Theft

by BK Loren

  Zeb watched from his distance as the cougars pulled at the fresh meat, their muzzles thick with blood in a way photos in souvenir shops never showed, uncomfortable as people are with an animal that is both beautiful and deadly. He watched silently until the female lion dragged the remains of the doe deeper into the woods and covered the carcass with leaves and debris.

  The following winter, he was walking home alone after a day of unsuccessful bow hunting. Twilight had turned to dusk and dusk to dark, the seam of the day now folded over into night. He inhaled the menthol air, let it flood his lungs. It felt good to him, and his constant vigilance lagged. In that vulnerable moment, without so much as the snap of a twig as a warning, a mountain lion was on him. It knocked him to the ground, and he felt his skin pop as the knifelike claws sunk into his fleshy shoulder muscles. He felt his own warm blood covering his skin, and then he went numb and strong with adrenalin. With the butt of his bow he hammered the animal between the eyes, and the cougar fell back enough to let him reach for his handgun, aim, and pull the trigger. The animal went down instantly, no struggle, no suffering.

  He stood there, shaken. It was a young cat, just pushed out of his mother’s care, in search of his own territory now. But with houses and subdivisions crawling up the mountainside like they were, new territory for mountain lions was meager. Zeb knew this young male was the offspring of the female he’d seen with her two kits at the edge of the meadow. It had been a while since he’d broken the law, and now a dead mountain lion, out of season, lay in front of him. As he looked down at the blood and earth, he knew this lion would go to waste in the woods. Scavengers would pick at it till it rotted. With the bears already asleep for the winter, there was no predator large enough to consume this much meat. So he bled the animal from the neck, then took out his hunting knife and split the lion from ribcage to anus. He field dressed it like a deer, and he hauled the remains home. It was the first time he had tasted the meat of another hunter.

  He blinked as he drove now, trying to shake the memory. He leaned into the steering wheel and coasted home.

  His bad leg caught on some sharp spur he could feel on his hip bone as he stepped out of the truck, and he limped without hiding it now, no one watching at this time in the morning anyway.

  At the corral, he bent at the waist and slipped between the wood slats of the fence. “Lita, Chey.” He clicked his tongue between his back teeth and jaw. “C’mon girl, c’mon, boy.” Cheyenne, the bay, trotted over, his dusky mane swaying. “Yeah, boy, yeah.” The horse bowed to meet him, and Zeb rested his own forehead against the blaze on Chey’s nose, stroked the sides of the horse’s muscled neck, saying, “Yeah, boy. Hungry? Yeah, let’s get you fed.” He pulled armfuls of hay from the feed shed, walked back out to the troughs, kicked at Bonnie and Clyde, the two old mules who had lumbered out of the stable, shooing them away from Chey’s bin, “Git, now, git,” then he spread enough hay on the ground to feed them, too. “Lita, Rosalita,” he called again, louder. He clicked his tongue.

  In the lightening dusk, he saw the silhouette of her neck. It rose from the earth like a sapling tree. “Well, come on, girl. Gonna let Bonnie and Clyde steal your breakfast?” He kicked again at the mules. “Y’old robbers.”

  Rosalita, the small paint pony Zeb favored, struggled to stand, her front hooves flailing. Then the reaching arc of her neck gave up and folded. Her head hit the earth with a thud.

  For a split second Zeb’s eyes widened like a boy’s. He felt like a boy again, the veins in his neck thick with fear, his heart a wild and bloodied thing snared in a steel trap. From his distance he watched the muscles in Rosalita’s whole body go limp in the certain way of death. He set his jaw, willed himself numb. He slapped the flanks of the bay stallion, let Bonnie press her stubbly, soft muzzle into his hip, felt the heat of her body in the cool morning, and gave her an extra good scrub behind the ears. He took out a cigarette, made motion to light it, then tucked it back into the front pocket of the flannel shirt he’d ripped the sleeves off of while driving through the Mojave, the damned heat that had scorched him all across the lowlands. He folded his arms over his chest, shivered, then walked toward Rosalita.

