From Pillar to Post

By Eli Lederman

When law enforcement agents disrupt his search for meaning in modern life, Jack Cover departs his native Wyoming to seek refuge and inspiration in New York City. Followed there by his girlfriend muse and accompanied by an expanding circle of followers, Jack moves among ranchers and romeos, nymphs and nerds, giants and aesthetes, some of them creative and some damned, and all seeking their way in a world where High Society live like homeless while generous bohemians reach for glory. Set over a single week in 1985 amidst the “Culture Wars” then raging in the United States, From Pillar to Post tells a romantic tale of art and science, cliques and clubs, drinks and drugs, promises and promiscuity, and people’s progress through privilege and pathos, to despair, hope, joy and resurrection. Picaresque and poetic, joyful and mad, romantic and demented, FROM PILLAR TO POST.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eli Lederman
• Release date: Dec 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9780984767885

Eli Lederman

Eli Lederman was born in New York City in 1963. A graduate in physics from Brown University, he received a Ph.D at NYU before spending two years as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard. During a fourteen year career at Morgan Stanley, half in New York and half in London, Eli was a managing director who established innovative new businesses in electronic trading and financial technology. From 2007 to 2010, he was the chief executive of a pan-European stock market owned by several of the largest investment banks in the world. He has been a landscaper and a lifeguard, prep cook and head cook, teacher and professor, semiconductor engineer and salesman; he has washed dishes and bused tables, painted houses, delivered flowers and tended bar, among other jobs. Since 2001, Eli has lived in England with his wife and three children.

Book preview

The sun casts short shadows now as it rises over the Wyoming prairie. Red fades to orange, wispy and streaked, suggesting features far away before the horizon emerges and a cool, diffuse dawn lines up like images in a rangefinder focus. A new summer day spreads across arid land, flat to the end, where it tumbles from sight. Daylight pours in through the passenger side window, a cue to switch off headlights that deserve a rest. Cranking down the window admits a blast of air, crisp and dry, that rumbles in, beating eardrums with a muffled roar. Outside, the wind sweeps from left to right raising sand and dust in clouds that sometimes swirl, briefly, before they vanish, dissipated. The truck sways with each gust, shrubs bend and brush blows, sometimes fifty feet before it finds anything in its path. Tumbleweed. From time to time two combine to roll together. Other times, lifeless as life can look, it is actually rooted, extracting sustenance from so little. Wild horses move into sight, an occasional moose, but mainly possum and marmots. These things mean a lot to me but then I’m a city boy.

Pamela stirs in the passenger seat and, inhaling once deeply, she turns her head from the sun and adjusts her posture to move her shoulder from the door. Still asleep, she smiles faintly on the edge of consciousness. Her features, I see now clearly, are fair and plain, at once without distinction or defect, neither fine nor coarse, not prominent or common, neither dreary nor radiant, but beautiful in that way. In the way that the land is, she is too. She picked me up in Utah last night, taking a risk she blamed on the sign I held. North, it read, but if a vehicle approaching on a lonesome road was giving no indication of braking, as happened with her, I would flip the board over to reveal the other side: Comma PLEASE, it read. She pulled over and was laughing when I leaned in at the open window.

Very funny! she said. I have a weakness for grammar. Get in!

We got acquainted as she drove on, making small talk that tested each other’s boundaries, revealing ourselves and not. Flirty and fun, the conversation moved along through the night, lit vaguely by the dash and the slide dial on a radio that no longer worked. Tired, finally, and wanting to close her eyes, Pamela trusted me to take the wheel and on the shoulder of some desolate stretch we stopped to switch seats. Pulling back onto the road, I felt her watch me shift up through gears, as if making sure I could; moments later she was sound asleep. Deep in the night, she stirred and shuddered as some animated dream played out, and she mumbled words and names. As I watched and listened, I wished that she would explain.

Waking up now, Pamela stretches her legs and arms. Good morning, Bart. Thanks for the respite, she says, patting my hand as it rests on the gearshift. We chat for a while about the land, the weather, her ex-husband, until she starts in about how wonderful Gander is. A beautiful town, she says of the place where she was born and still lives today. And, she adds, there’s nowhere better to be on the Fourth of July. Today is July 1, 1985.

