Blue Lonesome

by Bill Pronzini

  The postshooting stillness remained unbroken.

  Several more deep breaths and then he crawled over against the wall, to where a missing piece of board provided an eyehole. His thin imagination, heightened and wild-running, led him to expect more than one armed man. What he saw made him suck in another ragged breath, as much in confusion as in relief. A woman, alone, walking alongside the house toward the barn. Short, wiry, youngish, wearing a wide-brimmed cowboy hat, khaki clothing, scuffed boots. Carrying a rifle waist high, at the ready, with the ease and competence of long familiarity. Nothing else moved anywhere except for watery sun-shimmers.

  He remembered the car engine he’d heard. It hadn’t been over on the valley road; the car must have been on the access track by then—her coming here. He watched her walk slowly to within thirty yards of the barn. When she stopped she shifted the rifle slightly and stood in an attitude of listening. Then—

  “Hey! You in there! Come on out where I can see you.”

  Hard, angry voice. A woman used to giving orders and having them obeyed. He stayed where he was, watching her.

  “I’m not gonna shoot you. If I’d wanted that, I’d’ve put the first round into your hide instead of the wall.”

  He didn’t move.

  “Better get your ass out here if you don’t want any more trouble. It’s too damn hot for a Mexican standoff.”

  Still he didn’t move.

  “I’ll give you two more minutes. Then I’ll disable your car and go for the sheriff, and by God I’ll press charges against you for sure.”

  Now he was convinced. He got shakily to his feet. His respiration and pulse beat had returned to normal; the fear-grip had left him and his mind was clear again. He stood for a moment to compose himself. Then he limped around the door and out into the yard.

  “About time,” the woman said.

  He shaded his eyes with one hand so he could see her better. “Why’d you shoot at me like that? You scared the hell out of me.”

  “That was the idea. Can’t you read, mister?”

  “Read?”

  “Sign on the gate, big as life. No Trespassing. Keep Out.”

  “I saw the sign.”

  “But you came down anyway. Where’s your camera?”

  “My … what?”

  “Camera. Tourist, right? Looking for something real quaint to take pictures of?”

  “No.” He reached down to rub his sore knee. “I’m not a tourist.”

  “Then what in the hell’re you doing here?”

  “I came … I wanted to see this place. Anna Roebuck’s place.”

  The woman scowled and advanced a few paces. The muzzle of her rifle remained centered on his chest. She appeared to be in her early thirties, cured by sun and wind to a creased-leather brown; too thin, all bone and sinew. But not unattractive and not dried out. Juices flowed hot in her—that was plain enough. A woman of mood and temper and passion.

  “What do you know about Anna Roebuck?”

  “Not very much. I didn’t have the chance to know her well.”

  “Where’d you meet her? You’re not from around here.”

  “San Francisco.”

  “When?”

  “Not long ago. A few months.”

  She stood stiff-backed and flat-footed now. A film of moisture like a pale mustache had grown on her wide upper lip. “What’s your name? Who are you?”

  “Jim Messenger. I’m not anybody, just a man who’s interested in Anna and her past.”

  “Everybody’s somebody.”

  “And you? Who’re you?”

  “That any of your business?”

  “Are you Dacy Burgess?”

  “She sent you here, is that it?”

  “Please,” Messenger said. “Are you Anna’s sister?”

  “All right, I’m Dacy Burgess. Anna send you or didn’t she?”

  “No, no one sent me. She’s … I’m sorry, I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but Anna’s dead.”

  “… Say that again.”

  “Your sister’s dead, Mrs. Burgess. She committed suicide three weeks ago in San Francisco.”

  She stared at him without moving. There was no expression on her brown face; no hint of what she was thinking or feeling. All she did was stand there, still and straight, her mouth parted slightly and the film of sweat beginning to break and slide down around its corners from her upper lip.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Burgess, truly sorry. I—”

  She turned on her heel, in a kind of jerky about-face, and hurried away from him.

