The Final Country

THIRTEEN

By the time we got back to Tom Ben's, the sun had risen to obscurity behind the avalanche of roiling, slate-gray clouds that filled the sky. When I parked the truck in front of the main house, the housekeeper, Maria, rushed out on the porch, waving her arms and shouting at me. I couldn't make out the Spanish but I could tell it wasn't good.

I jumped out of the cab, Molly right behind me. The housekeeper looked at us oddly, rumpled and sleepy in our fancy clothes. Inside, the old man was slumped in the recliner. He had his bib overalls on but only one boot, and his mouth gaped open and shut like a fish as he struggled for breath. The front of his shirt was soaked but his pale forehead was as dry and hot as a stove pipe. A thick string of spittle drifted down his chin. The gnarled fingers of his trembling right hand clutched the black stub of his pipe.

"He don't wake up," the housekeeper kept moaning. "He don't wake up."

"Where the hell is everybody?"

"The bulls," she muttered, "the bulls are in the road. The men round them up…"

"Probably a case of raging pneumonia," I said to Molly, "but maybe he's had a stroke, too. I'm going to call a chopper. Get some blankets."

The old man was still alive and, according to the paramedics, stabilized as the chopper took off from the front yard half an hour later. Even his color was better as soon as they got an oxygen mask on him. The distraught housekeeper fell back on the household routine. Before Molly and I could leave, we had to sit down to huge plates of huevos rancheros and eat just to keep the old woman from bursting into tears.

So by the time we got back to the barn to pack for the trip to Montana, we were yawning so hard our jaws cracked. We were stretched out on the cot in our clothes and almost asleep when the rounds started punching through the Caddy. First, I heard the pops and tinkle of glass as a headlight was shot out, then the following echoes of the rifle's fire. Then the flat slaps as the shooter ran half a dozen rounds into the body of the Caddy. The sniper hadn't bothered with a suppressor this time and had brought a larger bore assault rifle. It sounded larger, maybe an M-14 or an AK. I found a crack to peer through. A dark van was parked to block the road on a rise just out of pistol range, semi-automatic gunfire pouring out of the dark interior through the open side door. They had probably cut the fences so Tom Ben and hands would have their hands full horsing his bulls out of the highway.

"Some son of a bitch is shooting holes in my Cadillac," I said. "And if we go outside, he's gonna shoot holes in us," I said, unlocking the foot locker. I grabbed the Mini 14, stuck it through the crack in the main door, and ran a clip through it. Mostly the rounds just raised dust, but a couple smacked into the side of the van. It backed off a hundred yards or so, then the firing began again. I turned to Molly. "Grab whatever you can carry," I said. "It's time to run." I gathered the cash, the fake ID, the cocaine, and a bagful of clips and stuffed them into my war bag when the rounds started punching through the metal walls about waist-high, moving back and forth, steady searching fire.

No time for explanations now. I grabbed Molly's arm, pulled her down to the floor, then dragged her out of the corn crib over to the large drain in the center of the barn, jerked off the iron grate, and stuffed her inside. The drain would give us a little cover. I went in right behind her. It was just large enough for us to slither through the old milk and cowshit, while round after round punched through the tin walls, ricocheted off the concrete floor, whirring like shrapnel until they slammed into a stall or one of the opposite walls. We bellied our way out to the abandoned drain pit behind the barn, where we rested for a few moments, then dashed for the safety of a dry wash. I leaned over the side of the wash with the Mini 14, but the black van remained hidden, pumping rounds into the barn.

"What the hell's going on?" she asked breathlessly.

"I guess whoever's been trying to kill me has decided that they don't have to be subtle anymore," I said, and she managed a wry, smudged smile, and didn't complain as we trudged up a muddy path out of the wash, then ran toward the safety of a low rise just beyond.

Without the sun and no real sense of the lay of the ranch land, I just assumed that the wind and rain came from the northwest, so we marched straight into it as best we could across the broken terrain. We only paused for short rests and to take down electric fences in our way. In the second or third pasture, we came across an idle D-9 Cat with a root plow attached to it. I bent the barrel of the Mini 14 prying the padlock off the toolbox, then discarded it. I picked out a large screwdriver, a pair of pliers, and a roll of duct tape, then used the pliers to steal the battery.

