The Clinch Knot (6 page)

The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Jess

 

I fixed one for the road, torched a remnant Swisher, and I drove directly back to Livingston, to the liquor store.

Uncle Tick Judith had become the Jackson Pollack of snoose. Loosed by his grief over Jesse, the grainy brown stains went everywhere, in streaks and splats and dribbles on his shirt front, his chin, his boots, the counter, the newspaper he was reading, even on the Crown Royal gift boxes shelved behind the counter and three feet in back of his spittoon.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sumbitch sorry don’t get me nothin’.”

There went effluent out the corner of his mouth into the stubble on his chin. He sniffed, dragged a sleeve across the general area, adding to that canvas.

“I’m responsible,” he said.

“You’re not.”

“Ize her sumbitch guardian. That girl’s daddy—” a gobby, no-look spurt in the general direction of the spittoon “—is my good friend and he asked me to watch out for her.”

“Jesse was an adult,” I said. “A pretty wild one, too.”

The old bull rider hoisted a plastic half-gallon of Smirnoff’s from beneath the counter. He addressed the register. “That one’s half gone,” I pointed out.

“Thennis half price,” Uncle Judith slurred. “Twenty-nine by half.” I watched the math confuse him while the register beeped.

“Point of information,” I said. “How do you know those skinheads work for Tucker?”

Tick Judith pulled back and stood mutely bowlegged, regarding me as if for the first time. He worked that quid beneath his lip as tears welled into eyes that looked set by a shovel and red-rimmed from an intense stretch of anguish. He didn’t process the skinhead question. Instead he fixed a shattered index finger in my direction.

“Now,
you
…”

“Yeah,” I said. “I brought Sneed around here.”

“So maybe you’re responsible.”

“Yeah. I am. That’s what I mean when I say you’re not.”

If this was harder than twenty-nine by two, Uncle Judith didn’t show it. In fact he bunched his quid up with a grizzled face-pinch, squeezed it hard a couple times, and tried to self-talk around the precipitate. “Sumbitch owned up,” he dribbled. “I am talking to a goddang man.”

He knuckle-punched the register:
NO SALE
. Then the cap was off the Smirnoff’s—”Here’s to ya, friend”—and we were passing it back and forth, a pair of good slugs each, throats on fire.

“When Galen went to prison,” he gasped, “that left Jesse in my care. She was coming up on fifteen. Grown men was sniffing around her like coyotes on a yearling deer. I was by myself with it. I put down some sumbitch rules.”

“I hear you.”

“And that girl broke every one of them.”

Uncle Judith hoisted the half-gallon again. Vodka hit him in the face. “Shiticks.” He mopped himself with a bandana, pried out his snoose and flicked it into a trash can, tried to get himself organized.

“I’m sure you did your best.”

“You can see about how good I did.”

“You did all right.”

He skidded the jug across the counter. “What the sumbitch hell do you know?”

“Not that much.”

“Okay then.”

I swallowed a mouthful. “About those skinheads—”

“Dwayne Hood told me.”

“Who’s Dwayne Hood?”

“Buddy of mine. Used to be ranch boss for Tucker. Got himself fired over some fence that was too expensive.”

Suddenly, Uncle Judith was the Marcel Marceau of snoose. His mouth worked convincingly, but nothing was in there. He searched pockets for his Cope can.

“Dwayne Hood said Tucker has a whole new crew now, including a couple of little dirtbags from Spokane that was supposed to watch the fences, keep out fishermen.”

I nodded. Okay. So the skins did in fact work for Tucker. “Let me ask you something.”

But the jangling here produced a summer person—short pants, sandals, sunglasses—who took some care in selecting a ten-dollar six-pack of beer. Uncle Judith killed the time locating his snoose can, rapping it loudly and violently with his thumb, then one-handing the lid off and letting out a smell like wet bat guano. Now he was the Julia Child of snoose, taking a deep and critical sniff, then a short corroborative nip. He wrinkled his busted nose. He pronounced the can “rotten as a goddang Monday morning,” and then he foisted in a hefty pinch.

