“Now you gotta feed me,” Evie said, interrupting his thoughts. “Hungry enough to eat shoelaces and bottle caps.”
Lilly Duval: muse, inspiration, lover, friend, the beginning and end of so much.
Love changed the world, both for those who were in love and those who were not. Determining when loving someone became being
in love
was indeterminable. Something they said, something they did, an idiosyncrasy of character that was theirs and theirs alone? The simple fact that such an idiosyncrasy became achingly endearing, that you were the only person in the world who could see it, and thus you somehow became more special in your own eyes. Loving someone helped you love yourself a little more, perhaps. That was how it worked for Evan Riggs. Loving this girl made reality more real. He wrote more, more than he’d ever done, and not just songs of love. He wrote from the gut as well as the heart, and sometimes he would find lyrics that surprised even himself. “Lord, I Done So Wrong.” “I’ll Try and Be a Better Man.” It was during this time that such plaintive expositions of the soul were penned, and few were the times he dared to ask if she could ever mean as much as Rebecca. He knew she could not, that no one ever could, but Lilly somehow consumed his thoughts and emotions so as to leave room for little else. Rebecca, at least for a while, was a ghost of something that might have been but never was.
There was an edge to the woman, a spectrum of colors that erred toward the dark and shadowed. Perhaps there was just a greater part of everything, the ability to love and to love life matched by an ability to hate whatever opposed her. She fought, and fought with ferocity. She railed against conformity, acceptance, banality, against that which she perceived as
safe
and
normal
. She was bohemian, a firebrand, a wire so live that the very air around her seemed to crack and snap with electricity. Against her, Evan knew that he did not possess anything like the gypsy blood his mother had jokingly suggested.
And yet, as with all people, Lilly was a contradiction, sometimes spending days in bed, wishing to do nothing, seemingly exhausted with the effort of forcing life to be interesting. Perhaps she believed that merely being alive entitled her to something, that she should not have to work so hard, that there should not be so many reasons and obstacles and deprivations.
“Why is it all so shit?” she would ask Evan, and yet be unable to define what
all
actually was.
A month, seeing her every day, almost every hour of every day, made Evan aware that a life with Lilly Duval would be no ordinary life. Everything was drama. There was no middle ground. It was extravagant and wild, or it was nothing, and the nothing was to be challenged and argued with and defied.
Perhaps he began to better appreciate the decision Rebecca had made in letting him go, how her refusal to follow him was more to do with saving herself from something almost destructive in its intensity than any real measure of her love for him.
Three months with Lilly and the edges were wearing thin. Even sex seemed driven by some other purpose, as if fucking each other was an act of revenge against something or someone unknown.
Nine months in and Evan felt himself start to disconnect. Just a little, but he did disconnect. He watched himself as if from a distance, finally refusing to become embroiled in the furor of her emotions. There were no half measures, no respite, no breathing space, and where he had at first found her passion and hunger for life somehow energizing, it was now enervating. The attention that had once seemed so perfectly validating of everything that he was, now felt claustrophobic and oppressive. A fight with Lilly about some meaningless detail left him exhausted, not only mentally and emotionally, but spiritually.
Close to Christmas of 1947, the train came off the rails.
Evan played a bar in Round Rock, night of Friday the twelfth of December. Just a small place, maybe thirty or forty regulars, but it was a good set and he was well received, hollered at for three encores and a crowd at the bar waiting to get him drunk. And he got drunk. So drunk he did not make it home until the following day.
“I was here all night waiting for you,” she said.
“I know, and I’m sorry,” he replied.
She stood in the kitchen doorway. She had on her fighting face, the eyes that said
I’m winning this one, asshole,
and Evan was hungover and tired and he’d driven back as early as he could, and his mouth tasted like a goat had bedded down in there, and he didn’t need it.
Hand on her hip, that sass in her stance that said she wasn’t moving until there was an explanation that would satisfy, forgetting—as always—that there was no such thing as a satisfactory explanation.
“Sorry isn’t gonna be enough, is it?” he asked.
She smiled, and there was a cruel flash in her eyes. He had left her behind. That was the point. It was not that she suspected the attention of other women. Nothing like that. It was simply that something had happened, something that might have relieved her boredom, and she had been excluded. It would only be later that Evan would begin to understand this state of mind, the sense that whatever was happening now, however good or exciting or new or fresh or interesting it might have been, there was always the chance that there was something better going on elsewhere. It was an inability to
be
in that moment. People could spend their whole lives elsewhere, all the while oblivious to the wonders right before their eyes. Had he understood that at the time, he might have been able to do something about it, but he did not, and thus was impotent.
“It’s not a matter of sorry, Evan. It’s a matter of thoughtlessness. You could have called me, told me you were going to stay. I could have driven over there. It’s twenty miles, goddamnit. I could have stayed overnight with you, and we could have had breakfast together and whatever.”
“You’re right,” Evan said. “I didn’t think.”
“Is it because you didn’t want me there?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Because I didn’t think. Because I played a set, I had a drink, then another one, and the more I drank, the less I thought. That was all there was to it. There is nothing else to it. There is nothing else to read into it or try to understand. I fucked up. I am sorry. I apologize. I will do my best not to be so thoughtless in the future, okay?”
