Blue Lonesome

18

Once the usual morning chores were done, Sunday was a day of rest on the Burgess ranch. This suited Messenger. He’d had a good eight hours of sleep, but he was still tired — and sunburnt and saddle sore — from Saturday’s truck-and-horseback ride across their grazing land.

He and Lonnie had set out early, with a loaded two-horse trailer hooked onto the back of the GMC pickup and the pickup’s bed stacked with fresh salt blocks. With water at a premium out here, salt blocks were essential to the survival of sagebrush cattle. They’d spent all morning jouncing over rough, arid terrain along the eastern foothills where the Bootstrap Mine was located. Most of the small herd were loosely scattered there, on land that belonged to the BLM. In another six weeks or so, Lonnie told him, the beeves would be bunched and driven back onto Burgess ground. That was when however many head they needed to sell would be culled and put into the holding pens, and any necessary doctoring taken care of; it was also when a BLM agent would come down from the regional office in Tonopah and take an inventory, one of the steps in setting next year’s quota. All the late calves would be on the ground then, too, and would have to be branded, earmarked, and inoculated. It was too much work for two people, so they’d scrape together enough money to hire a seasonal hand for a few weeks. A part-time buckaroo (yes, that was a word they still used out here) would also be short-hired for the spring roundup.

Cattle and the land were the only subjects Lonnie would discuss. Messenger tried twice to turn their desultory conversation to the murders; each time Lonnie withdrew into a moody silence. He had a feeling that whatever the boy was concealing, it was like a wad of bitter phlegm caught far back in his throat: He needed to spit it out, but he couldn’t do it even though it was choking him.

In the afternoon they’d saddled the horses and ridden along the southwest boundary line, over even rougher terrain, to check fences and look for far-straying cattle. It had been after three, Messenger feeling butt-sprung and as if he were cooking in his own juices, when they found the injured and dying steer. The animal had wandered too close to the edge of a shallow wash, and the powdery earth had given way and pitched it down into the cut. One of its hind legs had been broken in the fall. The accident must have happened within the past twelve hours, Lonnie said grimly; otherwise the steer, weak and bleating with pain, would already be dead. He’d wasted no more time with words, just gone and gotten his carbine and put the animal out of his misery, while Messenger waited with the horses. Afterward the boy grew moodily silent again. When Messenger asked him if he was upset over losing a steer from an already thin herd, Lonnie shook his head. “It’s not that,” he said. “I just don’t like to see anything suffer.”

At the time the statement had impressed Messenger as deep-felt; he was even more convinced of it this morning. Lonnie’s secret might be significant in some way, but it wasn’t murderer’s guilt that he had locked away inside. Lonnie Burgess was not capable of killing a family member in cold blood. Messenger was as sure of that as he’d been of anything, including Anna Roebuck’s innocence, in the past week.

The rest of Sunday stretched out ahead of him: free time to pursue his quest. But he couldn’t think of anything productive to do with it. He considered a trip to the Hardrock Tavern, a talk with the bartender and any customers he could locate who had witnessed the fight between Joe Hanratty and Dave Roebuck. It seemed futile, maybe even dangerous: asking prying questions in a bar was a good way of provoking trouble. Even if anybody knew what lay behind the fight, which was unlikely, the chances were slim to none that they would tell him. He’d have as much luck canvassing the town, ringing doorbells and trying to interrogate whoever answered.

He wasted the better part of an hour lying on the Airstream’s roll-away bed, brooding over what he knew, the bits and pieces of information Dacy had confided. All that came of it was frustration. It was like blundering around in darkness and finally locating a wall, on the other side of which was light: You were close to the light, you knew it was there, but you couldn’t get to it because you couldn’t find a way to scale the wall.

What nagged at him, too, was the fact that nothing more had come of his move to the Burgess ranch than John T.’s angry outburst on Thursday evening. He’d expected other visitors, protests, or actions of some kind. Lull before the storm? The real murderer had to be wondering what he and Dacy were up to, and worried that whatever it was might lead to the truth. He wouldn’t just sit back and wait and do nothing, would he? After the scheme with the snakes at Mackey’s, it didn’t seem likely. Cat-and-mouse game? That didn’t seem likely either. Something was going to happen. And the sooner the better, whatever it was.

