The News in Small Towns (Small Town Series, Book 1) (17 page)

But that wasn’t the strangest part by far.  As I looked at the tableau of man, girl, and horse, a frisson went up my back, then increased to a shiver when I realized I had seen that great gray horse once before, too.  I may have been half unconscious and staring up at him from a strange angle and through bloody eyes, but that was the horse I saw in the woods the day I killed the snake.

Jack materialized at my side.  He had been popping in and out throughout the morning, only to spot something else in the arena or on the grounds that intrigued him.  An occasional flash from his camera let me know where he was.  “So this is what you’re doing with your time now,” he said.  “It’s kind of fun.”

“Jack,” I said.  “I need you to get some pictures of that girl and her horse.”

“I already have,” he said.  “Got her boyfriend, too.  Why?  Who are they?”

“Guy’s name is Mark.  He works with me at
The Courier
.”  I changed the subject.  “It’s past lunchtime.  You hungry?  I suddenly have an almost overpowering hankering for chicken fajitas.”

“I guess so, sure.”

“There’s a good Mexican restaurant in downtown Forester.” 

“Let’s go, then.”

As we passed the judge’s booth, I hailed Panhandle Slim.  The rain, which had been been alternating between a downpour and a drizzle throughout the morning, had all but stopped, although the roof of the arena was still dripping in places.  Horses and riders had tracked in mud, which we tried to avoid as we walked.

“Not leavin already are ya, Sue-Ann?” Slim asked, showing his line of straight white teeth.

“People to see and places to go,” I told him.  I tore a blank page from my notebook, wrote down a few things on it, and handed it to him.  “Listen, I really enjoyed all this,” I said.  “If you can write down the winners and maybe a little about them, I’ll work up a story for
The Courier.
”

“I can do that.”

“I wrote my email address on the paper.  That’s the easiest way to get anything to me.”

“I can do that, too.”

“I promise to write up the event, but I can’t promise that the editor will print it.”

“If not, maybe you can send it to me and I’ll put it up on our website.”

I agreed and led Jack around the ring to where Mark and his blonde girlfriend were still hanging around the ammunition stand along with four or five other riders and their horses.  Mark saw me coming ten yards away and went slightly rigid for a moment, then braced up and relaxed.  “Hey, Sue-Ann,” he called out.  “What are you doing here?”

I walked up as his companion turned around to see who he was talking to.  Her natural wide smile and infections laugh disappeared when she saw me.  And if people’s eyes could actually get larger, hers did.  She seemed to check me out from baseball cap to running shoes before her eyes came back to my face.

“My assignment,” I told Mark.  I glanced at the girl, then back at Mark.  “No use asking what
you’re
doing here.”

The girl was more cute than pretty, with teeth just imperfect enough to give her character.  Her cowgirl outfit was light and airy except for a pair of sturdy pointed-toe boots.  She couldn’t have been much over eighteen years old and for some reason I seemed to scare her to death.  This intrigued me.

“This is Krista Torrington,” Mark said. 

“Hi,” I said to the girl, and put out my hand. “I’m Sue-Ann McKeown.  I work with Mark at the paper—maybe he’s mentioned me?”

“Um, I’m not sure.”  She took the hand I held out.  Hers was small and unadorned, its grip firm, and she withdrew it almost at once.

I introduced Jack to Mark and Krista.  Jack was his old hail-fellows-well-met, very charming self, which, for the first time in my memory, made no impression.  Krista simply glanced at him, then looked back at me, while Mark studied him with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.  Motioning with his eyes toward Jack’s camera case, he asked, “You a photographer?”

“That’s the name of my game,” Jack smiled.

I let them talk while I moved in on Krista.  “I loved your ride,” I told her. 

Krista tried to smile, but just couldn’t do it.  “Thank you,” she said mechanically.  “It was fun.”

“You have a beautiful horse,” I told her.  “What’s his name?”

“Trigger.”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“No,” she told me.  “That’s his name.  Trigger.”

“He looks so familiar.  I think I’ve seen him before somewhere.”

“Naw.  He doesn’t get out much.”

“And it seems like I’ve seen
you
somewhere before, too,” I said.

“Naw.  I don’t get out much neither.”

