Loser's Town Read online

The tragedy was, that was why Spandau loved her. Because she was so much unlike him.

  Spandau understood that he had wanted Dee to make him a better person. He hoped that he would become more like her. Instead, he had remained the same. As much as they had loved each other, as much as they still loved each other, she had not changed him. He was incapable of change and that was why she was gone, and why he was so good at the profession of betrayal.

  They were married for five years. She was a teacher. She taught second grade at a school in the Valley. There were moments, days even, of enormous happiness. Happiness that for Spandau brought a guilt with it, a sense that it was too good to be true, that it was (at least for him) unearned.

  The marriage was never bad, though sometimes hard.

  At the beginning of the fourth year Beau had died. A heart attack at seventy. Beau McCauley was as healthy as one of the horses he’d wrangled all his life. He was the sort of man who was supposed to live forever. A character bigger than life, for whom the normal rules of mortality could not apply. His death opened a great hole in all their lives.

  It was hardest on Dee, Beau’s little girl. Her brothers came for the funeral but could not remain. They were far-flung, one living in France and the other in New York, both with families of their own. Beau’s wife Mary, a tough old bird, was left to honcho the ranch in Ojai with the help of a Mexican family who’d been with them for years. Dee had practically lived out there the last couple of summers, helping with the stock, the intricacies of ranch bookkeeping, and just keeping Mary company. Spandau came out when he could.

  It was no surprise when she told him she wanted to move back to the ranch full time. They lived apart for a year without divorcing, then she said she thought it best to make it official. Spandau wondered about another man but no one appeared, at least not until now.

  Maybe Dee wanted to release Spandau to chase other women. It was only after the divorce papers were signed, within the last year in fact, that Spandau could look at anyone else. Even now it was awkward. He didn’t expect to find another Dee.

  He didn’t, in fact, expect to find anyone at all and he preferred it that way. The divorce papers were signed and when it was clear she wasn’t coming back, Spandau bought her half of the house. There was nothing else they owned. She took the Toyota 4-Runner. Spandau kept the Apache and most of the furniture.

  Spandau took the groceries into the kitchen and sat the bag on the table and put them away. It wasn’t quite two o’clock. He made a sandwich and ate it quickly, bachelor-style, over the sink. He went into his office to check his messages.

  The second bedroom was to have been a baby’s nursery. Now it was what Dee called ‘the Gene Autry Room’. It started out simply as an office where Spandau did his accounts and wrote his reports for Coren. Gradually it became a depository for memorabilia, mementos and photos of movies he’d worked on and rodeos he’d competed in. The occasional trophy from some dinky local rodeo – usually for roping, since Spandau stayed on a horse, as Beau told him once, like his ass was coated with Teflon.

  When Dee moved out, the never so latent cowboy in him took over completely. Navaho rugs, Native American totems, Mexican blankets draped over an old sofa and a saddle-leather chair, his favorite spot. His collection of books on Western Americana in a glass bookcase. Some antique guns hanging on pegs on one wall. A large poster of Sitting Bull on the wall behind his wooden desk chair, the desk itself an old roll-top that needed three men to wedge it into the room.

  It was a museum to a time long gone, as the few friends invited quickly pointed out. The only concessions to the twentieth century – which, like Evelyn Waugh, Spandau believed to be a huge mistake – were the answering machine and the laptop computer, tucked away in a corner out of eyeshot. Spandau was more at home here than anywhere in the world. He whiled away many a long and lonely night in his easy chair, smoking a pipe, sipping Wild Turkey and reading books on the American West.

  There were no surprises on the answering machine. Pookie reminded him, in that Marilyn Monroe voice she affected over the phone, that Coren wanted his mileage sheets. A friend from Utah, a genuine cowboy, drunk and bored, called to say he was coming to LA soon and wanted to know if Spandau knew any available starlets.

  Dee had called. She wanted to know if Spandau was still coming out to the ranch that afternoon. Spandau replayed her voice several times, coasting the familiar drop and rise of his heart.

