"That would be a good idea," Marybeth said, "since Stewie Woods is dead."
The man chuckled. "The old Stewie might be dead, but not the new one. Hey ... I know I wish I would have practiced for this quiz, but it looks like I have to do it off the cuff." His words tumbled out and ran into each other. Joe guessed that the caller would be easier to understand if he could see him gesticulate. He imagined hands and arms flying through the air, the telephone pinned in place between jaw and shoulder, and determined pacing.
"Anyway in high school you drove a yellow Toyota. Whenever it got cold, it wouldn't start, and I figured out how to get it going by taking off the air cleaner and opening up the intake valve with a screwdriver. Who else could possibly know that?"
Joe felt his face go slack.
"Just about everybody in high school," Marybeth answered, but her voice was tentative. "And it was a Datsun, not a Toyota."
"Whatever," the caller said, then bulled ahead with the confidence of a telephone solicitor trying to get as much across as possible before the phone went dead in his ear: "Okay, here's another one. Our football team, the Winchester Badgers, once played in Casper and you and Hayden Powell drove down on a Friday to see the game. After we won--I think the score was 27 to 17 and I intercepted a pass and ran it in for a touchdown--the three of us drove up on top of that hill on the east side of Casper and pulled up all of the survey stakes for their new mall. Remember?"
Marybeth was silent. Joe could hear Sheridan and Lucy squabbling at the kitchen table, and Marybeth's breathing. "Who would possibly know that happened except you, me, and Hayden?"
"Maybe you told someone about it," Marybeth said, her voice weak. "Or you wrote about it in your newsletter or something."
Joe, Marybeth, and the caller all realized at once that Marybeth had said "you." Joe was stunned.
"Did you just hear yourself?" the caller asked.
"I ... I did," Marybeth answered.
"Do I need to go on?"
"I'm just too shocked to answer right now," Marybeth said. Joe wished he were with her. He hoped she wouldn't hang up the telephone.
"Mary, I just want to see you again," his voice was kind.
"I'm married," Marybeth stammered. "I have three children eating breakfast at the table right in front of me."
"Everyone's married," Stewie said slyly, "but the big question, the one I've learned to ask is: are you happily married?"
You bastard, Joe thought. I can't wait to punch you right in the nose.
"Of course I'm happily married. To a wonderful man named Joe Pickett."
Stewie sighed. His voice changed. "I kind of figured that would be the case but I guess I hoped it wasn't."
Stewie was distancing himself. Now Joe hoped Stewie wouldn't hang up.Joe quickly buried the receiver in blankets from the bed so Stewie wouldn't hear the click of him hanging up, and scribbled a note in his spiral pad. He descended the stairs and handed it to Marybeth. Her face was pale and her eyes were vacant.
Joe had written: Keep him talking--Ask him where he is.
Marybeth read the note and frowned, and looked to Joe for confirmation. Joe nodded yes. Faintly, Joe could hear Stewie talking to Marybeth again.
"How can it possibly be that you're still alive?" Marybeth asked.
Now Joe could only hear one side of the conversation.
"What do you mean when you say that?"
The school bus honked outside the house and all three girls scrambled as if an electric current had been simultaneously shot through their chairs. They were suddenly grabbing backpacks, sack lunches, jackets, shoes. Joe signaled to Marybeth that he would take care of things. He opened the front door, waved at the driver, and shooed his girls toward the front gate. Sheridan gave him a look to indicate that she was getting a little old for shooing. The driver, a retired lumberjack named Stiles, leaned out of the door and asked Joe about the mule deer count in his hunting area.
"I'll have to talk with you tomorrow," Joe said, trying not to dismiss Stiles out of hand. "I've got a little bit of a situation inside I need to handle."
Stiles waved him off and Joe literally ran back to the house. Marybeth, with wide, disbelieving eyes, was gently replacing the receiver on the cradle.
Joe and Marybeth simply stared at each other.
"Did that actually happen?" Joe asked.
Marybeth shook her head, stunned.
"He wants to meet me Saturday," she said. "I wrote down the directions."
"It just doesn't make any sense," Joe said, as much to himself as anyone. "I saw where he died."
Marybeth smiled cryptically. "Joe, Stewie said that he did blow up. But that he was reborn"
"He actually said that?" She nodded, and started across the room toward Joe.
***
That evening, in the library Marybeth saw the handicapped accessible Vee Bar U van cruise through the parking lot The sight of the van froze her to her spot behind the counter, her fingers poised and still over the keyboard of the computer. She slowly swung her head toward the front doors, anticipating the arrival of Ginger Finotta and Buster. But Ginger didn't enter and the van was no longer in sight.
Instead, in the side office behind the counter, Marybeth heard the metallic clunk of returned books being dropped into the drive-up return. The sound, familiar as it was, startled her.
She waited for the van to pull away from the building and didn't move until the sound of the motor had vanished.
She quickly finished her entry then went into the side office. On top of the pile of returns was the single, aged, dog-eared copy of The Life and Times of Tom Horn, Stock Detective.
Yellows Stone National Park Wyoming
July 5
It was dusk when the Old Man realized he had truly become evil.
The setting had nothing to do with it. The heavy evening sun had painted a wide bronze swath through the tall buffalo grass of the clearing below them and had fused through the lodgepole pines that circled the clearing like a spindly corral. Breezes so gentle they could barely be felt rippled across the top of the grass and looked like gentle ringlets on water. The air was sweet with pine and sage but there was an occasional whiff of sulfur from seeping, newly punctured pockets in a swampy hot spring flat where they had ridden the horses a few minutes before. And there was another smell, too. It was the smell of slightly rancid pork.
Earlier that day they had located Tod Marchand, attorney at law near his tent on the bank of Nez Perce Creek. Marchand had been remarkably easy to find. He had checked in at the ranger station the day before at the South Entrance of the park and noted where he intended to camp. Tibbs had found the entry while the Old Man chatted with the female ranger and filled out the forms that permitted them to transport their newly acquired horse trailer and horses through the park.
They had ridden up on Tod Marchand just after noon, while Marchand was scrubbing his lunch plate clean with biodegradable soap. Marchand had looked back over his shoulder when he heard the horses approach, and stood up and turned around just in time for the butt of Charlie Tibbs's rifle to crack down hard on the top of his head. "Counsel, approach the bench," Charlie Tibbs had said, without explanation, as Tod Marchand crumpled to the grass.
They had gagged and hog-tied Marchand and thrown him across the back of the Old Man's saddle. They took the horses up into the trees far away from the trail and the creek--away from the places other hikers or trekkers might be,
Yellowstone was remarkably big and wild beyond the tourist traffic that coursed along the figure-eight road system in the park. As they rode up into the timber and over a rise, the sounds of the distant traffic receded, replaced by a light warm breeze wafting through the treetops. The chance of anyone seeing them, or of the two men stumbling upon another person, were remote.