obediently. Cal looked like a German shepherd having his chest scratched. Then Hansen got stern again and frowned.

“But good white men can’t afford to fight each other, men. That’s what the enemy wants us to do. Let’s save that hatred for ZOG, all right?”

ZOG-Neal always thought it sounded like the monster in a low-budget Japanese horror movie, sort of a poor man’s Godzilla, but actually it was an acronym for Zionist Occupation Government, the white supremacist name for the federal government in Washington, manipulated by the Jews for the suppression of the true chosen people.

“Now shake hands,” Hansen ordered.

Neal gave Cal an ironic smile and stuck his hand out like he was Mickey Rooney coming back to Boys’ Town. Cal took it, gave it a hard tug, and stared into Neal’s eyes with an unmistakable this-is-a-long-way-from-being-over look.

Hansen stepped back into the center of the group. He wore plain khakis with cuffed slacks and a black baseball hat. He had a webbed belt with a holstered. 45 Colt.

Neal had come to know the rest of the men during the past few weeks. There was Strekker, of course. Levine had pulled the file on him-sergeant in the army, ranger certified, dishonorable discharge for beating up a trainee. Served two years in the Washington State pen for knifing a man in a bar fight. Member of the Aryan Brotherhood in prison.

His cell mate had been Randy Carlisle. Rape. About five-six, black hair, mustache. A perpetual expression of feral cunning, the kind of twisted leer that your mother was talking about when she asked you if you wanted your face to freeze that way. A coyote to Cal’s wolf.

There was Dave Bekke, the chunky, bearded man Neal had met in his first encounter with Hansen back on the ridge. Part-time mine worker, part-time ranch hand, full-time loser. He had a fat wife he was scared of so rarely saw. He was a follower looking for something to follow, and he found it in the white supremacist movement. No prison but some jail time for DUI and petty theft.

Bill McCurdy was a cowboy first and a cretin second, but it was a close race. He was a runty, bowlegged little bastard with a giggle that could have made Gandhi slap him in the mouth. Neal had never seen him without his cowboy hat, which was a mercy, because the brown hair that hung below his ears hadn’t been washed since Jimmy Carter was popular. But the boy was transformed on a horse. On horseback he became a centaur, an idiot savant of the saddle.

Craig Vetter was something else again. A tree with clothes. Six-five with broad shoulders, sinewy legs, and muscles that wouldn’t quit. Short blond hair and blue eyes and a face as open as a Bible on Sunday. Guiltless, guileless, fearless. Didn’t drink, smoke, cuss, or chase women. There was a wife and five kids back in St. George, Utah, and Craig would still be with them if he didn’t feel duty bound to fight for God and the white race. He sent his pay home, though.

And then there was John Finley, tall, skinny, with sandy hair and shit for brains. Finley was a California surf boy who had his cocaine jones and his ass busted in the LA County jail. He’d found religion for comfort and the Aryan Brotherhood for protection and joined the True Christian Identity Church shortly after his release. Carter had shipped him out to Hansen’s ranch to keep his nose clean.

The Johnson brothers were bespectacled, benighted behemoths. Neal supposed they had first names other than Big and Little, but he never heard them. And Jory was Hitler’s poster boy.

There were a couple of others Neal didn’t have a line on yet, but they were pretty much the same type-men who saw an America that never existed slipping away from them, whose childhood horrors, or adult disappointments, or desperate need for pride had been transformed into a hatred for ethnic scapegoats.

Neal had all sorts of cheap psychoanalysis and snotty Freudian concepts to attach to his new playmates, but basically he thought they were scum. These were the men Bob Hansen had brought in to work his place, to turn a model ranch into a survivalist hovel.

Well, that’s his problem, Neal thought. I have my own. Come on, Bob, it’s dark enough. Let’s get going.

It was a night training exercise, because, as Bob Hansen had joked, “that’s when night fighters fight.”

“One technique you can use,” Hansen said, “is to leave out some fried chicken, and when the nigger smells it, he’ll smile. Don’t fire until you see the whites of his teeth.”

The small group gathered at the base of the spur chuckled. Neal joined in the laughter, but his stomach was fluttering.

Enough with the jokes, he thought. Let’s get on with it.

“Seriously,” Hansen continued, sounding like a fascist nightclub comic, “we’re very likely to do a lot of night fighting during the End Time. And even sooner, when we begin the shooting war against ZOG, which should be soon now, we’ll favor night attacks to make up for our lack of numbers. We must learn to be swift, silent, and lethal. So no firearms tonight, gentlemen. Just hand-to-hand combat.”

