Roddy lifted the hinged section of the counter and let himself in. The deputy glanced up, jerked his head in the direction of the coffee pot, and went on talking into the microphone. Roddy filled a brown-stained mug and carried it back down the hall to his cell.
He lowered himself onto the cot, holding the mug, feeling the heat of it seep into the bandage, and tried to recall the night before. His memory kept approaching a sense of blackness, then backing off. All he remembered was heading out to the county line, to the Midway Bar and Grill, and a redhead leaning on the polished bar. He didn’t know how he’d come to be in jail. He set the coffee down and patted his back pocket. His wallet and keys were gone, and without these familiar things, he was overtaken by a vague feeling, a sense of not knowing who he was or where he belonged. He’d learned to know this feeling from riding in strange towns and waking up in unfamiliar hospitals. This time, at least, he didn’t have to trust some stranger to tell him what bones were broken, or how he’d have to quit the circuit if he wanted to grow old. He picked up the warm coffee mug and took a sip. The deputy leaned in at the door.
“Mornin’,” he said.
“Drunk and disorderly?” Roddy asked him.
“Worse.”
“Let’s have the good news.”
“Better ask your friends.”
“Who else have you got?”
“Al Wilson. One of the Jimpson brothers.”
“What day is it—Sunday?”
“All day.”
The deputy moved off down the hall, clanging the cell doors open hard enough to wake the dead. Roddy finished his coffee, stretched out on the cot, and crooked an elbow over his eyes.
The night crept back. He remembered being too drunk to drive, catching a ride with Al and Jimpson. They were all laughing, crowding into the truck cab. He had a brief recollection of a long curve of highway, his head swinging heavy against the sway of the truck. The dullness of waiting, half asleep, to get dropped off, and wondering how he was going to make it to the bunkhouse.
That’s when he saw the deer, a dark shape looming up beside the road, weaving and running. It careened in from the berm, out of the blackness, and collided with the truck. The dull thud swung the truck sideways across the road, its headlights beaming off into the sage, shining on the red glow of eyes—large animals frozen by the light.
“I got a tag! I got a license. I’m legal!” He remembered Al hollering, and then the confusion in the truck, arms and legs scrambling, Al reaching for the gun rack. The first shot exploded close enough to slam his eardrums.
He stumbled down the roadside ditch behind Al, blinded by his own shadow in the headlights, and hit the barbed-wire hard, the rusted barbs burning where they tore his skin. Drunk as he was, he knew to lie still, not to struggle. Overhead, the stars spun slowly clockwise, and then he heard the thud of hooves on frozen ground, the sound of running horses. They were close, but he couldn’t tell in what direction they were running. He shoved his face in the dirt, fighting the wire to get an arm over his head.
Behind him, he heard the squeal of locked brakes and the sudden crash of the collision, ripping metal and exploding glass. He must have passed out. He woke up at the sound of sirens and saw the sheriff’s outfit and a fire truck. No ambulance.
There hadn’t been an ambulance. He opened his eyes. His mood lifted almost perceptibly.
The deputy knocked on the open door and tossed him a white paper bag folded over at the top. “Get cleaned up,” he said. “Café’s sending over breakfast.”
The thought of food made him queasy. He emptied the bag on the cot—a razor, shaving cream, a toothbrush and paste, a plastic comb. He went to the sink and bent to lower his head under the faucet. He closed his eyes and let the icy water run.
After he shaved, he sat back down on the cot and leaned against the wall. The concrete was so cold it sweated dampness through the paint. He heard the deputy’s stiff leather shoes coming down the corridor, and an unfamiliar voice.
“Doesn’t matter,” the deputy said. “They all get the same.”
He appeared in the doorway carrying a heavy cardboard box in both arms, and he had a woman with him, a pretty blond woman in a powdery blue sweater. She lifted out a plate with a cracked plastic cover and waited until he levered himself up and walked over to take it from her. While he set the warm plate on the cot, she reached back in the box and held out a paper cup of coffee. The woman smelled like soap, a smell so unexpected in the stale air of the jail that he could hardly look at her.
