Death Pans Out

by Ashna Graves

  Neva pictured an evening with the sheriff at a lively bar full of locals, followed by a night in the lovely old hotel. At any other time in her life the prospect would have been irresistible. In her regular life, it would have turned directly into a newspaper column, but now, thinking of her quiet cabin, the young man lying dead across the street, and the little dog waiting at the deserted Barlow Mine, she shook her head. “I’m not myself today, Sheriff. I’m better off going home.”

  “Then how about letting me know next time you’re in town.” He squashed her hand in his. “Just stop in at the jail. I’m easy to find.”

  ***

  Neva arrived back in the Dry River Valley when the sun was low in the west. Black Angus cattle, the first cows she had seen apart from Darla’s, stood like ebony carvings on a bright green field bordering the river. In the next field, sandhill cranes stood immobile on long legs. She slowed to a creep, watching in vain for a head or wing to move. She also watched for mailboxes that stood at the head of the lanes leading away from the highway every half-mile or so. The lanes ended at farmhouses, most on this side of the river, but a few on the south side across narrow plank bridges. The mailboxes, all large, bore names in weathered paint or flat brass letters.

  An especially decrepit box bore the name Anthony Briggs. Neva pulled over onto the gravel shoulder next to the mailbox and looked down the lane at a house set among cottonwood trees just across the river. Even from this distance it was easy to see that the house matched the mailbox. Tall and narrow, as though starved, it sat behind a picket fence missing half its posts, with a gate that was propped rather than hanging on hinges. Briggs hadn’t been exaggerating when he complained about struggling ranches.

  Recalling his rudeness, she knew she should drive on, should not expose herself to further distress on this of all days, but curiosity kept her sitting at the side of the road watching the house. It appeared abandoned apart from dogs. With luck, Briggs wouldn’t be home and another family member could show her the rifle. In any case, she was prepared for unpleasantness so at least it wouldn’t take her by surprise.

  Her tires bumped over the loose boards of the bridge. The motley set of dogs, stiff-legged and silent, watched her park. Their eyes followed her up the walk to a weathered door showing chipped layers of paint. There was no bell or knocker so she rapped with her knuckles, and was relieved when the door was opened by an old man with white-grizzled cheeks, who regarded her with a moronic, though friendly, grin. His baggy trousers hung low on suspenders that had lost their elastic, while his hands hung passively as though they had been of little use for years.

  “Eh?” he said, beaming. “Eh?”

  A television roared behind him in a room that, cave-like, was heavily curtained against the rich evening light outside. Stepping aside he waved her in, then folded like a dropped marionette into a recliner, his eyes fixed on the television. Neva followed, and from just inside the door she examined the strange room. From the shag-carpeted floor to the walls hung with velvet paintings and woven throws depicting country scenes, every surface was shaggy. Ancient, overstuffed couches and chairs left no space for movement except for a narrow path to a bright doorway where a little woman appeared, her gray hair standing out against the light.

  “Don’t mind him, don’t mind him. Lazy and crazy, aren’t you now, Father?” The woman laughed and waved Neva forward.

  The old man paid no attention to the woman or to Neva as she passed him to get to the kitchen, a first cousin to the living room. Heaped objects hid every surface, including an old wood range, which sat next to a gas range that had evidently usurped its function without actually driving it out of the house.

  The woman wiped her hands on a pinafore-type apron and offered them to Neva. “Tillie Briggs, I’m so glad to meet you. Just have a seat there. I’m fixing his dinner. If he doesn’t have his dinner on the dot he gets very upset.”

  “I’m Jeneva Leopold. I’m staying the summer up at Billlie Creek Mine.”

  “Sure you are,” Tillie said, then disappeared into a small side room where Neva could see the corner of a freezer lid go up, followed by a rummaging sound. The lid dropped and Tillie emerged waving a bag of home-frozen peas.

