by Joe Wilkins
After shortcutting across a series of rocky hills, hoping to find Wendell running south in the valley below, they came to a blind creek. At the bank, a coyote in a leg-hold trap leaped at them. The animal had been bellied down in the yellow grass, and as they ran on, it charged and snarled and clacked its jaws, and the trap, clamped on the left foreleg, reached its chain length and spun the animal around in midair. The coyote landed sprawled in the dirt and scrambled back up and stood there, its gray winter coat still shot through with streaks of red and orange from the summer. The animal bared its teeth and growled low in its throat.
Tavin, who’d slipped and fallen over when the coyote vaulted at them, stood and swore. Who in the hell was running a trapline out this way? He’d thought he and Brian were the only ones running traplines in the Bulls. Without caring who might hear and before Norris or Freddie could say a thing, he raised his rifle and shot the damn animal through the head.
Night found them at the spring. The sky stone-colored, dark clouds banking in the west. They’d nearly lost Wendell’s trail late in the afternoon. Tavin and Freddie had sat and waited as Norris circled and circled, his nose to the rocks like some bloodhound. And that’s when they’d heard the rifle shot. They simply ran in that direction and had picked up the trail again, as night fell, here at the spring.
Now they lay about and ate granola bars and beef jerky. They passed around Freddie’s Copenhagen. They talked and laughed and made sport of that dumb bastard Wendell Newman, who, given the evidence around the spring, had barely made it a day before he’d fallen on his ass and hurt himself. Old Verl must be shaking his head up there in heaven or wherever he was. They’d find Wendell easy tomorrow. Tavin didn’t even feel too bad that somewhere along the way they’d lost the girl’s trail and that Wendell was alone now. They’d likely just have to trace back to find her. Freddie, though, kept talking about the boy, who had to be with them, he said, who was with Wendell at Hougen’s roundup and was why the deputy and the CPS lady were there in the first place. He was all worked up about the boy, about the helicopter they’d seen, about what might be happening back at the trailer with the CPS lady and the dead deputy and Daniel, Toby, and Clay just sitting ducks. But Tavin didn’t care about the boy or about Toby and Daniel or any of the rest of it. As long as they got Wendell, things would come out right. He was the one responsible for what had happened to Brian.
Some of them had thought it was the sheriff, that he must have realized how fucked he was and shot first. Others studied the plum-size hole in Brian’s throat and said no, the shot had to have come from behind, so it must, somehow, have been Wendell—maybe the rifle had been in the girl’s car or something. But whether Wendell had actually shot Brian or not didn’t matter, Tavin said. It was still Wendell’s fault. If he’d done what he was supposed to do, if he’d done what his old man would have had him do, it would have been easy. There would’ve been no mess at the trailer.
What no one challenged Tavin on, so as not to dishonor a dead man, was that a number of them hadn’t even wanted to go out there. Brian had insisted. He said it was the symbolism of the thing. He said people were ignorant but that they could come to know. Part of what the Bull Mountain Resistance needed to do was educate people about the real issues, about the unjust ways the federal government was controlling their lives and land. In this respect, the wolves were more than the wolves, and if they had Verl Newman’s own son beside them, people would understand they weren’t just killing wolves—no, they were joining a long line of rebels and freedom fighters, from Verl Newman all the way back to George fucking Washington.
Tavin had listened and believed, but in his boy’s heart he was jealous of Wendell Newman, of his unearned status as the son of a hero. Before Tavin was even born his father had fallen out of a pickup bed and broken his head wide open. He was at best a sorry case and at worst a drunken idiot. A boy at school, a town kid, had razzed Tavin about it all last year, after the class had written personal histories for their unit on Indians and pioneers in Montana history. What kind of an assignment was that anyway? He’d hated that teacher, Mr. Lloyd, with his sandals and shaggy hair, his long lists of books and class debates and the big papers they had to write. Why couldn’t he just have them do worksheets like the other teachers did? Why couldn’t he teach them the facts and be done with it? Why—when they all knew damn well where he was headed anyway—were Lloyd and Leslie and Houlton always on him about his future? And how in the hell did Wendell get so fucking lucky as to have Verl Newman for a father? It wasn’t fair. Not by a long goddamn shot.
