by K. C. McRae
Lauri looked on with wide eyes. Merry sensed one hand reaching out to touch her, but it drew back. She wanted to run her bloody hand over her face, through her hair, in imitation of some tribal grieving ritual.
Jamie. I should have stopped her.
“Oh, Merry. This will never do.”
Her head jerked up, the tears surprised out of her. Yvette Trager stood outside the cell. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt and her gray curls were flattened on one side of her head as if she’d just crawled out of bed.
Merry hiccupped. Swallowed.
“I heard one of my parolees got themselves in trouble.” Yvette began with a light tone, as if ready to chivvy her charge toward right thinking. But the half-smile slid off her face as she stared at Merry. “Are you okay?”
“Fuck no. I just blew a huge hole in Olivia Lamente with my Bampa’s shotgun.” She wiped her nose against the still-damp shoulder of her T-shirt. “Just having it is a parole violation, right?”
The other woman gave a reluctant nod.
“Using it like I did, well, that’s going to land me in prison for more years than I ever had coming before. Not a lot you can do about that.” Merry’s angry gaze pushed at her to leave, but Yvette fielded her animosity with kind eyes, cracking her ire like an egg. Yvette grasped a bar in each hand and yelled over her shoulder.
“Nick!”
A short, overweight man hustled down the stairs. “Yes, Ms. Trager?”
“Why hasn’t this woman seen a doctor? Look at her arm.”
“I don’t know, ma’am. She came in with the deputy like that.” He looked closer. “Well, it didn’t look that bad.”
“It’s okay,” Merry said. “I kind of hid it from them so they could concentrate on Jamie.”
Her voice quavered as she spoke, and Yvette’s gaze sharpened. “Jamie Gutierrez? What happened to him?”
Merry gaped. “You don’t know?”
Yvette motioned to Nick, apparently the graveyard shift’s Nadine. “I want to talk to her upstairs. Let her out, and get me a first-aid kit.”
With alacrity, he bent to the keys dangling from his belt and unlocked the door. Apparently, being a parole officer held some clout around here. Or maybe just being Yvette Trager did. Merry stood.
Lauri followed. “Hey, what about me?”
“In a little while, honey,” Yvette said.
“No! Not in a little while. If Merry gets to go, so do I. I didn’t even shoot anyone!”
Merry turned pleading eyes on her cousin, who either didn’t understand or didn’t care, and whose rising voice continued to complain as they climbed the stairs to the main level of the police station. Yvette ignored her, and Merry tried to.
Nick shut them in the conference room Merry knew so well by now. Moments later he opened the door again to hand in the first-aid kit.
“Where’s Barbie?” she asked.
“Went back out to your ranch with the sheriff.”
Yvette began with the groove in her arm, gently wiping the dirt from the deep slash with a sanitized towelette. Merry winced as the disinfectant worked its way into the wound but didn’t pull back.
“What happened?” her parole officer asked.
Grime and blood had worked into her cuticles, into the tiny crevices of her knuckles, and into a fine webbed pattern in the skin on the backs of her hand. Brown-gray smudges of mud daubed her arms and stained her clothing.
Tangible.
Evidence.
It had all really happened. Her mind, playing the defensive tricks minds do when faced with untenable situations, had been distracting her with her own pain and guilt.
Now, as she prepared to relate the earlier nightmare at the ranch, she faced it all over again. Oh God. Jamie could really die. She was really going back to prison. She’d lose the ranch. The grim dominos lying down in all directions from this night filled her interior vision. Fear unfurled in her chest, and her hand began to tremble in Yvette’s. The older woman unscrewed the cap on a tube of Neosporine, watching her face.
“Merry?”
Somehow, she held it together enough to tell what had happened. When she’d finished her story, Yvette had finished cleaning and bandaging her hand and arm. Neither hurt as much as before, numbed by antibiotic ointment and the ibuprofen washed down with a bottle of water Yvette extracted from her giant handbag.
Merry gestured toward the bandages. “Thanks.”
Yvette nodded.
They sat back and considered each other.
“You saved a man’s life,” Yvette said.
“I don’t even know that! He might have died.”
Yvette got up and left the room without a word. Merry waited, unsure.
After about five minutes she returned. “He’s not dead.”
Relief gusted through her. Short lived. “So he could still die.”
“He’s stable. Critical, but stable. From what Nick said when he called the hospital, the bullet chewed him up pretty good inside, but it could have done a lot more damage.”
“Is that a clinical diagnosis?”
“Layman’s terms are all I have. Point is, you can go ahead and hope for him.”
Merry looked out at the night through the window.
“Are you afraid wanting so badly for him to be okay will somehow jinx his recovery?”
Merry hesitated, then inclined her head a fraction. As much affection as she’d developed for her, this woman was a little spooky. “I’m sorry.”
Yvette cocked her head to one side, inviting her to continue.
“I didn’t do what you said.”
“What I said?”
“In Chewie’s. About staying strong. I could have stopped her, but I didn’t.”
“I don’t understand. You did stop her.”
“But not in time. I could have knocked her down, hurt her before she hurt him.”
“Really? Could you have?”
