Down on the Farm – Part II – Fiction

Down on the Farm

Part Two

by Todd Brendon Fahey
Illustration by Mark Reusch

“Infidels!” Hamza cried, hurling the bottle in the direction of the Cadillac Bar and Grill. Then he opened the rear door and ran out into the street, a dark-skinned maniac all jacked up on No-Doz and rum, heralding the pure love of Allah against a blazing red sunset on a Friday night in the center of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and I was not a bit surprised when a big, rangy cowboy stepped out the front door of the Cadillac and stopped my cabbie cold in his tracks with a sharp kick to the balls with a steel-toed boot. Four of the man’s buddies then gave him a beating, the likes of which would have shamed the LAPD.

With the Main Square distracted, I drove past the action and stopped the car at a curb and calmly retrieved my suitcase from the back seat and walked away, leaving the engine running and just enough black hash laying on the front seat to keep Hamza, a known drug-felon, safely contained for the better part of my natural life. By leaving the scene, I figured I would probably hasten his parole by five years. The defense would recall a life filled with sorrow and broken dreams, but no one would care: he was dangerous, and I would only compound his troubles by testifying.

I walked a block or two to the Rusty Parrot Lodge, a handsome, big-beamed sanctuary smelling of pine and potpourri – a conscious union of the Yin & Yang and a deft marketing stroke, designed to keep wealthy couples returning year after year at $220 per night. I doubted I would ever be back, at least not until the freelancer’s gig could be counted on to pay more than a coat checker’s tip – but I appreciated the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce for thinking of me, anyway. My watch read 7:30 pm, which was probably too late for any hope of a free dinner. But it sounded about right for drinks.

A tall, pleasant-looking gentleman in smallish, round spectacles looked up from behind the front desk and smiled. “Your name, sir?”

I nodded. “I’m a guest of the Chamber.”

He nodded. “We have a car waiting for you as soon as you get settled in. I’m Peter Martin, the owner of the Rusty Parrot. We’re glad to have you staying with us this weekend.”

I shook his hand and told him I was glad to be here, studiously dodging questions about the quality of my ride from Salt Lake, which was already beginning to fade like a low-grade nightmare at breakfast.

The man signaled for a bellhop, who appeared in the form of a rumpled, heavyset young cur, apparently ready but unwilling to handle a real-world engagement. The thug tore loose the bag from my fist and flung it over his shoulder, motioning with his other hand toward the stairs.

“There’s no elevator,” the owner smiled. “We try to keep it like home.”

I nodded and managed a saccharine grin that I sometimes wear in the company of old people and relatives. As I began climbing the stairs, I became acutely aware of a not altogether savory presence behind me.

“It’s part of the charm,” a voice said. “The ambiance, you might say. Christ, they’ve fixed us in a friggin’ temperance house.”

I turned to my right and was met with a silver-haired man of sixty or so – a striking figure in a single-breasted Saville Row charcoal banker’s stripe, whose slight watering about the eyes told me nearly everything I needed to know. “No booze, eh?” I commented.

“Not a drop,” he cursed, tufts of silver protruding from flared nostrils. “We’ll have to go out and find ourselves a bottle. You look like a man who can stand his Irish.”

“I’ll join you in a beer,” I said, as we reached my second-floor room. “My stomach’s still a bit iffy from the ride.”

“Ahh… well… yes, I suppose a beer would taste fair, now that you speak of it,” he said. “Name’s Roderick Massey. I write for the London Times. You must be the one from Utah.”

I nodded and introduced myself. “Where are the others?” I wondered.

“The others. Christ, what a lot. There’s three of them. The woman looks like she’d fetch low prize at the annual Hereford sale. Her husband is with her, a rather innocuous lout… one of those skinny, lopey sorts, probably the middling child of a working-class family of Connecticut – a decent, moral lad suffering from an inbred lack of confidence, the type who allows every Jewish mother in the civilized world a calm night’s rest, as he will invariably fall for her bossy, she-whale daughter, as this one has apparently, poor wanker. Then there’s Jeffrey from Los Angeles, who always looks as if he is in the throes of a terrifically painful bowel movement. Sort of pinched up about the eyes and mouth,” he said, screwing on a hideous mask. So you see, there’s no reason to be with the others. Unless, of course, you feel a striking need to get your bollocks off. Our hostess from the Chamber appears very fit that way. She seemed rather disappointed by the caliber of men who showed up to this…whatever it is,” he waved.