Freddie curled himself against the cold now, hugged his knees to his chest. Norris was on his back, already sound asleep, like it didn’t even bother him. Tavin rubbed at the dried blood on his jaw, the tender, infected wound. It felt good, that easy pain. He lay down, put his hands beneath his other cheek, and studied his slice of sky: black clouds, the blacker shapes of mountains against the clouds. At least he’d been born to the Bulls. And when he’d been given the chance, he’d made the right choice—he had chosen Brian. They couldn’t take that away from him.
A light, cold rain woke them, fat drops splatting in the dust, the first real rain in months. They cached their supplies at the spring. Carrying only rifles and sidearms, they jogged across the plain and up the rocks. Atop the ridge they stopped and took a breath. Norris fingered a bunch of grass, a stick, then cut up a twisting coulee. The rocks were tight about them, the cedars too. In the rain a runnel of water widened beneath their boots. Tavin couldn’t hear much of anything save the whir of his own breath. Like bees in me, he thought. Wasps.
The rocks opened onto another, higher ridge, the view to the east, south, and west miles long beneath the tin sheet of the clouds. The mountain reared up to the north, which was the way they went, slipping through cedars and around bulbous sandrocks and as the rain came a notch harder stepping into a small clearing.
There sat Wendell Newman, maybe fifteen yards away, rifle at his shoulder.
A blackness filled Tavin. Black liquid waterfalling in his guts. Wendell had heard them first, seen them first. Wendell was ready for them. But Brian said, Brian said, Brian said! Brian said they were the ones who would always be ready. They weren’t ready. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
The rain runs down Tavin’s nose.
Norris sets his rifle on the ground, and Freddie does too, saying something unintelligible, working himself up to tears. The smell of rain and sage everywhere.
Tavin licks his lips. Lifts his rifle to his shoulder. As easy as that. He clicks the safety off, aims at Wendell’s neck, that soft hollow low on the throat. For a moment the two of them stare at each other, down the barrels of their rifles through the rain.
Then Wendell sets his rifle on the ground. He hauls himself up, his hands on the rocks, and Tavin can almost feel, beneath his own palms, the grit of rain-wet sandrocks.
—Freddie, Wendell says, do you remember that play we did? I was just thinking about it. I think about it all the time.
And that’s what does it. Or undoes it. Undoes everything Tavin knows. A man keeps his rifle at his shoulder. A man doesn’t worry about what comes next. Why isn’t Wendell staring straight down his rifle at him?
Tavin fires. Fires again.
Norris grunts. Freddie screams and wraps his arms around Tavin’s shoulders.
But Tavin’s making time. All he’ll ever have. The world has taken everything from him and he’s taking it right the fuck back. They’ll wear each other down to nothing, this world and him, right down to sulfur, dust, and bone.
Tavin shrugs Freddie off and fires again and again, each bullet ringing out, thudding home.
Verl
I dream a loping she-wolf beside me can you imagine boy the barrel of a wolf’s body kneeling there I thought to take her in my arms she was as perfect as anything I have known that time last summer we went down to the river to swim after a long day of bucking bales and you stripped out of your jeans and I looked up from the river wh
ere I was already shaking my wet head and saw you were a man boy the arc of you as if the light itself had some flesh and heft light is all that is left the wash of light or the wash of night the night your mother turned fifteen we lay down in a field of grass and the moon a fool I mean a full moon that night over us and the hard earth beneath us we held one another and the land held us as if the land cannot hold us anymore as if the line of earth and sky has fouled we are falling through the wolfholes of stars boy we are falling down
Rowdy
HE SITS IN THE BACKSEAT, SITS UP STRAIGHT AND TALL AND IN THE HARD winter light counts the old wooden fence posts as they whip by his window—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven…Just this side of a hundred, a hawk dives and from the matted grass lifts squirming in its talons a prairie dog, and Rowdy loses count. He switches to pretending he’s got a blade he can lever out the window and hold just so to trim all the weeds and cheatgrass in the bar ditch. Tapping his cheeks with his fingers, he looks up. The driving man—Mr. Leslie, Mr. Leslie, Mr. Leslie, he tells himself, trying to remember—eyes him in the rearview, then gives him a small grin, realizing he’s been caught, and shifts his gaze back to the road. Maddy, whom he knows and doesn’t have to make himself remember, sits across from him, staring out her own window, at the mountains. He squirms in his seat, the seat belt pressing at his neck, and reaches out to touch her elbow. She smiles at him, her face red and splotchy, eyes just about to break. She takes his hand. He likes it when she takes his hand.