"Okay," she said, "I gotta ask. Where the hell are we going?"

"You'll never guess," I said, tucked the battery under my arm, then led the way into the storm. Neither of us looked behind us at the soft explosion and the plume of smoke that had to be my Cadillac burning to the ground.

"Goddammit, I loved that car," I said. "I'm gonna have the hide and hair off somebody's ass for that little deal."

"It's just a car," Molly said.

"You got to be kidding," I said. "That was my last permanent address."

She chuckled a moment, then we moved on silently into the brisk wind.

Several hours later, convinced that the van hadn't followed us, we crossed the final ridge. The rain eased into a light mist, but the wind and scudding clouds didn't relent. Down in a shallow hollow, the catch pond gleamed like a dull silver dollar, the line shack leaning beside it.

The tires could have used some air, the Cat's battery had to be duct taped into place, but it was a classic short box GMC V-6 four-wheel-drive, the keys were in the ignition, and the engine nearly fired on the first try. It didn't take too long, though, until the tough little V-6 ran fairly smoothly. While I cleaned up as best I could in the shallow pond, Molly turned the heater on high and disposed of the spiderwebs and dirt dauber nests in the cab of the pickup. While I dried out in the blowing heater vents, Molly went to the pond to clean up.

I had just washed the mud and cowshit off my clothes with wet rags, but as I watched through the broken door of the line shack, Molly took off her clothes and waded into the pond. Standing thigh-deep in the chill wind and water as she washed her clothes, her skin darkened into a coppery, ebony shine I would have never seen without that ashen light, and when I stood naked on the edge of the pond, she raised her nose into the wind as if she could smell me coming. Her nipples were as hard as ice cubes, but inside she was as warm and soft as the ashes of a cooking fire. As I stood anchored in the soft mud of the bottom of the pond, my toes curled like talons, her long legs locked around my hips, one arm around my neck, the other pounding on my shoulders, her head back, neck arched into a quivering cord of muscle, her teeth gleaming in the feral Texas light.

Once we were back in the pickup, dressed and drying out, I removed the butterfly bandages and cleaned the faint wound, and Molly smiled and asked me, "Two questions, old man? What the hell was that about?"

"Just about as much fun as old men get to have, lady."

"And how the hell did you know how to find this place?"

"Tom Ben told me where it was when he told me about you," I said. "He thought the truck was too fine a piece of machinery to bury in the pond. And we had a little luck."

"A little luck?"

"It's Sunday."

"I'm sorry, but what the hell's that got to do with it?"

"I don't believe that bulldozer driver would have let me have his battery," I said. "But it was his day off."

"So what do we do now?"

"Somebody got it in here," I said, "so we can get it out. A little air in the tires, a little gas in the tank, and a couple of stolen license plates, then we're goin' to Montan' to throw the hoolihan."

"What the hell's that?"

"Either some kind of cowboy party or a double-looped rope. Nobody seems to be exactly sure."

"I vote for the cowboy party part," she said. "But you're going to have to do something about that hat."

"Now I've got a couple of questions for you."

"What's that?"

"Where'd you get this truck?"

"It was waiting in the airport parking lot," she said. "Keys over the visor, directions to the old man's place in the glove box. I'd done all my research before I left Vegas – law school was at least good for something."

"What did you do with the option you got Tom Ben to sign?" I asked.

She laughed, kissed me on the cheek, then whispered in my ear.

I had to laugh, then asked, "You still have it?"

"Nope," she said. "When I finally got back to Vegas, I gave it to Jimmy Fish, but I think it stunk too much to do anybody any good."

"Just the rumor of it made a lot of people uncomfortable," I said.

"They weren't the only ones," she said, then laughed again.

We picked up a set of stolen plates off a closed used car lot in Junction, then swapped again in Del Rio, driving straight through all the way to El Paso, where we checked into the El Camino downtown as Mr. & Mrs. Hardy P. Malvern the next afternoon. I left Molly lolling in a bubble bath while I drove across the border and parked around the corner from the Kentucky Club, leaving the keys in the truck, then had two margaritas at the Kentucky Club, and assumed the classic pickup had disappeared before I crossed the murky, shallow waters of the Rio Bravo del Norte. I called Carver D on the scrambled cell phone, asked him to check out the expired plates and the VIN on the pickup, then woke Molly long enough for room service Mexican food, and to send our clothes out to be cleaned, then we made love and slept the sleep of the newly alive until they returned our clothes the next morning. Then we took a cab to the airport where Hardy P. Malvern rented a Jeep Cherokee, and we headed north to Montana.

