He felt eerily in slow-motion, aware of very little but a roaring in his ears and the oddly black red of the road.
“Hang on, Wade!” he cried as on both sides the jeep screeched metal to metal against the trailer and the guard rail, gouging it its entire length as it plowed through, slowed but still sliding, until, several hundred yards on, he was able to wrestle it to a stop.
Despite the din, Joe hearing a far off siren’s wail in the distance.
Joe, Wade fast behind, running back toward the wreck, slipping on the red snow—red for being thick with the steaming blood spilling out from steers severed by the shards of the rent steel rails of the trailer, loud bellering steers still alive but pinned in.
The wheels on the upended side of the trailer lazily revolving, some one way, some the other. Steers thrown free shaking in the burrow pit; those still alive inside scrambling over one another, jamming pink nosed white snouts through the rails, snorting vaporous panicked breath.
A man weaving toward them, the driver, dragging a bum leg, his unshaven face embedded with loopy eyes, the reek of alcohol.
“Jesus, Harlo,” Joe cried, “What happened here?”
“Hell if I know. Guess snow grabbed the wheels or somethin.”
“Are you alright?”
Harlo swayed on his feet, a stupid smile on his face. “I been better, but I called in on the truck’s radio. Law’s gonna be along soon enough, so go on ahead, you don’t got to stick around.”
In fact the law arrived just then, the siren preceding Sheriff McComb’s pickup as it came around the bend below, flashers throwing harsh blue across the snow as it pulled to a stop. McComb heaved out from the driver’s side; his deputy, Jack Duffy, from the passenger’s side.
“Shit almighty!”
Duffy appraising the situation, stomping muck from his boots. “Tyler’s gonna shit gold nuggets when he hears about this.”
Harlo staggered to him. “Yeah and he’ll be burnin then, ‘cause he’s a golden flamin asshole anyway.”
McComb shook his head. “Duffy, give a call for Ewing to bring up his tow truck. I’ll deal with Harlo.”
Duffy turned to Joe. “This is serious, I’m tellin you, Meeks. Way people’re feelin these days, they’re sure as hell goin to blame this on you, I hope you know.”
Joe was incredulous. “Blame what on me?”
“Folks here’ve always thought good of Harlo, and they’re goin to say that if you’d never showed up, this here wouldn’t’ve happened. They know Harlo ain’t ever goin to take anything serious long as he thinks that ranch might be around. That’s what they’ll say; I know em too well.”
Duffy got in the pickup to call in; McComb pulled Joe aside.
“Look, son, till I get Tyler calmed down, best thing is if you get Harlo on into town and sober him up quick. Take him to the Grand; Marly’ll look after him.”
“He’s free to go?”
“He ain’t never gonna work around here again; that ain’t enough for you?”
McComb stomped off, drawing his revolver, beginning the triage of putting down the steers who’d never make it.
WADE BETWEEN JOE and Harlo down to Meagher. Joe stone-faced, Harlo chatty.
“Yeah, that’s it for me. Tomorrow I was s’posed to start drivin regular out of Billings, now even that’s fucked up royal, ain’t it?” He swirled his head around to Joe, then out the window. “Fuck em all anyways, should’a knew better than to hire me anyhow.” His head swinging back then down to Wade. “See, kid, us Meeks just ain’t cut out for the regular world.”
Whereupon, Harlo, all yakked out, slept all the way to the Grand. He roused once the engine shut off.
“What the hell’ve you got the long face about, Joseph?”
The sky had cleared; sunlight glistened on the warming slushy street.
“Had a funny dream last night,” Joe finally said.
“Well good for fuckin you, eh?”
“What about?” Wade asked.
“I was by a ditch, some irrigation ditch. It was brimming with water, real fast moving water . . .”
Harlo laughed. “That ain’t much of a dream.”
“Except that the water was running uphill.”
“Yeah, that’ll be the day.”
Harlo opened his door and got out. “C’mon kid. Buy you a drink.”
As Harlo limped off into the Mint, Joe sighed.
“What’s wrong, Joe?”
“That does it, Wade. I’m going to find Evan.”
“What for?”