They broke up into two teams for a nocturnal, violent version of hide-and-seek. Neal hoped that his luck would hold out long enough to put him on the “hide” side, which would make what he had to do a whole lot easier.

The scenario was that a gang of marauding “mud people” were planning to attack the compound to get its food. The defenders would launch a surprise nighttime spoiling raid to scatter the marauders and track them down one by one.

Strekker said he would lead the defender’s team.

“I’ll be a nigger,” Neal volunteered.

“Figures,” Strekker commented.

“See you up there,” Neal said, pointing to the spur.

“Count on it,” Strekker answered.

You don’t know, Neal thought, just how much I’m counting on it, Cal.

Hansen made the rest of the assignments. Neal, Jory, Dave, and Craig made up the marauding band of blacks. Hansen, Strekker, Finley, Carlisle, and Big and Little Johnson were going to track them down and “kill” them.

“You have a ten-minute start,” Hansen said. “Make sure you spread out.”

You ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie, Neal thought as he took off at a dead run. I have to put as much space between me and everybody as I can in those ten minutes. Space equals time, and I’m going to need time.

He sprinted across the sagebrush toward the spur until he figured that no one could spot his silhouette. Then he turned right, running parallel to the base of the mountain. He trotted until he found a narrow ravine and dropped down into it. He hoped he had moved enough south to take him out of the main path of the exercise. He crawled out of his denim jacket and baggy canvas pants. Underneath he was wearing a black turtleneck and black jeans. He pulled a tin of black, water-based makeup out of his pocket and spread it over his face and hands. He put a black stocking over his face and then pulled a black watch cap over his head. He took two thin steel cables, each about two feet long, and tied them around his waist. Then he laid flat on the ground and waited.

He thought about chickening out, creeping back to his cabin and forgetting the whole thing. Then he thought about Anne Kelley and Cody and decided to go through with it.

He let a full ten minutes pass before he got up into a crouch and headed west toward the compound. He was hoping that no one would figure him to be this far south, and certainly not to be headed toward, instead of away from, his pursuers. He knew that Strekker was running like a greyhound toward the spur to find him and dispatch him in the most painful acceptable manner.

It took him twenty minutes to make it to the compound fence.

Graham, I wish you were here, he thought. I’m more than a little rusty and could use some coaching. Oh, well, it’s no different from breaking into a car lot or a warehouse. Except that if anyone’s home here, I’m likely to catch a bullet in the chest while I’m sprawled out on the fence.

He wrapped the denim jacket around his waist and tied up the sleeves at his waist. Then he jumped onto the fence, dug a toe into the space between the links, and began to haul himself up. He was sweating not so much from the exertion as from the thought that a searchlight might hit him at any moment, followed shortly by a large-caliber, high-velocity bullet.

He made it to the top of the fence and paused to catch his breath, get a good toehold, and think about the next step. Then he untied the jacket and laid it over the top of the two-strand barbed wire. He took one of the cables from around his waist and looped it underneath the bottom strand, pulled it tight, and tied it off on top. He did the same with the other cable on the other end of the jacket.

When the wire was pulled up tight under the jacket, he took another deep breath and swung his left foot over the top of the jacket, pivoted his hips, and planted the tip of his left foot into a space on the inside of the chain link fence. Then he lifted his right foot over, balanced himself with his hands on the jacket, and pulled himself over the top.

He paused for a second to listen. He didn’t hear any footsteps, or barking dogs, or the sound of a rifle bolt.

Holding himself to the fence with his left hand, he reached up, untied the cables, dropped them, pulled the jacket off, and let it fall to the ground. Then he lowered himself another couple of feet down the fence, listened again, pushed off with his hands, and dropped to the ground. He landed perfectly on the balls of his feet, then fell over backward and hit the ground with his butt.

Rusty, he thought. Definitely rusty. But not bad.

He was still congratulating himself when he heard a deep growl.

It was a Doberman, of course. It was advancing slowly in a low crouch, the hair on its spine standing up, its fangs bared, tiny speckles of spit dripping from its mouth.

Neal muttered, “You could have had the decency to growl while I was on the outside of the fence.”

But it wasn’t a guard dog, Neal realized-guard dogs are trained to bark. It was an attack dog, which was trained to… well, attack.

And this one had ambushed him.

The dog took another careful step forward. It was sizing him up and quickly arriving at the conclusion that this particular human wouldn’t be much of a problem. It showed even more fang and boosted the volume on the growl.

It would leap for his throat at any moment.

