Lone Creek

31

The hired hands' trailers lay deeper into ranch property, but I was able to ride most of the way there still staying outside the boundary. I stopped just short of where the electric fence started. This time when I cut the engine I spent a good long minute listening. The trailer settlement was the one place on the spread where people would definitely be around right now, and the coincidence of running into Balcomb, if that was what it was, had me feeling extra edgy.

No man-made sounds broke the evening stillness. Everybody was probably inside. I climbed the barbed wire again and quietly walked the half mile to the trailers' lights. There were half a dozen double-wides, set far enough apart and shielded by trees to give reasonable privacy. It looked like Doug Wills was home-his big red pickup was parked outside.

I spent another minute thinking about what-ifs. It was all too likely that he'd take one look at me and call the sheriffs to bust me for trespassing, or even try to regain some of the macho turf he'd lost yesterday. I was banking on the good Knob Creek bourbon I'd brought to soften him up. But I was ready to bail out fast, too.

I hyperventilated a few times, then climbed the few steps and tapped on the trailer's flimsy aluminum door.

Doug answered the knock himself. His badly swollen nose stood out like a hazard light, and he had deep purple bruises under both eyes. I swallowed hard and held up the bottle in offering.

"Look, I know you're really pissed at me, and I know I'm not supposed to be here," I said. "I came to apologize." I'd taken that cue from Kirk. Even though I hadn't believed him, it had lulled me into dropping my guard.

Doug glared at me, then at the whiskey, then at me, then at the whiskey again. Finally he took the bottle in his fist and stepped back, leaving the door open.

"All right, I ain't holding any grudges," he said gruffly.

I exhaled quietly in relief, but I stayed wary as I followed him inside. It felt too easy-I'd expected at least a show of teeth. But the fight seemed to be out of him. No doubt the broken nose figured in-that would leave a man sore all over and laboring to breathe for some time to come. And yet, he looked puzzled, distracted, rather than whipped. Maybe it was because in his own mind he'd been the kingpin of his little world, and that idea had been shaken enough for something else to start working its way in.

The trailer's inside was cramped and noisy, with a huge satellite TV screen blaring a reality cop show and kids running around hollering. I knew there were only three, but the place seemed to be full of them. The diaper smell and clutter were the same as I remembered from the time I'd come in to unjam the cheap pocket door to the bathroom.

The living room and kitchen were separated only by a counter, where Tessa-Doug's wife and occasional horizontal passenger in Madbird's van-was chopping vegetables for dinner. She gave me a brief cool stare, but if she recognized me, it didn't show. She was tall and angular, with wide flat hips and a blond shag hairdo bleached almost stiff. Her mouth had a tough set to it and her face would have been prettier with a few corners knocked off. But that made it more attractive in an odd way-for sure, more interesting, with a hint of wildness. I didn't have any trouble seeing why she appealed to Madbird.

Doug walked on to the kitchen, automatically stepping over children and piles of stuff. I stayed just inside the doorway, still nervous that he might pick up a phone or gun. Instead, he got a couple of tumblers from a cupboard and filled them with bourbon. Tessa ignored him completely.

He handed me one of the brimming glasses and went to his chair, gesturing me to another one. But even though things might be OK with Doug, I didn't want to be trapped inside if somebody like one of the Anson brothers showed up, who knew I was trespassing and wasn't inclined to shrug it off.

"Thanks, I'd just as soon stand," I said, and pressed my hand under my heart. "If it makes you feel any better, you damn near broke a couple of my ribs. I don't think anybody ever hit me that hard." That wasn't true, but I could tell it smoothed things over a little more.

"I know you were some kind of boxer," he said. "I never done any of that, but you try riding a two-thousand-pound bull some time."

"I agree absolutely. No comparison."

We both drank. I took a sip, but he knocked back a quarter of his glassful.

"I'd apologize to Mr. Balcomb, too, if I could," I said, careful to refer to him respectfully this time. "I'd like to get my job back. Why was he so mad at me? You know as well as I do he doesn't give a rat's ass about that lumber."

"I don't know. When he called me and told me to stop you, he made it sound like you were running off with the company safe. Then after all that bullshit, I found out it was some old wood-it don't make sense."

He took another long drink. No doubt this figured into his air of puzzlement-realizing that the employer he'd been sucking up to had paid him back by making a fool of him.

"Why, then?" I said. "I never even talked to him before. My crew's been doing fine-no complaints except from those pissant consultants once in a while, and they whine about everything."

"You got that right." Doug set down the glass with a thunk and wiped his mouth with his wrist. "Them fucking accountants back east telling me how to run the ranch."

That was the best stroke yet, and I wasn't about to point out that being foreman wasn't exactly running the ranch.

"I'm wondering if Kirk poisoned the well somehow," I said. "Wanted to get rid of me, and got Balcomb-Mr. Balcomb-worked up about that lumber."

"Why would Kirk want to get rid of you?"

