by Jon Jackson
She was much stronger. She could walk unaided, even with a degree of energy. She ate very well and put on weight. She dressed every day, could take a sitting-down shower with only a nurse to keep an eye on her and assist with a few of the more complicated tasks. Very soon she asked Mulheisen what he was doing home.
He said he’d taken a leave of absence. He was looking after her. He didn’t know why he did not say he’d retired. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to complicate the discussion. She was quite aware that she’d suffered an injury, that she needed assistance. She wasn’t ill, though, she knew that and said as much.
“You’re back in your room,” she said. He nodded. “What happened with”—she paused and looked at a loss, then finished with—“her? The woman. Ah! Becky!” She seemed pleased to recall the name.
Mulheisen shrugged. “It didn’t work out,” he said.
“Good,” she said, and dropped the subject.
She enjoyed his readings, and the music. She was intrigued about his building project. She thought it was a good idea. “You’ll have a place to smoke those old cigars,” she said.
She also enjoyed the walks. A great day was the one on which they saw a green heron, crouching among the reeds along the river. She had noticed it first, even though it was in its camouflage posture of extending its long striped neck to emulate the reeds among which it stood. She pointed it out to Mul but he couldn’t see it.
“Some detective,” she muttered slyly. “Watch. There he is. He flattens his body, somehow. He’s just beyond that old buoy. Butorides virescens!”
Mulheisen saw the bird. With its long neck outstretched, its beak pointing directly into the sky, the stripes on its throat looked very much like the reeds among which it was standing—it even swayed when the breeze ruffled the reeds. He was amazed. How had she noticed it? The creature seemed to be another reed. But as they stealthily approached it slowly withdrew its head and neck into its now expanded body until, finally, only the tip of its beak was visible. Now it looked like nothing more than a darkish lump among the reeds, perhaps a large rock. They took a few more steps, closer, and abruptly the bird launched itself into the air with a hoarse croaking cry and spread its surprisingly large wings, flapping powerfully. It emitted a great stream of chalky white liquid as it fled across the water.
The pair of them fell back, laughing. “My god, did you see that!” she cried. As they walked home, elated, she recited: “I saw a bird up in the sky. He dropped some whitewash in my eye. Aren’t you glad that cows don’t fly?”
That evening, as they prepared to read Stevenson’s The Beach of Falesá, Cora suddenly said, “Shouldn’t you be going back to work, Feddy?”
Mulheisen didn’t know if he was more shocked at her inquiry or at her use of his childhood nickname. He stammered something like, “Ma! I’ve got plenty to do. I’m building a house. Maybe later, when you’re feeling better . . . I might go back.” It seemed to satisfy her, for the moment. He knew better than to suggest that she needed him to look after her. As it was, she just scoffed at his protests.
“Oh, you and your study! Well, I suppose you’ll go back when curiosity gets the better of you.”
A few days later she volunteered that she’d remembered a couple of things. She wondered if the police shouldn’t know. Mulheisen sighed and called Tucker.
4
Home Guard
Joe Service was on his way to kill his neighbor’s wife. He hadn’t killed anybody in so long that he had begun to feel innocent . . . not that Joe’s conscience had ever plagued him on this score. He never thought of these targets as victims, only as . . . targets, some more deserving of Joe’s dispensation than others. The last person he’d chilled had richly deserved it. The guy had, in fact, been on the verge of killing Joe. Several men had been on that verge, over the years. It wasn’t a comfortable verge: all of them had tumbled into the abyss of Hell, to use a convenient name for the trash bin of homicidal incompetence.
This dispensation of Fedima Oberavich was different: not, strictly speaking, a matter of self-defense. Although, as Joe saw it, in the long run it was totally defensive, in the manner of a pre-emptive strike. Fedima was bound to bring him into mortal danger, he felt. She was threatening his well-being, at present, and his life, ultimately.
Fedima Oberavich had given birth to her first child four months after she was married. It was a bit of a surprise, since she hadn’t appeared to be pregnant at the time of the wedding. Anyone acquainted with her history immediately did a little mental math and then sighed at least inwardly with relief. It couldn’t have been the child of the monster, Bozi Bazok, who had murdered her family, kidnapped her and raped her innumerable times during their trek out of Kosovo, too many months earlier.
