Blood Land (17 page)

Or was there?

Something about the whole situation seemed off. And that something had been worming its way into Pruett’s brain since the very start. The sheriff grabbed his hunting coat and his hat. He had some questions of his own he wanted to ask and he wasn’t going to wait until the attorneys got around to asking them.

“Wake up, Ty.”

Ty rolled over and look up at the cage door. “Weren’t asleep.”

“I brought us coffee,” said Pruett.

Ty stood and rolled his neck, joints snapping like tiny kernels of popcorn going off in his spine. “Gettin’ old’s hell, Sheriff. And that cot you all tryin’ to pass of as a bed ain’t helpin’ matters none.”

Pruett handed a lidded cup of black coffee through the bars. “They didn’t have any cream,” he said.

“Don’t take none. Obliged for the hot joe.”

“I want to talk to you, man to man,” Pruett said, pulling a chair over and sitting his two hundred and forty pounds down in it.

“Always do,” Ty said.

“Another one of those ‘off the record’ kinda deals,” the sheriff said.

“Hmm. Not sure that’s a grand idea anymore. With the trial and all.”

“Why do you want to die so bad?” Pruett said.

“Each of us owes a death,” Ty said. “Some of us owe a pile more’n one.”

“You told me once that you didn’t remember shooting that night.”

“I remember enough,” Ty said.

“Tell me again.”

“I remember tearin’ over there like a banshee, nearly tippin’ over the truck twice on that piece a shit road…then…hmm…stopped before I got there. I got out the truck and set my ass down on a big rock. Wanted to think.”

“What about?” Pruett said.

“All of it. How my old man could try and kill me. His son.”

“Didn’t sit well.”

“No it did
not
. But I got to thinkin’. Past the anger touched off in my skull…methodical kind of thoughts.”

“Like what?”

“Like how killin’ Rory weren’t just about me, or about revenge. It would be like wipin’ a scourge from the Earth.”

“Meaning?”

“He’s no good, Sheriff. Everyone’s bad, in one way or another. But Rory’s kind…they just go on hurtin’ and hurtin’. Never fuckin’ stops. I drove over thinkin’ I would be the one to put an end to it.”

“But your conscience got the better of you.”

“You serious?” Ty said.

“Let’s say thinking about doing it and doing it are
not
one and the same,” Pruett said.

“That’s goddamned right.”

“I knew when you asked me if I killed anyone in ‘Nam,” Pruett said. “Knew you couldn’t have done it.”

“How so?”

“You had a look in your eyes,” the sheriff said.

“What look?”

“There’s this look a man gets in his eye when he talks about taking another life. It’s a look of awe. Like the act itself is this sacred thing, which it damn sure is. Once a man has killed, though, he loses that look.”

“That’s why I stopped and started drinkin’ some more,” Ty said.

“I know. Didn’t help, did it?” Pruett said.

“No.”

“Nothing can help that, Ty. Nothing.”

“I decided then and there I was going to warn ‘em, though. Just put the fear of the devil in their hearts.”

“You think about winging one of them?”

“Sure. Considered pickin’ a few a them gray hairs off the old man’s head.”

“You’re a helluva shot,” Pruett said. “Just the kind who could do it.”

“’Cept I had a few more drinks.”

“Passed out, did you?”

“Yep. Sat down on my rear end and fell over. Went directly to sleep. Everything else was a blackout.”

“Why haven’t you told all this to your attorney?”

“I have told him. Why you think he’s arguin’ I didn’t intend to kill no one?”

“I mean the part about you passing out.”

“I did. Told everyone I blacked out.”

“You just said you passed out. Took a nap, as it were.”

“No difference,” Ty said.

“Yeah, well I say there is,” the sheriff said, standing up, pushing the chair back across the stone floor.

“What’s that?”

“All the times I ever got drunk,” Pruett said. “All those times I blacked out, you know I never once actually remember passing out? That’s why they call it a blackout. You don’t remember anything.”

“I don’t follow.”

“Man passing out, Ty, just ain’t the same thing as him
blacking out
.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” Ty said. “Black out, pass out. Damn you if you think there’s a difference.”

“You didn’t shoot anyone, did you, Ty?”

“Fuck you, Pruett.”

“Your truck was there.
You
were there. But you didn’t pull that trigger, did you?”

“I said
fuck you
, sir.”

