“Why honey, you ain't fit to go to the skunks’ ball,” Grace told her. “You're welcome to lay around here all you want. Glad for the company, really. You just make yourself to home. If you ain't expected nowhere, you might as well lay up for Christmas, anyway.”
So it was pretty much settled. Except that later, Heather confided that she did want to kind of avoid someone, a man from Butte. He might be looking for her and she'd just as soon he didn't find her. “I've had enough of these jerks,” Heather said. “I always seem to find the wrong ones. He seemed all right, but then he started drinking and he seemed to think it was all right to take a poke at me when I wasn't willing to, you know, accommodate him.”
“Honey, there is no reason for anyone to even know you're here. Don't you worry about a thing.”
Grace shook her head. She'd heard this story often enough. Her late husband, Cal, had not been that sort of man. Didn't drink, didn't swear, just chewed snoose a bit. Cal hadn't been no Clark Gable . . . Grace's mind flickered back to a hand they'd hired, a moment in the barn. . . . But plenty of the gals in Tinstar had run into just the same luck as Heather. Sally McIntyre, for one. It was a damn shame that some of these men didn't use more of their energy doing a little useful work. She herself wasn't no saint, but she did like to read the Bible a bit. Nothing preachy. She liked the Old Testament stories best. Would Heather like to hear the story of Ruth? Heather said that would be fine.
Grace took down the old, well-worn Bible and began to read. But it was so warm, so cozy in the house with the fire and the wind howling safely outside, that before long the two women were fast asleep, one of them snoring in the rocking chair with her mouth wide open and dreaming about a hayloft, the sneezy sweet smell of hay, the shafts of sunlight piercing down, the soft mocking drone of the doves, a young man with an indistinct face but muscular arms.
It was dark but not late when they were awakened by the telephone. Heather sat up abruptly, then clutched at her shoulder, at the wound, with a little cry. Grace hurried to her, but Heather said she was all right and managed a smile. Grace went to the phone, which hung on the wall by the entry to the kitchen. She looked back at Heather, who watched her with alert, frightened eyes. It was Sally.
“Oh, no, I'm fine,” Grace said. She put her hand over the speaker and whispered across the room that it was okay, it was just Sally. “I've got a visitor is why,” she said into the phone. “A friend.” Grace stared at Heather's worried face and grimaced in mock shame at fibbing, shaking her head with a little smile. “No, well, it's a lady friend, a cousin, or a niece . . . I guess she's rightly a second cousin, or third.” Grace winked at Heather. “Come to visit for Christmas. Yes, it's nice to have someone for the holidays. Well, you stop on by and meet her. She's been feeling a little poorly, but she's settin’ up now and as broody as a hen, so I guess she'll be all right. Why I'll have her out doin’ chores before you know it, if this weather ever lets up. Well, Merry Christmas to you too, and to the kids. I'll have your check for you, anytime. No, we don't need a thing, we're just cozy as a coupla badgers in a den. Unh-hunh, well you take care of them kids and I'll see you maybe tomorrow.”
Grace hung up. “Well, I didn't know but what you didn't want your whole life story spread all over the county. Sally's a fine gal, but she's out and about and I always thought it's just as well that nobody hears what they don't need to hear. Well, it was Cal, my late husband, who always said that, but it's true.”
“Thank you,” Heather said and she smiled a very warm smile that went right to Grace's heart. Then she lay back and closed her eyes.
“Well, I'll go out and see to them hens and such,” Grace said, pulling on the brown duck overalls and the tin coat, then stuffing her feet into the felt-lined Sorels. “There's been a ferret about. I'll put a stop to him! And when I come in I'll get to making supper and afterward, why maybe you'd enjoy me to read you one of Dickens's Christmas stories. Would you like that?”
