The Loop (15 page)

Luke walked along the ledge not caring if he fell, dreading with every step what he was going to see. He came alongside his father and peered down. The ground fell away steeply in a tumble of sliprock. About halfway down there was a dead tree which had snagged the elk’s fall and he lay wedged there, watching them, while his hind legs thrashed useless in the air below. There was a dark hole in his neck. His shoulder and chest ran slick with blood.

His father racked another bullet into the chamber and handed him the rifle.

‘There you go, son. You know what to do.’

Luke took it and, as he did so, felt his mouth quiver and the tears flood in his eyes and he tried so hard to stop it but he couldn’t and his whole body started to shake with sobs.

‘I c-can’t.’

His father put an arm around his shoulders.

‘It’s okay, son. I know how you feel.’

Luke shook his head. It was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. How could anyone know how he felt? Least of all his father who must have seen this kind of thing a dozen times.

‘You’ve got to do it, though. He won’t be yours unless you do.’

‘I don’t w-w-want him!’

‘Come on, Luke. He’s in pain—’

‘You think I d-d-don’t know that?’

‘Then finish the job.’

‘I can’t!’

‘Of course you can.’

‘Y-y-y-you do it.’ He handed back the rifle.

‘A hunter finishes what he’s started.’

‘I’m not a g-g-goddamn hunter!’

His father looked down at him for a long moment. It was the first time Luke had ever cussed in front of him. Then, in what looked more like sadness than anger, his father shook his head and took the rifle.

‘No, Luke. I don’t think you are.’

His father shot the elk through the neck again and they watched it jerk and kick its legs in the air as if its soul was flying to some far-off place. Then, with its eyes never leaving them, it stiffened and gave a long, gurgling sigh and at last was still.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

They got a rope on the carcass and pulled it out of the tree from below. And there his father made him help skin it out and field-dress it. This was the deal, he explained, as he slit the belly and reached up inside to sever the windpipe and haul out the elk’s steaming heart and liver and lungs. If you hunted, this was what you had to do. It was a sacred moment, he said. And they sawed off the head and then cut the body into pieces so that they could pack it out. And Luke wept in silence all the while, wept at the feel and smell of the elk’s warm blood on his hands and wept for himself and his shame.

They hung what they couldn’t carry from a high branch so coyotes or any late-denning bears couldn’t get it. And when they left the place, with the antlered head swaying crazily above the meat strapped to his father’s shoulders and more meat strapped to his own, Luke looked back and saw the gut piles and the snow soaked wide with blood and it occurred to him that if there were indeed such a place as hell, this was how it must look and where surely now he belonged.

The elk’s head was never hung on the wall with the others. Perhaps his mother forbade it, after hearing what had happened; Luke never knew. But even now, five years later, he still sometimes conjured it in his dreams, leering at him from some unexpected place. And he would wake whimpering and soaked with sweat, among the twisted sheets of his bed.

10

H
ope, that Wednesday morning, looked like the set of an out-of-control movie. The whole of Main Street was jammed with cows, cars and children about to bludgeon each other with musical instruments. Overhead, two young men, precariously perched on ladders, were trying to hang strings of colored flags from one side of the street to the other. The town was getting ready for the annual fair and rodeo.

Eleanor Calder stood in the doorway of Iverson’s grocery store and watched. All along the street others were doing the same.

The high school band had been practicing all morning and now, marching in the street in the glare of the noon sun, tempers had started to frazzle. They were supposed to be playing ‘Seventy-six Trombones’, which was probably someone’s idea of a joke for there was only one trombonist among them and even his survival was now in doubt because a cornet player, a girl twice his size, had just threatened to waste him if he poked her one more time in the back. Ignoring the shrill pleas of Nancy Schaeffer, their distraught teacher, everyone in the band was taking sides and screaming at each other while the cattle streamed like philistines around them.

Quite what the cattle were doing there, nobody seemed to know. Either they had misread their calendars and were on their way to the fairground or else someone had picked an inspired moment to move them to a pasture on the far side of town. Whichever it was, the men hanging the flags weren’t impressed. Their ladders were being jostled by the cattle until at last one of them took a head-on shove and toppled and the man had to leap for safety onto the porch roof of Nelly’s Diner just in time to watch his line of flags flutter down to garland the heads of the cows and be swept merrily away out of town.

