Big Picture: Stories (7 page)

Lewis Fife pointed but didn’t say anything.

Hiram grabbed the handle, opened the door, and got out. He walked toward the truck, feeling the muscles in his stomach shaking as if he were freezing cold. Beyond the crowd and the truck was the market, all lit up; people inside were pushing carts and standing in the checkout lines. He looked at the people inside, trying to distract himself, trying to tell himself that there was other business in the world. He recalled the look on Carolyn’s face as he left the house and repeated to himself that he wouldn’t cause a scene.

Hiram heard someone say, “Hey, it’s Doc Finch.” And the crowd of men peeled away from the truck and watched him. He got to the bed of the big pickup and there it was. Nothing could have prepared him for the face of the animal. He was large, his head about the size of a big boxer dog’s, and the front legs were crossed in a comfortable-looking position as he lay on his side. But the face. The mouth was open, showing pink against white teeth, and the tongue hung crazily out along the metal of the truck. The ochre eyes were open and hollow and cold and held a startled expression. Hiram looked up at the faces of the surrounding men, one at a time until he saw Wilcox and his son. The two were not quite smiling.

“We got him, Doc,” Wilcox said.

Hiram swallowed. “Yep, I guess you did.” Hiram touched the fur of the lion’s neck and stroked it.

“Big one, ain’t he, Doc?” someone said.

Hiram felt Lewis Fife standing beside him. He walked away from him, circled around the open tailgate of the truck, and studied the cat. “He’s a big one, all right. I hope he’s the right one.”

“He’s the right one,” Wilcox said.

“Got him in Moss Canyon,” the Wilcox son said. “I shot him,” proudly, a little too loudly.

Hiram looked up, caught the boy’s eyes, and saw the fear in them.

The silence was then broken by a scream and the breaking of glass. Hiram turned with the others to see Marjorie Stoval a few yards away, with dropped sacks and broken bottles at her feet, looking at the lion. She screamed again and then sank to her knees, crying. Hiram went to her, as did the Wilcox boy. Hiram supported her while the boy gathered her groceries. They helped her away from the pickup and to the line of stacked wire carts in front of the store.

Hiram talked to her. “Mrs. Stoval, are you all right? Mrs. Stoval?”

The Wilcox kid backed away and rejoined his father. Hiram stood with the woman and watched the crowd disperse, watched the black dually pickup drive off down the street.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Hiram said.

Lewis Fife came over. “Is she okay?” he asked Hiram.

Hiram shrugged.

“I’m sorry,” Marjorie said, trying to stand up straight, but keeping a hand on the cart. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“I know. Where’s your car?” Hiram asked. Marjorie pointed across the lot toward a small station wagon. “Listen, I’m going to drive you home.”

“I’ll follow you,” Lewis Fife said.

The headlights of the Lincoln faded and grew large, but stayed in sight the whole way. Hiram had failed to adjust the driver’s seat of Marjorie Stoval’s wagon and so he was crammed in behind the wheel; his knee raked his elbow every time he shifted. Marjorie was no longer crying, but sat stone-faced, staring ahead through the windshield.

“Are you okay?” Hiram asked.

“I’m so embarrassed,” the woman said.

“Why should you be embarrassed? I think your reaction was the only appropriate one out there. I told them not to, but they did it. They say they did it to protect their stock. They say they did it to protect their families. But none of that is true. They did it because they’re small men.” Hiram felt how tightly he was holding the steering wheel in his hands, and when he glanced into the mirror, he noticed that Lewis Fife’s headlights were white dots well off in the distance. He eased his foot off the accelerator and tried to relax.

“You’re really upset, aren’t you?” Marjorie said.

Hiram didn’t answer, but did look at her.

“That was a beautiful animal,” she said.

“Yes, it was.”

“I saw a lion near my place once.” Marjorie rolled her window part way down. “He was on the ridge about three hundred yards from my house. I couldn’t believe it. It was about nine in the morning and I had just finished my tea and there he was. Or she. I don’t know. I got my boots on as fast as I could and went hiking up there, but it was gone. I can still see the white tip of its tail.” She closed her eyes.

Hiram looked over at her face, the curve of her nose, then down at her hands, large for a woman her size, but they fit her. “They’re magnificent creatures, all right.
Felis concolor
.”

