Cold Dish (6 page)

“It’s Pancake Day!” The voice resonated through the lines from fourteen miles away. Jim Ferguson was not only head of Search and Rescue and my longest standing part-time deputy, but he was also the man in charge of driving around Durant once a year at dawn in the fire department’s truck, proclaiming through a bullhorn, “It’s Pancake Day, Pancake Day!”

There are only three major vote-getting days in Absaroka County, and I can’t remember the other two. “Oh God, no. It’s Pancake Day.” I thought about shooting myself. I could see the headline: SHERIFF SHOOTS SELF, UNABLE TO FACE PANCAKES.

“It’s Pancake Day!” Ferg really enjoyed his work. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the last hour, just thought somebody ought to call and remind you. But if you really are gonna retire next year, then who gives a shit?”

I stumbled to the phone beside the recliner. “Is it really today?”

“If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’.” There was a pause. “Hey, Walt, if you want, I can just tell ’em we were up all night.” Ferg was slightly in the Turk camp for future sheriff, but I had other plans. If Vic was going to be the first female sheriff in Wyoming, I only had a year to pull in all my political markers. I could last an hour of Pancake Day with the Elks, the Eagles, the Lions, the Jaycees, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and, of course, the AARPs.

“I’ll be there in a half hour.”

“Remember, it’s at the Catholic church this year.”

“You bet.” I plugged in the coffeemaker and dumped enough coffee for eight cups into the filter with only enough water for four. I took a shower while it was perking. The plumbing was somewhat makeshift, but the water that came from above went away below. It went away below through a bathtub that Henry had found for me for twenty dollars. Somebody on the Rez had used it for target practice with a .22 but had only chipped the porcelain. Then there was the shower curtain. I don’t know what the exact physical dynamics are that cause a shower curtain to attach itself to your body when you turn on the water but, since my shower was surrounded on all sides by curtains, I turned on the water and became a vinyl, vacuum-sealed sheriff burrito.

 

I slid behind the wheel of the Bullet and started driving the fourteen miles to town. Durant is situated along the Bighorn Mountains and, because there is abundant fish and game, it’s become the retiree capitol of Wyoming. In Absaroka County, to ignore the octogenarian vote is to pump gas at the Sinclair station for a living. Service jobs are about all there are in Durant, somewhat stunting the younger generation and forcing the majority out by age nineteen; but the retirees keep coming from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, with the odd Texan and Californian thrown in for spice. They come looking for the romance of the west that they had paid shiny quarters to view on Saturday afternoons in flickering black and white. They waited half a century of stamping out automobile bumpers to get their western dream; they paid for it and, by God, they were going to have it. Most ended up picking up and moving out, headed for Florida, Arizona, or wherever the weather was easier. I liked the ones who stayed. You’d see them out after the blizzards, shoveling away, and waving at the Bullet like it was the circus come to town. Hell, I’d stop and talk to them. Sheriffs have to get elected in Wyoming, so we have to be liked. I imagine that, if you had to elect the average police force, the turnover rate would spin your Rolodex.

When I first started out, it was the part of the job that I enjoyed the least, courting the public. But as time wore on, it got to be the part that I enjoyed the most. Martha was right when she said that I needed a bumper sticker that said BORN TO BULLSHIT. The debates were the best part. In ’81, old Sheriff Connally planned a peaceful takeover. He ran against me so no one else could and had lofted softballs to me so that I felt like Harmon Killabrew by the time the debate was over. I was elected. Lucian retired and was now living the high life in room 32 at the Durant Home for Assisted Living. I still went over on Tuesday nights to play chess, and he still kicked my ass, to his unending delight.

 

I looked at the inch of snow that dappled the sagebrush. It looked like a Morse code of white dots and dashes leading down the road. If I could read the message, would it tell me the story I wanted to hear? The truth still stood that I was a sheriff who had survived by the cult of personality, and that, if the trend were to continue, my heir-apparent would not be elected. Was I just trying to force Vic down the throats of the county because I could? No, she was the best person for the job and that was the reason I was going to have to keep pushing. Pancake Day, Pancake Day.

