Damned If I Do Part 5

Tim laughed loudly, calling attention from the three men in the booth. "That's funny. Rest in peace. I like you. You're all right. Rest in peace." He took another bite. "So, we got a water problem or something? Our wells drying up?"

"No, nothing like that. I'm just here to measure the flow of the creeks. Nothing special."

"We sure had enough snow this year," Tim said.

I nodded.

"You know, Muriel's awright. She's just a little high-spirited." Tim polished off the last bite of the first half of his sandwich.

I watched him chew. "High-spirited," I repeated his words and considered them. "She looked like she wanted to kill you."

"Aw, that little ol' knife? She didn't mean nothing by that." Tim got Hortense's attention and pointed to his empty cup. "I just wish I knew what the h.e.l.l she was signing at least half the time. She gets to going so fast."

"Well, Tim, it was a pleasure meeting you, but I need some rest." I put money on the tab and slid it to Hortense while she filled Tim's cup. "Maybe I'll see you again."

"G'night."

I put myself to sleep as I always did, by imagining myself on a stream, fishing. That night I was on the Madison, fishing a stretch of pocket water that no human had ever seen before. It was about six in the evening in early August, a slight breeze, not too hot. There was no hatch activity and so I was fishing terrestrials off the far bank. I was letting cinnamon ants fall off the weeds into the water. I would cast, let the ant drift, and pull it back before it could get to a fat eighteen-inch brown I could see in the shallows. I wanted the fly to float to him just right. I casted again and again, until finally there was no drag, the ant simply floated at the end of the tippet with no sign of the slightest disturbance to the water behind it. The fat trout rose, gave the ant a looking over, and ate it. I let him sink with it a few inches and then I set the hook.

It was windy and cold the next morning. A light snow had fallen during the night and left everything lightly dusted. I rode with the deputy in his 4 4 rig, and my attention was immediately fixed on the radar unit between us. It did not look as high-tech as I had imagined. There were a couple of dinosaur stickers on the housing.

"I've never seen a radar thing before," I said.

"To tell the truth, it doesn't see much action around here."

"Not on the way to anywhere, eh?"

"Not that. We just don't care how fast people drive."

I nodded and turned to the window as we veered onto Red Clay Road.

Harvey looked at me a couple of times and asked, finally, "Are you going to wait in the car?"

"h.e.l.l no."

"I appreciate guts as much as the next guy, but I don't much want to get shot at either."

"Okay, I'll hang back a few steps."

"Aw, man." He stopped the rig in the same place I had parked. "Please wait in the car?"

But I was getting out.

As promised I walked three steps behind him up to the door. He knocked, then knocked again. The door opened and we both jumped. It was the old lady.

"Give me the paper," Mrs. Bickers said.

"I'm going to have to come inside and talk to you, Mrs. Bickers," the deputy said. "You shouldn't be shooting at people. You could have killed Mr. Hawks here."

The old woman cut a glance at me. "I didn't know it was him I was shooting at."

I stepped into the house after the deputy. The house was freezing.

"You see, ma'am, that there is the problem," Harvey said. "It could have been me at the door or the postman. You could have killed somebody. Why were you shooting anyway?"

"I got scared," she said.

Harvey slapped his arms together. "What's wrong with your heat? Your fire go out?"

"I reckon."

"You got any coffee, Mrs. Bickers?" Harvey was looking around the hall and into the adjacent rooms.

I held off making any noise like I wanted to leave, but I didn't want to linger there. I wondered why he wanted coffee.

"Could you make us some coffee?" he asked.

"I guess so," she said. She gave me a hard look. We followed her into the kitchen. "You can sit there at the table." She turned on an electric burner beneath a kettle. "All I got is instant."

"That's fine," Harvey said. "Ain't that fine, Mr. Hawks?"

"Fine," I said.