There’s only one thing to do, Neal thought.

Panic.

Turn and run for the fence and hope you can climb high enough before Hans here rips into your leg, pulls you backward off the fence, and tears your throat out of your neck.

Panic.

No, no, no, no, no. Think. Surely Graham must have covered this subject in one of his endless lectures. He had covered everything else. Barbed wire, alarm systems… dogs.

What you have to do, Neal, is pretty goddamn weird and presents an enormous initial risk… What you do is…

Neal reached down with a quivering hand and unzipped his fly. Then he assumed the classic men’s room position.

Talk about presenting an initial risk, he thought. As for the “enormous,” well…

The dog kept growling but stopped advancing.

Why is it, Neal asked himself, that when you absolutely have to piss… you can’t? Like when you’re taking a physical and the nurse hands you a jar, or when you’re standing exposed to a potentially homicidal canine…

Come on, come on, come on.

The dog got impatient and started to come forward. It was staring at Neal’s crotch.

Come on, come on, come on… ahhhh.

Neal zipped his fly.

The startled dog came out of his crouch. His nose started twitching madly. He bent his head down to get a closer sniff. Then he turned his back to Neal and lifted his leg.

Now you have established-what do you call it-a rapport with Spot. He understands that you understand doggy etiquette. Of course, if he is really well trained, he’s just going to piss on your puddle and then kill you anyway. Otherwise, try to show him that you consider yourself lower status than he is. With you, this is no problem…

Neal laid down on his back, making himself completely vulnerable to the dog’s attack. The Doberman came over, growled, sniffed Neal’s crotch and stomach, and then opened his jaws over Neal’s throat.

If you move during this pan, you’re a piece of meat…

He felt the dog’s fangs press gently onto his skin.

The dog growled again. Then he let go, straightened up, and wagged his tail.

Then lick his ear.

Lick his ear?

Lick his ear! That’s doggy talk for telling him that he’s the boss. Once he’s confident that you admit that, he probably won’t attack you.

Probably?

What, you want a sure thing? Go into insurance.

Shuffling on all fours to the dog, Neal slowly put his tongue to its ear, and made a great show of licking. If it can be said that a Doberman can smile, the dog positively beamed. It wagged its stub of a tail and invited Neal to have a look around the place.

Neal made directly for the largest building, the one that looked like a barracks. He trotted down the steps to the sunken entrance. The thick wooden door was unlocked.

Of course, thought Neal. They aren’t expecting anybody until the End Time, which is still a few years off.

He opened the door and stepped inside.

It was a white supremacist whacko’s dream. The main rectangle was split into three rooms, each of which could be sealed off by a thick metal door in case part of the bunker was overrun. The first section was the barracks. Bunk beds lined the walls between ground-level fire slits that had been dug at angles to ward off shell fragments.

Hoping to see the form of a sleeping child under the military blankets, Neal looked into each bunk. But Cody McCall wasn’t in bed.

He went into the next section, which looked like a planning room. A wooden table sat in the center. A U.S. Geological Survey topographical map of the area had been spread on the tabletop. There was a small chalkboard on an easel and about a dozen metal folding chairs in front of it. The walls were decorated with posters-a picture of bodies stacked up outside a crematorium, with the caption “A Good Start”; a religious poster of God talking to Jacob in heaven and pointing to America down below; a framed photograph of Adolph Hitler. A pine bookrack held a section of supremacist writings including some back issues of a newsletter called The White Beacon, by Reverend C. Wesley Carter.

Neal fought off the queasy feeling in his stomach and checked his watch. Had it only been half an hour? He figured he had another hour or so before the boys wound up the exercise in the hills and made it back. He checked the gun ports at each corner of the building. No Cody.

He went back outside. The Doberman had brought a stick to play with and Neal obediently threw it. He had to check each of the smaller, circular concrete bunkers. The first held a survivalist cache-stacks of canned food, bottled water, and fuel. The second one was an armory, surprisingly skimpy. There were a few civilian rifles and pistols, one M-16, and what looked like some Korean War vintage land mines. Neal ran to the last bunker.

It was a jail. Iron rings were bolted to the walls. Chains and shackles were run through the rings. Neal felt his skin tingle with revulsion. He could smell the fear in here. Traces of stale sweat clung in the closed air. Bloodstains marked the concrete floor. Something horrible had happened in this place.

Neal felt the chill of a pervasive evil and backed out the door.

That’s when he heard the dog barking joyfully. A greeting.

Because his master was home.

