The Final Country (34 page)

“Me, too, man. Me, too.”

* * *

When we were ready, we drove north toward winter.

The only constant things about the drive up Highway 89 were the wind falling in icy flows off the Crazies and the stretches of black ice covering the old highway. We made it to the lease roads with plenty of light left. They were hard-frozen, so I didn’t bother putting the chains on the Jeep. Mostly we found dead ends, but just at dark I spotted a small, bullet-pocked sign pointing to the Punky Creek Mine. Except for random skiffs of scudding clouds, the sky had cleared, and the rising moon gave me enough light to follow the quickly freezing ruts up a dry creek that looked as if it had been washed, then dredged, and now the company was working the tailings for lost seeds and misplaced figments of gold-limned quartz.

At the head of the draw, the switchbacks led to a flat place just in front of a small metal building beside a large rock crusher and in front of a dark adit. Off to the side, a small Christmas tree was set over the natural gas well that powered the machinery and heated the building. A Chevy Suburban was parked in front. All the lights in the building were on and light smoke poured sideways from the natural gas heater’s stove pipes on the roof. Through the sweep of the wind, I could hear the rumble of a generator and the boom of a bass line. A satellite dish loomed like a gray moon from the southeast corner. All the comforts of home. I turned around at the bottom of the first switchback, left the Jeep idling, then stepped out, telling Molly, “I’m going to check it out. Any trouble, baby, you run.”

“What kind of partnership is that?”

“The kind that survives,” I said, then took off up the trail.

The building’s windows hadn’t been washed in a long time, but I could still see Enos sitting at a table, listlessly playing solitaire while the large television boomed with rap music, half a bottle of Crown Royal on the table in front of him beside a large pile of white powder. At the end of the table a stack of cardboard boxes sat like a wall. He was alone and didn’t look like he was going anywhere anytime soon. I assumed that daylight would be a better time to renew our acquaintance. So I slipped back down to the Jeep and drove us back to Livingston just as the weather changed again. The wind suddenly boomed in from the Canadian border like an invasion of geese, thick feathers of downy snow rippling down the dark sky.

While I had a couple of warm-up drinks at the Owl, Molly had done a good job cleaning up the remains of our traveling clothes. Even my cowboy hat looked as if it had new life, and Molly looked like a million dollars in the soft sweep of the cashmere suit, the dark drapes of her black hair swinging back from her high, smooth forehead. I kissed the faint scar, then said, “Tired of eating in the room?”

“Won’t somebody recognize us?” she asked, laughing.

“We’ll keep our sunglasses on,” I said. “Maybe they’ll think we’re from Hollywood.”

“I gotta ask,” she said. “What happens when this shit’s over?”

“Drift through Vegas, pick up your stuff, and disappear,” I said.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Paris,” she said softly.

“Look out, Paris,” I said. “Here we come.”

And we laughed as if life could begin all over again.

We found a quiet dinner at Chatham’s Bar & Grill, a couple of good Scotches, a bottle of wine, and a couple of steaks worth dying for. Then we walked back to the hotel in the blizzard.

“What do people do here in the wintertime?” she asked, the wind nearly whipping away her words.

“Well, when winter really starts,” I said, “they drink and fight and fuck and bet on when the chicken shits. Get divorced, kill each other, fall in love,” I added. “Just like normal life. Or what passes for normal life in a Montana winter.”

“Sounds like fun,” she said as she struggled with the hotel door. “How come you left?”

“I guess I made the mistake of thinking love was more important than fun,” I said.

“Or disconnected from it,” Molly said, then we stepped into the warm safety of the hotel. “I guess I grew up so fast I never knew much about it.”

As it turned out, neither did I. Not until now. We spent the rest of the night doing our best to discover what we had both missed. We nearly made it.

* * *

The next afternoon we checked out of the hotel, then drove out to Punky Creek. As we parked in front of the small steel building, the music boomed and the snowstorm rattled, but the noise must not have covered the sound of our arrival, because when Enos opened the front door, he had the huge automatic stuffed into his belt. “You folks lost?” he said, waving us in out of the blizzard.

“Not exactly, Mr. Walker,” I said, “but we could use some directions.”

“You ought not to be out in this kind of shit,” he said. “Ain’t fit for visiting.”

“It’s important that I talk to you, Mr. Walker,” I said as I removed my gloves, hood, and sunglasses.

“What the fuck? You’re that old son of a bitch from Duval’s place,” Walker said, then stepped back to consider us and our arrival at his hideout. At the end of the table one of the large cardboard boxes was half-unloaded. It didn’t take a genius to realize that Enos was unpacking a meth lab.

“What the fuck are you doin’ here?”

