Elsewhere in the Summer, at Pegleg Mac's

BRIGGS AND I took bets--not for money but bets nonetheless--on our neighbors, Daniel and Gay. Briggs didn't think Daniel was long for this world. I concurred: Daniel passes the day setting a torch to his brain. And Gay, Gay seems such a strong, husky woman--not pretty, but big and sweet.

And after all, it was Gay who took Daniel in this past winter after his all-American aid-patrolman of a father thumped his head on the kitchen floor (making a sound like leather thongs whipping on denim, Daniel says) and chucked him headfirst through the storm door back in Ogden, Utah by his split-ended brown hair that dances half-way down in back in one massive kinetic fling.

Gay does have a peachant for taking in wimpy things--like Bastus, a chicken-broad black eat she found starving at some party, and Mirrormere, a mutty bitch of a battered Airedale who had spent her life on one end of a chain and the other end of a two by four, and Daniel. Daniel in the lion's den, as he likes to repeat.

But last Sunday Briggs and I discovered we're no oddsmakers. We stumbled upon our myopia as a steel-tempered sky burned into crystal-hung night. We went chasing jail-bait and missed our aim and slummed our way into Daniel and Gay's ceric world.

Briggs and I had planned to get out of Ketchum early Sunday morning. Instead we went to watch the girls play softball down at the Ernest Hemingway Elementary School. They were big and beautiful and inspired us into getting some beer. So we headed to the market, running into Daniel and Gay and Daniel's tow-headed friends from back home. Bridget and Jenny, on the way. They weren't as big nor quite as beautiful, but we were in a fit mood to be inspired so Daniel's invitation to go down to the river and smoke a few bowls was promptly accepted. Briggs volunteered to get a couple cases of dark Blitz.

Well the stream behind our shack was running strong and clear and the poplars along its banks poured down their green light so we sank our cases and sat down to a good three hours of quaffing and smoking and low-brow chit-chat. The girls played with a twig-sized water snake. That skinny, terrified little thing twisted about my hand, and it was hell to get off.

Suppertime came around and the girls said they had to go and Briggs and I said no, come out with us and they said O.K. and we all piled into Briggs's and my '58 Caddy and cruised out of town. The Delac's quite the cruiser, and for only $450 Briggs and I just about cornered the chrome market. Her yellow paint job is a little faded, but at night the Delac does just fine. And night was fast coming, we thought.

Well things didn't really get hot till we got out to Pegleg Mac's. About an hour and a half from Ketchum, down in the valley on the far side of snow-towered Galena Pass, is Pegleg's spread: some pint-sized log cabins, a twin-holer outhouse, a good bit of fence, and the hot springs. We hadn't come to admire the fence.

We all (except for Gay who went out in the fields and disappeared, ducking under the stopped bank of a rock-banked rivulet) piled into Peg's overgrown, galvanized bathtub which sits smack in the middle of a lush, green rice paddy of a field like any other of the 1600 acres worth of fields on Pegleg's piece of land except it's where it is and not lost out in the real boonies of this vacant land--all of us getting all hot and drippy from the water bubbling in from the source (up 100 yards from the white bearded--that's insulation from the winter--tub big enough to fit 20 naked people) where two guys limped it into each other's laps on top of the wooden housing covering the spring, and when any sun-blistered American might have been expected, no even required, obligated, bound and beholden to roar "Fucking Faggots," Peg only muttered "Damn flat-land turkeys," and all of us except for Briggs, a slow-as-molasses bear of a flatlander passing himself off in the mountains, hopping down to a cold creek a 100 yards down from the tub--it taking just a little time for all of us to get pretty blown away on dark beer and Peg's 140-proof white lightning--only Daniel passed into other orbits. Monday afternoon, when he came back to himself, the boy didn't remember a thing. But that's normal for Daniel, a lightweight 17-year-old, high-school drop-out.

