Knife River, page 7
“Just staying sharp,” I said. “You know what Wyatt Earp used to say: Fast is fine, but accuracy is final.”
“I s’pose old Wyatt oughtta know.”
Caleb crouched down on his haunches and tugged the long stem of a wild daisy from the damp earth. He examined the white flower for a protracted moment, the trees overhead alive with birdsong, tucked the culm between his teeth, and tasted the tart nectar. When he turned his attention back on me, I could tell that he was about to come to the point.
“You expecting trouble, Ty?” he asked.
“I’m always expecting trouble.”
He cocked his head and studied my face.
“Maybe so,” he said. “But this here has a different feel to it.”
I saw no point in prevarication.
“It’s only a notion, that’s all,” I said.
“What kind of a notion?”
Living in agrarian Meriwether County, Oregon, was more than a geographical preference. It was an outlook, a lifestyle, an attitude and commitment. The people who settled here were the pioneer survivors of long, deadly trails, wild animal charges, and the savage brutality of bushwhackers and highwaymen; these were the descendants of the Oregon Trail. Hardheaded, self-sufficient, and fiercely independent, they had a tendency to keep to themselves and expected others to do likewise.
“Something’s troubling you, Ty,” Caleb said. “Spill it.”
“What kind of evil drives a man to hire a helicopter so he can shoot a baby eagle out of the sky?” I asked. “What kind of person does something like that?”
Caleb’s eyes strayed to the distant hills, soft curves against the horizon, waves of golden mustard weed channeling with the breeze.
“Hunting endangered species is a federal offense, Tyler,” Caleb said. “Want my advice? Just let them boys handle it.”
I reached for the cigarettes I used to keep in my shirt pocket and remembered I was trying to quit.
“Not a chance,” I said. “When the feds get involved, the politicians come right along behind ’em. A flash flood of unemployable morons. Every crisis becomes a fundraising mission, and everything is worse after they finally leave. I’ve already attended that shit show.”
“That ain’t all of it, though, is it?”
I’d known the old man since I had been a boy, and he knew me as well as he knew every inch of trail across this ranch, knew me as well as my own family, maybe better.
“You know Jesse and I ate dinner with Snoose Corcoran and Tom Jenkins the other night,” I said.
“Yep. And I thank you for not involving me in it.”
“Well, I told Tom he could throw his herd in with ours for the season.”
“You did what?”
“Snoose has that look, Caleb. You know the look I’m talking about. Like he’s run out of give-a-damn.”
“Snoose Corcoran has always been as useless as a bag of hair, only not quite as smart. He ain’t likely to come back from whatever it is he’s killing himself about, you know, Ty. You ain’t gonna save the man.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But the kid deserves a chance.”
“Tom Jenkins? I gotta admit he’s got some rocks.”
“He’s not even twenty years old yet, and he’s the only thing holding Snoose’s place together.”
The silence descended like a physical presence, enveloping both of us like a shadow.
“Anything else on your mind, Tyler?”
I turned and strapped on my holster, stepped into the sunlight, drew the Colt, and squeezed off several rounds. Caleb stood and watched, leaned a shoulder on the tree bark, and dropped the chewed-up daisy stem to the dirt between his boots. The smell of burned gunpowder stung my nostrils, and the elkhorn gun butt felt familiar in my grip. A silver cloud of spent propellant tore away on the breeze, the air threaded with the chemical smell of cordite. I thumbed the release tab and flipped open the cylinder, let the blistering shell casings fall to the ground, and the atmosphere seemed to shrink upon itself again.
“I ever tell you I fought in the war?” Caleb asked.
I was shocked by his sudden declaration, a thing I’d never known about Caleb, and I wondered why he had chosen this moment to tell me.
“Which one?” I asked.
“The Cristero War down in Old Mexico.”
His eyes drifted skyward, into the tangled branches of the oak, and he swiped a forearm across his face.
