“I ask you, I ask you in all conscience, which is the worse, a little nookie or slavery to drugs? Not,” he added, “that I think the first item is bad.”
“You mean, speaking from memory,” Doolittle put in.
“Your inference is as infirm as your stature is small,” Doc answered him in faked offense. “A man’s a man until he dies.”
Now Doolittle quoted:
“The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.”
Doolittle looked at Charleston, who said, “Andrew Marvell.”
So far the game was tied.
To keep Doc going I said, “But that’s in the past? The doped cures and all?”
“Better now, sure. But you still find dangerous stuff being peddled, and not by the patent people alone. So-called reputable companies put out bad stuff. When it’s caught up with and stopped, it’s too late for the victims. They can sue if they’re alive, but shit.”
“Older generations had some funny ideas,” Charleston said. “When one of us kids had a sore throat or croup, our mother would take an old stocking, line it with raw bacon, sprinkle the bacon with pepper, and tie the stocking around the sore neck. Worked, too.”
“Some old practices did,” Doc said. “More didn’t. But if the patient thought he was better, then by God he was.” Doc drank again. “I get called on for some old, crazy items now and then. Cubebs, for instance.”
I asked, “Cubebs?”
“Cigarettes made out of medicated peppers. Anyhow they smelled medicated. Then there was antiphlogistine, sometimes called Denver Mud. It was mud all right, smooth mud with perfume in it. Used like a mustard plaster.”
“Did it work?” Doolittle asked.
“As long as people thought so, sure. You ever hear of asafoetida? Parents used to tie it in a piece of rag and hang it from strings around the kids’ necks. Supposed to ward off germs like scarlet fever.”
“Good disinfectant?” Felix asked.
“Nope. It smelled so bad any self-respecting germ was supposed to stay clear. Jesus, what a stench! A dog would puke.”
We took time to sip at our drinks. Doc licked his lips and went on, full of himself thanks to what he had had. “You go back and you find all kinds of claims. The poor damn people didn’t know any better. Medicine was bound up with folklore, with witchery, superstition and what not. Sometimes it wasn’t so far off the mark, though. Take foxglove. Take deadly nightshade. Take henbane. All poisonous. And from them these days we get digitalis, we get belladonna, we get hyoscine.”
Doolittle asked, “What’s hyoscine?”
“Questions. Questions. That’s all I get.”
“Come off it, Doc,” Doolittle told him. “Every one of those words had a question mark after it. You ask questions so we’ll ask questions.”
Doc grinned an evil, turtle grin. “Smart ass. If ever you are taken with child and know the pains of delivery, ask for hyoscine. That’s twilight sleep.”
“Case closed. Any other benefits?”
“Lots of them. It was the willow gave us the idea for aspirin.” Doc rubbed his jaw. “The things patients ask for, though. Just lately a man wanted nitrate of potassium.”
Doc knew that someone would ask what that was, and Underwood did.
“It’s commonly known as saltpeter.”
I saw Charleston look up.
“That works against sex, huh?”
“Supposed to suppress the instinct. Supposed to dull desire. Been used in the army and navy and prisons. Maybe still is. I can’t swear to results except it makes a man piss.”
“Who in hell would ask for that?” Underwood said, curiosity getting the upper hand of morality.
“You know better, Felix. That’s confidential.”
“And you prescribed it?”
“Yep, but no need to. Anyone can buy it. It’s just that a prescription gives a sort of legitimacy to the purchase. Makes it all kosher. Doctor’s orders.”
The telephone rang then. The caller wanted Charleston. After listening, Charleston turned to me. “Report of a rustled calf. We can’t do anything tonight. Still, I’ll run along.”
I went out with him.
5
Doolittle was on the board when I entered the office next morning.
“Hey,” I said. “How come? Not your turn.”
Doolittle grinned. “I’m just spellin’ Halvor. He’s in what you might call the gentlemen’s room, cheerin’ peristalsis on.”