Ten-dollar six-pack paid with plastic and left us. “My question is delicate,” I went on.

“I look like I’m made of sumbitch piecrust?”

“I know you loved Jesse.”

We traded vodka punches. I was getting wobbly. Uncle Judith dabbed his eyes.

“So I wonder what you think about Sneed.”

“The colored boy? What about him?”

“You’ve seen a lot of Jesse’s men. I just wondered where he fit in the general outline of things.”

“That sumbitch,” Jesse’s guardian began. He squeezed back what looked like the impulse to cry. “I don’t care what anybody says. That sumbitching colored boy was the best thing that ever happened to Jess. Just the other day I said to Galen—” He broke off, squeezed harder. “I went up there. ‘What’s Jess up to,’ he says, ‘who’s she running with,’ and I can’t never lie to him so I told it. Then Galen got going on that subject and I said he ought to shut his goddamn—” Uncle Judith’s own mouth closed involuntarily. He shook some thought from his head, and his voice became scratchy and airless. “You mark my words, fella. I seen the other thing plenty of times. That colored boy loved Jess. And I suspect that’s why …”

He broke off into full-on tears, dripping and drooling like the Salvador Dali of snoose. I bit my lip and stared away toward the beer cooler. That Frangelico didn’t make sense, I was thinking suddenly. A syrupy hazelnut liqueur, on a hot summer day, between two avid beer drinkers?

As was my way, I let Uncle Judith cry out my ration too, let him honk around inside his bandana enough for both of us while I found Frangelico on the shelf behind the counter: the bottle was unmistakable, tall and shaped like a friar in a cowl, white cord around the waist, a price tag below that said
$44.95.

When Uncle Judith recovered, I asked him, “Who was Jesse’s last boyfriend? Before Sneed?”

He did not hesitate. He jerked his hat brim toward the window. “Nut case across the street. Tucker’s lawyer. Had Jess on the QT, supposedly. Everybody knew except the guy’s wife.”

“Henderson Gray?”

Suddenly a mad gulp of vodka, a vicious near miss at the spittoon. “That dumb girl was always spreading for a lawyer. She thought a lawyer could get her dad off. Galen wrote her letters like that—
Jess, get a lawyer, tell him I’m innocent
—leading her on like that. Hell, she’d do about anything.”

“Does he know she’s dead? Jesse’s dad?”

“Galen beat up a guy about a week ago. Colored fella. He’s in the hole right now.”

I waited a moment, sick and considering, and then I made a leap and hoped for luck. “You sell any Frangelico in here?”

“Winter. Ski season.”

“Lately, I mean.”

Uncle Judith’s eyes narrowed. He jackhammered the wad in his jaw. He was weaving now, hanging onto the counter.

I filled him in. “There was an empty at the crime scene.”

“The monk?”

“Yes.”

Seesawing words around a mouthful: “Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

“You sell any lately?”

“Hell yes,” he drooled. He jerked his hat brim toward the window again, threw himself off balance. He gunned another savage miss—the Raging Bull of snoose.

“To Henderson Gray. And I’ll kill that suck-egg sumbitch.”

Yes. Now. Jesse.

 

Gray’s girl at the reception desk was heavy and homely and trying so hard to overcome these flaws she didn’t notice I was drunken, ill-groomed, and hostile, the public defender type.

“Is there any particular type of legal service that you’re interested in?”

“I want to see Henderson Gray.”

“I’m sorry. He’s, um, out running. Can I help you with anything?”

“I’m … actually …”

“If you’re the carpet guy, you’ll need to see Charlotte anyway. She makes all those decisions.”

“Maybe I should go …”

“I’ll give you directions and call ahead.”

