by Gwen Florio
Lola acknowledged the impossibility of his task with a rueful smile. “Not a soul. Wish we had.” Her smile vanished in the memory of those moments of terror, the sense that she was alone with someone bent on hurting her and her child, with no one around to help them.
“Anybody around here pissed off at you?”
Lola thought of Tommy McSpadden’s mother, slamming the door on her; of the principal, angry at the way she’d taken offense at his racism. But neither seemed the type to play bumper cars with half-ton trucks. “I hardly even know anyone around here.”
“Could be it was just somebody out for a thrill. Happens every so often. Guy comes across a woman driving alone after dark and senses opportunity.”
“I wasn’t alone,” Lola pointed out. “And it wasn’t quite dark yet.”
He considered that, his eyes straying to Margaret and Bub. “Could be it was a worse kind of guy. You maybe dodged a bullet. Or worse.”
Lola didn’t even have to reach for Margaret. Girl and dog pressed against her legs, gone goosebumpy beneath her jeans. He was right, she knew. She’d done enough stories about just such wrong place-wrong time-very wrong guy situations to know that the deputy’s speculation was well within the realm of possibility.
“Where were you headed?”
“A friend’s house. We’re staying with her. Palomino Jones.
The deputy pursed his lips at the mention of Pal’s name, but said only, “On the rez. Long way yet.”
“Yes.” Maybe, out there somewhere, the guy in the truck patiently awaited his chance.
The deputy’s sigh was audible. “I’ll follow you on back. No sense taking chances. I’ll have to turn back at the rez line, but you’ll only have a couple miles left by then.”
Lola wanted to throw her arms around him, hug him tight, kiss him full on his fleshy lips. She restrained herself to “thank you,” hustling Margaret and Bub into the pickup before he changed his mind. She turned to Shirl and took both his hands in her own, feeling his grief flow into her and shoehorn its way into a too-crowded corner of her heart.
“Thank you for everything, Mr. Dillon. You take good care of yourself.” She knew better than to offer false promises that his pain would ease in the foreseeable future. She trained her eyes upon the taillights of the deputy’s truck, forcing herself not to look back and see Shirl once again outlined in his doorway, waiting for the one person who would never return.
EIGHTEEN
The next day found Lola back at the park in Thirty, empty this time but for a few crumpled napkins and the occasional stray plastic beer cup, the detritus of the previous day’s party that had escaped an unusually efficient cleanup crew.
Lola positioned Margaret at the picnic table and retrieved an array of distractions from her backpack. Books. Snacks. Drawing paper and crayons. A few toys. Lola was about to get on the phone with the Department of Defense and knew from hard experience that the process was likely to be interminable. But she wanted to arm herself against the likelihood that Skiff would refuse to talk on the record about his role in saving the others after Mike’s death. Best to have the official account of the incident. Despite the military’s propensity to gunk up its reports with convoluted phrasing, such narratives—once translated into words used by normal humans—often contained unexpected drama and pathos. She’d ask Pal, too. She wanted to have all the facts at hand first, though. Lola’s hand strayed to one of Margaret’s toys, a plastic rooster that despite his gender Margaret had renamed Jemalina in honor of the hen that continued to bully Lola whenever she ventured outside Pal’s house. On this morning, Jemalina had spoiled Lola’s plan to slip quietly away while Pal slept off her most recent hangover, chasing Lola all the way to the truck with Bub in voluble pursuit. Lola didn’t dare risk Pal overhearing her phone calls. Hence, another trek to Thirty, on a day so blindingly bright as to render almost unreal the previous night’s shadowy attack. Lola encountered various vehicles along the way, their drivers all staying decorously on their own side of the road, each raising a couple of fingers from the wheel in the time-honored greeting of rural motorists.
