by A B Guthrie
“I’m coming to that,” Charleston answered, unruffled. “Most of the people who fight against strip mining are decent people. They will stand against you as long as they can, but they will accept what the environmental agencies say. If it comes to court, they will abide by what the court decides. I know that, and you must believe it.”
“We don’t have to believe nothin’,” the redhead put in.
Charleston just looked at him and went on. “I said most of the people. I didn’t say all. It’s plain that some men, maybe only one man, have a scheme to scare you out of the country, away from your jobs. You can call it a conspiracy, a nonviolent conspiracy.”
A man I didn’t know broke in. “Pudge Eaton gets killed, and it’s not violent. Bullshit.”
“It wasn’t meant to be violent. The man with the rifle was shooting out lights. He made a bad shot. The bullet hit one of the porch supports and veered up. Eaton wasn’t a target. We have proof of that.”
The unknown man let out, “Ha!”
“That was the start of the campaign,” Charleston continued. “Next we have dogs, or possibly wolves, the bunch that came together in back of your places. Finally, there’s the dead cow this morning in about the same place. It was meant to look like the work of wolves. It wasn’t.”
The red-headed man was persistent. He said, “Them wolf howls at night. What about them?”
“I don’t know. I intend to find out.”
“Somebody’s got a pet wolf pack.” That was Coletti, sneering as he spoke.
Reagan said, “Shut up, Coletti. Shut your damn mouth.”
The miner I didn’t know interrupted again. “It’s all guesses. You haven’t come up with a goddamn thing, not a real thing. You can’t salve us with bullshit.”
“I’m telling you what I’m sure of.” Charleston remained unperturbed. “Bits and pieces are coming together. I begin to see the end.”
As he paused, Reagan said, “Thank you, Mr. Charleston,” as if the meeting was over.
It wasn’t. Charleston had a last word. “I’ve let you in on what I know, but there’s one other thing. My office will protect your rights. The yes and no of strip mining are not your concern, but the rights of American citizens are our concern as much as they are yours. We will honor and protect those rights. Should anyone do you wrong, let us know. You’ll get action.”
Reagan thanked him again. There was some applause. Charleston and I took our leave.
Howard and the carcass were gone from the alley, and so would be Doolittle. Driving on, Charleston said, “Tomorrow we’re going to talk more to Chuck Cleaver.”
We weren’t though, because by that time Chuck Cleaver was dead.
17
It was eleven-thirty that same night, and I was about to knock off. I had had time to nap, eat, look over the reports from the switchboard and type an account of the day’s events. Then the telephone rang.
“Jase,” Ike Doolittle said into my ear, “I just got a report of a man shot dead.”
“Who?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where?”
“Out there where they been huntin’ wolves. That’s all was told me.”
“Who called?”
“Search me. Wouldn’t give a name. Man’s voice.”
“Why call you, not the office?”
“Search me again.”
“You are home?”
“Yeah. In my room.”
“We won’t call Mr. Charleston yet. It may be some joker. You dressed?”
“Take me a minute.”
“I’ll go warm up a car and wait for you.”
Blanche Burton was about to knock off, too. I told her, “Leave a note for Mrs. Carson. We might need the sheriff tonight, but she’s not to call him unless we say to.”
“What’s up, Jase?” she asked me.
“Maybe nothing. Maybe another killing.”
“Who? What in the world—?”
I left her wondering.
Doolittle showed up soon after I had started the car and got the heater blowing. “You know those roads better than I do,” I said, “so how about driving?” I moved over to the passenger side.
For a while we were too busy rubbing and scraping our frosted breath from the windshield to do much talking. After a while I said, “This is damn funny business. Did you recognize the man’s voice?”
“Who can put a name to a voice over a scratchy line?”
“And no clue as to where to go?”
“Just the whole damn scoop of country. Somewhere where the wolf hunters rolled.”
