by D. J. Butler
“You don’t want to wait around for him to sober up?” Michael suggested.
Hiram shook his head. “If we’d come in on foot, I’d wait, but it’ll be hours and maybe not until the morning. That’s a long time to wait when we’re not sure he knows anything useful at all. We’ll come back tomorrow.”
Michael felt his brow furrow. “Maybe you Mormons aren’t wrong about staying away from alcohol.”
Hiram grunted.
“Coffee, though,” Michael said. “That seems all right.”
Hiram squinted at the sky. He walked around the back and got in the passenger seat.
Michael turned the truck around, driving across sand and slickrock, until they were headed back north.
“You know, he wasn’t wrong,” Michael said. “The Great Basin is in a rain shadow. As for the universe being in the rocks, that’s correct as well. The elements are all there, the building blocks of life along with inanimate things. He might be an interesting person to talk to once he dries up. I mean, he’s saying it in a crazy way, but what he’s saying isn’t wrong.”
Pap took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow, smoothing down the little hair left on his scalp. “That’s kind of you, son. Always look for the good in people. Nine times out of ten, you’ll find it.”
On the drive back, they stopped to look at a grand valley. Its cyclopean walls leaned in until they almost touched, an impossible geometry that only seemed possible if some gods had laid hand to hammer and chisel to lay the cliffs out that way.
Only there were no gods. No, erosion made the landscapes, time, water, and long eons, as powerful as any deity.
Michael thought of what Davison Rock had said about stones. “Only…you don’t think the prospector was talking about a seer stone, do you? All that talk about secrets of the universe, and seeing things in stones?”
“I don’t.”
Michael thought of the widow Artemis and her collection of books. He was curious about the astrology, the stars, the planets, but he also was interested in the geology of the area. Stars and stones, the desert definitely had its secrets. He found that so much more interesting than the heaven that Jimmy Udall had failed to find.
Chapter Eight
Michael turned off the road, cutting through the junipers toward their camp. In the darkness, the trees loomed up like wild beasts, sudden and startled and aggressive. Hiram resisted the urge to tell Michael to slow down.
Instead, he looked at the cliffs to the south-east and saw a light that must come from Preece’s house; he’d promised to update the rancher on information he collected about the ghost, and it was early enough yet that he wouldn’t feel uncomfortable knocking.
The Udalls had known Preece and had described him in friendly terms. Did Preece know, or suspect, that the ghost was Jimmy Udall’s? He hadn’t offered that information, which suggested that, if he knew it, it was information he wanted to keep hidden.
With the sun gone and the warm summer air melting into a cooling breeze across his face, Hiram closed his eyes. Why was he always so tired? He found himself thinking of the widow Artemis…the curve of her lip…the curves of…
The truck cracked to a halt, bouncing all thoughts of the widow from Hiram’s head.
The truck ticked but all else was silent. Even the river’s gurgle was lost in oppressive quiet. The air felt heavy, like the world was preparing to grieve. Hiram tried to trust his instincts. Grandma Hettie said a person’s intuition was God talking so quietly, only the heart could hear it.
Something was off, and while he didn’t much like violence, sometimes a weapon was necessary. He thought about warning Michael that things weren’t right, but then thought against it. If his son wasn’t feeling anything, Hiram might be mistaken.
While his son got out of the truck, Hiram reached into the glove compartment. He took out the Model M1917 revolver marked with the initials Y.Y. and H.W. and pocketed it. Then he was out of the Double-A with Michael following him through the junipers.
“You’ll go talk to Mr. Preece now, right?” Michael said. “He’s the one who wanted to know about the ghost.”
Hiram briefly considered taking an icy bath in the Colorado River. He feared it wouldn’t work, his mental images of Diana Artemis seemed so warm and real. “We’re staying on his land, so it seems only fair, doesn’t it?”
Michael nodded. “Also, you’re thinking he’s rich and maybe he’s in a position to help the Udalls, whether or not the ghost is their son Jimmy. And, no offense, Pap, but your sense of duty is going to drive you to go report to him before we eat. Right?”