Charlotte Gray was thin and good-looking, with exhausted eyes and a toddler on her hip. She was barely older than the girl at Henderson’s office. The house around her was grandiose in design but half-finished and obviously uncomfortable for the mother of a crawling, falling, gnawing child.

“Carpet? I haven’t even thought about carpet.”

She held her ground atop construction-grade plywood in the doorway, her toddler yanking her sideways as he reached and fussed for a loose screw on the floor. She looked beyond me, taking in the Cruise Master with a look of fatigue and annoyance.

“More lies,” she muttered. “You’re selling stolen carpet? Is that it? Magic carpet?”

I picked up the screw and dropped it in my shirt pocket. The little boy lunged at me, screeching and causing his mother to wince and widen her stance. I went through my pockets for something to pacify: matches, a crumpled pack of Swishers, the red plastic cap to a liquor bottle, the cork butt of a broken rod, a snarl of discarded leader.

She sighed, accepted my offer of the rod butt, redirected the boy. “Maggie called me and said you stopped Tick Judith from getting hit in the middle of the street, and then you took an ice pick out of his hand and shoved him back in the liquor store.” She hiked the toddler up on her hip and stepped aside. “So come in,” she said, “and tell me what this bullshit is about.”

“Those are the Crazy Mountains over there,” she announced when we had reached a much-too-spacious back porch. “The Bitterroots are there. That smoke is from the Canyon Ferry fire. It’s taking a thousand acres a day, and I just don’t care.”

She dropped the little gnawer and his rod butt on a pile of sawdust. She sat in a wrought iron chair and crossed her legs. A half finished drink—tea with ice and lime?—awaited her on a patio table.

“Now, what’s up? I’m sure it’s Henderson, and if it’s anything new and girl-related, he knows I’m going to divorce him.”

That was too fast for me. I needed a feel first. I started sideways. “How long has your husband had the idea to run down a deer?”

“Okay. You’re from PETA or something?” I shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Is it mutual? Does he get consent from the deer?”

She regarded me with weary amusement. Her eyes were pale blue and slightly bloodshot. Her short blonde hair contained flecks of something like oatmeal.

“You’re from Earth First!?”

“Don’t I dress the part? And how would your husband like to be chased until he drops from exhaustion? We can arrange that.”

She accepted a handful of sawdust from the little boy. “Are you some girl’s father?”

“Nope. Some boy’s.”

“Oh, shit.”

“I’m kidding.”

“I know.”

“But only sort of.”

“I know that too.”

We traded little smiles and sat in a decently relaxed silence for a long time. Her voice had changed when she spoke again.

“Well, it’s boring up here alone all day, so, let’s see … Deer running, as it’s called, was supposedly done by certain Native Americans as a test of manhood.” Another fistful of sawdust came her way, this one airborne. “Peter, don’t throw at Mommy. According to my husband, the Tarahumarans in Mexico still do it. His goal is to prove that it can be done and be the first white man to do it.” She paused, answered me before I asked. “Don’t ask me why. He’s competitive. He won’t stop brushing his teeth until after I do.”

Now I received a handful of sawdust, launched against my shins and boots.

“Peter, don’t throw at …”

“Dog.”

“Your name is Dog?”

“Dog,” said Peter. “Dog-dog-dog-dog.”

“You got it.”

“Your parents called you Dog?”

“It’s a nickname. And I always thought deer running was a myth.”

“Hendy wants to prove otherwise. Anyway he’s an ultra-marathoner. He can run twenty miles a day and up to fifty if he needs to. Especially if someone else ran forty-nine.”

“But deer are fast. Pronghorn are the fastest North American mammal.” Sneed told me that. And they were
antelope,
not deer. Horns, not antlers.

She said, “Pronghorn are what he chases. The idea is that the animal has short-term speed but not stamina. If the human can keep disrupting its rest cycle, keep it moving, eventually the poor creature will stress and overheat and finally collapse. Then you can walk right up and touch them, kill them, whatever.”

