16••••

I TRIED TO GET STACY TO GO BACK TO SELMA’S PLACE while I tidied up the rest of the mess, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

“I’ve got my first new dress in five years,” she said, “and you’re taking me out to dinner tonight, dummy.”

“Right,” I said, glad of the chance.

She waited at the motel while I ran errands. I returned the two rental cars, had the account books copied, sent the copies to Torres and stuck the originals in a safe-deposit box along with a note explaining what they were about. I made dinner reservations at a Chinese place and bought two bottles of French champagne, which we drank as we dressed for dinner.

“I’ve never had real French champagne.” Stacy sighed as she slipped her dress over her head. “But I intend to have it again.” Then she fell back across the bed, laughing softly until she fell asleep.

I ordered dinner over the telephone and sent a cab driver after it. When he brought the cartons back, I paid him, then lay down beside her. Sometime during the middle of the night, we woke up making love in our clothes. After, we undressed and sat down to our cold dinner, which we ate silently like two starving peasants, then crawled back into bed.

“You know,” Stacy said dreamily, “I must be well again.”

“Why’s that?”

“Here I am drunk on champagne, shacked up with a strange older man, the reek of gunpowder still fresh in my innocent young nose, and I feel absolutely great, ” she said. “How about you?”

“I’ve got these holes in my shoulder,” I said, “a swollen ankle, Chinese indigestion, and nothing to look forward to but a champagne hangover and a long drive home.”

“Isn’t it wonderful,” she whispered. “I’m gonna be a great horse doctor, you know, goddamned great horse doctor. When I grow up. Whadda you gonna be when you grow up?”

“Older,” I said, but she was already asleep again.

The next morning, as I parked at the head of Selma’s trail, I had to line up behind her pickup, a fence company truck, and Melinda’s Volkswagen.

“You think she’s still here?” Stacy asked.

“I think I’m back in the goddamned towing business,” I said as I climbed out to look at the note under the VW windshield wiper. A key was folded up in the paper, which had one word written on it: Please. I shook my head, and Stacy and I picked up our tired feet and headed them up the trail.

Selma was sitting in the living room watching four young men struggle as they tried to dig post holes in the rocky hillside.

“I never thought it would come to this,” she said as we joined her.

“You think it’s enough?” I asked.

“I’ve ordered two guard dogs from a place in Broomfield,” she confessed. “‘The world is too much with us, late and soon,’” she recited. “No one will ever trespass here again,” she added, then touched her bruised cheek. “Ever again.”

“I hope not,” I said. “I bought us some insurance, but put up the fence and get the dogs anyway. Just in case.”

“You sound like a man about to make his goodbyes,” she said. “You should stay a few days, should rest.”

“Do,” Stacy said, grabbing my arm.

“I’m too tired to stay,” I admitted. “Why don’t you all pack and head up into the mountains for a few days? Find a little lake and some air that nobody’s breathed. I’m going to town to pick up a tow bar and my dog, then I’m going home while I still can.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Selma said. She glanced at Stacy, who nodded slowly and released my arm. “You’re always welcome here, you know.”

“Thanks.”

“And if you need doctoring,” Stacy said lightly, “give me a call. Any time at all.” She gave me a quick hug and walked out of the cabin toward her own, her narrow back firm and erect.

“She’s a lovely woman,” Selma said, “and I think as terrible as all this has been, it has been good for her.”

“She’s a tiger,” I said, “she’ll be fine.”

“Melinda told me,” Selma said. “I always think I know my charges, and they always find some way to surprise me. You didn’t surprise me, though.”

“Why?”

“I knew that you would get Melinda back,” she said, “and I want to thank you for it. You saved her life.”

“If I hadn’t been so stupid, they would never have found her,” I said.

“One can’t be blamed for believing lies,” she said softly.

“I get paid for knowing the difference,” I said, “but this time—”

“This time was different,” she interrupted. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Will you do me one last favor?” she asked. “Of course.”

“Keep an eye on Melinda,” she said, “check on her from time to time. I have this feeling that she’s going to need a friend soon.”

“I’ll do my best,” I said, “but I can’t promise anything.”

“Thank you,” she said, “and please don’t blame yourself for this last spate of her troubles. They began many years ago, and none of this was your fault.”

“I’m not sure about that,” I said, then left her there with her cats and her chicks and her shiny new fence.

But the really bad ones never end. They drag on like an endless litigation or a chronic jungle fever. I thought this one was over, though, except for the forty thousand dollars, which was mostly Melinda’s worry. I had plenty of time to think about it, too, as I headed north one more time with Melinda’s VW in tow and Fireball lying in a drugged stupor on the seat beside me. The bulldog was heavily bandaged to hold the drains in place. When I picked him up, the vets released him to me as if he didn’t have much chance to survive. They had removed a portion of his stomach and resectioned his small intestine, so I babied him toward home as gently as I could. By the time we reached Meriwether, he looked so bad that I put him in the vet’s while I towed the VW up to Cauldron Springs.

