“The girls wanted to stay up, but I finally put them to bed. They’re awake right now and want a good-night kiss.”
“That I’d be glad to do,” Joe said.
He squeezed Marybeth’s hand as he walked past her and opened the door to the girls’ bedroom. The light was on and they were reading. He kissed Sheridan in the top bunk and Lucy in the bottom bunk.
“What happened to your face?” Sheridan asked.
“Just an accident,” Joe said, involuntarily reaching up and fingering the large bandage beneath his eye.
“That’s not what I heard,” Sheridan said, propping herself up on her pillow. “At school they said you got shot.”
“It was an accidental shooting,” Joe said.
“Will you tell us about it tomorrow?” Sheridan asked.
Joe paused. “You girls get to sleep,” he said. Lucy rolled her eyes and covered herself with the sheet.
“I’ve been looking out this window,” Sheridan told him. “I haven’t seen anything. No more monsters.”
“You won’t,” Joe assured her. “That’s all over now.”
Lucy was faking sleep. It was something she did to punish her father for being away. He kissed her and told her good night, but she held firm and wouldn’t acknowledge it, except for a hint of a smile.
Joe poured himself a bourbon and water in the kitchen. He had not taken any of the painkillers the doctor had prescribed for him, saving them for tomorrow.
“It says here that fat grams aren’t everything,” Missy Vankeuren said from the other room. Joe assumed she was talking to Marybeth. “You still need to watch calories. Just because something is low in fat doesn’t give you license to eat like a pig.”
He drank a quarter of the drink, then topped off the glass with more Jim Beam. Joe was not much of a drinker anymore, although he’d done more than his share in college and when he worked with Vern. But his intake of alcohol always increased proportionately when his mother-in-law was around.
He came into the living room and sat down. Marybeth had just come from tucking in Lucy. She frowned at Joe, and then smiled at her mother. She offered to get her mother something to drink, and Joe realized he was being scolded for not asking her himself.
“Do you have any red wine? That would be nice.”
“Joe, would you open a bottle?” Marybeth asked.
“Where is it?”
“In the pantry,” Marybeth said. “And I’d like a glass also.”
Joe found the wine on a shelf in the pantry. There were a half dozen bottles to choose from. All must have been purchased within the last couple of days, anticipating her mother’s visit, because normally the only thing on that shelf were boxes of breakfast cereal.
Marybeth, Joe grumbled to himself as he located the corkscrew, was a wonderful strong woman with strong opinions . . . except when her mother was present. When Missy flew in to visit, Marybeth shifted from being Joe’s wife and partner to Missy’s daughter, the one with unrealized potential, according to Missy. Her favorite child, according to Missy. Marybeth’s older brother, Rob, was a loner who failed to keep in touch, and her younger sister, Ellen, had devoted her life to following the alternative rock band Phish on their never-ending concert tour. Marybeth was the one, Missy had once said while she was drunk and sobbing, who married too early and too low (she may have forgotten about those comments by now, but Joe hadn’t). Rather than being the well-dressed, wealthy corporate lawyer she should have been, Marybeth was the wife of a game warden in the middle of Wyoming who made less than $30,000 a year. But, Missy no doubt felt, it still may not be too late. At least that’s what Joe read into many of the things Missy said and did.
They had discussed all this before, and Marybeth thought Joe was too hard on her mother. Marybeth said that yes, she did sometimes assume the role of daughter when Missy was around, but after all she was Missy’s daughter. Her mother just wanted the best for her, which was what mothers did. And Missy was proud of Joe in a way, Marybeth had said. Joe appeared to be faithful and a good father. Marybeth could have done much worse, Missy felt.
Joe’s mood was sour when Marybeth came into the kitchen. He poured two glasses and handed them to her.
“Cheer up,” Marybeth said. “She’s trying to be pleasant.”
Joe grunted. “I thought I was being the model of propriety.”
