She didn’t dare open her door. It would creak and they would hear her shut it. She put on her jean jacket, tucked the cigarette pack and matches that had been on the dash into the front pocket, buttoned it up. She didn’t want to have to waste movement or time once she was out of the truck. She reached behind the seat and pulled out the .22. She knew it was already loaded, safety on, and she reached under the seat and pulled out a box of bullets. She put about ten in her hand and then put them in her front jean pocket, right side.
Once she was ready, she stopped and listened some more. Heard the same three voices. She could pick out the voice that she imagined belonged to the young guy named John who had come into Arnie’s. From this distance she couldn’t make out anything they were saying.
When she determined where they were in relation to where she was in the truck, she laid the gun on the seat and pulled her body up so she was squatting behind the steering wheel and lifted her left leg out the window. Using the doorframe and steering wheel for balance, she brought out her right leg.
She eased down the side of the truck until her feet touched the gravel. She stretched up and reached back into the truck for her rifle. She looked around to get her bearings. Right in front of her was the already harvested wheat field. Nothing but stubble and no cover.
If she was going to approach them by walking directly across the field, the shortest route, eventually they would see her coming and she would have nowhere to hide. If she followed the river, she could come up by the Oye’s driveway next to the migrant shacks, where she had parked the other day, but that was the long way around. A little closer, but not directly across was a barbed wire fence that ran south to north on the Bjork’s land. The Bjorks must use that land as grazing pasture for their cows.
Cash headed to the fence line. She figured if nothing else, with her short stature and small build, she could freeze as a fence post if she thought they were suspicious of movement over this way. Cash walked into the field and directly to the fence line. She crouched down and rolled under the barbwire. It was strung in lines of three along the fence post. Up close she could see the conductors making at least one of the lines electric. She remembered as a kid they used to gather a group of kids from town and line them up by an electric fence each touching the shoulder of the kid in front of them. She or her foster brother would stand at the head of the line and grab the electric fence. The current would course through the line of bodies, zapping whichever kid was hooked on at the end of the line. Depending on how strong the farmer had the current set, sometimes the kid would go flying five feet back.
Tonight she avoided the electricity. She stopped every few posts to look in the direction of the pickup. She kept the rifle down along her side, barrel pointed to the ground. There was a cluster of cows along the tree line by the river. She could hear the occasional soft shuffle of one breathing or shifting its weight. The crickets and frogs must have sensed her presence because they had gone quiet, except the ones in the far distance.
The closer she got to the gravel road, the louder and more distinct the men’s voices became. As Cash stood silent, becoming the fence pole she was standing next to, she remembered a random science lesson from tenth grade. The teacher had said something about cool air refracting sound waves, which explained being able to hear things better at night. Her body jerked when she heard a couple beer bottles hit the ditch as they got thrown from the truck window. Even though they were being thrown right outside the truck, it sounded like they were landing next to her.
If it were daylight, both she and the men would have been easily visible to each other, but the men weren’t looking for someone to come up on them from the front. They didn’t notice when the fence pole fifteen feet in front of them got four inches taller and a few inches thicker.
When the occasional car or truck passed on the road behind them all three would go quiet, as if anticipating the worst. Once it passed, they resumed talking. The weather. The baseball season. The price of grain on the Grain Exchange. One voice was whiney. The other two were deeper and older. One man was clearly drunk. It wasn’t until the brake lights went on suddenly that Cash heard something interesting.
“What the hell!”
“Get your foot off the goddamned brake!”
The whiney voice said, “It was an accident. Move your big shitkickers over so I got some room over here. I don’t know why the hell you all had to come back out here anyways.”
“Visiting the scene of the crime.” The drunk one was talking.
“Shut up!” said the first man.
“Shit, I don’t know why you had to go stab him,” said the drunk. “He already gave you his check.”
Cash was trying to make out the color or make or year of their truck. It was too dark and she was too far away to see the license plate. She could tell you which was an International Harvester dump truck or a Ford grain truck. But damned if she knew the difference between a Ford or Chevy pickup. She loved her Ranchero, which is about all she could tell you about pickup trucks. And just about every truck in the Valley was dark blue. She was going to have to get closer so she could get Wheaton some information that would be useful.
Damn, she could use a cigarette. And all those beers in town were going right through her. Her jeans were tight and she had to pee. She reached over with her left hand and unbuttoned the metal button at the waist of her jeans. There, she could hold it a while longer. She needed to get closer to see the faces of the men in the truck. What to do?
It was dark. All she could really see of their truck was the dark outline against the east horizon. There were no trees behind the truck. To her advantage, she had the trees lining the riverbank behind her if she stepped out away from the fence. These guys might be just this side of plastered, but they would probably still notice a fence post moving and standing in the road in front of them.
Cash came up with a plan. She lay down parallel to the road. She tucked the rifle lengthwise against her body, her right arm holding it flat against her. She figured she could roll into the shallow ditch on this side of the road, wait a couple seconds to see if they reacted, then roll across the road into the ditch on the other side. She could use the trees over there as cover to move closer to the truck and try to get a glimpse of their faces.
