“What are you doing here?” Ruby’s chin rested on her palm, fingers trailing into the hollow below her cheekbones. I figured cheekbones were one of those things you gained from speed walking five miles a day.
I slipped off my coat and sat on it. “Well, I’m here to support the courageous Durant Volunteer Fire Department’s men in nonflammable nylon… Do you think their hats are cooler than ours?”
“Shouldn’t you be home, in bed?”
I took my hat and perched it on her head. It looked jaunty. I turned to the others at the table. “This is the problem I have with all the women I know, they’re always trying to get me into bed.” There was a derisive chuckle around the table, and Ruby took my hat off, sitting it on the table brim up-good Wyoming girl. “It’s ’cause I look so much like Gary Cooper.” General opinion at the table projected their cinematic consensus to more like Hoot Gibson, whereupon I changed the subject. “So, how are the pancakes?”
“We don’t know. We been here for twenty minutes and ain’t seen a damn pancake yet.” Joe Benham was in a lean and hungry mood.
“Might be for the best. They aren’t letting the firemen cook again, are they?”
“You think they’d learn to not trust ’em with fire.” David’s comment referred to the infamous Stove Oil Incident wherein the firemen had set fire to the old wood-burning stove at the Future Farmers of America hall, resulting in that year’s pancakes tasting roughly like roofing shingles.
“The best was when they almost burned their truck up at that grass fire out near you.” Elaine, being a patron of the arts, always appreciated spectacle.
Ruby placed a steaming Styrofoam cup of coffee in front of me. I hadn’t even seen her get up. “Thank you, ma’am.” I took a sip and listened to the rumble as it joined the other four cups in my stomach. I was hungry and that was not a good thing on Pancake Day.
“We were just discussing the city Christmas decorations, Walt. Do you think they’re the ugliest in Wyoming?” Elaine had a twinkle in her eye. As part of the city council, she had been lobbying for new decorations for about six years now. The problem was that Joe’s father had designed and executed the offending artistry of Santa, elves, reindeer, bells, wreaths, candles, trees, mistletoe, holly, stars, and toys twenty-five years ago. Say what you want about three-quarter inch exterior ply, it holds ugly for a long time.
“Gillette’s are uglier,” I ventured.
“We heard you had a busy night.” Dan Crawford picked up his coffee and blew into it, watching the swirls of cream separate at the rip-tide on the other side of his cup. It got quiet.
This was going to be the prime topic of conversation for the morning, so I might as well develop an official line. “Nothing big. We had a hunting accident out near 137 on BLM land.” I tried to make it sound like the end of the story.
“We heard there was a boy dead.” Dan continued to look at his coffee.
“Well, what else have you heard?” It got even quieter. “No offense, Dan, but I’m not gonna sit here and play guessing games with you. Why don’t you just tell me what you know, and I’ll either confirm or deny it or not.” His face reddened, which was not what I was after.
“I didn’t mean anything, Walt. Just curious.”
He meant it. I rubbed my face with my hands and looked at all of them. “I hope you’ll all excuse me, but it’s been a long night.” I sighed. “With all due respect to the ongoing investigation, it would appear that, on the night past, one Cody Pritchard departed for the far country from which no traveler born returns.”
The allusion was not lost on Elaine. “Have you narrowed it down to a couple of hundred thousand suspects, as in something rotten in the state of Denmark or Iowa?”
Joe nodded. “Well, I don’t figure there’ll be any public outcries of mourning…” Elaine ventured that there might be a parade, then saved me by asking if I was willing to play the Ghost of Christmas Future in the civic theatre’s upcoming production of A Christmas Carol. I was pretty sure that she wanted me for my height and not my dramatic skills. This was confirmed when she assured me that I wouldn’t have to learn any lines and that all I had to do was point.
