My sister thinks I have a lot of crackpot theories. Not that she would use a word like that. She says in an even voice, “You might want to not broadcast those ideas too loudly.” That would be her theory about our trip to Red Butte.
I was working at a small stable. In the middle of nowhere or what passes for nowhere in that part of southern Ontario. I was doing massage on an older mare. I used to do people too, but I got tired of it. Too much complaining about my fees and come-ons from older guys.
Janis was standing at the head of the mare in case it got antsy. An excuse. Janis is a real talker and there aren’t many people around in the daytime. Most of her boarders are working so they can pay for these massages.
I’ve known Janis for years. She’s on the wrong side of forty and looks it. Too much sun. Her arms are real sinewy, ropey-like. Her hands are always calloused and raw, almost every finger crooked, from making a living wrangling rebellious horses at the end of a line. Still attractive at a glance though. She wears her hair long – lucky because it’s dead straight. I had to shorten my curly hair years ago. I knew it had the blowsy look.
I met Janis at a stable. She was one for the dramatic scene from the beginning. She married a pilot and on the wedding day, he parachuted onto the cross-country field and she picked him up in a two-horse carriage she borrowed.
I lost track of her for a few years until she started her stable. She told me she had kicked the bum, the pilot, out because his layovers were, well, lay overs. After that I saw her occasionally with an assortment of men at horse shows, usually guys looking baffled and doing her bidding. Carrying water and such. I had to admire how she made her little stable work.
So, I was stunned when she was holding that horse and said, “Ellen, I’ve got big news. I’m selling up and moving to live with my boyfriend.” I had not even seen a man lurking around there for a while.
I took my hands off the mare’s haunches and stepped closer to her. “You have got to be kidding.” I saw right away that was wrong and felt bad. “Tell me all about him.” That got me off the hook.
“His name is Colton” – I forget the last name – “and he owns a ranch that breeds and trains cutting horses.”
She met him on-line. I must have had a sceptical look because she laughed. “Oh, Ellen, come on. Everyone does it now.”
He was near her age. Divorced, of course. No kids. Had sold horses to Robert Redford and that media guy, Jane Fonda’s ex. Liked western sunsets, loved to barbeque, preferred sitting around the fireplace to bars. I was tempted to ask about quiet walks along the beach but held back. Instead, “When will I meet him?”
Her voice softened and she spoke in that tone young, untested brides do. Not like her at all. “I don’t think you will. Unless you come visit. Which I’d love for you to do. In South Dakota.”
“South-frigging-Dakota. You’ve got to be kidding. You read about women doing such things.”
She was set on it. Business was down, dealing with spoilt horses was getting harder. This was a chance for a real future.
She wouldn’t take her horse.
“No, it will be just Tucker-dog and me.”
She admitted Colton hadn’t mentioned a dog. “You can usually trust a man with a dog.” I said.
She settled up quickly. Turned out she only rented the land. Gave her horse to a friend. Sent most of her possessions to Goodwill. She gave me a wrought iron hitching post with a horse’s head I had admired. The day I went to pick it up she gave me a piece of paper with her address. I stared at it as if deciphering hieroglyphics. It read:
Eldorado, nr. Red Butte, South Dakota 37558
“Keep in touch,” she said.
Janis isn’t a hugger and nor am I. We looked at each other, quiet. “See you,” I said as if I’d be back in a month.
I waited to let her settle in. I phoned first. Number no longer in service. Unsurprising now she was stateside. The letter was not returned so I assumed she had it. No response. But at Christmas a strange postcard arrived. A black and white photo of three early settlers, a man and two women standing outside a cabin, more like a shed. Where they stood was a nowhere, not a tree or shrub or rise of land for a location. I turned it over. The postmark was illegible. The faded pencil scrawls were inked over with my address and a wobbly heart and ‘Janis’ printed in the large unruly letters a first grader might produce. I knew I had to visit Janis.
My sister and I were driving along the Needle Highway in South Dakota. A scenic detour she wanted to make. Thankfully she agreed to make the three-day trip from Phoenix with me. I think she gets bored. Her husband is retired but does a lot of contract work.
Peggy was excited about the rock formations she knew we would see. I think people who like rock formations are the same people who like abstract art. Peggy has a lot of that in her house. Myself, I could never settle in a place without real trees. Oak, ash, maple. Not the scrawny trees we saw there. I told Peggy about the mystery man Janis met over the internet, the quick move, and the long silence. Nothing of my suspicions or the post card.
“You always have strange friends.” I let that comment pass. It did irk me though. Peggy’s life has been highly conventional. Her husband is an on-the-move-research scientist. Their two daughters are high achievers. All their friends are doctors and lawyers and such, as the song says.
I decided I might as well tell her about what I thought was really going on. “I don’t want to alarm you but I suspect we might not see Janis. I have a feeling she is being held captive.”
“Good God, Ellen, then what are we doing here? And what do you mean a feeling? A feeling or a theory?” You might know she was a linguistics major.
As I said, she thinks I am always promoting some cockeyed views about events. Not conspiracy theories, of course. “What do I mean?”
“Yes. Like your idea that violence and rioting in some places are explained by dehydration because no one has enough water to drink and dehydration causes irrational behaviour.”
I did happen to think that. Too many men running amok without water bottles. But I ignored that dig. “As it happens, I do have some thoughts on missing women. Don’t you notice how many aren’t found? It’s not easy to move and conceal a body. I think a lot of them are being held captive. I’ll bet it’s way more common than you think.”
“That is so disturbing. I don’t know how you can think about things like that.” She changed the subject to more of her research on South Dakota vegetation.
We reached Red Butte late afternoon. A faded sign announced, Home of the Pheasant Festival. “Must be the ringed neck pheasant. The state bird.” I wanted to show I knew something.