Just as she rolled under the barbwire and into the first ditch she heard, “Dumb fucker! I said, keep your goddamn feet off the brake!”
Cash held her breath.
“Next time you tell the whole damn county we’re sitting out here, I’ll put a bullet through your brain, dumbass.”
Cash figured now was a good time to get across the road. In four full rolls, she was there.
Two more rolls brought her to the bottom of the ditch on the other side of the road. Suddenly everything changed. Cash couldn’t tell which guy was talking, yelling. They all three went crazy.
“Did you see that bear just run across the road?” one man yelled.
“Ain’t no damn bears out here,” said another.
“Cut him off,” said the man who had threatened to shoot the whiner. Cash thought she was pretty sure of that voice.
“I ain’t that drunk. A goddamn bear just ran across the road. Saw it with my own two eyes.”
“Maybe it was a raccoon. The river’s right there.”
Cash lay still, breathing in shallow breaths. All of a sudden, three or four feet in front of her was lit up by a beam from a flashlight.
“What the fuck you doing?” yelled the man who seemed the most sober and angry of the three.
“I told you I saw a goddamn bear run across the road. I ain’t that damn drunk I don’t know what I saw.”
When Cash heard the truck door open, she didn’t hesitate, she crouched up and ran into the trees.
“There! There!” yelled the man. “You can’t tell me that ain’t no goddamn bear.” He was running in her direction, flashlight bobbing with his unsteady weaving.
Whiney-voice was yelling after him, “I go
t the rifle.”
“You stupid fucks, get back here,” yelled the first man.
Whiney-voice hollered back, “Get over it, man, anyone asks what we’re doing out here, we just say we saw a bear on the road up there and chased it down this way. Come on, let’s go find that sucker.”
Cash was standing on the river side of a big oak. Trying to catch her breath, berating herself for being so stupid as to not at least look at the truck when they first opened the door. She would have been able to see their faces in the dome light. Now she had blown that chance. They had the flashlight. If the beam found her, they would know who she was and hunt her till she was dead. Down this way so close to the river, they would probably just throw her in. Cash worked at calming her breathing. Her rifle was still on safety. She needed to rectify that situation, and soon, cause she wasn’t ending up like Tony O. Not this girl.
The men were thrashing through the brush and woods, twigs snapping under their feet. Cash held her breath and clicked the safety off. To her ears it was a loud metallic sound, but the men must not have heard it over the breaking twigs. The flashlight beam was coming closer.
Cash had the advantage of knowing this stretch of riverbank. Sometimes she and Wheaton would come down here to catch catfish, going down to the river’s edge by following old cow trails. There should be one about five feet ahead.
She had to pee so badly. She took a deep breath, scanned the woods and ground in front of her, squinting her eyes to make the most of the shapes in the dark. When she was as certain as she could be that she wasn’t going to run into a dead tree lying across her forward path, she took off in as silent a run as she could manage. The men must have heard something because the flashlight beam scanned her way, the beam just missing her as she jumped onto the cow path.
They fired off a shot. Cash took off running to the river’s edge, about forty feet ahead of where the men were. Shit! Thank god they’d been drinking. They were just shooting blind. Still, being hunted had her heart going faster than anyone’s heart should go. One of the guys was yelling at the shooter for firing. From the way their voices carried, Cash could tell they were turning back up the riverbank.
As she got closer to the river’s edge, she felt her tennies sinking into the clay. They started to make a slurping sound each time she lifted her foot. Ahead of her was an old elm tree that had died and fallen out across the river. She dropped the rifle on the other side of it and hoisted herself over. The size of the tree hid her from view. She squatted down and felt for the .22. It was right there. Thank god it hadn’t dropped in the river.
Cash knew she couldn’t hold it any longer. After getting shot at, she really needed to pee. She tilted her head to listen. The men were lost way behind her, still farther up on the riverbank. She could hear their voices but not make out words and could hear them thrashing through the underbrush.
She stood up facing the river. She could tell she was about three feet from the water. She unzipped her jeans and dropped them. As soon as she squatted down, she made sure the rifle was off to her right side about a foot and then released her bladder. As her urine hit the cold river clay, warm steam rose up her backside. What a relief. She stopped peeing midstream and listened again for the men. It sounded like they were moving up the riverbank. She started peeing again. Done, she shook her butt, no toilet paper out here, and pulled up her undies and jeans in one pull. She grabbed her rifle, leaned against the tree and listened. The men had given up. She heard the truck doors slam, first one door then the other. But she didn’t hear the engine turn over.
Oh, Christ. They must be gonna sit there and tell bear stories while they finish however much beer they’ve brought out with them.
Cash had no idea what time it was. But the beer she had earlier, the adrenaline rush of the chase, and the late hour all of a sudden made her extremely tired. And she still had to get to her truck and drive back into Fargo. She couldn’t show up in town all covered in river mud or the town talk would reach these three men’s ears and they would know it wasn’t a bear they were chasing in the woods. And damn, she wanted a cigarette and a drink of plain old water.
