Justice (23 page)

It was a November morning like so many other November mornings when Gail had awakened in this room. Outside the ground would be iron gray with frost or a mottled white from a scattering of snow. The cats would be leaving the barn and making for the kitchen's warmth. Soon her mother would call up the stairs telling Gail it was time to get ready for school....

But it was November, 1937. Gail had been out of school for close to ten years, and it had been almost that long since
Gail lived in this house, on this farm in North Dakota's Red River valley. Her home now was in northeastern Montana, in Bentrock, the county seat of Mercer County, where her husband was the sheriff. Where the barren rocky soil had a reddish cast that always made her think that the land had once been on fire.

She had left her husband to come back home. No, no, that wasn't the way to say it. It was the baby. Yes, she had left her husband, but he wanted her to go. No, he hadn't sent her away. It was the baby, the baby.

Gail opened her eyes to slow her whirling thoughts. She turned her gaze to the bassinet at the other side of the room where her sleeping baby lay. Even in the early morning darkness the bassinet, with its covering of white cloth and lace, glowed like no other object in the room. Where did it find light to reflect back to her eyes, she wondered?

She listened for her son's breathing. Could she hear it? She wasn't sure, but something, some disturbance of air seemed to be in the room with her. She almost believed the bedroom was warmer—by a degree? half a degree?—from her baby's presence, from the heat emanating from his tightly wrapped body, from the tiny chuffs of breath he sent into the air. She was often surprised, when she picked him up, by how warm he was, how he seemed at times to be nothing more than a miniature engine for producing heat.

She listened too for the murmuring smacking sounds he would make just before he began to cry to be fed. She could feel it was almost time. Her baby's hunger registered in her body just as it did in his. His emptiness. Her fullness. His
need. Her ache. Soon they would relieve each other.

She shifted onto her side, a position that increased the discomfort in her swollen breasts. Once when Gail was a young girl and visiting her cousins' farm near McKenzie, North Dakota, she sprained her ankle. She and her cousins had been playing Red Rover, Gail had been running, and she stepped in a gopher hole, twisting her ankle so sharply she was surprised it didn't break. “Just a bad sprain,” the doctor said as he probed and gently manipulated the foot. Her ankle swelled to twice its normal size, and despite the tightness and pain, Gail could not resist moving her foot. The way, since the baby, she could not resist pressing gently against her milk-heavy breasts. The ache was there—steady and dull—but she could tolerate it.

Her son was the reason for this visit. She had brought her first-born child here for her parents to see, to show her son—to show David—off to all the uncles and aunts, the cousins, the old friends and acquaintances who still lived in North Dakota. The trip had been at least in part her husband Wesley's idea. “If you go to them,” he said, “rather than wait for them to come to Montana, you'll be able to make this a vacation. Your mother will do the cooking and cleaning, and you can relax and take care of the baby. Stay as long as you like. Get good and rested before you come home.”

Gail left, then, of her own accord. She was not sent away. When Wesley put her and the baby on the train, he kissed her and told her he would miss her while she was away.

So she did not leave her husband in the way that some of the town's gossips—in both Montana and North Dakota—might whisper and speculate about. Gail would make her visit,
she would let her parents coo and cluck over this beautiful baby, she would let them wait on her until this fatigue—which made her feel,
after
the baby was born, as if she were carrying extra weight, as if every bone in her body had somehow been transformed to heavy iron—finally lifted, and then she would go back to Montana, back to her home and back to her husband.

Why then, from the moment she first entered this house of her childhood, did this thought wrap itself around her: I do not have to leave here, not ever again. She stepped into the parlor and saw her mother's doilies pinned carefully to the backs and arms of every chair, she breathed in that familiar household aroma—a mixture, it seemed to her, of baking bread and furniture wax—she heard the furnace clunk and gasp before it began to blow out hot air, and she thought—God help her, she could not keep from thinking—she would never have to set foot in Montana again.

