Free Deadman by Jon A. Jackson Page A

Detroit, and why was he telling him about it in October?
    “I didden see it,” Roman said. “Mrs. Sid had it under her pillow. I don't know how come she didden tell me about it. So, I don't know, maybe I shouldden even of told you.”
    “No, no, you should tell me,” Humphrey said. “You should always tell me.”

6
    Helen
    S he'd be just as happy if he never came back. Not true, really. It was a way of punishing him, in her mind, for going away. Of course, he had to come back, he would come back, she wanted him to come back. She couldn't live without him, but . . . she had begun to enjoy the time when he wasn't around.
    Oh god, what a miserable thing. She asked herself why women let themselves be trapped into these situations. But then she refused to feel trapped. This was a situation of her own making.
    She had gone to Joe for help, she couldn't deny it. And then he had invited her to come with him. The trouble was that having done what she had wanted to do, and having gone with Joe voluntarily, she had begun not to like it here. Who in the hell wanted to lie around Montana for the rest of their lives? She had things to do. She was a young woman.
    Joe had things to do. He went off and did them. He didn't tell her about them, not really, just little jokes. He called it his Gogol Scam and then, because she'd misunderstood and said “Go-go?” he'd laughed and taken that up. For a time she had been convinced it had something to do with girls, that he had another woman somewherewhom he went to see. What was the big secret? No secret, he insisted, it was just too complicated to get into. He'd tell her all about it one of these days, if it worked out.
    Helen hated that kind of talk. She was stuck here, waiting. That was the way it always was. She wanted to call her mother. No, says Joe. She wanted to send her mother a note. No. Don't contact your friends, he had warned. When you took out Carmine, you said good-bye to friends, to family. Sorry, but that's the way it is. Those guys get a lead on you, we're dead. They never quit. So, here we are. This is where we live now. Don't you like it?
    She liked it plenty, for a while. They went fishing, they floated on rafts, they hiked. They bought matching Harleys and roared up to White Sulphur Springs, careening down empty highways through the mountains and over Missouri River bridges and dodging antelope, lights out, driving by moonlight. But soon enough, they roared home. It wasn't as if they had nowhere else to go. On a whim, they flew to Vancouver Island, to take high tea at The Empress Hotel in Victoria, then dinner in Seattle and the sweet ride on Amtrak's “Coast Starlite” to San Francisco to shop for a few days. They drove down to Flaming Gorge to make love on a mountainside, ignoring the cars winding up the road. But always back to the cabin.
    She liked it here, basically. The house was terrific. She'd bought some nice things like dishes and a good sound system, hundreds of CDs, some great clothes. It was a lot of fun. They spent money sometimes like there was no end to it, and of course, there was no end to it, practically speaking. Boxes and boxes of money.
    On a normal day they would get up late, loaf around over breakfast—which they made themselves, since Joe refused to have servants of any kind. This was a point of contention. Helen argued that since they couldn't very well go out for breakfast, they ought to have someone in to cook and do the housecleaning. Joe laughed long and hard at this. “You can't make your own breakfast? Hell, I'll makeit.” And he did. And he cleaned house, too, though it was not an arduous task, after all.
    After breakfast was shooting. Usually it was just Joe, but Helen frequently went with him. She didn't really enjoy shooting, not as much as Joe did, but she knew that he liked her to come along. They would walk up through the trees and back into the canyon. Some days they shot pistols as they walked—snap shots, Joe called it (he