Wounded

THIRTEEN

TO SAY THAT I couldn’t believe the current set of circumstances was an understatement. Morgan and Gus took turns convincing me, or trying to convince me that I was not to blame for having let David drive into town alone. After driving back and forth between town twice, Morgan and I stapled ourselves to the house and waited for the phone to ring. Gus fell asleep on the sofa and Morgan covered him with a blanket. Then she fell asleep on the big chair in front of the stove. I paced, let the dogs out a couple times, and finally watched the sunrise. At first light I called the sheriff and learned that nothing had been learned.

“So, what now?” I asked Bucky.

“I called the Highway Patrol and they’re supposed to be sending an investigator,” he said.

“What should I do?”

“I don’t know, John. We’re still out there driving the roads. All the roads we can anyway.”

“Thanks.” I hung up and looked in on Gus and Morgan. They were still asleep. I gently woke Morgan to tell her I was going to feed the horses.

“Okay,” she said. “Do you want me to make breakfast?” She was only half awake.

“No, you sleep some more.”

I left the house and went about the chores. My mind kept turning to the thugs in the BMW. How could I not think of them? The next time I talked to the sheriff I would mention them, ask if anything was known about them. I wondered if I should call Howard or David’s mother. That thought made me feel as if I was giving into the worst notions and I felt bad, like I was giving up on the boy. Thinking of this made no sense to me and I became disoriented. I sat and watched the three-legged coyote splash after a stick in the mud.

I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t very well go about my daily business as if nothing was wrong. I didn’t know where else to drive and look. And I didn’t see myself going into town and making myself a troublesome and unwanted fixture at the sheriff’s office. I cleaned half the stalls and went back to the house.

Morgan had coffee waiting and was starting breakfast when I walked into the kitchen. Had there been any word she would have spoken up immediately, so I didn’t ask.

“What’s the weather like?” she wanted to know.

“I think we’re done with the rain,” I said. “It’s not terribly cold.”

“That’s good.”

“Is Gus still asleep?” I asked.

“He’s in the shower. You know, he’s looks really tired.”

I nodded. I opened the door and let the dogs in. They were wet and muddy, but I didn’t care. The phone rang. Morgan watched me while I picked up. It was Daniel White Buffalo.

“Daniel,” I said.

“Hey, I heard about your friend,” he said.

“What did you hear?” I could hardly feel myself breathing.

“One of the deputies drove by last night, said he was missing.”

“Yeah, he’s driving my Jeep,” I said.

“We’ll keep our eyes open over here.”

“Thanks, Daniel.”

We sat stupidly silent on the phone for a few seconds. “Okay, Daniel. Thanks.”

“You bet.”

I hung up.

The phone rang again and this time it was Bucky. Morgan came and stood close to me while I talked to him.

“John, I’ve got a guy from the Highway Patrol and he’d like you to come talk to him.”

“Okay. Anything yet?”

“No, nothing. Can you come in now?”

“I’ll be there in an hour.”

“We’ve looked just about everywhere,” the sheriff said. “We’ve got a plane up right now.”

“That’s good, I guess. I’ll be right there.” I hung up and looked at Morgan. “I’m going in to talk to the Highway Patrol.”

“You want to eat something first?” Morgan asked.

“I can’t eat. I’m going to go wash my face, then head into town.”

“I’ll stay by the phone,” Morgan said.

The drive into town felt exceptionally long and I didn’t even notice the view of the valley as I made the big curve. Though my hands weren’t shaking, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find them so. The traffic in town was a little heavier than usual; I had to sit at one light through three changes before I could get past it. But it was while I was idling there that I saw the BMW parked in the Wal-Mart lot. My thought was to go into the store and find the men, but I didn’t know what I’d say. Instead, I drove on to Bucky’s office and parked the pickup in a diagonal space in front of the town square.

Bucky introduced me to a tall man with a handlebar mustache. His name was Reg McCormack. He wore expensive Western boots and an easy manner. His handshake was cold, limp.

“Tell me about your friend,” he said.

“He’s about six feet tall, one-sixty maybe, twenty years old, light brown hair. He’s white. He was driving my Jeep.”

“Any reason he drove into town alone?”

“We’d just come back from picking up hay and we found out my uncle had forgotten to have us pick up his medicine,” I said.

