The Coyote's Cry

by Jackie Merritt

  The minister recited the Lord’s Prayer with feeling, then talked briefly about the hard paths some people had to tread in life. He spoke nicely of a man he’d never known, and after another prayer, indicated to Bram that the service was over. Bram thanked him and the minister departed.

  Bram and Will stood alone then. Finally Will spoke. “Something like this makes a man realize his own good fortune, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Bram’s eyes burned with unshed tears. The simple service had moved him. John Doe moved him. Gran’s bad health tore holes in his gut, and Jenna…Jenna represented everything good that life had to offer. He felt like bawling and didn’t dare do it. Not that Will would make fun of him for crying, but if he ever actually loosened the tight reins he kept on his emotions he might never stop crying.

  “I really wonder about death sometimes. Don’t you, Bram?”

  “Yeah, I do. Probably everyone does.”

  “Do you think you could ever do yourself in, like this poor guy?”

  “No, but everyone’s different. Who knows what a person might do in another man’s shoes?”

  “Right. It’s an awful thought, though.”

  “The worst. Well, I’d better get back to work. You, too.”

  They started walking to their cars. “Will, thanks.”

  “You know you can always count on me, Bram.”

  They stopped next to Bram’s vehicle and looked at each other. “And vice versa, Will.”

  “You’re a good man for doing this today, Bram. That’s why you’re the best sheriff Black Arrow’s ever had. You care about everyone, even this poor fella.”

  “If no one cared, the world would be a sorry place, Will.”

  Bram looked off across the cemetery. It was a pretty place with its many trees and flower beds, but the aesthetic beauty of this final resting place was the furthest thing from his mind. He had the strongest urge to tell Will about Jenna, and somehow felt this was the time to do it. It would put an end to Will’s teasing remarks about him finding the right woman and getting married, but maybe that was okay, too.

  “Will, I’d like to tell you something.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’ve been in love with Jenna Elliot for at least ten years. She’s the reason I’m not married.”

  Will looked puzzled. “You’re in love with her and she’s the reason you’re not married? Bram, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  “Yes, it does. She has no idea how I feel about her and she never will.”

  “For crying out loud, why not? Oh, wait a minute. You’ve sensed that she doesn’t care all that much for you, right? That’s tough, man. I feel for you.”

  “No, that’s not it at all. Well, I guess it could be part of it, but, Will, she’s white, and you know how her father looks down on Native Americans.”

  Will stared at him. “Hold on a minute. You don’t really give a damn about anything Carl Elliot might think, do you? I can’t believe that, Bram. Good Lord, man, Jenna’s opinion is the only one that matters.” Will narrowed his eyes. “And she’s living in your house. How can you be in love with a woman who happens to be in the same house with you every time you go home to bed and still get any sleep? Wait, I’m not saying that right. Let me—”

  “Don’t bother, Will. I’ve said it all to myself too many times to count.”

  “You’re denying your feelings for a woman because she’s white? Bram, I honestly believe I know you better than just about anyone else, and so help me God it never would have occurred to me that you might be ashamed of your Comanche heritage.”

  “I’m not, Will. But Jenna might be.”

  “Because of ol’ Carl? Doesn’t she have a mind of her own? I don’t know her real well, but anytime I’ve been around her she always seemed like a real nice lady.”

  “She is a lady, Will. Like your Ellie.”

  “Damn it, Bram, don’t do this to yourself. To hell with her dad’s bigotry. You wouldn’t be marrying Carl Elliot, you’d be marrying Jenna.”

  “And you don’t think she’d resent me for the rest of her days for being the cause of her father turning his back on her?”

  “Well, if he’s that thickheaded, she’s better off without him!”

  “Will, he’s her father! You’re white, how could you possibly understand how I feel about this? I never should’ve told you.”

  “That’s just about the worst thing you’ve ever said to me, Bram. I have to go back to work.” Will walked to his pickup with his head down, and Bram watched him go with a heavy ache in his heart. Will didn’t understand. How could he?

