Dudival zigzagged from tree to tree until he was next to the house. He would take nothing for granted—no matter how silly this may have seen to his onlooking neighbor, Mrs. Doser, who’d gotten up in the middle of the night to take her anti-seizure medicine. Her husband, Mr. Doser, believed, when he was alive, that the uranium market would one day rebound and high-graded (stole) chunks of yellowcake from the mine in his Jetsons lunchbox. By the time Atomic Mines closed its operations, Mr. Doser had accumulated three hundred pounds of the stuff, which he kept for thirty years in barrels in the spare room next to where he and his wife slept. Back in the day, the mine officials actually extolled the health benefits associated with radiation. That’s why it came as a total surprise to the Dosers when the mister came down with leukemia. And even though Mrs. Doser had to have her bladder and 80 percent of lower bowel removed a few years later, she was still spry and nosy. She took a chair to her window and watched Sheriff Dudival, pistol drawn, crouched for action, sneaking up to his own house—like he always did—and wondered how a person could live like that.
Dudival stood at the right side of his living room window and peeked in. He was looking for the telltale glow of a cigarette, the clearing of a throat, or the sniffling of a tweaker’s runny nose. Then, he unlocked the door and crept inside using a combat position to “cut the pie” at every doorway. When he was finally satisfied no one was lurking, he closed the curtains and turned on one small lamp that he’d redeemed with coupons from the generic brand of cigarettes that he smoked. As for his house, it was obvious at first glance that it belonged to a bachelor. Dudival’s stock answer when the subject of marriage came up was that he never got around to it, like a forgotten item on a grocery list. When pressed, he would tell people he never found the right girl, but they would have to be from out-of-town to believe that. Folks from Vanadium knew that, long ago, he had actually found the right girl—the most unlikely of girls. To everyone’s understanding, but Shep Dudival’s, the romance was doomed from the start. But that didn’t stop him from trying—just as newcomers to Vanadium find it hard to accept that tomatoes don’t grow well at this altitude.
The décor of the house was neat in a military way—no dirty clothes strewn about, no piles of magazines and newspapers, no TV dinners left out, or filled ashtrays—the detritus typical of a man living alone. Instead, a bed made as tightly as the envelope of a Hallmark card, a small Pledge-polished fold-leaf oak table with a tin tray from the fifties that extolled the beauty of the Rockies as a travel destination, and a La-Z-Boy recliner with a TV tray positioned in front of a black and white Zenith with rabbit ears. There was an area shag rug that was the color and texture of Chef Boyardi spaghetti, a gun safe, an old-fashioned percolator, and a framed black and white picture of a young boy standing next to a hard-looking peace officer with a brush mustache and campaign hat at the gun range in the quarry.
Sheriff Dudival took off his duty belt, his flack vest, his uniform, and carefully hung them up. He went to the bathroom, peed, and flossed his teeth. The cylinder lock, which he had collected earlier in the evening in an evidence bag, now went into his safe. He changed into ironed, cotton pajamas, got into bed and opened his copy of Mrs. Humphry’s Manners For Men. “Gentleness and moral strength combined must be the salient characteristics of the gentleman…” When Dudival’s eyelids began to dunk like catfish bobbers, he turned off the light.
CHAPTER THREE
The Svendergards’ Inhibitions
At Dominguez’s funeral, the family—whose minds had been poisoned by Cookie—made it clear that they were no longer interested in keeping Buster. Buster’s availability was passed along to the various friends and Lookie-Lous who were there for the free food served at the wake by the Buttered Roll restaurant. The Women’s League of Vanadium—in emergency session—had decided on the Svendergards, a middle-aged couple who were childless and had missed out on adopting Buster in the first draft round. Mr. Svendergard owned six hundred and forty acres on Lame Horse Mesa, but was neither a farmer nor a rancher. He owned the Svendergard Cement Company, which sold gravel and concrete. Svendergard had been responsible for blasting over a hundred gravel pits, leaving the once beautiful ridgeline—as their neighbor, Jimmy Bayles Morgan was heard to grouse—“as pockmarked as Uncle Joe Stalin’s goddamned face.” Rumor had it that breathing all of the dusty particulate had a sclerotic effect on Mr. Svendergard’s vas deferens, preventing the proper expulsion of reproductive fluids. That’s what people in Vanadium said, anyway. On first meeting Gil and Zella Svendergard, one was struck by how fat and pink they were. Coupled with their blonde eyelashes and eyebrows, they bore an uncanny resemblance to Yorkshire swine. But despite the fact that the Svendergards were hale, corpulent, and jolly people, they never mixed well in Vanadian society. Some felt it was because they lacked a normal interest in horses, fishing, and guns. There was plenty of gossip about them in Vanadium, but nothing, please pardon the pun, concrete. Sheriff Dudival’s background check only showed a Chapter Seven filed in 1993, which was not deemed serious enough to hinder the adoption. As Buster took his things from the Dominguezes truck and carried them to the Svendergard’s, Cookie Dominguez suddenly jumped out from between the two trucks. He grabbed Buster by the hair and, as a gesture of fond farewell, punched him in the mouth.
“I’m gonna kill you someday,” Cookie said.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Mr. Svendergard said as he and his wife stumbled onto the scene.
Cookie took a fake jab at Mr. Svendergard’s face, making him flinch. Content with having intimidated a grown man, Cookie smirked and returned to his grieving family.
“What’s got into him?” Mrs. Svendergard asked.
“He thinks ah kilt his daddy,” replied Buster.
The mister helped Buster to his feet. Mrs. Svendergard gave him a Kleenex to blot his bloody mouth. As the Svendergards climbed into their cement truck—which advertised the family company on its door panel—they couldn’t help wondering if they had made a serious mistake.
b
It was Mr. Svendergard who first discovered deposits of sand and gravel in Vanadium. He was a big believer in concrete, and the Svendergard compound was a showcase for his concrete artistry. Every structure on the property was made from the stuff—the domicile, floors, walls, countertops, showers, baths, and sleeping platforms.“Buster, they haven’t come up with anything better than concrete since the Egyptians,” Mr. Svendergard said. “Concrete is made from a filler and a binder. That binder is usually cement paste. We use normal size aggregates to make a heavy-duty product. Aggregates are the stones we quarry then wash. Am I going too fast for you?”
“No, sir,” Buster said, not understanding one thing he’d said.
“Wanna see the gravel loft?”
The gravel loft was the biggest building in the complex. Six cement trucks sat side-by-side, ready to be loaded with washed gravel from a large chute that was connected to a silo. He showed Buster a red handle that was connected to a large chain that went all the way up to the ceiling.
“Go ahead and pull it.” Buster was reluctant, but Mr. Svendergard encouraged him. Buster gave it a yank. When he did, gravel spewed out of the chute and emptied directly into the rolling tank of a cement truck.
“You just dropped a ton of gravel.”
“Cool,” said Buster.
“I designed this