Dangerous Men

by Michael Katakis

‘No thanks. Can you tell me where I might find George Lazlo?’

  At the mention of Lazlo’s name, the café suddenly became quiet and the expression on the woman’s face changed into a cold stare.

  Two men sitting at the counter turned. The big man in striped overalls stood up and walked toward Walt.

  ‘You a friend of that son of a bitch?’ asked the man.

  ‘No, I’m not a friend. I’m just looking for him, not trouble.’

  The big man leaning over the table settled down and the waitress left the check.

  ‘Sorry, mister,’ he said, ‘I didn’t mean to come on so strong. It’s jus—’

  The waitress picked up the check and cut in. ‘Coffee’s on me, boys. Jack here is a good man, but he’s soured on this guy Lazlo,’ she said, and the big man nodded in agreement. ‘’Bout a month ago, this character comes in with his wife. She’s a real polite and pretty gal who’d come into the café before. She would talk about her kids with me and the other girls, so naturally, when she came in with her fella it was nice to see her. So, I walk up to where they’re sitting and I say, “Hi, Judith, how’s the kids?” Well this guy Lazlo stands up, pushes me hard and grabs the pot of coffee I was holding and throws it in her face. She got burned bad but that wasn’t the end of it. He started slapping and punching her. I thought he was going to kill her. Everything happened so fast. Old Jack, you see how big he is, was sitting at the counter and got to Lazlo as fast as he could. Lazlo was drunk, you could smell it. Jack tried to hold the guy, and the guy stabs Jack in the shoulder with a fork. Can you believe it? A fork. Well, Jack beat the hell out of him. It took four men to pull him off. We called the police but Judith, poor thing, refused to press charges. Now get this. Lazlo is suing Jack for assault. How’s that for crazy?’

  Walt stood and moved to where the big man was sitting.

  ‘How’s the shoulder?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh hell, I’m okay. Better than that poor lady, I’d guess.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your trouble,’ said Walt. ‘Don’t worry. I have a feeling it won’t last.’

  Any second thoughts Walt had had about what he was going to do disappeared. This time it would be different. No games. He would get to Lazlo, let him know who he was and then shoot him dead.

  The waitress had given Walt Lazlo’s address. There was no point in wasting any time. He drove north for eight miles and found the entrance to the G Bar L Ranch. He rode past and found a turnout. It was 4.10 a.m. He needed to get some sleep.

  A little after 7 a.m., Walt opened his eyes and drove back to the ranch entrance and parked just outside the property. Walking up the ranch road, he took the gun from his coat and checked it. At the end of the road there was a gray house with a large porch. Seeing that no one was around, he moved quickly to one of the big windows and looked inside. Suddenly he felt a crash and fell backwards on the porch. His vision was blurred and the side of his head was covered in blood.

  ‘You son of a bitch. Rob me, will ya?’

  Walt could make out a large outline coming at him and covered his head. The ax handle came down on his shin. He screamed.

  From one of the outbuildings, Lazlo had seen the man and assumed he was a thief. Lazlo laughed as he turned the stranger over, asking his name so he would know what to put on the gravestone. Walt looked up.

  ‘I’m Walter Lesser and I’ve come here to kill you.’

  ‘Well I’ll be goddamned. It’s been a long time, boy. How ya been?’ Walter stared as Lazlo poked the ax handle into his ribs. ‘I said, how ya been? How’s your folks?’ Lazlo asked sadistically.

  ‘Oh ya, they’re dead, ain’t they? Well don’t take it so hard, you’re gonna see ’em soon.’

  The screen door opened behind them. Judith Lazlo stood there in her apron. ‘Oh, how nice,’ she said, ‘we have company.’

  George looked at his wife with contempt as she walked in front of him. ‘You stupid bitch. Get in the house.’

  She smiled as she raised her right hand and quickly moved the serrated bread knife across her husband’s throat. Blood flooded out of the wound, staining her face and clothes. Lazlo, on his knees, grabbed his throat and was trying to say something. Judith’s expression had not changed. She looked at Walt and then back at her husband. She knelt beside him.

