The Prairie Chicken Kill

by Bill Crider

  I got out, too, and stood there in the declining afternoon. The only sounds were from a lawn mower a couple of houses away and a couple of gulls that were circling overhead. The sun was beginning to sink across the bay. With the clouds over in that direction shading from gray to indigo, we were in for a spectacular sunset. I took a deep breath of the Gulf air, inhaling the scent of dead crabs, drying seaweed, salt, and sand.

  "You gonna stand there and stare around, or are we going in?" Dino asked.

  "What? You don't like it out here?"

  He didn't have anything to say about that, either. He started up the stairway on the shady side of the house, and I followed along behind him.

  "How long has it been since you saw Garrison?" I asked.

  Dino stopped and turned back to look at me. "Nine or ten years, I guess. I do my business on the phone when I can. Why?"

  "I just wondered if he was still 'most handsome.'"

  "He never would've got that if the class had voted after you broke his nose."

  "You think he remembers that?"

  "I do," Dino said. "And you do. And it wasn't us who got our noses broken."

  "So you're telling me you think he remembers?"

  "I'm just saying that I remember. I don't know about Lance. Anyway, even if he remembers, he wants to see you. He asked me to bring you as a favor, so I'm bringing you. Are you getting cold feet?"

  I wasn't, but I wasn't exactly eager to see Lance, either. He, Dino, and I had played on the high school football team together a long time ago, and Lance had had as much talent and ability as either of us, which, not to be overly modest about it, was saying a lot; Dino and I were both pretty good.

  But Lance, who was wide receiver, dogged it on the field during practice, and he sometimes dogged it during a game. He was always worried that he might get hurt if he went all out, and there was a rumor that he was worried about more than getting hurt -- he was afraid that he might get hit in the face and mess up his looks.

  I confronted him in the dressing room after one particularly close game in which I thought he'd cost us a touchdown, and not so incidentally a win, because he chose to fall down rather than try to run over a free safety whom he out-weighed by twenty pounds.

  I don't remember what I said, or what he answered, but I know that we were both suddenly angry in the way that seventeen-year-olds sometimes get angry, our faces red and the adrenaline surging through us like electric shocks.

  He hit me first, though he later claimed that he hadn't. It didn't do him any good to make the claim, since everyone on the team was watching and saw him swing a looping right that slid off my cheekbone and opened a thin red cut.

  I didn't wait for him to swing again. I punched him with a straight right to the nose and felt the satisfying crunch of cartilage giving way.

  He hit the floor like he'd hit the field avoiding the safety, and that was the end of the fight. It was also the end of Lance Garrison's football career. The trainer took him to the hospital, and he turned in his equipment the next Monday afternoon after the team had taken the field to practice. He never played another down.

  I thought about my knee and how I'd ruined it later on in college. I would have been a lot smarter if I'd never played another down of football, either, but in those days I thought there was some kind of magic about me that would keep the injuries away forever.

  I'd been wrong, of course.

  "Well?" Dino said. "Are we going in, or are we going to stand out here on the stairs all day? You decide. It's you he wants to see."

  "He didn't tell you why, huh?"

  Dino gave an exaggerated sigh and looked up at the sky. The seagulls were still circling.

  "Maybe he wants to break your nose," he said finally. "But it'll be dark in an hour or so. If we stay out here till then, we might be able to sneak away without him seeing us."

  "Sarcasm doesn't become you," I said.

  "Yeah. And neither does standing out here on the stairs all day."

  "All right. Let's go see what Lance wants with me."

  "Yeah," Dino said. "How bad can it be?"

  "Probably no worse than a visit to the dentist," I said.

  As it turned out in the long run, I was wrong about that, too.

  Three

  Lance came to the door himself. I'd hoped that he'd look old and tired, that his face would have sagged and his hair fallen out.

