“Yeah, he’s one of them high-altitude Mexicans.”
I smiled; it was a common phrase in these parts. “It’s always been a nice place.”
He looked down at the dog’s head, which he continued to pet. “They used to bring ’em through here, the Basquos. Kind of a halfway house for sheepherders.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “They’d sponsor a Basquo to come over by contacting the Wyoming Range Association, put the herder’s name in, and pay five hundred bucks to cover the immigrant’s travel expenses. The Range would check the fellow out, and if he hadn’t pitched any bombs into any cafes they’d run ’im through a quota system. Usually it was a relative, somebody they could count on. They’d deduct the money out of their pay once they got here. Poor bastards only made about thirty a week; took a while.”
I waited a moment and glanced over at the bar back, which continued to insist on older and gentler times. “You met here on Thursdays?”
“After Charlie was dead.” It took a moment, but he smiled. “We never got remarried. The Basquos are pretty hung up in that religious stuff, but I think I got her to understand that she was missing something. I’m just not sure if I got her to understand that it was me.”
I waited a respectful moment before asking. “Lucian, what happened?”
He stared at his arm on the table, his fingers brushing the brim of his hat. “Do you think I killed Charlie Nurburn?”
I continued to look at him and thought about what the old outlaw was capable of, the stories I’d heard, the stories I knew. “Right now, yes, I do.” I sighed and thought about Dorothy’s advice. “Lucian, I don’t particularly want to get into a pissing contest. You had to know I was going to discover all of this, you trained me too well.” I thought about Mari Baroja, Isaac Bloomfield, about Lana and the pack of lawyers soon to be snapping at my heels. I placed my elbows on the table and rested my chin on my fists. “Do you know she has a granddaughter here in town?”
“Yes, I do.” His look continued to darken. “You’d be amazed at the things I know.”
“No, I wouldn’t, Lucian. I wouldn’t be amazed at all. I’ll tell you what I would be amazed by, you telling me what the hell happened fifty years ago.” I didn’t move, just leaned on my fists and stared at him. I took a deep breath and went easy. “For me to know what’s happening now, I need to know what happened then.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly as something old and brittle broke loose. I watched as it fell into the river of memory and slapped against the rocky cliffs of Lucian’s mind. “What good would it have done?” His eyes took on a long dead look. “What good would it have done for a woman like that to go to prison for the rest of her life?”
I listened as Lucian’s voice carried us back to a summer night in the middle of the last century. I can still play it back in my mind, like a home movie that is grainy and overexposed. The film slips with the clattering of spanners in the works as a thin man comes home late one cloudy night, a mason jar half full of clear liquid still dangling from his fingers as he fumbles with the knob on the door. The jar slips and busts on the uneven steps with a loud pop, shards of glass and homemade liquor falling through the cracks of the warped and cupped wood. Cursing, he continues to fumble with a latch that has been locked since early in the evening.
There are three children in a bed at the backside of the little house, illuminated by the flashes of lightning along the Big Horns; two are three-year-old girls, twins, with their arms wrapped around their bony knees. They are clutching a threadbare star quilt between them; its floral pattern fades like distance. There is a boy who is a little older. He sits at the foot of their bed, unmoving, but holding a large hammer as best he can in his shaking small hands.
There is a slam against the door as the man throws himself against it in an all too familiar rage. This is the pattern, the framework to which these children have accustomed themselves. They shudder in fear and try to remain silent. A promise made and a promise kept in an attempt to keep the bad from being so bad.
There is a woman standing against an old Republic steel sink, her palms pressed against the coolness of the counter’s lip. The cool feels good on her hands, calloused and raw from a short lifetime of hard struggle. Her long dark hair hides the face that is bowed to a god that no longer hears the trembling split lips pray for just a small salvation.
The slamming on the door continues. It is softer this time, and shortly thereafter there are soft words, words that she has responded to before but cannot anymore. He slams the door again, loud, and her head rises, revealing a dark and seeping bruise. The damage has been inflicted at her cheek but has drained to the jawline and is yellowing like something gone bad.
