that?”
She paused. “What?”
“Just do me a favor and don’t drink.” For the next five months, I thought-but you’ve got to start somewhere.
“Why?”
“You’re pregnant.”
She looked down at her belly in mock surprise. “Wow, wonder how that happened?”
There’s a bone-weary quality to putting on your white suit in these kinds of situations, but you do it anyway. “What’s your baby’s name?”
Her hand dropped to support the girth as she grinned. “Wiggle.”
This was going to be harder than I thought.
She tossed a shoulder and then leaned it against the T-111 siding of the motel’s exterior wall, closed her arms around herself, and shivered. “It’s what it does.” I stood there looking at her and said nothing-I had probably said too much already. I reached a hand out for the bottle, but she pulled it behind her, and a look of anticipated defiance streaked its way across her face. “Hey, no way-”
I took a deep breath and marveled at my ability to find a place even more tired than the place I’d been. “Okay.” I turned and started into my own room.
“Whatta ya mean, okay?”
I looked back at her and then gestured to the front of The AR. “If I take that away from you, what’s to say that you won’t just go back over to The AR and get a full one?”
She studied me for a while, an even more puzzled look on her face. “The what?”
I shook my head just to clear it a little and make sure I was the only one in there. “The BAR.”
Her head cocked to one side, and the blond pageboy swayed just a little as her eyes stayed steady with mine. I stood there for a moment as she turned and began closing the door behind her with her foot. The bottle was still in one hand, and her belly was supported with the other-where worlds collide. “Mr. Good Samaritan, you’re in the wrong town.”
The door shut softly.
Boy howdy.
I stood there thinking about Wiggle, about what kind of chance he or she had, and wondered, in a place like Absalom, what kind of chance any of us had.
I was about to go back to my room when I noticed that the truck parked in front of The AR was a new, red Dodge duellie with no plates. I motioned for Dog to go in and then plucked my shirt off the chair. “Stay, and this time I mean it.” He looked after me as I closed the door.
I circled the backside of the empty truck and couldn’t see any temporary tags taped to the inside of the back window that I might’ve missed. It was probably some young rancher having made his first, second, or third pile of money from coal-bed methane, or one of the local boys coming back to show off a little to the hometown crowd of forty. There were a million reasons for the truck to have been there, another million for it not to have plates. I wasn’t sure why I was fixating on the Dodge, other than the oldest trick in the lawman’s repertoire-the hunch.
I walked the rest of the way around the truck and paused at the passenger door. It was locked, but on close inspection through the tinted windows, I could see a Winchester lever-action. 30–30 propped up against the dash.
I looked back at the bar-the lights were out in the main room, but it looked like there were still a few on in the kitchen in back. I thought I could hear voices and decided to circle and see who might be inside. I walked to the right and went around the final unit and up a small rise to the roadway behind the motel. There were no streetlights in Absalom, and along with a smear of clouds, it was a moonless night that made it hard to pick through the high grass, garbage cans, and automobile parts without making a racket. I finally found a path that led to the back of the establishment’s kitchen.
There was one light on in the short hallway connecting the bar with the kitchen, and it looked like there were two men talking. I edged a little closer and could make out Pat’s profile beside a pay phone on the wall-he was leaning back with his arms folded as a taller man in the shadows gesticulated passionately. They were keeping their voices low, but it was a heated conversation and I could just make out the gist of the thing.
The owner of the bar lifted his head and looked at the other man defiantly. Neither of them said anything for a few moments, and then the taller man began speaking again, in an even lower tone, with his index finger in Pat’s face.
There was a mudroom leading into the kitchen, and I carefully opened the screen door and slipped inside, or slipped as gracefully as I could. The floorboards bleated and complained under my weight.
I stood there without moving, but the conversation stopped.
I waited for a moment and then leaned forward to get a better look, but the light was off now and both men were gone. I pulled back into the corner and stayed where I was, waiting for the next sound, which was the pump- action of the shotgun I had seen on the shelf under the bar.
I could run, but I don’t do that very well. I could waltz through as if I were just looking for a little midnight snack and get a serving of a few ounces of lead for my trouble, or I could just stand there quietly like a buffalo in a stand of year-old aspens pretending that if I can’t see them, they can’t see me.
I heard footsteps in the bar. Whoever it was, either Pat or the tall man, they weren’t playing fair. The first thing we always tell people who have to deal with burglary is to make your presence known by flipping on all the lights, scream at your wife to call 911, and turn loose the dogs while you get the. 38 from the closet. Never, but never, go sneaking around in your own house at odds with some stranger.
Nobody was talking, nobody was turning on lights, and I had that hunch feeling that nobody was calling 911.
There was some more whispering, and I could hear someone coming down the hallway, through the kitchen, and toward the mudroom where I stood; he was moving slowly and carefully. I could see the barrel of the shotgun first and could even register the diameter-20-gauge-in the direct cast of the moon that had, of course, chosen to come from behind the clouds.
If the thing shifted four inches to the left, it would be pointed directly at my gut.
The shooter stepped forward, and I could make out the hands holding the scattergun and the gold Masonic ring. The owner of the bar and maker of the crapper laws stepped full into the moon glow, blinked, and looked out the screen door to my right. The barrel wavered for a second, at which point he took two steps closer, still looking out the doorway and into the overgrown back of the place.
I could see his face clearly. His hat was missing, and it looked like there was some swelling around the nearest eye; blood was palmed from his nose to his hairline. I looked at his hand again and could see the still-wet blood there.
Evidently, the taller man had struck him.
I hadn’t breathed since he’d entered the tiny mudroom and still didn’t. I watched him lean his face forward to get a better view of the back bushes. The swelling at his eye certainly wasn’t helping in the search, but he must have seen something because he suddenly turned toward me and looked directly up to my face.
The sound was already coming out of his mouth when I grabbed the shotgun with both hands and pivoted the butt up and into his chin-it sounded like a cleanly hit baseball. After a brief moment of teetering, he started to go over backward, but I was now practiced and grabbed one of the straps of his overalls and pulled his collapsing body into me.
I lowered him to the floor with one arm and leaned him against the wall with his legs folded underneath him, and then checked his pulse, which was rapid, but there.
Out cold.
I wondered why he hadn’t fired. I checked the Winchester and discovered that the reason he hadn’t was that he must’ve automatically clicked the safety on, something a lot of inexperienced shooters do. I was happy with his inexperience, clicked off the safety, and stood. More footsteps echoed from the silence, and I took the two steps that would give me a clearer view of the short hallway leading toward the front of the building. I could only see a small portion of the bar.
Nothing.