“Well, then, Jack and I’ll get out of your hair and let you enjoy your moment of freedom.  Mark, I’ll see you at the office.  Krista, I have a feeling we’ll meet again soon.  Maybe we can go riding together sometime?”

Without waiting for an answer, I turned away and, with Jack in tow, headed in the direction of my car, avoiding the worst of the puddles.  The sun was beginning to break through the cloud cover.

As soon as Jack had closed the door, he looked at me and asked, “Holy wow, Sue-Ann, what was that all about?”

“What was what about?”

“That girl looked like she thought you were going to shoot her.”

“Odd, she was the one with the pistols,” I remarked.  I didn’t venture anything else; Krista may not have won her shooting contest, but she had certainly ridden to the top of my Most Interesting list.

Chapter 11

The restaurant I chose was authentic Mexican, decorated inside with original oil paintings—one depicting the painters Frida Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera, another showing the restaurant’s owner astride a black Paso Fino.  The walls just below the ceilings were striped in the green, white, and red of the Mexican flag.  I ordered some chicken fajitas and a Modelo dark.  Jack ordered an identical Modelo dark along with a chimichanga.

I spent some of the time we waited for our meal in writing down more of my observations of the cowboy-mounted shooting event while Jack peered through the viewfinder of his camera to preview the pictures he had taken.  I noticed this with some surprise.

“You’ve gone digital?” I asked.

“Sometimes,” he said.  “If I’m in a hurry.”

“I’ve never been able to get digital pictures to come out in shaded areas,” I told him, thinking of the covered arena we’d just left.

“Sue-Ann,” he said, not even bothering to take his eye from the viewfinder, “This is top of the line.”  I had forgotten that Jack was a technofreak who subscribed to a dozen photographic magazines, but it made me recall that I had heard exactly the same words from Crookneck Smith after he had narrowly beaten me in a friendly match outside Crookneck’s Archery and Hunting Supplies.  From that moment on, I had never paid for any less than the best archery tackle available.  And Crookneck never beat me again.

We were halfway through our meals and on our second Modelos before we actually got around to talking about what was on our minds.

“Jack, I—”

“Sue-Ann—” Jack held up his hand.  “No, Sue-Ann, let me talk first.”  I nodded with resignation, and he went on, “I didn’t come here to harass you.  I’m sorry it didn’t work out between us.  I thought we had something special, but then you went to the Middle East . . .”  He shrugged.  “When you came back, you weren’t the same.”

“I’d been in a war zone, Jack,” I told him simply.  “Sometimes that changes people.”

“It was that bad?” he asked.  “I got your emails—few as they were—and read your pieces.  I know you didn’t embed with army units or get taken blindfolded to some place in Fallujah to interview Saddam’s personal imam.”

Jack was right, of course.  Like most Western journalists in Iraq, I rarely left my compound.  We partied, we slept, and we left everything to our Iraqi counterparts.  Some of us played video games on our computers and some of us kept diaries.  I kept one, and still do.  “You’re right, Jack,” I answered.  “I didn’t go hungry or thirsty or get shot or kidnapped.  Just about the only inconvenience was when the power went out and the AC didn’t work.”

“So—”

“It was the everyday things—the tank tracks that I tripped over, the women in veils, the piles of rubble, the hate I felt all around, Bush’s cronies lining their pockets with money that was supposed to go to hospitals and schools.  It was everything I saw and heard, every day.  And Jack, I was lucky.  I had friends—good friends—that died doing their jobs.  And every day I asked myself why I ever volunteered to come to that awful hellhole.”

“Why did you?” he asked.

“Because I needed something different than what I had,” I said levelly.  “I couldn’t believe that what we had in Richmond was all there was.  Look, Jack, you’re a brilliant photographer—if enough people say that to you maybe you’ll start to believe it, but you’re not the person I wanted to end up with.”  I put up my hand to stop him from speaking.  “I’m sorry if that’s harsh.  I agree that someone
like
me is exactly the person you need to end up with.”  I was tongue tied—not for the first time around Jack—but I pressed on.  “A relationship has to be mutual.  Shit, why can’t I explain this better?  It’s like, I don’t know, it’s like I dominate every relationship I’ve ever been in—the one with you more than most.  That’s what you wanted—for me to lead, to choose the movies we watched, what kind of beer we drank when we went out—but sometimes it’s too much to have to think for two.  I needed a break from that pressure.  No, not a break.  I needed out.”  I looked down at the remains of my meal. “I’m sorry.”