“You think it’s late for you?” Ed complained into the phone. “How do you think I feel?”

Ed drummed his fingers on the desk. He was hungry. He wanted a pastrami on rye with mustard and a beer-and not a lite beer, either, but a full, dark beer with some heft to it. And a bag of potato chips.

“So tell me,” Ed said, then listened while Carter told him what he needed.

“Reverend, we’re talking a tall order here,” Ed said when the man had finished. “I mean, you’re asking me to take a terrible risk. We’re talking big bucks.”

“How big?”

“Like you-pull-up-truckloads-of-money-and-I’ll-tell-you-when-to-stop big.”

The man bitched and moaned and Ed bitched and moaned back and they finally settled on a number.

“Do we have a deal?” Carter asked.

“We have a deal,” Ed answered.

Hell of a deal.

He hung up, lit a cigarette, and dialed another number.

Neal listened to the voices and the footsteps coming toward him. They were laughing, speculating as to how Neal had gotten lost, where he was, and how long he’d be wandering around the sagebrush before he got back.

The door opened and Cal Strekker came in, followed by Craig Vetter and Randy Carlisle. Neal could see that the two Hansens and Dave Bekke were right behind them.

When they were all inside, Neal threw the door open and lifted the pistol he’d taken from the armory.

Strekker started for him.

“Please keep coming, head of security,” Neal said as he pointed the gun at him.

Strekker froze.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” Vetter said.

“No kidding.”

“What are you doing, Neal?” Hansen asked.

It’s fourth and long, Neal thought. Nothing to do but throw deep.

“Well, Mr. Hansen,” Neal answered, “I’m just trying to show you what I can do… what kind of man I am. I’m the kind of man who can get into places, past twelve-foot fences, barbed wire, and attack dogs. I’m the kind of man who can penetrate security and take what I want-witness the gun in my hand. I’m the kind of man who wants to lay a hurting on ZOG. I want to fight for the white race, and I’m smart enough to figure out that you have more going on here than hide-and-go-seek games. I want to be a part of it. You were right the first time, Mr. Hansen, you can use a man like me.”

Neal flicked the clip from the pistol and tossed it to Hansen.

Cal Strekker sprang toward Neal. Hansen’s sharp voice brought him up short.

“Hold it, Cal.”

Hansen turned to Neal. “We call ourselves the Sons of Seth. The Reverend C. Wesley Carter himself gave us that name, so we wear it with great pride. And you’re right, Neal, we’re training to be the fighting arm of the True Christian Identity Church. We’re training to strike a blow against ZOG and to serve as a base of operations when the End Time comes.

“But you can’t just become a Son of Seth, Neal, just because you have some useful skills, and may I add, one hell of a nerve. You have to earn the name.”

Neal gave him his best flinty-eyed look. “Just give me a chance, sir.”

“I will, Neal,” Hansen said. “You can count on that. You’ll get your chance to show us what kind of a man you really are.”

I’m really a jerk, Bobby. Because Harley McCall isn’t in your damn compound and neither is Cody. I’ve wasted two months being stupid, stubborn, and selfish.

That’s the kind of man I really am.

“He’s cute,” Karen Hawley said to Peggy Mills, “but isn’t he supposed to be nuts or something?”

“No, he just needed some time alone.”

“Well, I guess he has it, living up there in that cabin. I don’t know if I’m up for another survivalist type, Peggy.”

“Just dance with him.”

“He hasn’t asked me.”

“True.”

Peggy Mills and Karen Hawley were having one of those ladies’ room conversations, if you could call the women’s lavatory at Phil and Margie’s Country Cabaret a ladies’ room. There was no pink wallpaper, plush banquettes, or mirrors framed in makeup lights. Instead there were two stalls divided by paneling, a sink with a rubber stopper on a broken chain, and a mirror that teamed up with a fluorescent light to tell some harsh truths about the cosmetic effects of long months and short paychecks.

Peggy and Karen were hip to hip, leaning in to share the single mirror as Peggy dusted her face with a little powder and Karen replaced some of the lipstick she had left on her beer glass. Lipstick was one of the few concessions Karen made to the magazine image of femininity, that and a little eyeliner on Saturday nights. She’d long ago taken an inventory of her physical features and found them quite acceptable on their own. She had thick black hair, cut just above the collar, and blue eyes as deep and sparkling as a lake on a brilliant winter day. She had a long face, a strong jaw, a sharp chin, and if some guys thought her nose was a little big, too bad. She had come to like it, even the little bump right there on the bridge. Her mouth was wide and her lips a little narrower than she’d ideally like, but her smile had been known to turn big lumberjacks into little boys, and if those little boys could turn back into men they’d find she was a great kisser.

