Along Came Mary: A Bad Girl Creek Novel - Hardcover

Mapson, Jo-Ann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743224612 ISBN 13: 9780743224611

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2002

Synopsis

After leaving her no-good rodeo boyfriend, Mary Madigan ends up in Oklahoma Creek where she meets an unforgettable cast of characters, including journalist Rick, pregnant Phoebe, and HIV-positive Ness - all of whom join forces to help, comfort, and love each other, in a wonderful novel of friendship, sex, sisterhood, family, and salvation. 40,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author:

Jo-Ann Mapson is the author of eight novels. She teaches fiction in the MFA program at the University of Alaska, and lives with her husband and four dogs in Anchorage, Alaska, where she is at work on a new novel. Visit her at www.joannmapson.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One: Hell, and the Route Out

Except for two boys hyped up about tonight's rodeo, the bleachers at Five Corners stood empty. Those kids in their dirty coveralls and straw cowboy hats -- maybe nine or ten years old, they were already talking in the hard way of their fathers, son-of-a-bitchin' this and goddamnin' that. I even saw one of them spit Copenhagen into a Coke can. They leaped the seats as if they were the backs of broncos, and I knew what was on their minds: winning a silver buckle, taking home the big-haired rodeo queen, though they weren't sure what exactly it was you did with a girl once you got her there. It's a way of life they were indoctrinated into straight off the baby bottle. Forget about the long-legged cranes that migrated through the sandhills; the university, where they could expand their minds; the highway leading out of town to brighter lights -- this was as good as it got -- Friday-night rodeo, good times, and Bud Light. Even without my mama's horoscope book I could read their futures: Knock up a pretty girl in high school, buy a double-wide trailer on time, work for NAPA Auto Parts, watch ESPN, and call that a life.

Me, I needed a map to tell which town I was in. I stood there smoking a cigarette before I started grooming the collies. I felt like ten miles of bad road, and I was looking down thirty miles of it, once again wondering how in the sweet Jesus I got to where I was. We were that far from anywhere, Dalton Afterhart and me. Tonight he would play his one famous song, and the crowd would go wild because a ten-year-old hit was really something out here in Nowhere Special, Nebraska. Everyone would buy him a beer, lay down ten bucks for his CD, and have him autograph the jewel case. I'd collect the money, and then Dalton would buckle his nasty spider monkeys into custom-made saddles on my border collies and he'd turn them loose in the arena. So where the hell was Dalton?

"Hey there, Mary Madigan."

I looked up to see Belmont Monty, the rodeo announcer, coming my way. He wasn't satisfied with calling me Maddy like everyone else; he had to say my whole name, every syllable coming out of his mouth like music. Monty was eighty years old, wizened as a golden raisin, and dressed in his natty Western-cut corduroy suit. I had no idea what his real name was. He'd acquired the Belmont nickname from his horseracing days, when he was a big-deal jockey and well known at the track. Then he had a wreck or drugged a horse or started taking drugs himself, or whatever else it is people do to fall so far from grace that they end up working here. "Hey to you, too, Monty. Looking so sharp there I might have to kiss you."

He grinned, a big, white, false-tooth smile.

Mentos, my female collie, whined from her tether, and Slim Jim, my male, trembled all over with happiness. My dogs adored this man, and why shouldn't they? He was a good man. It was something a person could tell just by being near him. He reached down to rub their ears, and they groaned with pleasure. "Where's Dalton?"

"Damned if I know. Said he'd be here an hour ago. Guess he's still drinking his lunch at Five Corners."

Belmont Monty squinted at me from behind his thick-lensed glasses. "Want me to go beat on him?"

There was a sight I'd pay to see -- five-foot-nothing Monty whaling on six-foot-tall Dalton. I shook my head no. "He's been later than this. He'll be here when he gets here."

Monty patted Mentos one last time, then adjusted his cowboy hat and moved along to check on the others. I admired the old man, the way he got ready for each rodeo like somebody was there with a clipboard rating our performances. Once when Dalton was being a dickhead deluxe, I spent the night in Monty's trailer. He made me a pot of green Chinese tea and sat up with me while I cried about men in general. I asked him did he have any kids, and he said God, no, he hoped not. Monty claimed to love three things, in this order: horses, dogs, and redheaded women, only when the first two items on the list weren't available. After that night Dalton was a peach to me for two solid weeks.

People like Dalton, who had had a chance at the spotlight and missed, there was a dressing room for them here at the Great Western Rodeo Company of America. We started out every year near Blanco, New Mexico, with mesas on one side of the road and locoweed on the other. You couldn't pasture horses there, but some cheap-ass always tried to save a buck on hay, and there was a long-drawn-out scene of suffering before a cowboy grew cojones enough to shoot the horse that ate the locoweed. Why God couldn't see fit to add a few trees and some grass to that landscape was beyond me, but I guess God had his reasons. Even third-rate rodeos were an addiction. Cowboys got asked for autographs; kids like the ones in the bleachers looked up to them as heroes. Those riders brave or stupid enough to ride bulls earned cash, sometimes a fairly decent amount. Of course occasionally they drew a longhorn that flicked them off as easy as a booger, and they went to the hospital, where -- whoops! -- it was adios long-term memory, but for some people that could be a good thing.

