Cry Father Read Online Free Page A

growl rumbles out of Sancho’s throat. Patterson crouches and strokes his neck. “Junior,” Patterson says, by way of greeting.
    “Patterson,” Junior says in the same tone of voice. “Need a beer?”
    “I could use one,” Patterson says.
    Junior reaches into the car and tosses him a can of Budweiser.
    Patterson pops the tab, drinks.
    “You always had the dog?” Junior asks.
    “A few years.”
    “What is it?”
    “Mutt. Some part German shepherd, but mostly mutt.”
    “He’s a good-looking dog.”
    “Visiting Henry?” Patterson asks.
    “Something like that.” Junior leans back on the car, bending his head at Patterson like his neck is just a little bit broken.
    “Something like what?”
    Junior hacks something globular and wet up from his lungs, spits it in the dirt. “You seen him? Henry?”
    “You check down at the barn?”
    “I did. He ain’t there.”
    “Probably working,” Patterson says. “Might be one of the horses is sick.”
    “Might be,” Junior says. “Might be he found him some little bitch down in San Luis that don’t mind he’s a cripple.”
    “He’s allowed,” Patterson says.
    Junior looks off at the north. “Which one of those is the one where they found the horse?” he asks, nodding at the mountains.
    “Horse?” Patterson repeats.
    “Snippy,” Junior says.
    “It was the Blanca Massif,” Patterson says. He points at the mountains on the north rim of the valley, sloping up from the floor to a sawtoothed ridge, the peaks blue-gray and snowcapped. “Can’t miss ’em.”
    Junior squints. “Where?”
    “Straight,” Patterson says. “It’s the five peaks right there. Little Bear, Blanca Peak, California Peak, Mount Lindsey, and Huerfano Peak.”
    “I heard about it on that dipshit radio show Henry listens to,” Junior says. “Brother Joe. You believe all that shit he gets from that damn show?”
    “Not much,” Patterson says.
    Junior nods for a second or two. Then he says, “Did he tell you that I gave him the money to move out here?”
    “No,” Patterson says. “He didn’t.”
    “I sure enough did. Didn’t have a pot to piss in and I gave him everything I had. Never saw it again, neither.”
    “I don’t have any interest in getting in the middle of your shit,” Patterson says. “None.”
    “Sure,” Junior says. “But there’s a bunch of things you ain’t heard about that old asshole. Don’t let him fool you none.”
    Patterson pours the rest of the beer in the dirt and tosses the empty can in the ditch.
    Junior laughs out loud. He walks around to the driver’s side of the car and climbs in, still laughing. “It’s real easy to do with the second half, ain’t it, partner?” he says, starting up the engine.

Justin
    I don’t know if I ever told you about the horse, Snippy, but that’s probably the strangest story to come out of the valley. She was found in 1967, skinned nose to shoulders, completely empty of organs. Not a drop of blood, neither. The lady who owned her said she was killed by flying saucers. Said they’d be back. And, sure enough, it was only a couple years later that the cattle mutilations started. And they’ve been continuing off and on ever since.
    I went and looked at a calf they found during the last round. Henry took me. It was in the shadow of this wind-twisted pine in the middle of a field of brown scrub. It’d been completely cored out, just a hole in the middle of the carcass where the organs had been, and its face had been cut off in laser-straight lines, not a drop of blood to be found.
    Of course, some believe that there ain’t really any cattle mutilations at all. Or, at least, that they aren’t caused by anything as exoticas aliens. The story runs that a man from Denver named John Baylor bought a hundred thousand acres in 1960 with the intent of clear-cutting it, only to find out that the land shouldn’t have been for sale. That it was communal-use land guaranteed by a Mexican land grant in 1863. Most