by Larry Watson
He ordered a whiskey and ginger ale for Gail and a glass of beer for himself. Paul Gurch, the tavern owner, served them. As he set the drinks down, he said to Wesley, “You think that’s a problem down there?” He nodded toward the end of the bar where an Indian sat drinking alone.
The Indian looked familiar to Gail, but she could not be sure where she had seen him. Perhaps he was simply a town Indian, as those who did not live on the nearby reservation were called. Though he was sitting on a bar stool and hunched over his drink, Gail could tell he was a large man. He wore overalls dark with grease and dirt, and under the overalls was an equally dirty flannel shirt, so old the plaid had worn almost to invisibility. He had long hair, uncombed and hanging down his back in oily strands.
Wesley took one look at the Indian and shook his head with the kind of mild disgust he usually reserved for machines that did not work properly. “LaChapelle,” Wesley said.
Then Gail knew. It was Gordon LaChapelle, known throughout the region, in the towns and on the reservation, as no good, a troublemaker, a rough customer. He was a bootlegger, a car thief, and, rumor had it, a killer. He had done time in the state penitentiary for armed robbery and for assault and battery. Wesley had arrested him a few times but never for anything more serious than public drunkenness and brawling. He was, she had heard more than one person say, a bad Indian. Her father-in-law had once said, “Mercer County would be better off if someone would come up behind LaChapelle and put a bullet in his brain.”
Wesley quietly asked Paul Gurch, “Has he said anything? Done anything?”
“Just sitting there drinking. Drinking a lot.”
“You could stop serving him.”
“How do you suppose he’d take to that?”
Wesley shrugged. “Is Len here?”
“Haven’t seen him.”
Wesley looked slowly around the the bar as if he were counting the house. To Gail he said through a forced smile, “Why don’t you sip your drink and I’ll be right back.”
As he moved down the bar toward LaChapelle, Gail wondered if it was his job or his knee that was paining him at that moment. She wanted to reach out to him, as she had wanted to on other occasions when she saw him off to do this work that was his duty. Stop, she wanted to say; don’t go. This is your father’s job, not yours. Leave this work to him and to others like him. Turn away, just turn away this time.
But Gail said nothing. Not any of the previous times and not tonight.
Wesley took a place at the bar next to Gordon LaChapelle, and though Wesley did not sit down, he leaned companionably against the bar, as though he had no other thought than to drink his beer and chat with the bar’s patrons. Wesley was in shirtsleeves, and nothing identified him as the sheriff, but that didn’t matter. Everyone in the county knew who he was and who his father was.
The music and din of the bar was too loud for Gail to hear what Wesley was saying. And perhaps LaChapelle didn’t hear him either for he remained hunched over his drink. Wesley must have spoken again, because the Indian finally acknowledged the sheriff’s presence.
Gordon LaChapelle slowly lifted his head and turned his broad, beefy face toward Wesley. The Indian’s eyes were barely open, but he held his gaze steadily on Wesley.
Her husband kept talking, but LaChapelle never replied. He simply stared at Wesley, blinking slowly as if it was all he could do to keep himself awake on his bar stool. Gail still felt there was something dangerous about him, for all his languor. He reminded her of a cat who feigns disinterest before pouncing. Her husband was not carrying a weapon. Once more, she had the urge to call him away. At just that moment, however, he walked away from LaChapelle and came back to her.
He cocked his head toward his right shoulder in a gesture that had become familiar to Gail. She knew its meaning, too, even if her husband did not. It meant, I know I’m supposed to do something but damned if I know what.
Wesley set his glass on the bar. It was empty, and Gail could not remember seeing him lift it to his lips.
Paul Gurch swept the glass from the bar to refill it. “Well?” he asked Wesley.
“I guess he just wants to drink his whiskey.”
“My whiskey. He’s done that. When’s he going to move on?” He placed the refilled glass in front of Wesley.
Wesley cocked his head again.
Paul Gurch gestured toward the crowd outside the bar. “There are people out there who’d like to come in here and dance. That’s what this was supposed to be.”
“What’s stopping them?”
Paul Gurch made no move to look or point in Gordon LaChapelle’s direction. “You know,” he said in a lowered voice.
“You sure you haven’t seen Len?”
“He hasn’t come in.”
Wesley pointed to Gail’s drink. “How is that? About ready for another?”
She put her hand over the top of her glass. She knew he wasn’t thinking about her drink. “I’m fine,” she answered.
“Sure?” His smile made her nervous.
“I’m sure.”
“Could you do me a favor then? Could you go outside and ask Jack Pepper to come in?” Jack Pepper was a hired hand on Julian Hayden’s ranch. Gail had met him only once, but she knew she would have no trouble recognizing him. He was well over six feet tall, broad shouldered, and heavyset, and with a head so large that Gail wondered how he managed to find a hat that fit him. Wesley insisted that Jack Pepper was a good man, hardworking, reliable, and loyal to Wesley’s father and the ranch, but Gail felt uneasy around him. He had a way, as some men did, of emphasizing his size around her and other women, done in a way calculated not to impress but to frighten her. Gail would do as Wesley asked, but she did not look forward to approaching Jack Pepper in the parking lot.
