Knife River, page 6
The four newcomers ordered beers from Lankard when he returned to his station behind the stick, and the men took turns making comments to one another as they studied Swann, London, and Kaanan consuming their breakfasts. The men were just starting in on their third round of beers by the time Kaanan paid our tab and we all stood and headed for the door. I waited for my tablemates to move out to the sidewalk so I could have a private word with the new visitors. When the door swung shut behind the rock star and his friends outside, I turned to face the strangers still seated along the bar inside.
I pulled the corner of my coat aside to reveal the badge clipped to my pistol belt and stepped in close to the man with the tattoos, the man who seemed to be in charge. His appearance and demeanor were nearly saurian, his irises the color of something you’d find at the bottom of a wastewater pond.
“You don’t want to act on any of the things you’re thinking right now,” I said. “In fact, I’d strongly recommend you move on up the road.”
The corner of his mouth twitched, but he never took his eyes off my face. Now that I was closer, I could sense that I had been correct about these men. There is a peculiar odor unique to trains and railroad sidings, the tart sharpness of creosote and pine tar, engine oil, grease, and diesel fuel exhaust. All of these had permeated the pores of these four and had collected in the folds of their unlaundered clothing.
“Trying to mad dog me won’t work here in the wild,” I said. “You’re not stalking the yard anymore, chief. Pay the man behind the counter and take your bullshit somewhere else. Hop the next highliner out of here. All four of you. We don’t need whatever it is you’re selling. Have a nice day.”
I stepped out into the sunlight where Cricket, Ian, and Len Kaanan were standing on the sidewalk beside Ian Swann’s blue Mustang. Mickey London was hunched over a pay phone on the corner, pumping dimes into the slot. My daughter looked at me with an expression of humiliation and shame, and I didn’t understand its cause. When I moved closer to the vehicle, I saw the reason for her reaction.
While we’d all been inside having our breakfasts, someone had snapped off Swann’s car radio antennae and used it to carve profanities into the gleaming blue paint job and smear feces across his windshield and door handles.
Halfway down the block, I heard the Blossom’s front door slam open, watched the four men from the bar file out in single file, like a chow line in the joint, or a mess tent near the front lines somewhere far downrange. I drew another reckoning from the history I detected in their faces and believed I could see their future written there as well.
“YOU MUST have taken the long way home,” Jesse said as we came inside the house. Cricket hugged her mom and took her belongings into her room, and I stayed behind to tell Jesse what had happened at the Cottonwood Blossom.
“What kind of person does a thing like that?”
“An angry person,” I said. “An envious person. A crazy person.”
“I don’t want to believe we live in a place like that.”
“We didn’t used to, Jesse. But I think the circus has arrived in town.”
I FELL asleep with Jesse’s breath against my neck, my mind brimming with images of fallen eagles and the specters of the lonely and the wounded and the lost. That night, I dreamt of a bleak and flattened wasteland five thousand miles from my family home, where the bilious scent of roasted flesh roiled across a frozen field of battle.
In my dream, my ears are ringing from a deafening concussion, dizzy as I retrieve the rifle that had slipped out of my hand when Chinese artillery lit up our position. My eyes feel like they’re melting from the heat and smoke; I’m trying vainly to avoid trampling on the disembodied limbs of soldiers and the offal strewn like barnyard waste on steaming tundra, roasted by the chemical hell of Chinese flamethrowers or masticated by grenades. A mortar shell whistles overhead and I stagger and fall into a foxhole, saturating my fatigues in a pool of melted ice and blood and human filth.
I lay shivering, and a familiar thought invades my mind again. Inside the sustained roar of automatic weapons and field cannon, and the rush of blood inside my own ears, I do not feel that I have been singled out. I am simply trapped inside a nightmare war that politicians won’t even bother to designate as one, breathless in their oratory and wet-eyed in their pontifications regarding democracy, but without a backward glance concerning those they send to die fighting the devastating wars they themselves initiated.
The far-off whumps of incoming artillery grow nearer. I am too exhausted to feel the terror I know I should feel, and I wonder again how long that final instant lasts. How long does it take for the light to leave one’s eyes, or for that twenty-one grams of precious soul to float away?
And what happens if no one tells me when I’m dead?
CHAPTER SIX
I WAS UP before the sun on Tuesday morning and left Jesse snoring softly in our bed as I slipped out to the kitchen. I filled my speckled mug with coffee and took it outside to the porch, the morning air woven with the remnants of late winter chill. A mantle of fog floated above the creek that ran beyond the corral, and I could hear the calves lowing inside the mist.
The cowboys were already stirring in the bunkhouse, a warm yellow glow in the window frames and a narrow stream of smoke rising from the chimney stack. In a short while, the echoes of pounding hoofbeats, the sorting of livestock, and the odors of singed hide would permeate the atmosphere as the rising sun burned through the low ceiling of sky, and the Diamond D would come alive for the new season.
