With her hands waving in a flurry of jewelry jangling, she dismissed me and continued past. “I’m just warning you, Walt.”
I caught up with Lucian at the office of the court of appeals, turned the knob of the glass-paned door, and swung it open, stepping inside and pulling it closed behind me.
The old sheriff was standing in front of a young woman at a reception desk who looked as if she wished she were anywhere else but under Lucian’s scathing gaze as he stared at her from over the piece of paper he was holding. “What the hell does that mean?”
The young woman reached up and tapped the paper he held. “It’s all right there.”
Lucian turned and looked at me. “Will you please tell this young woman that I know how to read, I just need to know what it means?”
I took the sheet and paraphrased. “The prisoner’s lawyers have filed for a compassionate release, petitioning the warden in Rawlins and the court to the effect that the subject is terminally ill and would benefit from obtaining aid outside of the prison system, or is otherwise eligible under the relevant law.”
I handed the woman back the paper and turned and walked out, not trusting myself with human company at that moment.
I don’t remember slamming the door, but the glass exploded into the carpeted office like it had been hit with a fragmentation grenade.
Waves of emotion roiling my mind, I didn’t stop to look at the damage I’d done. Instead, I stalked down the hallway through a cluster of suited men, blew open the brass double doors, and stepped out into the free air.
I stood there looking at the state capitol, taking deep breaths in an attempt to control the tide of emotion that was overwhelming me.
Feeling someone approaching from behind, I whirled with a snarling anger that caused Lucian to step back, whereupon he stumbled and almost fell, catching himself on the railing. Luckily, there was a bench nearby and he redirected the fall into a seat.
I stood there with my fists clenched.
“You ain’t gonna hit me, are you?”
“No.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
After another breath, I turned and sat beside him, finally feeling a little cooler, the angry, red tide subsiding.
He studied my face. “You all right?”
“No.”
He nodded and re-produced the piece of paper. “‘Compassionate release is most often granted to inmates with terminal illnesses that cause life expectancies of less than six to eighteen months, depending on the jurisdiction. Other allowable causes for compassionate release may be medical but nonterminal, such as incurable, debilitating mental or physical conditions that prevent inmate self-care, or a combination of advanced age and irreversible age-related conditions that prevent functioning in a prison setting.’” He stopped, cleared his throat, and turned to look at me again. “What in the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway?”
“They’re going to try and set him free.”
4
Henry and I negotiated the second corner of the staircase and were trying to figure out how to navigate the next. I was starting to regret not taking Alexia’s nephew and his friend Coulter up on their offer. “It’s not going to fit.”
The Bear smiled and shook his head. “You said that the last time.”
I shifted the weight of the thing in an attempt to relieve the pressure on my shoulder. “Maybe I’m not meant to be a furniture mover.”
“Then you should not have had a daughter.”
“Hold on a second.” I moved to the landing and extended the sofa out over the backyard, wedging my legs against the railing. “I have to get arranged here.”
He patiently waited as I prepared to bear the brunt from below. “So, ‘particularly extraordinary or compelling circumstances which could not reasonably have been foreseen by the court at the time of sentencing’?”
“That’s what the letter says.”
“He had a heart attack?”
“Episode. Supposedly.” I shifted to one side. “Are you pulling on this thing at all?” He made headway, and we turned the corner like two men in a horse suit. “All right, put it down—I need a breather.”
He did as requested and then sat on the arm nearest him.
I pushed my hat back, giving the sweat in my hair a chance to dry. “For years I’ve been coming down here to make sure this didn’t happen.”
“Perhaps it is time to let it go.”
“No.”
“You will not entertain the thought?”
“No.” He said nothing. “What, you’re not going to argue with me?”
“No.”
“It’s a moral issue—you always argue with me about moral issues.”
He looked down at me from an eight-step advantage. “I am tired of arguing with you about moral issues.”
“Well, what are we going to talk about for the rest of our lives?”
He glanced around. “The weather.”
“Hey, when are you lollygaggers gonna get the job done, huh?”
I looked up. Vic was sipping a glass of red wine; Lucian was hanging over the deck railing with a bourbon in one hand and Lola in the other. “Old man, if you drop my granddaughter, could you make sure she lands on the sofa?”
“There ain’t anywhere for the lady, me, and the baby to sit up here, so speed it up, will you?” With that pronouncement he and a couple of the loves of my life disappeared.
I went back to looking at Henry. “You know what happened.”
“Intimately.”
“Then you should understand that there are some sentences that can’t be broken.”
He stooped to pick up the sofa again.
“Hey, what’s the holdup down there?”
I looked up to see my daughter with her own glass of red wine.
“Your father is wanting to have a conversation.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, your granddaughter wants you to play the piano for her, so maybe you should get moving.”
—
With nothing else to do to entertain myself, I sat at the baby grand—a 1938 Wurlitzer Butterfly, so named for the twin top boards—in the corner of the parlor car and lifted the lid. The last time I’d played was in Vietnam; hell, I wasn’t even sure I still could with my hand scarred as it was.