  He pulled off the Armani and dressed quickly in jeans, a work shirt and an old pair of boots. It was like shedding a false skin in exchange for his true one. He felt his life become lighter. He opened the garage and after a few attempts cranked up the Apache. It hadn’t been driven in weeks. He backed it out and shut the garage. He sat in the truck in the driveway, relishing the feel of it. He’d restored the truck to its original state, right down to the baby-blue and white paint job and the functioning AM radio. With three speeds and six cylinders, it wasn’t a hellcat on the road, and drove like what it was, a work truck. On the bench seat next to him were a banged-up straw Stetson and a baseball cap advertising the Red Pecker Bar & Grill. He put on the baseball cap.

  He was home.

  The McCauley ranch was seven miles outside of Ojai, reached by a twisty and dusty road that dodged between the hills. Beau McCauley had purchased the fifty acres of mostly hilly land forty years before, not long after his marriage to Mary and his start as one of the best stuntmen in the business. Beau never trusted movie money and felt that raising quarter horses was a safer bet. Horses were the stupidest animals God ever put on this planet, but he still preferred them to most people. Beau and Mary both had good heads for business, and soon they owned the land outright. Beau continued to be in demand as a stunt coordinator, forming his own company, and the ranch did well for itself. When Beau died, Mary decided to continue running the ranch. She didn’t have to. She could easily have sold off most of the land and lived well without working. But that wasn’t Mary. She still raised horses but was pushing seventy herself and had slowed down a little. She ran the ranch with a Mexican named Carlos and his wife and son. The son was twenty and drank on weekends but was still a good hand.

  Spandau loved the ranch, and if he had a home this was it. He approached the ranch driving up a hill, and over the crest the ranch lay spread out on a piece of flat land below. A gravel road hugged the side of the hills weaving its way down. There was a creek that ran through the property and the white two-story frame house sat in a green oasis in the middle of the usually brown landscape. There were the outbuildings and the barn and the stables and the corrals and the small house where Carlos lived. A few horses wandered in the pasture. There were not many. Just enough, as Mary said, to still call it a working ranch. The sale of the horses in fact barely covered Carlos’ salary. But a ranch without horses was a dead thing, just a pointless hunk of land, as Mary pointed out, and as long as the ranch was alive there was some large part of Beau still alive with it.

  Spandau wondered what would happen to the ranch when Mary died. Dee loved the place but loved teaching more and had no inclination to run a ranch. The brothers had been happy to get off the place and were now citified with no desire to return. The land was worth about ten times what Beau had paid for it, and there was pressure to sell. A decade after Mary was gone the place would be a suburb, full of tacky-box houses, cable television towers and other remnants of the American Dream. One more part of Spandau would be gone as well. It didn’t pay to love something you didn’t own, that wasn’t yours. He ended up loving this place in spite of his common sense.

  Carlos was giving his son hell about something as Spandau pulled up in back of the house. The son stood with his head hanging down as Carlos wagged his finger at him. Carlos looked up long enough to smile at Spandau and raise his hand in greeting, then went back to his son. The son glanced up at Spandau, looked sullen but said nothing. Now Spandau could see that the boy had a black eye. The boy hung his head again, letting it all pass over him, not really
listening to a word. The boy had always seemed to dislike just about everything and Spandau had always disliked the boy.

  Spandau rapped on the screen door to the kitchen and Mary emerged from inside the house. Mary McCauley was a small, wiry little woman who still looked like Myrna Loy, the actress in the Thin Man movies. Beau said this was one of the reasons he had married her. Mainly though, he said, it was because he needed a woman even meaner than he was to keep him in line.

  This wasn’t far from the truth. The previous year, she had picked up a shovel and threatened to stove in the head of a real estate developer who’d been hounding her about selling the ranch. The man had known better when Beau was alive and thought to take advantage of Mary’s bereavement. It would have been fine if the man had left off at paying his respects, but he brought up the sale of the ranch and Mary felt this was a violation of decorum. She chased the man to his car and put out one of the rear lights of his Mercedes before he could get away. It was impossible that Spandau should not adore her.

  Mary opened the screen door and gave Spandau a dry peck on the cheek. ‘We didn’t know if you were coming,’ she said. Mary wasn’t much on demonstrations of affection – Beau had been the great hugger and kisser in the family – but she went directly to the refrigerator and set out on the table a bowl of potato salad, sliced ham, salad and a pitcher of iced tea, all things she knew Spandau liked, all made earlier in the day just for him.