Past noon he took himself to the house, detouring around where Buster squatted at the end of the short chain. The rottweiler had come to a grudging acceptance of him, to the point where there were no more barks or snarls when he was near, but the dog’s fur still bristled and the bright watchful eyes held no hint of friendliness. Dacy and Lonnie were both in the kitchen, companionably preparing what she called “Sunday dinner” even though it would be served at one o’clock. He hadn’t had much appetite at breakfast, but the aroma of pot roast was seductive.

“Decide yet if you’re joining us for dinner, Jim?”

“I’d like to, thanks.”

“We’ll set another place.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Nope. Beer in the icebox, if you want one.”

He helped himself to a bottle of Bud. “Dacy,” he asked then, “would you have any family photos?”

Her glance was wry, Lonnie’s unreadable. “Of Anna, you mean,” she said. “Anna’s family.”

“Yes.”

“A few. Why you want to look at them? They won’t tell you anything.”

“It’s not that.”

Lonnie said, “People who died the way they did — it’s not right to look at pictures of them.”

Anna’s real to me, but her husband and daughter... not enough. I don’t know their faces — just names, statistics. I want to see them as individuals. But he didn’t put the thoughts into words; they would have sounded harsh, even cruel. Instead he said, “If you’d rather I didn’t...”

“Oh, hell,” Dacy said, “take your beer out to the porch. I’ll bring the album.”

He sat in a canvas sling chair, looking out over the broken, empty land. Heat pulsed on the flats; the effect was miragelike, interestingly so. He felt comfortable with the heat, the silence, the stark desolation. Comfortable with the ranch too, and the kind of work he’d done here the past few days. Quantum leaps from city apartment to sagebrush cattle ranch, from white-collar CPA to blue-collar ranch hand; yet he seemed to have made the transition with almost no effort. Funny. It was as if this place and this lifestyle, not San Francisco and the life he’d built there, were his natural ones. As if this was where he belonged.

Dacy appeared shortly, carrying a small photo album. She let him have it without speaking, then went to sit in another of the canvas chairs. She didn’t watch him as he opened and began to page through the album; her gaze held on the heat shimmers in the distance.

Less than fifty photographs, most in color, most poorly framed and focused — snapshots taken at a birthday party, different Christmas gatherings, a barbecue at Anna’s ranch. The ones of Tess covered a span of years from toddler to seven or eight. She’d been slender, dark blond, gray-eyed — unmistakably Anna’s child. Active and animated too, with a smile that created cleftlike dimples. Dave Roebuck had been predictably handsome in a sharp-featured, unkempt, don’t-give-a-damn way; his smile contained a smirk and his eyes a smoky sexuality that was evident even in these pictures.

Messenger didn’t linger over any of them; it was less than five minutes from opening to closing the album. He knew their faces now: they were as real to him as Ms. Lonesome had been. Too real, in Tess’s case.

Dacy said, “Satisfied?”

“Satisfied isn’t the right word.”

“What is the right word?”

“I don’t know. Sad, maybe.”

“Sad over a man and a kid you didn’t know existed until a few days ago?”

“Is it so hard to believe?”

“For people like you and me, I guess not.”

“Lonely people? Or just sad ourselves?”

“Both. Combination gives you empathy, right?”

“Right,” he said. What he didn’t say was that too often, at least in his case, the empathy got turned inward and became self-pity.

None of them had much to say at dinner. But there was no strain in the silence, no lack of appetite: a quiet meal, period. Lonnie left as soon as they were finished, to spend the rest of the day with a friend in town. Messenger, without being asked, helped with the cleanup. Dacy’s approval was evident; for all her independence and hard-shelled exterior, there was a part of her — just as there was a part of him — that responded to a measure of old-fashioned domesticity.

