by C. J. Box
Joe brushed her cheek lightly with the tips of his fingers, shut off the light, and went back down to his office.
He had never enjoyed the paperwork associated with his job, but considered it necessary—unlike some of Wyoming’s other fifty-four game wardens, who complained about it constantly. He viewed the memos, reports, requests for opinion, and general correspondence as the price he paid to spend the majority of his working day out in the field in his pickup, astride one of his horses, in his boat, or on his snowmobile. Joe Pickett still loved his job with a “pinch me” kind of passion that had yet to go away. He reveled in his fifteen-hundred-square-mile district that included haunting and savage breaklands, river lowlands, timbered ridges and treeless vistas, and landscape so big and wide that there were places where he parked his truck and perched where he could see the curvature of the earth.
He even used to get pleasure from writing his weekly reports, coming up with a well-turned phrase or making an argument that could persuade higher-ups. But things had changed, and he now dreaded entering his own office.
Joe listened to his telephone messages. There was a complaint from a local rancher about a vehicle driving around on his land at night, possibly a poacher. The next message was from Special Agent Tony Portenson of the FBI, asking Joe to call him. Portenson was heading up the investigation into the murder of ex-sheriff O. R. “Bud” Barnum and another still-unknown male the year before. Both of their badly deteriorated bodies had been found in a natural spring the year before. Joe had reported the crime. The prime suspect in the murders was Nate Romanowski,the falconer whom Joe and the rest of his family had befriended years before. Nate had vanished before the bodies had been discovered, and Portenson was trying to track him down. The agent called Joe every month or so to find out if Joe had heard from Nate, which he hadn’t. Joe felt no need to tell Portenson that he and Sheridan still went to Nate’s place to feed his falcons, and that they would continue to do so until Nate returned or the birds flew away for good.
JOE YAWNED WITH exhaustion as he tapped out a terse recounting of his long day to send to Randy Pope at headquarters in Cheyenne. Pope read his reports very carefully for errors that he enjoyed pointing out.
When he completed the report, he used his slow dial-up modem to send the e-mail. As the connection was made, his in-box flooded with departmental e-mails. The volume of mail had increased fivefold since Pope took over.
Joe perused the subject lines, deciding most could wait until tomorrow morning. The only one he opened was a press release from headquarters entitled GOVERNOR RULON NAMES NEW GAME AND FISH COMMISSIONERS.
Joe read the short list. One name punched the breath out of him. The new governor had made his second mistake.
The new commissioner for Joe’s district was Arlen Scarlett.
5
JULIE SCARLETT WASN’T ON THE BUS OR AT SCHOOL for the next two days, and when Sheridan dialed her number at the ranch the call went straight to voice mail. The news of the shovel fight as well as the disappearance of Opal Scarlett swept through both the school and the community so fast that it was almost unnecessary to include it in the Saddlestring Roundup, but it appeared there nevertheless, with the photo of a startled Tommy Wayman exiting the sheriff’s department car.
On Friday afternoon, after Sheridan finished track practice and waited inside the entryway for her dad or mom to pick her up, a muddy three-quarter-ton pickup swung into the alcove. THUNDERHEAD RANCH was painted on the door of the truck, and when it opened, Julie jumped out. Sheridan could see that it was Julie’s Uncle Arlen who was driving.
Julie looked pale and tired, Sheridan thought. Her friend wore old jeans, cowboy boots, and a too-large sweatshirt. It was unusual to see her dressed down that way, and Sheridan felt sorry for her.
Sheridan was relieved when Julie’s expression changed from distraction to joy when she saw her in the doorway. Julie broke into a quick run, opened the door, and threw her arms around her friend.
“I missed you!” Julie said, beaming. “I know it’s only been, like, a couple of days, but it seems like a friggin’ month.”
Sheridan said, “I know. I’ve tried to call you because I was getting worried . . .”
Julie dismissed Sheridan’s concern with a wave. “Sorry about that. My uncles forget to tell me I’ve got messages since my grandma always did that. Hey, walk with me, Sherry. I’ve got to go pick up my missed assignments so I can get caught up this weekend.”
