Cady, my hi-tech, sophisticated, urban-dwelling daughter, hated the place.
In my rush to head north, I hadn’t gassed up in Wyoming—luckily, the Conoco had after-hours credit card pumps. As I was putting gas into my truck with the motor running, I noticed her stand up and trail out to where I stood, the old packing blanket billowing out from around her shoulders.
Looking at the stars on the doors and then at me, she paused at the other side of the truck bed, her eyes ticktocking. She studied my hat, snap-button shirt, the shiny brass name tag, and the other trappings of authority just visible under my sheepskin coat.
I buttoned it the rest of the way up and looked at her, expecting Crow, maybe Northern Cheyenne, but from the limited view afforded by the condensation of her breath and the cowl-like hood of the blanket, I could see that her skin was pale and her hair dark but not black, surrounding a wide face and full lips that snared and released between the nervous teeth.
“Hey.” She cleared her throat and shifted something in her hands, still keeping the majority of her body wrapped. “I thought you were supposed to shut the engine off before you do that.” She glanced at the writing on the side of my truck. “Where’s Absaroka County?”
I clicked the small keeper on the pump handle, pulled my glove back on, and rested my elbow on the top of the bed as the tank filled. “Wyoming.”
“Oh.” She nodded but didn’t say anything more.
About five nine, she was tall, and her eyes moved rapidly, taking in the vehicle and then me; she had the look of someone whose only interaction with the police was being rousted—she feigned indifference with a touch of defiance and maybe was just a little crazy. “Cold, huh?”
I was beginning to wonder how long it was going to take her and thought about how much nerve she’d had to work up to approach my truck; I must’ve been the only vehicle that had stopped there in hours. I waited. The two-way radio blared an indiscernible call inside the cab, the pump turned off, and I removed the nozzle, returning it to the plastic cradle. I hit the button to request a receipt, because I didn’t trust gas pumps any more than I trusted those robot amputees over in Deadwood.
I found the words the way I always did in the presence of women. “I’ve got a heater in this truck.”
She snarled a quick laugh, strained and high. “I figured.”
I stood there for a moment more and then started for the cab—now she was going to have to ask. As I pulled the door handle, she started to reach out a hand from the folds of the blanket but then let it drop. I paused for a second more and then slid in and shut the door behind me, snapped on my seat belt, and pulled the three-quarter-ton down into gear.
She backed away and retreated to the bench as I wheeled around the pumps and stopped at the road. I sat there for a moment, where I looked at myself and my partner in the rearview mirror, then shook my head, turned around, and circled back in front of her. She looked up again as I rolled the window down on the passenger-side door and raised my voice to be heard above the engine. “Do you want a ride?”
Balancing her needs with her pride, she sat there. “Maybe.”
I sighed to let her know that my Good Samaritan deeds for the season weren’t endless and spoke through the exhaust the wind carried back past the truck window. “I was offering you a lift if you’re headed north.”
She looked up at the empty highway and was probably thinking about whether she could trust me or not.
“I have to be in Billings in a little over an hour to pick up my daughter.” It’s always a good idea to mention other women in your life when faced with a woman in need. “Are you coming?”
The glint of temper was there again, but she converted it into standing and yanked something up from her feet—a guitar case that I hadn’t noticed before. She indifferently tossed it into the bed of my truck, still carefully holding the blanket around her with the other hand, her posture slightly off.
“You want to put your guitar in here, there’s room.”
She swung the door open, gathered the folds up around her knees, and slid in. “Nah, it’s a piece of shit.” She closed the door with her left hand and looked at the metal clipboard, my thermos, and the shotgun locked to the transmission hump. She blinked, and her eyes half closed as the waft of heat from the vents surrounded her, and we sat there longer than normal people would have. After a while her voice rose from her throat: “So, are we going or what?”
“Seat belt.” She opened her eyes and looked out the passenger window, and I placed her age at early twenties.
“Don’t believe in ’em.” She wiped her nose on the blanket, again using her left hand.
We didn’t move, and the two-way crackled as a highway patrolman took a bathroom break. She looked at the radio below the dash and then back at me, pulled the shoulder belt from the retractor, and swiveled to put it in the retainer at the center just as my partner swung his furry head around from the backseat to get a closer look.
“Shit!” She jumped back against the door, and something slid from her grip and fell onto the rubber floor mat with a heavy thump.
I glanced down and could see it was a small, wood-gripped revolver.
She slid one of her boots in front of it to block my view, and we stared at each other for a few seconds, both of us deciding how it was we were going to play it.
“What the hell, man . . .” She adjusted the blanket, careful to completely cover the pistol on the floorboard.
Thinking about what I was going to do, I sat there without moving for a moment, then pulled onto the frontage road, and headed north toward the on-ramp of I-90. “That’s my partner—don’t worry, he’s friendly.”
She stared at the hundred-and-fifty-plus pounds of German shepherd, Saint Bernard, and who knew what. She didn’t look particularly convinced. “I don’t like dogs.”
“That’s too bad—it’s his truck.”
