Plains Crazy

by J. M. Hayes

  “Damn it, Doc,” the sheriff demanded, “what’s wrong with my wife?”

  “Tumor,” Doc said. “Brain tumor, deep in the cerebellum where it’s probably inoperable.”

  “Good God,” the sheriff said, but even as he said it he knew he no longer had any faith in a benevolent deity.

  ***

  “Mr. Davis? Brad Davis?” Mad Dog approached the man with the long face stuffing a suitcase in the trunk of a rental car.

  “We’re not hiring.”

  “And I’m not job hunting. My name’s Mad Dog,” he paused and watched for a reaction. He got one.

  “Oh yeah,” Davis said. “I remember. You’re the guy with the buffalo we were going to rent. And you wanted to talk with Bud Stone, didn’t you. Sorry, we’re out of business and Stone’s already gone.”

  “That’s okay. Actually, I wanted to talk to you about your mother.”

  Davis glanced at his watch. Mad Dog had never seen one before, but he thought it might be a Rolex. “I can give you maybe five minutes,” Davis told him. “Now, what’s this about my mother?”

  “Your mother is Janie Jorgenson, right?”

  “Did you know her when she lived here?”

  Mad Dog nodded. “Has she ever mentioned me?”

  Davis shook his head. “She never talks about Buffalo Springs. She wasn’t happy here.” He looked at Mad Dog and reached up and rubbed a hand across his cheeks and through his prematurely graying hair. “Is something wrong with me? Have I got something on my face?”

  Mad Dog realized he’d been staring intently. He couldn’t see any of himself or his family in the man. If this were the son Janie had told him about, he didn’t resemble his father. He didn’t look like the pictures Janie had given him either, though a lot could change in twenty years.

  “No, I’m sorry. I was just trying to see Janie in you, Mr. Davis. And, excuse me, but I’m curious about the names. She’s going by Jorgenson but you’re Davis?”

  “She’s Jorgenson again all right. She and my father went their separate ways. I got his name, but she stopped using it long ago.”

  “Did she tell you anything about your father?”

  “She didn’t have to. He and I see a lot of each other.”

  Mad Dog couldn’t hide his surprise.

  “What’s this about, Mister? Who are you and why are you so interested in my family?”

  Mad Dog scrambled for an answer. “I was a good friend of your mother’s when she lived here,” Mad Dog explained. “Indulge me, please. How old are you, Mr. Davis?”

  “I’m thirty-seven, or will be next month. I hope you’re going to explain this.”

  Thirty-seven wasn’t possible. Nor was a June birthday. If Mad Dog were Brad Davis’ father, the man would have to be forty. By their calculations, Janie had gotten pregnant in June. If she’d had a baby, it would have been due around March of 1963. Davis hadn’t been born until more than three years later. The man couldn’t be his son.

  “I’m sorry,” Mad Dog said. “I must have you confused with your older brother.”

  “What older brother?” Davis said. “I’m an only child.”

  ***

  Heather Lane was on the verge of losing it.

  “You have to go after her,” Two told her father. She was on a cell phone in Doc Jones’ office and Englishman was still at the courthouse.

  “Calm down, Heather,” Englishman said. “I will if I can. Things may be coming together here. I only need a couple of answers to wrap things up. Don’t worry. I won’t let her get on that plane.”

  “No, Englishman, you have to do it.” Memories of the bizarre conflict that tore her parents from her only six years before were suddenly fresh and painful again. She couldn’t lose a second family, could she?

  “You can’t let a bunch of storm troopers from Wichita humiliate her in front of all those people at the airport. They’ll treat her like a common criminal. She needs someone who loves her, someone who cares about her.”

  “I promise,” Englishman said. “I’ll only call as a last resort, and I’ll explain the circumstances to them. They’ll treat her right.”

  “Oh yeah, sure.” Two threw the phone at the wall and missed. It hit the couch in Doc’s office and her sister rescued it.

  “Dad?” The other Heather put the phone to her ear and checked to see if they were still connected. “But Dad…” One continued, then paused to listen to his excuses, or so the expression on her face indicated.

