CHAPTER THIRTY

The white and purple hyacinth that Jesse nurtured in the greenhouse had come back into bloom, and the air in the kitchen was sweet with the fragrance of the cut stalks that she had arranged in a vase on the table. The three of us had just returned home from Sunday services and were changing our clothes for the remainder of the day.

After breakfast, we made the drive back to the fairgrounds, where Jesse and Cricket and I walked together across the dirt parking lot, weaved our way among the horse trailers and competitors’ barns, and rounded the corner to ours. Caleb Wheeler was shouting and waving his arms as he stalked back and forth in front of the rest of the Diamond D hands. They were gathered in the shade of an eave that ran the length of our stable, where the horses’ heads poked out from their stalls, ears cocked forward in curiosity.

“What’s all this?” I asked.

“Goddamned Taj Caldwell called me not an hour ago, is what it is.”

I scanned the faces of our cowboys, but perceived nothing that could help me decipher the meaning of Caleb’s statement.

“Where did Tai call you from?” I asked.

“A bar.”

Caleb stared at me, his face growing redder as he waited for me to catch up.

“The goddamned bar is in Phoenix,” he said.

“Taj is supposed to be Tucker’s heeler,” I said, finally registering the problem.

“Diamond D ain’t never scratched a team roping event. Not ever. I swear I’m gonna skin that sonofabitch when he gets back.”

I cut my eyes sideways at Jesse and Cricket for a moment, then considered the rest of our cowboys.

“Tucker,” I said, “what do you figure on doing?”

Paul Tucker tugged on the end of a hay stem he’d been chewing, narrowed his eyes as he looked off into the glare.

“I s’pose I see it this way,” he answered. “Griffin is still gimpy, and Powell can’t throw a loop down a well. All due respect, Mr. Dawson, sir, you ain’t tossed a catch-rope in a while …”

Tucker halted and roved his gaze across the men in the shade and considered what he was going to say next.

“Out with it, you coward,” Caleb said.

“You ain’t a young maverick no more, Boss,” Tucker said.

“There it is,” Caleb said, and spat a wad of tobacco juice that landed three inches from the toe of Tucker’s boot.

Tucker shifted the hay stem to the opposite corner of his mouth and his eyes landed on Tom Jenkins.

“I guess that leaves the kid,” he shrugged. “Even I can’t ride two horses with one ass.”

I was making my way to the stock tent, where a blue ribbon awarded to a stud horse or bull could mean tens of thousands of dollars in breeding fees. While the rodeo and midway were largely entertaining diversions, what went on in the stock tent could mean the difference between saving and losing a ranch when times were lean as they had been for the past couple of years.

The footpath to the stockyard passed through the fun zone, where the trash barrels had begun to overflow with empty beer bottles and spent plastic cups. In the distance, the voice of the event announcer resonated like a stannic and discordant chirrup. The breeze blew hot, and smelled of popcorn, hot dogs, and funnel cakes, while strings of multicolored triangular flags snapped and popped above my head.

I could sense someone coming up from behind me more rapidly than I was comfortable with, and when I turned to see who it was, I nearly ran headlong into Harper Emory.

“I need to speak with you, Dawson,” he panted.

His face appeared flushed from both heat and exertion, but it was clear that he no longer required the use of his cane.

“Walk and talk,” I said. “I’m on my way to the pens.”

I began to move on through the noise that rose from the lines of onlookers mobbing the game booths when Emory tugged on my shirtsleeve.

“Not here,” he said, and pulled up short.

Emory’s voice came out in a hoarse whisper, his attention locked onto something behind me, the folds of his eyes twitching as if insects were feeding under his skin. He took a step backward and looked as though he wished he could vanish into my shadow.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said. “At your office.”

I watched as he skittered away, losing himself inside the milling crowd as swiftly as he had appeared. I removed the sunglasses I was wearing and wiped the dust off before resuming my course toward the stock tent. I hadn’t made it three strides before I recognized what Harper Emory had been looking at over my shoulder, the thing that had stopped him in his tracks and sent him scuttling off in the other direction.

A low frequency electrical hum droned from an amplifier where a guitar player occupied a makeshift stage inside the beer garden, where red-faced men tipped long-necked bottles, sweated through the fabric of their shirts, and tapped fingers on shaded table tops underneath striped umbrellas. Carl Spinell was sitting at a table by himself, wearing a gray snap-button shirt and black jeans, paring the nails on his fingers with a pocket knife. His hat was pushed back off his forehead, his legs stretched out and encroaching into the pedestrian walkway, the sun glinting off the tooled silver decorations on the toes of his boots.

“I see you’re looking covetously at my hoof covers,” Spinell said to me.

“I don’t know where you went to school, but I don’t believe they taught you the proper definition of ‘covetous’.”

“You don’t like my brand new Luccheses?” he asked without lifting his eyes off his manicure.

