Coyote Wind

by Peter Bowen

  “One thing I still don’t know,” said Du Pré. “What was the Sheriff going to arrest Bart for?”

  “Um,” said Foote, “you really don’t know? He was going to arrest Bart for murdering his brother, Gianni, who disappeared nearly thirty years ago.”

  Du Pré nodded. “So the teeth match up?”

  “Maybe they do, maybe they don’t,” said Foote. “Nothing back from the state lab. The Sheriff, mind you—he must have been pretty drunk—didn’t even have a warrant.”

  Du Pré looked up, laughed. “You’re shitting me.”

  “I am not. I suppose he spent a couple pleasant days at the jug, watching Clint Eastwood movies over and over. Like I said, I had always suspected Montana was a place chockful of people too stupid to walk downhill, which is where civilization is, if you are at all interested.”

  Du Pré nodded. He wasn’t interested in civilization.

  “Anyway,” said Foote, “I bear thanks to you from Bart, who feels you probably saved his life. So do I.”

  Du Pré shrugged.

  “Bart only understands giving money away to express gratitude. He is astute enough to realize that you do not need or want money, and he fervently wishes that he was the same. But he did think that an offer to send your daughter to any school she can get into, all expenses, all travel, everything, contingent upon her making good grades—he is not prepared to render another human being as worthless as he feels himself to be—might possibly not be offensive to you.”

  Du Pré’s eyebrows shot up. He suddenly realized that Maria would have her dream, if she wanted it, and she might not know even that it was her dream. She wanted the best, would work hard for it.

  Now, Du Pré, he thought, don’t get the swelled head.

  “Well,” said Du Pré, “it’s fine with me, but my opinion, it don’t mean shit, really, so he would have to talk to my daughter.”

  Foote’s eyes shot up. Sideways. He tipped his chair back and laughed.

  “She is a minor, Mr. Du Pré,” said Foote, “so your blessing is vital. I am to take it she is an independent girl.”

  “Her own damn country, she is,” said Du Pré.

  “Well,” said Foote, “I have time enough to make the offer to her in person, if we can find her. Prior to taking Bart back East. I have a Learjet due in at five.”

  Du Pré shook his head. Bart was a nice man, should do something, anything, not the screaming in some alky hospital.

  Du Pré drove Foote to the high school in Cooper, fetched Maria out of class, stuck her in the car with the young attorney, took a walk in the gray light so he didn’t screw things up by hovering.

  He came back in fifteen minutes, to find Foote and Maria sitting on the dented hood of his old police cruiser. They were laughing.

  Foote was smoking a long thin cheroot.

  Maria was grinning like a mule eating chitlins.

  Foote offered Du Pré a cigar.

  Du Pré smoked it reverently. It was the best tobacco he had ever had.

  Before Maria went back into the school, she kissed her father.

  “See what happen,” she said, “to a daughter of a good Métis man?”

  Du Pré drove Foote to the courthouse.

  They shook hands.

  Foote’s eyes crinkled with a kindly intelligence. He offered his hand again.

  “That’s for me,” said Foote. “Bart’s the only decent one of the bunch. Thanks. He deserves some help, not the twaddle they will give him at the place where I am taking him.”

  “He come back?” said Du Pré.

  “Probably,” said Foote.

  “He ought to,” said Du Pré.

  “I think so too.”

  Du Pré drove off, wondering about a lot of things.

  CHAPTER 26

  “I AIN’T SO SMART BUT I’ll do my best,” said the acting sheriff, Benny Klein, former long-haul trucker and present little rancher. “I can’t believe old Sheriff Johnson didn’t have no warrant.”

  I can, thought Du Pré, that one dumb bastard. This Benny, he will do a pretty good job, if he don’t die of terror when he has to speak to Kiwanis or something.

  “So what do you think of all this, Du Pré?”

  Benny held a report that said that the teeth could well have come from the jaw of Gianni Fascelli, or someone like him had those same holes in those same teeth. Lots of people got holes in those two teeth, nothing exclusive about it.

  Du Pré shrugged.

