Don Winslow - Way Down on the High Lonely

She liked her body, too. She was tall-even taller now, in her cowboy boots-with long legs made taut and muscular by a lifetime spent hiking in these mountains. And if her hips were a little wider than you’d see on a Paris runway, she didn’t want to be seen on one anyway. Her jeans fit her real nice, thank you, and the white western shirt she was wearing had to stretch over breasts to tuck in over a tummy that owed her, dammit, for all the sit-ups. It was a good body, Karen thought. Good for backpacking, good for dancing, good for whatever the dancing led to, good for having babies. Except she hadn’t met a guy who wanted to settle in long enough to have a baby with her.

“I just don’t want to get involved with another ‘I have to be free like the wind, darling,’ ‘Love me, love my dog,’ guitar-strumming, moon-howling, living-in-his-car-and-my-kitchen cowboy mountain man who’s going to make me fall in love with him and then leave for California to ‘find himself,’” Karen said.

“You can screw him without falling in love with him.”

“He is cute.”

Peggy Mills took a brush to her hair. “He reads books,” she said.

Well, that is interesting, Karen thought. She had been teaching third grade in Austin for five years now and had heard more than one parent tell her that his son didn’t need to know how to read in order to rope a calf or dig gold. That was, of course, when she could even get a parent to come to one of the conferences. A lot of the parents were great, but there were also a lot she had never seen, not even once, not even for the Christmas pageant, when half of central Nevada came to town to see their kids dressed up as reindeer or the Virgin Mary or something. And while most of the kids in her school were happy, healthy, well-scrubbed kids, there were also a sad number who were dirty, malnourished, and just plain sad looking, and there were those kids who had bruises they didn’t get playing kickball at recess. And when one of her boys had shown up with actual burns on him, it was Karen Hawley who had driven up to their remote shack, woke his daddy up from his alcoholic stupor, stuck a shotgun into his crotch, and explained precisely what would happen if Junior didn’t stop “falling against the wood stove.” Word on The High Lonely was that you didn’t mess around with Karen or with anyone Karen put her arms around, and she definitely had her arms around the kids in that school.

“What kind of books?” Karen asked. “Remember Charlie? He read books. They were mostly about Swedish stewardesses.”

“Neal was working on his master’s degree in English.”

“Another hard-core unemployable.”

“You’re a hard woman, Hawley.”

“I’m a marshmallow.”

“Too true.”

“If he asks me, I’ll dance with him, okay?”

“You’re glued to that chair like you’re paying rent on it,” Steve Mills was saying to Neal Carey.

Neal was drinking beer straight out of the bottle, munching on peanuts, and feeling about as comfortable as a eunuch at an orgy.

Neal Carey had been in some bars in his life, early and often. He had been in Irish pubs in New York on Saturday nights when both the booze and the blood had flowed, when on- and off-duty cops laid their revolvers on the bar while they knocked back double shots, when the band had led the crowd in cheerful sing-alongs about martyred heroes and killing Englishmen. None of it had prepared him for Phil and Margie’s Country Cabaret.

First of all, there was the location. Austin, Nevada, could have been built by a Robert Altman set crew. Its broad main street was mostly mud, flanked by wide wooden sidewalks. Phil and Margie’s was a large, low, ramshackle building with a classic western facade, heavy screens over the small windows, and swinging doors, and if Gary Cooper had come through, Neal wouldn’t have been at all surprised.

They hadn’t arrived until after nine, and by that time the crowd had a good start on the drinking, smoking, and dancing, so the air in the place was a rich mixture of second-hand alcohol, smoke, and sweat with a heavy overlay of perfume, cologne, and failing deodorant. The delicate scent of grilled hamburgers and deep-fat french fries wafted from a grill in the back. The ceilings were low, the room was dark, and Neal knew that if any of his white-wine-sipping, vegetarian, rabidly antismoking Columbia friends could be condemned to a Saturday night in hell, this would be it.

The noise was literally earthshaking as about fifty pairs of cowboy boots, miner’s boots, and hiking boots pounded on the sagging floor to the beat of the Nevada two-step and the bar glasses rattled and the walls trembled. What conversation there was got shouted at full voice and close range and wasn’t really given to serious dialogue about deconstructionism in literary analysis or pithy interplay about what James Joyce may or may not have said to Ezra Pound.

They had elbowed their way to a table in the back, Steve exchanging back slaps and Peggy swapping hugs with just about every person in the place. Peggy insisted on making the first trip to the bar and returned with four beers and Karen Hawley.

Peggy made the introductions, Karen and Neal shook hands, she sat down in the chair next to him, smiled, and Neal found that he had a sudden fascination with the band.

Not that the band wasn’t fascinating. To Neal, country music had meant anything sung or strummed in New Jersey or Connecticut. So he wasn’t ready for New Red and the Mountain Men. New Red was the lead singer and rhythm guitar player. He was a young guy with sandy hair and a beard. He wore a Caterpillar gimme cap, plaid shirt, black logger pants, and tennis shoes. He had a face as friendly as an old pair of socks. The drummer was a woman with waist-length blond hair, a black cowboy hat, black western shirt with red roses on the chest, tight black jeans, and black cowboy boots. Neal sensed a sartorial theme and wasn’t surprised to find out from Steve that her name was Sharon Black, aka “Blackie.” She was a good drummer, anyway. The bass player was a big guy with curly brown hair falling to his shoulders and a bushy beard, bib overalls over a denim shirt, and cowboy boots he probably hadn’t seen for a while. The violinist (“That’s a fiddle player, Neal”) was a woman in her indistinct forties who looked like the kind who had about twenty cats at home and wind chimes. She wore a flower print blouse, painter’s pants, and sandals, and her hair was a wild quarrel between the colors gold and gray.

Whatever they looked like, they could play. Over the din of the pounding crowd Neal heard music as sharp and clear as the creek that rippled down by his cabin, each note distinct but blended into one stream. And just about as effortless. Neal watched the guitarists’ fingers sliding over the strings, pressing down strong and precise chords, or flying over the frets to pluck individual notes. He watched Blackie’s hands flash patterns with the sticks on the drumheads, her hips bobbing as she stepped on the bass pedal. He watched Cat Lady nestle the… fiddle… into her cheek as if it were a baby, but stroke the strings as fast and hard as if she were trying to start a fire. He watched it all the harder as he felt Peggy watching him and Karen trying not to.

He was doing all right until Steve, the dirty turncoat, stretched out his hand to his wife to fight their way out onto the dance floor.

Which is a lot worse than you leaving me in the back of a bouncing pickup with that calf, Neal thought.

Then he realized he hadn’t really talked with a woman for years, except for Peggy and Shelly Mills, which didn’t count.

“Where are you from?” Karen shouted.

Well, I’ve been living in a Buddhist monastery for the past three years, and on a Yorkshire moor the year before that… “New York,” he shouted back.