Bad Company (27 page)
Authors: Virginia Swift
Spectators lined Third Street, Laramie’s main thoroughfare, waiting for the procession to commence. Early birds, many of them elderly, had set up lawn chairs in the gutters, and hundreds of people were gathering to jam the sidewalks. Small children sat on their parents’ shoulders; teenagers and grown-ups jostled for the best view they could get. Boots and hats and shorts and fanny packs, everyone chattering excitedly. Vendors strolled in the blocked-off street, hawking keychains and T-shirts and ice cream bars, souvenir pins and hatbands and not-quite-hot pretzels.
The parade marchers, riders, floats, and bands were mustering in the big parking lot at the Lifeway, by now pure bedlam. Folks parading on foot: marching bands from the high school and the university, a passel of assorted drill teams (one of them composed of a dozen blinking six-year-olds made up to look like mini–Dolly Partons), the military color guard and three ROTC units (Army, Air Force, Marines), maybe twenty different banner-waving community organizations, from the Head Start program (more bewildered little kiddies) to the Lions Club (some of them looked a little sketchy too—evidently up early, celebrating) and the LDS church (new hat, big smiles). Maude Stark, in blue slacks, a white collared shirt, and a bright red blazer, was supervising the distribution of signs and banners to the marchers who were there to remember Monette.
People on horseback: the Jubilee Days Committee, of course, on matching mounts (Sally looked for Dwayne, but didn’t see him yet). The Gem City Jewels equestrian team, teenage girls who’d been riding since they were old enough to get boosted into the saddle, pranced on gorgeously groomed and beribboned horses. The more adventurous politicians were riding too, not all of them looking exactly comfortable. And of course the rodeo cowboys and cowgirls sat their saddles and controlled their horses without making a big thing of it. A lot of milling, mixing, and shouting.
Add to that the automobile paraders. The rodeo queen and her court were arranging themselves up on the backs of classic convertibles. The nonequestrian politicians (the president of the university, for example) rode in vehicles ranging from stock trucks to spanking new SUVs: all American-made, Sally noticed. Then there were the classics, a contingent of antique autos sponsored by various Laramie businesses, and of course the Shriners in their miniature Corvettes. “Check out Burt and John Boy,” Hawk said to Sally, pointing at two exultant, fez-wearing figures practicing their figure-eights far down the parking lot, in front of a cell phone store.
The floats, maybe twenty strong, were lined up out on Third. It didn’t take Sally long to pick out the float that Brit and her crew were still finishing. The big thing at the back end of the flatbed turned out to be a twelve-foot-high replica of the figure of Esther Hobart Morris, a Wyoming pioneer woman credited in the state’s mythology as “the Mother of Women’s Rights.” In real life Mrs. Morris herself had been six feet tall—no shrimp, and certainly no trembling flower of the prairie. She was most famous as the first woman justice of the peace in American history (probably not true), and it was said that one of her earliest judicial acts was to slap her feckless husband in the clink for public drunkenness (that, apparently, was fact). This particular rendition of Mrs. Morris was modeled after bronze statues that stood in front of the state capitol in Cheyenne and in the U.S. Capitol building, neither of which approached the size of the present crepe-paper, two-by-four, and chicken-wire assemblage. Sally was compelled to admit that from where she stood, Brit’s behemoth looked somewhat more like Mrs. Butter-worth than the sainted Mrs. Morris.
Sally watched as Herman Schwink, clad in his best black Stetson, razor-creased jeans, and starched snap-button shirt, worked his way around the bottom of the creation, banging nails into the wooden platform. She sincerely hoped they weren’t having terrible problems anchoring the thing down. It didn’t look all that stable.
Delice, meanwhile, was helping attach a long banner to the side of the flatbed. “Welcome to Wyoming,” it said, “Where the Men Are Strong, and the Women Are Equal.”
Sally couldn’t help smiling. And then she came to her senses, and with some desperation sought out Dickie Langham.
He was there in the parking lot, having a little trouble managing the palomino stallion that somebody—his wife, anyway—had decided would make him the image of the dashing Western lawman. Dickie had grown up in town, spent far too much of his wasted youth mounted not on animals but on bar stools. In short, he wasn’t the world’s best horseman (not that Sally was an expert!), but he was making a game effort. Jerry Jeff, aware of his uncle’s limitations in the saddle, was holding the stallion’s head, stroking its nose, and speaking sweet words into its twitching ear.
