A Certain Kind of Hero (25 page)

“W
hat do you mean,
ever since Kenny Becker kicked the bucket?
”

Tate was ready to pop bartender Ted Staples in the mouth for coming up with such a sick joke. But Ted wasn't smiling. In fact, Ted had stopped pouring drinks. He set the bottle of Jack Daniel's down on the bar as if it were a delicate piece of crystal, and he looked at Tate with about as much surprise as ever registered on the gaunt man's leathery face.

“I mean, ever since Kenny
died,
” Ted said more carefully this time. “Is that better? Since Kenny died, the women around here have been drivin' me crazy with phone calls, checkin' up on their men.”

“Checking up…” The hinges in Tate's jaw went rusty on him. He could even taste the rust in the back of his mouth. No, the word
died
wasn't any better. For an instant the letters on the neon Pabst sign above the bar swelled up and blurred clean out of focus. Hell, he was only on his first drink, and
somehow he'd missed the part where he'd taken a boot in the gut. “What in hell are you talkin' about, Ted?”

“I usually tell 'em the man ain't here or he just left, but you hear that damn he's-been-gone-too-long tone in their voice, kinda scared and trembly, and you know what they're worried about.”

“Kenny…”

“Well, you know—” Since they'd hit on a touchy subject, Ted splashed another shot in Tate's glass for good measure. “—it took us a while to find him. Surprised you didn't come back for the funeral, Tate. You two used to be close enough to use the same toothpick. Where you saw one, you saw the other.”

“When…” It felt as though somebody had just pulled the walls in a few feet. Tate was suddenly short on air and voice. It took a long pull on his drink to sear the goop out of his pipes. He pressed his lips together and pushed his big black Stetson back so he could get a better look at Ted's face. He needed to make damn sure the old man wasn't putting him on. “When?”

“Why, late last winter.” Ted turned to Gene Leslie, who occupied the bar stool on the inside corner. “Was it March?”

“Early March.” Gene swept his quilted jacket back with arms akimbo, poking his gut out while he took a moment to puzzle all this out.

Tate was listening, waiting for some sense to be made here. He felt clammy under the back of his shirt, under his hatband. He wanted to shed his jacket, open the door, let some air in the place. But nobody took his jacket off in the Jackalope Bar, because there was no place to put it, and everybody wore a cowboy hat, because you didn't hang out at the Jackalope unless you were a cowboy.

“Take that back,” Gene amended contemplatively. “Believe it might've been closer to the middle of the month. Them heifers started calving on the tenth, and I believe…” He squinted, focusing on Tate through a haze of blue smoke. “You didn't know about Kenny?”

Tate shook his head, trying to clear it of the flak and home in on some answers. “Know what? What the hell happened?”

“He was here that day.” Ted wiped his hand on the white towel he'd tucked into the front of his belt for an apron, then wagged his finger at the center booth next to the far wall. Two cowboys looked up briefly, then went back to nursing their brews and puffing their smokes as soon as they realized the finger wasn't pointed at them. “Sittin' right over there at that table, horse tradin' with Ticker Thomas 'til late afternoon, early evening. When his wife called, I told her Kenny'd left before suppertime, and I thought sure he was sober.”

“Turned out he was, which was too bad,” Gene added. “He'd 'a had more alcohol in him, he'd 'a made it through the night. My uncle Amos lived for two days in the middle of November when he went in the ditch that time over by Roundup.”

“Your uncle Amos is too ugly to live and too ornery to die,” thick-tongued Charlie Dennison said. The story was coming at Tate from all sides now, with Charlie getting into it from his perch near the door.

“You're damn straight. He was tanked up pretty good and glad of it, even when they cut off his frostbit toes.” Gene adjusted his hat in a gesture that allowed no two ways about the facts in either story. “Poor ol' Kenny should'a had a few more shots under his belt.”

“Kenny only drank beer,” Tate said. “I didn't see his old Ford pickup out at his place. Was it a—”

Gene shook his head. “Nah, he didn't wreck his pickup.
He got throwed. Ground was still froze hard as rock. Split his head open like a melon.”

