1964
Just as the logging truck rounded the bend, Eddie and Lewis took off running. They made it all the way across and up the bank to the fence before the truck even made it onto the bridge. The driver gave a blast of his air horn and the support timbers creaked when he crossed the bridge. The logs sticking out the back of the load wobbled like spaghetti.
They lingered to watch the cars go by. Eddie always found it hard to find anything fun to do after school. Plenty of jobs waited for him but nothing to hurry home for. He laughed when Lewis made faces at a staring woman. A Volkswagen bus filled with laughing girls and boys looked like they were having fun as they went speeding by.
The brothers stepped through a stretched square of page-wire and walked down the trail. When they topped the hill above Grandma’s, Eddie was the first one to spot the car parked at the door. Lewis ran on ahead but stopped at the door to wait. Eddie tried to remember if he’d ever seen the car before. It looked like the one he had seen in a Yakima street when his mother had punched the driver years ago, but the car still looked new with its shining paint and gleaming chrome.
They walked in to see a man sitting at the kitchen table. He had long sideburns and greased hair that drooped down over his forehead in an Elvis-style waterfall Eddie had seen in a magazine. The man stood and jammed his hands into his pockets. His white shirt with upturned collar was unbuttoned down below his chest and tucked into blue jeans, and each of his brown shoes had a coin tucked into a strip of leather across the instep.
Grace came out of her bedroom. “It’s about time, you guys. I told you before to get right back here as soon as you get off that bus.”
She rubbed the back of her left hand with her fingers and nodded to the man beside her. “Anyway, this is your dad. This is Jimmy.”
Eddie wasn’t sure he heard correctly. “What?”
“I said, this is your dad.”
Grace’s arms were folded tightly, and she didn’t look very happy. Eddie had imagined something a little more cheerful if he ever met his father. Lewis stepped forward. Jimmy gave him a bear hug. Seeing Eddie still hadn’t made a move, Grace walked over and put her hand behind his neck, pulling him forward. Eddie lifted her hand away.
Jimmy laughed. His eye teeth looked like fangs. When Eddie didn’t make any effort to greet his father, Grace gave a grunt and went to the stove. She lifted the lid and jammed wood inside.
“Everybody quit standing around. It’s time to make supper. You boys go bring some wood in and hurry up about it,” she said.
Eddie eyed the man sitting at the head of the table. He ate with his mouth open, and everybody could hear him slurping and gulping when he swallowed. Eddie knew that if he and Lewis ate like that, his mother would tell them to stop eating like pigs, but she ate quietly and stared at a spot on the table. Already he couldn’t stand this man.
Jimmy finished with a loud burp. “I brought my phonograph and records but I saw you still don’t have power yet. I thought you would’ve by now. I was wondering if I should bring it in or not.”
“We got one of those big dry batteries hooked up to the radio. Can’t we hook it up somehow so we can get music in here? You always been good at doing stuff like that.”
“I’ll give it a whirl. But I don’t think that battery is strong enough. We’ll give her a go as soon as I’m finished.”
Jimmy wound wires around the battery terminals and fastened them to the record player plug, then wiped his hands on a rag and opened the box of records.
“What do you want to hear? I got some new ones. How about Elvis, or Fats Domino? Huh?”
“You know who I like,” Grace said.
Jimmy took care to lift the record albums out one at a time before he slid them back down into place. When he found the one he wanted, he eased the record out of its jacket, placed it on the turntable, and clicked on the switch. The battery wasn’t strong enough, so he put his finger on the turntable and spun it faster. They could barely make out the voice of the singer.
That night Lewis couldn’t stop talking about his dad, but Eddie wanted to sleep and covered his head with a pillow. Lewis’s voice pierced through the feathers.
“Dad said he was going to make me a soapbox derby racer. He said in the States they have races and they get prizes and even money sometimes. Dad said the little hill would be a good place to learn me all about it. Dad said you were probably too old to want one because you never said anything. Dad said—”
“I was sitting right beside you. I heard him. You think I’m deaf or something? Shut up and go to sleep.”
Lewis’s chatter had driven the sleep from Eddie. Long after his brother dozed off, he lay in the dark staring up at the ceiling, trying to sort out his thoughts. He had gone down to his grandma’s after supper to tell her the news. It turned out Grandma hated Jimmy.