Peggy laughed. “You must mean the ring-necked pheasant. Though possibly true at the festival.” She took her hands off the steering wheel, twisted both hands on her neck and mimed breaking it.
Sometimes she breaks out in weird humour.
We pulled into the only motel in town. A six-cabin affair. The Pheasant Motel- surprise. A worn-out looking man booked us in. He seemed uninterested in our business there.
We set out for the Post Office where I hoped to get directions. Closed. Open three days a week for two hours according to the window sign. Next door another older man sat behind the counter of the hardware store, reading a Bible. I made some small talk about the pheasant festival but the man said it was mostly a local affair.
I was looking for directions to a place our GPS would not track I said. “The Post Office is closed,” I added as if this would be news.
“They don’t know much anyways. It’s all cluster mailboxes out there now. Some folks they never see.” I heard Peggy’s muttered, “Good God.”
“We’re looking for a place called Eldorado.”
He looked up now with interest and fixed his eyes on me. “I know about it on account of the name. Some like to dream big.”
He had never been there. Didn’t know anyone who had. But drew a map to an old logging road. It was about twenty miles away. I figured the kilometres roughly in my head.
“Hope you got a decent truck.” He nodded when I said I was from Canada.
My sister says she doesn’t care about vehicles as long as they run. I could sense otherwise. She was tense with all the jarring and bumping given to her SUV. She clutched the steering wheel with both hands and looked straight ahead.
“At least we aren’t on a mountain road.” Outside nothing but phallic-like rocks – her words from earlier – struggling aspen trees and in the distance ponderosa pines. Her research again.
The road ended abruptly in a turnaround and small clearing. An old trailer curved and shaped like an egg huddled alone in dry weeds. Amidst its rust, I could make out the original maroon and gold colour. “Do you know it’s called a teardrop trailer?”
“I suppose you think that makes it an omen.” I’ll say this. Peggy is often good at reading me.
No one was there. No one had bothered to shut the door properly. Inside, scarcely room for two people to move around. Peggy started going through the cupboards. I slid by her to the sleeping area. The mattresses were thin and dirty. I was leery of mice. I can’t abide a mouse inside.
“Nothing much here,” Peggy said. “A few mugs, a part of a jar of instant coffee, a can opener, cutlery, two cans of chili, matches.”
I looked under the mattresses as if expecting some big revelation. Nothing. There wasn’t much else to inspect. An oil lamp, a couple of musty pillows, a brown towel, no blood. “I think that’s it. I’ll take a quick look around the outside of the trailer.”
Peggy was already out the door.
I opened the cupboards again. One mug had a hunting scene with a horse and hounds coursing a fox. I put it in my jacket pocket.
I walked around the front of the trailer. Looking for I knew not what. Above the tiny front window was a chrome name plate: Eldorado. The brand of the trailer. Not even an original name for the place then. Behind the trailer was yet more untidy. Several empty oil barrels, a couple of tires, a broken webbed chair, all partly visible in the scrubby grass and weeds. Two more folding chairs, upended, around a fire pit filled with ashes and poked through by shards of grass. Something hung around the arm of one chair. Closer, I could see it was a dog’s collar, Tucker’s braided leather collar, and in the fire pit bones and some bits of charred black fur. “Fuck,” I said, and ran.
You know how the drive back from a place can seem shorter than the drive to the place. Not this time. I wanted to tell Peggy to drive faster but I didn’t want to scare her. Besides what were we running from? It was dark when we got to Red Butte. I couldn’t face staying there again. We drove to the nearest city, three hours away.
“What did you hope to find?” Peggy asked after a long shower in the security of a national brand hotel. I sat in a comfortable chair with the mug in my hand turning it around and around, looking at the hounds coursing the lone fox. There wasn’t much to say. Janis, of course. A ranch, maybe a struggling business. Maybe the guy would be a lot older than Janis but still it would all be good. Tucker would come out to greet me the way he always did.
“It was Eldorado.” Peggy looked up from the phone that now engrossed her. “I saw the name on the trailer, Eldorado, a brand plate. And Janis was there. I’m pretty sure.” I paused. “Didn’t you notice this mug with the hunt scene? That’s not the kind of mug a man out here would have. It’s fine china.
English made. English scene. The kind Janis would bring. The others were thick, dollar store junk.” “Shouldn’t we call the police or something?” Peggy would like that much drama.
Maybe I should have told her about finding that collar. I don’t know why I didn’t. Everything seemed to become more unreal when I saw that fire pit. It wasn’t the sort of thing that happens to Peggy and me. “There’s not much to go on. An adult woman, from out of the country, hooks up with a guy over the internet. Last name unknown. First name probably common here. Said by another woman, also from out of the country, to have disappeared. Oh, and the mug. What cop is going to understand about the mug?”
It wasn’t like we could go searching for Janis. Where would you begin in that vast emptiness? Peggy looked at me but said nothing. I don’t usually get this worked up. I walked over to her, bent down, and even hugged her. “Thanks for being such a good sport with all the driving and everything.”
At the window I looked into the dark. I wanted to go home. To my home, not Peggy’s. To see real trees. Pick up Ranger from the boarding kennel. Settle in on our couch. Make a real cup of tea. Why can’t the Americans make a proper cup of tea? Dishwater. Damn Janis. After all, I tried to warn her about him. What else could I do?
“You know,” I said more to myself than Peggy, “that was just the kind of place where someone like Janis could walk into a hardware store one day and announce she escaped years, say seven years, of being held in an abandoned cold war bunker.” Things like that happen. I tried picturing it all out.
Instead I kept seeing that collar. Such a shame about the dog.
