Michael McGarrity - Nothing But Trouble

“Are you a happily married man, Kerney?”

“Indeed I am.”

Julia giggled. “I’ve heard that line before.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Let me know when you change your mind.”

He watched her walk away, hips swaying in tight jeans, her body toned and trimmed. Or was it that she’d been under a plastic surgeon’s knife, maybe more than once?

Johnny Jordan stood in the front room of his parents’ house, trying to force down the uneasiness that always overcame him when he was about to see his father. Except for the ticking of the ornate mantel clock above the fireplace, not a sound could be heard. On the bookcase that held his father’s prize collection of books by novelists, biographers, and historians of the Old West stood the Cattleman of the Year Award his parents had jointly won some years back.

Johnny had shown up late to the award ceremony, drunk and in the company of a blond, buxom woman he’d picked up after finishing in the money at a California rodeo. He couldn’t remember the blonde’s name or even what she looked like. She’d been just another anonymous buckle bunny, one of the many women who made themselves available to rodeo cowboys after the events were over and the partying began. But he clearly remembered the disgusted look on his father’s face when he’d walked in with his date.

He shook off the memory and pushed his uneasiness aside. Ever since the day he’d left home to become a rodeo cowboy, the old man had never given Johnny anything but grief about the way he lived his life, had never once shown any pride in Johnny’s success and accomplishments. All he got from his father was criticism and some money when he needed it. Except for the games he had to play to get the old man to open his wallet, that suited Johnny just fine.

He stepped into the kitchen, and through the window he saw his mother in the backyard tending the flower beds that bordered a flagstone patio shaded by several large honey locust trees. He watched her for a minute as she carefully pruned a butterfly bush and put the cuttings in a neat pile at her feet. She’d slowed down considerably since Johnny had seen her last, and her face looked tired and drawn.

He rubbed his eyes, stifled a yawn, put on a big smile, opened the back door, and said, “How’s my girl? Need some help?”

Bessie shook her head and removed her gardening gloves. “You wouldn’t know what to do.”

“I’d probably just make a mess of things,” Johnny agreed jovially, surprised that his mother made no attempt to hug him. “Where is he?”

“He left before you arrived to meet up with Walt down at the old Shugart cabin,” Bessie said. “That’s where they’ll be pasturing the cattle for your movie.”

“Why doesn’t he just leave that stuff to Walt?” Johnny asked. “After all, he pays the man good money to manage the ranch.”

“Because he loves doing it,” Bessie said, “and would probably die if he didn’t get up and go to work every day, even if it’s only for a few hours. It’s bad enough that he can’t ride a horse anymore.”

“Is he still not talking to me?”

Slowly, Bessie lowered herself into a patio chair and looked at Johnny with sad eyes.

“What is it this time?” he asked.

“A woman named Brenda called for you here last night, and your father answered the phone. Why did you tell her your father had had a stroke?”

“I never said that. I said he wasn’t getting around all that well. Brenda must have misunderstood. She’s a flake. Half the time I don’t even know what she’s talking about. Don’t worry, I’ll set things right with him.”

“You leave your father alone for now,” Bessie said sharply. “He doesn’t want to see you.”

“All because of what some woman who doesn’t know what she’s talking about said? That’s ridiculous.”

“Do you really want your father dead?” Bessie asked.

Johnny knelt down and patted his mother’s knee. “Come on, you know better than that.”

Bessie pushed his hand away. “You never mean any of your little lies, and you always try to sweet-talk your way out of them. Until you show your father the respect he deserves, I’m not going to stand up to him on your behalf anymore.”

She rose, reclaimed her gloves, and began snipping angrily at the butterfly bush with the pruning shears.

Johnny stared at his mother’s back. She’d been his strongest ally in the family, the person he relied on to mend the broken fences between him and the old man. He wondered what he could do to fix things with her.

It had saddened Bessie that her children had produced no offspring, although she rarely spoke of it. Would it help to tell her that she had a granddaughter? A girl that Johnny had fathered ten years ago? He decided truth telling would only backfire and get him deeper in trouble. He had no pictures of the girl, hadn’t seen her in years, didn’t even know where she lived.

He watched as his mother pruned the shrub, the twigs of the butterfly bush falling haphazardly around her feet. Figuring out a way to placate her would have to wait. Right now, there was Brenda to deal with. He needed to sweet-talk his way back into Brenda’s good graces. He wasn’t about to head back to Denver when the weekend was over without a place to stay.

As he left the backyard, he dialed Brenda’s number on his cell phone. Maybe if he told her his father had Alzheimer’s, that would do the trick.

After lunch the team drove in a convoy on a ranch road that wound toward the mountains in the direction of the Shugart cabin, where, according to the location schedule, filming of the roundup and cattle drive would take place. Julia, who had invited herself along, positioned herself between Kerney and Susan Berman in the backseat of their vehicle. During the drive she kept her leg pressed against Kerney’s while ignoring him and making small talk with Berman.

Over the course of the morning there had not been a lot for Kerney to do, other than watch Usher and his people in action. Johnny, who was riding in the lead car, had made himself scarce after leaving Joe and Bessie’s house, walking back and forth in front of the barn, energetically talking to someone on his cell phone.

After a bumpy thirty-minute drive the caravan arrived at the Shugart cabin, which turned out to be a partially collapsed line shanty marked by two old cottonwood trees that had died from lack of water. Behind the cabin stood a windmill missing half a dozen blades. Sagging chicken wire hung on listing fence posts enclosed the site.

About a quarter mile west, in a holding pasture of untrammeled grassland intermixed with clumps of blue-green sage, a small group of men were building a corral out of railroad ties, wire, and large poles. They were using a backhoe with a front-end bucket to dig the post holes and set the heavy crossrails.

The pasture rose to meet a rocky, vertical cliff face in the mountains that was broken by a sheer, narrow gap. Here and there on a jumble of outcroppings, an occasional juniper had gained a foothold, showing up dark green against gray stone etched with thin, pale-pink fissures.

Usher assembled his crew in front of the cabin and immediately got down to business. Johnny, who now seemed fully reengaged in the process, eagerly joined into the discussion of how best to film the opening sequence of the cattle roundup.

Kerney left the group and walked across the pasture toward the men who were building the corral. He was halfway there when Julia caught up to him, obviously unfazed by his earlier rejection. Kerney wasn’t sure what to expect from her. Would she be congenial or continue her seductive ways?

The day had heated up, and a fierce afternoon sun washed away the color of the grassland that waved gently in an intermittent breeze. High overhead a prairie falcon glided toward an inaccessible cliff shelf in the mountains, where some blackbirds set up an outcry and scattered into the sky.