  “Lita. My Rosalita,” his voice cracking now. The horse’s flanks were torn clean, a row of knives dragged along them, the red striations of muscle pulsing visibly, the hieroglyphics of a wild cat engraved in her flesh. It had always bothered him that there was so little blood in dying. The white and brown hair of her hide was bloodied, yes, but very little blood had touched the ground, and what did just darkened the already red Colorado dirt, soaked in too fast to notice. Shaking, he placed a gentle finger on one of the deep puncture wounds in her neck.

  He rested his open palm on her heart, felt her breathing. Zeb never wore a watch, just went by rhythms. About thirty-five breaths a minute, he figured, more than twice her average breathing rate. “Rosalita,” a whisper now. The scimitar calls of killdeers divided the morning from the night. His own breath was fast and shallow in his chest. “Jesus.” His knees gave way and he crumpled to the ground next to the horse, his body leaning into the soft part of her chest, the wide V just below her ribcage.

  Sunrise came like an afterthought to the mountains where Zeb lived. Fourteen-thousand foot peaks stood like gods guarding the Arkansas river, the granite tree line on each mountain marking the place where oxygen thinned and most forms of life quit trying. By the time the sun brimmed over those giants, it had been warming the lowlands for hours, no ceremony left in the dawn. As the sun rose that morning, Zeb felt Rosalita’s heart stop. “It’s all right, Lita,” he whispered. “I’m here. I’m here.” He rested his head on her chest, listened to life slip out of her.

  A few minutes later he stood and walked into the house.

  “Well, you’re dragging your withered ass in late this morning,” Brenda said. She tossed her meaty arms around his neck, so sun tanned from the road that it matched the dark brown of her own skin. She kissed him flat on the lips, a kiss he did not return.

  “Got home at the regular time,” he said.

  “Not that I seen of you.”

  He sat down at the scarred wood table.

  Brenda gave up, waved her hand toward the electric range. “There’s cold eggs used to be hot waiting for you in the oven.”

  Zeb helped himself, scraped the dried eggs, bacon, and hash browns onto his plate. He stared out the small kitchen window, saw nothing, then saw something. He dropped the plate, let the yellowed eggs bounce off onto the counter. “Sonofabitch, it’s her.”

  “You’re on your own for the joe, too,” Brenda said. “I drank myself a pot already.” She poured vodka into her morning OJ, swished it around in the glass.

  “Yeah, all right,” Zeb said, not to Brenda.

  “Fire ants gnawing your panties this morning?” She shook her head. “Obsessed with that damn mountain lion again?”

  He walked into the living room, grabbed a rifle, felt the satisfying click when he cocked it, and headed outside, walking fast, numb to whatever it was that had made him limp earlier.

  The cougar slinked through ribbons of sunlight that fell through Doug firs and aspen. That cat could have been a shadow itself if it hadn’t moved with such intention, if it had moved mindlessly, like wind. But a predator’s moves always have purpose, have power. Especially a cat.

  Zeb raised his rifle, and the scope brought the lion so close he could see her breathing, mouth open slightly, pink tongue, muzzle outlined by whiskers quivering with each inhalation, the wary pant of a cat: cautious, and at the same time fearless. He could see, too, the barrel of his rifle jerking, the throb of his heart made visible in his aim. He was an excellent marksman, but this time he tried to steady the gun, and couldn’t.

  “Goddamn.” He lowered the rifle. It was a rule he lived by: Never point a gun unless you plan to shoot it, and never take that shot unless you’re sure it will hit dead on.

  The big cat skulked from the wooded hillside out into the meadow, her
graceful body moving low to the ground, a predator with a hunted look in its eyes. Away from the shelter of trees, the animal turned almost small under the wide, mountain sky. He watched the cat cross, and then—And then what? The world had split in two, far as Zeb could tell. Along the horizon, a seam had opened up, as if the sky had always been only loosely stitched to the land anyway, and the cat had disappeared into the space in-between. Though it was walking, sauntering, really, and though Zeb had his eyes right on it, the cat vanished into the woods.

  The sun was high in the sky now, but it didn’t warm anything, just turned it brighter and more crisp in the autumn air. Zeb stood still, watching. Then listening, then sniffing the wind like an animal.

  After a while, he went back to Rosalita. There was his life inside the cabin, waiting for him. His love for Brenda had never been a passion. It was love, yes, the kind of love that has tendrils rooted in childhood, something beautiful, but something lost, a nostalgia even before it had a chance to become real in the present.

