Annie Proulx - That Old Ace in the Hole

“I suppose I’ll never get it done,” she said with something like pride. “I suppose I’ll die and my son will throw everthing out – essentially the entire history of Woolybucket County and everbody in it.”

“Couldn’t you do it in several volumes?” asked Bob. “Like, get the first volume published that deals with the earliest days and then, later, you know, follow up with the later stuff?”

“No, I could not. My material is filed by family, not by year. It’s alphabetical, not chronological. I sometimes think that was a mistake. But we live with our mistakes.”

“Then couldn’t you do like A to L? I mean, anything, just so you make room. And don’t the people want their letters and pictures back?”

“They may,” she said carelessly. “And they’ll get them back when I’m done. There’s too much new stuff that comes in that has a be added to the families at the beginning a the alphabet.”

“But – ”

“Do not worry about it, Mr. Dollar,” said LaVon. “I’m sure you have your own work that interests you. Every pie got its own piecrust.”

“Well, yeah.” He did not see the trap.

“And just what is your work? What brings you down here in the panhandle, which has so few voluntary visitors?”

“It’s kind of complicated,” he said. “It’s not really work at all.” He noticed two semitransparent plastic sweater boxes on the table near LaVon’s computer. He thought he saw something moving inside the top box.

“Oh? A vacation perhaps in sunny Woolybucket?”

“I’m looking for – ”

“Yes?” She stared.

“I’m, I’m, I’m writing a profile of the panhandle for a magazine. That’s why I’m interested in your Compendium.”

“What magazine is that?”

“Ah. I haven’t got one lined up yet. I thought I’d write the article first and then send it to a magazine. Maybe Oklahoma Today,” said Bob, thinking fast.

“I don’t think so, Mr. Dollar. Strange as it may seem, Oklahoma Today specializes in Oklahoma stories, and they are not even partial a panhandle Oklahoma. And that’s not how you get a article in a magazine. People get assignments. You must think I’m pretty dumb. For your information I was a contributing editor to Drip for seventeen years.” She relieved his puzzlement; “It’s an ag-tech magazine devoted a irrigation.”

“No. No. You’re right. I’m not writing an article. Somebody else is. Was.” He thought frantically. “In fact I’m looking for a – a girlfriend. My mother disappeared in Alaska when I was little, but she always told me to marry a girl from Texas.”

“Oh, did she. How old were you when she gave you this advice?”

“Around seven. Or eight.” He kept looking at the plastic box. There were holes punched all around the top just below the cover.

“That’s a little young for someone a be guidin a child toward marriage. Unless she was Chinese?”

“No.”

“Maybe she came from Texas herself? There are a lot of Asian people on the coast.”

“No. She wasn’t Asian. But she always admired Texas girls. And I admire them too.”

“Maybe we’d better leave it at that, your admiration for Texas girls. By the way, are you employed? I’m just wondering if you’ll be able a handle the rent, low as it is.”

“Well, I am employed. I’m scouting the region for nice pieces of land for, for a luxury home development. Global Properties Deluxe. The company is interested in branching out into the Texas panhandle. They feel there is potential here.”

“If you know how many thousands have surmised that ‘potential.’ But luxury home development is a new one to me. This part a the country is losin people. I’d think they would a sent you down to the hill country outside Austin with all those rich computer folks or around Dallas. Your panhandle millionaire prefers a live in a trailer house and put the money into land and horses. Anyway, how lucky you are, Bob Dollar, to have a good job in a world where so many strive hand to mouth. In that case you probably don’t mind givin me a month’s rent in advance? I got a be protected in case you skip.”

He smiled and said he would write the check on the spot, then added, “Is there something in that plastic container? I thought I saw something move. In the top one?”

“That’s Pinky.” She reached for the box, set it between them and pried up the cover. Bob was horrified to see a tan tarantula with baby pink feet staring up at him. He rose so abruptly his chair tipped over. The spider reared back in alarm.

“She won’t hurt you,” said La Von. “She’s very quiet. I’m surprised you noticed her move. She spends most of her time in her hideout.” She pointed at several pieces of heavy bark propped at the back of the sweater box. “It seems a little dry,” she said, putting her hand in the box and feeling the wood chips and soil. The spider ignored her. She took up a small bottle near the phone and squirted the cage interior with a fine mist, replaced the cover.

“Long as I’m misting,” she said, putting down the bottle and reached for the other box.

“You’ve got two,” said Bob without enthusiasm.

“This one is different,” she said, carefully lifting up one corner of the lid. “This is Tonya. She’s a Togo starburst, an African arboreal. They’re both arboreals, but Pinky comes from Latin America, from the rain forest.” Bob moved closer to get a better look. “Stay back, Bob, this one can jump and she is very aggressive and bites like a flash. The bite can make you feel pretty sick.” He saw the grey spider had a beautiful starburst pattern on its carapace. It was not as large as Pinky. He was relieved when LaVon put the cover back.

“I only had Tonya for a year, but Pinky almost five. She could live to be eight or nine years old. That’s a short life span for a tarantula. Now your Mexican blond can live to be forty. They are long-term pets.”

The sky was the color of cold tea when he went out.

On the bunkhouse porch that evening when it grew too dark to see the words he fetched his flashlight, for he was at the point in the narrative where the lieutenant was looking at drawings by Old Bark’s son (who had earlier danced with “extravagant contortions”), autobiographical drawings in which the son vigorously attacked Pawnees with his lance. The lieutenant was generous, praising the execution and the “considerable feeling” for proportion and general design. Bob felt that if the lieutenant had had Old Bark’s son in a drawing class he would have given him a gold star. But when the famous guide Thomas Fitzpatrick came on the scene, cautioning the lieutenant never to tie mules to bushes, for they twitched the branches, each rustle convincing them that the enemies of mules were creeping near, the flashlight began to dim and falter and after a few minutes he gave up and went early to bed. At that moment, sitting in the deep dusk, the flashlight beam weakening, the course of Bob Dollar’s life shifted, all unknown to him, for he was conscious only of his annoyance at the lack of light and swore to get a camp light or candle the next day.

In 1878 in Manhattan, Kansas, Martin Merton Fronk, twenty-three years of age, the son of a German immigrant watchmaker, sat on Doctor Jick’s leather examination table, coughing and wheezing.

“Well, young man,” said Doc Jick, “what I think is that you are suffering from a concentration of the humid nature of our local atmosphere, which, however fragrant and delightful to the majority of nostrils, affects some few in a deleterious manner. You, I fear, are among that rare number. Your constitution is somewhat weak and renders you unable to enjoy or profit from the lowland airs. I advise you to seek a higher, drier climate where crystalline breezes sweep through the atmosphere with rapidity and frequency. I would suggest to you the high plains of Texas where other sufferers have gone before you and found themselves much improved within a year. Not a few with tuberculosis.”