Christmas in Absaroka County: Walt Longmire Christmas Stories (3 page)

He still didn’t move.

“Do you take anything in your tea?” I tapped the spoon on the rim of the mug and then carefully placed it on the edge of the sink. “Just as well, because I don’t have anything.” I purposefully walked over to him and handed him the cup. “Yep, a little mix-up at the local paper.”

He swallowed visibly.

I took the Bible from his hands, crossed the room, and plucked the blanket from my recliner, revealing the large-frame Colt .45 in the Sam Browne, and the six-pointed star of the Absaroka County Sheriff attached to my uniform shirt. “Sheriff.” I glanced at the star, and then at my sidearm. “Sheriff Longmire.”

I tossed the blanket onto the chair and sat with my elbows on my knees and the book in my lap. “It was a mistake. Ernie ‘Man About Town’ Brown went into Durant Memorial for surgery on his prostate and left a manila folder on his desk. The apprentice saw the file folder marked
OBITUARIES
and assumed they were current.”

He still didn’t move.

“I’d imagine it’s hard to throw away the photos and obituaries of people you know. Michael Lenz, a friend of Ernie’s who had died in a car crash back in the nineties, was there, along with Ernie’s sister Yvonne, who passed almost twelve years ago—and my wife, Martha.” I stared at the book in my lap. “Those two other Bibles at your feet wouldn’t have Michael’s and Yvonne’s names on them, would they?”

He cleared his throat and spoke. “Mr. Longmire . . .”

“Sheriff.” Another moment passed. “You know, there was this scam that they used to pull going all the way back to the dirty thirties when cheap presses made mass-market printing possible. These con men would drive around with the trunks of their cars filled with Bibles and they’d pick up the local newspaper and get the names from the obituaries, then they’d print the names on the Bibles and sell them to the aggrieved survivors.”

He started to get up slowly, so as to not spill his tea.

I looked at him, my voice a little more than conversational. “Sit down.” Dog heard the tone of my voice and planted his big paws on the floor, raising his head to look up at him. He stayed there for a second and then eased himself back onto the sofa.

I opened the cover and looked at the cheap, gold-edged pages with color separation that looked like newspaper comics, the inside cover of which was printed with a large tree with blank lines for family members. It wasn’t a very good version of the good book, or of any other book for that matter.

“My mother used to drag me to church when I was a kid, and I would sit there looking at the stained glass windows and listening to the choir sing and wondering what the heck was wrong with me.” I sighed and flipped a few more of the thin pages. “Never went back.”

He cleared his throat, and I glanced at him, but he didn’t say anything.

I looked at the Bible in my hands. “What do you suppose is the most important lesson in this book? That’s what it is, right? A book of lessons on how it is we’re supposed to treat each other.” I took a deep breath. “I mean, if I was to read this book, what do you suppose is the most important thing I’d take away from it?”

This time his response took longer. “I’m not sure.”

“I think this book is about forgiveness and tolerance.” I looked up at him. “At least, you better hope so.” I watched his eyes widen as my hand reached past my duty belt, and I pulled my checkbook from the seat of my uniform pants and my pen from my shirt pocket, which was just below the star. “One hundred and eighty-eight dollars, right?”

We sat there, looking at each other.

My eyes stayed steady with his. “Should I make this out to the American Bible Company or to you, Mr. Sherman?” He didn’t say anything but just sat there, holding his mug. “. . . I’ll just make it out to you.” After signing the check and tearing it from the book, I tucked the Bible under my arm. “Well, it doesn’t look as if you enjoy my tea or my company, and I don’t want to hold you here any longer.”

We stood. I took the mug and handed him the slip of paper.

He held the check.

“Don’t worry, it’s good, Mr. Sherman—and I’ll be happy to deliver those other two Bibles to save you the trouble.”

* * *

I watched as he turned the expensive car around. As he hit the gas, it slid a little, and my eyes followed the taillights as they disappeared down the ranch road.

I walked over to the northwest window where I’d begun the evening and sipped Mr. Sherman’s untouched tea; it was still warm. Dog watched me as I pulled the special heritage edition Bible from under my arm and peered through the ice-rimed window to see if the owl had returned.

He hadn’t.

