I nodded and smiled and listened while he yammered on, down through the small foothills and into the valley, where the road angled back toward Mount Fear, giving us a spectacular view.
“This really is God’s country, pal,” Mac told me with a Chamber of Commerce sincerity. “Believe it.”
I told him I would, but, after he entered the outskirts of the town, I had some doubts.
Big Pine was not so much a town as a collection of familiar franchise shops crowded along both sides of the highway at the base of the mountain. As Mac drove us along Main Street, past stores with names that echo in shopping malls in every corner of the country, I had a familiar, wistful sense that I was seeing a kind of retailing virus that was growing out across America, killing the hometown feel to places like Big Pine.
Mallitis americanus or something.
Higher up along the mountainside I could see the principal residential area — small, wood-framed houses, uniformly white and crowded by pine. Compared to Main Street, they looked like part of the natural landscape.
“So where do I drop ya?” Mac asked.
“Sheriff’s office.”
At the end of Main Street he parked in front of a newish single-storied building that advertised itself as the Big Pine Sheriff’s Station.
He told me the fare, which I paid. As I got out, he nodded toward the building and said, “You have some trouble or something?”
“I hope not,” I said. “I found a body this morning, up on the lookout on the other side of the mountain.”
He gave me an open-mouthed stare. “A body?”
“God’s truth,” I told him.
Loretta met me in the large, busy outer office of the sheriff’s station and led me down a hall to her own office, where she told me to have a seat. She picked up a phone and ordered a stenographer while I looked the place over.
It took some looking.
It was a big, windowless room, pine-paneled and — floored in glossy hardwood, but as big as it was, it was made close by the furnishings: a large oak desk with black leather chairs behind and in front; wall-mounted animal heads, mostly of protected species; framed photographs of men with their feet on dead prey; flags in two corners; and guns of every type and calibre, in and out of cases, everywhere — a combination trophy room and armory.
Daniel Boone and George Patton would have felt right at home.
“Nice office,” I said to Dilly when she hung up.
She laughed and made a face. “Sheriff Barrel was a man’s man. I haven’t had much of a chance to give it my imprint.”
“Sheriff Barrel?”
She lightly slapped the arms of the chair in which she was sitting. “He died right in this chair,” she told me. “Heart attack.”
“You look right at home.”
She missed the irony. “The County Council doesn’t think so. Not that they had much choice in appointing me acting sheriff.”
“They were reluctant?”
“Reluctant!” She laughed. “I had to tell them I’d sue them silly if they didn’t.”
“What are your chances of keeping the job?”
“Slim.” She frowned at a spot in space over my head. “I have to show them I can be...”
The stenographer came in just then, and Dilly led me through a short, businesslike Q and A. When the steno had departed to type up my statement, I said, “Any luck in identifying the body?”
“Not yet, but sooner or later we’ll get a line. The autopsy will be done this afternoon.” She smiled. “Um... this— Mend of yours. The one who was going to teach you to ski?”
“Sandy,” I said, “Something came up, and she couldn’t make it.”
“So — are you going steady or something?”
“No. You?”
“Married to the job.”
I nodded. “Well...” I said, but I got no further.
Dilly sat and smiled steadily at me.
And after a very long moment, I laughed and said, “Nice office.”
The stenographer came back then, and I signed three copies of my statement. When she’d left again, there was a mixed feel to things, and I started feeling foolish.
“Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it,” I said, making getting up motions.
“What are you doing tonight?” she asked.
I shrugged and said, “This is your town, Loretta.”
So we made some plans, dinner and whatever that night; then I left and spent the next hour or so strolling through the town, popping in and out of stores that had that familiar franchise feel to them, trying not to overthink my situation, trying not to think about the what ifs and maybes and whys that circled inside my head like birds of prey.
But in one of the stores I entered, I saw a girl who reminded me of Sandy.
So much so, in fact, that I furtively followed her for a short while until I thought I might frighten her. I quit it, telling myself to grow up.
But I strolled on, enjoying the fresh, high-country air. After making a turn or two, I eventually found the real town of Big Pine.
Or what had to have been the old town, a block behind what had become the new main street, on the mountain side of the highway. It was a dead area of boarded-up buildings with dilapidated signs like Bill’s Hardware, Dave’s TV & Appliances, and Bea’s Luncheonette hanging every which way in sad neglect.
I caught a look at myself in the dark, dirty window of what had been Mel’s Grocery, and despite the new me, I had the chicken-skin feeling I was home.
Which did little to lighten my mood.
After another half hour’s walk, I took a mountain shuttle bus back to my cabin and spent the rest of the afternoon inside, fretting some more about the wisdom of dating too soon and watching Oprah.
With women who hate their bodies.
Dilly was prompt and looked great in a black dress and white leather jacket. She drove us down off the mountain, through Big Pine and all the way to the outskirts of Portland — which seemed a long way to go for dinner, but this was her neck of the woods so I didn’t question it — to a steak-house she told me was the best in the Northwest. She had an inch thick New York cut, and I had fish.
Which wasn’t half-bad.
Later, over coffee (mine decaf, hers straight) and cigarettes (hers Benson & Hedges, mine merely memories), she remarked, “You’re more health-conscious than I remember.”
“A little,” I agreed.
“A little!” she laughed. “You used to smoke like a chimney.”
“I quit just recently.”
“And ordering fish in a steakhouse,” she went on with an amused lilt, “is like asking for smoked baby dolphin hearts in a vegetarian diner.”
I laughed.
“I mean it,” she said. “You’re a lot different now.”
I didn’t know exactly how to respond, so I didn’t. Instead I cocked my head toward the sounds of an electronically assisted country and western band that were coming from another part of the building and asked if she wanted to dance.
Which she did. We followed the music, but the dancefloor was packed, so we took a table and watched while the band performed. When they were done, we danced to a couple of slow ballads from the jukebox.
Back at our table, over a couple of light beers, she said, “I’m having a good time.”
“So am I,” I told her.
She laughed again shortly, then said, “Would you believe I haven’t been out on a date for almost a year?”
I cocked my head. “Why is that?”
“No opportunities,” she said without conviction.
“Really.”
She made a face, sipped at her beer, then sat back and said, “I’ve wanted to be in law enforcement all my life. And I have been. My first job after college was with the Portland P.D. — first parking control and then in records.” She smiled ruefully. “Meter maid, then clerk.