by Neil Mcmahon
My worries about the beer vaporized with her first words.
"Don't you sit there oogling that little slut, too," she said coldly.
I mumbled, "Sorry, ma'am," and retreated down the porch steps, too skewered by her spear of guilt to defend myself.
Then she spoke again, but this time it was like I wasn't there-she was gazing past me at Celia.
"If you think you're getting into this family on your back, you're in for a big surprise." Her tone was calm, definite, not so much challenging as pronouncing judgment.
It turned out to be accurate and swift. Several weeks later, on October 27, Celia was killed on the Pettyjohn Ranch. She'd been alone and tried to ride a young, still half-wild stallion that she'd been warned against. He'd thrown her into the corral fence, and she'd fractured her skull against a post.
The investigation was a rubber-stamp formality, and there was never any autopsy. The sheriff at the time, Burt Simms, was a crony of Reuben's. The Pettyjohn family quietly made their condolences to Celia's parents in the form of a generous check. Officially, that was as far as it went.
Gary Varna was one of the deputies involved in the case, and while he never really questioned me, I could tell he sensed that I knew something I wasn't letting on. After things settled down, I started running into him a lot, just by chance, it seemed. We'd chat and the talk would always get around to Celia. Eventually, I came to realize that he was already on the path to what he would become, and he wanted to know what was under all the rocks-not to make waves, but because that kind of knowledge gave him satisfaction and power.
Gary was a cop right down to his bones, but he treated me well-never forgot that I was a kid who'd lost somebody dear, never tried to bully me, and presented a genuine friendliness. I'd grown to respect him and, moreover, to like him, and I still did. But I never gave up my secret.
What I knew was this: a few weeks before she died, Celia had stayed out late on a Saturday night date with Pete. All the rest of us in the family went to sleep before she got home. She must have come in quietly-nobody else woke up. I did only because she sat down on my bed.
I was half dopey with sleep, but startled. She'd never done anything like that before. The only thing I could think was that she was going to tell me some news that was too exciting to keep till morning.
In a way, she did, and my surprise jumped to amazement. She lay down with her back to me, took my hand, and slid it inside her blouse, pressing it against her bare belly.
There was a slight but definite swell to it that hadn't been there when I'd seen her naked at the creek. Naive as I was, I knew what that meant.
After a minute or so, she got up and left. She hadn't said a word and she never gave any sign afterward that it had even happened.
The reason I'd kept that to myself through the years since then wasn't anything noble like wanting to keep her memory pure. On the contrary, my motives were outright selfish. For that one minute, she had entrusted me with the deepest part of her. It erased all the times and ways she'd hurt me, and still remained the most intense intimacy I'd ever felt.
I was goddamned if I was going to share it with anyone else.
But there were probably others who'd known or suspected that she was pregnant. Her boyfriend, Pete Pettyjohn, for one. The mental unbalance he already had-maybe inherited from his mother-got worse over the next couple of months, and so did his drinking, to the point where his old man started locking the liquor cabinet.
That Christmas eve, Pete broke into it, holed up alone with the bottles he took, and ended up shooting himself in the head.
11
Sarah Lynn Olsen and I had been sweethearts in high school and until my last year in college. Since then we'd both been married to, and divorced from, other people. I didn't see her often these days-just when we'd run into each other on the street or in a bar. But she was always warmly friendly, and she was a partner in her family's real estate business, which owned things like shopping malls. I figured those were the best odds I was going to get for a loan, although I wouldn't have blamed her a bit if she'd decided that a phone call from jail didn't fit her Saturday night plans.
But Gary came back to say she was on her way, and he took me out to the visiting room. She must have jumped into her car as soon as they'd finished talking, because she was there within ten minutes.
Sarah Lynn was very attractive, with a sort of earth mother quality-buxom figure, long wheat-colored hair, and a sweetness that sometimes came across as drifty. Old friends called her by her initials, Slo. But right now she looked a little exotic, wearing an expensive black dress that was just short and clingy enough to turn the jailers' heads.
Not surprisingly, she seemed nervous. It didn't help that we were talking on phones with a thick Plexiglas window between us, and everything had the kind of greasy feel you didn't like touching your skin. But I also suspected that I'd interrupted her getting ready to go out, and now she was running late.
"Aw, Huey," she sighed. "Gary didn't tell me anything except you'd asked to see me. What'd you do?"
"Pissed somebody off."
Her eyes widened in fake disbelief. "No!"
"My bail's twenty-five thousand bucks, Slo."
She sat back a little-maybe at the amount, maybe because it suggested a serious crime.
"I need twenty-five hundred, cash, or else I stay here," I said. "I can pay you back most of it as soon as I get out, and the rest within a few days."
"I'm not worried about that, honey. I'm worried about what kind of trouble you're in. Of course I'll help you."
I closed my eyes briefly in relief.
"I'll buy you a drink and tell you all about it," I said.
"Deal."
"You're an angel, Slo. I'm sorry to wreck your Saturday night."
Her mouth twisted in a quick wry smile. "My Saturday night's a bottle of white wine and whatever trash is on TV."
"You look like maybe you had a hot date."
