Depth of Winter

by Craig Johnson

  I could almost read a sadness in his face for my incompetence, but then he slipped to the right and when I followed him he spun to the left again, passing under my arm and bringing the eight-inch blade up between my ribs.

  Everything in my body froze as I unconsciously rose up on my toes in an attempt to escape the thin blade, but it remained there in my body as I rested my arm on his shoulder, my grip loosening as Henry’s knife slipped from my fingers.

  Unable to breathe, I looked up at my daughter and could see Alexia and Bianca holding her as she screamed, but there was no sound, other than Bidarte. “Suerte de matar, the final act.”

  My arm dropped beside his in a pathetic movement signaling utter defeat at the hands of a master—but then I closed my bloody hand around his as I seized him with my other arm like a horn and held him as I turned my face to look at him with my one eye.

  With a crushing grip, I took his knife hand and slowly began pulling the stiletto from me like a scabbard. The dread in his face heightened as he struggled to free himself but couldn’t.

  I finally pulled the stiletto from my ribcage and held his hand around the switchblade, the point of which I had lifted to the underside of his chin where it pushed an indentation in the skin.

  As he looked into the nickel-plated, apocalyptic pause in my eye, I could now see the panic in his. “You’re wrong, not all justice is personal—but this is.”

  Hammering it upward with all my remaining strength, I plunged the blade through the soft flesh under his jaw, through his palate and into his brain, and his eyes widened and then slowly, with an agonizing stillness, gazed into a distance beyond.

  I held him there for a moment to make sure of the deed and then released him. He slid from my arms and fell to the sand where he lay, gasping like a landed fish with his mouth opening and closing before lying there, very still.

  Hunching to the right in an attempt to lessen the pain from my wounds, it was all I could do to keep from following him to the ground. I leaned over and attempted to catch my breath, but either because of exhaustion or the amount of internal damage, I couldn’t. Finally pushing what little air there was from my lungs, I inhaled and tried to stand upright but still couldn’t, standing hunched over like that for I didn’t know how long.

  I slowly became aware of boots standing around me and was finally able to raise my face enough to look at them through my one eye.

  There were about a half dozen of them there backlit in the sun, the men from the desert with the automatic weapons now drooping toward the ground as they first contemplated Bidarte’s corpse and then me.

  They spoke in low voices, and even though I couldn’t understand them and the voices seemed to be coming from a long way away, I marveled at the beauty of the language. A spasm overtook me, and coughing, I brought a hand up to clear my eye, but there was too much blood and I finally gave up, concentrating on keeping on my feet as a wave of nausea hit.

  Glancing around, I was suddenly aware that the boots weren’t there anymore and that I was alone.

  Unsure of how much time had passed, I suddenly became aware of a roaring noise and looked up as best I could to see the phoenix rising again, screaming rhythmically and taxiing around, blasting me with dirt, grit, and sand as it moved away, faster and faster until it slowly lifted into the sky, headed for Heliopolis in Egypt to the Temple of R, or Mexico City—whichever came first.

  My legs collapsed under me, and I sat in the middle of the road, cupping a hand at my side in an attempt to stanch the bleeding. After a few seconds the nausea struck again, and I felt the need to just lie down, so I did but perhaps not as gently as I wanted to.

  Lying there on the ground, I watched as the phoenix circled and glinted in the sun-scorched sky, aware of its impending death and resurrection, rising from the ashes con moto to a beautiful song that rang in my ears as I slowly slipped away, hoping to be reborn.

  “Daddy, Daddy . . .”

  EPILOGUE

  When I finally came to the first thing I was aware of other than only being able to see out of my right eye was that I was clean and not sweating. The second thing I became aware of was that sitting in a chair at the foot of my bed was Tomás Bidarte, smiling and sharpening his knife.

  I jolted and tried to sit up, but when I did my vision blurred and hurting, I fell back against the pillow. After a moment, I opened my eye again, but he was gone and I was alone in the room.

  A warm wave overtook me, and I stared at the textured paint on the pale-as-death ceiling that looked like skin. Everything was fuzzy, and in the distance I heard someone speaking Spanish in a murmuring voice. There were other sounds, but they were nondescript and mechanical and try as I might, I faded away into the soft warmth.

  When I woke up again, I didn’t want to open my right eye for fear that I would be back in the desert, dead, staring up at the sky, so I opened my left eye, and didn’t see anyone or anything, only an absolute darkness, which was a little worrisome in itself.

  After a while I decided to open my right, desert and death be damned, and could see the hospital room again and a nice-looking nurse who had come in to adjust what felt like bandages on my head. She prepared a syringe and smiled at me.

  When I blinked, she disappeared without a word.

  I nodded in and out for days, which was fine with me since the Mexican government had a lot of questions, which explained the two suited men sitting at my bedside. “How do I know you guys are real?”

  They showed me their Federal Ministerial Police badges.

  “We don’t need no stinking badges.”

  They stared at me.

  I attempted to sit up, but the pain in my side caused me to gasp and clench my eye shut. I waited for the spasm to pass and slowly opened my eye again, but by then they were gone. “Well, this is getting tiring.”