  “His favorite,” she said, pouring peas into a pot steaming on the gas range. “I’ve been reading the Capitol Press,” she continued as though she and Neva were comfortable acquaintances, and Neva would of course know that the Capitol Press was the state agricultural newspaper, which she certainly would not know if she worked in a field other than journalism or farming. “I can’t afford the subscription any more but I pick it up when I can. I’ve just been reading where they’re growing organic vegetables over there in the Willamette Valley. Don’t I wish we could grow them here, but you can’t grow anything here for profit. You can’t hardly grow cows anymore, not so it pays. And sheep, well, it’s not worth selling them with the imports from Australia. I just look at mine as pets. If we could grow organic vegetables we might get out of debt, but don’t say that to him, he won’t go for anything but cows. He says a ranch without cows is no kind of ranch at all. No, you can’t talk to him. He doesn’t even like for me to talk this way because of what people will think.”

  The old man had come shuffling into the kitchen during this speech, and was pawing among the medicine bottles in a plastic tub nestled into the debris that covered the table. Smiling, blinking in a thoughtful manner, he looked simultaneously simple and wise as he lifted one plastic bottle after another, shook it, and put it back.

  “Need my pills,” he mumbled.

  “That’s a lot of pills,” Neva said.

  “Oh, some are for the dog!” Tillie laughed merrily as she ladled peas from the pot, then followed her shuffling husband into the front room carrying the bowl of peas with both hands while talking over her shoulder. “You just wait one minute until I get this guy settled with his supper and then we’ll have a good talk.”

  Outside, the low sun flooded the river valley with ripe evening light. Cows grazed, cranes stood in deep grass, herons flapped above the river, rattlesnakes stretched out on the pavement to soak up the last of the day’s heat. But in here behind heavy curtains time was of no account. Whether it was late or early in the day, spring or fall, last year or next was not significant. Peas would boil and pills would be swallowed. Tillie would read the agricultural news in the kitchen while the old man faced the roaring TV in the front room. Tillie Briggs, she thought with sudden appreciation, was a woman who would never bother to fold fitted sheets. She would roll them into a quick wad when they came out of the dryer or off the clothesline and stuff them into a cupboard so she could get on with something more interesting.

  “I suppose you’re wanting to see your uncle’s rifle,” Tillie said without preamble when she returned. She stood before Neva with her hands folded over her apron front.

  “Well, yes,” Neva said. “But there’s no hurry, and I don’t care about keeping it. I’m just curious about anything that was part of my uncle’s life. We didn’t have much contact with him when I was a kid.”

  “Of course you’d be interested and perfectly right, as I told Tony myself. He’s the only one of the boys who stayed on the ranch, and he means well, but it isn’t an easy life. I do have to say that. He’s out at the new house. I’ll ring him.” A search uncovered a cordless phone on a small table. “It’s just me,” she said into the telephone with no greeting. “You have that rifle? She’s here to see it.” Tillie clicked off, then addressed Neva with regret. “He says he’ll come right out. I thought we’d have a little talk first, but you might as well see what you came for.”

  Neva followed her through the back door and across a lean-to porch even more crammed than the house, leaving just enough room for them to pass between high banks layered like geological formations with wooden boxes, tools, flowerpots, twine, gunnysacks, cans, stakes, wire rolls, soil-encrusted tubers with pale root fingers twining outward. The smell was rich and attractively organic. Neva w
ould have enjoyed lingering but Tillie moved briskly out onto a ragged patch of lawn where Tony Briggs was waiting.

  Turning just beyond the door, she again took Neva’s hands. “I’ll get back to the house, then. Come talk to me any time. I do enjoy a talk. And I was real sorry to hear about that poor boy’s accident.”

  Beyond Tony stood a modular home with rust streaks below the windows and weeds around the small metal porch. A tricycle lay on its side in the weeds and on it was a red chicken that appeared to be sleeping. Without a word Tony handed her the rifle.

  Not accustomed to firearms, Neva held the rifle gingerly and was surprised by its weight. The wood stock was scarred but well oiled. “Does it still work?”

  “Why wouldn’t it?”

  “Looks like it’s had good care.”

  “Damn straight it has.” Tony was clean today, and rather than work boots he wore old moccasins on his feet, but still he scowled as though his head ached.

