The Distant Echo of a Bright Sunny Day

by Patrick O'Brien

  He looked around the yard one more time, and one more time wondered how he had failed.

  He supposed he could have worked less or made more of an effort to do recreational and cultural things with Heidi. Perhaps he could have made their relationship more of a focal point. Diverting her attention from herself and her affairs might also have helped. He could have promoted “togetherness”; as it happened, each of them had created a separate life joined, almost incidentally as it were, by the hour or two they might spend together at the end of the day, with an occasional weekend down at Seaside or in Seattle at her sister’s. Arguably, so little time in each other’s company was not a formula for a lasting marriage.

  Finishing the last of the Stout, he got up from the picnic table and went back into the house. He dropped the empty bottle into a recycling bin, rinsed out the beer mug at the kitchen sink, set it upside down in the dish rack, and went back into the living room, where he closed and locked the French doors and turned out the light. Next week when Heidi got back, he would take her to the small Italian restaurant they went to when they were first married; there, under the influence of a candlelit dinner, with violins in the background, he would try to set things right. He might also surprise her with tickets to the ballet, her favorite cultural activity.

  Locking the front door, he went up to bed.

  38

  Rick and Peewee had heeded the admonition to spruce up their appearance, albeit begrudgingly. No one likes to be told he doesn’t satisfy someone else’s dress code, and the two ex-Marines-turned-bikers were no different. It was like telling someone not to smoke or to give up an annoying habit of whistling, or to clean up his front yard, or to refrain from playing his stereo too loud. Likely as not, depending on his predispositions and social instincts, the recipient of another’s disapproval will not only continue his behavior but will do so with a vengeance. His hackles having been raised by the implication that he has violated someone else’s sensibilities, he will proceed down a path of increased activity, whether smoking more, whistling louder, ignoring the mess in his front yard, or cranking up his stereo, and all the while, of course, justifying himself with the thought that his Constitutional right to do as he pleases has been compromised. In the face of censorship, an indomitable characteristic of human nature—the urge to be oneself, and very often regardless of the consequences—asserts itself…and nothing changes.

  Had the stakes been less for Peewee and Rick, this generally recognized truism might have stood the test. But both men had gotten themselves too deeply into an unsavory and ruthless undertaking even to daydream about defying, to any significant degree, their mandate. Even though Peewee had started out as a bit player and a nonessential component in a dangerous scheme concocted by the two FBI agents, he had suddenly acquired a new appreciation for Rick’s dilemma. He now understood only too well that, standing as he did under a sword of Damocles, he had just relinquished something of his cherished sovereignty; that, in effect, the two of them had had their ability to call their own shots shanghaied.

  “What do you think?”

  Peewee stood in front of his bedroom mirror and gave a close inspection of what, in his case, amounted to a metamorphosis. The black biker’s jacket, with its leather epaulettes, oversize zippers, and attached waist belt, had been replaced by a wool, red and white Pendleton shirt-jacket that had hung in the back of his closet, unworn and unappreciated until now. It had been a gift from an ex-girlfriend who, after putting up with his sarcastic jibes and incessant drinking, had finally walked out on him.

  “Looks good.”

  “Fits okay?”

  “Yeah…she got that right.”

  “Turtleneck goes with it?”

  “They’re made for each other.”

  “What about the boots?”

  “Primo! You look just like somebody’s hunting guide, Peewee.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah.”

  The boots in question had never been worn, either; they had in fact just been taken out of the box for the first time. Dark green and made from kangaroo hide, they had come from the same source—the ex-girlfriend, as on previous occasions, motivated by the same misguided belief in character reformation. Except for the color, he might have worn them before now, but he didn’t know anyone who wore green boots.

  “I don’t know, man,” he said, looking down at them. “You sure they look okay?”

  “We’re supposed to be a couple of greenies, man. What better symbol than a pair of green boots?”

  Peewee chuckled.

  “Yeah, they can’t argue with that, can they?”

