You couldn’t blame the computer; it probably did the list of three names in alphabetical order. The first name on the list was Brian Connally-Turk.
6
In 1939, Lucian Connally had been told by his mother to sweep the front porch of their dry and dusty ranch house. He had refused and, when asked what it was that he intended to do, he had replied, “Go to China.” Which he did.
Lucian didn’t like family.
After finishing Army Air Corps flight school in California, he immediately joined the American Volunteer Group, a collection of a hundred U.S. military pilots released from enlistment so that they might serve as mercenaries in the lend-lease born, fledgling Chinese Nationalist Air Force. Lucian’s political zeal was reinforced by the $750 a month salary and by the $500 a head bonus promised by the Chinese for every Japanese plane shot down. Lucian found he had a knack for such activities and, by the time he left China on August 6, 1941, he had accumulated quite a little nest egg. A little over a year later he returned to the Pacific on the aircraft carrier Hornet and, in a cumbersome B-25, bombed Tokyo, crashed into the Yellow Sea, and was captured by the Japanese and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Lucian didn’t like Japs.
There was a sun-yellowed, decomposing circular in an intricate gold frame on the wall of private suite number 32 at the Durant Home of Assisted Living. Below the grainy photograph of five men in flight jackets and the exotic print was the translation, “The cruel, inhuman, and beastlike American pilots who, in a bold intrusion of the holy territory of the Empire on April 18, 1942, dropped incendiaries and bombs on nonmilitary hospitals, schools, and private houses, and even dive-strafed playing school children, were captured, courtmartialed, and severely punished according to military law.” Two of the men had been ushered outside immediately following the mock trial and summarily executed; the remaining three survived forty months of torture and starvation. Lucian was the short one in the middle with the cocky look on his face, who was smiling like hell.
After the war, Lucian had drifted back to Wyoming and then back to Absaroka County. He then drifted into being sheriff on the strength of his being the toughest piece of gristle in four states. This had been tested when Lucian had had his right leg almost blown off by Basque bootleggers back in the midfifties.
Lucian didn’t like Basquos.
He had tied the strap from an 03 Springfield he carried in the backseat of his Nash Ambassador around the exploded leg and drove himself back to Durant from Jim Creek Hill, thirty-two miles. They took the leg.
Lucian didn’t like sawbones.
They say the subzero temperatures that night saved his life, but I knew better. His more than a quarter century of sheriffing had been nothing short of epic, and his reputation in the Equality State was ferocious. Simply stated, he was the most highly decorated, retired law enforcement official in the country. “How’s them big titties on that Eye-talian deputy of yours?”
He was also a colossal pervert.
I kept my finger on the bishop and looked up at him. “Lucian.. ”
“Just askin’.” It was one of his favorite tactics, shocking me out of any sense of concentration. This might be why I had not won a chess game since the spring of 1998. I slid the bishop against the border as he looked at me through his bushy eyebrows. “What’s goin’ on?”
I settled back in the horsehide wing chair and took in the site of the losing battle. Lucian had been allowed to bring his own furnishings to the “old folks home” as he called it, and the jarring effect of the genuine western antiques in the sterile environment was unsettling. I had been coming here and playing chess with Lucian since he had moved in eight years ago. I never missed a Tuesday for fear that Lucian might lose some of his faculties and, in the eight years, he had not lost one iota. I, on the other hand, was sinking fast. “Nothing, why do you ask?”
He moved. “You ain’t said shit since you got here.”
I looked at the board. “I’m trying to concentrate.”
“Ain’t gonna do you no good, I’m jus’ gonna spank yer ass again, anyway.” He dug a finger in his ear, examined the wax on his pinkie, and wiped it on the faded blue-jean flap at the end of his stump. “I can’t believe you didn’t bring any beer.”
I couldn’t believe it either. For almost a decade I had been sneaking beer and Bryer’s blackberry brandy in to Lucian on Tuesday nights. “I need to talk to you about some stuff.”
“I figured as much, I’m just waitin’ for you to start.” He moved. “Important stuff?”
“Sheriff stuff.”
“Oh, that shit.” He watched me move a knight out to the slaughter and slowly shook his head. “Well, let’s talk it out and get it over with so I can get at least one decent game tonight.”
“It’s about your great-nephew.”
He looked up. “What’d he do now?”
“Beat on Jules Belden.”
His hands stayed still. “How bad?”
“Bad enough.”
He leaned back in his own chair, readjusting his weight and looking at his reflection in the dark surface of the sliding glass door behind me. He was a handsome old booger, movie starish like the judge, but in a more rugged way. The spiderweb wrinkles spread out from the corners of his eyes to his unreceding hairline and the trim landing strip of platinum white hair. He lacked the aesthetic of the judge; everything on him was square, even his flattop haircut, which I’m sure hadn’t changed since Roosevelt had been in office. His eyes were the darkest brown I had ever seen, the black of the pupils seemed to blend into the mahogany surrounding them. I’m sure they were swallowing the darkness outside and in. Lucian didn’t have any children of his own, and the responsibility of carrying the line into perpetuity rested solely with Turk. He was not completely satisfied with this turn of events, and the set of his jaw made that fact clear. “You wanna drink?”
“In case you’ve forgotten, after reminding me all these times, I didn’t bring anything.”
He scratched the slight stubble on his jaw with fingernails that had been cut down to the cuticles. “Well, thank Christ I don’t depend on you for much.” He pointed to the corner cupboard. “There’s a bottle of bourbon behind the star quilt on the bottom shelf.”
I got up and retrieved the bottle, Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve, nothing but the finest at the Durant Home of Assisted Living. I brought the three-quarters of a bottle over. “You got any glasses?”
“What, you too good to drink out ’a the bottle?” I handed it to him and watched as he took a slug and then with a great deal of animation wiped off the mouth of the bottle with a flannel shirtsleeve I was sure hadn’t been changed in a week.
“Thanks.” I didn’t like bourbon, as a general rule, but I sure liked this. I couldn’t even describe the number of smooth buttery tastes in my mouth, but I felt like I should chew. The fire in my throat felt cleansing, like part of a scorched-earth policy.
“Jules in custody at the time?”
“Yep.”
“Gonna press charges?” I took another sip and handed the bottle back to him, unwiped.
“Mighty damn liberal with my bourbon, for a man that didn’t bring me a thing to drink this week.” I sat, and he returned to looking out the glass doors. I wondered at the vitality of the man. Aristotle said that some minds are not vases to be filled, but fires to be lit. Excluding the bourbon, Lucian had been lit for a long time, and the flying tiger’s eyes still burned very bright. “If I had two good legs, I’d go out and kick that little son of a bitch’s ass myself.” The finger pointed at me this time. “You gonna handle this yourself?”
“I suppose so.”
He settled farther back in his chair. It was starting to sound like a contract hit. He sniffed, worked his jaw a little, and took another slug. “What you want from me?”
“Formal absolution.”