A drunken sheriff who was leaning against the wall nearby yelled, “Play ‘Melancholy Baby.’”
Another laughed. “How ’bout ‘Wreck of the Ol’ 97’!”
I ignored them and laced my fingers together, cracking my knuckles in a fashion that the great pianist Arthur Rubinstein would have abhorred—or maybe not. I tested a few fingers on the keys; the piano was a slight bit out of tune and the action on the soundboard a little dead, but I doubted the drunken sheriffs would be able to tell the difference.
“Let me get back there with you. I can play ‘Chopsticks’ with the best of ’em.”
Just for fun, I saluted Mr. Rubinstein with a little of Chopin’s Waltz in C-sharp Minor, but that made my audience go silent, which wouldn’t do.
I adjusted myself on the bench and slowly began playing a trainlike rhythm that changed into a boogie-woogie beat. I vamped on this and then began bringing in my left hand to follow the chord changes at eight to the bar.
“Holy shit!”
The second drunk gestured toward my boss, who was standing nearby. “Hey, Lucian, this boy’s actually got talent.”
I had just finished up with an improvised “Western Star Boogie” when I noticed Sheriff McKay’s property standing by the doorway with that look that singers get when they want to join in but can’t figure out how.
I raised my hands and began snapping my fingers, and even in its inebriated state, the audience joined in. By the time I lowered my hands to the keyboard, about half the train was
snapping. I overemphasized my left hand in an attempt to make up for the lack of bass and drums.
I watched the smile slink onto Kim LeClerc’s face as I circled around and gave her the intro again, nodding my head for her to take the impromptu stage. She moved forward and out from under George McKay’s arm.
Davenport and Cooley wrote the song in 1956, the first version being recorded by Little Willie John, but I first became aware of it when this chick from North Dakota picked it up, added some lyrics of her own, and emphasized the beat, making it into a monster hit back in ’58.
LeClerc was surprisingly good, with her husky voice, and I redoubled my efforts to match her phrasing, which was slightly different from Peggy Lee’s.
I looked up the length of the car and noticed that even Marv Leeland, peeking over the heads of the other sheriffs, was standing in the near doorway of the packed Pullman.
LeClerc was feeling her oats by this time and had begun swiveling her hips, providing a percussion all her own, as George McKay advanced and reached a hand out for her. “C’mon, that’s enough.”
She slipped away from him and, having moved toward the chairs that faced the windows, continued to sing like a cornered cat. “Fever! In the morning, fever all through the night . . .”
McKay moved toward her again. Even after a number of the sheriffs yelled for him to clam up and sit down, he kept reaching for her, obviously upset that she was sharing her charms with the other men. When he got close enough he made a grab for her but instead knocked the hat off an individual I hadn’t met yet, who took exception and stood. There were words, and McKay shoved the man out of the way. I started to get up.
Suddenly a hand was on my shoulder, and I turned to find Sheriff Leeland sitting next to me. “Not your fight. At least until somebody gets out a set of bongos or an accordion. God, I hate accordions.”
Bo Brown, the big farmer type from Natrona County, grabbed McKay by his collar and pulled him away from the other man, pushing him into the crowded aisle where a number of other sheriffs, including Sundown Nolan and Wayne Hanna and Holland, the security man, held him still until LeClerc and I finished the song.
I struck the final note, and the car erupted in a roar of applause as Kim took a bow and blew a kiss toward me; I nodded my head and gestured back to her, and she curtsied.
The group of men had released McKay, and he started toward his property just as Lucian stepped forward, intercepting him.
McKay loomed large over my boss, but the smaller man had lived entire lives that most men only hear about, and he stood there like a rock outcropping in a high tide.
I moved to get up, but Leeland stopped me again.
“In case you haven’t noticed, he’s about twice Sheriff Connelly’s size.”
Leeland chuckled as he glanced over his shoulder at the two would-be combatants. “Maybe, but my money would still be on Lucian—he fights dirty. Besides, this’ll be a nice audition for the presidency.”
I thought for a moment McKay was going to punch Sheriff Connelly, but then more words were exchanged and McKay seemed to deflate a little. Finally he turned, pushed some of the others out of the way, and exited through the front of the car, giving me a particularly hard look as he passed.
“Well, scoot over.” Marv glanced at me, and I did as he asked. “I think the biggest crime right now would be for you to rob this train of your talent.” He placed his hand on the keyboard, softly trilling a few notes. “Have you ever heard of Paul Wittgenstein?”
“I’ve heard of Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher.”
“His brother. Paul was the seventh child of nine. Now, the Wittgensteins were one of Vienna’s most remarkable families and were so obsessed with music that they had seven grand pianos. Paul made his debut in 1913 and was already deemed a successful pianist and promising virtuoso when he enlisted in the Austrian army.”
I had a funny feeling I knew where this was going.
His hand trailed up the keys, ending on a grim chord. “A few months later he was wounded on the Russian front and taken prisoner, where they amputated his right arm. In a Siberian prison camp, he practiced Chopin on a wooden box, improvising ways for one hand to play both melody and harmony.”
