I put on my coat and half-topped boots and went downstairs and removed Albert’s scoped ’03 Springfield from his gun cabinet. I also scooped up a handful of .30–06 cartridges and dropped them in my coat pocket. Albert was drinking coffee in the kitchen, dressed in pajamas and slippers and a robe. “Where are you going with my rifle?” he said.
“There’s a wolf in the north pasture,” I said. “It’s after your horses.”
“We’ve never had wolves.”
“You do now.”
“Don’t shoot it.”
“You want to take care of it?” I said, offering him the rifle.
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
I could hear the horses whinnying and their hooves thudding on the sod and splashing through water. I went through the mudroom and out the garage door and ran toward the pedestrian gate in the north pasture. The horses were in full panic, running in circles, corkscrewing, kicking blindly behind them. The wolf was moving through the grass in a half crouch, increasing its speed, its jaw hanging loose. I pressed five rounds into the Springfield’s magazine and locked down the bolt. Inside the gate, I passed the barn and, on the far side, saw the wolf splash through a pool of water, drops of mud splattering its muzzle and forequarters. I twisted my left arm through the leather sling on the rifle and threw the stock to my shoulder and swung the crosshairs of the telescopic sight on the wolf’s rib cage.
The wolf seemed to sense that a new factor had entered the equation. I saw it look directly at me, its nose black and wet and filled with tiny lines, the nostrils dilating. I moved the sight four feet in front of the wolf and squeezed off a round. Fire jumped from the muzzle, and the loud carrack echoed off the hillsides. I saw a jet of mud and water fly in the air.
The wolf went back under the fence, the wire twanging on the steel stakes, a fence clip popping loose. I thought the wolf would keep moving, but I was mistaken. It went up the slope and disappeared behind a boulder, then reappeared next to a cedar tree and stared at me. I put the sight right on its face. There was a gray scar below one eye and another scar on its chest. On the front right paw was an area almost entirely clean of fur, as though the animal had stripped off its skin in a trap.
I ejected the spent cartridge and pushed another forward in the chamber and locked down the bolt. I moved the crosshairs to the base of the boulder and fired. The round was a soft-nose, and it flattened into the rock and powdered the air with a dirty mix of lichen and rock dust.
The wolf bounded through the trees and up the hill. I worked the bolt again and fired one more round for good measure and heard it strike a hard surface and whine across an arroyo with a diminishing sound like the tremolo in a banjo string.
“Did you hurt it?” Albert said behind me. He had pulled his trousers on over his pajamas and was wearing rubber boots and a flop-brim Australian hat.
“No. I didn’t try to.”
“I’m glad. They’re protected, unless you or your livestock are in danger.”
“Your livestock are in danger.”
“I’m glad you didn’t shoot it, regardless. Come inside and have some coffee.”
“You never had trouble with wolves?”
“No. It’s probably operating by itself. I doubt it’ll come back.”
“In my opinion, that’s wishful thinking. That wolf is not afraid. He knows there’s food here.”
“It’s nature’s way.”
“If that wolf had its way, it would have grabbed one of your horses by its face, pulled it down on the ground, and ripped out its throat.”
“I guess that’s possible.”
This is not a rational discussion. Don’t say anything else, I told myself.
The creek bed in the pasture was swollen with rainwater and running brown and fast over the banks in the grass, the cottonwoods dripping, the clouds of fog in the fir and pine trees so white and thick that we couldn’t see the tops of the hills.
“I wish you hadn’t shot toward the end of the pasture, Dave,” Albert said. “There’s a house inside that box canyon.”
“I know where it is. My angle was such that even if the bullet ricocheted, it would have gone into the hillside. I exposed no one to risk when I took those shots.”
“Let’s not talk about it anymore.”
“You want me to walk down there and knock on the door? I’d be happy to do that.”
“I said forget it. I’m sure they’re fine.”
Albert really knew how to plant the harpoon. “Who lives there?” I asked.
