Ten Sleep

At first, I didn’t hear the Sheriff. It was probably about three in the afternoon. I remember listening to a Heart record, Dreamboat Annie, sitting on a footstool in my bedroom and painting my toe nails. As side one faded out, I heard three loud thumps on our front door downstairs. It had the authoritative delivery and impending urgency of a narc knock. Who knocked anyway? Nobody even came up the hill, usually. 

I heard Mama yelling from the kitchen, “Who in the hell is-” then breaking glass, “Marla!” I bit my lip. I got up and tiptoed into the hallway to the top of the steps, crouching down quietly. Mama came to the front door and opened it, cursing to herself. Her feet and ankles, taut, wiry and slippered in dirty flannel, stood and faced the Sheriff’s jet black, polished Chippewa Patrol Boots. Mama pushed the screen door open. 

“Hiya, there, Laura-Beth...” the Sheriff said, tapping his toes at the sight of her and taking a few steps back. The old, wooden porch creaked beneath his lanky frame. 

Mama put her left hand on her hip and leaned against the door frame, lightly stroking our patterned, light-blue wall paper inside the entryway with the right. “Hey Earl,” she said, initially acknowledging him like her regulars down at Big Boy’s, but then with the fondness of an old flame, “what you needin', Sugar?” 

“Uh, well...” The Sheriff stammered slightly and jiggled his knees below his pleated tan trousers. “Sorry to bother ya, LB, I know you’ve got a ranch to run here,” he said, taking off his hat in a show of respect. “It’s actually concernin’ a couple things...is Ralph home?” 

Mama twisted her hips a bit, ignoring the serious nature of the question and stating foxily, “Not at the moment, Earl.” 

“You two still gettin’ on?” The Sheriff begged.Mama let out a cackled bolt of laughter, dropping her chin to her chest and punching the Sheriff 

playfully. “Ralph’s my baby’s daddy, Earl. You know we always gettin’ on,” she said. 

“Oh- I see.,” he said, a little disappointed. He let out an unnecessary cough. “Just, uh, tryin’ to get a figure on his whereabouts...See, uh, your neighbors? Up on Barker over there? The Porters?” he asked. 

“Who- Rita and Lou?” Mama asked, “What about ‘em?” 

“Well,” The Sheriff paused, putting his hat back on and placing his hands on his belt, “The Frey folks up the road there found Lou’s Suburban stickin’ ass-up outta Old Buzzard Pond this mornin’. Nobody inside. Found some sets of boot tracks leadin’ back up to I-25, but not much else. They’re draggin’ the pond right now.”Mama was silent. 

“...and uh,” The Sheriff continued uncomfortably, “...checked up there at the Porter house but uh...” 

“But what, Earl? Are they ok?” Mama said somewhat impatiently. 

“Welp...saw the smoke from Watchahee Road before I even got up there. The whole place was lit up. I had to call Fritz and them volunteer boys to come out there. Took ‘em a couple hours, but they got it out. The whole place is torched. No sign of Lou or Rita. State boys got wind of it and they’re headin’ up from HQ now. Should be in town in a few hours. Just figured I’d stop by here before they come askin’. No word from Ralph today, then?” 

Mama breathed sharply through her nose and shifted her weight to her left side. Her voice dropped down a few octaves and her speech came out flat. “He’s been out on the road for six weeks or so now. Ozz-Fest,” she lied. 

“Ozz-fest...I see,” the Sheriff said, chuckling a bit. “Now, I’ve always wondered...how much does a roadie make on a gig like that?” 

Mama ignored the question, appearing to notice something. She slowly knelt down in front of the Sheriff, peering into his gleaming Chippewa boots. “Earl,” she said, “You’d better be shinin’ these here boots.” She smudged at the surface of his right toe, “folks might start callin’ you lazy,” she said through a soft grin. 

Mama told me once that the Sheriff was her first. She said they went steady in high school and that she only broke up with him because Pop drove a T-Bird. The Sheriff was the real catch, though. 

Class president, a good Christian and what Mama called “McQueen’s face, Redford’s hair and Newman’s butt.” That always made me cringe a little. He told her he would be true until marriage, but prom night and a pint of Rumple Minze spun a different tale. She said they spent the night in the back of his truck up on Valley View Ridge and that it was “true blue beautiful.” They kept it up for a few months, goin’ to parties and movies together and the like. Then she met Pop and seemed to just forget about the Sheriff altogether. Never seemed to forget that she had him wrapped around her finger, though, even twenty-five years later. 

Mama being who she was to him, and looking how she did that day, all pretty and angry and staring up at him like that seemed to send jolts of electricity through the Sheriff’s body. He nervously stepped backward from her, guiding her back to her feet by her shoulders. 

