by A B Guthrie
I helped with the dishes, and we went into the living room. I couldn’t take my father’s chair. I could see him there, reading, smiling once in a while and occasionally reading aloud a sentence or paragraph that struck him. Mother watched me and said, “He would want you to,” but still I didn’t sit in his chair. I thought I saw the beginning of tears in her eyes.
Break it up, I said to myself, and so I told her, “I’m on the night shift, Mother. You’ll be all right alone?”
“Of course. Better than you’ll be. Jase, do be careful.”
I grinned to reassure her. “No danger. My instructions are to make friends.”
“You’re never in danger, according to you. Make friends with whom?”
“The newcomers. The strangers. The strip-mining crew.”
“Everybody says they’re riffraff. Make friends with them?” She sniffed. “They don’t belong here.”
“You can hear anything. They’re human. Give them a chance.”
I kissed her on the cheek, went into the hall and put on my down coat and earflapped cap. “You keep warm now,” she said as I left her.
It was too early to visit the Chicken Shack, so, feeling shrunken with chill even in my down coat, I trailed down to the sheriff’s office. It was empty except for Mrs. Lynn Carson, who sat at the switchboard, ready for phone calls or radio messages. She had a hearty manner and a little frame. It was as if the years, having taken some of her flesh, made up for it by strengthening her tongue.
“Deputy Beard reporting for duty,” I said with a salute. “Make a note of the time.”
“Deputy Tomfool,” she answered, smiling. “What are you up to, down to, or into?”
“Classified instructions. I’m sworn not to blab.”
“Make it exciting and report developments.” She sighed. “I swear, a night like tonight, and a body could sit here and die, and the county no worse for it. One telephone call about a kitten up a pole. I said one of the town marshals would take care of that. Right?”
“Right.” It was about all the town marshals, both of them, were up to.
“Tad Frazier’s out in a cruiser. He reports nothing to report and wants to know can’t he do something. That’s all.”
“Sheriff’s not in?”
“He just left, late for dinner again. That poor man works too hard, and he’s a man shy even with you here. You know Halvor Amussen’s up at Petroleum, subbing for that deputy who broke his leg?”
I knew.
“What with conferences with the county commissioners, sheriff’s sales, court hearings, managing this office and God knows what, Mr. Charleston has no time to himself. I bet he hasn’t been to his country place in a month. Nights, he’s on call at the Jackson Hotel. His wife might as well be a widow.”
“She’s with him.”
“Of course, but what good does that do? Hardly a free moment with her alone, no time—never mind. I was just thinking.”
“Not about law enforcement exactly,” I said to fluster her.
She looked away from me and fiddled with a telephone cord. I imagined there was a blush under that aging skin. She said, “You just shut up, Jase,” and went on, “I’m glad you’re here to take part of the load.”
“As much as I can.”
I went to my desk in the sheriff’s office and killed time. When the clock said nine-fifteen I went out to make friends.
Our town, like others on the high plains, just up and died early in bad winter weather. A few street lights burned, and here and there a dim gleam came from residences. Other windows were black, the people having gone to bed to keep warm if nothing more. Up the street I could see the modest blue sign of the Bar Star. I supposed a couple of car engines were murmuring in front of it while the live ones went in for liver treatments.
In that still and bitter cold my footsteps rang on the walk, each step a ringing count of progress. Step and step and ring and ring in the echoing night. In town and all around, the earth was frozen six feet deep. The whole valley was a bell, and even boot heels swung the clapper.
A creek—Hill Creek officially—divides the town. The west side is the more respectable, or thinks it is. I walked east to the bridge. By contrast with the dimmed-out west, the sign above the Chicken Shack flamed on and off. The ice in the creek reflected changing shades of blue and red and yellow. Ahead the sign blazed over a place too small for it. BEER LIQUOR LIQUOR BEER ENTERTAINMENT.
Even through my earflapped cap noise stunned my ears as I opened the door. It was juke-box music or what went for music. I had outgrown rock ’n’ roll, if ever I liked it. To me the singers sounded as if they had been raised by coyotes to the thump of Indian drums. The juke box hit its last licks just as I closed the door.
I took off my cap and then my coat, to reveal my badge, and hung them on a hook.
I advanced a few feet and stood while heads turned and sized me up. A half-dozen men, including Ike Doolittle, sat at the rough bar. Two women, looking sad and willing, were seated at a table, waiting, I supposed, for drinks to promote ideas. The men all wore head coverings, beaked caps mostly. The one nearest me was bristly and burly and had a chin that seemed to invite a fist. Just beyond him sat Ike and, two stools away, a muscled customer that I took to be Italian.
The burly man barely opened his mouth. “Do you see what I see?”
“Maybe I do,” the man beyond Doolittle said. “An officer. That’s what they call them here in the bush.”
“Pig is the name.” The burly customer looked me over, maybe to see whether I was armed. I wasn’t. Charleston didn’t approve of gun-toting except in emergencies. The man went on, “Something we can do for you?”
“I was looking for a quiet beer,” I answered.
“Wrong place.”
“What about whiskey then,” I was straining myself to make friends.