I eased the V10 up to sixty on the snow-covered road and motioned toward the battered thermos leaning against the console. “There’s coffee in there.”
She looked, first checking to make sure the gun was hidden, and then reached down, and paused long enough so that I noticed her bare hands, strong and deft even with the remains of the cold. There was something else, though—a plastic medical bracelet, the kind you get at the hospital to remind them who you are.
She saw me watching her and quickly pulled the sleeve of her stained sweatshirt down to cover the municipal jewelry. Then she lifted the thermos by the copper-piping handle, connected to the Stanley with two massive hose clamps, and read the sticker on the side: DRINKING FUEL. She twisted off the top and filled the chrome cap. “You got anything to put in this?”
“Nope.”
She rolled her eyes and crouched against the door like a cornered badger. “Good coffee.”
“Thanks.” I threw her a tenuous, conversational line and caught a glimpse of a nose stud and what might’ve been a tattoo at the side of her neck. “My daughter sends it to me.”
The two-way squawked again as the highway patrolman came back on duty, and she glared at it. “Do we have to listen to that shit?”
I smiled and flipped the radio off. “Sorry, force of habit.”
She glanced back at Dog, who regarded her indifferently as she nudged one foot toward the other in an attempt to push the revolver up onto her other shoe. “So, you’re a sheriff in Wyoming?”
“Yep.”
She nonchalantly reached down, feigning an itch in order to snag the pistol. She slid it back under the blanket and carried it onto her lap. “Your daughter live in Billings?”
“Philadelphia.”
She nodded and murmured something I didn’t catch.
“Excuse me?”
Her eyes came up, and I noticed they were an unsettling shade of green. “Philly Soul. The O’Jays, Patti LaBelle, the Stylistics, Archie Be
ll & the Drells, the Intruders . . .”
“That music’s a little before your time, isn’t it?”
She sipped her coffee and turned to stare out the windshield. “Music’s for everybody, all the time.”
We drove through the night. It seemed as if she wanted something, and I made the mistake of thinking it was talk. “The guitar case—you play?”
She watched the snow that had just started darting through my headlights again. “Your dog sure has a nice truck.” We drifted under the overpass at the Blue Cow Café and Casino as an eighteen-wheeler, pushing the speed limit, became more circumspect in his velocity when I pulled from the haze of snow behind him and passed.
There was another long pause, and the muffled sound of the tires gave the illusion that we were riding on clouds. “I play guitar—lousy. Hey, do you mind if we power up the radio? Music, I mean.”
I stared at her for a moment and then gestured toward the dash. She fiddled with the SEEK button on FM, but we were in the dead zone between Hardin and Billings.
“Not much reception this close to the Rez; why don’t you try AM—the signals bounce off the atmosphere and you can get stuff from all over the world.”
She flipped the radio off and slumped back against the door. “I don’t do AM.” She remained restless, glancing up at the visors and at the console. “You don’t have any CDs?”
I thought about it and remembered that Henry had bought some cheap music at the Flying J truck stop months ago on a fishing trip to Fort Smith, Montana. The Cheyenne Nation had become annoyed with me when I’d left the radio on SEARCH for five minutes, completely unaware that it was only playing music in seven-second intervals. “You know, there might be one in the side pocket of that door.”
She moved and rustled her free hand in the holdall, finally pulling out a $2.99 The Very Best of Merle Haggard. “Oh, yeah.”
She plucked the disc from the cheap cardboard sleeve and slipped it into a slot in the dash I’d never used. The lights of the stereo came on and the opening lines of Haggard’s opus “Okie From Muskogee” thumped through the speakers. She made a face, looked at the cover, and read the fine print. “What’d they do, record it on an eight-track through a steel drum full of bourbon?”
“I’m not so sure they sell the highest fidelity music in the clearance bin at the Flying J.”
Her face was animated in a positive way for the first time as the long fingers danced off the buttons of my truck stereo, and I noticed the blue metal-flake nail polish and the bracelet that clearly read LAKESIDE PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL—LAKESIDE, TN.
“You’ve got too much bass, and the fade’s all messed up.” She continued playing with the thing, and I had to admit that the sound was becoming remarkably better. Satisfied, she sat back in the seat, even going so far as to hold out her other hand for Dog to sniff. He did and then licked her wrist.
“I love singer/storytellers.” She scratched under the beast’s chin and for the first time since I’d met her seemed to relax as she listened to the lyrics. “You know this song is a joke, right? He wrote it in response to the uninformed view of the Vietnam War. He said he figured it was what his dad would’ve thought.”
I shrugged noncommittally.
She stared at the side of my face, possibly at my ear or the lack of a tiny bit of it. “Were you over there?”
I nodded.
“So was my dad.” Her eyes went back to the road. “That’s why I’m going home; he died.”
I navigated my way around a string of slow-moving cars. “What did your father do?”
Her voice dropped to a trademark baritone, buttery and resonant. “KERR, 750 AM. Polson, Montana.”
I laughed. “I thought you didn’t do AM.”
“Yeah, well, now you know why.”
