The Western Star

by Craig Johnson

  The Cheyenne Nation slipped the big bird down into gear, pulled through the open chain-link fence onto Front Street, and drove my heart away.

  I felt a slap on my back. “Well, how did that go, Troop?”

  I stood there and watched the car before it disappeared behind a few buildings and even listened to the sound of the engine as the cold crept into my bones and solidified. “You say one more thing to me and I’m gonna knock the living shit out of you.”

  Figuring I needed to get my suitcase packed up so that I could get the hell out of there, I turned and walked toward the train. I’d had enough drama to last me a lifetime. I was close enough to get to Salt Lake City, and from there I could light out for the territories. Anybody who tried to stop me was going to be taking his life in his ill-advised hands.

  I got to our cabin and pushed open the door. I grabbed my things and shoved them back into my duffel, not bothering to fold.

  “Don’t do it, Mr. Longmire, sir.”

  I turned to look at Mr. Gibbs. “What?”

  “It didn’t look as though that went well, sir. I understand you’re really upset right now, but that ain’t no time to be making decisions in your life.”

  I stared at my boots. “I don’t know where I’m going, Mr. Gibbs, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “Can you live without her?”

  I turned back to him. “No, I don’t think I can.”

  “Then get her back.”

  “She doesn’t want me.”

  “She just like the rest of us; she don’t know what she wants, but worse than that, she don’t think you know what you want.”

  “I’ve told her.”

  “Hell, told . . . you go get that sweet, young thing and you show her.” He cleared his throat. “You say you can’t live without her, then you better go get her, ’cause near as I can tell, you ain’t an easy man to kill. You just come back from the war, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, Mr. Gibbs.”

  “On these trains, there’s a lot that come back in boxes, but you made it.” He clutched his fists together. “There was a woman I fell in love with in Chicago back in them dirty thirties, but I wanted to get out and get my musical career goin’. I thought I could live without her, but they wasn’t no way I could live without my music.”

  “How did that work out?”

  “I’m seventy-two years old, and I done think I was half right.”

  I smiled. “Which half?”

  “Unpack your stuff, ride this train back to Cheyenne, and hitch a ride out to where she is and show her you can’t live without her.” With that pronouncement he turned and walked away.

  My eyes dropped to the duffel, and I nudged it with my boot as I thought about what Gibbs had said. Finally I reached down and picked it up. My passport was on top, along with the Agatha Christie, and I heard Leeland’s voice echoing in my head—he did it, she did it, they all did it, or nobody did it.

  I zipped the duffel up, slipped it onto my shoulder, and then closed the door behind me. I ran into Lucian smoking his pipe on the steps.

  He moved aside as I stepped down the stairs and then onto the train bed below. I looked up at him and reached out in an attempt to hand him my star, but he made no move to take it. “Thanks for giving me a try, Lucian. I honestly appreciate it.”

  He just stood there, looking at it and me. “Where you headed, and what are you gonna do?”

  I stood there for a moment and then forcefully placed the star in his hand, before walking away. “Nowhere and nothing.”

  He called after me. “Well, there ain’t no hurry about nowhere and nothing—they’re always out there waitin’.”

  I paused, feeling the cold flow up from the ground through my boots, and was pretty sure I was going to be cold for a long time. I turned the collar up on my horsehide jacket and started off. “I’ll send you a postcard.”

  11

  “He must have gone straight to the office and written this shit up to make the deadline last night.” Vic lowered the paper and looked at the Bear and me. “What time was it?”

  “Right after midnight.” I sipped my coffee, took a final bite of my prebreakfast toast, slipped Dog a crust, and eyed my compatriots across the kitchen table. “Does he call me a vindictive prick?”

  She studied the article. “Did you really threaten him with Henry?”

  I looked out the kitchen window at the barely perceptible dawn, the serrated band of apricot-colored horizon reflecting off the taller buildings downtown. “Vaguely.”

  Henry joined the conversation. “In what sense?”

  “I told him you’d have probably broken his neck, on purpose or not.”

  He nodded. “A safe presumption.” He took the paper from Vic.

  There was a thumping noise from the living room and the party grew by one. “I wish you sons-a-bitches would learn to keep your voices down.” Lucian stomped into the kitchen, wearing nothing but boxers, a tank top, and his ubiquitous Stetson Open Road hat, his cane in his right hand. “What the hell’s going on in here?” He poured himself a cup of coffee and turned to look at us.

  “Old man, I’d appreciate it if you’d put on some clothes and your leg, not necessarily in that order, before my daughter and granddaughter wake up.”

  He sipped his coffee, finally focusing his bloodshot eyes on me. “Can’t find it.”

  “Your leg?”

  He nodded toward the beast under the table. “I think that critter ran off with it.” He took another sip and watched as Henry read the article. “What’s with the paper?”

  Vic gestured toward me. “Your protégé has taken to threatening reporters.”

  Using the back of one of the chairs to balance himself, the old sheriff hopped over and sat at the table with us, reaching down and petting Dog to show there were no hard feelings. “Well, there’s hope for him yet, isn’t there, you big bastard?”