  Then there was the life he had here, outdoors. The times he felt most like himself were the times he’d spent out in the woods, alone, or riding Rosalita. The longer he spent outdoors, the more the truck stops and highways faded away and his memory skipped a few decades and settled back on his life growing up, the house he was born in but could not remember, save for the rotted bones of it that stood in the field where his mother was born. He’d spent the best part of his earliest days in that neighborhood, growing up with his sister. He didn’t want any of it back. That wasn’t it. His future gnawed at him more deeply than any memory he could conjure, the vagueness of it, like smoke with no source of fire, just a dreary haze rising from something dowsed. He’d outlived most of what he loved, and what remained was shrinking away fast. Like the field; like his mother and the cruel and persistent illness that had crippled her; like wilderness.

  There were some things you could not change. He knew that. But when he’d sent that email, he’d made one decision. And with his hand there on Rosalita’s dying body, he made another: to change his future, his life.

  A FEW DAYS AFTER that he woke a little later than usual and saw the trail of police cars winding their way on the skinny road that switch-backed its way up the mountainside below him. They were silent from this distance, their diminished red lights flashing through the morning fog. Four of them, and no one else living near his place on this mountain. Just Zeb and Brenda.

  The cars approached closer now, and he felt something ping in his chest, as if his lungs were strung with musical wire and a sharp sound played in him, something as comforting and familiar as an old song: seductive and certain and alive. His confession had been the right thing to do. He had finally made the right choice.

  He walked outside to get a better look at their arrival. He saw his own breath in the late autumn chill, and he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his Lee jeans. He could hear Brenda calling him from inside, as usual, telling him his breakfast was made and she was not going to hold it for him, and she would let it get cold, and the coffee, too, and when was the last time they’d sat down together for breakfast anyway. And then she quit talking.

  With his head cocked a little sideways, he almost smiled. He walked back into the house, tossed the rubbery eggs Brenda had made into the trash, stood at the stove, and started cooking his own breakfast.

  Through the narrow doorway of the cabin, he could see Brenda crashed out in a heap on the musty, plaid, living room sofa. She would be surprised to hear a knock at the door, to see anyone other than him in her house. In a dozen years they had not invited anyone to their home, did all their visiting at the feed store or Gnarly’s Saloon instead, Zeb preferring, as he did, to choose the times when he was feeling talkative, even gregarious, and protect the times when he was not. Over the years, his gregarious times had come down to a few dozen long nights at Gnarly’s spent joking about some of his best pranks, but mostly telling stories of his childhood with his sister, stories the townies took as tall tales and bragging, but Zeb took as a chance to try and figure it all out. Brenda avoided joining him on these occasions, her version of each of his stories differing from his, and both of them being right. Still, he knew she would wake with a start at the strange sound of a knock on the door, her sodden consciousness trying for the sharpness it had had in her youth.

  He flipped the eggs in the pan, liked over-easy better than scrambled anyway, and waited for the bacon to sizzle white around the edges, the meaty parts crispy and charred, and he lifted the frying pan and the breakfast slid onto his plate. He sat down at the table and ate. A cool sensation like rivers rushed through his muscles. Any minute, the cabin door would open. Brenda would wake and not understand what was happening. The salty eggs tasted good on his tongue, the home-cooked meal a comfort to him now.

  He stood at the window sink, washing his plate, and sponged the egg grease into the sink. He wiped his hands on his jeans, watched the red lights flicker through the trees that striped the horizon, then he walked to the living room, took a handgun from the mantle, a box of ammo from a drawer in the coffee table he’d made of beetle-kill pine that he’d harvested himself, walked to the back door, and hurled the gun and ammo into the air. They landed past the tree-lined edge of his property.

  “Brenda,” he said, standing above her as she slept on the couch. “Brenda.” He shook her shoulder, and she roused. He was surprised at the feeling that swelled in his chest when her eyes opened and connected with his. He wanted to say something, but instead, he just looked at her, almost kissed her, but didn’t. She squinted at him, shook her head in annoyance, and slept again.

  “Tell them you don’t know anything,” he said, finally. He walked down the short hallway to the kitchen.

  “Tell who?”

