Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories (4 page)

He still didn’t move.

“Do you take anything in your tea?” I tapped the spoon on the rim of the mug and then carefully placed it on the edge of the sink. “Just as well, because I don’t have anything anyway.” I purposefully walked over to him and handed him the cup. “Yep, a little mix-up at the local paper.”

He swallowed visibly.

I took the Bible from his hand, crossed the room, and plucked the blanket from my recliner, revealing the large-frame Colt .45 in the Sam Browne, and the six-pointed star of the Absaroka County Sheriff attached to my jacket. “Sheriff.” I glanced at the star and then at my sidearm. “Sheriff Longmire.”

I tossed the blanket onto the chair and sat with my elbows on my knees and the book in my lap. “It was a mistake. Ernie ‘Man About Town’ Brown went into Durant Memorial for surgery on his prostate and left a manila folder on his desk. His part-timer saw the file folder marked
OBITUARIES
and assumed they were current.”

He still didn’t move.

“I’d imagine it’s hard to throw away the photos and obituaries of people you know well. Michael Lenz, a friend of Ernie’s who had died in a car crash back in the nineties, was there, along with Ernie’s sister Yvonne, who passed almost twelve years ago—and my wife, Martha.” I stared at the book in my lap. “Those two other Bibles at your feet wouldn’t have Michael’s and Yvonne’s names on them, would they?”

He cleared his throat and spoke. “Mr. Longmire—”

“Sheriff.” Another moment passed. “You know, there was this scam that they started to pull in the dirty thirties when cheap presses made mass-market printing possible. These con men would drive around with the trunks of their cars filled with Bibles and they’d pick up the local newspaper and get the names from the obituaries, then they’d print the names on the Bibles and sell them to the aggrieved survivors.”

He started to get up slowly, so as to not spill his tea.

I looked at him, my voice a little more than conversational. “Sit down, Mr. Sherman.” He stayed there for a second and then
eased himself back onto the sofa. Dog, hearing the tone of my voice, planted his big paws on the floor and raised his head to look up at him.

I opened the cover and looked at the cheap, gold-edged pages with color separation that looked like newspaper comics; the inside cover was printed with a large tree with blank lines for family members. It wasn’t a very good version of the Good Book, or of any other book for that matter.

“My mother used to drag me to church when I was a kid, and I would sit there looking at the stained glass windows and listening to the choir sing and wondering what the heck was wrong with me.” I sighed and flipped a few more of the thin pages. “Never went back.”

He cleared his throat, and I glanced at him, but he didn’t say anything.

I looked at the Bible in my hands. “What do you suppose is the most important lesson in this Book? That’s what it is, right? A book of lessons on how it is we’re supposed to treat each other.” I took a deep breath. “I mean, if I was to read this, what do you suppose is the most important thing I’d take away from it?”

He looked around, at anything except me. “I’m not sure.”

“I think this Book is about forgiveness and tolerance.” I looked up at him. “At least, you better hope so.” I watched his eyes widen as my hand reached past my duty belt, and I pulled my checkbook from the seat of my jeans and my pen from my jacket pocket, which was just below the star. “One hundred and eighty-eight dollars, right?”

We sat there, and I made him look at me.

My eyes stayed steady with his. “Should I make this out to
the American Bible Company or to you, Mr. Sherman?” He didn’t say anything but just sat there, holding his mug. “. . . I’ll just make it out to you.” After signing the check and tearing it out, I tucked the Bible under my arm. “Well, it doesn’t look as if you enjoy my tea or my company, and I don’t want to hold you here any longer.”

We stood. I took the mug and handed him the slip of paper.

He held the check.

“Don’t worry, it’s good, Mr. Sherman—and I’ll be happy to deliver those other two Bibles to save you the trouble.”

*   *   *

I watched as he turned the expensive car around; he hit the gas, it slid a little, and my eyes followed the taillights as they disappeared down the ranch road.

I walked over to the northwest window where I’d begun the evening and sipped Mr. Sherman’s untouched tea; it was still warm. Dog watched me as I pulled the special heritage edition Bible from under my arm and peered through the ice-rimed window to see if the owl had returned.

He hadn’t.

Martha and I had argued earlier that afternoon. I don’t even remember what it was we’d argued about, but I remember the tone of her voice, the timbre and cadence. It’s important to me sometimes to try and remember what it was that had been said, but I can’t. I’m afraid that my mind works like that more and more these days, allowing the words spoken to disappear into cracks and crevices.

