“No thank you, ma’am.”

“Wait a minute.” With a little effort she stood, waddled to a shelf and brought back a photo album. It was black leather, looked worn and very old. She turned to the first page and set it in my lap before flopping back into the armchair with a little grunt.

I looked at the first photo, black and white, five by seven, thick paper. On the album page below the photo someone had written Antonia in thick pencil. A young girl in a Little House on the Prairie dress, maybe ten years old, fled across a field of high grass, a slanted log cabin in the background, a slightly blurry windmill beyond that. The sky a flat gray.

The girl looked back over her shoulder as she ran, raw glee on her face, eyes wide as if being chased by a parent or sibling. It was easy to imagine a squeal of laughter, a breezy sunny day.

“That’s me,” she said.

“Where?”

“Here,” she said. “The cabin burnt down in 1937.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me and my folks and six brothers and sisters lived in there. Coyotes stole all the chickens the third year. We fought drought and ice storms. My brothers and sisters grew up and scattered, but I stayed. I stuck, by God, and that should be worth something. It should mean something when you endure and stay and the whole world changes around you, changes and forgets you. It should mean something.”

“I guess so.” But I couldn’t say what it might mean. Maybe not anything good.

She sighed, deflated a little into the depths of the armchair. “There was nothing here. The land was raw and the sky was wide and there was nothing. No town. We took the land and made it submit to us. There was nothing, and then there were the Jordans.”

It was easy now to understand why the brothers strutted around acting like they were entitled to everything. I could imagine years of this old woman whispering her poison to the boys, making them out to be barons of the endless prairie. Might makes right. Cowboys and Indians. It was hard to think of the Jordans as a family dynasty instead of a mob of rednecks, but the old woman had her own view of the world. Old people always did.

I turned the page in the photo album and the decades flew by. Smaller black and white photos of people I didn’t know. A woman on a horse. A gaunt man in an Army uniform, sergeant stripes. A barely recognizable picture of Main Street. Somehow the town looked more prosperous then than it did now.

More pages and more decades. Faded color photos of young boys, shirtless, lined up and mugging for the camera. I recognized Jason Jordan. I looked into his eyes, tried to discern the seeds of evil that would bloom in later years. I wanted to believe it was easy to recognize the bad, that you could see it coming a long way off and have time to duck or hide, like the eerie green clouds that warned of tornado weather. But all I saw was some kid with buck teeth.

When I looked up from the photo album, I saw Antonia Jordan had nodded off, her chin against her chest, snoring lightly, tea cup precarious in her bony fingers. I set the album aside, and carefully took the cup, set it on top of the album. Delicately, I extracted the revolver from her lap and hid it beneath her chair. She’d find it later. Or not.

I tried to see the same evil in the sleeping old woman that I’d tried to see in the old photo of Jason but couldn’t do it. Still, I knew it was there, or if not evil then something broken, something that had gone wrong with her as a human being. It’s so easy to think of old folks as kindly and cute, but anyone can go wrong. The hardships and disappointments and tragedies of our lives can make us strong or they can twist us wrong and nobody is exempt from this crapshoot. Not old women or Mexican hellcats or part-time deputies.

You spin the wheel and you take your chances.

I stood, felt my knees pop, back sore, ribs still tender. I needed three cold beers and ten hours sleep.

I’d settle for the Jordan brothers.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The room beyond Grandma Jordan’s kitchen was a thin unfinished hall, cement floor, exposed wiring, a bare light bulb pumping out sixty watts overhead. A washer and dryer, some paint cans stacked on the other side. I looked at it a minute and thought the room was maybe some kind of buffer zone, a combo laundry storage room between Antonia Jordan’s add-on apartment and the main part of the house.

I had no intention of trying to make my way past Lucifer again, so I went through the door ahead of me. I drew my revolver as I went. I didn’t want any more Jordans to get the drop on me.

The main part of the house was mostly dark except for a tiny lamp on a roll top desk. It was enough to see, and I took a quick look. The desk was cluttered with mail, much of it going back several months. It seemed like the Jordans preferred to be reminded a few times before they paid bills. Gun accessory catalogs. Field & Stream Magazine. Cattle business stuff. Nothing too interesting.

I’d expected the Jordan home to stink as bad as the inside of Luke’s truck or strange like Grandma Jordan’s addon rooms, but the house had an inoffensive pine odor which almost masked a faint cigarette smell. I took out a Winston and lit it. A few empty Budweiser cans here and there, ashtrays not too full but not quite clean either. Mismatched furniture. The sofa and most of the chairs were pointed at a giant fifty-inch television. CDs in a half-assed pile by the stereo. Dixie Chicks, Brooks & Dunn, more country stuff. A Def Leppard CD seeming slightly out of place.

The place looked like some kind of redneck fraternity house.

I searched four bedrooms and two bathrooms and a den before ending up in the kitchen. Nobody home, and I didn’t see anything that screamed proof of conspiracy.

This kitchen was bigger and better than the little thing they’d slapped together for Grandma, but there were dirty dishes in the sink and more empty beer cans on the counter. I opened the refrigerator and eyed one of the several cold Budweisers with lust. Bad idea. A beer might soothe my multiple aches and bruises, but it would probably knock me on my ass too. I searched for an energy drink without luck. A jar of dill pickles caught my eye. I opened it and took two. Crunchy. There was something in a Tupperware bowl that might have been meatloaf, but I decided not to risk it.

Not even cola, nothing with caffeine or sugar. Hell.

I closed the refrigerator and took a glass from the cabinet, filled it in the sink. While I gulped water I noticed something hanging on the wall, a chunk of wood carved in the shape of a key. A row of small metal hooks lined the key for the purpose of hanging car and house keys. All the hooks were empty except for one. I took the key down and had to smile at the key chain.

The words Harley Davidson against an American flag.

I left through the kitchen door and found the Jordans’ detached garage. I was worried it might be padlocked, but it wasn’t and I threw the doors wide. I didn’t bother looking for a light switch. The Harley was close enough to the front of the garage to see the chrome gleam in the moonlight. I put up the kickstand and walked it out. Heavy and solid.

The bike looked exactly the same as it did that day Jason pounded Mark Foster at the Tastee-Freeze. I straddled it, a dopey grin spreading across my bruised face. I felt like I could ride this thing to the moon. It felt big. I put the key in and turned. The Harley thundered to life beneath me. I heard Lucifer barking his ass off in the back yard. Screw you, dog.

I gassed it down the driveway and felt like I’d been strapped to a fat rocket. The wind in my hair. I felt like a legend, the big rumble between my legs like I was riding an earthquake. I opened it up wide, tear-assing back south on the Six. I made a promise to myself to get one of these babies.