by L. L. Enger
“It’s a gay bar, Carol.”
“So?” she said. Then three miles later: “Why are we
following Larson’s backtrail?”
“I can only think of one reason right now,” said Gun. “Mazy.”
“I’m missing a link somewhere.”
“Hedman. What if he was threatening to expose Tig?”
Carol made a so-what sound with her lips. “Gun, that’s ridiculous. Who would care?”
Gun said. “You’ve got to remember, Larson was first elected commissioner twenty years ago. Just a kid out of grad school. Folks were proud of him. He had one of those green ecology stickers on the back of his Beetle. Caught the guy from the old Shell station dumping used oil in the Woman River. It made Tig a folk hero. And in Stony, folk heroes weren’t gay. Not then.”
“But it hasn’t been a big secret, has it? For a long time?”
“Look,” said Gun, “in a small town it’s one thing for everyone to think they know something. It’s another altogether to shout it from the housetops.”
“Okay, if I give you that point, can you show me a connection to Mazy?”
“Hedman might be a swindler and a blackmailer,” Gun said, “and maybe much worse. And he has Mazy. I think that’s connection enough.”
Carol was silent. Gun said, “I should just go in. Go in and get her out.”
“You haven’t given her a chance,” said Carol. “She hasn’t asked for help.”
“Has she been able to?” Gun shifted his knees and the red plastic dash bent and creaked.
The Horizon, engine racing at fifty miles an hour, passed a homemade sign. the back forty, it said.
SEVEN MILES AND TO YOUR RIGHT. SEE YOU THERE.
17
The place had the tucked-under look of a basement house or a 1950s bomb shelter. It sat squarely next to the county blacktop, with a short gravel driveway and a ten-car parking lot. A sign on the door said back forty lounge.
Gun uncoiled himself from the Horizon. He could feel a rubbing in his kneecaps as he stood up straight.
“I think we got here too soon,” said Carol. “No one’s here.”
Gun walked slowly to the edge of the parking lot and peeked around the building. He saw a banged-up brown dumpster under a cloud of flies, and behind it an early seventies yellow Toyota Corolla. “It’s business hours,” he called to Carol. “Let’s go in. I’m dry as Ezekiel’s bones.”
Eyebrows high, Carol pushed at the door. It swung
open. The place seemed larger on the inside, with the low-hanging lamps turned down to a glow.
“It’s an optical illusion,” said Gun. “You walk into a dark cave and it seems huge until somebody flicks on a light, and then it’s as big as your bathroom.”
“Are you sure there’s someone here?” Carol spoke in a whisper.
“Should be,” said Gun. His voice was at normal volume but seemed big in the dark. “There’s a car out back. The door was open.” He walked ahead of her, easily skirting the barely-lit chairs and tables.
“Ouch,” said Carol. “Shinned a chair. How can you see in here?”
“Pretty well,” said Gun, then turned up his voice. “Hey, Toyota,” he called. “We’re two of us, and we’re thirsty. And let’s have some lights in here!”
A light clicked on immediately on the wall to their right. In its triangular beam they saw a young man in a shiny white shirt which was billowed and buttoned at the wrists. He was something over six feet and had a thick black mustache and thin black eyebrows. He was standing behind a bar.
“Just opening up,” he said in a tentative voice. “Nobody’s usually here so early. You spooked me coming in.”
“Carol,” Gun said. “Want something to drink?”
“I like margaritas,” said Carol.
“Do you have buttermilk?” said Gun.
The man’s eyebrows tilted in confusion. “I think so,” he said.
“Good. A glass of that, then. And an ice tea chaser.”
“Disgusting,” said Carol. Gun felt the smile in her voice.
It took the bartender several minutes to get their drinks. He fussed noisily trying to find the crusty salt for the rim of Carol’s margarita. He worried that the
buttermilk was too ripe. At last he put both drinks on the bar. “Just right,” he said.
“An ice tea,” Gun said.
“Oh.” The bartender scrambled.
“My, you’re demanding,” said Carol.
