Cold Dish

by Craig Johnson

  “Native American.”

  “. . . This Native American walks over to our table and just stands there. He’s a big guy like Henry, and I’m quickly running through the faces I’ve locked up for DUI, public indecency, aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, and jaywalking that weekend alone. I’m not making any connections, but the longer I look at this guy’s face, the more I’m sure that I’ve seen him somewhere before. That’s when Henry stops chewing his bacon, still looking at his plate, and says, ‘How have you been?’ I’m looking at this guy like never before, but damned if I can make the reach. He’s good-looking, maybe thirty, but he’s got a lot of miles on him. The guy says, ‘Good. You?’ I look at Henry and all he says is, ‘Cannot complain.’ You know how he never uses contractions. Well, the fellow just stands there for another minute, pulls out a cigarette, and lights it. Then he says, ‘Who’d listen? ’ And with this he just kind of turns and glides out of the place. I’m watching him walk out, and it hits me. He walks just like Henry. I turn to look at him and start to speak, but he cuts me off. ‘Halfbrother. ’ And that’s all he says. Come to find out, he hasn’t talked to the guy in fifteen years. As far as I know, he hasn’t talked to him since.”

  She looked puzzled. “Big falling out?”

  “Who the hell knows?” I squeezed her foot and leaned back on my stool. “I don’t think you hurt his feelings. I think it’s just a lack of windmills.” She laughed. “That, and probably there’s a part of Henry that wishes he had done it.”

  “You’re joking?”

  I wished mildly I hadn’t brought it up, because it was going to be hard to explain. “Nope.”

  “You really think he’s capable of something like that?”

  “I think under certain circumstances, everybody’s capable of doing something like that.”

  She exchanged feet, tucking the other one under her, and thought for a moment. “I guess I don’t, but then I haven’t seen all the things you’ve seen.” Her eyes held steady as they met mine. “Is there part of you that wishes you’d done it?”

  I thought for a moment, but she had me. “Yep, I guess there is a vicious little part of me that does.”

  I looked out the front window and watched the big cottonwood at the end of my road sway in the breeze that had just come up. It wasn’t bone cold, but it would be by the end of the night. Probably in the teens, and I could see the frost on the windows even though it wasn’t there. Winter was almost here, and I had to start remembering to look for the fall.

  She seemed lost in thought too, staring at my hands that were wrapped around her foot; but as long as I didn’t give it back, she had to stay. “Well, since we’re sort of telling our deepest, darkest secrets . . .” She trapped her lower lip in her teeth, let it slide out slowly, and continued, “When Cady was trying to fix us up a few years ago?” I waited. “I think a little part of me really was kind of hoping that it would work out.” She paused. “I’m telling you this because I don’t want to be sending mixed signals.”

  I was getting a sinking feeling, but I still held on to the foot.

  “I just don’t want to get moving too fast. The last relationship I was in was not a good one, and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I was in too much of a hurry.” Her eyes dulled and the angles on her face flattened and grew sad. “I think there was an awful lot about him that I thought I knew, but the truth was I was just coloring in the missing parts with colors I liked.” Her eyes sharpened again when she looked at me. “I can’t afford that with you; I like you too much.”

  “Thank you.” I still wasn’t giving up the foot. “What if you don’t like the way I look when I sleep with my mouth open?”

  We both laughed. “I’m willing to take that chance.”

  I sniffed and bit my own lip. “Vonnie . . .”

  She did her best Gene Tierney. “Walter?” We laughed again.

  “Don’t let this lusty, youthful appearance fool you. I’m not seventeen anymore, and I don’t have the expectations of a seventeen-year-old.” I took the last sip of my sangria. “I, uh . . .” I cleared my throat and forged ahead. “At least you had a last relationship . . .” I cleared my throat again. “I haven’t had any relationships since Martha died. Talk about pushing a virtue to vice . . .”

