Winterkill Page 15

  Jeannie Keeley turned and opened the door, climbed in, and slammed the door with a bang.

  The man looked vacantly at Marybeth, his face revealing nothing. Then he patted the butt of the pistol without looking at it, turned on his heel, and climbed back behind the wheel. Neither looked over at her as they drove away.

  Marybeth stumbled into the barn and slid the door closed. Her legs were so weak that she collapsed on a bale of hay and sat there, staring at the door handle, replaying the scene in her mind, disbelieving what had just happened.

  A judge, she said. Joe’s experience with Judge Pennock had shown how nonsensical the courts could be in these cases, especially when it came to decisions involving a biological mother.

  She could call the sheriff and report the incident, but she knew it would be her word against theirs, and it would go nowhere. Marybeth had not actually been threatened in any way she could prove. Maybe Joe will have an idea, she thought, and she tried to call him on his cell phone. She cursed out loud when he didn’t pick up. He must have turned it off for some reason. He was due to pick up Sheridan at practice within the hour, and Marybeth would keep trying.

  The mare nickered aggressively and she looked up at her.

  “You’ll get fed,” Marybeth said aloud, her voice weak. “Just give me a minute to think and settle down.”

  After feeding the horses, she slid open the barn door again. She looked at the tracks that the pickup had made, saw the cigarette butt and spent matches that Jeannie Keeley had dropped in the snow. It was almost as if she could see Keeley standing there again, squinting against the smoke, putrid with hate, spewing filthy words. The dirty man stood next to her, his handgun stuck in his pants.

  These two reprobates, these scum, wanted her April with them. The injustice of it filled her with violent passion. Children were not pets, not furniture, not items put on earth to bring pleasure to people who owned them, she raged to herself.

  She clenched her hands into fists and shook them. She threw the now-empty bucket across the barn, where it clattered loudly against the wall and sent the horses scattering back to the outside runs. Her eyes welled hotly with tears that soon ran down her freezing cheeks.

  Seventeen

  Sheridan Pickett stood in the brick alcove of the school and waited for her dad. Her hair was still damp, so she pulled her hood over her head. The basketball tryouts had been held the day before school resumed, and tomorrow she and the other hopefuls would be greeted with a posted list revealing who had made the team.

  It was always strange being at the school when it wasn’t in session, she thought. The sounds they made in the gym echoed louder, and the hallways seemed twice as wide when empty. She had peeked into her locked classroom to see that her teacher had replaced all of the Christmas decorations with self-esteem motivational posters.

  Most of the girls had walked home from school, but that wasn’t an option for Sheridan. So she waited, hoping her hair wouldn’t freeze.

  Sheridan shook her head when she thought about how the tryouts had gone. She doubted that she’d made the team. Although she had hustled—her dad had told her that even if she couldn’t shoot, every team needed players who hustled and played defense—the fact remained that she was a lousy shooter. In the scrimmage, she had gone 0-for-3, and one of her errant shots had bounced straight up off the top of the backboard. Worse, in one scramble after a loose ball, her glasses had been knocked off and gone skittering across the floor. The coach had whistled a time-out to protect them. The time-out called attention to her, and a couple of the girls giggled when Sheridan obviously had trouble locating her glasses, and the coach, because of her poor vision. When play resumed, and she had her glasses back on, she was called for two fouls in a row. She had hacked one of the girls who had giggled before when the girl went up for a layup, and she’d set a moving pick on another.

  The doors wheezed open behind her and the coach, Mr. Tynsdale, who also taught art, came out of the building and locked it up behind him.

  “Do you have a ride?” he asked. She tried to judge from the way he looked at her if he was asking out of sympathy or if he wanted to provide transportation to one of his new players. She couldn’t tell.

  “My dad is supposed to pick me up.”

  Mr. Tynsdale nodded. “He’s the game warden, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, then.” Mr. Tynsdale smiled and walked toward the teacher’s parking lot.

  “Thanks for offering!” Sheridan called after him, wishing she would have thanked him earlier.