  ‘Now dear,’ she whispered, ‘just die, won’t you?’

  The last thing George Lazlo saw was the madness that he had put in his wife’s eyes. She wiped the dead man’s brow with her blood soaked apron.

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘It’s all right now.’

  Wiping the knife on her apron, Judith turned to Walter.

  ‘How nice of you to come by. My children are coming home today so I have to clean up. I hope you’ll excuse me. Please, do come again.’

  Walter stared at the insane woman and knew he was damned.

  GOING HOME

  Walter managed to make it to the truck and drove to a motel outside of Glasgow. He inspected his head and leg. Nothing was broken but his scalp could have used some stiches. The face of Judith Lazlo was burned into his brain. He nearly panicked when he thought he might not make it back to Livingston to finish what he’d started.

  The pain had become stronger and now he didn’t think twice about taking the pills. He lay back on the bed. Annette Janowski’s warning came back to him: ‘Don’t do anything you can’t live with.’ Too late, he thought.

  Walt spent two nights at the motel trying to mend. He was fighting time. He just needed a little more. Packing his things, he glanced at the photograph of Mary Hollins and remembered how it had felt to be in love. He had always intended to marry her and then build their home on the western knoll by the creek where they had made love and talked about the future.

  A few years after the troubles, he had heard that Mary had married James Ringer. Ringer had taken a liking to her after visiting her father. The Hollinses’ property shared a fence line with the Lessers’. People knew what had happened to the Lessers and who had done it. They were all scared of James Ringer.

  Ringer had told Gus Hollins that he intended to take over his ranch one way or another.

  ‘I have big plans for the area,’ he said, ‘and your ranch is part of it.’

  Gus Hollins was an alcoholic who scared easily, a weakness that Ringer knew how to take advantage of. After pushing Hollins for a few months, Ringer suggested a deal. If Gus convinced his daughter to marry him, they would combine both ranches and be rich together. The old man took the deal and pleaded with his daughter to help him and the family. He pleaded with her, saying that he didn’t want to end up like George Lesser. She was the only one who could save the ranch, he told her.

  The wedding was a big affair, attended by many in the community, including people who had helped destroy the Lesser family and any chance of happiness she and Walt might have had.

  Mary was a reluctant lover to Ringer but he always helped her to see the light with a few slaps across the face. He liked it when she fought, so she stopped fighting. When he forced himself on her she would think of Walter and the might-have-beens, as if they were real. Those memories became her reality and she sank deep within them to a place where no one could reach her.

  A year after the wedding she gave birth to a boy. It had been a difficult delivery and she was bedridden for over a month.

  During her convalescence, Mary was surprised to see her husband attending to every matter concerning the child. It was the only time she had ever seen him be kind. The boy meant everything to Ringer and, like everything else in his life, he had big plans for him.

  One morning, Mary Hollins woke and went into the nursery. She picked up her child, kissed his head and then laid him back into his crib. She dressed, walked to the Lesser family cemetery and laid wild flowers on George and Catherine’s graves. Walking over to the large cottonwood tree, she opened the folding chair she had brought from the house. She climbed up, put the rope around her neck and stepped off the chair.

  In he
r pocket was a note. ‘Please bury me next to Catherine and George Lesser.’ Ringer had his wife cremated.

  Walter kissed the photograph, packed the rest of his things and began to make his way home. As the landscape became familiar, Walt settled down and remembered pieces of his past that had been buried. They were good memories that he had worked hard to forget. For so long he had thought he had to forget to survive, but now he understood that the memories had always been there, sustaining the best parts of him as he’d sleepwalked through the last twenty years. Making his way back, he was grateful for the remembering.

  Pulling into Livingston, Walter got some gas and a coffee to go. He walked along the railroad tracks and looked out over the countryside. There were houses and buildings that he had never seen but it didn’t matter. He was home and he would never leave again and the thought of that made him peaceful in a way he hadn’t been for a long time.

  Grabbing his bag from the truck, he walked over to the Murray Hotel and checked in. He took a pill, sat in the chair next to the window and watched the street below. It looked like nothing had changed. He lit a cigarette, lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. He knew this was the last week of his life.

