by Tim Poland
The assistant produced papers from one of the files, placed it on the surface of the binder, and held it before Keefe, offering him a pen. Keefe stared down at it, his eyes darting back and forth between the paper and the assistant.
“You remember, it’s the—” the assistant began before Sandy held up her hand and cut her off.
“Wait. Let him. He’ll get it.”
Keefe looked at the papers for a few more seconds before the fog cleared. “Ah, yes. Of course,” he said and signed the document. “The last will and testament of James Keefe, angler and all-round oddball.”
Stamper and the assistant signed as witnesses, passing the binder between them.
“We’ll have this filed before we leave today,” Stamper said. “Once it’s processed, we’ll get a copy in the mail to you. You appear to be an heir once again, Ms. Holston.”
Sandy looked from Stamper to Keefe, her eyes begging for clarification.
“Forgive me, my dear,” Keefe said. “Perhaps I should have spoken with you first.”
“Your will?” Sandy said.
“I’m afraid my vast estate doesn’t amount to much more than an old shack in the woods. But who else could I trust? Who else might understand it as you do?”
We live up there. Sandy had fled to the Ripshin River Valley for solitude and found herself at the center of an ad hoc family, its legacy passing on to her, the weight of which she now bore on her shoulders.
“James, are you sure about this?” she asked Keefe.
Before Sandy could pursue the question further, Margie burst through the entrance, brandishing a fistful of cash. Stamper quickly hobbled toward her when he saw Margie head right for Stephanie Paulson. With an overdramatic flourish, Margie snapped each one-hundred-dollar bill as she pressed them, one at a time, into the woman’s outstretched hand.
“There. Happy now?” Margie said.
“Bunch of damn rednecks,” the woman said as she huffed away to the exit, her high heels clicking over the tile floor.
Margie raised her middle finger boldly and was preparing to speak again when Stamper quickly slid one of his thick arms around her and whisked her back to Sandy’s group. “Don’t push it,” he said to Margie. “We got off easy on this one.” Stamper turned again to his assistant. “That damned Ridpath boy in there?”
“With his parents. Back row,” she answered.
“We have to get back to work now,” Stamper said. “I’ll be in touch. And try not to slug anyone anytime soon, okay?”
“I can’t thank you enough,” Sandy said.
“It’s what I do,” Stamper said. “And what you pay me for.” He smiled and limped back into the courtroom with his assistant.
“Well, at least you’ve got that fucking bitch off your back,” Margie said, sliding her arm around Sandy’s shoulder. “Felt like shoving every one of those bills right down her prissy little throat.”
Sandy reached to her friend’s hand on her shoulder and squeezed it fiercely.
“Sorry it took me so long,” Margie said. “There was a huge line at the bank, plus J.D. called my cell. All worked up. They arrested someone down in Pepper’s Fork this morning, something to do with all this bear-poaching business.”
“Good for him. Glad to hear it,” Keefe said.
“Shit, he was giddy about it. Sounded like they’d got the big kingpin or something.” Margie began poking around in her purse. “He’s supposed to give tickets to people without fishing licenses, not go running around making big busts with the state police and such.”
“He is a game warden,” Sandy said.
“Oh, I know, honey, but this guns-a-blazing stuff scares the shit out of me. J.D.’s just not cut out for that, bless his heart.”
Margie found her pack and pulled out a cigarette. “You okay now, honey?” she asked.
“Fine. Thank you,” Sandy said.
Margie engulfed her in a ferocious hug. “Next time you slap some snotty bitch, well . . .”
“There won’t be a next time,” Sandy said.
“Well, if there is, you call me first, so I can get in on the fun.”
Margie released Sandy and kissed Keefe on the cheek. “I’ve got to get going,” she said, the unlit cigarette bouncing between her lips. “Boys are on a half day today. They’ll be home at lunchtime, and you can be sure Matthew will get into some nonsense if I’m not there. Be good. I’ll call you.”
After Margie pushed her way out the exit, Keefe offered his arm to Sandy in that quaint, old-fashioned way that Sandy sometimes found charming. Just now the gesture presented itself to her like food for the famished.
