[Dalyia]

maybe it was

too damn cold, maybe people were on their best behavior,
or it might have been that the holiday spirit was entrenched in
that week between Christmas and New Year’s, but it was nearly noon
before the first call came in.
“Nate?” Peach came to his door holding a couple of knitting needles
and a hank of purple wool. “Charlene called from The Lodge. Seems a
couple of the boys got into a ruckus over a game of pool. Some pushyshovey
going on.”
“All right.” He got to his feet, fishing a quarter out of his pocket as
he walked out. “Call it,” he said to Otto and Peter.
“Heads.” Otto set down his Field & Stream while Nate flipped the
coin in the air.
He slapped it on the back of his hand. “Tails. Okay, Peter, you’ll
come with me. Little altercation over at The Lodge.” He snagged a
two-way, hooked it to his belt.
He stepped into the entry, began dragging on gear. “If it hasn’t broken
up by the time we get there,” he said to Peter, “I want you to tell me
the players straight off, give me the picture. Is it something that’s going
to turn nasty or can we resolve it with a few strong words?”

He shoved out the door, into the blast of cold air. “That mine?” he
asked, nodding toward the black Jeep at the curb.
“Yes, sir.”
“And that cord plugged into that pole there would be attached to the
heater on the engine.”
“You’ll need it if it’s going to sit for any time. There’s a Mylar blanket
in the back, and that’ll cover up the engine and keep the heat in for
up to twenty-four hours, maybe. But sometimes people forget to take
them off, and then you’re going to overheat. Jumper cables in the back,
too,” he continued as he pulled the plug. “Emergency flares and first-aid
kit and—”
“We’ll go over all that,” Nate interrupted, and wondered if navigating
down a road called Lunatic Street would entail the need of emergency
flares and first aid. “Let’s see if I can get us to The Lodge in one
piece.”
He climbed behind the wheel, stuck the key in the ignition. “Heated
seats,” he noted. “There is a God.”
The town looked different in the daylight, no doubt about it. Smaller
somehow, Nate thought as he maneuvered on the hard-packed snow.
Exhaust had blacked the white at the curbs, and the storefront windows
weren’t exactly sparkling, and most of the Christmas decorations looked
the worse for wear in the sunlight.
It wasn’t a postcard, unless you looked beyond to the mountains, but
it was a few solid steps up from dreary.
Rugged was a better term, he decided. It was a settlement carved out
of ice and snow and rock, snugged tight to a winding river, flanked by
forests where he could easily imagine wolves roaming.
He wondered if forest meant bear, too, but decided it wasn’t worth
worrying about until spring. Unless all that hibernation talk was bullshit.

It took less than two minutes to drive from station house to lodge.
He saw a total of ten people on the street and passed a brawny pickup,
a clunky SUV, and counted three parked snowmobiles and one set of
skis propped against the side of The Italian Place.
It seemed people didn’t exactly hibernate in Lunacy, whatever the
bears did.
He went to the main door of The Lodge and walked through it just
ahead of Peter.
It hadn’t broken up. He could hear that plainly enough through the
shouts of encouragement—

kick his fat ass, Mackie!—and the thud of
bodies and grunts.What Nate calculated was that a Lunacy-style crowd
had gathered, consisting of five men in flannel, one of which turned out
to be a woman on closer inspection.
Encircled by them, two men with shaggy, brown hair were rolling
around on the floor, trying to land short-arm punches on each other.
The only weapon he saw was a broken pool cue.
“Mackie brothers,” Peter told him.
“Brothers?”
“Yeah. Twins. They’ve been beating the hell out of each other since
they were in the womb. Hardly ever take a swing at anyone else.”
“Okay.”
Nate nudged his way through the press of bodies. The sight of him
had the shouts toning down to murmurs as he waded in and hauled the
top Mackie off the bottom Mackie.
“All right, break it up. Stay down,” he ordered, but Mackie number
two was already springing up, rearing back. He landed a solid roundhouse
to his brother’s jaw.
“Red River, numbnuts!” He shouted, then did a victory dance, fists
lifted high, as his brother slumped in Nate’s arms.

“Peter, for Christ’s sake,”Nate said as his deputy remained immobile.
“Oh, sorry, chief. Jim, settle down.”
Instead, Jim Mackie continued to bounce in his Wolverines to the
cheers of the crowd.
Nate saw money being exchanged, but decided to ignore it.
“Take this one.” Nate shoved the unconscious man into Peter, then
stepped up to the self-proclaimed champ. “The deputy gave you an
order.”
“Yeah?” He grinned, showing blood on his teeth and an unholy
gleam in a pair of brown eyes. “So what? I don’t have to take orders from
that shithead.”
“Yeah, you do. I’ll show you why.”Nate spun the man around, shoved
him against the wall, had his hands behind his back and cuffed in under
ten seconds.
“Hey!” was the best the reigning champ could manage.
“Give me grief, and you’ll sit in a cell for resisting arrest, among other
things. Peter, bring that one over to the station when he wakes up.”
With no apparent loyalty, the crowd shifted its support to Nate with
catcalls and whistles as he muscled Jim Mackie toward the door.
Nate paused when he saw Charlene ease out of the kitchen. “You
looking to press charges?” he asked her.
She stared, finally blinked. “I . . . well, hell, I don’t know. Nobody’s
ever asked me that before.What kind of charges?”
“They broke some stuff back there.”
“Oh.Well, they always pay for it after. But they did run off a couple
of tourists who were going to order lunch.”
“Bill started it.”
“Oh now, Jim, you both start it. Every time. I’ve told you I don’t want
you coming in here fighting and causing a ruckus that runs people off. I
don’t want to press charges exactly. I just want this nonsense to stop.
And payment for damages.”
“Got it. Let’s go sort this out, Jim.”
“I don’t see why I have to—”
Nate solved the matter by pushing him out into the cold.
“Hey, Christ’s sake, I need my gear.”
“Deputy Notti will bring it. Get in the car, or stand here and get
frostbite. Up to you.” He yanked the door open, gave Jim a heave inside.
Once Nate was behind the wheel, Jim had recovered some dignity,
despite the bleeding mouth and puffy eye. “I don’t think this is the way
to treat people. It ain’t right.”
“I don’t think it’s right to coldcock your brother when somebody’s
holding his arms.”
Jim had the grace to look chagrined, and dipped his chin onto his
chest. “I was caught up. Heat of the moment. And the son of a bitch pissed

me off. You’re that Outsider’s come to be chief of police, aren’t you?”
“You’re a quick study, Jim.”
Jim sulked during the short drive to the station house. Then he
trudged along as Nate took him inside.
“Lower

48 here,” he said the minute he spotted Otto and Peach, “he
doesn’t understand how things are done in Lunacy.”
“Why don’t you explain it all to him?” There was a light in Otto’s
eyes. It might’ve been glee.
“Need the first-aid kit. Step into my office, Jim.”
Nate led him in, pushed him into a chair, then, after unhooking one
of the cuffs, snapped it onto the arm of the chair.
“Aw, come on. If I was going anywhere, I could just take this little
dink of a chair with me.”