Montana Creeds: Tyler. Linda Lael Miller

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СКАЧАТЬ every once in a while, a part falls off. Last week, it was the muffler—”

      Tyler nodded, weary of Walt’s prattle but not about to show it. “That’s the idea,” he replied quietly.

      The aging redneck approached the Cadillac, touched the hood with something like reverence. “Is this thing stolen?” Walt asked, understandably suspicious. After all, Tyler reflected, a man didn’t run across a deal like that every day, especially in Crap Creek, Montana, or whatever the hell that wide spot in the road was called.

      Tyler chuckled. “No, sir,” he said. “I own it, fair and square. The title’s in the glove compartment. You agree, and I’ll sign off on it right now, and be on my way.”

      “Wait till Myrtle comes out with the groceries and sees this,” the old fella marveled, hooking his thumbs in the straps of his greasy bib overalls, shaking his head once and finally cutting loose with a gap-toothed smile. Walt needed dental work.

      Tyler waited.

      “I still don’t understand why any sane man would want to make a swap like this,” Walt insisted. “Could be, you’re not right in the head.” He paused, squinted up into Tyler’s impassive face. “You look all right, though.”

      Involuntarily, Tyler glanced at his watch, an expensive number with a twenty-four-karat-gold rodeo cowboy riding a bronc inlaid in the platinum face. Diamonds glittered at the twelve, three, six and nine spots, and the thing was as incongruous with who he was as the pricey SUV he was virtually giving away, but he’d never considered parting with the watch. His late wife, Shawna, had sold her horse trailer and a jeweled saddle she’d won in a barrel racing event to buy it for him, the day he took his first championship.

      “I don’t know as I’m eager to trade with a man in a hurry,” Walt said astutely, narrowing his weary eyes a little. “You’re runnin’ from somethin’, and it might be the law. I don’t need that kind of trouble, I can tell you. Myrtle and me, we got ourselves a nice life—nothin’ fancy—I worked at the lumber mill for thirty years—but the double-wide is paid off and we manage to scrape together ten bucks for each of the grandchildren on their birthdays—”

      Tyler suppressed a sigh.

      “That’s some watch,” Walt observed, in no particular hurry to finalize the bargain. The wise gaze took in Tyler’s jeans and shirt, newly purchased at rollback prices, lingered on his costly boots, handmade in a specialty shop in Texas. Rose again to his black Western hat, pulled low over his eyes. “You win it rodeoin’ or somethin’?”

      “Or something,” Tyler confirmed. His own brothers, Logan and Dylan, didn’t know about his marriage to Shawna, or the accident that had killed her; he wasn’t about to confide in a stranger he’d met in the parking lot at Wal-Mart.

      “You look like a bronc-buster,” Walt decided, after another leisurely once-over. “Sorta familiar, too.”

       You look like a forklift driver, Tyler responded silently. He looped his thumbs in the waistband of his stiff new jeans. “Deal or no deal?” he asked mildly.

      “Let me see that title,” Walt said, still hedging his bets. “And some identification, if you don’t mind.”

      Knowing it wouldn’t matter if he did mind, Tyler fetched the requested document from the SUV, pausing to pat the ugly dog he’d found half-starved in another parking lot, in another town, on the long road home.

      “Dog part of the swap?” Walt asked, getting cagier now.

      “No,” Tyler said. “He stays with me.”

      Walt looked regretful. “That’s too bad. Ever since my blue tick hound, Minford, died of old age last winter, I’ve been hankerin’ to get me another dog. They’re good company, and with Myrtle waitin’ tables every day to bank-roll her bingo habit, I’m alone a lot.”

      “Plenty of dogs in need of homes,” Tyler pointed out. “The shelters are full of them.”

      “Reckon that’s so,” Walt agreed. He studied the title Tyler handed over like it was a summons or something. “Looks all right,” he said. “Let’s see that ID.”

      Tyler pulled his wallet from his hip pocket and produced a driver’s license.

      Walt’s rheumy eyes widened a little, and he whistled, low and shrill, in exclamation. “Tyler Creed,” he said. “I thought I’d heard that name before, when I saw it on the title to this Caddie of yours. Four times world champion bronc-rider. Seen you on ESPN many a time. In some TV commercials, too. Takes guts to stand in front of a camera wearing nothing but boxer-briefs and a shit-eatin’ grin the way you done, but you pulled it off, sure as hell. My daughter Margie has a calendar full of pictures of you—two years out of date and she still won’t take it down off the wall. Pisses her husband off somethin’ fierce.”

      Inwardly, Tyler sighed. Outwardly, he stayed cool.

      “Myrtle and me, we’d be glad to have you come to our place for supper,” Walt went on.

      “No time,” Tyler said, hoping he sounded regretful.

      Walt looked him over once more, shook his head again and got his own paperwork out of that rattletrap truck of his. Signed his name on the dotted line. “Just let me fetch my toolbox out of the back,” he said.

      “I’ll get my own gear while you’re doing that,” Tyler answered, relieved.

      The switch was made. Tyler had his duffel bag, his dog and his guitar case in the Chevy before Walt set his red metal toolbox in the back of the Escalade.

      “Sure you won’t come to supper?” Walt asked, as a woman emerged from Wal-Mart and headed toward them, pushing a cart and looking puzzled.

      “Wish I could,” Tyler lied, climbing into the Chevy. If he drove hard, he and Kit Carson, the dog, would be in Stillwater Springs by the time the sun went down. They’d lie low at the cabin overnight, and come morning, he’d find his brother Logan and punch him in the face.

      Again.

      Maybe he’d put Dylan’s lights out, too, for good measure.

      But mainly, heading home was about facing up to some things, settling them in his mind.

      “See you,” he told Walt.

      And before the old man could answer, Tyler laid rubber.

      Five miles outside Crap Creek, the Chevy’s muffler dropped to the blacktop and dragged, with an earsplitting clatter, throwing blue and orange sparks.

      “Shit,” Tyler said.

      Kit Carson gave a sympathetic whine.

      Well, he’d wanted to go back and find out who he’d have been without the rodeo, the money and Shawna. This was country life, for regular folks.

      And it wasn’t as if Walt hadn’t warned him, he thought.

      With a grimace, Tyler pulled to the side of the road, shut the truck off and scooted underneath the pickup on his back, with damage control on his mind. Just like the bad old days, he reflected, when he and his dad, Jake, had played shade-tree mechanic in the СКАЧАТЬ