She tried to shake loose the thought immediately, to toss it off like a heavy blanket on a warm night, but she could not get free of it. Its weight and comfort was too much for her.

When her mother held a jar of applesauce under hot water to loosen the lid, when her father looked into his coffee cup, then swirled the dregs before swallowing, when Gail lay her baby on the bed in the very same depression in the mattress that Gail's own weight had made, every time some little familiarity struck her, she thought—again and again and again

—this was once my home. And it could be again.

There was nothing extraordinary in any of these moments or in any of these sights, but their very ordinariness was their
appeal. Because Gail could not eliminate from her memory the picture of something quite extraordinary. And Wesley was in the center of this picture, exactly where she wished he would not be....

The previous spring, on the first weekend in May, on a Saturday evening when, long after the sun had set, the air was still soft and warm as it can be only on nights in May. The previous winter had been particularly long and hard, even for northeastern Montana. They got their first heavy snow in late October, and from then until the end of April the snow cover was continuous. Usually an excess of snow meant, as Wesley and the other natives of the region told her, milder temperatures, but last winter that had not been true. December, January, February—all saw record-breaking cold. And still the snows came.

A part of Gail wanted to blame the weather, to say that people had been cooped up too long, that when they were finally released into the warm spring air, when they finally got to stand with their feet on dry earth—not in snow or mud—it was too much for them. In their giddy joy they dropped some of the restraints and inhibitions that they would usually hold tight to.

That was what one part of her said. Another said, what could you expect—this was Montana, the West, and that it was once called Wild was a source of pride for many of its citizens. Why, if the people in the part of North Dakota where Gail grew up knew that
their
region was called wild, they would hang their heads in shame. Or try to do something about it.

Oh, Gail told herself so many things—the weather was to blame. The state itself. Her father-in-law. The badge. The situation. The Indian. Anything to avoid saying: Wesley. His nature.

They hadn't been at the dance from its start. Wesley wanted to make his rounds in town first and then finish up the night at the small country tavern where all the tables had been taken outdoors to make room inside for dancing and the music makers—an accordionist, a fiddle player, and a drummer.

By the time Gail and Wesley arrived, there were as many people outside as in. The tavern was small anyway, and all the bodies—warmed by the day's heat and the night's dancing—made it impossibly stuffy. Besides, the night was clear and pleasant, why not stand outside with a whiskey or a beer in hand, stare up at the stars, and sigh once more to anyone who would listen, “My God, wasn't this winter a long one.”

Wesley did not expect trouble at this dance; he was simply putting in an appearance, showing himself in order to say, “There is law in Mercer County, Montana.” This strategy he learned from his father, who held the office before Wesley. “Keep moving,” his father often advised. “Let 'em know you're around. A minute here. A minute there. They'll never know where you're going to show up next.” But this dance was the last planned stop on the nightly tour; Wesley could allow himself a drink now, and he led Gail to the bar.

He ordered a whiskey and ginger ale for Gail and a glass of beer for himself. Paul Gurch, the tavern owner, served them. As he set the drinks down, he said to Wesley, “You think that's a problem down there?” He nodded toward the end of
the bar where an Indian sat drinking alone.

The Indian looked familiar to Gail, but she could not be sure where she had seen him. Perhaps he was simply a town Indian, as those who did not live on the nearby reservation were called. Though he was sitting on a bar stool and hunched over his drink, Gail could tell he was a large man. He wore overalls dark with grease and dirt, and under the overalls was an equally dirty flannel shirt, so old the plaid had worn almost to invisibility. He had long hair, uncombed and hanging down his back in oily strands.

Wesley took one look at the Indian and shook his head with the kind of mild disgust he usually reserved for machines that did not work properly. “LaChapelle,” Wesley said.

Then Gail knew. It was Gordon LaChapelle, known throughout the region, in the towns and on the reservation, as no good, a troublemaker, a rough customer. He was a bootlegger, a car thief, and, rumor had it, a killer. He had done time in the state penitentiary for armed robbery and for assault and battery. Wesley had arrested him a few times but never for anything more serious than public drunkenness and brawling. He was, she had heard more than one person say, a bad Indian. Her father-in-law had once said, “Mercer County would be better off if someone would come up behind LaChapelle and put a bullet in his brain.”