Words again, and then silence, an active silence that ends with the crash of a kitchen window and a piece of firewood that slides to a stop on the linoleum floor with the broken glass. She screams and rushes to the window, heedless of her bare feet and the triangular shards of heavy lead glass, in an attempt to push him away from her and from her children. His hands reach out for any part of her that he can grasp, finally tangling in her hair, and he yanks her head forward as he brings his other fist upward, propelling her backward in a lazy arch to the wood-burning stove at the other side of the small kitchen, where she lies, crumpled on the floor, still.
He scrambles in a drunken attempt to achieve purchase on the slick clapboard of the house, finally getting enough leverage to balance his weight on the sill, but slips on the edge, the glass slicing his hands as the house itself defends against his intrusion. He falls when he gets inside, rolls over onto his stiffened arm, and looks at his hand, at the glass splinters that continue to make him bleed. He attempts to pull them out but gives up in a thundering slam against the kitchen wall. He cries like a wounded beast before his attention is drawn to the opposite side of the room where a shapely calf and a well-formed foot stretch toward him in an unconscious but provocative manner.
Her father and uncles had said that she was a virgin, but they lied. Slut. She did it too well and enjoyed it too much. Bitch.
It is time for a lesson, time to teach her how to take what a man could give her. A flood of heat accompanies the anger and drunkenness giving it direction and focus. He pushes off with the good hand, tries to straighten his head, and considers the curves and softness barely concealed by the cotton dress. Even unaware, she begs for it.
She is small and easy to lift by the bodice of the dress. Her head slumps to one side, allowing the damage to her face to show. Ruined. So he turns her around and forces her over the sink. He thought of the stove, but the sink is higher and will afford a better angle for his purpose. He raises the dress over her hips and pulls at the cotton panties so that they slide down one leg and dangle from her foot, which is a good six inches from the floor.
There is blood on her undergarment; it is her time. He smells it, a different smell than that on his hands. He grabs the thick mane of her hair, pulling her head back and placing his face beside hers, telling her that he will not soil himself with her blood, that any hole is a hole. He fumbles, one-handed, with his belt and the thick buttons on his pants, shrugging the straps of his suspenders off his narrow shoulders and extracting himself for the work at hand.
She is partially awake now. The coolness of the porcelain has given her the slightest release, has allowed her the ability to center enough to bend her knees and kick. Her arms swing back and claw at him. Dishes fall from the counter, utensils crash to the floor with the melody of broken wind chimes, and the point of a large butcher’s knife sticks in the green linoleum. He slams her head forward again, still holding the fist full of hair. The only sound she makes now is an involuntary grunt as he drives himself into her, forcing the air from her, over and over again.
He has not seen the door at the end of the short hallway open and is not aware that the boy has crossed the room at a desperate but determined pace. The boy is troubled by the burden he carries and surveys the scene before him in
a despondent and inevitable fashion, raising the weight as high as he can, not sure if the leverage of the thing will allow it to be brought down on the appointed spot. He does not understand exactly what is happening here, other than the same one is hurting the same one again, and it has to stop.
The three smallest toes on the man’s left foot are broken on impact. He slips and falls sideways, back toward the busted window, where he curses and howls like the animal he has become. The woman still lies facedown on the counter, her feet still dangling above the floor.
The boy moves forward again, raising the pointed edge of the shoeing hammer in an attempt to strike once more before retribution. It is too late. The man reaches forward and grabs him by the shirt and most of his undersized chest. The hand sledge falls from his small hands. The man feels a surge of pain from his foot and pulls himself up and onto his knees; he shakes the little body, draws it close, and slaps the boy backward with his open hand. His free one scrambles across the floor in search of the hammer and pounces on it like a five-legged spider. He smiles through his teeth as he raises the heavy metal head and takes aim on another man’s child.
There is a sudden tugging at his collar.
He feels strange, almost peaceful, as he looks down at the unconscious boy. He stares at the geometric pattern of the floor, having never noticed it before. The hammer drops to the side, forgotten, as he reaches up to his throat. It feels strange and wet, and he coughs as thick, dark liquid passes from his mouth onto the child. The weight of his head pulls it forward, and there is more blood flowing onto his shirt and arms and hands. He opens his mouth to scream, but the liquid blocks his voice and spills onto the floor with the force of an open spigot. It fills the room with its smell and slippery texture, and it is everywhere.
