Lonesome Animals (24 page)

The doctor bent and opened one of her eyes with his thumb and flashed a penlight in it. The whites were shot with blood and the pupil dilated with narcotic. Dice returned her hand to her side. He patted it and the muscles in her forearms fluttered. Strawl realized the man was responding in a manner he never could, one beyond guilt and shame. The demon for which she had yearned had been aroused. Strawl shook his head. Dice had been too impatient. Revenge, they said, was best served cold.

He glanced into a mirror on the door. He was unshaven and tired-looking and his own eyes were purpled from his own beating. He listened to the machines working. The doctor set the stethoscope on her breast and listened. Strawl thought it strange,
all those men wanting just to touch that same spot, their hands trembling, and her trembling, too. The doctor, though, let the disc lie and counted to himself, like touching there was the same as anyplace else. He wrote another number on the chart, then hooked it to the bed foot.

Dice found an empty water pitcher. He ran the faucet, then set the flowers in it. He put the arrangement on the nightstand. Outside the room, the doctor met Strawl. He was an old man who had come through the Great War.

“Sheriff,” he said. “Did you put him up to this?”

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Strawl said.

“There's nothing mysterious about you,” the doctor said.

F
our days later, Dot opened Strawl's front door to find Elijah on the step. She and Arlen had brought the children and a plate of supper each evening since Strawl's return, and while her family ate, Dot changed Strawl's various dressings and applied his ointments, then rubbed liniment into his lower legs to stave off atrophy.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Dot said. She opened the door and allowed Elijah to enter the room.

“You want a bite to eat?” Strawl asked.

“Loaves and fishes?” Elijah asked.

Strawl shook his head. “Beef and taters.”

Dot placed the child in Arlen's arms and prepared Elijah's meal.

Elijah winked at the boy. “Against any of the children of Israel shall not a dog move his tongue,” he declared.

“Don't preach to him,” Dot said from the kitchen.

“You want heathen children?”

“No, I want them to consider the source.”

“Bible's words, not mine.”

“You're the one saying them.” Dot set his plate in front of him, but Elijah didn't eat. He sat silent, chastised.

“For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister. Are we not brother and sister?” he asked.

Dot sighed. “Brothers and sisters trust one another. They don't shirk.”

“Quit squabbling and tell me what's the news,” Strawl said.

“Well, Hollingsworth is in high spirits,” Elijah said. “Carrying around the newspaper with your mug shot and reading the article out loud.”

“Them BIA boys gloating, too?” Strawl asked.

“They figure they're in charge again.”

Strawl mopped a spot of gravy with his buttered bread. “Chickens will cluck,” he said, “but it takes a rooster to crow.”

“And an ass to bray,” Dot said.

Strawl clacked his fork on his plate. “You are ruining my digestion.”

“Maybe you could digest better in jail,” Dot said.

“Jail wouldn't have him,” Elijah told her.

Arlen leaned forward. “Come to think of it, why haven't the police visited? This is the most likely spot for you to land.”

Strawl shrugged. “I left them the address to forward my belongings. They confiscated my buck knife and I owe a debt or two to that blade.”

Dot said, “That's no answer.”

“Bringing men out here to arrest me would require Dice to admit I escaped. He'd rather avoid that.”

“That's not the reason,” Elijah said. “You hear about the Dice woman? She's been in the hospital ten days and will likely see that much more.”

“You wouldn't beat a woman?” Dot asked Strawl.

“He didn't need to. Dice did it.”

“He beat up his wife?”

“Nearly killed her.”

“That doesn't sound like him,” Dot said.

“No it doesn't,” Elijah replied. “Kind of makes you wonder what would light that kind of fire in a man.” He looked up from his meal at Strawl, then scooped a bit of potatoes. Dot stared at him, too.

“Man puts a key into the ignition, doesn't mean he built the motor, doesn't mean he owns the car. Just means he knows where the key goes.”

“Did you make the sheriff harm that woman?” Dot asked.

“I was asleep,” Strawl said. “And it's God in charge of creation, ask the prophet.”

Elijah smiled. “It's quite an alibi. Even Dice wouldn't argue. And I know he won't pick up the wrong end of a rattlesnake again.”

“As it should be,” Strawl said.

Dot put her head in her hands. “You coaxed him into assaulting his wife. My God, wouldn't you think my mother would have finished you for hurting women?”

The room grew quiet.

“What do you think you know?”

“I was four years old, not four months.”

Strawl nodded.

“You were my favorite,” Dot said. “I used to sit on the window ledge for hours, loyal as a dog, watching for you to come up the
walk.” She glanced up at Arlen. “I see the girls behave the same with him. I envy that. She did, too. I could tell, even then.” She pulled Esther, the serious one, next to her by a loose dress tie. The child stood dutifully while Dot stroked her hair. “You were my favorite,” she said again.

“Lord knows why,” Strawl said.

“She knew why. She encouraged it. For you, not for me. And surely not for her.”

“You can't remember that kind of thing.”

“I do,” Dot said. “Because I catch myself doing the same.”

“Why's that?” Strawl asked.