  And to my absolute shock, her eyes welled and a single tear streaked like lightning across her face. I fought back the sudden burning in my own eyes and squeezed her foot. It was a fine foot, long and narrow with toes that looked like fingers. Aristocratic, as feet go. My mother used to say it was a sign of royalty; that, and eating one thing on your plate at a time. I’m not sure how much royalty my mother ever met and whether she ever got to break bread with them or examine their feet, but she felt strongly about things. It’s a family trait.

  I took one of my calloused paws and drew the soft part on the back across her cheek, smearing the seawater to her hairline. She sobbed a broken sob and pulled at a loose strand of hair, tucking it behind an ear, and then caught my hand. She placed it on her knee. She wasn’t a small woman, but it took both hands to conceal my one. She pushed my knuckles apart, stretching the fingers around her calf and securing them there. She seemed like a child, satisfied with her work. Pulling back, her fingers spread to examine her creation, she smiled through the contractions of her diaphragm. I wanted her more than anything in the world. I set my jaw and just looked. It was more than enough.

  I drove her home through the fog that crept off Piney Creek, which was desperate to find its way through to the Clear and, in turn, the Powder. One stream started in the high reaches of the Bighorn Wilderness Area, at the very top of Cloud Peak, dropping a couple of thousand feet to shoot past Lake Desmet through the valley of the Lower Piney and making a left at Vonnie’s house. The other flexed its hydraulic muscles from Powder River Pass to the south, widening like a river at the flats through Durant till it met its lover about a half mile from my place. The small patches of snow were melting in the last warmth of the day’s heat before the night could get a firm grasp, and the low-lying fog was like riding on clouds.

  I shifted gears, making the turn at Crossroads, and looked down 16 toward the Red Pony. The lights were on, and I thought about my friend, patiently listening to another drunk telling another drunken story about getting drunk. Vonnie moaned a little and then readjusted her head. I put my hand on her shoulder, and she snuggled under my sheepskin coat, her legs curled up in the passenger seat. I listened to the heat blowing through the vents, the hum of the big V-10, and thought back.

  She argued at first, but the sangria and the emotional impact had layered her with fatigue. She was surprisingly light, and I was surprisingly smart enough to open the truck door before I carried her out. I figured she could get a ride back over the next day to get her little red Jeep or send somebody over.

  It took about ten minutes to get to her place, and I didn’t pass another vehicle the whole way. I had the feeling I was involved in some sort of clandestine operation as I pulled through the wrought-iron gates. Tucked in a hillside in Portugee Gulch, I was impressed by the size of the place. Cady had told me all about Vonnie’s house, about the indoor pool, spiral staircases, massive stone fireplaces, and statuary everywhere you looked. It wasn’t the usual big box log house; instead, it looked like it had started out at a reasonable size and geometrically evolved as Vonnie’s lifestyle had developed. As a reflection, I wondered where her lifestyle was headed.

  I pulled the Bullet up to the front door of the largest part. A number of movement-activated halogen lamps came on, but there were no lights in any other part of the house. I climbed out and went to the door; roughly four thousand dollars for a highly intricate, electric home-defense system, and it was unlocked. It was a large Spanish-style one that clicked solidly and opened to reveal an expansive living room with numerous leather sofas. I figured she could sleep on one of them for the night. I went back outside and got her, carefully easing her through the doorway and down the three steps tha
t led to the larger part of the room. The walls were an oversanded plaster that looked like they had been done and redone by numerous old-world crafts-men. Three archways led toward an elevated dining room that overlooked a pool in the back, and the Saltillo tile gleamed with the luster of polished mahogany. There were paintings on all the walls, mostly abstracts, and I felt like I lived in one of my cardboard boxes.

  I placed her onto the largest of the sofas and arranged her head on one of the Indian-blanket pillows. I was at a loss as to what to do next, thinking I should leave a note or something, finally deciding that my coat was enough. I pulled the scruffy, sheepskin monstrosity up around her chin and kneeled there, looking at her. She truly was an exquisite female and a remarkable thing to take in, even with the little furrows that now crowded the bridge of her nose; it was probably the smell of the coat. I stood and backed toward the door, sad to see the evening come to a close. I was feeling very tender, and I didn’t know how long it would be before I felt that way again. Then I saw him.