  The nurse came back with food, which I ate, and I decided that that was how I was going to determine if people were real, whether or not they brought me food. The two agents from the FMP came by again.

  “You guys have anything to eat?”

  They looked at each other and then were gone again, but at least I had the satisfaction of watching them go.

  “Evidently it is not okay to waltz into a foreign country and give the big adiós to a couple of dozen men no matter how much everyone agrees that they deserved the big adiós and then head back across the border with a hearty hi-yo Silver.” Glancing around the room, a battered Adan Martínez now sat at the foot of my bed. “Doc?”

  He smiled or did his best to. “Yes.”

  “You’re here in the hospital, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have anything to eat?”

  He studied me through the bandages on his own face. “Would you like me to speak to someone?”

  “No.”

  “Are they not feeding you in this hospital?”

  “They are, but I’ve decided that the only way I can tell if people are really here is by having them bring me food or stick a needle in me.”

  He placed both hands on the footboard. “I will remember that for my next visit.”

  The next day the nurse, who I had decided was real, wheeled me into a small garden between two of the buildings where a hunchbacked man in a porkpie hat sat without legs in another wheelchair—he didn’t look at me.

  “Are you really here?”

  He turned toward my voice, his sunglasses reflecting the flowers.

  “You have lost your mind in this place?”

  “Maybe.” I waited a moment and then spoke again, studying the man across from me for fear that he might disappear. It truly was like that with the Seer, if you didn’t pay attention, he drifted away and you were left with nothing but your own thoughts, something I was desperate to avoid, although they crowded in on me anyway. “Your nephew, Alonzo . . .”

  He nodded,
but it was impossible to read his face behind the large sunglasses. “Father Rubio helped me to light a candle for him earlier today.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  He nodded some more and then lifted his face so that the sun gently struck him—at least I think it was the sun in that I wasn’t taking anything for granted lately. “This garden is pleasant, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you spoken to any of the others?”

  I chortled a laugh without much humor in it. “That’s the problem—I’ve been talking to everyone.” I glanced around, considering the two FMP men seated near the door. “I think I’m under house arrest.”

  He smiled. “Your friend, the government man, your government, hopes to see you soon, but he told me things to tell you.”

  “McGroder?”

  “Yes.”

  “My daughter?”

  “Has returned home to your granddaughter, along with the large Indian who terrifies everyone.”

  “Henry.”

  “Yes, and there is a blaspheming woman who loiters near the hospital.”

  “Vic.”

  He nodded. “She is in contact with Señor Guzmán—a bad influence.”

  “On whom?”

  “Both.”

  My turn to nod. “What about Adan, Bianca, Alexia, and the children?”

  “You are lucky that they did not kill the doctor, and he was able to bring himself together enough to save you.” He adjusted his porkpie hat and for the first time, smiled. “They have all joined forces and moved the Orfanato to Adan’s ranch.”

  “Will they be safe there?”

  He nodded. “With the attention you have brought to Monasterio del Corazón Ardiente, and the fact that the mines are still active, the government is now concerned, and I do not think the narcos will be doing business there any longer.”

  “So Alexia is planning on staying here in Mexico?”

  “It would appear.”

  “Looks like my daughter lost a friend.” I glanced toward the door where the two men had started talking to each other, both looking down the hallway. “I suppose there is no reason for her to come back to Wyoming.” Rolling my wheelchair forward just a bit, I reached out and placed a hand on the stump of his leg just to make sure—and the leg was solid. “It seems to me that everyone involved in this fiasco has lost someone—everyone except me.”

  His head dropped, and if he had been able to see, he would’ve been looking at my hand. “You almost lost yourself, no?”

  “It was kind of touch and go there for a while.”

  “But you are still here.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he is gone.”

  “Is he?”

  The Seer paused, and I couldn’t help but feel a slight panic as he slipped off the sunglasses for only the second time since I’d known him and stared at me with the milky-white, opaque pupils. “You doubt your own abilities?”

  “Like a cat, he seemed to have lots of lives.”

  He slipped the sunglasses into a shirt pocket, and we sat with the weight of silence smothering us. “Have you ever been to the bullfights, my friend?”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “The bullfights, have you ever been?”

  I took a breath. “That was what Bidarte asked, when he came to the cell in the monastery, and then later on the road, he asked me if I’d ever been to the bullfights.”

  “And have you?”

  There was a noise down the hall, and I noticed the two Mexican Feds were gone. Gesturing to the Seer and then realizing he couldn’t see me, I spoke. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”

  Wheeling my chair toward the hallway, I rounded the corner, but no one was there. I could hear loud noises coming from the interior of the hospital and a lot of shouting, but I figured that wasn’t anything with which I needed to be involved. Sighing, I turned my chair and rolled back to the garden where I discovered that the Seer was gone.

  “I really need to get a grip on myself.” Sitting there for a few minutes more, I suddenly decided to stand. I locked the wheelchair and carefully placing my bare feet on the stone path I steadied myself and rose, kind of hunched over, to a semistanding position, the pain keeping me from straightening all the way up.

