Bum Steer

  Carl crushed the beer can in his fist.

  “Four wives,” I said, in much the same wondering tone that Detective Canales had used.

  Slight nodded with mock solemnity. “And damned if he wasn’t faithful to every one of them.”

  I smiled and found myself saying to these virtual strangers, “I have a husband like that. This is Geof’s third marriage, and he’s not even forty yet. But just as you say”—I smiled again, as much to myself as to Slight—“he’s been faithful to every one of us. I think there’s a phrase to describe men like Mr. Benet and my husband—”

  “Yeah,” Slight drawled, “lucky bastards.”

  I laughed out loud and immediately felt tactless for doing so. “Well, I was thinking of serially monogamous.”

  Carl was frowning at Slight, which Slight noticed.

  “Carl is offended at the levity we are showing at this moment—”

  “Oh, I’m sorry—”

  “Also, he wants me to watch my language,” Slight said in that mock-solemn way that was becoming more familiar, and more amusing to me, all the time. I did wonder if Slight wasn’t something of a bully toward the older man. Slight had the quick wit and quicker tongue that Carl did not and that could be as advantageous as a longer reach is to a boxer. “Why, Carl’s a more sensitive man than you might think by looking at him, Jenny. Carl’s got very delicate sensibilities. I apologize, Carl. Lucky buzzard, how’s that? Poor old Cat, may he rest in peace. How’s that, that better?”

  “Fool,” Carl pronounced.

  Surprisingly, that seemed to annoy Slight.

  “Aren’t you finished eating that damned steak of yours yet?” he said, looking tight around the mouth. It was an unjust charge, considering Carl had long since stopped eating. “I’ll swear, you take longer to eat your food than you do to cook it. If you took as much trouble over your cookin’ as you do over your chewin’, we might get a decent meal every now and then. You got to eat faster, if you want me to ride out and check on those pregnant heifers tonight. I ain’t about to leave Jenny here alone with you at the table. Poor girl’d die of loneliness before you finally set your knife down.”

  Carl’s response was to make an X of his knife and fork across his plate. He threw his paper napkin on top of them and then pushed himself away from the table.

  “Excuse me,” he said politely to me.

  “Pardon moi,” Slight mocked.

  Oh, knock it off, I wanted to say.

  Carl carried his six-pack away with so much dignity that I realized he was drunk. A big man like that, on two beers? Maybe this wasn’t his first six-pack of the evening. I had the feeling that Slight was observing me as I watched Carl lumber off down the hallway and into the kitchen. Out of our sight, a screen door slammed.

  “You’ve known each other a long while,” I said.

  “Obvious, ain’t it?” Slight reached over and picked up the crushed empty can Carl had left behind; he tapped it up and down on the table, beating out a nervous rhythm with it. “I guess we’re like an old married couple, always carping at each other. When Cat was around, I think we were probably on better behavior. He was the peacemaker, I guess, maybe because he was the boss, maybe because that was his nature. A man’s got to be a natural born diplomat to stay on speakin’ terms with his ex-wives, don’t he? Well, Carl and me and Cat, we was together a long time, probably longer than you been alive, I expect.” Slight’s grammar dropped in and out of school, I noticed, just as his drawl deepened when he wanted to say something sly and then practically disappeared at other times. I didn’t interrupt, hoping he’d keep talking.

  “Me and Carl worked for Cat Benet all those years, we’ve seen some times—” He stopped, and suddenly squeezed the beer can, turning it even more into trash in his hand. His voice turned hard, and I felt my stomach clench, as he said, “A man’s got a right to die when it’s convenient for him, and not for somebody else. If I find the murderin’ sumbitch who did this, he’s gonna be calf fries by dinnertime.”

  I sat frozen, hardly breathing.

  He opened his hand, letting the destroyed can fall to the tabletop, and then he took a deep breath, and said in a milder tone, “Well, I’m sorry he’s dead. But I’ve been missin’ the old bastard ever since he got sick, so that ain’t nothin’ new. At least he’s at peace now.” His smile was sardonic. “If there’s any peace in hell, ’cause that’s where he sure got told to go often enough by enough women.”

