The Long Count

by JM Gulvin

  Quarrie counted forty-two seconds and was about to make the dive when the water boiled and his friend came up thrashing and gasping for air. There was no sign of any fish and Pious had a haunted look in his eyes. He took a moment to catch his breath; chest-deep in the water still, he was panting hard. He did not say anything. He just looked at Quarrie and Quarrie looked back at him.

  ‘What’s up, bud? Swallow a little river water there then, did you?’

  ‘Yeah, I did. And we got us a graveyard for sure.’

  Quarrie dived, feeling his way as Pious had done moments before. He came to the edge of the den and stared through the gloom with his heart lifting against his chest. White and bulbous, a human skull; empty eye sockets, they stared at him like a sentinel guarding the hole.

  It was all he could do not to swallow water, and he could see it was not just the skull, but some partial vertebrae as well. A little of the neck was still attached and what looked like part of the clavicle. A child: from the size of the skull and that collarbone he figured it had been a child that drowned here and they’d not been much older than James.

  For a macabre few moments he just trod water, then reached out to gather up the bones before he remembered his son was waiting on the southern bank. Leaving the bones where they were, he surfaced and looked at Pious in exactly the same way that Pious had looked at him.

  ‘You see it?’ Pious said.

  ‘I saw it. And whoever it is, they’ve been there since the train wrecked, I guess. I’ll call it in when we get home.’ He nodded to where James was skimming stones from the other shore. ‘In the meantime I don’t want him knowing about it. I’ll tell him when I’m ready, OK?’

  ‘Whatever you say, John Q. But the fish and all – we got people relying on us to bring a flathead home.’

  ‘I know it. But we’re done here, bud. We’ll go fish the Texas shore.’

  Three

  Dawn, and he drove the Winfield City cruiser towards the state line. So far nobody had looked his way and that included a sheriff’s deputy who passed on the highway and barely lifted a hand. Up ahead he saw a sign that read Henry’s Diner and he eased his foot off the gas.

  Pulling into the parking lot he stopped outside an old slat-board shack that was built on shallow stilts. Climbing out of the car he stretched his shoulders, then shifted the weight of the Colt where it hung on his hip. He cast an eye over the three other vehicles parked up: an old Ford pickup, a Lincoln and a Buick sedan. Adjusting his cap he crossed the dusty parking lot, climbed the steps and went in.

  Sitting on a swivel stool at the counter he drank coffee and forked scrambled eggs into his mouth, considering the half-dozen or so customers at the tables and the short-order cook working the hatch. The waitress was efficient, moving up and down the counter with the coffee pot; no sooner was he sipping and setting down than she was right there topping him up.

  Quietly he cased his fellow diners: two good old boys in coveralls, a middle-aged couple, and a guy of about thirty wearing a shirt and tie who was well into a plate of ham and eggs. He had a Coke going alongside his coffee cup and when he was finished eating he reached for a pack of Lucky Strikes.

  From his stool he watched as the man palmed a few bills onto the table then slid from the booth. Through the window he saw him button his jacket as he trotted across the parking lot. Taking a couple of dollars from the money clip he had stolen from the cop on the station platform, he laid them down on the counter and watched as the Buick pulled away.

  He followed that car up the highway, passing a sign that indicated there was a swimming hole called Henry’s Bathtub a mile further on. The driver of the Buick could not have been watching his mirrors because he was fairly ticking along. Flicking on the roof light, he checked the dashboard for a siren switch.

  Within minutes he was tailgating the Buick, then backing off as the driver pulled into a turnout fifty yards from the dirt road that led to the swimming hole. Easing the prowl car in behind, he turned off the engine but remained in the seat. He was wearing the police officer’s gunbelt and next to him a pump-action shotgun stood upright in its stirrup. As he climbed from the car he could see the man in the Buick with his eyes riveted on the rear-view mirror.

  The driver’s window was rolled down and the guy had both hands hooked around the steering wheel. His gaze was nervous, darting, sweat across his brow as if he were high on dope.

  ‘Officer, is everything all right?’

  ‘Guess you weren’t concentrating on your speed.’

