Wounded (9 page)

“I love you, John,” she said.

And in the dark there, I told her the truth, the whole scary truth. I said, “I love you, too.”

Finding our clothes in the dark was considerably more difficult than removing them had been. It wasn’t until we were back in the light that we could see what we had done. Both our shirts were incorrectly buttoned and I found myself squirming, then realized that my underwear was on backwards. Morgan watched while I stripped down to get things straight. I began to feel self-conscious, which was fairly dumb, given what we’d just done.

“Are you feeling shy?” she asked.

“No, why?”

“You’re covering up.”

“I am not.”

“You most certainly are,” she said.

I faced her. “I am not.”

“Mr. Hunt,” she sighed.

Then I covered up. “Okay, okay,” I said, pulling on my clothes. “So, I’m shy. What do you want from me?”

“Exactly this,” she said and kissed me while I buckled my belt.

The ride back was easier than I had imagined all those days before. We were relaxed, talking, laughing, and so Felony rode better than ever. We cantered across a meadow and then walked, letting the horses catch their breath.

“You’re good for me, young lady,” I said.

“Why do you say that, you old fart?”

“You’re good for this nutty horse, too.”

“So, you think we’ll ever do that again?” Morgan asked.

I looked at her and realized she was joking. “I suppose. Once or twice more, the events being judiciously spaced so we don’t become bored.”

“So, when were you thinking the next time might be?”

“Couple hours from now.”

We loosened the girths and walked the horses the last quarter-mile home. We didn’t speak, but it felt right. Morgan had to go home and see to Emily, and so I took the horses and got them squared away. When I walked into the house, Gus smiled at me, stared, and smiled some more.

“What’s with you?” I asked.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you?” I said.

“You had sex, didn’t you?”

“What?” I was embarrassed.

“It’s all over you.” Then I made the mistake of looking all over me.

“What are you talking about?”

“You had sex.”

“You’re a dirty old man,” I said.

“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “I was beginning to think there was something wrong with you. Prostate-wise or something.”

“No, apparently I’m okay.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“You’re not going to say anything to Emily, are you?”

“You think I’m a damn fool?” he asked.

“Now that you mention it.”

“We’re having what you call locker-room talk,” he said.

“That’s what you’re having. I’ll be in the other room.”

“I’m happy for you,” Gus said and turned toward the kitchen.

I WAS DEEPER
into the cave than I had ever been. I had taken a bag of chalk with me and was marking my trail as I went. My light found it easily and I felt more secure than ever. Without traffic from animals, I also felt confident that my powder markers would remain undisturbed. I made my way across the big room to another opening and pushed myself about three hundred yards deeper. The darkness was heavy, sweet, and thick, and it scared me more than a little. I squeezed through a tight spot, two walls of rock formed a twenty-foot-high, nine-inch-wide chimney. I promised myself to shed a few pounds once I had popped through and was looking at it from the other side. Looking at the “fat man’s misery,” I wondered if, in fact, I would be able to squeeze my fat behind back through. I recalled when a child got his head stuck between banister spindles and everyone was wondering how he got it through in the first place. My heart began to race and I reminded myself that I was panicking before I had reason to. I pushed my arm into the crack, then my shoulder. Then, turning to face my direction of travel, I pushed my head into the crevice. The space felt even tighter now. I was convinced that I was swelling with uncertainty. I inhaled my gut in and my hips. I inch-wormed my way through and popped out like a cork. I couldn’t help laughing. The feeling was exquisite, not only the feeling of freedom from the cramped place, but from the fear itself. I looked back at the crack, my headlamp illuminating it, dark all around and dark in its core.

After the squeeze, the rest of the cave felt a bit more comfortable, familiar. Then, about a hundred yards from the cave’s mouth, my hand-held light flashed over something. I came back with the beam and after a few sweeps found it. It was a bit of paper and some dried brown shreds. I put the shreds of dried leaves to my nose and, though I could not detect an odor, I realized it was tobacco. It had been the butt of a cigarette and it had been field stripped, the paper opened up and the tobacco shaken free, an act meant to avoid detection, for some a mere habit. Fear washed over me, but a different kind a of fear this time. This time it was real fear, the kind that no place, no storm, no animal can make, only humans. It could have been there for years, I told myself. In the dark here, I certainly had not seen everything. In fact, I marveled every visit at how much was new to me. It could have been there for forty years, a Shoshone veteran of the Korean War looking for a quiet place, or a soldier from a hundred years ago. And as I looked at the tiny bit of paper, I realized it could have been left there hours ago.

It was midday and I was driving through town on my way to the reservation. Daniel White Buffalo had called and left a message with Gus that he really wanted me to come over to his place. His ranch was on the edge of the reservation. He had good water and this rankled a lot of the white ranchers around him; they were even less pleased when he increased his place by buying adjacent, nontribal land. Gus hadn’t picked up any details on the phone, but he thought White Buffalo had said something about somebody or something being shot. I turned off the highway and down the road toward the ranch. I looked across the big pasture and saw a sheriff’s rig parked near the house. I gave the Jeep a little more gas and kicked up some dust getting there. Bucky, Hanks, and Daniel White Buffalo turned and watched me get out and walk toward them. The stocky Arapaho man shook my hand and said he was glad I came. He ran a nervous hand over his hair and stopped at the knot of his braid.