“I hesitated. Said to myself we could talk it out. But really, I was just afraid that it was wrong to want to hurt someone the way I wanted to hurt Olivia.”
Yvette sighed. “First of all, avoiding violence is not cowardice; it’s rationality balancing out something more primitive. Second, you couldn’t have stopped her.”
“I could have—”
“She had a gun, Merry. A forty-four from what Nick told me before I came down to see you.” Merry’s head jerked up, and Yvette nodded. “I knew part of what happened, just not about Jamie. I wanted your version. Anyway, I come down and find you sitting in jail beating yourself up because you, unarmed and untrained, didn’t take on a crazy bitch with a Dirty Harry gun. How egotistical is that?”
“I—”
“Don’t be an ass. She would have shot you. Killed you dead. Killed Jamie. And killed Barbie. But she didn’t, because you were smart and because you did what you needed to do when you needed to do it.”
Merry was silent, resisting.
Yvette rose. “I’m going to go talk to your cousin, now. You stay here for a little while longer.”
Merry waited for half an hour. The door opened, and Sheriff Ellers walked into the room.
“Looks like you all were telling the truth.”
She stood. “Jamie regained consciousness?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. But the bullets and guns and the locations of things work out. You can go home. I wouldn’t wander too much farther than that, though.”
“Can I go to the hospital in Missoula?”
Ellers considered, then gave an easy nod. “Want a ride?”
She heard Rory Hawkins’s snort of disgust from outside the room.
“If you can spare the time.”
Ellers gestured toward the door. “Let’s go then.”
twenty-five
Merry leaned her head b
ack and stared at the fluorescent lights above. Her arm still ached a bit, even after one of the emergency room doctors had elaborated on Yvette’s first-aid handiwork with a few stitches. She’d refused the Vicodin he offered.
The clicking of a computer keyboard, the murmur of voices, the whisper of rubber-clad footsteps, and the occasional muted trill of a telephone combined to lull her tired mind. It was almost five a.m. and the sky was already bright. The cloying floral scent of dusty potpourri on an end table failed to override the underlying smells of disinfectant and floor polish.
Merry had found the correct waiting area and slipped onto a chair, fatigue put on hold until she found out what happened to Jamie. Another woman sat across from her, and Merry realized it had to be Gayle Gutierrez. Her dark, gleaming pageboy framed a face that would have been downright stunning minus the red nose and bloodshot eyes from crying. She perched on the edge of an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair, emanating worry for her husband. A quick glance up, then the double take. Merry met her eyes, trying for a smile but feeling it slip around on her face as if she had no control of her own muscles. Anger crowded the distress in the other woman’s eyes, and Merry looked away.
She should leave. She knew it but couldn’t go before finding out that Jamie was okay. At least she could move to another place to wait. She stood.
“Stay.” Gayle’s voice was raw.
Merry tried a casual shrug. Struggling to keep her voice even, she said, “Just thought I’d stop by and see if there was any news. I’ll check in later.”
“He’d want you here.” Gayle gestured at the chair, and Merry sank back down, unaccountably intimidated and as uncomfortable as she’d ever been.
Gayle slid back on her chair, eyes still on Merry. “He loves you.”
Merry opened her mouth, clamped it shut, then shook her head. “We’re just friends, from way back.”
Gayle ignored her. “Do you love him, too?”
She had no resources left to draw on. Her throat worked, but nothing came out.
His wife went on. “How could you drag him into your shit like that? He almost lost his job, and now he’s in there on that operating table, hanging on with everything he’s got, all because of you.”
Merry should have left, but now she couldn’t. She deserved everything Jamie’s wife chose to fling at her, and Gayle deserved the chance to do it.
She bowed her head. “I’m sorry.”
Gayle’s gaze never wavered. “That’s not good enough.”
Merry swallowed. “What would be? Good enough.”
“If he comes out the other side of this thing, you stay away from him.”
She studied the floor.
“No crooking your finger so he comes running. No phone calls pleading for help. No asking him to do things to get him in trouble at work. Just leave him alone.”
Merry met her gaze, opened her mouth to speak, and found the words had already run. Because his wife was right. Involving him in her crazy obsession with justice had been pure self-indulgence. Having sex with him on her front porch, for Christ’s sake. There was no going back from that. And she could think of only one way to go forward.
Gayle let out a short, barbed laugh. “Can’t do it, can you?”
Merry stood up. “But I will. Because you’re right. I never should have asked for his help. And I hate that he got hurt.” She took a step, then turned back. “I’ll never trouble either of you again.”
She could actually see the relief wash across Gayle’s features. This time when Merry turned to leave, Gayle didn’t try to stop her. It had become about something different than what Jamie would have wanted.
———
Harlan lived in a manufactured home set on a concrete foundation. He’d painted it white with forest green trim, and the barn and three other outbuildings reversed the colors. The siding showed wear, and lighter shingles spotted the roof in several places where it had been patched after rough weather. The valley to the northeast funneled wind and winter cold straight to Harlan’s small spread.
