“Something happened up there, didn’t it?” she asked me. I don’t know how, but she saw right through me.
“A lot of things happened,” I told her, “some good, some bad.”
“Tell me.”
“Do you have to get back home tonight?”
“Not really,” she said, “but don’t get any ideas — it’s the wrong time of the month.”
“No idea, my little wisteria of the workers,” I said. “I’m too tired anyway.” I really was.
“I’ve missed the botanical nick names,” she said, wrinkling her nose at me.
“I’ve missed you, Rosebud.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
She leaned over and kissed me. “Did you unload that damned frog leg?” she asked me.
“The what?”
“The frog leg. The pistol — isn’t that what they call it?”
“That’s hogleg, love.”
“Hog-frog, whatever. Get it empty. I’m not going to sleep in a house with a loaded gun.”
I reached over and took it out. She watched it the way some people watch snakes. I slipped the hammer and dropped the shells out one by one.
“It’s a hideous thing.” She shuddered.
“It saved my life a couple times up there,” I told her. I was over dramatizing it, I knew that.
“That’s the second time you’ve made noises like John Wayne,” she said. “Are you going to tell me what happened or not?”
“I’ll tell you in bed,” I said. “It’s a very long, very involved story, and we’re both liable to tap out before I get halfway through it.”
“Did it turn out like a bad Western, after all?” she asked.
“Pretty close,” I said.
We went to bed, and I held her very tightly and told her what had happened — all of it.
I wasn’t sure she was really awake when I finished the story. “… and that’s it,” I said, winding it up.
“Was he really white?” she asked drowsily.
“Kind of cream-colored.”
“He must have been beautiful.”
“At first he was,” I said. “After a while, though, I got to hate him.”
“It wasn’t his fault.”
“No, but I hated him anyway.”
“You don’t make sense.”
“I never pretended to make sense.”
“Danny?”
“Yes, love?”
“Do you think Cap and Clint would like me?”
“I think they’d love you, Blossom.”
She nuzzled my neck. “You say the nicest things sometimes,” she said, her voice blurry and on the edge of dropping off.
“Go to sleep, Little Rower,” I said.
She nestled down obediently and went to sleep quickly, like a child.
I lay staring into the darkness, and when I did go to sleep, I dreamed of the white deer. It got all mixed up with a dream about a dog until none of it made too much sense, but I guess dreams never really do, do they?
The Parting
34
After she left for class the next morning I called Mike at work to see how Betty was.
“She seems to be coming out of it OK,” he said. “She’s home now, but she’s got to take it pretty damned easy.”
“I’m glad to hear she’s better,” I said.
“Sloane and Larkin both called me after they came down — say, how sick was old Cal anyway? He says one thing, and Stan says another.”
“He was pretty damn sick,” I said.
“Yeah, I kind of thought he might have been. How was the hunt?” His voice sounded wistful.
“The hunt was pretty good,” I said. “Things got a little hairy a time or two though.”
“McKlearey?”
“Yeah.”
“I figured Miller’d be able to keep him in line.”
“He did OK, but things still got a little woolly a time or two.”
“Did anybody get that white deer Sloane told me about?”
“McKlearey shot him and he fell off a cliff. We never found him.”
“Too bad — say, Dan, I gotta get back to work. Gimme a buzz tonight, OK?”
“Sure, Mike. After supper, OK?”
“Right. Bye now.”
I guess his boss had been standing over him. I called the pawnshop. Sloane answered. His voice sounded a little puny, but otherwise he seemed OK.
“How are you feeling, Cal?” I asked him.
“Hell,” he said, “I’m OK now. I was startin’ to come out of it by the time we got back down the hill.”
“You see a doctor?”
“Yeah.” He giggled. “Claudia was on me about it as soon as I got back. He says it happens to guys my age some times. He’s got me takin’ it kinda easy for a couple of weeks.”
“Good idea,” I said. “Oh, we got your deer for you.”
“Hey, great, man — how big?”
“Five-point. He’s in prime condition.”
“Thanks a lot, Dan. Who shot ‘im?”
“I did. Miller and I went out and found him.”
“Shoot out the liver?” He giggled.
“Not a chance,” I said. “Old Clint was threatening to burn me at the stake if I did.”
He told me he’d call a processing plant to take care of the deer, and I said I’d drop the hide and horns by later that morning after I’d cleaned my guns.
After I hung up I sorted out all my hunting clothes and took them over to the washhouse. Then I went back and cleaned my guns and McKlearey’s rifle. Then I bundled up Lou’s gear and the two deer hides and drove on over to the shop.
“Come on in, Dan,” Cal called as I pushed my way on in with a big armload of gear.
“I brought Lou’s stuff on over,” I said.
Cal wanted to know where Lou was. He hadn’t shown up for work that morning. I told him that I didn’t know and filled him in on the way Lou’d taken off from Clint.
“God,” Sloane said, “that doesn’t sound like Lou. He’s pretty irresponsible sometimes, but he’s never gone that far before.”
“He was pretty badly shook up,” I said. “I don’t think he was thinking straight toward the end.” I told him about McKlearey’s shooting the white deer and then not being able to find it.
“God damn,” Cal said, “you say he took that .38 along with him?”
“That’s what Clint said.”
“Christ,” he said, his face darkening, “that damn gun’s on the record as being here in the shop. If he’s gone off the deep end or something and does something stupid with it, it could get my ass in a helluva lotta trouble.”
“Shit,” I said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Now what the hell do I do? I don’t want to report the gun stolen — that’d get him in all kinds of trouble. I wish I knew where the hell he was.”
“Beats me, Cal. He didn’t even say good-bye when he left.”
Sloane shook his head. “I’ll figure something out,” he said. “You want a drink?”
“Sure.”
“Come on back.” He jerked his head, and we went on into the back room. I dumped Lou’s gear in a corner and Cal reached down the bottle and handed it to me.
I took a belt and handed it back to him. He capped it up and put it away.
“Doctor said I oughta back off for a while,” he said. “I’m cuttin’ way down on my smoking, too — and I’m on a diet.”
“Jesus, Sloane, you’re going whole hog, aren’t you?”
“Let me tell you, man,” he said seriously, “I could feel the buzzards snappin’ at my ass up there. The doctor told me I came about that close to havin’ a coronary.” He measured off a fraction of an inch with his fingers. “Goddamn heart was workin’ doubletime to make up for the lack of oxygen. About one more day and I wouldn’t of made it back down. He says I gotta quit smokin’, cut way back on the booze, lose fifty pounds, and get ten hours sleep a night. Christ, I feel just like a goddamn invalid.”
“Jesus,” I said, “you were sicker’n any of us figured then.”
“I was sicker’n I figured even,” he said. “That damned doctor like to scared the piss outa me.”
“You’re going to be OK, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I’ll come out of it OK. He said there wasn’t any permanent damage, but little Calvin’s gonna walk the straight and narrow for a while.”
“Not a bad idea,” I said, lighting a cigarette. I saw the hungry look in his eyes and mashed it out quickly. “Sorry, Cal,” I said.
“It’s a little tough, right at first,” he said.
We went on back out to the shop.
“You know,” he said, “its funny.”
“What?”
“You remember that day up there when I told you I was gonna buckle down after the trip — maybe grow up a little?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I remember.”
“Looks like I’m gonna have to do just exactly that.” He giggled, suddenly sounding like the Cal I’d always known. “This ain’t exactly what I had in mind though.”
“Somebody once said that a guy shouldn’t make promises to himself,” I told him. “He winds up having to keep them.”