  Just before Will drove away Bram ran after him. “Listen, I’m sorry, man. I didn’t say that to hurt you.”

  “Maybe you said it to hurt yourself,” Will said. “Maybe you’re the one who thinks a man with Comanche blood isn’t good enough for Jenna Elliot. Think about that, Bram.”

  Watching his friend’s car leave the cemetery, Bram spoke under his breath. “It’s Carl Elliot who thinks that, Will, not me.”

  But long after Will had gone, his words hung in the air. Bram looked up at the pale sun trying to break through the clouds and only partially succeeding. Heavyhearted, he walked over to a stone bench, made sure it wasn’t still wet from the morning’s rainfall, and sat down. He turned his back on the two men who came along to fill in John Doe’s grave, and thought about how short a lifetime really was.

  And he pondered a man so in need of illegal drugs that he would use a gun on himself before going without them.

  Bram wasn’t a man who normally felt hatred for anything, certainly not for members of the human race, however low they might have fallen. But hatred welled for a drug dealer named Joker, and Bram sat there and swore an oath to arrest him and make sure he was brought to justice in a court of law.

  Bram stayed on that bench until it began sprinkling again. When he got in his car he was surprised by the time. He must have sat in the cemetery for a couple of hours. Did he really have so much on his mind that he could spend two hours just thinking and not realize it?

  He couldn’t deny it. For one thing, in all of his life he had never felt so overrun by complex problems. Usually he had one or two things going on that required a little time, maybe some work, possibly even some worry. But then Gran got sick and Jenna moved in and the courthouse burned and Rand Colton showed up.

  Now nothing went smoothly. In fact Bram had never driven a bumpier road than the one he’d been on lately.

  Somber and serious during the trip back to the station, Bram stopped at a drive-through and bought some supper, which he took with him. Seated at his desk, he ate his fish fillets and coleslaw. He took a few calls while he ate, and after the second one he put down the phone and found himself looking directly at the three old books on the catch-all table against the far wall.

  “Well, hell,” he mumbled. He’d forgotten to call Maddy Hempler about them. Shaking his head, he grabbed the telephone book and looked up the number for the Western Oklahoma Museum.

  He got a recording. “Thank you for calling the Western Oklahoma Museum. Our visiting hours are from—” Bram slammed down the phone. He decided that he was in no mood to talk to Maddy Hempler anyhow, and he put the telephone book back in his desk drawer.

  Then he sat there and wished he could go home. Some deputies were leaving for the day, others were arriving to begin their shift. If Jenna weren’t at the ranch he would go home.

  Heaving a disgruntled sigh, Bram got up and walked around his office. Every deputy was on the lookout for Joker. Sooner or later that piece of slime would show his face, but until then it was a waiting game. Maybe it was the waiting that had him so on edge, Bram thought.

  But he knew it was more than that. It was what Will had said today, and Bram loving a woman he couldn’t have, and Gran steadily losing ground, and on and on and on.

  Lester stuck his head in. “Roy called in sick. He sounded like hell on the phone. Must have caught a bad bug. Shoul
d I work his shift, too?”

  Bram considered the situation. Roy Emerson had been night duty officer for several weeks now. Bram could assign the job to another deputy, but he wanted every available man on patrol looking for Joker. And Lester couldn’t work all night and then again all day tomorrow.

  “No, you go on home. I’ll take Roy’s shift.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. See you tomorrow.”

  Bram wandered into the central area of the building. In one corner of the large room was the radio equipment the dispatchers used. These people had had police training every bit as strenuous as the deputies in the patrol cars. Bram felt fortunate—as should every resident of Comanche County—that the department had such efficient dispatchers. At any given moment those people knew where each and every man and woman on the force was, along with the vehicles they drove.

  Bram thought of calling the ranch and telling Jenna that he wouldn’t be home all night, but he changed his mind. She wouldn’t be looking for him at any particular hour, given the irregular schedule he’d been keeping—actually, no schedule at all.

