by Hannah Tinti
At six Hawley lit some Sterno and cooked a can of beans on the bathroom counter. When the brown juice started bubbling he turned off the fan and doused the flames. He clicked on the TV and ate the beans sitting on the bed. When he was finished he rinsed out the can and threw it away and cleaned the spoon and put it back into his kit. He opened a pouch of tobacco and took out rolling papers. He never used to smoke but after Lily’s funeral, he’d found the tobacco she’d bought the night before she died. He’d rolled a cigarette, thinking of her hands and how they would move, and ever since then he’d kept it up, just to have the taste of her in his mouth. Hawley lit the paper. He breathed it in. He flicked the ash on the floor. When the fire reached his fingertips, he stubbed out the end, and then he took out his list.
It was only a row of words. Laundry, Groceries, Pharmacy, Hardware Store. He was careful about that. Careful about everything. If someone picked this paper up or looked over Hawley’s shoulder they would think it was a list of errands. But each item was someone to be eliminated before they came after him or his daughter. He would leave nothing to chance anymore. He would leave nothing at all.
He’d had to bring in a cleaner at the lake. The cleaner took all the money in the licorice jars. The cleaner cleaned things. Got rid of Talbot’s body. Brought in a doctor. Paid off the man doing Lily’s autopsy. Scrubbed the police report. But the cleaner couldn’t clean Hawley. After the funeral was over and Loo was left with Mabel Ridge, Hawley had driven to the nearest bar and then stayed on a bender for two weeks straight. When he woke up, he was on a boat with Jove. His friend said Hawley had called him, though Hawley had no memory of picking up the phone. Jove had found him passed out on a mountain of garbage about to be trucked away to a landfill. That was before Hawley had made up his mind to kill anyone. He was still feeling too sorry for himself.
Over the years, Jove had finally learned to sail, and now he’d been hired to bring the boat they were on from Boston down to the Virgin Islands. On the way they met drop points and delivered various goods that he had stored underneath the floorboards. The yacht was a Bermuda-rigged ketch, with three sails: a mizzenmast, a mainsail and a jib. Jove was good at navigation, and he showed Hawley how to manage both the boat and his sorrow, giving him whiskey when he needed it, taking it away when he’d had too much. Talking him out of throwing himself in the water as they pushed through choppy currents. “Think of that daughter of yours,” said Jove. “You want to give her two dead parents instead of one?”
Their route went along the coast past Newport to Little Creek, Virginia, and from there on to Saint Thomas. The crossing took twelve days, and by the end of it, Hawley had sobered up enough to realize that the only thing that mattered was Loo. He needed to keep his daughter safe. And the first step was getting out from underneath Ed King. Hawley’s thinking was violent, but Jove talked him into putting the old boxer in prison instead. From the Alaska job he had enough to frame him for the pilot and the girlfriend, which wasn’t a frame exactly, since King was the one who had murdered them in the first place.
“Are you sure?” Hawley asked. “I know he’s your friend.”
“Not anymore,” said Jove. “Not after this.”
They made their final delivery and dropped the boat off. If there hadn’t been all that rain once they arrived, they might have stolen another boat and brought it back up the coast. But instead they caught a flight to the States and Jove went on to Alaska to take care of King and Hawley decided there were other people he needed to get rid of.
He’d meant to leave his daughter only for a week but it had been more than two years now. She was better off without him. Hawley knew that. But he also knew that he owed her this: a life without looking over her shoulder. And he was determined to finish the list to make sure that it came true, even though there were times when he could feel himself slipping, and he’d wonder if he’d last until the end. He’d scratch his beard and hours would pass, the skies darken and go light and then dark again. Sometimes he’d lie to himself.
He’d think: One day I’ll get over this.
He’d think: Tomorrow it will be less painful.
Then he’d scratch his beard some more and another day would be gone.
—
HE’D SPENT SOME time in Wyoming before, with Jove, back when he was in his twenties. It was after the Indian casino job and they’d both had some cash to spare. They went in on a three-way land deal with Frederick Nunn, whose house they’d robbed when they were first starting out, back when they were nothing but kids stealing silverware.