The Sheriff chuckled a little, nervously ignoring Mama’s advance. “Ozz-fest?” he cleared his throat,” Aint that not ‘til April this year?” 

There was a long silence and Mama took a few slow steps back from the Sheriff. She began shrugging indifferently, and her voice returned to that bitter register from before. “Well, shit. That’s where he said he went, Earl. I never know the difference anyhow! Everybody in town knows he’s always takin’ off on me! Weeks at a time. Months! Whores here, strippers there. Who the hell knows? It’s Ralph fuckin’ Rosewater. The man’s got shit in his skull and the cock of an eleven-year-old! Did you check in all the urinals and ash trays at Deja Vu?! Or...the jerk-booths at The Phoenix!? Yeah, that’s where you can find him. You know he’s got a runnin’ tab at every titty bar in Ten Sleep, for fuck’s sake!” 

“Sorry, LB, didn’t mean any-” The Sheriff said, stepping back defensively, “Look, just wanted to know if ol’ Ralphie and the gang been out lately...at night...” 

“Don’t call him ‘Ralphie,’ Earl. We aint fifteen, we damn sure aint at Garfield no more, and like I said, I aint seen him in weeks!” Mama hissed. 

The Sheriff paused again. He seemed very put off by Mama’s change in demeanor. “How 'bout them other boys? Terry? Hog Leg? They been around?” The Sheriff pleaded, noticing Mama was beginning to shut the door. 

“Aint seen ‘em. Now fuck off, Earl,” she said, closing the door. There was a brief silence outside followed by the Sheriff’s Chippewa’s softly plodding down the porch steps. Mama shuttered quietly to herself in the dark, then turned and walked to the base of the steps, taking notice of me. Shafts of light from the window behind me illuminated her face. The fluorescent lights and hovering tobacco clouds at Big Boy’s may not have done her skin any favors over the years, but her beauty remained, stoic and eternal. Her face was rounded smoothly and was framed stunningly by her dark black hair, thick and wild in the hallway light. At forty, Linda Ronstadt looked it. But Mama at forty looked like Linda at twenty- five: wild, free and intensely alluring. Mama wiped the tears from her eyes, deep black lagoons surrounded by thin tendrils of blood. She looked up at me, “You best be lettin’ me mention it to your Daddy.” Thick tears streamed down her cheeks. 

I stood up and started to walk down the steps towards her. She put her hand up and I stopped. I put my hand on the wallpaper and grazed the surface for a moment. “You think he still loves you, Mama?” I asked. 

“Oh, Marla,” she said, “what the fuck do you know about it anyway?” She walked back into the kitchen. 

I looked down at my toes. Fresh neon green polish beamed back at me. I noticed the tattoo of a tiger lillie on the outer arch of my right foot that I hated now. I remembered the day I snuck into town to get it. It was two years ago, I was fourteen. The shop smelled like cat food and the tattoo artist’s name was Fang. He was quite good, and very sweet to me. I wrapped my toes over the lip of the step, closed my eyes and took a deep breath. As I exhaled I opened my eyes and looked to my right, noticing an old framed picture on the wall of Mama and Pop when they first started dating. They were standing in the yard by Grandpa’s tire swing, wearing matching 38 Special “Special Delivery ‘78” t-shirts, his hand on her ass, her laugh beaming audibly, his gap-toothed grin settling in slyly. I sighed and went back to my room. 

* * * 

At about four-thirty I heard Pop pullin’ up the gravel drive in his old F150. As the truck approached the ranch, I heard something that sounded like horrible, wet concrete blasting out of the cab. Pantera, maybe. Then, as Pop screeched to a halt and slammed the truck into park, several overlapping, incoherent Jaeger-yells, whiskey- “whoops” and bourbon burps erupted into the dusking sky. I looked out my bedroom window. Hog Leg, burly as a brown bear and wide as a doublewide, hopped out of the truck bed. His snakeskin boots left massive divots in the mud beneath. Then Terry, a malnourished snake of a man, constantly wincing and wheezing, popped his head up from out of the cab. Then came Pop. He slammed his door hard, neglecting to turn off the engine, and stumbled quickly into the house. Terry lit up a smoke and chuckled. “Walk on home, boy...” Pantera proclaimed from the blown-out speakers to the cascading corn fields surrounding us. 

“Laura!” Pop called to her, the screen door slamming shut, “Laura-Beth! Where the fuck are you?!” 

