Short Money

by Pete Hautman

  A bear, he thought. His heart tried to scramble up his ribs, and he stopped breathing. Was it a bear? Too big. It was on the other side of the fence, which enclosed the north quarter, the four-hundred-forty-acre spread where they kept the main elk herd and a few volunteer whitetail. Shawn relaxed. It was just a big damn elk was all, lying on its side.

  “Hey, elk!” he shouted. The dark mass stirred and rose up. “I’m gonna get you, elk!” He crashed through the crust, trying to scare the animal into flight. The elk took a few steps away from the fence, and Shawn had his first good look at it. A bull, its enormous antlers reaching higher than the top of the fence. It was the biggest elk Shawn had ever seen.

  “Number One!” he breathed.

  Number One, the biggest, most elusive, most spectacularly antlered elk on Talking Lake Ranch. He was the trophy everyone wanted, but Number One could simply disappear when he wanted to. He’d heard Ricky and his dad talking about it, about how Number One knew when he was being hunted, how he could just melt away, disappear into the bogs, and nobody would see him for weeks. Shawn stared in awe at the legendary creature—only fifty feet and a few yards of galvanized steel wire between them—just standing there staring back. According to his uncle Ricky, Number One was a world-class specimen, the biggest ever seen east of the Rockies, and maybe the biggest in the U.S. of A.

  Shawn forgot about the rabbit, about his stiff fingers and freezing cheeks, about everything but Number One. He raised his .22 and pushed the barrel through the chain links, centered the sights on the elk’s massive body. Number One snorted and did a dance to the side, one fist-size eye fixed on the boy.

  Shawn pulled the trigger. He heard the sharp crack of the exploding cartridge but didn’t notice the small rifle’s modest kick. Number One jerked, but stayed where he was. Shawn could see his nostrils jetting steam. Had he missed? He cracked the rifle open and fumbled in his jacket pocket for another round. His hands were so cold he could hardly feel the shells, but he got hold of one and managed to get it into the chamber and close the rifle. Number One had moved a few yards farther away. Shawn took careful aim on the elk’s midsection and fired. This time the elk took off running.

  “Gotcha!” Shawn shouted.

  Shaking with excitement, he reloaded again, but the elk was no longer in sight. Shawn wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  “God!” he said. “Number One!” Suddenly the need to tell someone what he had done overwhelmed him, and he started the one-mile trek back home. He crashed through the crust for fifty yards until he reached a hard-packed snowmobile trail. “Number One!” he said, again and again, imagining himself at school, telling the other kids. They wouldn’t laugh at him then. They wouldn’t care that he was fat. He was almost home when it occurred to him that his dad might not appreciate his shooting Talking Lake’s prize elk.

  VIII

  Do you like TSE-TSE FLIES, POISONOUS SNAKES, and UNSAFE WATER? Are you willing to spend FORTY OR FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS for the chance to bag your trophy? Can you handle DISAPPOINTMENT, DYSENTERY, and HARASSMENT by U.S. Customs officials? If the answer is yes, then you should go to Africa for your next big game hunt. But if you want a COMFORTABLE, GUARANTEED, HASSLE-FREE HUNTING EXPERIENCE, consider TALKING LAKE RANCH.

  —TALKING LAKE RANCH BROCHURE

  “THIS BELLWEATHER, HE’S A trophy hunter. You should see his house. Stuffed animal heads all over the walls. He has a chair made out of antlers.” Pressing the phone against his ear, Crow sat back on the cheap sofa bed that had come with his apartment. It wasn’t nearly as comfortable as Bellweather’s moose-antler chair.

  “Sounds like your kind of place,” Melinda said.

  “What d’you mean?”

  “You hunt. You used to go out every fall and shoot ducks. I used to have to cook them for you.”

  “That’s different. Duck hunting is different. This doctor doesn’t even eat what he shoots. I think he’s a vegetarian. You should see what he has for breakfast.”