  About halfway across the elevated dining room in the archway to the left, he stood looking at me. He hadn’t made a sound as we pulled up, hadn’t made a sound when I opened the door, not even when I brought her in and laid her on the sofa. That’s what worried me. Here, at Portugee Gulch amid the fog of Piney Creek, stood the Hound of the Baskervilles. She hadn’t said anything about having a dog. He must have weighed close to 155 pounds, most of it chest and head. The yellow reflection in his eyes blinked once, and then he slowly walked to the edge of the stairs. The better to see you with, my dear.

  There was German shepherd or wolf in there somewhere and certainly some Saint Bernard. The muzzle and ears were dark, dappling into a reddish color, with a white blaze at his chest. His right lip lifted to free a canine tooth out of the Paleozoic period, and he rumbled so low it sounded like thunder rolling down the valley. I glanced over at Vonnie, who was sleeping soundly, and figured she’d wake up when she heard the strangling sound of my last scream. I have to admit that my hand drifted down to where my sidearm usually was and then rested not so casually on my empty leg. He didn’t move any farther, and I heard this strained version of my voice saying, “Good dog, good doggy . . . Easy, boy.”

  I fought the urge to run, knowing that such an enticement to wolves and to the Cheyenne was impossible to resist. Backing toward the door, I tripped at the bottom step and his head bobbed at the opportunity. We locked eyes, and I think there was an understanding. He might kill me, he might eat me, but I didn’t have to taste good. There was an umbrella and a loose assemblage of three golf clubs in the umbrella stand at the door. I figured that I could hold him off with the one iron, but then I’d most certainly need divine intervention, because everyone knows that God’s the only one who can hit a one iron. “Easy boy, easy . . .”

  He didn’t move, just watched. I backed the rest of the way out the door and slowly shut it in front of me. For a moment, I thought about opening it again and locking it, then figured the hell with it. Whoever went in there next would get what he deserved. I quietly walked across the red-slate gravel as the halogen lights came on again. The place was like a disco. I wheeled the truck around the compound and headed out through the gate from whence I came. Absentmindedly, I turned on the radio, suddenly feeling the urge to hear voices, voices I didn’t necessarily have to respond to. Then I had a rotten thought. I keyed the mic. “Absaroka County Sheriff ’s Department, this is Unit One, come in Base.”

  His voice was sleepy. I didn’t blame him; I would have been asleep, too. “Jesus, yeah. This is Base, yeah, go ahead.”

  I suppressed a laugh. “Are you okay?”

  Static. “Yeah, I’m okay, are you okay?”

  “Yep . . . I’m okay.” I looked out the windshield and navigated my way through the fog. “I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  “Roger that, okay.” And with that, he was gone.

  And I really was okay. It wasn’t exactly the evening I had planned. To tell the truth, I was probably relieved. The untold expectations of my first date in four, not three, years had kind of hammered me. When I made the turn at Crossroads, the lights were off at the bar, and I was glad there was nobody there to share war stories with. It was time to go to my little cabin with its stud walls, plywood floors, and UV-unprotected logs. Henry was right. It was time I got around to a few changes.

  When I got home, the red light was once again blinking on my phone machine, so I punched the button. “Hi, Pops . . .”

  4

  “You are not dying.”

  “How do you know, you’ve never died.” I pushed my spine into the depression in the mile-marker post and eased my weight against its scaly green-painted surface.

  “I have died many times.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “Get up.”

  I picked a piece of cheat grass from the red shale roadbed, and it came out in one whole stalk, roots and all. It was cold, too. The frost clung to every surface, encasing the poor little fellow like those dragonflies you see trapped in thousand-year-old amber. If I was going to keep doing this every other morning, I had to get a pair of gloves. I raised my head and looked at him as he positioned himself in front of the rising sun like some fighter pilot moving in for the kill. He nudged me with his foot. “Get up.”

