Blood Land (8 page)

“Juror seven. Ms. Cornwall?” Hanson asked, though he knew her name.

“Yes, sir,” Dorothy Cornwall answered.

Hanson noted fear in her voice. “Thank you very much for your time today, dear,” he said to her, then addressed Judge Butler: “Your Honor, the defense would like to use a preemptory challenge for juror seven.”

The judge nodded. “Ms. Cornwall, the court thanks you. You are excused, ma’am. Will the rest of you please move forward one chair, including those of you in the alternate chairs and the gallery. Thank you.”

When the reshuffling was complete, Hanson addressed the juror who had just been moved into the box. “Juror number thirteen,” he said. “Ms. Bineford? I hope I got that right.”

“You got it fine,” Suzan Bineford said.

“Could you see yourself as a vigilante? What I mean is, under a particular circumstance, might you take the law into your own hands?”

“I don’t think so,” Bineford said. “Not to such an extreme, no.”

Hanson expected her answer and followed with: “Ever have any cause to scrap with any of your brothers or sisters?”

“’Course I have,” she said, agitated. “Who hasn’t?”

Hanson liked her. He didn’t want to press further, wary of a Jorgensen challenge. He’d gotten her to decry vigilante justice, hoping that might sway the prosecution favorably.

The juror selection continued for most of the day. By four-thirty, the attorneys were ready to agree on a jury. Five men, seven women, and two alternates. Hanson excluded as many male ranchers as he could, but of the seven men on the jury, five of them ran cattle in rural Wind River. One was a teacher—a professed conservative with what Hanson believed to be some pretty strong liberal underpinnings he probably dared not flaunt before the local school board. The five women posed a challenge, too. They’d either sympathize with Bethy McIntyre or believe Ty when he talked about how much he loved his sister. They’d mother him or hang him; it was Hanson’s job to steer them.

On the way out of the courthouse, Beulah Jorgensen stopped him.

“Mr. Hanson,” she said.

“I told you, Beulah. Call me J.W.”

“I don’t care for people who use initials to refer to themselves,” she said. “And I don’t recall asking you to use the familiar with me.”

“Understood,” Hanson said.

“I thought it only fair to tell you that I am planning on calling your, uh, well, friend, to the stand. Ms. Steele.”

Hanson feigned stoicism. “For?”

“To testify as to the violent potential of Ty McIntyre. They have a history,” Jorgensen said.

“She won’t say anything to impugn her uncle, you know,” Hanson said.

“She’ll say whatever is the truth or I will have her jailed, sir.”

 “You do whatever you have to, ma’am,” he said.

“She’ll be on my witness list,” Jorgensen said and exited into the fading light.

The short conversation with Beulah Jorgensen squatted on his brain like a toad. Hanson sat on the edge of the hotel bed, a cable news channel humming in the background. He tried to call Wendy when he returned from the courthouse, but she either was out of range or was not answering. At around eight o’clock, she slipped through the door.

“Where have you been?” Hanson asked.

“I had dinner with a high school friend. I told you twice yesterday, and once today. When you were getting ready to leave for court.”

“Right,” Hanson said. Jorgensen’s revelation that there was a history between Ty and Wendy that played well for the prosecution perplexed him. He was also annoyed that neither his client, nor his girlfriend, had found it relevant to share said history with the lawyer tasked with saving the man’s life.

“A curmudgeonly little bird told me today that there is a ‘history’ between you and your uncle Ty,” Hanson said.

“Of course we have history,” Wendy said. “He’s my
uncle
.”

“I neglected to expand. I believe one might call it a
violent
history.”

Wendy sat heavily on the bed, next to Hanson. “Oh,” she said.

“I appreciate the candor, though I’d hoped for a less-incriminating response. Seeing that I will be trying to keep your uncle from a lethal injection starting Monday.”

“It was a long ways back. I didn’t think it would matter,” Wendy said.

“Jorgensen is calling you as a witness for the prosecution. To show Ty’s propensity toward violence.”

Wendy closed her eyes and lay down on her back. “When I was sixteen, my dad and I started to disagree a lot. We had some pretty bad arguments. Uncle Ty broke one up, that’s all that happened.”

“Wendy, if that was all that happened, Beulah Jorgensen would not be planning to call you to the stand.”

“Ty took a swing at my dad. He missed. Gave me one hell of a shiner.”

“Shit,” Hanson said. “Charges?”

“It was mandatory because I was a minor. But the sheriff testified that it was an accident. My dad said that he and Ty were fighting.”

