T. Boyle - Budding Prospects

Three nights later, after we’d refenced and cleared Jones’s plot (we dubbed it “Jonestown” by way of honoring our unknown predecessor and out of a perverse sense of humor that laughs in the face of its own defeat), we heard the sound of a well-tuned engine straining up the hill. All three of us were outside in the gathering dusk as Dowst’s sky-blue van lurched into the front yard and skidded to a halt. The first thing Dowst said was “Sorry I’m late,” as if he were overdue at a cocktail party. We said nothing. “I had to finish up this article on the walking-stick cholla for The Cactus and Succulent Journal , and I just got buried in my notes.” He shrugged. “Well, listen: I hope you can appreciate my position — I had to deliver on time and there were no two ways about it. I’m sorry.”

He looked like a page out of an L. L. Bean catalogue: fisherman’s sweater, duck hunter’s vest, skeet shooter’s cap. We regarded him with unremitting hatred. He’d been writing articles and we’d been stringing wire.

“So,” he said, clapping his hands and rubbing the palms together as if they were wet, “I see you’ve got the greenhouse up.”

Our heads turned like beads on a string. The greenhouse sat in the corner of the yard like the centerpiece in an exhibition of avant-garde sculpture, its camouflage colors disguising it about as effectively as the brick-oven red of my Toyota. “Yeah,” Gesh said finally, turning to Dowst, “no thanks to you.”

That night we sat around the stove, smoking the pot Dowst had brought Us, examining the Skippy jars full of seeds that would make us our fortune, and listening to Dowst’s assurances that everything was all right and that the few days we’d lost really wouldn’t matter in the long run. The resentment we’d felt when he first stepped from the van had begun to wane, and Phil broke the ice socially by offering him some of the corn chowder he’d been boiling for the past three days. Dowst feigned a grateful smile and said he’d already eaten. I told him he could sleep on the couch, but he said he’d just as soon sleep in the van — which he’d equipped, incidentally, like a pimpmobile, with cherrywood paneling and shag carpet. “Okay,” I said, “have it your way.”

In the morning we found ourselves in the front yard, lined up like refugees and licking egg yolk from the corners of our mouths, while Dowst plied his shovel in an exemplary and instructive way. The air was dank. A crow jeered from the rooftop. We listened to the hiss and scrape of the shovel, the sudden sharp clamor of metal and stone. We watched Dowst’s flailing elbows, his sure foot, we counted the seams in his designer jeans. And then, when he stood back, wiping the sweat from his brow with a red bandanna, we edged forward, silent, curious, awed and disgruntled, to contemplate the model hole.

I was against it. Gesh was for it. Phil wavered. But when we came within sight of Shirelle’s Bum Steer, the bed of the pickup loaded to the gunwales with groceries, twelve-ounce Styrofoam cups, half-gallon bottles of vodka, seam-split sacks of worm castings and steer manure, three rolls of chicken wire and a battery-powered Japanese tape player Gesh had picked up at a yard sale, Phil braked, downshifted and spun the wheel, and we rumbled into the parking lot like Okies on parade, lurching to a halt beneath the sorry bumper-blasted oak that presided over the place in long-suffering martyrdom.

There were three other cars in the lot: two mud-caked Chevy pickups and a Plymouth Duster with bad springs. A dog that looked like a cross between a malamute and a hyena regarded us steadily from the bed of the nearer pickup. “Just one,” Phil said, holding up a finger and draining a can of Coors in a single motion.

“Or two,” Gesh grinned.

“Okay,” I said, gulping down my beer. “But remember what Dowst said.”

“Fuck Dowst.”

“No, really — we can’t be too careful.”

“Loose lips sink ships,” Phil said, swinging out the driver’s door.

“Right on,” Gesh shouted, drumming at my shoulder blades as I heaved open the door and flung myself from the cab.

For a moment we just stood there in the glutinous muck of the parking lot, the hyena-dog’s yellow eyes locked on us, the tavern door as forbidding as the gates of Gehenna. We were feeling guilty. Dowst had laid down the law, ex cathedra — we were to pick up the groceries and supplies and head directly home. No stopping. Not at diners, bars, burger stands — not even at the post office. It was absolutely essential that we keep a low profile, talk to no one, remain anonymous and invisible. You strike up a friendly conversation — with the checkout girl, the man at the Exxon station, the old lady peddling stamps at the post office — and you’re dead. Dowst assured us, with Puritan solemnity, that the locals could spot a dope farmer a mile off.

“Maybe we shouldn’t,” Phil said.

I studied the dog, the scarred tree, the massive weathered windowless slab of redwood that barred the entrance to Shirelle’s inner sanctum. The Duster, listing to the right, sported a bumper sticker that proclaimed: I’M MORAL. It looked like rain. “Yeah, I guess we shouldn’t,” I said.

“Shit,” Gesh said. Nobody moved.

In that instant the decision was taken out of our hands. The door suddenly burst open and a woman emerged, an aluminum beer keg cradled in her arms like the decapitated head of a lover. She was in her early forties, dressed in black spandex pants, a lacy Victorian blouse and a pair of aniline-orange spike heels, with ankle straps. I registered bosom, flank, false eyelashes and a shade of mascara that was meant to coordinate with the shoes. There was a moment of hesitation as she locked eyes with us; then she flashed us a smile, tossed the empty keg down outside the door and invited us in. “Goddamn,” she said, and it was almost a bark, “you guys going to stand out here all afternoon or come on in and join us?”

Inside it was dark as a closet, the windows grimed over, a few feeble yellow bulbs glowing here and there. Two men sat at the bar, hunched over beers; three others slouched at a table in the back, their faces ghoulish in the blue light of the jukebox. All five were wearing straw hats worked into nasty, rapierlike peaks, work shirts, Levi’s and boots. They shared a look compounded of shock, indignation and irascibility in equal portions, as if we were the last thing they expected to encounter in the shadowy depths of Shirelle’s, and the first thing they’d like to stamp the life out of, followed by rattlesnakes, rats and weasels, in that order.

Shirelle ducked behind the bar, wiped her hands on a dirty towel and gave us a pert, expectant look. We were milling around, searching our pockets, shuffling our feet. The jukebox thundered with the strains of hillbilly-trucker music: Don’t let your cowboys grow up to be babies and Tears in my beers, can’t keep a bead up over you. Gesh ordered shots of rye and beer chasers. We sat. Gallon jars of pickled eggs confronted us, a faded souvenir pennant from the Seattle World’s Fair, dusty bottles of Bols créeGme de menthe, Rock & Rye and persimmon liqueur. The bar was smooth as a salt lick with generations of abrasion, the soft sure polish of sleeves and elbows. We threw down our shots like mean hombres and then took economical little sips of beer.

Shirelle leaned back against the cash register and lit a cigarette. “Haven’t seen you guys before,” she said. “Just passing through?”

“No,” I said.

“Yeah,” Gesh said.

“We’re heading over to Covelo,” Phil said, working a country twang into his voice.

“Covelo?” Covelo was the end of the road, a hamlet that gave on to Indian reservation, national forest, mountain. No one but game wardens and liquor salesmen went there.