“I feel so predictable.” Hiram laughed. “If you want to get a fire started and some food going while I talk with Preece, I think that would be a fine idea.”
Michael sighed. “I think if I’m learning this cunning man craft, I’d better learn all of it. It’s like how doctors have to practice bedside manner, and lawyers have to practice rubbing their hands together while laughing in a sinister fashion. Let’s go tell Lloyd Preece we think the Udall kid is dead, but we have no idea why.”
Hiram felt slightly uncomfortable with the words the Udall kid. He would have preferred Jimmy Udall; using the dead child’s name seemed more respectful. “It should be a short conversation.”
“That’ll leave us lots of time to ask him for money.”
“Not for ourselves.”
“Never. But…if he offers a meal, or gas money, or a gift…”
“We’ll try to refuse,” Hiram said.
“Right,” Michael agreed. “We’ll try.”
Their Redwings crunched on the dry soil across the valley. Hiram smelled wood smoke and meat as he stepped onto the plank porch. Up close, he could see that the cabin was nice, but not new—its most recent coat of paint was flaking off, but in the yellow light coming through the curtains and the windows, he noticed spots of a different paint color underneath. The building had a distinctly masculine feel from the outside—a stuffed elk head was nailed to the wall on the porch, above two wooden chairs whose Spartan simplicity was relieved by a pair of mismatched, worn cushions. The junipers grew right up to the walls of the cabin, huddling around its windows and crowding the edge of the porch.
He pulled open a screen door; standing inside, he knocked on the solid wood behind. “Mr. Preece!”
“I’m not saying that the smell of that stew is making me hungrier, Pap, but…”
“Okay.” Hiram grinned. “If he invites us in for dinner, I won’t say no. I won’t even try.”
The light inside went dark.
“Mr. Preece?” Hiram called. He put his hand near his overalls pocket and the revolver, just in case. “Lloyd? Everything all right?”
“I’ll get my flashlight.” Michael swung his knapsack around in front of him and dug inside.
The cabin door swung open. In the dark interior, Hiram could see nothing, and before he could open his mouth to call again or step aside, something slammed into his face. He collapsed, lights flashing in his vision.
“Pap!”
Hiram grabbed at his attacker and managed to wrap his arms around the other man’s legs. The assailant fell, tumbling forward over the edge of the porch and dragging Hiram with him. They rolled in the dust.
A light snapped on, and it blinded Hiram.
Knuckles struck Hiram in the cheek and in the jaw. Hiram punched back and connected with bone. The other man lurched away, groaning and cursing.
Hiram smelled alcohol and urine and the stink of a body that hadn’t been washed in a long time. And something else—rot? He climbed to his feet, reaching inside his shirt to touch the comforting iron disk of his chi-rho medallion. “Shine the light on him!” Hiram’s own vision was an explosion of colored blotches.
He reached for the revolver in his pocket and found it gone. Had he dropped it, falling from the porch? Did his attacker have it?
Fear gripped Hiram’s spine.
“I’m trying—ooph!”
Hiram heard thu
mping sounds on the porch and Michael’s light disappeared in a sudden crash of glass. He turned and leaped back onto the porch—
in time to take another haymaker to the jaw.
Hiram sailed backward, crashing to earth on his back, full length in the dust. He pawed at the amulet and couldn’t find it. Had he lost his protection? Was it failing him?
Improbably, he found himself remembering the widow’s cleavage.
“Hey!” Michael yelled. “Get the hell off me!”
Hiram stood up and saw a big shadow racing toward him. Lowering his head, he threw a shoulder into the place where he guessed a stomach should be. Somehow, he missed, and hurled himself onto the ground. Then a boot kicked him in the chest, and then another in the gut, and then the gut again.
Bang!
Bang! Bang!
Hiram saw the flashes of gunfire, and the kicking stopped. His head spun too much to see, but even over the ringing of his ears, he heard footsteps running away into the night.
“Pap!” Michael called.
Hiram groaned.
“My flashlight’s busted, Pap. Where are you?”
“Here.” Hiram groaned as he rolled over and tried to stand. “Please tell me that you’re the one shooting.”