“Thanks,” he said, but she only glanced at his bandaged hand and followed the deputy to the next cell down the hall. The eggs on the plate had congealed and the toast was cold. He had a hard, empty pain at the bottom of his stomach from the first cup of coffee, but he ate everything on the plate. There was no telling when they’d get out.
Later, the deputy went from cell to cell repeating the news that the judge wouldn’t be in town until Monday to set bail. They might as well relax. He stopped again at Roddy’s cell and filled in the details of the night before. They hadn’t hit a deer. They’d hit a horse. The animal had to be put down, but Al hadn’t shot anything.
The worst of it was that an old couple had plowed a camper truck into Al’s. Both outfits were a total loss, but nobody hurt. Al would get hit with drunken driving, destruction of property, everything in the book. Roddy still didn’t know why he was in jail—he hadn’t been driving. But the deputy was saving that for last. They’d all been in a stolen vehicle.
Later, he called the ranch from the pay phone and let the foreman know where he was. His parents kept two other houses, one in Arizona and one in L.A., because his father played golf. At the moment, he didn’t actually know where they were, but at least they weren’t around close.
Before lunch, the deputy passed out mops and buckets. “Might as well work while you’re killing time,” he said.
Roddy filled the galvanized pail with steaming, soapy water and wheeled it down the hall to the front door of the courthouse. It hurt to bend over, and it hurt to mop with one hand, but he’d taken too many hard falls to pay much attention. The soreness would last a day or two; the best thing was to ignore it. He swept the heavy mop in wide circles, spreading a thin chocolate film on the tiles. He rang the mop out and started over. He had all day. The courthouse was dead quiet, the halls filling with the sick smell of disinfectant rising from the bucket at his feet.
Out of the corner of his eye, he had the quick, eerie sense of movement where it shouldn’t be. There was nobody around. He lifted the mop and glanced in at the recorder’s office. At the counter, the woman who’d brought breakfast was shuffling through a stack of papers. He wondered what she was doing in the courthouse on Sunday.
He stood just out of sight, not meaning to spy, but watching her. She glanced up at the clock and seemed to lose her place. She stared at the papers on the counter, but she didn’t seem to see them.
8
Early in the morning, Kenny explored around the hunting camp, a hard-packed clearing in the trees surrounded by squares of flattened grass where canvas tents had stood. He found a narrow, rocky creek to the south, and near the creek, poles lashed high between the trees for hanging deer and elk.
Right after breakfast—hard, sticky donuts they ate right from the box—they saddled the horses and rode out of camp. Since they only had a permit for a mountain goat, they left the shotgun locked inside the truck. His dad carried lunch and rope and his buck knives. Kenny rode with his dad’s new Winchester in the scabbard on his saddle.
The plan was to get up high, above the game, and they rode up the steep side of a mountain, through a field of dead wildflowers, long-leafed mules-ears blown flat in one direction. Kenny stretched his legs down in the stirrups and began to feel awake. The view angled down through an open meadow and across a wide valley to another set of hazy mountains, so far away they looked like dirty clouds on the horizon.
He’d stayed awake in the night, after
his father fell asleep, thinking of his mother. Ashamed for wanting to be back home. His mother never locked her door. It made her seem like somebody he didn’t know, and the dark feeling loomed again. He wished he’d had a chance to say good-bye.
He followed Kenneth’s horse into a stand of quaking aspens as the sun broke out from behind the peaks. Wind gusted in the tallest yellow tree, and the leaves caught the sunlight. It poured through each round leaf until the whole tree shimmered like a treasure of gold coins against the high blue sky. As if by signal, both Kenny and his dad reined in their horses and let them stand. The wind hissed and whistled, churning and tossing in one tree, then another, like something alive. Then they were riding up the mountain again. The trees turned to lodgepole pines, growing close together and thick with fallen timber.