  Tongue shifting the length of his lips the man’s gaze locked onto the shotgun. ‘Was I going too fast? I’m sorry. I guess I was listening to the radio and just got carried away.’

  Moving back from the car door he shifted the shotgun to his other shoulder. ‘Would you mind stepping out of the car? I need you to sit in the back of my cruiser while I run a check on your license and registration.’

  Still the man sat where he was with his fingers encircling the wheel. ‘Registration, right. The car isn’t mine. It belongs to the company I work for.’

  Stepping back from the door he indicated for the driver to get out. ‘That’s all right. If you’d just take a seat in my car for a moment I’m sure everything is going to check out fine.’

  The man did as he was asked, walking ahead of him to the cruiser and waiting while he opened the rear door. Seated in the back with the door closed he was a prisoner, locked in and going nowhere. Stepping over to the Buick again he took the keys from the ignition and slipped them into his pocket.

  Back in the cruiser he fired up the engine and watched the color slide from the young man’s face. Beyond the metal grille he was sitting on his hands saying nothing, though he swallowed hard when they pulled out onto the highway and drove fifty yards to the sign for Henry’s Bathtub.

  They drove the dirt road for a hundred yards before it climbed a short rise then dipped into a gully, where a natural swimming hole filled the stubby valley beyond. He let the cruiser roll all the way to the bank and then he put on the parking brake. Reaching for the shotgun he swivelled in the seat. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I’m going to have to ask you to get out of the car.’

  ‘Why? What’s this about?’ the man stammered. ‘What’re we doing back here? I don’t understand. I mean if it’s a ticket you’re writing what’re we doing back here?’

  ‘Sir, if you’d just get out of the car.’

  He stood with the shotgun resting on his hip once more and asked the man to take his jacket off and toss it on the back seat. First, though, he had him take out his wallet, check book and driver’s license. Walking around to the back of the cruiser he unlocked the trunk.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, peering inside. ‘I figure there’s enough room.’

  ‘Enough room for what?’ Trembling, the young man stared.

  ‘Me and the boys back at the station house, we had a bet to see if you could get someone in the trunk along with all the gear.’ He indicated the traffic cones. ‘You see, with only the back seat there on a busy night it’s a case of holding a suspect where you can. Oblige me, sir, please, would you?’

  Still the man stared. ‘Are you kidding? You want me to get in the trunk?’

  ‘You’re about average size: what do you weigh, one sixty; one sixty-five?’ He racked a cartridge into the chamber and pointed the shotgun at the man’s stomach. ‘Go on now, do as I say.’

  The man was shaking badly but he did as he was told, climbing over the fender and crouching down in the cruiser’s trunk.

  ‘Curl up on your side.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like a baby now. Curl up on your side.’

  The man lay down and looked up.

  ‘That’s good,’ he said, nodding. ‘That’s real neighborly.’ Closing the trunk he walked around to the passenger door and fetched his own clothes from the paper sack.

  He could hear the man hammering on the trunk lid as he changed out of the uniform and slipped on his T-shirt and jeans. He tugged o
n the sleeveless Levi jacket then pocketed the man’s wallet and check book. The driver’s license said his name was Kelly, and the Buick was owned by a company called Mission Farm Supplies. There was thirty-six dollars in cash in the wallet and half a dozen checks in the book.

  He kept the pistol but not the holster, which he left with the uniform on the passenger seat. Taking the shotgun and extra shells he reached across the column and slipped the cruiser into neutral. Releasing the parking brake he stepped back and watched as it began to roll.

  Four

  When Quarrie went to sleep that night all he could see were those stone-washed, sightless eyes. When he woke at dawn he could see them again, and again as he drank his coffee outside.

  Tossing away the dregs of his cup, he found James at the kitchen table in his pajamas, shaking grape-nut cereal from the box. Quarrie fetched a quart bottle of milk from the refrigerator and ruffled a hand through the boy’s hair.

  The phone rang on the wall and he picked up.

  ‘Van Hanigan here, John Q.’

  ‘Captain. What’s up?’

  ‘Got a job for you over in Marion County.’

  ‘Marion County? Are you kidding me? That’s clear across the state.’