“Mommy.” Margaret removed the toy from Lola’s hand and said in her most accusatory tone, “You’re supposed to be working.” The sooner Lola finished her phone calls, the sooner they could do something fun. At least, that’s what Lola had promised. Even though she had no idea of what comprised fun in Thirty. She’d assured Margaret there would no repeat trip to the ice cream shop, and they’d already seen what appeared to be the region’s lone historic attraction, the cemetery. Lola reached for a toy horse, a wooden pinto with a flowing yarn tail, and galloped him across the table. As far as she knew, the horse didn’t have a name.
“Mommy.” Margaret rescued the horse, too, and shoved Lola’s phone toward her mother. “You work.”
The DOD number was on speed dial. It was, Lola reflected as it rang, likely to be the only speedy thing about the process.
An hour’s work netted nine transfers—four of them to wrong numbers—along with two hang-ups, three endless sessions on hold and five full pages of doodles in her notebook. At long last, Lola was instructed to send an email with her questions. “When will someone get back to me?” she asked. Just for the hell of it. She crossed her eyes at Margaret, who made her toys laugh in response. The answer was so mechanical Lola nearly forgot she was talking to a real person. “Your question will be answered in the order it was received.”
“In which,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“The order in which it was received.” Stupid. The last thing she wanted to do was piss off the DOD, ensuring her request would be removed daily to the bottom of the list. Fortunately, her grammatical gibe seemed to have gone over her tormenter’s head. Lola hung up and made a note to herself to send a Freedom of Information request for the same information. The feds at least were required to respond to such requests within twenty days. Although, by then she would be long gone from Thirty. It was possible she’d end up writing the story after her return to Magpie, which made it even more imperative that she do as much on-the-ground reporting in Wyoming as possible. She turned to the Last Word and the story that had caught her eye, a brief notice that Tyson Graff’s and Tommy McSpadden’s beating victim had been released from the Seattle hospital and was expected to recover. It was possible, according to the story by Dave Sparks, that the attempted murder charges against Tyson and Tommy would be downgraded to assault, still a felony but one with considerable sentencing latitude. Lola tapped her pen against her teeth. Tyson and Tommy might be more willing to talk now—at least, if she could get past Tommy’s mother. It would help to return with someone local. Someone like Dave. She even managed to persuade herself that if another reporter had written the story, she’d be calling that reporter instead, trying unsuccessfully to suppress the smile that curved her lips as she punched the number for the Last Word into her phone.
The smile faded when the Last Word’s receptionist informed her that Dave had the day off. It returned when the woman added, “Is it important? I can give you his cell number.” Lola allowed as to how it was very important. She shook her head as she jotted down the number, still amazed at the readiness with which people divulged such information. Dave picked up on the first ring. Margaret raised her head, alert to the change in her mother’s usual brusque tone. Lola shot her a sidelong glance, cleared her throat and lowered her voice as she explained her mission. Dave offered a plan. Margaret put down her toys and watched her mother’s end of the conversation.
“Sure,” Lola said.
And, “That’s a nice idea. But Margaret and the dog are with me.”
And, “It’s no trouble? Really? Can we bring anything?”
Margaret frowned. Lola grinned into the phone. Margaret’s frown deepened.
“What did I tell you?” Lola said after she’d rung off. “I promised you something fun. We’re going on
a picnic.” She turned her head so that her daughter wouldn’t see the combination of excitement and guilt flaming her cheeks.
“Say the name again,” Lola ordered Dave.
He shifted a rolled-up blanket beneath his arm and pointed to the water boiling grey and furious around jagged rocks far below. “Po-po-jah,” he said.
“Spell it.”
“P-o-p-o A-g-i-e.”
Lola had seen the words on signs beside the stretch of river that slid tamed and picturesque past the outskirts of Thirty. She’d never have connected the two bodies of water, let alone those words and Dave’s pronunciation.
“Popojah, Popojah,” Margaret repeated, making a song of it, dancing to the words.
“Stay away from the edge,” Lola said. Bub had already positioned himself between Margaret and the bluff above the disappearing river. The water plunged through a canyon, over rocks slick and covered with moss, and then dove into a cave. “It’s called the Sinks,” Dave said. “For the way the river just sinks into the earth.”
