Steven Havill - Privileged to Kill

I waited patiently until he had settled into the seat.

“I haven’t had any breakfast yet,” I said. “How about you?”

He waved a hand. “Oh, now, they gave me a little something.”

“I bet they did,” I chuckled. “Let’s go get something decent. You think you can hobble into the restaurant?”

“I should think so,” he said, “but really, don’t go out of your way on my account.”

“Don’t worry. You’re going to pay for it this time,” I said, and pulled 310 out of its parking slot. Wes Crocker apparently didn’t know what to say in reply, and I noticed that he rubbed his jaw with that nervous tic so many of us use when our brains are racing pell-mell trying to puzzle out an answer.

***

There was something about a good breakfast that always brought out the best in me. I could cheerfully skip any other meal of the day or night-and frequently did. The time to make up for those omissions was over a breakfast burrito as only the Don Juan de Oñate could serve it. I ordered two, and the platter must have weighed four pounds when it came.

The aroma of the fresh green chili cleared my head. Even the ringing in my ears settled down a decibel.

Crocker and I ate in silence for a few minutes until the worst of the wolves were at bay.

“How do you make out on your travels?” I asked, resting my fork for a while.

“Well, now,” Crocker said, and wiped his lips, “the good Lord has seen fit to bless me with my health, so…” He shrugged.

“That’s not what I meant.” I reached over with a fork and indicated a sausage link that he had pushed to one side. “You going to eat that?”

“You just go ahead,” he said and started to lift his plate.

I speared the tidbit and wrapped it in the tail end of the burrito’s blanket where the stuffing had ended. “A man’s got to eat. And food costs quite a bit of money these days. What do you do, work a few days here and there to pay for things?”

Crocker ducked his head and frowned as if he were expecting a broadside from his sister.

“I’m just curious about the logistics of life on the road, is all,” I added. Shari arrived with the coffeepot and we both waited until she left. “I mean, you’re obviously fit. You’re not starving.”

“Well,” Crocker said slowly, “I take work now and then, but say, I don’t do it for the money. No.” He shook his head. “That just don’t appeal.”

“What about when you worked for Tom Lawton? What made you decide to stay on there and work?”

“The wagon place? Well, now, that’s an easy one, sir. You see, I stopped at this little café in Button-that’s Button, Utah-just down the road from where his place is. And there on the bulletin board on the wall behind the cash register they had one of his flyers tacked up. I read it, and I got to thinking about a man who’d make a living today working on something that hasn’t seen regular use for a half a century.”

“And so you rode out to his place.”

“I did that. Yes, sir. And the good Lord provides. He was working on his tractor when I rode up, and I could see his new fence, just about half finished. So I figured”-Crocker paused and sipped his coffee-“so I figured that this man, this Thomas Lawton, could tell me just about everything a man would ever want to know about wagons and such.”

“And that took three days?”

“Well, I didn’t see no reason to head on out until that fence was just the way he wanted it. We talked about wagon trains, and freight wagons, and buckboards, and buggies-” He waved his hand at the wonder of it all. “It’s interesting to know just what kind of hardware moved things along, don’t you know.”

“You haven’t worked since leaving Lawton’s place?”

Crocker pursed his lips and thought a minute. I knew it wasn’t a hesitation to refresh his memory. “No, sir. See,” and he leaned forward against the table, his coffee cup between his rough hands. “I get a little something every month from the government. It ain’t much. Tied in with my days in the military. But it’s all I need.” He grinned. “I don’t go in much for buying souvenirs. You’d be surprised how far two hundred bucks will take you when you don’t spend much of it.”

“I can imagine,” I said, and almost added, Especially when you panhandle a few meals along the way. “How does the government get the money to you, if you don’t have a permanent address?”

“Well, now, that’s one thing my sister will do, bless her heart. Every now and again, I send her an address where I’ll be for a few days. Then she up and sends along whatever money’s come in. Every two, three months, maybe.”

“What are you going to do for a new bike?”

Crocker grimaced. “I ain’t thought that one through yet,” he said. “Got to find a used one somewheres.” He shook his head. “I sure hated to see the last one go. My, that was a brute of a machine. Would have lasted another century.”

I leaned back to give the burritos room to settle. “Do you make plans for where you’re going to travel, or do you just make up your mind each morning?”

“Oh, I get notions.”

“Notions?”

Crocker smiled and looked down at his coffee cup. “They don’t always work out just the way I’d plan ’em, but say, it’s all been interesting.”

“For instance.”

“Well…it isn’t the sort of thing to bore another man with, but there’ve been times.” He grinned again. “Like last summer. I got a bee in the bonnet to see Death Valley. You know, in California? I’d been reading this magazine that I got in a little town outside of Yosemite. It had a story in it about a wagon train getting stuck out in Death Valley in the middle of summer time. And I got to wondering just what that might have been like.”

“And so you rode your bike down into Death Valley?”

He nodded. “I rode into Stovepipe Wells on June 30. It was so bright out I was near to blind, and so hot that my bike tires sounded like they were rolling through molasses. Folks thought I was crazy, needless to say.”

“Needless to say they were right. Your sister also mentioned something about you getting stuck in a blizzard in the Dakotas.”

Crocker’s grin turned electric. “That’s about the only time I ever thought that maybe I’d made me a big mistake. See,” and he leaned forward again, “I just got done reading this book about the pioneers and how they managed to survive through some of those north country winters. Now me, I’m from down this way, and the only time I ever saw the North was in the finer times of the year. So…” He leaned back and shrugged. “I rode into Bismarck, North Dakota, on December 23. I’d had me a fair enough trip, comin’ up from the south. Hit a little storm in Kansas, and another one right at the Nebraska-South Dakota line, but neither one didn’t amount to much. I kind of got to thinking that all the stories were just that…stories. Well, I figured to take one of the back roads north out of Bismarck and visit old Fort Mandan. You ever been there?”

I shook my head.

“Well, it’s kind of along the Missouri River, there, just east of Washburn a hair. I got me about fifteen miles out of Bismarck, and I tell you what. That old wind commenced to rage down from Canada, and those big old storm clouds lowered right down on the prairie”-he smacked the table with one hand-“and snow pellets about the size of golf balls start shooting right down the road, right into my face. Let me tell you, I got to know real quick why some of them settlers never made it where they was going.”

“But you obviously did.”

“Well, it’s ranching country. I found me a barn and snugged down on the lee side, between a big old combine and an old semitrailer. Long as a man’s got something to break the wind, it’s not so bad. So I sat there, listening to that storm and watching that snow snake and curl around the buildings. It got dark, and the only thing I could see was the vapor light right by the barn. Watching that blizzard dance around that light was about all the entertainment I had for the better part of twelve hours.”