Chapter 6

Saturday, June 15

When she came down from the bedroom a few minutes past 09:00, she looked like death warmed over. Her eyes were red, face puffy, hair tangled, and shoulders slumped. She sat at the kitchen table without saying anything.

I’d made two pots of coffee and put all of it into an insulated pump pot, so I was able to fill a cup for her as she was sitting down. I then went and dropped some bread in the toaster. Cinnamon toast was one of Greta’s comfort foods. When I brought it to her at the table, I leaned down and lightly kissed the top of her head. I wasn’t looking for a response; I simply wanted to let her know how I felt.

We had the Kingston Courier Times delivered on Sundays, mostly because I liked to read the Sunday comics with breakfast. I sat back down across from her and continued to drink my coffee while perusing the editorials and letters to the editor. I wanted to let Greta deal with things at her own pace.

After a few minutes she said, “You make any eggs?” She knew I hadn’t, but she didn’t want to come right out and ask me to do something for her.

“Not yet. Scrambled?”

“With cheese.”

“Swiss or cheddar?”

“Cheddar.”

I kept the interchange succinct, to respect her own preference.

I made a couple more pieces of toast and brought it and the eggs to the table, hers with cheddar, mine with Swiss. She was looking at the regional news section of the paper, inside of which were folded the comics.

“May I have the comics, please?” I asked.

She looked up at me. “You don’t want to talk?”

She caught me off base and I tried to figure out which way I was supposed to run. I figured the direct approach would give me a better start.

“I’d much rather talk with you.”

She pulled the comics out and passed them to me. I folded them over and set them aside. Then took a bite of the eggs.

“So. Emily,” she said.

I wasn’t at all sure which way she wanted to go with this, and I didn’t want to influence her direction.

I said, “Emily?”

“When do you two even get together?”

“Not very often.”

“And where?”

I was struck by an urge to call the bomb squad.

“In the Slipstream.” Slipstream was the brand name of our mini-motorhome.

“Huh. Never would have thought of that.”

She took a bite of eggs and one of toast.

“Parked in the driveway?”

“No.”

“Then where?”

“WallyWorld, or up in the mountains, or the interstate rest area.”

“WallyWorld?”

I sighed. “On the side toward the trees.”

“She any good?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Why not?”

“Because she’s never at ease.”

“Why not?”

“Because she feels like she’s invading your space and she doesn’t like doing that to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because she likes you and thinks of you as a friend.”

“I thought you said she wanted to jump my bones.”

“That, too.” I give a quick shrug.

“What about Greg?”

“What about him?”

“Well, does he know?”

“I don’t Know.” Actually, I did know, but that was another matter altogether.

“Who does know? Everybody but me?”

“Best I can tell, just Tate.” Then I shrugged again and said, “And Louise, of course.”

“Those two again! I thought they were my friends.”

“Aren’t they?”

“Well, they sure never told me what was going on.”

“They never told me about Phil, either.”

“But you already knew.”

“But they didn’t know that. They’ve treated us equally and have been supportive whenever we sought that. They’re our friends, caught up in the uncertainty just like we are. Nobody knows how to handle these things, when everyone likes everyone else. It’d be different if one of us were a rat, but we’re not. We’re good folks trying to figure things out as we go along. Like the Buddha said, Life is all on-the-job training.”

“Buddha, my ass.”

She took the last bite of eggs, then leaned back in the chair.

“Maybe I should call Greg, bring him up to date.”

There was no right way to address that. Besides, she had no intention of calling Greg. But she wasn’t happy with my silence, either.

“Don’t you think that would be fair?” she prodded.

“You’re asking a question I don’t have enough information to answer. However, if your point is strict fairness, then Emily should choose if and when to tell him, just like the choices I had to tell you.”

“And aren’t you sorry you did?”

“No.”

“When are you going to see her again?”

“I have no idea.”

“You don’t have a schedule?”

“Nope.”

The land line phone chirped. Greta jumped up to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Just finishing breakfast, drinking coffee and talking.”

“I don’t know. Let me ask Gary.”

