Blood Land (6 page)

“Trying to cut back,” said Pruett.

“What for?”

“Doc’s got me on a regimen.”

“Doc Percy?”

“Is there any other?”

“Percy’s a quack. I wouldn’t let him doctor one of my animals.”

“My other question, Rory, is why Bethy was getting up anyway?”

“Huh?”

“It’s your house. Ty comes roaring up the road with piss in his veins—I’m just wondering why you didn’t go out to greet him.”

“Why
I
didn’t?”

“Yeah, why
you didn’t.
”

Rory seemed to be letting that one settle a bit. He removed his sweat-stained hat, rubbed a patch of gray whiskers, and spat on the ground.

“Hmm. I guess she just jumped to it first.”

“And put on your coat and hat.”

“And put on my coat and hat. Christ, Pruett, is this the best you got to be doin’ right about now?”

“Just procedural, Rory.”

“Fuck procedure, Pruett. That’s my daughter you’re jawin’ about.”

“Just trying to get all the facts straight.”

“Well I got fences to mend. We done here?”

“Just about,” Pruett said. “You aware that Ty’s saying he doesn’t remember anything?”

Rory nodded. “Blacked out as usual, I guess.”

“Might have some more questions for you and Honey a bit further down the road,” Sheriff Pruett said.

“We done?”

“We’re done, Rory.”

“Goddamn right we’re done,” Rory mumbled as the old codger threw a tool belt over his shoulder and mounted the tractor.

Pruett sat on the wide rocker swing on his front porch. His boots rested comfortably atop the flat pine rail, toes pointed toward the expanse of the Wyoming night sky. The cloudless night opened up unabashedly before him; a foreboding conduit to the heavens. The umbrella of stars glowed exquisitely; pinpoints of diamond light floating atop innumerable fathoms of insatiable blackness.

Pruett’s index finger stirred the glass of clouded whiskey. The aroma drifted upward. Pungent and sweet. Inviting and unsettling. His stomach circled and snarled within him like a cornered animal.

He’d purchased the bottle of whiskey almost a month before at the Wooden Boot—the bar had a package liquor store with a drive-up window. Pruett purchased it with a resolve that he
would not
crack the seal, hoping the gesture alone would both assuage the ache in his soul and calm the demons.

But it seemed over the weeks all the disjointedness and fear and lonesomeness leaked down and gathered in one tepid pool in his chest, solidifying there like a huge, rounded stone.

Pruett looked up into the vastness of the universe. All week he’d dreamed of a drink. He told himself it was because he was willing to do
anything
to counter the overarching pain in his soul. But that wasn’t true. Not entirely.

He had put the bottle away. Taken it out again. Played the old game of angel and devil on the shoulder; good cop, bad cop. Teasing himself. Knowing that in the end it always came down to himself; who he was at his core.

And how fervently he needed to numb the pain.

Twelve years of sobriety was not something Pruett took lightly. He’d been through several sponsors. Unlike most tenderfoots, he worked a job he loved. And there was the truckload of determination that it took to stay sober every single damn day of that dozen years. Drunks didn’t count by years; they counted by minutes. They clawed their way until enough minutes made an hour and then enough hours made a day.

Pruett had no idea how many moments there were in twelve years, but he’d thought about having a drink in damn near every one of them.

But so far, he’d withstood.

Then, that morning, going through the box of mementos Bethy stashed behind the dresses in her closet, Pruett discovered a single sheet of parchment paper. A weathered eight by ten cardboard folder frame.

A birth certificate.

Samantha Wendy Pruett.

The prodigal daughter who dropped Samantha and now answered only to “Wendy”.

The sheriff drained the orange booze in a single, fluid motion. He poured himself another. Then a third. This time he paused. The feral warmth of the whiskey washed down over the immovable stone, loosening it some; it also tamed the restless animal in his belly.

Losing his wife was a terrible thing, but there were memories that cost him nearly as much—and proved just as impossible to outrun.

Pruett heard the car before he saw the headlights. He did not get up as Wendy Steele walked the path toward the house. The two hadn't spoken more than a dozen words in the past few years, including at Bethy's funeral. There was a time when Pruett wanted nothing more than to forgive her, and to ask the same in return. He figured after Bethy died, seeing his child would reignite those desires.

It did not.

