by Homer Hickam
I realized that Ted was drunk. I guess it takes one to know one. I also realized the last thing he’d uttered had been in the twelve decibel range because everyone around us stopped talking and just stared. “Let me buy you a drink, Ted,” I said.
Ted was having none of it. He gave me an evil glare and stalked off. Ray came by. “You sure are causing trouble,” he said.
“Innocent of all charges,” I maintained. Ray laughed and suggested perhaps I was drunk. “Not drunk enough,” I replied. Still, I thought I’d better get out of Dodge so I went back to Tellman’s and fell into bed. There I snoozed until Ray let himself inside. I guess Mori had given him a key. I opened one eye when he said, “How come you’re not ready to go?”
“Go where?”
“The dance.”
I got up because I felt like dancing. I was also confused and still intoxicated as I fell into Bob’s passenger seat. Ray was driving. “Where’s your mom?” I asked.
“She and Mayor Brescoe decided to go out to the marina together.”
“Really? Since when are they such friends?”
“I don’t know. I’m just a kid. Nobody tells me anything. Amelia went with them, too. I guess they had girl talk to talk.”
“How about Ted the aggrieved husband?”
“I saw him in his own truck.”
“OK. Let’s go down the list. Pick, Laura, Tanya, Brian, Philip?”
“Pick’s truck. Pick and the girls in front, boys in back. Anybody else you want to know about?”
“Cade Morgan and his buddy?”
“Don’t know about them. You ready?”
I was ready and so off we went along the twenty miles of dirt road to the Hell Creek State Park and the Hell Creek Marina for the annual Fillmore County Independence Day Dance. Overhead, the moon was out, bright and luminous in a clear, starry sky. It was a gentle, peaceful evening, which, even through the gin, reminded me that Montana was probably up to no good.
21
The dance at the marina was nice. The owner had strung Japanese lanterns and other cheerful and colorful lights around the dancing deck, which was behind the little A-frame office/restaurant/bait store that had burned down twice and been built back during the ten years of my life in the county. There was a cowboy band, playing the latest cowboy dance tunes, and those ranchers who had wives or girlfriends who’d nagged them enough to make them learn how to dance, were out doing the two-step with their ladies.
There was a nice breeze coming off the lake, cool and refreshing. There were more steaks on the grill and hamburgers and hot dogs, too. I settled for a bag of chips, which tasted just fine. There was the hum of pleasant conversation as an undertone to the dance band. The only discordant note was the yelping noise of Ted Brescoe who had moved his unhappiness to the marina. He was now busily crabbing at Brian and Philip. In fact, he was giving it to them with both barrels. “You morons!” he screamed. “I gave you permission to do your idiotic study and you betrayed me! Well, you’re out there illegally now. I’ll have you both in jail before this is over. There will be a big fine, too. Just wait!”
Brian and Philip, plucky lads, were giving it back to him. They were both a little drunk, just like Ted, and were raising hell about the BLM and how it was an outlaw agency that needed to be reined in. “You sell the people’s land to the highest bidder!” Brian shrilled, revealing his pinko, left-wing, Socialist leanings. Otherwise, I thought he was a fine fellow, a pretty fair digger, and a secret Republican because he and his buddy had attacked Blackie Butte so arduously. But, under pressure, they had both reverted to type and there they were, screaming lefty epithets at our federal man. Philip even punched his finger into Ted’s chest and said, “You be careful, you be careful, or I will hit you.”
I will hit you? That’s what he said. Philip wasn’t very good at threats. Anyway, somebody asked them to move their fight away and they stalked off in opposite directions. For a little while, things got back to normal, everybody having a fine time.
I was pleased to see Ray and Amelia dancing. Since I can two-step with the best of them, I walked up to Laura who was chatting with Aaron and Flora Feldmark and asked her to dance. I halfway expected her to slap my face because of my failure to protect Pick from himself but she smiled and said, “Of course, Mike” and took my hand.
As we coasted around the platform, I asked her, “Have you forgiven me yet?”
“For what?” she wondered.
“You know. Pick and his bucking bronco adventure.”
