Open Season (10 page)

Joe simply nodded. The race to California by the two companies had been a fixture of state news for more than a year. He watched as Vern lowered his pen to the end of the InterWest line on the napkin.

“I met the InterWest boys when they first came to Saddlestring about two years ago. They contacted me because I knew everybody and everything.” Vern chuckled and his eyes moved to Joe's face. “The InterWest boys had been looking at the topo maps, and they saw where if they could take their pipeline through the Bighorns that they might gain six months on CanCal and be the first to California. They asked me if it was possible to do this. I told them it could be done if they had the right front guy working the landowners, the Feds, and the state land guys. ‘Give the right guy a checkbook,' is what I told them.”

Joe reached out and spun the napkin around. The pipeline ran straight through the mountains and through the Twelve Sleep Valley.

“The right guy was me, of course,” Vern said. “I negotiated with them for a real salary for the first time in my life and one percent of the stock in the company. I promised them I would deliver a route for their pipeline and by God if I didn't get it done.”

Joe looked up from the napkin. “You have?”

Vern sat back triumphantly. His eyes seemed to glow. “Private easements are done, state lands are cleared legally, and all we're waiting on is the final approval from the Forest Service on the environmental impact statement and approval at a few town meetings, and we'll be bringing the pipeline over the top,” Vern said. “Saddlestring is dying, Joe. This pipeline will bring in a bonanza for the whole county. It'll be like the oil-boom days of the early eighties once again. People around here will have good paying jobs again.”

Joe shook his head. What a gamble Vern had taken with the community and environment.

“InterWest needed someone who knew these people so they came to me. They needed someone who was trusted—and clean as a whistle-pig. You're that same kind of guy, Joe.”

“Are you offering me a job?”

Vern leaned forward and spoke softly. “I'm testing the water.”

“What's the job pay?”

“Three times what you're making, Joe. For the life of the project. Five to ten years, maybe more. Who knows after that.” Vern slipped the flask from his hip pocket and poured some in a water glass. He offered it to Joe, who shook his head no, then sucked on it himself. “Maybe some stock options, too.”

Joe sat back in the bed. He felt hot. It was as if Vern had somehow read his thoughts while he had been in the mountains the night before.

“You've got a wife and kids, Joe. You're a nice, wholesome guy. You're a goddamned hero right now. No one could ever doubt your sincerity when you talk to them. You deserve a lot better. You're working for nothing. You have a family, and a picket fence, and a dog. You,” Vern said, letting the chuckle start low in his belly, “are an endangered species. There ain't many like you, Joe.”

Vern slipped his pen back in his pocket and pulled out a business card. Joe read it:

“Call me,” Vern said, standing up. “Do it soon.”

At Joe's insistence,
the doctors grudgingly released him not long after Vern Dunnegan's visit. They had strongly suggested Joe stay in the hospital and rest but Joe had no intention of following their advice. I'm fine, he said. As much as he wanted to call Marybeth and have her come pick him up, he didn't. It was late and the girls would be in bed—he didn't want to wake them. He signed off on the insurance paperwork and located his pickup in the parking garage. As he swung the truck out onto the street, one thought kept repeating over and over in his mind:
eight miles on the right-hand side and we're home.
As he swung off of the Bighorn Highway onto the narrow gravel strip near his house he thought:
my wife and my girls, my anchors, will be inside.
The discussion with Vern had left a bad taste in his mouth.

The simple acts of turning off the headlights, pulling the keys from the ignition, and crawling out of the pickup were difficult in themselves. He was worn out and almost drunk from fatigue. He rubbed his eyes as he let himself in the front gate. The only thing that had kept him going for the last few hours was the prospect of getting home. Now that he was home, it was as if he were imploding. They had kept him overnight in the hospital for observation, and Marybeth had come alone to confirm that he was all right. The double-ought buckshot had chipped his cheekbone and stopped there, and it was easily removed. He would have a scar there for the rest of his life.

