Cheatgrass

by Bart Paul

  By quarter to seven I was camped at a window table at the Mark Twain Café, drinking more coffee and watching the street. I was fiddling with my phone when an older couple I knew who had a livestock vaccine business stopped by the table to say hi. We talked for a minute before they took a booth. I went back to my phone, to the text from Sarah I got a few days before.

  Dad’s been taken. I need you. Come home as soon as you can.

  Love, S

  That was all. I’d already read it a thousand times.

  A couple of minutes later Sarah walked through the door dressed for work. It was funny. Neither of us could ever stand being late. I set the phone on the table before she could catch what I was looking at.

  “Sitting with your back to the wall like Wild Bill Hickok, I see.” She leaned down and gave me a half-assed kiss on the cheek. I caught the vaccine lady sneaking a glance.

  “Thanks for coming,” Sarah said. She looked like she’d slept even worse than I did. “Just to set the record straight, nothing happened last night after you left—between Kip and me. He did that just for show.”

  “He’s your husband, for chrissakes. You don’t owe me an explanation.”

  “You’re getting one anyway,” she said. “Even if you don’t deserve it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were rotten to him last night,” she said. “If someone was that snarky to you, you’d take ’em out.”

  “Sorry. I’m not handling this ‘seeing you again’ business too great either.”

  “Good,” she said.

  “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

  She waited until the waitress set coffee in front of her and freshened my cup. Sarah didn’t look happy.

  “I left Kip about three weeks ago. I moved back in with Dad.”

  “Jesus, Sarah.”

  “That’s why the morning he disappeared, Dad was cooking me breakfast at the house. I was living there.”

  “And that’s why Kip was in Reno?”

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “What the hell happened?”

  “It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on. I guess I’d been second-guessing myself. Wondering if I’d made a mistake committing to this great guy when maybe I wasn’t over a certain irresponsible … somebody. I don’t know. It’d been gnawing at me for a while. Then I was lying in bed one morning watching him get out of the shower, preening in front of the mirror and talking nonstop about his plans and himself and all the cool things he’d done. He’d left me in bed on my day off when we might have had some time together. Instead of spending the morning with his wife, he’d gone out to go lifting with his dork pals in that dirty old equipment shed.”

  “I thought the gunsels had just moved in.”

  “They’ve been practically living with us for months,” she said. “That’s why they had all those weights already here.” She looked out the window at a stock truck rattling by. “Anyway, Kip had come back inside about nine thirty to shower. He was wired like crazy, and all of a sudden I was spooked. I looked at him like some suspect, not like my husband. It was creepy. I’d heard everything he’d said dozens of times, but I realized that every time things were a little different. Details were changed like he was just making stuff up as he went along, or maybe testing me to see if I’d notice the changes in the story. It came to me that I didn’t know this guy at all. I lived with him and slept with him and made plans for the future with him, but all of a sudden he was like a stranger. I thought back and remembered that if I ever asked him a question, he took it as a threat and got mean. Sometimes worse than mean—totally untracked.”

  She stopped when the waitress came back and took our order.

  “Later that day, we were at the barn and I asked him something about that trailer company he used to own. The ranch needs a better stock trailer than my barrel-racing rig, and I wanted his opinion. I thought he’d be flattered, but that set him off and he came after me. He was in a rage, saying I was spying on him. I ran into the kitchen and locked the door but he jammed his hand through the glass and unlocked it and kept on coming. I thought he was going to hit me, but then he got sweet and apologetic and wanted—” She stopped talking. She looked whipped. “You know what he wanted.”

  “Did he hit you?”

  “No,” she said. “No man has ever hit me, and no man ever will.”

  “Good.”

  She looked like she’d talked too much.

  “Anyway,” she said, “I needed some breathing room. Thinking room. So I moved out.”

  “Selling that trailer company—it set him up pretty good?”

  “Well enough, I guess,” she said. “He always seems to have money—for the mobile home, for his veteran’s deal and trucks and gifts. Nice clothes, nice dinners. First class airfare to Vegas for the NFR.”

  “Big rodeo fan, huh?”

  She looked sort of embarrassed. “You know, the things guys do to impress.”

  “I guess I don’t.”

  “Bull,” she said. “You used to try to impress me.”

  “I was just a kid.”

  She started to say something, then didn’t.

  “So,” she said, “did you believe his story about Parris Island?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why?”

  “I figured he was bullshitting. Doubtful he would have trained there if he was from that little Swedish town outside Fresno.”

  “Kingsburg,” she said.

  “He’d more likely have started his Basic at the Recruit Depot in San Diego, not South Carolina.”

  “I’m not surprised,” she said. “He likes to make himself the star of every story. But he did get those scars on his belly somehow.”

  “Yeah. So maybe it’s nothing, Sarah. We all have stuff in our stories that don’t track.”

