They probably won’t believe me.
Dang, he said. What if I have a sick dog?
You are a sick dog.
Exactly, he said, and I need a house call.
Tomorrow, unless you want to come over tonight.
I can probably come tonight.
Works for me. I’ll let Jude know.
All right. How about I bring something to eat?
Perfect, she said. Oh, Jude has a thing next Monday night if you want to come with. It’s a recital. Fall Festival or something like that.
Yeah, for sure I’ll come.
It’s at seven or something. I’ll let you know tonight. I have a flyer somewhere.
All right.
Gotta get back to dogtown, she said.
He was smiling now, faintly, the thread of panic that the warden had brought upon him already unraveling. I love you, he said into the phone.
I love you too, she told him.
He hung up the phone and sat looking at the stacks of paper on the desk. Debts paid. Debts waiting to be paid. Delivery manifests. He wondered about Fish and Game, wondered what the end result of their interest would be, hoping that Grace was right, that they would lever some fine and that they would find a way to pay it and then the rescue would be left alone. But he knew the odds were not nearly that good.
When the phone rang again he thought it would be Grace once more, even though there was no reason for her to redial the number.
North Idaho Wildlife Rescue. This is Bill.
Bill? the voice said. The voice of a man.
Bill Reed. Can I help you?
The voice hissed, a kind of sharp exhale. Bill Reed? That’s rich.
There was something now, something in the voice, a texture or timbre or quality that came back to him all at once. Can I help you with something? he said again.
Shit, the man said, you don’t recognize my voice? He added, hissing: Bill Reed.
I don’t know. Should I? But already he was lying. Of course he recognized it. Of course he did.
I didn’t think you’d forget.
Rick, he said.
Bingo.
You’re out?
Yeah, twelve years later.
He was standing now, although he did not recall rising to his feet. I’m glad to hear it, he said, his hand gripping the receiver, the room around him sharp and bright and small.
Are you?
Sure I am. Why wouldn’t I be?
The voice on the other side of the phone hissed again, that sharp exhale of breath. I tell you what you should be, he said. You should be pissing your pants. That’s what you should be.
Why’s that?
You know why.
A sharp tingling was radiating through his chest. What do you want? he said softly.
What do I want? To start with, I want my share.
Your share of what?
What the fuck? Rick said. You think I’m stupid? I want my fucking share.
He glanced around the room, the vinyl-paneled walls, the box of light streaming in through the dirty window. All right, he said at last. Give me your address.
It was silent for a moment, the line clicking and popping and hissing as if aflame. Then Rick said, I got a better idea. I’ll come get it.
It’s a long way. I’ll just mail it.
There was a long moment of silence on the phone. Then Rick said, Your brother’s name, Nat? That’s what you picked?
Bill could think of nothing to say. His throat felt dry and his teeth were clenched tight together.
You’d better have it when I get there, Rick said, and then the line clicked into silence.
Bill slumped back into the chair, holding the phone in his outstretched hand. The space heater hummed from across the room. After a time he set the receiver down, his eyes on the dust motes that spun in the air before him, their golden whorls like fingerprints suspended in the slashing light. His teeth ached from clenching them and his chest buzzed as if filled with insects.
When he stepped outside, Bess was walking toward him. I’m off to the school, she said.
He waved a hand in her direction, walking on past the grizzly enclosure, where Majer stood watching him, and the wolf enclosure, which appeared empty as always, and up to the perimeter fence and through the gate. The day had begun cold and the rising sun had hardly diminished its sharp edge, perhaps not quite freezing now but still frosting his breath upon the air. A hint of snow somewhere across the mountains. The path running from the gate to his trailer farther up the hill was cut through with the same slashed light as the office he had stepped out of, as if those shapes had come with him, trailing some filament of meaning he could not decipher even were he to try, a turning of worlds, a history of fingerprints and shadow and thin cold air.
The interior of the trailer a dark and curtained space. His worn sofa. The bed, covered in its tattered blue blanket. A few spy novels and some reference material from the office down the hill beyond the birch path.
It had rested on the floor of the closet for all these years, so long now that he had ceased thinking about it at all, even though he knew, of course he knew, that there was a chance it might one day be important again. Grace had asked him once what it was, why the squat black safe was in the trailer at all. She asked him what it held and he told her that it had been his uncle David’s and that it was empty. He knelt before it now and pulled it forward, out of the tiny closet, tilting it over the vinyl lip on the floor and walking it, corner by corner, out into the room. Not quite so heavy as he remembered and yet still significant as he slid it into the kitchen, its base scratching furrows into the linoleum. More than anything he wished he had simply left it behind. That such a thing could hold fast to him, its voice a faint cry ever calling a name he knew now would be impossible for him to forget.
4
THE BUZZING WAS A FLY CAUGHT BETWEEN THE CURTAIN and the window glass. Nat listened to the tap tap of its body as it ricocheted over and over against that lit pane, his head’s throbbing coming in concert with his pulse and with each pump of his heart his stomach seemed to flip with nausea. He reached for the curtain and waved it gently and the fly rattled against the glass once more and then found the opening in the slider and disappeared into the cold bright day.
The clock read two thirty. A little past. The cigarette burning down to a stub between his fingers. Through a gap in the curtain he could see a black sedan moving over the speed bump in the parking lot below, the slab of its hood rising and falling again. Farther down the row of parked cars, a bare-armed man in a flannel shirt with torn-off sleeves walked slowly away until he was out of sight.
He had been waiting for Rick and Susan to come out of his bedroom for more than an hour now but he knew they too would likely be hungover and he did not know if they would come out of the bedroom at all. He might leave for work without ever seeing them, a thought that brought a slow wave of disappointment. He had been waiting for thirteen months for Rick to emerge from one door and now he waited for Rick — and for Susan — to emerge from another.
The phone’s ringing jolted him out of his thoughts and he rose and stumbled back to the Formica counter that separated the kitchen from the tiny living room. Hello, he croaked into the handset.
Nat?
He exhaled, already lamenting that he had answered. Hello, Mrs. Harris, he said.
Hi there, honey. How are you?
I’m fine.
Did Ricky get out?
He’s out. I picked him up last night.
He didn’t call me. He was supposed to call me.
We were out pretty late. You know how it is.
He still needs to call his mom.
I know.
Rick’s mother began to cough, the sound sharp and hard through the plastic grill of the phone. How are you doing? he said when it was done.