Doug Allyn: Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, No. 5. Whole No. 819, November 2009

“Damn. That’s good hooch.”

“Ought to be. Made it myself.”

Roy handed the bottle back to his friend and watched as the Inuit took two long swallows straight. “They ever find out it was you with me on that week-long rampage out on Axton’s range?” he asked.

“No, man, they didn’t even look for me,” Tootega said. “It was you they wanted.”

“Well,” Roy said quietly, “they sure enough got me.”

“We’ll do better next time, man.”

“Won’t be no next time, Toot.” Roy looked down at his bulky prison-release shoes. “Since I was sixteen, I been locked up all but about two months. But this last stretch done it, Toot. I can’t take no more of the pen. Being in there is like being half dead. It ain’t worth it.” For the first time now, Roy noticed that his friend was wearing an unlined windbreaker and that the knees of his jeans were threadbare. Tootega clearly was down on his luck. But Roy could not allow that to change his mind. “I’m sorry, man. I guess you been counting on us getting some skins money.”

“Yeah, I have,” Tootega admitted. He forced a smile. “But, hey, don’t let it worry you. I’ll get along. It’s no big deal. Forget it.”

In the reformatory, they had been like brothers, but at that moment they could not let their eyes meet. The silence between them was like a scream without noise.

“Listen, I got to go, man. I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tootega said as Roy hurried away.

Joe Kell heard the phone at the other end of the line ring four times, then his wife, Doris, said, “Hello—”

“Hey, it’s me. I got a job, honey.”

There was a hollow silence on the long-distance line, as if there was a tunnel between them.

“Doris? You there, honey?”

“I’m here, Joe.” Her voice was flat, without feeling. “Where are you?”

“In a little motel in Farley, Alaska. I got a job, Doris.”

“Why’d you leave the rehab center, Joe?” she asked, ignoring news of the job.

“Because I was cured, honey,” he replied cheerfully. “No need to stay in rehab after I’m cured. I’m off the bottle, Doris. For good.”

“What kind of job have you got?” she asked at last.

“Range warden. For a big hunting-expedition company up in Nome. Some young kid been poaching game. I get twenty thousand soon’s I catch him.”

Catch him? It was a rogue thought in the back of his mind. That wasn’t what he’d been hired to do. Not just catch him.

Kell pushed the troublesome thought out of his mind, “Shouldn’t take me more’n a couple weeks, then I’m coming home. Sure be glad to get back to that Arizona sunshine. Hey, we’ll have us a high ol’ Christmas this year!”

“There’s lots of bills need paying first,” Doris said. “I’ve been paying some of them myself. I’ve got a job now, Joe.”

“A job?” Doris had never worked a day in her life. “Doing what? Where at?”

“Well, I’m working for Henry Edwards. In his office.”

Kell frowned. Henry Edwards was their insurance agent. A couple of times when he’d been at their trailer home, Joe had noticed him glancing furtively at his wife’s ample bosom.

“I had to do something, Joe,” Doris said defensively. “Creditors was coming around every day. Henry — Mr. Edwards — worked out a payment plan with all of them so they wouldn’t pester me anymore. And he gave me a job. He’s been very nice, very helpful.”

Bet he has, Kell thought.

“As for you being off the bottle, I’m happy for you, Joe. I just hope you stay off this time. But as for you coming home, I’ll be honest with you, Joe, I’d have to think about that. There’s lots of bad memories these past few years.”

“I see.” Kell felt his jaw tighten. “Well, where does that leave me, Doris?”

“You call me in a few days, Joe. Let me think on this. I really want us to be friends, no matter what.”

Those last words were like a kick in the stomach to him. “Okay, I’ll do that, Doris. I’ll call you from wherever I am in a few days.”

“All right then, Joe. Goodbye.”

After he hung up, Joe Kell thought it was a good thing there wasn’t a bottle handy.

Roy Sand was hiking along packed snow toward the ranch house his brother Roger rented when his two nieces came running out to meet him. Roy stared at them, happily incredulous. Emily was sixteen now, Edith fourteen. They had been just little kids when he was sent up the last time; now they were young girls, both obviously developing under the sweaters and jeans they wore.

“I can’t hardly believe you two,” Roy said as they kissed him, hugged him, and hung all over him. “You’re both so tall.” He hadn’t seen them in four years; Darlene, Roger’s wife, refused to let Roger take the girls to visit him in prison. “I won’t have my daughters being gawked at by a visiting room full of convicts,” she had declared.

On the way to the house, each of them clinging to one of his arms, the girls were full of questions.

“How was prison this time, Uncle Roy?”

“Not too bad,” he lied. “Guess I’m getting better at it.”

“Did you get thrown in the hole this time?”

“Once,” he admitted. “Fighting on the yard. Other guy started it.”

Darlene was waiting on the porch. She was heavier in the hips, had a double chin starting, and her eyes had not grown any softer. She did not smile. She never smiled at Roy.

“Hello, Roy.”

“Darlene.” Nodding, he awkwardly kissed her on the cheek, mostly for the benefit of his nieces. Looking past her shoulder, he saw in the doorway behind her his only nephew, Danny, who was ten and autistic. “Hey, pardner,” Roy said happily, stepping past the boy’s mother and sitting down on his heels in front of him. “You ‘member your Uncle Roy?”

The boy stared at him, wholly disinterested, then turned and walked away.

“He’s like that with most ever’body,” Darlene said.

Roy stood. “Where’s Rog?”

“Shutting up the milking sheds for the night.”

Roy turned to Emily. “Get my box of things, will you, honey?”

Danny was standing in front of the family’s J. C. Penney stereo, seemingly entranced by the music that was playing. “It’s the only thing in the world he cares about,” Darlene said. “He’ll stand for hours like that.”

“Before he discovered music,” Edith said, “the only fun he got out of life was beating his head against the wall.”

Darlene threw her younger daughter an irritated look. “There’s a school for autistic children in Anchorage now. It’s called the Markinson Institute. We took him down there last spring for what they call an evaluation. Did Roger tell you about it?”

“No.” Roger’s visits every month or so had been awkward at best. Roy and his older brother were eight years apart in age, and a million light years in disposition. Roger was even-tempered, Roy a hothead; Roger, with a family, had to look to the future, Roy could not forget the past; Roger followed every rule, every law, to the letter, but Roy had some dark inner compulsion to examine everything for fairness. The brothers loved each other, but no longer understood, or even tried to understand, what lay behind their differences.

“The Markinson Institute said Danny could be helped,” Darlene continued. Emily returned to the room with a large cardboard box. “Em, you explain it.”

“Danny has what they call ‘infantile autism,’” the older daughter told her uncle clinically.

“His sensory perception is distorted. That causes difficulties in his speech, learning, and behavior patterns. Markinson Institute employs a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a neurologist, a speech therapist, and a staff of trained behavioral counselors. It takes children from all over Alaska, even some from Canada, and teaches them on an individual basis how to utilize their distorted perceptions. With Danny, they would begin by teaching him music. The Markinson evaluation said that he could probably become an accomplished pianist in a matter of weeks.”