Heather said she'd like that and when the old woman went out she got up off the sofa, shocked at how weak she was. But it was necessary to take a look around. The first thing of interest that she found was a .30–.30 Winchester carbine, loaded, leaning against the wall near the door. Guns could be useful, Heather felt, but she had never really liked them: there was a tendency to rely too much on them and if they failed, as any mechanical device might fail, you were screwed. She preferred simpler methods—a stick, a stone. The gun could come in handy for Grace, however. She emptied the magazine and put the bullets in the pocket of the robe that Grace had provided her. She looked about the kitchen and then the rest of the downstairs, being careful not to stray too far from the couch, in case Grace should come back in and catch her.
The house was an old farmhouse, now somewhat modernized and better insulated than it had originally been. But it had the odor of old houses, not that the odor was familiar to Heather. It was a combination of years of wood smoke and years of the outdoors and the barnyard inevitably carried into the house by people who essentially lived outdoors. An odor of outdoor clothing and boots, of simple cooking. Not a scent of polish except for the wax on the dining room table and the old upright piano that was covered with a cloth and surmounted with a few family photos, including one of a rugged-looking man in a cowboy hat plus two of the kids. There was a faint tang of strong soap or piney-scented detergents. A homey odor, comfortable and warm.
Heather returned to the couch and snuggled up. She felt secure. She thought she could probably hang out here for another day or two, until she felt better, and then she would have to get moving. Grace had a pickup truck parked near the back porch. Heather figured she could use that, but it would mean having to take care of Grace. She felt no animosity toward Grace, quite the opposite: she couldn't recall when she'd felt so, well, at home. She hadn't lied about being an orphan, or not much. She had a vague notion of her mother but none of a father, and the succession of aunties and foster parents were not memories she cared to invoke. But she would have to do something about Grace when the time came. She drifted into sleep.
4
Deal Me In
Young lovers on awakening do what they did before falling asleep, but when Joe and Cateyo awoke he was suffering what she diagnosed as “bed spins.” This is not a medical term, but a colloquial phrase more appropriate to the experience of a teenager when he or she first goes to bed drunk. In Joe Service's case it obviously had something to do with the brain injuries from which he had still not recovered. There was an alcoholic component, of course, having to do with drinking Mad Dog the night before, as well as some dreadful dreams he'd had about Tongans and a tree frog with an Egyptian or Assyrian beard who played fantastic blues on the piano—he could vividly see those long, spatulate fingers and that wide, wide, maniacal grin. In the dream the creature had also had black, leathery wings, which he didn't remember from the scene in the bar, or whatever it was. But it was difficult to sort the dream from the vision.
Sorting dreams from reality had been a problem for Joe since his brain injury, so when Cateyo went into the shower, he struggled up and searched his clothes: there were no pistols in his coat, but there were wads of money, about four hundred dollars. He wasn't sure what this meant; possibly he had disposed of the guns on the way back to the hotel, but he didn't recall doing so. He tried to imagine throwing them into the river as he walked across a bridge, but he had no memory of walking across a bridge. For that matter, he had the impression that Salt Lake City was one of those rare cities that is neither a harbor city, nor an island city, nor even a river city. Possibly an oasis city, he thought, except that here the water was brackish and salt and the city avoided its shores.
He was curious, in fact, about how he knew this, how he knew these things. How did he know anything? He was, by now, fairly confident about his own identity, although in the early days after he had awakened from the bullet-induced coma, in the hospital in Butte, that had been a very serious problem. Even now, the path that led back from the pr
esent to his remembered past was a narrow one, perilously faint, liable to disappear at any moment into the undifferentiated grasses of the plain. Or, he thought, perhaps like the wake of a canoe on a lake: you could look back and see it, and it told you where you had been, but it was clearly dissipating into the other currents and eddies of the water that lay all about you. . . . He shuddered, not wanting to think any more about it. Except that it seemed important.
Thus far, he had managed to retrace his steps—recover his memory—by simply trusting that he could. That is, he would, in effect, take a deep breath and boldly step toward where the path might be presumed to be. How he had hit on this tactic he hardly knew, but it seemed to work, most of the time. And a memory once recovered was strengthened, or the path to it was strengthened, but he wasn't completely confident of the technique. Perhaps there were different kinds of memories, short-term and long-term, habitual things as opposed to contemplative things. He didn't know. He wasn't a neurologist or even a person with an interest in medicine. But he had a good mind and he trusted it. Somehow, though, he knew that one couldn't do that all the way back. The farther back one went, the more difficult it would be to find the path, or the wake.