“Pat me down,” I said, leaning into a steel support. “I’m clean.” I had assumed that this wasn’t the time to be armed.

“Pat you down, my ass,” he said, pulling the large pistol out of his belt and flopping into a chair. “Man, you strip. And you, bitch, you lock your hands behind your head, and don’t fucking move. I’ll deal with you later.”

“This is a hell of a place to be cooking meth,” I said as I was undressing.

“I can’t get off on that fuckin’ coke anymore,” Enos said. “And the bastards who stole my money, this is the only stake they’ll give me to get back in the coke business. So I’m working my way back into the good times.”

“Lomax?” I said.

But Walker just laughed. Once I was down to my T-shirt and shorts, Walker made me lock my hands behind my neck, while Molly stripped to her thermal underwear.

“Well, at least you people are clean,” he said, “so come over here and sit down.” He motioned to a worktable with several swivel chairs around it. I sat beside him. Molly sat on the other side of the table. Walker shoved a partially eaten microwave dinner to one side. An almost full bottle of Crown Royal stood beside ten or twelve long, sloppy lines of cocaine, lines like drifts or sand dunes, that had been chopped along the side of the table. As we sat down, Walker grabbed a straw and huffed two of the huge lines. “You understand, this ain’t exactly an ideal time for me, man. I’m up here all alone, with this fuckin’ meth to cook, and you two are the first human beings I’ve seen in two weeks. So I gotta ask what the hell you’re doin’? If you ain’t delivering money, drugs, or pussy, what business you got botherin’ me?”

“I started off looking for you so I could keep the state of Texas from jabbing a needle in your arm,” I said calmly, “then somebody started popping caps in my direction, and now I guess I’m looking for Mandy Rae and some answers.”

The burst of his laughter banged the sides of the building like a twelve-pound sledge. “Mandy Rae. Shit, man, she’s been dead for years. After Duval got shot that night, there was too much heat to work, so she split for France to move into the heroin trade. Perfect business for a bitch like that. When I was in the slam, I heard that the Corsicans blew up her car. She was a real pain in the ass, man, she always had to be running things, to be in charge of everything. Hell, if she wasn’t dead, I’d kill her myself. I know damn well she dropped the dime on me when me and my brother went into business on our own.”

“I think it’s a quarter now,” I said. “Where’d she get the cocaine?”

Walker laughed and reached for the bottle, saying maybe we should have a drink. “You think she’d give up her source to a Mandingo nigger like me? Hell, no. Not a chance.” He hit the bottle hard, then looked at me and said, “But you still be wanting something else, don’t you? You one of them unsatisfied white motherfuckers. You think if you know some shit, it’ll make everything better? You don’t know shit.”

“You might be right. But I think if you’ll come back to Texas with me, Walker,” I said. “And roll over on Mandy Rae, Sissy Duval, and Hayden Lomax, I can help you beat the Billy Long murder charges.”

“Billy Long’s murder charges,” he said, then laughed for a long time before he did another line, then hit the bottle again. “Fuck the small stuff. Mandy Rae, man, she’s long dead. Hayden Lomax, hell, he owns the world down there, and you couldn’t touch him in a hundred years. And Sissy Duval, she’s just a silly piece of ass. She liked it up the old dirt track even better than her husband did. Fuck her. And all them other cunts.” Then he paused to hit the bottle again. “Billy Long, that racist fucker, he don’t count for nothin’. Nobody gives a shit that he’s dead. I’m clean on that one. I’m clean here. Come spring, I’ll sell all this shit to some Mexicans over in Yakima, then I’ve got some South American plans.” He hit the bottle again. “Look at it from my point of view,” he said, then stood up.

“That’s what got me in trouble, Walker,” I said. “Looking at it from your point of view. Now I’m thinking I should have just walked away.”

“Maybe you should have walked away, man. What’s to keep me from poppin’ your ass, then runnin’ it through the rock crusher?”

“Just me,” I said.

“Milo,” Molly whispered.

“By the way, who is that fine lady?” Enos asked. I didn’t tell him.

“Maybe we ought to forget all this and go,” she whispered, staring at the pistol swinging casually in his hand.

“Go!” Enos shouted before I could agree with her. “Shit, the party’s just gettin’ off the ground, girl. Hey, girl, let’s see what you got under that other shit.”

“Don’t fuck with me, man,” I said. “I’ll sic Lomax on your ass.”

Walker was suddenly no longer interested in Molly. “What’s that you say?”

“Lomax sent me to look for you,” I said, lying as fast as I could.

