Blood Land (11 page)

“A lady that knows me

affection she shows me

and a smile so easy and sweet.

The dreams that I've buried

the load that I've carried

Are some of the reasons I cheat.”

Randy Travis,

Reasons I Cheat

ONE DRY week that felt like a year.

How many years of sobriety have I pissed down the sewer this past month? Or was it two?
Pruett wondered as he drank his second tonic water.

He sat at the Bar of the Willow Saloon, where he’d taken Ty into custody. Hanson, the lawyer, asked to meet him there.

“Sheriff Pruett,” a voice declared from behind him.

Pruett turned to see the smiling face of J.W. Hanson.

“Sit,” Pruett said. “Roland, whatever the man wants.”

“Tullamore Dew,” Hanson said.

“Heaven Hill,” the sheriff corrected. “You want to talk to a gentleman, you drink bourbon. No goddamn Irish whisky swill. Besides, this way I get to smell it at least.”

Hanson nodded to the bartender.

The two sat in silence for a time, Hanson screwing up the courage to say what he’d come to say. “You’re aware of Wendy and me?”

“I’m aware,” Pruett said. “You have any kids?”

“No,” said Hanson.

“Married?”

“Once,” Hanson said. “Divorced a number of years ago.”

“Bethy and I almost divorced,” Pruett said. “I was a hard drinker. Had a fling with this teacher in town. Stupid goddamn thing, but there it was. My daughter tell you about that?”

Hanson shook his head.

“Mostly why my daughter hates me,” Pruett said. “That and the war.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Hanson said.

“Bethy forgave me. For both. Not like she should have. Took me a year to break it off with the teacher. Checked into a rehab place up in Cody. By the time I got back, teacher got herself fired. Bethy and I, we never talked about it again. I can’t even remember that woman’s name.”

“
We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love
,” Hanson said.

“You dream that nonsense up yourself?”

“Freud,” Hanson said, sipping on his whiskey. “Love ends up complicating things more than we’d hope, whatever you believe.”

“Never felt like my love for Bethy was complicated. What did Freud say about following the angst in our loins?”

“A lot.”

“How’d you get yourself divorced, Professor?”

“Guess.”

“Now see, I like a man better when he speaks from experience. To hell with the quotes.”

“Fair enough,” Hanson acquiesced.

“It’s hard,” Pruett said. “Being worthy of a good woman’s love.”

“It’s the
staying
worthy that challenges us.”

“Another famous declaration?”

“J.W. Hanson,” the professor said.

“Then I’ll drink to it,” Pruett said, lifting his glass of limewater.

Honey McIntyre came by the jail around eight-thirty P.M., while the sheriff was drinking a limewater with Ty’s counsel. Zach Canter, youngest on staff was staffing the office.

“Uh, hello, ma’am,” Canter said when she hobbled through the front door carrying a basket of fresh-baked bread on her elbow that immediately filled the place with the wonderful aroma of home. “What can I do for you?”

“Well I’d like to see my son,” Honey said. “Give him some of his favorite pull-apart loaves. You, too, if you’re hungry, young man.”

“Uh, yes, ma’am. What I mean is, I’d be obliged for the bread, but I really shouldn’t let you back with the prisoner. I mean,
Ty
. Visiting hours, well, they were over at six sharp. When the sheriff left.”

Honey shuffled across the floor and looked up at Canter with emotionless eyes. “Your ma or pa have arthritis?” she said.

“No.”

“You’d never have insulted a woman with such affliction who made the effort to come down here if they did.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. I guess it might be all right. For a couple of minutes is all.”

“It was the bread, wasn’t it?” Honey said, her eyes suddenly full of the rainbow of motherly love.

“Guess so,” Canter said. He grabbed the key ring and escorted Honey back to where Ty was lying on his cot. “Five minutes, okay?”

“That’ll be fine,” said Honey. “You enjoy that pull-apart.”

When Canter was gone Honey pressed up against the cell bars. “Get up here and talk to your mother, Tyree.”

Ty stood and walked across the eight by twelve cell, head hung low.

“I brung you your favorite sweet bread.”

“And I appreciate it, Ma.”

“Reminds a man of home, don’t it?” she said. “Used to make it for you boys back in the day.”

“Yes.”

“Families don’t stop being families with age. Message is, we stick together when it counts, don’t we?”

“That’s a notion I figured you forgot,” Ty said, still not meeting her gaze.

“If these bars weren’t ‘tween us I’d whip your ass for such talk.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Ty said and accepted the warm bread.

