Coyote Wind

by Peter Bowen

  Du Pré choked up. He caught himself, went on. Madelaine took his hand.

  “And then little Maria, who’s four, says that while Jacqueline is busy having all those babies she’ll take care of me just as good as Mama did, do a real good job for sure.”

  Madelaine squeezed Du Pré’s hand.

  “So they raised themselves always thinking got to take care of Papa, don’t upset Papa. All I can do is not get upset with them. They have done very well, better than I could have done for them, if I knew what to do for them, which I don’t, I think.”

  “They’re jealous of me,” murmured Madelaine.

  “So you drop dead, Maria will fix her hair back and start going to Mass and confession again,” said Du Pré. “Not that I like the idea.”

  “I ain’t going to drop dead,” said Madelaine. “They don’t need me mothering them, I guess.”

  “They might need it,” said Du Pré, “but they won’t have it.”

  “You’ve been a real good father to them.”

  “I keep my mouth shut, let them take care of me,” said Du Pré. “Worst of it was to have a eleven-year-old and a four-year-old do all the cooking. Some of the things I ate, smiling, I still have bad dreams on. But they got better at it and I lived.”

  Madelaine laughed, a long deep throaty one.

  “I’m jealous of them, too,” said Madelaine.

  “Why?” said Du Pré.

  “They got some of you I can’t have,” said Madelaine, “and I got some of you they can’t have.”

  “Sometimes I feel like a piece of salt-water taffy,” said Du Pré.

  “Poor Du Pré,” said Madelaine dryly. “All these women fussing over him and he feels bad used.”

  Du Pré grinned. “Not a bad life,” he said.

  Madelaine yawned. She’d been up all night with Sebastian, in the rocking chair, holding him against the pain.

  “I got to go,” said Du Pré. “They’re shipping some of those Crossed Eyes cattle, I got to sign off on them.”

  Madelaine nodded.

  Du Pré leaned over and kissed her good-bye.

  CHAPTER 12

  DU PRÉ WATCHED THE brands closely. Always. A steer was a wad of hundred-dollar bills on the hoof, and it always paid to run a few weren’t yours on through. Anytime.

  Bodie was out of jail and still limping. He took one look at Du Pré and went as far away as he could without quitting the ranch entire. He spat a lot.

  Du Pré looked at the brand. Five fours any old line, couple slashes. Crossed Eyes would have been better. He wondered if the red face that had asked him who he was was strapped to a bed somewhere, screaming.

  Shipping two hundred and thirteen head. The trucks backed up and loaded their forty or whatever, two tiers.

  BAAAAAAAWWWWLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL.S S S H H H H H I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I T T T T.

  Cows don’t got much of an act, Du Pré thought.

  Loaded up, Du Pré signed off. The cattle went down to Wyoming, someone had come into a little money and hated having it, bought cattle. Well, it always was a funny business.

  Du Pré saw an old, old cowboy across the way, carrying a plastic sack of garbage to the slit trench where the offal was dumped, then covered with earth dumped by a backhoe every evening, or they would have skunks in numbers, and one skunk was plenty.

  Booger Tom. That was the man’s moniker. As opposed to a name. Du Pré remembered him from the rodeos of his childhood. Booger Tom had seemed old then, helped in the chutes, too old to ride pickup or play the clown.

  “Booger Tom!” Du Pré shouted, the old man was likely deaf.

  The old cowboy stopped, stared over at Du Pré. Gabriel walked over to him, hand out.

  “Why, if it ain’t Gabriel Du Pré,” he said. “You’re old Catfoot’s boy. Yes, well, I ain’t seen you in years.”

  They talked of nothing much, the water or lack of it, weather, dust, cattle, a few men now dead they both had known.

  “You always work here?” said Du Pré.

  “Forty year. Worked for the Higginses, then these people,” Tom said, spitting in the dirt, these people. “Get to my age, it’s hard to get work.”

  “When did Higgins sell this place,” asked Du Pré. His mind was prickling.

  “Sixty-eight,” said Booger Tom.

  Gabriel nodded. Maybe. Time was a little close, though.

  “But these Fascellis, they leased the place starting in sixty-two … waited a while to drop the hammer.”

