the start, by which I mean from the night of the fistfight, nobody thought there was any mystery to the whole chain of events. Everybody knew it was young Royal Cullen who killed the racehorse, even if nobody saw him do it, and that’s why the jury convicted him. They sent him up for killing the horse, which was a crime he wasn’t even charged with, and not for killing young Blaine Harrison, which he did do but which was an act of self-defense as clear as the blue Oregon sky. And if that damn fool lawyer Tobb had even the good sense God gave goats, he would have asked for a change of venue and Royal Cullen wouldn’t be inside the wall at Salem right now doing a year for manslaughter. But that’s where he is when the plain truth is he shouldn’t be in the pen at all. I just found that out — that there actually was a mystery, I mean — because Cookie Vernon broke his arm trying to steal a pig, if you can picture that. He just climbed a fence and tried to tie a rope around the neck of one of Jeb Reiser’s fat hogs, except did you ever see a pig with an actual neck you could tie a rope around? I never did, and to this day it never occurred to me that a pig even has a neck, except maybe in an anatomical sense, but nobody ever claimed any of those Vernons is what you’d call brainy, especially not little Cookie who can’t be more than ten years old. It was Cookie Vernon’s sister Melva who started the whole chain of events, though I’d be the last one to say the fistfight was Melva Vernon’s fault for a moral fact, because you tell me when a girl that age can be held responsible for the pure and simple biological phenomenon of being a female. You know how it is, how a girl grows more in a certain six months than a man does in any six years or even sixty and how when those six months are over she’s learned more than she ever needs to know about certain advantages she has from then on from the pure and simple biological fact of being a girl that age. Sixteen, seventeen, something in there, too young anyway for two grown twenty-some-year-olds to be fighting over, and one of them a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. That was Blaine Harrison, who punched out young Royal Cullen on a Saturday night outside the Pastime. Harrison dropkicked him some too before they stopped the fight, or so I heard, but Royal Cullen got out of it with nothing seriously broken so that didn’t make it anything I could stick my nose in very far. Because, see, I’m a sheriff’s deputy for Umatilla County. Name of Webb Malone. They’ll tell you up in Meeker Valley that I’m about of an age to retire, which is truer than I care to think about, and they’ll probably tell you I’m your basic easy-going Santa Clausey kind of lawman except you might want to think twice before you armwrestle me. And I suppose that's true, too. Anyway, Royal Cullen came out of the fistfight with a purple eye and a good piece of skin scraped from his cheek, but he didn’t suffer anything bad enough to see Doc Henry about. And he was bragging about a rematch, which was dumb because he gave away four inches and twenty pounds to Blaine Harrison, who was an ex-Marine to boot. But the really dumb thing about it all was that neither one of them cared a damn about the girl. She was just an excuse. Melva Vernon showed up at the Pastime, they told me, in a silk almost-blouse and a pair of bluejeans you couldn’t know for sure if she climbed into or just had tattooed on, and she switched that body of hers around, that certain age biological phenomenon I spoke of, and it was like neither Blaine Harrison nor Royal Cullen had ever noticed her before. In fact they probably hadn’t, the Vernons being a family no one cares to notice if they have a choice, but that night they saw her all right, and one beer led to another and one insult led to another and finally everything led out to the parking lot where Blaine Harrison put out Royal Cullen’s lights without too much visible trouble. Like they say, the Marine Corps builds men. And it left me puzzling what kind of a rematch Royal Cullen had in mind, whether it was pride talking or just dumbness from being good and mad. Because what he told me was, “You stay out of it, Malone. This is a private fight. This is family.” Family’s what it was really about. It wasn’t about Melva Vernon, bluejeans or not, but about that damn thoroughbred black race pony of the Harrisons. They not only bragged about how they paid in the six figures for it, but they went and re-named it Big Isaac after the most famous historical man in this part of the county. I’ll tell you how it is. I was military police when I got called back for Korea and when that mess ended I got my discharge and took myself as far away as I could, which was Umatilla County, and I’ve been deputy up here in Meeker Valley for twenty-five years now. But a quarter of a century doesn’t make me settled-in-Oregon, not to the old families. Because they’ll still tell you how in the 1850s John Carter Harrison showed up here with his wife and kid, the only settler in thirty miles, and how he claimed the land and started a cattle herd. And they’ll tell you how whatever spunk or craziness it was that drove John Carter Harrison all the way out here in the first place was deposited undiminished in his son Isaac, and that it was Big Isaac Harrison who actually built Meeker Valley, who made peace with the Indians and dug the irrigation ditch and figured a trail for the cattle. They had a slogan then, “Big Isaac’ll do it,” which you’ll still hear once in a while up here, more than likely from someone who doesn’t have the sloppiest idea what it means. It’s legend, pure and simple. See what I’m getting at? That fistfight went way back. Because the Cullens came out here in the 1800s, too. They were twins — Regal and Royal — as if it took two Cullens to match up with one Big Isaac Harrison. And it probably did, but two were enough since one of their wives happened to be first cousin to a U.S. senator. And that was how through a special act of Congress