Assumption Read Free Page A

then to remain productive. That’s what memo 9374 says.”
    Ogden looked over at Huddie’s Lumber Company where Manny and Rick worked, had worked since high school, probably would work until they stopped working for good.
    “It’s slow right now,” Rick said.
    Ogden nodded.
    Mindy or Eloise brought food to Ogden and coffee to his friends. She didn’t give them much of a look and even less of a greeting.
    “She doesn’t like you guys,” Ogden said.
    Rick smiled. “She likes us.”
    “Listen, fellas, I’ve got to eat so I can make my rounds. You mind?”
    Rick held his palms out as if pressing against an invisible wall. “Pardon the hell out of us. We wouldn’t want to interfere with Wyatt Earp making his rounds.”
    “Give me a break, guys.”
    They did. The two men left in a bit of a huff. Ogden watched them walk across the street and back toward the lumberyard. He felt bad for having shut them down. He finished his meal.
    The old road up to the defunct ski area was just that, old. The lodge had burned to the ground fifteen years ago and now the only people who went up there were teenagers. They kissed each other, tore around on the occasional snowmobile, or spray-painted what they thought were offensive words on the remaining five feet of the lodge’s north wall. It being a weekday and during school hours, the place was deserted, the dry snow blowing across the meadow beyond the parking area. Ogden got out and walked to where the doors had once been, then he moved around and along the wall to see the new graffiti. In the summer, people who called themselves Gypsies would come park their motor homes and squat for a while. Nobody minded much. He recalled the past summer when he had to pick up a Gypsy man accused of stealing a watch from a tourist. Ogden knew as soon as he began talking to the man that he wasn’t guilty of stealing the watch, but oddly he also knew that the man, given the opportunity, would have taken the watch in a heartbeat. He went back to the tourist and helped the man retrace his steps. They found the watch in the man’s car trunk.
    Ogden felt bad for having tied the dead cat up in a plastic bag to be taken to the lab in Santa Fe. He imagined that the old woman would have wanted the cat buried. He walked back to his rig and radioed in.
    “Anything?” he asked Felton.
    “No escapes from no place,” Felton said. “Checked the pen and the hospitals and the animal shelter. Everybody’s present and accounted for. Well, except the mental hospital. They want to know when you’re coming back.”
    “Thanks.”
    “They said your brain will be ready on Wednesday.”
    “Thanks, again.”
    “What’s your twenty?”
    “I’m up here at the old lodge.”
    “Don’t freeze up there.”
    Ogden hung up the handset. He looked at the field of white against the backdrop of the slope of aspens, spindly and naked.
    It was afternoon when Ogden received the call to go to Mrs. Bickers’s house. Bucky Paz’s car and two other rigs were already parked in front. Neighbors were hanging about on their porches and Ogden took this as a bad sign. Inside he found Paz just hanging up the telephone. He paused at the look on the big man’s face.
    “I got a notion to come here and look around,” he said. He looked away and coughed into his fist.
    Ogden didn’t speak. He waited.
    “Well, I figured out why no one saw anything.”
    “Why is that?”
    Paz asked Ogden to follow him out of the parlor and across the hall to the room with the television. The rug was pulled back. Ogden stopped to observe the trapdoor in the floor.
    Ogden hummed.
    “I came in and found the rug turned back like that.” He paused and put a cigarette in his mouth. “The old lady’s still down there.”
    Ogden felt his stomach turn a little.
    “Just like the cat,” Paz said.
    “Christ,” Ogden said.
    “Christ ain’t got nothing to do with this, son.” Paz stomped his foot down on boards of the trapdoor. He took a slow breath