Death at the Black Bull

by Frank Hayes

  “You’re really big on small talk,” she said sarcastically over coffee on their most recent morning together, as Virgil stared into his cup.

  As if in confirmation, Virgil didn’t respond.

  “I think you’ve been alone too long. You’ve forgotten how to share.”

  Virgil continued in silence, which she would not accept, and for the next twenty minutes she pulled and prodded until he had given up more information about his life and his past than he had to people that he’d known for years.

  When he was a teenager, he would often come home from school, throw a saddle on one of the horses, and head out over the rangeland, exploring every gully and wash. He came to know the land and the creatures that lived on it. Time stood still and he never felt alone. Many times his mother would join him. They would often ride in silence, stopping to observe a newborn calf struggling to nurse or a coyote on the prowl. He missed those times, but as the years passed without her, he came to feel that when he went on those solitary jaunts she was riding beside him.

  Finally, he signed the last invoice on his desk and placed the overdue stack that had been waiting for his acknowledgement on Rosie’s desk so she could enter everything into the computer and file the hard copies. He left a note on her desk and headed out the door.

  The sunlight made him squint, but the warm air pushed by a slight breeze made him feel good, and the dullness of the last few hours of clerical duties faded away. He was still savoring the feeling of a lightened load when Jimmy rolled in.

  “You early or am I late?” Virgil said.

  “You’re late, Sheriff. I just had a hard time getting out of that bed. If it hadn’t been for my little sister, I’d still be there.”

  “Why don’t you bring her out to the ranch some day? We’ll put her up on Sugar. I bet she’d get a kick out of it. Get to know a little something about horses.”

  “Well, sure, Sheriff. That’d be nice. Abby would love it.”

  “Didn’t you say something a while back about going fishing with her off the bridge? Well, there’s trout in that creek back of the barn. You could try your hand.”

  “Yes, sir, that’d be nice.”

  “You know, when I was a kid, I’d skinny-dip in that creek.”

  It was the first time Jimmy ever heard a reference to Virgil’s childhood.

  “Well, I guess it’s time for me to head down the road,” Virgil said. “Any problems, give me a call.”

  Virgil stepped past Jimmy and opened his car door. A blast of hot air escaped.

  “Like an oven in there. Good talking to you, Jimmy.”

  He gave a wave, got into the car, and left Jimmy standing in the doorway trying to figure out what had come over the sheriff.

  Once he was on the road, Virgil’s thoughts went quickly to the one thing that had become a constant in his thoughts. There was a basic law of physics he knew: that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Leaning on someone, as he had done with both Micah and Wade, would get a response. He just wished he had a clue what it would be.

  The twenty-minute trip to the ranch allowed him time to consider a range of possibilities. He realized as he looked toward the dipping sun that it must have been later than he thought. This part of the country had a reputation for spectacular sunsets. The shades that every artist since the dawn of time had tried to capture. Blends of reds and blues mixed with dust from the earth. The closer he got to the ranch, the more dominant the red in the sky became. He glanced at the clock on the dash. It was 5:40. He glanced at the sky again, then again at the dashboard clock.

  This sky was way too red.

  As his car climbed the last rise, the ranch came into view. It was then he saw the explanation to the illusion. Swirls of smoke rose into the sky, filtering the light. The ripe orange-red glow that he’d mistook for a departing sun was one of the barns engulfed in flame.

  Virgil reacted automatically. He called in the fire as he pressed the accelerator to the floor. Help would be on its way, but it would take time. His eyes fixed, his hands gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles showed white, he barely slowed at the driveway, taking the turn on two wheels.

  A dense dust cloud trailed after him all the way up to the house. Flames licked the walls of the barn as they reached for the roof. There was an eerie quiet as he threw open the barn door. The inside was untouched, but dense smoke was rolling down the passageway between the stalls. He knew that he had only moments before the fire would reach the packed hayloft. Virgil had seen barn fires when that happened and he knew what to expect. The intense heat, suddenly fed by all that hay, would blow the barn apart. Anyone or anything inside would become just another combustible.

  He threw open the stall doors as he made his way toward the far end of the barn on the outside chance that there was anything within. A couple of chickens squawked as they ran toward the open barn door. The closer he got to the last stalls, the denser the smoke was. It started to gag him and his eyes started to water. He heard the movement in the last stall, followed by a nervous nicker. He couldn’t see them through the smoke, but he knew they were there. He knew there was no way he could get the mare and the foal back the way he had come. Before opening the stall, he felt along the wall until he found the double door at the back of the barn. Virgil gave a tremendous push and the doors swung open.

  Billowing smoke poured out through the opening as sunlight threaded its way in. He turned to go back to the stall. He threw open the stall door and saw the mare huddled in the back corner with the foal. Grabbing a saddle blanket off a nearby peg, he moved toward her, relieved to see she had her halter on. When he reached her, he threw the blanket over her head, shielding her eyes. Then he grabbed the throatlatch and started to move forward. At first she resisted, then took a few hesitant steps. She called to the foal and it came alongside.

