The Clinch Knot

by John Galligan

  The girl’s golden Oldsmobile is parked on the piney bank above the pond, nosed into a little thicket of huckleberry brush. I see Sneed’s dark head inside the car. I see a liquor bottle spun out across the pine needles, just beyond the passenger door. Then I see Jesse about thirty feet away—Jesse face down. I am running—arms and legs spread like she’s getting a suntan, except with no towel under her, only a wide, dark stain.

  I skid to my knees. “Jesse!” Her face is split open at the nose, stuck in a black crust of blood that has soaked into the dry ground. Her wild blond hair parts just slightly behind one ear where a bullet has entered.

  I freeze. Everything—heart, breath, thought—stops.

  The car, Sneed, everything else, is at my back. But I cannot turn. My whole body wants to vomit, wants to jerk itself inside out, but I am as rigid as the hard ground, eyes fixed on Jesse’s lifeless body until they burn out and stray away for relief to the liquor bottle drawing ants just beyond her left foot. The bottle is empty. Frangelico, it says. Premium hazelnut liqueur, it says. Enjoy! it says.

  Then I lose it. I stand and stumble backwards, coughing, spilling bile across my front and calling, “Sneed … Sneed …”

  He is inside the car. He is naked to the waist, his jeans on but unzipped. He is slumped in a corner of the backseat, his beautiful brown skin turned ashen purple, his lips nearly white and his eyes half open.

  I grab door handles but they snap back. Locked. Front and back. “Damn it! Come on, Sneed!”

  I circle, tearing at the stubborn handles. Strips of silver duct tape hang from the inside door and window seams. A can of lighter fluid rests on the seat, and on the floor, between Sneed’s long, splayed legs, squats the little hibachi grill that Sneed uses to cook hot dogs when he and Jesse go on their “picnics.” The grill’s coals have burned out.

  “Sneed, God damn it!”

  I stagger to the pond edge, come back with a heavy rock. I slam the rock through the driver’s window and reach in. I rip the side door open. On a tide of stale air, Sneed slumps out against me, heavy and limp.

  “Dog,” he moans.

  “Sneed … what the …”

  He makes a second feeble moan as he drags down my leg, flops onto his face and lays still on the pine needles. My eyes jerk back inside the car: on the seat, beneath the sweat-damp spot where Sneed has slumped away, rest my Glock and Jesse’s keys.

  I turn my face to the sky and howl.

  Severe Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

  Murder Shocks Paradise Valley

  Death Penalty Possible for Killer, Authorities Say LIVINGSTON, Montana (News Service) Residents of the Paradise Valley expressed shock and sadness over Wednesday’s brutal slaying of a local woman, while death penalty advocates called for swift justice for her alleged killer, an Arkansas man who survived a suicide attempt and remains under guard at Livingston Memorial Hospital.

  According to investigators, D’Ontario Sneed, 20, shot his victim in the back of the head with a stolen pistol. Sneed then locked himself in his vehicle and attempted to take his own life by asphyxiation, Park County Sheriff Roy Chubbuck said at a press conference yesterday.

  “We are treating it as a murder, followed by a suicide attempt,” Chubbuck said. The sheriff said Sneed will be arraigned today.(continued)

  The dead woman, 22-year-old Jesse Winifred Ringer, was a former Livingston High School Homecoming Queen and Forest Service smokejumper who had been dating Sneed while the pair worked as guide-shuttle drivers in the Paradise Valley. An acquaintance discovered the body of Ringer and subsequently pulled Sneed from his vehicle in a state of severe carbon monoxide poisoning.

  Ringer is survived by her father, former bull rider and Livingston fishing guide Galen Ringer, who in 2003 was convicted of murdering a fellow guide on the Yellowstone River and currently awaits appeal of his death penalty sentence.

  Chubbuck told reporters in a press conference Sunday that Sneed apparently shot Ringer after a domestic dispute. Finding no more ammunition in the pistol, Sneed then sealed himself inside the vehicle and used a small charcoal grill to attempt suicide, Chubbuck said.

  A spokesperson for the Livingston Memorial Hospital would not confirm reports that Sneed was in critical condition as hospital officials seek to contact next-of-kin.

  Death penalty advocates in Helena, where Montana’s capital punishment law is under legislative review, called for Sneed’s trial and execution.

  Meanwhile, in Livingston, residents mourned the death of a popular and spirited young woman who overcame a troubled life to …

  Can Pronghorn Jump?

  “Dog?”

  My tax guy back in Boston, Harvey Digman, croaked his surprise into my ear.

  “Is it really you?”

  In my state of blinding anguish, the old man’s question confused me. Was it really me? I fumbled some non-answer down at the cruddy floor tiles.

  “Dog? Where are you?”

  I looked up and around. I was in the back hallway of a mini-mart or some such location, between the doors to the toilets. I could not remember getting there, but booze and grief will take you to places like this—and beyond.

  “Yeah, Harv. It’s me.”

