Bone Fire (11 page)

“I need to see you for a minute,” he called. His voice sounded frail and he cleared his throat.

They turned, staring at him, and he knew for a fact he was the last person he could think of to figure out that this friend of his mother’s was his real dad, and that McEban had always known it.

“I’m sorry,” he said when McEban stepped up beside him.

“For what? Did you set fire to something?” He was trying to make a joke, but it didn’t come out funny.

“I’m getting sick,” the boy told him.

“You were fine a while ago.”

“Now I feel like puking.”

They heard the pickup door open and watched Rodney pull the keys out of the ignition to make the dinging sound stop, then lean back into the shade of the cab.

“I don’t like it either, Kenneth, but this isn’t something we can get away from. He showed me the papers. He showed me where your mother signed.”

The boy looked at where she parked her trailer beside the house, the spot rutted from the tires, the bunchgrass broken and discolored. “You would’ve told me if you knew this was going to happen, right?”

McEban knelt down on a knee in front of him. “I guess maybe not,” he said. “I guess I always thought it might, I just didn’t know when. But I’ll bet this turns out to be fine.”

“Is that what you really think?”

“It’s only for three weeks. I think you can have a good time if you’ll let yourself.”

Kenneth bounced the ball once, then settled it on a porch chair. “I need you to look at something.”

“All right.”

“Inside, I mean.”

McEban followed him into the kitchen and he bent over at the counter, wedging his hands up against the edge like some rough cop had just ordered him to. When they heard the truckdoor slam, Kenneth laid his face against his arm and looked out the screen door. “I hurt my back.”

McEban stared down at his thin back, the T-shirt stained off-center on the right side near his waist. The blood was bright and fresh, dried only at the edges. “Well, Jesus Christ,” he said, carefully pinching the shirt up.

“Is it bad?” the boy asked.

“You sound like you wouldn’t mind if we had to go in to the doctor’s.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“It’s not that bad.”

Kenneth nodded, his cheek still pressed against his arm. “I didn’t think it was. I could sort of see it with the hand mirror in the bathroom.”

The skin was scraped away behind his right kidney, but it didn’t appear to go deeper. “I’ll bet this hurt like a son of a bitch when you did it.”

“I didn’t feel anything till I got out of the water. That’s two quarters you owe me.”

“I’m going to have to put something on it.”

“You sure?”

“I’ll find something that won’t sting too much.”

McEban went into the bathroom and came back with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a bag of cotton balls, a tube of antibiotic salve, a package of square gauze bandages and tape, all of it cradled up against his chest. When he dabbed at the wound with a peroxide-soaked cotton ball, the boy widened his stance and hung his head between his shoulders. McEban could hear him breathing through his mouth.

“That’s not too bad, is it?”

“It’s okay.”

“When did this happen?”

“Last time I jumped, I came down too close to the concrete. I was showing off.”

“How come you didn’t say anything?” He was peeling the packaging away from the gauze.

“I didn’t think it was a good time to say something.”

“And when did you think a good time would be?” McEban smoothed the tape around the edges of the bandage and pulled the T-shirt down. “Did you think it’d heal up on the drive home?”

They heard footfalls on the porch, the scrape of a chair being moved.

“I didn’t want you saying anything to my mom when you were on the phone. I didn’t want her to know.” He pointed his chin toward the porch, looking like he might finally cry. “Or him.”

“How’d you figure out who I was talking to?”

“It wasn’t that hard.”

McEban got a brown paper lunch sack from under the sink and put the gauze and antibiotic and tape in and folded the top back, and when Kenneth turned around he handed it to him. “I want you to put some salve on every day. And wash your hands first.”

“Okay.”

“If you don’t it’ll get worse.”

“I’ll do it.”

“I know you will.”

They were stalling, like nothing had changed and they were just standing around throwing out possibilities about what they might fix for dinner. They heard Rodney get up out of the chair. He passed in front of the screen door and they watched him walk back to the truck.

“My library books will be overdue before I come home.”

“I’ll take them back for you. If you want, you can check out the same books at the library in Laramie.”

“I don’t have a card for the Laramie library.”

