Montana Noir

by James Grady

  A small trash pile next to the porch featured a couple of played-out Odor-Eaters. David wondered where the walkin’-around money Ray had alluded to was supposed to come from. “Place is kind of a mess,” Morsel warned. “We don’t collect but we never get rid of.”

  As they went into the house, Weldon asked David if he enjoyed shooting coyotes. He replied, “I just drive Ray around”—Ray turned to listen—“and whatever Ray wants I guess is what we do . . . whatever he’s into.” David kept to himself that he enjoyed popping coyotes out his car window with the .25-06 with a Redfield range-finder scope and a tripod that he’d gotten from Hill Country Customs. David lived with his mother and had a habit of telling her about the great shots he’d made—like the five hundred–yarder on Tin Can Hill with only the hood for a rest, no sandbags, no tripod. David’s Uncle Maury had told him a long time ago, “It don’t shoot flat, throw the fuckin’ thing away.”

  David, who enjoyed brutally fattening food, thought Morsel was a good cook, but Ray ate only the salad, discreetly lifting each leaf until the dressing ran off. Weldon watched Ray and hardly said a word, as Morsel grew more manic, jiggling with laughter and enthusiasm at each lighthearted remark. In fact, it was necessary to lower the temperature of the subjects—to heart attacks, highway wrecks, cancer—in order to get her to stop guffawing. Weldon planted his hands flat on the table, rose partway, and announced that he’d use the tractor to pull the plane around back. David was preoccupied with the mountain of tuna casserole between him and the peach cobbler and hardly heard him. Ray, small and disoriented next to Morsel, shot his eyes around the table, looking for something he could eat.

  “Daddy don’t say much,” Morsel said.

  “I can’t say much,” Ray said, “with him here. Dave, could you cut us a little slack?”

  “Sure, Ray, of course.” David got up, still chewing.

  “See you in the room,” Ray said sharply, twisting his chin toward the door.

  * * *

  Weldon had shown them their room by walking past it and flicking the door open without a word. It contained two iron bedsteads and a dresser, atop which were David’s and Ray’s belongings, the latter’s consisting of a JanSport backpack with the straps cut off. David was better organized, with an actual overnight bag and a Dopp kit. He had left the cattle receipts and breeding documents in the car. He flopped on the bed, hands behind his head, then got up abruptly and went to the door. He looked out and listened for a long moment, eased it closed, and shot to the dresser, where he began rooting through Ray’s belongings: rolls of money in rubber bands, generic Viagra from India, California lottery tickets, a passport identifying Raymond Coelho, a woman’s aqua-colored wallet with a debit card in the name of Eleanor Coelho from Food Processors Credit Union of Modesto, Turlock grocery receipts, a bag of trail mix, and the gun. David lifted the gun carefully with the tips of his fingers. He was startled by its lightness. Turning it over in his hand, he was compelled to acknowledge that there was no hole in the barrel. It was a toy. He returned it to the pack, fluffed the sides, and sped to his bed to begin feigning sleep.

  It wasn’t long before Ray came in, singing “Now Is the Hour” in a flat and aggressive tone that hardly suited the lyrics: “Sunset glow fades in the west, night o’er the valley is creeping! Birds cuddle down in their nest, soon all the world will be sleeping. But not you, Dave. You’re awake, I can tell. I hope you enjoyed the song. It’s Hugo Winterhalter. Morsel sang it to me. She’s very nice, and she needs a man.”

  “Looks like you got the job.”

  “Doing what? Hey, here’s what’s going on with me: I’m starving.”

  “I’m sure you are, Ray. You ate like a bird.”

  “I had no choice. That kind of food gathers around the chambers of the heart like an octopus. But right behind the house they got a vegetable garden, and my plan for you is to slip out and bring me some vegetables. I’ve been told to stay out of the garden. Don’t touch the tomatoes—they’re not ripe.”

  “What else is there?”

  “Greens and root vegetables.”

  “I’m not going out there.”

  “Oh yes you are.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  Ray went to his pack and got out the gun. “This makes me think so. This will really stick to your ribs, get it?”

  “I’m not picking vegetables for you, or, technically speaking, stealing them for you. Forget it.”

  “Wow. Is this a mood swing?”

  “Call it what you want. Otherwise, it’s shoot or shut up.”