“Which wasn’t the whole truth,” Hanson said.

“It was
enough
of the truth,” Wendy said.

“Had Ty been drinking?”

“Ty was always drinking. So was my father.”

“What happened in court?”

“The attorney defending Ty asked for a trial by judge. Figured the sheriff testifying would hold more sway on another member of the justice machine. He was right. The judge threw the case out.”

“And Beulah Jorgensen?”

“She was just starting out in the City Attorney’s office. It was one of her first cases, I think.”

“Perfect,” Hanson said.

“Sorry,” Wendy said. “I really didn’t think it mattered, since he was acquitted. Pretty stupid.”

“Hopefully it won’t matter much. She can’t go after you too hard. One, you were the victim in the previous case. A child to boot. Second, no conviction. Guessing we won’t have the sheriff’s kind remembrance of the events in question, though.”

“Pruett wouldn’t lie,” she said.

“He’s not my biggest fan.”

“What reason is that?” she said.

“Come on, Wendy. I’m closer to
his
age than yours.”

“Pruett has his problems,” Wendy said. “But he looks out for my happiness.”

“He pulled me over when I first got into town. Did you know that?”

J.W. Hanson had been leaving the Wooden Boot after one draft beer and a few questions directed at the bartender and a couple of the regulars. Halfway to his hotel, blue and red lights appeared in his rear view mirror. He pulled over and a man who looked like a walking oak tree got out of the patrol car, donned a proper western hat, and walked toward the professor’s Toyota Prius.

“License, registration, proof of insurance, sir,” the big man said, leaning down, and a bit into the window.

“No problem, officer,” Hanson said, handing over the documents.

“I work for the Sheriff’s department, Mr. Hanson,” Pruett said, looking at the license and other papers. “Not an officer of anything I know of.”

“Sorry about that,” Hanson said.

“Your insurance card has lapsed, Mr. Hanson. Last week.”

“Guess I forgot to put the new card in my wallet. You can call my agent—I’m still covered, I assure you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Pruett said. He directed the beam of his flashlight into Hanson’s eyes. “Wind River’s a nice place, Professor. It stays that way because the rules get followed.”

He handed the license and laminated card back. “Big trial coming up. Hope for Ty McIntyre’s sake you don’t let
his
insurance lapse.”

“Message received, Sheriff.”

“No message, Professor. Just get your new card.”

“You should have told me,” Wendy said. “Pulling you over is a load of bullshit.”

“Easy, lady. Nothing happened. He was just pissing across the bow of my boat.”

“It still doesn’t mean he won’t tell the truth,” she said.

“The evidence suggests your uncle Ty killed your mother—the man’s wife. I’m not expecting any flattering testimony from a witness like that. I’d be a fool.”

“Tonight it’s a bottom,

tomorrow, what then?

Anything that brings a happy glow

Once I loved somebody,

I wish I could again

How far down can I go?”

Lefty Frizzell,

How Far Down Can I Go

BOOZE HAD him by the balls. Pruett knew it. His conscience told him to ignore the negative; that circumstances allowed him to make significant concessions. But there wasn’t much denying the reality that the bitch was back. Pruett only too gladly let her right through the front door, though the one thing he’d forgotten was that her grip rivaled any vise he ever owned.

Reaching rock bottom requires a devastating personal journey, no matter the person; bottom being as far down as a man or woman can go. Alcohol does not smooth the stones, illuminate the path, or sooth the senses—at least not for long. Rather, it catalyzes the horrors, accelerates the downward journey—like pulling the trapdoor on the gallows. One is enticed into believing alcohol dulls the nerves when it ultimately only intensifies the pain.

Pruett gave up drinking years before—twelve years, two months, and a handful of days. Back then the reason was simple; clearer than anything had been for a long, long time: he stopped because his wife asked him to stop.

Should
he have stopped before?

Did his health ultimately depend upon his stopping?

Was his career, his family—his
honor
at stake?

Yes to all.

But being aware and being capable were two different things. One of the many challenges of the addict is the paralyzing terror resiliency faces when eclipsed by the towering shadow of
NEED
.

Pruett felt it every morning when he climbed stiffly out of bed; that clawing desire for the next drink. He heard it from around every bend, flying on the very wind: the whispery promise of release.

Whenever he was drinking, the bottle held full sway over Pruett; a flagon of demons that manipulated his thoughts, the beasts scrambling constantly to gain further purchase on the craggy slopes of conscience and morality.

