Don Winslow: Way Down on the High Lonely

Ed Levine stood in the corral and looked down at the bodies of the men he had killed. Dave Bekke lay flat on his back, his arms flung out and his legs spread in a grotesque parody of death. Bill McCurdy lay in a fetal ball, his face twisted with fear and pain. A few feet away Craig Vetter’s long body was stretched out face-down, his hand still on the gun stock.

It was cold satisfaction for Ed that he had been right, that these thugs were shooters but had never been shot at. The feeling of bullets coming at them-the incredible noise-had rattled them, made them hesitate for those few fatal seconds.

He looked over to where Steve Mills was trying to stanch Hansen’s bleeding, but he could tell by the sounds of Hansen’s gasps that the effort would be futile.

Ed stood as the cold daylight paled the glare of the fire beside him. The acrid smell of gunpowder and the smoke streaming from the blazing barn burned Ed’s eyes until tears ran down through the soot on his face like tiny rivers through a scorched land.

Joe Graham knelt against the corral’s metal piping and watched the figure of Neal Carey get smaller as it trotted away across the flat sagebrush.

Graham turned his eyes for a moment to look at the scene of death and destruction behind him, then turned back to watch Neal running.

Run, son, Graham thought. Run long and hard and far away.

Neal found Strekker about an hour later. He was a hundred yards away, headed for the creek. He was dragging one foot behind him and clutching one hand in the other.

A wounded animal going for water.

Neal thought about Harley and Cody, about Anne Kelley, about Doreen. He thought about Shelly Mills and Steve. He thought about that horse.

Neal brought the rifle stock to his cheek and centered the V on Strekker’s back. He started to squeeze the trigger when he remembered Joe Graham’s face and heard his words: What, have they turned you into one of them? He lowered the rifle and watched as Strekker limped away.

Neal raised the rifle again and pulled the trigger.

He looked through his sights as the bullet took Strekker square in the back. Blood burst out the front of his chest and blossomed onto the ground like a rose in the snow.

Neal didn’t go to check if Strekker were still alive or to give him a burial. He didn’t walk back to the ranch. He just wiped his fingerprints off the rifle, threw it down, and started walking across the empty miles of The High Lonely.

Brogan poured another glass of whiskey as the stranger listened in rapt attention. Brogan had sold a lot of booze telling the story of the battle of Reese River valley.

The stranger, a salesman from Bishop, laid another five down and looked around the grungy, colorful saloon. A mammoth dog lay sleeping behind the bar. The only other customer was a bearded, long-haired man who sat at the last bar stool drinking coffee and reading a dog-eared paperback book.

“So then what happened?” the salesman asked Brogan.

Brogan went on to tell him how Milkowski had found the money somewhere to buy the Hansen place and so now owned the whole valley, and how the daughter had gone off to college at Brown, which he thought was in Rhode Island or one of them little East Coast states. The boy got back to his momma, who sent a postcard a few weeks ago saying he was coming along well, was going to be just fine. The one-armed man and the big bear of a guy just disappeared, and for a while the feds were all over town, asking a lot of questions. Then there was a whole herd of types from the state museum who went poking around the cave measuring shit and stuff, and they were just puzzled as hell about that Indian’s body, because he came from a tribe that was supposed to have been extinct for about a hundred years. And Karen Hawley… well, she found herself a new man.

Brogan leaned over the bar, smiled, shook his head at the wonder of his own story, and waited for the question that always came so he could give the kicker.

Sure enough, the stranger asked, “And what happened to Neal Carey?”

Brogan shrugged dramatically, leaned over a little more, and said, “Nobody knows. Some say he froze to death out there. Others say he’s still alive somewhere up in them caves. But no one ever saw him again.”

Brogan left the man shaking his head and sidled down the bar. He poured more coffee into the bearded man’s cup and smiled at him.

Neal finished the cup, climbed off the stool, nodded to the salesman, and headed out. Brezhnev lifted his head, and if Neal hadn’t known better he’d have sworn the dog winked.

Neal would like to have had another cup, read a few more pages of Roderick Random, and maybe chewed the shit with Brogan for a while, but there wasn’t time.

He pushed open the door, stepped out into the cool air, and walked up the hill to meet Karen for dinner. It was chili night at Wong’s.