The Winslow Incident (15 page)

“Hazel Hazel Hazel!”

“Sean, why are you—” she
started.

But he yelled, “I’ve always done
everything for you and you don’t even give a shit!”

“That’s not true!” She looked
shocked by his sudden hostility.

“Why do I waste my time on you?” he
asked.

People in the Crock were staring
at them now.

“She loves me, she loves me not,”
Sean bitterly sing-songed. “
Do you know how fucking confusing that is!
”
he screamed at her, certain that his head would split open right then and
there, his taffy brain plopping out—splat—onto the white linoleum.

“
Sean.
”

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” he
screamed some more. “You’re jerking me around!”

“No I’m not!” she cried. He turned
away from her and she grabbed him by the arm. “What do you want from me, Sean?”

“I want you to leave me alone, Hazel.” He shook
her off. “Just leave like you’ve always wanted to.”

H
azel stood on the sidewalk outside the Crock
for a long time after Sean was gone, because everything he’d said to her was
absolutely true.

P
ulling up to The Winslow, Ben Mathers was
surprised to find it looking so innocuous. This was his first visit in five
years so he’d had plenty of time to work it up in his mind, and he’d expected
the hotel to wear its malevolence brazenly.

He climbed out of his brown
Valiant, walked to the foot of the steps, and stopped to look up at the structure:
old growth siding, flat rooflines with elaborate brackets supporting deep
cornices, and windows as tall as late afternoon shadows. Nothing to suggest
anything sinister.

The place is clever
, he thought.
It hides.

Ben shook his head, irritated by
his own trepidation. He needed to keep his mind on what he was doing here.
Swallowing the fear, he forced himself to walk up the stone steps.

He paused to catch his breath once
he reached the level front yard, leaning against one of the pedestal gaslamps
that flanked the walkway. An enormous birch tree still occupied the northeast
corner of the yard, shading the hotel in summer, branches laden with snow in
winter. He’d remembered that right.

Evan and Ruby Winslow’s mansion
had been converted into the town’s only hotel after the Silver Hill Hotel in
Matherston burned to the ground in 1918. Same year the Spanish flu stole away
half the town.
Most likely Evan Winslow himself struck that match
, Ben had
always thought
.

That got his ire back up. He
marched through the yard to where the path concluded at wide steps leading up
to the columned front porch, then took each stair one at a purposeful time.
After Ben passed beneath the double-arched entry, he reached the twelve-foot
black walnut doors and placed his hand on the silver knob. Then he hesitated.

Not because the door was locked .
. . but because things had happened here.

He stared down at his feet, shod
in sandals with thick leather straps.
My Lottie would not approve
, he
thought, and a wave of dread poured through him.

“Get a hold of yourself, Mathers,”
he said out loud and the sound of his own voice gave him the strength he needed
to push open the heavy door.

He glanced around, eyes darting
left and right, up and down . . . looking for what? What did he expect to see?
Floating apparitions? Blood? All he saw was the red-carpeted staircase with its
silver stair rods and the brass statuette adorning the newel post.

Moving through the lobby into the
ballroom, it felt as if it had been a hundred years since he’d sipped his last
gin and tonic in there. He could almost smell the juniper scent of the booze
and remembered resting his arm across the mantle of the carved marble
fireplace, watching the others drink their cocktails in the reflection of the gilt-framed
mirror. Now he was afraid to look into that mirror.
I don’t want to see.
He
backed out of the ballroom.
I don’t want to see.

Ben waved his hands in front of
his face as if clearing away cobwebs. He needed to stay focused on the reason
he’d come to this place: he needed to find her. Time to settle up with Sarah
Winslow.

He didn’t have to look far. When
he turned around she was standing beside the newel post. She looked older than
the last time he’d seen her. He supposed that he did, too. It didn’t feel as
though his heart was beating anymore.

“Get off my property,” she said.
Her light eyes reflected resolve, nothing more.

He stood his ground, but suddenly
his bladder felt very full. “I demand to know what’s wrong with this town.”
Something was wrong all right, and anytime something went wrong around here, it
was a sure bet that a Winslow was behind it.

“I’m warning you, Mathers.”

Funny, he hadn’t noticed the
shotgun resting against her side until now.
Painfully full . . .

“You’re not going to shoot me, old
girl.”

“You sure about that?” She raised
the gun to her hip.

He was not at all sure. And he
could no longer ignore his urgent need to relieve himself. “You had better hope
nothing worse comes of this, Sarah Winslow.”

As he moved toward the door, she
swiveled with the shotgun to keep him covered. “You’d better hope not either.
And you’d better not come back here.”

He careened out the door and
hurried as quick as he dared back to his car. When he reached the Valiant, he
scrambled in and drove fast down the driveway. Then he slammed on the brakes
three quarters of the way to Ruby Road. Ben jumped out, raced to the side of
the drive, and unzipped his shorts. As he stood urinating into a thatch of ferns,
he looked up at the hotel.

It wasn’t hiding anymore. The
Winslow watched him through arched windows, mocking him, forcing him to
remember—and daring him to do something about it.

S
itting astride Blackjack, Pard Holloway surveyed
his acreage and worried.

Worried,
What the hell is
happening to my herd.

Worried,
Where the hell is Doc
Simmons.

And it promised to be hot again.
Is
that it: the heat?

Then he wondered how much this
nightmare was going to cost him above and beyond the market value of each head
lost.

He figured he’d lost sixty-five
head total. About the same number were sick, but hanging in there. So far. And
his men had found no more dead since Friday. While a relief, that made the
whole damn thing all the more confounding. Each time he ran down the list of
possibilities he was left more perplexed than the time before. The symptoms,
variations in severity, rapid onset: none of it added up to anything Pard had
ever seen or even heard about. In fact, if he didn’t know better he’d think his
animals had been poisoned.