“Who called you?” Bucky asked.

“Daniel did,” I said.

“Yeah, I called him,” Daniel said. “John’s got good sense. So do you, Bucky, but John, he’s like family.”

I thought this was odd since I seldom saw the man. I’d trained a couple horses for him and it was his mule that was haunting my barns.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Somebody shot a cow,” Hanks said with a slightly dismissive tone.

“Shooting a cow is a big deal,” Daniel said. “That’s two thousand dollars lying in that gulley.”

“Let’s go have a look,” Bucky said.

We piled into Daniel’s open-topped late-sixties Bronco and bounced across the pasture and toward the creek. He’d called Bucky because the cow was shot off the reservation, in the county, Bucky’s jurisdiction. I didn’t know why he’d called me. He came to an abrupt halt that we were all expecting, but still sent us lurching forward.

The cow was lying about ten yards up the opposite creek bank. I sloshed through the water to the animal. He’d been shot through the head. Just beneath the ear. I looked back to see Bucky and Hanks picking their way over the rocks.

“Shot, all right,” I reported.

Hanks turned back to see Daniel White Buffalo leaning against his truck. “What are you doing over there?” he called.

“I’ve seen him,” Daniel said. “My getting wet again won’t change his condition much.”

Bucky folded his long frame to a knee beside me. “So, what am I supposed to do?” he asked.

“You got me,” I said. “He’s been shot. There’s no denying that.”

“I suppose I can get a vet to dig the slug out of his brain and try to match it up to one of the eight million guns in this county.”

“He was shot pretty close up,” I said. “Pretty messy.” I stood and walked upstream some yards, then up the bank. I spotted a beer can and beside it a place on the ground where someone had lost his footing. “Looks like he had a picnic,” I said.

Hanks started toward me. He turned back to the sheriff and said, “At least if the vet dug out the slug we’d know the caliber.”

“I’d say it was a two-twenty-three,” I said.

“And how would you know that?” Hanks asked.

“Shell casing,” I said. I held it up on the end of a stick.

Bucky gave me a look, a different look than he would have given me if I’d said thirty-thirty or forty-five.

Hanks picked up the can. “Pabst,” he said. “Still has beer in it. Whoever it was will drink anything, that’s for damn sure.”

Bucky shook his head. “Hanks, are you holding that can in your hand?”

Hanks dropped it. Beer spilled out and made a rivulet down the slope into the stream.

“Well, pick it up again, with a stick this time, and put it in an evidence bag. Maybe we can still get a print off the damn thing. As if that will do us a damn bit of good.”

“I’m sorry, Sheriff,” Hanks said. The deputy collected the can and the casing in separate plastic bags.

We walked back across the creek to Daniel White Buffalo.

“He’s still dead,” Bucky said.

“I thought so,” Daniel said.

Bucky looked back at the cow, then at the sky. “I hear that you were complaining in town about Clara Monday stealing your cattle.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking that for a while,” Daniel said. “I’ve lost a couple beefs and I’ve seen her up on the ridge riding that horse. Spooky. Old lady riding around on a horse like that.”

“You think she might have done this?”

Daniel laughed. “I believe in my heart that she’s a rustler, but she sure as hell ain’t wasteful.”

That seemed to satisfy Bucky. “Well, that’s about all there is to see and do here. Let’s go back.”

“Who do you think did it?” I asked Daniel as I climbed into the passenger seat beside him.

“I don’t know. I have absolutely no idea.”

When we arrived back at the house, Hanks jumped out quickly and Bucky worked himself free.

“I’ll give you a call, White Buffalo,” Bucky said.

“Yeah, right,” Daniel said, more to the ground than to them.

Daniel walked slowly to my Jeep. “Sorry about the beef,” I told Daniel. “Scary stuff.”

“You got that right.”

We tossed absent waves to Bucky and the deputy as they rolled away toward the road.

“Speaking of scary stuff, when are you going to come pick up that mule of yours? He keeps escaping.”

“He’s yours.”

“He’s a nice ride now,” I told him. “But I don’t need a mule.”

“Indians don’t get on with mules,” Daniel said.

“Don’t give me that shit.”

“You ever see an Indian riding a mule? Not even in the movies.” Daniel gestured to his place with a sweep of his hand. “It’s nice here, and why? No mule.”

“Not so nice,” I said.

Daniel remembered the cow, too. “Not so nice,” he repeated.

“Why did you call me anyway?” I asked.

“I wanted a witness here for the sheriff, so he could see somebody seeing him.”

“You don’t trust Bucky?”

Daniel shook his head, then pulled out a cigarette, lit it. “I trust him about as much as I trust any white man with a gun.”

“Yeah, well, sorry about the cow.”