Today she seemed to want to prolong it, too. When they were done in the kitchen she asked, “You play chess, Jim?”

“I used to.” With Doris, constantly during the time they’d been together; she was a big Bobby Fisher fan back then. “It’s been years, though.”

“How good were you?”

“Fair.”

“I’m a little better than fair. My daddy taught me and I taught Lonnie. But he doesn’t have enough patience to play well.”

“I’m not sure I do either, these days. But if you’d like to play a game or two, I can probably provide some competition.”

“I’ll get the set.”

“Question for you, first. How do you feel about music?”

“Some I like, some I don’t.”

“Jazz?”

“Not bad, what little I’ve heard.”

“Well, I’m a jazz buff,” he said, “have been for years. One of my passions.” One of the few. “I own a fairly large collection of tapes and old records, and I brought a few cassettes with me. If you have a cassette player and wouldn’t mind some background while we play, I could bring them in...”

“Fine by me. Tape deck in the stereo unit over by the fireplace.”

They played on the porch, where it was cooler, with the windows and front door open so they could better hear the music. He’d taken a little time in selecting tapes, because he wanted to give her an idea of the broad range of jazz, old and new. The three he’d settled on were a hot-jazz medley of artists and arrangements from the forties, a late-seventies Miles Davis album, and a mixed bag from improvisational swing to electric funk by such contemporaries as Joe Henderson, Charlie Hunter, Ornette Coleman, and Sonny Rollins. Dacy seemed to like them all. It pleased him that her strongest response was to the forties tape. She particularly favored Louis Armstrong’s “Potato Head Blues,” Sidney Bechet’s “Polka Dot Rag,” Bunk Johnson’s “St. Louis Blues,” and Billie Holiday’s “Keep Me in Your Dreams” — all favorites of his.

Her enthusiasm led him, without realizing it until he was already launched, into a fervent discourse on jazz. He told her about its central laments of wasted youth and lost loves and bittersweet dreams, its shrieks and whispers of melancholy and pain, its mournful expressions of that all-gone feeling on the morning after a long, troubled night. He told her the old folk theory that the true originator of the blues was the mighty Mississippi; that W. C. Handy had stood on an old wooden bridge in Memphis, listened hard and close to Old Man River singing its lonesome songs, and lifted out “Memphis Blues,” “St. Louis Blues,” and others whole, words and all. He told her about the mechanics of improvisation, how each instrument worked to complement the others and what each brought in terms of harmony, melody, rhythm, and syncopation: the hard-driving moan of the trumpet, the hoarse bray of the alto sax, the insistent, sometimes raucous tones of the clarinet, the burry cry of the trombone, the steady throbbing four-four beat of the piano and the drums. And in the vocals, the glides and skidding elisions, the lyrical invention, the husky and tender tones that only good hot singers like Billie Holiday and Mildred Bailey and Bessie Smith could achieve.

Dacy didn’t interrupt. Unlike too many people these days, she listened to and absorbed what she was hearing; and her interest seemed genuine. When he finally ran out of steam she gave him another of her long, speculative looks before she spoke.

“You really love that music, don’t you, Jim.”

“I do. Yes. It’s... another world to me.”

“Better than the one we live in?”

“Reflective of it. And a lot more honest.”

“No argument there. You play an instrument yourself?”

“God, no. I was born with plenty of musical appreciation but not a scrap of musical talent. I tried trumpet, clarinet, and guitar when I first developed an interest in jazz in college. Hopeless in each case.”

“So now you just listen and yearn.”

He liked that; it made him smile. “Now I just listen and yearn.”

He was no match for her on the chessboard. She played a calculated, determined game, and made no move without carefully considering it first; and like all good chess players, she was capable of thinking and planning several moves ahead. She checkmated him in twenty-two moves the first game, in nineteen the second.