But after thirty-two years together, after Pruett’s awful betrayal, Bethy sat him down, looked him in the eye, and
required
something of him. All the other years, from the first to the last—every decision that impacted their lives: each belonged to him. But this one thing—this one impossible thing—she wanted. And so it was actually not that hard for him to do.

After such a long hiatus, one might think it hard to return to such a low point, but the sleazy lie of a drink fixing what ailed him returned too easily. It seeped into every crack and fissure in his soul, feeling like a smoky-keg fire, soothing the aching joints of his heart. Soon enough, he knew, the warm liquid salve would cool, freeze, and expand, bursting the façade of his healing into a billion dead, sparkling pieces.

The demons returned too, happily resuming their elevated position above his will. Like snipers in the trees bordering his mind, they aimed their weapons, demanding that he do things that, until then, only came to him in nightmares; evil thoughts that now breached the innocent light of day.

Blue smoke choked the air in the small bar. Pruett liked to drink in the Wooden Boot—one of three Wind River bars—because of the clientele: mostly roughnecks from the gas patch, many of them transplants. The locals that frequented there were a rough bunch too, and kept mainly to themselves. Ty McIntyre hung his hat there some nights, when he was a free man anyway. Tourists avoided the Boot; it was dingy, seedy, and could be downright dangerous. Because of these untoward realities, however, it was a popular hideaway for people who shirked the public eye.

Sheriff Pruett was off-duty and wearing a plaid hunting shirt, jeans, and a fresh pair of Justin work boots. His felt hat occupied the stool beside him on the right and he had just drained a third Heaven Hill blended whiskey when Carter Lee Holcomb walked up and dropped his butt in the stool to his left.

“Sheriff Pruett,” Holcomb said, tilting back his natty, sweat-ringed straw hat but leaving it fixed atop his head. He motioned to the bartender. “Jenny. Two bourbons and a Bud back.”

Holcombs were about as popular in Wind River as McIntyres. Sonny Holcomb, the father, ran one of the two local filling stations; twenty-year-old Carter Lee worked at Jonah Field for a Canadian natural gas company,
Encana
, doing miscellaneous scuttle work—roughnecking, mostly. That is, when he wasn’t drinking or roaring his truck up and down Main Street, cruising for high school seniors or drunken divorcees.

Pruett kept quiet and tilted his head back to Jen Werner, signaling for another Heaven Hill.

“What, you don’t talk to us respectable folk anymore?” Carter Lee said.

“Would you mind adding a little clarification, slick?” Pruett responded. Though it was a rough bar, he never pushed his sheriff weight around unless it was necessary. Most of the regulars respected the distance between him and the badge. In a place like this, even the law could remain anonymous.

But to Carter Lee Holcomb, no one got a free pass. Carter Lee was every town’s fallen high school hero. Three years before he’d made Wyoming All-State in football. Halfway through his senior year, with no real college prospects, Carter Lee dropped out of school and started working the gas fields. He put on fifty pounds that first year, most of it padding the considerable muscle on his short, wide-body frame. Word in town was that Carter Lee’s biggest contribution to the old man’s business was drinking away what little profit Son Holcomb’s station mustered.

“Fuck you,
boy
,” Carter Lee said, his eyes looking at Pruett in the mirrored backstop. “Heard you keepin’ old Ty
fuckstick
McIntyre all nice and fatted up in the jailhouse. Probably sneaking him his favorite whiskey too. Just saying that maybe you ought to think about the good respectable folks in this town ‘stead of catering to the scum.”

“First class, eh, Carter Lee?” Pruett said. “That what I have sittin’ next to me? Well, shit, I am honestly sorry. Here I was thinking since you walked in here that the God-awful stench of white trash came right in here with you.”

Pruett normally controlled himself better than this. He never allowed himself to be bullied into a bar fight; you couldn’t carry out the office he held and have an unchecked temper. But the sheriff had been drinking. And “fed up” didn’t begin to describe the assault he’d been feeling against his awful, inflammable pride.

“Least I don’t lower myself to playin’ grab-ass with my own wife’s
killer
,” Carter Lee said.

James Pruett didn’t
jump
, so much as
explode
, sideways. When he drove his shoulder into Carter Lee Holcomb, he hit the man so hard it lifted Holcomb clear of the barstool. Pruett kept moving, as if he was carrying a practice dummy across the field, doing a fine football crossover step as he barreled through the five or six empty barstools between them and the pinewood wall at the front of the Wooden Boot.

