CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

In late June, Paiute Meadows saw two funerals. They happened one week and a hundred fifty feet apart. The first funeral was big. Several hundred people, about half the population of the valley, stood on the bare ground on a slope east of the town. A few dresses, fewer ties, mostly cowboy hats and clean jeans. It was at the old Hornberg plot, the gravestones surrounded by an iron fence. Mourners circled a new chunk of black marble with both Erika’s and Buddy’s names freshly chiseled on either side of a badly rendered horseman. The birthdates on the stone were four years apart. The dates of the deaths were identical. The marble said that Buddy’s given name was Claus Wolfgang Hornberg, but not one in ten of us had known that.

The black monument stood apart from the tilting century-old pink and white angel with engraving worn by wind and sand. And apart from white marble slabs carved to look like axe-hewn tree trunks, stones with old forgotten names and the birthdates rendered in block letters that went back a hundred fifty years, and newer names from early in the last century right up to Erika and Buddy’s father, who had died twelve years before. All ranchers, well remembered by old timers in the crowd, their Masonic symbols carved in stone above the men’s names. The names were all there were. Hard old-country names with no Beloved Mother or anything else so frivolous or so kind.

The family wasn’t the earliest to work the valley, and their ranch wasn’t the biggest. Becky’s great-grandfather had them beat by fifty years and fifteen hundred acres, and the Allisons, who’d hired my dad before I was born, had a few more years and a thousand acres more than that. Unspoken was the obvious thing. We were seeing the end of a family. The end of a ranch. For a lot of us, this ceremony was a reminder that the life we’d chosen was not forever. There was talk of an older cousin from Evanston, Illinois, who had visited the ranch once forty years before. The woman got sunburned bad enough to never come back, and told her uncle Kurt that his ranch house was a disgusting dump and should be bulldozed and Erika and Buddy sent to boarding school in Santa Barbara or Lake Forest. Now, that woman was the only heir. She had paid for her cousins’ headstone but wouldn’t pay to embalm a slacker like Buddy. She told the sheriff over the phone that he could be cremated like his sister, which even Mitch thought was a crass thing to say. After hanging up, he sent Sorenson to scoop up ash from the ruin of the ranch-house so there would be something of Erika to bury. It went against his image, but I was glad he did it, though I’d never tell him so. At the Sierra Peaks bar that night, Sorenson talked about gathering the fake ashes, which started the first rumor that Erika might still be alive. The county not paying for a forensic sifting of the ruins after sworn deputy Jack Harney had seen the woman run into the flames and not seen her come out just added to bar-room speculation. Folks remarked that there was no actual grave, just a little round hole in the ground at the foot of the marble where the canisters of ashes would go.

There was talk the Illinois woman would sell out fast. If no ranching interest stepped up to keep the land in cattle, she might sell part of it as a mobile home park. That would be more Sonny VanOwen’s style than Erika’s. Sarah and I stood with her father and my mom and Mom’s boyfriend, Burt, who was fresh from the base in his Marine Utilities. Everyone had known everyone. What we kept hearing in both the testimonials and the whispers was how much they all thought of Erika, even from folks who’d trashed her in life. Of her kindness and forgiveness to her brother and of her hard work, both on the place and in the bank, and her contrariness in taking the risks she took even when those risks were beyond foolish. Becky Tyree spoke last. She wore a dress and talked from the heart about Erika’s love of the high country and of her family, and how she gave herself to save her brother and the way of life they were born to. She stood pretty and strong and optimistic, reminding folks that no matter what, the land endures. I heard the word legacy more than once. As was fitting, nobody mentioned VanOwen or the trouble he brought with him.

The hard winters clean this hard country. I don’t know what they do down in Southern Cal where VanOwen came from, down where it never freezes and people like him never get a rest from the evil worm inside them. It just feeds and feeds. A Tecate-born medic in my unit in the Hindu Kush called it the gusanillo, that worm inside you. That passion. Passion for good or passion for evil. He said it’s what makes bullfighters fight bulls, and makes kiddie pool parties turn bloody when drunken dads whip out their pistols.