  Melinda laughed. The memory of her cool hand stroked his spine. Crow leaned forward eagerly and ground the phone against his ear. He imagined Melinda at her phone. She would be dressed in jeans, probably, and a sweater, with her straight, pale-blond hair piled on top of and behind her head, held in place with one or more of her curious barrettes. Melinda liked animal shapes—snakes, pigs, butterflies—and she had assembled an impressive menagerie of hair-control devices, none of which was altogether effective in taming her wandering tresses. Six weeks after moving out of their home, Crow still found the fine blond hairs on his clothing and, once, on his pizza. He imagined her now—sitting at the kitchen table holding the telephone in her left hand and curling a lock of hair around her right forefinger, the way she did when she was bored. Or she would be working the crossword puzzle, filling in the blanks with whatever words occurred to her, ignoring the clues, which she said were usually wrong anyway, filling in the empty spaces with whatever was on her mind. She would be wearing pink lipstick to match the chipped and abraded polish on her nails.

  “Are you doing the crossword?” he asked.

  “I’m brushing Felix,” she said.

  Crow nodded to himself and let it take form. He could see her brushing Felix, white cat hairs drifting off in every direction. He took a breath and flattened the image.

  “Milo is still gone.”

  “He’ll be back.”

  Crow didn’t want to think about it He said, “So anyway, this doctor thinks the Murphys are out to get him, but he doesn’t know why. You remember the Murphys?”

  “The Murphys? The ones you had the troubles with?”

  “Yeah. Ricky and his brother George. I’m thinking about driving out there this afternoon to talk to them.” Actually, it hadn’t occurred to him to actually drive out to Big River until he heard himself say it. “Maybe I can find out why he’s making trouble for my client.” I could stop by, he mouthed silently. “You should see the car this doctor has. It’s a pink Jaguar.” I could show it to you. We could go for a ride. Talk.

  When Melinda did not immediately reply, he said, “It probably won’t take long.” A few miles from her house.

  “Why don’t you just phone him?”

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

  Crow cleared his throat. “I want a face-to-face. I want to just drop in on him, ask him what’s going on.” He could hear his breath striking the mouthpiece, he could smell the warm plastic.

  “That doesn’t sound very smart,” Melinda said. Her voice sounded as though she was holding the phone away from her mouth, as far as her arm could reach.

  There were four black cats at the Humane Society. One, a long-haired, yellow-eyed torn, looked a lot like Milo, but he lacked Milo’s stylish notched ears and confident bearing. The other three weren’t even close. Crow spent a few minutes playing with an orange kitten, sticking his finger into the cage and letting the kitten bat at it.

  A tired-looking woman who seemed to be in charge listened politely as Crow described his missing cat. She took his phone number and promised to call if a black cat matching Milo’s description showed up, but strongly suggested that he stop back every day because, as she put it, “We see a lot of cats.”

  Crow got back into Bellweather’s Jaguar. Melinda appeared, again, in his mind. He forced his thoughts to turn, pushed them in other directions. Bellweather. Ricky Murphy. Big River. He was tired, but not sleepy. He started the car. I’ll just go for a drive, he told himself, turning west on Highway 12. A few miles later, he stopped, bought a roll of clear packing tape from a hardware store, and covered the hole in the rear window. When he reached the outer suburb of Maple Plain he turned south, taking one of the small county roads down to Highway 7. It wasn’t the most direct route to Big River, but it would feel less like he was going home.

  When Shawn burst into the kitchen, Grandy was standing at the stove, stirring something in a pot.

  “You want a bowl of hot soup, boy?” she demanded. Grandy never called him Shawn. She said that w
as Grandpa’s name. Except Grandpa’s name was spelled S-e-a-n, which was the real way to spell it. Shawn had never met his grandfather, but according to Grandy, old Sean Murphy had been a great man. Thin as a rail and tough as a nail.

  Shawn said, “Sure, Grandy.”

  His grandmother scowled at the diminution of her name, but Shawn knew she secretly liked it. If she didn’t, she’d have come after him with the spoon. Instead she peered closely at his cheeks.

  “You get yourself frostbit again, boy?” Grandy always called him “boy.”

  Shawn shook his head. His thawing cheeks burned like slabs of hot lead. Grandy glared at him, her lips pulled into a wrinkled knot. For a moment, he was afraid she was going to get mad. Grandy was nice, mostly, but she could get scary mad in a second. More than once, she had whacked him for no reason. Or for no reason he could figure out at the time. Shawn kept his eyes on the ladle in her hand.