  ‘I like to cultivate an air of mystery,’ he said.

  ‘Mystery, hell,’ Mary said. ‘You’re the most un-mysterious person I ever met. You’re like Beau. You’re an open book, honey, I hate to tell you.’

  ‘What’s all that about?’ he asked, nodding out the window toward Carlos and his son.

  ‘Miguel’s knocked up some girl down in Camarillo,’ she said.

  ‘No wonder he looks like hell. Carlos give him the shiner?’

  ‘Nah, it was the girl’s old man. A good Catholic, too, so he wants wedding bells.’

  ‘Poor bastard.’

  ‘He’s turned into a nasty little shit,’ Mary said. ‘Do him good to get saddled with a fat little wife and about fifteen kids, before somebody knifes him.’

  ‘You’re in a rare mood today.’

  ‘We buried Beau two years ago this week. I always go through an angry spell.’

  Spandau sat down at the table. Mary put a plate, cutlery and a glass in front of him. She filled the glass with tea and removed the plastic wrap from the food. Spandau helped himself and began eating.

  ‘You’re not going to ask where Dee is?’

  ‘It’s all part of my program of being mysterious,’ he said. ‘Besides, I’m hungry.’ The truth was he couldn’t wait to see Dee, he ached to see her, and they both knew it.

  ‘She’s out in the stable. She’s got Hoagy all ready for you.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘You’re so full of shit,’ she said, smiling. ‘She’s been nervous all morning, waiting for you.’

  ‘Are you supposed to be telling me this?’

  ‘I don’t know what in hell is wrong with you two. You act like all this is some sort of game. I never could understand why you got divorced in the first place. You still love each other. Neither one of you is ever going to get over it, or wants to, for that matter.’

  ‘It’s a complicated world.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she declared flatly. ‘It ain’t now, and it never has been. It’s the goddamned intellectuals like you two who screw things up by pretending it is. The world goes around just fine. All you got to do is learn how to hang on,’ she said. ‘Just like horses.’

  ‘Is this some kind of comment on my recent showing up at Salinas?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I heard it was less than brilliant. Let me see that thumb.’

  Spandau showed it to her. She laughed. ‘You always did have a tendency to get that thing in the way. Beau said you were going to snatch it off one day. Looks like you damn near did the job this time.’

  She sat down across from Spandau and looked at him. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you,’ she said, ‘that I’m going to die one of these days?’

  ‘You got mortality on the mind, do you?’

  ‘They’re going to chop this ranch up into little gibbety-bites and sell it to people who watch Oprah Winfrey,’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t die, then, if I were you.’

  ‘The boys don’t care anything for it, and Dee won’t run it by herself. She could, I guess, but she won’t.’

  ‘This doesn’t have a thing to do with me, Mary,’ he said. ‘Lord, you wouldn’t be picking on me this way if Dee was in the room.’

  ‘She’s bullheaded. Maybe you’ve got some sense left.’

  ‘Dee’s the one who left me,’ he said.

  ‘You let her go.’

  ‘Since when could anybody ever stop Dee from doing what she wanted.’

  ‘Hell,’ she said. ‘Let her teach. You could be running this ranch.’

  ‘Don’t you think your sons might have something to say about that?’

  ‘All this is to them is a patch of dry land in the middle of nowhere. It don’t mean a thing to them. I got money and I can make them a good settlement. Not that they need it.

  The ranch can pass on to Dee, if she wants it. They won’t squeak about it.’

  ‘You’d better talk to Dee.’

  ‘I’m talking to you, mister. You better get your head on straight about what you want. There might not be much time.’

  ‘You’re as fit as a fiddle, unless there’s something you’re not saying.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about.’

  She got up and started to wash dishes in the sink that had already been washed.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m not saying a word,’ she said. ‘It’s not any of my business what you two do with your private lives.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me she’s seeing somebody?’

  ‘It’s not my place to say. You ought to talk to her.’

  ‘Goddamn it, Mary,’ Spandau said.

  ‘All I can say is you two better work it out. I won’t be around forever.’

  ‘Work out what?’ asked Dee from the screen door.

