Cold Skies

by Thomas King

  “You know that there are laws against assault.”

  Beth rolled her eyes. “Anything else I can tell you?”

  “James Lester and Margo Knight?”

  “I’d concentrate on your health first,” said Beth. “At this point, there’s not much medical science can do for either of them.”

  Twenty-Two

  Beth let him drive home alone on the promise that he wouldn’t make any stops along the way. It was after two, and Thumps couldn’t think of anywhere to stop even if he wanted to stop. Al’s was closed, the two restaurants at the Tucker were closed. Even the convenience store out at the truck stop would be dark at this hour.

  Freeway was curled up on the kitchen table. Thumps wasn’t sure why he bothered making rules when the cat ignored them.

  “Tonight’s an exception,” he told Freeway. “I’m diabetic.”

  Freeway lowered her eyes and pretended not to care.

  “You think ice cream is on the list?” Thumps opened the brochure Beth had given him. Sure enough, ice cream was on the list.

  Under food he couldn’t eat.

  Along with bananas, potato chips, watermelon, fruit juices, white bread, pasta, pizza, and cheeses with high fat content.

  He opened the refrigerator. If he threw out all the offending items, the only things he’d be left with were green beans and broccoli. Along with a package of frozen fish that Cooley had missed.

  According to the brochure, a half-cup serving of Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream had twenty-one grams of sugar and eighteen grams of fat. One ounce of Kellogg’s Raisin Bran, which Thumps had always considered a healthy cereal, had twenty-one grams of carbohydrates and one gram of fat. One-quarter of a Sara Lee pound cake contained nineteen grams of sugar and thirteen grams of fat, which didn’t seem unreasonable until he remembered that he would normally eat half a cake at a sitting. Even a cup of spaghetti—before you factored in the sauce and the Parmigiano Reggiano—had thirty-nine grams of carbohydrates.

  One waffle had twenty-seven grams of carbohydrates. One slice of watermelon had thirty-five grams of carbohydrates. Eight ounces of low-fat yogurt with fruit had forty-three grams of carbohydrates. One pat of salted butter had four grams of fat, but no carbohydrates.

  Thank God for small mercies.

  By the time the phone rang, Thumps had calculated the sugar, fat, and carbohydrate levels of everything in his kitchen and was working on the nutritional values of individual meals that he had eaten for the past month.

  Thumps glanced at his watch. Only one person would call him at this hour.

  “Archie, do you know what time it is?”

  “Hi.” Claire didn’t sound happy, and she didn’t sound angry.

  “Hi.”

  “You busy?”

  It was a strange question for Claire to ask at three in the morning, but it had been a strange day all around.

  “No.”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Where are you?”

  “On the porch.”

  Cellphones, Thumps had to admit, had certainly changed patterns of social interaction.

  “Why didn’t you just knock?”

  “If you were busy, I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “Busy? With what?”

  “Busy,” said Claire with that fragile detachment that had marked much of their relationship. “You know.”

  When Thumps opened the door, he still had the phone in his hand, and he still didn’t know what it was he might have been doing. Claire was on the porch in the moonlight, the blue dress sparkling like a starry night.

  “We should probably hang up now.”

  Actually, it was the porch light and not the moon, but the effect was the same.

  “So, how bad is it?” Claire slipped through the door, set her handbag on the table, and sat down.

  “The diabetes?”

  “You have other medical problems I don’t know about?”

  “I think getting it is the bad part.”

  “His name is Quincy.”

  “Quincy?”

  “Quincy Comes at Night. He’s a lawyer from Missoula. We’re not sleeping together.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, we’re clear on that?”

  “Sure.” Thumps went to the sink. “You want coffee?”

  LAST YEAR, he had gone to Planet Earth, a new free-trade coffee store that had just opened across from old city hall. Thumps had spent over an hour picking out a Bodum French press and then another hour sniffing his way through the different varieties of coffee beans. In the end, he bought a Colombian, an Ethiopian Limu, and an expensive Nicaragua FT.