“The sarcasm isn’t appreciated, Evan,” she said, and she glowered at him.
“I wasn’t being sarcastic.”
“Sounded sarcastic to me.”
“Okay, well, it wasn’t meant that way. What I am saying and what you are hearing are not always the same thing.”
“Meaning what?”
Evan stood facing her, his hand on his guitar case, his mind slipping its moorings.
“I know that look,” she said.
“Do you, Lilly? Do you really? Well, enlighten me, sweetheart. Why don’t you tell me what my face is telling you right now? I would love to hear it.”
“Sometimes you are such an asshole, Evan Riggs.”
“Sometimes you are such a bitch, Lilly Duvall.”
“Is this the way it’s going to be?”
“Is this the way
what
is going to be?”
“Our life together. You forget me and I get angry, and then we fight, and then we fuck, and then we wait for it to happen all over again.”
“Is that how you think our life is?”
“That seems to be how it’s going, Evan.”
“You are fucking crazy sometimes, Lilly. In fact, no, you are not crazy. You are driving
me
crazy. This is bullshit. This is just wild. I don’t know where the hell you get these ideas from, but they seem to be based on nothing that I can even see, let alone anything that I think is actually happening. Seems to me you are angling for a fight, and I am wondering why—”
“I could say the same about you … leaving me back here on my own.”
Evan fell silent, inside and out. He was exhausted. He didn’t want the battle. He sighed quietly and then turned and headed back toward the door of the apartment.
“You’re leaving?” Lilly asked.
“Yes, I am, Lilly.”
“Asshole.”
Evan turned back. “Enough now,” he said.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning nothing more nor less than that, Lilly. I love you, but this is driving me crazy. I don’t know how to make you happy. I don’t know how to make you stop fighting the world—”
“I am not fighting the world,” she interjected.
“You
are
, sweetheart, and you know you are. I have lived with you for a year, and I see it every day. I even see it when you are enjoying yourself. There is always some tiny facet of you that wants something better or different. You know what it’s like? It’s like talking to someone who’s always looking for someone more interesting to talk to, and it wears me out.”
“You’re leaving me,” she said matter-of-factly.
Evan smiled. “I am not leaving you.”
“But you want to.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You’ve stopped loving me,” she said, as if whatever now passed her lips was an undeniable truth.
“It’s not a question of how much I love you, Lilly, but
who
I love. I don’t love the person you are being right now, not the person you believe you have to be in order to get what you want.”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” she snapped.
“Yes, it does. And you know it makes sense, and that is why you are getting defensive.”
“Fuck you, Evan.”
Evan smiled again, which aggravated her further.
“You can’t just walk up to someone and tell them what to think about who they are,” she said.
“Yes, you can,” Evan replied. “And I just did.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
“I am always wrong, Lilly, even when I’m right. That’s the point.”
“I can’t talk to you. You contradict yourself and you make no sense.”
“Okay,” Evan said resignedly, and once more he headed for the door.
“You really are leaving me, aren’t you?” Lilly asked, and in her voice there was a slight shadow of anxiety, as if she was wondering if she had pushed him too far.
“Yes,” Evan said, “I am leaving you for about fifteen minutes. I am going to the store to get some cigarettes and some beer, and then I will come back. Do you want me to get you anything?”
Lilly looked at him wide-eyed. There was an emptiness in her expression. He felt something then, some strange sense of uncertainty, but he did not trust his intuition. He let the moment go.
His hand on the door, Evan glanced back at her and smiled. It was an artless, simple smile, an effort to lighten the mood, to relax her, to make her feel at ease, but she did not smile back.
He should not have gone. He knew it in that second. It was the same as that final moment with Rebecca, knowing he should have said something but staying silent.
Evan Riggs left the apartment and walked to the store. He bought cigarettes, half a dozen bottles of beer, and a box of Ritz crackers.
As he’d told Lilly, he was gone no more than fifteen minutes, but a quarter of an hour was all it took.
By the time he got back, it was too late.
That which had been suspected was proven out, at least by intuition and observation, that evening at the saloon in Calvary.
Ames, Sperling, Mills, and Eakins were present, and when Henry Quinn and Evie Chandler starting plying them with drinks and questions, the seams began to unravel. For there
were
seams, pulled tight from one to the other and back again, and there were moments when one would look to another, and both Henry and Evie knew that some unspoken agreement was in force.
Someone speak first, then I will speak; until then I am silent.
“I am not saying that Carson Riggs’s continued presence as sheriff is incorrect,” Harold Mills ventured, “but Warren, being a lawyer an’ all, said there might have been questions asked about the veracity of those elections … whether or not the votes placed and the votes counted were one and the same thing.”
“Isn’t there some kind of limit as to how many terms someone can serve as sheriff?” Henry asked. “I mean, from what I can work out, Riggs has been sheriff for the better part of thirty years. That can’t be right.”
“Garfield’s the man who’d have known,” Sperling said. “But he up and died at the end of May.”