“Who’re you protecting, Ty? Who’s worth one of those deaths owed?”

“We’re done talking.”

Pruett walked away and never said a word about the phone number his prisoner had carved in the wall. He also neglected to mention the homemade etcher, made of a fork—the one that Pruett had returned to its hiding place wondering just what his wife’s accused murderer might carve next.

Pruett left the jail with nothing but drinking and sleeping on his mind.

The sheriff bought a bottle of Heaven Hill on his way home. All that talk of drinking with Ty had done him in. He thought about what little weakness it took for a man to acquiesce to his sworn addiction. He could spend
years
walking away from that goddamned bottle and yet the first sip was always just ‘round the next bend. Pruett had bounced on and off the wagon before; all drunks ever needed was an excuse, and never a grand one either. Before his twelve years of sobriety Pruett had quit and restarted a hundred times. He’d started drinking because his back hurt him or because a particular day on the job was worse than another. He justified drinking when it was too damned cold out, and then he reached for a bottle of something when it was too fucking
hot.

No sir, I only drink under two conditions: when I’m alone or when I’m with somebody.

There was always an excuse. The reason, however, remained the same.

Fill the hole.

Every man had one. Some had a hundred. Hell, when God brought souls up to Heaven, Pruett guessed some fellas’ souls probably looked like they’d been carved up with a Thompson gun. But Pruett had long since figured the secret:

It didn’t matter how
many
. All that mattered was THE hole. And there was always one. For the habitual drunk, it was simply easier to find.

Negative space. The abyss of a soul.

And as life rolled on, the abyss, it only got bigger.

Now, after the death of his sweet Bethy, Pruett felt like the emptiness inside him knew no boundaries—as if all the other holes in him had finally caved into the One. Endless, like a canyon at night. Or a well in which you never heard the rock hit bottom.

He spun the cap off his new bottle with one thick thumb and then he drank.

He relished the heat as it ran through him. It was like a thousand tiny fires burning in his heart and in his belly.

He knew the void he was pouring the booze into would never be filled.

But he figured maybe he could burn it out. Let the damn thing consume the whole of him.

How then would he know the pain, when there was nothing left with which to compare it?

He sipped on the bourbon and reread the copy of the will. There was nothing out of the ordinary. Hanson said it himself: it was stock issue, pure boilerplate. The land was divided equally.

And yet it was
not
.

Dirk never wanted anything to do with the ranch. So Willy never gave him any land.

Dirk, however, likely would have known nothing about the mineral rights. Not until Ty told him, anyway. Or he heard it shouted in one of the bars.

So why had Dirk been squawking all these months? Money-wise, he was taking it in the shorts as much as Ty.

And where
was
Dirk? He’d not shown up at trial. The other boys and the old man, they never came either, except when they were called to the stand of course. But they were ranchers—their sustenance depended on daylight hours; they couldn’t be troubled to get splinters in their ass on the courtroom benches.

Dirk could have come.  Out of pure curiosity he should have come.

Pruett picked up the phone and called for the number to the Flying Q Guest Ranch.

“Flyin’ Q,” a throaty woman answered.

“This Marigold?” Pruett said.

“Depends who’s on the other end a this line.”

“Sheriff James Pruett.”

“Well, Hell’s bells, Sheriff. Why’d you not say so?”

“I need to speak to Dirk McIntyre. Is he on the trail?”

“Dirk’s not on any trail that I know of,” Marigold Potter said. “He’s been off sick for more’n a week.”

“Sick?”

“He called in last Monday. Sounded turrible. Couldn’t hardly tell it was him.”

“You haven’t talked to him since?”

“Nope.”

“All right then, thanks a heap, Mari.”

“Sure thing. Sheriff, I never made it to Bethy’s service. I’m sure sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks,” said Pruett and hung up the phone before the hole in him grew any bigger.

He had to sober up first, so Pruett brewed himself a pot of campfire coffee—threw the grounds right in the kettle on the stove, boiled it up, and poured it into his favorite mug. He drank the swill as fast as he could. Then he went upstairs and turned on a cold shower.

Pullin’ every cliché out of the book for this one
, he thought.

He needed to get over to Dirk’s place.

After three cups of the strong coffee, a long, frigid shower, and an hour of walking around the property, fiddling with this and that—anything to keep the blood flowing and the mind busy—Pruett had sobered up pretty well.