Cold Dish wl-1

by Craig Johnson

  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 that 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 grace 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?”

  This is not what Clel wanted to hear, another chore to add to his ever-growing list. “No, we ain’t got no signs. You’d think the fence would be enough.”

  “Well, I guess it’s not.” The state law was fence to keep out, which meant that if you didn’t want anything on your land, you were responsible for the fences, but evidently it took stronger measures for the two-legged variety. “Why don’t you run into Shipton’s and get some of those yellow metal no hunting signs and just wire ’em to the fence?”

  “Then what?”

  “Then you call me.”

  He mulled that one over. “Sheriff Connally woulda let us shoot ’em.”

  I reached over and took his coffee away from him. “Yep, Lucian probably would have done the job himself, but we’re living in more enlightened times.” I drained his cup and handed it back with a smile. “Ain’t it grand?”

  I pushed off the truck and casually thundered the entirety of my 255 pounds, shoulder first, into Henry’s chest, emptying his lungs and sending him sliding backwards into the frosty grass below. I turned to smile and wave at Clel as I cut behind his truck and ran for my life. Past the county line, another hundred yards to my driveway, and another hundred to the cabin. I would never make it. I started listening to the rhythm of my breathing as I pushed with every muscle I didn’t have. Maybe this was all I needed every morning, somebody angry to chase after me. I figured it could be easily arranged. This was not the first time a white man in this part of the country had found himself in this particular situation. I must have pushed him farther than I had thought, because I could just make out the scratching of his shoes as they fought the shale bed at the side of the road.

  Tell them Standing Bear is coming.

  My head started feeling gorged with blood, whereas my legs began feeling as if they’d been left out overnight. To make things worse, my clammy sweatpants were now riding up the crack of my ass. I wondered if the Seventh Cavalry had had this problem as I ran for all I was worth, listening to the growing pat of his cushioned running shoes. I thought about turning to meet him, but the sound seemed to be coming from a distance yet, and I figured I’d play it out till the end.

  The sun was shining on the driveway when I got there, and I was careful not to slip on the thawing frost as I cut the corner and headed into the final furlough. The receding wind was enough to flip the dried leaves up in salute as I passed, and I started thinking about making it: mistake. It didn’t take much, just a little nudge that forced my left foot in front of my right just before we got to the Big Bonanza irrigation channel. The results were cataclysmic as my already top-heavy momentum carried me into the only partly empty ditch.

  By the time I got to the cabin, Henry was standing with two young men at the southeastern corner about t
en feet from the front log wall. One of them was the young man with the strong features I had seen at the bar the other night. I walked past the ’69 half ton sitting in my drive and glanced at the hand-lettered writing on the door. Hopefully, Red Road Contracting’s carpentry skills were better than their sign painting ones.

  “Well, if you do the porch at ten feet, then you can use dimensional twelves for the roof overhang.” He turned to look at me. “Run the porch all the way across the front.”

  “Porch?” They were looking me over, but I guess they figured I was covered with mud every day.

  “Yes, most people have areas outside their houses so that they can keep the majority of the outdoors outside.” Henry folded his arms and looked at me. “Charlie Small Horse, Danny Pretty on Top, this is Sheriff Walter Longmire.”

  Pretty on Top was Crow, so it was a two-tribe deal. “How much is this going to cost?” I had to do this quickly; my pants were already starting to harden.

  “I am glad you asked that question, because I like to be real up front with people on the cost of things. That way there isn’t any problem later on.” He looked down the front of the house and imagined the porch that would be the first step forward in home improvement I had taken in years. “About fifteen hundred in materials if you use rough-cut, not including the tin. Then labor.” Charlie Small Horse and I were going to get along.

  After my shower, using soap as shampoo, I passed them on the way to the Bullet. They had already placed stakes and run string lines to give the general dimensions of the structure, and Charlie Small Horse was using a digging bar to break away the frozen topsoil. He paused to look up and smile as I carefully stepped over the bright green twine.