  She moved forward more deliberately, following Virgil’s lead through the stall door. Virgil became aware of the sudden intense buildup in heat. The mare called again to the foal, then again, even louder. Finally, the foal nickered in response. Virgil was having a hard time controlling her. She was throwing her head left to right and up and down. The blanket slipped from his grasp and off her head and fell to the ground. She let out a scream and reared. Virgil held on and actually felt his feet leave the ground. A shaft of light momentarily showed through the smoke and she bolted. This time Virgil lost his grip and fell. He saw her plunge through the opening toward the light, the foal at her heels.

  He crawled forward, pulling himself to his feet as he ran. He didn’t look back, running as fast as he could. The heat was searing his back, but he still ran. Then he heard what he knew he would hear, an explosion of everything inside the barn within the fire’s reach. The force of it knocked him to the ground, but didn’t stop him. He scrambled to his feet and ran again without looking back. He didn’t stop until he reached the creek that ran alongside the far corner of one of the barns. He jumped in and heard the hiss as the water met what was his burning uniform. The sudden relief was followed by a searing pain.

  He lay in the shallow water. In the distance, he thought he heard a siren and the wail of a fire engine.

  “Over here. Over here.”

  He didn’t respond to the sound of Jimmy’s voice. It was too painful to move.

  “We’ll get you outta there, Sheriff. Just hang on.”

  “I think we should turn him over to put him on the carrier. Looks like the worst burns are on his back.”

  Virgil didn’t recognize the other voice. He turned his head. Even that hurt. He saw Jimmy and two other men, one in medical white, the other in firefighter gear. Jimmy and the firefighter moved, one to his head and shoulders, the other to his feet.

  “Okay,” he heard the third man say. “On the count of three. One, two, three, lift. Oh, yeah, it’s his back, most of his uniform is in the creek. Let me unstrap his
gun belt before you lay him down.”

  Virgil could barely moan through the pain while tears stung his cheeks.

  “I’ll give him something for the pain.”

  Those were the last words Virgil heard before he slipped into unconsciousness.

  * * *

  When he opened his eyes, he didn’t know where he was, until he heard one of the nurses who had taken care of him when he had had his operation.

  “Just can’t get enough of this place, can you? Must be my animal magnetism that keeps drawing you back.”

  Virgil tried to respond, but the words wouldn’t come. He realized he was lying on his stomach when he could only see the lower part of her uniform as she stood next to his bed. “Got some pretty nice burns on your back. Kinda looks like that rare steak my husband likes.”

  “Thanks for the visual,” Virgil finally managed.

  “Could’ve been a lot worse. Skin on the back is tougher than skin on the face. Better you took the blast there. Only damage to that good-looking face is you left your eyebrows and eyelashes in that creek and you won’t be needing a haircut for a while. That Brazilian wax job took care of any hair on your back, but that will come back, too.”

  Virgil felt the coolness as she applied some soothing gel to his back. He thought he saw a small brush in her hand as she continued the application. After she finished, he saw her inject something into the IV he was hooked up to and heard her say something about a nice long sleep as he closed his eyes.

  When he opened them next, his back was getting another application from a different nurse.

  “What time is it?” His voice sounded strange to his own ears.

  “A little after two, Sheriff.” It was a male voice.

  “Two . . .” He said in the same strange voice.

  “Two on Wednesday. You lost a day. That’s why you’re a little confused.”

  “My voice . . . ?”

  “That’s from the smoke you inhaled. The inhalation therapist will be in later. She’ll help you with that, but you might be hoarse for a day or two.”

  “But today is Wednesday.”

  “All day, Virgil, and you have nothing to do but rest.”

  The words were as soft as the gel on his back. He smelled her before he saw her. She reached down to him and her lips felt soft on his cheek. The odor of a ripe tangerine just peeled washed over him and obliterated the burnt smell which had persistently lingered.

  “How . . .” he said to her. “How . . .”

  “Everything is fine. One of the barns is a total loss, but the animals are all safe. Everyone is amazed that you were able to do what you did and escape with only second-degree burns.”

  That’s when Jimmy came into the room.

  “Hey, Sheriff.” He hesitated before coming to the bed. “I can come back later.”

  “No, I have to go,” she said. “Business as usual.”

  She bent down and gave Virgil another soft nuzzle. Then she was gone.

  “Real nice lady,” Jimmy said as he came near the bed. “I see her at the Black Bull all the time. She sure has done a job on that place. Good food, line dancing, and the bull.”

  “Wish she could have stayed.”

  “Well, she was here quite a while yesterday. Then here again today. She needs a break.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You’ve kind of been in Happy Valley. They gave you some serious stuff. Doc says burns are about the worst pain.”

  “Yes, I remember after the fire, in the water. Did they figure out how it started?”

  “Not for sure, but there was one thing practically everyone agreed on.”

  “What was that?”

  “That fire was no accident.”

  35

  The nurse had come in shortly before he got his dinner tray and had moved him in the bed, first on one side then the other. Shortly after she left, a therapist came in and gave him a couple of exercises to do to keep the skin on his back from tightening as it healed, explaining that the discomfort would continue for a while, akin to the kind of feeling people get after a really bad sunburn.

