Knife River, page 10
Something in the air made all of them feel invincible, as if time had ceased moving, all borders and boundaries dissolved, a lacuna carved out of the universe and fashioned exclusively for them. Back at home, their parents seemed shellshocked, reeling from a recent nuclear near miss in Cuba, an escalating war somewhere in the jungles of Southeast Asia, and still grieving the assassination of a US president; an entire adult population was coming to terms with its own moral inventory. But that was the establishment’s burden, their weight to carry. Life persists, man, young lives in particular, exploring infatuations, desires, and furies as though they were the first to discover them.
Music was everywhere. The Beatles and the Beach Boys; the Supremes and Jan & Dean; Johnny Rivers and the Dave Clark Five; and Lesley Gore. The atmosphere was alive with abandon and a culture newly rejuvenated, dominated by both the joy and the narcissism of youth. So they proceeded blissfully unaware they were standing at the headwaters of a hedonistic tsunami not seen since the apex of the Roman Empire, the last of the remaining floodgates having been cobbled together from the fragile substance of tradition.
“I don’t think I recognize anybody at this party,” Paul said. “Do you?”
“Do you want to leave?” Heather said.
“No,” Paul said, probably a little too quickly. “I’m fine.”
“Want to take a walk? Get away from all … this?”
She looked across the width of the glade, gestured vaguely toward the beer-flushed teenagers who loitered at the fringe of a bonfire showering embers into the night sky, their glossy skins marbled with orange light. Paul didn’t answer Heather’s question, just stood and offered his hand to her.
“I had a nice time with you the other night at your house,” he said as they walked among the damp pebbles on the bank of the river.
“You did not,” she said and playfully bumped him with her shoulder, unwilling to let go of his hand. “My dad was being a jerk.”
“Okay. I was just being polite. But I had a nice time being with you.”
“I did with you, too,” she said. “I saw you looking at the family pictures on the mantelpiece.”
“You can tell a lot about people from the photos they keep.”
“You think so?”
“I know so,” he said.
“We used to have more, but my father’s been putting them away. He thinks I don’t notice.”
“My dad’s just the opposite. He doesn’t have anything of my mom’s in the house. I found an earring one time. He’d be pissed if he knew I still had it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t talk about her.”
“That’s sad,” Heather said. “I’m glad we still have a few things around.”
“I am too.”
“What can you tell about me? From the pictures, I mean.”
“That you look just like your mom. She was very pretty.”
They stopped walking and listened to the river, watched the glow of the moon on white water that braided the rocks.
“I don’t really remember her,” Heather said. “She died when I was very young.”
“How?”
“Ovarian cancer.”
“That’s rough. I’m sorry, Heather.”
“They say it’s common.”
“Doesn’t make it any better. Or any easier.”
He felt Heather looking at the side of his face, searching for something, but he didn’t know what. She let go of his hand, crouched down, and scooped a flat stone from the water’s edge, skimmed it across the flats.
“No, it doesn’t make it any easier,” she said finally. “I think my father blames me for her cancer. Do you think that’s weird?”
“Why do you think he blames you?”
“The way that he looks at me sometimes. Like he wishes I was her and not … me.”
She had a way of saying things, so unvarnished and sincere, that it caught Paul off guard and made him feel clumsy, inadequate and crude. Paul knew she didn’t mean to make him feel that way, but life with his father had not exactly prepared him for refinement or polish, or even the basics of courteous conversation. He tilted his head upward, looking into a black sky that seemed intent on swallowing the stars. Behind the clouds, the moon appeared blue, bruised and alone, and a melancholy fell over him.
“I was only six when my mom was killed,” Paul said. “I don’t remember much about her at all. It’s like she faded away. Images, like little movies in my head, but now they’re nearly all gone.”
Heather moved close to him then, slid an arm around his waist, and rested her head on his shoulder. Her hair smelled like cinnamon.
“Tell me one,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me about one of the memories you still have of her.”
No one had ever asked him that before, and again he found himself unprepared. His memories were spotty, imperfect in their construction, and something about that embarrassed him. There was one, though, that had appeared in his mind without origin or chronology, no frame of reference Paul could fit into the puzzle of his early life: The day’s wash was drying on a clothesline beside the house, flapping in the dirty breeze. His mother looked tired. No, maybe not tired; alone and unhappy. Paul felt himself grow sadder just thinking about her that way, looking as though she wished she could be somewhere else. Anywhere other than where she was. If she could have, she would have wanted the wind to carry her into the sky, gone and forever away.
“I’ll try,” Paul said finally, and he described it to Heather.
And as he did so, the image disappeared into nothing. Like the tail end of a film reel that had abruptly unspooled, vanishing into the screen, and receding into waxen darkness.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHEN THE BEDSIDE TELEPHONE woke me at 4:00 Monday morning, I plucked the receiver from the cradle before it could ring a second time. Through the fog of a sudden awakening and the commotion on the other end of the line, Meriwether County’s volunteer fire captain informed me a blaze had broken out at the hog farm on Sahaptin Road.