Old Mr Iverson clucked and shook his head.

‘Gets worse every year,’ he said. ‘Even the band can’t play a half-decent tune anymore.’

‘Oh, they’ve got a couple of weeks to get it together,’ Eleanor said. ‘The cows don’t help.’

‘They sure make a better noise though.’

Eleanor smiled. ‘Well, I’d better be getting home. Some hungry men’ll be wanting their lunch.’

She said goodbye and made her way with her two sacks of groceries along the cracked sidewalk to where she had parked. Except for a few stragglers, the cattle had almost gone. Two young hands Eleanor didn’t recognize were bringing up the rear on horseback and taking abuse from storekeepers and some of the less patient drivers who’d been blocked in their cars. Band practice appeared to be over and the squabbling factions were dispersing.

Eleanor dumped her groceries into the back of her car and shut the tailgate, chiding herself for having bought so much. Like most of her neighbors, she normally went once a week to the big supermarket in Helena and only used Iverson’s for the odd thing she had forgotten to put on her list. On these rare visits, like today, she was always stricken with guilt and ended up buying all kinds of things she didn’t need. She was sure the Iversons, the lugubrious couple who had owned the place for as long as anyone could remember, recognized this as a syndrome and adjusted their expressions accordingly when anyone came in. They probably whooped and danced with glee when they had the place again to themselves.

Eleanor got into the car, wincing at the scald of the seat through her cotton dress. She was about to start the engine when she noticed the FOR SALE sign was still in the window of Ruth Michaels’ gift shop across the street. She thought yet again about what Kathy had said.

It was about a month ago, when they were changing little Buck’s diapers. Kathy mentioned that Paragon was up for sale and suggested Eleanor should consider buying it. Since she had gotten married, finding projects for her mother to get involved in was one of Kathy’s favorite pastimes. Eleanor had variously been told she should go to college, open a restaurant, start a mail-order business, take up yoga; maybe even do all of these at the same time. Now it was buying Ruth Michaels’ gift shop.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Eleanor said. ‘I wouldn’t have the first idea how to run it, let alone make a cup of cappuccino.’

‘You used to help out in Grandpa’s store. Anyhow, you wouldn’t have to. Ruth doesn’t want out. She’s just borrowed too much and can’t afford to keep going. You could buy into the business and let her go on running the place. Be involved as much or as little as you wanted.’

Every excuse she put up, Kathy neatly demolished and though it was never mentioned again, Eleanor had thought about it many times since. It might be just what she needed. With both girls now married and Luke soon off to college, she could do with something to fill the void.

In the old days, before Henry died, she used to handle a lot of the ranch paperwork that Kathy now looked after. And apart from cooking - which Eleanor was amazed to think she had once actually enjoyed - she barely got involved at all. She got so bored and lonely sometimes, she worried for her sanity.

She didn’t know Ruth Michaels, except to say hello to, but had always thought she seemed bright and pleasant. People had been both intrigued and a little suspicious of her when she’d first arrived in town some five years ago. To be more precise, the men had been intrigued and the women suspicious and for the same two reasons: her dark, exotic looks and the fact that she was single. By now she was accepted (or as much as any New Yorker ever would be) and generally liked.

On the few occasions Eleanor had gone into the shop, she had been impressed. It wasn’t the usual western tourist trash - plastic dream catchers, snowshakers and jokey cowboy T-shirts. Ruth had taste. You could see it in the selection of jewelry, books and pieces of artwork.

Before she had finally made up her mind, Eleanor found herself crossing the street, picking her way with care between what the cows had left behind and the last few bickering band members.

Ruth allowed people to stick notes and posters on a board in the shop window, announcing yard sales, unwanted puppies or upcoming events such as potlucks or weddings to which the whole town was invited. Most at the moment were to do with the fair and rodeo, including one that made Eleanor smile.
Trombonists Urgently Wanted,
it read.
Call Nancy Schaeffer - NOW!
Below it, a black cat basked asleep in the filtered sunshine.

