Damned If I Do Part 6

"The guy's a nut. Don't let it bother you, Chick."

"You gonna call him?"

I looked at the card. "Leighton Dobbs," I read the name aloud. "Sounds made up to me. I don't know. I might call him. Do you think I should?"

"Twenty thousand dollars? h.e.l.l, yeah."

I moved to fall in behind the wheel. "Are you going to carry that rooster around all day long?"

"He's upset today." The Chicken Lady put a finger to the bird's beak. "His friend died and he's lonely. So, I'm his company."

"Lucky chicken," I said. "You take care now. And thanks."

I arrived home to find my cat and dog stretched out on the porch as if they weren't sure I was coming back. But after an eager lifting of heads to note my arrival, neither got up to greet me.

"Spoiled rotten, both of you," I shouted through the window as I backed into my parking spot.

I put away my supplies, fed the dog and cat, then went out to tend to the horses. I turned my jacket pocket inside out to get rid of loose hay and found the card of the man who wanted my truck. First of all, I couldn't believe the offer and second, I didn't want a crazy person knowing where I lived. As I shoved the card back into my pocket, I lamented the fact that too many crazy people already knew where I lived.

I sat down to write, or at least type, some more of my latest, ever-more-like-the-last-one, piece-of-c.r.a.p novel, this one about an air-traffic controller and her affair with a pilot who had been seeing two flight attendants on the side. Sh.e.l.ley, that was her name, Sh.e.l.ley, learned about the second affair just as Brad's plane disappeared from the radar on his approach to O'Hare. Writing these things paid my bills and a bit more and I had decided, however much I hated writing them, I wasn't hurting anyone, not even art itself, not even myself. I gave up trying to write serious fiction because I wasn't any good at it. My limitations were unfortunately noted also by my then-wife who took it as a personal affront when I moved to romance.

Writing this stuff always bored me, but bored was bored and it was the same boredom I'd experienced having to talk to corporate fellows I'd guided fishing, the same boredom I'd felt walking irrigation pipelines for ranches and welding shut leaks. The only thing about my job I found amusing was the list I'd receive every couple of months from my editor. The list was of hot names. Sh.e.l.ley was big again, but it had to be Sh.e.l.ley with an e-y and not Sh.e.l.ly with a y. Brad and Lars were always good. Brittany, Brandy, Sydney, Lucas, and Tasha were hot. I wanted so much to call my characters Agnes, Angus, Gertrude, and Gisela.

A couple days later, as I was saddling my mare, a fancy coupe with far too short clearance came creeping up the dirt lane to my place. I left the horse hitched to the post and met the car. A tall, good-looking man got out and so did a tall, good-looking woman.

"Can I help you?" I asked.

But the man had already spotted my truck and was staring at it. I knew that this had to be Leighton Dobbs.

"Are you Rawley Tucker?"

"I am."

"I'm Leighton Dobbs." He shook my hand. "I believe the man with the chickens told you about me."

"He did."

"So, what do you say?"

"It's not a twenty-thousand-dollar truck."

Dobbs smiled at his companion. "Mr. Tucker, this is Devra Filson, my a.s.sociate."

I nodded a greeting to the woman, then to Dobbs, "I need my truck. I don't want to sell it." As I spoke to them I realized that I knew these people all too well, had seen them before, lunched with them, had drinks with them, had even tried to be one of them, spinning my wheels in L.A. trying to meet the bills by writing screenplays.

Dobbs looked around my property. Though it was neat, it was modest. The barn some fifty yards away was considerably larger and in better repair than the house. I hadn't yet taken down the weeds along the edge of the front pasture, so the place might have seemed a little shabby.

"With twenty thou you could buy a couple of trucks," Dobbs said.

"No doubt. But I like my truck."

"Twenty-three thousand."

"What do you want it for?"

"We're making a film and this is the perfect vehicle."

"The perfect look," Ms. Filson said. Filson then whispered something to Dobbs.

"There are plenty of trucks out there like mine. Have your makeup people do a job on one. What kind of film are you talking about?"

"It's a feature with a major studio," he said as if I should take note. I didn't take note and he shook it off and went on. "Twenty-five." He and Filson talked without speaking for a few seconds. "Another thing, we might be interested in renting your place here."

"Out of the question." All I wanted to see was their dust.

"Five thou a day for-" he turned to Filson.

"Fourteen or better," she said.

"For at least fourteen days. That's at least seventy thousand dollars."

I whistled. I looked over at my horse and saw she was pawing at the ground. "Listen, my horse is getting antsy. I appreciate the offer, but my answer is no." I smiled at them and turned away.

"You're refusing nearly a hundred thousand dollars?" Filson said.

"Yes, ma'am. I'm happy. I don't need the money. And I sure as h.e.l.l don't need a bunch of people running around my home. Why do you think I decided to live way up here?"

Dobbs coughed into his fist. "Listen, if you're growing pot or something, we could care less."

"I'm not growing anything. This is my home." Then I said, slowly, "This is where I live."

"Two hundred thousand." Dobbs shifted his weight.

"You don't get it." I stepped closer to them and pointed at the side pasture and the view beyond it. "What do you see out there?"

"I see a nice landscape," Dobbs said.

"Yes, sir. And no people." I pointed to the front pasture. "And there?"

"A couple of horses," Dobbs said.

"And?"

"No people," Filson said.

"How many people do you think your movie will bring up here? The crew and the actors and the caterers?"

"Sixty, seventy," he said. "But we'll bring in crews to clean up."

"I won't allow you to mess it up in the first place. I don't know why I'm wasting my time telling you this, because the bottom line is no."