The first person he saw when he stepped inside his home was his mother-in-law, Missy Vankeuren, curled up on the couch with dozens of glossy magazines splayed like a massive poker hand on the floor beneath her. She was wearing a cream cashmere sweater and black stirrup pants. Her dark hair was cut close to her face and, as usual, she didn't look her age. She was and always had been an attractive woman. When she looked up, there was no doubt she read him like a book, because he was too tired to feign a hardy welcome. In fact, in all that had happened over the last three days, he had forgotten she was coming.

“I never get a chance to read at home,” was what she said by means of a greeting. “So I brought my magazines with me, and it's wonderful to have the time.”

“That's great,” Joe said, because he couldn't think of anything else to say. Missy lived in Phoenix now, Marybeth had told him, dating a wildly rich and influential cable television magnate who was part of the Arizona political glitterati (Missy dutifully sent Marybeth society page clippings from the Arizona
Republic
and Phoenix
Gazette
that mentioned her name). She no doubt had little time between functions to read all the back issues of
Glamour, Gourmet, Southern Living, Cosmopolitan, Vanity Fair,
and Condé Nast
Traveler
that were arranged on the floor.

Marybeth arrived from the hallway and had on her perfect hostess face with the big grin.

“The girls wanted to stay up, but I finally put them to bed. They're awake right now and want a good-night kiss.”

“That I'd be glad to do,” Joe said.

He squeezed Marybeth's hand as he walked past her and opened the door to the girls' bedroom. The light was on and they were reading. He kissed Sheridan in the top bunk and Lucy in the bottom bunk.

“What happened to your face?” Sheridan asked.

“Just an accident,” Joe said, involuntarily reaching up and fingering the large bandage beneath his eye.

“That's not what I heard,” Sheridan said, propping herself up on her pillow. “At school they said you got shot.”

“It was an accidental shooting,” Joe said.

“Will you tell us about it tomorrow?” Sheridan asked.

Joe paused. “You girls get to sleep,” he said. Lucy rolled her eyes and covered herself with the sheet.

“I've been looking out this window,” Sheridan told him. “I haven't seen anything. No more monsters.”

“You won't,” Joe assured her. “That's all over now.”

Lucy was faking sleep. It was something she did to punish her father for being away. He kissed her and told her good night, but she held firm and wouldn't acknowledge it, except for a hint of a smile.

 

Joe poured himself
a bourbon and water in the kitchen. He had not taken any of the painkillers the doctor had prescribed for him, saving them for tomorrow.

“It says here that fat grams aren't everything,” Missy Vankeuren said from the other room. Joe assumed she was talking to Marybeth. “You still need to watch calories. Just because something is low in fat doesn't give you license to eat like a pig.”

He drank a quarter of the drink, then topped off the glass with more Jim Beam. Joe was not much of a drinker anymore, although he'd done more than his share in college and when he worked with Vern. But his intake of alcohol always increased proportionately when his mother-in-law was around.

He came into the living room and sat down. Marybeth had just come from tucking in Lucy. She frowned at Joe, and then smiled at her mother. She offered to get her mother something to drink, and Joe realized he was being scolded for not asking her himself.

“Do you have any red wine? That would be nice.”

“Joe, would you open a bottle?” Marybeth asked.

“Where is it?”

“In the pantry,” Marybeth said. “And I'd like a glass also.”

Joe found the wine on a shelf in the pantry. There were a half dozen bottles to choose from. All must have been purchased within the last couple of days, anticipating her mother's visit, because normally the only thing on that shelf were boxes of breakfast cereal.