  He put on a brown cowboy Stetson that was part of the outfit he wore when he chased jackrabbits across open sagebrush country on his Kawasaki dirt bike. Cocking the hat a little to the side, he adjusted the brim by giving it an upward curl.

  He looked at himself in the mirror. The addition of the hat was the final touch to an unfamiliar ensemble but one that, despite misgivings, he suddenly rather fancied.

  “You think I’ll pass, huh?”

  “No sweat, man—you got the right look now.”

  Peewee rubbed his chin. He had shaved off the two-day growth he normally kept in place to offset a slightly boyish quality he imagined his face to have. The sensation of it not being there felt strange, but it grew back quickly enough.

  “I guess I‘m all ready, then. What about you?”

  “Ready as you are,” Rick said. They had stopped at his place first so he could change from the t-shirt into something more suitable: a heavy, flannel plaid shirt and a safari jacket with flapped pockets on the front and a smaller one on the left shoulder for a cell phone or a cigarette lighter. He had on a pair of camouflaged combat boots he kept for special occasions.

  A few minutes later, the two men were back on the road. Peewee had lit up a joint, and they were passing it back and forth.

  § § § § § §

  About the time Heidi looked at her watch and saw they’d already waited over an hour and a half for the two men to show up, Rick and Peewee pulled into the parking lot and came to a stop next to her Subaru. Rick had called ahead and had agreed to meet them at a Burger King on the outskirts of The Dalles, but had run into a head-wind blowing down the Columbia Gorge. The van, not exactly a powerhouse in any case, had bucked it all the way, and they had revised their arrival time twice already.

  “We didn’t know if you were going to make it…”

  “One thing I’ve come to learn about a Volkswagen van, circa 1969, is that it usually gets there, but at its own pace. I see everybody showed up.”

  “You should know everybody here, Rick…from Cleveland.”

  “Yeah, the faces all look familiar…except for this guy…”

  Heidi introduced Rick to Mitch. The two men eyed each other like adversaries in a Mexican stand-off, but the firmness of their handshake conveyed a respectful acknowledgment of the other’s manhood.

  “You’re the guy who put all this together, then?” Mitch said.

  “I’m only partially to blame. My partner here is the one you really wanna talk to about that.”

  As if responding to a cue, Peewee, who up till now had hung back, stepped forward and held out his hand.

  “Peewee,” he said.

  Mitch shook the proffered hand. “Glad to know you, Peewee.”

  Heidi introduced the others.

  Accompanied by the honest gaze of a politician at a potluck dinner attended by potential donors, Peewee gave each of them a meaningful handshake.

  “Glad to know y’all,” he said. “Rick’s told me about all the environmental stuff ya been doing. It sounds like you’re trying to bring everybody’s awareness up to snuff. I say, bully for you…it’s gotta be done…”

  Rick excused himself to use the restroom. “I’ll be right back. Peewee can keep you entertained.”

  He went off.

  Smilingly, Peewee turned back to the others.

  “I like your hat, Peew
ee,” Misty said. “It looks like you’ve worn it a lot.”

  “It sure does,” Jody said, without smiling.

  “Oh, yeah.” Peewee laughed. “I been everywhere with it. I had it with me when I was overseas, in Kosovo. My first-sergeant threatened to have me court-martialed for being out of uniform, but I stuck to my guns…asked him which he’d rather have, an out-of-uniform sniper with fourteen kills under his belt or a properly dressed jailbird not doing anybody any good. Never heard any more about it.”

  “You were a sniper?” Ralph asked.

  “Yep!—the real McCoy. Used to nail the bad guys from five hundred yards out. My best hit was a thousand-yarder from the top of a water tower. I nailed the poor bastard when he stuck his head up to check out the terrain with a pair of binoculars. I like to think I got him through one of the lenses, but that’s one of those things I’ll never know for sure.”