  ‘I know it. But somebody put a call in to Austin and that call made it to me. City of Winfield, they got a cop been beat half to death, and the fact is we got nobody over there right now on account of all the protests going on. Headquarters told me they had to send everybody we got down to Houston because of those college kids kicking off. The draft and all – nobody wants to fight for their country anymore. Anyway, whatever. The perp used the cop’s own billy on him and stole both his uniform and his car. It’s a fact he’s quit the county most probably and could be in Louisiana by now.’

  Quarrie wore a pair of flesh-hugging Levi jeans and his tan-colored boots with no pattern tooled on either on the leg or toe. All his life he’d favored plain boots, and if he couldn’t have bought them off the shelf like that he would have paid for them to be hand-made. His hat hung on the back of the kitchen door along with his gunbelt and pistols. A pair of three-fifty-seven Ruger Blackhawks in silver with polished wooden grips. He slid each one from its holster and took a moment to check the loading gates.

  ‘James,’ he said to his son. ‘Bud, I’m sorry but that was the captain on the phone. I’ve got to go east for a while.’

  The boy spoke through a mouthful of cereal. ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘Don’t know right off. It won’t be tonight though. Tomorrow maybe, or the day after that.’

  Head down, James nodded. ‘That’s OK, Dad. I got school.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Eunice will drive you down to the bus stop and Nolo or one of the other hands will be there when you get back.’

  Barefoot and still in his pajamas, James followed him outside. Quarrie had an overnight bag in his hand and his guns strapped on his hips. His son opened the driver’s door on the Riviera and flipped the seat forward, and Quarrie stowed his bag in the back. Knocking the sun visor down, James reached for his father’s sunglasses. Neck craned a little, he studied the photograph of the mother he had never known where it was pouched where the glasses had been. Blonde hair and blue eyes, she was smiling from where she sat the rail of a fence.

  ‘That was taken in Idaho, wasn’t it,’ the boy said. ‘That picture of Mom.’

  Quarrie polished the Ray-Bans on his tie. ‘Yes, it was.’

  ‘I know I never knew her but I think about her every day.’

  ‘That’s good, son. She’d like for you to do that,’ his father said. ‘It doesn’t matter that you didn’t know her. It doesn’t change the fact you’re her son. You’re a lot like her, kiddo. Same kind of instinct, especially when it comes to horses. She’d be proud of you, I know.’

  Eyes a little misty, the boy stepped back a couple of paces as Quarrie slipped into the driver’s seat.

  ‘Dad,’ he said, ‘we haven’t been up to the house in a while. When school’s out this summer can we go up there d’you think?’

  ‘Sure we can. I already got her planned.’ With a smile, Quarrie nodded towards the kitchen door. ‘Now go on and get ready. Don’t want you being late on my account and Miss Munro bawling the two of us out.’ Closing the driver’s door he rolled down the window. ‘And stay in class, you hear? No more lying in the dirt watching ants trail dirt when you’re supposed to be studying math.’

  With that he twisted the key and the Wildcat 425 Pious had sweetened thundered into life. For a moment he sat there watching as James climbed the step and went in through the screen door. Shaking a Camel from his pack Quarrie tapped the inscribed end against the base of his thumb then looked once more at the picture of his wife before folding the visor back. Nursing the motor a little he clicked a gear and backed the car around, then drove the dirt road three miles out to the blacktop.

  Picking up some coffee from Cabells, he headed east on 82 with the light flashing under the clamshell grille. It was long drive and he wasn’t quite sure how it was that he could be the only Ranger available, but it was a fact there were only sixty-six covering the entire state. With all the anti-war protests going on, for a while they’d been stretched pretty thin.

  He was into Fannin County beyond Sherman and heading for Paris, Texas, when a call came in.

  ‘Dispatch calling any sheriff’s unit on Route 82.’

  Quarrie listened to see who would pick up.

  ‘Dispatch calling any sheriff’s deputy. Do you copy? Come back.’

  Still there was no answer.

  ‘We got an incident at a house south of Monkstown,’ the dispatcher went on. ‘Possible B&E. Does anybody copy? Come back.’

  The location she’d named was up in the Caddo Grassland about ten miles north of where Quarrie was driving now. Turning the volume a little higher on the radio he waited for a deputy to pick up.