Dot shrugged. “Love,” she said. “And a normal life. There's some comfort in the routine and something pleasant about having a minor celebration every evening when your husband comes up the walk.”

Strawl was quiet. He could hear his own ragged breaths. “I ever tell you about your grandparents?”

Dot shook her head.

“There's a reason for that,” Strawl said.

“You didn't mean it,” Dot told him. “I remember you didn't mean it.”

“Well, I wish my memory was as generous as yours,” Strawl said. “Too many things I meant to do get in the way of believing you.”

“It was a long time ago,” Dot said.

“It was,” Strawl agreed. He rose and lumbered into the kitchen for more of his meal.

“What was that all about?” Elijah whispered.

“It's none of your affair,” Dot snapped.

“I sold the property,” Elijah whispered. “Is that why you're so wound up at me? He bought it back. You'll get it all. I did you a favor.”

“Property doesn't have anything to do with it, though good manners might have led you to inform us. We had a bargain. I
took care of my end. You were supposed to watch him. Instead, you sold your inheritance and squandered it on who knows what.”

“He doesn't seem looked after?”

“No, he looks beat-up. And there were two other killings.”

“I don't know he did them or the others,” Elijah said.

“Do you know he didn't?” Dot whispered.

Strawl hobbled back into the room with his second helping. Elijah turned his attention to the baby. “He called his servant that ministered unto him, and said, put now this woman out from me.”

Dot stared at him. “And your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years, and bear your whoredoms, until your carcasses be wasted in the wilderness,” she said.

Elijah ignored her. “You girls sass your mom often as you can?” He poked Violet's ribs and she giggled.

“They're intolerable as always,” Dot said.

“And this baby's well?”

“Yes.”

He looked to Arlen. “You in good health?”

“We're all fine,” Dot told him.

“Good,” Elijah said. “Now, I have presents, if anybody is inclined.”

The girls squealed and trailed him through the door to Baal and the saddlebags. Dot waited a moment, then scooped up the baby and followed.

Strawl gazed out the window. The maple remained filled out with summer, the leaves green and slick in the slanting light. Elijah treated the girls to rock candy and ribbon and offered a ball to the baby, who immediately put it in his mouth.

“I see the big hill's been disked. You thinking about planting winter crop there?”

Arlen nodded.

“Makes sense,” Strawl told him. “That dirt holds water better than the rest, though it shouldn't, being on an incline.”

“Ground there is soft,” Arlen said. “Snowpack can sink instead of run off.”

“I knew there was a likely reason. Just didn't know what it was.” Strawl pointed his chin toward the door. “Tell her it's all right,” he said. “Tell her I told you so and you believe me.”

“Except I don't.”

“You can swear it off in a prayer if you can't bear the lie.”

Strawl stood. He ached everywhere but was as mended as time would allow. He made his way to the door.

“I'll start morning,” he said to Elijah. “You'd be better served to stay. There will be a shit storm and you don't appear to own the clothes for that kind of weather.” He looked at Dot. “Don't say a word. You know I'm not listening.”

“I got two boxes of bullets, yet,” Elijah said.

“You'll need them.”

“You figure I squandered your money,” Elijah said.

“Nope,” Strawl told him. “You got more imagination than that.”

“Then why do you think I took it?”

“I have no idea,” Strawl said.

“What if I told you?”

“Then I'd still have no idea,” Strawl said.

First, Strawl felt compelled to square the rest of his more recent disputes. He and Elijah cornered the remaining Bureau of Indian Affairs policemen at their office as they arrived for their morning shift. Most limped and two still wrapped their skulls in gauze, following their encounter with the bull. Strawl handcuffed the six of them to one another, then herded the group to the truck bed and
latched the odd cuffs to the low end of the stack muffler pipes to keep them there. Strawl directed Elijah north and east toward a copse of hardwoods and huckleberries above Owhi Lake rife with bear droppings and matted hair. He ordered the deputies to strip, then organized them in a ring around the tallest tree and cuffed the ends to close the circle. Ten pounds of pork from the grocery were stowed in the cab along with a few jars of honey. Strawl poured honey over their heads and torsos and legs, then strung a pork chop or ham around each's neck, then scattered scraps in the surrounding brush.

Each breath was a difficulty, but he ordered Elijah next to drive to Hollingsworth's ranch, where Strawl splintered the door with an axe and took both the silverspoon and his father from a fine lunch served by their wives and attended by the children. Strawl cuffed them together as well. When the old man, whose face was red with spidery blood vessels, began to bluster about law and due process and friends in advantageous positions, Strawl broke his nose with his pistol butt.

Elijah drove silently and said nothing when the silverspoon attempted to negotiate with him, though it was clear from his expression that such grisly work had not gone easily on him. Strawl considered how to dispatch the two. Killing them crossed his mind, but even he would have difficulty arguing his innocence when he had taken them in front of a houseful of witnesses.

Elijah persuaded him to dump them in the middle of nowhere and gamble on how they'd manage their return. Strawl chose the west end of Omak Lake where there was no road, and the few Indians who inhabited the area were far enough into the past to think a pair of white men were devils. To add to their difficulties, he sliced off the soles of their feet, poured gasoline on the wounds, and lit them afire.