“I don’t believe it. You mean he’s up there right now? Damn him anyway. I thought I got rid of that bugger. What’s wrong with that mom of yours? She used to swear every time she talked about him. She said she couldn’t trust him at all. When they were together they’d get so stupid sometimes, holding hands and making eyes at each other. Maybe that’s why he left. Maybe they both got sick of each other. God almighty. He’s a no-good devil, that one. You watch. Soon as something happens, he’ll leave again. But it sounds like they kissed and made up already.
“If I was you, I’d get back home and hide all your toys. He’s probably up there playing with them right now. Makes me sick just thinkin’ about him. He’s lucky I’m not a man. Boy, if I was, I’d go up there right now and stand him on his head.” She waved Eddie away with the back of her hand. “Go on. And don’t come down here bragging about him to me. You go right back up there and give that good-for-nothing dad of yours a big kiss.”
Alphonse looked up from his pocketbook western and snickered.
Maybe Grandma was right, Eddie thought in the dark. His mother had hardly talked about Jimmy in the past. The times that she had, she said they were better off without him. He’d even seen her chase after him and punch him in the face. If that was the way she felt, why was he here? As Eddie tried to make sense of it all, he heard squeaking bedsprings in his mother’s bedroom.
The next morning Grace and Jimmy sat at the table blowing steam off cups of coffee. The woodbox was piled high with split wood and kindling. Condensation trickled down the sides of the full metal pails like rain on a window.
Grace filled two bowls with porridge and set them in front of Eddie and Lewis. She reached down to take Jimmy’s plate away, but he put his arm around her waist and pulled her down on his lap. Her face turned red as she struggled to get away. Jimmy stuck his jaw into her neck and dug his fingers into her sides until she laughed and squirmed. When she pulled away, Jimmy finished his coffee, jumped to his feet, and picked up a dish towel. After the last plate was put away, he hugged Grace from behind and bit her lightly on the ear. Pushing him away, Grace threw the wet dishrag at him and he grabbed her by her arms. She threw back her head, laughing.
The brothers glanced at each other. Eddie couldn’t stay in the house any longer to watch all the funny business going on, and he motioned Lewis to come with him.
Jimmy wheeled around. “Where you going, guys?”
“Outside.”
“Hold on just a minute. I need you both to give me a hand.”
Eddie saw his reflection in the car’s paint as they approached. The fire engine red rims and chrome hubcaps were framed by wide whitewall tires. Black fender skirts on the rear wheel wells showed only the bottom part of the tires. A raccoon tail was tied to the aerial. Eddie reached out to the fender to see if it was as smooth as it appeared.
“Don’t touch that,” Jimmy snapped.
Eddie pulled his hand away. A slow heat rose to his face.
“You don’t touch a paint job like that. Your sweaty fingers takes away the shine. What’s wrong with you?”
Jimmy turned the key in the trunk, and it opened with a click. He pulled out two boxes and gave one to Lewis.
“Here, take this into the house and put it on the table. I’ll be there in a minute,” he said.
“Oh, it’s so heavy,” Lewis said with a smile.
“Here. This one’s yours.” Jimmy handed Eddie a long narrow box.
Jimmy pocketed the keys and put both hands on the trunk lid, palms out, and brought it down gently. He leaned forward to blow across the trunk at a piece of lint that had appeared out of nowhere. Turning to go back inside, he didn’t take his eyes off his car until he reached the door.
The box made a scratching sound when Eddie placed it on the table and gave a hard shove. Lewis looked at his mother for an explanation, but she shrugged her shoulders.
“Open it up, Lewis, and see what you got there,” Jimmy said.
Lewis pulled back the flaps. The box was filled with marbles. “Wow. These are all for me?”
“All yours. I stopped at my mom’s and picked them up. I couldn’t believe she kept them all these years. When I was your age, I won all these at school. I never had to buy one single marble in my life. We’ll go outside later, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
“Holy cow,” Lewis said.
“Open yours now, Eddie,” Grace said.
Eddie looked at the way she was smiling at Jimmy. The ever-changing mood of the household was confusing. He pulled off the binder twine wrapped around the box that smelled of dried alfalfa. Pulling back the cardboard lid, he saw the stock and iron barrel of a single-shot .22 rifle.
The gun was old but had been well taken care of. Someone had kept the wood oiled so the grains wouldn’t crack or dry out, and there wasn’t a sign of rust anywhere on the polished steel. The only marks on the gun were notches carved into the butt. A shoulder strap was attached at both ends of the wooden stock. Tucked inside the box were a tin of 3-In-One Oil and a neatly folded rag. How could Jimmy have known that when all the kids at school wanted ponies and toys, all Eddie wanted was what he now held in his hands? He felt as if his insides were being tickled with a feather.