  Slight pushed himself back from the table.

  “Well, life goes on. Mine anyway. Come on, Jenny, you might as well come with me.”

  He stood up and hitched up his jeans.

  “Calf fries?” I said. “What’s that?”

  The amused squint returned. “Fried bull balls.”

  “You must be kidding. People—eat—them?”

  He grinned. “Sure do.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed, hard. I was appalled and amused in about equal measures. What 1 wanted to say next was, “My God, that’s the most disgusting thing I ever heard!” What I did say, trying to be nonchalant, and clearly not fooling him for a minute, was, “Well. And where are we going now?”

  “To check on some cattle.”

  I glanced at the darkness outside the windows. “Not by horseback, I hope.”

  He smiled. “No, we’ll take the truck.”

  I started to pick up my dinner—supper—dishes.

  “Leave ’em,” he said. “Carl’ll get ’em. Sometimes I ’spect he just gives ’em to the cats to lick clean, but it sure as hell beats washin’ them myself. Got a jacket upstairs? Good. Go on up and grab it, and I’ll meet you outside.”

  “For an employee, you are pretty darned bossy.”

  He grinned. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  I ran upstairs, laughing under my breath.

  I was beginning to regret that I would never meet Cat Benet. I wished I could have seen the three of them together, Slight, Carl, and Cat. I had a feeling this was like meeting the Three Musketeers without D’Artagnan. Peter and Paul without Mary. The Kingston Duo. The Two Stooges. I was still smiling when I ran outside to join him in the truck.

  10

  We bounced over the yard and down onto a dirt road that led into pastures behind the house. Between the first pasture and the house, we drove through an open gate.

  “Aren’t you afraid the cows will get into the yard, Slight?”

  “Nope,” he said. “Feel those rattles and bumps? That’s a cattle guard. If it weren’t so dark, you could see the metal bars stuck in the ground. Cattle won’t cross it, not unless they’re panicked. A lot of cowboys think cows are smart, but me, I think that’s more a case of a dumb cowboy. The other day, I heard about some psychologists who tried paintin’ silver lines on the ground, and the cattle wouldn’t cross them, either.”

  “Maybe they lack depth perception,” I suggested. “They lack depth, all right.” He smiled, keeping his eyes on the bumpy dirt-and-gravel road ahead of us. “In my opinion, a cow’s about as smart as your average chicken, which ain’t no compliment.” After a moment he said, “I like ’em, though.” After another moment he added, “But hell, there are a lot of dumb cowboys I like, too.”

  We both laughed.

  Soon we had climbed a hill and dropped down on the other side. The house and other buildings were now out of sight. In fact, I couldn’t see much of anything except what the headlights picked up—the road, grass at the side of it, a bit of fence now and then. It was dark like this on the road to our new house back in Port Frederick, but I still wasn’t used to total darkness. I would have felt more secure in the city, under streetlights.

  “Hold on!” Slight braked the truck so suddenly that I slammed into the dash and then slid toward the floor. He honked and leaned out his window. “Get outta the way, you big old dummy!”

  “Christ,” I muttered as I worked my way back into a sitting position again. I felt my limbs to make sure everything was all in one piece. Ow. My right shoulder announced
it would be bruised by morning. I looked out the window and finally saw who—or what—he was shouting at. An enormous cow blocked our path. She appeared to be blinded by our lights, which illuminated her broadside. On her rump I saw a darkened area amidst her curly red hair and realized it was a cattle brand. Curious, I leaned forward to get a better look at the brand “our” cattle bore. What I saw made me gasp.

  “You all right?” Then Slight noticed where I was staring. “Oh, that.” He chuckled. “Cat’s idea.”

  The cattle brand for the Crossbones Ranch was a human skull outlined over crossed bones.

