Craig Johnson: The Dark Horse

October 27, 11 A.M.

It was the third week of a high-plains October, and an unseasonably extended summer had baked the color from the landscape and had turned the rusted girders of the old bridge a thinned-out, tired brown.

I topped the hill and pulled the gunmetal Lincoln Town Car alongside the Pratt truss structure. There weren’t very many of them in the Powder River country, and the few bridges that were left were being auctioned off to private owners for use on their ranches. I had grown up with these old camelback bridges and was sorry to see the last of them go.

My eyes were pulled to the town balanced on the banks of the anemic river and pressed hard against the scoria hills like the singing blade of a sharp knife. The water, the land, and the bridge were sepia-toned, depleted.

I told Dog to stay in the backseat and got out of the car, slipped on my hat and an aged, burnished-brown horsehide jacket, and walked across the dirt lot. I studied the dusty, wide-planked surface of the bridge and, between the cracks, the few reflecting slivers of the Powder River below. The Wyoming Department of Transportation had condemned and, in turn, posted the bridge with bright yellow signs-it was to be removed next week. I could see the abutments that they had constructed off to the right on which the new bridge would soon rest.

A Range Telephone Cooperative trailer sat by a power pole holding a junction box and a blue plastic service phone that gently tapped against the creosote-soaked wood like a forgotten telegraph, receiving no answer.

“You lost?”

I turned and looked at the old rancher who’d pulled up behind me in an antiquated ’55 GMC, the kind that has grill-work frozen in a perpetual sneer. The big truck was overladen with hay. I tipped my new hat back and gazed at him. “Nope, just looking around.”

He kicked at the accelerator and eased the Jimmy into a lopsided idle as he glanced at Dog, my late-model car, and the Montana plates. “You workin’ methane?”

“Nope.”

He squinted at me to let me know he wasn’t sure if I was telling the truth, his eyes green as the algae that grows on the tops of horse troughs. “We get a lot of them gas and oil people out here, buying up people’s mineral rights.” He studied me, sizing me up by my new black hat, boots, and freshly pressed blue jeans. “Easy to get lost on these roads.”

“I’m not lost.” I looked at his load, at the sun-dried, tiny blue flowers intermixed with the hay and the orange and cobalt twine that indicated it was weed-free; idiot cubes, as we used to call the seventy-pound bales. I stepped in closer and put a hand on the hay, rich with alfalfa. “Certified. You must have a pretty good stretch of bottom land around here somewhere.”

“Good enough, but with the drought, this country’s so dry you have to prime a man before he can spit.” As if to emphasize his point, he spat a stream through the rust holes in the floorboard of the truck and onto the road, the spittle approaching the same tint as the river.

I nodded as I glanced down at the stained pea gravel. “A buddy of mine says that these small bales are what broke up the family ranches.” I looked back up at the cargo-two and a half tons at least. “You buck a couple thousand of these in August and your mind starts to wander; wonder as to what the heck else you could be doing for a living.”

His eyes clinched my words. “You ranch?”

“Nope, but I grew up on one.”

“Where ’bouts?”

I smiled, stuffing my hands in the pockets of my jeans, glanced at his rust-orange, heavily loaded flatbed, and then at the dilapidated structure that spanned the distance between here-and there. “You gonna drive this truck across that bridge?”

He spat into the dirt again, this time near my boots, and then wiped his mouth on the back of his snap-buttoned cuff. “Been drivin’ the car-bridge for sixty-three years; don’t see no reason to stop.”

Car-bridge; I hadn’t heard that one in a while. I glanced back at the yellow WYDOT signs and the decrepit condition of the doomed structure. “Looks like you’re not going to have much choice as of next week.”

He nodded and ran a hand over his patent-leather face. “Yeah, I reckon they got more money down there in Cheyenne than they know what to do with.” He waited a moment before speaking again. “The state highway is about four miles back up the road.”

“I told you, I’m not lost.”

I could feel him watching me; I’m sure he was looking at the scar above my eye, the one on my neck, that little part of my ear that was missing, my hands, and most importantly, trying to get a read on the insouciance that goes along with a quarter of a century spent with a star pinned to my chest. I nodded, glancing back across the bridge before he had a chance to study me longer. “Is that a town, down there?”

“Sort of.” He snorted a laugh. “Halfway between woebegone and far away.” He continued to study me as I watched the dust drifting across the warped and swirled surface of the dried-out planks. “Used to be called Suggs, but when the Burlington and Missouri came through they decided that it ought to have an upstanding, proper, biblical name.”

I continued to look at the town. “And what’s that?”

“Absalom.”

I laughed and thought that one of those railroad engineers must have had a pretty good sense of humor or been from Mississippi. But then it occurred to me that Faulkner hadn’t been walking, let alone writing, when the railroads came through here.

He continued to look at me through the collection of wrinkles that road-mapped his eyes. “Something funny?”

I nodded. “Do you read the Bible, Mr…?”

“Niall, Mike Niall.” I noticed he didn’t extend his hand. “Not since my mother used to make me. And there ain’t nobody that makes me do much of anything in about seventy years.”

Seven years longer than he’d been driving the car-bridge, I figured. “You should read it, Mr. Niall, if for no other reason than that historical reference. Absalom was King David’s son-the cursed one who turned against him.”

I started back toward the rental car, and there was a pause before he spoke again. “I wouldn’t go down there if I was you; it’s not a friendly place.”

I opened the door of the Lincoln, tossed my 10X onto the passenger seat, and looked back at him from over the top, and especially at the. 30–30 carbine in the truck’s rifle rack behind his head. “That’s all right; I’m not looking for friends.”

I started to climb into the driver’s seat but stopped when he called out to me again. “Hey youngster, I didn’t catch your name.”

I paused for only a second, continuing to look down the valley at the small town. “I didn’t throw it.”

I drove off the pavement to the edge of a dirt street alongside the railroad tracks and pulled the rental under the shade of an abandoned mill that read BEST OUT WEST, but maybe not so much anymore. It was true that they had changed the name of Suggs to Absalom in an attempt to elevate the town and pull it from a dubious past, but I couldn’t help feeling that whatever its name, it had been surviving on borrowed time and the bill had come due. I left the windows down just a bit for Dog and got out across from the only obvious commercial establishment in the town.

The AR had been The BAR at some point in its past, but poor carpentry and the ever-prevalent wind had changed its name; that, or the B had decided to move on to a better hive. There were a few used-up motel rooms connected to the building on one side with a few unconnected cabins on the other, the entirety attached by an overhang that marginally protected the wooden walkway.