When Sally caught up with him, Dickie did his best to listen attentively, despite the fact that the horse was bouncing under him and JJ kept having to yank on the damn animal’s head. The sheriff’s mouth grew grim as she told him about the phone call. “This comes at an unfortunate time, Mustang,” he said. “As you can see, most of my personnel are gonna have their hands full today. This parade route is crawling with cops, if that’s any reassurance. I don’t know if you’d feel safer going home, but in some ways you might be better off down here. That guy might have been trying to bluff you, and if he came after you at your place, we’d have a hard time getting people over there. You’ll forgive me if I’m not inclined to approve of the idea of Hawk hanging around as an armed bodyguard.”
Dickie paused. “The guy who called presumably also did the number on your underwear. So as far as we know, he goes in for private harassment, not grand public gestures. I don’t much like this, but I’m going to suggest that you go get a sign and march right along next to me. I’ve got a good seat up here on old Trigger,” he said, patting the horse’s neck in what he clearly hoped was a soothing manner, “and a good view of the crowd. I’ll let my guys know to be on the lookout for anybody acting in a suspicious manner,” he finished, slipping a radio off his belt.
“What do you think?” Sally asked Hawk.
“We’re here now.”
She went to get a sign from Maude, who gave her a piercing once-over and said, “You look terrible.”
“Too much Jubilee Days,” Sally said vaguely. “I heard Molly Wood had a fall. Have you talked with her?”
Maude looked at Sally with suspicion, but didn’t ask how she’d heard. “Yes. When she didn’t show up this morning to set up at the white elephant sale, I called her house, and her daughter told me she’d fallen. I spoke with her at the hospital. I’m going over to see her after the parade.”
“The white elephant sale?” Sally asked. “I totally forgot. There was a captain’s chair I wanted.”
“Someone bought it—sorry.”
Damn. “So how is Molly?”
“So far, they’re saying she broke her ankle, but they’re going to keep her in there a couple of days for tests. She’s going stir-crazy. What are you up to anyway?” Maude asked, eyes narrowing.
“Oops. I’d better get in line,” Sally said, grabbing a placard and escaping. Sounded like Molly had kept quiet about their night visit—good.
So Sally Alder was once again standing a little too near a horse, and with even more reason to be nervous than she’d had at the rodeo. This time she was holding a sign that said, “For Monette. For All Women,” and waiting for the Jubilee Days parade to begin. Sally had a lifelong predilection for the ironic, and in that moment of anticipation, she reflected on the ironies of enshrining Monette Bandy as a martyr for women’s rights.
Nobody could dispute that Monette had been a victim. She’d grown up in an unhappy, even brutal household, at the mercy of a rotten father and a terrorized mother. She’d fairly begged men to treat her like crap, and it looked as if they hadn’t let her down. If Monette had ever had the chance to see herself as a valuable human being, not just a whipping post for men’s anger or lust, things might have gone a lot better for her. A world in which women really were equal would have given her that chance.
But Monette had also been more than a victim. Even if Sally’s own idea of a desirable career ladder didn’t run to employment at the Lifeway, Monette had advanced from stocker to checker trainee: she was, in at least some measure, ambitious. If Bone Bandy had it right, his daughter was also unscrupulous and greedy (gee, wonder where she got that from?), possibly even a blackmailer. And say what you would about the possible causes of her aggressiveness about sex, there was no denying that Monette had lusted powerfully, and pushed hard to satisfy that lust. Ambition, greed, and lust—not exactly admirable traits, but not uncommon.
Monette was, in short, a highly flawed human being, whose faults were not solely matters of gender. She’d been murdered and violated in a way that reflected a hatred of women, but also a grave offense against humans of all kinds. Maybe the sign ought to read: “For Monette. And for All Us Poor Sinners.”
Not exactly an upbeat message for Jubilee Days.
And now it looked as if the parade was about to roll. Sally saw the color guard march out into the street and head south, followed by the first of the bands, then the Jubilee Days Committee. (Where the hell was Dwayne? Was he at that very moment shaking hands to seal the deadly deal?) Parade marshals made sure everybody went in the order they were supposed to go, trying hard to keep the various groups from tripping over each other, and yet close enough together that there wouldn’t be gaps in the procession, a tricky task. At the edge of Sally’s group, the twirlers were pulling out Bic lighters and touching them to the cloth-wrapped ends of their batons, carefully wrapping fingers around the glinting chrome shafts between the flames.