He was likely to strangle Doc
Simmons whenever he finally decided to show back up, but only after the vet
told Pard what was the matter with his cattle, why his prize bulls were
buckling like newborn calves. All night Pard had fought the panic that
threatened to spill over like the creeks at high water. If Simmons didn’t
figure this out soon, it might be too late to save the rest of the herd. And
depending on whatever the hell this turned out to be, Pard stood to lose his
herd
and
his reputation. And if that happened, that’d be the end of
Holloway Ranch.

Pard was not a rich man but he did
well enough. The ranch had been in his family for nearly ninety years but it
was he who’d grown it from bare subsistence to a full-blown moneymaking
operation when he’d made the name Holloway synonymous with Prime grade beef.
Now his beef was shipped to upscale restaurants and high-end markets across the
country.

And Pard was dead certain about
one thing in this whole sorry mess: news about sick cattle would spoil those
refined appetites for his goods. For good.

At least he’d scared the kids
quiet Friday night
.
(And dammit if Hazel didn’t look just like Anabel
when she was mad. Eyes flashing that same fierce green, those long coltish legs
kicking at the dirt.) But then there’d been that regrettable incident with
Indigo at the rodeo. So now, on top of everything else, Pard had to worry about
the other townsfolk squawking. He hoped they’d have enough sense to keep
quiet—for the common good. They had, after all, done this dance before.

While
Pard found that somewhat reassuring, he still worried that someone was bound to
slip up. In which case Pard may as well take out a billboard on Yellow Jacket
Pass:

Something is
very
wrong up
at Holloway Ranch.

He sighed so loudly that Blackjack
craned to look at him.

Patting the horse’s neck he said,
“It’ll be all right.” Then he nudged the animal with his boot heels to get him
moving across the narrow bridge. Once they reached the opposite side of Ruby
Creek, Pard nudged harder and Blackjack broke into a gallop across open
pasture.

I’ll do what it takes to put an
end to this
, Pard thought.

Story over. Period.

But what precisely—
Dammit!
—was
this all about?

He found his ranch hands talking
and smoking outside the main barn. They constituted fifteen weathered cowpokes
ranging in age from nineteen (Maggie Clark’s boy, Kenny) to seventy-two (Old
Pete Hammond, who was curing ham and churning butter on this land before Pard
was even born.) He knew he had the complete loyalty of these men. Though they
resented his heavy hand, their livelihood depended on Pard keeping the ranch
afloat and for that they respected him.

Noticing him riding up, they
gathered and turned their attention to the boss.

Pard remained on Blackjack.
“Listen up! I want you men to separate the ailing cattle from the rest and as
you do, check them from muzzle to switch for cuts, lesions, screw worms, bugs,
grubs, ticks, fleas, blisters and warts. Check their piss, shit and every hole
in their body for discharges of pus, snot and blood or any other damn thing.
Herd the healthy to the north pasture. Sick go south. Move it out!”

H
is uncle had assigned him to keep an eye out
for Doc Simmons since they wouldn’t be finished separating cattle until late
afternoon at best.
Good riddance,
Tanner had thought and took the
opportunity to go back to bed. His uncle kept getting him up so early. And he
was sore from being dragged around by that bastard horse at the rodeo.

When Tanner first arrived at the
ranch and was assigned a bedroom on the second story above his uncle’s room,
his first thought had been that it was going to be hard to sneak out at night.
Now he knew Pard didn’t give a shit what he did so long as it didn’t harm his
precious ranch or dent his sterling reputation.

So that morning, without a second
thought, Tanner had crawled back into bed and fallen fast asleep and dreamt of
heifers and steers and his Uncle Pard riding around barking orders and looming
large like Moses parting the Red Sea.

A buzzing noise from the direction
of the main barn woke him. He looked at the clock: 12:20. That was more like
it.
He grabbed his blue trunks off the floor and threw them on with a
t-shirt. It was hot already, which was the only drawback he could see to
sleeping late: not easing into the heat.

After he left the house, he
wandered toward the buzz until he found Doc Reed Simmons at the far end of the
barn.

Using a circular saw, the
veterinarian was cutting open the head of the bull killed at the rodeo. He
finished the cut and with a lot of effort and cursing pulled off the top of the
skull and tossed it aside. It landed on a hay bale with a soft plunk.

For a fascinated moment, Tanner
watched Indigo’s lid—horns erect, ears slack—drip red into yellow
hay. “That’s nasty,” Tanner said.

“Don’t sneak up on me like that!”
The bony and bespectacled vet looked seriously startled and wielded the
circular saw as if he just might use it on Tanner’s head next.

“Have you figured out what’s
wrong?” Tanner kept his distance from the agitated man.

“That’s what I’m trying to do
right now.” Doc Simmons pushed up his glasses with a gloved finger, leaving a
bloody mark on the bridge of his nose. He then made some wet snips inside the
head.

Tanner found himself intrigued by
this autopsy. “Haven’t found anything yet?”

“Acutely inflamed gastrointestinal
tract.”

Tanner glanced at the bucket full
of guts next to Simmons’ blood-spattered galoshes.

“Could be the bull got himself
into marsh marigold,” Simmons continued, “or lupine.”

“What’re those?” he asked, though
it seemed like the vet was talking more to himself.

“Toxic plants.” Snip snip. “Ate
some jimsonweed maybe.”

“Is it serious?”

The vet looked at him as if he
were an imbecile. An annoying imbecile. “Dead serious. Or haven’t you noticed?”
When the vet adjusted his glasses again, Tanner noticed that his fingers shook.