“I’m sorry you’re having to do this, drive me home, I mean.”

“It’s no trouble.” Hiram glanced behind them. “Besides, Lewis is here to drive me home.” He felt a cramp start in his leg and tried to stretch it out.

“You’re kind of wedged in there.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Marjorie laughed.

“I like you, Dr. Finch,” she said.

Hiram nodded and smiled at her.

“I’m sorry I unloaded my baggage on you earlier.” Marjorie’s voice didn’t sound frail anymore. “I mean, about what’s-his-name.”

“Eagle Nest, eh?”

“In a trailer.” She shook her head. “Did I mention that she’s twenty-three? I saw her. Dwight and I were shopping and we ran into her. She saw him and said hello and then she saw me and they pretended not to know each other. That’s how I found out.” She sneezed out a laugh.

“That sounds awful.”

“Have you ever had an affair?”

“No.”

“Ever thought about it?”

“No. I guess I’m pretty boring, huh?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Marjorie said. “I wouldn’t say that at all. In fact, I’d say you are anything but boring.”

“Why, thank you kindly, ma’am.”

Hiram turned off the road into Marjorie Stoval’s yard and killed the engine. They were out of the car when Lewis Fife came to a complete stop. The fat man waited in his car while Hiram helped Marjorie with her groceries. He held the ruptured sacks and stood next to her on the porch while she looked for her keys. Once inside he put the groceries on the table in the kitchen.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you around,” Hiram said.

“I guess.”

“Good night, Mrs. Stoval.”

“Marjorie.”

“Hiram.” He smiled at her. “Good night.”

Lewis Fife was more relaxed during the drive home than he had been during the ride to see the lion. He drove faster, his fat fingers holding the bottom of the steering wheel lightly.

“Seems like a nice woman,” Lewis Fife said.

Hiram agreed.

“I never met her before tonight.”

Hiram glanced out the window at the river as they passed it. “I’ve been out to treat her animals a few times. I was out at her place treating her horse just today.”

“She live there by herself?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Not married?”

Hiram shrugged. He didn’t want to seem removed, but neither did he want to broadcast the woman’s life story all over the county. “I think there’s a Mr. Stoval, but I’ve never seen him.”

“Funny,” Lewis Fife said, “the things we assume.”

Hiram looked back out his window and his thoughts turned to the lion. “I wanted to scream just like she did,” he said. “I just don’t get people. Did you see the look on the Wilcox boy’s face?” He glanced over at the silent Lewis Fife. “He hurt that boy.”

“Takes all kinds.”

At home, Hiram found Carolyn already in bed and sound asleep. He didn’t pause for the cup of tea he wanted, just undressed and slid into bed next to her. He felt the cool sheets against his back and stared up at the ceiling. The vapor lamp over the door of the barn always threw just a little light through the window. He listened to his wife’s breathing and closed his eyes.
The world was thirty inches high and full of scents, the pads of his paws struck the ground fully, completely, feeling it thoroughly, absolutely, pushing it away beneath his body with each stride and he was floating, the muscles of his haunches and shoulders replete with eager power, power resting, power tightly wound, his nerves on fire, his eyes pressed to the edge of capacity and all of it, all of it set to the quiet his presence created in the woods, the quiet and his subdued, continuous, vibrating breathing. He understood that he was in danger, that he fell centered in the crosshairs of someone’s sad and human weapon, but he could not pause to be apprehensive, could not pause to locate the enemy, but instead walked through the woods that were his, the quiet of his making, looking for life where life always was, walking on the floor that had always been his, waiting for the report to split the air. Now he was Hiram Finch and he was standing in Marjorie Stoval’s kitchen, at least he believed it was Marjorie Stoval’s kitchen, it being oddly made of wood with the bark still on it, and Marjorie was standing in front of him, her blouse open and her breasts exposed and he was attending to her nipples, large nipples, the kind he had never found appealing, but here they were and he wondered why he was in her kitchen and she was pushing her finger toward him, toward his chest that he realized was uncovered, to his sternum. Her finger landed lightly and he could feel his heart rattling in its cave, vibrating and filling his torso with that low, continuous purring and her finger dragged its nail down along the line that separated his left from his right.…
Hiram awoke with a start and saw the light from the vapor lamp still on the ceiling and heard his wife breathing beside him. He pushed the top sheet off his body and tried to let the air through the window cool him. He was afraid and lonely and hungry, terribly hungry. He rolled onto his side and faced his wife’s back. He put his hand on her hair.

