After finishing his float, the man called the Bridger Mountain Star and asked to speak to Gail Stocker, the reporter who had written a feature story about the making of the documentary, which had aired in September. In the documentary, Bart Trueblood had christened the snake that bit him “the Silent Tickler.” The story she wrote after interviewing the floater ran under the headline “Silent Tickler Strikes Again.” Along with a summary of the documentary, which had reached 1.4 million viewers in its first airing, it included a photo of the cast-and-blaster, holding the Ithaca in one hand and the terminated serpent in the other.
When Sean Stranahan read the story, he smiled, then peered critically at the sketch on the drawing table in his art studio. One of dozens of pencil studies of the Smith River he’d made before putting paint to canvas, this one included a few strokes of graphite to give heartbeat to the landscape, a pair of sandhill cranes flying low over an inside bend where Indian Springs hooked and crooked its silver threads to the river.
Sean again looked at the newspaper, and then, for a long minute, his eyes were somewhere else. Then the smile came back, and he picked up a gum eraser and the cranes flew no more. Selecting a pencil in 2B grade, he sketched in a small rattlesnake, coiled discreetly among rocks, in the lower right-hand corner of the study. This one had rattles.
“You son of a gun,” he said aloud. “You scheming son of a gun.”
* * *
—
At the Camp Baker boat launch, the ranger stood with his hands on his hips, watching Sean and Martha pack gear into Martha’s Mad River canoe.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me those are hunting dogs,” he said, taking in the playful leapfrogging of Choti, Sean’s little sheltie, and Goldie, Martha’s bright but aging Aussie shepherd. “But I can’t imagine what they’re hunting,” he said, “seeing’s how you have no rifle and no shotgun.”
“The truth,” Sean said, and the ranger shook his head and said, “Go on, get out of here. I didn’t see anything. Who am I, anyway? Just somebody dropped by to collect money from the box.”
He helped push them off.
“You think we’ll see anyone on the river?” Sean asked.
The ranger vibrated his lips, making a sound like a dying outboard motor. He shook his head. “Only fools float the Smith this late in the year.”
* * *
—
Martha had phoned ahead and Bart Trueblood was waiting for them, exercising his philosophy with beer in hand. He set down his bottle and grabbed the bowline of the canoe that Martha tossed him.
“My favorite season,” he said. “Last stroke of the paintbrush before the leaves fall. Call it what you want.”
“I call it third week of October,” Martha said.
“Did you stop by just to spoil my fun?” Trueblood coughed, the sound deep in his chest. He seemed thinner and even frailer than when they had last seen him.
“You don’t sound so good, Bart,” Martha said.
“I wish I could say you were mistaken.” He looked at Sean, his eyes sharp in a face turned haggard. “Are you still planning to submit a painting to the American Rivers contest?”
“If I can meet the deadline.”
“Would you like to see what you’re up against?”
“I would,” Sean said.
“It’s in my studio.”
Trueblood’s villainous goatee preceded them up to the house, past Billy Goat Gruff and the charcoal self-portrait, then to an east-facing room with tall windows and a flood of natural light that served as his studio.
The painting stood on an easel. It was an eagle’s-eye view of a bend of the Smith in the stretch upriver from Sunset Cliff, a full moon over the water in a dawn sky, geese flying in a wedge.
“Acrylic on wood,” Trueblood said. “The morning of the super moon, June 16, year before last. The closest the moon’s orbit came to the earth in three years, and the last time I would ever be able to climb so high.”
“It’s beautiful.” Sean meant it.
“Thank you. I am at the point when I wait for the painting to tell me if it’s finished. Yesterday it said it was. This morning, it’s ambivalent. What is your opinion? One artist to another.”
“I would sign it, that’s all.”
Trueblood nodded. “As you are aware, the original of the first-place painting will hang in the Capitol Building. But win or lose, I am commissioning a limited-edition run of one hundred prints, and I would like you to have one. I’m also reserving prints for Harold Little Feather, for his son, and for Lillian Cartwright.”
“Not for me?” Martha said. “I’m hurt.”
“I should have said one for Sean and you. You hang your hats on the same rack, I assume you will be looking at art on the same wall. Or have I misread your relationship?”
Martha felt color come into her cheeks.
“The reason I’m telling you this now,” he said, picking up the thread, “is because my body has been at war with a particular malady that I refuse to credit by name. I have been ill for some years, and recently I’ve been informed that I may not be around for the outcome of the art competition. In that event, you will be contacted by the lawyer handling the distribution of my estate.”
He waved a hand as Martha began to speak.
“Your sympathies are noted and appreciated, but they aren’t necessary. I’ve had a full life well lived, if not without heartache. Through the years there has been one constant, this river that flows through my paintings, which I have only to draw the curtains to see. To have awakened nearly every morning of my life to its sight, and fallen asleep every night to its song—I have been enriched beyond measure. That is why I have fought so hard against the mine. When I pass, this place will be sold and the profits will go toward carrying on the battle.”
“Has the status changed since we saw you last?” Sean asked.