Jazz and chess on an isolated desert ranch, he thought as he set up the board — an old one made in Mexico, its alabaster pieces chipped and worn smooth from long use — for a third game. Incongruous to some; perfectly natural to the two of them. Shared enjoyments between two people who at first meeting had seemed to have little or nothing in common. Easy and relaxed with each other. Kindred spirits: partners in loneliness. Maybe...

No, he warned himself, don’t go jumping the gun. Some connection here, yes, but she’s still the boss and you’re still the hired hand and there’s been nothing to suggest any change in that relationship. Jazz and chess on a Sunday afternoon — that’s all this is. If it’s enough for her, it ought to be enough for you, too.

She broke into his thoughts by saying, “We’re about to have company.”

Messenger glanced up from the board. Dacy was looking toward the valley road, at what he saw then were chutes of dust above and behind a fast-moving car or truck. The vehicle had passed the gate to John T.’s ranch; there was little doubt that it was headed here.

“Lonnie?” he said.

“No. He won’t be back until late.”

They waited without speaking. In half the time it took Coleman Hawkins to blow “Body and Soul” on his sweet tenor sax, the vehicle reached the Burgess gate and turned in — a high-riding Ford Bronco with a rack of spotlights atop the cab.

Dacy said, “That’s Henry Ramirez’s Bronco.”

“Ramirez?”

“Jaime Orozco’s son-in-law. You didn’t meet him when you talked to Jaime?”

“No.”

Messenger went ahead to meet the Bronco as it slid up. Buster had begun his usual furious barking and lunging; Dacy yelled at the dog to shut up and for once it obeyed. The man who swung down from the high cab was in his thirties, dark-mustached, and building a beer belly; he and Dacy exchanged greetings. The nod he offered Messenger was brief but not unfriendly.

“What brings you out, Henry?”

“Favor to Jaime.”

Messenger asked eagerly, “He found out who owns the pickup with the broken antenna?”

“Little while ago,” Ramirez said, nodding. “Man named Draper, Billy Draper.”

“You know him?”

“No. Miner, works at the King Gypsum Mine. The other one’s probably Pete Teal, another miner out there — word is the two of ’em are always together.”

“Are they close to anyone in Beulah?”

Ramirez shrugged. “Not that Charley Wovoka knows about. You know Charley,” he said to Dacy. “Bartender at the Wild Horse.”

“Sure, I know him.”

“Well, he’s the one who tied them to the pickup. They come in once or twice a week to gamble. Sports book, mostly. Big sports fans. He saw Draper parking the truck once.”

Messenger said, “If they’re in the casino that often, there’s a good chance John T. knows them, too.”

“Wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Where’s the King Gypsum Mine located?”

“Montezuma Range,” Dacy said, “northwest of here. But you don’t want to go out there, Jim, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Why don’t I?”

“Those gypsum miners are pretty rough boys,” Ramirez said.

“That’s one reason,” Dacy said. “Another is that the King is privately owned and the land is posted and patrolled. It isn’t likely you’d get past the front gate.”

“So what do I do then? Espinosa won’t do anything without the kind of proof he can’t ignore — we all know that.”

Ramirez said, “They’ll be in the casino bar at six tomorrow night.”

“Draper and Teal? How do you know?”

“Charley Wovoka says so. He says they come in every Monday night during football season. Watch the Monday night game on the Wild Horse’s big-screen TV.”

“That’s it, then. Thanks, Henry. Tell Jaime I’m in his debt.”

“Tell him yourself. He likes company.” Ramirez paused. “Watch yourself, man. I wasn’t kidding when I said those gypsum miners are rough trade.”

When he and his Bronco were headed back to the valley road, Dacy said, “Henry’s right. You’d be a fool to try bracing Draper and Teal by yourself.”

The prospect should have worried him, maybe, but it didn’t. He relished it the way he relished the imminent arrival of a vital piece of information in a complicated tax case: It would put him that much closer to a solution. “The casino bar’s a public place,” he said. “Besides, what other choice is there?”

“I can think of a couple.”

“Such as?”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Why not now?”

“Tomorrow,” Dacy said. “What we both need right now is the rest of Sunday.”