Nason slowed to a crawl and eased off Gilpin’s end of the bridge. The Gilpins didn’t maintain their dirt road and it had become a snarl of large rocks, potholes and dust. He dropped his truck into first gear and bumped over exposed rocks, tires dropping unevenly into deep ruts, his truck slowly rocking back and forth.
Gilpin’s truck should have fallen to pieces long ago.
He rounded the granite outcropping on a rise, still driving uphill, and the larger rocks in the road disappeared, farther from the river. He slipped his truck into second gear, drove up the narrow valley to Gilpin’s twelve by sixty foot trailer that had replace the dilapidated shack built by his grandfather. He parked next to Gilpin’s truck, same place as yesterday.
Nason got out of his truck and put on his official hat, noticing again how much the place had decayed since that bad storm two winters back when Nason had called the Pendleton kid out to repair the electric and telephone wires. The wires had been run out here by the Potters when they'd put in the hydroelectric generator at the top of the valley, before Nason was born. The wiring had been run underground everywhere but here. Here, the river made underground wiring impossible. They did run them underground from River Road to the river then up into the trees and out to here. No wires could be seen from River Road.
The Gilpins had never been grateful for any of it, always acting like they were somehow entitled. They’d never even paid an electric bill.
The phone lines belonged to Pacific Bell. Everybody with a phone or internet connection paid phone bills. Gilpin had both.
Gilpin’s aging bull had long been penned between the trailer and the creek, feeding on a clump of dry alfalfa, not even looking at the moon-eyed cow next to it. Neither one paid any attention to Nason.
The rotten wood steps in front of the trailer had been filled in with small rocks and rubble, an uneven climb to the porch. He took off his hat and knocked on the door. The sweet smell of mountain grown marijuana told him somebody was home. He smelled it every time he came out here.
Nason didn’t care about the pot, legal now anyway.
. . . long as he doesn’t sell to kids up here.
He knocked again and waited. Nobody answered. He shouted, “Gilpin,” and knocked again. Still no answer. He donned his hat and climbed back down the uneven steps, rounded the front of the trailer and climbed up the hill toward the barn.
Gilpin’s father had built the barn with money borrowed from Mary Lou, probably never repaid. It stood uphill and a hundred feet behind the trailer, sided and roofed with corrugated iron. Tall sagebrush grew over dents and rust at the bottom, needing repair like everything else.
Sweat trickled down his neck and back, already hot from the morning sun and the still air in this tight canyon. He stepped inside the barn door and waited for his eyes to adjust.
The barn reeked of drying pot, same as it had yesterday, hanging everywhere from joists and rafters, nearly blocking the scant shaft of sunlight shining through two high dormers.
Gilpin sat on a stool near the center of the barn, helping the Angus bull calf take a nipple from his milk cow. His fat belly rested on his legs and nearly reached his knees.
You fat, dumb . . .
Nason stepped quietly across the barn and snatched Gilpin up by his coat collar.
Gilpin jerked sideways, trying to free himself from Nason’s grip. “What in hell you doing? You got no right.” He slapped at Nason’s hands and kicked at Nason’s legs, trying to keep Nason from dragging him out of his barn.
Nason shoved him downhill toward the trailer.
Gilpin spun and slid, tugging up on the belt loops of his worn blue jeans to keep them from falling around his ankles. “What in hell you think you’re doing?”
“Shut up!” Nason shoved Gilpin again, nearing the back of the trailer, wanting to punch his ugly fat face.
A curtain moved at the rear window, forcing Nason to calm. “I need to show you something. It won’t take long.” He grabbed Gilpin’s upper arm and dug his fingers into the pressure point against the bone.
Gilpin stiffened from the pain and stopped resisting.
Nason led him toward the parked trucks, hoping to leave big black bruises under Gilpin’s arm.
They reached the front of the trailer where Sally, Gilpin’s wife, stood on the front porch with their five-year-old daughter, Sissy. The expressionless child had tucked herself tightly between her mother’s knees.
Nason said, “Hi, Sally. I need to borrow your husband for a few minutes. He’ll be right back.” He leaned close to Gilpin, speaking softly. “Don’t make me hurt you in front of your wife and daughter.”
He deposited Gilpin in the passenger side of his truck, closed the door, walked around the truck, took off and tipped his hat to Sally, climbed in behind the wheel and tossed his official hat into the back seat.
Gilpin grinned, probably at the beating Nason’s truck was taking, driving slowly back toward the bridge.
Nason decided he'd let the fat ass walk back from Kidro’s .
Driving across the bridge, Nason said, “Was Mary Lou Potter who built this bridge. Without it, your father and grandfather had to ford the river on horseback two miles up, still on Potter land. Whenever you got snowbound in winter, it was the Potters found a way to help. Without their benevolence, there’d be no Gilpins in this valley.”
“So?”
Nason cleared the bridge and churned over graded gravel toward River Road, thinking this moron probably didn’t even know what the word benevolence meant, hardly ever showed up for school as a boy. “When you fell and broke your arm, wasn’t it Kidro Potter who took you into Carson City? Wasn’t it Kidro who paid the hospital
