When the Women Come Out to Dance: Stories

I.

At Kim's funeral - people coming up to Ben with their solemn faces - he couldn't help thinking of what his granddad Carl had said to him fifteen years ago, that he hoped Ben would have better luck with women.

"We seem to have 'em around for a year or so," the old man said, "and they take off or die on us."

It was on Ben's mind today, along with a feeling of expectation he couldn't help. Here he was standing ten feet from the open casket, Kim in there with her blond hair sprayed for maybe the first time, her lips sealed, a girl he lived with and loved, and he was anxious to take off. Go home as a different person. Maybe look up a girl named Denise he used to know, if she was still around. Get away from the movie business for a while.

He could've taken 40, a clear shot across the entire Southwest from L.A. to Okmulgee, Oklahoma, fourteen hundred miles, but took 10 instead, drove four hundred miles out of his way to look in on the Professional Bull Riders Bud Light World Challenge in Austin. Getting away was the main thing; there was no hurry to get home.

He thought he might see some of his old buddies hanging around the chutes, not a one Ben's age still riding. Get up in your thirties and have any brains you were through with bulls. Ben entered the working end of the arena to the smell of livestock, got as far as the pens shaking hands and was taken up to the broadcast booth. An old guy he remembered as Owen still calling the rides.

Owen said, "Folks," taking the mike from its stand as he got up, "we have a surprise visitor showed up, former world champion bull rider Ben Webster, out of Okmulgee, Oklahoma." He said, "Ben, I liked to not recognize you without your hat on. Man, all that hair - you gone Hollywood on us or what?" Owen straight-faced, having fun with him.

Ben slipped his sunglasses off saying yeah, well, he'd been working out there the past ten years, getting by.

"Your name still comes up," Owen said. "I see a young rider shows some style, I wonder could he be another Ben Webster. I won't say you made it look easy, but you sure sat a bull, and didn't appear to get off till you felt like it. Listen, I want to hear what you been doing in Hollywood, but right now, folks, we got Stubby Dobbs, a hundred and thirty-five pounds of cowboy astride a two-thousand-pound Brahm a name of Nitro." Owen turned to the TV monitor. "You see Stubby wrapping his bull rope good and tight. Ben, you don't want your hand to slip out of there during a ride."

"You're gone if it does," Ben said.

He had taken Kim to a rodeo in Las Vegas, explained how you had to stay on the bull eight seconds holding on with one hand, and you can't touch the bull with your other hand, and she said, "Eight seconds, that's all? Hell." He told her she might last a second or two, being athletic. Kim said, "Bring it on," waving both hands toward her body, "I'll ride him." He'd miss the way things he said to her could become fighting words.

"All right," Owen was saying, "I believe Stubby's ready, tugging his hat down... And here we go, folks, Stubby Dobbs out of Polson, Montana, on Nitro. Ride him, Stubby."

Ben watched the butternut bull come humping out of the gate like he had a cow's butt under him, humping and bucking, wanting this boy off his back in a hurry, the bull throwing his hindquarters in the air now with a hard twist, Nitro humping and twisting in a circle, Stubby's free hand reaching out for balance, the bull humping and twisting his "caboose," Owen called it, right up to the buzzer and Stubby let go to be flung in the air, whipped from the bull to land hard in the arena dirt.

"Well, you can hear the crowd liked that ride," Owen said, "it was a good'n. But it looks like Stubby's favoring his shoulder."

Stubby holding one arm tight to his body and looking back as he scurried to safety, the rodeo clowns heading Nitro for the exit gate, Ben thinking: Don't look back. You're a bull rider, boy, get some strut in your gait. Check the rodeo bunnies in the first row and tip your hat.

"You can ride to the buzzer," Owen was telling the crowd, "and still get in trouble on your dis-mount. Ben, I imagine you had your share of injuries."

"The usual, separated shoulders, busted collarbone. That padded vest is good for sponsor decals but that's about all."

"You think riders'll ever have to wear helmets?"

Ben said, "Owen, the day they won't let you wear your cowboy hat, there won't be anybody riding bulls."

"I know what you mean," Owen said. "Well, I thought Stubby rode that train to score a good ninety points or better. How did you see he did, Ben?"

They were waiting for the number to show on the monitor.

"I think the judges'll give Stubby his ride," Ben said, "but won't think as much of that bull. He hasn't learned all the dirty tricks yet, kept humping in the same direction. I'd have to score it an eighty-five."

And there it was on the monitor, eighty-five, Owen saying, "Well, Ben Webster still knows his bulls." Owen was looking toward the stalls now, saying that while the next rider was getting ready they'd take a commercial break. Owen turned off his mike and said to Ben, "Come on sit down. I want to hear some of the movies you were in."

"I was in Dances with Wolves, my first picture."

"What were you in it? I don't recall seeing you."

"I was a Lakota Sioux. Got shot off my horse by a Yankee soldier. I was in Braveheart. Took an arrow in the chest and went off the horse's rump. Die Hard with a Vengeance I wrecked cars. I got shot in Air Force One, run through with a sword in The Mask of Zorro. I got stepped on in Godzilla, in a car. Let's see, I was in Independence Day..."

"Yeah...?"

"Last Action Hero, Rising Sun, Black Rain... Terminal Velocity. Others I can't think of offhand."

"I missed some of them," Owen said. "I was wondering, all those movies, you have a big part in any of 'em?"

"I'm a stuntman, Owen. They learn you rode bulls, you're hired."

A kid from Brazil named Adriano rode a couple of bulls that hated him and were mature and had all the moves - one of them called Dillinger, last year's bull of the year - and the kid hung on to take the $75,000 purse. Seventy-five grand for sitting on bulls for sixteen seconds.

Ben picked up three cases of Bud, a cold six-pack and a bag of ice for his cooler at the drive-thru Party Barn and aimed his black Mercedes SUV north toward Dallas, two hundred miles. He'd cross the Oklahoma line and head for McAlester, home of the state prison he used to visit with his granddad, Carl, and then on up to Okmulgee, the whole trip close to four-fifty - get home at three A.M. No, he'd better stop at a motel the other side of Dallas, take his time in the morning and get there about noon. Drive through town, see if it had changed any. The last time he was home, seven years ago, was for his granddad's funeral. Carl Webster, who'd raised him, dead at eighty.

Ben was thinking, sixteen into seventy-five thousand was around... forty-five hundred a second, about what you got for smashing up a car. He had earned $485,342 less expenses his last year of bull riding, way more than he ever made in a year doing stunt gags.

The six-pack was in the cooler behind his seat, a cold Bud wedged between his thighs, Ben following his high beams into the dark listening to country on the radio. The three cases of beer were in the far back with his stuff: travel bags full of clothes, coats on hangers, four pair of boots - two of them worn out but would break his heart to get rid of. He had boxes of photographs back there, movie videos, books...

One of the books, written before Ben was born, was a volume of Oklahoma history called Hell Raisin' Days that covered a period from the 1870s to the Second World War. Ben's grandfather and great-grandfather were both in the book. He had told Kim about them.

How Virgil Webster, his great-granddad, was born in Oklahoma when it was Indian Territory, his mother part Northern Cheyenne. Virgil was a marine on the battleship Maine when she blew up in Havana Harbor, February 15, 1898. He survived to fight in the Spanish-American War, was wounded, married a girl named Graciaplena in Cuba, and came home to buy a section of land that had pecan trees on it. Inside of twenty years Virgil had almost twelve hundred acres planted in pecans and another section used to graze cattle he bought, fed and sold. Finding oil under his land and leasing a piece of it to a drilling company made Virgil a pile of money and he built a big house on the property. He said they could pump all the oil they wanted, which they did, he'd still have his pe-cans.

Ben's granddad Carl, Virgil's only son, shot a cattle thief riding off with some of their stock when he was fifteen years old. Hit him with a Winchester at a good four hundred yards. He was christened Carlos Huntington Webster, named for his mother's dad in Cuba and a Colonel Robert Huntington, Virgil's commanding officer in the marines when they took Guantanamo, but came to use only part of the name.

Once Carlos joined the Marshals Service in 1927 everybody began calling him Carl; he was stubborn about answering to it but finally went along, seeing the name as short for Carlos. By the 1930s, he had become legendary as one of Oklahoma's most colorful lawmen. There were newspaper stories that described Carl Webster being on intimate terms with girlfriends of well-known desperadoes from Frank Miller to George "Machine Gun" Kelly.

