by Peter Heller
That was not a cunt it was mud wallow!
Aw crap, Les wouldn’t know the difference if he was up to his neck in either one!
The fire popping, crack of a limb on rock, a stirring of sparks as someone threw it on.
If you fuckers are on good behavior we just might see what Les knows about cunts. Maybe Sunday.
It was him, the voice. The shiver inside like hooking a trout but icy.
A couple of those gals from the Mill might come up and party with us. You seen ’em. Spirited. Do about anything after the fourth round. This is the pussy you dream about tonight while you got your dicks in your hands. Damn.
Dell. It was him talking, a booming voice, coming up out of a gravel pit. Ugly, a little slurred. The image hit the group, onetwothreefourfive … counted seven, hit them like a gust of wind: the prospect of young women in tight skirts, tight jeans. Maybe that’s how he got so many return clients. For about a second, the quiet, and then the uproar, the overlapping claims and yells calling bullshit, calling out the shit they would do with a girl that would do anything, more loud laughter. I scanned and found him at the edge of the group, a hulking shadow on the creek side of the fire, bigger than I remembered. He was shaking his head. I saw him tip it back and drink, pass the bottle, holding a beer in the other hand.
Dell! one called from the other side of the fire. A sallow face, unshaven, hollow in the cheeks leaning into the uneven light. Kip thinks you should call one now. One or two. Call that one called herself Trina. That skinny one likes to dance.
Laughter.
Another voice, deeper, out of the shadows, said, You all need to take a chill pill and focus. Get some rest. Goddamn.
Use the sat phone, another said, ignoring the voice of reason. The one we got for emergencies. Like this.
More laughs.
Dell gestured with the can like he was swatting away a fly.
You all just fill your orders this weekend. You’ll get it when you get it.
He hitched himself tall. Jason, he said, almost shouting. Keep an eye on Tyler will you? Make sure he don’t fall in the damn fire? I’m gonna piss in the creek, see if I can make a trout drunk.
He turned and swaggered away from the light.
I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. I went still, barely breathed. You are fishing, night fishing, fish on. Before he sees you. No. I couldn’t move. It was like I was paralyzed. He was a big man, even bigger than I remembered, bigger than me, which few men are. He dropped the can of beer as he walked and I could hear by the sound of it hitting the stones it was partly full. A big man in a dark colored Carhartt coat, unzipped, a baseball cap. Broad shouldered, a gut, heavy in the legs, walking with a hitch. I have hunted a little and I did not watch him that way, moving unevenly to the bank, his shadow thrown on the rocks by the moon and thinned by the fire. The way you watch a deer moving or an elk. And my heart was not hammering the same way, the way it does when you are hard against a tree, pressed into the bark for steadiness. The stillness, the long drawn breath, the leaning into a future where the gun bucks and the deer falls. Not like that. Not expectant, not excited. The ice of my focus took the heat out of it. For once I did not feel blind.
The scrim of willows went almost to the water. I watched his progress through the leaves more the way a cat watches a bird. Utterly stilled. The line between us a thread of simple attention, as taut as a line can be without breaking. He got to water’s edge, a cutbank maybe two feet above the current. He cleared his throat, coughed, spat, shrugged up his shoulders to unzip. One of the hunters was yelling C’mon! You ain’t never come near that and don’t say you did! Peckerwood accent, probably Arkansas. Laughter. Someone turned on a boom box. Old Little Feat, Dixie Chicken. Well. Pretty good music. He was less than fifteen feet away, partly turned, I could see his back, his right ear, the curve of his cheek. The oak leaf pattern of the camo on his cap and hear the stream of urine hitting the slow water. Slide guitar, taunts, bottle breaking.
The whimper of the mare like a human baby, eye rolled back, absolute terror.
Leaned the rod against a branch, squatted, felt the fit of the smooth rock in my hand and stepped out fast.
He turned and the piss spattered against the leg of my waders.
“Matt? What the— Oh—”
Face lengthening in recognition.
“You!”
