Authors: Virginia Swift
Bone looked exasperated. “I’ll just tell you what she said. She told me, ‘Daddy, I roped me a good one, and this week I’m gonna ride this sucker down hard and then get the hell out of town.”
“So you think she was shaking somebody down?” Sally asked him.
“I think she knew something, and she thought some-body’d pay her to forget all about it. If that somebody was a stud hoss cowboy, and I know Monette, she’d offer to take part of her payoff in nookie. You know what they used to say about Will Rogers. Monette was the hoochie version of him. When she was twelve years old I caught her with the propane delivery man. Near took her hide off,
and
his, but it didn’t do no good. That gal never met a man she wasn’t ready to drop her panties for.”
Everything in the world really had slid to the bottom.
Bone looked her up and down. Really. “So now it’s your turn, Mustang Sally. Did Monette tell you anything?”
She was too disgusted to be afraid of him anymore. “Why in the world would I tell you if she had?”
Bone drew himself up. He ruined the attempt at dignity by leaving the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, but something winsome cracked through the nasty façade. “Well after all, I am her daddy. Leastways, that’s what her ma claimed.”
And at that moment, sitting on that bench, watching him sweat and smoke, Sally couldn’t help seeing Bone Bandy for the pathetic loser he surely was. “I’m sorry, Bone,” she said. “All Monette told me, Monday morning, was that she had things to do. She didn’t say anything more than that. I don’t have any idea what she was up to.” Sally sat a minute, and then asked very softly, “What do you intend to do if you find the guy?”
Whatever vulnerability she’d glimpsed in him, Bone shut it away instantly. “I raised her, didn’t I? Let’s just say as the surviving next of kin, I reckon I got payback comin’ to me.”
So many people jammed the Ivinson Community Center for the memorial service for Monette Bandy that they had to leave the doors open and let people stand out on the lawn. The soft-voiced Unitarian minister, unaccustomed to evangelical cadences, had to yell to make himself heard. He’d kept it brief, ecumenical, simple, and familiar. “We’ve got to stop hurting and hating each other, people!” he’d exhorted. “Everybody get together. Try to love one another. Not next week, not tomorrow, but now, right now. Right now. Right now!”
Sally had believed in that message from the first time she’d heard it, going on thirty years ago. But she’d wondered, even in those bead and bell-bottom days, how in the world human beings would ever put it into practice. As the minister finished, she turned to look at the crowd and saw Bone Bandy slip out the door. She was still wondering.
After the service the crowd flowed outside, under the trees, talking and waiting and setting up folding tables and chairs while the ladies got out the food. To be fair, not quite all ladies. Burt Langham and John Boy Walton, partners in the marvelous Yippie I O café, had brought a whole poached salmon, glistening in aspic and garnished with cunningly carved vegetable flowers. Dwayne Lang-ham, ever the gentleman, had picked up a Sara Lee pound cake.
If calories were horses, everybody in Wyoming could have ridden to Mexico on the spread for Monette’s funeral reception. Molded salads and covered dishes, stiff with mayonnaise and cream of mushroom soup. Half a dozen casseroles and platters courtesy of the Wyoming Cowbelles, the ranch women’s group, featuring the state’s favorite ingredient (Enjoy Beef Daily). Cold cuts and sliced cheese, iced tea and lemonade, pies and cakes, and five kinds of pickles. Sally saw Dickie Langham pile his plate with short ribs and crock pot meatballs and potato salad and then head for the desserts, stoking up for another tough day of crime fighting.
There were a lot of folks she’d expected to see. The Langham clan, of course, this time dressed for the occasion in dark suits and sober dresses, and a contingent from the Lifeway, most of them wearing their uniforms, getting ready to head back to work. The feminist types— women who ran the shelter and the rape crisis center, the orthodontist and the university’s lawyer (the town’s lesbian power couple), Maude Stark, looking unusually formal in a tailored powder-blue skirt with matching short-sleeved jacket, her steel-gray hair in a sleek pony-tail. Polite old-timers like Molly Wood.
And then there were people who came representing groups—contingents of firefighters and police officers paying their respects. They too were all in uniform, even Scotty Atkins in his Sheriff’s Department khakis, which made him look, er, taller. Local civic groups like the Cowbelles and the Sunshine Nellies (Laramie’s gay and lesbian barbershop quartet). Some rodeo cowboys had showed up too, Herman Schwink among them, with serious faces and slicked-down hair and creases pressed in their starched shirts. Some people surprised the hell out of her by being there—Sam Branch and Marsh Carhart, for two. It occurred to her that it was the second time that week she’d seen vultures circling.
Most of all, there was an extraordinary number of humans she just plain didn’t know. Some of them she recognized by sight, the way you’d have some impression of a person who might have been sitting next to you in the doctor’s waiting room. But others she felt she’d never laid eyes on. Incredible that Laramie was that big. More amazing still that so many had turned out.