and without lifting a hand except maybe to toast the senator with a snifter of brandy, the Cullens arrived here fully endowed with title to half of Meeker Valley. All properly legal. And that’s what it means to be settled-in-Oregon, not just to know that ancient history but to believe in it, too, and to believe as a simple fact of life that since Big Isaac Harrison couldn’t do diddly about losing half his claim to the Cullens it was proper for him in a fit of that Old Testament robber baron rage to curse the Cullens in perpetuity and saddle Meeker Valley with a family feud that’s gone on for four generations now. Me, I’ve only been here since Korea but I’ll tell you what I think. I think there was plenty of land for the Harrisons and Cullens both, and history has proved that for a mortal fact because both families have money now, and I mean big money. Flrst-name- the-governor and find-me-a-tax- shelter money. So what are they still feuding about? It’s not like Royal Cullen and Blaine Harrison were hired hands blowing off steam on a Saturday night. They’d gone to Harvard and Yale, one each, though I can’t remember which went where. If there’s a difference. So you see, it wasn’t Melva Vernon they were fighting over. No way. It would never have been her because of where the Vernons stand in Meeker Valley. Little Cookie Vernon, for example, the would-be pig thief sitting next to me holding his arm while I Little Cookie Vernon, the would- be pig thief, had a narrow nose and for that matter a whole pinched-in narrow face that would never know the use of a handkerchief as long as his shirtsleeves had cuffs, but it was his eyes, those little washed-out too-close-together grey puddles, that marked him a Vernon. drove him to Doc Henry’s, had a narrow nose and for that matter a whole pinched-in narrow face that would never know the use of a handkerchief as long as his shirtsleeves had cuffs, but it was his eyes, those little washed-out too-close-together grey puddles, that marked him a Vernon. The way I imagine it, some Vernon or other once argued to the Harrisons that he was squatting on Cullen land and to the Cullens that he was squatting on Harrison land and they both left him be in exchange for a promise of future work which, being a Vernon, he never quite got around to doing. And that’s how it is to this day. North of town we've got the Harrison ranch that goes on for miles in one direction and the Cullen ranch that goes on for miles in the other direction and squeezed between the two next to the highway is the Vernon place. The Vernons might have been farmers once, but for as long as I remember all they’ve been growing is a crop of bathtubs and bedsprings and rusty car bodies out front, not to mention whatever falls off trucks on the highway in the vicinity and is worth hauling to the Vernon shack providing they got a pickup in proper running order at the time. So you see, it couldn’t have been the Vernon girl the boys fought over. It had to be thoroughbred. The Harrisons had started fooling with racehorses, which was a new hobby for them or anyone else in Meeker Valley, and that left them vulnerable to the gossip that naturally developed over what people took to be the Harrisons going la-di-dah and putting on high- society airs. Because it was an expensive hobby. They brought in that black pony, which they named Big Isaac in honor of their illustrious ancestor, at a buying price in the six figures, and it was one hell of a looking animal, I’ll tell you that. It was black and shiny and streamlined down with something hot and special in its eye you’ll never see in any stock horse. So finally that’s what young Royal Cullen and Blaine Harrison got into it over. It was Yale and Harvard and it was Saturday night and it was beer and it was Melva Vernon and her tattooed bluejeans, okay, but at rock bottom it was the damn horse and the Harrison lineage. So when Royal Cullen insulted Big Isaac on Saturday night at the Pastime everybody knew it wasn’t actually the horse he was sneering at but Blaine Harrison’s famous legendary great-grandfather and every Harrison from him on down. So with beer and hot tempers the argument just had to move out into the parking lot where Royal Cullen picked up a black eye and a cut cheek and various other hurt spots from a veteran of not just Harvard or Yale but the U.S. Marine Corps, too. And said he wanted a rematch but told me to stay out of it by telling me, “This is family, Malone.” Except three days later Royal Cullen killed the horse for revenge and that put me into it. We’d had heavy rains and if there were tire tracks or tractor treads or even hoofprints there were no helpful ones I could find, especially after every Harrison on the place had rode or walked or drove out to have a look. By the time they were through churning up the stable area the Boy Scouts and the crime lab and the FBI put together couldn’t have read any tracks out of that place. Except the Harrisons didn’t care about tracks since they knew it was Royal Cullen who killed Big Isaac for revenge, but as I tried to tell them it helps to have some kind of evidence if you figure to prosecute. And we didn’t have any, starting with no tire tracks except for a churned-up mess of too many, none helpful. Because all they found that morning was the horse’s head. The body had been hauled away. They put the story on page one down at Pendleton and wrote about UFO’s and “ritual slaughter,” which missed the point entirely because that black horse had been worth a lot of money. Which wasn’t a point my boss, the sheriff, missed. Not by a long shot. I’d had to go into Pendleton because the sheriff as usual was doing his best to pretend tha t such a place as Meeker Valley didn’t exist. Every year at budget time the sheriff asked the county board to eliminate my deputy job and every year he got rebuffed be cause the county boa rd like most politicians maybe couldn’t read too well but knew how to count 16 Clinton St. Quarterly
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