She glanced down at her outfit.
"Oh, that's left over from this afternoon. Once in a while I decide I'm going to go out and do something wild and exciting. I usually end up shopping."
Then she looked at me straight on. Her eyes were a deeper blue than Gary's and usually seemed dreamy, but right now, they were very focused.
"Thanks for noticing," she said.
"It was easy."
She stood up, still holding the phone, and smoothed her skirt with her other hand.
"I'll have to go to the office safe to get the money, so it'll take a few minutes," she said. "What then?"
I told her about Bill LaTray's bargain basement option. She said she'd make sure he agreed to it, and I knew she would. She might have been dreamy in some ways, but she had a good business head, like most people who'd grown up in that world.
She stalked out, looking like a million bucks.
I spent most of another dreary hour back in my cell before a jailer led me to the main desk, where I signed away my immortal soul to Bill's Bail Bonds. Bill was there, with his hit-man leather coat and stony face. He didn't say much, but he didn't have to. We both knew that the last thing in the world I wanted was him on my ass.
The desk sergeant told me to show up first thing on Monday-the judge would see me as soon as he had time. A clerk got my truck keys and my plastic sack of clothes from a storage room.
When I put them on, I imagined I could still smell those horses.
I didn't see Gary Varna again. Sarah Lynn had come in along with Bill LaTray, but she'd disappeared by the time I finished dealing with the paperwork. I thought she'd probably slipped outside for a cigarette.
But when I walked out onto the worn stone steps of the courthouse, she was gone, too.
I sat down and threaded the laces into my boots. The afternoon had turned into a luscious September evening, with the sky a shimmering blue that deepened every minute and the mountainsides going from green to purple. The air was taking on the crisp chill it did that time of y
ear, after the warm days suckered you into thinking it was still summer.
Maybe she'd left to spare me any feeling of obligation. Maybe the tawdriness of this had come home to her, and she'd wanted to distance herself.
Maybe it had to do with a road I didn't care to look back down.
She and I hadn't ever been officially engaged, but it was understood that we'd get married after I finished college. I was the one who'd pulled the pin, for reasons I'd never really been able to explain to her.
On my way out of town, I stopped at Louie's Market for a six-pack of Pabst. They kept their beer ice-cold, and the first one was about as good as anything I'd ever tasted.
Then I headed home, to scrub off that smell, root out my money stash to pay Sarah Lynn, and figure out where I was going to score a truck and driver to haul my ill-gotten lumber back to the ranch.
12
My father had left me a number of his possessions, most of them well worn, and all grounded in the reality of his world. The pickup truck I was driving was a prime example. He'd bought it new in 1968-a four-by-four GMC, with a lionhearted V-8, spacious toolboxes lining the bed's rails, and a sturdy welded-iron lumber rack. It was already long in the tooth when I'd learned to drive on it, and it probably blue-booked now in the hundreds of dollars. But he'd cared for it religiously, changing the oil every two thousand miles, and I'd done the same. It had paid us back by carrying us almost three hundred thousand miles, through long winters, hunting trips, and construction jobs, with just one short-block rebuild and occasional minor repairs. I'd slept in it, drunk in it, loved in it, and lived out of it to the point where it was more of an old comrade than a vehicle.
But the greatest of my old man's gifts was a chunk of land near the northeast shore of Canyon Ferry Lake-a quarter section of rough hilly timber that he'd bought for a song back when things like that were still possible. Some of my earliest memories were of being there with him. My sisters had lost interest in it after childhood, so he'd willed it to me, compensating them with most of the cash from our slender inheritance. Besides the truck and my tools, it was about all I owned. I'd lived there full-time for almost exactly nine years now. I sometimes wondered if he'd foreseen how critical to me it would be.
The drive from Helena to Canyon Ferry took me about twenty minutes. Traffic thinned quickly after I left town, and when I got there I had the road to myself. The lake was an impressive sight, a twenty-mile stretch of shimmering blue that stayed hidden until you topped a final rise, then appeared suddenly. It had been created by damming the Missouri in the 1950s, a century and a half after Lewis and Clark had traveled through on their way to finding the river's headwaters. During the summer it was crowded with boats and vacationers, but they dropped off once the weather changed, and not many people lived out there all year round.
I crossed the dam and drove through the tiny village, then turned off the paved road into Stumpleg Gulch, supposedly named for an early trapper who'd lost a limb to one of his own bear traps as a result of an overfondness for whiskey. My place was about two miles up, on a spur that dead-ended in the talus slopes of the Big Belt Mountains. Most of the surrounding land was national forest, buffering it from development. The nearest habitation was well out of sight and sound, and belonged to an elderly Finlander who was a perfect neighbor-glad to help if you needed it but otherwise he didn't care for company, and had been known to emphasize that point to strangers with warning shots. The few other places around were partly hidden little enclaves where families had survived for generations through some combination of raising a few animals, gyppo logging, subsistence mining, and living off the land, which, in practice, included a lot of poaching. The same traditional code that dictated other facets of life figured in there. Residents never noticed jacklights in the woods at night or gunshots out of season. The deer and elk herds stayed plenty strong, and fed people instead of falling to starvation or predators.