  ‘Work out what it is you two want for dinner,’ Mary said. ‘I don’t mind cooking but I can’t be bothered with menus. People have to tell me what they want.’

  Delia McCauley was tall like her father. She’d inherited his family’s auburn hair, which she wore long and was now twisted and curled, pinned up on the back of her head. Spandau had seen her many nights standing above him at the side of the bed, pulling the pins loose and letting the hair cascade down in a breathtaking autumn flow. From her mother she had a fineness of bone and features, an almost regal elegance. She was long and slim and beautiful and Spandau desired her as much now as he ever had.

  She came in the screen door and let it close with a sharp thwack, done mainly to irritate her mother. She crossed to Spandau and kissed him lightly on the cheek, laying her hand on his upper arm. Spandau smelled the faint odor of horse and leather tack, which was not unpleasant to him. It rooted her into this world, this place he loved as well.

  ‘I didn’t think you were coming,’ she said. ‘I got held up in town. I should have called, but I got home and just came straight out here.’

  ‘I got Hoagy all ready for you,’ she said. ‘If you still want to go for a ride. We can be back in time to cook dinner.’

  ‘You all just go on,’ said Mary. ‘I’ve learned how to cook all on my own. Just enjoy yourselves,’ she added sweetly.

  Dee gave her a warning look. Mary ignored her. Dee disappeared back into the house.

  ‘I guarantee,’ said Mary, ‘that you’ll hear water running in a minute. She’ll want to wash the horse off of her. And don’t be surprised if there’s a hint of perfume.’ Mary sighed. ‘I’ve never seen two dumber people.’

  Spandau finished his food, and when Dee returned Spandau could detec
t the faintest hint of Chanel. Mary looked at him and shook her head. ‘Hmpf,’ she grunted.

  ‘You all set?’ asked Dee.

  He followed her out to the stables, watched her walk across the yard, the sway of her hips in the clinging blue jeans. Seeing her here, so natural in this place, it was hard to imagine her in the classroom, standing in front of a bunch of second-graders or a meeting full of teachers. But he’d seen both, seen her dressed in the severe blouse and skirt, crisp and formal, the auburn hair done up in a tight spinster’s bun, the reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, standing there tall, uncompromising and unapproachable. He suspected some of the teachers were afraid of her. She stood her ground. But she was a fine teacher and loved the work, loved the children year after year. Still it was like watching some stranger. It wasn’t the same woman who had done a striptease for him in the bathroom doorway, then, damp and soft and smelling of scented soap, climbed into the bed like a cat and lowered herself onto him, holding his hands on her hips, whispering to him, beads of moisture running from her still wet hair down her neck to trickle between her breasts and down her stomach, dampness too falling on Spandau, like a fine rain, as she put her hands on his shoulders and leaned forward above his face and cried out in a small voice that she loved him, that she would always love him.

  They called the horse Hoagy because he always looked so damned sad. He was the first birthday present Dee had ever given him, a skinny little yearling then that nobody but Dee thought was going to amount to anything. He was too thin, too long, and showed none of the signs that made for a top-dollar quarter horse. Dee said anyway he had soul. Beau said he was built more like a goddamn llama than a horse. Mary said that he looked in the face like Hoagy Carmichael, always a little blue. The name stuck. When the time came, it was Spandau who broke and trained him. Even now he was too tall, too long in the leg, with a center of gravity too high to be a good roping horse. But he was. They’d meant for him to be just something for Spandau to ride when he came out to the ranch, but Spandau set him to work with cattle on a neighboring spread. He wasn’t quick to turn and you were sitting up so high he’d damn near shift you off, but he was smart and he had an instinct for what the cow was going to do before it did and that more than made up for it. And he was fast. First time he put Hoagy in a rodeo chute the cowboys laughed their asses off about whether or not camels qualified for roping events. When the chute opened that was the last Spandau heard of it. Hoagy shot out so fast he was nearly on top of the calf and all Spandau had to do was practically lower the rope onto it. Then Hoagy stood firm with a slight backward tug that Spandau had never taught him and the calf flipped onto its back and Spandau had only to tie it. When Spandau left the arena the same cowboys were now asking why the hell the horse even bothered with Spandau, since all Spandau had done was carry the damned string.