  He was startled enough to stand rooted, with more words caught tight in his throat. She didn’t look back; walked faster, until she was almost running as she passed the patch of prickly pear. His motor responses finally sent him in pursuit. He tried to run himself, but his sore knee twinged and threatened to buckle the leg on him; all he could manage was an awkward hobble. By the time he came around to the front of the house she was all the way uphill at the gate.

  “Mrs. Burgess, wait. …”

  If she heard him, she gave no indication of it. She climbed quickly over the gate, disappeared from his view until he’d hobbled to the top of the rise. Parked fifty yards downhill was an open-sided, canvas-topped Jeep; she was just sliding in under the wheel. The engine roared, hammering echoes across the desert wastes. She reversed into a skidding half-turn that boiled up dust like pallid smoke. He heard the gears grind as she shifted into low, then the Jeep bucked ahead and was gone into an expanding funnel of dust.

  He didn’t think about pursuing her; he just did it. The powdery grit was like an abrasive in his already dry mouth and throat, making him cough steadily as he started the Subaru and turned it around. The hanging dust half obscured the track’s surface all the way to the valley road. He couldn’t do much more than crawl along. From the intersection the Jeep’s dust trail extended in caterpillarlike segments west toward the burnt hills. Heading home, he thought.

  It took him more than ten minutes to reach her ranch, which put him at least that many minutes behind her. The fine white powder was settling in the ranch yard and he had a good look at the place as he drove through the open gate, past another warning sign: PRIVATE PROPERTY. KEEP OUT.

  The Burgess ranch was a little larger than Anna’s, its buildings set against the fold where two naked hills came together. The spring that had dictated its location must have been a fairly large one; there were twice as many trees here, cottonwoods and tamarisks, and grassy spots and a vegetable garden that looked as if it got enough water. The house was of wood and native stone, with a broad chimney at one end and a covered porch along the front. The sun struck fiery glints from a squat silver Airstream house trailer set on blocks at an angle between the house and barn—an arrangement, planned or accidental, like the three points in an isosceles triangle. In a pole-fence corral adjacent to the barn, three lean horses stood languidly in the barn’s shade. Beyond was a pasture that contained cattle pens. And behind the house, chickens scratched inside a coop’s wire run and more sun glints came off windmill blades and a galvanized water tank like the one on Anna’s property.

  The fences and the buildings were all well made, had once been well cared for, but there were signs of recent erosion and neglect: sagging fence poles that needed replacing, a broken windmill blade, a cracked and tape-repaired house window. Reverend Hoxie: She and her son are alone out there now. Too large a place for the two of them to manage by themselves, really, but they can’t afford a full-time hired man anymore. He wondered if the former hired man, Jaime Orozco, had lived in the Airstream trailer. He couldn’t see any reason for its being here except as a kind of one-man bunkhouse.

  The Jeep was parked in front of the house. Messenger drew up alongside it. There was no one in sight, but he could hear a dog barking furiously inside the house. He started past the Jeep to the porch.

  “That’s far enough, mister. Hold it right there.”

  Male voice, young, and as hard as Dacy Burgess’s
. Messenger stopped, turned slowly toward the sound of it. A gangly kid of fourteen or fifteen, sweat-stained cowboy hat shoved back on his head to reveal a mop of sun-bleached brown hair, had come out at the far corner. The rifle in his hands was similar to the one the woman had carried, and he held it with the same competence and authority. The sight of it and its aimed bore didn’t bother Messenger as much as it would have before the shooting at Anna’s ranch. He thought: Gun-happy people. Then he thought: No, that’s not fair. If I lived alone in a place like this, and had the recent history they’ve had, I’d be leery of strangers and keep a weapon handy, too.

  The kid said challengingly, “What’s the idea chasing after my ma?”

  “I wasn’t chasing her. Just followed her home, that’s all.”

  “What happened? What’d you do to her?”

  “Nothing. Didn’t she tell you about it?”

  “Didn’t tell me anything. Just drove in all lathered and went inside.” His mouth worked as if he were about to spit. Instead he said, as though explaining something, “She’s never lathered.”

