The Wild Inside

by Christine Carbo

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t recall the name, I guess. Can’t say I’m hurt.”

  Natalie smiled, large as always.

  Ma threw the butt of the cucumber in the garbage disposal and turned it on, the loud grind speaking for her.

  She was complicated. She didn’t escape the weltschmerz Kathryn and I had, but she always had a way of buoying herself above it and keeping a sense of humor, or at least a large dose of sarcasm. When Dad died, she lost her playfulness for a number of years, but she pretty much regained her old self after a decade or two, if you can ever fully do that. Losing a loved one changes people. Period.

  “I don’t care how long it’s been. If you’re a park superintendent, you shouldn’t forget the names of . . .” She looked down and I sat quietly while Natalie opened her pot again and poked at the beans. She had just finished stirring a moment earlier, so I knew she was only doing this to escape whatever discomfort was occurring. “You shouldn’t forget significant events that happen in your own damn park,” she finished.

  I took a sip of my beer and felt the familiar clench gather below my breastbone. I turned and tried to peer through my sister’s sliding glass doors. It was going on eight, so it was dark out, and I could see our reflection: Natalie before the stove, her dark hair in shoulder-length waves, Ma now at the sink washing the cutting board. She had gained a little more weight around her center since the last time I saw her. And myself, sitting languidly but inside, wound up. I looked thin, tired, and the reflection made my face seem more elongated than usual. I turned back to Natalie. “Can I set the table?”

  “No, no, I’ve got it. You better go up and play a game or two of Mario before dinner or the boys will be upset.”

  “My pleasure.” I grinned and headed upstairs.

  • • •

  We had a baked chicken dish with Parmesan cheese and rice along with the green beans. Luke had arrived after we started eating and quickly washed up to join us. I’d always liked Luke, an easygoing and avid fly fisherman. We caught up on the best fishing holes around the valley and up toward Eureka, near the Canadian border. We discussed proposed measures to control the lake trout that were squeezing out bull trout and new legislation on reopening cyanide mining techniques in Montana that could potentially harm streams and rivers. The boys got bored listening to us, and after they cleared the table, went back upstairs to get their PJs on before they could have the apple pie Ma had brought.

  Against Natalie’s and Luke’s protests, I insisted on Luke staying seated and helped Natalie rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Ma stayed at the table and chatted with Luke. “Ma baked this with the fruit from that apple tree in her backyard.” Natalie worked at the plastic wrapping from underneath the pie plate.

  “Excellent,” I said.

  “Oh, and guess who I ran into the other day?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  “Shelly. At a grocery store in Kalispell.”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “That so? How is she?”

  “She’s good. She recently got divorced.”

  “That’s too bad.” Nobody had brought Shelly’s name up to me in years, and I had had no reason to mention it myself. Just the sound of it made me feel oddly shy. “She has a couple kids now, doesn’t she?”

  “Two girls. I think ’bout seven and nine.”

  I shook my head. I wasn’t sure how it made me feel, other than sad for her, for her kids. Some pang of nostalgia shot through me, and I wondered if her second husband communicated with her. When Shelly had gotten pregnant, it was unexpected, and I found myself reeling with fear that I’d make a terrible parent and that the world was too unstable a place to bring a child into. But as several weeks passed, I’d wrapped my head around the idea—even became excited. Shelly was giddy, but wanted to wait a few weeks before telling her parents or my mother. When we finally did, as if on cue, the miscarriage hit us, a tornado railing into our marriage at full speed and crumbling the already weakened pillars and walls we’d managed to construct.