Carhart was making his way down the buffet line just ahead of Sally, smiling and introducing himself, taking little bits of this and that and chatting up the ladies who’d brought the dishes. “You know,” she heard him tell one middle-aged woman sporting helmet-sprayed hair, a bad-fitting brown dress, and a giant diamond ring, “it’s a real treat to find Frito pie anymore. This is some of the best I’ve ever had.”
The woman blushed and grinned and explained, “A lot of people just go ahead and make it with canned chili and American cheese and whatever ol’ corn chips they got on special down at the store. You just throw all that stuff into a dish and call it real Frito pie. I don’t mind using canned beans,” she admitted, “but the secret”—and here she beckoned him toward her, and lowered her voice—“is browning your own meat, and using real Fritos, and Cracker Barrel cheddar.”
“You can always tell when somebody’s given it their own personal touch,” Carhart said, smiling, his face still close to the Frito pie lady’s.
“And garlic powder,” she replied, and introduced him to her daughter. That Frito pie did look tempting, but Sally was determined to be moderate. Browning your own meat, indeed. Sally had bought one of the Cow-belles’ beef cookbooks at the county fair last year. You didn’t often see that many recipes calling for suet.
She saw Hawk edge Marsh Carhart out for a seat at a crowded table, next to Molly Wood. In black jeans, a white shirt, and a silk tweed sport coat that some rich former girlfriend had talked him into buying, Hawk looked comfortable and elegant, at ease and alert. Sally wasn’t eager to join him. They’d had, well, a little disagreement about whether he ought to go ahead with his plan to look over the land swap property later in the day. He’d been just getting his breakfast when Sally had returned and told him about her skirmish with Bone at Washington Park. Hawk had slammed his cereal bowl on the table so hard that the bowl cracked and Cheerios and milk flew all over the room. She’d spent the next half hour watching him rage and clean up spilled milk.
Then, of course, they’d had an adult discussion of their plans for the day (“I am damn well not letting you out of my sight!”
“You damn well are! I’m not a baby!”
“Oh yeah?”
“Shit!”) Sally wasn’t sure why it seemed so important to her that Hawk proceed with his plan to go up to the Laramies. Maybe she liked seeing what the connection with Molly Wood did for him. Or maybe she just didn’t want him around when she got together with Scotty Atkins. Her intentions, as usual, were probably purer than her motives.
But at last she’d managed to convince him not to keep her locked up in the house while he stood guard with the Remington over-under shotgun he never used for hunting anymore. He was planning to head up to the mountains right after the reception, and for now Sally was giving him some room. Neither one of them was exactly him or herself today.
She turned and saw Delice sitting at a card table, along with Brit, Maude, and Charlene from the Lifeway.
“Can I squeeze in with you guys?” she asked, pulling up a metal chair to perch at a corner of the table.
“Hey, you took some of the ambrosia salad,” said Charlene. “I brought that from the deli at the store. Can’t go wrong with pineapple, mini-marshmallows, and maraschino cherries, can you?”
“Yeah, but it’s the whipped topping that really makes the salad,” said Delice dryly. “I see you’re taking the ladies’ lunch approach, Mustang. You’d be better off with these,” she added, sinking her teeth into a large, meaty barbecued rib.
Sally had some of the poached salmon; a pile of salad made from sliced-up iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, and radish discs; a spoonful of green bean casserole with cornflakes on top—so far, so good. And then the ambrosia and a piece of a cherry pie that could only have been baked by Maude Stark. Maybe there would be some ribs left if she got up for seconds. Buffets were insidious.
“So,” said Delice, eyes glittering, lips smacking, “what’s this in the morning paper about an unlawful entry at your house Tuesday night?”
Sally had her story all ready. “Dickie figured it was probably lowlifes from the rodeo. They came in and messed things up some, looking for valuables I guess, but they must have gotten scared off and left before they found my jewelry. No big thing.”
Maude knew something about attempted burglaries, and she knew Sally. Her face registered her skepticism. “In my experience, having an uninvited stranger in your house is always a big thing.”
Delice was scowling over her ribs. “Dickie asked me if there’d been anybody hanging around my house. What the hell’s going on in this town anyway?”
Charlene sighed. “We get our little crime wave every year during Jubilee Days. Down at the Lifeway, this time of year, we got more shoplifters than shoppers. With all the cowboys and carnies and transient scum, what do you expect? Three years ago a guy came to my door and said his car had broken down and his grandmother was sitting in it, and he’d lost his wallet, and could I give him a twenty for the tow truck? I fell for it, I swear. I bet he’s still laughing.
“Burglars busted into my sister’s place last year and stole her TV and stereo. Jeez, even the tourist families think they’re entitled to steal everything in the motel room that isn’t bolted down. My niece works at the Reata motel, and she said she’d cleaned one room where the people had not only taken the towels, but even the toilet paper holder. One of the waitresses at the Holiday Inn restaurant told me they’d lost forty-six coffee cups during Jubilee week last year, and this year they’re going to serve the coffee in Styrofoam cups.”