It had been so long since I had been in Livingston that the last thing I expected was to see somebody I knew when we checked into the Murray Hotel two nights later. When I handed the night clerk, a woman who looked remarkably like Carol Channing's little sister, enough cash for three nights, she looked at the Hardy P. Malvern name on the registration card, then glanced back up at me, saying "Don't I know you, partner?"

"Never been here before, ma'am," I lied, but she looked as if she didn't believe me. I couldn't remember when I last stood in front of her, but she almost remembered.

"I'll need your license plate number," she said, tapping the registration card with a long fingernail, "and some ID."

"I thought Montana was supposed to be a neighborly place," I said, then turned my back to the counter to dig into my billfold for Hardy's driver's license. In the reflection of the plate glass window, I looked like the survivor of a terrible car wreck that only my hat survived. Then I couldn't remember the license plate number on the Jeep. We had driven straight through from El Paso, and my head was still ringing with road miles, my eyes blurred with the images of drifting snow, and my nose burning with the bitter cut of the coke. "Honey," I said, "I've forgotten the plate number again. You want to check it for me?"

"Your driver's license expires next month, sir," the night clerk said suspiciously as she handed it back to me.

But Molly saved us. She touched my arm, smiled, then turned, walked through the front door on her high-heeled boots as steady as a schooner in a freshening breeze. I might look like death microwaved, but Molly was a lady.

"You better take care of it, Mr. Malvern," the night clerk said, then smiled happily as she handed the license back to me.

"You don't have a typewriter I can borrow?" I said.

"Be careful," she said as she pulled a battered portable from under the desk. "It's an antique. And supposedly haunted. If it starts cussing at you, throw a shot of Wild Turkey down its throat."

When the rented Jeep was finally stuck in the lot, and the Macallan poured over ice, I sighed. The room was long and narrow, filled with comfortable old furniture. Outside, the Livingston wind, as cold as a developer's heart and as hard as a crap shooter's luck, roared down out of the Absarokas, throwing pellets of corn snow against the windows like a rattle of distant automatic gunfire. But we were safe and warm and home.

"We made it," Molly said. "I can't believe it."

"At least we're this far," I said. "Maybe tomorrow we'll make it the rest of the way." On the endless trip I had told Molly everything I knew about what had happened to me. I had left out the part about her hypocrite of a natural father because I assumed that she didn't need to know that. I had learned a long time before that my father had killed himself because he was in love with another woman and afraid to tell my mother. It wasn't a decision I would have made, but it was a long time ago. It had to be better for Molly to think of her father as a tough little one-armed son of a bitch who would take me on with a bottle rather than tell me where she was. "But that won't be the end," I said. "I still have to go back to Texas."

"Do what you have to," she said, picking up my hand and holding it to her lips, "and we'll work it out."

I was back in Montana, right, but that wasn't the only reason my heart sang like the wind. Molly's blue eyes no longer looked like a false dawn but were shining with what I hoped was hope. Then I turned to the typewriter.

It took all the next morning to get some cold weather clothes – winter underwear, insulated coveralls, gloves, and pacs – and a set of chains for the Jeep. We were heading for dirt roads and the weather on this side of the Divide could change quicker than the price of wheat futures. I packed the remaining cocaine and weapons in my war bag, checked with Molly one more time, who sat in front of the dresser mirror trying to make her hair fit attractively under a Scotch plaid hat.

"I'm along for the ride, honey," she said.

"I'll be back in a minute," I said.

Downstairs I stopped by the desk and returned the typewriter to a tall man with a dark beard, then hiked across the street to the dark, dingy bar where I had spent some time in the past.

The same ex-biker still stood behind the stick, waiting for something. He bounced down the bar toward me, and I held my finger up to my lips.

"Hell, it wouldn't have mattered, man," the bartender said. "I almost didn't recognize you in that get-up. Where did you get that hat?"

"Ran over a cowboy outside Laramie."

