THAT WOULD BE THE best thing for Bart,” said Madelaine when Du Pré described his disappearance. “Kinda rude for him to go off like that, though.”
“He’s handicapped,” said Du Pré.
“Huh?” said Madelaine.
“He’s a rich kid,” said Du Pré. “They are handicapped. People always do for them, you know. Some of their wires never get hooked up.”
“I think I chew his ass hard he get back here,” said Madelaine.
Du Pré grinned. Poor Bart. Madelaine’s ass-chewings were artful. As a mother, she got lots of practice. She was fond of Bart, so she would do a good job, too.
It had frosted hard and the trees and bushes had started to turn. The wind smelled of fall, late in coming this year.
Du Pré heard the distant boom of a shotgun. The grouse season was open. Couple weeks, the season would open for pheasants and ducks. The wild turkeys in the river bottoms. Du Pré thought maybe he’d hunt for a turkey this year. He’d written off and gotten a turkey call from some fellow in New Hampshire. Beautiful thing, in an oiled leather case, Du Pré had played with it. You scraped a dingus on the side of the call and the thing scrawked and gobbled.
I hope Benetsee don’t see this, Du Pré had thought. He put the call away.
Something nagged at the back of Du Pré’s mind, nibbled in the shadow—on that long trip through the dark green forest, over the clear water, on the route of Du Pré’s blood, one stream of which ran all the way to France. Something. Once when he was young, he had shot a bear. He’d been too excited and he’d wounded the animal, not killed it. When his father, Catfoot, shot something, it dropped, and he had told Du Pré to wound an animal was not to respect it.
Du Pré had been alone. He waited for the animal’s wound to stiffen and then he tracked the bear, a good-sized black one. He came to a small glade. The glade was quiet, too quiet. He walked softly out on the path, past a big old ponderosa pine. Too quiet. He felt sudden fear and he turned, pointing the gun back the way he had come.
There was nothing there.
Du Pré stood there frozen for some time—he never knew how long.
A single drop of something fell on his hand.
He looked up. The wounded bear was directly above him, perhaps twenty feet up, clinging to the tree.
Spend a lot of time looking in the wrong place because I am thinking I am looking in the right one, Du Pré thought. I got to learn to look everywhere, see everything. Like Benetsee.
That man don’t have visions, Du Pré thought. He just pays real close attention.
Or maybe he does have visions.
He remembered the coyote pawing for the lumps of fat in the snow directly over the brass box that held the story complete of the murder of Bart’s brother by Du Pré’s father, Catfoot. Someone had hung that piece of fat up there. Indeed, had known the story all along, it seemed. But, like any good storyteller, hadn’t told it too rapidly. Benetsee hang that fat, yes.
Du Pré went into the house. He got his shotgun from the closet, put a few shells in the pocket of his jacket. There was always jerky, fruit leather, a plastic space blanket, and fatwood splinters to make a fire with in the game pouch in back.
“I drop you off and go shoot a grouse maybe,” said Du Pré to Madelaine. It was getting close to time to take her home, anyway.
Du Pré barely saw his daughter Maria, a senior in high school. Since Bart had offered to send her to any college she could get in, she had washed the dye out of her hair, quit wearing clothes that looked like they had been taken from the bodies of car-bombing victims, and spent her time studying with the same ferocity she had once devoted to driving her father up the wall.
Du Pré walked Madelaine to her front door—he always did—and then he got in his old cruiser and drove off toward the Wolf Mountains. The grouse would begin to come down to the logging roads to pick up gravel for their crops in an hour or so, and Du Pré, without a gundog, would pretty well have to stick to beating the bushes near the roads. Not that he cared if he shot a grouse or not, he liked being out in the bright fall air, liked the smell of the forest.
When Du Pré turned off the county road and entered the trees, he drove slowly on the left side of the road, glancing down at the verge for the tracks he might see—elk, mule deer, a mountain lion.
Must be that lion lives up by Belker Ridge, he thought. See a few more tracks, we had better trim them on back.
Mountain lions were simple killing machines. If their numbers grew, their solitary ways would bring them down near people, where they would feed on dogs and, eventually, small children.
The Montana newcomers would scream about killing such nice big puddy-tats.
We have always had dudes out here, Du Pré thought, but this last bunch think they know things.
Du Pré saw a couple ruffed grouse up ahead taking dust baths and scratching in the fine gravel at the road’s edge. He pulled the car off as far as he could go and stopped it, pulled the shotgun out of the case, got out, racked a couple shells in, and began to walk casually toward the grouse;
They looked at him and took less time to dust and peck.
Du Pré got closer.
The grouse became nervous and dashed off into the woods. Du Pré ran after them. They were fast runners. Du Pré was a little faster. He pounded over the thick needles. The grouse took flight, their wings booming. Du Pré threw the shotgun to his shoulder and fired.
The grouse kept right on going.
I ought to shoot the bastards on the ground, Du Pré thought. It pissed him off to miss a shot.
He walked back to the car, stuffing another shell in the shotgun.
Just as he stepped out of the woods, four grouse boomed up from across the road, wings whirring, heading straight up. Du Pré shot twice and two birds folded up and fell.
I am some hot shit, Du Pré thought. He walked into the trees and picked the birds up, crumpled on the ground, the little wind ruffling their soft feathers.
He drove on to the end of the road and saw no more birds. He backed and filled at the Kelly hump that blocked the road and then headed back down, in no particular hurry. He got back home with an hour of sunlight to spare. He cleaned the birds, shucked their skins, and put the carcasses in salty water. He would bake them in aspic and then chill them overnight and they would be tender then, make wonderful sandwiches.
Shadows.
He went to the violin case and got out the slingshot.
He went down to the creek.
What about this, now? he thought, sending a stone in flight.
What about this?
Blood dropping from the sky? Long time ago.