Comeback (Gun Pedersen Book 1) (11 page)

17

The place had the tucked-under look of a
basement house or a 1950s bomb shelter. It sat
squarely next to the county blacktop, with a short
gravel driveway and a ten-car parking lot. A sign on
the door said
back forty lounge.

Gun uncoiled himself from the Horizon.
He could feel a rubbing in his kneecaps as he
stood up straight.

“I think we got here too soon,” said Carol. “No
one’s here.”

Gun walked slowly to the edge of the parking lot
and peeked around the building. He saw a banged-up
brown dumpster under a cloud of flies, and behind it
an early seventies yellow Toyota Corolla. “It’s busi
ness hours,” he called to Carol. “Let’s go in. I’m dry as
Ezekiel’s bones.”

Eyebrows high, Carol pushed at the door. It swung

open. The place seemed larger on the inside, with the
low-hanging lamps turned down to a glow.

“It’s an optical illusion,” said Gun. “You walk into
a dark cave and it seems huge until somebody flicks on
a light, and then it’s as big as your bathroom.”

“Are you sure there’s someone here?” Carol spoke in a whisper.

“Should be,” said Gun. His voice was at normal
volume but seemed big in the dark. “There’s a car out
back. The door was open.” He walked ahead of her,
easily skirting the barely-lit chairs and tables.

“Ouch,” said Carol. “Shinned a chair. How can you
see in here?”

“Pretty well,” said Gun, then turned up his voice.
“Hey, Toyota,” he called. “We’re two of us, and we’re
thirsty. And let’s have some lights in here!”

A light clicked on immediately on the wall to their
right. In its triangular beam they saw a young man in a
shiny white shirt which was billowed and buttoned at the wrists. He was something over six feet and had a
thick black mustache and thin black eyebrows. He was
standing behind a bar.

“Just opening up,” he said in a tentative voice.
“Nobody’s usually here so early. You spooked me
coming in.”

“Carol,” Gun said. “Want something to drink?”

“I like margaritas,” said Carol.

“Do you have buttermilk?” said Gun.

The man’s eyebrows tilted in confusion. “I think so,” he said.

“Good. A glass of that, then. And an ice tea chaser.”

“Disgusting,” said Carol. Gun felt the smile in her
voice.

It took the bartender several minutes to get their
drinks. He fussed noisily trying to find the crusty salt
for the rim of Carol’s margarita. He worried that the

buttermilk was too ripe. At last he put both drinks on
the bar. “Just right,” he said.

“An ice tea,” Gun said.

“Oh.” The bartender scrambled.

“My, you’re demanding,” said Carol.

“Anyone would demand ice tea if they planned on
drinking buttermilk first,” he said.

The bartender returned, walking fast. A brown
half-dollar stain on the left arm of his shirt told Gun
he’d hurried with the ice tea.

“I appreciate the effort,” Gun said. He laid a
five-dollar bill on the walnut veneer of the bar. “Now
I’d like something else.”

“Sure.” The barkeeper wrinkled his nose,
making the mustache hop. “What’ll it be?”

“A little help. Do you know a guy named Larson, first name of Tig, a county commissioner lives down
in Stony?”

The barkeeper looked at Gun, then cautiously at Carol and back at Gun. “I know who Larson is,” he
said, “but I don’t know why you’d want him.”

“I’d like to know who
he hung out with in here. And how
recently.” Gun took a long plug of buttermilk, looking
over the glass.

“What, did something happen to him?” The bar
tender elevated his brow in what Gun perceived to be false concern. “You’re talking like he’s dead or some
thing.”

“He drove into Stony Lake off a cliff, most likely

yesterday,” said Carol. She picked up the margarita
and took a sip.

“Oh, no,” said the bartender, in a tone that affirmed
Gun’s judgment.

“Who did he know here?” said Gun.

“I really shouldn’t talk,” said the bar
tender. “Manager says discretion means my job.”

“In this case,” said Gun, “indiscretion would be
wise.”

“That’s really true,” said Carol.

Gun drank ice tea, put the glass down and got to his
feet. He gazed down a five-inch slope at the bartender.

“Actually, Mr. Larson wasn’t here very often
.”

Gun stayed on his feet. Carol said, “We have to know.”

The bartender looked up at Gun, dropped back to Carol. “A guy named Rutherford, Dan Rutherford.
Sort of a new face. I don’t think I ever saw him before,
say, a month ago.  He was at some resort, I think.”

“Was Rutherford here often?” said Carol. She
leaned forward, her hair parting to show the back of
her neck. Gun noticed.

“Only with Larson. Hell, I think they met here. The Friar
introduced them.”

“The Friar?”

“Yeah, the Friar—this older guy with a circle of
hair on top. Like Friar Tuck. I don’t even know his real
name. Comes in here every few months. He brought
Rutherford in, sat him down next to Larson.”