Until Briggs and I bought the Delac, Daniel was hardly a substantial thing. Gay and he were the shadowed whispers of 4 a.m. arguments, heard across the 3-4 inch thick fiberboard that separates our kitchens. But we bought the Delac and she glows in the dark and Daniel was sky-high and wandering into our shack chanting, "Fried potatoes, Fried potatoes, Fried onions...," spuming beer down over his chin like a baby gurgling on its pablum (greasily, in big, viscous bubbles), his Coors can outstretched as he flexed to show off his "megalopulous muscles," twittering about the floor like a wind-up toy (skittering into walls ever so lightly and then reversing his direction), telling us about his "Vitamin A" (as in acid) as Gay went to get his flute so he could demonstrate that he was not yet Ian Anderson.

Daniel didn't think he'd remember too much about that evening; dropping acid is a hum-drum every night occurrence. But old Daniel, from the moment he first laid eyes upon the Delac, was sure he'd never forget a ride in her. So Gay steered him into the white leather and silver glitter back seat that's as plump and as soft as a Cherubim's rosy- checked behind, the four feet of leg-room sucking him into a state of heavenly transport punctuated by means of "Far out, Too much..." and hideous witch cackling that had gotten all twisted up somewhere deep down in his throat before flirting out between his rotten teeth. The Delac does give quite a ride and she does purr like a lady and she is real sweet and smooth and Daniel was right: He didn't forget his ride.

Nor did Daniel forget our ride out to Peg's. The sun melted up on Galena Pass; on mountains still white and green from the late winter, not yet brown, sapped, sore, crumbly from the summer's desert sun. And the sun was smooth on the summit: the Sawtooths stretched about as far as the eye could see; blue, brittle, gaping; Pegleg's valley fell below.

Peg lives off the main highway, a two-lane, black-top affair. A rutty dirt road leads to his gate and a sign warning off all trespassers not on foot. From a parked green Capri, the two flat-landers later seen by the source stared at us in a not altogether pleasant manner, and they were big and ugly and smelt sort of funny so I gave the biggest and ugliest of them--a bulging, pale fish-eyed creature with sweated-back hair and a dim-witted, monotone voice--a warm beer. He smiled.

Peg was on the ground by his tub, searching for its plug, his aluminum construction hat glinting in the bulging evening-got-up-in-drag-as-afternoon sky. Ruddy bearded and freckled all over and pale where his clothes would have been, he said the tub would soon be filled. His kids screamed about with the ducks and geese--silently, Peanut, his youngest daughter, tottered out of the outhouse trailing her pants about her ankles. Bridget and Jenny collected rocks. Daniel was happy and we were all a little drunk and the day was bright, never-ending, clear, pleasing us all though damn if I didn't wish for it to get a little dark soon.

But it didn't. And the tub filled up with some Californians and New Zealanders who had never seen a twist-off cap and everyone except Gay (out catching rabbits with Rosebud. Peg's elder daughter) leaned back against the side of the tub, sticking their feet in towards the pipe that bubbled from its center, letting the water seep above their stomachs and shoulders and higher still as Peg spun his stories and we were all quiet and sucked in and pushed out, in the steamy mineral water steamy breath.

Light hung: the Sawtooths blazing orange and gold as Daniel raced at the dark Blitzes and Peg pointed over his shoulder to some ridge beyond which he had shot something or other and maybe even his leg, partially lost with a spent magnum cartridge. Pegleg spoke of how his Thompson sub-machine gun laid down such a pretty pattern when he went target shooting: of how some cowboys, who had come around one night with their girls and their guns and told everyone to put on their clothes because they were embarassing their girls, had high-tailed it at the sight of his tool; he spoke and a couple hours passed and the Californians and New Zealanders left--Peg pinching the girls on the buttock and inviting them back--and we were all alone.

It was light: everything faded and the Sawtooths curved about us and we curved about Pegleg. He kept right on talking: showing his tricks to Bridget and Jenny, hanging a whirlpool device on the pool's ladder. Bridget and Jenny would grab the ladder, around the device, and Peg would grab their ankles and stretch them out flat, spreading their legs a bit, and they would giggle and Peg would spread a bit more and ask if it didn't feel damn good. Peg's wife appeared from nowhere and he told her to get some moonshine and homemade wine and she did.

