Free There Is No Otherwise by Ardin Lalui Page B

thing,’ he said.
    ‘I'd say that's a mite more verifiable than anything rumored to have occurred in Fort Stockton.’
    Modine got to his feet. ‘Oh you believe me, Arliss. My uncle showed me the bullet hole in his back.’ He turned round and showed them the place between his shoulder blades where the man had been shot. Then he went to find a toilet.
    Arliss said to JP, ‘that's what Modine drunk looks like.’
    JP nodded. He leaned back, lit another cigarette. The door stood half open and he could see outside to the street. It had grown dark and but for a few cars passing there was nothing out there but the sound of cicadas. Las Cruces New Mexico — it was every bit as foreign to him as if they'd crossed to Juárez. Nothing about the place felt correct. He'd have almost given up the chance to get laid just to be back on the ranch right then with the Mr and Mrs.
    He thought about the old man.
    He said to Arliss, ‘Tobin aint getting any better, is he?’
    Arliss shook his head. ‘You might as well out and say it, JP. He's getting worse.’
    ‘You think he'll get over it? When it happens I mean.’
    ‘Who's to say?’
    ‘Modine says he won't.’
    ‘Ashton Modine says a lot of things.’
    JP nodded. Arliss and Modine were a good five years older than he was and they'd known Tobin a lot longer than he had. They'd been on the ranch since they were kids. They weren't brothers but they had arrived together courtesy of the El Paso County child protection service and Tobin and his wife treated them as though they were brothers — as though they were sons. The Tobins didn't have any children of their own. They managed to strike a balance between treating the boys as kin and as ranch hands and everyone seemed comfortable with it being that way. The boys went to school till about the age of sixteen, fifteen for Arliss, and up till then they slept in the house. When they started working on the ranch they moved to the bunkhouse beside the barn. In all that time, not one single day passed that they didn't sit at the table in the kitchen and eat dinner with the Mr and Mrs.
    JP said, ‘you've known him a long time.’
    ‘I aint never seen him like this, JP.’
    ‘He ever been a drunk before?’
    ‘What do you think?’
    JP shrugged. ‘Well I seen my own father go like this and there aint but one way it ends.’
    *
    J P HAD WATCHED HIS own father self‐destruct and he wasn't about to do it a second time. Every time he saw the old man cussing and swearing at the moon with a brown bottle in his hand he swore he would light out come morning. He never did though.
    He had arrived at the Tobin ranch just before they found out about Mrs Tobin's illness and everything began to change. And it was amazing how much things could change. All them thousands of acres of chaparral and thousands of head of cattle and that little woman was the very heart of it all. Without her it didn't any of it seem worthwhile. It was her that found JP in the first place, and because of her he was there at all.
    She saw him one night sleeping in a bar ditch by the side of the highway on her way back from bingo. She pulled over and asked him if he was all right and he said he was, and she asked him what he was doing and he said he was sleeping. She asked him if he had a horse and he motioned yonder to the field behind him. That was enough for her. She always prided herself on her ability to read a man. She told him to ride back a few miles to the ranch and when he got there she had a hot meal on the table and round it was Mr Tobin and Modine and Arliss and one empty seat. He took it and that was that.
    *
    M ODINE CAME BACK FROM the toilet and sat down. ‘This place is deader than a churchyard.’
    ‘What time is it anyhow?’
    Modine looked at his watch. ‘It's gone eight. The night will be shot and we still won't have had no fun.’
    ‘We'll have our fun,’ Arliss said.
    Modine called over to the bartender. ‘Amigo, dónde están?’
    ‘Ahora