Craig Johnson - Divorce Horse

Cady glowed. “Thanks.”

The owner/operator glanced at the three cowboys, whom I recognized as the wranglers from Paradise Guest Ranch, and one raised his coffee mug as the other two smiled at us. “I better go refill the Wild Bunch over there.” She placed her fists on her hips. “You folks need anything else?”

Cady volunteered. “I might switch over to coffee, when you get the chance.”

Dorothy winked and disappeared.

Cady began nibbling at a forkful of cottage cheese but stopped just long enough to give the Bear and me a warning look. “Don’t say it.” She caught another curd on the end of her fork and then used it like a baton to get my attention. “I still don’t believe that women ask more about personal issues than men. I mean, maybe men hide the question more, but it’s there.”

Henry said nothing, so I spoke for the two of us. “Okay.”

She ate the bit of food but continued to watch us. “But the two of you do.”

From all my years in law enforcement I knew that the only thing that happened more than not getting to eat was having your meals interrupted and abandoned. Making good progress on my sandwich, I looked at Henry, and we both turned and answered her in unison. “Yep.”

Buck Owens swung into “Before You Go,” and Cady sang along in her fine voice in a pretty good imitation; I was starting to think we had a soundtrack on our hands. She suddenly stopped, looked at the two of us, and I knew we were in trouble. “How about a bet, a sporting wager.” She continued before I could say no. “For every woman that asks either one of us about our relationships or every man that doesn’t, you two get a point. For every woman that doesn’t ask us about our relationships or every man that does, I get a point.”

Knowing my daughter’s level of competition in all things, I knew this was a bad idea, and said so.

“Come on, Daddy. It’ll be fun.”

Henry leaned over and gave her the horse-eye, up close and personal. “One to nothing then.”

She glanced at Dorothy, pouring her a cup of coffee behind the counter, and then back to the Bear. “We hadn’t started yet.”

I was shaking my head when the walkie-talkie on my hip chattered to life.

Static. “Unit one, this is base.”

I slumped in my seat, dropped my sandwich in dramatic fashion, and sat there for a moment.

Static. “Walt?”

Cady, who could never resist pushing buttons, plucked the device from my duty belt and keyed the mic. “Yo.”

Static. “Cady?”

I took the radio from her. “It’s after five; go home.”

Static. “Tommy Jefferson says one of his horses has been stolen out at the rodeo grounds.”

I gazed at my half-eaten meal and sighed. “Not the divorce horse again?”

Static. “Of course.”

The much-storied case of the divorce horse was the kind of tale familiar to most rural sheriffs, involving the kind of disputes you got involved in even though it really had nothing much to do with law enforcement. The world-class Indian relay racer Tommy Jefferson and his ex-wife Lisa Andrews were Cady’s age. Tommy was a New Grass from Crow Agency, Montana, who had lived with an aunt in Durant so that he could go to the high school here, and Lisa was a blond whirlwind of a barrel racer. Their romance had been epic; seven years later, their divorce was a long and familiar story. Tommy had had a bad habit of loitering at equine sales and was already a frustrated horse trader before their marriage, but it only got worse as he and Lisa joined incomes-and as he intensified his use of diet pills in an attempt to keep his racing weight down and his energy level up. It had gotten so bad that Lisa began to think that Tommy was more addicted to horses and amphetamines than to her.

When he brought home a vicious, Roman-nosed, cloudy-eyed little sorrel the color of store-bought whiskey that had a propensity to wander and bite and that took all his time, effort, and attention, Lisa had had enough, and their separation and divorce had become a pitched battle. The train wreck that had become Tommy and Lisa’s lives was played out in every under-the-breath conversation in the county and on the Rez.

My part in the saga had started when Tommy, who had returned to the Rez and to methamphetamines big time, decided to call the sheriff’s office in order to get Lisa to answer his calls. It had seemed logical to his chemically addled, emotionally distressed mind that it was my duty to ask Lisa to answer her phone. As a rural sheriff, there are times when the law enforcement side of the job has nothing to do with the right-thing-to-do side of the job.

So, I’d dutifully made the trip down to Powder Junction where they had shared a house, only to discover Lisa, clad in a bikini bottom, a T-shirt, and a potato-chip cowboy hat, sunbathing in her yard. I asked her if she would please answer the phone, because Tommy had been trying to get in touch with her for days.

She’d taken a sip from a can of beer beside her towel and said, “Had it disconnected.”

“Do you mind if I ask why?”

“He was calling here twenty times a day and I couldn’t take it anymore.” She adjusted the straw hat and sighed. “You know he’s still using, right?”

“Um, it’s becoming apparent to me.” I’d stood there on the other side of the chain-link fence that separated her yard from the sidewalk. “Well, he’d like you to call him.”

Lisa put the can down. “No thanks. I jumped that crazy horse, Sheriff-and I have no intentions of getting back on.” She applied more suntan lotion to her arms. “Anyway, I yanked the cord out of the wall.”

Then she’d served papers, and that’s when things really got weird.

Tommy began calling me and Verne Selby, who had been appointed judge in the case, and the county clerk about all kinds of strange things, insinuating that this was obviously a matter of racial discrimination and that anti-Indian bias had led to the current impasse between him and Lisa. I stopped taking his calls, so he resorted to the fax machine. I would come in mornings to find thirty- and forty-page letters from Tommy, most of them incoherent but each one ending with the request that the communication be dated, stamped, and placed in the official record. Of all the faxed letters, the one that leaps to mind as the strangest was a four-pager instructing the clerk, judge, and me on what it was we should bring to Thanksgiving dinner up on the Rez-how I should bring pie, but not rhubarb since his aunt Carol usually had that covered. Like we were all family.

A standard divorce with a file over fourteen inches thick.

Vic had measured.

“Divorce Horse.”

Vic had coined the term.

I keyed the mic again. “Well then nobody stole it; nobody in their right mind would steal that horse.” I looked at the food on my plate and questioned the choice of giving the majority of my deputies the night off. “Isn’t Saizarbitoria out there?”

Static. “He’s not answering, but that could just be because of the crowd noise.”

“I’m on my way.”

Static. “Roger that.”

I keyed the mic one last time. “Go home.”

Cady worked a little faster on her cottage cheese. “My Tommy Jefferson?”

Cady and Tommy had dated and even went to a junior prom together, but this was nothing unique-my daughter had cut a wide swath in the male populace of Durant High School and had pretty much held sway with anything in a pair of Wranglers. “Yep.”

Henry chewed quickly. “Wow, a case.”

I nodded and, thinking about all those phone calls, faxes, and accusations, reached up to rub the top of my ear, which was the locale of persistent frostbite.

Cady swiped at my hand. “Stop that.” She studied me. “You don’t seem overly enthusiastic.”