Jesse turned over and reached for me in the dark as I rolled out of bed. I kissed her and whispered for her to go back to sleep. I brewed coffee in the percolator as I got dressed, poured it into a plaid thermos container, and climbed into my pickup, my breath coming out in gray clouds.
The morning was chilled, moonless and silent, and a lone katydid churred from somewhere in the brush. I pulled out of the driveway and over the wide entry lane paved with crushed rock that led out to the state road, my headlights reflecting the rubicund flicker of animal eyes staring out from the weeds growing on the embankment. As I neared the paved road, I recognized Tom Jenkins sitting horseback in the distance, pushing the better part of the Corcoran herd up the dirt track to my ranch by himself. By the time most of the folks in the county got around to eating their breakfasts, Tom Jenkins and my cowboys would be tagging the ears of those animals and hazing them out to the feedlot. I flashed my headlights to him as I passed, then turned onto the county road toward the fire.
About forty-five minutes later, I spotted the ghost of a smoke cloud in the sky, pallid and ashen against the deep blue of false dawn. Four trucks were fanned out along the periphery of the hog farm by the time that I arrived, a Type 2 and three pumpers, all painted a hideous shade of lime yellow, drowning the last of the embers that glowed at the center of a huge pile of blackened rubble. The farm was in the middle of nowhere, flanked by thick stands of fir trees and cottonwoods, its nearest neighbor a good five miles east. All that was left standing now were the rail fences surrounding the empty hog pens, the farrowing barn, and the steel posts that once supported a roof above the compost shed. The main residence, the workshop, and the hoop barn were nothing but piles of smoldering staves and plankwood with a chimney and hearth built from red brick protruding from the debris like a cenotaph.
The man who had phoned me, Fire Captain Baxter Gage, saw me arrive and climbed down from one of the pumpers, turning the controls of the deluge gun over to one of his men. He peeled the heavy gloves from his hands as he ambled in my direction, his turnout coat blackened by smoke.
“Sorry to drag you out of bed so early, Ty,” he said.
“I’m a rancher,” I said. “My day’s already half over.”
He grinned and accepted the coffee I offered from my thermos, removed his helmet, and placed it on the wheel well of my truck.
“Anyone hurt?” I asked.
“No, thank god. The place has been abandoned since the McEvoys left in … what, seventy-one? House still had some furniture in it.”
I could recall the days when this farm had been a thriving enterprise, back before I’d left for college and the war. Seeing it this way was not only a depressing sign of present times, but troubling as well, in that it looked intentional to me.
“Any idea how it started?” I asked.
Baxter Gage scanned his eyes across the smoldering remains of the old farm. What hadn’t been incinerated by the flames had been gradually decimated by years of neglect and indifference.
“It’s been clear and dry all night long. No lightning, no storms,” he said.
“Arson?”
“I don’t know what else it could be. That’s why I called you.”
“Why the hell would somebody want to burn this place down?”
“Who knows anymore, Ty,” he said. “This world keeps getting stranger and stranger. I’m getting too old for this shit, tell you the truth.”
“Mind if I have a look around?”
“Knock yourself out,” he said. “I’ll send you a copy of our after-action report if you’d like.”
I circled the periphery of the wreckage, careful to maintain my distance from the remaining hot spots, my eyes stinging anew with every shift of the wind. I sheltered myself beneath an ancient oak that stood a short distance from where the front door of the dwelling had been, its limbs and trunk deeply scorched nearest the blaze. I could see the shattered remnants of furnishings and broken glass amid the ash, but nothing I recognized as overt evidence of arson. But Baxter Gage was right. In the absence of inclement weather, there was no other logical explanation. The place had been long abandoned, presumably with no active utilities in use or operational defects to blame. Yet the notion of arson made my skin crawl; the town of Meridian was still recovering from the emotional aftereffects of a firebomb that had cost at least one young person his life.
I thanked Gage and started back for the office, the sun as it rose from behind the Cascades burning my smoke-reddened eyes.
WHEN I had driven through town on my way out to the hog farm, the streets had been empty, too early for anyone except the garbage collectors emptying containers into the back of their crusher. Now, as I turned right onto Main on my way to the substation, I saw parked cars lining both sides of the street. I glanced through the window of Rowan Boyle’s diner as I drove by and could tell it was packed. Across the street, I saw Lankard Downing already unlocking his front door for the day, at least an hour earlier than usual. I pulled into the small lot behind the office and noticed Jordan Powell in the park.
He looked up at me as I took a place across from him at the picnic table where he had been scooping the flesh from a mushmelon he had sliced and laid out on a section of yesterday’s paper.
“Doesn’t look like much of a breakfast for a cowboy,” I said.
He responded with a roll of his eyes and wiped melon juice from his chin with his sleeve.
“Shasta says she don’t want me looking fat for the wedding.”
“Is that so? You finally set a date?”
“Looks like we’re drawing a bead on one, Cap,” he said. “Circling the wagons on sometime in June.”
