Chapter Two An Unhappy Breakfast with Brad and Kate

Call stood on the sidewalk. A cold breeze blew off the desert, shredding filmy, gray clouds over the pink sky. The sun was not quite up and it was quiet. Even the wind blew silently lifting only the tips of leaves. Brad honked the horn. Call walked to the truck wondering where June had gone, and if she was planning the funeral.

Upon his own death, Call hoped his woman would mourn for months, maybe even the rest of her life. That she would swear off sex, booze, movies, novels, poetry, chocolate, and champagne at New Years — anything and everything that might bring her joy. By the time he climbed into the truck with Brad, he realized he wanted that self-denial and sacrifice from June while knowing that when she left him she had given up nothing

Brad asked, "What’s the hold up?" He always spoke in short bursts as if the actual words tasted bad and had to be spat from his mouth.

"Just thinking."

"About what?"

"How did you get the commissioners to trade in your Pontiac hardtop to this?" Call looked around at the new vehicle. "This is pretty nice."

"Damn. I need it."

"Really?"

Brad pulled the Tahoe onto Idaho Street, almost hitting a mongrel lab mating with a cocker spaniel. Locked in the tie, the dogs ran off yelping in pain.

"Damn dogs." Brad put on the brakes and unsnapped his gun holster.
Then with his hand on the door handle, he looked over at Call.

Call asked, "What are you going to do?"

"I’m going to shoot them."

Call laughed. Brad’s grandstanding anger, and the absurdity of his temper had long been a running joke between the men. Call said, "Good try."

"No joke. I’m sick of dogs, sick of them. We’ve had more trouble with strays this year. Some kid’s malamute killed eighteen chickens off State Hospital Road. No one wants to get them licensed or keep them fenced in. They don’t get the fact that they aren’t on the farm."

"Call it into animal control."

Brad said, "Had you going, didn’t I?" Then Brad laughed and they drove off. As they came to a stop sign, Brad said, "That Damn June!" Two things had the power to really worked up Brad, June and food prices, especially bread. Brad’s family had been wheat farmers until Carter’s grain embargo and high interest rates bankrupted them in the late seventies and forced Brad into law enforcement.

"What?"

"She killed him in cold blood, and she’ll walk away as if she has done nothing wrong. Like she did us all a service for putting him down."
In all the years he had known Brad, his wife Kate, and June, Calder had never understood Brad’s feelings for June. When asked to explain, all Brad could do was swear, shake his head, and swear again.

In appeasement and because he believed what he was about to say, Call answered. "Brad, I promise you if she did kill him, I’ll find out. We’ll get it taken care of."

Brad put the Tahoe back into gear and yielded on Fort Street and turned up Judicial where most of the houses had been converted to businesses.

A one story ranch was an A.G. Edward’s brokerage office, a two-story stucco home had been recast as a car insurance office, and a stately, but slightly rundown Tudor home now housed Slim’s Mexican cafe. On the corner of Main and Broadway, the Frontier Bar had stopped advertising topless dancers in favor of micro brews and pool. Call noticed the changes with dismay as if they were a personal affront.

The chatter of the dispatcher over the radio called one officer to a domestic dispute that arose when the wife declined to fry bear steaks for breakfast; another call was sent out to a fire that got out of control when an elderly man tried to burn the weeds off the banks of his irrigation ditch; then a call came in about someone who had drowned a pillow case full of kittens.

However, neither man talked until Brad stopped in front of his house on the only street in town that boasted two story homes built at the turn of the century. The white Victorian had new paint, a new roof, a yard full of flowers, and thick green grass.

Brad asked, "What do you think?"

"Looks like Kate’s been doing a lot of work."

"Never could complain on that count."

Brad pointed to the walkway under the grape arbor that separated the back from the front yard. Raised beds of herbs and early spring vegetables divided the lawn at the rear of the house. A young girl weeded the vegetable beds. When she turned to toward the men, the glance contained both innocence and knowledge.

She said, "Dad, what are you doing home?"

"I brought Call over for breakfast. Sarah, do you remember him?"

"Sure, why wouldn’t I? June talks about him all the time. When Call and I did this or when Call and I did that." She had the same odd lilt to her voice as her mother.

Call said, "I wouldn’t think that June would still be talking about me after all these years."

"Mostly it’s about when you were kids." Sarah returned to her work.

Brad said to him, "You should see her play basketball. She has the sweetest inside jumper. She’s on the varsity team with Jennifer."

They entered the back porch, where racks of cookies were cooling. The air was full of the smell of sugar and vanilla.

The door to the kitchen swung open and Kate came out carrying another rack of cookies. Call took the cookie sheets from her. Kate pointed to a table where to he should place them.

"Call, what are you doing here?"

"Brad asked me over for some breakfast."

"Well, he better make it himself. I don’t have time and he knows it."

Then Kate stopped and gave Call a hug and a kiss. The pale prettiness that had distinguished her as a young woman had faltered with the onslaught of middle age. During their embrace, he felt the slight heaviness of her body. Then in a curiously intimate moment their faces brushed.

They pulled away, and looked at each other.

She said, "I’m sorry Call. I just don’t have time to cook for the two of you today. Let’s set up a time for dinner." She returned to the kitchen and the men followed her.

Brad immediately sat and asked for a cup of coffee, which Kate brought. As she turned, Brad said, "Kate, you spend all day cooking for other people. You can take five minutes and make me and Call some food." Call still waited by the door.

Kate stood in the middle of the kitchen. She scrutinized her husband with loathing as Calder looked on. Unaware, Brad glanced at her and finally

Kate said, "Sure."

The men sat at the table and Kate stood at the stove making an omelet for each man. Call wished they had gone to a truck stop in town instead of putting her out.

Call asked when she placed a cup of coffee in front of him, "Kate, what are you doing anyway? Do you have a business of some kind?"

She smiled and said, "I do some catering and I have a cookie business."

