One Step Over the Border (2 page)

“No, ma’am, I guarantee that was never in my mind. I really must get…”

“It wasn’t in your mind? Are you saying that I am unattractive?” She threw her shoulders back. “I am not ugly.”

“No, ma’am… I just…”

“Many men want to make love with me. I am not hideous.”

“I never implied that you were…”

“Do you want to make love with me?”

“Good grief, lady, I don’t even know you.”

Still toting the infant, she scooped up an open can of soda.

Laramie held up his hands. “Don’t throw it. You don’t want to mess up your house.”

Her glazed eyes appraised the broken front window and the trashed living room. “Yeah, right. It wasn’t always like this. But
it’s not your fault. I’m just mad.”

“I can see that.” Laramie relaxed when she set the can down.

“Something inside me just snaps when I get angry.” She strolled toward him. “But I’m not mad at you.”

Laramie’s back mashed flat against the door. “I’m grateful for that. Now I need to…”

Her voice softened. “You are too skinny, but other than that you are a handsome man.”

Laramie’s blue shirt collar squeezed too tight. He eased open the front door behind him. “Thanks, ma’am. I hope things start
going better for you.”

“You must know that under these grubby clothes, I am still a beautiful, sensual Latin woman.”

The loud ring yanked their attention toward the kitchen.

“You’d better get that phone, ma’am, and I’ll be…”

“Here… hold Philippe.” She shoved the baby into his arms and slalomed through the litter toward the telephone.

Round, brown eyes ogled up at Laramie as he tried to maneuver the six-month-old with a mushy plastic diaper into a comfortable
position. He hadn’t held a baby more than twice in his life—his cousin’s boy, Ronald, at his dedication, and his fourth-grade
teacher’s one-week-old baby girl when she brought her to school. Panic growled at his stomach.

He rocked Phillipe back and forth. Sweat dribbled down the back of his neck as Spanish threats boomed from the back room.

“Lady, I have to go,” he called. “Come get your baby.”

“Un momento,”
she yelled.

The baby grabbed his ear. Laramie shoved his hand away.

Philippe wailed.

“Now, now… shhhh. Everything’s okay. You’re being raised in the most dysfunctional home in Wyoming, but everything’s okay.
I know how you feel, little pal… I’ve been there, too, but crying never changed anything.”

The baby continued to sob as Laramie hushed him.

There was a hollered,
“¿Viene aquí? ¿Ahora?”
Then silence.

“Juanita, I have to go. Come get your baby. Philippe needs you,” Laramie called out.

No reply.

“Juanita?”

Philippe began another round of wails.

“I suppose you want your diaper changed. That’s not my department, son. In fact, you’ve already experienced all of my child-care
skills.” Laramie hiked toward the kitchen. “Juanita?”

The wooden counter around the sink and the square table were piled with food-hardened dishes. Two metal folding chairs with
Property of Park County Social Club
stenciled on the back completed the furnishings. Next to the open door of an avocado-green refrigerator, a beige wall phone
swung back and forth on a long cord that at one time had spiraled.

Laramie paused at the doorway next to the phone and could hear someone still on the line, shouting in Spanish.

In the laundry room, there were dirty clothes piled on the floor and on top of the avocado-green clothes dryer. The back door
and screen door swung open in the slight breeze.

A large horsefly buzzed into the pantry as Laramie inventoried the backyard. Brown weeds bunched around an abandoned chain
saw. A trackless snowmobile lay on its side next to a dried garland of once-fresh flowers. A faded blue silk banner read:
Congratulations
.

“Juanita?” At the sound of his voice, the baby cried again.

“Shhh… just hang in there, little partner. If I wasn’t twenty-one, I’d be bawling, too. Your mamma will be right back.”

Laramie wandered across the backyard, baby riding his arm. Dry grass crinkled under his boots. He poked his head in the open
door of a portable storage shed. “Juanita?” In the shadows of the shed, he spied a heavily chromed and polished Harley-Davidson
motorcycle. “Baby, does your mamma ride a Harley?”

Untilled, bare ground stretched for a half-mile behind the house. Laramie circled the entire dwelling but found no one. “Philippe,
where did she go?”