  “I got to go, inspect some cattle,” he said. “I don’t want any more of this mess. I am a simple cow-ass expert. I check to see them cows branded outside, not inside, them hides, I sign off. I have work to do on my one-horse ranch. I got two daughters. I am not a detective. Good thing, too. For everybody.”

  Klein nodded. It was about three in the afternoon. Lawyer Foote and a vodka-swilling Bart Fascelli had taken off in a prop plane, they would catch the Learjet in Miles City, a whole week ago.

  Good luck to him, thought Du Pré, that lawyer, he don’t need luck, he make his own.

  Maria was bringing home six, eight library books a day and she was staying up till four in the morning reading them.

  I got one married off, thought Du Pré, making babies and loving them and me, the other going to get a Nobel Prize in something, soon as she figure out what. Now I got to worry about Madelaine’s four.

  I got to take that oldest boy hunting, explain to him about rubbers.

  The fire alarm sounded, Du Pré and Klein looked at each other. The county fire department was whoever happened to be in hearing of the alarm and near to the old fire truck, which had been bought in 1948 and used a lot. It was a pretty thing, faded red and lots of brass and gauges, but it wasn’t much at putting out fires, which had mostly burned completely out before the truck lumbered up and the crew remembered just exactly how to hook up the hoses.

  Du Pré and the Sheriff walked outside, looked up toward the Bench. There was a giant column of black smoke coming from the very place the Fascellis’ huge ugly fat wet house was.

  “Shit,” said acting Sheriff Klein. He jumped in his car and drove off, without his hat. Du Pré followed him. The fire truck would get there by and by, in time to damp down the ashes.

  God, Du Pré draught, looking at the blazing house. Flames were shooting a hundred feet in the air, glass was shattering, and the roof and some of the walls had already fallen in. You couldn’t get closer than a couple hundred feet.

  Booger Tom was sitting on the fence, working on a fifth of whiskey like he meant it.

  “How the hell the fire start?” said the Sheriff to Booger Tom.

  “Oh, that,” said Booger Tom. “Well, Mr. Bart wrote me a letter, said he’d canceled the insurance, and to burn the place down. Sent five hundred bucks to buy gasoline and diesel fuel—told me to make sure—said he wasn’t defrauding anyone and he would goddamned well burn down his own house if he wanted to.”

  “So I soaked the place down, opened the windows, tossed in a match, and there she is. Hah.” Glug glug.

  Du Pré laughed so hard he doubled up.

  The new sheriff scratched his head.

  “Well,” he said, “people burn down old barns all the time. You get a burning permit?”

  “No,” said Booger Tom. “Piss on your damn burning permit.”

  “I’ll have to write you a ticket,” said Sheriff Klein.

  Booger Tom nodded graciously. “Want a drink?” he said, offering the bottle to Klein.

  “No,” said the Sheriff, “I better not. I seem to remember that the fine is fifteen dollars or something. Just come in to the courthouse when you have a mind to.”

  Booger Tom nodded.

  There was a towering column of flame rising up in the exact center of the burning house.

  “That’s the three hundred gallons of diesel in the swimming pool, said Booger Tom. “I thought of that my own self. Belch.”

  The Sheriff left, Du Pré watched the fire.

  “Hey, Du Pré,�
� said Booger Tom, “there’s a little note here for you from Fascelli.”

  Du Pré held it out at arm’s length, squinted.

  “Dear Du Pré”—the handwriting was pretty shaky and loopy, so Bart wasn’t feeling so good when he wrote it—“I am coming back and when I do, I am going to raise the cows myself, live in a sheepwagon, and make Booger Tom the foreman and me the hand. I promise, Bart.”

  “Hey, Tom,” said Du Pré, “you know Fascelli says he is going to come back, make you the foreman, himself the hand?”

  “Yup,” said Booger Tom.

  “What you think of that?”

  “Well,” said Booger Tom, “I think that if Mr. Bart will learn how to shovel shit and like it, or at least say that he does, he might do all right.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  There was a God, maybe, time to time.

  CHAPTER 27

  BENETSEE MOTIONED TO DU Pré. I got to pee. The old man clambered out, stood swaying, pissed. It was dark out, cold with frost.

  They were supposed to be hunting deer.

