Ask the Parrot

5

Tom,” Parker said, “you’ll have to loan me a rifle. I didn’t bring one.”

Lindahl gave him a startled look, but then said, “Sure. Come on in and pick one.”

Fred Thiemann said, “Want me to wait for you boys?”

“No, you go on ahead,” Lindahl told him. “It’ll take me a couple minutes to get ready. I’ll see you at St. Stanislas.”

“Fine. Good to meet you, Ed.”

“You, too.”

Thiemann left, pulling the door shut behind himself, as Lindahl turned toward the bedroom. Parker followed, and when he stepped through the doorway, Lindahl was glaring at him, face suddenly blotched purple.

“You get out of here!” It was a hoarse whisper, almost a choked scream. “As soon as Fred drives off, you clear out!”

“No,” Parker said.

“What?” Lindahl couldn’t believe it. “You can’t stay here, you’re a fugitive!”

“We’ve got our agreement,” Parker told him. “We’ll stick to it.”

“We will not! Not for another second.”

Parker looked from the bedroom doorway out through the front window. “Fred just drove off,” he said. “What are you going to do, holler? At that empty house up there? Are you going to try to take down one rifle and not two?”

“When you said—when you said, give me a rifle—Jesus, I came to my senses, right then and there. You could kill people I know.”

“If I’m the only man there without a rifle,” Parker said, “how does that look? What am I there for?”

Lindahl dropped backward to sit on the bed, hands limp between his knees. “I was out of my mind,” he said, talking at the floor. “Brooding about that goddam track for so many years, then thinking about you, and by God if you don’t show up, and I was just running a fantasy. A fantasy.” Glaring at Parker, trying to look stern, he said, “I’m not giving any fantasy a rifle. You just take off. I got you this far, you’re on your own. I won’t say a word about you.”

“Doesn’t work,” Parker told him. “You’re accessory after the fact. You took me off that hill, you drove me home, you introduced me as somebody visiting with you. You show up at this saint place without me, what do you say to Fred? And what if I am caught, and Fred sees my picture on the television? What do you tell the cops?”

“I was crazy,” Lindahl whispered, as though to himself. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Revenge. I’m not going to shoot your friends, now that you’ve suddenly got all of them. I’ll carry a rifle because that’s what everybody’s doing.”

Lindahl looked at him. “What if we find the other guy? What if you’re trying to help him get away?”

“I wouldn’t try to help him get away,” Parker said.

Lindahl frowned at him, trying to understand what he meant, and then his entire body slumped. “You mean, you’d kill him.”

Parker would, to protect himself, but he didn’t want Lindahl thinking about that. “I’ll keep away from him,” he said. “And he’ll keep away from me. He’s probably long gone from here, anyway.”

Lindahl seemed unable to move forward. He continued to sit on the bed, staring at nothing at all, slowly shaking his head, as Parker went to study the four rifles in their locked racks on the wall.

The top two were nearly identical, Remington Model 1100, single barrel shotguns, the top one a 20-gauge, the other the slightly longer and heavier 16-gauge. The other two were both lever-action rifles, one a Marlin 336Y, firing a .30-30 Winchester cartridge, the other a Ruger 96, firing the .44 Magnum. All four weapons were old but well cared for, and might have been bought used.

Parker turned back to Lindahl, still slumped unmoving on the bed. “Lindahl,” he said.

Lindahl looked up. There was very little emotion in his eyes, so he was scheming down inside himself somewhere.

Parker said, “You and me, we’ll go with this posse crowd. We’ll take the two lever actions, no round in the chamber, that way neither of us can get off a snap shot. We’ll stay with those people as long as they’re out there, then we’ll eat something and come back here.”

“I don’t want you here,” Lindahl said, dull but stolid.

“Listen to me. We’re talking a few hours out there. What you wanted—what you thought you wanted—was revenge. You’ll have those hours to think about it. When we get back here, you tell me, either you still want to take down that track or you don’t. If you do, we’ll go look at it. If you don’t, I’ll leave in the morning.”

“I don’t want you here.”

“You’ve got me. You brought me here, and you’ve got me. If it wasn’t for your friend Fred, I could lock you in your utility room and not worry about you. But if we don’t show up at this saint place, Fred’s going to start wondering this and that. So we’ve got to do it. Let’s go.”

Lindahl shook his head in a slow dumbfounded way. “How did this happen?” he wanted to know.

“You made your choice when you saw me come up the hill,” Parker told him. “Back then, you could have shot me, or held me there for the dogs, figuring there’s got to be a reward. But you looked at me and said, ‘This guy can help me.’ Maybe I can. Or maybe you’ll change your mind. We’ll know when we get back. Do you have a spare coat? Something right for the woods?”

Lindahl blinked at him, confused. “A coat? I have a couple coats.”

“And boots, if you’ve got them. These shoes aren’t much use outdoors. Do you have extra boots?”

Lindahl didn’t want to be dragged away into this other conversation. “I have boots, I have boots,” he muttered, shaking his head. “But no. Take my car. Just drive away.”

“Right into their arms,” Parker said. “Look at me, Tom.”

Reluctantly Lindahl looked up.

Parker said, “Do you want me to think you’re trouble, Tom?”

Lindahl frowned, looking at him, then his eyes shifted away and he shook his head. “No.”

“So you’ll loan me a coat and a pair of boots. And you want the Ruger or the Marlin?”