Gun sat down on the bar stool. “Rutherford,” he
said. “Which resort?”

“God, you think Rutherford did something to off
Larson?” The man stroked one end of his mustache
with the tip of his tongue.

“Nope. Which resort?”

The bartender leaned back against a rack of dark
whiskey. He closed his eyes. “The Broken Rock,” he
said. “I think the Broken Rock. It’s just a guess,
though. I heard that name once or twice
.”

“Thank you,” said Carol. “We’ll go now.”

Gun stood up. “Got a phone I can use?” he asked.

Without opening his eyes, the bartender pointed to
a wall phone off to the right.

Gun went over to it and dialed information to get
the right number. At the Broken Rock a young child’s
voice came on the line. “My dad’s not here now.”

“When will he be back?” Gun asked. “Later to
night?”

“He’s here in the morning always,” said the child.

“Okay, thanks.” Gun hung up and walked back to the bar.

Carol got up.

“Don’t you want your margarita?” said Gun.

“Too much salt on the rim,” said Carol.

18

As they drove back to Stony the sky darkened around
them, turning from hazy white to a steely gray-blue.
Carol was quiet and seemed to be watching everything
with interest: the low rocky fields; the marshlands,
still mostly brown with last year’s dead growth; the acres of burned-off woodlands; the mossy tamarack
bogs, lush and tropically dark. By the time they
entered Stony the sky was low and dense, the air sharp
with the smell of rain. At the east edge of town Gun turned into the driveway of Peaceful Haven, the resort
where Carol was renting a small cabin.

From the middle forties to the late sixties Peaceful
Haven had been a favorite vacation spot of wealthy
Kansas farmers who drove into northern Minnesota
for the singular pleasure of catching bullheads. If
they’d been willing to learn Stony Lake’s hidden bays
and the contours of its floor, they could have had
sunfish, crappies, northerns, and walleyes, but most of
them preferred to stand evenings along the T-shaped

docks and cast into the shaded water beneath over
hanging elms where the bullheads lay, twitching their long whiskers.

By the early seventies the older generation of farm
ers was starting to stay home summers, and the
younger generation was going elsewhere. They pre
ferred the newer resorts, the big flashy places with their live bands and tennis pros and saunas. Before long Peaceful Haven was just half full on the busiest
weekends, and the owners—Shep and Mary Skaggs,
former Kansans themselves—had no choice but to
rent cabins out by the month, to locals. Carol lived in number four, which sat on a rock ledge twenty feet
above the lake. It was painted light green, same as the other buildings. A big stone chimney covered one end
of it. Gun braked to a stop and let the engine idle.
Carol didn’t open her door. “We’re going to get some
weather again tonight,” Gun said. “You might want to
collect enough dry wood for a couple days, in case this
front decides to hang around.”

“I don’t use the fireplace. There’s a little gas burner in my bedroom, and I turn that on if I need to.” Carol
tapped her lips with an index finger. “In fact, I don’t
even know how to use the fireplace.”

“I’ll find some dry wood and show you, then. Won’t
take long to get a little flame going.”

Carol looked at him. “Okay. You make a fire, and I’ll make supper. How’s that?”

He turned off the ignition and the engine dieseled to
a stop. “Deal.”

In fifteen minutes Gun had enough dry wood for a week of evening warm-up fires: fast-burning birch, a
few half-rotted branches of pine, and some whitened
lengths of driftwood, delicately curved and smooth as
skin. From the neat stack he’d made on the little
screened-in porch he took a high armful of wood and
carried it inside. The kitchen was cabbage-colored—
smelled like cabbage too, Gun noticed. He walked
into the compact living room. It was paneled with a
darkly stained particle board. He lowered his load
onto the brick hearth.

“Hope you like cabbage,” Carol said from the
kitchen.

“Sure. What’s it belong to?”

“New England boiled dinner.”

“Great,” said Gun. It wasn’t what he expected. Not
from a long-time islander. Seafood, maybe, or something Chinese, Italian. Something international. But
boiled cabbage and corned beef? Gun turned from
building a pyramid of sticks on the iron rack. Carol
was setting the table. She was facing away from him.
The backs of her legs looked smooth and tan, her waist
narrow. As she bent forward to adjust her silver, she
tipped her slender hips up and to the right, and
beneath her reaching left arm Gun could see the push
of her breast against the loose cotton shirt. Then she straightened and walked to the stove with just a little
twist in her stride.

When the food was ready they moved the kitchen
table into the tiny living room, and there, with the fire
crackling and throwing shadows against the wall, they
ate quickly and in silence. Gun wanted to say something to Carol about how nice this was, how for the
first time in his life he was enjoying the taste of
cabbage, even the smell of it, God help him. But he
was also thinking of Mazy. He wasn’t doing her a lot
of good here.