  Two months after the miscarriage, I discovered calls on our cell phone bill (one Shelly usually paid and I rarely looked at) indicating that she was talking into the late hours of the night with some overmuscled bozo from the local gym. When we fought over whether the baby had even been mine, she’d yelled, “I didn’t even begin talking to him until you clammed up and ignored me.” Through choked cries, she said she only confided in him because she needed someone, anyone, who could talk to her, whose sentences didn’t trail away in midair like mine, whose eyes didn’t glaze over and not see her, whose silences made being with someone a lonelier prospect than being by herself. And guilty I was. I thought if I could just walk away from it, not look directly at the pain and tears in her eyes—just go to work, set my mind on other things, that it would all pass. Time. It helped me get over my father; time would heal her wounds as well. I couldn’t do it for her.

  “Just thought I’d let you know,” Natalie said. “You should give her a call while you’re here.” From a drawer beside me, Natalie grabbed a silver pie knife, the kitchen light glinting off its shiny surface.

  “Oh, you think so?” She looked at me with her signature smile, and I laughed. “I take it that means you really do think so.”

  Natalie nodded.

  “You’re something’ else.” I pinched her arm lightly. “Come on, cut that pie before everyone starts yelling.”

  • • •

  Natalie was getting some whipped cream out of the fridge and bringing it to the table when the boys came down, Ian in flannel and Ryan in some blue cotton PJs with a picture of two crisscrossed baseball bats and a ball on the chest. I felt another twinge of something achy sift through me when I looked at them—a type of longing or homesickness for something forever lost. Both were younger than the age I was on the fateful day I went camping with my dad. At the risk of sounding trite, I couldn’t help but recognize the innocence shining in both sets of eyes. When Ryan climbed onto Luke’s lap, his body looking taut like a Gumby doll, but cuddly at the same time as Luke’s big arms held him in a warm bundle, I tried to remember my father’s lap but couldn’t.

  Ian sat across from me and asked me what was white and black and red all over. When I said a newspaper, he told me to try again. “A toad in a blender,” I said.

  “Yuck,” he screeched. “No, an embarrassed zebra.” His smile was huge like Natalie’s.

  I laughed.

  He and Ryan continued to tell me silly jokes, and I laughed on cue until they finished their pie and Natalie shoved them off to bed. I gave each of them a good-night hug and as I smelled their soft, silky hair, an overpowering urge, sharp as a blade, to be sweet, trusting, hungry for life and giggling uncontrollably at silly jokes just once again, cut through me. The yearning caught in my throat and I had to cough to dislodge it. I pushed my hand in my pocket and felt for a quarter but came up short, so I wrapped my fingers around my thumb and squeezed tightly until Ma said, “They’re sweet boys, heh?”

  “I take it you haven’t wagered any money yet on one of those Wii games.”

  Natalie insisted I stay the night on their couch, but I told her absolutely not, that I needed to get back to the cabin so I could get on the job early. A part of me wanted to stay, curl up in their family room with the rest of them soundly sleeping upstairs, their rhythmic breathing providing some invisible shield from the outside world. How I admired Natalie for the simple, but hard-won irreplaceable things she’d created and fostered by having a little trust and an ounce of faith in the world. The willingness to take leaps in spite of knowing how fragile it all is, how easily everything can break—how it can fall and shatter like broken glass in an instant.

  Yes, a part of me wanted to stay in the warm cocoon of their family life and not go back to Glacier, but I had the feeling that if I stayed one night, I’d want to stay two, then three, and not sleep in Glacier again
as the case progressed. And for reasons not completely understood by me, that would be unacceptable.

  16

  VICTOR ENDED UP with a small family gathering at a depressing funeral home in Evergreen not too far from his mother’s place. I stopped in on the off chance that some strange person or weird characters whom I hadn’t considered would pop up out of the blue.

  The ceiling was low, the lighting dim, and the carpet a rusty burgundy color trying to look royal but failing miserably. I had been in the same funeral home about fifteen years earlier for a friend who’d lost his life in a heavy-equipment accident while paving a highway east of Kalispell. Victor’s father wasn’t there, and according to our records, now lived somewhere in New Mexico. Megan had informed us that they’d tried to contact him all week but had been unsuccessful. They left messages on the only cell phone number of his they had, but no longer had his voice recording on it, so were unsure if it was even his any longer. I made a note to make sure Monica checked his current number so he could be notified.