“Whose idea was it that he drive?” McCormack asked.

I looked at Bucky, then answered, “He offered to drive in.” I didn’t like the tone of his questions.

“How long was he gone before you became concerned?”

“It was getting dark,” I said, thinking. “Three hours, I guess, maybe a little longer. He’d never driven in alone before.”

“Why was that?”

I shrugged. “Hey, why all the questions?”

“I have to ask them, Mr. Hunt.”

“Listen, my friend’s kid is out there somewhere, probably in trouble.”

“Your friend’s kid?”

“Yes, David is the son of an old college friend.”

“I understand you had some trouble with the boy before,” McCormack said. “A deputy had to drive out to your ranch?”

“He got lost in the woods, but I found him.”

“So, he has a habit of going missing,” the man said.

“I wouldn’t say that,” I said. “He was driving this time. Last time he’d had words with his father and ran out of the house drunk.”

“Was he drunk this time?”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“He wasn’t drunk when he left your place,” McCormack said. “Was he drunk when he left town to head back?”

“I think he wasn’t,” I said.

“But you’re not sure.”

I was starting to get mad, but I sucked it in. “A twenty-year-old kid is out there somewhere, maybe pinned under a Jeep, and we’re playing games in here. You should be talking to the thugs in town who are running around shooting cattle and writing the word nigger in the snow with blood.”

“I will,” McCormack said, unfazed.

“No, really, these guys have tried to pick fights with David on a couple of occasions,” I said. “They drive a BMW.”

“Why would they want to fight David?” he asked.

“They don’t like the fact that he’s a homosexual.”

“How do you feel about that fact?”

I stared at McCormack for several seconds, then stood. “Bucky, this is getting us nowhere. You’ve seen the guys I’m talking about. Find them and ask them some questions. In the meantime, I’m going to drive the same roads for the seventh and eighth times trying to find David.”

“I’m trying to help, Mr. Hunt,” McCormack said.

I nodded. “Then talk to the guys in the BMW.”

As I was walking through the main office, I became aware of a bustle of activity. I paused and watched, listened. Bucky came out of his office.

“Hanks found your Jeep,” he said.

The vehicle was parked, almost neatly, about twenty miles off the main highway on an undeveloped road into the Red Desert, about thirty miles west and south of my place. I hadn’t found it because I was looking between my place and town. I used the station phone to call my house and then followed Bucky and McCormack. The Jeep had been spotted from the air and there apparently was no sign of David. As I drove I felt as if progress was being made, but that none of it sounded at all good. Now, my hands were shaking.

Hanks was standing at the rear of the Jeep when we arrived and he had admittedly done little more than wait. The sheriff department’s plane was still circling. The sheriff, McCormack, and I all walked around the vehicle like it might say something. McCormack looked the most closely, asking us to keep our distance.

“We’ll need to go over it,” McCormack said.

“Team’s on the way,” Hanks told him.

McCormack stood next to me. “Your rig?”

I nodded. “Can you tell anything?”

“There’s a small, white, paper bag on the seat,” Hanks said.

“Probably my uncle’s medicine,” I said.

We stood around while clouds collected over us. The plane left. More men arrived and I watched as they examined the Jeep. I looked down the deeply rutted dirt path and wondered how far it went into the desert. I tried to get my bearings by looking at the hills and the distant butte. I realized I wasn’t that far from where I’d found the coyote. We were perhaps only ten miles south of that place.

McCormack came back to me. “You ever been here before?”

I shook my head.

“Your friend didn’t say anything to you before he left?”

“He said, ‘See you later.’”

“I’m just trying to help,” he said.

“Yeah, fuck you,” I said. That was unlike me, but I wasn’t feeling much like myself. I turned and walked toward my truck.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to look for my friend,” I said. I turned and walked back to him. “My uncle needs his medicine.”

McCormack called to one the investigators. “Let him have the bag.”

I took the medicine and left.

As I drove away, I glanced into my mirror and watched McCormack watching me leave. I knew that there was no way for him to implicate me in David’s disappearance, but still I was insulted. I didn’t know what to do. I would go home, give Gus his medicine, tell him and Morgan about the Jeep, and then stare at the telephone. I had to call Howard and David’s mother, Sylvia.

