Bonegrinder Read Free Page A

impulse.
    So Wintone sought his escape in sleep; he dreamed less often now. He lowered his head into the cradle of his folded arms on the desk, and in the morning he awoke on the cot in the next room, neither remembering nor caring how he’d got there.
    The cedar frame of the cot groaned like something dying as Wintone rolled onto his side and sat up, raking his fingers lightly over his sleep-swollen features as if to check for changes. After a brief, cold shower and a quick shave, Wintone felt better. He felt good enough to put on a fresh uniform and to walk down to Turper’s Grill and have scrambled eggs and gravy biscuits for breakfast.
    There were several fishermen breakfasting at the counter at Turper’s, dressed in expensive city-bought outdoors clothing and talking about the insurance business. A vacationing family—man, wife and teen-age daughter—sat in one of the booths by the window, eating in silence. The place where Wintone customarily sat at the counter was taken, so he ate at one of the small tables near the door. From time to time he’d look up and watch Velda’s bubblelike henna hairdo moving back and forth behind the tall serving-shelf from the kitchen, much like a balled-up artificial animal in a shooting gallery.
    It was nine o’clock when Wintone ordered a cup of black coffee to go and carried it back to his office.
    Things to do. Nate Graham had claimed some city fishermen had trespassed to fish his private lake, and after he’d chased them off in none too friendly a fashion one of his milk cows had turned up dead of a bullet wound. He’d managed to find out the name of one of one of the fishermen, and though they’d gone back to Saint Joseph the next day, Graham had filed charges. Paperwork for the state, enough to keep Wintone occupied for over an hour hunt-and-pecking on his old Royal typewriter.
    After that Rufe Davis, proprietor of Colver General Merchandise and Colver’s postmaster, came by with the day’s mail and sat for a long chat, talking mostly about how his business had picked up and how hellish hot it was getting outside. When he was gone, Wintone leisurely opened his mail with his pocketknife and scanned the various colorful ads and form letters with disinterest. He had no need for a new anything, really. The tools of his trade were basic.
    It was just past noon when old Bonifield crossed the street toward the sheriff’s office with his curiously agile, limping gait. Sweat had streaked his grizzled, lean face and he was walking fast, bent slightly forward, nervously shifting his usual large wad of chewing tobacco from cheek to cheek behind set lips.
    He threw open the office door with a suddenness that startled and momentarily angered Wintone.

THREE
    W INTONE SAT AND LISTENED. Craziness here. What old Bonifield was yammering about couldn’t be true. The sheriff decided to let the old man talk until he ran down.
    Lazily rubbing a forefinger along the side of his nose, Wintone speculated that maybe it was the combination of afternoon heat and morning alcohol that had ignited old Bonifield’s imagination.
    Quite a story he was telling, about a boy who’d been attacked at the lake by something that sounded as if it came right out of a late-night horror movie. Wintone had heard this sort of almost incoherent ranting before from Bonifield when the old man had been drinking hard. What did worry the sheriff was that a boy might have been hurt badly somewhere in some other fashion. Though even that part of Bonifield’s tale was probably so much wind.
    “It be true, Sheriff!” Bonifield shouted, sensing Wintone’s doubt.
    “Ain’t always easy to know what’s true,” Wintone said.
    “You’ll be knowin’ when you see the body.” Bonifield opened the front door for a moment, rattling the blinds against the window, and spat an amber arc of chewing tobacco into the street.
    Wintone resented him letting the heat in against the hardworking air conditioner. “I wish you’d