The phone jarred me awake and I realized that someone had covered me with a blanket. Morgan had answered the phone in the kitchen and was now standing in the doorway of the study.
“The sheriff’s on the phone,” she said.
I nodded and picked up. “Bucky?”
“John, I’m calling to tell you that we found nothing in or around the Jeep that might help.”
“That’s too bad,” I said.
“I’m sorry about McCormack. He’s a hardass, but I’m told he’s good.”
“I hope so.” I looked out the window to see it was late afternoon and that a few flakes of snow were starting to fall. “What now?”
The sheriff was silent for a few awkward seconds. “We’re still out there looking. We’re radiating our search out into the desert from where we found the Jeep. We’re in the air as well.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll come out there and join in.”
“Why don’t you stay clear. We’ve got the area covered.”
“Okay.” I hung up.
I walked upstairs without going into the kitchen and seeing Morgan and Gus. I stood in the shower for a long time. I tried to slow my breathing, tried to clear my mind, tried to understand what was happening. I stared through the steam at the tiles of the shower wall until they didn’t make sense, until their color seemed unreal. I turned off the water, half dried, and then sat on the edge of the tub. The window was steamed up and I couldn’t see out, but I knew it was snowing hard. I felt it.
In the kitchen I found Gus and Morgan preparing dinner. Gus was kneading bread dough at the counter. Morgan was stirring something in a pot at the stove. I kissed her on her neck and looked over her shoulder.
“Smells good,” I said.
“What now?” she asked.
I looked at Zoe and Emily sleeping in the corner. “I don’t know.” I glanced out at the snow. “How cold is it out there?”
“It’s plenty cold,” Gus said. “And it’s getting colder.” He left the dough and wiped his hands on a towel.
“I’m going out to walk the barns,” I said. “Then I’m going to go out to look for David.”
“It’s dark out,” Morgan said. “You can’t see anything. Especially in this mess. How is getting yourself killed going to help David?”
I stood there, looking stupid.
“You need rest,” Morgan said.
“I can’t rest,” I said.
“You’re going in the morning and I’m going with you,” Gus said. He eyes looked weak, but his voice was strong.
“In this weather?”
“Yep. Morgan’s better with the horses and I don’t mind the cold and you need somebody to keep you awake.”
I glanced at Morgan. I could see that the two of them had already discussed the matter and I was stuck with their decision. “Okay, okay. I’ll go out and check on everybody.”
“When you come back, you’re eating,” Morgan said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Take the dogs with you,” Gus said.
I walked through the quiet of the snow and up and down the aisles of the barns a couple of times. The dogs stayed close. Zoe had always been able to tell when I was bothered by something. As we walked back to the big barn I watched the track the three-legged coyote left in the snow. Zoe made two continuous tracks, punctuated by deep impressions of her feet. The coyote left a similar pattern, but wherever she stopped, there was a place of undisturbed or barely disturbed snow under her left forepaw. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Perhaps I was trying to imagine anything to take my mind off David, but that gap, that space, that break in her track fascinated me because it was only there briefly and only while she was still there. Once she moved on, her rear foot stamped its impression where her front one had been.
I lay there that night, unable to sleep, but desperately needing rest. I was afraid to sleep, afraid to dream. I felt Morgan drift off beside me; her breathing was a restful rhythm to me. I put my hand on her hip, perhaps to be sure she was there. I watched the sky lighten. I got dressed and went downstairs. Gus was up and waiting for me, had coffee made. He looked better than I felt. He handed me a mug.
“Drink this,” he said. “I’m filling a couple of thermoses.”
“Thanks.”
“The snow has let up a lot. I’d say we got at least seven inches.”
“That’s not too bad.”
“How are you holding up?” Gus asked, studying my face.
I shrugged.
The phone rang and I jumped, answered it quickly. It was Howard.
“No, nothing,” I told him. “The sheriff and state police are out searching, dozens of them. They’ve got planes up.” There were probably not dozens of searchers, but they had had planes up. “I’m going out again myself right now.”
“Sylvia and I will be there tonight,” he said. “We’re flying into Denver and renting a car.”
“Rent something with four-wheel drive,” I said. “We’ve got snow.”
He was briefly silent, then, “Okay.”
“Call and let Morgan know when to expect you.”
I hung up. I was not happy he and his ex-wife were coming, but that was what they should do. I wrote a note for Morgan and left it on the table.
“Let’s go,” Gus said.
I pulled on my jacket, then went into my study and grabbed my rifle. We walked out through the snow to the truck. I took my fly rod from the behind the seat and tossed it into the drifted snow in the bed. I then, for the first time in my life, put a rifle in my rifle rack.
I tried to keep focus, but realized I was driving the highway without scouring it. I’d traveled that stretch many times already since David’s disappearance. I told Gus that since the sheriff was looking in the desert and generally west of town, we would search east, toward the reservation.
