Free Fire Part 40

Available in hardcover from G. P. Putnam's Sons May 2008

1.

I AM A HUNTER, A BESTOWER OF DIGNITY.

I am on the hunt.

As the sun raises its eyebrows over the eastern mountains I can see the track through the still gra.s.s meadow. It happens in an instant, the daily rebirth of the sun, a stunning miracle every twenty-four hours so rarely experienced these days by anyone except those who still live by the natural rhythm of the real world, where death is omnipresent and survival an unfair gift. This sudden blast of illumination won't last long, but it reveals the direction and strategy of my prey as obviously as a flas.h.i.+ng neon OPEN sign. That is, if one knows where and how to see. Most people don't.

Let me tell you what I see: The first shaft of b.u.t.tery morning light pours through the timber and electrifies the light frost and dew of the gra.s.s. The track made less than an hour before announces itself not by prints or bent foliage but by the absence of dew. For less than twenty seconds, when the force and angle of the morning light is perfect, I can see how my prey had hesitated for a few moments at the edge of the meadow to look and listen before proceeding. The track boldly entered the clearing before stopping and veeringback to the right toward the guarded shadows of the dark wall of pine, then continues along the edge of the meadow until it exits between two lodgepole pines, heading southeast.

I am a hunter.

As a hunter, I'm an important tool of nature. I complete the circle of life while never forgetting I'm a partic.i.p.ant as well. Without me, there is needless suffering and death is slow, brutal, and without glory. The glory of death depends on if one is the hunter or the prey. It can be either, depending on the circ.u.mstances.

I KNOW FROM scouting the area that for the past three morningstwo dozen elk have been grazing on a sunlit hillside a mile from where I stand, and I know which way my prey is headed and therefore which way I will be going. The herd includes cows and calves mostly, and three young male spikes. I'd also seen a handsomefive-by-five and a six-by-five bull, and a magnificent seven-pointroyal bull who lorded over the herd with cautious and stoic superiority. I'd follow the track through the meadow and the still-darkand dripping timber until it opened up on the rocky crest of a ridge that overlooked the gra.s.sy hillside.

I walk along the edge of the meadow keeping the track of my prey to my right so I can read it with a simple downward glance like a driver checks a road map. But in this case, the route I am following-filled with rushes, pauses, and contemplation- takes me across the high wooded terrain of the eastern slope of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. Like my prey, I stop often to listen, to look, to draw the pine and dust scented air deep into my lungs and to taste it, savor it, let it enter me. I become a part of the whole, not a visitor. takes me across the high wooded terrain of the eastern slope of the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. Like my prey, I stop often to listen, to look, to draw the pine and dust scented air deep into my lungs and to taste it, savor it, let it enter me. I become a part of the whole, not a visitor.

In the timber I do my best to control my breathing to keep it soft and rhythmic. I don't hike and climb too fast or too clumsilyso I don't get out of breath. In the dawn October chill, my breath is ephemeral, condensating into a cloud from my nose and mouth and whipping away into nothingness. If my prey suspectsI am on it-if it hears my labored breathing-it might stop in the thick forest to wait and observe. If I blunder into him, I might never get the shot, or get a poor shot that results in a wound. I don't want that to happen.

I almost lose the track when the rising terrain turns rocky and becomes plates of granite. The sun has not yet entered this part of the forest, so the light is dull and fused. Morning mist hangs as if sleeping in the trees, making the rise of the terrain ahead of me seem as if I observe it through a smudged window. Although I know the general direction we are headed, I stop and observe, letting my breath return to a whisper, letting my senses drink in the scene and tell me things I couldn't just see. and becomes plates of granite. The sun has not yet entered this part of the forest, so the light is dull and fused. Morning mist hangs as if sleeping in the trees, making the rise of the terrain ahead of me seem as if I observe it through a smudged window. Although I know the general direction we are headed, I stop and observe, letting my breath return to a whisper, letting my senses drink in the scene and tell me things I couldn't just see.

Slowly, slowly, as I stand there and make myself not look at the hillside or the trees or anything in particular, to make the scene in front of me all peripheral, the story is revealed as if the ground itself provided the narration.

My prey had paused where I pause, when it had been even darker. It looked for a better route to the top of the rise so as not to have to scramble up the surface of solid granite, not only becauseof the slickness of the rock but because the surface was covered with dry pockets of pine needles and untethered stones, each of which, if stepped on directly or dislodged, would signal the presence of an intruder.