Lola looked around for a flat place for them to picnic. Despite the drama below, the overlook offered nothing but dun earth, gray rocks, and dusty, silvery-green sagebrush. Dave gestured toward a dirt trail that led away from the parking area. “We’ve got a little ways to go.”
Lola started back to the truck.
“Where are you going?”
“To get the picnic things.”
“We aren’t picnicking here. I just thought you should see this. Come on.”
They picked their way along the path, Lola leading, not trusting Dave to be as wary of rattlesnakes as she. Bub stalked beside her, picking up on her unease, ears pricked forward. The trail began a descent, then took a sharp jog into a different world. Lola stopped so abruptly that Dave bumped into her, lingering a moment before stepping away, the warmth of his body a distraction from the oasis before her. They were at an overlook. Below, a glassy pool reflected the towering clouds, their inverse image leading Lola’s eye down, down through the water’s green depths, serene and untroubled in contrast to the muscular river they’d just left. Trout, the biggest Lola had ever seen, lolled near its surface, so confident that she knew their protected status even before she saw the “no fishing” sign. “What is this place?”
Dave’s lips quirked. Lola looked away. “The Popo Agie,” he said. “This is what it looks like on the other side. It’s called the Rise.”
Lola thought of the churning cataract not a half-mile behind them. “It seems impossible that it’s the same river. It’s not even a river here. It’s a pond.”
Dave pointed to the far end of the pool, where a tendril of water wandered away through a tangle of scrubby willows. “There’s your river. Such as it is, at this point. You know how quickly we walked from the Sinks to the Rise?”
“Uh-huh.” Even slowed down by Margaret, it had been a short walk.
“Given how fast that water dumps into the Sinks, you’d think dye would shoot right through to the Rise, wouldn’t you?”
Lola nodded. She seemed to have lost her voice. Dave stood so close that she could feel the heat from his body. She edged a half-step away.
“But when they dumped dye in, it took more than two hours for it to show up in the Rise.”
Lola offered a croak that she hoped indicated interest. In the river. Margaret came to her rescue. “Where are we going to have our picnic?”
As far as Margaret was concerned, the picnic spot was even better than the mystery of the Sinks and the Rise. Easy for her to say, Lola pointed out. Margaret hadn’t toted picnic gear during the mile-and-a-half hike in. Lola dropped the rolled-up blanket she’d carried. Even Dave looked relieved to dispense with the cooler. “Worth it, though, huh?” His gesture took in the river tumbling over the smooth rocks that surrounded a natural swimming hole.
Margaret brushed past her, stopping just long enough to tear off her shoes and socks, leaving a trail of pudgy footprints to the water’s edge. Lola started after her. “Careful,” she called. “It looks deep.”
“It’s okay.” Dave trotted beside her. “It is deep, but not for a long ways out. If she stays near the edge, she’ll be fine.”
Margaret was already in up to her calves. Bub paddled back and forth a few yards ahead of her. “No deeper than your knees,” Lola warned.
Dave unrolled the blanket, spread it on the sand, and opened the cooler to reveal sandwiches from the hippie café where they’d eaten a few days earlier. “I brought this, too,” he said, emerging with a six-pack of good microbrew, not the watery stuff that had been in the kegs at the Fourth of July celebration. “This, too,” he said. A lidded paper cup—recyclable, of course—from the café contained orange juice for Margaret. “Fresh-squeezed,” he said. “Not that store-bought junk.”
Margaret splashed reluctantly ashore when Lola summoned her. “Can I take mine down to the water?”
“As long as you don’t take it in the water,” Lola said. Bub hesitated. His job was to stay with Margaret. But there was more food on the picnic blanket. Lola shook her head at him. “You know the drill. Do your job, and there’s a little something in it for you.” She tore off a corner of her sandwich and set it aside. Bub’s ribs bellowed in a sigh. He followed Margaret back to the shoreline. Lola wondered when Margaret would grasp the concept of delayed gratification as well as Bub had learned it. The hiss of an opening beer interrupted her thoughts.