“I’ve never heard that before,” I said. “You never talk about it.”
“Neither do you.”
I searched the open pasture for Drambuie, watched him forage through grass that had already grown to his knees, the air sweet with the smell of fresh water.
“War isn’t like the pictures they publish in Life magazine,” I said.
“That’s a fact,” he said. “But you ain’t the only one who’s ever felt it. Won’t be the last, neither.”
I scanned the glade again and spotted an eight-point stag and two does lingering near the irrigation canals. I saw the buck’s ears peak with caution. He lifted his muzzle into the wind and caught our scent, and all three melted into the tree line.
“Well, since we’re swappin’ confidences, I got another one for you,” Caleb said. “I only intend to tell you one time, so listen up.”
“I’m listening.”
His eyes reflected the directness I had always known in him, but this time I could almost feel the weight of the decades that had accumulated there. He seemed troubled for reasons I could not sufficiently explain.
“You know how much I hate your sheriff job,” he said.
“Yes, sir, I believe you have made that clear to me before. Several times.”
“Then you also know how much I hate that the damned job takes you away from the Diamond D.”
“Yes, sir,” I said again.
“Well, there’s something I have to admit to you: I might hate that goddamned job, but you’re the right man to do it, Tyler Dawson. You’re the right man, and I respect you. ’Cause lately it occurs to me that you might not like it any more than I do, but you still do it anyway. I gotta respect a man who does that. Yes, pardner, I certainly do.”
His calloused hand felt like a vise as he squeezed my shoulder, then he nodded once and walked away without another word.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THREE DAYS LATER, I was at the substation, filing the last of the week’s paperwork, preparing to lock the office for the evening. Jordan Powell was wrapping up a phone call that sounded like another dead end in the eagle poaching case. He’d been striking out where leads were concerned, but to his credit, it hadn’t put a dent in his resolve.
He hung up the phone, licked the lead tip of his pencil, and crossed another name off the list he’d obtained from the Cattlemen’s Association. He swiveled his chair and faced me, his features tinged with fatigue and frustration.
“Bullet train to nowhere,” he said.
“Those aren’t words of surrender I’m hearing, are they, Jordan?”
“Oh, hell no, Cap,” he said. “Just expressing my opinion on the present condition of the case.”
I was about to reply when Sam Griffin pushed through the back door, guiding a gangly man, fitted with handcuffs and wearing a pair of ill-fitting chinos and khaki work shirt with a name patch sewn above the pocket. Griffin had hold of the man by one elbow, as if leading a blind person. He halted at the base of the staircase that led up to the holding cells and displayed an uncharacteristic grin.
“Meet Emmett Burress,” Griffin said to Powell and me. “The dumbest criminal in Meriwether County.”
Powell and I shot a glance at each other as Griffin turned to address his arrestee. “Lift your eyes off the floor, my man,” he said. “This here is the duly elected sheriff of this county, and you’re being disrespectful.”
Emmett Burress peeled his focus from the linoleum and swiveled his head in Powell’s and my general direction.
“What the hell happened to your kisser, Emmett?” Powell asked. “You look like the victim of a botched elementary-school art project.”
The suspect’s otherwise clean-shaven face had been scrawled upon with a black felt-tip marker—amateurishly, at that—in what appeared to be an attempt at a depiction of a beard, mustache, and garishly arched eyebrows.
“I’m guessing you performed that artwork on yourself,” I said.
While most criminals would choose to use a mask, a hood, or even a pair of pantyhose pulled down over their head to obscure facial attributes, this guy had chosen a far less conventional methodology. I placed him in his midtwenties with a lumpy mop of greasy russet-colored hair that looked as though he’d been wearing a hat made from a colander. The veins of the man’s arms bulged like blue nightcrawlers had burrowed underneath his nearly translucently pale skin, his eyes lifeless and dull as an old coin. Emmett Burress was not only a poor illustrator, he was obviously intoxicated. He was also an extremely poor planner.
