Craig Johnson - Kindness Goes Unpunished

“Deal. I’ll meet you at the hospital?”

I nodded and closed the door. The driver was doing some of his paperwork, so we waited for a moment on either side of the window, and I had a strange twinge of something as she looked at me again. I extended my hand; she sat there watching me as the taxi started off down Bread, took a left on Quarry, and disappeared.

The skies were looking more threatening, and I wasn’t sure if it was thunder I was hearing in the distance or the train on the bridge. I turned and walked to Cady’s door, reached above the junction box, and pulled down a note with the key. Lena had filed it so that it would now operate smoothly in the lock. I opened the door and was immediately mauled by Dog.

I gave him the ham that had been left over from Lena’s picnic basket and figured I could always get a couple of hamburgers from Paddy O’Neil’s-me too, for that matter. There was a menu, which gave me the luxury of phoning in my order. I opened the fridge and there was a six-pack of Yuengling, so I popped a bottle out and drank it while I looked for the bathroom. I took a shower and got out some clean clothes from my duffle, which I’d left next to the sofa. There was a clock on the microwave that told me I still had three and a half hours before Cady would be back in the ICU, so I got the pad from beside the phone and read the numerous and assorted messages from practically everybody in the Cowboy State. Most of them were from Ruby and Vic, but there were also ones from the Ferg, Lucian, Sancho, Double Tough, Vern Selby, Dorothy, Lonnie Little Bird, Brandon White Buffalo, Dena Many Camps, Omar, Isaac Bloomfield, and Lana Baroja.

There were no messages from Devon Conliffe.

I shuttled the dark thoughts toward the back of my mind and placed the notebook on the glass coffee table. I had been here two days and hadn’t called anybody. I wasn’t sure if word had gotten back to Absaroka County through the Moretti network, the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, or the Philadelphia Police Department, but I had a lot of explaining to do. I suppose I had been waiting till I could give some sort of hopeful prognosis and, now that Cady had given even an involuntary response, I should call.

I looked at the phone but just didn’t have the energy. I took a deep breath, lay back against the pillows on the sofa, and placed my cowboy hat over my eyes. Dog jumped on the couch uninvited and, after what seemed like a long time, we were both asleep.

I’d been dreaming a lot lately, and there were always Indians in my dreams, so it wasn’t surprising when I could see them from the corners of my eyes. I could feel the wind, the kind we get on the high plains that’s only a notch or two below hurricane force. I was leaning into the gale at the edge of some bluffs near Cat Creek. It was hard to focus; my eyes were thin slits with tears streaming from the sides. I turned my head a little and could see a Cheyenne brave who instructed me to lift my arms by raising his own. He wore a fringed and beaded war shirt with the bands of blue and white seed beads running up the arms, and I could make out a parfleche medicine bag painted red and black with the geometric wind symbol.

The old Indian half smiled, brushing an arm toward my face and forcing me to concentrate on what was in front of me. I glanced at the horizon as the lightning flashed like the seizures in Cady’s brain and swept across the sky in a silent electrical storm. I looked down into the canyon, and a chill shot from my spine like a fuse; there was nothing below us for at least three hundred feet.

The phone rang, and I lifted my hat to look at the greenish numbers on the microwave that told me that I’d been asleep for about an hour. A pang hit me as I listened to Cady’s recorded voice on the answering machine and heard the beep. “Walt, it’s Ruby. I hope you’re getting these messages…Vic said she got a phone call from her mother saying that there had been an improvement in Cady’s condition. I just wanted to check in and see if there’s anything any of us can do here. We’ve been trying to call Henry, but he doesn’t answer his phone either.” There was silence on the line as I sat there with my guilt and listened. “Vic is threatening to fly back there, so you better call us.” Another pause, and I would almost swear she knew I was listening. “Please call us. We’re worried about Cady, and we’re worried about you.” I was about to reach for the phone when the line went dead.

I sighed. If Cady’s situation stayed the same, there would be no going back; it was as simple as that.

I looked at Dog, and he looked back at me. “You want a hamburger?” He wagged, and I took it for a yes. I ordered us up four cheeseburgers to go from the leprechaun at the end of the block.

I went to the terrace doors and listened to the sporadic drops hit the leaves of the crab apple tree. It was a gentle rainfall that unfocused the hard edges of the city night, making all the surfaces glisten. It was only about fifty yards to the side entrance of Paddy O’Neil’s, so I figured I could get there and back without getting soaked. I watched the drops fall slowly past the yellow of the streetlights and into the widening pools on the cobblestone street. I looked up at the span of the bridge arching into Old City and listened to the steady thrum of the traffic.

Even over the blare of the Celtic band and the raucous crowd, the brogue wasn’t a generation removed. Black Irish; a handsome kid about Cady’s age with a wayward eye that kept tracking left. “Yore Cady’s fatha’, the sheriff?”

I looked up at the brim of my cowboy hat. “Yep.” He was like one of those bundles of baling wire that I had seen in Vietnam, the ones that went into the Vietcong tunnels with. 45s and the balls of a cat burglar. “You O’Neil?”

He smiled a grin. “Hisself. Took the place over from me Uncle Paddy, the original O’Neil.” He handed me the bag full of cheeseburgers, and I noticed the tattoos up and down his arms. I paid him, with a little extra for his trouble. “Where’s ya daughter?”

I waited a moment, the hubbub of the bar swirling around me. “She’s not feeling well.” I leaned in and cleared my throat. “O’Neil, can I ask you a question?”

He wiped his hands on a dishtowel. “Ya?”

“You ever met her boyfriend, Devon Conliffe?”

His hands stopped working the towel. “Ya, I met ’im a couple’a times.”

I nodded, my face only a foot from his. “Nice guy?”

He worked his jaw for only a second. “Ya.”

“O’Neil?” He leaned in a little closer with the question. “You’re a liar.” He watched me for a second, then laughed and walked down to the other end of the bar to help the overworked waitresses. He glanced back at me only when I left.

Dog ate his cheeseburgers faster than I ate mine, so I gave him the last bite of my second one and tried to fade into another nap, but I suppose I was worried that I might oversleep and, as a result, didn’t sleep at all.

I finally gave up after an hour and called a cab. I looked at Dog from the door; he was watching me with his big, brown eyes. “They don’t allow dogs in the ICU.” He continued to look at me, and I was sure he understood every word. “There’s nothing I can do.” He sat. “I’ll take you for a long walk tomorrow.” He lay down, still watching me. “Honest.”

It was raining a little harder when I stepped out and, just before jumping into the taxi, I noticed the throb of blue tracer emergency lights that seemed to spring from the support cables of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge; in the darkness, it looked like the body of the bridge was hanging in the saturated air. There must have been a wreck. I stood there for a second more, then decided it was somebody else’s problem and climbed in the cab.