Alice said, looking distressed, ‘Speaking of keeping up, I just realized I’ve got the whole paper to edit before press time tomorrow. How can I do that and write the helicopter story too? Can you help me with that? You were there, you heard everything he said.’
‘But you took all the notes. Don’t worry’ – he shook off her hand – ‘I’ll write up what I remember and you can put marks all over it and rewrite it the way you always do.’
‘I suppose,’ Alice said, walking out, frowning. All the way home, she asked herself, Why did I ever say I’d do this job? It’s much harder than I expected. She was home in her kitchen, getting pans out, before the thought formed. The truth is, this is not the job I agreed to do.
NINE
Nod showed up alone the next Saturday, with product and needles.
‘Winkin had to see another customer,’ he said. Not apologizing, just stating a fact. ‘But you’re all about ready to solo anyway, aren’t you? You don’t need much help.’
They all made noises like, more or less, ‘Yeah.’ Not sure of themselves but not ready to pick any fights with Nod.
‘How about you, Undie – you about ready for the needle now? You get a better high, and you get it faster.’
Undie had his mouth open to say no. But suddenly he met Nod’s cool, appraising stare, and something in him didn’t want to back down from that. So he shrugged and said quietly, ‘Sure.’
He was rewarded with a tiny glint that he took for approval, and felt his mood tick up a notch. ‘I don’t have a way to get any more needles, though, or—’
‘I’ll take care of that one more time. But you guys have a smoke shop here in town, don’t you? Well, grow up and tell them to keep you supplied with needles. Or, from next week, add a buck to the weekly price, and I’ll bring the needles.’
Again, a chorus of grunts. They were all so wary of earning Nod’s contempt, they’d lost the power to protest.
Undie had always had a powerful dread of needles. He had screamed his way through small-child shots, whimpered and squirmed through middle grades and begged his mother for an excuse to avoid shots for the last two grades. She wouldn’t let him off and he had vomited every time. Even his father’s contempt had not changed his behavior; his nausea started as soon as he saw the needle.
Today, though, this great new pleasure was at stake. He watched carefully as Nod filled the syringe, then laid his open elbow on the table in front of his mentor and took his dose like a soldier. Everybody else did the same, and nobody commented – they all maintained stoic silence during the shots. He had no way of knowing if any of the others felt fear.
Undie lay back against his hay bale for the first few minutes, just feeling grateful that he had not birded in front of his buds. Then the glow began, and for the rest of the afternoon he felt like the king of someplace beautiful.
It was only later, at home alone, that he realized his shot hadn’t really hurt at all. It was just a little prick – not much more than squeezing a pimple. Could this be the same size needle he’d been making such a fuss about all these years? He began to long for one true friend, somebody he could trust not to ridicule him if he talked about his feelings.
Because feelings were the point of this whole adventure, weren’t they? The risks were worth taking because of how the product made you feel. The first time he smoked pot in Naughtie’s loft, he’d realized, This makes the world feel like a different place. The second time, he had added another little gleeful thought: And I can feel it again whenever I want to.
That wasn’t exactly true, under present circumstances, but thinking about arranging his life so it would be true eventually made him feel goal-oriented, on top of things. In odd little moments, ever since that second shot of heroin, he would think, If you know what you want out of life, you can just keep moving toward it till you get it. And there was so much power in that thought!
The road didn’t always run smooth, of course.
On the Saturday following Undie’s big leap of faith with the needle, Nod showed up alone again. And this time he was empty-handed.
‘No needles, no heroin,’ he told the would-be customers facing him in the barnyard. ‘Winkin’s gone to find out what’s happened.’
‘What, you only got one supplier?’ Naughtie turned away and watched an Appaloosa nibbling the paddock fence. ‘That seems kind of bush league, to me.’