“Well hell,” I said, “maybe I am from PETA.”

“You’re not.”

“No. I’m not.”

Sawdust flew in the air between us. She sighed. “Peter, how about we don’t throw at all?” She brushed sawdust off her bare legs. “Hendy has a bet with a scientist from somewhere. He has this little tag thing the guy gave him. If he can videotape himself clipping that tag to the animal’s ear, he’s good. As long as the animal gets up and runs later, healthy, he’s got proof. Then there will be articles everywhere. He’s already going to be featured in this month’s
National Geographic
with a story about his incredible connection to nature and ancient cultures.” She said this dryly and directed my gaze across that immense back porch. “There used to be a big fir over there that had grizzly scratchings on it going back almost two hundred years. The Blackfeet used it for a sign post. But Hendy needed that corner for a hot tub to keep his muscles loose.” She took a reckless gulp of her drink. “He thinks he’ll be famous. He thinks there would be a movie about him—the man who ran down an antelope.”

I worked on that, gazing off at the smoke in the Bitterroot range. Eventually Charlotte Gray said, “That’s what I did before. I was a casting agent before we moved up here and started a family.”

“Well, it’s pretty here.”

“Pretty goes up in flames,” she said. “You want something to drink while you figure out how to get to the point?”

“Sure.”

“And can you watch Peter?”

Given my track record, I watched that kid with my hair on end, vigilant for screws in the sawdust, for birds of prey swooping down, for Sudden Exploding Toddler Syndrome. When Peter Gray reached into the sawdust, pinched out a caulking tube tip and aimed it toward his mouth, I dove. I grabbed his chubby hand, pried his find away, causing him to shriek first with fright and next indignation.

“You’re good,” his mother said, exchanging the choking hazard for something that looked like iced tea but tasted more like some whoop-ass cocktail for college kids. “Not good,” I said. “Just traumatized,” and she looked at me strangely, hoping for an explanation she wouldn’t get.

“So Dane Tucker’s one of your husband’s clients?”

“There.” She was decisive. “Now I know. You’re after a piece of Tucker. Well, good for you, that asshole deserves it, but sorry, you’re out of luck. My husband
was
Tucker’s lawyer.”

“I heard it in the present tense.”

“Nope.” She squeezed lemon over her drink, rattled her ice. “Tucker was one of Hendy’s main clients. But Tucker fired him over a year ago. It was because of some forty-mile fence that the old ranch manager put up. Tucker was on location in Australia. The ranch manager claimed the fence was my husband’s idea and that Hendy okayed the job. Turns out Tucker got sued by some radical group for supposedly blocking a pronghorn migration route. He bought himself some science and my husband won the case, but it cost Tucker a load of money and brought a lot of bad press, which the moron then multiplied for himself by refusing to take the fence down. It was all pointless and ugly. Tucker fired Hendy as soon as it was over.”

“People don’t seem to know that.”

“Oh, Hendy hides it. He hides all his little failures. Like not making the Berkeley Law Review. Like Peter’s delayed speech. Like me and this.” She waved her empty glass at me.

I set my drink down empty, too. Wow.

“Another?”

“Sure.”

“You’re on day care again.”

This time I was proactive. I distracted the boy by burying my hand in sawdust and wiggling my fingers like worms. He chortled and tried to clobber the worms with a Matchbox Camero. When Charlotte Gray came back, she said, “But you’re not trying to extort Dane Tucker?”

“I’m not.”

“Too bad. That could be fun.” She sat back with a little smile and sipped. “I should have visitors more often,” she said. “Especially mysterious ones.”

“Nice to be appreciated,” I said, and then I looped back, following something. “Is that where your husband runs deer,” I asked, “on Tucker’s land?”

“No. He crosses Tucker’s land to get to the place where he runs them.”