“They’ll give you one.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll say something to him.”

The boy nodded. “What if I can’t think of anything to talk about? On the drive. What if he doesn’t say anything either?”

“Well, I bet his radio works.”

Kenneth was looking down at his feet. They both watched the tears fall at the toes of his boots. There weren’t many.

“You know why Chuck Norris doesn’t read books?” McEban asked.

The boy shook his head, still looking down.

“I can’t believe you don’t know this one.”

He pulled the bottom of his T-shirt up and wiped his eyes. “How come you do?”

“I looked it up on the computer the other day. When you were over at Bobby Martens’.”

McEban waited until he was done wiping his face, shaking his head like there was water in his ears. He waited for him to stand up straight and take a deep breath. “He doesn’t read them because he doesn’t have to. He just stares them down until he gets the information he wants.”

The boy’s eyes were still full but he smiled, like he was giving a gift, and they both knew that’s what it was.

C
RANE KNOCKED
on the door again and waited. To the east a weedy lot, the sage grubbed out around a swing set, the pipe-metal uprights peeling and rusted, a plastic seat hanging by a single chain, paddling in the wind, the slide broken loose from its base and twisted Möbius-wise, and beyond a sagging barbed wire fence and an overgrazed stretch of prairie. He wondered briefly if he would have been any good at a trade that didn’t require a uniform and confrontation. To the west, three other weathered duplexes described the arc of the cul-de-sac.

Lately, his calves and thighs have felt as though corn kernels were popping endlessly through the muscles and tendons, and he bounced on the balls of his feet, squatting twice, and then bent at the waist to touch the toes of his boots. It helped a little. He knew it soon wouldn’t.

He straightened up, meaning to knock once more, and the filmy curtain in the window to his right hooked back and released but he couldn’t see who was behind it. Then a woman’s voice, harsh and impatient: “Why don’t you come on in, for Christ’s sake. It’s unlocked.”

He stepped inside, blinking in the dimly lit front room, and when the woman asked if he was done with his calisthenics he saw where she was sitting, in an overstuffed chair by the window.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I am.”

“Can’t do ’em myself. Got a gone-to-hell disc in my back. Ruptured is what they say, but then, as you can clearly see I didn’t injure myself jogging.” She tucked her chin into the swell of her neck, stuck her tongue out and squinted down over her cheeks, trying to locate the fleck of tobacco at the very tip of her tongue, then flicked it off with a fingernail. “I ought to buy filtered.”

“Looks like it.”

“Benton’s parking tickets finally catch up with him?”

“No, ma’am. I don’t know anything about any tickets.”

“When I seen you come in the drive I thought that’s what it must be about.”

“I’m here about your daughter.”

“You say you’re here about Janey?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why don’t you see if you can find you a place to sit.” She had a canker sore in the corner of her mouth and dabbed at it with a yellowed forefinger. “I get nervous with somebody standing over me.”

He sat down in the middle of the couch across from her, the cheap cushions bobbing at his sides. On the coffee table there was a canister of black powder, an electric melting pot, a dipper, bullet mold, a cereal bowl heaped with newly formed lead balls.

“Don’t knock that stuff over,” she said.

He moved to the end of the couch where he could stretch out his legs.

“Benton’s queer as a three-dollar bill for all that mountain-man bullshit.”

She leaned over and stubbed out her cigarette in a plate beside the chair, then pulled the cannula prongs from her nostrils, biting down on them to suck in the air. She sat gathering herself. “It’s the shits bein’ sick,” she said.

“It’s no fun, that’s for sure.”

“Tell me about it. I ain’t even forty-five yet.”

They waited for her breathing to calm, then she wiped the cannula on the sleeve of her robe and arranged it back in her nose.

“I cried like a little child when them heartless bitches come over here and took her away from me.”

“Excuse me?”

He’d been thinking he should have gone to a better college. Somewhere out of Wyoming. One that would’ve broadened his take on the world. He heard the toilet flush, and a man walked into the kitchen tucking his shirttails in.

“Goddamn,” he said. “I didn’t know we had company.”