  I nodded toward the backyard. “Mike Barr was here last night staking the place out.”

  He sipped his coffee some more. “Well, you ain’t exactly hard to find these days.”

  “I guess he wanted a scoop; I think he figured he could get something out of me if he was on my side.” Henry tossed the paper to the center of the table on top of a bowl of fruit. “The Star-Tribune didn’t do us any favors.”

  His finger sprang up and then thumped the table. “You know, it would do the people of this state well to realize that not everybody we go up against is either innocent or well meaning.”

  Someone started knocking at the door, and all of us turned toward it before looking at one another.

  Lucian grimaced. “Who in the hell is that this time of morning?”

  “I’m betting it’s the fourth estate.”

  Lucian made a move. “I’ll talk to ’em.”

  Henry got up, stopping the old sheriff with a hand, and moved toward the door. Whoever it was knocked again. “I will get this.” We listened as he crossed the living room. He snatched the door open and leaned forward with intent, causing whoever it was to stumble backward. “Can I help you?”

  “Um, is this the residence of Cady Longmire?”

  The Cheyenne Nation’s voice was low and sharp. “There is a child in this house—do you know what time it is?”

  Lucian picked up the paper and glanced at it before turning it toward me. The headline read: LONG ARM OF THE LAW REACHES INTO THE PAST WITH A VENGEANCE.

  —

  Pulling the handle of my duffel farther up onto my shoulder, I braved the wind and walked the length of town. I was about to take the cutoff toward the highway when a cream-colored sedan with whitewall tires pulled up to the curb beside me. “You look like you need a lift.”

  I stared at the familiar face that appeared in the driver’s side window of the Plymouth Belvedere and recognized John Scha
fer.

  “Where you headed?” I nodded in the direction of the highway. “Giving it up, huh?”

  I stared down at my boots as a few flurries swept past. “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a lawman.”

  He nodded. “Maybe I can make you a better deal.”

  “Than the law?”

  “Than hitching.”

  I stuffed my fists into my jacket pockets.

  “How ’bout I give you this car?” I didn’t say anything, so he climbed out. “I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I need somebody to go over to the state hospital with me.”

  I shook my head.

  “Listen, I’ve been visiting my brother in that place every month since he was convicted, and I’ve never gone alone.”

  “Why?”

  He snorted. “You ever been?”

  “No.”

  He gestured toward the car. “My parents went out and bought this boat for Ed when he went off to college; damn thing’s got only about six thousand miles on it.” He looked at me, his larger eye holding me in check. “I gotta get rid of the thing ’cause the place where I keep it is getting torn down. I don’t want it, never wanted it—too many memories—and Lord knows my brother doesn’t need it.”

  I nodded but still didn’t say anything.

  “You seem like a stand-up guy, so here’s the deal. You come with me to visit my brother and then give me a ride back to The Western Star, and I’ll sign the pink slip over to you. When you get wherever you’re going, you can just send me whatever you think the thing is worth.” He stood there studying me for a long while. He gestured toward the idling monstrosity. “One hour’s work for a car?” He ran a hand over the glossy surface of the front fender. “She’s underpowered with the slant six, but she’s in fine shape. And hell, she’s better than walking, wherever you’re going.”

  I had to admit he had a point.

  The cold was likely to worsen as the day progressed, and maybe I’d catch a ride, but maybe I wouldn’t. The Belvedere wasn’t my idea of a dream car, but it had a heater, and beggars should avoid being choosers on I-80 in the winter.

  “One hour?”

  He nodded and then started toward the Plymouth.

  I walked around the long hood. “One hour.”

  Schafer climbed in, and I glanced around once more, weighing my options one last time before I pulled the handle and got in, tossing my duffel into the back. He pulled out, continuing down the street past the turnoff for the highway, and then took a sweeping left turn. After a few minutes the town seemed to break up, giving way to a pastoral landscape.

  We drove in silence until we reached the hospital’s main gate, the only impediment in both directions as far as I could see.

  “I promised my family that I’d visit him for as long as he lived.” He rolled down the window. A young man in a security uniform, who looked to be about twelve, lowered his head and smiled in at us. “How are you, John?”

  “I’m good, Brian, how are you?” The young man glanced inside. “This is Deputy Longmire, and he’s with me.”

  “Can I see some ID, Deputy?”

  I took out my billfold and handed it to him with my driver’s license inside. He examined it and made a notation and then handed my wallet back. “Thank you, sir.”

  Schafer drove toward a large, square brick building that looked about a hundred years old and pulled across the street underneath a copse of leafless cottonwoods. “A national historic building now—used to call it just the Insane Asylum back then before a devastating fire on September 11, 1917. At that point, they renamed it the Hospital for the Insane, the word ‘asylum’ having gone out of favor. When they built the Hall for the Criminally Insane in 1935, they called the wings Absaroka and Carbon in hopes that people from those counties might provide a little extra for the inmates around the holidays, but that worked only for a couple of years.”

