by A B Guthrie
“Restitution.”
“Yeah. Restitution. Hired those cleaners and all. Made a clean breast of things.” He sighed and said, maybe thinking of his own old misdemeanors, “It could have happened to anyone.”
“I thank you, Mr. Underwood,” Doolittle said, still in the witness chair. “You’re right. It could have happened to anyone, but more likely to an old fool drunk.” The beard moved wide as he spoke.
Bolser said, “Case dismissed.”
2
It was twelve-thirty when court adjourned, and, feeling pretty sure Sheriff Charleston would not be in his office, I walked, hunched in my down coat, to the Commercial Cafe. There were few people on the street and few cars. The people hurried and dodged into doorways, sending out steam-engine puffs.
The cafe was almost empty. The workingman’s lunch hour in Midbury is from twelve to twelve-fifteen. I sat at the counter and ordered the special. It was short ribs, and they were greasy enough to lubricate a tractor. I picked over the bones for meat not too oily for a goose and ate a boiled potato and a couple of sad carrots. Then I scoured my throat with a cup of scalding coffee.
“Hello, Joe College,” Blanche Burton said from the switchboard as I entered the sheriff’s office. She was a buxom old girl, long widowed, and, like a lot of older women, was more than a little arch. Hopeful to the last, I thought. Our community took good care of its widows, if not often by marrying them, then by seeing they got jobs.
“Afternoon, Sis,” I said to please her.
She sat at a sure-enough switchboard, beside which was a radio transmission and receiving set. Communication to cruise cars. A new dispensation for the county. Night-and-day service, with three women alternating shifts. Not like the old days when Jimmy Conner, sitting before a lone telephone and a couple of jacks, answered nearly all calls.
“He’s in his office, Sheriff Charleston, I mean,” she said as if I didn’t know what she meant.
Charleston was worrying with papers on his desk when I entered. He looked up, his eyes inquiring. He waved toward a chair.
“Home free, it looks like,” I told him. “Doolittle said the cow was long past her prime and should have been culled years ago. Natural death, according to him. He was backed up, so he said, by Dutton’s granddaughter and old man Dutton himself.”
“Mutilations?”
“The bag and private parts were gone, probably eaten out by predators. He seemed pretty sure about that. He mentioned wolves but then switched to coyotes.”
Charleston looked at the window, not through it, because no one could see past the glaze of ice. The radiators kept banging. He said, “Hmm. We can be thankful then.”
I asked, “Just who are the Duttons?”
“I know them to see them,” he said. “In fact, I caught a glimpse of her in town today. Pretty girl. Both parents died, the father just a year or so ago. Left her with a poor ranch and the old gaffer. I guess they must do most of their trading at Petroleum. It’s closer. Once in a while, just once in a while, they come here.”
I could tell his mind wasn’t on the subject. After a pause he said, “There’s another problem, Jase, or likely to be.”
I waited.
“It’s the newcomers, the hard-hat breed. You’ve seen their camp?”
“From a distance. I haven’t been across the creek.”
“Campers, trailers, mobile homes, the like of that, some new, mostly old. Miners, the men call themselves. They’re strip miners, machine operators, truck drivers, and they’re just waiting for the go-ahead.”
“Who says go or not?”
“Right now environmental agencies. There’s a hearing next week. One company, Energy Associates, has leases, some of it on land above Chuck Cleaver’s place.”
Charleston moved his head sadly. “They would leave a spoiled land.”
Abruptly he shook himself and sat straighter. “There could be bad trouble ahead. These men don’t know land or the love of the land. They just think jobs and coal. They’re a strange breed to us. They don’t mix in, and we don’t want them to.”
“We?” I asked.
“Most, if not all, of the locals. The ranchers. There’s tension, Jase. It could snap. Some little thing, or big, could do it. That’s what I’m afraid of. Dislike into violence. Mob action.” He shook his head. “So I want you to mingle, make friends with the strangers if you can, promote good relations, show the law’s not taking sides.”
“When do I start?”
“Whenever. I’m putting you on the night shift. You better go home now.”
It was dismissal, and I got up. As I went to the door he held me up with, “And Jase.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Find me another deputy, too.”