  I stood at the back, trying to fade into the wall and stay unobtrusive. There was no coffin, only flowers next to a tripod stand with a photo board filled with pictures of Victor, mostly when he was a boy and still had some fat and color on his cheeks. I recognized one of the pictures—the one of Megan and Victor swimming—and figured Penny must have taken it from its frame from her side table.

  Penny looked glassy-eyed and numb, going through the motions and being pleasant to everyone who came. She wore a dark-green dress and Megan, in black trousers and a sweater, stood next to her with her arm woven under her mother’s. With her jaw set hard, Megan appeared stoic, as if she had her guard up and was there to offer protection for her mother, not to grieve her dead brother. When she noticed me, she gave me a stiff, curt nod, her dark eyes darting around, ravenlike. Eventually, she and Penny sat with the other family members: Lou and Becky, another uncle on Penny’s side whom I hadn’t met named Mark and his wife, Angela, and a few of their kids who all looked older than twenty and had a few toddlers and various-aged children of their own.

  Candles glowed steady and created oblong shadows beside the altar. I felt a little shaky again, which I chalked up to another sleepless night and the fact that I drank too much coffee before coming. Lou glanced at me when he took a seat behind Megan, then looked away. Daniel, a few rows back, noticed me as well and gave me a small wave.

  The service was short with a few hymns and one or two sentimental eighties songs, including “Wind Beneath My Wings,” which seemed grotesquely out of place, given that Victor didn’t seem to provide wind for anyone’s wings other than his own attempt to fly high in some altered state.

  When everyone rose from their seats and filed outside, I followed. The sky had turned bruised, the temperature dropped, and the wind picked up and stirred some fallen leaves. I found Penny first and offered my condolences. She thanked me for coming, then stood on her toes and whispered to me, “Have you caught who did this yet?”

  “Not yet,” I said, stooping down to her level. “We’re working hard on it.”

  Sadness broke through the dull glassiness of her gaze. She pursed her lips, nodded, and opened her mouth to speak, but one of her friends came up and grabbed her around the shoulder before a word escaped. I smiled politely and turned to see Megan.

  “Surprised to see you here, Detective Systead.”

  “Have you been able to contact your father yet?” I asked.

  “Yeah, we finally got ahold of him this morning through a former landlady of his who had a current number.”

  “Had he known?”

  She shook her head.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “I’m fine. Any closer to finding who did this?”

  “It’s progressing,” I offered. “Anyone here that you weren’t expecting or that seems out of place?”

  “Besides you?”

  I smiled. “Besides me.”

  “No, whoever you’re lookin’ for wouldn’t be here.” It was almost a question; her brow furrowed.

  I nodded as I scanned the crowd. “No, most likely not.”

  • • •

  It was late afternoon, and the wind had picked up even more. When I returned to headquarters, I sat outside in the car for a moment with my eyes closed and listened to gusts of wind cut through the mountains, stir the leaves, and rattle the outer branches of the trees by the building.

  I thought of how it must have been for Victor Lance out alone in the woods for an entire night, strapped to a tree, scared shitless: wildly looking around, the wind in the creaking trees, shaded objects that you can’t tell are real or your imagination, not knowing if a wild animal might wander upon you. Just the act of breathing must have been a challenge—trying to calm it down, but trying not to focus on it. It’s the first time I’d let myself go there and immediately felt the familiar clench below my breastbone. I opened my eyes and shook the images away.

  I went inside, where I talked to Monty more about Lou and Victor gambling—that it just didn’t sit right with me. “Why in the hell would Lou place bets for a guy who he knew would be an albatross around his neck, who he’d tried so hard to get rid of in the first place?”

  “Maybe he didn’t try as hard as he claims.”

  “No, he did. His wife confirmed that, in general, that was the way it was, and I can tell she’s not lying.”

