Junkyard Dogs (11 page)

I took the two steps to the fireplace with the baby still in my arms—I think he liked the heat from the stove as much as I did—and I studied the photographs on the thick slab of dark wood. There was a wedding photo with the handsome groom and beautiful bride smiling at the camera, yet clutching each other like they knew what was ahead. There were a few shots of some older folks, about my age, actually—parents, I assumed—and one to my far right, a black and white with three individuals standing in some frozen coulee. The two flanking men were very tall, but my focus was on the center one, a young man with glacier glasses that reflected the mountain sky and adorned with the trademark Vandyke. He was smiling like a banshee, his fists planted on his hips, and a Tyrolean hat kicked to the side of his head.

Musketeer Santiago Saizarbitoria, mountain climber.

“He’s very proud of that one.” She’d shed her coat. The baby was making a few mewing sounds. “Can you continue to hold him while I make the tea?”

“Sure.” I readjusted him against my chest and slowly twisted back and forth.

She considered me for an instant and then disappeared around the corner.

I peeled the edge of the blanket back and looked into the almost black eyes of Antonio Bjerke Saizarbitoria, aka the Critter. Even at three months, the swaddling looked like he’d been popped out of a Santiago mold. The dark eyes were wide. I extended a pinkie and watched as his little fingers wrapped around my proffered digit. “Howdy, partner.”

I heard the ding of a microwave, and Marie appeared with two cups of tea complete with saucers.

I gestured for her to put mine on the mantelpiece. “The other two men in this one look familiar. Are they brothers?”

“Jim and Lou Whittaker—Jim was the first American to climb Everest, but that’s Mount Rainier in Washington. San spent a few summers guiding up there for them.”

“They must’ve named it after the beer.” She didn’t laugh. “Is that what you call him, San?”

She sipped her tea. “I call him lots of things, but that one’s for public consumption.”

I gestured with the baby. “And what do you call this one?”

“The Critter.” I turned red, she grinned, went up on tiptoes, and peered over my arm. “He’s awake.”

I tried to get a little of the color to drain from my face. “Yep.”

She looked at me, a little surprised. “And he’s not crying.” I reached over and took a sip of my tea, which was briny, dark, and good. Maybe that’s what I needed in the late afternoon, a little caffeine pick-me-up. “So, I’m getting the feeling that Sancho is a world-class mountain climber.”

“He is, or he was.” It was cozy there by the fire, and she showed no interest in moving. “Nothing happened, he just stopped climbing. The whole reason we moved here was so he could be near the mountains.”

“It’s probably hard to be a world traveler on twenty- one thousand dollars a year.”

She glanced up at me. “Twenty thousand and sixty before taxes.”

“Oh.” I’d said it for comic effect, but she still hadn’t laughed. “Marie, trust me, there’s no one more aware of the shortcomings of the county budget than me.” I took another sip. “So, if I give him a raise, do you think he’ll stay?”

Her Basque eyes were metallic and shone like hematite. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“I will, if you think it’ll do any good.”

She said nothing, and I was afraid we were going back to the silence. She set her tea on the mantel next to mine and flexed her hands as if they were lonely. “You think it’s me, right?”

I paused. “Think it’s you what?”

“Who’s holding him back or something—keeping him from climbing, doing his job, everything.”

I returned my cup to its saucer. “I didn’t say that.”

“It’s what you’re thinking though.” Her voice carried no edge. She seemed to relax, almost relieved to have the subject broached. She took a deep breath and added, “Isn’t it?”

“It had crossed my mind.”

We listened to the wind pushing against the pocket-sized house and beating against it like the tail ends of a rope. She looked at the fireplace, the agates resting on the river stone like deep water under a fall, and I thought about what my Indian scout had said earlier, and how once again I was venturing onto thin ice.

“Whether he’s doing this for you and Antonio or not, he’s going to regret it, and I’ve learned from experience that it’s not the things we do in life that we regret so much as the things we didn’t do.” I smiled at her, trying not to sound like her father.

The silence suited her just then, and I could tell she was fond of the rhythm of the little house. She looked at the baby in my arms and then at me, and it was like I was cascading into that deep water at the base of the falls. “Sheriff, promise me you won’t let him get hurt.”