I grinned back. A drifter before he got to be deputy, Doolittle had educated himself by reading every book he could get his hands on. He could make me, with my degree, feel ignorant, not meaning to.
Charleston was at his desk, my report before him. He motioned me to sit down. “This Gerald Fenner,” he said, looking up. “He’s on the level?”
“I’d bet on it.”
“A middle-aged man in the chancy years when he’s trying to get hold of what he’s losing. He could be mean if the girl turned against him.”
“I can’t figure it that way.”
He laid the report to one side. “Old Mr. Gates—he’s the one who reported the calf rustling last night—he’s on the way in. Should be here any minute. Better stick around unless you have something better to do.”
“My stock of inspiration ran out.”
It was a little short of an hour before Gates entered. He was a man maybe of sixty-five with stooped shoulders, a face that had been patterned by wind, and eyes that distance had given a squint. We shook hands with him.
After he sat down, he said, “Thought I might as well come in and give you the dope.”
Charleston made a little tent of his hands and rested them on the desk. “One calf missing?”
“Nope. Two. I don’t run much stock and I keep tally. I know who took ’em, too.”
We waited.
Gates pointed a finger at Charleston. It was deformed, as if it had been caught sometime between saddle horn and dallied rope. “There’s a squatter in Chicken Coulee not so far from me. You know the place. It’s government land and under lease but no good for anything and so nobody kicks about his old camper. A crick runs through it, but it’s wore itself so deep that cattle can’t get down to water, and there’s maybe one spear of grass to every square yard. You savvy?”
“Sure. Go on.”
“So the damn man squats there in a camper that must have been first off the line, and with him’s a woman that’s all tangle and angle iron. I know. I saw them.”
Charleston got out one of the few cigars he permitted himself, offered another to Gates, and lighted them both. “What makes you suspect him outside of what you’ve said?”
“What they call process of elimination. Who the hell else would make off with my stock?”
“Your elimination cuts a wide swathe. It’s hardly conclusive.”
“Think so, do you? What they livin’ on, savin’ maybe a rabbit or two, allowin’ just maybe for a deer that he’s poached? I tell you, I saw ’em.”
Charleston blew out a thin stream of smoke. “You braced him, then?”
Gates made a little helpless gesture with his hands. “Tried to, but he run me off. I don’t carry a gun. Never did. And I’m too old to fight, anyhow too old for that bastard.”
“What’s he like?”
“Like a goddamn thief.”
“His looks, I mean.”
“Young, big and strong, and he’s all hair, like as if his neck just haired out.”
Charleston straightened in his chair. “It’s not a lot to go on, but we’ll look into it.”
“Look and learn, goddamnit.”
“What’s the man’s name?”
“I wouldn’t know, except I heard the woman call out when he made like to fight me. ‘Mefford,’ she told him. ‘Stop it. You’ll get your ass burned.’ Them were her exact, lady-like words.”
After Gates had gone Charleston said, “We could nose around, I suppose, just to show Gates we’re on the job,
but it would be a waste of time. No evidence, nothing to justify a search warrant. And Mefford, if it is Mefford, wouldn’t leave hair or hide of the calves around.” He looked at his watch. “Early for lunch, but I’m hungry.”
At the board Halvor told us, “Old Mrs. Wilcox had her house broken into. Doolittle said not to bother you. He’d take it.”
We had sandwiches at the Jackson Hotel. I said, chewing the last bite, “I think I’ll go to the high school.”
“School’s out.”
“But the principal may be around. What’s his name?”
“Parsons. Alfred Parsons. But why see him?”
“Background on Laura Jane Smitson. She probably went to high school here.”
Charleston gave a little grin. “That’s what I might call shooting in the dark.”
“The dark is all there is to shoot at.”
“Go on, Jase. You might bring down a night bird.”
I walked to the high school that warm afternoon. The sun promised eternal summer, but I knew June in Montana. The wind might rage tomorrow, or the sky darken and clouds drench the land. Never a dull moment, from drouth to flood. People in Montana had to like weather.
