“Call and let Morgan know when to expect you.”
I hung up. I was not happy he and his ex-wife were coming, but that was what they should do. I wrote a note for Morgan and left it on the table.
“Let’s go,” Gus said.
I pulled on my jacket, then went into my study and grabbed my rifle. We walked out through the snow to the truck. I took my fly rod from the behind the seat and tossed it into the drifted snow in the bed. I then, for the first time in my life, put a rifle in my rifle rack.
I tried to keep focus, but realized I was driving the highway without scouring it. I’d traveled that stretch many times already since David’s disappearance. I told Gus that since the sheriff was looking in the desert and generally west of town, we would search east, toward the reservation.
“Makes as much sense as anything,” Gus said.
“Keep your eyes open for a blue BMW.”
“Why?”
“A couple of rednecks. I’ve got a bad feeling about them.”
“That’s usually the way I feel about rednecks.”
“These assholes picked fights with both David and me and I saw them talking to David the other day.”
“You think?”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “I’m thinking everything right about now. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine.”
“You know, I appreciate privacy as much as the next guy and this might not be the best time, but how about telling me what’s going on?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Gus, you look sick. Your medicine keeps changing. You sleep a lot. Tell me something. I’ll find out at some point.”
“I’m seventy-nine years old,” he said.
“I know that.”
“And I’m pretty strong for seventy-nine.”
“You’re very strong for seventy-nine,” I said.
“I’ve got cancer.”
“Okay.” I can’t say that I was stunned by the news; I’d suspected as much. Still, hearing it was hard and I felt like I had been sucker-punched. I wanted to pull off the road, but I kept driving. We came around the big curve and the valley appeared before us. “What do we do about it?” I asked. “What kind of cancer? Just what are we dealing with?”
“It’s my pancreas,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m dying, John.” I couldn’t bring myself to look at his eyes. I studied the road. “There’s not much to do about it,” he said. “But we can talk about this later.”
“Talk about it later?”
“What’s talking about it now going to accomplish?”
His point was well taken and I was left silent. As we rolled into town, I said, “I’m sorry, Gus.” I was sorry he was sick, but I was also sorry I had pressed him into the admission.
“Why sorry? I’m an old man. Old men die. I swear some people would whine if you hanged them with a new rope. I’m not one of those people.”
I glanced up through the windshield at the sky. “The snow’s stopped.”
We stopped at the diner for a couple of muffins. I saw the back of Duncan Camp’s head in the rear of the restaurant and left Gus to pay for the food. Camp was sitting with three men in a booth and I could hear them as I got closer.
“So, the whole sheriff’s department is out searching the desert for that cocksucker,” Camp said. “And I mean that literally.”
Another of the men caught sight of me and directed Camp’s attention behind him toward me. Camp was stunned to see me there and was trying to figure a way to backpedal. He rose and followed me as I walked away.
“John,” he said. “It ain’t like that.”
I turned to him. “What’s it like, Duncan?”
“I was just joshing with the boys, you know.” For the world, the man looked sorry.
I didn’t have it in me to be angry, even disappointed. Perhaps I simply was not surprised, and that was surprising in itself.
“Listen, Duncan, I figure I need to clear out before you start with the nigger jokes. I wouldn’t want to cramp your style.”
“That ain’t fair, John,” he said as I turned away.
I faced him again. “I’m sorry it isn’t fair, Duncan. That’s going to eat at me for the rest of the day.” I left him standing there and walked out telling Gus to come along as I passed.
I sat behind the wheel of the truck and threw my head back against the seat. I felt as if the whole world was upside-down.
“What’s wrong, nephew?” Gus asked.
“You know what I am?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
“I’m that three-legged coyote.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I can’t recognize my own tracks until I stop moving.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.”
At the gas station, I asked the attendant if she had seen the blue BMW while I paid for gas.
“Those fools,” she said. She was a heavyset woman with hard, blue eyes. “They come in a lot.”
“Do you know them?”
She shook her head.
“So, you wouldn’t have any idea where they live?”
She took this the wrong way and her blue eyes became harder. “I said I don’t know them. How would I know where they live?”
“I didn’t mean anything,” I said. She softened immediately. “Maybe you could tell me which way they go after they gas up?”
“Sometimes east, sometimes west.”
I thanked her for her useless answer.
As I was leaving she said, “Of course, at the end of the day when they stop, they’re headed east.”
“Thank you.”
We drove over to the reservation on the back roads, finding nothing along the way. I used the pay phone in front of the tribal office building to call Morgan. She told me that Howard had called and said that he and Sylvia would be there at eight that night. Then I put a call into the sheriff’s office and learned there was nothing to know. I blew out a breath and looked up to see Daniel White Buffalo standing at the window of the truck talking to Gus.
“Anything we can do?” Daniel asked me.
“Yeah, why don’t you just shoot me now,” I said. “Have you seen the rednecks in the BMW?”
“You mean the neo-Nazi boys?” he said.
“That would be them,” I said.
“I see them around sometimes. They’re sons of bitches. Them and their asshole friend in the dually. I think he’s the one shot my cows.”
“Dually?”
“Big black one. Four-wheel Ford.”
“Any idea where they live?”
“Don’t know, don’t want to know.”
“I can understand that,” Gus said.
“Well, we’re going to keep on driving the roads,” I said.
“You should talk to Elvis Monday,” Daniel said. “He got into a fight with them guys. He said he was gonna shoot them. He might know where they are. He wants to shoot everybody. He’s like his mother.”
“Okay, Daniel.” I walked around and climbed into the truck.
“Where to?” Gus asked.
“Clara Monday’s.”
Elvis Monday was sitting in a chair on the porch of the modular home. He was smoking a brown cigarette. He watched as I climbed out of the truck, but didn’t rise. Gus stayed in his seat. He said he was tired.
“Elvis,” I greeted the man.
“Buffalo soldier,” he said.
I sat on the steps with him and looked back at my truck. “How is your mother?” I asked.
“She’s inside.”
“Is she doing okay?”
“She’s cooking. I hear your friend is missing.”
“He is. White Buffalo told me you had a fight with a couple of white guys in a BMW.”
“Assholes,” he said. “I was going to shoot them, but ammunition is too expensive, know what I mean? I had them all set up.” He aimed a pretend rifle into the yard.