  Virgil immediately related to a time in his youth when he had been mowing a field and running the hay through a Haybine for conditioning before baling. He had taken off his sweat-soaked shirt and let the soft breezes dry his body. It didn’t seem long and the air currents over his bare skin felt good, but the Southwestern sun was not to be ignored even in the late afternoon. That night and for the next couple of days, he paid the price.

  Evening shadows drifted into the room. Another application of the soothing gel had lulled him into a slight drowse. He lay immobile and pain free, enjoying the moment, his eyes barely open. A slight movement caused them to widen. A pair of finely tooled leather boots stood at the side of his bed. Their owner remained unknown, because he didn’t want to raise his head yet.

  “Sorry about this, Virgil. But I had to come and tell you I had no part in this. I’m no barn-burner. Maybe that’s hard for you to believe after our last conversation, but it’s the honest-to-God truth. And I’ll do anything to convince you. I meant it when I said I always thought of you as a friend. I never saw Rusty happier than when she was with you, and that was enough for me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about the baby, Mike?”

  There was a long pause. Micah reached over and grabbed the wooden arm of a cushioned chair and pulled it closer, then sat in it and bent over so that Virgil could see him without having to raise his head.

  “I guess you’d have to go back some twenty years and step into my shoes to understand, but I’m sorry I didn’t. I’ve regretted it ever since. Guess I was too vulnerable, too easy to manipulate. Maybe just weak. You weren’t around. You were away at school. Everything seemed to come apart at once. Rusty . . . the baby, and then my wife. Hell, Virgil, I’m not that much older than you. Five, six years. I had Caleb, and a mentally unstable wife who I finally had to commit to keep her from doing harm to herself or someone else.”

  His voice trailed off. Virgil could see the pain come into his face, hear it in his voice.

  “I could have helped,” Virgil said. “I would have left school. I would have come home if I’d known.”

  Micah shook his head. “My mother wouldn’t let me call. That thing, with your father. That’s why when you and Rusty happened, she was so set against it. It was like she somehow felt betrayed. He rejected her, then Rusty rejected her for you. Then when Caleb came home from Nam in a box . . . You can’t imagine what it was like. Dad didn’t take two sober breaths for the next ten years. She despised his weakness. I was just trying to keep everything afloat. Because Caleb didn’t come home to take over, it was left to me. But until Dad died, I had no real authority and it was only after he died that I realized what bad shape we were in. So that’s when I shook hands with the devil. Virgil, we were close to losing everything. The banks wouldn’t look at us. We were mortgaged to the hilt. Then there were those bad cattle years. You remember.”

  Virgil nodded.

  “Hell, we weren’t even breaking even on them and the pecans. Couple of bad years there and selling wholesale was killing us. That’s when I thought if we could absorb some of the factors of production, process and retail them ourselves. I got the idea of processing them across the border, then distributing them from the Redbud facility. They’d just built the interchange there. We’d owned that parcel of land for years, and it was ideal for distribution. A facility there would be perfect. But all of this needed money.”

  Virgil shifted a little in the bed so he could see Micah more fully. “Could you get me a glass of water?”

  “Sure.”

  Micah got to his feet, quickly walked around the bed, got the pitcher off the nightstand, poured a glassful, then returned to Virgil.

  “Here, let me help you.”

  H
e steadied Virgil by holding his upper arm so Virgil could raise his head off the pillow. Then he held the glass to Virgil’s lips. Virgil almost drained the glass in one swallow.

  “Thanks.”

  Micah laid him gently back on the pillow and returned the glass to the table.

  “So let me guess the rest of the story,” Virgil said. “Wade hooked you up with some people who bankrolled you. You were able to build the facility at Redbud and the processing plant outside of Juárez. The only hitch was it wasn’t strictly a cash deal.”

  “I thought it was.” Micah looked toward the window, which showed the last of the daylight. “I figured because Wade was getting the exclusive contract for all the service work, he set this up as much for him as for us. He was a go-between for the financing, but we would both benefit.”

  “When did you find out it was more than that?”

  “Not until Buddy. I was making regular quarterly payments on the borrowed money. The investment paid off and I was seeing daylight at the end of the tunnel. Then . . .”

  “You mean, you never knew until Buddy told you.”

  “I wasn’t sure. I suspected, but . . . Maybe I didn’t want to know. Virgil, it was a slippery slope. Wade became more of a factor as time went on. The business grew, so did he. Within a couple of years we were out of the hole. The pressure was gone, we were doing more business and growing even faster than I thought possible. My mother actually backed off. But Buddy wasn’t the one. He never told me.”

  “But that night at the Black Bull . . . the night Buddy went missing . . . You went there. You were there to see him.”

  Micah sat up in his chair. “How did you know I was there?”

  “The technology, Micah. The video of the parking lot.”

  “But I never went into the lot. He came out to me, and it wasn’t Buddy, it was Wade. But how?”