I wouldn’t mind putting you up for a few days if you’d like, she offers, somewhat out of the blue.

That’s really very nice of you, I reply, considering the inherent possibilities. I did have my heart set on Jackson.

Jackson’s a tourist trap, she shoots back, dismissively. Gander is the place to be on the Fourth of July.

As we hurtle towards a fork in the road, I spread a tattered map across the steering wheel to survey the choices. Bear right and I go to Gander and have an adventure of who knows what variety with Pamela. The alternative means parting with her to stand alone on the side of the road, waiting for another ride, unsheltered from a risen sun blazing hotter every minute. The problem is that if I go to Gander with the idea of then going to Jackson it would mean traversing a hundred miles of Indian reservation that people have advised me to avoid, warning that nobody there will give rides to white folks and, more ominous still, that the only thing worse than not getting a ride there is getting one. I have no idea whether any of this is true, though it bears consideration even as I decide to chance it. All right. Good. Let’s go to Gander.

Bart, you just made the best decision of your young life.

Bearing right at the fork in the road, I hug the shoulder around the bend, tires tracking its white line like some measure of discipline imposed on the car against the giddy new atmosphere inside it. Pamela has moved to the radiant end of the spectrum, vibrant and excited. Sunlight streams through the windshield and we squint to see terrain change smoothly as the road veers east. Prairie gives way to the Wind River Mountains and evergreens replace earthen shrubs, alive if still not lush. There are even some cars on the road and a diner, too. Pamela suggests we stop for breakfast, and that afterwards she’ll drive the last half hour. Sounds good. Over a coffee mug I realize that I’m weary.

When we get home, she says almost maternally, and suddenly sounding every day of the eight years older she is, I’m going to put you right to bed. Smiling tenderly, she reaches across the table to touch my hand, but as quickly as the moment of her intimacy had arrived it does also depart, and her gaze rises to meet an image over my shoulder.

In the window glass behind her I see a reflection of a television against a wall some fifteen feet from our booth, and I watch as Pamela straightens her back and lifts her chin to focus on its screen. Summoning strength to turn and investigate, I see a man being interviewed, surrounded really, by a throng of reporters, other people too, in a scene that appears to be transpiring on the steps of some courthouse. Turning back to our table, I discover Pamela’s seat vacated for a better view. Standing now between two stools at the counter, she leans forward to see and hear better what the man is saying. As the cook turns back and forth between the news and eggs on the griddle, our waitress turns up the volume and the television becomes the background sound for a room that has otherwise fallen silent.

The crackling audio doesn’t reach me, but the visuals come through clearly enough. As microphones jostle before his strong jaw and dimpled chin, the man speaks emphatically to the assembled crowd, addressing people to one side, and then the other, back and forth across the camera’s field of view. Flanking him, just behind his broad shoulders, stand three younger men who appear to be in their twenties, one in a gray suit and the others wearing Western shirts drawn closed at the neck by string ties. Seeing Pamela and the waitress watch so intently, practically in awe, it crosses my mind that they might be in love with these men, or one of them at least. The segment ends and Pamela returns.

That’s about Jack Cover. Do you know the story?

No, tell me.

Well, that man speaking is Joe Cover, Jack’s father. Jack is on trial for murder, or maybe manslaughter. Incredible story—biggest thing around here for years. The Covers are an important family, just huge in Gander. Cement of the county in some people’s minds, mine anyway. Mr. Cover’s got the best working ranch left around here. Anyway, his sons were behind him, did you see?

Yes.

Jack is the oldest one, the smaller fella, and the other two are these giant lugs. They also have a sister. She wasn’t there, or I didn’t see her. Someone told me she started going to the trial again, but I didn’t see her there. Hmmm. Anyway, she’s so beautiful. You could figure that, though. They all are, really.

They do make a picture...