We drove on, silent. I was hoping the call was a false alarm, and probably Doolittle was, too. The bleak country flowed around us, dark and still. A faint starlight showed on level and ridge. We had to hold up to let four gaunt deer cross the road. It was hard going for wild creatures, I thought, and not too dandy for tame. It was no country to live in, and it was mine. Come spring, I would laugh at past discomforts, counting them nothing. I asked if the heater was on full tilt. We passed the Linderman place and, later, the Whitney buildings. Both were dark, as they wouldn’t be, we agreed, if the occupants had heard of a killing.
“Those wolf hunters could have taken off nearly anywhere,” Doolittle said. “Didn’t have to follow the roads. Not many fences to stop them and no snow. They could have cross-hatched the whole damn country.” We kept on, watching to see what our light revealed and straining to see beyond their shine.
It was a long search, apparently futile, and then, a hundred yards off the road, a pickup truck loomed. Doolittle steered toward it. A shape lay at its tailgate.
We got out, taking flashlights, and stepped ahead. A north wind, colder than death, began playing with us. The shape lay spraddled, face down. We turned it over. The flashes showed the bloody, torn face of Chuck Cleaver.
“Good God!” Doolittle said, drawing back. “The poor bastard!”
“Shot in the back of the head.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I bet by wolf hunters,” I said. “He was hunting himself.” I pointed to a rifle that had fallen from Cleaver’s grip. “Must have been a hunter who called you.” I took hold of Cleaver’s hand and tried to move his arm. Death had already stiffened him, death or the cold.
“Get on the radio, Ike,” I said. “Get word to Charleston. He’ll rout out the others. You can tell where we are better than I can.”
Doolittle hurried to the car, leaving me for a minute with death and that deathly wind. Charleston had been right. Those hearty wolf hunters with whiskey in their bellies were bound to do somebody in. I felt more and more certain that one of them had called in the report, refusing to give his name because he or one of his party was guilty.
Doolittle came from the car, saying, “Message sent.”
I asked him, “Just where are we? Do you know?”
He didn’t answer at once. He squinted north, south, east and west. “Yeah, I know.”
“Tell me then.”
“The Dutton place is over that hump, mile or so away. Can’t see it from here, or any lights.”
“You sure Mrs. Carson got the message right?”
“Yep. Sheriff was going to tail up Doc Yak and Underwood.”
“While we wait, I have plenty of time to go tell Anita.”
“I don’t know, Jase. I got a feeling we ought to stay here.”
“You can stay. I won’t be gone but a few minutes.”
“Long enough for me to freeze solid.”
“You can get in the truck, away from the wind.”
“I hate to think of you waking up the household, including old Grandpa.”
“I’ll be mighty quiet. You’ll be warm enough. Start up the truck and turn on the heater.”
“Not me. I’m not going to fiddle with it. Not me, messing up evidence.”
“I just want—”
“I know what you want, Jase. All right, then.” He started walking to the truck. I guessed, with some astonishment, that he
didn’t like to be alone in the presence of death.
I wheeled our car back to the road and set out. Once over the hump I could see the Dutton house. The lights were on.
The radio crackled. Mrs. Carson asked, “Ike?”
“No. Jase.”
“Jase, Sheriff Charleston and the rest are on the way.”
I thanked her and drove on.
I coasted the car to the front of the house and took care not to slam the door when I got out. I stepped to the house and knocked softly.
Anita came at once, a finger to her lips.
I said, “Anita, I came to tell you—”
She made a hushing sound. “Don’t come in. You’ll disturb him. Grandfather’s very sick. I think it’s pneumonia.”
“You called a doctor?”
“That new man in Petroleum. He said he’d come just as soon as he could. He told me what to do.”
“Doc Yak’s coming this way. You want him?”
“No need.” An instant later she asked, “What’s bringing Doc Yak?”
“That’s what I came to tell you. Chuck Cleaver’s been shot, out wolf hunting.”
“Chuck Cleaver? Dead?”
“Yes.”
“Dear Lord!” she said. “Chuck Cleaver.”
