Lucian unstrapped his wooden leg at the bank, took off his hat, jumped into the creek, and a minute later came up. “This goddamned bottle.” They helped him with his leg and his hat and then cheerfully jumped in the back of the squad car for the ride into town. The Cheyenne elders were careful when they spoke his name, Nedon Nes Stigo, He Who Sheds His Leg.
Lucian knew who Henry was, and he knew his name. “He can probably help you figure out who did the feather and where on the Rez it came from. Gawd, all my contacts out there are dried up dead and traveling on the wings of the wind. But you gotta start with that girl’s family.”
“Henry is her family.”
He shook his head. “How’s Ladies Wear tied into the Thunderbirds?”
“Little Birds. Melissa’s father is Henry’s cousin.”
“So, the daughter’d be his second cousin.”
“Yep, but with the age discrepancy they just call her his niece.”
“Her father the one that lost his legs, Lonnie?”
“Diabetes.”
“Damn, that’s rough.” I looked at the one-legged man before me. “The mother was a drunk, and the kid turning out feebleminded the way she did…” The hand went back to his face, and the air that came from his lungs rattled like a snake. “Well, go talk to ol’ Ladies Wear.”
“You don’t think he’s a suspect?”
His eyes quickly looked like the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun. “Do you?”
“No.”
He continued to look at me. “He’s your best friend, seems like it’s something you’d know.”
“Yep.”
He leaned his head to one side and half-closed the nearest eye, sighting me in. “You don’t sound so sure.”
“I am.” He watched me as I reached over to the sofa and got my coat. “Anybody else I should put on the list?”
He shrugged. “How the hell should I know. I’m retired.”
It was still nice when I got outside. I always used the emergency exit by the commissary at the end of the hallway. I never looked down into the sliding glass windows as I crossed the parking lot; it seemed demeaning to Lucian. In my peripheral view, I could see the lights were still on, and I was sure he still sat there watching me, waiting for next Tuesday. I turned around.
“What the hell do you want now?”
It hadn’t taken long to get back to his room. I leaned on the doorway, pretty much filling the opening and pushed the brim of my hat back. “Have you thought about that dispatcher’s job we talked about a while ago?”
He had unbuttoned his shirt and hopped to the dividing wall, his hand steadying him. “Two years ago?”
“Yep.” He stared at me through the eyebrows. “Things are awful busy, and I could use some help.”
“Two days a week?”
“Weekends, yeah.”
“I’ll have to think about it.” He didn’t move, embarrassed at being caught hopping through his suite and heading for bed.
“You were going after that bourbon, weren’t you?” He didn’t smile very often but, when he did, he had great teeth. I wondered idly if they were his.
I started back to the office with the windows down. If it was going to snow, it wasn’t giving any indication of it. The moon glowed a clear white, slipping through the slender arms of the willows along Clear Creek. Late at night you could hear the water, and most of the summer I would leave the windows in my office open so I could listen. It was only about eight-thirty, but the town had already put itself to bed.
There was a note from Ruby saying that Ferg had swung by the Espers but that nobody had been home. He would telephone them himself and stop by again tomorrow. There was an addendum Post-it, in which she related that she had informed him that he was being drafted to full time. She said his response hadn’t been enthusiastic, but he hadn’t been spiteful enough not to leave four dressed brown trout in the refrigerator for me. I wandered past Vic’s office and looked in at the explosion of legal pads. The display was daunting, and I would be cursed at if I messed up any of what I’m sure was a carefully detailed arrangement. We were little but we were mighty. I thought of Don Quixote, being far too powerful to war with mere mortals and pleading for giants.
