“Fucking thing is a nuisance,” his father muttered under his beer breath.
Walt wondered if this was a comment on road conditions or something else. He nearly spoke up, but his father’s mood was sliding, as it often did. He was muttering and talking to himself, and looking up the mountain instead of at the road. For the rest of the ride, Walt kept one hand on the door handle, ready to jump.
Shortly after they crested the summit, the dirt road widened out, crossing an open, flat expanse of gray green prairie, wax weed, sage, and tumblebush. To the east loomed the jagged peaks of the Pioneers, and the barren faces of the White Clouds. They turned right onto a dirt track following signs to Devil’s Bedstead. The name stuck in Walt’s mind. He would be haunted by it for the rest of his life.
A third beer was gone as they arrived at the trailhead Unnamed Lake. Devil’s Bedstead, an oppressive gray granite monster wearing a skirt of boulders, rose from the lake, blotting out the sky. Even in late July it wore a cap of ice and snow.
The car rolled to a noisy stop on the gravel, and his father lumbered out from behind the wheel, grabbing for the door to retain his balance. It was cooler here despite a powerful sun. Walt tugged on a sweatshirt he’d thrown into the backseat.
“Get the cage,” his father ordered while pissing only feet from the car. His father zipped up his pants and came around the car, shielding his eyes to survey up the mountain. Then he looked back down the road from where they’d come. He wore the revolver on his belt in a leather holster that carried an insignia. From the backseat he withdrew the stained towel that he now unwrapped to reveal a twelve-gauge, over-under, double-barreled shotgun. Sunlight flickered dimly off its polished barrels, as his old man tucked the gun beneath his left armpit.
Now Walt understood what his father had in mind, why he’d been sworn to secrecy. He knew, too, not to question or go up against his father when he’d been drinking. So he drew the cage from the Pinto, his hands shaking, his knees weak.
“Dad…,” He pleaded, breaking his own rules.
“Shut up!” his father snapped. “This is what’s called the laws of nature. This, son, is real justice. You ask a person any fucking number of times to get the fucking cat off your property…and then you take matters into your own hands. You remember that.”
He would, as it turned out.
But it had been Walt’s hands, not his father’s, that had captured Chippers. Walt’s hands that had trapped Chippers in the cage. Walt who had been giddy about joining his father. For this…
“Release the prisoner,” his father said.
He shook his head, fighting back the tears.
“Do it, son.”
“Can’t we just let him go?”
“That’s all you’re doing.”
“But…the shotgun.”
“Release the prisoner,” he repeated.
Walt hesitated, the first tears escaping.
“OPEN THE FUCKING CAGE!” His father hollered so loudly that his voice echoed off the mountain.
Walt opened the cage, and a bewildered Chippers jumped out. The cat landed on the rocky ground behind the car and walked a tight circle, its nose working furiously. Walt sniffled. The cat sprang away from him and scampered up the scree toward a stand of Douglas fir.
Walt’s father trotted after the cat, across to the copse of trees. Walt turned toward the lake, its surface peaceful and still. He covered both ears, pressing hard, and sank to his knees, his nose running.
His whole body jumped with the reports-a cramp from head to foot. Wind riffled the surface of the lake.
They rode back in a sickening silence, his father glancing over at him from time to time but never speaking. His father occasionally broke into a grin and chuckled morbidly to himself. Walt hated him-a hate beyond anything he’d ever experienced, so dark and awful that he even considered turning the shotgun on his father and killing him right there. Killing them both, if it came to that-jerking on the wheel and sending the car over the unguarded edge of Trail Creek pass.
For the next two years his mother tried to negotiate a truce between them, having no idea of the cause of their break. She mentioned Chippers’s absence one night at dinner; Walt and his father exchanged glances, but that was all. His father came and went, rarely staying more than a long weekend, the time between those weekends increasing, which didn’t bother Walt one bit. He and his brother, Bobby, took over putting out the garbage, fixing the heat tape on the roof ahead of the first snow, shoveling the path and driveway. His father returned like an unnamed planet, and then left as quickly as he’d come. Back to his darkness.
Walt finally broke the silence after waiting for his old man to get in his car, about to leave for another several months. Walt tapped on the window. Jerry rolled down the glass and sat there waiting.
“I’ll never forgive you,” Walt said.
He turned and walked away, at twelve years old, an orphan.
Three
W alt could enter a dark garage knowing there was an armed man inside, but something about a hospital gave him the creeps.
The semiprivate room had one empty bed. Walt passed under a flickering TV and stopped abruptly. Glowing monitors connected to his nephew with wires and tubes. The boy’s head was shaved and bandaged. Purple bruising surrounded his right eye socket. A line of stitches at the edge of his lips extended his mouth into a lopsided snarl.
Myra sat in a chair close to the bed. She directed a sullen, resentful expression at Walt. “You could have prevented this.”
“ Myra -”
“Mom,” Kevin muttered. “Not his fault.”
She turned and took his hand gently in hers. “Back to sleep. It’s only Walt.”
“Hey, Kev.”
The boy’s eyes, bloodshot and swollen, found Walt.
“Eric?” The boy spoke with difficulty.
“No talking, Kev,” Myra said. “Back to sleep.”
“Eric’s okay,” Walt said. He saw relief in the boy’s only eye.
“Thank God,” Kevin said.
“I’m here as your uncle. First and foremost my concern is with your health and your speedy recovery. But we talked about this before, Kevin: I’m the sheriff, and I’ve got to talk to you about this.”
“But we can do this later,” Myra said.
“Ketchum police are going to want to talk to him, Myra. They’re going to charge him. I need to hear it first if we’re going to help him.”
“Doesn’t matter to me. It’s okay, Mom.”
“The boy is doped up.”
“It’s up to Kevin.”
“I’m okay, Mom. Please.”
Myra huffed, but sat back in the chair.
The bloody eye blinked. “We wanted clothes,” he said, “some nice clothes.”
“Go on.”
“Me and Eric thought we could lift some clothes from the Suds. So we…like…scoped the place. Checked it out. You know. Parked around the corner.” He paused, worked his mouth side to side and started again. “Eric said he could pick a lock, but he ended up kicking it in.”
“Eric kicked the door in,” Walt clarified.
“We got inside and the alarm went off. We freaked. Eric went for the window-don’t ask me why. I took off and hit a pole, I guess.”
“Why the window, if the door’s kicked in?”
“I dunno.”
“Why Suds Tub over something like the Goldmine?”
Kevin grimaced and then winced with pain. “I don’t know.”