A strangled, frail cry came from inside the house.
“That’s Grandfather. I’ve got to go. Good-bye, Jase.” She gave me time for the quickest of kisses.
I drove back to Cleaver’s truck. Doolittle came from it, slapping himself against the cold. “Quick trip,” he said.
“Too quick. Grandpa’s down with maybe pneumonia. Mrs. Carson said help’s on the way.”
We waited, for safety’s sake running the engine and heater just now and then. Presently we saw headlights coming our way. They belonged to an ambulance and Charleston’s old Special. We directed the three men to Cleaver’s body. Doc Yak bent over it, his doctor’s bag in one hand.
“Dead,” he said almost at once. “Stone dead, as you might say. I wish to Christ, Charleston, that sometime you’d take me to someone I could help.”
“Me, too,” Charleston answered, “but we have to have a doctor’s certificate.”
“Goddamn red tape. Without a certificate I suppose the poor son of a bitch would be alive. But all right. Bullet wound. Looks bigger than a .22, probably not as powerful as a .30-06. That’s at first blush.”
“No idea about time of death, Doc?”
“Oh, sure.” Doc’s breath made abrupt clouds of white. “Not hard, not with this warm zephyr blowing. Make it he was killed sometime, as he sure as hell was.”
Felix Underwood said, “Well?”
“Take him away, Felix. Take him where it’s nice and warm. Take me, too. That damn Charleston believes in cruel and inhuman treatment.”
Doc fastened the case he hadn’t used. Felix took a stretcher out of the ambulance, and Doolittle and I helped him lift the body to it and carry it on to the ambulance.
Charleston poked around with a flashlight and shook his head. He picked up the rifle with a gloved hand. With only the three of us left, he said, “Keys in the truck?”
Doolittle told him they were.
“Sorriest chore of all,” he said, pausing for a moment. “Telling people about sudden death. Jase, bring the truck to the Cleaver ranch. Just follow me. Ike, take the other car to town.”
The truck started easy enough, and I lumbered the five or six miles to the Cleaver place, watching Charleston’s headlights bobbing ahead of me.
The house was dark, huddled against the cold, hibernating, I thought, as if sleep alone were the answer to weather like ours. Charleston knocked at the back door and knocked again. Finally we heard movement inside, and Mrs. Cleaver opened the door. She had on an old wrapper around her. Her hair hung in strings. Seeing who we were, she said, “He ain’t here. He’s out hunting wolves.”
“We came to see you, Mrs. Cleaver. May we come in?”
She stood aside, not speaking until after we’d entered. “Better come to the front room,” she said. “There’s maybe some heat left in the stove.” There may have been some. The old livestock dog that we had seen before was lying by the stove. She got up, sniffed at us and, satisfied, went back and lay down again.
“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Cleaver?” Charleston asked. She let herself perch on a chair, hugging herself against the creeping cold. We took tentative seats on that old, worn furniture. “I’m sorry,” Charleston continued. “It’s bad news we bring.”
“Might as well spit it out then.”
“Your husband has been shot. He is dead.”
Her expression hardly changed. She had the face of a cow, I thought, a face dull to tragedy, dull to death and loss. She might have been listening to the last of a series of blows that had left her shockless. “He’s gone,” she said, as if letting the words sound in her mind. “I told him that wolf huntin’ would be the end of him. I told him to stay home. But, no. Like all them crazy hunters, he had to go out.”
“I’m sorry. Jase, will you give Mrs. Cleaver the details?”
I told her about the phone call, the caller unidentified, the search for the body and where we found it. While I talked, Charleston stared at a bookcase, which might have had thirty volumes in it. From where I sat, I couldn’t make out the titles. I laid the stare to Charleston’s love of books.
He picked up when I left off. “Did Mr. Cleaver go hunting often?”
“Regular lately.”
“Did he get any wolves?”
