“So it’s time for you to come home. Try not to get into any more trouble in here. It’s only twenty-four hours. Sometimes you gotta turn the other cheek for the greater good of your people,” she said. “You need to think long-term, which is something I know you’ve never been very good at. But if you lash out every time somebody does you wrong, you’ll stay in this damned place forever.”
Timber said, “If someone does something to you in here, you gotta retaliate or it just gets worse. This is a fuckin’ jungle.”
She looked around the room at the families, and the children scrambling around on the floor.
“It ain’t like this inside,” Timber said wearily. “There ain’t a bunch of rug rats crawlin’ around.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Eldon said, “since I was never dumb enough to get caught and sent to prison.”
That was his issue, Timber knew. It wasn’t that his son was a convicted felon who was sent to the penitentiary in Rawlins. It was that he’d been dumb enough to get caught.
“I’m ready to come home,” Timber said to Brenda. He ignored Eldon. Ignoring Eldon was getting easier to do.
“We’re ready to have you back,” she said, but with a beat of hesitation.
“What?” he asked, ready for another lecture about staying away from drugs and not hooking up with his old crew. She didn’t realize that most of his old crew was either dead or in prison with him.
“Before you come straight home, we need to know you’re with us,” she said. She reached out with both hands and cupped his left. His right was still under the table, trying to control his leg. She stroked the back of his hand with her pudgy thumbs and studied him closely. She always seemed to know what he was thinking even when he tried to hide it from her. It was like she could see into his soul. Sometimes she knew what he was thinking before he was even sure.
She said, “We need to know you’re willing to be part of the family again—that you’ll contribute. We need some proof of your loyalty before we can welcome you back with open arms.”
Timber stared at her. He knew she couldn’t be overheard by the guard because of the noise in the room and the blaring television above his head. The CCTV would show them talking to each other, but there weren’t recording devices to pick up what they said.
“Are you still working in the infirmary?” she asked.
The question came out of the blue. “Yes. But it’s not like I have any responsibility. I just mop shit up.”
“That’s not important,” she said. “What’s important is that you know your way around a medical facility. Even if it’s with a mop in your hand.”
He sat back and tried to read her face for clues. As usual, she gave nothing away.
“We need you to do something for us where nobody knows you,” she said. “It’s got to be done in a way so it won’t connect back to us in any way. But you can’t do that unless they let you out of here free and clear and within the next couple of days. You’ve got to hold your temper and think long-term, like I said. Store up that angry feeling. Don’t retaliate if someone does something to you.”
“I’ve been good,” he said defensively. “I done what you said. I’ve been a model prisoner for the last year. See that guy over there with the full sleeves?” He nodded toward a dark man with a black mustache, a shaved head, and a swirl of tattoos that covered each arm to his wrist. The inmate wore red and was whispering into his wife’s ear while his two little boys wriggled around his legs.
Brenda looked over, then looked back.
“He stole my MP3 player from under my mattress. I know it was him. Two years ago, I would have ripped his throat out for what he done to me. But I let it go for now because I couldn’t prove it and I want to get out of here. Did you hear me? I let it go.”
“I’m glad,” she said.
“Now, what is it I have to do before you’ll take me back?” he asked.
“Don’t put it like that,” she said. “You know I love all my boys. But you also know that the most important thing in the world is to keep the family intact. We’ve all got to be working together or they’ll tear us down. The town, the county—they all hate us for what we are.”
Then she went on and on about how the community leaders refused to put up welcome signs on the outskirts of town that would read: Home of World Champion Rodeo Cowboy Dallas Cates.
He nodded. He’d heard it so many times from her over the years.
“So what is it I have to do?” he asked.
“Before we get to that, I’ve got a question for you,” she said. “Who loves their mama the most?”
19
This kind of thing has happened before,” Governor Rulon said to Joe in the governor’s capitol building office. “Remember the Canada lynx debacle in Washington state?”
“No.”
“Ah, a prelude to a story,” Rulon said. He was wearing a snap-button cowboy shirt, jeans, and scuffed boots. No one else was in the building on Sunday except for a security guard dozing at the lobby counter.
Joe had left his home well before the sun came up. He toasted the memory of Chris LeDoux as he passed Kaycee, and he thought of Nate. The four-and-a-half-hour drive had included all four seasons: summer in Kaycee, winter near Midwest, fall in Casper, spring outside of Chugwater.
He’d also been thinking about the call they’d received the night before from Nurse Reckling in Billings. She said that she’d overheard two of the doctors discussing the procedure for bringing April out of the coma. Reckling cautioned Marybeth about jumping to any conclusions, but promised she’d keep her posted. It was the first thread of good news they’d had on April’s condition since she was placed in the drug-induced coma.
Sheridan had decided not to go on spring break to Arizona with her friends but to come home instead. She wanted to see April. Marybeth told Joe that it just might be that the doctors would try to bring April back when the whole family could be at the hospital.
“That way,” she said, “we’ll all know at the same time if she’ll make it or not.”
He could tell by the look on her face that she was more than slightly terrified by the prospect.
—
RULON LEANED BACK in his chair, steepled his fingers, and said, “When I was U.S. Attorney, there was a big three-year study going on to determine if the rare and elusive Canada lynx existed in the forests of Washington. If the lynx could be proved to exist there, the Endangered Species Act would kick in and the feds would have to close all the roads, shut down the loggers, and seal off the forests to snowmobiles, skiers, four-wheelers, and on and on.
“Toward the end of the study period, with everyone holding their breath, there was an exciting discovery: Canada lynx hair had been found on three different rubbing posts. That proved that the lynx was there after all!
“Then somebody blew the whistle. It turns out that high-ranking U.S. Forest Service biologists had planted the hair samples on the posts. They’d gotten the hair from some zoo or a dead lynx and had planted it so it could be found. These biologists were true believers and they did it for their cause—to save the planet. How falsifying scientific evidence saves the planet is anyone’s guess.
“Hell,” Rulon said, slapping the desktop with the heel of his hand, “you got into a similar situation a couple of years ago with Butch Roberson and the EPA. This kind of petty crap by government bureaucrats shouldn’t be new to you.”
“It isn’t,” Joe said. “I just keep hoping that was a one-off.”
“Oh, Joe,” Rulon said almost sadly. “It’s inevitable that when there are hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats with endless budgets, who have no accountability and can’t be fired, that these things are bound to happen. They’re just people, although too many of them like to think that they’re special people with some kind of special insight. But when they have private agendas, watch out! That’s what I keep hollering at anyone who will listen.