I idled down into second gear at the corner of Main and Big Horn and looked down the street to see Turk’s Trans Am parked at the office. Just seeing his car made my ass hurt. I didn’t feel like facing him on an empty stomach. I hoped he would have already contacted Lavanda Running Horse over at Game and Fish for any information we could get about last night’s incident. I circled quickly around the courthouse to avoid being seen and made a beeline for the Catholic church. The place was mobbed, and there was no parking. I wheeled the Bullet onto the concrete pad beside the HVAC unit and cut the engine. I figured the Pope wasn’t coming today.

“Well, if it isn’t the long arm of the law.” It was an old joke, but one I didn’t mind. “Longmire, pull up a chair and sit yourself down.” Steve Brandt was the mayor of Durant and the de facto president of the Business Associates Committee, a loosely affiliated group of warring tribes that made up the commercial facet of the downtown. He also owned the screen-printing place on Main and had done the T-shirts for the annual Sheriff’s Department
vs.
Fire Department softball game, but the less said about this the better. Next to him was David Fielding of the Sportshop, Elaine Gearey who had the Art Gallery, Joe of Joe Benham’s Hardware and Lumber, Dan Crawford from the IGA, and Ruby.

“What are you doing here?” Ruby’s chin rested on her palm, fingers trailing into the hollow below her cheekbones. I figured cheekbones were one of those things you gained from speed walking five miles a day.

I slipped off my coat and sat on it. “Well, I’m here to support the courageous Durant Volunteer Fire Department’s men in nonflammable nylon . . . Do you think their hats are cooler than ours?”

“Shouldn’t you be home, in bed?”

I took my hat and perched it on her head. It looked jaunty. I turned to the others at the table. “This is the problem I have with all the women I know, they’re always trying to get me into bed.” There was a derisive chuckle around the table, and Ruby took my hat off, sitting it on the table brim up—good Wyoming girl. “It’s ’cause I look so much like Gary Cooper.” General opinion at the table projected their cinematic consensus to more like Hoot Gibson, whereupon I changed the subject. “So, how are the pancakes?”

“We don’t know. We been here for twenty minutes and ain’t seen a damn pancake yet.” Joe Benham was in a lean and hungry mood.

“Might be for the best. They aren’t letting the firemen cook again, are they?”

“You think they’d learn to not trust ’em with fire.” David’s comment referred to the infamous Stove Oil Incident wherein the firemen had set fire to the old wood-burning stove at the Future Farmers of America hall, resulting in that year’s pancakes tasting roughly like roofing shingles.

“The best was when they almost burned their truck up at that grass fire out near you.” Elaine, being a patron of the arts, always appreciated spectacle.

Ruby placed a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee in front of me. I hadn’t even seen her get up. “Thank you, ma’am.” I took a sip and listened to the rumble as it joined the other four cups in my stomach. I was hungry and that was not a good thing on Pancake Day.

“We were just discussing the city Christmas decorations, Walt. Do you think they’re the ugliest in Wyoming?” Elaine had a twinkle in her eye. As part of the city council, she had been lobbying for new decorations for about six years now. The problem was that Joe’s father had designed and executed the offending artistry of Santa, elves, reindeer, bells, wreaths, candles, trees, mistletoe, holly, stars, and toys twenty-five years ago. Say what you want about three-quarter inch exterior ply, it holds ugly for a long time.

“Gillette’s are uglier,” I ventured.

“We heard you had a busy night.” Dan Crawford picked up his coffee and blew into it, watching the swirls of cream separate at the rip-tide on the other side of his cup. It got quiet.

This was going to be the prime topic of conversation for the morning, so I might as well develop an official line. “Nothing big. We had a hunting accident out near 137 on BLM land.” I tried to make it sound like the end of the story.

“We heard there was a boy dead.” Dan continued to look at his coffee.

“Well, what else have you heard?” It got even quieter. “No offense, Dan, but I’m not gonna sit here and play guessing games with you. Why don’t you just tell me what you know, and I’ll either confirm or deny it or not.” His face reddened, which was not what I was after.

“I didn’t mean anything, Walt. Just curious.”

He meant it. I rubbed my face with my hands and looked at all of them. “I hope you’ll all excuse me, but it’s been a long night.” I sighed. “With all due respect to the ongoing investigation, it would appear that, on the night past, one Cody Pritchard departed for the far country from which no traveler born returns.”