Ben showed Kim photos of his mother and dad, Cheryl and Robert, taken in California sunshine, his dad in uniform, but said he had no memory of them. Robert, a career marine, was killed in Vietnam in '68 during Tet, when Ben was three years old. Cheryl gave him up to become a hippie, went to San Francisco and died there of drugs and alcohol. It was how Carl, sixty-two at the time and retired from the Marshals, came to raise him. Kim would ask about Cheryl, wanting to know how a mother could give up her little boy, but Ben didn't have the answer. He said Carl would tell him about his dad, how Robert was a tough kid, hardheaded and liked to fight, joined the marines on account of Virgil telling him stories when he was a kid, and was a DI at Pendleton before going to Vietnam.

"But he'd never say much about my mother other than she was sick all the time. I guess she took up serious drugs and that was that."

Actually, Ben said, Carl didn't talk much about any of the women in the family. "Not until I dropped out of Tulsa after a couple of years to get my rodeo ticket and we sat down with a fifth of Jim Beam."

He told Kim some of what he remembered of the conversation. Carl, close to eighty at the time, saying the men in the family never had much luck with women. Even Virgil, came back from Cuba and never saw his mother again. She'd gone off to live on the Northern Cheyenne reservation, out at Lame Deer, Montana. Carl said he came out of his own mother, Ben's great-grandma Grace, bless her heart, and she was already dying from birthing him.

Carl said that time, "Now your grandma Kitty - I can barely remember her face even though I'm still married to the woman. If she died I doubt she's in Heaven. Boy, Kitty was hot stuff, wore those real skimpy dresses. She'd read about me in the paper and pretend to shiver in a cute way.''

It sounded to Ben like Carl's idea was to take Kitty out of the honky-tonks and show her a happy home life. Only Kitty found herself living with a couple of guys who dipped Copenhagen, drank a lot, argued and took turns telling stories about fighting the dons in Cuba and chasing after outlaws in Oklahoma. "Kitty saw me as a geezer before my time," Carl said. "She had Robert, and took off and I never went looking for her."

This was the occasion Carl said to Ben, "I hope you have better luck with women. We seem to have 'em around for a year or so and they take off or die on us."

Kim said, "What's that supposed to mean, a curse?" She said, "Luck has nothing to do with it," starting to show some temper. "You know what your granddad's problem was? He saw himself as a ladies' man without knowing a goddamn thing about women. It was all guy stuff with Carl, and you ate it up. My Lord, raised by an old man with guns and livestock out in the middle of nowhere. Having a jarhead drill instructor for a dad wouldn't have helped either, even if you never met him. To tell you the truth," she said, "I'm surprised you're considerate and know how to please a woman."

They'd argue over dumb things like how to make chili and Kim would say, "I'm from where they invented it, for Christ sake, hon. We do certain things my way or I'm out of here. Like Kitty, or whatever her name was, your grandma."

This Kim Hunter, from Del Rio, Texas, down on the border, had come to Hollywood hoping to be a movie star and was told she'd have to change her name, as there already was a Kim Hunter. This Kim Hunter said, "Have the other one change hers," like she'd never seen her in Streetcar playing Marlon Brando's wife. She was a physical fitness nut and got into stunt work falling off horses, getting pushed out of moving cars, jumping off the Titanic, stepping in to get beat up in the same dress the star was wearing...

He said, "You think you'll ever leave me?"

She said, "I doubt it."

Their arguments played like scenes they could turn on and off. Their home in Studio City was aluminum siding with a flagstone patio, a lot of old shrubbery in the backyard and bats that would come in the house through the chimney.

Three weeks ago they'd spent Sunday on the beach at Point Dume, where Charlton Heston kisses the real Kim Hunter playing a monkey chick in Planet of the Apes, and she doesn't want to kiss him because being a human he's so ugly - right before he takes off and comes to the head of the Statue of Liberty sticking out of the sand.

"You'd never catch me playing an ape," Kim said.

That day they walked along the edge of the Pacific Ocean talking about getting married and spending the rest of their lives together.

"You sure you want to?"

Ben said, "Yeah, I'm sure."

"If we're gonna have any children - "

"I know, and I want kids. Really."

They had fallen in love falling off a ladder in a movie, five takes, and were still in love almost two years later. She was slim and liked to wear hiking boots with print dresses.

Crossing the rocks to the path up the cliff - that bed of volcanic rock at Point Dume - Kim twisted her ankle. They got home, she put ice on it and an Ace wrap and said she was fine. They had talked about going to a movie that night, Harry Potter or Ocean's Eleven. Kim said no problem, she was up for it, and said, "You promised to fix the chimney today."

Ben was in the kitchen adding mushrooms to the Paul Newman spaghetti sauce. He said, "In a minute."

She limped out saying she'd take care of it, not sounding mad or upset; it was just that impulsive way she had. He called to her to wait. "Can't you wait one minute?" No answer from outside. If she thought she could do it - she had done enough climbing and falling gags, she knew how. He thought of the day they fell off the ladder together five times in the LONG SHOT of the couple eloping... and now they were getting married. He told Kim and told himself he was all for it and believed he meant it.

She had dragged the ladder out of the garage, laid it against the chimney to climb up and replace the screen over the opening so the bats would quit flying in. She must've got right to the top... He heard her scream and found her at the foot of the ladder, on the flagstone.

For the next three days and nights he sat close to the hospital bed taking her hand, touching her face, asking her to please open her eyes. He prayed, having once been a Baptist, see if it would do any good, but she died as he watched her and had to be told by the nurse she was gone.

They let him sit there while he tried to place the blame somewhere, going through ifs.

If he had quit slicing the mushrooms right away.

If Kim wasn't so - the way she was.

If they hadn't gone to Point Dume she wouldn't have twisted her ankle. He was sure it was the ankle caused her to fall.

That evening at home he got out the Jim Beam and it reminded him of his granddad that last time they were together, Carl hoping Ben had better luck with women, having 'em around a year or so and "they take off or die on us."

He tried to find a way to blame Carl for telling him that, Ben now looking at four generations of bad luck with women. He was afraid it meant that if it wasn't Kim's time had come it would've been some other girl's.

The idea was in his head now, stuck there. He didn't see it as a curse; there was no such thing. Still, there it was and he had to ask himself, You think you can handle it?

They had talked about taking a trip one of these days to show each other where they came from, Kim saying, "A bull rider, I imagine you'll show me a stock tank on a feed lot, like you're proud of it."

Turning off the highway into Okmulgee he was thinking this could be his part of the tour, Kim sitting next to him in her denim jacket, Ben in a wool shirt hanging out of his Levi's. It was mid-November, the best time of the year to show off his land. They'd be harvesting the pecans and Lydell, his caretaker-foreman, would have a crew out shaking the trees and gathering up the nuts. First, though, a tour through town. And right away he was thinking of Denise again, Denise appearing in his mind ever since he left L.A.

Okmulgee, population: 13,022.

Show Kim some history, the Creek Nation Council House, and tell her about the "Trail of Tears" and how Cherokees and Chickasaws and Creeks were forced to move here from Eastern states. He'd be serious about it and she wouldn't say anything. He was surprised to see a brand-new jail next to the county courthouse.

Here was a chance to tell about Denise if he wanted to. Say to Kim, "See the courthouse? That whole top floor used to be the jail. I spent a night there when a girl named Denise got me in trouble." Kim would want to know about it. He'd tell how he and Denise went skinny-dipping late one night in the country club swimming pool and he got caught. Denise ran, leaving her clothes, but he wouldn't tell on her so they locked him up they said to teach him a lesson.

Kim would want to know more about Denise. He'd tell her that in high school - right up that street, see it? Okmulgee High, Home of the Bulldogs - she was known as Denise the piece.

But now he was thinking it wouldn't be fair to say that. It was the reputation Denise had, but you couldn't prove it by him. They had fooled around some but never gone all the way.

Okay, there was Boy Howdy, the variety store where he got his sweatsocks and T-shirts. Ralph's barbershop, he'd stop in once a month for his crewcut. Marino's Bar...

It was where he last saw Denise, home that time for Carl's funeral in '86. She was about to marry a country entertainer Ben had never heard of, Wayne Hostetter and the Wranglers, but kept touching him as they had a few beers and talked about things they did twenty years ago, like yesterday.

His close friend in school, Preston Raincrow, mentioned her only once, Preston on the tribal police now, a Muskogee Nation Lighthorseman. They had played basketball together and would write each other when they felt like it. Ben never asked about Denise, but Preston happened to say in a letter she had left Wayne, the country singer, and Ben would think of her - sometimes even while he was living with Kim - and wonder what she was doing. He didn't know why he kept thinking of her.

He drove past her parents' home on Seminole Avenue, but didn't stop. Denise's dad was a lawyer. He liked to bird-hunt and Carl used to take him out to their property on the Deep Fork River.