She reached into a basket on the table and pulled out a cookie cutter in shape of a buffalo and a pamphlet. "Cowgirl Cookies, Inc. It’s been a pretty good business. June helped me get started. She thought I needed more to keep me busy, and the money has been good so far."

He handed back the pamphlet, but she shook her head. "Keep it. You never know when you’ll need a dozen cookies."

"So you like the work?" Call asked.

"It’s okay. Paid off most of the house and bought me that extra lot in the back for my garden. But don’t get me wrong, it’s hard work getting up at 4:00 every morning."

Brad said, "Well, don’t you have it rough?"

The phone rang. Kate picked it up and walked to the porch to talk in private while they finished their breakfast.

Home skills came easily to Kate and it was this absolute submission to her domestic role that Call found alluring, but forbidden. Kate had taken home education in high school and belonged to FHA, Future Homemakers of America. June had taken shop, learned how to fix tractors and belonged to FFA, Future Farmers of America. Yet, they had remained steadfast friends since first grade and neither saw the flaws of the other.

Kate came back into the kitchen and said, "That was June. Why didn’t you tell me her husband died?"

Brad said, "I thought maybe she had already discussed her plans to kill him."

"That is a terrible thing to say, Brad. You are such an ass."

Brad lifted himself off the seat of the chair and Kate took a step toward him. Then he relaxed and slouched down in the chair and asked, "Hey, baby can you get me more coffee?"

"Sure," Kate answered. After pouring the coffee, Kate sat. The three of them talked about what had been happening in town: who was getting divorced, who was getting remarried, who was pregnant, and whose parents had died.

Brad said, "Like I said, your ex-is married. Some guy she met at school and she’s expecting, again. She moved back East to do a fellowship or something like that."

Call laughed and said, "She always considered herself arty."

However, he found he didn’t care and didn’t ask for anymore information.

Kate added, "Jennifer stayed to finish her senior year. She is living with Stewart and Marlene."

He had nothing to say to that either and after a moment of silence they returned to generic gossip until Kate announced she really did have to get back to work.

Call said, "We shouldn’t have been holding you up and I have to get to the place. Need to see how my house has stood up."

Brad said, "From the road it looks okay. Damn, Call it was never much to begin with. Smallest damn house, I’ve ever seen."

"It serves it purposes."

"I suppose, but I’ve seen dog kennels bigger."

Call picked up his plate and utensils and took them to the sink where he said goodbye to Kate, who touched his arm once or twice too often during the leave taking.

Brad yelled for him to hurry from the porch. When Brad pushed open the backdoor, a cat ran outside. The cat leapt, and caught a butterfly with its front paw. Sarah had put on earphones and didn’t look up from her work when they walked past her. Call glanced over the measured tidiness of the yard and gardens, the brightness of the flowers in the morning light.
Brad drove him back to his truck. Neither man spoke during the trip. All that needed to be said had been. Before he shut the truck’s door, Brad cleared his throat.

"Well, Call I’m sorry about your folks, but I guess if that’s what it took to get you home, that’s what it took. I’ll be out later in the day to talk to you."

"I’ll be at the house."

Call sat in his truck, inserted the key, and listened. The motor rolled over with a hum he connected with the grace of God. Since he was ten, he understood that men who made money in the harvest bought new trucks from Heaven’s bounty. June’s father had made it big in feeder calves and potatoes and bought a new Chevy pickup every year and a gold-colored

Cadillac every other year.

Gerald, his father, had bought only one new car, a Buick Bonneville, the year Call turned fourteen. The night Gerald drove the Bonneville off the lot, four of their heifers came into heat and jumped the electric-fence after a wind storm knocked out a generator. An eighteen-wheeler hauling dead horses to the glue factory hit the cattle. The loss of the cattle made the car an unbearable luxury. That night Call sat in the car until three in the morning rubbing his hand over the velvet texture of the car seat. The blue Bonneville with the plush interior and an AM/FM radio had gone back to the dealer the next day.

Call’s love of new vehicles, which originated that night, remained unchanged even though the world that produced it was gone.

Absently he had turned on Riverton Road, forgetting it didn’t connect with the road he needed.

Unless it was an emergency he never turned around, because of that habit he had seen some fascinating sights. However, it didn’t endear him to those uninitiated to the whims of deserted roads. He drove on the outskirts of town.

To his left was a small triangle of a park with a few thick willows, a couple of poplars, one swing set, faded grass, and a crumbling monument of rock and plaster erected by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. General knowledge gained from his college courses blended with information gleamed from the markers to produce a serendipitous understanding of the region.

The monument commemorated the Central Ferry which had been established December 10, 1878 to provide mail service to the area, but the ferry station had also served rot gut whiskey.

The shrines that honored the sacrifices of early settlers had been the idea of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. His grandmother had belonged to the organization.

Members of the DUP had held bake sales to raise money to build the memorials throughout the area. Gold moons and silver shooting stars decorated the blue plaster obelisks that sat on river rock bases.

Many of the events the shrines honored were now discredited; the growth of the West was a source of shame for displacing native people. However, he believed the wrongheadedness of some men and women, who came west, didn’t matter as much as the desperation or faith or greed or boredom that drove them into a wilderness they could not cultivate into anything that resembled the cities, villages, farms, countries they came from. It was that ingrained admiration that he offered to the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, knowing they based their stories on what their fathers and grandfathers had told them — not facts.

Next to the park was a church. The trim was freshly painted white. Shiny bronze lettering announced it was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Already a few family vans were in the parking lot. Call checked the little calendar attached to the dashboard and noted it was the first Sunday of the month. It was testimony meeting. It was a day set aside for fasting and prayer and sanctified for the bearing of testimonies.
Any member of the ward, moved by the spirit, could go to the pulpit and bear testimony of the gospel as the one and only true church, or whatever else was on their mind. He had seen men go on about the government, women about signs and devils, and children repeat the set speech told to them by Sunday School teachers. All that was years ago. Call no longer worried about Mormon notions of sin, hardened in his belief that God viewed the world quite differently than what most people imagined.
A bright green Geo Tracker convertible honked and startled him as it passed. Music blared out of cheap speakers, the bass turned up. A young girl was behind the steering wheel and another girl sat in the passenger seat. Call glimpsed the wind lifting their hair in blond flickers before the driver jerked the car back into the lane and slowed. The passenger stood up, morning light danced through her shirt and hair. The girl swayed to the music in baggy shorts and a long baggy T-shirt. Not thinking, he tipped his hat, and waved. He was still waving when the girl pulled up her T-shirt and exposed her breasts. The driver reached up and pulled the passenger down with one arm.