The players in this rodeo were like slow-falling stars, but stars all the same. They attracted gaggles of groupies, girls who screamed and pulled up their T-shirts and showed everyone their wealth. Then there were roadies like me, who didn't fit in anywhere -- we came and went so often hardly anybody noticed.

I got out my various brushes and started working on Slim Jim's glossy black-and-white coat. Border collies come in the short- and longhaired varieties. Jim's was crazy long, prone to tangles and burrs, collecting particularly in his ruff. He stood still for the brushes, but let me come close with a fingernail and he carried on like he was being ax-murdered. Mentos's coat was thinner, silky, a beautiful sign of weakness in her breed. She was easier to groom, so I did her last. I liked them to look their best, so I finished them up with a mist of Show Sheen, and I remembered to outline their strangely blue eyes with some Vaseline to keep the dust out.

The dog-and-monkey show consisted of two overly intelligent dogs running with two of the vilest primates known to the animal world trying every which way to get loose. It went like this: Ten white sheep and two black ones were released into the arena. Immediately my collies started cutting the sheep into herds, because that's what they knew. The monkeys, screaming and clapping their hands, appeared to be cheering them on. From the stands all this looked hilarious, particularly with a six-pack of beer in your gut. But the monkeys were terror struck, and my collies were and are simply obsessive about work. There could be nuclear war going on up there on their backs, they'd still cut sheep. They wanted those black sheep out and separate from the white ones so bad it looked like Birmingham in the sixties.

All the time Dalton told me how the crowd loved our act. Just listen to them laugh, he'd say, and if that didn't convince me, how about the money we got paid? He'd pull on his leather gloves and unstrap the monkeys and toss them back into their cages for bananas and some kind of herbal Valium concoction to keep them quiet until the next show. My collies were allowed to sit and watch the events, but they had to be leashed or they'd try to herd the horses, the bulls, and the clowns; if it had legs they considered it fair game. At that point things took a turn for the serious. Me. I climbed the stairs to the crepe paper-draped stage and sang, a cappella, our national anthem, and tried to think of something besides what the words mean. It was just something I did. And when people got teary and clapped too soon, I knew enough not to take it too seriously.

For instance, this one time in our travels, we stopped at a Wal-Mart that was having a plant sale, and I bought all these four-inch pots of indoor greenaroo. Dalton got a big kick out of that, me going "domestic." Soon enough all the plants mysteriously died. I think he sabotaged them with coffee. Dalton was jealous of everything I liked, even my clothes, especially my deerskin leather jacket with the red-white-and-blue-beaded fringe my grandmother Fawn made me. He hated the fact that I had Indian blood in me and he did not. Next I got these cactus plants, special food, and a book on how to care for them. I bungee-corded them to the window in the trailer, and on the first of every month I fed them an eyedropper of plant food. At present my paddle cactus was sporting a fat little bud! Every day I checked on it, and I told that plant, Spike, if you can manage to bloom in this crazy environment, maybe I can too.

Five Corners roadhouse was this hokey, hogan-shaped building that badly needed a new roof. Not that it mattered much in the summertime, but come winter I imagined the place leaked like a sieve. There was a wooden hitching rail in front of the parking spaces. Even a few ratty horses tied up. Nothing worth stealing except for this seventeen-hand black-and-white paint horse with a ton of chrome. Inside the bar all the rodeo cowboys were drinking, which was what I'd've liked to be doing, but drinking made me do stupid things, like have sex with total strangers or agree to five-year-long singing gigs with men like Dalton or -- duh, what do you know? -- both, so I avoided the bottle, though I hadn't quite got around to doing the AA thing. On the sign outside Five Corners, faded plastic letters announced that the Lou Peltier band played every Thursday through Sunday. I wondered if he was a distant relation to Leonard, one American Indian who stood up for his beliefs enough to stay in jail and not rat out his brothers. It killed me how Bobby Dylan could sing one song and get Hurricane Carter cut loose. Unless Clinton grew a conscience -- and how likely was that? -- Leonard would rot in the slammer until he was an old man crippled by phlebitis. Underneath the regular sign, in those plastic letters they use on movie marquees, it read, TO-NITE ONLY DALTON AFTERHART. Whoop-de-fecking-do. Just then, the door swung open and out came Dalton himself. It says in the Bible that man is created in His own image. I hoped that was an exaggeration, because if not, Lord God, what a specimen! Imagine Kevin Costner with an overbite, a beer gut, and a little bit blonder hair, age fifty-two, but looking older. Now cut his vocabulary in half, give him a shorter, fatter Johnson that only works half the time, and the bank account of some ordinary Joe. Take away manners, and throw in a Ph.D. in sweet talk, paint a mean streak down his back, and you have Dalton Afterhart, who professes to have authentic Cherokee Indian blood! First time I met him in Tulsa he asked me to call him Chief. I told him that sounded even dumber than anything I could ever have thought up, and I had a lengthy history of dim. I am one-quarter Creek Indian, one-quarter German, and the whole other half of me is a terrible combination of fighting Irish and Sicilian Eytie, thanks to Daddy's parents' scandalous union. I didn't tell anyone anything when they asked me why my last name (Caringella) was so unusual. I just said, Gee, isn't that a coincidence, your name sounds pretty fecking weird to me, too.

