That Old Ace in the Hole (42 page)

“There you go,” said Bob to the fat man, handing him the stack of pink tickets, turning back to Brother Mesquite. “That was beautiful heeling, Brother Mesquite. You could turn professional.”

“I already got a profession, Bob. Pretty content the way things are. Got me a nice buckle and some beaut spurs, too,” and he showed off the saucer-size buckle, which read

Champion

2000 Team Roping

Woolybucket 68th Barbwire Festival

Bob started to write “Brother Mesquite” on the raffle tickets.

“Whoa! I want my mother’s name on the ticket,” he said. “Write ‘Laura Moody.’ If it should win it goes to her.” He hauled up his cassock and fished out ten dollars.

“Isn’t that thing hot?” asked Bob, gesturing at the cassock.

“You wouldn’t believe how hot. But it makes a nice statement, I think. After a rodeo we do usually get a few boys wantin a know more about bein a monk
and
a bison man. Anyway, Bob, I want a ask you somethin. I guess you are headin out pretty soon, right? Seein that the hog farm site business is not doin too good?”

“I suppose so,” said Bob. “In a few days.”

“Well, you didn’t buy many hog sites and you riled some folks, but you also made a good impression on some. Showed you had grit. Stuck with it even when it got ugly. Ace is wonderin if you’d like a job workin for us.”

“Ace! For who? The monastery? Doing what?”

“No, for Prairie Restoration Homesteads. Sort a what you was talkin about all the while—house sites. Only not particularly for rich folks, not that luxury estate thing. Soon as we get the hog farms cleared out and the bison range established, Ace is thinkin there would be people want a live where they can see bison and watch the prairie come back. It would be like kind a prairie restoration homesteads. Maybe one house per square mile. Or maybe the houses clustered and the rest empty. Wants to call them that—Prairie Restoration Homesteads. He’s sort a talked to the Nature Advocacy and the Wildlife Coalition and they think there’s somethin in it. If it looks like it’s goin a take off, they’ll maybe come in with him. Each one a the home sites would have a covenant—the buyer would have to agree to maintain habitat for prairie species—prairie dogs and burrowin owls, prairie chickens, antelope or Baird’s sparrow, the ferruginous hawk or native prairie plants or whatever. Did you know there used a be black-footed ferrets here? And big old cougars and wolves and such? Ace wants a reintroduce the ferrets. Ace thinks there’s people out there would be proud a get into such a way a livin, kind of a experiment in community habitat restoration. So he wonders if you’d like doin that kind a thing?”

“What kind of thing?” asked Bob.

“Why, sellin the homestead sites. Talkin a people about them. Like I just explained.” He looked at Bob as at an idiot.

“I don’t know,” said Bob. “I
sort
of been thinking about going back to school. Learning about history, the Santa Fe Trail, learning Spanish, learn how to ride. Maybe start a small bookstore.” He stopped, blushing and wordless.

“A bookstore! Never was a place needed one more. Woolybucket needs a bookstore bad,” said Brother Mesquite. “I can teach you how to ride. Bunch a people can teach you Spanish. And the Santa Fe Trail is not far away. And you could still help with the prairie homesteads. Seems like you belong in Woolybucket, Bob. Tell you what, why don’t you think it all over and get back to Ace or me in the next day or so?”

“I am,” said Bob. “I am thinking it over.” Brother Mesquite punched him on the shoulder and strode away, spurs jingling. The thunderstorm dryline had nearly dispersed, blown apart by the brisk wind that now sent paper and dust flying.

“Oh, Bob!”

He looked up at LaVon, who seemed coming apart in all directions, her face flushed, her hands full of papers, her lipstick a crooked smear as one who swipes it on without benefit of a mirror.

“LaVon. I tried to call you this morning, tell you about the shooting. But the sheriff says you already know.”

“Yes, and it’s terrible but it’s the third death. At least we don’t have that hangin over us. At least none a us knew the fella got shot.”

“I knew him,” Bob said. “He was the president of Global Pork Rind. He was my boss’s boss.”

“It’s a tragedy. And poor Tazzy. And poor Francis Scott Keister.”

“And their poor son,” said Bob, hoping the boy had an uncle.

LaVon looked suitably tragic for a few more seconds, then said, “How’d you do? Sell any tickets?”

“I sold sixty,” said Bob. “Fifty to one guy, that big man over there eating snake cakes.”

“Oh Bob, didn’t they tell you? The limit is ten tickets to any one person. Oh dear. The odds are very good now that that man will win the quilt and for a relative pittance.”

“How many tickets have been sold in all?”

“I’m not sure. Over a thousand, I think.”

Bob thought quickly. “His chances aren’t that overwhelming. Fifty out of a thousand means the odds are one out of a hundred. Not that great. Just stir the names up well. Plus, whoever does win it gets it for a pittance anyway. I don’t see the problem.”