The allusion was not lost on Elaine. “Have you narrowed it down to a couple of hundred thousand suspects, as in something rotten in the state of Denmark or Iowa?”

Joe nodded. “Well, I don’t figure there’ll be any public outcries of mourning . . .” Elaine ventured that there might be a parade, then saved me by asking if I was willing to play the Ghost of Christmas Future in the civic theatre’s upcoming production of
A Christmas Carol
. I was pretty sure that she wanted me for my height and not my dramatic skills. This was confirmed when she assured me that I wouldn’t have to learn any lines and that all I had to do was point.

 

I excused myself to see a man about a horse and made for the boy’s room at the far end of the hall. On the way, I got a peek through the kitchen service opening and was startled to see Vonnie Hayes sliding a stacked platter of pancakes to a waiting fireman. She looked much as she did last evening, which seemed like another life. Her hand came up and swiped back a stray wisp of hair that had escaped from the loose bun. It’s funny how the little movements that a woman makes seem so individualized, like a signature. It was the rotation of the wrist with a two-finger pull. I gave it a ten and was aroused. I waved and thought she had seen me, but maybe I was wrong. She smiled at the young fireman and disappeared into the kitchen. Those firemen, they make out like bandits.

In the boy’s room, I attended to business, washed my hands, hit the button on the hand dryer, and wiped my hands off on my pants to the quiet hum of modern technology. It was then that I realized I was wearing my weapon. I don’t wear my gun to community functions, and I don’t wear it on weekends. I was actually famous for taking it off and leaving it places. Periodically, Vic would bring it back to me from the bathroom in the office or out of the seat of the Bullet. She liked to make fun of my antique armament by calling it the blunderbuss. Heavy, hard to aim, slow rate of fire, it was the weapon I had used in Vietnam for four years, and I’d gotten used to it.

The Colt 1911A1 had a grisly but effective past. During the Philip-pine campaigns, the islanders took to getting doped up and wrapping themselves in sugarcane. United States servicemen had the glorious experience of shooting these natives numerous times with no result before being hacked to death by their machetes. Obviously, something with a little more hitting power than the standard issue .38 was needed. John Browning’s auto-loading, single-action child graduated to .45 caliber, and the Filipinos began flying back out of the trenches they had hurled themselves into. Unaccurized, the weapon was about as precise as a regulation basketball but, if you hit something with it, chances were good the fight was over.

I thumbed the standard duty holster open and took the weapon out to check it; an old habit. The matte finish was rubbed off at the sights and the ridges along the barrel’s slide action. Fully loaded, which it was, it regularly weighed 38.6 ounces, but today it seemed to weigh about three tons. What the hell was it doing on? Was I responding to some unconscious threat? Did I know more than I thought I knew? It was about this time that I became aware of the bathroom door being opened, and a fully dressed fireman looked at me and my gun.

“I didn’t think the pancakes were that bad.”

“Hello, Ray.” He was the young one I had seen talking to Vonnie at the kitchen window. “You need in here?” It took him a moment to respond.

“Ms. Hayes sent me over, you got a phone call in the kitchen.”

It was probably the first time he had ever used the title
Ms.
in his life. He still didn’t move. “Anything else?”

He smiled, embarrassed. “You gonna shoot somebody?”

I thought for a moment and sighed. “Anybody need shooting?”

“Not that I know of.” He looked away for a second. “Sounds like the only one that needed it got it last night.” He was roughly Cody Pritchard’s age, and they probably had gone to school together. I nodded and started to squeeze by him. “What’s the um . . . story on Cody?”

I stopped, and we were lodged in the doorway. I looked down at him. “Well”—I paused for effect—“he’s dead.” I watched him to see if there was anything else. There wasn’t, so I smiled. “You better get some pancakes over to the mayor at the Business Associates Committee table before you guys are putting out fires with a bucket brigade.”

“You bet.” Always good to know on which side your pancake is buttered.

As I made my way toward the kitchen, I mused on the thought of being caught in the bathroom playing with my gun. Great, as if everybody in the county didn’t already think I was loony as a waltzing pissant. When I got to the kitchen door, Vonnie already had it open.