Excerpts

Chapter 1 When Sheriff Jack Nevelsen got the call from the dispatcher about the accident out on Highway 284 -- single car, two fatalities -- his first thought was, kids. Teenagers. Oh, sweet Jesus, somebody's babies. It was ten o'clock Sunday night, May 28, 1957, and Bentrock High School's senior class had graduated that afternoon. Mercer County's roads and highways were going to be traveled that night by kids going from party to party. And they were going to be drinking. This was Jack's fear every year at graduation, that a kid -- or worse, kids, a whole car full of them -- would get drunk and try to beat a train to a crossing, or weave across the center line, and some parents' proudest day would turn into their worst. On graduation night kids drank; the ones who never drank would probably pick that night to start, and the ones who drank regularly would try to do it up bigger than ever. So far Mercer County had been lucky. No graduation-night tragedy for them. But three years ago they came close, damn close. The kids held a big party at an area north of town known as The Haystacks, and in all the driving back and forth, a young woman missed a bridge and landed her car in a creek bed. Jack could never figure out if it was good or bad that the creek was dry. At any rate, the drop from the bridge was not far, less than fifteen feet, and everyone got out of the car unhurt. Only minutes later, another carload of kids -- speeding around the same curve -- missed the same bridge. They didn't fall as far as the first car because they landed right on top of it. A giant hand couldn't have balanced the second car more precisely on the first. The next morning when the tow truck winched the cars up the slope, and when Jack saw the crushed roof of the first car, Kathy Hessup's white Ford, he wondered how much luck Mercer County had used up the previous night. So every year, come graduation time, Jack, along with Chief of Police Bagwell, tried to put the word out: Stay put and we'll leave you alone, but if you drive drunk, we're going to be on your ass. Now it sounded as though someone hadn't gotten the word, or hadn't heeded it, and Mercer County's luck had run out. Jack took the call on the phone in the kitchen, and before he went out to his truck, he stuck his head into the living room where his wife, Nora, was sewing and watching television. "I've got to go out," he said. "Accident out on two-eighty-four west of town." She didn't ask how bad the accident was, or if he knew who was involved. But that was Nora. She would know soon enough; everyone in town would. She was not in any hurry to hear bad news, and the fact that his job kept bringing it to their doorstep, like a stray dog or cat that, once fed, won't stay away, put some strain on their marriage. It was nothing serious. But often Jack could not talk with Nora about his work. If it was in the least sordid, ugly, brutal, or even unpleasant, Nora did not want to hear about it. Starting at midnight on Friday nights, the television station in Williston broadcast Shockerama, a double feature of old horror movies, and Nora would not even stay in the room when those movies played. Jack loved them, especially the werewolf features, and if he wasn't out on patrol (he and his deputy alternated Friday nights), he brewed a pot of coffee and sat down in front of the set. He kept the volume low, but Nora, in the bedroom, still kept the door closed. Their ten-year-old daughter, Angela, on the other hand, loved scary movies almost as much as Jack, and she would often put her blanket and pillow on the floor in front of the television and watch with him. She seldom lasted through the second movie, and Jack would finally carry her to bed. He remembered thinking one night, as he watched the movie's light and shadow flicker over his daughter's face, about the contrast between mother and daughter. While Nora was in the bedroom with her pillow over her ears so she couldn't hear the monster's roar, Angela slept peacefully while above her the Wolfman claimed another victim. Ah, it was just as well Nora was the way she was. He shouldn't bring his work home with him. Wasn't that the advice he read in the law enforcement newsletter every month? Tonight even the family dog seemed to know that it was bad news calling Jack out of the house. Muley, an aging shepherd mix, who usually ran excitedly to the door as soon as he heard the jingle of Jack's keys, did not move from his station by the stove, but merely tilted his sleepy gaze in Jack's direction. Before he left, Jack shook three Chesterfields out of the pack, slid them into his shirt pocket, and carefully snapped the flap. He was trying to cut down on the number of cigarettes he smoked in a day, and he could best do that by not carrying the pack with him. If he had a full pack out at the accident site, he knew he'd light one right after another. He liked to smoke outside, liked the way the wind tore the smoke off in its own direction no matter how hard he exhaled, or how, when the air was cold, the smoke and the steam from his breath combined and billowed around him like a miniature cloud. He also liked to use his cigarettes to give himself a little distance. While he tried to think of what to do or say, he could strip the cellophane from a fresh pack of cigarettes, slit the foil with his thumbnail, exposing those perfect brown circles of tightly packed tobacco, knock the pack on his index finger until one cigarette jumped apart from the rest, take it out, and tap it on his lighter or the face of his