Assumption (2 page)

“Thank you.” He stood and again felt the cold air. “How about I bring in some wood for you? It’s a little chilly in here.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I insist. Maybe I’ll see your cat while I’m out there.” Before she could protest again he was at the door. He stepped out and made the only set of prints in the fresh snow. Ogden had a bad feeling about something but he couldn’t nail it down. As he loaded his arms with wood he looked back at the house, at the windows of the kitchen and the room she’d gone into for the pistol. That shade was drawn. He guessed that it was her bedroom. And where was her cat? Maybe she was acting strange simply because she was strange, because she had never liked Ogden’s skin color, though she had never said as much. But he knew. Anyway, something wasn’t right. A full clip? Why would she have replaced the missing bullets so quickly? A chambered round?

Back on the stoop, he stomped his boots free of snow and then stepped inside. Mrs. Bickers stayed close to him all the way to the front room where he set down his load next to the stove.

“I can take it from here,” the old woman said.

“You want me to open your bedroom door and let it warm up?” he said and looked for a reaction.

“Oh, I will, I promise.”

Her agreeable response rang strangely. Ogden had imagined her biting his head off, telling him that she’d lived alone long enough to know how to take care of herself and that she didn’t need some half-­brained deputy telling her how to heat a house.

Ogden smiled at the woman and walked to the front door. “You know, it’d be no trouble for me stroll around awhile and look for your cat. What, did she just scoot out when you had the door open, something like that?”

“He’ll be home soon.”

Ogden was out of the house and walking, almost to his car, when he turned around and looked. As he was about to fall in behind the wheel he saw Mr. Garcia standing at his door. Ogden walked toward him.

“
Buenos días,
again,” Ogden said. He kicked at the snow in the corners of the steps and looked up at Garcia, now on his porch.

“Everything straightened out?” the man asked. He held an unlit cigarette between his lips.

The deputy shrugged. “Seems under control.” He stepped onto the porch and stood next to the shorter man and together they looked across the street at the old woman’s house. “Report says you heard shots last night. I know you didn’t see anybody, but is there anything else you remember? Even before the shots?”

Garcia blew into his hands and then shoved them into the pockets of his thick sweater. “Like what?”

“Anything at all. Anybody suspicious hanging around the last few days? Ever, for that matter. Strange cars. Spaceships landing in her backyard.”

“The spaceship was a couple of weeks ago.”

“You don’t like Mrs. Bickers much, do you?” Ogden asked.

“Do you?” he asked.

Ogden looked at the gray sky. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Garcia.”

Ogden walked to his rig and got in this time, started the engine, and drove away. He stopped when he was sure his car couldn’t be seen from Mrs. Bickers’s house. He sat there behind the wheel for some minutes, nibbling from a bag of chips he’d bought the night before, trying to figure out what to do, trying to think of what was bothering him about the situation, if there was a situation.

He watched the postman drive down the road, depositing mail in the boxes. He could see the old lady’s box, but she didn’t come out to get her mail. The old people around there were paranoid about letting their mail sit in the box; too many checks had been stolen. Ogden had even seen Mrs. Bickers on occasion meet the postman at the roadside.

He got out and climbed a fence and made his way through the backyards to the old woman’s house. He slipped through the barbed wire that kept a fat calf in the neighbor’s yard and moved low until he was seeing the old woman’s house from behind the woodpile. The calf came to the place where he had crossed the fence and stared at him, lowed a complaint. Ogden stared back at the house. His heart was racing now and he focused on breathing more slowly.

He would have felt like a fool trying to dash across the yard unseen. With winter, all the shrubs were bare and there was no hiding. So he walked to the house casually, but quickly. He was glad he had taken the old woman’s pistol. When he had returned to the house with the wood, he had been the one to close the door. He hadn’t locked it and maybe it was still unlocked. He ducked and passed beneath the bedroom window and stepped up to the door. He gripped the knob gently, but surely, and gave it a slow twist. It was open. He heard nothing, nothing at all. If there was nothing wrong he was going to have a hell of a time explaining himself. He could tell the truth, that she had been acting strange and he was worried that something was wrong and then he would lie, saying he’d knocked on the back door and when there was no answer he became more concerned. The only lie was the part about knocking.