I excused myself to see a man about a horse and made for the boy’s room at the far end of the hall. On the way, I got a peek through the kitchen service opening and was startled to see Vonnie Hayes sliding a stacked platter of pancakes to a waiting fireman. She looked much as she did last evening, which seemed like another life. Her hand came up and swiped back a stray wisp of hair that had escaped from the loose bun. It’s funny how the little movements that a woman makes seem so individualized, like a signature. It was the rotation of the wrist with a two-finger pull. I gave it a ten and was aroused. I waved and thought she had seen me, but maybe I was wrong. She smiled at the young fireman and disappeared into the kitchen. Those firemen, they make out like bandits.
In the boy’s room, I attended to business, washed my hands, hit the button on the hand dryer, and wiped my hands off on my pants to the quiet hum of modern technology. It was then that I realized I was wearing my weapon. I don’t wear my gun to community functions, and I don’t wear it on weekends. I was actually famous for taking it off and leaving it places. Periodically, Vic would bring it back to me from the bathroom in the office or out of the seat of the Bullet. She liked to make fun of my antique armament by calling it the blunderbuss. Heavy, hard to aim, slow rate of fire, it was the weapon I had used in Vietnam for four years, and I’d gotten used to it.
The Colt 1911A1 had a grisly but effective past. During the Philip-pine campaigns, the islanders took to getting doped up and wrapping themselves in sugarcane. United States servicemen had the glorious experience of shooting these natives numerous times with no result before being hacked to death by their machetes. Obviously, something with a little more hitting power than the standard issue. 38 was needed. John Browning’s auto-loading, single-action child graduated to. 45 caliber, and the Filipinos began flying back out of the trenches they had hurled themselves into. Unaccurized, the weapon was about as precise as a regulation basketball but, if you hit something with it, chances were good the fight was over.
I thumbed the standard duty holster open and took the weapon out to check it; an old habit. The matte finish was rubbed off at the sights and the ridges along the barrel’s slide action. Fully loaded, which it was, it regularly weighed 38.6 ounces, but today it seemed to weigh about three tons. What the hell was it doing on? Was I responding to some unconscious threat? Did I know more than I thought I knew? It was about this time that I became aware of the bathroom door being opened, and a fully dressed fireman looked at me and my gun.
“I didn’t think the pancakes were that bad.”
“Hello, Ray.” He was the young one I had seen talking to Vonnie at the kitchen window. “You need in here?” It took him a moment to respond.
“Ms. Hayes sent me over, you got a phone call in the kitchen.”
It was probably the first time he had ever used the title Ms. in his life. He still didn’t move. “Anything else?”
He smiled, embarrassed. “You gonna shoot somebody?”
I thought for a moment and sighed. “Anybody need shooting?”
“Not that I know of.” He looked away for a second. “Sounds like the only one that needed it got it last night.” He was roughly Cody Pritchard’s age, and they probably had gone to school together. I nodded and started to squeeze by him. “What’s the um… story on Cody?”
I stopped, and we were lodged in the doorway. I looked down at him. “Well”-I paused for effect-“he’s dead.” I watched him to see if there was anything else. There wasn’t, so I smiled. “You better get some pancakes over to the mayor at the Business Associates Committee table before you guys are putting out fires with a bucket brigade.”
“You bet.” Always good to know on which side your pancake is buttered.
As I made my way toward the kitchen, I mused on the thought of being caught in the bathroom playing with my gun. Great, as if everybody in the county didn’t already think I was loony as a waltzing pissant. When I got to the kitchen door, Vonnie already had it open.
“No rest for the wicked?”
“I wish.” God, she looked good with that little bit of sweat in the hollow at the base of her throat.
“The phone’s over by the sink, back hallway.”
I breezed by, trying to exude competent professionalism as I picked up the receiver from the drain board. “Longmire.”
“Jesus, are you eating again?” The long distance whine from Cheyenne was no surprise; in my experience most things from Cheyenne whined.
“I am motivating the constituency and have yet to eat any pancakes. What are you still doing awake?”
