(WESTERN THEME. HORSE, COWS, WHOOPS)
SS: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS. . .brought to you by Wild Bill Brand Skin Moisturizer, the cream that keeps your skin fresh and shining even in sandstorms (WIND), avalanches (RUMBLE), or stampedes (MOMENT OF TUMULT, SHOUTS, COWS, HORSES).
As we join Dusty and Lefty, they are making camp in Cottonwood Gulch, just west of Flat Butte on the Goodnight Trail, after a long day's ride.
(OUTDOOR AMBIENCE, DISTANT CATTLE)
TR: (GRUNTS) I sure hope we find them fifteen head who wandered off today, that's all I can say. I don't know how we coulda lost 'em.
GK: Oh they'll catch up ---- don't worry about it. You know, I was thinking, with this tree here, we could put your bedroll over there and mine here and put the kitchen between us and set the packs down there and then have a sort of a conversation area he re and ----- what do you think of that?
TR: I don't care. Do what you like.
GK: Okay. I'll have the kitchen here. (HE DUMPS A LOAD OF JUNK ON THE GROUND) And then I can hang the towels up in the tree and ---- well, that's going to be nice.
TR: I just hope the cougars didn't get them cattle ---- if they wound up trapped in one of them arroyos or something.
GK: (RUMMAGING IN POTS AND PANS) You know what we need is an egg poacher. I keep meaning to buy one. I sure miss having poached eggs.
TR: When did we ever have poached eggs?
GK: A poached egg on a toasted muffin. With a little tarragon on top. Two strips of bacon. Mmmmmmm.
TR: We got three more hours before the sun goes down. What do you say we ride back up the trail and find them fifteen head of cattle?
GK: I remember having a perfect poached egg at the Ritz Hotel in Cheyenne, Wyoming, with a girl named Mona Mahoney and her sister Lena.
TR: (OFF, SLIGHTLY) What do you say, Lefty? Let's saddle up and go get em.
GK: My, they were special.
TR: Lefty, are you listening to me?
GK: They were wearing a powder blue dress with poofy sleeves.
TR: Lefty----
GK: A blue dress with four sleeves because they were Siamese twins. Joined at the waist.
TR: Lefty, would you get your mind off women for one minute?
GK: Mona and Lena. They were so beautiful. They sat across from me. We had poached eggs for breakfast.
TR: You weren't listening to me, were you, Lefty?
GK: Two beautiful women in one blue summery dress and one of them played the trombone and the other the tambourine and I remember they played "Deep Purple" and it was the prettiest thing I ever heard. Especially with poached eggs.
TR: Lefty, shut up. We got three hours of daylight left and fifteen head of cattle missing and it's time we head out and find em. Okay? (BEAT) Lefty?
GK: That dress was the color of this blue checked tablecloth.
TR: I don't remember no Ritz Hotel in Cheyenne.
GK: It was right there in Cheyenne.
TR: All I remember was a lunch counter called Mom's and the saloon and a passel of cheap liberal Democrat dance-hall floozies, and waking up in a pile of straw in the alley outside the livery stable with a headache that went all the way down to my knees a nd a taste in my mouth like I'd been eating fried gym socks.
GK: I didn't go to the saloon with you that night, Dusty. I went to a book club and met the Mahoney girls and we went to the Ritz for breakfast while you were passed out in the alley and they played "Deep Purple" in their blue summery dress as I sat eatin g at my poached eggs with tarragon on them.
TR: You mean to say that while I was lying filthy and hung-over in the alley, you, my partner, were dining on poached eggs with Siamese twins named Mona and Lena?
GK: I was.
TR: (HAWK, SPIT) You never told me this before, pardner.
GK: It's a sad story.
TR: I love sad stories about other people. What happened?
GK: Well, the two of them and I sat there eating our poached eggs and I could tell they were looking me over but I pretended not to notice and then Mona, the older one, said, "Would you mind if I ask you a personal question?"
TR: I love it when they say that.
GK: Me too. A woman can't ask too many personal questions for me.
TR: It's when they already know the answers that a woman becomes tiresome.
GK: I said, "No, I don't mind," and she said, "I can see by your rugged demeanor that you are a cowboy," and I said, "Yes, ma'am."
TR: "Rugged demeanor". I like that.
GK: And Lena said, "And you seem to be carrying a pistol," and I said, "No, ma'am. I am not. That is my lunch." And she said, "Oh." And I said, "It's so hard sometimes to find fresh fruit or yoghurt in these frontier towns, so I carry some in my holster."
TR: Uh huh.
GK: I had a kiwi and a banana and a strawberry-banana yoghurt and a spoon in a Baggie.
TR: In your holster.
GK: Right.
TR: And what'd she say?
GK: She didn't comment on it. She leaned over to me and she says, "I've never said this to anybody before, but--- I'd like to know you a lot better. And so would my sister."