The Orpheum was showing Harry Potter and Monsters Inc. That Sunday they went to Point Dume they were going to see Ocean's Eleven after Kim talked him out of Harry Potter. And if she were sitting next to him right now... they might or might not see Harry Potter, Kim calling it another kid flick.

II.

Ben took 56 out of town, west, up and around Okmulgee Lake to the bottomland of the Deep Fork, the river that ran through his property to water the groves and keep out the pecan weevils. They still had to spray all summer for fungus and casebearer larva. You had to have the right kind of weather for pecans. Carl used to pray for a spring flood. It got too dry the trees'd start throwing off pecans before they were ready to harvest.

Lydell, his caretaker-foreman, had worked here all his life, first for Carl, and now looked after the property for Ben, who'd transfer money to the bank in Okmulgee and Lydell would draw from it with power of attorney to run the pecan business, pay taxes, hire the spraying done and the work crews, keep production records, make deals with brokers to sell the harvest to a sheller in Texas. Lydell, now in his seventies, would send handwritten reports to Ben. "That tornada come thru and took out 4000 trees. It don't look like we will make our nut this year." Was he being funny? It was hard to tell. If they sorted and bagged a thousand pounds an acre, they'd load eight to ten semis and make money. With last year's freeze they loaded three trucks. The tornado was the year before.

Now, if there hadn't been too much rain Lydell would have already mowed the orchards with a brush hog and raked up the sticks. Ben hoped to see a crew using the shaker today on the trees: mechanical arms gripping the trunk, giving each tree a good shake for half a minute or so, then bringing in the Nut Hustler to gather the pecans from the ground.

Ben turned onto the road that edged along his property and pretty soon there they were off to the left: fifty- and sixty-foot trees on the average looking bare this time of year, a tangle of limbs reaching up to stand dark against the sky, some of the trees growing here seventy years or more.

But no crews in there working, none he could see, only a park of black trees, spiderwebs of limbs and branches, clusters of pecans, untouched. Either the crew started on the other side of the river... Wait a minute. Ben raised his foot from the gas pedal to let the SUV coast and slow down. He saw shapes, movement, deep in the trees.

Cattle. A dozen or so cross-Brahmas grazing on papershell pecans.

But there were no cows on the property. Not a one since Carl died.

His great-granddad's original house stood on this road, where Virgil lived till he made his oil money and built a new one in the 1920s, a big California bungalow that was back in the property, the house where Lydell was now living.

Except Lydell was sitting on the porch of the original house, now weathered gray, its porch roof sagging to one side.

Ben turned in past a sign that said NO TRESPASSING, one he'd never seen before, and stopped in the yard next to Lydell's pickup, Lydell watching him, the old man's expression taking time to change and now he seemed to be smiling as Ben approached.

"Well, Carl, I'll be God damn. When'd you get in?"

Ben stepped up on the porch.

"Tell me you're being funny."

The old man looked puzzled now. How long had it been since they'd spoken on the phone? Jesus, last Christmas, almost a year. "Lydell, how come you're not up at the other house?"

"What for? This is where I live."

"You used to," Ben said. "Carl died, I said go on live in the new house." The new house as old as some of the oldest pecan trees. Lydell looked puzzled again. Ben said, "Lydell, I'm Ben." And saw the old man's face begin to change again, light coming into his eyes, and Ben heard himself say oh shit.

"Yeah, hell, you're Ben. But you sure look like your daddy."

Ben let that one go. "How're you feeling?"

"Well... I don't know. I seen the doctor. He said I'm as good as can be expected."

"Why'd you go see him?"

"I get dizzy at times and have to sit down. I think from the chemicals, that spraying every year as long as I can remember. I know a boy that did the spraying had to have all his blood drained out and new blood pumped in and he was fine. Went up to Tulsa to work as a gardener."

"But why're you living in this house again?"

"They's only one of me and they's three of them. Four when they have a woman there with 'em. They said they ought a have the house and wrote it into the deal, the lease."

"Lydell, these people leased my house?"

"They leased the property. I musta told you of it in my report. Carl, you can't hire the labor you used to. These fellas come along, offer to work shares on the pe-cans and their cattle both."

"Their cows are in the orchard."

"Again? Goddamn it, I keep telling 'em about that."

"And nobody's working." Ben stepped off the porch to the ruts in the drive to look toward a closed-up barn, a shaker power - hooked to a tractor with a covered cab and a Nut Hustler sitting outside in the weeds and brush. The house where Lydell should be living was a quarter of a mile up this farm road that cut through a grove of pecan trees, the house not in sight from here.

"Lydell, they haven't touched the equipment."

"I'll get on 'em, Carl, don't worry. The one they call Brother? He'll go into town and bring me back my supper if I ask him nice. Get it from the Sirloin Stockade or a TV dinner from Git 'n' Go."

"Lydell, they walk up and say they want to lease the place?"

"Their name's Grooms. A daddy name of Avery and the two boys. Hazen about your age and the younger one they call Brother. Carl, it's so God damn hard to get labor - Hazen says they'll work the pe-cans, I won't have to lift a hand."

"And they stick you in this shack."

"Hell, it was my home for years and years."

"How'd they come to pick this place?"

"We's related, what they tell me, on my mama's side. They stop by and we's talking, I believe they come from Texarkana."

"Lydell, you have a copy of the lease?"

The old man touched his shirt pocket. "Yeah, it's somewheres. I have to remember now where I put it."

"How long they been here?"

"They come by the first time," Lydell said, "I believe was toward the end of spring, with a real estate woman. Then they come back again and moved in."

"They've been here most of the year," Ben said, "and you never told me?"

"I thought I did, Carl."

Ben drove toward the house, a quarter mile up the farm road, creeping the SUV through the orchard to look at the trees. None of the grounds had been brush-hogged. He angled off the road to get closer to the trees. None had been picked, some with fungus growing on the limbs.

Now the house was straight ahead past cleared land: the house, the structure back of it where pecans were sorted and bagged, an old red barn, a tractor with a rake attached standing outside. The road continued on to a gate that closed off pasture, where a few cows that weren't supposed to be here were grazing. A pickup truck and a Cadillac with a good ten years on it stood at the side of the house, stucco with green trim that needed paint.

Carl had called it a California bungalow design, the kind that didn't look too big till you got up close: the porch in shade, sun shining on bare windows coming out of the steep pitch of the roof. Ben stopped behind the Cadillac and pressed down on the horn to give it a blast. He waited.

Now the screen door swung open and a man in his sixties wearing new bib overalls came out on the porch, his dark hair slicked back, a bottle of beer in his hand. Ben was out of the SUV now walking toward the house. The screen swung open again and a forty-year-old version of the first one appeared. Ben took this one to be Hazen, with the same slicked-back dark hair as his dad but more of it. He wore a striped shirt hanging open with his jeans and what looked like lizard boots. Ben thought Avery, the dad, could stand in for Harry Dean Stanton, looking enough like him to be his twin. Hazen looked like half the stuntmen working today, the kind Kim referred to as rough-trade good-looking, blue-collar guys with an easy slouch to their pose. Trees going to hell and they sat in the house drinking beer.

Ben came to the porch steps and looked up at these Grooms from Arkansas. He said, "I like to know what you're doing in my house."

The one, Hazen, raised his eyebrows saying, "Well, you must be the movie star," sounding glad to see Ben, till he said, "Come to check on us, huh?"

"I'm here to kick you out. This is my home."

Avery said, " 'Fore you start eating anybody's ass out, I'll show you the paper says this property's ourn for two years, stamped and signed by a noterary in the real estate business. You go on get outta here."

Ben said, "You took advantage of an old man didn't know what he was doing." And looked at Hazen. "You tell him you're gonna work shares, only I don't see nothing a-tall getting done. You got cows grazing on pecans falling off trees haven't even been sprayed.''

"I changed my mind about growing pe-cans," Avery said.

"Gonna test for oil instead. They was some pretty fair wells here at one time and they's always some left."

"The wells were plugged," Ben said. "Cement poured down 'em."

"They's still oil. You heard of stripper wells?"

Ben said, "Look," keeping his tone flat, and it was hard, "even if there's oil, and even if your lease stood up in court, you'd only have surface rights. Mineral rights are something else."

"You mean to tell me," Avery said, "we hit a gusher you don't want to go shares on it? Boy, you're ignorant you think you can make more growing pe-cans. You know what oil's selling for these days?"

No, and he didn't imagine they did either. It wasn't about oil. They were having fun with him, but in a serious way, see where it would lead.

Ben said, "You people are the Grooms, come here from Arkansas?"

Avery, looking past Ben, said, "That's right, and so's this one coming," sounding happy to see whoever it was.