No one alive knew that her lover in Kosovo had been her husband Frank’s late cousin, Paulie. But obviously, he was not the father of the child. Nor could it have been her husband, whom she’d met only a few weeks before the marriage took place. It had to have been some unknown fellow along the route that brought her to America. Fedima wasn’t talking. After all, it was of no consequence. The significant thing was that she was now a mother. It was a transforming event.
There was no one in the world who could now testify to the character of Fedima, at least in the sense of knowing her past. Her entire family had been wiped out by the paramilitary beast Bozi Bazok, who had all by himself slaughtered her mother and younger siblings and her extended family in a cave in the hills behind the farm where her people had tilled the land and piled the rocks of the fields for more than a hundred years. Fedima, and now her son—inevitably named Paul—were the sole living descendants of the family Daliljaj . . . at least, as far as Fedima knew. There may have been some cousins, but she didn’t know of them.
This horrendous situation was shockingly not rare among the peasants of Kosovo. But for Fedima it was no less devastating. Who knew that she had been a heroine of sorts? Who saw that in the demure, seemingly complacent young girl who had somehow made her way to America and been, finally, offered as a bride to a young man of remote Serbian heritage in faraway Montana, here was a young woman of unusual courage and determination?
Among those living about her now it soon became apparent that she was not a shrinking violet. She was no pushover, no complaisant wife for Frank Oberavich. An early indication was her adamant insistence that something must be done about the two dogs, Sylvie and Bruno. These two dogs were the faithful servants of Frank, an important component of his security system. But they had demonstrated that they would attack a human being: they had torn to pieces the villainous woman Jamala Sanders, who had murdered their favorite human, Paul, and then threatened the lives of Frank and Joe. Fedima had not witnessed this incident; it didn’t sway her. She insisted that the dogs were a threat to her child.
Others were concerned. Dogs that would attack a human, albeit one who represented a danger to their master, were considered by many to be irrevocably damaged. Frank was devoted to them, however. He offered to have them retrained. But that was not acceptable to Fedima. The dogs must be put down. Joe and Helen were drawn into the discussion. They were grateful to the dogs, which were always complaisant toward them. But they soon saw that Fedima would not be swayed. The only compromise was that they would be “gotten rid of,” which meant they would be sent away, presumably to be retrained and given into the possession of someone else, far away. Colonel Tucker saw to it. The dogs were “reassigned” to a K-9 program in another state, to be used by law enforcement.
The incident pained Frank considerably, but he was learning that his lovely young wife was not to be swayed in matters where she felt strongly. In addition, he found that she would brook no replacement with similar dogs of such a nature. The dog of Anders Ericsson was viewed with suspicion, but it was not really a resident dog and it was not in Fedima’s power to banish it. Anyway, it was tame enough, and the little dog of Joe and Helen, Homes, was deemed safe.
The next issue encountered was Fedima
’s argument that all this open space belonging to her husband, two thousand acres, should be converted to some useful agricultural purpose. For a young woman raised in Kosovo it was unconscionable that so much open land was allowed to be “idle.” If Frank refused to cultivate the land, perhaps to raise a good crop of wheat, at least it must be put to use as grazing land. Perhaps a small herd of cattle could be introduced. The land was well fenced, there was ample water, corrals could be built, barns. The idea appalled Frank. Who would tend the cattle? He wasn’t a cowboy. He was a talented gardener, of sorts, dedicated to his small crop of marijuana, which he grew in the house, essentially a greenhouse, complete with an elaborate irrigation system. He had no notion of raising cattle, seeing to their health, feeding them in winter, buying hay, marketing them. Given his avocation, if you could call it that, he was not about to hire hands, more or less strangers who might expose him to legal problems.