A girl was just going out as I entered the high school. She was a trim and pretty thing, dressed in a white blouse and gray skirt. I asked, “Miss, could you direct me to the principal’s office? Do you know whether he’s in?”
In a voice that was music she answered to my surprise, “He just came in, Mr. Beard. Walk down the hall, turn right, and you’ll see the office.”
I thanked her, not asking how it was that she knew my name.
I knocked at the office door and was told to come in. Mr. Parsons rose from his desk and smiled largely. He was a beaming man with a beginning pot. It occurred to me that it took a lot of beaming to endure high-schoolers.
“My name is Jason Beard,” I told him. We shook hands. “Who was that nice young girl who directed me to the office? She knew me.”
“That must have been Virginia Stuart. You haven’t heard of her?”
“Should I have? I don’t know. I just returned to town.”
“You will hear of her. She’s the prize. She’s a well-mannered, thoroughly decent young lady with a voice that God gives to few.”
“She’s a singer?”
Parsons stuck out his arms as if to embrace an unembraceable talent. “As fine a soprano as these ears ever heard. She’s practicing now for the state festival, where she’ll win hands down. And she’s generous with her gifts. She gave a recital at the school last Christmas and another at graduation. Everybody came. They were uplifted. What a voice!”
I had heard enough of her, but Parsons wasn’t through. “Her father is Duncan Stuart, as staid a Scotsman as you’ll ever meet. That’s where she gets her manners and principles.”
“It sounds as if she were a person apart. No schoolgirl antics?”
“Oh, she dates a bit, not much. Lately I’ve seen her a time or two with that young man at the bank, but it can’t be anything serious.”
“I see, but I came to ask you—”
“Please.” Mr. Parsons delayed me with an uplifted hand. “She is training under a man from the city, but I doubt he’s good enough. He comes twice a week, and some people show up just to hear her practice. After graduation she’ll go east, to Juilliard perhaps. The town is so proud of her that it’s gathering a fund to see her through. The bank, under Mr. Mike Day, started the idea and the contributions with a gift of a thousand dollars. Mr. Stuart is a proud man but not really well off. He’s had to swallow his pride.”
“I’d like to hear her.”
Mr. Parsons nodded. “I’m forgetting your purpose.” He sat back waiting, his fingers intertwined on his belly.
“Of course you’ve heard of the murder at Overthrust, the murder of one Laura Jane Smitson?”
“Indeed I have. What a pity! And what a life she seems to have led!”
“You knew her?”
“Of course. She was a student here. She dropped out after her sophomore year. That was three years ago, I believe.”
“What kind of a girl was she?”
“A very decent student, not brilliant but genuinely competent. I understand she went then to business college. It was family finances, I gather, that caused her to leave here.”
“Was she—let me see—wild at all? No escapades? No scandals?”
“None whatever, which is more than you can say of some students.”
“You back up what I’ve been led to believe about her. But what about her friends, any wild ones in the group?”
“Not to my knowledge. I believe she had few friends, perhaps because she had to dress rather poorly. Shabbiness—it wasn’t quite that—begets few friendships.” Mr. Parsons breathed with satisfaction as if he had uttered truth in a nutshell.
“No run-ins, then? Not with a roughneck whose name might be Ford?”
“No. In my time there’s never been a Ford enrolled here.”
I rose and thanked him. He beamed his goodbye as I said, “I’m just turning over stones, without any luck.”
6
“Mr. Charleston had to go out,” Ken Cole on watch command told me the next morning. “Be back by noon or so.”
Cole—elevated by Doolittle to King Cole—seemed to be fitting in all right. He was a dark-skinned man, maybe a year or two older than I, with brown mournful eyes but a cheerful enough air. He had on a black shirt and black pants, and I said to kid him, “Jack Palance killed any taxpayers today?”
Even dark-skinned men can flush. He answered, “Black isn’t a bad color when it comes to stocking shelves and bagging groceries. I worked in a store, and these are the best I have. I can’t hardly wait for my uniform.”