“So you went to Iraq.”

“So I spent six months in Iraq, which made me go bonkers.  Then my mother died and I went numb, so when I came back to Richmond I just couldn’t take care of you like I’d done before.  I couldn’t do it.  So I left and came here and got sick—I have a hyperthyroid condition and probably came close to dying.  And that was pretty depressing, too.”

“I wondered about the weight loss,” he said.  “Is it bad?”

“No.  I mean, yes, but it’s okay.  It’s treatable.  I’ll be strong again eventually.”

He paused, then said.  “I might have something that will cheer you up.”

I raised my eyebrows. 

“I’ve been offered a book deal,” he said.

I was puzzled.  “Book deal?” I asked.  “Are you writing now?”

“No, no.  A book of photographs.”

“That
is
good news, Jack,” I said sincerely.  “No one deserves it more than you do.  Are you talking about a retrospective, or what?”

“It’s for work I haven’t done yet.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I, um, got a call from somebody I know at Aperture—one of my old students.  He told me they were looking for someone to do a before and after book on Iraq.  Photos taken before and after the wars—both this one and Desert Storm.”

“But you can’t—”

“They’ll be putting out a call for photographers who were in Iraq anytime during the last twenty years, asking them to submit photographs.  I’ll make the final selections and take some of the “after” pictures myself.  They’d like to have it come out by the end of next year.”

“That’s incredible, Jack,” I told him, “but most of the things you’ll want to shoot are in really dangerous places.  It’s a bad idea.  I have enough on my mind without having to worry every day about you getting blown up.  Why didn’t you just go and not tell me?”

Jack drained the rest of his beer and smiled slightly.  “I didn’t have any say when you decided to go over, so I don’t feel as bad about that as I should.  But there’s another reason: I’ve convinced Aperture to let you write the copy for the book.”

“Me?” 

“Who could be better?  You’ve been to Baghdad.  Your stories were read by hundreds of thousands of people.  We worked as a team for years before we even started dating, and no one understands my photographs better than you do.”

“You’ve thought it all out, haven’t you?” I asked.  “It even makes some kind of bizarre sense.  I’ll think about it.  Probably won’t do it, but I owe you that much.  I definitely won’t do it, though, if you get killed.”

“Agreed,” he grinned.  “So, you’ll miss me when I’m away?”

“Don’t press your luck,” I said.

We both ordered flan for dessert and finished eating in relative silence.  I had a lot to think about.  The book deal would take some pondering, that’s true.  There was also the problem of what I was going to do with Jack—having him drop in on me was kind of like finding a new trombone on the sidewalk, I couldn’t play it but I just couldn’t leave it lying there either. 

Our talk over dinner had made me realize that Baghdad had given me a kind of ennui, that I had floated somewhere outside myself, somewhere safe, for over a year now.  The hyperthyroidism had made things worse but now I was beginning to focus again, was beginning to be able to see that just about everything I had done since I had left Iraq was suspect.  That whole mess with Donny, for instance; would any of it have happened if I hadn’t been sick?  My goat story might not be real, might be just something I projected into being through my fantasies, through my desire to have a focus.  For that matter, it was no longer certain that leaving Jack had been a rational decision.  And what about this confusing and kind of wonderful thing that was happening with Gina?  Was that just my glands talking?

It was likely that the more my hormone supplements kicked in, the clearer headed I would become.  It was truly a scary moment.  I looked at Jack and had the sense that he was a handsome, creative, intelligent man who I was proud to know—yet I didn’t want to live with him.  And as for my fantasies, Cal’s “rodeo” had given me another piece of the goat story puzzle, and that piece was very real to me.  It excited me, and unless something happened to change my priorities, I had to go with my feelings.

“I want to see those pictures you took at the Ag Center,” I said suddenly.  “And I really need to get back to my horse.”

“You have a horse?” he asked.

“Would that top-of-the-line camera allow you to plug it in to my computer so I can see what pictures you took?”

“Any computer,” he answered.