“I guess you are right. And in a few hours it will all be over and we can get back to our normal lives, whatever they are. I wanted a tell you, Bob, that Coolbroth is movin back into the house, to his graindaddy’s room. He says he can’t do without the telephone since he got into this thing with Ace and them. So the bunkhouse is empty…”

Suddenly Brother Mesquite was at his shoulder again, whispering intensely.

“I’m serious, Bob. You think
hard
about it. I believe a bookstore would help everbody out. And Ace’s is a noble project,” and he was gone again.

“Well,” said LaVon, “I better be getting back to headquarters. Give me your raffle tickets and I’ll put them in with the others. It’s a hour and a half until the drawin. I hope that big man don’t win. He’s not from around here.”

“Don’t let the wind get those tickets—they’ll fly to Oklahoma. I suppose I’ve got to be getting along myself,” said Bob.

But as he pushed through the crowd, walking along the sidewalk behind the street kiosks, he doubted Ace’s plan could work. People did not want Baird’s sparrow, they wanted bacon on their plates. He felt sorry for Brother Mesquite, for Ace, for the Shattles and Tater Crouch, even for Coolbroth Fronk. Their naïveté sparked his pity. He wanted to tell them that nothing worked out for the best, that ruined places could not be restored, that some aquifers could not recharge. They were all, except for Coolbroth, older than he was, Tater and Ace by many decades. How could they be so hopeful? How could they believe that prairie dogs would tame the urge to pump, to plow and crop, to build low white bunkers with giant fans and stinking lagoons? It was as unlikely as Evelyn Chine leaping from her hospital bed and roller-skating down the hall, as sad and hopeless as a snot-nose kid checking the mailbox for a letter with an Alaska postmark.

What would become of the panhandles, a region like a rug jerked back and forth, marked and trodden, spilled on, worn and discolored? Would everyone move to the edges and leave a huge center milling with bison? Would the buffalo be able to paw their way to water when the Ogallala was piped down to San Antonio? More likely, Ace would fail, for even he could not afford to buy up the entire top of Texas, and Habakuk van Melkebeek’s money, from the bowels of the panhandle itself, would have been wasted. Then the place would turn into a massive hog farm, millions of hog bunkers and scummy lagoons spread across the old plain, waiting for what would come next. Would he be watching from Denver or would he somehow still be in Woolybucket dodging hail and eating cabbage pie at the Old Dog? But maybe Ace was right and this was the beginning of something huge.

In his mind’s eye he saw the panhandle earth immemorially used and tumbled by probing grass roots, the cutting hooves of bison, scratchings of ancient turkeys, horses shod and unshod pounding along, the cut of iron-rimmed wheels, the slicing plow and pulverizing harrow, drumming hail, the vast scuffings of trailed cattle herds, the gouge of drill bits and scrape of bulldozers, inundations of chemicals. What was left was a kind of worn, neutral stuff, a brownish dust possessing only utility. This ghost ground, ephemeral yet enduring, was what it came down to.

He passed the Old Dog as he walked. A sign in the window read
CLOSED TODAY FOR BOBWIRE
. He would miss Cy’s cooking. He came abreast the old lawyer’s office. There was a sign in that window as well,
FOR RENT
, and a telephone number. He stopped, pressed his face to the window.

He gazed into a high bare room with a stained hardwood floor. The walls were lined with empty bookshelves, floor to ceiling. The thin crack of an idea opened in his imagination. There was a small table and a wooden chair at the back, a box of papers. A door ajar showed another room with part of a tall window visible. He felt the wind pulling his hair. From the bandstand came the sound of a fiddle limbering up, ready to claw through the old tunes. He wanted time to stop, just for a few days, an hour. He needed to sort things out. But of course nothing stopped nor slowed, the minutes tumbling down, the day moving to a close, everything up in the air. He felt for his pen, found it and wrote the telephone number on the palm of his hand.

He would go back to Denver but not for long. LaVon owed him the story behind the photograph showing the deep scars on her grandfather’s back.

There are no counties named Woolybucket or Slickfork in the panhandle country. The towns of Teemu, Cowboy Rose, Struggle, Woolybucket and Twospot are invented. The characters are not based on real people except in a remote way, as composites of human behavior, with some physical descriptions based on old photographs. Some anecdotes and incidents have been extrapolated from historical records and regional histories.

The costume notes of the 1884 leap-year party on pages 103–4 are taken from William Curry Holden’s
A Ranching Saga, the Lives of Williams Electious Halsell and Ewing Halsell
(San Antonio, Texas: Trinity University Press, 1976), vol. I, pp. 172–74.

Uncle Tam’s comment on page 25 on humankind’s inadvertent selection of rattleless rattlesnakes comes from Barry Lopez.

The lyrics on page 253 are from “A Perfect Day to Chase Tornadoes” by Mike Pratt and Jim White.

I know of no real Global Pork Rind Corporation nor any Barbwire Festival nor any monastic bison ranch. On the other hand, Bent’s Fort is real, the names of many real panhandle towns are used here and the real James Abert spent many years in the service of the Topographical Corps.