Bub Stuck stared at her. “Now just wait a damned minute, here. You ain’t goan tie me up with that there shit, no way.” He was sweating profusely.
“Will you do it? Or me?” asked Andi. “One of us has to hold the gun on him.”
“I’ll tie him,” said Mary. She started toward the agent.
He balked, yelled, “You think I’m lettin’ two little girls tie me up? Nossir!” He took a step away from the tree. “You ain’t goan tie—”
The dusty earth at his feet exploded. The shot was so loud and unexpected, he slammed, open-mouthed, back into the tree.
“We ain’t?” Andi’s voice was as cold and level as the gun. “Tie him up, Mary.”
Carefully, first wrapping the wire around a lower limb, Mary started moving around the agent. Pricked by the barbs, he yelled.
Andi said, “Do it a little loose. But not so loose there’s play in the wire. Just so it touches skin.”
When she was through with both the barbed wire and the rope, Mary stepped back and went over to Andi, who said to Bub Stuck, “I wouldn’t try too hard to get myself untied, if I were you. It might cause some damage.” Andi still held the gun, straight out.
“Now, you just listen—”
“Seems to me you’re the one that’s in the listening position, Bub.” To Mary, she said, “There’s some bandages in my backpack. Do you think the blood’s not so bad that pup can be wrapped up?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Looking at the small body, Mary was about to weep.
“The stuff’s in a brown paper bag.”
“Okay.” Mary rushed off toward the car.
Bub spat. “Yeah, I figured you was part of one of them fuckin’ animal bunches.”
“Stop figuring, Bub. You weren’t born to figure.” When he tried to lurch forward, the barbs raked his skin and he gave out a bansheelike cry. “We told you not to move, didn’t we?”
“You cain’t shoot me, girl!”
Andi gave a stagy sigh. “Someone ought to’ve put you out of your misery when first you were born, Bub.” She shrugged. “But then, how could your poor momma know how you’d turn out?”
His voice tight with rage and fear, Bub yelled, “You two’re goin’ to jail, you know that? To prison. This here’s a federal o-fense you’re committin’. I’m a gov’ment agent, lady!”
“I can hardly wait to tell my folks this is where their tax money’s going. They’ll be pleased.”
Mary was back with the paper bag.
Unable to thrash around in the barbed-wire casing, all he could do was talk. Repeat the same things over and over. Shout. Whine.
“Good.” Andi lowered the gun. “He’s not going anywhere. I only wish he’d stop talking.” She raised her voice. “I think I should shoot him just for talking, don’t you?” Andi snapped the gun up, sighted.
The movement was so quick and practiced, it scared Mary.
It certainly scared Bub. “You hold it, now!” He screeched as the wire bit into his skin.
Andi shook her head, set the gun carefully on a stump.
Together they went to bend over the pup. Blood seeped through the shirt. Mary was cold without it; she hadn’t noticed until now how cold it was. “He’s awful torn up,” she said.
Andi nodded. She looked over to the well-camouflaged den. “See there.” She inclined her head.
Mary saw two pairs of eyes just barely over the edge of the hole. “He didn’t get them all, thank God.”
“That’s why he was building the fire,” Andi yelled. “Hey, Bub, there’s at least three or four more coyotes you missed.”
He called back some indecipherable words, cursing them to kingdom come.
Andi ran her hand over the soft coat of the little coyote. “I’m going to have to shoot it, Mary.”
“Ah, hell.” Mary got up and stamped around. “Ah, hell!”
Andi retrieved the gun. “I’m sorry. It’s just too cut up and—” She didn’t finish; she raised the gun. But it seemed to freeze there. Andi’s hands lowered the gun but couldn’t seem to release it. For a frozen moment she just stood there. Her head fell forward and her arms down. “I can’t.” She sounded bitterly ashamed.
Mary went over to her, put her hand on Andi’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ll do it, Andi.”
Andi’s fingers loosened, and she released the gun. Then she walked off, started walking in circles with her hands over her ears, muttering something.