I thumbed the Good Book open, flipped through a few pages, and then closed it. The sleet had turned to snow, and the
flakes caught the light from inside the cabin and burst into small sparks before pressing themselves against the glass.

I continued to look out into the raw night, but from habit my eyes drifted upward and I thought about how maybe I had softened a little, and the words escaped with the memories. “You should’ve hung around.”

Motivated by a sense of generational snobbery or the assumption that the drink, cuisine, and ambient atmosphere might be better in such places, the ignorant or unwary visitor to Absaroka County, faced with where to revel away the debut of the New Year, might choose the Euskadi
Bar, the Centennial, or even Henry’s establishment, the
Red
Pony, over the Durant Home for Assisted Living.

They would, of course, be dead wrong.

The aged of Absaroka County look after their creature comforts with an expertise born of making it through one depression and the war to end all wars. No matter where you are in the county and no matter who goes short, it won’t be them—they’ve been in the game far too long for that.

Ex-mayor Bud “Buddy” Elkins stood next to the Dutch doors of the home’s entryway broom closet. Handing me a Pappy Van Winkle’s bourbon, he looked past my shoulder to where the one-legged ex-sheriff was contemplating the latest of
my opening chess gambits, Dog at his foot. “Looks like you’ve got Lucian flummoxed.”

There had been times in the last quarter of a century when my old boss and mentor, Lucian Connally, had let me off the hook on chess night, especially on holidays, but tonight was not one of those nights. Evidently, the old sheriff had left a space heater too close to the curtains in room 32 and was being forced to spend New Year’s Eve in the communal area, a place he normally avoided like a hot and cold running venereal disease. They had cleaned out his room, but they wouldn’t let him return to his haunt until near midnight when they figured the fumes would have dissipated.

I was here as a buffer.

I sipped my drink and glanced back. “He’s distracted; he doesn’t care for the music and hubbub.” I was referring to the pickup Dixieland jazz trio that was playing next to the Christmas tree, which seemed perilously near the roiling flames in the blond-brick fireplace. “That and I picked up a few moves from one of my deputies.”

“The Pyrenees Indian?”

I smiled at the old politician’s political incorrectness. “Saizarbitoria—he’s the one who’s caught the duty tonight.”

He sipped his Coke. “What about that hellcat, that other deputy of yours?”

“Vic? She’s back in Philadelphia till the day after tomorrow.”

“I always like it when you bring her along.”

I nodded. “So does Lucian. He likes her breasts.”

His ninety-two-year-old face took on a dreamy look, and he held a hand out to palm a not so imaginary body part.
“They’re nice boobies, just the size of a red wine glass—not too big, not too small.”

Pretty much everything Buddy had to say had to do with alcohol or women. He’d owned a number of drinking establishments as far back as I could remember—dance clubs, bars, and package stores. In fact, he’d sold me my first beer. Whether I was of legal age was something neither of us ever brought up.

I leaned against the counter that separated the entryway from the main room and glanced around, meeting the eyes of a woman who, apparently, was the reason Buddy was forced to serve the liquor from outside the official party room. Genevieve McNeil was an incredibly old, bright-eyed Presbyterian with a penchant for elaborate hats. Hard, of few words, she kept a sharp eye on the Old Testament God to make sure
He
didn’t get up to any shenanigans she might disapprove of, like granting salvation to Catholics or allowing sheriffs to drink in public.

I nodded to her, but she didn’t return my greeting and instead turned away and whispered in the ear of one of her compatriots.

In protest, I took another sip of my bourbon. As I looked around, I remembered that this was the room with the black-and-white photos of the area on the walls. The nearest was of the Fort McKinney parade grounds, where in 1878 an opportunistic commander had filed a claim on the ground underneath the fledgling town to the east under the Desert Land Act.

Major Verling Durant had died unrepentantly a few years later, and his wife was given the deed to the unnamed town. Two hundred and fifty land sales were made that next year, including the one for the courthouse and the future Carnegie Library that had become my office and jail. Juliet Durant was
suddenly a very rich woman, and the town at the foot of the Bighorn Mountains had a name.

Buddy noticed me studying the photograph. “Whole town started with larceny and hasn’t gotten any better since.”