“What kind of a horse’s ass promise was that to make?”

He had a point.

Henry was seated on the old sheriff’s leather sofa, was petting Dog, and smiling. I studied the marred surface of the chessboard and the open squares where I could possibly hide my king long enough to forestall the inevitable. The wind was continuing to blow outside, but it felt close and warm in room 32 of the Durant Home for Assisted Living. “Well, what was I supposed to say?”

The old sheriff picked up the cut-glass tumbler of Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve and examined the twenty-three-year-old bourbon, finally placing it on the prosthetic knee that had replaced the original since the forties.

“I never made a horseshit promise like that to any wife of anybody that ever worked for me, I can tell you that much.” His index finger shot out from the glass, sighting on me from across the chessboard. “You go around makin’ bullshit promises like that, you’re courtin’ disaster.”

I moved my king and glanced at Dog, asleep with his head in Henry’s lap and taking up two of the three cushions on Lucian’s sofa; it seemed that Dog and the Cheyenne Nation were the only ones who ever sat on the thing.

“Check.”

As I reset the board, Lucian refilled our glasses. He rattled the ice in his, the mahogany eyes scanning his room as the sound of the wind stiffened, and he looked out the sliding doors. He sat like that looking like a line drawing in a Louis L’Amour novel—page 208, Twentieth-Century Lawman, Lucian Connally. “Let’s see, we only had five altercations worthy of mention when I was sheriff and four of ’em involved you.”

“Yep.”

He’d always had the darkest eyes I’d ever seen, even in comparison with the Basques, or the Crow or Cheyenne, for that matter. The old sheriff dug into his vest pocket for his pipe and beaded tobacco pouch, which had been a gift from the Northern Cheyenne tribal elders. He looked at Henry for confirmation. “Still, I’d say his tenure as sheriff has been a lot harder on him than mine was.”

The Cheyenne Nation smiled but said nothing.

I thought about my impromptu physical examination earlier this morning as a gust blew the pines outside so that they looked like they were raising their skirts and then pushed on the glass with a groan. More snow later, for sure.

I thought about Hatch, New Mexico; about a little adobe house I’d constructed in my mind with chilies hanging in the window and the lilt of Spanish voices drifting through the warm breeze. A place where there were no electric outlets on the parking meters to plug the engine block heater of your vehicle into, and where Gore-Tex and fleece were foreign words.

Lucian stuffed the bowl of the pipe full of Medicine Tail Coulee Blend tobacco, returned the pouch to his vest, and produced his old Zippo lighter. “You gonna move to New Mexico?”

I looked up at him, a little surprised. “Why do you say that?”

He lit his pipe, took a few puffs, surveyed the board, my next move, and spoke to Henry. “’S what he threatens all of us with, every winter.”

The Cheyenne Nation nodded. “Yes, it is true.”

The thick, double-paned glass flexed with the wind again, and it felt good to be inside with their company.

“So, what’s really on yer mind, other than the change in the seasons?”

I lifted my tumbler and took a sip of the caramel liquid, allowing the medicinal burn to heal as much of me as it could from the inside. I paused, giving a moment of trepidation to the naming of my anxieties. “Bullet fever.”

He continued to study the board, then moved a rook of his own and nodded. “The Basquo?” I nodded back. “How bad?”

“Pretty bad.”

He let out with a long, slow exhale sounding like a locomotive stopping at a station. “You gonna keep him working?”

“For another two weeks—he gave notice today.”

Henry looked up.

Lucian glanced at the Cheyenne Nation and then back at me. “Well, hell. What’s he wanting to do?”

I hooked a knight out to greet his rook. “Go back to Rawlins; corrections.”

The old sheriff grunted, then set the pawn in sacrifice to my knight, his bishop reclining on the baseline.

Henry breathed a laugh. “You want to run off to New Mexico, and he wants to run off to prison. It seems to me you are getting the better deal.”

I turned and studied Lucian. “Where’d you want to run off to when those Basque bootleggers shot you?”

“To the county hospital to see if the sons-a-bitches could save my leg—and you can see how that turned out.”

We all took sips of our respective bourbons, but Henry was the first to speak. “Sometimes things happen and places get sounded for us; things get touched that perhaps should never be touched.”