  I took a large swipe at his legs, but he nimbly jumped back out of the way, gravitating to the balls of his feet and rolling up on another set of wheels. The tendons and veins popped out of his naked ankles like those of some skinned cat, and I looked away, colder than when I hadn’t noticed he wasn’t wearing any socks. He came back and nudged me with the same foot as I resettled against my post. “If you don’t stop kicking me, you really are going to find out about dying.”

  “This is something I did not know about you, grumpy in the mornings.” He looked into the little breaths of wind, which clattered the dried leaves that had refused to release their grip on the black cottonwoods along the Piney. Under Tiepolo skies, shrouded with banks of gray, rolled back at the lavender and cream edges like waves receding from a high shore, the sun was just starting to hit the tops of the hills in the Wolf Valley. I wouldn’t die, so I was feeling better.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “Leave me alone, I’m having a moment of grace.”

  He stared at me. “Well, we would not want to interrupt that.”

  I tossed a piece of shale at him, missing by a good two feet. “If you can have multiple lives, I can have moments of grace.”

  He grunted. “How was your moment of grace last night?”

  “Not bad, as moments of grace go.” I thought for a while. “More like a moment of truth.”

  He nodded. “That is good, they are harder to come by.” He winced as he stretched the tendons in his right knee; maybe he wasn’t indestructible. “So, she left the Jeep?”

  “Yep.”

  “You drive her home?”

  “Yep.”

  He stretched for a minute more, leaned against the mile-marker post I was sitting against, and sighed. “Okay . . .”

  “Okay, what?”

  “We do not have to talk about it.”

  “We are talking about it.”

  “No, I am talking about it, and all you are doing is saying ‘yep.’ ”

  I put on my best faraway smile and looked at the glowing hills down the valley. “Yep . . .”

  He kicked me again.

  A battered black and maroon three-quarter-ton diesel with a roll feeder, signature MCKAY RANCH, was coming down the road; it slowed as it got to the bridge and rolled to a stop beside us. Clel Phillips was the head ramrod for Bill McKay and was probably wondering what the Indian was doing beside the road with the sheriff laying alongside the barrow ditch. He rolled the window down on the feed truck and rested his shoulder against the door. “Hey.”

  Clel poured himself coffee from an aged Stanley Thermos and offered Henry a sip, which was gratefully declined, so he motioned toward me, and I left gra
ce behind for a steaming cup full of drip-dry Folgers. My legs were about to kill me. “Hey.”

  The coffee tasted good, and I used my other hand to pull the sopping sweatpants from between my legs. Clel filled the cup up again. “What’re you fellas up to?”

  “Running.”

  He looked up and back down the road. “From what?” He took the insulated cap back and took a sip. “Hey, Sheriff . . .” Business call. I never ceased to be charmed by the cowboy way of priming the pump. They were like cattle, constantly looking into your eyes to see if there was danger or if there needed to be. It was the best part of the cowboys’ character, the animal husbandry part. They stayed up through many nights in frozen calving sheds, running their hands over and into expectant mothers, comforting them, soliciting them. The cows’ lives depended on them, and their lives depended on the cows. It wasn’t an easy way to live, but it had its rewards. “I’m havin’ a little trouble with Jeff Tory.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “You know that stretch of bottom land between his place and McKay’s? Well, he’s been lettin’ bird hunters on his place, and they seem to be havin’ a little trouble figurin’ out where Tory’s place ends and ours begins.”

  Escaped pheasant, Hungarian partridges, and chuckers were prevalent up and down the valley as they fled from the two local bird farms and from the eastern Remington Wingmasters that pursued them. We had the best bird hunting in the state, and every once in a while somebody else found out about it. I hadn’t hunted since Vietnam; somehow, it had lost its appeal. Clel was finishing up his saga by the time I got interested in his problem, “. . . and Bill says he’s gonna give ’em a load of rock salt for their trouble.”

  “Well . . .” Henry was bobbing up and down, but I paused for a moment to collect my thoughts. In sheriffing, shooting people with anything was bad business, and Bill McKay was just the kind of ornery cuss that would go after double-ought buck hunters with rock salt just to call it even. “Does Bill have signs up along that stretch of fence?”