‘Is there somebody else we can try?’ Undie asked him, barely keeping his voice friendly, trying for the tone you’d use at Office Max if they ran out of staples. He had worked two part-time shifts bagging groceries at the Fry’s nearest his house, and made up the rest of the new, higher payment by stealing small amounts from his family every day all week. Picking his father’s pockets felt like a crude sort of justice, but added stress that made his nightmares worse. He was close to tears at the thought of having gone through all that for nothing.
‘There’s one other place and I already tried it,’ Nod said. ‘Something’s happened to the supply line.’ He reached under the driver’s seat and brought out a bag. ‘I was able to get hold of this weed. It’s top of the line; back-door stuff from one of the medical fakers. It’ll give you a nice ride for the whole afternoon, and if you take the whole bag I can let you have it for just over half the street value.’ He looked around and gave the bag a little shake. ‘You want it? Yes or no?’
They took it, of course; it was better than nothing. They spent a long time over the math, dividing up the price and debating over the change. Nod looked about ready to start a killing spree by the time the haggling was over. But when they finally all got a joint rolled and the spicy-sweet odor filled the loft, they leaned back in the hay and got started on the day’s serious business – getting mellow. After that, there was nothing in the loft but happy sounds.
Nod left as soon as he had his money, saying he was sure the supply-chain problem would be solved by next week. Saturday afternoon contentment was a habit with the Gamers now. They wanted to hang onto this new, life-expanding experience, and Nod and his mates were the only dealers they knew, so they agreed to meet him in a week. He had given them an OK afternoon, but just OK, not great. They had glimpsed Nirvana; they wanted more of that.
Undie fingered the leftover money in his pocket as he rode home. It was pleasant to think he had almost half of what he would need for next week. But to make sure there was going to be a next week, a real one with the glow intact, he decided to talk to Naughtie, the host and organizer of Games Day in the loft. They met in the usual dodgy spot in the hall at school.
‘Let’s not mess around like this,’ Undie said, his small, usually furtive face set in sterner-than-usual lines. ‘Let’s find a supplier we can count on.’
‘I’ve been thinking the same thing,’ Naughtie said. ‘There’s seven or eight of us now, pretty regular, and we always come up with the cash. So for that kind of money we should be able to find somebody who’ll take our account seriously.’
They nodded solemnly, feeling taller. It would be quite a while before they realized they had begun to sound a lot like the establishment they had ganged up to rebel against.
TEN
The rain that put the fire out ushered in another spell of glorious Indian summer. Leaves of aspen and maple flamed crimson and gold, and began spiraling to earth. Fresh snow powdered the peaks of the mountains, the smoke cleared away and brilliant sunshine lit the whole panorama. All week, the staff of the Guardian crunched to work through the brilliant clutter of fallen leaves, and came inside reluctantly.
The alternative fire story came back from the printer on time and was sent to customers old and new. Contrary to her earlier resolution, Alice was billing out-of-town customers for the first half of the extra edition when Stuart came to work the next morning. He smiled at her and said, ‘So you’re turning into the billing clerk after all.’
‘Just this once more. Mort’s got another high school girl to work Saturdays from now on. And when I’ve finished this job
I’ve got a date to meet Clarence Simpson in his potato patch.’
‘God, newspapering is fun, isn’t it? Who’s Clarence Simpson?’
‘The other half of the mop-up team that found the burned body. Judy found a cell phone number for him and it turns out he needs to put his garden to bed on off days, just like the rest of us.’
‘Judy’s the best for having all the right info, isn’t she? She found me the last name for the red sneaker guy, too,’ he said. ‘It’s Davis. And his freebie, according to what he wrote on his sign-in sheet, is called Savvy Shopper.’
‘Oh, good.’
‘But she forgot to get a phone number. So I called the Bozeman Chamber of Commerce, and asked them for the number of a new shopping guide named Savvy Shopper. Guess what?’
He looked annoyed, so Alice guessed, ‘They say the Savvy Shopper just suspended publication for lack of funds.’
