The Clinch Knot Page 5

  “Sheriff?”

  Chubbuck leaned forward with a grunt. He pressed his intercom button. “Miss Park-Ford? Would you please tell Deputy Crowe to hang on a minute before he goes on patrol? Thank you.”

  The sheriff let up on the button. He leaned up to the computer monitor at the corner of his desk, side-eyed it in his bird-like way. He tapped on the keyboard for a full minute, clicked something with his mouse. When he looked at me again, his eyes had become tiny wet stones, ferociously blue inside their raw red rims.

  “Anyway, go home, Mister Oglivie. Your license has expired.”

  “I want to see my friend Sneed.”

  “He’s a murder suspect.”

  “He didn’t kill Jesse. He wouldn’t do a thing like that. Those skins—”

  “Your statement says you knew Mister Sneed for no more than three weeks. Do we need to change that?”

  I dropped my glare. I clenched my fists and stared at that shitty spruce fly, smelling my sweat, my alcohol, my rage. “Those skins did this,” I claimed. “I know they did.”

  “Just go home, Mister Oglivie.”

  I didn’t move. The sheriff’s hands quaked into my vision. He unclamped the spruce moth and let it fall into his palm. He sucked oxygen and sighed. Then the both of us were silent for a very long time.

  “Look,” he said at last. “I understand how these things are difficult to accept, Mister Oglivie. Very, very difficult.” He paused, flicked the spruce fly into his waste basket. “Grief is a bitch. It’s a mess. It’s a process.”

  “Don’t tell me about grief.”

  He shook his head as if he pitied me. He pressed his intercom.

  “Ms. Park-Ford?”

  “Yes, Sheriff?”

  “Send Deputy Crowe on back.”

  “Yes, Sheriff. Oh, and Mister Walters is here from federal—” she paused, seemed to catch herself “—here from Salt Lake.”

  Chubbuck nodded. “Tell Mister Walters ten minutes.” Then to me he said, “As a matter of fact, I will tell you about grief.” He pulled the throw off his lap. He arranged it over the arm of his chair. “You’re a fisherman, Mister Oglivie, so grief goes like this.” His eyes watered like they stung. “There you are, just fishing along, when you hook into something big. You pull back, expecting your usual control. But within moments, the size of what you’ve hooked into goes beyond your comprehension. It blows your goddamn mind.”

  He turned his head to gaze out his window at the mountains, at wind whipping up dust and wrinkling the smoke-freighted sky. Slowly, shakily, he began to transfer himself from his desk chair to his little twelve-volt scooter.

  “I mean this thing on your line is big, Mister Oglivie. I mean you hook this sonofabitch and right away large sectors of your brain just give up and shut down. You become a reptile.”

  He toppled into the plastic seat of the scooter. He began to fumble at the seat belt.

  “And you fight it like a man, with everything you have, until you hit the wall. You have nothing left. You have no strength.” He took short, fast breaths. “And that is when you understand that this thing will never break off. Nor will you ever land it. Nor will you ever see it, ever touch it, ever know exactly what it is.”

  Sheriff Chubbuck reached back to his desk for his campaign hat, trembled it into place over his hairless skull. “Nor, Mister Oglivie—” he fixed me with a blue stare “—will you ever let go of the rod. That is grief.”

  His deputy, Russell Crowe, stuck his head back into the doorway.

  “Yes, sir?”

  The sheriff burped his little scooter ahead to where he could grab the open door from the deputy and hold it. A stocky young man in a black suit, waiting outside, seemed to think this was his cue. “We just heard about another one, Sheriff, an endontist in Fresno who was—”

  “Walters. Come in. Sit down.”

  Chubbuck turned to his deputy, gave a nod in my direction.

  “Russell, this gentleman is yours. Gas him up and make sure he crosses the line into Sweetgrass County. He’s going home.”

  Black from Both Directions

  “I am no relation to the actor of course.”

  Chubbuck’s deputy discharged this complete non sequitur into my exhausted brain as he pulled his cruiser past a dusty, neatly parked black SUV and swung from the lot.

  “You know, Russell Crowe? The actor?”

  My silence provoked him: “Deputy Russell Crowe. It’s just my name. I can’t help it. I’m not, like, an actor or anything.”

  This not-actor deputy had glossy black hair, exactly one centimeter too long for law enforcement. He had a distinctively oversized jaw that appealed in the general direction of handsome but did not quite arrive. He grinned at me with large yellow teeth proportioned for the mouth of a small horse. “Trust me,” he said. “It’s weird, but I’m actually no relation to Russell Crowe the actor.”

  We were headed for Sacagawea Park, where I had left the Cruise Master in the shade of cottonwoods. The deputy ran the windows down and spun the steering wheel with the palm of his right hand. He laid his left arm out the window and used that hand to designate greetings upon a sun-beaten old rancher limping across Park Street.

  “What’s the good word, Walt? We gonna get some rain?”