watch. If he still needed more time, he could light the cigarette, inhale, exhale....By that time, he usually had considered the alternatives and their consequences and knew what course to follow. When a particular moment became too much -- the drunk was cursing you out or the farmer was telling you why you had to arrest his neighbor -- lighting and smoking a cigarette gave you something to concentrate on besides the moment at hand -- like the look of a car or the bodies at an accident site. Jack reconsidered and put the entire pack in the pocket of his denim jacket. As he drove out of town, Jack tried to keep his gaze aimed straight ahead. He was fighting the urge to speculate who might be lying dead out there along Highway 284, and he didn't want to start looking around for citizens, or their sons and daughters, to eliminate as possible victims. He had already caught himself once. Less than a block from the house, Jack saw Arletta Whitcomb standing under a streetlight with her dog, and he thought: There. It's not Arletta. When was she scheduled to graduate? Next year? Two years? Thank God. He would not be knocking on the Whitcombs' door tonight. But that line of thinking was no good; eventually he would land on someone's name about whom he might say to himself, why not, why not let it be him? He's been in trouble since grade school; he's going nowhere, except perhaps the state penitentiary in Deer Lodge....That line of thought, as far as Jack was concerned, was damn near the same as wishing someone dead. And how Christian was that? Jack let his thoughts spin for a moment until they settled themselves on a subject that allowed him to think about the accident but not the victims or their identity: he wondered where the white crosses would be. Whenever a fatality occurred in a highway accident, a white cross was planted at the site, one cross for each death. Cautioning other travelers was the idea, to tell them that someone had died here, because of speed or carelessness or hazardous road conditions or simply bad luck. No doubt it made sense and had an effect -- you approached that railroad crossing and saw five crosses bristling up from the weeds alongside the tracks and perhaps you looked carefully before proceeding. But were those five crosses from five separate accidents, indicating that here was a crossing where trains came out of nowhere, or were all the crosses from only one accident, from the night five teenagers heard the Empire Builder's whistle and saw its light but still thought they could beat it to the crossing? What if you drove a highway only once, and by the time you noticed that single cross in the ditch you were already past it -- what lesson could you take from that? Jack had seen bouquets of those crosses in places so dangerous they made you nod your head and say silently, yes, no question but that a heedless driver could meet his death here. But he had also seen crosses in places that brought nothing but puzzlement, that left you scratching your head and wondering what the hell a driver must have done to get himself killed along this ribbon-straight stretch of road. Now two more crosses were going to be stuck in the soil of Mercer County. And who stuck them anyway? Was there a special highway department crew whose only responsibility was to visit those death sites? Or was it a regular sign crew who just kept a few white crosses in the back of the truck along with the Falling Rocks, Yield, Cattle Crossing, Dangerous Curves, and Soft Shoulder signs? Who -- or what -- marked the spot until the permanent cross was posted? What about the deaths that occurred in winter, when the earth was often frozen so deep April couldn't even finish the thaw, when the mortician had to stack the dead in an unheated Quonset hut until spring -- was there a special spring detail that traveled Montana's highways, pounding in all the white crosses that were owed the previous winter? He couldn't help it. Those crosses made him feel as though he hadn't done his job. Each one could just as easily be flying a little pennant that said, "If Sheriff Jack Nevelsen had kept the county roads free of drunks, speeders, reckless or incompetent drivers, this cross wouldn't be here." He knew there wasn't a man, woman, or child in the county who held him accountable; nevertheless, he would take those two new crosses personally. Copyright © 1997 by Larry Watson Chapter 2 When Jack looked down from the top of the hill to where the accident had occurred, he let his hopes rise just a little. Below him were the lights of three cars -- his deputy's, the tow truck, and a third car that looked like a highway patrol vehicle but which could as easily have belonged to a civilian, a witness who had waited around to report on what he had seen. The cars were parked near the bottom of the hill, at the exact spot in the county where an accident was most likely to occur. There, less than five miles from the Bentrock city limits, the road made a steep descent, coming down from the bluffs west of town. As the road dropped, it curved gradually toward the northwest until, almost at the base of the hill, it veered hard to the southwest. If you missed the curve, you were off the road in an instant and sailing toward a slough. Beyond was the meadow where Jonas Sprull pastured his prize Appaloosas. If you were going slowly when you went off, you were going to slide and probably roll down that steep, crumbling embankment. If you were going fast? Well, you just might soar out and land in the branches of one of those huge, old