One of the big-titted barmaids walked down in front of them smiling. Riley lost his melancholy look as he stared at the tits before him.
The girl looked at Riley. He pushed a ten dollar bill in front of the girl and spoke, “Ten bucks and let me see your tits.”
The girl didn’t stop smiling, but leaned forward and whispered, “See that man at the end of the bar?”
“Yes,” Riley answered, “the big guy with the nose that looks like it caught too many fists?”
“That is my husband,” the girl answered.
Riley smiled, “Ten dollars to keep your mouth shut.”
The girl laughed and slipped the ten dollars in her cleavage.
Ronnie chuckled, “This isn’t your freshman photography class here.”
Riley shivered, “Give me that wrapper, I need another toot.”
Frank Cummings felt the four horses moving in the trailer. He scratched his balding head and sipped on the Coors beer. In the back of the truck was all the gear, tents, packsaddles, fishing poles. Every year, he brought the pack gear and the four horses. Of all the men, he still lived in the mountains. He had become a guide and outfitter, hanging on to his dream of freedom. Somehow, he had managed to stay alive during the lean years. By growing a few pot plants, he always seemed to make it. While the others were getting their ladies pregnant, he was like Riley.
“No sir, not me,” he swore. And he went down and had the knots put in. It wasn’t that he didn’t like kids, he just figured that if the world was as fucked up as it was, why have more people to make it more fucked up?
“After the war is when we’ll need more kids,” he told everybody, “but not mine. I’d hate for people to walk around with my brain.”
During the year he never went to see Bill in Albuquerque, even though he was only a hundred miles away. Frank was the kind of guy who loved his friends dearly, but after a week, people made him nervous. He would have to run back to his cabin and sit alone and relax. There were periods in his life when he could only sleep with a gun by the bed, one behind the door, one in each drawer he might open, and one in his back pocket. To most people, Frank was distant, quiet, not easy to understand or get to know. Handsome in a cowboy way, he was a loner, a man who sat and watched the world from his hermit hideaway. To Frank, life boiled down to his favorite phrase, cocksuckers; everything, everybody, at one time or another, was a cocksucker. Horses were cocksuckers, trees, chainsaws, trucks, doors, radios, presidents, kings, mailmen, tax men, and people in general. Frank finished the warm beer in his hand and parked the truck across the street from the Wagon Wheel. He could see the reflections of his three friends behind the Miller sign. He took some hay from the truck, fed the horses, and walked toward the bar.
Entering the bar, he looked at the backs of the heads of his companions. The various people in the bar were all involved in some overly loud conversation about something the government was doing to fuck it all up.
Frank walked up behind Bill, Riley and Ronnie and hollered, “Cocksuckers.” The three men jerked around, relief flooding their faces.
“Jesus Christ,” Ronnie blurted out, “we were getting worried.”
“Won’t be me the first to die,” Frank laughed, “only the good die young.”
The four men sat and were silent for a moment. Frank got his beer and looked at the others. He stood.
“A toast to ex-hippies and dreamers and outlaws at large.” He raised his voice and looked at the other men in the bar and hollered, “Fuck the communist cocksuckers.” The various people responded with grunts and scowls.
At mignight they decided it was time to go. Bill left the bar first. Outside, the stars seemed as though they could be touched. Bill stood and saw the Narrow Gauge train resting silently with the night. Bill saw what looked like the engineer climb down from the engine. For a moment, it was as though the man with the bib overalls and the train silhouetted behind him were pulled out of place and made one entity. The train seemed to twist and turn until the headlight was following the old man and it watched him until he walked into a small house by the tracks. Bill looked at the train and the space where the man had been. He began to wave his arms and make strange noises. When the others came out of the bar, he was standing there looking crazed.
They looked at him. “What is it? What is it?” Ronnie asked.
Bill shook his hands and looked at the stars. “I know what it is,” he hollered, “I know what it all is.”
“What is it?” Frank asked.
Bill put this hands down and lowered his voice, “There’s not enough outlaws left; do you understand, there’s not enough outlaws left.”
Bill turned and looked at the train, then turned and looked at his friends once again. For a moment, he was lonely; for his friends, for the train, for the old man. He didn’t know exactly why, but he was lonely.
Leaving two vehicles parked by the bar, Frank and Ronnie unloaded Ronnie’s gear and got into Frank’s truck. Bill and Riley got into the other. Pulling the horse trailers behind, they started off in the dark, headlights reflecting off the trees and barbed wire fences that bordered the highway. Frank stared into the dark. It seemed so distant — the trees, the dark — so solid and impersonal, uncaring, filled with eons of time. And he was with it all, so small and tiny and vulnerable. They drove into the mountains, and stopped at the trail head to sleep. Around them the crickets chirped and the mountains waited.
CHAPTER 3
Matthew Crane rose before the alarm went off. He walked through the hall to the kitchen, lit the gas stove, and placed the already prepared coffee pot on the burner. Outside, it was still pitch black; but, within an hour, the sun would touch the trees by the river, turning their dark forms crimson.
He walked to the bathroom and washed his face. It was not a bad face for seventy-two years, what you could see of it. All one could really make out were the piercing, captivating blue eyes that looked out upon the world from a circle of white curly hair and an out-of-control white beard. People called him Santa when he wasn’t around. He washed his face, put his teeth from the jar by the sink in his mouth, and thanked God for another day. Back in the bedroom, he pulled on his grey-blue striped bib overalls and set the matching engineer’s cap on his head. Walking back to the kitchen, he sat down, rolled a Bull Durham cigarette, and drank his coffee.
The sun began to turn the horizon red, and the chorus of morning dogs started across town. Matthew stood and began to move his large frame toward the door. Outside, the morning was chilly but comfortable. Matthew walked slowly, dragging his oil-stained boots. At the restaurant across the street, Grace would have his lunch ready. His life beat the hell out of sitting in the old folk’s home back in Albuquerque. Matthew had a lot to be thankful for, and he treated people around him in that manner. He was friendly, helpful, and quiet in an old man sort of way.
Two years earlier, it had been another day at the home for Matthew. Another boring, starched, and clean antiseptic day. He had eaten his gruel, swallowed his toast, taken his pill, and drunk his juice, just like the young nurse with the nice round ass had told him to. He had then walked like the prisoner he was to the sun room and started to read the paper. It was the same very day except the days he didn’t eat his gruel, or take his pill, or pinch the nurse’s ass. It was the same until he saw the want ads:
“Wanted. Man with experience with narrow gauge steam engines.”
An address was given with a time, “Apply in person.” Matthew cut the ad out of the paper