The ruts of the trail threw me about pretty roughly. I hadn’t felt it on the way out, perhaps because of adrenaline or shock. But now every trough and hole bounced the truck. One thing was certain, no BMW had come along this road. That thought slightly depressed me, because the thugs were the only notion I had about what might have happened.

When I arrived at the house I didn’t know how to let Gus and Morgan see me from the porch, I became self-conscious about my gestures. If I shook my head, they might take it to mean that David was found dead. If I didn’t, they’d assume the same thing. A shrug would have been incomprehensible. So, when I set the brake and climbed out of the truck, I shouted, “Nothing!” That was more than an assessment of what was known, it was a statement of what I was feeling. I was numb with shock, too confused to admit my fear and somewhere the anger and guilt and anger about feeling guilty.

I tossed Gus his medicine and he caught it. “They found the Jeep,” I said. “Abandoned in the desert.”

“Oh, John.” Morgan embraced me.

I put my hand to the small of her back, but didn’t find the strength to pull her close.

“What now?” Gus said.

And what a good question that was. I looked at the old man. “I don’t know, Gus. I don’t know.” I looked at the mountains, then felt that the air was turning colder. “I’m going to call Howard. Then I’m going to drown myself in the shower. Then I’m going back out to look for David.” I stopped and looked at both of them. Morgan’s eyes were red from lack of sleep and Gus was as drawn looking as I had ever seen him. “How are you two?”

Gus nodded.

“We all need rest,” Morgan said. Then, “This is all so unreal.”

You watch the news and see stories about awful accidents and missing loved ones and it seems so distant, like it isn’t real and then when it happens to you, it doesn’t seem real. I kept expecting David to walk into the study where I was sitting, then I entertained thoughts that there was no David, that I had made him up. I pulled my rifle from the cabinet and set the cleaning supplies on the desk. I looked at the phone, knowing I would use it. I then looked at the rifle in my lap and had a feeling that I would be using it as well.

I opened my book, found Howard’s number and dialed.

“Howard, it’s John.”

“Hey, I was going to give you a call.”

“Howard, there’s a problem here.”

Howard was silent at the other end.

“David is missing.”

“What do you mean by ‘missing’?”

“We can’t find him.” Before he launched into reasonable, sensible and appropriate questions, I continued, “He drove into town and didn’t come back. He went in to pick up a prescription for Gus. The police just found the Jeep he was driving abandoned out in the desert.”

Howard was still silent.

“I don’t know what to say. I’ve been out searching. They found the Jeep by air. As far as I know there was no sign of anything strange or unusual. But I haven’t talked to the sheriff for a couple of hours.”

“Missing? Was there blood?” The question made sense, still it ran cold through me. “Was there any blood?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t see any. I’m so sorry, Howard.”

“What should I do?” His question hung in the wires between us. It wasn’t really directed at me, but then it was.

“I don’t know. I’m going out to search more. I don’t know where to look, but I’ll look.”

“I’ll call Sylvia,” he said.

“Okay. I’m sorry, Howard.”

“You think he’s okay?” he asked.

“I hope so. I hope so.”

“I’ll call you later.”

I hung up and blew out a long breath that shook my lower lip and realized my teeth were chattering. I placed my head down on my arms on top of my desk and soon fell asleep.

In my dream, Susie was sewing at a treadle machine, something she never did; in fact, she didn’t own one. But there she was, her booted foot marking an exact rhythm. I had been working outside. I was sweating and for some reason I had not removed my jacket or my filthy boots. She was intent on her activity and when I asked her what she was making, she said,

“It’s a patch quilt, but it has no pieces.”

“Then how can it be a patch quilt?” I asked.

She stopped sewing and glared up at me. “Why do you always have to be so critical of me?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I guess I just don’t understand.”

“There’s a lot you don’t understand.” Her foot started again and she began to push and pull the fabric beneath the needle. “You think I don’t know.”

“I think you don’t know what?”

“I see the look in your eyes,” she said.

I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I felt pressed to make her feel right. “Is the quilt a gift for someone?” I asked.

She didn’t answer me, didn’t look up, kept sewing.

“It looks like it’s going to be beautiful.”

“Do you love him?”

“Who?”

“We don’t have children, John. Have you noticed that?”

“Some people don’t have children, Susie.”

“And I suppose I’m some people.” She stopped the treadle, but kept her focus on the needle. “Am I some people, John? Am I?”