“Rest the chuff of your hand on my hip,” Keefe said. “Well, on my arm would be more precise, I suppose. Let’s go home.”
We live up there.
Sandy pulled the strap of her canvas purse over her shoulder, smoothed the front of her dress, and grasped Keefe’s sinewy arm with both of her hands as they walked out of the courthouse.
SANDY stood on the porch of the bungalow late that afternoon, breathing in the crisp chill of the autumn air while she watched Stink waddle around the clearing. Her black dress hung in the bedroom closet of the bungalow. She was now dressed in jeans, boots, and a heavy wool sweater, clothing her body could recognize. On the drive home from the courthouse in Sherwood, Keefe had asked if she’d like to stop a moment at Edith’s spot on the lower Ripshin along the river road.
“No,” she had said. “That’s done now. She never really liked being fussed over.”
At first Sandy had thought to question Keefe further about the surprise of his will, of making her his heir. She worried that Keefe had, in some way, surrendered his world to her. But his gesture, as simple and generous as it may have been, was equally practical, sensible. If his health deteriorated, she was his chosen caretaker. There was no one else. And she was the only one who understood what the bungalow in the headwaters meant, who valued it as Keefe did. She wouldn’t sully his trust with any false graciousness. And, she knew, admitted to herself fully, he had bestowed on her exactly what she had longed for all along. Sandy felt as if a door at the end of a long hallway had been opened. She would accord Keefe’s choice all the respect it deserved.
Shortly after they’d arrived back at the bungalow, Keefe had taken his carved walking stick and told Sandy he was going for a little hike up the trail along the stream. He would need the time alone along the headwaters to realign himself after spending the whole morning under the glaring lights of the crowded human world of the courthouse in Sherwood. She didn’t offer to accompany him. As she watched him disappear up the trail, what she felt was different from her usual concern for the clarity of his mind when she was away from him. It would take her a while longer to understand, but the shell of her solitary self had cracked open in some way, as if the result of a chemical reaction. She wasn’t less. She wasn’t more. She was different, other than what she was away from him, away from the headwaters. Such as it was, they were a couple, irrevocably linked within this place.
Stink toddled up the steps, and Sandy held the door open for her dog as he went inside to his post on the sofa. “I guess one of us is going to have to start looking for a job pretty soon, don’t you think?” she said to the dog as he passed inside.
THE sun had slipped fully below the ridge that rose behind the bungalow, leaving the clearing in the gray light of late afternoon. Keefe had been gone for a while now. She had to trust him, to leave him his dignity, but the worry began to rise up in her despite her best efforts to resist it. Just as she was about to give in and go in search of him, Keefe appeared where the trail opened onto the clearing. He was fine.
“Can you smell it?” Keefe asked as he walked up the steps from the clearing to the porch.
“What?” Sandy raised her nose to the air.
“A hint of winter in the air.” Keefe reached the porch and leaned his walking stick against the wall by the door. “The old-timers say it’s going to be an early winter this year.”
“What old-timers?” Sandy grinned and leaned against the porch railing.
“Well, mainly this old-timer, now that you ask.”
Keefe stepped to her side and wrapped her in his arms. They stood melded together, quiet, at ease, listening to the rush of the headwaters, breathing in the promise of winter.
“It seems we should do something to commemorate your liberation from the threat of incarceration, but I haven’t the slightest idea what to do.”
At that moment, Sandy felt she had been given so much, more that she deserved. What more could she ask?
“I have an idea.” Sandy leaned back and looked into Keefe’s furrowed face. Would it be too much to ask of him, too precious a line, too guarded a border for her to ask to cross? “Teach me to tie flies?”
The line of a grin edged slowly into Keefe’s weathered cheeks.
“Of course, my dear,” he said. “With pleasure.”
“I suppose we’d better start with something pretty simple,” Sandy said.
“I know just the one.” Keefe walked to the door and opened it for them. “Yellow stonefly.”
