suddenly turned a sharp right and went up along side the town park and around the top and over to the Church. The gravel parking lot was marked off with yellow crime scene tape, as were the steps up to the front doors. Detective Bender and the county fire chief’s cars were parked across the curb directly in front. A deputy was leaning against Bender’s grill and pushed off to stand as Smoke pulled up along side.
I rolled down my window so Smoke could talk past me.
“All right if we go in?” he asked.
“‘Fraid not, Smoke. They’re dusting for prints and vacuuming up lint right now?”
I looked up at the tall steeple and took in what I’d always considered the most elegant church I had ever seen. It was blindingly white, and was built by our Norwegian settlers with Scandian craftsmanship. Its stained glass windows and the furnishings, including the pews and pipe organ were brought over from the Old Country.
Smoke thought over the deputy’s reply, shook his head, and pulled away.
“Well,” he said, turning back towards my place, “at least they didn’t burn down the church too.”
I considered this.
“Everything’s strange about this, Smoke.” I said. “They killed Donny after fire bombing MacAvity’s. What’s the connection?”
“I don’t have a clue, Pardner.”
We rounded the park.
He continued. “Donny didn’t drink and never came into the Pub to visit. He pretty much stayed to himself when he wasn’t being a preacher man. He watched sports with some of the men on his big screen, played the guitar with some of the local jazz buffs, shot hoops, jogged, was married,” he paused, “and was pretty much a typical Lutheran guy.“
“And MacAvity’s and he were not on the same page,” I said.
“Not at all. Except they were both for women being pastors and gays being people. But I remember when he came here. He implied in his first sermon that Butte and Shiela’s living together out of wedlock was not very cool.”
“I remember that too,” I said. “They never set foot in the church again.”
“But Butte didn’t firebomb himself and then go shoot Donny, and Donny didn’t torch the Pub and then go back to the church, tape himself up and shoot himself in the back of the neck.”
“No.”
We pulled up to my barn and sat thinking this over.
“Whoever did this,” Smoke concluded, “wanted the church to remain and the Pub to be destroyed. They wanted the pastor to be dead, but weren’t concerned if Butte and Shiela, were alive or dead.”
“Right.”
He looked at me. “But I ask again--what are we going to do with MacAvity’s Pub gone?”
“Doesn’t Butte own most of the old brick buildings in town?” I said.
“Yup. We know that. Ol’ Grandpa Coe, after he built his pub and one-whore whorehouse, just kept building.”
“So, let’s pull the plywood off some windows and help Butte and Shiela move into another pub, like are scattered over all of Dublin.”
Smoke brightened. “Like ‘Cheers,’” he said. “Given your limited intelligence, you sometimes actually have a good idea. I’m impressed.”
“Right.”
I got out and headed for the back door, thinking up a list of things I would need to grab to sleep out in the desert while being hunted by a pack of Lutherans gone rabid.
Something about this whole day was getting, as Kinky Freedman use to say, ‘up my sleeve.’ I was also beginning to wonder if I shouldn’t just buy a condo in LaPaz and vanish. Or worse, join Lana, Joy and Huey at his Cambodian mission and eat rice-and-earthworm currie for the rest of my life.
I had a fleeting thought, just then, that made me temporarily forget what I was doing. What if my hunch that Lana was gone for good came true. What if I met someone else?
At age seventy?
It was just a thought. And oddly, it didn’t seem to bother me. Two years can be a long time to be left behind and still remain the exact same person. I could feel I was changing into, perhaps, a different Paul, even though I had lived in Ryback my entire life. Still, a person can change and still remain the same, too, I told myself. No big deal. But would the town accept that? Would Smoke, MacAvity and Hammersmith?
I opened the screen door to Ollie’s insistent welcoming.
Well, I knew Shiela and Ruthie would understand. Women had a way of not forgiving each other, but did, ironically, have a gift of seeing to the core of things with an uncanny clarity when it came to men’s reckless ways.
I stepped inside and ruffled Ollie’s face with my palms. “You wanna go for a road trip?”
Ollie, of course, demonstrated she knew my meaning by tearing down the hall and running laps between all the rooms at high speed.
Chapter Nine
We drove into the harvest sun which remained up until nine o’clock. As usual, we rode in silence enjoying the rolling hills of the Palouse which gave way to basalt cliffs and mesas which then opened up onto the Columbia Basin. Or what was crassly referred to by Coastal folk as the Scablands or simply the Desert. Actually, this expanse was more accurately considered steppe land because, though it didn’t grow trees, it did grow grass, sagebrush, a host of flowers and pockets of willows. It was also teaming with wildlife. A true desert, on the other hand, grew nothing at all and evaporated more moisture than rainfall provided. Like Death Valley or the Sahara.
For Smoke and me, what slid past our windows in the amber-blue light of late evening was beautifully empty and wild and deeply satisfying to be out in. Maybe that was why we rode in silence. What’s to say?
The sun had set and dusk was closing in on us when we pulled into Othello for gas. While Smoke was doing that, I trotted across the street to snag us some soft tacos from a roach coach lit up by transparent Christmas tree lights.
By the time I got back, Smoke had the Jimmy’s hood up and was jabbering Spanish as he showed four Hispanic laborers the engine that could split atoms and be off the mark like a thunder clap. They were very serious and obviously deeply in love with the miracle Smoke had wrought. As I came up I pointedly did not mention that the station’s mercury lights were not reflecting off the pickup’s hood. I didn’t want to quash a love fest.
It was dark by the time we reentered the night. Smoke, however, instead of turning up to Moses Lake and beyond, kept heading west.
I watched that for several minutes, and then ventured, “Um...aren’t we headed in the wrong direction?”
He glanced sideways at me, a devil’s mask of a grin spreading around a fresh cigarillo he held between his teeth like Clint Eastwood. “Nope. We’re headed to Wheatland, Pardner.”
I
