“You look like hell, Bud,” Joe said, lowering the shotgun but keeping the flashlight on the old rancher.
Bud said, “You know, I feel like hell, too.” He swayed while he said it, as if he’d been hit with an ocean wave at knee level or he was doing some kind of lounge dance very poorly. His arms circled stiffly in their sockets, and he took a step forward to regain his balance. “Whoa,” he said.
“Sit down,” Joe said, propping his shotgun against Lucy’s bike. “Grab one of those lawn chairs.”
“I’ll do that,” Bud said, pulling a chair over and collapsing into it. The whoosh of his exhale floated in Joe’s direction, and the alcohol content was so high Joe was grateful he didn’t have a lighted cigarette. He hoped the chair wouldn’t collapse under the ex-rancher’s weight.
Nate remained hidden, and Joe purposefully didn’t look in his direction. Although Bud seemed completely harmless now, it was good to have Nate there monitoring the situation. It was preferable Bud didn’t know it.
Said Bud, “I heard this damned poem in the bar the other night I can’t get out of my head. It’s a Dr. Seuss poem. It goes:
I cannot see, I cannot pee
I cannot chew, I cannot screw
Oh my God, what can I do?
“Dr. Seuss, you say,” Joe said. “I doubt that.”
Bud continued, “ . . . My body’s drooping, have trouble pooping
The Golden Years have come at last
The Golden Years can kiss my ass.”
With that, Bud paused and grinned a new jack-o’-lantern smile that was the result of missing teeth. One gone on top, two on the bottom.
“Are you through?”
“Yup,” Bud said. “There’s more, but I can’t remember the lines. So yeah, I’m through.” He said it while digging into his ranch coat and coming out with a tin of Copenhagen. Joe watched as he formed a huge wad with his thumb and two fingers and crammed the snuff into the right side of his lower lip in front of his teeth. The wad was so big it distorted his lower face.
“So what are you doing here?” Joe asked. “I don’t appreciate you sneaking around my house at night.”
“I’m sorry,” Bud said, shaking his head. “I really am.”
Joe couldn’t believe how this man had changed in just two years. Bud had been one of the best-liked and most influential ranch owners in Twelve Sleep County. He was generous and avuncular, served on boards and commissions, donated thousands to Saddlestring charities, and almost single-handedly kept the 4-H Club and rodeo arena afloat. He’d been a kind step-grandfather to Sheridan and Lucy, and he’d briefly employed Joe as foreman of the Longbrake Ranch when Joe had been fired from the Game and Fish Department. But here he was, broken and embarrassing. And armed.
He looked up, trying to focus. “Missy told me,” he said.
“Told you what?”
“Missy told me she’d hired that Nate Romanowski to put the hurt on me. To knock hell out of me and send me down the river in a pine box. I know what that character can do with that big cannon of his he carries around.”
Joe moaned.
“She said he was coming here, to this house, and he was going to kick the living crap out of me in front of my friends and buddies.”
“She said that, did she?”
Bud nodded. “She called me yesterday and told me that. She said she was giving me fair warning to get the hell out of town and stop bothering her. I thought about it some, I’ll admit. I couldn’t sleep at all last night, and I had a beer for breakfast to help me decide what to do. I been on a tear ever since,” he said, tipping an imaginary glass of bourbon into his mouth. “Then I said to myself, the hell with it. I ain’t scared of no Nate Romanowski. I came here to get the drop on him and maybe bring this thing to a head.”
Joe sighed. He was as angry at Missy for inadvertently revealing Nate’s whereabouts as he was disappointed in what Bud had become. “It’s probably hard to sneak up on guys when you can hardly stand up.”
Bud nodded. “You’re telling me?”
“She’s a cancer,” Joe said. “Why do you still listen to her?”
“A cancer?” Bud said, sitting back and slapping his thighs with his big hands, “Cancer can be cured most of the time. No, she’s a damned witch! She’s an in-the-flesh witch! She put her spell on me for a while and she took everything I owned, and now she’s working on that guy, the Earl of Lexington. She’ll have everything he’s got soon, I’ll bet you money. I mean, if I still had some.”
Joe said, “I won’t take that bet.”
Bud laughed drily. “The only revenge I got is that the way things are going, I’m not sure I could have afforded to pay the taxes or comply with all the new regulations they’re putting on us out here. I’m glad somebody else has to deal with that shit. But I don’t like the idea of your friend coming after me, either.”
Joe said, “Bud, Nate’s not after you. That’s all in Missy’s imagination. Not that she hasn’t tried to hire him to intimidate you, but that’s not what Nate does.”
Bud said, “What does he do?”
Which momentarily left Joe at a loss for words.
The kitchen drapes parted, and Joe saw Marybeth look out. Her face fell when she saw Bud Longbrake and how he looked. Joe nodded to her and indicated that everything was fine. Before she let the curtains fall back into place, he could see her purse her lips and shake her head sadly.
“I asked what he did,” Bud repeated.
“I take drunk old ranchers home,” Nate said, stepping out from the shadows where he’d been hiding. His .454 was low at his side but not in the holster.
At the sound of Nate’s voice, Bud’s arm rose stiffly and he fluttered his hands and his boots kicked out in alarm.
“Calm down,” Nate said to Bud, putting a hand on his shoulder. “If I was going to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
Joe shrugged to Bud, as if to say, You know he’s right.
“Where’s your pickup, Bud?” Nate asked.
Bud gestured vaguely toward the sagebrush field in back of the house. “Out there somewhere,” he said.
“Why don’t we go find it?”
“Then what?” Bud asked.
“Then I’ll take you home. Are you still living in that apartment over the Western wear store on Main?”
Bud nodded.
“Then let’s go.”
Bud didn’t move.
Nate reached out and grasped Bud’s ear and twisted it. “I said, let’s go.”
Joe had seen Nate twist off enough ears. He said, “Nate . . .”
But the pressure caused Bud to rise clumsily and stand up. Nate let go of Bud’s ear and Bud pawed at it with his free hand like a bear cub.
“Can I at least see the girls?” Bud asked Joe. “I miss them girls.”
“They’re in bed,” Joe fibbed. “It’s a school night, Bud.”
“I do miss them girls.”
“They miss you, too,” Joe said. “You were a good grandpa to them.”
“Until that witch screwed it all up.”
Joe nodded.
“You know the worse thing about her?” Bud said suddenly.
Joe braced himself.
“I still love her. I still goddamn love her, even after all she did to me.”
Joe said, “That is the worst thing, all right.”
“What about my Army Colt?” Bud asked Joe. “I like to have it within reach.”
“Go home, Bud. I’ll drop it by later.”
“Come on,” Nate said. “Can you find your keys?”
Bud clumsily started patting himself. In addition to his pickup keys, he located his can of Copenhagen and a warm bottle of beer. Bud twisted the cap off and took a long drink, and offered it to Joe and then Nate.