He was in the kitchen now, his boots weighing on the buckled linoleum. He knew there was no way to walk across the floor unheard, so he stepped quickly. He slipped a little on the ice he had brought in on his boots. He stopped at the closed bedroom door, looked up the hallway toward the front door, and unsnapped the trigger guard on his holster. If he opened the door and found the old lady in her altogether, she wouldn’t need a gun, he’d shoot himself. He did open the door and there was no one there. He moved quickly through the rest of the house, the parlor, the spare bedroom where the old woman had apparently watched television, the bathroom. Then he opened the front door. No one. The only prints in the snow were his, one set in and one set away.

Ogden went again into the bedroom and looked around, fingered through the papers on the nightstand, mostly receipts for prescriptions. He called out the woman’s name. He paused at the door, a little dizzy. He was about to leave the room when he stopped. He dropped down to look under the bed. The little white cat looked like a rag. Ogden pulled him out, the cat falling limp over his palm. He thought that maybe the animal had been squeezed to death, his eyes blood-­burst and erased of all sign of life. He called out the woman’s name again.

Ogden’s father would never have approved of his son’s job with the sheriff’s office. He wouldn’t have said it outright, that had never been his way except in Ogden’s dreams, but he would have made it clear that he believed Ogden to somehow be a traitor. A traitor to what would have remained forever unclear, but it would have been tinged with the language of race and social indignation. Ogden never did much like the uniform. He disliked it as much as he had disliked the one he’d worn in the army. His father had been alive for that uniform. It wasn’t that the man hated the idea of his son being a soldier; he hated the idea of his being an American soldier. He’d moved to New Mexico from Maryland because there were fewer people and so, necessarily, fewer white people. He hated white people, but not enough to refrain from marrying one, Ogden’s mother. Ogden’s mother never flinched and always laughed off her husband’s tirades as silly, which they no doubt were, but it was hard for a son to think that his father hated half of him. Perhaps this was why he was willing to care enough about the bigoted white woman who was now missing.

Sheriff Bucky Paz was a big man with a belly round enough that the general belief was that his suspenders not only held up his trousers but kept him from exploding. He didn’t carry a side arm because he figured he was wide enough without one. He had once said to Ogden, “I can’t do anything about my gut, but there’s no reason to look sillier than god intended.” He was sitting now behind his desk, eating carrot sticks and listening to Ogden’s report.

“You get any more out of the neighbors?” Paz asked. “People don’t like to talk in the middle of the night, but you catch them after breakfast and that’s another story.”

“They’re not crazy about talking with full stomachs either,” Ogden said. “Mr. Garcia didn’t see anything. The Hireleses didn’t see anything. Nobody saw anything.” Ogden stood from his chair and walked across the room to lean on the file cabinet. “And I believe them. Though I can’t say any of them are too fond of the old girl.” He peeled down a slat of the blinds and looked out at an insignificant flurry of snow. “They might not say anything even if they had seen something, but I believe them.”

Paz held up the Baggie of carrot sticks and offered some to Ogden. He nodded at the refusal. “My wife packs these for me. Says she’s trying to save my life. You know how many of these you have to eat before you don’t want a doughnut?”

Ogden rubbed his eyes. “How many?”

“Hell if I know. I eat all the carrots she packs for me and then I go get a doughnut.” He dropped the Baggie on the desk. “You say there were no car tracks.”

“Only mine and the mailman’s. The only vehicle on the street was Mr. Hireles’s pickup and it never moved.”

“That vintage blue Ford?”

“That’s the one.”

“I love that truck.”

Ogden nodded.

“Mrs. Bickers.” Paz said the name as if to hear how it sounded. He shook his head. “You know I took this job because nothing happens around here.”

“So, what now?”

“Hell if I know.”

“No escapes from the prison,” Ogden said. “I called. Not for over a year anyway.”

Paz bit the end off a carrot stick and looked up at him. “That’s good to know.”

“Felton!” Paz called out into the duty room.

The lanky Felton came to the door, tugged at his belt buckle, and adjusted his glasses. “Yeah?”

“Call over and see if anybody’s escaped from Santa Fe.”

“No reports of any escapes,” Felton said.

“Call anyway,” Paz barked. Then to Ogden, “Nothing wrong with double-­checking. And call the mental hospital, too.”

“Yes, sir,” Felton said and turned away.

Paz studied Ogden. “You look like shit.”

“I’m tired.”

“Yeah, you look tired, too. Son, you’re too young to look old.”

“Right.”