  “Dad, if you don’t go get her, we will,” Heather English interrupted. Then her eyes got wide and angry. She turned to her sister and said, “He told me not to throw a temper tantrum and hung up on me.”

  “I’ll go along, if you want,” Doc offered.

  “No,” both Heathers said.

  “Just us,” Two told him.

  “And Dad, if he cares enough,” One agreed. They turned for the door.

  “If it wasn’t for this bank robbery thing,” Doc called after them, “I’d tell you to let her go. A few days in Paris might be just what she needs to sort things out. Half of her battle will be how she feels about herself and her life. Only I wish Englishman was going with her.”

  If Doc said more than that, Two didn’t hear it. She and Heather were out the back door to the mortuary and on their way to Englishman’s truck. Two, though more tenuously connected to the English family, was in the grip of a more demanding terror. It wasn’t just Judy she was worrying about. It was also her place in the universe. She grabbed the keys and said, “I’m driving.”

  One didn’t argue. The girls piled into the truck and Two squealed out of the parking space, laying rubber all the way to the street. One got her seat belt fastened just before they turned onto Main. She reached over to switch on the lights and siren and noticed something else.

  “Look out,” One howled. The truck’s brakes cried in echo to those of an aging Nissan Altima that caught the Chevy’s rear chrome-step bumper and sent them spinning in a perfect three-hundred and sixty degree circle, right in the middle of Main.

  Two checked her rearview mirror. A man and his female passenger stepped out of the Altima into the street. Clearly, neither was hurt. She slammed the truck into gear again and popped the clutch. They were pointed in the right direction.

  She was still smoking tires when the Chevy passed Deputy Wynn, standing by the curb in front of the Bisonte, eyes nearly as wide as his mouth. Two glanced in the mirror and watched him recede.

  “There’s no real damage,” her sister told her, “so step on it.”

  Heather Lane needed no encouragement.

  ***

  “Look,” Mad Dog said. “I just spent most of the afternoon with your mother. She told me she had a son named Sam, Samuel.” He could see from Davis’ eyes that the name meant nothing to him.

  “No way,” Davis said. “My mother and I aren’t close. But she’s always been pretty open about things. Even difficult stuff. I think she must have been spinning you some kind of tall tale, though I can’t for the life of me think of why.”

  Mad Dog decided straight out and honest was the best approach. He wasn’t much good at anything else anyway. “She told me I was that boy’s father,” he said.

  “Oh,” Davis said. “You’re the football player, aren’t you.”

  “Then she did tell you about me.”

  “No, sir. She didn’t. But she told Dad and he told me.”

  Mad Dog ran a hand through his non-existent hair. “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “Me either,” Davis said. “I’m not sure what to tell you, or if I should tell you anything. I’m surprised mother’s been here. I would have bet she’d never come back unless it was to blow this town off the face of the earth.”

  Considering what had been going on today, Mad Dog didn’t like the way he’d put it. “What makes you say that?”

  Davis took a deep breath and let it out with a sigh. “Dad tried to explain her to me once. If you knew her while she was here, y
ou must remember her father ran off and abandoned her and her mother. People treated them as second-class citizens because of that.”

  “It’s not true…” Mad Dog began. Though, on second thought he had to admit it might have seemed that way to Janie and her mother. Folks in Benteen County were slow to accept strangers, and inclined to discuss their strangeness. Hell, they were inclined to discuss everybody’s strangeness, as Mad Dog knew from years of testing their limits. Janie and her mother hadn’t been treated like pariahs, but they hadn’t stuck around long enough to win real acceptance either. Janie had been a top student and a cheerleader at Buffalo Springs High, but he supposed she’d had to be twice as cute and vivacious and to work twice as hard as anybody else in order to accomplish that. Mad Dog had only noticed the cute and vivacious parts, then the loss of his heart.

  “Well, she thought so,” Davis continued. “She hated this place. Dad told me she ran away from here because she was pregnant and abandoned.” He gave Mad Dog a hard look with this disclosure and Mad Dog decided not to argue the point. “You got any idea how a seventeen-year-old high school-drop out supports herself?”