Again, Fedima was insistent. Soon, some fifty head of crossbred red Angus were wandering the hills, placidly chomping on grass, trampling in the hot springs, leaving their abominable splatter everywhere. Fences had to be erected around Joe and Helen’s property, along the river, around the hot springs. A gate was installed on the road to Joe and Helen’s place. It was annoying. It took up far too much of Frank’s time and energy. What next?
Joe was angry. This was an altogether unacceptable imposition on his Eden. Life had been fine until this idiot woman and her baby had come into the picture. First the dogs, then the cows. Now, with the disquieting information provided by Caspar, Joe felt insecure without the dogs. Franko was supposed to keep an eye on security—he had an elaborate alarm system and even remote TV cameras at the gate—but now he was so busy that Joe knew he wasn’t monitoring the system. Well, who could? The remoteness made you feel secure, at first, and the openness of the approaches, but it was impossible to really be secure without guards. Who wanted that? Strangers couldn’t really protect you. But Joe and Helen had fallen into that square, Home Guard mode. They were no longer Inside, no longer part of the Life. Caspar was just a residue of that life. They were outside, now, out in the free world, and yet not really of that life. Joe marveled at how readily he had fallen in with it. He felt exposed.
He considered the situation calmly as he drove from his unfinished house, where he had left Helen sprawled and spent on their bed. It was no more than a half mile to Frank’s house, down a dusty two-track road. Joe drove slowly. He had ample time to weigh his thoughts on this fateful act. He had been more shocked than he realized by the implications of Caspar’s warning. His life was changing again. He didn’t feel angry, just resolved.
He had a feeling that he’d not be coming back this way afterward. He’d very likely never see Helen again. It wouldn’t even be wise for him to visit Montana again, which made him sad. At present, he wasn’t sure where he would go; he didn’t have time for these thoughts but he was sure it would be somewhere nice.
He wasn’t angry. Joe avoided anger. It was a waste of time. Very early in life he had given a great deal of thought to the problem of anger. His analysis was that typically anger arose as a result of an injury. Anger made it difficult to act. It clouded one’s mind, blinded one to further danger. If one needed to retaliate, or otherwise compensate for the injury, especially quickly, anger was something one couldn’t afford. If the injury was not sufficient to require action, then one ought to shrug off the injury. He’d practiced this, over the years, and he’d become proficient at it.
Yet he’d ponder anger in idle moments. It seemed to him that most people indulged their anger, nourished it. Apparently, they did this because they were afraid to act. They didn’t want to disturb things. They were content to live with their anger, he felt. Presumably, they eventually forgot about the source of it, although he supposed there was always some bitter residue stuffed away in the back of the mind, likely to surface at odd moments.
That was probably the case with most anger-inducing situations. There were also, of course, those situations where one simply couldn’t react, daren’t react, because the source of the injury was too powerful. In that case, one was forced to swallow one’s anger, which became a corrosive acid in one’s stomach. Perhaps, in some uncharted future, one could react, savagely no doubt, but it would likely be too late.
Joe didn’t want any of that. When an occasion for anger arose, he felt he should recognize it, decide as quickly as possible if it was an actionable offense, and, if it wasn’t, wave it away. That didn’t mean he would forget that an injury had been done to him, although he supposed he had forgotten most if not all of the minor injuries done. But if it didn’t require a response, then admit as much to himself, promptly, and let that be enough.
Case in point: it was bad enough that Fedima had successfully convinced Frank to get rid of the two watchdogs Bruno and Sylvie. Joe had conceded that these dogs, having demonstrated that they would attack human beings, must have seemed to Fedima too great a threat to the life of her child, Paulie, to ignore. When Joe looked at it from her point of view, he felt that her fears were, if far-fetched, simply too intense to be overcome. So he’d shrugged off Frank’s decision to send the dogs away.
But the cows were too much. Farming might be in Fedima’s blood, but that blood could be let. It was ridiculous. Frank was not a farmer, or a rancher. He raised marijuana. That might be considered gardening, but it wasn’t farming, and definitely not ranching. Beyond that, they had plenty of money. They didn’t need to do anything but fish and hunt and dawdle in the hot springs. Most important, Joe and Helen depended on Frank to provide a kind of buffer between them and the rest of the world, which couldn’t otherwise reach Joe’s place without going through Frank’s. It was a security issue. Joe was very keen on security. Now, with Caspar’s revelations, he didn’t have that anymore.
