by Brian Hart
“Thanks,” Roy said. “You too. I was about to make lunch. You guys want a sandwich?”
“Sure,” April said. “Where are the girls?”
“They’re at the Coffee Stop,” Roy said. “Karen’s putting in a double-bowl sink. I offered to help but she said she’d do it.”
“She built the first one more or less on her own,” Aaron said. “We helped her with the roof and my buddy did the electrical but she did all the plumbing and put in the counters and everything.”
“I guess that makes me redundant,” Roy said.
“Only if you were as useful as she is,” April said.
“Ouch,” Aaron said.
“OK. OK. I got turkey and I got ham,” Roy said. “I’ll prove my worth with sandwiches. Let’s eat.”
Karen and Wiley came home later and found the three of them on the porch drinking beer. Aaron and April stayed for dinner too but left before it got dark. April worried about deer on the road.
Karen put Wiley to bed, then she and Roy stayed up in the kitchen drinking the last of the wine.
“That’s the first time April has been back out here since the wake,” Karen said. “But I’m at their house all the time. They watch Wiley for me.”
“She seems OK,” Roy said. “She told me I had big shoes to fill.”
“April,” Karen said, shaking her head. “Did you think Aaron was gonna give you a smack?”
“I did.” Roy drained his glass and set it down. “I gave him my CB,” he said.
“You what?”
“I gave him one of my motorcycles before you got home. Signed the title and everything.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“It was the one that Yano gave to me, the one that got stolen. Yano was riding that bike with Rasheed when he died. The bike was there. And Aaron, in a roundabout way, was the one that got me thinking about bikes in the first place. I owe him.”
“You’re a whimsical little thing.” She gave him a big wet kiss and held on tight to the hair on the back of his head.
They locked the door to the bedroom so Wiley couldn’t surprise them and did their best to be quiet.
Late in the fall as a dry, dusty snow blanketed the fields, the swoosh team was filming in Roy’s bowl, the Goat Bowl, as it came to be known. He’d put a Porta-Potty out back and a woodstove in the barn and if he kept it fed it stayed warm enough to skate and not worry too much about the pain of a cold slam. On the last night of filming Roy got too drunk and ended up sleeping in the barn.
Early the next day Wiley arrived with a paper sack full of breakfast burritos wrapped in tinfoil and a large thermos of coffee. Roy stoked the fire in the stove and when the boys got up he let Wiley hand out burritos. There weren’t any coffee cups besides the thermos lid so they cut the bottoms off of beer cans with pocketknives and used those. Wiley found her board and Roy helped her put on her helmet. Everybody climbed on the deck to eat and watch the kid skate. She dropped in and got cheered when she made it a halfway up the deep-end wall. On her next drop she went faster and took a tumble, called it quits. She teared up but without her mom there to console her, she just took off her helmet and climbed out of the bowl and sat down next to Roy and watched the skateboarders eat and roll cigarettes and finish off the coffee, then she and Roy walked to the house together.
“Mama says you’re in trouble,” Wiley said, as they stood at the mudroom door.
“What should I do?”
“Be nice. You have to be nice and say you’re sorry when you’re in trouble.”
“OK.”
“Where’s Turtle?” she asked.
“He wasn’t in the barn. I don’t know where he is.” He’d gotten the dog for her off of Craigslist in Truckee. Golden retriever, dumb but sweet. “When’d you see him last?”
“He didn’t sleep in my room. Mama said he was with you.”
“I don’t think so. We’ll find him. He’s around here somewhere.”
Wiley pulled open the door and Roy followed her inside. Karen was in the kitchen with NPR on the radio. “There’s more coffee,” she said, without looking up from the book she was reading.
“Thanks for the food,” Roy said. “The boys told me to tell you.”
“I spit in them. All of them.”
“That’s OK. Sorry about last night.”
“I’m not mad.”
“I’m still sorry. Six beers too many. It’s an old story.”
“Get your old story in the shower. I can smell you from here.” She looked up then.
“I just hadn’t seen anybody, skated with anybody for a while, guess I got carried away.”