This time Lucian pointed the pipe stem at me, something he did so often that I sometimes wondered if his finger had a safety. “Now I’m a big one for thinking—but I think you can give a man too much time to think. The Basquo’s a thinker, and if you give him enough time he’ll think himself out of his job.” He glanced at Henry. “Whatta you think, Ladies Wear?”

The Bear lifted Dog’s head and stood, downing his bourbon in one swallow. “I think it is time to go to jail.” He crossed to the kitchenette, and Dog padded after him.

I smiled across the board at Lucian and moved my own queen out into play. “So, you don’t think it’s such a bad thing to take Sancho on a little snipe hunt with this chase-a-thumb?”

He shrugged. “At least until you can find something else for him to occupy his mind with.” He puffed on the stem of his pipe and changed the subject. “Hey, I heard Geo Stewart’s family took him out sleddin’ yesterday.”

I pulled out my pocket watch and studied its face in the dim glow of the painted hide lampshades. I figured Henry was right, and we needed to get out of there soon or we’d be facing one of Lucian’s signature bologna sandwiches with instant coffee sprinkled on it for seasoning as our dinner. As it was, we were looking at either a frozen burrito from the Kum & Go or a potpie from the holding-cell kitchenette.

“The Indian says we gotta go.” I walked past Henry and Dog.

He shook his head. “You ain’t gonna finish the game?”

I placed my empty tumbler in the sink and returned to collect my hat and coat. “I guess my mind’s somewhere else.”

Lucian set his glass back on the small table, and I could tell he’d just as soon we stayed. “You know those Stewarts got more lives than a tin bear at a shootin’ gallery.” He looked at all of us and chuckled. “You know why Geo Stewart always wears a scarf or keeps his collar buttoned up on his shirt?”

“Nope.”

“Got a scar ’round his neck, runs from ear to ear.”

I leaned against the door. “I noticed it.”

“Back in April of ’70 we had a bad snow, dropped about forty inches overnight, and Geo finds himself short on supplies—mostly Four Roses, or Red Noses as we used to refer to it, and jumps on his motor toboggan and heads into town hell-bent for leather.”

Henry asked. “Motor toboggan?”

Lucian shrugged. “ ’At’s what they used to call ’em; military surplus, made outta someplace in Wisconsin.”

“What happened?”

Lucian leaned back in his chair with his palms on his thighs. “Mike Thomas . . .” He paused for a moment. “He still got that spread out near the Stewarts?”

“Yep.”

“Well, the snow got so deep that it filled up the cattle guards, so Mike’s father had him string a strand of barbed wire across the ranch road to keep the stock in.”

“Oh, no.”

“Geo hit it at about forty miles an hour.” He chuckled.

“Mike and another artist fella, Joel Ostlind, found him that afternoon, and they had to use a digging spade to get him loose from the road where his blood had froze. Doctors said that the cold was probably what saved him.” I opened the door for Henry and Dog but, just before closing it behind us, he added, “Another good reason for you to not move to New Mexico—it’s warm down there, and you can bleed to death.”

 

 

On the way back from the old folks’ home, as Lucian referred to it, I conferred with the Cheyenne Nation, and we decided to partake of the best of both worlds and pick up a burrito at the Kum & Go and take it home to the jail to warm it up.

We were both surprised to find the much-used Olds Toronado parked out front and discovered Gina Stewart parked behind the counter. The same dirty parka was draped over her shoulders, and she was munching on some peanut butter crackers while watching a thirteen-inch black-and-white television, which was up on the cigarette shelves. She didn’t even glance at us as we walked past the height indicators that were taped to the doorjamb to help identify burglars. I had spent a lot of time in the gourmet portion of the store and knew that the frozen burritos were stacked like tiny bundles of firewood in the fast-food section at the back.

Henry studied me as I peered through the glass. “You are actually going to eat this stuff?”

There was the shredded beef and cheese, the bean and cheese, and my old standby, the chicken and cheese. There was always the cheese with cheese, but I never felt full without the little bit of protein from the supposed-to-be-meat filling. In all honesty, I tried not to read too closely when I partook of this type of fine dining. Armadillo and cheese would be more than I could stomach. “You don’t know what you’re missing.”