He couldn’t wait to finish it, me. His hand went to his waist and came up with a hunting knife which flashed with firelight and in the same instant I swung. I swung as hard as he had swung at the little horse and the rock caught the side of his right eye the temple and a crush louder firmer than breaking eggs and a warm prickle pattered my face and I shoved with my left hand and the knife clattered onto stone and he splashed into the creek. Face down.
I pivoted and threw the rock as far as I could downstream and heard it plash, and before I picked up my rod I made sure he had washed to the bottom of the pool, into the rocks there half submerged and that he was still face down. I thought I saw his arms moving, spastic. Not too late. I could. I stayed. I watched until I was sure the only movement was the back and forth rocking of the pulsing current.
Slow, slow down. Breathe. I stumbled back of the brush and made myself take my time. They were all drunk with cognitive abilities further smitten by dreams of easy women. They wouldn’t bother about him for an hour probably, then figure he hit the cot in his personal tent early, was it early? No it was late, and he’d be the first up, rousting the cook and graining the horses. If he did that. Probably not, probably fed them only dusty second rate hay. Anyway, if he wasn’t in his bed and someone noticed they’d figure he was tugging it off in the trees, or passed out on a hummock, he was a big boy, let him sleep it off. Wouldn’t miss him till morning. So I hiked downstream slowly, the last thing I wanted to do was twist an ankle.
I kept to the game and fishermen’s trail along the bank. The trail pushed through the thick brush and dark open groves of virgin firs and pines, footfall soft on needles there and scented. Threaded back to the bank. At a long pool with a flat and stony bar I knelt and dunked my head in the icy water, scrubbing and scrubbing my face and hair with both hands, dunking again. The fine patter had been his blood. I waded in up to my waist and let the current wash the waders. Picked up the rod again and walked. Wanted to light the cigar bad but didn’t. Wanted a drink, didn’t have one. Was tempted to throw some casts and fish the bottom of the pool, like if I fished, like if I picked up the routine where I’d left it off, fishing under the moon, watching the molten light twine in the flats and unravel in the riffles, if I did that then I could pretend that thing between hadn’t happened. Did I want that? To pretend? No. I wanted to hoof it downstream and get to the truck and didn’t know beyond that.
I did. I must have dropped the rod in the truck bed less than twenty minutes later. I climbed in, wet wading boots and waders and vest and all, and started it up and backed around in the little clearing where the reverse lights wouldn’t be visible from the road and rolled slowly out onto the packed clay of the track, accelerated smoothly and not too fast, and hit the pavement in ten more minutes and goosed it. No lights at the lodge and cabins but security lights. Desolate. Not another car. Lit the vanilla sweetened cheroot with the dash lighter and drew on it hard and let the smoke get sucked out the open window.
At Stoker no one. Just the strung white lights of the coal conveyors, the towers. It was well into the graveyard shift, no one coming from town. Pulled my shirt up to my chin anyway, lowered head and cap brim and drove through. Passed the turnoff to Grand Ave and took the back road again over the black bridge, and where the sign at a drive said OLD BRIDGE ORCHARDS and the woods in the bottom were thickest I turned in. Just a hundred feet. I had been here last week to buy peaches and remembered a tractor yard on the right, a Mexican filling up a spray tank from a hose and hydrant. I pulled in, shut the lights, the motor, listened for the barking of a dog—none. Could see the orchard house up the hill above the rows of appl
e trees, one window lit. Could smell late summer roses, a hedge here somewhere. Everything still, all at peace.
The moon was settling now into the western quadrant, settling in for a long sail, casting the fragrant valley in something between dark and dawn, a midway limbo that suited. In its benign light I could make out the fruited trees, the boughs heavy with black apples. I saw the hydrant and the hose as if it were morning, and for a moment I just stood there, wishing that this stillness, this limbo, could last forever. It couldn’t. The ugly man intruded again, his image face down washing against the boulders, moving a little with the rhythm of the stream.
