An overgrown footpath led down to the broad, turgid water of the Colorado. A circle of dead ashes shone dark in the clearing, tall weeds growing through the campfire of some forgotten hobo or migrant worker. Dropping the tailgate, he squeezed through to the gray’s head, and backed him out.
He tied the gelding to the side of the trailer, brushed off his back, and settled the faded saddle blanket in place. The gray swiveled an ear when he swung the saddle up, and filled his belly with air. Lee bridled him, led him out a few steps then tightened the cinch again. The gray looked around at him knowingly. Swinging into the saddle, Lee walked him around the clearing then moved him out toward the river at a jog. He cantered him, stopped him short, backed him, spun him a couple of times, let him jog out slow, and he felt himself grinning. He rode for maybe half an hour up along the river. It had been a long time since he’d felt a good horse under him. “You’ll do,” he told the gray. “I guess we both will.”
In the falling evening, as he unsaddled the gray and rubbed him down, his thoughts turned sharply back to the South Dakota prairie when he and Mae were kids, to the long summer days when, hurrying through his chores, they still had daylight to slip away while Ma and the girls were getting supper and his dad was maybe in town or busy with the cattle in a far field. He could see Mae’s smile so clearly, her dark eyes, her dimples deep as she stepped up onto her small cowhorse.
Why had he dreamed of Mae last night? And why had that other little girl, in town that day, stared up at him shocked, bringing Mae so alive for a moment? Why was his little sister, from half a century gone, suddenly so clear and real in his thoughts? Riding up along the river, he’d felt for a moment almost as if she rode behind him, her small arms around his waist, her head resting against his back as she used to do; the feeling had been so strong that near dark when he returned to the clearing he felt he ought to help Mae down off the gray before he stepped down, himself.
Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he tied the gelding to the trailer again, and then secured two five-gallon buckets to the side, one filled with water from the river, the other with a quart of oats. He heaved the hay from the pickup into the trailer, broke open one bale, pulled off two flakes of good oat hay, and dropped them on the ground where the gelding could reach them. He shut the tailgate so the gelding couldn’t get in at the rest. Leaving the quiet saddle horse with the truck and trailer, leaving him to sleep standing, he set out through the falling night on the two-mile hike back to his cabin, keeping his mind, now, on the job ahead.
28
Half an hour after Morgan was booked into the Rome jail, Jimson returned, moving in through the heavy outer door, looking in through the bars at Morgan.“Becky’s on her way. I couldn’t get her at home, she was at Caroline’s.” Morgan was surprised Jimson had bothered to call her. But he knew that wasn’t fair, Jimson was only doing his job, and when Morgan looked up at him now, some of the old warmth had returned.
“She’s been out all night looking for you,” Jimson said, “looking for your car. She started to cry when she knew you were all right, that you weren’t lying dead somewhere.” The officer paused, a frown touching his round, smooth face. “She said to tell you she wasn’t bringing Sammie,said Sammie has a cold, she’s left her with Caroline.” The officer colored a little. “She said to tell you she loves you.” Quickly he turned away again, locking the outer door behind him.
Morgan stared after him. Of course she wouldn’t bring Sammie, not here to see him locked behind bars just as in her nightmare. What had Becky told Sammie when he hadn’t come all night, when Sammie didn’t hear him get up and shower this morning, when he didn’t appear at the breakfast table?
What would she tell Sammie if he didn’t come home at all, if this couldn’t be straightened out, if he was kept in jail and was arraigned and even tried, a prisoner escorted back and forth to the courtroom? Thinking about what might lie ahead of him turned him shaky, cold and despondent again. How could he be charged with murder? He had killed no one. Not even if he’d been drugged would he kill a man—except in the war, he thought, bitterly.
There was only one explanation for his long lapse of memory, his long and debilitating sleep, and that was that Falon had given him some drug. Easy enough for Falon to get drugs, maybe some kind of prescription that was passed around among Falon’s sleazy friends. Opium, maybe, that was easy enough to get, it was prescribed for colds and the flu. Dover’s Powder, he thought it was called, something like that. He supposed, unless they found the Coke bottle, there was no way to tell. He doubted the Rome cops would go looking for Coke bottles, as surly as they’d been. And even then, could a chemist or pharmacist find such a thing?
Sitting on the sagging bunk, he put his face in his hands, sick and cold with fear. No matter what Becky told Sammie about why he wasn’t home, at some point Sammie would have to learn the truth, and what would that do to her? They’d tried never to lie to Sammie, even when she was very small; only those few times that, because she was so young, the truth would have been inexplicable to her. Now, this morning,would Becky lie, so that Sammie wouldn’t know so soon that her worst nightmare had come true? He couldn’t bear to think of his little girl’s terror. Or of Becky’s own pain, when she heard the inexplicable charge of murder. What could he have done last night—what could Falon have done—to make this happen, to hurt the two people in the world whom Morgan loved more than life itself?
He and Becky had been sweethearts since before high school, they had married the week after they graduated, just a small wedding in her mother’s garden. He lay thinking about their honeymoon at Carter Lake, how happy they had been, how perfect life had been then. They had stayed in a cabin borrowed from a friend of Becky’s mother’s, had spent most of that week in bed, a little of it walking the woods or in leisurely twilight swims.They didn’t give a damn that they had little money and would have to live with Becky’s mother at first, in the bedroom behind the bakery kitchen. He liked Caroline, had always liked her, though they had had their moments when, in high school, he still wouldn’t stop running with Falon. That week on Carter Lake they would lie in bed spent from loving each other, planning how soon they could buy their own business and maybe even buy a house, planning how many children they would have, planning the beginning of their real lives as if they had only just been born.
The next week after their honeymoon he went to work as a mechanic at one of the three local gas stations, and Becky found a job with an accountant. When she’d learned enough, she left to start her own freelance accounts, to build her own new business. She had the same drive and stamina that had helped her mother succeed alone in the bakery business after Becky’s father died.
Becky had taken only a little time out to have Sammie, balancing her customers’ books while caring for the baby. When war was declared, he’d joined the navy rather than being drafted. During his absence, their need for each other, their passion had built intolerably. All the time he’d been gone his dreams had been only of Becky and of their baby girl, of the business they would build together and the large family they planned, of a rich, long life together.
When he got home, they had saved enough for a nice down payment on the old abandoned gas station. His mother would have scraped to send him to college but he’d never wanted that, he had no use for that kind of learning. He loved machines, he loved cars and trucks, anything mechanical, and he had gotten further education for that, for the learning he really wanted, in the navy.
All the time he was gone, Becky sent him pictures of Sammie. She had his pale Irish coloring, but Becky’s dark eyes and turned-up nose, she was the spirit of their spirits, she was proof of the eternity of their union, her existence filled him with an even deeper love of being alive in God’s world. At six years old Sammie had handled her bicycle like a pro, she knew how to make her own bed and how to mix and cut out cookies for her mother—but the minute he got home she became Daddy’s helper, his gamin-faced grease monkey.