"So Stephanie, is her name, works at this restaurant in Laramie where she goes to school. And Jack, her brother, is living down there with her. He’s doing something down there, going to school and other stuff. And one night Stephanie’s boss, some older guy, makes some kind of play on her. This much is known. No one knows exactly what he did. People think, well, everyone knows that she didn’t want any part of this guy, and some people think he even raped her. Ugghh. I hate to even say that or think about it. Anyway, they aren’t saying because that guy’s not around to have charges brought against him. Jack took care of that, her brother did. He killed him! Plus they don’t want to say, or she doesn’t because she’s probably embarrassed. Or not that, but humiliated, really."

"He killed him?"

Yes, this much is known. Steph came back and told Jack, crying and all. Jack put on his jacket—I heard this direct from someone he told—and walked right out of the apartment they shared to get on his horse. Oh! That’s a kind of funny thing about Jack. Rides his horse everywhere, even in the city, unless it’s a real long trip.

Different. Go on.

Oh. Rode his horse over to this guy’s restaurant and beat the heck outta this guy so bad he died! Jack’s said all along that the guy had it coming but that anyway he didn’t mean to kill him. That a blood thing burst in his brain is what must’ve happened.

So what was all the commotion on the courthouse steps? Were those the courthouse steps?

Yes. In Cheyenne. Well, it went to the jury today. And nearly every day—the trial’s been on two weeks, probably—Jack’s dad has walked outta court and had these wild things to say. Crazy. So funny... Pamela smiles, shaking her head, at once delighted and embarrassed for the things Jack’s dad has been saying.

Like what?

Well, today. Wait. I want to get it right; this man speaks like nobody else. He went to Harvard and you’d never guess it, or maybe you would, seeing as where you’re from. He said that there’s only thinking people on this jury, he knows that, and any thinking person would have to deliberate on this case for about a minute and a half.

Is the case that open and shut, you think?

Probably. That guy killed was a shady character; there’s been lots of people in court to say that. And the Covers...well, they’re top of the line, those Covers. I mean, it’s a fair trial and all, but realistically everybody knows just by looking at ’em. Jack in particular. Oh, so Mr. Cover then says that the State of Wyoming was crazy to bring charges in the first place. He leads that Cover cavalry right down the courthouse steps and says—Pamela lowers her voice two octaves, sticks her chin out, and rocks her shoulders back to imitate the elder Cover—‘God help any court that convicts Jack of defending his sister the way he did. If he hadn’t done it I would have. God help the District Attorney.’ Really, Bart, he was on a roll!

Was that it?

No, he went on and on. I’m not gonna get all the words right—paraphrasing, right?—but it was like this, Pamela says, before resuming her imitation of the man. "‘The D.A. is supposed to be on the side of the daughters with fathers and sisters with brothers there to protect them. They couldn’t keep my son in jail for a day, not anywhere in this country. We’d spring him if we had to. Proud people anywhere would do it. Most of all in Wyoming where we’re proud and we bear arms!’ Or something like that."

Guy sounds like a lunatic.

He is, I think. I adore him. Imagine talking about a jailbreak in 1985! Gee! Another time he said that if Jack was convicted he’d run for governor. Said that it’d be a two-plank platform: first day in office he’d pardon Jack, and then he’d fire the D.A. Said that after that he’d resign. A one-day term. He swears he’d win too.

Would he, you think?

I hope so. I really do.

Pamela and I finish up our coffee before heading out to the truck. She strides ahead with a jaunty bounce, cutting a lovely figure through the sand and gravel of the parking lot, and when we climb back in, she’s at the wheel.

Go to sleep. There’s nothing much to see till we get there.

Thanks, but I’d rather see the land.

Suit yourself. I live in Blue Canyon. In a bungalow, really. You’ll like it there, she says as she puts the truck in gear.

I like you. And the way she handles her pickup, too.

You’re sweet. We can have a nice time.