Sheridan turned and strode down the empty hallway with Julie.
“I’m glad school is out for the day,” Julie said, speaking softly. “This way I don’t have to face anyone and answer all of the questions right now. That’ll have to wait until Monday. So, is everybody wondering where I’ve been?”
“Sure,” Sheridan answered, knowing Julie wanted to find out she was the topic of all conversation, even though some of the kids had said cruel things about her and her family. “Me, mainly.”
“Oh, you’re sweet,” Julie said.
Sheridan stood near the door of Julie’s math classroom while Julie got her assignments from her teacher. She listened as Julie told her teacher how rough it had been the last few days with her grandmother missing, and with her uncles fighting. The teacher eagerly drank it in. If Julie was going to repeat the story to every teacher, Sheridan thought, they’d never get out of there. While she liked Julie and was relieved she seemed okay, her friend reveled in being the center of attention.
Finally, Julie finished and left, Sheridan beside her.
“I may not be able to stay,” Sheridan said. “My ride should be outside.”
Julie stopped. “Are you sure? We’ve got some catching up to do.”
“I know,” Sheridan said, thinking she would much rather do that instead of listen to Julie explain what had happened at the ranch seven more times to seven more teachers. While she had the opportunity, Sheridan asked Julie something that had been on her mind since the other day. “Remember, you were just about to tell me something in the truck before we saw the fight? Remember that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to tell me now?” Sheridan asked.
Julie laughed bitterly, and suddenly seemed much older than her fourteen years, Sheridan thought.
“It’s not really news so much anymore,” Julie said. “I was going to tell you how weird my family is. I was thinking about your mom coming to pick you up, and your sister, and your dad. It’s so friggin’, like, normal compared to what I’m used to.”
“That’s what you were going to tell me?” Sheridan asked, a little let down.
“Yeah. It’s just that I didn’t know how strange it was until pretty recently. I guess I thought everybody lived like I do—I didn’t realize how screwed up it is.”
Sheridan shook her head, not understanding.
“You need to come out and see it for yourself,” Julie said, grasping Sheridan’s arms. “You won’t believe it until I show it to you. Wait until you see the Legacy Wall.”
“What do you mean?” Sheridan asked, genuinely rattled by what Julie was saying.
“Well, you know that term ‘nuclear family’? Meaning, you know, a dad, a mom, some kids, a dog? Like your family? Well, mine’s like, a blown-up nuclear family. Like somebody dropped a bomb on us.” Julie giggled when she said “blown-up nuclear family,” which made Sheridan smile.
“I mean,” Julie continued, “I don’t even live with my dad. He lives on the other side of the ranch, on the east side, all by himself. My mom lives in a cabin on a creek, and she never talks to my dad. I mean never. I grew up in the big house thinking my grandma was my mother because she took care of me. My mom drinks, I guess. Anyway, so it’s like my grandma is my mother and my uncle Arlen is my father. Uncle Wyatt—he sometimes seems like he’s more my age or my little brother than anything. I’m very fond of my uncle Arlen and my uncle Wyatt, and they’re on our side of the ranch . . .”
Sheridan shook her head. “Julie, this is gettin
g complicated.”
“I know,” Julie said. “That’s what I wanted to tell you, how complicated it is. But I don’t want anybody else around here to know, because it’s embarrassing, you know? At least I hope Grandmother is back soon. Then it will feel more normal.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her car is gone,” Julie said. “We think maybe she took a trip somewhere. We hope she comes back soon. It’s a weird situation, but it would at least be more normal if she came back. She’s a good cook.”
Sheridan felt even more sorry for Julie, how naked she seemed to be, how pathetic she sounded. But Julie’s situation also gave her an odd, cold feeling about her friend that made her feel guilty.
“Oh-oh,” Julie said, pointing over Sheridan’s shoulder. “I see your dad’s truck outside.”
Sheridan turned and looked down the hall. The green Game and Fish truck was out there, and she could see her father’s silhouette, his hat brim bouncing up and down. He was probably talking to someone. Then she could see Julie’s uncle Arlen leaning out of his window, talking back.
