Disgraced (5 page)

EIGHT

Lola arranged the groceries
on the kitchen counter with a sense of dread. She'd grabbed some of the items Charlie routinely brought home without giving much thought to the fact that she had only the vaguest notion how to prepare them.

They sat there—the mushrooms, the carrots, the lettuce, the tomatoes, the ground beef (extra lean, something Charlie always emphasized), the brown rice (again, Charlie's insistence), the bananas and the cereal and the soy milk for Margaret, whose Indian heritage rendered regular cow's milk intolerable. Bub plastered himself to her leg, alert to the fact that the appearance of food meant that some might find its way to the floor.

Margaret played in the cool shade of the porch, investing pieces of kindling filched from the box near the woodstove with names and personalities. Pal was MIA, as were the running shoes she usually kicked off just inside the front door. Lola turned her attention back to the food. It was late afternoon. Soon Margaret would be hungry again. Despite the café's substantial sandwich, Lola already was. What in heaven's name was she supposed to do with the things in front of her? She studied them awhile. Hamburgers, she decided. Despite the fact that she'd forgotten buns, or even bread. Rice. And a salad, even though she hadn't bought any dressing. She mentally compiled a new shopping list. She tore the plastic wrap from the hamburger, washed her hands, and began shaping the meat into lumpy patties, recoiling from its clammy chill, relieved when Margaret's summons interrupted her.

“Mommy, come see.”

She rinsed watery hamburger blood from her hands and stepped out onto the porch. Margaret was in the yard, crouched before a tall clump of sagebrush. Bub stood between her and the bushes, nose extended, tail stiff, body quivering. Lola shielded her eyes against the sun. She caught a blur of bright-colored movement along the road. Pal jogged toward them, nearing the end of one of those inexplicable runs.

“What is it?” Lola joined Margaret, the heat slamming her as soon as she left the porch, the same blast-furnace intensity that had marked summers in Kabul, once again resurrecting warring emotions of nostalgia and fear. She'd worked hard to put her years in Kabul behind her. But in this landscape that so resembled that of Afghanistan, the memories had begun to reassert themselves, pricking at her like a too-stiff tag on a new shirt.

“Listen.” Margaret stamped her foot.

Lola heard a dry rattle. She peered beneath the sagebrush. Saw fat coils, a raised, spadelike head. She snatched up Margaret and leapt back screaming in a single motion. Bub barked and bounded about. Pal charged up in a flurry of pounding footsteps and swirling dust.

“What's going on?”

“Snake,” Lola gasped. Margaret squirmed in her grasp.

“Snake!” Margaret said in an entirely different tone.

“Snake.” The look Pal shot Lola's way was pure disgust. “Another snake, I should have said.” She marched off toward the porch, dust clumping on the sweat running down her arms and legs. She returned with a shovel. “Stand back.”

Lola stepped away. Pal swung. It was Margaret's turn to scream. “You killed it!”

Pal nudged the head, the fanged mouth slowly opening and closing, farther beneath the bush, then slid the shovel under the snake's body and flung it away. A circling raven landed nearby. Bub shot past it and nosed about the still-writhing coils. The raven croaked at Bub and flapped its wings.

“Of course I killed it,” Pal said. “Just like I killed the last one, and just like I'm going to kill the next one. Otherwise, when we walk outside, they'll be sinking their fangs in our ankles. What do you think about that?”

Margaret allowed as to how she didn't think much of that at all.

“Besides,” said Pal, “there's a present in it for you.” She walked over to the snake's body, dragging the shovel behind her. She nudged Bub aside, and stood over the squirming remains. The shovel rose and fell again. She returned and held out her closed hands. “Pick.”

Margaret's gaze moved from Pal's hands to her face and back again. Lola sighed. Margaret was like her father in that regard, considering all the options, taking forever to make a choice. Which, Lola had to admit, was usually correct.

“That one.” Margaret pointed with certainty to Pal's left hand. Pal uncurled her fingers. The snake's rattles lay across her palm. Margaret lifted them with thumb and forefinger, held them beside her ear, and shook them. “Put me down.”

“Please,” Lola reminded her.

“Uh-huh,” said Margaret. “Put me down.”

Margaret called to Bub and they scampered away with her new toy. The porch door banged shut behind Pal. Lola took a long look around to make sure no more snakes lurked, then followed Pal into the house to once again confront the issue of dinner.

A half-hour later, three people sat at the table in silence, moving food around on their plates, Pal's usual modus operandi when it came to meals. This evening, it was Lola's and Margaret's as well. The burgers lay charred and black on their plates, the cut pieces oozing red. Bare lettuce leaves found their way to the edge of the thick crockery plates and floated off onto the table, where hands nudged them beneath the plates' edges. As though she wouldn't find them there later, Lola thought. Even she had to admit the meal was damn near inedible. She'd also forgotten to buy the ketchup and mustard that might have made the burgers palatable. The rice would have been a welcome addition, but the burgers were already sizzling in the pan by the time Lola realized the rice needed nearly an hour's preparation.