"Well, he doesn't like me much, but that's always been true. I don't know-I got this notion that he's up to something and he was nervous I'd stumble onto it." I waited, watching him closely.

Doug shook his head. "Nothing more than usual, least that I know of. I guess he's took off."

"Yeah, I heard."

"Nobody'd pay it any mind, except he's Reuben's kid. Same as here. Everybody else busting their ass from dawn to dark, and all he ever did was fiddle-fuck around."

He drained his glass and stomped to the kitchen. While he refilled it, I noticed Tessa glance at me. This time her gaze seemed more interested. She walked past Doug, ignoring him again, and disappeared into a bedroom. I spent a little quality time with the TV, watching steroid cops busting hookers who were wretched enough to finance their junk habits by blowing guys in cars.

When Doug came back to his chair, he brought the bottle along. It was close to half empty now.

"This ain't bad stuff," he said, and made a halfhearted gesture of offering it to me.

I declined with a wave at my own glass, still almost full.

"Thanks, I'm easing off a hangover. This is plenty."

He sat down heavily, with the contented look of a man who knew he had a pleasant few hours ahead, all the sweeter because he hadn't expected or paid for them.

"You're not the only one who thought that about Kirk," I lied. "I've heard other guys talk about how he had an inside track with Balcomb. It almost seems like they're in on some secret together."

Doug frowned in concentration. "Balcomb don't know his way around here," he said. "Kirk does. Plus he's a good whipping boy, and Balcomb needs that, too."

It was a sharper insight than I'd expected, but it still didn't do me any good. I tried to phrase another question, but Doug wasn't finished.

"I been watching how it works," he said. "I grew up stupid about that kind of shit, but I'm getting smarter." His head made a disgusted circle that took in the trailer and a whole lot more. "Look at this, and then look at what people like them got."

I couldn't fault him for thinking like that. Most people sold out in some way-I'd done it many times. The only question was price. But while he might get smarter, he was never going to develop the natural cunning of someone like Kirk or Balcomb. I was sure he hadn't been hedging his answers to me, and that he didn't have anything to do with the lumber being burned-I hadn't even seen a hint that he knew it had happened.

Just then the biggest of the kids, a grinning gap-toothed four-year-old berserker, lunged across the room and threw himself gleefully against his father's legs. He'd been playing a game that seemed to involve tackling whatever caught his fancy-he'd already taken out his wailing little brother and a laundry basket full of clothes and made impressive assaults on the furniture, all without parental rebuke. Now I braced myself for some yelling and maybe a slap.

But Doug only reached a hand down to catch and steady him as he careened away, paying no more attention than if it had been a newborn calf stumbling around. The gesture was so carelessly gentle and sheltering that it almost stunned me-swept away everything else I'd ever thought about him and left me confused. It was a kind of love, a generosity of spirit even if only toward his own flesh and blood, that was foreign to me.

The mellowing shift of gears didn't last long.

I heard a door open and glanced over toward the sound. Tessa stepped out of the bedroom, wrapped in nothing but a towel. Her legs were very long. I turned away hastily.

"Lord, woman, what the hell you doing, walking around like that?" Doug said, startled harshly out of his comfortable bubble.

"Taking a shower, what's it look like?"

"A shower? At dinnertime?"

Her voice took on an edge that pressed me back against my chair.

"I spend half my life trying to keep this place clean. But it's goddamn impossible and I always feel grubby, especially with all the shit you track in."

She walked on to the bathroom. Doug, glowering, knocked back another big drink of whiskey. Things probably would have been OK if they'd stayed there.

But Tessa said, archly, "In case you don't know, that's the man who fixed this door, so we could have some privacy."

I swear I wouldn't have looked at her again, but I realized that she was talking about me, and the response was automatic. She smiled over her shoulder, then tugged at the door to close it, but somehow her towel got caught in it and fell to the floor, and she had to kick it free before the panel slid home behind her. Her ass was a little on the generous side, but firm and quite attractive.

Doug saw me see it, and his eyes lit on fire.

"So you could have some privacy?" he barked at me.

"No, Doug, so you could-your family."

But he was heaving himself up from his chair. I backed ungracefully out onto the trailer's steps. On top of his busted nose and hammered ego and Christ knew how many other hard-ons, plus a bellyful of whiskey to amp them all up, he probably suspected Tessa'd been jumping somebody, and she'd just made me the odds-on candidate.

"Goddammit, it's not what you think," I said, but he kept stomping toward me the way he'd done yesterday, seeming to inflate like an old-time cartoon villain, while I felt myself shrinking like one of those mice. I hopped down the stairs and took off. I was in trouble enough for what I had done, and I wasn't about to get my ass kicked for what I hadn't.

As I trotted away, I caught a glimpse of the clothesline. There was just enough light around for me to recognize that rose-colored thong flying in the breeze like the defiant flag of a small republic, declaring its independence.

I was going to have to tell Madbird that while he might be done with the construction project, his services were still in demand out here.