Free Gravedigger by Joseph Hansen

instant coffee, crackers, a roll of toilet paper. Fifty feet behind the shed, charred sticks lay on a circle of blackened stones. The bottom of the gray enamel coffee pot was smoky. Pine needles floated in an inch of coffee in a gray enamel cup. In an unwashed steel skillet lay an unwashed steel fork. Downhill, a patch of duff had been scraped away. He dug there with a fallen pine branch. The hole held empty cans, labels still fresh. Snow began to fall on them. He covered them and went back to the shed. The sleeping bag was heavy when he picked it up. When he shook it, a pair of boots fell out. Dave scowled. Where the hell could he have gone in his stocking feet?
    He stepped down out of the shed. The snow was falling harder now. “Lyle!” he shouted, “Lyle!” and headed for the orchestra shell. He turned up the sheepskin collar, hunched his shoulders, jammed his hands into the jacket pockets. He went down the center aisle, looking along the rows of pine-log benches. He hiked himself up on the stage, the cement cold to his hands. Doors—to storage rooms, dressing-rooms?—opened at either side of the shell, but they were padlocked. He used the shell to amplify his voice and shouted Lyle’s name out into the snowfall. It sounded very loud in his ears, but no answer came. His ears were so cold they ached. He covered his ears with his hands and climbed back up the aisle. At the top, he shouted the boy’s name again, once to each point of the compass. He thought of following his voice out among the big pines. But the snow fell in dense earnest now. It was hard to see through. One man didn’t make a search party anyway—not in country this big and empty. One man could get lost and freeze to death. He went back to his car.
    In the little town, the windows of the café smiled yellow through the snowfall. It was only noon, but the snowfall made it dark. He parked beside a battered pickup truck and entered the café through a door hung with little bells that jingled. The air inside was warm, steamy, and smelled of cooking. A pair of leathery men, one old, one young, both in cowboy hats and quilted khaki jackets, sat at a counter shoveling down meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, green peas. Thick white mugs of coffee steamed in front of them. They glanced at Dave and away again, seeing he was a stranger.
    A plump, motherly-looking woman in a starchy print dress, new cardigan sweater, patched white apron, chatted through a service window with someone unseen in the kitchen. She looked at Dave with more interest than the customers had done. Dave laid a bill on the counter. “Can I have a cup of coffee and change, please, for the telephone?” It was screwed, black and battered, to the wall at the far end of the room. The woman took the bill and jangled open the cash register. She laid coins in his hand. She gave him a lovely false-teeth smile.
    “You look half frozen,” she said. “You drove through only an hour ago. I thought then you’d be cold. It’s that cloth top. That’s a cute little car, but you can’t expect to keep warm in it. Not in Buenos Vientos in the winter.”
    “The coffee?” Dave begged.
    “Coming right up.”
    The directory that hung on a chain off the phone was tattered, dog-eared, food-stained, but he found the San Diego county offices section and a number that looked as if it might be the right one. The motherly woman brought a mug of coffee to the end of the counter and set it there for him. She didn’t go away. She stood watching him with open curiosity. The phone kept ringing at the far end, and Dave stretched to try to reach the coffee mug. She picked it up and handed it to him. He burned his mouth on the coffee. It had come out of an ordinary café glass pot but it tasted like farmhouse coffee. The heat of it made him shiver. He was colder than he’d realized. At last a voice came on the line.
    “Sheriff station, Guzman speaking.”
    Dave gave his name, said he was an insurance investigator,