Wolf, No Wolf

by Peter Bowen

  “How long you talk to him he say that?” said Du Pré. “Just want to know?”

  “Oh,” said Agent Banning, “about two minutes, I guess, you know how I get? Scream, foam, bite things. Told him I’d cut a deal with him, he slaps a badge on you, I don’t let those three pussies they stuck me with out of the trailer, they can sit in there, pull each other’s dicks, answer the phone, I don’t care. Useless as the tits on a slab of bacon but the main office is always trying to help. Bunch of fucking social workers, don’t want the poor little things out on the street. I’ll get rid of them soon enough but you know they’d just get themselves killed I let them go outdoors, and how would I feel? Actually, I wouldn’t really give a shit but it’s against the law which I do care about so I got to arrest more people and then they get pissy, they think I’m making work for myself so I can stay here. You know how their tiny little minds work. Hardly at all. They’re so dumb all I got to do is water ’em once a week, sprinkle a little bullshit on ’em.”

  Du Pré howled.

  “Yeah,” said Agent Banning, “I do a great stand-up routine, don’t I? Now I got to have your help. I just have to have it. You ever want one thing so bad you can just taste it? Run your credit card over the edge getting it? Do that? Well, I just got to have you, Deputy Du Pré, just until it’s over. I just won’t settle for less, you know.”

  “OK,” said Du Pré, “but we got to let Benny off this one. He’s too kind a guy for this job.”

  “Already done,” said Banning. “I talked to his wife and we agreed on it, I don’t want anybody hurt don’t have to be, and he’d just fuck up and I’d have to bust him.”

  Du Pré nodded.

  “Slug of that, please,” said Special Agent Banning. “Christ, I lend government property, drink on the job, show disrespect for my superiors. Oughta report myself but I don’t feel like it.” She had a good pull of the whiskey.

  “Now my first question,” said Agent Banning, “is also my last question until I think of another, which may take a bit of time.”

  Du Pré waited.

  “How far is it to this Medicine Person,” said Agent Banning. “I have some gifts of respect in a bag over by your Rover there, and I would very much like to meet him.”

  Du Pré looked at her.

  “We go there,” he said. “He is called Benetsee.”

  “Ben-et-see,” said Agent Banning, slowly. “Mr. Benetsee.”

  “No,” said Du Pré, “just Benetsee.”

  “OK,” said Banning, “I won’t mister him.”

  Chapter 9

  BUT BENETSEE WASN’T THERE. The sweat lodge was cold and empty and no smoke came from the chimney. The dogs were on the front porch of the shack. There was a pile of gnawed bones and scrap meat a little ways away and they could drink from the creek, eat the scraps, and sleep in the warm place under the porch.

  Agent Banning scratched their ears.

  “I think he’s watching us,” she said, “either from that bunch of rocks over on the ridge there or the willows just across the creek. You mind we wait a bit? Actually, we wait a bit. I got to talk to him. Oh, well. Tell you what, I’ll just bet you there’s a chopping block back there, and I’ll just go and put this wine and tobacco and meat back on it and then come back and we just sit here on the front porch, have us some more of that whiskey and I’ll bum a couple smokes off you and we’ll wait.”

  “I am supposed to meet my Madelaine, hour or so,” said Du Pré. “I got to go then.”

  “Actually, you don’t,” said Banning. “I talked to her, see, she was in the bar when I talked to Susan Klein and I said, look, I got to do this with your Du Pré, sorry about that. She said fine, tear your ass off if I needed to.”

  Yah, thought Du Pré, that sound like my Madelaine, all right. She think this is funny.

  “So we’ll just wait till he comes. We’ll wait all night and all day tomorrow and all week and still be here when the snows fucking melt but I just got to talk to this Benetsee and I won’t have it any other way or with anyone but you.”

  She walked round back and put the wine and meat and tobacco and a small knife on the chopping block. She pulled a twist of sweet grass out of her jacket and lit it and set it on a stone on the ground.

  “Uncle!” she yelled. “I must speak with you! You can help me! Please, Uncle!”

  “Good,” said Du Pré.

