Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories (8 page)

She has always enjoyed pushing buttons; I think she got it from her mother, who was always quick to punch the ones in elevators. She likes gadgets—phones, cameras, computers—anything with buttons.

I said nothing as she adjusted the heater higher and turned the louvers in the vent toward herself, closing her eyes and savoring the warmth. 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 ways of criminals and emotionally disturbed people. “No.”

She’d just arrived from Philadelphia, and we were driving down from the Billings airport to the town proper on the winding Zimmerman Trail. It was close to Christmas, and my
daughter needed things. Cady pulled a few strands of strawberry blond hair from her face with a bright grin. “So . . . I’ll ask again, what do you want for the holidays?”

“I don’t need anything.”

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

I navigated the intersection at Grand and Twenty-seventh Street. “I’d rather you saved your money.” I slowed the truck and watched the first snowflakes drift innocently down from the darkened sky, 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.

Cady’s clear, frank, gray eyes traveled across the defrosting windshield in my direction with a frost of their own. “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—with 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 sleeve of her Burberry coat 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 thingamajiggie.”

“The NOAA radio?”

She reinforced the thought by pointing at me with the finger that was smudged with the lip gloss residue.

She was right—the thing had died. Everyone on the high plains has one—they 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 the counter, at which point it had stopped receiving the local alerts. I had finalized its demise with a Phillips screwdriver, when I had attempted 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 out of the habit of listening to it after Henry alerted me to the fact that I had a tendency to leave it on for hours at a time. 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, which way the wind blew.

“I guess I do, then.”

Excited, she nudged forward on the truck seat. “Where do you buy them?”

“Radio Shack.”

“Where’s Radio Shack?”

“The mall.”

Three slaps.

*   *   *

I’d ended up successfully avoiding the Rimrock Mall by suggesting that we go to one of the big-box stores instead. I parked the Bullet beside a light post in the parking lot of the Best Buy. Cady slipped out the passenger side as I opened the suicide door and let Dog out 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 across the way. What I really needed was to get the oil changed in my truck—I was a good four hundred miles over.

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

I looked at her as she watched Dog. With her eyes glistening 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. “You . . .” I bit the vapor escaping from my lungs along with my words.

She looked up at me. “What 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 me. She squirmed her way into the crook and draped my arm over her shoulder. “I miss her, too.”

“I know you do.”

“But 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 Vic’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 alone 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 muzzle jealously 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 I would appreciate it if you would brighten your mood and come in and help me carry in a little while. All right?”

Dog and I watched her twirl her black greatcoat, fling her cha-cha fun fur, tinsel-threaded 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 him. “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. I really didn’t want to go 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. Martha 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 flakes clinging to the mirror and blocking my inspection just enough so that I could stand the view, I gave the hard eye to the man who had been left tackle of the almost-national-champion University of Southern California Trojans, to the First Division Marine investigator, and to the man who was now 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.

*   *   *

The parking lot was crowded near the entrance of the electronics store, with the lights spilling from the whooshing pneumatic doors and the trumpeting of classic holiday music 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 before Christmas.

I ambled through the empty handicapped spots and around a forest-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 T
OYS FOR
T
OTS
.

As an inactive Marine—because there is no such thing as an ex-Marine—I was intimate with the program; in fact, I had
manned the bin in front of Buell’s hardware store myself on numerous Christmases back home in Durant.

The charity had been started by Marine reservist Major Will Hendricks back in ’47 when his wife couldn’t find an organization that would give a doll that she had made to a needy child. Along with being a Marine reservist, Hendricks had also been a director of public relations for Warner Brothers and had used his considerable influence to place bins to collect used toys outside movie theaters.

Decades later, when giving out hand-me-downs had become controversial, collections had been switched to include only new toys. 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 see the small cross above the arm bands. He dipped his head a little, going so far as to loosen the 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. “Ensign 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 having put nothing in the box, they ducked aside 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 midtwenties. “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 that the doors, which continued to open and slide shut, were having on the snow. “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 that was only three kilometers from North Vietnam. The site of numerous battles, it was known to most Marines 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-f bin. “You have family inside?”

“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 me 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.”

I glanced down at the service bars and on his chest, the Purple Heart visible just under the sling.

“He says those don’t count.” He rearranged the injured arm and placed the other hand in his pants pocket. “I get the feeling that he thinks I’m some kind of . . . I don’t know.”