Walking from the building, I was struck with the thought that he looked tired, that he had begun to grow old. But I would have backed him against any man I ever hoped to meet.
I set out for home on foot, refusing the use of a police car that Charleston had suggested I take. In this weather—I passed an outside thermometer that registered forty below—a car was a questionable asset unless you were within easy reach of an electrical outlet and had an engine heater under the hood. Most people had them, which didn’t do any good unless plugged in. Unplugged, an engine stiffened fast. The courthouse had a rank of outside outlets which the sheriff and other officials used. At home we didn’t have one. If a driver had business along the street or wanted to idle over a couple of drinks, he often left his engine running.
Halfway home and half frozen, I saw her. She was coming out of Bloom’s Grocery carrying a sack of supplies.
It happens. I know it happens because it happened to me. She was the girl. I watched her taking the sack to a car. I saw how she moved. I saw her face, bright and alive and clean-lined on this cold and misshapen day. I stood there, thinking to help her with the sack, and didn’t move. She drove away. I didn’t notice the make or color of her car.
I went into the grocery, trying to saunter. Bloom wasn’t busy. He stood at the cash register and asked, “Something for your mother, Jase?”
“I dodged in to get warm. How’s business? That last customer of yours must be a stranger. Know who she is?”
“Uh-huh!” he answered. “Uh-huh!” His fat face was grinning. “How come the law is interested in her?”
“Just curious.”
“Sure you are. Just curious. Sure. That girl is Miss Anita Dutton and too good for the likes of you. Too self-reliant, too. Too independent. She wouldn’t even let me carry her stuff to her car.”
He was still grinning when I thanked him and left.
Outside there sounded the hoarse snort and pound of an engine, magnified by the cold, and a truck with a cab high as a balcony came roaring. On the flatbed behind it crouched a big bulldozer. It had the appearance of a bulldog about it, ready to tackle a mountain. And behind it rolled a trailer with two people in it. It turned off to the right, toward the row of movable homes.
I walked on to the Bar Star, wanting to think, not to drink. There wasn’t a customer in the place, and Bob Studebaker welcomed me as if I had come to forgive his sins.
“On the house, Jase,” he said. “A hot one. Just the thing to thaw a frozen ass.”
He took a teakettle that was fretting on a single burner, poured some hot water into a mug, added a little sugar and filled the cup with brandy.
“I’ll have one myself,” he said, as if on second thought. “Cheer me up. Sad days, these are, sad for Midbury and the county.”
“How so?”
“These goddamn strangers. These grease-monkeys. These gear-shifters. These big-shovel shits. Not welcome here, and they know it. This started as a stockmen’s saloon, and by God she stays that way. Stockmen, honest businessmen, professional people like you.”
His face flushed, either from the brandy or outrage. “So they set up their own place. Hauled in an old house, and I guess outfitted it and bought some booze. They ought to be put the run on.
Once in a while one or two of those jokers drops in here. Well, hell, this is a public place and I serve ’em. Not that I want to and not that they get any change out of me when it comes to talk. Goddamn foreigners.”
I said, “Think so?”
“Sure. They call their place the Chicken Shack, though that ain’t the way I pronounce it. But they serve chickens all right—roosters and a couple of laying hens, if you get what I mean.”
I nodded, getting it, and took a swallow of my drink.
“But, hell,” he continued, “you didn’t drop in to hear my gripes. What goes with you?”
“Ike Doolittle’s trial, held this morning. I was there.”
“I heard he had to show up before Bolser. What happened?”
“Case dismissed.”
“That’s good.” Studebaker put down his cup and patted his paunch, which had grown a little year by year, though it didn’t look burdensome yet. It would in time, I thought. All bartenders tended to get fat, but not from home cooking. “I had a notion to lay a charge against him myself. I’m glad I didn’t. It was what you might call a passing fancy.”
I said, “I’d like to hear it.”
“It’s a long story—”
“And calls for another hot one. I’ll pay.”
Studebaker went through his ritual of hot water, sugar and brandy, and set the cups on the counter. That done, he told me, “It was about a dog, the biggest goddamn dog you ever seen, name of Gunnar.” He took a big swallow. “Six, maybe eight customers were here, drinking sociable, and I was behind the bar, all innocent-like, and then the door opened. That was last fall, I should say.”
