A Wild Sheep Chase (33 page)

The same was pretty much true of the lavatory and the bathroom.
The grouting between the tiles had been scrubbed with brush and cleanser. It was gleaming white, a work of art. The box sachet in the lavatory gave off the fragrance of a gin-with-lime you’d get at a fancy bar.

I went into the living room to smoke my morning cigarette. I had three packs of Larks left in my backpack. When those were gone, it’d be no smoking for me. I lit up a second cigarette and thought about what it’d be like without smokes. The morning sun felt wonderful, and sitting on the sofa, which molded itself to my body, was pure luxury. Before I knew it, a whole hour had passed. The clock struck a lazy nine o’clock.

I began to understand why the Rat had put the house in such order, scrubbed between the tiles, ironed his shirts, and shaved, though surely he had no one to meet. Unless you kept moving up here, you’d lose all sense of time.

I got up from the sofa, folded my arms, and walked once around the room, but I couldn’t see anything that needed doing. The Rat had cleaned anything that was cleanable. He’d even brushed the soot from the ceiling.

I decided instead to go for a walk. It was spectacular weather. The sky was feathered with a few white brushstroke clouds, the air filled with the songs of birds.

In back of the house was a large garage. A cigarette butt lay on the ground in front of the old double doors. Seven Stars. This time, the cigarette butt turned out to be rather old. The paper had come apart, exposing the filter.

Ashtrays. I had seen only one in the house, and it had shown no trace of use. The Rat didn’t smoke! I rolled the filter around in the palm of my hand, then threw it back onto the ground.

I undid the heavy bolt and opened the garage doors to find a
huge interior. The sunlight slanted in through the cracks in the siding, creating a series of parallel lines on the dark soil. There was the smell of dirt and gasoline.

An old Toyota Land Cruiser sat there. Not a speck of mud on the body or tires. The gas tank was almost full. I felt under the dash where the Rat always hid his keys. As expected, the key was there. I inserted it in the ignition and gave it a turn. Right away the engine was purring. It was the same Rat, always good at tuning his automobiles. I cut the engine, put the key back, then looked around the driver’s seat. There was nothing noteworthy—road maps, a towel, half a bar of chocolate. In the backseat, unusually dirty for the Rat, was a roll of wire and a large pair of pliers. I opened the rear door and swept the debris into my hand, holding it up to the sunlight leaking in through a knothole in the siding. Cushion stuffing. Or sheep wool. I pulled a tissue out of my pocket, wrapped up the debris, and put it in my breast pocket.

I couldn’t understand why the Rat hadn’t taken the car. The fact that the car was in the garage meant that he had walked down the mountain or that he hadn’t gone down at all. Neither made sense. Up to three days ago the cliff road would have been easy to drive. Would he abandon the house to camp out up here?

Puzzled, I shut the garage doors and walked out into the pasture. There was no reasonable explanation possible from such unreasonable circumstances.

As the sun rose higher in the sky, steam rose from the pasture. The mountains seemed to mist over, and the smell of grass was overwhelming.

I walked through the damp grass to the middle of the pasture. There lay a discarded old tire, the rubber white and cracked. I sat down on it and surveyed my surroundings. From here the house looked like a white rock jutting out from the shoreline.

In this solitary state, the memory of the ocean swim meets I used to participate in when I was a kid came to me. On distance swims between two islands, I would sometimes stop mid-course to look around. To find myself equidistant between two points gave me the funniest feeling. To think that back on dry land people were going about business as usual was pretty peculiar too. Unsettling, that society could go on perfectly well without me.

I sat there for fifteen minutes before ambling back to the house. I sat down on the living-room sofa and continued reading my
Sherlock Holmes
.

At two o’clock, the Sheep Man came.

As the clock struck two, there came a knocking on the door. Two times at first, a two-breath pause, then three times.

It took me a while to recognize it as knocking. That anyone should knock on the door hadn’t occurred to me. The Rat wouldn’t knock, it was his house. The caretaker might knock, but he certainly wouldn’t wait for a reply before walking in. Maybe my girlfriend—no, more likely she’d steal in through the kitchen door and help herself to a cup of coffee. She wasn’t the type to knock.

I opened the door, and standing there, two yards away, was the Sheep Man. Showing markedly little interest in either the open door or myself who opened it. Carefully inspecting the mailbox as if it were a rare, exotic specimen. The Sheep Man was barely taller than the mailbox. Four foot ten at most. Slouched over and bow-legged besides.

There were, moreover, six inches between the doorsill, where I stood, and ground level, where he stood, so it was as if I were looking down at him from a bus window. As if ignoring his decisive shortcomings, he continued his scrutiny of the mailbox.

“CanIcomein?” the Sheep Man said rapid-fire, facing sideways the whole while. His tone was angry.

“Please do,” I said.

He crouched down and gingerly untied the laces of his mountaineering boots. They were caked with a sweet-roll-thick crust of mud. The Sheep Man picked up his boots with both hands and, with practiced technique, whacked them solidly together. A shower of hardened mud fell to the ground. Then demonstrating consummate knowledge of the lay of the house, he put slippers on and padded over to the sofa and sat down.

Just great, his face was saying.

The Sheep Man wore a full sheepskin pulled over his head. The arms and legs were fake and patched on, but his stocky body fit the costume perfectly. The hood was also fake, but the two horns that curled from his crown were absolutely real. Two flat ears, probably wire-reinforced, stuck out level from either side of the hood. The leather mask that covered the upper half of his face, his matching gloves, and socks, all were black. There was a zipper from neck to crotch.

On his chest was a pocket, also zippered, from which he extracted his cigarettes and matches. The Sheep Man put a Seven Stars to his mouth, lit up, and let out a long sigh. I fetched the washed ashtray from the kitchen.

