There wasn't any physical punch to shock me into awareness this time-just the growing sense that I'd let myself get put in a box, and even helped to build it. It was a good box, a lot better than most people ever got, but I was having more and more trouble breathing, like the air inside was running out. Almost worse was the crushing sense that the real problem was me-that I didn't belong anywhere and I was blighting everything around me. Discomfort edged into quiet panic. I started drinking too much, jacking the family disapproval level way up.
One night Emilie and I went to bed without touching, as had become common. We didn't talk, either, just lay there side by side awake. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. Our marriage had been based on our trying to please each other and do what the world expected of us, but now we'd grown, or retreated, into who we really were. Whatever connection there once had been was between two different people.
But I saw another truth alone. I'd allowed myself to believe that with all the external changes, I'd embarked on a new life. In fact, I had only caved in to the very thing I'd avoided with Sarah Lynn. The trappings were different, that was all.
I had just turned thirty then. Not long afterward, I took a solo vacation to Montana, thinking I'd refresh myself for a few days. It was the same time of year as now. The plane arrived just at dusk, coming in from the southwest over a carpet of green mountain wilderness.
Madbird picked me up at the airport and took me out drinking, a great night of cruising the bars and running into old friends. He let me know that he'd started working with a crew he liked a lot, and they could use a framer.
Within another month, my marriage and my journalistic career were both over, and I was back in Montana growing calluses on my hands again. I hadn't left since.
Like memories of Celia, that old restlessness had faded to the point where I'd barely thought about it for years. In a way that was a great relief. But I had never come any closer to resolving it, and in another way, it was like the death of an enemy-you lost a powerful force that had been driving you.
Now I was pushing forty.
20
I wasn't in any hurry to get home to my dark, empty cabin and burnt lumber, so I took a roundabout way, drifting along the country roads and crossing the Missouri at the York Bridge.
I'd reached the northeast rim of Canyon Ferry Lake when headlights flashed at me out of the darkness ahead-a double flick that was repeated a couple of seconds later. The vehicle was a few hundred yards farther on, down near the shoreline, not moving. Most likely it was a signal for help. That area lay between a couple of campgrounds, a half-mile-plus stretch of brush and gullies that was off-road, but that teenagers often drove into at night. There were little beaches where you could skinny-dip, cliffs you could dive off, plenty of places to drink or steam up your windows. A lot of the ground was sandy and soft, and getting stuck was easy.
It was after one o'clock in the morning now and my mood was far from helpful. But the headlights kept flashing and I decided I'd better at least make sure that whoever was there was OK. I was probably the only person who would come along this way before morning, and the night had gone cold.
I slowed and turned off the highway onto a dirt track that led in there. I knew the landscape well from my own teen years, for the same reasons as the kids nowadays. I was still edgy, and I cut my headlights and stayed in the brush, coming up on top of a little knoll. I got out quietly and walked to where I could get a look.
The other vehicle was maybe sixty yards away now, a little below me on a slope toward the lake. The moon was dropping behind the Rockies, but there was enough light for me to see that it was a dark-colored Jeep, with a man pacing around beside it.
Kirk Pettyjohn drove a black Jeep just like it. And his wiry form and pale hair were unmistakable.
That sure put a new spin on things.
He was staring in my direction, his head swiveling with jerky meth agitation. He'd probably heard my engine and was trying to spot me. Anger and wariness rose up in me together. My first thought was that Balcomb had sent him, maybe to extort the photos I'd claimed to have. He wasn't carrying his rifle, although he could have had it stashed within easy reach or had somebody else hiding.
But it didn't make sense that he'd wait at a place like this and flag me down-taking the chance that I'd just drive on past or even have a gun of my own-instead of nailing me when I wasn't expecting it.
I stood there for most of a minute, trying once again to choose the path of greatest caution.
Then I realized how much I'd been letting fear push me around more in these past several hours. I was sick of it and disgusted with myself, and I was goddamned if I was going to back down from Kirk Pettyjohn.
I drove toward him slowly, watching for nervous glances toward a hidden weapon or accomplice. But his gaze stayed fixed on me, and he raised his hands palms forward in appeasement.
"I come to apologize, Hugh," he called.
That was a possibility I hadn't considered, although "apologizing" no doubt meant trying to lie his way off my shit list.
Visibility was better in the open space of the lakeshore, and for once he wasn't wearing his sunglasses. His eyes were twitching and darting around, and his face was as pale as his hair, and even in the night's chill, beaded with sweat. On top of the meth, he was scared. My anger eased off a little. I hadn't intended to really thump him, anyway-maybe bitch-slap him once or twice. Now I decided just to rattle his cage some more. But as I walked toward him, I didn't have to pretend I was pumped up.
"Now, hang on a minute," he said. His hands rose higher and made pushing motions, like he was trying to keep me away. "I know you're feeling kind of sore."
I kept walking. "You can start your apologizing with that lumber you burned, Kirk. Did Balcomb pay you extra? Or does that kind of thing go with your job?"
"Lumber I burned?" He edged around the Jeep to keep it between us. It was another one of his macho props, called a Rubicon, for Christ's sake.
"If you lie to me, that's just going to piss me off more," I said.
"I'm not lying-I don't know what the hell you're talking about."
"Those old fir planks I took from the ranch. That you ratted me off about and got me sent to jail for this afternoon. Remember?"
His mouth opened in an O. "Somebody burned them? Whoa there, goddamn it." He scuttled farther around the Jeep, his words spilling out in a rush.
"Hugh, I swear, this is the first I heard of it. I snitched on you, yeah. That whole deal today, I feel so bad I could walk under a dime with a tall hat on. But I didn't burn nothing. Hell, I wouldn't go near your place-I knew you wouldn't like it. I tried calling you, and figured you were in the bars and I'd wait here until you came back."
I stopped. In the quiet, the elephant that was always in the room with Kirk and me-what had happened with Celia and Pete-became an almost tangible presence.
When they'd died, I'd been old enough to understand it at least in an adolescent way, but Kirk was only seven or eight. From the little I'd learned about psychology, I'd gleaned that younger kids in particular were prone to take on irrational guilt for traumas like that-that it was common with divorces, and it certainly seemed likely with the tragic death of an only brother, especially a golden boy like Pete. I'd often wondered if Kirk had subconsciously become a fuckup to punish himself. I knew those sorts of things weren't nearly that simple, that he was probably a fuckup by nature, and that there was the flip side of using the trauma as an excuse. Still, I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. My anger dropped another notch.