Ben half turned. A pickup came across the open ground to pull up behind his SUV, the driver in a cowboy hat looking this way, then inched up to get his front bumper within a foot of the SUV's rear end. This would have to be the one called Brother, walking toward them now. He had size but looked slow, about twenty-five, a big kid in a cowboy hat and curltoed boots. The belt cinched around his jeans bore a rodeo winner's buckle, one he must've bought if he didn't steal it. Looking at Ben he said, "Who's this?"

"The movie star," Hazen said.

"No shit."

"You tell by his shades," Hazen said, "and his beauty parlor hair."

"What's he play in movies," Brother said, "queers?"

"Ask him," Hazen said.

Now their big boy was here they were getting to it. Ben told himself to walk away, and said to Avery, "Why don't we have this heard in court?" But couldn't leave it at that. He said to Brother, "You take a swing at me I'll put you on the ground, hard."

Brother stared and Avery said, "Now you got my boy looking sideways at you, like he might want to give you an asswhuppin'."

Ben walked toward Brother saying, "I'm tired, been driving all day. Why don't you whip my ass tomorrow?" Put his hand on Brother's shoulder as he passed and kept walking to the SUV. Ben got in and laid his arm on the windowsill. He said to Brother, "You want to back your truck up a few feet?"

Brother folded his arms and gave Ben a stare that worked pretty well under the hat brim pointing this way. Brother said, "You can't get out, then you have to stay, huh? Get you ass-whuppin' right now."

Ben turned the key, went ahead a foot or so, revved, said fuck it, and slammed his rear end into the pickup, went ahead, reversed and revved and hit the truck again. Ben slipped out of the space, put the gas pedal on the floor and went into a power slide to head for the road through the trees. He looked back to see Brother going to his truck.

Coming up on the old house Ben stopped at the side of Lydell's porch, the old man still sitting there.

"Lydell, don't you have a daughter lives in Chouteau?"

He said, "Lemme think, I believe Isabel's the one there."

"Go stay with her a while."

Ben turned onto the country road and held his speed at thirty miles an hour with an eye on the rearview mirror. In less than half a minute he saw Brother's truck coming up on him fast, closing in at sixty or better. Ben waited till the truck's hood and windshield filled his rearview, saw the cowboy hat, Brother by himself in there, the big boy wanting to handle this deal on his own. Ben mashed the gas pedal and watched the truck lose ground like it was being sucked away from him. He shot past the road to town doing ninety and held it there, horses in a field raising their heads at the tail of dust rising, the truck behind him hidden as Ben got ready to bring the game to Brother, see if he was any good. Approaching the next intersection he watched the speedometer ease down to forty-five, came to the crossroads and punched his left boot down on the parking brake - tires screaming as the rear wheels locked - cranked the steering wheel a quarter turn, released the brake and let his rear end swing around in a tight one-eighty to head back toward Brother. The fat kid would see from under his cowboy hat a black shape coming dead at him out of the dust and realize, the distance between them closing at top speed, he had seconds to decide how much nerve he had.

Not enough. Brother bailed, swerved off the road to his right, and Ben watched the truck in his mirror dive into the ditch and wedge itself against the bank. Ben stopped and backed up all the way to the truck. Brother, his hat gone, blood coming down his face, turned and looked this way at Ben watching him. Ben shook his head at the dumb kid, put the SUV in gear and headed back to his property.

Avery was still on the porch, sitting in a squeaky wicker chair with green cushions, waiting for Brother to come back with his story, Avery expecting it to be a good one. Hazen was in the house. Avery raised his voice to say, "I told Brother bring him on back here. I was thinking, put that pe-can shaker on him, get his nuts to fall."

Hazen came out to the porch pushing the screen ahead of him.

"I said to Brother, bring him on back, we'll put the pe-can shaker on him."

"I heard you. Where's the number for the real estate office at?"

"By the phone in the kitchen, last I seen of it. You know Brother'll likely have to chase that Mercedes all the way to town to catch it."

Hazen said, "She's pretty, huh? Once we tend to the movie star I might keep her."

"Suppose to be in pitchers - I never heard of him."

"Me neither, but it's what they say."

Both of them heard the car coming and looked out at the yard. Avery said, "Don't tell me," seeing it was the black Mercedes back again but no sign of Brother. Now it circled, bringing the driver's side close to the porch steps. The smokeglass window lowered and there was Ben Webster looking up at them.

He said, "You all want to settle out of court it's fine with me. My offer, you have till noon the day after tomorrow to get out of my house and off my property. You don't, I'll be back here to run you off."

The smoke window started to go up and Avery said, "Hold it there. Where's Brother at?"

"He needs to get winched out of a ditch," Ben said, "and some Band-Aids."

Avery watched the window slide up all the way and the sporty black SUV circle out of the yard and into the trees, gone. It got Avery frowning, saying to Hazen, "The hell's he talkin about, Brother's in a ditch?"

"Like he put him there," Hazen said.

"Brother was chasing him."

"Brother ain't the issue," Hazen said. "You heard him, he's gonna raise the law on us we don't leave, have troopers out here looking around. You want to stay or not?"

"We ain't gonna move nothing in no two days. Course I want to stay."

"All right, then what do you want done with the movie star?"

"What do you think? Take him off somewheres and shoot him. Hell, Brother'd kill you to do it. Yeah, jes take him off somewheres."

"I saw it coming," Hazen said, "but wanted to make sure." He went inside, walked through the musty smell of the living room to the kitchen, picked up the business card from the counter and dialed the number on it.

Within moments a voice came on saying, "OK Realty, this is Denise. How may I help you?"

Hazen said, "You know who this is?"

There was a pause before she said, "I have a pretty good idea."

Hazen said, "Guess who jes come by here?"

Ben coasted toward Brother standing at the side of the road by his truck and stopped close to him.

"Man, you're a mess."

Bloody from his face to his T-shirt. Brother said, "I busted my goddamn nose," and touched it, barely.

"I see that. Listen, I told your daddy. He ought to be along pretty soon." Ben raised the window, nothing more to say, and continued on toward town.

Doing the one-eighty brought him to life again and got him thinking of Carl, what Carl would say to him: "There you go, you don't take abuse from those people. You can tell looking at 'em they're dirty. What you said's fine. Get off my property or I'll fuckin run you off."

They looked serious enough to come after him, and he couldn't help thinking this situation could be in a movie. The only thing different, he'd be the good guy for a change. And it was real life.

III.

Preston Raincrow could trace his people back more than a hundred and sixty years: some of them from a Cherokee clan, the Keetoowah, and some from slaves owned by the Creeks, black slaves brought all the way here from Georgia or Alabama during the Trail of Tears. His great-grandma, Narcissa Raincrow, lost a child when she was sixteen - not having any business being with child - and Virgil Webster hired her as a wet nurse when Graciaplena died giving birth to Carl. Narcissa stayed on as Virgil's housekeeper, "becoming as close as a man and woman can be," Preston would say, "till she died a few years ahead of old Mr. Webster."

Preston and Ben played basketball three years for the Bulldogs, Ben looping the ball toward the basket, Preston finally growing tall enough to go up for the ball and stuff it. After high school Preston went to work for Ben's granddad Carl in the orchards and rode bulls every year in the Okmulgee Invitational, the all-black rodeo they held out at the Creek Nation arena, fourteen thousand in prize money. Ben told him he was too lanky for bulls and Preston switched to saddle broncs. It was fun, but didn't offer a living. After a few years he gave up working for Carl and joined the tribal police, became a Muskogee Nation Lighthorseman and drove around in a white Taurus with a gold star on the door.

Ben called the Lighthorseman headquarters from the motel and was told Preston was no longer with them, now working for Russell Exterminating, killing bugs. Ben said, "You're kidding - Preston?" but didn't get a reason or any more information. He called the exterminators to learn Preston was out on his route. Ben left his name and the Shawnee Inn phone number.

Five-thirty, Preston Raincrow hadn't called. Ben was about to try him at home, say hi to Ophelia and find out where he might be. That was when Preston knocked on the door and came in the room in his dark-green exterminator uniform.

The first word he said was "Tenkiller. Man, it does me good to see you," and wrapped his long arms around Ben.

"How'd you find that out?"

"What, calling yourself Tenkiller?" Now he stepped back to look Ben over. "I'd catch a glimpse of you in a movie falling off something, or getting beat up by the good guy, but I wouldn't see your name there at the end? I don't know why I never wrote and asked. So one time I kept stopping the tape to look good. I see 'Ben Tenkiller' there with the stuntmen and I know it's you."

"I used it," Ben said, "to get the job on Dances with Wolves, told 'em I was Indian. But then once I was known in the business as Tenkiller I was stuck with it."

"You name yourself after the lake?"

"After the Cherokee with ten notches on his bow the lake was named after. What're you doing killing bugs?"