“It’s time to be done with this ranch mess once and for all. Look at Harlo. Evan’s been right all along; I’m goin to screw everyone up, just like I always do. What more has to happen until I figure that out. I’m sorry, Wade, but it’s got to be done.”
Wade turned away.
“Now Wade, you knew this would happen.”
Joe got no response. He sat, watching the snow melt. Marly’s face appeared in the window of the Mint, looking at them, then was gone again. Joe looked at the clearing sky.
“That dream was so damn real; it’s just like I feel all the time.”
“What do you mean? Like what?”
Joe turned his door handle.
“Like I’m always trying to swim upstream.”
THE AIR BREEZY; the sun warm. Anne on the tailgate of her pickup, singing under her breath, swinging her feet, bootlaces flapping. Lazy excited, waiting for Norman to start the boys on the slope taping and get back down to work with her. Seeing a glint down valley, which became the jouncing daylight star of reflected sun off the windshield of a jeep—silver—grinding its way up the mining road, she fingered her bangs, aware of that same sun reflecting off the windshield of her face as well. And wondering. . .could Joe see her light, like she could see his?
It didn’t matter to her why he was coming, it mattered to her only that it was still more to feel good about.
Dreamy alert, she waited for his jeep to turn off into the sea of mountain grass and sail her way. Which became the day’s first bad turn, when his jeep did not turn, rather it continued bucking straight up the rutted road toward Independence Basin instead of toward her.
The second came half an hour later, when two four-wheel drives drove up and did turn her way, their thick tires knocking aside juniper shrubs and crushing the tall grasses as they cruised up alongside Norman’s van. They stopped, quivering on their torsion bars. Inside tinted windows she could make out several figures.
Then, off the other way, she saw Norman’s shock of white hair emerging from the timber. He clearly didn’t know what to make of the new arrivals either, and tucking a clutch of maps under his arm, changed course to go greet them. As he approached, a team of men got out, all in new work clothes, and idly clustered together while one of them, a small size stump of a man in small size stumpy overalls and thick stumpy glasses, walked to intercept Norman. The two spoke, briefly, then the stumpy man returned to his team. Norman remained, strangely inert, arms at his side, the maps falling to the ground out from under them.
Anne’s boots had hardly stopped swinging and she was running to him, demanding to know who they were, why were they here, what was going on, clearly aware that something was going on. He bent down to pick up the maps, ignoring her, telling her instead to go get the boys and bring them back down.
“What for?” Anne cried.
Norman pointed to the men from the two trucks.
“Because that there’s the new survey team.”
Anne looked at them, back at him, back at them, not getting it, whatever it was.
“Go on, Anne, call in the boys. We’ve been called off the job.”
“But. . .what do you mean, off the job? What happened? I don’t. . .”
“Can’t give you an answer on that till I have one myself. C’mon now, pack it up. All of it.”
The Roscoe boys whooped when they heard; dismissal, sudden or not, expected or unexpected, meant back to town, back to sleep, to sleep till no
on, or even beyond. They were on their way the moment they were told. Anne, however, sat in her pickup, stunned with disbelief. Only once the new crew took the field did she start it up and drive off, not even knowing to where. She drove just to the turnout, and then stopped again, and sat again, unable to turn the wheel onto the road down to town. She looked at her feet, her unlaced boots. She looked at her watch; not even the 9:15 break yet. Her day—her last day?—hadn’t even begun, and her job—over and done with? Just like that? She gripped the wheel. She looked left, right, then tore out in a flourish of spinning tires, not left toward home, but right, up toward Independence Basin.
JOE HEARD IT long before he saw it, sounding like a bushwhacking growling motor bear smashing through low hanging boughs, clambering over exposed blocks of shale, plowing through streams of runoff gushing out of the pine-softened crags that shadowed the last of yesterday’s resilient snow, knowing it was Anne’s red pickup well before it bounced across the boulder talus into the basin. He watched it shoot past the lakeside hunting cabin into the coulee up to where he himself had just parked, a few hundred feet below where he now sat, where he had come to be alone, to think, to figure things out. He watched Anne park and get out and scan the ridges in all directions, then began the scramble up the slope he himself had only just climbed, her calls drowned by the clatter of scree knocked loose as she climbed.