Martha and I had argued that afternoon. I don’t even remember what it was we’d argued about, but I remember the tone of her voice, the timbre and cadence. It’s important to me sometimes to try and remember what it was that had been said, but I can’t. I’m afraid that my mind works like that more and more these days, allowing the words spoken to disappear into cracks and crevices.

I thumbed the good book open, flipped through a few pages, and then closed it. The sleet had turned to snow, and the flakes caught the light from inside the cabin and burst into small sparks before pressing themselves against the glass.

I continued to look out into the raw night, but from habit my eyes drifted upward and I thought about how maybe I had softened a little, the words escaping with the memories. “You should’ve hung around.”

TOYS FOR TOTS

She’s always enjoyed pushing buttons; I think she got it from her mother, who was always quick to punch for the floors when we got into elevators. She likes gadgets, phones, cameras, computers—anything with buttons. She adjusted the heater higher and turned the louvers in the vent toward herself, closing her eyes and savoring the warmth.

I didn’t say anything as the windshield wipers, set on automatic, slapped across the glass three times.

“Gimme your gun.”

“Why?”

“I wanna shoot you.”

With more than a quarter century in law enforcement, I’m savvy to the holiday ways of criminals and emotionally disturbed people. “No.”

She’d arrived from Philadelphia, and I was driving her down from the airport on the winding Zimmerman Trail descending into the shimmering retail lights of Billings, Montana. It was the holidays, and my daughter needed things. Cady pulled a few strands of strawberry blonde hair from her face with a bright grin. “So . . . I’ll ask again, what do you want for Christmas?”

“I don’t need anything.”

She turned in the seat and, refusing to dim the cheer, reached back, scratching the fur behind Dog’s ears. He grinned, too. “That—is
not
what I asked.”

I navigated the traffic light at Grand and Twenty-Seventh Street. “I’d rather you saved your money.” I slowed the truck and watched the first snowflakes drift down from the darkened sky in an innocent fashion, the way they always did; we were two hours from home across some of the emptiest high plains countryside, and I wasn’t fooled. “Do we have to go to the mall?”

Three more slaps of the wipers.

The clear, frank, gray eyes opened and traveled across the defrosting windshield with a frost of their own that was doing anything but de. “You are not adopting the proper gift-purchasing and gift-giving attitude.” She let that statement settle before continuing. “No, we don’t have to go to the mall; but if you could run me down to Gillette, I’d like to get you a ton of bulk product for Christmas.”

Gillette, Wyoming—one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the world.

“A week ago, you said we could do some shopping when you picked me up.”

I did.

“You promised.”

I had.

She stretched out a hand, the Burberry coat sleeve riding up her arm, and flipped on the radio, readjusting the station to “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” “You always get like this at the holidays.” She fooled with the search button, this time coming up with Andy Williams and “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” “What’s the best gift Mom ever gave you?”

“You.”

Three slaps.

“Besides me.”

I thought about it but couldn’t really come up with anything. I added, as an afterthought, “She bought me these Peerless stainless-steel handcuffs that are on my belt.”

“I’m not buying you handcuffs for Christmas.” She pulled the visor down, sliding open the hidden mirror I always forgot was there, and smoothed her lip gloss with her index finger. “What about your radio?”

I glanced at my dash and Andy Williams. “What’s wrong with my radio?”

Cady snapped her reflection shut and flipped the visor up with a wave of her hand. “The one at home, the weather thinga-ma-jiggie.”

“The NOAA radio?”

She reinforced the point by throwing the finger with the lip gloss residue at me.

It was true—the thing had died. Everyone on the high plains has one sitting in their mud rooms—little, dark-gray plastic radios that pick up the frequency of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration so that their owners can find out just how many feet of snow are going to be on the ground in the morning. Dog had knocked the device from where it crouched on the counter, at which point it had stopped receiving the local NOAA alerts. I had finalized its demise with a Phillips screwdriver in an attempt to take it apart on my kitchen table while talking to my daughter long distance. “It died.”

She nodded in exasperation. “I know; you said you killed it.”

I glanced back at Dog. “It was natural causes.”

“So you
need
another one.” She emphasized the word with a smile.

I really didn’t; I’d gotten in the habit of not listening to it after my friend Henry Standing Bear had alerted me to the fact that I had a tendency to leave it on, giving Henry the impression that, although we were in my kitchen, we were on a ship and he was getting seasick. I still suspected the Cheyenne Nation of moving the radio close to the edge of the counter where Dog could get tangled in the cord. The Bear had his own ways of knowing the weather and, better yet, knowing which way the wind blew.