Laramie hiked back through the laundry room and kitchen to the living room. The short hallway led to three small bedrooms.
In one squatted an unmade, cluttered waterbed. U-Haul cardboard boxes crammed a second room. A window in the third had been
darkened with foil and duct tape. Under it was a crib. Beneath the crib, a toy-lined floor.

“Juanita?”

He rapped on the only remaining closed door with his free hand. “Juanita, are you in there?”

He tried the cold aluminum door handle. It wouldn’t budge.

He banged again, this time with force. “Juanita!”

The baby wailed.

Majors heard the front door slam and hurried out into the hall. He paused before a hulking, bushy-bearded, tattooed man in
black jeans and sleeveless blue denim shirt who tilted the couch back to its rightful position.

“Who are you?” the man roared.

Laramie edged toward the front door. The rancid air of the room now reeked of fresh grease and old sweat. “This is all a big
mistake.”

The man whipped out a switchblade knife and flipped it open. “Where’s Juanita?”

“She, eh, shoved the baby in my hands and took off toward the back of the house. Maybe she’s in the bathroom. I’ll sit your
baby here in this chair and be on my way.”

“You ain’t goin’ nowhere until my Juanita clears this up.”

“Look, mister, I never met your wife before today. I just…”

“I didn’t say she was my wife.” The man stalked closer. “You just stopped by to do what to her?”

“I needed to talk to a guy, not Juanita. I was told he was here. But I think I… eh, just missed him, and then…”

“What guy? Who’s been hanging around here?” The big man jabbed the knife in the air. “What was his name?”

“Eh… his name… I think it was Ha… Hamilton. I don’t know his full name. A mutual friend mentioned that I should…”

“What mutual friend?” the big man growled.

“Dwight… eh… Dwight Eisenhower,” Laramie blurted out.

“Does he work for the road department?”

“No, but I think he did have something to do with the interstate.”

“Never heard of him.” The man scraped the piece of pizza off the wall with his knife.

“Look, here’s what happened. I asked her about, eh, Hamilton, then the telephone rang. Juanita shoved the baby at me, went
to answer the phone, and never came back. That’s all I know.”

“Juanita!” the bearded man bellowed. “Get in here.”

“Maybe the phone call was from a neighbor. An emergency of some sort.”

“It’s a mile to a neighbor’s house and they threatened to shoot us if we ever showed up on their property again.” The man
gazed out the broken window toward the street. “Was the call in English or Spanish?”

“Spanish.” Laramie thought about closing his eyes to make the whole scene disappear. But that had never worked when he was
a kid and he knew it wouldn’t work now.

The man exploded like a jack-in-the-box. “I’m not going to put up with this anymore.” He stomped down the hall, then waved
his knife at Laramie. “Get down here.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to see what’s going on in the bathroom. If you even so much as touched her, I’ll kill you.”

Laramie toted Philippe to the hall.

The big man beat on the door. “Juanita, open up right now.”

Laramie figured he could outrun him, provided he didn’t have a gun or throw that knife. But he froze again, this time out
of fear.

“Did he hurt you, Juanita
mía
?” He jammed the point of the switchblade into the door handle and twisted it. The white door popped open.

Majors spun for the living room when the man disappeared into the bathroom. The scream “Nooooooooo!” would have rattled windows,
if there had been any left. Laramie propped Philippe on the sofa. “Sorry, little man…”

“I’ll kill you!” The man lumbered down the hall.

Laramie banged open the screen door and hurled himself off the deck.

“Hey,” someone to his right called out. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

Hap Bowman stood like a sentry at ease in foot-tall weeds in the front yard. Amazed at the man’s calm demeanor, Laramie reached
out his hand as Hap tossed him a coiled nylon rope. The big man roared out of the house. The dog on the porch let out a solitary
“woof” without raising his head.

As the wild man stormed down the wooden stairs, Hap’s rope looped his arms. When he yanked back, the man flew off his feet
onto his back. At that moment, Laramie’s rope circled the man’s legs. Amidst screams about parentage and curses meant to last
for generations, the man flailed in tall dead grass and weeds.

Laramie heard a crack, like a bat hitting a baseball. The man collapsed.

“Did he just knock himself out?” Hap asked.

After wading through weeds and trash where the man lay, Laramie scratched the back of his neck. “I think he hit his head on
a bowling ball.”