The man tries to raise his head, but the muscles refuse to work, and his face will not rise to follow the boy who is being pulled from him. He slips sideways and falls back against the cabinets below the sink. He lies there, blinking at the tableau before him, as the mother holds her eldest in her lap close to her, her legs tucked as she crouches against the stove like a panther.
He feels cold. He blinks again and remembers how one of the uncles had told him how they always allowed her to butcher the hogs in the autumn, how she had the blood touch. He looks into those baleful eyes, which are willing him to die. Slut. And she is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. Bitch.
He takes forever to die, but she waits, unmoving, and watches him for the better part of an hour to make sure, finally kicking his leg to see if there is any reaction. She gathers the still unconscious child and feels his breathing on her neck, and this is when she cries, smearing the tears away with the back of her hand. She carries him to the bedroom where the twin daughters wait, eyes wide, as she gently places their brother between them. She tells them that she must go to the Aranzadi’s, eight miles distant. It will be late when she returns, but they must remain in the bed. They must not move, and they must not make noise, but most of all they cannot go into the kitchen. The smallest cries that she is thirsty but is silenced by her mother’s look.
She reins in the large bay and wheels him around the motorized carriage. The automobile is his, and she does not trust it. The bay is spooked by the lightning that pounds the black edges of the Big Horns. The wind is up, and it might rain; the buffalo grass sways like an undulating ocean of flax and seed. Tired as she is, she hopes for rain. She drives her naked heels into the horse’s flanks and gathers herself low behind his neck. There is only one two-track back to the main road and the nearest phone.
The rhythm of the horse’s hooves on the hard ground lulls her; she tries to stay on, gripping the hair of the horse’s withers. The first drops of rain hit like mercury dimes as she makes the rise overlooking the neighboring ranch house. There are no lights, but they will understand.
The hard flat drops of the high-altitude rain continue to strike at her as she urges the horse faster down the slippery track. Lightning flashes again, and the horse sidesteps in the yard, his stocking feet glowing like spats. She has started off, but the horse has taken her by surprise, and she tumbles forward. He backs away, dragging her as he goes. She holds to the single rein as the horse shakes his head up and down in an attempt to be free. He stops when she speaks to him in the language her husband had never tried to know. “Ialgi hadi kampora…”
She drags herself up toward the door and stumbles at the steps, is pounded by the rain, and shakes with the chill of the cold water as it streams from her hair and onto her skin. Her muscles contract, and it is all she can do to drop a clenched hand against the screen door. She cries and tries to strike the door again but can’t. Her head sinks to the step, and she rests there; it cannot end like this, it must not. She stirs, but her hair clings to her broken face, and her joints ache with the strain. Whatever was there, whatever had pushed her to this point, is washing away with the cold wind and rain. She pulls her legs and arms in to protect them, to allow them rest.
There is a sound from within the house, and the door swings wide. A kerosene lantern shines on her with the pointillist pattern of the reinforced screen. Someone is kneeling now, lowering himself to her view and reaching out a thin and gentle hand. As his fingers close around her shoulder, she raises her head and, shivering with the last strains of energy she can afford, she speaks. “ Polizia constabule.. Lucian.”
He smoked his pipe for a while and then got up quietly, positioning his leg, and moved around to the bar. He pulled a paper filter from a stack on the shelves, placed it in the maker at the bar back, pulled the urn from the burner, and filled it with water from the small bar sink. “You ever seen a man cut like that? Ear to ear?”
“No, not like that.”
He nodded, poured the water into the machine, and placed it back on the heating element. “If you cut an artery completely through, it tries to heal itself by pinching off but, if you’ve got the touch, you only cut the blood vessel halfway so it keeps bleeding until there’s nothing left to bleed.”
“Lucian, this was a clear case of domestic abuse and self-defense.”