I waited for more, but that was all he chose to say about it, which was fine with me. The morning was filled with riparian smells and the susurrus of the river as it slid past the park, and we sat in companionable silence until the clock tower chimed eight o’clock.
“You smell like smoke,” Powell said as he got up to dispose of his hollowed-out melon rind.
“Fire at the hog farm.”
“The old Swanson place?”
“I’ve always known it as the McEvoy farm,” I said. “Out on Sahaptin Road.”
“That’s the one. The McEvoys took it over and couldn’t make a go of it either. Too bad, too. Some places are just plain snakebit, I guess.”
I watched as he dropped his refuse in the garbage can and rinsed his hands in the drinking fountain. He shook his hands dry and returned to the table, resting one boot on the seat of the picnic table as he looked off toward the heart of Meridian. A bicentennial flag popped in the wind at the top of the flagpole, the number 76 encircled by stars inside the canton.
“Anybody get hurt in the fire?”
“No,” I said. “Place has been abandoned for a few years, as far as I know.”
“That’s what I thought,” Powell said. “Anyways, I got a couple more leads on the poachers to follow up on. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
“You do that, Jordan. I’m going to try to get something to eat. I’ll be back in a while.”
“Got it, boss,” he said and ambled across the lawn to the office.
I WALKED up the street to Rowan Boyle’s diner for some breakfast and found a long line of customers waiting outside the door. Inside, the dining room was filled to capacity, as was every seat at the counter. My stomach rumbled at the smell of food and I wasn’t willing to wait, so I crossed the street to drop in at the Cottonwood Blossom. Ordinarily, the Blossom didn’t open until ten or eleven, but Lankard Downing was not a man to squander opportunity when it showed up unexpectedly.
When I stepped inside, I was as surprised to find the place packed to the rafters with patrons as I was to see Meridian’s town drunk, and the Cottonwood Blossom’s near-permanent resident, Leon Quinn, working behind the counter as a barback.
“I can see the way you’re looking at me, Sheriff,” Quinn said. “But I’m a changed man. I’m a friend of Bill Wilson’s now. Three days already, and I’m sober as a judge.”
“Congratulations, Leon. Keep coming back,” I said and wondered whether that was the appropriate rejoinder under the circumstances.
Lankard Downing topped off a Falstaff glass of draft and rang it up for a waiting customer before he strolled over to address me.
“We’re full up, as you can see, Sheriff,” he said, showing me a rare and somewhat vulpine smile. “But I can set you up with something to carry back to the office with you.”
“Much appreciated, Lankard, but I’d like to have a word first.”
“You smell like smoke.”
“That’s what I hear,” I said and changed the subject. “I’ve never seen the Blossom opened up so early in the morning.”
“Didn’t want to miss a chance like this here. I guess the word’s got out on some kind of rock-and-roll show somewhere up the valley soon. Look at all these people. Like Christmas and New Year’s and the rodeo all rolled into one.”
I knew he was already aware of exactly what and where the concert was planned to be, but playing cornpone dumb was how Downing plied his trade in idle gossip. He was correct, though, as far as his business was concerned. Every table was occupied by unfamiliar people eating plates of grits and sausage and fried eggs, or bowls of Colorado chili accompanied by tall glasses of beer. At the far end of the bar, an attractive blonde sat by herself beside the only empty barstool at the rail, sipping a salted Bloody Mary through a straw. She eyed me like a raptor for a few seconds, and then she looked away.
“I heard there was a fire out at the McEvoy place,” Downing said. “That why you smell like you’ve been sleeping in your smokehouse?”
There was no point in lying to him, so I confirmed I had been there.
“I’d prefer you keep it under your hat for the time being, Lankard,” I said. “We’re still investigating the origin.”
His eyebrows arched with curiosity, but he pursed his lips and made a lock and key motion. “Mum’s the word.”
Like hell. But this was how things operated in Meridian.
I could see the Bloody Mary girl was still keeping tabs on me, and I watched a man approach her and sit down in the empty seat with an air of ownership that seemed somehow perverse. He hollered out an order for a stubbie of Olympia with a whiskey on the back and hooked his bootheels over the rungs of his stool. The girl whispered something in his ear, and I saw him nod, his face obscured by the wide brim of his hat.
Lankard Downing excused himself from me and went to fill the newcomer’s order, and I watched a waitress and busboy work the busy room. I leaned an elbow on the countertop and kept the couple at the far end of the bar in my peripheral vision as Downing pulled a bottle of well whiskey from the bottom shelf. The Bloody Mary girl was young, midtwenties, stunning in a way that demanded the wrong kind of attention, and with mileage on her life that only revealed itself beneath the skin. She was wearing tight white pedal pushers and a cutoff T-shirt printed with a Harley Davidson skull, a tattoo of the yin-yang symbol imprinted on her shoulder. She looked beautiful and dangerous and damaged, an untamed creature who was both predator and victim at the same time. If this concert was going to draw more of this kind of crowd, I was going to require some help.