"That explains it," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"Let me have a shot of schnapps and a cup of coffee," I said, pulling an envelope out of the insulated Carhart's. "Then I want you to hold this for a while. If I don't show up in a few days, mail it."

The bartender looked at the address. "He's in fucking law school? Jesus, I thought he'd be in the slam by now."

"Me, too, man. Me, too."

When we were ready, we drove north toward winter.

The only constant things about the drive up Highway 89 were the wind falling in icy flows off the Crazies and the stretches of black ice covering the old highway. We made it to the lease roads with plenty of light left. They were hard-frozen, so I didn't bother putting the chains on the Jeep. Mostly we found dead ends, but just at dark I spotted a small, bullet-pocked sign pointing to the Punky Creek Mine. Except for random skiffs of scudding clouds, the sky had cleared, and the rising moon gave me enough light to follow the quickly freezing ruts up a dry creek that looked as if it had been washed, then dredged, and now the company was working the tailings for lost seeds and misplaced figments of gold-limned quartz.

At the head of the draw, the switchbacks led to a flat place just in front of a small metal building beside a large rock crusher and in front of a dark adit. Off to the side, a small Christmas tree was set over the natural gas well that powered the machinery and heated the building. A Chevy Suburban was parked in front. All the lights in the building were on and light smoke poured sideways from the natural gas heater's stove pipes on the roof. Through the sweep of the wind, I could hear the rumble of a generator and the boom of a bass line. A satellite dish loomed like a gray moon from the southeast corner. All the comforts of home. I turned around at the bottom of the first switchback, left the Jeep idling, then stepped out, telling Molly, "I'm going to check it out. Any trouble, baby, you run."

"What kind of partnership is that?"

"The kind that survives," I said, then took off up the trail.

The building's windows hadn't been washed in a long time, but I could still see Enos sitting at a table, listlessly playing solitaire while the large television boomed with rap music, half a bottle of Crown Royal on the table in front of him beside a large pile of white powder. At the end of the table a stack of cardboard boxes sat like a wall. He was alone and didn't look like he was going anywhere anytime soon. I assumed that daylight would be a better time to renew our acquaintance. So I slipped back down to the Jeep and drove us back to Livingston just as the weather changed again. The wind suddenly boomed in from the Canadian border like an invasion of geese, thick feathers of downy snow rippling down the dark sky.

While I had a couple of warm-up drinks at the Owl, Molly had done a good job cleaning up the remains of our traveling clothes. Even my cowboy hat looked as if it had new life, and Molly looked like a million dollars in the soft sweep of the cashmere suit, the dark drapes of her black hair swinging back from her high, smooth forehead. I kissed the faint scar, then said, "Tired of eating in the room?"

"Won't somebody recognize us?" she asked, laughing.

"We'll keep our sunglasses on," I said. "Maybe they'll think we're from Hollywood."

"I gotta ask," she said. "What happens when this shit's over?"

"Drift through Vegas, pick up your stuff, and disappear," I said.

"I've always wanted to go to Paris," she said softly.

"Look out, Paris," I said. "Here we come."

And we laughed as if life could begin all over again.

We found a quiet dinner at Chatham's Bar & Grill, a couple of good Scotches, a bottle of wine, and a couple of steaks worth dying for. Then we walked back to the hotel in the blizzard.

"What do people do here in the wintertime?" she asked, the wind nearly whipping away her words.

"Well, when winter really starts," I said, "they drink and fight and fuck and bet on when the chicken shits. Get divorced, kill each other, fall in love," I added. "Just like normal life. Or what passes for normal life in a Montana winter."

"Sounds like fun," she said as she struggled with the hotel door. "How come you left?"

"I guess I made the mistake of thinking love was more important than fun," I said.

"Or disconnected from it," Molly said, then we stepped into the warm safety of the hotel. "I guess I grew up so fast I never knew much about it."

As it turned out, neither did I. Not until now. We spent the rest of the night doing our best to discover what we had both missed. We nearly made it.

The next afternoon we checked out of the hotel, then drove out to Punky Creek. As we parked in front of the small steel building, the music boomed and the snowstorm rattled, but the noise must not have covered the sound of our arrival, because when Enos opened the front door, he had the huge automatic stuffed into his belt. "You folks lost?" he said, waving us in out of the blizzard.