  Walt scaled the curb, pushed his ten-gallon up and looked back in dismay as we rounded onto Main Street. So perhaps I spoke for Walt too. “Well, why would you be any relation? If you were related, you wouldn’t have the same name. Unless you were the guy’s son.”

  “I’m not. I swear.”

  “Of course you’re not.”

  Deputy Crowe laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s confusing.” He sent greetings to an underdressed older woman leaving the flower shop with a bouquet. She smiled and waved.

  “Hello, Russell.”

  “Hey, baby girl.”

  “Working hard or hardly working?”

  “You know me.”

  “Oh, Russell.” She rolled her eyes. Russell gave her a little salute and took an unnecessary left turn.

  “But you’d be totally surprised how many people don’t pick up on the name thing like you did. They think I’m related to the actor.” He hit the brakes. “Hey, there’s Ivan.”

  The deputy eased up wrong-side to the curb. “Ivan, my brother!” This salutation startled a young man in grungy bermudas and a goatee who looked stoned and therefore sorely undecided about approaching a sheriff’s cruiser.

  “Ivan’s a writer,” Russell Crowe told me. “Hey, Ivan, how’s that novel coming along?”

  Mortified, this Ivan shifted a paper sack under his arm and made some noises, possibly also some words.

  “Attaboy, Ivan. Never give up. And then you gotta write the screenplay, remember? You promised me.”

  We took another left at the next corner, Second and Geyser, accomplishing a one-eighty now, heading back in our original direction along a street with three saloons and five art galleries. Deputy Crowe said, “My bad. Gotta make a stop.”

  He pulled into the angle parking in front of a craft shop. A minute later he was back, showing me the contents of a bulging plastic sack.

  “Pine cones,” he said, stating the obvious. “You’d be surprised how much these cost. Two bucks apiece for something you can pick up off the ground.” He tossed the sack in the back seat. “But the boss lady, she’s gotta have ‘em.”

  Two more lefts and we were taking a second tour down Main Street. The deputy confused a tourist couple with his vivid salutations. Then he froze to the hot sidewalk a deeply inebriated old gentleman with one wet pant leg. This man stood as motionless as he could manage, as if he and the deputy were playing red light-green light.

  “That’s Elmer Sorgensen.”

  Russell Crowe pulled over, hopped out and opened his back door. “Come on, Elmer, get in.”

  The frail old man sluiced himself in across the backseat and lay down. The smell of urine filled the cruiser until Crowe put up his safety window. “Sorgensen
s are a clan of sheep-herding Swedes from the old days.” He swung me a jaw that looked heavy with information. “There’s a ton of them around here, various states of falling apart. None of them went to school at all. Elmer’s brother does okay, though, runs the outfitter Jesse worked for. Hilarious Sorgensen. I bet you know him.”

  Yes I did, I said, and Crowe celebrated his acumen with a horse-toothed smile. Then, as he eased away from the curb, he said, “So you don’t think your black friend popped Jesse? Is that it?”

  “Is that what?”

  “Is that the basic problem?”

  “The word black in that sentence,” I said, “is the basic problem.”

  “Huh? Oh.” He gave me a falsely contrite look. “African-American. I mean, no offense.”

  “It doesn’t belong in the equation,” I said, “unless you’re going to look into black from both directions.”

  Deputy Russell Crowe drove a half block in utter puzzlement. At last he said, “Black from both directions?”

  “Meaning my friends Sneed and Jesse were threatened by skinheads the day of Jesse’s murder.”

  That jaw extended. “I didn’t know that.”

  “The sheriff knew it and did nothing. He came out alone, never even left his car. He has a hate crime staring him in the face, and he never even questioned the skinheads.”

  Crowe had slowed down to a studious five miles per hour, trying to follow. We passed by Tick Judith in the window of the liquor store. He stared out, crumpled and bereft.

  I said, “So does the sheriff have something going with Dane Tucker?”

  “Dane Tucker?”

  “Those two punks work for Dane Tucker.”

  Here came even more jaw. “They do?”

  “I should think the sheriff’s department would know that.”

  “Well … you said they made a threat?”

  “They burned Sneed’s tent. They left a note that said turn back now.”

  “Huh,” the deputy said. He scratched along the hairless run-up to his chin. “But why would the sheriff take the call himself? He never does that. He’s got emphysema, bad. He’s pretty weak. He saves his energy for fishing.”

  “Maybe someone should ask why.”

  “Huh,” the deputy said. “Yeah. That’s right. And hey, lucky, here’s my man Henderson Gray.”

  Crowe slowed again, veered to the wrong-side curb in front of a familiar law office. So Henderson Gray was the nasty little marathon man who flipped me off a few hours before I found Sneed and Jesse. He wore a summer suit now, looked wealthy, full of purpose and importance.

  “Yo, Mister Gray!”

  Russell Crowe yipped this out the window. The man looked annoyed.