Ain’t Been No Mountain Lions in This Part of the Country for a Hundred Years
The wound creasing her flank had hardened into a hairless scar. There was no longer any pain, only a slight tightness. Nothing to impede her movement in any significant way. An old wound now, it merited no further attention.
She had not abandoned the cave. Once she’d dug out the leaves and debris at the rear of the cave and found the opening into the small, buried cavern, she’d settled into it as her primary den. Here on the edge of her range, the cave was secure, undisturbed. The stream provided ready access to water and a barrier. Though the human dwelling remained too close, no activity there had ever indicated any kind of legitimate threat to her. Humans withdrew at night when she most often roamed. A couple of times the dog had caught her scent, but it was an old, feeble thing, incapable of crossing the stream, not worthy of consideration.
When she’d slipped out earlier tonight, there was light in the human dwelling, but it was dim, did not come near her side of the river. She had been to her most recent cache, fed on yesterday’s deer. Well covered, in the cooler air, the carcass had been preserved and undiscovered by scavengers. She had feasted. Most of a shoulder, more of the throat, and all of one hind leg. Her belly full, she stalked her way back. Prowling along the river leading upstream to the cave, she spotted the raccoon pawing in the water at the bank. Winter was in the air, the leaner season approaching. Even with a full gut, no prey could be ignored. She crouched low and approached, her belly nearly touching the ground, her footfalls slow and silent, jowls twitching. The raccoon caught sight of her only after she leapt. It raised up on its hind legs, hissing, front paws clutched together, and she mashed it into the soft, silted soil of the river bank. The tiny neck snapped easily, instantly. The fresh carcass clamped securely in her jaws, she walked back to the cave.
With the raccoon cached in the back of the den, she crawled out to the lip of the cave and sat. The human dwelling remained dimly lit, and the night revealed itself in the muted glow of light for which her eyes were made. She raised her snout into the chill night air. It carried a trace of something she recognized, coded in her blood, in the memory of seasons within the boundary of her range. She sniffed the air deeply, intently, drawing in the scent that promised snow.
The opening of the human dwelling opened, shooting a brighter beam of light into the clearing. The shadowy form of one human walked outside and disappeared into the darkness at the end of the dwelling. A moment later the form reappeared, carrying an armload of wood. One chunk of the wood slipped from the armload and clattered loudly down the steps to the dwelling.
Too much human noise and movement to suit her. She turned, dropped to her belly, and pulled herself through the slender opening into the cavern behind the cave.
Winter
Sandy at Keefe’s Workbench: Yellow Stonefly
Once the fingers and eyes adjust to the scale, it’s not so difficult as it appears to be. Care and precision, attention to detail, yes. But those qualities, the same as those needed to put the fly to proper use on the stream. Same attributes, different application. More at ease wrapping the hook shanks with dubbing. More comfortable with the foundation. Less so with the hackles and saddles, laid into the pattern in one direction to be fluffed and feathered in the opposite direction on the finished product. In the glaring light within the ring of the magnifying loop, the fragile, downy plumes seem always about to disintegrate under the press of fingertips. Through attempt and failure and attempt again, he’s never pressed, never pushed or grown frustrated with these limitations. He has guided, pointed out the direction, led the way into waters where secure footing might be found. He has taught. Gently, quietly, patiently. And the doing of it, the teaching, seems to have done him good. At the bench, as at the river, he never shows himself to be faltering, unsure. Only occasionally, the name for some minor thing, a specific herl or type of hackle, may be slow in coming, but a few patient moments will bring it back to his tongue. Some has been lost, but most remains, if only allowed the time and space to permit the pattern to reshape itself. Pay attention now to what is at hand. Lay the bleached squirrel tail to the head of the shank, wrap it tight with dubbing, continue to hold tight in place, fluff the fur and fold it back, feather into a tuft, wrap again, again, loop and cinch, secure the base tightly at the head, snip off the excess. Complete. Not beautiful, but complete. Serviceable. Functional. It will ride the water as intended and catch a good fish in the spring.
