I’m sitting in the Cadillac. The sun is rising over the motel, and just like he said, the steering wheel is ivory. I put his keys in the ignition, then stop to think if I’m really doing this. This is not what I intended to do.
I hear a diesel engine pulling into the parking lot. That’s gotta be the crew boss and crew. Do they know his car? Shit. I lie down in the front seat. The dually stops right behind the Caddy. The driver honks.
How long will it take them to realize he’s not coming out of his room? He’s not even in his room. He’s in mine. The diesel engine growls for another minute, then the driver honks again. Another minute passes, and the truck drives off. Thank God.
Oil workers are impatient.
I sit back up and turn the key. I’ll be in Topeka in four hours, give or take. By tonight, I’ll have enough money to pay that lowlife Trevor and get Tim-Tim back.
Less than eight hours ago, things were looking very different.
I dropped my second to last quarter into the bartop Texas Hold ’Em. I needed a run that would get me all the way to 30k. I needed a miracle. I’d lost nine hands. If my last two quarters didn’t win me something, then all I had left to my name was the Dodge and Tim-Tim’s gooseneck. I never should have made a bet with that asshole. What kind of a person steals your horse out of your trailer with a pair of bolt cutters while you’re in the gas station getting a six-pack?
For my hole cards, I got a pair of sixes. The first piece of luck I had all night. As I was about to drop my last quarter into the machine to make the bet, a boozy thirty-something roughneck bellied up to the bar right next to me.
“This cowgirl could use a whiskey, James,” he said to the bartender.
“Not interested in company,” I said.
“I got a ’78 Cadillac out there with leather seats. It’s got an ivory steering wheel,” he said.
“That supposed to impress me?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It’s my grandfather’s. He died yesterday. Left it to me.”
The bartender arrived with the whiskey, set it down next to my empty beer.
“I’m done drinking tonight,” I told him.
“How about if you win this hand, you take a drink, and let me take a seat. You don’t win, I leave, and you never have to think about me, my granddaddy, or my Cadillac ever again.”
“If I win, I’d like the same deal.”
“If you win, might mean I’m your Lady Luck. What’s it gonna hurt if we just see what happens?”
He had a point.
“Okay, then,” I said. “Let’s see how this hand goes, but I don’t want you sitting down next to me while I play it.”
“Understood,” he said.
I dropped the quarter in, and felt the pit of my stomach drop. The community cards: another six and two kings. Full house. I won twenty-five dollars.
“Lady Luck, at your service,” he said as he took a seat next to me.
He smelled like gasoline and Stetson cologne.
“Two more, James. Doubles,” he said to the bartender.
“I can’t stay out too late. Crew boss is picking me up at 5 a.m. tomorrow.”
“The agreement was I let you take a seat, not I let you talk,” I said.
He did the locking-his-mouth-with-a-key gesture.
An hour later, with him by my side, I’d won six hands. He’d kept his promise. He kept quiet and just ordered us more whiskeys when we ran empty. I could tell he was thrilled to be sitting next to me. He was lonely, and I was five hundred dollars closer to getting Tim-Tim back. I was fired up and ready to keep going, but he said,
“Time for me to get some shuteye. The boys are counting on me tomorrow.”
I could have asked him to stay for a few more hands — he would have — but there was no way I was getting the rest of the 30k tonight. I needed him longer.
“I could use some shuteye too.”
“Pretty comfy pillows in my room,” he said sheepishly.
“I bet they’re comfier in mine,” I said.
He paid the bar tab, and we walked out of The Boomerang Diner together. He could barely walk straight. Lucky for him, the motel was right next door, so he made it across the parking lot without falling on his face. I got him inside my room, told him I needed to get some things out of my truck, and hurried back to the gooseneck to get my tack.
When I came back into the room, holding my saddle and rope, he was struggling to get a boot off. He stopped his struggle when he saw my saddle. I brought it in so he wouldn’t pay too much attention to what else I brought: rope. I wasn’t sure I was going to do it yet. I was just… preparing.
“Well, that’s a way to spice it up,” he said.
“I don’t want it getting stolen.”
“Oh,” he said, disappointed.
He went back to his boot.
“Could I get a hand here?” he asked.
I felt sorry for him. He wanted this so bad.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Gabe Lucas. And you are?”
“Katy.”
I gave him a fake name.
He kept working at his boot, twisting, pulling, grunting. Then he fell forward and knocked his head on the wall. He lay there on the floor. I stood over him and he said, “Ouch.” He closed his eyes and passed right out.
I did wonder if he was dead, but all I could think about right then was that a miracle was happening and I wasn’t sure I was equipped for it.
I leaned down and felt his pulse. He was alive. I needed to clear my head.
I left the room and lay down in the gooseneck. I could smell Tim-Tim and his hay. Kansas was so damn quiet at 2 a.m. I grabbed a handful of hay. I smelled it, and I ate it. All of it.
“A hayeater follows through,” I said to myself.
I drove the Dodge and the trailer down the street to the Walmart and left them in the parking lot. I walked back to the motel, in the quiet Kansas night, committed.
Once I got back in the room, I managed to heft Gabe up onto the bed. He was still out cold, deep in a whiskey sleep. I tied him to the bed with my rope. I stepped back and looked at the first person I had ever tied to a bed. There was no way he could get up.
It might take one day. Two days. It might take a week. I hoped I could make him understand that he couldn’t go back into the oil fields until this was over.
I put the gag over his mouth around 4:50 a.m., and that’s when he woke up and looked me in the eyes. It didn’t take him long to take stock of the situation and start flailing around and trying to scream through the gag.
I just wasn’t prepared for how it would look and feel. I felt so dizzy and cold at the sight of him trapped on the bed. I grabbed the keys to his Cadillac and ran out the door. That’s how I got on the road to Topeka. I know a guy there. This Cadillac has gotta be worth 30k, at least. It’s got an ivory steering wheel.
When I get to Topeka, I’ll put in an anonymous call to the motel, and let them know there’s a guy tied to the bed in room 146. As I’m thinking over exactly what I’ll say on the call, a car slams on the brakes in front of me. I swerve, barely missing it. The glove box flings open, and all these pictures fall out.
I pull over and pick them up. They’re Polaroids of an empty, old swing set in the middle of the prairie. There are pictures of the swings at dawn, during the day, and at dusk. They’re the loneliest swings I’ve ever seen. They must belong to Gabe’s grandfather. In one of the pictures at dawn, there’s the top of an old, wrinkly finger in the side of the frame.
Parked there on the side of the road, I look at that picture, at that old finger and those lonely swings for at least thirty minutes.
Finally, I return the pictures to the glove box, turn the Cadillac around and head back to the motel. I park in front of my room and walk right in there. I sit down next to Gabe, who is looking at me with wild, scared eyes. I get ready to speak, but we need sun in here. I open the curtain a little. The sun falls on Gabe’s face.
I sit back down next to him, push his hair back from his face. His eyes tell me he’s scared, but I know, soon enough, he’ll understand.
“You are my Lady Luck, Gabe. We’re on a streak. I can’t let you leave yet.”
I take out my cell phone and open the poker app.
“Now, should we start with Texas Hold ’Em or Five-Card Stud?”