‘Worse than that. They say there’s no such publication in Bozeman that they know anything about – never has been. And they’ve never heard of Dooley Davis.’ He sat down in Alice’s desk chair and began revolving slowly, glaring at his shoes. ‘They sounded like they thought I was some kind of a prankster.’
‘Have you talked to Judy this morning?’
‘Uh … yeah.’
His expression made her realize the question had been indiscreet. She soldiered on, pretending not to notice. ‘Does she still think he’s the one who got burned?’
‘Off and on. Last night she said yes, but this morning she doubts if he could be the guy. Dooley just hated being around that fire, she says. He found it much scarier than he expected. She’s sure he wouldn’t go back up there by himself.’
‘It seems pretty unlikely to me too,’ Alice said. ‘And have you ever heard of anybody using a fake ID to get a look at a forest fire?’
‘Never,’ Stuart said. ‘Except … that business of looking in people’s faces – maybe he was looking for somebody he knew?’
‘But isn’t that the oddest place you could possibly imagine to start looking for someone?’
‘Yes. But right now I just remembered I’ve still got to get the grocery store ads for this week, and those guys will skin me alive if I don’t get every loss leader exactly right. So I think I’d better decide I don’t have to explain every odd thing in Clark’s Fort today.’
‘No, you don’t,’ Alice said. ‘The Guardian’s a weekly newspaper again and this is only Tuesday, so you’ve got till tomorrow night to explain every odd thing in Clark’s Fort.’
Stuart rolled his eyes to the ceiling, found his order book and strode out into the bright October morning. Alice finished her bills for the extra edition, and put her own bar bill from the Gandy Dancer Saloon on top of the pile, thinking, Mort will make me wait as long as he possibly can for this money, so I better start nagging right away.
Then she picked up her iPad and told Sven, ‘I’m going to interview Clarence Simpson. I’ve got my cell.’ She got out the door quickly then, before anybody started asking questions. The nitpicking detail about who handed over the shoe to the incident commander could have waited, or maybe even been skipped entirely. Who really cared?
But, on the other hand, who knew how much longer the Indian summer would last? Stuart had found his reason to get outside, and she was pleased with herself for finding one more credible outdoor job for herself. On company time, in no hurry at all, she drove downstream, basking in the glorious October weather.
‘I work in a non-profit industry,’ Clarence Simpson told Alice. ‘I’m a farmer.’
He said he had a couple of hundred acres on this small creek east of Clark’s Fort, ‘And I work part-time at three other jobs, so I can keep every penny I make from the hay crop and garden plots on my farm to pay down the mortgage. Lucky for me, I have a patient wife with a good job in town. She’s willing to wait a couple more years to start a family, because once we have the farm paid off, we’ll be, kind of, in a small way, on easy street.’
Alice thought him little changed since she’d taught him eighth-grade English and Social Studies – same pleasant face and quiet voice, and the willingness to tackle the hard stuff. She remembered how she had struggled that year, probably not always successfully, to keep from showing that he was her favorite student.
She found him in one of his garden plots, loading baskets of freshly dug potatoes into his pickup. He turned over a barrel for her to sit on, stuck the tines of his pitchfork into the dirt and leaned on the handle while he told her about that day on Meredith Mountain.
‘Working those hot spots, you know, it’s kind of a tricky business. Everything underfoot was still hot, and the ashes so deep we didn’t hardly want to step off the trail, afraid we’d get embers inside our pants and burn our legs. And yet, every so often we’d find a patch that was hardly burned at all – like that tussock where the mountain ash was growing, in a tangle of little trash pines.’
‘Why didn’t it burn?’
‘Oh, fire can be freaky – fire’s the one thing that goes uphill faster than down, did you know that? And sometimes the draft in those gullies pulls it up so fast it skips over things, which is what must have happened there. That ash tree was just as green, all the berries orange and juicy – usually there’ll be cedar waxwings eating the berries this time of the year, but of course they’d all flown away from the fire. So the only color up there was the berries and that one crazy shoe.
