Prime Cut

never showed up. And his classes start next week.” We had all been disappointed not to see Julian this summer. Arch, though, had felt Julian’s absence most acutely.

“Go see your friend, Goldy. Have him tell you one of his stories of Nazi treasure. And stop worrying so much.”

Clasping the basket, I hugged Andre and hurried down the stone steps. Once across the creek, I trotted between the mud-blackened bank, the granite boulders, and a thickly packed heap of dry twigs, monument to the industry of beavers. A rising wind whistled through a nearby stand of yellow-tinged cottonwoods.

Most of the models had departed. The elk had returned to the meadow to graze. Beside my van, the breeze whiplashed a slew of white-faced daisies. Leggy thistle branches waved bright pink-purple tops and spilled hairy nests of silver seeds. The breeze shifted and wafted my scent toward the elk. They lifted their racks and trotted cautiously toward the safety of the trees. I unlocked the door, shoved the picnic basket onto the front seat, and thought of Andre’s words. Forget the men who were bothering me? How?

I revved the van. What I really needed was help from the main man in my life—Tom. I was terrified the county health inspector would descend on our home at any moment and deem that the cabinet-window mess left by Gerald Eliot wasn’t technically a commercial kitchen repair, but a remodeling. Remodeling was illegal without pulling a permit and closing the kitchen. Tom had promised to help. But Andy Fuller, the prosecutor who was such a thorn in Tom’s side, had just plea-bargained down to reckless driving a drunk driver’s killing of six people on 1–70. Tom’s long, tempestuous meetings with Fuller precluded home maintenance.

I carefully negotiated the rocky road leading back to Blue Spruce. At the intersection with the highway, preoccupied with thoughts of Tom’s troubles with Andy Fuller, I gunned the van and nearly hit a paint-peeled board announcing Swiss Inn Apartments—Seven Miles Ahead, West of Aspen Meadow, next to a Real Estate For Sale sign plastered with an Under Contract!!! sticker. I slowed and sloshed through the mud. Worry muddled my brain. Where was I? Oh yes, taking food to Cameron Burr, president of the Furman County Historical Society, an old friend whom I loved dearly, especially for the many tales of Aspen Meadow he’d told my son Arch. And the story Andre had alluded to was Arch’s favorite: the improbable myth that somewhere in the Colorado mountains, the Nazis had buried a stash of gold. Before Barbara got sick, she’d told me she and her husband were going to have to find that money, if they were ever going to pay off Gerald Eliot.

I turned at the road running by the You-Snag-Em, We-Bag-Em Trout Farm, drove another three miles, then rocked over the Burrs’ puddle-pocked driveway. My apprehension grew. The last time I’d been to visit Cameron, he’d been home in the middle of the afternoon, battling anxiety with tranquilizers that he washed down with hot chocolate while listening to old Ravi Shankar tapes. He’d told me how he’d tried to help Gerald Eliot with his cash flow by getting him a job as a security guard at the Homestead Museum. But he still didn’t come back to finish our sun room, Cameron had moaned. Join the club.

I pulled up in front of a contemporary-style, green-stained A-frame house. Its roof was pitched steeply to the ground, like an oversized tent. Jutting out the back was the unfinished sun room; the few panes of glass Gerald Eliot had left untouched winked in the sunlight. Across the driveway from the main dwelling was the guest house, a miniature replica of the green A-frame. Cameron’s maroon pickup truck was parked at an angle in front of the guest house door.

Standing on the van’s step, I could just see the panoramic view of the Continental Divide’s icy peaks beyond the A-frame. The photographer wants a view of snow, Andre had asserted over the phone. And I am to make a treat for the homeowner with the view of snow. Do you think he would like my strawberry tart? Maybe with chocolate sauce and a Valium, I’d thought.

“Cam?” I called when there was no response to my knock at the guest house door. “You in there?” I listened for the twang of sitar music but heard none, thank goodness. Unfortunately, there was no hum and pop of Cameron’s printer, either, which I found more worrisome. Cameron wrote articles on the historic West; according to Marla, who knew everything, he hadn’t written a word or made a sale in the past sixteen months, not since Gerald Eliot had made such a mess of their home. That, combined with his mounting depression and Barbara’s illness—she might not be able to return to her teaching job—were distressing. For politeness, I knocked again, although it was a point of pride for Cameron that he always kept his door unlocked. I turned the knob and the door opened.