“Basement,” came Mama’s muffled call from below. Pop had the door open by the second syllable, his steel-toed Caterpillars thumping mercilessly down the thin softwood planks to the dirt floor below. I struggled to make out what Pop was saying through the two sets of floorboards. It sounded like he kept saying “Darrel.” Darrel who? Mama had talked about a Father Darrel from church, but I didn’t know what Pop could possibly want with him. Mama wasn’t saying anything back, from what I could tell. I couldn’t tell much with that dang radio outside. 

I went back to the window and looked down at the boys. Hog smoked and Terry chewed and spat in the mud. Pantera gave way to Seger’s “Katmandu.” |A very odd transition. Hog Leg noticed this and went back into the cab to change the radio station. Terry looked up and noticed me. He pushed a strip of black tobacco through his teeth at the mud and let loose with a sleazy whistle. “Hey there, Marla the Mouse! How’s about you come down and party with us?” 

“Shut the fuck up, Terry,” Hog said from inside the cab. He stopped the tuner at Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” and turned it up. 

Mama and Pop were upstairs and in the kitchen now. I stooped by the vent in my room to hear them better. 

“Well, what the fuck did he say?!” Pop demanded. “Just...askin’ about you and them,” Mama replied. “What about them?” he yelled. 

“Just, if you was out huntin’ is all. I told him you was on the road,” said Mama, slightly annoyed. 

“Bullshit. You told him. I know you still got it for Earl,” he said. “I didn’t tell him shit, Ralph. You know I got no reason to rat on you,” “How long ago? Where’d he go?” Pop asked angrily. 

“An hour or so? Didn’t say where he was headed. Probably went up to talk to Lester up the way. Aint no one gonna find ‘em, babe, there’s no one for miles-” 

“What about the fucking state cops? You said-” 

“He said they was comin’ but they aint here yet. He doesn’t know anything, Ralph, I’m tellin’ you. Look, why don’t you just take ‘em up somewhere quiet, Red Tail Lake or Bearville or somewheres? Somewhere no one goes. Just dump ‘em and head back.” 

There was silence for a while. “Cult of Personality” faded out and Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.” Pop must have been thinking. Probably fixing his eyes on the black and white linoleum clashing with the olive-green cabinets. Maybe looking around the room, thinking of what he could use to bash Mama’s skull in. A single bead of sweat cascaded down my spine. Something didn’t sound right down there. 

“I know you told someone else, Laura-Beth,” came Pop’s hollow, cold voice. “You called Maggie or Lester or told one of them cunts down at the diner. Terry said Jagfish was askin’ about it-” “Ralph, it aint surprisin’-” Mom cut him off, “there aint but 1500 people in town. Word’s gonna spread.” “If Jagfish knows, everyone knows,” Pop fired back. “He’s a fuckin’ meth goat! He don’t even live in the same world as us! He aint got no friends. Who the hell would be talkin’ to Jagfish?” 

“I don’t know...fuckin’ Terry, for one, said so yourself,” she said. I heard Mama’s lighter igniting her tenth Salem of the day. She exhaled deeply. 

“Terry’s not-” Pop started, then stopped himself. “This aint how this should be goin’ down, Laura-Beth. Terry and Hog was with me all night-” 

“Where you been, by the way?” Mama cut in again, “Bubba’s? The Holy Diver? Earl’s goin’ after your ass, that’s for sure.” 

“Mention that cunt again and they’ll find you in that pond,” Pop jabbed. “Real nice, Ralph,” said Mama.

More silence. I could feel the air changing in the house. Darkness suddenly began to consume every wire, piece of drywall and light bulb. I could feel every bathroom tile and mirror shatter and every floorboard begin to char. I knew he was about to do it, but I could do nothing. There were no chains holding me back. I did not have feet made of cement. No unseen force was holding me there in my room. I had every muscle available, every young, healthy bone that could have been used to save her. I had the unbending will of a mother myself, something she had taught me at a very young age. Perhaps because she thought that I could save her from him. But, she must have known that he was much too powerful for that. 

There was a brief scuffling sound, a dish falling to the floor and the table rubbing harshly against the linoleum. I heard Mama yell, “Don’t you-” and then an incalculable block of black silence. Then there was Pops boots on the basement steps again. Slow, deliberate. I heard him moving things around in the basement, then the horrible creaking sound of the hinges to that ancient crawl space door grinding against each other. I heard a soft whimper, maybe Rita, and then Pop tellin’ it to “shut the fuck up.” The door shut again. Then he was back up the steps, bounding through the hall and back out to the front drive. Outside, Pop slurred loudly over the Guess Who’s “American Woman,” “Let’s fuck this shit up, boys! Goin’ to Lester’s!” Whistles and whoops, doors slamming and tires skidding followed. As they pulled out, Hog looked up at me from the truck bed and waved. I closed my eyes.