“Nobody's figured out yet what he was doin' out ridin' that horse that time of night,” Ted put in. “Like I said, his ol' lady'd been callin' around to hell and back. Then she went out lookin' for him, so there was nobody home. He must'a drove his pickup out in the pasture, caught a horse and went off ridin' bareback, far as anybody can tell. Damnedest thing.”

“Moon was bright as hell that night, and it was cold as a witch's tit,” Charlie recalled.

“We used to go out together on nights like that,” Tate said. He could picture the moonlight flooding the snow-covered hillsides. Kenny loved those nights, when the big black velvet sky was filled with stars and their voices cracked the cold hush with pithy adolescent wisdom. “Bareback, too, so you'd keep your butt warm. Twice as warm as a woman and half the trouble,” he remembered with a melancholy smile.

“Women don't usually buck as hard,” Gene said.

“Tell you what, Leslie,” Charlie grumbled. “Any woman does any buckin' with
you
has got be three ax handles wide in the hip and horse-faced as hell,” Charlie said.

Ted let the perpetual banter go in one ear and out the other, but Tate's difficulty drew rare concern. “They must not've been able to track you down, Tate.”

“Maybe they didn't try.” Amy, he thought. Maybe Amy hadn't wanted him around when she'd buried her husband.

“That little girl was pretty damn broke up, but I'd be willing to bet she tried to call you or something.”

Tate wasn't going to argue. “Who found him?”

“She did.”

“Amy?”

“The pickup wasn't back, see, so that kinda throwed 'em off for a while. But when they found Kenny's pickup, and then
they found the horse still wearin' a hackamore, well, they sent out a helicopter. A bunch of us went out on horseback. But his wife took those dogs of hers, and she went out on foot. She found him.”

“He'd slid down into a ravine. Don't know what all he ran into. Head split open like a damn melon.” Gene was stuck on the melon image.

It was all a dream. A bad one. The kind that wouldn't go away when he woke up. Tate knew it well; he'd had it before. He cast his gaze at the sooty ceiling and whispered, “Jesus.”

Jesus, get me out of here.

Jesus, make it not be true.

Jesus, give him back.

He sighed heavily and dug into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. “Hope she got a decent price for her stock.”

“She ain't sold much yet,” Ted reported. “She says she's gonna run the place herself, her and the boy.”

Tate glanced up from the match he'd struck on his thumbnail. “The kid's only, what? Three or four?”

“Hell, I was feedin' stock when I was four years old,” Charlie claimed.

Gene laughed. “The hell you were, Dennison. Even at
forty
-four you wouldn't know which end to feed.”

Tate dragged deeply on his cigarette, hoping the smoke would do better than whiskey at calming his innards. One of the cowboys had gotten up from the booth and chucked some change into the jukebox. It rattled its way down the hollow tube and clunked when it hit bottom. If they'd pitched it down Tate's throat, it would have made the same damn sound.

“She hired any help?” he asked. The cowboy punched his numbers, and up came the steel guitars.

“Well, she tried,” Ted said. “She run one scarecrow-lookin'
guy off with a shotgun after about a week last summer. Said he'd tried to make a pass at her.”

“My uncle Amos used to say some widows are just like cask-aged wine, and some are pure vinegar,” Gene said.

“Your uncle Amos oughta take another drive out to Roundup,” Charlie said. He was listening to Ted's story with increasing interest. “None of her family came to help her out? You woulda thought…”

“Her mother lives in Florida somewhere. She was here for a little while after Kenny died, but she went back.” In response to Gene's signal, Ted slid another bottle of Blue Ribbon his way. “Mrs. Becker's got spunk—I'll say that for her. Winter's a bad time to sell, anyway. If she can hold out a few months, I'd say she'll get a good price for the place.”

“She's over to the sale barn now,” Charlie said. “I was just there. Looks like she's gonna run some horses through.”

“Horseflesh is goin' pretty cheap,” Gene said as he raised the bottle to his thin lips.

Tate was tempted to stay right where he was and get himself blind drunk, fight absurdity with absurdity. These people were talking about Kenny like it made perfect sense that he was dead. Like it was not possible for Kenny to be the next man to park his old green pickup out front. Like the next guy that flung that creaky front door open and let in a blast of cold air couldn't be Kenny.