“You’d be in a position to know.” Bud had served an unprecedented half-dozen terms as mayor of Durant. I motioned toward the framed photos. “Are some of these new?”

He glanced around the room where it seemed to me a lot of additions had been made. “They’re from that trove of photos your buddy Henry found up on the Rez. I guess that old Mennonite preacher took photos of white people, too.”

I cleared my throat and gestured my tumbler toward the bottle. “You wanna pour one of those for Lucian, I’ll take it over to him.”

“Might as well—he paid for the stuff.”

I took the two glasses to the communal long table and sat a tumbler at the old sheriff’s elbow, on the left where he liked it.

“Well, thank Christ for that and the fact that they don’t have those damn Christmas carols playing.” He took a nip and cast a glittering gimlet of a dark eye toward the trio. “Do me a favor?”

“What’s that?”

“Shoot me.”

I smiled. “No.”

“It’s all I want for the holidays, a bullet in the back of my head.” He studied the board and massaged the stump where his leg used to be. “Lousy thirty-seven-cent cartridge . . .”

“Lucian.” The Dixieland trio had coaxed a few couples out onto the open area at the end of the table near the Christmas tree. It appeared as if everyone was having a good time—all but
one. “If you don’t like the communal area, then you shouldn’t have set fire to your room.”

“I didn’t set fire to my damned room.” He took another sip to combat the general festive spirit. “Jesus H. Christ—didn’t even have that damn thing plugged in. They bring us those fire hazards on that windy side of the building, but they already keep the place so hot you can barely breathe.” His eyes came back to mine. “You ever see me plug in that space heater?”

It was true, I hadn’t. “Maybe one of the attendants did it.”

“Those minimum-wage morons couldn’t stick a plug up their ass with both hands.”

He grew quiet, and I grew worried. His eyes were on the chessboard, but I knew that wasn’t what he was seeing. “Lucian.”

Even his voice was distracted. “What?”

“Are you all right?” He didn’t answer at first, and I took advantage of the situation to give him a good going-over. His hair was like wire and still the silver it had been for decades, cut in the same manner it had been since he had flown a B-25 Mitchell off the deck of the USS
Hornet
all those years ago. The hard times had not diminished him but had worn him like a good piece of leather. His dark eyes were still bright as searchlights, and the wrinkles around them were like fissures in granite. Maybe it was a reminder of my own mortality, but I hated to think of him as old.

He set the searchlights on me, and his words were heavy and low-pitched. “I think I’m slippin’ a little.” I stared at him. “I swear I don’t remember plugging that thing in or turning it on.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing and looked around the room just to make sure my eyes wouldn’t water. To
my surprise, Genevieve McNeil was motioning to me. I excused myself from my old boss and slid down the bench a few seats, careful to remove my hat. “Mrs. McNeil, Mrs. Percy, how are you ladies?”

Genevieve cast a cold and forbidding eye on me, her feathered cloche balanced on her narrow head, the veil patchworking her gray hair. “Should you be drinking on duty, Sheriff?”

I sat my tumbler on the table. “I’m not on duty, Mrs. McNeil.”

The feather on her hat wobbled along with her head, but her eyes stayed steady. It was easy to see that she had been an exuberant daughter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement. “And what if you are called to duty, Mr. Longmire?”

“I won’t be.” I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. “We’re perfectly safe, Mrs. McNeil.”

“You’d be a pretty judge of that with that friend of yours setting fire to the place only last night.” She huffed a breath and glanced at Elaine Percy, sitting next to her, who smiled at me and shrugged.

My attention went back to Genevieve. “I think he only singed the curtains in his room.”

She shared another glance with Mrs. Percy. “Drinking, no doubt. You realize he’s the only resident with liquor in his room?”

Officially chastised, I placed my hat back on my head and stood. “You ladies have a Happy New Year.” I edged my way back toward the chessboard with my bourbon. I was sure that if I had left it on the table, Mrs. McNeil would have quickly watered the plants with it.

Bud Elkins, enjoying a break from his bartending duties
and taking advantage of my indecision, threw a hand up to call my attention to another photo on the wall beside the entryway.

I joined him, as I could see that Lucian hadn’t moved and was still pondering the small wooden pieces along with his own faculties. Elkins raised a narrow forefinger and pointed at a picture of a sprawling, low-slung building. I shifted and looked at it. “Where’s that?”