  “I hear he’s a very sacred person,” said Banning, “and I will not be a smart-ass with him. My mother had kidney cancer and the Mayo Clinic told her to go home and die quietly. So I took her to a person like this Benetsee and she is seventy-six and on the third husband now, the other two died.”

  “Oh,” said Du Pré.

  “My daddy was a test pilot,” she said, “you know how that goes. Lost him when I was three. Next one was a drunk and a lawyer and you know how that goes.”

  “OK,” said Du Pré. He waited. “Who is the third?” he said.

  “A really good guy,” said Banning. “A blind blues saxophone player, wonderful man. Blind and black. They live in Paris.”

  Du Pré laughed.

  “No shit,” said Banning. “Great guy. She’s wonderful. Sends me these frilly things. Tells me to get married.”

  “And?” said Du Pré.

  “Well, I got married the one time but it didn’t work out,” said Banning.

  “What happened?” said Du Pré.

  “I shot the son of a bitch for pissing out the bedroom window. It bothered me, so I became an FBI agent so I wouldn’t do that again.”

  There is a true story in there somewhere, Du Pré thought. I chew on it long time maybe I guess it.

  “Now, these people who shot the kids they get murder two,” said Agent Banning, “ ’cause I don’t think they were thinking about it till they saw the stupid little bastards cutting the fences and shooting the cattle, and you know we got to stop this because otherwise it’s going to be a sport, you know, shoot anything walks funny, eats tofu, or carries around a flag with baby seals on it. You know, I know, small-town West is going to die, our wonderful government is going to kill it off. They like doing that to small cultures, did it to the Indians and now it’s us but it’s how history moves, and beef is a bad word now and we live in a democracy and we got a very small voice. Oh, by the way, when they release those damn wolves up there they’ll last about two hours and I know that and I don’t care. I don’t want to hear it, or about it. That’s Fish and Wildlife crap, doofuses. They pulled me off some drug murders, Jackson Hole, to send me up here. God, that place is unbelievable. Good place for a nuclear accident you ask me. Well, we had this when it was good.”

  “Yah,” said Du Pré, “it was. I don’t think that we lose it, though. This is just one bad moment.”

  “Hope so,” said Banning, “but I don’t think so. Well, we had it when it was good and I actually feel for the poor little bastards who came here to save everything, bring back the woolly mammoth and such. It was gone when they got here because when they came they came in a tide and they just swamped it. All the drinking water in the Rockies is poisoned now with giardia. Thank you, backpackers.”

  Du Pré laughed.

  How many more people dead before this is over, he thought sadly. It came on him suddenly. He looked down at his feet.

  Banning held the whiskey bottle in front of Du Pré.

  “We got to do this,” she said. “It’s ugly enough now, Gabriel. Really ugly. And you know how bad it could get.”

  “Yah,” said Du Pré, “I am not going to enjoy being a good guy this time, if I am.”

  “Gray hats, for sure,” said Banning. “I give that old bastard about five minutes before he comes round the shack. I hope I didn’t leave him too much wine.”

  “Not possible, leave him too much wine,” said Du Pré. “You know these persons. I got more, he wants it. He is some old man. I sometimes want to break his dirty old neck, but then I think, sometimes he don’t know the answers, just the riddles.”

&nb
sp; “Case you are wondering,” said Banning, “I just want to ask for his help and he’ll do it or not and I’ll take what he gives me and it’s all right, whatever.”

  “I knew that,” said Du Pré. “I tell you I help. You are right, it was not right, kill those people. I wish it had not happened. I wish for many things in my life. I wish it happened someplace else, I wish my leg was broke. I wish much. But I help you. I will find myself in front of somebody I went to school with, hunted with, drank with, maybe someone who saved my life, this country almost take it few times. I don’t like this.”

  “Thanks,” said Banning. “I didn’t know if you could fly high enough to see it. I am truly grateful.”