‘Frank didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He said, “Come on, we’re here to put out fires, what’s a stupid shoe got to do with anything?” But I said, “They told us to turn in anything we found, remember?” Finally I got sick of arguing and just climbed the damn tree and knocked it down.’
‘Wait a minute – you climbed the tree?’
‘Only partway – the laces were snagged on a branch about halfway up.’ He looked at her curiously. ‘Why is that so strange?’
‘Only that Navarro said he climbed up and got the sneaker.’
‘Oh.’ Clarence took off his striped John Deere cap with the long bill, scratched his messy hair, and said, ‘Well …’ in an embarrassed way and put the hat back on. ‘That’s just … Frank being Frank.’
‘What does that mean?’ She watched Clarence blush and look away. She had known him most of his life and would have vouched for his honesty in court. ‘Why would he lie about such a silly little thing?’
‘Well, see … Frank kind of likes to embroider the truth a little.’
‘What for? I don’t get it.’
‘He just … for some reason, every story he tells, he always has to be the hero.’
‘You mean, it’s a self-esteem thing? He wants to be admired?’
‘Mmm … I suppose that’s what it is. I’m not sure he knows, himself … He halfway believes his little white lies by the time he tells them, I think.’
‘Doesn’t that make him kind of hard to work with?’
‘Oh … I’m used to him so it doesn’t bother me anymore. He’s a pretty good guy, you know. Give you the shirt off his back, actually. He just always wants to look like the smartest guy in the room.’
‘OK. Let me see if I’ve got this right. You saw the shoe in the tree. Frank said forget about it, but you wanted to follow orders so you walked across the hot stuff and climbed the tree to get it down. Then what?’
‘Frank said, “I think I see smoke up above, let’s get back up there.” But I didn’t see any smoke. So I said I thought we ought to look around a little because that shoe didn’t walk up there by itself.’
‘You said that? Dear me.’
‘You mean he told you he said it?’
‘Yes. Almost word for word, I think.’ They looked at each other and this time they both shrugged. ‘Tell me,’ Alice said, ‘was it as hot as you feared, walking around that tree? Did you burn your feet?’
‘No. It was still very warm, but we both had good boots and we were lucky – we never stumbled into an active burn. People have been known to do th
at, though, and it’s no joke, burning your legs when you’re out there so far from help. We both hated that walk around the tree, even before we found the body under the log.’
‘When you realized what you had there, what did you do?’
‘We each stuck a red marker in the ashes and then ran for the trail. Jim Tasker, when I got him on the phone, kept telling me not to touch it. But I said, “Don’t worry, Sheriff, I wouldn’t touch that thing if you paid me extra.”’ Clarence looked away from Alice, down toward the creek, and said hoarsely, ‘I still have nightmares.’
‘It must have been hard for the two of you, waiting up there for the sheriff.’
‘I’ll tell you the truth – I only lasted about two minutes before I turned my back on Frank and walked back out into the ashes and puked. When I got myself cleaned up and stepped back on the trail, Frank wouldn’t look at me, and I could see he’d been crying.’
‘He cried in the bar yesterday, too. Does he do that a lot?’
‘Never since I’ve known him, till now.’
‘So was there something extra tragic about … I mean, because the body was so badly burned or—?’ She stopped, unsure how to ask a man about his emotions.
‘Something extra tragic. I don’t know how to compare … See, this is the first dead body I ever actually found.’ Too late, Alice realized that she had asked a stupid question and dear, kindly Clarence Simpson was reliving the experience and quite possibly going to puke again.
To head him off, she said, ‘You showed exceptional presence of mind. If I ever found a body like that after a fire I’d probably run squawking down the mountain like a crazy parrot.’
It seemed to work; Clarence snickered a little and then gave a healthy chuckle and said, ‘That would be quite a sight to see, wouldn’t it? The English teacher running and squawking like a parrot.’
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