Big Sky River

by Linda Lael Miller

  An odd combination of irritation and pity rose up in Tara as she pictured Boone inside that run-down trailer, doing whatever he did when he was at home. Most likely, he lounged in a beat-up recliner patched with duct tape, consumed copious amounts of off-brand beer and watched marathons of Pimp My Ride and Pawn Stars on a TV the size of a picture window.

  While all these thoughts were unfolding in Tara’s mind—and she wasn’t particularly proud to be thinking them, since they were undeniably bitchy—Lucy lingered in the kitchen instead of attempting to join the trio of chattering stargazers outside, standing next to Griffin’s chair and resting her furry muzzle on his lap, her glowing brown eyes rolled up toward him, beatific as a saint’s, as he petted her silken head.

  “Dad said we could maybe get a dog,” Griffin told Tara, his tone as wistful as his expression. “Sometime. When the dust settles.”

  “When the dust settles?” Tara echoed, confused.

  Griffin flashed her a grin, dazzlingly reminiscent of his mostly dour but sometimes-cocky father. In a few years, when Griffin Taylor was approaching manhood, that grin would become a lethal weapon. There should be some kind of advance-warning system in place, for the sake of unsuspecting girls everywhere.

  “I guess he means when Fletch and me get used to living with him instead of with Aunt Molly and Uncle Bob,” the future heartbreaker explained manfully. He seemed so grown-up that it was easy to forget he was only seven. “I don’t mind it so much, because I know Dad’s doing the best he can, but my little brother just wants everything to be like it was before.” A look of sadness passed over Griffin’s face then, bringing the lump back to Tara’s throat and the sting back to her eyes. “Maybe Fletch thinks if he just pees the bed enough times, and acts like a brat, Dad will get fed up with raising kids and send us back to Missoula for good.”

  Once again, Tara yearned to take this brave child into her arms and comfort him somehow, but the connection between them seemed as delicate as a single strand of a spider’s web, and she couldn’t risk breaking it. So she sat very still in her chair, with her hands clasped together in her lap, where they were out of Griffin’s sight because of the tabletop.

  “Is that what you want, too?” she asked carefully, quietly. “For your dad to send you back to your aunt and uncle, I mean?”

  Griffin pondered the question. “I miss Aunt Molly and Uncle Bob and our cousins,” he finally replied, having weighed the matter in his sharp little mind. “But Dad—well, he’s our dad—and I think we ought to be with him.”

  Tara didn’t know how to answer, so it was a good thing the twins and little Fletcher chose that instant to come clattering back inside. Spotting the plate of cookies on the table, all three of them dive-bombed it.

  “There are bajillions of stars out,” Fletcher said excitedly, pointing his cookie-free hand toward the ceiling. Maybe he was a budding astronomer—like his brother, he was smart for his age.

  “At least that many,” Tara agreed.

  “I’d like to sleep outside sometime,” the little boy continued, with his mouth partially full of snickerdoodle and crumbs on his chin. “That way, I could count stars all night long.”

  Tara smiled at the image. “That sounds lovely.”

  “Except for the mosquitoes,” Elle said, with a little shudder, scratching at a bite on her left forearm.

  “And the bears,” Erin added, eyes big with delicious dread.

  “And you only know how to count to ten anyhow,” Griffin reminded his brother.

  The wall phone rang then, a sudden, shrill jangle that startled Tara. Elle, being closest, reached for the receiver and said hello.

  “It’s for you,” she said, after listening for a few seconds, seeming mildly disappointed as she held out the phone to Tara, stretching the cord as far as it would reach. “The sheriff.”

  She must have hoped James would call, which, of course, he hadn’t, jerk that he was.

  Tara took the receiver. “This is Tara,” she said.

  “Boone Taylor,” was the gruff reply. “We’re wrapping things up here—it’s all pretty cut-and-dried—so I’ll be stopping by your place to get the boys within an hour or so, if that’s not too long.”

  “They’ll be ready when you get here,” she replied. There was so much more she wanted to say, wanted to ask, but she’d be prying if she did and she didn’t have that right and she didn’t have the words ready anyhow. “Are you—is everything—all right?”