“Pick it up. It’s the gun my grandpa gave me on my thirteenth birthday,” Jimmy said.
The gun fit Eddie’s hands perfectly as he lifted it from the box. His ears felt hot.
“Thanks,” he said.
“See all the nicks there? Those are all deer kills. We ate a lot of grouse and rabbit for a while until Mom got tired of doing all the plucking and skinning. She said cleaning fish was easier. Tell you what. After I show Lewis a few tricks, we’ll go up to the range and do some target practice. I got a eagle eye and a box of shells. You hang on to that gun. Don’t let anything happen to it.”
Jimmy dug a hole under the clothesline tree and showed Lewis how to toss the large cob. He leaned forward demonstrating how to use the bounce of his body. Jimmy made him stare at the pot until he had the location memorized and toss his shooter with his eyes closed. Eddie could hear the impatience growing in Jimmy’s voice each time Lewis missed. Lewis didn’t do well under pressure, and Eddie knew he couldn’t hit the hole now if it was four feet wide. He wasn’t even coming close. Lewis’s nerves were obvious when his marble landed two feet past the hole.
“What’s the matter with you? Are you even listening to me? Lean ahead like I told you. Come on.”
Eddie glanced back and saw his mother standing in the doorway. He waited for her to say something, but she just stood and watched. Eddie turned away. He was angry enough that, even though he knew there would be trouble, he would tell Jimmy to lay off. But before he could speak, Lewis’s marble fell into the hole.
“See, I told you. It’s not that hard. You just have to practise more. Every night you’re gonna come out here and sink at least five in a row. That’s what I did. That’s why you got all them marbles,” Jimmy said.
Jimmy didn’t want to take his car on the rough road up to the range, but Grace said the truck had broken down and nobody knew how to fix it. Jimmy brought out a metal case from his trunk and spread his tools out on the ground. He worked under the truck for so long that Eddie wondered if they would ever get going. Finally, Jimmy crawled out, put his tools back into the toolbox, and switched batteries with his car. After poking a stick into the gas tank to check for fuel, he told the boys to get into the back of the truck. Then he poured gasoline into the throat of the carburetor and turned the starter. The truck roared with a puff of smoke. Sputtering and backfiring, it chugged up the driveway and made the turn toward the range.
Since World War II the army had taken over a large corner of the range to train militia and cadets. Each summer, for as long as Eddie could remember, they returned to set up camps the size of small towns with tents lined up like a game of checkers. Popping and rattling gunshots could be heard from morning until late afternoon.
One summer, during a long period of hot weather, long lines of vehicles drove up and down the dirt road all day long until Eddie’s house was covered in a layer of dust. That day, after going out to the clothesline to bring in the washing, Grace had had enough. For years she had written letters to the Indian Affairs office in town about the army vehicles going up and down the road and making a mess. But as with her letters about the bridge, she received no answer.
At noon that day Grace and her family drove over the cattle guard so fast they were airborne. Ploughing past a checkpoint, she barely missed the sentry before skidding to a stop in the centre of the camp. Eddie and Lewis were alarmed to see men with rifles approach the truck. An officer listened as she held up their clothes and told him they were dirtier than before she had washed them. Grace ignored several warnings to leave or face arrest by the military police, then drove away. Nothing was done about the road, but at the end of summer, when the army packed up to leave, a jeep drove to Eddie’s house and dropped off boxes of food rations: canned fruit and vegetables, instant mashed potatoes, and powdered milk.
Now the truck sped uphill on an old track overgrown with brush and saplings. Jimmy manoeuvred the truck around fallen trees and washouts as the boys held on to the roof rain trough. They ducked when a low-hanging bough brushed across the top of the truck. The needles scratching the metal sounded like fingernails on a blackboard. Every so often they saw a sign written in oversized red letters nailed to a tree, warning of unexploded bombs and live ammunition.
Every year in late spring, when parts of the range turned bright yellow, Grace and the two boys walked up to see the unreal colours.
On Eddie’s first trip as a four-year-old, he’d spent an afternoon hunting for flowers and fallen asleep under a pine tree. Awakened by sounds coming from the tall grass, he imagined snakes crawling everywhere. But when he looked closer, he saw only small birds fluttering among the grass stalks.
The truck was noisy, but Eddie could still make out the birds piping back and forth. A meadowlark rushed across the road with its wing hanging down, a trick meant to attract danger away from its nest. After the truck passed, the meadowlark stood up straight and folded its wings.
