Bone Fire (24 page)

The senior patrolman said, “Goddamnit, Crane, it’s not just baby-boomer accountants anymore. We’ve got some bad ones this year. Some Diablos and Angels on their way to Sturgis, I guess.”

Crane sat down behind his desk. “You need more help?”

“I wouldn’t mind it.”

“I’ll make a call.”

The state cops shook his hand, telling him they appreciated his cooperation, and then lingered outside to gossip with Starla.

Hank was still in his chair. “I hope you know this thing’s going to get somebody killed one of these years,” he said. “Or raped.”

“I agree with you, but it’s the mayor you need to talk to.” His back ached but the coffee was helping.

“I’m here to tell you I won’t work that Iron Horse Rodeo. It ain’t Christian.”

Crane stared at him until the older man looked away.

“It’s that weenie-bite event they run. Riding them women under that row of strung-up hotdogs and making ’em snap at them.”

Crane came around the end of the desk and Hank stood out of his chair. He was puffed up, ready for a fight, and Crane looped an arm across his shoulders and guided him through the doorway. He could feel Hank soften.

“They’re just hotdogs,” he said. “And I’m not sure Jesus keeps that close an eye on any of us.”

He drove to the top of the Bighorns, pulled into a campground and turned off the radio and slept in the backseat. He woke in the early evening, feeling more rested than he had in a week, and
returned to the office. He cleaned up in the restroom while Starla warmed two Hot Pocket Ultimates in the microwave.

It was after ten when he double-parked at the corner of Ash and walked out into the milling crowd. There were two thousand Harleys backed into the curb for eight blocks along Main and two blocks back on Madison, Jefferson and Adams.

The volunteer fire department had lined hay bales through the crosswalks west of the main drag and the vendors had set up their tents and kiosks in the streets behind them. They hawked knives and cups of beer, leather clothing, Harley-Davidson patches sewn with silver thread. There were two tattoo artists and another offering hygienic piercings. A braut-and-soda stand. Burritos sold from a corner of the IGA parking lot, half the proceeds going to the Boys and Girls Club.

The Chamber of Commerce had mounted speakers and American flags on the corner lampposts and sixties and seventies rock and roll blared from noon until the bars closed.

He was standing across the street from the Spur when Brady came out. He watched him working the sidewalk like a politician, stopping to shake hands and clap shoulders.

Crane crossed at the intersection, following him east through a reeling street dance of curb-to-curb drunks and past the raised plywood stage where a band from Great Falls was butchering the chorus of CCR’s “Fortunate Son.”

Two blocks farther back, in the dirt and pigweed lot where Vorachek Saddlery had burned down, a gathering stood with their heads bowed before two sky-blue Dodge Power Wagons. The trucks were parked tailgate to tailgate, and in the bed of one a man paced back and forth wearing jeans and a leather vest, his beard grown to his waist. At certain points in his rant against Satan’s onslaught of alcohol, drugs and fornication, the beard lifted away stiffly, exposing his naked chest. Brady sat at the edge of the congregation on a cairn of blackened bricks. He was drinking a beer, and Crane squatted down next to him. They watched a young
woman get helped up onto the bumper of the second truck and from there into the bed.

“Haven’t seen you in town in awhile,” Crane said.

“I haven’t been in awhile.”

The preacher stepped over the tailgates, the woman sinking to her knees in front of him. He spread his hand against her forehead and intoned, “‘We have been buried with Christ by baptism into death.’”

Brady sang, “‘It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate son,’” then said, “I always liked that song.”

“But you been doing okay?”

“I’m doing great. You look like shit, though.” He took a pull from the beer.

The pickup bed was lined with plastic and filled with water that sloshed over the sidewalls and onto the dirt as the girl was lowered into it, the preacher cupping the back of her head and pinching her nose.

“That boy didn’t have to die like he did.”

Brady squinted through the weak glare of the streetlamp. “It wasn’t my first choice either.”

“Brought light and life to a formless world,” the preacher said.

“Cooking that shit wasn’t something he thought up on his own. He wasn’t even twenty yet.”