One of the sloped, wood-paneled walls was given over to the TV, the computer-printer setup, a kitchenette, and a tiny bath. The other featured a long shelf chock-ablock with framed photographs of Cameron and Barbara visiting ghost towns, abandoned mines, and historic sites. In the pictures, stocky, jovial Cameron and blond, plump Barbara looked as excited as kids.

But these photos did not reflect the way Cameron looked now. Disheveled, grizzled, he was snoring loudly on an unmade sofabed pushed up against the wide part of the A. His gray hair, pushed askew like windblown barbecue ash, desperately needed cutting. Mouth open, his chunky body contorted, he looked more like a wrestler on the skids than a historian. One shoe lay on the floor; there was no sign of a second. He wore muddied socks, rumpled dark chinos, and a denim shirt. He’d wrenched a patchwork quilt around him so that it knotted his middle.

He snorted, then jerked violently awake. “What? Who’s there?”

“I’m sorry, I’ll leave. It’s just Goldy Schulz.”

He scratched his scalp, then sighed. “Come on in, Goldy.” His leathery face was even more deeply furrowed than the last time I’d seen him; his red-rimmed eyes lingered on the kitchenette side of the room. “Checking on me again, eh?” With sudden decision, he yanked the quilt around him and stumped toward the tiny bathroom. “Be right back.”

Shower water began to run. I unpacked the basket and checked the refrigerator. It smelled terrible and contained only a green-edged, muddy-brown package of ground beef. When had Cameron had his last meal? For that matter, when had he last had contact with the outside world? I checked the bottles of pills on his bedside table: Librium and Restoril—tranquilizers and sleeping pills. The message light on his phone was blinking. On the floor next to his discarded shoe lay a half-empty bottle of Bacardi, a nibbled bar of chocolate, and a box of crackers. Great. The man obviously needed coffee and decent food, in that order. I knew from my previous food-bearing trips that Cameron kept an old-fashioned chrome percolator beside the kitchenette’s yellow ceramic cannisters. Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s your coffeepot?” I called.

“Oh, hell,” he yelled over the spray. “The coffeepot? Let’s see.” For a moment all I heard was the hiss of shower water. “I was watching one of those home improvement shows. You know, where they teach you to glaze your own windows? So I thought, why not?” The valve squealed as he turned off the water. “See any aspirin out there?”

I scanned the counter, the tables, even the tops of the TV and computer: no aspirin. “Nope. I’ll go get you some, if you want.”

“Aspirin would be in the main house bathroom. The coffeepot’s in the sun room.” He grunted, undoubtedly pulling clothes on over damp skin. “I bought some old window frames and glass … thought I’d do the glazing myself. Made a pot of coffee, started working, broke two pieces of glass, got frustrated. Poured some rum into the coffee. Then I cracked a window frame. Went into town to buy more supplies, but the hardware store was closed.”

So you got sloshed instead. I looked down at the blinking message machine. “How’s Barbara?”

“Don’t know, need to call the hospital. You making that coffee?”

I trotted out the guest house door. When I rounded the corner of the big A-frame, I heard what sounded like cars starting up Cameron’s driveway. Visitors? I wondered how many cups Cameron’s coffeepot made, and if it would be enough for a slew of guests.

An orange auxiliary power line snaked out of the concrete foundation for the sun room. On the near side, glass of different hues filled the completed windows: one was slightly pink, one gray, one blue. This, Cameron had told me, was the result of Gerald Eliot trying to get a better deal by ordering windows from three different places. On the far side of the sun room, the plastic-swathed framing looked more like a ruin than a building-in- progress.

I took hold of the orange cable and stepped onto the concrete floor. I hopped gingerly over another empty Bacardi bottle, pieces of broken window glass, and several open boxes of nails. The cord wormed over one sawhorse and under another, then disappeared beneath a pile of broken drywall. I yanked on the cord: Chunks of