He looked down at the dog’s head, which he continued to pet. “They used to bring ’em through here, the Basquos. Kind of a halfway house for sheepherders.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table. “They’d sponsor a Basquo to come over by contacting the Wyoming Range Association, put the herder’s name in, and pay five hundred bucks to cover the immigrant’s travel expenses. The Range would check the fellow out, and if he hadn’t pitched any bombs into any cafes they’d run ’im through a quota system. Usually it was a relative, somebody they could count on. They’d deduct the money out of their pay once they got here. Poor bastards only made about thirty a week; took a while.”
I waited a moment and glanced over at the bar back, which continued to insist on older and gentler times. “You met here on Thursdays?”
“After Charlie was dead.” It took a moment, but he smiled. “We never got remarried. The Basquos are pretty hung up in that religious stuff, but I think I got her to understand that she was missing something. I’m just not sure if I got her to understand that it was me.”
I waited a respectful moment before asking. “Lucian, what happened?”
He stared at his arm on the table, his fingers brushing the brim of his hat. “Do you think I killed Charlie Nurburn?”
I continued to look at him and thought about what the old outlaw was capable of, the stories I’d heard, the stories I knew. “Right now, yes, I do.” I sighed and thought about Dorothy’s advice. “Lucian, I don’t particularly want to get into a pissing contest. You had to know I was going to discover all of this, you trained me too well.” I thought about Mari Baroja, Isaac Bloomfield, about Lana and the pack of lawyers soon to be snapping at my heels. I placed my elbows on the table and rested my chin on my fists. “Do you know she has a granddaughter here in town?”
“Yes, I do.” His look continued to darken. “You’d be amazed at the things I know.”
“No, I wouldn’t, Lucian. I wouldn’t be amazed at all. I’ll tell you what I would be amazed by, you telling me what the hell happened fifty years ago.” I didn’t move, just leaned on my fists and stared at him. I took a deep breath and went easy. “For me to know what’s happening now, I need to know what happened then.”
He nodded almost imperceptibly as something old and brittle broke loose. I watched as it fell into the river of memory and slapped against the rocky cliffs of Lucian’s mind. “What good would it have done?” His eyes took on a long dead look. “What good would it have done for a woman like that to go to prison for the rest of her life?”
I listened as Lucian’s voice carried us back to a summer night in the middle of the last century. I can still play it back in my mind, like a home movie that is grainy and overexposed. The film slips with the clattering of spanners in the works as a thin man comes home late one cloudy night, a mason jar half full of clear liquid still dangling from his fingers as he fumbles with the knob on the door. The jar slips and busts on the uneven steps with a loud pop, shards of glass and homemade liquor falling through the cracks of the warped and cupped wood. Cursing, he continues to fumble with a latch that has been locked since early in the evening.
There are three children in a bed at the backside of the little house, illuminated by the flashes of lightning along the Big Horns; two are three-year-old girls, twins, with their arms wrapped around their bony knees. They are clutching a threadbare star quilt between them; its floral pattern fades like distance. There is a boy who is a little older. He sits at the foot of their bed, unmoving, but holding a large hammer as best he can in his shaking small hands.
There is a slam against the door as the man throws himself against it in an all too familiar rage. This is the pattern, the framework to which these children have accustomed themselves. They shudder in fear and try to remain silent. A promise made and a promise kept in an attempt to keep the bad from being so bad.
There is a woman standing against an old Republic steel sink, her palms pressed against the coolness of the counter’s lip. The cool feels good on her hands, calloused and raw from a short lifetime of hard struggle. Her long dark hair hides the face that is bowed to a god that no longer hears the trembling split lips pray for just a small salvation.
The slamming on the door continues. It is softer this time, and shortly thereafter there are soft words, words that she has responded to before but cannot anymore. He slams the door again, loud, and her head rises, revealing a dark and seeping bruise. The damage has been inflicted at her cheek but has drained to the jawline and is yellowing like something gone bad.
Words again, and then silence, an active silence that ends with the crash of a kitchen window and a piece of firewood that slides to a stop on the linoleum floor with the broken glass. She screams and rushes to the window, heedless of her bare feet and the triangular shards of heavy lead glass, in an attempt to push him away from her and from her children. His hands reach out for any part of her that he can grasp, finally tangling in her hair, and he yanks her head forward as he brings his other fist upward, propelling her backward in a lazy arch to the wood-burning stove at the other side of the small kitchen, where she lies, crumpled on the floor, still.
He scrambles in a drunken attempt to achieve purchase on the slick clapboard of the house, finally getting enough leverage to balance his weight on the sill, but slips on the edge, the glass slicing his hands as the house itself defends against his intrusion. He falls when he gets inside, rolls over onto his stiffened arm, and looks at his hand, at the glass splinters that continue to make him bleed. He attempts to pull them out but gives up in a thundering slam against the kitchen wall. He cries like a wounded beast before his attention is drawn to the opposite side of the room where a shapely calf and a well-formed foot stretch toward him in an unconscious but provocative manner.
Her father and uncles had said that she was a virgin, but they lied. Slut. She did it too well and enjoyed it too much. Bitch.
It is time for a lesson, time to teach her how to take what a man could give her. A flood of heat accompanies the anger and drunkenness giving it direction and focus. He pushes off with the good hand, tries to straighten his head, and considers the curves and softness barely concealed by the cotton dress. Even unaware, she begs for it.
She is small and easy to lift by the bodice of the dress. Her head slumps to one side, allowing the damage to her face to show. Ruined. So he turns her around and forces her over the sink. He thought of the stove, but the sink is higher and will afford a better angle for his purpose. He raises the dress over her hips and pulls at the cotton panties so that they slide down one leg and dangle from her foot, which is a good six inches from the floor.
There is blood on her undergarment; it is her time. He smells it, a different smell than that on his hands. He grabs the thick mane of her hair, pulling her head back and placing his face beside hers, telling her that he will not soil himself with her blood, that any hole is a hole. He fumbles, one-handed, with his belt and the thick buttons on his pants, shrugging the straps of his suspenders off his narrow shoulders and extracting himself for the work at hand.
She is partially awake now. The coolness of the porcelain has given her the slightest release, has allowed her the ability to center enough to bend her knees and kick. Her arms swing back and claw at him. Dishes fall from the counter, utensils crash to the floor with the melody of broken wind chimes, and the point of a large butcher’s knife sticks in the green linoleum. He slams her head forward again, still holding the fist full of hair. The only sound she makes now is an involuntary grunt as he drives himself into her, forcing the air from her, over and over again.
He has not seen the door at the end of the short hallway open and is not aware that the boy has crossed the room at a desperate but determined pace. The boy is troubled by the burden he carries and surveys the scene before him in a despondent and inevitable fashion, raising the weight as high as he can, not sure if the leverage of the thing will allow it to be brought down on the appointed spot. He does not understand exactly what is happening here, other than the same one is hurting the same one again, and it has to stop.