"I slept with him once. Only once," Marybeth said, wincing, anticipating Joe. On cue, Joe moaned and slumped in his saddle as if hit by a rifle bullet.
"Aaugh," he groaned. "Yuck. Yipes."
She stifled a smile. She told him that she had read in the library that Hayden had died recently as well; killed just a week ago in a fire in his home. Joe said he had learned of the fact from two anti-globalist drifters.
"So were you an ecoterrorist?" Joe asked, still wounded. This was a disquieting circumstance to be in, asking his wife about things he had never known about her.
"No, I never was," Marybeth answered. "But I was with them a few times when they did things like pull up survey stakes and pour sugar in gas tanks. I never did any of those things, but I was there. And I never told on them."
Joe nodded. "This reporter," he asked. "Has he called back?"
"Twice," Marybeth said.
"Do you want me to talk to him? Would that help?"
She waved her hand. "He'll go away I'm not worried about that."
Joe fell behind because they had to thread through two boulders, then caught up again.
"So why didn't you ever tell me any of this? Stewie Woods was a pretty famous guy in his way"
Marybeth thought for a moment. "It just didn't seem necessary. How could it have mattered?"
"It might just have been good to know "Joe said, unsure of whether or not that was true.
"Why?"
Joe shrugged. Like most men, he had a tough time believing that his wife had had any kind of interesting life before she met him. Which was ridiculous on its face.
"The good part of my life started when I met Joe Pickett," Marybeth said, looking deeply into his eyes. Joe felt his face go red. He knew what that look meant. He had just never seen it on horseback before.
"I brought a blanket," she said, in a tone so low he hoped he had heard her correctly
***
They approached the corral as the school bus stopped and the door opened and the girls ran out. Lucy and April ran into the house to dry their hair from swimming. Sheridan, with her towel and sack of clothes in her arms, walked up to meet them, her thongs snapping on her bare feet.
"Hi, darlin'," Joe greeted her, leading Lizzie into the corral.
Sheridan just looked at him. Her gaze moved from Joe's face to her mother's. Joe noted that Marybeth's face glowed and she looked very pleased with herself, although she now sternly returned Sheridan's gaze.
"What?" Joe asked.
Sheridan slowly shook her head. It was the same gesture Marybeth used when she couldn't believe what her children had just done.
"You still have grass in your hair," Sheridan told her mother, her voice deadpan.
Marybeth gently scolded Sheridan. "You should be happy that your mom and dad like each other so much that they go on a ride together." While she talked she self-consciously brushed through her hair with her fingers to remove the grass.
Then Joe got it. For the second time in an hour, he flushed red.
From the house, Lucy yelled out that there was a telephone call for Marybeth,
"Go ahead," Joe said. "I'll un tack Sheridan, why don't you go with her?"
He didn't want Sheridan staring at him anymore. She was getting too old, and too wise. She huffed and went into the house, making sure to stay several feet away from her mother.
As Joe was hanging the bridles on a hook inside the shed, Marybeth entered the barn. Joe assumed she was there to talk about how Sheridan had reacted. He was wrong.
"It happened again," Marybeth said.
"That reporter?"
"I think so .. ." Marybeth looked troubled. "But this time he was posing as Stewie. He said he wanted to see me again."
"Are you sure it was the reporter?"
Marybeth held up her palms. "It had to be."
Joe earned the saddles to the saddle trees and folded the warm, moist horse blankets over a crossbar to dry.
"Did he sound like Stewie?" Joe asked.
Marybeth let a chuckle creep into her voice. "I haven't talked to Stewie Woods in years. It kind of sounded like him, but it didn't sound right. It was sort of as if someone were trying to imitate his
voice."
Joe stopped and thought. He gripped his chin in his hand in a pose that made the girls whisper, "Dad's thinking!"
"It was weird," she said. "I just hung up on him."
"Next time," Joe said, "Don't hang up. Keep him talking until you can figure out who it is. And if I'm here, let me know so I can get on the other line." Marybeth agreed, and they walked back to the house together. Before they opened the door, Joe reached out for her hand and squeezed it.
***
THAT NIGHT, in bed, Joe lay awake with his hands clasped behind his head on the pillow and one knee propped up outside the sheets. It had been the first warm evening of the early summer and it hadn't cooled off yet. The bedroom window was open and a breeze ruffled the curtains.
"Are you awake?" he whispered to Marybeth.
Marybeth purred, and turned to look at him.
"Sometimes I wish I were smarter," he said.
"Why do you say that?" Her voice was hoarse--she had been sleeping. Marybeth was a light sleeper, a carryover from when the children were younger.
"You're one of the smartest guys I know," she said, putting her warm hand on his chest. "That's why I married you."
"I'm not smart enough, though."
"Why?"
Joe exhaled loudly. "There's something big going on all around us, but I can't connect the dots. I know it's out there, and I keep trying to look at things from a different angle or perspective, thinking maybe then I'll see it. But It's just not coming clear."
"What are you talking about, Joe?"
He raised his hand and counted off: "Stewie Woods, Jim Finotta, Ginger Finotta, that Raga character and his friends, the reporter, Hayden Powell, Jim Finotta--"
"You already said Jim Finotta," she murmured.
"Well, he really pisses me off."
"Anyway--" she prompted.
"Anyway, I think that if I were smarter I could see how they all connect. And there is some kind of connection. That I'm sure of."
"How can you be sure of that?"
He thought, rubbed his eyes. The breeze was filling the room, taking the temperature down to comfortable sleeping conditions.
"I just am," he said.
She laughed softly "You're smarter than you think."
"You're shining me on, darling."
"Good night." She hugged him and rolled over.
"That was fun this afternoon," he said. "Thank you."
"No, thank you. Now, good night."
Joe remained awake for a while longer. He recalled Raga saying the "people who did this will come back." He wondered if he would recognize them if they did.
15
Choteau, Montana
June 29
Charlie Tibbs and the OLD MAN were parked behind a chain link fence bordering an airstrip near Choteau, Montana. To the west were the broad shoulders of the Flathead range under a bleached denim sky. A morning rain--one of those odd ones where the bank of clouds had already passed out of view before the rain finally made it to earth--had dampened the concrete of the two old runways and beaded the black hood of the pickup.
Three-quarters of a mile away, a door opened on the second of four small private airplane hangars. Charlie Tibbs raised binoculars to his eyes. He would provide the commentary.
"They opened the door."
"I see that," the Old Man said.
The Old Man was, if possible, even more miserable than he had been the week before. Even though they had eaten a real dinner at a truck stop (steak, mashed potatoes, corn, apple pie, coffee) and had taken a break enroute to Choteau to sleep the night at a motel in Lewistown, he didn't feel like he had gotten any real rest. His mind was doing things to him that were unsettling and unfair. He had nightmares about Peter Sollito, Hayden Powell, and Stewie Woods, as well as dreams peopled by friends and neighbors he hadn't seen in forty years. Everyone seemed to disapprove of him now They clucked and pointed, and shunned him when he walked over to them. His own grandmother, dead for twenty-two years, pursed her lips defiantly and refused to speak to him. He'd had the same kind of disturbing, unconnected, fantastic dreams before, but only when he was feverish. His back was sore from sitting in the pickup and even the real bed two nights before hadn't helped unbend him. His back muscles were in tight knots and it hurt to raise his arms. His eyes were rimmed with red and they burned when he opened them. He wouldn't have been all that surprised if his reflection in the visor mirror showed two eyes like glowing coals. He had taken to wearing dark glasses. It flabbergasted him that Charlie Tibbs did not seem to require sleep. This must have been what the Crusades were like, the Old Man thought.