James Sallis - Cripple Creek

"Is there a message I can give Sheriff Burke for you, Sam?"

"What it comes down to is, since no one else seems to be available, here I am talking to you."

"Likewise."

"In an official capacity."

"Hold on then, let me get my badge and gun."

What sounded suspiciously like a snort came over the line.

"Never change, do you?"

"All the time."

"Given the possibility of a connection between the series of attacks youVe suffered and the shootings here-"

"Not much gets past you boys, does it?"

"-MPD believes it important to extend our investigation. I have instructions to request a full local investigation, and to hand off responsibility for that investigation to your office. I'm doing so with this call."

"But suh, we don't know-"

"Shut up, Turner. Just be glad the FBI's not on its way down there."

He was right, of course.

"Turner…"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry for the way this went down. All of it."

"Thanks, Sam."

"We'll be expecting your reports, then. In due time. No particular hurry-up, we've got our hands full."

"Business as usual."

"God's truth. And Turner…"

"Yeah?"

"You do get up this way again, you should think about giving Tracy Caulding a call. For some twisted reason, the woman likes you."

"I know you find it hard to believe, Sam, but people do."

"Go figure… One hell of a world, ain't it?"

It sure as Hell is.

I didn't know exactly what it was that MPD expected us to investigate, but over the next several days I made gestures in that direction. J. T. had taken time off to head back up to Seattle- "thing or two I need to take care of." She'd left right before it happened, so I was pretty much running things.

I swung by Don Lee's that afternoon to see if he might be up to coming in to help. Patty Ann answered the door and told me how sorry she was. She said Don Lee was sleeping. The yeasty, rich smell of baking came from inside.

"He doing okay?" I asked.

"Just fine."

"Heard he'd been feeling bad."

She looked at me a moment before saying, "It comes and goes. Kind of like Donald." She ducked her eyes, then added: "I can get him up for you."

"No, no. He needs his rest. Have him call me?"

"I'll do that. Time for a piece of pie before you go? I was just about to take it out of the oven."

"Best be going, but thanks."

Her gaze held mine. Something was pushing from inside, something that wanted to be said (about what had happened? about Don?) but never made it to the surface.

I stopped to help Sally Miller, whose car had stalled outside town, and pulled in at Lonnie's just behind Himself. He wore the usual khakis, which he must buy by the dozen, and a blue shirt. He had a sport coat tossed over one shoulder, his book bag over the other. The bag, he'd liberated from June years ago when she graduated high school, and now he took it everywhere. God knows what all's in there.

"Been on a jaunt, have we?"

"Little business I had to take care of, couldn't put it off any longer. How're you holding up?"

"I'm all right."

"Figuring I'd grab some late lunch and head down to the office, see what I could do to help."

Shirley opened the door as we stepped onto the porch. She gave me a hug, then hugged Lonnie. Inside she had a plate of sandwiches already made, fresh coffee in one of those pots that look like small urns.

"Call ahead and place an order?" I said.

He shrugged. Shirley smiled, said she was praying for us, and excused herself.

As he ate and I drank coffee, I told him about the call from Memphis.

"Full local investigation my ass," Lonnie said when I finished. Picking a divot of celery from between his teeth, he asked, "Those kids on the mountain doing okay?"

"Isaiah's back with them, cast and all. With everyone pitching in like they have, it's beginning to look good up there."

He got up, unplugged the pot and brought it over, poured more coffee for both of us.

"Is there anything you need, Turner? Anything I can do?"

"Just time…"

"Time, right. Worst enemy, best friend, all rolled into one. If there is anything-"

"I will, Lonnie."

"Like to think I don't need to say that."

"You don't."

"Good."

"This business of yours that came up…"

"Nothing much to it. Some old loose ends. It's done." He snagged another half sandwich, crusts cut off. This one was pimento cheese, which Shirley ground in an old hand-cranked processor heavy as an anvil. "We were worried about you, all alone up there at the cabin. Time like this, a man needs-"

"I was where I needed to be, Lonnie. Doing what I needed to do."

"Right. Who else would know, huh?"

"I'm fine."

Out in the living room, the TV was on and our current president, one of a cadre of archconservatives who had seized this country to wring its neck in the name of liberty, a man with a to-do list to whom everything was crystal clear, was speaking about "recent troubles in the old world." Yet again I marveled at how we always manage to persuade ourselves that our actions are justified, righteous, for the good.

"Thing is, you have to admire what those kids are doing up there," Lonnie said, "foolish as it is. They have an idea, a star to guide by, and they're willing to put everything they are behind it. How many of us can say that?"

J. T. got back to town not long after. I saw her pickup coming down the street, met her out front of the office. She looked exhausted-exhausted and wired-as she hauled a gym bag out of the cab and held it high to show this was the whole of it. Travel always does that, she said, stomps her flat, jacks her up. I filled her in on the call from Memphis. She listened carefully, shook her head and said nothing.

"So how'd it go?"

"Okay. How are you?"

"I've been worse. Get things taken care of?"

"Did my best, anyway."

"They still trying to get you back?"

"No. No, that's over. That's over, the flight's over, the drive's over-and I'm starved."

"Come on home with me, then. I'll cook."

She hesitated. "I don't think I want to be at the cabin just now, Dad."

"Fair enough, we'll go out. What are you up for?"

"Anything-as long as it's not the diner. No, I take that back.

Meat. Serious meat."

And since Eldon was playing at the steakhouse an hour and spare change away, what better choice?

So we chose, and drove, only to find Eldon MIA. Said he had to be out of town a day or two, our waitress told us, her expression and inflection suggesting that she'd give damn near anything to be the same.

We'd made the drive with windows down, on deserted roads, through tide pools of moonlight and the smell of tomorrow's rain. It was at times like this, sitting together at the kitchen table or in a car, suspended for moments from causality and process, that the natural barriers between J. T. and myself receded. Not that they went down, just that they ceased for those suspended moments to matter.

"I've been thinking about my brother, about Don, a lot," she said. "Thinking how so many people I know have these lives that seem impossible to them. People who do really stupid things over and over. Stupid things, violent things-either to themselves or to others."

"Pain as the fulcrum, loss as the lever, to keep their worlds aloft. After a while that can get to be all they feel, all that reassures them they're alive."

"Exactly. You worked with them, Dad. You must understand."

"No. You always think you will. Every time you learn something new, develop a new passion, you think that's where you're heading. Like that song Eldon and Val used to sing. Farther along we'll know all about it… But you don't. You wind up holding the same blank cards-just more of them."