“Here.” Dave handed her a bottle, then held up his own. She clinked hers against it.
“What should we toast?” His eyes met hers, his intent clear, the question rhetorical.
At some point, Lola thought, she was going to have to tell him about Charlie. Although, Margaret’s presence surely implied someone in her life. She raised her bottle.
“To good stories,” she said, and drank deep, trying not to choke on the laughter that arose at the look on his face.
She waited until they were halfway through their pieces of pie before bringing up her story, telling him what she’d learned about Pal and Mike’s relationship. “So many people I talked to dislike her. This could explain why.”
Dave handed her another beer. “It also could explain why he was so tired he fell asleep on watch.” He laughed. Lola didn’t.
“I can’t imagine anybody wanting to have sex in a place like that. Back on base, sure, but not on patrol.” Maybe soldiers were different, she thought. She’d had her own fair share of fun during weeks of relative inactivity in Kabul, but the field was different. She loved her forays out of the city—the best stories were out there—but they were fraught with danger in a way that, at least for her, precluded any thoughts of sex. Not to mention the heat, the dirt, and the lack of plumbing.
“Spoken by one who knows,” Dave prompted. But Lola rarely talked of her time there. Charlie had learned better than to probe too deeply, and Dave was about to learn the same lesson.
“I want to talk to Tommy McSpadden and Tyson Graff again,” she said. It was, after all, the real reason that she was meeting with Dave. The only reason, she reminded herself.
“You mean T-Squared?” he said. “That pair is trouble. They almost killed that guy.”
She pointed her beer bottle at him. “Apparently not, at least according to your story.”
“Yeah, but that was just dumb luck. The guy could just as easily have died. Really, you want to stay away from them.”
Lola snorted at the idea that despite their bar dustup, a couple of yahoos like Tommy and Tyson could present a serious threat, especially in the middle of the day and the middle of town. Going unarmed into a hostile warlord’s territory with only a driver and a fixer who’d become the closest thing she had to a friend in Afghanistan, drinking endless cups of tea surrounded by men crouched beside grenade launchers—then she’d worried about getting hurt. And she’d worry the next time she drove back to the ranch in dar
kness, she thought. She pushed the notion away. She’d already considered that Tommy or Tyson might have been the truck’s driver but, even though she’d barely seen the driver, he’d seemed bigger than either of them.
Dave tried another tack. “You’re really going to pursue this?”
“I have to. I got the go-ahead to do a story. It’s important. The same sort of ripple effects in Thirty are playing out in towns all over the country as soldiers come back.”
He tilted his head back for another swig of beer. His Adam’s apple bobbed. A tuft of pale hair curled from the top of his T-shirt. Lola swallowed hard. “I thought you said Tommy and Tyson wouldn’t talk to you,” he said.
“Tyson did, a little. Tommy’s mother wouldn’t let me get near him. I thought if I went back with someone local—” She let it hang there, not directly offering him a piece of the story, waiting for him to ask. Any reporter would, especially the hungry ones at the beginning of their careers. It’s how she’d forged her friendship with Jan, although with Jan, she’d offered. But she’d been new to the West then, less sure-footed. Besides, she got the feeling Dave had skated through life on things being offered to him. She wanted to know that the guy could break a sweat, at least on someplace other than a rock face.
“Let me think about it.”
Lola finished her beer and replaced the empty in the cooler. “Don’t take too long, okay? I’m only here for another week. Maybe I can call you tomorrow?”
Dave reached for the cooler. Another bottle cap hissed free. “Hell,” he said. “You can call me anytime.”
A pair of damp and sandy arms wrapped her from behind. Lola turned to Margaret in guilty relief. “Sleepy, Mommy.” Margaret sagged against Lola and closed her eyes. Bub flung himself down on the blanket, off the clock for the moment, and claimed the bit of sandwich she’d saved for him.