  Du Pré’s mind prickled a lot.

  “Well, who owns it now?” He looked up at the Wolfs.

  “Them kids, old man Fascelli died. Them two in the house are his son and daughter. But they ain’t around even if they are. They drink. Their mother’s in a nursing home. Checks come out of Dee-troyt. Regular about that, anyway.”

  “Well,” said Du Pré, “they seem to be having a lot of fun I guess you’d call it. Jesus.”

  Booger Tom looked up at the ridiculous house with an old and rarefied hatred.

  “When they first come here there was four of them kids,” said Booger Tom, “all wild, now there’s just the two.”

  The fat red face Du Pré recalled staggered out of the front door of the gross house, lurching like his feet had forgot where his body was. The man found a lawn chair and fell into it. He turned to the house and yelled something Du Pré couldn’t make out. A maid hurried to him, bearing a tray with bottles and an ice bucket on it.

  “I got to go,” said Booger Tom, staring hard at the drunk.

  Du Pré started walking to the man sprawled in the lawn chair. He was drinking something brown out of a tall glass, and spilling it on his shirt. Shaking his head as though confused.

  But by the time that Du Pré got there he was cold sober.

  “May I help you?” he said pleasantly.

  “Gabriel Du Pré,” said Du Pré. “I just inspected the brands on your cattle. All in order, too, I signed off on them.”

  “I should hope so,” said the man. “Drink?” He waved a red hand at the tray, the bottles, his life.

  Gabriel nodded. The man put a double slug into a glass, added ice and water, handed it up.

  “I’m Bart Fascelli,” said the man, offering his hand.

  The change fascinated Du Pré.

  Gabriel shook the hand.

  “So,” said Fascelli, “you inspect brands. Do you know horses?”

  “A little.”

  “Come and look at my pasofinos.”

  He led Gabriel to the horse barn, a new one, white with blue trim. It would have looked good on some millionaire’s racing farm, in Kentucky, here it looked like it dropped from the moon.

  They talked about horses. Then Bart walked Gabriel to his car.

  “Come anytime,” said Fascelli, his big red hands on the window.

  Du Pré nodded and drove away.

  “Now what’s this shit about?” he said aloud.

  A woolly bear caterpillar crawled across the dashboard. The orange band was wide.

  Sign of a hard winter, some said.

  CHAPTER 13

  DU PRÉ STOOD UP and cheered loudly. Maria had just sunk a long jump shot and put her team ahead. The girls raced downcourt, set themselves in their defense. The crowd was fiercely partisan. Three fights had already broken out.

  Girls’ basketball. They were fast and graceful. This was fairly new, Du Pré thought, all them years when no one taught girls to move their arms when they run or shoot a basketball. They were good, damn good, and much fun to watch.

  “Look at them now,” said Madelaine. “These girls, they are very good. Your daughter, she’s the star, see her shoot!”

  Madeline’s oldest, Suzanne, was the center. Tall, like her vanished father.

  Toussaint had no high school, the kids went to Cooper, the other team was from Fort Benton. Better team, lots more kids to pick from.

  The breeds yell for Toussaint, the whites yell for Cooper, same team, Du Pré thought. What a bunch of
fools we all are.

  Maria fouled out. Du Pré saw her roached hair in some sort of cartoon whirligig, he expected to see dust, fist here, head there. She always fouled out. The Crusher, her teammates called her.

  “My daughter, she take life very seriously,” Du Pré muttered.

  “What?” said Madelaine.

  I don’t understand any of my women, even when I do.

  “Nothing,” said Du Pré. He muttered to himself, came of working alone, someone to talk to.

  Madelaine huffled, mad he wouldn’t tell her.

  “Du Pré,” said Madelaine, “you go talk to your daughter, there.”

  Maria was on the bench, slumped over with her head in her hands.

  Du Pré picked his way down the creaky bleachers.

  “Child,” he said, behind her, his hand on her shoulder. Maria turned. She had been crying. Her eyes crinkled up.

  “I wanna play football, sack quarterbacks,” she said.

  Du Pré touched a bruise on her forehead, right above the eyebrow.