The road from Forester out to Pine Oak alternates between two and four lanes.  It’s a quick trip with only one caution light between the two cities.  Much of the scenery is pine forest, with an occasional new business—a tractor dealership, a truck stop, a junk store.  There are also the businesses that failed—a rotting grocery, a small motel without windows or doors, a brick chimney standing alone in a weedy lot.  The turnoff to my farm was just before the Pine Oak city limits, then it was a couple of miles of red dirt, farms on both sides, one with cotton stubble, another with huge round peanut-hay rolls wrapped in black plastic.  In another long field stood rows of tomato plants with wooden climber stakes driven in the ground every few feet.  Mexican migrant laborers had tacked a three-inch strip of tinfoil onto each of the many hundreds of stakes, which, fluttering in the wind, were supposed to scare off birds.  From a distance, the fields looked like wind-rippled silver lakes.

When we got to the house, I took Jack to the back and introduced him to Alikki, who wouldn’t come within twenty yards of him.  Jack snapped a few pictures of her anyway, then went inside while I groomed her and made over her for a while.  Half an hour later, I went back inside and made coffee while Jack hooked up his camera to my iMac.  With two chairs close together, we sat at my computer desk and went through them.  He had been thorough, going as far as taking pictures of each brand of horse trailer on the grounds.  He had close-up shots of most of the riders.  In some of them you could actually see the almost invisible powder spraying from the pistol and into the bursting balloons.  But it was the pictures of Krista Torrington I was anxious to see.  When we came to the first one—a picture of her galloping in the arena, I stopped and scrutinized it carefully.  There was another of her full-face and one of her with Mark.  I zoomed in on her face, trying to recall if I had ever seen it before.  I had no luck.  Then I zoomed in on her horse and gasped.

“What is it?” Jack asked.

“Here,” I told him excitedly, “Just beyond her horse, in the bleachers.  Three people—two boys and a girl.”  The three young people were looking in Krista’s direction—into the camera.  One of the boys and the girl looked like they were trying to achieve a starved look; the other was a year or two older and had more substance.  All had shaggy dyed-black hair, with clothing to match.  But none of the three looked familiar.

“No cowboy gear,” Jack commented.  “I guess I missed that one, huh?”

“No, Jack, you didn’t.  Listen, I need to print a couple of these out, do you mind?”

“Go ahead, but do you think I could take a shower?  Maybe get a shave?  I have my stuff out in my car.”

“Feel free.”

In fifteen minutes I had gone through the pictures again and printed out several, including the blow-up of the three goths in the bleachers.  I had pulled up the notes on my goat story and was adding to them when there was a knock on my door.  I went to answer it.  It was Gina.

“Gina!” I said.  “You’ll never guess what I’ve got.”

“Somethin for Alikki?” she guessed.

“Not this time,” I told her.  I hurried into the bedroom for the pictures on the computer desk.  Gina followed me in.

At that moment the bathroom door opened and Jack came out wrapped only in steam and a bath towel.  Gina looked at him, then at me.  Her mouth became a fine line.

“Maybe ah should call before ah barge in,” she began.  “But as long as ah’m here, whah don’t go we all outsahd to your target range and you can shoot at me.”

“Stop it, Gina,” I told her.  “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Not what what looks like?” Jack asked innocently.  He removed some clean clothing from a suitcase on my bed.

“Gina, this is Jack Stafford from Richmond.  He dropped in this morning for a visit and now he’s leaving, but he took some pictures I have to show you.  Jack, Gina works with me at
The Courier
.” 

“You’re a reporter, Gina?” he asked in his innocent, curious Jack manner.

“Office manager,” she said thinly.

“Jack, go get dressed,” I told him.

“Can I take some pictures of her later?” he asked.

“Absolutely not,” I told him.

I grabbed the stack of pictures from my desk and pulled Gina out into the living room, closing the bedroom door behind us.

“What kahnd of pictures was he talkin about?” she asked, casting a glance backwards, as if she wanted to see through the closed door.

“Pictures that will carve you up and let you know what the inside of your heart looks like,” I told her.  “But really, I know you think I’m a wad of human gum, but we haven’t done anything.  We’ve been in Forester all day covering that thing at the Ag Center.”  I looked her in the eyes and said mischievously, “But were you jealous?”