“Oh, that. I was just upset. I was never really mad at you.”
“Good. How’s Pick?”
“Good enough to come to the dance,” she said. “You see? He’s right over there.”
He was right over there, beneath a string of Japanese lanterns, and pretty much cozied up to Miss Walleye who was looking at him like he was the second coming. I guess she’d never seen a golden-haired California dino-dude before.
“I think he might get lucky tonight,” Laura said.
“How about me?” It was the gin talking, of course.
“You never know. Which is it to be, me or Tanya?”
I gave that some thought for about as long as Pick stayed aboard Tornado. “You. Of course.”
“Well, Tanya likes you, too, and I reckon we’re both ready to bounce the bedsprings with somebody.”
I was thrilled beyond belief. It sounded like a twofer, not that I’m into that, but that’s what it sounded like. Of course, I thought there was a possibility she was kidding. I also didn’t much like the way she put it, “bounce the bedsprings with somebody,” like I was just convenient or something. “You and Tanya want to flip a coin?” I asked.
She laughed. “Did you think I was serious?”
Crushed, I said, “Well, I hoped you were.”
“Maybe I was,” she said. “Let me think about it. Buy me a drink.”
“I’ll buy you three drinks.”
“Ah, the old get-her-drunk strategy.”
“Candy’s dandy but liquor’s quicker,” I said. “Shakespeare.”
“Yeah, Shakespeare Ogden Nash,” Laura said, endearing herself to me. I mean she knew who Ogden Nash was! I was impressed.
The band played on, Laura and I two-stepped until Tanya tapped her on the shoulder. “Me, please,” she said, fluttering her long Russian eyelashes.
Laura gave away graciously and I took Tanya in my arms, pleasantly astonished at how small her waist was. It felt like I could put my hand around it if I tried. She was also a good dancer. In fact, I said, “You’re a good dancer.”
“I studied ballet,” she said, “before I came to the United States.”
“It shows,” I said. “Can you do the two-step on your toes?”
Tanya laughed and spun out of my arms. She moved into the center of the platform and did a pirouette and a couple of other fancy ballet moves. When she was done, everybody applauded. I happened to look over toward a dark corner and caught Cade and Toby standing there. Cade was applauding but Toby wasn’t. He looked pissed but what else was new? I waved at them and Cade waved back. Toby sent me air kisses. Yeah, right.
Tanya gave a little bow with her legs crossed and came back to me and we started the two-step again. Her eyes were bright. “I love Montana,” she said. “It is so nice here and the people, they are nice, too.”
“I agree,” I said. “That’s why I’m here.”
This was all lovely but then here came old Ted again. He stomped up to Mayor Brescoe who was sitting alone on one of the benches that ringed the dance floor. “Stand up!” he yelled.
“Ted, please,” she said, but she stood up whereupon to the astonishment of just about everybody, he slapped her hard in the face. She abruptly sat down, her hand to her cheek, while he called her a whore and a couple other ugly names.
Naturally, Ted was jumped by about a dozen cowboys who dragged him off. I was one of them. We carried him into a little copse of woods behind the marina and slapped him around a littl
e. Not too hard, just enough to make him cry. The Haxbys were with me, so was Brian and Philip. So was Cade and Toby, for that matter, although they were just gawking. We left Ted slumped against a tree although he cried after us, “I know who you are, every one of you! I’ll get you for this, don’t think I won’t!” Ted was such a sweet fellow.
I returned to the dance floor but Tanya was nowhere in sight. Laura was dancing with some Texas cowboy and she looked pretty happy. I’d missed out there. I looked around until I spied Jeanette. I still had enough gin in me to ask her to dance but before I could, Pick, leaving Miss Walleye for the moment, asked her. They danced, then he deposited her back on her bench and took up again with the game fish beauty. I guess I was feeling pretty sorry for myself because I hit the bar again and this time I did the drunk thing absolutely proper. I had bought a bottle of gin, screw the tonic. Screw Jeanette. Screw them all. Well, I wanted to screw somebody but it wasn’t going to happen so I screwed myself with my gin.