The phone jarred me awake and I realized that someone had covered me with a blanket. Morgan had answered the phone in the kitchen and was now standing in the doorway of the study.

“The sheriff’s on the phone,” she said.

I nodded and picked up. “Bucky?”

“John, I’m calling to tell you that we found nothing in or around the Jeep that might help.”

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“I’m sorry about McCormack. He’s a hardass, but I’m told he’s good.”

“I hope so.” I looked out the window to see it was late afternoon and that a few flakes of snow were starting to fall. “What now?”

The sheriff was silent for a few awkward seconds. “We’re still out there looking. We’re radiating our search out into the desert from where we found the Jeep. We’re in the air as well.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “I’ll come out there and join in.”

“Why don’t you stay clear. We’ve got the area covered.”

“Okay.” I hung up.

I walked upstairs without going into the kitchen and seeing Morgan and Gus. I stood in the shower for a long time. I tried to slow my breathing, tried to clear my mind, tried to understand what was happening. I stared through the steam at the tiles of the shower wall until they didn’t make sense, until their color seemed unreal. I turned off the water, half dried, and then sat on the edge of the tub. The window was steamed up and I couldn’t see out, but I knew it was snowing hard. I felt it.

In the kitchen I found Gus and Morgan preparing dinner. Gus was kneading bread dough at the counter. Morgan was stirring something in a pot at the stove. I kissed her on her neck and looked over her shoulder.

“Smells good,” I said.

“What now?” she asked.

I looked at Zoe and Emily sleeping in the corner. “I don’t know.” I glanced out at the snow. “How cold is it out there?”

“It’s plenty cold,” Gus said. “And it’s getting colder.” He left the dough and wiped his hands on a towel.

“I’m going out to walk the barns,” I said. “Then I’m going to go out to look for David.”

“It’s dark out,” Morgan said. “You can’t see anything. Especially in this mess. How is getting yourself killed going to help David?”

I stood there, looking stupid.

“You need rest,” Morgan said.

“I can’t rest,” I said.

“You’re going in the morning and I’m going with you,” Gus said. He eyes looked weak, but his voice was strong.

“In this weather?”

“Yep. Morgan’s better with the horses and I don’t mind the cold and you need somebody to keep you awake.”

I glanced at Morgan. I could see that the two of them had already discussed the matter and I was stuck with their decision. “Okay, okay. I’ll go out and check on everybody.”

“When you come back, you’re eating,” Morgan said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said.

“Take the dogs with you,” Gus said.

I walked through the quiet of the snow and up and down the aisles of the barns a couple of times. The dogs stayed close. Zoe had always been able to tell when I was bothered by something. As we walked back to the big barn I watched the track the three-legged coyote left in the snow. Zoe made two continuous tracks, punctuated by deep impressions of her feet. The coyote left a similar pattern, but wherever she stopped, there was a place of undisturbed or barely disturbed snow under her left forepaw. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Perhaps I was trying to imagine anything to take my mind off David, but that gap, that space, that break in her track fascinated me because it was only there briefly and only while she was still there. Once she moved on, her rear foot stamped its impression where her front one had been.

I lay there that night, unable to sleep, but desperately needing rest. I was afraid to sleep, afraid to dream. I felt Morgan drift off beside me; her breathing was a restful rhythm to me. I put my hand on her hip, perhaps to be sure she was there. I watched the sky lighten. I got dressed and went downstairs. Gus was up and waiting for me, had coffee made. He looked better than I felt. He handed me a mug.

“Drink this,” he said. “I’m filling a couple of thermoses.”

“Thanks.”

“The snow has let up a lot. I’d say we got at least seven inches.”

“That’s not too bad.”

“How are you holding up?” Gus asked, studying my face.

I shrugged.

The phone rang and I jumped, answered it quickly. It was Howard.

“No, nothing,” I told him. “The sheriff and state police are out searching, dozens of them. They’ve got planes up.” There were probably not dozens of searchers, but they had had planes up. “I’m going out again myself right now.”

“Sylvia and I will be there tonight,” he said. “We’re flying into Denver and renting a car.”

“Rent something with four-wheel drive,” I said. “We’ve got snow.”

He was briefly silent, then, “Okay.”

“Call and let Morgan know when to expect you.”

