The Final Country

A FINAL WORD

If justice were to be done, I guess, they would all be in prison. But it didn't happen that way. As usual, the innocent suffer; the evil of greed lives on past all belief. Everything disappeared behind Hayden Lomax's rich influences. Nobody's in jail. And nobody's disappeared except for Sissy Duval. She had stashed enough of Betty's money to hide somewhere in Brazil. At least Richard Wylie Oates is out of prison. He's home, farming. The Herreras were delighted to agree to my terms to buy the bar. Richie and Renfro are running the Lodge for me, turning it into a world-class B &B, the place for same-sex marriages in that part of the world. Travis Lee is out of business, out of any kind of business, stuffed into a retirement home in Georgetown, living on my charity, which he probably hates as much as he does sitting in his own shit every day. They say nobody ever visits. They say he's dying. Slowly and painfully, I hope.

Afterward, the kids and I melted the rifles into scrap, cleaned up what we could, and burned the rest. They're married now. Bob is copping in Gunnison, Colorado. CJ is pregnant, going to college at Western to get a teaching degree. I gave the bride away at the wedding at the top of a summer ski slope in Telluride, then sent them on a honeymoon to Paris. The ten days didn't ruin them for middle-class American life, but it surely changed the way they looked at it. I wish I had gone along when they invited me. I've never been to Paris. With a bit more luck, Molly and I might have made it to the City of Lights.

These days I feel a bit more like a human being. Ever since the moment I donated all the money my ex-partner and I had stolen from the contra-bandistas to the International Red Cross. I didn't realize that money had much meaning until I gave a bunch of it away. I also paid the taxes on my father's blighted inheritance, which still left me with enough clean money to behave badly, or at least as badly as an old man can afford, as long as I want.

I'm back in the bar business again, sort of. I bought a little place from a couple of aimless Brits within walking distance of the waterfront in Belize City, a warm, placid place rife with friendly strangers, run-down, colorful, and forgiving. I live in a hotel room. Another place that isn't mine. That's the way it has to be now. I've searched the country fairly thoroughly for another copy of the Shark of the Moon. Without success. Sometimes love works that way.

The grass widow, Sherry, told me that rumor says Betty and Cathy came to a parting of the ways. Betty shares her ranch with a religious woman now. Maybe she has found a religion herself, one that forgives pathological lying and murder. Cathy has taken her act to California. I don't know what to think about that. Or what to say. Sherry's divorced now and for a while she'd fly down and sleep with me. Until we realized that we were holding hands more than making love. Petey and Carver D have visited a couple of times from Boston. Petey's kicking ass at Harvard, which is a perfect revenge for a kid born to unreconstructed hippies in an alley in Austin. Carver D is happy, as funny sober as he was drunk, a gift I suspect I sorely lack. My ex-partner came down for a few days of bonefishing, but a hurricane was brewing, so we just had a few drinks, and a small conversation.

"Shit, man, you didn't come out too badly," he said. "The kids are happy, and the farm boy is riding his tractor."

I begged to differ. "Let's look at it this way, old buddy," I said. "I discovered that the woman I loved had lied to me endlessly and unnecessarily, had murdered at least two men. For good reasons, perhaps, but murdered them nonetheless. My business partner turned out to be as crooked as a snake's asshole. I killed a cop and a district attorney, broke a fat woman's hand, beat the shit out of a one-armed man, and got the man I meant to keep out of prison killed. Shot a woman in a wheelchair. And God-fucking-dammit, I got Molly killed, too."

"You never could look on the bright side of things, could you, Milo?"

"The children of suicides seldom do, buddy," I said. "So leave it the fuck alone." We sat silent for a long time, then I relented. "The wind's calm as a nun's breath," I said, "but watch the swells. They've doubled in size the past hour. A big blow's a-coming."

He stood up, stretched like a man heading for his hotel, sighed, "Come see us this fall."

"I'm going to Paris," I lied, and he walked away without looking back.

It's done. This may not be my final country. I can still taste the bear in the back of my throat, bitter with the blood of the innocent, and somewhere in my old heart I can still remember the taste of love. Perhaps this is just a resting place. A warm place to drink cold beer. But wherever my final country is, my ashes will go back to Montana when I die. Maybe I've stopped looking for love. Maybe not. Maybe I will go to Paris. Who knows? But I'll sure as hell never go back to Texas again.