"What about motels?" I asked.

Lloyd looked slighted. "Moby d.i.c.k is self-contained, almost. We won't be stopping at motels."

"Self-contained means toilet, shower, and stove. Does d.i.c.k contain a toilet, shower, and stove?"

Shane hooted, which was the next subject I meant to discuss.

Lloyd rubbed his leg. "We have sleeping bags. There's a separate bag for you."

"You bet there is."

Twenty minutes turned into seven hours, but, by G.o.d, we pulled it off. Who would have thought two dried-up ex-drunks and a housewife or whatever I was could get their acts together and bust out of a rut in seven hours?

First stop was the TM ranch for a double-wide horse trailer and cash on the barrel head.

I left the boys up by the house and walked across the west pasture to where Hank Elkrunner stood in a ditch, wearing jeans, leather gloves, and irrigation boots. He'd stripped off his shirt and had his hair down, so he came off all muscles and sweat and brown skin. I could see why Lydia went drippy on sight.

Hank looked up at the ambulance. "Somebody hurt?"

Shane sat shoveling cookies into his mouth while Lloyd lay on his back under the front end, checking something mechanical. "Those are my good examples. They used to be drunks."

"I figured the hospital expected you back so soon they decided to tag along on your adventures." The Indian thing about Hank is you never know when he's joking. Other than that inscrutability stance, he's fairly white-doesn't sleep with bird parts next to the bed or drink bad wine or say "my people" like other Indians I'd met.

I said what I forgot to say Friday. "Thanks."

Hank bent at the knees and grabbed both sides of a head gate with his hands. His muscles bunched up as he lifted. "Arnold found you. I was tr.i.m.m.i.n.g Charley Chaplain's nails when Arnold started howling. Thought he had flushed a porcupine."

With a grunt, the gate came up an inch and brown water swirled under the board, oozing into the sides of the ditch before it filled in around Hank's boots and started pushing dust downstream.

"Well, I appreciate you and Arnold saving my life."

"Couldn't leave a naked woman lying that close to the creek. Might spoil the water."

I'm way fond of Hank. He's worked for Dad since Shannon was born, and even though he's Lydia's boyfriend, which makes him a generation older than me, we've always been able to talk about life and boyfriends and horses and stuff.

Sometimes Hank was more of a dad than Dad. He taught me how to read scat and howl like a wolf and G.o.d is Nature/Nature is G.o.d. Dad drove me to Sunday school a lot, but he never taught me anything about G.o.d.

"Hank, I need to borrow a trailer and three hundred dollars."

His attention was on the mares next to the barn. "You will have to grant me an advance before I loan you three hundred dollars."

"Do we have three hundred dollars to advance you to loan me?"

He pulled off his irrigation gloves. "Barely."

Hank listened without expression while I outlined the Coors-to-Carolina gig. At pertinent points his eyes roamed up the rise to Shane, Lloyd, and Moby d.i.c.k.

"Why not call Sam and have him mail you the money to fly back east?"

"I don't want to owe Sam money."

Hank slapped the dust off his gloves on his left forearm. He looked over at the Tetons, which is what everybody in the valley does when they're thinking deep stuff. "Maurey, have you looked at the books since Buddy died? Sam financed the funeral and paid the inheritance taxes. He owns your mama's house."

"I don't get it."

"This ranch is supporting your mother, brother, me, and most of Lydia, and now it'll have to do for you. That many people can't live on horses."

"Why didn't anyone tell me?"

Hank looked right at my face, which, as I understand it, is a very un-Blackfoot thing to do. "You were preoccupied."

"Drunk."

He shrugged. "Sometimes you were just depressed."

You know, when your dad dies you can't simply stop functioning for six months. I mean, you can-I was the number one example-but you shouldn't. Somebody has to pay attention. At her sanest, Mom didn't know which end of a cow s.h.i.ts, and Petey was afraid of animals. That left me, and I'd flopped.

"I should surrender and give the ranch to Sam."

Hank crammed the gloves in his back pocket so only the tips of the fingers stuck out. "Don't do that, he might fire me and run the place himself."

The thought made even Hank smile. I'd seen Sam in a cowboy hat once. He looked like Woody Allen gone hombre. The only time he ever got it up to ride a horse, Mae West threw him into a barbwire fence.

"Still, I'd rather do this without Sam," I said. "He's been saving me for ten years. It's my turn."

As Hank and I walked through the shin-high gra.s.ses up to the house, I thought about why I didn't want Sam flying me down there. It was like, here in Jackson Hole people watched me. And in Greensboro Sam's expectations would cause discomfort. If I got drunk, Sam wouldn't preach or anything, but he would think. Shannon had never seen the Mom-gone-bad either.