“Stink. Shower. Clean clothes.”
“Thanks.”
“Roy.”
“What?”
“I really did spit in them.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
By the time he’d gotten dressed and had some more coffee, the boys had the van warming up in the driveway. Karen and Wiley were upstairs. He could hear them talking. He heard Karen say Turtle. He put on his insulated coveralls over his clothes and pulled on his snow boots and his parka and went outside to the machine shed and started Karen’s Kubota tractor with the snow-blower attachment and let it warm up. On the way to the barn he turned off the van. He could hear them skating inside and he opened the door just wide enough to yell at Tony that he was going to blow the driveway before they left so they didn’t pack it down by driving on it.
“Don’t forget to cup its balls,” Nessy called from the deck of the bowl.
Roy was laughing, still a bit drunk, on the way to the tractor. He’d forgotten his gloves so he steered with his hands inside his coat sleeves. Blue sky, white snow, the cool rumble of the little diesel. The churned powder from the blower caught in the wind and drifted back on him in rainbows, coating him in a layer of snow like an Arctic explorer. When he went by the house again, Wiley was watching him from the living room window and he could see Karen in the kitchen. He waved stiffly and Wiley waved back.
The neighbor, Barry Miller, drove by in his big Dodge truck and ignored Roy when he waved good morning. Barry never waved. Roy retracted his coat sleeve and gave the finger to the cloud of snow dust retreating to the south.
“Have a nice day, asshole,” Roy said, and as he whipped the tractor around to make the final pass, he saw the dog’s leg, the golden color in the ditch. The dog was dead and frozen solid. He didn’t know if he should tell Wiley. He had to tell Karen.
He lifted the dog from the snow, frozen blood on its head, and set it down on the floor of the tractor. He ran the blower on the way back because dead dog or not he still had to clear the road.
When he climbed down from the tractor, Karen must’ve seen the dog. She came outside and Wiley was right behind her.
“He got hit by a car, sweetie,” he said to Wiley. “He’s gone. I’m sorry.” The boys were coming out of the barn now, laughing, stopped laughing when they saw the dog.
Wiley came forward slowly and touched the dog’s fur. “He’s bleeding,” she said. Tears were forming. Roy looked away, shook his head at Nessy and the boys, nodded to the van. “Go ahead and go, man. We got a tragedy here. Good to see you.”
Karen lifted Wiley up and hugged her. “No, Mama. I don’t want to leave. Where does Turtle go now?”
“We’ll have to bury him,” Karen said.
“The ground’s frozen solid,” Roy said.
Nessy pulled his hood on to protect his ears from the wind, touched Wiley on the head, looked to Roy and to the dead dog. “You might not know it by looking, but we are the best diggers in all of America. There are none better. True fact.” His accent was reassuring. He gave Wiley a smile and a nod. “We’ll take care of him for you, darlin’. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”
Midday and the sun was high. Warm enough to stand in a T-shirt from all the pick swinging and spud-bar wielding and shovel chipping. A ragged bunch of tattooed skateboarders smoking cigarettes, sipp
ing beer. All the hangovers had been sweated out.
Roy wrapped Turtle in another blanket and with Karen’s help lowered him into the hole where his stinky plaid dog bed was already waiting. Wiley used her small shovel to help cover him up.
The van drove away and Karen and Wiley and Roy stood in the driveway and waved goodbye.
“I like your friends,” Karen said.
“Yeah,” Roy said. “You OK, sweetheart?”
“I miss Turtle. I miss him,” Wiley said.
He’d successfully fought back the tears all morning but he cried when Wiley reached up and he lifted her to his shoulder.
[28]
M<55
OR 9XXXX
Dawn and they can see the dead gray rock of Mount Shasta. Ash is in the air and the road is skinned with it. The high alpine snow is gone, the glacier buried under ash or melted away. Graffiti on the rocks at the edge of the road tells them that the ranger station and highway junction ahead are in militia hands. After consulting their maps they leave the highway and take the back way over the old Military Pass Road. The sun is low as they push their bikes through the burnt forest. They make camp on the northern flank and discover snow sealed to ice under layer upon layer of ash. They use sticks and rocks to scrape away the grit and mud. Each of their small camp cookpots is continually topped up and left fireside. Water jugs and bladders are refilled. They split one of Sol’s Mountain House meals for dinner, chicken parm, before passing out early.