I’d like to do that, I say, and when I add, Exactly, Pamela turns to me and she smiles. Blushing a little, she turns back to the road and through her smile she bites her lower lip a bit. The land has turned into a magnificent light show, with shimmering surfaces at dramatic angles, and Pamela responds in kind. Close-cropped and unkempt, blond hair falls across her forehead and tucks back behind her ear. Cliff faces stagger through a hundred hues from sky to ground. Bony knees jut past the hem in a denim skirt. Solitary trees grow from cracks in rocks. Now as she raises her hands to steer from the top of the wheel I see her breast framed in her shirt’s short sleeve. Turning left onto a dirt road, she barrels down it a half mile toward her house, her bungalow, which comes at last into view.

Bouncing from crater to bump, the truck approaches the ramshackle structure and, just as it seems she may drive through its front door, Pamela turns abruptly to the left, fishtailing to stop on sand, rock and gravel. When the breeze clears risen dust, a verdant strip emerges across the windshield above the hood, yielding in the distance to canyon walls that rise behind. Nestled in nature, the cabin looks like it was airlifted into position, completely surrounded by fauna that a hundred miles ago would have been unimaginable, but flourishing here, well fed by a trickling creek, a relic probably of the river that carved the canyon. Through the trees and over the creek cows graze in a lush meadow. In the distance, beyond the herd, there grow from the ground sheer red rock cliffs. The other canyon boundary is directly behind us, a stone’s throw to more red rock cliffs.

Pamela, the walls are red and the floor is green. So why do they call this Blue Canyon? Glad to be home, she appears not to have heard me. Anyway, she doesn’t deign to answer, or maybe she does by not.

This is my home, she says holding her arms out to the bungalow before us. And that, she points across the road to a decaying shack, "is my outhome."

We spend that day and the next together, indoors and out. Pamela is a teacher and boasts of summers off.

What kind of name is Bart? she asks.

Short for Bartholomew.

I’m gonna stick with Bart.

Most people do.

You know, Bart, you can take the summer here if you want. I can probably help you get some kind of job—

"Thank you, but...no, that is really nice. You could do that?"

"Yes, but—mind you I’m not saying you could stay here all summer. Just saying that if you were here in Gander..."

Spread out upon the grass and wrapped in cotton sheets under the afternoon sun, I realize that Gander and Pamela have begun to cast a spell.

What kind of job did you have in mind?

Would you mind working in a restau—

I love working in restaurants.

’Cause I know you have this education and all, and you had some fancy Wall Street office job, but...well, I could maybe find you something else, I guess.

I love working in restaurants.

Well, it’s more of a bar.

Bars are better.

My friend owns the Gander Bar and Grill.

Then it’s settled. I’d like to see your town, and spend some time here. Whatever! Pamela has a bachelorette party to go to, but there’s a rodeo today and she’ll drop me at the grounds.

You, you city boy, are gonna love rodeo. It’s the Wild, Wild West when it’s done homestyle. And in Gander, we do it homestyle!

2.

"Jack, dammit, yes, I’d have done it if you hadn’t, but this is some mess you’ve got us in. If you’d called me and let me do the killing, this trial, my trial, would be long done by now. So, in the future, let me do the killing when there’s killing to be done."

"Pa, you know I didn’t plan to kill him."

Mistake number one in the commission of a possibly otherwise perfect crime...

Forgive me if I’m not amused.

I do know you didn’t plan it, but all the same. In the future...

The Covers, Joe and son Jack, are having a cup of coffee on this, the second day of deliberations in Jack’s trial. While the jury deliberates in a suite on the other side of the building, the Covers sit in a waiting area just off the courtroom where testimony was heard. Yesterday the Covers waited for the verdict in the judge’s chambers, where they hobnobbed with His Honor and played chess. No verdict came in, but this morning a local paper ran an editorial about the appearance of impropriety in letting the Covers relax in the judge’s rooms—a symbol, the paper said, of the family’s sense of entitlement to two-tiered justice. Having earlier railed against the unfairness of allowing Jack to remain free on bail, the commentary was particularly strident under the headline, Asymmetry in the System. Reacting to the article, the presiding judge decided, however reluctantly, to quarter father and son down the hall for the remainder of their wait. For their part, the Covers were happy to oblige, preoccupied as they were with winning a speedy acquittal, and they duly moved their chess game.