She’d married Todd Steele, a local ranch boy, straight out of high school. Mostly, the sheriff always thought, to spite her old man. The two annulled the marriage less than a year later. She kept the Steele surname and joined the Peace Corps. Anything, it seemed to Pruett, to stay away from Wind River. Away from him.

“Can I come up?” Wendy said from the bottom step.

“Give it a try.”

She climbed the steps slowly, walked over to the table, and stood next to the extra chair. It had been her mother's. Pruett motioned for her to sit.

“You look underfed,” Pruett said.

“Thanks.”

“More glasses inside,” Pruett said, waving an arm toward the front door.

Wendy shook her head slowly. “I'm okay. I thought you gave up on that stuff.”

Pruett did not answer. Wendy sat down.

The two withstood the silence for a while, soaking in the peace of the Wyoming night. Pruett finally dropped his boots to the solid decking. A gesture. Prelude to saying what had been wandering around in his head all day.

“You know, you're allowed to hate me all you want, but you didn't have to let it keep you from visiting your mother. She never did anything but love you, girl.”

“I always hated it when you called me that.”

“Hmmm.”

“A punctuation mark on the inevitability of chance. A son would have been nice.”

“I never regretted a thing about you. Except your leaving.”

“I didn't drive up here to talk about this. I came to talk about uncle Ty.”

Pruett drew back. “Your
murderous
uncle Ty, you mean.”

 “Maybe. I figure a jury will decide that. But he's still family. He's still Mom's brother, and she loved him.”

“She did love him,” Pruett said, “and he’
ll
sit before a jury of his peers.”

“I guess it surprises me to hear you say that.”

“How's that?”

“I don't know. You never struck me as the merciful type. Now with what happened to Mom, well, I just...”

“You seem a little matter-of-fact about the whole thing yourself. Did you think I would have already strung Ty up in his cell?”

“No. I didn't mean it that way. Honestly, Sheriff, it's because I would understand. However you are feeling.”

“Speaking of hating a name. When exactly did you start? Referring to me in the professional, I mean, rather than the paternal.”

“You never did understand. I always meant it respectfully.”

Pruett poured another drink for himself. “You know, I had my reasons. I never asked for that medal. It would have been wrong to accept it.”

“Because you didn't deserve it.”

“That's right, because I didn't fucking deserve it,” the Sheriff said.

“Makes people wonder why,” Wendy said.

“See, that's the difference between you and me. Always has been. Man who murdered your own mother deserves more mercy than...”

“Than?”

“Than your own father.”

“I didn't drive up here to open old wounds.”

“You've said that. Why
did
you drive up here, then?”

“You know, you
hated
your old man. Why should it be any different between us?”

“Maybe it shouldn't,” Pruett said. “But you owed
her
a hell of a lot more.”

“I did owe her more. And honestly, I owed you more too. That's the real reason I drove up here.”

“That and to tell me you got an attorney for your uncle Ty?” Pruett said, sipping on his whiskey.

“That too. Though he hasn’t said yes.”

Pruett did not answer for a long moment. When he spoke, he measured his words:

“Ty carved out his life, just like the rest of us. People put themselves into their own drama. There's due process; setting aside personal feelings and doing what the job says you do.”

“You feel like that's in the cards—Uncle Ty getting a fair shake?”

“’Course I do. It never ceases to surprise me, the way you see your old man.”

“Yeah, well, I asked you to defend yourself a long time ago. So did a lot of people. You declined.”

“A man shouldn't have to defend himself to those that love him.”

“Sometimes that's all he can do.”

They sat quiet for a bit, again awash in the peace of silence.

“The booze isn't going to help anything, you know.”

“Not a thing I care to debate with you,” Pruett said. “You're a long way from knowing what makes things better or worse for me.”

“I'm with him. The lawyer.” Wendy said. “I didn't plan it. It's reckless. But it’s the kind of thing that chooses a person, rather than the other way around.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jay Hanson.”

“Congratulations,” Pruett said, and finished another glass.

Wendy didn't respond and Pruett didn't get up when she left.

The whiskey no longer held back the coldness of night.

In nineteen-ninety-eight, the Army decided to award the Soldiers Medal to a pilot and three crewmembers that landed as part of a helicopter evacuation and ended up putting themselves between their own U.S. comrades and fleeing Vietnamese villagers in the Hamlets of My Lai.