by Gwen Florio
Charlie started the car and rolled down the window. He started to say something, but bit it short. They’d always tried not to fight in front of Margaret. “Suit yourself,” he said.
Lola allowed herself a moment of self-pity, bitter and satisfying in its predictability. She decided it was a good thing his proposal was likely off the table. As uncomfortable as it had made her, that sort of discomfort paled beside the task of explaining to him how a story, even for a second, had trumped Margaret’s safety.
“Speaking of the story,” she reminded herself. She couldn’t put it off any longer. She dialed the number for InDepth.org. The editor answered on the first ring. “Lola!” She held the phone away from her ear as he enthused about the response to the story, the comments and the web traffic it had engendered. “It’s blowing up,” he said. “Great job.”
She waited for his enthusiasm to wind down. Finally, silence. She took a breath and lobbed the grenade. “There’s been a development.”
By the time she clicked off her phone, the Winds sat in black judgment against a violet sky. The air wrapped her in gooseflesh. Pal waited on the porch steps, a quilt folded around her shoulders, another in her lap. Lola dropped beside her and took the second quilt, welcoming its embrace. The porch light threw a pale circle onto the dirt and sage. Something stirred at its edge, low and sinuous. A snake curved its way toward the warmth beneath the house. Pal leaned down and picked up a handful of pebbles and tossed them. The snake coiled tight and shook its rattles. “Get out of here,” Pal said. “Where’s that chicken when we need her?”
“Want me to get the shovel?” Lola made an offer she wasn’t sure she could fulfill. Her weariness ran bone-deep. She remembered when she’d tried to explain Pal’s PTSD to Margaret. “It hurts her soul.” Her own soul felt as though it had been battered into something she barely recognized. She’d expected Pal to kill Skiff, and had done nothing to stop her. And if Pal had killed him, Lola had been prepared to leave that detail out of the story. The latter had been unthinkable—except that, of course, she’d thought it anyway.
At least the story was out of her hands, safe from her worst impulses. The editor at InDepth had responded exactly as he should have when she’d told him of the day’s events. First, he’d cursed. Then he’d cursed some more. “We’ll put somebody else on it. You can’t be your own subject. But you already know that.”
“Of course I do,” she’d said. “Of course.” Needing to repeat it until she steered herself back on course. The effort drained her. The shovel, propped against a wall not five feet behind her, might as well have been miles away. The snake lowered its head and slid a foot closer to the house. Lola bent and felt about on the ground until she found a stone about the size of a walnut. She’d been a pitcher on her college softball team. The stone had real velocity behind it when it struck the snake’s body. This time, it didn’t bother with the coil-and-hiss routine, but slithered off into the sagebrush with a flick of its too-long tail.
“Cool.” It was the first time Lola had heard anything resembling appreciation in Pal’s voice.
“Not really.” Years earlier, Lola had turned that same skill on a man who was trying to kill her. The object she’d thrown had hit his horse. Both man and horse had died in the resulting fall. At least she hadn’t seen their bodies. She thought of Skiff, writhing on the floor. “Maybe I should stop throwing things at people.”
Pal drew her arm back and slapped Lola.
Lola drew back, hand to cheek. It hurt. A lot. “What was that for?”
“You did what you had to do. Skiff was like that snake. Turn your back on him for a minute and he’d have killed us both. And maybe Margaret, too.”
Lola’s heart lurched.
Pal was on her feet, hands on hips. “You had no problem telling me to go ahead and file my complaint, even though you and I both know exactly what sort of hell I’ll be going through as a result. You thought I was tough enough to take it. I think you’re tough enough to take this. Cowboy up, sissy.”
“Sissy?” Something bubbled up in Lola’s chest, pushing past the stone there. Her shoulders shook with the force of it. To her absolute and utter shock, it escaped as laughter, incredulous at first, gaining strength, turning into whoops that bent her double. “Sissy?” she gasped past it before it overtook her again.