"You mean 'stead of arresting drunk Indians? I stopped a white guy come driving away from the Elks, weaving all over the road, and I stood at attention while I caught hell for it. What Caucasians do is not the business of a Lighthorseman. The guy even sideswiped a car, said somebody cut him off, two A.M., not a soul on the street. I said fuck it. I said what am I doing working for the law? My great-grandma Narcissa? Her daddy, Johnson Raincrow, was bad as they come and got shot for it in the olden days. Shot while he's sleeping outside on the ground, the only way to take him."

"You gonna turn outlaw?"

"I was thinking you could get me work in the movies.

Sonny Samson from here made it big. One Flew over the Cuckoo's? The man didn't even talk and was one of the stars."

"You want a beer?"

"I don't need any for a change, but yeah, gimme a cold one." Preston looked around the room of dark wood, the king-size bed, walked over to the balcony and looked out from the second floor. "Man, you could almost dive from here in the swimming pool. But don't try it, you hit your head on the concrete. It's too cold anyway, do any swimming."

Ben got a couple of Buds from the cooler asking Preston how his family was doing. Preston said Ophelia took the kids to her mama's when he quit the cops and stayed drunk for a while. He said, "It ain't hard to act stupid if you put your mind to it. But two weeks of missing them was all I could take." He asked how Ben was doing and Ben told how Kim was killed, falling off a ladder while he's slicing mushrooms, and Preston said, "Did it turn you stupid, get you thinking you're to blame?" Ben said he was handling it. He didn't mention the feeling of expectation, ready for something new in his life. Or ask about Denise, if Preston had seen her lately.

He told about going out to the house and finding these people living there, the Grooms, Avery, Hazen and Brother, and what they'd pulled on Lydell, getting him to lease the property.

"Bring Lydell to court with you," Preston said. "The judge'll let you tear the lease up."

They were seated at the table now, drinking their beer and smoking cigarettes. "They're bad guys," Ben said, "but I can't figure out what they're up to."

"What made you suspect it, big ugly prison tats on their arms?"

"They're not working the place," Ben said. "Letting it go to hell. The barns are closed up, the equipment's all outside in the weather. They got cows in there eating the papershells off the ground."

"That's only criminal in the eyes of a pecan grower," Preston said. "What else you see?"

"Nothing."

"What you suppose are in the barns all closed up?"

Ben said, "If I could get deputies to go out there to take a look -"

Preston was shaking his head. "They have to know what they're looking for."

"But they could go out with subpoenas, couldn't they? Get these guys to appear in court?"

"Once you file a complaint."

"But when's the court date, next year? I want 'em out of there now, so I can still hire the pecans picked. I gave 'em till noon the day after tomorrow."

Preston, starting to grin, said, "Or what?"

"I'd run 'em off."

"You told 'em that, uh? Man, you sound like old Carl. That's what he'd do. Come back from Hollywood and find squatters on his land? He'd go out there with a shotgun and run 'em."

"If he didn't shoot 'em," Ben said.

Preston got up from the table and went to the phone on the desk. "Avery Grooms and Hazen. What's Brother's name?"

"Haven't any idea. But that notebook right there has his license number in it."

Preston dialed, waited a moment and said, "Eddie? Guess who I'm sitting here with having a beer. Our old point guard, man, Ben Webster." He nodded, quiet for a few moments, and said, "I'll tell him that. Listen, what I need, somebody to run two guys name of Grooms, Avery and Hazen, on NCIC." He opened the notebook. "And a license number I'll give you, from Arkansas." Preston spelled the names, gave the number, spoke and listened for a while and said, "Yeah, if you can do it now, I'll buy you three beers." He said to Ben, "Remember Eddie Chocote, the only freshman made the team our last year? That was Eddie."

Ben said, "Went on to play for Tulsa."

"That's right, and he said you were the quickest guard he ever went down the floor with, and that's counting college ball. But you rather ride bulls."

"It paid," Ben said, "else I'd have to've sold the farm."

"Why keep it? Other than you grew up there."

Ben said, "I have to think about it."

Eddie Chocote came on again and Preston talked to him for a few minutes taking notes, then came over to sit at the table saying, "Hazen have dog bite scars on his left arm?"

"He didn't show me any."

Preston looked at his sheet of notes.

"Hazen Richard Grooms, May 12th, 1967. Served a hundred and thirty-two months in the Cummins Unit over there, Arkansas Department of Corrections. You want to guess what for?"

"Tell me."

"Theft of property and aggravated robbery. Hazen hijacked a highway hauler and they caught him with the tractor. That was, let's see, twelve years ago."

"What about the old man?"

"Avery Louis Grooms, wears dentures, has 'Lucky Dog' tattooed on his left arm. D.O.B. August 5th, 1940. He went down for theft by receiving and was given ninety months in their North Central Unit, the same time Hazen was in Cummins. There's a detainer on him for parole violation. All you do is tell the sheriff and Avery's gone."

Ben said, "I don't know if that would settle it."

"Maybe not," Preston said, "but it would spray their hive, get 'em active." He looked at his notes again. "Next piece of business, the Ford pickup's registered to Jarrett Lloyd Grooms, so Eddie ran him on the crime computer. Date of birth April 10th, 1975. He's six-four and weighs two-forty. 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 those barns closed tight and locked."

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

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

Ben said, "Or mad cow."

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

"You think they'll believe you?"

"I wear my exterminator uniform and bring Eddie Chocote along with his sidearm. Tell 'em this mad cow business could be a terrorist plot, like anthrax. Eddie's cool, he'll go along. We find stolen property, we tell the sheriff. We find a meth lab working - speed's big around here - we call the DEA.

They'll go out there with marshals. But if we don't get to peek in the barns..." Preston shrugged. "You ever in a movie 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 and got shot."

"You were good at dying."

"We played guns enough when we were kids. Get shot and go, 'Unhhh, I'm hit,' and fall in the river." Ben thought of what he'd say next, hesitated and then said it. "I almost got shot for real one time, taking a midnight dip in the country club pool."

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

"Denise Patterson," Ben said.

"That's right, she's Denise Allen now, married twice. The first time to some country singer came through with a show and Denise ran after him. The second time to a guy in Tulsa with oil money left over from the '80s. They got divorced and she come back home. Her folks moved to Hawai-ya and let 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 like any other ladies she works for."

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

"You keep any?"

"I never took the pictures. I was hardshell Baptist at that 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 called her Denise the piece. They said she'd let you screw her long as 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 to each other and she's always asking what you're doing."

"Denise?"

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

IV.

The way Denise met Hazen Grooms: one night in that dark, smoky bar at the Best Western, months ago, he asked her to have a drink with him. He was scruffy, but there was something about his pose she liked, his cool, sleepy eyes, and shrugged, why not, and said she'd have a Margarita. He told her he was a cattleman. Denise said, "You mean you shovel cow shit?" Hazen said he speculated on cattle, oil and land development - looking like he might have five bucks in his jeans. He asked her with his sleepy Jack Nicholson look, "What's a hot number like you doing in Okmulgee?" Denise kept a straight face and laid her OK Realty card on the bar. If this cowboy was into land development he could put up or shut up. Hazen said, "Hmmm," studying the card. He said he had run into a relative of his operated a pecan farm and was talking to him about working shares. He asked Denise if she could put together a lease agreement. When he told her it was 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 Ben Webster. Not every day, but a lot; in fact more than ever while she was married to those two jerks. She was sure this lease deal would put her in touch with him again. They'd talk about it on the phone and she'd say, "By the way, I'm coming out to the Coast soon." Ben could even come here to look over his tenants and she'd act grown-up for a change, try to be more subtle than she was dreaming up ways to seduce him. Like the 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 to him in a soft voice, "Ben, are you gay? It's okay if you are." It wasn't, but that's what she said. He looked surprised and told her no, of course not. She said, "Then why don't you want to 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 now that he lived in Hollywood and was in movies, an Indian, in Dances with Wolves, but which one? She caught glimpses of 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 to the house and she wasn't sure what to wear, if she should go smart or hot.

First Hazen calling with "Guess who just came by."

No, "Guess who jes come by here," and knew right away who he meant - without knowing why she knew it - and felt a twitch in her stomach, or even lower. Hazen said he was calling because now he wanted to buy the property and needed his offering drawn up before the movie star went back to Hollywood, California. He always called Ben the movie star, getting it from Lydell, who hadn't seen a movie since Gone with the Wind and assumed any picture Ben said he was in he must've been the star.

"Since you and him are old school buddies," Hazen said, "I bet 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 the down payment, sell his repainted Cadillac?