  Monty looked at me thoughtfully, his head cocked to the side.

  “I’m going to go talk to him again,” I said.

  “Now?”

  “Nah, it can wait till morning. Havin’ another home-cooked meal now.”

  “That so? Lucky you—your sister or your mother?”

  “Neither, Joe and his wife.”

  “Nice.” Monty smiled.

  • • •

  Joe and his wife, Elena, lived in a two-story farmhouse on ten acres by the Flathead River outside Columbia Falls. They still had several horses, but according to Joe, he decided he was getting too old to have so many responsibilities, so they sold the four head of cattle they’d owned.

  Elena was a petite woman, and I could easily see that Leslie got her mother’s frame, large eyes, and pale porcelain skin, while Heather got her father’s larger, Scandinavian build with fairer, ruddier skin and blond hair. Elena looked quite a bit younger than Joe, and I wondered what the age difference was. I knew Joe had to be in his midsixties, while Elena looked to be in her early fifties.

  “Nice place you have here,” I told Elena as I handed her the bottle of wine I’d picked up in Columbia Falls on the way over.

  She thanked me, took my jacket, and brought me into the living room, which was painted in a tasteful, deep silvery-blue with white trim. White bookshelves framed the fireplace, and I could see family pictures lining the mantel, many with the two girls when they were younger, a dark-haired beauty next to a light-haired one. Pictures of them riding horses, sitting on wooden field fences, bundled up and standing beside a Christmas tree they had picked out in the woods, and school pictures with perfectly combed hair and gap-toothed smiles. In the pictures, in spite of the light and dark, tall and little contrasts, it was obvious they had similar features in the shape of their jaws, their cheeks, and their smiles. Joe came in and greeted me, and we hadn’t chatted for more than five minutes when the doorbell rang. “Oh, that’s Monty.” Joe smiled. “Ran into him on the way out and thought he could use a good meal as well.”

  Monty came in clean-cut, smelling of cologne, and smiling. He gave Elena a big hug and handed her the bottle of wine he’d brought. I could see that this wasn’t the first time he’d been over for dinner. Monty turned to me. “Guess I’m having a home-cooked meal as well.”

  “I guess you are,” I said. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Ran into Joe after you left. I suppose he felt sorry for me.”

  �
�Speak for yourself.” I smiled. I couldn’t tell if I was pleased or pissed off that he was coming to dinner too. I had decided earlier that I was looking forward to spending an evening with Joe and meeting his wife after all this time.

  “Not that anyone should feel sorry for either one of us,” Monty added.

  I held up my hand to signal for him to say no more. The two of us followed Joe into the kitchen to chat with Elena and to see if we could help her with anything while she finished last-minute preparations. Elena shooed us away and said that we absolutely could not help her. She told Monty and me to sit, and put Joe to work opening both bottles of wine. Monty and I took seats at a small counter dividing the kitchen from the dining area.

  “I’m making corn chowder for us tonight for starters,” she said, her eyes large and brown. She had that sophisticated, Audrey Hepburn look with her dark hair pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck. She moved gracefully around the kitchen, but I could sense that there was an energy to her small frame that bristled and revved, waited to escape as soon as she felt more at ease with her guests.

  Joe gave us each a glass of wine and we sat at the counter and chatted. Joe was talking about his acreage and how it was to raise cattle when out the kitchen window, an older, white Toyota truck rusting near the front bumper drove up, and Elena said, “Oh, hon, did you invite Heather?”

  “Nope.” Joe stood to go greet her. In the fading light, I watched as Heather got out of the car. Then I saw the passenger side open and a young boy hopped out. A minute later, they all came into the small kitchen, and Joe introduced Monty and me to Heather again and to Lewis for the first time.

  “I’m so sorry,” Heather said to her mother and she bent, because she was much taller, to kiss her. “I didn’t know you had company tonight. We just stopped by to say hi before heading to get some ice cream for a certain person with a big sweet tooth.” She smiled at Lewis.