By the time the last tears dried in the June heat and the last cars pulled out of the cemetery gate toward town, the dead woman had got a share of her reputation back. The idea that Erika might have faked her death a second time hadn’t caught on just yet.

There were barely a dozen of us standing around the second grave a week later. Audie, my mom and Burt, Becky Tyree and Dan, Harvey and May, Sarah’s dad, Jack Harney, Sarah—just off duty and still in uniform—the baby, and me. That was it. The site was just a hole in the sand at the edge of the paupers’ lot. Last stop for the indigent dead. The forsaken prostitute. The markers, where there were any, were white-painted steel crosses welded from sections of highway signposts or snowplow markers provided by the county road crew. Or short pine planks ruined by mountain winters and half-buried in the sand that marked the oldest Paiute graves, those names long gone. My mom and Becky had raised hell to keep the county from cremating the friendless woman, though they had no legal claim on the remains. They thought Audie should have one spot in this world where she could always go to remember her mother, a woman murdered trying to protect her child. We’d all chipped in, and a headstone had been ordered but not yet delivered. Aaron Fuchs rattled some cages at the FBI to track down the woman’s birthplace outside of Coeur d’Alene, and her true name, Jennifer Leigh Ravenswood. It was a pretty name. She was just fifteen when Audie was born and twenty-four last fall when Sonny VanOwen, her rapist and her pimp, put a bullet in her brain. Aaron emailed us a juvi court photo of Jenny taken at around sixteen when her motherhood was new to her. She was beautiful. There was no other way to say it. In spite of the life she’d been dealt, she just glowed and had a smile that would break your heart. There was a passing resemblance to Erika in color and frame and bone structure but little resemblance in beauty. Just enough for VanOwen to think he could pull a switch when he had a body to dispose of. And he came close to getting away with it. Sarah said, looking at the picture of Jenny, that we could see what Audie would look like in a few years. Mom printed out the picture on good paper and framed it for Audie, who said it was the only picture of her mother she’d ever even seen.

She wore a dress my mom had bought for her to the cemetery. We carried the coffin to the grave with the marks of backhoe teeth still fresh in the cut. Audie’s tears poured out along with the tears from people who’d never known the dead woman. After all the months in the lifeless water of the airless bog, we lowered her down into dry ground. Staring into that sandy hole, I got the idea that we hadn’t gone on a false hunt after all. The search for a missing child was real. And we’d found her. We found Audie.

The first handful of dirt hit the coffin lid, and she wailed loud enough to wake the dead Spaniard in his cave.

When it was over and the tears were wiped and the noses blown, we walked back to our pickups for the drive to town. We were heading to the Sno-Cone for bacon cheeseburgers and chocolate malts, which was Audie’s choice. I noticed a little German convertible parked under some runty spruce trees along the cemetery chain-link. It was a hot day to leave the top up. I walked next to the car and pulled my skinning knife so the driver couldn’t miss it. Holding the knife in my right hand I ran the back of my thumb across the ragtop so it sounded like I was cutting into it. Carl had the door open quick enough.

His hair and Hawaiian shirt were plastered down with sweat. He looked more scared than pissed.

“What?” he said.

“You’re the one scopin’ us out. That’ll stop right now.” I sheathed my knife. “You’re not in Reno anymore, so you got no jurisdiction and no cause if you did. Plus, your boss is dead.”

“I know,” he said. “Word gets around.” He started to get out of the car.

“Don’t.”

He stopped. “Look, I don’t want any trouble.”

“Then what’re you doing here?”

“I wanted to pay my respects.”

Boy, there was nothing to say to that.

“To Jenny. She was a nice kid. What Snake did was wrong.”

“Killing her? Oh, yeah. But you took his money anyway.”

“I ain’t perfect, okay. Internal Affairs is breaking my balls. I’ll be lucky to keep my badge.” He squirmed in the seat. “They might wanna talk to you about … you know, stuff.”

“Here’s what I know. You were following me. That’s all. I don’t have a clue why. A pimp said you were on the take for him, but he’s past talking. You just leave it at that. Enough people died here already. I could give a shit if you get to keep your job.”