“How did he die?” Evie asked.
“Heart gave out,” Ames said. “Right there at his desk.”
“And no one has ever really challenged Riggs for the position?” Henry asked.
George Eakins leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his hands nursing the glass of whiskey before him. “This isn’t San Angelo, kid,” he said. “Life in a city and life in some small backwater town are not the same thing at all. Here you say something, everyone knows it in an hour. Everyone is living out of one another’s pockets. That’s the way it is, the way it’s always been, probably the way it will always be.”
“Things are the way they are because no one changes them,” Evie said.
Clarence smiled. “The voice of youth.”
“The voice of truth,” Evie said. “Seems to me you guys are frightened of Carson Riggs. You flinch every time his name is mentioned.”
There was a definite cooling of the atmosphere then. Henry sensed it, felt it, looked at each man in turn and knew that Evie had voiced something that none of them had wanted to hear.
“Careful now, young lady,” Roy Sperling said, almost under his breath. “You don’t go saying things like that if you want to keep your friends.”
Evie Chandler smiled, started to laugh. It broke the tension. “Oh, come on, guys!” she said. “You know what I mean. Hell, this guy backs everyone off. Henry’s here trying to find something out, trying to help a friend, and all he gets is brick walls and bullshit. Someone must know something about what happened between Evan and Carson.”
“Their mother,” Harold Mills said, and if there had been a cooling of the atmosphere in the saloon before, it then became positively icy.
Ames looked at him, Sperling, too, and there was an unspoken hostility in their response. It was unclear who wished for this history to be revealed and who wished for things to remain unquestioned.
“Their mother?” Henry said. “She’s alive?”
Clarence Ames looked away and down, shook his head in seeming disapproval. Something was definitely not right. Some line had been crossed.
“Hey,” Evie said. “What’s the deal here? Carson’s and Evan’s mother is alive?”
Harold Mills nodded. “She’s alive, yes.”
“Where?” Evie asked.
“Someplace out in Odessa, far as I know,” Mills said.
“Enough, Harold,” Ames said. “You can’t send these people out there … harassing some old woman who can barely remember her own name.”
“Old?” Harold said. “Grace Riggs is not so much older than you. And maybe they should go out there. Maybe they should start some trouble, Clarence. Been a long time since there’s been any real trouble in Calvary. Warren said it a few times, didn’t he? That we should all tell him to go fuck himself, and to hell with the consequences.”
“You’re drunk,” Ames said. He turned to Henry and Evie, smiled somewhat resignedly. “Pay no mind to him,” he told them. “He’s drunk.” It was clear that Mills was not drunk, clearer still that Ames was angry with him for speaking of Grace Riggs.
“I am not drunk, Clarence,” Mills said. “Nothing to do with liquor. Hell, maybe it is … If I had a good deal more, I might open my fucking mouth and never shut it.”
“You go ahead and do that, Harold. See what the hell happens,” Ames said.
“You think I wouldn’t?” Mills retorted, his voice edged with animosity now. “You think I wouldn’t say to hell with all of this … all of you. Take one last stab at that—”
“Enough!” Roy Sperling said sharply, cutting them all dead.
Silence hung awkwardly in the middle of the room. There was no going back. Words had been spoken that could neither be retrieved nor forgotten.
Henry Quinn and Evie Chandler perceived a sense of quiet terror. It was tangible; the air was cold and electric.
Henry got up from his chair. “We’re going,” he told Evie.
Evie got up without a word.
“Thank you for the drink, gentlemen,” Henry said. “Next time it’s on me.”
He turned and started toward the door. He reached out his hand behind him, and Evie took it.
“Mr. Quinn.”
Henry stopped, turned back, and looked toward the small gathering.
“Man digs a hole, he better shore up the sides,” Clarence Ames said. “Last thing he wants to do is go and bury himself.”
Evie opened her mouth to respond, but Henry squeezed her hand and she said nothing.
They left the saloon and walked back to Henry’s truck, and neither of them said a word.
An hour later, sitting beside each other in the Chandler house,
McCloud
on the TV with the sound turned down, Evie’s father evident in his absence, the conversation could not have been about anything but what they’d witnessed and heard that evening in the saloon.
“He’s got something on them,” Evie said.
“All of them,” Henry replied, “and maybe not the same thing. He has been sheriff for nearly thirty years, for Christ’s sake. Every misdemeanor, every wrongdoing, every fuckup … It’s a small town. He must know everything that happens, every little secret.”
“And he keeps them in check and he keeps getting voted in.”
“And the mother,” Henry said. “Evan never said a thing about her. I never even suspected that she was still alive. I want to go to Odessa and talk to the mother.”
“We have no idea where she is, Henry. Odessa ain’t Calvary. I don’t think you can stop the first person you see in the street and they’ll tell you.”
“We ask Harold Mills,” Henry said. “There’s a man who wants to talk if ever I saw one.”
“Tonight? Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” Henry said.
“And tonight?”
“I wanna get drunk and do stuff to you that’s nearly illegal,” Henry said.
Evie laughed. “Hell, soldier, why stop at
nearly
illegal?”