“You’re not being very accommodating,” Marybeth said, her eyes flashing. Joe stepped up close to Marybeth, so that what he had to say couldn’t be heard in the next room. He had just been through three of the strangest days of his life, he told her, from finding Ote’s body, to the shoot-out at the outfitters’ camp, the finding of the mutilated bodies, to the barrage of questions afterward, to the hospital. His mind was reeling, and he was beyond tired. The last thing he needed upon finally getting home was Missy Vankeuren. The Missy Vankeuren who at one time resented the hell out of her daughter for having the gall to make her a grandmother, of all things.
Real anger flashed in Marybeth’s face.
“It’s not her fault all of this happened,” Marybeth said. “She’s just here to visit her granddaughters. She had nothing to do with a man dying in our backyard. She has a right to visit me and her granddaughters, who think she’s wonderful.”
“But why does it have to be now?” Joe asked lamely.
“Thomas Joseph Pickett,” Marybeth said sharply, “go to bed. You’re tired and disagreeable, and we can discuss this tomorrow.”
Joe started to say something, then caught himself. Her tone was similar to what he heard when she was mad at the children and used their formal names. It was fortunate she was right because Joe didn’t have the energy for an argument.
Joe entered the living room, and Missy looked up from her magazine. Her eyebrows were arched in an expectant way. Joe found this annoying. She obviously knew there had been words in the kitchen.
“I’m going to bed,” Joe declared. He knew he sounded simple.
“You should do that,” Missy said, purring. “You are probably just dead with all you’ve gone through.”
“Yup.”
“Good night, Joe. Sweet dreams.” Missy dropped her eyes back to her magazine and, with that gesture, dismissed him.
When Marybeth came into the bedroom later, Joe woke up with a start. He had been dreaming he was back in the mountains, back at the elk camp, reliving what had happened. In the aftershock of the shooting, time had become fluid, and Joe had drifted with it, like a raft on a river. The bodies of the outfitters were still in their tent where they had been found. Clyde Lidgard was still wrapped in the folds of the tent. He was moaning. They covered him with blankets. Pink bubbles formed and popped from a hole in his chest as he breathed. Deputy McLanahan was getting violently sick in the bushes from the tension and the release. The stench from the tent drifted to Joe and Wacey when the wind shifted.
In his dream, they were still waiting on the helicopter to arrive. They were all hungry.
“What time is it?” Joe asked.
Marybeth was scrubbing her makeup off in the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom. She was scrubbing hard. She was still mad.
“Midnight,” she said. “Mom and I were visiting. I didn’t realize how late it was getting.”
“Honey, I’m sorry,” Joe said. “I just need sleep.”
“So sleep.”
“I will, if you’ll get me that bottle of pills from the counter.”
Marybeth brought him a glass of water and the bottle of painkillers and returned to the sink. She had stripped to her bra and panties to scrub her face. Joe thought she looked good standing there. She stood on her toes to get her face closer to the mirror, and he admired her legs. Marybeth was not extremely thin, but she was firm and still looked athletic. The only place she looked pregnant was her belly. Marybeth carried her babies high and straight out as if she were already proud of them. She looked perfect as far as Joe was concerned. She could be fun in bed, and Joe suddenly wanted her there.
> “What are you thinking?” she asked, looking at him from the mirror.
“I’m thinking you look pretty good.”
“And . . .” Marybeth said, “aren’t you too tired?”
“And I want you.”
Marybeth stopped scrubbing and turned toward him. “Honey ...” she said, almost pleading and gesturing toward the closed bedroom door.
“She can’t hear us,” Joe replied dryly. “I’ll make a point not to shout.”
Marybeth glared at him. “It’s not that. You know I don’t like to do anything when my mother is in the house.”
Joe knew. They had had this discussion before, many times. But he continued, “Do you think she thinks the kids were conceived by divine intervention?”
“No,” Marybeth said, “but I’m just not comfortable when I know she’s in the house, under the same roof. If I’m not comfortable, how fun can it be?”
Joe conceded the point, as he had conceded the point before.
“Okay,” he said, covering up. “No hard feelings.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m glad you understand. I know it’s irrational, but it’s the case here.”
