Shots Fired: Stories From Joe Pickett Country Page 6

  Ezra spit the gob onto the grate and said, “Lookit that thang burn. Jim, come lookit this thang.”

  Jim threw his covers aside, sat up, said through gritted teeth, “I’m leaving. I’ll be back come spring.”

  Ezra stroked his beard and squinted at Jim. “How you going to cover two hundred miles in the snow to get to Fort Bridger?”

  Jim gathered and tied up his ropes as a backpack and filled a leather sack with half the pemmican. He grabbed his possibles sack from a peg and stuffed it with half their powder and lead.

  “Take more if you want,” Ezra said.

  “This is fine. I’ll manage.” Jim couldn’t even look at Ezra. He couldn’t look at his rheumy eyes or filthy union suit or scraggly beard because he knew if he did he’d kill the man right there. Gut him, and toss the carcass outside for the grizzlies.

  “The only way down is through the Pawnee winter camp,” Ezra said. “They might not like that.”

  “Ezra,” Jim said, hands shaking, “get out of my way.”

  “You want breakfast first?”

  “Ezra, get out of my way.”

  “Just because I spit in the fire?”

  “That and every other damned thing.”

  Ezra stepped back as if slapped.

  As Jim pulled on his buffalo coat and clamped his red fox hat over his head, he heard Ezra say to his back, “God be with you in your travels, Jim. I’m going to miss you, my friend. We had some mighty great years together.”

  Jim plunged outside with his eyes stinging. He convinced himself it was due to the blowing needles of snow in his face.

  Through the howling wind he thought he heard Ezra’s voice, and he turned.

  The wind whipped Ezra’s words away, but Jim could read his lips. Ezra said, “We’re victims of our . . .”

  Jim ignored the rest.

  • • •

  THE PAWNEE WINTER CAMP was massive, stretching the length and width of the river valley. There were lodges as far as Jim could see on both banks of the frozen river. Smoke hung low over the lodges, beaten down by the cold. Hundreds of ponies milled in corrals and Jim could hear packs of dogs yelp and bark. Because of the snow and cold he rarely saw a Pawnee venture outside their tipis and when they did it was a quick trip, either to get more wood, water from a chopped square in the ice, or to defecate in the skeletal buck brush.

  From where he hunkered down in the deep powder snow on the top of a hillock, Jim tried to plot a way he could avoid the encampment and continue his trek. It had been four days and he’d eaten nothing but pemmican—meat, fat, and berries mushed together into frozen patties—and he was practically out of food. He’d found no game since he left the cabin, not even a snowshoe hare. He’d tried to eat the skin-like underbark of cottonwood and mountain ash trees like elk did, but the taste was acrid and it gave him no energy. A cold breeze from the valley floor brought whiffs of broiled meat, puppy probably, and his mouth salivated and his stomach growled.

  He knew from his years in the mountains he was a few days away from death. He had no horse, no food, and he hadn’t been able to feel his toes for twenty-four hours.

  And he cursed Ezra once again and thought of going back. But he knew if he did, Ezra would have to die, because he couldn’t spend another minute in the man’s presence. Ezra had always been just a hair over the line into civilization and it hadn’t taken him long to slip back and become an animal again. A filthy pig. Jim wondered why he hadn’t seen it before, how close Ezra was to comfortable savagery. He imagined Ezra back in the cabin, eating his own leg.

  It would be nightfall soon. The winter camp would go to sleep. If he could find their cache of meat, and steal a horse . . .

  • • •

  IT TOOK A LONG TIME to get back to the cabin. Jim didn’t know for sure how many days and nights, but he guessed it was over a week. Most of the time, his head had been elsewhere, for hours at a time, and he sang and chanted and cursed the world and God and those Pawnees who had filled him full of arrows and murdered him for sure.

  He lurched from tree to tree on columns of frozen rock that had once been his legs and he peered out at the pure white of the sky and the ground through his left eye because his right was blind. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his rifle and his possibles sack. He thought his knives were still in their sheaths under his buffalo coat, but he couldn’t be sure and he didn’t look.

