That Old Ace in the Hole. Annie Proulx

over a sullen creek toward a motte of cottonwood trees. There was a second fence behind the barbwire made up of old tires on end, packed three deep in overlapping rows. Under the cottonwoods stood a small log building with a porch. A rope ran around the circumference of the porch floor and La Von explained this was to keep snakes out of the cabin. Inside were four empty bunks, on each a thin mattress folded in half, a stack of blankets, four wooden chairs at a square table. There was a tiny stove with a blackened teakettle on it and against the wall a wood box full of kindling and sticks.

      “Spartan,” she said. “There’s no electric. Supply your own sheets and towels. You’ll have to haul water. Get it down the house in the kitchen.”

      “I’ll take it,” he said without seriously considering a daily drive across a cow pasture, the labor of lugging water, no telephone, for already he was taking pleasure in the subtle beauty of the panhandle, noting the groves and thickets along watercourses, huge coils of grapevine weaving the trees into a coarse fabric. He thought the bold diagonal of caprock rim that divided the high plains from the southern plains, the red canyons of the Palo Duro striking and exotic.

      He unloaded his suitcase, his new briefcase (new only to him, for it had come from Uncle Tam’s shop) with its freight of Global Pork Rind flyers and papers, a pair of pinch-toe cowboy boots shining with polish, and the box of fried chicken he had brought from Perryton. It took only a few minutes to unpack. He went outside and walked around the bunkhouse, starting up a plump, chickenlike bird in the tangled vines along the creek. The sound of running water was pleasant though it made him want to piss. Against the back of the bunkhouse leaned four large logs, two of them partially shaped and carved into figures – a woman’s head with flowing hair, and a roughed-out human figure that vaguely resembled Lenin. Perhaps some ranch hand had fancied himself a sculptor.

      In the deepening afternoon he sat on the porch with a warm bottle of Pearl and told himself to buy a cooler and ice in Woolybucket the next day. There were several pieces of farm machinery in a large field to the west, ungrazed for some years and grown up with big bluestem and weeds. He counted five rusted wheat combines, three pickup trucks, four old tractors, various harrows and rakes, all sinking into the earth. There was a dark shape in the high grass, but what it was he could not make out – perhaps an old gas pump. In the dulling light he noticed a low rise to the south, too low to be called a hill even in this flat country, little more than a swelling as though the earth had inhaled and held the breath. But by panhandle standards it was a wave of earth that deserved the name “hill.” Beyond the rise was a great indigo cloud spread open like a pair of dark wings, monstrous and smothering, shot through with ribbands of lightning, and in the distance the stuttering flash of strobe lights at the ends of the irrigation pivot water arms. The dusk sifted down like molecules of pulverized grey silk.

      He left the fried chicken skin and bones on the porch floor. Sometime in the night he woke to hoarse barking cries outside the door repeated with monotonous regularity. But even as he struggled to come fully awake the barks began to recede and, peering out the window into faint starlight, all he could see was a small shadow gliding into the black weeds, whether fox or coyote he didn’t know. Toward morning rain tapped the roof.

      

      He went over to the ranch house in the morning, drew the water, then sat and had a cup of coffee with La Von, who had the regional taste for very weak, pale brown coffee. She told him she was compiling a county history which she called The Woolybucket Rural Compendium, hundreds of memoirs and photographs from families of the region.

      “Mr. Dollar, I have been workin at it for thirteen years.”

      Her mailboxes, she said, were packed full with genealogical reminiscence every noon when Doll McJunkin delivered. Elderly visitors came up the drive with their boxes of photographs and diaries, faded envelopes. The papers and photographs filled two entire rooms downstairs. As they sat at her worktable with their coffee cups LaVon gestured at the shelves of boxes.

      “I suppose I’ll never get it done,” she said with something like pride. “I suppose I’ll die and my son will throw everthing out – essentially the entire history of Woolybucket County and everbody in it.”

      “Couldn’t you do it in several volumes?” asked Bob. “Like, get the first volume published that deals with the earliest days and then, later, you know, follow up with the later stuff?”

      “No, I could not. My material is filed by family, not by year. It’s alphabetical, not chronological. I sometimes think that was a mistake. But we live with our mistakes.”

      “Then couldn’t you do like A to L? I mean, anything, just so you make room. And don’t the people want their letters and pictures back?”

      “They may,” she said carelessly. “And they’ll get them back when I’m done. There’s too much new stuff that comes in that has a be added to the families at the beginning a the alphabet.”

      “But – ”

      “Do not worry about it, Mr. Dollar,” said LaVon. “I’m sure you have your own work that interests you. Every pie got its own piecrust.”

      “Well, yeah.” He did not see the trap.

      “And just what is your work? What brings you down here in the panhandle, which has so few voluntary visitors?”

      “It’s kind of complicated,” he said. “It’s not really work at all.” He noticed two semitransparent plastic sweater boxes on the table near LaVon’s computer. He thought he saw something moving inside the top box.

      “Oh? A vacation perhaps in sunny Woolybucket?”

      “I’m looking for – ”

      “Yes?” She stared.

      “I’m, I’m, I’m writing a profile of the panhandle for a magazine. That’s why I’m interested in your Compendium.”

      “What magazine is that?”

      “Ah. I haven’t got one lined up yet. I thought I’d write the article first and then send it to a magazine. Maybe Oklahoma Today,” said Bob, thinking fast.

      “I don’t think so, Mr. Dollar. Strange as it may seem, Oklahoma Today specializes in Oklahoma stories, and they are not even partial a panhandle Oklahoma. And that’s not how you get a article in a magazine. People get assignments. You must think I’m pretty dumb. For your information I was a contributing editor to Drip for seventeen years.” She relieved his puzzlement; “It’s an ag-tech magazine devoted a irrigation.”

      “No. No. You’re right. I’m not writing an article. Somebody else is. Was.” He thought frantically. “In fact I’m looking for a – a girlfriend. My mother disappeared in Alaska when I was little, but she always told me to marry a girl from Texas.”

      “Oh, did she. How old were you when she gave you this advice?”

      “Around seven. Or eight.” He kept looking at the plastic box. There were holes punched all around the top just below the cover.

      “That’s a little young for someone a be guidin a child toward marriage. Unless she was Chinese?”

      “No.”

      “Maybe she came from Texas herself? There are a lot of Asian people on the coast.”

      “No. She wasn’t Asian. But she always admired Texas girls. And I admire them too.”

      “Maybe we’d better leave it at that, your admiration for Texas girls. By the way, are you employed? I’m just wondering if you’ll be able a handle the rent, low as it is.”

      “Well, I am employed. I’m scouting the region for nice pieces of land for, for a luxury home development. Global Properties Deluxe. The company is interested in branching out into the Texas panhandle. They feel there is potential here.”

      “If you know how many thousands have surmised that ‘potential.’ But luxury home development is a new one to me. This part a the country is losin people.