"I'm going have to take your pistol, Mrs. Bickers," Harvey said, matter-of-factly. He slipped in the line so casually I had a new appreciation of him. He was smarter than I had thought and I felt small for having let my preconceptions get the better of me. The woman complained with her expression and Harvey went on. "Like I said, Mrs. Bickers, that could have been anybody at the door. Mr. Hawks here wasn't trying to break in or nothing, he was just doing his job. While we're on the subject." Harvey looked to me and put his hand out and I gave him the form I needed signed. He flattened the paper on the table, took a pen from his breast pocket, and held it in the air for the old woman. "Right there, ma'am."

Mrs. Bickers took the pen and scratched her name at the bottom of the page. I didn't get the satisfaction from watching her sign that I had imagined. She had the eyes of a cornered animal. I felt sorry for the woman, alone in this cold house, scared of noises, scared of me. Then I felt stupid for giving a d.a.m.n.

While he folded the paper, Harvey said, "Now, if you could get me that gun." He handed me the form, then looked over at the woodstove, sitting on uneven bricks on the warped linoleum. "Where is the gun, ma'am?"

"It's in my bedroom. I sleep with it."

"I'm going to have to take it," he repeated. "While you're getting it, I'll bring in some wood for your stove."

Mrs. Bickers stared at me for a couple of seconds and then left the room. I had a pa.s.sing thought she might come back with the pistol and shoot me. She went to her bedroom, returned, and put the gun on the table in front of me. A .22 target pistol. I watched her pour water into two cups, then measure spoonfuls of powdered coffee.

Harvey came in with the wood. "I swear it feels like it's going to let loose with a real storm." He stomped his boots clean on the rug inside the door. He put the logs down and came back to the table, looked at the pistol. "Mercy, Mrs. Bickers, how do you even lift that thing, much less fire it?"

"I do just fine. Here's the coffee." She put the mugs on the table. "You drink, I'll start the fire." She knelt by the stove and began to twist up sheets of newspaper from a plastic crate.

The deputy and I sat and took a couple of sips of the coffee. Finally, Harvey picked up the pistol and popped out the clip, put it in his shirt pocket. "You got any other guns, ma'am?"

"No."

"Just asking."

"I've got to get to work," I said.

"Okay, Mrs. Bickers, we'll be leaving now. Thanks for your cooperation and the coffee and your time."

The woman nodded and followed close behind us toward the front door. We were on the porch, the door was shut. Mrs. Bickers was on the other side.

True Romance.

The problem with the old Jeep was that you had to be sure to park it on a hill if you wanted to start it again. The alternator turned to no decent result and even if it did, the old battery couldn't hold a charge. The flywheel of the starter was so sticky that if you tried to crank it over, a good battery would have drained anyway. Sometimes, finding a hill was a h.e.l.l of a job. I was okay at my place on the mountain, but when I drove down to Taos, I was in trouble. There was a little slope about a mile from the plaza, outside a business called The Chicken Lady. The Chicken Lady, who sold chickens, geese, and ducks, allowed me to park on the hill, all 250 pounds of him. In exchange, I allowed him to put a FOR SALE sign on the windshield of my truck. He loved to d.i.c.ker about price and tell great lies about its history to Texans and Oklahomans who romanticized such relics.

"Rawley," he said, greeting me as I backed up the hill.

"Chick."

He watched as I set the brake, climbed out, and put my rock in front of the rear tire. "Why don't you get your rig fixed up?" the Chicken Lady asked me. He was holding a big black rooster under one arm and an unlit cigar in his free hand. He looked at the end of the cigar as if surprised it was cold.

"Oh, I don't know," I said. "I don't mind the walk when I come down here. And on the mountain, it's never a problem."

"Seems like a ha.s.sle to me," he said.

"What's wrong with a ha.s.sle? Besides, I know it's coming."

"Still, the thing looks like h.e.l.l."

I looked at my truck. "True enough."

The rooster pecked at a b.u.t.ton on the Chicken Lady's shirt.

"I'll be back in an hour or so," I said. I watched as he slipped the sign under a wiper. "What if somebody meets your price?"