“Joe? I know you’re there. Answer me, damn you!”
Knowing this couldn’t be good, wishing he could wish her away, he nonetheless stood so she could see him.
“How’s a person s’posed to get up there if she ain’t a bighorn?” Anne yelled.
Joe pointed toward a crevasse an up an erosion-sculpted precipitous chute that led up to the outcrop to the impromptu aerie he had taken. Breathless and so wordless when she finally reached him, he waited while she caught her breath, patiently watching the shimmer of the distant ridges of the Absarokas receding to hazy sunlight, and the layering of their canyons surging like dark slow waves.
“God am I. . .I. . .”
Too winded to finish, Anne breathed deep then burst out in tears.
And cried and kept crying and cried some more, and, enraged that she couldn’t quit what she hadn’t intended in the first place, cried even more. She gulped and choked and held her breath and still couldn’t stop. Flung off her jacket. Swore and stomped the ground. Buried her face in her forearms. Nothing helped. She slumped down on her knees in the muddy remaining snow. Gradually the sobbing abated, the tempo of her heaving shoulders slowed.
No idea why she was so upset, astonished that a person could cry like that, Joe had knelt beside her and did. . .not much more. Since there was not much more he could do. When she had about stopped, she raised her head, started to explain, then all at once threw her face into his shoulder and began all over again.
Still at a loss, Joe—tentatively—touched her hair.
“I guess just try an’. . .maybe take a deep breath or two?”
Nothing better to say came to him.
Ultimately she sighed, rolled up sitting on her ankles, pushed back her strewn hair, swiped the matte of dirt and pine needles from her face, and so revealed her eyes, watery red, and her cheeks, doughy white.
Noticing her laces loose, Joe pulled one boot off then the other as she listlessly helplessly lifted her legs, one then the other, each boot a full pot of soil and scree, her socks a chiaroscuro of bleached white at the top, dirt black below. His hands, now each holding a naked foot, with a will of their own began to rub the instep of one then the other, sensing that doing so was releasing and freeing all her pent up dispirited gloom into the high altitude ethers of scrub pine forest. Quieting both the giver as well as the receiver.
Then for a time they sat, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, until Anne pulled the wet hair out of her mouth and settled her florid teary face into his neck.
“Joe?”
Her voice-breath like warm oil, her wet lashes flicking his cheek, Joe dreamishly let the fullness of his name, tuned by her voice, resonate in his head. Let the volume of her diaphanous blond hair occlude his eyes—familiar hair, thick, strawberry blond hair, not red, like Marly’s, but yet. . .
Suddenly he turned away, dropped his head into his hands.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothin. My neck, it’s a little sore.”
“Then how come you’re rubbin your forehead?”
Joe didn’t explain.
“Here.”
Anne spread her fingers over his forehead and pressed them into his head, his temples, then down to the base of his skull to the ropey tendons of his shoulders.
“That help any?”
Her touch radiating the heat of her palms, Joe nodded, which encouraged her to encircle his chest in her arms, and soon he was thinking of Marly. . .how sometimes she held him from behind, taking his hands in hers and pressing them all, hers and his, against his romping heart, how one of the hands, his, would break away and reach up behind him to touch her face, and how his fingers would find her mouth and somehow—who knew how?—they would lead his own mouth around to that same mouth and kiss the glossy lower lip, kiss it just barely. . .how his elation made his heart wallop into his ribs, his thighs jerk, his musculature go rigid in every root and limb, his eyes glaze. . .
He had shut his eyes, and when he then opened them, he was surprised to find Anne facing him. Averting them quickly, they fell and saw the rise and fall of a young woman’s bosom, filling up the fabric of a work-shirt damp from tears, a breathing living chest lifting then subsiding—the closeness of it primed a carnal pump in him, a pump of desire so badly wanting what it wanted that the primal power of it ripped from his lungs any capacity for air they had left, and he was panting, feeling like a man who can’t help but stop a lifelong denial of wanting what he wants and begin wanting what he wants like he never wanted it before. And filled with all this unwanted wanting, he couldn’t breathe, and so struggled and wobbled up on his feet for air.
Anne also stood, slowly, brushing herself, pulling her wet shirt from where it was sticking to her skin.