  About an hour later, though, he tried to remember if he’d filled Nellie’s food and water bowls that morning and couldn’t. He’d brought those books out to the car, but had he gone down to the barns before that?

  “You’re really losing it,” he muttered under his breath as he stood at the counter and dialed the ranch’s number.

  “Colton Ranch.”

  “Jenna, Bram. Have you seen Nellie today?”

  “A couple of times. She never comes to the door without you.”

  “Well, I can’t remember if I fed her this morning. I hate to ask, but I’m tied up here. Would you mind running down to the smallest barn and checking Nellie’s food and water bowls? They’re right inside the door to the right, and there’s a big sack of dry food on the shelf just above them.”

  Jenna glanced to a window and saw that it was pitch-black outside. There were a few yard lights, but she wasn’t at all accustomed to running around in the dark miles from neighbors and traffic, and her heart was all of a sudden nervous and leaping around in her chest. Or at least it felt that way.

  She wasn’t thrilled about this, but how could she refuse? Nellie shouldn’t have to go hungry just because she was afraid.

  “Sure,” she said, faking a confidence she didn’t feel at all. “I’d be glad to do it.”

  For some crazy reason Bram got all choked up. She was just so darned special, so giving, so considerate of everyone else.

  “Thanks,” he said huskily. “I really appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  “I doubt that, but it’s a good sign-off. Good night.”

  Frowning, Bram slowly put down the phone.

  Jenna put her phone down as well, then stood there and stared at the darkness beyond the windows.

  “You goose,” she said out loud. “There’s nothing out there at night that isn’t there during the day.” She took a quick look at Gloria, then grabbed a light jacket because of the drizzling rain and went out the back door of the house.

  The yard lights helped a lot more than she’d thought they would, which bolstered her courage, and she jogged down to the smallest barn. But even if everything else had been just great, she didn’t like leaving Gloria alone in the house, so she hurriedly filled Nellie’s food bowl. The little collie wriggled all around Jenna’s legs before she began eating hungrily, and Jenna was glad that she had overcome the after-dark jitters to do this simple chore.

  But Nellie’s water bowl was also empty, and where did one get water down here? Jenna looked around the shadowy barn with its dark, spooky corners. There had to be a water faucet somewhere out here, but where? Bram should have told her, she thought resentfully.

  When she realized that a water pipe ran along the inside of a wall, she followed it until it vanished through the wall. Obviously the spigot was outside.

  “Well, for crying out loud!” she exclaimed, and forced herself to walk around the side of the barn, which included climbing between the wooden rails of a fence. But she did it, and in the feeble light that reached that particular area she managed to identify a water trough. She didn’t waste time looking for a spigot, but merely dipped Nellie’s bowl into the trough to fill it.

  She was about to reverse directions when she heard the howling of a coyote. With chills traveling her spine, Jenna froze, but strangely, Nellie, who had followed her through the fence, paid the bloodcurdling howling absolutely no mind.

  “Don’t you hear it? What kind of watch dog are you?” Jenna’s mobility returned with a rush and she nearly fell over her own feet getting through the fence and into the barn to set down the bowl of water. Outside again, on her way back to the house, she heard the howling split the night quiet one more time.

  Jenna hit the back door running. Breathing hard, she listened acutely, but there was no more howling. Why on earth hadn’t Nellie barked? Didn’t dogs bark at everything? Hell’s bells, that coyote had sounded close enough to touch!

  The hours ticked by and Bram restlessly paced the rooms of the sheriff’s station. By midnight there were barely any radio communications to listen to on this quiet, mostly uneventful night in Black Arrow, and Bram went into his office and sat at his desk. He doodled, he looked at old reports, he twisted paper clips and finally, beginning to feel sleepy, he got up and toted one of the courthouse books over to his desk, figuring it was something different to look at and just might prove interesting enough to keep him awake.

  He turned back the cover and then slowly, one by one, the book’s pages.