  Which meant that maybe Du Pré would shoot a deer for the old man, but the drunken old fart’s gun was going to stay locked in the trunk of the car. Argue all you want, old man, the answer is no.

  “The hunter dream the deer and the deer come,” said Benetsee.

  “Shape you in, I don’t want to see what you dream come at all,” said Du Pré. The car smelled like the drunktank. Benetsee belched, adding a little more to the stench.

  “Park here,” said Benetsee. Du Pré parked where he was going to park anyway. The brush below hid a path deer used. Every day. Morning and evening.

  It was a half hour or so till the light would begin to rise. Du Pré got his rifle from the trunk, came back to the warm seat in the wine fug.

  He rolled a cigarette, handed it to Benetsee. The old man dug in his dirty jacket for matches, found some, lit it. Du Pré rolled himself another.

  “So,” said Benetsee. He took a pinch of tobacco, rolled down his window, muttered for a moment, dropped the wad to the ground.

  An offering.

  They sat, smoking.

  Du Pré poured himself some coffee. He sipped it. The purls of steam rose and stuck to the windshield.

  “Too much excitement lately,” said Benetsee, “but I think things calm some now. People ought to go out, sit, wait for deer more. It is restful.”

  Smoke. Belch.

  “Wonder who shot that fool Sheriff,” said Du Pré. The FBI had finally been called in on some bullshit pretext, they were being snotty to everyone. The bullet that had gone through the Sheriff’s head had gone right on into the house and maybe out the other side and maybe not. Anyway, now the house was a sump of smelly ashes. Who knows?

  Du Pré had seen the report on the Sheriff. Death instantaneous. Since everybody started in firing like fools the moment after the Sheriff went splat on his back it was extremely hard to find out where anybody thought the first shot had come from.

  What with everything, it was even impossible for the FBI to frame anybody, like they usually did.

  Du Pré was finding the whole thing hilarious. The FBI had interviewed all four of the Sheriff’s deputies who had been crouched there in backup, and who had fired every round they had for the rifles within a couple minutes of the Sheriff’s rapid shuffle off this here mortal coil.

  The Highway Patrolmen had arrived a little later, and they hadn’t fired a shot among them.

  Du Pré never took a gun out of his car.

  Booger Tom was not likely to confess in a fit of remorse, on account of Booger Tom was not the type to feel such a furrin emotion.

  Talk all they want, them FBI, not much good, that.

  There was a rattle of scree, flat little rocks racketing down a slide of stone. Something there had loosened them.

  The trail led across the scree to the trail Du Pré would watch just as soon as it got light.

  Du Pré got out, racked a shell into the chamber, took the caps off the lenses of the sight. The scope was light-gathering, and he could see well enough if the deer wasn’t behind a bush. It would be another half hour before he could see a deer behind branches well.

  Du Pré swung the rifle, looked out at the spot on the trail he’d shot maybe two dozen deer on in his life. Some even in season. In Montana, one out of five deer shot was taken legally. Since the cattle business in Montana had collapsed, the ranchers weren’t even killing deer wholesale to keep them off the grass and out of the haystacks, so there were lots more deer now than when Du Pré was a boy.

  Du Pré saw a nice six-point buck, swung the scope back, put the post and crosshair on the spot where the spine joined the skull.

  POWWWWW … and the echoes, back and forth, back and forth.

  The deer was flopping, just a little. Good place to aim for, since either the animal dropped in its tracks or Du Pré missed clean. He hurried down to the deer and slit its throat to drain it. If he shot the deer in the chest he didn’t have to do that, but it messed up the ribs and organs, and the liver was the best part.

  Du Pré walked back up to the car, jacking the shells out of the rifle. He put the rifle in the trunk and walked back, dragged the deer to a spot where it lay downhill, watched the bright blood plume from the throat.

  Blood steamed on the stones.

  Du Pré ringed the anus, tied it off, slit the deer open, jammed his hands into the chest cavity and grabbed hold of the windpipe, esophagus, and heart. He heaved. The viscera came free.

  He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket, shook it open, set it beside the guts. He cut out the heart and liver, dropped them into the sack, reached into the abdomen and carved the kidneys out from their wads of backfat. He closed the bloody sack and stuck it in the game pouch of his coat.