  Much to my disappointment, however, he looked pretty much the way he had in high school. There was a little gray in his hair, but there was still a lot of it. It was expensively cut, and most of it was still jet black, like his eyes. There were a few wrinkles in his forehead, but his chin still might have been chiseled from granite, and his mouth still had that little twist that was almost a sneer. He'd had his nose fixed; it was narrow and straight, and if I hadn't broken it myself, I would never have guessed that it had ever been less than perfect.

  He was wearing Birkenstocks, a pair of tan cotton slacks with even fewer wrinkles than his face, and a navy blue sport shirt with no pockets. There was a colorful little polo player stitched on the left side of the shirt where a pocket should have been.

  "Truman Smith," he said, sticking out his right hand. He was holding a drink of some kind in his left. "It's been a long time."

  I think the proper response to that is supposed to be something like, "Too long" or "You're right. It has been a long time. We should get together more often." But I didn't feel that way at all. As far as I was concerned, another twenty years or so wouldn't be too long, and I didn't want to get together with him now, much less more often.

  So I shook his hand and said, "Hello, Lance. Dino says you want to talk to me about something."

  He let go of my hand. "You always were direct, Tru. You, too, Dino. I haven't seen you for a while, either."

  "I don't get out much," Dino said, and I laughed.

  "What's so funny?" Lance asked, looking from Dino to me as if he thought we might be laughing at him.

  "Private joke," I said.

  "Oh," Lance said, smiling and showing his straight, white teeth. "Sure."

  He led us through a short paneled hall and into a long room fronted with heavily tinted glass. The hardwood floors gleamed where they weren't covered by what looked like genuine antique Persian rugs. I didn't have a good eye for that sort of thing, though. I bought my own rugs at one of K-Mart's remnant sales.

  I looked up from the rugs and out over the bay at the sailboats tilting on the water and the clouds that were now beginning to turn reddish-orange around the edges as the sun sank behind them.

  "Nice view," I said.

  "That's why I built this place," Lance said. "You can't see a sunset like that in Houston."

  "You can't even see the sun in Houston," Dino said. "Not most days, anyway."

  Someone laughed, and I looked over to where a woman was sitting on a low couch that cost two or three times as much as Dino could get for his Pontiac.

  I looked over and the woman smiled at me. "Hello, Tru. Dino hasn't changed a bit has he?"

  "Anne?" I said.

  She laughed again. "I'm glad you recognized me. I was afraid I'd changed more than Dino has."

  She hadn't changed at all, that was the thing. That was why my mouth was dry and why my knees were suddenly weak and why I felt as if a little man inside my chest was slugging me in the heart with a tiny sledgehammer.

  "Close your mouth, Tru," Lance said. "Can I get you and Dino something to drink?"

  "You got a Big Red?" Dino asked.

  "A what?"

  "Never mind. Bring me a gin and tonic and bring Tru here a glass of water. He looks like he needs it."

  I needed something, that was for sure. "Water will be fine," I croaked.

  "Perrier?"

  "Tap water."

  I didn't like water that fizzed, not unless it was flavored like Big Red. Lance shook his head at my unrefined tastes and disappeared from the room.

  Anne got up from the couch and
started toward me. Long legs in faded Levi's, blonde hair that fell to her shoulders. Blue eyes and red lips. I felt as awkward as if I were seventeen again.

  When she got closer I could see the lines that crinkled the corners of her eyes and the way the blonde hair faded slightly to gray at the temples, but it didn't matter. She was still Anne Temple, the first girl I'd ever loved.

  "It's been a long time, Tru," she said, extending her hand.

  I took her hand, still smooth and slim, and this time I said what was expected. "Too long. If I'd known that you were in Galveston, I'd have tried to see you sooner."

  "Oh, I don't live in Galveston. I just visit occasionally."

  "Lance?" I had never regretted breaking his nose, and I found myself wanting to break it again.

  "Sometimes. Sometimes I come to see my parents. They still live here. This time I came to see you."

  "Me?"

  "You can let go of her hand now," Dino said. "This isn't the senior prom."

  I hadn't realized he was still in the room. I let Anne remove her hand from mine and said, "What did you want to see me about?"