  However, the Nicaragua FT was nowhere as expensive as something called kopi luwak, a coffee from Sumatra. According to the guy at the store, these particular coffee beans had been eaten by a small marsupial, passed through its digestive tract, and excreted. The beans were then gathered, cleaned up, roasted, and turned into the world’s most expensive coffee.

  He didn’t carry kopi luwak, the man told Thumps, but the beans could be ordered online. If you had the money and were so inclined.

  “IS THIS THE LIST of foods you can and can’t eat?” Claire held up the pamphlet that Beth had given him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you looked at the lists yet?”

  “Just a glance.” Thumps poured the boiling water into the Bodum.

  “What’s on the good food list?”

  “Things I don’t like.”

  “What’s on the bad food list?”

  THUMPS WAS PRETTY SURE the guy at the store was having him on about fecal coffee beans, but the man swore the story was true, told him that there were places on the internet where you could buy a gift box of Arabica kopi luwak for about $220 or Robusta kopi luwak for $160, though Thumps had no idea what the difference might be.

  And, if you wanted the full boutique coffee experience, you could pass on the gift box, order a pound of unprocessed kopi luwak for little more than a hundred dollars, and roast it yourself.

  “WHAT DO YOU know about water?”

  Thumps held the cup close to his mouth and let the steam wash over his face. “Not a lot.”

  “What about the Blackfoot Aquifer?”

  “Even less.”

  “A large part of the aquifer runs under the reservation,” said Claire. “But most of the water is in a sandstone formation under the Bear Hump.”

  “Orion Technologies.”

  “Two years ago, Orion negotiated a ten-year lease with the state to drill monitoring wells on the Bear Hump to measure the water in the aquifer. When we discovered what had happened, we tried to get an injunction.”

  “The 1836 Treaty.”

  “In the original treaty, the Bear Hump was part of the reservation, but before it could be ratified, the terms were unilaterally changed by the U.S. Senate.”

  It was a familiar story, one Thumps had heard before. “And Bear Hump was removed from the reservation boundaries.”

  Claire nodded. “Evidently Congress didn’t think we needed all that land.”

  “An early version of government assistance.”

  “There would have been a written record of the negotiations, but we’ve never been able to find it.” Claire wrapped her hands around the cup. “There’s a strong oral record of exactly what was agreed to, but every time we go to court, oral testimony has been ruled unreliable.”

  1836. THUMPS KNEW the decade well. In 1830, Andrew Jackson signed the 1830 Removal Act, which allowed the government to strip the tribes along the eastern seaboard of their land. But it was his successor, Martin Van Buren, less a friend to Native people than Jackson, who in 1838 issued the order for the U.S. army to invade Cherokee territory, force more than thirteen thousand people into concentration camps, and then march them west in a series of removes to Indian Territory.

  Nu na da ul tsun yi.

  “The Place Where They Cried.” More than four thousand Cherokee died on the two-thousand-mile trek. Two dea
ths for every mile.

  “BUT ALL THAT has changed.” Claire was suddenly animated. “Eight months ago, Benjamin Thomas, a history professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, was doing research at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and came across the diary of a Canadian named William Holland, who was present at the treaty negotiations. Holland was there as an interpreter, and the man kept detailed notes.”

  “Bear Hump.”

  “In black and white. We have a court date in October.” Claire looked away, her eyes glistening. “We’re going to get the land back.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Yes, it is. But even if we win the case, we won’t get control of the land right away.”

  Thumps slowly saw where Claire was heading. “The lease.”

  “Exactly,” said Claire. “It doesn’t expire for eight more years, and there are few restrictions. While Orion can’t cut any timber, they could, if they wanted, pump water out of the aquifer.”

  “Archie know about this?”

  Claire chuckled. “I’m not looking for trouble.”

  “I think he’s beginning to mellow.”

  “We’re not worried about Orion. They don’t have the wherewithal or the interest to put that kind of a venture together. Everything they have is tied up in their Resource Analysis Mapping technology.”