I was worn out from disappointing people. I needed a gap, a rest between this and that where no one could pull me up, put me down, or tear off little pieces of my energy. Even though I'd just finished one, I needed a three-day nap, and being out of reach on the road with Laurel and Hardy might be the next best medicine.

Shane slid another cookie into his beak. "I don't see cows. You said there were cows and all I see are horses."

Hank nodded to the uphill side. "Cattle are on the Forest Service lease till October."

"I don't much care for horses. Never have since Katharine Hepburn insisted I copulate with her on one in 1942," Shane said.

I was dubious. "You nailed Katharine Hepburn?"

"On a stallion. Sweet girl, really, although she went to extremes for sensory experience." Shane lowered his voice. "She suffered from p.e.n.i.s envy."

"We've got a filly named Katharine Hepburn." Hank waved his arm in the general direction of Frostbite and three or four quarter horse-Thoroughbred combinations.

Shane peered off toward the group. "Kate always was a bit horsey in the thighs."

I didn't for a second believe Shane had nailed Katharine Hepburn. n.o.body-except possibly Spencer Tracy when she was underage-had ever nailed Katharine Hepburn. She wouldn't allow it.

Lloyd backed out from under Moby d.i.c.k. Some gravel was embedded in his bare shoulder next to the overalls. "Big hole in the exhaust," he said. "Thought I felt fumes inside."

Hank dropped to a haunch-squat to peer under d.i.c.k's guts. "c.o.ke cans wrapped around the pipe will fix that. I've got some clamps in the barn."

"Much obliged," Lloyd said, and Bingo, they were male pals on the spot. Men can do that. "Carburetor's clogged," a man will say to a complete stranger, and instantly they're connected by a common language. I don't share a common language with women. Mildred Barber asked me what I thought of Final Net once and I had to say, "Huh?"

Lloyd and Hank wandered off for clamps and the trailer and left me with Mr. Delusions of Grandeur. Under the fat folds, his ratty eyes glittered. "This was right after The Philadelphia Story. She told me Cary Grant had vulture breath."

"So, if you got laid on one, why do you hate horses?"

He glanced at me. "Kate screamed, 'Give me more, big boy!' and the stallion panicked and reared. The end result was a life spent in this chair. It took all the Warner Brothers' resources to keep the story out of the tabloids. Can you see it?" He held his hand up to scan an imaginary headline. "Katharine Hepburn Cripples Stunt-man While f.u.c.king on Pony."

"You were a stuntman?"

"Didn't you know?" He slid through another cookie.

The brown slime was getting deep, so I muttered something vague about checking a colt and walked over to the main corral. One of the mares had come up dry, and Hank had her and her foal penned so he could do the baby bottle deal. I did the baby bottle deal for Shannon, mostly, but Auburn was a breast baby. He'd left my t.i.ts tender-I could kind of excite myself by touching them. Sometimes I wonder if it's a sign of hopeless deprivation when nursing a baby gives you thoughts.

It felt weird to be at the TM getting ready to leave. What if I never made it back? All my innocence was wrapped up in this ranch, and innocence isn't something to leave on purpose. Things happen outside Jackson Hole; you never know when you're going to get stuck somewhere and never again see the place that you'd always taken for granted would be the center of your days for life.

The corral poles were part of me, and the watering hole off the creek, and the boneyard where pieces of machinery older than Wyoming rusted into the sage. The ranch cycles were so soaked into my blood that on our land I always knew what time it was and which way was north. You feel those things when your ident.i.ty becomes a location. The outside world made me nervous.

Back over at the house, Lloyd and Hank had pulled Dad's old rodeoing trailer over to Moby d.i.c.k and were in the process of winching it onto the hitch and hooking up brake and lights wiring. From the corral, I could see a big dent I put in the trailer by backing it into an A&W billboard. The billboard fell on an empty fireworks stand and knocked it flat. Dad laughed until tears dripped off his beard.

I didn't see any urgent need for Hank to loan us that particular trailer. Self-destructive tendencies can't possibly benefit from a father memory following your backside across America.

Shane had his back to the work, facing the horses and the sun. It was the time of year people liked to face the sun. He looked at me and popped a cookie. "Tonto says you used to ride horses."

"Used to?" I said.

"Tonto?" Hank said.

"You might think you're hot stuff, but even before you fell off the deep end you could never have matched Kate at horsemanship. There was a competent woman. You don't look so very competent."

I advanced on him. "Maybe it's time you and me duke it."