  Jim scooped up snow and ate it as if it were food and it kept his tongue from swelling and cracking. He’d fallen on a snowshoe hare that was still warm from being killed by a bobcat and he pulled what was left of it apart and ate it raw.

  He thanked God it hadn’t snowed hard since he’d left, because he could follow his own trail back most of the way.

  And he thanked Ezra when at last he smelled woodsmoke and meat cooking and there was the cabin, and the fur shack, and the corrals.

  Jim wept as he approached the front door and pounded on it.

  “Who is it?” Ezra asked from inside.

  Jim couldn’t speak. He sunk to his knees and thumped the door with the crown of his head.

  The door opened and Jim fell inside. For the first time since he’d left, he felt warmth on his face.

  And Ezra said, “You don’t look so good, Jim.”

  • • •

  THROUGH THE VIOLENT, roaring, excruciating pain that came from his frostbitten skin thawing out, Jim had crazy dreams. He dreamed Ezra had shaved, bathed, and put on clean clothes. He dreamed Ezra had re-chinked the logs and fireplace until they were tight with mud and straw and had emptied his chamber pot, swept the floor, and put the cabin in order. He dreamed Ezra awakened without hacking or spitting or even talking.

  He thought, I’m in heaven.

  But he wasn’t.

  Jim painfully rolled his head to the side. Ezra was sitting at the table, finishing his lunch of roast Emily. Ezra’s face was shaved smooth and freshly scrubbed. His movements were spry and purposeful. His eyes were clear and blue.

  Ezra said, “I didn’t think you’d come back. I thought you’d make it to Fort Bridger because you’re just so goddamned stubborn.”

  Jim couldn’t speak. The pain came in crippling waves.

  “I got the arrows out, but your flesh is rotten, Jim,” Ezra said. “You know what that means.”

  Jim knew. He closed his eyes. The pain reached a crescendo and suddenly stopped. Just stopped.

  Ezra’s voice rose and was filled with emotion. “You ain’t exactly the easiest man to live with, neither,” he said.

  And with that, Jim died, a victim of his success.

  In the midnight forests of the Bighorn Mountains, below timberline, all movement and sound ceased with the approaching roar. Elk quit grazing and raised their heads. Squirrels stopped chattering. The increasing roar caused the ground to tremble. And suddenly the stars blacked out as the huge aircraft skirted over the mountaintops, landing lights blazing, landing gear descending, the howl of jet engines pounding downward through the branches into the earth itself. The tiny town of Saddlestring, Wyoming, was laid out before the nose of the plane like a dropped jewelry box, lights winking in the night against black felt, the lighted runway just long enough for a plane this size to land on, but just barely.

  • • •

  THE NEXT MORNING, Nate Romanowski slipped out of Alisha Whiteplume’s quilt-covered bed on the Wind River Indian Reservation, pulled on a loose pair of shorts, and searched through the cupboards of her small kitchen for coffee. He tried not to wake her. There were cans of refried beans and jars of picante sauce, home-canned trout in Mason jars, but no coffee except instant.

  As two mugs of water heated in the microwave, he opened the kitchen blinds. Dawn. Early fall. Dew and fallen leaves on the grass, dried into fists. A skinned-out antelope buck hung to cool from the basketball hoop over the garage.


  Nate was tall, rangy, with sharp features and a deliberate, liquid way of moving. His expression was impassive, but his pale blue eyes flicked about from the hollows of his sockets like the tongue of a snake. Sometimes they fixed on an object and forgot to blink. Alisha said he had the eyes of a hunter.

  “What are you doing out there?” she said from the dark of the bedroom.

  “Heating water for coffee. Want anything in it?”

  “Not instant. There’s a can of coffee under the sink in the bathroom.”

  Nate started to ask why she kept coffee in the bathroom, but didn’t.

  “Bobby has been coming over in the morning and stealing it,” she said in explanation. Bobby was Alisha’s brother, known to Nate as Bad Bob. “I hid it so he has to go steal it from someone else.”

  Nate found a five-pound can of Folgers under the sink, and set about making a pot.

