The Hour of Lead (30 page)

Lucky saw that a number of houses were occupied. He had no idea which was the family home, so he waited for the mail truck to pass and after plucked grocery circulars from each mailbox. Two didn't have Garrett's name on them. The first was the drunk he'd encountered at the restaurant bar and the second shared a last name with the first. Lucky drove the long driveway and discovered someone in the shop rebuilding a truck transmission.

“Looking for James Garrett,” Lucky said.

The shop was dark besides the light from the open door. The man shoved himself from underneath the wheat truck, wiped his
hands on an orange rag and blinked, then gave directions that Lucky ignored.

“I figured this house,” he said. “It's a nice place.”

“It'll do.”

“Must've been in the family awhile.”

“I believe it belonged to a man called Jarms. This piece is called that.”

In the car, Lucky traced his homemade map. Garrett had acquired a vast amount of land in his Depression-era sweep. The sky slipped to dusk. Lucky drove on. The first two houses were Garrett's sons. Neither were off crawlers, but he heard kids in the yards. The last house was Garrett's. Lucky chanced the road in, determining to play his cards, until he recognized the track looped up the valley. He cut his lights and coasted past the main house. The road hadn't been graveled and a fog of fine dust forced him periodically to pause until it settled. It was reduced to tire ruts when he broke over a hillcrest toward the river. Below, one house light was burning.

He parked and listened for a dog, but heard only coyotes downriver. The garden was turned, but the willow branches touched the grass. An old woman answered his knock. She stared at him.

“I'm glad you've come,” she said.

She asked him in and served him lemonade. “It's fresh,” she said. “He brings it to me from town.”

“It's nice your son takes care of you,” he said.

She said, “he won't let me out.”

“Well, maybe he just likes to do the shopping for you.”

“Do you see an automobile out there? There's not a fit animal to ride. I walked once to the barns. All it has is cows. He comes once a month with the groceries. That's all of people I know.”

“You've got grandchildren and great-grandchildren, though.”

“He tells them I'm dead,” she said. “He doesn't allow me to light the house except when it's dark enough they won't be working. Is that any way to treat your mother?” she asked.

“My mother's dead,” Lucky said.

The woman stared into her hands. Underneath her coffee table were National Geographics and a book of crosswords, open. Lucky stooped to pick it up. It was a hard puzzle and she'd not missed a word.

“How about your other children? They might be nicer to you.”

The old woman sat for a moment. A crocheted doily draped the chair arm and she plucked it from its place and stabbed her fingers into the holes.

She nodded. “Perhaps he would have,” she said.

“He?” Lucky asked.

“Yes,” the woman said. Lucky didn't interrupt. She had determined to confess, and, as her voice scratched on, he grew more certain it was as close to truth as any of them could manage. She'd abandoned a child, she said, and her fate was justice, plain and simple. She apologized for complaining about what she deserved. It was late when she finished. She sat exhausted in her chair. What pressed Horace Jarms to madness didn't appear clear. He was dead, that was all she knew of the end.

As he rose to depart, she grasped his hand. A cataract clouded one eye, but the other set on him like a weight. He gazed into it. The years had unraveled the woman, and she saw her own hand responsible. Blaming others was a simple track, though it went round and round and round. Laying it on yourself at least gave you peace from the chase.

“You must go, I know,” she said.

He felt tired. He decided he'd sleep in tomorrow, sleep till noon if it suited him. It would strengthen his resolve.

But that night he did not sleep. He reclined in the tiny bed and listened to the radio playing country music. The street lamp outside shone through the curtains, a reddish kind of light, the same as when he closed his eyes and stared into the lids. His head hurt.

Early morning, he woke the clerk and bummed two aspirin, then pocketed his badge and drove to the police station. An hour in the basement and he discovered the file on Jarms's death along with several others. The murders appeared a killing spree, but absent motive, weapon, or bodies. The name on the report was the current sheriff's father.

Lucky climbed the storeroom stairs and inquired directions from a deputy, who turned out the old man's grandson. He thanked the boy and wrote the address on a paper scrap. Bertrand Heitvelt napped on a porch swing, the steps to it lined with tulips and gladiolas. Their scent lingered on the stoop. Under the swing, a cur pup raised its head and sidled through the propped screen door into the house. Lucky heard a food bowl. He kicked Heitvelt's foot and the man started.

“I'm from Lincoln County. I'm the sheriff up there.”

“I know who you are.”

Lucky nodded. “I'm examining a case, a murder with no weapon, no motive, and no body. You want to tell me how that can be.”

Heitvelt squinted. Lucky showed him a list of names. “I don't have to tell you nothing,” the man said.

“You ever heard that in your travels? A lawman hears that, he knows to quit looking, doesn't he?” Lucky leaned against the porch rail. “I guess I could ask your boy about this. Maybe his police work's better. Maybe his conscience is, too.”

Heitvelt sat for a long time. The dog waddled out the screen door and licked Heitvelt's hand. When he didn't pet it, it tried Lucky, who kicked it across the yard.

“I never saw it. Garrett told me.”

“You believed him?”

“It seemed prudent,” Heitvelt said. He looked at Lucky's face the way a cop does, trying to remember enough about you for the next time.

“They really dead?”

“I believe so.”

“The hired man do it, this Lawson?”

“He worked there a few years. Lived and worked. They treated him like kin and he seemed to feel similar. I don't know what happened out there, but he'd be on the second page of any list I made.” The old man coaxed the dog. It circled wide of Lucky and returned to him, and dropped its head into his lap.

“You're a damned sorry policeman,” Lucky said.

“My boy is better,” Heitvelt said.