When she came to bed, he was still awake.
“Do you want to know who came in and saw me last night in the hospital?” Joe asked as she snuggled into him.
“Wacey.”
“Well, him, too,” Joe said. “But after Wacey, Vern Dunnegan came to call.”
He felt her stiffen.
“I really hate hospitals,” Joe said.
“I know you do. What did Vern have to say?”
“He just wished us well and said he thought I had done a good job up there in that camp with Wacey. He said he was proud of his two boys.”
“You’re my boy, not Vern’s,” Marybeth said. Then she cautioned him. “Be careful with that man. I don’t trust him. I never have.”
Joe chuckled at that. The pills were beginning to work. He felt numbing waves slowly wash over him. “He just stayed for a minute, but he said he wanted to meet with me later this week. He said he wanted to talk about my future.”
“What did he mean?” Marybeth asked haltingly.
“He kind of offered me a job with InterWest Resources,” Joe said. “For a lot more money.”
“You’re kidding,” Marybeth said, sitting up and turning to him.
“I’m not,” Joe said, patting her.
“Well, my goodness, Joe,” she said. “My goodness.”
PART THREE
Lists
(c) (1) The Secretary of the Interior shall publish in the Federal Register [, and from time to time he may by regulation revise,] a list of all species determined by him or the Secretary of Commerce to be threatened species and a list of all species determined by him or the Secretary of Commerce to be an endangered species. Each list shall refer to the species contained therein by scientific and common name or names, if any, specify in respect to such species over what portion of its range it is endangered or threatened, and specify any critical habitat within such range. The Secretary shall from time to time revise each list published under the authority of this subsection to reflect recent determinations, designations, and revisions made in accordance with subsections (a) and (b).
—The Endangered Species Act Amendments of 1982
11
The triple funeral for the three dead outfitters was unlike anything Joe Pickett had experienced before. Ote Keeley’s wish that he be buried in his 1989 Ford F-250 XLT Lariat turbo diesel had caused complications with the staff of the Twelve Sleep County Cemetery in that they were required to dig the biggest hole in the ground they had ever dug. The rental of an earthmover was necessary, and the size of the hole created a fifteen-foot mound of fresh soil at the head of the grave. The ceremony had been organized by the widows of Ote Keeley and Kyle Lensegrav (Calvin Mendes was unmarried) and the “unconventional” Reverend B. J. Cobb of the First Alpine Church of Saddlestring.
Joe Pickett stood soberly in his suit, hat, and bandage on a hillside listening to Reverend Cobb give the eulogy as he stood perched on the hood of the pickup. The Keeley and Lensegrav widows and children flanked the crowd and the truck. Behind the families, a blue plastic tarp hid a large pile of something.
It was a beautiful day at the cemetery. A very light breeze rattled the leaves of the cottonwoods, and the sun shone down brilliantly. Dew twinkled in the late fall grass, and the last of the departing morning river mist paused at the treetops.
Although Reverend Cobb’s eulogy covered the short history of the outfitters—boyhood friends who hunted in Mississippi, joined the army together, served the country well in Operation Desert Storm, and relocated to the game-rich mountains and plains of Wyoming—Joe couldn’t stop looking at the massive hole in the ground in front of the pickup and wondering what was under the blue tarp behind the families.
The mourners consisted of a few fellow Alpine Church members and several of the outfitters’ drinking buddies. Joe noticed that there were no other outfitters present, and when he thought about it, he wasn’t that surprised. Keeley, Lensegrav, and Mendes had been drummed out of the Wyoming Outfitters Association for their radical views and tendency to commit obvious game violations.
“They were salt-of-the-earth types,” intoned the Reverend Cobb, a pudgy bachelor with a crew cut, who was known for his survivalist tendencies and small but fervent congregation. “They loved their trucks. They were throw-backs to a time when men lived off of the land and provided for their families by their outdoor skills and cunning. They were prototypes of the first white Americans. They were frontiersmen. They were outdoorsmen. They were sportsmen of the highest caliber. And these boys knew their calibers, all right. They ate elk, not lamb. They ate venison, not pork. They ate wild duck, not chicken ...”