  “You sound like hell, buddy.” Harvey turned down the volume on what was very likely a vintage Jane Fonda jazzercise tape. “Tell me you’re finally coming home.”

  I lurched out to the end of the phone cord. “Dane Tucker,” I blurted. These words turned the head of a shape-free young woman scooting into the toilet on snapping yellow flip-flops. She gave me a pinpoint glance—What about Dane Tucker?—before she let the door swing.

  “Can you—” I lowered my voice “—Harvey, can you do me a big favor? Can you look up Dane Tucker on the internet?”

  “What? You call me for the first time in a year and want me to Google a guy?”

  I was thinking in pictures: Harvey Digman was at that moment sending a hurt look across the exercise mat to his personal trainer, some lovely Stephanie. With death upon me, with death squatting in my heart and lungs and gut, I was reminded that Harvey Digman planned to live forever.

  “You mean the actor? Force Factor? That poor man’s Chuck Norris? What for?”

  I plugged quarters. Toilets flushed and towels hanked out. The phone was oily, slick as a chub in my palm. I tried to center on some statement I was sure about.

  “I’m in Montana, Harv.”

  He sighed. “Well, gee, Dog. That explains everything.”

  “The guy has a ranch here in the Paradise Valley.”

  “A ranch. Well, then of course. The man must be Googled.”

  But instead of keyboard tappings, I heard the telltale sound of a file drawer running out and slamming the end of its track. That was all me in there, file after file, a long and complicated mess.

  “I know I’m broke, Harvey. I’m not calling for money. Just Google the guy.”

  “You’re more than broke. Last month Miss Mary Jane sued for your half of the condo at Cape Cod. You lost.”

  “I’ve already spent my equity.”

  “I know you have. I cooked that book already. I can’t do this for you anymore, Dog. Come home. Get a job. Start over.”

  There passed a quarter’s worth of blank time here, me seeing pictures of a suit, a train, a stream of people, a desk and an empty apartment at the end of the day.

  “I just want you to Google Dane Tucker with the word skinhead.”

  Another sigh. But now he was tapping. “I’m not following this, Dog.”

  “Or Nazi. Or white supremacy. Anything like that.”

  “Don’t they have libraries out there yet?”

  “Come on, Harv. This is a pay phone.”

  “You do not sound well, Dog.”

  “Damn it, just—”

  But Harvey always came through for me, all the way back to the founding days of Oglivie Secure, so I fixed on fingers tapping keys, and I tried to take what I believe is referred to by the lovely Stephanies among us as a d
eep, cleansing breath. But right then the shape-averse young woman, coming out of the toilet with her hair fluffed, pinned me with another look. “I’m Cindra. Do you, like, know Dane or something?” I looked away as Harvey intoned into my ear, “Tucker Flick Force Factor loses 40 million.”

  “Not that stuff, Harv. I want to know if he has any connections to skinheads, Nazis, Aryan Nation, white supremacy, the whole, you know …”

  “The whole hate community?”

  Harvey, an old lefty, would have the proper term. “I guess so.”

  “I am loathe even to ask, Dog.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “I am now conducting a Boolean search.”

  “Only you would know a thing like that, Harvey.” He chuckled. “Librarians. Pure, simmering libido, Dog, I’m telling you.”

  A wave of fatigue and nausea slammed me, made me retch over a trash can, and right on schedule Cindra brought a friend in from the car to show off the man who knew—

  “Nope,” said Harvey. “Nothing like that. Though it says here, in Variety online, that because of a flap with the ACLU Tucker hasn’t been able to finance his next project, Border Force.” He clucked. “This is all sounding a little forced, wouldn’t you say, Dog?”

  “All right, Harvey. Thanks—”

  “Hold on.”

  He tapped more keys. As I waited, I saw an alternate picture of myself. A healthier Dog was out there beyond the Little Debbies and the beef jerky, beyond the window on the curb outside, weeping. I was shaking, dripping, mewling into my hands, letting Cindra and everyone else in the whole world just know how bad it hurt what happened to Sneed and Jesse.

  But I held on, gritted my unbrushed teeth while Harvey quoted from something titled “Hollywood’s Tucker Addresses Citizen Group.”

  “‘Action film star Dane Tucker addressed a group of California Minutemen volunteers in San Diego last month’—this is from a website, Dog, Minutemen Civil Defense Corps—’commending the volunteers for standing guard on this nation’s border to do the job our government refused to do for its citizens and decrying the rampant sex trade and rapes notorious for occurring along our porous southern border.’”

  Harvey paused, smacking his dentures in disapproval. “Is that the kind of rot you’re looking for?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  “Your voice is shaking. What happened, Dog?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “This doesn’t sound like fishing. Of course this has never been a fishing trip, not as far as I’ve been—”

  “Harvey, type in one more thing.”

  “If you promise to tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Can pronghorn jump?”

  “What?”

  “Pronghorn antelope. Can they jump? Type it in.”