“No, the ball is still in the DEQ’s court, and the environmental impact statement is being prepared as we speak. Our best chance to halt or at least postpone development is by placing a rider in a legislative bill, the way they put a temporary stop to gold exploration on the Yellowstone Park border last year. We can also request that the DEQ take a hard look at the company owners with respect to bad actor laws. If one of the execs has been neglectful with regard to environmental cleanup in a previous mining venture, then the DEQ has the authority to disbar that person or persons from involvement with the current project. Which could buy us time, if nothing else. I assume you saw the documentary then?”
“Last week,” Martha said.
“Then you know it made a powerful case in favor of the river. Not to say Clint came off poorly, and for the most part we were preaching to our choirs. But for anyone on the fence, I predict they’ll fall on our side of it. And public opinion always counts where politicians are concerned.”
“It made you a celebrity,” Martha said.
They had moved back into the living room, where they reluctantly accepted Trueblood’s offer of coffee. It was already afternoon, and though it was only a handful of miles to Indian Springs, where they’d make their first camp, daylight hours in late fall were in short supply.
“The snake helped,” Sean said, after sipping at his cup.
“Didn’t it, though?” Trueblood smiled, exposing his porcelain canine tooth. “Tickler was a windfall. I wish he hadn’t come to such an inglorious end, though.”
“What I’m wondering is how you did it.”
Sean saw Martha glance at him.
“What do you mean?” Trueblood said.
“I think you know, Bart.”
Trueblood gave a slight shrug and turned to regard his self-portrait. “I should add one more line to my epitaph,” he said. “‘I care too goddamned much, too.’” Sean watched his Adam’s apple work under his goatee.
“It wasn’t premeditated
, if you were wondering. I saw the snake in back of the house, where my wife’s rock garden used to be. Just weeds and rocks now. He crawled under one of the stones. I didn’t think much of it. I share the earth with all God’s creatures. But then it came to me that I might better serve the river dead than alive. I didn’t really want to die. But either way, being bit during the float would grant me, and the cause, instant sympathy. The disease that can’t be named had already eaten away the core of my body, and I’d resigned myself to probably never seeing another summer. What better way to go than making the ultimate sacrifice to save this river?”
The next day he had turned the stone. He didn’t really expect the snake to still be there, but there it was. It was like he’d shown himself deliberately and was patiently waiting. Trueblood had taken a broom and coaxed the snake into a pillowcase. His hard-sided gear bag had plenty of room to accommodate the snake for a couple days. There only remained the question of his rattles. Rattles are made of keratin, the same substance that toenails and fingernails consist of. Rattlesnakes grow a new segment each time they shed their skin. That was why, Trueblood explained, that in some cultures they were seen as a symbol of eternity. The shedding of the old skin, the putting on of the new. The continual renewal of life.
Trueblood had pinned the snake’s head down, then snipped off the rattle with a pair of pruning shears. It did him no harm. At worst, Trueblood said, old Tickler lost a little dignity. Trueblood told the snake that he’d have his revenge soon enough. And that’s exactly what had happened. Trueblood had let him out of the bag once he got inside of his tent. The snake didn’t want to strike. It was cold and he was lethargic. Trueblood had to grab him with his hand before the snake completed his end of the bargain.
Trueblood looked at Sean, then Martha, and shrugged.
“All’s fair, as they say. But please don’t tell Clint. We’ve arrived at détente and this would open old wounds. I assume you’re going to stop by? He’s at the house. I saw woodsmoke from his direction this morning.”
They were back at the river’s edge, where Trueblood wavered a little unsteadily, as if buffeted by an internal breeze.
“I assume you’re contemplating this season for your painting,” he said, “or you wouldn’t be floating so late.”
Sean said he was considering it.
“Then I suggest Indian Summer—Smith River for a title. Simple, direct. A world at peace before the snow falls.” He fingered his goatee, as if the thought had just occurred to him that he might be describing the current status of his own life.
“And you, Martha? Why have you agreed to this misadventure?”
“This one,” she said, cocking a finger at Sean. “He insisted.”
“Then I’ll bid you goodbye and safe passage.” He extended his hand, and they took it in turn.
Sean glanced back as they rounded the bend downriver, and Trueblood was just standing there. Sean knew he would never see him again.
“So now I’m ‘This one,’” he said to Martha’s back.
He watched her dig with the paddle from the bow. “Better than ‘That one,’” she said.
* * *
—
Clint McCaine tipped his hat back with two fingers as he leaned in the doorframe.
“I know that winter’s in the air when my head no longer looks like a two-tone Chevy,” he said. “That’s something my wife used to say. You wear a cowboy hat in summer, you’re white over brown. I told her if she must use an automobile analogy, I would prefer being compared to a Rolls. They were famous for their two-tones. In fact I owned one, a ’69 Silver Shadow drophead coupe in tan over black, back during my first midlife crisis. Purred like a kitten. A very large one. Now, like everyone, I drive a truck.”
