Tom Robbins - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Miss Adrian didn't know what to tell them. “You'll just have to discuss it with the Countess,” she said. She had a poison headache.

“Come along, Miss Hankshaw,” she uttered through the pain. “I'll show you to your room, and see that you get something to eat — if there is anything to eat besides brown rice and bean sprouts.”

The camermen stared at the pair of thumbs that came swinging around from the opposite side of the Cadillac: pillows of sugar, clouds of meat, filling the lenses of their camera eyes.

One of the men wiped his brow. “Come back, Walt, all is forgiven,” he moaned.

The Rubber Rose. Disney's was never like this.

42.

FOR THE NEXT FEW DAYS, the ranch stood on one leg (more in imitation of flamingo anxiety than of what the poet García Lorca called “the ecstasy of cranes"). The ranch wasn't going to set its other foot down until the Countess came.

Meanwhile, the cowgirls dug a lime pit in which to bury the snuffed cattle. After it was dug, they had to fill it up again. That's the way it is with holes; they're insatiable. The hands worked from early morning until sundown. They took their meals from the chuck wagon, and when supper was done, rode to the bunkhouse and bombed directly into bed. From her window, Sissy watched them come and go, heard their weary laughter and observed the dimples in their skintight Levis opening and closing like the mouths of tropical fish.

Taking advantage of the hands' absence, Miss Adrian sought to reestablish her control over the health-and-beauty program. No longer did ladies grunt in carbohydrate confusion, trying to squeeze a “fiery serpent” up their spines.

Sissy was given a tour of the facilities, most of which were in a wing of the main house: the sauna and the buildings that housed steam baths and the mysteries of “sexual reconditioning” were separate, a few yards away. Miss Adrian invited Sissy to use the pool and the sauna whenever she wished, but the manager was busy putting things straight and had little time for the thumby model from New York.

The cinematographers spoke with her the first morning, as they picked up additional provisions for the blinds, which, due to the presumed approach of Crane Hour, they dared not leave again. They offered to show her the pond and the blinds, but repeated what they'd said earlier about having to film her separately. “No whooping crane is gonna let you get that close to it,” they said. “Hell, whoopers don't even like other birds around.” The cameramen weren't entirely sure there was going to be any filming. Nobody would know anything until the Countess arrived.

So the ranch stood on one leg and waited.

And all the while, this clumsy balancing act was being nonchalantly scrutinized — leisurely leered upon, some might say — by a short man with a long white beard, a sure-footed man whose periodic appearances along the eroded poop decks and wind-carved turrets of Siwash Ridge had such an air of the occult, the supernatural, that he may excite the imaginations of many an eager mind, while others may find him merely disconcerting and shake their heads suspiciously.

But now, as we observe events at the ranch, and observe, further, the old gentleman who observed them, now is not the time for either reckless excitement or cynical scoffing. We must regard this business coolly, objectively, with a philosophy of operative wholeness. We must suspend, temporarily, a critical or analytical approach. Let us, rather, gather facts, all the facts, regardless of aesthetic appeal or theoretical social worth, and spread those facts before us not as the soothsayer spreads the innards of a turkey but as a newspaper spreads its columns. Let us be as journalists, then. And like all good journalists, we shall present our facts in an order that will satisfy the famous five W 's: wow, whoopee, wahoo, why-not and whew.

43.

ON THE FIFTH MORNING, as the Indian summer sun popped up from behind the hills like a hyperthyroid Boy Scout, burning to do good deeds, Sissy was awakened by the tinkle of breakfast trays. She yawned and stretched and held her thumbs up in the sunlight to make sure there had been no overnight change. Then she propped herself up on pillows — she felt rested but uneasy — and awaited the knock at her door.

Breakfast in bed was a tradition Miss Adrian had installed at the Rubber Rose. It seemed like a nice idea to Sissy until she lifted the cloth cover from her first tray and encountered decaffeinated coffee with saccharine, fresh grapefruit without sugar and a piece of Melba toast: the guests were on a strict 900-calories-a-day regime. At least they were when Debbie was not running the kitchen. Sissy had had more luxurious breakfasts in jail.

The morning maid, who doubled as a bath therapist, delivered her tray this fifth day and stood by, as if to take sadistic amusement in watching Sissy unveil a meal that would piss off the taste buds of a saint. But when our Sis removed the cover, she discovered (in addition to a vase of prairie asters) a double-meat cheeseburger, a package of Hostess Twinkies, a cold can of Dr. Pepper and a Three Musketeers bar; in short, just the sort of repast she might have procured for herself had she been on the road.

A dragon who'd been served Princess Anne on a platter could not have grinned with more gastronomical satisfaction.

“Compliments of Bonanza Jellybean,” said the maid. “She'll be up to see you directly.”

Sure enough, about the time Sissy clinked the last droplet of the Doctor's peppy nectar out of the can and dabbed a final trace of chocolate from her lips, there was a fist against her door and in sailed the tresses, teeth and titties of a cowgirl so cute she made Sissy blush just to look at her. She wore a tan Stetson with as aster pinned to it, a green satin shirt embroidered with rearing stallions snorting orange fire from their nostrils, a neckerchief, a leather vest as white as a corpse, of the same cadaverous leather a skirt so short that if her thighs had been a clock the skirt would have been five minutes to midnight, and a pair of handtooled Tony Lama boots, the toes of which you could pick your teeth with. There were silver spurs fastened to her boots, and encircling her trim waist, just above the slightly bulging baby fat of her belly, a wide, turquoise-studded belt, from which dangled a holster and the holster's inhabitant, a genuine six-shooter with a long nose like bad news from the clinic. She flashed honey thighs when she walked, her breasts bounced like dinner rolls that had gotten loaded on helium and, between red-tinged cheeks, where more baby fat was taking its time maturing, she had a little smile that could cause minerals and plastics to remember their ancient animate connections.

She grasped Sissy's elbow (not daring to get too close to the thumb) and sat on the side of the bed. “Welcome, podner,” she said. “By God, it's great to have you here. It's an honor. Sorry I took so long getting to you, but we've had a mess of hard work these past few days — and a heap of planning to do.” When she pronounced the word “planning,” her voice assumed a conspiratorial, almost ominous, tone.

“Er, you seem to know who I am,” said Sissy, “and maybe even what I am. Thanks for the breakfast.”

“Oh, I know about Sissy Hankshaw, all right,” said Jelly. “I've done a little hitchhiking myself. Ah shucks, that's like telling Annie Oakley you're a sharpshooter because you once knocked a tomato can off a stump with a fieldstone. I haven't done a lick of serious hitching. But starting when I was about eleven, I used to run away from home every couple of months and try to find a place where I could be a cowgirl. Somebody always sent me back to Kansas City, though. No ranch ever let me stay and some of 'em had me locked up. Lot of times the law picked me up before I could get outta Kansas. But I got around enough to hear about you . First time was in Wyoming. Some deputy says to me, 'Who do you think you are — Sissy Hankshaw?' I says, 'No, you dumb fuck, I'm Margaret Meade,' and he whipped me good, but not before he'd aroused my curiosity about this Sissy Hankshaw person. Later, I'd hear tales about you from people I'd meet in jail cells and truckstops. I heard about your, uh, your, ah, your wonderful thumbs, and I heard how you were Jack Kerouac's girl friend. .”