She liked her body, too. She was tall-even taller now, in her cowboy boots-with long legs made taut and muscular by a lifetime spent hiking in these mountains. And if her hips were a little wider than you’d see on a Paris runway, she didn’t want to be seen on one anyway. Her jeans fit her real nice, thank you, and the white western shirt she was wearing had to stretch over breasts to tuck in over a tummy that owed her, dammit, for all the sit-ups. It was a good body, Karen thought. Good for backpacking, good for dancing, good for whatever the dancing led to, good for having babies. Except she hadn’t met a guy who wanted to settle in long enough to have a baby with her.

“I just don’t want to get involved with another ‘I have to be free like the wind, darling,’ ‘Love me, love my dog,’ guitar-strumming, moon-howling, living-in-his-car-and-my-kitchen cowboy mountain man who’s going to make me fall in love with him and then leave for California to ‘find himself,’” Karen said.

“You can screw him without falling in love with him.”

“He is cute.”

Peggy Mills took a brush to her hair. “He reads books,” she said.

Well, that is interesting, Karen thought. She had been teaching third grade in Austin for five years now and had heard more than one parent tell her that his son didn’t need to know how to read in order to rope a calf or dig gold. That was, of course, when she could even get a parent to come to one of the conferences. A lot of the parents were great, but there were also a lot she had never seen, not even once, not even for the Christmas pageant, when half of central Nevada came to town to see their kids dressed up as reindeer or the Virgin Mary or something. And while most of the kids in her school were happy, healthy, well-scrubbed kids, there were also a sad number who were dirty, malnourished, and just plain sad looking, and there were those kids who had bruises they didn’t get playing kickball at recess. And when one of her boys had shown up with actual burns on him, it was Karen Hawley who had driven up to their remote shack, woke his daddy up from his alcoholic stupor, stuck a shotgun into his crotch, and explained precisely what would happen if Junior didn’t stop “falling against the wood stove.” Word on The High Lonely was that you didn’t mess around with Karen or with anyone Karen put her arms around, and she definitely had her arms around the kids in that school.

“What kind of books?” Karen asked. “Remember Charlie? He read books. They were mostly about Swedish stewardesses.”

“Neal was working on his master’s degree in English.”

“Another hard-core unemployable.”

“You’re a hard woman, Hawley.”

“I’m a marshmallow.”

“Too true.”

“If he asks me, I’ll dance with him, okay?”

“You’re glued to that chair like you’re paying rent on it,” Steve Mills was saying to Neal Carey.

Neal was drinking beer straight out of the bottle, munching on peanuts, and feeling about as comfortable as a eunuch at an orgy.

Neal Carey had been in some bars in his life, early and often. He had been in Irish pubs in New York on Saturday nights when both the booze and the blood had flowed, when on- and off-duty cops laid their revolvers on the bar while they knocked back double shots, when the band had led the crowd in cheerful sing-alongs about martyred heroes and killing Englishmen. None of it had prepared him for Phil and Margie’s Country Cabaret.

First of all, there was the location. Austin, Nevada, could have been built by a Robert Altman set crew. Its broad main street was mostly mud, flanked by wide wooden sidewalks. Phil and Margie’s was a large, low, ramshackle building with a classic western facade, heavy screens over the small windows, and swinging doors, and if Gary Cooper had come through, Neal wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

They hadn’t arrived until after nine, and by that time the crowd had a good start on the drinking, smoking, and dancing, so the air in the place was a rich mixture of second-hand alcohol, smoke, and sweat with a heavy overlay of perfume, cologne, and failing deodorant. The delicate scent of grilled hamburgers and deep-fat french fries wafted from a grill in the back. The ceilings were low, the room was dark, and Neal knew that if any of his white-wine-sipping, vegetarian, rabidly antismoking Columbia friends could be condemned to a Saturday night in hell, this would be it.

The noise was literally earthshaking as about fifty pairs of cowboy boots, miner’s boots, and hiking boots pounded on the sagging floor to the beat of the Nevada two-step and the bar glasses rattled and the walls trembled. What conversation there was got shouted at full voice and close range and wasn’t really given to serious dialogue about deconstructionism in literary analysis or pithy interplay about what James Joyce may or may not have said to Ezra Pound.

They had elbowed their way to a table in the back, Steve exchanging back slaps and Peggy swapping hugs with just about every person in the place. Peggy insisted on making the first trip to the bar and returned with four beers and Karen Hawley.