“A part-time preacher and his wife and two teenage daughters,” he replied. “I’ll talk to them later, in case they wonder why we were shooting down here.”
I ejected the spent cartridge from the chamber into the mud, and the rounds from the magazine, and did not bother to pick up the unfired rounds. I think I stepped on them and pressed them into the mud. I closed the bolt and handed Albert his rifle. “The next time I try to save your horses from a predator, please reload this and shoot me, and after you’ve shot me, please shoot yourself. The world will be better off all the way around.”
“What set you off?” he asked.
* * *
Clete had made a lifetime practice of not arguing with fate. He had also accepted the harsh reality that most experience, whether good or bad, comes at a price. Was a hangover worth the experience of the previous night? Rarely if ever, he would probably reply, though he repeated the same behavior over and over. Was falling in love worth the cost? He didn’t have to dwell on the answer to that one. Life had no value if it didn’t contain love.
Was there any worse fate than not loving another and not being loved in turn? If the color gray could be applied to an emotional condition, it was a life without affection or human warmth. The absence of love ensured depression, resentment of self, feelings of guilt and fear and hostility, and an inexplicable sense of personal failure that tainted every relationship and social situation. If you wished to destroy a person, at least in Clete’s opinion, you only needed to teach him that he was not acceptable in the eyes of God or his fellow man.
These were the lessons he had to learn as a child in order to survive. He didn’t talk about the dues he’d paid, and he considered self-pity the bane of the human race. The downside of his stoicism was the emotional isolation it imposed upon him.
On Thursday morning Clete arranged to meet Felicity Louviere in downtown Missoula. He thought they would visit a fly and tackle shop or perhaps investigate the antique and secondhand stores by the railroad tracks, or just enjoy the weather, the way other couples did. And that was what they did, under a blue sunlit sky that seemed to stretch infinitely over the horizon. At noon they ended up at a grocery store and deli that had been open since the late nineteenth century. They ordered salads and cold drinks and sandwiches bulging with sliced meat and cheese and lettuce and tomatoes, and found a table outside, under the canvas awning flapping in the breeze. The lampposts were hung with ventilated steel baskets that overflowed with petunias; bicyclists in spandex togs powered through the traffic; the mountains and hills surrounding the town were green from the spring rains, the air as pure and clean as wind blowing off a glacier.
There was only one problem: Clete had brought his own rain cloud with him, and he didn’t know how to make it go away without paying a price that so far he had not been willing to pay.
She ducked her head until she made his eyes meet hers. “You’re deep in thought,” she said.
“It’s my kid. I think she’s getting a bad deal.”
“With the sheriff?”
“People are trying to kill her, but she gets rousted. I’d call that a bad deal. This guy who ended up with a pistol ball in his head? What’s-his-name?”
“Tony Zappa. He was part of Love’s grounds crew.”
“That’s not all he was. When he wasn’t clipping hedges, he was raping the girlfriend of this character Wyatt Dixon.”
“I didn’t know him, Clete. Love hires ex-felons. I think t
hat’s how he convinces himself all the other things he does don’t matter.”
“What other things?”
“Political intrigue. Despoiling the environment. Bribing Arabs. Whatever works. He grew up in a dirt-floor shack and thinks of the world as a shark tank.”
“Because guys like him are in it, that’s why.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“Somebody wants my daughter dead. She’s making a documentary that exposes some of Love Younger’s enterprises. What conclusion should I come to? In the meantime, this nutcase from Kansas is out there somewhere, and he’s probably got connections to the Younger family.”
“That’s not what you’re really trying to say, is it?”
Her hand rested on her plastic cup. There was moisture on the balls of her fingers, and he wanted to reach over and clasp her hand in his and warm it and protect her. But from what?
“I owe my kid,” he said. “Her father let her down. That’s me. Now I got a chance to make it right. I got the feeling I’m not doing a very good job of it.”
“Maybe you’d be doing a better job if you let go of me?”