  Thumps waited for the other shoe.

  “But,” said Claire, “Orion could sell the lease to another company.”

  There it was. A piece to the puzzle that hadn’t been available until now. “Boomper Austin.”

  “Boomper Austin.” Claire shifted in her chair and her dress came to life. “He called this morning. Asked to meet with me.”

  “About what?”

  “Didn’t say. He just asked to meet.”

  “You and Oscar?”

  “Quincy,” said Claire without any hint of annoyance. “Maybe. He’s a water rights lawyer.”

  “So, he’s not really a . . . boyfriend?”

  If it hadn’t been so late and if he hadn’t just discovered he was diabetic and if he hadn’t been feeling sorry for himself, Thumps might have come up with a better way to phrase that question.

  “Do you want him to be?”

  Thumps wondered if there was something genetic or instinctual that allowed women to answer questions with questions.

  “You want to stay the night?”

  “Not much of it left.” Claire stood and put her cup in the sink. “Is this the dress talking?”

  “It’s a great dress.”

  “Yes,” said Claire, “it is.”

  Thumps moved in behind her and gently put his hands on her shoulders. “Stick is worried that you might be serious about Oscar.”

  “Are you doing that to piss me off?”

  “Yeah.” Thumps nuzzled Claire’s hair. “I am.”

  “And what about you?” Claire turned so she could see Thumps’s face. But it was already too late. He had hesitated that fraction of a second, and now the opportunity was gone.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Me neither,” said Claire. “And until we do, things such as sex will have to wait.”

  “Okay.”

  “Besides, I have to get up early tomorrow and fly to Great Falls.”

  “Business?”

  “More or less.” The kiss was soft, almost apologetic.

  Thumps followed her to the door. “I didn’t mean I don’t know.”

  Claire watched Thumps’s face. “Does it work with other women?”

  “What?”

  “The confusion. The helplessness.”

  “There aren’t any other women.” It had been a dumb thing to say and it sounded stupid, maybe even desperate.

  Claire opened the door and let the night flow in around the dress. “Call me when you get it figured out.”

  Twenty-Three

  Thumps hardly slept at all, and by six in the morning, he was wide awake. Three hours of sleep. Not even that. He had tried to work out his relationship with Claire, what he might want, what she might want, what they might want together.

  But in spite of his best efforts, his mind kept flying off to the prairies and circling around James Lester and Margo Knight. Like the vultures out on the coulees. The birds had seen something they couldn’t explain and had stayed away. Thumps should have learned from their good example.

  But he hadn’t.

  James Lester and Margo Knight. Boomper Austin and Cisco Cruz. Jayme Redding and Oliver Parrish. Thumps was beginning to feel as though he were stuck in the middle of a Russian novel.

  Lester and Knight had come to Chinook to present their report on the mapping of the Blackfoot Aquifer and to showcase their new technology. Boomper’s motives for being in town were equally transparent. The only reason for a rich Texan to race off to the middle of nowhere was money. The dinner for three at Shadow Ranch had to have been a negotiation for Orion’s mapping system. Or a celebration to mark the completion of a deal.

  Or both.

  Cruz was here because Austin was here, and Redding had come to town in hot pursuit of the Orion story.

  Oliver Parrish was the wild card. Why had he come? Maybe corporate teams travelled in packs of three. But with the deaths of the company’s principals, Thumps would have expected Parrish to have run back to Sacramento to do whatever it was that chief operating officers did to keep the corporate ship afloat.

  Yet he had stayed in town.

  In the end, Thumps didn’t trust any of them. Duke was going to squeeze Chivington until he found out how an already dead James Lester had got himself from the airport back to the motel. Norm hadn’t looked as though it would take all that much squeezing. From there the sheriff might be able to walk his way back to Knight. Perhaps Hockney had already solved the puzzle and Thumps was wasting his time looking for the missing pieces.

