by Kris Ashton
Her mother sometimes called from California (Janet’s parents had flown in the face of tradition and moved west to retire when farming became too much for her father) and asked when Janet planned to get married. Janet’s standard response was “when the right man comes along”, but in truth she had not been looking too hard. She liked being in charge of her own destiny and had no desire to accede any of that power. She knew she had a garrison of willing suitors in Bald Eagle alone, but if she did get married, it would be on her terms and when she was ready.
With Horace and his wife the last customers in the shop, she sat down to do some paperwork. Keeping track of her hundreds of small sales and not being audited by the IRS posed quite a challenge. It was also the part of being a businesswoman she hated the most—the due she had to pay for her independence.
So she was not displeased when someone entered the shop to distract her. She dropped her pen and stood up to greet them.
“Sharna!” she said, happier still. "I didn’t expect to see you for another couple of weeks.”
“Hi,” Sharna said. “I have something for you.”
She was not carrying dreamcatchers as Janet had expected. They had proven to be big sellers for some reason and Janet had struggled to keep up with demand.
“What have you got this time? Everything that comes out of that commune of yours sells like a hot apple pie at the North Pole.”
“It’s pretty,” Sharna said.
“Are you all right?” Janet asked. Sharna looked pale, as if she might be fighting a virus.
“Fine. Here.”
She held up a silver ball of some sort. Janet put out her hand to receive it.
Usually Bert appreciated the humdrum side of being a rural lawman (especially when so many of his big-city counterparts seemed to find their way onto a shrink’s couch) but today it had turned on him like a lazy pig dog turning on its master. He sat at his desk, the newspaper read, all his urgent paperwork done and Cody out seeing to an alleged cattle theft. Martha had asked permission, while things were slack, to type a letter to her sister in Kansas. In the single cell, located through an adjunctive door off Bert’s office, the hippie had gone to sleep on the bunk, his back to the bars. As such, Bert found himself with nothing to do but stare at the photo of Dana and Sharna and listen to the infernal click-click-clack-ding of Martha’s typing.
“Aw, the hell with this,” Bert said out loud. He got up and took his hat and coat off the rack.
Martha paused in her typing and looked up. “Going somewhere, Sheriff?”
“Thought while nothing was happening I might go and check on Sharna. I haven’t properly seen her in six months and I can’t get her out of my head.”
“Well, I don’t blame you in the least for wanting to go. Heavens, Bert, when did you last take some time off for yourself anyway?”
Bert thought about this for a second and laughed. “Damned if I can remember. There was that time I came down with pneumonia—”
“Oh, fiddlesticks! That’s not time off for yourself. I’ll tell you the last time you had time off for yourself—Dana’s funeral.”
Bert raised his eyebrows. “It can’t have been that long, surely.”
“Do you want me to get out the paperwork?”
“No, I know when I’m licked. Okay, I’m going to spend some time with Sharna and I’m not going to apologize for it. Call me at home if you need me.”
“Goodbye, Bert.”
Bert smiled. “Bye, Martha.”
He found it tough sticking to the speed limit on the way home, especially in the forest stretch between the station and the town center. You always have to be in control of everything, Bert Grayson, Dana had been wont to say, usually when he was trying to micro-manage her affairs. He hated things out of order, out of control, and those two terms had been a fair summation of his life in recent days. He wanted to get home, get Sharna on the path to reform and rehabilitation and reclaim the sense of stability (the false sense of stability, he corrected) in which he had been blithely living. Worrying solved nothing—you had to roll up your sleeves and put your hands to work.
He parked the cruiser in his driveway and got out. As he approached the front door, his cop’s intuition kicked in. Something about the house wasn’t kosher. It seemed…inert.
“Sharna?” Bert called out. He tried to turn the front door knob but it resisted. Locked. He thrust his hand into his pants pocket and hooked out his house keys. Women lock themselves inside all the time when they’re home alone. Even in Bald Eagle, he thought. But the words were little more than a prosaic incantation to ward off the anxiousness rising in his chest.
