Montana by Gwen Florio Read Free Book Online Page A

that bracketed his mouth. “I’d been riding fence all day. Elk got me pretty bad this winter, dragging right through the fences trying to get to the hay. Every time I think I’ve got it all fixed, I find a new hole. Thought I’d stop on the way home and check the head gate before they start running the water through the irrigation ditch. Good thing I did. Otherwise, you’d have had to go all the way into town to find somebody. Way you were driving, I’m not sure you’d have made it. Then Charlie would have had two bodies on his hands.”
    Lola fought an urge to pull out a pen and take notes. “I don’t think I understood two words you said. Except for that last part. I got that just fine. But riding fence? A headgate? What do you do?”
    “I’ve got a place between Mary Alice’s and the reservation. Run some cattle there.”
    She shaded her eyes against the sun. Through the window, the sky went on and on, lifting effortlessly above the mountains. The cafe felt small. “Does that mean a ranch? And what does little mean? A hundred acres? A thousand? Because nothing out here looks little to me.”
    The air in the room went dead. Verle leaned toward Lola and delivered an indictment heard by everyone in the room. “You’re not from here, so I’ll excuse you. You don’t ask someone how much land he’s got.”
    Lola’s head hurt like a hangover. In Afghanistan, she’d spent years learning how to get along. She never ate with her left hand, never pointed the soles of her feet at anyone, never offered a handshake to a man, let alone looked a man in the eye. She’d draped an extra layer of cloth over her breasts, covered her hair, her face, her whole body in yards of flowing fabric. And now she was up against a new set of rules. “What are those mountains?” she said. Trying for distraction. As if, at this point, a change of subject would help.
    “Those mountains?” Verle replied, after he’d given her enough time to wonder if he was still talking to her at all. His eyes signaled amused tolerance. “Those would be the Rockies.”
    The food arrived in the midst of a collective guffaw, the steak still sizzling around the edges, the eggs goggling yellow-eyed at her. She pushed the plate away. Verle leaned across the table, took her knife and fork, sliced a piece of the steak, jabbed it into the eggs until the yolks broke, and then waved it beneath her nose. “Go on and eat this now.”
    She turned her head away. The fork followed. She opened her mouth. Bit down, chewed, swallowed. Protein hit her veins like speed. Her mouth fell open again. Verle laughed and handed her the silverware.
    “You can take over from here.”
    Lola sliced at the steak, layering it with some egg onto a piece of toast. She folded the bread and brought it dripping to her mouth. Verle handed her a napkin. “I may have to rethink my bias against breakfast,” she allowed.
    The youth with the coffee returned and stood beside her, making no move to refill her cup. “Miss.”
    She strained to hear his voice.
    “Wicks,” Verle told him.
    “Miss Wicks.”
    “Please,” she said. “Lola.”
    He set the coffeepot on the table. His arms stuck like sticks from a T-shirt that billowed nearly to his knees. “You know—you knew —Mary Alice?” he asked the floor.
    “Yes.” Not a single person in the cafe made a pretense of not listening.
    “Mary Alice and my uncle—he works for the tribes—they were good friends.”
    “They were?” Verle’s voice intruded.
    Joshua looked up. His eyes, fixed on a point just behind Lola, were rich and brown and liquid, the color of a good strong Arabic brew rather than the watery stuff in her cup. “Do you know what happened to her? All we heard is that she’s dead.”
    “And that’s all we know, too,” Verle broke in. He lay a ten on the table. “This lady can’t be talking to you about it. She’s got to talk to the sheriff first.” He dug in his pocket and dropped a quarter atop the bill.