cottonwoods. That was on the right side of the road, the open side. The other side was a sheer rock face, ready to bounce you right back over the edge. Because of the rock wall and the slough, the road was narrow, with a tight shoulder and no guardrail. Jack believed he was as skilled at driving on snow and ice as the next man, but if the roads were slippery he might go out of his way so he wouldn't have to negotiate that hill and that curve. No two ways about it -- it was just a treacherous piece of highway. If Mercer County weren't up there in the corner of the state that nobody gave a damn about, Jack was sure the highway department would have long ago straightened or widened the road. Or condemned it altogether and rerouted the highway. Everyone in the county knew how dangerous the hill was, knew you had to respect it, regardless of the season, and slow way down, coming up or going down. If you drove it any other way, you were probably drunk or suicidal. Or from outside the county. And that was what Jack hoped for -- that the bodies down there did not belong to his county. Or -- and he damned himself immediately for this thought -- were Indians from the nearby reservation. Either way -- Indians or residents from another county, another state, another country (the Canadian border was less than twenty miles away) -- the dead would be someone else's problem. He could call the tribal police or the sheriff of another county or the Mounties and let them take over. There was no part of his job that Jack dreaded more than notifying the next of kin. He even hated the word. Kin. It sounded like a word out of another time, a word that survived up in their remote part of Montana. Kin -- it reminded him of the backwoods, of cousins marrying cousins. And maybe what bothered him most was the fact that he never had to ask: he always knew who the next of kin was. During Jack's first term in office, for example, when old Harold Many Bulls was found frozen to death behind the Fremont Creamery and no one knew if Harold had any kin, on the reservation or off, Jack knew. Harold and Rhoda Cleer had once been husband and wife, and Jack had a hunch they were never divorced. He drove out to Rhoda's little farm to tell her about Harold, and damned if she didn't break down in tears. Seventy-five-year-old Rhoda Cleer, as tough as prairie fescue, and there she was weeping over that drunken town Indian. Yes, she admitted it; she and Harold were married years ago, back when she was trying to work the place alone. She had first hired Harold to help out, one thing led to another, and before you knew it, the two of them were heading for Havre to find a justice of the peace to marry them. And no, they were never divorced, even though Harold didn't actually live in the house more than a year. Once they were married, Rhoda said, Harold wasn't as good a worker. His drinking worsened, and soon she had to tell him to get out. But how did Jack know about the marriage? Jack's father used to own a hardware store, and Jack and his brother had worked in the family business from the time they were old enough to sweep a broom. Jack was working the day Harold Many Bulls came into the store and tried to buy an assortment of goods -- hammers, saws, wrenches, coils of wire, lengths of rope. Harold had no money but tried to have the items put on Rhoda Cleer's account. Jack's father refused Harold's request, telling him it looked as though Harold meant to trade the merchandise for whiskey. Harold was already drunk, and he became belligerent, insisting that Jack's father had to let him take the items. Bring me a note from Miss Cleer, Jack's father said, and you can charge anything in the damn store. Harold pounded the counter with his fist. He didn't need no note, he said -- I'm her husband. Jack's father laughed, and did not stop laughing until Harold shuffled from the store. Jack witnessed the incident and, like other moments from his childhood, stored it away in one of those regions of his mind that he was unlikely to visit again -- until the day Harold's frozen body was found and no one was quite sure who should be notified. Rhoda not only immediately confessed to the marriage, in her rambling way she tried to explain it to Jack. Living out on the prairie...No one who lived in town could know how lonely it could get. The brevity of those winter days, the length of the nights...You felt you were so alone in the world you had to make your pleasure any way you could. But when Jack asked about the disposition of Harold's body, Rhoda's tears stopped. That wasn't her problem, she said. Call his tribal leaders. Harold was a Cheyenne; let them decide. And once her tears dried up, Rhoda Cleer, in a voice as stern and full of menace as she could manage, told Jack that he needn't bother blabbing this marriage all over the goddamn county. Although Jack drove away with Rhoda Cleer's curses and threats echoing in his ears, he felt that day that he was doing the job he was meant to do. No other man in Mercer County was elected to serve as sheriff, and no other man knew to draw that line from Harold Many Bulls' corpse to Rhoda Cleer's farmhouse. That feeling was rare. On most days Jack felt as though he was doing a job that others could do and do as well. The position was Jack's only because his best friend from childhood, Steve Lovoll, had a perforated eardrum and could not serve in the military. While most of the other males of Bentrock were going off to fight in Europe and the Pacific, Steve went to college and law school. After receiving