  “Anyone. When they come asking for me.” He added, “Please.”

  He heard her gruff laugh coming from the living room now. “Is that what you’re thinking? Someone’s coming for you?” she said. “They could care less about your petty stealing, your little pranks. Delusions of grandeur, sweetheart, delusions of grandeur.”

  He leaned on the small windowsill in the kitchen, watched the police cars finally emerge from the narrow, tree-shrouded drive that led to his place, something settling down inside him as he watched. He saw them, their sedan wheels bobbing, barely able to hold the muddied road, a black and white SUV behind two cars, an impressive parade. It frightened him. And it felt good.

  The chair legs stumbled across the knotty wood floor of the kitchen as he pulled out a chair and sat back down at the table. Brenda was already snoring again, the sound like a wind through the cavern of the living room.

  The knock came just after he took his seat, and he pressed his face into his palms, inhaled deeply, felt the ache of a held-back smile in his jaws. They were polite enough to knock. He considered pulling the door open for them, reaching out his hand in greeting, but it was just a consideration. His heart jackhammered in his chest, alive and slamming through the years of cement and pavement time had packed around it.

  From there on out, the cops did what he knew they’d do. They called his full name. Zebulon Pike Robbins. They threatened him. They announced their warrant for his arrest. Brenda slept. Then the toughest among them jiggled the door handle, hoping the door was locked so he could bust it down—Zeb knew this, knew too much about them and how their thoughts twisted around in their brains. He knew the constant anger inside that gave the cops a reason for living, knew it like it was his own blood, but darker.

  The toughest cop opened the door first. It pushed open easily, and then the rest of the blue uniforms spilled in. But by that time, Zeb had already slipped through the floor-door in the work shed and made his way through the narrow cave of the bomb shelter that had been built by Clean Dan, the crazy recluse who had lived in the cabin before Zeb. As Zeb made his way up the hillside, he imagined Brenda fully awake now, standing in the kitchen half drunk and trying to make sense of it all. That swell of
emotion came to his chest again, and it puzzled him and he quelled it, and he kept on walking up the mountainside.

  HE KNEW WHAT WOULD happen next. He knew they’d call in other forces, bring the dogs out. With the powerful scent glands they had balled up inside their noses, dogs could see without laying eyes on things. A canine sniffs the air and has all the information anyone needs about a place: the mood, the danger, the food sources. Zeb understood the cops and the dogs, the ferocity and drive both shared.

  He also knew this: The most dangerous part of any weapon is the end of it. The blade of a knife is half as damaging as the point. The middle of a chain is soft when it wraps around you, though the end of it can shred the skin. It was against all instinct and human intuition, but Zeb had learned over the years that when someone attacked you, moving in, not backing away, was always the best defense.

  So as the men hunting him dispersed into the field, he methodically circled back to the center. It wasn’t haphazard or even overconfident. It was analytical. He watched their steps and made his decisions. He needed them to want him, and he needed them not to find him. He was driven by this crazy hope he had about maybe seeing his sister one more time. She was a tracker, after all. She knew him, and she knew these woods.

  He knew he had advantages over the cops. He understood this land better than anyone, the crevices and open spaces, the places any well-trained hunting party would look, and the ones they would likely overlook. For every step they took into the woods, Zeb took two back toward home. He watched them expand around him. He stayed at the center. By the time the back-up police wagon came with the canines, he’d already circled back onto his own property, the starting point. On the way, he’d picked up the handgun and ammo he’d tossed, just in case, and he tucked them into his pockets. A few cops guarded the periphery of the home, but none were near good old Clean Dan’s shelter, an easy way in and out.

  Now, he sat in the workroom of his cabin wrapped in a deerskin clothing he’d tanned and sewn recently. Its musky scent might confound the dogs, at least momentarily. He looked out the narrow window, saw the cops walking back and forth to their cars, doors hanging open like heavy wings, cherry tops circling like Christmas lights among evergreens, radios squawking in almost-victory. In the midst of it all, his eyes rested on Rosalita. Even in death, that beautiful horse comforted him. He’d seen her born on this land and had stayed with her till she died, and in all that time, nothing had restrained her or made her anything other than horse. Even her death was a part of this landscape, violence being a part of how everything lived out here.