  “Okay, but not for the reason you think. I prefer not to wake up the whole house.”

  “And the body’d be a problem for you, as a house guest and new fiancé.”

  “Very well, very well. This time.” Ray put the gun back in his pack. “You don’t know how close you came.”

  “Whatever.”

  David rolled over to sleep, but he couldn’t stop his thoughts. He should have spent the day at Jorgensen’s with his arm up a cow’s ass. He had a living to make and if it hadn’t been for his inappropriate curiosity about Ray and Morsel, he’d already be back in Jordan, looking to grab a room for the night. But the roll of money in Ray’s pack and the hints of more to come had made him wonder how anxious he was to get back to work. There was opportunity in the air and he wanted to see how it would all play out.

  “Ray, you awake?”

  “I can be. What d’you want, asshole?”

  “I just have something I want to get off my chest.”

  “Make it quick. I need my Zs.”

  “Sure, Ray, try this one on for size: the gun’s a toy.”

  “The gun’s a what?”

  “A toy.”

  “You think a gun’s a toy?”

  “No, Ray, I think your gun’s a toy. It’s a fake. And looks like you are too.”

  “Where’s the fuckin’ light switch? I’m not taking this shit.”

  “Stub your toe jumping off the bed like that.”

  “Might be time to clip your wings, sonny.”

  “Ray, I’m here for you. Just take a moment to look at the barrel of your so-called gun, and then let’s talk.”

  Ray found the lamp and paced the squeaking floorboards. “Taking a leak off the porch. Be right back,” he said. Through the open bedroom door, David could see him silhouetted in the moonlight, a silver arc splashing onto the dirt, his head thrown back in what David took to be a plausible posture of despair.

  By the time Ray walked back in he was already talking: “. . . an appraiser in Modesto, California, where I grew up. I did some community theater there, played Prince Oh So True in a children’s production and thought I was going places, then Twelve Angry Men—I was one of them, which is where the pistol came from. I was the hangman in Motherlode. Got married, had a baby girl, lost my job, got another one, went to Hawaii as a steward on a yacht belonging to a movie star who was working at a snow-cone stand a year before the yacht, the coke, the babes, and the wine. I had to sign a nondisclosure agreement, but then I got into a fight with the movie star and got kicked off the boat at Diamond Head. They just rowed me to shore in a dinghy and dumped me off. I hiked all the way to the crater and used the restroom to clean up, then took the tour bus into Honolulu. I tried to sell the celebrity drug-use story to a local paper, but it went nowhere because of the confidentiality agreement. Everything I sign costs me money. About this time, my wife’s uncle’s walnut farm was failing. He took a loan out on the real estate, and I sold my car, which was a mint, rust-free ’78 Trans Am, handling package, W-72 performance motor, solar gold with a Martinique-blue interior. We bought a bunch of FEMA trailers from the Katrina deal and hauled them to California. We lost our asses. The uncle gasses himself in his garage, and my wife throws me out. I moved into a hotel for migrant workers, and started using the computers at the Stanislaus County Library and sleeping at the McHenry Mansion. One of the tour guides was someone I used to fuck in high school and she slippe
d me into one of the rooms for naps. I met Morsel online. I told her I was on hard times. She told me she was coining it, selling bootleg OxyContin in the Bakken oil field, but she was lonely. It was a long shot. Montana. Fresh start. New me. Bus to Billings and hit the road. I made it to Jordan, and I had nothing left. The clerk at that fleabag barely let me have a room. I told him I was there for the comets. I don’t know where I come up with that. Breakfast at the café was my last dime and no tip. I had to make a move. So what happens now? You bust me with Morsel? You turn me in? Or you join us?”

  “You pretty sure on the business end of this thing?” David asked, with a coldness that surprised him.

  “A hundred percent, but Morsel’s got issues with other folks already in it. There’s some risk, but when isn’t there, with stakes like this? Think about it, Dave. If you’re at all interested in getting rich, you tell me.”