My interest in this whole ordeal suddenly advanced a hundred-fold. “Pretty nice, is she?”

He nodded briskly. “And she knows it.” He gave me a thorough once-over. “I bet you could crack her nut, handsome lad like you,” he said, seizing me by the bicep. “Fine stock. I bet she’ll go ninnie over that cleft chin.”

Up in my room, I ransacked my clothes bag for a blazer, which I pulled on directly over the jeans and T-shirt I had been wearing the whole of the day. The mirror told me that it could be worse, but also that it would take an entire night’s sleep to get the vicious red out of my eyes. Not even Visine would work at this point, though I went ahead and soaked my eyeballs in it anyway, after buying a small bottle from the gift shop downstairs.

Strolling into town, Massey ignored the fading sapphire overhead and the mob on the street that was showing a seated and cowering Iranian cab driver a little Western justice, the half-dozen police officers taking their time filling out the preliminary report. He was fixated on his imminent retirement from journalism, which seemed to have him both agitated and saddened.

“I don’t want to leave the racket,” he protested, “but these silly Age Laws say that I will. And it’s not the money. Good God, lad, I’ll be drawing on three pensions: a sturdy one from twenty years in the Royal Air Force, a pittance from the Civil Defense, and now this criminal payoff from the Times. No, no, it’s that I very much like coming to my desk each morning with the rest of the buzzards on the Fleet. I enjoy swilling instant coffee and pressing unreliable informants for the latest gossip: It’s what I do.” He looked up at me and smiled feebly. “I don’t suppose as a freelancer you can have much empathy. Shall we have that beer?”

I patted him solidly on the back, a token of camaraderie which I felt probably he needed at the moment. Conceptually, I could understand his lament – just as I could understand why a man who, for whatever reason, had developed a fondness for stewed Brussels sprouts at breakfast would miss them if they were suddenly replaced with Scotch eggs and prunes – but empathy I could not supply. I worked for three hours once at the Copy Desk of the Salt Lake Tribune, just long enough to get my press pass with no date of expiration, and I remember feeling that if I did not flee during the first available break, I would suffer a terrible stroke.

I had just graduated with a Master’s degree in creative writing from a prestigious private university in Los Angeles, the fruits of which, it seemed for a time, would amount to nothing more than a crushing life of poverty. During these so-called Salad Days, I worked as a legal editor in one of L.A.’s largest law firms, attempting to stave off malnutrition while piously refusing student loans. I was facing graduation and was moderately suicidal, when I began filching postage from the machine in the mail room to use on a blizzard of résumé packets that I would then send off to magazines and newspapers from Seattle to Santa Fe. I was what they call an “unknown quantity” at the time; all I had to show for myself was a pedigree from this expensive school with its world-class reputation, a few published book reviews, and a two-drawer oak filing cabinet full of unpublished satire, which my professors, friends and family all warned me against showing to anyone in a position to hire.

“The Times would never have taken you,” Massey chuckled. “And it’s sad, because your kind always makes the best writers; but you can be counted on to be egregiously bad reporters. A glaring excess of talent, no patience, defies authority… you are a natural editor – better, in fact, than the copy chief – you can invent your own headlines if left mercifully alone; you will be awarded in a year’s time the honors and acclaim of your peers, and you’ll quit it all with a petulant note chronicling how badly you have been neglected the instant you tear open a check for sixty quid on your first short story.”

I shrugged. “Let’s have that beer.”