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

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

She had never allowed him in the house. Several times they had drinks and dinner together because she had nothing to do and was curious about him and would listen to Hazen tell how he'd once rustled cattle with a semi-trailer and had done some prison time in his wild youth, but never associated with the perverts or hogs inside and had kept himself clean, Hazen eating his dinner with his cowboy hat on. Hazen wanted her 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 ever told anybody she'd add, "You have to hear him say it."

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

She said, "Hazen, please don't," and thought of telling him 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 was talked into getting married, not giving myself time to realize 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. He grumbled something and withdrew it. So she didn't have to pull the SIG Sauer .380 she kept in her handbag and shove it under his nose.

It was time to dress for Ben.

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

Denise opened the door. Ben came in. They looked at each other, neither one saying a word. They went into each other's arms for a hug after all these years, kissing each other on the cheek, on the mouth, on the mouth hard, and ended up on the oriental that covered the living-room floor, scrambling to get enough of their clothes off, Ben's windbreaker, his boots - goddamn it, a pair of the newer ones, hard to pull off - his 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 at 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 he 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 and took them into the library where they used to kiss and fool 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 many guys I did it with? Two." She paused. "Actually three while we were in school and I'm Denise the piece? You must've wanted to."

"Sure I did."

She said, "I was absolutely insane over you," and stopped for a moment, looking at him next to her on the cracked 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 at 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 happened to her, and what he felt now about ever getting married or even serious with a woman, because they didn't have to be married to have something awful happen to whoever she might be. He wasn't convinced that it would, no, but here it was on his mind while Denise was telling him about the country artist, Wayne Hostetter and the Wranglers in their cowboy hats. "I called them Wayne and his Wanglers. He's the only guy I ever heard of puts lifts in his cowboy boots."

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

She said marrying Arthur Allen, an investment banker, the 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 the 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 you 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."

"Stay here and grow nuts? Grow, not go, but you can do both."

"I want to get the place in shape, hire a family to work it and take care of Lydell. I'm thinking of the Raincrows, make Preston the working partner. I thought of that driving over here."

There was a silence and Denise said, "I have a confession to make."

Ben had told her, while they put their clothes back on and went out to the kitchen, the situation with the Grooms.

Forty-eight hours to get out, and he didn't think they'd budge.

"I know those people," Denise said. "I wrote the lease."

"That's your confession? If you hadn't," Ben said, "I doubt we'd be sitting here. Look at it that way."

"But now Hazen says he wants to buy your place, and he's using me to get you two together. You know he's a criminal, or was?"

"I think still," Ben said, "the whole family. Preston looked them up."

"Hazen wants to kill you, doesn't he?" her voice quiet as she said it.

"Any one of them," Ben said. "And if they do and you know about it and can put them away for life..."

Ben watched her cross her legs as she thought about it and reach over to pick up her can of beer from the coffee table. Now she was looking at him again.

"I've been ready for Hazen since the first time I met him. He comes here with intentions of doing us harm I'll shoot him. My dad gave me a gun a long time ago, and I'm licensed to carry it. But you know what? You better move your car from the drive. Park it in town somewhere."

"It won't be here," Ben said. "I'm meeting Preston later on.

He's looking into the Grooms, see if he can find out, as he says, what kind of criminal enterprise they're in. I always like talking to Preston."

"So you can stay a while?"

"I'm not in any hurry."

"Tell me some Hollywood stuff."

"Jack Nicholson always carries an ashtray in his pocket."

"What about - like I heard some stars actually do it in their love scenes?"

"I wouldn't be surprised, but I've never been needed on that kind of set. What else you want to know?"

"Ben, have you really been thinking about me?"

V.

Preston Raincrow got home and threw a football around with his two boys, went in the house and kissed Ophelia and his little girl, smelled what was cooking and poured himself two ounces of Jim Beam. He sipped on the drink thinking of Avery Grooms and his two white trash boys, thinking if Avery was picked up on the detainer and held for Arkansas, it could cause his boys to act stupid and become nasty and they could be picked up, too. Preston had one more drink for the pleasure of it - he didn't need courage - and phoned the young sheriff of Okmulgee County, a reasonable-enough Caucasian boy Preston had played football with this time, and told about the detainer. "Avery Grooms, done most of ninety months, come out and must've blew his parole." He said, "You know the Webster place. That's where he's at." Preston suggested the young sheriff bring some backup along, the man had his two sons with him and they weren't likely to sit still, watch their old dad taken away cuffed. He listened and said, "Anytime. I'm always glad to help you out."

The Raincrows were finishing their supper when the phone rang. Preston listened to the young sheriff say it was on for tonight and he could come if he wanted. Preston sat at the table again and ate the rest of his rice pudding before calling Eddie Chocote.

Hazen put aside the early part of the evening to check motels, see where a Ben Webster was registered, came to the Shawnee Inn and the desk clerk said, "Yes sir, he sure is," but wouldn't give up the room number till Hazen flashed a federal badge and ID he'd bought in Biloxi, Mississippi, and used from time to time and was told, "Room two-twenty, overlooking the patio and the swimming pool." The clerk wanted to know if Mr. Webster was in some kind of trouble and was told, "He sure is, partner."

Hazen returned to his favorite bar, the dark, smoky one at the Best Western, and drank Margaritas while he thought about what to do with Denise. If she'd have come across once or twice he'd feel better about her. As cold sexu'lly as the woman was he believed he could set her afire and bring her to her... get her to come. Hazen thinking now that if Brother took care of the movie star that'd be out of the way and he'd have had nothing to do with it. He could stay around and take his time with the real estate lady. If it ever came to putting a pistol on her, like a last resort... Hell, he didn't even know where he'd aim.

His cell phone made its noise. It was Brother trying to keep his voice low. "They come and put handcuffs on Daddy, saying he's going back to Arkansas."

The Margaritas worked to Hazen's favor, allowing him to believe he was cool. He asked Brother, "You say anything stupid to 'em?"

"They want to know who I was, see my driver's license. Asked could they look around. Daddy told 'em they could go fuck theirselves."

Hazen said, "Shit." That kind of talk could bring 'em back with warrants. "They still there?"

"Yeah, they's still here. Jesus Christ, you coming?"

"A bunch of 'em?"

"Three Crown Vics, 'Sheriff' on the doors big. A Taurus with 'Muskogee Nation Lighthorseman' on it. They got their headlight beams on the house, lightnin' it up. The deputies are wearing vests and carrying shotguns, like they expect we's armed. Daddy's saying, 'I never detained nobody. The hell you talking about.' '

"Don't even know he's wanted. Been for five years."

"Hazen, you coming?"

"For what, kiss him goodbye?"

"They's putting him in the car, pushing his head inside. You don't get over here they gonna be gone."

Hazen said, "I got no business with those people. Soon as they leave, come on meet me here at the bar. I found out where Mr. Webster's staying."

It quieted Brother. He said, "Yeah?" interested.

"They come with warrants, we don't want to be anywhere near the place. But I don't want to leave till you take care of Mr. Webster."

"Why you saying me?"

"You're the one has the score to settle. Look at your goddamn nose. Do what Daddy said, shoot him in the head."

"What're you gonna do?"

"Don't fuck up and I won't have to do nothing."

Preston was with Eddie Chocote, the Lighthorseman, the last one out, trailing the taillights of the sheriff's cars but not all the way. Eddie killed his lights and turned from the farm road into the grove of pecan trees, creeping now in the dark, not too far... "Right here," Preston said. Next thing, turn the car around and watch for headlights: going out would be Brother, coming in, most likely Hazen. The plan: if Brother leaves, Eddie follows him to see where he goes. Preston would stay here and look in the barns. Maybe even the house.

Eddie said, "Looking for what?"

"I don't know - whatever I find."

Eddie said, "You have your sidearm?"

Preston, getting out of the car, said, "I don't need it. I gave it to Ben."

Driving back to the Shawnee Inn he didn't think of the Grooms once. It was all Denise, her scent on him, her asking, "Do you really think about me?" And telling her almost every day.

But not saying it was with a longing, or even understanding why her face kept showing up in his mind, until he saw her again. He was in love with her was the reason. Had always been in love with her except... Carl was the problem back then, Carl and Jesus, Carl getting him bummed about going to Hell, while Denise's idea was to "experience life" and she dared him to do things with her. Like buying weed in the black section of Okmulgee, Denise asking the young guys about their life and listening to stories about dope house busts and guys getting shot, Denise natural, standing there in her miniskirt, but not putting on any kind of airs, and they were nice to her. She talked him into leaving college to get his rodeo ticket, and by that time they weren't even seeing much of each other.