There were bells on the door that clanked when it opened and closed. After the glare of the street, Eleanor’s eyes took a moment to adjust to the shadowed clutter of the shop. It was cool and calm and soothing music floated on the air along with a rich smell of coffee. There was no one to be seen.

Eleanor stepped carefully between tall dressers stacked with pottery and handmade toys and brightly colored Indian blankets, taking care not to knock the jungle of mobiles and chimes that hung from the ceiling, tinkling as they turned and touched. There were baskets of bracelets made of dyed and plaited horsehair and glass cabinets crammed with silver jewelry.

There were clunking and hissing noises coming from the rear of the shop, where the cappuccino bar was, and as Eleanor got nearer she heard Ruth’s voice.

‘Do it, you stupid bastard!
Do
it!’

There was nobody to be seen. Eleanor hesitated. She didn’t want to blunder into a private altercation.

‘I’ll give you one more chance and then I’m going to beat the living shit out of you, okay?’

There was a huge chrome coffee machine on the counter and suddenly it erupted with a terrifying squall of steam.

‘You shit! You lousy, useless godforsaken heap of shit!’

‘Hello?’ Eleanor said tentatively. ‘Is that Ruth?’

Everything went quiet.

‘Not if you’re from the bank or the IRS, it isn’t.’

Ruth’s head lifted slowly into view above the machine. There was a smudge of black oil on her cheek. When she saw Eleanor, her eyes seemed briefly to fill with panic. Then she beamed.

‘Mrs Calder! Hi! I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you. This machine will, probably literally, be the death of me. What can I do for you? Can I make you a coffee?’

‘Not if it’s going to explode.’

‘Oh, he only behaves badly when he thinks no one’s here.’

‘You’ve got something on your . . .’ She pointed to the smudge.

‘Oh. Thanks.’

She found a tissue and, using the coffee machine as a mirror, wiped it off.

‘Do you believe in ghosts?’

‘Yes, I think I do. Why?’

‘I swear this thing is haunted. I got it from a place that was closing down in Seattle, really cheap. Now I know why. How about that coffee?’

‘Do you have decaf?’

‘You bet. Skim milk or regular?’

‘I’ll have skim.’

‘Why bother.’

‘Well, I . . .’

‘No, I mean, that’s what I call it. No caffeine, no fat, so why bother?’ She laughed. It was a catchy, throaty laugh, almost scurrilous, and it immediately had Eleanor laughing too.

‘Did you get caught in the stampede?’

‘Very nearly. Those poor children.’

‘Please, take a seat.’

Eleanor settled herself on one of the little bar stools while Ruth coaxed two cappuccinos from the machine. She was wearing faded jeans and a baggy purple T-shirt emblazoned with the shop’s name. Her black hair was bundled up in a red bandanna. Eleanor guessed she must be in her mid to late thirties and was struck by how attractive she was.

She wondered about that look of panic when Ruth saw her just now. Maybe she really had been expecting a visit from the IRS. She placed Eleanor’s coffee in front of her.

‘So, have you found a buyer yet?’ Eleanor asked. ‘Kathy said you were hoping to find a partner to come in with you.’

‘Did you see them all lining up outside? Nobody’s interested. ’

Eleanor sipped her coffee. It tasted good. Go on, she told herself, say it. She put the cup down.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘I might be.’

 

Buck figured the calf must have been dead a good few days. There wasn’t a whole lot left of it. But for a few bones and chewed-up strips of hide, its hindquarters had all but disappeared. The remains were lying exposed at the top of a steep gully and what the birds and other varmints hadn’t taken, the sun had baked stiff. Nat Thomas was having a hard time working out what had happened.

He was kneeling beside it, probing among the flies and maggots with his knife and forceps. The ground around him was alive with grasshoppers. Nat and his father before him had been vets to the Calder ranch for years and Buck had called him right away. He wanted to get an independent opinion before the feds got their itchy hands on the carcass. They’d come clean about it being a wolf that had killed Prince, but given that Kathy had seen the damn thing with her own eyes, they hadn’t had much choice.