At last it was time for Sheriff Dickie Langham to lead the Monette Bandy Memorial Marchers, and the Esther Morris float, out into the street to join the pageant. Sally looked back over her shoulder at the cheering, sign-waving marchers, at the sight of the lifelong radical Maude, the Sierra Club stalwart, Nature Conservancy board member, contributor to all things green and progressive, in her proper patriot’s garb, waving her “Thank You Wal-Mart” sign. Herman Schwink, behind the wheel of the flatbed truck, was giving a thumbs-up, getting ready to put the big rig in gear. Brit stood next to the giant sculpture, one hand clenched in the wire and wood frame. Delice stood on the other side, her position mirroring Brit’s, down to the clutching hand. Like Mary Langham and the twenty-odd other people standing and sitting on the float, Brit and Delice were smiling and waving, but unlike the others, they were not whooping. They weren’t making any noise. Their smiles could pass for rictus grimaces, they were gritting their teeth so hard. The monstrous Mother of Women’s Rights swayed slightly as Herman eased off the break, and the truck lumbered into motion.
Somewhere up ahead, the Laramie High School band was performing an out-of-kilter rendition of “Streets of Laredo.” The old Model Ts and Stutz Bearcats, Chrysler Newporters and Ford Edsels were honking their horns. Along the sidewalks the crowds cheered as they passed, the sheriff waving his hat (and with JJ’s help, appearing to be doing all right with that enormous horse), Sally brandishing her sign. Each group paused as it passed the reviewing stand in the center of town, right in front of the Wrangler Bar and Grill, and then marched on. Every time the parade halted, Sally shot a backward glance at the truck, where Delice and Brit were managing to keep Mrs. Morris erect, but clearly having a time of it. Indeed, three other people were also holding on to the sculpture’s skirts. From the waist up, Big Esther shuddered a little with each slow start and stop.
As the Monette Bandy Memorial Marchers reached the reviewing stand, the parade announcer declared,
“Ladies and gentlemen, please remove your hats and observe a moment of silence in honor of a young woman who recently fell victim to violent crime not far from our peaceful community. Let’s all work together to prevent such terrible things from happening to our children, our friends, our parents, and our neighbors.”
And the crowd, for just that instant, fell completely silent. Sally would never have been able to predict how that fleeting stillness would affect her. The tears came instantly, followed by a surge of warmth toward everyone there, friend or stranger, anyone capable of compassion, anyone who might reflect on Monette’s death. She told herself she had to learn to be a little more generous and compassionate in the future.
Her vision was still blurred, her heart still full, when the moment was over, and Dickie began to lead them forward again. Thus blinded by sentiment, she didn’t see the rock come whizzing toward her face, smack the sign next to her head, and ricochet off to hit the stallion right in the part of the anatomy that distinguished it from its gelded brethren.
The palomino whinnied and reared. Dickie dropped the reins and nearly fell off. As the horse plunged earth-ward again, JJ scrambled to snatch hold of the bridle. Hawk yanked Sally’s arm and pulled her away from the irate animal. All around them, marchers scattered in panic.
A screech behind: Herman had slammed on the brakes. The next noise Sally heard was the sickening crack of breaking boards. As Hawk dragged her to the side of the street, she looked back to see people leaping off the sides of the flatbed as the enormous sculpture heaved and rocked, wobbled, and finally pitched over backward.
The twirlers, who’d only moments before been high-stepping gaily forward, saw the statue falling and dropped their batons, squealing in flight. Big Esther hit the ground right on top of the burning batons, and burst into flames. The Shriners, whizzing up from behind in their Corvettes, wrenched their little wheels to avoid crashing into the Mother of Women’s Rights, now blazing brightly in the middle of Third Street. Their carefully choreographed driving routine obliterated, they veered around in crazy patterns, fezzes flying. Four Corvettes careened, fortunately at low speed, into one another. Sally was relieved to see that both Burt and John Boy had avoided collision. It was probably all those years they’d spent driving California freeways.