  “Is Dane in town? I mean, is he out at the ranch?”

  Gray flicked a glance through the cruiser at yours truly. He moved internally, like running in place at a stop light. “Yes. Dane is at the ranch. Is there something I can help you with, Russell?”

  “The sheriff been out to, like, see Dane? Or anything? Lately?”

  “Not that I know of.” I could see Gray grinding his teeth.

  “Why?”

  “Nah. Just wondered. Hey—you run down that deer yet?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Hah,” the deputy laughed. “You do that. Show me the picture. I’ll buy you a beer.”

  Henderson Gray looked like he might hurtle the cruiser in another second or two. But Russell Crowe, no relation, showed a surprising sense of timing. “Gotta scoot,” he said, and he pulled away. He left Gray scowling at his watch.

  “That’s Dane Tucker’s attorney,” Crowe told me. “Great guy. Ultra-marathoner. Trying to be the first man to run down a pronghorn antelope.”

  I felt the bump of that—pronghorn antelope—but my brain was done and slipping into distraction.

  “So Dane is at the ranch.” I heard Crowe musing as he drove on toward the place where I could sleep. “So the sheriff …”

  Elmer Sorgensen, the drunk, moaned and babbled in the back seat. The sounds reached me faintly through the safety glass. They lulled me toward my own dark deep.

  “Huh. Really. Skinheads? Working for Tucker?” Deputy Russell Crowe accelerated. “And the sheriff did nothing?”

  We Work for the County

  Chubbuck’s deputy ladled Elmer Sorgensen onto a bench in the shade at Sacagawea Park and then followed the Cruise Master east on I-90 to a point just short of the Springdale exit at the Sweetgrass County border. There he signaled me to pull over. He swaggered up in my mirror, holding his campaign hat down against the semi-trailer gusts. I figured after he signed off, I would sleep a while and then loop around, park the Cruise Master somewhere out of sight, and ask some more Dane Tucker questions.

  “Mind following me for a couple of miles?” the deputy asked instead. “Something I’d like to show you.”

  The deputy skipped ahead and we took the Springdale exit. From there we took a local road back under the interstate, headed southwest toward the Absorakas and the mountain peak the locals call Baldy. About fifteen miles and several turns later, we passed a sign that said: and then another that said:

  YOU ARE NOW ENTERING PARK COUNTY

  NO FIRES

  ABSAROKA-BEARTOOTH WILDERNESS

  NO FIRES

  Finally, just after Smokey the Bear concurred with ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST FIRES, we turned into a long gravel driveway that terminated at a run-down family home tucked into a slope of aging Douglas fir. At the side of the house, a frail-looking woman tended an ash-spewing bonfire of household trash. Seeing us, she dropped the rake and slipped inside.

  Deputy Russell Crowe strolled back to the Cruise Master, hitching at his loaded utility belt.

  “Welcome to my home,” he said. He gave me his ass-jawed grin.

  “You look like you could use a cup of coffee and a piece of pie.”

  “Here’s your pine cones, Ma.”

  Rita Crowe, Russell’s mother, was about my age, but despite a clear effort to spruce up for company, the woman was listless and spot-skinned, with injured, sunken eyes. She was good-looking once, though, and from her Russell had inherited his dark components and his ability, at a glance, to suggest handsome. That crowbar chin came from his father, Russell Sr., the subject of an official law enforcement photo portrait on the fireplace mantel. I veered closer to parse insignia. Senior was once a Park County Sheriff.

  Rita Crowe saw me looking. Her voice startled me, grated like a fly reel with sand stuck in it. “Twenty-five years of service, then railroaded by the politicians.”

  “He’s retired?”

  “Rusty? Ha! He never had the chance.”

  “My dad’s no longer with us,” Russell said. “Come on, Ma. Here’s your pine cones. Look if I got your order right.”

  As she inspected his delivery, Russell directed my eyes. “Check it out.” From surfaces throughout the house, pine cones craftily done up as assorted woodland creatures peered back at me through the kind of googly eyes they fix to saltwater streamers.

  “Ma is just awesome at this.”

  “I wanted ten, Russell. This is a dozen.”

  “Sorry, Ma. I got you a couple of freebies.”

  Her voice came out like the swing of my galley door, fricative dry aluminum. “There are no freebies, Russell. Not in this world.”

  Russell fought off defeat and nudged me. Look. Her cone creatures were everywhere. Owls and more owls and spiders with pipe cleaner legs and hot-glued constructions of cones and cone scales amounting to deer and moose and skunk and porcupine and squirrel. There were even grizzly bears, rearing with a fair amount of malice despite their wibble-wobble eyes.

  “She does almost one a day since we lost my dad. That’s over two thousand. She goes to the schools and shows the kids how to do it.”

  “Ha,” she said. “The schools.”

  “He’s a fly fisherman, Ma. You think you could make a pine cone trout?”

  “I do not do fish.”
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