From the west came the first rumblings of a storm,
and from out on the water the sad cry of the loon, an
airy high-low wailing. They finished eating and Carol
said, “I understand how you’re feeling, Gun. I’m a
parent too. Here, help me”—she stood suddenly and
took hold of one end of the table—”let’s get the table

back in place and sit by the fire awhile. We’ve earned
it, haven’t we?”

Gun helped her with the table, then knelt at the
hearth. A chunk of smoldering pine had fallen off the
iron rack.

“Time you learned about me,” Carol said. “I al
ready know about you. And not just from that god
awful biography that came out when you retired.”

“Unauthorized.”

“Right. Anyway, I got the inside story from Mazy.”

“Great.”

Carol fell into one of the stuffed chairs and crossed
her ankles on a wooden footstool at Gun’s side. Gun
laid several splintered pieces of birch onto the red and
white coals, leaned down and blew a steady stream of
air until a flame began to flash up from the coals and
lick at the new wood. He remained in a catcher’s
crouch before the fire.

“Aren’t you going to sit down?” Carol said to Gun’s
back.

“In a second.”

“I’ll start with the inauspicious beginnings. Living
ston, Montana, rancher’s daughter, sister of four
brothers, model child until the age of sixteen.” She
uncrossed her ankles and tapped her toes together.
Her feet were nearly touching Gun’s elbow. He
reached over and took one in his hand.

“Fire feels good,” Carol said. “Hand, too.”

“So. Sixteen.”

“I decided Montana was no place for a woman with
ambition,” Carol said. “Didn’t want to end up a
rancher’s wife. So I talked my parents into letting me
spend my last year of high school in California with an
aunt.”

Gun gave Carol’s foot a squeeze and stood from his
crouch, moved to the chair beside her. The fire was

snapping and breathing, sending out orange sparks which the chimney draft sucked away. The thunder
had been getting closer, and now a jarring crack shook
the cabin. At the same instant a shot of lightning exploded at the living room window. For a moment
the inside of the cabin was bright as noon, then it was
darker than before, and quieter, until the first large
drops began to strike the roof. Soon the rain was
coming hard.

Gun waited for Carol to go on. He watched her
profile in the fire’s uneven light.

“The next few years, I don’t know how they got by
me so quickly. Bad decisions are great for speeding up
your life. I graduated from high school in San Diego,
started college there, got through the first year, and then along came this guy who knew everybody. He
told me if I went to Hawaii with him I’d be a model in
six months. I went. In six months he was gone and I
was looking for a job. Too proud to go home, of
course. I started at the
Honolulu Advertiser,
ground
floor, writing obits. They’re habit-forming, you know. I still write them. This afternoon, for instance. You’re
bringing Tig up from his car, I’m writing the poor
guy’s eulogy in my head.”

“I don’t want to hear it right now,” Gun said.

“No. Where was I?”

“The guy left you and you got a job.”

“Right. After Stan the First—he was the man of
many promises—I met Stan the Second. This one was
just the opposite, said practically nothing, Mister
Clam, and no promises. Out of gratitude for that I
married him.” Carol stopped. The rain on the roof
was letting up.

“And you had a child,” Gun said.

“Yes. Michael. He’s twenty now, studying in Cali
fornia. You’d like him.”

“I bet I would,” Gun said. “What happened to Stan
number two?”

“Stan number two found his dream job and dream girl. When I married him he was going to school at the
University of Hawaii to be a park ranger. After
Michael was born, he graduated, got a job in Redwood
National Forest. I waited in Hawaii while he went on
ahead. But instead of getting the call telling me to
pack up the baby and fly to California, I got a call asking for a divorce. We were together a year.”

The rain had stopped and the low rumbling was moving off to the east. The wood in the fireplace had
turned to gray ash.

“And for the last twenty years I’ve been learning
journalism and saving to buy my own paper. I won’t
give you a play-by-play of that.”

“Another time,” Gun said.

Neither spoke for several minutes. The skies
quieted and the rain stopped. Carol laughed softly.
“You were really something to watch today. You know
that? Diving off the cliff into the water, bringing up
Larson from that car?” She bit at her emerald ring. “Something bothers me, though. I don’t know how to
put it. It was almost like you were ... enjoying your
self out there today. Am I wrong?”

“Look, Carol.” Gun pushed himself up straight in his chair and placed his palms flat on the corduroy-
covered arms. He drew a long breath and blew his lungs empty. “It’s been a long hard day.”

“I know,” said Carol, nodding. She looked quickly
at the fireplace, then back at Gun. “Does it have to be
over?”

“I need to go home, get cleaned up,” Gun said.
“And you’ve got to go over to the newspaper office tonight.”

“It’s only nine-thirty,” Carol said.

Gun leaned toward her and picked up her hand. He

slowly traced around it with a big index finger, then

replaced it in her lap.

“There’ll be another time,” she said.

He stood up and rolled his shoulders, then bent

down and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m glad you

said that.”