  While it dripped and the aroma filled the kitchen, she came out of the bedroom wrapped in a blanket so long it brushed the floor. He glimpsed her thin brown feet and painted nails, and looked up to see her naked shoulder, a valentine-shaped face, bed-mussed black hair. Her eyes were obsidian pebbles perched over her cheekbones. He had yet to tire of simply looking at her.

  “Did you hear that big plane last night?” she asked.

  “I heard a roar. I thought it was me.”

  She smiled. “You did roar, but earlier. You were sleeping when the plane came over us. It seemed really low. I felt you tense up when it came over, like you were going to jump out of bed and grab a gun.”

  Nate didn’t respond. She padded over and put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Do you know who is in the plane?”

  He shrugged and said, “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Are you going to say?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “You drive me crazy,” she said.

  “You drive me wild,” he said, putting his own hand over hers.

  “I’ve got to take a shower,” she said, slipping from his touch and reaching out to hook a strand of his long hair over his ear. He liked the intimate familiarity of the gesture. “I’ve got to get to school by seven-thirty. Playground duty.”

  “I’ll bring you a cup of coffee when it’s done.”

  “That would be nice,” she said, and left.

  Alisha taught third grade and coached in the high school. She had a master’s degree in electrical engineering and a minor in American history and had married a white golf pro she met in college. After working in Denver for six years and watching her marriage fade away as the golf pro toured and strayed, she divorced him and returned to the reservation to teach, saying she felt an obligation to give something back. Nate met her while he was scouting for a lek of sage chickens for his birds to hunt. When he first saw her she was on a long walk by herself through the knee-high sagebrush in the breaklands. She walked with purpose, talking to herself and gesticulating in the air with her hands. She had no idea he was there. When he drove up she looked directly at him with surprise. Realizing how far she had come from the res, she asked him for a ride back to her house. He invited her to climb into his Jeep, and while he drove her home, she told him she liked the idea of being back but was having trouble with reentry.

  “How can you find balance in a place where the same boys who participate in a sun dance in which they seek a vision and pierce themselves are also obsessed with Grand Theft Auto and Call of Duty: Black Ops?” she asked. Nate had no answer to that.

  She said her struggle was made worse when her brother Bob intimated that he always knew she would come back, since everybody did when they found out they couldn’t hack it on the outside. She told Nate that during the walk she had been arguing with herself about returning, weighing the frustration of day-to-day life on the reservation and dealing with Bobby against her desire to teach the children of her friends, relatives, and tribal members. Later, Nate showed her his birds and invited her on a hunt. She went along and said she appreciated the combination of grace and savagery of falconry, and saw the same elements in him. He took it as a compliment. They went back to her house that night. That was three months ago. Now he spent at least two nights a week there.

  Nate was tying his hair back into a ponytail with a rubber band when Bad Bob Whiteplume entered the kitchen from outside without knocking. Bad Bob was halfway across the kitchen before he saw Nate in the doorway.

  “I smelled coffee,” Bad Bob said, squinting at Nate and looking him up and down. “You’re here again, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Boinking my sister?”

  “Say that again and we’ll have to fight.”

  Bad Bob was shaped like a barrel and had a face as round as a hubcap. His hair was black and it glistened from the gel he used to slick the sides down and spike the top. He was wearing buckskins with a beaded front and Nike high-tops. Bob owned Bad Bob’s Native American Outlet convenience store at the junction, which sold gasoline, food, and inauthentic Indian trinkets to tourists. He also rented DVDs and computer games to boys on the reservation. The back room was where the men without jobs gathered to talk and loiter and Bob held court.

  Smiling and holding his hands palms up, Bob said, “Okay, I won’t say it again. But your scalp would look good hanging from my lance.”

  “Why are you talking like an Indian?”

  “I am an Indian, Kemo Sabe.”

  “Nah,” Nate said. “Not really.”

  Bob poured himself a cup of coffee and sipped it, looking over the rim at Nate. “You haven’t commented on my garb.”

  “I was waiting for you to bring it up.”