I hung up. I was not happy he and his ex-wife were coming, but that was what they should do. I wrote a note for Morgan and left it on the table.

“Let’s go,” Gus said.

I pulled on my jacket, then went into my study and grabbed my rifle. We walked out through the snow to the truck. I took my fly rod from the behind the seat and tossed it into the drifted snow in the bed. I then, for the first time in my life, put a rifle in my rifle rack.

I tried to keep focus, but realized I was driving the highway without scouring it. I’d traveled that stretch many times already since David’s disappearance. I told Gus that since the sheriff was looking in the desert and generally west of town, we would search east, toward the reservation.

“Makes as much sense as anything,” Gus said.

“Keep your eyes open for a blue BMW.”

“Why?”

“A couple of rednecks. I’ve got a bad feeling about them.”

“That’s usually the way I feel about rednecks.”

“These assholes picked fights with both David and me and I saw them talking to David the other day.”

“You think?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I’m thinking everything right about now. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine.”

“You know, I appreciate privacy as much as the next guy and this might not be the best time, but how about telling me what’s going on?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Gus, you look sick. Your medicine keeps changing. You sleep a lot. Tell me something. I’ll find out at some point.”

“I’m seventy-nine years old,” he said.

“I know that.”

“And I’m pretty strong for seventy-nine.”

“You’re very strong for seventy-nine,” I said.

“I’ve got cancer.”

“Okay.” I can’t say that I was stunned by the news; I’d suspected as much. Still, hearing it was hard and I felt like I had been sucker-punched. I wanted to pull off the road, but I kept driving. We came around the big curve and the valley appeared before us. “What do we do about it?” I asked. “What kind of cancer? Just what are we dealing with?”

“It’s my pancreas,” he said.

I didn’t say anything.

“I’m dying, John.” I couldn’t bring myself to look at his eyes. I studied the road. “There’s not much to do about it,” he said. “But we can talk about this later.”

“Talk about it later?”

“What’s talking about it now going to accomplish?”

His point was well taken and I was left silent. As we rolled into town, I said, “I’m sorry, Gus.” I was sorry he was sick, but I was also sorry I had pressed him into the admission.

“Why sorry? I’m an old man. Old men die. I swear some people would whine if you hanged them with a new rope. I’m not one of those people.”

I glanced up through the windshield at the sky. “The snow’s stopped.”

We stopped at the diner for a couple of muffins. I saw the back of Duncan Camp’s head in the rear of the restaurant and left Gus to pay for the food. Camp was sitting with three men in a booth and I could hear them as I got closer.

“So, the whole sheriff’s department is out searching the desert for that cocksucker,” Camp said. “And I mean that literally.”

Another of the men caught sight of me and directed Camp’s attention behind him toward me. Camp was stunned to see me there and was trying to figure a way to backpedal. He rose and followed me as I walked away.

“John,” he said. “It ain’t like that.”

I turned to him. “What’s it like, Duncan?”

“I was just joshing with the boys, you know.” For the world, the man looked sorry.

I didn’t have it in me to be angry, even disappointed. Perhaps I simply was not surprised, and that was surprising in itself.

“Listen, Duncan, I figure I need to clear out before you start with the nigger jokes. I wouldn’t want to cramp your style.”

“That ain’t fair, John,” he said as I turned away.

I faced him again. “I’m sorry it isn’t fair, Duncan. That’s going to eat at me for the rest of the day.” I left him standing there and walked out telling Gus to come along as I passed.

I sat behind the wheel of the truck and threw my head back against the seat. I felt as if the whole world was upside-down.

“What’s wrong, nephew?” Gus asked.

“You know what I am?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“I’m that three-legged coyote.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I can’t recognize my own tracks until I stop moving.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

At the gas station, I asked the attendant if she had seen the blue BMW while I paid for gas.

“Those fools,” she said. She was a heavyset woman with hard, blue eyes. “They come in a lot.”

“Do you know them?”

She shook her head.

“So, you wouldn’t have any idea where they live?”

She took this the wrong way and her blue eyes became harder. “I said I don’t know them. How would I know where they live?”

“I didn’t mean anything,” I said. She softened immediately. “Maybe you could tell me which way they go after they gas up?”

“Sometimes east, sometimes west.”

I thanked her for her useless answer.