As Pruett carried the stunned man through the air, Holcomb’s arms and legs flailed wildly, like a windmill that had lost its equilibrium. When Pruett slammed Carter Lee’s back into the solid wall, the man’s lung spewed a final reserve of breath, his red face went pallid, and the fight drained from his eyes. Pruett let Carter Lee drop mercifully to the floor, both the oxygen and the mighty pith stolen from him in just a few short moments.

The big man leaned down, face to face with the young roughneck—who was still searching for his wind—and looked him straight in the eyes: “You be careful who you think to bring up in conversation, Carter Lee. Next time, there won’t be any stopping it.”

The fight awoke a different kind of demon inside Sheriff James Pruett. Once the fever of bloodlust took him over, he felt rejuvenated—reborn—as if he could
physically
challenge his pain; as if he could bust his guilt the way a crack rider broke a wild mare. It felt so
good
to put Carter Lee Holcomb down.

Later, on his front porch, nursing his bum knee, he realized he’d not felt this good since long before Bethy died. There was a time in Vietnam when a young, scared boy decided it was time to find himself or get sent home in a bag. Some kids never figured that out—or at least they never were able to summon the requisite courage.

Pruett took a pull from a bottle of Beam and remembered the jungle hooch his platoon discovered one rainy afternoon, marching through the tangled middle of the Quang Tri Province. The sky still bellowed heavy rain, but the sun was also out, and water was literally turning to steam the moment it landed on the heated branches, leaves, and soil. It gave the whole scene a mystic, otherworldly feel.

And so a sense of deep foreboding came over PFC Jimmy Pruett when his commander instructed him to clear the small villa; a feeling of dread so overpowering that he froze for the first time in his forty-two days in country. Jimmy Pruett stopped in his tracks halfway to the entrance to the hut; fellow soldier PFC Jo-Jo Barney, walking half a step behind, nearly ran him over. The platoon commander barked at Pruett to move ahead, follow his orders.

But Pruett couldn’t move. He thought of his girl back home; he remembered the ashen, blood-caked faces of the friends he’d already seen zippered and shipped to a first-class burial in the States.

Eventually the platoon commander pulled him back by the straps on his pack and sent another man in his place. The hooch was empty, abandoned for weeks. That evening, when the platoon dug in and set up a perimeter, no one spoke to him. But they whispered to each other. Nineteen year-old Jimmy Pruett knew what was on the men’s mind: the putrid danger of a coward in their midst.

You could abide almost anything in the bush. You came to admire—and even
love
—all sorts of people you probably wouldn’t stand within ten feet of back home. The most popular guy in the platoon—Rag Top Willy—was a good old boy from Texarkana who admitted one night to Pruett that he’d once viciously beaten a black boy for nothing other than the color of his skin.

Yet some of Rag Top’s best friends in the platoon were black, and though they knew his story, these self-respecting men trusted Rag Top—and Rag Top trusted them. Men would abide almost anyone squatting in the hole next to them if it meant they’d likely wake up for another day—because waking up for one more day meant you were that much closer to going home.

But a coward?

Cowardice had its own color. If you abided a coward, you might as well be carrying a one hundred and eighty-pound grenade with the pin pulled; death was just a matter of time.

PFC Pruett stewed all day. He pretended not to notice the sideways looks. He’d been a popular soldier right from the start, but that was fading fast. He volunteered for point on that night’s patrol. The fact that the countryside all around them was hot as a fry-cook’s griddle only made PFC Jimmy Pruett happier: he prayed all day to find Charlie out there in the jungle; knew the only way he was going to redeem himself was to choke down that motherfucking fear and get some.

Kill or be killed. Either way, Jimmy Pruett was returning to camp a goddamned hero.

The patrol found the shit, all right—came upon a small contingent of Vietcong who were unaware how deeply the Americans had penetrated into their perimeter. The eight members of the night patrol killed all nine of the Vietcong encampment without firing a shot. PFC Jimmy Pruett killed two for himself. He also took a finger from every enemy killed. When he returned to the camp, he stood in the middle of them—those who’d returned with him, those who were trying in vain to sleep, those who stood post. Eventually the platoon gathered around him. PFC Jimmy Pruett—the soldier who failed them earlier; the man whose courage had become an ever increasing doubt in the minds of those he’d sworn to stand beside and protect—laid the gook fingers down, one by one, in a small pile that resembled kindling that might start a small campfire. Jimmy Pruett shined his standard issue flashlight on the trophies for exactly one minute. He timed it on his watch. Sixty seconds of silence; one minute of a prayer-like atmosphere. Then he extinguished the light and crawled into his sack.