Cash climbed back over the fallen tree and walked on the cow path about a quarter mile, stood and listened again. She heard the river water moving upstream, softly slapping mud, but she still hadn’t heard the truck engine start. She stepped off the path and headed up the riverbank, coming out of the woods a bit farther up the road from where she had first rolled across it.
Cash didn’t take any chances. In the dark she could barely make out their truck still sitting down the road. She followed the tree line to the spot where the barbwire fence ran to the river. She decided to risk walking across the cow pasture. She figured if the men were still looking for the bear they were looking at the woods on the riverside of their truck instead of in her direction anyways. She was tempted to run but had no desire to trip and land in a cow pie and add that mess to the river mud she was already covered in. She got to her truck in about fifteen minutes. From there she could still make out the outline of their truck sitting across the fields.
Cash put the .22 through the driver’s side window. She walked back over to the small ditch and scooped up a handful of damp mud from the bottom to smear across both tail lights. Done, she wiped her hands first on grass and then on her jeans. She hoisted herself up the side of the Ranchero into the truck bed and walked to the front end. From there she sent her right leg into the cab, then her left and slid herself down into the driver’s seat. She smelled like cow shit and the rifle butt poked her butt. She lifted up her backside, pulled the rifle out and slid it as far under the seat as she could. She crossed her arms on the steering wheel and dropped her head. Damn reconnaissance mission. Damn. She could feel her legs and arms quivering, the adrenalin coursing through her body.
Cash took a deep breath and turned on the truck. It sounded like an airplane starting up. The truck across the way stayed put. Cash backed down Bjork’s road as far as she could, then eased the Ranchero into their driveway. She hesitated in the driveway before deciding she wasn’t going to return to Halstad. She headed instead to the state bridge where she jumped on the North Dakota highway that ran directly into Fargo. She pushed the Ranchero up to eighty and hauled ass. When she could see the red lights and the sweeping blue beam of Hector Airport in North Fargo, she slowed down. The acrid smell of the sugarbeet plant reminded her that in a few more weeks she would be hauling beets nonstop. That would be the major income that would get her through the winter.
She drove through the backstreets of Fargo toward her apartment. She swung by the Casbah just on habit, took a look at the cars and trucks that lined the street. Saw some familiar vehicles and some not familiar.
Jim was there. The backside of his Ford pickup was smashed in where some high school kid, after a winning football game, had backed right into him. Cash wondered what time it was. There was no way she could go in the bar looking like she did. She’d run home and clean up and, if it wasn’t too late, run back down for a couple beers and some Jim.
Cash parked. She grabbed the rifle from under the seat and ran up the outside stairs to her apartment. The screen door screeched. She put the rifle across the table and looked at the clock sitting next to her bed. Christ, it was only 11:30 at night. Felt more like 3 am. But shit, she had plenty of time.
She hustled back down to her truck and grabbed the six-pack that she’d bought earlier in Halstad. She took one bottle and put the other five, cardboard carrier and all, into the fridge on the top shelf where she supposed most folks kept milk. She popped the top and took a long swig, then lit a cigarette. When she had smoked about half the cigarette, she set the remaining half—smoke curling toward the heat of the kitchen light—in the green ashtray that read Holiday Inn. She carried the Bud into the bathroom with her.
As the water filled the tub, Cash stripped.
Damn, she had forgotten about the .22 bullets she had stuffed into her front pocket. A couple shells ro
lled under the clawfoot bathtub. She would get them later when she cleaned.
She stepped into the tub. Steam rose out of the water. When her body was submerged, steam came up off her also. With a beer in her left hand and a cigarette in her right, she used the toilet for her ashtray.
She lay like that and thought about the night. She never had gotten a good look at any of the men. And because it was so dark she couldn’t even began to guess their heights. She knew the whiney guy now, not his name but who he was. What he looked like. The first guy, the one who wasn’t drunk—she would be able to recognize his voice. And the drunk guy—that would be a harder guess, unless she happened to be in a bar where he was already drunk and talking.
Cash finished her cigarette and flipped it into the toilet. It hissed as it hit the water. She killed the beer and quickly soaped up, rinsed off and got out of the tub. She dried off and scooped her clothes up from the floor. She cleaned out her jean pockets, laying a couple crumpled one-dollar bills, change and the remaining .22 bullets on the dresser top. She pulled on a clean pair of jeans and t-shirt washed and worn so many times it felt like silk. Her tennis shoes were filthy, full of cow shit. She reached under the bed and pulled out the cowboy boots she usually just wore on Saturday night when she pretended she was getting dressed up to go out.
One of the farmers had hired her to clean out his migrant sheds at the end of beet-hoeing season and she’d found the boots tucked under one of the beds. They were plain old cowboy boots, with plenty of white stitching up the sides in whorls and curlicue things. The foot of the boot was a darker brown. The top of the boots was almost a creamy white. She imagined these were someone’s going-to-Catholic-church boots or going-out-dancing-on-Saturday-night boots. The going-to-church thing was not something she did. Occasionally, she danced around a barroom floor.
Murder on the Red River Page 7