  “I gave her some bad news.”

  “Yeah? What bad news?”

  “Lonnie,” Dacy Burgess said, “leave him be. I’ll handle this.”

  She had come out onto the porch, was standing there in that ramrod posture. Her hands were empty now. She’d shed the broad-brimmed Stetson too; her hair, short and windblown from the open Jeep, a thick lock jutting like a topknot, was the same sunbleached brown as her son’s.

  The boy, Lonnie, said, “Handle what? What’s going on?”

  “Your aunt Anna’s dead.”

  “What?” Nothing changed in his face. “When?”

  “Three weeks ago in San Francisco.”

  “So that’s it.” Then, flatly, “Well, good.”

  “Lonnie. She killed herself.”

  “Did she? Who’s this guy?”

  “Never mind that now. Go on back to your chores.”

  “You okay with him?”

  “Yes. Go on now, I mean it. We’ll talk later.”

  No argument from Lonnie. He lowered his rifle, slow-walked toward the barn without looking back.

  Messenger said, “He must really hate her.”

  “Well, he’s got cause. He loved his cousin.”

  “Tess.”

  “That’s right, Tess.”

  “Do you hate Anna, too? Even now?”

  “No. Maybe I should, but I don’t.” She ran a hand through her hair; the topknot bounced back up again. “I shouldn’t have run off on you that way.”

  “It’s all right. I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “The news hit you pretty hard and you needed time to recover.” Time to cry a little, too: Her eyes looked red and a little puffy, even though she’d washed her face afterward. “You’ll want to hear the rest of it. That’s why I followed you.”

  “Might as well know. Come inside.”

  She led him into the house. On one side of a narrow hallway was the kitchen, on the other a living room with plain furniture, Indian rugs, books on homemade shelves; no television set, but a home computer on a desk. The computer seemed out of place, anachronistic in these surroundings, though of course it wasn’t. He wondered what she used it for.

  It was not quite as hot in here; a noisy rooftop swamp cooler stirred the air sluggishly. Over the rattle of the cooler, the dog’s frantic barks seemed to thud like solid things hurled against a wall. “That’s Buster,” she said. “Doesn’t like strangers any more than we do. Go on into the kitchen. I’ll settle him down.”

  The kitchen had an old-fashioned look that appealed to him, dominated by a huge black cast-iron cookstove—the kind that sold in Bay Area antique stores for upward of two thousand dollars. A bulky refrigerator-freezer was the only newish appliance. A dinette table sat next to the window with the cracked pane; as he drew out one of the three chairs, the dog’s barking cut off into a shrill whine and then silence. Half a minute later Dacy Burgess reappeared.

  She took glasses from a cupboard, a jug of ice water from the refrigerator, and brought them to the table. “You look dry,” she said. “Help yourself.”

  “Thanks.”

  She sat down and watched him drink thirstily, not touching the glass he’d poured for her. Up close and without the broad-brimmed Stetson, she bore a faint resemblance to Anna. The same facial bone structure, the same pale gray eyes. But her eyes were full of life, even dulled as they were at the moment. He wondered if Anna had been a woman of mood and temper and passion once too, long ago, and decided that she probably had.

  “I’m sorry about your sister, Mrs. Burgess.”

  “You already said that.”

  “I want you to know I mean it. Really very sorry.”

  “So am I. Now Lonnie’s all the family I’ve got left.”

  “What about your husband?”

  “I don’t have a husband.”

  “Lonnie’s father …?”

  “Him. Long gone, and good riddance.”

  He started to say, “I’m sorry,” again, bit the words back. Meaningless. And she wouldn’t want to hear them anyway.

  She pinched a pack of Marlboros from her shirt pocket, lit one and coughed out smoke, grimacing. “Shit, that tastes awful. I’ve been trying to quit but it’s not easy. Not when you’ve had the habit more than half your life.”

  “No, I guess it isn’t.”

  “Don’t smoke yourself?”