  “Skull and crossbones?”

  “You think it’s weird?”

  “I sure do.”

  “Yeah, everybody does.”

  The skull grinned malevolently at me from its nest on the cow’s ass. So this was to be the brand owned by the Port Frederick Civic Foundation. I could just see it on the cover of next year’s annual report. If I had thought about it ahead of time, I suppose I would have imagined that we would have a quaintly western brand, one of those rolling M’s or rocking Z’s or Q-Bar-T’s or whatever. Not this evil-looking thing.

  “Why, Slight?”

  “Because he was dying.” He edged the truck closer to the cow. “And so is she, when you think about it, only she don’t know it yet.” He nudged the cow’s side with the truck. I held my breath for fear he meant it literally, and that he was going to slice up fresh steaks right then and there. But she merely flicked her tail and trotted off.

  “I’m sorry,” Slight said. “I should have seen her coming up on us. You okay?”

  I rolled my shoulder to see if it still worked. “Sure. Fine.”

  I thought of the bumper sticker on city cars: I BRAKE FOR ANIMALS. Given the size of these beasts, any sensible person would. But would any sensible person have burned a skull and crossbones into their hides?

  I shivered under my thin suede jacket.

  After a few more minutes of rough driving, our headlights picked up a closed gate. Slight pulled right up to it, but then he switched off both the engine and headlights. In the sudden darkness inside the truck, I saw him shift his body around until he faced me. I felt as if somebody had thrown a sheet over me. For an instant I was blind with terror. I had an insane impulse to start flailing around with my arms and legs, to fight my way out of that confining truck. Stop it, I commanded myself. Dwight Brady knows you’re here. The pilot knows you’re here. The trustees know where you are. For God’s sake, even the cops know you’re here! Nobody would dare to hurt you. Stop this. You are safe. But that moment brought to full consciousness the thought I’d been suppressing simply because I liked Slight Harlan: This man was not above suspicion. Even he might have killed Benet.

  “Ready for your first lesson, Jenny?”

  I swallowed and said, “In what?”

  In the flame of the match that he struck to light a cigarette, I saw him glance at me and grin. Leave it to Slight Harlan to find a double entendre in the most innocent question. Suddenly, the fear seeped out of me; in its place poured a sense of coziness, almost of intimacy, caused by that grin and by the fact of the two of us being closed in together in that small, dark space.

  “In ranching, you mean?” I said quickly.

  “That’s what I mean,” he deadpanned. “So ask me any questions you want to.”

  “Do we have to keep that brand?”

  “No,” he said a shade coolly, “but I wouldn’t like it if you didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.” He shifted in his seat, as if to relieve a discomfort. “I don’t know. Because Cat picked it. Because this is the last ranch. Because it’s our last brand together. Because I guess it means something to me.”

  I didn’t pursue it.

  “Next question?”

  “Why are his relatives forbidden from coming here?”

  He hesitated, then said, “These aren’t exactly the kinds of questions I had in mind, but fair enough. Well, he did it to keep them out of our hair, to tell you the truth.” He lifted his hat and ran a hand through his own thick hair, as if to illustrate the point. “They weren’t any of them interested in the ranches when he was alive, so why should he let them interfere with us now?”

  “Still, it seems … vindictive.”

  “Yeah, he could hold a grudge.”

  “Is that why he didn’t leave this ranch to them?”

  “Well, it embarrasses me to say this, but I think ol’ Cat, he wanted to provide somethin’ for Carl and me, and if he’d left his family in charge, they would have sold this place, and then Carl and me’d be out of a job at what you might call awkward ages in our lives.”

  “Why didn’t he just leave it directly to you then?”

  “I ’spect he knew we didn’t want that much responsibility, and maybe couldn’t even handle it if we had it.”

  Hmmph, I thought, you could handle it.

  “But why leave it to us, Slight?”

  “Guess you got a good reputation.”

  “All the way out in Kansas?”

  He shrugged.