  Mad Dog didn’t, and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He avoided the man’s eyes, looked down at Davis’ shoes instead—good ones, hiking boots with a footprint that even looked expensive.

  “She only had one commodity. Her body. That’s how Dad met her. He was a city prosecutor. She’d had a couple of years in the life by then, but she still had an innocence about her, or so he told me. He rescued her. At least he thought he did. I was the result. I was her first and only child. She had an abortion when she left here because she had to keep her figure to market it. But I guess she never really loved Dad, or not as much as she loves money. They split after she finished her MBA. I was seven. Since then, she’s passed in and out of my life on her schedule. Oh, she loves me in her way, but she loves besting the opposition in a business deal more.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mad Dog said, forcing himself to meet the man’s eyes again. “I had no idea. But what you said about her wanting to blow Buffalo Springs off the face of the earth, that was an exaggeration wasn’t it?”

  “Not an exaggeration,” Davis replied. “Just a figure of speech. Do you know who my mother is? What she does?”

  “Obviously not,” Mad Dog said.

  “She’s Chair and CEO of one of the most innovative energy corporations in the Americas.”

  “Oh Jeez,” Mad Dog said. “Not Windreapers?”

  Davis nodded. “The only reason I can imagine her coming back to Kansas would be to wipe your hometown off the map and replace it with a wind farm.”

  It was starting to make sense. “How about your daughter? Would she know where Janie is? Your mom talked about being in touch with Jackie. She said part of the reason she came back was to visit her. Could we ask?”

  “We could if I knew where Jackie’s got to,” Davis said. “She’s been missing from here all day.”

  “But I saw her this morning. She and some guy were bringing in a pickup load of stuff.”

  Davis shook his head. “Only load we had come in today was that stuffed buffalo Chad drove up from Pretty Prairie.” He glanced around, located a couple of guys sorting through piles of leather and fur under a tarp, and shouted, “Hey, Chad. Did Jackie go with you to get the buffalo?”

  Chad wandered over. He smiled at Mad Dog and acknowledged him with a, “Hey, man.” Then he turned to Davis. “She didn’t go with me. I thought you knew that. I found her walking along the road as I was coming back. She’d run out of gas and asked me to drop her at the filling station in town.”

  “You seen her since?” Davis asked.

  “No, sir. And, actually, I didn’t get her to the gas station. Just after this gentleman helped us with our tire, we passed a red Buick. She waved it down and told me to let her out.”

  The kid had Mad Dog’s attention now. “The Buick, do you have any idea who was driving it?”

  Chad wrinkled his forehead and put a finger to his chin. “You know, there were two people in the car. When she saw them she stuck her head out of the truck and waved and shouted at them. She called one of them ‘Gran,’ the other one, I thought his name would have been more appropriate if we were in Oklahoma, since that musical is the only time I’d heard the name used before.”

  “Oklahoma?” Davis asked.

  “Yeah,” the kid replied. “Rod Steiger played the role in the movie…”

  Mad Dog didn’t have to wait for the boy’s answer. “Jud,” he said. Jud Haines was the principal backer of the Benteen County Energy Coop and its impending deal with Windreapers. And Janie was Windreapers. God, Janie must really hate him, and this community, to have planned such an elaborate revenge. Englishman had to be warned.

  ***

  It left the sheriff feeling like that time just after he was first elected. He was called out to an accident on the blacktop east of town. A bad one. The car was crumpled under the cattle truck that had broadsided it, then dragged the remains more than a hundred yards beyond the intersection. He hadn’t recognized it as his mother’s until he wrote down the plate number. That was long after he’d determined the truck driver was the only survivor. And then, he’d had to carry on, because the trucker had two broken legs and there were dead and injured cattle everywhere.

  The sheriff shook his head—like he was trying to shake off his need to deal with Judy the way he shook water from his short cropped hair. The aquatic metaphor was all too apt. He felt like he was underwater, struggling desperately to reach the surface. He forced himself to take a couple of deep breaths and then turned to his attentive audience.