“I guess.”

Excited with the thought that she had found the perfect gift, she nudged forward on the truck seat. “Where do you buy them?”

“Radio Shack.”

“Where’s Radio Shack?”

“The mall.”

Three slaps.

* * *

I successfully avoided the Rimrock Mall by suggesting that we go to one of the big-box stores, so I parked the Bullet beside a light post in the parking lot at Best Buy down by Big Bear Sports Center, near the MasterLube with the pro–Montana State mural that said
GO, CATS!
Cady slipped out the passenger side as I opened the suicide door and let Dog free onto the snow-dusted grass berm to relieve himself.

She came around the truck and stood with me, her arm linked with mine. Cady watched Dog lift his leg on the candy-striped lamppost, and I leaned against the fender, drew her closer to me, and studied the lights of the MasterLube. I was a good four hundred miles over and what I really needed was to get the oil changed in my truck.

“I’m not buying you an oil change for Christmas, either.”

I brought my eyes down to her as she watched Dog continue to pee. With the glistening in her eyes and the flakes resting gently on her hair like a blessing, she looked so much like her mother that I had to catch my breath in my mouth “You . . .” I bit the vapor escaping from my lungs along with my words.

She looked up at me. “Is it Mom?”

I glanced away and lifted up my hat, scratched the hair underneath, and then lodged it back on. “I don’t know . . . I guess.”

She nodded and bumped her hip into mine, pulling in even closer against my arm, and, when I wasn’t quick enough placing it around her. She squirmed her way into the crook and draped the offending appendage over her shoulder. “I miss her, too.”

“I know you do.”

She continued to watch Dog. “You need to get with the Christmas program, Daddy.”

“I know.”

She sighed against my chest, and I could feel the words welling up in her. “Dad, I may not be coming home for the holidays as much anymore. I’ve kind of got my own life back East, and I’m thinking I’d rather use the time off from the firm in the summer.”

I thought about my undersheriff Victoria Moretti’s younger brother, the Philadelphia patrolman who had asked my daughter for her hand and pretty much everything else. “Sure.”

“If this is our last Christmas together, I was thinking that it would be nice if it was a good one.”

“Uh-huh.”

Her head shifted past the thick collar of my sheepskin coat, where she could watch Dog. “That’s one long pee.”

I watched as he gave out with the last few surges. “He saves it up for when you come home.”

Dog, aware that we were talking about him, broke off the irrigation and came over to poke his jealous muzzle between us. Cady turned her face up and stood on tiptoe, grazing her glossed lips against my stubble.

“I’m probably going to get some things for some of the other people on my list, too, so in a very short period of time you will be required to brighten your mood and come in and help me carry. All right?”

Dog and I watched her twirl the black greatcoat, fling the tinsel-threaded cha-cha fun fur scarf over her shoulder, and march between the parked cars of the Best Buy parking lot as if it were the steppes of Russia.

I looked down at Dog. “Show off.”

Smiling and wagging, he looked up at me.

“Yep. Laugh now. PetSmart is right next door, and I bet she’ll want to get you a pair of those reindeer antlers with the jingle bells.”

After loading the beast back into the truck, I stood there for a minute, thinking that I really didn’t want to get in yet. The air was bracing, and maybe that’s what I needed, a little slap in the face. I stood there for a while watching the cars wheel in and out of the parking lot and hoping my mood would shift like the traffic.

I remembered the first Christmas with Cady and how she’d refused to go to bed—the life of the party at eight months. My wife and I had had a Christmas picnic by candlelight on a Hudson’s Bay blanket we had thrown on the floor beside the crib. It was the best Christmas dinner I ever remember having.

Glancing at my profile in the side window of my truck, the clinging flakes blocking my inspection just enough so that I could stand the view, I gave the hard eye to the left tackle of the almost-national-champion University of Southern California Trojans, to the First Division Marine investigator, and to the high sheriff of Absaroka County—informing him, in no uncertain terms, that it was time he straighten up and fly right.

He didn’t seem overly impressed, so I took him for a walk.