The girls honked, one, two, three times, and waved. It almost seemed he could hear their laughter drifting along the ribbon of road. Then in a burst of speed the car and its passengers were gone. He looked down at his speed, thirty-five miles an hour.

He pressed the gas pedal, sped up to forty miles an hour, and looked out the window to where the Snake River ran parallel to the road. Along the river, willows grew and ospreys made nests. Close to the bank in deep pools, he knew trout swam lazily. Cottonwoods spread their thick branches, grass grew tall and green, and a lone Angus bull lay under a tree sleeping in the shade.

It was beautiful.

It had been more beautiful in his youth. Too many big homes now. The old weathered houses, barns, and corrals had been swept away to make room for nice new models of farmhouses.

However, the area was prone to decay. Mending and fixing was an art few inhabitants practiced. The west experienced booms and busts. So it went. He was old enough to have seen the cycles and he liked the bad times better. It was the land that mattered to him, not the people with their half-baked ideas on how to turn a fast buck. Finally, he hit Ferry Butte Road and turned west.

Ferry Butte rose in the desert like a burial mound covered with brittle sage, a landmark of the Oregon Trail, something for settlers to walk toward, a charm, and a reminder that Fort Hall and supplies were near. Men and women traveling to the Willamette Valley had gazed across the vastness of the blue-gray sage, and dropped beds, dining tables, china, anything and everything to make it across.

They followed the course of a boiling river that twisted its way through the desert without spreading more than a few yards of green on either side. Then the Snake dropped hundreds of feet below the desert floor to cut through black gorges of lava as it flowed toward the Columbia River. Yet here, coaxing next to Ferry Butte, the Snake River widened and rolled easy over the flat landscape and water seeped into the fertile bottom lands; it was peaceful, cool, and green. Sometimes, in August the river ran so low that it could be crossed, without getting wet, by stepping on smooth river rocks.

A Dwight Yoakam song was playing on the CD player. The words of lyrics reminded him of a woman who could only make love while listening to Dwight and how each orgasm was a grim battle for a small pleasure. It hadn’t lasted long. The woman had been happier in the dark with the music, masturbating, unencumbered by him. While living in Montana his past mistakes with women and sex and drink felt insignificant, but being home forced him to contemplate them with bemused horror.
It took another half hour to make up for the mistake on Riverton Road and get to his parent’s place. Call looked at the road that took him to his old home.

Before he could protect himself from the past, a memory of walking home with June as a boy hit him.

Chapter One in which June's husband is dead, Call comes home and finds his Father is Nuts

Chapter One

June’s Dead Husband

Calder Larsen sensed the empty space left by death as they wheeled the man past. The doctors could work on the man for an hour, hammer on his chest, shove a needle in his heart, shock his flesh until the air filled with the smell of burnt skin, but it was too late for the man on the gurney.
While the hospital floor filled with the party sounds, he walked to the waiting area and watched. Nurses, orderlies, and policemen gathered outside the one emergency room in the rural hospital.

At two forty-one in the morning, sheriff Brad Smith strode down the hall escorting June Jackson. She carried herself as a person, who had never experienced a major disappointment.

The low riding wrangler jeans and tight wife-beater purchased at the farm supply store as if she was a ranch hand sharply contrasted with the yellow cowboy boots with an inlaid red, white, and blue American Flag over the toes. The boots would have cost him almost a week’s salary as he knew she had them handmade someplace in Texas. The old guy that shaped them did not work cheap besides June had expensive tastes when it came to her boots.

He looked at her. June possessed everything he liked in a woman. She had a tall angular body, large, firm breasts, a long narrow waist, thick chestnut colored hair with golden undertones, and hazel eyes that wavered between blue and green depending on what she wore. She was not pretty, but striking.

That early morning her eyes were wide, face pale, but what he noticed was the hair. Every shiny strand was in place. It struck him as odd, and it was the type of thing he noticed as an unemployed police detective.
After high school, a track scholarship paid for time at the State University where he majored in history and ended up in law enforcement. His divorce sent him to Cody, Wyoming until a sexual miscalculation with a female inmate forced him to take an indeterminate leave of absence that quickly turned into a lawsuit followed by an affair with a woman much too young for him and then six months of serious drinking.

Brad pulled June next to the chairs by the emergency room entrance before two deputies came over and spoke frantically and walked off. June and Brad stood by the vending machines looking at the door of the emergency unit.

Call walked over.

"Brad."

"Call, Goddamn!"

Call noted the puffiness around Brad’s eyes and lines forming around his mouth and the gray at the sides of his hair that hadn’t been there eight months ago. There was a slackness in his body caused from overindulgence in petty vices of drinking and whoring.

They shook hands. Brad squeezed his hand a little too hard smiled a little too wide in a show of bravado that had never been a part of a friendship that began before birth when their mothers lived next door to each other.
Forty two years.

Brad added, "I wondered when you’d get here. Brad then reached out and took hold of June’s upper arm. The gaze of her green eyes moved from Brad to the emergency room door, and lastly to Call. An easy smile turned up her full lips.

With him under her full scrutiny, she said, "Hell, Call. Sorry about your Dad going nuts. That’s some rough shit."

"Thanks," He turned from her and asked Brad, "What’s going on here?"

"June’s husband of sorts was found unconscious after he called 911. June was at the station so I brought her down. He lives in Groveland and practices here and in Pocatello. It’s a bad deal. No one likes to work on someone they know."