  "Lance will tell you. It's more his story than mine."

  Lance came back into the room just then, carrying a silver tray with three glasses on it.

  "And I'll tell you in a minute," he said, handing Dino a highball glass. "I believe you wanted water, Tru. I'm sorry I didn't have a jelly glass to put it in."

  I took the water from the tray, drank most of it in one long swallow, and set the glass back on the tray that Lance was still holding. My throat didn't seem quite so dry now, and I looked at Anne again.

  I hadn't seen her since our high school graduation. We'd broken up several months before that, in January or February, and I hadn't quite recovered by May. I think that what hurt me the most wasn't that she'd broken up with me but that she'd begun dating Lance.

  She hadn't married him, though. I remembered that Jan, my sister, had sent me a clipping from the Galveston paper one year in my Christmas card. The clipping was an engagement photo of Anne, and the caption under the photo said that Anne was marrying the son of a rice farmer from somewhere around Eagle Lake. I didn't remember his name.

  I'd kept the clipping for a couple of years and then thrown it away. I'd thought then I was over Anne forever. Judging by the way I was feeling right now, that was another thing I'd been wrong about.

  "Why don't we sit down and talk about old times?" Lance said.

  I wasn't interested in old times at the moment, not unless Anne and I were alone. Then I might have a few things to say. But as far as Lance was concerned, I was doing a favor for Dino, and the favor didn't include reminiscing.

  "I'd rather hear about what you wanted with me," I said. "And why you called Dino instead of me."

  Lance shook his head. "Can we at least sit down?"

  "Sure." I walked over to the couch where Anne had been. "Let's sit."

  Lance came over, set the silver tray on a coffee table, and picked up his own drink. Anne and Dino trailed along behind him. I sat on the couch, hoping that Anne would sit beside me. She didn't. She sat in a wooden rocker. Dino and Lance sat beside me on the couch.

  For a few seconds, we simply looked out through the glass at the clouds and the sailboats. Dino drank his gin and tonic, and Lance sipped at whatever it was that he had in his glass.

  Finally Lance said, "I called Dino because I was afraid you wouldn't come if I called you. We weren't exactly best friends in high school."

  He had a point. I probably wouldn't have come if he'd called me, not unless he'd mentioned that Anne would be there.

  "Anyway," he said, "I've read a few things about you in the papers, and I knew that you and Dino were still friendly. Dino and I have been doing business for a long time, so I thought he might talk to you for me. I've made him more money than his uncles ever did."

  At one time, back in the days when Galveston had been wide open, with gambling, prostitution, and just about any other illegal enterprise you can think of, Dino's uncles had run every racket on the Island. Times had changed. The uncles were gone, and everything was strictly legitimate now, or as legitimate as things ever were anywhere, but a lot of people on the Island remembered the uncles and the old days, usually with a great deal of affection and not a little regret.

  "OK," I said. "Dino got me here. Since, as you say, we weren't the best of friends, you must want me for something pretty important."

  Lance stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed his ankles. "Not really. But your name came up, so I thought I'd give you a try."

  "My name came up?"

  "My father-in-law asked for you," Anne said.

  "Oh," I said. So that's why she was here to see me. Because of her father-in-law. I'd been sort of hoping that she might ask me to run away to Tahiti with her. Still, if what Lance wanted had to do with Anne, I might actually try to help him out.

  But not if he wanted me to find someone.

  "Her father-in-law is Red Lindeman," Lance said. "He works for me."

  The name Lindeman jarred my memory, and I remembered that Anne had married a man named Paul Lindeman, but I'd never met either him or his father.

  "What kind of work does Lindeman do?" I asked Lance, thinking about rice farming.

  "He manages some ranch land I own."

  I didn't know any more about ranch land or ranching than I knew about rice farms. "I've never heard of him. Where's this ranch land?"

  "In the Eagle Lake area. You might never have heard of Red, but he's heard of you. He knows an old friend of yours."

  "Oh? Who?"

  "Fred Benton."

