Bone Fire

Twelve

CRANE KNOCKED on the door again and waited. To the east a weedy lot, the sage grubbed out around a swing set, the pipe-metal uprights peeling and rusted, a plastic seat hanging by a single chain, paddling in the wind, the slide broken loose from its base and twisted Möbius-wise, and beyond a sagging barbed wire fence and an overgrazed stretch of prairie. He wondered briefly if he would have been any good at a trade that didn’t require a uniform and confrontation. To the west, three other weathered duplexes described the arc of the cul-de-sac.

Lately, his calves and thighs have felt as though corn kernels were popping endlessly through the muscles and tendons, and he bounced on the balls of his feet, squatting twice, and then bent at the waist to touch the toes of his boots. It helped a little. He knew it soon wouldn’t.

He straightened up, meaning to knock once more, and the filmy curtain in the window to his right hooked back and released but he couldn’t see who was behind it. Then a woman’s voice, harsh and impatient: “Why don’t you come on in, for Christ’s sake. It’s unlocked.”

He stepped inside, blinking in the dimly lit front room, and when the woman asked if he was done with his calisthenics he saw where she was sitting, in an overstuffed chair by the window.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I am.”

“Can’t do ’ em myself. Got a gone-to-hell disc in my back. Ruptured is what they say, but then, as you can clearly see I didn’t injure myself jogging.” She tucked her chin into the swell of her neck, stuck her tongue out and squinted down over her cheeks, trying to locate the fleck of tobacco at the very tip of her tongue, then flicked it off with a fingernail. “I ought to buy filtered.”

“Looks like it.”

“ Benton ’s parking tickets finally catch up with him?”

“No, ma’am. I don’t know anything about any tickets.”

“When I seen you come in the drive I thought that’s what it must be about.”

“I’m here about your daughter.”

“You say you’re here about Janey?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Why don’t you see if you can find you a place to sit.” She had a canker sore in the corner of her mouth and dabbed at it with a yellowed forefinger. “I get nervous with somebody standing over me.”

He sat down in the middle of the couch across from her, the cheap cushions bobbing at his sides. On the coffee table there was a canister of black powder, an electric melting pot, a dipper, bullet mold, a cereal bowl heaped with newly formed lead balls.

“Don’t knock that stuff over,” she said.

He moved to the end of the couch where he could stretch out his legs.

“ Benton ’s queer as a three-dollar bill for all that mountain-man bullshit.”

She leaned over and stubbed out her cigarette in a plate beside the chair, then pulled the cannula prongs from her nostrils, biting down on them to suck in the air. She sat gathering herself. “It’s the shits bein’ sick,” she said.

“It’s no fun, that’s for sure.”

“Tell me about it. I ain’t even forty-five yet.”

They waited for her breathing to calm, then she wiped the cannula on the sleeve of her robe and arranged it back in her nose.

“I cried like a little child when them heartless bitches come over here and took her away from me.”

“Excuse me?”

He’d been thinking he should have gone to a better college. Somewhere out of Wyoming. One that would’ve broadened his take on the world. He heard the toilet flush, and a man walked into the kitchen tucking his shirttails in.

“Goddamn,” he said. “I didn’t know we had company.”

He was angular and gaunt as an undernourished farm animal, wore buckskin pants and a rough cotton shirt, a necklace made of bearclaws and, on his belt, a beaded bag and a long sheathed knife that looked like he could chop kindling with it. His dirty hair was drawn back and tied with a leather thong, but he was clean-shaven.

“We was just talkin’ about the day they come and took Janey from us,” she said.

“You mean them dykes from the Social Services.” He was getting a coffee cup down from the cupboard.

“There wasn’t a goddamn social thing about either one of ’em.” She pinched off the oxygen tube and lit another cigarette.

Her husband chuckled. “She thinks that shit’s going to light up like propane.”

“You don’t know it won’t.”

“I know more than you think.”

Sitting up straighter seemed to ease her breathing. “You’re more full of crap than the Christmas goose,” she said, and then, “This here’s Benton.”

“You want coffee?” he offered.

“If it’s already made, black’s fine.”

“It’s always made,” he said. “So, what do you need Janey for? She get crosswise of the law?”

“I’ve just got some questions that need answers. I think she could help me out.”

The woman started to laugh and then coughed for a while, which put her out of breath again. She pulled a little plastic garbage can closer, spat in it, straightened up and sat there with her eyes closed, settling. “They must teach you that sorry line in cop school,” she said, smiling with her eyes still closed. “‘I just got some questions to ask.’ Christ, they even got them numbnut pretend cops on the TV sayin’ it.”

Benton handed Crane a cup of coffee and sat down on the other end of the couch. He plucked a lead ball out of the bowl, holding it up in the weak sunlight, rolling it between the pads of his thumb and forefinger. “You ever been to that Mountain Man Rendezvous they got up in Red Lodge?” he asked.

Crane balanced the cup on a knee. There was a shimmering slick on top of the coffee like it had been sweetened with motor oil. “No, I never have.”

The man sat back in the couch. “Janey always said she thought I resembled Jeremiah Johnson. In the movie. I guess you saw that.”

“Some years ago.”

“And I’d look like Angelina-fuckin’-Jolie,” she said, “if I shed about two hundred and fifty pounds. You goin’ to tell me what you want my Janey for?”

He was staring at an unframed Charlie Russell print thumb-tacked to the wall, fly-spotted and stained, the edges curling.

“Hello?” She made it sound like a cuss word, and when he focused on her she was glaring at him.