He paused, waiting for me to get the picture or to add some suspense to his report. “Like I said, the door opened, and in came little Ike Doolittle and that monster of a dog. Afterwards he said he knew a little German but got mixed up. Anyhow, he pointed at me, and I swear he said, ‘Get him, Gunnar.’ Jesus Christ!”
I waited, knowing he would go on after an appropriate silence.
“Gunnar got the message all right. With one jump he came clear over the bar, knocking a couple of customers off of their perches. One look was enough for me. He had that big mouth open, showing teeth like an alligator. I vaulted over to the customers’ side, and here he came after me. So it was down the bar we went, jump and jump, and him on my ass all the way.”
He shook his head. “A man like me now, he can’t keep in shape. Three leaps, and I was done for.”
He wanted me to ask a question, and I did. “So he got you?”
“I passed out on the floor, customers’ side.” He patted his belly again. “I ain’t made for the high jump.”
I said, “Go on. I’m listening.”
He went on, slowing his words. “Now wouldn’t you think one of my customers would have tried to help me? Wouldn’t you now? All my friends and good pay, and I pass out a good share of drinks free. Didn’t I have a right to expect help? Wouldn’t someone have done something? Well, I’ll tell you, not one son of a bitch did.”
For the sake of emphasis he fell silent, then said, “It was the dog that brought me to.”
“I’ll bet.”
“You got it wrong. He brought me to by lickin’ my face.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“It’s the truth. When I opened my eyes, there was that big tongue bathing me. You see, Jase, that dog won’t chew on dead meat, so to speak. Lie down helpless, and his heart breaks.”
“Some dog. Was it Doolittle’s?”
“Hell, no. It belonged to a fat German couple who was touring the U.S. Well, not exactly fat, but what you would call plump. Comes from eating all that damn sausage. Doolittle does know a little German, and the Germans spoke some American. So they got friendly, and Doolittle saw they was tired after a long drive and offered to walk the dog while they ate. It was then he decided to call on me. All the same, I got nothing against him. Turns out he done me a favor.”
“Some favor. Scaring you half to death.”
“That Gunnar’s a good dog. Don’t attack unless told to. Minds his own business. I let him out at night and no trouble.”
“Now hold on, Bob. You say you let him out? You?”
“Sure. I bought him. He was the only goddamn one that done me a kindness.”
I just looked at him. Seeing my expression, he said, “Think I’m crazy, huh? I got him for twenty-five bucks. Like I said, that German couple was fat, and their car was one of them squeezed-up beetle bugs. Put two stout people in it and that oversize dog, and you got a crowd. The Germans were glad to get him off their hands.”
“I can see that.”
“Days, I mostly keep him in the lean-to. Want to see him?”
“Do I have to lie down?”
“Not unless you’re sleepy.”
Studebaker went out the back and returned, followed by a horse. I sat still on my bar stool.
“Here’s a friend, Gunnar,” Studebaker said. “Go see nice friend. Jase, hold out your hand and let him sniff it.”
I held it out, wondering what I would draw back. The dog sniffed it, gave it a lick and began wagging his stump of tail. He rested his head on my thigh. He could have put it on my shoulder without reaching.
I said, “Some dog, all right, Bob,” and paid my bill and started for home. It wasn’t the dog I kept thinking about. It wasn’t police work or factions in town. Maybe Ike Doolittle would get me acquainted with her.
3
Short ribs twice in a row would revolt any appetite, unless my mother was one of the cooks. The grease in hers wouldn’t have oiled a doll buggy. And she cooked them in beer. I wasn’t interested in the rest of her methods, just in the results. Anyhow, she couldn’t have explained in detail. She didn’t measure by teaspoons or cups or fractions of them. A pinch of this, a tad of that, a splash of this, a shake of that. A born cook.
So I ate short ribs again. Over the meal I told Mother about Bob Studebaker and the oversize dog. She laughed but, being Mother, had to reflect, “Why, the poor man might have had a heart attack.”
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.