My old man had intended our place to be a family hangout during the summer and a base for hunting in fall. He'd built a cabin of lodgepole pine, using a Swede saw, an ax, and other hand tools-I still had them-and later added a good-size shed for storage, dressing game, and emergency vehicle repairs. He'd gotten a well dug and put in a cold water sink, which worked fine in good weather but the pipes would freeze by Thanksgiving if you didn't shut down the system. That was as far as he'd seen fit to take it. Light came from kerosene lanterns and heat from woodstoves. If you stayed up there long enough to want a bath, you filled an old washtub with hot water and hunkered down in it. More organic needs were consigned to an outhouse, with a coffee can full of lime beside the seat.
When I'd moved up there nine years ago, I'd thought at first that my stay was going to be temporary while I figured out what to do next. But eventually I'd realized that I wasn't going anywhere soon, and started making improvements.
The cabin was sound structurally, but drafty and crude-just a wooden box for cooking and sleeping. I'd re-chinked and insulated until it was tight and comfortable, paid Montana Power an arm and leg to bring in electricity, trenched the cold-water intake eight feet deep to protect against freezing, and installed a propane system for hot showers. I'd finally even broken down and gotten a phone.
Everything was dandy now except for the size. The outside walls were barely seven feet high and only a few strides apart. A couple months of winter put teeth in the term stir crazy, especially when you felt the need to pace but snow was blowing horizontally outside the windows. I'd been dying to add more space and I'd spent a lot of time sketching plans; but extra money came slow, and more pressing priorities were always cropping up.
When we'd started tearing those fine old floor joists out of the Pettyjohn mansion and I realized they were just going to be tossed away to rot, it was like manna falling from heaven.
That had jump-started me from fantasy to reality. Framing lumber was the big-ticket item that had been holding me back-my cash supply wasn't much, but it would get me a good start on other materials, and there was plenty of lodgepole pine on the land for log walls. The two-by-twelves would carry the floor and make perfect rafters for this country's heavy snow loads, and there'd probably be enough left to mill out for cabinets and trim. I could build the addition high-ceilinged and tie into the existing cabin with a valley roof. After a few years of weathering, the new part would seem like it had always been there. Of course I was looking at a long haul-working mostly alone, on the days I could spare-but I enjoyed that kind of thing, and I wasn't much involved in other forms of recreation.
But now those plans had plummeted back down to fantasy-in fact, quite a ways farther. Easy come, easy go.
I was just finishing my second beer when I reached the spur road to my place. It narrowed to a single lane, through thick forest that darkened the last of the evening to night.
But as soon as I made the turn, I caught a glimpse of something bright up ahead that seemed to be dancing around. The first notion that flashed through my mind was that some bizarre combination of the steep road and windshield refraction was giving me a view of the northern lights. Then the truth followed just as fast.
Flames.
I stomped on the gas pedal and tore the last few hundred yards, jolting and fishtailing. The pipe-metal gate to my property was hanging open. I had never put a lock on it, but I never left it like that. I drove on through and jumped out of the truck with it still rolling.
In those blurry few seconds, I assumed that there must have been a propane leak or electrical short and the cabin was burning. But its silhouette was the same as ever, dark and untouched. Instead, the flames were spouting from thirty yards away.
Right where I'd stacked the lumber that I'd hauled here from the ranch.
I sprinted toward it. The blaze was steady and strong, the heat intense enough to make the air shimmer. I got as close as I could and stared, forcing myself to believe what I saw.
That truckload of clear fir two-by-twelves, thigh high, four feet wide, and twenty f
eet long, had become a bonfire.
I started running again, making a wide circle through the surrounding forest in case drifting sparks had started other fires. Mercifully, the night was calm, and there didn't seem to be any. I went on to the pump shed and hooked up another blessing my father had left, an industrial firehose he'd acquired from some job or barter. He'd seen his share of emergencies and was prudent about being ready for them, but he'd never had to use that hose. Neither had I until now.
The blaze sizzled and smoked like a son of a bitch when the water hit, but within a couple of minutes, it died down to flickers. I soaked the nearby area thoroughly, then piled up some rocks and wedged the hose nozzle in them to keep the stream on the fire. I raked the surrounding pine duff and twigs inward to leave a wide circle of bare earth. When the heat was down to where it didn't sear my face, I started chunking at the embers with a shovel. As they broke up and spread out, the water doused the last of the flames. I scraped up loose dirt and threw it on top until nothing was left glowing. For insurance, I left the hose running.
Then I went into the cabin, got my old man's.45 service automatic, and strode back out to go looking for Wesley Balcomb.
My truck door was still hanging open. I tossed the pistol onto the seat and started to climb in. But after a long thirty seconds, I swung the door shut again and sagged against the fender. I was soaked with sweat, coated with ashes on top of the day's other grime, and so pumped up with adrenaline and rage that my teeth were clicking. I had no doubt that I could look Balcomb in the eyes and not hesitate a second to blast him to hell. In fact, it would be a lot easier than taking down an elk or a stately buck deer. Their only sin was that you could eat them.