  Mr. Tynsdale waved it off. As he started to climb into his car, he gestured toward the main road as if to say, “I think your ride is here.”

  Sheridan started toward the street, then saw that the big late-model SUV that had pulled to the curb was not her dad’s. She stopped as the passenger window descended.

  “Do you know where the Forest Service office is?” a man asked. He was thin, almost skeletal, with a close-cropped pad of curly gray hair. He had a long thin nose and wore silver-framed glasses. His eyes were blue and rheumy.

  The driver was dark, but didn’t look as old as the man who had asked the question. The driver had close-set eyes and a scar that hitched up his upper lip so that it looked like he was snarling.

  “You scared her, Dick,” she heard the driver tell the passenger, not intending for her to hear.

  A slight smile pulled at Dick’s thin lips, but he didn’t acknowledge his partner’s comment.

  “Is this a school for the deaf?” Dick asked.

  The driver chuckled at the other man’s remark. Dick, Sheridan noted, didn’t mind trying to intimidate young girls. Sheridan wasn’t to be intimidated.

  “No, it isn’t,” she answered a bit testily. “This is Saddlestring Elementary. The U.S. Forest Service office is three blocks down and a block to the right.” She pointed down Main Street.

  “You stand there much longer you’re gonna catch a flu,” Dick said dryly. The driver laughed.

  “And if you keep talking to me, I’m going to call the police,” Sheridan snapped, a little surprised that she’d said it.

  “Woo-hoo!” the driver laughed.

  Dick turned to him, then back to Sheridan. The power window began to whir closed.

  “Thanks for your help, you little—” The window sealed tight, and the insult wasn’t heard. But through the glass, Sheridan saw the man say the word “bitch.”

  The vehicle eased away from the curb and continued down the street. Sheridan watched it go. She noticed that the license plates weren’t local. They read: U.S. GOVERNMENT.

  Sheridan stood there for a moment, still shocked that an adult would call her that. It made her feel numb inside.

  Before she could retreat to the alcove, her dad’s green pickup appeared. She was relieved and grateful that he was there, and she ran out to greet him.

  “Who was that?” her dad asked, nodding toward the SUV that was now two blocks away.

  “A couple of men wanted to know where the Forest Service office was,” she said, settling in and pulling the seat belt across her. Maxine’s tail thumped the back of the seat in greeting. “They were jerks.”

  She sat in silence as they drove through town. Both Sheridan and her dad glanced down the street where the Forest Service building was and saw the two men getting out of their SUV. Her dad slowed his truck to a crawl as they drove by. The men wore heavy, high-tech winter clothing that looked brand-new. The man named Dick had a large black duffel bag. The driver was sliding a long metal case out of the hatchback of the SUV.

  “That’s a gun case,” her dad said.

  She looked over to see if he was concerned or not, but couldn’t read his expression.

  “Why are we going this way?” she asked, since their home was in the opposite direction.

  “I wanted to see these guys,” her dad responded. “And I was wondering if you would want to help me check on some birds at a place out by the river.”

  “
Some birds?”

  “Falcons,” her dad said. “I’m doing a guy a favor.”

  Sheridan had never seen a hawk up close, and she’d always wanted to.

  “You bet, Dad,” she said.

  Sheridan noticed, however, that her dad wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were fixed on his rearview mirror, watching the two men enter the Forest Service office.

  “Oh,” her dad said, as they cleared Saddlestring on the highway. “I’m sorry. How did tryouts go?”

  “Bad, I think,” she said.

  “Did you hustle?”

  She smiled. “That’s the one thing I did right.”

  He winked at her. “That’s the most important thing, Sheridan. Even if you’re just hustling inside, and anybody who looks at you just sees calm. Always be aware of what’s going on around you.”

  The wind picked up as they drove west. The fresh snow from the day before mixed with the gritty snow from the first storm and whorled in kaleidoscopic ground blizzards. Snow in Wyoming never stays in one place, Sheridan thought. It just keeps moving and rearranging itself, as if it’s constantly looking for a better place to live. They turned off of the highway and drove several miles down a snow-packed gravel road. Drifts were high and sharp on both sides of the pickup.