his degree, Steve decided to return to his hometown and run for public office. Jack had been in the military police, and it was Steve's idea that the friends run on the same ticket -- Steve for state's attorney and Jack for sheriff. Jack didn't think he made a bad sheriff. Not at all. He understood the concept of duty, that it meant facing up to and doing unpleasant tasks, but mostly it just meant doing the job, all of it, and doing it as well as it deserved to be done. He had, apparently, an authoritative air about him, though Jack believed what others saw as authority was actually the way shyness was perceived in a physically large man. People respected him, but that too seemed to Jack merely the consequence of his policy of never speaking ill of anyone in the county. He held plenty of them in low regard, but he kept his opinions to himself. Other men in the county might also possess these qualities, but for better or worse, the name on the courthouse register was Jack's. And part of his job was notifying the next of kin. He usually took someone with him -- a priest, a relative, a close friend, a doctor. In the presence of grief -- of any strong emotion, for that matter -- Jack was often without resource. He could think of little to say beyond, "I'm sorry," and even that phrase, repeated often enough, began to sound less and less like consolation and more like a child whining for forgiveness. Some people, when they received bad news, needed the comfort that only a physical embrace could provide, and this was something Jack couldn't do. He could hand over his handkerchief or pat a shoulder, but hold someone, let her sobs gradually subside in the circle of his arms -- no. But if the widow's sister or the father's minister was there, they could furnish the hugs or the promises of God's mercy, and Jack could simply relate the facts of the accident and back quietly away. It didn't always work. Last fall when Walt Flightner accidentally shot himself in the leg on a hunting trip high in the Bitterroot Mountains and bled to death before a damn thing could be done to save him, Jack took Father Howser along to break the news to Walt's wife, Marge. But Marge must have had an uneasy feeling about the trip her husband was on, because when she saw the car with the sheriff's insignia on the door pull up in front of the house and the sheriff and the priest get out of the car and walk slowly up her front walk, Marge locked her front door and ran out the back door. Father Howser spotted her as she cut across the neighbor's yard, and the two of them called out and ran after her. In that part of Bentrock, a newer subdivision, almost none of the residents fenced off or hedged their yards, and each lawn ran right into the next. Finally, however, Marge came to a fence that she couldn't get over before the two men caught up to her. She cowered before them as if they were assassins. And they were. They were about to take from her the life she had known. Sobbing, shaking her head, Marge held her hands clamped tight over her ears. Father Howser reached down, took hold of her wrists, and pulled her hands away so she had to hear what he was about to tell. "Walt's dead, Marge. He's dead." Jack, first of all, could never have grabbed her the way the priest did. And he couldn't believe the way Father Howser gave her the news. Where were those words and phrases -- in the Lord's hands, watching down from heaven, at peace -- that were supposed to make the truth easier to bear? But Marge calmed somewhat and let herself be led back to her home. Jack followed along behind them. With Father Howser's arm around her, Marge looked like a little girl who had fallen at play and was being taken home to have her wounds washed and bandaged. Jack could have lifted her up and carried her the way he held his own Angela. But she was not Angela. She was Marge Flightner, a short, pretty, energetic woman with full breasts and sturdy legs and a deep tan from all the hours she spent on the golf course. She had grown up in southern California, and when Walt brought her to Bentrock, she came with talents and interests that few Montana women shared. She loved to swim and play tennis, and she was a better golfer than almost any man in the region. Rather than scorn the women who couldn't do what she could, Marge tried to convert and teach them, and because of her enthusiasm and patience, many women followed her lead, and soon there were enough female patrons at the Knife River Municipal Golf Course to justify having Ladies' Day. But Jack couldn't allow himself to lift her up or embrace her or touch her in any way because he couldn't be sure why he might be doing it: because he wanted to comfort her, or because he wanted to know what it felt like to touch a woman like Marge? Walt made enough money in his construction business to allow the family (Walt, Marge, their two sons and daughter) to spend two weeks in Florida every winter. They made that trip at just about the time Marge's summer tan was fading away, and she returned as bronzed as she was in midsummer. Jack wondered, as Father Howser helped Marge back into her home, when winter came would Marge turn as pale as every other Montana woman? And he wondered now, as he tapped his brakes, shifted into second, and eased down the hill toward the accident site, if before the night was over, someone would try to lock the door on him and the bad news he brought. Copyright © 1997 by Larry Watson Excerpted from White Crosses by Larry Watson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.