  “As ‘all right’ as things can be, under the circumstances,” Boone answered flatly, but without sarcasm. Then, after a brief goodbye, he ended the call.

  Elle took back the receiver and studied it quizzically before returning it to its hook on the wall unit. “Is this an actual antique?” she asked. “Or is it just vintage?”

  Tara chuckled. Shook her head. “Not quite either one,” she answered. In Dr. Lennox’s New York penthouse, the phones were all wireless, of course, sans cords and completely portable. She turned back to the Taylor boys. “Your dad will be here to pick you up in a little while,” she told them.

  Fletcher didn’t react to the announcement in any overt way, but Griffin was clearly glad they’d be going home instead of spending the night. No sleeping in borrowed T-shirts, no danger that his little brother would embarrass himself by wetting the bed.

  “Come on,” Erin said, producing her state-of-the-art cell phone from the pocket of her pajama bottoms and joggling it from side to side a couple times. “I’ll show you how to play ‘Angry Birds’ while we wait.”

  “I know how to play ‘Angry Birds,’” Griffin told her, still touchy, but Fletcher was already across the room, stretching out a hand for Erin’s phone.

  “Show me,” he cried eagerly.

  Elle allowed Fletcher to take the phone, but her gaze was fixed on Griffin. “Are you still bent out of shape because I called your house a trailer this afternoon?” she asked, in good-natured challenge. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything like that.”

  Griffin glowered at her, but a reluctant twinkle sparked in his eyes.

  Breezily, Elle pulled back a chair at the table, dropped down onto the seat, and started showing an already-enthralled Fletcher the rudiments of the popular video game.

  “Dad’s going to build a real house,” Griffin told Erin, since both of them were on the sidelines, his tone marginally friendlier than his expression but still taut. “I saw the plans. He keeps them in a drawer in the cabinet under the TV.”

  “Awesome,” Erin said sincerely, producing her own cell phone from the pocket of her pajama bottoms. “Think you can beat me at Mario?”

  Griffin beamed, sun-parting-the-clouds style. “Yeah,” he said.

  “Bring it,” Erin replied, as they joined Elle and Fletcher at the table.

  Tara, feeling a little restless, brewed herself a cup of herbal tea and stood leaning against the kitchen counter while she watched the kids manipulate those smartphones with the skill of stealth pilots at the controls of a fighter jet.

  Boone would be there soon, and her feelings about that were mixed. On the one hand, her nerves buzzed with low-grade anxiety.

  On the other, she couldn’t wait.

  * * *

  THE LITTLE DOG whimpered pitifully when the EMTs finally loaded the shell of Zeb Winchell onto a gurney, inside a body bag and zipped him in, ready to roll him outside to the ambulance for the short trip to the Sunrise-Sunset Funeral Home, which doubled as the county morgue when necessary.

  “Want me to drop the mutt off at Martie Wren’s place?” McQuillan asked, with an annoyed glance at Scamp. Martie ran Paws for Reflection, the local animal shelter, and she had a heart as big as the Montana sky. By now, she was probably in bed, deep in the sleep of the kind and the just.

  Irritated anew, Boone shook his head, stooped to pick up the dog when it tried to scrabble after the departing gurney. The little critter felt light against his chest, trembling and squirming and making a mournful sound, low in its thro
at.

  “No,” he said. “I’ll see that he’s taken care of.”

  McQuillan remained unfazed, both by the dog’s obvious sorrow and Zeb Winchell’s lonely demise. He lifted one skinny shoulder in a shrug and then straightened, finally dropping the cell phone he was always fiddling with into the pocket of his uniform shirt.

  Silently, Boone wished being an asshole was grounds for dismissal—he’d have fired the deputy on day one if it had been.

  “Be sure the report is on my desk when I get to work tomorrow morning,” he said, heading for the door with Scamp still wiggling under his arm.

  McQuillan responded with an insolent salute and a smirk and followed Boone outside, where the neighbors were waiting, watching the ambulance pull slowly away, taillights red in the humid darkness of a summer night.

  Boone paused to address the gathering, while McQuillan sauntered on through the gate, climbed into his squad car and drove off.