He was easy to find. He was wearing a white shirt, and on the moonlit night his broad back stood out like a ship’s sail on the sea. He was standing with a group of men, all of them drinking and smoking. When Gail tapped Jack Pepper on the back, she interrupted a conversation about horses.
“Excuse me,” she said as he turned around. “My husband would like to see you inside.” Then it occurred to her that he might not know who she was, much less to whom she was married. “Wesley Hayden. I believe he needs your assistance.”
Gail didn’t show much in her fifth month—not much more than a little tummy—but she had taken to wearing maternity clothes nonetheless. It was due to shyness more than anything else. She would let her appearance announce her condition to the town. If she looked pregnant, she wouldn’t have to respond to every busybody’s question about whether the rumor was true that she was expecting.
Perhaps the cotton print maternity smock she wore that night caused Jack Pepper to treat her with unusual respect. Or perhaps it was nothing so noble on his part. Perhaps he was simply obeying a command that came from Julian Hayden’s son.
Jack Pepper set his bottle on the ground, tossed his cigarette away in a shower of sparks, and strode quickly toward the bar.
Gail wasn’t sure what she should do. Wesley had told her to wait for him outside, but she couldn’t stand there with that group of cowboys. She looked around the lot for someone she knew. She recognized faces but saw no one she would feel comfortable approaching. If there were a group of women she could stand with them, but all the women were with husbands or boyfriends. So Gail did what she was hoping to do all along—she walked back to the bar and looked through its smeared window to see what her husband and Jack Pepper were going to do.
What happened inside coincided so precisely with her arrival at the window that it seemed as though it were staged for her benefit.
Gail saw her husband walk behind Gordon LaChapelle. Wesley must have done so quietly because LaChapelle didn’t turn on his stool to watch him. When Wesley was directly behind the Indian, he reached up and grabbed him by his hair, pulling LaChapelle backwards off his stool.
LaChapelle was caught completely off balance, and he fell so heavily that Ga
il wondered for an instant if his fall was caused by something else—could he have fainted and Wesley was only trying to catch him, to break his fall? No, if he had lost consciousness, he would have pitched forward, the way his weight was leaning. Besides, she could tell that Wesley had not just pulled LaChapelle back but had hurled the Indian to the floor.
The stool toppled over too, sliding out to the side while LaChapelle went straight back. The Indian cracked his head on the floor, and as soon as he hit, Jack Pepper—where had he come from?—grabbed one of his legs. Just as quickly, Wesley had the other leg, and together they dragged Gordon LaChapelle across the floor and toward the door.
At first Gail believed that LaChapelle must have been knocked unconscious by the fall, because he allowed himself to be dragged without protest. Then she saw his arm flop out to the side and his hand grab weakly for something to hold onto.
Wesley and Jack Pepper backed through the screen door, and as it closed behind them it banged against Gordon LaChapelle’s ribs.
By now a crowd had gathered, and the people formed a kind of circle—half of them in the bar and half of them outside watching.
Once they were outside, Wesley nodded to indicate they were to drag him to the right, in the opposite direction from where Gail stood. Wesley asked Jack Pepper, “Did he leave anything on the bar? Money? A hat?”
“I didn’t see nothing.”
Then they were out of sight, behind some parked cars and trucks. Gail knew she wouldn’t follow them, no matter how badly she wanted to know what was going on, so she listened intently.
She heard some grunts, some breathy exhalations of air, some scuffling sounds—all of which could have come as easily from a man being beaten or a man being helped to his feet.
No one else in the crowd ventured behind the parked cars either, a fact that Gail considered remarkable considering these people’s curiosity and their level of inebriation. If it were merely a fight they would have all gathered around—she had seen that often enough—but this was official business; since the sheriff was involved it was best to stay back.
Gail was still standing alone, and she could tell that others were staring at her. Because she was pregnant? Because she was the sheriff’s wife? Her baby shifted inside her, a slow liquid roll that felt almost deliberate and made Gail feel as if she was nothing more than a vessel, as if this life inside her was as likely to respond to the moon’s pull as to Gail’s will.
A truck’s engine coughed and sputtered to life, and then a nearby stand of birch trees was briefly illuminated by headlights sweeping past. Gail guessed that was Gordon LaChapelle driving away, and she wondered how far he’d get in his beaten, drunken condition. There were so many accidents along these county roads—someone missing a curve and rolling down a ravine, a car or truck stalling on the railroad tracks, a driver too drunk or sleepy to go on and pulling off on the shoulder only to be crashed into by another car. It distressed her that so many of these accidents involved Indians.
Wesley and Jack Pepper walked out from behind the parked cars. Wesley scuffed his feet through the gravel and thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets as if embarrassed to be the focus of so much attention.
Gail heard Jack Pepper ask Wesley, “Where’d he get that truck?”
“I have no idea.”
“I try to put a little money aside. I can’t afford no new truck.”
“You’ve got money saved?”
“I’m tryin’. I don’t always manage.”
“Tell my dad you need a raise.”
“Your dad’s always been fair with me. I got no kick.”