“Not a cook,” Pal said. It wasn't a question.

“No.”

“She looks healthy enough.” Pal nodded toward Margaret.

“Her father cooks.”

“I miss Daddy.” Margaret sounded more angry than sorrowful.

“Me, too.” Lola heard the echoing emotion in her own voice. Why had Charlie been so insistent that they go on this vacation that was turning out to be anything but? At least back in Magpie, they could have eaten in the café. Slept in their own beds at night. Walked outside without fear of being set upon by poisonous reptiles. Maybe she could have persuaded her editor to a wink-and-nod arrangement to work on a couple of long-term projects while she was off—knowing, even as the thought occurred to her, that was why Charlie had wanted her out of town. She collected their plates, scooping up the stray leaves of lettuce, and scraping the contents onto a single plate, which she set on the floor for Bub. He took a single sniff and turned an incredulous gaze upon her before setting dutifully upon it, probably afraid if he turned down an offering of leftovers, there might never be another.

“Tomorrow night will be better,” she promised. Even though she wasn't sure how. “What would you like to eat?” Maybe if she started planning now.

“Ravioli is fine with me,” Pal said.

“No,” Lola and Margaret chorused.

“Whatever, then.”

Margaret spoke into the silence. “Chicken.”

Chicken, thought Lola. They ate a lot of it at home. How hard could it be?

“I'll call Delbert, ask him to pick some up,” Pal offered. “He usually goes to the convenience store before he comes up here for breakfast. Maybe he'll bring us some more doughnuts, too.” She looked at Margaret as she said it. If the woman had anything regarding a soft spot, Lola thought, it was for Margaret, as improbable as that might seem. Lola wondered if she could somehow use that to get more information out of Pal. Her stomach growled. Food was the more immediate issue. But having Delbert stop at the convenience store was no solution. If it were anything like other reservation stores she'd been in, the only available chicken would be fried, with the added insult of being wildly overpriced.

“Never mind about calling Delbert,” she said. “I've got to go into town again tomorrow. I'll pick up the chicken myself. Along with everything else I forgot today.”

Pal made a show of yawning and stretching. In a few minutes, she would retreat to the bedroom, passing unobtrusively by the cupboards, making a quick grab for the bottle she'd shield with her body as she left the room. Lola knew Jan would expect her to discourage Pal from drinking. A worthy goal. But not on this night. The last thing Lola needed from Pal was any uncomfortable questions as to why she'd head back into town herself rather than have Delbert pick up the groceries for her. While the
Last Word
's archives had been of limited help, the daily paper had informed her that two men who'd been arrested in the bar fight had bonded out of jail. Lola had every intention of tracking them down the next day and talking to them about whatever the hell had happened to their unit in Afghanistan.

NINE

Tyson Graff must have
moved the instant the photographer snapped the photo that accompanied the enlistment story, his head a blur atop an angular frame. So his face was new to Lola, a freckled square beneath gingery curls already challenging the remnants of his military buzz cut. But the rangy body had filled out since that post-graduation portrait; muscle, mostly, but the beginnings of a gut, too.

Lola shook a doughy hand, reminding herself that the average MRE contained 1,250 calories, and that it wasn't unheard of for soldiers to consume more than one per sitting. More to the point, the food at the bases was just as heavy on starches and fried crap as anything offered on the reservations. Tyson had been easy to find. He worked in Thirty's hardware store, a fact divulged in the story about his release. The store's owner had stood up in court and offered to hire him on the spot. “We all know what these boys have been through over there,” he said. “Well, we don't. But that's the point, isn't it? They've got some big adjustments to make, being back home. We're all here to help them out. There won't be any more problems.” No such offer, Lola noted, had been made to Tommy McSpadden, the soldier who'd joined Tyson in the bar fight.

Lola stood with Tyson in the hardware store's cool dimness, in an aisle lined with bins of nails and screws, their metallic, oily scent mingling with that of the varnish on the wooden floorboards and the sweet saltiness emanating from a popcorn machine by the front door. “Is there anywhere private we can talk?” she said. “If you're not busy, that is.”

That last, a formality. She and Tyson were alone in the store but for the owner, who cast dark looks their way from his position by the front door. Margaret turned a winsome smile upon the man and his expression softened. Lola hadn't been wild about dragging Margaret back to town with her, but the notion of leaving her at the ranch with Pal was unthinkable. She hadn't considered that Margaret's presence might lessen people's resistance to a stranger asking questions. Tyson raised his voice. “Okay if I take a smoke break?”

