The Far Empty by J. Todd Scott Read Free Book Online Page B

got him for me in Braintree and named him while he was still in the cardboard box she used to bring him home. He was all paws and tail, high-strung and active, and I loved him so much itmade my heart hurt. He slept at the end of my bed, and when my father came in to stare at me, Shep stared right back with his own bright blue eyes, growling, like he could see something none of the rest of us could. My father didn’t like his bark, his look, or that growl, so while I was at school one day Shep mysteriously got off his chain and got lost in a thunderstorm, scared by all the crash and lightning, or so my father said.
    I spent two days looking for him, calling his name until my throat hurt and I came home each night, muddy and cut. My mom sat on my bed and touched me up with Polysporin, drying my hair with one of her big towels. She never said anything, just held me tight without really seeming to do so.
    I finally found Shep by Coates Creek way out behind our house. He’d been worked over with something small and heavy and left in the swollen water beneath the branches of an old, twisted desert willow. He was hidden, but not that well. I was meant to know, after all.
    I buried Shep with my bare hands out by the creek and never said anything more about him. A month or so later my father offered to get me another dog, and I said thanks, but no.
    I smiled when I said it, just like he expected me to.

6
    CHRIS

    C hris sat in a chair that was too small, hunched over Sheriff Ross’s desk, even though the office itself was expansive—dark, hand-oiled wood and paneling except for one wall that was nothing but massive arched windows looking out over Main.
    Now morning light came through those windows, muted by the old soda-lime glass in the panes. This building had existed nearly since Murfee’s founding, serving at various times as a mercantile, a saloon, and a brothel. It had once functioned as a courthouse, and you could have stood in this room, looking through the thick glass of those windows, and watched more than a few rustlers and horse thieves turn at the end of a rope.
    The building had been renovated numerous times, most recently around 1996, and served now as the Big Bend County Sheriff’s Department. Downstairs were a waiting room and office space and holdingcells, all modern or nearly so, but this area up here was reserved for the sheriff alone. It was his office and a museum.
    Chris had been up here a dozen times, seeing something new each and every time. The walls were covered with Murfee’s history, framed photographs and tintypes of old lawmen and bandits, Indians and Mexicans. Each picture had a weird thunder-and-lightning cast, as if drawn in charcoal and quicksilver. Buildings and ranch houses looked barely able to stand under their own weight, the buckled timbers and sagging roofs—everything slightly off-kilter—captured for all time.
    There were pelts on the floor, longhorn and elk and sheep; a mountain lion, even a Mexican wolf. Their heads adorned the high cavernous walls above the old pictures, staring down with dark, dead orbs. Chris knew the sheriff liked to hunt, had property somewhere, and went several times a year.
    In one corner on a stand was a full saddle, Guadalajara style, with a big horn and a high pitch, stirrups touching the floor: hand-stitched Hermann Oak leather, a half-breed of tooled smooth areas with plenty of rough out for a better grip while riding. Parts of it were picked out in silver and gold and it gleamed in the light, winking, a distant skyline.
    There were guns arranged all around the walls, several beneath glass and soft lights and not meant to be touched. Others the sheriff was fond of taking down and handing around, all loaded, and he always rechecked the load and wiped them with a special cloth before placing them back. There was a whole collection of guns John Wayne had used in his films. Steve McQueen’s cutoff Mare’s Leg .44-40 from
Wanted: Dead or Alive
. The Colt