He opened the door and went inside. He half expected to see the place trashed, turned upside down in a search for valuables, but all drawers remained in their slots and not a single cupboard door hung open. Bert tilted his head left and right, listening for sounds of a running shower or a scratching pen. But the only thing he could hear was the whuk-whuk-whuk of a neighbor’s sprinkler.
“Sharna, are you here?” he called, loud enough for his voice to resonate through the whole house.
If she was there, she did not respond.
Bert’s shoulders slumped. He sighed and rubbed his cheek. “Goddammit, Sharna,” he muttered.
He made a systematic search of all rooms in the house and even poked his head out the back door, but she was gone. He checked for a note in all the obvious places—on the kitchen table, under a magnet on the fridge, even on his bedside table—all in vain. She had broken her promise and walked out on him again.
What’s the promise of a junkie worth?
Nothing. Less than nothing. The promise of a junkie was a like a negative number; it subtracted something from your life rather than contributing as promises were meant to do. But his daughter had not always been a dishonest, deceitful junkie, had she? No, she’d had some instruction in that discipline.
Bert ground his teeth so hard his jaw creaked. Before he could snap a molar or put his fist through the nearest wall he strode outside, got back in his cruiser, and drove to Main Street.
When he emerged from the town center limits, Bert put his foot down and headed for the station at ninety miles an hour, slowing to seventy to take the bends. He pulled up outside in a skid, the tires planing across the gravel. He exited the car amid a cloud of dust.
Martha, no doubt having heard his low-traction arrival, stood up behind her desk as he walked in. “Sheriff? Is something—”
“Not now, Martha,” he said, not even looking at her. He stormed into his office and slammed the door so hard the frame juddered. He slipped the billy club out of his gun belt and went into the cell room. Brolin, wide awake now, sat on the edge of his bunk with questioning eyes. Bert belted the billy club against the cell bars hard enough to make the galvanized steel ring. “No more bullshit, Brolin!”
The brazen hippie didn’t even flinch. “What’s crawled up your butt now?”
“My daughter promised me she would stay home,” Bert said, refusing to be riled. “She gave me her word she would get clean. But I just went home and she’s not there, Brolin. Now you’re going to tell me where she is.”
“How the hell would I know where she is?”
“Because if I were a betting man, I’d wager she’s gone somewhere to score drugs. And since you’re the son of a bitch who brought drugs into my town and pushed them on my daughter—”
“She didn’t need any pushing.”
Bert’s hand closed tight around the billy club. “One more crack like that and I’m going to break this thing over your head. I don’t care if I have to go to jail, it’ll be worth it just to see your head split open and your smart-aleck mouth shut.”
The hippie looked defiant but quit it with the wisecracks.
“Okay, now I’m guessing that with you taken out of the equation, Sharna’s gone to find the others. So you’re going to tell me exactly what was going on this morning—where everyone went and why you were alone up on the Hi
ll and where they’re likely to be now.”
Brolin got up and put the top of his head between two of the cell bars. “If you’re going to brain me with that nightstick, you might as well go ahead and get it over with, because I don’t plan to change my story.”
“You mean your goddamned magic egg story?”
Brolin lifted his head to look at him. “I wouldn’t call it magic.”
Bert held his gaze for a few seconds, then slipped the billy club back into its loop on his belt. “If you’re not going to help me, you can just stay in your cell for the rest of the night. How do you like them onions?”
“It’ll keep me safe, I guess. But you’re going to regret your ignorance, Sheriff. Something bad went down in Peace Out and I think the same bad thing could be going down in the rest of Bald Eagle right now.”
“The only bad thing going down in this town is you, hippie.”
“That’s real glib, Sheriff. You can look back on that and smile when everything else has turned to shit.”
“This conversation is over,” Bert said, starting for the door. “I’m going to go and find my daughter the old-fashioned way.”