June shook her head and said, "Don’t know why. It’s not like anyone liked him. What a prick. He’s a prick or was. Don’t look at me that way, Call. You didn’t know him. He was a no-good bastard." June watched the door of the hospital room open as another doctor entered and they could hear the rhythmic thumps of hands on flesh. She placed her hands over her ears, bowed her head, and burst into tears. Then she sat on the floor only inches from Call’s boots. He looked down at the part of her brown hair—so, fine and soft. The sent of her skin surrounded him or else he remembered how she smelled.

Suddenly, all his old desire for her overcame him, Call took two steps back to stop himself from reaching down and stroking June’s head.
Brad elbowed him and they left June in the middle of the hall while traffic directed itself around her. A young orderly walked over and tried to bribe her into moving by offering her a Diet Coke as they looked on.

"I’m sorry about your dad. Damn, he’s been crazy these last couple of years."

"Mom always says everything is fine and all he’ll talk about is the weather."

"What could you do?"

"Nothing."

"Well, you’re here now. It’s good to see you." Brad gave him a quick hug. The embrace felt unfamiliar though they had known each others parents and grandparents and worked and lived like brothers until into their twenties.

Since Call had moved from his hometown, they had kept in contact through an annual elk hunt where the Elk were never more important than the Jim Bean and the Wild Turkey. With what Call read as embarrassment, Brad backed away and touched his badge.

Brad asked, "What’s it been? Eight or nine months since we shot that big bull at Bend?"

"Eight."

"Nothing new around here, except that your ex is remarried."

"How about that."

"Yeah, Carolyn got pregnant and married her live-in. Kate did her cake."

"How is your wife?"

"It hasn’t been good between us. June is always causing trouble." Brad pointed toward June, who was sitting on the floor drinking the Coke the orderly had given her.

"She has a talent for trouble."

"Guess so."

Both men leaned against the wall and listened to the muted sounds of the emergency room. The architects had designed the new addition to incorporate the original building. Old red bricks were exposed and mixed with rough stucco walls while pictures Blackfoot in the early 1900's when it was just getting settled decorated the walls.

Call pointed at the room where they had taken June’s husband and said,

"He’s gone. They’re just running up the insurance bill."

"You’re probably right, you cynical bastard. Small loss. June’s right. He was one sick puppy."

A nurse named Slim, who he knew from highschool and vaguely remembered fucking, walked out of the emergency room and head for the coffee machine. She came over with two cups, gave them each one, and told Brad that the time of death was 3:18. On the tip of her shoe was a drop of blood. Brad signaled to an officer and asked him to call the county coroner.

"Back to your old man, before someone grabs me. We aren’t going to file assault charges or charges for resisting arrest."

Call hadn’t considered that possibility, because he assumed Brad would make sure no charges were filed. He began to look around in a nervous manner that was unfamiliar to Calder.

Brad said, "Now, the bunch of them will get hold of me pretty soon. Local doctor, dead of whatever. I got to go and fill in the blank." Brad pulled a small yellow pad from his pocket and scribbled a few notes. Then he glanced at June who was sitting in the waiting room away from the noise, drinking her diet Coke, looking at her boots.

Brad said to Call, "It’s good to have you home. After the trouble in Cody, I’ve been wondering when you’d call asking for your old job."

"I’ve been busy. I was going to call next month and see if you had a spot for me."

"I’m always short on men. If you want a job come in and fill out the paperwork and I’ll push it through."

"Thanks. I’ll do that in the next couple of days."

"I lost my detective last month. Took a job as a Federal Marshall. Hell of a guy, but it would be great to have you back working for me. The detective position would be a good place for you to start. And with a murder case." Brad nodded toward June.

"Isn’t that jumping the gun?"

"I saw him on a twenty-mile run two days ago. June swore she’d kill him in front of fifty people at their New Year’s Eve party a few years back."
They stopped talking and looked at June, again. She was sitting very still.
In the low voice Brad reserved for business he added, "And I’ve never, and I mean never seen her go back on her word. You remember in seventh grade when she said she was going to run her daddy’s farm and how we laughed. Well, who’s running the farm?"

Call looked down at the floor.

Brad added, "I think June had something to do with this. I don’t know why or how, but she did."
"Does she have an alibi?"

"Damn right. She’s not dumb. She was down at the jail bailing out Ron Sorter."

"Who? I don’t think I know him."

"Ron Sorter belongs to this Sagebrush Brigade group. They march around on the desert, practice their shooting, declare themselves against the Bureau of Land Management. Drink beer until they’re dead drunk."
Calder figured they weren’t up to much harm, just bored and wanting to feel important.

Call asked, "If the jailers are her alibi, how could June have done it?"

"How does she do anything? You know her."

"Yeah, but she looks good." Call studied June. She sat on a beige plastic chair tapping her foot. And by all that was normal, she should have looked a lot worse at 3:30 a.m. the morning of her husband’s death.
Brad asked, "Call, you’re over it, aren’t you?"

"Sure." He hadn’t thought about June more than two or three times a week in years. So by the old standards he was over it. It being something, he never understood. He might as well be over it. If anyone asked, he would tell them he was over it for years. "It’s been years since I’ve even thought about her."

"That’s good because, I think she killed her husband."

"You always hated her. Besides what would she have to gain?"

"Money. I suppose. Damn, I don’t know. I guess that’s your job if you want it. I’ll take you over to the house for breakfast this morning and we can talk about it."

"Sure. I’d love to see Kate. It’s been years."

"Damn, here comes the news woman. Later."

"Yeah, catch you later. "

Brad nodded and walked off to join the crowd gathering in the room of the dead man. Call thought on June and came up empty. However, he needed a job.

Life had never been much in Blackfoot, Idaho, but he had liked it well enough, and he was not one to buck against fate.

He walked over to June and sat beside her, pressing his leg against her thigh knowing she would meet the pressure with equal force.

"I’m sorry, June."

"Thanks."