  “I guess you all understand I don’t have time to spare for this. But several bombs have gone off this morning. I lied to Doc so he’d tell me what’s going on with Judy. Somebody else left that bomb stuffed in the deposit box. Judy took it inside, but she didn’t know what it was. So, tell me again, Mr. Finfrock, who did you give that C4 to?”

  Finfrock seemed anxious to please. “Haines. I gave it to Jud Haines.”

  “In trade for a Sharps buffalo rifle?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “And how would Supervisor Haines come by an antique buffalo gun?”

  “A garage sale?” Finfrock fidgeted in his seat. “That don’t sound too likely, does it? But it’s what he told me.”

  The sheriff didn’t bother with that one. “He tell you why he wanted the plastic explosives?”

  “Tree trunks,” Finfrock said around a sheepish grin. “Look, I guess this all sounds pretty wild, now I hear myself saying it, but I’ve been looking for a Sharps for years, and when he came in the bar with it, well, I pretty much gave him everything he wanted. But it’s Jud Haines we’re talking about. He wouldn’t hurt anybody. I mean, he’s a supervisor, just like me and Chairman Wynn here.”

  “We just gave him three million dollars,” the chairman said. From the sound of his voice, he didn’t seem as sure of Haines’ innocence as Finfrock.

  The sheriff ignored the chairman and concentrated on Finfrock. “And you didn’t think anything of it when bombs started going off all over Buffalo Springs the morning after you made that trade?”

  “How’d you know it was last night?”

  “’Cause that’s when someone went into one of the RVs where they’re shooting that PBS special and stole a Cheyenne bow and some arrows…”

  “And a Sharps,” Finfrock finished for him. “I shoulda known it was too good to be true. But I was with him when we found that bomb over at the Texaco. He couldn’t have planted it, could he?”

  “We found the remains of a timer from that bomb,” the sheriff said. “It couldn’t have been set for more than sixty seconds. That means somebody who was still at the station had to have dropped it there, or…”

  “Haines brought it there himself,” Finfrock said. “Shit. I gave him a whole range of timers and radio controlled switches along with a bunch of detonators. He said he wanted to experime
nt and I sure wanted that Sharps.”

  “Three million dollars,” the chairman wailed. “We just transferred three million dollars into the control of a terrorist bomber.”

  The sheriff swiveled his wooden chair in Chairman Wynn’s direction. “Where the hell could you get three million dollars?”

  The chairman and Craig Finfrock exchanged worried glances.

  “You know,” the chairman said. “Maybe Craig and I oughta talk to a lawyer after all.”

  ***

  “Was that a law enforcement vehicle?” The man who’d been driving the Nissan was pointing down Main, out of town toward where the Heathers had disappeared from view only moments before.

  Deputy Wynn chewed his lip for a moment as he decided how to deal with this. The man had walked around his Altima just fine, until he spotted the deputy. Now he had an exaggerated limp and was feeling his neck like he was considering what the symptoms of whiplash should be.

  “Was that your county’s vehicle?” the man asked, “’Cause it just left the scene of an accident with injuries. I mean the wife and I are banged up pretty good here, aren’t you, Hon?” The woman looked confused for a moment before the light bulb went on.

  “You know, I should probably see a doctor,” she said.

  “Yes, sir, it was official,” Wynn told them. “Looked like you done it some damage in the back there, too.”

  “I damaged it?” The man’s voice was filled with moral outrage.

  “Yup,” the deputy continued. “It came onto the street with light bar flashing and siren blaring. Don’t you know you got to yield the right of way to an emergency vehicle, sir? Especially one involved in such an important errand.”

  “But it never gave us a chance to stop. It caused the accident, not us.”

  “No, sir,” Wynn proclaimed. “I could see you were speeding. Outsiders like you got to pay attention to our traffic signs. Serious accident like this, I probably couldn’t find a judge who could get around to setting your bond before Monday. Have to hold you over the weekend.”