When Cateyo got out of the shower, toweling off that rosy young flesh, Joe put all thought of riverless cities, grassy paths, and dissipating wakes out of his fragile mind, gratefully yielding brain time to more urgent interests. He advised her to get into bed and wait until he had showered. This advice was eagerly taken and eagerly they replayed the sexual events of the night, this time with even more deeply satisfying results.
Afterward, Cateyo told him what she had been unable to convey the night before, concerning the cabin fire and the police search for them. To her surprise Joe didn't seem very concerned. He said something about how it would all work out and they went down to breakfast and the newspapers.
Looking into the restaurant, Joe was suddenly struck with the thought that he had been here before. This was not a good place to eat. The good place to eat was somewhere about five or six blocks away. . . . The railroad station? He remembered the Rio Grande Cafe. But it was too far. Then it hit him: the Market Street Grill and Oyster Bar. He was fairly certain that it was a “private club,” which in Mormonland meant a place that served booze. They found it easily. Membership was five dollars for two weeks. They were soon bunkered in a comfortable banquette and eating a Hangtown Fry, made with very fresh oysters flown in that morning from Seattle.
There was nothing in the Salt Lake paper about the incident in Montana at Joe's cabin. They had picked up the Butte paper on the way and it carried the story on the front page, but it wasn't the lead. It had been three days, and even in Butte that is long enough for a story to lose interest. Apparently, the arson investigators had found nothing to suggest that it was anything other than an accident, perhaps precipitated by the damage the invading gangsters had done to the house: it seemed clear that they had been ripping out walls and perhaps disturbing electrical wiring and the propane-feed tubing. It was the explosion of the propane tank itself that had done the major damage, literally leveling the structure, and if propane explosions are not common they are at least not unheard-of in rural areas.
A reporter had asked, naturally, what the intruders might have been looking for, but no one had an opinion on that, although Deputy Jacques Lee had observed, pointedly, that the intruders were known gangsters and three of them were thought to be Colombians.
Joe was interested to learn that only one man, a Victor Echeverria, had survived. He was now in Salt Lake City, as it happened, in serious condition at the burn treatment center, where he'd been flown within hours of the explosion. It was not known if he would survive. The name meant nothing to Joe. It was more interesting to Joe to read that Helen Sedlacek, whom the press described as “the missing Joseph Humann's companion,” was in the Butte jail and was expected to be charged with assault on a police officer and resisting arrest. He'd had no idea she was in town: he hadn't seen or heard from her since before he was shot.
What was bothersome, if laughable, was that the police were still treating the disappearance of himself and Nurse Cathleen Yoder as a possible kidnapping: who was the kidnapper and who the kidnapped, since Joe was also described as an invalid? Cateyo's call to Nurse Work had not made the papers.
Cateyo was worried more about Joe than the misunderstanding about her disappearance. He seemed anxious and withdrawn. He ransacked the newspapers, especially the Salt Lake Tribune. She had no way of knowing that he was looking for some reference to a shootout in a local bar. When he did find an article referring to a minor disturbance at a southside “social club,” in which no one was reported injured despite several gunshots being fired, he seemed perplexed, but then he shrugged and seemed to lighten up.
Joe couldn't figure it out. Had everything that had happened to him last night been a dream? Had he simply imagined it? He didn't believe it, but he wasn't sure. For one thing, he had a pocketful of money, so presumably the attempted mugging, at least, had been for real. But no guns. Well, there would be ways to find out, and he knew the ways. But first things first.