  “There it is,” her dad said, pointing through the windshield.

  “Is this the house of the man who’s in jail?” Sheridan asked.

  “Yes, it is. He’s a falconer, and he asked me if I would feed his birds.”

  “Is he a bad man?”

  “He’s accused of murder.”

  Sheridan screwed up her face. “Then why are we helping him?”

  “We’re not,” Joe said. “We’re keeping the birds alive. There’s no reason they should be punished. At least, I hope we’re helping them. I didn’t see them the last time I was out here to feed them.”

  There was a broken-down fence, and beyond that a small stone house and a little building of some kind that had collapsed. It wasn’t much, she thought, although the steep red bluff on the other side of the river was beautiful and vibrant in the last half-hour of sunshine. Her dad drove into the ranch yard close to the house and turned off the truck. Before getting out, he pulled on a pair of leather gloves.

  “It’s cold but it’s not too bad,” he said, opening his door and jumping out. “Nate Romanowski picked a good place here. It’s the only spot in the valley where the wind isn’t blowing.”

  Sheridan patted Maxine and closed the door on her. Sheridan didn’t need to be told that Maxine should stay in the cab of the truck if they were going to try to feed the birds.

  Her dad stood near the front of the truck, looking at the stone house and shaking his head. The house’s front door was flung open, and clothes and furniture had been tossed out. Books lay open and facedown in the snow, their pages swelled with moisture so that they were twice their normal size.

  “It’s been ransacked,” her dad said. “They tore the place apart to find evidence.”

  Sheridan nodded. She thought that maybe her dad was a little ashamed that law enforcement had done this. After all, he was law enforcement, too.

  He picked up a few of the books out of the snow. “The Art of War, Mutiny on the Bounty, Wealth of Nations, Huckleberry Finn,” he said, looking at the spines. Sheridan picked up two from the ground and followed him toward the cabin. Both of the books she had were about falconry.

  Inside, they stacked the books on a counter before looking around. It was a mess. Cupboard doors hung open, drawers sagged. Their contents littered the floor. The mattress in the bedroom had been sliced open, its innards of cotton and spring exposed. Even sections of the interior walls had been smashed open.

  Sheridan watched as her dad went back outside and brought the furniture back in. Most of the pieces—clearly not all that great to begin with—were damaged. “The least we can do is get this stuff out of the weather,” he said. It took her dad eight trips to get everything back inside. She helped as much as she could. One thing she could not stop staring at was a framed photo with cracked glass. The photo was faded, but it was of four men standing shoulder to shoulder in the desert. The men wore white robes, and behind them was a camel. Three of the men looked like Arabs, with dark features and beards. The fourth man was fair, with piercing eyes and a slight smile.

  Her dad saw her looking at the picture and picked it up.

  “That’s Nate Romanowski, by God,” he said, pointing at the fourth man. Her dad sounded surprised. He nodded at the picture, and pursed his lips as if reaffirming something.

  “What is it?” She asked.

  “Nothing,” her dad answered, but in a way that she knew meant he didn’t want to talk about it.

  They went outside, and her dad closed the door behind them. Then he scanned the sky.

  “There’s one of them,” he said, pointing toward the river. She followed his sight line, and there it was, all right.

  “That’s a red-tailed hawk,” he said. “He’s immature, not older than a year. You can tell because he’s still got a brown tail and a speckled dirty breast.”

  She looked to her dad, and he smiled. “Go ahead and walk up to him, but give him plenty of space. He needs sort of a cushion between you and him, or he’ll get nervous. I’ll go get some of their food and be with you in a minute.”

  The hawk stood on a piece of driftwood near the river. He stood so still that she thought it would be possible to miss him if they hadn’t been looking for him. His eyes were on her as she approached.