TR: I love that, when they say, "I've never said this before to anybody"-----
GK: Yeah.
TR: It's when you have to say it for them, that women get tiresome.
GK: So the one who was playing the trombone, Mona, she says, "Do you have a room at this hotel?" I said, No, I'm staying at the boarding house over by the salon.
TR: By the saloon.
GK: Well, I said "salon". I didn't want to offend them. So we paid for our breakfasts and meandered over to the boarding house and up the stairs and into my room and there they stood and took it all in ---- -
TR: The piles of dirty underwear, the bed all torn apart, the empty beer cans on the floor, the peanut shells, the pizza cardboard, the spent cartridges from a night of target shooting at the bedposts----
GK: No, that's your room, Dusty.
TR: Oh. Right.
GK: My room had my satin pillow on the bed. My origami. The poster of Big Sur on the wall and the picture of the Dalai Lama and the paper lanterns and the bay leaf candle----
TR: Boy, we never shoulda gone through Boulder, Colorado, on that cattle drive. I tell you. Big mistake.
GK: And the room is all nice ---- it has this simplicity and peacefulness about it ---- and I decided to recite to them from Wallace Stevens, my favorite poet.
TR: Oh boy....
GK: And I did his "Complacencies of the peignoir, and late/Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,/And the freedom of a green cockatoo/Upon a rug mingle to dissipate/The holy hush of ancient sacrifice." And then Mona and Lena played "Beyond The Sunset" on th e trombone and tambourine.
TR: And then what?
GK: A gentleman does not enjoy the affections of ladies and then peddle the story for the amusement of others, Dusty.
TR: Ahhhh. No wonder you were sad to leave Cheyenne.
GK: They played a duet in their peignoir for me ---- "Beautiful Isle of Somewhere". And then they burst into tears. Siamese twins, crying. And Mona said, "You'll go away and you'll forget us, I just know it." It was heartbreaking.
TR: Little did she know.
GK: Not a day has gone by but what I recall them both.
TR: I can imagine.
GK: And she was a good trombonist, too.
(HORSES HOOVES APPROACH, GALLOPING)
TR: Who in the world-----?
(SS WHOA, HORSES PULL UP, WHINNY, SS WHOA. DISMOUNTS. FOOTSTEPS ON DIRT, JINGLE OF SPURS. STOPS.)
SS: Hey you two saddle tramps ---- are them your fifteen fleabitten head of shorthorns I found about ten miles up the trail bunched up in a box canyon with cougars circling em and closing in for the kill --- ? Huh?
TR: Yes, ma'am. We were just about to----
SS: Well, you don't need to. I brung 'em in for you. Had t' shoot a couple cougars and arm-wrestle a third---- (PAUSE) Who's this?
TR: He's my partner, Lefty.
SS: How come he's wearing a T-shirt that says, "This cowboy could sure use a big hug right now" ---- what in the hell is that supposed to mean?
GK: I got it out of a catalogue.
SS: I'd rather hug a warthog than put my arms around a little runt like you, that's for sure.
GK: Well, it was just a thought.
SS: Well, if you want to be a ding dong, why advertise it? (SHE HAWKS AND SPITS) Go change your shirt.
GK: Okay.
SS: You two owe me big-time for doing your work for you. Rassling with a cougar and driving fifteen spooked cattle ten miles is no piece of cake, let me tell you. You got any whiskey?
TR: Sure we do. Lefty, where's the whiskey?
GK: We got a very nice single-malt----
SS: Single-malt, my Aunt Sally! (SPITS) Dang it, I didn't come out on the trail for single-malt whiskey! What do you take me for? A social worker? Gimme some real whiskey.
TR: You heard the lady----
GK: We got a bottle of cheap rotgut we use to cauterize wounds on the cattle----
SS: Gimme a glass of that.
GK: You want ice with that?
(PAUSE TWO BEATS)
SS: Listen, ding dong. You water my whiskey, and that'll be the last whiskey you water, so help me.
GK: Coming right up....(FOOTSTEPS AWAY. SOME RIFFLING THROUGH THE STUFF, OFF-MIKE, UNDER.....)
TR: Where you headed, ma'am?
SS: None of your cotton-picking business.
TR: Mind if I ask your name?
SS: I'll tell you my name the moment I decide that we ought to be friends. We're not there yet.
TR: Okay. Whatever.
(FOOTSTEPS)
GK: Here's a glassful of cheap rotgut whiskey.
SS: Good. (SHE GULPS IT DOWN AND EXHALES AND THEN SPITS IT OUT). That's terrible. What kind of weak-tea whiskey is that?
GK: You want something stronger?
SS: That whiskey wouldn't give a hangover to a tree toad.
GK: We got some even cheaper rottener whiskey that we use to soak our utensils in to take the rust off.