  JAMES RINGER

  The Final Tally

  Over the last few days, Walt drove up and down Crooked Creek Road looking up at the house-filled hills that had once been his home. His home was gone and he knew that whatever he did wouldn’t change that. The people living in those houses had nothing to do with the taking of land and the destruction of his family. They had no connection to the land and moved through the barn and cemetery like they were an amusement park attraction. They knew nothing of the people who had lived, loved and died there. Only one person was left who was guilty.

  The next morning Walt checked out of the motel, rolled a cigarette and got into his truck. On the passenger side were two empty gas cans. He pulled into a filling station outside of town, and the attendant offered Walt a free cup of coffee and talked about how the bird hunting wasn’t the same.

  ‘Few things are,’ said Walt.

  ‘You bet. That’s for sure, mister,’ the man answered.

  Thanking him for the coffee, Walt drove toward the White Sulphur Springs exit. The Absaroka mountains looked beautiful in the clear autumn air.

  At Clyde Park he turned left onto the gravel road toward home. He mentally went through what he was going to do. Turning up the ranch road, he drove about a hundred yards from the house and parked. Walt put the pistol in his pocket and walked over to the passenger side and picked up the gas cans.

  Moving behind a row of trees, he didn’t see anyone outside. Remembering how Lazlo had surprised him, Walt stopped, suspicious of the silence. Finally he walked around the house and set the gas cans beside the back door. He climbed the few steps and tuned the doorknob. It was unlocked. With his hand in his right coat pocket, he stepped slowly into the house. Down the hall he could hear a voice. Slowly, he moved through the kitchen and down the hall to the right. The voice got louder. Walter stepped into the wood-paneled study. It wasn’t as simple and comfortable as his father’s but the stone fireplace was as he remembered it. Behind the oak desk, James Ringer was looking down at a stack of papers and talking to himself. He didn’t look like the same. His gray hair was thin and his left hand trembled.

  Without looking up, Ringer said, ‘I knew you’d come. I always knew.’

  A cold and paralyzing fear moved through Walt’s body. Ringer had been waiting for him.

  ‘You should have learned from our first fight that I don’t leave things to chance.’

  From behind Walt someone spoke. ‘You stupid son of a bitch. Look at me, you sorry piece of shit.’

  Walt saw the smile on Ringer’s face. It was the same smile he’d worn the day he took possession of the ranch. It was the look of a man who couldn’t lose.

  The voice from behind him was louder. ‘I said turn around.’

  Walt turned and recognized Russell Byers.

  ‘Thought I was dead, huh? Did you really think you’d get us, find some kind of justice? Well, did ya? Did you all of a sudden get the guts to come back here and put things right? After all these years you’re still a coward and as stupid as your old man.’

  Walt stood expressionless but his eyes had turned a dead gray. For a passing moment, Byers was taken aback, and afraid.

  With his back turned, Ringer said, ‘Finish it, Russ.’

  Byers smiled and aimed the gun at Walter’s head. A shot rang out and Byers looked surprised as he stared at the smoke coming from a small hole in Walt’s coat. He looked down at the small hole in his shirt and then tasted the blood in his mouth. Walt stared into the eyes of the terrified man as he fell to his knees, then flat.

  Walt turned. Ringer hadn’t watched. He was looking out the window.

  ‘Get rid of him, Russ.’

  Walter stood there staring at Ringer’s back. The silence irritated Ringer.

  Ringer turned and said, ‘Damn it Russ, I said t—’

  His throat tightened when he saw Walt standing there calmly, with Byers’s dead body at his feet. The two men stood there.

  ‘Walt, I’ve got money, lots of money. I’ll give it to you. I can get you a fine ranch. I can get you anything.’

  Walt stood motionless as the man began to sob.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Walt, don’t kill me. What’s the point in that? You’re not a cold-blooded murderer,’ Ringer said, nervously looking at Byers’s dead body.

  Walt pulled the gun from his pocket and aimed it at Ringer’s head.