The next time she came up for air, she saw Pal on the ground, contorted in laughter of her own. She fell beside her, letting mirth chase the bad spirits from her body and, yes, her soul, leaving her limp and cleansed and, finally, quiet. Beside her, Pal sat up.
“All better?”
Lola tilted her head back. The upside-down peaks of the Winds were visible, just, a jagged inky line against a charcoal sky. “Hell, no. Not by a long shot. But getting there.”
“Good. Then it’s time for you to pick yourself up and go to Charlie.”
A moment earlier, the laughter had still lingered within Lola, pushing against her chest, tugging at her lips, threatening to burst free again. Now it vanished. Lola tried to coax it back, if not the laughter itself, at least the lightness.
Too late. It was gone.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Charlie had bypassed the low-end chain motel on the Thirty’s eastern edge for the old-fashioned motor court on the west end of town, hard by the river. Its rooms, each with a postage-stamp concrete patio and two plastic chairs, faced the water. Flowers bobbed in boxes below the windows, their colors muted in the light that shone above each room’s entrance.
Charlie opened the door before Lola could knock. “Heard somebody coming,” he said. “Figured it was you.”
Lola started to enter the room, but he shook his head and put his finger to his lips. “She’s asleep.” He pushed one of the chairs toward her. Lola sat. The plastic was cold through her clothing. She was glad she’d donned a sweatshirt before heading into town. She tucked her hands into its pouch. Charlie lowered himself into the chair beside her and tipped it back against the wall. The river slid past, whispering over rocks, eddying among the grasses in the shallows. It glinted like liquid metal in the moonlight. A damn shame, Lola thought, that Charlie had chosen such a pretty spot to end things. She’d have preferred the chilly anonymity of the chain motel.
Charlie waited. That old trick. Thinking she’d crack and speak first. He could just think again. Lola closed her eyes and let her breathing slow. She had a few tricks of her own, one of them an ability to catnap when stressed. She feigned sleep and then it arrived, fast and fitful, a shallow dip below the surface, just deep enough to return her to the kitchen and the moment when her hands opened, launching the pot. Crunching, splashing sounds. A scream. Glass breaking. Thud of body to floor.
“Lola.” A hand on her arm. “Wake up.”
Lola surfaced with a gasp. Skiff vanished. Charlie’s face hovered over hers, concern softening his features. “God,” Lola breathed. “Thank you.” She wanted to pull him closer, to soak in the strength that, much as she refused to admit it, had sustained her these last years. He withdrew to his own chair, his face once again set in lines of implacable anger.
“You want to tell me what happened out here? Start at the beginning. Don’t even think about leaving anything out.”
Lola left some things out anyway; mainly, the dalliance with Dave. She could only handle so much self-destruction. She wasn’t suicidal.
“Honestly, we thought we were safe,” she said at the end, her voice hoarse with the effort of prolonged whispering. “The story was going online. You were on your way. We had no way of knowing his friend was hanging out with that girl from the rez.”
“But he’d chased you. Nearly ran you off the road. And you didn’t even call the cops when you realized it was him.” Each word dropped distinct and heavy onto a scale already lopsided with her failings.
Because when she’d told Pal about how Skiff had chased her, Pal finally decided to talk.
To have called the sheriff at that moment might have given Pal time to change her mind. Lola knew better than to say those things aloud. It didn’t matter.
“You and your stories. They’ll always come first.”
“It was a hell of a story.” The word slipped unbidden from her lips, words that could only make him angrier. But it was the truth. “A hell of a story,” she repeated. “Even without what it turned out to be. Those deaths, those arrests, those kids who left Wyoming whole and came back dead or broken inside. It’s happening all over the country and nobody has to think too much about it because our fabulous all-volunteer military is filled with people from rural areas or inner cities, and nobody gives a rat’s ass about what happens to people in those places.”