“You sit and eat. But you think about whose side yer on.”

“Tell me about her,” Pruett said.

“I thought she was the love of my life. I’ve since decided there is no such thing,” Hanson said.

“Maybe not for some. For me, there was only one.”

“Did your wife accept you for who you are?” Hanson asked.

“And then some,” Pruett said. “But for me, it was hard living up to her expectations.”

“Sorry?”

“Bethy loved me pure. It was me who could never accept who I was.”

“May I ask you something personal, Sheriff?”

“I’d say we’ve passed that marker,” Pruett said.

“With all due respect to your wife departed, why would you stray from one who was the only light in your life?”

“I thought we were talking about love,” Pruett said. “There’s a lot of ways to give a man light.”

“So yours was a physical weakness?”

“Not only. Jesse was more like me. Flawed. My wife, she was of the finest stock; all color and clarity. With Jesse it was more like giving in to my own self. I didn’t have to live up to her.”

“I thought you said you’d forgotten her name,” Hanson said.

“Man’s memory has a funny way of waking back up to join the party, doesn’t it?”

“That it does.”

“Mind telling me about
your
transgressions?” Pruett said.

“My wife and I married at thirty. When we met, I thought I’d found my other half. The thing is, marriages aren’t challenged in the good years. Like a well-built bridge. You can stand on it, drive over it—it’s sturdy, you can
feel that
. But when the hurricane comes,
that’s
when the engineering gets tested. That’s when you know if the stanchions are sunk deep enough; that’s how the true tensile strength of love is measured.”

“So what was your storm, Professor?”

“Same as yours. Thing is, I was unfaithful one time. One single time. And this woman, who loved me without condition, could not find it in her heart to forgive me.”

“And so it ended.”

“Brutally, I’m afraid. She has not spoken to me since.”

“May I share an observation, all respect intended?” Pruett said.

“Like you said, we’re long past such concerns,” Hanson said, finishing his drink.

“We ain’t built the same, us and the gentler sex. Wired differently. That said, if she really loved you, she’d have stayed. You said it yourself: the tensile got tested. It was found wanting. In the big scheme, you were likely better off, all things known.”

“I’ve tried to convince myself of that very thing.”

“How’s that worked out for you then?” Pruett said.

“Until I met Wendy, not particularly well.”

“Hmm,” Pruett said.

“I love her,” Hanson said, motioning for another glass.

Pruett turned and looked at him. “How the hell old
are
you?”

“Fifty-seven,” Hanson told him.

“Jesus,” Pruett said. “You fight in ‘Nam?”

Hanson shook his head. “I was in school. Deferred. If not for the deferral, I probably would have skipped to Canada.”

Pruett thought for a moment. “Time was I would have punched you for that. Called you a coward. No more. You were the smart one, Professor.”

“Never really felt like that,” said Hanson.

“War is not favorable to those who wage it,” Pruett said. “A circular hell, Professor.”

“Still, I have thought many times that I should have learned that lesson for myself,” Hanson admitted.

“So it’s love?” the sheriff said.

“Yes,” Hanson said.

“You sure?”

“Hellacious love, Sheriff.”

Pruett lifted his impotent glass. “Only kind.”

Patrolman James Pruett loved his wife. The life they’d carved out in Wyoming was a good one, and Bethy was the kind of woman for whom men pined. But ten years of heavy drinking eroded the will. It made a man feel invincible, as if the laws of others applied not to him.

At fourteen, Wendy Pruett already questioned her father’s merit as a man. More than most teens. She was idealistic, and he was a cop who fought in the unpopular war. So, like any good drunk, Pruett did what he could to screw it up even more.

Jesse Claremont taught seventh grade at Wind River Middle School. She was young and pretty and she spent as many nights at the Cowboy Bar as James Pruett. While Sam and Bethy were at home, Pruett got to know Jesse. First it was just drinks at the bar and friendly flirtation. But things progressed. Soon it was two or three nights a week, all the drinking at Jesse’s tiny one bedroom house in town. The sex was good. It seemed to revitalize Pruett, but then—at that time in his life—he was bulletproof. His own disease convinced him he could have it all. The booze, Jesse,
and
his wonderful life at home.

Wind River, like most small towns, allowed very few secrets. And Pruett was a cop. He knew better than anyone how word traveled. Pruett ignored the obvious. He and Jesse carried on in what they convinced themselves was secret. Until one night Pruett’s daughter confronted him, standing stoically at the foot of his mistress’s bed.