I sat at my desk and looked at the phone as the windmills loomed overhead. Vonnie would still be up, but my courage had curdled. There was a sheet of paper from one of Vic’s legal pads with her angry scrawl spreading across the top quarter. I picked it up, turned on my desk lamp, and read… “Where the hell are you? Spiral searched the site with a fine-tooth comb. Full six hundred yards, and do you have any idea how fucking long that took? Numb-nuts thought there might have been some grass blowdown on one of the rises about five hundred yards away, so we had to stake and cover it. Guess how fucking long that took? He’s an expert with a camera, too. Go figure. Asked me out for a drink. Guess how fucking long that took?” It was signed, VIC. With an addendum, “PS: More grist for the investigative ballistics’ mill tomorrow, nothing worth hampering your extensive social life with.” And another. “PPS: I took the film over to the drugstore, and they said they would drop it off tomorrow morning, first thing. Read: noon.”
I had never received a note from Vic that had less than two PSs. I continued to hold up the yellow legal sheet and noticed the little pinholes of light shining through everywhere she had made a period. I laid the sheet of paper down and looked at the phone again. The feather caught my attention, and I picked it up, turning it in my fingers as it had turned in my mind all day. I picked up the phone, but it just hovered in my hand, a foot away. I could hear the dial tone, so it was working. I gently sat it back on the cradle and looked out the windows; as I suspected, the clouds were starting to haze out the mountains. I hoped that whatever Vic had found with Omar this afternoon was safely tucked away or covered with a staked plastic drop cloth.
I picked up the phone again, dialed, and listened to it ring. On the fourth ring there was the mechanical fumbling of the answering machine, and I left the daily message I had been leaving since last week, “This is your father, I just want to know if you’ve escaped, or do we have to pay the ransom?” Nothing, so I hung up.
My attempts at reviving my mood were failing, so I went back to the refrigerator in the jail to retrieve my trout dinner, and there, proudly standing at the front of the top shelf among the potpies and Reynolds-wrapped fish, was a mountain fresh, twelve-ounce bottle of Rainier beer. There was a yellow Post-it stuck to the bottleneck with Ruby’s careful handwriting, “In honor of your getting in shape.” That Ruby.
I twisted off the top and tossed it into the trash can, headed back into my office, and sat back down. I took a swig of the beer and felt a lot better. I picked up the phone yet again, and then remembered I was going to have to look up her number. I finally found my battered phonebook in the bottom drawer of my desk and sat about working my way through the H s. Michael Hayes. I dialed, and she picked it up on the second ring. “Yes?”
The yes surprised me, but I got back on my feet quick. “Hey, I haven’t even asked you yet.”
The response was soft. “Hello, Walter.”
I could see her curled up on one of those leather couches by the fire with the phone pulled in close. It had been so long and I was so out of my depths, I was always feeling dizzy when I spoke with her. “I can take that yes as a blanket response?”
“Is a sheriff supposed to be making these kinds of phone calls?”
I sat the bottle down and began working on the label with my thumbnail. “Sheriff who?”
“I was thinking about inviting you over for dinner.” There was a pause. “How about tomorrow night?”
“Perfect. What can I bring?”
“How about a bottle of fine wine and your fine self.”
“I can do that. Tomorrow’s a court day, but then I’ll just be running around like a chicken with its head cut off, standard operating procedure.” She laughed, and it was warm and melodic. I should have pushed for tonight. She advised
me to take care of my head till then and bid me farewell till light through yonder window break. It was hard to describe, but courting Vonnie seemed to elevate me onto another plane. Without trying to sound like some lovesick teenager, the world just seemed better, like the air I was breathing had a little something extra.
I finished off the beer, gathered up the feather and fish, and headed for the Bullet. I looked at the smear of clouds reflected by the moon. It looked cold on the mountain. We were in the fifth year of a drought cycle, and the ranchers would be glad of the moisture collecting up there. In the spring, the life-giving water would trickle down from the precipices, growing the grass, feeding the cows, making the hamburgers, and paying the sheriff’s wages. It was all in the natural order of things, or so the ranchers told me… and told me.