“Forget I said it. I was just joshing. The sheriff isn’t too strong for up-to-snuff uniforms. Thinks they might lead to uniformity of mind.” I wore a short, blue-gray jacket with trousers to match but hadn’t put on a tie.
I went back to type up my report. That didn’t take long, so for a while I sat quiet and tried to make what I knew tell me something. It didn’t. I went back to Cole, who was fiddling with a camera. A tripod and second camera stood in a corner.
“Nothing important here,” he said. “One lost dog. A complaint about county kids running over private lawns on their way to school.”
“You made notes just the same?” I was trying to help him.
“Sure. I didn’t forget.”
“You a photographer?”
“Kind of. I think that’s why I got the job.”
“One of the reasons.”
“That and maybe an interest in police work.”
I wandered back. On Charleston’s desk was a copy of Komongo. I got interested in the pros and cons of faith and science.
Charleston came in at noon, saying “Pisswillie.” It was a term of his for the trifling or vexing. “Sorry to hold you up, Jase,” he said.
“You didn’t. I wasn’t going anywhere. There’s my report.”
He sat down and interlocked his fingers and cast a keen eye on me. “I have a straw to grab at.”
“Yes, sir.”
He untwined his fingers and took up a pencil and studied it. Then he said, “Mefford. Mefford. Ford. Mr. Ford—Mefford.”
It took a minute for me to understand. “That’s a long rope to throw.”
“Yep. But I want that man brought in.”
“I could go out and question him.”
“Not from what we hear. There he’d be in his element. I want him in mine.”
“All right.”
“Maybe I’d better send a man with you.”
I said, “I can handle it myself.”
That’s what I thought.
I had a bite of lunch and set out for Chicken Coulee. I knew where it was, and I knew a short cut. Roving kids learn geography.
A storm was building up in the west. Not rain clouds, I thought. Too much light gray. But June was early times for hail
. The wind pushed at the car when I turned from the highway to a rough, graded road.
The wind came first, then charges of hail as big as pigeon eggs. I turned the car around to save the windshield. I couldn’t hear the engine for the hard thunder on the roof. The green fields turned white. I could run for cover, but where was it?
Then all at once the storm was over, and the sun came out, shining on the beaten fields. Somehow the glass in the car was unbroken, but the roof and hood might have been hit by a ball-peen hammer. I turned the machine around and drove on.
A back wheel slipped off the greasy road and sank to the hub. Rocking back and forth just dug a trench. Police cars always carried a blanket and shovel. I got busy with the shovel. After a hard hour I was on the way again.
Chicken Coulee had escaped the storm. An old camper stood on the high bank of a stream, and a man stood beside it. A gaunt woman looked out the door.
I left the car, walked toward the man and asked, “Are you Mr. Mefford?”
The description I had received fitted him. He was big and hairy, dressed in dirty work clothes. The woman had taken a step from the camper.
He asked, “What’s it to you?”
“The sheriff wants to talk to you.”
“I don’t see no sheriff.”
“I’m a deputy. My name’s Beard.”
He began advancing on me. I stood my ground. “If your fuckin’ sheriff wants to talk to me, let him come and do it.”
“No, sir. That’s not the way he wants it.”
“Two different things, what he wants and what he gets.” He took two steps and swung.
It was a wild and awkward punch, and I thought, slipping it, that I had no need for fancy stuff. I hit him hard with a left and right.
They shook him, and a roar came out of him. He tried to close in, wanting to grapple. This time I hit him harder, left and right, and he teetered and went down.
I started putting on handcuffs. Too late, I glimpsed the swing of something dark. It hit me, the edge of a frying pan, I learned later. I learned a lot of things later.
What I have to report now comes from dredged-up memory, from what others said and said I did. I was seeing through a wall of water. I was hearing through a waterfall.
“Try to sit up, please, Mr. Beard.” They were the first words. “Lean On my shoulder. Ain’t far to help.”
Playing Catch-Up Page 3