She looked at me as she walked back to the table, phone in hand. “Louise wants to know if we’d like to come over for some grilled burgers, about one o’clock.”

“Whatever you decide is fine with me. You might want to ask if anyone else will be there, if you still want to talk with Louise.”

“You bet I do.

“Hey, Louise, are you inviting anyone else?”

“The reason I ask is because I’d like to talk with you this afternoon. Gary said he’d take Tate golfing or to a cricket match or something.”

Neither of us golfed, nor cricketed.

“Tell him to poke holes in the lid so they get air.”

“Okay, see you then. B’bye.”

She pushed the disconnect and set the phone down on the table.

“Tate says he knows where there’s some big crickets, so you better bring your best.”

She sat down and took a sip of her coffee.

“What if I called Emily? Right now?”

“Greta, would you mind if I digress and point out something I think is significant in the dynamic between us since this Q-and-A started?”

She sighed. “Go ahead.”

“As you ask these questions, I have the impression of a teenager trying to catch a parent or other authority figure in some contradiction. I don’t mean that you should stop your questions, only that I’d feel more comfortable if we were dealing with this on an equal footing.”

She swept her hair off her face and back over her head. “Then do you know what makes me uncomfortable, Gary? It’s when you can deal with issues and have an overview of what’s going on at the same time.”

“Greta, you do that all the time. You’re really good at it.”

“But I can’t do it with you, Gary. When I’m talking to you I’m always worried about what you’re going to say next. I can’t think of anything else.”

“Wow. That’s quite an insight.”

“Insight? Yeah, like watching a train barreling at you in-sight a tunnel.”

“No, Greta. I’m impressed. Really. I know you have a hard time dealing with me when I get this intense, but you just pulled the rabbit out of the hat. Bravo!”

“You’re full of shit! I just told you I can’t do it.”

“Greta, that was doing it. You’d stayed in the conversation, even dealt with Louise, and then you described one of the dynamics I hadn’t even known about. That’s as good as it gets.”

She pumped herself more coffee from the pump pot.

“Maybe. Doesn’t mean you’re not full of shit.”

When we arrived at the Plummer’s, Louise served a fruit salad as an appetite-suppressant, so that dinner could be delayed until after she and Greta had a chance to talk. Tate invited me to ride along while he ran a supplementary patrol up in the mountains.

We got into the Sheriff’s Department beater that was in his driveway and he said, “Have to make a couple phone calls.”

He punched in a quick-dial code, waited and few seconds, and said,

“Yeah, Spud. You had your lunch break yet?”

“I’ve got Gary Mazur with me in my cruiser. We’re going to go from my place, through Limekiln, up to the Junction, then drive down the ‘mushroom loop’ and back to my place via Foughbury. So, if you want to take a long lunch...”

“No, nothing in particular. Just that things have been popping up there lately. Mostly just show the flag.”

“Sure, go ahead. I’ll call in my plan, you radio in a normal lunch break, then just radio in you’re back on duty and keep your radio on in case something comes up. You can stay at home ‘til I get back. I’ll call ahead of time.”

“Okay, good. Oh, no radio about my patrol. Don’t want folks knowin’ I’m up there, in case it might spoil my fun.”

“Right. Kiss Glenna for me. Make it a good one. I know how she likes lots of tongue.”

Tate laughed.

“Same to you, Mister Potato Head. I’ll call later.”

He clicked off, then another speed dial.

“Good afternoon. This is Tate Plummer, Coldwater Sheriff actual. No radio call on this duty change, please. I’ll be primary patrol until further notice.”

“No. If there’s a call-out, use the radio. I just don’t want it known that there’s a second patrol out right now. Coldwater Sheriff 2 is going to take a long lunch break and then be back on.”

“Okay, thanks. I’ll call back when I go off duty.”

“‘Kay, Bye.”