  “You said it was on the porch?”

  Without turning, Tony indicated the house behind him. “So it was you that found that kid, DeRoos. Head smashed in, they say. He was a little sissy, anyway. I wouldn’t have him working for me.”

  Neva looked at him in silence until he said, “Well, just because he’s dead doesn’t mean I have to like him. Nobody’s going to like me any better when I’m dead. Funny thing, you come out because of a dead man and you end up finding one, but it’s the wrong one.”

  “You are a very unpleasant man.” Neva dropped the rifle on the ground as though it had stung her, turned, and strode away around the corner of the house. The hen flew up from the tricycle squawking and a dog rushed at her from an open shed. Too angry to bother dodging the dog she marched on while it followed, making quick dashes at her legs but veering off without biting.

  She slammed the car into gear and sped up the lane and across the little bridge without slowing down for the planks. Her grip on the steering wheel was hard and she talked furiously to herself all the way to Billie Creek Road. Forced to slow down as the road steepened, bumping along in the last glow of sunset, she felt her anger begin to dissolve. She didn’t care what Tony Briggs said or thought, and recalling his gentle, eccentric mother and his failing father, and the impoverished look of things, she felt an involuntary rush of sympathy. They were clearly struggling. She would visit Tillie Briggs again soon, earlier in the day when Tony should be at work, and they would have that nice long chat the old woman had mentioned so wistfully. She did not need to see the rifle again, and she was glad to have left it behind.

  Gene’s truck was not at his cabin and there were no lights in the window or she would have stopped. He must have learned about Roy by now. She would have welcomed the chance to talk with someone who had known all three of the young miners, and drove regretfully on.

  It was nearly dark when she approached the Barlow Mine. Going slowly, dreading the sight of the road into the pit, she wished she had accepted McCarty’s suggestion and stayed at the Grand Hotel. Right now she would be sitting in a bar full of people, most likely half drunk herself, the noise level so ferocious it would chase everything else out of her mind. But someone had to feed the dog. Resolutely, she drove past the mine entrance without looking at it, followed the road around the pit, and pulled up at Reese’s cabin.

  The dog was gone.

  The chain lay on the ground still attached at one end to the porch pole. At the other end was an empty collar. Neva got out of the car to whistle and call, but she did not walk far. The absence of the dog put the finishing touch on the bleak scene, and she wanted only to get away. She filled the empty water and food dishes from closed containers on the porch, got back in the car, rolled up the windows, and drove too fast up the creek.

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the morning, Neva sat on the porch with coffee to watch the day begin, as usual, but her thoughts were not on the scene before her. She was thinking of the absent Skipper, and wishing she could walk down to the camp to sit with him under the pines talking over the accident. Even at this distance, she could feel the emptiness of the Barlow Mine, the absence of a single soul between here and Gene’s place. Her gaze was on the trees that surrounded the deserted camp, and as though in answer to her thoughts, there was movement between the pale trunks. A horse and rider appeared. It was Darla Steadman, she saw after a puzzled moment, and the rancher was leading a second horse with three dogs trotting behind.

  Despite the lack of warmth on their first meeting, Neva went eagerly to wait for Darla by the woodshed, relieved to have human company of any sort. Without a word, Darla swung down from the saddle, dropped the reins for both horses, and removed her hat to reveal a mat of sweaty hair. She pulled a bandanna from her pocket, wiped her forehead, folded the bandanna, and said, “Bad luck about Roy.”

  Neva nodded and looked away.

  “I’m going up for the cows. I brought Barbry Allen in case you felt like going along. Sometimes a ride’s the best medicine there is.”

  The offer was so kind and unexpected that Neva looked at her visitor for a moment, nodded without speaking, then turned her gaze to the tidy little brown horse that stood on three legs, letting the fourth leg rest in a slightly cocked position with only the point of the hoof on the ground. The saddle was worn shiny where a thousand pairs of jeans had rubbed it. Neva hadn’t ridden since her teens, but she could feel the creak of the leather as she imagined swinging into the saddle, which would be warm from the sun and the body heat of the little mare. Had she been asked five minutes ago what she would enjoy most in the world, riding a horse would not have made the list. Now, suddenly, she wanted to take the reins on the spot, grasp the saddle horn, swing into the saddle, and head for the high country.