“I got fired today,” she announced, finally able to get off her chest what was so much on her mind.
“Oh you did? Meanin what?”
Anne visibly flared, silent, angry, defeated. “Meanin what? Meaning fired.”
Joe now appreciating the seriousness in her but still not getting it.
“Fired? You mean, like, let go?”
She doubled up in her shoulders, as though to burst out in tears, but with nothing left in her, she couldn’t.
“But that can’t be. Fired? How could Norman. . .he liked you, you were doin so well.”
“It wasn’t Norman. He got let go himself. The whole team got replaced.”
“What for?” Joe paled. “Not for those loony ideas I had about that bein a better dam site?”
“I donno, Joe. I don’t know anything.”
She rose and stepped to the edge of the outcrop.
“What the hell. It was bound to happen. Mom was right, I never should’a got such fancy big ideas.”
She gave an awful sigh and folded her arms around her.
“It’s just that I. . .” she said, “I. . .”
And she choked.
Joe came to her side. His eyes took in the long dizzying drop from the precipice to down below, and he teetered until Anne leaned into him, nudging his arm so it came around her waist. And there they stood, at the height of all the rampant geology of Independence Basin, and the worked-over worn-out beautiful terrible landslide that had collapsed onto it, the magnitude of which Joe had hoped would shake off the crush of doubt and second thoughts and back and forth waffling, of his mind berating him, What are you doing? So as to somehow escape his always always always finding the something, whatever it was, that was wrong with everything.
Anne stretched her arms.
“Goddamn. You know? Who’d ever think such a pretty little stream in such a sunlit
valley would empty down to such a miserable little cowshit town?”
Joe absently nodded; he no longer had an opinion one way or the other left in him.
“Do you ever wonder, though? About, what if you’d never left. Never got out?”
“Worse’n that. What I wonder is, what if, after all these years of believing one thing I did do right was get away, then I come back, only to find out that, no, I didn’t, I never did get out.”
“Don’t tell me that, Joe. God. That’s so. . .”
Doe elk grazing in the grassy ledge below, two young bucks fencing with antlers, the herd of them not fifty yards off yet not able to scent—because of updraft—the danger above, the humans. Joe picked up a rock and threw it down into the timber beyond them. As it clattered to the ground, coarse haired necks rose, rutilant heads stiffened, tall ears flicked back and forth, all sensing danger.
“Look at em,” Joe said, watching the deer, picking up another rock. “Don’t know whether to bolt or not. Just like us: you never know for sure.”
“Know what?”
“Know anything. Nobody ever knows anything for sure.”
A light wind rustled the tops of the jack pine below, which flickered the noon angles of shade, now hiding, now revealing the elk.
“You know, Anne? Just once, just one time in my life, I’d like to be right about something. Even only the once, I’d like to know what that’s like.”
He threw the second rock. It hit, and the shady grassy ledge erupted with elk instantly bolting into the trees and down out of sight.
THEY, JOE AND Anne, descended down the cragged crevasse, out of the weathered remnants of landslide to the shore of the sun-dappled lake it had created, over which now and then, as they edged around to the cabin, a breeze ghosted through the blanched dead white tips of the trees that it had so terribly drowned.
As they approached, Anne took Joe’s hand and pulled him.
“C’mon.”
Joe’s hand reared almost from her grasp.
“What?”
“Just come on.”
She jerked him harder, and led him up the draw to the hot springs.
“This time you’re gettin all the way in. And no clothes allowed.”
The languid billow of steam mirroring the water’s surface, an invitation too compelling to resist, Joe removed the boots from his aching feet, while Anne pulled a fistful of his shirttail, rolled it up the sweaty lace of his ribs, and off over his head, airing his shoulders, his bony sternum, the oval of rust colored stomach hair to full sunlight. He stopped her when she went to ungird his pants, which, no, he would do, and did, dropping them, and—what the hell—waded in naked of all but the long shadow of his maleness. He submerged to his neck; the water’s heat made his lungs bellow a low long-lasting OOOOO! His feet sighed relief; his calves thighs elbows fingers neck spine hair eyes spread away from him in a simmering loss of self.