He shook his head as the coffee began to percolate. “Not in 1951.”
I waited. “I thought you said it was ’52.”
“That’s when the goddamned Indians stole the car out of the irrigation pond Isaac and I stuck it in down on Four Brothers.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the bar. “How’s I supposed to know it was gonna be a drought summer?”
“Why the elaborate charade with Marcos down in Vista Verde?”
“She wanted him alive.”
“Why didn’t she just file for abandonment?”
He shrugged. “Religion.”
I waited. “Bloomfield was in on this?” He looked away for a moment and didn’t speak. “He’s in a room over at Durant Memorial.” I got Lucian’s undivided attention. “He tried to drive to Billings last night to assist in Mari’s autopsy and wrecked his car near Sheridan.”
Lucian nodded. “She needed medical attention, and I knew he would understand.” He looked at me. “He all right?”
“Yep.” I sat on the stool opposite him. “Lucian, her heart gave out.”
“I don’t believe that.”
I thought about the things I had believed when my wife died, complicated, hurtful things, and how the only thing that seemed to help was to have somebody listen. I glanced back over at him as he waited for me. “Did you see anything that night?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me if you had?”
“Yes, goddamn it. I ain’t got nothin’ to hide.”
“You have up to now.”
He shook his head and turned around, pulled two cups from the cluster below the coffeemaker, and poured us a fresh pair. He pushed one of the cups toward me with his fingertips. “That’s my personal life.”
“Your personal life is this case.” The stillness was back, and I was sure he was thinking about the heart that had failed. I thought about bri
nging up Isaac Bloomfield’s theories on substance abuse, advanced venereal disease, and hereditary predisposition but, if Mari was resting easier in Lucian’s mind, now was no time to trouble the waters.
When I looked back up, he was studying me. “So, you gonna call in the F B of I on me or what?”
I took a sip of my coffee. “I’m thinking.”
He nodded. “Well, you think about this while you’re thinkin’. You know what a jury can do. You remember what they did for Melissa Little Bird.”
The coffee was hot, or maybe I’d lost my taste for it. I sat the mug back on the surface of the bar and shook my head. “Not the same.” I waited a moment then stood up and buttoned my coat. “I have to go to work.”
He looked at me as I crossed to the door with Dog in tow. “Big murder investigation?”
“Something like that.”
He sat the mug back on the bar. “Which one?”
I looked at the floor and pushed the door open to let Dog out. “I’ll let you know.”
It was getting colder, so I flipped the collar up on my jacket and scrunched my neck down for cover. So, he didn’t do it, at least not technically. He just covered it up or, in the parlance of the law, he was an accessory after the fact, which could get you from twelve to seventeen. I tried to think about how things had changed in our little corner of the world in fifty years. I thought of Lucian rumbling around the county in the old, upside-down bathtub of a Nash, meting out justice with a tin badge, a long-barreled. 38-caliber revolver, and a shovel. I had developed my own ideas about murder from a Vietnamese Colonel COSVN who labeled it as the worst of crimes because once you had taken a life it could not be replaced. He had also stated that Ngo Dinh Diem was an idiot, but he was our idiot, one of the statements I had chosen not to take to heart. All in all, murder was a complicated and dirty business that took up a lot of emotional space in your soul; I don’t think Lucian could have tolerated that kind of occupancy.
I shifted my thoughts to Mari Baroja. I wondered if she would have preferred to die in one of the small rooms in the Euskadi Hotel rather than in Room 42 of the Durant Home for Assisted Living. Some of their lunches must have been longer than their three-hour marriage. I thought about the effect she might have made on the old sheriff’s life had she been able to remain nestled there, the good she would have probably done, the holes in his tattered sails that could have been filled. Why hadn’t they remarried? Religion, maybe, but perhaps the clandestine weight of Charlie Nurburn had been too much. Things like that have a way of gathering momentum until there simply isn’t a way of dealing with them in one lifetime. Maybe they were two different people by then. Maybe it was that those three hours weren’t to be tampered with, that those three hours for those two people had been enough. Some fires can’t bear to dampen and can provide heat even from the distance of time.
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