“Makes as much sense as anything,” Gus said.
“Keep your eyes open for a blue BMW.”
“Why?”
“A couple of rednecks. I’ve got a bad feeling about them.”
“That’s usually the way I feel about rednecks.”
“These assholes picked fights with both David and me and I saw them talking to David the other day.”
“You think?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I’m thinking everything right about now. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.”
“You know, I appreciate privacy as much as the next guy and this might not be the best time, but how about telling me what’s going on?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Gus, you look sick. Your medicine keeps changing. You sleep a lot. Tell me something. I’ll find out at some point.”
“I’m seventy-nine years old,” he said.
“I know that.”
“And I’m pretty strong for seventy-nine.”
“You’re very strong for seventy-nine,” I said.
“I’ve got cancer.”
“Okay.” I can’t say that I was stunned by the news; I’d suspected as much. Still, hearing it was hard and I felt like I had been sucker-punched. I wanted to pull off the road, but I kept driving. We came around the big curve and the valley appeared before us. “What do we do about it?” I asked. “What kind of cancer? Just what are we dealing with?”
“It’s my pancreas,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m dying, John.” I couldn’t bring myself to look at his eyes. I studied the road. “There’s not much to do about it,” he said. “But we can talk about this later.”
“Talk about it later?”
“What’s talking about it now going to accomplish?”
His point was well taken and I was left silent. As we rolled into town, I said, “I’m sorry, Gus.” I was sorry he was sick, but I was also sorry I had pressed him into the admission.
“Why sorry? I’m an old man. Old men die. I swear some people would whine if you hanged them with a
new rope. I’m not one of those people.”
I glanced up through the windshield at the sky. “The snow’s stopped.”
We stopped at the diner for a couple of muffins. I saw the back of Duncan Camp’s head in the rear of the restaurant and left Gus to pay for the food. Camp was sitting with three men in a booth and I could hear them as I got closer.
“So, the whole sheriff’s department is out searching the desert for that cocksucker,” Camp said. “And I mean that literally.”
Another of the men caught sight of me and directed Camp’s attention behind him toward me. Camp was stunned to see me there and was trying to figure a way to backpedal. He rose and followed me as I walked away.
“John,” he said. “It ain’t like that.”
I turned to him. “What’s it like, Duncan?”
“I was just joshing with the boys, you know.” For the world, the man looked sorry.
I didn’t have it in me to be angry, even disappointed. Perhaps I simply was not surprised, and that was surprising in itself.
“Listen, Duncan, I figure I need to clear out before you start with the nigger jokes. I wouldn’t want to cramp your style.”
“That ain’t fair, John,” he said as I turned away.
I faced him again. “I’m sorry it isn’t fair, Duncan. That’s going to eat at me for the rest of the day.” I left him standing there and walked out telling Gus to come along as I passed.
I sat behind the wheel of the truck and threw my head back against the seat. I felt as if the whole world was upside-down.
“What’s wrong, nephew?” Gus asked.
“You know what I am?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
“I’m that three-legged coyote.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I can’t recognize my own tracks until I stop moving.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.”
At the gas station, I asked the attendant if she had seen the blue BMW while I paid for gas.
“Those fools,” she said. She was a heavyset woman with hard, blue eyes. “They come in a lot.”
“Do you know them?”
She shook her head.
“So, you wouldn’t have any idea where they live?”
She took this the wrong way and her blue eyes became harder. “I said I don’t know them. How would I know where they live?”
“I didn’t mean anything,” I said. She softened immediately. “Maybe you could tell me which way they go after they gas up?”
“Sometimes east, sometimes west.”
I thanked her for her useless answer.
As I was leaving she said, “Of course, at the end of the day when they stop, they’re headed east.”
“Thank you.”
We drove over to the reservation on the back roads, finding nothing along the way. I used the pay phone in front of the tribal office building to call Morgan. She told me that Howard had called and said that he and Sylvia would be there at eight that night. Then I put a call into the sheriff’s office and learned there was nothing to know. I blew out a breath and looked up to see Daniel White Buffalo standing at the window of the truck talking to Gus.
“Anything we can do?” Daniel asked me.
“Yeah, why don’t you just shoot me now,” I said. “Have you seen the rednecks in the BMW?”
“You mean the neo-Nazi boys?” he said.
“That would be them,” I said.
“I see them around sometimes. They’re sons of bitches. Them and their asshole friend in the dually. I think he’s the one shot my cows.”
“Dually?”
“Big black one. Four-wheel Ford.”
“Any idea where they live?”
“Don’t know, don’t want to know.”
“I can understand that,” Gus said.
“Well, we’re going to keep on driving the roads,” I said.
“You should talk to Elvis Monday,” Daniel said. “He got into a fight with them guys. He said he was gonna shoot them. He might know where they are. He wants to shoot everybody. He’s like his mother.”