"I don’t know what to say."

"You said enough." She looked at him straight in his eyes. It was a habit most people found unsettling. It felt as if she looked right into a person and discovered secret needs and was amused.

"Hey, Call, is the poet, treating Gerald?"

"Yeah. Strange deal. He quoted me a poem about old age."

"I suppose it’s no better than the bone one he told me when I had my arm set two years back It’s beyond strange. I used to go to his readings."
"Why?"

"I don’t know. He wasn’t just him. Other men read poetry."

"Why did this interest you?"

"Some literary phase I was in. It was after the art phase and before the exercise phase. They used to try to pick me up. I hated that. And sometimes I let them pick me up. Good hell, I hated that more. Cross-dressing son’s of bitches. They got too weird even for me."

"Really. Who were these men?"

"The Thursday Night Men Only Poetry and Seduction Gathering at The Owl and The Pussycat Bookstore."

"But it’s men only."

"That’s for the Thursday night meeting. They hold their monthly readings on a Saturday at eight o’clock and serve cheap champagne while they read bad poetry about the women they bed,
‘her breast’s were jell-o-ing with each deep thrust.’ Can you imagine that? ‘Jell-o-ing breasts!’ Good hell. And thank goodness my breasts don’t Jell-O. Women competed to see who would be mentioned."

"Were you mentioned?"

"Every Saturday for six months. ‘Sagey woman of the desert.’ Very sad." She leaned into him, pressed her breast against his arm and let out a low breath as she dropped her head on his shoulder. She rested there, closing her eyes. He watched her heartbeat in the blue veins of her eyelids. It was slow. The feeling that came over him from having her close was one of waking after a good night’s sleep.

She asked, "What do you think they’re doing in there?"

"Going over evidence. Seeing if there was foul play."

She looked at him again and held his gaze until he looked away.

"So Call, did that bastard Brad offer you Neal’s old job. His detective just took a job as a Federal Marshall. I’ll miss him. He was a good guy."

"He was a young guy." Call added and laughed as June shrugged her shoulders.

"Yeah."

"I bet he was cute with a nice butt?"

"Yeah."

"Don’t you ever change?"

"No, and I ain’t planning to." She patted his shirt pocket, which contained scraps of paper and a bottle cap or two, and laughed. "I see you haven’t changed much either. Still, picking up junk?"

"A man’s got to have his hobbies. What do you think about this job Brad offered?"

"Power. I bet it makes him feel hot to be able to offer you a job. You know, help out an old friend and all that old boy horse manure. But I don’t like what I see around the jail. Brad is Brad. He got a lucky break with that murder case in 89 which was mostly your work. I don’t know why you didn’t take credit for it. On the other hand, he hasn’t done anything to really piss folks off so he gets reelected. You know how I feel. Brad’s an ass. A horse’s ass."

"Yeah, I think most people know that."

"But he keeps things under control and he does have a certain slick charm. It would be good to have you back. Hell, there aren’t too many like you. You look. . . ." She placed her hand on his jaw, turned him to her, and examined his face the way an artist might.

"Calder, I think you’re the best looking man I have ever known." He considered it quite a compliment since June had known more than a few men.

She dropped her hand from his face and pointed at the floor. He looked down as she asked, "Anyways, what do you think of my boots."

"Trash, pure trash June." The boots were audacious and drew the type of attention to her long legs that a respectable woman would not want.

"Ain’t they cool? They are all hand tooled and inlaid with the American Flag. Cost me over five hundred dollars."

"I didn’t know you were patriotic."

"Of course I am."

He learned something whenever he talked to June. Generally it just wasn’t anything he wanted to know.

Then the door to room 101 opened and the gurney rolled into the hall. June reached out and stopped the orderly. Gently, she lifted the sheet and looked down at her dead husband. Lust, hate, anger, showed on her face the moment she felt them, and he believed she’d be shocked to know that simple fact about herself. However, looking at her dead husband, June was unreadable.

She kissed her fingertips, put that kiss on the lips of the dead man, dropped the sheet, and motioned the orderly to continue down the hall. She followed them.

Call sat still for a moment, breathing, and thinking. He watched Slim go into his father’s room. After a few more minutes he followed and sat by the bed and watched as the nurse took readings and measurements.
Slim bent over the bed and her green cotton pants pulled taut across her buttocks. There weren’t too many backsides like that, not in that town. He knew big women weren’t lusted after or at least few men admitted to lusting for big women, but she was all right.

Personally, he valued enthusiasm over beauty.

Call remembered Slim as limber for a big woman and making love to her had been an experience full of strange, soft, wet pleasures.

He asked, "How’s he doing?"

"Sleeping, finally." Slim pulled up the sheet and walked to the foot of the bed to mark the chart. Then with a hearty sigh, she slid down into a chair, reached over to the night stand, poured two glasses of water from the brown plastic pitcher, and handed him one. Both took a drink.
She said, "That was something about June’s husband. Man, she hated him."

"Why do you say that?"

"The way she looked at him on the gurney. Most people feel something when a person dies. I don’t know. There was no grief. Nothing."

"That’s not June."

"What do you know? You love her. You always did. You wouldn’t believe who she’s sleeping with."

"I didn’t know you disliked her."

"I don’t. She gave Jose money to start his business after every bank in town turned us down. Even Rodney Anderson, over at Key Bank, wouldn’t okay our loan." She stopped talking and pointed at him. "You remember Rodney. We went to school with him. Then when things took off at the restaurant, June sold back her share." Slim took another drink of water, reached out and patted his knee, then said, "June’s crazy, Call. You know that. She’s got some odd ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong. You don’t want to cross her."

They sat in the eerie light of the hospital room, drinking water, listening to his father rock back and forth in his sleep and whimper, "Oh, boy." Call winced at the cry. Later, decisions would have to be reached about his father, his mother, the farm, the job Brad offered, and June, always June.