  Three hours later he was more awake than he’d been at midnight and so torn up emotionally that he didn’t know where to put himself. He made himself check the pertinent entries again and again because he couldn’t believe his own conclusions.

  Finally he sat back, feeling dazed. Carl Elliot had Comanche blood? Jenna had Comanche blood? Carl couldn’t be aware of these records or he would have found a way to destroy them.

  My God, was he the arsonist? He wouldn’t have had to actually light the fire; he had more than enough money to buy anything he wanted, even the destruction of his own past.

  Bram was badly shaken, and he left his office and got himself a cup of coffee, which he’d been avoiding because of the discomfort in his stomach. But he sipped that hot, strong brew and wondered unhappily what to do with the information he’d stumbled upon tonight. Did Jenna know about it? Should he tell Jenna? If everyone learned the truth of the Elliot family’s ancestry, there would no longer be a reason for Bram to deny his love for Jenna.

  But what if she didn’t know, and what if learning about it hurt her in some way? Bram didn’t give a damn if Carl got hurt in twenty different ways, but he would die before knowingly causing Jenna any grief. And yet wasn’t he hurting her in some manner every day that she lived in his house?

  Bram glared at the three old books that once again lay on the table in his office. “Damned things,” he mumbled. Yes, it did his heart good to know that Carl Elliot wasn’t snow-white, but then neither was Jenna.

  Groaning, Bram put his head down on his arms on the desk. Why did these things keep happening to him? Damn it, life used to be good! Had he committed some unpardonable sin that required constant and possibly endless punishment?

  Independence Day, the Fourth of July, dawned sunny and bright. The Coltons began arriving around ten that morning, and by noon the yard was ready for a picnic. The family had set up tables bearing red, white and blue cloths, the American Flag flew proudly from its high pole, and red, white and blue balloons had been attached to trees and bushes to float on a gentle breeze.

  Jenna had been told a few days prior about the holiday celebration planned by the family, but someone had called it “simple,” and to Jenna, this wasn’t at all simple; it was lovely and appropriate, and stirred feelings of patriotism and love of family. It also stirred o
ld memories, and Jenna thought of her mother often that morning. She also thought of her dad, but she couldn’t recall that he had ever liked picnics or even Black Arrow’s Fourth of July celebration. Jenna’s mother, on the other hand, had loved the Fourth and called it her favorite holiday of the year.

  The amount and variety of food brought by the Coltons was almost unbelievable. This picnic was going to be a feast. While the family members joked and laughed outside, each and every one of them became sober and serious when they came in to spend time with Gran. Jenna prayed the generosity of her family would lift Gloria’s spirits, but only time would tell on that score.

  In truth, Jenna was so unnerved by another matter that it was difficult to smile at these wonderful people and act as though nothing was wrong. Bram had gone to work early that morning as though it were any other day, and his cold disregard for the time and money spent by his family to make today a special holiday seemed unforgivable to Jenna. She thought it rather strange that no one commented on Bram’s absence, but she didn’t feel it was her place to bring it up, and so it was never discussed, not in her hearing, at any rate.

  The men were setting up chairs and the women of the family were placing the food on the tables when Jenna saw Bram’s SUV coming down the road. Her breath caught as she suffered a jolt of genuine anguish. She’d been upset because Bram wasn’t there, and then when he showed up she was even more upset? Good Lord, she thought disgustedly. Get a grip, for Pete’s sake. Do you want all these nice people knowing how weak-minded you get around their Bram?

  The men gravitated toward the driveway, and when Bram had parked and gotten out, Jenna watched out of the corner of her eye—not wanting to appear all giddy and lovestruck, which she was no matter how hard she fought it—and saw several of them helping George WhiteBear from the vehicle. She should have known they wouldn’t leave the patriarch of the family out of the day’s festivities. In fact, she realized suddenly, the big chair they had carried from the house and placed at the head of one of the tables had been expressly planned for George WhiteBear.