“A time back, he got one. Just a couple or so of coyotes since then. The skins are in the tool shed, if you want to see.” She rose, a gaunt, worn woman, and put a chunk of wood in the stove. “Maybe it’ll catch.”
Here, I thought, watching her, was a marriage held together by habit, by hardship, by erosion of soul, until feeling was lost and communication made mute. It would be different with Anita and me.
She went back to her chair and spoke in a stronger yet plaintive tone. “Now what’ll I do? Him gone, what’ll I do?”
Charleston said, “It’s hardly a time to decide, Mrs. Cleaver. Don’t think about it now.”
“I can’t run this ranch by myself.” She thrust a stringy arm from under the wrapper. “You can see that. I got to decide. Waitin’ won’t help.”
Now a tear came to one eye and rolled down her cheek, a tear for the loss of working muscle.
Charleston took a breath and sighed it out. “How do you feel about the ranch?”
“Nothin’. I never felt nothin’ much, not after the shine had wore off. Just cold and wind. Just lonesomeness. Just work. And what’s to show for it? A few ornery cows and the wolves howlin’.”
Charleston surprised me by saying, “Then I would lease the mineral rights, the rights to mine coal. You understand?”
“Chuck would turn over in his grave if he was in it yet.” She looked up. “But he’s gone now. I guess he wanted to be buried in the town cemetery, but he never quite said so. We didn’t talk about passin’ away or anything else much. Not lately. I got to see about buryin’ him.”
“We’ll be glad to make the arrangements you want,” Charleston told her.
“Lease it, you said?”
“Yes. That is if you need the money.”
“When was it we didn’t?”
Charleston went on to explain. “Right now you can get a good price. Here’s what to consider. If strip mining goes through, your land won’t be worth much as a ranch. Your husband understood that. But it hasn’t been approved yet and won’t be for some time. Maybe never. If it isn’t approved, you’d still have your ranch. Is that plain enough?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Think about it. We have to be on our way. Would you like to ride to town with us? Stay with somebody tonight?”
“No. I’ll set right here. If I get the wide eye, Chuck’s got a bottle he thinks is hid.”
“You’re sure?”
“’Cour
se I am. I’m alone mostly anyhow.”
Charleston got to his feet. “The body’s on its way to the undertaker’s. You can see it later if you wish.”
“Don’t fret yourself about me. Nobody does.” Another tear came to one eye.
We said good-bye and made for the tool shed, Charleston muttering, “Home, sweet home.”
He examined the four skins we found on stretchers in the tool shed and announced, “One’s a wolf all right. Or looks like a wolf.”
As we rode along to town, he broke a long silence. “Jesus, Jase, I’m afraid the shit is about to hit the fan now.” Raw language was uncommon to him. It came from disturbance.
“You mean trouble?”
“Yes. Conflict.”
“But you told me a violent death calmed things down.”
“The shoe’s on the other foot.”
“I don’t get it.”
“There are more ranchers than strip miners, more on one side than on the other. Watch out when you sting majorities. Understand now?”
“I guess so,” I said, and maybe I did.
18
The weather broke in the early morning. The wind woke me up, though I was half dead for sleep. It sang and sighed at the windows and the house corners, and the house itself murmured, and I threw off some covers, thinking slowly that a chinook had at last come. I drifted back to sleep with its singing.
Walking to work late that afternoon, I felt buoyant, lifted in step and spirit by the warm wind out of the west. You could almost hear the land relaxing, freed of the tight clamp of the cold. It was breathing again, and hope rode on the air.
And so it was with the townspeople and those who had floated in from the country. Cars stood at the curbs, and men and women popped in and out of doorways, rid now of their cumbersome wraps. They stopped me, some of them did, and spoke in the strong voices of cheer. First item, the weather and wasn’t it great? Second item, poor Chuck Cleaver killed and what did I know about that? Mike Day, the banker, stood outside his place in his suit coat. “Never lose faith,” he told me solemnly. “Remember the silver lining. Too bad about Cleaver. Accidental, you think?”