  Du Pré dragged the deer up to the car, his feet sometimes slipping on the wet stones. It was hard work, the animal weighed closer to three hundred pounds than two. Du Pré was running sweat by the time he had it on the ground behind the car.

  He opened the trunk and heaved the deer in. He propped the trunk open so that the air would cool the carcass. He stuck sticks in the chest cavity to keep it open, cool that meat.

  “Where’s your tag?” said Du Pré to Benetsee.

  “No,” said Benetsee. He had some more wine.

  Du Pré tagged the deer with his own tag.

  This old fart got nerve.

  I owe him one.

  CHAPTER 28

  “GOT YOU GOOD, DIDN’T HE?” said Madelaine. She was stuffing Du Pré’s bloody clothes into her washing machine.

  “No,” said Du Pré. “I expected it.”

  “He’s some old fart, eh?” she said, adding detergent to the wash.

  Du Pré was rosining his bow, getting ready to fiddle for a ribbon. Blue. My favorite color.

  Maria was coming to hear Du Pré fiddle, and Jacqueline, too. He had given Jacqueline money for a babysitter, so she and Raymond could have a little time away from the babies. Raymond worked like three men to keep them all, fine young man, perhaps in time he could fall into something paid better than jackknife carpentry, plumbing, the feed mill.

  Du Pré heard the door. Maria, laughing, and so was Madelaine, born very gay. Like they had some secret, a happy one.

  “Hey, Du Pré,” Madelaine called. “Let go yourself, come out here, see how your women love you.”

  I know my women love me, thought Du Pré, now what is this?

  The two women smiled at him. Jacqueline had come from somewhere and she, too, sat on the couch. Big white box on the coffee table, blue ribbon, little card in an envelope.

  Du Pré raised an eyebrow. “Now what’s this?”

  “So open it, see,” said Jacqueline. All three giggled.

  Du Pré took the little card out. To our good Métis man, love.

  Du Pré opened the ribbon knots, let the blue ribbon fall to the table, fold it up, use it again, hardly wrinkled.

  Tissue paper.

  Du Pré fold
ed it back. A vest on top, soft white leather, all worked with quills in patterns, hummingbirds and suns and teepees, animals. Beautiful. The quills were all dyed with the old dyes, from sunflowers, salmonberries, choke-cherry root, he hadn’t seen those dyes in many years.

  A soft cream silk shirt, full sleeves, tight cuffs.

  Gaiters of soft white deerskin, quilled with beaver tails, the Pole Star and Big Dipper. Compasses.

  A red velvet sash with black beads.

  Moccasins with turquoise and yellow and red and black beadwork. Nez Percé that.

  A little round Red River hat, soft black felt, with a beaded band and a hard narrow brim.

  A bright turquoise silk scarf.

  “My my,” said Du Pré. “This is too fine stuff for me.”

  “We made the stuff from what we could see in that old picture of your great-grandfather,” said Jacqueline. “Maria found them dyes, in a book, no one living we know knows them.”

  “So, you happy?” said Madelaine.

  Du Pré’s throat choked up. Such good people, his women. All this must have taken many hours.

  He lifted the vest, looked at the tiny careful stitchings.

  “My, my,” he said, slipping it on, fit perfectly over his old stained blue work shirt.

  “Papa,” said Maria, “you put it all on, not one thing at a time.”

  Du Pré dressed in the bedroom, all the finery. He looked at himself in the big mirror, the dark skin, straight black Indian hair, black mustache. A Métis man, got a fiddle and a pipe.

  “We take this fine-looking man to the fiddling contest,” said Madelaine. She beamed at Du Pré.

  I got me some beautiful women, I’m very lucky.

  They all piled into Du Pré’s old cruiser, went off to the old Toussaint Bar. It had another name many years ago but someone didn’t like it and blew the sign off with a shotgun one very-drunk-out Saturday night. So it was the Toussaint Bar, no sign.

  Du Pré was embarrassed when he walked through the door, he hoped he wouldn’t have to shove anybody’s teeth down his throat for insulting the beautiful handiwork of his women.

  People whistled. A couple old grandmothers came to him and one got right down on the floor to look at the fine beaded moccasins. The other fingered the sash.