He wasn’t sure how long he remained motionless on the floor on his hands and knees, his head hanging, trying to focus his mind. Had he hit his head in the fall? he wondered. He didn’t remember doing so. But he practically swooned as he sat back on the floor, dizziness returning. Slumping to the side, he slid out of the bag and lay on the floor, his bare skin on cold wood, his eyes open, until he finally started to get his bearings.
Joe stood up shakily, padded to the doorjamb and hit the light switch beside it. The bedroom flooded with harsh light. He stood there, naked, rubbing his eyes but not able to clear the cobwebs from his vision.
Still not entirely lucid, he looked around the room and remembered where he was. His sleeping bag was a tangle on the floor, his pillow on the mattress but puckered with sweat. Had he dreamed about flushing a bird? Where had that come from?
As he pulled on his Wranglers and a Tshirt, he recalled the sound. It had a rapid, thumping cadence, like a pheasant breaking wildly from the brush. Or, he thought, feeling the hair prick up on his arms, like the sound of someone running away.
Joe looked around, trying to recall where he had put his weapon before going to bed. He slipped his .40 Beretta out of its holster and tiptoed down the hallway. Methodically, he checked out each room, opening closet doors, peering around corners, but the house was empty, the doors bolted, the windows locked. His head was still feeling thick and fuzzy, as if a terrific bout of the flu was coming on.
Assured that he was alone, Joe sat in a chair at the table and put his Beretta on the tabletop. He rubbed his eyes and face, debating whether he should try to wake up fully or go back to sleep. He felt somewhere in the middle of both.
Maybe it was simple exhaustion, he thought. He hadn’t slept well for almost a week. He was out of his home territory, out of his routine. He missed Marybeth and his daughters. He let his head flop back and found himself staring at the bullet hole in the ceiling.
“This is where Will sat,” Joe said aloud, “right here in this chair.”
He glanced involuntarily at the Beretta on the table, then at the urn, instantly recognizing the action for all of the cinematic melodrama it held. He stood and shook his head, trying to shake the fog away. Maybe it was that sour beer, or the heavy odor of disinfectant in the house that was making him feel so strange.
Joe unlocked the front door and stood barefoot on the porch. A light frost the color of the moon sparkled on the grass. He filled his lungs with needles of icy air and felt better. His head began to clear. He stood on the porch and breathed until he started to shiver from the cold, then went back inside. He was beginning to remove his clothing and crawl back into the sleeping bag when he thought of something. Pulling on his boots and grabbing his flashlight from his daypack and the Beretta from the table, Joe went through the utility room and unbolted the back door and stepped out into the tiny backyard. The umbrellalike canopy of cottonwoods closed off the sky. He snapped on his flashlight and panned it across the grass until the beam stopped at the cluster of footprints in the frost beneath his bedroom window and the indents made by boots, widely spaced, where the man he had startled by falling out of bed had run away.
Par t Three You stare through the plastic at the red smear of meat in the supermarket. What’s this it says there? Mighty Good? Tastee? Quality, Premium, and Government Inspected? Soon enough, the blood is on your hands. It’s inescapable.
Thomas McGuane, An Outside Chance We cannot pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected . . . if I were to live in a wilderness, I should become . . . a fisher and hunter in earnest.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Sixteen
The town of Jackson was dark and still in the predawn of Sunday morning. Joe was groggy. He had been unable to sleep after being woken up and falling out of bed, and had spent the rest of the early morning hours going through Will’s boxes, searching in vain for the missing notebook or anything else that would give him a better idea of what happened. He dressed, showered, and drove downtown, his thoughts sluggish and opaque. As his head cleared slightly, he realized he was hungry. He found a restaurant called The Sportsman’s Café that would open at 5:30 a.m., according to the sign on the door, so for the next half hour he walked around the town square, his boots clumping on the frosted wooden sidewalks, his breath condensating in translucent white puffs. He studied the elk antler arches at the corners of the square, the antlers themselves turning white with age.
The stores facing the square were designer clothes shops, specialty outlets, art galleries, flyfishing stores, The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, which boasted saddles instead of bar stools, and restaurants that would explode his state per diem like a charge of C4. He stopped briefly at Wildwater Photography, the business Birdy owned, and looked at the displays in the window. There were photos of happily screaming families bound up in life vests, smashing through rolls of whitewater, and another display of action shots of individual skiers. All of the subjects, Joe thought, looked like they were having the time of their lives.
He wished he were. He could not account for the slight residue of fog that still hung in his brain and hoped it was simply a combination of lack of sleep, hunger, and simple disorientation. Somehow, though, it felt like more than that.
He tried not to let it alarm him. There hadn’t been enough time to adjust, and he couldn’t wallow in his loneliness. A game warden was dead, and Trey had given him an assignment. But first what he really needed was a big breakfast.
He entered the restaurant as soon as the proprietor unlocked the door and opened it. The man stood to the side to let Joe in and said, “Usual table, Will?”
“I’m not Will,” Joe said.
The proprietor was short and thick with a bristly saltandpepper beard, a potatoshaped nose, and a toothpick in his mouth. He wore a stained apron over a Henley shirt and held a coffee mug. He looked dumbfounded.
“Of course you aren’t,” the man said after a long moment, his face flushing. “I don’t know you at all.”
“Joe Pickett. I’m the new guy.”
“Ed,” the man said, putting his coffee on an empty table so he could shake Joe’s hand. “I own this place, at least for now.”
Joe shook Ed’s hand and chose a table by a steamedover window near the batwing kitchen door. “I’m really hungry, Ed.”
“Then you’ll want the Sportsman’s Special,” he said.
“Country fried steak with gravy, three eggs, hash browns, toast. How do you like your meat and eggs?”
“Medium rare and overeasy,” Joe said. “And coffee.”
“Of course.”
Joe sat and unbuttoned his green Game and Fish jacket, sipped ice water and coffee, and listened as Ed cooked and filled the silence with the angry sound of sizzling food. A radio in the kitchen played scratchy country music. The Sportsman’s Café seemed out of place among the art galleries and specialty shops Joe had looked into earlier. The inside was steamy and dark, with the wall nearest the restrooms covered with flyers for local horse sales and team penning events. A feed store calendar was tacked up behind the counter. The heads of elk, deer, antelope, and a pre–Endangered Species Act grizzly bear stared out from the walls. The menu, printed on a single laminated page, consisted of traditional American big breakfast fare—
eggs, pancakes, waffles, patty sausages.
Joe looked up from the menu as Ed came by to refill his coffee. “You won’t find any blintzes on it,” the older man said, “or anything with sprouts. There’s nothing on that menu with hollandaise or béarnaise sauce either. The only sauce I make is God’s own sauce—gravy.”
“Gotcha.” Joe smiled in solidarity.
After Joe had downed a cup and a half of strong coffee, Ed brought out the platter. Joe ate with barely controlled aggression, and sat back only after swiping the plate clean with toast. There was nothing special about the food, except that it was perfect, Joe thought.