The land was near the Bighorn National Forest. Hawley and Jove had sold their shares off to a natural-gas company, using banks and intermediaries to keep the paper trail off. But Frederick Nunn’s property got declared a wildlife refuge for an endangered species: the black-tailed prairie dog. And then the feds came down and busted Nunn for money laundering and put him in jail, and in the process Nunn lost everything, even the great house in the Adirondacks. When he got out all he had left was the prairie-dog land, and it was full of giant rodents who lived in extensive colonies and tore down all the vegetation and dug their holes and ruined the soil until it wasn’t fit for cattle or horses or any kind of farming.
The land had been split into three separate properties. They had flipped a coin for the deeds. Hawley won the first toss, and got to pick first. Jove won the second. They didn’t think it would make a difference who got what, just ordered another round of whiskeys from the bar. Jove had even told Nunn about jacking his forks and spoons all those years ago and Hawley getting shot by the groundskeeper, and they had joked about it, aglow with the prospect of wealth, Nunn making a show of forgiveness, Jove and Hawley chipping in the next day and buying him a whole new fancy set of Mexican silverware. But later on Nunn said Hawley and Jove had known about the prairie dogs—that they’d fixed the toss somehow, and that they owed him. And then because Jove was in jail, Nunn started calling Hawley late at night and then every night, saying the dogs were laughing at him. That they could talk to one another. That they knew what Hawley had done. He’d thought of killing Frederick Nunn then. But instead he’d pulled up and moved on to Oklahoma, and Arkansas, and Louisiana, and New Mexico, and Florida, and then after Florida he’d met Lily.
Now, as Hawley drove west on Route 14 in a stolen sedan, he remembered how much he’d liked living out West. The sky so big and open and no one and nothing as far as the eye could see. Snow clipping the tips of the rolling hills, which were covered in scrub grass and packs of wild turkeys and elk and horses and cattle and sage. Trees were so scarce you could tell where the water was from miles away, sets of widow-makers clustered along the riverbeds, their weathered branches twisting out like giants turned to stone.
Then in the distance he caught sight of the gas flares blazing up against the setting sun, trailing dark smoke in the wind. Methane and sulfur dioxide. The stacks holding the drills in place were crossed with metal pilings, like the neck of a crane perched on the edge of a skyscraper. All that metal looked out of place in the middle of this wild country. As did the men Hawley could see closing down for the day—workmen in hard hats, nothing like the Basques Hawley knew from his days on the ranches, drifting from place to place, living alone in the mountains with the herds, barely a word between them for months, and layers of dirt and sweat so thick on their skin that even the snakes kept off.
There was a twenty-foot chain-link fence with barbed wire running all along Hawley’s old property. He slowed down to look and then he kept going. It was the only fence he’d seen for miles. Even on I-90, where eighteen-wheelers roared down at one hundred miles per hour, the cattle were kept back with just a few wooden posts and maybe a single electric wire. The gas company drilling Hawley’s land had closed up around the property like it was a prison.
Up ahead, Hawley saw a sign nailed to a telephone pole. On it was a picture of a prairie dog, with crosshairs circling its head. Underneath was written: TARGET PRACTICE! And: NEXT LEFT! And: USE
OUR GUNS OR BRING YOUR OWN AT PRAIRIE-DOG RANCH!
Hawley took the left. He pulled through the open gate and drove up the road for half a mile or so. The land started out flat but then veered steeply uphill onto a ridge, a curved slope covered in ragged bushes that flattened at the top like a mesa, overlooking the giant fence and towers of burning gas on Hawley’s old property.
Next to a sign marked PARKING was a Jeep with a roll bar and a torn cover and a beat-up SUV. Behind the sign was a three-wheeled camping trailer, the hitch propped up on cinder blocks. The trailer looked like it had been hauled from the ends of the earth. It was small, the sides dented and beaten in, the screens full of holes, an old wooden trough set in front of the door, and, duct-taped to the roof, instead of a satellite dish, was an old-fashioned antenna wrapped in tinfoil.
Hawley turned off the car and waited. Then he heard a rifle shot. And another. His .357 Magnum was on the seat beside him. The shotgun was loaded and set across the dashboard, the rifle covered with a blanket and hidden underneath the front seat. He did not reach for any of them. He waited to see who would come.