The three mahogany-stained pine caskets were in the bed of the pickup, two side-by-side on the bottom and the third laid across them on top. Joe couldn’t tell which casket contained whom. The weight of the caskets made the four-wheel-drive pickup list to the rear. The Reverend Cobb finally finished up his comments about what the outfitters ate.
Ote Keeley’s wife wasn’t hard to pick out as she was the only pregnant woman there. She was thin and small and severe. Joe guessed that normally she wouldn’t weigh more than 100 pounds. She had short-cropped blond hair and a pinched, hard face. Her mouth was set around an unlit cigarette. She tightly held the hand of a small girl who wanted to go look at the big hole instead of stand there respectfully with her mother. The girl—Joe would later learn that her name was April—was a five-year-old version of her mother but with a sweet, haunting face.
Joe had introduced himself to her before the services began and had said he was sorry about what happened and that he had children, too, with another on the way.
She had glared at him, her eyes narrowing into slits. “Aren’t you the motherfucking prick who wanted to take my Otie’s outfitting license away?” Her Southern accent made the last word sound like “uh-why.”
The little girl didn’t flinch at her language, but Joe did. Joe said he was sorry, that this was probably a bad time, and scuttled back to the loose knot of mourners on the side of the pickup.
The Reverend Cobb ended his eulogy by saying that there were certain sacred items that the families of the deceased wanted their loved ones to have with them in the afterlife. At his cue, Mrs. Keeley and Mrs. Lensegrav peeled back the blue tarp to reveal a large pile of objects.
“Kyle Lensegrav would be lost in heaven ...” the reverend paused until Mrs. Lensegrav turned from the pile with her arms full, “. . . without his Denver Broncos jacket.”
Mrs. Lensegrav approached the pickup and draped the jacket over one of the coffins on the bed of the truck.
“Where Kyle will be, the Denver Broncos will always be predominantly orange and blue, as they were in the seven-ties, eighties, and mid-nineties before they changed into their new hideous uniforms,” thundered the reverend.
Joe wa
tched in fascination as Mrs. Lensegrav placed Kyle’s favorite hunting cap, spotting scope, Leatherman tool bag, meat saw, Gore-Tex boots, and saddle scabbard on the coffin.
Mrs. Keeley was next.
“Not every man has the skill, determination, and acumen to bag a moose that will forever be listed as one of the top five Boone and Crockett-sanctioned trophies of North America!” the reverend said. “But Ote Keeley can make that claim and these massive beauties . . .”
Mrs. Keeley struggled under the weight of the huge moose antlers—rumor had it that Ote had actually shot the animal illegally within Yellowstone Park and sneaked it out—and Joe felt an urge to step forward to help her. He caught himself because he wasn’t sure that she wouldn’t attempt to skewer him. Somehow, she summoned the strength to place the antlers over the top coffin.
“. . . will forever be mounted above Ote’s celestial easy chair.”
There were more items for Ote, including a television, VCR, tanned hides, his HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUT PILE T-shirt. Calvin Mendes was probably shortchanged in the ceremony overall because the only items the women put on his casket were his bound volumes of Hustler magazine and a case of Schmidt’s beer.
Then the Reverend Cobb started up the pickup, eased it into drive, and leaped from the cab. Joe watched, as did the rest of the small crowd and the families, as the Ford inched forward and descended into the massive hole. It settled to the bottom with a solid thump, and no one wanted to look down to see if the caskets had jarred loose and broken open.
Joe wondered, as he walked down the hill through the cemetery, how long the engine of the pickup would keep running and whether or not the cemetery staff would choose to shut it off before they filled up the grave with the earthmover.
12
After the funeral, Joe went to work. It felt good to get out of town and away from the cemetery and go to work. He had packed his lunch that morning in the kitchen and filled a Thermos of coffee. Maxine had been waiting for him in the back of the pickup, her heavy tail thumping the toolbox like a metronome as he approached.