“Anyone would demand ice tea if they planned on drinking buttermilk first,” he said.
The bartender returned, walking fast. A brown half-dollar stain on the left arm of his shirt told Gun he’d hurried with the ice tea.
“I appreciate the effort,” Gun said. He laid a five-dollar bill on the walnut veneer of the bar. “Now I’d like something else.”
“Sure.” The barkeeper wrinkled his nose, making the mustache hop. “What’ll it be?”
“A little help. Do you know a guy named Larson, first name of Tig, a county commissioner lives down in Stony?”
The barkeeper looked at Gun, then cautiously at Carol and back at Gun. “I know who Larson is,” he said, “but I don’t know why you’d want him.”
“I’d like to know who he hung out with in here. And how recently.” Gun took a long plug of buttermilk, looking over the glass.
“What, did something happen to him?” The bartender elevated his brow in what Gun perceived to be false concern. “You’re talking like he’s dead or something.”
“He drove into Stony Lake off a cliff, most likely
yesterday,” said Carol. She picked up the margarita and took a sip.
“Oh, no,” said the bartender, in a tone that affirmed Gun’s judgment.
“Who did he know here?” said Gun.
“I really shouldn’t talk,” said the bartender. “Manager says discretion means my job.”
“In this case,” said Gun, “indiscretion would be wise.”
“That’s really true,” said Carol.
Gun drank ice tea, put the glass down and got to his feet. He gazed down a five-inch slope at the bartender.
“Actually, Mr. Larson wasn’t here very often.”
Gun stayed on his feet. Carol said, “We have to know.”
The bartender looked up at Gun, dropped back to Carol. “A guy named Rutherford, Dan Rutherford. Sort of a new face. I don’t think I ever saw him before, say, a month ago. He was at some resort, I think.”
“Was Rutherford here often?” said Carol. She leaned forward, her hair parting to show the back of her neck. Gun noticed.
“Only with Larson. Hell, I think they met here. The Friar introduced them.”
“The Friar?”
“Yeah, the Friar—this older guy with a circle of hair on top. Like Friar Tuck. I don’t even know his real name. Comes in here every few months. He brought Rutherford in, sat him down next to Larson.”
Gun sat down on the bar stool. “Rutherford,” he said. “Which resort?”
“God, you think Rutherford did something to off Larson?” The man stroked one end of his mustache with the tip of his tongue.
“Nope. Which resort?”
The bartender leaned back against a rack of dark whiskey. He closed his eyes. “The Broken Rock,” he said. “I think the Broken Rock. It’s just a guess, though. I heard that name once or twice.”
“Thank you,” said Carol. “We’ll go now.”
Gun stood up. “Got a phone I can use?” he asked.
Without opening his eyes, the bartender pointed to a wall phone off to the right.
Gun went over to it and dialed information to get the right number. At the Broken Rock a young child’s voice came on the line. “My dad’s not here now.”
“When will he be back?” Gun asked. “Later tonight?”
“He’s here in the morning always,” said the child.
“Okay, thanks.” Gun hung up and walked back to the bar.
Carol got up.
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“Don’t you want your margarita?” said Gun.
“Too much salt on the rim,” said Carol.
18
As they drove back to Stony the sky darkened around them, turning from hazy white to a steely gray-blue. Carol was quiet and seemed to be watching everything with interest: the low rocky fields; the marshlands, still mostly brown with last year’s dead growth; the acres of burned-off woodlands; the mossy tamarack bogs, lush and tropically dark. By the time they entered Stony the sky was low and dense, the air sharp with the smell of rain. At the east edge of town Gun turned into the driveway of Peaceful Haven, the resort where Carol was renting a small cabin.
From the middle forties to the late sixties Peaceful Haven had been a favorite vacation spot of wealthy Kansas farmers who drove into northern Minnesota for the singular pleasure of catching bullheads. If they’d been willing to learn Stony Lake’s hidden bays and the contours of its floor, they could have had sunfish, crappies, northerns, and walleyes, but most of them preferred to stand evenings along the T-shaped
docks and cast into the shaded water beneath overhanging elms where the bullheads lay, twitching their long whiskers.