Peggy made the introductions, Karen and Neal shook hands, she sat down in the chair next to him, smiled, and Neal found that he had a sudden fascination with the band.

Not that the band wasn’t fascinating. To Neal, country music had meant anything sung or strummed in New Jersey or Connecticut. So he wasn’t ready for New Red and the Mountain Men. New Red was the lead singer and rhythm guitar player. He was a young guy with sandy hair and a beard. He wore a Caterpillar gimme cap, plaid shirt, black logger pants, and tennis shoes. He had a face as friendly as an old pair of socks. The drummer was a woman with waist-length blond hair, a black cowboy hat, black western shirt with red roses on the chest, tight black jeans, and black cowboy boots. Neal sensed a sartorial theme and wasn’t surprised to find out from Steve that her name was Sharon Black, aka “Blackie.” She was a good drummer, anyway. The bass player was a big guy with curly brown hair falling to his shoulders and a bushy beard, bib overalls over a denim shirt, and cowboy boots he probably hadn’t seen for a while. The violinist (“That’s a fiddle player, Neal”) was a woman in her indistinct forties who looked like the kind who had about twenty cats at home and wind chimes. She wore a flower print blouse, painter’s pants, and sandals, and her hair was a wild quarrel between the colors gold and gray.

Whatever they looked like, they could play. Over the din of the pounding crowd Neal heard music as sharp and clear as the creek that rippled down by his cabin, each note distinct but blended into one stream. And just about as effortless. Neal watched the guitarists’ fingers sliding over the strings, pressing down strong and precise chords, or flying over the frets to pluck individual notes. He watched Blackie’s hands flash patterns with the sticks on the drumheads, her hips bobbing as she stepped on the bass pedal. He watched Cat Lady nestle the… fiddle… into her cheek as if it were a baby, but stroke the strings as fast and hard as if she were trying to start a fire. He watched it all the harder as he felt Peggy watching him and Karen trying not to.

He was doing all right until Steve, the dirty turncoat, stretched out his hand to his wife to fight their way out onto the dance floor.

Which is a lot worse than you leaving me in the back of a bouncing pickup with that calf, Neal thought.

Then he realized he hadn’t really talked with a woman for years, except for Peggy and Shelly Mills, which didn’t count.

“Where are you from?” Karen shouted.

Well, I’ve been living in a Buddhist monastery for the past three years, and on a Yorkshire moor the year before that… “New York,” he shouted back.

“City or state?”

“City!”

So far so good.

“Where are you from?” he asked, realizing that his voice sounded as high and narrow as one of Cat Lady’s strings. She thinks I’m an idiot.

“Here,” she said, “I’m from here.”

“Austin?” Great. Now she knows I’m an idiot.

“I think that’s where we are.”

Duhhh.

“What do you do for a living?”

I was sort of an unlicensed private investigator, a troubleshooter for a secret organization. But right now I think I’m unemployed.

“Nothing much lately. What do you do?”

“I’m a teacher.”

Oh?

That’s when the music stopped, the band took a break, and Peggy and Karen went off to the ladies’ room together, a ritual that is constant throughout the world.

“You’re glued to that chair like you’re paying rent on it,” Steve was saying.

“It’s a nice chair. I like it.”

“You’re scared shitless.”

Steve grinned at him. He almost looked like Joe Graham, who also had a habit of grinning at Neal when he was being nasty.

“Of what?” Neal asked.

Steve roared. Actually sat back in his chair and guffawed. “Of Karen! Nothing to be ashamed of-Karen has scared a lot of good men.”

“Good for Karen.”

“Ask her to dance, moron.”

“I can’t dance,” Neal said.

“War wound?”

“I don’t know how.”

“Nothing to it. You just get up and move,” said Steve.

“That’s what I don’t know how to do.”

“Get up, or move?”

“Both.”

Steve leaned over the table to give Neal one of those soulful cowboy looks. “It’s not like you’re Fred Astaire and she’s Ginger Rogers or anything. You’re not dancing for the artistry of the damn dance. You’re dancing to, you know… move around together. Get close.”

Yeah, right-get close. Getting close isn’t exactly my best thing, Steve. The last woman I got close to did a triple gainer off a big cliff.

Neal worked at finishing his beer. If he could do that fast enough, he’d have an excuse to escape to the bar to buy the next round.

“You ready for another one?” Neal asked as he got up.

“Coward.”

“Well, will you let a coward buy you a drink?”

“I’m not particular. You better hurry, though, I see the women coming back.”

