At last Smart crossed the first clear-running river, and he pulled off the road to go and stand beside it and listen to its tumbling run and smell the sage. Salmon?
With Moby-Dick himself, they shared the Japan Ground
And now under the sky of the Tanana, two thousand miles from there, two hundred from the salt, in this clear baptismal water, they’re home
To claim their lay, like the Nantucket whalers, their fishers’ portion.
They make me feel like cheering.
Hearing the roar of a truck somewhere back along the two-lane road, bearish Smart, weeping for his lost poem, hurried in embarrassment back to his car.
Back up at park headquarters, across a small parking lot from the rail to the Temple, Rowan found the county sheriff, Max Peterson, waiting beside the glass counter of the bookshop. Phyllis Stowe, the sales clerk, had been minding the store. She and Peterson had been gossiping. They both stopped talking to watch Rowan as she came in.
“Here’s my new police person,” Peterson said to Phyllis with a wink. In his right hand he was holding a gun belt with a holstered pistol on it. He wore a big.357 in a silver-decorated Mexican holster on his own belt. “She look tough enough to you?”
“She’s mighty tough,” Phyllis said, and seemed not to be joking.
“Come on, tiger,” Sheriff Peterson said to Ranger Smart. He motioned her toward a small office off the headquarters lobby that said PRIVATE on the door. When they were both inside he closed the door. He was a huge man, six five, with massive shoulders and a bald shaven head to which he affected to apply wax. He had fierce curling mustaches which he waxed as well.
“Here you go,” he said. He took the pistol from the belt he was holding and handed it to her barrel toward the ceiling. “You gotta sign for it. And for the bullets.”
Rowan took the pistol, swung it toward the closed window and sighted down the barrel, gripping it with both hands.
“Oh, wow,” she said. “A.357! Heavy shit. Who can I shoot?”
“I can see,” Peterson said, “where we got a lot of review ahead of us. I mean like a massive reorientation procedure has to accompany this assignment for you.”
“Nonsense,” Rowan said. “Absolutely not.” She set about inserting the cartridges in the revolver’s chambers. “I’ve done this before, Max, remember? I was an enforcement ranger for seven months in ‘94.” She pointed the weapon double-handed toward the window again, pivoting so that it could cover the arc of the visible park outside. Peterson gently took the weapon back, handed her the belt and watched her buckle it on.
“First off, Rowan,” Peterson said, “this here weapon is not a.357 Magnum.”
“It’s not?”
“Sorry about that. This here is a Colt Lawman. American-designed revolver parts made in Spain or somewheres. Double action. Four-inch barrel.”
“OK,” she said.
“Now, Colt does a.357-caliber version of this and they do a.45-caliber but what you have, what you will have here, is a plain old.38-caliber version. Six shots. Firing.38 slugs. With double action, you don’t have to squeeze the trigger hard to cock it. You use your thumb.”
“Well good for little me. But I can’t stop a damn bear with this, can I? I can’t stop a crack-crazed gangsta. So what good is it?”
“Very accurate weapon.” Peterson watched her sign the form for the revolver “You OK, Rowan? Everything all right?”
She gave him a quick affectionate glance with her striking blue eyes. He was at a disadvantage with Rowan Smart because, although he was a married Mormon and a bishop of the stake, he had been to bed with her.
“I mean, you attending your program? Everything like that?”
“What are you, Max, my parole officer? My confessor? My political commissar?”
“I hear your old man was a major Communist,” he said. “That’s what they say in town. Some ranchers say.”
“Damn right,” she said. “Mom was the same. Mom’s buried in the Kremlin wall. I’m gonna be buried there too.”
“The fact is, Rowan,” Peterson sighed, “I’m worried about you. I wouldn’t have put you on enforcement but it’s not up to me.”
“There you go,” she said. “I don’t work for you either.”
Peterson flushed. “Now that’s where you’re wrong, sweetheart. Every law enforcement officer in this county works for me. And you, pal, you work under my direct personal supervision. You’ll be subject to regular testing. I catch you stoned and armed, I swear I’ll put you in the penitentiary.”
“I’m clean, Max.”
“Things are perverse,” he said. “I got little Mormon farm boys giving each other hand signs like they’re Crips and Bloods. I’m up against it. I’m trying to protect the public. Do I have to protect them from you? Were you clean when you like to rode that quarter horse to death up by Sutler’s Bar? I heard about that.”
She frowned deeply, childishly.
“I told you, man, I’m clean.”
Peterson fidgeted.
“You’re the only officer we got around here with a Ph.D. That’s supposed to mean you’re smarter than the other guys. So don’t go all dumb on me.”
“I don’t have a Ph.D.,” she said. “I never finished my dissertation.”
“Goddamn it, Rowan,” Peterson said, “I don’t give a good blip what you got. I need some law and order. I need this park not to be a hangout and I need you to help me. You know I like you,” he told her. “I’m an easy guy to get on with. I just want you to be responsible.”
“You are an easy guy, Max,” she said. “When I first met you I thought you were one of the twelve Nephites who walk the earth.”
He flushed further at her invocation of the Mormon tradition and then laughed. He had been to college and taken a sociology degree at a state university down in Utah and done a few years as a social worker in prison. He was a member of the Mutual Improvement Society and a scoutmaster.
“Just don’t blow it, baby.”
“Don’t worry, Max.”
As she started out, her.38 buckled on, Peterson closed the door she had opened. She looked at him puzzled.
“I don’t know how to put this, Rowan. I mean, I don’t want to embarrass you. You gonna wear those boots and britches on patrol? With your weapon?”
“I got mounted patrol tomorrow,” she said. “Why not?”
He paused and then spoke slowly.
“I don’t know how to put this.”
“That’s what you just said. What don’t you know how to put, Max?”
“For … psychological reasons,” he said, looking at the floor, “I don’t think female law enforcement officers should wear provocative clothing. And I think you look good enough to … I think you look real nice in that rig. And with your gun belt, you know … you’re kind of provocative.”
“You mean I’m a leather trip, Max? Sort of S-and-M like.”
“I mean I know how bad guys think. How men think. Makes me wonder what you got in your own mind. So there it is. I don’t like you getting yourself up like that.”
“It’s standard service uniform.”
“Oblige me, Rowan.”
“Male bullshit,” she said.
“Jeez, you called it. Not me.”
“All right, all right,” she said. “I’ll see you around.”
There was a stretch of road, a time of afternoon when he could see the great peaks to the west shining. As the sun declined toward them, they seemed to remove themselves from sight. As he drove, a sudden storm came out of the east. The pinon-dappled hills were higher now and fingers of lightning struck the taller trees and set them ablaze, blackening the trunks and the ground around them. But in a few minutes the storm was gone, except for the smell of ozone and pine smoke, and there was hardly any rain.