Craig Johnson: The Dark Horse

I took a deep breath and started to rise. “Well, we’ll get out of your way…”

“No, no.” He looked genuinely panicked and motioned for me to stay seated. “I don’t get too many visitors, and sometimes I forget how to behave.”

We were both silent, then I apologized. “I’m afraid I didn’t bring any beer.”

He continued to smoke and then smiled with more than a few teeth missing. “ ’At’s all right, I did.”

October 19: eight days earlier, night.

I had been seated at my desk alone, having sent Vic home to grab a shower before she pulled the all-nighter.

I opened the windows in my office and had just leaned back in my chair to enjoy the unseasonably soft breeze when I heard Dog get up from beside my desk and thump his oversized paws to the door. The beast paused in the hall but continued on toward the holding cells. Since I had adopted Dog, he’d almost never left my side, unless it was for Ruby, and I knew she was home and in bed, so I got up to follow his trail when I heard a low, steady noise.

I flipped on the kitchenette light. It didn’t give the flat, antiseptic quality that the fluorescent overheads did and wouldn’t disturb Mary too badly if she was only crying in her sleep.

She was crying but was not on the bunk; she was standing by the bars with her head down. She paid no attention to me or to Dog, who was looking up at her. I took off my hat and stepped forward; there was a lone streetlight across the road that illuminated the sidewalk in front of Durant Elementary, and its light spilled from the windowsill and splashed against the side of her light-colored hair. She was still crying very softly, and I turned to look at her as her shoulders twitched and her voice echoed against the concrete floor in a low moan.

She had a maiden name, but it wasn’t on the two-page report. “Mrs. Barsad…”

I knew that people made noises in jail, whether they were conscious of it or not. Angry sounds, boisterous sounds, sad sounds-some even sang-but as she continued, I could hear it was the wounded sound, the one that caused the stillness in my hands and the cooling in my face.

The one I couldn’t stand.

“Mrs. Barsad?”

She wailed softly, and I could feel that she was in a place that I could never reach. I felt it in me, and it clawed its way up the inside of my spine. I knew that it would come out of my mouth like a regurgitation of emotion, if I let it.

I thought about the missing lovers and the dead parents, the friends and strangers that I had seen behind closed doors and closed eyelids. I had lost people too and had grown used to those surprise visits of the mind that froze my thoughts and my heart.

I stood there, staring down at her, until I became aware of the welling in my own eyes. “Mrs. Barsad?”

She had paused for a second as she’d inhaled. I barely made out the words that she repeated over and over, and over and over: “So-o-o girl, no… Oh, God… So-o-o girl…”

October 27, 9:05 P.M.

Hershel handed me one of the tepid beers he’d retrieved from the spot in the river that he used as a refrigerator as he sat with his back against the post. “There ain’t a pit in hell deep enough and dark enough for that son-of-a-bitch.”

I threw a couple more logs into the fireplace and dusted off my hands on my jeans before taking the beer. Dog lay down between us as a conciliatory gesture to the old cowhand, even going so far as to allow Hershel to pet his broad back.

“Dante reserved the lowest rings of hell for the betrayers.” I popped open the can and took a swig. “Rainier.”

He looked at the fire. “Now, don’t make fun of my beer.”

“Mountain fresh, my favorite. Really.” He nodded without comment, and I took a moment to study the Henry repeater leaning behind his shoulder. “Is that a real Henry?”

“Yes, it is.” He smiled. “I found that gun back in the rocks up on Twentymile Butte at the Battlement.”

“Can I see it?”

He continued to study me. “I don’t know you that well, and my fortune is in this rifle.”

I glanced at the fire. “You got a lot of fortunes.”

“Used to.”

I nodded and looked out toward the river. “Did you know Wade Barsad well?”

He sipped his beer with the cigarette still in the corner of his mouth and then let the can dangle as he supported his wrist on his bent knee. “Enough to not cross the street to piss on ’em if his guts was on fire.”

I took another sip and thought about how much he sounded like my old boss, Lucian Connally; they would’ve been close to the same age. “Did you work for Barsad long?”

He sighed. “ ’Bout four of the longest years of my life.” He reached down and stroked Dog’s thick fur. “He didn’t like animals, and I don’t trust people that don’t like animals. Hell, animals are the finest people I know.” As if on cue, Dog rolled over and laid his head on the edge of the patio. The cowpoke smiled and talked to the nearest animal while rubbing the beast’s belly. “You like to scare the shit out of me, you monster. I thought you was gonna eat me alive.”

“Where was he from?”

“Youngstown, Ohio. Ever been there?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Me neither, but they must breed some true-to-life sons-a-bitches and that’s good enough reason for me to never go.” He took another long draught of his beer. “Made all his money in some steel mill, stole it probably.” His eyes were drawn to the river and the star-dappled sky. “Always talkin’ about how he hated all this cowboy shit.”

I set the insurance binder on the hearth and leaned forward, my elbows on my knees. “He hated animals, and he hated the West? That kind of strikes me as odd for a fella who buys a ranch in Wyoming.”

He looked at me pointedly. “Hers.”

I nodded. “Seems like an odd couple. Where’d they meet?”

“Some cuttin’ event down in Las Vegas; he liked Las Vegas.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, belching softly at the end. “He was a handsome booger and smart. Don’t get me wrong, he had a boatload of cash and he could turn the charm on like a bug light whenever needed.”

“Why’d she do it?”

His hand stopped on Dog, and he looked out into the darkness. “I don’t think she did, but if she did, she come to it righteous.” He stayed motionless, and I got the impression that the Powder River and the high plains sky was not what he was seeing. “I knew a couple once, up near Recluse; fella was out irrigatin’ and come in for his supper and said somethin’ about his wife’s biscuits. She pulled an old long gun off the wall…” He gestured to the big carbine in his lap. “.. not unlike this one, and splattered his brains all over the dinner table.” It was silent for a moment. “She’d had enough and, brother, believe-you-me, Mary Barsad had had enough.”

“Were you here the night it happened?”

He motioned with the stubble on his chin toward the hills to our right. “My trailer, back at the loading chutes. Saw the reflection of the fire in the window and heard the horses a screamin’ and come runnin’, but it was too late.”

I nodded. “Was there lightning that night?”

He begrudged the answer. “Yep.”

“The fire from the barn caught the house?”

“Yep.”

“Where is the barn?”

“Opposite side from where you parked your car.”

“You go in?”

He looked at me incredulously. “There wasn’t no goin’ in there.”

“Where was she?”

I glanced back at the blackened and cavernous rubble.

This time he motioned with the beer can and the cigarette. “Out there in the grass, with that varmint rifle across her lap.” He took the last puff off the cigarette, stubbed it out on the ground beside the patio, and then stuffed the butt into his shirt pocket. Evidently, Hershel Vanskike was a respectful man, of what I wasn’t quite sure, but I had suspicions. “Her head was down, and it was almost like she was asleep. I touched her shoulder and she looked up at me and said that the horses were dead and that she’d killed him.”