They turn off the county road and onto a dirt road whose entrance is framed by thick timbers, with a horned cow skull nailed to the oiled log across the top. Mr. Leslie slows across the cattle guard and bumps through the ruts and on the dirt straightaway picks up speed. Rowdy knows this road. He sits up all the taller and leans to the middle to watch the land shift and unfold out the front window. His teacher—Ms. Houlton, Ms. Houlton, Ms. Houlton—turns in her seat and smiles that same sad smile they’ve all been giving him.
Ms. Houlton tells him that Mr. Hougen had been a friend of his uncle’s and asks if he remembers him.
Behind his eyes Rowdy sees a big red calf coming right at him, sees Wendell scoop him up and swing him out of the way, then the old bald man, Mr. Hougen, lean down to hand him a five-dollar bill.
Rowdy nods once, twice, three times. He knows he needs to respond. That’s one of the things his new teachers keep teaching him. When he doesn’t have the words, he can just nod or shake his head, give a thumb up or down. He needs to talk to them, even if with just his body, so they can take good care of him. Just like his uncle Wendell did.
Rowdy picks up his notebook, pulls his pencil from the whorls, and flips through—trees, mountains, traps, the dinner table set with two full bowls. He finds a blank page near the back and begins to draw the calf and the dust. The biggest person is his uncle Wendell—there’s not even enough room on the page for his uncle Wendell.
Mr. Leslie noses the car in beside the row of work pickups outside the house. Everyone gets out, their breath billowing and disappearing, the tang of wood smoke in the cold, still air. Mr. and Mrs. Hougen are right there, waiting by the front door, smiling those same sad smiles, though Mr. Hougen’s smile, when he sees Rowdy, cracks and shatters, like Maddy’s eyes. Mrs. Hougen puts her arm around his middle. Ms. Houlton touches his shoulder. Mr. Leslie shuffles on his feet and looks the other way. Rowdy lets go of Maddy’s hand and comes right up to Mr. Hougen, who pulls out a white handkerchief and loudly blows his nose, then leans down close, his breath warm and bitter on Rowdy’s cold face.
—I’m short a hand, Rowdy Burns. And grieving it. Just as soon as you get your feet back under you, you come on out and put in a day’s work for me, okay?
Rowdy reaches out to shake hands. There are laughs and tears, and Mr. Hougen takes Rowdy’s hand and shakes it up and down, up and down. Doesn’t let go until Mrs. Hougen tugs at him. He turns to Ms. Houlton, takes a long breath, and pulls off his cap, rubs at his bald head.
It’s a goddamn mess, he says, and he’s goddamn sorry about it all. He just didn’t ever think for a second they’d go so far as this. Now there are three down on the ground and half a dozen in jail, the whole place torn this way and that. Mr. Hougen pauses to haul in a big ragged breath. The trouble, he says, is that a young fellow can’t make a living out here anymore. Even if his daddy has land to hand him.
—It ain’t a living, he says. It’s a dying is what it is. I don’t know. Maybe we pull up stakes and give it back to the wolves and buffalo. I just don’t know—
He cuts himself off, presses at his eyes. Ms. Houlton touches him at the shoulder again.
—I’m sorry, Glen. I am. You were always good to Kevin and me. I was grateful for that, in spite of everything.