  ‘Don’t, Walt. God no, don’t,’ Ringer said, crying.

  Walt pulled back the hammer. He was beyond hearing any pleadings. Both men heard someone come into the house. While keeping the gun on Ringer, Walt stepped to the side of the door.

  ‘Dad, I heard something like a shot from the barn.’

  The young man saw his father crying and Byers’s body.

  Then he saw Walt, and the gun.

  ‘What’s going on? What are you doing to my father?’

  Looking at the young man, Walt could see Mary’s eyes. This might have been my boy, he thought.

  ‘I’m sorry, son. This is old business between your dad and me. I’m sorry you had to see this. It’s best you go now.’

  ‘You’re Walter Lesser. Your dad is the man who cheated on his taxes and lost the ranch. What does that have to do with us?’

  Enraged, Walt turned toward Ringer. ‘Goddamn you. Tell him the truth.’

  ‘I, I . . .’

  ‘Tell him, I said.’

  Ringer told the boy everything, how he cheated to get the ranch and how Catherine and George Lesser had died. Walt made him tell the boy about Mary, what he had done to her and how she died. The boy, in tears, stared at his father as Ringer’s eyes betrayed every dark truth.

  ‘My God, Dad. What have you done? What about Mom? How could you do that to Mom?’

  Walt felt sick. He never wanted to bring pain to this boy. Everyone was broken now. Walter looked at Ringer and lowered his gun, realizing that the truth had done more damage than any bullet ever could.

  ‘Son, take your father and get the hell out of here.’

  Sobbing, Ringer leaned on his son and walked out of the study and then outside. Walt went to the back door and retrieved the gas cans. He walked through the familiar rooms, dousing them with fuel. Though the house had been redone, he could feel the memories. In the kitchen he could see himself hugging his mother, picking her up and twirling around.

  ‘Walter, Walt, put me down, you silly boy.’

  He remembered the smell of Ivory soap on her skin.

  In the study his father was beating him at chess, giving him that cagey smile that he used to make Walt laugh and break his concentration.

  He left the gas cans in the study and walked back into the kitchen. He looked at the place where the long dining table had been. Everyone he had loved was sitting there. The ghosts that had brought him here were
smiling. He pulled the stick from his pocket. The ghosts of those he had loved vanished as he tossed the lit match to the floor.

  As the ranch house burned, Walter Lesser looked out of the kitchen window to the mountains in the distance, and remembered how it used to be.

  PART TWO:

  Cemetery Trees

  When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.

  RALPH ELLISON, Invisible Man

  Hal Gustafson sat on a stool at the Wilsall bar trying to get drunk when men started yelling ‘FIRE.’

  ‘It looks like it’s coming from the Ringer place,’ one of them said.

  ‘The Lesser place,’ Hal snapped.

  ‘What? What did you say, Hal?’ asked the man.

  ‘I said, the Lesser place. It’s always been the Lesser place.’

  ‘Well, Hal, sure, it used to be the Lesser place,’ said the man nervously.

  Hal Gustafson was a good man, but not when he drank. Growing up in Park County, people remembered the nice young man who became a dangerous one after a few drinks. Hal knew it too and that’s why he hadn’t had a drink in nine years, until today. People noticed and took care.

  Hal was a volunteer fireman, so everyone was surprised when he just sat there ordering another drink. He didn’t seem like the man they knew. The person who had returned home was a respected man who shelved his dreams to take care of his parents.

  ‘Give me another damn drink,’ he mumbled. ‘Two fingers this time.’

  ‘Hal, ain’t you gonna do nothin?’ asked John Dolan, a rancher.

  ‘No. Just let the goddamn place burn,’ Hal said, before downing another whisky.

  ‘Hal, that’s it. I’m cutting you off. You’ve had enough,’ said Bill Havers, the bartender and Hal’s childhood friend.

  ‘You’re right, Bill, I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of this town and all the good and decent people. Good people, my ass. Where? Where are all the good people? The lies, Bill. Goddammit. Don’t you get tired of all the lies?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, and what does it have to do with the damn fire?’