Specimen Song Read Free

Pré’s old sheriffs cruiser with the patches on the doors where the decals had been. Good road car, though. On those long, straight stretches of Montana road, Du Pré drove maybe 120. Had to slow down for some towns. Once a highway patrolman had stopped him, but Du Pré said call the sheriff in his home county of Charbonneau, told him he was on an errand and needed to make time. When the cop went back to his car, Du Pré smoked it, getting back up to speed. He never heard anything more about it.
    Du Pré tossed his suitcase and fiddle in the backseat. He felt dirty from the city air and all the miles of flight. He itched.
    He held Madelaine for a moment. Murmuring.
    “We go home and in a while we both find out I got the clap or not,” said Du Pré. She looked shocked—for a moment.
    “So everybody is all right?” said Du Pré. It seemed he’d been gone a long time, but it’d been only five days.
    “Yeah,” said Madelaine. “That Bart, he is working so hard on his house and that ranch. Old Booger Tom run him around and Bart don’t say nothing to the old bastard, and Bart owns that place. Booger Tom, I saw him in the bar the other night and he say he try every way to make Bart blow up or quit or whine and Bart just won’t do it. I think that Booger Tom kind of likes Bart for that,”
    So do I, Du Pré thought. Poor Bart Fascelli, rich boy, horrible family, then he is in his late forties and suddenly realizes that though he owns that ranch, “Booger Tom owns himself . Bart, he wants to own himself, too. I like that man. Hope he don’t never drink again.
    “Bart is so very nice to Jacqueline and Maria,” Madelaine went on. “Like a good uncle, you know. He is always very correct.” Jacqueline and Maria were Du Pré’s daughters. Bart had helped out Maria a lot and was going to pay for a college education for her. Since Du Pré’s father had murdered Bart’s brother, Du Pré thought that was pretty tough of Bart. He’s probably a pretty tough man, don’t know how much yet.
    They were headed east to pick up the two-lane norm to Toussaint. Du Pré looked down at the speedometer. Ninety. He slowed to seventy. Can’t go fast on the expressway, he thought, but I want to get home. Take a long hot shower. Feels like my soul and half of my ass is still in Washington, D.C.
    That detective, he never came to ask me more questions, Du Pré thought. I only caught the horse. Don’t even know the name of the woman who was killed. Cree, though, like some of my people.
    Madelaine fiddled around in a little cooler and brought out a can of beer for Du Pré and a wine cooler for herself. She popped the can open and handed it to him. Du Pré took a long swallow.
    “That’s pretty good,” he said.
    He saw the exit north up ahead. Get off this four-lane mess and back on a two-lane road. I am a two-lane man in a four-lane age. And they are welcome to it.
    Du Pré glanced up at the bluffs above the Yellowstone as he turned round the exit ramp. The Roche Jaune of the voyageurs. They had been here so long ago, no one really knew how long. Tough men, could cover some country.
    A huge hawk flapped up from a kill in a field across the highway. It held something small in one talon. Du Pré couldn’t see what it was. The big bird turned in the air and locked its wings and floated on. Du Pré grinned. Home, it sure felt good.
    “So, this Washington D.C., what was it like?” said Madelaine.
    “Hot and sticky,” said Du Pré. “But I met some nice people, some Cajun people from Louisiana. They talk some French like ours, only some different. Call it Coonass French.” Du Pré spoke Coyote French. Well, those Cajuns had been descended from Québécois deported by the English over two centuries ago to Louisiana. And we didn’t talk so much after that. Du Pré’s people were Métis—French, Cree, Chippewa, and some little English no one wanted to admit to—who were the voyageurs and trappers of the Company of Gentlemen