“Sheriff, can you do me a favor?” Brolin said.
Against his better judgment, Bert looked back.
“If you do find Sharna, lock her up in a safe place.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep her safe. Safe from you.”
“No,” Brolin said, returning to his bunk and facing the wall, “I meant put her someplace where everyone else will be safe from her.”
Saturday, August 8, 1969
Hank woke to the sour smell of bourbon mash vomit. He had spent the better part of Friday afternoon unconscious and then devoted the evening to toilet worship as his body returned the booze to sender. When the first lurch of nausea hit he had still been asleep at the table and his typewriter now had a half-dry moat of sick pooled around it. Subsequent to that he had made shambling, groaning pilgrimages between the bed and the bathroom, the series of spew attacks finally desisting around midnight.
He had felt bad then, but at least the illness had been intermittent. Now, as he tried to sit up, he wished for the mercy of a quick death. He had never felt so awful, not even the time he had contracted glandular fever as a kid. This was much more intense.
Somehow he got his clothes off and got in the shower without collapsing. He stood under the hot stream for nearly half an hour, unmoving, trying to wash the hangover away. When he got out he still felt horrid, but had taken one step towards being a member of the human species again. He put on his watch and looked at the time. Ten-thirty a.m. Time for a breakfast of bacon and eggs. When they had settled, he thought it might be time for a drink. He didn’t have to be in at work until Monday, and what was the point of a weekend if not to have a relaxing scotch or two?
He got dressed in a pair of jeans and a white shirt and sat on the bed to pull on his boots. As he tightened the second double knot a small envelope near the door caught his eye. He went over and picked it up. The envelope had an Eagle’s Nest Motor Inn letterhead and the small sheet of paper inside was also motel stationery. MR WOODS [it read in what he guessed must be Marjorie Bennett’s handwriting] a Derek Brolin called for you at 11:30am on Friday morning. I called your room but there was no answer. He said it was urgent and asked if you could call him back.
“Oh, for the love of God,” Hank said, screwing the sheet of paper up into a small ball. He could think of nothing he desired less than company, not even the laidback, easygoing company of Derek Brolin. Make that double if he had got himself in trouble with Bert Grayson, and he could think of no other reason why Derek would call urgently. Well, he could just wait. Sure, he had let Hank write his Rolling Stone article about him (what article? Ha-ha), but that didn’t mean Hank had to be at his beck and call every hour of the day.
Hank checked his pockets to make sure he had the key-and-wallet essentials and left his motel room. He passed no one in the hallway or the stairwell and he hurried through the lobby before Marjorie could ensnare him in conversation. Outside, an overcast sky made for a sullen summer day, but no one except Hank seemed to miss the sun—they wore Saturday smiles and had a Saturday spring in their steps. Hank lowered his eyes and made with all possible haste to the Screaming Chick Diner, which would have been half a block down if Bald Eagle had blocks.
He chose a booth seat, which ran the smallest risk of human contact (discounting the waitress) and ordered his bacon and eggs plus a bottomless cup of coffee. The coffee came first and he sipped at it obsessively, while staring out the window at tourists coming and going from the Log Shop, and trying not to feel dreadful. His breakfast came and he forked small pieces of bacon into his mouth until his stomach got the knack of accepting solids again. About halfway through he started to feel better, and then as he scraped up the last of his eggs a new bout of nausea flooded through him. His jaw froze and he shut his eyes. The booth seat seemed to rise and fall on a tiny sea.
If you throw up here, you’ll never live it down.
The diner had a bathroom but he didn’t trust himself to run for it without his legs tangling. He breathed in, slow and deep, trying to calm his heart and quell the spasm in his belly.
In time, peristalsis resumed its regular downward motion and when Hank opened his eyes the diner appeared to be underwater. He leaned back in his seat until his vision cleared and then sipped his way through another cup of coffee. He left a five dollar note under his empty plate (he had no smaller denomination) and made his way to the Eagle Eye Tavern.