Neal worked his way to the bar, got a pitcher of beer, and bumped right into Cal Strekker.

“Doing a little honky-tonkin’, New York?” Cal sneered.

“Leave your knife at home, Cal?”

“Nope.”

Great. “Where do you have it hidden?” Neal asked. “Up your ass?”

“In my boot.”

“Well, be careful dancing.”

“You want to dance with me, New York? Maybe finish what we started?”

“Gee, I’d love to, Cal, but my beer is getting warm.”

“You’re a chickenshit bastard.”

You’re half right, Cal. Okay, maybe all right.

“Jesus, Cal, I told you I’m busy tonight!” Neal shouted. “I’ll dance with you another time, all right?”

Cal turned a color that would have drawn a charge from a bull as a whole bunch of people turned around and looked. “I’ll be seeing you, New York,” he hissed.

“In your worst dreams, shithead.”

Neal set the pitcher on the table and sat down. Steve, Peggy, and Karen were staring at him.

“Cal Strekker giving you trouble?” Steve asked.

“How much trouble could he give?” Neal answered as he started to fill their empty glasses.

“A lot,” Peggy answered. “He did time in prison for killing a guy in a bar fight in Reno.”

It wasn’t Reno, Neal thought, it was Spokane. But the bottom line is the same.

“Newcomer trash,” Karen said. Then she quickly added, “No offense meant.”

“None taken,” Neal said. “I’m here for the long haul.”

Karen gave him a long look and said, “Then you’d better learn to dance.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him out of his chair just as the band struck up a snappy little number about eighteen wheels rolling down two-lane blacktops.

Karen held Neal by two outstretched hands and did a little hopping step that he did his best to imitate. He could feel his hands getting sweaty in her amazingly cool, soft palms, and he felt as awkward as he knew he looked. Especially in contrast to the beauteous Karen Hawley, with her long legs and wide mouth and big blue eyes.

“Relax!” she shouted to him. Her smile turned his knees to Jell-O, so it looked like he was more relaxed, anyway. He started to let go a little, actually moved his feet more than two inches at a time, and let her swing his arms around in time with Blackie’s drum strokes. He was doing all right when that treacherous cretin New Red switched to a slow song.

Neal and Karen looked at each other for an awkward moment. Jesus, Neal thought, I’m blushing.

He looked at her, laughed a little bit, shrugged, and held his arms out. Scary, tough Karen Hawley settled into his arms as soft and gentle as a cloud, and much, much warmer. She didn’t bother with any of that hand-held-out-like-a-guitar business, just put both hands on the small of his back, and settled her head into his shoulder. He laid his hands just under her shoulder blades, realized that his hands were quivering, then left them there anyway.

What is it, Neal thought, about the smell of a woman’s hair? How it spins around your brain, then rushes straight to your… no, don’t think about it… and the feel of her breasts just grazing your chest… or her thighs just brushing against yours… don’t think about any of that.

The whole thing was an erotic charge, and then she nestled right up against his erotic charge and tightened her hands on his back and let him see the corner of her mouth curl into a little smile and Neal thought he was going to die on the spot. Or get arrested for indecent exposure once the dance was over and they parted hips, even though he was completely dressed.

He looked over her shoulder and saw Steve and Peggy slow dancing, both of them grinning at him. Karen must have seen them too, because the edge of her lips against his neck widened into a chuckle.

“Peggy’s subtle,” she murmured.

“Like a sledgehammer,” Neal agreed.

“I don’t mind. Do you?”

“Yeah, I’m real pissed off.”

She pressed her hips forward a little. “I don’t think you are,” she said.

“Sorry about that.”

“No, no, no, no. And you do know how to dance.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Her head sank a little deeper into the crook of his neck, filling his nostrils and his brain with her scent. Something made him kiss her hair where it fell over her ear.

“Damn hair,” she whispered, “always in the way.”

He started to brush it off her ear, but she lifted her head to look at him and said, “Later.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I want you to do that later.”

She must have seen the doubt in his eyes, because she leaned forward and gave him a quick, soft kiss on the mouth, her tongue lashing between his lips before her head dropped back on his shoulder and her hips made the subtlest possible circle against his groin.

A big hand grabbed bis shoulder and spun him around. Suddenly Neal was looking up into the red, drunken face of one big, angry cowboy.

“What are you doing with my woman?” he yelled.

The dancers around them stopped dancing and backed away. The band kept playing, although they watched the developing altercation with great interest.

“Charlie, get out of here!” Karen yelled.