  “I have lived here always,” said Du Pré. “Little time, the army, but that is all. My papa is brand inspector, and when he is killed I am. I got one daughter here with many children, the other she is finishing up her doctor’s degree, at Yale. That Bart, he pay for her everything. But me, I am here, I don’t know too much else. Now I got to go to my life, my friends, cut some of them out, put handcuffs on them, see them off to bad prisons, have their families hate me forever. I don’t like it.”

  Banning nodded.

  “I say I help you and I will, unless this Benetsee he tells me I can’t. I am sorry, I give you my word and then I think of this. If he says no I go away.”

  “He won’t say no,” said Banning. “Whatever is bad now will only be worse if you don’t help and he will know that. A bad time, it’s here, and we have to deal with it. Your Madelaine told me something about you, Du Pré, she knows you well. She said you’d charge hell with one bucket of water. I ain’t heard that for thirty years.”

  The old dogs stirred. They got up and woofed wheezily.

  “Benetsee!” said Du Pré. “We need you, my friend.”

  The old man was behind them on the porch.

  “Some good wine,” said Benetsee. “I like maybe a good smoke. You roll it thick, yes?”

  Du Pré did. He handed it to the old man and held out his lighter to him. Benetsee drew deeply on the cigarette.

  Benetsee knelt down and held the smoke in front of Banning. She took it and had a long drag.

  “You got a good spirit,” said Benetsee, “falcon spirit. Pretty swift, little too sure sometimes, get you in trouble, crash into things.”

  “Yes, Uncle,” said Banning.

  Benetsee moved down the steps. He squatted in front of her and he looked at her face for a long time. He finished his cigarette.

  “You better be my daughter,” said Benetsee. “I can help you more.”

  She nodded. “A great honor,” she said.

  “No shit,” said Benetsee. “You going to need it. Now, Falcon Woman, you got more to do, you know.”

  Banning’s head snapped up. She looked levelly at Benetsee.

  “Coyotes sing early this morning,” said Benetsee. “They tell me sad things.”

  No, Du Pré thought, please, no more.

  Benetsee stood up and he tugged at Banning’s sleeve till she rose and she followed him.

  “People, last night they let wolves out up there. They sneak them in three days ago, pen them, last night they let them loose. Eight wolves. Four people up there with them.”

  “Oh, God,” said Banning.

  “Two wolves left now,” said Benetsee. “They get lucky, run right.”

  “The people?” said Banning.

  “Coyotes say two wolves left,” said Benetsee.

  Agent Banning looked up at the Wolf Mountains, bright with snow. A thin line, gray as the lead of a pencil scraped over paper, stretched east from the tops of the peaks.

  “It’s going to snow like hell up there,” said Banning.

  Shit, Du Pré thought. Shit. Goddamn it.

  Six.

  Chapter 10

  “WHO DO WE KNOW that can go up there on snow-shoes very quietly and kill four people and six wolves and then come back down quietly and not leave a fucking trace?” said Bart. “The bastard even dug the slugs out of their heads. Chopped them open with a hatchet and fished around in their brains till he got the slugs and then off he went singing a happy song. Probably twenty-two hollow-points. He is thorough, he goes back to his home, fires up the old cutting torch, melts down the barrel, and leaves us here with our dicks in our ears.”

  Du Pré tossed a dart at the dartboard. It had a photograph of the Governor on it. Very tattered.

  “Ah,” said Du Pré, “forty people could do all that, you know. But this one it is different. This time that person was hunting those Fish and Wildlife assholes. Maybe more, Bart, they were not even from this place.”

  Bart nodded. It was snowing like hell outside.

  “He’ll be easy,” said Corey Banning. “Whoever did this did it in cold blood. Means they like it, they’ll do it again. They’ll fuck up.”

  Du Pré sighed.

  “What we need to do today,” he said, “we maybe go down to the bar there, drink some, I play a little fiddle, lot of people there, the weather is nice bad, just snowy, not too cold, they not got much to do, don’t do much more than feed the cattle, take a couple hours, we just be there, maybe someone say something.”

  “I got some paperwork,” said Banning. “I’ll see you later. Check in on my little helpers. What a priceless little bunch of peckerheads. I wonder what their mothers did to them after they cut their balls off.”

  Bart laughed.

