The Ford Ranger pickup, its dirty green paint gleaming dully under the brassy sun, was angled across the road, blocking it, just west of John T. Roebuck’s ranch gate. Two men had been sitting inside; they got out, almost leisurely, as Messenger approached. Waiting for me, he thought. That damn telltale dust.
There was no way around the pickup, even if he’d had the inclination to try; the earth on both sides of the road was crumbling soft, as ensnaring as beach sand. He slowed, watching the men stand together at the driver’s door, arms folded, one booted foot each flattened back against the hot metal. Two peas in a pod: lean, weathered, wearing side-slanted cowboy hats, faded jeans, scuffed and manure-stained boots. The only difference between them, at a distance, was that one stood a few inches taller, wore a bandit’s droopy mustache the same tawny color as the desert landscape. Inside the truck, a long-barreled rifle with a telescopic sight was conspicuously visible.
He knew he ought to feel at least some anxiety, but he was perfectly calm. Funny. If this were the city a week ago, and he was about to be braced by a couple of tough-looking types, he would probably have peed in his pants. Today, here, even though it was their turf, he felt equal to the confrontation. Maybe the sense of courage had to do with his early-morning thoughts about risks and edges. Well, one thing for sure: Just how sharp this edge turned out to be depended as much on him as it did on the two cowboys.
He drew a couple of deep, slow breaths. Then he set the parking brake, shut off the engine, and eased himself free of the sticky leather seat — keeping his movements deliberate, the way the men had. He stood for a few seconds, measuring them, before he closed the door and walked forward.
The mustached one said, “Mr. Jim Messenger,” and spat into the grit a few inches from Messenger’s right foot. “He don’t look like much, does he, Tom?”
“Sure don’t,” the other one agreed. He was a few years older, around forty. The stubble on his cheeks was flecked with gray. “Hardly seems worth all the fuss.”
“Reckon he’d break easy?”
“Oh, sure. Neither of us’d even work up a sweat.”
“How about that, boy?” the mustached one said to Messenger. “You figure you’d be easy to break?”
“Not as easy as you think.”
“By God, Tom, he’s got sand in him after all.”
“Might be we let some of it out.”
Messenger said, “Tom Spears, right? And you’d be Joe Hanratty.”
That stirred them a little. They exchanged a quick look. “How in hell’d you know that?” the mustached one, Hanratty, demanded.
“Lucky guess.”
Spears did the spitting this time. The gob spattered against the toe of Messenger’s hiking boot; he didn’t move his foot.
“It’s too hot to play games,” he said evenly. “Why don’t you just say what you’re here to say and get it over with?”
Another shared glance. They didn’t like the way he was behaving. They’d thought they could intimidate him, and now that he’d refused to let it happen they weren’t sure what to do next.
Hanratty was the leader; he made up his mind first. He shoved off the Ford, crowded up close with his face a few inches from Messenger’s, and poked him in the chest with a callused forefinger. Messenger didn’t move, didn’t react except to start breathing through his mouth. Hanratty’s breath smelled sourly of cigarettes and beer.
“I don’t like you messing around my sister, you hear?”
“I’m not messing with her. I talked to her while she served me breakfast this morning.”
“That ain’t all you did. Made a date with her for four o’clock this afternoon.”
“She tell you that?”
“She didn’t have to tell me. Ain’t nothing you do in Beulah, city boy, that’s a secret more than five minutes.”
“I know it. But I’m not looking to keep secrets. Not from anybody, including you and your friend here.”
“I don’t want you messing with Lynette.”
“I offered to buy her a beer, that’s all.”
“Yeah. What do you get in return?”
“Not what you’re thinking. I don’t have any romantic interest in your sister.”
“Why not?” Spears said. “Ain’t she good enough for you?”
Messenger said, “Talk, that’s all I want with her.”
“Talk about Dave Roebuck,” Hanratty said harshly. “She don’t have anything to say about that pile of shit.”
“She was seeing him. She broke up with him not long before he was killed.”
“So what?”
“I’d like to know why.”
“None of your goddamn business.”
“Something must have happened between them. You had a fight with Roebuck about it.”
“Fuckin’ outsider — it’s none of your business! He’s dead and damn straight good riddance. Anna did us all a favor, blowing his head off.”
“Did he hurt Lynette in some way, Joe?”
The question earned him another poke in the chest, hard enough this time to make him wince. “Joe to my friends. Mr. Hanratty to you. Ask about Roebuck one more time, I’ll knock you on your ass. Bother Lynette and I’ll kick your ass until it’s purple. Keep poking your nose in where it ain’t wanted and I’ll rip it off your face. You hear what I’m saying?”
“I hear.”
“You believe it?”
I believe you’re another one who’s hiding something.
“Well? You want that kind of trouble, city boy?”
“Not particularly.”
“Not particularly, he says. Not particularly.”
“Ain’t got so much sand at that,” Spears said. “Good thing for him he don’t.”
“Damn good thing,” Hanratty said. His eyes raked Messenger’s face; then he snapped, “Just remember what you been told,” and turned on his heel and stalked around to the pickup’s passenger side.
Spears grinned, aimed another gob of spit onto Messenger’s boot. When Messenger didn’t move Spears lost the grin, slid in under the wheel, and slammed the door. The starter ground, gears clashed; the Ford bucked away, spewing dust, and then turned in through John T.’s gate.
Messenger had been holding his hands tight against his sides; he lifted them, extended them palms down. Steady. Not even the hint of a tremor.
Test passed. The first edge hadn’t been very sharp at all.
13
He had just come out of the Western apparel shop on Main, wearing his new wide belt with its oblong Nevada buckle — not too big, not too fancy — when he spotted Maria Hoxie. She was maneuvering the Jeep wagon he’d seen at the parsonage into a space across the street. When she got out and headed west in no hurry, he jaywalked across at an intercepting angle. Before he reached her she entered one of the storefronts: All-Rite Pharmacy.
He followed her inside. It was an old-fashioned drugstore, the kind with a soda fountain along one wall — among the last of an endangered species, doomed to eventual extinction as surely as the great auk and the Great American Dream. Maria was the only customer; she had gone into the cosmetics section and was examining a bottle of something the color of mud. She looked flushed, a little wilted, her black hair windblown and sweat-damp at the temples. Preoccupied, too. She kept nibbling at her lower lip.
“Hello, Maria. Remember me?”
He hadn’t meant to startle her, any more today than in the church cemetery on Tuesday; but she reacted in the same sort of defensive fashion — wheeling, tensing, raising the bottle as if to throw it. Even when she recognized him it took her a few seconds to relax. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, “the Messenger.” She bit her lip again; her black-eyed gaze was almost accusing. “What do you want?”
“Nothing much. I just thought I’d say hello.”