•

L
UCKY WAITED AT
J
ARMS'S DRIVEWAY
until dark and Garrett's truck lights bounced on the washboarded road.

“Lawson killed no one, including your brother,” Lucky said. “Why are you putting me on a wild goose chase? In fact, why are you chasing the same bird?”

“Because if Lawson had listened to reason, he could have saved them all,” Garrett said.

“Your reasons.”

“Does it matter whose if it rescues lives?”

“I got a feeling lives don't mean much to you.”

Garrett looked off to where the black sky met the blacker earth. “Most don't, I admit. Some did. Horace was my only kin, the rest were just blood. Lawson didn't kill him, but he forced my hand on the matter.”

“You killed your brother. That's why you're packing this grudge.”

“No more than Lawson did.”

“No less, though.”

“That's true,” Garrett said. “I suppose you're going to quit me.”

“I'm not employed by the people any longer. Seems to me who did what to who is someone else's business.”

“That's so. I hired you to get Lawson. You got some reason yourself.”

“That's where you're mistaken. The man is in a photograph with my mother forty years ago. That's not enough reason for murder, even for one inclined toward blood.”

“I'll add five thousand,” Garrett said.

“That might wet my whistle.” Lucky told him.

Garrett wrote out a check and passed it to Lucky. Lucky examined it. “Just so you know,” Lucky said. “I'd've hunted him for free.”

“Why's that?”

“Love,” Lucky said.

“That's a word I did not expect was in your vocabulary,” Garrett told him.

“That remark might offend me if it hadn't come from a man with the mark of Cain all over him.”

“Fair enough,” Garrett replied. He dug a paper from his pants and offered it to Lucky. It was a paycheck stub from the Grand Coulee project.

33

A
WHOLE BOOK OF HISTORY
passed in the next five years. FDR's heart clogged, Hitler and his minions ate a handful of poison, Truman melted Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a nuclear sunrise, and the Soviets turned Europe into a chessboard and cut loose the queen in Eastern Europe.

None of this was more than newspaper clippings to Wendy Lawson. What occupied her remained within a few miles of her, and most within hearing. She thought it a woman's lot to tend first those around her, and if those like her herded nations the newspapers might write more about swap meets and less about armies.

Wendy was more interested in the boundaries in her home than those in Berlin. She had once thought Angel the balance between herself and Matt. As the time for the new child approached, however, the girl alternated from distant to clinging. After Luke split her womb, Wendy was slow to mend. It was June before she could resume their park ritual. Pushing the pram tired her and required both hands so, on their walks, Angel was permitted to wander. The
girl, a kindergardener now, closed her eyes and ordered Wendy to direct her. Occasionally, Wendy would fool her into a sprinkler or a puddle, which tickled them both. Wendy encountered Ardith at the park, where they continued to talk books and children. Ardith spoke of her husband, Ray, at length, though Wendy wasn't inclined to do the same.

Evenings, Angel asked Matt questions while Wendy prepared meals or cleaned them up in the trailerhouse they could finally afford. She didn't hear their words, just their sound. Matt scooped her into the chair beside him and pressed his finger to her lips. He set his head across her little chest. His huge head in her arms rocked like he heard music inside her. His eyes closed, and when they opened, she knew they would see nothing but the child. Morning, she'd turn to him gazing at her the same way. It broke her heart, that kind of seeing.

As Luke grew to crawl then toddle, Angel trailed him across hill or dale, and if she didn't the boy would grow confused and howl for her. At first, Wendy considered Angel's devotion to Luke nothing curious. The oldest looked after the babies, especially girls. She'd done so herself. Later, though, she recognized more in Angel's constancy. Wendy had always thought Luke's sleep steady, until one morning she woke before dawn and discovered him in Angel's bed. He visited almost every night, Angel admitted, returning to his room at first light. He never cried, just wrestled into the place Angel made for him. Angel recognized Wendy's distance, even concerning the child of her blood, and she saw the boy's fears and put herself between them. Wendy knew it should have shamed her, but all she felt was gratitude.

She began to leave for long evening walks after dinner, not gambols or meanders. Shoulders forward, her forehead leading her like the prow of a ship, she hiked to distant points and returned, sometimes marching through rock-choked canyons or arid brush
if it provided a direct path. Occasionally, her route would pass Ardith's home and they would exchange a few words, but Wendy soon pressed on. Her thoughts stacked in her mind like cordwood, rounded, split, and quartered, too much to clear if she had ten winters to burn through. And her thoughts required flame, a conflagration, though she had no idea how to strike a match and ignite the blaze. Instead each step the pile grew. She considered the bullet she put into Matt and her years laboring on the Lawson ranch in penance and deliberated on her parents and sisters, as well; she had no idea where they had emigrated after the grocery's drowning. She pondered Linda Jefferson in a cave and Lucky half-naked next to her, neither able to move—more fodder for remorse. Though she did not regret their inaction, she reproached herself for what led to it. She worried over how Angel had come about and worried that it mattered to her. She became angry and then was angry at her anger. She feared Matt and feared his absence. Once she put the pistol into her purse and carried it with her a week. The weight finally annoyed her. Her walks were slow-burned, and upon her return she would be more fueled than when she departed. She added her miles to four or five, barely reaching home before the children retired. Finally she lit into Matt.

“You know you never once inquired about my day?” she told him. “If it went well or poorly?”

“How was your day then?” Matt asked.

She laughed.

“That isn't what you want?”

“No. Tomorrow you'll ask and it won't matter. If I asked for flowers and bows the house would be filled with them and it still wouldn't be what I want, because it will mean nothing.”