Cold Quiet Country (21 page)

Damned if I was going to turn my back on her.

Bittersmith rested his hand on the girl’s shoulder and spoke to her. She nodded slowly, like the motion drove a nail into her skin. I held a can of beans. He turned and approached. I glanced at him. He grew taller and taller. I wondered how he was my father.

I wondered if I could brain him with beans.

“You passing through?”

“I work at Haynes’s.”

“That so?”

“Yes.”

“You here for beans?”

“A couple items.”

“I don’t like you.”

I squeezed the can. Held my tongue.

“I don’t like the way you’ve been watching me, like you’re set to rob the place.”

“I’m no thief.”

“You ought to move along, ’fore I decide you and me need to have a more thorough conversation.”

“I’m here to buy a couple of things.” I placed the beans back on the shelf.

The door chime sounded.

An elderly man and woman entered the store and took a pushcart. They walked slowly. Bittersmith scowled. “I see you again, it’s royal goddamn trouble.”

Bittersmith walked away. He made a click-sound with his mouth while he pointed at the girl, like he was calling a horse. I fetched the salt Haynes had sent me for. I didn’t talk to the girl, other than to ask if she was okay and how her day was going. Her nametag said Judy. She was tightlipped and shy, but more relaxed than when Bittersmith was hovering over her.

Haynes sent me to the same store a couple weeks later. This time a bald angry man with a stiff waxed mustache sat behind the register.

“Where’s Judy? Does she work today?”

“Judy, huh? She went to school.”

“In Bittersmith?”

“College. San Francisco. What do I care? Now I’m here all day and all night, too.”

I was happy for Judy. She ran when she could.

* * *

During the fall I worked for Burt Haudesert, Sheriff Bittersmith was the source of at least two angry rants from Burt. He occasionally drank whiskey from a Mason jar. It coarsened his manners and speech, and accented his drawl with a barbeque twang, impressing upon me that he chose moonshine because he was proud of being country, just as a rich man might choose an aged bottle of wine and say old chap in homage to his aristocratic forbears.

We sat on the porch. Like most nights after supper, Burt brooded, at once melancholy and tired from the day’s work and eager to make me an acolyte of his views on the militia, the gold standard, and Nixon. But this night he held my look longer than normal and seemed unconvinced of what he was about to say.

In my fear I believed we each knew everything. Would he confront me about my relations with Gwen, or worse, attempt to justify his frequent visits to her bedroom?

Burt offered me the Mason jar; I sniffed it and gave it back. Cal was inside the house, in bed, as it was still early fall, and Jordan was inside too. Burt didn’t launch into the militia being the only crew of honest Americans left, the last defenders of the Constitution. Instead, he told me of his schoolboy days. I sensed he was trying to bridge his growing up with a single mother and then a stepfather to my life at the orphanage. He told a story about hollowing the center of a history text and hiding a water pistol inside. Each time Mr. So-and-so turned, Burt squirted the back of his head. The teacher knew it had to be Burt and went so far as to stand him up and pat him down. Failing to find the water gun, he instructed Burt to open his textbook and read aloud the assigned chapter.

Burt hemmed and hawed. Mr. So-and-so flipped open the book, and found the squirt gun in the cut-out pages. He seized the book and smashed it to Burt’s crown.

Burt giggled like a four-year-old girl. He filled the story with so many embellishments that he finished a pint of moonshine telling it.

“That’s a great story,” I said.

“That’s the truth. Not a story.”

“That’s a great truth,” I said.

“Goddamn right.”

I winced.

“What? You got a problem?”

“No problem, Mister Haudesert. Did you go to school in Bittersmith?”

“Bittersmith. Hunh? Goddamn Bittersmith. There’s a rotten son of a bitch, there.”

He must have been thinking about Sheriff Bittersmith earlier, and the liquor loosed his frustration.

“You ever walk down the street and see him comin’. You see him walkin’ down the street and you’re on his side, you just cross. Don’t even look and see if there’s cars.”

“You two have history?”

“History? Goddamn future, too.”

“Future?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“How is it the town’s named after him?”

“Named after his granddaddy—Walt Bittersmith, a rancher. Held a huge tract o’ land and sold a right-of-way to the Burlington railway. They put a depot at the crick and Walt built the first saloon. So the great sheriff’s roots go straight to the brothel. His grandmum was a hoo—ooo—oor.” His voice scattered into laughter.