The owner nodded, once, the warning in his eyes clear. Tyson was not to say anything untoward to this strange woman from out of town. And Lola was not to stir up any trouble. Tyson led her to a back door that opened into an earlier era. Many of Thirty's storefronts sported updated facades, and wrought-iron lampposts with hanging flower baskets lined the sidewalks, evidence of the coal and oil money that had washed westward from the mines and oil fields on Wyoming's eastern border. But progress had yet to wrap itself around the buildings' backsides, all rough bricks adorned by ghostly painted signs from a bygone era, advertising saddleries, dry goods, farm implements. Lola retreated, wedging herself into the few inches of shade afforded by the store's back wall. It wasn't much of an improvement. The bricks radiated heat. Dust hung like a veil. Lola licked lips gone dry and cracked. She loved the crisp, dry air of the West, but Wyoming took desiccation to a new level, extracting moisture with ruthless efficiency. Tyson stood in the full sun, not even breaking a sweat, grinning at her discomfiture. Lola remembered how long it had taken her to acclimate to Afghanistan's savage heat, and how quickly she'd lost that resistance upon returning stateside. Give Tyson a month and he'd lose that cocky smile.

“What's this about?” he said.

Nothing shut people down faster, especially people who'd recently tangled with the law, than knowing they were talking with a reporter. Lola would have been required to let him know as much, if she'd actually been working on a story, but on this day she could tell herself in all honesty that she wasn't. Yet.

“I'm just down here on vacation. A friend of mine back in Montana has a cousin, Palomino Jones, who served over there with you. Her cousin is worried about her. She wanted me to check around with her friends, make sure everything's fine.” Again, it was almost true. Jan hadn't said anything about talking with Pal's friends. But it was a logical move, Lola reassured herself.

Tyson dropped the cigarette into the dust of the alley and turned his heel atop it.

“Pal Jones, huh? Know her?”

“Met her. Briefly.” Again, true. Every encounter with Pal was brief. “Interesting woman,” Lola hedged.

Tyson moved farther into the alley, forcing Lola to follow him into the sun. Margaret stayed in the shade. Lola thought of Bub in the truck. She'd rolled down the windows as far as she'd dared and parked it beneath one of the spindly oaks lining Main Street. The trees were another effort at civic improvement, one that had yet to realize its potential. She felt sorry for the dog, panting in the front seat. Moisture trickled from her hairline down the back of her neck, dampening her shirt. Tyson grinned again.

“Hot enough for you?”

“It's nothing compared to Paktika.” She named the province on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border where Mike had lost his life.

That was the end of the grin. “What do you know about that?”

“That Mohammed Gul is one rude sonofabitch.” Gul was one of the region's minor warlords. The day Lola had interviewed him, Gul had motioned to a servant, who brought the inevitable cups of tea. But instead of serving her one, Gul drank from one cup, then the next, tossing the dregs of each into the dust at her feet, an insult so stunning that even his battle-hardened men had exchanged fearful glances.

“You're not military.” Tyson stated the obvious.

“Hardly.”

“Then what?”

Lola ignored the question. “Sounds like you all have had a tough time. First Mike getting killed, then Cody Dillon shooting himself in front of all those people. And now your own … issues.”

Tyson's nostrils flared. His freckles ran together across the bridge of his nose, a brown blotch suggesting a mask across his face. “Fucker asked for it.”

Lola thought of the account she'd read, and imagined the victim in his hospital bed in Seattle, tubes snaking from every orifice, the machine beeping slowly beside him, the relatives sitting braced against the possibility of any change in that ominous rhythm. “I didn't come here to talk about that,” she said. Even though she hoped to get around to it later. “Pal's cousin thinks—”

“I heard you the first time,” he said. “Here's what you can tell her cousin.”

Lola leaned in, close enough to see the coppery stubble forcing its way through the skin of his chin and jaw. He'd have a five o'clock shadow by two in the afternoon. “What should I tell her?”

“That any problems Palomino Jones has are very much of her own making. Karma's a bitch. Know what I mean?”

Lola moved out of the alley's incandescence into the steadier, ovenlike heat of the shade. “No,” she said. “I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Maybe you can tell me.”

She spoke to a closed door. The interview—even if it wasn't one, not really—was clearly over.

Lola crossed Tyson Graff's name off her list. Next up, Tommy McSpadden. She was grateful for his unusual last name. There'd been no reference in the newspaper to a hardware store job, or any sort of job or other connections, about McSpadden. She'd meant to ask Tyson how to find him, but he'd ended their conversation before she got the chance. Lola clicked through sites on her phone, finding references to only a single McSpadden family in Thirty. The address, she saw with relief, was in town. She didn't even want to think how much time she could have wasted negotiating one after another of the gravel roads that ran like strands of a comb-over across the bald hills surrounding the town.