But it couldn't see a better way, so it stepped up on the ledge and continued on a few feet. I now see the disturbance caused by a tentative step in a pile of pine needles, where a quarter-sized spot of moisture has been revealed. The disturbed pine needles themselves, no more than a dozen of them, are scattered on the bare rock like a child's pick-up sticks. Ten feet to the right of the pocket of pine needles, a small egg-shaped stone lies upturned with clean white granite exposed to the sky. I know the stone has been dislodged, turned upside down by an errant step or stumble,because the exposed side is too clean to have been there long.

Which meant my prey realized scrambling up the rock face was too loud, so it doubled back and returned to where he started. I guess he would skirt the exposed granite to find a better,softer place to climb. I find where my prey stopped to urinate,leaving a dark stain in the soil. I find it by the smell, which is salty and pungent. Pulling off a glove, I touch the moist ground with the tips of my fingers and it is a few degrees warmer than the dirt or air. The prey is close. And I can see a clear track where it turned back again toward the southeast, towardthe ridge.

On the other side of the ridge will be the elk. I will likely smell them before I see them. Elk have a particular odor-earthy, like potting soil laced with musk, especially in the morning when the sun warms and dries out their damp hides. potting soil laced with musk, especially in the morning when the sun warms and dries out their damp hides.

Quietly, deliberately, I put my glove back on and work the bolt on my rifle. I catch a glimpse of the bright, clean bra.s.s of the cartridge as it seats in the chamber. I ease the safety on, so when I am ready it will take no more than a thumb flick to be prepared to fire.

As I climb the hill, the morning lightens. The trees disperse and more morning light filters through them to the pine-needle-coveredforest floor. I keep the rifle muzzle out in front of me but pointed slightly down. I can see where my prey had stepped, and follow the track. My heart beats faster, and my breath is shallow. I feel a thin sheen of sweat p.r.i.c.k through the pores of my skin and slick my entire body like a light coating of machine oil. My senses peak, pushed forward a.s.serting themselves, as if ready to reach out to get a hold on whatever they can grasp and report back.

I slow as I approach the top of the ridge. A slight morning breeze-icy, bracing, clean as snow-flows over the ridge and mists my eyes for a moment. I find my sungla.s.ses and put them on. I can't risk pulling up over the top of the hill and having tears in my eyes so I can't see clearly through the scope.

I drop to my knees and elbows and baby crawl the rest of the way. Elk have a special ability to note movement of any kind on the horizon, and if they saw me pop over the crest, it would likely spook them. I make sure to have the crown of a pine from the slope I just climbed up behind me, so my silhouette is not framed against the blue white sky. As I crawl, I smell the damp soil and the slight rotten odor of decomposing leaves and pine needles.

There are three parklike meadows below me on the saddle slope and the elk are there. The closest bunch, three cows, two calves, and a spike, are no more than one hundred and fifty yards away. The sun lights their red brown hides and tan rumps. They are close enough that I can see the highlights of their black eyes as they graze and hear the click of their ungulate hooves against stones as they move. To their right, in another park, is a group of eight including the five-by-five. He looks up and his antlers catch the sun and for a moment I hold my breath for fear I've been detected. But the big bull lowers his head and continuesto chew, stalks of gra.s.s bouncing up and down out of the sides of his mouth like cigarettes.

I let my breath out.

The big seven-point is at the edge of the third park, at least three hundred yards away. He is half in the sun and half in shadow from the pine trees that border the meadow. His rack of antlers is so big and wide I wonder, as I always do, how it is possible for him to even raise his head, much less run through tight, dark timber. The big bull seems aware of the rest of the herd without actually looking at them. When a calf moves too closely to him, he woofs without even stopping his meal and the little one wheels and runs back as if stung by a bee.

The breeze is in my face, so I doubt the elk can smell me. The stalk has been perfect. I revel in the hunt itself, knowing this feeling of silent and pagan celebration is as ancient as man himself but simply not known to anyone who doesn't hunt. Is there any kind of feeling similar in the world of cities and streets? In movies or the Internet or video games? I don't think so, because this is real real.

Before pulling the stock of the rifle to my cheek and fitting my eye to the scope, I inch forward and look down the slope just below me which has been previously out of my field of vision. The sensation is like that of sliding back the cover off a steamingpot to see what is inside. I can feel my insides clench and my heart beat faster.