“You have to go home,” he told Cateyo. She argued and protested, but there was no good alternative. She had to show her unharmed self. And Joe could not. She would be questioned, and he had no confidence in her ability to withstand a police interrogation, but what did she know after all? The police would have to believe her when she told them that Joe was fine, that he was “traveling.” If she could stick to that simple line. To that end, the less she knew about Joe and his program, the better. He was sure that the Detroit detective, Mulheisen, would be looking for him now. It was something that he had long feared but had always successfully avoided. Over the years he had been involved in a number of investigations for the Detroit mob, mainly for Carmine, the late and unlamented mob boss. Time and again, Detective Sergeant Mulheisen had come close to encountering Joe in his flittings and fleeings, but Joe was fairly confident that, until now, Mulheisen had never “made” him. Heretofore, Joe Service not only had no criminal record but not even an official existence, much less an identity. To be known was a new and serious danger to Joe's freedom. And he was concerned about how Cateyo would interact with Mulheisen, but perhaps she wouldn't have to: it would be a Butte-Silver Bow case, although Mulheisen was bound to stick his nose in, Joe thought, and maybe the FBI, as well. But Joe had no regard for the FBI.
She refused to go, even though Joe assured her that all she need do is return to Butte, talk to her superiors and the police, prepare her house for her absence and meet him . . . well, somewhere. She wanted to know much more about Joe, about his life, about the life they would have together. She couldn't possibly go back now . . . unless he enlightened her.
They went for a long walk. They found a large park, built around what Joe thought at first was a zoo, not very far from downtown. It wasn't a zoo; it was an elaborate aviary, populated now with ducks and geese in its outdoor ponds.
“Who is this Helen?” Cateyo wanted to know, as they strolled in the wintry sunlight. “I know she must be the one who was paying your medical bills, but is she . . . I mean . . . I guess you're not married?” She stalked along, not looking at him, her blond head buried in the collar of her ski jacket.
“No, I'm not married,” Joe said. He was strangely confident of this. He wasn't finding it easy to keep up with her. They paced along a poorly cleared walk, gritty with dirty ice. The sun filtered coldly through the bare branches of cottonwoods, and a breeze blew off the mountains. Geese coughed and slid around on the iced ponds. In the caged areas there were odd-looking ducks.
Cateyo pleaded, “What is she to you . . . now?”
Joe appreciated the “now.” “We were lovers,” he said casually, “but it wasn't working out. I mean, even before this.” He gestured at his head. “It was a mistake.” He stopped on the lumpy path. Cateyo stopped and looked back at him.
Joe stared at the ground. It was true, he thoug
ht. It hadn't been working out and it had been a very grievous mistake. He realized for the first time since he'd been shot that it was Helen who had betrayed him. He wondered how it had happened. He was inclined to believe that it was something unintentional on her part. And then he knew what it must have been: she had contacted her mother, back in Detroit. A phone call, a postcard, a letter . . . something like that. He had vehemently warned her not to; it was worth nothing less than their lives. She had killed Carmine and he had helped her do it; the mob would never forget. Oh, the Fat Man, or Humphrey (as he seemed to be calling himself these days), might want to cut Joe some slack, but it simply wasn't possible to forgive and forget the killing of a mob satrap. Humphrey was a patient man; he would have waited and, finally, when Helen made contact with her aged mother, Humphrey would have learned of it and would have acted. And that was what had happened.
“Joe? What is it?” Cateyo said, coming back to stand by him, taking his arm.
He looked at her. “Nothing. I made a mistake. It was my mistake. I should have known better.” Joe uttered a brief dry laugh.
They walked on. Finally she stopped and turned to him. “Joe, don't you understand? I have to know more. Don't you care? Don't you want me . . . to stay . . . to be with you?”
“Of course I do, babe.” It was true. He needed her. He wasn't well and she could help him. Also, he had feelings for her. He understood that she wanted him to be in love with her and he was willing to be in love with her, whatever that meant. He had been in love with Helen, perhaps. He certainly had been fascinated with her, almost obsessed. He thought it probably had been love. But he wasn't sure how he felt about Helen now. Betrayed. Alarmed. He wanted very much to see her and talk to her, but it didn't have much to do with desire or love, at this point. As for Cateyo . . . well, he thought she would be nothing if not loyal and faithful. He thought he could love her. He understood her need to know more about him and he wanted her to know more, but how much, and of what nature?
Dead Folks Page 7
