The Stake Read online

  “She may not want an audience,” Jean explained.

  “Damn it. Barb!” he yelled.

  No answer. He called again, and Larry saw a trace of worry in his eyes.

  “She probably can’t hear you,” Larry said. “The wind and everything.”

  “Take these, okay? I’ve gotta make sure she’s okay.”

  Jean and Larry each took two bottles from his arms. “She’s only been gone a couple of minutes.”

  “Yeah, well...” He hurried away, jogging toward the far end of Holman’s.

  “Hope he doesn’t tear her head off,” Jean said.

  “At least he’s worried about her. That’s something, anyway.”

  “I sure wish they’d quit bickering.”

  “They must enjoy it.”

  Jean wandered toward the road, and Larry stayed at her side. The bottles of beer felt cold and wet in his hands. He took a drink from the one in his right.

  “You’ll be having to go yourself, if you don’t watch it.”

  “Don’t let Pete come to my rescue,” he said, and turned his attention to the town.

  The central road had broad, gravel shoulders for parking. The sidewalks were concrete, not the elevated planking common to such old west towns as Silver Junction, where they’d spent the morning. The citizens had made some modern improvements before leaving Sagebrush Flat to the desert.

  “I wonder why they left,” Larry said.

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t live anywhere that doesn’t have movie theaters.”

  “Well, I don’t see any.”

  Neither did Larry. From his position in the middle of the road, he could see the entire town. Not one of the buildings had a movie marquee jutting over the sidewalk. He saw a barber pole in front of one small shop; a place on the left with a faded sign that proclaimed it to be Sam’s Saloon; about a dozen other enterprises altogether. He guessed that they’d once been hardware stores, cafes, possibly a bakery, clothing stores, maybe a pharmacy and a five-and-ten, a dentist’s and doctor’s office — and how about an optimistic realtor? — and certainly a sporting goods store. Not even the smallest back-country town in California was without a place to buy guns and ammo. Way at the far end of town, on the left, stood an adobe building with a pair of bay doors and service islands in front. Babe’s Garage.

  The centerpiece of town appeared to be the three-story, wood-frame structure of the Sagebrush Flat Hotel, right next door to Sam’s Saloon.

  “That’s the place I’d like to explore,” Larry said.

  “Sam’s?”

  “That, too. But the hotel. It looks like it’s been around for a while.”

  “We’d better go there next, then. No telling how long this little expedition’s going to last, those two start fighting.”

  “We’ll have to come back by ourselves, sometime, and really check the place out.”

  “I don’t know.” She drank some beer. “I’m not sure I’d want to come here without some company.”

  “Hey, what am I, chopped liver?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  He knew. Though he and Jean shared a desire for adventure, they were limited by a certain timidity. The presence of another couple seemed to erase that weakness.

  They needed backup.

  Backup like Pete and Barbara. In spite of the bickering, each was endowed with self-confidence and force. Led by that pair, Larry and Jean were willing to venture where they wouldn’t go on their own.

  Even if we’d known about this place, Larry thought, we wouldn’t have dared to explore it by ourselves. The chance of a return trip, at least in the near future, was slim.

  Jean turned around and looked toward the corner of Holman’s. “I wonder what’s keeping them.”

  “Should we go find out?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Larry took a swig of cold beer.

  “Why don’t we get out of the sun?” Jean suggested.

  They wandered back past the van, climbed the rickety stairs to Holman’s shaded porch and sat down. They rested the two extra beers on the wood between them. Jean crossed her legs. She rubbed her bare thighs with the base of her bottle. The wetness left slicks on her skin. She lifted the bottle to her face and slid it over her cheeks and forehead.

  Larry imagined Jean opening her blouse, rolling the chilled, dripping bottle against her bare breasts. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would ever do that, though. Hell, she wouldn’t even step out of the house unless she had a bra on.

  Too bad life can’t be more like fiction, he told himself, and drank some more beer. A gal in one of his books would have that wet bottle sliding over her chest in about two shakes. Then, of course, the guy would get in on the action.

