C J Box - [Joe Pickett 02]

by C. J. Box

  39

  At home, Joe placed the battered Cheyenne doll on top of the bookcase. Both April and Lucy said they wanted to play with it, and Joe let them after they promised to be gentle. But they preferred their Barbies, choosing nice clothes, long hair, and massive breasts over featureless leather, and Joe later found the doll on the floor and put it back on the bookcase.

  After a fried chicken dinner, Joe's welcome-home request, he and Marybeth cleared the dishes and the girls went out to play.

  Marybeth told Joe that she had received another call from a reporter looking for a comment. According to the reporter, the rumor was floating through the environmental community that Stewie's body had not been positively identified. Joe scoffed, saying that the damage had been so great that it was unlikely that Stewie, Finotta, or the cow could have been positively identified. So it was a good thing there was no need for medical testing, since seven law enforcement officers and Marybeth had witnessed the entire incident.

  "I couldn't tell the reporter with any assurance that I actually saw Stewie's body," Marybeth said. "There was so much smoke and stuff falling from the sky that we all covered our heads and eyes. When we finally recovered from the shock of the explosion, you were the only person I looked for."

  Joe liked hearing that. Marybeth asked if he still felt jealous. Joe said yes, a little. But he said that it was hard not to like Stewie. And he told her that he had punched him in the nose.

  "Somehow, I like it better that no one is sure about Stewie," Marybeth said. "This is what he would have wanted. It's right up his alley."

  Joe smiled.

  ***

  SITTING ON A bale of hay in the last light of the evening, Joe watched Marybeth work Toby in the round pen. Sheridan sat beside him, reading a Harry Potter book. Lucy and April played in the backyard. It was a perfect, still, warm summer evening. Joe wished he could drink it in. Instead, he settled for a tumbler of bourbon and water.

  "Are we going to get another horse?" Sheridan asked, while Toby's hooves thundered in the soft dirt.

  "Eventually," Joe said. He still didn't like thinking or talking about Lizzie.

  "Dad, I'm trying to figure out what happened between the environmentalists and the ranchers, how it got so bad."

  "First, Sheridan, it isn't 'the ranchers' Most ranchers take their role as stewards of the land seriously This was a particular group of people who went too far."

  "But how did it happen?"

  "I'm not sure what it was that set it off," Joe said, putting the drink down. "I think it had been building for the last ten years, maybe more. On this end of the scale," Joe started to gesture with his hands, felt a sharp pain from his right arm, which was in a sling, and settled for gesturing with his left hand, "you've got the environmental terrorists, the most extreme of the extreme. Stewie Woods was one of those guys, at least at first.

  "Over here," Joe straightened his fingers from the fold of the sling in lieu of sweeping with his arm, "you've got the other end of the scale, which is the Stockman's Trust group of hard-core, violent men. What this war did was cut back just a little on both sides of the scale."

  "Where do we fit on the scale?"

  Joe chuckled "Somewhere near the middle. Like most folks."

  "I hope it doesn't happen again."

  Joe nodded. "Me, too. But I'm not as optimistic as I'd like to be. This wasn't the first range war. There will be others, I'm afraid."

  Sheridan turned and looked hard at him. They had had a conversation like this before.

  "I love you, Dad," she said. "I'm glad you're back."

  Joe felt his face flush. He leaned forward and buried his head in her hair. "I love you too, honey And it's good to be back."

  ***

  Slicked out and sweating, Toby pounded the packed earth in the round pen. Marybeth turned him and asked him to lope in the other direction. She was working him hard, very hard. As if she were exorcising something out of him. Or herself. Joe was intrigued by the fact that he was still learning about the woman who was his wife.

  Joe's eyes wandered away from the horse, over the corral to the humpbacked Bighorn Mountains. There was no conceivable way that Stewie could have survived the explosion. No possible way.

  No possible way.