SS: That's better. Gimme some of that.
GK: Okay. Coming right up. (FOOTSTEPS, RUSTLING)
SS: What you got for supper tonight?
GK: For dinner, I am preparing a braised----
SS: I didn't say dinner, I said supper. Dinner is what you eat at noon. Does it look like noon to you? It doesn't to me. So it must be suppertime. What we having for supper?
GK: For supper, I am preparing a braised breast of squab on a bed of sauteed mushrooms and fresh asparagus-----
SS: Squab! I didn't beat up cougars and drive fifteen head of cattle ten miles to sit down to a supper of pigeons!
GK: Here's your whiskey, ma'am.
SS: Okay. (SHE TAKES A GULP AND SPITS IT OUT) Why that ain't whiskey! That tastes like some kinda children's drink! Is that what you drink? Then no wonder you're that way.
TR: We do have another bottle of whiskey, ma'am. It's a cheap rotgut whiskey so rotten and cheap that sometimes we sprinkle a few drops outside the camp to keep the badgers away.
SS: Lemme try some of that.
TR: Okay. Get her some of that badger poison, Lefty.
SS: You see that dark shape coming across the top of that butte over there? (SHE PICKS UP RIFLE, PULLS BOLT, PUMPS SHELL INTO CHAMBER) About half a mile away? Just above that big rock?
TR: Yes, ma'am-----
SS: (EYE SQUINTED, LOOKING THROUGH CROSS-HAIRS) You see him there?
TR: It's a----- why---- it's a bear.
GK: It's a grizzly bear.
TR: He looks about eight feet tall.
(BLAST OF RIFLE)
SS: That's my supper, right there. You two can have the squab.
GK: Well. All right. Fair enough.
TR: I'll go saddle up the horses. (FOOTSTEPS AWAY. HORSE WHINNY.)
SS: I'd like a haunch for supper and the rest I'll dry for jerky.
GK: Whatever you like. You care for that on a bed of----
SS: I don't eat my food on a bed. I eat it with my hands standing up.
GK: Yes, ma'am.
SS: I sleep in a bed. Right there by the fire. And I'm a light sleeper. I hope neither of you two snores.
GK: Not tonight we won't. You care to bathe before din--- before supper?
SS: Bathe? HA! I say, if you can't stand the smell, you better move upwind.
GK: Well put. So probably you won't be wanting to borrow a peignoir?
SS: A pen what?
GK: Never mind. Just a figure of speech.
SS: You're a strange dude, mister.
GK: I've thought so myself on more than one occasion.
SS: How long since you got into a fight?
GK: An argument?
SS: A fistfight. An honest to goodness knockdown, dragout, eye- gouging, face-scratching, kick-em-in-the-ankles fistfight.
GK: Why do you ask?
SS: I think maybe that's what you need to get you back with the program, cowboy.
GK: I don't think so.
SS: I think you need to taste some blood and feel your eye swell up and look down and see a couple teeth on the ground. That's what I think.
GK: You know, maybe I'll go help him skin that bear.
SS: Hit me.
GK: What?
SS: You heard me. Hit me.
GK: I will not.
SS: Take a swing. Go ahead.
GK: I don't care to.
SS: I said hit me.
GK: I couldn't do that in a million years.
SS: Make your hand into a fist and hit me, you dweeb.
GK: I wan't brought up that way, ma'am. My mother would never speak to me again if she knew I hit a woman.
SS: I said hit me. I want you to hit me so I can paste you one and kick your little flat butt until you get some sense in you. Hit me. Come on.
GK: Boy, the West has sure changed in recent years.
SS: (SHE IS DANCING AROUND IN A BOXER'S CROUCH) Come at me. Let's see you. Come on, big boy. Put up your dukes. Make my day. Put em up. One on one. Eyeball to eyeball. Here's the line. Come over it. Come on, champ. Step toward me. Come on.
GK: Sometimes a guy is going to have days like this.
SS: Come on. Stick it out there. Come on, big boy. Come at me. Come on. Take a swing. Take a poke.
GK: Sometimes, you just can't win.
SS: Let's see what you got. Come on. Show your stuff. Take a swing. Hit me right here on the jaw. Hard as you can. Come on. Let's see it. (HORSE WHINNY)
GK: (OFF) Help yourself to the whiskey. There's cheese and crackers. And a pesto dip. Just help yourself. We'll be back in a few hours. (GK WHOOPS, WHINNY, HOOVES AWAY)
SS: I'll be waiting for you! (THEME)
TR: THE LIVES OF THE COWBOYS. . . was brought to you by Sundown Kid deodorant and snake spray ---- does your present deodorant contain ingredients that keep snakes from crawling into your bed while you sleep? If not, you better try Sundown Kid. You smell good and you don't get bit by snakes.
(MUSIC OUT)
(c) 1998 by Garrison Keillor