I fired the truck up and let her run, rolling up the windows and looking at my right eye in the rearview mirror. It was a handsome right eye, roguish yet debonair. The right ear was also evident, a handsome ear as ears go, well formed with a disattached lobe. A sideburn had a little gray, just enough for seasoning, and it blended well with the silver-belly hat. A damn fine figure of a man or a man’s eye and ear. I avoided the temptation of ruining the effect by readjusting the mirror for a fuller view.
I had a date. My first date in… since before I was married. Wine, I had to remember wine. The only place that would be open was the Sinclair station’s liquor annex. Somehow, I didn’t think they would have the vintage I was looking for. If I could catch Henry at the bar, he could supply me. I backed out and headed for the Wolf Valley.
When I got to the bar my mood deflated a little; the lights were all off, and there wasn’t a vehicle in sight. Henry often closed up if no one was around. I suppose he figured that nursing the drunks through the nights when they were there was one thing, but anticipating them was another. I swung around and headed back home. I thought about continuing on out to his place but figured I would just call him at the Pony tomorrow. I looked over at the lovely fish resting on the passenger-side floor mat and tried to think of how to cook them without messing them up. I relaxed a little when I caught a flash of reflected taillight as I pulled up the drive to my little cabin. I looked in at the powder blue Thunderbird convertible with its top down and at the pristine white interior as I gathered my assortment of things.
Henry’s father had bought the car new in Rapid City back in 1959, about three months before he was diagnosed with “the” cancer. That’s what they called it back then, “the” cancer, like “the” winter, or “the” Black Death. I leaned over the door and read the odometer: 33,432 miles. When the old man passed over, there had been a great deal of controversy in the family as to who would get the T-bird. Henry ended the debate by fishing the keys out of the old man’s last pair of pants that lay crumpled beside his deathbed. Henry started the Thunderbird, drove the old girl forty miles, and parked her in an undisclosed garage somewhere in Sheridan. None of them ever asked him about it again, ever. He called the car Lola.
“Hey, get away from that car.” The deep voice had come from the darkness, somewhere under the new porch roof. I walked up the slight grade to the front of my newly transformed log cabin. The porch ran the entire length of the house, and the smell of the freshly cut redwood was enchanting. The roof consisted of two-by-six tongue and groove; the green tin surrounded the edges and joined seamlessly with the already existing roof. It was a really good job, even I could see that. The rough-cut six-by-sixes gave the place a look of permanence, the look of a home. There were a couple of concrete blocks stacked on the ground at the center, which allowed access between the railings.
I stood beside the blocks and leaned against one of the upright timbers. “Damn.”
“Not bad, huh?” He sat by the front door and leaned against the wall with his legs crossed and stretched out in front of him. His worn moccasins translated the print of his feet through the moosehide. He reached down and plucked out a bottle of beer from the holder and tossed it to me; it almost slipped, but I caught it. “You were going to be able to have three, but then it got late. Now, you only get two.”
I opened the beer and took a sip. “They do good work.”
“They are going to be back tomorrow to finish the railings and put some steps in.”
“They know it’s going to snow tonight?”
He shrugged and straightened his shoulders against the log wall. “Not until after midnight.” I looked out at the convertible and hoped he was right.
I took another sip, wandered down the porch, and nodded toward the car. “Special occasion?”
“Last hurrah. I do not suppose I will get a chance to drive her anymore this year.” His eyes stayed on the car and, in the flat moonlight, it looked very pale; another ghost pony for Henry.
“Slow night at the bar?”
“Yes. What is in the tinfoil?”
“Couple ’a browns.” I stuck out a hand and pulled him up. “You want help putting her top up?”
He looked past me to the hills across the valley. “I told you, it is not going to snow until after midnight.” I laid the fish on the counter by the sink and tossed the feather packet over toward the edge. He went to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of milk and eggs he must have brought Sunday. He opened the carton and sniffed. “Do you still have the cornmeal?”