Carl looked through his windshield, past the crappy spruce trees and down the hill over the sagebrush to the Reno Highway heading south to Hornberg’s a few miles below town. If you knew what you were looking for, you could see scorched pasture and blackened trees and fences around the foundation of the burned house in the hazy distance. He sort of nodded toward the grave.

“Jenny deserved better,” he said. “I knew her ten years.”

“What? Sonny give you a discount with her? Great, a sentimental predator.”

He started to close the door, but I put my boot on the rocker panel so he couldn’t.

“Now, here’s what I think. I think Audie’s mother went to the only cop she knew to say Sonny was molesting her daughter. Their daughter. And that cop, being a vice cop as well as a weak-suck chicken-shit scum, told Sonny instead of his superiors. And that’s when Sonny blew that poor girl’s brains out. That’s what started this whole hoo-rah that ended up at Hornberg’s last week.”

He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his arm.

“Tell the kid—”

“I’ll tell her nothing.” I took my boot off his car. “I better never see you again.”

He closed the door and started the engine. I walked back to the rest of my folks.

“Who was that?” Dan said.

“Nobody.”

At the Sno-Cone we piled around two picnic tables and waited for our order. Harvey, May, and I stood by the take-out window.

“I’m ready for some ice cream.” Harvey said. He was more a bourbon and beer guy, but he had a devilish sweet tooth.

“What’s to become of that child?” May said. She spoke soft so Audie couldn’t hear. “You think your mom and Burt can get custody?”

“Maybe. Or she might stay with us. That’s what Sarah wants.”

May grabbed me and gave me a big smack on the cheek. “Good,” she said.

“Sarah and I need to figure it out. She said anything permanent with non-relatives is hard. Then there’s the … recent violence. I did kill the kid’s father.”

“I have the feeling that her being with you and Sarah is just meant to be.”

“Now you sound like Mom.”

I knew nothing was ever meant to be. You either make it happen or you don’t.

Audie dozed off on the drive back up to the pack station, whimpering and mumbling in her sleep. When our two trucks pulled into the yard, Harvey strapped on his tool belt to put in a few hours on the cabin before supper and work off his hot fudge sundae.

Sarah put Lorena down for a nap. I went outside and slid Dad’s .270 into the outhouse rafters, then saddled up a brown horse that didn’t belong to me. Nobody had claimed Twister Creed’s body or even knew if he had any family, much less if this horse actually belonged to him. The gelding stood quiet while I rigged him up, but I was quiet, too. He didn’t seem like a horse a guy should take for granted. I’d have to put ads in the Reno Gazette Journal, the Copper County News, and the Progressive Rancher and leave notices at feed stores and such to see if anybody claimed him, but if I was going to feed him, I was going to ride him.

He was watchful as I stepped up, and he seemed light and responsive and ready to move. I saw Audie keeping an eye on me from the porch, more serious and sad than ever. I busted the horse out along the fence to see what he’d do, pushing him harder than I ought, to see if he’d bog his head. He did. He was fast and catty and a bit touchy, a cowboy’s horse, but honest, and he settled pretty quick. Sarah had gone inside to change, so I hollered for Audie to open the corral gate for me. Sarah heard the gate creak and walked back outside, barefoot and in jeans, buttoning a cowboy shirt. I rode up to the porch. Sarah gave me that look she had.

“I’m going to ride this guy up the trail for half an hour.”

“Are you coming back?” Audie said.

“’Course I’m coming back. I live here, remember?”

“Where do I live?”

I circled the brown horse a few more times. Sarah watched to see what I’d say. I answered Audie, but my eye was on my wife. We’d never really come close to settling this.

“Here. You live here. With Sarah and me.”

Sarah nodded and gave me a heartbreaking smile. I nodded back.

I loped the horse out the gate, stopped him, and circled him again. “Tell you what. Go get into your jeans.”

“How come?” Audie said.

“’Cause you’re going with me.”

I didn’t have to ask her twice. In the couple weeks we’d known her, getting the kid on a horse was never something I had time to think about. I had a solid old mare saddled when Audie came back. I got her mounted and the stirrups shortened.

“You ever been on a horse before?”

“Hell no,” she said. “But I bet I’ll be damn good at it.”

Sarah shaded her eyes with her hand and watched us ride off up the canyon.