  I went back inside and caught my breath, and my eye followed the black and white tiles down the hallway where I could see that one of the glass doors at the end was hanging half open, an incredible light flowing through the tempered glass. I took another sweep of the hallway with my one good eye, but just as before, the place was completely empty.

  I turned back and discovered Alonzo adjusting his thick glasses and smiling the goofy grin. “You should go.”

  “What?”

  “The door is open, and you should go through it.”

  Looking back at my wheelchair, I shook my head. “I’m not moving very fast these days.”

  “Take your time.”

  Staring at the glow still shining through the glass doors, I placed a hand against the wall, sliding it along as I moved, very slowly. “Your uncle was just here.” I couldn’t say the next part without dropping my eyes. “Alonzo.”

  “Sí?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I got you killed.”

  He shrugged. “Everybody dies.”

  I stopped there, my head hanging down. “Everybody around me.”

  “You save many.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to straighten, slowly standing upright until I thought the pain was going to split me in half. “We did.”

  I looked up, and he was gone, too, but in his place someone else stood backlit in the open door. Sliding along, I tried to focus my eye but it was like I was back in the desert, staring into the unforgiving sun.

  Predictably, he said nothing.

  Considering the circumstance, neither did I.

  I turned my head to the side and stared at the bushy-haired, wild young man still dressed in the cotton poncho, the M1 rifle still hanging off his shoulder. I could feel the light, almost as if it were burning its way through the door. After a moment he gestured, extending his arm with his palm up, bidding me to exit or enter whichever it was.

  “I’m not so sure I want to go through that door, Isidro.”

  He held the other hand out to me and through no volition of my own, my hand crept out to him and he guided me the rest of the way as he stooped and the amulet fell forward from around his neck on the thin chain—Riablo, the trickster devil that attempted to keep the balance of the universe with sacrifice.

  The bas-relief of the imprinted metal glinted in the bright light. “You giving me up to the powers that be?”

  I stumbled forward with my eyes closed against the brightness and fell, the pressure from the impact robbing me of my breath. I rolled sideways and felt someone pulling me up to a sitting position.

  I opened my eyes to tarnished gold ones that exploded with tiny flakes in layers of lighter colors and a mouth that covered mine with tender but insistent lips, capturing what little breath I had left. Her hair formed a dark shroud around my face, giving me relief from the scorching light. “What took you so long—this is a getaway, you know.”

  “Vic?” I studied her. “Are you really here?”

  She pulled back and smiled. “Boy howdy, are you fucked up.”

  Glancing around, I could see I was seated in the familiar, cavernous backseat of the pink 1959 Cadillac convertible with my undersheriff leaning over the front seat.

  “With the bullfighting . . .”

  I turned so that I could see the Seer, who was sitting in the backseat alongside me.

  “What the hell?”

  I was about to amplify my question when a large man in a black cowboy hat, an impressive mustache, and a hospital gown ran down the alley toward us. He was bar
efoot like I was and gave all of us a prodigious mooning as he threw himself into the driver’s seat, cranked the ignition, the big V-8 of the Caddy roaring like a poked panther.

  He first looked at Vic, and then threw an arm over the seat where I could see his plastic medical bracelet that read GUZMAN. He looked at me with a wink. “It would probably be in our best interests to get the hell out of here right now.”

  He yanked the Caddy into gear and floored it, blasting down the alley at mach speed, scattering trashcans, a few pedestrians, and finally some white-coated hospital orderlies, the massive steer horns leading the way.

  The Seer, shouting to be heard, yelled in my ear. “As I was saying, with the bullfighting, every once in a great while . . .” He leaned in, his porkpie hat flying from his head and his sunglasses reflecting my image through a glass, darkly. “The bull, he sometimes wins.”

  A CONVERSATION WITH CRAIG JOHNSON

  Before the start of Depth of Winter, Walt Longmire’s longtime nemesis Tomás Bidarte has kidnapped his daughter Cady and Walt has left his friends behind in order to rescue her from Bidarte’s clutches. Can you discuss the origin of Walt and Bidarte’s feud? Where does it stem from? Why are they such mortal enemies?

  The feud between Walt and Bidarte goes back five novels to A Serpent’s Tooth when Tomás Bidarte is introduced. He’s basically a hired gun in that book, but he and Walt go head to head and even though Walt saves Bidarte’s mother, things get ugly. It’s strange, but I think for Bidarte it’s an affront for Walt to become involved in his personal life, even if it’s in a positive way—an appropriation of his privacy, if you would, and that becomes business. For Walt, however, what begins as business becomes personal when Bidarte starts targeting Walt’s loved ones.

  Walt hates Bidarte because of his callous use of violence and murder, considering him to be so far from the norm of any decency that he is insane. The philosophical gulf between the two is enough to put them at odds, but when Vic Moretti is wounded attempting to save Walt, the animosity between Walt and Bidarte becomes concrete. Bidarte knows the way to truly hurt Walt is through the things that are most important to him, his friends and family. In this instance, not only is Vic almost killed, but she loses what was her and Walt’s child and any ability to ever have children in the future. In true Vic fashion she plays down the loss, but one can’t help but think that it’s something that will haunt both of them for the rest of their lives.