There he is. I see the broad back of his coat clearly, as well as his blaze orange hat. He is sighting the elk though his rifle scope. He is hidden behind a stand of thick red buckbrush so the elk can't see him. He's been tracking the big bull since an hour before dawn through the meadow, up the slope, over the ridge. Those were his tracks I'd been following. He is crouched behind the brush, a dark green nylon daypack near his feet. He is fifty yards away.

I settle to the ground, wriggling my legs and groin so I am in full contact. The coldness of the ground seeps through my clothes and I can feel it steady me, comfort me, cool me down. I thumb the safety off my rifle and pull the hard, varnished stock against my cheek and lean into the scope with both eyes open.

The side of his face fills the scope, the cross-hairs on his graying temple. He still has the remains of what were once mutton-chop sideburns. His face and hands are older than I recall,wrinkled some, mottled with age-spots. The wedding band he once wore is no longer there, but I see where it has created a permanent trough in the skin around his finger. He is still big, tall, and wide. If he laughed I would see, once again, the oversizedteeth with the glint of gold crowns in the back of his mouth and the way his eyes narrowed into slits, as if he couldn't look and laugh at the same time. tall, and wide. If he laughed I would see, once again, the oversizedteeth with the glint of gold crowns in the back of his mouth and the way his eyes narrowed into slits, as if he couldn't look and laugh at the same time.

I keep the crosshairs on his temple. He seems to sense that something is wrong. His face twitches, and for a moment he sits back and looks to his right and left to see if he can see what, or who, is watching him. This has happened before with the others. They seem to know but at the same time they won't concede. When he sits back, I lower the crosshairs to his heart. He never looks directly at me, so I don't have to fire.

I wait until he apparently concludes that it was just a strange feeling, and leans forward into his scope again, waiting for the seven-point bull to turn just right so he offers a clean, full-body shot. My aim moves with him.

I raise the crosshairs from his heart to his neck just below his jawbone and squeeze the trigger.

There is a moment when a shot is fired by a high-powered hunting rifle when the view through the scope is nothing more than a flash of deep orange and the barrel kicks up. For that moment,you don't know if you have hit what you were aiming at or what you will see when you look back down the rifle at your target.The gunpowder smell is sharp and pungent and the boom of the shot itself rockets through the timber and finally rolls back in echo form like a clap of thunder. There is the woofing and startledgrunt of a herd of elk as they panic as one and run toward the trees. The seven-by-seven is simply gone. From the blanket of trees, birds fly out like shooting sparks.

Here's what I know: I am a hunter, a bestower of dignity.

2.

JOE PICKETT WAS STRANDED ON THE ROOF OF HIS new home. it was the first Sat.u.r.day in October, and he was up there to fix dozens of T-Lock s.h.i.+ngles that had blown loose during a seventy-five-mile-per-hour windstorm that had also knocked down most of his back fence and sandblasted the paint off his shutters. The windstorm had come rocketing down the eastern slope of the mountains during the middle of the night and hit town like an airborne tsunami, snapping off the branches of h.o.a.ry cottonwoods onto power lines and rolling cattle semitrucks from the highway across the sagebrush flats like empty beer cans. For the past month since the night of the windstorm, the edges of loosened s.h.i.+ngles flapped on the top of his house with a sound like a deck of playing cards being shuffled. Or that's how his wife Marybeth described it since Joe had rarely been home to hear it and hadn't had a day off to repair the damage since it happened. Until today.

He had awakened his sixteen-year-old daughter Sheridan, a soph.o.m.ore at Saddlestring High, and asked her to hold the ricketywooden ladder steady while he ascended to the roof. It had bent and s.h.i.+vered while he climbed, and he feared his trip down. Since it was just nine in the morning, Sheridan hadn't been fully awake and his last glimpse of her when he looked down was of her yawning with tangles of blond hair in her eyes. She stayed below while he went up and he couldn't see her. He a.s.sumed she'd gone back inside.