Marybeth, Joe grumbled to himself as he located the corkscrew, was a wonderful strong woman with strong opinions . . . except when her mother was present. When Missy flew in to visit, Marybeth shifted from being Joe's wife and partner to Missy's daughter, the one with unrealized potential, according to Missy. Her favorite child, according to Missy. Marybeth's older brother, Rob, was a loner who failed to keep in touch, and her younger sister, Ellen, had devoted her life to following the alternative rock band Phish on their never-ending concert tour. Marybeth was the one, Missy had once said while she was drunk and sobbing, who married too early and too low (she may have forgotten about those comments by now, but Joe hadn't). Rather than being the well-dressed, wealthy corporate lawyer she should have been, Marybeth was the wife of a game warden in the middle of Wyoming who made less than $30,000 a year. But, Missy no doubt felt,
it still may not be too late.
At least that's what Joe read into many of the things Missy said and did.

They had discussed all this before, and Marybeth thought Joe was too hard on her mother. Marybeth said that yes, she did sometimes assume the role of daughter when Missy was around, but after all she
was
Missy's daughter. Her mother just wanted the best for her, which was what mothers did. And Missy was proud of Joe in a way, Marybeth had said. Joe appeared to be faithful and a good father. Marybeth could have done much worse, Missy felt.

Joe's mood was sour when Marybeth came into the kitchen. He poured two glasses and handed them to her.

“Cheer up,” Marybeth said. “She's trying to be pleasant.”

Joe grunted. “I thought I was being the model of propriety.”

“You're not being very accommodating,” Marybeth said, her eyes flashing. Joe stepped up close to Marybeth, so that what he had to say couldn't be heard in the next room. He had just been through three of the strangest days of his life, he told her, from finding Ote's body, to the shoot-out at the outfitters' camp, the finding of the mutilated bodies, to the barrage of questions afterward, to the hospital. His mind was reeling, and he was beyond tired. The last thing he needed upon finally getting home was Missy Vankeuren. The Missy Vankeuren who at one time resented the hell out of her daughter for having the gall to make her a
grandmother,
of all things.

Real anger flashed in Marybeth's face.

“It's not her fault all of this happened,” Marybeth said. “She's just here to visit her granddaughters. She had nothing to do with a man dying in our backyard. She has a
right
to visit me and her granddaughters, who think she's wonderful.”

“But why does it have to be now?” Joe asked lamely.

“Thomas Joseph Pickett,” Marybeth said sharply, “go to bed. You're tired and disagreeable, and we can discuss this tomorrow.”

Joe started to say something, then caught himself. Her tone was similar to what he heard when she was mad at the children and used their formal names. It was fortunate she was right because Joe didn't have the energy for an argument.

Joe entered the living room, and Missy looked up from her magazine. Her eyebrows were arched in an expectant way. Joe found this annoying. She obviously knew there had been words in the kitchen.

“I'm going to bed,” Joe declared. He knew he sounded simple.

“You should do that,” Missy said, purring. “You are probably just dead with all you've gone through.”

“Yup.”

“Good night, Joe. Sweet dreams.” Missy dropped her eyes back to her magazine and, with that gesture, dismissed him.

 

When Marybeth came
into the bedroom later, Joe woke up with a start. He had been dreaming he was back in the mountains, back at the elk camp, reliving what had happened. In the aftershock of the shooting, time had become fluid, and Joe had drifted with it, like a raft on a river. The bodies of the outfitters were still in their tent where they had been found. Clyde Lidgard was still wrapped in the folds of the tent. He was moaning. They covered him with blankets. Pink bubbles formed and popped from a hole in his chest as he breathed. Deputy McLanahan was getting violently sick in the bushes from the tension and the release. The stench from the tent drifted to Joe and Wacey when the wind shifted.

In his dream, they were still waiting on the helicopter to arrive. They were all hungry.

“What time is it?” Joe asked.

Marybeth was scrubbing her makeup off in the bathroom adjacent to the bedroom. She was scrubbing hard. She was still mad.

“Midnight,” she said. “Mom and I were visiting. I didn't realize how late it was getting.”

“Honey, I'm sorry,” Joe said. “I just need sleep.”

“So sleep.”

“I will, if you'll get me that bottle of pills from the counter.”