Yesterday’s paper still lay folded on the old pine table, and against my better judgment, I picked it up and began reading. The headline story proclaimed that the much-feared resurgence of the 1918 flu virus was proving to be nonexistent, and President Ford’s campaign for mass inoculations motivated solely by his reelection hopes. Even with the knowledge the entire panic had been a lie, it appeared neither the president’s moral vacuity nor its inherent disingenuity was going to prevent Congress from passing emergency immunization legislation, the implementation of which was serving to confuse and terrify millions of Americans who neither wanted nor needed the damned shot in the first place.
Despite the ginned-up pandemic having failed to materialize, in the end, the real victims of the fiasco were proving to be unsuspecting and innocent citizens who were stricken with a rare neurological disorder determined to be a direct result of having taken the vaccine—as they’d been instructed to do—in the first place. Congressional lapel pins, political ambitions, and white lab coats had proved, yet again, to be a toxic combination. Corporate nihilism.
I folded the newspaper in half, went inside, and tossed it in the rubbish bin, regretting that I didn’t have a birdcage.
I was on my third cup of coffee when Cricket came outside to join me on the gallery. She was still wearing her flannel pajamas, a Navajo blanket pulled tight around her shoulders, and cradling a steaming ceramic mug between her palms. She took a seat in the willow chair next to me and angled her face toward a rising sun that appeared slightly out of focus, like a ball of spun cotton glowing softly behind the retreating clouds.
“Smells like horse sweat and juniper out here,” she said, her voice still thick from slumber. “Smells like home.”
I watched a faint smile appear at the edges of her eyes as she looked at me across the rim of her cup.
Through the window I could see Jesse stirring inside the kitchen, and I was reminded how that woman had swept into my life, shaping it every bit as much as my history on this land and this ranch ever had. Her attitudes were well-defined from the moment I met her, holding fast to an affection for nature and its wildlife and a loathing for anyone who would mistreat or exploit either one of them.
She would hunt wild game with me to stock the smokehouse—a crack shot with both rifle and revolver—and mend a fallen bird’s wing that same day and saw no contradiction. She held a permit to carry a concealed firearm, but rarely did so; could ride and rope with my finest cowhands, and break your heart when she got dressed up to go dancing. She was generous and fierce with her love, her loyalty never in question; passionate and opinionated, beautiful and bold.
I returned my attention to Cricket, her face aglow with the diffused sunlight, muted on the planes and angles of her face. While I recognized a few of the traits my daughter had inherited from me, it was clear she had grown to become Jesse’s spiritual twin. Which, as her father, scared the hell out of me every single day of my life.
THE PHONE in the house rang at 8:00 a.m. sharp as I was preparing to head down to the corral to watch the new hands drive the first of the calves into the pen for branding, tagging, and castration. Training up a new crew was always a challenge, the bane of Caleb Wheeler’s surly existence, but a fine thing to observe when it all came together. By the end of the season, I knew it would resemble nothing short of a ballet on horseback, though one with spitting, swearing, and bloodletting substituting for an orchestral score.
I picked up the telephone receiver and announced myself.
“Hope I’m not calling too early,” the caller said.
“We’re generally awake by first light around here, Mr. Kaanan,” I said.
He hesitated for a moment, and in the background on his end I could hear the muffled noise of table conversation and the resonance of Ian Swann strumming an acoustic guitar.
“Why do I feel like we keep getting off on the wrong foot, Sheriff?”
“I don’t know how to reply to that.”
“I realize I’m the new guy in this valley,” he said. “I understand that. And I understand what you were trying to tell me yesterday about cultures clashing—”
“We both saw what was done to Ian’s car.”
“Yes, and Ian has no intention to press charges, nor do we have any desire for you to waste your time on that matter. It was a pointless act of vandalism, plain and simple. People with high public profiles like Ian has … well, we’ve come to expect it. It goes with the territory.”
“I appreciate the sentiment,” I said. “But it happened on my street, where a room full of innocent people were sitting and trying to mind their own business. Surely, you understand my concerns.”
“I want you to know I meant what I said before, Sheriff. I don’t want any trouble, and I don’t want to be the cause of any either. I mean that sincerely.”
“And as I said before, Mr. Kaanan, I understand your point of view. Is there something else on your mind?”
Outside my kitchen window, I watched the bluebirds foraging sticks and straw and packing them into the bird box Jesse made for them.
“Actually, there is,” Kaanan said. “I understand your wife is an experienced production assistant.”
“Where did you hear that?” I asked, although I had a very good idea as to where that information had originated.
“I heard you were once in the military, Sheriff Dawson. You know the importance of quality recon.”
I have never appreciated a vague answer to a direct question, so I let it sit there, waiting him out in silence.
“It’s a small town,” Kaanan offered at last.