The cub was dying, and it had to be dying painfully, yet its eyes as it followed Mary’s movements looked unbelievably bright and inquisitive, as if asking her if she could find some way out of this mess, some solution. Mary’s hands were shaking. She managed to lock them around the gun. For a frozen moment she just stood there, watching Andi, who had stopped walking but who stood now with her face turned toward the sky, her hands pressed over her ears, her mouth open. Mary heard no sounds at all, not from Andi, not from Bub, not from whatever was alive in the woods. This must be what war was like, the beseeching wounded, the foxholes of soldiers, the long lines of refugees, those pictures in the paper of old people walking, children crying, forced from their homes, beaten, shot, and seeing, as they walked or fell, as she saw now, that last bit of horizon, that last line of woods. When she finally raised the gun and shot (and she did not close her eyes; she had to look at what she was doing), the explosion rent the sky and the forest, as if the damage were uncontainable, and the shot had taken the world with it.
21
They drove a long way in silence.
It was a heavy silence, Mary thought. She said, “How come I feel guilty?”
For a few moments Andi didn’t answer. Her face was turned away, looking out the passenger window. Then she said, “I don’t know, unless we are.”
Then Mary knew Andi felt it, too.
• • •
They had left his gun a tantalizing few feet from him and him they left tied to the tree trunk, bellowing, unable to twist or pull against the wire that would cut him to pieces if he tried too hard.
Just before they got to the Idaho border, Mary pulled the car off the road at one of the emergency telephones.
Andi, who was much better at disguising her voice than Mary (she should, Mary thought, be an actress), made the call to the police.
In a southern drawl she said to whatever state policeman answered, “Back in Medicine Bow there’s one fat, unrighteous U.S. gov’ment agent tied to a tree. In case you want to go and cut him loose—which ah don’t recommend, but in case you do—be sure to take wire clippers with you.” Silence. “No, ma’am, ah ain’t gonna give you my name, but listen up and ah’ll tell you wheah he is.” Andi described the place. “And in case you think this is a hoax, well, it ain’t. His name’s Stuck and he is one fat, stupid sumbitch.” Andi smiled at the receiver. “Ain’t they all?” She slammed down the receiver, turned to go back to the car.
“ ‘Sumbitch?’ They don’t say ‘sumbitch’ in the south.”
Andi looked at her as Mary drove. “Sure they do.”
“No, they don’t. It’s more like in—I don’t know, the mountains or somewhere.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Yes, it is.”
They drove for some time arguing about the rightful origin of sumbitch and trying not to think of what the fat agent who was one had been doing when they caught him.
22
It took them nearly three hours to reach Little America, where they picked up Route 30. After driving for ten miles, they saw a cluster of buildings—all one long building, as it turned out, with an oddly uneven roof. There were a filling station, a general store, a gift shop, and a café. Andi was driving (slowly, for Mary insisted), and she pulled off the road and parked the car in front of the café. They got out, Andi with her maps, which she took in with her.
The Roadrunner Restaurant (that was its name) was nearly empty, but then it was almost three o’clock, pretty late for lunch. At a table up front sat two tru
ckers—or so Mary believed them to be and berated herself for stereotyping men with tattoos and well-muscled forearms (all that driving and lifting of cartons).
Andi asked the waitress if they could have one of the big booths because she wanted to consult her maps. Darlene (her name tag read) said sure and scooped up the menus. She asked them if they wanted smoking or nonsmoking and Mary said non. But she thought that was pretty funny, since the room was so small there was no way to keep from getting the other diners’ smoke in your face. The truckers were both smoking, and they were only two tables away.
The menu offered a huge enough selection to meet the requirements of anyone: meat-and-potatoes, vegetarian, kosher, New Yorker. No cook could possibly come up with all of these entrees, and Mary assumed they were frozen and then just popped in the microwave: Lobster Thermidor, Bengali Shrimp Curry, Shellfish Normandy—things like that. It was such a strange menu for way out here, where there was only the two-pump filling station, the general store, and the tract town of flat-roofed houses, the desert stretching all the way to the mountains, unrelieved, and here the fancy menus of the Roadrunner Restaurant. She couldn’t imagine who brought them business.
