Jan Burke - Liar

“Oh, honey,” she said, shaking her head sadly, “the fellow that made that passed on a couple of years ago. I’ve never seen another like it myself. He made it for me because I live out here near the track.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said, without the least bit of insincerity. “But you have something very unique to remember him by, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes, I do,” she said wistfully.

“I’m Travis Maguire,” he said, then gestured toward me. “And that’s my cousin, Irene.”

“Trudy Flauson,” she said.

He cocked his head to one side and said, “I’ll bet some school kids used to call you Mrs. Flauson.”

She laughed. “Yes-only it’s Miss Flauson. But I am a retired schoolteacher. How you guessed, I’ll never know.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, apparently becoming bashful, “maybe you just reminded me of one of my favorite teachers. Well, I’m sorry if we disturbed you, ma’am, but I made Irene stop the car when I saw this yard. I just love whirligigs, and here you have half a dozen of them. We were all turned around anyway, so I said, ”Look at that pretty little yard, Irene. I want a closer look at that trotter.“ And she said people in California might not like folks snooping around their yards, and were as like to shoot you as look at you, but I’m not from around here, so I said, ”This house is flying an American flag, and the yard so pretty, I’ll take my chances that the owner knows varmints from honest folks. What’s it going to hurt to stop for a minute?“”

In a lower voice, he said, “Can’t blame her for being distrustful. Husband beats her.”

She gave me a pitying look. I was going to strangle him.

“My mama asked me to come out here to try to get her to leave him. I’m also supposed to look up a third cousin of ours living here in Los Alamitos.” He slaughtered the Spanish, making it sound closer to “Last Tomatoes.”

“Los Alamitos,” she corrected. “It means ‘little cottonwood trees.”“

He looked all around. “Cottonwoods? Where?”

“There used to be lots of them,” Miss Flauson said, laughing.

He laughed, too, then suddenly stopped, wincing and holding his hand. He looked up, smiling bravely. “I guess we should get back to business. Thanks for letting me see your whirligigs.”

“Honey, is that hand bothering you?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Don’t let him tell you that!” I called. “Wilbur was going to hit me with a hot iron and Travis stopped him by grabbing it bare-handed.”

Her eyes widened, and Travis turned bright red.

“Now, Irene, hush!” he said. “Ma’am, you don’t need to hear all our troubles. And I didn’t do anything anybody else wouldn’t have done.”

She winked at me, as if to say she knew a humble hero when she saw one.

“Well,” he said, “we’d better try to find our way over to Cousin Gerald’s place. He’ll wonder why we never showed up.”

“Gerald!” she said, scowling. “Gerald whom?”

“Spanning?” he said meekly.

“You mean to say you’re looking for Gerald Spanning?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Travis said.

“Which one?”

We looked blankly at one another.

“Junior or Senior?” she asked.

“Junior?” Travis said, looking at me with unfeigned surprise.

I stepped into the batter’s box and called out, “I told you, Travis, that ever since Cousin Dolores passed on, nobody has been able to keep track of all the births in the family. Sorry, Miss Flauson, we didn’t know we had a fourth cousin.”

“Well, you may wish you never did learn about it. This one is no blood relations of yours, she’s his wife. That’s just what we call her around here. Her real name is Geraldine, and she’s old Gerald’s wife. So we call them Gerald Junior and Gerald Senior. Just nicknames.”

“Oh” was all either one of us could manage.

“I have nothing to say against Gerald Senior,” she went on. “He is one of the hardest-working men I ever hope to meet on this side of heaven. Drinks a little, but not more than most fellows around here. That’s how he met her-she’s a cocktail waitress. Mostly they keep to themselves, but Gerald Senior’s always willing to lend a hand to a neighbor if need be. But that wife of his is another story.” She paused, then said, “Well, I won’t carry tales about your family. You’ll see for yourself, I’m sure.”

“They been married long?” Travis asked.

“No, not so long. Four or five years, perhaps.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Travis said. “It would have been awful if we’d acted too surprised when we met her. Uh-I don’t suppose I could ask you to point us in the right direction to my cousin’s place?”

She was happy to oblige, describing not only the route, but the trailer itself. “I think I may have seen Gerald going to work this morning, but maybe he’s back by now.”

We thanked her profusely, and she waved to us as we drove off down the lane.

Once we were out of sight, Travis started laughing. “God, you are a sorry liar!”

“Me?”

“Wilbur? Caught a hot iron bare-handed? Puh-leese. And we already told her neighbor that I cut my hand. They might talk to one another.”

“Oh, yeah? What about the fact that the guy with the cut hand has a sister that lives here? And doesn’t have a rodeo accent?”

He grinned and shrugged. “We’ll have to be more careful.”

“No kidding. By the way-how did you know she was a teacher?”

“She had a small teacher’s union sticker on the rear bumper of her car.

I congratulated him, then said, “Going back to the subject of being more careful-how many people know you’re already in possession of your father’s money?”

“Very few. My parents knew, of course. My father’s lawyer, and Ulkins. And now you. That’s it.”

“You’re sure?”

He nodded. “My father didn’t trust many people.”

We spotted the mobile home Miss Flauson had described to us: a large white double-wide with flower boxes full of red geraniums bordering the carport, which was empty.

“Doesn’t look like they’re home,” Travis said.

“We’ve come this far; let’s at least knock on the door.”

There was a small, shady patio on the opposite side of the structure, under which sat two lawn chairs and a small, low table. There were no whirligigs on the Spanning lot, but there were wind chimes hanging from the carport awning.

The area around the trailer was neat and clean, uncluttered. We climbed the steps on the carport side and rang the bell.

The door opened, and as I first looked in through the screen, I thought we were being greeted by a young man. The reddish-blond hair of the person standing before us was shaved in a ‘50s-style flattop; a half-smoked Lucky Strike dangled from one corner of her hard mouth. She was either part armadillo or had spent too much time in the sun- I figured it to be a fifty-fifty bet either way. She wore absolutely no makeup; her eyes, squinting from the smoke, were small and dark beneath black brows that nearly met over her sharp nose. She was thin, wearing a man’s sleeveless undershirt, a wide leather belt, blue jeans and leather work boots. There was a tattoo of a scowling pirate waving a sword near her collarbone on her right shoulder, the words “Pirate’s Dream” scrolled above it. If the tattoo was a self-mocking joke, it referred to the old schoolboy’s taunt to flat-chested girls: a pirate’s dream was a girl with a “sunken chest.” The appellation fit. Even with her arms crossed as they were now, she had the door, but absolutely no knockers. “What the fuck do you want?” she said by way of greeting.