  I'd done a little work for Fred not so long ago. "Fred told Lindeman about me? Why?"

  It was Anne who answered. "He told him how you solved the murder of his alligator."

  I looked over at her. "Has somebody murdered another one?"

  "No," she said. She smiled and the little guy with the sledge hit me another shot in the heart. "Not an alligator, not this time."

  "What then?"

  "A bird," Lance said. "This time, somebody killed a bird."

  Four

  "A bird?" I don't know what I'd been expecting, but it sure hadn't been this. "Somebody killed a bird?"

  "Not just any bird," Lance said. "It was an Attwater's Prairie Chicken."

  "Thanks for clearing that up."

  I was beginning to wonder if this whole thing was some kind of elaborate joke. Prairie Chickens? I glanced at Dino, who was taking a drink of his gin and tonic.

  He took the glass away from his mouth and swallowed. "Don't look at me. I'm just the go-between. I wouldn't know a Prairie Chicken from a goose."

  "I'm not surprised," Lance said. "Hardly anyone knows about Prairie Chickens, these days. Why don't you tell them a little bit, Anne."

  "All right. They're not really chickens, though."

  Great. Someone had killed a chicken that wasn't really a chicken. I felt as if I'd wandered into a sequel to Ace Ventura, Pet Detective.

  "If they aren't chickens, what are they?" I asked.

  "They're actually grouse. They're just called chickens. I don't know why."

  It probably didn't matter, anyway. A grouse by any other name.

  "OK, you've got a dead grouse on your hands. Why do you care that one got killed?"

  "Because there aren't many of them left," Anne said. "How many, Lance?"

  "Sixty-eight, in the wild. That's the count for this year, anyway. There are maybe forty or fifty more in captivity."

  "A hundred and eight or so in the whole world?" I said, wondering what difference it made.

  "Prairie Chickens are what you might call a very endangered species," Lance said. "There were 156 in the wild at the previous count, so there was a considerable drop-off this year. There used to be even more, a lot more. A hundred years ago there were probably a million or so roaming around the coastal prairie."

  "So what happened to them?"

  "Lots
of things," Anne said. "Hunters, for one. But the main reason they're disappearing is that the habitat's vanishing faster than they are. With all the development along the coast, there's no prairie any more. It's not just the Prairie Chickens that are displaced, either. The Snow Geese have lost a lot of their habitat, too, and now they're nesting around the Prairie Chickens that are left. Some of the parasites from the geese have killed the Prairie Chickens."

  I thought about the house we were sitting in, and all the others like it up and down the coast. And of the highways and industries and all the ever-expanding cities and towns. No wonder the habitat was vanishing.

  Lance must have read my mind. He said, "I'm not a developer. I just happen to own a house here. If I hadn't built here, someone else would have."

  He was right, of course, but there seemed to be a little tinge of guilt in his words. Hearing it gave me more satisfaction than it should have.

  "I'm not interested in your house or where it is," I told him. "But I would like to know what this dead bird has to do with your ranch land. Or with me."

  "Here's what it has to do with my land. I entered into a deal with the federal government. They put some Prairie Chickens on my land and managed them for three years. They improved the land, got rid of some of the brush, and created a habitat for the birds. They turned things over to me this year, and I turned them over to Red Lindeman. He sees to things like mowing and controlling the pests and predators. We have to be very careful, and we are. But now one of the birds is dead."

  "And Lindeman wants me to do something about it?" I asked.

  "That's right. He wants you to investigate. I know it sounds crazy, but he knows Fred Benton, and Benton told him all about that business with the alligator. Red already knew part of it, read about it in the paper. That's why he talked to Fred in the first place."

  "But we're talking about an endangered species," I said. "The government will send in all the investigators you want."

  Lance shook his head. "They've already sent in someone, and that's one more than Red wants. He doesn't like the man and he doesn't think he's competent. He wants you."

  "What do you have to do with all this?" I asked Anne. I didn't care about Lindeman or Garrison, and I didn't care much about Prairie Chickens, but I cared about her.