“If you’re the bouncer at a Tijuana whorehouse.”

He sliced away some loose skin on his thumb.

“I never have believed in economizing on footwear.”

“You’ve been a difficult man to draw a bead on,” I said, changing the subject. “I’ve been looking for you.”

Carl Spinell drew himself out of his slouch and stared at me, admiring his own reflection in the lenses of my shades.

“Just enjoying a grin over a cold beverage or two.”

“That puts you one up on most of the folks around here. They haven’t had much to smile about since you arrived.”

“Aw, Sheriff,” he said, his drawling delivery like needles in my ears. “You can’t be placing the blame on me for the misfortune that’s befallen this unfortunate town. It’s become downright dangerous around here.”

“I suspect more than a little responsibility for that lands at your doorstep, and that of your two dead amigos.”

“Quite a shock about them two, I admit,” he said, and folded the knife blade into the handle and slid the whole thing into the pocket of his pressed jeans. “Who would’ve guessed that they were fairies, am I right? Prison does strange things to some folks. Speaking of which, did my eyes deceive me, or did I just see you conversing with Harper Emory?”

“You need to express yourself more plainly, Mr. Spinell. I don’t believe I understand the connection.”

“I shouldn’t presume to tell you how to do your job, Sheriff.”

“I need you to come in to my office and give a formal statement,” I said. “Tomorrow works for me.”

Deep lines radiated from the corners of his eyes when he smiled.

“I don’t believe that I wish to say anything further to you in the absence of legal counsel,” he said, and made a grand pantomime of surprise when Nolan Brody stepped up to the table carrying two frosted beer bottles, their necks covered with inverted plastic cups.

“Why, I’ll be damned,” Spinell enthused. “Here’s my attorney now.”

When I returned to our temporary stables an hour later, I was still seething with anger that a man like Carl Spinell had been invited into Meriwether County to track his shit across our town. I wandered around looking for anybody from the Diamond D, but it was quiet. I finally located Tom Jenkins out back, in an open patch of hardpan practicing heel roping on a wood peg he had driven into the ground. I watched him catch the peg and draw up tight on it. His eye was good, and his reactions quick. I knew it would do me some good to clear my head of Spinell, Brody, and Emory, if only for a short while.

“You nervous?” I asked.

I saw that the scabs he’d earned in the ring the day before had broken open, but he didn’t seem to notice or care that fresh blood was running down the fingers of his left hand.

“I’m all right, I s’pose.”

“You tell your uncle how you did with the calf-roping yesterday?”

“No, sir.”

His tone of voice betrayed no hint of carping or self-pity. In fact, I was somewhat puzzled in that it betrayed no emotion whatsoever.

“Did you tell Snoose you’re gonna represent us in the team roping? I imagine he’d want to see that.”

“I doubt that, sir,” he said.

Tom pulled the rope slack through the honda and rolled the lasso, then slapped it hard against the side welt of his boot. He trained his focus on his target, but it was clear that his attention had drifted away.

“I reckon I’ll go and talk to him,” I said. “You happen to know where he’s set up his stable?”

“He didn’t rent a stable this year,” Tom said, and turned his eyes away. “Last time I saw him he was out near the feed lot drinking Wild Turkey out of a paper bag. He’s been sleeping in the stock trailer that he used to haul the breed bull over here.”

Tom lined up his twine and turned it loose again. He overthrew his target by at least a foot. It was the first miss I had seen since I’d begun watching him.

“Why don’t you fall off and rest your feet a minute,” I said.

His hat was pulled down low and I could not see his eyes inside the shadow of the brim when he turned to face me.

“With respect, I ain’t got a lotta time before the ropin’,” he said. “Them boys’ll tan my hide if we lose because’a me.”

“We ain’t gonna lose because’a you,” I said. “I’ve watched you throw. I’ve never seen you hot-rope a horse or steer, not even once. You’re a natural. Now set down here with me a minute.”

He took off his hat and squinted in the harsh sunlight, stepped into the shade, and sat down on a hay bale across from me. I went into the tack room, grabbed a cold bottle of soda from the ice chest, popped the top, and handed it to him.

“You given any thought to what you’re gonna do when the summer’s over, Tom? You figuring on going back to California to live with your momma?”

“I don’t imagine there’s much for me down in California no more,” he said and tipped the bottle to his lips.

“We got high schools here in Oregon, too, you know,” I said.

He tried not to let me see him smile as he leaned forward and studied the topsoil.

“I only got one more year before I graduate,” he said.

“Old Snoose could surely use a decent hand, Tom. That ranch could be yours one day, if you were of a mind to work it. Your uncle doesn’t have anybody else.”

Something lit behind his eyes and flickered out, like he could not afford to allow himself more than a moment’s worth of hope.

“I don’t know whether he can hold out that long,” he said. “It seems like my uncle’s busting apart at the seams.”