When the land levelled off and the fir trees gave way to scrubby pine, they came to a fork in the road. They could either keep right for an extra few minutes of bone-jarring travel or take a shortcut up a steep hill. The rising face of the hill was scarred by tracks of army trucks and motorcycles that had tried to make it to the summit. Each time Grace had driven past the spot, Eddie and Lewis had begged her to give the hill a try. She wouldn’t try it even once.
Suddenly the truck veered left. Through the glass Eddie saw his mother’s hand on the door handle as if she planned to jump out. With the motor revving a high-whining roar, they sped toward the hill. Twenty feet from the base of the hill, terror and excitement came over Eddie. At the steepest part, where the road seemed to go straight up, the tires kicked up rocks and dirt like a mad bull. It was almost impossible to keep from falling out the back. Eddie heard a shout from Lewis and saw him giggling with such a wild look that he feared his little brother might lose his grip.
“Hang on, stupid,” he warned.
But his voice was drowned by the racing engine. Just as the motor was about to stall, the front end of the truck dropped down onto level ground. Jimmy had done it. He switched off the engine and stepped out of the truck.
“What do you think of that, boys?” he asked, beaming.
“Can we do it again?” Lewis asked.
“Better not. I think I scared your mom a bit,” Jimmy said. “Anyway, Lewis, you go catch up with your mom while me and Eddie do some shooting.”
Jimmy pulled the gun from behind the seat of the truck, slipped the shoulder strap over his head, and picked up a box that rattled with tin cans and bottles.
“Wait right here,” he ordered.
Jimmy walked over to a spot fifty feet away and lined up the bottles and cans. As he walked toward Eddie, he dipped his shoulder and the gun slid into his hands. He smiled and winked. “Okay. First things first. This is a single-shot rifle and takes only one shell at a time.”
Jimmy opened the box of shells. The brass and grey lead jackets of the rows of shells looked like soldiers. Jimmy jerked back the bolt, placed a shell into the chamber of the rifle, and pushed the bolt forward, locking it in place. With his thumb holding back the end of the bolt, Jimmy pointed the gun into the air and squeezed the trigger. The bolt slid forward and stopped.
“You see how I did that? I just put on the safety. That’s the only way you got of not shooting yourself in the foot or somebody in the back. You make sure you do that every time you go hunting. That way you don’t have to go digging around for a shell and miss a chance at a deer or something. After that you just pull back on the bolt slow until it clicks twice. Then you’re ready. I’ll fire off a few rounds to get it sighted.”
Jimmy leaned against the truck, aimed at a target, and fired. The shell kicked up a spray of dust in front of a can.
“She’s a little low.”
He tore a strip off the cover of a book of matches and slid it under the rear sight, reloaded, and tried again. This time he was off to the right. He tapped the rear sight with a stone ever so softly, and Eddie couldn’t see how it could possibly make a difference. He reloaded again. This time he shot over the top of the can. As the minutes went by, Jimmy fiddled with the gun, blaming it each time he missed. Finally on his fifth try he hit the can.
“Okay. It’s good now. Your turn. Scoot yourself down on the ground. You’ll be able to keep the gun steady that way.”
Jimmy waited until Eddie found a comfortable position on his stomach before passing him the gun. He handed Eddie a shell and watched to make sure he loaded the gun correctly. Eddie smiled to himself but listened to instructions and did exactly what he was told. Lining up the dot of the front sight into the vee of the rear sight, he aimed at the centre of a bottle and squeezed the trigger. The bottle burst with a pop, scattering glass over the ground.
“Jiminy Crickets. Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”
Eddie shrugged his shoulders. Jimmy pulled the gun away. He ejected the empty shell and went down on one knee. He aimed at the target for a long time, held his breath and shot. The can spun away. He handed the gun back to Eddie. Eddie knew Jimmy thought that his hit was more luck than skill, so he took steady aim as if he were down to his last bullet, just as his mother had taught him.
Grace had her own way of teaching Eddie to shoot, with little money to spend on shells, and she’d used the old .30-06. It was a relic from World War I and had a kick like a horse. She wedged the gun between stones so there would be no movement and showed Eddie how to line up the sights on a target. After checking his aim, she gave him three shells. He had three chances to hit the target and wasn’t to shoot until he was sure about his aim.