He found Redmond Jakes taking chairs off tables and turning them the right way up in anticipation of early Saturday arrivals, but he still gave Hank a queer look as he walked in.
“Morning, Hank,” he said, pushing in a chair. “What brings you here?”
“Bottle of bourbon to go, thanks.”
Red had sold him the other bottle the previous morning. “Little early for bourbon, isn’t it?”
“Little early for a bar to be open, isn’t it?”
Red smiled. “No need to get testy.”
“It’s for a cook-out this afternoon.”
“No kidding.”
Red went into a back room and returned with the bourbon. “Bit of free advice with purchase,” he said, putting the booze in a brown paper bag and placing it on the bar top. “You hit the bottle too often, it’s gonna start to hit back.”
“You should call the people at Hallmark,” Hank said, handing over some coins. “Tell them you’ve got an idea for a new line of cards.”
Red’s smile stretched into a grin, but Hank had trouble finding the humor in his own wit. He took the bottle and gave Red a limp salute of thanks.
“Try to remember to lie on your side before you pass out,” Red called after him.
Not bad advice, Hank thought, certainly more practical than the bit about hitting the bottle. He stepped out into the morose summer weather and licked his lips, enjoying the fresh crackle of the paper bag under his fingers. His feet hurried him back towards the motel, anticipating privacy, loneliness, and a lightless pit where neither love nor anger nor despair could reach.
“Hank.”
Denise blindsided him, coming out of nowhere like a white pointer shark. An oil slick of queasiness spilled into him. He considered a few different words but none seemed to fit the shape of his mouth, so he just stopped and stared at his wife. Her eyes dropped to the bottle in his hand, lingered there, then found his face again.
“What are you doing to yourself?” she said. “Drinking at eleven-thirty in the morning?”
“It’s liquid inspiration. I’m writing a goddamned masterpiece, don’t you know.”
“Hank, you shouldn’t—”
“You gave up your ‘should’ and ‘shouldn’t’ rights when you decided to open your legs to your transient toyboy,” Hank said.
Denise’s eyes darted around. “Please, keep your voice down.”
“If you’re ashamed of what you did,
you shouldn’t have brought the subject up in public.”
“Come home, then. I’ll make a pot of coffee and we can—”
“I can’t do this yet, Denise.”
“If not now, then when?”
“I don’t know!” he said. An old lady walking by gave him a disgusted look. “When I’m good and goddamned ready. Go home, Denise. I’ll come to you when I want to talk.”
“When will that be?”
Hank lifted up the bourbon. “Not until I’ve finished this, at least.”
Denise looked frightened and Hank was glad. He left her that way and continued on up the street.
“Are you staying at the Eagle’s Nest?”
“Don’t try to contact me,” he called back. “I need to concentrate on my Rolling Stone story.”
He expected her to give chase or try to say more, but he had apparently let down all the tires on her reconciliation drive. He made his way back to the motel (finding the reception area mercifully unoccupied) and took the stairs to his room as fast as his hangover allowed.
He shut himself inside and removed the bourbon bottle from its paper shell, contemplating the rosy brown hue of its contents. As he stepped away from the door, the scrunched up message from Derek crackled beneath his shoe. He picked up the note and took it with him to the desk, only remembering then about the puddle of dried sick. He would need to clean that up before he began his next drinking adventure—if Marjorie or her cleaner found it, Hank would be out on his ass and driving to the next town to find new accommodation.
In the name of procrastination he sat on the bed and smoothed out the phone message. What the hell, he might as well call Derek. Most likely he had been arrested, and if that was the case, he could probably count on another visit from Bert Grayson. Denise, too, for that matter—now that she knew where he was, he doubted she’d leave him in peace. The Eagle’s Nest had been soiled in more ways than one. It looked like he’d have to find another writing/drinking venue no matter what.