He looked at her, wondering.
“I’m pregnant.”
He felt his breath catch in his chest.
“Is that all right with you?” She had never been able to get pregnant. For a long time now they had stopped trying.
“It’s wonderful.” He raised his glass. “To us.”
They clinked glasses. “To the three of us.”
10
He stood at the place on the trail where he and his brother had taken their trophy. The traps were gone now. The bones, too, had been cleared away. They had been taken to the state forensic lab for analysis. Without a head, and without any fingerprints, since all the flesh had been chewed off, there was no way of making an identification of who the remains belonged to.
The bones would be cremated and buried in a common, unmarked grave.
He took the photographs out of the Manila envelope he had brought with him, the photographs he had taken over the course of several months. He looked at each in turn, carefully, remembering how he had felt when he had originally taken them, and before that, when he had first found out.
It had been a gut-wrenching feeling. A feeling of emptiness, of almost utter despair.
Now there was no feeling. That was in a different lifetime.
He dug a small firepit in the moist spring earth. Spreading the photos in the depression, he poured enough lighter fluid on them to insure that they would burn easily. Then he lit the match to them.
The pictures burned slowly, the ends curling as the flame grew towards the center. The smoke drifted up into the sky.
When the photographs had burned completely, he covered the depression with dirt and smoothed it over with his boot. Then he walked away down the trail.
He had done his hunting here. He wouldn’t come to this place again.
11
She went to bed early. She tired easily now that she was pregnant.
He sat outside in the dark, on the edge of the back deck he’d added on two years ago. It was a warm evening. He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. His feet were bare. He felt the grass under his feet when he stretched them out over the edge of the deck. It was a well-made deck. He’d done all the work himself, in his spare time.
He finished his beer and went inside. He tossed the bottle into the recycling bin in the kitchen and went through the mud room into the garage.
The open freezer gave off a dry-ice smell. He lifted the various packages, including those of the venison he had taken in deer season. This weekend he’d thaw one of the packages out and they’d have a barbecue. He’d make venison burgers.
Pushing some other packages aside, he reached down to the bottom of the large freezer and pulled out the Ziploc bag. The contents of the bag had formed an unclear opaqueness; you couldn’t see inside it from the outside.
He unzipped the bag and lifted out the contents.
He had been coming out to the freezer all winter and spring, at least once a week. Taking out his prize and looking at it, handling it, exposing it to the air. Too many times, that was obvious now.
The trophy head was going bad. Pretty soon he’d have to throw it away.
The Big Shuffle
by Clark Howard
In his introduction to his new short story collection, Challenge the Widowmaker, Clark Howard talks of a common element to all Iris stories: “That characteristic is the quality of pride... manifesting itself in surprising ways at unexpected times, giving... desperate people the mind and muscle... to get through another day, and hopefully get another chance.”
Jack Nash had not even sat down at his desk on Monday morning when his boss, Sam Spear, the company’s Director of Claims, came briskly into his office with a file folder in his hand.
“Where the hell have you been for two days?” he asked gruffly. “I’ve been trying to get hold of you since noon Saturday.”
“I went down to Ensenada,” Nash replied undefensively. “Did a little albacore fishing. Laid on the beach. Drank tequila. It’s a primitive custom called enjoying the weekend.”
Spear was a beefy, overbearing man of sixty, with a widely held reputation throughout California All-Risk Liability Company of being able to frighten subordinates with a mere glance. Nash, his best claims investigator, was the one person who was never intimidated by him.
“I don’t suppose you’re up on the news,” Spear said. It was actually an accusation.
“The only news that interests me on weekends is the weather report, Sam.” Nash sat down at his desk while Spear dropped his heavy bulk into one of the chairs facing it and tossed the file folder over to him.
“Eureka Petroleum,” Spear said. “One of their company planes went down in a lake up in northern Nevada late Friday afternoon. Pilot survived, but one of their vice presidents, Richard Tenney, sank with the plane. We carry a blanket policy for a million on all the company officers.”
“With P, T, and A?” Nash asked, opening the folder.
“With P, T, and A,” Spear confirmed. P, T, and A was insurance jargon for Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It was a clause that doubled the amount of insurance payable if an insured was killed while on company business as a passenger on any of those modes of transportation.
“What brought the plane down?” Nash asked.
“Don’t know yet. It’s at the bottom of Ghost Lake, along with Tenney. The lake’s in the Granite Mountains, six or seven thousand feet up, and it’s deep, very deep: fourteen, fifteen hundred feet. They’ve had divers looking for the plane and Tenney’s body for two days, but no luck yet. The lake is four miles wide and twelve miles long. I’ve been on the phone with the local sheriff up there; he’s not too optimistic. Says there’s half a dozen or more bodies in there already — fishermen, boaters, swimmers — that have never been recovered.”
“Ghost Lake,” said Nash. “Aptly named, apparently. What’s the pilot say?”
“He hasn’t been questioned too extensively yet; he’s hospitalized for exposure. Wandered around half the night soaking wet before he found a fishing lodge to get help. All he’s said so far is that the engine was missing badly and in danger of quitting. Says he either had to try a lake landing or risk a crash in the trees.” Spear rose and adjusted his ample belly back under his vest and belt. “Anyway, my notes are all there. I want you to handle this, Jack. You’re the best man I’ve got. Get up to Ghost Lake and start digging in every direction to see if you can find a reason to deny this claim. Company can’t afford to take a two-million-dollar hit this quarter. This could affect our bonuses for the whole year.”
The phone rang on Nash’s desk. He answered and handed it to Spear. “Nelson in data processing, for you.”
Spear took the phone. “Hello — yes — Richard Tenney — T-E-N-N-E-Y, that’s right.” The burly man frowned. “What! Are you sure? Social Security numbers and birth dates match?” His face reddened. “Son of a bitch!” He slammed the phone down.
“Another policy?” Nash asked, raising his eyebrows. He had worked for Sam Spear for ten years and knew what detonated the older man.
“Yes, goddamn it! A personal policy! Half a million!”
“With P, T, and A?”
“Oh, yes! Of course!”
“That raises the death benefit to three million.”
“I can add, Jack!” His face turned redder. “We’ve been double-shuffled!” A double shuffle was when an insured managed to obtain two policies for an amount in excess of what would have been allowed, according to his age and health, in a single policy.