Brady swigged from his beer. “Hell, Crane, you don’t have to look so sad about it. I knew him a bunch better than you.”

The girl’s head came up, sputtering, and the preacher proclaimed, “And Jesus said unto Nicodemus: ‘No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water.’”

“We aren’t kids anymore,” Crane said.

“Amen,” the crowd declared.

“It’d be a hell of a lot better all around if you turned yourself in.”

“For you, maybe. I don’t believe it would be for me.”

“Do you repent of your sins, my child?”

The girl was shivering, her wet clothes clinging.

Crane stood.

Brady was looking up at him. “My guess is you didn’t bring an arrest warrant out with you tonight.”

“I wanted to talk first.”

“Now we have.” The light fell so completely from his eyes they appeared mere replacements a taxidermist might have chosen.

Crane unsnapped the leather strap over the hammer of his pistol as Brady stood up next to him, dropping the beer bottle. They heard it break.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,” the preacher said.

“This isn’t just going away.”

“For the love of our Savior, Jesus Christ.” The preacher’s arms were spread wide.

Brady lifted the front of his shirt. “What you’ve got to do now, old buddy,” he said, gripping the pistol stuck in the waistband of his jeans, “is decide just how fucking Western you’d like this to get.”

The worshipers were dispersing around them, a woman brushing past with a crying baby in her arms. Crane lifted his hand away from his side, and Brady turned with the crowd, pulling his shirt down over the gun.

“You be sure to call before you come out,” he called back over his shoulder. “I’d hate like hell to miss you.”

C
RANE WAS STILL
awake when the light came on in the hallway outside the cells. He heard her footsteps on the tiles and then she was standing at the open doorway.

“You mind if I come in?”

He sat up on the cot and leaned back against the wall. “What time is it?”

“It’s late.” Jean checked her wristwatch. “A quarter after three.” She sat on the cot across from him looking around at the graffiti on the walls, then set her purse on the floor. “Well,” she said, “here we are.”

“I guess so.”

“I saw Helen,” she said.

“She called. She said you two were thinking about starting a book club.”

She wagged a forefinger at him. “You’re funnier when you’re homeless.” She opened her purse, fishing around until she pulled out a joint. “You mind?”

“Pearl’s out there.”

“I don’t have enough for her too.”

He shrugged. “What am I going to do—put you in jail?”

“Twice as funny. You really are.”

She lit the joint, inhaled, then reached it across to him. They
sat for a moment, holding the smoke in, and he took another hit and handed it back.

He turned his head aside to exhale. “You think we ever were in love?”

“You were with me.”

“Not the other way around?”

“I was in love with Griffin.”

He felt removed from his body and didn’t know whether it was the weed or something else. “Are you still?”

“He didn’t live long enough to disappoint me.”

“But you think about him?”

“Yeah.”

His face felt unnaturally relaxed, heavy in the cheeks and around the eyes, and when she offered the joint again he waved her off.

“Are you fucked up?” she asked.

He nodded. He could hear his hair scraping against the cinderblock. “I snuck a little from your stash,” he said. “About a week ago.”

“I know. Addicts always know exactly how much shit they’ve got left.”

“You aren’t an addict.”

“Don’t you think it’s cute, though? Saying I am.”

He thought about it. “It’s adorable.”

She fished a can of beer from her purse and opened it. “I’ve got more in here,” she said. “They’re cold.”

“I’m fine.”

“It’s weird.” She sipped the beer. “But you dying’s kind of sexy. It’s like you’re being sent on a secret mission, or to the front or something.” She set the can on the floor, stood up and undid the top two buttons of her blouse. “I feel like if I came over there right now, something could happen for us.”

She was only a step away, her hands at the waistband of her slacks. She had beautiful hands. “It’s not going to work,” he said.

“We could try.”

“I’m not up to the humiliation.”

She sat down, bending forward with her forearms against the tops of her thighs. Her blouse was open, and he stared at the rise of her breasts.

“I’m sorry about the other night,” she said. “He was just the most adventuresome guy in the bar.”

“I had it coming.” He lay over on his side, still looking at her. She tilted the can up. He watched her throat as she swallowed.