  “You can ride?” Darla said.

  “Yes, that is, I can stay on. Thank you, Darla, thank you so much. I’d love to ride with you.”

  “Your feet look about right.” Darla’s tone was matter-of-fact, and she turned with businesslike briskness to untie the thongs that secured a bundle to the back of the saddle. “I only had size eight. They’ve seen better days, but who hasn’t.”

  She handed Neva a pair of dark leather riding boots that truly did look as though they’d been worn from New Mexico up to British Columbia and back again. But they had been freshly oiled and though they were stiff to pull on, they were comfortable apart from a slight squeezing in the toes. Wearing the boots, Neva felt as though she’d undergone a subtle character change, had become more commanding and even a little dangerously sexy. “They’re just fine,” she said. “I feel tall.”

  Darla declined coffee, saying they had a long ride ahead and had best be going. Walking self-consciously in the wedge-heeled boots, Neva hurried inside, made her usual preparations for departure, and was back outdoors within minutes. Resisting the urge to affect nonchalance, she got her left foot into the stirrup, swung the right leg up and found herself perched alarmingly far from the ground.

  “You got on, that’s a good start,” Darla said, handing her the reins. “She knows what to do.”

  The dogs leaped up from the shade of the woodshed where they’d flopped on arrival and took up positions behind the horses as they started down the road. Two were short-haired, spotted and looked like twins, while the third was small and had the long silky hair of a show dog, and long ears that fell over his eyes but didn’t appear to slow him down. The twins trotted shoulder-to-shoulder, with the silky dog dashing around them like a small child who has just been allowed to play with the big kids for the first time.

  Neva felt rather like a child herself as she tried to match her posture to the rancher’s, which was relaxed and controlled at the same time.

  “In heat like this the cows pretty much stay to the creek,” Darla observed as they rode through Skipper’s camp. “If we head up it we should get most of them.”

  “What if some are downstream?”

  “I came all the way up the creek from Gene’s place and didn’t see any. They
always did like the upper bowl. Like me, I guess, they prefer the high country.”

  From the camp they rode single file with Darla leading. Noting the way she reined through the trees, Neva did the same even though Barbry Allen seemed to need little direction. The docile horse responded to the slightest signal, stepping lightly over logs, navigating through scattered rocks, squeezing between close-set pines. The first time she jumped the creek Neva clutched the saddle horn, then let go as though stung, recalling that only greenhorns hang on. While she didn’t mind confessing to being a greenhorn she didn’t want to look like one. The land was not quite the same when viewed from the saddle though she could not easily identify the difference—a little less intimate, maybe? The crowns of the scattered pines and junipers felt closer, while the sagebrush and flowers were not so easy to see in detail.

  Soon they picked up a group of cows. Bellowing and kicking up dust, the cows rolled their eyes in terror even though the two riders ambled along well behind, ignoring them unless one strayed, when Darla would spur ahead to outflank the runaway and, aided by the dogs, drive it back with a whoop and a slap of her hat against her lean thigh. Most of the time they rode side-by-side, and during one of these stretches, Darla said, “I can’t figure out what Roy was up to. He knew better than to drive close to the edge like that. He wanted to work for me, to be a cowboy. He thought he’d be riding into the sunset every day. I asked how he’d like to mend fences, and move irrigation pipe, and drive around the hills checking salt licks. I wish now I’d talked up ranching instead of discouraging him.”

  “You couldn’t foresee something like this.” Neva studied the rancher from the side. Her tone was sincerely regretful, which shouldn’t be surprising, but her habitual wooden expression seemed to deny emotion just as it denied her beauty. “Young men are their own worst enemies.”

  “When you’re dealing with a Cotter, you better expect anything. Hey, cut that out!” Darla spurred after a young bull that had already tried three times to circle back down the creek.