Neal felt the circle widen around them. Here we go, Neal thought, they’re giving us room for a fight. He saw Cal lean against the bar, smiling his feral smile at the thought of Neal getting pounded into hamburger by this animal. Except that under the red face, the drunkenness, and the fury, Charlie didn’t look like an animal. He looked like kind of a nice guy.

“Or is she your woman now?” the nice guy demanded.

“I think she’s probably her own woman,” Neal said, trying to keep his voice low and calm, because maybe if he kept it low enough, no one would hear it shaking. He saw Steve Mills work his way toward the front of the crowd and place himself between Cal Strekker and the impromptu boxing ring. The band had come to the end of the slow song and didn’t bother to start a new one. New Red was probably searching his memory for a country-western dirge.

“You want to take this outside, or settle it right here?” Charlie demanded.

“Uhh… what’s behind door number three?”

There was a titter of laughter from the crowd, but no one stepped forward to stop the upcoming fight.

I don’t believe this, Neal thought. Stuff like this just doesn’t happen. This is so goddamn stupid.

“I’m going to beat the shit out of you,” said Charlie.

Why does everybody want to beat the shit out of me tonight? “Too late,” Neal said. “You already scared the shit out of me.”

Another chuckle from the onlookers. Charlie wasn’t laughing, though, he just looked puzzled.

“Are you afraid to fight me?” he asked. It was the ultimate challenge.

“Of course I’m afraid to fight you. I’m a lousy fighter and fighting hurts, even when you win. I never fight unless I absolutely have to.”

“You’re chicken, yellowbelly!”

“You’re not really getting it, are you, Charlie? And by the way, that was a mixed metaphor.”

Neal felt that awful sensation of having every eye in the place on him, including Karen’s.

“Hold on a second, Charlie,” he said, giving him the time-out signal before turning back to Karen. “Do you want me to fight him? Something about your honor or my honor or something?”

“Of course not. Would you fight him just because I wanted you to?”

“Of course not. Do you want to just get out of here?”

Charlie put his hands up and started forward.

“Just a second, Charlie,” Neal said. “Can’t you see I’m having a conversation here? Jesus.”

Charlie stopped cold, his hands still up in the fighting position.

“Yes,” Karen said, “I would like to get out of here.”

“Let’s go,” Neal said, taking her arm. As they walked past Charlie, he said, “See? You lost.”

As they went through the swinging doors into the street, Neal could hear the roar of laughter from the bar and the music starting up again. Well, he thought, John Wayne might not have approved, but Cary Grant would have loved it.

Karen pushed him up against a pickup parked along the sidewalk.

“That,” she said, “was great.”

She grabbed his face with both her hands and kissed him long and hard.

“You’re not going back to that stupid cabin tonight,” she said.

“I’m not?”

“No, you’re not.”

“Tell me,” she said as she nestled in his arm under the sheets of her old iron frame bed, “if it isn’t too personal a question, how long has it been since you… uh…”

“Since I was with somebody?”

“Okay.”

“Almost four years.”

She thought about that for a couple of seconds.

“Well, that explains it,” she said, and then she started to laugh. She laughed until her body shook and he started laughing, and they laughed until she reached for him and observed, “Well, there are some good things about this four-year gap, too. Lucky me.”

So much for my monklike existence, Neal thought. Good riddance.

Joe Graham meandered out of his cheap room into downtown Hollywood, which looked like a lot of downtowns on a late Saturday night. The winners had already gone home, the losers sulked in anticipation of the dreaded “last call.” The cops pulled out of the doughnut shops to collect their quotas of Dill’s along the strips, the emergency room crews took a breather in the last quiet minutes before closing time brought the rush hour of stitches and cold compresses. On the sidewalks, the working girls circled like vultures, waiting to feed on the defeated men who were skulking away from the singles bars still single. In the back rooms of the biker clubs the boys made low-ball dope deals, while heavy metal teenagers in sleeveless T-shirts scuffled to pick up nickel bags of grass. In gravel parking lots old rivalries burst into new fights, and in the AA club the old-timers and the newcomers drank coffee, smoked cigarettes, and thanked their higher powers that for this twenty-four hours, anyway, they were out of it, out of the old cycle of fresh hopes and stale disappointments that was Saturday night in America.

Back on The High Lonely, Neal Carey slept in Karen Hawley’s warm arms and warm bed, while out on the sagebrush flats the coyotes sniffed, pawed, and whined in an excitement that turned into a howling frenzy.

Don Winslow

Way Down on the High Lonely