“I gotta go,” Sheridan said, relieved that she had an excuse to depart.
“I know, but thanks for hanging with me,” Julie said.
“Always, Julie.”
“That’s why I love you the most,” Julie said, smiling. There was mist in her eyes. “Come out for a sleepover. I’ll show you just how . . . fucked up my family is.”
Sheridan had never heard Julie say “fuck” before, and it startled her. It seemed to startle Julie as well, who covered her mouth with her hand.
6
IT WAS A SECTION OF FENCE OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF nowhere that made J. W. Keeley think, This is not only another world, it’s another goddamned planet.
The fence was there when he woke up. He was parked alongside Wyoming Highway 487 headed north. The Shirley Mountains loomed over the horizon like sleeping reptiles, miles across a moonscape still covered with snow, feeling as if he were absolutely alone on the top of the world. The fence was unique in that it was only a section of a fence, parallel to the highway, but not connected on either end with anything else. It was a tall fence, made of fresh lumber. The morning sun fire-bronzed the planks, made it look as if it was lit up by electricity.
Because it was another planet, and there was no electricity. Or trees. Or power lines. Or anything resembling human presence or activity, except for that section of fence, which was obviously placed there to drive men like Keeley out of his mind, this Wyoming version of Stonehenge, as if to make him think he was hallucinating or seriously hungover.
Right on both counts, he thought. But this fence, he had to go look at it up close, prove to himself that it was real, and try to figure out why it was there.
ON THE BENCH seat of the old Ford pickup next to J. W. Keeley was a scoped rifle with a banana clip. It was a Ruger Mini-14, a carbine that shot .223 rounds. The night before, the coyote hunter at the bar in Medicine Bow told Keeley the rifle was used mainly for killing coyotes and other vermin because the cartridges shot nice and flat. The thirty-round clip was a vestige of the pre-assault rifle law days, back when some federal lawmakers still had spines, the coyote hunter said, back before they all started wearing frilly little skirts and drinking lattes and passing laws against gun owners. In fact, the hunter said he’d spent the day out in the sagebrush between Medicine Bow and Rock River, working a wounded-rabbit call and popping four coyotes, missing a few others. The dead ones were in the back of his truck as he spoke, the hunter said. Their fur was worth $90 for a good pelt, he told Keeley, plus there was a $15 bounty on account of the coyote was considered a predator.
The coyote hunter told Keeley his name was Hoot.
Keeley told Hoot his name was Bill Monroe, hoping Hoot had never heard of the bluegrass picker.
Keeley had said “coyotes” in the way he’d always heard, emphasizing the middle syllable, “kye-oh-tees,” but Hoot had made fun of him, asked him good-naturedly where in the hell he was from, because in the Northern Rockies the creature was pronounced “kye-oat” without that fruity Hollywood flare on the end. Keeley repeated “kye-oat, kye-oat, kye-oat” as he followed the man outside to see the dead animals.
Hoot the Coyote Hunter was a local with a bloodstained Carhartt and a trim goatee. He liked to talk, and told Keeley in the time it took to leave the Virginian Hotel bar and arrive at his pickup that he’d grown up on a ranch near Elmo, graduated from UW with a degree in social work, come back to the area he grew up in to work in the coal mines, which paid a hell of a lot better than social work, bought a small place and got married to a wench named Lisa, lost his job in the coal mine and got divorced, now he drove a school bus and trapped and popped a few coyotes in his spare time.
When Hoot asked, Keeley said he was headed north to Casper to look for work because he’d heard there was plenty there, with the coal-bed methane boom and all.
“Pinedale,” Hoot had said once they were back inside from seeing the dead coyotes while he graciously accepted another double bourbon from Keeley “that’s the place to go for jobs and gas. I hear a man can pull down sixty K just for showing up, seventy K if he can fart and walk at the same time.”
Keeley bought Hoot drinks until the coyote hunter finally lowered his head on the bar and went to sleep. Then Keeley went back outside and stole Hoot’s Mini-14 and an army cartridge box filled with over five hundred rounds.