  Her first impression of the bird was that it was smaller than she would have guessed it would be. Still and compact, not revealing his wingspan, the hawk looked to be about the size of a large raven. But unlike a raven, the hawk had a sense of majesty about it, she thought. The bird’s head was cocked back slightly, as if looking down on her. Its coloring was finely textured, a beige breast and mottled, bay-colored wings. His large, wrinkled talons gripped the driftwood, and she could see shiny black and curled nails.

  From behind, she heard her dad approach. The hawk was now watching him instead of her. She found out why when he approached the bird and lowered a dead sage grouse on the ground in front of it.

  The hawk looked at the grouse, looked at Sheridan, looked at her dad. Its movements were precise, almost mechanical.

  Then, with a slight shuffle of his wings, he hopped down from the driftwood to the grouse and began to eat.

  “This is kind of . . . gross, honey,” her dad cautioned.

  But she was fascinated. She watched the hawk methodically take apart and consume the entire sage grouse. As he ate, a lump above his breast got bigger and bigger.

  “That’s called his crop,” her dad explained. “It fills as he eats. The food is stored there for later. That’s one of the reasons these birds can go so long between meals.”

  She noticed now that blood flecked the hawk’s sharp beak, and that bits of down from the grouse floated through the evening air. She watched the hawk carefully. Although its eyes were hard and impassive, she sensed a kind of comfort in him now. He was full, and relaxed.

  “This bird is somebody’s pet?” she asked.

  “It’s not like that,” her dad said. “Good falconers don’t break the birds, or domesticate them. They work with them, like partners. The birds can fly away any time they choose to leave.”

  All that was left of the sage grouse was a pair of clawed feet. Sheridan watched as the hawk dipped down and took one of the feet in his mouth and started eating it. The crunching sound reminded her of when she opened peanuts to eat them.

  “Here comes the peregrine,” her dad whispered.

  She looked up and saw it, an airborne “V” cruising upriver like a missile, a few feet from the surface of the water and ice. She could hear it cutting through the air with a hiss as it went by.

  “Stay still,” her dad said, putting his hand on her shoulder. “I think he’ll come back.”

  “Do you have another sage g
rouse?” she asked, concerned.

  “Yup.”

  It took a few moments before the peregrine reappeared. This time, it was flying downriver, and a little closer to the bank.

  “What a beautiful bird,” Sheridan said.

  “Peregrines are the ultimate hunters,” her dad said. “They’re not the biggest falcons, but they’re the fastest and the most versatile. They used to be endangered, but now there are lots of them.”

  She was entranced.

  And when the peregrine came back, flared, and lit with a graceful settling of his wings just a few feet away from them, she felt as if something wild, and magical, had happened.

  Her dad lowered the other grouse to the ground in front of the peregrine. The little bird, darker and somehow more cocky and warlike than the red-tailed hawk, gracefully tore into it.

  “I think I’d rather learn about these falcons than play basketball,” she heard herself say.

  In the pickup, as they drove from Nate Romanowski’s place in the pre-dark of winter, Sheridan realized just how cold she was. Her teeth chattered as she waited for the heater to warm up. Seeing the falcons had made her forget about the cold, forget about how late it was getting.

  She noticed that her dad’s cell phone, clipped to the dashboard, was turned off, and she mentioned it.

  “I forgot about that, damn it,” he said, turning it on. Her dad rarely cursed.

  Almost immediately, it rang and he grabbed it quickly. She watched him. His expression seemed to sag, then harden, as he listened.

  “I can’t believe she said that.”

  “Is it Mom?” Sheridan asked. But she knew it was.

  “I’ll be home in half an hour, darling. I’m so sorry this happened. And I’m sorry you couldn’t reach me.”

  Sheridan was concerned. His voice was low, and calm, and very serious. But she knew that inside, he was hustling.

  Eighteen

  The next morning dawned gray and cold, and there was a bulletin on the radio that said a stockman’s advisory had been issued for Northern Wyoming. For their first day back to school, the girls were dressed in clothes they had received for Christmas. Because the girls had become used to sleeping later in the morning over the break, Joe and Marybeth had trouble moving them along so they would be finished with breakfast and ready to go when the bus arrived.