Damned If I Do (6 page)

I drove back to the main street with the intention of returning to the gas station and asking where the sheriff’s office was, but I spotted it on my way. I parked in a diagonal space and walked up the concrete steps and inside. The deputy was a big man, even sitting, and he watched me coming toward his desk.

“What can I do you for?” he asked.

“I need some assistance.” I produced my papers from the Department of Ag and Fish and Game. “I’m supposed to go up and perform some tests on Rocky and Talbert creeks. I’ve got to get Emma Bickers’ signature on this piece of paper so I can take my readings and go home.”

“So, go get it. Her address is right here.”

“I tried. It seems she has a bit of a problem with my complexion.”

The deputy observed my complexion. “Yeah, I can see. I think you’ve got a pimple coming on.” He laughed.

I didn’t, though I appreciated his attempt at humor and his demonstration of something other than sheer amazement that I was there.

He picked up the phone and dialed. “Mrs. Bickers? This is Deputy Harvey … ma’am? … yes, he’s fine … ma’am, I’ve got a fella here from Fish and Game who needs you to sign a paper … yes, ma’am, that would be him … well, yes, but I think it won’t hurt for you to sign … just going to check the water in the creeks … yes, ma’am … yes, ma’am … I reckon, they’ll get a court order and he’ll get to go up there anyway … yes, ma’am.” The deputy hung up and looked at me.

“Well?”

“She said she’ll sign it, but you can’t come in.”

I stepped into the air. It was nearly four and I was hungry. There was a restaurant across the street and so I left my truck where it was and went in and sat at the counter. There were a couple of men sitting at a booth in the back. They gave me a quick look and returned to their conversation. The menu was written on poster boards over the shelves on the wall facing me.

“Coffee?” the waitress asked. She was a pie-faced young woman with noticeable, but not heavily applied, makeup. She held her blond ponytail in her hand at her shoulder while she poured me a cup. “Know what you want?”

“You serve breakfast all day, like the sign says?”

“All day long, every day,” the waitress said.

“Are the hotcakes good?”

“They’re okay,” she said. Then, quietly, “I wouldn’t eat them.”

“Eggs and bacon?”

She nodded. “Toast or biscuit?”

“Toast?”

She nodded. “I’ll bring you some hash browns, too.”

“Thank you, ma’am,”

She moved to the window and stuck the ticket on the wheel, then talked to me from the coffee machine where she seemed to be counting filters. “Visiting or just passing through?”

“I’m working for Fish and Game, doing some work up mountain.”

“What kind of work?”

“Checking the streams, that’s all.”

“We used to go up that mountain all the time when I was a kid. My daddy taught me to fish there.” She came back over and wiped the counter near me. “It was good fishing then.”

“What about now?”

“I don’t know really. I hear tell it’s not good like it used to be.” She looked over at the men in the booth. “You all right back there?”

“Fine,” one of them said.

“You don’t go up there anymore, eh?” I asked.

“Nobody does, really,” she said.

“Why’s that?”

She shrugged.

A hand reached through the window and tapped the bell, then put a plate down. The waitress stepped over, grabbed it, and brought it to me. “You want ketchup or anything?”

“Tabasco?”

She gave it to me.

A couple of young men came in and sat at the opposite end of the counter. “Hey, Polly,” one of them said.

“Hey, Dillard.” She slid along the counter toward them.

She and the men ignored me while I ate and I liked that just fine. I finished, paid the tab, and left a generous tip, figuring I’d be eating there again.

Emma Bickers’ house looked no more inviting than it had earlier. I walked the dirt path to the porch and before I could knock, two loud pops hurt my ears and I could feel the door move, though I wasn’t touching it. I looked at the glass high on the door and saw the small holes. I ran back to my truck, keeping low, my heart skipping. I fumbled with my keys, finally got my engine going, and kicked up dust as I sped away. I don’t like being shot at, always have a really bad reaction to it. I don’t get scared as much as I get really mad. I stayed hunched in my seat until I was well on the main road again.

I parked in the same space and burst into the sheriff’s office. The sheriff was standing beside the deputy and they turned to observe me. I was fit to be tied. “That old lady is crazy as hell and I want her arrested.”