Joe, the judge said to the elder Cover this morning, when privately telling him of the relocation, yesterday I wanted justice served and for the jury to return their verdict, for better or worse. Today, to hell, justice! To hell, deliberations! I want Jack set free posthaste so’s I can put him on to that meddling moron who runs that liberal rag!

Back in their waiting room, father and son pass anxious hours. So what’s your best guess, Pa? Guilty? Innocent? If it was that cut-and-dried they’d have reached a verdict by now. Don’t you think?

"Yes, I think. You mean, ‘Don’t you think so.’ And yes, I think so, Jack. It is that cut-and-dried. They’ll be back anytime now, that jury will, to proclaim you innocent. You watch. They’re sitting around, insolent, self-important. I spoke to the judge this morning. He says you’ve got nothing to fear."

"Oh? What does he base that on? Do you know why he said I’ve nothing to fear? Do you know why, Pa? A man should always know why, shouldn’t he?"

"Yes, yes, a man should know why. And you’re the man you are today because you know why this, why that. But he’s not my son, Jack, is he? Look, he’ll have hell to bear if it doesn’t go as...well, as it should."

The liberal paper across the street thinks ‘as it should’ means I go down on a lesser charge! That people like me will just go around like vigilantes if there’s no message sent.

That’s not going to happen, and if it did, well, Joe Cover pauses to recall his strategy for that outcome. If I were governor I could fire judges, right?

It would be too late.

Well, maybe, but we’d find some way. Anyhow, the judge said he saw my point and that his guess was we’d get our verdict come July Fourth. His Honor indicated that the jurors would have an inkling of the patriotic significance of the verdict coming on Independence Day.

That sounds, to the accused, like total BS.

Be patient, son.

Pa, you’re right. You are. It’s just that I want to go to the rodeo back home. Fact is, I am distraught not to be riding in it but, barring that, I would downright love to watch it.

"Well, son, let me ask you this: Do you want so badly to see that rodeo that you would like for the judge to recess the jury? Because they won’t deliberate in your absence, Jack. You stay here, and they stay at it. You leave, and there’s no telling how long this drags on. So it’s down to you, your call. Should His Honor pull up roots on those tree stumps, send ’em home so they can’t reach a verdict today? Sweat it out another night and hope that tomorrow they see it our way? If that’s what you want, Jack, I think I can arrange it."

Pa, that is exactly what I want.

With that Joe Cover nods and rises. He’s a large man and he moves deliberately, so his unfolding takes quite some time. It pleases him to find his son so drawn to the rodeo, as it drew him, too, years ago. He smiles to think of the similarities and shakes his head to think of the differences. When he buttonholes the judge in a hallway nearby, Joe Cover asks His Honor to recess the jury, citing a personal reason. When you speak with them, Mr. Cover adds suggestively, it might help to point out that Independence Day would be a fine time to deliver an American verdict.

A half an hour later, Jack Cover is aboard his 1969 Ford Fairlane wagon zooming west to be on hand for Founder Days festivities in Gander.

3.

Marlena keeps an eye on the window as she busies herself with minor tasks that need doing, passing the time into the early evening. Work slows down in the New York summer and she could leave as others have, but she stays, preferring the air-conditioned office to stifling heat outside. She waits for the sun to set behind buildings before a horizon she cannot see, and when the sky begins to darken, she knows by then it’s happened, the slow cooling has begun. Rising from her desk, she gathers her belongings and puts them in her brightly striped summer satchel. Keys, pen, lighter, a paperback, purse and her idea pad—she drops them all in. Scanning her surroundings for anything she might have missed, she switches off her fluorescent desk lamp and walks from new shadows on her side of the room.