  Grandy shrugged, and her mouth relaxed. She turned back to the stove. “You just take that coat off and sit down, boy. How was school?”

  “Okay,” Shawn said. Sooner or later she would find out that he had been kicked out, but he was no way going to be the one to tell her. After getting his shot at Number One, he had spent the rest of the day in the barns, feeding things to the animals, teasing the bobcat with a stick, and carving his initials in several interesting places. He wanted to tell someone about Number One. He would explode if he didn’t say something, even though he knew it might get him in trouble. He felt the words tumble from his mouth.

  “I saw Number One, Grandy. He came right up to the fence!”

  “Eh?” She put a wide bowl full of soup on the table. “You mean that big old elk? Must be the size of a house by now.”

  “He’s pretty big.”

  Shawn tasted the soup. It had plenty of noodles in it, and he liked that. He liked that Grandy hadn’t asked him what he had been doing out by the north quarter when he should have been in school. Sometimes she missed stuff. He ate steadily, spooning the broth into his mouth as quickly as he could swallow. He was starving! Grandy watched him eat, her small mouth pulsing with each swallow the boy took. Shawn wondered what she was thinking. With Grandy, you couldn’t tell.

  Shawn finished the soup and held up the bowl.

  “Can I have some more?”

  Grandy shook her head. “Not until dinnertime.”

  “How about can I have a cookie?” Grandy made great chocolate chip cookies.

  She shook her head. “You’re getting fat, boy. You get much fatter, and we’ll have to call you a girl.”

  Shawn blinked. A girl? What was she talking about?

  “I’m still hungry!” It was not a sensation he was accustomed to ignoring. Grandy had never before refused to feed him.

  “A boy gets too fat, he turns into a girl,” Grandy said. “You get any fatter, I’ll have to put you in one of my dresses.”

  Shawn gaped, then understanding flashed in his mind. She was fooling with him. He laughed and said, “Oh, Grandy, that’s stupid! Dad’s fat, and he’s not a girl!”

  Shawn realized in an instant that he had made a mistake. Before he could move, Grandy’s sharp claws dug into his shoulders and pinned him to his chair. Her face filled his vision, and her old-lady breath rained down on him.

  “Don’t you talk about your father that way, boy.” She cuffed him on his frostbitten ear. “You’re half girl already. You hear me? Half girl!” She reached down and grabbed his crotch, squeezing. Shawn gasped as a balloon of pain filled his gut.

  “You know what this is for, little boy?” she hissed.

  Shawn shook his head, terrified.

  “It’s for going pee-pee and for making babies. You do anything else with it, you’ll turn into a girl. You understand me?”

  Agonized, Shawn nodded. He thought he was going to puke up his soup. As quickly as she had grabbed him, Grandy unclenched her claws, stood back, and crossed her arms.

  “You go see your father now. He’s in the lodge. You go tell him how you saw his big elk today. Tell him how you were out looking at the animals when you were supposed to be in school.”

  Shawn pushed his chair back and fled the kitchen, a conduit of pain pulsing from his groin to his frostbitten cheeks.

  IX

  Actually, he’s good for business. The rest of my customers, they look at him and tell themselves that compared to Harley, they got it all under control

  —BERDETTE WILLIAMS

  THE COFFEE WAS BLACK, bitter, and at least four hours old. It reminded him of the coffee at CA meetings. Adding sugar only produced another unpleasant sensation: now it was too sweet. Berdette walked by and eyed Crow’s cup, looking for something to do. Crow shook his head, lifted the cup to his mouth, let his upper lip disturb the black, oily surface, set it back on the bar. Berdette’s wife, Arlene, sat slumped in one of the booths, reading the Big River Herald. It was a few minutes before noon.

