Read Online Loser's Town by Daniel Depp - Free Book Online Page B

chair, the desk itself an old roll-top that needed three men to wedge it into the room.
    It was a museum to a time long gone, as the few friends invited quickly pointed out. The only concessions to the twentieth century – which, like Evelyn Waugh, Spandau believed to be a huge mistake – were the answering machine and the laptop computer, tucked away in a corner out of eyeshot. Spandau was more at home here than anywhere in the world. He whiled away many a long and lonely night in his easy chair, smoking a pipe, sipping Wild Turkey and reading books on the American West.
    There were no surprises on the answering machine. Pookie reminded him, in that Marilyn Monroe voice she affected over the phone, that Coren wanted his mileage sheets. A friend from Utah, a genuine cowboy, drunk and bored, called to say he was coming to LA soon and wanted to know if Spandau knew any available starlets.
    Dee had called. She wanted to know if Spandau was still coming out to the ranch that afternoon. Spandau replayed her voice several times, coasting the familiar drop and rise of his heart.
    He pulled off the Armani and dressed quickly in jeans, a work shirt and an old pair of boots. It was like shedding a false skin in exchange for his true one. He felt his life become lighter. He opened the garage and after a few attempts cranked up the Apache. It hadn’t been driven in weeks. He backed it out and shut the garage. He sat in the truck in the driveway, relishing the feel of it. He’d restored the truck to its original state, right down to the baby-blue and white paint job and the functioning AM radio. Withthree speeds and six cylinders, it wasn’t a hellcat on the road, and drove like what it was, a work truck. On the bench seat next to him were a banged-up straw Stetson and a baseball cap advertising the Red Pecker Bar & Grill. He put on the baseball cap.
    He was home.
     
    The McCauley ranch was seven miles outside of Ojai, reached by a twisty and dusty road that dodged between the hills. Beau McCauley had purchased the fifty acres of mostly hilly land forty years before, not long after his marriage to Mary and his start as one of the best stuntmen in the business. Beau never trusted movie money and felt that raising quarter horses was a safer bet. Horses were the stupidest animals God ever put on this planet, but he still preferred them to most people. Beau and Mary both had good heads for business, and soon they owned the land outright. Beau continued to be in demand as a stunt coordinator, forming his own company, and the ranch did well for itself. When Beau died, Mary decided to continue running the ranch. She didn’t have to. She could easily have sold off most of the land and lived well without working. But that wasn’t Mary. She still raised horses but was pushing seventy herself and had slowed down a little. She ran the ranch with a Mexican named Carlos and his wife and son. The son was twenty and drank on weekends but was still a good hand.
    Spandau loved the ranch, and if he had a home this was it. He approached the ranch driving up a hill, and over thecrest the ranch lay spread out on a piece of flat land below. A gravel road hugged the side of the hills weaving its way down. There was a creek that ran through the property and the white two-story frame house sat in a green oasis in the middle of the usually brown landscape. There were the outbuildings and the barn and the stables and the corrals and the small house where Carlos lived. A few horses wandered in the pasture. There were not many. Just enough, as Mary said, to still call it a working ranch. The sale of the horses in fact barely covered Carlos’ salary. But a ranch without horses was a dead thing, just a pointless hunk of land, as Mary pointed out, and as long as the ranch was alive there was some large part of Beau still alive with it.
    Spandau wondered what would happen to the ranch when Mary died. Dee loved the place but loved teaching more and had no