  That’d be a scene worth writing.

  You’ll never get a chance to liveit, not in this lifetime, but...

  “Larry, I’m starting to get worried.”

  “They’ll be along.”

  “Something must be wrong.”

  “Maybe she has a problem.”

  “Like the trots?”

  “Who knows?”

  “They’d be back by now if somethinghadn’t happened,” Jean said.

  “Maybe Pete got lucky.”

  “They wouldn’t do that.”

  “Obviously they did it back at that old ruin we passed.”

  “Sounded like it. But they were alone. They wouldn’t do that here with us waiting.”

  “If you’re so sure, why don’t we go around back and look for them?”

  “Go right on ahead.” She gave him an annoyed glance.

  “Nah.” He put a hand on her back. Her blouse was damp. He untucked it and slipped his hand beneath it. She sat up straight, and sighed as he caressed her.

  When he fingered the catches of her bra, she said, “Don’t get carried away. They could show up any second.”

  “On the other hand, maybe they won’t show up at all.”

  “Don’t kid around like that, okay?”

  “I’m not entirely kidding.”

  “Maybe they arescrewing around.”

  “You said they wouldn’t.”

  “Well, I don’t know, damn it.”

  “Maybe we’d better go see.”

  Jean wrinkled her nose.

  “If they did run into trouble,” Larry said, “we aren’t making matters any better by procrastinating. They might need help.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Besides, their beers are getting warm.”

  He picked up the bottle for Pete, stood, and waited for Jean. Then they walked to the end of the porch. Larry peered around the corner. The area alongside the building was clear, so he leaped down. Jean covered the mouth of Barbara’s bottle with her thumb and jumped.

  “I don’t know about this,” she said.

  “They can’t expect us to wait forever.”

  Larry led the way, wanting to be a few strides ahead of Jean in case there really was trouble.

  At times like this he wished his imagination would take a holiday. But it never left him alone. It was always busy churning up possibilities — most of them grim.

  He pictured Pete and Barbara dead, of course. Slaughtered by the same pack of desert scavengers he’d dreamed up when he saw the overturned car.

  Maybe Pete had been killed, Barbara abducted.

  We’d have to go looking for her. Run back to the van first and get Pete’s gun.

  Maybe they both got killed by a criminal using the old town as a hideout.

  Or by an old lunatic on the lookout for claim jumpers.

  Maybe they’ll just be gone. Vanished without a trace.

  Pete has the keys to the van. We’d have to walk out of here.

  He supposed the nearest town was Silver Junction.

  God, it’d take hours to get there. And maybe someone would be after them, hunting them down.

  “Better warn ‘em we’re coming,” Jean said.

  He stopped near
the corner of the building, looked back at her and shook his head. “If they ran into someone...”

  “Don’t even think it, okay?”

  From the look on Jean’s face, he could see that she’d already considered the possibility.

  “Just go ahead and call out,” she said. “We don’t want to barge in on something.”

  Speak for yourself, he thought. If Pete was having at her, he wouldn’t mind a glimpse of it. Not at all. But he kept the thoughts to himself.

  Without looking around the corner, he yelled, “Pete! Barbara! You all right?”

  No answer came.

  A second ago he’d pictured them rutting. Now he saw them sprawled dead, murderous savages hunched over their bodies, heads turning at the sound of his voice.

  He gestured for Jean to wait, and stepped past the end of the building.

  Three

  “Where are they?” Jean whispered, pressing herself against his side.

  Larry shook his head. He couldn’t believe the couple was actually gone. “They probably just wandered off somewhere,” he said. The idea that he would catch them fooling around had been the product of wishful thinking, and he knew that his worries about murder had been farfetched. But so had his worries that they’d disappeared.

  “We’d better find them,” Jean said.

  “Good plan.”

  But all he saw were the rear facades of the other buildings, and the desert stretching away toward a ridge of mountains to the south.

  “Maybe they’re playing some kind of trick on us,” Jean suggested.

  “I don’t know. Pete was awfully eager for his beer.”

  “People don’t go for a leak and vanish off the face of the earth.”