I had had a bellyful of the Trahearne family circus, so I left Melinda’s car parked behind the hotel pool house, then went home to keep an eye on Fireball and tie up the loose ends. I sat in my office holding the telephone until it was slick with sweat, then I hung it up and dug up some postcards. It seemed a fitting form of communication. I sent one to Rosie with Trahearne’s tele-

phone number on it. Another to Melinda, telling her to call her mother. A third to Traheame, which said simply: You owe me, old man.

As I left the office, I stopped by the secretary’s desk and interrupted her as she buffed a higher gloss on her blue fingernails.

“If anybody calls,” I told her, “tell them that I’m out of town indefinitely.”

“How long is that?” she asked without looking up.

. “Almost forever,” I said, and she wrote it down.

I picked up Fireball, who was still hanging on, and drove him up to the cabin on the North Fork. His wounds healed slowly, but they healed. A fresh froth of white hairs grizzled his muzzle, he walked carefully as if trying to control his natural waddle, and he couldn’t lift his leg to pee, but he survived. Finally I drove him down to Columbia Falls to have the drains and stitches removed. When we got back to the cabin, Traheame’s Caddy was parked in front and he was sitting at the table with a half-gallon of vodka and a jug of tonic. He didn’t say anything as I picked up Fireball and carried him up the steps. When I sat him down, the bulldog walked toward Traheame to sniff him, but halfway there he changed his mind and lay down to lick his scars.

“I suppose you blame me for that, too,” Traheame said casually.

“I guess I don’t blame anybody for anything,” I said.

“Must be tough being a saint,” he suggested. He sounded sober but his eyes were red and drunk. A white crust of antacid flaked at the comers of his mouth.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I couldn’t work,” he said, and hung his head. “Maybe you’re standing too far from your desk,” I said.

“What the hell do you know about it?” he asked, his 243

anger changing to sadness in the middle of the question.

“Nothing.”

“Then don’t try to tell me how to do it,” he said as he tried to pour vodka into his glass. It was too much trouble, though. He lifted the half-gallon and drank from the bottle, using the tonic water as a chaser.

“I don’t think that’s how you make a vodka tonic,” I said.

“Fuck you.” He belched painfully and had another drink.

“Let’s start this conversation over,” I said.

“Whatever you say,” he mumbled. He stood up and staggered over to the edge of the cabin. He fell to his knees as if he were about to pray, gagged once or twice, then projectile-vomited a huge gout of blood off the side.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. He did it again, and collapsed over the side, three feet down to the ground on his face. I went over and helped him to his feet and wiped his face, then hooked an arm over my shoulder and walked him toward his car.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Taking you to the hospital,” I said.

“Lemme die,” he muttered, “lemme die.”

“You’d draw flies,” I said as I stuffed him into the Caddy. As I went back to get Fireball, Trahearne laughed and gagged again. It took me a few minutes to throw some clothes into a knapsack, and when I stepped out of the tent, Trahearne had gotten out of the car and was stumbling toward the river. “Hey!” I shouted as I ran after him.

“Get away,” he said as I caught him by the arm. When I didn’t, he jerked his arm so hard that he threw me into a tree. Then he set off .for the river again.

My first impulse was to leap up and knock the hell out of him, but I didn’t want to break my hand on his giant jaw. This time when I caught him, I wrapped a forearm around his neck to choke him down. He thrashed and raged and bucked like a wounded bull, but I stayed on his back until he fell to his knees, then I turned him loose. He shook his great head, struggling for breath and oxygen for his brain, then rose without a word and took off for the river again. This time it was easier. The third time easier still.

“I can keep this up all day,” I told him as he stood up the last time.

“You’re going to have to,” he whispered, still strangling on his words.

“To hell with it,” I said as I turned away from him, then I swung around and hit him on the point of the jaw. It was like hitting a tree, and it felt as if I had broken all the bones in my right hand and wrist. “God damn,” I said as I held it gently with my left hand. Trahearne stood upright for a moment, then took a step toward me and fell into my chest. We both went down, the big man on top, and I felt a couple of ribs tear loose. At least he was finally out, though. I crawled from under him and grabbed his collar to drag him to the car before the pain got too bad. But I couldn’t budge him. I had to drive down to the Polebridge store to get help loading him into the back seat of the Caddy. By the time I drove to the hospital in Kalispell, Trahearne was snoring peacefully, and my right hand looked like a rubber glove full of water.