As I backed up to turn around, Daniel said, “Enjoy that mule.”

I stopped and pulled forward, close to him. “You understand that you owe me for his board and food.”

“How much?”

“Near five hundred dollars.”

Daniel whistled.

“What happens if I don’t pay?” he asked.

“Well, the law says, he’s mine to sell.”

“Have at it, buckaroo.”

I drove away. I’d been taken advantage of, but I wasn’t too upset. If I had a mind to, I could sell the beast for twelve, fifteen hundred. But I didn’t have a mind to. I actually liked having him around.

On Thanksgiving morning Morgan’s mother died. I was trimming hooves when Gus called to me from the house end of the barn. “Phone,” was all he said. I found myself trotting, then sprinting. Gus said, “Morgan,” as he trotted behind me. My messy boots slipped on the linoleum as I crossed to the phone.

“Morgan?”

“It’s mother.” She was crying. “She won’t wake up. I’ve called nine-one-one.”

“I’m on my way.”

On the phone with the emergency operator, Morgan had used the magic words “heart attack.” And so the medivac helicopter was already there when I arrived. The blades were still turning and the horses in the pasture were tearing around through the wet grass and mud. The sky was bright blue and the yellow helicopter set against it made the scene surreal. Emily was being carried to the open craft as I climbed out. Morgan ran to me and I held her, but she didn’t need to be held. She told me that the paramedics would not let her ride in the helicopter with Emily.

“I’m driving you to town,” I said. “Get in.”

I opened the passenger side and got her in. Suddenly she was like an elk caught in a bright light. I buckled her belt and closed the door. As I drove away from the house she stared ahead through the windshield.

“I knew she wasn’t right this morning,” she finally said. “I asked her, I said, ‘Are you okay?’ and she waved me off. Oh, god. I knew it. I just knew something was wrong.”

I put my hand on her leg. I considered a list of platitudes, but they all seemed unusable. Years ago, I had often felt ambushed by Susie when bad things happened. I would offer a quiet hand of support and she would ask why I wasn’t saying anything. Then I’d say something, admittedly vacuous but meant in the spirit of support, and she would snap at me, asking what that was supposed to mean or accusing me of belittling her fear or grief. Now, I remained silent and if Morgan asked me to speak, I planned to say, “I’m right here.”

“Do you think she’s going to die?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, realizing that ‘I’m here for you’ wasn’t going to work.

“She was so limp. Maybe she was already dead.”

I squeezed her thigh.

“John.”

“Yes?”

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too, honey.” We made the big curve around the mountain. “Twenty minutes,” I said.

“Twenty minutes?”

“To town.”

“Twenty minutes to town.” Morgan closed her eyes and let her head rest against the seat.

When we arrived, the helicopter was idle on its pad, and a nurse was watching through the emergency-room doors. Morgan looked at me and I pulled her close. We walked to the hospital, knowing already that Emily was gone.

Emily had been laid on a bed in a curtained stall. Her face still looked alive, with some color in her cheeks. A sheet was pulled up to her shoulders. Her hair was wild about her head and Morgan sought to straighten it. The doctor stood there with Morgan and talked to her. I stood there, feeling sad and sick and weak. I thought of the elderly person I had left at my house. I stepped into the hall and used the phone at the nurse’s station to call Gus. After I gave him the news there was a long silence.

“Gus?”

“I’m here.”

“You okay?”

“Fine.”

“I’ll feed. You stay with Morgan.”

“Thanks, Gus.”

I arranged for the one mortuary in Highland to come for Emily while Morgan took care of matters with the hospital. I then drove her home. I wanted to take her to my place, but she insisted. I got a fire going while she straightened up. Emily had fallen in the den and things had been left disturbed.

“It’s cold in here,” Morgan said.

It wasn’t cold, but I said, “I’ll have the fire good and hot shortly.”

“She just fell over, John.” Morgan was standing in front of the sofa. “She didn’t make a sound. I didn’t see her face. I don’t think she felt anything. The doctor said she probably didn’t feel anything. He said her heart probably just stopped.”

I walked to her and lowered her to the sofa. I sat beside her with my arm around her.

“Do you think she went peacefully?” Morgan asked me.

“I do,” I said.

Morgan didn’t cry, but she fell fast asleep quickly. I untwisted our bodies and went outside to feed her horses and check the gates. I came back into the house and called Gus. He took a long time answering and I started to get upset. He picked up.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“All is fine,” he said.

“What took you so long?”

“I was busy, do you mind?”

I caught myself, caught my worry and caught the anxiety that had been working on me. “I’m sorry, Gus.”

“How’s Morgan?”

“She’s asleep.”

“I’ve got things covered here.”

“Okay.”

“Get some sleep,” he said. “I mean it.”

“Yes, sir.”

I didn’t wake Morgan, but let her sleep the night on the sofa. I sat nearby in a stuffed chair and watched her, realizing with each sleep-breath she took that I did, in fact, love her. And I didn’t love her because I needed to love someone, but because she wouldn’t go away, not physically, but in my head.