  “Ten of us are in a television commercial,” Bob said. “They’re shooting it up on the rim. The new Jeep Cherokee, I think.”

  Nate took a moment to say, “I guess they don’t build a Northern Arapaho.”

  “No,” Bob said, grinning, thrusting out his jaw. He was missing every other bottom tooth, so his smile reminded Nate of a jack-o’-lantern. “I’ll suggest that to them, though. You should see the director. He’s from L.A. He’s scared of us.”

  “Must be the Nikes.”

  Bob laughed, the sound filling the room. “We told him we wouldn’t do it unless they increased our talent fee from five hundred a day to seven-fifty. We scowled. He caved.”

  “Congratulations.”

  From the bathroom, Alisha called out, “Is that Bobby?”

  “Good coffee!” Bob yelled back.

  “Bobby, I need my television back! You’ve had it for a week!”

  Nate looked at Bob.

  “Mine went out,” Bob explained. “We needed to watch the poker tournament.”

  Bob drained his cup and refilled it. While doing so, he saw the digital clock on the microwave. “Shit, I need to get going. They wanted to shoot with the sun at a certain angle. The director loves dawn light.”

  Nate said, “Who doesn’t?”

  “If we miss the dawn light, we just sit around until dusk and smoke cigarettes and shoot then,” Bob said. “It’s a good job.”

  “That’s what counts,” Nate said.

  “Hey, did you hear that plane last night?” Bob asked, backing out the door so he wouldn’t spill his coffee. He was taking the mug with him.

  “No.”

  “I heard there’s a big-assed jet sitting at the airport,” Bob said. “Some kind of foreign writing on the fuselage.”

  With that, Bob left.

  To himself, Nate said, Damn.

  • • •

  NATE ROMANOWSKI lived in a small stone house on the bank of the Twelve Sleep River, in the shadows of hundred-year-old cottonwoods and a high, steep bluff across the water. As he crested the long rise from the east, his place was laid out in front of him—house, round pen, sagging mews where he kept his birds—and he could tell instinctively that someo
ne had been there.

  Pulling off the two-track, he climbed out of his Jeep and walked back over to the road. Three sets of fresh tire imprints cut the night crust of the dirt where a vehicle had gone in and out and back again to his home. The tracks were wide—an SUV or a pickup. The tread was sharp, indicating new tires or a brand-new vehicle. Then he saw what had triggered his suspicion in the first place: the mews door was slightly open. Meaning his falcons had been disturbed or were gone. Which meant somebody was going to get hurt.

  He stood and squinted, determining whoever had come onto his place had parked their vehicle on the side away from his house so it couldn’t be seen from the road. And that they were waiting for him.

  Slipping his .454 Casull handgun from its holster under his seat onto his lap, Nate drove down the rise. As he approached his house, the front door opened and a man walked out. Nate recognized the man as Ben “Shorty” LaDuke, a sometime ranch hand who resided mainly on stool number four at the Stockman’s Bar in Saddlestring. Shorty had been to his house before when he was briefly employed by Bud Longbrake. Looking for strays, Shorty had said. Shorty was diminutive with a hunched, gnome-like posture that made him look even smaller. He wore torn Wranglers and boots and a hooded Wyoming Cowboys sweatshirt.

  Nate parked under the cottonwoods with his open driver’s-side window framing Shorty, who ambled over. The .454 was gripped in Nate’s hand, the muzzle an inch below the window.

  “Nate, how are you?” Shorty asked.

  “Not pleased that you’re trespassing,” Nate said.

  “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t sure where to find you. There’s a feller inside who—”

  “Raise your hands and turn around. Put your hands on top of your head.”

  Shorty grimaced. “Ah, Nate, buddy, I don’t mean no trouble here.”

  “Then don’t walk into a man’s house or fuck with a falconer’s birds. Do what I said.”

  Shorty sighed theatrically, turned, and laced his hands on top of his King Ropes cap.

  Nate got slowly out of the Jeep, reached around Shorty, and patted him down. No weapons. He shoved the barrel of the .454 into Shorty’s back to urge him toward the house.