* * *

It was crowded at the entrance of the electronics store, with the lights spilling from the whooshing pneumatic doors and the trumpeting of classical Christmas thundering against the heavy glass where stickers held a large red and white December calendar informing the world that only three days of shopping remained.

I ambled through the empty handicapped spots around a green Wrangler toward the concrete pillars that kept the populace from parking inside the store. My eyes shifted past the calendar to a lean young man in a Navy dress uniform and an arm sling. He stood by a large cardboard box that had been covered with gold- and silver-foil wrapping paper, on top of which was pasted a red toy train logo carrying the words
TOYS FOR TOTS
.

As an inactive Marine—because there is no such thing as an ex-Marine—I was intimate with the program that had been started back in ’47 and had manned the bin in front of Buel’s hardware store numerous Christmases back home in Durant.

The charity had been started by Marine reservist Major Will Hendricks when his wife, who had made a doll to donate to a needy child, couldn’t find an organization to which she could give it. Along with being a Marine reservist, Hendricks had also been a director of public relations for Warner Brothers and used his considerable influence to place bins to collect used toys outside movie theaters. Decades later, collections had been switched to include only new toys when the mixed message of giving out hand-me-downs as a point of hope had become controversial. In the nineties, the secretary of Defense had approved Toys for Tots as an official mission of the Marine Corps Reserve.

I made eye contact with the young Navy chaplain. “You get drafted?”

He grinned. “We minister to the Marines, and since I’m on medical leave I’m considered an unofficial reservist.” I looked down at his right sleeve and could now see the small cross above the arm bands. He dipped his head a little, going so far as to loosen the arm sling at his chest to reveal the collar underneath his uniform jacket. He looked up at me under the patent leather of his dress lid. “Semper Fi?”

I spread my gloved hands. “Ours is not to question why.”

He stuck out his own hand. “Corporal Gene Burch.”

We shook. “Lieutenant Walt Longmire.”

“Whoa.” He saluted and studied me closer. “Vietnam, Lieutenant?”

“’67–’68. You?”

“Afghanistan.”

I glanced at the front of the store as the door swept open and a young couple exited with numerous bags; I stepped to the right and positioned myself out of the way. The chaplain gave the pair a smile, but they ducked away quickly, embarrassed at their lack of largess.

I shuffled my boots in the snow. “That must’ve been fun.”

He nodded. “Until I dislocated my shoulder and they sent me back home on medical leave.”

I studied him a little closer and pegged his age to be mid twenties. “How’d it happen?”

His turn to look embarrassed. “I got backed over by a Humvee.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that and fell back on an old holiday favorite. “Well, at least you get to spend Christmas with your family.”

He nodded again and looked at the riptide effect of the snow on the sidewalk as the doors continued to open and slide shut. “My father, he’s the only one left—no brothers and sisters. I’m it.” He glanced back up at me. “He was a jarhead, third division—Vietnam like you, Con Thien in ’67.”

I leafed through my military history and came up with the combat base and site of numerous battles only three kilometers from North Vietnam that most Marines had referred to as the Meat Grinder. “Gung ho.”

“Yeah, he’s pretty proud of that.”

“Well, he must be glad to have you home.”

His response held little enthusiasm. “Yeah.” Another couple emerged, this time pausing to place a box with an electronic robot in the chaplain’s hand. “Thank you both and have a Merry Christmas.” He watched them half walk, half slip to their vehicle and then placed the toy in the half-full bin. “You have family in the store?”

“My daughter.”

He looked beyond the large maroon metal-framed doors. “The redhead?”

“Yep.”

“She waved and knew my rank.”

“She would.”

He glanced at me again, just to make sure I knew that there was no disrespect intended. “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir—she’s hot.” I raised an eyebrow, and he shrugged a response. “Hey, I said I was a chaplain, not a eunuch.”

I laughed. “She’s in the process of trying to cajole me out of my bad holiday mood.”

“Hey, it could be worse; you could be like my father and be in a bad mood year-round. I think it’s hard for him; I mean, all he does is sit around the house and read the newspaper.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that either, so I just stood there.

After a few swishes of the door, which produced one Barbie princess, he spoke again. “He’s not a bad guy, my old man, but I don’t think he understood me joining the Navy and certainly not joining the clergy.” He paused again. “He was a career Marine and he keeps asking me about medals. You know, why it is that I don’t have any.”