However at that moment, he enjoyed the silent company of Slim now the unit was quiet and June’s husband was dead and hauled off to Foreman’s Funeral Parlor where the coroner would search for a cause of death. In stillness and relative solitude, Call waited for the doctor. At six o’clock, the doctor opened the door, asked about his father, and told him what tests they would perform over the day. Then he said he was going up two floors to check in on his mother.

Call said, "If you don’t think you’ll need me, I have some business to take care of. I’ll be back later today."

"There really isn’t anything you can do right now, but I’d like to talk to you about your father’s test results. Your mother said I was not to mention Gerald Larsen to her." The doctor smiled at an old woman’s whim.

While Slim and the doctor talked, Call patted his Dad’s hand. His father opened his eyes looked around as if he was surprised.

"Call, what are you doing here?"

"Dad, we talked last night, don’t you remember?"

"Of course. You finally came home for Thanksgiving?"

"Right?"

"You going to take me home now? We’ll have to get the turkey in the oven."

"I’ll take care of the turkey. They are going to run some tests and I’ll see you tonight."

"Did they tell you about your mother?"

"Yeah, Dad they did."

"She started making decisions. Then she would watch those musicals on video all day long. I had to put a stop to it."

"We’ll talk about it later."

"Everything is fine. I fixed it with Rene. She’ll be home today making the pies. There’s nothing to talk about."

As his father drifted off to sleep, Slim gave him a weary smile, and Call left the room.

He still had no clear idea of what had happened between his parents to land them both in the hospital. A forest ranger found him in fishing on the banks of Flathead Lake and told Call there had been some sort of accident involving his parents and they were both in the hospital. That was the most lucid explanation he had received.

Calder walked out of the hospital into the chill of an early summer morning just as Brad pulled up in his new white Chevy Tahoe with the Sheriff’s logo on the side.

Love is a Killer. Prolouge, in which a confession is made, sex is exchanged and June finds her true love.

Prologue
June 1973

Calder Larsen stopped attending church the first Sunday of June 1973. Until then it hadn’t mattered. He never believed in the church anyway. He went to please his father, and because his Grandma Mary asked him to drive her in the "49" Chevy coupe. He didn’t mind, he liked sitting next to his Grandma and listening to the old hymns: "I Thank Thee Oh God for a Prophet," "Come, Come Yea Saints," "The Spirit of God Like a Fire," "I know that my Redeemer Lives," and the other good Mormon hymns they sang on Sunday.

That Sunday’s service started with a hymn, a prayer and invitation for the members to share their testimonies. Grandma Mary walked to the front of the church, still steady at ninety-two, and leaned against the oak pulpit. She spoke of her faith and her mother and grandfather who left their English village and set up homes and farms on the Utah-Idaho border.

She said, "Because of his testimony, my grandfather gave up his home in England to journey to America. They landed in New Orleans and took a steam boat to St. Louis. Cholera broke out, and his wife and firstborn son were the first to die, but he never lost his faith."

A little boy in the front row flicked a spit wad at Call. It missed. As was always the case during Sacrament Meeting, the young children caused mischief. The boy hit him with another. Call put aside the dignity of his seventeen years, and flicked the wet paper back at the six-year-old.

His grandmother paused to collect her thoughts, as was her way. She leaned forward at the pulpit and continued. "At Council Bluffs he and his two daughters joined a handcart company to cross the plains. They were too poor to buy a wagon with oxen. They made a two wheeled handcart from castoff wood and loaded on their possessions and pulled it across the plains. My mother walked most of those miles because her father was too sick and weak to pull her on that rickety cart. They walked thirteen hundred miles to Salt Lake City. Papa buried one daughter on that trip and entered the Utah Valley in the fall of 1859 with my mother who was eight years old. He built a one room log house and lived there with his new wife and her sister, Aunt Maggie. There was never enough food and many nights they ate boiled crow and service berries. They sacrificed everything for their beliefs. I love this church and I know as surely as my grandfather knew, that it is true. I am the last leaf on our tree. All my family is gone. In the temple we are promised that we will live with our families forever. This is a great promise and I am here to say I know it is true."

Whenever he listened to that story, and he had heard it many times before, Call almost — almost — believed. He had grown up listening to the stories of his great aunts and uncles and grandparents about the sacrifices they made for a faith that carried them across the sea and plains to settle a rough land of sage and sky. Faith kept them rooted and they built homes and bred large families and believed in a richer future. It was always going to be better.

His grandmother sat and he patted her hand. A few more of the older women got up and talked about their families. Gwen Parker got up and read a poem about her pioneer grandfather that she’d written and shared with her quilting group a week earlier.

Then, across the aisle from him, Rodney Anderson stood up and walked to the pulpit. For some reason, it angered Call to see him take those four steps to the stand. Rodney’s mother gave birth to him at forty-six and after that the other five Anderson kids didn’t exist. He was skinny with thick glasses, and wore his religion like a red fur coat. He stood at the pulpit, shaking and white.

"Satan lived with us in the pre-existence and knows all our weakness. He knows mine." Rodney clasped his hands in front of him and looked down.


With a sudden jerk, he looked up at the ward, and said loudly, "He tempted me."
Rodney hesitated and bowed his head so low the microphone scarcely picked up his words when he said, "I was led to the waters of hell. I had my lips on those cold waters and was ready to drink and sink down into sin. By a miracle I was saved." Rodney began to cry in big heaving gulps and shakes.

Grandma Mary leaned over and said to Call, "What’s that boy saying? I can’t hear him."

"I don’t know. Something about the devil."

"Well, Bishop Benson should stop him. No one wants to hear that."

It was quiet with everyone leaning forward waiting for the next confession. The bishop stood up. Rodney looked over his shoulder, and then turned back to the congregation. His eyes were wide, eyebrows raised above the rims of his glasses.
His voice broke and came out high and squeaky, "The devil is here!" His arm swung in a wide arc with a finger pointing to June Jackson, who sat by herself on the last bench. Heads turned and starchy whispers spread through the congregation. The bishop, a large strong man, rushed to the pulpit and gathered Rodney in his arms. Together they walked out of the chapel, the older man with his arm around the younger.