  Berdette’s only other customer, Harley Pike, was hunched over the far end of the bar, clad in his usual greasy jeans and motorcycle jacket, scowling at the remaining half inch of beer in his glass. Bits of foam clung to his scraggly gray-and-blond beard. Harley was the nearest thing Big River had to a town drunk—Crow had picked him up off the street dozens of times. Sometimes Harley had been cooperative, happy to sleep it off on a jailhouse cot. Other times he had been having too much fun to let anybody interfere, and Crow had been compelled to use force. He wondered whether Harley remembered him.

  “Hey Berdette,” Crow called.

  Berdette turned and pointed at the coffeepot, looked at Crow, and raised his eyebrows. A column of horizontal wrinkles climbed nearly to the peak of his hairless head.

  “No, not that, please.”

  Berdette looked hurt. Crow didn’t feel sorry for him. He figured Berdette owed him something back for all the money he’d spent there during his years as a Big River cop, when he’d ended every shift with a few shots of Berdette’s watered-down Cuervo.

  “What do you hear from the Murphys these days, Berdette?”

  Berdette’s eyes narrowed, and his cheeks inflated. “Nothing much new. But if that Ricky sets foot in here one more time, I kick his ass.” Berdette was close to eighty years old, shorter than Crow, maybe a hundred fifteen pounds, but if Ricky had walked in the door at that moment, Crow might have put his money down on Berdette.

  “What about the rest of them?”

  Berdette said, “That what you’re doing back here? You got something going with those boys?”

  “Not with them,” Crow replied.

  Berdette nodded. “They been trouble ever since George took over from his daddy. Actually, his daddy was trouble too. What do you want to know, Joe?”

  “Anything you can tell me.”

  Berdette’s eyes went into a distant stare. “Well, now,” he said, “that ain’t much. I see George and Ricky and their mama at Saint Luke’s every Sunday, but that’s about it. They pretty much keep to themselves, except when Ricky gets a few under his belt.”

  “You remember the last time I was in here?”

  “Not likely to forget.”

  “You remember that guy Ricky clobbered?”

  “Sure I do. Doctor something, from the cities.”

  “You know why Ricky went after him that way?”

  Berdette shook his head. “I don’t never wonder why Ricky does what he does, some of the shit he does.”

  “Fucker!”

  Startled, Crow looked down the bar at Harley Pike, who had lifted his glare from his beer glass and fixed it on some invisible object floating above the bar, a few inches in front of his face. “Goddamn motherfucker,” Harley snarled.

  Berdette said, “You need another one, H.?”

  Harley blinked and looked back at his glass—which was now empty—his vision forgotten for the moment. He fingered the small pile of coins on the bar, pushed forward three quarters and an assortment of smaller change. Berdette refilled Harley’s glass, letting the beer
flow down its side, bringing the amber fluid right up to the rim, a no-foam, no-bullshit beer. He took the coins, rang them into the register. Harley clasped his battered hands around his beer glass and fixed his moist eyes on the fullness of it.

  Berdette added an unwanted splash of hot coffee to Crow’s cup. “H. gets testy when he’s on empty.”

  “Testy when he’s full too,” Crow said.

  “Couple more beers, he’ll mellow out just fine. I oughta kick him out of here, but I don’t know what he’d do with himself. Puss’ll be out to pick him up pretty soon. She knows how to handle H. when he’s got a bellyful. Anyways, he’s mostly mouth these days. Not like that Ricky Murphy—who knows why he does what he does?”

  “So you haven’t heard anything, like the doctor did something to make Ricky mad? Or something different going on with the Murphys?”

  Berdette shook his head. “Far as I know it’s been just business as usual. George is still sellin’ them canned hunts a his. It’s got to where you want to shoot a rhinoceros or some damn thing, George’ll go out and find one for you, if you got the loot. You ever been out to their place?”

  “Never had reason to.”

  “You know, they got close to four thousand acres out there. Mostly river bottom and coulee, but it’s a hell of a chunk of land. Damn shame what they do with it, but I guess they got a right. I hear they even got a real live tiger for sale. Forty thousand bucks, you can go shoot yourself a tiger. Hell, for forty thousand bucks I’d let you shoot Arlene.”

  Arlene heard her name and looked up from her newspaper.

  Berdette told her, “Never mind, sugar.” He lowered his voice. “I’d let her go for twenty in the off-season.”