“Okay, Daniel.” I walked around and climbed into the truck.
“Where to?” Gus asked.
“Clara Monday’s.”
Elvis Monday was sitting in a chair on the porch of the modular home. He was smoking a brown cigarette. He watched as I climbed out of the truck, but didn’t rise. Gus stayed in his seat. He said he was tired.
“Elvis,” I greeted the man.
“Buffalo soldier,” he said.
I sat on the steps with him and looked back at my truck. “How is your mother?” I asked.
“She’s inside.”
“Is she doing okay?”
“She’s cooking. I hear your friend is missing.”
“He is. White Buffalo told me you had a fight with a couple of white guys in a BMW.”
“Assholes,” he said. “I was going to shoot them, but ammunition is too expensive, know what I mean? I had them all set up.” He aimed a pretend rifle into the yard.
“You know where they live?”
“I followed them. Assholes. All you have to do is open your nose and follow the ass smell.”
“Where?”
Elvis started to say something and then stopped. “You should go in and say hello to my mother.”
“I’ll be right back,” I said. I went to my truck, to Gus’s window. “Gus, open up the jockey box and hand me that pack of cigarettes.”
Gus opened the box. “What are you doing with cigarettes?” he asked.
“I just keep some for times like this. Old Clara is traditional. There’s a new towel in a plastic bag under your seat. Give that to me as well. You got any money?”
“I’ve got a twenty,” Gus said.
“Let me have it.”
He did. I took the towel, the cigarettes, and the bill and walked past Elvis into the house. Clara Monday looked as old as anyone I had ever seen, but she had looked that way for fifteen years. She was a skinny stick of wrinkled muscle wound up and ready to spring. She wasn’t cooking, but was sitting in front of a little black and white television. The picture was very clear. She was watching CSPAN.
“Hello, Clara. I brought you these,” I said.
She looked at the gifts and nodded, gestured for me to put them on the table. Then she nodded toward the chair beside her.
“Watching the government?” I asked.
“Their government,” she said. “They sure like to talk.”
“Your house is looking nice.”
“Thank you.”
“The president is a liar,” she said. “I say that because he doesn’t tell the truth. I could understand if he didn’t want to get caught, but he’s caught anyway. Why lie when the truth is in plain view?”
“That’s the way our government works,” I said.
“Do you still run cows?”
“No ma’am.”
“Too bad. Why not?”
“I don’t like cows. I just train horses now.”
She nodded.
“They get away with everything,” she said, nodding to the television again.
“I guess they do.”
“They just get away with it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“When you’re out there, tell Elvis the house is cold,” she said.
“I’ll tell him.” I stood and walked back out. Elvis was at the truck talking to Gus through the passenger window. He looked down and stepped back from the truck. He came around to my side as I climbed in behind the wheel. “Your mother needs some wood in the stove,” I told him.
“Okay. I must do that,” Elvis said. “The assholes are squatting in the old cabin up in Mouse Canyon. Not far from the creek.”
“Thank you, Elvis.” As we rolled away I looked over at Gus. “What was that all about?”
“What was what all about?”
“What were you two talking over?”
“
Just talking.”
FOURTEEN
WE DROVE EVERY BACK ROAD we could find while there was light and Gus finally asked me, “What do you plan to do with what Elvis told you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you going to tell the sheriff?”
“I don’t know. I do know that it’s a little dark to be messing around up in that canyon now,” I said.
“I’m going up there with you,” Gus said. “I know you. That’s why you didn’t head straight there.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m going with you.”
We headed west toward home. All we had gotten for our efforts was tired and I was more than a little discouraged. In fact, I was terrified, but too much in shock to actually feel it. As we rolled down the hill to the house I saw an unfamiliar car and only then remembered that Howard and Sylvia would be there. I set the brake and looked over at Gus.
“Here we go,” he said. “How are you holding up?”
“Not so well,” I said.
We climbed out of the truck. Morgan came out onto the porch. Howard and Sylvia hung back inside the doorway. Morgan gave me a sympathetic touch on the shoulder and I stepped inside.
“Sylvia, Howard,” I said. “I wish I could say I’m glad to see you.”
“Any news?” Sylvia asked.
“No.” I looked to Morgan. “Any calls?”
She shook her head.
“Well, let’s sit down and I’ll tell you what I know. I’m sure Morgan’s told you everything, but you’ll hear it again.”
I sat with Sylvia and Howard in the kitchen and told them the story. Morgan and Gus went about the business of feeding the horses and checking the water. Sylvia was in shock. I could tell she would have cried if any of this made sense. Not the how of it, but the why. Howard was uncharacteristically quiet, until I glanced at him following a prolonged silence.
“You want to blame me for this,” he said.
I didn’t understand.
Sylvia was confused as well, looking from Howard to me, but she spoke up. “What are you talking about?”
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