She tells him that considering the circumstances, the state is letting Rowdy stay with her while her foster application is being approved. As for Mr. Hougen, she makes clear that what he’s done is more than generous, covering Wendell’s debts and paying more for the Newman land than it would’ve fetched at sale. The state has set up a trust for Rowdy, she says, and two different therapists are visiting him each week. He’s making good progress.
Mr. Hougen wipes at his eyes, blows his nose again.
—Hell, it’s only what Wendell wrote down. That’s what I’m doing. I wish I could do more.
The trailer is cleaned up, he tells them. Rowdy can go over whenever he’s ready and take whatever he wants or pick up anything Lacy wants.
Ms. Houlton thanks him. Then reaches out and takes Maddy’s hand. She says she doesn’t know that she did right last time, just leaving like she did, without a word to anyone, and she doesn’t want to do that to Rowdy. She visited Rowdy’s mother at the prison the other day, and she plans to see her again next week. The day before, meanwhile, she went to the hospital to see Tricia Wilson.
Ms. Houlton gets stuck on something there, swallows, stops. Maddy takes her mother by the elbow and speaks up for the both of them. They’ve been talking to Rowdy about what happened, she says—the therapists tell them that’s important—and they’ve got a picture of Wendell up by Rowdy’s bed.
This starts Mr. Hougen in to crying again, and Mrs. Hougen rubs his back.
—That’s enough of this, at least with little ears around, she says. Rowdy, I’ve got a treat for you here.
She pulls a paper bag of something from her pocket and hands it over. Rowdy crinkles down the neck and peeks in. Gummy worms. Must be a pound of them.
Just then Tyler comes running around the back of the house wearing a fringed leather jacket and a coonskin cap, two toy six-guns stuck into his belt. He hands one of the guns to Rowdy, who fists a mess of gummy worms up for him in return.
Tyler grabs the worms and angles off across the yard, cuts around the henhouse and the machine shop, now up a deer trail. Rowdy’s right behind him. At the tattered line of jack pines, Rowdy slows and turns, looks back at the low, sprawling house below, where curlicues of wood smoke lift from the chimney into the sky. His chest heaves, his lungs burning with each big, cold breath, and his sneakered feet tingle with an itch to run.
He’s only making sure, is what he’s doing, counting once again everyone who’s in that house—Maddy, Ms. Houlton, Mr. Leslie, Mr. and Mrs. Hougen, one, two, three, four, five. And even though they’re not there, his uncle Wendell makes six, his mother seven, and seven is a nice, good number. Seven is all the people he knows who love him very much. That’s the word his uncle Wendell used when he left them in the mountains, love, and that’s how Maddy says it now when she tucks him in at night. He loved you very much, we love you very much.
The hard snow glisters beneath the sun. A magpie veers overhead, settles on a killed pine, and makes its hack-hack-hack.
The Bulls shift with winter shadows, winter light, and Rowdy’s thinking he likes living with Maddy and Ms. Houlton in the new big house in town. He’s thinking, too, that he’d like to live again with his uncle Wendell, out here in the mounta
ins. But his uncle Wendell’s dead, that’s the word they keep using, dead, which means he’s nowhere anymore but in Rowdy’s heart. That’s what Ms. Houlton says. Rowdy looks down, his breath blooming and fading before him, and taps his chest.
That’s where his uncle Wendell is.
He smiles and takes off running, carries his uncle Wendell with him up into the mountains.
Acknowledgments
Jennifer Sahn shepherded portions of this manuscript into publication at Orion; her early support and critique were essential. Derek Sheffield suggested I keep following these characters; I’m thankful he did. Shann Ray, Jonathan Rovner, Lex Runciman, and Liz Wilkins read early drafts and offered wise guidance. Sally Wofford-Girand and Ben George—both simply extraordinary at what they do—believed in this story and worked to make it all the stronger; I am so, so grateful for their efforts. And a final thanks to the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, and Linfield College for the time and space necessary to write.