  ‘Does anybody copy?’ he heard the dispatcher say. ‘Highway 82: is anyone out there at all?’

  With a shake of his head Quarrie unhooked the transmitter from its housing. ‘Dispatch, this is Ranger Unit Zero-Six.’

  ‘Ranger?’ the dispatcher said. ‘I’m looking for a sheriff’s deputy. How come you’re the only one picking up?’

  ‘I don’t know. But I’m south of Monkstown right now so you better tell me what you got.’

  ‘Look, this is a county deal. I don’t want to hang it on you guys – not with what-all you got to deal with. Fact is I took a call from a gardener and it might be nothing at all.’

  ‘Could be nothing, but then again it might not. I’m here now so you might as well go ahead.’

  ‘Well sir, this gardener said his name was Gonzalez and he’s working a house up there by the lake. Said how he showed up to cut the grass as he usually does only he found the door wide open and no sign of the owner, and nobody answered when he called. It doesn’t sound like a hell of a lot, but it’s remote over there, and with the door open the old man didn’t like what he could smell.’

  ‘What he could smell? You mean from inside the house?’

  ‘That’s right. Told me he could smell something and it didn’t smell good.’

  ‘Did he take a look?’

  ‘Not that he said. Just told me how the vehicles are in the garage and the owner would never go out and leave a door open like that. There’s a phone in the garage apparently and he used that to make the call.’

  ‘OK, copy that. I’m only a few miles south right now. Go ahead and tell me where it’s at.’

  The dispatcher told him the house was on its own at the end of a dirt road not far from the lake. Clipping the handset back on the hook, Quarrie flipped the switch for the siren and stamped his foot down hard on the gas.

  Heading due north he located the road where the clouds hung bruise-like across the sky. Flatland up here, it was salt brush and wheat grass and it shimmered like the sea until the road was swallowed by the stands of trees. Hot and sticky, the drought had broken finally, and th
e weather report said there was a storm coming. Judging by the weight of those clouds it was going to hit pretty soon.

  He drove deep into the trees before finally coming on a mailbox fixed by the side of the road. The name Bowen printed on it, he turned into the gravelled drive. There he spotted the gardener, an old Tejano leaning against the door of a bull-nosed Chevy with his equipment loaded on the bed. Quarrie peered beyond him to the house. Built in yellow brick, it was single-story with a pitched roof as well as a separate garage made from the same colored bricks. The garage doors were open and inside two vehicles were parked side-by-side. Pulling up next to the gardener’s truck, Quarrie reached for his hat.

  ‘Howdy,’ he said as he got out. ‘You the feller called the sheriff just now?’

  The old man nodded.

  ‘My name’s Quarrie. Texas Ranger. What’s going on?’

  Gonzalez seemed to inspect him for a moment before he nodded towards the house.

  ‘The kitchen door is open.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what they said.’

  ‘It never happens.’ Gonzalez wagged his head. ‘Mr Bowen, he don’t ever leave a door open. I been working here three years and he don’t go anyplace unless he locks up.’

  Quarrie nodded to the car and pickup parked in the garage. ‘You sure he ain’t about here somewheres? Vehicles in the garage like that, he could be up at the lake.’

  ‘No.’ Again Gonzalez shook his head. ‘He’s not here. I know he’s not here. Nobody answers when I call, and the door is open, and then there is the smell.’ He wrinkled his nose as if to emphasize the point. ‘I know Señor Bowen. He would not go out and leave a door open. That’s not the way he is.’

  Quarrie started towards the house. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’m going to take a look. Stay where you’re at and don’t come in the house lessen I call.’

  Crossing the driveway he climbed the short flight of steps to the paved patio and went around the side of the building. The fly screen was sprung to but beyond it the kitchen door stood open. On first inspection it did not look as if it had been forced but, using just his index finger, Quarrie hooked the screen back to get a better view. The lock was intact: no wood splintered or paint stripped. He could see the kitchen was set with a stone-tiled floor and worktops made from granite. No marks on the floor that he could pick out, he was struck by the scent of burnt coffee and wondered if that was what the Tejano had smelled.