  My tax guy tsked and muttered as he typed. A knot in my throat stopped my air, blackened my brain around a picture of Sneed watching pronghorn graze across the slopes above the Boulder River. Pronghorn couldn’t jump, Sneed claimed, kicking angrily at a brand new fence that blocked our path to the river. So how were they supposed to migrate? That a black kid from the south would know this, would care—this meant something, or nothing, or everything. He was such a tender soul. Sneed, how could you?

  “Nope,” said Harvey. “Can’t jump.”

  He waited.

  I choked and snuffled and fought with tears.

  “Dog, what’s going on?”

  With a gargantuan effort, with a struggle and a messiness perhaps akin to giving birth, I managed to produce a single tortured sob.

  “Well, that sounds like a start,” Harvey managed before I hung him up.

  Hell and Back

  “Sir? This is restricted area. You can’t just walk here. Sir!”

  But I went around the woman’s desk and pushed through a swinging door of reinforced glass to find myself in an inner hallway of the Park County Sheriff’s Department.

  “Sir, I’ll call deputy!”

  Buffed floor tiles, bulletin boards, inverted cask of spring water, a burnt-coffee breeze from the air conditioning—”Sir! Mister! Stop!”—and now this Asian woman with a Western twang but no articles or prepositions, this ferocious miniature, was on my heels.

  “Sir, I will call deputy,” she threatened as I pitched left, took a hallway toward the coffee smell. “Russell!” she hollered into the break room as we passed.

  “What’s up, baby girl?”

  “You call me Ms. Park-Ford. You get him.”

  But I was around a corner and just strides from Sheriff Chubbuck’s office along the west flank of the building. The office was glass-walled and I could see right in to what looked like the living room of a trailer home: wall-to-wall carpet the color of split barley soup, mis-matched tassled lampshades, a cracked leather sofa with a rumpled pillow and blanket, a collection of hunting and fishing memorabilia crowded onto the single solid wall. The sheriff himself was asleep in his desk chair, boots up on the desk, hat pulled down and a home-knit throw across his lap. Clamped to the desk in front of him was a fly-tying vice. A three-wheeled electric scooter was parked beside the desk.

  “Hey.” This was the deputy. “Pal. Hold on. You can’t go—”

  The office was soundproof inside, perfect for the fat thump! of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle onto Chubbuck’s desk.

  The sheriff jerked awake. His hands clenched and then let go. After a toke of oxygen, he tipped his hat back and found me with those red-rimmed, laser-blue eyes.

  “You,” he said.

  “Me.”

  “You been to Massachusetts and back already?”

  “I’ve been to hell and back, Sheriff.”

  Chubbuck cleared his throat. He nursed his feet off the desk, straightened his spine as the door opened. The deputy, Russell, was a young guy with a big jaw and slicked hair. Ms. Park-Ford took up a militant posture behind him. The pair of them looked ready to extract me. But Chubbuck raised a shaky hand.

  “He’s harmless.”

  The sheriff took a second gander at me as if to assure himself. “Isn’t that right, Mister Oglivie?”

  “Sneed was harmless.” That was my answer. “He wouldn’t kill her. Or himself. You must have missed something.” My tone was turning. “Such as, say, Dane Tucker’s pair of skinhead punks who threatened my friends and stole my pistol.”

  “Thank you, Russell. Thank you, Ms. Park-Ford.”

  When the door was closed, the sheriff looked down at his desk. He took off his hat as if to get more light. In the jaws of the fly-tying vice was a near-finished spruce moth. Strewn beneath the vice, across official-looking papers, were his elk hair pelt, his hair stacker, dubbing wax, and scissors. He blew elk hair clippings off a document, cocked that right eyeball, the one for close work, then held the paper out.

  “Your statement says you were—” his voice was reedy, struggling for breath and power “—last certain of your pistol’s whereabouts no later than the twentieth of this month. Do we need to change this?”

  “I pretty much forgot I had it. But—”

  “And your statement says you found the car locked with the keys and the pistol inside.”

  “It also says those skinheads came to the campground about two hours earlier—”

  The sheriff put up a red and flaking hand. “Now hold on.” He rummaged beneath fly trimmings to find another paper. “And this one says that you did not see those boys with your pistol. You only noted—” breathing now like he was climbing a damn hill “—that the pistol was not in your box and your box had been pried open—”

  “Yes, but—”

  “—pried open we are certain by Mister Sneed.” Chubbuck licked his dry lips but was unsatisfied with that. He peered into a coffee cup and took a feeble sip. “Mister Sneed whose prints we found on the pistol, on the box, all over your vehicle. Are you a heavy sleeper, Mister Oglivie?”

  “You could call it that. I drink.”

  He nodded. “Now then …” He shifted more papers. I wai
ted. I glared at the spruce moth in his vice. The fly was junk. The dubbed yellow body was too thin. The elk hair wing was wrapped too loosely, and the ends blocked the hook’s eye. I raised my glare to the sheriff, caught him gazing away from his documents and out his window toward the Wineglass Range. In the next few moments, a kind of Ronald Reagan look of bemusement found its way onto his tortured face. He was lost in whatever pain he had, I figured, or maybe having a morphine moment.