Richard Ford - Women with Men

Doris said, “I'm all wet, Lawrence.” She opened her eyes and stared at me, and wrinkled her nose up in a strange way. Then, from the hallway where the deputies were looking and pointing their shotguns, there was a very loud crashing, breaking sound, as if a door had been broken in or out. There was more noise I couldn't identify, and I couldn't even say now what it was, though for some reason I thought Barney was kicking something, even though it was like a noise made by metal. But whatever it was, the deputy holding the flashlight suddenly jumped back out of the way, his light going crazy across the ceiling, the long black barrel hitting the floor. And then two of the men who were holding shotguns shot almost at the same instant, right down into the little hallway, into the dark. And the noise of those two guns going off inside the barroom was an awful noise. My ears went deaf and there was pressure on my brain, and my eyeballs felt like air was pushing on them. The shots made a yellow flash and dust was all in the air and falling out of the ceiling, and there was the thick, sour smell of burned gunpowder. When the guns went off I felt Doris jump, and she squeezed my hand until her wedding ring cut down into my knuckle, and I couldn't get it free.

“Okay,” I heard Barney say to the policemen in a loud, odd voice. “I'm all shot up now. You shot me up. You shot me. I don't feel good now.”

Two other deputies, ones who hadn't shot, ran into the little hallway, right in front of Doris and me, though a third one knelt beside the man who'd held the flashlight. “I'm all right,” that man said. “I'm not shot.” His white hat was on the floor. I heard the bartender say, “Oh, my heavens,” though I couldn't see her.

Then Barney — it must've been him — said, “How are you?” almost in a casual voice, then he yelled, “Ohhhhhh,” and then he said, “Stop that! Stop that!” And then he was quiet.

The two men who had shot Barney stayed where they were, pointing their guns into the hallway. They had each ejected a shell, both of which were on the floor.

The sheriff, who was standing behind everybody, said even louder, as if he was even more afraid now, “Careful. Be careful. He's not dead. He's just hit. He's just hit.” One more deputy, who had been across the room, suddenly moved into the hallway in front of the men holding guns. “Barney, you son of a bitch,” I heard him say, “stay down there now.” But Barney didn't make a noise. I heard footsteps behind me, and when I looked, the Indians and the man who'd been talking on the phone were going out the front door. I saw headlights outside, and from a distance I heard a siren, then the noise of a two-way radio and a woman's voice saying, “It probably is. But I can't be sure. You better check that out. Ten-four.”

I looked at Doris, and her eyes were wide open, her cheek flat against the wet wood. Her mouth was drawn tight across, as if she thought something else might happen, but she had begun to loosen her grip on my hand. Her ring came off my knuckle, and she breathed very deeply and she said, “They killed that man. They shot him all to pieces.” I didn't answer, because my jaw was still clenched and my ears hollow, but I thought that what she said was probably true. I was close to what had happened, yet I wasn't a real part of it. Everything had happened to Barney and the policemen who shot him, and I was better off, or so I felt, to stay as far away from it as I could and not even discuss it.

IN A FEW MINUTES one of the sheriff's deputies came and helped us to stand up and go sit in the booth against the wall. There were a lot of police in the room all of a sudden. The front door stayed open, and two Montana highway patrolmen and more sheriff's deputies and two Indian policemen all came in and out. I could hear the voices of other people outside. More cars drove up with two-way radios going, and an ambulance arrived. Two men in orange jumpsuits came inside and went down the little hall carrying equipment in black boxes. I heard someone say, “No problema aquí.” And then the sheriff said, “Go ahead, I'll just sign all that now.” Barney never said anything else that I heard. After a couple of minutes, the men from the ambulance left. One of them was smiling about something, but I didn't think it had to do with what had happened. It had to have been something else.

“I'm freezing,” Doris said across the little table. “Aren't you freezing?” She had found her glasses and put them back on, and she was shivering. Almost immediately after she'd said it the same deputy came in and brought her a blanket and one for me too, though I wasn't so cold, or didn't know I was. My nose was running, that was all, and the front of me was wet from the floor.

For some reason, two deputies took the bartender away with them. I could hear them put her in a car, and heard it drive away. And then the ceiling lights in the bar were turned on, and a man came in with a camera and took pictures in the hallway, using a flash. He came out afterwards and took pictures of the room itself, one of which Doris and I were in, wrapped in our blankets.

In about ten minutes, while we sat waiting, two more ambulance men came in the door with a folding stretcher on wheels. They pushed it into the hall, and I guess they picked Barney up and put him on, because when they pushed it out through the bar he was on it, covered up by a sheet with blood soaking through. One of the men was holding Barney's white Burlington Northern hard hat, and I could actually see part of Barney's ponytail out under the edge of the sheet. I had to turn to see all that. But Doris didn't look. She sat with her blanket around her and stared down at the cup of coffee the deputy had brought. When the cart had gone by she said, “Was that him?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I thought so,” she said.

After a few more minutes, a big man wearing a light-gray suit and western boots and a western hat came in and looked around the room. He appeared very clean and neat and had pale white skin and thin hair and a bad complexion, and at first he only glanced at us before he looked behind the bar and into the back room, where the sheriff had come from. He stepped down the hall where Barney had been and into the bathroom — though I couldn't see him do that. When he came out he said something to the sheriff, who had put his hat on again, then he brought a chair over to the booth and sat down at the end of the table in front of us.

He took out a little spiral pad and wrote something in it with a ballpoint pen. Then he said, still writing, “I'm Walter Peterson, I'm the lawyer for Toole County. I'd like to find out some things from you people.”

“We don't know anything,” Doris said. “We don't live here. We're on our way to Seattle. We just stopped in.” She had her blanket clutched up to her neck, and her fists were holding the edges together.

“Did you know the deceased man?” the lawyer said without answering Doris. I realized that was what they were calling Barney now. The lawyer had a tiny pin on his lapel — a pair of silver handcuffs — and when he sat down I saw he was wearing a leather holster under his coat. He didn't take off his hat when he was talking to us.

“No,” Doris said, “we didn't.”

“Did you know him?” he said to me.

“No, sir,” I said.

“Did either of you talk to him?” the lawyer said, writing something in his little notebook.

“I tried to talk to him,” Doris said. “Just practically by accident. But he didn't care to say much.” She looked at me and then looked all around the barroom, which seemed larger and even dirtier with the ceiling lights on. “Was he carrying a gun of some kind?” she said. “I had the feeling he was.”

“He didn't say anything about his wife?” the lawyer said, still not answering her.