By the early seventies the older generation of farmers was starting to stay home summers, and the younger generation was going elsewhere. They preferred the newer resorts, the big flashy places with their live bands and tennis pros and saunas. Before long Peaceful Haven was just half full on the busiest weekends, and the owners—Shep and Mary Skaggs, former Kansans themselves—had no choice but to rent cabins out by the month, to locals. Carol lived in number four, which sat on a rock ledge twenty feet above the lake. It was painted light green, same as the other buildings. A big stone chimney covered one end of it. Gun braked to a stop and let the engine idle. Carol didn’t open her door. “We’re going to get some weather again tonight,” Gun said. “You might want to collect enough dry wood for a couple days, in case this front decides to hang around.”
“I don’t use the fireplace. There’s a little gas burner in my bedroom, and I turn that on if I need to.” Carol tapped her lips with an index finger. “In fact, I don’t even know how to use the fireplace.”
“I’ll find some dry wood and show you, then. Won’t take long to get a little flame going.”
Carol looked at him. “Okay. You make a fire, and I’ll make supper. How’s that?”
He turned off the ignition and the engine dieseled to a stop. “Deal.”
In fifteen minutes Gun had enough dry wood for a week of evening warm-up fires: fast-burning birch, a few half-rotted branches of pine, and some whitened lengths of driftwood, delicately curved and smooth as skin. From the neat stack he’d made on the little screened-in porch he took a high armful of wood and carried it inside. The kitchen was cabbage-colored—smelled like cabbage too, Gun noticed. He walked into the compact living room. It was paneled with a darkly stained particle board. He lowered his load onto the brick hearth.
“Hope you like cabbage,” Carol said from the kitchen.
“Sure. What’s it belong to?”
“New England boiled dinner.”
“Great,” said Gun. It wasn’t what he expected. Not from a long-time islander. Seafood, maybe, or something Chinese, Italian. Something international. But boiled cabbage and corned beef? Gun turned from building a pyramid of sticks on the iron rack. Carol was setting the table. She was facing away from him. The backs of her legs looked smooth and tan, her waist narrow. As she bent forward to adjust her silver, she tipped her slender hips up and to the right, and beneath her reaching left arm Gun could see the push of her breast against the loose cotton shirt. Then she straightened and walked to the stove with just a little twist in her stride.
When the food was ready they moved the kitchen table into the tiny living room, and there, with the fire crackling and throwing shadows against the wall, they ate quickly and in silence. Gun wanted to say something to Carol about how nice this was, how for the first time in his life he was enjoying the taste of cabbage, even the smell of it, God help him. But he was also thinking of Mazy. He wasn’t doing her a lot of good here.
From the west came the first rumblings of a storm, and from out on the water the sad cry of the loon, an airy high-low wailing. They finished eating and Carol said, “I understand how you’re feeling, Gun. I’m a parent too. Here, help me”—she stood suddenly and took hold of one end of the table—”let’s get the table
back in place and sit by the fire awhile. We’ve earned it, haven’t we?”
Gun helped her with the table, then knelt at the hearth. A chunk of smoldering pine had fallen off the iron rack.
“Time you learned about me,” Carol said. “I already know about you. And not just from that godawful biography that came out when you retired.”
“Unauthorized.”
“Right. Anyway, I got the inside story from Mazy.”
“Great.”
Carol fell into one of the stuffed chairs and crossed her ankles on a wooden footstool at Gun’s side. Gun laid several splintered pieces of birch onto the red and white coals, leaned down and blew a steady stream of air until a flame began to flash up from the coals and lick at the new wood. He remained in a catcher’s crouch before the fire.
“Aren’t you going to sit down?” Carol said to Gun’s back.
“In a second.”
“I’ll start with the inauspicious beginnings. Livingston, Montana, rancher’s daughter, sister of four brothers, model child until the age of sixteen.” She uncrossed her ankles and tapped her toes together. Her feet were nearly touching Gun’s elbow. He reached over and took one in his hand.
