think a the history. It’s more than the team and the matches, it’s more than playing, and you are a wonderful athlete.”
“Startin a feel my age, Deck. Sage wouldn’t quit, even when he stiffened up. You see what it got him?”
“O.K., I can understand that, but remember that your people been connected for generations to polo—they knew the Moncreiffs, the Wallops, and wasn’t your great-granddaddy related by marriage to the Gallatins? I mean, there’s history there. You got a responsibility.” “Yeah, but—”
“Crawshaw is one a the great names in western polo. I personally won’t let you get out. We need you, we need a keep the Crawshaw name alive in polo.”
They met for lunch, and Georgina said that while she would not play again, she could become an involved spectator, a keeper of records and local polo history. The connections would live on.
“You could be an umpire, Georgina.”
“You think so? I cannot see that happening,” she said. “There are no women umpires that I ever heard of.”
“First time for everthing,” he said. “Or you could be the timekeeper.” That was more like it. She could be a timekeeper.
Then, suddenly, she remarried, her surprise choice the ranch foreman, Charlie Parrott, considerably younger than she and part Oglala Sioux, or so he claimed, though she figured Mexican and something else was in there but what of it? Parrott, with a tight, hard body and buttocks like cantaloupes, had a long swatch of black hair, glittering black eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. His sad, big face and frog-wide mouth did not go with his body, but the low voice pulled things together. He had hired on only weeks before Sage’s death. Charlie was not a great fan of polo, but horses liked him for his quiet, slow movements, his silence, his affection, felt more than observed. Georgina liked him for some of the same reasons. If Sage had known of his lack of interest in polo he would have told the man to move on. But Georgina didn’t care.
“Anyhow, I don’t have to play polo to manage a horse ranch,” said Charlie Parrott. “That’s what you got Elwyn for.” Elwyn Gaines, middle-aged and spattered with transparent freckles, was the soft-spoken trainer and married to the Brawlses’ cook, Doreen Gaines. Their son, Press, worked as a groom, cleaning tack and mucking out stalls. Georgina said she would rather have her head shaved than lose any of the Gaineses.
Georgina found Charlie Parrott more than attractive. There had not been much sex with Sage in the last years, but once Charlie got going he was insatiable and she found herself heated to the point of abandoned vulgarity.
“Look at this,” she would say and haul up her nightgown.
“Take that damn thing off.” And he was on her like a falling I-beam.
He had been married twice before, the first time to a woman who now lived in Nevada and with her had had one daughter, Linny. The second wife, he said, was a California cop, and they broke up after five months of screaming. End of story. In his slow, easy voice he gave his daughter Linny’s history; she was in her early twenties and apparently a pure Nevada hellcat who had already been the recipient of two unwanted pregnancies. Linny was coming to live with them, Charlie Parrott told his widow-bride. A flash of distaste crossed her features. She covered up quickly with a grand smile.
“Well, it’ll be nice to have another woman on the place,” she said, but with some acid, as if remarking that it would be nice to have more rattlesnakes. Charlie Parrott wasn’t fooled and told Linny to walk softly. The girl’s name had been picked from a baby-name book which reflected a brief fashion of naming girls for expensive wedding gifts of an earlier time—Linen, Silver, Crystal, Ivory.
When Georgina told Decker Mell, who had become her confidant, of this new development he remarked that she was probably in for some trouble.
“You know, Georgina, I sort a wish you hadn’t married him. You should a hitched up with somebody in polo. I am guessin Charlie don’t have much feelin for polo.”
“Right,” she laughed, implying that her husband had an excellent feel for other, unspecified sports. “But you were already married, Decker, so I had to settle for Charlie.” They both laughed.
Linny arrived on an August weekend driving an old Land Rover with a bad muffler, the vehicle once painted with tiger stripes now faded to faint wiggles. She was wearing a skimpy green halter and the shortest skirt Georgina had ever seen. She was a big, good-looking girl, buxom and curvaceous, with dusty black hair (except for a fringe of bleached blond bangs) pulled into a ponytail that slapped her between the shoulder blades when she ran. She looked very Indian to Georgina, more Indian than Charlie. Her face contained enough material for two faces: a high brow, a long chin, wide cheekbones with fleshy cheeks like vehicle headrests, and a nose like a plowshare. Her eyes were black, double-size almonds, and her long teeth were perfect. Georgina saw that Linny’s eyes were marred by a slight strabismus in the left one which gave her a crazy appearance as though she might suddenly shriek and spring on someone. She yanked two huge duffel bags out of the Land Rover.
Georgina and Linny shook hands like men, eyeing each other as though looking for toeholds.
Linny said, “I sure appreciate it that you let me come here. It’s my plan to find a job and then get an apartment or something in town. I don’t want to get in your and Dad’s way.” She scratched her dark thigh with mint green nails.
“That sounds like a plan, Linny. I’m happy to help if I can. The job thing might be tough. Wyoming is not a great place for jobs. What kind a work have you been doin?”
“Mostly I been in school, little bit a film school in California, which I couldn’t hack after they showed us this nasty old Edison film, Electrocution of an Elephant. Then I worked in Reno at one of the casinos.”
“The elephant thing does sound ugly. But Reno?”
“Sure. My mother lives in Reno. She works in one a the casinos and I got a job in the gift shop. You know, waitin on customers. Somebody wins some money, first thing they want a do is spend it. And the gift shop had real expensive stuff. It was sort of a crappy job, though. But paid pretty good so the employees wouldn’t try to rip the shop off. That’s how I could afford the Land Rover. And I did other stuff. The usual, like, let’s see, I did waitressing, bartending, and the gift shop thing, then a summer as a fire spotter in this lookout tower for the Forest Service. Which was a headache—those horny USFS guys would come up there all the time to ‘help me out.’”
“Uh-huh,” said Georgina, biting back a remark that anyone who wore clothes as skimpy as Linny’s would always be bothered by men with horn colic, and went off to the kitchen to talk with the cook.
Doreen Gaines was a thin hypochondriac. She and her husband had worked for the Brawlses since 1978. After Sage’s death she stayed on, the main artery of news connecting the Brawlses to the town. Sage and Georgina had given the Gaineses an unvarying Christmas present—a hundred-dollar bill and a saddle blanket. They had twenty-four saddle blankets, most with the price stickers still on them, stacked on top of the freezer in their garage. While Sage Brawls was alive Doreen had recognized Georgina as the enemy, but now Charlie Parrott and his half-naked daughter had moved into the opponent’s corner.
“Dad,” said Linny to Charlie Parrott, “she’s too old to have kids, right?”
“Who, Georgina? I guess so. Never discussed it. Guess she’s over the line. Never thought about more kids, seeing how bad the first one turned out.” He winked
