I cut on my lights and eased the Plymouth into second as I came off the incline; then I remembered the Springfield propped like an iron salute against the passenger’s door. It was too late to dump it or even throw it over into the backseat. The sheriff’s deputy was already by the wooden bridge rail, winking his flashlight at me.
Oh boy. And you rolled right into it, babe.
I slowed the car and looked over at the bright flame in the parking lot and the two men who were spraying it with fire extinguishers in silhouette. Then the deputy began to sweep his flashlight impatiently, and it took a second, like a beat out of my heart, to realize that he was waving me past. I rattled across the board planks, and the headlights suddenly illuminated his brown uniform, the wide gun belt and cartridges, and the Stetson pushed low over his eyes. I nodded at him and slowly depressed the accelerator.
I hit the highway and opened up the Plymouth with the rods knocking, the frame shaking, and the moon rising over the mountain like a song. I opened the wind vane into my face and felt the sweat turn cold and dry in my hair, and then I drank the last of the whiskey in a long swallow and sailed the bottle over the roof. I had walked right out of it with the kind of con luck that drops on your head when you’re sure that this time they’re going to weld the cell door shut.
I bought a six-pack of Great Falls to drink on the way back to the ranch, and I felt a light-headed, heart-beating sense of victory and omniscience that I had known only in the infantry after moving all the way to the top of a Chinese hill without being hit. The fact that I weaved across the white center line or ran through an intersection at seventy seemed unimportant; I was flying with magic all over me, and the alcohol and adrenaline worked in my heart with a mean new energy.
The next morning I felt the sun hot and white in my eyes through the window. There was an overturned can of beer by the bed, and my shirt was half off and tangled around my cast. I walked into the back room where Buddy was sleeping and saw the Springfield back on the rack, though I had no memory of having put it there. I could still taste the mixture of beer, whiskey, and cigarettes in my mouth, and I worked the pump on the sink and cupped the water up in my hand. When the coldness hit my stomach, I thought I was going to be sick. My hands were shaking, the blood veins in my head had started to draw tight with hangover, and my eyes ached when I looked through the window into the bright light and the dew shimmering on the hay bales.
I tried to light the kindling in the wood stove to make coffee, but the paper matches flared against my thumbnail, and as I stared at the split chunks of white wood, the whole task suddenly seemed enormous. I took a beer out of the icebox and sat on the edge of the bed while I drank it. The sickening taste of the whiskey began to dissipate, and I felt the quivering wire in the middle of my breast start to dull and quieten. I finished the beer and had another, and by the bottom of the second can that handkerchief of flame in the parking lot became removed enough to think about. Then I saw Buddy leaning against the doorjamb, naked to the waist, his blue jeans low on his flat stomach, grinning at me.
“Are you getting in or getting up, Zeno? Either way, you look like shit,” he said.
“What’s up?” I said. My voice sounded strange, distant and apart from me, a piece of color in the ears.
“Did you get bred last night?”
“Get me a can out of the icebox.”
“Man, I can hear those hyenas beating on their cages in your head.”
“Just get the goddamn beer, Buddy.”
“My car ain’t in the pound, is it?”
I hadn’t thought yet about the car or what condition it might be in. My last memory of the Plymouth was winding it up out of Lolo after some drunk discussion in a bar about steelhead fishing over in Idaho. Then I remembered the tack-hammer rattle out of the crankcase that meant a burnt bearing and maybe a flattened crankshaft.
I heard Buddy click off the cap from a bottle of beer and the foam drip flatly on the floor. He pushed the bottle inside my hand.
“What did you get into last night?” he said.
He struck a match on the stove. Then I smelled the flame touch the reefer.
“It’s a real bag of shit, man.”
He pulled a chair out from the table and sat down, his eyes focused and serious over the joint in his mouth.
“Like what?”
“I really went over the edge and hung one out.”
“What did you do?”
“I took your Springfield and shot the hell out of the parking lot in that pulp mill.”
“Oh man.”
I couldn’t look at him. I felt miserable, and the absurdity of what I had done ached inside my hangover like an unacceptable dream.
“How bad?”
“I left about three trucks burning and probably blew the engine blocks out of a half-dozen others.”
“Wow. You don’t fool around, do you?”
It was silent for a moment, and I heard him take a long inhale on the reefer and let it out of his lungs slowly.
“Iry, what’s in your head? They’re going to pour your ass in Deer Lodge.”
“I got out of it. There was a dick at the log bridge, but he must have thought the damage was done inside the lot.”
“Forget that. You were in the sheriff’s office yesterday, and maybe these cowboys ain’t too bright, but they’re going to put the dice together and waltz you right into the bag. And believe me, buddy, they hand out time here to outsiders like there’s no calendar.”
He set the reefer on the edge of the table and walked back to the bedroom.
“What are you doing?” I said.
He unlocked the bolt of the Springfield, and an unfired cartridge sprang from the magazine.
“Really cool, man. What do you think I’m going to do?”
He walked out the screen door, and then I heard a shovel crunching in the earth behind the cabin. I wanted to argue with him about his rifle, but I knew he was right. I wet a towel under the pump and held it to my face and neck. I couldn’t stop sweating. Buddy dropped the shovel on the porch and came back through the door with grains of dirt in the perspiration on his arms. He was grinning again, with that crazy light in his eyes that used to get him into isolation at Angola.
“You’re sure a dumb son of a bitch,” he said.
“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said since I got out here.”
“But we’re in a real hardball game now, partner.”
Fifteen minutes later we heard a car rumble over the cattle guard. Buddy looked through the window, then back at me.
“That’s your taxi, Zeno,” he said. “Don’t say anything. Little Orphan Annie with empty circles for eyes. You were juicing in the saloon at Lolo, and you were too drunk even to drive into Missoula.”
“Get rid of the roach.”
He went to the sink and peeled the reefer, then pumped water over it.
“This is a crock, ain’t it?” he said.
“Give me all the cigarettes you have.”
“Look at that pair of geeks. They love making a bust on the old man’s place.”
He handed me two packs of Lucky Strikes and a paper book of matches.
“I ain’t got the bread for a bondsman, so you’re going to have to sit it out, Zeno,” he said.
“I should have a check by tomorrow or the next day. Bring it down to the jail and I’ll endorse it.”
The deputy didn’t knock. He opened the screen door and pointed one thick finger at me.
“All right, Paret. Move it up against the car,” he said.
He held the screen open while I walked past him to the automobile. The other deputy leaned against the fender with his palm resting on the butt of his.357. Both of them were over six feet, and their wide shoulders were stiff and angular against their starched shirts.