Tom placed his empty pop bottle on the ground beside the hay bale and ambled back out into the sun. He spun his line in a slow circle over his head, steadied his aim, and turned it loose. The rope flew straight and kicked up a tiny dust cloud as it caught the peg.

“Are you familiar with the American flag, son?” I asked. “It was the man on horseback who put most of them stars on it.”

He pivoted on one foot and squinted in my direction, tried to locate my face inside the shade where I stood leaning against the wall.

“A man with land, water, and livestock is the freest man in the world,” I went on. “This thing we do is a way of life, but it isn’t going to stay this way forever.”

“My uncle’s property don’t belong to me.”

“You’re a Corcoran, aren’t you? If you want it, you’ve got to commit,” I said. “If you don’t, it’ll disappear right out from under you. Opportunities die of neglect, not murder.”

Tom Jenkins seemed to take notice of the blood on his knuckles for the first time. He drew a kerchief from his back pocket and wrapped his fingers in it while he considered what I had told him.

“I don’t think it’s as easy as that,” he said.

“Are you asking me if it’s simple, or if it’s easy? That’s two completely different things.”

“Do you really think my uncle would consider it?”

“There hasn’t been an abundance of hope lingering around here these days,” I said. “I do believe it’s been a helluva long time since your Uncle Snoose had much to look forward to. I don’t know for sure, but that might apply to you as well.”

Caleb was still furious with me for taking the Diamond D bull, Julius, out of the judging and stock auction. But I made him come along with me to locate Snoose anyway, on the likely chance that Snoose might be in a surly mood. Tom had been correct as to his uncle’s whereabouts, and we found Snoose passed out on the floor of his split-tailgate cattle trailer, resting his head on a pile of dried straw, his crumpled hat drawn down to cover his eyes. I grabbed hold of his shoulder and shook him awake. He made a grumbling noise that reminded me of the sound an old dog makes and pushed his hat off his face, but he didn’t appear overly surprised to see either Caleb or me standing there inside his trailer. He didn’t seem particularly pleased either.

“What the hell do you fellas want? I don’t recollect inviting y’all out here.”

“It’s time for you to pull on your boots and cowboy up, goddamn it,” Caleb said.

Snoose’s bloodshot eyes wandered from Caleb to me and back again.

“We get married or something when I wasn’t payin’ no attention?” Snoose asked. “’Cause I don’t recollect leaving you in charge of my doin’s, Wheeler.”

“I suggest you shut your mouth,” Caleb said. “Most people never get to meet their own angel.”

“I ain’t never come palm-up to either one of you,” he said.

Caleb shot a look in my direction that told me he was one more stray comment away from letting loose of his long-restrained frustration with Snoose Corcoran.

“Are you kidding me?” Caleb said, and spat a dollop of tobacco juice into the corner. “I’m surprised your paws ain’t sunburned from all the daylight they’ve been exposed to at Ty Dawson’s door.”

Snoose’s face turned red as he scrambled to push himself up off the floor.

“Relax,” I said. “I’ve got a business proposition for you, Snoose.”

“You’d be wise to hear Ty out,” Caleb said. “If it was up to me, I’d let you sleep in this trailer ’til Christmas.”

“Your nephew, Tom, is becoming a damned fine hand,” I said. “He’s even heeling in the team roping event for the Diamond D tonight. I want you to come and watch him.”

Snoose smoothed a hand across his thinning hair. He sat up straight and reached for the paper bag he had propped against the wall, but Caleb kicked it over before Snoose could get a hand on it. The fumes of low-shelf whiskey burned my eyes inside the overheated stillness.

“You sonofabitch!” Snoose bellowed at Caleb. “I don’t recollect askin’ you to be my goddamned sponsor.”

“You been doing a grand bit of recollectin’ for a man who’s had his head stoved in as much as you have,” Caleb said. “You’re staring at your last good chance right this very second and you can’t even see it. You’d best hold your tongue and listen.”

“You gonna hear me out, Snoose?” I asked. “Give me an honest consideration?”

I could see it in the set of his jaw. When he had been a younger man he would have tried to take both Caleb and me right then and there.

“I’m too drunk to fight or lie,” he said, rested his head against the wall, and closed his eyes. “I ain’t got the energy no more.”

I turned away and stepped down from the trailer, lit a cigarette, and waited in the fresh air as Caleb followed me out. The late afternoon sun was dipping low against the crenellated mountain ridge and elongated the shadows at our feet.

“I’m tired of seeing decent people lose,” I said.

“You get to an age where you start to insert the past where the present oughta be,” Caleb said. “Do it long enough, people think you’re crazy, but you ain’t. It’s just self-defense.”

I took a long, last drag and flicked the cigarette, watched it land in a shower of sparks and roll along the caliche before I moved back inside the trailer.

“Help me drag Snoose to our stable,” I said. “I’ll get some coffee in him.”