A Country unto Himself
The mongrel redbone had become more trouble than she was worth. She would never have been of use for hunting. Too enthusiastic with the scent, unfocused and erratic. Nor had he ever intended her for the hunt. To follow the frantic path of a mongrel to his prey would be nothing short of a failure. Beneath contempt. The hunt was between him and his prey, palpable proof of his skill and attention to detail, a demonstration of his self-sufficing, self-relying soul. The dog was there merely to give the alarm, to announce an intruder. But of late she’d begun to bark at anything, from the caw of a crow to the rustle of leaves in the wind. A dog like that would do more to reveal their own presence than to announce that of an outsider. When he found her in the storage cellar, the remains of the man from the roadside half dug up, he fetched the .25 caliber pistol.
“Sit.” The dog did so, her pink tongue lolling happily, her front paws caked with dark earth.
He laced his fingers through her collar and pressed the muzzle of the .25 to the top of her head. “Shhhhhh,” he said, and discharged one round through the dog’s brain.
He’d tracked the mountain lion carefully, methodically. The cat’s range, under natural circumstances, could be vast—many miles in any direction. He had, after all, first scented the cat many miles from here, north of Sherwood, assuming it was the same creature. But circumstances beyond these wild ridges were not natural. Human encroachment, especially from the valley below, had long since cut away at the lion’s native range. He was confident the cat remained within the ravines and ridges folded around the headwaters of the upper Ripshin. And his confidence grew not from wishful longing, but from determined pursuit and meticulous scrutiny of the signs.
He’d stalked the ridges in long, concentric arcs, working his way slowly, centripetally down the surrounding slopes into the ravines below. The signs were few and subtle, but to the attentive eye, they were there. Claw marks on a fallen tree trunk, gouges thinner and deeper than a bear’s. Territorial scent markings, pawed up into distinctive piles. Cached and scavenged carcasses of the cat’s older kills. No individual sign distracted or pushed him to feverish excitement. He remained focused, calm, knowing that knowledge of his elusive target would come not from any single piece of evidence but from the pattern cohering from the complex combination of all these discrete signs. The closer his trajectory moved toward the central ra
vine of the upper Ripshin, the fresher the cached kills, the more pungent the scent markings. He had paused over each sign, observing closely, drawing in the scent of each in a series of deep breaths. One. Two. Three, four, five.
On his last foray, in the saddle of the ridge above the headwaters, he’d found the remains of a doe, the cache not more than two days old. The cat was constricting its range, conserving energy, denning for the winter now in the air. It would be holed up somewhere down the ravine cut by the upper Ripshin. He was sure of it. He could now constrict his range as well, concentrate on the slopes hugging the river. The cat was close at hand, the hunt nearly complete.
He had first smelled the approach of early winter a week ago, and now it had arrived. The snow began to fall just after midnight. A fine, light snow, it would not bury the ridges or impede movement, only coat the trees and ground with a thin, delicate layer of white, an intimation of the deeper winter yet to come. He sat on his haunches by the fire ring under the tarpaulin. Laying another length of wood into the fire, he pushed his glasses up his nose and stared into the embers, waiting for the new flame to leap up. A fresh tongue of fire rose, and he turned his gaze to the dark perimeter beyond the fire light. Snow hitting the tarpaulin melted instantly. Tiny rivulets ran down the slope of the covering, dripping lightly from the hem. The dark forest surrounding him brightened to a hint of gray as the snow collected.
The Winchester was cleaned, loaded, and sheathed in its scabbard, lying at the ready on the seat of his truck. Water and bear jerky were packed in the pouch with the .25 caliber pistol and the extra ammunition he wouldn’t need. The hunt well done, he would require only one shot. He would not sleep tonight. Before dawn, he would drive to the old logging road that led down to the government fire road. By first light, he would be in position. With the snow, if the cat had been on the move in the night, he could, and would, now track it easily, all the way to its den somewhere down the ravine, along the headwaters. He had stalked his prey with skill and patience, had learned to read the pattern of its movements, to take the pulse of its life. He would go upright and vital, speak the rude truth, in the shared language of peers, seeking his equal in this wild and sovereign land.