“Iwannadrink,” said the Sheep Man. I duly went into the kitchen and got a half-bottle of Four Roses and two glasses with ice.

He poured whiskey over the ice, I did the same, we drank without a toast. As he drank, the Sheep Man mumbled to himself. His pug nose was big for his body, and with each breath he took, his nostrils flared dramatically. The two eyes that peered through the mask darted restlessly around the room.

When the Sheep Man finished his whiskey, he seemed more at ease. He put out his cigarette and with both hands rubbed his eyes under his mask.

“Woolgetsinmyeyes,” said the Sheep Man.

I didn’t know how to respond and said nothing.

“Youcamehereyesterdayafternooneh?” said the Sheep Man, rubbing his eyes some more. “Beenwatchingyouthewholetime.”

The Sheep Man stopped to pour a slug of whiskey over the half-melted ice and downed it in one gulp.

“Andthewomanleftalonethisafternoon.”

“You watched that too, did you?”

“Watchedher?Wedroveheraway.”

“Drove her away?”

“Surestuckourheadthroughthekitchendoorsaidyou
bettergohome.”

“Why?”

That threw the Sheep Man into a pout. “Why?” was obviously not the way to phrase a question to him, but before I could say anything else, his eyes slowly took on a different gleam.

“ShewentbacktotheDolphinHotel,” said the Sheep Man.

“Did she say so?

“Didn’tsaynothing.ButwheresheisistheDolphinHotel.”

“How do you know that?”

Again the Sheep Man refused to speak. He put both hands on his knees and glared at the glass on the table.

“But she did go back to the Dolphin Hotel?” I said.

“UhhuhtheDolphinHotel’sanicehotel.Smellslikesheep,” said the Sheep Man.

Silence again.

On closer inspection, I could see that the Sheep Man’s fleece was filthy, the wool stiff with oil.

“Did she say anything by way of a message when she left?”

“Nope,” the Sheep Man said, shaking his head. “Shedidn’t sayanythingandwedidn’task.”

“When you told her she’d better leave, she up and left without a word?”

“Right. Wetoldhershe’dbetterleavebecauseshewaswantingtoleave.”

“She came up here because she wanted to.”

“Wrong!” screamed the Sheep Man. “Shewantedtogetoutbutshe herselfwasconfused.That’swhywechasedherhome.
Youconfusedher.” The Sheep Man stood up and slammed his right hand down flat on the table. His whiskey glass slid two inches.

The Sheep Man froze in that pose until gradually his eyes lost their zeal and he collapsed back into the sofa, out of steam.

“Youconfusedthatwoman,” the Sheep Man said, this time more calmly. “Notaverynicethingatall.
Youdon’tknowathing.Allyou thinkaboutisyourself.”

“You’re telling me she shouldn’t have come here?”

“That’sright.Shewasn’tmeanttocomehere.
Youdon’tthinkabout anythingbutyourself.”

I sat there speechless, lapping my whiskey.

“Butstillwhat’sdoneisdone.Anywayit’soverforher.”

“Over?”

“You’llneverseethatwomanagain.”

“Because I only thought about myself?”

“That’sright.Becauseyouthoughtonlyaboutyourself.
Justdeserts.”

The Sheep Man stood up and went to a window, forced up the window frame with one hand, and took a breath of the fresh air. No mean show of strength.

“Gottaopenwindowsonnicedayslikethis,” said the Sheep Man. Then the Sheep Man did a quick half-turn around the room and stopped before the bookcase, peering over the spines of the books with folded arms. Sprouting from the rear end of his costume was
a tiny tail. In this position, he looked like a sheep standing up on its two hind legs.

“I’m looking for a friend of mine,” I ventured.

“Areyou?” said the Sheep Man, back to me in total disinterest.

“He was living here. Up to a week ago.”

“Wouldn’tknow.”

The Sheep Man stood in front of the fireplace shuffling the cards from the mantel.

“I’m also looking for a sheep with a star mark on its back,” I pressed on.

“Haven’tseenit,” said the Sheep Man.

But it was obvious that the Sheep Man knew something about the Rat and the sheep. His lack of concern was too affected. The timing of his response too pat, his tone false.

I changed tactics. Pretending I’d given up, I yawned, taking up my book from the table and flipping through the pages. A slightly vexed Sheep Man returned to the sofa and quietly eyed me reading the book.

“Readingbooksfun?” asked the Sheep Man.

“Hmm,” I responded.

The Sheep Man bided his time. I kept reading to spite him.

“Sorryforshouting,” said the Sheep Man in a low voice. “Some timesit’slikethesheepinmeandthehumaninmeareatoddsso
Igetlikethat. Didn’tmeananythingbyit.
Andbesidesyoucomeonsayingthingsto threatenus.”

“That’s okay,” I said.

“Toobadyou’llneverseethatwomanagain.Butit’s
notourfault.”

“Hmm.”

I took the three packs of Larks out of my backpack and gave them to the Sheep Man. The Sheep Man was taken aback.

“Thanks.Neverhadthisbrand.Butdon’tyou needthem?”

“I quit smoking,” I said.

“Yesthat’swise,” the Sheep Man nodded in all seriousness. “They’rereallybadforyou.”

He filed the cigarette packs away carefully in a pocket on his arm. The fleece buckled out in a rectangular lump.

“I’ve absolutely got to see my friend. I’ve come a long, long way here to see him.”

The Sheep Man nodded.

“The same goes for that sheep.”

The Sheep Man nodded.

“But you don’t know anything about them, I take it?”

The Sheep Man shook his head forlornly. His fake ears flapped up and down. This time his denial was much weaker than before.