She had been way ahead of him back then and now he'd caught up. When they were still on the floor, settling in, and for a while they were quiet, he said to her, "Denise... 'You're the reason God made Oklahoma.' "

She looked at him and without changing her expression said, " 'There's a full moon over Tulsa, I hope it's shining on you.' "

Ben said, " 'In Cherokee County there's a blue norther passin through.' "

Denise said, "Boy, have I missed you."

"I'm surprised you know that one."

"Wayne covered it with some girl, but their cut didn't compare to David Frizzell and Shelly West."

"That song'd come on," Ben said, "and if I wasn't thinking of you already I would then."

In the library, on their second beer, she said, "Now that you're a grown man, how many girls have you slept with in your life?"

He began thinking about it, looking for faces.

She said, "You're counting?"

"You asked how many."

"I meant in round numbers."

"About ten."

"In over twenty years?"

"Wait. Fourteen."

"What'd you have, four at one time?"

"In one afternoon, at a whorehouse in San Francisco. With some rodeo buddies."

"I bet that was a party. Four times isn't bad."

"Average for a bull rider."

"How about some who weren't hookers?"

"Yeah, about ten. I spent time with a girl when I first went out to the Coast and... a couple years with a girl one other time."

"You were in love."

"To some extent. The one, we talked about getting married 'cause she wanted to have a child - even though in Hollywood you don't have to be married." He wasn't going to ask Denise how many men she'd slept with, but thought of something close to it and said, "You ever cheat on your husbands?"

She took her time, close to each other on the couch, and put her hand on his thigh. She said, "I gave you the wrong idea. Really, the only reason I asked - I've imagined rodeo bunnies and starlets coming at you in packs."

"Packs?"

"Droves. I thought you'd say, modestly, 'Oh, only a few hundred,' and it could be true. I didn't bring it up to compare notes with you. I was never Denise the piece and I don't sleep around. You want to know if I ever cheated on those two jerks? I did once. When I was married to Arthur, bored out of my mind."

"And a little horny."

"Probably. I could've had a shot at the club tennis pro, but I didn't."

"Who was the guy?"

"The UPS man. Arthur goes, 'You're doing what seems to me an inordinate amount of ordering from catalogues lately.' Swear to God. The UPS guy was funny and kinda cute, but it was recreational, no way it would come to anything." She shrugged and looked at her hand on his leg.

Ben said, "You think you'll marry again sometime?"

She looked up at him, her smart eyes holding his, looked away and nodded a couple of times like she was thinking about it and came back to him.

"Let's say I'm madly in love."

"Yeah...?"

"And he's the kind of guy isn't afraid to ride a two-thousand-pound pissed-off animal with horns."

Ben said, "I doubt he'd step up on one today."

Denise said, "It wouldn't matter." She said, "Ben, I'll marry you first thing in the morning if you'll spend the night."

And he said -

He turned off the interstate to pull up in front of the Shawnee Inn.

He didn't know what to say and she told him not to say anything if he didn't want to. She said, "I'm not putting you on the spot, I'm telling you how I feel."

That was when he said, "But it's like we just met," and she started shaking her head, smiling at him.

Ben went up the stairway and along the hall toward his room. He saw the guy at the end of the hall by the Coke machine, a big guy looking this way, about to put money in the machine, but now was coming toward Ben in a hurry - Brother in his cowboy hat - running, pulling a gun, a revolver, from under his jacket. Ben got to 220, shoved the card in the lock slot and a goddamn red light came on, shoved the card in again and now the green light showed and the door opened as Brother reached him. All Ben had time to do was step and jab a left hand hard into the nose with adhesive tape on it, stopping Brother long enough for Ben to get in the room and this time hit Brother in the face with the door as he tried to swing it closed and heard Brother yell out as he stumbled back, Ben already crossing to the balcony, sliding open the glass and now was looking down at the pool about twenty feet from the building, no lights showing, Ben not knowing how deep the water was. He heard the door to the hall bang open and pressed himself against the stonework framing the balcony, felt handholds between the stones, and hoisted himself to the tarred gravel roof, rolling onto it as Brother reached the balcony.

Ben looked around. There was no door to a stairs going down, only metal shapes housing the air-conditioning, no place to hide. He could stay up here if Brother was afraid to climb the stonework. But if Hazen was around - he couldn't be too far.

Ben got down flat on the roof, put his eyes over the edge and there was Brother with his gun raised, pointing straight up at Ben and firing in the night as Ben rolled away from the edge and crawled back a few yards before getting to his feet. He'd have to run and dive for the pool - the way he dove off the roof of a motel when they were filming at Angola, the Louisiana State Prison, did it on a bet and caught hell from the stunt coordinator. "You want to lose your SAG card, asshole?" Hell no, it was worth $636 a day whether he worked a stunt or not. He remembered now the trouble he had at Denise's trying to get his new boots off in a hurry. He'd have to leave them on - goddamn cowboy boots when he ought to be wearing high-top sneakers.

Brother surprised him.

Ben started for the edge - four strides and dive out as far as he could - and Brother's cowboy hat and shoulders appeared above the roof edge, arms clinging tight to the tarred gravel, Brother trying to raise the gun and hold on at the same time. The gun fired in the moment Ben reached Brother to kick him in the face: Brother going back, falling, Ben pressing to keep his balance and then lunging out at the dark, Brother missing the balcony but not the concrete floor of the patio, as Ben landed flat in the water in his wool shirt and his windbreaker and began swimming to the side of the pool, till he found out he could walk.

Denise opened the door. Ben gave her time to look at him wringing wet and say whatever she wanted.

She said, "You change your mind?"

VI.

The first thing Ben did, dripping on the kitchen floor, was call Preston. Ophelia said, "Hey, Ben, love your movies,'' and they talked a while. Preston wasn't home but she'd have him phone.

Denise helped him take his clothes off and put them in the dryer - shirt, jacket, socks, everything but his boots - poured a couple of vodkas, and they stood in the kitchen, Ben in a terry-cloth robe stretched tight on him, while he told Denise about Brother.

She said, "You sure you're not making it up? It sounds like a movie. I can hear the score, 'You're the Reason God Made Oklahoma.' "

Standing there in the kitchen looking at each other, Ben said, half singing it, " 'I work ten hours on a John Deere tractor just thinking of you all day.' "

Denise did the same with " 'I've got a calico cat and a two-room flat on a street in West L.A .' "and stopped there. She said, "But the song has it turned around. I'm here and you're the one in L.A." She said, "You're going back, aren't you? Once you get Preston or someone to work your place?"

Ben hesitated. That was the idea and he could say yeah. He could say yeah, why don't you come with me? It was in his mind.

The phone rang before he could say anything.

Preston telling how Avery Grooms had been picked up on the detainer and what he found in the barns. "Ben, was a big Peterbilt tractor in one and all kind of truck parts in there. Big Cummins diesel engine, crankshafts, axles. What they do, Ben, hijack a truck, bring it there and go over it like ants taking apart a magnolia leaf. See, then they sell to wholesalers in that criminal enterprise. The diesel engine they can get six, eight thousand for."

"A lot of work," Ben the eight-second man said, "for what they make off it."

"Yeah, well, these are working-type people, they don't know no better."

Ben told about Brother and Preston said, "I gave you my Smith, whyn't you shoot him?"

"It was in my bag, I didn't have time to get it out."

"If you had, would you've shot him?"

"If I couldn't club him with it. I've done it."

"You mean in a movie." Preston said he'd find out about Brother and call back.

Once Ben's clothes were dry he peeled off the robe and got dressed, Denise watching, looking right at him as he stepped into his shorts and jeans and pulled them up - the way he remembered when they were little kids and she always wanted to see his thing and he'd tell her to close her eyes or turn around. Not now. He felt natural, the way he liked to think of himself with Denise. More natural than with any woman he could think of. Even Kim.

And there she was, bringing along the other women.

He wasn't going to tell Denise about them, but now he wanted to - even knowing pretty much what she'd say.

Preston phoned.

"City police and the sheriff both got the call, shots fired at the Shawnee Inn. They got over there to find Jarrett Lloyd Grooms, laying by the swimming pool unconscious, and took him to Memorial. Brother's busted up cheekbones to toes, messed up his mouth, has knees that bend the wrong way. They wrote him for having the gun and attempting to break and enter.''

"They think he's a burglar? What about the shots fired?"

"Gun went off when he fell. They want to close it."

"They have Hazen?"

"No sign of him. He must've took off."

Ben hung up, gave Denise the report, and she said, "You're staying tonight, aren't you?"

"Yeah, but I want to tell you something."

They were in the kitchen now, Denise pouring vodka.

"You know my mother left right after I was born."

"Your dad was dead and that part of her life, along with you, was over."

"She died of drugs and alcohol."

"Yeah...?"

"You remember Carl?"

"Honey, Carl leaves his imprint on you."