Wesley quietly asked Paul Gurch, “Has he said anything? Done anything?”

“Just sitting there drinking. Drinking a lot.”

“You could stop serving him.”

“How do you suppose he'd take to that?”

Wesley shrugged. “Is Len here?”

“Haven't seen him.”

Wesley looked slowly around the the bar as if he were counting the house. To Gail he said through a forced smile, “Why don't you sip your drink and I'll be right back.”

As he moved down the bar toward LaChapelle, Gail wondered if it was his job or his knee that was paining him at that moment. She wanted to reach out to him, as she had wanted to on other occasions when she saw him off to do this work that was his duty. Stop, she wanted to say; don't go. This is your father's job, not yours. Leave this work to him and to others like him. Turn away, just turn away this time.

But Gail said nothing. Not any of the previous times and not tonight.

Wesley took a place at the bar next to Gordon LaChapelle, and though Wesley did not sit down, he leaned companionably against the bar, as though he had no other thought than to drink his beer and chat with the bar's patrons. Wesley was in shirtsleeves, and nothing identified him as the sheriff, but that didn't matter. Everyone in the county knew who he was and who his father was.

The music and din of the bar was too loud for Gail to hear what Wesley was saying. And perhaps LaChapelle didn't hear him either for he remained hunched over his drink. Wesley must have spoken again, because the Indian finally acknowledged the sheriff's presence.

Gordon LaChapelle slowly lifted his head and turned his broad, beefy face toward Wesley. The Indian's eyes were barely open, but he held his gaze steadily on Wesley.

Her husband kept talking, but LaChapelle never replied. He simply stared at Wesley, blinking slowly as if it was all he could do to keep himself awake on his bar stool. Gail still felt there was something dangerous about him, for all his languor. He reminded her of a cat who feigns disinterest before pouncing. Her husband was not carrying a weapon. Once more, she had the urge to call him away. At just that moment, however, he walked away from LaChapelle and came back to her.

He cocked his head toward his right shoulder in a gesture that had become familiar to Gail. She knew its meaning, too, even if her husband did not. It meant, I know I'm supposed to do something but damned if I know what.

Wesley set his glass on the bar. It was empty, and Gail could not remember seeing him lift it to his lips.

Paul Gurch swept the glass from the bar to refill it. “Well?” he asked Wesley.

“I guess he just wants to drink his whiskey.”

“My whiskey. He's done that. When's he going to move on?” He placed the refilled glass in front of Wesley.

Wesley cocked his head again.

Paul Gurch gestured toward the crowd outside the bar. “There are people out there who'd like to come in here and dance. That's what this was supposed to be.”

“What's stopping them?”

Paul Gurch made no move to look or point in Gordon LaChapelle's direction. “You know,” he said in a lowered voice.

“You sure you haven't seen Len?”

“He hasn't come in.”

Wesley pointed to Gail's drink. “How is that? About ready for another?”

She put her hand over the top of her glass. She knew he wasn't thinking about her drink. “I'm fine,” she answered.

“Sure?” His smile made her nervous.

“I'm sure.”

“Could you do me a favor then? Could you go outside and ask Jack Pepper to come in?” Jack Pepper was a hired hand on Julian Hayden's ranch. Gail had met him only once, but she knew she would have no trouble recognizing him. He was well over six feet tall, broad shouldered, and heavyset, and with a head so large that Gail wondered how he managed to find a hat that fit him. Wesley insisted that Jack Pepper was a good man, hardworking, reliable, and loyal to Wesley's father and the ranch, but Gail felt uneasy around him. He had a way, as some men did, of emphasizing his size around her and other women, done in a way calculated not to impress but to frighten her. Gail would do as Wesley asked, but she did not look forward to approaching Jack Pepper in the parking lot.