As I was leaving she said, “Of course, at the end of the day when they stop, they’re headed east.”

“Thank you.”

We drove over to the reservation on the back roads, finding nothing along the way. I used the pay phone in front of the tribal office building to call Morgan. She told me that Howard had called and said that he and Sylvia would be there at eight that night. Then I put a call into the sheriff’s office and learned there was nothing to know. I blew out a breath and looked up to see Daniel White Buffalo standing at the window of the truck talking to Gus.

“Anything we can do?” Daniel asked me.

“Yeah, why don’t you just shoot me now,” I said. “Have you seen the rednecks in the BMW?”

“You mean the neo-Nazi boys?” he said.

“That would be them,” I said.

“I see them around sometimes. They’re sons of bitches. Them and their asshole friend in the dually. I think he’s the one shot my cows.”

“Dually?”

“Big black one. Four-wheel Ford.”

“Any idea where they live?”

“Don’t know, don’t want to know.”

“I can understand that,” Gus said.

“Well, we’re going to keep on driving the roads,” I said.

“You should talk to Elvis Monday,” Daniel said. “He got into a fight with them guys. He said he was gonna shoot them. He might know where they are. He wants to shoot everybody. He’s like his mother.”

“Okay, Daniel.” I walked around and climbed into the truck.

“Where to?” Gus asked.

“Clara Monday’s.”

Elvis Monday was sitting in a chair on the porch of the modular home. He was smoking a brown cigarette. He watched as I climbed out of the truck, but didn’t rise. Gus stayed in his seat. He said he was tired.

“Elvis,” I greeted the man.

“Buffalo soldier,” he said.

I sat on the steps with him and looked back at my truck. “How is your mother?” I asked.

“She’s inside.”

“Is she doing okay?”

“She’s cooking. I hear your friend is missing.”

“He is. White Buffalo told me you had a fight with a couple of white guys in a BMW.”

“Assholes,” he said. “I was going to shoot them, but ammunition is too expensive, know what I mean? I had them all set up.” He aimed a pretend rifle into the yard.

“You know where they live?”

“I followed them. Assholes. All you have to do is open your nose and follow the ass smell.”

“Where?”

Elvis started to say something and then stopped. “You should go in and say hello to my mother.”

“I’ll be right back,” I said. I went to my truck, to Gus’s window. “Gus, open up the jockey box and hand me that pack of cigarettes.”

Gus opened the box. “What are you doing with cigarettes?” he asked.

“I just keep some for times like this. Old Clara is traditional. There’s a new towel in a plastic bag under your seat. Give that to me as well. You got any money?”

“I’ve got a twenty,” Gus said.

“Let me have it.”

He did. I took the towel, the cigarettes, and the bill and walked past Elvis into the house. Clara Monday looked as old as anyone I had ever seen, but she had looked that way for fifteen years. She was a skinny stick of wrinkled muscle wound up and ready to spring. She wasn’t cooking, but was sitting in front of a little black and white television. The picture was very clear. She was watching CSPAN.

“Hello, Clara. I brought you these,” I said.

She looked at the gifts and nodded, gestured for me to put them on the table. Then she nodded toward the chair beside her.

“Watching the government?” I asked.

“Their government,” she said. “They sure like to talk.”

“Your house is looking nice.”

“Thank you.”

“The president is a liar,” she said. “I say that because he doesn’t tell the truth. I could understand if he didn’t want to get caught, but he’s caught anyway. Why lie when the truth is in plain view?”

“That’s the way our government works,” I said.

“Do you still run cows?”

“No ma’am.”

“Too bad. Why not?”

“I don’t like cows. I just train horses now.”

She nodded.

“They get away with everything,” she said, nodding to the television again.

“I guess they do.”

“They just get away with it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“When you’re out there, tell Elvis the house is cold,” she said.

“I’ll tell him.” I stood and walked back out. Elvis was at the truck talking to Gus through the passenger window. He looked down and stepped back from the truck. He came around to my side as I climbed in behind the wheel. “Your mother needs some wood in the stove,” I told him.

“Okay. I must do that,” Elvis said. “The assholes are squatting in the old cabin up in Mouse Canyon. Not far from the creek.”

“Thank you, Elvis.” As we rolled away I looked over at Gus. “What was that all about?”

“What was what all about?”

“What were you two talking over?”

“Just talking.”