I sat down on one of the picnic tables out in the grass and admired the moon glittering on the lake until Edith, of all people, came over. “Have you seen Ted?” she asked.
“You mean since we beat him up?”
“I’m sorry you fellows did that. It was between him and me.”
Intoxicated as I was, I was still prepared to set her straight. “Any time a man hits a woman, it’s no longer between him and her.”
She shrugged. “Well, maybe he had the right, Mike, I don’t know.”
“I’m telling you, Edith. No man ever has the right to hit a woman.”
“If you say so.”
“I say so. Do you want to have sex?”
She laughed. “I love you, you big jerk.”
“No, you don’t. But I appreciate the thought.”
She gave me a hug, then went off somewhere. My next visitor was Jeanette. “Have you seen Ted Brescoe?”
“Not since I helped the others beat him up.”
“Well, he’s missing.”
“How can you tell?”
“Don’t be an idiot, Mike.” She peered at me. “Well, I do believe you’re drunk.”
“How can you tell?”
Jeanette went away. I kept hitting the gin and admiring the moon. Sam Haxby came over. “Mike, tell Edith I don’t know where Ted is. She thinks I did something with him.”
“Where is she?”
“Over there.”
“What did you do with him?”
“Nothing, I swear.”
“Have her come over here and I’ll tell her.”
She never came over and, anyway, I was feeling pretty sleepy. Then Ray asked me if I was ready to go home. At the time, I was lying on the picnic table looking up at the stars and the satellites go over. OK, I was unconscious but I woke up long enough to consider Ray’s question and suggested that perhaps he should go away and leave me the hell alone. Later, he came back to tell me he was going back to town but he was leaving me Bob to drive in after I’d sobered up. He also told me everybody had given up looking for Ted and, even though his truck was still in the parking area, the consensus of opinion was he’d caught a ride into town with somebody because he was too drunk to drive.
“Who would give Ted a ride?” I asked and then faded to dark.
Morning comes early in summertime Montana, which I think I’ve already mentioned, I woke to shouts out on the water. I sat up. Well, I actually rolled off the table and threw up, almost the same thing. I pulled myself back aboard the bench and listened to the shouting. Finally, I managed to squint enough to see there was a bass boat out there and they were yelling something about something being in the water. I looked around to see a more responsible person than myself and saw no one at all. So I staggered down to the dock. Pretty soon, the bass boat came roaring in. It contained two Canadians identified by their ball caps emblazoned with Calgary Stampede logos. Another clue was their T-shirts which heralded, no lie, Canadians Do It More Often And Find It More Appealing.
Anyway, one of them said, “There’s a body in the water out there.”
I absorbed that and said, “Describe it to me.”
“I think it’s a man,” the other one said.
“Well, that narrows it down,” I said.
“It does?”
Actually, it did because I knew exactly who it was. “Take me out there,” I said, tiredly.
I climbed aboard their boat with shaky legs, then tried to gulp in as much fresh air as I could while they were taking me out to the body. When we got there, I held my head and kept my eyes closed against the glare of the sun richocheting off the lake. “Pull the damn thing in,” I said.
The Canadian fishermen were thinking by then they’d asked the wrong person to help them. One of them said, “Are you somebody, like, official?”
“Yeah,” I responded, still holding my throbbing head, “I’m the law. Haul him in.”
They hauled the body in. It wasn’t easy from the sound of it. A lot of grunting and then I heard them get the thing in which flopped like a big dead fish on the deck. I wanted to look at it but I didn’t, fearful I might toss my cookies on top of it, which probably wouldn’t have been considered professional by my fishermen who were convinced I was the “law.”
“Take his pulse,” I said.
They did and the report came back there wasn’t one. Then one of them said, “He has his throat cut.”
“Ear to ear,” the other one said.
“Looks like somebody whopped him on the head, too.”
That explained the no pulse thing. “Back to shore,” I ordered and we sped back to shore and I crawled off the boat. By then, the owner of the marina, a man named Earl Williams, and his two adult sons were down there.
“Where should we take him, Mike?”