Charlie started to say something but Lola bulled right over it. “And then Pal. Do you know how many thousands, how many tens of thousands, of women and some men, too, are assaulted in the military? And in this case, we’re not just talking assault, but murder. Those assholes were going to get away with everything. But she stood up to them. And I helped her do it. That’s what I do, Charlie. Sometimes it’s dangerous—not nearly as dangerous as what Pal did, but still. It’s dangerous the way your work is sometimes dangerous, too, but you don’t see me going all whiney and crybaby about how you should stop. How many times have you gotten up from the dinner table when a call came in? What about Margaret’s birthday last year? You left her party because of—what? A goddamn truck wreck?”
Charlie’s protest turned defensive. “A truck that spilled steers all over the road. And I didn’t have a choice. I’m the only law in the county outside the rez. But you have a choice. There’s other reporters out there.”
Lola had already pounced. Now she dug in her claws. “But it was my story. I don’t give away my stories, Charlie. Just like you don’t give away your cases. This is who I am. Just like the Becker Babes are who they are.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. If you hadn’t figured all of that out after six years, then you had no business asking me to marry you.”
Lola rose from her chair. She stood over him, no longer bothering to whisper. “And you have no business implying I’m a bad mother, either. I’m a good reporter and I’m a good mother. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, just like being a good sheriff who’s on call around the clock doesn’t mean you’re a bad father.”
Charlie tried to interject something. Lola held up her hand to stop him. “No. This whole proposal thing has been your show from the start. Maybe I’ll marry you someday.” Lola thought about the marshmallow dress. The sticky makeup. “Maybe not. But for sure, it’s not going to be because you bullied me into it. And if this means ending things between us, so be it.”
The words hung there, as much of a surprise to Lola as they no doubt were for Charlie. Beyond them, an immense blackness, populated by specters of separate homes, shared-custody arrangements, awkward social situations involving extended family and Charlie with a new girlfriend hanging on his arm. Lola wanted to shove past Charlie into the room, take Margaret and flee with her into the night. Life without Charlie, she could handle. Maybe. Life without Margaret, even part of the time? Incomprehensible. But they’d arrived at this point, and there was no turning back.
Charlie pushed himself slowly from the chair, only inches away from her when he stood, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body. She leaned in. He held her so close that the buttons on his shirt mashed into her cheek.
“Maybe you’re bluffing, Lola. I know how you like to do that. It’s how you get half your stories. Well, I’m calling your bluff. The proposal goes. Forget I mentioned it. But I hope you stay.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
The women stacked small squares of red crepe paper in piles of six, pleating each pile with brown fingers so gnarled as to seem incapable of such dainty work. Each woman selected a long green wire from the pile in the middle of the table and wrapped one end tight around the middle of the pleated sheets. They wielded scissors with deft sharp snips, triangling the ends of the sheaves, bits of red paper floating down around their ankles like bloodied snowflakes. The paper rustled and whispered a conversation of its own beneath the elders’ desultory voices.
“Cold’s holding off. Good thing. Want to get these in the ground before a hard freeze.”
“But not too long before Veterans Day. Don’t want them to be all faded for the ceremony. Hey, Dolores. Why you make your flowers so big, hey?” Laughter all around, eyes glazed with age crinkling at the corners, hands lifted to cover toothless grins.
“She wants Mike’s grave to shine bright.”
Dolores, a big woman, puffed larger, suddenly fierce in aspect, not unlike the chicken she’d pawned off on her unsuspecting victims some months earlier. “Don’t he deserve it, though?”
Smiles vanished. The women’s hands stilled. Even the paper held its breath.
“That other boy. The one killed ours. He’s in jail now, right?”
“Long time. They got him on the murder. Still working through the rape thing.”
“Huh. Maybe in jail, he finds out what that’s like. That girl gets justice one way or the other. Bet he cry for his mama. Big boys like him, they always cry. So brave until it’s them.” Lips stretched in expressions too frightening to be termed smiles.
The eldest among them, a woman so small her head barely edged the tabletop despite the cushion thoughtfully placed beneath her bony rear, took it upon herself to bring the flower-makers back to their proper mood. “So, Dolores, you’ve moved yourself right in with Delbert. You got your man.”