  “Why didn’t he tell Alice and Margaret that he was in a hospital in Kansas City?”

  “Didn’t want to impose.”

  “On his daughters?”

  “They weren’t close.”

  “I guess not,” I said dryly. “But why not?”

  “Hell, Jenny, he had three wives after he left their mother! That’ll create a little distance between a father and his children, don’t you think?” He stubbed out his cigarette on the door of the truck, then flipped the butt to the dirt. “You know, I thought he’d live a little longer than this, I really did. Old cowboys are tougher’n stringy chicken. I thought he might have had a few million more breaths left in him. I don’t say he would have enjoyed ’em, but I don’t say he wouldn’t have, either.”

  “So he was bitter because they didn’t love ranching as he did? Or because they didn’t love him?”

  “Stubborn, aren’t you? And now you’re putting words in my mouth. Well, I don’t know anything about psychology, but I do know a few things about cows. So let’s see how much you know, Jenny.”

  I decided it was time to play along. “Uh-oh. I’m in trouble already.” I made out his grin in the dark.

  “What’s a steer?”

  “Something you do with a car?”

  “It’s a bull with his balls cut off. We do it when they’re little.” I heard laughter in his voice. “That’s how we get calf fries. And fat cattle to sell for a bigger profit.”

  I winced. For the poor little bulls. “Eunuchs,” I murmured.

  “Yeah, but they don’t sing at the Vatican.”

  I glanced at him. He was squinting at me again, obviously highly amused. It occurred to me that I might be providing even more amusement for him than Carl did. Right then I decided never to underestimate this man’s sophistication.

  “What’s the difference between a heifer and a cow, Jenny?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m afraid you’re going to tell me.”

  “A heifer is a cow that’s never had a calf; she’s a sort of a virgin until she’s about a year old and gets bred. A cow is—”

  “I’ve got the idea.”

  “If we get lucky here tonight, you might even get to see one of these heifers drop a calf. We got a whole mess of calves due right about now.”

  I was almost afraid to ask the obvious. “Drop a calf?”

  His squint deepened until I couldn’t see his eyes at all. “A cow, she don’t have her babies in bed, Jenny. She has ’em the natural way, standin’ up—”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “You got any kids, Jenny? You and that lucky bastard serially monogamous husband of yours?”

  “No.”

  “Seems to me you could have answered that by saying not yet.”

  “I could have, yes.”

  “Well, I’m going to get out and open the gate. You drive the truck on through. Just pul
l up and wait for me on the other side. Think you can drive this thing?”

  “Sure.”

  He lit another cigarette after he got out and slammed the door. The noise set off some mooings in the pasture ahead of us. I heard a nearby rustling. Until I switched the headlights back on, all I could see of Slight was the glow of his cigarette. I slid over to the driver’s side and looked down at the gear knob on the stick shift, hoping it would tell me how to get the truck into first gear. The mechanism was looser and more difficult to slot than any automobile transmission I’d ever operated, but after a couple of false starts in neutral, I managed to get it going.

  As I drove through the gate he had opened, a rock flew up and hit the little window behind the passenger’s side of the front seat. I braked instinctively and looked back. The glass was shattered. I drove on through and pulled up, waiting for Slight. He ran up to the cab.

  “Goddamn hunters.” He looked furious as he flung open the door on the driver’s side. “Scoot over—”

  “That was a gunshot?” I slid quickly to the other side. “In a pasture? I thought hunters stuck to woods and duck blinds, places like that.”

  “That was two goddamn gunshots, and I think one of ’em got a heifer. We’ve got deer and coyotes and prairie chickens people like to hunt for, but you’d think the goddumb fools could tell the difference between a cow and a coyote, wouldn’t you? Even at night.” He drove the truck in a circle, playing his lights over the cattle, most of whom were scattering in confusion. Slight hollered out the window, “There’s people and cows out here you idiots!” Finally, the headlights picked up the figure of an animal lying on the ground.