  Misty stood uncomprehendingly. She had never before met anyone who had actually killed someone, and the fact that it had been done with cold and deliberate calculation, with a sort of scientific exactitude, made it seem all the more unreal; and his casual reference to it, as though recounting a long-ago, well-executed play on the baseball diamond, didn’t help, either. Moving in closer to Ralph, she put her arm around his waist.

  Ralph wanted to know more. “How did you get to be a sniper?” he asked.

  Peewee’s eyes lit up at the question. He might have been a returning war veteran, dressed in uniform and standing in front of a classroom full of kids wanting to hear stories about the war. He felt suddenly expansive and voluble.

  “Well, you know, the first step is, ya gotta join the Marines,” he said confidingly. “Then ya gotta prove yourself out on the firing range. If they see ya got talent, that you can hit the farthest target several times in succession, they take note of that. And each day you’re out there, they watch ya. They wanna make sure your ability is consistent, that it’s not a fluke. Once they’ve made a determination about ya, you might get an offer to sign up for sniper’s school. It ain’t everybody that gets asked. Besides being a good shot, you gotta be an all-around good Marine, too. A sniper’s a special, independent breed, but to be a good sniper, he’s gotta have more than just that one skill.”

  Carlos, who had been listening right along with Ralph and the others, wanted to know about covert assignments.

  “They ever send you out on secret missions?” he asked.

  “All the time.”

  “Yeah, like what?”

  “Well, Kosovo was secret. Officially, I wasn’t there. And there were others, but they’re a little more hush-hush. I ain’t supposed to talk about them.”

  “How’d you get to be such a good shot, anyway?”

  Peewee let out short laugh. “Well, that’s almost another story,” he said. “But it all had to do with the way I was raised. My dad and my grand pappy were both hunters, and they took me out when I was kid and taught me everything they knew. You’ll find that the best snipers come from that kinda background…they know about the woods and about handling a rifle.”

  “It sounds like you’ve got a little of the Indian in you, Peewee,” Mitch opined. He had taken note of Peewee’s wiry build, his horsemane black hair, and the angularity of slightly swarthy features.

  “As a matter of fact, he does,” Rick voice came from behind. Returning from the restroom, he had just walked up.

  “That’s a fact,” Peewee said. “My dad married a white woman, which makes me a half-breed. He was a Cayuse. They lived on this land long before the white man came along. One of my great grandfathers, Chief Lame Wolf, entertained Lewis and Clark for a spell. But that name oughta tell you a little about me and my sentiments…we revered the wolf for its fierceness, its independence, and its loyalty to family. I wear this medallion as a way to keep in touch with the spirit of the wolf…”

  Reaching down inside the collar of his turtleneck shirt, he pulled out a medallion attached to a leather thong. In size and appearance it resembled a fifty-cent piece and had a wolf’s head embossed on it. Holding it between his thumb and index finger, he raised it up to give everyone a look.

  Carlos and Ralph leaned forward and squinted at it.

  Misty reached out and ran her finger over its surface.

  “You should wear it outside your shirt,” she said, “where everybody can see it.”

  “That’s a great idea,” Peewee said. “I shoulda thought of that myself.” And he pulled the thong the rest of the way out and let the medallion hang outside the shirt-jacket, in full view.

  “Everybody’ll think it’s a medal of some kind,” Tony burbled admiringly. His focus had been on the smaller man’s dapper compactness, as exemplified by the way his hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, the tailored cut of the shirt-jacket, the form-fitting 501 Levi’s, and even the laced, dark green boots that seemed just the right size for his height and build. Tony easily visualized him as a bantam-weight boxer or a Spanish bullfighter: capable of nimble and quick movements and totally without fear.

  Peewee looked down at the medallion. “Yeah, I suppose I could pass it off as that. But I got plenty of medals, as it is…I don’t need another one.”

  “Could I get a picture of you two, do ya think?” Tony asked with an obsequious smile.

  Peewee looked at Rick.

  Rick shrugged.

  “What do you think, Heidi?”