“Fire feels good,” Carol said. “Hand, too.”
“So. Sixteen.”
“I decided Montana was no place for a woman with ambition,” Carol said. “Didn’t want to end up a rancher’s wife. So I talked my parents into letting me spend my last year of high school in California with an aunt.”
Gun gave Carol’s foot a squeeze and stood from his crouch, moved to the chair beside her. The fire was
snapping and breathing, sending out orange sparks which the chimney draft sucked away. The thunder had been getting closer, and now a jarring crack shook the cabin. At the same instant a shot of lightning exploded at the living room window. For a moment the inside of the cabin was bright as noon, then it was darker than before, and quieter, until the first large drops began to strike the roof. Soon the rain was coming hard.
Gun waited for Carol to go on. He watched her profile in the fire’s uneven light.
“The next few years, I don’t know how they got by me so quickly. Bad decisions are great for speeding up your life. I graduated from high school in San Diego, started college there, got through the first year, and then along came this guy who knew everybody. He told me if I went to Hawaii with him I’d be a model in six months. I went. In six months he was gone and I was looking for a job. Too proud to go home, of course. I started at the Honolulu Advertiser, ground floor, writing obits. They’re habit-forming, you know. I still write them. This afternoon, for instance. You’re bringing Tig up from his car, I’m writing the poor guy’s eulogy in my head.”
“I don’t want to hear it right now,” Gun said.
“No. Where was I?”
“The guy left you and you got a job.”
“Right. After Stan the First—he was the man of many promises—I met Stan the Second. This one was just the opposite, said practically nothing, Mister Clam, and no promises. Out of gratitude for that I married him.” Carol stopped. The rain on the roof was letting up.
“And you had a child,” Gun said.
“Yes. Michael. He’s twenty now, studying in California. You’d like him.”
“I bet I would,” Gun said. “What happened to Stan number two?”
“Stan number two found his dream job and dream girl. When I married him he was going to school at the University of Hawaii to be a park ranger. After Michael was born, he graduated, got a job in Redwoo
d National Forest. I waited in Hawaii while he went on ahead. But instead of getting the call telling me to pack up the baby and fly to California, I got a call asking for a divorce. We were together a year.”
The rain had stopped and the low rumbling was moving off to the east. The wood in the fireplace had turned to gray ash.
“And for the last twenty years I’ve been learning journalism and saving to buy my own paper. I won’t give you a play-by-play of that.”
“Another time,” Gun said.
Neither spoke for several minutes. The skies quieted and the rain stopped. Carol laughed softly. “You were really something to watch today. You know that? Diving off the cliff into the water, bringing up Larson from that car?” She bit at her emerald ring. “Something bothers me, though. I don’t know how to put it. It was almost like you were ... enjoying yourself out there today. Am I wrong?”
“Look, Carol.” Gun pushed himself up straight in his chair and placed his palms flat on the corduroy-covered arms. He drew a long breath and blew his lungs empty. “It’s been a long hard day.”
“I know,” said Carol, nodding. She looked quickly at the fireplace, then back at Gun. “Does it have to be over?”
“I need to go home, get cleaned up,” Gun said. “And you’ve got to go over to the newspaper office tonight.”
“It’s only nine-thirty,” Carol said.
Gun leaned toward her and picked up her hand. He
slowly traced around it with a big index finger, then
replaced it in her lap.
“There’ll be another time,” she said.
He stood up and rolled his shoulders, then bent
down and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m glad you
said that.”
19
He drove home in the dark with the windows down, letting the storm-cleared air wash the inside of the truck. He thought of Mazy, of who she was and why. He tried to think of Tig Larson and brought up only the sight of nipped-off fingers. He remembered how Carol had stood on the bluff that afternoon, looking for him down in the freezing water, the wind snapping at her hair. Then the noise of the wind in the cab took thinking out of his mind and made the trip home as easy as sleep.