The ex-mayor shifted with me and smiled. “That was my first dance hall, north of town.” He sighed deeply. “Burned down and never got open. Long before your time—back in the dirty thirties.”

“After Prohibition?”

He nodded his head, aware that he was talking to the law, even if it was the law with a bourbon in his hand. “You bet.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, Bill Miller—before you were born—worked for me and slept in the building since they were just getting ready to lay the hardwood dance floor the next morning. Hell of a carpenter, but the man drank—built the Peters Dance Hall, Hotel Ladore, and the American Legion, too. Anyway, Bill said he’d gotten up to go take a whiz and then had gone back to sleep—man slept like a log—woke up an hour later ’cause he said angels were talkin’ to him, and the whole place was on fire. It was an honest-to-God miracle he didn’t get burned up alive. It was so late and took so long for the fire department to get out there . . .” His voice trailed off. “Ninety thousand shingles, seventy thousand feet of lumber, twenty thousand dollars. That was a lot of money back then.”

“That’s a lot of money now.” I thought about it. “I think I’m starting to remember the story . . . Didn’t they arrest a fellow?”

“George Miller, Bill’s brother. They found the oilcan that smelled like kerosene that Otto Hanck, the Mennonite tinsmith from over on Klondike, had made for him. Even had his initials on it—GM. Otto never would say the name of the man who bought the can, but since Miller had a competing dance hall over in Story and was the brother of my handyman, it was pretty much an open and shut case.”

“Yep, but didn’t the dance hall over in Story burn down the next week?”

There was a shadow of discomfort that played across the old man’s eyes. “That it did. There’s a photograph of that right over there.”

We readjusted ourselves and looked at another picture. “Hmm.”

Buddy pointed to another photo. “And there was one that burned up in Big Horn the week after that.”

I swallowed a little more Pappy’s to prod my memory. “I’m trying to remember about George Miller . . .”

Bud provided the answer. “Moved away after he got out of Rawlins. Idaho, I think.”

“What about the brother, Bill?”

“Drank himself to death.”

I moved on to the next photograph, but my mind stayed snagged on the one I’d left behind. “Do you think Bill was an accomplice?”

“Nah, he didn’t have the nerve for that kind of thing. He was quite a bit older than his brother, fought in the Great War, although I don’t know what was so great about it. He got mustard gassed, and I don’t think he ever got over it.” The ex-mayor raised his hand and shook it as if palsied. “Had the shakes, bad.
People used to joke that the reason he was such a good carpenter was because he was a natural at sanding.”

I nodded and looked at the next photo down the line and what looked like a celebration of some kind, a fishing derby, maybe, with a few individuals that I recognized this time. “Robert Taylor.”

“The actor, sure. You remember him being around here, don’t you?”

I laughed to myself. He was young in the photograph, and the matinee smile was there, the one that had gotten him the record twenty-four-year contract at MGM. “I remember when he used to come down off the mountain in that Cadillac of his with the steer horns and terrorize every stationary object in town. I actually met him one weekend when I was still in school.”

Bud leaned in closer and raised his glasses again, and I started wondering why he wore the things. “Yep, that one was taken when they opened the lodge on the peninsula out at Lake DeSmet.” He dropped the glasses and leaned in even further. “Well, speak of the devil.” He turned to me and pointed at the photo to a rail-thin man in the back row. “Bill Miller.” He laughed and shook his bald head. “No surprise; he must’ve helped to build that place, too. Hell of a carpenter. You know, now that I think of it, that place partially burnt down, too.”

I left my gaze on the doomed man but couldn’t help but notice the pretty girl in the hat beside him. With his eye to the gentler sex, Buddy knew where mine had come to rest. He grinned. “I bet you can’t guess who that gal is.”

I studied the photo—the woman did look vaguely and freshly familiar. “I’m not . . .”

“Genevieve McNeil.”

I could feel my eyes widen as I stared at the photo. Something struck me, and I moved back to the photograph of the burned dance hall and the small crowd out front, then I moved and studied the photo before that one and the photo before that.

I looked back over my shoulder past Lucian and the chessboard to where Mrs. McNeil sat with her flock of cronies. After a second, she glanced up to see me looking at her. I swiveled my head to reexamine the third photo and then turned to look at her again, and she wore an expression that I had grown accustomed to seeing in the business of enforcing the law.