I was quiet while Burt tried to drink ‘shine. He coughed booze across the porch.

“How long has Sheriff Bittersmith been the sheriff?”

“Shit. Longer’n you been alive. Longer’n me.”

“Seems like a quiet town.”

“Yeah. You make some noise and he’ll see you quiet again. Slapped my ass in jail for a bar fight. That sombitch had it in for me my whole life. He used to come around and visit Ma. Give her the willies. He’d watch me and I’d know why she was so goddamn disgusted with him.”

“You said he made you quiet?”

“I was in a fight. Stupid thing, shooting nine ball. I was good back in the day and got in a pissing contest. I went to bust the other fella’s head and Bittersmith shows up, like he was waiting, and hauls my ass in. He threw me in the tank overnight and the next morning came in and sat on the plank beside me and said, ‘I’m not citing you for the disturbance, last night. But you ever fuck up in my town again, I’ll kill ya, son.’”

“Bittersmith said that?”

“Them exact fuckin’ words.”

“He called you ‘son’?”

Burt inhaled deep. He exhaled, then gulped long from his ‘shine.

“This is crazy. But I like you Gale, and I’ll steer you straight. This is how I put it together. I was a boy. Shit. Five or so. I found a baby. A baby rabbit, sitting under a pine tree. Just sitting there. He saw me and froze. He was easy to catch. I remember that day…clear blue sky.”

Burt reached to his left boot and unlaced it. Bent over and half grunting, he said, “I came running into the house with the rabbit in my hands. Didn’t know Bittersmith was there. Didn’t hear his truck.”

He untied his other boot, then sat up, kicked out his legs, and drank from his bottle. He pulled a half-burned cigar from his pocket. Lit it. I had never seen him smoke, and the stink of it blended perfectly with his mood.

“Bittersmith had my mother pressed up against the kitchen counter.” Burt grimaced. “Pressed against the counter with his pants at his knees and her wrists pinned to the cabinets. I dropped the rabbit.”

He was silent a long minute. His chin touched his chest.

“So that’s why he threw me in jail,” Burt said. “The son of a bitch had the paternal instinct. I saw that Mutual of Omaha show. The lion killing his young. That’s what the paternal instinct feels like with Bittersmith.” He drank from his bottle. “But he’ll get what’s coming. He’ll get what’s due.”

“What do you mean?”

His sleepy eyes danced inside shadows cast by the sixty-watt bulb.

“You look awful coy, Mister Haudesert. Like you’ve got a plan.”

He winked. “Board decides who’s sheriff. Other places, the people vote. But Bittersmith’s granddaddy made it the board so the law wouldn’t be above him and his boys. Give him a layer of money insulation. Pesky voters and all. In these many years, it’s never changed. But the board has. The board’s made of militiamen. Masons, too.”

“You’ve got some pull with the Masons?”

“I am a traveling man.”

I studied him, tried to parse the secret language.

“I guess you’re not. Shit. I got Bittersmith into the Masons.” He leaned back until his head hit the wall, and he stared into the darkness. “He asked if I’d sponsor him. I figured sure, all I had to do was vote against him. The ballot was secret.”

“But you didn’t.”

“At a certain age, a man wants to know his father. Pure-ass evil or not. A man wants to put it all to rest.” Burt leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. His face was dark. “Have a drink of ‘shine, Gale. You ask too many fuckin’ questions.”

I liked him, for a moment.

* * *

I cut through the snow at the best vector I can figure to return to Doctor Coates’s house and stop at a cow fence. It’d be bad to see blood where I dragged the deputy across the porch from a hundred yards off. The steps are white, and I keep on.

I look across the field to where the deputy left his car, expecting to see a second vehicle. A pickup truck with six extra headlights on the roof, like the Militia uses. Or another police car, coming fast with swirling blue and red lights. I am happy in my disappointment.

I shield my eyes from the glare off the snow and take in the lake, a morbidly sullen expanse of pure white.

Firewood.

The deputy’s face still melts snow, but ice crystals rest on his hands. Soon, drifts will cover him. I didn’t start the day looking to see so many people die. Maybe I’m like the butcher Haynes. A man can only kill a dozen doe-eyed animals a week for so long before his heart grows hard.