Dobbs and Filson were looking at me like I was crazy. "Three-fifty and we'll just be renting the truck."

"Beat it."

I watched them drive away. I mounted and rode to a section of stream I never fished because it was just too pretty. The spot was well above a sharp bend in the flow where the real pot growers in the canyon had repeatedly dammed the creek to divert the water to their crops. For a while I was riding up daily to check the stream and destroy their handiwork. After finding a couple of big fish dead below the dam, I got mad and camped out with my shotgun. I parked myself on a short ridge and waited. I felt like a fool because, in truth, those people scared me, but the Forest Service wouldn't help and Fish and Game just laughed. I saw the sweeping beams of their flashlights in the dawn haze first, then heard their loud talking. Once they had set to work, I fired above them, three sh.e.l.ls, then I moved along the ridge and fired three more, which I'm not sure they appreciated because of their running. My heart was racing and my ears were ringing. I slept there three nights in a row and they never came back.

The water where I stood watching flowed around a couple of boulders and then flattened over a bed of rocks. The pool below held a couple of browns that were at least sixteen inches long. I'd watched them for two years now, getting bigger and fatter and growing accustomed to my presence. They would rise to a hatch if I was standing four feet up the bank.

Deputy Jack drove us over to the Chama early. The morning was brisk, but not cold. The water was high and a little muddy and we weren't sure any fish would find us, but we went at it anyway.

The deputy was in the middle of the river trying to dislodge a fly from a submerged tree, his buddy had wandered downstream, and I was standing at the end of a riffle, bouncing a foam beetle along the bottom.

"That guy find you?" Deputy Jack asked, coming toward me on the bank.

"What guy?"

"That movie fella."

"So, you're the one who told him where I live."

"He asked."

"Do me a favor and don't tell anybody else." I roll-casted to the middle of the riffle and stripped in line. The deputy had his fly and slipped walking back to the bank. "Are you all right?" I asked.

"Yeah, just a little wetter than I'd planned on getting."

"I've got half a mind to try a parachute dragonfly at the top of that riffle." I looked hard at the sunlight bouncing off the broken water. "But then it is just half a mind."

"So, if you hate it so much, why do you write it?" the deputy asked.

"That's an abrupt change of subject."

"It's a trick we cops use. Hardly ever works."

"I write it because I can and I make enough money so that I can live way the h.e.l.l out here and be happy." I looked at the mountains in the distance. "I don't want to talk about it anymore."

We were quiet for a while, neither of us fishing. The deputy unwrapped a breakfast bar, offered me one. I declined.

"You gonna sell your truck?" The deputy was closer to me, prowling through his fly box. "Lotta money."

"You had a long talk with this guy, did you?"

"Naw. The Chicken Lady told me about the truck and how much the guy's willing to pay. That really shook him up."

"Yeah?" I reeled in my line to check my fly.

"The Chicken Lady doesn't understand how there can be that much money in one person's pocket." Deputy Jack looked up at a circling hawk.

"Yeah, well, I told the guy to take a hike."

"You're crazy."

"Maybe."

"You can pa.s.s up that kind of money?" Deputy Jack asked. "Maybe you are growing pot up there."

"I didn't like that guy. I don't want to do business with people I don't like anymore." Which was a lie, because I pretty much hated my publisher, my editor, and my agent.

"You could take my old pickup. n.o.body's using it." He folded a stick of gum into his mouth. "It's one of them newfangled jobs. Starts with a key."

"Funny man."

"Just a thought," he said.

"Thanks anyway."

We drove home another way, the scenic way Deputy Jack called it. Scenic meant longer and the drive took us into an old town I had always loved, Enrico, through which flowed Enrico Creek. Perhaps sixty people lived in Enrico. The walls of the old buildings were the sides of the road that pa.s.sed through it. When we reached the other end of the town, I saw an excavated site, a chain-link fence, and a sign announcing the arrival of a Wal-Mart. My heart sank. "What the h.e.l.l is that?"

The deputy's friend, whose name I couldn't remember, but whose job was repairing firearms, shook his head. "They're blasting open a malachite mine up mountain. Jobs. People. Wal-Mart."

"McDonald's, motels, more people," I said.

No one was working at the construction site, but I caught myself staring at a big yellow grader as if it were a responsible party. I reached down beside me and picked up one of my wading boots. I held it to my nose and inhaled the sour smell of the river water that had soaked the felt sole.

"I'm glad you called," Leighten Dobbs said as he closed his car door. "To tell you the truth I was a little surprised."

I was leading my mare and the fat gelding from the barn to a pasture. I was going to worm them and turn them out. "Here, you can help me," I said.

"How? What?" He looked nervously at the horses.

"Just hold this rope." I gave him control of the mare. He held the rope away from his body as if it were wet. I pulled the tube of worming medicine from my back pocket, grabbed the gelding's nose, and pressed it into his mouth.

"I take it you've changed your mind," Dobbs said.

"About your using my place, yes." I took the mare and had him hold the gelding's lead rope.

"And your truck?"

"You'll have to take that up with the owner. It now belongs to the man you tried to buy it from the first time."

"But it's right there."

"Talk to him tomorrow. The truck will be in front of the store. I promise he'll sell with no problem." I put the paste into the mare's mouth and watched her try to spit it out. I put the empty tube in my pocket. "She hates this stuff," I said. "But we're done. Thanks." I took the gelding.

Dobbs was a bit puzzled, but he nodded. "What did we decide on for the use of your place? A hundred thousand?" He followed me to the pasture.

"Three-fifty." I opened the gate and led the horses in.