Craig Johnson: Cold Dish

“I guess it doesn’t make much difference, does it?”

“Not now.” Her finger twitched on the trigger. “Walter, I need you to not look at me…”

“Vonnie, don’t do it.” There was a long pause.

I froze the image of her then, with her head turned just slightly in the light of the dim, forty-watt bulb, the angle of her head accenting the fine bone structure of her jaw and the strong muscle tone of her throat. It might have been the night I saw her at the bar, the morning with the pancakes, our one date, on the street that day, angry at the hospital, or now.

She said it like it was a statement about the weather. “I love you.”

It was my turn to look away, just as she knew I would. My breath was short, and my voice refused to cooperate and burned in my throat. For a split second I studied one of the saddles, the worn appearance of the horns and curled surfaces of the rosettes where the touch of human and horse had at first softened the leather but where the man had left it to stiffen and dry. The dust on this particular saddle had been brushed as she had passed, probably by one of the sleeves that were tied at her waist. The leather surface underneath had held a warm glow that promised romance and freedom, and you could almost feel the gathering of equine muscles as they reached out and grasped the rotation of the earth.

I looked closer at a small spot on the cantle and at a singular drop of blood that had landed there. Blood drops at a uniform volume of. 05 milliliters and in a tiny ball. Upon striking a surface, the blood leaves a pattern that will be dependant on the type of surface it falls upon. Splatters. On the smooth leather of the saddle, the drop had remained relatively intact with only one scalloped droplet having escaped at eighty degrees and perpendicular in direction.

I’m sure the blast in the little room was deafening, but I didn’t hear it.

I didn’t go into work the next day, or the day after that, or even the week after that. I’ve been drinking a lot, not with a conscious effort but more as a pastime. It’s a nicer place to drink, since Red Road Contracting finished up. I don’t think I drove them off, but maybe I did. There’s still a lot to do in the cabin; I think I was making them nervous.

The new deck is my favorite part. It’s about as big as the house and goes out the back door toward the hills. There’s an opening in the middle where they said I could plant a tree in the spring, but for now it’s where I toss the empty beer cans. It’s an easy shot from the lawn chair, which I placed against the log wall of the house, and my sheepskin coat keeps me warm enough. The cooler is right beside the chair, so I don’t have to get up much. Sometimes, at night, the beer freezes, but I just wait for it to thaw the next morning.

Periodically, vehicles come up the driveway; some of them are official and some of them aren’t. The DCI Suburban was one of the official ones, and they brought the Bullet back sans bullet holes. They left the keys on the counter, and she sits out there pawing the ground, waiting. I guess Ferg got a new truck. Vic came by once, but now she just calls and talks to the phone machine. I’ve developed a tactic for dealing with these drive-by visits. No matter what time of day it is or what I might be doing, whenever I hear somebody coming up the driveway, I just step off the deck and start walking toward the hills. In a couple of minutes, I can be in those hills. Sometimes I walk; sometimes I just pick out a rock and sit. Nobody stays very long, but I lose track of time out there, and sometimes I remember coming out when it’s still light, only to look around and find that it’s dark. Sometimes, it’s the other way around, and I get to watch the sun come up.

People leave food, but nobody ever leaves beer so, every once in a while, I have to make the run into the outskirts of Durant to buy it at the Texaco station near the highway. I haven’t shaved in a while, so the kid that works there doesn’t know me, or pretends that he doesn’t.

I have a friend that showed up after a few days. One morning when I woke up in the lawn chair, he was lying out at the end of the back pasture, just at the sage. He didn’t make any move to come in closer but just sat out there all day watching me. He would circle around the house, only to return to the sage after a while. I didn’t think he meant any harm; like me he just didn’t choose to go anywhere else. The next trip into the Texaco station, I bought dog food and left it in a bowl at the edge of the deck, along with water. Every morning it was gone and, after a few days, he slept there, as long as I didn’t move much, which was okay, because I wasn’t moving much these days. He had lost a little weight since escaping from Vonnie’s mudroom, and Vic mentioned in one of her telephone reports that the Game and Fish guys had had quite a rodeo when he ran off.

One day, Henry’s truck came up the drive and, as I started my usual retreat to the back forty, the dog ambled along after me. When I sat on one of my favorite rocks, he came over and sat down not too far away, and we waited for Henry to leave the house together. I reached over and rubbed my hand across the dog’s big head, and he looked up at me. He had sad eyes, and it was as if he had had enough, too. As I petted him, he leaned on my leg. He really was a big brute, with a shoulder spread as wide as the trunk of my body. The hair was curly on his back with all kinds of reddish swirls and swoops. It looked like a bad toupee.

Cady called, but I knew her schedule and would call back and leave vague messages with her secretary while she was either in the law library, taking depositions, or doing whatever lawyers do when their secretaries answer the phone. It was odd to think of my daughter with a secretary, so I just kind of thought of Patti with an i as a babysitter who talked with a funny, South Philadelphia accent.

Vic called at about five-thirty at the end of each day with a report of ongoing concerns. “Hello, shithead. This is the person who’s doing your job for you as you lay out there and grow increasingly fat and stupid in your nest of depression and self-pity…” The messages always started that way.

“We had a drive-by egging on the middle school, which leads me to believe there may have been an accomplice…” I nodded. Sound detective work.

“Vandalism was reported at the old stockyard. Reporting person said someone had moved his irrigation system twice in the last month, and this time the irrigation wheel-line assembly was broken. The attending officer questioned reporting person as to what the fuck he was doing irrigating in November? Answer, came there none…” I nodded some more.

“There was an official protest made as to the language used by said attending officer that was deemed profane and inconsiderate of the station and age of the reporting person, shortly after the irrigation incident…” I shrugged. It was to be expected.

“The officer is currently available for any and all comment…” I bet.

“Caller requested an officer to go tell her neighbor to turn his radio down. Caller would not give her name, and said she did not know her neighbor’s name. The attending officer did find a handsome, young dentist working on a car stereo in his Land Rover. It was NPR out of Montana, and the attending officer informed the dentist that he could go ahead and listen to whatever he damn well pleased as loud as he damn well pleased and to not pay any attention to the witch next door

…” I knew Bessie Peterson, and this was far from over.

“Further complaints of noise were duly noted…” Um-hmm…

“Jim Keller returned from his hunting trip, and rumor has it he and the Mrs. are going to be going their separate ways. Personally, I think it’s the best thing that could happen to Bryan.”