There had been a time when Sheridan was his constant companion,his a.s.sistant, his tool pusher, when it came to ch.o.r.es and repairs. She was his little buddy, and she knew the differencebetween a socket and a crescent wrench. She kept up a constant patter of questions and observations while he worked, even though she sometimes distracted him. It was silent now. He'd foolishly thought she'd be eager to help him since he'd been gone so much, forgetting she was a teenager with her own interests and a priority list where "helping Dad" had dropped very low. That she'd come outside to hold the ladder was a consciousacknowledgment of those old days, and that she'd gone back into the house was a statement of how it was now. It made him feel sad, made him miss how it had once been.

It was a crisp, cool, windless fall day. A dusting of snow above treeline on the Bighorns in the distance made the mountainsand the sky seem even bluer, and even as he tacked the galvanized nails through the battered s.h.i.+ngles into the plywood sheeting he kept stealing glances at the horizon as if sneaking looks at a lifeguard in her bikini at the munic.i.p.al pool. He couldn't help himself-he wished he were up there.

Joe Pickett had once been the game warden of the Saddlestringdistrict and the mountains and foothills had been his responsibility. That was before he was fired by the director of the state agency, a Machiavellian bureaucrat named Randy Pope.

From where he stood on the roof, he could look out and see most of the town of Saddlestring, Wyoming. It was quiet, he supposed, but not the kind of quiet he'd been used to. Through the leafless cottonwoods he could see the reflective wink of cars as they coursed down the streets, and he could hear shouts and commands from the coaches on the high school football field as the Twelve Sleep High Wranglers held a scrimmage. Somewhereup on the hill a chainsaw coughed and started and roared to cut firewood. Like a pocket of aspen in the fold of a mountain range, the town of Saddlestring seemed packed into this deep U-shaped bend of the Twelve Sleep River and was laid out along the contours of the river until the buildings finally played out on the sagebrush flats but the river went on. He could see other roofs, and the anemic downtown where the tallest structurewas the wrought iron and neon bucking horse on the top of the Stockman's Bar.

In the back pocket of his worn Wranglers was a long list of "To-dos" that had acc.u.mulated for the past month. Marybeth had made most of the entries, but he had listed a few himself. The first five entries were: Fix roof

Clean gutters

Bring hoses in

Fix back fence

Winterize lawn

The list went on from there for the entire page and half of the back. Joe knew if he worked the entire day and into the night he wouldn't complete the list, even if Sheridan was helping him, which she wasn't. Plus, experience told him there would be a snag of some kind that would derail him and frustrate his progress, something simple but unantic.i.p.ated. The gutter would detach from the house while he sc.r.a.ped the leaves out of it, or the lumber store wouldn't have the right fence slats and they'd need to order them. Something. Like when the tree branches started to s.h.i.+ver and shake as a gust of wind from the north rolled through them with just enough muscle to catch the ladder and send it clattering straight backward from the house to the lawn as if it had been shot. And there he was, stranded on the top of the roof of a house he really didn't even want to live in, much less own.

The wind went away just as suddenly as it had appeared.

"Sheridan?"

No response. She was very likely back in bed.

"Sheridan? Lucy? Marybeth?" He paused, "Anybody?" "Anybody?"

He thought of stomping on the roof with his boots or danglinga HELP! message over the eave so Marybeth might see it out the kitchen window. Jumping from the roof to the cotton-woodtree in the front yard was a possibility, but the distance was daunting and he visualized missing the branch and thumping into the trunk and tumbling to the ground. Or, he thought sourly, he could just sit up there until the winter snows came and his body was eaten by ravens.

Instead, he went to work. He had a hammer and a pocketful of nails in the front of his hooded sweats.h.i.+rt. And a spatula.

As he secured the loose s.h.i.+ngles he could see his next-door neighbor, Ed Nedny, come out of his front door and stand on his porch looking pensive. Nedny was a retired town administrator who now spent his time working on his immaculate lawn, tendinghis large and productive garden, keeping up his perfectly well-appointed home, and was.h.i.+ng, waxing, and servicing his three vehicles-a vintage Chevy pickup, a Jeep Cherokee, and the black Lincoln Town Car that rarely ventured out of the garage. Joe had seen Nedny the night before when he came home applying Armor All to the whitewall tires of the Town Car under a trouble light. Although his neighbor didn't stare outrightat Joe, he was there to observe. To comment. To offer neighborly advice. Nedny wore a watch cap and heavy sweater, and drew serenely on his pipe, letting a fragrant cloud of the smoke waft upward toward Joe on the roof as if he sent it there.