* * *

Morning came hard in Jackson Hole. I vomited twice in the shower and once again in the sink while trying to stand up to comb my hair. My eyes looked like baked adobe, and I just knew that many decent people in this rustic little hamlet would have cause to point and laugh piteously in my direction wherever I was today. Several times, I stumbled over to the big poster-bed and collapsed, as I probably had less than five hours earlier, but something always forced me to my feet.

The first time, it was room service, which only magnified my nauseous plight. The second time, it was Massey, who appeared in fine shape, with “not the slightest trace of alcohol poisoning. Perhaps you should have gone for the Scotch after all,” he winked, saying he’d see me “on the white-water” at 9:30. After I had committed to dressing and had brushed my teeth, I answered the door again.

A freckled brunette of maybe twenty-five, in a white cowboy hat and matching fringed leather skirt, smiled wickedly, wagging her index finger. “Bad boy. Did you keep the house up late last night?” she said, affecting a pout.

On any other morning, I would have tossed her on the bed, gripped her by her beautifully thick ankles, and treated her to a wishbone surprise without so much as a word of introduction; but on this morning I hadn’t the strength. I was pathetic, and I think she felt genuinely sorry for me when I had to sit down on the floor, so as not to lose consciousness. “What’s the plan for tonight?” I wondered, which was about the soonest I could picture leaving the room.

She knelt and handed me a typed itinerary. “Get some sleep. You’ll be miserable out on the river. Believe me, I’ve done it before. If you like cowboy poetry, we’re all meeting at the Bar-J ranch tonight at seven. It’s like “Hee-Haw,” but it’s a lot of fun.” She tussled my hair with her long fingers, then she bit her lower lip softly. “I think I’ll have to follow you around and regulate your intake the rest of the weekend. You’re on our tab now, wild child.”

It was when I found myself too weak to masturbate that I knew I was getting old.

* * *

“Hey, little piker. What’s yor name?”

“Mmm… Verdy Ellis.”

“You must be Bobby-Ray’s youngster. That right?”

“Hi, Jasper. ‘Been a while since you seen little Verdy, hain’t it?”

For nearly three decades, with the exception of every second year at Christmas and one shocking Pentecostal family reunion just before my eighth birthday, I had been dodging an impure bloodline – on my mother’s side, from and around Deaconville, Arkansas, to be exact; and now it appeared the road had finally washed out. They say Mom was always “shy,” but the fact is she was plain uppity, and when the new crop of minor-league ball players came passing through that hard-luck north Arkansas hamlet just after her graduation from high school, she hiked her skirt up and made every leg-kick and twirl a seventeen-year old virgin knows how from all those years in the Baton and Drum Corps. She bagged a pretty fair first baseman, so I’m told, who gave up the game a few months later and eventually became a respected executive for a Southern California power company.

Dad was raised Catholic. And while I’m sure I could have enjoyed a warmer upbringing from parents who had both spoken in tongues, the sacrifice seems trifling in times such as these.

I had hitched a ride to the Bar-J Ranch from the surly bellhop at the Rusty Parrot, who earnestly believed that there was no better place to be on the face of the planet on this evening than at the Bar-J, listening to cowboy poetry. “I know it sounds sissyish,” he admitted, “but I swear to God, it’s the one place a guy like me can compete for choice cuts in this town. I ain’t rich. I’m kinda fat. But every year, after this thing’s over, I must look like I’m covered in gold-dust. You just wouldn’t believe the ladies who’ve taken me home the past coupla years…”

Luckily, we had pulled into the dirt parking lot of the Bar-J before he could get into the malodorous particulars, and I thanked him with a couple bucks for the ride, then jogged toward the entrance of the cavernous barn and made every effort to lose him. Once inside, my eyes took a few minutes to adjust to the relative darkness. That’s when I became conscious of the speech patterns of mine distant kin. I also picked up on a peculiar, nasal patois emanating from the front of the hall, and I walked toward it as a lost sailor heeding the call of the Siren.

Massey was slurping coffee from a tin cup at a crowded picnic table just off the stage, trying to ignore the other three members of the media excursion, who sat blankly across the table and who matched impressively his cruel caricature. Next to him, still wearing the fringed skirt, but minus the cowboy hat, the Chamber hostess appeared bored. I tapped her on the shoulder and motioned that I’d like to somehow wedge in beside her. She brightened and wriggled her ample bum a few inches down the bench.