  “I just felt in my gut that I didn’t really know him,” she said. “Maybe I just fell for the image—the charming, successful guy.” She looked just about drained. “And the life he could offer. Anyway, I told him I needed some space and moved back in with Dad.”

  “What did Dave think of all this?”

  “Dad thought Kip walked on water. It was almost like he pushed me into …” She quit looking at me. “Into his arms. I think Dad was wanting grandkids.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Dad got to know Kip first,” she said. “He helped Dad with all sorts of stuff. Putting on training clinics, jackpot ropings—all the stuff Dad loves.”

  “He knew a lot about those, did he?”

  “Not really,” she said, “but Kip’s a diabolical organizer and an awesome talker. And Dad genuinely liked him. He thought they were going to be a team. Kip took an interest in everything Dad did. He acted like spending his life keeping Dad’s dream alive was all he wanted. It flattered Dad.”

  The waitress brought Sarah’s omelet and my chicken-fried steak, and we got to it for a bit.

  “When he was courting me after you left,” she said, “he seemed too good to be true.”

  I wasn’t touching that. “Was he mad you moved out?”

  “He was cold,” she said. “As cold as I’ve ever seen anyone.”

  “You hurt his feelings.”

  “That is really touching, Tommy,” she said. “Coming from you.”

  “You ever consider that you figuring you might not love this guy, then leaving him, might have triggered something—something that ended with Dave getting taken?”

  “No,” she said. I was annoying her again. “That would be too much of a leap.”

  “What about selling his water rights? Would that put Dave crosswise with anybody?”

  “No,” she said. “Why would it?”

  “I got no idea. I’m just throwing stuff out there. I thought that’s maybe why you asked me here.”

  She looked at me like I was about the dumbest son-ofabitch she’d ever seen.

  “I told you yesterday why I asked you. To have you here right by my sid
e to scare the crap out of anybody messing with my father—or me.” She gave me a snarky look. “Hey, sweetheart, nobody does it better.”

  I wiped my sourdough toast in the gravy and looked out the window.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “That was mean.”

  “When did you move back in?”

  “When I got your message a couple of days ago saying you were coming,” she said. “I only wanted to deal with one crisis at a time.”

  “How’d he react?”

  “Weird,” she said. “Both possessive and standoffish. Like he’s punishing me by refusing to touch me. And he’s gotten even weirder since you showed up. He knows our history, so I guess I can’t blame him for that.”

  “And how’d you react?”

  “Relieved. Jesus, Tommy, what kind of question is that?”

  She picked up my phone and started fiddling with it, not really paying attention. When she saw me tense up as she scrolled around my messages it seemed to make her happy.

  “Who’s Captain Cruz?” she said.

  “One of the company commanders at Fort Benning.”

  “Nice underwear,” she said, “and great boobs. She a sniper too?”

  “She wishes she was. Helluva shot, though.”

  “She misses you, ‘lover’, but she doesn’t know how to spell Ophelia.”

  “It’s Mexican. Ofelia.”

  “Whatever,” she said.

  I took the phone back.

  “Oh shit.”

  “What?” I whipped around to see what Sarah was looking at.

  “My husband just drove by.” She didn’t say anything else, just sat there afraid to move.

  “It’s okay. We’re not doing anything wrong here, Sarah.”

  The café was at the east end of town, the last building on the south side of Main Street before the river bridge. The parking lot was around back. Across the side street was the tall old Masonic Lodge, so once you drove by the café on Main Street it would be hard to glance back for a good look at what cars were parked there. I flagged down the owner for a coffee to go.

  “Get to the office. Start your day. When you see Kip next, tell him we had breakfast, or don’t tell him. Whichever. I’ll cruise down and see where he is, and maybe him and me will shoot the breeze. I’ll be polite as hell after grinding his nuts last night.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”

  We walked to the door, and she took the coffee from the owner and headed out to the parking lot. It bothered me how spooked she looked.

  I joked with the owner like nothing had happened and sat back down by the window to finish my breakfast. I watched Sarah’s truck pull out of the lot and turn left opposite the Ponderosa Motel just across Main Street. The waitress brought the check, and I handed her my card. Then I got out my phone and texted a guy I’d known at Walter Reed who was serving in the Provost Marshall’s office at Pendleton and asked him to find out what he could about a Marine named Kip Isringhausen.

  Chapter Six

  I turned on to Main Street myself a few minutes later. I could see Kip’s white Ram a block away parked in front of the Sporting Goods. I pulled over a few cars behind it and walked up the sidewalk like I hadn’t a care, then I stepped inside. Kip was standing at the counter buying something from Nick, the owner, who was just opening up. Kip was dressed like a city boy on vacation with hiking shorts and boots and a fisherman’s shirt. He looked up when he heard the little bell over the door and smiled almost like he was expecting me. I waved and browsed among the flyrods and shotguns, just passing the time. Nick shouted hi, and I shouted back while I took a nice Lamson reel out of its box. The Sporting Goods was small and cluttered and old as hell. It had been a lunch counter, a saloon, a billiard parlor and another saloon, and had a justice court on the second floor until about 1900. An acquitted murderer coming down the stairs from that court had been attacked by a mob and beheaded out in the street. But that was a long time ago. Nick and his parents had owned the store as long as I could remember, and the pine floorboards were worn deep between the nailheads.