“That new 250 I saw ’round back is copper,” Sean said. “Is that an accident, or is it the color you ordered?”
“Technically, it’s amber gold metallic. But yes, the possibility exists.” He shrugged. “Probably.” Held up his hands. “So shoot me.”
And ushered them into the house, the big man at his most expansive and hospitable, where they brought each other up to date over mugs of hot chocolate. McCain was interested in what had happened when sheriff’s deputies raided the compound of the Rural Free Montanans after Rayland Jobson and Dewey Davis were killed. A photograph of the in-house outhouse had leaked and gone viral over the Internet. Martha told him there wasn’t much to report. The several dwellings had been abandoned, the flag with the copper snake entwined around the initials RFM was gone, and there was no evidence suggesting that the grizzly-bear-poaching ring went beyond the brothers-in-law, except for the Korean buyers for the traditional medicines market, who had not been identified or brought to justice.
He also was curious about Jewel MacAllen, whose body had never been found, and who had now become part of the lore and legend of the Smith River. Martha said it was hard to imagine that he’d survived the icy current after Harold’s canoe capsized, especially as Harold had seen the man react to the first shot from the Mannlicher rifle, though he couldn’t say where he’d been hit.
Sean found himself warming to McCain, even though his Land Cruiser now sported a NO SMITH RIVER MINE bumper sticker.
“Maybe it’s appropriate,” he said.
McCain said, “What? That he’s still missing?”
“All the better to haunt the river.”
“This river already has too many ghosts,” McCain said. And for a moment, a dark cloud swept over his face. “As well Bart and I know.”
“We just left his house,” Martha said. “It must be nice that you are friends again.”
“Yes. It’s good to put the bad blood behind us. To hear him tell it, you would have thought God had banished me to the Land of Nod and given me this mark on my forehead.” He touched the birthmark under his hairline. “I have news for him. It is not given me by God. It’s just a vascular blemish under the skin.” He waved a big hand, the dust motes in the stripes of sunlight coming through the half-shuttered windows stirring to life. “I just wish I’d come off a little better in the documentary. I was promised it would be fair, and then Bart goes and gets bit by a snake. Now how was I supposed to compete with that?”
“You gave him your blood,” Sean said.
“It ran across the screen before the credits rolled, but small letters as I recall. More an afterthought than kudos.”
“You had the last word.”
“I’m not sure about that. But I will have the last laugh.”
They had entered his copper room, where McCaine showed them the latest core sample in a glass-lidded case.
“That’s from the southeast arm of the deposit. A finer core of copper you cannot find in the world. Makes my heart skip a few beats just to see that color. You realize, despite what Bart may have told you about bill riders, public opinion, bad actor laws, political pressure, or anything else he deludes himself is going to stop the mine, he’s wrong. A seam of ore this rich creates its own specific gravity. It will come out. There’s too much money under the ground for it not to. The question is, do you want it to be dug by someone who’s never stepped foot in Montana, or do you want it to be dug by somebody who grew up here and will do the job the right way?”
He shrugged. “The answer seems clear to me.”
And with that they went to the door and shook hands, and McCaine went back into the vast house where his heart could skip a few beats over the color of copper.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The Usual Suspect
At the top of the climb from Tenderfoot Creek, Martha put her hands on her knees to catch her breath. Or, as she put it to Stranahan, to admire the view. “Such as it is,” she added, straightening and sweeping a hand to encompass the weathered bones of the homestead.
“Remind me why we’re here,” she said. “Oh yeah, in case the Scarecrow God survived bullets, drowning
, and hypothermia and decided to take up housekeeping.”
“It’s where he told Harold that he’d spent a winter with his father. It has meaning for him. Unless he’s dead or gone back to Florida, this is where he’d come.”
“He can go back to being the Creature from the Black Lagoon as far as I care. I forgot to ask you how it went.”
“How what went?”
“Talking to the mother.”
When Jewel MacAllen’s personal effects—the photos and sketches that Martha and Sean had found in the playing card tin—were released from evidence, Martha had had a deputy work the keyboard to find an address. It was a place called Hilliardville, near the Florida Gulf only a few miles from Wakulla Springs, where the horror classic had been filmed. Sean was better at extracting information over the phone than anyone else she knew, so she’d given him the number to call. He had, and got next to nowhere.
Annabelle MacAllen had admitted to having a child with Scott Henry MacAllen, and a good boy he was, sweet as Tupelo honey. But when he came back from Vietnam he wasn’t anyone she recognized, she’d told Sean, and that had been nearly fifty years ago. She’d seen Jewel infrequently since and had last seen him five years ago. No, it wouldn’t do any good to send the package of his belongings to her. It would just bring back a bad time in her life, and Sean, hearing the pathos in her voice, had wondered if there had ever been a good time. If that was all he had to say, she’d better get back to her orchids. Sean said if she saw Jewel, to tell him that the tin with its contents had been returned to the place where it had been found. He would know where that was.
“I don’t expect you’ll be hearing from me,” she’d said, and Sean hadn’t, and that had been that.
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