Two days later I went back down to visit him. When I walked into his hospital room, he smiled painfully.

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he said.

“I broke six bones in my hand, old man, and dislocated three ribs—trying to keep you alive.”

I held up my cast.

“I guess I owe you again, huh?”

“Damned right,” I said.

“Well, thanks.”

“What the hell did you have in mind?” I asked as I sat down in the nearest chair.

“Who knows,” he murmured. “Who the hell knows?” Then he paused for a long moment. “Melinda told me about the forty thousand,” he said, “and I made the mistake of going to my mother to borrow the money.”

“Mistake?”

“The crazy old bitch laughed at me,” he said, blushing with shame. “I knew better than to ask,” he added, “knew I had to work it out on my own.”

“What did you do? Mortgage your house?”

“I would if I could,” he said, “but the bank already has two overdue notes on it now. The only reason they don’t kick me out is because my mother went down and guaranteed the notes. Goddamned crazy old woman. I’ve never understood anything about her, you know, nothing. Maybe she wants me around, but only on her terms. I don’t know …”

“So she laughed and you hit the bottle, huh?”

“Not then,” he said, “not just yet. I called my publisher and got him to give me a forty thousand advance against this new book—”

“What new book?” I interrupted.

“Whatever new book I write,” he answered. “But I have to finish at least a hundred pages of it before he’ll give me the money. That’s why I came to see you.”

“You want me to write it?” I asked. “Or just hold your hand while you do it?”

He nodded slowly. “If you could come up and keep me dry for a month, I could do it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Not at all,” he said. “I know how much I owe you, C.W., but if you could just do this last thing, I’d … I’d do anything for you, pay you anything. I’ve just got to get back to work, you see, just have to …”

“For the forty thousand?” I asked. “For Melinda?”

“Yeah, right,” he muttered.

“You son of a bitch,” I said. “I’ll do it, but not for you or your damned stupid book … “

“For her,” he said quietly. “I’ll take that. I guess that’s more than I deserve.”

“What’s she think about it?” I asked.

“She doesn’t know yet,” he said. “She rented a truck and loaded up her pieces and took them down to San Francisco.”

“Great,” I said. “Why didn’t you give her a hand?”

“She wouldn’t let me,” he confessed. “She said it was her trouble and that she’d handle it. But when I get the money, you can give it to them, and she’ll be off the hook.”

“Me too,” I said, but he wasn’t listening. “It must be tough,” he said softly.

“What’s that?”

“To finish the grand quest and find the fair maiden sullied,” he said, almost whispering.

“Only by you,” I said, “only by you.”

“That’s what I meant, of course,” he said, “to find the fair lady in love with the dragon, married to the shaggy, foulbreathed beast … ” He stopped and stared at me. “You should have let me make it to the river.”

“I thought about it.”

“Why didn’t you do it?”

“Because she loves you, I guess,” I said, “though I don’t understand why.”

“Neither do I.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Do you love her?”

He paused for a long time before he answered, then he said, “I’m not sure what that means anymore, but I know I can’t live without her.”

“You don’t seem to live with her too well.”

He paused again, even longer this time, then he said,

“You know, I used to look forward to the day when I got too old to give a damn about women. I used to think that when that day came, all that wasted energy I spent chasing them would go into my work. I thought I’d grow old and wise, sexless as an oracle, but it didn’t work that way, son, not at all. It came on me sooner than I expected, it drove me crazy—or crazier. And when Melinda rekindled the fires, I was so grateful that I married her. Now I’m afraid to lose her.”

“You don’t need a detective, old man, you need a

shrink.”

“Maybe so, son,” he said, “but you’re all I’ve got. I’d rather give you the thirty dollars an hour anyway. At least you buy me a drink every now and again.”

“But no more,” I said. “The first drink you take is the last one I buy.”

“I’ll be as meek as a lamb,” he said, and grinned.

“You’ll see.”

As soon as the doctors could run a series of tests, they found out that Traheame didn’t have a perforated ulcer at all. Just an attack of acute alcoholic gastritis. They let him check out of the hospital the next morning.

“Put the top up,” he said peevishly as he settled into the passenger seat of his Caddy. His face was so white that it seemed to have been painted with clown make-up.

“Shut up and enjoy the sunshine,” I said as I wheeled away.

“Where are you going?” He sighed. “You’re going the wrong way.”

“I’ve got to get my pickup.” I popped the top on a beer.

“I can’t drive,” Traheame said, staring at the beer. “I know,” I said, “I’ve got a tow bar in the trunk. You just bought me one. I got tired of renting the damn things. Almost as tired as I am of towing your damned cars back and forth.”