Call had known June since they were kids. She was bad. It had been her idea to leave a dead fish in Sister Benson’s mailbox after the woman yelled at them for throwing rocks into cowpies and splashing shit on themselves; it had been her idea to borrow her father’s girly magazines and let Call and his friends look at them; it had been her idea to steal wine in seventh grade and skip school to get drunk and float the canal in an old inner tube. But her badness was always the same, nothing mean, it was always fun. Like the time in third grade when June gave him two dollars for showing her what was between his legs and earned one back by showing Call the same.

After the bishop and Rodney left the chapel, the ward sat in silence. Some looked at June. Others flipped the pages of their leather-bound bibles. When it became obvious the service was over, the chorister stood up, and the organist began to play the prelude music to "I Stand All Amazed." It was then June stood, with as much dignity as a seventeen-year-old girl could gather, and walked out the side door. Call followed.

She was sitting on the bottom step of the side stairs, humming and watching an ant carry a crumb of bread. He sat by her and noticed how her chest was flushed a deep pink. With each breath the mole on her left breast moved up over the lace of her dress and then sank back down.

"I was going to leave, but I love that song. I’ll leave when it’s over. Call, tell Grandma Mary I liked her testimony."

"What happened back there?"

June moved her shoulders up and let them drop in a grand gesture. The singing swelled as the congregation moved to the chorus and she sang along in her pure alto. "I stand all amazed at the love Jesus offers me. She hummed the rest until the last chorus and sang, "Oh, it is wonderful that he should care enough to die for me. Oh, it is wonderful. Wonderful to me."

She stood up and brushed down her short flowered dress. The dress was tight under her breasts with a deep scooped neckline and puffy sleeves trimmed in lace. She looked so beautiful to Call.

Call asked, "Are you going to tell me what that was about?"

"You don’t like that song?"

"I hadn’t thought about it?"


"I love it."

"Why?"

"What a great love song. ‘Oh, it is wonderful, that he should care for me enough to die for me. Oh, it is wonderful to me.’ "

"I don’t think it’s about love at all. I think it’s about death."

"Maybe. So are you here to be tempted? Do you want me to lead you down to those cold deep waters of hell?" She laughed and pulled at her sleeve.

"I was just curious with what happened between you and that dick, Rodney?"

"Good hell." She smiled at him. "You know, I have some beer at the house."

It beat church, he took her arm, and they walked the mile to her house in silence.
June lived with her father in a fine old house on a bluff. The New York canal, named by the east coast investors that built the canal in the early 1900's ran in front of it. Poplars lined the gravel road that curved upwards to the old sandstone farmhouse. June’s dad was old, seventy-six. Lo and June lived alone, but that Sunday he was at some cattle sale in Montana looking for a range bull.
The house was dark and cool, smelled of lilacs and polished wood. He used to like to visit, and watch Lo play chess with his cousin, Woody, who had lost most of his eyesight drinking wood alcohol during Prohibition.

"Sit down, I’m going to change."

Call walked to the piano and studied the picture that hung on the wall surrounded by a heavy gilt frame of entwining roses and leaves, and grapes and vines. In a few places the gold gilt was cracked and beginning to peel. The print was of a sleeping woman enveloped in sheer orange silk that drew attention to the line of her flank, but what attracted him was not the nipple that showed through the transparent tunic, or the lovely face, but the smooth white skin of the woman’s upper arm.
He reached out and ran his finger over the high polish of the ebony piano and wondered who was keeping house for Lo. June came out of the bedroom wearing cut off Levi’s that hung loose on her hips and white T-shirt that showed the round outlines of her breasts.

"Did Lo buy this?" He pointed to the picture.

"I don’t know it’s always been here. It’s called "Flaming June" by some painter named Frederic Leighton. I hate it. It’s beautiful and all, but there she is asleep with her tit showing and its like look, but don’t fuck. It is so damn languid. "

"Did Lo name you because of it?"

"Hell, no. He named me June because I was born on the first of June. You knew that. Lo thought it would help him remember my birthday."

"Does it?"

"No. Forgets it half the time, even if I remind him."

She waved him into the kitchen where she took a six pack of beer from the fridge. They left by the back door, stepping on the creaky wooden steps together.

Snowball bushes and lilacs hovered on the edges of the house, springing up in front of windows and draping down in clumps of flowers.

The blooms were starting to fade and scatter to the ground like confetti. June stopped by a lilac bush with deep purple clusters of flowers, placed the six-pack on the ground. She took out a pocket knife, cut off several branches, and held them in one arm while she picked up the beer.

They left the yard by the old wire gate and walked through the orchard.
Wind came off the desert, and sent pink and white petals into their hair. Both tossed their heads to shake them loose. Carefully he reached out and brushed a few remaining apple blossoms away from her hair. She looked over her shoulder and smiled so he let his hand move down her back, his knuckles
tapped down her spine until she skipped ahead of him.

They walked across the back pasture to an old plank bridge that spanned an irrigation ditch where they stopped. While he waited, June took two beers, gave him one, and plunged the rest beneath the current, hooking them against a rock at the bottom of the ditch.

She sat on the plank and let her feet dip into the water.

"Damn it’s cold."

Call stood there, watching and not knowing what to say.

It was the summer after their senior year, and June had ignored him since last fall when she had started sleeping with Stewart. She finished the beer by taking long hard swallows. Her mannerisms reminded Call of her father, although he did not mention it.

With the flowers still in her arms, June led him to a place where two ditches came together and formed a shelter of pasture grass and clover.

Call had not gone there with her since fifth grade, when they buried her dead turtle in a matchbox lined with gray silk she cut from inside of her dad’s Sunday suit. Trouble had come from the hole in the lining of the suit jacket, but not much. Lo only yelled a little and finally felt bad about that, and ended up taking him and June to Arctic Circle for root beer floats.