In the darkness, Michael found him and stepped under his shoulder to support him. “Sorry I swore, Pap.”
Hiram coughed, his ribs hurting. “I don’t know, it seemed appropriate to me. I don’t think you hit that fellow, though. Or if you did, you only grazed him, because he got away clean.”
“Yeah, what happened? You’re a great fighter, but that guy cleaned your clock like Jack Dempsey giving Jess Willard dancing lessons. Lucky I found the gun where you dropped it.”
Hiram coughed. “Caught me by surprise, I guess.” He reached into his shirt and found his chi-rho medallion. He hadn’t lost it, after all. Had it not helped him, then? Or would his beating have been even worse without it?
Or had the amulet helped Michael find the gun?
Suddenly, he remembered the smell of Diana Artemis, and his blood ran cold. A chaste and sober mind.
He’d be powerless without a chaste and sober mind.
He needed to concentrate and keep his thoughts pure.
“I wasn’t aiming to hit that guy,” Michael said. “I wasn’t sure I could tell you apart in the darkness anyway, so I shot at the sky.”
“Good work.”
“I don’t think it was Lloyd Preece,” Michael said. “Preece smells better.”
“Maybe we accidentally interrupted a burglary. Preece must not be home.” Hiram straightened; his back felt as if it might snap in two. “Let’s get back to the camp and see how much damage Mr. Dempsey did to my beautiful face.”
“Are you nuts, Pap? We’re going to go in the cabin, and you’re going to sit down and let me look at your face. And if Mr. Preece has any scotch, we’ll—”
“I don’t need a drink.” Hiram’s jaw felt numb.
“We’ll clean your wounds, Pap,” Michael said. “You’re bleeding. I don’t know if you noticed, but you took several shots in the kisser as well as a couple of kicks to the breadbasket.”
“I noticed.”
“So we’re going in and taking care of you where we can get some decent light.” As he spoke, Michael pushed Hiram toward the front door.
“Right. Okay, you’re right, of course. But let me go first, just in case.”
Michael laughed out loud but let Hiram go first. Hiram took the pistol back. He’d counted three shots, which meant that he had two left, since he habitually left the hammer over an empty chamber, for safety.
“We’re armed,” Hiram said in as commanding a tone as he could muster. Then he stepped inside.
Nothing attacked him. Now that he was past the door, Hiram could see the tiny blue dot in the far corner of a kerosene lamp turned low. Red and purple spots still impaired his vision. Stepping carefully, he crossed the room to the light, Michael at his side.
“I smell…something,” Michael said. “Something I don’t like.”
Hiram turned up the light.
Lloyd Preece lay on his back in the center of the room, still and covered in blood.
Beside him stood a sofa and a table. In the corner was a cast-iron stove. Beside the door was a pegboard with hats hanging from it. Above a cold fireplace hung a bolt-action rifle, and beside the same fireplace leaned a double-barreled shotgun. Other hunting paraphernalia and trophies decorated all the walls. Dark doorways suggested other rooms.
Hiram handed Michael his pistol. Michael raised the revolver and shouted. “Is anyone else here?”
Hiram knelt beside Preece to check his pulse and breathing. Nothing. The man’s throat was slashed wide open and his shirt was soaked in gore. It wasn’t blood that Michael smelled—in death, the man’s bowels had released.
“He’s dead,” Hiram said, as if announcing the fact to himself. Michael left him to search the rest of the house. Hiram wanted to help, but his head was still whirling, his vision was uncertain, and he felt nauseated. He had to sit down.
“There’s a study over here!” Michael called. “Books and ledgers! And…uh…a queer little statue thing.”
Hiram stared down at the body. If the man who had killed Lloyd Preece had then knocked Hiram down, then perhaps Hiram had narrowly avoided being murdered himself. He smelled garlic and mustard, faintly, and he murmured his charm against the falling sickness. “I conjure me by the sun and the moon, and by the gospel of this day delivered to Rupert, Giles, Cornelius, and John, that I rise and fall no more.”
