Free Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories by Craig Johnson

door.”
    She moved and rustled her free hand in the holdall, finally pulling out a $2.99
The Very Best of Merle Haggard
. “Oh, yeah.”
    She plucked the disc from the cheap cardboard sleeve and slipped it into a slot in the dash I’d never used. The lights of the stereo came on and the opening lines of Haggard’s opus “Okie From Muskogee” thumped through the speakers. She made a face, looked at the cover, and read the fine print. “What’d they do, record it on an eight-track through a steel drum full of bourbon?”
    “I’m not so sure they sell the highest fidelity music in the clearance bin at the Flying J.”
    Her face was animated in a positive way for the first time as the long fingers danced off the buttons of my truck stereo, and I noticed the blue metal-flake nail polish and the bracelet that clearly read LA KESIDE PSYCHIATRIC H OSPITAL—LAKESIDE, TN .
    “You’ve got too much bass, and the fade’s all messed up.” She continued playing with the thing, and I had to admit that the sound was becoming remarkably better. Satisfied, she satback in the seat, even going so far as to hold out her other hand for Dog to sniff. He did and then licked her wrist.
    “I love singer/storytellers.” She scratched under the beast’s chin and for the first time since I’d met her seemed to relax as she listened to the lyrics. “You know this song is a joke, right? He wrote it in response to the uninformed view of the Vietnam War. He said he figured it was what his dad would’ve thought.”
    I shrugged noncommittally.
    She stared at the side of my face, possibly at my ear or the lack of a tiny bit of it. “Were you over there?”
    I nodded.
    “So was my dad.” Her eyes went back to the road. “That’s why I’m going home; he died.”
    I navigated my way around a string of slow-moving cars. “What did your father do?”
    Her voice dropped to a trademark baritone, buttery and resonant. “KERR, 750 AM. Polson, Montana.”
    I laughed. “I thought you didn’t do AM.”
    “Yeah, well, now you know why.”
    Merle swung into “Pancho and Lefty,” and she pointed to the stereo. “Proof positive that he
did
smoke marijuana in Muskogee—he’s friends with Willie Nelson.”
    I raised an eyebrow. “In my line of work, we call that guilt by association.”
    “Yeah, well, in my line of work, we call it a friggin’ fact—Willie’s smoked like a Cummins diesel everywhere, including Muskogee, Oklahoma.”
    I had to concede the logic. “You seem to know a lot about the industry. Nashville?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay, so you’re not a musician. What did you do?”
    “Still do, when I get through in Polson.” Her eyes went back to the windshield and her future. “Produce, audio engineer . . . Or I try to.” She nibbled on one of the nails, on the hand that held the shiny cup. “Did you know that less than 5 percent of producers and engineers in the business are women?” I waited, but she seemed preoccupied, finally sipping her coffee again and then pouring herself another. “We’re raised to be attractive and accommodating, but we’re not raised to know our shit and stand by it.” She was quiet for a while, listening to the lyrics. “Townes Van Zandt wrote that one. People think it’s about Pancho Villa, but one of the lines is about him getting hung—Pancho Villa was gunned down.”
    I nodded and glanced at her lap. “Seven men standing in the road in Hidalgo del Parral shot more than forty rounds into his roadster.”
    “You worked for the History Channel before you were sheriff?” I didn’t say anything, and the smile lingered on her face like fingerpicking on a warped-neck fretboard. “You’re okay-looking, in a dad kind of way.”
    I widened my eyes. “That’s a disturbing statement for a number of reasons.”
    She barked a laugh and raised one of the combat boots up to lodge it against the transmission hump, but realized she was revealing the pistol from the drape of the blanket on her