Bathed in yellow neon light from a Coors beer sign in the window, he paused at the entrance to the saloon and breathed it all in and settled into its familiarity.
The saloon was dark, smoky, and raucous. Old dusty mounts of mule deer, elk, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, and pronghorn antelope covered the walls. Strings of tiny white Christmas lights were looped through the tines and curls of the horns and antlers, and gave the room the feel of being roped in by a twinkling lariat. Hunters still in their hunting clothes crowded the bar or stood together in knots throughout the tables. A few still wore holstered sidearms on their belts, and most had sheathed knives and saws. A harried waitress waded through them with a full tray of beaded beer cans and shots. Joe smelled cigar and cigarette smoke and fried hamburgers from a small grill behind the bar manned by a dour gnome-like man with three missing fingers on each hand. With the exception of the harried waitress, there were no women in the saloon.
His first concern on entering was the possibility of being recognized by locals he had met who could identify him, but he confirmed quickly the hunters in the saloon were from out of state. These men were on vacation, or, as he’d heard the term once in Saddlestring, on a “red holiday.”
A few hunters saw him enter and nodded hello, and he nodded back and went to the bar. He knew a lone hunter was odd but not unusual, although he glanced expectantly at the door several times to pretend he might be waiting for a buddy to join him. Behind him, he heard loud but good-natured ribbing about missed shots, getting stuck, and poor Ritchie from Indiana who had literally been caught with his pants down and his rifle out of reach when two large bucks broke from the timber right in front of him and continued on.
“Bob Pulochova,” the bartender said in greeting. “Everyone calls me Pulo.”
“Coors Light, please,” Joe said. Pulo was gaunt and toothless, and had a white inverted horseshoe of hair beneath his shiny bald head.
“Get your deer yet?” Pulochova asked as a greeting while reaching down into an ice-covered bucket and placing the unopened bottle on the bar.
“I’m an elk hunter,” Joe said. It wasn’t a lie.
“I don’t see blood on your hands,” the man said with a wry smile.
“Good reason for that,” Joe sighed, leaving it vague. “Say, are there any rooms in this place? It looks pretty full.”
“There might be, but you’d have to check up front with Alice. I think a couple of guys from Pennsylvania got their elk and cleared out today, but don’t quote me on that. This place fills up fast with hunters.”
Joe nodded to his beer. “I might leave this here while I go check.”
“You can take it with you. Want another one? Or a shot to go with it?”
“I haven’t even opened this yet,” Joe said.
“It’s happy hour,” the bartender said. “Two for one for the next twenty minutes until seven.”
“That’s okay,” Joe said.
“Suit yourself,” Pulochova said, rolling his eyes. “Want to know the menu?”
“Sure.”
“Hamburger or cheeseburger, single or double,” the bartender said, chinning toward the gnome. “That’s the menu, unless you want to go into the restaurant down the hall. They got everything in the damn world to eat down there, as long as it’s beef.”
Joe smiled and said he wanted a double cheeseburger.
“Double cheeseburger coming up!” Pulo shouted out without looking over his shoulder.
The registration desk was no more than an ancient knotty pine lectern in the main lobby. The lobby had high, tin-lined ceilings and smelled of hundred-year-old woodsmoke. A flinty woman with bleached yellow hair stood behind the lectern, sucking on a cigarette and squinting through the smoke. She wore a name tag that read ALICE PULOCHOVA.
“Do you have any single rooms available?” Joe asked, nodding toward the open ledger in front of her.
“Did my better half send you here?” Alice asked, meaning the saloon. Apparently, the bartender was her husband.
“Yup.”
“Well, we got a room on the top floor that just opened up, but it ain’t cleaned out yet, so I can’t rent it to you.”
“I’ll take it,” Joe said.
She looked put-out. “My housekeeping folks have left for the night.”
“I’ll still take it,” Joe said, reaching for his wallet. He could tell by the set of her mouth that she was about to turn him away. “Do you take cash?”
Her eyebrows arched conspiratorially, and she said, “Yes, that would be fine.” Meaning: she could keep him off the books and pocket the cash and not enter the rental in her ledger, and there wouldn’t be a credit card trail to tie either one to the transaction.
“It’ll be a hundred,” Alice said.
Joe counted out five twenties, leaving only thirty dollars in his wallet.
“This means I’m gonna have to go up there myself when I get a break and take care of it. So the room won’t be available for a few hours.”
“That’s fine.”
She gave him a registration card. He filled it out and handed it back.
“Here’s the key,” she said, reading the card. He wondered if she’d ball it up and toss it in a garbage can the second his back was turned. “Welcome to the Black Forest Inn, Mr….” She struggled with the pronunciation of the last name.
“Romanowski,” Joe said. “Nate Romanowski.”
“Like I said, give me a few hours to get up there. Unless you want to wallow in the empty beer cans and assorted filth from the last guests.”
“No thanks.”
“How long are you staying, Mr. Roma-nooski?”
Joe shrugged. “Maybe just tonight.”
She cackled at his answer. “You must be pretty sure you’ll kill something tomorrow, then.”
He nodded, and said, “I think I’m on their trail.”
An hour and two Coors and a double cheeseburger later, the south interior door of the saloon opened inward and three men shuffled in. Joe glanced at his watch — eight-thirty. It was a half-hour after the wild game — processing facility had closed to receiving, and the men were obviously employees just off the clock. They looked exhausted. Joe recognized two of them from when he entered the lot before nightfall as the workers who assisted the Michigan hunters with their deer. One large man with a full red beard still wore his blood-covered apron. Small bits of bone, like cracker crumbs, nested in his beard from sawing off limbs and cracking through pelvises and rib cages. The red-bearded man and a second meatcutter took two adjacent barstools, and the third wandered Joe’s way, looking for a place to sit.
Joe had empty barstools on both sides of him, and he nodded toward the approaching meatcutter that it was okay for him to have a seat. The worker nodded back, sat down on Joe’s left with a heavy sigh. He was short and round, with thinning black hair and had the bulbous red nose of a drinker.
“Want a beer?” Joe asked, gesturing toward the five full cans and three whiskey shots sitting in front of him. “Guys keep buying rounds for the house and every time I look up, there’s another one in front of me. I don’t even want to try to drink ’em all.”
The worker looked over, assessing Joe’s intentions. Free beer from a stranger? “Are you kidding?”
“Nope. Somebody back there came up with a rule where anyone who got his deer or elk today had to buy a round for the house. I was just sitting here minding my own business, and the drinks started piling up. Feel free to have one… or two.”
“Hell of a deal,” the worker said with a grin, and quickly drained half of a Coors in a long pull. “Damn, that’s good after the kind of day I had.”