Andi asked, “What’s Rainbow Trout Dusseldorf? Is it a German dish or what?”
Darlene shook her head. “It’s the chef’s special—well, one of his specials. His name’s Dusseldorf. I know it sounds German, but he’s not; he’s from right around here. It’s real good.”
Mary said, “He must have a lot of specialties. There are a lot of Dusseldorf dishes.”
“Uh-huh. They’re all real good.” Darlene shifted her weight to her other foot, her pad and pencil hovering. She did not appear annoyed with their questions; she seemed to enjoy the company. The truckers were getting up to leave, each with a toothpick in his mouth.
“Is his first name Hiram?”
“The chef?”
“It says here”—Mary pointed—“Hiram’s Hot Potato Salad.”
“No, Hiram’s a completely different person, just a friend. The chefs Herb. That potato salad’s one of his best dishes.”
Andi asked, “Well, how’s this rainbow trout cooked?”
“It’s rolled in crumbs and sautéed. Fried, like.” She smiled at them as if to say, What do you think of that!
Andi blinked. She said, “I don’t mean to put your cook down, but—”
“Chef,” Darlene gently corrected. “He just hates being called cook or having people talk about his creations as cooking.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Andi thought for a moment. “I was just saying that a lot of rainbow trouts are cheffed that way. So what’s special about Chef Dusseldorf’s?”
Darlene bunched her lips as if she meant to kiss a cat or dog. “It’s the herbs and spices he puts in the crumbs. It’s his special crumbs.” She looked at Andi. “There’s no word called cheffed, is there? You said cheffed.”
Mary said, “You mean is there a verb cheffed? No, it’s not a verb. Well, it’s not even a word, you’re right. Andi used it because the chef doesn’t like the word cook.”
Darlene flapped her hand at them, laughing. “Oh, for heaven’s sakes, I didn’t mean—Just don’t call him a cook.”
Andi blew out her cheeks, regarded the menu again. “Listen, maybe the best thing to do is you tell us what the chef thinks is the best dish.”
Mary nodded. “That’s a good idea.”
Darlene was flustered. “Well, the lobster, maybe; or, no, the trout. . . .” She seemed to think she’d been called upon to uphold someone’s honor. “Maybe the lamb. . . .” She frowned. “Look, why don’t I just run back there and ask him for a suggestion?” She smiled.
“Yes, why don’t you?”
Relieved, Darlene went off to the kitchen.
Mary looked at the menu. “Okay, I bet he says the meat loaf and mashed potatoes.”
“But what about all those Dusseldorf dishes? Wouldn’t he choose one of his specialties? I wonder who Hiram is.”
Mary shook her head. “You don’t think he makes all this stuff, do you? It’d take the whole staff of the Santa Fe Cooking School to wade through this menu.”
“How about the Hot Roast Beef Sandwich and Gravy?”
“That’s a good choice. I bet he chooses that, or maybe the Chicken Fried Steak.”
“Chili, how about chili? Everybody thinks they’ve got the best chili recipe.”
Mary nodded. “Chicken Pot Pie?” She saw Darlene coming toward them.
Darlene said, beaming, “He says the ham and candied yams.”
Mary and Andi smiled. “Close,” said Mary.
Andi looked at Mary, who nodded. “We’ll both have the ham,” said Andi. “And Diet Pepsi, if you’ve got it.”
Darlene looked sad. “We’ve only got Diet Coke.”
“That’s okay.”
When Darlene had whisked off with the order, Andi spread out one of the maps, looking pleased that she could contemplate the state of Idaho all by itself, not muscled off the map by Wyoming. “We’re right over the border, here.” She pointed. When Darlene came with their Cokes, Andi asked, “How far’s Salmon from here? Driving time, I mean.”
“Salmon? Well, I’d say four, maybe five hours, about. Is that where you girls’re headed?”
They both nodded and sipped their drinks.
