Spruce grouse were not intelligent birds--they were known as "fool hens" by local hunters. Joe and Stewie exchanged glances and came to an immediate understanding: Get those birds!
Picking up a stout branch, Joe bounded into the flock and stepped into his swing like a hitter pulling a fastball, lopping the head off a grouse perched on a log. He stepped back and swung again, connecting with another grouse as it started to rise. Stewie killed one with a well thrown stone. The rest of the flock, finally realizing the threat, rose clumsily through the trees. The three downed birds flopped and danced in the dark grass.
They found dry pinecones under brush to use for kindling, and started a fire with a plastic butane lighter Stewie had found in his trouser pocket. As the fire grew, they added short lengths of wood. Stewie built the fire up while Joe cleaned and skinned the birds. Their flesh was warm to the touch and their blood smelled musky.
Roasting the grouse on green sapling sticks, Joe found himself trembling. He could not remember ever being as hungry as he was now The hardest part was waiting for the grouse to be cooked through.
"Are they done yet?" Stewie asked repeatedly "Jesus, that smells good."
Eventually Joe pricked one of the grouse breasts with his knife and the juice ran clear. It dripped into the fire and there was a sizzling flare-up.
"Okay" Joe said, his mouth watering so badly that he had trouble speaking. He lifted the stick to Stewie, who hungrily grabbed the first bird.
The grouse breasts were tender white meat and they tasted faintly of pine nuts. Joe ate one grouse with his hands and split the remaining down the middle, giving half to Stewie. In the firelight, Joe could see Stewie's lips, fingers, and chin shine with grease. Joe sat back and finished off a drumstick.
"This," Stewie declared loudly each word rising in volume, "is the best fucking meal I've ever had!"
Joe Pickett and Stewie Woods sat across from each other on the damp earth, the fire between them, and grinned goofily at each other like schoolboys who had just pulled off the greatest practical joke in the history of fifth grade.
Joe looked at his watch. It was three-thirty in the morning.
"Let's go," Joe said, scrambling to his feet. "We can't afford any more breaks."
"Even if we find more of those birds?" Stewie asked.
***
IF I HAD KNOWN THEN what I know now, I never would have structured One Globe the way I did," Stewie was saying. "I formed the organization the traditional way, with me as the president and a board of directors, with bylaws, newsletters, the whole works. I was told I needed to do it that way for effective fund-raising, and we did raise some good money But I fucked up when I let the board talk me into moving our headquarters to Washington, D.C. I was best at monkey wrenching and public relations, as we all know. But the fund raisers started taking over. That was the beginning of the end for me and they booted me out.
"One thing that discourages me about One Globe and most of the other environmental groups is that we need crises to raise funds. There've always got to be new demons and new bad guys in order to raise awareness. That means we can never be happy Even when we win, which is often, we're never really happy about it. I'm inherently a happy guy so this started to be a drag.
"And when we do win, we're out of business. Headlines are only headlines for a day, and then they're old news. So we constantly need new headlines. That gets pretty old, and it's hard not to get cynical when we start thinking of our cause as a fund-raising business.
"If I had it to do over again, and I still might, I'd organize differently I'd do it like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front, with no centralized hierarchy They can operate cheaply without all the fund-raising crap. They're effective, too. Where do you think the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, got his Eco-Fucker Hit List? The future of our movement is in small, mobile, hard-to-find groups like Minnesota's Bolt Weevils, Hawaii's Menehune, Wisconsin's Seeds of Resistance, or Genetix Alert. If we were set up that way it would be harder for a group of bastards like the Stockman's Trust to find us."
"What do you think about that, Joe?" Stewie asked.
"About what?" Joe answered, although he had heard every word. Deep into the night, Stewie declared that much of his life had been wasted. He turned morose, blaming his own egomania for the death of his wife of three days, Britney, and the others.
"When I was crawling across these mountains I had a thought that haunts me still," Stewie said, his voice dropping to a whisper. "I wondered if I would have done more good if I had spent all my time and energy raising money to buy land, then planting trees on it, and turning the whole shiteree over to the Nature Conservancy or some other white bread outfit At least then I'd have something to show for my life. What I've got now, is this .. ." He gestured toward the sky and the treetops, but what he meant was nothing. "That thought just won't go away" He told Joe that his new mission in life, though, was to be an avenger. An ugly avenger.
"It's a bummer looking like a monster." Stewie lamented.
***
IT WAS an hour before dawn, the coldest time of the day The ground was spongy from the ram and the long grass was bent double as raindrops still clung to the blade tips. Mist began to rise from the meadows. Joe pushed through a thick stand of aspen and emerged in an opening. He stopped suddenly and Stewie walked into him.
"Sorry," Stewie apologized. "Do you see it?" Joe asked, his attention focused on the sight before them. Fifteen miles away on the dark flats below, a tiny yellow light crossed slowly from right to left. "It's the high way," Joe said.
36
THE IRRIGATED HAYEIELD had recently undergone its first cutting of the season and it still smelled sharply of alfalfa. Mist rose from the still wet ground and blunted the outline of the cottonwood trees in the dawn horizon. Joe and Stewie slogged through the wet field, their boots making slurping sounds in the mud.
Joe felt giddy with happiness. The barbed-wire fence they had crossed a half hour before was one of the most beautiful things he had ever seen. Stewie had reluctantly agreed. Struggling across the cut, flat hay field seemed easy compared to the rugged country they had been through. Cottonwoods were a welcome sight, because cottonwoods grew where there was water. Therefore ranch houses and buildings were more likely located near groves of cottonwood. In the rural west of the Northern Rockies, cottonwood trees meant that people would be somewhere nearby Stewie picked up a crumpled Coors beer can in the stubby grass and held it aloft.
"This," he declared, "is a sure sign of civilization."
Joe marveled at Stewie's strength, and wondered how it was possible that Stewie seemed stronger now than when they had begun their trek. Stewie also seemed strangely wistful, and content. He was no longer thundering on about environmental politics or revenge. Stewie Woods was certainly a puzzle, Joe thought.
They crossed another barbed-wire fence and entered a herd of black baldy cattle. The cows shuffled, then mindlessly parted so Joe and Stewie could walk through the herd. Joe noticed the brand on the cows--it was the Vee Bar U. "Damn!" Joe spat. "Of all of the places to end up. This is Jim Finotta's ranch."
"Jim Finotta?"
"Long story" Joe said.
***
AS THEY APPROACHED the thick cottonwoods in the mist, the sharp angles of the gabled roof of the magnificent stone ranch house emerged, as well as the sprawling outbuildings. Between where they were in the mud and the ranch buildings were a series of corrals filled with milling cattle, separated by age and weight. They heard heifers bawling, splitting the silence of the early morning. They climbed over several wood-slat fences, which reminded Joe of how sore and bruised he was. The cattle let them pass. The smell of fresh manure was ripe in the air and hung low in the mist.