"I know you do. What did Vern have to say?"
"He just wished us well and said he thought I had done a good job up there in that camp with Wacey. He said he was proud of his two boys."
"You're my boy, not Vern's," Marybeth said. Then she cautioned him. "Be careful with that man. I don't trust him. I never have."
Joe chuckled at that. The pills were beginning to work. He felt numbing waves slowly wash over him.
"He just stayed for a minute, but he said he wanted to meet with me later this week. He said he wanted to talk about my future."
"What did he mean?" Marybeth asked haltingly.
"He kind of offered me a job with Inter West Resources," Joe said. "For a lot more money."
"You're kidding," Marybeth said, sitting up and turning to him.
"I'm not," Joe said, patting her.
"Well, my goodness, Joe," she said. "My goodness."
PART THREE
LISTS
(c) (1) The Secretary of the Interior shall publish in the Federal Register [, and from time to time he may by regulation revise,] a list of all species determined by him or the Secretary of Commerce to be threatened species and a list of all species determined by him or the Secretary of Commerce to be an endangered species. Each list shall refer to the species contained therein by scientific and common name or names, if any, specify in respect to such species over what portion of its range it is endangered or threatened, and specify any critical habitat within such range. The Secretary shall from time to time revise each list published under the authority of this subsection to reflect recent determinations, designations, and revisions made in accordance with subsections (a) and (b).
--The Endangered Species Act Amendments of 1982
The triple funeral for the three dead outfitters was unlike anything Joe Pickett had experienced before. Ote Keeley's wish that he be buried in his 1989 Ford F-250 XLT Lariat turbo diesel had caused complications with the staff of the Twelve Sleep County Cemetery in that they were required to dig the biggest hole in the ground they had ever dug. The rental of an earthmover was necessary, and the size of the hole created a fifteen-foot mound of fresh soil at the head of the grave. The ceremony had been organized by the widows of Ote Keeley and Kyle Lensegrav (Calvin Mendes was unmarried) and the "unconventional" Reverend B. J. Cobb of the First Alpine Church of Saddlestring.
Joe Pickett stood soberly in his suit, hat, and bandage on a hillside listening to Reverend Cobb give the eulogy as he stood perched on the hood of the pickup.
The Keeley and Lensegrav widows and children flanked the crowd and the truck.
Behind the families, a blue plastic tarp hid a large pile of something.
It was a beautiful day at the cemetery. A very light breeze rattled the leaves of the cotton-woods, and the sun shone down brilliantly. Dew twinkled in the late fall grass, and the last of the departing morning river mist paused at the treetops.
Although Reverend Cobb's eulogy covered the short history of the outfitters--boyhood friends who hunted in Mississippi, joined the army together, served the country well in Operation Desert Storm, and relocated to the game-rich mountains and plains of Wyoming--Joe couldn't stop looking at the massive hole in the ground in front of the pickup and wondering what was under the blue tarp behind the families.
The mourners consisted of a few fellow Alpine Church members and several of the outfitters' drinking buddies. Joe noticed that there were no other outfitters present, and when he thought about it, he wasn't that surprised. Keeley, Lensegrav, and Mendes had been drummed out of the Wyoming Outfitters Association for their radical views and tendency to commit obvious game violations.
"They were salt-of-the-earch types," intoned the Reverend Cobb, a pudgy bachelor with a crew cut, who was known for his survivalist tendencies and small but fervent congregation.
"They loved their trucks. They were throwbacks to a time when men lived off of the land and provided for their families by their outdoor skills and cunning. They were prototypes of the first white Americans. They were frontiersmen. They were outdoors men They were sportsmen of
the highest caliber.
And these boys knew their calibers, all right. They ate elk, not lamb. They ate venison, not pork. They ate wild duck, not chicken ..."
The three mahogany-stained pine caskets were in the bed of the pickup, two side-by-side on the bottom and the third laid across them on top. Joe couldn't tell which casket contained whom.
The weight of the caskets made the four-wheel-drive pickup list to the rear. The Reverend Cobb finally finished up his comments about what the outfitters ate.
Ote Keeley's wife wasn't hard to pick out as she was the only pregnant woman there. She was thin and small and severe. Joe guessed that normally she wouldn't weigh more than 100 pounds. She had short-cropped blond hair and a pinched, hard face. Her mouth was set around an unlit cigarette. She tightly held the hand of a small girl who wanted to go look at the big hole instead of stand there respectfully with her mother. The girl--Joe would later learn that her name was April--was a five-year-old version of her mother but with a sweet, haunting face.
Joe had introduced himself to her before the services began and had said he was sorry about what happened and that he had children, too, with another on the way.
She had glared at him, her eyes narrowing into slits.
"Aren't you the motherfucking prick who wanted to take my One's outfitting license away?" Her Southern accent made the last word sound like "uh-why."
The little girl didn't flinch at her language, but Joe did. Joe said he was sorry, that this was probably a bad time, and scuttled back to the loose knot of mourners on the side of the pickup.
The Reverend Cobb ended his eulogy by saying that there were certain sacred items that the families of the deceased wanted their loved ones to have with them in the afterlife. At his cue, Mrs. Keeley and Mrs. Lensegrav peeled back the blue tarp to reveal a large pile of objects.
"Kyle Lensegrav would be lost in heaven ..." the reverend paused until Mrs. Lensegrav turned from the pile with her arms full, ".. . without his Denver Broncos jacket."
Mrs. Lensegrav approached the pickup and draped the jacket over one of the coffins on the bed of the truck.
"Where Kyle will be, the Denver Broncos will always be predominantly orange and blue, as they were in the seventies, eighties, and mid-nineties before they changed into their new hideous uniforms," thundered the reverend.
Joe watched in fascination as Mrs. Lensegrav placed Kyle's favorite hunting cap, spotting scope, Leatherman tool bag, meat saw, Gore-Tex boots, and saddle scabbard on the coffin.
Mrs. Keeley was next. "Not every man has the skill, determination, and acumen to bag a moose that will forever be listed as one of the top five Boone and Crockett-sanctioned trophies of North America!" the reverend said.
"But Ote Keeley can make that claim and these massive beauties ..."
Mrs. Keeley struggled under the weight of the huge moose antlers--rumor had it that Ote had actually shot the animal illegally within Yellowstone Park and sneaked it out--and Joe felt an urge to step forward to help her. He caught himself because he wasn't sure that she wouldn't attempt to skewer him. Somehow, she summoned the strength to place the antlers over the top coffin.
".. . will forever be mounted above Ote's celestial easy chair."
There were more items for Ote, including a television, VCR, tanned hides, his happiness Is A warm gut pile T-shirt. Calvin Mendes was probably shortchanged in the ceremony overall because the only items the women put on his casket were his bound volumes of Hustler magazine and a case of Schmidt beer.
Then the Reverend Cobb started up the pickup, eased it into drive, and leaped from the cab. Joe watched, as did the rest of the small crowd and the families, as the Ford inched forward and descended into the massive hole. It settled to the bottom with a solid thump, and no one wanted to look down to see if the caskets had jarred loose and broken open.