Kenny watched his dad’s wide shoulders bend forward as the haunches of his horse gathered to jump a fallen log. Kenny followed after, his horse in perfect rhythm with his dad’s. He couldn’t figure out how they could find a mountain goat in all this country, but he didn’t really care. If all they did was ride all day, he wouldn’t be unhappy. But he wished they had a permit to shoot elk. The veiny yellow leaves underfoot were dotted everywhere with nests of dark clay beads.
At the tree line they unsaddled the horses and hobbled their front legs. Kenny lay down on the thin mountain grass. His dad sat leaning up against a tree, his bad leg stretched in front of him. He’d broken most of his bones flying or riding rodeo, but only the one leg bothered him, and only when he was tired.
His dad handed him a thick piece of salami and a cracker, and Kenny washed it down with warm, metallic soda. The sun was so hot he could smell it baking the nylon on his jacket sleeves. It smelled like a short in the toaster cord. The warmth made his eyelids itch with heaviness. He could have gone to sleep, but his dad stood up stiffly, ready to go. They left the horses hobbled under the trees and started up the mountain on foot.
Kenny climbed after his father, the rifle bumping on its strap behind his shoulder, the air so thin it was hard to breathe and keep up. He was glad when his father’s boots slid and a small avalanche of rock and shale came rolling down. He stopped and stood aside.
“Hey,” his dad said, “you didn’t say anything about riding this year. Don’t they rodeo at school?”
“Yeah.”
The climb grew steeper. His dad stopped talking and used his bare hands to haul himself up through the rocks. When he found a place to rest, he stood, one khaki leg out straight, the other bent and braced against a rock.
“You won’t ever be any good unless you keep at it,” his dad said. “When I was your age, we rode every day.”
“You lived on a farm.”
“A ranch,” his dad corrected. He stopped talking and his eyes narrowed. “What happened?” he said. “You didn’t make the team?”
Kenny took his hat off and wiped hot sweat out of his eyes. “No,” he said, “that’s not it. My mom wants me to wait until we get a little bit ahead. In case I have a wreck.” He settled the hat back on and looked up.
His father was staring down at him, one eyebrow raised. A dark look passed over his face and was gone like the shadow of a trout deep in the water. Kenny saw his mistake in a second, calling his mother “my mom,” as if he didn’t have a dad. But his father only turned and clambered faster through the rocks. Kenny had to scramble to keep up. Sweat stung his eyes, and the rifle strap seemed to cut right through his jacket.
They climbed onto a flat table of rock where they could stand up straight. A cone-shaped gravel peak rose behind them, but over the cliff edge of the rock the solid ground dropped straight into a deep canyon ridged with rocky ledges. He stood at the rim and tried to catch his breath, but a wind swept up from the canyon and grabbed the air from his lungs. He thought the wind might lift him like a paper kite and push him off the rock. He stepped back from the edge and felt his father’s hand clamp down on his shoulder.
“Kenny,” his father said, having to shout into the wind. “You have a wreck. I’ll pay for it. What’s your mother up to?”
Kenny faced his father, the wind rushing in his ears.
“Never mind,” his dad shouted, shaking his head. “I’ll talk to her.”
“Don’t —” Kenny started, but his father hissed for quiet and jerked his chin toward the canyon.
Far down on the opposite wall, Kenny saw a tiny white dot, a piece of glistening quartz. He slipped the rifle strap off, and his dad took the gun, using the scope to sight with.
“Can’t get there from here,” he said, and handed the rifle back. Kenny shouldered the gun, and his dad placed his hands over his and moved them to the right positions. He adjusted the scope.
Kenny found the white dot, but it was so distorted by distance it shimmered in an oily rainbow. Even through the scope the mountain goat was only a tiny white carving you could hold between your thumb and fingertip.
The pinch of his father’s hand on his shoulder came again, harder. He lowered the rifle. His father’s eyes were open wide and the muscles in his face were set so hard he looked unfamiliar—a man with darker eyes and eyebrows. Kenny followed his gaze down into the canyon.
Two mountain goats, a big one and a smaller one, had appeared on a rocky ledge no more than a hundred yards below them. The big one raised his bony face and gazed into the distance, his angle of beard trailing in the wind. Then he lowered his head and began to nibble at a tuft of grass. Kenny froze. His heart pounded so hard he thought it might jolt him off the rock. He’d never seen a mountain goat this close before. He was stunned by how perfectly white and clean they were.