  He pointed. “That one’s the women’s building—looks all alone out there, but there are tunnels that hardly anybody knows about that connect most all of the buildings; they’re still used to bring food and patients back and forth.” He gestured toward I-80. “On the other side of the highway is the cemetery, but most of the markers just have dates and patient numbers on ’em. You should hear the stories. . . .” His voice trailed off.

  I thought about the individuals who had been shunned by society, forgotten even by their own families, and a slight shudder ran through me that had nothing to do with the cold. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who is Annie Welsh?”

  He studied me. “Somebody been telling you stories out of school?”

  “Lucian mentioned her.”

  He sighed and gestured toward the building. “Probably the most dangerous prisoner in the criminal wing. Farm wife out of Goshen County, up and killed her three children one day with a butcher knife, killed her husband when he came home, and then went over to the next farm and killed another couple with the same knife.”

  “Insane?”

  “I’ll say. All the way through the trial, all she’d do was repeat the same thing over and over—I didn’t mean to do it.” He turned to look at me again, before pulling the handle on his door. “Not to worry, she’s locked up good and tight.”

  He got out, and when I followed suit, he tossed the keys over. “All yours.”

  “I haven’t done anything yet.”

  He ignored me and crossed the street to where a large, overweight man in a white shirt and black slacks stood at the top of the steps with his arms folded. “John.”

  “Bernard.”

  “Bad Day at Black Rock.”

  Sheriff Schafer stopped at the bottom of the steps and looked up at the heavyset man. “You don’t say.”

  “I do. We had a two-man unlock with him this morning, trying to get him to come out for breakfast and exercise.”

  “So everybody got some exercise?”

  “Not funny. The new guy ended up damn near getting an eye torn out.”

  “Ed always was touchy on the subject of eyes.”

  The man didn’t say anything more but simply turned and entered the building. Schafer glanced back at me. “C’mon.”

  We walked through a general reception area and then a steel door that opened into a hallway that led to a smaller room, bare except for an empty desk and six chairs lined against the green, two-tone walls. There was a window looking into another office where a woman was typing on a Selectric. “How many guards are there?”

  Schafer eyed me again. “Two.”

  “Only two for both wings?”

  “There was only one till ’57 when the new warden requested another.” He sighed. “Everybody in these wards knows they have to look after themselves, more or less.”

  We waited until the heavyset guy returned. Ignoring Schafer, he looked at me. “Got any weapons, pocketknife or such?”

  I pulled the stag-handled knife from my jeans and then took my .45, still in the holster, out of the duffel, handing both to him.

  He passed my things through the window to someone I couldn’t see and then turned back to us. “We got a protocol, and as long as you follow it, we won’t have any trouble.”

  Once he’d outlined the rules, we followed him through another security door and down a hall until we came to a steel-grated opening that he unlocked, then locked again once we’d passed through. “Welcome to the tomb, Deputy Longmire.”

  As he lumbered down the steps, I noticed the walls turned to concrete, which gave way to slip-formed stone, giving an indication of just how old the building was. The tired fluorescents were buzzing and blinking and giving off a strange bluish light. All I could think was that Schafer was right: an hour in this place was more than plenty.

  There was a dark hallway to the right of the stairs, which I assumed was part
of the tunnel system that ran between the buildings, where every twenty feet or so a protected lightbulb gave out with a feeble yellow pool.

  At the next steel grate a man was sitting at a desk. He nodded to the turnkey and the sheriff in turn and then looked at me, and I noticed when he turned his head that his eye was completely covered with a bandage. “Just so you guys know, I’ve got a patient over in Carbon that I have to escort for meds in five minutes.”

  Bernard nodded, and the man stood and unlocked the gate, allowing us to continue into a hallway, where we stood, looking at a row of doors on either side—heavy, iron doors with paint that had chipped through the years, a color catalogue of the history of the place.

  Each cell had a number above the door, a thick knob that stuck out at about eye level, where a small barrier could be slid aside to provide visual access, and a lower, larger door that worked the same way, which I assumed was used to pass food in and out.

  “I hope you’re not claustrophobic.” There were two folding chairs leaning against the wall, and the guard handed one to each of us, pausing to glance at Schafer. “You know the rules.”

  “Yes I do, Barnyard.”

  The man turned and walked away.

  Schafer saw me looking at him with a raised eyebrow and explained, “Doesn’t like sheriffs—ran against Marv Leeland twice.”

  “Oh.”

  “I guess now he’ll get another shot at the job.” He turned and approached the nearest door, reached out a hand, and gently rapped his knuckles against the rough surface. “Ed, I know you heard us coming.”

  First there was nothing, but then a voice echoed from inside. “Hey, hey . . . who you got with you this time?”

  “A deputy friend of mine from up in Absaroka County.”

  “I knew a girl there once.”

  “Ed.”

  There was a silence. “Hey, hey, what’s your name?”

  “Walt Longmire.”

  There was a noise from down the hall, and Bernard appeared alongside us again. “Schafer, I got a code with the new guy and could use your help.”

  The sheriff looked at the door and then at me. “I’m here so often that they’ve decided I’m part-time help. I’ll be right back—don’t do anything. Don’t talk to him, but especially, don’t open that slat. You hear me?”