The man turned farther on his stool. “What I mean to say is you’re not welcome here. Better get out.”
“You’re the owner?”
“I’m the enforcer. Bouncer to you.” His head turned briefly to the bartender. “Ain’t that so, Pudge?”
The bartender’s gaze was a mere slit, which was all that the fat of his face allowed. “Sure, Tim. Sure, when you’re sober. Keep cool, man.”
“Cool as a goddamn ice cube. That’s me. But pigs melt me down.”
The bar was silent. The women waited.
“No trouble now,” the bartender said. His words sounded weak. “No trouble, please.”
“It’s no trouble at all.” The hard blue eyes looked into mine. “I said go. I said get out.”
“When I’m ready,” I told him.
“Now!” He swung off his stool and ran at me. He swung with his left. I dodged, caught his wrist and used his own momentum to fling him behind me. His head hit the door with a satisfying thump.
From the side of my eye I saw the Italian type making for me, a beer bottle aloft in his hand. I saw him, and I saw Doolittle stick out his foot. The man tripped and fell on his face.
I had heard of a monkey on a man’s back, meaning something else, but now I witnessed it. Doolittle jumped to the man’s shoulders and sat astride, his own beer bottle lifted. When the man tried to buck him off, Doolittle said, “Down Mussolini,” and hit him on the head. Mussolini went down.
The saloon was silent. The other customers watched, with what feelings I couldn’t tell. The two women sat forward, eager, as if they hadn’t known such excitement since they entered the trade.
The man I had thrown climbed to his feet. His hand went to his head. Tottering a little, he turned around and said to me, “A goddamn pro, huh?”
“I’ve taken a few lessons.”
“Next time I’ll know.” He took his seat at the bar.
“Gimme a glass of ice water,” Doolittle said to the bartender. He took the glass and poured the water over the head of the man he had conked. The man twitched and snorted and finally got up. He made his way to a stool, the fight gone out of him. �
��Jesus Christ,” he complained to Doolittle, “you didn’t have to hit me so hard.” He took off his cap and rubbed his skull.
“I couldn’t figure how much bone was there.”
“I’ll tie you in a knot one of these days.”
“Maybe so,” Doolittle said, unperturbed. “The answer lies in the future, or, to make it plain to you, time will tell.”
It struck me that there was some inner confidence in the little man, some inner resolution, some sure faith in himself that, reflecting outward, earned him, if not command, then a wary respect. Perhaps he had tangled with one of these hard-hats before.
“What’s your name?” I asked the burly man, my notebook and pencil in hand.
“Find out for yourself.”
“It’s Tim Reagan,” Doolittle told me cheerfully.
“And yours?” I asked the man who was still feeling the bump the beer bottle had made.
“Regular League of Nations here,” Doolittle said. “Name of this friend is Tony Coletti.”
“Why don’t you keep your mouth shut?” the bartender asked Doolittle.
“Aw, you with the fat face, pipe down.”
I had scribbled down the names of the two men, as given by Doolittle. Watching, he asked brightly, “Going to take them in?”
I said, “Naw, naw. Just a friendly fracas. Bartender, set ’em up.”
The men accepted their drinks, all but Reagan and Coletti. Passing me on the way out, Reagan said, “Next time. Always a next time.”
“Sorry I had to bust you.”
“In a pig’s ass. Yours.”
I gulped a beer, and Doolittle tossed off a drink. I said to him, “Better come with me.”
“Why so?”
“Your friends here might be mad at you.”
“Not right,” he answered. “Just stand up for yourself, and they let you alone. But I’ll come along, anyhow.”
We went to the sheriff’s office, and I talked to him at length, trying to figure him out, wondering. I didn’t get very far.
“Why did you get involved?” I asked at last. “Why did you take sides with me?”
“Oh, hell,” he answered. “They figured to gang you, and me, I usually take the side of the law, or the underdog, anyhow.” He added, after consideration, “Big guys, big arrogant bastards, they bug me. I’m so small, see?”
He left after a while, and I spent the rest of the night half-drowsing at my desk. It was just as well, I thought, that nothing was happening, and I was one whale of a success making friends.
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About the Author
A. B. Guthrie Jr. (1901–1991) was an award-winning American novelist, screenwriter, historian, and environmentalist. Born in Indiana, he was six months old when his father brought the family west to the Montana territory. Guthrie graduated from the University of Montana with a degree in journalism and worked as a reporter and editor for two decades before receiving a Nieman fellowship from Harvard University. During his grant year, he began to seriously pursue his interest in writing fiction. His first major novel, The Big Sky (1947), was followed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Way West (1949). Guthrie’s popular mystery series featuring Montana sheriff Chick Charleston earned a Silver Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and an award from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. The five books in the series are Wild Pitch (1973), The Genuine Article (1977), No Second Wind (1980), Playing Catch-Up (1985), and Murder in the Cotswolds (1989). In 1954 Guthrie’s screenplay for the film Shane was nominated for an Academy Award.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1977 by A. B. Guthrie Jr.
Cover design by Drew Padrutt
ISBN: 978-1-4976-5270-5
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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