A white cross marked a mound of dirt covered with a scruff of grass, wilted dandelions, and pansies. Kneeling, she swept away the dead flowers and arranged the lilacs and snowballs on the grave. The cross had the word Trixie written in uneven letters.

She said, "You remember Trixie? She was fifteen when she died. That’s old for a dog. Dad won’t let me get another. Says I’m off to college and he doesn’t have time to take care of it."

June got two more beers and they drank them. It went to his head and he had to lie down and rest as the sun poured over him. June lay next to him and they watched the clouds.

"Do you want to hear about Rodney?"

"No. I don’t care anymore. It was just an excuse to get out of church."

"I’ll tell you."

"I don’t care."

"Do you want another beer?"

"Sure."

June got up and went for the beer. Call turned his head and watched her. When she leaned over to take the beer from the ditch, he could see the white flesh of her bottom. June turned and walked toward him, her breasts moving softly up and down with each step. He watched until she sat next to him, legs spread wide, a rich warm smell came from her.

"Here." She handed him a beer and slid to the grass with her arms stretched out behind her head—bare feet pointed.

"Let me tell you about Rodney?"

"Sure, June. Tell me about Rodney." He had let June ignore him so he didn’t have to hear about her boyfriends. Only the night before, after drinking with his friends, he had seen June parked with some guy. In his bed, Call had dreamed of her. Even in his dream things didn’t go the way he wanted, which didn’t seem right.

"Calder, you know how much I hate him."

"We all hate him."

"No, I mean I really hate him."

"Since fifth grade when he showed everyone your spelling score."

"I’m not stupid."

"You’re not stupid."

"I just can’t spell. That does not make a person stupid."

"No, June it doesn’t."

"Do you think I’m stupid?"

"No."

"Well, I’m not. So anyways, let me tell you about Rodney. What a pussy. "

June sat up and tipped the beer to her lips and killed it. She sat the empty next to her before placing a hand over her mouth and burping.

"Sorry," and added. " I never liked Rodney. He has that holier than thou attitude. You know it’s got nothing to do with what he feels. Little fucker."

"Okay, June." She was getting wound up, was always getting wound up about one thing or another. However, a good drowsy feeling had come over him and he was willing to listen to almost anything.

"Kate and I were out smoking pot. You know how much Kate loves to smoke pot. It’s just crazy. And you know how mad it makes Brad. Don’t tell him. He always thinks it’s my fault and he hates me anyways. That stuff with his mother and Lo. Hell, that was years ago."

"You hate him."

"Brad’s a bully." While she talked, June ripped up handfuls of clover and searched
through them for lucky four leafs. She dropped the spent piles between them and the smell of clover and dirt drifted toward him. "So we’re sitting on the canal bank, Kate and me, over by the big cottonwood, smoking pot and skipping rocks. I had four, but Kate beat me with seven. Can you believe that? Seven skips. Then Rodney comes over and delivers a sermon or something about our wickedness and the general evil of the world and all sorts of horseshit. Kate leaves, she is going to meet Brad, and she’s all paranoid about that. Don’t tell him."

"I won’t."

"Please."

"I won’t tell him."

"Good." She brushed back his hair and pulled a dandelion leaf from it. "Anyways, I’m sitting there with Rodney taking the last hits off the joint and I ask him if he wants some. I think he’s going to say no, but he takes it. I show him what to do and he takes the biggest hit I ever seen. I have another joint and I take it out. He smokes it too. I’m pretty wasted. But, I can see and everything. You know how I get sometimes when I get high and can’t see. I am not laughing because you know when I’m high and laugh, I pee myself. That’s why I don’t smoke pot very often."
She paused and held up a four-leaf clover, smiling.

"Then this weird thing happened. Rodney’s eyes start to wander. They’re off in two completely different directions. One is looking toward your house and another is looking at the Big Butte. I think that’s called wall-eyed. Hell, I think that’s what dad calls it, and then Rodney starts to giggle."

She stopped to make sure he was listening and grabbed two handfuls of clover and grass and dropped them into a growing mound between their bodies.
"Call, then I start to think about that fucking spelling test. I can’t stop thinking about it. Then I get pissed, really pissed. Then I start to think about how he walks."

"What about the way he walks? I can’t see why that should bother you."

"It does. Have you watched him? I hate it. Rodney walks on the balls of his feet and sort of bounces. It’s not even walking the way a normal person would do it. He walks like he has a corn cob up his ass."

"You know. You’re right." He finished his third beer and wished June had brought more.

"So I’m sitting there pretty high and feeling really pissed off about the spelling test and how he walks." June reached into her shirt pocket and pulled out a joint and a book of matches, which he lights as she continues to talk.

"And did you know he can’t skip rocks? Now what in the hell kind of person can’t skip rocks?"

"An asshole, June."

"Yeah. So I sucked his dick!"

"You what?"

"Do you know something?"

At the moment, Call didn’t know anything, but that June had placed her mouth around Rodney Anderson’s dick. He had never even kissed her. He took an enormous hit from the joint.

June tapped his shoulder to get his attention. She said, "And do you know what."

"No, what?" Call took another hit.

"Well, I’ll tell you. There is nothing worse to look at than an ugly guy having an orgasm! That look on his face, fuck, that was worth it. And he squealed like a pig. It was really gross."

He took another hit and saw that he smoked half and asked, "Why did you do that?"

She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

"God, June. Why do you do stuff like that? Stewart is going to find out. Everyone is going to know."

"I can’t help myself."

Call couldn’t help what he did next. He rolled onto her. The only fight she put up was to hold him closer and tighter than he’d ever been held. While he knew about his own arousal, the quickness of her responses surprised him. And she was as noisy in love as any other time. And when she showed him how to bring her to an orgasm she began her oh baby’s. Oh, baby, oh baby, baby, baby. Oh, baby. The last one came out in one long whimper.

At sunset the clumsiness of it being his first time had worn off and they forced one more performance from themselves. Then June spoiled the perfection of the day when she said. "Oh, baby. I love you!"