Sheriff Leeland began playing in a waterfall of five fingers, and I’d never witnessed anything like it.
“After the war, Wittgenstein returned home and commissioned more than a dozen pieces from some of the greatest composers of his time.” He chuckled. “He wasn’t particularly fond of any of them but decided that Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand in D Major wasn’t bad.”
He swelled into the piece, his hand flat-hatting across the keyboard and thundering the lower notes like a trip-hammer. Finishing what I assumed was the first portion of the piece, he turned to look at me with his sad eyes. “Personally, I think it’s a masterpiece.”
We sat there smiling at each other until we became aware of the silence and looked up once again to find the onlookers dumbstruck.
I leaned his way and spoke in a low voice. “Maybe not a highbrow crowd.”
Leeland immediately launched into a jazzy blues version of “This Train.” “Boy howdy.”
—
“How was your day?”
I sat on Cady’s newly arrived sofa with Dog snoring at my feet and Lola snoring on my daughter’s lap as the radio played in the background. “Great.”
She stared at me over the lip of her glass.
“Okay, not so great.”
She put her wine down and cradled Lola’s head in the crook of her arm so that she would stop snoring. “So, is this a medical release, medical parole, medical furlough, humanitarian parole . . . ?”
I nudged Dog with my boot. “I’ll find out tomorrow morning in the judge’s chambers.”
“In these cases, the eligibility usually is a result of terminal or chronic illness.”
“Yep.”
“So, he’s dying.”
“Maybe.” I stood and walked toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I just need some air.”
I pushed it open and stepped out onto the deck that overlooked the alley and the backyard. Carrying my tea to the balustrade, I stood there for a while looking at the nearby park and cemetery. Vic, Henry, and Lucian had gone to bed, and since Cady and I had occupied the new sofa, the Bear had made the supreme sacrifice of attempting to sleep in the same bedroom with Lucian, who had been snoring louder than Dog and Lola combined. In the distance I could hear a train whistle and, with the music in my head, I tapped a rhythm on the railing with the fingers on my left hand as I sipped my tea.
“What’s the song?”
I turned to find her wrapped in an old hippie blanket her mother had given her. “I put Lola to bed.”
“Where’s Dog?”
“Asleep beside her crib.” I smiled, and she asked again, “What’s the song?” She placed a hand over mine.
I sighed. “It’s called ‘This Train’—so old nobody knows who wrote it.”
“Oh, that old.”
“The first recording was done in 1922 by the Florida Normal and Industrial Institute Quartette. Their version was called ‘Dis Train,’ with a ‘D,’ but it was Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s version, called ‘This Train,’ for Decca in the early fifties with accompaniment from a newfangled contraption called the electric guitar that really kicked the song off.”
“And it’s about a train.”
“Bound for glory, but the thing that always bothered me about it was the exclusivity—it’s basically a list of all the people who aren’t going to get to ride the train to heaven, and if you’re a certain type of person, you don’t get to go.”
“Like who?”
“Lawyers are the first ones mentioned.”
“Oh, I don’t like this song already.” The Greatest Leg
al Mind of Our Time looked up at me. “Who else doesn’t get to go? Anything about sheriffs?”
“Not specifically. . . . It’s mostly concerned with false pretenders, backbiters, whiskey drinkers, and crapshooters. As I recall, no jokers, no tobacco chewers or cigar smokers, either.”
I sighed and looked back at the scattered lights of the state capitol. There were no lights when you looked out my windows at home, unless you count the ones on the Hanging Road in the Milky Way.
She nestled in close and took my arm in hers, pulling me in tight, her voice muffled against my shoulder. “You seem to be thinking about redemption a lot lately.”
“I suppose.”
She tilted her head back. “Maybe you should go see the object of this compassionate release?”
“Now?”
She traced a fingernail at the side of my jaw. “You see this muscle right here? I used to see it a lot when I was a teenager. I used to look for that muscle, because it told me that I was probably not going to get what I wanted. Well, that muscle is there now, and it tells me that you’re not going to go to sleep, so why don’t you go over to the hospital and take a look at him and decide for yourself if he’s worthy of the compassion of the state.” She nudged me. “I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to let the celebrated sheriff of Absaroka County have a look at the prisoner.”
I thought about it. “You want to go with me?”
She shook her head. “I’ve got a baby in bed and a job to go off to in the morning. Anyway, I’m thinking this is a train you should maybe ride alone.”
—
I lay there trying to read Agatha Christie and listening to Lucian snoring from the upper bunk as the train pulled into Medicine Bow to take on water and maybe to top off the fuel oil as well; we would stop every two hours, just like they used to, as we rolled across the state to Evanston.
Someone was whistling “This Train,” the tune drifting along the passageway as I slid my boots on. There was a tradition that if you left the boots in the cubby by the compartment door, the porters would have them polished by morning; I figured the porters had enough to do, and besides, I liked polishing them myself. I slipped my horsehide jacket on, straightened my hat, and stepped into the hallway.
The Western Star Page 6