Rough Country

some lunch, he thought, pick up the gun, and go roust Slibe. There was something in the whole mess that seemed to want to pull him toward Wendy and her band, including her old man and her brother. An ambient craziness.
    He headed out to the highway, to a McDonald’s, got a call from Johnson Johnson, who was back home: “Fished the V one more day, never did see a thing. You solve the murder yet?”
    “Not yet.”
    “I was thinking, since they peed all over your vacation, why don’t y’all come along to the Bahamas this fall? Get you in a slingshot, put you on some bonefish.”
    “Johnson, the chances of getting me in a slingshot are about like the chances of you getting laid by a pretty woman.”
    “Aw, man, I been laid by lots of pretty women,” Johnson said.
    “Name one.”
    After a long silence, “This woman . . . she gotta be pretty?”
    Virgil laughed and said, “Johnson, I’ll call you when I get back. But count me in. Goddamnit, they can’t pull this shit if they can’t find me.”

    SITTING OVER A BIG MAC , fries, and a strawberry shake, he took another call, this one from Jud Windrow, the bar owner from Iowa.
    “You in Grand Rapids?” Windrow asked.
    “I am,” Virgil said, through the hamburger bun. “Where’re you?”
    “About three thousand feet straight up . . . just coming in. Wendy’s playing the Wild Goose tonight. I’m gonna stop by and take a look. You gonna be around?”
    “Could be,” Virgil said. “You got something?”
    “Huh? Oh, no. You told me to be careful, and I thought if you were around, with a gun, that’d be careful,” Windrow said. “Besides, you were wearing that Breeders T-shirt.”
    “Well, hell. What time you going?”
    “First set at seven o’clock,” Windrow said. “If she’s decent, I’ll stay until she quits. If she’s not . . .”
    “See you at seven o’clock,” Virgil said.
     
     
     
    VIRGIL BACKED out of his parking place, drove a block, pulled over, and got on his cell phone. Davenport’s secretary answered, and Virgil asked, “Lucas in?”
    He heard her call back to Davenport’s office, “It’s that fuckin’ Flowers.”
    Davenport picked up, said, “Virgil,” and Virgil said, “Sometimes I get tired of that ‘fuckin’ Flowers’ stuff.”
    “I’ll let her know,” Davenport said. “But it’s part of the growing Flowers legend. Or myth, or whatever it is. What’s up?”
    “Wanted to fill you in,” Virgil said.
    “Shoot.”
    Virgil spent five minutes filling him in. When he finished, Davenport said, “You know what I’m going to say.”
    “So say it.”
    “Go see this band with the guy from Iowa, stay up late, have a couple beers, and in the morning . . .”
    “Say it . . .”
    “Go fishing.”
    “I wanted it to be official,” Virgil said. “So I could say that you ordered me to.”
     
     
     
    THE HIGHWAY PATROLMAN HADN’T gotten to the sheriff’s office yet, so Virgil hit the men’s room, then wandered outside, not wanting any more food or coffee, and so at loose ends; standing there, with his fingers in his jeans pockets, he saw the liver-colored patrol car turn a corner, and walked out to meet the driver.
    The patrolman’s name was Sebriski, and he wanted to hear about the shoot-out in International Falls. Virgil told him a bit about it, and Sebriski said, “Better you than me, brother.”
    He’d handed over the rifle and Virgil had signed a receipt for it, and they talked for a couple more minutes about Department of Public Safety politics, and the prospect of raises, and then Sebriski slapped Virgil on the back and went on his way, and Virgil threw the rifle in the back of his truck.
    Sebriski had been sucking up a little bit, Virgil thought.
    In the immediate wake of the shoot-out in International Falls, in which three Vietnamese nationals had been killed, and another wounded, Virgil, who had a second career going as an outdoor writer, had been invited to write two articles for The New York Times Magazine .
    There’d been some bureaucratic mumbling about it, but the governor’s chief weasel, who was using the episode to pound his Republican enemies, did the algebra, got the governor to clear the way, and the Times published the articles, the second one two Sundays earlier.
    The effect had been greater than he’d anticipated—the Minneapolis papers subscribed to the Times ’s news service and reran the articles, and that had put them in every town in the state. He was, Davenport said, the