“My advice is to take anything that Lankard Downing tells you with a grain of salt,” I said. “That is the best advice I can offer any newcomer to Meridian.”
“The cocktail and dining options are slim in Meriwether County. Plus, it turns out Mr. Downing has been a fountain of useful information to a man such as myself.”
“Around here, we refer to that sort of chatter as ‘gossip.’”
It was his turn to ignore my remark.
“You may have heard we’re making a film of Ian’s album as it’s being recorded.”
“I heard something like that.”
“Then I will assume you’ve also heard that we intend to throw a little concert to kick it off, once we’re finished,” he added.
“I heard something about that as well.”
“Truth is, Sheriff, I could benefit from a little local expertise, and I could really use the help of someone who is organized and familiar with the making of a film.”
I leaned on the kitchen counter and looked outside, watched Jesse collect eggs from the nesting box in the coop and place them into a wicker basket dangling from the crook of her arm. She smiled when she caught me looking at her through the window, tucked a tuft of loose hair beneath her hat, and returned to her work.
“You want to hire my wife to assist you with your film production?” I asked.
“Yes, sir, I do.”
I don’t make Jesse’s choices for her and never have. I would have liked to weigh in on this particular decision, but I knew I wouldn’t bother trying. As much as I love and admire my wife’s independence, it’s the stubbornness I could do with a little less of. Nevertheless, you take the whole package when you exchange rings and vows, and that is a bargain we both live with.
“She’s feeding the chickens at the moment,” I said to Kaanan. “I’ll leave her a note to call you back when she’s finished.”
I CALLED the substation to tell Jordan and Griffin I would be a couple hours later than usual coming to the office and set out for the horse barn instead. The early morning cloud cover had finally burned away, and fingers of steam rose from the roof as the sun warmed the damp shingles.
I saddled Drambuie, a bay Morgan gelding that had become my most trusted mount in the string. I fitted his bridle, checked the noseband and chinstrap, tightened the girth cinch, climbed up, and settled myself into the cantle. We passed through the barn doors and headed northward, the noise from the ranch growing more distant as I spurred him along the narrow game trail that wound through an old grove of larch and opened onto a field of tall grass cut by a wide, shallow stream. Some years ago, Caleb and I had constructed a footbridge made of stone and deadfall we had reclaimed from the wild as a shortcut for its crossing, the rush of high-country snowmelt flowing clear and cold beneath the freeboard. Boo’s hooves clacked the weathered timbers as we crossed and made our way to the paddock I had repurposed as a target-shooting range.
Stacks of baled straw had been piled high along a cutbank, where my spent ordnance would be contained by the natural contour of the land and ricochets were a practical impossibility. Far from the working corrals and activity at the ranch, it was a place where I could expect a certain solitude when I needed to clear my head.
It was no secret in the valley that I was a dead shot—with both pistol and lever-action Winchester rifle—having won a handful of awards at fairs and equestrian exhibitions over the years. I even performed a few trick shots for the cameras back when I worked for the studios.
But that was a long time ago, and my attitudes with respect to gun-handling skills had adapted over the years, having learned to appreciate the considerable difference that a .45-caliber round makes on a human being as opposed to a paper target. And while I do not relish the notion of turning a live firearm on my fellow man, I don’t intend to come in second place if the time comes.
I unsaddled Drambuie and allowed him to graze loose in the glade while I laid out my ammo boxes on a stump in the shade of a pair of black oaks. It took a few minutes to bind the targets and ready my weapons while I maintained an eye on my horse as he wandered off in the direction of the trough and feed crib. Drambuie and I had spent hours together, hazing recalcitrant steers from dense tangles of thornbush, bulldogging calves out on the open range, firing a gun at fixed targets inside an arena at a full gallop, and damn near everything else in between. My horse had learned to fear nothing when we were together, not even the reports from my rifle as they echoed inside the arroyo, and he had taught me to trust him the same way.
I was halfway through a third box of ammo when I heard the approach of hoofbeats as they crossed the old bridge. I slid my Peacemaker back into its holster and watched Caleb rein his palomino to a halt inside a patch of marbled sunshine underneath the trees.
“Didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” he said as he climbed down from his mount.
“You must’ve learned your sneaking skills inside a sawmill. I heard you coming from a half mile away.”
With Spring Works underway, I knew that Caleb hadn’t ridden all the way out here for a social visit, but he was also not a man to be hurried along once he got started. Whatever was on his mind would come out in due time, so I peeled off my holster and took a seat on the cut stump. I took a swig of spring water from a blanket canteen and passed it to Caleb.
“How’s the crew working out?” I asked.
“They’ll do,” he said and passed the canteen back to me.
I watched his eyes scan the stacks of straw bales and the mound of spent copper that had piled along the firing line.
“What’s all this about?” he asked, eyes squinting at the shredded targets I’d pinned to the bales. “County Fair ain’t coming around for months yet. You figuring on getting back in the shooting contest?”