"His wife, my grandmother Kitty, walked out on him after a year."

"Girls named Kitty don't think much of becoming grandmothers."

"Virgil's wife, my great-grandmother, died having Carl."

"I won't comment on that."

"And the girl I was living with, Kim, a stuntwoman, fell off a ladder at home and fractured her skull."

Denise said, "You're kidding."

"No, she did."

"I mean about what you're thinking, that I could be next in line. Tell me you're kidding."

"Carl's the one pointed it out. He said we don't seem to have any luck with women."

Denise said, "Carl?" She said, "Carl told you that? Carl told stories, things he did as a marshal? My dad said most of it wasn't true.''

"Your dad represented guys Carl arrested.''

"He predicted things, crops, the weather - where to find game - my dad told me about that, too. He said Carl was always wrong. You lived half your life with him and you didn't know that?''

"His stories were great,'' Ben said. "His predictions, I never paid any attention to them. It's just, every once in a while I think about what he said."

Denise shook her head. "Ben, your granddad didn't know shit. Remember that and you'll quit thinking of yourself as a lady killer."

"I thought you might fall on the floor laughing."

"That's too obvious." She finished her drink and looked at Ben in fluorescent kitchen light and said, "You're perfect for me and I've known it since I was a little girl. But you're too glum." She took the drink from his hand and placed it on the counter.

"Let's go to bed so I can wake you up."

Brother never showed. By the time Hazen realized it and quit talking to the waitress he'd had five Margaritas following a few beers earlier. He called the farm and let it ring. What was he supposed to do now, call the police? Y'all holding my little brother? Call the hospital, see if he got hurt fucking up somehow? He probably sassed the troopers and they put him in detention. Next they'd be out to the farm with warrants. Shit, it was time to move on. Tomorrow, after he'd settled accounts.

Hazen went out to the desk and took a room for the night. Tomorrow he'd go to Denise's house first thing, before she left for the real estate office, and have her call the famous movie star nobody ever heard of and tell him to get his ass over there.

They were still in Denise's double bed under the covers, putting off getting up. She said, "I imagined you'd snore, but you don't."

"You do, a little."

"Really? No one's ever told me."

"I gave you a kick and you stopped."

"I suppose you want breakfast - eggs, the whole thing?"

"I like just a sandwich, if you have any leftovers."

"Leftover what, you think I cook dinner for myself?"

"You know how?"

"Is it important to you?"

He said, "I haven't thought of Hazen once."

She said, "Then why bring him up."

"Later on I have to see a lawyer."

She said, "Let's brush our teeth and go for another, okay?"

"After you." He watched her get out of bed naked and go in the bathroom. He waited for the full frontal shot when she came out, and heard the doorbell. He got out of bed and went over to the bathroom to tell Denise through the door someone was here.

She came out wrapping herself in a pink kimono. "It's the paperboy. He comes to collect once a month." She said, "Don't get dressed. Put the robe on and we'll have a cup of coffee first, okay?"

She picked up her handbag from the vanity and went downstairs barefoot.

She was seriously thinking of selling the house, but would hold on for a while, see what happens. It was way too big for one person, dark, sort of Victorian, frosted-glass panels in the double doors of the entrance. She could see a figure waiting on the porch, a dark shape more than an actual person, opened the door and said to Hazen Grooms, "You're not the paperboy."

"What I am," Hazen said, "is hungover. You get horny when you're like that? Man, I sure do." He stepped inside and took the lapel of her kimono between his fingers, feeling it, saying, "Honey, you're a sight for horny eyes. I bet you got nothing on under there, have you?" He looked past her saying, "What I need more'n anything right now is a cold beer. Get the spiders outta my head." He started across the foyer saying, "I bet they's some in the fridge," and went on through the hall that passed beneath the staircase landing to the big kitchen in the back of the house.

Denise followed, handbag hanging from her shoulder, not saying a word. She opened the refrigerator, brought out a can of Bud and placed it on the table in front of Hazen. He said, "We not talking this morning. Still seepy-eyed? We could go back to bed, you want." He popped open the can and Denise watched him pour the beer down his throat, his Adam's apple bouncing as he swallowed, watched him lower the can, his eyes shining wet, and say, "Jesus, I've come back to life."

She brought a glass ashtray from the sink and placed it with her handbag on the other end of the table from Hazen. Now she took a pack of Winston and a Bic lighter from the bag, lit a cigarette and dropped the pack and lighter back inside.

"Gotta have that first smoke, huh?" Hazen said. "What I want you to do for me is call Mr. Ben Webster, get him to come over here."

"Why?" Denise said.

"Settle our business."

"I thought you changed your mind - your dad going back to prison and all."

It got him to hesitate. "Where'd you hear that?"

"My cleaning lady."

"Your cleaning lady." Hazen squinting at her now. "How'd she know?"

"What difference does it make?" Denise said, and blew smoke at him. "You're leaving, aren't you?"

Now he changed again, using his sly Jack Nicholson eyes.

"If I am," Hazen said, "we got one last chance to go upstairs and fall in love."

She saw Ben in the terry-cloth robe too small for him appear in the doorway behind Hazen, and said, "I don't think Tenkiller would like it."

Hazen said, "Who?"

Now Ben came in past Hazen to Denise's end of the table, looking around to say, "I wouldn't waste any time. I think you ought to get out of here's fast as you can."

Hazen put his beer on the table and stared at Ben in the fluffy skin-tight robe, the sleeves short of his wrists. "Jesus Christ," Hazen said, "you go around in women's things, you're actu'lly queer, aren't you? One of those fellas likes to take it in the butt. You hear the one, the Indin goes in the whorehouse with a bushel of corn?"

"Front hole money hole," Denise said, "back hole corn hole. I told it to Ben in the eighth grade."

Ben remembered it and turned his head to Denise. Hazen said, "Look at me, goddamn it," and they saw him holding a black semiautomatic pistol on them but mainly on Ben, a big one Denise believed was a Colt .45, like one her dad used to have, Hazen saying now, "I'm through talking," raised the gun to eye level and put it dead center on Ben.

Ben said, "You're gonna shoot me? For what? It won't get you my land."

Hazen sighted down the barrel. "I'm not talking to you no more."

Denise's hand went into the bag close in front of her.

Ben said, "How's Brother?"

It stopped Hazen because - Denise saw it - he didn't know and had to ask.

"What happen to him?"

Her hand came out of the bag and laid the pack of Winston on the table.

"He fell off a roof," Ben said. "He won't die, but has to be put back together."

"Goddamn it," Hazen said, "what'd you do, push him off?"

Denise's hand went back into the bag.

"I'm trying to get away from him," Ben said, "and he's shooting at me up there, and he lost his balance."

"You care so much," Denise said, "why don't you go to the hospital and see him?" She waited a moment and said, "You shoot Ben you'll have to shoot me, too, won't you?" Threw that in and got Hazen to look at her and saw his eyes lose their fire, his eyes turning heavy so she'd think he was cool.

"You know your brother," Ben said. "He likes to fight but doesn't know how. He's too quick on the trigger."

"He's a moron," Denise said to Hazen. "That's why you never let him hang around with you. I really think you ought to take off while you have the chance."

Ben said, "Why bust your ass dealing in truck parts? If I was a hardcase like yourself, shit, I'd rob banks. My granddad, a famous deputy U.S. marshal in his day, used to tell me robbing banks took nerve, but was the quickest way to get your hands on real money. Even if you get caught and put away, you're looked up to in prison."

Denise said, "Really? Is that true?"

Ben said, "Yeah, bank robbers are among the elite," and looked at Hazen. "You've done time. Isn't that right?"

"Hijackers," Hazen said, "don't take any backseats to nobody."

"It's a lot of work though, huh? Heavy work." Ben said, "You want another beer?"

"No," Denise said, "he's running out of time. Let him go."

Hazen put his sleepy eyes on her, looking more tired than cool, and she softened her tone saying to him, "Go on, Hazen, get out of here while you can." She paused a moment and said, "For my sake. Please."

And it seemed to move him. Hazen said, "Sometimes it works," shaking his head, "and sometimes it don't." He looked at Denise again to say, "This one wasn't my trip," and walked out with his big Colt .45.

Neither one of them moved until they heard the front door slam.

"What did you mean," Ben said, "you told him to leave for your sake?"

Denise's hand came out of the bag holding her SIG Sauer and laid it on the table.

"So I wouldn't have to shoot him."

"You think you would've?"

"If it looked like you and I were through before we even got started? I'm not a victim type." She said, "That man is really stupid, isn't he?"

"Carl said nine out of ten criminals have the brain of a chicken."

"Your old granddad, known for his wisdom."

"He could tell a story," Ben said.