In the morning Sol wanders away from the fire with his .22 Browning pistol, muttering something about a squirrel. The dog naps while the man tends the fire. The skies are gray with low clouds that move toward them easily. The air smells charged, as if it could rain. As the sky darkens he wonders if it might snow.
There’s a pop in the air that almost sounds as if it were made by the fire but two more follow and he recognizes gunshots. Pecos hops up and sniffs the wind. The man grabs his rifle and follows Sol’s tracks hesitantly into the dead trees. The way is uphill and it isn’t long before he’s breathing hard and beginning to sweat. He smells sulfur first, sees the steam. It’s a hot spring and in the morning chill the steam is thick and he can’t see anything until a breeze pushes a lane open. Then he spots Sol, squatted down with his knife out, gutting an animal, a deer. It has small forked horns. The dog gooses Sol and makes him jump.
“Oh Lord,” he says, on his feet and laughing. “Look at this. Can you believe this?”
“This is somebody else’s place,” the man says.
“Not anymore.”
The pools have been constructed with stone and mortar and there’s a mossy pipe stubbed out of the rocks where the hot water comes out. “We should go,” the man says. The pools, two small ones and a larger one, are marked by cairns, heights of which are relative to the water temperature. No militia graffiti, no defensive positions, none of the usual trash, shell casings, cigarette butts. No fresh footprints either.
Sol waves his knife at the man. “I’m staying. You do what you want.”
“Fine. I’m going for our rigs, then,” the man says. “I gotta put our fire out too so no one sees it.”
The dog stays with Sol waiting for more scraps and the man feels a little insulted.
On the way up the hill with Sol’s rig, he hears more gunshots, five, six in a row. The dog barks and keeps barking, and it gets louder, comes bounding down from the forest and runs by without more than a glance. Then Sol comes charging out of the steam, churning up dust, going as fast as he can.
“Bear,” he says. He has his pistol in his hand and he keeps coming, runs right by. Over his shoulder: “Leave the bike. We’ll come back.”
The man follows Sol downhill, hobbling as quickly as he can.
“Did you shoot it?” the man asks. “Is it wounded?”
“I shot at it but I don’t know if I hit it.” Sol slows so the man can catch up. “That dog of yours is a huge coward.”
“Smart is all.”
Sol starts coughing and laughing at the same time. Hanging from his pocket is a hacked tenderloin. “Bitch won’t get it all,” he says.
They rebuild their fire in the ash pit at their first camp and pan-fry the tenderloin with a little bit of snow and ice tossed in to keep it from sticking, but it sticks anyway.
“I say we go up there and see what’s left,” the man says.
“You can.”
“How many shells do you have?”
“There’s a box of ’em. Fifty or so left. You can’t kill a bear with that peashooter.”
“You can kill anything with that if you hit it in the right place.”
“Not if it kills you first, and if I hit it, it’s going to be pissed. I vote for using your big bad militia rifle.”
“It’s too loud. You can hear it for miles.”
“Then I vote for getting my rig and heading down the road, grateful for what we got.”
“I thought you wanted to stay at the pools. Spa day for Sol.”
“Not if I’m a get eaten in the process.”
The man picks up the pistol and ejects the magazine. Sol stands up and digs a few loose shells from his pocket and passes them over.
“Where’s the rest of your ammo?”
“Shells are in the bag on my handlebars, under my bandana.” Sol stoops and picks up his tin plate from the ground and finishes the last bite of his dinner. Talking while he chews, “If you aren’t too horribly maimed, could you bring my bike back with you so I don’t have to haul my ass up that hill again?”
“Keep my dog here.”
“Like he’d go with you.”