  “You go sit there,” said Maria, “right there.” She pointed to an empty spot on the bleachers behind her. Du Pré sat. She walked round the bench and came and sat next to him, leaned against him. She smelled fresh, young sweat without much sin in it.

  They watched her team lose.

  “We wait for you, buy you a pop or something,” said Du Pré. “Now where is Billy?” He looked back for the boy.

  Maria shrugged. Billy was not doing good with her, for sure.

  “Well,” said Du Pré, “you want the pop or you got more fun folks to be with?”

  “I bother Madelaine,” said Maria.

  “She bother you.”

  “S’pose I ought to learn to put up with her,” said Maria.

  “Hey, make it easy on your papa. Damn women anyway.”

  Maria laughed and went off to the showers.

  Du Pré and Madelaine stood waiting for their children. Other parents slapped backs, exchanged dinner invitations, replayed the game, the shots, the errors.

  Two men began shouting and swinging at each other.

  Maria came out first, scruffy clothes, torn jeans, cheap boots that crumpled around her ankles, one papier-mâché earring. All clean, mind you. Du Pré wondered if she broke her clothes in with a hatchet.

  “I want to go dancing,” said Maria, “but there’s no place to go.”

  “Who you gonna dance with?” said Du Pré. “Since Billy’s went missing?”

  “Myself alone,” said Maria. Whatever the trouble, she was really mad with him. Billy should switch on his old truck, suck the tailpipe good and hard.

  “OK,” said Du Pré. “You dance with your old fart father, bar in Toussaint’s got a jukebox.”

  Suzanne’s fella was waiting on her, glands visibly throbbing.

  Du Pré, Madelaine, and Maria got into the old cruiser and he drove to the bar in Toussaint. They took a little table and Gabriel bought soda for Maria, pink wine for Madelaine, whiskey for himself.

  Du Pré danced with his daughter, danced with Madelaine, and then Maria danced by herself. A young half-drunk cowboy asked to join her. She nodded. The two slouched together on the slow songs, danced far apart on the fast ones.

  Du Pré walked out to Maria, nodded to the cowboy. “I got to go and you got to come with me,” he said. The bar rules were that children were OK, but with a parent and no booze for them.

  After they had dropped Maria off, Madelaine asked to go back to the bar for one or two more. Du Pré nodded. He was tired but not sleepy.

  I’m listening to a record, he thought, the needle is whispering over the blank grooves, the song hasn’t started yet.

  But could you dance to it? Have fun?

  The Toussaint bar was empty, the woman behind the worn bartop was washing up. Madelaine sat down at a table. Du Pré went to the bar, got a couple for them.

  “This all right?” said Madelaine. “You pretty tired. We don’t got to stay long.”

  Du Pré shook his head. “Just a little tired but not sleepy,” he said.

  Benetsee shuffled out of the men’s room. He came over and stood for a moment, swaying a little.

  The old man reached in his coat pocket and pulled out a knife, one mostly gone to rust. The elkhorn handle had been gnawed by pack rats.

  “This was up in the wall of your shed, there,” said Benetsee.

  Du Pré picked it up. Handmade. Catfoot used to make knives. Knives for everything. He had more man fifty, Du Pré remembered. Made them out of old sawmill band saw steel.

  The knife blade had a skin hook on the tip, a thick curved blade. Half of the top was toothed. Catfoot could skin out a deer, use the saw blade to saw through the joints in minutes.

  Benetsee shuffled out the door.

  Du Pré slipped the knife into his pocket.

  Good steel, he thought.

  Benetsee, he is telling me something.

  What?

  CHAPTER 14

  BART FASCELLI SAT WELL on his horse. He shrugged inside his long slicker, taking the binds out before riding. Du Pré looked away. Was this the man who had screamed at him from the window?

  He was sober now. He had called, wanted to see the place where Bodie had found the wreck. In the rain. He offered to pay Du Pré but Gabriel had refused.

  I just listen, that song, someday I know all the words, Du Pré thought.

  A maid came out of the house, she had a pair of saddlebags, one in each hand. She wore just a thin white uniform, hunched herself against the splacking drops.