  “Zeb’s passed on,” Boone told the neighbors, quite unnecessarily. “Probably a heart attack. We’ll know more tomorrow.”

  People in bathrobes shook their heads in collective sadness, murmuring to each other—it’s a shame...you just never know...poor little dog, left all alone—

  Gradually, they dispersed, went back to their nearby houses, sorry for what had happened to Zeb and yet, in that perverse way common to all humans, guiltily glad that death had knocked at someone else’s door instead of their own.

  Reaching his cruiser, with its large gold sheriff’s insignia painted on both doors, Boone stepped around to the passenger side and carefully set Scamp on the seat.

  “Stay,” he said very quietly, without a hope in hell that the dog would obey. Scamp was still jittery and fretful, but he was showing signs of exhaustion, too.

  How long had the poor little critter sat there, beside Zeb’s dead body, willing him to wake up? When had he eaten, or had water to drink?

  The images saddened Boone so deeply that, if he hadn’t been going back to Tara’s place for his boys, and if Scamp hadn’t been in the car, he might have suspended his personal moratorium on hard liquor and stopped by the Boot Scoot Tavern for a stiff drink.

  As he drove away from the curb, Scamp stood up in the seat, paws scratching at the window glass, and whimpered desperately.

  “There, now,” Boone said. “Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Was it? he wondered grimly.

  Bob, his brother-in-law, his good friend, his sister’s beloved husband, the father of three kids and as good as one to Boone’s own two sons, was recovering from serious surgery, and in a lot of pain.

  Griffin and Fletcher were like the proverbial fish out of water, far from the only home they really knew, living with a virtual stranger—him—in what amounted to a giant metal box, rusting at the corners, nearly swallowed up by overgrown grass.

  And as for Boone himself? Well, he was in way over his head. Love those boys though he did, he knew jack-shit about raising children, especially when they were trying to cope with an upheaval in their lives. It would be a wonder if he didn’t scar them for life, just by being his ordinary old lunkhead of a self.

  Scamp stopped whimpering as they passed the city limits and settled down on the seat, muzzle on paws, with a desolate little sigh and one more shiver.

  “Sometimes things just suck, and that’s all there is to it,” Boone told the dog.

  Scamp sighed again, more deeply this time, as if in agreement.

  A few minutes later, they pulled into Tara Kendall’s driveway. The chickens were asleep in their rickety coop by then, so there was no wing-flapping uproar to announce their arrival.

  Tara stepped out of the house as Boone was exiting the cruiser, putting on his hat, adjusting the brim out of nervousness, rather than vanity. Still in her sundress, she was hugging herself with both arms, though the night was warm.

  She looked so pretty, even in a frazzled and tired state, that Boone felt something shift inside him. He stopped where he was, in the middle of her front walk, and took off his hat.

  “I appreciate your looking after my boys the way you did,” he said.

  “No problem,” she replied. Bathed in porch light, she bit her lower lip. “I was wondering if we could—” she went on tentatively, before stopping again “—if we could talk sometime.”

  Boone watched her, curious and a little unsettled. Whatever she wanted to talk about, it wasn’t going to be good. Probably, she meant to rag on him about the sorry condition of his property or offer him some salient suggestions on the art of child-rearing. “Whenever you say,” he told her, already dreading the conversation. It wasn’t as if he didn’t realize he lived in a junkyard, after all. He knew what needed to be done over at his place, especially now that his sons were living with him, but where was he supposed to get the time? He’d lost a couple deputies to budget cuts, and he often worked twelve-hour days.

  Griffin and Fletcher slipped through the open doorway behind Tara just then, stood one on either side of her, like they were fixing to grab at her skirt and beg to stay right there on the chicken farm. Don’t make us go home with him, Boone imagined they were thinking.

  But Fletcher was peering past him, toward the cruiser. “What’s that?” he said.

  Boone glanced back over one shoulder and saw Scamp with his front feet up on the dashboard, looking through the window.

  “It’s a dog!” Griffin shouted, before his dad could say a word. He and Fletcher both bounded down the porch steps and blew past Boone like he was standing still. Which, of course, he was.

  Tara smiled a little, as though she thought there might be some hope for him as a parent, after all, however vague and flimsy.

