Outside on the downtown street, it was still dark, the time of the morning when normal people were sound asleep with a couple of hours left before their alarm clocks went off. There was no one stirring. It was cold enough that you could see the steam rising from the grates in the sidewalks. The city busses had not begun their scheduled routes yet, and aside from an occasional passing car, there was nothing moving in the wee hours. Even the street people had found their spots for the night.

The air stunk, too. People said the city had grown up from being a cow town, and maybe it had, but when the wind blew from the stockyards, it still smelled like one.

Besides that, the wind was sharp and cold, It went right through my corduroy jacket. They were already playing baseball in spring training, but back home, the March wind made opening day seem like more than just a month away.

We got into my maroon, rag top G.T.O., and I started the engine. I had it tuned the week before, and the motor sounded good with a low throb as we wound through the deserted streets and headed south on Broadway.

The Town Topic was just a few blocks from the Union Station. It was one of my favorite hangouts, a little greasy-spoon joint that never closed, a dying breed that had dropped through the cracks since the forties, and somehow managed to survive in a faster time. The Station used to bring it diners around the clock, but most of that business dried up with the demise of the passenger trains. It still had its regular crowd, but nothing like back in the day.

We had the place all to ourselves except for the fry cook, and we sat on stools at the counter. Dee Dee ordered a hamburger and fries while I had coffee and a piece of cherry pie. She hadn’t said much since we left the bus depot, just small talk about her trek from San Francisco where she had been living. She wanted to know about the man I was following, and I told how his wife had come to my office with her sob story, wanting pictures to have ready for a divorce case. All the time, I drank my coffee and watched her wolf down the burger, just like I watched everybody, figuring them out, piecing together the puzzles of their lives from the hints they left behind.

“You know, I don’t think you’re a very good liar,” I said as she dipped the last of the fries in the ketchup on her plate.

She was slow in answering.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I don’t think you’re really here looking for your little girl.”

A slight blush colored her face, and she looked away.

“Why do you say that?” she asked.

“I’ve never known a mother of a three-year-old who couldn’t whip out a picture or two on a moment’s notice. And I can’t imagine your parents letting you go off searching for their grand daughter without giving you some help. Besides, you just don’t fit the part.”

I started to say more, but left it at that.

“Well, you’re a pretty smart detective,” she answered after a while. “And I’m not a good liar. I never have been.”

She met my eyes again.

“I didn’t think you’d help me if I told you the truth.”

“And you don’t have a daughter, either, do you?”

“No.”

I looked away and took a drink of coffee.

“What made you pick me out from the crowd at the bus station?”

“Just because you looked kind of like a cowboy with your boots and blue jeans.”

“You got a thing for cowboys?”

She blushed and shrugged her shoulders.

“Not really. Maybe.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s start all over again. Just give it to me straight.”

She nodded, and her voice broke a bit.

“I will. I’m sorry I lied to you. That wasn’t fair. You’ve been nice to me.”

I waited.

“Okay,” she began. “The part about living in San Francisco is the truth. I’ve been out there a couple of years, staying with some other people around Haight-Ashbury. I met a cowboy.”

She paused to brush her hair behind her ear. She wasn’t looking at me as she talked. She sat hunched  over, speaking in a monotone until she got to this part. Then, her voice took on some life again.

“He was really a cowboy. He followed the rodeos around the country, and he just needed a place to stay for a while. He was wild, probably the most unpredictable guy I’d ever known. He was that, but at the same time, he was gentle and caring, vulnerable, you know, honest. I trusted him.”

She had turned her eyes back to me during this part, like she wanted to make sure I understood.

“Anyway, he stayed with me during the winter. That was a year ago. I loved him so much, I lost track of everything else. It was the first time I’d ever felt like that, you know, where you just give yourself up. Oh, I’d had boyfriends before, but not like that. I think he loved me back, in the way he could.”

She stirred her coke with the straw.

“But I don’t think he loved anything as much as his damned rodeo. That’s all he talked about, the different places like Cheyenne, Wichita, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, and all the bulls he rode. I was never more jealous of anything in my life, but you couldn’t really hate it, it was such a part of him. You’d have to hate him first, and I couldn’t do that.”

“He left when the weather turned. I guess I knew that would happen, but I tried to put it out of my mind. It was one of those unspoken things that both of us knew. He never talked much, anyway. I just took the time he gave me. He was so wild.”

“Anyway, by the time he left, I was pregnant. He said he’d come back as soon as he could, and I think he meant it. He’d lie next to me at night with his hand on my belly, feeling that baby growing inside.”

“Then, one morning he was gone before I woke up. It hurt me a lot, but he always said he was never big on good-byes. Not too long after that, I lost the baby. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be, you know?”

She looked at me with a soft smile.

“So, I didn’t really lie about a baby, either, though I never got to find out if it was a little girl or not.”

“Did he ever come back?” I asked, although I knew the answer.

She shook her head, playing with the straw.

“No. I never saw him again. So, after a few months passed, I decided to go after him. He used to talk about coming here to some show. I can’t remember the name. American something.”

“American Royal?”

She nodded.

“I just couldn’t let the whole thing go. It’s all I could think about. Does that make any sense?”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

My mind was in that other lifetime, thinking of another cowboy and his friends, four wild kids riding the wind out of western Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle. But that was another story, two of them already dead. My jeans and boots were about all the traces left of that cowboy, that and a lonely ache that never quite went away, no matter how hard I tried to forget.

Dee Dee searched my face, and I sensed she saw the pain. I shrugged away the ghosts.

“So, you want me to help you find your cowboy?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Yes, but I told you another lie that I have to confess. My parents don’t care about me. Oh, I suppose my mother does, when she thinks about it. She divorced my father when I was five, and I don’t even know where he is. My stepfather already had two kids of his own, so I just kind of got lost in the shuffle. The part about them not knowing where I am was the truth. Anyway, they wouldn’t give me any money. The only thing I have to pay you with is this.”

She held up a silver cross that hung from a chain around her neck. I felt it, rubbing my thumb over the inlaid turquoise and smooth silver, then let it fall back against her shirt.

“It must be special,” I said.

“He gave it to me about a week before he left.”

I nodded, and the talk trailed off to an awkward pause.

“Well, let’s give it a shot. There’s really just one place I know of in this town to look for cowboys.”

 

 

TO BE CONTINUED