Now, as Eddie lined up his shot, he held his breath and pulled the trigger. The can flipped into the air. He passed the gun to Jimmy. As time went on, Eddie knew Jimmy was worried that he might be shown up, and he remembered how angry Jimmy had been after he’d touched his car. When Eddie lined up the sights again, for a second he considered missing the target on purpose. But he took aim and hit the can dead centre. Jimmy shook the empty box of shells.
“I guess that’s it. We’re all out of ammo.”
They hurried down a narrow cow trail to a flat piece of ground on the slope where Grace and Lewis sat on an old tank turret. The three-inch-thick iron shell was speckled in shades of rust. Where the giant gun barrel had once poked through, knee-high grass now covered the opening.
“So you killed off all the cans and bottles? What a waste of shells,” Grace muttered.
“Wasting shells? We had to get the gun sighted, for Pete’s sake. What do you know about guns anyway?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all,” she said.
Lewis and Eddie rolled a large rock over to where the hill dropped straight down. With a hard push, the rock rolled toward the bottom, bouncing and kicking up chunks of grass and dirt. Reaching the floor of the flatland, the rock rolled twenty feet before coming to a stop and tipped over on its side.
They sat looking out at the broad plateau that spread from the treed slopes in the east and the lakes in the west all the way to the southern skyline. The stubby bunch grass covering the plain looked like a deer hide spread over the land. The only object to stand out against the landscape was a single juniper tree in the centre. Most trees grew away from the wind, but the juniper leaned stubbornly forward. The tree had stood alone in the relentless wind for so long that its trunk was twisted and crooked. Its sparse boughs drooped like umbrella spines.
“This place never changes,” Jimmy said. “Like it won’t let you change it. A long time ago, the chief of the Okanagans was asked by the cattle growers on the reserve to clear more land for grazing. A lot of people had cows then. When summas were having a hard time in the Depression, our people did good. We had a herd that one family could look after for two years and they could keep the calves. Then somebody else had a turn. The chief said the range would be a good place to grow a newer, better grass so the cows would get fat and they could make a lot of money. Those guys started rubbing their hands together cuz they thought they were gonna be rich, so they met on the range in the spring.
“They started walking on the farthest corner with torches and set fire to the bunch grass. They all said that grass was good for nothing anyways. The tallest it ever got was half a foot high, and only the wild horses could graze it because it was so slow growing.
“The wind pushed them flames across that flat land until the smoke was so thick it was hard to tell the red sun from the sparks. Birds flew out of the grass, while all the little trapped animals were burned. Their bones popped like pitch wood. The wildflowers folded up to nothin’, and the whistlin’ gophers ran underground to wait for the fire to burn itself out. When that big flame reached the juniper, the heat lit the needles on the branches, and pretty soon you couldn’t see anything but smoke. When the flames moved on, the men thought there would be only ashes left of the old juniper. But the tree was still standing. The wood at the heart of that juniper must be hard as iron.
“After the ground cooled off, the men walked in a line turning the handles of their seed spreaders. And when they finished, it rained and rained, and then the first grasses popped out of the ashes. Just what the chief and cattle growers hoped for. When the grass was a foot tall, the cattle growers released their cows onto the range, and they got good and fat.
“The next year the grass grew tall again from the spring rain, and all the cattle people came back with a bigger herd. But it didn’t rain. No sir. Not until fall. That range was dryer’n a popcorn fart. There wasn’t a drop fell that summer, and all that fancy new grass up and died. Well, the chief and cattle growers walked around with their bottom lips hangin’ down because they didn’t have money to plant the new grass. They spent it all.”
Eddie laughed. That seemed to please Jimmy.
“So they rounded up their cows and took them home. The spring after that the rain didn’t bring back the new grass, but the old bunch grass grew as tall as it was before the fire. And wildflowers came out of the ground again, and on the branches of that old juniper small buds showed up. And the bunch grass grew half a foot high, and only the horses could eat it.”
No one spoke for a few minutes.
Jimmy jumped to his feet. “Let’s vamoose, guys. Hop in the truck, and we’ll go for a little tour. I ain’t been up here in a long, long time.”
Bouncing over boulders and jerking out of potholes, they drove off the rough ground onto an old road. The smoother ride allowed the brothers to kneel so they could look out through the windshield without the risk of cracking their kneecaps. Up ahead at the end of the road, on the other side of the reserve boundary where the upper high peaks met the range, stood an abandoned log cabin surrounded by poplar trees. The sod roof sagged in the middle as if it could cave in at any time. No one knew much about the cabin’s history except that it was called the old Smith place. It had been there for as long as anyone could remember.