“Folks in your line of work usually prefer a disguise they can remove when they’ve finished committing the crime,” I said. “I guess by now you know why they refer to those felt pens as permanent markers.”
“What’d you collar him for?” Jordan asked.
“You’re going to love this,” Griffin said.
“Dude, please—” Emmett Burress complained, the odor of his stale perspiration beginning to permeate the room.
Griffin ignored him.
“Mr. Burress tried to knock over Calhoun’s Gun Shop,” Griffin said.
“He tried to rob a gun shop?”
“Brandishing a baseball bat as his weapon of choice,” Griffin added.
“With your face painted like a lunatic rodeo clown?” Jordan said. “Emmett, you are one sorry sonofabitch.”
“It wasn’t hard for witnesses to pick him out of a crowd, either,” Griffin added. “You might notice that his name is stenciled right there on his shirt.”
“Damn, man,” Jordan said. “You might want to think these things through a little bit before you run off and do ’em.”
Burress kept his head down, eyes locked on his filthy, untied sneakers.
“All right, Griffin,” I said. “Book this jackass and take him upstairs to the pens.”
Powell shook his head in astonishment as he watched the two men ascend the stairs.
“Please don’t tell me I have to stay here and look after that guy all night long.”
I shook my head.
“Call Dewey before you leave,” I said. “Let him know he gets to babysit Shoeless Joe Capone tonight. I’m going home, and so are you and Griffin. It’s been a long damn week.”
THERE WAS nobody at home when I returned to the ranch that evening. Wyatt, my blue heeler, heard my truck pull into the driveway and ran up from the corral to greet me as I stepped down from the cab. I scratched his head and led him into the house, where he circled my ankles beneath the kitchen counter as I prepared a fresh bowl of chow for him. His fur smelled of smoke from the blacksmith’s shed, dust from the crowding pen, and the cattle he had been chasing all day long.
Outside on the gallery, I could hear the familiar noises that marked the end of a busy day; the farrier packing his truck, the tuneless whistling of cowboys and their voices in conversation as they stabled their exhausted horses, and the keening of mourning doves perched in the low branches of cedars. The setting sun backlit a sky ribbed with cirrocumulus, spreading out from horizon to horizon like an alluvial plain. The Farmer’s Almanac calls it a mackerel sky and says that it portends a change in weather. Two hundred years ago, Oregon’s indigenous people would have told you that it would be raining by the time morning broke.
A vane of red dust rose into the air from the road leading into the ranch, followed by another one a short distance behind. I expected that the first of the approaching vehicles was Jesse and Cricket, but I circled around to the front of the house to see who the second one might be.
I waited as the two cars arrived in the driveway. The first was Jesse’s faux-wood-paneled station wagon, the second an electric blue Mustang with California tags I recognized, only this time, Cricket was behind the wheel.
Jesse had invited our daughter to assist with her new job working for Len Kaanan, which Cricket was unusually quick to accept. I watched as she climbed out of the Mustang’s driver’s seat, waving at me like a child from the stage of a grammar school play, her teeth shining brightly inside a smile the likes of which I hadn’t seen in quite some time.
“Ian let me drive his car,” she said as Ian Swann stepped out from the passenger side. He was wearing his signature denim bell-bottom trousers, a shirt decorated with Mexican embroidery on the placket, and a pair of aviator sunglasses with mirrored lenses.
“I can see that,” I said. “Very daring of him.”
Jesse came over to me, designer tote bag in hand, packed tight with notebooks and cameras, binoculars, pads, pens, and a Dictaphone recorder—the implements of her profession.
She leaned in to kiss me on the ear and whispered, “Be nice.”
I led them inside the house, took orders for drinks, and headed to the bar cart in the living room. Jesse took her things to the bedroom, and I heard Cricket splintering ice trays into the silver bucket I’d won as an equestrian trophy for an event I no longer recall.