Wesley saw Gail waiting for him and put his hand out to her as though he were meeting a prospective voter on the street. She took a step back.
“You want to go back inside?” he asked.
Jack Pepper drifted off to resume drinking with his friends. Gail could tell from the way they greeted him that they were eager to know what had happened with Gordon LaChapelle. She was, too, but she was in no hurry to ask Wesley.
“Are we staying?” she asked.
“We can go. I just have to talk to Paul Gurch for a moment.”
“I’ll wait out here.”
“Suit yourself.”
Wesley left her alone again. This time while she waited someone approached her. Carol Clifton, who also worked at the courthouse, walked unsteadily toward Gail. Carol looked like she was dressed for a square dance, in a bright yellow blouse and a wide flared skirt. Gail could see that Carol was drunk. She carried a bottle of beer, and she could not stop smiling at Gail.
“It’s not like this, sweetie,” Carol said.
“What isn’t?”
“You know. Here. Living here.”
“Just tonight?”
“Tonight, sure. I know you’re thinking about your baby and all. I would, too. But I wouldn’t worry. I mean, I don’t.”
“I was thinking about Wesley.”
“Wes? He wears a tie.” Carol pointed the neck of her beer bottle toward the group of cowboys. “That’s who you should worry about. Donnie Eidsen over there? A steer stomped on his foot and it swelled up so bad he couldn’t even pull on his boot, much less put it in a stirrup. So he ain’t drawing his pay right now.”
Gail squinted through the darkness. She wasn’t sure who Donnie Eidsen was, but she thought she saw one of the cowboys leaning awkwardly against the hood of a car, and he may have been resting a sore foot on the car’s bumper.
“Wes is workin’ anyway,” Carol said again.
“Yes, he is.”
“Too bad he has to when you’re around.”
Wesley came out of the bar. He held the door open while he called something back to Paul Gurch. The open door let the bar’s light tumble out and cast Wesley’s silhouette on the ground. Gail kept her eye on the shadow, letting it tell her when her husband was coming her way.
Carol turned to leave, then stopped. “How much longer you going to work?”
Gail hunched her shoulders. “Until the doctor tells me I can’t.”
“See you Monday then!”
As they drove home Gail thought about how glad she was that she was pregnant. It meant Wesley would not initiate lovemaking that night. Since she announced her pregnancy he would not touch her in that way unless she indicated that it would be all right. And tonight she was not about to do that. She didn’t want to take a chance that his blood might be heated not by desire for her but by the violent act he had been involved in. There had been times in the past when he came home late, after making an arrest, when he wanted her so badly it was all she could do to make him slow down. And she didn’t mind giving herself to him if it meant their lovemaking could help wipe out some unpleasantness he had encountered on his job. But if he came to her simply because he was so full of himself he didn’t know what else to do—why, then she didn’t want him to touch her.
They had been in the car a long time, riding in silence, but Gail knew Wesley wanted to talk. He was just trying to find a way to start. He had even been driving slower than usual—oh, he might pretend he was looking for deer or stray cattle or Gordon LaChapelle’s car in the ditch—but she knew he was searching for words. He began to click his tongue the way he did when he was working up the courage to speak. And they had to talk in the car. When they got home, Wesley’s father might be waiting.
Mr. Hayden was famous for his insomnia, and sometimes on nights when he couldn’t sleep he would come over to their house and engage Wesley in endless games of gin rummy. If Mr. Hayden found Len McAuley awake and sober he’d bring Len along and the three of them would play pinochle. As long as those men were awake in her house, Gail couldn’t sleep. She would lie in bed and listen to them at the kitchen table, the shuffle and slap of the cards, their strange counts—“Nine, twelve, thirteen, and twenty for gin;” “Rope for sixteen, aces for ten.” Sometimes these were the only words they spoke. Since she didn’t know how to play any of their card games, it seemed as though they were talkin
g in code, some secret manlanguage that they spoke to prevent her from understanding.
Gail could make things easier for her husband simply by starting a conversation. Anything would do, an observation about the stars in the spring sky, the way the baby stopped kicking when they were in the car. But Gail was determined to wait.
Finally Wesley found a way to translate those sighs and tongue clicks into actual words. “You didn’t like that, did you?”
He expressed so exactly what she had been thinking that her heart suddenly flooded with feeling for him. She was tempted to call the discussion off. But only tempted.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Paul has good-paying customers. Men want to be able to bring their wives, their girlfriends out for the night. I want to bring you.” This last remark was so unexpectedly tender that it too caught her by surprise.
“Why does it have to be that way?” she asked.
“What way?”
“So rough.”
“I didn’t arrest him. Is that what you think—I should have arrested him?”
“Not necessarily.”
“What then?”
“It’s not for me to say.”
He went back to his silence and his tongue-clicking. He moved his hands back and forth on the steering wheel.
She relented and said, “Couldn’t you have talked to him?”
“I talked to him.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“What did he say?”
“He wasn’t moving.”
“So you moved him.”
“I moved him. That’s right.”
She could feel his anger now, filling the car the way the scented night air would if she rolled down her window.