  Probably snowing up there, the Wolfs, but it was early, not like the last time, they’d have light to make camp in.

  Du Pré tied the bags behind him, they were fairly heavy. Du Pré wondered if there was a portable sauna in one of them. But Fascelli was sober, no reek of alcohol. Even if he’d been drinking yesterday he’d still smell.

  Du Pré couldn’t figure him out. He had a twin brother, maybe?

  No.

  There were two Barts. Maybe more. Time to time he went off his head. Did he want to go up there, see if he remembered it? When he had a sack across his horse? A sack that dripped little streaks of watery red?

  So we go to a place of death and puzzles. Du Pré remembered Catfoot taking him, a child, to an old battleground, the air was sad there, Du Pré had been frightened. A place of bad hearts.

  He crossed himself, felt the lump in his shirt pocket.

  The shrew skull in the coyote scat. Du Pré had put the hairy turd in a little black plastic box, one that once held a hundred rounds of .22 ammunition. Gopher loads.

  I don’t think I probably want to know the answer to all this but I’m going to out anyway, Du Pré thought. A small cascade of icy water sluiced off his hat, onto the narrow strip of skin between his sleeve and glove. He moved his hand out of the way. The horse chuffled, swung his head, Du Pré had bumped the bit a little.

  Du Pré clucked to the horse, a fine-gaited pasofino. Little, but tough. He wondered how much the horse cost. Bart wouldn’t care about that. Why did he care about this?

  They got to the foothills, Bart pulled up, swung down, put his hands in the small of his back and stretched. Snow clouds were huddled against the peaks. It would be damn wet and cold up there, the kind of wet weather kills people. Hypothermia. Eats flatlander backpackers. Not often enough. All the streams were polluted with Giardia now, the ninnies always brought their dogs, the better to spread it further.

  “Some country, isn’t it?” said Bart, banging one gloved hand into the other.

  “All I know,” said Du Pré, “but I like it pretty good.”

  “That plane went down in … 1959?” Bart asked.

  “Fifty-seven,” said Du Pré. Bart was close. These Fascellis, they came in ’62. Did he come up here in ’62, young then, on fire for the mountains? Find the wreck, keep it close against his need?

  Long damn time for all these questions to wait.

  Du Pré wondered why something kept n
ibbling out on the edge of his mind, telling him he didn’t really want to know about this one. But he had to know now, even if he didn’t want to.

  Bart swung back up, headed up the trail. At the gate in the high fence he got down, opened the lock, swung the green pipe gate back to let Du Pré through. Gabriel reached for the other horse’s reins and tugged the horse along. Bart locked up, swung up, they went on.

  He was in good shape, for sure. Bad drunks now, their muscles melt away and they shake, too weak to do anything close to this.

  They rode up into timber. A grouse banged off beneath Bart’s horse. The animal skittered a little, Bart calmed him, another grouse boomed away from a bush. But the horse was used to them now, didn’t even snort.

  “You lead,” said Bart, moving off the trial. “Where is it anyway?”

  “Three miles, maybe four,” said Du Pré.

  “You think Bodie is stupid?” said Bart.

  “Very,” said Du Pré. “He’s a bad hand with stock. You should fire him. He hurts them.”

  “Consider it done,” said Bart.

  “Booger Tom work for you all these years, eh?”

  Bart nodded. “He’s a nice old man, allowing for cowboy quirks. I like him, he hates us, how could he not? Rich, drunken assholes is what we are.”

  Du Pré looked away. What about this?

  “Runs in the family,” said Bart. “We aren’t smart enough to be artists. We could get away with a lot more if we were.”

  Du Pré laughed. He was beginning to like this Bart. The other Bart was a bastard and he hadn’t met the rest.

  Du Pré flicked his eyes left, right, up, looking for sign, the leaf without the raindrops on it, the shadow in the grass where feet had pressed it down, the branch swaying wrong, where the eagle had lifted off, great wings beating.

  They came to the little meadow at the foot of the draw. Du Pré saw a pile of duffel, a big tent all up and taut.

  The place where the helicopter had landed.

  “I’m staying up here a few days, maybe,” said Bart. “Had this stuff flown on up. You do what you want, but I need to stay.”