In a room of forty stations, a lone fellow remains at work. Marlena’s route takes her past the drafting table where he sits now, past the filing cabinet there, too, and into the light of his lamp. Good night, she says and he does too. For the year they have worked together, she has always thought that he must genuinely enjoy his job, even in ways inconceivable to her. As the office empties, she trades her work for a novel to read and big nights out, but he goes on laboring at this project or that. Marlena harbors some contempt for him and, under her breath now, out of earshot and behind his back, she calls him a bore, code word for people who happily devote themselves to things that cause her only duress. He is a symbol, as she passes him and until she reaches the door, of all the things she hopes never to bear in the man she finds to love. Arriving at the office door and opening it, Marlena pauses to imagine that it will be the threshold to a new life, but she passes through, emerging as always into a familiar hallway.

Marlena’s walk home takes fifteen minutes when she does it nonstop, but she rarely takes a direct route, choosing instead to indulge in various diversions served up by her downtown neighborhood, hip and young as it is. Crossing a cobblestone street tonight, she pauses at a sidewalk grating that spews an abundant stream of cool air, probably derived from an underground vent. The book in her bag is The Hawkline Monster by Richard Brautigan, and she feels as she stands above this frigid blast that she is the novel’s heroine who lives in that unnatural house surrounded by snow when all around it’s superhot. Hovering over the impromptu chill, Marlena smiles to think that New York has fabricated just for her this peculiar reality from such outlandish fantasy.

Cool air feels nice against her skin, especially so when it winds its way around her bare legs and into her skirt, a gentle caress that distracts her as the evening takes her by the arm. Marlena loves the night for all its boundless hope; cocktails fuel her optimism. The idea of having a drink now delights her. Yep, a drink and a smoke. That’s what this girl needs. Moving her lips to the thought she spins on flats away from her icy manor on Broadway, unsure of where to place the first order.

Opting for the Spring Lounge, Marlena pushes open the spring-hinged door to her evening. Blinking into the cacophony that envelops the room, smoke-filled and dark, she pauses for her senses to adjust as she takes stock of her environs. Still populated by the afternoon crowd, career-drinking regulars puffing enthusiastically and shouting conversationally, the venue earns her approval: the barometer reads bar-ambient, a measure of committed decadence, at once energetic and slothful. As she moves further in, the scene emerges from its shadows to reveal everything already in place. Folks at the bar, more at the tables. There’s nothing like air-conditioned bar smoke, she thinks to herself, inhaling deeply. Nothing at all.

Marlena comes to this tavern over others nearby because it’s a friendly place, a place where she knows people, though she doesn’t talk to them but to say hello. Sometimes she’ll say more to a stranger but the next time he’s in (and he always comes back) he’s just another regular who gets a kind hello. Like her office, this place is cool-aired and she can do as much or as little as she wishes.

Spotting a nice looking man to sit beside, one she hopes might keep her interest for the duration of this visit, Marlena sets her satchel on a stool, orders a beer after planning a cocktail, and walks the short length of the bar collecting quarters left as tips. I’ll pay you back, barkeep; just need some smokes.

Sure, Lena, agrees the bartender, accustomed as he is to the routine. She knows him all right and he knows her. Help yourself. Pumping quarters here for cigarettes, there for music, she steps back with her Camels through the desert to her beer. Climbing onto her stool, she wastes no time with the young man whom she picked to be her neighbor. She nods hello and says it too.

Hi, he says back.

Hmmm? she hums through the cigarette in her mouth, offering him one from the pack in her hand.

No, thanks. I’ve got. Reaching into his jacket pocket, automatically as if he had been asked to show a ticket, he produces Lucky Strikes and, in a practiced motion, taps the pack twice on the back of his hand to eject an inch of cigarette, enough for his lips to grip to retract the rest. Having watched the smooth ritual, and beating him to the draw, Marlena extends her lighter. Holding the flame steadily before him, she inspects the man’s illuminated face as he leans in, staring cross-eyed down the length of his cigarette to aim at the flickering fire ahead. This is as close to candid as any view she will get of him, as from this moment on, she knows, he will grow more self-conscious, posturing for the impression he hopes to make. This Marlena is used to, for she is of uncommon and disarming beauty. In his face she sees stock that summer makes appealing to her: he looks like he has a real job, a cool-aired crib, maybe even a summer home. In other seasons of the year, Marlena’s tastes run less traditionally, usually to men with unpleasant dispositions and wardrobes that tend to black. He turns to her and smiles, trying to seem casual and unfazed even as he moves his fingers back through his hair.