“I want you to come home,” she said. “Whenever you feel like it.”

“I will in the morning.”

“It’s cold in here.”

“It’s the cinderblock. It holds the AC.”

She finished her beer. “I’m going to take care of you.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“How do you think it’ll look if I leave you now?”

He was still lying on his side. He lifted his head, getting a hand under it. “It’s what I’d do.”

“No, you wouldn’t.”

“I might.”

She placed the can on the floor and stood and stomped it flat, then put it in her purse. “Here’s how it’s going to be,” she said. “Me and my girlfriends are going to go out every weekend and drink shots and I’m going to bitch about how hard it is watching you die. I might even let them pry it out of me that you tried to fuck your ex-wife.”

“You don’t have any girlfriends.”

“I’ll find some. It’ll be the best time of my life.”

When he closed his eyes she sat watching until his breathing deepened, then gathered up his clothes from where he’d folded and arranged them at the foot of his cot.

She turned off the light in the hall when she left, said good night to Pearl and put his things on the backseat of her car. She
walked around and leaned against the trunk. It was raining lightly, enough that it made a purring sound. The air smelled of mown hay and sage and asphalt, and she didn’t feel a bit tired.

She lit a cigarette and got in behind the wheel and backed out into the street. She put the window down, enjoying the mist of rain against her cheek. I can do this, she thought. She tried to remember when she’d been brave in the past. She’d done what she had to do. She didn’t want to go right home, thinking she’d drive awhile before it got light, out toward the interstate, then turn around and go home and put clean sheets on their bed.

She shouldn’t have said that about Griffin, made him out as someone special, unforgettable. We all have our shit, and it had been twenty years, and truly, she would’ve found something to hate about him if they were still together. She flicked the cigarette out the window. That’s one thing she could change. If Janice Obermueller could quit smoking, how hard could it be? There were deer grazing the overgrowth of grass along the borrow ditches. Their eyes flashed red in the highbeams. Maybe she’d start exercising. She reached into her purse where it sat in the passenger’s seat for a can of beer.

She popped the tab and took a sip, thinking she might taper off the drinking a little. Nothing drastic. No meetings, nothing like that, maybe just start later in the day, and this wasn’t really like driving at all, more like gliding. It could be like that. She and Crane could have whole days together that were just this effortless. She could make it happen.

K
ENNETH HAD ORDERED
a second plate of waffles and the ripest banana their waitress could find. He spread the pulpy fruit on like it was cream cheese and poured maple syrup over the whole works, closing his eyes when he chewed so he could concentrate on the flavors. After each bite he swished his mouth clean with a swallow of milk.

“I’m not sure we’ve ever taken a real vacation,” McEban said. “Not that I can remember.”

“We did when you broke your pelvis,” the boy said. “When the roan colt fell over backwards and squished you like”—he looked down at his empty plate—“like a waffle.”

McEban tapped the
Wyoming Tribune-Eagle
spread out on his side of the table where he’d been studying the program of events. “This might work out a little better for us,” he said.

“I got to stay home from school for a whole week. And ladies brought food to the house and Paul and I played hearts. Remember? I drew pictures of horses all over your cast.”

“I remember.”

McEban folded his placemat back, borrowed a pen from the waitress and made a list of when the parade was going to run, the hours the carnival operated, when the rodeos and concerts began.

When they’d finished breakfast they stood out in the bright sun on the sidewalk.

“I guess first thing we ought to do is get a room,” McEban said.

“Can we wash the truck?”

McEban pulled the toothpick from his mouth, staring down at the boy.

“In one of those places with the spray hoses,” Kenneth said. “I’ve always wanted to.”

They took a room with two beds at the Super 8 on Lincolnway off I-25, then found a carwash on Missile Drive. There were a few others but the boy liked the idea of a road named after something that got shot into the air.

He sprayed the truck with soapy water and clean, alternating between machine-gun and laser-sword sounds, and when they were nearly out of quarters McEban parked at the vacuum stands and sorted through the clutter on the dash while Kenneth sucked up the gravel, gum wrappers, dried mud and horseshit from the floormats.