“How are you feeling?” she shouted over the din.

“Like a human being again,” I yelled back.

Massey leaned over from my other side. “They’ve done it again, old boy,” he said, with a mixture of irritation and resignation. “We have the choice of sour lemonade or a certain viscous petrol which they claim is coffee. I’ll be certain to recommend Wyoming to all my friends as an excellent place, should ever they wish to dry out.”

The audience hooted wildly as a cluster of spotlights bore down on a portly, ruby-cheeked farmer who lumbered past the carefully arranged props: the feed sacks, rusty rakes and two-handled saws, the rack of moose horns obscuring a single, faded Burma Shave sign. Tickling the microphone with his walrus mustache, the rancher goaded the crowd with a couple of hateful jokes concerning the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Interior, but the punchlines fell short on my citified ears.

“These guys get nasty,” the Chamber maiden whispered, and I took her word for it, the crowd continuing to howl.

“But now I’m gonna clear out and make room for some real talent,” the emcee promised, though I had serious doubts as to his ability to deliver. “Tonight, the Bar-J Ranch is home again to one of the West’s longest-running lit’rary tray-ditions. And tonight I have the personal privilege of introducing four decorated cowboy poets, who will regale you with their visions of home on the range, as it were: all the way from Elko, Nevada, we have Curly Spencer. From Rock Springs comes Miss Sandra Lytle, who has just published her fifth collection of verse which we’ll have for sale at the break for the bargain price of $4.95,” he said proudly. “Carl Smolden is with us from Laramie, where he teaches English at the U of W to feed his family. Keep your day job, that’s what they say in this racket. And finally… finally” he said, raising his voice above a rising volley of boos, “from somewhere on the outskirts of Jackson – may you never cross his path – the ever-controversial Jean-Louis Lebris de ‘Black Jack’ Laroue. Laroue.”

The booing drowned out all semblance of understanding on my part; I could barely hear the Chamber hostess, as she tried to explain such a shocking reaction. “It’s a love/hate thing,” she yelled into my ear. “He refuses to rhyme his verse. It’s like a big ‘fuck-you’ to the rest of these yokels. Jack Laroue’s famous,” she insisted. “He was a Rhodes scholar out of Yale in the late sixties. He’s been appointed to task forces in the Arts under Reagan and Bush. But he’s crazy.”

I nodded distractedly. It was hard to get worked up over a man whose legend was built on a refusal to employ iambic pentameter in his bullshit prairie limericks. But she wouldn’t let it rest.

She grabbed my forearm and looked into my eyes. “My name’s Marlene, but everyone calls me Marnie. I wouldn’t lie to you. He’s a psychopath.”

Suddenly, the booing revved louder and a towering, swarthy man in a lustrous, full-length black mink coat walked slowly to the microphone. His eyes were concealed behind curved green Ray-Bans, and it appeared that he was smiling in the manner of a mollified sadist.

“He’ll leave as soon as he finishes reading. The others say he makes them nervous,” Marnie said. “I think he’s interested in talking to you.”

“Whu? Why?” I said derisively, staring at this figure who would have looked entirely comfortable on the saddle of a shovel-nosed Harley and with a four-color Hell’s Angels tattoo splayed across his back. “What on God’s frozen earth would we have to say to each other? And why me?”

Marnie pulled a denim jacket over her bare shoulders. “Let’s just say he and I used to know each other,” she smiled, sadly. “But he’s deteriorated. You’ll see. He wants someone to tell his story. He feels abandoned.”

I shrugged. Searching the angles, I supposed I could see some merit in the interview – a uniquely famous poet’s view of a pair of Republican administrations castigated for their decade-long neglect of the arts. Salt Lake City might even want such a thing. The idea of an objective to this free-floating trip became strangely calming. “Sure,” I whispered finally. “What the hell, I’ll talk with him.”

(to be continued…)

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