It couldn't be true. It was inconceivable that Tate couldn't come home to Overo and buy Kenny a drink, listen to his tall tales and hear that bizarre, high-pitched laugh of his. Kenny was only thirty years old, for God's sake. He couldn't be lying stone cold and silent in a box six feet deep in the ground. That was the meaning of
dead
. His best friend couldn't really be dead.

Blind drunk was one thing, but Tate didn't know if he could
pull off a
deaf
drunk, and he didn't think he could handle any more of Hank Williams's “Cold Cold Heart” without getting awkwardly choked up. He tossed the rest of his drink down and stubbed his cigarette in the plastic ashtray. After he slid off the stool he slapped a twenty on the bar.

Ted pushed the cash back across the polished wood. “It's on the house, Tate. I'm real sorry you had to find out this way.”

“Good a way as any,” Tate answered as he backed away from the bar. “You give these guys another round on me. For Kenny. There were no flowers at his funeral with my name on 'em, so—” his gesture was all-inclusive “—you guys remember Kenny kindly over the next round. He always gave the best he had.”

The words tasted a little saccharine in Tate's mouth, but everybody readily agreed with his assessment. Hell, yes, drink up, boys; Kenny Becker was a damn good friend.

“You say she's over at the sale barn?” Out of habit he flipped up the collar of his sheepskin jacket, even though he left it hanging open in front.

“Last I saw.”

“Think I'll pay my respects.”

 

Tate didn't feel like pretending to be glad to see people, but it was like old home week the minute he walked into the Overo Livestock Auction. Not too many of his own friends, but several of his stepdad's old cronies recognized him and made a fuss over seeing his picture in
Rodeo Sports News.
It was no big deal, he told them. He'd made a few good rides this summer, but he hadn't made the National Finals yet.

Bill Walker insisted that Tate had “done real good” and his ol' man would be proud of him. To this day Tate couldn't think of Oakie Bain as
his ol' man,
even though he knew his real father only from pictures. But it would have been rude to
take exception to the claim aloud. And something in the back of his mind regularly put the skids to downright rudeness.

He stepped around the boxes of baby rabbits and mewling kittens the country kids had for sale near the front door and shook hands with longtime neighbor Myron Olson. Myron wouldn't let go until he'd figured out how long it had been, so Tate had to guess six or seven years before he could slap the old man on the back and head up the steps to the gallery. He didn't look for a seat. Instead he lit a cigarette and leaned against a post near the doorway, where he could observe without being seen.

It didn't take long to spot her. He couldn't see much more than the top of her head, which stood out from all the cowboy hats and straw-hued mops like a fur coat in a dime store. Her hair was the color of a dark bay mare he'd had when he was a kid. You could only see the red tones when she stood out in the sun. Indoors, it was a rich shade of ranch mink. She'd kept it long. Today she had it done up in a braided ponytail. She was sitting way over to the side, down close to the activity, but the crowd was pretty sparse. She was all alone.

She seemed intent on the proceedings in the ring, but maybe she was staring hard because her thoughts were somewhere else. He wondered where. She looked like a high school girl, sitting in class and paying close attention to the teacher. Could have been a foreign-language class the way the auctioneer was rattling off numbers a mile a minute. No problem for Amy. He hadn't known her when she was in school, but she was the type who had probably aced every class. Poor Kenny had nearly bombed out, but Tate had loaned him enough of his homework to see Kenny through to graduation.

He wondered if she knew that. She'd pegged Tate for a troublemaker. He'd always been the one getting poor ol' Kenny into hot water. He wondered if she knew he'd also
gotten Kenny through school. Didn't matter, Tate told himself. By and large, she had his number.

He watched the numbers flash on the electronic sign. Good saddle horses were going for killer prices. He took a long slow drag on his cigarette as he listened to the auctioneer describe the merits of the next lot. Chief among them, the next four horses had belonged to the late Kenny Becker, who'd raised some of the best quarter horses in the state. According to reliable reports, these were the best of his herd.