  “Never have, no.”

  “Smart,” she said. Then, “What was Anna to you?”

  “Somebody I wish I’d known better.”

  “She didn’t make friends easy.”

  “We weren’t friends.”

  “Bed partners?”

  “Not that, either.”

  “No, you’re not her type. Only man she ever wanted was that son of a bitch she married.”

  “Dave Roebuck.”

  “God’s gift to women, to hear him brag on it. We sure could pick ’em, Anna and me.” She sucked in more smoke, made another face and exhaled gustily. “So you met her in Frisco.”

  “We lived in the same neighborhood. Ate every night at the same café.”

  “Surprised me at first, to hear that’s where she went.”

  “You had no idea she was living there?”

  “Before you told me? No. Not a word from her since she up and left here. I figured she’d gone somewhere in Nevada or Arizona. Born and raised in the desert—desert rats usually stay close to home. More I think about it, though … makes some sense that she’d head for a city. Get as far away from here as she could, in miles and surroundings both. Frisco was the only city she ever visited that she liked.”

  That isn’t why she went there, Messenger thought abruptly, with an insight so clear he had no doubt it was true. Contraction of self in the city: easier there to wrap loneliness and despair and resignation tight around yourself, weave a smothering cocoon of it all; easier then to put an end to the pain. Anna either thought that out or intuited it at some level. In any case, she went to San Francisco to die.

  “Just how well did you know her, Jim?”

  “Hardly at all,” he admitted. “I tried to talk to her once but she didn’t want any part of me or anyone else. She’d cut herself off from all human contact.”

  “Never even had a conversation with her?” Dacy Burgess squinted at him one-eyed; smoke from her cigarette had closed the other one. “Then why’d you come here? Beulah’s a long drive from Frisco.”

  “It’s on the way to Las Vegas. I’m on vacation and I thought … I wanted to find out about her, her real name, some idea of why she took her own life. And if she had any relatives.”

  “What do you mean, her real name?”

  “She was living under an assumed name. She died alone, without leaving a note, no explanation of any kind, and the police weren’t able to trace her. That’s why you weren’t notified of her death.”

  “How’d you trace her, if
the police couldn’t?”

  “There was a book with a Beulah Library stamp among her effects.”

  “Yeah? How’d you get a look at her effects?”

  “If I tell you that you’ll think I’m crazy.”

  “I about half think it already.”

  “She fascinated me,” he said, “from the first day I laid eyes on her. I’ve never seen anyone sadder or lonelier.”

  “And you just had to find out what made her that way.”

  “Yes. Her death bothered me more than it should have. I talked to the police and then I went to see the manager of the building where she lived. Her belongings are stored there. I … well, I paid to look at them.”

  “Paid?”

  “I told you you’d think I’m crazy.”

  She studied him for a time. “Not married, right? No kids, no woman?”

  “What does that have to—”

  “Takes lonely to know lonely,” she said.

  Yes it does, he thought. And we’re both sitting here looking at loneliness, aren’t we? Anna’s sister in more ways than one.

  “Well, now you know the truth about her,” Dacy Burgess said. “Some of it, anyhow. People in town told you all about the killings, right? Must have, for you to find your way to what’s left of her ranch.”

  “I went to see Reverend Hoxie at the Church of the Holy Name.”

  A mirthless smile bent her mouth at the corners. “The good Reverend. He doesn’t know the whole story. Good thing for him he walks around with blinders on half the time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You meet his daughter? Maria?”

  “Yes, I met her.”

  “Pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is. …”

  “Dave Roebuck thought so, too.”

  “Oh,” Messenger said. “So it was like that.”

  “Just like that. Maria Hoxie and half a dozen others I could name. That bastard would’ve humped a snake if somebody’d held its ears. Can’t blame Anna for blowing his head off with a load of number two shot. Not him, you can’t blame her for. Tess is another story. What she did to Tess … she’ll burn in hell for that.”

  “You’re convinced she was guilty of both murders?”

  “Guilty as sin.”