“That’s your bad luck, old man,” Walker muttered. “I ain’t ever doin’ no more time.” Then without another word, Walker backhanded me on the side of the head so hard that I lifted out of the chair and fairly flew across the room, smacked into the side of one of the roaring gas heaters with the side of my neck and shoulder, then bounced hard to the concrete floor. I didn’t have a second to appreciate my scrapes and burns before Walker kicked me in the side with his work boots. I had a moment to feel the left arm and several ribs crack before he stuffed the pistol in his waistband and jerked me upright to smash me full in the face with his giant fist. I felt my nose flatten and several teeth splinter. I guess I should have been surprised that he hadn’t knocked my eyes right out of their sockets. When he picked me up again, at least I got the remains of my nose out of the way of his fist, but he caught me high on the forehead. I rolled over the heater again, then landed on a pile of rock-crusher bits. Then Walker picked me up again. I was done, all my strings were broken, my limbs dangling like broken wings. Piss ran down my leg, shit dribbled whenever it wanted, blood filled my eyes.

Before he could hit me again, through the billowing fog of shock, I heard Molly scream “No!” Then a sharp pop. I grabbed weakly at Walker’s pistol, but he swatted me away like a gnat, then I heard another crack, followed by an explosion, then he released me. I tumbled to the cold floor as softly as a black feather, glancing off the bulk of the gas heater again, the smell of burning skin rank in the bloody, crooked remains of my nose.

* * *

Sometimes you don’t get a chance to say goodbye. Sounds maudlin, but it’s true. I don’t know how long it took Molly to die. The .50 Magnum round had taken her just two fingers to the left of her right hipbone, right in the center of that lovely dimple which I would never taste again, then essentially blown her right buttock off. Even if I’d been conscious, I probably couldn’t have saved her. Enos Walker was beyond saving, too. One of the .22 rounds from the derringer she had stolen out of my war bag and secreted in her purse had glanced off his teeth and harmlessly out of his cheek. The other, though, had gone up his left nostril, and, I suspected, kicked around his brain pan like a marble in a urinal. He probably was dead when he pulled the trigger. No one will ever know. Once I was vaguely mobile, I crawled to Molly but there was nothing beyond her eyes, just that other country where the dead go, and when I held my face to hers, I just stained her beauty with my bloody snot. Then I crawled to the door and into the blizzard, burying myself into a small snowbank beside the shed, just long enough to stop the burning on my neck and back, then staggered to the pickup, and gobbled a handful of codeine. When I stumbled back inside, I struggled into my insulated Carhart’s and pacs, listening to the tiny rat’s teeth of bone grinding every time I moved my left elbow. Next came the first of many hard parts. To make my nose resemble one. It took three tries, even packed with wads of Walker’s cocaine. The result wasn’t anything that my friends would recognize, but it stopped flopping around my face. It didn’t work as well as it once did, either, but I had enough coke left to pack the nostrils, plus some left over to pack into the bloody slots where teeth used to hang out. Then the necessary shit. Somehow I had to get out of there.

By the time I had taken care of everything, the snowstorm had blown itself out, and the sun sat low in the southwestern sky, hanging just over the snow-packed peaks of the Bridgers, the bare golden ridges of short grass banked by blue clots of snow glittering like frozen rivers. The wind had turned. Icy torrents roared off the Crazies behind me, blasted the afternoon, blowing the tears off my cheeks before they could freeze. South, the Absarokas gleamed with frozen snow and even harder rock, shining distant and dangerous like polar mirages against the clotted sky.

Welcome home,
I thought,
welcome fucking home.

Although it was not yet April, it could have passed for a summer dusk in the real world, except for a small, aimless wind and the lingering chill of the last in a series of wet northers that had plagued the Hill Country winter. The pungent, musky cedar fragrance mingled lightly with the damp but dry limestone wafting on the cool air. The cloudless horizon burned like a distant grass fire. CJ, as Carol Jean Warren said we should call her, stepped out of the front door of Tom Ben’s house as former deputy sheriff Bob Culbertson drove up. She patted my shoulder and tucked my windbreaker closer around my shoulders as if I was some ancient grandfather, and the movement set the rocking chair in motion for a long second. I waited for the black discs and the waves of nausea, echoes of the concussion, that sometimes still came with the rocking, but they didn’t come, so I continued whittling at the scrap of cedar in my hands. I wished her good luck. CJ told me good night, kissed the top of my head, then headed down the walk to Bob’s pickup, her pool cue case cocky over her shoulder. Bob climbed out of his pickup to meet her at the bottom of the walk. They chatted a few minutes standing beside the pickup. With skinny butts tightly packed into jeans, cowboy shirts topped by down vests, they could have been siblings. Or lovers. Which I suspected they had become in the weeks they had been working for me. But they showed no sign as they parted. She climbed into his pickup and drove away. Bob ambled up to the veranda, scattering the small goats, then stopped in front of me, smiling.