A woman, wearing an orange hunting cap and a bathrobe, cracked open the trailer door and peered out at him, then stepped down onto the trough. She was young, with a body made thick with fast, cheap food. The hunting cap was pulled down over her ears. Her ankles were elegant. Her feet bare. Her toenails painted bright green. The robe swung open and revealed a football jersey and a pair of sweatpants cut off at the knee. She motioned to Hawley. He put the handgun in his jacket pocket. He opened the door to the car and stuck his head out.
“They’ve already started,” she said. “Go on through the back.”
“Thanks,” said Hawley. He left his door unlocked and the keys in the ignition. And then he started off in the direction the girl had pointed.
About one hundred yards ahead were six tables and chairs set up for long-range rifle practice. Sandbags and tripods and scopes. There were two men sitting and shooting, and another standing and staring out into the distance with a pair of binoculars. Hawley watched the man clap one of the shooters on the back, then turn and pick up a beer from the table. Frederick Nunn still had the same mustache, heavy, like a finger bent beneath his nose. And Hawley would have known those hands anywhere, fringed at the top with tiny black hairs. Nunn used to scare people with those hands, flexing them while he talked. Now he wrapped them around the can of beer and tipped it back down his throat and then he swallowed and saw Hawley coming. He swallowed again. He picked up the binoculars. Hawley could feel the glass on him and tried to keep his face neutral. He kept walking straight, even when Frederick Nunn put down the binoculars and picked up one of the rifles.
“Sam Hawley,” said Nunn. “I didn’t know you at first.”
The shooters took off their ear protection. One fellow was in his twenties and wore an army jacket and a pair of ear guards that matched, both desert camouflage. The other was at least ten years older and had cratered cheeks and a western-style vest with leather tassels. The shooters were both drunk. But Nunn was not.
“What’re you doing here?” Nunn asked.
“I saw your sign,” said Hawley.
Nunn lifted his nose, like a dog trying to find a scent.
“Everything all right?” said the man in the leather vest.
“Yeah,” said Nunn. “He’s all right. This is Mike, and that’s Ike.”
“Like the candy,” said Hawley.
The men nodded but did not get up. They kept their hands on their guns.
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“Oh,” said Mike. “There’s no stopping us.” He put his ear guards back on and leaned across the table in his leather vest, setting his eye to the scope. Ike played with one of the zippers on his camouflage jacket but kept his eyes on Nunn and Hawley.
“Fire in the hole!” said Mike. And then he fired. Everyone turned to look. In the distance, Hawley saw a small explosion of fur and guts.
“I thought the dogs were protected,” said Hawley.
“Not anymore,” said Nunn. “Now they’re target practice.”
“That’s good news,” said Hawley, “for you.”
“It’s something,” said Nunn. “People pay me to come try out their guns, before the hunting season starts.”
Hawley looked out over the prairie-dog town. There was no vegetation. Only mounds of dirt and holes and craters to fall into. A dead landscape that belonged someplace dead.
“Who’s the girl?”
“Just a girl.”
“I mean who’s she to you?” Hawley asked.
Nunn looked him over. He spit on the ground. “That’s some beard you got.”
Mike and Ike began shooting, one after the other, misses that sent tiny clouds of dirt up like smoke signals in the distance and occasional hits that blasted blood and innards in tiny splatters across the dried-up earth. Between each bullet Hawley could hear the prairie dogs calling. A chorus of weeps and chattering so loud it drowned out everything but the gunfire.
“Let’s go someplace we can hear each other,” said Hawley.
“All right,” said Nunn.
They walked back to the trailer, but Nunn didn’t ask him in. Hawley could see the girl watching them from the window. Hawley didn’t say anything. He just stood there feeling the Magnum in his pocket and waiting for something else to happen, something that would let him finish what he had come to do.
“You on a job?”
“Yeah,” Hawley said.
Nunn was flexing one of his big hands. He was nervous—Hawley could see that now. Nunn had never been the kind of guy who got nervous. But here he was, staring at Hawley like he was something wild. And maybe he was.