"Not exactly, Mr. Walker," I said, "but we could use some directions."

"You ought not to be out in this kind of shit," he said. "Ain't fit for visiting."

"It's important that I talk to you, Mr. Walker," I said as I removed my gloves, hood, and sunglasses.

"What the fuck? You're that old son of a bitch from Duval's place," Walker said, then stepped back to consider us and our arrival at his hideout. At the end of the table one of the large cardboard boxes was half-unloaded. It didn't take a genius to realize that Enos was unpacking a meth lab.

"What the fuck are you doin' here?"

"Pat me down," I said, leaning into a steel support. "I'm clean." I had assumed that this wasn't the time to be armed.

"Pat you down, my ass," he said, pulling the large pistol out of his belt and flopping into a chair. "Man, you strip. And you, bitch, you lock your hands behind your head, and don't fucking move. I'll deal with you later."

"This is a hell of a place to be cooking meth," I said as I was undressing.

"I can't get off on that fuckin' coke anymore," Enos said. "And the bastards who stole my money, this is the only stake they'll give me to get back in the coke business. So I'm working my way back into the good times."

"Lomax?" I said.

But Walker just laughed. Once I was down to my T-shirt and shorts, Walker made me lock my hands behind my neck, while Molly stripped to her thermal underwear.

"Well, at least you people are clean," he said, "so come over here and sit down." He motioned to a worktable with several swivel chairs around it. I sat beside him. Molly sat on the other side of the table. Walker shoved a partially eaten microwave dinner to one side. An almost full bottle of Crown Royal stood beside ten or twelve long, sloppy lines of cocaine, lines like drifts or sand dunes, that had been chopped along the side of the table. As we sat down, Walker grabbed a straw and huffed two of the huge lines. "You understand, this ain't exactly an ideal time for me, man. I'm up here all alone, with this fuckin' meth to cook, and you two are the first human beings I've seen in two weeks. So I gotta ask what the hell you're doin'? If you ain't delivering money, drugs, or pussy, what business you got botherin' me?"

"I started off looking for you so I could keep the state of Texas from jabbing a needle in your arm," I said calmly, "then somebody started popping caps in my direction, and now I guess I'm looking for Mandy Rae and some answers."

The burst of his laughter banged the sides of the building like a twelve-pound sledge. "Mandy Rae. Shit, man, she's been dead for years. After Duval got shot that night, there was too much heat to work, so she split for France to move into the heroin trade. Perfect business for a bitch like that. When I was in the slam, I heard that the Corsicans blew up her car. She was a real pain in the ass, man, she always had to be running things, to be in charge of everything. Hell, if she wasn't dead, I'd kill her myself. I know damn well she dropped the dime on me when me and my brother went into business on our own."

"I think it's a quarter now," I said. "Where'd she get the cocaine?"

Walker laughed and reached for the bottle, saying maybe we should have a drink. "You think she'd give up her source to a Mandingo nigger like me? Hell, no. Not a chance." He hit the bottle hard, then looked at me and said, "But you still be wanting something else, don't you? You one of them unsatisfied white motherfuckers. You think if you know some shit, it'll make everything better? You don't know shit."

"You might be right. But I think if you'll come back to Texas with me, Walker," I said. "And roll over on Mandy Rae, Sissy Duval, and Hayden Lomax, I can help you beat the Billy Long murder charges."

"Billy Long's murder charges," he said, then laughed for a long time before he did another line, then hit the bottle again. "Fuck the small stuff. Mandy Rae, man, she's long dead. Hayden Lomax, hell, he owns the world down there, and you couldn't touch him in a hundred years. And Sissy Duval, she's just a silly piece of ass. She liked it up the old dirt track even better than her husband did. Fuck her. And all them other cunts." Then he paused to hit the bottle again. "Billy Long, that racist fucker, he don't count for nothin'. Nobody gives a shit that he's dead. I'm clean on that one. I'm clean here. Come spring, I'll sell all this shit to some Mexicans over in Yakima, then I've got some South American plans." He hit the bottle again. "Look at it from my point of view," he said, then stood up.

"That's what got me in trouble, Walker," I said. "Looking at it from your point of view. Now I'm thinking I should have just walked away."