He had driven north in the dark until he began to imagine he was on the surface of the moon, and realized it had been over an hour since he had seen even a single set of oncoming headlights. So he pulled over to the side of the road, covered himself and the rifle with a blanket he found behind the bench seat, and went to sleep.
IT WAS WHEN he awoke that he looked out over the sparse, open, endless vista and saw the fence.
Now, as he drove toward it off the highway, on a rough two-track still choked with dirty snowdrifts that meandered across the top of two hills, he saw a real cowboy astride a real horse, and J.W. Keeley thought he had awakened in the middle reel of a western movie.
The cowboy wore a long heavy coat and a wide-brimmed hat, and a dog tailed him. In the distance, toward the Shirley Mountains, Keeley could see a pickup and horse trailer parked on the side of a hill, glittering in the early-morning sun.
There were cows on the bottom of the basin, and the cowboy was probably headed down the slope to gather them up or count them or something. Whatever real cowboys did. Keeley wasn’t sure. In movies, cowboys were always in town, having just come from somewhere else.
The real cowboy stopped his horse and turned when he heard the sound of a motor coming.
Keeley drove up and got out of the truck, but the dog started yapping at him, barking so hard it skittered stiff-legged across the ground. Keeley jumped back in the cab and closed the door, opened the window, and heard the cowboy say, “Sorry about that, mister. Pay no attention to him. He don’t bite.”
Keeley looked at the cowboy. Except for the heavy coat, scarf, and hat, the man looked normal, like anybody, like a shoe clerk or something. The cowboy wore round wire-rimmed glasses and had a brushy mustache. His cheeks were flushed red from the early-morning cold.
Keeley rolled down his window but didn’t get out.
“What can I help you with?” the man asked.
Keeley gestured toward the hill. “I was wondering about that fence up there. Ain’t they ever going to finish it?”
The cowboy looked at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. Keeley felt his rage shoot to the surface. The fucking cowboy kept laughing, and even raised a gloved hand to his stupid shoe-clerk face to wipe away a tear.
“You’re kidding me, right?” the cowboy said.
“I guess I’m not,” Keeley said, much more calmly than he thought himself capable of.
“. . .‘Ain’t they ever going to finish it?’” the cowboy said. “Pardon me, but that’s one of the funniest things I ever heard. That there’s a snow fence. This mu
st be the first time you seen one.”
“A snow fence?” Keeley said. “But it’s made of wood.”
Which got the cowboy laughing again, and the rage boiling up in Keeley, as much at himself as at the shoe-clerk cowboy for saying that, as if the fence would be made of snow, which was stupid.
“Yer killin’ me, mister,” the cowboy wheezed, between belly laughs.
Keeley looked off into the distance at a single cloud that was hardly a cloud at all, just a wispy white stringer across the light blue, like egg whites dropped in hot water. He asked, “Hey, you got family around here?”
“What?” That stopped the guy.
“You work for some rancher, or is this yours?”
The cowboy’s eyes narrowed. The question had obviously thrown him off stride. “Talk about apropos of nothing,” he said, then: “It’s a corporate operation. They hire me and a half dozen other men to manage the place.”
“But you have family, right?”
“Yeah, my wife and a couple of kids, but what does that have to do . . . ?”
Keeley said, “Glad I made your day,” and turned the wheel sharply and floored the accelerator. He could see the cowboy watching him—still shaking his head with profound amusement—in his rearview mirror as he drove up the hillside toward the snow fence.
At the top, he parked and got out near the fence—it was practically ten feet high—and survyed the hillside he had driven up. The cowboy had finally turned his horse and was continuing back down the hill, toward the cattle on the bottom of the basin.
Keeley got out and took a moment to look around. He had never seen country so desolate, and so mean. It reminded him of one of those old western movies, but worse. The movies always showed desert as being hot and dry. This was high and rough, with dirty snow. He preferred desert, he thought; at least it was warm. And except for that laughing cowboy down there, Keeley was the only man on earth for as far as he could see. There were no cars on the highway.