"You feed those monkeys, Maddy?" Dalton slurred as he tried to light his cigarette. He was way buzzed, having trouble with the lighter, and I was banking that even with a pot of coffee in him he wouldn't be sober by the time he needed to perform.

"Hell, no. They're not my monkeys. You feed the little bastards."

"Those monkeys pay for your cigarettes, let me remind you."

"Relax, Chief. I tuned your guitar."

He stopped in his tracks, the cigarette hanging from his lips, and gave me a smile. Nobody knew this but me, but Dalton was going deaf and he could not tune that beat-to-shit Gretsch to save his life. He fancied himself some Willie Nelson clone, on the road 365 days a year. I guess he thought the world would eventually give him a trophy for his time, and my tuning the guitar would go down in history as a small contribution. "That's what I love about you, Madigan," he said, using my middle name, which I preferred. "You're thoughtful."

Dalton was the only man who ever said "I love you" to me besides my daddy, and my daddy sure as hell didn't say it anymore.

"Oh, get over yourself," I said, and went to tune the guitar before he realized I was lying.

Well, the night didn't stand still for thinking, and Dalton did not get sober enough to sing. In fact, he must have had some secret bottle stashed back in the trailer because when I came to get him for the show he was dressed to perform but passed clean out. He'd apparently bumped into a few things along the way, too, because the frying pan was on the floor, and so was a bagful of onions, and the silverware box I kept all straightened was upside down, and I nearly broke my neck stepping on spoons and knives. Then I saw my jacket. Mother feckity! It was covered with vomit. My paddle cactus was out of its pot, and the bud, which was just starting to unfurl a silky yellow blossom, lay crushed in the sink. I cradled it in my palm for a moment and then tossed it in the trash. Using a dishrag, I wiped each bead clean and tried to get out the worst of the stain, but the deerskin had soaked too much up ever to look good again.

I sat down on the bed and took Dalton by the shoulders. I shook him hard, I threw water on his face, yanked his belly hair, screamed in his ear about what a worthless piece of shit he was, and all the while he smiled and rolled his eyes. His limp form in that horrid parrot-patterned Hawaiian shirt fell back on the bedding like he'd just finished a day of hard labor. Jimmy Buffett after too many margaritas. I was killing mad. If we didn't do the act, we didn't get the paycheck, and we needed gas money just to stay with the rodeo. Outside the trailer I heard the collies whimper, and I pictured them cowering. They hated fighting, and could tell when I was in a bad mood without me saying a word. The monkeys, who were probably hooked on the herbal Valium, rattled the bars on their cages and screamed that ear-piercing squeal that meant they knew it was almost show time.

I asked God, What have I done in my twenty-nine years to deserve this?

He answered, Don't go there, Madigan. The answer will take too long and you can't spare the time.

So I rinsed the vomit off my hands. I swept up the dirt, picked up the silverware and the onions. I took out the leather gloves, the special saddles, said a Hail Mary, who had never let me down. Some Christians will tell you that praying to the Mother of God is pagan, blasphemous, and downright wrong. To them I say, Excuse me, and just who taught Jesus his pleases and thank-yous? Give the woman some credit. I harnessed up my dogs. Mentos was such a good girl that she looked at me with her wide blue people eyes and lifted a front paw when I went to adjust her cinch. Slim Jim stood tall; like a good soldier, he knew the drill. Then came the monkeys. Thing One and Thing Two was what I called them. Their little biting faces were pure evil. At first they looked real cute, like wrinkly old grannies, but if you gave them a half second they'd transform into aliens with razor-sharp teeth like in that movie about the gremlins.

They despised the saddles, the straps, the stirrups, the buckles, and the cinches that kept them tethered to the dogs. They were trembling by the time I got the second one buckled in -- and they'd each had nine peanuts as bribes. I wanted nothing more than to let them out, but the thought of that paycheck kept me going. Lately we'd bee...

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0743224612
• ISBN 13: 9780743224611
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368