Dicotyles Tajacu

Michael Lawson didn’t believe his wife when she told him that she was tiring of his periodic depressions, nagging headaches really, bouts that would often last for a couple of weeks. The headaches manifested themselves in overly quiet behavior and some grumpiness, but mostly in minor absent-mindedness and seeming apathy. He didn’t believe Gail when she said that she didn’t like the way he talked to her when he was “lost in his own little world,” nor when she informed him that she was falling out of love with him, although he had actually noted the germinating distance in spite of his ostensible lethargy and inattention. He didn’t believe any of it when the message was conveyed by a “concerned” third party, his wife’s friend Maggie, who had never seemed to like Michael anyway. Maggie made a special trip over for a chat, knowing that Gail was not there, and in fact admitted early on in the chat that Gail was waiting at her house. It didn’t appear to bother Michael that Gail had a new close friend named Bob who was “fun” and “bright” and single, although the friendship hadn’t, contrary to Maggie’s accusation, gone without regard. He was some kind of skin doctor who lived way out with other skin doctors in a cul-de-sac in the foothills north and west of Denver. But when Michael came into the house from his studio, which was just seventy yards away, and found that all of the spots where the furniture had been were now merely spots, he could only do what the note on the bare wood of the kitchen floor said—“Believe it.”

Michael didn’t go to the foothills to talk to Gail, or to finally get a good look at Bob the skin doctor and his house with the bathroom the size of a barn. She left in the middle of one of his depressions and he somehow wanted her to be okay, at least he talked himself into believing that was what he wanted. He folded the note neatly and placed it on the counter. He thought perhaps he had never really loved Gail, and was saddened by the knowledge that she had loved him, had wasted her time loving him. Michael walked back out to his studio and collected his paintings, twenty-seven large canvases. He heaped them in a pile in the yard, doused them with gasoline from a can he kept for the mower, and tossed on a strike-anywhere kitchen match that he held until he burned his fingers. It was a big fire that caused a neighbor to call the fire department, who put it out quickly with fat hoses stretched across the yard, red lights twisting in the predawn sky, while the marshall wrote out a citation for Michael. When the fire fighters roared away, he packed all the clothes he could into the two suitcases that his wife had left behind, got into his pickup truck, looked into his mirror, and saw that a smattering of neighbors were still rooted, loitering and gawking and whispering. He then drove away, stopping at an automatic teller before heading north toward Wyoming.

For years, doctor after doctor had said, “We have to do something about your headaches,” and let that pass as treatment. Finally, failed drug after failed drug, and one neurologist’s insipid question, “Are you sure they’re headaches?” led Michael to give up and admit that the pain was a part of his life. Evidently the headaches were not going to kill him, a lamentable thought, so he decided to get to know them, to feel them, to accept them, to, in what he thought was the Zen way, become one with them. He didn’t mention them, just endured them. He didn’t miss them when they left, and was not surprised when they returned: different headaches with disparate associative symptoms, which located themselves in various parts of his head, where they moved, pulsed, or sat immobile for hours behind an eye or ear like cheetah watching gazelle.

Michael drove north on Interstate 25, then west toward Fort Collins. Clouds were already collecting over the front range, just a few then, but soon there would be many, and he was glad to be out of Denver where the weather was always sudden and extreme: hail and tornadoes or clear, blizzards followed by sunny days of sixty degrees with gentle breezes from the south. He made his way through Fort Collins and stopped for breakfast at a diner on US 287 that sported stuffed animals everywhere he looked: heads of deer, elk, and moose were hung over the tables of booths, and bobcats, coyotes, and badgers marched along a mantle that separated the dining area from a little store with cold drinks, doughnuts, and sundries. The headache he nursed was a sharp, needling pain behind his left eye that spread toward the back of his head like smoke, becoming duller, but fingering out with a scratching at the base of his brain. He cataloged it as he fell into a booth beneath the head of a wild boar with a conspicuously missing left eye. The brass plate under the trophy read, “Javelina,
Dicotyles tajacu
, taken July 1967, Red River, NM by C.C. Wilcox.”