Free Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories by Craig Johnson Page B

singers, no harps—and just play.”
    I watched her face, trying not to let the eyes distract me. “Maybe you should tell him that sometime, but I wouldn’t look for him in Muskogee.”
    The wind pressed the blanket against her, urging departure, and I was struck by the sudden vulnerability in her face as she closed the door, the words barely audible: “Merry Christmas.”
    She continued to clutch the blanket around her as she turned. Dragging the guitar case, she walked away without looking back and disappeared into the swinging glass doors with swirls of snow devils circling after her; all I could think was that I was glad I wasn’t in Polson, Montana, and in possession of a set of Sennheiser HD414 open-back headphones.
    I thought about the things you could do, and the things you couldn’t, even in a season of miracles.
    I tossed the decrepit revolver into my glove box, sure that whoever might have pulled the trigger on the thing had as equal a chance of getting hurt as the person at whom it was being pointed.
    Twenty minutes later, my daughter climbed in the cab. “Please tell me we’re not staying at the Dude Rancher.”
    I smiled, and she pulled the shoulder belt around in a huff as Merle softened his tone with one of my favorites, “If We Make It Through December.”
    She ruffled Dog’s hair and kissed his muzzle, and it must’ve taken a good thirty seconds before she remarked, “Did you get a new stereo in the truck, Dad? It sounds really good.”

SEVERAL STATIONS
    “Many calls that night, did Scrooge make with the Spirit of Christmas Present. Down among the miners who labored in the bowels of the earth. And out to sea among the sailors at their watch, dark, ghostly figures and their several stations.”
    “What do you want to do, Sheriff?”
    I paused, repeating the lines in my head, and glanced at the young Wyoming highway patrolman. I envied him his insulated coveralls—mine were still folded up behind the seat of my truck. I ducked my head down and peered around the flipped-up collar of my sheepskin coat and from under the brim of my hat.
    The highway patrol had closed the interstate and the driver of the big eighteen-wheeler had negotiated the off-ramp but had only gotten as far as the first turn on the Durant county road before he slid off and slowly rolled the truck over like an apatosaurus looking to make a giant snow angel. “Go home, troop.”
    The emergency lights from his cruiser were flashing, andthe both of us turned blue and red like a rotating color wheel on a Christmas tree as he shook his head. “I’ll stick around and—”
    “Go home. I’m sure that family of yours in Sheridan would like to see you sometime before Christmas day.” We’d been talking while the EMTs checked the rather nonplussed truck driver, who said the insurance would cover the damages. He didn’t appear injured, but they’d hauled him away to Durant Memorial as a precaution.
    The trooper had been transferred from the Evanston detachment and had been enjoying the new duty, at least up until tonight. He’d done a stint in the first Gulf War and was now married with three kids and trying to make it on state wages—he didn’t mention which was tougher. I looked out toward the closed highway across a landscape that, if it didn’t look like the North Pole, was getting very close to looking like Barrow, Alaska. “You don’t get going soon, you might not make it.”
    He glanced back at his two-wheel-drive Interceptor—good for a hundred and forty miles an hour on dry pavement and in current conditions good for about twenty. “What about you, don’t you have people?”
    I looked back at my snow-covered truck and nodded toward Dog, who I could see through the sweeping windshield wipers was sitting in the passenger seat. “My only in-town family this holiday.” I pushed his shoulder toward his unit but not so hard that he’d slip. “Go.”
    He looked at me, then at the overturned tractor and sheared-open