  “Only on occasion.”

  “It’s not funny.” Her voice was trembling.

  “Look, they’ve got to be around.”

  “Maybe we’d better go and get the gun.”

  “It’s locked in the van. I don’t imagine Pete would be very happy about a broken window.”

  “Pete!” she suddenly shrieked. “Barb!”

  A distant voice called, “Yo!”

  Jean’s eyebrows flew up. Her head snapped sideways and she squinted out at the desert.

  Some fifty yards off, Pete’s head and shoulders rose out of the wasteland. “Hey, y’gotta see this!” he shouted, and waved for them to approach.

  Jean glanced at Larry, rolled her eyes and sagged as if her air had been let out.

  He grinned.

  “I think I may kill them myself,” Jean said.

  “I’ll go get the gun.”

  “Break allthe windows, while you’re at it.” Her voice sounded shaky.

  “Come on, let’s see what they found.”

  “It better be good.”

  They walked over the hard, baked earth, moving carefully as they stepped on broken rocks, avoided clumps of cactus and greasewood. Near the place where Pete waited was an old smoke tree. Larry guessed that Barbara had wandered farther and farther away from Holman’s, looking for a suitably large bush or rock cluster, and had finally decided upon the tree. Its trunk was thick enough to afford privacy, and there was shade beneath its drooping branches.

  Pete was standing some distance from the tree. At his back the ground dropped away.

  “What’d you find?” Larry asked. “The Grand Canyon?”

  “Hey, glad you brought the suds.” He lifted the front of his knit shirt and wiped his face. “It’s nastyout here.”

  Larry handed the full bottle to him.

  The depression behind Pete was a dry creek bed some fifteen or twenty feet lower than the surrounding flatlands. Barbara, sitting on a rock at the bottom, looked up and waved.

  “Did you forget about us?” Jean asked Pete.

  He finished taking a swig of beer, then shook his head. “I was just on my way to get you. Figured you might want to see this.” He started down the steep embankment, and they followed.

  “We were getting a little worried,” Larry said, watching his feet as he descended the rocky slope. “Thought you might’ve fallen victim to a roving band of desert marauders.”

  “Yeah? That’s a good one. Make a good story, huh?”

  Barbara stood up and brushed off the seat of her white shorts. “God, it’s hot as a huncher down here,” she said, as they approached. Her blouse was unbuttoned, its front tied, leaving her midriff bare. The knot was loose enough to leave a gap. Her bra was black. Larry saw the pale sides of her breasts through its lace. “No breeze at all,” she added.

  “What’s the big discovery?” Jean asked, handing a beer to her.

  “It’s no big deal, if you ask me.” She tipped the bottle up. Larry saw a bead of sweat drop from her jaw, roll off her collarbone, and slide down her chest until it melted into the edge of her bra.

  “Over here,” Pete said. “Come on.”

  He led the way to a cut eroded into the wall of the embankment. There, lying in shadows and partly hidden by tangles of brush, was the demolished carcass of a jukebox. “Must’ve come from that cafe,” he said, nudging its side with his shoe.

  “How’d it get all the way out here?” Jean asked.

  “Who knows?”

  “The thing’s no good, anyway,” Barbara said.

  “It’s seen better days,” Larry said, feeling a touch of nostalgia as he pictured it standing fresh and bright near the lunch counter in Holman’s. He guessed that someone had dragged it out and used it for target practice. It would’ve made a tempting target, all decorated with bright chrome and plastic — if the shooter happened to be an asshole who took pleasure from destroying things of such beauty. After the box was blasted to smithereens, it had probably been shoved off the edge of the slope for the fun of watching it tumble and crash.

  Larry crouched beside its shattered plastic top. The rows of record slots were empty. The tone arm dangled from its mount by a couple of wires.

  “Probably worth a few of grand,” Pete said.

  “Forget it,” Barbara told him. “He thinks we should take it with us.”

  “She’s sure a beaut,” Pete said. “A Wurlitzer.”

  “Think you could get it working?” Jean asked.

