Bone Fire

Thirty-two

IN THE EVENINGS, after eating his dinner at a café around the corner from the office, he’d drive out to the house and give her garden a couple of hours. Hoe the weeds, harvest whatever was ripe, turn the sprinklers on for a good soak. The first night after her death he’d carried a box of tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and bell peppers over to the next-door neighbor’s, but they’d looked at him with such pity that he now brought the produce into the office, encouraging Starla and his deputies to pick through it. He learned there was far too much zucchini in the world and that he slept better on the cot in the cell. One night Pearl brought in a plate of cookies.

He thought he might buy a van and drive to Arizona. Have a look at the Grand Canyon, loop down into Mexico and poke around. But what if his condition worsened and he couldn’t make it back? That’s how it had gone with his grandfather. He’d been able to sit up at the table and mash his food around enough to swallow, then two weeks later was in a wheelchair, wearing a neck brace to keep his head level and sucking his meals up through a straw. Anyway, he couldn’t imagine choking to death in a foreign country and didn’t want some stranger he couldn’t understand shoving a catheter in his dick.

He drove past the house before turning back south and out of town. The front door was propped open, Einar’s truck parked in the driveway with boxes in the back. Griff passed in front of the living-room window.

The traffic was light. Ranch families, tourists, a tractor idling along the shoulder, a carload of teenagers coming into town going ninety. He could see the expression of alarm on the driver’s face and watched in the rearview mirror as the kid stood on the brakes, locking them, damn near rolling it. He imagined their panic, their laughter, too young to honestly believe they’d been seconds away from dying, now pitching beer bottles two and three at a time into the borrow ditch, arguing who among them could walk the straightest line, contemplating how they’d get to school or get laid with no driver’s license, what story they’d fabricate for their parents.

His dad had taught school. He’d also taught him how to roll the gauze pads and wedge them around the outside of his grandfather’s bottom teeth, after plucking out the soaked rolls, the old man silently drooling. He remembered the apology in his eyes, unable by then to voice his thanks. Finally, the gauze wasn’t enough and they had to knot a bath towel around his neck.

His dad had done the heavy lifting. In and out of bed and the wheelchair, on and off the shitter. He’d rigged a canvas sling from the bathroom ceiling, like a suspended lawn chair, to get his father in under the shower. He’d strip down and get in with him, soaping, rinsing carefully. And then it was just sponge baths on the bed, the old man’s legs swollen red, purple and blue.

He turned off on Cabin Creek, stretching his mouth open wide, working his chin back and forth to relax the muscles in his jaw. He’d had another seizure last night, waking with it, biting at his tongue. He could still taste the blood in his mouth.

The tires rattled the plank bridge and he swung the cruiser around through the workyard, parking by the barn. There was only Brady’s truck and the rusted hulk of a ’52 DeSoto down on its rims, burdock and snakeweed growing out through the broken windows, the chrome hood ornament of Hernando’s head hack-sawed off.

He unholstered his revolver, releasing the cylinder and turning the barrel up, the cartridges falling onto the palm of his hand. The doctor-his name was Scott-had said it was a pulmonary embolism that killed the old man. It happened at dawn. Probably during one of the nightmares he’d begun having. The lungs fill with blood, maybe you cough in your sleep, thrash once or twice, and you’re gone. Just that fast. Dr. Scott said if he had ALS it’s how he’d want to go, but he hadn’t been the one to clean up the mess. He thumbed the cartridges back into their chambers, all six of them, and snapped the cylinder home.

He didn’t ease the door shut when he got out of the car but slammed it hard, flushing a party of gray jays from the apple tree in front of the house. A single horse was circling the corral, neighing.

Inside the barn it was just as the girl had said it would be. No hoofstrikes or the odors of clover or timothy or animal dung, only the scratching of packrats in the loft, the light falling in dust-filled shafts from the row of windows under the eaves. Stereos, televisions, computers and firearms stacked carelessly against the walls as high as a man could lift. The stalls overflowing with cameras, VCRs, DVD players, antique furnishings, saddles, chain saws, power tools, wrench sets, table saws, joiners, a planer and drill press. He didn’t bother to part the sheets of milky plastic hanging from the rafters above the last stall. He knew what he’d find in there, his eyes already watering from the bite of ammonia, the mix of cooked chemicals.

“That you, old buddy?”

He turned to the granary door. He could feel the weak sunlight on his shoulders, on the back of his neck. It felt like a caress. “Right here,” he called.

There was Brady’s distinct laughter behind the door. “You want a beer?”

He slid his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Still the taste of blood. “I’m all right.” He gripped the revolver, holding it at his waist as he stepped through the door. He felt relaxed, fluid, just a boy coming to see his friend.

“Well, look at you,” Brady said. “Wyatt Earp-looking son of a bitch that you are.” He was sitting across the room in a cushioned chair, with a floor lamp by his side, books stacked around the base. A hooked rug in front of the chair. A card table crowded with rows of bound bills, tens and twenties and fifties. “I’ve been waiting all day for this.”

He bent over the arm of the chair and pulled a beer out of the cooler. The ice shifted. He offered the can and Crane shook his head. A pistol lay across Brady’s thighs. “Suit yourself.” A vein was pulsing in his pale neck, sweat dripping from his nose. “This is it? Just you?” He sipped the beer, wiped his mouth. “I was hoping for a SWAT team.”

On the walls were framed photographs of their families mounted and moving cows. He and Brady at a branding, in a snowdrift with their schoolbooks.

“Remember when we tried to drop a new engine in that old DeSoto?” Brady asked.

“Greased lightning.”

“That was us. Good times.”

Crane nodded, and Brady was on his feet with the pistol snatched up off his lap, the muzzle blast knocking Crane back a step. He stood blinking, his hearing mostly gone, his head filled with a high-pitched shrieking. He turned and saw the hole where the bullet had struck the wall, and when he turned back he could see the spiral of rifling in the bore, the barrel level with his face. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said.

Brady swung the pistol just inches to the side and it bucked again in his hand, the concussion again like a blow. He could smell the burning gunpowder and thought blood might be running from his ears, his skull and shoulders now vibrating.

“Anything you say can and will-”

Brady fired once more, just over the top of Crane’s head, his hand trembling. “Can’t you just fucking do this?” He was pleading. “Pretend I’m on fire.” His voice cracked. “Pretend I’m screaming so loud you can feel it in your teeth.”

Crane slapped him in the temple with his service revolver and Brady’s head snapped to the side but he didn’t go down. He just smiled like that’s what he’d needed all along, the blood sheeting the side of his head, as smooth and bright as new paint.

Crane leaned forward, lifting the pistol from Brady’s hand, and cuffed him. He didn’t struggle being led from the barn and folded into the backseat of the cruiser. He just bled.