“Whatever.”
David rolled over to sleep, but he couldn’t stop his thoughts. He should have spent the day at Jorgensen’s with his arm up a cow’s ass. He had a living to make, and if it hadn’t been for his inappropriate curiosity about Ray and Morsel, he’d already be back in Jordan, looking to grab a room for the night. But the roll of money in Ray’s pack and the hints of more to come had made him wonder how anxious he was to get back to work. There was opportunity in the air, and he wanted to see how it would all play out.
“Ray, you awake?”
“I can be. What d’you want, asshole?”
“I just have something I want to get off my chest.”
“Make it quick. I need my Z’s.”
“Sure, Ray, try this one on for size: the gun’s a toy.”
“The gun’s a what?”
“A toy.”
“You think a gun’s a toy?”
“No, Ray, I think your gun’s a toy. It’s a fake. And looks like you are too.”
“Where’s the fuckin’ light switch? I’m not taking this shit.”
“Stub your toe jumping off the bed like that.”
“Might be time to clip your wings, sonny.”
“Ray, I’m here for you. Just take a moment to look at the barrel of your so-called gun, and then let’s talk.”
Ray found the lamp and paced the squeaking floorboards. “Taking a leak off the porch. Be right back,” he said. Through the open bedroom door, David could see him silhouetted in the moonlight, a silver arc splashing onto the dirt, his head thrown back in what David took to be a plausible posture of despair.
By the time Ray walked back in he was already talking: “... an appraiser in Modesto, California, where I grew up. I did some community theater there, played Prince Oh So True in a children’s production and thought I was going places, then Twelve Angry Men — I was one of them, which is where the pistol came from. I was the hangman in Motherlode. Got married, had a baby girl, lost my job, got another one, went to Hawaii as a steward on a yacht belonging to a movie star, who was working at a snow-cone stand a year before the yacht, the coke, the babes, and the wine. I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement, but then I got into a fight with the movie star and got kicked off the boat at Diamond Head. They just rowed me to shore in a dinghy and dumped me off. I hiked all the way to the crater and used the restroom to clean up, then took the tour bus into Honolulu. I tried to sell the celebrity drug-use story to a local paper, but it went nowhere because of the confidentiality agreement. Everything I sign costs me money. About this time, my wife’s uncle’s walnut farm was failing. He took a loan out on the real estate, and I sold my car, which was a mint, rust-free ’78 Trans Am, handling package, W-72 performance motor, Solar Gold with a Martinique Blue interior. We bought a bunch of FEMA trailers from the Katrina deal and hauled them to California. We lost our asses. The uncle gases himself in his garage, and my wife throws me out. I moved into a hotel for migrant workers, and started using the computers at the Stanislaus County Library and sleeping at the McHenry Mansion. One of the tour guides was someone I used to fuck in high school and she slipped me into one of the rooms for naps. I met Morsel online. I told her I was on hard times. She told me she was coining it, selling bootleg Oxycontin in the Bakken oil field, but she was lonely. It was a long shot. Montana. Fresh start. New me. Bus to Billings and hit the road. I made it to Jordan, and I had nothing left. The clerk at that fleabag barely let me have a room. I told him I was there for the comets. I don’t know where I come up with that. Breakfast at the café was my last dime and no tip. I had to make a move. So what happens now? You bust me with Morsel? You turn me in? Or you join us?”
“You pretty sure on the business end of this thing?” David asked, with a coldness that surprised him.
“A hundred percent, but Morsel’s got issues with other folks already in it. There’s some risk, but when isn’t there, with stakes like this? Think about it, Dave. If you’re at all interested in getting rich, you tell me.”
Ray was soon snoring. David was intrigued that all these revelations failed to disturb his sleep. He himself was wide awake, brooding over how colorless his own life was in comparison with Ray’s. Ray was a con man and a failure, but what had he ever done? Finish high school? High school had been anguish, persecution, and suffering, but even in that he was unexceptional. He’d never had sex with a mansion tour guide. He’d had sex with a fat girl he disliked. Then the National Guard. Fort Harrison in the winter. Cleaning billets. Inventorying ammunition. Unskilled maintenance on UH-60 Blackhawks. Praying for deployment against worldwide towel heads. A commanding officer who told the recruits that the president of the United States was “a pencil-wristed twat.” Girlfriend fatter every time he went home. He still lived with his mother. Was still buying his dope from the same guy at the body shop he’d got it from in the eighth grade.
Perhaps it was surprising he’d come up with anything at all, but he had: Bovine Deluxe, LLC, a crash course in artificially inseminating cattle. David took to it like a duck to water: driving around the countryside detecting and synchronizing estrus, handling frozen semen, keeping breeding records — all easily learnable, but David brought art to it, and he had no idea where that art had come from. He was a genius preg-tester. Whether he was straight or stoned, his rate of accuracy, as proven in spring calves, was renowned. Actually, David preferred preg-testing stoned. Grass gave him a greater ability to visualize the progress of his arm up the cow’s rectum. His excitement began as soon as he donned his coveralls, pulled on his glove, lubed it with OB goo, and stepped up to the cow stuck in the chute. Holding the tail high overhead with his left hand, he got his right hand all the way in, against the cow’s attempt to expel it, shoveled out the manure to clear the way past the cervix, and finally, nearly up to his shoulder, grasped the uterus. David could nail a pregnancy at two months, when the calf was smaller than a mouse. He never missed, and no cow that should have been culled turned up without a calf in the spring. He could tell the rancher how far along the cow was by his informal gradations: mouse, rat, Chihuahua, cat, fat cat, raccoon, beagle. Go through the herd, or until his arm was exhausted. Throw the glove away, write up the invoice, strip the coveralls, look for food and a room.
Perfect. Except for the dough.
He’d once dreamed of owning jewels, especially rubies, and that dream was coming back. Maybe glue one on his forehead like a Hindu. It’d go over big on his ranch calls.
Morsel made breakfast for her father, David, and Ray — eggs, biscuits, and gravy. David was thinking about Ray’s “last dime” back in Jordan versus the rolls of bills in his pack and watching Weldon watch Ray as breakfast was served. Morsel just leaned against the stove while the men ate. “Anyone want to go to Billings today to see the cage fights?” she asked. David looked up and smiled, but no one answered her. Ray was probing around his food with his fork, pushing the gravy away from the biscuits, and Weldon was flinching. Weldon wore his black Stetson with the salt-encrusted sweat stain halfway up the crown. David thought it was downright unappetizing, not the sort of thing a customer for top-drawer bull semen would wear. At last Weldon spoke at top volume, as though calling out to his livestock.
“What’d you say your name was?”
“Ray.”
“Well, Ray, why don’t you stick that fork all the way in and eat like a man?”
“I’m doing my best, Mr. Case, but I will eat nothing with a central nervous system.”