I pulled up on the stiff tap handle, felt the gush swell and weight the hose. A spray head at the end. Moved it over the truck, from hood to bed, bumpers, back up the other side, remembered the roof. Crouched stiffly down and washed the undercarriage as best I could, re-coiled the hose, took one more deep breath of flowers and pulled out. Pulled on the headlights: reminded myself that if seen now in town it would look worse with the beams off. I turned back onto the pavement that led to the edge of Grand Ave and as I did my headlights swung and a bright shape filled the windshield, splayed across, big as the night. Owl. White owl, wings wide as the truck, soundless swift and gone. Jesus. Heart hammering now, booming. Had kept my cool before, but now— It was spirit. I had not one doubt, not one doubt in the world. And it was not of the man because it was beautiful and it flew and was silent, it was Alce. That’s what I thought, said: Alce.
Thanks or warning or just company, reassurance, I didn’t know. Alce. Out of the twilit limbo of this night that was both night and day, deeply peaceful and profoundly violent. In a night that was between everything, came my daughter flying. Thanks, I said as I drove.
I crawled into bed and curled around Sofia. Sleep came stubborn and slow but came, carried me into the dark. Sometime between falling asleep and morning a storm swept in and it rained. Hard. Then cleared just as fast. Monsoon season.
BOOK TWO
Road
OIL ON CANVAS
24 X 36 INCHES
Road Home
OIL ON CANVAS
24 X 36 INCHES
I woke with the rain. Woke with the first halting tattoo on the metal roof tap tap taptap taptaptaptap tap fingerdrumming, tentative, a few scattered drops, pause, then a clatter like someone throwing a handful of seeds, speeding up until the beats ran together, then the onslaught. A rush, a dark flood that silenced all thought.
Inside the roar I spooned her. Cradled her breasts in my left arm, pressed my cheek into her hair, curled around her warmth and let the wind that came through the screen door wash me. Inside the roar and the dark and the currents of cool wind we floated.
I could die now. My one thought. Somehow complete. With the Ocean of Women back on the easel and the dead man in the creek and my friend in my arms and the rain at last reaching the ground and drenching the country.
I
Woke again with the knocking. Not tentative. I woke and I realized I was expecting it.
I untangled myself, slipped to the floor, pulled the Hudson’s Bay blanket that came with the house over Sofia, pulled on a pair of paint smattered khaki shorts that were hung over the rocker.
Two of them this time. The last time, when I shot Lauder Simms, it was just the sheriff. Well. He had been my friend. This time evidently they were not here to arrest me. He was very polite. He was a rangy thirtyish detective in a green soft wind jacket, the kind sporty outdoor people wear, I remember thinking it was a beautiful color, something between sage and grass, looked supple, thinking it would be perfect for fishing on a night like last night. Last night. The man was thin, with the drawn cheeks of a runner, with red spots flushing the cheekbones; gave him an impressionable sensitive look the way adolescents can’t quite control their emotions. Steady hazel eyes, a smile. A man you could trust.
To lock you up forever.
That’s what I thought. Of Rilke’s panther. In the first instant, opening the door, taking in the man and the uniformed deputy behind him I thought, Careful Boy, say the wrong thing and this man will put you away to die in the zoo like Rilke’s cat.
“Jim Stegner?”
“Yah.”
“Sorry, did we wake you?” Very polite. Held up a wallet badge. “Craig Gaskill, Delta County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Nah. I mean, yes, but it’s okay. The rain in the middle of the night. Slept better than I have in a month.”
Clear conscience. Something a stone cold murderer probably wouldn’t say. Much less feel. I was standing holding the carved door open with my right arm, kind of leaning into it, and smelled my fishing vest. It was hanging on a hook two feet from my head. I could smell it because often if I was just keeping dinner for myself, I would slip one or two trout into the zipper pocket high on the back. If it was a hot afternoon I would unshuck the vest and tear a bunch of grass and horsetails from the bank and wet the fistful in the creek and stuff it in the pocket with the fish to keep them cool. Made the vest smell fishy but I liked it better than carrying around a slung creel. The vest was two feet from my face, hanging on the wall right where the open door swung into it, and I could see that it was spattered with blood.