He clicked off and put the phone in his shirt pocket, a blue-on-white plaid, western-cut, long sleeve with snaps instead of buttons and snapped flaps on the pocket. Then he took his keys and unlocked the center console. He withdrew a shoulder holster rig and a small, clip-on belt holster. Then he brought out a small carton with a graphic of a compact, black, semi-automatic pistol and the caption “SIG Sauer P229R” on the glossy label. He handed both to me. He reached back into the console and handed me a box of cartridges marked “S&W .40 Caliber.” Finally, he showed me a box with a label that indicated it was a pistol cleaning kit, which he put back in the console. Then he closed the console, but didn’t lock it.

“Happy First Sunday of the Week,” he grinned. “Figure it’d be cheaper if I gave you this and told you to hunt your own chickens than for me to have to feed you mine all the time. There’s a rail on the top if you want to add a hunting scope.”

“What is this?”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot.” He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a folded sheet of paper and handed that to me. I opened it and found a laminated wallet card that said I had the state’s permission to carry a concealed weapon.

“I, uh, don’t remember applying for a concealed weapon permit.”

“Technically, you haven’t, yet. I’ve got one at home, dated last Wednesday, ready for your signature. Remind me when we get back. I’m a pretty good forger, but I try not to practice the art very often.”

“Is this because of the head bonk?”

“Partially. But you get into some iffy situations now and then, so...”

“Tate, I can’t wear this when I’m on a crisis call.” I held up the shoulder holster rig.

“Du-uh, really? That’s what the belt holster’s for; you can clip it inside the waist band. Or put the weapon in your pocket, molasses-for-brains. It’s compact for a reason.”

“I’ll pay you for this. It’s not right that --”

“Oh, no you won’t. Don’t forget, I’m one eighth Ciranaga. We Injuns take it personal when a gift is refused.” He did a kid-style woo-woo-woo Indian whoop with his fingers tapping against his lips.

“According to tribal custom, what you need to do, is offer a gift in return.”

“Oh, well, sure. Some blankets, maybe or some beads, or maybe an air fryer.”

“I was thinking more of a night with Greta.”

“Ah, well, I’d take the air fryer, if I were you.”

“What?” he said. “Get your mind out of the gutter. She likes to play poker, you don’t, and neither does Louise. There’s a few of us play the first Friday of the month.”

“Fine with me. She might like that, but no guarantees. Any other women in the group?”

“Sometimes Liz Garrison plays, Frank, too, though usually they’re pretty busy on weekends with barrel racing and all.”

He started the patrol car and, once out on the highway, drove west, toward Limekiln and the Blackstone Mountains.

I said, “I thought that monthly poker game broke up.”

“That was the first Saturday poker game. Lost its players. Then a group started on first Fridays.”

“What happened to the Saturday players?”

“Mostly they got fed up with Jimmy Schuster and Phil Amundsen. Those two aren’t in the Friday game.”

“What, Jimmy and Phil always wanted to play Night Baseball with the jokers, blue-eyed queens, and prime numbers wild?”

“Something like that.”

“Like what?”

He glanced over at me, then back at the road.

“They played as a team, passing signals, playing to the other guy’s strength, boosting each other’s bluffs. They had it down to a science.

“And that Jimmy. That guy treated every hand as if it were the weigh-in for the heavyweight championship of the world, bad-mouthing everybody, boasting about his hand. If he lost, more badmouthing.”

“And if he won?”

“If he won, he’d go on about it as if he just been crowned pope, president, and prick of the year all at once. He’s a worse winner than he is a loser, and that’s saying something. Those two took the fun out of it.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. One time, at the Center’s annual picnic, he brought a set of bocce balls. I never played before, but it seemed simple enough, so I let him talk me into playing a game. Big surprise, he beat me. But you’d have thought I’d been castrated and had served him my nuts, lightly sautéed in butter, between my wife’s naked breasts. He went on and on about what a crappy player I was and how the mighty had fallen. It was really bizarre. Too bad, too, because bocce seemed like it might be fun to play, but the shine kind of went off it after that one game with Jimmy.”

“Bocce balls?”

“Bocce’s a form of Italian lawn bowling. It’s played with rules like shuffleboard, or horseshoes, or those old lawn darts. In bocce, it’s about getting the balls closest to the target ball, hitting your opponent’s balls away, that sort of thing.”