She was wearing a peasant dress and a beret and tennis shoes and a thin jade necklace. She looked outrageous and mysterious, like an orphan girl who had wandered out of a nineteenth-century novel into the world of the rich and famous. Or was that simply an identity she had manufactured in order to turn a burnt-out bail-skip chaser into a sock puppet? If she was looking for a guy to use, why him? If you wanted a thoroughbred, you didn’t go to an elephant farm.
“I asked you a question, Clete. Do you want me to disappear from your life?” she said.
“Don’t say that.” The canvas awning swelled in the wind, popping loose from the aluminum frame that held it in place. The sunlight was blinding. “I care about you. I don’t want to let go of you. But I can’t forget that you’re married.” His face reddened when he realized how loud his voice was.
“You just noticed that I’m married? Somehow that got lost in your mental Rolodex?”
“You don’t want to leave him when he’s in mourning. I understand that,” he said. “But it doesn’t make me feel too good.”
She covered his hand with hers. “You haven’t done anything wrong. If anybody has done wrong, it’s me. I married Caspian because he was rich. I tried to convince myself otherwise, but that’s why I did it. It’s not his fault, it’s not yours, it’s not Love Younger’s, it’s not my father’s, it’s mine.”
“What are we going to do, kid?”
“I look like a kid to you?”
“Yeah, you do. I’m old, you’re young. You’re a gift that guys who look like me don’t receive too often.”
The color in her eyes deepened, and her face seemed to grow small and more vulnerable. He was sweating, even though the wind was cool; the sun seemed to be burning a hole through the top of his head. “We can go away,” she said. “Maybe for just a little while. Or maybe forever.”
“Go where?” he said.
“A friend of mine lets me use her ranch outside Reno. Her mother was an actress in western movies. It’s like going back to America in the 1940s. The view is wonderful. In the early mornings, you can smell the sage and flowers that only open at night. We could have such a grand time together.”
“I got to take care of my daughter. I got to help Dave.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’ll always be my big guy.”
“Let’s go somewhere. I mean now. Maybe the DoubleTree on the river.”
“I can’t. I told Love I’d go with him to visit Angel’s grave. He’s not doing very well.”
“He was close to your daughter?”
“In his way. He’s a private man and doesn’t show his feelings. He thinks of the world as his enemy. His real tragedy is he tries to control the people he loves most, and he destroys them one at a time.”
“Why didn’t you eighty-six this bunch a long time ago?” Clete said.
“Greed, selfishness, anger, because my father’s ideals were more important to him than I was. Take your pick.” She rose from her chair with her purse. “I’ve got to go. Caspian was suspicious when I left.”
“I hate that word. It makes me feel like a bucket of shit.”
“I’m sorry for using it.”
“Meet me tonight,” he said.
“I think bad things are going to happen to both of us, Clete.”
“In what way?”
“What’s the expression? ‘Our fate lies not in the stars but in ourselves.’ No matter what happens, I’ll always love and respect you. I wish we had met years ago.” Then she walked away.
He felt as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of his chest. He stared at her back as she walked to the end of the block, her dress swishing on her hips, her beret tilted on the side of her head. In seconds she was gone, like an apparition that had never been part of his life. He looked emptily at the street and took out his wallet to leave a tip on the table. That was when he saw Caspian Younger stepping into the intersection, after the traffic signal had turned red, crossing the street without looking at the cars, his face knotted with the rage of the cuckold or that of a dangerous drunk who had decided to sail across the Abyss.
As Caspian threaded his way through the people on the sidewalk, Clete could see the weakness in his chin, the petty and childlike look of injury around the mouth, the flaccid and tubular arms that had probably never picked up heavy weights or split wood with an ax, the hands that were incapable of becoming fists that could deliver a blow stronger than a mosquito bite. Caspian Younger had been one who was always shoved down in line, or stuffed headfirst into a toilet bowl in the boys’ room, or bailed out of trouble by his father and treated as an infant by his mother; he was one of those whose dreams were filled with bullies at whom he flailed his fists while they laughed in his face. He was also the kind who would pull a .25 auto from his pocket and park one between your eyes before you ever saw it coming.