Scissors flashed in Dolores’ hands. She spoke righteous as the new preacher at the reservation’s fundamentalist church, who no doubt would be scandalized by the women’s conversation. “Him and that girl, they’re setting up to ranch again, just like Delbert and her father used to do. Going to get themselves some cow-calf pairs, see if they can make a go of it. Last thing he needs to worry about is cooking, keeping house.”
“Oh. You’re looking after him.”
Dolores fluffed a carnation so assertively she shredded the petals. She tossed it onto the floor.
“He keep you up all night? That why you’re so clumsy today with your flowers?”
Shoulders shook. Laughter pealed. Order was restored.
The cold held off, one balmy day after another, aspen trembling golden on the flanks of the Winds, sky an ethereal blue, even the wind briefly becalmed. Harsh edges seemed softer. Wyoming briefly became the place on postcards, calendars, tourism brochures. Newcomers publicly complimented themselves for their great good sense in moving there. Old-timers held their tongues and spent as much time outdoors as possible, storing up the bluebird days against the inevitable.
The Shoshone elders scooped armfuls of the paper flowers into black plastic leaf bags and handed them off to young people with strong thighs and backs, who spent a weekend pulling the old, faded flowers from the humped graves in the Sacajawea Cemetery and inserting the new stems into the ground, one close by the other, until a scarlet blanket adorned each grave. At the last minute, Dolores decided she didn’t trust anyone else to give the job the attention it deserved. Despite her arthritis and Delbert’s various aches and pains, they spent a long afternoon kneeling beside Mike’s grave, placing flower after flower, stopping frequently to sit and stroke the surface of the dirt, crumbling the larger clods and patting them smooth.
Two weeks later, they were back. Winter came with them, the sky grey and heavy and unyielding as steel, a great weight pressing down on the small crowd assembled at the cemetery. A rude wind spit snow into the wrinkled faces of the elders, tore at the eagle feathers on the veterans’ war bonnets, tossed the buckskin fringes dangling from the lances, and snatched the honor song from the drum and carried it away. The veterans, Delbert among them, slitted their eyes against it and held heads high. Pal waited off to one side with Shirl
Dillon. She had insisted that this shattered man, who now bore the shame that once burdened Delbert, join them. “Your son, Cody,” she said, “at least he was sorry. He punished himself. Not like those others.”
Charlie and Lola and Margaret stood beside them. Margaret tugged with mittened hands at the scarf wrapped around the lower part of her face. Lola’s own hands were bare. She clasped them together against the cold, the fingers of her right hand worrying the tiny diamond ring on the third finger of her left. The ring was a compromise—Lola’s acknowledgement of someday, along with Charlie’s that something flashier would have represented too strong a push. Charlie took her hands in his own, enfolding them in warmth. They turned toward Mike’s grave. A veteran, one of the younger ones, pulled a bugle from beneath his arm, where he had tucked it for warmth. He raised it to his lips. Lola’s eyes met Pal’s. The two women nodded, then faced front as the sound of taps rose and bumped against the sky and hovered there above them as Mike St. Clair was finally accorded the honor he deserved.
the end
Acknowledgements
So many people to thank: The empress of editors, Terri Bischoff, and the rest of the Midnight Ink crew—development coordinator Kathy Schneider, publicist Katie Mickschl, freelance editor Gabrielle Simons, proofreader Melissa Mierva, book designer Bob Gaul, and cover designer Ellen Lawson; also, to agent Barbara Braun.
Deep gratitude to Glenda Trosper of the Eastern Shoshone Tribal Council, who patiently answered my questions; J.J. Hensley for an early read; Tom Avril, whose story about his Aunt Pearl’s Fourth of July celebration I appropriated for my own purposes; and my niece, Gina Florio Sous, for lending the name of her diabolical cat, Jemalina, to my fictional and equally diabolical chicken.