I’d opened the pistol box while we talked. I had it in hand and worked the slide to check the chamber.

Tate said, “Go ahead and load the magazine.” Then, “Oh, yeah,” and he put his hand in his pocket and brought out another magazine on a display card under a clear plastic shell. “This one, too. It holds fifteen, but sticks out some.”

As I was thumbing cartridges into the smaller magazine, I said, “What’s the ‘mushroom loop’?”

“It’s a series of National Forest roads that takes you from State Route Thirty Nine, from just north of Coldwater Junction, then uses Forest Roads Nineteen, Forty, and Forty-two to go down to and across County Road Six, then loops back to County Road Six a few miles above the bridge over Neverbitter Creek. Lots of mushroom hunters use those forest roads to get into prime morel country. I was doing the mushroom loop that one time I found your rig up there with you and your fancy woman testing the shock absorbers.” He looked over and grinned.

“You were out there long enough. Should ‘a come in. I’d ‘a made coffee. You could have watched, taken notes. I’m sure Louise would have appreciated it.”

“Just don’t worry your head about Louise. She’s plenty appreciative. Your big city perversions would only distress her.”

“Says the guy who thinks it’s perverted to make love with the lights on.”

“I simply don’t want Louise to see, uh, anything sizable that would frighten her.”

“You could just put a bag over your head.”

He slowed down as we came to Limekiln. He rolled down the front windows and turned off the county road and made a slow circuit through the village, looking side to side as we drove through.

“Are you looking for anything specific?”

“Nah. Just anything that seems odd or out of place, or sounds that way. Also just to reassure people that we’re out here, watching out for them.”

He waved to a guy mowing his lawn and to a woman shelling beans on her front porch. He stopped to chat with an older couple who were riding one-speed, coaster-style bikes. He introduced me and I realized the woman was the MD gynecologist Emily went to, who had her main practice over in Plattsburg, but was in Leaufroide on Fridays.

Back on the county road, he sped up again after we crossed Limekiln Creek, only to slow a few minutes later as we began the twisting climb into the mountains.

County Road Twenty-five had its western terminus at a “T” intersection with State Route 39. Tate turned left. State Route 39 followed the east side of the ridge of the Blackstone Mountains, in a roughly south-southwest to north-northeast heading. After three or four miles, he slowed for the turn onto the aggregate surface of Forest Road 19.

The road was not paved, per se, but was topped with a mix of sand, gravel, and clay that was scraped back into shape with a road grader in the early summer and the early autumn. The Coldwater County Road Department had a contract with the National Forest Service to grade the forest roads within the county. We were not even to the summer solstice, so the roads were still in good shape. Traffic and weather would break them down over the summer, then they’d be graded again before hunting season. The hunt-season traffic, winter freeze-thaw cycles, and the spring snow melt would do them in again, and then some. The early-summer road grading took longer than the road–shaping in the fall. Most of the Forest Service roads were closed in winter, many converted to snowmobile trails.

There were pickups, SUVs, and plain old sedans parked near the road every mile or so, some with men and women nearby, loading boxes, small crates, or buckets filled with morel mushrooms, into their vehicles. Tate mostly just waved or nodded at the people we passed, but he stopped a few times to check for federal permits. I asked him if there was anything special that attracted his attention to those he checked.

“Nah, just wanted to stretch my legs or look at the scenery where they were parked.”

A few of the pickers we saw were wearing sidearms, which was perfectly legal, maybe even sensible, in country known to harbor venomous snakes and omnivorous mammals. There were also a few long guns in evidence, in window racks or leaning against vehicles.

“All those guns make you nervous?”

“You get used to it. Depends on circumstances. Up here is one thing, but if a group walked into the First Bank and Trust wearing guns, I might get a bit antsy.”

About a mile further on, Forest Road 19 crossed the West Fork of the Coldwater River on an old-style steel, overhead truss bridge. Tate pulled over onto the east side of the road. Across from us, long remnants of crime scene tape fluttered in the breeze.

He said. “Come on, bring the pistol. The holsters and shells, too.”

I got out and followed him across the road.