Joe tapped a nail into a s.h.i.+ngle to set it, then drove it home with two hard blows.

"Hey, Joe," Ed called.

"Ed."

"Fixing your roof?"

Joe pa.s.sed a beat, discarded a sarcastic answer, and said. "Yup."

Which gave Ed pause as well, and made him look down at his feet for a few long, contemplative moments. Ed, Joe had discerned,liked to be observed while contemplating. Joe didn't comply.

"You know," Ed said, finally, "a fellow can't actually fix fix T-Lock s.h.i.+ngles. It's like trying to fix a car radio without taking it out of the dash. It just can't be done properly." T-Lock s.h.i.+ngles. It's like trying to fix a car radio without taking it out of the dash. It just can't be done properly."

Joe took in a deep and waited. He dug another nail out of the pocket of his hooded sweats.h.i.+rt.

"Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't try or that you're was.h.i.+ngyour time. I'm not saying that at all," Ed said, chuckling in the way a master chuckles at a hapless apprentice, Joe thought. The way his mentor-gone-bad Vern Dunnegan used to chuckle at him.

"Then what are you saying?" Joe asked.

"It's just that you can't really fix s.h.i.+ngles in a little patch and expect them to hold," Ed said. "The s.h.i.+ngles overlap like this," he held his hands out and placed one on top of another. "You can't fix a s.h.i.+ngle properly without taking the top one off first. And because they overlap, you need to take the one off that that. What I'm saying, Joe, is that with T-Lock s.h.i.+ngles you've got to lay a whole new set of s.h.i.+ngles on top or strip the whole roof and start over so they seat properly. You can't just fix a section. You've got to fix it all. If I was you, I'd call your insurance man and have him come out and look at it. That way, you can get got a whole new roof."

"What if I don't want a whole new roof?" Joe asked.

Ed shrugged affably, "That's your call, of course. It's your your roof. I'm not trying to make you do anything. But if you look at the other roofs on the block-at my roof-you'll see we have a certain standard. None of us have patches where you can see a bunch of nail heads. Plus, it might leak. Then you've got ceiling damage. You don't want that, do you?" roof. I'm not trying to make you do anything. But if you look at the other roofs on the block-at my roof-you'll see we have a certain standard. None of us have patches where you can see a bunch of nail heads. Plus, it might leak. Then you've got ceiling damage. You don't want that, do you?"

"No," Joe said defensively.

"n.o.body wants that," Ed said, nothing, puffing. Then lookingup at Joe and squinting through a cloud of smoke, "Are you aware your ladder fell down?"

"Yup," Joe answered quickly.

"Do you want me to prop the ladder back up so you can come down?"

"That's not necessary," Joe said, "I need to clean the gutters first."

"I was wondering when you were going to get to that," Ed said.

Joe grunted.

"Are you going to get started on your fence then too?"

"Ed . . ."

"Just trying to help," Ed said, waving his pipe, "just being neighborly."

Joe said nothing.

"It isn't like where you used to live," Ed continued on, "up the Bighorn Road or out there on your mother-in-law's ranch. In town, we all look out for each other and help each other out."

"Got it," Joe said, feeling his neck flush hot, wis.h.i.+ng Ed Nedney would turn his attention to someone else on the street or go wax his car or go to breakfast with his old retired buddies at the Burg-O-Pardner downtown.

Joe kept his head down, and started sc.r.a.ping several inches of dead leaves from his gutter with the spatula he'd borrowed from the kitchen drawer.

"I've got a tool for that," Ed offered.

"That's okay okay, Ed," Joe said through clenched teeth, "I'm doingjust fine."

"Mind if I come over?" Nedney asked while crossing his lawn onto Joe's. It was easy to see the property line, Joe noted, since Ed's lawn was green and raked clean of leaves and Joe's was neither. Nedny grumbled about the shape of Joe's old ladderwhile raising it and propping it up against the eave. "Is this ladder going to collapse on me?" Ed asked while he climbed it.

"We'll see," Joe said, as Nedny's big, fleshy face and pipe appeared just above the rim of the gutter. Ed rose another rung so he could fold his arms on the roof and watch Joe more comfortably.He was close enough that Joe could have reached out and patted the top of Nedny's watch cap with the spatula.

"Ah, the joys of being a homeowner, eh?" Ed said.

Joe nodded.

"Is it true this is the first house you've owned?"

"Yes."