  “Sure.”

  He probably could, Larry thought. The guy’s house was a museum of resurrected junk: televisions, stereo components, a toaster oven, lamps, a dishwasher and vacuum cleaner, all once disgarded as useless, picked up by Pete and restored to working order.

  “You might get it playing again,” he said, “but it’s too messed up to ever look like anything.” Its chrome trim was dented and rusty, one side of the cabinet was smashed in, the speaker grills looked as if they’d been hit by shotgun blasts, and bullets had torn away at least half the square plastic buttons used for selecting tunes. “You probably can’t even get replacement parts for a lot of this stuff,” he added.

  “Sure would be neat, though.”

  “Yeah.” Turning his head sideways, Larry blew dust and sand from its chart of selections. Bullets and shotgun pellets had ripped away some of the labels. Those that remained were faint, washed out by rainfall and years of pounding sunlight. Still, he could make out the names of many titles and artists. Jean crouched and peered over his shoulder.

  “There’s ‘Hound Dog,’ ” he said. “ ‘I Fall to Pieces,’ ‘Stand by Your Man.’ ”

  “God, I used to love that one,” Jean said.

  “Sounds like it’s mostly shit-kicker stuff,” Pete said.

  “Well, here’s the Beatles. ‘Hard Day’s Night.’ The Mamas and the Papas.”

  “Oh, they were good,” Barbara said.

  “This one’s ‘California Dreaming,’ ” Larry told her.

  “Always makes me sad when I think about Mama Cass.”

  “All right!” Larry grinned. “ ‘The Battle of New Orleans.’ Johnny Horton. Man, I must’ve been in junior high. I knew that sucker by heart.”

  “There’s Haley Mills,” Jean said, her breath stirri
ng the hair above Larry’s ear. “ ‘Let’s Get Together.’ And look, ‘Soldier Boy’ ”

  “Here’s the Beach Boys, ‘Surfin’ U.S.A.‘ ”

  “Now we’re talking,” Pete said.

  “Dennis Wilson, too,” Barbara said. “So many of those people are dead. Mama Cass, Elvis, Lennon. Jesus, this is getting depressing.”

  “Patsy Cline’s dead, too,” Jean told her.

  “And Johnny Horton, I think,” Larry said.

  “What do you guys expect?” Pete said. “This stuff’s all at least twenty, thirty years old.”

  Barbara took a few steps backward, stumbled when her sneaker came down on a rock, but managed to stay up. Sweaty face grimacing, she said, “Why don’t we get out of this hellhole and look around town? That’s what we came here for, isn’t it?”

  “Might as well.” Jean pushed against Larry’s shoulder and rose from her squat.

  “Let’s see if we can lift this thing,” Pete muttered.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Barbara snapped. “No way! You’re not carting that piece of trash home with us. Uh-uh.”

  “Well, shit.”

  “If you want an old jukebox so bad, go out and buy one, for godsake. Jesus, it’s probably got scorpions in it.”

  “I think you’d better forget it,” Larry said, rising to his feet. “The thing’s beyond saving.”

  “Yeah, I guess. Shit.” He gave his wife a sour look. “Thanks a heap, Barbara dear.”

  She ignored his remark and started climbing the slope. Below her rucked-up blouse her back looked tawny and slick. The rear of her shorts was smudged with yellow dust from the rock where she’d sat. The fabric hugged her buttocks, and Larry could see the outline of her panties — a narrow band inches lower than the belt of her shorts, a skimpy triangle curving down from it. Jean, climbing behind her, was hunched over slightly. Her blouse was still untucked. It clung to her back, and the loose tail draped her rump.

  Pete was watching, too.

  “Couple of good-looking chicks,” he said.

  “Not bad.”

  “You ever get the feeling they run our fucking lives for us?”

  “Only about ninety-nine percent of the time.”

  Pete choked out a laugh, slapped Larry’s arm, and took a long drink of beer. “Guess we’d better be good little boys and go with them.” He glanced back at the jukebox. He sighed. He shrugged. “Adios. No more music for you, old pal.”