Merle swung into “Pancho and Lefty,” and she pointed to the stereo. “Proof positive that he did smoke marijuana in Muskogee—he’s friends with Willie Nelson.”
I raised an eyebrow. “In my line of work, we call that guilt by association.”
“Yeah, well, in my line of work, we call it a friggin’ fact—Willie’s smoked like a Cummins diesel everywhere, including Muskogee, Oklahoma.”
I had to concede the logic. “You seem to know a lot about the industry. Nashville?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so you’re not a musician. What did you do?”
“Still do, when I get through in Polson.” Her eyes went back to the windshield and her future. “Produce, audio engineer . . . Or I try to.” She nibbled on one of the nails, on the hand that held the shiny cup. “Did you know that less than 5 percent of producers and engineers in the business are women?” I waited, but she seemed preoccupied, finally sipping her coffee again and then pouring herself another. “We’re raised to be attractive and accommodating, but we’re not raised to know our shit and stand by it.” She was quiet for a while, listening to the lyrics. “Townes Van Zandt wrote that one. People think it’s about Pancho Villa, but one of the lines is about him getting hung—Pancho Villa was gunned down.”
I nodded and glanced at her lap. “Seven men standing in the road in Hidalgo del Parral shot more than forty rounds into his roadster.”
“You worked for the History Channel before you were sheriff?” I didn’t say anything, and the smile lingered on her face like fingerpicking on a warped-neck fretboard. “You’re okay-looking, in a dad kind of way.”
I widened my eyes. “That’s a disturbing statement for a number of reasons.”
She barked a laugh and raised one of the combat boots up to lodge it against the transmission hump, but realized she was revealing the pistol from the drape of the blanket on her lap and lowered her foot. “My dad never talked about it, Vietnam . . . He handled that Agent Orange stuff and that shit gave robots cancer.” Her eyes were drawn back to the windshield and Polson. “He died last week and they’re already splitting up his stuff.” The mile markers clicked by like the wand on a metronome. “He taught me how to listen—I mean really listen. To hear things that nobody else heard. He had this set of Sennheiser HD414 open-back headphones from ’73, lightweight with the first out-of-head imaging with decent bass—Sony Walkmans and all that stuff should get down and kiss Sennheiser’s ass. They had a steel cord and you could throw them at a talented program director or a brick wall—I’m not sure which is potentially denser.”
It was an unsettling tirade, but I still had to laugh.
“You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Nope, but it all sounds very impressive.” We topped the hill above Billings and looked at the lit-up refineries that ran along the highway as I made the sweeping turn west, the power of internal combustion pushing us back in the leather seats like we were tobogganing down a hill. The tires ran silent and floated on a cushion of air headlong into the snowy dunes and shimmering lights strung alongside the highway like fuzzy moons.
She turned away, keeping her eyes from me, afraid that I might see too much there. “You can just drop me at the Golden Pheasant; I’ve got friends doing a gig who’ll give me a ride the rest of the way.”
Nodding, I joined with the linear constellation of I-94.
I had a vague sense of the club’s location downtown, took the Twenty-seventh Street exit, rolled past the Montana Women’s Prison and the wrong side of the railroad tracks, and then sat there watching the hundred and fifty coal cars of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train roll by.
When she finally spoke, her voice was different, saner. “It belonged to my father. When I was leaving for Tennessee, he gave me a choice of those headphones I was telling you about, but I figured I’d have more use for the gun.” She placed her hand on the dash and fingered the vent louvers as the two of us looked at the plastic strip on her wrist. “I got in some trouble down there.” Her voice died in her throat, but after a moment she started again
. “I got picked up by a few guys over in South Dakota earlier tonight and they tried stuff. They seemed nice at first . . .” She gestured with the pistol, still under the blanket. “Anyway, I had to pull it.”
I turned down a side street and took a right, where I could see the multicolored neon of the aforementioned pheasant spreading his tail feathers in a provocative manner. I parked the truck in the first available spot and turned to look at the girl with the strange eyes, the sifting snow providing a surreal scrim to her backlit face.
“I didn’t shoot anybody.”
“Good.”
She smiled and finished the dregs of her coffee, wiped the cup out on her blanket, and screwed the top back on the thermos. She placed it against the console, but the movement caused the revolver to slip from her leg and onto the seat between us.
We both sat there looking at it, representative of all the things for which it stood.
I leaned forward and picked it up. It had been a nice one once upon a time, but years of negligence had left it scuffed and rusted, emerald corrosion growing from the rounds permanently imbedded in the cylinder. “How ’bout I keep this for you?”
She didn’t say anything for a long time but finally slipped through the open door, pulled the guitar case from the bed of my truck, and stood there in the opening.
The plaintive words of Haggard’s “A Place to Fall Apart” drifted from the speakers, and she glanced at the radio as if the Okie from wherever might be sitting on my dash. “I’d give a million dollars if he’d go into a studio, just him and a six-string guitar, no backup singers, no harps—and just play.”
I watched her face, trying not to let the eyes distract me. “Maybe you should tell him that sometime, but I wouldn’t look for him in Muskogee.”
Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories Page 6