I mixed our beverages while Cricket showed Ian the view from the living room window, and Jesse took her usual seat beside the fireplace. Animated small talk filled the room as I delivered highballs from the serving tray I was unaccustomed to using. They nearly slipped off when I saw Ian’s face as he removed his glasses.
His eye sockets were ringed purple, one of them swollen to the size, color, and texture of a ripening fig, a strip of surgical tape high on his left cheek stained with a pencil-thin line of dried blood. He saw my expression and showed me a lopsided smile that was absent of humor, more an expression of indignity, or even contrition, and all conversation went dead.
He held my gaze as I handed him the whiskey and soda he’d asked for, passed a vodka martini to Jesse and a chilled bottle of Shasta cola to my daughter. I took my time returning the serving tray to its place at the bar and took three fingers of Jim Beam to my leather club chair.
“So,” I said. “Anyone have anything new to share with me?”
“I got jumped, sir,” Ian said after several long beats of silence so thick you could carry it out the door. I waited, but he offered nothing more.
“Where and when did this happen to you, Ian?”
“Are you asking as a police officer?”
“I don’t know yet. Depends on the answer.”
“In that case, I would really prefer not to say.”
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Swann, after the day I’ve had, I would prefer not to hear it. But I’ve discovered that what I want is a practically nonexistent part of my job.”
He looked at me earnestly, and I was taken aback by his lack of discomfiture.
“Do you mind if I ask you how long you’ve been sheriff?” Ian asked.
It was an odd turn from the subject at hand, but I decided to go along.
“I’ll sum it up for you: I’m forty-three years old, and I’ve been sheriff for nearly three years now. It is a job I neither wanted nor asked for, but the people elected me to do it, so I do it. I was an MP in the army a lifetime ago, so I suppose I drew the short straw when the position became available—and for other reasons we don’t need to go into right now.”
“Must have been strange coming back to Meridian after the war. Coming back to a place is not the same as never having left.”
He’d surprised me again with the insight of his reply, the depth of his sincerity almost otherworldly. Perhaps this was the blessing and curse Ian carried, a philosopher-king both sad and noble, traveling unceasingly, preaching his wisdom from a revival tent, only to move along again to a new chautauqua.
“I tried to enlist,” he said.
“Excuse me,” I said. I didn’t think I had heard him correctly.
“I wanted to serve,” he explained. “But they wouldn’t accept me. Bad feet.”
“You didn’t miss anything. When wars end, nobody cares who fought them.”
“Is that true?”
“In my experience, mostly yes.”
His eyes raked the room, landed on Cricket for an extra second, an expression I interpreted as a belgard, and I saw the color rise on her throat. He glanced out the living room window, to the ridgeline that had dimmed to a silhouette as the night folded in, and he turned his damaged face back on me.
“I was on my way from The Portman,” he said. “I had taken a stroll to clear my head, to have a walk down by the river, when I noticed the old hotel and stopped in for a drink.”
“When was this?”
“Couple days ago.”
“Go on.”
“I’d made it almost all the way back to town—I parked my car there earlier—and three guys came out of the dark and beat holy hell out of me.”
“They broke two of his ribs, Dad,” Cricket said, then flashed an expression of apology. To whom the apology was directed I was not clear.
“Did you see who it was?” I asked.
“I’d rather not say, sir.”
I don’t know why I was so profoundly troubled by what he said. Perhaps it was more in the way that he said it, or that something in his comportment did not belong in this century.
AFTER DINNER, Cricket led Ian down to the creek while Jesse and I tended to the dishes. Outside, the ceiling of sky was alight with sunset afterglow, the forest falling swiftly into darkness. The evening air was unusually warm, swollen with coming rain and the scents of night jasmine and rose blossoms.
“He’s an unusual young man,” I said as I glanced out the living room window and watched Ian and Cricket recede into the shadows of the trail leading into the woods. “I don’t want to see him break our daughter’s heart.”