“Have you had anything to eat today?” Paz asked. “You know breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Person can’t go around with his body needing fuel.”

“You sound like my mother.” He started out of the office. “You know, Bucky, it wouldn’t hurt to miss a meal or two.”

“That’ll be the day.”

Ogden left the station and drove to the diner down the street. It was a place run by two young women who opened for the single meal of lunch. Whether they slept late and went to bed early, Ogden didn’t care. He cared only that their lunches were good and not expensive. They were pleasant enough and not flirty and Ogden liked that. He waved to a couple of people at the counter. One of the two owners came to his table, filled his cup with coffee.

“Thanks.”

“How you doin’, Deputy,” she said.

She and her partner didn’t much like the idea of policemen. He understood. He didn’t much like cops either, though he did want to like himself. “It’s okay to dislike the uniform. It’s just a uniform. Under it I’m just like you.”

She studied him for a second and together they realized that he had just uttered a blatant untruth.

“Forget I said anything,” he said.

“What’ll it be?”

“Tuna on whole wheat.”

“Fruit or fries.”

“Fruit,” he said.

She smiled. “And you’re healthy under the uniform as well.”

As he watched her walk back to the kitchen, Manny Archuleta and Rick Gillis slid into the booth opposite him.

“Hey there, Ogden,” Rick said. “Mind a little company?”

Ogden shook his head no, but he didn’t mean it. “How are you guys?”

They nodded.

“Don’t you love this place,” Rick said. “I was telling Manny I think they’re lesbians.”

“Who?” Ogden said.

“The gals that run this place. Mindy and Eloise.”

“So,” Ogden said.

“So, I think that’s hot,” Rick said.

“What about you, Manny?” Ogden sipped his coffee while he looked at Manny.

“I don’t know. It don’t matter none to me.”

“Me, either.” Ogden shifted his focus to Rick.

“Listen, don’t make me out to be no pervert,” Rick said.

“How’s Carla?” Ogden asked Manny.

“She left his ass,” Rick said.

Manny slapped his friend’s shoulder with the back of his hand. “She’s gone to visit relatives.”

“Yeah, right,” Rick laughed. “That’s why she took everything she owns with her.”

Manny called for Mindy or Eloise to bring them some coffee.

Rick leaned back in his seat. “Hey, Ogden, we’re trying to get some guys together for a poker game this weekend. You interested?”

“I don’t have any money.”

“You’ve got enough,” Manny said.

“I don’t think so. I told my mother I’d fix a few things, and I was hoping to get in a little fishing.” Ogden looked at his watch. “Don’t you two work for a living anymore?”

“Break,” Manny said. “Man’s got to have a break now and then to remain productive. That’s what memo 9374 says.”

Ogden looked over at Huddie’s Lumber Company where Manny and Rick worked, had worked since high school, probably would work until they stopped working for good.

“It’s slow right now,” Rick said.

Ogden nodded.

Mindy or Eloise brought food to Ogden and coffee to his friends. She didn’t give them much of a look and even less of a greeting.

“She doesn’t like you guys,” Ogden said.

Rick smiled. “She likes us.”

“Listen, fellas, I’ve got to eat so I can make my rounds. You mind?”

Rick held his palms out as if pressing against an invisible wall. “Pardon the hell out of us. We wouldn’t want to interfere with Wyatt Earp making his rounds.”

“Give me a break, guys.”

They did. The two men left in a bit of a huff. Ogden watched them walk across the street and back toward the lumberyard. He felt bad for having shut them down. He finished his meal.

The old road up to the defunct ski area was just that, old. The lodge had burned to the ground fifteen years ago and now the only people who went up there were teenagers. They kissed each other, tore around on the occasional snowmobile, or spray-painted what they thought were offensive words on the remaining five feet of the lodge’s north wall. It being a weekday and during school hours, the place was deserted, the dry snow blowing across the meadow beyond the parking area. Ogden got out and walked to where the doors had once been, then he moved around and along the wall to see the new graffiti. In the summer, people who called themselves Gypsies would come park their motor homes and squat for a while. Nobody minded much. He recalled the past summer when he had to pick up a Gypsy man accused of stealing a watch from a tourist. Ogden knew as soon as he began talking to the man that he wasn’t guilty of stealing the watch, but oddly he also knew that the man, given the opportunity, would have taken the watch in a heartbeat. He went back to the tourist and helped the man retrace his steps. They found the watch in the man’s car trunk.