“I’m sorry. I was thinking about my leg.” He stretched his right leg out, flexing the toe back, and the pain that shot through his calf made him gasp. He felt the sweat standing across his forehead.

“Well, Jesus Christ,” she said. “If you’re going to have some kind of attack maybe you better leave.”

“I’m fine now.”

“You goin’ tell me or aren’t you?”

“I just have a few questions for her about her boyfriend.” He set the cup on a blue plastic milk crate beside the couch. “He got in some trouble, and Janey’s name was in his cell phone. I called for a couple days but she never did answer, so I decided to come over in case you might know where she was.”

“She ain’t here,” the woman said. “And she hasn’t been since they took her. She was only fourteen and that was three years ago.” She took a drag from her cigarette, holding in the smoke as long as she could, then exhaled through her nose and made the cannula whistle. “Her name the only one you got out of that phone?”

“No, I spoke with all his friends. They seemed like good kids. They said Janey was his girl, and I imagine she’s a good kid too.”

“How you doing on your coffee?” the husband asked.

“I’m fine with what I’ve got.” He turned back to the woman. “So you haven’t heard from her, is what you’re saying?”

She struggled up to the edge of her easy chair again. “We seen her once in the grocery store but she was already checked out, and you know how kids is once the glands kick in. Revs ’ em up. You can’t hardly get ’em to stay put.”

“I know what you mean.”

“You have a daughter, do you?”

“Stepdaughter.”

“Same goddamn thing.”

“I always thought so.”

“What’s the boyfriend done?”

“He was killed.”

“Like in an accident.”

“No, that’s not it. He was murdered.”

She nodded, using the hand towel draped on her knee to swab her neck, front and back. “ Benton, I need this air changed out,” she said, and he got up from the couch and dragged an oxygen bottle out from behind it, and jostled the green cylinder into place beside her chair.

She lit a fresh cigarette from the one she was done with, reaching a framed photo down from a shelf at her shoulder. She wiped the glass with the towel at her neck, then leaned over her knees to offer Crane the picture. “Right there’s what she looked like.” She eased back in the chair, watching her husband change the regulator over to the fresh bottle. “I seen that photo in the Wal-Mart and thought it was Janey herself, but it ain’t. I mean, I got no idea who that girl is there. They take them photos just to sell you the frame, but that one there I bought for the picture. If that ain’t a likeness of Janey you can kiss my fat ass.”

Crane squared the frame in his hands. The picture was of a blonde girl, her hair done into curls at the top of her head, and she wore a shiny white dress and a strand of pearls. She looked like a bridesmaid for a friend who’d gotten pregnant in high school and probably wouldn’t be going to college. “That’s a beautiful girl,” he said.

“You got that right,” the woman said.

Benton walked the empty bottle to the door and came back, bending over to squint at the oxygen gauge. He tapped it with a fingernail. “You need me to fetch you your nebulizer, sweety pie?”

“I’m fine without it for now.” She stubbed her cigarette in the plate, then pitched forward again coughing. Her scalp showed through her thin hair, reddening.

“I wish she’d give them things up,” Benton said. “Throw ’em in the goddamn ditch. You ever smoke?”

“No. I never liked the taste of them.”

“Me neither.”

“Well, good for you healthy sons a bitches.” She was sitting up sucking on her cannula. “You can give that picture back now if you’re done with it.”

He handed the picture over to her. “I knew a girl who looked something like that when I was in high school,” he said.

“I guess Benton here’s up shit’s creek now,” she said. “I been tellin’ the simple son of a bitch he can’t just park where he likes without gettin’ one of them license plates with a wheelchair on it.”

Crane stood from the couch. “I really don’t care where you park, Mrs. Grasslie. Neither one of you.”

“Well, you goddamn for sure should. What if I wasn’t handicapped? What about that?”

“If you hear from your daughter, would you ask her to get in touch with me?”

She rolled her head back, staring at the ceiling. “We ain’t gonna hear from her.”

“But if you do.”

She leveled her head. “Can I get you to leave on out of here if I say I will?”

“I guess I’m done anyway.” He had his hand on the doorknob, thinking about the young, nervous kids he’d interviewed, most of them just smoking pot on the weekends, a few of them tweaking, pale and reckless and empty. He was looking out through the thin curtain at his cruiser. “I didn’t have to come back here,” he said. “I had the GI Bill after Bush One’s war. I could’ve gone lots of places.”

“I wish I’d have fought in a war.” The skinny husband looked up from where he knelt at the coffee table, carefully placing little bars of lead into the melting pot.

Crane stared at him. “I guess I just couldn’t think of anyplace else to go.”

“I hear that,” the woman said. She tried to turn toward him but it was a hard position to hold and the effort shortened her breath. “Before you get out of here I need you to understand that we grew her up good. Got her started out right,” she said. “There wasn’t nothin’ wrong with what we done.”

“Yes, ma’am. If you say so.”

“Maybe Kayla knows where she is,” Benton said, and they both looked at him. He appeared excited by the thought.

“Kayla don’t know word one about her sister,” she said. “Or us neither.”

“You don’t know what she knows.”

“She don’t know shit from Shinola. That’s what I know.”

“I might like to ask her,” Crane said.

She slumped back in the chair, puffed out her cheeks and lit another cigarette. “Well, I hope you have a good goddamn time in Denver, then. That’s what I hope.”

“ Colorado?”

“There ain’t no Denver anything else as far as I know.” She turned to Benton, flicking the lighted cigarette at him like he was a bothersome dog. “You sure got a lot to say about girls you didn’t father,” she said.

He picked the cigarette off the carpet, keeping his head down, rubbing at a spot in the shag that had been singed.