I fill my arms at the woodpile and carry the logs past the deputy. I make two more trips so I won’t need to get bundled up again until dark. Inside, I go to the list of food items I’ve taken and update it with each article of clothing I took from the doctor’s bureau and closet. Upstairs, I locate a duffel of World War II vintage and stuff it with several sets of underwear and socks, pants, shirts, a second pair of sloppy-fitting boots, another wool sweater. A toilet kit. A blanket. A tarp from the basement that, with enough twine and ingenuity, might become a tent. I lean the packed duffel against the wall by the front door.

In the room where I found the duffel is a bookshelf. I’d normally devour the titles for works I’ve read or volumes I’ve always wanted to read. This time I seek something that caught my eye when I searched out the duffel: a stack of folded roadmaps.

When Guinevere and I snuggled those fall nights, we traded dreamy runaway destinations. Hers was Mexico. I said Chicago because it came to mind. She wanted Mexico because it was warm and she could live beside the ocean.

“Which ocean?” I said.

“I don’t care,” she said. “Don’t be specific with a dream. You’ll be disappointed.”

I check the front flaps of each map and one is for the southwestern United States. I stretch it flat on the bed. At the bottom, outside the double boldface line, its territories dull gray, is Mexico. The map shows no Mexican cities, no roads, no rivers, as if everything known ends at the border. As if the person who crosses that double line will be forgotten. I eyeball the distance between the words “Wyoming” and “Mexico.” Glance at the legend.

A thousand miles?

The closest road south from Wyoming comes out of Monroe.

Margot Haudesert’s car is in the center of the driveway. The coroner’s GMC is parked beside my Bronco at the barn. I’m fresh out of jerked venison, and my stomach is like a fist squeezing a handful of sand.

Coop said Haudesert had plenty of snowmobiles, but I look in the barn and an ancillary shed and find only one. Eighteen-inch-wide sled tracks lead away, breaking sharply from the gate and shooting across the field, opposite where I trekked. Under snow, the tracks could be a few hours old or a few days.

Coop releases the hood spring on each side of the green Skiroule, checks the fuel tank up front. Straddles the sled and rocks it side to side, mixing the oil and gasoline. Turns the key, pulls the cord taut, releases, heaves. The motor sputters. His hand flashes to the choke and back to the throttle on the handlebar. The motor dies. Another quick pull and it sounds like a bored-out chainsaw. The shed fills with white smoke. Coop throttles up and the sled jumps forward. He allows the machine to idle on the snow, gets off, and we step a few yards away, our backs to the racket.

“Why don’t you send me and Sager after the girl?”

“Sager and Fields,” I say. “Appreciate your help.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Find Gale G’Wain.”

“You ought to find a doctor.”

I straddle the snowmobile and cruise to the barn, where Coroner Fields and Deputy Sager wrap up. Burt’s body is gone. Sager’s pile of vomit is buried in snow. But Burt Haudesert’s blood spatter still gleams like precious stones.

I feel eyes on me. Back at the house, Fay Haudesert holds the kitchen window curtain to the side. Margot stands behind her, a shadow.

“Just finishing,” Fields says.

I turn. “Photos?”

Sager nods. “And we got the boy’s prints on the fork.”

“That so? You recognize them?”

Fields is silent. Looks at the floor.

“So far as I’ve heard, no one saw what happened here. The missus inside, there, don’t know. And Gwen won’t be saying anything. We got a coat that may belong to the killer. We got a few tracks in the woods. That’s what we got.”

“Blood samples,” Fields says. “If there’s two types, I’ll find them.”

I nod. “I’m sure you will. We do this by the book.”

“Right.”

“We found the girl. Coop found her. Sager, I want you to go out with Fields and bring her in.”

“Now?”

I study his face.

“It’s just that I ain’t had lunch.”

“And since you lost your breakfast—”

“It won’t take long to pick her up,” Fields says. “We’ve got to retrieve her before she’s buried in the blizzard.”

Sager sighs, the kind that says he’ll be glad when he ain’t taking orders from a geezer bastard every day. Fields tilts his head toward the barn door, and the snowmobile.

“You’ll want to find a toboggan or something to drag her out. Take your camera and follow our tracks into the woods ’til they stop at a giant rock. I want a shot of every angle.” I leave him with that. From this moment, he’s Odum’s problem.