Just a sip out of the Jack Daniels bottle in which Peg kept his hot as ice and clear as crystal brew was enough to feel a hell of a jolt, but Daniel had to go and pour the whole thing into his beer and Gay came back and, taking off her denims, climbed into the tub and suddenly it was right. Shooting stars peeled off the cob of the Milky Way, iridescent silk whipped off the rich black and yellow health of night, plunging into the darkness of the valley where a pair of headlights twined down the pass 20 miles away. Peg wondered whether he ought not go and get his gun.

Daniel was stark raving and told Bridget he could be a hell of a man and she said oh can you and he said wait and see and she spread her palms and he pounced and she sighed and the night poured liquid and the water glowed liquid and the air bent in liquid waves of soundlessness and Gay broke the liquid soundlessly and went her own way. And she was gone.

Calling it a night, Peg climbed out, telling Daniel to pull the plug when he was finished. Bridget and he stopped this writhing, uncoiling out of the water like salamanders; slickly limp, warm, shivering. Briggs and Jenny headed up to the Delac where Gay wasn't, Jenny telling Briggs about Gay's black eyes, the bandaged stabs on her arm, the bruises on he chest. And Gay was dying of T.B. and wouldn't go see a doctor and Briggs leaned back against the Delac, its door open and insides all aglow in the depth of nothing, and our odds were ruined.

Daniel, Bridget and I followed Peg up to his tiny, one-room cabin. A loaded shot-gun and squat, scoped hunting rifle hung over the door, a long-necked banjo and the Thompson over the bed. Peg turned on his tape deck, gave Peanut a piece of licorice, and pulled out the Thompson's clip: 90 rounds a minute of bloated, stumpy bullets. Peanut cried and Pegleg picked his banjo and Daniel got down on the floor where the child was and then wasn't when her mother picked her up, and said how she had the life and wasn't it the best while Pegleg invited Bridget back, smiling under his red, balding head, his glasses glinting and the polyeurethane over the windows smoking as I thanked him and plunged out into the pitch and ran a path I couldn't see to the road, running like the devil just for the hell of it. Not to wait for Daniel to stagger up the path on Bridget's arm, asking what was wrong and then, after saying something really must be done, passing out in the backseat of the Delac, on his sweetheart's lap. Not to walk back to Peg's picking my way through the blackness with a load tread and louder whistle so Peg would hear me loud and clear and not blast me when, stepping onto his porch, his door popped open a crack and he stood naked in the glow, his hands hidden as I told him we'd be on his property a while longer, if it suited him. Briggs and I hadn't come to Pegleg Mac's to cruise his rutted road, the night's sweat dripping off the Delac as she heaved in the ruts, looking for a girl out wandering in stars she said were "fucking intense," feeling all cold and wooden inside. Coming out to Pegleg Mac's, we hadn't counted on poking through these depths, strung to the short end of the Delac's lingering lights, all caught up in this black region that was so soft and cold, suspending them like feathers dusting the tarnished edges of the burning, empty space.

Gay staggered out of dusky nowhere. She was sobbing a bit and a little red-faced and I couldn't quite put my arm around her. Briggs stared at the road ahead and drove fast paMmmmmst the whorehouse of which Pegleg had informed us, and fast up Galena and fast to Ketchum. In the backseat all was quiet except for a few snores from Daniel: the road sucked under soundlessly; the trees didn't moan; there was no wind; the radio crackled, playing "This is the Last Song I'll Sing for You"; the night hung out beyond us; I thought what art from the artless.

Three days later old Daniel and Gay were back together for another month. Bridget and Jenny were staying over and Briggs and I were out hustling. We were all shouting across the fiber-board, and though nobody talked about Pegleg Mac's, we found plenty other low brow chit-chat.