“The other side of Pocatello you’d take Twenty-six. That’ll get you there. Salmon’s real popular. We get lots of people in here in summer that’re on their way to Salmon for the rafting. White-water trips. I wonder if they do them this early in the year. I’d’ve thought the river’d be too swole up to get down it in canoes and those rubber rafts. You wouldn’t catch me out there in a kayak or whatever them skinny things with points is.” And suddenly, Darlene stopped talking and began to sing: “ ‘Let’s take a kayak to Quincy or Nyack—’ ”
They were surprised at how light and clear and pretty her voice was.
But then she stopped, embarrassed. “Remember that? Oh, shoot. You’re way too young to ever have heard that. It’s one of Frank’s songs.” She looked at them out of eyes as colorless as water. “That’s Frank Sinatra, I mean.”
“Darlene,” said Andi, “you can really sing. Can’t she, Mary?” Mary nodded, and Andi went on. “Sing the rest of it. I really like the words.”
“Oh”—Darlene wiped back her hair with a forearm—“I was just fooling.”
“No, go on! It’s only us here. Go on.” Andi made a prodding gesture with her hand.
Blushing, Darlene ran her hands down the sides of her dress, as if they were damp. Then she stood straight and sang, much like a child in a recital:
“Let’s take a boat to Bermuda,
Let’s take a trip to St. Paul,
Let’s take a kayak
To Quincy or Nyack,
Let’s get away from it all”
And as she sang about trailers and Niagara Falls, Mary and Andi exchanged a wondering glance. What’s she doing here, waiting on tables? When the song was done, they applauded. Darlene sighed, as if they were all glad that was over.
Mary said, “This should be the Wild West again and you could be the singer in a saloon.”
“Really, Darlene,” said Andi, “you should be on the stage or in the movies. You’re better than a lot of professionals I’ve heard.”
Darlene, her face blotchy and hot with embarrassment and pleasure, thanked them and hurried back to the kitchen.
“I don’t think she knows she’s good,” said Mary. “Out here in the middle of nowhere. Imagine all of that talent wasted on the desert.”
Andi’s face looked transparently pale. After a while she said, “ ‘Wasting its sweetness on the desert air.’ That’s from a poem.”
“For someone with amnesia your memory’s pretty huge. What’s wrong, though? You look—kind of ghostly.”
“I have that . . . gone feeling.” Andi pressed one hand against her chest, the fingers spread. Her breathing was labored.
Mary though
t for a minute that she was ill. “Gone?”
“Haven’t you ever had that feeling that somebody’s tiptoed in and stolen something really valuable away?”
Before Mary could say anything (not that she knew what to say), Darlene was setting down their ham platters. She stood back and watched over them like a mother waiting to be complimented. They both told her the food was very good, which Mary was sure it was. She was just too hungry to pay much attention to the taste.
It was Virginia ham, Darlene told them. Ham all the way from Virginia.
Mary wondered why ham from Virginia was better than ham from Idaho or New York or North Dakota, but she was too busy eating it to ask.
Finally, Darlene went away to stand behind the counter and drink from a mug of coffee, and Andi said that maybe she was waiting for them to ask her to sing again. Then they stopped talking to concentrate on their platters, with Andi occasionally casting glances at her Idaho map.
Andi said, “We can make it to Salmon tonight.”
“No way. It’s already nearly four o’clock and Darlene says it takes five hours and she’s probably underestimating. Most people do when they give directions.” Was that actually true? Mary wondered. “It’s not a good idea to be spending so much time driving at a stretch.”
Andi was running part of a roll through a small pool of gravy. “Look at all the non-driving time we’re spending.”
“Well, I don’t consider nearly getting shot by some jackass of a government agent exactly a rest stop.”
“We’ll have to get a motel room, either that or pitch our tent.”
“Which we don’t know how to do. Boy, are we ever losers.” She sighed, leaned her head against her hand wearily. Mary knew her sigh was simply showmanship, like Darlene’s. She wondered what was for dessert. She pulled the map around, studied it for a moment, said, “The Salmon River looks like it runs almost side by side with this—no, that’s another river. There sure are a lot of rivers. There’s the Snake. There’s this whole Snake River Plain. I guess we cross it to get over to—where’d she say?”
Biting the Moon Page 11