A few red cows lay in the late afternoon sun, fenced from the road with split rails instead of the ubiquitous barbed wire. As Merry shifted into Park, the brown rheumy eyes of a bony old specimen watched her with calm interest. As her boots hit the driveway, Merry breathed in the familiar scent of horse carried on the warm air, along with a hint of cedar. Chickens gabbled at one another conversationally, bocking and scratching in a large rectangular enclosure built off one end of their coop. A metallic clang echoed from the nearest building.
She strode to the doorway and looked inside. A well-lit and tidy shop greeted her eye. Harlan lay on a roller, installing new shocks on the front of an old yellow flatbed truck. She watched him work for a few moments, unnoticed, then cleared her throat.
He craned his head from under the truck, saw Merry, and returned to the bolt he was tightening. The whine of the impact wrench bounced off the metal walls, and then silence settled over the shop. After long seconds of stillness, he rolled out from under the vehicle and used the grille guard on the front to pull himself upright. Wiping grease off his hands with a scrap of blue flannel, he walked over to Merry. Stopping in front of her, he looked up from his hands and regarded her with steady gray eyes.
“Want a beer?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He nodded to himself. “Stay here. I’ll go get them.”
She waited, eyes roving over the hills beyond, the golden grass drinking in the oblique rays of the sun and butting up against a sky turning blue gray with clouds so smooth she couldn’t tell where they began.
Harlan reappeared, an oilcan of Foster’s in each hand. He handed one of the lagers to her, and popped the top on his own. Then, eyeing the sling on her arm, he took back the can, opened it, and handed it back.
“Thanks,” she said.
They gazed out the door at the hills.
She sipped her beer. Swallowed. “I was kind of a jackass. About you and Mama.”
When he didn’t respond, she looked over at him and met a gaze that held frank amusement.
“Yup. You were,” he said.
She grinned and looked at the floor. Gave a little nod. “Yeah.”
He leaned against the workbench running along one wall. “’Course, I’ve had my share of jackass moments.” He took a swallow. “Maybe more’n my share.”
“Huh,” she said. “Hard to imagine.”
They watched the hills do nothing for a few more sips.
“What are you going to do now?” Harlan asked.
A hawk dove into the rectangle of land and sky visible through the doorway, streaking toward the ground and then swooping upward with something small and limp in its beak.
The Texas parole board had allowed Merry to remain in Hazel, under Yvette’s supervision. It helped that Yvette had argued on her behalf with the same inimitable verve with which she seemed to approach everything else. That—plus the statement Barbie had given Sheriff Ellers and the fact that Merry had saved the life of a policeman—had been enough for the county attorney to decide Merry had not actually committed any crime. Texas had been willing to go along with his recommendation.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Couple named Brentwood are buying the Lamente place. Plan to rebuild the whole shebang, and they want to take over Frank Cain’s leases when they’re up.”
“They know what they’re doing?”
“Nope. But Thomas Brentwood is hiring Frank’s oldest son to run the place. He’ll do okay.”
“What’re these Brentwood people like?”
“More money than God. Seem decent enough, though.”
“Well, that’s better’n a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.” He took a swallow and swiped his forearm across his mouth. “Your Mama would’ve been proud of what you did.” Watching her as he said it.
/> “Maybe. Maybe she would’ve. I just wish … never mind. It doesn’t matter.”
“Some things I wish I’d done differently, too.” He sighed. “Hard to get through life without some of that. I doubt she holds our shortcomings against us, wherever she is.”
“No,” she said. “I don’t suppose she would. I’m glad you were here when I wasn’t.”
“Guilt’s a useless thing to hold onto, you know.”
She didn’t respond.
A rooster crowed outside.
“So are you looking for work?”
“Well, I need some kind of job. I suppose I could hire out to help when someone needs it. Fix fence. Whatever. Don’t suppose you need any fences mended, do you?” she asked, trying to laugh.
He pressed his lips together and shook his head.
“Oh, well. I’ll find something.”
“I’ve managed to keep up pretty well with the fence work around here,” he said. “But I could sure use some reliable help down at the hardware. Don’t suppose you’d be interested in doing some indoor work. Some of it’d be in the open, out back with the loading and feed and such. You know. But nothing like ranch work.”
She looked at him. “Really?”
“I would dearly love to get rid of that little pissant who pretends to work for me right now.”
She recalled the laconic, comic-book-reading youth in the battered John Deere cap.
He continued. “It’s not that he’s dishonest, but he’s such a dipshit I hardly dare to leave him alone. I’d really appreciate if you’d think about it.”
She grinned, not certain how he’d managed to turn a job offer into her doing him a favor.
“I don’t have to think about it,” she said. “It sounds like a pretty good deal to me.”
“You don’t know how much I’m going to pay you yet. May not be such a good deal after all.”
Merry laughed. “Well, you could throw in another beer.” She swished the dregs in her Foster’s can.
Harlan nodded. “I guess I could do that.”
———
Sprinklers defended the grass in the park from the late-July heat, sending occasional drifts of spray under the clump of trees that shaded the big picnic table. It was covered with Chester-fried chicken, egg salad sandwiches, potato and macaroni salads, a quivering bowl of green Jell-O studded with fruit, watermelon cut into chilled wedges, and two pans of pecan-studded, double-fudge brownies made from Mama’s recipe.