The man takes the rifle too, just in case. The sun is high as he belly crawls from the trees into the cove. He rests the butt of the pistol on his hand resting on the rock. The rifle is loaded and ready beside him. He sees the deer first, its horns. Then he sees the bear sitting on its ass with its back facing him, a massive black lump. He checks the safety and takes a breath and shoots the animal three times in quick succession in the base of the skull. It stands suddenly and spins around and paws at its injuries, teeth snapping as if it’s biting at yellow jackets. Then it sees him and lowers its head to charge but its front legs give and it pitches forward and begins lurching toward him with only its hind legs churning, head in the dirt. The sound is more of a moan than a roar. The animal’s dark eyes search among the trees beyond the pools and it tries to turn but its front legs are limp and it can only manage to roll to its side. The bear’s cries get louder and more desperate.
The man takes aim and shoots it six more times and when it stops struggling and goes quiet he reloads the magazine with shaking fingers and stalks over to it and sees its lungs working still and puts the pistol barrel to the side of its head and pulls the trigger until the clip is empty. He backs off and waits while it twitches out its final sparks of warm-blooded electricity. His hands won’t stop shaking and his heart is pounding blood in heavy gushes that resonate in his ears.
It’s a sow and she is seemingly rooted to the ground. He touches her side and feels her ribs, lifts her leg, and is repulsed by the crusted dugs. Later, when they cut her open there is milk. Her stomach is full of mud. Pecos finds a young cub floating in the smallest of the soaking pools. It has an entrance and exit hole on either side of its small body, red froth along one side of its jaw. Sol holds it in his lap, touches the bloodless entrance wound.
“I went camping with my brother-in-law and some of his friends outside of Bozeman,” Sol says. “I was the pity invite, but I didn’t care. I’d never been to the mountains before. I made my sister make them take me with them. We hiked into this lake and went fishing.” He set the bear cub’s body on the ground, covered it with his bandana. “I’d never seen anything like it. Have you ever caught a trout?”
“Yes, Sol,” the man says. “I’ve caught a trout.”
Sol raises an eyebrow. “Then you know what I’m talking about. It’s amazing. They had to, like my brother-in-law and his buddies, they had
to take my pole away or I would’ve just stayed there.”
The man thinks of a time when he and his family went fishing on the Feather River. He’d hooked his own hand, caught no fish.
Sol continues, “We hiked back to camp, and after we fried up our trout, we were drinking in this campground, big campground with campers everywhere. The moon came out.” Sol stops and motions to the sky, the moon. “Like tonight, it was bright, and there were kids with their families, you know, playing and toasting marshmallows, but later, like eight mojitos later, I was about to go to bed and we saw this van come into the campground, slow moving, no windows, like sketchy, and this lady is calling for her daughter—Samantha! Samantha!—over and over. And I remember seeing this lady earlier, because she was pretty and I caught my brother-in-law checking her out and I gave him my I-will-cut-your-outdoorsy-white-balls-off-if-you-so-much-as-think-of-cheating-on-my-lovely-and-so-much-better-than-you-sister look, and this woman at the campground was with her whole family and the daughter was probably five years old and had no business whatsoever wandering around at that time of night. Like what the fuck, you know? And we’re all, every one of us, fairly blasted on mojitos and beer and I say to Bob, my brother-in-law: ‘Bob, that van is just wrong,’ or something, and Bob runs over to it, heroic stud that he is, and makes the van stop. We all go over and we’re trying to see inside but the driver and the passenger, these hobo-looking white motherfuckers—no offense—dirty as hell with fucking pine needles in their hair and torn clothes, like they’ve been rolling around in the dirt. No hygiene at all.” Sol raises a hand. “Seriously, no offense.”
“Fuck you,” the man says.
Sol laughs. “Capturing little girls, is what I think. I think they look guilty and they’re leaning forward and trying to cover the windows with their bodies, like blocking us so we can’t see in the back. And they’re saying what’s the trouble and we ain’t seen no fucking kid and we’d appreciate it if you got out of the way and Bob says, ‘They got something in the back.’ So I try the slider but it’s locked and the driver hits the gas and about runs over one of Bob’s friends, seriously almost kills him.