  She went out, cussing.

  “What a lady,” said Bart.

  Du Pré shrugged.

  “We going to have to get lucky, this one,” he said. “Nobody see anything, hear gunshots, nothing. No trucks, cars they see. They blind, deaf. That bunch of people dead in the mountains, it will not take long to find out who did it. But maybe never on the first two.”

  “That guy who did kill those four people,” said Bart, “he might have done the others. If, like Corey says, we can get him first, he might crack. Our best bet.”

  One fucking crack, Corey Banning had said, one crack and we get a wedge in and then we go. Just one crack. Or heat it up and pour water on it and see what flakes off. Or go ask Benetsee what he’s seen lately. But find that crack, now.

  They drove to the Toussaint Bar. The place was packed and smoky. Susan was mixing drinks and Madelaine was in the back frying hamburgers.

  Du Pré looked at the prime rib sign. So it was Friday night.

  He waved at the accordion player from Cooper and the guitarist. They had their instruments out on the little stage. Du Pré went back out to the Rover and got his fiddle. He took it in and opened the case and left it sitting on top of an amplifier left over from the country band, to warm up so it would stay in tune.

  Susan shoved a glass of soda at Bart and a double whiskey at Du Pré and she bustled off.

  The air was hot, damp, and close. Du Pré took off his jacket and untied the kerchief at his throat. He tossed his hat and jacket on the stage and he sat on a stool sipping whiskey.

  I know every face, this room, he thought. One of you, two of you, who did this thing.

  I know my people. I make a list, I write them on it, I cross them out one by one, I do this and something it will go click and then I will know before I know. I will find this one, have to smell it.

  Like a coyote. Coyote looks for things aren’t right. Trap there, a circle that is something’s eye, something to eat. Way I track. Look for something that is not right.

  Packy lurched up to Du Pré. He was very drunk, his eyes bleary. He deserved to be, pulling shoes off horses fifteen hours a day for six weeks.

  “They got the sonsofbitches this morning,” said Packy.

  “Huh?” said Du Pré.

  “Them fucking wolves. They came down to Stemple’s feedlot and he got ’em, two shots.”

  Good, Du Pré thought. Now if they don’t do it again we maybe don’t get anybody more killed.

  Who is a trapper?

  Fur market is down so bad no one does it.

  Du Pr
é remembered sending his furs to Sears, Roebuck and getting things back for them, thirty years ago.

  Used to do it, till the bobcats got cut back so far, used to be you got three hundred fifty for a bobcat pelt.

  Bill Stemple. Packy, till he got stove up so bad. Draft horse kick him, then step on the other leg. Gets around pretty good, though. And those two brothers, the St. Francis boys. They’re forty. Never married. Folks are dead.

  Marcus and George St. Francis.

  Not Bill Stemple, he would not do that, he shoot the wolves for sure, hell, anybody do that. Spit in their faces, those fools want them here. Packy is too sweet a guy and he can’t get up there.

  St. Francis boys both trap once, they are of this country, they know it, I know them, they are very quiet.

  Kind of crazy, I always think, Du Pré thought. Can’t think why I think that.

  Du Pré saw them across the room, leaned up against the wall. They were dressed in stained brown overalls and coats, farmer caps, boots with rubber bottoms and leather tops. Big guys, strong. Played basketball, high school.

  Or it is somebody over the other side of the mountains, north, they are doing it.

  Du Pré made his way across the room to the St. Francis brothers. They looked at him curiously.

  I don’t think that I have spoken to them, twenty years, thought Du Pré. But I am remembering something.

  What?

  Bart and Banning had talked to them and they got nothing.

  Suddenly Du Pré remembered. Both of them had had some trouble as kids. They were twins, the kind that look different from each other.

  Set some cars, a house on fire, got sent to the state school, Pine Hills. Kept to themselves.

  Fuck it, thought Du Pré, I am tired of playing by the rules.

  He stood in front of them. They smiled at him. Shook their heads.

  “Bart and Banning didn’t think of something,” said Du Pré, “but I did. You guys shot those people up in the mountains. Left some witnesses.”