"Maybe you should have walked away, man. What's to keep me from poppin' your ass, then runnin' it through the rock crusher?"

"Just me," I said.

"Milo," Molly whispered.

"By the way, who is that fine lady?" Enos asked. I didn't tell him.

"Maybe we ought to forget all this and go," she whispered, staring at the pistol swinging casually in his hand.

"Go!" Enos shouted before I could agree with her. "Shit, the party's just gettin' off the ground, girl. Hey, girl, let's see what you got under that other shit."

"Don't fuck with me, man," I said. "I'll sic Lomax on your ass."

Walker was suddenly no longer interested in Molly. "What's that you say?"

"Lomax sent me to look for you," I said, lying as fast as I could.

"That's your bad luck, old man," Walker muttered. "I ain't ever doin' no more time." Then without another word, Walker backhanded me on the side of the head so hard that I lifted out of the chair and fairly flew across the room, smacked into the side of one of the roaring gas heaters with the side of my neck and shoulder, then bounced hard to the concrete floor. I didn't have a second to appreciate my scrapes and burns before Walker kicked me in the side with his work boots. I had a moment to feel the left arm and several ribs crack before he stuffed the pistol in his waistband and jerked me upright to smash me full in the face with his giant fist. I felt my nose flatten and several teeth splinter. I guess I should have been surprised that he hadn't knocked my eyes right out of their sockets. When he picked me up again, at least I got the remains of my nose out of the way of his fist, but he caught me high on the forehead. I rolled over the heater again, then landed on a pile of rock-crusher bits. Then Walker picked me up again. I was done, all my strings were broken, my limbs dangling like broken wings. Piss ran down my leg, shit dribbled whenever it wanted, blood filled my eyes.

Before he could hit me again, through the billowing fog of shock, I heard Molly scream "No!" Then a sharp pop. I grabbed weakly at Walker's pistol, but he swatted me away like a gnat, then I heard another crack, followed by an explosion, then he released me. I tumbled to the cold floor as softly as a black feather, glancing off the bulk of the gas heater again, the smell of burning skin rank in the bloody, crooked remains of my nose.

Sometimes you don't get a chance to say goodbye. Sounds maudlin, but it's true. I don't know how long it took Molly to die. The.50 Magnum round had taken her just two fingers to the left of her right hipbone, right in the center of that lovely dimple which I would never taste again, then essentially blown her right buttock off. Even if I'd been conscious, I probably couldn't have saved her. Enos Walker was beyond saving, too. One of the.22 rounds from the derringer she had stolen out of my war bag and secreted in her purse had glanced off his teeth and harmlessly out of his cheek. The other, though, had gone up his left nostril, and, I suspected, kicked around his brain pan like a marble in a urinal. He probably was dead when he pulled the trigger. No one will ever know. Once I was vaguely mobile, I crawled to Molly but there was nothing beyond her eyes, just that other country where the dead go, and when I held my face to hers, I just stained her beauty with my bloody snot. Then I crawled to the door and into the blizzard, burying myself into a small snowbank beside the shed, just long enough to stop the burning on my neck and back, then staggered to the pickup, and gobbled a handful of codeine. When I stumbled back inside, I struggled into my insulated Carhart's and pacs, listening to the tiny rat's teeth of bone grinding every time I moved my left elbow. Next came the first of many hard parts. To make my nose resemble one. It took three tries, even packed with wads of Walker's cocaine. The result wasn't anything that my friends would recognize, but it stopped flopping around my face. It didn't work as well as it once did, either, but I had enough coke left to pack the nostrils, plus some left over to pack into the bloody slots where teeth used to hang out. Then the necessary shit. Somehow I had to get out of there.

By the time I had taken care of everything, the snowstorm had blown itself out, and the sun sat low in the southwestern sky, hanging just over the snow-packed peaks of the Bridgers, the bare golden ridges of short grass banked by blue clots of snow glittering like frozen rivers. The wind had turned. Icy torrents roared off the Crazies behind me, blasted the afternoon, blowing the tears off my cheeks before they could freeze. South, the Absarokas gleamed with frozen snow and even harder rock, shining distant and dangerous like polar mirages against the clotted sky.

Welcome home, I thought, welcome fucking home.