The house stood a few blocks off the main street, across from an elementary school. The playground's monkey bars and metal swingsets sat in full sunlight. Lola thought it could have used a sign warning parents that their children risked third-degree burns if they used the equipment. Not that any of Thirty's young mothers were foolish enough to bring their children to the playground during the day's baking heat. The McSpaddens' house stood in cool contrast, its square of grass well-watered and green, shielded by cottonwoods whose girth and deeply ridged bark indicated stately old age. Cheerful geraniums planted in coffee cans marched up the front steps. Lola parked in the pool of shade beneath one of the trees and rolled down the windows, fighting an urge to simply stay in the truck and enjoy the brief respite from the heat. In just the short ride from the hardware store to the house, Margaret had fallen asleep, her lips puckered around a chubby thumb, wisps of hair stuck to her high damp forehead. Her features were a streamlined version of Charlie's blunt visage, the nose tamed to mere assertiveness, chin like a small smooth stone. She'd be a string bean like Lola, her visits to the pediatrician since birth showing her at the top of the growth charts for height and near the bottom for weight. Lola's heart lurched as she gazed upon her sleeping child. Until she'd had Margaret, she'd never understood the stories about mothers who rushed headlong into flames, dove into churning seas despite their inability to swim, offered themselves to would-be killers, all in the name of saving their children. Comprehension came the moment the nurse had placed newborn Margaret in her arms. “Stay with her,” Lola told Bub now. As though he'd do anything else. He curled beside Margaret's booster seat, well aware of his job.

A slight woman answered the front door, wiping her hands on a dishtowel, squaring her shoulders with a visible effort. Exhaustion scribbled the delicate skin beneath her eyes and around the corners of her mouth. She wore a starched pink camp shirt and pink-and-white flowered shorts. Toenails a shade deeper than her shirt winked from her sandals. Lola made a mental note of the effort it cost the woman to maintain the appearance that Everything Was Fine. She wondered what wasn't.

The woman held the door wide, wordlessly inviting Lola in before even ascertaining her name. Lola glanced over her shoulder at the truck, assuring herself she'd have a clear view from the doorway, and stepped inside. The assumption of goodwill that seemed to be first nature in the West, as opposed to the deep suspicion of East Coast residents, still surprised her. “I could have been an ax murderer,” she always wanted to say to all the people who, like Tommy McSpadden's mother, ushered her into their homes without an apparent second thought. “A thief. A scam artist.”

She might as well have said it, because Mrs. McSpadden found her voice as soon as Lola asked to see her son. “He's asleep,” she said, backing deeper into a living room that owed its refreshing cool to closed windows and heavy, drawn drapes rather than air conditioning. The towel slipped from her hands and lay ignored on the floor. Her face flushed red. “Are you from the VA?” She folded her arms, and took a few steps sideways, blocking a hallway that Lola guessed led to the bedrooms, exactly the sort of protective maternal instinct that had tugged at Lola moments earlier. Lola guessed that if a stranger had knocked at her own door, asking about Margaret, she'd have done the same thing.

“No.” Lola hovered—reassuringly, she hoped—by the door. “I'm, well, I guess I'm a friend of a friend.”

Mrs. McSpadden wasn't buying it, not yet. Her round, wire-framed glasses caught a shaft of sunlight sneaking between the drapes and shot it back at Lola. “What friend?”

Something moved in the hallway. Lola tried to look out of the corner of her eyes, not wanting to draw Mrs. McSpadden's attention to the young man who'd emerged from a bedroom in nothing but his briefs. He was short, like his mother, ribs showing prominent beneath slumped shoulders.

“The friend?” The mother again.

“Palomino Jones. She goes by Pal. I guess they've known each other since school—” She got no further. Mrs. McSpadden moved fast to Lola's side, grasped her elbow, steered her onto the stoop and gave her a shove. Lola caught her balance just before she fell. A shout followed her. Tommy, not his mother.

“That little slut,” he yelled. “She's just lucky she didn't get us all killed.”

“Tommy, get back to bed.” His mother's voice was full of concern. It changed when she spoke to Lola, her words like a slap. “Whoever you are, wherever you came from, you go right on back there. Leave my son alone.”

The door closed. A lock clicked. Lola wondered when it last had been locked. She turned to the truck, only to be confronted with two sets of wide-awake eyes. Margaret bounced in her booster seat and pronounced judgment as Lola climbed back into the truck.

“Scary lady.”

Lola started the truck and looked back at the house. The drapes twitched. She pictured mother and son peering through the opening, watching to make sure she left. “Not scary,” she said. “Scared. People who get mad and yell are usually scared of something.”

She steered the truck around a corner, imagining the relief in her wake as she disappeared from Mrs. McSpadden's sight. She wondered what in the world about the very mention of Pal's name could have triggered such a reaction. One thing for sure, she wasn't going to bring up Pal with whomever she interviewed next.