I pictured Henderson Gray the first time I saw him, his showy finishing kick down Livingston’s Main Street, his dramatic heaving goober onto the sidewalk, the water bottle over the head.

“So what’s it take to run deer? What’s it about?”

Gray’s wife shrugged. “We don’t talk about it much any more. It’s one of our issues. He trains constantly. I don’t know how he finds the time or the energy to—”

She stopped herself. She lifted her glass too strongly and ice hit her in the face. “It takes open land,” she said, “good visibility. And you have to understand which direction the animal doesn’t want to go. You run them that way, the way they don’t want to go, and the stress tires them out.”

“If your husband is fired, how does he get across Tucker’s land?”

She laughed. This was nothing. “Along with Hendy, Tucker fired the ranch manager and the most of the hands too. I’m sure they all just kept their keys. Tucker’s only here one month out of the year. He has no idea what goes on there day to day.”

She finished her drink. She looked at me pointedly, a long time, raised her eyebrows. “Well? It’s Peter’s nap time. Is there anything else?”

“I’m here about your husband’s girlfriend.”

She did not look surprised. Instead she released a weighty exhalation that made her son look up from the sawdust pile.

“You’re the tramp’s father?” she said. “Or the brother. The ex?”

“I’m a friend.”

“That whole episode is over,” said Charlotte Gray. “Hendy and I have worked it out. He has made his apologies and explanations. This girl came after him because he is a lawyer and she wanted something. That’s what he said. He made a mistake and it won’t happen again. That’s his story, and I’ve elected to believe him. It’s over. He’s told her to stay away and she has.”

She bent between her legs, beat her child to a roofing nail that had surfaced in the pile of sawdust. Once more he yowled at his loss. Charlotte Gray extended the nail. “Here,” she said. “You’ve got pockets. Be useful. And tell me what you want.”

“Do you know where your husband was last Wednesday?” I said.

“I told you. It’s over.”

Sure, because Jesse is dead,
I was about to say.

“We saw a counselor at Park County Mental Health. Henderson promised it was over and he would never do it again.”

Gray’s wife opened her arms, and the boy, angry and over-tired, toddled into them, released two punitive fistfuls of sawdust into her crotch. “What could I say?” she asked me. “He said he was sorry. He said he would never see the little bitch again. He promised.”

“And these last couple of days he’s been just like always? Things are normal again?”

“What do you mean? I’ve hardly seen him,” she said. “He’s so busy at work. Wednesday? I think he worked all day, probably went for a long run, came home late, had a scotch and a power bar, read Peter a story and went to bed. Is there a problem?”

I waited a long time before speaking again. I watched the Canyon Ferry smoke balloon up and spread, besotting the entire easterly sky until Gray’s impressive roofline cut off the view.

“Well—”

“Well what?” She gathered red-cheeked Peter into her saw-dusty lap. “What is it you want from me?”

I was confused. I said finally, “It almost sounds as if you don’t realize that Jesse is dead.”

She fairly dropped the kid out of her lap. She sputtered at me, “
Jesse?”

I nodded.

Again, louder—
“Jesse?”
—the kid, still slipping, grabbed at her shirt, yanking it open to expose exhausted breasts. She didn’t care. Her voice became a croak, a snarl, and a sob.

“I was talking about
last year.
I was talking about
Ally Browning,
his old receptionist.” Her eyes filled fast. “All this time you were talking about
now,
with Jesse, Jesse Ringer? He was screwing Jesse? The dead girl?”

I nodded. Yes. Now. Jesse.

“He was … that dirty lying … after all that we went through …”

She grabbed her drink, seemed surprised it was empty. She began to shake. The boy fell between her legs, but I saw it coming and caught his little skull in the palm of my hand.

“Missus Gray—”

“Not for long.”

“—I’m sorry.”

As I let the little boy down safely, he looked at me, looked at his mother, and then he began to thrash on the fresh cedar planks between her feet, began to thrash, and thrash, and wail.