Hap meandered over to him. They gawked down at the unconscious man. “That was mighty thoughtful of him, because I didn’t know
what to do next.”

“I’m grateful that you showed up, Bowman, but you were about an hour late. What’s going on here? Dwight Purley told me I needed
to talk to you about roping together. He said you were cowboy from boot to hat. Then you run out the door and leave me in
a situation straight out of the
Jerry Springer Show
.”

Hap squatted beside the big man and examined the lump on his head. “It’s a long story. I didn’t know you were aimin’ to stick
around and visit with Juanita. I figured you were right behind me, comin’ out the door. I waited down at the stop sign, but
you never showed. I was beginnin’ to think I had the wrong guy. I called Dwight. When he mentioned you bein’ tall, skinny,
and a tad shy, I figured I’d better come pull you out. Who is this guy, anyway?”

“You don’t know him?” Laramie asked.

“Nope. Never seen him.”

“He claims to live here. I think he’s the father of that baby.”

“So, he’s the one.”

“The baby,” Laramie groaned. “I dumped him on the divan when I ran for my life.”

Laramie and Hap jogged back to the house. The black dog on the porch opened one eye, then closed it quick.

Philippe stood on the couch chewing a dry, yellow celery stick.

“Where the heck is Juanita?” Hap asked.

“I don’t know. She left me holding the baby.”

“What do we do now?”

“You check out the bathroom.”

“Why?”

Laramie plucked Philippe off the couch. “Because the old boy in the yard spotted something in the bathroom that made him decide
to kill me. If you find a body in there, I don’t want to know about it.”

Hap stepped over a spilled tray of cat litter. “Where’s the bathroom?”

Laramie waved at the hall. “You don’t know your way around this house?”

“This was the first time I’ve ever been here.”

“You aren’t going with this Juanita?”

“We’ve been talkin’ on the phone for three months, but this is the first time we met.”

“You made a great first impression. The bathroom is the first door to the left.” Laramie bounced the baby and snatched a look
out the busted window. “Hurry up. That self-inflicted bowling ball wound won’t keep him down forever.”

Hap wandered back with two sheets of paper. “She taped a Dear John letter to the toilet seat lid, which seems rather appropriate.”

Laramie surveyed the room. “She was leaving all this?”

“It says she’s splittin’ with a dark, handsome cowboy.”

“Who?”

Hap shrugged. “Me, I reckon. That’s why she went crazy. I told her there was no way I was takin’ her and the baby with me.”

Laramie continued to shake his head as he gaped at the room. “That explains it. A scorned woman.” Philippe swatted him in
the ear with the dried celery.

“She deceived me, man. During all those phone calls, she neglected to mention that she lived with a guy, had a kid, and had
gained umpteen pounds since the picture she mailed me. Worst of all, she lied about having a birthmark in the shape of a horse’s
head under her right ear.”

“What’s a birthmark got to do with anything?”

“I told you, it’s a long story.”

“Hey, is he dead?” The voice from the front yard was female, curious, but not panicked. They found Juanita crouched over the
unconscious man. “Did you kill him?”

“Where have you been?” Laramie marched out to the woman and shoved the baby at her.

She straddled Philippe on her hip. “When I heard Francis was on his way home, I knew I had to get out of the house. If he
found you here, he would beat on me and the baby again.”

“What about me?” Laramie asked. “Weren’t you concerned that he would carve me up?”

“Why should I be? I don’t even know you.” She turned and purred at Hap. “Honey, did you come back for me?”

“I came back for Laramie, my new ropin’ partner.”

“Well, you’re stuck with me now, too,” she said. “I’m going with you. When Francis wakes up, he’ll kill me, now that you did
this to him.”

Hap held up his hand. “I told you, I’m not taking you with me. I came up here for a chat. That’s all I promised and you know
it. We agreed to a ‘no strings’ visit.”

“Do you call ten minutes a visit?”

“A short visit. That’s all we needed.”

“If you didn’t plan on staying longer,” she whined, “why did you give this guy my address?”

“Optimistic speculation.”

“I’m not staying here. Give me and the baby a ride to my parents,” she demanded. “You owe me that much.”

“Where do they live?” Laramie asked.

“Greybull.”

“Get your stuff, quick, and change the baby’s diaper. We’ll give you a ride,” Laramie offered.