  THUMPS WAS DRESSED and standing in front of the refrigerator when he remembered two things. One, there was nothing in the refrigerator to eat. And two, he was diabetic. What the hell did diabetics eat for breakfast?

  Maybe Al would know.

  Of course, there was no reason to bother Al. Thumps could always read the brochure that Beth had given him. Recommended foods. Foods to be avoided. Thumps was reasonably sure that eggs were on the side of the angels and that hash browns were not. He didn’t need a brochure to tell him that. But maybe if you ate one good food and one bad food, you wound up with a balance.

  Balance. Wasn’t that the basis of a healthy life?

  THE LAND HAD warmed up overnight. The sun was bright. The wind had disappeared. As Thumps stepped outside, he could actually smell things growing, and for the moment, winter was nothing more than a vague memory.

  “Mr. Awfulwater.” His new next-door neighbour was standing on his porch. Pops was draped over a wicker chair. Freeway was perched on the dog’s enormous head, her tail dangling in his face. It was a disturbing tableau. “Have you got a minute?”

  Thumps wanted to say no. He hadn’t had a good night’s sleep, and he was hungry.

  “Sure.”

  Dixie came off the porch with the agility of a stork. Jerky. All wings and legs.

  “Don’t think it’s a problem,” said Dixie, “but last night when I let Pops out to do his business, there was someone parked in front of your house.”

  Thumps wondered just how much business a dog that size could do. Enough to turn a yard into a minefield.

  “All the houses on the block have parking off the alley,” said Dixie. “So nobody much uses the street. You probably already know that.”

  Thumps looked down the street. “What kind of car?”

  “Not a car guy,” said Dixie. “Software, computers, programs. That’s my game. So the car was sitting all by itself, and when I stepped off the porch to get a better look, they drove off.”

  “They?”

  “Couldn’t really tell that either. It was dark.” Dixie paused as though he were trying to remember something he had for
gotten. “I tend to be a little security conscious. Hope you don’t mind.”

  “No. Security’s good.”

  “That’s why I have Pops.”

  As soon as the dog heard his name, he struggled to his feet, spilling Freeway off his head.

  The cat took the disturbance in stride. She rolled onto one side and leisurely licked her groin.

  Lovely. The queen at her toilette.

  “My plan is to remodel the kitchen,” said Dixie. “I’ll try to keep the noise down.”

  “No problem.”

  “New counters. New cupboards. The works.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “You like espresso?”

  “Sure.”

  “Just got my machine set up,” said Dixie. “As soon as the kitchen is done, I’m going to bake a bunch of pies. Everyone says I make great pie.”

  CHINTAK RAWAT WAS where Thumps had left him. Standing behind the counter of Chinook Pharmacy in his white jacket.

  “Ah, Mr. DreadfulWater,” said Rawat, “will you be wanting a standard or an ultra-mini?”

  Thumps heard every word Rawat had said, but he had no idea what the man was talking about.

  “Your glucose meter.” Rawat set two boxes on the counter. “For the diabetes.”

  The prescription Beth had given him was still in his pocket. Thumps could feel it right next to his keys. “How did you know I was diabetic?”

  “Dr. Mooney,” said Rawat. “She called in the prescription. She was concerned you might neglect her instructions.”

  Thumps had hoped to keep his health information under wraps, but as he stood in the store he realized that it was hopeless. Beth knew, but she was his doctor. Claire knew. And now Rawat knew. Along with anyone who was at Shadow Ranch the night before.

  Even his cat knew.

  Rawat stretched out a wrist and tapped his watch. “She was most firm. If you did not arrive by nine-thirty, I was to call you at your house.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Dr. Mooney was quite insistent,” said Rawat. “Many doctors do not possess this level of dedication.”

  Thumps had no quarrel with Beth’s level of dedication. But she was also pushy. And meddlesome. Isn’t that how Henry II had described Thomas Becket? Or had the king used the word “troublesome”? Maybe priests and doctors had more in common than met the eye.