Clete remained seated, raising one hand gently, avoiding eye contact. “Whoa,” he said.
“I warned you before,” Caspian said.
“You got a right to be mad, Mr. Younger. But not here. We can talk about it somewhere else.”
“I’ll decide that.”
“Yes, sir. That’s your right. But no good will come out of this. I say let it slide for now. I’ll stay out of your way.”
“You’re balling my wife and you dare lecture me? Where did she go?”
“Sorry, I don’t know.”
“She’s meeting you at a motel? Don’t tell me she isn’t. I know her pattern.”
“Time to turn the volume down, Mr. Younger.”
“Really? How’s this?” He picked up Clete’s iced tea and threw it in his face.
“I might do the same thing if I was in your shoes,” Clete said. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. “Maybe I’d do worse. None of this is on your wife. If there’s one person responsible, you’re looking at him. But I’m asking you to call it quits.”
“Stand up.”
“No, I won’t do that. I’ll get up and leave after you’re gone. In the meantime, I’m sorry for the harm I’ve caused you.”
“I’m overwhelmed at your humility. Is this hers? Must be. Her whorehouse-purple lipstick is on it,” Caspian said. He picked up Felicity’s plastic cup of Coca-Cola and poured it slowly on top of Clete’s head, the crushed ice sliding down his forehead and face onto his shirt and shoulders.
Clete wiped his hair and face again. “She’s a good woman,” he said. “I think you’re a lucky man.”
“You’re just going to sit there, in front of all these people, and not defend yourself? Stand up. I’m not afraid of you.”
“You don’t have any reason to be,” Clete said. “I’m leaving now. Stay away from me. Don’t take your anger out on your wife. If you do, you’ll be walking around on stumps.”
He put on his porkpie hat and walked down the street toward hi
s Caddy, his pale blue sport coat striped with tea and Coca-Cola and grains of melting ice, everyone at the other tables too embarrassed to look directly at him.
* * *
Two hours later, he called me from the only saloon in Lolo, a biker hangout, one often crowded during the summer, particularly in the run-up to Sturgis. “Come on down. I’ll buy you a lime and soda,” he said.
I could hear music and a clatter of pool balls in the background. “You sound like you’re half in the bag.”
“My mind is crystal-clear. That’s my problem. When my mind is clear, I go into clinical depression.”
“Come back to the cabin, Clete.”
“No, I dig it here, big mon. Right now I’m watching this fat slob with an earring through his eyebrow shoot nine ball.” He took the phone away from his ear. “Yeah, I’m talking about you. That last shot was a rocket. You’re beautiful, man. I’ve never doubted the genetic superiority of the white race.”
“Are you crazy?” I said.
“When did I ever claim to be normal? Are you coming down here or not?”
“Did something happen between you and Felicity Louviere?”
“Dave, I feel like killing myself. I’ve never felt worse in my life.”
How’s that for getting a jump-start on the evening? I got in my pickup and drove down to the saloon. Two rows of motorcycles were parked outside. Clete was standing at the far end of the bar by himself, a longneck Bud and three full jiggers of whiskey in front of him. The bartender stopped me. “You know the guy down there?”
“That’s Clete Purcel. He’s an old friend. My name is Dave Robicheaux. I’m a cop,” I said. “He’s a PI. He doesn’t mean any harm.”
“He needs to go home and take a nap. Maybe start the day over.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“The guys at the pool table paid for those three whiskies and the Budweiser. They were all in Afghanistan or Iraq.”
“There won’t be any trouble,” I said.
I ordered a Dr Pepper and carried it down to the end of the bar. The back of Clete’s neck looked oily and red and pocked with acne scars in the neon glow of the beer sign on the log wall. His coat was folded on top of the bar, with his porkpie hat placed crown-down on it. “What’s the haps, noble mon?” he said.
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