His father motioned for the rifle, raised it to his shoulder and readjusted the scope. His movements seemed so slow to Kenny. He thought his dad must be thinking of the wind, of where to place his shot, and of how the goat would fall. But all he could think was hurry, hurry, hurry. The goats might vanish into air.
The rifle went off loud in Kenny’s ear and reported back from high up on the mountain. The small goat leapt and disappeared among the rocks, but the big goat stood square, as if he hadn’t even heard the shot. Then his knees buckled. He crashed forward on his chin, like a running calf jerked backward off his feet. The wind died, and Kenny could hear the echo of the other goat’s descent, the trickling fall of loosened rock, long after it was gone.
Then his dad was yelling and slapping him on the back, as if Kenny had shot the goat.
“I can’t believe you got one!” Kenny yelled.
“One in a million chance,” his dad said. “One in a million.”
They were so excited they hardly noticed how long it took to work their way down to where the goat had fallen. All the time, Kenny worried how they were going to climb back out of the canyon, but he could hardly wait to get there.
When they finally found the goat, his dad grasped the front legs in both hands and flipped the carcass over, to gauge the weight and size, to see if the fleece was good enough to keep. It was a big, male goat with black spike horns—nearly two hundred pounds, his dad thought—but Kenny was surprised how small it looked up close. He watched his dad slide his knife out of the scabbard.
His father kneeled down and started cutting back close to the chest to sever the head. The hide was so thick he had to stab to make the first cut. Then he plunged the knife in so deep he had to work his watch strap over his bloody hand and hold it out to Kenny. Kenny slipped the heavy watch over his own wrist and pushed it up on his arm, but he never took his eyes off the goat. He could hardly believe they had it. It seemed still alive, its black and gold eye shiny and wet. When he knelt to touch it, the fleece was still warm, and it glowed from within, yellow close to the skin and pure snowy white at the edges.
When the head was free, his father drew out a smaller, sharper knife and began to cut the fleece from the muscle. When he finished, Kenny helped him fold the hide into a square envelope and secure it with rope. With a second length of rope, they tied the head and fixed a slin
g so his dad could carry it.
Kenny realized his dad meant to leave the carcass on the ledge.
“Can’t we eat it?” he asked.
“Some people do,” his dad said. “It’s pretty strong.”
“I’ll eat it.”
“You want to carry it?” His dad looked at Kenny and down at the goat. The skinned carcass had a pearly blue cast and bits of grass and rock were sticking to it.
“I guess not,” Kenny said.
They worked their way down a narrow ravine where deep snow and ice had collected in the shadows. Kenny carried the hide slung up high on his shoulders like a rucksack. He thought he could feel sticky blood trickling down his neck, but it might have been his own sweat. His dad labored behind him, carrying the head.
Kenny wasn’t sure his dad knew where they were going. For a long time they struggled down through rocks, following a dried-up creek bed, but finally they struck a ridge of dark timber. They hiked the crest of the ridge and emerged on a narrow game trail. The sun sank below the trees and lit up the mountain behind them. It radiated, warm and pink, as if the whole sheer slope were made of salmon-colored seashells, but shadows fell across the meadow and Kenny was cold. His neck felt sticky, and icy trickles of sweat rolled down his ribs.
“Listen,” his dad whispered and stopped still. Kenny pulled up and heard the loud snap of branches. Something big was pushing through the trees. He glanced at his dad. His dad’s mouth was pulled taut in a strange half-smile.
Fallen branches cracked and snapped. Then the elk began to bugle. At first Kenny couldn’t imagine what could make a sound like that. It didn’t seem to come from anything alive. He heard the elk again, squealing into the darkness in a drawn-out wail. It sounded like a heavy door creaking open—at the bottom of a boiler. He shivered, but his dad stood motionless. Kenny started to speak, but his dad held up his hand, and after a long silence, an answering call echoed out of the trees.
Love and Country Page 6