  I eased up to the counter and saw Kip buying 9mm ammo.

  “Hey, Tom,” he said. “Long time no see. Hope you didn’t think I was rude last night. The last few days have about wrung me out.”

  “I bet.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was whipped and ready to hit the rack.”

  Then I saw him smirk like some high school jerk who’d been telling his boys about nailing the cutest cheerleader. I almost took him out right there.

  “Stocking up?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I just bought a new SIG. Since the thing with Dave, you can’t be too careful.”

  “What kind of SIG?”

  “A totally sick P-two-two-six Blackwater,” he said. “A righteously fine piece.” Talking about the pistol seemed to make him happy.

  Nick brought him a handful of cash in change, then reached over the counter and shook my hand and told me how good it was to see me safe. He was about twenty years older than me and looked like an eighth grade history teacher, but a lot of what I learned as a kid about fishing and shooting in that country I learned from Nick.

  “Got one myself.”

  “A SIG?” Kip said.

  “A nine millimeter. A Beretta.”

  “Which one?” he said, “The M-nine?”

  “M-nine-A-one. Pretty basic, though.”

  “Do you have it with you?” he said. “I’d love to burn some powder with you before you leave town. You could check me out on it. You could teach me a lot, I bet.”

  Nick sort of smiled at that.

  “Until the FBI gets a handle on the Dave thing,” he said, “we don’t know what the hell we’re up against, so I wanna be ready.”

  A Mexican-looking girl stepped out from the rear of the store to wait on a fisherman back by the old glass-front drink coolers.

  “Left the Beretta back in Georgia, sorry. You might want to try those Remington rounds with the nickel-plated casings in that new SIG. Lower friction coefficient. They’ll feed and extract real smooth, and you’ll never jam.”

  Kip grinned at Nick. “I said this guy could teach me a lot.” He held up his fist at me. “Combat experience. No wonder the bad guys you tangled with up at that pack station never had a chance.”

  I fist-bumped him in spite of myself. He picked up the box of cartridges.

  “Can I trade up, Nick?” he said.

  Nick said sure and brought out the nickel-plated rounds. He re-rang the sale and recounted Kip’s change. The girl smiled at us as she went behind the register to ring up the fisherman’s Bud Light.

  “Maybe we can figure a way to shoot a bit before you go, anyhow,” Kip said. “I’m new to all this, but there’s obviously some bad actors on the loose.”

  “So you don’t buy the Dave-wandering-off scenario now?”

  “Hey,” Kip said. “I think we’ve got to consider every angle.”

  “Well, if I have some time to go shoot, I’ll give you a yell. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Great,” he said. He was looking the girl over as she walked around us, then he gave me a look.

  “Sweet,” he said when she disappeared into the back room. “Ay Chihuahua.” Then he headed for the door. I just shrugged, but Nick looked peeved. He leaned both hands on the counter, watching Kip cross the sidewalk.

  “Good to see you, stranger,” he said. “We hope you’re about done with your foreign adventures.”

  “You and me both.”

  Nick looked out the window as Kip fired up his Ram. “That guy’s a character,” he said. “A steady customer, always friendly, and always pays cash. But he knows Conchetta’s my niece and he’s still being a crass jerk. On the other hand, a few more like him and I’d retire.”

  “You’ll never retire.”

  “So, can I get you anything, my friend?”

  “I guess I’m handled. I don’t know. Probably could use a sixpack.”

  “What’s your poison
?”

  “Sierra Nevada?”

  “Kip’s favorite,” Nick said.

  “Then Coors’ll do.”

  “It’s funny what he said about just buying that SIG,” Nick said. “He’s had that pistol as long as I’ve known him.”

  He rang me up while I snagged a sixpack from the cooler and fetched it back to the counter.

  “Take ’er easy, Nick.”

  “You too, Tommy. Welcome back.”

  I started to walk out when I saw the two Indian cowboys who’d been visiting the ironpumpers the night before. They’d walked up from the General Store and were climbing in the cab of the GMC with the ruined tailgate. I turned around and saw Nick heading toward the back of the store where they stocked clothes and waders and such. “Hey, Nick, who are these guys?”

  He came back and stood next to me.

  “The two Indian guys in that black pickup.”

  We looked out the window at the GMC pulling out into Main Street.

  “The Miller brothers,” he said. “A couple of real mean drunks. They got arrested on some assault thing with Jedediah Boone last year.”

  “Jed’s been bad news since the third grade. He’d wipe his boogers on the little kids.”

  That made Nick laugh. We watched the GMC make an illegal U-turn.

  “Say, Nick, do you have a box of those Remington two-seventy soft points?”