I heard the bartender. Is it Lena?

Actually, Marlena, but almost everyone calls me Lena.

Marlena works for an advertising agency where she writes copy. Ted, this boy beside her, edits manuscripts of fiction. Unconvincingly, he suggests that they must have a great deal in common, and he tells her so eagerly. She disagrees but plays along, or well enough at least.

"That, he concludes after some exposition, is my latest greatest idea."

Marlena smiles and nods her head to convey a favorable reaction. She had lost interest in his monologue early on and has no idea what he had been describing. He had earlier spoken of launching some new magazine for experimental literature, before switching gears to opine on up-and-coming New York neighborhoods. The last topic she recalls had him spouting about late night television hosts he considered important for having wooed racially diverse audiences. Sounds great, she bluffs. Still more daring now, she asks, But do you think it will come to pass?

I have lots of ideas, all about making a difference, he replies, oozing a kind of earnest naiveté that bores her. Do I know for certain that this one will reach some kind of fruition before another one ripens and tempts my reach? Can’t say that. Right now I’m just thinking about it, this and others. But, when the time comes... Marlena smiles, relieved that her tactic worked well enough to restart his stream of consciousness and, confident of her new lease on absentia, she fades out again. Now when she looks at her companion, absorbed as he is in his discourse, Marlena’s vision blurs and she looks beyond him at some dream vision of a man who could please her enduringly...

They drink a great deal together, she accepting his offer to pay. She smokes more than he does, maybe for all his talking. She doesn’t care about smoking. She doesn’t care who pays either, it’s just that he will. He’ll talk and he’ll pay. Her most recent beer looks half-empty.

Hey, Lena, Ted starts and stops on a note that begs imminent response and which, therefore, summons again his listener’s attention, only as it slays in her the fervent hope that the banter would require her participation never more again. Do you do coke? Because I have some left over from a party I just had. I live right around the corner.

Oh to count the times my beauty has garnered a line so meager...and I can count to zero the times I’ve turned it down. Well, sometimes. Is your place cool-aired?

Pardon?

"Do you have air conditioning?" Marlena enunciates as though that had been the problem.

Two speeds: off and full-blast.

For when you’re talking? she asks, unsubtly disparaging the enthusiasm that has started to grate her as a boyish affectation. If he leaves now...

Pardon? For a moment he looks hurt.

Nothing. No, sorry. I mean, yeah, sure. Why not? As they leave, Ted holds the door open for Marlena, smiling at her as she passes through. For her part, she resents him for taking from her an evening that might have been more. Stepping out onto uneven pavement, Marlena looks down at the fractured sidewalk around her, finding design in its decrepitude. Smooth would be so tedious.

4.

On the way here, Pamela told me that people come from all over the state to attend Gander’s annual Founder Days rodeo festival. A real spectacle, she called this three-day affair, and an absolute must-do. Arriving on this, the middle day, I find a short line waits at the gate where teenage girls sell tickets. It costs a couple of dollars to enter, or fifty cents for kids, one of whom goes in ahead of me wearing a full cowboy get-up, with holsters and toy six-shooters at the hip.

Have a nice time, this girl at the gate says to me, smiling easily as she trades a ticket for a bill and change. A stand inside sells hot dogs and beer to benefit the local Boy Scouts. The Coors I buy foams to the rim of its plastic cup.

The afternoon sun may be relenting some for three o’clock, but still it burns fiercely bright. Almost everyone wears a hat on a day like this, for the sun and the spirit of it all. When a man on horseback enters the ring, the crowd’s attention turns from neighborly chats to follow his progress, as a slow gait takes him to the center. The man’s voice rings out when he speaks, filling the arena by virtue of a wireless microphone, a new feature at this year’s festival, he explains. When he asks people to stand for the national anthem, the bleachers rise as one, and hats come