“Who’s the girl?” he said again.
Nunn lifted the rifle and pointed it at him. “What the hell do you want, Hawley?”
“Tell her to come outside.”
“Not until you answer me.”
“You,” said Hawley. “I came here for you.”
For a moment he wasn’t sure if he’d said the words out loud, he was so used to being alone and not talking. The conversation was already the longest he’d had with anyone in nearly three months. At least he thought it was three. He wasn’t too sure about that, either.
Nunn lowered the rifle. He sat down on the wooden trough and stared at the dirt. He didn’t look surprised. “Was it Rodriguez?” He rubbed his hand back and forth across his mustache. “Or Manley? I bet it was Manley.”
“It wasn’t Manley.”
“Parker, then. He always hated my guts.”
“It wasn’t any of those guys,” said Hawley. “I’ve got a list, that’s all. And you’re on it.” He could smell it now, the air from his old land. Full of carbon monoxide and clouds of chemicals. The smell of burning things never meant to be burned.
“King,” said Nunn. “He on your list?”
“He’s in prison.”
“Somebody sold him out, I heard.” Nunn touched his mustache again. He seemed more thoughtful than frightened, as if he’d been waiting for something like this to happen. “Well, anyway. I was right, you know. They can talk.”
“Who’s that?”
“The prairie dogs,” Nunn said. “A scientist came out here from the University of Oklahoma to count the population. Helped them get off the endangered species list. He paid me to study the dogs and the noises they make. They have words and grammar and everything. A whole language.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Hawley asked.
“It’s just that I thought I was losing it. When I got this dead land. I used to go up on that ridge and listen to them talking and think about blowing my brains out. But they were saying something, after all. It felt good to be right about that. They’re actually quite intelligent.”
In the distance, Hawley could hear Mike and Ike pulling off their shots. And then he heard a phone ringing, from inside the trailer. The phone rang and rang. Hawley waited to see if Nunn would go answe
r it, but the man stayed where he was.
“Why use them for target practice, then?”
“I got to shoot something,” said Nunn.
The screen door opened and the girl came outside. She’d ditched the bathrobe, but was still wearing the shorts and football jersey. The orange hunting cap was pulled tight around her face. She was wearing flip-flops with daisies on them, her green toenails flashing beneath the flowers with each step.
“Phone,” she said.
“Right,” said Nunn. To Hawley he said, “Wait.” Then he stepped on the trough and into the trailer.
Overhead the sky was starting to pink, the sun slipping behind the mountains. In the distance Mike and Ike whooped, and the guts of another prairie dog blew across the ground.
“He’s a little old for you,” Hawley said.
The girl shrugged and pulled at her hunting cap.
“Why don’t you get out of here.”
“I’ve got a deal with him,” said the girl.
“Whatever it was it doesn’t matter anymore,” said Hawley. And he showed her the Magnum.
The girl looked at him and then she looked at the gun and then she opened the door to the SUV and got in. She turned the ignition. She rolled down the window.
“He’s got a custom Weatherby in there. Semiautomatic, with a laser.”
“Jesus,” said Hawley. “Thanks.”
“Wait until I’m on the road,” she said. Then she pulled the hunting cap off, and her hair came down, and it was green, too, just like her toenails. And even though her lips were chapped when she smiled at Hawley, it was the nicest thing that had happened to him in a long time.
Then she threw the SUV in gear and drove off.
Hawley knew that Nunn was inside watching him. Probably already had the semiautomatic trained on his back. He took the gun he’d shown the girl and tucked it into his jeans. Then he walked toward the screened door and knocked.
“Are you really fucking knocking?” Nunn called out.
“I guess so,” said Hawley, and then he went inside. The place was small and cramped but surprisingly tidy. The bed at the back was covered with a quilt, and the miniature kitchen had a propane stove and a row of mugs hanging from a rack. In the corner was a table piled high with old country records—Lefty Frizzell and Kitty Wells—and a record player, the portable kind that came in a suitcase. There were four clocks, one on each wall, all set to the same time. Two Hawley recognized from the great house: a face with Roman numerals instead of numbers, and a Kit-Cat clock next to the door, the eyes clicking back and forth.