I went over to the lower cabinet by the door and retrieved the cardboard container; the corner was already eaten through. I shrugged as I handed it to him. “Sorry.” He shook his head and cracked two eggs in a bowl, whisking them with a fork and adding some milk. He retrieved the frying pan from earlier in the week, checked it for mouse shit, turned on a front burner, and dropped a dollop of butter onto the slowly warming iron. He was fun to watch in the kitchen, his movements easy and smooth. It dawned on me that I should ask, “Anything I can do?”
“No, I prefer my trout meuniere sans poopi.” He opened the tinfoil and admired the fish. “Beautiful. Where did you get them?”
“What makes you think I didn’t catch them?”
He didn’t honor this statement with a response but dumped out a bed of cornmeal in a dish and whisked the batter some more. Finishing this, he picked up his beer and started to take a sip. “I don’t suppose you have any peanut oil, parsley, or white wine?”
“No, but I have a date tomorrow night.”
He nodded, extended his arm, and poured part of his beer in the batter. He coated the fish, layered them in the cornmeal, then took a dish towel hanging from the drawer pull under the sink and tilted the handle of the frying pan. “Good.”
“I need some help.”
He watched the butter slide down the inside of the pan, added a little more, and rested it back on the burner. “Yes?”
“Wine?”
“Yes, wine is a good thing.”
He didn’t see the sarcastic look I was giving him. “I need help picking one out.”
He stared at the fish. “Dinner is in her home?”
“Yes.”
“What is she serving?”
“I don’t know.” He slowly shook his head and took a sip of his beer; I was driving him to drink. I took a swig of my own and smiled, putting a good face on things. “She didn’t say.”
He nodded, spreading his hands over the repast. “Red with beef, white with fish, or cheap beer with everything.” He leaned against the counter and braced his weight on one arm. “Is this to be a gift or to accompany dinner?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. If it is to accompany dinner and it is white, then it must arrive chilled. If it is a gift, then it should not.”
“What if I just don’t let her touch the bottle?”
He nodded sagely. “Are you going to let her drink any?”
“Oh, there is that.” He finished off the abbreviated beer and pulled the last one from the cardboard carrier. “I thought that was mine?”
“You do not deserve it.” He opened it and took a swig before I could grab it
away. “Then there is chicken.”
“What about chicken?”
“It can go either way.”
“I’ve heard that about chickens.”
He shook his head some more. “According to how it is prepared, it can go with either red or white. The whole idea of wine is to complement the meal. There are dry wines, moderately dry wines, dessert wines, aperitifs, sparkling wines, fortified wines, sherries, and ports…”
“Mad Dog 20–20?” I was trying to be helpful.
“There are an infinite number of both white and red wines: sauternes, chardonnays, pinot grigios, sauvignon blancs on the white side; bordeaux, burgundy, beaujolais, pinot noir, zinfandel, shiraz, merlot, syrah on the red side; never mind the vineyards themselves and the vintners. The wine of the year is a cabernet blend from the coastal region of Bolgheri. Antinori planted sixty percent to cabernet sauvignon, thirty-five percent to merlot, and five percent to cabernet franc. Then there are the appellations-St. Emilion, Margaux, Barolo, Barbera, and Chianti…”
“Which ones come in cartons?”
He nudged the empty carrier with the punt of his bottle. “How about a nice six-pack?”
“I’m trying to change my image.”
“Yes, I am trying to change it, too, but it does not seem to be working.” He took two of the fish and plopped them in their reflective image in melted butter; they sizzled and settled in as he returned the skillet to the stovetop. There was only room for two of the fillets at a time.
“What about the chenin blanc she drinks at the bar?”
“That is a good choice, along with a merlot. Just in case.”
“You can hook me up?” A term I had picked up from Vic.
“Yes.”
I went ahead and ate while thinking about which subject I wanted to raise first as he prepared the next brace of trout. “Things really that slow at the bar?”
Cold Dish wl-1 Page 14