  Boone simply nodded his thanks and his farewell and turned to follow his kids back to the car.

  How was he supposed to tell them that he’d only brought Scamp home to keep from waking up the nice lady who ran the animal shelter in town? That even if they had been ready to take in a pet, there was still a pretty good chance that Zeb’s daughter would come back to Parable and claim her dad’s dog?

  Griffin and Fletcher had the passenger-side door open, admiring Scamp and fairly exuding eager goodwill.

  Scamp, for his part, eyed them warily, hunkered down on the seat.

  “Hop in,” Boone told the kids, anxious to get going. “It’s late.”

  Remarkably, they obeyed without sharing an opinion, shutting the car door, scrambling into their safety seats in the back behind the folding grill.

  Boone made sure they were both fastened in, glanced back toward Tara’s house, and saw that she was still standing on the porch, watching them.

  She gave a little wave goodbye as Boone settled behind the wheel, and he waved back.

  “Where did you get the dog?” Griffin piped up from the back.

  “What’s his name?” Fletcher said at the same time.

  “His name is Scamp,” Boone said, turning around the cruiser in the dirt driveway. “He ran into some hard luck recently, and he needed a place to spend the night.”

  A brief but weighty silence followed.

  “You mean we don’t get to keep him?” Griffin asked, his voice quavering and small. “He’s not our dog?”

  Boone’s heart staggered inside his chest. Ready or not, Scamp was in their lives and hell or high water, he decided suddenly, the dog was going to stay. If he had to buy the critter from Zeb’s daughter, he would.

  “He’s your dog,” Boone said.

  “Really?” Griffin hardly dared hope it was true, that much was clear from his tone.

  “Could we change his name to Ranger?” Fletcher inquired brightly.

  Boone had to chuckle then, and damned if it didn’t feel good. “I think he answers to Scamp,” he explained, keeping his gaze on the road except for a brief glance at the rearview mirror. “Might be confusing to him if you start calling him something else at this late date. And besides—he’s pretty sad just now.”

  “Because his
person died?” Griffin proffered.

  Boone’s throat tightened. “Yeah,” he said with a sidelong look at the dog. Scamp lay curled up on the cruiser seat and every few seconds, a little shudder went through him, like he might be crying on the inside. “I reckon Scamp’s probably scared, too.”

  Like you guys are, Boone thought glumly.

  The yard was dark when they pulled in—again, Boone wished he’d left a light on inside the double-wide earlier, but he’d been in too much of a hurry at the time, too stressed out.

  His place wasn’t a complete write-off, though, he thought. Night softened the edges of the trailer with shadows and hid the rust, pines and a few oaks and maples whispered in the breeze, as if they were sharing tree secrets, and moonlight shimmered on the sliver of water between his place and Tara’s. Her windows glowed in the near distance like a warm smile.

  “What are we going to feed Scamp?” Griffin asked. The instant they’d stopped, he got out of the car, opened the door opposite Boone, and gathered the dog gently in both arms.

  “Dog food, I guess,” Boone replied. “We’ll pick some up tomorrow, in town.”

  Huddled against Griffin’s narrow chest, the dog stopped trembling, at least for the moment, and ventured to lick the boy’s cheek once.

  Fletcher was out of his car seat before Boone could help him, running around the cruiser to stand at Griffin’s elbow. “Do you think he’s hungry now, Dad?” Fletcher fretted.

  Dad. Where had that come from? Griffin called him that, but Fletcher didn’t.

  Boone had to clear his throat before he could get a reply out. “I don’t guess he is, Fletch,” he said, heading for the double-wide, the kids and the dog flanking him. “Old Scamp’s kind of in shock, I think.”

  He mounted the porch steps, unlocked the door, reached inside to switch on the kitchen light so Griffin and Fletcher wouldn’t have to stumble around in the dark.

  Griffin carefully set down the dog on the worn linoleum and regarded him with concern. “How old do you think he is?” he asked Boone.

  Boone got a bowl out of the cupboard, filled it at the faucet and placed it on the floor for Scamp. “I’d guess he’s pretty young,” he answered. “Zeb didn’t have him all that long, as I recall.”