Delice laughed mirthlessly. “It’s a pain in the ass, but I figure rip-offs are part of the cost of doing business. Not that it’s any fun. I can’t tell you how many times the most wholesome-looking people try to beat the check and get out the door before we can nab ’em.”
Brit chimed in. “It’s like people who are mondorespectable in some other town turn into criminals when they go on vacation. Last night at the Yippie I O, we caught a guy trying to stuff a candlestick into his sport-coat pocket. The guy said Burt better not mess with him, because he was a trial lawyer and a close personal friend of the vice president of the United States . . .”
“And what exactly was it about this fool that made you imagine he was respectable?” Maude asked.
Sally’s strategy had worked—they’d moved off the subject of her and onto themselves. Now was the time to really change the subject. “So what’s the story on the parade Saturday?”
“I’ve got a neighbor out in Albany who does a lot of haying, and he said we could borrow his tractor-trailer flatbed. I figure anybody who wants to ride on it could make any kind of sign they want, in support of equality and the idea that women have a right to feel safe and in charge of their bodies,” said Maude, taking command.
Sally looked at Brit. “This was your idea in the first place. What do you think?”
Brit considered. “The flatbed’s great, and we’ve gotten calls from people who want to do signs and banners. So what Maude said is fine with me, although I think people might need a little, like, help with the sign-making thing. Some of them might not be exactly clear on the concept when it comes to ‘equality,’ you know?”
Sally could easily imagine. Lots of Wyoming people carried their equalizers in holsters. If they weren’t careful, the memorial display for Monette could turn into an NRA rally.
They ended up deciding that everyone who was interested could gather in the parking lot behind the Wrangler Friday afternoon to make signs and banners. “Do you think we could get the paint donated?” Delice asked Brit.
Brit made a face. “I already talked to the guy at Gem City Paint. He said he’d given a bunch of money to the rodeo committee, and didn’t have any to spare for ‘political causes.’ ”
Maude snorted. “I’ll give him ‘political causes.’ From now on I’m buying all my paint at Wal-Mart, and telling all my friends to do the same. It’s cheaper there anyway. Matter of fact, I’ll be down there this afternoon, picking up whatever you think we need for the signs and banners. My treat.”
“God, Maude, that’s really generous of you,” said Sally.
“No big deal,” she said. “I might even ask the manager there if they want some free advertising as backers of Wyoming’s long tradition of equality for women, and the home of one-stop shopping.”
Charlene took a big bite of cherry pie, drummed her long nails (same color as the pie!) on the table, chewed, looked thoughtful. “You know, I’m all for controlling your own body and all that, but this being equal thing...I don’t know. Take Monette. I don’t think she was spending a lot of her time worrying about equality. When she got promoted, I asked her what she planned to do with her first big paycheck, and she said, ‘Go to the fanciest beauty shop in town and get a makeover. Then go to the bar and make some dude beg.’ ”
They all shook their heads. “Give me a break, you guys!” said Charlene. She looked straight at Maude. “Do you really want to be
equal
to other people, Maude? I mean, do you want people saying, ‘That cherry pie was just as good as every other cherry pie I ever had’? I doubt it. And how about you, Delice? I never have heard that you run your business by taking a vote every morning about who to hire and who to fire and how many pounds of potatoes to order. Then there’s you,” she said, turning to Brit. “When you get done with school and go out there and hang up your shingle as a lawyer, you want them saying they choose who gets to be a partner in the firm by lottery?”
“Come on, Charlene. That’s not what we’re talking about,” Maude replied. “Women have always had to prove we were twice as good to get half as far. We don’t want to be victims, we don’t want special favors. We just want the chance to compete for the good things in life, and to make the world a little better.”
“A nice sentiment,” said Delice, “but you gotta admit, Maude, sometimes women who want that chance to compete couldn’t care less about making the world a better place. They’re just looking out for ol’ number one. Hell, I sure am. I guess I’m already equal in one way—I pretty much want the same things men want.”
“For instance?” Sally asked, finishing off her piece of that unequaled cherry pie.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Delice. “How about money and sex for starters?”
Everyone laughed.
Charlene gave Sally a knowing look. “That sound good to you? From what I hear, with the deal you got with that Dunwoodie Center, you won’t be suing the university for ‘equal pay’ anytime soon.”
“Point taken, Charlene,” Sally said dryly. “Flog me for my pious hypocrisy.” Sally’s endowed chair came with a salary and a basket of perks that dwarfed the average college professor’s take-home. She was paid at the level of rocket scientists with big federal grants, and engineers who got hired by corporations to consult on new ways to breed genetic monsters or turn planet Earth into a big round ball of waste. Most of them were men, and Sally figured that her research in women’s history was at least as worthy as building a bigger nuclear reactor or finding a new way to freeze bull semen. She didn’t lose a lot of sleep over getting what she had. Why shouldn’t women finally get a piece of the pie?