And he hated cows—miserable, slab-sided, shit-smeared, stupid beasts that wandered everywhere as if in a daze, treading down the banks of the stream, dirtying the hot springs, leaving their splattered crap everywhere, bringing flies. If Frank had cows, Joe necessarily had cows. He didn’t like looking out of his window and seeing cows. Well, he wouldn’t have cows anymore, but he couldn’t leave without doing something about it.
“Why do cows get out?” he’d asked Anders Ericsson.
“A cow is about the stupidest creature on earth,” Anders had explained to Joe. “It grazes along a fence line—for no good reason, there’s plenty of grass all around—but it’s grazed over to the fence, so now the fence is like a guide. Then, the cow comes to a hole in the fence. Maybe a tree fell on it, or a deer tripped jumping over. Anyway, the cow immediately ducks through the hole. Why? There’s no better grass on the other side, usually. But the guide line has been disrupted, so the cow goes through, looking for the next barrier. It could walk two steps and find where the barrier resumed, but it doesn’t want to do that. The cow goes through every time. Cows will not walk past a hole in a fence. They’re either committed opportunists, or mindless hammerheads.”
Joe hated that kind of mindlessness. He was leaving, but he couldn’t let the cows win. Frank, he knew, didn’t give a damn about the cows. He’d like to get rid of them himself. They took up too much of his time. It was just Fedima. You had pastureland, you had to have cows. It was bullshit . . . or, rather, cowshit.
Luckily, the issue had come to a head at a good time. It was fall, time to market the cows. Otherwise, you had to feed them through the winter. Fedima didn’t want to market them, not all of them. The bigger, healthier cows should be bred. They’d calve in the spring. They would build their herd. They could artificially inseminate or they could buy a bull. Fedima leaned toward buying a bull. She also wanted some milk cows, a couple of goats, some sheep. Even pigs.
“Pigs?” Frank was surprised. Fedima was a Muslim woman. Why would she want a pig? But it seemed that even Muslims raised pigs where she was from. In Kosovo, as in Serbia proper, pigs were traditional market animals—the Serbs, the Croats and Slov
enes, and beyond them the Hungarians and the Germans had a seemingly insatiable appetite for pork. The Kosovars ate pork too, although perhaps not these days. One of the reasons, in fact, that the Kosovars had not gotten much aid from other Muslims in their struggle for independence, at least initially, was that they had become so like their Serbian neighbors that traditional Muslims tended to shake their heads and say, These are not Believers. They eat pork.
Frank was bound to side with Fedima if it came to a dispute with Joe, but not over a pig. He was having no pigs. Fedima relented. No pigs. But having relented on that she held firm for sheep, goats, and building up the cattle stock. She had convinced Frank, in July, that there was so much ungrazed native grass it could be mowed and picked up for fodder. He had an old barn, in which there was already some very old hay, moldering away. That hay had been in there for years. Some of it had been used to hide a rented vehicle that the ogre Bazok had abandoned near their fence line. The idea had been to conceal it in the event that cops came around looking for Bazok. Frank had dug a hole in the field with a backhoe and they’d buried the car. They cleaned out the hay and stored the fresh. So now they had hay. They could keep, say, a third of the cattle, the best ones. Fedima consented to artificial insemination, for now.
Joe wasn’t having it. As a concerned neighbor, not a tenant, he felt compelled to insist on the primacy of security. All this agriculture and husbandry had given him a headache. At his old place, down on the Ruby, some sixty miles south, he had owned a hundred acres or so of a mountain, with his land backing onto thousands of acres of national forest and BLM land. He still owned this property, but for complicated reasons he had no intention of living on it. A rancher owned all the land between him and the highway. That rancher had left him alone, tended the fences, and took good care of the cattle, providing a de facto barrier between Joe and the outside world. This was a different situation. Frank was not a rancher. Joe explained this to him, patiently.