Icy grip in the guts. The sporty detective saw it. I know he did because he said, “Mr. Stegner, are you okay?”
“Yah,” I said fast. “Just haven’t had my coffee yet.”
And in the rush to cover for myself I heard myself saying, “You boys want some coffee too? I’ll just make a pot.”
And heard Sport say, “That is very hospitable. I certainly could use another cup, you, Dan?” And I heard Dan say he was just thinking they better get down to the Conoco out on the highway and get a refill. And I saw myself stepping back and opening the door wider and they came through the screen door with a clap and I heard Sofia call out, “Jim?” And I said, “It’s alright, honey, we have guests. Gonna make some coffee.” Honey? I must’ve been really frazzled. And I saw the men come to the long counter and pull up two stools and I went behind it and reached for the old pot and rinsed it in cold water and refilled it all the while talking about how bad we needed the rain and how fresh the country looked already like it had been rinsed in green, and saw myself clutching the little grinder to my chest like a secret and compressing the sprung top in my hands while the motor triggered and the blade bawled and shredded the beans that rattled then whined.
Heard the door to my bedroom which opened onto all of us slam and that snapped me out of it.
She had slammed the door. She didn’t want to talk to cops, to anyone this early. That was one lucky break the way I saw it. She was not social this early in the morning. She did not wrap herself in the blanket and come out stretching and purring and being polite to the nice policemen and go into the bathroom to pee and brush her teeth and throw on a wrap and join us for coffee the way some more finished hostesses might have done. Finished like finishing school, not her. She slammed the door. The two men raised their eyebrows, I shrugged, it was a male bonding moment, all good, but more important it let me pull myself up. Kind of reined me up short and put a loud period on my rambling.
I heard the slam and stopped stock still and thought Jesus, Jim, get a grip. You are a cooler cookie than this. Take a breath. I did. Went to the sink at the west end of the counter, put my back to them, and rinsed out some cups, covered myself, my loud thoughts, with the running water and the clatter of ceramic and thought, Slow down. You were here all night, sleeping the sleep of the dead, not the dead, Jesus, the newly rained on, the sleep of the new monsoon, and if your fishing vest is spattered with blood and hanging there right by the front door, well. No big deal. When you let them back out, lead them away from the vest to the French doors in the south wall, follow them around the house to their cars, you go out that way all the time, it is a natural motion to exit out toward the big view, the mountain, talking the whole while about how you haven’t seen the foothills this green since June. That’s what you will do.
I gave Sport the elk mug. A bull elk in the fall in a tawny field, yellow aspen losing leaves, overcast about to snow, he is lifting his head to bugle and from his muzzle a stream of fog in the icy air. Seemed right.
“You get the elk,” I said. I was going to say bull but I didn’t want to encourage him. To the deputy I said, the NASCAR cow or the loon? The NASCAR cow coffee cup said wISCONSIN and had the head of a happy looking Holstein framed by a border of what looked like black and white racing checks.
The deputy grinned. He was a beefy kid with a fade and flattop, probably played high school ball for Delta and was the luckiest man in the universe when he landed the job with the county. Could tell he was the type who appreciates what’s appreciatible, really loved his wife, etc., which I admire and like in a man, in fact liked them both and had the circumstances been different I would have relished pouring the two coffee and sitting down to bullshit.
“NASCAR cow every time,” said Dan the deputy.
There was no stool on this side of the counter so I stood, leaned back against the drawers next to the stove said,
“Anything in those? Sugar?”
Sport said, “If you have cream and honey, otherwise fine.” I smiled at him. Because it was clear that he was getting me in the habit of getting him what he asked, the more specific the better. Honey. Exactly what I took in my coffee. The kid shook his head. Polite. A blunt instrument. Hadn’t learned the use of subtle tools yet, probably never would, it would probably fuck up his general sense of gratitude. I am not at all a simple person but I like simple people, I admire them.