  Ray was soon snoring. David was intrigued that all these revelations failed to disturb his sleep. He himself was wide awake, brooding over how colorless his own life was in comparison to Ray’s. Ray was a con man and a failure, but what had he ever done? Finish high school? High school had been anguish, persecution, and suffering, but even in that he was unexceptional. He’d never had sex with a mansion tour guide. He’d had sex with a fat girl he disliked. Then the National Guard. Fort Harrison in the winter. Cleaning billets. Inventorying ammunition. Unskilled maintenance on UH-60 Blackhawks. Praying for deployment against worldwide towel heads. A commanding officer who told the recruits that the president of the United States was a “pencil-wristed twat.” Girlfriend fatter every time he went home. He still lived with his mother. Was still buying his dope from the same guy at the body shop he’d got it from in the eighth grade.

  Perhaps it was surprising he’d come up with anything at all, but he had: Bovine Deluxe, LLC, a crash course in artificially inseminating cattle. David took to it like a duck to water: driving around the countryside detecting and synchronizing estrus, handling frozen semen, keeping breeding records—all easily learnable, but David brought art to it, and he had no idea where that art had come from. He was a genius preg-tester. Whether he was straight or stoned, his rate of accuracy, as proven in spring calves, was renowned. Actually, David preferred preg-testing stoned. Grass gave him a greater ability to visualize the progress of his arm up the cow’s rectum. His excitement began as soon as he donned his coveralls, pulled on his glove, lubed it with OB goo, and stepped up to the cow stuck in the chute. Holding the tail high overhead with his left hand, he got his right hand all the way in, against the cow’s attempt to expel it, shoveled out the manure to clear the way past the cervix, and finally, nearly up to his shoulder, grasped the uterus. David could nail a pregnancy at two months, when the calf was smaller than a mouse. He never missed, and no cow that should have been culled turned up without a calf in the spring. He could tell the rancher how far along the cow was by his informal gradations: mouse, rat, Chihuahua, cat, fat cat, raccoon, beagle. Go through the herd, or until his arm was exhausted. Throw the glove away, write up the invoice, strip the coveralls, look for food and a room.

  Perfect. Except for the dough.

  He’d once dreamed of owning jewels, especially rubies, and that dream was coming back. Maybe glue one on his forehead like a Hindu. It’d go over big on his ranch calls.

  * * *

  Morsel made breakfast for her father, David, and Ray—eggs, biscuits, and gravy. David was thinking about Ray’s “last dime” back in Jordan versus the rolls of bills in his pack and watching Weldon watch Ray as breakfast was served. Morsel just leaned against the stove while the men ate. “Anyone want to go to Billings today to see the cage fights?” she asked. David looked up and smiled but no one answered her. Ray was probing around his food with his fork, pushing the gravy away from the biscuits, and Weldon was flinching. Weldon wore his black Stetson with the salt-encrusted sweat stain halfway up the crown. David thought it was downright unappetizing, not the sort of thing a customer for top-drawer bull semen would wear.

  At last Weldon spoke at top volume, as though calling out to his livestock: “What’d you say your name was?”

  “Ray.”

  “Well, Ray, why don’t you stick that fork all the way in and eat like a man?”

  “I’m doing my best, Mr. Case, but I will eat nothing with a central nervous system.”

  “Daddy, leave Ray alone. You’ll have time to get to know each other and find out what Ray enjoys eating.”

  When Morsel brought Ray some canned pineapple slices, he looked up at her with what David took to be genuine affection.

  She turned to David and said, “It’s all you can eat around here,” but the moment he stuck his fork back in his food she put a hand in his face and said, “That’s all you can eat!” and laughed. David noticed her cold blue eyes and thought he was beginning to understand her.

  To Weldon, she said, “Daddy, you feel like showing Ray ’n’ ’em the trick?”

  Weldon stopped his rhythmic lip pursing. “Oh, Morsel,” he said coyly.

  “C’mon, Daddy. Give you a dollar.”

  “Okay, Mor, put on the music,” he said with a sigh of good-humored defeat. Morsel went over to a low cupboard and pulled out a small plastic record player and a 45, which proved to be a scratchy version of “Cool Water” by the Sons of the Pioneers. Weldon swayed to the mournful tune and then seemed to come to life as Morsel placed a peanut in front of him and the lyrics began: “Keep a-movin’, Dan, / Don’t you listen to him, Dan. / He’s a devil not a man.” Weldon took off his hat and set it upside down beside him, revealing the thinnest comb-over across a snow-white pate. Then he picked up the peanut and, with sinuous movements, balanced it on his nose. It remained there until near the end of the record—“Dan, can you see, / That big green tree, / Where the water’s runnin’ free”—when the peanut fell to the table and Weldon’s chin dropped to stare at it. When the record ended, he replaced his hat, stood without a word, and left the room. For a moment it was quiet, and then came the sound of Weldon’s plane cranking up.