Jimmy drove through an opening in the barbwire fence and parked in the shade of the trees. When he switched off the engine, it gave a slow groan.
Eddie wanted to wash the dust from his face and eyes and have a drink from the creek that had the coldest, sweetest water he’d ever tasted. He raced around the cabin. But instead of the two-foot-wide flow he’d hoped for, he found only a small trickle at the bottom of a stony trench.
“What you looking for?” Grace asked, coming around the corner of the old house.
“I wanted a drink from the creek, but it’s almost all dried up,” he said.
“Yeah, we’re a little too late, I guess.”
“Shhh . . . quiet,” Jimmy whispered loudly. He cocked his head to the side, straining to hear. “I remember that sound.”
Below a steep rock cliff stood a column of ponderosa pine. The great trees swept at the clouds, creaking and groaning like ship masts. Heavy boughs waved and dropped cones to the ground where they spiralled away with a click. The wind washing through the needles made a calming hush. Eddie leaned back to watch the clouds race past, his body swaying with the trees.
“Hey. You guys hear something? What is that? Is it thunder?” Jimmy asked.
The ground shook with a drumming sound as if rising from the centre of the earth. “Look. Up there,” Jimmy said, pointing.
Eddie saw running horses coming down the mountain like a vee of geese. As they came closer, Eddie spotted the lead horse, a bay stud, at the front of the pounding feet and bobbing heads. His long tail whipped the wind like a banner, and his feet kicked up saucer-sized chunks of earth that flipped in the air like pancakes. Closer and closer they came, twisting, turning, and plunging down the steep hill. Yearling colts stumbled as they tried to keep up, aware of the laid-back ears and bared teeth of old mares behind them.
At the base of the mountain, the herd turned to the right like a wave of sparrows and sailed over the single strand of drooping barbwire hanging between the leaning posts. With a quick turn of his head the stud swung to the side, spun around, and stopped to face the humans. The herd closed in behind him, and twenty sets of guarded eyes watched. Hot breath blew dust out of rattling nostrils. A mare answered a lost foal’s whinny somewhere among the milling hooves. The stud pulled his head high, stamped his hooves, and pranced forward lightly as a deer. Stopping thirty feet away, the stud observed the people for a moment before he snorted, tossed his head, and pivoted around on his rear legs. He galloped away. The herd turned and broke into a run behind him.
“Jeez. You see that? He was giving us a once-over. Man oh man. There’s only a couple dozen of the wild horses left now. Looks like they’re going to water down at the lake,” Jimmy said. “There used to be a hundred of them around when I was a kid.
“There was this stud we called Snowball. He was white with big hairy feet and a mane full of burrs, and his hide was covered in scars. If another stud even set foot on his ground, he would hunt him down and run him off or just kick the shit out of him. Me and Pop rode up here once looking for deer and we seen him chasing this little grey. It was something to see. That little horse was running for his life. I don’t know how far they ran, but he was gone for quite a while. When he got back, he went after my horse and almost took a piece outta my leg. Then he turned around and starts putting the boots to us. Pop lets a shot go behind him and he just stands there. When we start to leave, well, the chase is on again. The old man said these horses were just left here, and they went kinda wild. Shitters, everybody calls them, because that’s all they were good for. But you shoulda seen that old stud. He was something.”
They watched the herd disappear over the hill.
“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting hungry. My stomach sounds like a bear in heat. Let’s skedaddle,” he said.
A grey light began spreading across the range as the sun slipped out of sight behind Blue Grouse Mountain on the west side of the valley. They drove down the long road to the bottom, coasting the last quarter of a mile with the motor turned off. Fenders rattled as the truck drifted sideways on washboard corners. Rocks flipped from under the tires with a hum. Cool air floating back into Eddie’s face made his eyes water.
The road curved alongside Madeline Lake, where Eddie saw fish surfacing for bugs. Only the wake of the ever-moving coots broke its smooth reflection of the valley walls. Dust behind the truck lifted from the road and rolled out across the water like smoke. Deep tracks in the mud at the lake edge left behind by cows gave the air a musky smell. Small twisters of no-see-ums swirled inches above the water. The truck clattered over the cattle guard and turned down the driveway to home.
Jimmy rested the rifle on two spikes he drove into Eddie and Lewis’s bedroom wall. The gun was the last thing Eddie saw that night before he fell asleep and it was the first thing he saw when he awoke the next morning. His eyes wandered up and down the length of the gun as he lay with his hands behind his head, amazed at the feeling the gun gave him.