beer?”
“They’re behind my seat. Othello’s finest. Coronas.”
We passed through a smattering of rusting trailer parks that encircled Othello like a bathtub ring. These were occupied by Hispanic laborers who worked at the McDonald’s french fry factory off to our right on the west edge of town.
Three miles later we found ourselves freely rolling across a sweep of sage and ground water wetlands. The sky was clear and Venus was bravely welcoming in a half moon.
Nadine and Smoke had been close since we put her worst nightmare, a drug trafficking SEWU professor behind bars, with the help, of course, of the Camas Tribal Police, the local sheriff, the FBI, and the world’s best investigative journalist, Billy O’Connor. But, naturally, Smoke and I continually tried to convince each other over scotch that we had subdued, cuffed and stuffed this asshole single handedly.
Unfortunately, our efforts trashed Nadine’s cafe and living quarters, and Smoke had stayed behind to help her put it together again. And even though she was thirty years his junior, and even though he was sixty-eight at the time, they developed, so to speak, a working relationship. They had been best of friends over the following two years.
Despite the clucking of tongues, not only did Butte now have Shiela, and Smoke have Nadine, and I, of course, had Ollie the Wonder Dog, none of us were married, though Ollie was hopeful. Ollie, at the moment, was asleep between us on the pickup’s bench seat, glad to be shuck of a gas station and its curious aliens. I noticed, as well, that she was having some serious taco gas going for her.
“Incidentally,” Smoke added after a time, “Our ol’ Wheatland buddy, Sheriff Colton, says he knows all about these Saddleback Lutherans. We’re having breakfast with him and Nadine tomorrow morning at the cafe.”
I nodded. “How do you know that?”
“Magic,” Smoke said. “I used the cell phone. Called her while you were loading up your stuff.”
“What am I suppose to do while you and Nadine are playing Monopoly? Sleep in the street?”
Smoke shook his head sadly.
“Oh ye of little faith,” he said. “You’re staying in Nadine’s friend’s bunk house out towards the SEWU labs.”
I considered this. “You mean that single story spread in the Cottonwoods?”
“The same. It’s the only ranch out there, Paul.”
I didn’t like the sound of this.
I decided to keep my mouth shut.
We drove in silence. Smoke seemed to be enjoying an interior world of great mirth and circumstance. On the other hand, I seemed to be enduring an interior world of misgivings and flight fantasies.
Wheatland came into view a bit after ten o’clock, A lonesome Last Picture Show sort of town with only one forlorn mercury lamp hanging its head sorrowfully over the two block street. The town was of old brick and, like Ryback, was mostly boarded up with the exception of an all-in-one hardware/post office/liquor/grocery/video store that was lit dimly by a single bulb over the checkout counter closed for the night. But there was also, on the far corner, Nadine’s cafe which sported a red and blue neon sign for Fat Tire beer set among congenial window plants.
Smoke took the alley to the back of Nadine’s and pulled to a stop under a porch light. The thunder of the Jimmy triggered an interior light, and Nadine came to the door with what looked like another head perched on her shoulder. I suspected, rightly, that the head was soon to be my evening’s landlady.
“This is where you get out, Pardner,” Smoke said.
“Where you going?”
“Inside. You and Ollie are going with Maggie, to get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”
Ollie and I got out...Ollie with a great leap and dash to pee on a small sage.
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