He was angular and gaunt as an undernourished farm animal, wore buckskin pants and a rough cotton shirt, a necklace made of bearclaws and, on his belt, a beaded bag and a long sheathed knife that looked like he could chop kindling with it. His dirty hair was drawn back and tied with a leather thong, but he was clean-shaven.

“We was just talkin’ about the day they come and took Janey from us,” she said.

“You mean them dykes from the Social Services.” He was getting a coffee cup down from the cupboard.

“There wasn’t a goddamn social thing about either one of ’em.” She pinched off the oxygen tube and lit another cigarette.

Her husband chuckled. “She thinks that shit’s going to light up like propane.”

“You don’t know it won’t.”

“I know more than you think.”

Sitting up straighter seemed to ease her breathing. “You’re more full of crap than the Christmas goose,” she said, and then, “This here’s Benton.”

“You want coffee?” he offered.

“If it’s already made, black’s fine.”

“It’s always made,” he said. “So, what do you need Janey for? She get crosswise of the law?”

“I’ve just got some questions that need answers. I think she could help me out.”

The woman started to laugh and then coughed for a while, which put her out of breath again. She pulled a little plastic garbage can closer, spat in it, straightened up and sat there with her eyes closed, settling. “They must teach you that sorry line in cop school,” she said, smiling with her eyes still closed. “‘I just got some questions to ask.’ Christ, they even got them numbnut pretend cops on the TV sayin’ it.”

Benton handed Crane a cup of coffee and sat down on the other end of the couch. He plucked a lead ball out of the bowl, holding it up in the weak sunlight, rolling it between the pads of his thumb and forefinger. “You ever been to that Mountain Man Rendezvous they got up in Red Lodge?” he asked.

Crane balanced the cup on a knee. There was a shimmering slick on top of the coffee like it had been sweetened with motor oil. “No, I never have.”

The man sat back in the couch. “Janey always said she thought I resembled Jeremiah Johnson. In the movie. I guess you saw that.”

“Some years ago.”

“And I’d look like Angelina-fuckin’-Jolie,” she said, “if I shed about two hundred and fifty pounds. You goin’ to tell me what you want my Janey for?”

He was staring at an unframed Charlie Russell print thumb-tacked to the wall, fly-spotted and stained, the edges curling.

“Hello?” She made it sound like a cuss word, and when he focused on her she was glaring at him.

“I’m sorry. I was thinking about my leg.” He stretched his right leg out, flexing the toe back, and the pain that shot through his calf made him gasp. He felt the sweat standing across his forehead.

“Well, Jesus Christ,” she said. “If you’re going to have some kind of attack maybe you better leave.”

“I’m fine now.”

“You goin’ tell me or aren’t you?”

“I just have a few questions for her about her boyfriend.” He set the cup on a blue plastic milk crate beside the couch. “He got in some trouble, and Janey’s name was in his cell phone. I called for a couple days but she never did answer, so I decided to come over in case you might know where she was.”

“She ain’t here,” the woman said. “And she hasn’t been since they took her. She was only fourteen and that was three years ago.” She took a drag from her cigarette, holding in the smoke as long as she could, then exhaled through her nose and made the cannula whistle. “Her name the only one you got out of that phone?”

“No, I spoke with all his friends. They seemed like good kids. They said Janey was his girl, and I imagine she’s a good kid too.”

“How you doing on your coffee?” the husband asked.

“I’m fine with what I’ve got.” He turned back to the woman. “So you haven’t heard from her, is what you’re saying?”

She struggled up to the edge of her easy chair again. “We seen her once in the grocery store but she was already checked out, and you know how kids is once the glands kick in. Revs ’em up. You can’t hardly get ’em to stay put.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You have a daughter, do you?”

“Stepdaughter.”

“Same goddamn thing.”

“I always thought so.”

“What’s the boyfriend done?”

“He was killed.”

“Like in an accident.”

“No, that’s not it. He was murdered.”

She nodded, using the hand towel draped on her knee to swab her neck, front and back. “Benton, I need this air changed out,” she said, and he got up from the couch and dragged an oxygen bottle out from behind it, and jostled the green cylinder into place beside her chair.