  “I don’t know why not,” she said, and looked at the others.

  “Why not all of us, Tony?” Mike put in sharply. “Why just those two?”

  “Uh…I just thought…”

  “Hey, the guy wants to take our picture—let him take it!” Peewee said. “Me and Rick are a team, anyway.”

  “Shouldn’t we really be going?” Jody brought out. “We can get pictures anytime.” She had been standing off to one side, looking on, and hadn’t said anything until now.

  Tony hesitated, waiting for Heidi’s response.

  Heidi looked at her watch. “Okay, let’s wait,” she said. “There’ll be plenty of time when we get there.”

  “Yeah, we need to keep on track,” Jody said, repeating the sentiment.

  “Yeah, we’ve been here too long, as it is,” Mitch agreed. “One or two more pit stops like this, and we’ll never get there.”

  “Do we have to stay with the same cars?” Tony wanted to know, looking at Peewee.

  “That was the plan, Tony,” Mike snapped. “Let’s stay with the plan.”

  “I just asked.”

  “Well, that’s your answer.”

  Everyone else started breaking up toward the car he or she had come in. Tony hesitated, then joined them.

  “Hey, Jody, why don’t you ride with us?” Rick called out as she walked away.

  “That’s okay, Rick,” she replied. “I’ll be driving my car. And we’ve already divided up the driving.”

  Rick shrugged and walked over to the van. Peewee glanced at Jody, then followed Rick.

  39

  After driving seven hundred and fifty miles, with an overnight stop in Missoula (a spur-of-the-moment decision), Heidi’s little band of Eco-guerillas arrived in Livingston, rested and refreshed, the second day after leaving Portland. Rick and Peewee, pushing the van to its limits, pulled into town three hours later. They also had done a stopover, though at a roadside campground, and felt equally rejuvenated by a night’s sleep—though, in both cases, a night’s sleep helped along by a dozen or so cans of Budweiser shared between them.

  They had already established a post-arrival agenda. The game plan entailed meeting up with Punch.

  “You guys wait here,” Rick said. “I’ll give him a call.”

  Rick and Peewee had rendezvoused with the others at a mini-mart not far from downtown Livingston. While everyone else either stayed with their car or went inside to buy snacks and cold drinks, Rick went over to a payphone.

  He dialed the number the two agents had given him.

  “You Punch McGon
igle?”

  “That’s affirmative. And who might you be?”

  “Rick Strange. You’re my contact, right?”

  “I been expecting your call. Where are you?”

  Rick told him the name of the mini-mart.

  “I know where it is. I can be there in an hour. I got your picture, but it’s been my experience that photos don’t always do a man justice. What’re you wearing?”

  “I look like I’m all set to go on a safari. You can’t miss me. Ditto my little buddy.”

  “Your little buddy?”

  “I brought along some company. He’s an ex-Marine, like me. We were in Kosovo together. We’re sort of dressed alike, but you won’t mistake him for me, not if you’ve seen my picture.”

  “I’m not supposed to know him, though?”

  “Right, just me.”

  “Fair enough. But you got your part down pat?”

  “I did my homework. You were an operations commander in Panama. I was assigned to you for a special detail, a demo operation. All hush-hush, though—can’t really talk about any of it, except in a general sort of way. Since retirement, you’re into environmentalism in a big way, especially because of all the recent development in Montana. Maintaining a natural wilderness means a lot to you. And that includes protecting the wolf population…”

  “So far, so good. But what about since then?”

  “Since then…I ran into a buddy in Portland a couple of years ago. We were together in Panama. We had a few beers together in a local bar, and he told me you had retired and settled in Montana…said to look you up. I did…I gave you call. You said if I ever got out your way to stop by and say hello…We could have a few drinks and talk about the old days.”

  “And now?”

  “And now—ah…you know about Art Jimson and the wolf kills…you were mad as hell about it, in fact were one of the protestors. We can count on your assistance. That’s why we’re here. Did I leave anything out?”