But shouldn’t Diana Artemis’s cross ward off the fainting spell without Hiram’s charm?
The thought of the widow Artemis came wrapped in flesh and sweet scents, though; would her amulet, too, fail, when Hiram’s mind was wracked with lustful thoughts as it was?
Hiram pinched his own earlobe, fiercely, to bring his mind into focus. He took deep breaths, and the garlic and mustard smell retreated, to be replaced again by the smell of feces—that, and not blood at all, was the real smell of human death.
Should they chase the killer? But he already had a head start, and in the darkness Hiram and Michael couldn’t move fast enough to catch up.
“This one’s a bedroom!” Michael yelled. “And a little washroom.” He returned to the parlor, revolver down at his side. “No one here but us.”
Hiram dragged himself up onto the sofa, feeling a seizure tease at the edges of his mind but then recede. “We need to tell the sheriff. He’ll be in Moab.”
“You sure, Pap?”
Hiram frowned. “Of course. Why?”
“Because last time you and I were near a murder scene, we became suspects. Right now, there’s no reason for anyone to think we were involved. Maybe we should just go down to the river and camp and let someone else find Preece in the morning.”
Hiram’s eyes had trouble focusing. He looked at the hat rack. “You make good points, son. But even if there was a reason for us to become suspects, I’d still want to report it.” It would be the right thing to do, and right now Hiram wanted to be very careful to do the right thing, to restore his chaste and sober mind. “But in this case, there’s simply no reason anyone would blame us. Even if we are the ones who report the crime.”
Michael nodded slowly. “I guess we know what the murder weapon was.”
“Well, that’s really the sheriff’s business, but…what weapon do you think killed Preece?”
“That fancy silver knife he was flashing yesterday.” Michael stooped to the floor, and when he stood he was holding the knife’s sheath. The weapon wasn’t in it.
“I guess I’m lucky I didn’t get stabbed,” Hiram said. “Unless the knife is still in here somewhere.” Hiram tried to get up to look, but nearly fainted with the effort.
“Sit, Pap. I’ll do the searching.”
Michael set the sheath down again and looked for the knife. Hiram gazed at the hats on the pegboard, trying to figure out why he fel
t that something looked wrong. Then he realized what it was.
“It’s not here, Pap,” Michael announced. “I think you’re lucky you didn’t get stabbed.”
Hiram nodded, then pointed. “Is one of those hats a lady’s hat?”
Michael plodded over to the row of headwear. “Oh yes,” he said, plucking a round blue cap from a peg. “Very fashionable in about 1929, and therefore worn by all the girls in Provo this spring.”
“Why does that feel wrong?” Hiram asked.
“Because the whole point of fashion is to wear things when they are fashionable, and not six years later.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean, Pap.” Michael cracked a grin. “Preece is a widower. Was a widower. So whose hat is this?”
Hiram considered it. “Probably his daughter’s. Addy Tunstall.”
“Or a lady friend,” Michael added. “Nothing wrong with a widower having a lady friend, is there, Pap?”
Hiram flinched.
“That guy who beat us up,” Michael said. “You think maybe he’s that prospector? Davison Rock?”
“I smelled booze,” Hiram said. “A lot of it.”
“So did I. And stinky man-beast.”
“But he would have had to come running down here, hell-bent for leather, to beat us by the footpath. I’ve never known a drunk to have that much ambition, or that much staying power.”
Michael shrugged. “Maybe he drove. People drive drunk all the time. Maybe he took some faster road that we don’t know.”
Hiram nodded. “And I thought I smelled something else, too. I thought it smelled like rot, or decay. Maybe I was smelling Preece’s body?”
Michael looked down at the body and shuddered. “No, he smells a little like blood, and mostly like, uh, other stuff. He isn’t rotting yet.” Michael waved his hand to shoo away flies, which were beginning to crawl over Preece’s corpse.
“Let’s get that covered.” Hiram stood and hobbled, over Michael’s protest, into the bedroom. A spare sheet folded and sitting on a set of shelves would do fine; he brought it back, chased away the flies, and covered the body. “Any idea what uranium smells like?”