  “Daddy’s pretty hard on himself when he don’t make it to the end of the record,” Morsel said glumly, as she cleared the dishes. Heading for the living room, she added, “Me and Ray thought you ought to see what dementia looks like. It don’t look good and it’s expensive.”

  * * *

  David had taken care to copy out the information from Ray’s passport onto the back of a matchbook cover, which he tore off, rolled into a cylinder, and put inside a bottle of aspirin. And there it stayed until Ray and Morsel headed off to the cage fights. David used his cell phone and 411 Connect to call Ray’s home in Modesto and chat with his wife or, as she claimed to be, his widow. It took two calls, a couple of hours apart. The first try, he got her answering machine: “You know the drill: leave it at the beep.” On the second try, he got Ray’s wife. David identified himself as an account assistant with the Internal Revenue Service and Ray’s wife listened only briefly before stating in a firm, clear, and seemingly ungrieving voice that Ray was dead: “That’s what I told the last guy and that’s what I’m telling you.” She said that he had been embezzling from a credit union, left a suicide note, and disappeared.

  “I’m doing home health care. Whatever he stole he kept. Killing himself was the one good idea he come up with in the last thirty years. At least it’s kept the government from garnishing my wages, what little they are. I been through all this with the other guy that called, and we have to wait for his death to be confirmed before I get no benefits. If I know Ray, he’s on the bottom of the Tuolumne River, just to fuck with my head. I wish I could have seen him one more time to tell him I gave his water skis and croquet set to Goodwill. If the bank hadn’t taken back his airplane, I would have lost my house and been sleeping in my car. Too bad you didn’t meet Ray. He was an A-to-Z crumb bum.”

  “I’m terribly sorry to hear about your husband,” David said mechanically.

  “I don’t think the government
is terribly sorry to hear about anything. You reading this off a card?”

  “No, this is just a follow-up to make sure your file stays intact until you receive the benefits you’re entitled to.”

  “I already have the big one: picturing Ray in hell with his ass en fuego.”

  “Ah, you speak a bit of Spanish, Mrs. Coelho?”

  “Everybody in Modesto speaks a bit of Spanish. Where you been all your life?”

  “Washington, DC,” David said indignantly.

  “That explains it,” Mrs. Coelho said, and hung up.

  Of course he had no car when we met, David thought. No need to leave a paper trail by renting cars or buying tickets on airplanes. He’d got done all he needed to get done on the Modesto library computers, where he and Morsel, two crooks, had found each other and gone into business without ever laying eyes on each other.

  Before heading to Billings, Morsel had told David how to get to the Indian smallpox burial ground to look for beads. Otherwise, there was nothing to do around here. He wasn’t interested until he discovered the liquor cabinet and by then it was early evening. He found a bottle marked Hoopoe Schnapps, with a picture of a bird on its label, and gave it a try: “Bottoms up.” It went straight to his head. After several swigs, he was unable to identify the bird but he was very happy. The label said that the drink contained mirabelles, and David thought, Hey, I’m totally into mirabelles.

  As he headed for the burial ground, David was tottering a bit. Rounding the equipment shed, he nearly ran into Weldon Case, who walked by without speaking or apparently seeing him. Behind the ranch buildings, a cow trail led into the prairie, then wound toward a hillside spring that didn’t quite reach the surface, visible only by the greenery above it. Just below that was the place that Morsel had told him about, pockmarked with anthills. The ants, Morsel claimed, carried the beads to the surface, but you had to hunt for them.

  David sat down among the mounds and was soon bitten through his pants. He jumped to his feet and swept the ants away, then crouched, peering and picking at the anthills. His thighs soon ached from squatting, but then he found a speck of sky blue in the dirt, a bead. He clasped it tightly in one hand while stirring with the other and flicking away ants. He didn’t think about the bodies in the ground beneath him. By the time it was too dark to see, his palm was filled with Indian beads and he felt elevated and still drunk.