It looked like everybody wanted to keep me in charge so I said, “Lay him out on one of your picnic tables.” I figured if it was good enough for me, it was good enough for Ted Brescoe who, of course, was the dead body. “And call the state police. Tell them they don’t need an ambulance. A pickup will do.”
Earl went off somewhere while his stout sons carried Ted to one of the tables, there to lay him down. One of the fishermen came over to me where I was sitting on the grass, my head down. “You gonna be OK?” he asked.
I raised my hand and waved and he went away. After a bit, I managed to get to my feet. It was time to take a closer look at Ted. But before I could study our BLM agent’s remains, I was intercepted by Earl. “I called the state, Mike. They said they’d send somebody from Billings. They said it would take at least four hours to get up here so they’re sending the paramedics in Jericho to pick him up.”
“All right,” I said. “After I look at Ted, put him somewhere cool until they get here.”
Earl gave me a funny look. “Ted? This isn’t Ted. I don’t know who it is.”
Well, that fried it. What we had was some drunken cowboy or fisherman who’d pitched off the dock in the night. But then I thought, wait a minute, didn’t those fishermen tell me his throat had been cut and his head bashed in? As I got closer, I still didn’t know who our body was until at last I saw his shaved head and the gold earring in his ear. Toby! “Man,” I said, “I figured you to be the killer, not the killee.”
Toby didn’t answer but his sliced throat told its own story. I lifted up his head and observed the back of his skull, which had a dent in it. It looked like maybe a hammer was the weapon. Lowering his head, I searched his pockets, finding his wallet. His driver’s license, issued by the state of Nevada, identified him as Sergei Tobovski and gave his address as a street in Reno. Even his photo on the plastic card looked threatening. “Now, who would dare attack you?” I wondered, then kept searching. There wasn’t much, just some car keys. I looked in the parking lot and saw a white Hyundai sedan, probably a rental car and probably Toby’s. I looked some more and found a folded up and very soggy paper. When I unfolded it, I discovered it was actually a notice that read:
This
range improvement project brought to you by the Green Monkey Wrench Gang. No address—we’re everywhere. No phone—we’ll be in touch.
Earl was watching me. “You didn’t kill him, did you, Mike?”
“No, Earl,” I said, “and I don’t have a clue who did, either. The only person who deserved killing last night was Ted Brescoe. That’s why I thought the body was his.”
“Ted’s in room thirteen,” Earl said. He looked at me. “You’re not going to beat him up again, are you?”
“I didn’t beat him up before. Well, not by myself, anyway.”
I walked over to the motel, which was actually a string of doublewides. I climbed up on the deck attached to unit number thirteen and knocked on the door. To my astonishment, Tanya opened it. “Mike,” she said. She was dressed in a white terry cloth robe.
It took me a moment to gather myself. “I was told Ted Brescoe was here,” I finally managed to croak.
“And here I am,” came the answer from the couch. Ted Brescoe, alive and well, stood up and strutted to the door.
I looked at Tanya. “Well,” I gulped, stupidly. “What do you know?”
She raised an eyebrow, but remained silent.
“Need a word, Ted,” I said. “Outside.”
Tanya moved out of the way. Ted came outside and I asked, “Where were you last night?” It was a dumb question but it was the best I could do, considering the circumstances.
“Who wants to know?” he asked.
“A man was murdered last night,” I said, dully. “You know anything about that?”
“Why would I?”
I ignored that for now. “It was Cade Morgan’s friend, a man who called himself Toby.”
“Don’t know him. Ain’t got no business with Cade Morgan. He gave up the Corbel leases as soon as he bought the property.” He studied me. “Hey, you don’t look so good. You upset because of this Russian whore? Shit, Mike, a hundred dollars is all it takes. Go ahead. You can have my sloppy seconds.”
I hit him. I hit him real hard. I hit him so hard I knocked him clear off his feet and he went down like a sack of potatoes. Then I kicked him. After that, I reached down and picked him up and knocked him down again. Tanya opened the door and dragged me off him. “Get me a knife, Tanya,” I said. “I’ll cut his throat and throw him into the lake. Maybe they’ll think there’s an epidemic.”