Shane was amused to no end. "I don't fight helpless women."

"I do fight fat cripples."

I could tell calling him a fat cripple earned me a little respect. Most people bend so far over backward not to say the wrong thing around the handicapped, to the point where the bending over becomes obvious and an insult. Shane was one of those cripples who wanted the same abuse given normal men.

He turned the chair so we weren't facing head on. "I did not mean to upset your feminine sensibilities. All I meant was Katharine Hepburn did things you couldn't do even before you became a drunk."

I looked over at Lloyd, who chose to stay noncommittal, then back at Shane, who seemed to be leading with his belly.

"Watch this, Humpty-Dumpty." Sticking two fingers in my mouth, I let out a whistle. Very little causes me pride, not since college, anyway, but my whistle does call 'em in for lunch. Not a boy in Teton County could out-blow me.

Frostbite's ears jumped alert and his head swiveled. As he came at a canter, you couldn't help but admire the skewbald Daddy-killer. The old guy was fourteen now, but he still lifted his feet like a colt, and his eyes still sparked with the glory of performance.

At a twenty-foot gap, I held my hand palm forward and Frostbite stopped on a nickel. A dime. World's greatest trick horse.

"n.o.body's rode him since Buddy," Hank said.

Frostbite and I locked brown eyes on blue. Faith in each other leapt between us like lightning between a thunderhead and a mountain spire. Horse and woman became a unit.

Hank stepped next to me. "I advise against it."

Shane said, "If you break your neck, don't ask to use my chair."

I gave the hand signal for Frostbite to turn around. Exhaling calmly, I said, "No problem. We haven't lost a thing."

My rear mount was smooth as water over a rock. The instant my jeans touched his back, Frostbite became motion, I became Frostbite. We're talking exhilaration-the refinding of lost enthusiasm.

I grasped the mane with my left hand and did a right vault, then reversed it and bounced dirt on the other side. For the first time I wished I hadn't cut my hair. Long hair streaming in the wind is a trip when you go fast. You should see Hank do the arrow-beneath-the-belly Indian trick. On a full-blast horse death doesn't mean s.h.i.t.

As he hurled toward the fence I gently tugged Frostbite's mane and touched him with my left leg. He did a flying leftward U-ey, and ZOOM, we're charging back toward Moby d.i.c.k. I placed both palms on his back between my thighs, straightened my legs, and lifted myself into a rear spin-same trick Mary Ellen McKenzie had been trying on the mechanical horse at Kimball's before she mocked me.

Forward again, I made a crowd appreciation check. Hank watched with both hands on his hips. Shane knocked his harmonica against his dead leg. He would say something tacky, but I would know I'd shut him down. The slug couldn't c.r.a.p at me anymore.

I brought both feet under my body with my weight on my toes. Time for the free rump stand followed by the back flip dismount. This would knock their socks off-all except Lloyd, who wasn't wearing socks.

I came to on the ground in the shade of the ambulance. This time the progression went in reverse-black spots turning to yellow turning to three round faces staring down at me. Hank's was angry, Lloyd's concerned. Shane was so entertained he practically bubbled.

Hank said, "I won't bury another member of your family."

In times of embarra.s.sment, always fall back on bravado. "f.u.c.king horse broke stride."

Shane giggled. "That's what Katharine said." Hank knelt to manipulate my legs.

I must have landed on my shoulders because that's what hurt the most, other than my already battered ego. "Frostbite jumped a chiseler hole. He's lost his touch."

Lloyd didn't blink. "Would you have fallen if you hadn't had a drink?"

Shane gave his hideous hoot. All three chins contracted like a frog's neck when it croaks. "She'd have stayed up longer with more to drink, not less."

I closed my eyes. I'd crashed any number of times learning the tricks. This didn't mean a thing; I wasn't a washed-up, twenty-two-year-old has-been.

Hank touched my ankle. "Can you move your feet?"

"Of course I can move my feet. Let's get the h.e.l.l out of Dodge, I'm tired of this G.o.dforsaken dump."

Dothan trained Mae West to buck whenever she heard "Chewy Chewy" by the Ohio Express. Dothan loved the Ohio Express, which tells you as much about his depth of character as the calendar with Kiwanis meetings marked by a star.

He used to bring his portable eight-track tape player to the ranch and sit on the corral fence listening to music while I exercised Frostbite and a couple others. Dothan was only there waiting for me to get done so he could take me up the hayloft and get straw in my p.u.b.es. Every now and then while I rode I'd catch him chunking a rock at Mae West's b.u.t.t, always when the same song was playing. I didn't make the connection until after the incident.