"It ain't happening," the big man said.

I never much warmed to Taos with all its galleries, which might have been one for all the sameness, with its trendy air and restaurants charging a fortune for what you could buy at the bowling alley for nickels. But the town was there and it had a grocery market better than the convenience store in Questa. It also offered a fly-fishing shop and I guess I owed a thank you to yuppies and the Orvis catalog for that. Before lunch and shopping on my bimonthly visits, I'd stop in and shake the expensive graphite rods and run my fingers along the even more expensive bamboo sticks. There were always a couple of guys in there engaged in fish talk with the owner.

"I hear they're hitting on stonefly nymphs up in the Box."

"So, what do you think of these new four-hundred-dollar waders?"

To that question, that day, I had to chime in and say, "It'd be a shame to get them wet."

The owner, a squirrely looking fellow despite his pudginess, a bearded transplant from Vermont, shot me a face. He hadn't liked me since I told him I couldn't find a place to fish the Battenkill where I couldn't see a house or a road. And he couldn't believe I actually fished with a turn-of-the-century Abercrombie and Fitch bamboo rod.

I had said to him, "What do you expect me to do? Stick it in some silly display case?" Then I happened to glance up at the wall behind him and saw a 1930 Wright and McGill rod behind gla.s.s. Basically, since then he thought I was nuts.

One of the fisher guys said, "Somebody told me there're cutthroat in the Rio Grande."

"That's a myth," Vermont said.

"I ate a myth the other night." I put back the $150 metal fly box. "Fish the confluence of the Grande and the Hondo." Then I thought to have a little fun. "Wait until right after the rafters go by and throw a weighted zug bug behind one of the big rocks."

"That's where you catch cuttthroats?" the man who had brought up the subject asked.

"Browns and rainbows, too. If it's cold enough, you might get lucky and see a flash of red. But, hey, they all taste the same." I tossed the last bit in to get under their skins. I catch and release as much as the next guy, but I despise religions of all kinds.

I left the shop seeming a little like a bully, which was a bad feeling, but like most feelings, I knew it would pa.s.s. I was having one of my what-the-h.e.l.l-am-I-doing-in-this-stinking-town epiphanies when a big man threatened to slap handcuffs on me.

"Kiss me first," I said.

Deputy Jack filled most doorways and I felt happy to call him a friend. He fished and camped with me and was always asking to go elk hunting, but I told him gunfire hurt my ears. He said, "Didn't I just see you down here three weeks ago?"

"Out of toilet paper and I figured they must have a lot of it down here. With so many a.s.sholes and all."

"A buddy and I are driving over to the Chama on Sat.u.r.day. Wanna go?"

"I've got to work."

"You don't work," he said.

"It doesn't look like I work."

"You know you ought to just tell people you write that s.h.i.t. Right now they think you're a pot farmer, or worse, that you're just rich."

"I'm not telling anybody I write romance novels." I glanced up and down the street. "And you promised not to tell anybody either, remember."

"Your secret is safe with me, Lance."

"Call me Friday about fishing," I said. "Maybe I will go."

"You bet."

I shopped, then lugged some of my goods back through town. I nodded to a couple of people and responded to offers of rides by shaking my head. The heavy stuff, bags of animal feed and the like, I left to pick up with the truck, motor running all the while. When I got back to the Chicken Lady's, he seemed troubled. I asked what was wrong.

"Remember when you asked me what if somebody met my price?" He was still holding the rooster.

"You didn't sell my truck?"

"No, I didn't do that. But this fella wants it real bad. Says he's making a movie or some s.h.i.t and, anyway-" Chicken reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a business card, and gave it to me. "That's the guy's name."

"What's bugging you so bad?" I set my bags in the back of my truck.

"I never had to give in that it weren't my truck before."

"How much did he offer?"

"I hate losing. Even if I'm pretending, I hate losing." The Chicken Lady shook his head.

"How much?"

"He said he'll pay twenty grand for that hunk of s.h.i.t."