“Your mother is a smart woman,” he said. “Maybe you won’t be a waste of my time.”
She didn’t say that when Isabel channel-surfed and accidentally found Fox News she would cover her eyes and howl until it was gone. In fact, Isabel had called the local cable service to see if they could remove just that channel so she wouldn’t ever have to see even a second of it ever again.
He said, “I remember the day when Republicans and Democrats alike loved America. I had lots of friends and clients who were Democrats. Now they’re different. They want to change us into goddamn France or Sweden. And I always thought I was safe from ’em here in Montana.
“But all you have to do is walk around downtown Bozeman to see they’ve infiltrated here. They always ruin the best places, you know. They move in and set about changing everything to be more like what they left. And I’m not even talkin’ about what they’ve done to Missoula or Whitefish.”
She nodded to indicate she heard him but she didn’t want to use the short time she had to discuss her mother or politics.
“I’ve got some questions to ask you if you don’t mind,” Cassie said.
“Yeah, Rachel told me that. Something about those damned Pergrams down by Emigrant.”
Cassie felt her heart lift.
“So you remember them?”
“They were low-rent white trash. Except for the girl. The girl turned out all right.”
“How well did you know them?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Well enough, I guess. That valley used to be a whole lot different before all the pinkos and movie stars started buying up ranchettes. I used to run horse pack trips into the park so I’d lease pasture down there, so I got to know just about everybody. That don’t mean I palled around with ’em.
“That was back when the park was a national park and not a candy-assed nature preserve run by Ivy League bureaucrats. It was a whole different world back then,” he said, shaking his head.
“Frank Pergram worked for me from time to time.”
Cassie looked up. She was interested. Ronald Pergram’s father was a mystery to her. She knew very little about him other than he’d deserted Helen and their two children when Ronald was young.
“What was he like?”
“Frank?”
“Yes.”
“Frank was a fuck-up. I never would have hired him as a wrangler but it was hard to find people to work back in those days. It wasn’t like it is now with people stacked on top of each other around here like it’s goddamn New York City.”
“I understand,” she said, trying to be patient. “But what would you say he was like? Why was he a fuck-up?”
“He just was. He couldn’t help it. Having him on the payroll was like having two good men gone. Frank could screw up a two-car funeral, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t.”
“He was the kind of guy who thought he could impress my female clients by acting like an old-time mysterious cowboy. Like he was Shane or something. When I needed him to picket the horses up in camp he was never where he was supposed to be—he’d be trying to romance some lady from Connecticut. Or he’d be getting into a fight with one of my other wranglers. Or he’d be in charge of the pack horses and he’d forget to bring the panniers. It was always one thing or other with him. He was a malcontent, a goddamn tumor on every expedition.”
Bull reached across his body and placed a hand on his armrest so he could lean closer to Cassie. His gaze was intense.
“You probably don’t understand how important it was to have a good crew in my line of work. I needed to have men and women I could depend on because once we set off into the Yellowstone wilderness I was stuck with ’em for days on end. We got clients from all over the country and all over the world who didn’t know jack-shit about horses, or packing, or camping in the wilderness. All some of ’em knew about nature was from watching Bambi, and the Yellowstone backcountry is raggedy-ass and nothing like Bambi at all.
“So we’d take all these people who didn’t know each other, who’d never been away from civilization, and put them on horses and take them into wild country. My crew had to be customer-friendly and professional. They needed to be able to overlook the dumb stuff our clients did or said, and I’ll be the first to admit some of our clients were real peckerheads. I couldn’t have employees who argued with the clients or tried to sneak into their tents at night. That’s unprofessional bullshit. Plus, I always had to be aware of the fact that the National Park Service could jerk my license to operate a commercial trip if they got complaints on me. Frank was the kind of guy who clients could complain about.
“I fired him once and he came back and begged me for a second go. Being the soft-heart I am,” Bull said with a sarcastic grin, “I let him go on the next trip. But he did the same dumbass things and I fired him as soon as we came back out of the wilderness.
“I can’t say we spoke much after that but I’d still see him around. Usually playing cowboy at the First National Bar in Emigrant or here in town at the Crystal. Still trying to impress the ladies with his squinty-eyed mysterious Davy Crockett bullshit.”
Cassie asked, “Did he ever talk to you about his family?”
Bull Mitchell was still for a moment. “I know where you’re going with this, you know. I ain’t stupid. This is about his son Ronald, the no-good murdering pervert, isn’t it?”
“Partly,” she said. “But I’m trying to learn more about Ronald by finding out about his father. You’re the only person around who probably knew him.”
He considered that and nodded, apparently satisfied with her answer.
“To Frank Pergram, his family at home was like boils or gout. They were just an irritation that flared up from time to time. He wouldn’t even mention them unless somebody asked him.”
“What would he say?”
Bull’s eyes left hers and seemed to focus on one of the elk heads. “He’d say his wife couldn’t even whore around because she was too damned ugly. I know he beat on her but that wasn’t so unusual in those days. But I heard he beat on her in front of his kids, and that’s not tolerable. He used to say he wished his son had been been stillborn because he was so damned useless to mankind. He made fun of how his kid talked and mocked him in front of other people. There was never any doubt that he was ashamed of them.
“You know,” Mitchell said, “I have something to confess here. I actually felt sorry for Ronald back then. The kid was a slug and he was hard to understand—some kind of speech impediment—that’s true. He was hard to figure out. But what kind of father is ashamed of his own son? His own family? It wasn’t until all this stuff came out about Ronald that I kind of figured Frank might have been right about him all along. But you know what? I don’t think Ronald would have been the sick monster he turned out to be if he hadn’t have grown up like that.”
Cassie was intrigued.