“What happened?” the sheriff asked.

“That nut shot at me. I hadn’t even knocked on the door and she fired two shots.”

“Slow down,” the sheriff said. “Who are you and who shot at you?”

“This is the guy from Fish and Game I told you about,” the deputy said.

“Mrs. Bickers shot at you?” the sheriff asked.

“I don’t know for sure. I was on the other side of the door and when the shooting started I took off. I didn’t see if anyone opened the door once I was running.”

“Harvey, call over to that old biddy’s house and find out what the hell is going on,” the sheriff said. Then to me, “Are you all right?”

“I’m not shot.”

“Well, that’s a good thing.” He seemed even-tempered, but of course he hadn’t been the target. He ran a hand through his graying hair and watched the deputy hang up the phone.

“No answer,” Harvey said.

“Why don’t you ride on out there and see what in hell’s the matter,” the sheriff said to Harvey. “And take that gun away from her before she shoots somebody I give a damn about.”

“I’m going with him,” I said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Mr.—”

“Hawks,” I said.

“Mr. Hawks. Let Harvey get things unraveled.”

The sheriff was reasonable in his request, but I was hot. “Listen, all I want is this paper signed so I can do my damn job.”

“Let Harvey take the form and get it signed.”

“No, I want to watch her sign it. I want her to see me watching her sign it. I’m going with Harvey.”

The sheriff sighed. “I don’t see why you don’t trespass on her land and get it over with.”

“With all due respect, sheriff, greetings around here are somewhat unpredictable and I would prefer to keep things as simple and clean as possible.” I wasn’t backing down.

“I see your point. Harvey, see to it that Mr. Hawks doesn’t get killed.”

“I’ll do my best,” Harvey said.

The sheriff looked out the window. “Wait a second. It’s too dark to go messing around over there tonight. If she can’t see you, Harvey, she might shoot again.” The sheriff looked at me. “You gonna press charges?”

“Probably not. Not if she signs this form and not if I get to see her do it.”

The sheriff glanced at Harvey and blew out a breath. “Harvey will pick you up in the morning from the motel across the street. How’s that?”

I nodded.

The sheriff walked away, shaking his head, saying, “I hate this fuckin’ job. I want to shoot every idiot who voted for me.”

Harvey sat at his desk. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning then.”

I checked into the motel, which was like any motel anywhere, the same room, the same bed, the same synthetic blanket, the same television with cable, and the same fat clerk in slippers holding a scruffy cat with a terrier standing in the doorway behind him.

I threw myself onto the bed, switched on the television, and settled on CNN. I must have fallen asleep fairly quickly because I couldn’t recall any of the so-called news when I was awakened by a crash. Then there was shouting. A man’s voice, booming, not so much angry as frustrated.

“I’m telling you it’s not my fault,” the man said.

I couldn’t hear the response.

“Her tire was flat and I offered to change it. When I turned around she had her shirt off.”

There was another crash. Then a silence.

“I’m sorry if you think that, but I didn’t have any interest in her,” he said.

Silence.

“I did
not
know her!”

“—”

“That’s not true!”

“—”

“Lord Christ, Muriel! Have you lost your mind! Now, honey, you put that down. Muriel!”

A door slammed. I went to the window and peeked out. A bearded man wearing jeans and no shirt was standing in the parking lot, under a bright lamp, looking at the door. His shoulders were fixed in a shrug. The woman was out of the room, too, her back to me, a parka covering what I took to be her naked body; an assumption I made observing her bare feet and legs. She was waving a large and nasty hunting knife.

“Now, Muriel!”

The woman said nothing. She stowed the knife under her arm to free her hands for signing something to the man, then pulled her hair away from her head and let it fall. I, of course, had no idea what she was saying, but the tone of her signing was clear.

“Quiet down, honey.”

“—”

“That’s just not true,” he said. “Muriel, she’s fat. For chrissakes, she was gigantic. And ugly. I was just changing her tire.”

But apparently Muriel didn’t think she was fat and ugly enough because she threw the knife at the man and marched into the room, slamming the door. The man picked up the blade, which had bounced to a stop well in front of him. He saw me watching and offered a half-smile as if embarrassed.